वित्त मंत्रालय के तहत एक स्वायत्त अनुसंधान संस्थान

 

Events

Seminar

GRM Talks: A webinar series on grievance redress and consumer protection in finance

  • Speaker Chittu Nagarajan, Pramod Rao and Sachin Malhan
  • Speaker profile
    Speaker:
     
    Chittu Nagarajan is a pioneer in the field of ODR for the last 20 years, a thought leader and a serial ODR Entrepreneur. Her current venture is CREK ODR a 4th Generation ODR Technology Solutions Platform. Before CREK she Co-founded Modria - the world's leading online dispute resolution platform, was the Head of eBay and PayPal Community Courts and founder of one of the first ODR platforms - ODRIndia and ODRWorld.  She is a Fellow of the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution (NCTDR) at UMass- Amherst and a Founding Board member at the International Council for Online Dispute Resolution (ICODR). Chittu is also the Managing Director of Contract Wrangler (India), a one of a kind Contract Management and Analysis Company in the Silicon Valley. She holds a Master’s degree in Alternative Dispute Resolution to Ecommerce Disputes, a Graduate degree in Law and BA in History. She is a Certified Mediator and holds a Legal Practicing Certificate.
     
    Pramod Rao is the Group General Counsel of ICICI Bank where he oversees the legal function for the ICICI group. He also serves as a member of Board of Directors of ICICI Securities Ltd, ICICI Prudential Trust Ltd and ICICI Trusteeship Services Ltd. Before this, Pramod served as General Counsel for the Citi India cluster. Pramod has a deep interest in LawTech & startups: He has co-founded a LawTech enterprise, served as a Board member for two startups, and advises and mentors startups. He is also associated with IDIA – Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access – an initiative that facilitates access to legal education for students from underprivileged backgrounds. Pramod has been an active participant in several law and regulatory reform initiatives of the government, regulators and industry forums. He is currently a member of the Legal & Banking Operations Committee of Indian Banks' Association (IBA) and of the National Committee for Regulatory Affairs constituted by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
     
    Sachin Malhan is the co-founder of Agami, an organization catalyzing innovation, entrepreneur- ship and collaborative action to advance new and improved systems of law and justice. Agami’s work on advancing Online Dispute Resolution and Digital Courts in India is well recognized. Before Agami, Sachin was the Executive Director of the Changemakers program of leading non-profit Ashoka. Sachin has previously co-founded three ventures in India – test prep pioneer Law School Tutorials (LST, now called CL LST), Rainmaker, a learning and talent platform that ultimately spun off Vahura and mylaw.net, and Inclusive Planet, a policy and platform venture focused on greater literary access for the visually impaired. For his work in technology, media, social impact and education, Sachin became an INK Fellow in 2010. Sachin is a graduate of National Law School, Bengaluru, and began his career with law firm Amarchand Mangaldas in their Mumbai offices. Sachin cares deeply about the aspiration and potential of every young person in India.
     
    Moderator: 
     
    Smriti Parsheera is a researcher at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi and a Fellow with the CyberBRICS Project hosted by the FGV Law School, Brazil. Her research focuses on digital rights and technology and the policy processes shaping these fields. She has previously worked with the Competition Commission of India and the United Nations Development Programme and was a part of the research secretariat for the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission.  Smriti graduated from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore and obtained her LLM from the University of Pennsylvania with a Certificate in Law and Business from the Wharton School. She is currently pursuing a PhD in policy studies from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
     
  • Date गुरू, 12 नवमबर, 2020
  • Time 04:00 बजे - 05:00 बजे
  • Venue Webinar
  • Abstract
    Talk: Online Dispute Resolution in India
     
    Online dispute resolution (ODR) refers to the use of technology to enable the effective and timely resolution of disputes. Its genesis lies in the redress of online grievances but the field has expanded since then to cover a range of sectors, including, property settlements, family disputes and, of course, financial transactions. This session will explore the meaning and history of ODR, the current state of the ecosystem in India, and what are India's unique challenges and opportunities. A discussion on these issues is also timely in light of the Niti Aayog's expert committee report on an ODR Policy Plan for India. 
     

