NCAER with its consortium partners, University of Maryland and University of Michigan, has recently set up a new National Data Innovation Centre (NDIC). The main objective of NCAER-NDIC is to serve as a laboratory for experiments in data collection, interfacing with partners in think tanks, Indian and international universities, and government. Initial funding for NDIC is provided by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr Sonalde Desai, Senior Fellow, NCAER and Professor, University of Maryland, is serving as its first director. 

India’s rapid transformation in data-oriented research has led to a growing demand from researchers and policymakers for rapid, high-quality and policy-relevant data. Changing socio-economic conditions also necessitate rethinking of the kind of data that are collected, as also ways in which they are collated and made accessible to users. In this context, NDIC is being visualised as a national centre of innovation and excellence in data collection that will build research capacity to strengthen India’s data ecosystem to meet the 21st Century challenges. NDIC forms an important core of NCAER’s long-standing data collection activities.

The main objective of NCAER-NDIC is to serve as a laboratory for experiments in data collection, interfacing with partners in think tanks, Indian and international universities, and government. In particular, the Centre will address problems with existing data streams and important data currently not collected; foster, incubate, mainstream, and increase uptake of data innovations; and improve the triangulation and compatibility of distinct but related datasets. It will also: (1) promote innovative data and quality assurance modules using new data collection methods and technologies, initially in the areas of gender empowerment, financial inclusion, health and agriculture; (2) build connections with diverse stakeholders, including data researchers, and data professionals located within government national data agencies; and (3) enhance skills through formal and informal training and through the building of a broader collaborative network. 

For additional information, please contact Prof Sonalde Desai.

Tracking Lives and Livelihoods through the Pandemic:
Results from the Delhi Metropolitan Area Study (DMAS)

On March 2, 2022, NCAER-NDIC team discussed results from the Delhi Metropolitan Area Study (DMAS), which interviewed residents from Delhi-NCR in 2019, before the onset of the pandemic, and continued to follow their lives since then, as they struggled to protect their health and livelihoods, and to educate their children through the biggest global crisis of our generation. The discussions were held at a webinar session. The team interviewed over 5,200 households in NCR, with samples drawn from Delhi as well as districts in the neighbouring States of Haryana, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. The DMAS survey was initiated in early 2019 and continued until November 2021, allowing us to assess the lives of our respondents before and after COVID-19, and the changes brought about by the pandemic. The team members participating in the conversation included Sonal Desai, Santanu Pramanik , Reem Ashraf, Ruchi Jain, Abhinav Motheram, Debasis Barik, Manjistha Banerji, and Pallavi Choudhuri.

Know the details about the webinar here. 

A Press Note and a Presentation on DMAS findings is available for download. 

India Covid-19 Poverty Monitor: January 2022
 

India Covid-19 Poverty Monitor bulletin is compiled by NCAER National Data Innovation Centre and The Chronic Poverty Advisory Network (CPAN)  hosted at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London, using a combination of original qualitative data collected from a small number of affected people in India, interviews with local leaders and community development actors, and secondary data from a range of different sources. Read more in the January Bulletin.

Vaccination Targets and Progress in India (As on 18 August 2021)

The NCAER National Data Innovation Centre has been analysing data on COVID-19 vaccination coverage and vaccine hesitancy since the launch of COVID vaccination in India. The graph below shows daily doses of vaccination from 16 January 2021 till 18 August 2021. According to some sources, India plans to inoculate all its estimated 944 million adults by December 2021. In order to achieve this target of administering at least 1,888 million doses (assuming 2 doses per adult) in the remaining 135 days, the daily number of doses needs to be 9.8 million, on an average.

So far India has administered approximately 565.5 million doses, with a majority of them being Covishield (86.9%), followed by Covaxin (12.4%), and Sputnik V, which has just started being administered (~ 7 lakh doses given so far). The findings in the graph can be summarised as follows: 

• The current average rate of vaccination is below the ideal rate of 9.8 million per day required to achieve the target of vaccinating all adults by 31 December 2021.
  
• The temporal trend suggests a huge variation in the daily doses of vaccination:
  
• Administration of the daily doses of vaccination started picking up pace in mid-March 2021 when the vaccination drive opened for people aged above 60 years and those above 45 years with co-morbidities.
  
• There was a sharp decline in the progress of vaccination towards the end of phase 2 (end of March 2021).
  
• It picked up pace again in early April but there was a sharp decline in mid-April due to the advent of Wave 2 of COVID.
  
