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The India Policy Forum 2014

The India Policy Forum, now its eleventh continuous year, is organized by NCAER in New Delhi every year in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. Its objective is to promote rigorous empirical research on Indian economic policy with commissioned papers, an annual two-day conference leading to a volume, the India Policy Forum Volume published by SAGE, and the annual IPF Lecture. The IPF explores and provides insights on India’s rapidly evolving and often tumultuous economic transition and the underlying policy reforms that are driving it. It has easily become the apex annual economic policy discussion event in New Delhi.

The 2014 IPF on July 15-16 featured an exciting mix of five papers and ended with a policy roundtable on how the new Indian government in New Delhi can improve India’s investment and business climates. See the detailed 2014 IPF Program and download the papers for the 2014 IPF from the program. A highlight of the 2014 IPF was the annual IPF Lecture delivered by Dr Surjit Bhalla, member of NCAER’s Governing Body and Chairman of OxUS Investments, on Changing Mindsets, Accelerating Growth, Reducing Inequality.

The topics the IPF has dealt with over the years cover a broad sweep of macro, international, and sector challenges that the India economy has faced and the many successes and failures of policymaking over the past decade. IPF research papers are invited on the strength of their policy-relevance and represent some of the best empirical research on India being done globally. The IPF Volume is currently the most highly ranked economics journal out of India based on RePEc citation counts.

An international Research Panel of India- and overseas-based researchers with an abiding policy interest in India supports this initiative through advice, active participation at the annual IPF Conference, and the search for innovative papers that promise fresh insights. An international Advisory Panel of distinguished economists provides overall guidance. Shekhar Shah (NCAER), Barry Bosworth (Brookings), and Arvind Panagariya (Columbia) are the editors of the 2013-14 volume to be released at the 2014 IPF.

The IPF has been generously supported by a select group of Indian corporate partners that over the years have included the Tatas, HDFC, Reliance Industries, SBI, HSBC, IDFC, and Citibank. This support reflects their deep institutional commitment to rigorous high-quality policy research that helps promote informed policy debates and sound, evidence-based policymaking.

IPF Advisory Panel: Shankar Acharya, Isher Ahluwalia, Montek Ahluwalia, Pranab Bardhan, Jagdish Bhagwati, Barry Bosworth, Willem Buiter, Stanley Fischer , Vijay Kelkar, Mohsin Khan, Anne Krueger, Ashok Lahiri, Rakesh Mohan, Arvind Panagariya, Shekhar Shah, T.N. Srinivasan, Nicholas Stern, Lawrence Summers, John Williamson.

IPF Research Panel: Abhijit Banerjee, Kaushik Basu, Surjit Bhalla, Mihir Desai, Shantayanan Devarajan, Esther Duflo, Subir Gokarn, Jeffery Hammer, Vijay Joshi, Devesh Kapur, Kenneth M. Kletzer, Robert Lawrence, Karthik Muralidharan, Rajnish Mehra, Dilip Mookherjee, Urjit Patel, Ila Patnaik, Raghuram Rajan, Indira Rajaraman, M. Govinda Rao, Rohini Somanathan, Ajay Shah and Arvind Virmani.

Innovations in Data Collection: The Chitwan Valley Family Study in Nepal

The Chitwan Valley Family Study (CVFS) is an 18-year old, multi-level, panel study of communities, households, and individuals based on multi-mode, mixed-methods data collection built around cutting-edge, computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) and mobile phone technologies. CVFS serves as a unique laboratory based at ISER-N for interdisciplinary social and economic research in the heterogeneous, high-mobility setting of the Chitwan Valley in Nepal’s Inner Terai region.  CVFS investigates the impact of this rapidly changing context on family formation using a combination of ethnographic, archival, geo-spatial, and survey methods. CVFS tracks domestic and international migrants and provides continuous measurement of community change going back seven decades and backed by 17 years of monthly demographic event data.  CVFS data are available through ICPSR, the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research at Michigan, www.icpsr.umich.edu.

