What’s working in India?
MILAN VAISHNAV
THERE is a natural tendency in the world of
commentary and analysis to focus on the negative. Journalists land Page One
stories or lead the evening news when they uncover government corruption or
gross mismanagement, not when they chronicle a smoothly functioning public
administration. Activists raise funds not when they report how much they’ve
achieved but rather how much is left to do. And researchers and think tank
scholars are consistently pushing for reforms, tweaks, and fixes that could
improve the status quo.
Choosing to focus on what’s gone wrong is
not inherently bad. If the goal of the analyst class is to promote social
advancement, the only path forward is to continuously strive for improvement
rather than resting on the laurels of past achievements.
To be sure, there is ample reason to focus
on adverse trends in the study of contemporary India. There’s indisputable
evidence – from qualitative and quantitative sources – that democ-racy
is on the backfoot as the forces of majoritarianism, illiberalism, and intolerance gain ground.
India remains in a precarious economic position with high inflation, subdued
growth, and lackluster formal sector employment
prospects. In social terms, news head-lines and social media timelines remind
us that India is hardly free from the scourge of gender-based violence, caste
discrimination, or the margin-alization of those
living below the poverty line.
While it would be natural to rehash the
laundry list of challenges that Indian society faces, this article will press
pause on the negative. Instead, the start of a new year creates a unique
opportunity to appreciate the areas in which India has made concerted progress
in recent years.
To this end, this essay highlights eight trends that unambiguously point to improvements
in the daily lives of Indians. This is not to wish away the democratic battles,
economic struggles, or social challenges that ordinary Indians face on a daily
basis, but rather to place them in a broader context.
The choice of the eight trends examined
here is necessarily idiosyncratic. There are undoubtedly developments that have
been omitted. But the focus here is on critical areas of economic, political,
and social development where data can be utilized to establish clear trends.
While the trends point in a positive direction, they are inevitably subject to
caveats, which the essay highlights as well.
Trend #1: India has succeeded in
sustaining rapid economic growth over a four-decade period as a democracy.
Last August, India celebrated its
seventy-fifth anniversary as an independent, sovereign republic. The
anniversary brought forth a deluge of assessments of the country’s ability to
provide a basic quality of life to its 1.3 billion citizens. Appraisals of
India’s economic evolution follow a familiar pattern: modest, but underwhelming
growth in the Nehruvian era; the consolidation of the
‘License Raj’ and prolonged years suffering a ‘Hindu rate of growth’;
pro-business and then pro-market reforms that fuelled an economic awakening;
and, finally, a recent period of uncertainty, fueled
by both domestic and external factors.
But what often gets lost in this recitation
is just how unusual – and indeed impressive – India’s economic performance has
been since the Emergency. Economists Rohit Lamba and Arvind Subramanian have
calculated that since India’s growth takeoff in 1980, the country has enjoyed
an average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita growth rate of 4.6 per cent.
In nearly forty years (ending in 2018), no decadal average fell below three per
cent.1
To put these numbers in context, the
economists note that, since 1950, India is the only continuous democracy (other
than possibly Botswana) to maintain an average GDP growth rate between 3 and
4.5 per cent for nearly four decades.
This sustained growth has had an
unmistakably positive impact on poverty. According to the World Bank, India’s
poverty headcount index stood at 38 per cent in 1983; as of 2019, that number
is estimated to have fallen below seven per cent.2 While there is a heated debate over the
precise poverty numbers today (some economists debate whether that number is
lower or higher – a disagreement fuelled further by the lack of official
government data), every credible economist agrees the reduction in deprivation
has been monumental.
The caveat, of course, is the question of
India’s continued ability to generate such sustained growth. The lack of
official data aside, a series of vexing questions continue to loom over the
economy. For instance, can India fully reap the rewards of its demographic
dividend with its minimal industrial base and lack of formal sector employment
opportunities? As of 2021, industry accounted for only a quarter of India’s
overall GDP, which actually represents a decrease from a decade ago. This
stagnation has occurred despite the vaunted ‘Make in India’ programme.
