India is the second largest producer of cotton in the world and farmers across the country use copious amounts of pesticides to ensure that the production of cotton remains consistent through the years. The harmful consequences of this have motivated a global adoption of organic farming techniques and cotton farmers in the country have also been encouraged towards this transition. However, this is not an easy task given the absence of adequate knowledge of organic farming practices and the resistance of farmers to new techniques.

Field work is hard. Our typical day on the field starts at 6 a.m., because often, the village we have to visit for data collection is a 2-3 hours’ drive from the town centre where we stay. Rural India is largely an agrarian society with 70 percent of people living in rural areas and half of our workforce still engaged in agriculture (2011-12). This means that we also have to time our field work in a way that we are able to meet the respondents before they leave to work on the fields. Often this entails checking with the local inhabitants the timing of electricity and water supply, and migration and work patterns before making a field plan.

One of our recent studies involved exploring instances of child labour in Gawan, Jharkhand. Our researchers were deployed to our base at Giridih for this study. Our site was a further 4-hour journey from our base. After a long journey through the dry and dusty roads of Jharkhand, we were nearing our sample villages and we could see from the distance, the ground was shining. The glistening ground was due to the rich mica deposits in the soil. Naturally, one of the main occupations of the region is mica mining.

Measuring the true effect of development programs requires more than tracking outputs—it demands rigorous counterfactual analysis, appropriate statistical methods, and data collection infrastructure capable of reaching populations across India's diverse contexts. For program officers commissioning impact evaluations, CSR heads seeking credible evidence of program effectiveness, and research commissioners at foundations and multilateral agencies, the quality of evaluation design determines whether findings can reliably inform investment decisions and program adaptation.