Policy Briefs & Reports

Context: India holds the unique distinction of being both the world's largest constitutional democracy and also one of its fastest growing economies. Critical to the process of India's economic development is state acquisition of land for infrastructure and industrial development. Creating a l...

India has been underscoring the transformative potential of cross-border partnerships in tourism for the Northeast. But whatever the glossy brochures may proclaim, initiatives taken in the name of the Northeast seldom ask the question to what extent the border region will benefit from these. The ...

Around the landfill sites: A groundtruthing of solid waste management law across landfill sites in coastal areas of Uttara Kannada district, Karnataka, highlights a community-led groundtruthing exercise in relation to the operation of municipal solid waste processing units and landfills along coa...

Closing the Enforcement Gap: Groundtruthing of Environmental Violations in Sundargarh, Odisha highlights a community-led groundtruthing exercise carried out in relation to operations of the Kulda Open Cast Mining Project in Sundargarh, Odisha. Through the process of groundtruthing, discussions ab...

Groundtruthing broadly means to compare facts stated in official documents and maps with the ground realities at a site or in a place. As a method of physical verification of statements made on paper, groundtruthing can act as an effective tool to create evidence by collecting easily observable f...

In the three years since the Swacch Bharat Mission was launched over 30 lakh urban toilets have been built and a further 30 lakh are planned to be built by the program’s deadline in 2019. The efforts in toilet construction have not been matched by equivalent efforts to create infrastructure and i...

The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) is Government of India's (GoI) flagship programme aimed at providing basic education, health and nutrition services for early childhood development. This brief uses government reported data to analyse ICDS performance along the following paramet...

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is a flagship scheme of the Government of India (GoI) which aims to provide at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year (FY) to every rural household that demands work. Using government reported data, t...

The National Health Mission (NHM) is Government of India's (GoI) largest public health programme. It consists of two submissions: National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), and National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) Using government data, this brief reports on: Allocations, releases and expen...

Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana - Gramin (PMAY - G) is Government of India’s (GoI) flagship ‘Housing for All’ scheme. The scheme was launched in November 2016 and aims to provide monetary assistance for the construction of a pucca house with basic amenities to all rural houseless households and those...

Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) is Government of India’s (GoI) flagship secondary education programme. The scheme was launched in March 2009 to augment access to, and improve the quality of secondary education. In FY 2013-14, four existing schemes were subsumed into RMSA to create R...

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) is the Government of India’s (GoI) flagship elementary education programme. Launched in 2001, it aims to provide universal education to children between the ages of 6 to 14 years. SSA is the primary vehicle for implementing the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory ...

The Self Employment Scheme for Rehabilitation of Manual Scavengers (SRMS) is a Central Sector Scheme of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MSJE). The scheme was introduced in January 2007, to rehabilitate the identified manual scavengers in alternative professions by the end of FY 20...

The Swachh Bharat Mission - Urban (SBM-U) is the Government of India’s (GoI) nationwide flagship programme targeting universal sanitation coverage in urban areas. Using government data, this brief reports on: Allocations and releases Physical progress of toilets built and Solid Waste Mana...

Swachh Bharat Mission- Gramin or SBM-G is the Government of India’s (GoI) flagship rural sanitation programme. Using government data, this brief reports on trends for SBM-G along the following parameters: Allocations and expenditures Physical progress of toilets built Expenditures incurre...

Sanitation in the urban areas of Odisha, as in most other parts of the country, has been a major challenge. Though one of the least urbanized states in the country,Odisha has registered a significantly high growth rate in the 2001-2011 decade and a considerable increase in the number of Census To...

Although sanitation remains a focus in present government programmes and schemes (SBM and AMRUT), capacity building of ULBs and State Government on issues of sanitation has remained an area of neglect in most of the State and ULBs. The study on Capacity Building Need Assessment of cities (Angul a...

Electricity use in Indian homes – from lights, ceiling fans, televisions, refrigerators, among other appliances – has increased 50 times between today and 1971, even though India’s per capita residential electricity consumption is less than a third of the world average. Residential electricity no...