World Bank-NCAER to jointly assess govt's policies and programmes

World Bank and NCAER will further their collaborative relationships to evaluate the impact of government policies and programmes

As India starts a whole new initiatives like direct benefit scheme, the World Bank and the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) will further their collaborative relationships to evaluate the impact of government policies and programmes.

At a workshop yesterday, Ariel Fiszbein, chief economist for human development of the World Bank, said when the Indian government starts a good programme, they should look at the international evidence.

“There has been quite a few evaluation of cash transfer programme across the world and the evidence in favour of it is substantive.” he said.

Fiszbein said cash transfer programmes are not new in India. “There are conditional cash transfer schemes that have already worked in India like the Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) that is intended to reduce the maternal and neo-natal mortality by promoting institutional delivery among the poor pregnant women. These are large scale programs and, they show good results.” he said.

The World Bank currently collaborates with the research and data collection of NCAER.