Hola holaaa, namaste.
Here I am after more than two weeks. These past weeks have been very busy, so that explains my disappearance. In this blog, I want to write about something I had been waiting for since the beginning of my internship: my first field visit.
Last week, Nandita and I traveled to one of the villages in central India to observe the Poshan Clinic in person. We traveled on a Monday, but before getting into that, we need to start with Sunday.
On Sunday, I went to Nandita’s house because we had a very important mission: trying on kurtas for field work. A kurta is a traditional Indian garment, usually a long shirt or tunic, sometimes longer and sometimes shorter, often colorful and with different prints. They are usually worn with loose pants, which makes them very comfortable and fresh for this weather.
When I arrived at Nandita’s house, she welcomed me with an incredible meal: chole bhature, chaas, and vegetables. Chole bhature is a North Indian dish made with spicy chickpeas and deep-fried bread. Chaas is a yogurt-based drink made with curd, water, salt, and spices like roasted cumin. It is very refreshing and perfect for the heat. Everything was really good. We enjoyed the food while watching an episode of Friends. Fun fact: my friends always tell me (and they are right) that I am 100% Phoebe.
Then came the most important moment: trying on the kurtas. They were all beautiful, and several of them fit me, so I was officially ready for the field.
On Monday, we took a two-hour flight, arrived, had lunch, and then had a three-hour car ride to our final destination. Unfortunately, something from the food or the car ride did not sit well with me, and that night I ended up in bed with a stomach sickness. We thought we might have to cancel the field visit to the Health and Wellness Centre the next day, which was the Poshan Clinic day. I was really sad because I had been looking forward to going since the beginning of the internship.
Luckily, we found a solution. Instead of going for the whole day, I would go only in the afternoon, so I could sleep and recover in the morning. And here is a little bit of what that day looked like:
Here you can officially see me as a Latina-Indian: wearing the kurta Nandita lent me, a bindi on my forehead, and my jhumkas, traditional earrings that are very commonly worn here. Survival after a night in bed: check.
During the visit, we spoke with Anganwadi Workers and the Community Health Officer, who answered all our questions with a lot of patience and kindness. Most of the conversation happened in Hindi, so Nandita was translating for me in real time. Sadly, my Hindi is still limited to accha, theek theek, and chalo. Through those conversations, I was finally able to understand much better what happens behind the data I had been analyzing.
It was a very necessary reality check for the economist in me. When you only look at numbers, it is easy to think that all metrics should be clean, complete, and easy to collect. But they are not. Behind every row in the dataset, there is a lot of work.
The frontline workers do so much to make the clinic happen in the best way possible. They measure children’s height, weigh them, and conduct detailed screenings using different tools, including the appetite test and MUAC, which measures the circumference of the child’s upper arm. Based on this screening, children are diagnosed and assigned the medicines they need, although sometimes there are not enough supplies available.
All of this information is first written down in notebooks and registers. Later, it is uploaded online, so that the compiled data can be accessed and analyzed by the TAF team. Seeing this process in person helped me understand how much effort exists between a child being examined at the clinic and a number appearing in an Excel sheet.
The next day, we met with the TAF team based in the village to discuss several implementation questions we had. It was very helpful to understand some of the challenges more deeply, especially around follow-up, medicine availability, data entry, and coordination across different actors. That same night, we flew back to Delhi.
It was a short visit, but a very meaningful one. I finally got to observe the reality behind the data and understand more clearly that working in development means going to the grassroots, listening carefully, and taking local realities seriously. It is not only about designing a good program or analyzing indicators. It is also about understanding how those programs actually work in people’s daily lives.
This was my first field visit, but definitely not the last. In a few weeks, I will be going back for a longer visit: one full week across two different villages.
Stay tuned!
Leyre in India
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