Quick Update on my internship/directed research

moneylenders raise interest rates! ILLEGITIMATE

Okay--I am in the middle of my amazing 10 days of Diwali travel and still pinching myself after the Taj Mahal's grandeur and the incredible hospitality and comfort provided by Akta's extended family. Since I know I'll have so much to write about Agra, Amritsar, Chandigarh, and Jaipur, I wanted to share a bit about my internship I just began last week.

As a part of my global development program, I conduct 8 weeks of directed research at an NGO matched to my interests. I was assigned to Parvati Swayamrojgaar, an organization founded in 2002 that distributes micro–business loans for education, business, and housing repairs up to 15,000 rupees. They also offer an innovative mutually generated health insurance, a Family Development Program that counsels on issues ranging from child marriage to health needs, financial literacy training, and health awareness programs and monthly medical camps.

So far I'm really impressed with the professionalism and dedication of the staff. Although I speak in very basic Hindi/Marathi and most of our conversations say "It's hot" "Would you like chai?" and "Is ___ home for an interview?", they always beam these big smiles when I walk into the office, located on the third floor of a small hospital.

I am lucky to have an incredible translator and friend, Nikhil, a student at Fergusson College. He accompanies me on visits to decipher poverty level data and measures on consumption at the branch office and also on field visits to Dandekar Pool, the slum where most of the borrowers live adjacent to my hostel. Usually, something is going on when I arrive around 2:30 after class, prepared with surveys about household consumption, education levels, and borrowing history. Once I walked into a financial literacy training and was so pleased to watch the branch manager explain risk and investment management to first time female borrowers. Interestingly, he used pictures along with a white board to describe different aspects of finance. I liked the use of a camel cartoon to demonstrate that just as a camel stores water so it won't be thirsty all the time, one can take out a loan so they don't have to scramble day to day trying to pay bills. Also key to the presentation was the use of the tortoise and the hare to describe how saving slowly pays off in the end.

Even though I've only gotten to conduct three interviews so far, I'm learning so much about what it takes to do research in India.  There are so many variables that go into designing a questionnaire, an important sense of flow to understand how to build off of questions, and recording accurate answers. Those are all challenges in any research setting. But for India, a lot more factors are in play. The language barrier can make things difficult, especially if Nikhil summarizes a statement that a woman was saying for like 2 minutes in Marathi. Timing is difficult. One has to know that at least 45 minutes at some point will be spent having chai. Sometimes people aren't home when they are supposed to be, or the collection motivator will be off somewhere instead of being around to escort us to the family home. A classic example of India time: a health camp that was supposed to start at 2 lacked a doctor until 3:45. Timing is all relative here---except for trains, generally.

I don't want to go into too much detail about what I've found out so far, since I am still only in my 1 of 3 target population samples. I will be interviewing 5 participants in the health scheme and with loans for education, 5 women just in the health scheme, and 5 women not participating in either microfinance or microinsurance.

These are my research objectives:

The study empirically examines:

1) whether the insurance program improves health seeking behaviors of the poor with respect to access to health care, out-of-pocket health spending, and preventive care behaviors;

2) whether the program reduces the health risk exposure of the poor through lowering the chance of assets depletion and of falling into severe debt when confronted with a health shock;

3) how the relief of health-related financial burdens and improved health may effect the education of slum children;

4) how the insurance program’s effects can be identified as intended effects due to the program participation and spillover effects due to the coverage of the program in the community of residence, such as those members taking out a micro loan for child education.

5) how micro loans for education can alleviate financial burdens to make attending school a reality for poor families.

6) what extraneous barriers to education remain unsolved in spite of the schemes

I'll keep you updated!