NCAER - NATIONAL DATA INNOVATION CENTRE
NDIC offer commentary and insights on the latest issues in human development, gender, business and economics. Our staff are regularly quoted in the world’s leading media outlets.
Dr Sonalde Desai (Professor and Centre Director, NCAER-NDIC) recently participated as a speaker in the second episode of Parisila Perspectives, NCAER's podcast on macroeconomy and public policy. Hosted by NCAER Director General Mr. Suresh Goyal, the episode explored the theme "Data-led Change, Evidence-led Policy" and featured Dr Desai alongside Mr. Adil Zainulbhai, former Chairman of... Read More
Dr Sonalde Desai (Professor and Centre Director, NCAER-NDIC) recently participated as a speaker in the second episode of Parisila Perspectives, NCAER's podcast on macroeconomy and public policy. Hosted by NCAER Director General Mr. Suresh Goyal, the episode explored the theme "Data-led Change, Evidence-led Policy" and... Read More
Dr Pallavi Choudhuri (Senior Fellow and Deputy Director, NCAER-NDIC) was invited to deliver a lecture on "Measuring the Outcomes: Gender-Disaggregated Data" at the Capacity Partnership Workshop on Gender-Responsive Agricultural Policy and Data Systems, organised by IFPRI South Asia in collaboration with the Department of Agriculture... Read More
On Day 1 of the NCAER Workshop on the Economics of AI and Digital Public Infrastructure held on 5–6 June 2026, Mr. Manish Sabharwal, Vice Chairman of the NCAER Governing Board, released the research report, “The Evolving Landscape of Digital Inclusion in India.” The report... Read More
From 7th to 9th May 2026, members of the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) Team participated in the Population Association of America (PAA 2026) Annual Meeting held in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. NCAER faculty members Sonalde Desai (Professor and Centre Director, NCAER-NDIC), Pallavi Choudhuri (Senior... Read More
Dr Pallavi Choudhuri, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director at NCAER-NDIC, was invited to speak on gender statistics at the "Gender Statistics and Women-led Development" panel, moderated by Dr. Pankaj Srivastava, Statistical Advisor to the Ministry of Women and Child Development. The Capacity Building Workshop on... Read More
Dr Pallavi Choudhuri, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director at NCAER-NDIC, was invited by Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) on 12 March 2026 to deliver a Public Lecture at the National Workshop on Quantitative Methods in Social Science Research. Dr Choudhuri examined non-sampling biases in... Read More
Dr Pallavi Choudhuri, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director at NCAER-NDIC, served as a panelist in a session titled, “Women at Work: Understanding Barriers, Advancing Equality” at the second National Convention on Women in India (NCWI) organised on March 9, 2026 at the O. P. Jindal Global University... Read More
Dr Pallavi Choudhuri, Deputy Director and Senior Fellow (NCAER-NDIC), served as a panellist at the Inception Workshop of the Gender Responsive Cell, organized by the Department of Agriculture & Farmers’ Empowerment, Government of Odisha, and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in a technical... Read More
Dr Debasis Barik, Senior Fellow at NCAER, served as a resource person at a 3-day workshop, "Decoding Large-Scale Public Health Data: Structure and Evaluation Strategies,” organised by the Population Studies Unit at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, from 10 to 12 February 2026. The workshop convened undergraduate... Read More
NCAER faculty member Dr. Debasis Barik was invited as a Resource Person to deliver the residential Lecture on “Technical aspects of designing a questionnaire scientifically for socio-economic and demographic Survey” at JNU campus, organized by UGC-MMTTC, JNU. UGC-Malaviya Mission Teacher Training Centre, JNU organized a Residential... Read More
NCAER faculty member Dr. Debasis Barik was invited as a panellist in one of the ICSSR Sponsored Two Days National Seminar’s thematic sessions organized by Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute in collaboration with the Directorate of Census Operations, Uttar Pradesh, and the Office of... Read More
Dr Debasis Barik served as a resource person in a workshop “Five Days National Workshop on NSSO, NFHS and IHDS Data: Analysis for Empirical Research” organised by the Department of Economics, St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata, held in Kolkata Campus on November 11, 2025.
NCAER faculty member Dr. Debasis Barik delivered a special lecture at the Vidyasagar University, West Bengal. He spoke on the Implications of Hypogamous Marriage on Household Economy and Children’s Education in Contemporary India. This was organized by Department of Economics, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore.
