One of my first tasks upon joining CBPS as a research fellow was for a project looking at early childhood development models across the states of Kerala, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh. My task was to go through the field notes taken across the three states that had detailed findings and observations of the operations of Anganwadi Centres (AWCs). With the help of these details, my colleague and I had to calculate the total operational cost of running each Anganwadi centre. This was my first encounter with numbers in a very long time, after having done only one paper of statistics in my undergrad. It was difficult in the beginning, to understand what each number meant, and just the calculation aspect of the task scared me. This fear probably came from the memory of making ‘silly mistakes’ in my math exams. Amidst the numerous rounds of calculating, recalculating, checking and rechecking the figures, the numbers started to mean something, especially when I could see the drastic differences between resource allocations for the AWCs across these states and the different costs incurred for nutrition, health, education, human resources, and for maintaining the AWC itself. Consequently, these numbers would directly reflect in the overall quality of services provided by the centre. Of course, the numbers alone didn’t give you the whole picture.
Nevertheless, it was interesting to witness how the state government’s priorities directly reflect on the efficiency of some of the practices in these centres. I think that it was at this point, that this exercise ceased to be purely mathematical and jarring, and became something fun and exciting! As a young researcher, I was starting to learn how one can make connections between numbers and policy, while also learning more about the policy landscape and state’s priorities in discussions with my colleagues.
I started to enjoy the process of the costing exercise. On my way to and from work, I would go past private nurseries, government schools, AWCs and wonder why each of them looked the way they did – why was this one looking rundown? Why was this one well kept? How much money would the institution be incurring to keep the place running?
Another aspect of the costing exercise was also discovering the hidden costs and opportunity costs. And this meant trying to calculate a monetary value for something that didn’t technically carry a cost, for example, people’s time. This wasn’t something I thought one would calculate. In one of our meetings, the idea of this costing being comprehensive was discussed, and for this, one would also have to calculate opportunity costs. Now, in three years of studying economics, I had managed to learn the definition of opportunity costs. And that was my only input to these meetings because I had no idea how one would calculate that, and didn’t realise the importance of calculating such costs for our exercise. Apart from the AW staff, and the government provisions for these centres, the AWC is also efficiently run with the contribution of the community. One of the responsibilities of these centres is to have community engagement, and that means having various sorts of events – be it for festivals, awareness and also parent teacher meetings. What doesn’t get accounted for here is the time given by community members to engage in these activities. The time that they give by attending and participating in these activities is valuable, as that will truly help the centre mould itself into a centre for the local community. The one way we attempted to account for the same, was to calculate the monetary value/ cost of their time. For this calculation, we costed their time per hour as per daily wage rates of respective states. Adding up such costs to the operational costs of these centres made drastic differences in the total cost of running each centre, which again reflects the importance of accounting of time of the community.
The numbers started to feel more than just amounts of money when it was time to design a comprehensive responsive model. This model was designed to mirror our vision of an ideal ECD centre that borrowed practices from the various models we visited, and attempted to build upon them to make a universal yet locally contextual model. Designing this model also meant looking at resources in terms of money, material, people, and hours. Every number we quoted in whichever unit, needed to be justified. Why did we need these many personnel? Why this particular student-teacher ratio? How many hours would a child spend at a centre? How much would it cost to furbish the centre with all the amenities?.. and so many more questions like that. We had to have an answer for what all these numbers would mean, and what would be the implications and expected outcome for each cost.
This exercise also gave me a glimpse into policy design, and what numbers mean in a policy document or in a budget. Who is it for? Why is it this much? Can we ask for more or for less? Do we need this? It was such an interesting experience, because we tried to be in two different roles when we designed this – one as a researcher, and one as a policy designer. It was fun to just whip out a number, and try to find a justification for why exactly this number, and why not more or why not less or why even there be a number for this provision? Up until then, numbers felt like rocket science to me – it meant too much, and arriving at numbers felt even harder. I was always intimidated by the sight of a number. However, this exercise intrigued me. I had some sort of power to put a number on a paper, and having to have a reason for that number was an exciting process. It helped me understand what numbers in public policy meant. My experience with costing helped me understand the distinction between numbers from a mathematics textbook and numbers on a budget and in a policy document.
I am glad that my experience with research kickstarted with this exercise. To be able to understand both numbers and policy hand in hand, was a rough but a very fulfilling experience. It was just like stepping into cold water – it was harsh at the first step, flinching at every contact with the cold, but this exercise let me step into the water completely, and it wasn’t cold anymore.