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Bansi Malde
Bansi Malde is a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Kent and a Research Associate at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Her research agenda focuses on understanding the determinants of child health, and the design of effective policies and programs to improve these outcomes; and the role of social networks in shaping behaviour and outcomes, including mutual insurance and adoption of new technologies and practices, in low-income settings. Her research has been published in leading economics journals including the Economic Journal and the Journal of Development Economics. She holds a PhD in Economics from University College London.
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To invest in sanitation or not? The role of gender differences in perceptions
Although sanitation is essential for health, many households remain without a toilet due to financial constraints. This article describes the extent to which perceptions of costs and benefits of sanitation investments vary by gender and within the household. It demonstrates how these intra-household gender differences impact the success of a sanitation microcredit intervention in Maharashtra. Impacts of these differences on intervention success are largely concentrated in households where the woman is involved in the decision-making process.
वर्गीकृत ऋण और स्वच्छता संबंधी निवेश
ग्रामीण भारतीय परिवार शौचालय बनवाने का खर्च वहन नहीं कर पाने को शौचालय नहीं बनवाने का मुख्य कारण बताते हैं। इस लेख में ग्रामीण महाराष्ट्र के एक प्रयोग के जरिए जांच की गई है कि स्वच्छता के लिए वर्गीकृत सूक्ष्मऋण (माइक्रोफाइनांस लेबल्ड फॉर सैनिटेशन) स्वच्छता में निवेश बढ़ा सकता है या नहीं। इसमें पाया गया कि लक्षित परिवारों ने स्वच्छता ऋणों की मांग की और शौचालय के उपयोग में 9 प्रतिशत अंकों की वृद्धि हुई। हालांकि मोटे तौर पर आधे ऋणों का उपयोग स्वच्छता के लिए नहीं किया गया।
Labelled loans and sanitation investments
Rural Indian households report lack of affordability as the main reason for not having a toilet. This article investigates – through an experiment in rural Maharashtra – whether microcredit labelled for sanitation can increase sanitation investments. It finds that targeted households demand the sanitation loans, and toilet uptake increases by 9 percentage points; however, roughly half of the loans were not used for sanitation
Using personalised information delivery to improve uptake of emergency government benefits
Although many governments introduced additional benefits as part of existing welfare schemes for Covid-19 relief, there is often a significant gap between the introduction of, and access to these benefits. Based on a field experiment in Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, this article shows that simple, low-cost, information provision interventions can improve the accuracy of households' beliefs about the entitlements they are eligible for and increase the amounts they actually receive, improving beneficiaries’ food security and well-being.