    Please find below the registration link:

     

    https://tinyurl.com/y3s7wvs7

     

  • Contact email suresh.kumar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

GRM Talks: A webinar series on grievance redress and consumer protection in finance

  • Speaker M.R. Sharan, CGD
  • Speaker profile
    Speaker:
     
    M.R. Sharan is a recent PhD from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Global Development. His PhD research focused on questions centred around the political economy of rural Bihar in India. He has worked as a researcher and policy economist, with research organizations, state governments and the central government in India. Prior to his PhD, Sharan obtained a B. A. (Hons) and an M. A. in Economics from the University of Delhi. He will start as an assistant professor at the University of Maryland's Agricultural and Resource Economics Department in January 2021. His debut novel, Blue, was published worldwide by Harper Collins (2014). His second book, a narrative non-fiction account of village politics in Bihar, is being published by Amazon Westland's Context imprint in early 2021.
     
    Discussant:
     
    Sabyasachi Das is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Ashoka University. He has received his Ph.D. in Economics at Yale University. Prior to joining Ashoka he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi. His fields of specialization are political economy, public economics, and applied microeconomics. 
     
    Vimal Balasubramaniam is an Assistant Professor at Queen Mary University of London. He has received his Ph.D. in Financial Economics at Oxford University. His fields of specialization are household finance, empirical asset pricing, political economy and financial inclusion. 
     
  • Date गुरू, 05 नवमबर, 2020
  • Time 04:00 बजे - 05:00 बजे
  • Venue Webinar
  • Abstract

    Talk: Something to Complain About: How Minority Representatives Overcome Ethnic Differences 

    We study the costs of ethnic differences between local politicians and examine ways tomitigate them. Using data from over 100,000 local politicians in India, we establish – via a regression discontinuity design – that delivery of key public goods suffers when ethnic minority(low-caste) representatives govern under non-minority (high-caste) representatives. We then study an institutional innovation that mitigates these adverse consequences. In our setting,local politicians can file complaints with the higher bureaucracy under a formal complaintstechnology. We establish that low-caste politicians use the technology, filing over twice as many complaints when exogenously paired with high-caste superiors. Does filing complaints improveoutcomes, though? We run a large field experiment involving 1629 low-caste representatives where we randomize offers to file complaints on their behalf. Treated jurisdictions see a 26%rise in public good projects, accounting for 79% of the initial gap in provision, with positive spillovers onto neighboring jurisdictions.

     

    Please find below the registration link:

    https://tinyurl.com/y59hepzg

     

  • Contact email suresh.kumar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

6th Quarterly Roundtable – Data Governance Network

  • Speaker Pooja Haldea, Sharmadha Srinivasan and Vrinda Bhandari
  • Speaker profile
    Speaker Profile:
     
    Pooja Haldea is an expert in the area of applied behaviour science, especially in public health, nutrition and financial inclusion. She is a Senior Advisor to the Centre for Social and Behaviour Change, Ashoka University and leads its effort in establishing the first ever Behavioural Insights Unit in India, working closely with the Central and State governments. 
     
    Sharmadha Srinivasan is an Associate at IDFC Institute. Her research focuses on the link between infrastructure investment and job creation, healthcare as re-architecturing welfare, and regional divergence.
     
    Vrinda Bhandari works on a variety of digital rights and privacy issues alongside a commercial and criminal law practice. She has written extensively on issues of privacy and surveillance and has also been part of numerous court cases on these issues.
     
    Discussant: 
     
    Udbhav Tiwari is a lawyer who works with Mozilla on issues of data protection, content regulation, and competition issues. He has previously worked at Google, and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru where he worked on issues of cyber security, digital payments, and artificial intelligence.
     
     
  • Date बुध, 28 अक्टूबर, 2020
  • Time 04:00 बजे - 06:30 बजे
  • Venue Webinar
  • Abstract
    Presentation 1 : The System Knows Your Name: Behavioural Experiments in Data Privacy in the Global South.
     
    Presentation 2 : Regulating Digital Platforms: Bridging the Gap Between Competition Policy and Data Protection.
     
    Presentation 3 : Backdoors to Encryption: Analysing an Intermediary's Duty to Provide Technical Assistance.
     
    The Data Governance Network was created in 2019, to create a community of researchers and practitioners that can inform good governance practices in the digital ecosystem and produce innovative research on data governance in India, so as to enable evidence based policy making. The Network brings together some of India's leading policy think-tanks with a view to help create a uniquely Indian model of data governance.
     
    The webinar on the 28th/29th of October 2020, is the 6th DGN Quarterly Round Table. The event will see presentation of papers and proposals by researchers from the participating institutions, with a view to highlight the latest research and solicit public feedback thereon. The event seeks to bring together institutional and individual experts, convening stakeholders across industry, government and academia, in order to fuel an engine of implementable policy research. 
     

