Policies based on demonstration effect could have suboptimal outcomes (Financial Express)

Research fellows Devesh Roy and Avinash Kishore, and research analyst Vinay Sonkar from IFPRI’s South Asia Office coauthored an op-ed in India’s Financial Express. The article examines India’s Public distribution System (PDS), a social protection scheme to provide food security to India’s poor, and the need for a comprehensive assessment of the program. The authors suggest that policy implications from the assessment must take into account states’ preferences, and that one national policy might not be successful everywhere.