The final-year exam fiasco

The University Grants Commission is the top boss governing policies of all universities in India. It oversees about 800 universities encompassing about 40,000 colleges. Of these, 49 are central universities, i.e. run by funds from the central government, 367 are state universities run by state government funding and 123 are deemed universities, i.e. UGC has blessed them with that status, although they are largely run with their own funds. The rest are private universities, established under laws passed by respective state legislatures. Until 1976, education was on the States’ List as per the Constitution of India. So all policies were governed by state governments. Due to an amendment passed during the Emergency, education was shifted to the Concurrent List, which meant that the central government could now legislate policies that would be binding on all.Of course, the UGC has existed since 1956, with a mandate to maintain the standard of higher education in the country. It provides grants and funds, and also regulation to maintain standards. Its decisions are binding on all universities of all states and Union Territories.Read More 

The California caste atrocity

The constitution of the United States does not recognise discrimination based on caste. It bars discrimination based on race, religion, gender, ethnic or national origin, and even sexual orientation, but not on the basis of caste. Why so? Because caste as a category was unknown to the founders of the American republic. That is now to be changed thanks to a landmark case last week.The California State Department of Fair Employment and Housing has filed a lawsuit against a Silicon Valley giant, Cisco Corporation. It has charged the company with caste-based discrimination. Cisco and others in Silicon Valley employ thousands of engineers and professionals from India. The department has said that Ciscoviolated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and also California’s own Fair Employment Act. The lawsuit also names two engineer managers who used to work at Cisco, and who discriminated against a fellow employee at Cisco, who is a Dalit. The two defendants are Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella. As per the charges, they being uppercaste, denied the Dalit employee his promotion, and gave him lesser pay and opportunities. They revealed his ‘Dalit’ caste to their co-workers at Cisco and also that he had got admission to IIT based on the caste quota. They were trying to enforce caste hierarchy at the workplace. When these complaints were taken to the HR department in Cisco, they ignored these. The state charges that Cisco failed to protect the employee against harassment, discrimination, and humiliation. If you ask around in private conversations or hushed whispers, such caste discrimination is quite widespread if not rampant in America.Read More

The unbearable burden of oil tax

On April 20 there was a historic drop in oil prices in Texas. The price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude dropped all the way, not just to zero, but $37 below zero. That means the seller was giving money to the buyer to buy oil. Unthinkable and unprecedented.Since then oil prices have recovered and WTI is trading at around $38+ per barrel. Its European cousin, called Brent Crude, is priced at $41 per barrel. This is roughly the import price that India pays. When the price was near zero, why didn’t we simply book an order for the entire year’s requirement? That’s called booking a future(delivery) contract. Alas, it doesn’t quite work that way. Besides, India’s oil refining companies, which import crude, aren’t really geared up for doing such sophisticated futures contracting. For instance, if they book a large futures contract at a low price, who’s to say the price won’t fall even further? The manager who booked such an advance contract may be hauled up by the anti-corruption vigilance guys for having defrauded the company. So India’s oil imports are done somewhat old-fashioned way, without too much speculation into the future. So whenever crude oil prices change in the world, the oil refining companies in India pay less or more depending on the fluctuation. Obviously, since the cost of refining crude oil into petrol or diesel is fixed, the price that they should ask at the petrol pump should also fluctuate according to global oil movements.Read More 

