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Idealog Works · An Ideas Place · Innovation + Impact

Ideas that work.

Twelve ventures in consulting, education, technology, publishing, photography, and civic life, connected by a single question: how do knowledge and story change what development practice actually does?

Explore the ventures New Delhi · Working across South Asia

On the name

A log of ideas in the works.

It is a practice, not a slogan. Ideas get written down, tried, kept, or retired. The ones that survive grow into ventures. The ones that do not still earn their keep because they feed the ones that do. Everything on this site is either an idea being logged, a venture already in the works, or notes from the bench in between.

The ventures

Twelve ventures,
one question.

Twelve projects at different ages. Some run in the wild. Some are still finding their shape. Some are sketches the ink has not dried on. Together they ask how knowledge, story, and evidence can shift the practice of development, not the slide decks about it.

Active running in the wild

Consulting · MEL · Social research

PinPoint Ventures Advisory

A registered social research and advisory practice since 2016. MEL system design, programme evaluation, applied research, and strategic advisory for development funders, implementers, and civil society. Recent engagements include the Gates Foundation, the India Health and Climate Resilience Fund, the Alliance for Responsible Aquaculture, Claylab Education, GAIN, and Populi Research Services.

Civic tech · Air quality · Indian cities

JanVayu

India's first citizen-led air quality testimony repository. Hyperlocal AQI data, citizen-reported pollution accounts, and policy-relevant analysis across Indian cities.

Open source · Civic tech · Research tools

OpenStacks for Change

A family of open-source tools for public-interest research. InsightStack for MEL and econometrics, FieldStack for field R notebooks, EquityStack for development data workflows, SignalStack as the companion knowledge base for the Research Rundown newsletter (archived issues, featured tools, method spotlights, curated resources for practitioners), plus RootStack, BridgeStack, ViewStack, and PolicyStack under the hood.

Growing out of the sketch, open for collaboration

Publishing · Women-led

StoryWell Books

A women-led publishing house committed to voices at the margins of Indian literary life.

Education · 5,000+ users/month · Free

ImpactMojo

A free development education platform for practitioners across South Asia. 48 courses, 400+ handouts, 16 learning games, 19 labs, 9 premium interactive tools, a podcast, a 247-tool dataverse, a repository of 203 behaviour change techniques, and a NudgeKit.

Sketching ink not dry, company welcome

Publishing · Commentary · Indian politics

Policy Grounds Press

A sharper voice on Indian policy, rights, and the things mainstream coverage quietly skips. One writer, strong opinions, written to be used.

Newsletter · Development research · South Asia

The Research Rundown

A bi-monthly curation of development research, evidence, and sector jobs from South Asia and beyond. Lands in inboxes once every two months, for practitioners, students, and researchers who want the interesting stuff without the slog.

Civic tech · Policy tracker · South Asia

PolicyDhara

A live South Asia policy and scheme tracker. Government announcements, welfare schemes, and budget lines across the region in one searchable place, built so a practitioner can answer a question in under a minute instead of an afternoon.

Stage zero · Tech experiments

idealogworks.foo

The scratchpad, not a proper venture. Small tools, proofs of concept, and side projects built to scratch an itch or test an idea before it earns a name.

Photography · Travel · Prints

Phototales Studio

Curated travel photography printed on museum-quality paper. Affordable wall art that turns a wall into a story.

Indian craft · Thoughtful gifts

All The Good Stuff

Curated Indian craft and thoughtful gifts. Researched guides to craft objects and gifts built to last, from makers worth knowing about.

Digital agency · Non-profits · Social enterprises

MakeItPOP Online

A digital agency built for non-profits, social enterprises, and the people changing things. The in-house workshop, open to outside projects too. We make movements pop.

Ideas, tested

Things we tried
and what they did.

35 experiments in public-interest work, shuffled on each rebuild. Each has a question, a bet, and an outcome. Showing 8 of 35.

  1. Civic data

    Can an interactive tool show someone where they actually stand in India’s income distribution?

    The bet

    Most Indians overestimate their economic position. Build a calculator that uses real government data and lets a user type in their income to see where they actually fall. The shock is the pedagogy.

    What happened

    The Real Middle reveals where users stand in India’s income distribution using government data. Makes inequality concrete and personal in under ten seconds.

    The Real Middle

  2. Publishing

    Can a novel make climate collapse more visible than a policy brief?

    The bet

    The policy brief is the wrong genre for what needs to be felt. Tell the story from inside the world instead.

    What happened

    The Very Last Superhero, a dystopian novel following a fourteen-year-old in a climate-collapsed India. Published, bestselling on Amazon.in.

    StoryWell Books

  3. Behaviour change

    Can a state-wide behaviour change programme shift health practices across one of India’s poorest states?

    The bet

    Work at the intersection of supply (health system readiness) and demand (community practices). Shape both at the same time, district by district, using frontline workers as the hinge.

    What happened

    The Ananya programme reached millions across Bihar, combining supply-side health strengthening with demand-side behaviour change through frontline workers. The ambition was the point — a state, not a pilot.

