Commentary
Find our newspaper columns, blogs, and other commentary pieces in this section. Our research focuses on Advanced Biology, High-Tech Geopolitics, Strategic Studies, Indo-Pacific Studies & Economic Policy
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
Why India needs to be the centre for content moderation reform
You could put a price tag on what it costs to keep platforms clean of harmful content. $52 million is a good starting point (and an underestimation). But the learnings that come out of this experience have the potential to be priceless. Not just in terms of how much money they can potentially save in counselling costs, but in terms of preventing the mental harm that content moderation causes people who undertake it.The article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Read more.
India’s Bargaining Power with China and US will Grow in Post Covid World
Covid-19 is likely to accelerate the competition and confrontation between the US and China, and simultaneously reduce the global authority of both by eroding their absolute power and legitimacy. The relative power scale can tilt in either direction. India and other middle powers are likely to enjoy greater bargaining capabilities with both US and China. Smaller powers are likely to fall in line with any side that provides them with the required capital. India’s geopolitical stance depends on actioning key domestic reforms, failing which India’s leverage will reduce and it will be forced to ally with a major power on less favourable terms. If India’s relative power vis-a-vis China and the US improves, India can become a swing power for both the US and China led groupings. If India’s relative power declines, India will have to align itself more closely with the US. Read the full op-ed on The Print here.
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
Don’t let your dislike of Yogi Adityanath get in the way. Labour reform is a good idea
Unless you belong to the ideological Left — and even if you do — it is impossible to argue that India’s complex web of labour regulations serve the public interest.
Simply put, they are part of the reason why 90 per cent of India’s labour force is “informal”, without the basic protections that law ought to have given them. Our labour laws are part of the reason why we have failed our migrant workers, millions of whom have not been paid their wages, have been prevented from going home, were killed on the rails and are trying to walk the long distance home. Over the past few decades, both employers and workers have found a working optimum outside the Kafkaesque labour regime, which more or less worked during normal times, but showed its failings during the coronavirus pandemic-triggered lockdown.
Consider the counterfactual — if a greater proportion of our workforce had enjoyed the basic protections of employment, the migrant crisis might have been less acute.So, when Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, two Indian states that acutely need new economic engines, surprisingly announce that they intend to do away with a substantial chunk of their labour laws, they deserve the right kind of support.Read More
Will Facebook’s ‘Supreme Court’ make the internet a safer place?
An intended and anticipated consequence of this board is that it will instil more transparency into the process of what stays up and why. By reporting on what the board discussed and did not discuss, it will help bring more clarity around the most prevalent problems on the platform. It may help tell us whether bullying is a bigger problem than hate speech or how (or where) harassment and racism manifest themselves. Read more. This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.
Crowds at booze stores reveal an addled approach to policy
Why govt must address the question of access inequity before making mobile apps mandatory during COVID-19
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The Issues
Several concerns have been raised about the implications on multiple fronts. Privacy, and the risk of its evolution into a vehicle for mass surveillance. Security, and the potential information security risks to individual users as well as a large centralised database of citizen data. Legal - whether the National Disaster Management Act confers the necessary powers to do so, as well as the absence of Data Protection legislation. Technological - efficacy of contact tracing apps/algorithmic risk detection and the associated issues with false positives and false negatives. Transparency - opaque processes and the fact that the code has not been open-source yet. Some reports suggest that this may happen when the app is considered to be 'stable'. It is unclear, though, how stability is defined.The Ada Lovelace Institute has published a rapid review titled "Exit through the App Store" which warns of the risks of 'rushed deployment of technological solutions without credible supporting evidence and independent oversight'.
On Equity
An aspect which is under explored is Equity, or the lack of it. In designing public policy, Equity is a crucial part of policy design. It deals with the social allocation of benefits and deals with the questions of 'who pays' and 'who benefits'. In the book 'Policy Paradox', Deborah Stone lists 3 dimensions and 8 issues and associated dilemmas with each distribution method. Ultimately, this is a complex undertaking and no matter what criteria is for distribution, some group or the other will feel that they have been left-behind by the policy.Read more
Amid COVID-19 Crisis, How Can Telemedicine Be Harnessed in India?
The Medical Council of India, in partnership with NITI Aayog, recently released guidelines for practice of telemedicine. Considering the current COVID-19 outbreak, the guidelines could not have been released at a more apt time. Using telemedicine is a safe way of screening and treating patients in times of infectious outbreaks. It ensures safety of doctors, as they do not need to be in the physical vicinity of the patient. Besides outbreak situations, telemedicine is also of great help where healthcare facilities are not easily available or accessible. It saves patient the time of going long distances for minor illnesses. While the telemedicine practice guidelines have paved the way for more efficient practices in healthcare, it is imperative to have the infrastructure and the funding in place, for their implementation on ground.Read more
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.
