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Long-term Impact of the Pandemic on People’s Lives and Lessons for Developing an Inclusive Social Protection Programme

The COVID-19 pandemic could have a long-term impact for the people of the country due to the unexpected deaths of family members, loss of livelihoods, decline in household income, school closures and inability to access alternative methods of remote learning for students, and lack of access to routine healthcare services. The NCAER National Data Innovation Centre in collaboration with the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network (CPAN) recently published the India COVID-19 Poverty Monitor Bulletin assessing the consequences of the pandemic for the vulnerable populations and the risks of impoverishment faced by them. CPAN’s COVID-19 Poverty Monitoring Initiative is supported by the Covid Collective, a rapid social science research response to inform decision-making on COVID-19 related development challenges.

As a follow-up to the launch of the bulletin, we are organising a webinar to analyse the potential long-term impact of the pandemic on people’s lives and lessons to be learnt for developing an inclusive social protection programme. The panellists at this discussion comprise researchers, policy makers, and bureaucrats with extensive on-ground experience, as well as an overall understanding of the impact of the pandemic and social protection programmes that could help mitigate this impact.

Panellists:

Tanuka Endow is a Professor at the Institute for Human Development (IHD) and the co-ordinator for the Centre for Gender Studies at IHD. Her work is mainly in the area of education, including on the issues of out-of-school children and low-cost private schools. She has worked on Human Development reports and vision documents for various States, including Delhi and Uttarakhand. She has recently contributed to a Human Development Report for the Scheduled Tribes. Dr Endow has engaged in a collaborative study with UNICEF on the post-COVID situation for vulnerable populations in India.

Paromita Sen set up and now runs the Research and Data Vertical at SEWA Bharat, where she and her team conduct research on entrepreneurship, empowerment, labour, disaster resilience, and leadership amongst others—all through the lens of gender and the informal economy. Under the aegis of the SEWA leadership, she has represented SEWA and has been involved in work with NITI Aayog, the Delhi Government, National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), International Labour Organization (ILO), and the Lok Sabha, amongst others.

Manjistha Banerji is a Fellow at National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER). Her primary areas of research are education, family demography, social change and gender, migration, and survey methods. At the NCAER National Data Innovation Centre (NDIC), she is involved with experimentations on different data collection techniques, telephonic surveys to assess the impact of the COVID pandemic in Delhi NCR, qualitative data collection to understand the risk of impoverishment in the context of COVID-19, and in questionnaire design for the upcoming round of the India Human Development Survey (IHDS).

S.M. Vijayanand is Former Chief Secretary to the Government of Kerala. He has earlier also served in various capacities in the Government of India, including as the Secretary, Ministry of Panchayati Raj; and Additional Secretary, Ministry of Rural Development, among other positions. He spearheaded the Rajiv Gandhi Drinking Water Mission, Ministry of Sanitation, Government of India (1992-1996). He has also conceptualised and operationalised ‘Kudumbashree’, a women’s Self-Help Group movement in the State of Kerala.

Sonalde Desai is a Professor at NCAER with a joint appointment as Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland. She directs the NCAER-National Data Innovation Centre (NDIC). She is an internationally known demographer whose work deals primarily with human development in developing countries with a particular focus on gender and class inequalities. At present, she is leading the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), India’s only nationally representative panel study conducted in two rounds in 2004–05 and 2011–12. Preparations are currently on for the next round of IHDS.

Health Data Ecosystem and Pandemic Preparedness

A webinar on Health Data Ecosystem and Pandemic Preparedness was held with Dr Gagandeep Kang, Professor, CMC Vellore; Dr Sanghamitra Pati, Director, ICMR Bhubaneswar; and Dr Peter Lloyd-Sherlock, Professor, University of East Anglia. Dr Aravinda Meera Guntupalli, Senior Lecturer in Global Health, University of Aberdeen, was the discussant. The discussion was moderated by Dr Arokiasamy Perianayagam, Professor, NCAER.

