Author: cprindia

Watch the full video of the workshop (above), which deconstructs the ideals of love, romance and choice marriages as an urban phenomenon, associated specifically with the so-called progressive, modern, ‘neoliberal’ middle class.

This talk examines the construction of middle class identity by young professionals in Delhi, through their experiences of romance and criteria for selection of a spouse.

While the first part examines the changing landscapes of urban Delhi–coffee shops, restaurants, leisure spaces, and describes the specific ways in which these spaces enable a middle class identity, the second part of the talk focuses on the ideals of being middle class.

The two-part question and answer session that followed can be accessed here: Part 1, Part 2.

The Centre for Policy Research, Delhi in association with the Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence Research Programme (GI-ACE) hosted a workshop focused on ‘Audit and Anti-Corruption Measures in India’ with a special focus on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY). The workshop took place on Tuesday, 24th September 2019 and was conducted at the Centre for Policy Research. The co-conveners of the workshop were Amrita Dhillon, who is currently Professor of Economics at King’s College London and Yamini Aiyar, President and Chief Executive of the Centre for Policy Research.

The workshop sprung from a belief in the necessity to bring together government officials, policy activists, and researchers to deliberate on finding possible complementarities with two seemingly opposite methods of ensuring transparency and reducing inefficiency in government schemes. While policy activists have focused on the power of public audits as a forum to bring to light inefficiencies and corruption and have sought to formalize them into schemes thereby empowering beneficiaries, the government seems to have shifted to a technology based approach to deliver greater efficiency and target corruption. With a view towards securing a holistic view of this question, the workshop was successful in bringing together participants from the government, civil society, and academia. They ranged from organizations such as the Ministry of Rural Development, Comptroller and Auditor General’s Office, Indian Statistical Institute, Social Accountability Resource Unit, IDInsight, Azim Premji University, Accountability Initiative and the Brookings Institution to name a few.

The first session was chaired by Farzana Afridi from the Indian Statistical Institute and titled ‘Leakages in Central Schemes, Centralised Monitoring and Interaction with New Technologies.’ It featured speakers from academia, policy practitioners, and the government who each sought to contextualize their experience within the ambit of either framing anti-corruption policy or studying its efficacy on the field.

Yamini Aiyar from the Centre for Policy Research began the session by recounting her experiencegleaned from having observed the implementation of MGNREGA since its inception and closely studiedsocial audits in the MGNREGA. She pointed to the importance of the scheme as an experimental ground for governance and citizen engagement through vehicles like social audits. However she also cautioned against an overemphasis on corruption at the cost of building state capability for effective implementation and the tensions between greater decentralization and anticorruption efforts. To reduce leakages, she underscored the importance of the need for enhancing capacities of the panchayats while roping in the government to be a part of the social audits which can be a rich source of feedback to judge the workings of their technological interventions. This was a point also echoed by Karan Nagpal, an economist at the consulting group IDInsight, who drew upon the firm’s groundwork experience as well as his own doctoral thesis research which emphasized the need to build capacity at the grassroots to overcome the difficulties that arise from a technological intervention.

The government officials who attended the session provided an invaluable insight into how the establishment looks at the issue of corruption through the lens of auditing and how technological innovations are conceived, adopted, tweaked and finally institutionalized.

Alka Upadhyay, Additional Secretary at the Ministry of Rural Development, detailed how the Ministry has moved to plug the main sources of leakages in the MNREGA—namely wage siphoning, creation of fake beneficiaries and assets not getting created. According to her, aside from the oft cited Direct Benefit Transfer, an important technological intervention to obtain a finished asset has been geotagging- particularly in the PMGSY. She also highlighted the Ministry’s efforts to ensure transparency across multiple levels while still acknowledging that more needs to be done in this matter; an example cited was the possibility of making data on road maintenance mapped through geotagging and MIS publicly available thereby making it a powerful tool for social audits. Another area of improvement mentioned by her was in empowering citizen monitoring and building better mechanisms to track their complaints.

Sunil Dadhe—Director General of Audit (Central Expenditure)—sought to demystify the Audit approach to handling corruption. He explained the three approaches that Audit employs: a system-oriented approach which focuses on the system that creates a scheme where delivery doesn’t match expectations, a result-oriented approach which is focused on meeting pre-decided targets, and a problem-oriented approach which looks at specific instances that enhance audit risks. He highlighted the need to embrace technology in audits and bring about correlating data sets across various fields—something China has done to better combat air pollution.

