Issue Briefs

ABSTRACT Women’s financial inclusion improves their agency while also impacting their growth and productivity. With the advent of Digital India, the term ‘financial inclusion’ has been highly associated with digital financial services. The Covid-19 pandemic may have propelled the adoption and usage of technology and expedited India’s digital transformation. The goal of making financial services […]

The irrigation-energy nexus in India’s agricultural sector is characterised primarily by depleting groundwater and a growing debt burden of power distribution companies (or DISCOMs) due to massive power subsidies that remain underfunded by the state governments. To address the burden, the Government of India [GOI] has been promoting solar irrigation pumps [SIPs] by offering substantial […]

INTRODUCTION  The month of June, also known as international pride month, marks half a year since the start of India’s vaccination programme. It is pertinent to place the world’s largest vaccination drive under a queer lens to examine how inclusive the nation’s vaccine policy is, particularly for trans persons.  As of 18th June 2021, the […]

While rural India dodged the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the second wave transmitted into remote communities causing wider destruction. The relief of the receding second wave has been trumped by the threat of a third wave that can be allegedly disastrous for rural India. The lack of awareness about the pandemic, misinformation about […]

INTRODUCTION India’s 94th rank in the 2020 Global Hunger Index (2021) out of 107 reflects the rampant undernourishment in the country. While the economy has witnessed rapid growth in the past decades, improvements in nutrition status have been relatively steady, and hence, the need for substantial breakthroughs remains. A critical aspect of this public health […]

ABSTRACT Climate change is a threat to all livelihoods. However, people engaged in agriculture, particularly women, are disproportionately burdened by the vagaries of climate. As a consequence, existing gender inequalities in agriculture are likely to widen. This paper examines gender issues in Indian agriculture with respect to climate change and identifies gaps in integrating gender […]

ABSTRACT February 2021 marks the completion of a year since women gained the right to be permanently commissioned across all ten branches of the Indian Army. However, available data shows that even after the Supreme Court judgement that mandated it, only 45% of lady officers were permanently commissioned compared to 90% of their male counterparts. […]

ABSTRACT The informal sector employs over 90% of the total Indian workforce (Murthy 2019). The COVID-19-induced lockdowns massively reduced demand for various non-essential goods produced by the informal economy, leading to a decrease in production levels. This significantly contributed to the soaring levels of unemployment in and beyond this sector. Not only did the income […]

ABSTRACT India’s caste system is one of the oldest surviving social hierarchies in the world. The oppressive conditions faced by marginalised caste populations under this system have been well documented. This Issue Brief, the second in SPRF’s series on Inequality in India, examines the current debate surrounding caste-based reservations by looking at the comparative socio-economic […]

ABSTRACT This paper seeks to objectively assess the Government of India’s  (GoI) move this year to open the Indian coal mining sector to commercial operations by private industry. The paper delves into why it is unlikely for any additional increase in capacity to occur in the absence of significant interventions from the GoI on behalf […]

ABSTRACT Tribal communities in India are some of the most vulnerable social groups despite having a special status guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. Being at the margins both in the demographic and socio-economic sense, they experience extreme inequalities, especially in their access to healthcare. This Issue Brief attempts to locate these tribal communities in the public […]

  ABSTRACT  There are approximately 4 million informal waste pickers in India today (Dandapani 2017). These workers engage in recycling activities that are crucial to the health of our ecosystem, as well as help in significantly reducing the waste collection costs for the government. However, they face multiple, overlapping shocks and stresses while trying to […]

  ABSTRACT This issue brief, the third in SPRF’s series on India’s Urban Transition focuses on the process of rurbanisation. Rurbanisation has been recommended by many scholars and taken up by successive governments as a way of redistributing the effects of India’s economic growth, which has been conventionally concentrated in and around major urban centres. […]

  ABSTRACT  This issue brief aims to understand the provisions to formalise the work of informal waste workers in India.  It looks at the relevant policy actions and tries to identify existing gaps in the implementation of such actions. It also dwells briefly on the socio-economic precarity that is the primary feature of the work […]