Abhijit Banerjee

CHENNAI: This year’s economics Nobel winners Abhijit Banerjee and his wife Esther Duflo have been working with the Tamil Nadu government for the last five years on improving governance.

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-Pal) founded by the couple has signed an MoU with the state government to identify policy priorities for the state and come up with innovate solutions. J-Pal assists the government in building internal capacity to evaluate and monitor ongoing or new schemes and to adopt a result/outcome-based approach.

Chief minister J Jayalalithaa had announced in September 2014 that as evidence-based policymaking was key to effective governance, her government would lay emphasis on proper monitoring and evaluation of schemes. Two months later her successor, O Panneerselvam, signed an MoU with J-Pal. Duflo attended the MoU signing at the Secretariat.

“We have associated with the best brains in the world in economics, who advise on improving our schemes. We have evidence-based policy making and when the idea was pushed various departments came forward themselves and made use of the experts to improve the quality of our programmes. It has been very successful,” said finance secretary S Krishnan.

J-Pal works with seven government departments -- health, education, labour and employment, housing and urban development, social welfare and nutritious meal programme, MSMEs, and commercial taxes.

The Tamil Nadu government’s spending of $3.5 million is matched by J-Pal co-funding on projects, researchers, policy dialogues and capacity building. J-Pal was entrusted with 15 studies. “Nine pilot/scoping studies and three randomised controlled trial/impact evaluations have been completed. These include improving youth labour market outcomes through skilling; evaluating the effectiveness of weekly iron folic acid supplementation and school-based anaemia monitoring; inculcating healthy habits to decrease the burden of non-communicable diseases; improve breastfeeding; and primary school education interventions in northern districts,” said a source. Studies on alleviating anaemia through food fortification and a long-term survey on socio-economic status of elderly population in Tamil Nadu are ongoing.