An interesting point that arose during these discussions was the role of the citizen in demanding accountability. Keshav Desiraju, who retired as Secretary, Health & Family Welfare, spoke about how the state expects the citizen to demand accountability and is not predisposed towards providing it; a factor which perhaps explains the social audit falling out of favor as an anti-corruption measure.

The second session was chaired by Amrita Dhillon and titled ‘Accountability Initiatives.’ The speakers in this session were practitioners and civil society activists from the social audit sphere who provided an incisive view on how grievance redressal works at the ground level and the multiple roles played by social audits as mechanisms for increasing awareness, providing a platform for complaint redressal and, formulating processes for grievance redressal against mistakes caused by technological intervention.

Rakshita Swamy from the State Accountability Resource Unit (SARU) built on the points made in the previous session by Sunil Dadhe and pointed out that Social Audit reports have great potential to be used in compliment to CAG audit reports—a practice already in place in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. While highlighting the importance of an audit as a mechanism for spreading awareness and demanding accountability, they are also rich sources of qualitative data which can explain the ‘who, why, and how’ of scheme operations.

Anjor Bhaskar, faculty at Azim Premji University, drew on his fieldwork experiences in Jharkhand to illustrate the role social audits play as grievance redressal mechanisms when technological interventions create a plethora of new problems, probably most commonly seen with the stories of starvation deaths coming out of Jharkhand due to PDS denial caused from inefficient Aadhar linkage. Rajendran Narayanan, also at Azim Premji University, provided more detailed case studies expressing what he termed his “wariness about the techno-utopian way of making schemes efficient.” An interesting observation that Narayanan brought up was the use of messaging services like WhatsApp by frontline bureaucrats to convey decisions which obfuscates accessibility and erases trails which citizens cannot appeal against later.

A second point that Bhaskar sought to underscore was the availability of multiple datasets of rich data with the government but none of them are available for public scrutiny. The most obvious one he highlighted was the lack of Action Taken Report (ATR) availability in the public domain or on the internet. Another opaque avenue rich with data that he mentioned was the possibility of studying Gram Panchayat Development Plans (GPDP) to better understand the workings of the panchayat as well as its priorities.

Anindita Adhikari, currently a PhD student at Brown University, shared experiences from fieldwork conducted in Bihar as part of her ongoing doctoral thesis. She sought to explain the widespread adoption of Jaanchculture or a culture of inspections, often unplanned, random ones, comprising of surprise checks, individual checks, Lokpal inspections and, social audits. It was found that a lot of these random visits and checks are not explicitly audited but a way of maintaining a regular flow of work. However, it was observed that some of the reports coming out of these social audits were ambiguous and difficult to take action on. Another important factor was that panchayats were being kept out of the process of the social audits pointing to the need for giving them more formal responsibility when it comes to social audits.

The workshop culminated with a note of thanks delivered by co-convener Amrita Dhillon who drew notice to the breadth of topics covered throughout the day as well as appreciation for the sheer diversity of experts around the table. The daylong session was a fascinating, and rare, insight into a topic where two major stakeholders- the government and civil society are often at loggerheads, unable to see the other’s side. By bringing not just representatives from these two sectors, but also formal academics and private practitioners, the workshop helped foster substantive discussions based on a holistic understanding of the sector and generated avenues for further improvement, study, and implementation.

The Centre for Policy Research, Delhi in association with the Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence Research Programme (GI-ACE) hosted a workshop focused on ‘Audit and Anti-Corruption Measures in India’ with a special focus on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY). The workshop took place on Tuesday, 24th September 2019 and was conducted at the Centre for Policy Research. The co-conveners of the workshop were Amrita Dhillon, who is currently Professor of Economics at King’s College London and Yamini Aiyar, President and Chief Executive of the Centre for Policy Research.

