In "Bowling Alone," Putnam (1995) famously argued that the rise of television may be responsible for social capital's decline. I investigate this hypothesis in the context of Indonesian villages. To identify the impact of exposure to television (and radio), I exploit plausibly exogenous...

The paper attempts to construct political influence variables and explain discrepancies in fund disbursement through proper econometric specification in the Indian context.

This manual is a step by step guide to district planning which will assist planners at the local, district and State levels. District planning, by taking into account resources locally available, infrastructure status and gaps, the aims and vision of the local people and weighing options of lead...

This article presents the findings of a survey conducted in 2000 in the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC), where quotas – 33 per cent of seats - for women have been implemented since 1995. [CSH Occassional Paper No. 2]

This paper presents the results of fieldwork on rural primary schools of two districts of Madhya Pradesh, India, conducted from December 2001 to March 2002. Since the mid-1990’s, the government of this state has initiated reforms in the public primary school sector, by decentralising its...

Decentralizing authority to democratically elected local government is advised for reasons of efficiency and good governance, but equity may suffer if elites capture decision making at the local level. What safeguards can help promote equitable and participatory decentralization? This question...

This study, entitled “Municipal Finance in India – An Assessmentâ€, undertaken for the Development Research Group (DRG), Reserve Bank of India examines the performance of Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in India. Using data from 35 Metropolitan Municipal Corporations, the study...