Independent Research and Policy Advocacy

Policy Initiatives

Household Finance

Dvara Research’s Household Finance Research initiative aims to rigorously understand the financial choices and decisions of low-income or excluded individuals and households, and their relation to achieving households’ objectives. It has been our consistent endeavour to study financial inclusion as a gateway to a suite of appropriate financial services eventually enabling well-rounded household balance sheets and consumer financial well-being.

Misha Sharma Dvara

Misha Sharma

Head - Household Finance

Priyadarshini Ganesan Dvara

Priyadarshini Ganesan

Senior Research Associate

Our Work

February 1, 2022 | Dvara Research

In this slide deck, we cover some of the key insights from the AIDIS 2019 that throw light on the current landscape of household finance in India.

By Rakshith S. Ponnathpur, Sahana Seetharaman, Misha Sharma
January 11, 2022 | omifoundation

In recent months, there have been several reports on platform workers demanding greater worker rights in India.

By Rakshith S. Ponnathpur
January 6, 2022 | Dvara Research

Gold dominates household portfolios in India. This has been labelled as irrational behaviour by financially illiterate households. In this paper, we show that household preference towards gold is not irrational in the context of the Indian financial and macroeconomic environment which includes high inflation, financial repression, and capital controls.

By Renuka Sane, Manisk K. Singh
October 20, 2021 | IndiaSpend

The pandemic-led economic crisis has exacerbated the rising indebtedness among India's poor households, and could push more families into a debt trap

By Rakshith S. Ponnathpur
October 7, 2021 | Moneycontrol

There is an urgent need to make formal financial services more flexible, and customer centric, in order to increase its usability

September 30, 2021 | Dvara Research

In this blog post-through a case study, we analyse how microcredit borrowers availed the debt moratarium and through that identify how much they may have been impacted by COVID-19 and lockdowns.

By Rakshith S. Ponnathpur
September 2, 2021 | The Hindu

he microfinance movement in India is set to receive another dose of impetus with the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) recently released Consultative Document on Regulation of Microfinance in June 2021. Following the Malegam Committee Report, which is a decade old now, the current document looks to reassess and realign the priorities of the sector.

August 11, 2021 | Dvara Research

This brief reviews the literature on the finances of platform workers in India and around the world.

By Natasha D’cruze, Asmita Chatterjee, Anupama Kumar, Rakshith S. Ponnathpur, Anubhutie Singh
August 5, 2021 | Dvara Research

In this paper, we document some key relationships between micro-level household behavior and macro-level aggregates for the Indian economy. Using the CMIE’s Consumer Pyramids Survey, we show that for the period 2014-19, the household-level savings rate around the median of the income distribution correlates strongly with, and has predictive power for, macro-aggregate variables such as the Wholesale Price Index and its rate of change, the Prime Lending Rate, the growth rate of bank credit for personal loans, the growth rate of industry-sector GDP, and the growth rate of bank credit to the household sector.

By Dr. Indradeep Ghosh, Vinay Subramanian, Rohith Krishna, Rakesh Nigam
July 16, 2021 | Dvara Research

In this deck, we analyse the financial portfolios of Indian households adhering to different religious faiths

By Rakshith S. Ponnathpur