Subscribe

Back

Who we are

With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Kate Ambler

Kate Amber is a Senior Research Fellow in the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit. Kate’s research broadly focuses on interventions that can increase incomes for smallholders and other microenterprises in agrifood value chains, with a specific focus on the inclusion of women. This includes work on programming in fragile settings, innovations in agricultural finance, and regulatory solutions for food safety. 

Where we work

Back

Where we work

IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

IFPRI Regional Programs

IFPRI Country Programs

Research by country and region

Subscribe

experts

Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

Kalyani Raghunathan

Research Fellow

Follow

Kalyani

at:

ORCiD

Bio

Kalyani Raghunathan is Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit, based in New Delhi, India. Her research lies at the intersection of agriculture, gender, social protection, and public health and nutrition, with a specific focus on South Asia and Africa. Her recent work uses a range of methods—from secondary data analysis to quasi-experimental evaluations and randomized controlled trials—and focuses on the affordability of nutritious diets as well as women’s microfinance and agriculture collectives and their impact on welfare, youth, and social protection.

Google Web Page

Research Gate Profile

Google Scholar Citations

CV

Publications

Resource thumbnail

Working Paper

Can role models and skills training increase women’s voice in asset selection? Experimental evidence from Odisha, India

2024Kosec, Katrina; Kyle, Jordan; Narayanan, Sudha; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Ray, Soumyajit
Details

Can role models and skills training increase women’s voice in asset selection? Experimental evidence from Odisha, India

We explore the impacts of exposing women to female role models and providing skills training on outcomes related to women’s aspirations and engagement in demanding assets under India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)—the largest public works program in the world, which solicits citizen input on which assets to build and where. While the role model treatment exposes women to a video with stories of female role models from neighboring districts who successfully demanded assets, the skills training shows women how to identify individual and group needs for assets, frame their demands, and articulate them to public functionaries. In a randomized controlled trial spanning 94 villages and involving approximately 2,600 women, we find that exposure to role models alone has limited impacts, but when combined with skills training, there are strong positive impacts on women’s aspirations and engagement in demanding assets. This reveals that even a light-touch training can significantly benefit women’s voice and agency in village decision-making.

Year published

2024

Authors

Kosec, Katrina; Kyle, Jordan; Narayanan, Sudha; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Ray, Soumyajit

Citation

Kosec, Katrina; Kyle, Jordan; Narayanan, Sudha; Raghunathan, Kalyani; and Ray, Soumyajit. 2024. Can role models and skills training increase women’s voice in asset selection? Experimental evidence from Odisha, India. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2315. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Civil Society; Decision Making; Gender; Training; Women’s Empowerment

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Gender Equality

Record type

Working Paper

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

Women improving nutrition through self-help groups in India: Does nutrition information help?

2024Kumar, Neha; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Scott, Samuel P.; Menon, Purnima; Thai, Giang; Gupta, Shivani; Nichols, Carly; WINGS study team
Details

Women improving nutrition through self-help groups in India: Does nutrition information help?

Women’s self-help groups (SHGs) are an important platform for reaching poor women in India. Despite SHGs’ women-focused programming, evidence of the impact of SHG-based interventions on nutrition outcomes is limited, and most evaluations of nutrition interventions have not examined intermediate outcomes along the impact pathways or outcomes for women themselves. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of an integrated agriculture-nutrition intervention delivered through women’s SHGs in five states in central and eastern India. The interventions involved the delivery of nutrition behavior change communication to groups through participatory approaches, community engagement around key issues, and the strengthening of collective organizations. Our analysis is based on three rounds of rich panel data on close to 2700 rural women and their households from eight districts in these five states and qualitative work from an accompanying process evaluation. Using difference-in-difference models with nearest neighbor matching methods, we present results on women’s anthropometry and diet-related outcomes. We do not observe any improvements in women’s BMI or overall dietary diversity. Although more women in the nutrition intensification arm consumed animal source foods, nuts and seeds, and fruits, this was not enough to increase overall dietary diversity scores or the proportion of women achieving minimum dietary diversity. We measure intermediate outcomes along the program’s impact pathways and find improvements in household incomes, cultivation of home gardens, and utilization of government schemes but not in women’s empowerment. The lack of improvement in anthropometry and diets despite changes in some intermediate outcomes can be attributed to several factors such as low implementation intensity, poor facilitator capacity and incentives, the lack of relevance of the BCC topics to the average SHG member, and resource and agency constraints to adoption of recommended practices. Although we do not have data to test the parallel trends assumption and so do not interpret our results as causal, these findings do suggest that optimism about using group-based platforms needs to be tempered in resource-poor contexts.

