Nobel Lessons

To really improve its welfare policy, India needs improved data and accountability - look at the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for economics, Angus Deaton, who has had a long professional association with India. And various lessons from his work are quite relevant to Indian public policy today, for example the lesson about measurement being the key to enforcing accountability. Deaton was a pioneer in devising ways to measure consumption, which led to a better understanding of poverty and ways to fight it. India, unfortunately, falls short when it comes to measurement.

For an India audience, the Nobel is a welcome development as his work has been of particular relevance to our challenges. We spend over Rs 3 trillion annually on subsidies and welfare measurers but make slow progress in poverty reduction, with almost a third of the population still poor. India’s fight against poverty, however, has benefitted from Deaton’s body of work and will continue to gain from his relentless drive to understand the way things work.

As a matter of fact India is a land of opportunity and the source of inspiration to scholars and economists to fathom more and more  and come to findings that could fetch awards and prizes.