In this Idea's for India column, Visiting Fellow Mudit Kapoor, Senior Associate Vaidehi Tandel and Consulting Senior Associate Komal Hiranandani, argue that alternative definitions of 'urban' are better suited than the administrative definition used by the government to determine poli...
Yoginder K. Alagh, in this Indian Express article, argues that "recognition [by] senior policymakers in the government that many so-called large villages are really urban areas but are not classified as towns on account of various reasons is a step in the right direction. Demographers...
This Cityscope blogpost discusses the story of the coming urban explosion which is about the rise of medium-sized cities.
"...The past decade has seen the number of Asian intermediary cities explode from 342 to 629 — a far faster rate of expansion than seen for the region’s l...
In a recent article in the Indian Express, Bibek Debroy discussed some of the problems with the way urban and rural is defined in India and the implications these definitions have for public goods and service delivery. Debroy pointed to the fact that rural is a residual category,...
IDFC Institute's first Working Paper, "What’s In A Definition?: A Study On Implications And Suitability Of Urban Definitions In India Through Its Employment Guarantee Programme", is now online.
The paper has been co-authored by Vaidehi Tandel, Komal Hiranandani, and Mudit Kapoor.
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This Mint article discusses doubts about this claim of India's recovery.
"The first problem is that there is no official data with which to compare the current economic momentum with what happened a few years ago. It is widely known that the government statisticians have moved to a new meth...
Recent developments in Kharghar in Maharashtra display the unintended outcomes of a complex governance system for rural-urban and local-state governance authorities.
India has a three-tier governance system - central, state and local. If a settlement is governe...
As part of its transparency efforts, the government has made complaints related to the flagship rural NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee) scheme available online. The actual text of complaints is available, along with information on pending complaints and the level of government that is comp...
