Before announcing a big programme, the government should test it

Iqbal Dhaliwal, global executive director of J-PAL, sits for an interview with Business Standard to discuss the role of evaluations in government programming. Reflecting on J-PAL’s approach to using randomised control trials (RCTs) for measuring the effectiveness of government programmes, Iqbal says: “The problem is people interpret somehow that we are saying: ‘Do an RCT for everything’. But that is not the case. In fact, at J-PAL, we say ‘no’ to more requests to do RCT, than we say ‘yes’.”