Book Description

The India Policy Forum (IPF) is organized by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in New Delhi in partnership with the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. It aims to examine India’s economic reforms and its economic transition using policy-relevant empirical research. The IPF comprises an annual international conference in July in New Delhi and the IPF Volume that brings together the conference papers. These papers undergo detailed revisions after the conference based on discussants’ comments at the IPF and the guidance provided by the editors. The IPF is guided by distinguished international advisory and research panels. The first IPF 2014 paper presents an assessment of the impact on India of the US Federal Reserve’s tapering talk in May 2013, and the lessons to be learnt from that for the future. The second paper uses the longitudinal panel data from the NCAER’s India Human Development Survey to answer the question of whether we can expect India’s National Food Security Act to reduce the problem of malnutrition. The third paper examines the distributional impact on women of India’s rapid economic growth during the past three decades. The fourth paper asks the question of whether India’s publicly funded health insurance schemes are working for the population below the poverty line. The volume concludes with the fifth paper discussing corruption in India and seeking to bridge the available research evidence to the policies that could be used to tackle corruption. The annual IPF Volume is globally the most cited collection of articles on India and should be useful to researchers and policy-makers in economics and political economy.