Nayantara Biswas on Demand- and Supply-Side Interventions in India's Maternal Health Policy

Our sixth scholar in the series is Nayantara Biswas (https://connects.catalyst.harvard.edu...) is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Clark University. Her research focuses on health equity impact evaluations of small-scale interventions and large-scale public policies.


We spoke about dissertation titled, The Impact of Social Policies on Reproductive Health, Maternal Employment, and Child Health: Evidence from India (https://www.proquest.com/openview/4ec...) . We talked about demand side versus supply side policy interventions in public health, India's maternal health policy landscape, the ASHA workers program, variation across states in policy impact and much more.


Recorded August 28th, 2025.


Read a full transcript (https://www.mercatus.org/ideasofindia...) enhanced with helpful links.


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Timestamps


(00:00:00) - Intro


(00:01:35) - Setting the Stage


(00:04:44) - India's Maternal–Child Health Policy Landscape


(00:08:29) - Uneven Progress: State Differences, Culture, and Measurement Challenges


(00:09:24) - Who Are the ASHA Workers?


(00:11:56) - Trust, Access, and the Information Channel


(00:14:26) - Pay, Hours, and Unionization: Why Conditions Vary by State


(00:16:50) - How Incentives Are Structured


(00:21:44) - From Design to Data: Building the District-Level Panel


(00:25:20) - We Are Measuring ASHAs—and Something Else


(00:26:45) - DiD Simplified: How the Causal Claim Works


(00:33:45) - Policy Implications: Where to Invest and How to Train


(00:36:53) - Cost-Effectiveness: Supply vs. Demand


(00:39:53) - Why Supply-Side Effects Take Time


(00:41:50) - Beyond Pregnancy: Anganwadi Daycare and Women's Work


(00:46:27) - Outro