Doing research in India is both exhilarating and frustrating. There are times when I feel like dropping this whole PhD nonsense and going back to the toil of med school. Then there are times when I feel completely motivated to push forth and continue the "quest." Luckily, in any given day, I go through those emotions in that order, so at the end of the day I'm stoked for what lies ahead.
Yesterday was a typical day. I started off at the Government of Tamil Nadu, oscillating between the Department of Social Welfare, Planning Commission and World Bank ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) offices. The great thing about Tamil Nadu is that high-level officials are extremely accessible. I literally walked into the Secretary of Social Welfare's and Member Secretary of the Planning Commissions' offices yesterday to ask a few questions! Imagine trying to do that in a typical U.S. state goverment. Heck, I probably couldn't drop in on the Town of Clifton Park Supervisor's office that easily!
I think a lot of this comes from the recent nationwide push to make government more accessible/accountable to the people. In fact, the Right to Information Act which I am using for leverage in getting data is another initiative in this broader scheme.
Everyone in government is nice and willing to help. Unfortunately, it is still difficult to extract the needed historical information. Apparantly, it is computerized somewhere...but not really. And each official claims that the other one has the information I need....but when I head to that individual, I get returned to sender.
All in all, I think I shuttled between departments three times yesterday, taking the city train back and forth. Like a fool, I didn't take a bottle of water with me, and paid the price for being out in the sun later at night when my body completely shut down.
The afternoon session was much better. I visited the Institute for Financial and Management Research (IFMR) on a tip from Santosh Anagol (do visit his blog, "Brown Man's Burden"), and found it absolutely exhilarating. They are doing all sorts of interesting research there, much of it in conjunction with U.S. economists. A lot of their work has to do with coming up with various poverty reduction schemes and testing these in the real world using randomized experiments. Because its applied, the research is policy relevant and useful for public and private organizations alike. In addition, the investigators try to incorporate questions in their survey that will allow the measurement of outcomes and behaviors that are useful in testing/building economic theory.
Here is an example of an applied problem they work with. Imagine two neighboring farmers. Neither is rich enough, or has enough access to credit, to make a capital investment in a bore-well that could be used for irrigation. Collectively they do have enough to carry this out. However, despite generations of their family living and tilling that land, no contract or transaction is made between the two parties to undertake this investment. It seems that farmers are unwilling to enter joint-liability situations (where would the bore-well be placed, does placement matter in who is in charge of upkeep, etc?). Rather, they are more willing to buy water from a neighboring farmer who already has a bore-well; that too, not through a long-term agreement, but through daily spot transactions. How can we encourage efficient investment and low-opportunity cost financial contracts? What sort of financial instruments are appropriate for this situation? These are the sorts of questions the IFMR deals with.
My visit was to find out more about what they do in the public health and micro-healthinsurance areas. I won't know about that until next week, when I visit another branch of the IFMR. I'm excited for the next visit and will surely keep you informed.
1 comment:
Post a Comment