• Thereafter, it resumed its earlier pace in June 2021 when the second wave started subsiding, followed by a declining trend in early July 2021.
  
• Currently, we are witnessing an increasing trend again (from mid-July to mid-August 2021).

Delhi NCR Coronavirus Telephone Survey (DCVTS)

NCAER has conducted two Rounds of its Delhi National Capital Region Coronavirus Telephone Survey (DCVTS) in April 2020. NCAER’s National Data Innovation Centre has carried out Round 1 and Round 2 of this rapid response telephonic surveys in the Delhi NCR region in April to assess:

• people’s knowledge of the Coronavirus
• people’s attitudes and perceptions towards the risk of a Coronavirus infection
• people’s knowledge of preventive and control measures, especially social distancing, and the feasibility of adhering to them
• the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on people’s livelihoods, income, social life, and access to essential items 

Round 1 of the Delhi NCR Coronavirus Telephone Survey (DCVTS-1), conducted between April 3 and 6 interviewed 1,756 adults, each sharing the experience of their household. The results of this round was released on April 12, 2020. Round 2 of the DCVTS (DCVTS-2), conducted between April 23 and 26, interviewed 1,885 adults from a different set of households selected randomly from the same urban blocks and villages of Delhi NCR that were sampled in Round 1. The results of the Round 2 of DCVTS was released on May 1, 2020.

Round 1 and Round 2 of DCVTS were conducted each about a week prior to the announced end of each lockout period to generate evidence to support the crucial decisions policymakers are faced with.   

NCAER launched Round 3 of its Delhi National Capital Region Coronavirus Telephone Survey (DCVTS) on June 15, 2020. The DCVTS-3 will build in crucial ways on the important and timely findings of the first two NCAER DCVTS Rounds. It will  resurvey all households contacted in both Rounds 1 and 2, doubling the size of its sample and increasing the precision of its findings.

DCVTS Round 1 Press Release
DCVTS Round 1 Presentation
DCVTS Round 1 Questionnaire

DCVTS Round 2 Press Release
DCVTS Round 2 Presentation
DCVTS Round 2 Questionnaire

DCVTS Round 3 Press Release
DCVTS Round 3 Presentation
DCVTS Round 3 Questionnaire

DCVTS Round 4 Press Release
DCVTS Round 4 Presentation
DCVTS Round 4 Questionnaire

2020

Call for Papers and Training Participation

The NCAER National Data Innovation Centre will host the First International Survey Methodology Conference in India on June 10-11, 2020 at the NCAER India Centre. The Conference seeks to bring together government statistical personnel, academia, and the global research community to explore the challenges and opportunities offered by this changing landscape of data capture, data analysis, data curation, and data usage. The Conference includes a prior training programme.

The last date for submission of proposals has lapsed. Detailed information is available here.

2019

Request for Proposals (RFP) on Methodological Innovations to Improve Data Quality.
 

NCAER-NDIC invites proposals on methods to improve data quality across the following themes: gender equity, women’s time use, health system, health insurance and healthcare expenditure, employment and unemployment, family planning, and financial inclusion. The proposals should ideally focus on generating evidence pertaining to these specific areas relevant to data quality: Sampling frame for selection of ultimate sampling units, Use of paradata as a quality assurance mechanism, Controlling interviewer bias and variability in outcomes, Real time survey data and consistency checks, Use of machine learning techniques to identify patterns automatically, Secondary data analysis to quantify variability between interviewers. Applicants affiliated to any academic or research institutes, non-profit organisations, and private companies that have experience in primary data collection and work out of offices located within India are eligible to apply. The Centre will support a budget of up to Rs. 20,00,000/- (inclusive of all applicable taxes) for a period of 12 months. 

The last date for submission of proposals has lapsed.  Detailed information is available here.

Request for Student Research Proposals supervised by Faculty Members 
 

NCAER-NDIC invites proposal on methodologies for data collection and analysis across the following domains: gender equity, health system, health insurance and healthcare expenditure, employment and unemployment, family planning, and financial inclusion. The proposals should focus on innovative ideas to improve data quality pertaining to these aspects; Fulfilling data needs and bridging gaps, Mode of data collection, Questionnaire designing, Social desirability bias, Interview setting, Survey implementation. Students pursuing their PhD degree or equivalent in any Indian academic or research institute are eligible to apply. The Centre will support a budget of up to Rs 6 lakhs for a period of 12 months.

The last date for submission of proposals has lapsed.  Detailed information is available here.

