Articles by Raghav Gaiha

The analysis builds on the extant literature in three ways: it covers the longest period of the lockdown; offers robust comparisons of means and variances of food commodities’ prices and the price wedge between them in different cities/market centres in Maharashtra during the lockdown relative to the pre-pandemic period; and finally gives a distillation of time-series analysis of co-movements of wholesale and retail prices between pairs of centre/wholesale and retail prices, mutual dependence of wholesale and retail prices, taking their lags into account, and their time-varying volatility.

Whether the burden of non-communicable diseases has shifted to older men and women, and whether it varies by marital status and affluence of the household has been examined. The analysis is based on the 60th and 71st rounds of the National Sample Survey for 2004 and 2014. Even though comparisons of prevalence and shares between men and women are relied on in the analysis, some glaring disparities emerge. The growing menace of NCDs in the context of a rapidly increasing older population calls for bold policy initiatives, which are currently either underfunded or limited in coverage and uncoordinated. A drastic overhaul of the health system and behavioural changes are thus emphasised.

The performance of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, even as revealed by government statistics, has been disappointing and, if anything, has deteriorated over time. Using offi cial data, this article evaluates the NREGS according to the average number of days of employment per household, the percentage of households completing 100 days of employment, the percentage of expenditure against total available funds, and the percentage of work completed. The performance across the fi rst two criteria has been disappointing and the average number of days of employment per household has declined over time. The percentage of expenditure against total available funds has risen sharply, particularly since 2010-11, and has been consistently higher than the work completed as a percentage of the work planned.

While local knowledge matters in impact assessment, it is also important to identify issues and concerns, which given budgetary and time constraints, could be addressed more meaningfully through such knowledge. This paper, through a review of certain development projects, illustrates the specific advantages of drawing on local knowledge for design and implementation of projects. The examples cited point to a substantial gain in terms of richness of analysis and cost reduction. However, local knowledge from different sources needs to be tapped more efficiently.