The Coronavirus pandemic has brought into focus the need for a more comprehensive integrated health data ecosystem to generate real-time data for enabling policy decisions. Public health systems, policy response, and pandemic preparedness depend on the quality and range of health ecosystem data, including the speed and efficiency of data analysis. The World Health Organization (WHO) envisions a world where people are better protected and safer from health emergencies, irrespective of the locations and circumstances in which they live. The public health response to the ongoing pandemic in a high-resource setting shows how the data ecosystem system can be used as an effective information, knowledge, and policy tool for tackling health emergencies and augmenting preparedness by leveraging and linking different data sources. These diverse sources of data could include clinical settings, primary care, diagnostic laboratories, public health surveillance systems, clinical research, emergency departments, epidemiology, and multidisciplinary studies. It is also imperative to use innovative approaches for capturing data and harnessing the existing resources during ‘peace-time’ for building infrastructure capabilities to deal with pandemic outbreaks. This seminar  deliberated on the lessons learnt and the infrastructure that would be needed through forecasting and prediction models to facilitate decision-making in the real world through adaptation to operational realities.

Gagandeep Kang, Professor in the Department of Gastrointestinal Sciences, Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, and currently, Executive Director of the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Faridabad, recently became the first Indian woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Society. Dr Kang’s research focuses on viral infections in children, the testing of rotaviral vaccines and other enteric infections. She has written extensively on COVID-19 policy response, including the book, Till We Win: India’s Fight against the Covid-19 Pandemic, co-authored with Chandrakant Lahariya and Randeep Guleria, (Penguin, 2020).

Sanghamitra Pati, a physician-cum-scientist, is currently the Director of Regional Medical Research Centre of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She is an expert in public health and has worked extensively on multi-morbidity research in public health settings. She has also been a lead in the first ever study of multi-morbidity in India.

Peter Lloyd-Sherlock is Professor of Social Policy and International Development at the University of East Anglia. His main area of research encompasses social protection, health, and the well-being of older people in developing countries. He is also interested in the economic and social effects of non-communicable diseases, such as stroke, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s Disease.

Aravinda Meera Guntupalli is Senior Lecturer in Global Health, University of Aberdeen. Her research interests are motivated by welfare issues, nutrition, and health. Her recent work is on gender differentials and well-being; nutritional transition, and health inequalities across the life course; and non-communicable diseases and non-monetary indicators of poverty and health in later life mostly using quantitative methods and/or historical perspective. Her research covers various countries, including India, the UK, Kenya, and Zimbabwe.

Arokiasamy Perianayagam is a Professor at NCAER leading research programmes in the area of health and health economics.
He has been a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Policy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, and prior to that, served as Professor and Head of the Department of Development Studies at the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, where he served as faculty for over three decades. His areas of teaching and research expertise cover demography; public health and health economics; ageing and global health development studies; and, large-scale health survey research.

Conversations with NCAER | Implications of the Haryana Government’s job quota for locals (fourth Webinar)

A webinar to discuss the Implications of the Haryana Government’s job quota for locals in the light of recent judicial pronouncements was organised by NCAER.  The webinar, the fourth of our webinar series titled ‘Conversations with NCAER’, was held with Neeraj Kaushal, Professor, Columbia University, Santosh Mehrotra, Visiting Professor, Centre for Development Studies, University of Bath, and Arghya Sengupta, Founder and Research Director, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.  The discussion was moderated by Mythili Bhusnurmath, Senior Adviser, NCAER.

The discussion focused on the implications of job quotas legislated by the Haryana state government, in the light of the Supreme Court setting aside the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s earlier stay on the job quota law. The recent order came on an appeal filed by the Haryana Government challenging the High Court order granting an interim stay on its law providing 75 per cent quota in private sector jobs for residents of the state.

