Ahmedabad and Me

A week has passed since I arrived in Ahmedabad. While at first I felt a bit fatigued at the thought of restarting again, it really only took a few days to sort out my basic needs and to familiarize myself with the design of the marketing strategies used for the SEWA's weather insurance product. This is a lucky because the principal researchers (Shawn Cole, Harvard, Petia Tapolova, IMF and Jeremy Tobacman, Oxford) plan to present the initial results the first week of August. To help prepare ,the last week at work has been spent pounding out programs on Stata in order to merge, clean, code and test the data collected from weather insurance coupons and receipts. 

The primary survey that is being conducted tests the impact of SEWA's weather insurance product. Weather insurance is new to both the poor clients SEWA serves and to SEWA itself. Last year was the first year that it was offered. Unfortunately, due partially to the payout scheme and partially to moderate weather, clients did not receive payouts. Since clients were already weary about purchasing insurance and some of them had lost crops to weather, this lowered their confidence in the insurance program. (Interestingly, CMF has done a small study on client's understanding of the insurance scheme and basic math that comprehension was low even after information sessions. Demonstrating it seems that SEWA needs to find new ways to connect with their members). 

In order to increase take-up of the weather insurance product, SEWA and CMF added villages to the treatment sample and implemented a marketing scheme. The marketing project included flyers, videos and coupons (the videos were shown on hand held players). Different videos and flyers were created to test how members respond to changes in factors like: tone of language and religious affiliation. Also, coupon amounts were varied to test the elasticity of the market.

So now the marketing campaign has been completed and insurance has been purchased. CMF and SEWA now would like to know what worked and what didn't work. This is where I come in. In theory this should be straight forward but being that this is the real world things dint always work out as planned. The greatest concern is that it seems that some members might live in the same household. Therefore, one household might have received more than one treatment. All of this is unclear though so on Saturday, I am going with Monica, a research associate, while she does detective work on this matter. It should be interesting and more than anything I will be very glad to get out of the office.

Having said that it has not all been work. I have met some interesting people in the week that I have been here and have been eating out and visiting temples with them. Gujarat is a dry state (no alcohol) and conservative  but it is also safe, clean, and has great food and historical sites. It also has a lot of vegetarian restaurants partially because its large Jain population. The picture at the top of this blog is a Jain temple called Swaminarayan. The next, is a picture taken at Gandhi's Sabarmati Ashram. While I was there I found a group of reporters surrounding a small building coming out of the temple. I was pushed in to the crowd, being the token foreigner, and suddenly found myself nearly touching Pratibha Patil the woman who is expected by many to be the next president of India! Imagine. I stood there next to her as she paused and had pictures taken, having at the time no idea what I literally had stumbled upon. Finally to satisfy those who want to be sure I am alive and well, I leave you with a photo taken while I was passing time alone in a train station.

Comments

[Maria]

Wow, that temple is so different from the structures here in the U.S. Sounds like you are going to be busy for a while. Hope it all goes well, can't wait to see more pics.

Maria