According to development policy analyst Sanjay Kaul in his new book, 'An alternative development agenda for India', redesigning and restructuring the country’s priorities rest on two fundamental planks. First, a robust and clear understanding of the neediest households; second, a fuller understanding of government institutions and implementation structures. To understand the first factor, i.e., the poorest households, Kaul points to co-founders and co-directors of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee's observations that the poor do not always display 'rational' behaviour and that they ‘lack critical pieces of information and have some inaccurate deep-rooted biases and beliefs', which mean they end up making faulty decisions. As such, Kaul highlights Esther and Abhijit's suggestion that programmes for low-income families need to be more ‘fault-tolerant', in a radical re-conceptualisation of poverty policy.
