Ideas for smarter growth: India’s bet for an inclusive future
This article is authored by Saptarishi Dutta, Sharanya Chandran and Vijayalakshmi Iyer.
India has set a lofty economic target for itself: becoming a high-income country by 2047. To achieve this goal, it has to grow at an average of 8% at least the next decade. It is a formidable challenge that calls for significant policy re-imagination and leaves practically no room for guesswork. In other words, India must double down on programmes with proven effectiveness and local relevance so they benefit as many people as possible, in as many places as possible.
The practice of rigorously evaluating development programmes to make policy decisions has steadily grown in popularity over the years. The national as well as state governments in India have also warmed up to the idea. The appeal of testing social programmes is easy to grasp: they help separate what works from what doesn’t so scarce public funds are spent on policies with the potential for maximum impact.
Today, there is a growing set of globally tested policy innovations that have helped people around the world earn more, learn better, and live healthier lives. To take just one example: Pratham Education Foundation’s remedial education programme, Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL), has helped eight crore children in India and Africa catch up on basic math and reading by improving their foundational learning skills. India must accelerate the adoption of such proven innovations to help its 20 crore citizens still trapped in poverty live with dignity.
But having a pool of proven solutions is only half the puzzle. The other half is to deliver them to the people who need them — not a small task when the number of such people run into crores. Three things are needed to scale up evidence-based programmes.
First, and perhaps the most important, is the willingness to work together for the long-term. The evidence that a programme has worked in one place does not automatically mean it will have the same impact elsewhere. In other words, success in one country does not guarantee success in another. The same is true for two states within a country and even within a state. Making it work is an intensive effort requiring close collaboration among several groups. It needs a government keen on implementing evidence-based programmes as well as academic partners who can help tailor those programmes to local contexts. Civil society organisations and funders also have a critical role to play in helping governments kickstart policy innovations. And bringing such a coalition of partners together itself requires a lot of hard work. It can take decades of working together to turn an evidence-based programme into government policy. That is what happened with the Graduation Approach, a multifaceted livelihoods programme for people living in extreme poverty.
First implemented in 2002, the Graduation Approach has reached and improved the standard of living for more than three million households in more than 20 countries following multiple rigorous evaluations. The households receiving the programme are found to have greater spending power as well as higher income and savings, showing that a concerted push can help people lift themselves out of extreme poverty. These findings spurred Bihar to launch its rural livelihoods programme, Satat Jeevikoparjan Yojana (SJY), in 2018. A consortium of civil society organisations and researchers helped the government to adapt the Graduation Approach for SJY in Bihar. A landmark moment came in 2024 when India’s ministry of rural development (MoRD) announced it will adapt the model for its flagship Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Rural Livelihoods Mission, underlining the significance of long-term collaborations in taking evidence-based programmes from pilots to national policy.
Second, governments need to adapt and refine the programme based on their needs and local conditions before rolling them out widely. That’s because a combination of social, bureaucratic, financial, and institutional factors prevents the blanket replication of evidence-based interventions. Running a few pilots of the adaptations helps in identifying the best way to deliver the intervention reliably and consistently before state-wide rollout.
Punjab and Odisha’s experience in introducing NGO Breakthrough’s gender equity curriculum for adolescents offers useful insights into how this can be done. A randomised evaluation led by a J-PAL affiliated researcher between 2013 and 2017 in Haryana found the curriculum, which uses interactive classroom discussions, to be effective in promoting progressive gender views. Following these encouraging results, Punjab and Odisha piloted the curriculum in state-run schools across a few districts over the next four years. With each phase of the pilot, they added more districts and tweaked the curriculum content to make it culturally relevant. In Punjab, the curriculum places emphasis on the need for having safe spaces for women both within and outside their homes. Odisha, prone to cyclones, focuses on the unequal impacts of natural disasters on women and the issue of child marriage. Much of the governments’ efforts went into working out the budgets, teacher training, supplying study materials to pupils, and removing administrative bottlenecks so the curriculum could eventually become part of the states’ education system. The result: The curriculum is being taught in 29,000 state-run schools in Punjab and Odisha today, reaching approximately 30 lakh children every year.
Third, the programme must be built into the state administrative apparatus so it reaches the full target population consistently. For that, governments need systems to monitor whether the programme is doing the right thing the right way as it expands. A big reason behind the successful scale up of the Graduation Approach and the gender equity curriculum is that the governments could closely track the programmes, spot problems and course correct when needed. Over time, this capacity must be within governments through updated monitoring systems and officials trained to identify and remove obstacles. When governments own both delivery and learning, proven interventions are far more likely to sustain and evolve with the system.
Let us be clear: Delivering impact at scale is far from being a straightforward exercise. But India’s bold economic ambitions must be matched with policies that work for those who need them most, wherever they are. For governments, the biggest advantage of investing in high-impact, rigorously tested ideas is that the risk of failure is already significantly reduced. The evidence of effectiveness already exists. This means shifting focus from “will it work” to “how can it work” and sustain in the public ecosystem.
Indeed, the Indian government deserves credit for enabling 27 crore Indians to climb out of extreme poverty over the last decade. But as the country marches towards Viksit Bharat 2047, it must make sure that the rising tide lifts all boats. The key is for everyone to work together in taking proven ideas to scale.
This article is authored by Saptarishi Dutta, senior manager, communications, Sharanya Chandran, director, policy and communications, J-PAL South Asia, New Delhi and Vijayalakshmi Iyer, associate director, policy (scale-ups) and unit director, ASPIRE, J-PAL South Asia, Bengaluru.
