A new space race in the offing?

As the world is grappling with the coronavirus pandemic and the United States is ina precarious situation, President Donald Trump has passed an executive orderallowing Americans ‘the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, anduse of resources in outer space.’All major spacefaring nations, including the United States of America and India, aresignatories of the Outer Space Treaty 1967. Article II of The Outer Space Treaty,1967, states, ‘Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is notsubject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use oroccupation, or by any other means.’ The Moon Agreement 1979, although ratified byonly 18 countries, the US not being one of them, also prohibits the exploration ofthe moon. The order highlights that US doesn’t consider space as ‘global commons’and further states that the US is not a party to the 1979 Moon Agreement anddoesn’t recognise the Agreement to ‘be an effective or necessary instrument toguide nation-states regarding the promotion of commercial participation in thelong-term exploration, scientific discovery, and use of the Moon, Mars, or othercelestial bodies.’While the legal opinion on the legitimacy of exploiting outer space by the USA isdivided, the intent of commercial exploration is not entirely new. Over the pastcouple of years, we are seeing increasing interest in asteroid mining andexploitation of space by nation-states. The US Congress had passed the‘Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act’ in 2015 giving its citizens the rightto ‘possess, own, transport, use, and sell the asteroid resource or space resourceobtained.’ NASA’s Artemis Lunar Exploration programme plans to develop a basecamp at the south pole of the moon and build other infrastructure to facilitatelong-term exploration of the moon. Billionaire explorers like Jeff Bezos and ElonMusk, are also looking to reach Mars and other celestial bodies and take advantageof the resources found.Luxembourg, a small European nation, has implemented an even more liberalregime than the US for asteroid mining and harvesting of other resources fromspace. Trump’s executive order is an endorsement of the growing global sentimentand formal recognition of the property rights of private players from the US.Russia has heavily criticised the US, and Trump for the order, stating, ‘attempts toexpropriate outer space and aggressive plans to actually seize territories of otherplanets hardly set the countries (on course for) fruitful cooperation.’ However, weneed to trust actions, not words when we observe sovereign nation-states in theinternational arena. Russia’s space agency Roscosmos has announced plans for a2024 orbiter, a 2028 sample-return mission, and human flights by 2029-30, Chinahas an ambitious lunar programme with its Chang’e missions. Russia and China arealso planning to build a shared data centre for lunar and deep-sea research. It willbe interesting to see whether all these missions are only towards the pursuit ofscience or are there other strategic and economic interests that the countries willundertake.Setting up bases and exploiting and trading resources found in space is also a wayof asserting power in space. Most states now acknowledge space as a new domainof security, and thus are building capabilities to safeguard their interests andproject power. While building defensive capabilities through specialised defencespace agencies is one way, establishing economic avenues through the exploitationof resources and trade is the other way to gain primacy.The Outer Space Treaty, enacted in 1967, in the wake of the cold war and the heightof the space race, has done well to prevent exploitation of space so far. As spaceexploration and travel is becoming cheaper, and there is increased participationfrom private players, we are likely to see new strains in the international order. Wewould observe an increased interest in property rights in space and countriestrying to enable, if not encourage, their private players to harvest resources inspace.The executive order says that the US is looking to negotiate multilateralagreements with foreign states for sustainable operations for the recovery of spaceresources. India needs to be cognisant of the developments in this new ‘space race’.While the Moon Agreement which India has signed but not ratified may prove to bea thorn, India must take prudent measures to ensure that its citizens can reap theeconomic dividends of space exploration while India can safeguard its strategicinterests.(This article was published in the Deccan Herald. The views are of the author's own.)

COVID-19 and Geo-political Implications

It is perhaps too early to judge the scope and long-term impact of COVID-19 on the geopolitical landscape. What is not in doubt, however, is the certainty that there will be global political and strategic effects. Presently, the dominant emotion that runs across the global population is the ascendant fear that stems from the known and unknown aspects relating to the coronavirus. While it is known how the virus spreads and what its symptoms are, no known cure has been discovered nor is a vaccine likely before 12-18 months, if at all. One of the major challenges in containing its spread though is its ability to transmit, even during the incubation period. Herd immunity1 is said to theoretically provide the best available defence against the virus, but it comes at a major cost in terms of human lives and the infection quantum. You can find the full article here

Omar Sheikh: If Not Daniel Pearl, a Trail With Links to ISI, 9/11 Mastermind and Bin Laden

Was it a coincidence or was it purposely timed for when everyone was too busy worrying about the Covid-19 crisis?Last week, the Sindh High Court overturned, citing a lack of evidence, the conviction of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh on charges of murdering Daniel Pearl. It, however, found him guilty of a lesser charge of kidnapping and sentenced him to seven years in prison.Omar Sheikh, who has been in custody since 2002, will be released as the sentence for kidnapping will be deemed to have been completed.In India he’s remembered as one of the three terrorists released at Kandahar after the hijacking of IC 814. The other key figure released with him was Maulana Masood Azhar who went on to found the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM)...Read the full article on The Telegraph India here.

