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Opinion » Comment
‘Political courage needed to admit government can’t deliver promises’
Rukmini S
Economist Esther Duflo. Photo: Rajeev Bhatt
We could hold people accountable to a reasonable standard of expectation and that’s the first step, says
In 2003, French-American economist Esther Duflo co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Pov
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with Abhijit Banerjee and Sendhil Mullai
years, JPAL has carried out 568 field experiments – or Randomised Control Trials (RCTs)
of them in India alone. RCTs test whether a particular development intervention – smartca
incentives for immunisation – actually works. Ms. Duflo, recognised as one of the world’s t
numerous awards including the John Bates Clark Medal and a MacArthur Fellowship.
In an interview with Rukmini S, she spoke about what it’s like to bring evidence into Ind
are doomed to fail.
I don’t think many people in India know the scale of JPAL’s work here – both
the evaluations going on. Are Indian state governments getting more open to h
conducted in their states?
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Yes, Karthik Muralidharan’s RCT covers 20 million people in Andhra Pradesh. There is an
involved with which is in Bihar and covers 20 million people. Earlier, we did one with Raja
about eight million people.
I don’t think they were ever against it but it was just not in the type of things they used to c
in India, I haven’t seen, to be honest, objection to the idea of experimenting. Some times, t
programme itself, but not to the idea of trying something. It’s only in the last few years tha
different government departments and we have now several experiments - one on pollutio
Rajasthan police one, two MGNREGA experiments, one on schools in Haryana and now a
the government of Tamil Nadu. So across states, across sectors, we find a remarkable level
it’s worth trying things out.
With Tamil Nadu, is the partnership only for evaluations, or will the governm
findings into policy?
There is an MoU saying broadly speaking that the government and JPAL agree to work tog
proposal comes together between a government department and a team of researchers bro
the world. Then, the proposals are submitted to a steering committee which meets twice a
proposals or not. And then the government will ask the departments to fund whatever is ap
amount of money is approved both for the evaluation and the programme. In principle, the
area which interest both the government and the team. What has been explored are propos
management of non-communicable diseases like diabetes and livelihoods.
Presumably the intent is for this then to feed into policy. I don’t think the government wou
and effort into this if they were not going to use it for policy. The first steering committee m
were a few proposals before it and they were well-received, so we are on track.
Much of your work has found that the actual job that a government employee
that there is a tacit understanding that she will only do a part of it. If the new g
wants to improve public service delivery and reduce corruption, do you think
demythologise a public servant’s actual job?
If they could pronounce that word, it would be a good place to start! I think that’s absolute
whether anybody would have the courage to do that, because it requires to say in black and
already the case in practice – that we are not able to deliver what we promise to deliver. So
example of nurses, on paper the government is delivering a fantastic system of primary hea
practice, that system is different, but nobody says it.
A government would have to say: Forget it, we are not going to have this wonderful three-t
knowing the first name of every person in the village. You’re going to have your sub-centre
your place, you’re going to have to figure out your way to get there, but at least it’s going to
to be open at 8 am because you need time for the nurse to get there, and it’s going to be op
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what she can do.
I think it’s difficult to admit that it will not be someone who knows everyone and who conv
hands and get sterilised and teach the women about weaning foods. These are things that i
we are not equipped to. But to admit that would require so much political courage that I do
think if it could then yes, at least then we could hold people accountable to a reasonable sta
that’s the first step.
…The combination of improving the logistics, say with UID, and also simplify and clarify th
employees, will help.
Are there any major Indian government programmes that you can see in this w
The Right To Education. Not in its entirety – I think it has good pieces to it – but largely. T
and community schools need to have such-and-such buildings and infrastructure and pay
it’s not just failing, it’s hurting. Usually things fail and it’s just a waste of money. Here it’s l
adopted, will be hurtful. So that’s one.
The Public Distribution System in its current form is not working. The objectives are the w
physically works is terrible, the level of corruption would need to improve a lot to be outsta
should push grain on to people – to start with, it seems to me on the basis of all that we kn
problems, that is the least of their concerns. So that’s the big one.
Then the diesel subsidy - although we haven’t done any randomised research, just looking
redistribution from the poor to the non-poor, and it’s terrible for the environment. There i
it’s there.
Of the policy lessons that JPAL has come up with in the last ten years, I know d
in schools have been taken up by state governments. But other work, like on im
attendance, which is over ten years old, has not been taken up. Does it get frus
evaluations are finding is not making it to policy?
Yes, with deworming now the national government has also announced that it is taking it u
teachers, I’m not sure what could be scaled up….In the two experiments that we did, it did
where I would be comfortable recommending scale-up.
When you run a very large experiment, you can recommend the scale-up more easily. But i
the experiment, and with NGO partners etc, it takes some work to translate it into policy. S
education. We did plenty of experiments with Pratham and Pratham knows how to do it as
But it took a while, it took about three or four replications with different states to arrive at
the government. Now we have one, one that we tested in Haryana and it works. So now we
replicate it elsewhere, and so far at least there are glimmers of interest from various state g
reason to be frustrated.
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Keywords: French-American economist, Esther Duflo interview, Abdul Latif Jameel Pover
Randomised Control Trials, Abhijit Banerjee, Sendhil Mullainathan, India public policy go
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