Furthermore, what will become of the vast
numbers of Indian women who are unable to engage productively in the
non-household economy? The government’s latest Periodic Labour Force Survey
(PLFS) from 2020-2021 shows that 32.5 per cent of women aged 15 and older are
engaged in the workforce. While this is the highest level in four years, it
remains abysmally low compared to the rest of the world. Analysts further
caution that this uptick in female labor force
participation is likely an aberration driven by short-term responses to the
pandemic and economic crisis.3
Trend #2: Indians have experienced an unprecedented
improvement in access to basic private goods.
On the surface, the 2014 general election
was a contest between the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a Rahul Gandhi-helmed Indian
National Congress. But behind the scenes, another fight raged on – one between
economists Jagdish Bhagwati
and Amartya Sen. Bhagwati
(along with his longtime collaborator Arvind Panagariya) and Sen (with his longtime co-author
Jean Drèze) published dueling
books in the run-up to the Indian elections. In a nutshell, Bhagwati
argued for a return to the pro-growth reforms championed by the first National
Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in the early 2000s, while Sen advocated for greater investments in social safety nets
to better ensure the fruits of India’s growth could be equally shared. The battle
was seen as a proxy fight between economists supporting the BJP (Bhagwati) and the Congress (Sen).
Therefore, it came as a shock to many
observers that while Modi and the BJP won the
election, Sen’s ideas were not immediately rejected.
Instead, as journalist Pramit Bhattacharya has noted,
Sen’s ideas seem to have enjoyed greater success in
the Modi regime than those of Bhagwati
since its ascension to power in 2014.4
The Modi government has not
invested considerable political or financial capital in improving public good
provisions such as health and education, as Sen had
hoped. Whether this is because many public goods are state subjects under the
Constitution or because such investments do not lend themselves to easy
credit-claiming by politicians is difficult to say. But the government has
increased investments in the public distribution of private goods such as gas
cylinders (a clean source of cooking fuel), toilets, bank accounts, and
electricity connections. This enhanced governmental emphasis on private goods
delivery has been described by former chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian (and his collaborators) as a key
component of a doctrine of ‘New Welfarism’.5
To be fair, these investments did not start
with the Modi government; many of these schemes were
in force under the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime. What the
present government did was to rebrand, retool, and re-energize them. The
scaling up of welfare distribution is unmistakable, particularly in rural
areas. Prior to 2015, Abhishek Anand,
Vikas Dimble, and Arvind Subramanian calculated that slightly less than one
per cent of rural households acquired fresh access to clean sources of cooking
fuel each year. After 2015, this pace rose to an astonishing 5.6 per cent.
Similar trends are apparent for other amenities, including sanitation and
electricity.6
Data from successive waves of the National
Family Health Survey (Table 1) demonstrate that access to a range of household
goods has risen dramatically in recent decades.
Of course, the headline numbers obscure a murkier
reality. A collaborative panel survey of rural households in four north Indian
states, between 2014 and 2018, found that rural latrine ownership had indeed
increased significantly, but open defecation remains rampant due to persistent
social norms.7 Research has shown that while LPG expansion
has been dramatic, many households cannot access replacement gas cylinders due
to the twin barriers of affordability and availability.8 Similarly, a 2018 survey documented a marked
expansion in access to the power grid across some of the poorest states in
northern and eastern India, while highlighting continued struggles with both
the quality and reliability of electricity supply.9
Trend #3: India is enjoying a digital payments
revolution.
Thanks to Jan Dhan
Yojana, the government’s flagship financial inclusion
scheme, more than 460 million bank accounts have been opened across the country
since 2014. Bank accounts are but one component in a burgeoning digital
payments ecosystem flourishing in India today.10 Arguably, the bedrock
of this system is the Aadhaar biometric
authentication programme, begun under the UPA government but fully embraced by
the Modi Sarkar. To
date, more than 1.2 billion Indians have been enrolled in its unique identity
scheme.
The combination of Jan Dhan
accounts, Aadhaar, and the universality of the mobile
phone have formed what has become popularly known as the ‘JAM trinity’.