Grain Mountain Amidst Food Insecurity

The official stock of food-grain with the Food Corporation of India stood at 77.7 million tonnes as of March 1. This includes 27.5 million tonnes of wheat and 50.2 million tonnes of rice. The rice estimate includes a significant quantity of unmilled paddy. This mountain of grain is among the highest level that the government has held in its stock. It is far in excess of what is required by the norms defined by the government itself. And this large stock is prior to the coming rabi harvest, which is expected to be bumper, and will add further to the stock. The coexistence of high stocks with the government amidst rising hunger and starvation, is a peculiarly Indian phenomenon, and this is not the first time such an anomaly needs to be highlighted. Food-grain procurement and the public distribution system (PDS) are designed to meet three objectives: food security, food price stability and adequate remuneration to farmers with minimum support prices. There is an inherent inadequacy in using just one instrument to achieve all three objectives. Add to it, the other factors like inefficiency of large bureaucracies, lack of coordination between Central and State agencies, pilferage and wastage, lack of storage capacity, knee jerk policy responses like imports and exports of food, it is no wonder that this elaborate system has failed to address the problems of hunger and nutrition.Read more 

Perennial Lockdown Is Not a Remedy. India Must Isolate and Insulate

Since March 25, India has been adopted a lockdown strategy in its ‘war’ on COVID-19 and continues to put its faith in it. This fact was confirmed on April 14, when the prime minister in his third address to the nation announced the decision to extend the national lockdown till May 3.The decision, he claimed, was based on the advice of several chief ministers and public health experts. There is no doubt that the decision was an extremely difficult one especially since it meant the prolongation of economic inactivity that is bound to have severe consequences for all, especially for the unorganised sector which constitutes the bulk of India’s poor.You can find the full article here

To meet world average, India must add at least 10 lakh doctors to healthcare force

India has long been short of doctors, nurses and hospital beds. And a recent working paper by Shruti Rajagopalan and Abishek Choutagunta of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center reminds us of that. Compared to the world average of 150 doctors per 100,000 people, India has only 86 doctors registered for practice. The actual number of doctors available for practice, as Basant Potnuru shows, is even lower: we probably have only around 64 doctors per 100,000 people, well below half the world average. Of course, the national average does not tell the whole story: southern states and urban areas are vastly better served than other parts of India. The picture with regard to nurses is relatively better, but there is still a shortage, regional variation and differences in skill levels.

We could take any indicator of healthcare capacity and find that as a country, we are short of it. Public expenditure on healthcare is low — our Union and state governments together spend around 1.5 per cent of GDP on health — and most of India relies on private, mostly out-of-pocket healthcare. Even as we point fingers at the government for spending too little on health, consider that only 20 per cent of the population has medical insurance. Perhaps it is yatha praja, tatha raja, and we have been collectively casual about our health.

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To open or not to open India up: a dilemma that need not be one

As India decides what next after the 21-day national lockdown ends on 14 April, opinions are divided among those who want a phased lifting and those who want to extend it. This reflects underlying differences between those who believe it is worth taking calculated risks to forestall widespread suffering on account of lost livelihoods, and those who are concerned taking such risks could cause the pandemic to spiral out of control.

Bold as it was, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to impose a lockdown on 24 March was easier compared to what he has on his plate now. At that time, the consequences of the pandemic were clear, whereas those of the lockdown both unknown and in the future. It is almost the opposite now, and the moral dilemma appears far more acute. The prime minister has to weigh the real suffering of hundreds of millions of people caught in the lockdown against the millions who might catch the disease if the lockdown is lifted and the pandemic spreads. It’s not an easy decision, but there are ways to make it less difficult.Read more

