Author: cprindia

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN NEELANJAN SIRCAR, BHANU JOSHI, ASHISH RANJAN, AND RICHA BANSAL
ELECTION STUDIES POLITICS PODCAST

The Uttar Pradesh (UP) state elections of 2017 saw the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, script an unprecedented and unexpected landslide victory in the state.

In the 12th episode of CPR’s podcast, ThoughtSpace, (above), Richa Bansal talks to Senior Fellow Neelanjan Sircar, and Research Associates Bhanu Joshi and Ashish Ranjan, who spent months conducting intensive field research in UP, to deconstruct BJP’s victory.

Drawing on their experience from the field and analysing available data, Sircar, Joshi and Ranjan explain the strategy that catapulted BJP to a historic win, as well as what this means for UP’s future, and for the general elections of 2019.

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN RICHA BANSAL AND SENIOR FELLOW NAVROZ DUBASH
PODCAST CLIMATE RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order to promote US energy independence and economic growth, which can potentially damage global efforts to limit climate change.

In the 14th episode of CPR’s podcast ThoughtSpace, Richa Bansal talks to Navroz Dubash to unpack the implications of this order further, and understand how it will impact India’s strategic interests, including the role India can play, going forward.

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN RICHA BANSAL AND FELLOW DR NAMITA WAHI
PODCAST LAND ACQUISITION RIGHTS

The Land Rights Initiative at CPR recently completed a study of Supreme Court cases on land acquisition in India from 1950 to 2016. This study examines land disputes along various metrics, as well as analyses litigation under the newly enacted Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (LARR Act) for the three year period, 2014 to 2016.

In the 15th episode of CPR’s podcast ThoughtSpace, Richa Bansal talks to Dr Namita Wahi, a Fellow at CPR who heads the Initiative, to unpack the findings of the study, delving particularly into the massive imbalance between the state and land-losers, including possible ways forward.

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN RICHA BANSAL AND SENIOR FELLOW MANJU MENON
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE RIGHTS PODCAST

Manju Menon, Senior Fellow at CPR, leads research on environmental justice with her team, in collaboration with another organisation called Namati. In the 16th episode of CPR’s podcast ThoughtSpace, Richa Bansal talks to Menon to unpack her research, including the context; how the research is put to action on the ground through training personnel to find solutions; and the impact this action research project has had.

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN RICHA BANSAL AND T R RAGHUNANDAN, ADVISOR TO ACCOUNTABILITY INITIATIVE
BUREAUCRACY POLITICS PODCAST

Corruption is a systemic problem in India and a recently released report categorised states in India by their level of corruption. T R Raghunanadan, an advisor to the Accountability Initiative (AI) at CPR, is a pioneer on corruption work and was the programme head of the first website launched to address the issue called ipaidabribe.com. In In the 18th episode of CPR’s podcast ThoughtSpace, Richa Bansal talks to Raghunandan to understand corruption systemically; break down the different types of corruption and the various ways in which both the state and citizens can tackle it.

Raghunandan also wrote a series on blogs on corruption for the AI website, listed below:

The Corruption Survey – A Critical Analysis

Perception and Incidence of Corruption – A Critical Analysis

Crafting a Meaningful Measure for Corruption: Some Suggestions

A Useful Measure of Corruption: How it can be Designed

Measuring People’s Thoughts, or Corrupt Transactions?

FULL VIDEO BY PRATAP BHANU MEHTA
ECONOMY BUDGET POLITICS

Watch the full video (above) by Pratap Bhanu Mehta on the politics of the Union Budget 2017-18, and what it means for India’s future, as part of the 5-institute seminar on the budget organised earlier this month.

This joint seminar involved the directors of five institutions, namely, the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), India Development Foundation (IDF), National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), and National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP).

FULL VIDEO BY YAMINI AIYAR
ECONOMY BUDGET POLITICS

Watch the full video (above) by Yamini Aiyar on the politics of the Union Budget 2018-19, and what it means for India’s future, as part of the 5-institute seminar on the budget organised on 10 February 2018 at The Leela Palace, New Delhi.

This joint seminar involved the directors of five institutions, namely, the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), India Development Foundation (IDF), National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), and National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP).

COMMENTARY BY MUKTA NAIK
ECONOMY POLITICS

It has been a war of words since the release of the Reserve Bank of India’s annual report 2017-18, which stated that 99.3% of the demonetised currency was returned. While critics of the government’s note ban move have felt vindicated, the Finance Minister has defended demonetisation by claiming that it has fulfilled its ‘larger objective’ of making India a tax compliant society. It is worth remembering that the government’s narrative around the objectives of demonetisation has been changing over time. It started with the Prime Minister’s dramatic note ban announcement on 8th November 2018, which was widely termed as a ‘surgical strike’ on black money. Then it changed to a narrative of cashlessness and digitalisation and finally, the current justification of tax compliance.

