Nobel economist Kremer to India: Ditch intuition, embrace experimentation
Among the most striking findings Prof Kremer shared was the economic impact of AI-driven weather forecasting on Indian farmers
Nobel Prize-winning economist Professor Michael Kremer told a packed auditorium in Chandigarh on Friday that India stands at a historic opportunity to transform its development outcomes — but only if policymakers replace intuition with rigorous evidence, embrace artificial intelligence, and treat public programmes as experiments that must be tested, refined, and proven before being scaled.
Delivering a public lecture on “Economics and Policy Innovation in India” at MGSIPA Auditorium, Prof Kremer — awarded the Nobel in economics in 2019 for his experimental approach to fighting global poverty — drew on a wide body of research spanning agriculture, road safety, drinking water, and education to make a single, compelling case: when governments combine data, technology, and institutional accountability, the results are measurable, significant, and replicable.
The event was jointly organised by Chandigarh Citizens Foundation (CCF), Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID), and MGSIPA.
Former Punjab chief secretary Vini Mahajan, who is the vice-president of CCF, welcomed the Nobel laureate and moderated a lively question-and-answer session that drew active participation from policymakers, academics, administrators, and students.
Among the most striking findings Prof Kremer shared was the economic impact of AI-driven weather forecasting on Indian farmers. Modern AI models, he noted, can predict weather up to 15 days in advance and operate up to 80,000 times faster than conventional systems. During India’s 2025 monsoon season, AI-based forecasts accurately predicted an unusual pause in the monsoon’s northward advance — a detail that traditional models missed. Farmers who received timely advisories through voice-call platforms responded by adjusting their nursery timings, transplanting decisions, and seed choices. The result: an average economic gain of approximately Rs 2,000 per hectare per year, underscoring how the right information, reaching the right person at the right time, directly translates into higher productivity.
With over 1.5 lakh road deaths annually, India has one of the world’s most lethal highway networks. Prof Kremer highlighted how the HAMS platform — now deployed across 56 Regional Transport Offices — uses AI-based visual analytics to standardise and objectify the driver licensing process, reducing the scope for bias and corruption. Evidence from a partnership with Ola showed that drivers certified through these AI-supported systems reported 20 to 30 per cent fewer instances of unsafe driving behaviour, with the sharpest improvements among younger drivers.
On drinking water, Prof Kremer presented findings from a meta-analysis of 19 randomised studies showing that water treatment interventions can reduce all-cause child mortality by 21 per cent. Applied to India’s rural population, universal water treatment has the potential to prevent over one lakh under-five deaths every year. Field trials in Odisha’s Rayagada district using in-line chlorination systems showed sharp reductions in bacterial contamination. However, Prof Kremer was careful to add that technology alone is not enough — maintenance systems, community involvement, and institutional oversight are equally essential for sustained results.
TEXT MESSAGE THAT TEACHES
In education, Prof Kremer pointed to Pratham’s initiative of sending daily math activities to parents via SMS and WhatsApp as a low-cost intervention with measurable learning gains. Text messages alone improved student performance, but combining digital prompts with human follow-ups produced even stronger results. Tablet-based teacher support programmes offering scripted lesson plans and structured feedback delivered learning gains equivalent to nearly one additional year of schooling in some studies. The message, he stressed, is not that technology replaces teachers — it is that technology, when designed thoughtfully and evaluated honestly, can make teachers significantly more effective.
EXPERIMENTS AT HEART OF POLICY
Prof Kremer closed by urging governments to institutionalise what he called “the innovation cycle” — identify a problem, design candidate solutions, test them rigorously, refine based on evidence, and scale only what demonstrably works. It is a discipline that demands patience and honesty, he acknowledged, but it is the only reliable path from good intentions to good outcomes.
The auditorium was filled to capacity, a rare sight for a policy lecture, reflecting the depth of interest among Chandigarh’s academic and administrative community in evidence-based approaches to governance.