Overcorrection at the cost of privacy during coronavirus is problematic

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal. There are three pillars of crisis management, according to NYU professor Scott Galloway. First, the top guy/girl takes responsibility. Second, acknowledging the issue. Third, overcorrect. When you read it out loud, it seems reasonably straightforward but is a process that should not be taken for granted.It has taken governments and leaders around the world multiple attempts to take responsibility and acknowledge the issue. Finally, time has come to overcorrect. Six months from now when things are back to relatively normal, measures taken now may look drastic, but that is the point.However, it is not going to be easy to overcorrect. Even governments have to follow social distancing and may already have limited capacity to deal with a pandemic of this size. Given the pervasive nature of modern technology, it is no wonder that government administrations around the world are going to try and use digital methods to aid their efforts.China has been ahead of the curve on this. The government has begun using the Alipay app to assign citizens with QR codes based on their risk of exposure to regulate citizen movement. A green QR code means that you are free to move around. A yellow code means a one week quarantine while a red QR code refers to a two week quarantine. In Tamil Nadu, the Police is now using facial recognition to track people in quarantine. At a larger scale, the Union Government of India is using the Aarogya Setu app to help connect Indian citizens to health services.To most people, it might not make sense to talk about privacy in such times. And on one level, they would be right. It is hard to overstate the seriousness of the situation and dealing with the pandemic comes first. In such emergencies, concerns about privacy come second. Moreover, as a fundamental right in India, privacy exists with reasonable restrictions. Erosions of privacy must be necessary, legal, and proportional. Instead of being suspended, this standard should be upheld. Because as the Union Government (and the larger international community) use facial recognition, or apps such as the one deployed in China, it is crucial to keep in mind that such techniques have the potential to set a new normal by resetting our expectations on personal privacy.Rahul Matthan has an excellent analysis backed by observations regarding this. Before 26/11, hotels in India would let you drive to the entrance and hand over your keys to the valet. Post the Mumbai attacks, vehicles are mandatorily screened, as are people and the contents of their baggage. As a practice, it seemed important and urgent at the time, and has now become routine.More than a decade from now, doing so has become the expectation, and it is probably for the best. However, that was 2008, and the difference between now and then is that the liberties yielded today will be a lot more invasive than just vehicle checking at hotels.For instance, in case of CoBuddy (the app bring used in Tamil Nadu to track people), the app has constant access to the phone’s GPS and continuously checks the location of the phone. The app automatically sends an alert to the Police as soon as the person moves out of the geofence. The Police also sends users prompts 2-3 times a day to verify their faces.Not all data is created equal. While both facial data and location data are personal and sensitive, the former tends to be more invasive. This is because facial information is permanent and cannot be easily changed. While constant access to people’s location can help determine where they live and their movement patterns, it is easier to change where you go compared to how you look.The Aarogya Setu app, while admittedly better than (now discontinued) Corona Cavach when it comes to privacy, still collects your name, phone number, age, sex, profession, countries visited in the last 30 days and whether or not you are a smoker (apart from constant access to your location). Compare this with the Singapore government’s app, Trace Together, that only stores your mobile number and a randomly generated ID. Not only are we being subject to invasive apps, lists of infected people with their names and addresses have been made publicly available without their consent.Given the nature of the crisis and the tech response we have seen, it is evident that two things are happening here. Firstly, there is little regard to data minimization. Governments in India and across the world are collecting more data and accessing increased data points to get a better sense of people’s movements during the crisis. Once your name, age, facial data is shared with the government, it is unlikely to change. Instead, once this crisis is over, the data can be used for purposes it wasn’t collected for.Secondly, violations of personal privacy are becoming the norm and not the exception. It is now somehow okay to post lists of infected people on WhatsApp groups and to provide facial data to the police 2-3 times a day. Much like the vehicle checks at hotels post the 26/11 attacks, our expectations of privacy are being reset. Only this time, it is being done at scale.It is fair to say that we live in unprecedented times. But just because we do, does not mean that the necessity and proportionality standards for eroding personal privacy should be suspended. If anything, they should instead be upheld. Because the liberties we give up today, may end up becoming the norm tomorrow.

Dealing with adverse impact of COVID-19 on India's Military planning

Author: Lt Gen (Dr) Prakash Menon, PVSM, AVSM, VSM (Retd)India’s military planning will be severely challenged by the inevitable and adverse economic impact of COVID 19. It also exacerbates the long term and unresolved problem of competing demands for military modernisation being overwhelmed by inadequacies of financial resources. The silver lining in the situation is the recent creation of the CDS and the Department of Military Affairs (DMA). This is so because there is now greater institutional singularity in the form of the CDS being both a head of department in the MoD and the Permanent Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee (PC-COSC).Continue reading the article here.