2018 

NCAER-NDIC has recently invited Proposals on Methodological Experiments with Telephone Surveys in India. the focus of the current RFP is to seek proposals on data collection experiments involving phone surveys across the following themes: household income and expenditure, labour force participation, financial inclusion, health insurance and out-of-pocket expenditure, gender equality and empowerment, other forms of social inequality, and agriculture. Applicants affiliated to any academic or research institutes, non-profit organisations, and private companies that have experience in primary data collection and have offices within India are eligible to apply. The Centre will support a budget of up to Rs. 20 lakh (inclusive of all applicable taxes) for a period of 12 months.

The last date for submission of proposals has lapsed.  Detailed information is available here.

NCAER-NDIC has also invited Student Research Proposals supervised by faculty members on methodologies for data collection and analysis across the following domains: gender equity, income from different sources, consumption expenditure, employment and unemployment, financial inclusion, health insurance and health expenditure, and agriculture. The Centre will support a budget of up to Rs. 6 lakhs for a period of 12 months. 

The last date for submission of proposals has lapsed.  Detailed information is available here. 

• Publications
• Events
• Researchers

	India Human Development Survey Forum, May 2022
	India Human Development Survey Forum, April 2022
	Coverage and Nonresponse Bias in Telephone Surveys during the COVID-19 Lockdown in India
	Urban Exclusion: Rethinking Social Protection in the Wake of the Pandemic in India
	Measuring Women’s Empowerment in the Global South

	Long-term Impact of the Pandemic on People’s Lives and Lessons for Developing an Inclusive Social Protection Programme
	Re-imagining Data Systems as if Women Counted
	Tracking Lives and Livelihoods through the Pandemic
	Data Talks: The NCAER Data Innovation Centre Methodology Seminars (Fourth Seminar)
	Data Talks: The NCAER Data Innovation Centre Methodology Seminars (Third Seminar)

Manjistha Banerji Manjistha Banerji is a Fellow at National Council of Applied Economic Research. Her primary areas of research are family demography, social change and gender, migration, education and development and survey methods. At the National Data Innovation Centre at the Council, she is involved with experimentations on different data collection techniques in the Delhi Metropolitan Area, telephonic surveys to assess the impact of the COVID pandemic in Delhi NCR and in questionnaire design for the upcoming round of India Human Development Survey. She completed her PhD in 2012 from the Department of Sociology, University of Maryland at College Park.

Debasis Barik Debasis Barik is a Fellow at NCAER, working in the area of public health and mortality. His research interests are in public health, demography, migration, gender, labour and social security. His current research focuses on health and health systems analysis. His other research interests include analysing the issues arising out of demographic transition in India.

Pallavi Choudhuri Pallavi Choudhuri is a Senior Fellow at the NCAER-National Data Innovation Center (NDIC), with primary research interests in development, informality, employment, inequality, and gender. At NDIC, her recent work has focused on leading experiments related to measurement gaps in income and consumption data and women’s time use data. Prior to joining NCAER, Choudhuri taught courses in Economics and Finance at the Grand Valley State University as a Visiting Assistant Professor and as an Instructor at the University of Wyoming. She has a PhD. in Economics from the University of Wyoming.

Bijay Chouhan Bijay Chouhan is working as Data Manager with NCAER’s new National Data Innovation Centre. His interest area includes advanced data and IT technologies. Bijay has an experience of  around 15 years in applying information technology to processes and systems. An IT professional with considerable experience in managing and analysis of high volume of primary/ secondary dataset,  he has been associated with many national/international think-tanks and institutes as IT and Data consultant.

Sonalde Desai Sonalde Desai is a Professor at NCAER with a joint appointment as Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland. She directs the NCAER-National Data Innovation Centre (NDIC), a newly established Centre by NCAER with its consortium partners, University of Maryland and University of Michigan. She is an internationally known demographer whose work deals primarily with human development in developing countries with a particular focus on gender and class inequalities. While most of her research focuses on India, she has also undertaken comparative studies across South Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. At present, Sonalde Desai is leading the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), India’s only nationally representative panel study with interviews in 2004–05 and 2011–12. The next wave of IHDS is planned for 2022-23. The IHDS is used by over 11,000 users worldwide and has led to over 1000 papers and dissertations.    Desai is a member of the editorial committee of Population and Development Review and has served on the editorial advisory boards of many Indian and international journals. At present, she is the President of Population Association of America.   She has published articles in a wide range of Indian and international sociology and demography journals and is a frequent contributor to Indian newspapers.