Separating economic and border issues

As we exit the lockdown and resume economic activity, we will have to observe certain protocols. Like social distancing. Or using hand sanitisers in office, public places, or even at home. These sanitisers are alcohol-based and usually come in dispenser pumps. The pump minimises human contact, unlike a tube or bottle. It is made of plastic, has 16 components, and costs less than Rs 20 if produced at scale. Here’s the rub: As reported by an online news outlet, we have not been able to find domestic manufacturers who can produce dispensers at a large scale, at this cost. We are facing a health crisis, and urgently need large quantities of dispenser pumps. There’s no alternative but to import from China.Take pharmaceuticals. We are the world’s leaders in bulk drug formulations, used by leading medicine makers of the world. But these formulations need crucial active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) as inputs. Without APIs, our pharma industry, both domestic and export, will be crippled. And 65 per cent of APIs are imported from China, worth $3.5 billion (i.e. about Rs 25,000 crore). When imports were halted in April and May due to the lockdown and stoppage of the sea and air cargo, there was near panic in the Indian pharma industry. This could threaten even our internal supply situation for medicines. And there is no realistic option of switching to any other supplier, at this cost or scale. Unless we risk rising medical costs.Read More

Let us not dilute law on cheque bouncing

The Indian court system is notoriously clogged. There are more than three crore cases pending at various levels and stages. Justice delayed is justice denied. What do we do? Experts and bodies such as law commissions and industry chambers have recommended several judicial reforms. A big part of the solution is filling out all the vacancies in the judiciary so that there is a speedy resolution of cases. We also have to encourage parties to settle out of court as far as possible, a process called arbitration or mediation. If a case goes to trial in a court, what are the chances of the plaintiff winning? In India, it is not even 50-50. The process itself takes so long that the plaintiff loses at the beginning itself. Often the accused, or the defendant, can tell the plaintiff: go to court if you want. As if admitting a trial into court, means getting into a permanent traffic jam – the ‘taareekh pe taareekh’ syndrome. Imagine the following: what if the chance of the defendant being found guilty, or losing the case is 90 per cent?Then the defendant will try hard to settle out of court. This can happen if the pre-trial preparation is watertight and of excellent quality. So shoddy investigation and badly done prosecution can also cause the trial to fail. Indeed the pendency ratio of courts in India would vastly come down if the trials were speedy, and almost surely end up with the defendant losing, because of excellent pre-court preparation.Read More 

The role that compassion could play in India’s economic revival

To rebuild the economy, we must focus on rebuilding social capital. To rebuild social capital, we need greater compassion across society. So many of the humanitarian tragedies that unfolded over the past few months could have been avoided or mitigated had we shown more compassion: in making migrants feel safe, making food available, saving small businesses, and giving money directly to those who are in most need. This is not merely an indictment of our Union and state governments. It is an indictment of our society as a whole. Read more

When should Indian schools physically reopen? The best answer is: not yet

The winding down of the national lockdown in India and the devolution of coronavirus pandemic management to the states will change daily life as we have known it for the past few months. While the reopening of the economy is rightly the subject of public interest, the reopening of schools and educational institutions will require greater attention in the coming weeks. The lockdown was less disruptive than it might otherwise have been because it came at the tail end of the academic year in many states and students spent the better part of the period at home. But now the questions of if, when, and how to reopen schools and colleges can no longer be put on the back burner. How should state governments proceed?

From the public health perspective, there are two principal considerations: protecting children and their families from the disease and preventing transmission through school children.

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Not vultures but watchdogs

The Supreme Court of India finally took up the issue of the plight of migrant workers and their families. It took up this issue suo moto. Meaning it was not in response to any public interest litigation. But surely it was affected by the extensive media coverage. And also by that sharp letter written by 20 senior lawyers from Delhi and Mumbai. That letter almost chastised the court for failing to protect the rights of the hapless migrants. It said that the court was showing undue deference to the government, and complete indifference to an enormous humanitarian crisis. Taking care of the migrants was not just a "policy issue" beyond the purview of the court but in fact, a constitutional issue to render justice. Whatever the influence, the court has taken notice, and asked governments, both the centre and states, what they are doing. It has also instructed that whether by bus or train, no fare should be charged to the travellers going home, and arrangements should be made for food and water, especially in this deadly heat.Read more 

