InSPIRE
Informal Sector Policy Interventions and Research Engagements
Dvara Research runs a platform called the Informal Sector Policy Interventions and Research Engagements or InSPIRE. The mission of InSPIRE is to research and advocate for policy action to provide adequate levels of social and livelihoods protection for the informal sector in India. We began the InSPIRE journey in April 2020, when Dvara Research began to host a series of conference calls every Tuesday, as a means of staying in touch with all our partners in the financial inclusion and social protection arenas, and of informing ourselves about significant challenges that were beginning to arise for low-income households and the informal sector in the early weeks of Covid-19 lockdown. During the months of lockdown and beyond, the fortnightly Tuesday conference calls became a venue for very productive interchanges among a diverse group of researchers and practitioners, from across the spectrum, India and abroad.
The InSPIRE platform aims to accomplish its mission by hosting discussions among key stakeholders every fortnightly Tuesday, and using these discussions to learn about research and action-projects that are ongoing as well as to originate new ideas for research and action-projects that group members can individually or jointly pursue. All discussions will be off-the-record, and no press will be present. The spirit of engagement among group members will be collaborative and one of learning together so that the urgent challenges of social and livelihoods protection for the informal sector in India may be met with a sense of added urgency and joint purpose by the group.
The following table provides information on the sessions we have had so far. We do record the sessions but because of their off-the-record nature, we are not making the recordings available online.
