Policy Briefs & Reports

Mountains are hard to govern. National boundaries rarely reflect mountain geography and carve mountains into ecologically and socially incomplete sections. Mountain ecosystems, glaciers, rivers and communities are deeply intertwined, bearing all the complexity of systems that have evolved over mi...

Safe sanitation and clean surroundings have an immense impact on health, productivity, safety and dignity, and are vital for an enhanced quality of life. In response to the national and international commitments toward the Sustainable Development Goals, the Swachh Bharat Mission, and the National...

Ayushman Bharat, under the aegis of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), was launched by Government of India (GoI) on 23 September 2018. The programme consists of two initiatives: (1) The Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY); and (2) The establishment of 1.5 lakh Health and Well...

Food Subsidy is provided by the Government of India (GoI) for the supply and distribution of foodgrains and other essential commodities. The National Food Security Act (NFSA) 2013, ensured nutritional security became a right by providing adequate quantities of quality food at affordable prices...

Integrated Child Development Services is Government of India’s (GoI’s) flagship programme aimed at providing basic education, health, and nutrition services for early childhood development. It has now been combined with POSHAN Abhiyaan to form Saksham Anganwadi and POSHAN 2.0. Against the bac...

Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) is Government of India’s (GoI’s) rural drinking water programme to provide functional tap connections to every household for drinking, cooking, and other domestic needs on a sustainable basis by 2024. It subsumes the previous National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP...

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is Government of India’s (GoI’s) flagship scheme to provide at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a Financial Year (FY) to every rural household that demands work. To boost employment opportunities and cater to incre...

The effectiveness of climate governance depends on its underlying institutional arrangements. This paper examines the emergence of climate-related institutions in India, organised around three periods: pre- 2007; 2007–2009 and 2010–mid-2014. Several key themes emerge: Institutionalisation is inad...

Samagra Shiksha – an integrated scheme for school education, is Government of India’s (GoI’s) school education programme extending from pre-school to senior secondary stages. The scheme was launched in April 2018 to ensure equitable and inclusive quality education. Against the backdrop of the COV...

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused extraordinary hardship since India’s first case was reported in Thrissur, Kerala in January 2020. Individuals and communities have since then made drastic changes to their behaviours, daily routines and lives, quite often in response to announcements or regulatory...

Resilience and adaptation have become buzzwords as governments, corporations and society find ways to survive the Covid-19 pandemic and, where possible, seek to develop processes and outcomes that improve on the pre-crisis status quo. Members of the Women, Work, and the Gig Economy research conso...

This brief presents some of the key effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on India’s public school education, focussing specifically on children. It begins with a discussion of the pre-pandemic status of school education and key policy shifts over the past few years, and provides an overview of the pr...

The state of Odisha has made unprecedented strides in increasing access to individual toilets from 14% in 2011 to a purported 100% in 2019 under the Swachh Bharat Mission - Gramin. In light of the clarion call of a ‘Swachha Odisha, Sustha Odisha’, and the national imperatives set by the National ...

The brief unbundles the global standard definition of informality with respect to the labour market, a concept often considered inexplicit and broad-based. It presents the parameters used to measure informality in the Indian context, and presents key characteristics of the informal workforce.

This brief’s focus is solely on core nutrition specific interventions for pregnant women, lactating mothers, and children under six years of age. These address the immediate determinants of fetal and child nutrition and development. Nutrition-sensitive interventions are discussed where relevant.