This paper presents the results of a survey of over 4100 works created under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and over 4800 randomly selected users across 100 villages in 20 districts in Maharashtra. It has two goals: the first was to verify the existence of...

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which guarantees employment of every rural household for 100 days, has different progressive provisions which incentivise higher participation of women in the programme. Official data suggest that 47 of all MGNREGA workers are...

This study examines time use data for 1244 children in the age-group 6-12 years in 274 villages in eight states in rural north India to understand the tradeoffs between time spent in school, time spent at work, time spent on home study and liesure. Using a Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SURE)...

This paper examines the idea that contract farming arrangements in developing countries even while offering farmers insurance against certain kinds of risks could simultaneously exacerbate other risks or entail new risks of their own. If correct, farmer perceptions of risks and returns would...

This piece analyzes the implications of the National Food Security Act for India's commitments under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) in the context of widespread concern that they might be mutually incompatible. An analysis of support to rice and wheat for the period 1995-2012 suggests...

This study examines the moral economy of firm-farmer contracts in contract farming schemes in India, bringing together data from field surveys, conducted between 2007 and 2010, of 42 agribusinesses and 484 contract farmers from multiple commodity sectors. The central argument of this paper is...

This study examines primary school choice in seven states in rural north India, using data from a survey of schools and 1586 households in 274 villages. The analysis emphasizes the role of choice sets faced by rural households, given uneven provision of primary education, and of the relative...

Assessing the extent of welfare gains from participation in contract farming arrangements is important to be able to make a case for promoting contract farming as a way for smallholders to capitalize on the opportunities okered by modern supply chains. At the same time, empirical accounts of...

Are ostensibly demand-driven public programs less susceptible to political clientelism even when private goods are allocated? We investigate this conjecture using expenditure data at the local level from India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. By focusing on one state where...

This study investigates the consequences of poor implementation in public workfare programs, focusing on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in India. Using nationally representative data, we test empirically for a discouraged worker effect arising from either of...