Jio-Facebook’s e-commerce monopoly is not a foregone conclusion
This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle, views are personal.Earlier last month when Facebook made a $5.7 billion, (₹43,574 crore) investment to buy 9.99% share in Jio Platforms ltd, it led to plenty of analysis on how this deal was going to impact the Indian digital ecosystem.There is, of course, plenty to read into. For starters, you could say that for Facebook, this is all a long ploy to monetize WhatsApp. WhatsApp is the dominant means of communication in India. In 2017, Indians made 50 million minutes of WhatsApp video calls a day.Considering the bigger picture, Indian traffic on WhatsApp is bound to be significantly higher. WhatsApp has likely acquired a sizeable number of Indian customers since 2017 and the statistic above does not even take into account time spent by Indians on voice calls and texts.India is a huge market opportunity for WhatsApp, and considering the platform is end to end encrypted and does not run ads, the market dominance does not directly translate into revenue. It is no wonder that WhatsApp has been trying to launch a payments service in India for over two years now. ‘WhatsApp Pay’ has recently been granted regulatory approval to roll out the service in a phased manner. Chatter after the deal focused on the combination of WhatsApp and ‘JioMart’ bringing kirana stores online, making a decisive entry into a new, relatively unexplored landscape.When asked to do a ‘TalkPoint’ by The Print on the subject, I found to my surprise, the widespread speculation around whether this news was the beginning of an inevitable monopoly. The short answer to this question is that the Jio-Facebook alliance translating into a monopoly is far from a foregone conclusion.The long answer begins with my information economics class for The Takshashila Institution. During the segment on standards wars, one of the key topics is around what are the key assets for a technology to establish itself as a standard. According to Hal Varian (Chief Economist at Google), there are seven key assets to a standards war; control over an installed base of users, intellectual property rights, ability to innovate, first-mover advantages, manufacturing abilities, strength in complements, brand name and reputation.Just looking at the deal and the nature of JioMart and WhatsApp, it is evident that the alliance has the first mover advantage. Kirana stores are an unexplored market and there is a significant opportunity to be tapped here. But a first mover advantage does not directly translate into victory.History of modern tech (a fascinating topic for a different column) has repeatedly taught us that doing something right can be more important than doing something first. The iPad was not the first tablet and Microsoft Zune was launched before the iTouch. But Zune, and the early competitors to the iPad have been relegated to being case studies in product failure.Put this into context, and the rest of recent news starts to seem like a natural flow of events. The week the news broke, Amazon’s homepage was updated with an article by Gopal Pillai (VP, Seller Services) titled ‘Local Shops on Amazon, a new beginning for offline retailers, highlighting Amazon’s shift of focus towards the issue. The timing is not a coincidence, competition moves fast. In the coming months, expect similar developments from Flipkart and Snapdeal as well.It is also important to note that core competences are going to play an important role here. Jio and Facebook can boast unparalleled national integration and scale. However, neither of those companies have the experience in seller interactions, operating complex supply chains, and consumer preference data that Amazon boasts.So the first mover advantage is not definitive. Comparative strengths in other assets will be established over time. It is too early to say who the players will be. There is a whole bunch of plausible combinations involving payment apps, telcos, and e-commerce giants that could be possible. The Jio-Facebook alliance is likely the first alliance in a battle that is going to be long and drawn out. In addition, we do not know yet how the ability to innovate and strength in complements will demonstrate itself over the coming times.Borrowing from Donald Rumsfeld, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. The outcome of this deal on the e-commerce landscape in India is filled with known unknowns.Sure, given Facebook’s financial might and Jio’s demonstrated understanding of the Indian market, it is so easy to classify the move as the beginning of a monopoly. It may well turn out to be one. But to conclude that a monopoly is inevitable or that in some sense we are already there, is jumping to conclusions.
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
The PLA Insight: Issue no 52
I. The Takshashila Assessment: Impact of COVID-19 on the Chinese Armed ForcesThe People's Liberation Army played a prominent role in the Chinese leadership's effort to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak. Starting late January, China deployed thousands of PLA medics on the frontlines of Wuhan and Hubei province to help fight the outbreak. Besides the PLA, PAP and militia also aided in infrastructure building and provision of essential supplies. The PLA, in a press conference, claimed that there had been no cases of infection among the ranks of the deployed personnel.My colleague and the head of China Studies Programme at the Takshashila Institution, Manoj Kewalramani, and I decided to examine this claim. We are happy to share our latest document on the impact of COVID-19 on the Chinese armed forces.We study four aspects:Read more...