Arguably one of the most under-recognized components of the digital revolution
is the United Payments Interface (UPI), a real time, mobile enabled payments
system that facilitates transactions between banks. According to the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), India’s digital payment volume has grown at
an average annual rate of roughly 50 per cent over the past five years.11 The UPI expansion has been even more rapid. The IMF calculates that
– from June 2021 to June 2022 – digital transactions doubled to 5.86 billion.
The value of funds transacted also doubled in the same year. Those numbers
continue to rise steeply. In October 2022, the National Payments Corporation of
India (which governs UPI) recorded 7.3 billion transactions in that month alone
with a transaction value totaling $146 billion. Both
figures represent an eight per cent month-on-month growth from September of
that year.12
A study conducted by Boston Consulting Group and PhonePe estimates that 40 per cent of payments (in value
terms) are now conducted digitally in India. If current trends persist, this $3
trillion market could more than triple by the year 2026.13 This revolution
has had multiple beneficial impacts on the lives of ordinary people: it has
drastically reduced the unbanked population, eased the burden of paying bills,
and spurred a Golden Age of consumer-friendly financial innovation and
technological adaptation.
Despite this fantastic rise in digital
payments, pronouncements about the death of a cash-based system have proved
premature. After the 2016 demonetization sledge-hammer, cash in circulation
immediately halved (as a percentage of GDP) and digital payments surged. Six
years later, cash-in-circulation is well above predemonetization
levels. According to HSBC, a leading driver of cash’s resurgence is the
widespread distress experienced by India’s informal sector. As a result, those
Indians living in precarity were instrumental in the return
of safe, cash-based economic activities.14
While digital payments are prized because of their link
with transparency, the two do not always travel together. The most striking
example is the advent of electoral bonds – a new political funding modality.
According to this scheme, parties and firms can purchase ‘bonds’ from the State
Bank of India and transfer them as ‘donations’ to their favoured political
party in unlimited quantities at specified times of the year. The upside is
that actual cash never changes hands. The downside is that neither the donor
nor the recipient is required to disclose the transaction, leaving ordinary voters
in the dark.15
Trend #4: India has markedly increased its renewable
energy capacity.
As noted above, Indian households are
better connected to the power grid than at any time in the past. As the
population has grown, incomes have risen, and urbanization has taken root,
India’s energy consumption too has grown. According to information compiled by
Our World in Data, sourced by the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, the
average Indian uses around 7,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy a year, which
represents a doubling over the past two decades.16 For comparison’s sake, per capita energy usage
in India is still four times lower than in China and ten times lower than what
it is in the United States.
But all of this energy must come from
somewhere. In India’s case, coal continues to be the single biggest source of
energy, accounting for roughly 55 per cent of nationwide energy consumption,
the same proportion as in the mid-1970s. All in all, fossil fuels account for
about 90 per cent of India’s energy, a number that has budged very little in
decades.
But in this era of growing concern over
carbon-based pollution and the need to mitigate climate change, there is a
silver lining: India’s recent dramatic expansion of renewable energy generation
capacity. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA)
reports that renewables account for roughly one-quarter of installed power
capacity in India, although only around 13 per cent is currently used as part
of India’s electricity generation.17 The government has plans to further increase
the share of renewables in installed capacity to 56 per cent by 2030.
IIEFA notes that more than 90 per cent of
India’s solar capacity has been installed since 2015-2016, a dramatic increase
in such a short period of time. The rate of investment in renewables has been breathtaking, with the IIEFA estimating that renewables
investment hit a record $14.5 billion in 2021-2022. This represented a 125 per
cent increase over the previous year and a 72 per cent increase over the
pre-pandemic year, 2019-2020.18
As a result of India’s ramping up of
renewable energy at home, it is on track to meet – and potentially best – the
‘Nationally Determined Contributions’ it set for itself in accordance with the
Paris Climate accords. While this milestone is notable, analysts point out that
India’s stated goals are comparatively modest and not ambitious enough to
deliver its fair share of emissions cuts that would be necessary for the world
to restrict temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.19
Trend #5: India’s skewed sex ratio at birth is
showing signs of normalizing.
