Public policy

A collection of articles on public policy published on The India Forum.

Caste and Careers: Limited Mobility Over Three Generations

Does caste still dictate occupation and occupational mobility? A socio-economic survey in Uttar Pradesh reveals that aside from modest Dalit upward mobility, the occupational gap between upper-caste…
▶09-Apr-2025
Rukmi Pradeep, Srinivas Goli

Cash Transfers and Public Services Work in Tandem

Unconditional cash transfers empower individuals to address their immediate needs. Yet, this could yield greater benefits if complemented by public goods. The government must acknowledge that cash…
▶02-Apr-2025
Sheetal Bharat

Unshackle Local Governments from Bureaucratic Control

State panchayati raj acts empower bureaucrats to suspend or dismiss elected representatives of local governments, and supersede or dissolve the bodies themselves. Such powers must be scrapped, and…
▶27-Mar-2025
Sunil Kumar

Enumerators and the New Private Customised Survey Industry in India

In the absence of timely data from official agencies, private organizations and researchers have turned to designing large data surveys, often promoted by global philanthropies. There are questions…
▶18-Mar-2025
Vinayak Krishnan

Grounding Research: An Experiment from Uttarakhand

The National Education Policy wants research to be a part of undergraduate curricula. To meaningfully engage with this ambition, we need to design a pedagogy of research methods that emphasises local…
▶04-Mar-2025
Gautam Bisht, Gaurav Joshi, Mahendra Rawat, Shivam Pandey

Empowering Local Governments in India’s Federal Structure

Panchayats and municipalities are rarely given their due as the third pillar of federalism. The challenges posed by the delimitation of parliamentary constituencies can be side-stepped by…
▶26-Feb-2025
Sunil Kumar

How Healthy is Health Insurance?

State-sponsored health insurance schemes are growing by leaps and bounds in India. Ensuring that they serve the public interest rather than private profit is a major challenge. Insurance apart, what…
▶18-Feb-2025
Anfaz Abdul Vahab, Jean Drèze

NITI Aayog has Failed. India Needs a New Institutional Compact

Since it was created in 2015, NITI Aayog has neither been able to offer fresh thinking on the economy nor has it functioned as a a mediator between the centre and the states. A federal institution…
▶06-Feb-2025
Yamini Aiyar
Book
Behind the Rise in Women’s Work-II

The Rise in Female Labour and Work Force Participation Rates

The increasing participation of women in work in recent years as revealed by official surveys, especially in 2023-24, appears to arise from definitional changes that now include groups of women as…
▶16-Jan-2025
Avanindra Nath Thakur, Priyanshi Chaudhary
Book
Behind the Rise in Women’s Work-I

What Does Self-Employment Mean for Women in India?

Contrary to official claims that we have “an equitable, vibrant labour market where women play a leading role”, there has been a decline in real incomes of self-employed women and falling real wages…
▶14-Jan-2025
Jayati Ghosh