The workshop sprung from a belief in the necessity to bring together government officials, policy activists, and researchers to deliberate on finding possible complementarities with two seemingly opposite methods of ensuring transparency and reducing inefficiency in government schemes. While policy activists have focused on the power of public audits as a forum to bring to light inefficiencies and corruption and have sought to formalize them into schemes thereby empowering beneficiaries, the government seems to have shifted to a technology based approach to deliver greater efficiency and target corruption. With a view towards securing a holistic view of this question, the workshop was successful in bringing together participants from the government, civil society, and academia. They ranged from organizations such as the Ministry of Rural Development, Comptroller and Auditor General’s Office, Indian Statistical Institute, Social Accountability Resource Unit, IDInsight, Azim Premji University, Accountability Initiative and the Brookings Institution to name a few.

The first session was chaired by Farzana Afridi from the Indian Statistical Institute and titled ‘Leakages in Central Schemes, Centralised Monitoring and Interaction with New Technologies.’ It featured speakers from academia, policy practitioners, and the government who each sought to contextualize their experience within the ambit of either framing anti-corruption policy or studying its efficacy on the field.

Yamini Aiyar from the Centre for Policy Research began the session by recounting her experiencegleaned from having observed the implementation of MGNREGA since its inception and closely studiedsocial audits in the MGNREGA. She pointed to the importance of the scheme as an experimental ground for governance and citizen engagement through vehicles like social audits. However she also cautioned against an overemphasis on corruption at the cost of building state capability for effective implementation and the tensions between greater decentralization and anticorruption efforts. To reduce leakages, she underscored the importance of the need for enhancing capacities of the panchayats while roping in the government to be a part of the social audits which can be a rich source of feedback to judge the workings of their technological interventions. This was a point also echoed by Karan Nagpal, an economist at the consulting group IDInsight, who drew upon the firm’s groundwork experience as well as his own doctoral thesis research which emphasized the need to build capacity at the grassroots to overcome the difficulties that arise from a technological intervention.

The government officials who attended the session provided an invaluable insight into how the establishment looks at the issue of corruption through the lens of auditing and how technological innovations are conceived, adopted, tweaked and finally institutionalized.

Alka Upadhyay, Additional Secretary at the Ministry of Rural Development, detailed how the Ministry has moved to plug the main sources of leakages in the MNREGA—namely wage siphoning, creation of fake beneficiaries and assets not getting created. According to her, aside from the oft cited Direct Benefit Transfer, an important technological intervention to obtain a finished asset has been geotagging- particularly in the PMGSY. She also highlighted the Ministry’s efforts to ensure transparency across multiple levels while still acknowledging that more needs to be done in this matter; an example cited was the possibility of making data on road maintenance mapped through geotagging and MIS publicly available thereby making it a powerful tool for social audits. Another area of improvement mentioned by her was in empowering citizen monitoring and building better mechanisms to track their complaints.

Sunil Dadhe—Director General of Audit (Central Expenditure)—sought to demystify the Audit approach to handling corruption. He explained the three approaches that Audit employs: a system-oriented approach which focuses on the system that creates a scheme where delivery doesn’t match expectations, a result-oriented approach which is focused on meeting pre-decided targets, and a problem-oriented approach which looks at specific instances that enhance audit risks. He highlighted the need to embrace technology in audits and bring about correlating data sets across various fields—something China has done to better combat air pollution.

An interesting point that arose during these discussions was the role of the citizen in demanding accountability. Keshav Desiraju, who retired as Secretary, Health & Family Welfare, spoke about how the state expects the citizen to demand accountability and is not predisposed towards providing it; a factor which perhaps explains the social audit falling out of favor as an anti-corruption measure.

The second session was chaired by Amrita Dhillon and titled ‘Accountability Initiatives.’ The speakers in this session were practitioners and civil society activists from the social audit sphere who provided an incisive view on how grievance redressal works at the ground level and the multiple roles played by social audits as mechanisms for increasing awareness, providing a platform for complaint redressal and, formulating processes for grievance redressal against mistakes caused by technological intervention.

Rakshita Swamy from the State Accountability Resource Unit (SARU) built on the points made in the previous session by Sunil Dadhe and pointed out that Social Audit reports have great potential to be used in compliment to CAG audit reports—a practice already in place in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. While highlighting the importance of an audit as a mechanism for spreading awareness and demanding accountability, they are also rich sources of qualitative data which can explain the ‘who, why, and how’ of scheme operations.

