Academic Themes

Notes on my research, book reviews and discussions on social sciences
This section contains articles on some of my main areas of academic interest including economics, development studies, collective action, social policy, governance and the right to food. A few articles look software and utilities that would be of interest to researchers. If you are interested in any of these in particular, please click on the subtopic on the menu to your right.

Apps4Africa: A contest to build mobile based technologies that could be used for social purposes in Africa

Technology for Transparency Network |: A collection of projects that use technology for promoting transparency. The case studies can be accessed by the country.

MyNeta – Candidate Affidavits for Elections in India: Information on all Members of Parliaments of India based on the affidavits they file with the election commission. Visitors are permitted to point out inconsistencies between the given information and the case on the ground.

Annual conferences on IT and politics: Annual conferences on information technology and politics organized through American Political Science Association.

Bus Routes.in: Website providing information on bus routes in Madras using information on routes gathered by crowd sourcing.

The Bulgarian Anticorruption Portal: Media coverage of corruption stories, anti-corruption initiatives in Bulgaria and links to research on corruption from across the world.

I paid a bribe: The innovative crowd sourcing platform by Janaagraha to crowd source reports on demands for bribes in India. The website has inspired many such initatives internationally.

Anti-Corruption Resources: Transparency International UK’s page with links to articles and websites of other organisations working on corruption. There are detailed case studies from different countries on anti-corruption measures.

Climate Collaboratorium: Seeks to use the collective intelligence of people to develop a plan on climate change. It’s a project of center for collective intelligence at MIT.

Sunlight Foundation: The foundation is, “a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for open government globally and uses technology to make government more accountable to all. We do so by creating tools, open data, policy recommendations, journalism and grant opportunities to dramatically expand access to vital government information to create accountability of our public officials”. The website is a great source of information on open data policy, political financing and a range of other topics in the intersection of technology and transparency.

This We Know: Explore U.S. Government Data About Your Community: Collates data from various US Government databases and presents them at the community level that can be searched by zip code.

School Report Cards: NUPA’s school monitoring system that has recent school level data for more than 1.2 million schools in India.

Public Database Indexing Guidelines: North Carolina is mandated by law to maintain an index of all electronic public records with description of available data. This is a guideline prepared by the State government to prepare an index of the databases

Government 2.0 Taskforce, Australia: A task force set up by Australian government to examining ways of making proactive disclosure of digitised information, to promote digital innovations in government, and promote online engagement.

Open data catalogue: A spreadsheet containing links to websites around the world providing open government data.

“Mobile Vigeye” Complaint system by CVC India: A mobile application developed by the Central Vigilance Commissioner of India through which individuals can submit complaints to the commission. The application includes a facility for the user to record audio, video and also write notes in order to submit complaints. Sounds like an interesting application that could be put to imaginative use by citizens from whom bribes are demanded.

iGovernment Working Papers – University of Manchester: Working papers on information technology for the government, produced at the University of Manchester.

Helping Countries Combat Corruption: The Role of the World Bank: A World Bank publication outlining the measures advocated by the bank to combat corruption in bank funded projects, and in countries supported by the Bank overall.

Corruption & Integrity Improvement Initiatives in Developing Countries: A book on corruption and anti-corruption initiatives by UNDP with case studies from different countries, along with a discussion of anti-corruption initiatives.

Not all that unique by Reetika Khera: UID has limited scope for reducing corruption, even if it works as intended; but as things stand. Development and reduction of corruption are used as a smokescreen for what is mainly a project driven by security establishment and corporate interests, argues the author.