ROURKELA: The Poverty Alleviation Research Centre (PARC) of National Institute of Technology-Rourkela (NIT-R) will be focussing on understanding the never-ending poverty pattern of KBK districts and find ways of addressing the crisis. Launched recently, the centre will be utilising its tech and research expertise to detail the vicious cycle of poverty, pumping of resources and bottlenecks impacting the districts. PARC was set up with financial assistance of Rs 60 lakh from NIT-R alumnus Venkata Narsimham Peri on January 26, which coincided with the institute’s diamond jubilee celebrations.
The centre’s chairman-cum-coordinator Prof Snehashish Chakraverty of the institute’s department of Mathematics said the inter-disciplinary research project with use of mathematical modelling and Artificial Intelligence would understand the causes of poverty in the KBK region and work out measures to eradicate it. He said the research on the subject would also be helpful in predicting the pattern of poverty basing on which assistance would be sought from the Central and State governments.
PARC is in a nascent stage and methodologies of the research would be worked out shortly. Two PhD scholars of the institute would soon be recruited to the centre. Peri, who is the co-chairman of the centre said, “As a student of Developmental Economics at London School of Economics and practitioner of deep analytics, I believe that poverty is a problem of science and with the right amount of modelling and data, we can help the administration intervene in the best possible way to arrest families from slipping into chronic poverty.”
Peri said the Poverty Research Centre at UC Davis (USA) which extensively works on similar problems and provides assistance in California will mentor a team of PARC with technical assistance and apt methodologies. PARC will pool resources from departments for an evidence based research to understand the genesis, evolution and the cycle dragging generations of families and communities into acute poverty.
NIT-R director Prof Animesh Biswas said the research study would identify the bottlenecks preventing desired uplift of people of KBK region despite pumping of ample resources by successive Central and State governments. He said the study would involve massive data collection, simulation and analysis to offer best possible corrective measures.
Science for poverty alleviation