Learn to be positive in coronavirus pandemic from this Vietnam war US navy pilot

During the Vietnam War, James Stockdale, a US navy pilot, was taken prisoner-of-war (POW) in 1965 and imprisoned in the infamous Hanoi Hilton for eight years, much of it in solitary confinement. As the author Jim Collins tells it in Good to Great, Stockdale was tortured “over 20 times…and lived out the war without any prisoner’s rights, no set release date, and no certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again. He shouldered the burden of command, doing everything he could to create conditions that would increase the number of prisoners who would survive unbroken, while fighting an internal war against his captors and their attempts to use the prisoners for propaganda.”Writing in 1999-2000, Collins knew that Stockdale survived the ordeal, was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1976, led the Naval War College and was Ross Perot’s running mate in the 1992 US presidential election. But he was struck by “how on earth did (Stockdale) deal with it when he was actually there and did not know the end of the story?(emphasis in the original)”

We are in a similar situation today. ...Read more

Lockdown Stopped Two Thirds Of World Economy

Despite bitter political bickering, the United States passed its highest ever relief package to support the economy. It is valued at 2.2 trillion dollars, and another one trillion is coming, if not more. That would make it nearly 15 percent of the US GDP, as against 0.8 percent announced by India’s Finance Minister last week. And even that meagre announcement of India had items which had already been budgeted for, and hence were not part of the new relief spending. Keep in mind that the political bickering in the US Senate and Congress was not about the size of the package, but its composition. The Democrats claimed that the earlier proposal was too generous to corporations and too stingy to workers. Hence the revised proposal had a provision for a direct cash payment to every adult in America, barring a small minority earning a very high income. There were also tax breaks and loan incentives to companies to not retrench workers, and keep them on the payroll.Read More 

Zoom fiasco highlights need for data protection law

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle.None of the protections afforded by a privacy law are in place yet, which leaves our data open to exploitation by tech companies.There has been a lot going on at Zoom. The video conference app has been a major beneficiary from the lockdowns imposed due to the coronavirus, as humanity participates in its largest-ever work from home experiment. As a result, Zoom’s shares have doubled in value in less than six months. All is not well though, the company has been fraught with privacy issues recently. For instance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) pointed out that hosts of Zoom meetings can see if the participants are paying attention based on whether or not the Zoom window is active on their screens.Zoom would likely make the argument that the ability to be able to check whether people are active on a team call is a feature, not an instrument meant to cause harm. Which is one way to look at things. But at the same time, that is not the only slip up in terms of privacy the company has been embroiled in this past month. VICE reported that Zoom’s iOS app sends user data to Facebook even if you do not have a Facebook account. Zoom notifies Facebook when the user opens the app, shares details about the user’s device, such as the model, time zone, city, phone carrier, and the unique advertiser identifier (a unique number created by user devices which are then used to target ads).Zoom’s privacy policy is not explicit about this data collection and there is a blame game to be played here. Facebook can make the argument that it requires developers (like Zoom) using Facebook’s SDKs and Pixels to be transparent about the data they are collecting, using and sharing. Zoom can and has argued that Facebook was collecting unnecessary device data. We need to talk about all of this because apps like Zoom and Houseparty are not going anywhere.Instead, this incident is an excellent teacher for how policy and protections work in the data protection space. Firstly, it highlights the need and urgency for India (and other countries) to have a data protection law. These are exactly the kind of offenses a data protection law is supposed to penalise. In an ideal world, had there been a data protection law in place here, Zoom likely would have had to adhere to a standard of explicit consent. This way, the user would have been aware of what data was being shared. Had Zoom not adhered to the guidelines of consent, it would have had to pay a penalty. The data being shared with Facebook would have come under ambits of personal data, personal sensitive data and non-personal data, requiring different levels of protection and liability.The fact that none of the protections afforded by a privacy law are in place yet means the only protections users have are those given to them by companies whose objective is to maximise shareholder value. More often than not maximising shareholder value comes at a cost of trampling on user rights. Most companies will be more than happy to make this trade-off and would ideally want to do it when there isn’t a data protection law in place.At this point, it is hard to state whether or not a data protection regulation is going to be a definitive solution to incidents like these. Broadly because there isn’t a lot of precedence to learn from yet. Arguably the most significant existing legislation in this space is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU. The law was enforced in May 2018 and an assessment of how its implementation has fared is due by the Commission sometime this year.There is every chance that the Personal Data Protection regulation that India ends up adopting is not going to fix everything when it comes to abuses of power that come with a vacuum in the data protection space. It is going to be hard to implement clauses and penalties on every website on the internet and to track data flow at scale.  However, as any policy analyst worth their salt will tell you, change happens at the margins.In the larger picture, Zoom sharing data with Facebook without explicit notice is a sign that is reflective of a deeper problem of accountability within the data protection space. There are no laws, and when laws do exist, they are near impossible to impose and monitor. This should serve as a high-profile warning sign of practices that currently exist and are going to continue until regulation exists.The writer is a technology policy analyst at The Takshashila Institution. Views are personal.