Year published

2024

Authors

Kumar, Neha; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Scott, Samuel P.; Menon, Purnima; Thai, Giang; Gupta, Shivani; Nichols, Carly; WINGS study team

Citation

Kumar, Neha; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Scott, Samuel P.; Menon, Purnima; Thai, Giang; Gupta, Shivani; Nichols, Carly; and WINGS study team. 2024. Women improving nutrition through self-help groups in India: Does nutrition information help? Food Policy 128(October 2024): 102716. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102716

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Agriculture; Body Mass Index; Maternal Nutrition; Self-help Groups; Women; Nutrition Education

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102716 Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Journal Article

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

Staking claim to entitlements under MGNREGA: How can women make their demands?

2024Raghunathan, Kalyani; Kosec, Katrina; Kyle, Jordan; Narayanan, Sudha; Ray, Soumyajit
Details

Staking claim to entitlements under MGNREGA: How can women make their demands?

There are internal constraints and structural barriers to women’s claim-making under MGNREGA. Supporting more egalitarian decision-making within the village, designing interventions that can help women gain confidence to speak out in public and making officials more responsive could all help.

Year published

2024

Authors

Raghunathan, Kalyani; Kosec, Katrina; Kyle, Jordan; Narayanan, Sudha; Ray, Soumyajit

Citation

Raghunathan, Kalyani; Kosec, Katrina; Kyle, Jordan; Narayanan, Sudha; and Ray, Soumyajit. 2024. Staking claim to entitlements under MGNREGA: How can women make their demands? The India Forum. Published online August 28, 2024. https://www.theindiaforum.in/public-policy/staking-claim-entitlements-under-mgnrega

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Decision Making; Employment; Surveys; Women; Women’s Empowerment

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Gender Equality

Record type

Journal Article

Events

32nd International Conference of Agricultural Economists
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

August 2 to 7, 2024

32nd International Conference of Agricultural Economists

The triennial International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE-2024), centred on the theme “Transformation Towards Sustainable Agri-Food Systems” is scheduled from August 2-7, 2024, in New Delhi, India. The conference offers a distinctive platform, providing a golden opportunity for the agricultural academic institutions and researchers to convene in person, exchange knowledge, and actively contribute to the […]

2024 GFPR India Launch
Series/Special Event

 | 

July 4, 2024, 10:00 – 5:20 pm

2024 GFPR India Launch

Unhealthy diets are a major driver of all forms of malnutrition, including undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and overweight and obesity. At the same time, our food systems contribute about a third of greenhouse gas emissions and degrade natural resources. The 2024 Global Food Policy Report examines policies, innovations, and governance solutions to strengthen diet quality and […]

From Research to Impact: Towards just and Resilient Agri-food Systems
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

October 9 to 12, 2023

From Research to Impact: Towards just and Resilient Agri-food Systems

Conference: October 09, 2023 – 9:00 AM to October 12, 2023 – 6:00 PM IST. IFPRI is participating in the 2023 annual CGIAR gender research conference will take place in New Delhi, India.

View all Events

News

November 09, 2022 | In the News

India’s double-edged nutrition problem (Code Blue) 

IFPRI’s research fellows Kalyani Raghunathan and Derek Headey, in an op-ed in Code Blue (Malaysia), focus on India’s problem of malnutrition, which includes under- and over-nutrition simultaneously. The authors discuss both the implications and policy recommendations to improve access to affordable healthy diets in the country. “Diet quality, already alarmingly bad, is only likely to have deteriorated in […]

October 21, 2020 | In the News

After Abysmal Hunger Index Rank, Paper Points Out 3 of 4 Rural Indians Can’t Afford Nutritious Diet (The Wire) 

The Wire (India) published an article on the results of the Global Hunger Index (GHI). According to GHI, India ranks 94 out of 107 nations and falls in the “serious” hunger category. Along with these results, IFPRI has published a Food Policy journal article titled Affordability of nutritious diets in rural India. Research Fellow Kalyani Raghunathan and Senior Research Fellow Derek Headey, with senior […]

October 14, 2020 | In the News

60 percent of rural India can’t afford nutritious diets (Hindustan Times)

Hindustan Times published an article focusing on a paper by Research Fellow Kalyani Raghunathan that states the cost of a recommended diet (CoRD) in India in 2011 (the most recent year for which expenditure and consumption data is available) was ₹45.1 and ₹51.3 for women and men, numbers that were almost 1.6 times the commonly used World Bank poverty line […]

View all News