Anti-poverty schemes: Govt ties up with research team

Chandigarh, April 29

To maximise the impact of the state’s anti-poverty programmes, the state government signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, South Asia (J-PAL SA) here.

The meeting was chaired by Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal. The government was represented by Chief Secretary Karan Avtar Singh and J-PAL SA was represented by its executive director Shobhini Mukerji.

Manpreet, while thanking Prof Abhijit Banerjee, co-founder and director, J-PAL and professor of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, US), and his team, emphasised the emotional ties of Punjab and Bengal for these two states had suffered much during the partition and had to struggle a lot to put their economies back on track.

J-PAL will assist the government in the formulation and evaluation of various schemes of the state in key sectors like health, school education, social welfare, labour and employment, local government, water supply and sanitation, planning, finance and rural development.

Professor Banerjee said he was looking forward to engaging with the various departments in designing and evaluating innovative approaches to solve many of the pressing problems facing the government. J-PAL is an international research network known for its evaluations of development programmes and has over 145 affiliated professors from top universities. — TNS