    Please find below the registration link:  

    https://tinyurl.com/y6to4x36

     

     

  • Contact email suresh.kumar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

GRM Talks: A webinar series on grievance redress and consumer protection in finance

  • Speaker Chad Tompkins, CFPB
  • Speaker profile
     
    Chad Tompkins is the Section Chief for Data and Governance at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and has been there for the past 9 years. His expertise with building the infrastructure goes back even further with the U.S. consumer product safety commission, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. 
     
     
    Discussant: Manoj Pandey
     
    Manoj Pandeyis currently serving as the Joint Secretary, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India. In the past, he has been Commissioner of Income Tax, looking after the appellate functions relating to International Taxation. Besides, he has been part of the Advance Pricing Agreement Team negotiating Transfer Pricing Agreements with Multinational Corporations. He has been on deputation on earlier occasions with different Ministries & Departments of Government of India including Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, Government of India. He also served as Additional Director General and Adviser, Competition Commission of India.
     
     
    Moderator: K P Krishnan
     
    K. P. Krishnan is the IEPF Chair Professor in Regulatory Economics at NCAER (National Council of Applied Economic Research). Prior to this he was the Union Secretary in the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Special & Additional Secretary, Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development; Additional Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Ministry of Finance; Principal Secretary, Department of Personnel & Administrative Reforms in the Government of Karnataka. He has held a number of other positions after joining the Indian Administrative Service in 1983.
     
  • Date गुरू, 15 अक्टूबर, 2020
  • Time 04:00 बजे - 05:00 बजे
  • Venue Webinar
  • Abstract

    Talk Title: Building a Grievance Redress System: The CFPB Experience

     

    The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was created after the financial crisis of 2008 to provide a single point of enforcing federal consumer financial laws in the United States. As the primary consumer financial protection authority, the CFPB has amassed enormous experience over the decade in building and implementing a grievance redress system by way of its Consumer Complaints process and integrating it with both financial firms, and consumers, and monitoring the interaction that takes place through the system. This talk will shed light on the inner workings of the Consumer Complaints system. 

     

    Please find below the registration link:  

    https://tinyurl.com/y2tw338r

  • Contact email suresh.kumar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

GRM Talks: A webinar series on grievance redress and consumer protection in finance

  • Speaker Deepak Saxena, Srishti Sharma
  • Speaker profile
    Deepak Saxena is the Assistant Director of CUTS International, Jaipur working on issues relating to consumer protection. Deepak is also a coordinator of the Grahak Sahayta Kendra run by CUTS International. 
     
    Srishti Sharma is a research fellow at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. Her research interests lie at the intersection of Economic policy and development. Her current projects focus on the process of grievance redressal in the formal financial sector and the effects of privatization on firms' performance. As a research assistant at Ashoka University, she worked on designing field experiments to investigate the declining female labor force participation rates in India. Her experience as a research intern at UNESCO India, Harvard University Asia Center, and the Center for Civil Society entailed extensive research on the field. Srishti received her Master's degree in Economics from the Shiv Nadar University. 
     
  • Date गुरू, 01 अक्टूबर, 2020
  • Time 04:00 बजे - 05:00 बजे
  • Venue Webinar
  • Abstract
    Talk 1: Addressing Grievances Outside of the Court: Lessons from Grahak Sahayta Kendra
     
    Grahak Sahayta Kendra (GSK) helps financial consumers address their grievances with physical centres that serve as a non-judicial stop point for consumers. We present lessons from the GSK on designs of grievance redress, and the nature of complaints from financial consumers. 
     
    Talk 2: Notes on Grievance Redress from the Field
     
    We present lessons from focussed group discussions that were carried out in Nagpur and Mumbai among varying demographic groups accessing different financial products. We gathered insights on access to financial products, incidence of grievances in the formal financial sector, and how consumers interact with formal and informal mechanisms of grievance redress. We found low levels of reporting of grievances irrespective of the economic background and access to financial products among consumers. Lack of awareness of such mechanisms is the most cited reason and common across groups. Consumers from rural areas with poor economic background and limited access to finance showed a high level of tolerance to financial grievances. They cited the fear of retribution as an additional reason for not airing their grievances. On the other hand, the consumers from urban households having high access to financial products reported the complexity of the grievance redress process and lack of trust in such mechanisms as the contributing factors.
     
