The Centre for Social and Economic Progress is delighted to share the Annual Report for the calendar year 2023.

An increasingly competitive geopolitical context is fragmenting global climate governance and traditional modes of multilateral cooperation. The report maps both what has been done in the past as well as the avenues towards a comprehensive climate strategy built on greater policy coordination and expanded state capacity for India to engage externally.

Based on eight case studies by analysts and scholars from Bangladesh, Nepal, India and Sri Lanka, the report examines China’s growing role in a range of sectors in these four countries, including education, public diplomacy, technology, social media, civil society, party politics, religion, and governance.

While the Bay of Bengal is located at the fulcrum of the Indo-Pacific, between the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, it continues to act more as a divider than a link between land and maritime neighbours such as India

Land acquisition and lack of coordination has delayed India's development cooperation projects in neighbouring countries

Impact of temperature on electricity demand: Evidence from Delhi and Indian states

Healthcare expenditure is financed through various sources in a country. It can be financed by the government (state or union), insurance schemes (public or private) or borne by households directly in the form of out-of-pocket expenditures (OOPE). More financing by the government implies less financial burden on households in the form of ...

This paper examines enrolment trends, graduation and employment patterns and the quality of Higher Education Institutions in India.

Abstract For the first time, India has sufficient or even surplus electricity generation capacity.  Headline numbers show India’s gross installed electricity capacity is over 350 GW, but the maximum load met has been approximately 180 GW. Does this mean we have sufficient buffer for years to come? A significant fraction of this ...

  Achieving the ambitious sustainable development goals (SDGs) by 2030 will take an estimated $5 to $7 trillion per year, with a financing gap of $2.5 trillion in developing countries.In India alone, the outsize challenge has been translated into a financing gap of $565 billion. While the country has seen huge progress ...

The paper discusses the need to focus attention on the primacy of growth as a policy objective, to eliminate poverty and achieve upper-middle income status.

India is expected to be among the top growth markets in the world for electricity in the coming decade. At the same time, electricity supply mixes are changing worldwide, in large part due to the rise of renewable energy (RE). Apart from RE, the elements of the Indian electricity sector transition today ...

A changing global order, energy transitions and climate change and rapid technological advancement – India’s next government has the difficult task of steering the country through an interesting and crucial time. India 2024: Policy Priorities for the New Government, edited by Dhruva Jaishankar and Zehra Kazmi, is a compendium of policy briefs ...

For years, governments, policymakers, and philanthropists have contributed funds for the delivery of social programs to achieve specific goals and development outcomes. These funds have been used to tackle poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and other critical policy issues. But while necessary, they have met varying degrees of success. Each year the government spends ...

It is now widely recognised that India’s future will be urban. According to estimates by the United Nations’ World Urbanisation Prospects, India will see the highest increase in urban population in absolute numbers of any country. By 2050, it will add more people to its cities than are currently residing in them. ...

India has seen a rapid expansion in the higher education sector since 2001. There has been a dramatic rise in the number of higher education institutions (HEI) and enrolment has increased four-fold. The Indian higher education system is now one of the largest in the world with 49,964 institutions. Despite the increased ...

India’s economy has grown at an impressive pace over the last few years, but overall, it still witnesses poor health outcomes. The wealth of a nation is its human capital and with poor health outcomes, India’s human capital will suffer. This has a direct consequence on the economic well-being of the nation. ...

Executive summary Coal provides about half of India’s commercial primary energy supply today and is the dominant fuel for power production in India. In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi established ambitious goals for renewable energy (RE) development, aiming to quadruple its capacity by 2022. Despite expected growth in RE, we project that ...

Existing literature has documented a significant gender gap in various sectors including health, labour market opportunities, education and political representation in India. The objective of this compendium is to move the gender policy focus towards the underlying trends and causes of these gender gaps. In particular, we highlight three areas of interaction ...

By making financial services accessible at affordable costs to all individuals and businesses, irrespective of net worth and size, financial inclusion strives to address and offer solutions to the constraints that exclude people from participating in the financial sector. Research shows thatcountries with deeper levels of financial inclusion defined as access to ...