Anjor Bhaskar, faculty at Azim Premji University, drew on his fieldwork experiences in Jharkhand to illustrate the role social audits play as grievance redressal mechanisms when technological interventions create a plethora of new problems, probably most commonly seen with the stories of starvation deaths coming out of Jharkhand due to PDS denial caused from inefficient Aadhar linkage. Rajendran Narayanan, also at Azim Premji University, provided more detailed case studies expressing what he termed his “wariness about the techno-utopian way of making schemes efficient.” An interesting observation that Narayanan brought up was the use of messaging services like WhatsApp by frontline bureaucrats to convey decisions which obfuscates accessibility and erases trails which citizens cannot appeal against later.

A second point that Bhaskar sought to underscore was the availability of multiple datasets of rich data with the government but none of them are available for public scrutiny. The most obvious one he highlighted was the lack of Action Taken Report (ATR) availability in the public domain or on the internet. Another opaque avenue rich with data that he mentioned was the possibility of studying Gram Panchayat Development Plans (GPDP) to better understand the workings of the panchayat as well as its priorities.

Anindita Adhikari, currently a PhD student at Brown University, shared experiences from fieldwork conducted in Bihar as part of her ongoing doctoral thesis. She sought to explain the widespread adoption of Jaanchculture or a culture of inspections, often unplanned, random ones, comprising of surprise checks, individual checks, Lokpal inspections and, social audits. It was found that a lot of these random visits and checks are not explicitly audited but a way of maintaining a regular flow of work. However, it was observed that some of the reports coming out of these social audits were ambiguous and difficult to take action on. Another important factor was that panchayats were being kept out of the process of the social audits pointing to the need for giving them more formal responsibility when it comes to social audits.

The workshop culminated with a note of thanks delivered by co-convener Amrita Dhillon who drew notice to the breadth of topics covered throughout the day as well as appreciation for the sheer diversity of experts around the table. The daylong session was a fascinating, and rare, insight into a topic where two major stakeholders- the government and civil society are often at loggerheads, unable to see the other’s side. By bringing not just representatives from these two sectors, but also formal academics and private practitioners, the workshop helped foster substantive discussions based on a holistic understanding of the sector and generated avenues for further improvement, study, and implementation.

We are excited to announce that this volume has been awarded the 2018 Certificate of Merit in a Specialized Area of International Law by The American Society of International Law. Find below a short excerpt from the note accompanying the award:

“In a foreword to this book, the authors remark that “international climate change law presents a moving target.” Indeed, a field buffeted by sharp political controversies, entrenched economic interests, complex evolving science, global inequalities, and urgent advancing deadlines presents a formidable area of study. The authors rise to the challenge, bringing their many collective decades of experience to bear in developing a remarkably clear and cohesive overview of the field. Indeed, the authors develop the parameters of the field as they review it,offering an account of its origins; analysis of the key conventions of the climate change regime (specifically the Framework Convention on Climate Change, Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement), and their corresponding institutions; as well as private, sub-national, and polycentric climate change governance regimes; and intersections between climate change and areas like trade, human rights law, and migration. We were particularly struck by the authors’ capacity to weave both authoritative analysis of legal rules and a nuanced understanding of practical and political factors into a comprehensive and eminently accessible account. The elements add up to a timely and extraordinarily useful guide that will be relevant for scholars, practitioners, students, and legal architects alike.”

The CPR Initiative on Climate, Energy and Environment is pleased to announce the publication of International Climate Change Law, co-authored by Professor Lavanya Rajamani, which provides a comprehensive overview of international climate change law. Climate change is one of the fundamental challenges facing the world today, and is the cause of significant international concern. In response, states have created an international climate regime. The treaties that comprise the regime – the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement establish a system of governance to address climate change and its impacts. This tome authored by Daniel Bodansky, Jutta Brunnée, and Lavanya Rajamani provides a clear analytical guide to the climate regime, as well as other relevant international legal rules.

The book locates international climate change law within the broader context of international law and international environmental law. It considers the evolution of the international climate change regime, and the process of law-making that has led to it. It examines the key provisions of the Framework Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. It analyses the principles and obligations that underpin the climate regime, as well as the elaborate institutional and governance architecture that has been created at successive international conferences to develop commitments and promote transparency and compliance. Further, it address the polycentric nature of international climate change law, as well as the intersections of international climate change law with other areas of international regulation.