For decades, one of the most disturbing
facts about Indian society has been the heavily skewed sex ratio that resulted
in a significant gender imbalance among newborn children. According to
demographers, the natural ratio of male to female births in India should be
around 105, a ratio last witnessed in India in the 1960s and 1970s. Since then,
thanks to sex-selective abortion and social norms regarding son preference, India’s
sex ratio at birth began to drift in a pro-male direction. By 2011, according
to Indian census data, 111 boys were born for every 100 girls.20
But that year proved to be a turning point;
since then, India’s sex ratio at birth has begun to normalize. According to
NFHS-5 data (2019-2020), there are approximately 108 boys born for every 100
girls – a discernible improvement (Figure 1).
As the Pew Research Centre has found, this reversal
means that the average annual number of ‘missing’ baby girls in India fell from
approximately 480,000 in 2010 to 410,000 in 2019.21 What’s even more encouraging, according to
Pew, is that the stark variation across religious groups has also diminished,
resulting in convergence across religious communities. Sikhs, for instance, had
among the worst sex ratios in India, but their numbers have begun to converge
with all other groups.22
This demographic shift is no small matter and could be
a sign that deeply entrenched, conservative social norms are showing signs of
weakening. But India is not out of the woods yet. As the Pew analysis noted,
the United Nations estimates that India had one of the world’s most skewed sex
ratios at birth between 2000 and 2020 – after Azerbaijan, China, Armenia,
Vietnam, and Albania.23
Furthermore, even if India’s skewed sex
ratio is narrowing, there is some evidence suggesting that families underinvest
in the health and education of girl children once they are born compared to
their sons. For instance, economists Seema Jayachandran and Ilyana Kuziemko find that mothers in India tend to engage in
shorter periods of breastfeeding for girl children, especially if they have yet
to have a son. This, in turn, has material consequences for child survival
patterns; the economists estimate that the gender gap in breastfeeding accounts
for roughly nine per cent of excess female child mortality in India.24 Jayachandran and Rohini Pande find similar effects of son preference when it comes
to child stunting among young girls.25 On the plus side, the latest NFHS data suggest
that some of these gender-based gaps have significantly attenuated in recent
years.
Trend #6: Fertility in India continues to decline,
approaching replacement levels.
Fertility and family planning have been a
vexed issue in India since the dawn of independence. Concerns about
overpopulation – by no means restricted to India alone – led to dire warnings
about an eventual unending series of Hobbesian fights over scarce natural
resources like food and water, public goods infrastructure, land, and property.
The latest NFHS data significantly allays
concerns about the potential of a ‘population bomb’. According to the most
recent figures, as of 2019-2020, India’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) stood at
2.0, a slight reduction from the previous NFHS round (2015-2016), when TFR
clocked in at 2.2. A TFR of 2.1 is considered replacement level, which means
that the population replenishes itself without growing or shrinking.
India’s TFR now stands just a hair below
replacement level, meaning that India will hit its peak population, estimated
at around 1.6 billion by 2050, a decade ahead of schedule and below the
projection of 1.7 billion people).26 India’s National Population Policy, published
in 2000, had sought to achieve replacement level fertility by the year 2010 –
an achievement only slightly behind schedule. While data from India’s Sample
Registration System differs marginally from the NFHS numbers, the two sets of
data clearly point in the same direction.27
This decline in fertility has been celebrated
by demographers and population experts in India. But there is good reason to
exercise caution when interpreting the headline numbers. First, there is
evidence to show that as family size decreases, the ‘son premium” increases –
suggesting that lower fertility could exacerbate, rather than ameliorate,
India’s skewed sex ratio. For instance, the economist Seema
Jayachandran has found that India’s fertility decline
actually explains as much as one third to one half of India’s previous sex
ratio increase (between 1961 and 2011).28 As the journalist Rukmini
notes, Indian household data demonstrate that ‘families where a son is born are
more likely to stop having children than families where a girl is born.’29 As a result,
girls are much more likely to be a part of large families while the opposite is
true for boys.