India Can’t Be Self-Reliant & Prosperous With Price Caps, Quotas

A lot of people around the world will retweet you if you blame the coronavirus pandemic on ‘neoliberal capitalism’. In an excellent article in Boston Review, Alyssa Battistoni outlines the case. “(The) pandemic,” she argues “can hardly be understood as exogenous to capitalism: the virus itself is the outgrowth of the peri-urbanisation that has accompanied rapid development, the commodification of once-wild subsistence foods, new encounters between humans and nonhumans driven by industrial food production, and the global movement of both people and commodities.”Read more

What 300 Days of Internet Winter in Kashmir Tell Us About Erecting a Digital Wall

This is an extract from the full article published on The Wire.....What is the cost of this protracted disruption?There is no shortage of real-life stories about the economic impact this prolonged Internet disruption has had in the union territory. Media reports are replete with such examples.Given that we are still in the midst of these events, an academic exercise to estimate the economic costs has not been published.Still, using available numbers regarding internet subscribers (38% from TRAI for the service area of Jammu and Kashmir) and a rough estimate of time connected drawn out from reports on patterns of internet usage by people in India (different sources peg the ‘active consumption’ time between 90 minutes and 150 minutes. Let’s use the higher end of that range. Note that there is no measure of passive consumption impacted), it is possible to arrive at a back-of-the-envelope ‘estimate’ of how many hours of Internet access have potentially been disrupted since August 4, 2019.

Between August 4 and January 14, when there was a complete shutdown, this number amounted to ~1.9 billion hours. In the period from January 14 to March 4, when there was whitelisted access another ~600 million hours were added. And the 87 days between then and May 30, will have accounted for another ~1 billion hours. That adds up to around 3.5 billion hours of disrupted internet access for approximately 12.25 million people. Let that sink in.

Cities, both paradise and hell for migrants

Till the end of March, the world was marvelling at the success of Singapore for having controlled the spread of the pandemic. Its lockdown was not as severe as India, and yet with a combination of sanitising, social distancing, movement restrictions, testing and tracing protocols, it had managed to keep its numbers relatively low. It was flattening the curve. Even its schools and colleges were running.Then over the month of April, its numbers went up from around 1,000 to 15,000 and by the third week of May it has doubled further to 30,000. Singapore's population is about 5.6 million, so if the same infection rate would have happened in India, we would have 70 lakh virus positive patients. Today we barely have 1.2 lakh.But this is not about trumpeting our record. India needs to scale up its testing in any case. What is remarkable that even with relatively strict protocols, Singapore numbers have skyrocketed. Unlike countries of the West, Singaporeans do not mind strict controls, and curtailment of their personal liberties, if it is for their own safety, health or national interest. It is also one of the world's richest countries in terms of per capita income, and has a world class health care system and infrastructure. And yet the infection numbers have risen so dramatically? Why?Read more

Direct cash transfer best way to help poor in Covid crisis. If Modi govt can’t do it, let us

During as deep and as unprecedented a crisis as the coronavirus pandemic, the best way to help the largest number of people is to put money in their pockets. In most cases, cash allows people to purchase what they want: whether it is food grain, oil, medicine, a recharge on the mobile phone or a railway ticket home. Cash in hand also gives vulnerable people a little more confidence to deal with the many uncertainties of life during a crisis. Yes, in a country as large as India, there will be instances where cash won’t help, but for hundreds of millions of people, money is the single-most important helpful thing today.

And thanks to Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile (JAM), India today can process direct cash transfers to hundreds of millions quickly and efficiently.