This book is an essential introduction to international climate change law for students, scholars and negotiators.

Catherine Redgwell, Chichele Professor of Public International Law, University of Oxford, writes in her review of the book, “This book is a comprehensive and authoritative account of international climate change law by three towering figures in the field… The authors have brought their unique blend of academic expertise and practical experience of the climate regime to produce the definitive work on international climate change law, and what will surely be viewed as an instant classic.”

Philippe Sands, Q C, Professor of Law, University College London in his review writes that “On the ‘defining issue of our age’, Bodansky, Brunnée and Rajamani offer the definitive guide to the history, process and substance of international law’s effort to address climate change – and the prospects we face. Measured, authoritative and readable, to the Paris Agreement and, hopefully, beyond.”

Jacob Werksman, Principal Advisor, DG Climate Action, European Commission writes “I can think of no better team of “academic practitioners” to bring a balanced insight to this surprisingly complex and subtle area of international law. I am sure even those involved in these negotiations will find new nuance and insight in this book.”

Further information about the book can be found here. More detail on Dr. Rajamani’s work can be found here.

The journey

PAISA course was Accountability Initiative’s flagship capacity building programme to equip our field team to understand and engage with the processes and implementation of government programmes across a range of sectors.

Over the course of our journey, we realised that our research and on-ground experience spanning domains related to policy, finance, education, planning and management, coupled with the theoretical knowledge from the original PAISA course could prove to be essential learnings for other stakeholders working in the larger development ecosystem. We believe governance is a practice-oriented discipline. Thus, in order to build capability of both professionals and frontline government functionaries, theoretical knowledge must find application in resolving an experiential problem. The course is our attempt to not only bridge the gap between research and practice but also create spaces for collaborative learning.

What are we trying to achieve?

The aim of the course is to inculcate in participants an understanding of:

The structure of the Indian administrative system and the complications of the environment within which they work. The participants should be able to decipher for themselves the bureaucracy’s importance within the Indian government system and not just criticise the system on grounds of corruption.

The fund flow system, the importance of budgets, and how schemes are formulated and implemented, and then analyse the complexities of the Indian financial system. The course urges participants to simultaneously ask questions around why money does not reach its stipulated destination on time and where it gets delayed.

Who is our audience?

Hum aur Hamaari Sarkaar has been strategically designed to cater to grassroots-level development sector professionals across organisations working towards improving the quality of public services. The course makes a conscious effort to take content, often not available easily, and empower these professionals with tools to understand and contextualise government functioning within their local context. It thereby enables participants to undertake a critical analysis of state capability in India.

Through this course, the Learning and Development team (L&D) at AI envisages to build and strengthen the nodes between decision-makers, service-providers and citizens, and catalyse change through structured learning opportunities that enable them to participate in and monitor social sector programmes.

The course is conducted entirely in Hindi by PAISA Associates or AI’s field staff who carry out ground surveys to track budget spend in key social sector schemes.

Our experience so far

So far two trainings have been conducted, with:

District-level coordinators of the NGO Pratham in Bihar, who mainly work to implement Pratham’s programmes on education at the field-level, often in partnership with the government, and;

Block-level coordinators of the Nehru Yuva Kendra in Rajasthan, who work to create awareness about government schemes and ensure all intended beneficiaries are able to avail them with ease.
The following are testimonies of some of the participants, which underscore the importance of the training:

‘Change from earlier way of thinking in which bureaucracy and officials were seen as corrupt and hungry for bribes to recognising that they are burdened beyond their capacities, stuck in centralised and long drawn bureaucratic processes,’ Deepak Saini, Participant, Nehru Yuva Kendra.

‘There were 1 or 2 people whose money was stuck. We found out that the Sarpanch had listed someone else’s account and the money had gone into that account. Thus, while the money was transferred, it did not reach the intended beneficiary. The Sarpanch and the Secretary said this could be the result of a mistake. Through the course we could identify where the lapse actually was (at the Panchayat level) and would have assumed that the money had not been disbursed from the source!’ Om Prakash Sharma, Participant, Nehru Yuva Kendra.

