“Living on a remote island in Pulicat, it is difficult for us to take people to a hospital during medical emergencies. Just last month, a village resident suffered a snake bite but passed away while he was being transferring to … Read More
Empowering Nano Entrepreneurs to Transform India’s Economy
In India, the ingenuity, vision, and limitless potential of nano entrepreneurs represent a tremendous and largely untapped opportunity. According to the baseline report of a longitudinal study on credit access for nano enterprises, conducted by LEAD at Krea University, nano entrepreneurs are … Read More
Does One Nation Really Have One Ration Card?
The COVID-19 pandemic rendered millions of workers unemployed in India; during the first wave, the estimated unemployment rate in India peaked at 24% in April 2020. The pandemic also brought to the forefront the vulnerability of the migrant population in India who bore the maximum brunt. … Read More
Six Learnings from Swashakt Program’s Complexity-aware Monitoring
Monitoring, Learning and Evaluation (MLE) approaches for development interventions have been constantly evolving over time. It started as a country-level focus in the 1960s and expanded to individual program-level MLE approaches, methods and standards in the 1990s and newer and … Read More
Connections: How Social Interactions Shape Growth Stories of Women-led Enterprises
This blog presents insights from a research study that seeks to understand how social interactions between women entrepreneurs and their business ecosystem intersect with their social and economic backgrounds, and in turn shape their business decisions and outcomes. “Women are … Read More
Postcards from the Village Square
Our research and field teams occasionally run into curious and amusing situations on their data-collection missions into the hinterland. These experiences also offer insights into people’s lived experiences and the various dimensions of the problems central to our research. Here … Read More
Delving Into the History of Pulicat, Its Inhabitants and Its Ecosystem
This post on the history and socio-economic context of Pulicat was produced in collaboration with students from Ashoka University to observe World Environment Day. Pulicat or Pazhaverkadu is home to over 56 fishing communities which depend on this endangered ecosystem … Read More
Postcards from the Field
In this new series, we bring forth anecdotes and lessons from our field interactions in Bhagalpur, Bihar and Tondiarpet, Tamil Nadu.
Moving the Clean Cookstoves Sector Forward: Six Principles for Investors
Around 3 billion people across the world rely on solid fuels for their daily cooking needs. The adverse effects of traditional cooking methods on health, socio-economic and environmental conditions, especially among women, are well documented. Clean cookstoves promise a solution to these … Read More
Social Welfare Delivery in the Age of Platforms: Comparing Private Models
Globally, 1.3 billion people (22 per cent) live in multidimensional poverty – with millions of households in 107 countries living with undernourished members, out-of-school children, and lacking access to electricity and clean cooking fuel. The Covid-19 pandemic is estimated to … Read More