Debasis Barik is a Senior Fellow, at the NCAER National Data Innovation Centre. He is a demographer by training with a specialization in economic demography and ageing. He has worked on public health, migration, gender, and intergenerational well-being. However, more than a decade of work at NCAER has diversified his research career, now spanning the intersection of demography, economics, and human development. Dr. Barik’s current research focuses broadly on the adaptation process of Indian households to environmental threats.
In recent years, Dr. Barik has focused extensively on the design and implementation of large household surveys. As a member of the core team for the India Human Development Survey – Wave 3, he has helped design questions slated to be administered to nearly 50,000 households nationwide, taking into account the geographical and cultural diversity of India. He has also developed tools for remote monitoring of data and quality control.
His research has been published in journals of global repute, including World Development, Feminist Economics, and Health Economics. He has served on the expert group of National Health Accounts (NHA), formed by the National Health System Resource Centre (NHSRC), Government of India, to institutionalize the NHA estimates annually. He also contributes opinion articles to English language dailies.
Bijay Chouhan is Senior Data and Systems Specialist at NCAER. He has been working with the National Data Innovation Centre (NDIC) at NCAER. His main roles are data management, research, and prescription of technological innovations for data capture, curation, analyses, and visualisation. He oversees maintenance and improvement of systems, tools, and technology within NDIC. He has specialised in research data management, data technologies, and statistical computing. He has prepared a combined STATA data file using 7 quinquennial rounds of NSSO employment data sets. He has also prepared the CAPI Reference Questionnaire for the Delhi Metropolitan Area Survey (DMAS) baseline questionnaire. He has a Masters in Computer Science from MD University and BCom from University of Delhi.
Sonalde Desai (Distinguished University Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Maryland and Professor and Centre Director, NCAER-National Data Innovation Centre, New Delhi) is a demographer whose work deals primarily with social transformation and its impact on the lives of individuals with a focus on education, employment, gender, and maternal and child health.
She leads the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) of over 40,000 households, one of the few national panel surveys in India providing a rich and free public resource for studying the transformation of the Indian society in the 21st century between 2004 and 2023. Desai has published extensively in Indian and international journals and served on editorial boards of several major journals. She is a frequent contributor to Indian English language newspapers.
Desai received a Ph.D. from Stanford University and post-doctoral training at the University of Chicago and RAND Corporation. Desai was elected President of Population Association of America for 2022 and has been named a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She also serves on several government committees such as the Standing Committee on Statistics (MoSPI), the Task Force on Indian Statistical System (NITI Aayog), and Technical Advisory Committee on Surveys (RBI).
Dr. Sharan Sharma is an Assistant Research Professor with appointments in the departments of Sociology and the Joint Program in Survey Methodology. His research interests include cross-cultural methodology, interviewer effects, interviewer-respondent interaction, survey falsification, paradata, and modeling complex survey data. His management interests lie in the planning and implementation of large-scale complex surveys; more specifically, in organization development, capacity and capability building in developing countries, and process management.
Sharma has close to two decades of experience in the private sector, most recently as Senior Vice President for TAM India (a Kantar-Nielsen joint venture) where he held responsibilities spanning research, business development, and corporate affairs.