So, it is disappointing that direct cash transfers do not form a significant part of the Narendra Modi government’s economic package announced last week. Towards the end of March, it re-assigned around Rs 62,000 crore for transfers to women Jan Dhan account holders, farmers and construction workers, but did not widen cash transfers after that. It is unclear if the PM CARES Fund will be used for the purpose either.Read more

What the Modi Govt Could Learn From Kautilya and His Take on the Role of Experts

The decisions that the Narendra Modi government makes in the coming months could save the lives of thousands and also whether the economy holds up.The stakes have never been this high. The initial decision of a complete lockdown garnered popular support in the wake of confusion and fear of the unknown.But as the panic eases and fatigue sets in, every decision of the political leadership will be judged minutely. Kautilya’s Arthashastra offers a ready guide to sound decision making based on knowledge; an aspect of power which the political realist rates higher than armed might and raw energy.You can find the article here

Like an MEA to help NRIs in crisis, India needs a system for its internal migrants too

India’s treatment of its migrant population has been a disgrace. We must redeem ourselves by admitting our failures and devising policy approaches that are sensitive, humane and respectful of individual freedom and dignity.

Much of the blame on this issue that was directed at the Narendra Modi government immediately after the lockdown was unfair. The nationwide lockdown had to be imposed quickly and not every scenario could have been catered for. Sure, the government’s antennae failed to pick up the risk that millions of migrants would make a beeline for their homes. But as far as one can tell, few outside experts, activists or mediapersons had flagged it as an important factor ahead of the lockdown. So the Union and state governments had to react to the unfolding human tragedy, which they did to the level their administrative capacities allowed.

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Kautilya Can Help to Resolve a Basic Policy Dilemma During COVID-19

Prime Minister Modi is set to make an important decision on May 3. India’s Lockdown 2.0 is nearing its end with much conjecture and debate about its successive version. The pros and cons of the lockdown are in the open, and this time, more than the previous two, people are awaiting the verdict with much anxiety and impatience. The once-in-a-century pandemic has put a premium on decision making, the political leadership’s greatest test yet. While the situation is quite unprecedented, Modi could do well by taking a leaf out of Kautilya’s Arthashatra.You can find the article here

States Must Be Given More Ownership of India's COVID-19 Containment Strategy

COVID-19 has been instrumental in testing the structural cohesiveness of human systems at the global level. Its shadow over India’s federal system is getting longer by the day and could accentuate the tensions that are endemic to it.Constitutionally, health is a state subject but a pandemic allows the Centre to assume charge. The Centre has used the provisions of the Disaster Management Act, 2005 and the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 to take control of public health. Understandably, centralisation has been the defining characteristic of India’s efforts against COVID-19.You can find the full article here

Stay safe and go back to the newspaper this pandemic

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.It is arguably easier to deal with the coronavirus than it is to deal with misinformation about it. The key difference is that when dealing with the former, you have your work cut out for you. Maintain social distancing, close borders, flatten the curve, and build capacity in the national healthcare system. When it comes to dealing with misinformation there is no one set of steps you can take to definitively win the battle.We did not need a global pandemic to realise how big a challenge misinformation is, but it helps. In India and abroad, we have seen some spectacular consequences of spreading misinformation. In the UK and Netherlands, conspiracy theorists spread misinformation claiming that 5G cell towers were spreading coronavirus. As a result of which, some 50 towers were burnt in the UK and 16 in the Netherlands.

