Our sixth scholar in the series is Nayantara Biswas is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Clark University. Her research focuses on health equity impact evaluations of small-scale interventions and large-scale public policies.

We spoke about dissertation titled, The Impact of Social Policies on Reproductive Health, Maternal Employment, and Child Health: Evidence from India. We talked about demand side versus supply side policy interventions in public health, India's maternal health policy landscape, the ASHA workers program, variation across states in policy impact and much more.

Recorded August 28th, 2025.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:01:35) - Setting the Stage

(00:04:44) - India's Maternal–Child Health Policy Landscape

(00:08:29) - Uneven Progress: State Differences, Culture, and Measurement Challenges

(00:09:24) - Who Are the ASHA Workers?

(00:11:56) - Trust, Access, and the Information Channel

(00:14:26) - Pay, Hours, and Unionization: Why Conditions Vary by State

(00:16:50) - How Incentives Are Structured

(00:21:44) - From Design to Data: Building the District-Level Panel

(00:25:20) - We Are Measuring ASHAs—and Something Else

(00:26:45) - DiD Simplified: How the Causal Claim Works

(00:33:45) - Policy Implications: Where to Invest and How to Train

(00:36:53) - Cost-Effectiveness: Supply vs. Demand

(00:39:53) - Why Supply-Side Effects Take Time

(00:41:50) - Beyond Pregnancy: Anganwadi Daycare and Women's Work

(00:46:27) - Outro

Our fifth scholar in the series is Karthik Narayan, who is a doctoral candidate in Economics at Nuffield College and at the Department of Economics, University of Oxford. His research focuses on monetary policy, macroeconomics and finance in developing countries.

We spoke about his job market paper titled, Macroeconomic Effects of Scheduled and Unscheduled Monetary Policy Surprises.

We talked about how the Reserve Bank of India makes and announces its policies, its impact on interest rates, inflation expectations and output, measuring the impact of policy announcements, the Lucas Critique and much more.

Recorded August 28th, 2025.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:03:22) - Measuring Causality Is Hard

(00:11:16) - What Counts as a Policy Surprise?

(00:13:27) - OIS and MIBOR: Expectation Thermometers

(00:21:11) - Short term versus long term effects on asset prices

(00:27:18) - Noise and Fiscal-Monetary Coordination

(00:32:46) - Inflation Before and After the MPC

(00:37:24) - The Lucas Critique

(00:40:51) - Practical Implications

(00:45:48) - Other Research Interests

(00:47:39) - Outro

Our fourth scholar in the series is Asad Tariq, who is a doctoral candidate in Economics at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. His research focuses on the political economy of development, with a particular interest in religion, politics and public service delivery in India. We spoke about his job market paper titled, Constituencies of Change: Electoral Redistricting and Public Goods Provision in India.

We talked about the 2008 delimitation exercise, especially at the state level, gerrymandering, the median voter versus swing voters and ethnic groups, public service delivery for minorities, especially Muslims, and much more.

Recorded September 5th, 2025.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:02:42) - Packing and Cracking

(00:05:10) - From Theory to Ballots

(00:06:40) - Median Voter Logic: A Mechanism in Play

(00:08:24) - Delimitation as an exogenous shock?

(00:19:06) - Does Identity of the elected leader matter?

(00:20:10) - Enter: Swing Voters

(00:23:07) - Schools, Roads, and Wires: Evidence on Public Goods

(00:26:21) - Crunching the Numbers

(00:29:44) - Drawing the Lines: Gerrymandering Then and Now

(00:37:40) - Policy Stakes and What's Next

(00:41:45) - Outro