Article 19’s correspondent Meenakshi Viswanathan interviews Manjari Shankar, who graduated from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras, in 2014.
Manjari is currently working with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance in Geneva, Switzerland. She is an Economics graduate from the Department and a Global Health graduate from LSE. On days she isn’t within the confines of the Global Health Campus overlooking the Alps, she can be found poring through articles on 5 totally free things to do in the city or populating her Instagram feed.
You are currently working as an analyst with the Health Systems and Immunization Strengthening team at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance based in Geneva. Could you tell us more about your work?
Gavi might need some introduction. We are a global health alliance of governments, international organizations like the WHO and UNICEF, philanthropic organizations, civil society and the private sector to improve global immunization coverage rates among children in low-income countries. So, to put it simply, if country X decided to introduce the polio vaccine into their National Immunization Program, Gavi offers to partly fund the cost of the vaccines while encouraging governments to gradually increase their spending and working with vaccine providers to drive down the prices through economies of scale.
As a global health organization, we are also engaged in all the ongoing conversations around achieving Universal Health Coverage. Strengthening health systems is crucial to UHC and is viewed as better accelerating equitable immunization coverage. Hence, my team.
I provide analytical support on country application reviews and their proposed health systems interventions to improve the national immunization program. This may include better delivery of services, capacity-building of health workers, stronger data collection systems and vaccine delivery mechanisms.
You received your Master’s in Global Health from the London School of Economics. You are also a recipient of the prestigious Chevening Scholarship. What was the process for the scholarship and how different from IIT was your experience studying at LSE?
To be honest, Chevening was entirely unexpected. One is usually familiar with the scholarships from the Tatas, Commonwealth and the like, but this one by the British High Commission was a surprising find, particularly if you have had at least 2 years of work experience and plan on pursuing a 1-year postgraduate program in the UK. The entire process runs parallel to your university application process and wraps up with a panel interview at the UK Consulate. They cover for absolutely everything: your flights, tuition, visa fees, NHS along with a monthly stipend. London couldn’t have been better!
To the second part of your question, it was drastically different. Any University tends to push you out of your comfort zone, socially and academically, to varying degrees. On both occasions I interacted with the best of people and to date, would credit them for who I am today. The experience of graduate school would be incomplete without these incredible, lovely people.
What was jarringly different though was what I was entitled to as a student and the processes in place to guarantee the same. Graduate programs are stress-inducing. But, as an undergraduate, I realized that I was navigating a system that invariably selected for those similar to those already in the institution, with a defined set of expectations and failed to accommodate an entire range of students, often labelled as not worthy of institutional time and resources. Moving across programs restored my belief in educational institutions though. I felt valued as a student. There was a lot of emphasis on positive mentorship. My mental health, as a student, was never a stigmatized conversation. I was allowed a safe and inclusive space to voice my problems. The university was set up around the ‘student‘ with a strong mental health ecosystem. I hope things are headed there in IIT-M too.
What are the rigours of working as a policy analyst? What are some challenges that you have faced both as an analyst and on your road to becoming an analyst?
Nothing is absolute. Every work-day comes by with a new set of problem-statements. Off late, there is a lot of push towards evidence-based policy making across the international organizations here. But this also comes with its own set of questions. How do we best define the problem? What would be the best methodology for analyses? Which analytical framework to adopt? How do we address data deficiencies? Who can scrutinize the findings? Are the timelines feasible? Everything is so iterative. Probably, this is what makes this an extremely exciting field to be in.
The fluidity of the policy-making space speaks to how much the data space has evolved. The skill-sets required of an analyst have changed drastically since the time I graduated from IIT. We spent close to 3 years poring over STATA commands and SPSS. LSE introduced me to TreeAge and Spectrum, a demographic projection tool. And today, I work on R and absolutely enjoy coding. There is a constant cycle of learning and re-learning and I can only imagine this changing over the next few years and all of us having to play catch-up, yet again. This seemed like a massive challenge earlier, but I enjoy the process now. Social media with its hashtags has livened it all up. (read: #Rladies)!
After 5 years at the DoHSS, what are your takeaways from the course? What does/doesn’t give you an edge as an IITM MA postgraduate?
To be honest, I was alien to the concept of liberal arts until IIT-M. The familiar arts vs. science battles dominated secondary school but applying to this 5-year long program was a massive leap of faith as an uninformed 17-year old. So, I never had a concrete plan going into the program or for that matter, even after graduation. There was a lot of misguided background chatter on how unwieldy and useless the humanities and social sciences could turn out to be but the more I broke it down across internships, family/friends, university applications, I gradually got a better sense of the course and what I ought to expect off it.