    Please register here: https://tinyurl.com/y4pxjl3x
  • Contact email suresh.kumar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

GRM Talks: A webinar series on grievance redress and consumer protection in finance

  • Speaker Karan Gulati
  • Speaker profile
    Karan Gulati is a lawyer and a researcher at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. His research interests include judicial administration and regulatory governance.
     
     
    Discussant: Dr. K.P. Krishnan
     
    Dr K P Krishnan is the IEPF Chair Professor in Regulatory Economics at NCAER (National Council of Applied Economic Research). Prior to this he was the Union Secretary in the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Special & Additional Secretary, Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development; Additional Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Ministry of Finance; Principal Secretary, Department of Personnel & Administrative Reforms in the Government of Karnataka. He has held a number of other positions after joining the Indian Administrative Service in 1983.
     
  • Date गुरू, 17 सितमबर, 2020
  • Time 04:00 बजे - 05:00 बजे
  • Venue Webinar
  • Abstract

    Talk Title: “How have Indian courts dealt with consumer finance disputes? "

    This paper studies the role of courts in consumer nance disputes in India. It describes the structure of the courts that consumers can access, such as the consumer courts established under the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 (and now 2019), High Courts and the Supreme Court of India. It finds that in the case of banking disputes, courts have generally sided with the consumer when banks behaved contrary to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) circulars. In the case of insurance, courts have taken a pro-industry contractual compliance stance. Hence, consumers did not get a remedy in cases where the contracts had unfair terms. The paper also finds that courts tend to award low compensation, take a long time for adjudication, do not have systems for class action suits, and generally lack specialization to deal with consumer finance issues. All of these are important issues that must be addressed for courts to become more effective in providing relief regarding consumer finance (and other) disputes.

     

    This seminar is part of a series of webinars on "Grievance  redress and consumer protection in finance", to be held every alternate Thursday starting September, 2020. .

    Please find below the registration link: 
     
     
  • Contact email suresh.kumar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

GRM Talks: A webinar series on grievance redress and consumer protection in finance

  • Speaker Malavika Raghavan and Vimal Balasubramaniam
  • Speaker profile

    Malavika Raghavan is a lawyer working on inter-disciplinary research in India, focusing on the impacts of digitisation in finance on the lives of lower-income individuals. She currently heads the Future of Finance Initiative at Dvara Research.

     

    Vimal Balasubramaniam is an Assistant Professor at the Queen Mary University of London. His research interests include Household Finance, Behavioural Finance, and Empirical Asset Pricing.

     
  • Date गुरू, 03 सितमबर, 2020
  • Time 04:00 बजे - 05:00 बजे
  • Venue Webinar
  • Abstract
    We are pleased to announce a webinar series on grievance redress and consumer protection in finance every alternate Thursday starting September 2020. The first of these events will be held on 3rd September, 2020 from 4-5 PM IST. Please RSVP to Suresh Kumar (suresh.kumar@nipfp.org.in) for the Webex link for the event.
     
    The first event will have two talks:
     
    Talk 1: Transaction failures & Redress in the Aadhaar-enabled Payment Systems – Protecting consumers within digital financial infrastructures, by Malavika Raghavan, Dvara Research
     
     
    Abstract: The Aadhaar enabled Payment System (AePS) witnessed a surge in transactions during India’s COVID-19-induced lockdown. This surge in AePS transactions in the early months of the lockdown was accompanied by reports of spikes in transaction failures, raising many urgent issues for consumer protection and redress. 
     
    This talk will frame our understanding of the nature of AePS transaction failures revealed in recent months. It will identify key categories of transaction failures (based on data from four financial institutions) and map these within the AePS process flow. The analysis reveals several consumer protection concerns, especially relating to redress mechanisms that create risks for low-income users in a crisis. Some immediate and medium-term solutions are suggested for discussion.
     
     
    Talk 2: Estimating customer complaints using Twitter feeds, by Vimal Balasubramaniam, Queen Mary University of London
     
    Abstract: This talk will present an analysis of Twitter posts related to the banking sector surrounding the COVID Crisis. It asks: a) was there an increase in the number of complaints in accessing financial services during the lockdown? and b) what is the nature of the problems we observe? Such an analysis does not tell us how the system resolved such problems. However, it presents us with statistics on the kinds of problems faced and sheds light on where the bottlenecks lay in the financial system, in general, and in the implementation of specific policy measures.
  • Contact email suresh.kumar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Unified Payments Interface: Towards greater cyber sovereignty