 Closer to home, when PM Modi asked citizens to light candles and make noise for 10 minutes, WhatsApp was rife with networks of misinformation. People claimed that the rise in temperatures or the chance in decibel levels would kill the virus. Even if you have not been subject to any of these messages, you have likely heard that Indore locals or Muslim mobs attacked health staff and attacked doctors who went to treat them.  To put it mildly, it does not make any sense to attack doctors during a pandemic. Until you read Indian Express’ report that fake WhatsApp videos were circulated in localities claiming that healthy Muslims are being taken away and injected with the virus were doing the rounds of Tatpatti Bakhal and adjoining localities.Misinformation is so potent because social media is an excellent tool to spread narratives and reinforce beliefs, as opposed to television. Imagine a scenario when you are viewing protests live through news on a television screen. In all likelihood, all you can see is a hoard of people fighting with the police or marching down an aisle with slogans printed on charts.  The information you take in is largely what is visible on the charts or what the anchor at the time is saying.Compare that to how you observe a protest on social media. On Twitter, when you follow a trending hashtag, it will show you the video of the protestors or the slogans they carry. In addition, you will also be able to look at what most people are saying or thinking about during the protests. This helps absorb a narrative a lot more quickly than a news anchor would.In times of panic, like protests or a pandemic, the narratives thrive and get a larger audience. This leads to more engagement and more content. It is a vicious cycle that reinforces itself. That’s how it becomes easy to believe that 5G towers are spreading the virus or that doctors have come to inject you with the virus and not to treat you.It’s hard to say whether most misinformation is a result of malice or stupidity. But when it comes to tackling the infodemic, there are not a lot of generally accepted truths in the area.  The broad goal is clear. We need to re-evaluate the importance we afford to social media in our news diet. To anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock, it is evident that WhatsApp is not a credible source of information.In that spirit, it is easy to go to news sources that are free and convenient to access, such as Twitter and Facebook. It is even better when the news comes to you through push notifications on WhatsApp. However, when we rely on these sources for the news, there is no assurance that we actually get the news.Quality journalism and information that comes as a result of it is a commodity. Like most commodities, it might make sense to pay for it with money (not with privacy). Paying for the news is inherently not a foreign concept. We have paid for newspapers before, and a significant number of us still do so. It may not make sense to physically hold a newspaper everyday right now, but paid digital access is a more convenient and ironically, a more natural alternative.The trade-off is worth it. There is no end in sight to the lockdown and the pandemic. In times such as these, the value we attribute to information will increase on average. You may have a gripe with the editor about the stories s/he curates for you, but in a good news agency, there is genuine effort involved in fact checking and ensuring that consumers get both sides of a story. Any person who sends you a forward on WhatsApp will not go through any of these pains.So this lockdown, consider paying for the news or be critical of what you consume for free.As 5G towers in the UK and injured doctors in Indore will tell you, it is worth it. 

Individual Rights and Collective Good: A Historical Perspective

In an article published recently in the Times of India, author Rohini Nilekani expresses her concern, rather persuasively, about the gradual shift away from “primacy of the individual” to a world where surveillance and privacy infringement for the collective good of the society are becoming more acceptable. The turn away from individualism, she argues, was largely caused by developments such as the 9/11 terror attacks and 2008 economic meltdown that have necessitated the broadening of the state’s role aided by technology tools, which ironically had given wings to the netizens in the first place.You can find the link to the article here

Dear young IRS officers, taxing the rich in Covid times is bad economics

The Narendra Modi government did well to promptly dismiss a proposal put up by a group of young Indian Revenue Service officers that recommended raising a number of taxes to make up for the government’s revenue shortfall amid higher spending requirements as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. A prompt and public rejection of the proposal was warranted because even the whiff of an increase in taxes can deepen the crisis and prolong the recovery, because the already-mauled individuals and businesses will choose to play it safe by holding back on spending and investment.

That said, the government should not have gone further and taken disciplinary action against the intrepid officers. They were clearly acting in good faith. Barking up the wrong tree is not an offence and should not be penalised. A crisis is an especially important time for top leaders and civil servants to keep ears and minds open, and encourage fresh thinking within the government’s ranks.

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Get India back at work to secure the economy and employment

As we near the end of an extended national lockdown, our policy discourse must broaden from containing the outbreak to addressing the three ‘R’s for the economy as well: of relief, revival and reconstruction. While the pandemic will haunt us for a few years, it is also true that complete lockdowns will harm Indian society as much—if not more—than the disease.

Unlike rich countries, India’s government simply does not have the resources to pay people to stay at home. Most businesses are staring at insolvency after having to keep and pay employees over the past four weeks. Even if they manage to stay afloat, their distress will compound our unemployment crisis. According to Mahesh Vyas of the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, 140 million people, or 14% of India’s working age population, have lost their jobs during the lockdown. Both urban and rural India have been hit hard.

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