Mousumi Das
IGIDR
You
won the 2015 Sylvia Lane Mentor Fellowship for your research proposal: Asian
Enigma on Child Under-nutrition: An Indian Version and its Verification vide
Structural Equation Modelling Approach, how is your research progressing?
Developing countries in Asia and
Africa are burdened with high proportions of malnourished children. For example
despite higher GDP growth rates; proportion of children suffering from
malnutrition in India is almost double of that in Sub-Saharan Africa. Studies
have tried to explain this puzzle, called the “South Asian Enigma”. The
difference has been attributed to women’s status level or empowerment, poor
hygiene and child feeding practices. So it needs to be verified if such a
paradox prevails among the states à la the Asian Enigma.
What needs
to be examined is whether differences in nutritional status can be explained in
terms of factors, which explain the South Asian Enigma across states in India. Women empowerment is
measured using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Expected results are in
support of this hypothesis.
Your mentor is Dr. Suresh Chandra
Babu; how did you two connect on this research topic?
Dr. Babu is in my PhD thesis committee.
He has worked extensively in the area of food, agriculture and nutrition
policy. I was really looking forward to him for guiding me, given his expertise
in the Indian context. He readily agreed to it.
What
led you to pursue food and agricultural economics?
Food and agriculture policy planning
involves a study of different interdisciplinary subjects. This is one of the
main reasons for me to work in this area. Moreover, it involves a lot of
applied work which I find very interesting and challenging. A lot of
multilateral organizations do work on cross-country issues related to food
policy. This provides one with a lot of exposure, which I find very appealing.
What
advice would you offer aspiring agricultural/applied economists?
Applied economists should expose
themselves to a large number of cross country studies. They should get
themselves involved in field surveys to know the practicalities.
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