Evidence-Based Innovations: Reflections on the Exchange Sessions in Delhi

How can a promising idea become a solution that tangibly improves people’s lives? How can its effectiveness be demonstrated? And how can proven interventions be scaled up and sustainably embedded in public policy? By bringing together public policymakers, researchers, grassroots organisations and funders for the “Common Ground: India-France Development Dialogue” event, FID, AFD and J-PAL South Asia sought to create a space for dialogue to identify what works, understand why it works, and determine the conditions that enable the most promising solutions to benefit as many people as possible.

The event was held as part of the 2026 France–India Year of Innovation, which provides an opportunity to strengthen ties between the French and Indian innovation ecosystems and encourage the sharing of experience. In her opening remarks, Lisa Amon, Deputy Head of Mission at the French Embassy in India, highlighted the potential for cooperation between the two countries and their shared commitment to it: “Our shared ambition is to deepen our cooperation and develop innovative solutions to the major challenges facing our societies.”

In her opening address, Esther Duflo, Chair of FID’s Board, stressed the need to experiment and draw on robust results to identify which solutions merit wider implementation. Failures help us better understand what does not work and, in turn, focus on interventions that can have a real impact. “Even if it does not work, it's okay, as long as it's understood that this is the process by which we find what works.”

The first panel brought together representatives of four FID-supported projects, alongside Anushka Chawla, Investment Officer at FID. The discussion focused on the conditions needed for scale-up and the challenges that should be anticipated from the outset when designing an intervention. If the goal is to deploy a solution on a larger scale, this ambition needs to be built in from the beginning, while leaving room for the adjustments that experimentation may show to be necessary. Urmi Bhattacharya, Associate director of research at the Inclusion Economics India Centre for a rural project encouraging women to become more financially independent, explained this approach: “The framework we used was: what is likely to scale if found impactful? And then start with that. As you learn more about how the intervention is progressing, you might realize that you need to add an additional layer which is a bit more intensive.” For Richa Gupta, co-founder of Labhya, which runs a school well-being programme to improve educational outcomes, the sustainability of an innovation depends in part on its ability to become embedded in the way public institutions operate. “We need to think about how we can institutionalize programming beyond Labhya or beyond us as individuals, into budgets and into institutional time within the school day. Because once that happens, there is a continuum that continues despite shifts in the ecosystem.” For an innovation to last, it must move beyond the organisation that developed it and find a place within institutions. Along similar lines, Bhawna Mangla, a Senior Research Associate involved in evaluating a project using edutainment to address drug use among young people, discussed the adjustments required to transfer an intervention from schools to vocational training institutes: “We had to go back to the drawing board, rework our design, and include incentives in our programme.” Scaling up, therefore, is not simply a matter of replicating an intervention. It sometimes means rethinking the model to reflect the realities of a new environment. As a funder, FID has a particular role to play in supporting these scale-up processes. Anushka Chawla noted that “all the adjustments mentioned by the other speakers - whether changes in public policy or changes among the people supporting a project - are the rule rather than the exception. As funders, our role is to be flexible and responsive, adapt timelines and milestones, and enable teams to seize opportunities as they arise.”

Beyond education, gender and health, a second panel addressed climate and resilience challenges, particularly those related to access to water, air quality, extreme heat and energy. Discussions involving Esther Duflo, Ashok Kumar K. Meena, Secretary of the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, at the Ministry of Jal Shakti, Georges Richards, Director of Community Jameel, and Paul Procee, Chief Operating Officer and Acting Country Director at the World Bank, highlighted the importance of drawing on research and cross-sector partnerships to develop responses tailored to climate risks and strengthen their implementation at scale.

Through this event, FID, AFD and J-PAL South Asia reaffirmed their conviction that innovation should be measured not only by the novelty of an idea, but also by its ability to deliver tangible, lasting results. Achieving this requires evidence to go hand in hand with long-term partnerships, appropriate funding and close collaboration with the stakeholders responsible for implementing solutions.