This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND license. This volume analyzes the economic, social, and political challenges that emerging states confront today. Notwithstanding the growing importance of the ‘emerging states’ in global affairs and governance, many problems requiring immediate...

This book focuses on the issue of financial exclusion with particular reference to the urban informal sector in India. Continuing the work of its predecessor, the current Government of India is also placing considerable importance on driving policy initiatives for financial inclusion. However,...

The urban poor in developing countries face challenging living environments, which may interfere with good sleep. Using actigraphy to measure sleep objectively, we find that low-income adults in Chennai, India sleep only 5.5 hours per night on average despite spending 8 hours in bed. Their sleep...

Many efforts to improve school quality by adding school resources have proven to be ineffective. This paper presents the results of two experiments conducted in Mumbai and Vadodara, India, designed to evaluate ways to improve the quality of education in urban slums. A remedial education program...

The book assesses the development experience by reflecting on a number of aspects, su­­ch as growth in relation to employment, regional imbalances and rural-urban distribution. Further, it examines educational attainment and human capital formation issues in the context of the skill shortages...

This book contributes to the adoption of agricultural technology in general and to literature on the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) in particular by identifying the factors that influence the decision to adopt SRI and examining SRI’s impact on household income and yield. The study also...

The theme of this book is health outcomes in India, in particular to outcomes relating to its caste and religious groups and, within these groups, to their women and children. The book’s tenor is analytical and based upon a rigorous examination of recent data from both government and...

This paper analyzes the effects of the reforms initiated in India following the balance of payments (BOP) crisis of 1991 on economic performance. We do not find persuasive the contention of many analysts that growth accelerated after the mid-1980s when reforms were initiated. Nor does...

Hirschman's (1970) seminal thesis that enabling worker “voice” prevents exit from the employment relationship has played a foundational role in labor economics. We provide the first experimental test of this hypothesis in a real-world setting via a randomized controlled trial in Indian...