At each step, there has been an emphasis on morality, and the message sent out by the government and amplified by the press and social media has been clear: those who comply are ‘good citizens’ and others are enemies of India. Given the credibility and popularity that PM Modi enjoyed in 2016 – and given that he was the face of demonetisation – this kind of messaging created real pressures on people to comply with the government’s efforts.

For a large number of poor households in India, however, compliance came at high costs. It wasn’t just the snaking lines to deposit cash at the bank, or the ruptures in cash-dependent supply chains that took away jobs and made food prices soar. For a population that earned barely enough to subsist, digitalisation and tax compliance were objectives that had little resonance with their daily lives. The tax base in India is very small, and income inequality is a glaring reality. Data from the India Human Development Survey II (2011-12) shows us that 90.4% Indian households earn less than Rs 250,000 per year, which means that individuals in these households earn too little to be liable to pay income tax. The situation is only slightly better in cities, with 73.8% households in metro cities and 84.2% in non-metro cities remaining out of the tax ambit because they earn too little (the five years between this survey and demonetisation is unlikely to have much altered this situation). This essentially means that the poor – most of them marginal farmers, agricultural labour and non-farm casual workers – who do not pay taxes anyway, took the hardest hit post-demonetisation in order to facilitate increased direct tax collection to the tune of 18% in FY 17-18. There is no argument about the benefits of increased tax collection, but does the end always justify the means?

Many have wondered why so much suffering did not provoke backlash against the government. One answer lies in the government’s strategic use of nationalistic narratives in which the role of the good citizen is constantly invoked. In our fieldwork in urban neighbourhoods across Delhi NCR, we observe that people recalibrated their responses to fit in with the idea of the good citizen. For example, in the immediate aftermath of demonetisation, the poor saw themselves as hardworking, ordinary citizens who suffered due to the corruption of other, richer people. At the same time, a petty landlord in an urban village in East Delhi told us he was ambivalent about collecting rent by cheque instead of cash and wondered if the government was going to come after people like him even as he defiantly told us he filed his tax returns annually. The moral narrative also created fissures within communities, encouraging those with a foothold in the formal economy to pass judgement on poorer households who were unable to cope without cash. As late as June 2017, we met a Dalit tailor in Gurgaon who invoked demonetisation to explain why he had paid money he could ill afford to a tout in order to get a PAN card made and file taxes.

These are but glimpses of the kind of disruptions that demonetisation caused, adding fuel to fires that had already been set by rising inequality and the inability of the Indian democratic project to fulfil the dreams of a growing number of semi-educated but aspirational young people. Instead of arguing about the success or failure of demonetisation, it might be a good time to put our ears to the ground and re-examine the experience of poverty in India. We must take heed and try to understand the ways in which the poor seek to be included in the larger public discourse, often to their own detriment, and the ways in which they continue to remain voiceless and often vilified.

CPR’s research on demonetisation can be accessed below:

• Demonetisation and its impacts, CPR website, 21 November 2016
• Is the Current Demonetisation Legal?, CPR website, 6 December 2016
• Coping with ‘Notebandi’ (Demonetisation): Voices of informal workers, CPR ThoughtSpace Episode 7, 22 December 2016
• Rule of Law or Law of the Powerful? Deconstructing Demonetisation Legally, CPR ThoughtSpace Episode 8, 13 January 2017
• The government must compensate for the demonetisation setback to migrants’ mobility, Hindustan Times, 16 January 2017

FULL AUDIO OF TALK
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

Listen to the full audio (above) of the talk by David C Engerman, where he discusses how superpowers turned to foreign aid as an instrument for pursuing geopolitics through economic means during the Cold War.

Looking back to the origins and evolution of foreign aid during the Cold War, Engerman invites us to recognise the strategic thinking at the heart of development assistance—as well as the political costs. India, the largest of the ex-colonies, stood at the center of American and Soviet aid competition, seeking superpower aid to advance their own economic visions, thus bringing external resources into domestic debates about India’s economic future.

Drawing on an expansive set of documents, many recently declassified, from seven countries, Engerman reconstructs a story of Indian leaders using Cold War competition to win battles at home, but in the process eroding the Indian state.

David C Engerman is Otillie Springer Professor of History at Brandeis University, and the author of ‘The Price of Aid: The Economic Cold War in India’.

PART 6 OF A SERIES ON ‘COASTAL REGULATION’ BY THE CPR-NAMATI ENVIRONMENT JUSTICE PROGRAM
COASTAL GOVERNANCE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE RIGHTS

After three Right to Information (RTI) Applications and a file inspection, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) shares the draft MCRZ Notification, 2017 but full details are yet to be revealed.

