Punjab Government on Saturday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Abdul latif Jameel Poverty Action lab, South Asia (J-PAl SA) at Punjab Bhawan here.

While the Punjab Government was represented by Chief Secretary Karan Avtar Singh, the J-PAl SA was represented by its Executive Director Shobhini Mukerji. The meeting was chaired by Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal. The collaboration aims to institutionalise an evidence-based approach to policy making in order to maximise the impact of the State’s anti-poverty programmes.

The Finance Minister while thanking Prof Abhijit Banerjee, co-founder and Director, J-PAl and professor of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT- USA) 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.

He strongly hoped that the evaluation and research to be carried out by J-PAl would prove to be a game changer in bringing to the forefront new concepts and methodologies in policy planning and implementation with regard to various sectors connected with public welfare resulting in better infrastructural facilities.

On the occasion, the Chief Secretary, Karan Avtar Singh expressed hope that this MoU would pave the way for cooperative institutional relation to encourage cooperation in the sphere of public policy.

Appreciating the State’s initiative, Professor Banerjee said, “I am very excited by the desire of the Punjab Government to use rigorous evidence and data in its decision making to improve the effectiveness of development programmes. We look forward to engaging with the various departments in designing and evaluating innovative approaches to solve many of the pressing problems facing the Government.”

Notably, the J-PAl is a leading international research network known for its rigorous impact evaluations of development programmes, and has over 145 affiliated professors from top universities including MIT, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, london School of Economics and FlAME Pune.

J-PAl SA will assist the Punjab Government in the formulation and evaluation of various schemes of the State in key sectors like health, school education, social welfare, labour and employment.