Neeraj Kaushal is Professor of Social Policy at Columbia School of Social Work, Columbia University, and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is a labour and health economist and conducts research on how policies and events affect the well-being of low-income families, with special emphasis on immigrants.

Santosh Mehrotra is currently Visiting Professor, Centre for Development Studies, University of Bath, and Adjunct Faculty at the Public Health Foundation of India.  Earlier, he was the Director General of the Institute of Applied Manpower Research, New Delhi. His research interests include industry and trade issues, impact of macroeconomic policy on health and education, and the informal sector.

Arghya Sengupta is Founder and Research Director, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. His areas of specialisation are constitutional law and regulation of the digital economy. He has served on a number of government committees including the Justice B.N. Srikrishna-led committee of experts on a data protection framework for India.

Mythili Bhusnurmath is an economist-turned-banker-turned journalist and is presently Senior Adviser, NCAER, and Consulting Editor, ET Now TV.

Re-imagining Data Systems as if Women Counted

After decades of feminist advocacy, it is now accepted as a part of conventional wisdom that all data collection systems should provide gender-disaggregated data. However, this ‘add gender and stir’ approach often fails to capture data that is critical for developing gender-friendly policies, especially data on care responsibilities, access to public spaces, and, discrimination in employment. NCAER organised a discussion on re-imagining data systems from a gendered perspective to celebrate International Women’s Day, March 8, 2022.

In recent years, national data collection systems in India have faced considerable challenges. Lack of data, particularly at a time when data are most needed, have hampered both the evaluation of public policies and an understanding of women’s lived realities. The panellists at this discussion comprised a diverse group having extensive experience with the data and evidence ecosystem. They drew upon their past experiences to discuss the importance of gender data and strategies for ensuring its efficient collection and optimal use. Broadly, the seminar address the following questions:

  • How can the existing data systems be re-imagined?
  • What data should be collected and from whom?
  • Who should collect it?
  • How do we enable feminist advocates to move beyond data gatekeepers to access pertinent data?

The event was held in a hybrid mode, in-person and virtual. Speakers at this forum included the following:

Panellists:

Rukmini S. is an independent data journalist based in Chennai. In 2004, she began covering Mumbai city for the Times of India. Since 2010, she has specialised in data journalism. She was the first Data Editor of an Indian newsroom, initially at The Hindu and then at Huffpost India. She now writes for a range of publications, including Mint, IndiaSpend, and The Guardian. Her pandemic podcast, The Moving Curve, won an Emergent Ventures India COVID-19 Prize in 2020. She was awarded the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Mediaperson (Honourable Mention) in 2020 and the Likho Awards for Excellence in Media in 2019. She has a post-graduate Diploma in Social Communications Media and an MSc in Development Studies.

Diva Dhar, Deputy Director (Data and Evidence), Women’s Economic Empowerment, leads the global strategies at Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and oversees investments on strengthening the gender data architecture and deepening research and evidence for women’s economic empowerment programming and policymaking. Prior to joining the team in 2019, she anchored research and evaluation portfolios for the foundation on nutrition, health systems, ICT, youth and gender in India. Previously, she worked for over a decade in public policy research and design for J-PAL, Innovations for Poverty Action, World Bank, Planning Commission of India, and other non-profit organisations in India, Morocco and Bangladesh. Diva is currently a doctoral candidate in Public Policy at the University of Oxford. She has a Master’s in International and Development Economics from Yale University.

Mayra Buvinic, an internationally recognised expert on gender and development, is a Senior Fellow with Data2X and a Senior Fellow Emeritus with the Center for Global Development. Previously, she was Director for Gender and Development at the World Bank. She also worked at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) where she headed the Social Development Division and was founding member and President of the International Center for Research on Women. She has a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

 

Jeemol Unni is Professor of Economics at Ahmedabad University. Earlier she was Director at Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) and RBI Chair Professor of Economics at IRMA. She holds a PhD. and MPhil in Economics and was a post-doctoral Fellow at Economic Growth Center, Yale University. She is currently a member of the Standing Committee on Economic Statistics constituted by the Government of India. She is on the Editorial Board of The Indian Journal of Labour Economics and Journal of Development Policy and Practice. Her research addresses issues of informal labour, returns to education, social protection and women entrepreneurship. Her latest co-authored book is titled Women Entrepreneurship in the Indian Middle Class (Orient Blackswan, 2021).

