Working Papers

Performing Poriborton

In 2011, Mamata Banerjee and party, Trinamool Congress, stormed to power in West Bengal under the simple slogan poriborton (change). In this piece, Bhanu Joshi, Ashish Ranjan, and Neelanjan explore how Mamata went about demonstrating this change to the West Bengal, as well as the architecture of ...

Does Government’s Monitoring of Schools Work?

This study attempts to understand the effectiveness of education governance, specifically the monitoring function, through the perspectives of frontline officials in India. It locates institutions within social and political structures marked by deep inequalities and analyses the manner in which ...

Kiran Bhatty
radhika saraf

Understanding the Election in Assam (Part 2)

Muslims comprise 34 percent of Assam’s population, and this population may play a large role in the outcome of Assam’s election. In this piece, CPR researchers Bhanu Joshi, Ashish Ranjan, and Neelanjan Sircar examine the complex contours of the Muslim vote in Assam, with a particular focus on the...

Understanding the Election in Assam (Part 1)

We were warned not to take the bus from Silchar to Guwahati. Unfortunately, the train was fully booked, so we had no other option. As soon as we left the city limits of Silchar, we began to make our way through the soggy, bumpy mess that was supposedly the route to Guwahati. We could only discern...

Eighth Pupul Jayakar Memorial Lecture Cultural Diplomacy: Leveragin...

Pupul Jayakar was influenced deeply by theosophy and became a follower of one of its best known spiritual masters, J. Krishnamurti. One of my treasured possessions is an autographed copy of her celebrated biography of the spiritual guide and teacher. This was her gift to me in the midst of the Fe...

Assessing Party Performance and Alliance Dynamics in the 2015 Bihar...

The 2015 Bihar election represented a stunning reversal of fortune for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In the 2014 national election, the NDA won 172 out of 243 assembly constituency (AC) segments. But in the 2015 Bihar election, just 18 months lat...

Impact of China Slowdown on India

After three decades of double-digit growth, China is slowing as it is rebalancing its economy from export-driven to less-volatile domestic consumption driven economy. The paper looks at the impact of China slowdown on India through different channels. Even though India is usurping China as the fa...

Indradhanush-Banking Sector Reforms

The Indradhanush framework with its seven pronged plan was unveiled by Finance Minister Mr Arun Jaitley on 14th August 2015 for revamping Public Sector Banks (PSBs) of India. In this paper, we look at the deteriorating profitability, asset quality, capital position of PSBs along with previous ban...

Penalising Environmental Violations: An Analysis of The Ministry’s...

In October 2015, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change released a Draft Environment Laws (Amendment) Bill 2015 proposing amendments to the Environment (Protection) Act 1986 and the National Green Tribunal Act 2010. The stated objective of the Bill is to provide ‘effective deterre...

Reforming the Liability Regime for Air Pollution in India

The recent uproar about the toxic levels of pollution in the country’s national capital region has once again brought to fore the failure of the regulatory and legal mechanisms in India to control air pollution. Despite an early legislative acknowledgment of the issues relating to air pollution, ...

Channelling household savings to productive uses through the capita...

Savings provides the means for investments. Typically, investments are primarily funded through domestic savings and the rest through foreign capital inflows. Domestic savings are from three sources -- households, private and public sector. Household savings form the largest part of total savings...

Sakshi Bhardwaj
geetima das krishna, vardhana pawaskar

Education reforms, bureaucracy and the puzzles of implementation: A...

It is a widely accepted truth that the Indian state suffers from a serious crisis of implementation capability. Despite widespread recognition of this crisis, there is remarkably little analytical work on how the Indian state works, particularly at the level of implementation. We know very little...

How Will Bihar Shake Out?

The exit polls are out in Bihar, and we are none the wiser. It is seemingly a photo finish between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Janata Dal United [JD(U)]-Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-Congress Grand Alliance. The Bihar election is ending as it began...

What Do Bihar’s Voters Want?

From this week, voters will queue up for the final three phases of the five-phase election in Bihar, choosing either the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) or the Janata Dal (United)-Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress “Grand Alliance” (mahagathbandhan). Over the past few wee...

Elaborating in the INDC context

Several countries have embarked on nationwide processes to devise their ‘contributions’ towards a new global climate agreement set to be adopted at Paris in 2015. Sixty-two countries have already communicated their contributions to the UNFCCC, in pledges covering around 62.9% of global emissions ...


neha b joseph

Taxes: Price of Civilization or Tribute to Leviathan?

There are two dominant narratives about taxation. One is taxes are the “price we pay for a civilized society” (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.). In this view taxes are not a necessary evil (as in the pairing of “death and taxes” as inevitable) but a positive good: more taxes buy more “civilization.” ...

Exclusion, Informality, and Predation in the Cities of Delhi

Delhi is India’s richest city and as the capital of the nation has long enjoyed favourable treatment from the Centre. As the home to the country’s national bureaucracies, it also benefits from a large base of secure, well-paid, government jobs. Over the last decade the city has grown at an averag...


cities of delhi team

Use of standardised patients to assess quality of tuberculosis care...

Existing studies of the quality of tuberculosis care have relied on recall-based patient surveys, questionnaire surveys of knowledge, and prescription or medical record analysis, and the results mostly show the health-care provider's knowledge rather than actual practice. No study has used standa...

Jishnu Das
ada kwan, benjamin daniels, srinath satyanaraya...