  • Speaker Sunil Abraham
  • Speaker profile

    Sunil Abraham is an Ashoka Fellow and Endowed Professor at Artex University of Arts, where his work focuses on digital policy and design practices. He was formerly the Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore/New Delhi, where he worked on issues of accessibility, access to knowledge, internet governance and telecommunications. He is also the Founder and Director of Mahiti, a twenty-year-old social enterprise that aims to reduce the cost and complexity of ICTs for the voluntary sector by using free software. Sunil also managed the International Open Source Network, a project of UNDP’s APDIP, serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region from 2004-2007

  • Date गुरू, 13 अगस्त, 2020
  • Time 04:00 बजे - 05:30 बजे
  • Venue Webinar
  • Abstract

    Sunil Abraham will give a talk on his paper titled “Unified Payments Interface: Towards Greater Cybersovereignty” (ORF Issue Brief, No. 380, July 2020). The paper analyses India’s experience in setting up the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and outlines lessons that can be emulated by other countries aiming to provide affordable, ubiquitous and quality digital payment services to their public. The paper argues that the interventionist approach and public-private partnerships fostered by the Indian government have paid off, though there are course corrections required to protect the UPI ecosystem.

    Webinar Registration: https://forms.gle/bcmnTvVMEwMuNFtx6

     

     


Conference

Papers in Public Economics and Policy (PPEP)

  • Date गुरू, 26 मार्च, 2020 - शुक्र, 27 मार्च, 2020
  • Venue Auditorium and Conference Hall, NIPFP
  • Details
    The National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) has initiated a lecture series and an annual conference on “Papers in Public Economics and Policy”, in honour of Dr.Raja J.Chelliah.  The seventh event in this series is being organized on 26-27th of March, 2020, at New Delhi.  Dr. Kaushik Basu, C Marks Professor of International Studies, Cornell University, has kindly agreed to deliver the Memorial Lecture.  Papers on issues broadly in the area of Public Economics and Policy can be submitted for the conference.  Papers received would be subject to review.  Accepted papers may be published after suitable revision as working paper of NIPFP.  For all accepted papers, the Institute will reimburse travel expenses and take care of local logistics.  
     
    Submission of full Paper: 31st January, 2020
     
    Authors of accepted papers would be intimated by the middle of February 2020
     
    The full papers should be sent in soft copy to       : ppep@nipfp.org.in 
     
    Any other communication regarding the Conference can also be addressed to dinesh.nayak@nipfp.org.in or alka.matta@nipfp.org.in 
     
  • Schedule
  • Contact email alka.matta@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Next Generation Justice Platform: Vision, Implementation, and Legal Framework

  • Speaker Surya Prakash BS, DAKSH
  • Speaker profile

    Surya Prakash BS is the Programme Director at DAKSH - a civil society organisation which conducts research on judicial performance, and on judicial reform. He has been working in the area of judicial reforms since 2015. Prior to that he worked in large technology MNE’s, where he handled tax related functions. He is a chartered accountant by training, and also holds an LLB from the Karnataka State Law University.

  • Date गुरू, 12 मार्च, 2020
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Committee room, First Floor, R&T Building
  • Abstract

    The justice system has made considerable advances in adoption of ICT given the scale of its operation and the large population whose needs it must meet. The design of information systems used by institutions such as the Indian judiciary, lawyers, government departments, police, and prison authorities, does not exploit the full extent of currently commonplace technology, owing to legislative, institutional, and resource constraints. In a recent whitepaper series, DAKSH provides a roadmap for a transformation of the justice system that is not merely technologically oriented, but which sets goals which the process should fulfill, and proposes strategic, technical, legislative courses of action to reach these goals. The speaker - Surya Prakash BS - will present the highlights of these white papers in this seminar.

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

"One Hundred Homes" - A Visual Survey of India

  • Speaker Prof. Jeffrey Hammer, Economists Without Borders(ECWB) and NCAER
  • Speaker profile

    Speaker profile

    Jeff Hammer is currently a principal in “Economists without Borders”, a non-resident Senior Fellow at NCAER, Delhi and the originator of the One Hundred Homes project. From 2008 to 2018 he taught development economics and health policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public andInternational Affairs at Princeton University. From 1982 to 2007 he had been aLead Economist at the World Bank working on issues of public economics and public expenditure, emphasizing service delivery in the social sectors – particularly in health. He was on the core team of the 2003 World Development Report: “MakingServices Work for Poor People” and was at the Resident Mission in Delhi from2004 to 2007, working on improving services through better accountability. Hewas educated at Swarthmore College and has his Ph.D. in economics from MIT.