    Ananya, Bihar

  4. Education measurement

    Can you measure the impact of edtech products on learning outcomes when every product defines "impact" differently?

    The bet

    Build a common evaluation framework — a Tulna (comparison) — that standardises what counts as an outcome across edtech products, so funders and schools can compare apples to apples.

    What happened

    The EdTech Tulna framework became a reference tool for assessing edtech effectiveness, giving the Indian education sector a shared vocabulary for what "works" means in digital learning.

    EdTech Tulna

  5. AI in evaluation

    Can AI-administered phone calls track long-term outcomes of a fellowship programme at scale?

    The bet

    Human-administered follow-up surveys are expensive and slow. An AI calling system can conduct structured interviews with fellowship alumni, capturing employment, civic engagement, and social capital data at a fraction of the cost and time.

    What happened

    An AI-assisted call survey was designed for tracking long-term alumni trajectories, combining automated structured interviews with targeted human follow-ups for deeper probing.

    AI-assisted alumni tracking

  6. Mobile health

    Can an automated phone call service deliver stage-appropriate health information to pregnant women at scale?

    The bet

    An automated voice call reaches women who cannot read, in their own language, at the right gestational week. Design the calls to be welcomed rather than tolerated.

    What happened

    Kilkari became one of the largest mobile maternal health services in the world, delivering weekly audio messages timed to each stage of pregnancy and early infancy across multiple Indian states.

    Kilkari

  7. Education

    Can school vouchers for girls change enrolment patterns in the dense lanes of Old Delhi?

    The bet

    Give families a voucher that covers fees at a private school of their choice. If the barrier is cost and the private schools are already trusted, the voucher closes the gap without building new classrooms.

    What happened

    India's first school vouchers field trial for girls, conducted in Old Delhi. An early RCT in a country where randomised evaluation of education policy was still rare.

    School vouchers, Old Delhi

  8. MEL design

    Can a health fund build a dedicated learning layer — not just an evaluation — inside the fund structure itself?

    The bet

    Evaluation tells you what happened after the money is spent. A learning layer tells you what to change while the fund is still running. Build it in from the start.

    What happened

    The learning layer produced real-time evidence that was used to adjust fund priorities mid-cycle. Programme managers had data they could act on, not reports they could file.

    Fund learning architecture

Values

A few things
we hold true.

Six working rules for how the work gets made. None of them are new. All of them get forgotten under deadline pressure, which is why they are written down here.

  1. 01

    Evidence is a craft, not a compliance exercise.

    We write reports practitioners actually use, not reports they dread. The number has to answer a question somebody is already asking.

    Because MEL that lives on a shelf is just expensive paper.

  2. 02

    The margins set the question.

    Not the funder, not the calendar, not the theory. The voices nobody counts yet are the ones worth counting first.

    Because if the sampling frame is polite, the frame is wrong.

  3. 03

    If you cannot explain it on a Tuesday afternoon, you do not understand it.

    Plain language is a rigour check, not a dumbing down. Jargon is a hiding place.

    Because clarity is the bar, not the ceiling.

  4. 04

    Free is a design decision.

    We publish openly when we can. Access is a political act, not a marketing gimmick, and the free edition is the edition that matters most.

    Because paywalls are the wrong bottleneck.

  5. 05

    Own the work, share the tools.

    Every script, template, and workflow belongs to whoever needs it next. Closed libraries die. Open ones grow sharper.

    Because the sector has enough private silos already.

  6. 06

    No neutral ground.

    Peaceful in most rooms. Loud in the ones that need it. Evidence that refuses to take a side is usually already on the wrong one.

    Because silence during a harm is a verdict.

The playbook

How ideas become
ventures.

There is no magic. There is a loop that runs many times before anything gets a name. It looks like this.

  1. 01

    Sense

    Listen for a question that real practitioners are bumping into and nobody has framed cleanly yet. Read the complaint inside the complaint.

    weeks, not quarters

  2. 02

    Sketch

    Prototype on the cheap. A paper tool, a field survey, a notebook, a script. Show it to three people who will use it and fix what they hate.

    low cost, fast feedback

  3. 03

    Stand up

    Publish a public version that someone can open on a Tuesday afternoon and get value from before closing the tab. Ship, then tune.

    in the wild, not in a deck

  4. 04

    Sustain

    The venture grows its own team, its own story, and its own runway. Some land with a partner organisation. Some become their own thing. A few get retired with thanks.

    own legs, own shape

Work & writing

Notes from the field
and the desk.

Essays, dispatches, and the slower work of making sense of what the data actually says. Two places the writing lives.

Policy Grounds Press policygrounds.press

Sharper commentary on Indian policy, rights, and the things mainstream coverage quietly skips. Six of fifty-odd pieces, shuffled on each redeploy so the rotation keeps moving.

The Research Rundown varna.substack.com

A bi-monthly curation of development research, evidence, and sector jobs from South Asia and beyond. Once every two months.