Trend #7: Female voter turnout has achieved parity
with male turnout.
Since the first general elections in 1952,
politics in India has largely been a male-dominated affair. India has had
female presidents, a female prime minister, and several powerful female chief
ministers, but these have proven to be exceptions to the norm. Relative to
their share of the population, women have been dramatically under-represented
both as electoral candidates and as elected representatives. In many respects,
2019 was a banner year for female representation, yet women accounted for just
8.9 per cent of all Lok Sabha
candidates and 14.6 per cent of winning Members of Parliament, according to
data collected by the Trivedi Center
for Political Data.30
Historically, women have also trailed their male
counterparts when it comes to exercising their right to vote. In 1967, for
instance, female turnout in national elections lagged male turnout by 11.3
percentage points. Apart from 1984 (an anomalous election that followed Indira
Gandhi’s assassination), the male-female turnout gap remained stubbornly in
place through the 2004 elections, averaging between 8 and 12 percentage points.
However, a marked shift took place after 2004. Between 2004 and 2009, an 8.4
percentage-point gap between male and female turnout fell by nearly half to 4.4
percentage points. In the subsequent 2014 election, the gender gap in voter
turnout advantage stood at just 1.8 percentage points. By 2019, female turnout
had nearly achieved parity: the gap was a negligible 0.1 percent, according to
official data (Figure 2).31 The pattern can be
seen at all levels of government, with female turnout now surpassing male
turnout in most state assembly elections.
The drivers of increased female turnout are not well
understood. It is likely that this historic equalization is a result of some
combination of growing female empowerment, increased male migration,
mobilization efforts by the Election Commission of India, and rising levels of
social awareness. But the parity between male and female turnout ignores a
critical fact, which is that there is still a striking gender gap in voter
registration. As of 2014, there were 909 women per 1,000 men on the voter
rolls, compared to a population sex ratio of 943 women per 1,000 men according
to the 2011 census. As political scientist Rithika
Kumar has pointed out, the increase in female voter participation is not driven
by increases in new female voters, but rather the result of greater female
turnout among those already registered to vote.32
Trend #8: Organized violence is at historic lows.
The casual, almost routinized use of
violence in contemporary India is hard to escape. More than 40 per cent of
elected Members of Parliament face ongoing criminal cases, many of them
involving charges of committing bodily harm. Police abuse of protestors,
dissidents, and suspects held in their custody is regularly documented in
newspapers and on television. Even the term ‘encounter killings’, often used as
euphemism for law enforcement officials engaging in extrajudicial violence, is
bandied about as a badge of honor by governments that
want to appear tough on crime.
Against this backdrop, it is easy to feel
pessimistic about the state of law and order in India today. But multiple
metrics of violence paint a very different picture: organized violence of
almost all kinds has been declining for years, according to a forthcoming book
edited by political scientists Amit Ahuja and Devesh Kapur. For instance, according to the authors, the number
of terrorist incidents in India (leaving Jammu and Kashmir aside for the
moment) has dropped dramatically, from 71 in the first decade of the 2000s to
21 in the period of 2010-2020.33
India has been wracked by multiple
insurgencies in the past, including in Punjab, the Northeast, Kashmir, and the
so-called ‘Red Corridor’, of central and eastern India where Naxal violence has been concentrated. By the mid-1990s, the
Punjab insurgency had faded away, but violence raged on the other three fronts.
Since 2010, however, insurgent violence has ebbed across the board, according
to data compiled and analyzed by Ahuja
and Kapur. Between 2000 and 2019, the Kashmir
insurgency took nearly 42,000 lives, but just 2,300 (5.5 per cent) of those
deaths came after the year 2010. The number of annual violent incidents in the
Northeast touched 2,000 in the year 2000, but today that number is below 250.
