FULL VIDEO OF BOOK LAUNCH
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS ECONOMY
Watch the full video (above) of the book launch of ‘The Other One Percent: Indians in America’ co-authored by Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur, and Nirvikar Singh.
In conversation with Pratap Bhanu Mehta, author Devesh Kapur discusses how a population from a ‘low-income’ developing country like India become among the most educated and highest income group in one of the world’s most advanced countries in one generation.
CPR FACULTY G PARTHASARATHY UNPACKS THE CONTEXT AND THE ROAD AHEAD
INDIA-PAKISTAN POLITICS SOUTH ASIA
On April 14, you wrote in The Indian Express that imaginative diplomacy alone is not enough to deal with the Pakistan army. Can you elaborate on this more, especially drawing on your own experience as a former Indian High Commissioner in Pakistan?
The answer to your query on why imaginative diplomacy alone will not be enough to deal with State sponsored terrorism can be illustrated in two examples. First, with the advent of General Zia ul Haq as President in 1977, Pakistan adopted a conscious policy of subverting sections of the population from (Indian) Punjab. This occurred regularly during the visits of Sikh pilgrims there, which led to their training disaffected youth in terrorism. Pakistan also started a worldwide campaign to mobilise disaffected Sikhs living abroad for the cause of “Khalistan” (an independent Sikh Homeland).
This situation continued till the mid 1990s. This serious situation was not resolved through diplomacy alone. Matters were ultimately sorted out when India took effective political action by holding elections in Punjab, and the State police dealt with the terrorist issue. In the meantime, world powers like the US and UK were persuaded to pressurise Pakistan to end its support for violence and terrorism in Punjab.
The second instance is the intrusion across the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, by Pakistani forces in Kargil in 1998-1999. This carefully planned intrusion would have continued had India’s military action not forced the intruders from Pakistan’s Northern Light infantry, to vacate areas they had occupied, in violation of the letter and spirit of the Simla Agreement.
In the meantime, effective diplomacy ensured that we persuaded the international community that Pakistan had endangered peace and security by its actions. Facing diplomatic isolation and military disaster, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had to rush to Washington to ask President Clinton to bail him out of a humiliating situation. Mr Sharif was compelled to agree in Washington that he would withdraw his intruding forces and respect the sanctity of the Line of Control. The whole exercise was a military and diplomatic fiasco for Pakistan, and required decisive military action, together with astute diplomacy.
In a second article titled The General, the “Spy”, and no talks with India, you have called the Pakistan Army Chief General Raheel Sharif the most ‘destabilising’ factor in the subcontinent and the reason why the Pathankot joint probe process fell through. In these circumstances, what is the road ahead for Prime Minister Modi, who made imaginative and bold moves in reaching out to Nawaz Sharif personally?
Pakistan realised that Mr Modi’s visit to Lahore had turned global opinion in India’s favour, since the world saw PM Modi’s visit as reflecting a genuine desire for resolving issues and living at peace with Pakistan. The Pathankot attack happened immediately after the visit. It was seen by the world as being entirely unacceptable and contrary to Pakistan’s protestations of being desirous of good relations with its neighbour. But is this diplomatic gain for India going to get Pakistan to end sponsorship of terrorism and resolve issues with India peacefully through bilateral negotiations? The answer is no.
As I have written in my article, the Pakistan army will wait for the world to forget what happened in Pathankot, in the same way as memories of the Mumbai attacks faded with the passage of time. I have little doubt that once the snows melt in July, infiltration across the Line of Control will again pick up.
In such a scenario, the road ahead for Mr Modi is to continue with diplomatic engagement with Pakistan to assess if there are any signs of Pakistan being prepared to end its support for terrorism. We also need to monitor the evolving political situation within Pakistan. The Pakistan army is going to have difficulties in sustaining its current stance toward India, given that it is fighting a battle with its own people in all four provinces of the country, including Punjab, which is the political base of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. This is going to lead to internal contradictions within Pakistan. India must be prepared to take advantage of that situation.
Lastly, would you like to comment on the road ahead for Pakistan?
My sense is that Pakistan is going to face more trouble on its border with Afghanistan than on its border with India. The Taliban leadership that the ISI has stitched together under Mullah Mansour is going to extend and expand its military actions within Afghanistan. The tribal areas in Pakistan bordering Afghanistan will becomes increasingly troubled and violent. This will become a morass into which the Pakistan army will be drawn, ever deeper.
