On discussing the impact of financial access, I can think of few questions more important than whether and how financial access affects stress. Does a life insurance policy let you sleep easier, knowing that if your husband dies, at least … Read More

Field-based survey work requires a scientific approach, with several activities and procedures taking course simultaneously. In this post, we’re going to try to define the several phases which take place during field work and try to define procedures for improving … Read More

42% of Indian children under age five are underweight[1] – double the rate of sub-Saharan Africa. India is also home to 1 in every 3 malnourished child in the world. Last January, Manmohan Singh, while addressing the country, said that … Read More

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion and a heated debate (see here, here and here) on the relative effectiveness of providing cash transfers versus offering more traditional, in-kind or conditional transfers – such as grants of livestock—as a … Read More

During a survey operation, we conduct various surveys with our study participants, such as Household surveys, Vendor surveys, Market surveys and so on. Something we don’t think about however is that while surveying, the field staff, especially the surveyors take various … Read More

Effective identification of the poor continues to be a problem Identification of the poor has always been more easily said than done. Many people consider the poverty line to be 1.25 USD per day, but can such an amount universally … Read More

There has been a lot in the news lately about financial inclusion and extending banking services to the poor. With the expansion of the Aadhaar registration and new initiatives like the Financial Access at Birth (FAB), it seems that a … Read More

A cutting edge geographic information system tool to track the Indian diaspora has been developed by Dr. Tsukasa Mizushima, a professor at Tokyo University. Dr. Mizushima and his colleagues have developed the “India Place Finder“, a web-based application that allows … Read More

Even in an environment of great expectations, new RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan’s opening statementwas remarkable for its ambition and clarity of purpose.  His speech deserves the widespread praise it has received.  It should also be lauded for its unexpected and … Read More

In our previous post we spoke about why Indians buy gold. Citing another important finding from our gold-loan study, we highlight the various purposes for acquiring gold loans in this post. According to the revised norms of Microfinance Institutions (Development … Read More