India has set a lofty economic target for itself: becoming a high-income country by 2047. To achieve this goal, it has to grow at an average of 8% at least the next decade. It is a formidable challenge that calls for significant policy re-imagination and leaves practically no room for guesswork. In other words, India must double down on programmes with proven effectiveness and local relevance so they benefit as many people as possible, in as many places as possible.
The practice of rigorously evaluating development programmes to make policy decisions has steadily grown in popularity over the years. The national as well as state governments in India have also warmed up to the idea. The appeal of testing social programmes is easy to grasp: they help separate what works from what doesn’t so scarce public funds are spent on policies with the potential for maximum impact.
Today, there is a growing set of globally tested policy innovations that have helped people around the world earn more, learn better, and live healthier lives. To take just one example: Pratham Education Foundation’s remedial education programme, Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL), has helped eight crore children in India and Africa catch up on basic math and reading by improving their foundational learning skills. India must accelerate the adoption of such proven innovations to help its 20 crore citizens still trapped in poverty live with dignity.
But having a pool of proven solutions is only half the puzzle. The other half is to deliver them to the people who need them — not a small task when the number of such people run into crores. Three things are needed to scale up evidence-based programmes.
First, and perhaps the most important, is the willingness to work together for the long-term. The evidence that a programme has worked in one place does not automatically mean it will have the same impact elsewhere. In other words, success in one country does not guarantee success in another. The same is true for two states within a country and even within a state. Making it work is an intensive effort requiring close collaboration among several groups. It needs a government keen on implementing evidence-based programmes as well as academic partners who can help tailor those programmes to local contexts. Civil society organisations and funders also have a critical role to play in helping governments kickstart policy innovations. And bringing such a coalition of partners together itself requires a lot of hard work. It can take decades of working together to turn an evidence-based programme into government policy. That is what happened with the Graduation Approach, a multifaceted livelihoods programme for people living in extreme poverty.
First implemented in 2002, the Graduation Approach has reached and improved the standard of living for more than three million households in more than 20 countries following multiple rigorous evaluations. The households receiving the programme are found to have greater spending power as well as higher income and savings, showing that a concerted push can help people lift themselves out of extreme poverty. These findings spurred Bihar to launch its rural livelihoods programme, Satat Jeevikoparjan Yojana (SJY), in 2018. A consortium of civil society organisations and researchers helped the government to adapt the Graduation Approach for SJY in Bihar. A landmark moment came in 2024 when India’s ministry of rural development (MoRD) announced it will adapt the model for its flagship Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Rural Livelihoods Mission, underlining the significance of long-term collaborations in taking evidence-based programmes from pilots to national policy.
Second, governments need to adapt and refine the programme based on their needs and local conditions before rolling them out widely. That’s because a combination of social, bureaucratic, financial, and institutional factors prevents the blanket replication of evidence-based interventions. Running a few pilots of the adaptations helps in identifying the best way to deliver the intervention reliably and consistently before state-wide rollout.
Punjab and Odisha’s experience in introducing NGO Breakthrough’s gender equity curriculum for adolescents offers useful insights into how this can be done. A randomised evaluation led by a J-PAL affiliated researcher between 2013 and 2017 in Haryana found the curriculum, which uses interactive classroom discussions, to be effective in promoting progressive gender views. Following these encouraging results, Punjab and Odisha piloted the curriculum in state-run schools across a few districts over the next four years. With each phase of the pilot, they added more districts and tweaked the curriculum content to make it culturally relevant. In Punjab, the curriculum places emphasis on the need for having safe spaces for women both within and outside their homes. Odisha, prone to cyclones, focuses on the unequal impacts of natural disasters on women and the issue of child marriage. Much of the governments’ efforts went into working out the budgets, teacher training, supplying study materials to pupils, and removing administrative bottlenecks so the curriculum could eventually become part of the states’ education system. The result: The curriculum is being taught in 29,000 state-run schools in Punjab and Odisha today, reaching approximately 30 lakh children every year.
Third, the programme must be built into the state administrative apparatus so it reaches the full target population consistently. For that, governments need systems to monitor whether the programme is doing the right thing the right way as it expands. A big reason behind the successful scale up of the Graduation Approach and the gender equity curriculum is that the governments could closely track the programmes, spot problems and course correct when needed. Over time, this capacity must be within governments through updated monitoring systems and officials trained to identify and remove obstacles. When governments own both delivery and learning, proven interventions are far more likely to sustain and evolve with the system.
Let us be clear: Delivering impact at scale is far from being a straightforward exercise. But India’s bold economic ambitions must be matched with policies that work for those who need them most, wherever they are. For governments, the biggest advantage of investing in high-impact, rigorously tested ideas is that the risk of failure is already significantly reduced. The evidence of effectiveness already exists. This means shifting focus from “will it work” to “how can it work” and sustain in the public ecosystem.
Indeed, the Indian government deserves credit for enabling 27 crore Indians to climb out of extreme poverty over the last decade. But as the country marches towards Viksit Bharat 2047, it must make sure that the rising tide lifts all boats. The key is for everyone to work together in taking proven ideas to scale.
This article is authored by Saptarishi Dutta, senior manager, communications, Sharanya Chandran, director, policy and communications, J-PAL South Asia, New Delhi and Vijayalakshmi Iyer, associate director, policy (scale-ups) and unit director, ASPIRE, J-PAL South Asia, Bengaluru.
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