Publication: Dvara Research

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.

The objective of this blog is to articulate the scope and relevance of various blended finance instruments in advancing access to suitable credit for nano entrepreneurs.

This document offers a guide to understanding and using CPHS data, focusing on its stratified multi-stage sampling design, weighting methodology, and operationalisation in statistical analysis.

In this blog post, we analyse the changes in the direction and weigh them through the lens of customer protection and long-term sustainability. We also offer suggestions on streamlining the KYC updation (re-KYC) exercise without adding to systemic risks.

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.   

The Consultation Paper sets out the landscape of use cases of AI prevalent in the Indian Securities Market.

The survey was conducted between March and April of this year in partnership with Gram Vaani, a social technology company, in seven districts of Rajasthan: Ajmer, Alwar, Bharatpur, Bundi, Dausa, Deeg, and Jaipur.

On 13 December 2024, the Ministry of Finance, Government of India (MoF) released the draft Banning of Unregulated Lending Activities (BULA) Act. This aligns with recommendations made in the Report of the Working Group on Digital Lending.

By studying people’s instinctive, unguided ‘trust-decisions’, we hope to uncover their mental models of trust. More specifically, we aim to (i) articulate the expectations that customers have of trustworthy lenders, (ii) help lenders design their products in a manner consistent with the customer’s expectations, and (iii) translate these principle-level expectations into processes that lenders may adopt in their customer service to become trustworthy.

This Whitepaper unpacks what RTAI would mean in the context of digital lending. While the term Responsible AI has been adequately conceptualized in academia and elsewhere, it still needs to be coherently contextualized to specific domains.