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
COVID-19 Operations: Role of the Armed Forces
The metaphor of war has been universally invoked to describe the conditions under which ‘victory’ over COVID-19 is sought. The metaphor is certainly useful to galvanize a nation and harness its capacities that can be directed towards the ‘enemy’. The challenge in the fight is that the enemy can spread invisibly even through hosts who are unaware, as the individual can transmit the virus even during the incubation period when the individual is asymptomatic. Its detection requires testing but is not as yet known as a killer of the magnitude of previous pandemics, even though there is no cure nor vaccine. The most vulnerable are people over 60 years of age and those who are already nursing other ailments. It is obvious that if lives have to be saved then this war must be fought by the young while the old are specially protected. You can find the link to the full 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.
Get India back at work to secure the economy and employment
COVID-19: Localise efforts to tackle water shortage
This article is written by Rohan Seth and Rashi Sharma, was first published in Deccan Herald. There have been plenty of debates and discussions around what is being done to manage the threat of coronavirus. A lot of that attention has been focused on using technology to deal with the problem. Apple and Google announced that they will be working on developing software to enable contact tracing in phones. In a similar vein, the Indian government has rolled out its own contact tracing application in Aarogya Setu. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while extending the nationwide lockdown, urged the public to download the app. While most of the discourse has been focused on how technology fits into the picture, we have ended up missing more fundamental means of coping with the problem. Ubiquitous elements, particularly water, have been overlooked and taken for granted. Water is going to be an essential part of any country’s strategy when dealing with COVID-19. If you are reading this, there is a significant chance you have been told about the importance of washing hands or have watched a video of how to do so properly. Healthcare professionals, essential workers, and law enforcement have and will be subject to a higher risk of exposure to the virus. As our most important line of defence against the pandemic, they will need to sanitise themselves regularly. This involves washing their clothes and taking regular showers. Unfortunately for India, in recent years, the country has been dealing with acute water shortages. While major Indian cities have increased in size and their water consumption, villages lack water for basic sanitation, bearing witness to lowering levels of groundwater. Keeping in mind the lack of access to clean water for nearly 163 million people in 2018, the Union Government created the Ministry of Jal Shakti in 2019 to integrate water resource management efforts. Under the Jal Shakti Abhiyan, the Ministry plans to ensure the availability of running tap water for domestic purposes in all households across the country. While the mission of the Ministry of Jal Shakti has been off to a promising start, there is only so much it has been able to accomplish in a year. Due to lack of both administrative will and centre-state politics, much of the water projects could not be successfully completed before the outbreak of the virus. COVID-19 and the water crisis A summer induced water crisis is not a new phenomenon for India. The depleted water levels and the already exploited government managed resources have made India rank 13 of the 17 water-stressed countries. Access to freshwater is now important and urgent. Without water to sanitise, villages once exposed to COVID-19, will find it harder to recover and to contain the virus. In the recent past, an inexorable rise in the population residing in clustered areas makes self-isolation a privilege that not many can afford. Given the historically limited state capacity, necessary demands for social distancing, and a time-sensitive situation, it is going to be a lot harder to ensure clean tap water reaches water-scarce areas. The lack of adequate supply, particularly during a lockdown, will prevent households from ensuring domestic sanitisation and lead to an increase in open defecation during this period. This socio-economic standing of the larger Indian community is a ticking time bomb which may be scheduled to explode at Stage 3 of social transmission of the virus. Importance of finding local solutions This brings us to what should be done to mitigate the crisis. There have been some attempts to allocate scarce resources amongst states across the world. Most notably, the Federal Government in the US created competition among states, creating a bidding war for medical equipment. As a result, it created an environment where medical equipment was not distributed based on need but on the purchasing power of states. Of course, a bidding war for medical equipment leaves open the risk for poor areas impacted by the disease not getting enough medical supplies to manage the spread. Learning from the US, and instead of turning to a market to mitigate an impending water crisis, it might make sense to take a different approach. The stakes now have abruptly been raised. What the spread of the pandemic has done is to leave the inadequacies in Indian infrastructure exposed. They needed to be fixed yesterday, and they need to be fixed now. Communities must mobilise their efforts to find solutions to the water crisis locally. The Union government cannot be expected to build adequate infrastructure overnight if doing so has not been possible in over 70 years. Given the social distancing requirements, time and capital constraints, these inadequacies cannot be fixed using a top-down approach. Instead, changes need to be made at the grassroot level so that the water available is optimised for usage. Along with local efforts, nudges towards desired behavioural changes for water optimisation might be the most viable option. Water optimisation thus, involves promoting the usage of greywater for irrigation, and when possible, collecting rainwater in previously built infrastructures. Along with revisiting traditional methods of preserving water, reusing already existing structures like dried-up ponds, reservoirs, tube-wells etc. can also be a low-cost source of clean water. At this point May 3, 2020 is a line in the sand. The pandemic will not end on May 4, neither will the need for water across India. Local efforts may not be enough to meet the surged demands, but steps taken today should contribute to a better scenario tomorrow. (Rohan Seth is a technology policy analyst at the Takshashila Institution and Rashi Sharma is a research assistant at the Observer Research Foundation)