Insights, a blog published by IMPRI.
Most of us order food and book cabs without thinking much about the person on the other end of the app. There are a lot of them. NITI Aayog (2022) counted 7.7 million gig and platform workers in 2020-21, about 6.7% of India's non-agricultural workforce, and expected 23.5 million by 2029-30.
Women in many Indian households perform a substantial amount of unpaid domestic work, while their control over household finances may remain limited . To address this, several state governments have started schemes that send cash directly into women’s bank accounts and Odisha’s Subhadra Yojana is one such example.
BACKGROUND
Women’s economic insecurity is shaped not only by low household income but also by unpaid care work, limited control over resources and unequal access to employment. State governments have increasingly responded through direct cash-transfer programmes that place money in women’s bank accounts. Madhya Pradesh’s Mukhyamantri Ladli Behna Yojana is one of the most significant examples of this shift.
Background
India-US space cooperation has evolved from limited technical engagement into a broader strategic partnership. The relationship gained momentum after the 2005 Indo-US civil space framework, followed by the easing of US export controls on Indian space entities during the 2010s. A major step came in 2014, when NASA and ISRO began developing the NISAR mission as a joint project during bilateral discussions.
India's narcotics challenge is undergoing a structural transformation. Situated between the Golden Crescent in the west and the Golden Triangle in the east, India is exposed to two major international narcotics corridors.
In 1693, the British Parliament passed the Million Act for financing the Nine Years' War. Specifically, they agreed to collect all beer and liquor taxes directly toward servicing the new debt. As such, this was one of the first instances of earmarking government borrowing. Making a specific funding source or spending objective to legitimize a borrower's commitment. Modern Public Finance has been retreating from earmarking since then through the consolidation of America's revolutionary debts by Alexander Hamilton to current treasury orthodoxies. According to these orthodoxies, a sovereign's ability to borrow is at its best when it is able to make use of a free flowing, fungible, single treasury account where funds are drawn from many sources to a central point.
India's fiscal stability is closely linked to the financial health of its states, which account for a significant share of public expenditure and revenue. Differences in revenue mobilisation, expenditure quality, fiscal deficits and debt levels can create substantial variation in the fiscal resilience of individual states. NITI Aayog introduced the Fiscal Health Index (FHI) as a systematic framework to assess and benchmark the fiscal performance of states. States can track their performance across the five pillars: Quality of Expenditure, Revenue Mobilisation, Fiscal Prudence, Debt Index and Debt Sustainability: year-on-year and identify areas where deterioration is taking place (NITI Aayog, 2026a).