The GLM|LIC project Urban Geography of Entrepreneurship and Growth in India led by Paul Novosad (Dartmouth College) and Sam Asher (the World Bank), has recently launched The Socioeconomic High-resolution Rural-Urban Geographic Platform for India (SHRUG), facilitating data sharing between researchers working on India. The repository includes a comprehensive set of data comprising of India’s 500,000 villages, 8000 towns, and 4000 legislative assemblies and spanning over the past 25 years. The datasets are publically available and designed for researcher’s accessibility to high-resolution socioeconomic data as well as giving space for communication, linking and sharing of data.
One interesting study out of this project investigates the impacts of a high-scale national rural road construction program in India on village labour and goods markets, see the policy brief here.