Associate, Behavioural Insights Unit (BIU), Uttar Pradesh
Reports to: Program Manager, BIU Bihar

Overview of CSBC
The Centre for Social and Behaviour Change (CSBC), Ashoka University - India’s leading liberal arts University – is funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). The vision of CSBC is to establish an institution, based out of India that is globally reputed for thought leadership and excellence in impactful behaviour change interventions for low-income and marginalised populations. The Centre is focused on bringing new capabilities such as behavioural science, design thinking, advanced data analytics, and responsive feedback to governments, practitioners, and donors to help better design and optimise behaviour change interventions. We work closely with Central and State Governments as well as other stakeholders in the areas of nutrition, sanitation, financial inclusion, maternal and newborn care, data privacy, and agriculture. 

Overview of Role

The Behavioural Design & Impact vertical at CSBC is responsible for:

• Establishing a Behavioural Insight Unit network in India, both at the Central and State Government levels.
• Providing Strategic Support and Technical Assistance to improve policy outcomes by generating behavioural solutions across sectors of health, nutrition, education, sanitation, financial inclusion, etc.
• Empirical consulting, for both the government and the private sector, in applying behavioural science.

The Associate would be responsible for supporting the establishment of the first-ever Behavioural Insights Unit at the NITI Aayog (the policy think tank of the Government of India) to strengthen policy outcomes through the application of behavioural insights across key sectors such as health and nutrition, education, agriculture, water and sanitation, and financial inclusion.
The role would provide comprehensive experience, going from big picture policy challenges to providing specific evidence-led behavioural solutions for strengthening policy outcomes. It would provide an opportunity to work with senior bureaucrats to institutionalise the use of behavioural insights in policy design to drive the long-term success of policy outcomes.

Responsibilities

The Associate would be responsible for the day-to-day execution of the BIU deliverables:

Capacity Building: Provide support and training on behavioural science to identified officials, enabling them to use behavioural insights in their day-to-day work and programmes and apply them to policy priorities. This would be done through:

• Supporting in the development of training curricula that focus on core technical and behavioural science principles and their applications in the field.
• Overseeing all logistics of training workshops for government officials.
• Supporting in the execution of training workshops – facilitating and leading sessions.

Advisory Services: Provide rapid advisory services to states/districts on the integration of behaviour change components into ongoing programmes.

• Develop knowledge products that showcase the behavioural lens to solve any specific problems rapidly and responsively.
• Work with designers, consultants, and other sector experts to design products.
• Conduct literature reviews and quick gap-filling research
• Lead formative research studies in the field through a mix of qualitative and survey-based methodologies.
• Prepare documentation to capture learnings from secondary and primary research.

Generating Behavioural Solutions: Work closely with the CSBC empirics team to run pilot projects to generate behavioural solutions to solve policy challenges.

• Working with the empirics team to complete the full behaviour change process of diagnosing, designing, and testing solutions.

Advocating for the scale-up of effective behavioural solutions

• Working with district officials, block officials, and last-mile service providers to understand the intricacies of program processes and structures.
• Supporting in the development of operation toolkits that are aligned with existing government processes and structures.
• Supporting the execution of the advocacy strategy for generating buy-in on various behavioural solutions.

Building visibility on importance and value of using behavioural insights within government and across partner institutions.

• Producing strong project documentation and knowledge products for external circulation.
• Organising workshops, webinars, and other events to highlight ways in which behavioural science could help solve policy problems.

The Associate would also be responsible for:

• Ensuring timely delivery of high-quality project outputs as per project requirements.
• Supporting the contracting and financial tracking of projects.
• Ensuring strong knowledge management processes of projects.
• Provide organisational support:
• Bringing innovation and creativity to project approach and processes.
• Ideating and innovating on the application of behavioural insights for addressing policy challenges and for
• contributing to larger behavioural literature.
• Supporting other organisational growth and needs as required.

Skills Required

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in economics, social sciences, public policy, sociology or related fields.
• A minimum of 1-2 years of work experience in an analytical, consulting or policy role.
• Experience with conducting primary research in peri-urban/rural India.
• Strong understanding of the Indian policy landscape and experience of working with government officials.
• Familiarity with the design and implementation of lab, lab-in-the-field and field experiments.
• Ability to manage and respond to varied tasks quickly and efficiently.
• Strong interpersonal and communications skills – to be able to develop strong project documents and briefs.
• Strong critical and analytical thinking skills.
• Quick to learn, motivated to self-teach and capable of independently translating new knowledge into practice.
• Ability to give and receive constructive feedback.
• Willingness to travel and stay for an elongated period in field settings (based on existing circumstances).
• Fluency in English and Hindi (Required).

Venue and Days of Work

This role is based in India. Hence, the candidate should have work authorisation in India (preferably Indian citizenship or Overseas Citizenship of India). The role could be based in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.
Though, due to the COVID-19 situation, CSBC has switched to a work-from-home model of operations. Given these circumstances, the role would be on-boarded and executed remotely. The person would need to have their own laptop and access to a functioning internet connection. They would need to be available through regular working calls to virtually join team discussions and to support project requests. But based on the evolving COVID-19 situation, candidates could be asked to come into the office. 
 

Send your application to csbc@ashoka.edu.in

Please mention the position title (Associate, BIU Bihar/AV) in the subject line of the email.
Please include your resume and a cover letter highlighting your experience.