On 22 March, 2017, leading national dailies carried the news of the existing Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification, 2011 being replaced by a new framework called the Marine Coastal Regulation Zone (MCRZ) Notification, 2017. It was clear that a new law was on the anvil, but its contents were not publicly available. The ministry had only shared copies of the “stakeholder” meetings on MCRZ, in response to an RTI application earlier. A copy of the proposed MCRZ Notification, 2017 was accessed by Meenakshi Kapoor of the CPR-Namati Environment Justice Program following a file inspection on 23rd May 2017. Yet again, the ministry failed to disclose suo moto the proposal to amend the CRZ Notification despite directions of the Central Information Commission (CIC) in 2008 and 2016 and the government’s commitment to transparency.

The draft notification proposes significant changes to the manner in which the coastal zones are to be managed and regulated for variety of activities. The proposed changes are not only a change in nomenclature with the word “Marine” appended to the law, but have far reaching social and ecological implications:

Temporary tourism facilities will be allowed in Ecologically Sensitive Areas (MCRZ I). CRZ Notification, 2011 does not allow temporary tourism facilities in CRZ I areas.
Development in urban areas (MCRZ II) to be regulated as per prevailing local laws. CRZ Notification 2011 allows development in CRZ II areas as per the town and country planning norms of 1991. This was done to acknowledge the need of the local town and country planning norms to be aligned with Coastal Regulation Zone notification, which was issued for the first time in 1991.
Housing and basic infrastructure for local inhabitants will be allowed after 50 metres from the High Tide Line in rural areas (MCRZ III). The CRZ Notification, 2011 permitted houses for coastal communities after first 100 m of CRZ III areas.
State and Union Territory Governments are to prepare tourism plans for their respective MCRZ areas. No such tourism plans are mentioned in the CRZ Notification, 2011 (see detailed comparison between the current and the proposed Notification here).
Area under MCRZ will depend only on tidal demarcations (High Tide Line (HTL) and Low Tide Line (LTL)). Whereas, the CRZ Notification, 2011 links the CRZ area with Hazard line in addition to HLT-LTL demarcation (see details here)
While the notification proposes changes to coastal regulation, the details of the new clauses lie in the 10 annexures that are to go along with the MCRZ Notification. The proposed MCRZ accessed contains mention of these annexures, however, they were not made available at the time of the file inspection. These annexures cover the following aspects of coastal regulation:

I- Methodology for HTL-LTL demarcation
II- Guidelines for preparation of Marine Coastal Zone Management Plans (MCZMP)
III- List of tourism zones
IV- Kinds of Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESAs)
V-List of the ESAs in each coastal state and Union Territory
VI- Guidelines for constructions in MCRZ I
VII- List of areas that need special shoreline protection measures
VIII- List of municipal towns
IX- Guidelines for development in MCRZ III areas
X- Guidelines for preparation of tourism development plans
XI- List of minerals and hydrocarbons that can be extracted with due permission (despite a prohibition on mining in the MCRZ) in each state and Union Territory.
XII- Composition, tenure and mandate of National, State and District marine Coastal Zone Management Authorities (MCZMA).
XIII- Guidelines for collection of fees and usage of MCRZ fund
XIV- Guidelines for preparation of Integrated Island Management Plans

Since 2014, the entire process of reviewing and revising the CRZ Notification, 2011 has been a closed-door exercise. Instead of the Ministry inviting suggestions and feedback from coastal communities, researchers, urban planners and legal experts on the implementation of the CRZ Notification and proposals for reform, there has been reluctance to share the details of this review.

For over a year and a half, despite repeated RTI applications, the report of the committee that reviewed the CRZ Notification, 2011 was not made public (read how CIC directed the MoEFCC to disclose the report). Four of the nine amendments made to the notification in the last three years were issued without seeking public comments on those (see details here).

This file inspection revealed that even the ministries that were asked to provide comments on the MCRZ Notification on 20 March 2017 were also not provided full information related to the MCRZ, in particular the annexures. In April 2017, the Ministry of Earth Sciences and Ministry of Tourism requested the MoEFCC to share copies of these annexures before they furnished their comments on the draft.

Researchers, activists, fishing unions and coastal communities have been persistent in their efforts to have an informed and participatory review of the primary law governing India’s coastline, the CRZ, 2011. Fisher groups across the country have written to the Ministry based on what was revealed in the news reports, as there has been no attempt by the government to involve them. Such a participatory review is critical because changes in the coastal regulation will have a direct bearing on over 3200 marine fishing villages and several million residents living across India’s coastline.