Kautilya and COVID-19

Author: Dr Kajari Kamal, Research Faculty, Takshashila Institution.Why is it that Kautilyan principles are invoked only when India tries to outdo its neighbor through an unconventional military endeavour (recent India-Pakistan conflict), or when devising novel ways to upgrade India’s modern warfare capabilities, or when the nation witnesses a dramatic twist  in domestic politics, often by resort to clever means? Surely, the expansion and maintenance of a political entity as large as the Mauryan Empire would have necessitated a wider, more comprehensive, understanding of governance and statecraft.Continue reading the article here

As Chorus of 'Chinese Virus' Rings Loudly in India, Is the Stage Set For an Info-Ops Tussle?

This article was originally published on The WireUsers of Indian Twitter, for want of a better term, will not have been able to escape the term ‘Chinese virus’ trending on the platform in the form of different hashtags over the last 10 days.What seemingly started off as agitprop by the American right has transcended boundaries and resonated in India as well, echoing sentiment that Beijing and the Chinese should be severely penalised for the COVID-19 pandemic.This sentiment was backed by what appeared to be some coordinated activity on Twitter from March 24 onward, around the time of India’s lockdown, all with the purpose of taking aim at China.#ChineseVirus19, #ChineseBioterrorisn, #Chinaliedpeopledied and #ChineseVirusCorona were some of the hashtags being used in favour of this narrative around March 24 and March 25.Read more

What Zoom’s rise tells us about future of work culture

This article was first published in Deccan Herald.The shift to working from home would have happened in an organic manner, but the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the speed of change; important to think about the precautions we must take to make this on-going experiment successfulThe coronavirus pandemic has become the reason for the largest work from home experiment in history. This phenomenon has meant an increased use of video conferencing and collaboration platforms that allow many people to simultaneously interact and collaborate in a virtual setting.Not surprisingly, the company that has benefited most from this on-going experiment is Zoom, a video conferencing platform that is being used by millions of users. Zoom’s share price has more than doubled since the new coronavirus began to spread in December 2019. There has also been a rise in trolling and graphic content on Zoom, an almost definitive sign that it is rising in popularity among teenagers and not just working professionals.Zoom’s rise (along with other video conferencing platforms like Skype and Slack) is indicative of a broader shift in the work culture. This shift to working from home or working remotely would have likely happened in an organic manner anyway, but the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated its speed.There isn’t much value in arguing about whether this phase will lead to a permanent shift in terms of a bulk of jobs being performed remotely from now. That question depends on too many variables, and it is impossible to predict.But the shift itself needs to be understood as part of an evolving trend. Workspaces for the most part have moved from cubicles to open-plan offices. As Chris Bailey notes in Hyperfocus, it is contentious to conclude that open-plan offices improved productivity across the board. What open-plan offices did was to make employees think twice before interrupting their colleagues, and made them more respectful of each other’s time.The future of the office space, moving on from open-plan offices, is the virtual office (widely anticipated and now catalysed by the COVID-19 threat), with people logging in and conducting meetings from home. This brings us to what the characteristics of this new work from home culture will be and what broad precautions we must take to ensure that remote working is successful for us as a people.Thinking through the idea of working remotelyThe first and most important thing to look out for here is going to be the impact this is going to have on the attention economy. With an increasing number of people working from home today, there is going to be a significant reduction in friction. Let me explain, the attention economy runs on the idea of manipulating people to spend more time on platforms. Companies do this by eliminating friction between the user and the content This is why the feed on Instagram is endless, or why the default option on Netflix is to keep watching more instead of stopping. Because everything is either free or so easy to access, attention becomes the currency.But when in office environments, for example, during a meeting, there is a certain amount of friction in accessing these apps. Using Instagram while talking to a colleague is going to have a social cost on your relationship. However, when working from home, it is going to be significantly easier for employees to give in to their distractions instead of focusing on tasks at hand. It is no wonder that Zoom has begun offering a feature that allows hosts to check if participants are paying attention based on whether or not the Zoom window is active on their screens.In addition, this also opens a can of worms for privacy breaches and the issue of regulating non-personal data. Because a huge number of people are shifting to working online for the foreseeable future, the value of online meetings increases in terms of the data being shared on them. This gives video conferencing and collaboration platforms the incentive to collect and share an increased amount of data with advertisers. For example, information on when users open the app, details about the user’s device – such as the model, time zone, city, phone carrier, and the unique advertiser identifier (a unique number created by user devices which are then used to target ads).In addition, increased workloads being transferred online will also generate increasing volumes of non-personal data, making the debate on how that should be regulated more relevant. For context, non-personal data is a negative term that is used to refer to all data that is not personal. This includes data like company financials, growth projections, and quite possibly most things discussed in office meetings.It is unlikely that COVID-19 has transformed offices forever. In this regard, its role in history is likely to be seen as a catalyst, accelerating the shift from offline offices to online offices. But as it does so, we need to take precautions by introducing friction in the attention economy, being conscious of the privacy trade-offs being made to facilitate new features, and installing regulation for the governance of non-personal data.(Rohan Seth is a technology policy analyst at The Takshashila Institution)