Pallavi Choudhuri is a Fellow at the NCAER-National Data Innovation Center (NDIC). At NDIC, her work focuses on methodological innovations in measuring income, consumption, and women’s time use. Prior to joining NCAER, Choudhuri taught courses in Economics and Finance at the Grand Valley State University as a Visiting Assistant Professor and as an Instructor at the University of Wyoming. She has a PhD in Economics from the University of Wyoming.

 

Sonalde Desai is a Professor at NCAER with a joint appointment as Distinguished University Professor in Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland. She directs the NCAER-National Data Innovation Centre (NDIC). She is an internationally known demographer whose work deals primarily with human development in developing countries with a particular focus on gender and class inequalities. At present, she is leading the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), India’s only nationally representative panel study conducted in two rounds in 2004–05 and 2011–12. Preparations are currently on for the next round of IHDS.

Tracking Lives and Livelihoods through the Pandemic

How have the lives of residents of Delhi and other areas in the National Capital Region (NCR) changed over the past two years since the advent of COVID?  NCAER National Data Innovation Centre (NCAER-NDIC) team discussed results from the Delhi Metropolitan Area Study (DMAS), which interviewed residents from Delhi-NCR in 2019, before the onset of the pandemic, and has continued to follow their lives since then, as they have struggled to protect their health and livelihoods, and to educate their children through the biggest global crisis of our generation.

The NCAER-NDIC team interviewed over 5,200 households in NCR, with samples drawn from Delhi as well as districts in the neighbouring States of Haryana, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. The DMAS survey was initiated in early 2019 and continued until November 2021, allowing us to assess the lives of our respondents before and after COVID-19, and the changes brought about by the pandemic. These households have lived through the difficulties and challenges caused by COVID-19 infections and the lockdowns designed to control the spread of the disease. This webinar discussed the findings on:

  • Experience of COVID-19 infection and its severity;
  • COVID-19 vaccinations;
  • Management of non-communicable diseases during the pandemic;
  • Impact of school closure on education and access to digital learning;
  • Changes in employment patterns and financial recovery;
  • Trends in food consumption and role of social policies; and
  • Perceptions regarding the decision to impose the nationwide lockdown during the early phase of the pandemic.

The NCAER press note on DMAS findings is available on this webpage.

Sonalde Desai is a Professor at NCAER with a joint appointment as Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland. She directs the NCAER-National Data Innovation Centre (NDIC), which has been established by NCAER in collaboration with its consortium partners, University of Maryland and University of Michigan. She is an internationally known demographer whose work deals primarily with human development in developing countries with a particular focus on gender and class inequalities. At present, Sonalde Desai is leading the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), India’s only nationally representative panel study conducted in two rounds in 2004–05 and 2011–12. Preparations are currently on for the next round of IHDS.

Santanu Pramanik is a Senior Fellow at NCAER and the Deputy Director of the National Data Innovation Centre. He is a Statistician and Survey Methodologist by training. His research interests encompass survey methods, data quality, remote monitoring of data collection activities, randomised controlled trials, small area estimation, and the application of these methods across different substantive domains, including vaccination, health insurance and healthcare expenditure, and family planning. He has earlier worked as a Research Scientist at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), and as a Survey Statistician at National Opinion Research Center, an independent affiliate of the University of Chicago.

The other team members who partcipated in the conversation include Reem Ashraf, Ruchi Jain, Abhinav Motheram, Debasis Barik, Manjistha Banerji, and Pallavi Choudhuri.

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