     

  • Date बुध, 04 मार्च, 2020
  • Time 04:00 बजे - 05:30 बजे
  • Venue Auditorium, Ground Floor, Main Building, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, 18/2 Satsang Vihar Marg, Special Ins
  • Abstract

    Abstract

    “One hundred homes” illustrates with pictures, videos, 360 shots, and family descriptions what people who are the respondents of the standard government surveys look like in real life. It organizes the one hundred visual essays according to the results of a household consumption survey that are used by researchers, statisticians and policy makers to bring out the richness of life under the numbers.

    This “visual survey” is the result of a collaboration between journalists, economists, sociologists, photographers, videographers, survey researchers and others.

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

The Brexit Meltdown: Populism and the Dynamics of Global Decline

  • Speaker Prof. David Long
  • Speaker profile
    Dr. David Long is Professor of International Affairs and Associate Director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He has published widely on the history of international theory and on the foreign policy of the European Union. He is a past president of the European Community Studies Association-Canada.
  • Date मंगल, 21 जनवरी, 2020
  • Time 03:00 बजे - 05:00 बजे
  • Venue Conference Room, Ground Floor, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    Among the many accounts of the reasons and consequences of Brexit for the United Kingdom, nationalist populism is frequently accorded importance. In this paper, I consider the relationship of the rise of populist discourse to the impact of global decline. While populism is a all-too-obvious recent trend in democratic politics, in a number of contexts – whether the US, Russia or even Turkey – it is associated both materially and ideationally with notions of a glorious past, a less than satisfactory present, and the looming unknown of the future. The paper will unpack the discourse of decline and examine the rhetorical device where the people ‘take back control’ and ‘make great again’, to use but two populist catchphrases.
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

The Trilemma of Gender Based Analysis

  • Speaker Prof. Frances Woolley
  • Speaker profile
    I am a Professor of Economics at Carleton University, cross appointed to the School of Public Policy. My research centres on families and public policy. My most-cited work is on modelling family-decision making, measuring inequality within the household, feminist economics, and tax-benefit policy towards families. Recently I have devoted more time to social media and popular writing, primarily for Worthwhile Canadian Initiative and the Globe and Mail.
     
    My twitter profile says “I theorize about life.” I delight in using economics to explain everyday experience, and in sharing that passion with my students. I also have an on-going commitment to professional service, having served as Secretary Treasurer and also President of the Canadian Economics Association, co-editor of Review of Economics of the Household, on the editorial boards of Feminist Economics and the Journal of Socio-Economics and as Associate Dean of the Faculty of Public Affairs at Carleton University.
     
    I hold a BA from Simon Fraser University, an MA from Queen’s, and completed my doctorate at the London School of Economics, under the supervision of Tony Atkinson.
  • Date गुरू, 16 जनवरी, 2020
  • Time 03:00 बजे - 05:00 बजे
  • Venue Conference Room, Ground Floor, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    In 2016, Canada’s the newly elected Trudeau government set out a Gender Based Analysis Plus action plan, with the plus referring to intersectionality. GBA+ capacity was increased, and conducting GBA+ became a higher priority throughout government. In 2018 the Canadian Gender Budgeting Act was passed, enshrining gender budgeting as official government policy. In 2019 the federal budget, for the first time, contained a gendered analysis of all new budget initiatives. 
     
    In this paper we use the Canadian experience to argue that governments attempting to incorporate GBA+ into the policy process face a trilemma: it is impossible for the GBA+ to be simultaneously complete, open, and politically palatable. A complete GBA+ analysis identifies how policies impact different groups differently: the costs and benefits a policy creates for different groups of men and women. For example, university attendance rates differ substantially between men and women, across regions, and according to ethnic origin and other characteristics. A complete GBA+ analysis of educational policies such as, for example, reducing the interest rates on student loans, would take account such differences in who benefits from the policies, and thus make it clear that some group of people receive, on average, greater benefits from such a policy than others. Yet as soon as it becomes apparent that a policy benefits some groups of people more than others, this fact can be used to mobilize the people who do not benefit from the policy to oppose it. Thus a complete and thorough GBA+ evaluation of policy cannot be made open and transparent, if the government wishes the process to be politically palatable. 
     
    In this paper we explore how the Canadian government’s GBA+ initiative has negotiated the tension between completeness, openness, and political survival. We argue that there is no simple way out of this trilemma, but suggest that having an independent agency responsible for evaluating the GBA+ process is one possible solution. 
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in