Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Government signed a three-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) South Asia on Wednesday to strengthen evidence-based policymaking and support the state’s development goals under Odisha Vision 2036 and 2047.
Under the partnership, J-PAL South Asia will work with various state government departments to identify priority policy challenges, generate rigorous research evidence and translate findings into actionable policy recommendations.
The MoU was signed by Rashmi Kabi, FA-cum-Additional Secretary, Planning and Convergence Department, and Shobhini Mukerji, Executive Director, J-PAL South Asia, in the presence of Chief Secretary Anu Garg, Development Commissioner-cum-Additional Chief Secretary Deoranjan Kumar Singh, Murali Mallikarjunan, Acting Associate Director (Policy), J-PAL South Asia, and senior government officials.
The partnership aims to support Odisha’s ambition of becoming ‘Samruddha Odisha’ by 2036 and ‘Viksit Odisha’ by 2047. It builds on J-PAL South Asia’s engagement with the state since 2006 in areas such as early childhood education, foundational literacy and numeracy, governance, sanitation, agriculture and gender equality.
As part of the collaboration, J-PAL will coordinate with government departments to understand their policy priorities and provide research-based support. One of the existing initiatives covered under the partnership is ‘Barnali’, a gender-equity curriculum currently being taught in around 23,000 government schools. J-PAL South Asia serves as the knowledge and research partner to the School and Mass Education Department and Breakthrough Trust for the initiative.
A Steering Committee chaired by the Chief Secretary, with senior government officials and J-PAL South Asia representatives as members, will guide the partnership. The committee will meet every six months to review project proposals, while designated nodal officers from both sides will coordinate implementation. The scope and deliverables of individual projects will be finalised in consultation with the concerned departments.
Speaking on the occasion, Chief Secretary Anu Garg said the state had set an ambitious goal of achieving Viksit Odisha as part of Viksit Bharat.
She emphasised the importance of engaging research institutions in policy research, piloting innovations and adopting data- and artificial intelligence-based interventions in line with global best practices.
Garg outlined three key roles for J-PAL: bringing relevant global evidence to address the state’s priorities, adapting promising approaches to Odisha’s requirements in consultation with government departments, and helping design and test evidence- and data-based solutions before scaling them up.
J-PAL South Asia Executive Director Shobhini Mukerji said Odisha had long been a pioneer in generating and using evidence for policymaking. She expressed confidence that the partnership would help bring global research evidence into local policy priorities, co-develop programmes and test and scale up effective interventions, while building on the state’s existing monitoring and evaluation capabilities.
J-PAL is an international research network comprising more than 1,000 affiliated researchers, with over 2,500 ongoing and completed randomised evaluations. Its co-founders and directors, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, were awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for their work in advancing evidence-based approaches to tackling poverty.