सोशल सिक्योरिटी को एक नए सिरे से सोचने का समय आ गया है

An edited version of this article appeared first on The Print Hindiअगले कुछ दिनों में कोविड-१९ के फैलाव को जल्द से जल्द रोकना केंद्र और राज्य सरकारों का प्राथमिक उद्देश्य रहेगा | साथ ही साथ यह भी बेहद ज़रूरी होगा कि लॉकडाउन से क्षतिग्रस्त ग़रीब लोगों के जीवन को फिर से संवारा जाए | अच्छी ख़बर यह है कि जनधन-आधार-मोबाइल की त्रिमूर्ति के रूप में भारत के पास एक ऐसा प्रभावशाली औज़ार है जिससे ज़रूरतमंद लोगों तक तेज़ी से सहायता पहुँचाई जा सकती है |इस महामारी से भारतीय अर्थव्यवस्था को इतनी बड़ी क्षति पहुँचेगी कि उसकी भरपाई सिर्फ सरकार नहीं कर पाएगी | मसलन, मोदी सरकार ने फुर्ती से १.७ लाख करोड़ के राहत पैकेज की घोषणा तो कर दी लेकिन सही माइनों में ज़रुरत है कई गुना बड़े पैकेज की - कम से कम पाँच प्रतिशत जीडीपी के करीब की | मतलब अगर आप सरकार के स्वास्थ्य, रक्षा, और मनरेगा पर सालाना खर्च को जोड़ कर एक राहत पैकेज बनाए तो वह भी अपर्याप्त होगा |अगर सरकार ऐच्छिक खर्च मसलन राष्ट्रीय राजधानी की रीमॉडलिंग को टाल भी दे, फिर भी उसके लिए 10 लाख करोड़ से ज़्यादा की रकम जुटाना मुश्किल होगा| करों में वृद्धि या सेस (cess) बढ़ाने से लेने के देने पड़ जाएँगे क्योंकि ऐसे साधनों से अर्थव्यवस्था को अपने पैरों पर खड़ा करना और भी मुश्किल हो जाता है |साधन १: पीएम-केयर फंडपीएम केअर के नामकरण को लेकर बेवजह का विवाद खड़ा किया जा रहा है | ठंडे दिमाग से सोचें तो ऐसे कोष नए नहीं हैं| राज्यों में मुख्यमंत्री राहत कोष हो या पीएम-केअर फंड, सरकार द्वारा प्रशासित यह राहत कोष उस जमाने की देन है जब हमारे पास ऐसी तकनीक नहीं थी कि हम ज़रूरतमंद की सटीक पहचान कर उन तक सहायता पहुंचा पाते|जैसा कि अर्थशास्त्री अजय शाह लिखते है, भारत में एक रुपये के सरकारी खर्च के लिए उसे समाज से तीन रुपए लेने पड़ते है | यह भारत की प्रशासनिक हालात को दर्शाता है | इस संख्या का मतलब यह कि पीएम/सीएम राहत कोश लोगों को राहत राशि पहुंचाने का सबसे बेहतरीन तरीका तो नहीं है | इसका मतलब यह कतई नहीं है कि हमें इन कोषों की ज़रूरत ही नहीं | कुछ ऐसे क्षेत्र है जहां सरकार का खर्च किया गया एक रूपया समाज को तीन रुपये से ज़्यादा का फ़ायदा पहुँचा सकता है | उदाहरण के लिए सार्वजनिक स्वास्थ्य, टीकाकरण, आपातकालीन खाद्य प्रावधान, सार्वजनिक आश्रय कुछ ऐसे खर्च है, जिनके प्रावधान से सरकार समाज से लिए हुए पैसों को सूद समेत वापस कर देती है |इसके आलावा दूरदराज़ के स्थानों में या आर्थिक रूप से कमजोर राज्यों में सरकार शायद एकमात्र एजेंसी है जो आर्थिक संरचना में निवेश कर सकती है | इसलिए इस तरह के कोष काम में आ सकते है, खासकर आज के हालात में | अच्छा होगा अगर व्यवसाय, दान-संस्थाएं, और आम नागरिक सब मिलकर इस पूँजी में अपना योगदान कर पाएँ |साधन २: २१वीं सदी का सोशल सिक्योरिटी अकाउंटइस पारम्परिक तरीक़े के अलावा, अब एक और ज़रिया है जिससे समाज के सभी हिस्से ज़रूरतमंदों तक सीधे पहुँच सकते है| मोदी सरकार को जल्द ही एक नागरिक-से-नागरिक हस्तांतरण योजना शुरू करनी चाहिए जिसके तहत कम्पनियाँ, दान-संस्थाएं, और आम नागरिक सीधे लाभार्थियों