Program
The Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP) was launched by the Department of Pharmaceuticals, Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers, Government of India in November, 2008. Under the scheme, dedicated outlets known as Janaushadhi Kendras are opened to provide generic medicines at affordable prices. Over 10,000 such outlets have been opened in the country.
Effect on Menstrual Health Management
In 2018, the program started selling sanitary napkins at affordable prices which was further reduced to INR 1 (<0..02 USD) per pad. This is around 5-10 times cheaper than market alternatives. We combine multiple datasets to estimate the effect of this program on multiple outcomes. In a first paper, we estimate that the program increases a woman’s pad usage by around 8 percentage points if she resides in a sub-district (comparable to a census tract) where a PMBJP pharmacy exists. We also find positive effects on educational attainment.
Where do we build? : Efficacy v/s Equity
We use our estimates to find out how many women would be effected by the scheme in sub-districts where pharmacies are not built. We proxy efficacy by the raw number of women who will be affected by the program. We proxy equity by mean value of pad usage. A social planner may value these differently. We showcase the social planner problem in the app below, where for different weights given to efficacy and equity, we provide location of sub-districts that the government could prioritize when building the next pharmacy.
Accounting for availability of waste disposal
Now we use our heterogeneity estimates to account for waste disposal. We generate a measure for average availability of waste disposal and define efficacy accounting for number of women who will take up pad usage when we consider waste disposal. This shows that accounting for heterogeneity will change the optimal locations.