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Apurva Bamezai
Apurva Bamezai is currently a senior researcher affiliated with Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include political economy of development in India, State capacity and institutions. Previously, she has worked as a researcher in Oxford Policy Management’s Poverty and Social Protection portfolio; IDinsight; and the Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute, New Delhi. She has significant experience in quantitative impact evaluations and process evaluations of programmes in social protection, maternal health, child nutrition, and early childhood education. Apurva holds a B.A. (Honours) in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, an M.A. in Development Studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and an M.Phil. in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge.
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The particulars of social policy in India: Evidence, State capacity, and policy design
Economist-activist Jean Drèze has argued that economists are no better equipped to comment on development policy design than other social science researchers and other stakeholders, and that policymaking requires more than just evidence. In this post, Apurva Bamezai and M.R. Sharan explore the roots of development economists’ centrality in social policy design and locate it in the nature of the evidence they generate and the top-heavy policymaking paradigm in India. Further, focusing on evidence alone, they contend that a more multidisciplinary approach can prove beneficial, and evidence-generation can also be a by-product of increased citizen-State interactions