के बैंक खातों में पैसा डाल पाए |  देखा जाए तो हम यह काम अनौपचारिक रूप से करते ही हैं जब हम अपने घर में काम करने वालों और पड़ोसियों को कुछ अतिरिक्त पैसा देते हैं |  लेकिन जनधन-आधार-मोबाईल और यूपीआई की मदद से यह हस्तांतरण बहुत बड़े पैमाने पर किया जा सकता है |ज़रा सोचिए: एक ऐसा मल्टी-कंट्रीब्यूशन सिस्टम जिसमें किसी भी ज़रूरतमंद के जनधन अकाउंट को कई योगदान के स्त्रोत से टॉप-अप किया जा सके | एक ऐसा सामाजिक सुरक्षा खाता जिसमें राज्य सरकारें केंद्र के योगदान को टॉप-अप कर सकती हैं, या फिर सीएसआर (CSR) फंड्स निजी योगदान को टॉप-अप कर सकते है, या फिर एक एनजीओ (NGO) संस्था किसी आम नागरिक के योगदान को टॉप-अप कर सकती है | इन स्त्रोतों से इकट्ठा की गयी राशि आपके एक  जान-पहचान वाले व्यक्ति के जन-धन खाते में यूपीआई से सीधे डाली जा सकती है, या एक अज्ञात व्यक्ति के खाते में, जिसे आप जनसांख्यिकीय मानदंडों (आयु, स्थान, आय) के आधार पर परिभाषित कर सकते हैं | साथ ही इस हस्तांतरण के बदले में आपको टैक्स कटौती का लाभ भी मिल सकता है | यह सही मायनों में २१वी सदी की सामाजिक सुरक्षा प्रणाली होगी |  सामाजिक रूप से हस्तांतरित इस रूपये की समाजिक लागत 3 रुपए से कम होगी जो कि एक सरकारी चैनल के माध्यम से किए जाने वाले ट्रांस्फर से होती |  इस टेक्नोलॉजी से ज़रूरतमंदों की बेहतर पहचान कर सकते हैं बजाय किसी अनजान सरकारी कर्मचारी की उदारता पर निर्भर होने के | वैसे तो ये एक मूल ढाँचा है और इसका दुरुपयोग न हो, उसके लिए कुछ संशोधन ज़रूर करने होंगे | टैक्स कटौती की सीमा तय की जा सकती है और एक निश्चित सीमा से ऊपर के डोनेशन को सेवानिवृत्ति / स्वास्थ्य सेवा खातों में डाला जा सकता है| मानदंड-आधारित दान स्कीम भी शुरू की जा सकती है | मुझे यकीन है कि ऐसे सौ तरीकें है जिनसे इस तरह की व्यवस्था का दुरुपयोग किया जा सकता है लेकिन इसे हमें इन कारणों को एक बेहतर सामाजिक सुरक्षा प्रणाली की ओर अग्रसर होने में रूकावट नहीं बनने देना चाहिए |वास्तव में, समाज को खुद की मदद करने के लिए सक्षम बनाना भारतीय परंपरा का एक अटूट अंग रहा है |  राजनीतिक सिद्धांतकार पार्थ चटर्जी रवींद्रनाथ टैगोर के इन्हीं तर्ज पर विचार को कुछ इस तरह से पेश करते हैं: “भारत में अंग्रेजों के आने से पहले, समाज अपनी पहल से लोगों की जरूरतों को को पूरा करता था | वह जरूरी कार्यों के लिए राज्य की ओर नहीं देखा करता था| राजा युद्ध या शिकार करने जाते थे, कुछ राजा राजकार्य छोड़ अपने आनंद और मनोरंजन में ही व्यस्त रहते थे और रियासतों को उसके हाल पर छोड़ देते थे | ऐसे समय में भी समाज में कष्ट भुगतने की बजाय कर्तव्यों को अलग-अलग व्यक्तियों के बीच में ही आवंटित कर दिया जाता था| जिस व्यवस्था से यह सारा काम किया जाता था उसे धर्म कहा जाता था|”कोरोनोवायरस महामारी से बनी परिस्तिथि ने एक आवश्यकता को वह अब एक अनिवार्यता में बदल दिया है | मोदी सरकार को अपने ही विचारों को तार्किक निष्कर्ष की ओर ले जाना चाहिए: सामाजिक सुरक्षा को वास्तव में सामाजिक बनाना बनाकर| कोरोनोवायरस और लॉकडाउन से प्रभावितों को राहत देना इस नई सोच के लिए एक शुभ शुरुआत होगी|(Translated by Pranay Kotasthane)