Despite the thrust on transforming electricity supply, India’s per capita electricity consumption remains amongst the lowest in the world, with vast latent demand and high room for efficiency. More recently, electricity demand has witnessed unprecedented slowdown, which is likely a cyclical than a long-term phenomenon. This study aims to deep dive into ...

Executive Summary Even before signing the Paris climate agreement, the Indian government announced extremely ambitious renewable energy (RE) targets  that would quadruple the country’s RE capacity between late 2014 and 2022, to 175 gigawatts (GW).1  From India’s relatively small RE base, this target implies annual growth of 25 percent a targeted buildout ...

The Indian government’s JAM trinity comprises three components: Jan Dhan bank account, Aadhaar unique identity number and mobile phone. A combination of these three elements is seen as the pathway to implementing large-scale direct benefit transfers in India. The Jan Dhan Ayojana (Peoples’ Wealth Scheme) is a government scheme that aims to ...

Coal and railways in India are heavily interdependent. In the Financial Year (FY) 2017, out of 574 MT of coal (inclusive of imports) consumed for grid electricity generation (Central Electricity Authority, 2017), 341 MT, or 60 per cent, was transported through railways (Railway Board, March 2017). On average railways accounts for over ...

This paper provides a narrative of Indian monetary policy since the North Atlantic Financial Crisis (NAFC) in the mid-2008 till the current period. The period 2009-13 was dominated by the joint monetary and fiscal stimuli of the Indian authorities prompted by the NAFC. These, along with some structural shocks and a hands-off ...

Coal India Limited (CIL) commissioned a study in 2017 to analyse the long term trends that would play a role in determining the future for coal in the country. While commissioning the project, CIL noted, “With government’s efforts to push renewable energy due to international conventions on climate change, increase in carbon ...

India has a vibrant market for batteries and inverters and even diesel generators – but a cynic could call these responses to the failure of the grid in providing quality supply. Are microgrids similarly stepping in to fill gaps in grid-based supply? This Impact Series Paper revisits the fundamentals and drivers for ...

This paper analyses the ways in which civil–military relations shape professional military education (PME). Its main argument is that military education benefits from a civil–military partnership. In doing so, the article examines the role of civil–military relations in shaping PME in India. While describing the evolution of military education in India, it ...

The National Medical Commission Bill looks to create a National Medical Commission (NMC) to replace the currently existing and extremely corrupt Medical Council of India. This new body would be responsible for the accreditation of all medical education institutions within the country as well as maintaining a national registrar of all certified allopathic medical practitioners. ...

The Health Monitor brings together real-time data, research & powerful analytics of India’s healthcare sector on a common platform. It’s created using publicly available data from across all states & Union Territories. It enables researchers & policymakers to access, monitor and analyse real-time health measures at a highly disaggregated level. This Health ...

Donald Trump’s election at a time of growing and converging interests between India and the United States necessitates a re-evaluation of several aspects of Indian domestic and foreign policy. This paper identifies four areas in which Trump’s election affects Indian interests: bilateral relations (encompassing trade, investment, immigration, and technological cooperation), the Asian balance of power, counterterrorism, and global governance. ...

Forty-two years have passed since the United Nations first decided to commemorate March 8th as International Women’s Day, marking a historical transition in the feminist movement. Gender remains a critically important and largely ignored lens to view development issues across the world. On this past occasion of International Women’s Day 2017, here ...

Violence in childhood is a serious health, social and human rights concern globally, there is, however, little understanding about the factors that explain the various forms of violence in childhood. This paper uses data on childhood violence for 10,042 individuals from four countries. We report Odds Ratios from pooled logit regression analysis ...

Brookings India Senior Fellow Shamika Ravi recently presented glimpses of her work on women and representative governance in India to a group of students from New York University. Dr. Ravi presented her research through three main perspectives namely, governance, representation and potential solutions. Her research has been inspired by the ‘missing women’ ...

The decade from 2004 to 2014 saw the Indian economy grow at an impressive rate. This was also the time when the government brought sweeping policy initiatives into the healthcare sector. New health schemes were introduced at the national level as well as state levels. After a decade of experimentation, India is still faced with ...

As India continues to experience rapid urban expansion, public and private leaders at a national, state, and local level are looking into ways to better manage larger populations and unlock greater economic potential. Launched under Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015, the “Smart Cities Mission” is an ambitious multiyear effort to boost ...

