Over the past year, India witnessed two waves of COVID-19, where the second wave unleashed brutal implications on all aspects of individual, familial, societal, economic, and national life. With different mutations and variants of coronavirus emerging in different parts of the world, the pandemic threat continues to loom large. The rapid development of vaccines and massive vaccination drives offer a silver lining. In this context, the hopes of easing COVID-19 restrictions and unlocking the various sectors of the economies lie.

In light of the above, we are happy to present to the readers Issue 1 of Volume 1 of Impact and Policy Research Review (IPRR), a flagship journal of IMPRI Impact and Policy Research Institute. It is divided into the following sections: Insights, Policy Perspectives, Special Articles, Young Voices, and Report Review. The articles provide an in-depth analysis of the grassroots-level realities and make room for further introspection and analysis in a pandemic-ridden world. These articles propose unbiased policy recommendations and address the underlying objectives of IPRR to demonstrate evidence and action-based research. We hope that the articles in this Issue would greatly benefit the social science research community and policymakers and foster healthy deliberations of development policies and decisions in India and the world.

We thank the Journal Advisory Board and Editorial Review Committee for their enthusiastic support for the journal. We congratulate the authors for their insightful and well-researched articles. We also congratulate the IPRR Secretariat for their hard work and for setting solid foundations of high editorial standards for the journal.