The Pakistan army will become more preoccupied in dealing with developments on its borders with Afghanistan rather than its eastern borders with India. And with President Obama categorically stating that American troops will not be withdrawn from Afghanistan this year, the Afghans can be expected to hold their own against the Pakistan backed Taliban. We can only hope that the more costly their adventure on the Afghan border turns out to be, the more likely the Pakistan army will be to see reason, on the Indian border.
NEW ARTICLE IN THE ‘INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF WATER RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT’
POLITICS ENERGY RESEARCH
SOUTH ASIA ECONOMY
What does the next decade in South Asian electricity trade have in store? In a new article in the International Journal of Water Resources Development, Aditya Valiathan Pillai and Sagar Prasai analyse four crucial variables that will enable, and at times, constrain progress on cross-border electricity trade:
The health of distribution companies in India: India’s distribution companies are likely to shy away from relatively expensive Himalayan hydropower due to a combination of supply factors, such as a steep fall in renewable prices and the abundance of cheap thermal energy in the domestic market. These traditionally loss-making entities are also in the process of responding to incentives for financial rectitude created by new power sector reforms, namely UDAY (Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana).
The role of hydropower in India’s ambitious transition to renewable energy: India’s much-lauded addition of renewable capacity presents a long-term opportunity for hydropower developers in Bhutan and Nepal. Meeting peak demand, particularly after the sun goes down, has long been a function well-served by hydropower. At present, however, India is leaning towards coordinating existing coal and hydropower capacity to balance the grid until the current target of 175 GW renewable capacity addition is met.
Bangladesh’s power crisis and import dependency: Bangladesh’s depleting natural gas reserves, which supply nearly two-thirds of the country’s power sector, may result in the nation steadily importing hydropower from Bhutan and Nepal to reduce dependence on expensive imported coal and gas. Importantly, the country’s master planning for the power sector indicates that power imports will play a significant role in the energy mix.
The governance of regional electricity trading arrangements: Regional politics have repeatedly disrupted progress in creating an electricity market, first under the SAARC framework (due to faltering relations between India and Pakistan), and now in the sub-region. In India, the Ministry of Power’s 2016 guidelines on cross-border electricity trade have imposed conditions on who can trade electricity across India’s borders. Increasingly, regional electricity trade is being challenged by growing geopolitical competition between India and China.
In an analysis of these factors, the authors find that progress on cross-border electricity trade and hydropower development in the region will be incremental in the next decade, hindered by mixed demand signals and the turbulence of geopolitics. They argue that in a fragmented marketplace led primarily by individually-priced bilateral agreements, dynamic political relationships in the region will continue to deter investors. They conclude that the future trajectory of cross-border electricity trade will be shaped by India’s stewardship in the region.
Read the complete article here.
LISTEN TO THE PODCAST ON HOME-CHEFS AND THE GIG ECONOMY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
ECONOMY PODCAST
The COVID-19 lockdown forced many businesses, big or small, to innovate and find creative ways to stay relevant. This included small restaurant owners and home-chefs across the country. In the first episode of The Gig Sisters, we look at the stories of three women entrepreneurs in the food space and how they leveraged platforms to sustain themselves when everything else came to a standstill. Do their differing strategies tell us something about how platforms operate and what that means for their business?
The Gig Sisters is a new podcast by the Jobs Initiative at the Centre for Policy Research. It is an output of a collaborative research project called Digital Platforms and Women’s Work in Sri Lanka and India. Our partners on the project are World Resources Institute India, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, LIRNEasia in Sri Lanka. The project is a part of the Women, Work, and Gig Economy consortium managed by the JustJobs Network and funded by the International Development Research Centre. The show is edited and mixed by Anmol Karnik.
FULL VIDEO OF TALK BY PRATAP BHANU MEHTA
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
Watch Pratap Bhanu Mehta (above) talk about the global crisis of liberal democracy. Addressing the global rise of right-wing authoritarian populism and nationalism of various varieties, he questions the nature of this crisis.
Dr Mehta elaborates on the origins of the anxiety about the future of liberal democracy by examining some of the common themes emerging from across the world.
The talk was delivered at Brown University’s International Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI) in June.
FULL VIDEO OF TALK
URBAN GOVERNANCE
Watch the full video (above) of the talk by Aishwarya Tipnis, where she discusses the recognition and conservation of ‘everyday buildings’ as ‘heritage’ in India, with a special focus on small towns.
