This program focuses on solutions that speak to the changing landscape of issues pertaining to financial customer protection in India. It studies how institutional practices in customer protection can build trust and confidence to increase uptake and usage of formal financial products and services among low-income, rural, and women consumers.
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This blog is the first in a two-part series on nano-enterprises, a segment that remains underrepresented in official statistics and policy discussions. It presents a descriptive overview of India’s unincorporated enterprises using evidence from ASUSE, laying the empirical foundation for subsequent analysis focused on nano-enterprises.
In the paper, we lay out a theoretical frame for thinking about microfinance crises. The theoretical frame draws from Hyman Minsky’s 1977 work on financial instability, and layers over it a cultural reasoning that recognises overlending and overborrowing as cultural traits that sometimes takes hold of microfinance markets.
The objective of this paper is to draw attention to those aspects of the lives of Low-Income Households (LIHs) that aren’t related to their income. In doing so, the paper characterises LIHs from a social capital perspective, highlighting the maintenance and strengthening of social capital as a deep-rooted cultural trait that is central to meaning-making in the lives of LIHs.
This paper traces the historical evolution of TSP in social protection discourse and argues that TSP rests on an incomplete diagnosis of poverty and inequality that underestimates the role of a hyper‑financialised global economy.
In early April, the World Bank published its State of Social Protection report (2025), earlier known as the ‘State of Social Safety Nets’ series. These reports use global-level data about social protection programs to reflect on trends in social security and to ascertain future requirements of social security.
In the first blog of this series of two, we break down (i) the Committee's methodology, (ii) key insights on the current state of AI adoption, (iii) FREE AI Framework and (iv) its recommendations.
This paper focuses on Part III of the IBC, which deals with natural persons, proprietorships, and personal guarantors for corporate debt.
The two worlds of policy research and academic research (in economics) sometimes do intersect, but for the most part, they appear to me to be quite different arenas of inquiry, with different epistemologies and types of truth claims. This blog is about those differences as I see them, having worked in both domains.
This article aims to provide a preliminary estimate of the credit requirements of FPOs, drawing on the experience of professionals who have been closely associated with FPOs for several years in their development and operations.
In this document, we present our response to the policy document on DHRUVA (Digital Hub for Reference and Unique Virtual Address): The Digital Address DPI, hereafter referred to as the ‘policy document’, published by the Department of Posts in May 2025.
In all our research efforts, we strive to maintain an independent voice that speaks for the low-income household and household enterprises. Our ability to perform this function is significantly enhanced by our commitment to disseminate as a pure public good, all the intellectual capital that we create.
