Archives: Event

Regional Impact Evaluation and Survey Methods Workshop Evaluating the Impact of Development Programs

NCAER and the World Bank organized a two-week international high-level workshop, titled “Evaluating the Impact of Development Programs: Turning Promises into Evidence” in New Delhi. NCAER and the World Bank collaborated to offer this unique training workshop for the first time in India. The workshop trained more than 100 participants from around 14 countries, many from India, on how to answer questions such as:

Do government development projects and schemes have the desirable impact?
How can that impact be
measured in robust ways?
Can the impact be attributed to the specific government project or to other factors?
How to collect good survey data necessary to answer such questions?

The workshop familiarized participants with cutting-edge methods for identifying and measuring the impact of development schemes and for survey data collection. A unique aspect of the programme was the hands-on training that participant teams received to develop their own evaluation designs for specific government schemes. With the largest contingent from South Asia and India, the participants represented a wide spectrum of institutions interested in evaluation, including central and state governments, think tanks and research institutes, private firms, and international multilateral and bilateral agencies.

The plenary session in the first week of the workshop had special lectures by Mr. Nandan Nilekani, President, NCAER Governing Body and Chairman of UIDAI on “Aadhaar: Direct Benefit Transfers in India and their Impact” and by Dr Abhijit Banerjee, Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on “Evaluating Impact: From Promise to Evidence”

The second week had Dr Abhijit Sen, Member, Planning Commission talking on “Indian Evaluation Experience” and Dr Rukmini Bannerji, Director, Pratham speaking to participants on “Evidence to Action: Learnings from ASER in India.”

The workshop offered policymakers, researchers, and government officers a unique mix of conceptual and practical training where they worked together as project teams with world-renowned experts in the field. Rated as one of the best skill-building events in evaluation by previous participants from the same workshop around the world, the two-week workshop included sessions on designing evaluations, building results chains, interpreting results, constructing survey samples, developing survey questionnaires, and managing field data collection. These were taught through a mix of lectures, small and large group discussions, and hands-on application of practical skills in impact evaluation, to participants. A unique aspect of the workshop is its dual-track approach that will cater to both policymakers and technical researchers in separate specially designed sessions. The workshop had participants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Chile, Egypt, Ethiopia, Papua New Guinea, Romania, Tajikistan, the United States, and Vietnam. The workshop ended with participants receiving certificates from Dr Shekhar Shah, Director-General, NCAER and Dr Ariel Fiszbein, Chief Economist, Human Development Network, the World Bank.

The Union Budget 2013-14: Reforms and Development Perspectives Budget Seminar

In what has become a  post- budget tradition, five leading Indian think tanks – NCAER, CPR, ICRIER, IDF, and NIPFP got together for the  seventh consecutive year to present their assessment of the Union Budget delivered by the Finance Minister on 28 February, 2013. The presentations by the heads of the five institutions, the panel discussion and the Q&A session that followed, provided a reflective review of the Union Budget 2013 -14 and its implications for the Indian Economy.

Can Panchayats Make Services Work for Poor People in Rural India?

The National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) organized a roundtable discussion on “Can Panchyats Make Services Work for Poor People in Rural India?” Dr Hari Nagarajan, Senior Fellow, NCAER presented findings from his forthcoming book “Decentralization and Empowerment for Rural Development: The Case of India”, jointly authored with Dr Hans Biswanger-, and Dr SS Meenakshisundaram. Dr David Malone, President, IDRC, Canada and Ms Yamini Aiyar, Director, Accountability Initiative and Senior Research Fellow, CPR were invited as the main discussants. The Roundtable also saw an active participation from experts on Panchayati Raj.

Dr Nagarajan spoke about panchayats’ role in delivering services like management of water, health, education and the pathologies related to service delivery. In his presentation he made the observation that the India’s model of decentralization is different from those prevailing in other countries of the world. He remarked that Panchayati Raj Institutions are having increasingly positive impacts on services and there is a need to devolve more powers to them. He emphasized that Gram Sabhas are an important tool for governance related services and must be strengthened. Presenting inferences based on the analysis of NCAER’s nationally representative Additional Rural Incomes Survey (ARIS) and Rural Economic Demographic Survey (REDS) data, he remarked that reservations for women help in bringing about improvements in service delivery and policies should persist in furthering women’s empowerment. Inheritance of land by women goes a long way in changing intra-household decision dynamics and has a positive impact on household incomes.

