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Arijita Dutta
Arijita Dutta is an Associate Professor in Economics in Calcutta University. She completed her Master’s degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Ph.D. from University of Calcutta. Her research interests are in health economics, development economics and econometrics. Arijita has a number of publications in national and international Journals to her credit, and has completed a number of research projects. Along with Dr Satarupa Bandyopadhyay and Dr Arpita Ghose, she has published a policy document on ‘Hospital Efficiency in West Bengal’, which has been used to shape various health policy in the state.
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Kanyashree Prakalpa in West Bengal: Justification and evaluation
Kanyasree Prakalpa is a conditional cash transfer scheme of the Government of West Bengal that offers scholarship to adolescent girls for continuing education and remaining unmarried until the age of 18. This project seeks to evaluate the impact of the scheme on the education outcomes of the beneficiaries and their siblings, as well as their bargaining power within the household
Ensuring access to medicines through PPPs
To address the issue of low access to basic medicines by the general public, the state government of West Bengal introduced Fair Price Medicine Shops in secondary and tertiary hospitals through a Public Private Partnership model. This column finds that while there is scope for improving the coverage of patients and availability of medicines, the programme has been successful in reducing out-of-pocket expenditures on medicines.
Analysing efficiency of government hospitals in West Bengal
Given the insufficient public investment in the health sector in India, optimal utilisation of resources in the sector is crucial. This column analyses the efficiency of secondary government hospitals in West Bengal. It finds a huge slack in the use of resources such as doctors. With better monitoring, hospitals will be able to serve more patients with existing resources.