We must avert an economic disaster due to Covid-19

Indian economy will suffer due to COVID-19, but govt can ease the pain for individuals and firms with decisive and meaningful action nowFor businesses, the union government should think of delaying GST payments, tax credits, and any other policy that could support employers to keep their staff on board.  As on March 24, the Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman has announced a few measures to ease the compliance and regulatory burden for businesses: increasing the threshold of default that triggers the insolvency and bankruptcy proceedings from 1 lakh to 1 crore, easing some of the rules for corporate affairs, and extending extending the deadline to pay excise and customs duty and GST. Government should ensure that the flow of critical supplies and services are uninterrupted, including food, healthcare, security, groceries and other provisions, electricity, telecom, ATM and banking.Most importantly, we need to think about how to protect the unorganised and informal workforce. While the salaried class, small as it may be, can afford to work from home and be assured of payments at the end of the month, the daily wage earner does not have the same luxury. A limited form of targeted Basic Income (not universal) using the JAM (Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) trinity could be used to ensure sustenance. The union government can use the unexpected bonanza from the lowering of oil prices to fund some of these programmes.It is important, however, that any policy made for these emergency purposes come with sunset clauses. If not, the extraordinary measures to combat the disease and its impact will linger on far after the disease has faded from human memory.Read more here

Modi govt needs to open the JAM for public contributions. PM Cares alone can’t deliver

If containing the coronavirus outbreak is the primary national policy prerogative at this time, a close second is the task of providing relief to those who have been hardest hit by the lockdown. With advances in financial inclusion, reliable identification and mass mobile internet, the so-called JAM or Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile trinity, Indian society has efficient ways of delivering aid to those most deserving of it.

State will fall short

The economic damage caused by the coronavirus outbreak will be so large that the government alone will not be able to ameliorate all the suffering and setbacks in society. The Indian economy is large and complex, and the pandemic will have direct and indirect consequences over a long period of time.

Read more

Why WHO Must be Partly ‘Blamed’ For Coronavirus Global Pandemic

The World Health Organisation (WHO), founded to reduce health risks for all, is facing international criticism for its handling of the COVID-19 outbreak. WHO’s Director-General (DG), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has been accused of forwarding China’s interest rather than ensuring the containment of the virus through awareness procedures.WHO’s assessment, finally characterised COVID-19 as a pandemic on 11 March 2020, almost three months after its outbreak in Wuhan, China.

By then, there were already 118,332 confirmed cases globally with 4, 292 deaths. Coronavirus had already impacted people across 113 countries when the WHO declared it as a pandemic.

The article was originally published in The Quint.

Look ahead of the current crisis to plan for an economic revival

Even as we grapple with the anxieties and uncertainties of the Covid-19 pandemic, two things are clear. First, its impact on Indian society will be unprecedented. Second, the crisis will pass, leaving us with the task of recovery, reconstruction and rejuvenation. While much of our management of the coronavirus outbreak has been reactive in nature, it is both possible and incumbent upon us to start planning for life after the pandemic. It might sound presumptuous to say this at a time when the energies of our Union and state governments are focused on the gargantuan task of managing the consequences of the outbreak and subsequent lockdown.

But if India is to emerge from this crisis with the best prospects of resuming on its development path, it is crucial that we align relief measures and economic stimulus efforts with a medium-term reconstruction plan. With last week’s announcement of a ₹1.7 trillion relief package, amounting to under 1% of gross domestic product (GDP), the government has set the ball rolling on a fiscal response. The Reserve Bank of India followed with a reduction in interest rates. These measures are primarily intended to provide relief to individuals, families and firms affected by the current lockdown.Read more