J-PAL South Asia at IFMR Launched

Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys Inc. and N. Vaghul , Chairman if ICICI Bank and the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) helped launch J-PAL South Asia at IFMR on July 13, 2007 in Chennai , India . J-PAL partners from around the region discussed how randomized evaluations had contributed to their work and the role of evidence in improving policy.

Narayana Murthy commented that,  “Initiatives like J-PAL provide transparent and efficient [data] on policies that will help in investing resources in an optimal manner.”

“ India is at a time of great historical importance, where the future of the country depends on its ability to succeed in bringing the poor along with the rich as its economy continues to grow at astounding rates” said Prof. Abhijit Banerjee, Director, J-PAL. “India was a natural choice for our first field office as it has encouraged its researchers to critically assess what is effective in reducing poverty and how to ensure that all Indians benefit from economic growth”, he added.

Ajay Mehta, Executive Director of the National Foundation of India and President of the Board of Trustees of Seva Mandir said there was a clear need for the policy dialogue about how best to combat policy to have a clearer evidence base. Nina Singh, Inspector General of Personnel for the Rajasthan Police, described how she was working with J-PAL to evaluate police reforms on a randomized basis—even freezing transfers in a randomly selected group of police stations around the state.

Madhav Chavan, founder of Pratham, talked about the need to design evaluations that took into account the complications of field operations.

Professor Esther Duflo closed the event with a summary of some of the policy lessons emerging from the many randomized evaluations that have already been completed in the region. Over lunch the over 200 guests from India , Sri Lanka , Bangladesh , and Pakistan debated some of these findings and shared their own experiences.

J-PAL South Asia, which is headed by Ms. Lindy Miller, is the first of several regional offices that J-PAL plans to open in the coming years and builds on a successful collaboration with IFMR and its centers, including the Center for Microfinance Research. The office will coordinate the twenty projects J-PAL has in the region, strengthen existing partnerships with governmental and nongovernmental organizations, and help ensure that the results of evaluations feed into more effective policy.

For more information about J-PAL South Asia at IFMR please see www.ifmr.ac.in/J-PAL. For press coverage of the launch please see www.povertyactionlab.org/news