Alumni Feature | Shreoshee Mukherjee, Master’s in Public Policy ‘16

Shreoshee Mukherjee, born and raised in a middle income, liberal family, with roots in the political hotbeds of Uttar Pradesh (Varanasi and Gorakhpur), was part of the first cohort graduating out of the MPP programme (2014-16) at NLSIU. She was trained in economics, mathematics, and statistics during under graduation (BSc, 2014) at Mount Carmel College, Bangalore. The MPP programme challenged her to debate diverse political views, especially in the current neoliberal vision of the society. It helped her raise uncomfortable questions about the socio economic structures around us. It also helped her negotiate the influence of the private sector in solving social issues like health care access, where the government appears to be gradually withdrawing welfarism. It trained her to objectively observe social problems within the backdrop of constitutionalism. The program familiarized her with the social revolutions which have inspired human values like equality, liberty, and justice, within the democratic framework.

Post-MPP, she worked as a research associate for two years with J-PAL, where she initially studied the rural agricultural labour market with behavioural economists. Her field work experience during MPP, where she had interactions with MGNREGA labourers, strongly helped her discussions with daily wage agriculture labourers and the socio-economic challenges they face. Thereafter, she wanted to understand another developing country’s context and moved to Africa, in the Kingdom of Eswatini, a monarchical democracy, located in the south of the continent. Here she worked on a government led clinical study to prevent HIV among the general population wherein one in three individuals are HIV-infected. Debating health policies and economic evaluations during MPP had instilled in her the need to advocate for policy guidelines to promote equity and efficient resource allocation, and back it up with scientific evidence, which she was able to do with her research collaboration in Eswatini. Currently, she is a PhD student at the Viroscience Department, Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on reaching the World Health Organization goal of eliminating the HIV and hepatitis C pandemic in 2030. For this purpose, she uses mathematical modelling to guide health policy decisions on how antiviral drugs can prevent HIV and hepatitis C infections in the most cost-effective manner. The implication of her research leads to leveraging public-private partnerships in advancing societal development by optimal allocation of funds and effectively navigating policy alternatives.