So here I am, back in India after a couple of years, doing research for a project in the relatively rich rural district of West Godavari in Andhra Pradesh. Some biased observations based on the few data points here.
Train prices are increasingly affordable and hence demand outstrips supply. For the first time, I was ready to book First class AC Tatkal to catch a project deadline and yet tickets were not available....

This is an op-ed piece of mine that appeared in today's issue of Mint. In response to the photo-post Photo-state of schools in an urban slum in Delhi, there were a few comments and emails deploring the state of schooling. I couldnt present the empirical...

Circa May 2005, Aditi Bhargava, an ex-intern of mine did a short exploratory study of schools in Sangam Vihar in
Delhi
. The study was part of an internship program at the Centre for Civil Society. Sangam Vihar is one of the largest slum townships in Asia with a population of about 4 lac. The basic research question was this: what and how are the schooling opportunities...

Public policy writing in India is too steeped in macroeconomics and plain vanilla political analyses. Pratap Bhanu Mehta's writing is a good exception like the article The truth is not in the facts.
What happens when you penalise the messenger for bad news? Think about it....