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...

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 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...

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...

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...

Traditionally sanitary services are provided by the State or State owned bodies. However, with the ever increasing population and waste generation rates coupled with lack of financial resources and infrastructure, poor community participation the municipalities are unable to provide a good...

Trade policy reforms which lead to changes in world prices of agricultural commodities or domestic policies aimed at affecting agricultural prices are often seen as causing a policy dilemma: a fall in agricultural prices benefits poor urban consumers but hurts poor rural producers, while a rise...