India

Background

IGC has a long history of engagement in India. The India-Central and India-Bihar country programmes were launched in 2009, following extensive consultations with policymakers, academic experts, media, and civil society representatives. In 2017, these programmes merged under a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to work with government, research institutes, and other institutions in Bihar and across the country and remained active till 2019.

Today, IGC’s work in India continues through two key initiatives:

1. India Sustainable Growth Hub

The Centre for Research on the Economics of Climate, Food, Energy and Environment (CECFEE) at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Delhi and IGC at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) co-established the India Sustainable Growth Hub (ISGH) in 2024.

ISGH brings together ISI’s domestic expertise and IGC’s global policy and research ecosystem to generate high-quality evidence for India’s transition to sustainable growth. The collaboration was made possible by funding from the Bezos Earth Fund.

The Hub was launched at the India Sustainable Growth Conference on 18 December 2024 in Delhi and the team is based at ISI Delhi.

2. Ideas for India

Ideas for India (I4I), launched in 2012, remains an important platform for exchanging and disseminating ideas to promote evidence-based policy. 

By providing an ideologically neutral space for social scientists and development practitioners, I4I makes policy discussions more accessible to both specialists and non-specialists interested in issues of growth and development in India. The platform is run by a editorial team based in New Delhi.