Archives: Event

This one day workshop held at NCAER presented findings from NCAER’s Initiative on Gender-Inclusive Macroeconomic Policy Management which forms part of the UNDP’s Grant Agreement Project, “Policy and Advocacy”. The project is led by Dr Anushree Sinha, Senior Fellow at NCAER and aims to augment the Indian government’s capacity in gender-focused macroeconomic policy-making. This is of vital importance in an environment where India still has a lot of ground to cover to ensure equality for women and arrest all forms of violence against them

At the workshop the authors presented all the modules to a panel of professionals engaged in gender studies.

The first module on “Macroeconomics Analysis of Gender” was presented by Dr. Anushree Sinha, NCAER with Dr. Preet Rustagi, Institute of Human Development (IHD) as the discussant. Dr Anushress Sinha said, the concept of genderneutrality in policy-making is misconstrued as being “gender-blind” – an error, as women and men are not at par in terms of their social development. Women’s empowerment has major growth implications for the entire economy. The main aim of the initiative is to bring attention to gender bias in all areas of policy-making with an urgent need to focus on “gender-focused” or “gender-responsive” policy design.

Dr. A C Kulshreshtha, (Former DDG, CSO) presented the second module on “Gender & Macroeconomics in the Framework of SNA”. This module focuses on the official computational methods of National Accounts Statistics and the lack of recognition of women’s unpaid services, such as those of homemakers. Valuation techniques were discussed to formally acknowledge such work, perhaps in the form of satellite accounts in the NAS. Prof. Manoj Panda, IEG was the discussant for this module.

The “Macroeconomics Policy for Gender and Work” module was presented by Prof. Indira Hirway, Centre for Development Alternatives (CFDA) and discussed by Ms. Ratna Sudarshan from ISST. The concepts of paid and unpaid SNA and NonSNA work in the production and general production boundaries were discussed and distinguished. The importance of time-use surveys in determining how women utilize their time was highlighted. It was noted that policies to bring about equal opportunity for women have to specifically focus on equal sharing of house-work by men and women and on promoting skills and employability of women.

NCAER, organised a one day workshop on the role of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in building technological capabilities in developing countries with a special reference to India. Mr Rajiv Kumar, Member Secretary of the National CDM Authority, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India was the Chief Guest and Dr Srikanta K. Panigrahi, Director General, Carbon Minus India (CMI), was the Guest of Honour. Thought provoking speeches by both of them set the tone for an engaging workshop.

The workshop was part of the NCAER- South Asian Network of Development Economics and Environment (SANDEE) project- Acquisition of Technological Capabilities through the Clean Development Mechanism in India. The objective of the workshop was to bring together stakeholders involved in CDM, to learn about their experiences in implementing the mechanism with a focus on creation of a knowledge base, and discuss the future of the mechanism.

CDM was established in 1997 under the Kyoto Protocol with an objective to facilitate technology transfer by financing emission reduction projects that use green technologies not available in host countries. Currently, CDM is imperilled- carbon prices in the CDM market have been falling drastically, signalling the potential death of the instrument. Policymakers and climate advocates alike increasingly question its continuing value. Some however argue that CDM is a valuable tool that should be retained with appropriate reforms and scaled up to enhance its cost-effectiveness and to promote, global climate change mitigation. There is thus a strong need to analyse the role of CDM in the climate change regime. During the workshop various stakeholders, policy makers, representatives of CDM implementing companies, and advisors shared their ideas and experiences in implementing the Kyoto Protocol tool, particularly in knowledge creation, transfer, dissemination and diffusion.

The workshop also included presentations by representatives of industry, nongovernment agencies and academics. Dr Aradhna Aggarwal, Senior Fellow NCAER and Project Leader for SANDEE presented research findings from the on-going study titled, “Acquisition of Technological Capabilities through the Clean Development Mechanism: Some quantitative explorations”. This empirical study is the first of its kind on the subject and evoked keen interest among the participants. The workshop brought forth serious concerns on the usefulness of this tool in building capabilities in green technologies among Indian firms.

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.