The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab is based in the economics department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was started in June 2003 by Professors Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan, and is supported through an endowment from MIT alumnus Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel, after whose father it is named.
J-PAL has a network of 19 academics at different universities who work closely with local partners in 13 countries.
J-Pal chose to open its first field office in India in Chennai six months ago as the headquarters of its South Asian operations. The Institute for Financial Management and Research, a leading business school, has partnered with J-PAL to host this field office in Chennai.
Lindy Miller, head of J-Pal's South Asia operations, did her masters in public administration and international development from Harvard University. In an interview with Contributing Editor Shobha Warrier in Chennai, she spoke about their future plans.
Why did you decide to have Chennai as the centre for your South Asia operations?
J-Pal has been growing from 2003 -- when it was established -- at a fast pace and it was decided that instead of continuing to manage everything from the Cambridge, MIT Lab, we will establish regional offices around the world.
In deciding where we should pilot that regional office, we found that a lot of our work is going on in South Asia. About where we should locate, we looked at our partners in the region, and then we decided to partner with the Institute for Financial Management and Research. That decision was taken because J-Pal and IFMR have been working closely on a number of research projects, and they extended an invitation to host us in Chennai.
IFMR is a financial management research business school. In what way can a business school help you in poverty alleviation programmes?
Yes, IFMR is a business school. In addition to its business school training, it is doing a lot of research and training on various sides of India's development. IFMR has many centres like the Centre for Finance, Centre of Micro Finance Strategy, Centre for Small Enterprise Finance, etc; each doing research on different aspects of development. So, it is natural that we partner with such an institute. We felt we could collaborate with their think-tank.
Image: Lindy Miller, head of J-Pal's South Asia operations.
Photograph: Sreeram Selvaraj
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