And left wing extremist violence on account of the Naxal
conflict has declined by almost two-thirds in the period 2008-10 to 2018-20.34
With the resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to
power and its Hindutva ideology, communal
tensions between Hindus and Muslims are palpable. But, as of now, these
tensions have not resulted in the frequency and intensity of riots that India
witnessed in earlier decades. Since Gujarat 2002, official data suggests that
incidents of communal violence have held steady. Riots, a broad category which
includes incidents of a communal and non-communal nature, are at a historic low
relative to the size of the total population.
Of course, the decline in organized violence is
welcome, but these numbers should not distract from other persistent forms of
violence which often occur under-the-radar or which has taken on new forms. For
instance, gender-based violence often occurs in private homes and is not
adequately recorded. NFHS data on spousal violence show a decline from 2005-6
to 2019-21, but this could be subject to social response bias and fails to include
other forms of psychological or verbal abuse. Furthermore, the same survey
shows that the proportion of women (between the ages of 15-49) reporting that
they ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ experienced some form of physical violence in the
preceding year was 18.9 in 2005-6 but grew to 22.1 in 2019-2021.
Furthermore, there is some data to suggest
that vigilantism (such as cow lynchings) that occurs independent of the state – though often with its
implicit consent – is on the rise as is everyday harassment of Muslims.35
The preamble to the Indian Constitution commits the
republic of India to securing justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity for
all its citizens. This monumental task remains a work in progress, as it does
in nearly every democratic society on Earth. There is a reason that the
political scientist Robert Dahl eschewed the use of the word ‘democracy’ when
describing the modern political form that bears this name. Dahl preferred the
term ‘polyarchy’, because, in his view, no large
system anywhere in the world is fully democratized.36 Consolidated
democracies are best thought of as polyarchies or
works-in-progress constantly trying to improve their level of inclusion and
contestation. Democracy is akin to the North Star, serving as an ever-present
beacon but one that is nearly impossible to reach.
Today, India’s polyarchy faces intense pressures – from external forces like globalization, economic headwinds, wars, and pandemic as well as internal forces of intolerance, illiberalism, and nativism. While gearing up for the next series of encounters, it is worth recounting battles both won and lost. On this score, India has many victories worth celebrating.
Footnotes:
*The author is grateful to Aislinn Familetti and Nitya Labh for editorial and research assistance and to Devesh Kapur for comments on an earlier draft. All errors are the author’s own.
1. Rohit Lamba and Arvind Subramanian, ‘Dynamism with Incommensurate Devel-opment: The Distinctive Indian Model’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 34(1), 2020, pp. 3-30.
2. Martin Ravallion, ‘Filling a Gaping Hole in the World Bank’s Global Poverty Measures’, Ideas of India (blog), 14 October 2022, https://www.ideasforindia.in/topics/poverty-inequality/filling-a-gaping-hole-in-the-world-bank-s-global-poverty-measures.html.
3. Namita Bhandare, ‘Why An Increase In Women’s Workforce Numbers Might Not Be Good News’, IndiaSpend, 15 July 2022, https://www.indiaspend.com/womenwork/why-an-increase-in-womens-workforce-numbers-might-not-be-good-news-826138.
4. Pramit Bhattacharya, ‘The Aftermath of the Sen-Bhagwati Debate’, Hindustan Times, 11 July 2022.
5. Abhishek Anand, Vikas Dimble, and Arvind Subramanian, ‘New Welfarism of Modi Govt Represents Distinctive Approach to Re-distribution and Inclusion’, Indian Express, 22 December 2020.
6. Ibid.
7. Aashish Gupta et al., ‘Revisiting Open Defecation: Evidence from a Panel Survey in Rural North India, 2014-18’, Economic and Political Weekly 55(21), 2020, pp. 55-59.
8. Santosh Harish and Kirk R. Smith (eds.), Ujjwala 2.0: From Access to Sustained Usage. Collaborative Clean Air Policy Centre, New Delhi, 2019.
9. Abhishek Jain et al., Access to Clean Cooking Energy and Electricity: Survey of States 2018. Council on Energy, Environment and Water, New Delhi, 2018.
