Submit Your Work
Economy
Governance
Thursday, July 23, 2020

Randomised Control Trials and the Alleviation of Poverty in India

This article is by
Sattva Vasavada
Sattva Vasavada
South Asia

Share this article
Download as PDF
Cite this Article

Article Contributor(s)

Sattva Vasavada

Article Title

Randomised Control Trials and the Alleviation of Poverty in India

Publisher

Global Views 360

Publication Date

July 23, 2020

URL

Poverty in India — A Representative Image

Poverty in India — A Representative Image | Source: Atul Kumar via Unsplash

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics for their “experimental approach in alleviating global poverty”. Their experimental approach encompassed a variety of novel methods to understand and analyse interventions and Randomised Control Trials (RCTs). Their research has been used by policy makers to make informed policy decisions to best help the marginalised.

What are RCTs?

To understand the effect of a policy, intervention, or medicine, decision makers try to measure the efficacy of the treatment. Do deworming pills given to children improve test scores? Does providing chlorinated water improve the health and economic outcomes of villages? These are some causal (read causal, i.e. caused by, not casual) questions researchers are interested in. The best way to analyse causal effects is to randomise the selection of people in the treatment and the control group (for example: children who are given deworming pills versus children who are not given the pills). This random selection of the two groups removes many statistical biases that might affect the results.

RCTs in India:

Many of the RCTs performed by Banerjee and Duflo were in India. They involved short- and long-term impact assessments of various interventions, policies, models, and treatments. We look at a few RCTs implemented in India:

Teacher absenteeism rates:

Troubled by the low attendance rates (or high absence rates) of public-school teachers in India, Duflo assessed the impact of financial incentives on the absence rates of teachers in Rajasthan. The study monitored teacher attendance by cameras, which was tied to a financial incentive if the attendance was high. From a baseline absence rate of 44%, teacher absenteeism in the treatment group fell by 21%, relative to the control group. High teacher attendance caused child test scores to improve too.

COVID-19 and health-seeking behaviour:

In the context of COVID-19, Banerjee tested the effect of sending messages via SMS that promoted health preserving behaviour. The results were very positive. By sending a short, 2.5-minute clip to 25 million randomly selected individuals in West Bengal, the intervention i) found a two-fold increase in symptom reporting to village health workers, ii) increased hand washing rates by 7%, and iii) increased mask-wearing by 2%. While mask-wearing rates increased only marginally, the spillover effects (wearing a mask stops the virus from infecting more people) were moderately high and positive.

Asset Transfers and the Notion of Poverty:

An RCT by Banerjee in West Bengal involving a productive asset transfer accompanied with training found large and persistent effects on monthly consumption and other variables. The treatment group reported 25% higher consumption levels relative to the control group, who did not receive the asset transfer and training. Implications of such RCTs are huge. The notion that the poor are lazy and unwilling to perform strenuous labour is falsified by this RCT. Often, what the poor lack are opportunities that are hard to come by, given their financial status. A small nudge, like the asset transfer, can cause large and positive effects on their well-being.  

Salt fortification to reduce anaemia:

RCTs also help rule out less cost-effective interventions. Duflo and Banerjee evaluated an RCT which distributed fortified salt in 400 villages of Bihar, to reduce the prevalence of anaemia. However, this intervention found no statistically significant impact on health outcomes like anaemia, hemoglobin, etc.  Thus, while RCTs help introduce novel methods of impacting the lives of the poor, they also help in ruling out in-effective measures. A policy maker might try other alternatives to reduce the prevalence of anaemia.

Are RCTs the gold standard?

Maybe. Extrapolating results from a regional RCT to national policies could present problems. Contextuality matters. A study that indicates positive gains for one region might present different, and rather adverse effects for another region. Nation wide effects might not be as prominent as regional results of a single RCT. The good part is that Banerjee and Duflo have a solution. Just perform more RCTs!

