Study of Studies

Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (MDoNER), Government of India, has sponsored a study titled ‘Study of Studies’ to The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi to analyse the impact of these studies in NER development. The study is aimed at listing out and compiling various studies conducted from January 2010 to June 2020 in different sectors in the context of the NER, and analyse and compile recommendations of such studies, which would be useful for MDoNER in policy and decision-making purposes and for the benefit of the scientific community and the society.

The ‘Study of Studies’ project was broadly divided into two phases: data collection and analysis to reflect impacts. The first phase of this study focused on (i) collection and compilation of completed and ongoing study reports and project information, (ii) preparing a master database of the collected studies, and (iii) categorization/organizing these studies by sectors, subjects, areas, states, funding and implementing agencies. The study team conducted perception survey and collected knowledge inputs from principal investigators (PIs), project of implementing institutions and funding agencies for the purpose.

A total of 833 studies were identified. Soft copies of 833 such completed study reports were collected, compiled, and organized in a specially developed Database with relevant meta-data including sectors, sub-sectors, objectives, and recommendations. The reports were categorized under 12 broad sectors: (i) agriculture and allied, (ii) banking and finance, (iii) commerce and industry, (iv) energy, (v) environment, (vi) health and nutrition, (vii) human resource development, (viii) infrastructure, (ix) law and governance, (x) rural development, (xi) science and technology, and (xii) tourism. In the second phase of the study, the 833 study reports were analysed by the experts keeping the focus on the impact of these studies and the status of recommendations. The analysis has been broadly done in two major parts: i) Broad Analysis and ii) Report-wise Analysis.

This study analyzed responses of different PIs and stakeholders as part of the perception survey wherein it shows that 52.5% of the recommendations of research and implementation studies commissioned by various government ministries, departments, foundations and private bodies, have fully or partially implemented. Implementation of recommendations remain poor among sectors like law & governance and infrastructure. Administrative factors were identified as the most important barrier against implementation of recommendations.

This study report recoammended that more emphasis should be given on implementation and measuring impact of government R&D schemes, development of infrastructure and adoption of new technologies in renewable energy sector. There are high potentialities of renewable energy in NER but lack of skilled manpower is a constraint in smooth implementation of any project in the region. Local people should be involved in maintaining the equipment and properly trained for competency development for operation and maintenance of the equipments or system.