Key findings India is heavily dependent on coal based power for its electricity needs, 79 per cent of total electricity generation is coal/thermal based. This is not expected to change drastically in the near future. Thermal power generation consumes around 76 per cent of total coal available in the country (imports included). ...

A Brookings India roundtable on “Future of Coal – 2020” invited experts to discuss future coal demand for the country, and also to share preliminary findings of our ongoing research on the challenges in ensuring sufficient coal supply contingent with the demand. Summary: The three key preliminary findings from our research are: Coal demand ...

In August 2015, the Ministry of Power released the State Distribution Utilities Third Annual Integrated Ratings.  This is the third instance of rating for utilities undertaken by the same agencies, thereby imparting some consistency to them. Though it is a transparent attempt to measure utility operations and financial performance, the current metrics do not go ...

The mobile sector continues to see dramatic growth around the world. Usage of cellphones, smartphones, and tablets is increasing at a rapid pace. With the growing popularity and ease of use of mobile devices such as iPhone, Android phones, tablets, and other portable devices, new mobile applications are coming online that increase access and capability, ...

In this paper, we study the data from the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) of India and disaggregate across demographic and leading causes of suicides. We find that mental and physical health are the leading causes of suicides in India (20%) while the often cited factor, indebtedness, causes significantly lower number of ...

The Indian electricity system is struggling. Worldwide challenges of supply security, fuel choice, environmental impacts (now adding carbon and climate change), and sustainable business models are present, but the last one is where India is furthest behind.  We have a muddled system with state and private participation that satisfies neither the social ...

The recent policy measures undertaken by the Government of India and the Reserve Bank of India have provided a much-needed push for financial inclusion in the country. However, there remain some key gaps and concerns that must be addressed for attaining sustained comprehensive financial inclusion. This paper highlights some of these gaps ...

Education is a powerful medium to unleash the potential of the SAARC region by cutting poverty and promoting development. It can also be an instrument of soft power for a nation like India by raising its cultural and political, especially democratic, attractiveness for others. With rapid globalization and expanding communication technology, India ...

Less than one fifth of all international tourists to India are from the SAARC countries. Yet, more than half of all foreigners who visit India for medical treatments are from SAARC countries. Together the two statistics imply that while India gains a lot more from rest of the world in the tourism ...

Water is vital in South Asia, where most countries are still largely agrarian. As such, water is inherently political – its socio-ecological flows are implicated in competition by economies, individuals and nations, while its distributional regimes have the capacity to alter lives and livelihoods. Competing water-use for agriculture, industry, and domestic purposes ...

(Remarks made in the ASSOCHAM Livelihoods Security Summit on November 3, 2014) Let me begin by expressing my appreciation for ASSOCHAM’s initiatives in furthering debate and understanding on the very critical issue of livelihoods. The theme for this seminar addresses a very important aspect of an overall strategy, i.e. security. Secure livelihoods ...

Intellectual property rights (IPR) are a significant point of contention between India and the United States. India is on the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) IPR priority watch list, indicated in the Special 301 Report for 2014, which signals heightened scrutiny and, from India’s perspective, the threat of sanctions. The ...

“Electrification” has been a priority for India for many years, and there are ongoing plans and projects to improve access to many more households, followed by electricity for all in the coming years.  Despite improvements in the threshold for village electrification (moving from any single point to 10% of homes plus common ...

In this paper, the authors analyze women as political candidates in Indian democracy. Using 50 years of assembly elections data at the constituency level from the Indian states, they show that women are more likely to contest elections in those constituencies where gender ratio of the electors is less in favor of ...

This paper studies the growth of entrepreneurship in India by analyzing the micro, small and medium enterprises sector (MSME) and explores the factors that contribute to its development. The author analyzes a panel data of all 35 states and union territories from 1991 until 2006. The outcomes of interest are number of ...

This backgrounder – prepared for the Petrotech 2014 CEO Conclave held in New Delhi, on December 17, 2013 – looks at the dynamics of energy demand and supply in 2030, the implications of geopolitical stress on energy trade, and provides a framework for a sustainable energy agenda in 2030. Key Insights:   ...