At this seminar on the “Innovations in Data Collection: The Chitwan Valley Family Study in Nepal”, Dr Dirgha Ghimire from the University of Michigan and the Institute for Social and Environmental Research in Nepal (ISER-N) discussed study’s design and its evolution, including tracking respondents over time and space and the use of innovative life history calendars for data collection using multi-level retrospective histories and measurements between panels. He described how CAPI makes it possible to collect high-quality panel data in less-than ideal field conditions but with active, real-time survey management at ISER-N and Michigan. As panel studies around the world have shown, understanding the consequences of rapid social, economic, and environmental change for policy design, implementation and monitoring has become critical in all settings. Dr Ghimire explored how the innovative design and execution of CVFS can be useful for similar cultural settings, such as in India. Prof. Reeve Vanneman, University of Maryland provided his comments as the discussant for the seminar.  The Q & A that followed was a platform for some very thoughtful discussions in this subject area.

Dr Dirgha Ghimire is the Director of ISER-N and Research Associate Professor at the Population Studies Center and Faculty Associate at the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan.

NCAER-IDS Conference: Undernutrition in India and Public Policy

This conference organised by NCAER and Institute of Development Studies is a part of a collaborative project which explores the reasons as to why India’s burgeoning growth rates have not translated into better nutrition outcomes for its people,. It aims to understand and shape the current policy process around the proposed National Food Security Act (NFSA) as well as restructuring of Public Distribution System (PDS) and Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) that can lead to improved nutritional outcomes and better food security.
A welcome address by Dr Sonalde Desai, NCAER and a keynote address by Dr Veena Rao, Advisor, Karnataka Nutrition Mission set the tone for this three day workshop held at the Heritage Village Resort, Manesar, Gurgaon. The conference was platform to present and discuss on issues ranging from identifying the gaps in the nutrition agenda to the role of households in shaping malnutrition and appraisal in the environmental context. The following sessions saw interesting debates on improving the service delivery and on whether employment and agricultural policies influence diet. The governance challenges where discussed in light of the National Food Security Act followed by a policy roundtable, chaired by Dr Shekhar Shah, Director General of NCAER on India’s Malnutrition Challenge and how India’s New Government should tackle the issues. This very interactive workshop was attended by researchers, academicians, policy makers from India and abroad.

Inflation Volatility: How Much More Costly is it for Developing Countries?

Scholars and policymakers have unanimously recognized the adverse economic and welfare consequences of inflation.   However, relatively less attention is given to inflation volatility and its consequences.  Inflation episodes are often more volatile (i.e. inflation fluctuates a lot) in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) as compared to advanced countries. This stylized fact raises the question of how costly is it for the EMDEs, such as India, when they suffer such greater volatility of inflation. At this seminar , Shesadri , Associate Fellow, NCAER presented his paper that evaluates the welfare consequence of high inflation volatility by measuring the resulting loss of output.  It shows that developing countries incur far greater loss of GDP—nearly twice—than advanced countries as a result of the high volatility of inflation. This finding re-emphasizes the importance of inflation targeting in the monetary policy frameworks of EMDEs, not dissimilar to the recent approach adopted by the Reserve Bank of India. Rudrani Bhattacharya, Assistant Professor, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy as the discussant of this seminar, provided valuable inputs.  Shesadri will also be presenting this paper at the forthcoming thirteenth Annual EEFS Conference to be held in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Why So Few Women in Politics? Evidence from India

Women remain severely under-represented in political institutions across the world. The International Political Science Association reports that as of January 2013 women representatives accounted for just over 20 percent of all parliamentarians in the world. Set against the just-completed largest election in the world in India, it is useful to ask why are there so few female representatives in political positions relative to their share in the population and electoral rolls? The gap between men and women has narrowed least in political representation when compared to the gaps in education, legal rights and economic opportunities. Despite the magnitude of the problem, there is little definitive understanding of the factors that might be causing this. Mudit Kapoor discussed his recent study for India, done jointly with Shamika Ravi, on women as political candidates in a representative democracy. The study analyzes data from 50 years of assembly elections at the constituency level from the states of India. The seminar provided a platform for some very interactive discussions led by Dr Maitreyi Bordia Das, Lead Social Development Specialist at the World Bank, Washington, D.C. who was invited at the discussant.

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