‘Before announcing a big programme, govt should test it’

IQBAL DHALIWAL is global executive director of J-PAL (Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab), the anti-poverty centre at the economics department of Massachusetts Institute of Technology that was founded in 2003 by Nobel laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. Banerjee and Duflo pioneered Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) used to test the effectiveness of a particular intervention to determine whether a change causes a specific effect. During his recent visit to attend the Kautilya Economic Conclave in New Delhi, Dhaliwal told Asit Ranjan Mishra in an interview about evidence-based policymaking in India, and universal basic income, among other things. Edited excerpts:

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After the Nobel award to two of your founders, how things have changed for J-PAL? Have RCTs become more acceptable?

Yes, we get less questions about the methodology issues. A lot of criticism that comes to RCT is because of the impression that people create about RCT. We've always said that RCT is a very good tool in some situations, and it is a very bad tool in other situations. And the problem is people interpret somehow that we are saying: "Do an RCT for everything". But that is not the case. In fact, at J-PAL, we say “no” to more requests to do RCT, than we say “yes”. I would say the ratio is actually not more than 10:100. But yes, I think after the Prize, there is definitely more understanding and recognition.

When it comes to India, especially the central government, do you think evidence-based policymaking has increased in recent years?