J-PAL South Asia’s Policy Engagements to Support Governments during Covid-19

J-PAL South Asia, with its mission of mobilizing evidence to improve policy making, is providing policy advisory support and engaging in new research within the framework of existing engagements and partnerships with state and central governments in the region.
People in a queue.
Photo Credit: Manoej Paateel | Shutterstock.com

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused large-scale disruptions in the routine delivery of public services and social programs all over the world. This has created unprecedented challenges in identifying and implementing impactful and cost-effective solutions for policymakers and practitioners grappling with development questions, old and new. There is a need for high-quality data and evidence to inform immediate as well as long-term decisions that have arisen in the wake of the pandemic.

Supporting our Institutional Partners

Government of Punjab

Iqbal Dhaliwal, Global Executive Director, J-PAL and Scientific Director, J-PAL South Asia, was appointed to the Government of Punjab's Group of Experts for Covid-19 Relief on April 24, 2020, a group instituted by Captain Amarinder Singh, Chief Minister of Punjab to aid the north Indian state's post-lockdown economic recovery. The Group is chaired by eminent economist Montek Singh Ahluwalia and aims to develop a medium- to long-term recovery strategy by addressing policy measures in the areas of social protection, industry, healthcare, education, digitization in agriculture, governance, and finance, among others. Dhaliwal is a part of the digitization, social-sector, and skills and education sub-groups. The digitization group is addressing issues of enabling systematic use of data for better governance, digitization of agricultural supply chains, supporting the start-up ecosystem, financial services for MSMEs using digital tools, and developing internet infrastructure. The social sector sub-group is working on methods to ensure protection of vulnerable populations such as migrant workers, and enabling portability of benefits across states. The skills and education sub-group is developing strategies to build long-term and sustainable skilling and education infrastructure in the state. Drawing on existing evidence from randomized evaluations, Dhaliwal and the team at J-PAL South Asia is advising the sub-groups by sharing insights from global evidence, and analyzing relevant data for quick and actionable policy recommendations. 
 

Government of Tamil Nadu

The Government of Tamil Nadu entered into a partnership with J-PAL South Asia in 2014 to institutionalise the use of evidence in its policy decisions. Since then, over 30 J-PAL affiliated and invited researchers have partnered with nine line departments for studies to inform policy, including the first panel survey for the elderly in India, a rigorous evaluation to address sleep deprivation for the urban poor, and a large scale study to identify effective interventions to reduce malnutrition and improve school preparedness through anganwadi centers.

The Government of Tamil Nadu has formed a high-level committee to recommend measures to revive economic growth as a Covid-19 midterm response, and has sought views and inputs from J-PAL to develop this effort.
 

Media and Resources

Featured Webinar

Upcoming Webinar

Using Phone Surveys to Improve Public Service Delivery and Guide Crisis Response - June 5, 2021, 5:30pm - 6:30pm IST

Regular program monitoring is critical for improving public service delivery and ensuring that benefits reach intended populations to improve their lives. However, in low- and middle-income countries, monitoring is often constrained by slow, indirect processes such as periodic government surveys as well as unrepresentative, sporadic data from government dashboards and grievance redressal systems. 

In this lecture-based webinar, researchers Gaurav Chiplunkar (University of Virginia, J-PAL invited researcher) and Kartik Srivastava (PhD candidate, Harvard University) will discuss the potential of phone surveys to build stronger, more responsive monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems, the versatility of their uses, and the operational and technical challenges that they pose.

Register here>>

This webinar is hosted by CLEAR/J-PAL South Asia as a part of the gLOCAL Evaluation Week 2021, a global M&E knowledge-sharing event convened by the Global Evaluation Initiative.

Past Webinar Recordings

This page was last updated on June 1, 2021 For further information, please reach out to Vidita Priyadarshini ([email protected]).

Page Content