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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

Kalyani Raghunathan

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. 

Where we work

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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.

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experts

Development Strategies and Governance

Sudha Narayanan

Research Fellow

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Bio

Sudha Narayanan is a Research Fellow in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit, based in the South Asia Office in New Delhi. Sudha’s research interests span agriculture, food and nutrition policy, and human development. She is particularly interested in survey-based research using microeconometric approaches to understand broader questions of agrarian change and state delivery systems for nutrition security. Her research focuses on contract farming, agrifood value chains, technology adoption in agriculture, public policies for food security and employment, and agriculture-nutrition linkages.

Sudha was previously an Associate Professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai. Prior to her PhD studies, she worked with the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, the Right to Food Campaign in India, and Cornell University, among others. She earned a PhD from Cornell University in Agricultural Economics. She also holds a dual master’s degree in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, India.

Development Strategies and Governance

Publications

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

How do women’s empowerment metrics measure up? A comparative analysis

2024Bageant, Elizabeth; Lentz, Erin; Narayanan, Sudha; Jensen, Nathan; Lepariyo, Watson
Details

How do women’s empowerment metrics measure up? A comparative analysis

Research has identified women’s empowerment as a critical factor for nutritional outcomes and a priority area for understanding women’s mental health status. At the same time, there is no consensus on how empowerment should be measured. The surrounding debate has produced several empowerment metrics that are widely used, yet we know little about whether they can be substituted for one another or their respective strengths and weaknesses. Using data collected from a single sample of women from rural, northern Kenya, we compare five empowerment metrics: The Project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) and associated Health and Nutrition Module (HN), Women’s Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI), Women’s Empowerment in Livestock Index (WELI), and the Survey Based Women’s Empowerment Index (SWPER). The metrics have shared theoretical origins and are commonly used in the food, nutrition and health spaces to study rural women’s lives across low- and middle-income countries. We examine the metrics’ characteristics, distributions, pairwise correlations and capacity of each metric to predict outcomes often associated with the concept of empowerment: body mass index (BMI) and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). We find striking differences between these common empowerment metrics. The metrics’ correlations with one another are highly variable as are the predictive capacities for both outcomes. Further, our analysis finds that the choice of metric can dramatically influence which individuals are identified as empowered. In sum, our results suggest that while these metrics are used in remarkably similar ways to understand rural women’s empowerment and its consequences, unless they are computed with many identical survey questions, the metrics do not capture the same underlying concept and are not interchangeable. We recommend that our work be replicated elsewhere and caution should be taken when implementing and interpreting research using these metrics, as findings may be highly sensitive to the choice of metric.

Year published

2024

Authors

Bageant, Elizabeth; Lentz, Erin; Narayanan, Sudha; Jensen, Nathan; Lepariyo, Watson

Citation

Bageant, Elizabeth; Lentz, Erin; Narayanan, Sudha; Jensen, Nathan; and Lepariyo, Watson. 2024. How do women’s empowerment metrics measure up? A comparative analysis. Food Policy 129(November 2024): 102764. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102764

Country/Region

Kenya

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Women’s Empowerment; Nutrition; Mental Health; Women; Data

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102764 Source record

Project

Livestock

Record type

Journal Article

Resource thumbnail

Brief

Cluster-based development: Lessons from country experiences for Odisha, India

2024Belton, Ben; Breisinger, Clemens; Kassim, Yumna; Pal, Barun Deb; Narayanan, Sudha; Zhang, Xiaobo
Details

Cluster-based development: Lessons from country experiences for Odisha, India

Clusters are spatial aggregations of small businesses producing the same or related goods or services. Together, these businesses have the potential to contribute to economic development of rural areas by compounding the existing strengths of local producing communities. Cluster-based development has been successful where governments facilitate infrastructure and provide services to support existing clusters, often leading to spillover and expansion of these clusters to wider areas over time (Abdelaziz et al. 2021). Agrifood cluster development can occur via two broad mechanisms: (1) immanent development, where clusters of commercial farms as well as firms in the value chain that provide goods and services re quired by farms (for example, specialized production inputs, machinery, and transport), emerge spontaneously in co-located groups; and (2) organized development, where actors such as government, companies, or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) organize producers into groups to deliver extension services, inputs, or credit or to upgrade production practices, facilitate collective action to improve terms of market access, or enable compliance with standards or forms of branding such as geographic indications

Year published

2024

Authors

Belton, Ben; Breisinger, Clemens; Kassim, Yumna; Pal, Barun Deb; Narayanan, Sudha; Zhang, Xiaobo

Citation

Belton, Ben; Breisinger, Clemens; Kassim, Yumna; Pal, Barun Deb; Narayanan, Sudha; and Zhang, Xiaobo. 2024. Cluster-based development: Lessons from country experiences for Odisha, India. South Asia Policy Perspectives 1. New Delhi, India: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/152082

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Small and Medium Enterprises; Economic Development; Rural Areas; Value Chains; Infrastructure

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

National Policies and Strategies

Record type

Brief

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

Blogs

Inspirational filmmaking to raise women’s voice and agency in the construction of assets for climate resilience in India
IFPRI Blog
 | 
December 26, 2023

Inspirational filmmaking to raise women’s voice and agency in the construction of assets for climate resilience in India

By Jordan Kyle, Katrina Kosec, Sudha Narayanan, and Kalyani Raghunathan

Compelling personal stories as a learning and motivational tool.

How India’s agrifood supply chains fared during the COVID-19 lockdown, from farm to fork
IFPRI Blog
 | 
July 20, 2020

How India’s agrifood supply chains fared during the COVID-19 lockdown, from farm to fork

By Sudha Narayanan

Food systems have proven more resilient than many expected, but vulnerable populations still need help.

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 […]

Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia: Transforming Diets
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

November 9 to 10, 2022

Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia: Transforming Diets

Hybrid Event: November 9, 2022 – 4:30 PM to November 10, 2022 – 6:30 PM GMT. The purpose of this conference is to synthesize relevant evidence and stimulate dialogue to inform and guide policy and program initiatives in South Asia for improving equitable access to and consumption of healthy diets.

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News

April 17, 2023 | In the News

MGNREGA attendance app a govt ploy to discourage workers, contain expenses? (The Federal) 

The Federal (India) writes in a piece that “workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) are now required to mark attendance twice a day with onsite, geo-tagged photos through the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS) app.  Sudha Narayanan a researcher at IFPRI, has evaluated MGNREGA through studies and surveys since it […]

December 22, 2020 | In the News

MSP–The factoids vs. the facts (The Hindu)

The Hindu published an op-ed by Reteeka Khera, Senior Research Fellow Sudha Narayanan, and  Prankur Gupta on the purpose of the MSP and the debate on agricultural issues that must take into account the changed geography of procurement and the seller’s profile. 

December 15, 2020 | In the News

MSP–The factoids vs. the facts (The Hindu)

The Hindu published an op-ed by Reteeka Khera, Senior Research Fellow Sudha Rayanan, and  Prankur Gupta on the purpose of the MSP and the debate on agricultural issues that must take into account the changed geography of procurement and the seller’s profile.

View all News