This article reflects on the effectiveness of trade liberalization, as envisaged in the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) of the WTO, for promoting ICT use and production in developing countries. It makes the case for an e-South Framework Agreement that facilitates the harnessing of...

Notwithstanding its impressive economic growth, food insecurity in South Asia continues to be a stark reality for a large number of households. Despite several successful policy interventions by Governments, the number of mal-nourished children and adults remain alarmingly high in the region...

The objective of the paper is to i) understand and document the morbidity profile, ii) examine utilisation of health services, and iii) estimate approximate expenses on health care by the rural households. [WP No. 8]

Home to over 25 per cent of the world’s hungry poor, India faces major food security challenges and the situation has barely improved in two decades. Will the National Food Security Bill that the Indian Parliament is expected to pass this month alleviate the country’s food...

Unpredictable rainfall is an important risk for agricultural activity, and farmers in developing countries often receive incomplete insurance from informal risk-sharing networks. The demand for, and effects of, offering formal index-based rainfall insurance is studied through a randomized...

This paper examines how the neoliberal policies have influenced the water sector reform policies and interventions in India, particularly, in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat. In doing so, the paper tries to engage with three questions: a) what are the national and state-level responses...

Part I of the Budget speech by Finance Minister

Information plays a vital role in lives of individuals/groups for development and growth. Just information does not serve the purpose, but accurate information does. The sources/tools/techniques used to get the desired information have evolved from the foremost person-to-person interaction to...

This paper claims that the roots and remedies of health inequalities reflected in the major academic debates that culminated with full force towards the turn of the last century, have done little to usher in a radical change in public health discourse. There has been a hesitation to understand...

The main argument of this paper is that in many situations, dicult puzzles of governance can be solved in dramatically new ways using modern IT systems. Nationwide centralised databases, coupled with ubiquitous high-speed Internet access, and pervasive computational power, has put a new set of...