The Blog idealog.works/blog

Longer, slower pieces on research, measurement, parenting, and the view from the edges of the development sector. Self-hosted here on the site.

Free field kit

The Measurement Checklist

Twelve questions to ask before you commission, design, or fund a piece of MEL work. One page, free to share, printable as a PDF. A companion to The Measurement Trap.

Open the checklist

Also published in

  • The Wire Opinion · Reportage
  • BehanBox Gender · Labour
  • Ungender Gender · Workplace
  • Mainstream Weekly Political economy
  • Deccan Herald Commentary
  • The Economic Times Business · Policy
  • Business Standard Business · Policy
  • The Hindu National daily
  • The Washington Post International
  • OneWorld South Asia Development

Peer-reviewed and academic

  • A Framework for Operationalising the Capabilities Approach in Poverty Research World Bank & HDCA Poverty Measurement Journal · 2016
  • Schooling in Urban Slums in India: Choices, Capabilities and Constraints HDCA Journal · Helsinki · 2016
  • Building Communities for Change: An Experience in Mumbai International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy · Springer · 2011
  • Study of Impact of ECE on Primary Level Outcomes: The Galli Galli Sim Sim Intervention in ICDS Journal of Childcare and Education Policy · 2012
  • Measuring School Readiness: The Sesame Workshop India Experience Entertainment Education Conference (EE5) · Johns Hopkins · 2011

Books in progress

  • The Measurement Trap

    A history of welfare measurement in India — from the first Five Year Plans to Aadhaar-linked welfare, and what happens to the people who fall between the indicators. The argument: the metrics we chose shaped the country we got. The companion Measurement Checklist is already live.

  • The Hate Effect

    A political economy of communal violence in India — how hate gets priced into elections, budgets, and media cycles, and who pays the bill when the cycle accelerates. Still in the outline stage, taking its time.

In the pipeline

  • A children's book on air quality

    Tied to the JanVayu project. How do you explain AQI to a six-year-old who cannot go outside?

  • A practitioner's field guide to evaluation

    The longer version of the Measurement Checklist — a book-length guide for people who commission or run evaluations in the development sector.

  • A Policy Grounds essay collection

    Fifty-plus pieces from the Policy Grounds archive, selected and annotated. The writing that lives between the news cycle and the shelf.

Notes

Stuck to the wall
for now.

20 short working notes on measurement, field practice, and what the data actually says. Shuffled on each rebuild — showing 8 of 20.

On power

Power leaves traces on the calendar before it leaves traces on the budget. Read the calendar first.

On the archive

A country that does not measure its own inequality is not failing to measure. It is choosing not to know.

On migration

A bus ticket is a financial instrument. The family that cannot afford the fare to the city during the lean season stays poor until someone covers it.

On indicators

An indicator is a promise about what you will pay attention to. Pick only the ones you can afford to keep.

On learning

If a training does not change what a participant does on the following Monday, it was a performance, not a training.

On grantmaking

A grant is a bet on a person before it is a bet on a project. Fund the person with the question, not the prettiest logframe.

On writing

If a report needs a glossary, the glossary is where the reader gives up. Write the glossary first, then don't use any of the words in it.

On data gaps

India has not conducted a census since 2011. Every policy decision made with that data is a bet on a country that no longer exists.

On rotation

What's feeding
the work.

A few things on the desk this month. A bit of reading, something to watch, something to listen to. Updated when something better shows up, and not before.

Reading

Books from the desk and the shelf behind it. The full list lives at /shelf.

  • Himal Southasian Regional magazine · Kathmandu

On the podcast shelf

Sixteen shows in heavy rotation — development, law, climate, and a few dailies.

About

Who is behind
the work.

Varna Sri Raman has spent twenty years at the edges where research, story, and practice meet. She reads evidence for a living. She reads most other things for the love of it.

The questions keep coming back to the same few. What are we measuring, and does it match what we mean? Whose voice gets to frame the problem, and who has to live with the answer? Why do so many good reports end up on a shelf? Policy briefs rarely fit these questions, so she writes in whichever form will hold them — essays, working papers, a dystopian novel, children's picture books, and a handful of longer books still taking shape.

The writing is half the work.

Off the clock, she is wife, daughter, and sister inside a loud, loving family, and mum to two sons. Heera the dog still lives here and is much loved. Two cats used to, until they ran away for love — they spent six months quietly duping her by bringing lookalikes home at dinner time for the extra meal, an operation she respects. Free time goes to books, watercolour painting, astrophysics rabbit holes, and a lot of music — mandolin, sitar, and piano on the speakers, guitar in her hands (barely). When not otherwise occupied with her projects, Varna can be found curled up by the window howling at the moon. A peaceful bibliophile until confronted by a fascist.

Collaborate

Bring a question,
not a brief.

Conversations about MEL consulting, research partnerships, civic technology, and development education are open. The work tends to start with a question no one has framed well yet and ends with something that can actually be used in the field.

If that sounds like what you are trying to do, write in. A short note about what you are working on is enough to begin.

Location New Delhi, India
LinkedIn /in/varna

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