Support us to bring the world closer

To keep our content accessible we don't charge anything from our readers and rely on donations to continue working. Your support is critical in keeping Global Views 360 independent and helps us to present a well-rounded world view on different international issues for you. Every contribution, however big or small, is valuable for us to keep on delivering in future as well.

Support Us

Share this article

Read More

February 4, 2021 5:00 PM

Stonewall Riots: A Pillar In The Movement For American LGBTQIA+ Rights

The Stonewall Riots are globally remembered as the cornerstone of Pride Month, and rightfully so. Fifty-one years ago, a routine police raid on Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York turned into an upheaval against homophobic society, laws, and policing.

In the early hours of June 28, 1969, a police raid— often conducted on secret or private bars that exclusively served LGBTQIA+ patrons— turned its head on the New York Police Department.

The Stonewall riot in 1969 | Source: David via Flickr

Some accounts say that the pivotal moment came when few of the lesbians who were brutally shoved into a police wagon showed resistance. In response, the crowd lit up in anger and resistance. Instead of running away to save themselves, the patrons fought back, even leading to the police barricading themselves within the bar itself as they waited for backup.

The Stonewall riot in 1969 | Source: David via Flickr

News of the clash spread and more people gathered, throwing anything they could find: nickels, garbage cans, broken bottles, and yes, bricks too, though ‘the first brick’ may have been more myth than real. Eventually, it took the fire department and a riot squad to quell the riots on the first night.

Defiant, Stonewall reopened the next evening, and the confrontation between police and community members continued for the rest of the week, drawing hundreds and upto thousands of community members. A total of twenty one protestors were arrested over the week, with the majority being arrested on the first night itself.

It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly led to the Stonewall riots, or the status that it earned in present-day Pride and LGTBQ+ liberation movements. The movement for LGTBQ+ rights existed before Stonewall (if relatively subdued relative to what came after), and so did the concept of ‘Pride,’ in the form of ‘Personal Rights in Defense and Education’ (PRIDE) that went on to become the Advocate magazine.

Stonewall wasn’t even the first time the community clashed with the police. It has been postulated that the act of naming, “the first to be called the first,” and the decision of organizers to commemorate its anniversary in the form of ‘Christopher Street Liberation Day’ contributed largely to Stonewall becoming a permanent and popular fixture in LGBTQIA+ history and collective memory.  

Regardless of the contributing factors, the cultural impact of Stonewall on American and Western LGBTQIA+ communities was immediate and intense. It became the epicentre of a louder, more radical movement. The community had tried it the ‘respectable’ way through organisations such as Mattachine, but it didn’t get them anywhere.

The number of LGTBQ+ focused organisations and magazines soared after Stonewall, going from around two dozen to four hundred. These included radical organisations such as the Gay Liberation Front and Radicalesbians.

The year after Stonewall, Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, who were present at the riots and are considered transgender icons, created the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), which focused on struggles of drag queens and trans and gender-non-conforming youth who often lived on the streets.

Stonewall Inn as it existed no longer stands, but the new Stonewall Inn in the same street and the park across it have been recently declared as a historic national monument.

The old Stonewall was not a luxurious bar in terms of drinks or furnishings. It was not a place frequented by upper or middle class, white, cisgender gay men. Being a dance bar whose patrons included working class or homeless LGBTQIA+ people and drag queens, it was often looked down upon. All of that changed in one week, and the spirit that shone in Stonewall that night continues to resonate and be celebrated in the hearts of all LGBTQIA+ people.

In light of the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests and the rioting that happened alongside, many LGBTQIA+ people on social media have responded to criticism by reminding people of Stonewall, and how the “first Pride” was a riot led by Black and Latin transgender women, gender non-conforming youth, and other LGBTQIA+ people of colour, the very people whose history and resistance has often been white-washed, diminished, or erased altogether.

As said by Martin Luther King Jr., “A riot is the language of the unheard.”

Read More