In this talk, Tipnis presents the case study of Chandernagore, an erstwhile French Colony situated about 40 kms from Kolkata, where multiple efforts are being initiated by the voluntary sector in an attempt to preserve and valorise the essential ‘urban character’ of the city, instead of letting it fall prey to ‘piecemeal suburban redevelopment’.
The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here.
PAPER CO-AUTHORED BY JISHNU DAS
HEALTH
Health care providers without any formal training provide more than 70% of all primary care in rural India. A new study by Jishnu Das, Abhijit Chowdhury, Reshmaan Hussam and Abhijit Banerjee combines unique data from standardised patients with random assignment to a training programme conducted by The Liver Foundation in West Bengal to assess whether training can improve their quality of care. Findings of this study were published as a paper in the journal Science, titled The impact of training informal health care providers in India: A randomized controlled trial.
Why is the research important?
In many low-income countries, including India, health care providers without formal medical training account for between one-third and three-quarters of primary care visits. What should be done about such informal providers in India is a highly charged debate.
While the Indian Medical Association argues that any kind of training would legitimise an illegal activity, others believe that training can act as a stop-gap solution to rural India’s severe shortage of trained personnel and serve as an effective complement to reform in the public sector. There is currently no evidence on the benefits of training (or the lack thereof) on the quality of care provided by informal providers.
What does the research do?
When people in Indian villages fall sick, they often go to a village provider–who in many cases, has received no formal medical training. As the source of primary care, these providers are asked to provide a broad range of services. They are expected to treat patients with conditions that can be managed in a primary care setting; refer patients with serious conditions to higher level care; and diagnose and manage patients with chronic conditions.
This study was uniquely designed to assess whether a 9-month long training programme, implemented through 72 teaching sessions, would allow informal providers to improve along each of these three types of services. The research assessed:
Does training improve the ability of informal providers to correctly diagnose and manage different conditions?
Does training decrease the use of unnecessary medicines, injections and antibiotics among informal providers? The researchers were concerned that any positive effects may not be sustainable if training adversely affected the providers’ patient loads, and in turn the profitability of their practice. Hence, they also assessed how does training affect the patient load and revenues of informal providers?
How was the research conducted?
The study was completed in three phases. In the first phase, 152 informal providers were randomly selected (out of a total of 304) to participate in a training programme implemented by The Liver Foundation. The training program was implemented over 9 months in 72 classroom training sessions. The remaining 152 providers were offered training after the completion of the study and thereby served as a ‘control’ group.
In the second phase, Das et al. sent standardised patients to all providers in their sample, regardless of whether they had received training or not. The standardised patients were recruited from West Bengal. Each standardised patient was extensively trained to present one of three different conditions and all three conditions were presented to each provider to evaluate their ability to correctly diagnose and manage them.
Since the implementers of the training programme did not know what conditions the standardised patients were going to present, and therefore could not tailor the training to these conditions, the researchers interpret their results in terms of upgrading in overall skill level of the providers.
In addition, the standardised patients did not know whether the providers they visited had been trained by the Liver Foundation. Finally, standardised patients were also sent to every public clinic in the 203 villages that the informal providers came from as an additional benchmark for the effect of training. Reflecting the scarcity of trained medical professionals in the region, the study was able to locate only 11 Primary Health Care Centers in these villages, each of which we evaluated using standardised patients.
Because standardised patients allowed the study to assess care only for these three conditions and not for the multitude of cases that informal providers are asked to provide care for, in the third phase, the researchers sat in the clinics of the informal providers for a full day, recording key details of all clinical interactions.
What were the key findings?
Average attendance in the programme was 56 percent. The main reasons for non-attendance were distance from the training centre and excessive rain. The correlation between attendance and distance to the training centre suggests that if each provider could access training within 5 kilometers from his or her clinic, attendance would increase to 80 percent.
Assignment to training increased the likelihood of correct case management by 7.9 percentage points against a control group mean of 52 percent. If attendance had been 100 percent (instead of the 56 percent observed), training would have increased correct case management by 13.3 percentage points instead. The study found that providers assigned to training were more likely to complete recommended checklists of history questions and examinations, both among standardised patients and in clinical observations.
Public sector doctors were 14.7 percentage points more likely to correctly manage a case than untrained informal providers. Training closed half the gap in correct case management relative to the public sector.
However, there was no decline in the use of unnecessary medicines, antibiotics or injections among providers who were trained. Strikingly, both trained and untrained informal providers were less likely to give unnecessary medicines and antibiotics relative to doctors in the public sector.