NCAER faculty member Dr. Debasis Barik delivered a lecture in a session on Health inequality, Poverty and Life Course Effects in the Institute of Social and Economic Change (ISEC) Platinum Jubilee International Conference on Statistics and Data Science for Development Planning on September 23rd at... Read More
Dr. Reshma Roshania, Associate Fellow with the National Data Innovation Centre, presented at the 10th Annual Agriculture, Nutrition and Health Academy Week held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania at the end of June. In a session focused on the impact of policies and programmes on... Read More
The National Statistics Office (NSO) under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), in collaboration with the Indian School of Business (ISB), organized a Data Users Conference on 27th May 2025. Dr Pallavi Choudhuri (NCAER) served as a panellist, highlighting the growing female work participation in the... Read More
Professor Sonalde Desai presented paper titled “Rethinking Social Safety Nets in a Changing Society: Evidence from India Human Development Survey” at the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI), University of Philadelphia in partnership with the South Asia Center & Dept of Sociology. About... Read More
Dr. Pallavi Choudhuri, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director at the NCAER – National Data Innovation Centre, participated as a panelist at the National Workshop on Longitudinal Surveys in India: Lessons and Challenges, hosted by the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) and the Tamil Nadu... Read More
NITI Aayog hosted the Data Forum 2024, a collaborative initiative with the World Bank, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), and the Government of Odisha, on November 21-22, Bhubaneshwar. The engagement brought together experts to explore innovative strategies for leveraging data in development,... Read More
The Indian Express Of the four key areas that define women’s empowerment, personal efficacy, power in intra-household negotiations, societal engagement, and access to income-generating activities, we see improvements in the first three domains. In contrast, the fourth — access to employment — has stagnated. Link:... Read More
Prof Sonalde Desai explains the whys and hows of delimitation, what will happen to the number of Parliamentary seats in the country if it is implemented in 2026, and what could be done to ensure a fair outcome for all States in India. For Listening:... Read More
How do we decode the puzzling trends in women’s labour force participation in India given the substantial decline between 2004-5 and 2017-18 and a striking increase thereafter? Does a focus on overall work participation take our attention away from underlying stagnation in women’s wage work?... Read More
Carbon pricing has emerged as a key policy instrument for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with carbon taxes and emissions trading as the main tools. As of June 2024, 89 national and subnational jurisdictions globally have implemented carbon pricing, covering 24% of global GHG emissions.... Read More
Opinion: Sonalde Desai and Debasis Barik. [The Indian Express, October 25, 2024] If south India wants a larger population, it needs to focus on family-friendly policies or encourage migration from more populous states. In 1944, Stalin (Joseph not MK) established the Mother Heroine award for... Read More
Opinion: Sonalde Desai. [The Indian Express, September 30, 2024] Instead of focussing excessively on rankings with well-recognised shortcomings, recognising achievements and refining goals consistent with national priorities will be a more fruitful approach. Developing global indices and rankings has turned into a minor industry. The... Read More
Opinion: Sonalde Desai. [The Hindutan Times, July 3, 2024] India’s growing economy is lifting families out of poverty but often onto a precarious perch. A single disaster can push them right back. Policy, obsessed with counting the poor, ignores the question of helping ‘newly poor’... Read More
Professor Sonalde Desai delivered a lecture on “Gloom or Boom? The Puzzling Trends in Indian Women's Labor Force Participation” at 10th Institute for Human Development (IHD) Silver Jubilee Lecture Series on 17 March 2024 at 11.30 am (IST) at the Shri Krishna Institute of Public... Read More
Opinion: Sonalde Desai. The population dialogue in India has been dominated by concerns about population explosion. However, it is time for us to move these fears and learn from the experiences of other countries. In her speech, while presenting the 2024 budget, Finance Minister Nirmala... Read More
Pallavi Choudhuri, Senior Fellow at the NCAER-NDIC, was invited to participate in a panel discussion at the Niti-State Workshop series on "Leveraging State Data Ecosystems for State and District-Level Policy and Planning" hosted by the Niti Aayog and the World Bank at The Centrum in... Read More
Professor Sonalde Desai and Professor Amaresh Dubey were invited to participate in a Panel Discussion organised by Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, New Delhi, and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, South Asia, on 8 November 2023. The Indian Institute of Dalit Studies (IIDS), New Delhi, and Rosa... Read More
Sonalde Desai and Pallavi Choudhuri presented a paper titled “India’s Occupational Transformation: A Tale of Two Escalators” at a conference on India’s Economy in a Changing Global Landscape at Cornell University, Ithaca on October 14, 2023. India has undergone tremendous changes over the past three... Read More
Mr. Suman Bery, Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog, joined us for a special event the NDIC Fellows meeting on October 17, 2023. Mr. Bery shared insights on selecting impactful research topics, presenting results for policy influence, and NITI Aayog's research priorities. His conversation and query session... Read More
Data collection for the third round of the much-awaited India Human Development Survey (IHDS-3), has started from the second week of May 2022 and is in full swing. The India Human Development Survey (IHDS) is a nationally representative, multi-topic panel survey. The NDIC team conducted... Read More
Santanu Pramanik, Senior Fellow at NCAER and Deputy Director of NDIC, presented on “Statistical validation of a large-scale web survey during the COVID-19 pandemic in India” at the University of Michigan, Survey Research Centre Faculty Seminar. This was a joint work with Abhinav Motheram, Research... Read More
The NCAER National Data Innovation Centre (NDIC) has launched a gender data hub, supported by a five-year grant from Co-Impact. This hub will focus on research supporting evidence-based policy design from a gender perspective. It will serve as a resource for researchers, policy-makers, civil society... Read More
NDIC team members were conspicuous by their presence at the 2022 Population Association of America (PAA) Annual Conference. NDIC Deputy Director Santanu Pramanik organised and chaired a session on COVID-19 vaccination. Pallavi Choudhuri, Senior Fellow, NCAER, presented her work on “Impact of COVID-19 on Household... Read More
Dr Sonalde Desai, Professor at NCAER, who holds a joint appointment at University of Maryland, USA, has recently been appointed as Distinguished University Professor (DUP) at the University. DUP status is a permanent honorific title that recognises exceptional records in research, teaching, and service. Dr... Read More