India's economic standing and its policy landscape have come a long way since the 1943 Bengal famine. History saw buffer stocking of food grains as a famine-combating tool. Today, apart from serving as an effective hedge in times of famines, such grain stocks are a conduit deployed by the...

Parochial politics is typically associated with poor leadership and low levels of public good provision. This paper explores the possibility that community involvement in politics need not necessarily worsen governance and, indeed, can be efficiency-enhancing when the context is appropriate....

Parochial politics is typically associated with poor leadership and low levels of public good provision. This paper explores the possibility that community involvement in politics need not necessarily worsen governance and, indeed, can be efficiency-enhancing when the context is appropriate....

This paper has adopted the exploratory case study method of analyzing a few recent cases of public procurement irregularities on Indian Railways documented by the vigilance departments and the CAG available in public domain to inquire into the following issues: (a) how do irregularities and...

Indian Railways is one of the world's largest public sector organizations. Its network, traffic, organization and extent of vertical integration are gigantic. This paper undertakes a critical examination of its procurement process to understand the procedures and institutional mechanisms which...

In the post-9/11 world, the current US counterterrorism efforts in the Af-Pak region and the terror attacks on Indian cities have prompted India and the US to cooperate more closely on counterterrorism concerns. However, this counterterrorism cooperation is not commensurate with the...

There has been a phenomenal global increase in the proportion of women in politics in the last two decades, but there is no evidence of how this influences economic performance. We investigate this using data on competitive elections to India's state assemblies, leveraging close elections to...

The paper examined different welfare schemes implemented by central, state and local governments in a village in Telangana, India. The entire households in the village were surveyed on census basis. The benefits accrued to the villagers were assessed and policy suggestions were made to improve...

Achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a gigantic task given its 17 goals and 169 targets cutting across many areas. These have to be achieved in synergistic manner by central, state and local governments. Although, state and central level departments work in silos, their actual...