Thursday, July 23, 2020

Randomised Control Trials and the Alleviation of Poverty in India

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Sattva Vasavada

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Randomised Control Trials and the Alleviation of Poverty in India

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Global Views 360

Publication Date

July 23, 2020

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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!

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February 4, 2021 5:21 PM

The Toxicity in Video Games and Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077, the most awaited video game was released on consoles and PC on 10th of December, 2020. The game went under 10 years of build-up and had kept gamers waiting for over 8 years. Cyberpunk 2077 is inspired by a cult-favourite tabletop roleplaying game. The video game was designed by well-known Polish studio, CD Projekt Red. Cyberpunk was the studio’s first big console game since The Witcher 3: Wild hunt which was an extraordinarily triumphant game that won numerous awards after its launch in 2015.

The popular video game, when released, faced backlash from the gaming community and non-gamers for several reasons. To many observers and gamers, Cyberpunk 2077 even proved to be an absolute failure. Several gamers called out the game developers for the promotion of sexiest ideologies and transphobia. However, the reviews weren’t well received by the fans. Cyberpunk 2077 fans responded with unacceptable abuses, harrasing and hateful messages and even rape and death threats.

Keanu Reeves in Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 released ample previews, trailers, motion pictures and marketing material. Aside from this, the appearence of popular Canadian actor, Keanu Reeves as a character in the game carved the expectations of gamers and promised a sexy and kinky world of futuristic and revolutionary action. CD Projekt Red, one of Europe’s most successful video game company announced Cyberpunk 2077 project in 2012 and released the first trailer in 2013

The game is set in an alternate timeline in the city of California. The streets in the game are owned by tyrannical corporations. Everyone in the game modifies their body with illegal technology. Much of the state in the video game setting is said to be suffering from the impacts of a major nuclear attack which happened years ago. Every player gets to be a cyber-enhanced human who has to fight against physical and psychological threats to their survival. The game character of Keanu Reeves comes in as your sidekick.

In 2018, the developers insisted and had assured the gamers that Cyberpunk 2077 would not include in game purchases. CD Projekt Red did not want to lock any content behind a paywall. The studio was also insistent that the game would come out only when it was completely “ready”. They announced that the release would take place in April 2020 but it was delayed multiple times due to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as other quality problems that the game was facing. When it was finally released in December 2020, gamers expected their experience of the game to be “worth the wait”. However, the video game wasn’t well revived by all. In spite of several months of work that went into making and developing the game, the game was launched with several technical issues. Players on both PC and consoles were having terrible experiences. As a result of multiple glitches and technical problems, the characters’ faces were obscured and the game would reset randomly. Some of the environments or areas of the game map was unappealing. The game even caused consoles to crash repeatedly and sometimes sacrificed players’ progress. One glitch led to characters’ breasts and penises being exposed. The characters’ genitals would poke out of their clothes. CD Projeckt Red offered refunds to players who were disappointed with the product. In fact, they updated a self-review discouraging gamers from playing the game on console until the game was fixed and improved.

Cyberpunk 2077 was roundly criticized by reviewers, game designers, industry insiders and other gamers across the gaming community. The wait and hype for the game had already created a fanbase which turned toxic by harassing reviewers who criticised the game.

There is another reason why the game wasn’t well received. Cyberpunk 2077 transphobia was apparent in the game contradicting the fact that the developers had claimed that the game was ahead of its time. The game has an incredibly detailed character creation menu. The players can control several aspects of their character’s appearance including the shapes and size of the genitals. The game even allows players to decline the option of including genitals to their characters. However, this isn’t the problem and is in fact appreciable. The idea of not determining gender by the character’s genitals in fact made many trans players happy. But this soon turned into disbelief and disappointment. The gamers realised that the game actually assigned the gender to the characters not based on their genitals but rather by the voice. Characters with higher-pitched voices were identified as females and characters with deep-voiced characters were assigned male pronouns. This purports the toxic idea that people’s gender can be determined by certain traits. A non-sexist video game would determine the gender of a player’s character based on an independent choice made by players themselves. This is uninfluenced by other physical traits or qualities.

Several reviewers called out Cyberpunk 2077 for promoting sexist ideologies. Unfortunately, toxic fans harassed the reviewers. “You just KNOW when you're going to get harassed. If the game with all the hype has anything wrong with it, and you're honest about that, or even just want to provide any context outside of ‘it's fun’, you're going to get harassed. It's a given.” These were precisely what Susan Arendt, a podcast host quoted. She even second guessed herself whether sharing her true opinions was worth the hateful, threatening and harassing messages that she received.

Controversial Tweet by Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter Handle

In the early days of arcade, gaming was a family activity. The popular male dominance and stereotype that only boys or men are good at video games were perpetuated in the past three decades. We observe this change due to sexualisation of video games. Today, most video games aren’t family friendly as they include explicit and sexual content. This, in fact, is a marketing tactic used by developers to target the male population. In 2018, a Cyberpunk 2077 fan who was awaiting the game at that point of time tweeted that the user wanted to see more from the “guys” at CDPR. In response to this tweet, CD Projekt Red tweeted, “Did you just assume their gender?!”. On the look of it, the tweet seems innocent but it is a joke at the expense of the trans community. After receiving backlash to the tweet, CDPR took it down and issued an apology staying sorry to “all those offended”. The apology seems like another targeted mockery and CDPR did no right by not taking responsibility for its actions.

Not only is Cyberpunk2077 transphobic and sexist, it is non user friendly as well. The game has several epilepsy triggers without any warnings about it. There are several instances and situations in the game where the effects and the graphics are brighter, louder and flashing. This is a general trigger for seizures. Liana Rupert, a player of Cyberpunk 2077 suffered a major seizure and at several moments felt that she was close to another one. After bringing this to the notice of CD Projekt Red, the company agreed to add trigger warnings wherever necessary.  

The gaming industry has definitely taken a few steps forward in terms of inclusivity of all genders but has also taken a few steps backward. While all genders are welcome, they still face harassment and judgement for simply existing in the community and need a lot more improvement.

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