Blog

This was a tough week. When I left Sitapur in the last days of March, I said good-bye to 21 women who I had been visiting weekly throughout February and March. Three were pregnant, and 18 had little babies, all...Read More..

Bihar is in the throes of a severe drought again—the third time in last four years, and so far, the shortfall in rains is worse this year than it was in 2009 and 2010. Rainfall is below normal in 36...Read More..

Yesterday I had the fun opportunity to present my sanitation research at LBSNAA, the training institute for Indian Administrative Service officers. We met with the 2010 class, almost finished with their two years of training. These folks will go on...Read More..

...a friend of mine, Anirvan Chowdhury, who works with Accountability Initiative in Delhi, sent this link which is related to Avinash's last post. Thanks, Anirvan! http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kochi/Pruned-mid-day-meal-scheme-for-students-is-egg-on-states-face/articleshow/14827670.cms...Read More..

There is a new wave of populism in South Asia—of giving free laptops or tablets to students. Government of Punjab in Pakistan was probably the first to launch a scheme to gift free Dell laptops to 110,000 meritorious college students...Read More..

I just added three new papers to our research. Two are about sanitation in India, in preparation for NCAER's upcoming India Policy Forum, where I will talk about the Total Sanitation Campaign. One, "Sanitation and open defecation explain international variation...Read More..

I just read a brand-new and very interesting paper by Janet Currie, Wanchuan Lin and Wei Zhang, entitled, “Patient Knowledge and Antibiotic Abuse: Evidence from an Audit Study in China.” The authors find that antibiotics are very often prescribed when...Read More..

Diane and I are glad to be back in India – where it is hot – and Avinash will be joining us in just a few days. I started the week in Seattle seeing old friends and making new friends...Read More..

I just wanted to share a new working paper that is posted under the rice research tab called "Early life mortality, income and adult height in India." Here's the abstract to whet your appetite: Recent research on the relationship between...Read More..

About half an hour ago, RICE India Director Avinash Kishore became Dr. Avinash Kishore. Avinash defended his dissertation with flying colors. Notice the big purple book of Stata and the Dale Jorgenson compendium:...Read More..

There are so many ways in which the deck is stacked against poor babies in India. A few days ago, Jo, one of our board members, sent me the HUNGaMA Survey Report from 2011. HUNGaMA is a survey of about...Read More..

Two weeks ago I wrote how denying job cards seems to be one of the ways used to deny employment guarantee under NREGA. Legally, a job card has to be issued to anyone who applies for it within 15 days...Read More..

Diane, Avinash, and I all want to send a big thank you to my hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma for helping us celebrate rice's first birthday this past weekend! We had two parties, many meetings, too many samosas, and one big...Read More..

You can read it here: http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2012/05/Indias-Total-Sanitation-Campaign....Read More..

Sorry for the light blogging this past week --- we've been taking rice's research on tour. In five days Dean and Diane made five presentations in three cities. We'll write more soon about what we learned at a population conference...Read More..

In the last post, we saw how more than half of all rural households (55%) who wanted to work under NREGA, did not get even a days work in year 2009-10. All these households are entitled to unemployment allowance under...Read More..