As for the course itself, it was a mixed bag. Creating a space for the humanities and social sciences in a premier engineering institute is no easy feat. So, credit where credit’s really due. Moreover, this was a good attempt at defining multi-disciplinary studies with a comprehensive set of modules, most of which I wouldn’t have ventured into if not for the nature of the program. Experimenting with minors & electives was probably my biggest comfort zone. But yes, all of this was disorienting, overwhelming, confusing and falling apart in different measures at different points in time. But all of this also allowed me to vaguely draw the scope of the program for myself and maneuver around subjects outside of Economics.
Five years may seem just about enough to find your feet. But clarity and experiences are so relative. I wasn’t an 8.5-pointer. I had no idea where I wanted to be in my final year of the program. I was a ‘mediocre’ student who unexpectedly ended up writing her thesis on public health. I was hired as a Business Analyst during placements which I turned down to work as a researcher at a public health start-up. This wasn’t an expected trajectory but in hindsight, all of this feels normal and should be the case. I never came out feeling technically sound but instead I felt a sense of accomplishment at having merely survived an intense half-a-decade long liberal arts program. It geared me up for all and sundry.
What are your thoughts on the now defunct Economics stream at the department?
I wouldn’t dispute the usefulness and relevance of economics as a subject, but it wasn’t an exceptionally well-designed stream in the program. I am still not clear on whether the intention is to bring it back but if that is the case, it would require major restructuring.
This was a relatively new program when I joined, and a lot was unknown. Over the years though I think any course requires a faculty that is both well-equipped to handle the flexibility of the curriculum, the diverse range of students enrolled in the program and their apprehensions as well as be open to constant and constructive feedback on teaching methods and course content. As alumni, I think we are all happy to help with the program redesign and reintroduction, but not sure where that process stands now.
In fact, introductory courses in health economics, econometrics and research methodologies were extremely helpful going into another postgraduate program in Public Health. But it was equally important for me to know how competent the syllabus was, if the skills were marketable enough and if I was well-placed to dive into research after. For me, these questions definitely speak more to fundamental problems in how subjects are presented and taught rather than the stream in itself. Moreover, the program could have better capitalized on the student-professor interface, most of which was lost to frequently discomforting power dynamics.
What was department life like back then? Do you have any anecdotes to share with us?
The department corridors and classrooms have been privy to some of the best stories, real and exaggerated, from back then. Some of them still stand unverified but immortalized. Students being rescued out of washrooms, professors with floral shirts and bowler hats, multiple freshie nights, monkeys and people falling off furniture, practicing German in the corridors for lack of better acoustics elsewhere and so on. The DCF was probably the most happening place even if the air-conditioning never functioned beyond February. It was a tiny department with an amazing bunch of people across the first 5 batches.
My batch though had a famously followed Facebook page which diligently maintained all the conversations that were worth a post. You must check it out ‘Epic Lines of MA 2014’. We took it very seriously.
If you were to become a DoHSS student all over again, what would you do differently this time?
Nothing at all. I would want the same set of friends, do the same amount of theatre and Saarang and probably squeeze in a little more sleep.
Any favourite hangout spots in Chennai or insti that you miss?
The campus in itself is (was?) so beautiful. I have some of my favorite memories walking back from the main gate late at night especially during the monsoons, with the yellow lights and this mist floating around. The lake, the rooftops and all the hidden roads: sigh, I miss all of them. The Besant Nagar beach would come a close second.
I love food and always had massive midnight cravings. This brings me to all the eateries in the institute and immediately outside. Tiffs for Horlicks and podi dosa. Basera for gobi Manchurian and fried rice. Gurunath for extra shammam and egg puffs. Ramu’s tea kadai for chai and biscuit. And of course, Supriya biryani at Taramani gate, Ascendas, Krishna gate for omelettes. It really doesn’t help recounting these while enjoying gourmet salad in Geneva.
Imagine you woke up one day to find yourself the HoD. Are there any changes you would effect in the department?
Install a good coffee machine. But on a more serious note, our department absolutely needs a professional counselor and a clear process for students to avail of this easily and confidentially. Yes, we do have batch/academic supervisors but not sure if each one of them has been consistently receptive to students and their questions on their overall development. Also, alumni should be made to want to come back and visit the Department and Professors. Most of us are met with such disinterest, there is no incentive to show up. We aren’t that bad after all!
I would never want to wake up to this though. Seriously.
Interview by Meenakshi Viswanathan
Article 19 