Policy Briefs & Reports

The National Health Mission is the Government of India’s largest public health programme. It consists of two sub-missions: (1) National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) (2) National Urban Health Mission (NUHM). Using government data, this brief reports on: Trends in allocations, releases and exp...

The Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) was launched by the Government of India (GOI) on 25 December, 2000 to provide all-weather road connectivity in rural areas. PMGSY is administered by the Ministry of Rural Development (MORD). Using government data, this brief reports on PMGSY progres...

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

The 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 inc...

The Swachh Bharat MissionUrban (SBM-U) is 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 Management (...

This report chapter explores nuances in the working of distributed ledgers, their capabilities as a decentralized architectural solution to store and access land records, and the hurdles – policy and practical – in the journey towards such realization.

Over the past four years, the national policy environment and institutional response to sanitation have undergone a substantial change. The launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) and Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) have catapulted sanitation into the league of ...

Over the past four years, the national policy environment and institutional response to sanitation have undergone a substantial change. The launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) and Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) have catapulted sanitation into the league of ...

In the intergovernmental climate negotiations India has consistently argued against greenhouse gas mitigation commitments for developing countries. This paper argues that while India’s position, given the burden sharing architecture of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and...

India is undergoing structural urban and economic transitions and has set ambitious policy targets to meet its rising energy needs for development. Expanding coal and renewables are two important pillars of this undertaking and, since 2008, climate protection is of increasing concern. India’s int...

China’s One Belt One Road Initiative has virtually been a lightning rod for divisive debate and a polarised narrative since it was announced in 2013. For India, it has been the proverbial elephant in the room, as it awkwardly swings between willful pretence and wishful erasure. The policy brief l...

The numbers of out-of-school children (OOSC) put out by various official sources in India, show wide variations. The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) survey by Social and Rural Research Institute – Indian Market Research Bureau (SRIIMRB) estimate of this figure is around 6 million, w...

People around the world live in areas that have been altered for industrial, infrastructure or mining projects. Their lives and occupations are being negatively impacted by problems of access, encroachment or pollution. Though governments in many countries have regulatory procedures for implement...

So that local people can use and understand the laws regulating development and the environment of India’s coast, Namati has created a Coastal Regulation Zones booklet that covers all the information available in the complex official document, but it is presented in a way that ordinary people can...

This report is the product of an effort to develop an assessment framework or matrix to measure sanitation outcomes in India. We begin by tracing international policy instruments on Open Defecation (Free) [OD (F)], the genealogy of the term, and then compare India's policy environment with the ot...

Using government reported data, this brief looks closely at the effects of the Fourteenth Finance Commission (FFC) recommendations on state finances in Tamil Nadu, with a particular focus on effects on social sector investments. The brief asks two key questions: Did increased tax devolution...

A problem can occur, no matter where we live, pass by everyday or cross occasionally. One could be living next to an industrial site, which is polluting the nearby river, a power plant, which lands up dumping fly ash on an agricultural field or a beach, where the municipality is dumping the town’...

On 10 May 2016, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change issued a draft Notification proposing a mechanism to deal with projects that have commenced activities before obtaining an environmental clearance [Draft Notification]. Such activities are illegal and amount to criminal offenc...