Rich and Creamy: Ice Creams, Cakes and Fried Chicken

So, before I dive into what's been going on the past few days, let me explain the title of this posting. I have decided that for the time being, I'm going to name the blog posts after ridiculous signage that I encounter here, since we have seen such a multitude of spectacularly absurd signs, that it seems a pity not to share them. At some point, I may run out (e.g. while I'm here at a beach resort for our training), but in the meantime - enjoy!

It has been almost a week since I last wrote, and I think that we are starting to get into the swing of things. We still don't have our two suitcases, but they have been located - Delhi - and an amazing member of the J-PAL staff is going to pick them up from the airport for us (hopefully).

First, though, since a few folks have rightly pointed out that I haven't actually explained what we're doing or who we're working for, a quick summary. Jeff and I are happily employed by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab South Asia (J-PAL SA). J-PAL is part of the Economics Department at MIT, and although you can find a much more detailed explanation on their website (www.povertyactionlab.org), in short, they evaluate international development projects through randomized experiments. So a government body or an NGO will either have an existing program or be starting a new program, and they'll call J-PAL in to see if it's working. And J-PAL will tinker with things, setting up randomized controlled trials (RCTs), and then lovely field RAs (Research Associates) like me and Jeff will implement the experiment (supervised of course by our Principal Investigator(s), or PIs). Once a bunch of data is collected, it gets sent to the RAs (Research Analyst) in Cambridge, who analyze it.  Jeff worked for J-PAL in Cambridge last year as an RA, so he's really excited to get some field experience now that he (mostly) knows the ins and outs of J-PAL.

Doesn't sound like the kind of thing you'd expect me to doing? Well, I certainly didn't think that I would end up at J-PAL when Jeff told me that he'd been asked to go to India for a year. I thought I'd teach English or find work at an education NGO, but then I met with the staff at J-PAL (to ask for suggestions for where I could look for work), and they described this really awesome project they were going to be starting up in Bihar, and things took off from there.

Although there's a lot still uncertain, in broad strokes, I will be trying to enhance the effectiveness and political power of elected female village leaders (Elected Women Representatives - EWRs) in Bihar.  Bihar has a reservation system, which means that a third (and soon, half) of the village council seats are set aside for women (otherwise there would be virtually no female political representation). However, J-PAL has done previous studies which have made it clear that the reservation system is not currently accomplishing as much as it was hoped it would.

So, the project that I'm working on is designed to take advantage of the opportunity provided by the reservations, and maximize their effectiveness. What's that's actually going to look like is still TBD. So I'm entering the project at a really cool phase - I get to design the initial qualitative research that will help us determine what specific skills and competencies we want to target (ideally, what the EWRs themselves have identified as important), and then jump into designing the intervention, which will be in the form of some kind of training. Although I'm doing a lot of Econ-ish stuff, there's also a strong educational component. So I get the best of both worlds - a topic that I'm already passionate about (perhaps not the political effectiveness of EWRs specifically, but certainly women's empowerment, civic engagement and education!) and an opportunity to learn a whole host of new skills that I definitely would not have learned otherwise.

I'm very lucky, since I know what project I'm working on in Patna.  Jeff doesn't actually know what he'll be working on (two possible projects were cancelled), but he's kept plenty busy by his bosses. Hopefully one of these days he'll have the time to sit down and talk about what he's up to, since I definitely can't do it justice.

Phew ok I'm going to give you guys a rest - the next entry will be about what we've been up to the past week or so.