Thoothukudi, in southern Tamil Nadu, found its place in recorded history preceding even that of the State’s capital, Chennai. Famed as one among the world’s ancient seaports documented by the likes of Ptolemy, it is now in the news for all that can go wrong in the dynamic interplay of the state a ...

This Issue Brief is an attempt to understand the challenges before the health system in India and why these challenges persist. The year 2016 and 2017 in particular witnessed a series of tragedies so horrendous and widespread that they brought to light the deplorable state of the public health sy ...

The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi's announcement over television on the night of November 8, 2016, withdrawing from circulation currency notes with denominations of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000, has had a cascading effect on the economy.  This Issue Brief maps the pathways through which d ...

In the summer of 2016, at least a third of India’s rural residents are battling drought, often for the third consecutive year. Where rains have failed, farmers who depend mainly on rainwater to irrigate their crops – the large majority - have no yields or very low yields. Those who rely on irrigation are scarcely better off, with groundwater sinking and streams and reservoirs drying up. The extent of the crisis is compounded by chronic agrarian distress reflected in a massive slowdown in agricultural growth to as low as 0.2 per cent in 2014-15, with no imminent signs of recovery. In this Issue Brief, Harsh Mander, a former officer of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), civil rights activist, and author of books on public policy, traces the evolution of state responses to famines in India. The first four decades after Independence saw the gradual expansion and democratisation of state obligations and responses to droughts and scarcities. Though public policy traversed in more progressive directions of protecting people from desperate want created by drought and food scarcities, paradoxically many unacceptable elements of public policy and practice continued to be carried over from colonial times. Post-liberalisation, the Indian state has gradually changed course and become entirely unconscionable towards its poorer and distressed citizens, in some instances more so than the colonial rulers.The way forward is to create a more proactive state that recalibrates its warning systems and a well-geared administrative machinery that can reach out to those in distress....

In the context of the raging controversy over the Indian Premier League betting and match-fixing episodes, there has been considerable public concern over the issues involved. This Issue Brief analyses the core issues that need to be clarified in order to understand how to handle gambling in sport in India. The Brief looks at the philosophical underpinning in India and also traces the ineffectiveness of sports regulation in India thus far....