Escaping poverty is no mean feat, but having to do it twice makes the journey even more arduous. This is the precarity most nations face as they enter the middle-income level and become stuck in what is known as the Middle-Income Trap (MIT). They get trapped in a difficult place between low-wage, low-income countries with competitive exports in mature industries and high-income countries that dominate technologically evolving industries. It is

The sun rises over a village in Madhya Pradesh, where 17-year-old Laxmi prepares for her college entrance exam. A generation ago, her mother was married at 15 and never finished school. This change isn’t an isolated story but reflects a sweeping transformation across India, credited mainly to the initiatives launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government since 2014. India worships the goddess Saraswati, the deity of knowledge, yet pre-2014, millions

The notion of public service delivery in India has been synonymous with the idea of a large government. However, given its large population size and vast geographical spread, the Indian state has repeatedly been identified as lacking the human resources to undertake the logistics of efficient government transfers. Hence, to cover this gap in state capacity, the government has relied on a complex web of intermediaries (both government and non-government

When discussions revolve around nature, terms such as ‘sustainability’, ‘biodiversity’, and ‘conservation’ commonly dominate the conversation. Rarely is ‘peace’ mentioned in this context. Even rarer is the acknowledgement of nature within conversations explicitly focused on peace. In an era when awareness about the severity of climate change has finally permeated mainstream consciousness, conflicts with the potential to escalate into global warfare, such as the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war, have concurrently resurfaced.

A Quantitative Assessment of India’s DBT System (A Policy Analysis) Executive Summary India’s Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) system, implemented in 2013, has redefined welfare delivery by enhancing transparency, curbing leakages, and ensuring precise fund distribution. This policy document evaluates a decade of data (2009–2024) to assess DBT’s impact on budgetary efficiency, subsidy rationalization, and social outcomes. The analysis reveals transformative results, including cumulative savings of ₹3.48 lakh crore through leakage

As India celebrates 10 years of the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY), its role in transforming the financial ecosystem—particularly the banking sector, from one marked by opacity, inefficiency, and delays to a model of transparency and inclusivity—has been profound. Before 2014, countless small enterprises languished outside the formal credit system. PMMY changed that narrative by unlocking collateral-free loans, empowering millions of entrepreneurs, and turning micro dreams into macro impact.  By