World Development Report

The World Development Report (WDR) is the World Bank’s most influential publication — an annual deep-dive into a specific development challenge, combining original research, cross-country data analysis, and policy recommendations. Recent editions have covered climate and development (2023), data for better lives (2021), the changing nature of work (2019), and governance and the law (2017). The archive going back to 1978 is freely available, making the WDR one of the longest-running continuous series of development analysis. For India researchers, the WDR provides global context and comparative frameworks for understanding India’s development challenges — and many editions include India-specific case studies and data. Each report is available as a free PDF, and the underlying data is often published separately.