Importantly, Hum aur Hamaari Sarkaar also proved to be a stepping stone for AI’s PAISA Associates or field staff, who are the trainers and facilitators of the course. They not only honed their training and facilitation skills but also spent considerable time building their knowledge levels to become subject experts.

For more information please click here.

About the Book
As science is increasingly making clear, the problem of climate change poses an existential challenge for humanity. For India, this challenge is compounded by immediate concerns of eradicating poverty and accelerating development, and complicated by its relatively limited role thus far in causing the problem. India in a Warming World explores this complex context for India’s engagement with climate change. But, in addition, it argues that India, like other countries, can no longer ignore the problem, because a pathway to development innocent of climate change is no longer available. Bringing together leading researchers, activists, and policymakers, this volume lays out the emergent debate on climate change in India. Collectively, the chapters deepen clarity on why India should engage with climate change and how it can best do so.

Read the open-access PDF version of India in a Warming World on the Oxford University Press website.

To view the table of contents and learn more about the authors, visit the book homepage on the CPR website.

About the Speakers
Chandra Bhushan is a noted environmentalist, and has distinguished himself as a researcher, writer and campaigner for environmentally sound and socially inclusive development. Bhushan has wide-ranging research and public policy interests. He has researched, written and campaigned for issues ranging from climate change and energy transformation to rights of mining-affected people and industrial pollution. He was conferred with the Ozone Award by the UN Environment in 2017. He is presently the CEO of the International Forum for Environment, Sustainability & Technology (iFOREST), an independent non-profit environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi.

Naina Lal Kidwai is Chairperson, Advent Private Equity India Advisory board, a non-executive Director on the boards of LafargeHolcim, Max Financial Services, CIPLA, Nayara Energy and Larsen and Toubro, and a former President of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI). She retired in 2015 as Chairperson, HSBC India and Executive Director on the board of HSBC Asia Pacific. She is a member of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Economic Council on Planetary Health, and serves as a Commissioner on the Global Commission on Economy & Climate. She has previously been a member of the International Advisory Council of the United Nations Environment Program, and the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Climate Change. An MBA from Harvard Business School, Naina is the recipient of several awards and honours, including the Padma Shri for her contribution to trade and industry.

Nitin Sethi is an independent writer and journalist. He has written on and investigated the intersections of environment, energy, climate change, development and the political economy over the last two decades. A winner of several international and national fellowships and awards, he has worked previously at The Hindu, Business Standard, Times of India, Scroll.in and the Down To Earth magazine.

About the Editor

Navroz K Dubash is a Professor at CPR, and leads the CPR Initiative on Climate, Energy and Environment. He works on climate change policy and governance, the political economy of energy and air pollution, and the regulatory state in the developing world. Widely published in these areas, Navroz serves on Government of India advisory committees on climate change, energy and air pollution, and on the editorial boards of several international journals. He is currently a Coordinating Lead Author for the national policies and institutions chapter in the upcoming 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In 2015, he was conferred the 12th T N Khoshoo Memorial Award for his work on climate change policy.

Before the global financial meltdown of 2008, India’s economy was thriving and its GDP growth was cruising at an impressive 8.8 per cent. The economic boom impacted a large section of Indians, even if unequally. With sustained high growth over an extended period, India could have achieved what economists call a ‘take-off’ (rapid and self-sustained GDP growth). The global financial meltdown disrupted this momentum in 2008.

In the decade that followed, each time the country’s economy came close to returning to that growth trajectory, political events knocked it off course. In 2019, India’s GDP is growing at the rate of 7 per cent, making it the fastest-growing major economy in the world, but little on the ground suggests that Indians are actually better off. Economic discontent and insecurity are on the rise, farmers are restive, and land-owning classes are demanding quotas in government jobs. The middle class is palpably disaffected, the informal economy is struggling and big businesses are no longer expanding aggressively. India is not the star it was in 2008 and in effect, the ‘India growth story’ has devolved into ‘growth without a story’.

The Lost Decade tells the story of the slide and examines the political context in which the Indian economy failed to recover lost momentum.

Puja Mehra is an Economic Journalist. Rathin Roy is Director of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. Nitin Desai is the Former Chief Economic Advisor at the Ministry of Finance. Rohit Chandra is a Fellow at CPR.

A review of the book by Rohit Chandra, published in Open, the Magazine can be read here.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here.