NEW DELHI: In a bid to foster deeper ties with Indian academic institutions and think tanks The University of Michigan inked partnerships with The National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and AIIMS in New Delhi last week.
The five-year MoU between NCAER and the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center (SRC) is aimed at promoting collaborative survey research. SRC is a part of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research (ISR) and the MoU was signed between Shekhar Shah director general NCAER Mary Sue Coleman president University of Michigan and William Axinn director Survey Research Center.
Both institutions have said they will jointly seek to develop sample survey infrastructure to support economic and other social science research in India. Other initiatives may include establishing a survey research laboratory at NCAER to test and advance new approaches for social science research and for training professionals in state-of-the-art survey-based research methods.
“We are interested in the application of information technologies to social research in India. Collaborative research will be our top priority but the problems faced in data collection in India in terms of the sheer size of the population and the several linguistic barriers could be a perfect training ground for our students here” said Axinn.
“NCAER has a tradition of survey based research but we realised that some of the work that we were doing was not cost effective and cutting edge. Through this tie-up we get a chance to collaborate with a world leader in survey methodology and technology” Shekhar Shah director general NCAER added.
The University also expanded its partnership with AIIMS last week to facilitate health research and education. The new agreement includes the research of cancer immunology genetics trauma and disaster medicine. It was signed by professor Mahesh Misra director AIIMS and Mary Sue Coleman president University of Michigan.
“AIIMS will benefit immensely from our collaboration in gastroenterology liver pediatric surgery acute care surgery organ transplantation” professor Mahesh C Misra director of AIIMs stated.
Added Joesph Kolars senior associate dean for education and global initiatives at the University Of Michigan Medical School: “We are aiming to develop a robust platform for collaboration that will facilitate research on diseases common to both our countries and the education that will strengthen our abilities to improve health.”
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Never mind what surveys might say about Indians being among the happiest people on earth. A country that’s home to a third of the world’s poor must almost by definition have quite a large number of people who are pretty miserable; at least in terms of economic well-being.
This is where the Misery Index a measure devised by economist Arthur Okun as the sum of the rates of unemployment and inflation might prove useful.
Admittedly a crude approximation of well-being the index is based on the assumption that a high rate of unemployment and inflation are the most proximate causes of human unhappiness. Hence the term Misery Index.
The index as constructed by Okun serves as a reasonable approximation in the developed world. But extending it to developing countries like India is likely to miss other dimensions that have a major impact on well-being. So based on the latest (68th) round of NSSO data we constructed a Modified Misery Index (MMI) for the states taking into account dimensions such as access to healthcare percentage of the population below the poverty line and food inflation rather than the overall inflation rate.
The results while broadly on expected lines test a few long-accepted beliefs. A ranking of states on the basis of the MMI shows Uttar Pradesh was on top in the misery index in 2004-05.
However it was overtaken by Jharkhand in 2011-12 mainly on account of a moderation in food inflation. Tamil Nadu the least “miserable” state in 2004-05 ceded place to Andhra Pradesh in 2011-12.
Which are the states that made the greatest strides in reducing misery? Surprise surprise! Odisha heads the list moving six places up in the league tables followed by Punjab and Andhra Pradesh that moved up five places each. Odisha’s dramatic improvement could be attributed to the fall in theunemployment rate from 7.3%in 2004-05 to 3% in 2011-12 even as the poverty ratio fell from 57.2% to 32.6%.
The worst-performing states over the same period are Madhya Pradesh Chhattisgarh and Delhi. While Madhya Pradesh showed a sharp increase in the MMI moving “up” from 17th position in 2004-05 to 10th position in 2011-12 Chhattisgarh and Delhi also fare poorly with Chhattisgarh slipping five places and Delhi four.
While the increase in Chhattisgarh’s MMI can be attributed to its high poverty rate rise in unemployment and high food inflation despite the success of its much-touted PDS high food inflation wasresponsible for the increase inDelhi’s MMI.
A word on the methodology: The four indicators of misery used in the Modified Misery Index (MMI) – unemployment rate foodinflation poverty rate and lack of access to health services – were transformed into unit-free indices by normalising them using”distance from best and worst performers” method as in the original HDI.
The economic fundamentals of the Indian economy continue to remain weak despite several policy initiatives taken by the government during the past few months.
The 86th round of the Business Expectations Survey carried out in the second quarter of the current fiscal (September 2013) shows a drop in the NCAER Business Confidence Index.
For a long time, the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) were attributed mainly to the energy sector, which is an intensive user of fuels such as diesel and petroleum.
Bountiful rain has had a positive impact on agricultural growth but it will not be enough to pull up the rest of the economy which is suffering from a lack of confidence, high inflation, dismal domestic scenario and uncertain external scenario. Predictably growth rates have been revised onwards.
