While quota based and other affirmative action remains on the policy radar of nations faced with social inequalities, there is limited evidence informing policy choices at the national level. This paper estimates the mid-term impact of quota-based affirmative action in higher education (HE) in...

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru once said: “If you educate a man you educate an individual, however, if you educate a woman you educate a whole family. Women empowered means mother India empowered”. When women who contribute almost half of the population are empowered it will strengthen the national...

Using a recent national level survey data, we have systematically investigated the pattern of higher education differential along gender, socioeconomic and geographical dimensions in India. We have found a salient differential in the attainment of higher education across gender subgroups, social...

We examine the role of the Indian diaspora in the outsourcing of work to India. Our data are taken from oDesk, the world’s largest online platform for outsourced contracts. Despite oDesk minimizing many of the frictions that diaspora connections have traditionally overcome, diaspora...

This paper proposes a stylised model to derive the effect of a sizeable middle class on average educational outcomes. Under reasonable assumptions, the model predicts that the spending share on education increases if the middle class becomes larger such that the size of the middle class has a...

This paper proposes a stylised model to derive the effect of a sizeable middle class on average educational outcomes. Under reasonable assumptions, the model predicts that the spending share on education increases if the middle class becomes larger such that the size of the middle class has a...

This paper is an attempt to unravel some specific inter-related dimensions of inequality in participation in higher education by economic status of the households. The importance of examining the linkages between economic status and participation in higher education also lies with the fact that...

An analysis of relevant data for 27 Indian states from 2005-06 to 2016-17 indicates that there were considerable variations in the provision of free elementary education (FEE) across states. While there was a slight decline in the access dimension of FEE, especially after the implementation of...

I evaluate the impact of the right to education from the passing of the Right to Education Act in India in 2009. This Act guaranteed free education to children aged 6-14 years, including children with disabilities. Given that the school participation deficit associated with disability is large,...

I study the impact of school consolidation on enrolment and achievement, using its staggered roll-out in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Across the years 2014, 2016, and 2017, Rajasthan merged many of its grade 1-5 schools with grade 6-10 schools to create grade 1-10 'model' schools. Twenty-three...