Independent Research and Policy Advocacy

Publications

Blogs

We produce blogs to discuss new research findings, ongoing projects, and even personal reflections on the research process. Our blogs are written for a variety of audiences, including other researchers, policymakers, practitioners, financial service providers, grassroots organizations, impact investors and the public. The format is simple and easy to grasp. The language is straightforward, and the tone is non-academic. Our blogs can be of varying lengths. We choose to write a blog when we don’t want to do a full- fledged study or follow a rigorous research process. Blogs may contain opinions and they can also be based on experiences. Some of our blogs may just share some observations, learnings, or challenges.

Our Work

July 6, 2022 | Dvara Research

This blog post summarises literature regarding users who are most likely to face difficulties in using digital payments, and some design principles and best practices that could simplify digital payment interfaces.

By Srikara Prasad, Sarah Stanley
July 4, 2022 | Dvara Research

Our recently concluded State of Exclusion study finds that payment failures during the back-end processing of a Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) payment are a significant concern. In this blog piece, we highlight the broad takeaways to help the reader better understand the landscape of payment failures.We also set out some broad recommendations to be taken into consideration by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to improve the chances of a successful DBT payment.

May 5, 2022 | Dvara Research

This post summarises how BNPL lending functions and highlights customer protection concerns that can put at risk the promise of better credit access.

By Srikara Prasad, Sarah Stanley
May 4, 2022 | Dvara Research

On June 25, 2022, the XKDR Forum and Dvara Research Foundation will be hosting an all day workshop.

By XKDR Forum, Dvara Research
April 26, 2022 | Dvara Research

A comparison of household portfolios across two nationally representative survey highlights substantial differences in the ownership of financial assets, while similarities in the incidence of indebtedness.

By Niyati Agrawal, Rakshith S. Ponnathpur, Sahana Seetharaman
April 4, 2022 | Dvara Research

In this series's of blog posts, we will provide challenges and gaps in the BoCW Act implementation and highlight the viewpoints of multiple stakeholders in the BoCW Act registration and service delivery.

By Dvara Research, India Migration Now
April 1, 2022 | Dvara Research

The Centre for Customer Protection is announcing a call for proposals for the Voice of the Aggrieved Customer (VoAC) project, under the auspices of CPP. The Centre invites Consumer Groups, Self-Regulatory Organisations (SRO), industry associations, Financial Service Providers (FSPs) including digital FSPs, DFS agents and business correspondents, financial planners/advisors, investigative journalists, institutional and independent academicians, research institutions/think-tanks and scholars to submit proposals to document authentic experiences of customers, in the context of digital financial services and customer protection.

March 14, 2022 | Dvara Research

We presented detailed feedback on the Reserve Bank of India’s Discussion Paper on Review of Prudential Norms for Classification, Valuation and Operations of Investment Portfolio of Commercial Banks in the form of answers to the ten questions posed within the Discussion Paper.

By Amulya Neelam, Madhu Srinivas
March 7, 2022 | Dvara Research

In this post, we set out our vision for what social protection in India should aim to do, and then pose some questions on how we might achieve this.

By Anupama Kumar
February 7, 2022 | Dvara Research

In our response, we commend and highlight the more risk sensitive methodology and the corresponding disclosures outlined in the draft guidelines. However, we also point out that not including conduct risk under operational risk is a major lacuna.

By Madhu Srinivas