10. Arvind Panagariya, ‘Digital Revolution, Financial Infrastructure and Entrepreneurship: The Case of India’, Working Paper, Columbia University, 2019.
11. Jeff Kearns and Ashlin Mathew, ‘How India’s Central Bank Helped Spur a Digital Payments Boom’, IMF Country Focus, 27 October 2022, https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2022/10/26/cf-how-indias-central-bank-helped-spur-a-digital-payments-boom.
12. Laxitha Mundhra, ‘UPI Records 731 Cr Txn Worth INR 12.11 Lakh Cr In October 2022’, Inc42, 1 November 2022, https://inc42.com/buzz/upi-records-731-cr-txn-worth-inr-12-11-lakh-cr-in-october-2022/.
13. Boston Consulting Group and PhonePe, Digital Payments in India: A US$10 Trillion Opportunity, 2 June 2022, https://www.bcg.com/press/2june2022-digital-payments-in-india-projected-to-reach-10-trillion-by-2026.
14. Pranjul Bhandari, Aayushi Chaudhary, and Priya Mehrishi, ‘India’s Currency in Circulation Conundrum’, HSBC Global Research, 24 June 2022.
15. Milan Vaishnav, ‘Political Finance in India: Déjà Vu All Over Again’, Seminar 713, January 2019.
16. Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, ‘India: Energy Country Profile’, Our World in Data (2022), https://ourworldindata.org/energy.
17. Kashish Shah, ‘India’s Renewable Energy Journey: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back’, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, 27 May 2022, https://ieefa.org/resources/ieefa-indias-renewable-energy-journey-two-steps-forward-one-step-back.
18. Vibhuti Garg, ‘Renewable Energy Investment Surges in India’, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, June 2022, https://ieefa.org/resources/renewable-energy-investment-surges-india.
19. Data from Climate Action Tracker, https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/india/.
20. Yunping Tong, India’s Sex Ratio at Birth Begins to Normalize. Pew Research Centre, 23 August 2022.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Seema Jayachandran and Ilyana Kuzi-emko, ‘Why Do Mothers Breastfeed Girls Less Than Boys? Evidence and Implications for Child Health in India’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 126, pp. 1485-1538.
25. Seema Jayachandran and Rohini Pande, ‘Why Are Indian Children So Short? The Role of Birth Order and Son Preference’, American Economic Review 107(9), 2017, pp. 2600-2629.
26. ‘India’s Population Will Start to Shrink Sooner Than Expected’, Economist, 2 December 2021.
27. Abhishek Jha, ‘Size of Rural Families Shrinks: Sample Registration System Report’, Hindustan Times, 15 March 2022.
28.
Seema Jayachandran,
‘Fertility Decline and Missing Women’, American Economic Journal: Applied
Economics 9(1), 2017, pp. 118-139.
29. Rukmini S., ‘Population Curbs Will Hit Sex Ratio, Mint, 21 August 2019.
30. Gilles Verniers, ‘Verdict 2019 in Charts and Maps: Lok Sabha Has More Female MPs Than Ever Before, More Dynasts Too’, Scroll.in, 1 June 2019, https://scroll.in/article/925313/verdict-2019-in-charts-and-maps-lok-sabha-has-more-female-mps-than-ever-before-more-dynasts-too.
31. Milan Vaishnav and Jamie Hintson, ‘The Dawn of India’s Fourth Party System’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 5 September 2019.
32. Rithika Kumar, ‘India’s Female Voters Not Turning Out To Vote As They Should’, IndiaSpend, 15 September 2018, https://www.indiaspend.com/indias-female-voters-not-turning-out-to-vote-as-they-should-95710/.
33. Amit Ahuja and Devesh Kapur, ‘The State and Internal Security in India’, in Ahuja and Kapur (eds.), Internal Security in India: Violence, Order, and the State. Oxford University Press, New York, 2023, pp. 1-61.
34. Ibid.
35. Annie Gowen and Manas Sharma, ‘Rising Hate in India’, Washington Post, 31 October 2018.
36. Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. Yale University Press, New Haven,1971.