Working Papers

Is the BJP in Trouble? Caste, Class, and the Urban-Rural Divide in ...

After 22 years in power, the BJP is feeling the heat this year in Gujarat's election campaign. This paper analyses the reasons for this sudden frustration with the BJP – with a particular focus on caste mobilisation, urban-rural division, and emerging class politics in Gujarat.

On the importance of triangulating datasets to examine Indians on t...

Beyond summing up salient migration trends from existing data sources; a new working paper by researchers from Centre for Policy Research and Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research (IGIDR) builds on a critique of the estimations made by the Economic Survey 2017 to outline fresh ideas fo...

Elaborating the Paris Agreement: Implementation and Compliance

Article 15 of the Paris Agreement establishes a mechanism to facilitate implementation of and promote compliance with the provisions of the Paris Agreement. Along with the global stocktake and the transparency framework, this mechanism provides a means of assessing and enhancing the effectiveness...

Comments on Draft National Energy Policy

The Draft National Energy Policy released by the Niti Aayog in June 2017 was a roadmap describing the priorities of the government with regards to India's energy future and a critical reference document for all actors working in this field. This working paper reflects the result of internal delib...

From Prior to Post: Legalising environmental violations?

Between March 15 2017 and June 15 2017, 207 projects that violated the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification applied for an environmental clearance. These applications have come as a result of a notification that the Environment Ministry had passed on March 14th 2017 which gives an opp...

Gender and Urban Sanitation Inequalities in Everyday Lives

Even though sanitation was established as a separate human right by the United Nations General Assembly in January 2016, there has an been overall failure to reduce by half the proportion of the global population without access to basic sanitation (Millennium Development Goal 7, Target C). The Su...

Becoming Homeless, Surviving Homelessness

This working paper from CPR’s and TISS' Understanding Metropolitan Homelessness project tells stories of six migrant homeless men from Uttar Pradesh and Nagaland who live, for various durations, in shelters along the western bank of the Yamuna river in North Delhi, locally referred to as ‘Yamuna ...

Horizontal and Vertical Inequalities Explaining Disparities in Acce...

Burgeoning urbanisation coupled with policy implementation gaps have resulted in growing disparities in the provision of public infrastructure services in urban areas of India. Apart from the impact of this, a household’s ability to procure basic amenities is also subject to its economic and soci...

The Learning Generation: India’s Education Policy and Its Developme...

Even as the reach of education has expanded enormously in India in the last few decades, it has been accompanied by differential access and the continuing spectre of inequalities. This inequality could take various forms but the extent to which opportunities, access, and outcome are distributed a...

Kiran Bhatty
ambrish dongre

Understanding India’s Urban Frontier: What Is behind the Emergence ...

This paper presents the results of an investigation of selected census towns in northern India. Census towns are settlements that India’s census classifies as urban although they continue to be governed as rural settlements. The 2011 census featured a remarkable increase in the number of census t...

China and the World in the Coming Decade

In the next decade, how US-China relations unfold will shape the external environment for countries like India. How does China perceive the Trump presidency?

Socioeconomic Status And Quality Of Care In Rural India: New Eviden...

To assess socioeconomic differences in access to high-quality health care services, we collected novel data on illnesses that required primary care from 23,275 households in 100 villages in Madhya Pradesh, India. We matched the primary care visits for those illnesses to characteristics of the hea...

Competition and Choice in Electricity Distribution in India

Introduction of competition and providing consumers choice of supplier have been two of the main aims of reform of the electricity sector in India. This paper examines the experience with three measures to fulfill these aims: (1) open-access to the transmission and distribution system; (2) allowi...


daljit singh

Renewable Energy in India: An Analysis of the Regulatory Environmen...

India emerged as a key player in the recent international climate talks in Paris. On the global stage, India reiterated its commitment towards clean energy and reducing carbon emissions.1 India’s increased thrust on renewable energy is outlined in the 2015 national budget, which set a five-fold i...


megha kaladharan

Political Economy Of Distribution Reforms In Indian Electricity

Despite sustained efforts to reform the sector, electricity distribution in India remains amidst complex problems, manifested in the form of loss-making distribution utilities, poor quality of service, governance ambiguities, and absence of basic data. The current wave of reforms seeks to turnaro...

Mapping Dilutions in a Central Law

Even as the Joint Parliamentary Committee’s report on the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (RFCTLARR) is awaited, several states have already brought about changes that severely compromise the scope of clauses related to consent, Soc...

Cabal City: Regime Theory and Indian Urbanization

This paper explores the interaction of politics and business through the lens of the city. The power of business to influence politics in India would lead to a prediction that Indian cities are, in the classic sense of the term, growth machines. Yet we argue in this paper that fundamental problem...