Dr David Malone shared his experiences about service delivery to Native Canadians living in remote location, difficult terrain and hostile climatic conditions. He also spoke about the need to have proper accountability mechanisms in place for the utilization of money given to local governments.

Ms Yamini Aiyar noted that in India the issue is not whether decentralization is good or bad, but that centralized administration has clearly failed.  She said that the present analysis offers an opportunity to reorganize current institutions in a bottom-up manner. She observed that panchayats need to be looked at not merely as institutions for service delivery but rather as mechanisms of governance. Commenting on the 3Fs- Funds, Functions and Functionaries formula of decentralization, she noted that along with the devolution of money, functional responsibilities and functionaries should also be devolved.

The Inaugural C.D. Deshmukh Memorial Lecture 2013

NCAER, organized the first annual C D Deshmukh Memorial Lecture on January 4, 2013, to honour one of India’s most eminent economists and one of its founding fathers.

The lecture titled “Grassroots Welfare Schemes and Macroeconomic Choices: India’s Dilemmas” was delivered by Professor Kaushik Basu, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at NCAER. Dr Rakesh Mohan, a member of the Board of Executive Directors at the International Monetary Fund, and a former Director General of NCAER was the Guest of Honour.

Prof Basu spoke about the challenges that India faces in balancing its macroeconomic policies for higher growth with the need to protect the most vulnerable sections of society through welfare schemes.

He spoke about the need to bring down the inflation rate, which has persisted between 7 -11% in the last 3 years.  Taking the example of South Korea which  saw unprecedented growth as well as a high rate of inflation between 1950, when it’s per capita income was the same as India’s and 1990, by which time the per capita income was 22 times that of India, Prof. Basu stressed that curbing growth to control inflation is certainly not desirable.

He commended the recently launched direct cash transfer scheme of the government and felt that besides reducing leakages and ensuring people got the benefits due to them; it would also ensure choice for the poorest who can demand better service by paying the market price for food and other commodities.

Dr Mohan observed that to have a serious impact on the poorest, India’s growth rate must be more than 8% per year. He emphasized the need of infrastructure development in rural India, particularly, roads, electricity and sanitation to provide access to market and retain vital human capital in the rural sector to make a significant dent in poverty reduction.

About CD Deshmukh
Sir Chintaman Dwarakanath Deshmukh was the first Indian to be appointed the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India in 1943 and was part of the official Indian delegation to the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference. He subsequently served as the Union Finance Minister from 1950 to 1956 under Prime Minister Nehru and was a key member of NCAER’s founding Governing Body under the chairmanship of John Mathai, India’s second Finance Minister. Deshmukh also founded the India International Centre in New Delhi in 1959. He was the first Chairman of the University Grants Commission from 1956 to 1961, and then served as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Delhi from 1962 to 1967. He was knighted by the British Government in 1944 and honoured by the President of India with the Padma Vibhushan in 1975. NCAER owes its founding vision to Deshmukh and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.

Columbia NCAER Conference on “Trade, Poverty, Inequality and Democracy”

NCAER hosted a conference jointly with Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. This two-day conference on Trade, Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy featured research papers prepared jointly by domestic and overseas scholars on areas of key policy interest. Economists, political scientists, and policy makers, reviewed the research and discussed its impact on India. . The conference was also the backdrop for the release  of a special issue of NCAER’s journal, Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research, on international trade policy, by  Professor Jagdish Bhagwat.

The conference included six sessions, namely, (i) Trade, poverty and socially disadvantaged groups; (ii) Inequality and trade; (iii) Liberalization and competition; (iv) The services sector; (v) Reforms and election outcomes; and (vi) Effects of privatisation. The conference was applauded for the academic quality and richness of the papers.

The conference also included a special lecture on “Aadhar and its Role in Inclusive Growth” by Mr Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, UIDAI, India and President, NCAER, which was attended by an august audience of around 175 people, including eminent personalities from the academia, government, politics, NGOs, private sector, and media.

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