Blog

In a new article in the business newspaper LiveMint, Sumit Mishra discusses the increasing recognition of the importance of sanitation in India. Mishra writes: The importance of sanitation can be gauged by looking at the manifestos of the two major...Read More..

Indian voters are often asked to vote for, among other things, lotuses, cycles, lanterns, elephants, watches, or hammers and sickles. Six decades ago, when a largely illiterate and unschooled country decided to embark on an experiment in political democracy, images...Read More..

A couple of my friends sent me this. Its from the city of Mumbai....Read More..

Different places in India are voting in national elections on different days. Diane and I wrote these thoughts about the election together. Today, India is preparing for an election which will shape the lives of more people than any election...Read More..

My article with Aparajita Chattopadhyay and Rajan Gupt just came out in Economic and Political Weekly -- check it out!  ...Read More..

I wanted to share Jeff Hammer's blog post on the World Bank blog about the role of development economists in policy making. More wise words from Jeff Hammer can be found on a previous blog post on the Indian health...Read More..

In fact, Sagar, Madhya Pradesh – where I have been watching the surveyors ask about toilets – is not any more horrible than the other districts where we have done the survey, but I could not resist the pun. Yesterday,...Read More..

A recent article about child height in the Lancet has been getting wide attention, even at macroeconomist Paul Krugman’s blog. As Sebastian Vollmer and coauthors conclude, in their paper titled “Association between economic growth and early childhood undernutrition: evidence from...Read More..

I have spent most of the past three days in airports or airplanes going to or coming from Australia. Even in a 26 hour visit, there was enough time for me to be deeply impressed. In particular, this is the...Read More..

Editor's Note: Nicholas Lawson is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Aix-Marseille School of Economics, and is the newest member of the r.i.c.e. extended family. Nicholas is a labour economist who has been studying the effect of early life health and...Read More..

Sitting at the Delhi airport at 5:30 am, I noticed a pair of signs. The first was the official, plastic government-sponsored sign for the family restroom: "Baby Care," illustrated with a diaper. The second, printed on what we used to...Read More..

In the coming days we will introduce a new blogger and member of the rice extended family: Nicholas Lawson of the Aix-Marseille School of Economics. Today, you should read his new post on the CLTS blog at IDS: "What's the...Read More..

Today we have a blog post by Nidhi Khurana, our wonderful SQUAT survey team leader. She has been traveling around with our SQUAT team for the past 3.5 months, and she is finally sharing some of her experiences with you...Read More..

We talk about what we learned in Bangladesh, and what India can learn from Bangladesh. Check it out here. And here's a little spoiler, a nice infographic from the article.  ...Read More..

A few days ago, Sangita asked an important question: What makes us think that not knowing the effect of x on y is what is holding back better policies? Do policy-makers even care? Is there any realistic mechanism whereby they...Read More..

Lant Pritchett wrote a blog for the Center for Global Development website last week on how development, including the decade-long RCT movement, is a faith-based activity. He says, "The delightfully quirky aspect of the success of the randomista movement is...Read More..