World Bank : The Social Observatory: A Living Lab for Developing a Science of Delivery

The Social Observatory assembled an interdisciplinary team of economists, sociologists, behavioral scientists, information management specialists, and others to see if they could overcome the failures of the past. The team wanted to create projects that are nimble, learned by doing, and are able to make mid-course corrections in response to local conditions-in short, projects with adaptive capacity.

To illustrate how this approach works in practice, Rao focused on the example of Jeevika, a livelihoods project in the Indian state of Bihar. Between 2006 and 2011, Jeevika worked with nearly 400,000 clients. A retrospective evaluation carried out by the Social Observatory team found impressive impacts from the program, with a near tripling of savings, a large reduction in households with high-interest debt, and a much greater empowerment of women.

Jeevika's impact was in part due to the concrete resources participants received such as group money or a passbook. But the embedded approach of the Social Observatory allowed them to uncover less obvious but equally important reasons for the impact. Self-help groups forged an alternative identity for poor women that cut across caste. This allowed the women to participate in the social and political life of villages in a way that was previously unthinkable. Deeply entrenched social norms were transformed in a relatively short amount of time. 'Culture is not an immutable constraint for development,' said Rao.

In another project, Pudhu Vaazhvu in Tamil Nadu, the Social Observatory has invested heavily in generating project feedback loops through a new approach to data called 'participatory tracking'. Cutting-edge technologies like tablets are paired with participatory processes such as community-based generation of questionnaires to generate a real-time picture of project performance that is relevant to all stakeholders. To make the data truly democratic in settings where literacy is limited, the Social Observatory has also developed entirely new systems of data visualization. Communities are empowered to be true stakeholders rather than passive recipients of aid.

Shobha Shetty, Practice Manager, South Asia Region, Food and Agriculture Global Practice, also shared her perspective on the value of the multi-year partnership. 'One of the biggest advantages of this really exciting collaboration has been the rigor and independence that the Social Observatory has brought to our livelihoods projects, which are big and complex,' Shetty said. Compared to other experiences, where evaluators parachute in, the program was able to 'test, learn, and adapt to achieve measurable results specific to the states that they operate in.'