India Policy Insights

Also referred to as Burden of Disease and Deprivation in India across Micro and Macro Public Policy Units

Currently, public policy discussions and decisions around population health and development in India are limited to data that is collected and reported at broader levels of districts or states. Yet recent research has shown there to be significant variation in key indicators of population health and development within these macro levels, underscoring the importance of disaggregated zones of villages and micro public policy units such as Gram Panchayat (GP). In addition, district administrative areas do not typically align with the geopolitical units represented by elected politicians (e.g. Parliamentary Constituency (PC) and Assembly Constituency (AC)), leaving political representatives in the dark about the particular needs of their constituents. Having accurate and up-to-date data on population health and development publicly available for all ACs and PCs can improve political leadership and accountability in India.

Harvard Pop Center faculty member S (Subu) V Subramanian, PhD, and visiting scientist Rockli Kim, ScD, have been awarded a 2.2 million dollar grant by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve precision public policy, public financing, and governance in India related to indicators of population health and development. By leveraging novel geospatial and statistical methodologies, a major aim of the project is to collate and analyze population health and development data geocoded to multiple micro and macro public policy units (GPs, ACs, and PCs) and make robust predictions at each level. Another aim of the project is to foster evidence-based policy discussion, formulation, and action by disseminating this targeted data to the public domain and engaging with multiple stakeholders, including elected representatives, bureaucratic leaderships, citizen groups, policy advocacy groups, and academics.

The project features the development of web-based intelligent public data and analytics platform for data storage and dissemination. Visit this page to learn more!

This project is connected to the research taking place at the Geographic Insights Lab.

Read about this research in the news…