BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha Government on Thursday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), South Asia, to engage in a strategic evidence-based approach to policy making to maximise impact on anti-poverty programmes of the State across a wide range of sectors.
Odisha Government is the first State in the country to have entered into partnership with J-PAL after its founder and co-founder Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo got the Nobel prize for Economics this year for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.
J-PAL South Asia will provide Odisha Government technical assistance under this partnership for scaling up evidence-backed programmes to improve development outcomes in the State. Commensurate with the 5T programme of the State Government, the partnership aims at bringing partnership in the lives of people through research-based intervention policy formulation.
The MoU was signed by Development Commissioner Suresh Mohapatra on behalf of the Odisha Government and Executive Director of J-PAL, South Asia, Shobhini Mukerji at a function at Kharavel Bhavan officiated by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. The Chief Minister has been focusing on transformation of Odisha through timely application of transparency, teamwork and technology. Official sources said this programme partnership has all the components of the 5T with on-field application.
The Chief Minister expressed his hope that this partnership will result in actualising Team Odisha’s efforts to transform the State by addressing growing aspirations. The partnership establishes an overarching collaboration between J-PAL, South Asia, and the Odisha Government under which J-PAL will work with several departments, including, but not limited to, Labour, Education, Health and Women and Child Development, to conduct policy relevant randomised evaluations of new anti-poverty and development programmes.
Additionally, a diagnostic exercise and subsequent workshops will be conducted to build State capacity in the area of monitoring and evaluation. J-PAL, South Asia and the Odisha Government will conduct an annual policy dialogue to identify the Government’s top policy priorities, conduct discussions to share evidence and jointly come up with innovative solutions that can be field tested through rigorous randomised evaluations.
Official sources said the policy dialogues will be on malnutrition, women’s empowerment, distress migration, health worker performance and improving agricultural productivity. “J-PAL, South Asia, is very excited to enter into collaboration with Odisha Government which has been focusing on transforming outcomes and improving efficiency through a number of different initiatives,” Mukerji said.
Members of the council of ministers, Chairman of the Odisha School Development Authority Subroto Bagchi, Chairperson of Mo School Susmita Bagchi, Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy, agriculture production commissioner Pradipta Mohapatra and senior officials attended.