The training increased the patient load of the provider. Although the study did not experiment with providers’ willingness to pay for the programme, it computed that the increased revenue would compensate for the cost of training within 66 days if the research used the higher end of its patient load estimates, or 210 days if it used the lower end of its patient load estimate.
Interpreting the findings:
Informal providers are the mainstay of India’s primary care system. The study demonstrates that training informal providers does not worsen care, as has been argued by representatives of the Indian Medical Association. In contrast, it found that training improves their ability to correctly diagnose and manage multiple conditions and although it does not reduce their likelihood of providing unnecessary medicines or antibiotics, it doen’t increase it either. The low costs of training imply that permanently hiring just 11 additional fully trained MBBS providers into the public sector would be as costly as training 360 informal providers every year through this programme.
The full paper can be found here, subject to user access.
SUMMARY OF A BLOG SERIES BY ACCOUNTABILITY INITIATIVE
BUREAUCRACY
Find below a summary of a series of blogs by Accountability Initiative (AI) at CPR on the challenges in navigating the complex government bureaucracy to access basic services and benefits:
In Water Problems in a South Delhi Slum – Challenges of Access, Usage and Awareness, Kriti Seth narrates the problems a common person faces in accessing clean water in the slums of Delhi through the experience of an Anganwadi worker. Lack of awareness of redressal mechanisms and difficulty in approaching relevant authorities compounds the problem. The words of the Anganwadi worker interviewed summarise the crux of the issue, ‘navigating the matrix of zones and departments (like Water, Water sewer, Water maintenance etc.) listed on the Delhi Jal Board website and deciphering the confusing acronyms to finally get the appropriate phone number was a challenge to a comparatively technically sound person like me.’
In Soochna ka Adhikar: Ek Pehlu Ye Bhi.. (Right to Information: Another perspective…)AI’s PAISA Associate (field staff) in Himachal Pradesh, Indresh Sharma describes the roadblocks faced by Arun, a local dairy farmer, who tried to access information through the Right to Information (RTI) Act regarding a road construction on government owned forest land. This led to a bitter dispute with panchayat and land department officials, and as a result, Arun and his family suffered adverse personal consequences, including severe monetary and psychological damage. The piece acknowledges the strengths and power of the RTI Act, but also urges the government to strengthen its provisions, so that such incidents do not recur.
Sachai Ki Jeet (Truth’s Victory), is in essence, a case study on citizen-led actions that demand accountability from the bureaucracy. Dinesh Kumar, AI’s PAISA Associate in Bihar, details the inadequacies of the Public Distribution System (PDS) in Bihar, through which millions of families access daily rations for food at subsidised rates. He shares the story of his relative who mobilised others like him and fought against a nexus of corrupt ration dealers and a hostile bureaucracy to successfully retrieve ration that was rightfully due to him.
In Right to Whose Education, Vincy Davis shares the ongoing story of a man’s mission to get his child admitted to a private school under the quota reserved for students from economically weaker sections under the Right to Education Act (RTE Act 2009). The story traces Sunil’s journey during which he has to face hurdles at every point, and despite having the requisite documents as well as substantial support from his employers, his fight to get his son admitted is still not over.
In Aadhar in Public Service Delivery: An Enabler or a Disruptor , Taanya Kapoor shares a story of the tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh, where the mandatory requirement of Aadhaar enrolment to avail key public services and direct benefit transfers has affected the most marginalised, particularly by restricting their access to cash for daily use. She illustrates this point by sharing the story of a woman from Satna district, one of the most underdeveloped areas in the state, and her struggle to get an Aadhar card made, and consequently being unable to acquire her family’s share of ration from the fair price shop. While, a scheme like Aadhar may be well-intentioned, what needs to be questioned is the sheer incapacity of the state system to tackle implementation issues, which affect many people on a daily basis, writes Kapoor.
In the last two blogs of the series – Bridging Gaps between Citizens and the Bureaucracy – Part 1 and Part 2, Vincy Davis reflects on the journeys of various people whose struggles have featured in the blog series in an attempt to identify common issues within these diverse contexts. One of the main themes that emerges is the struggle to implement a digital India with very low levels of digital literacy, and the implementation process being beset with issues of access; grievance redressal; and bureaucratic complexities. Davis also shares some tried and tested hacks to counter these issues, and lays down a path towards long-term solutions.
BHARAT KARNAD ANALYSES
POLITICS SECURITY
Bharat Karnad, Research Professor at CPR and a national security expert traces the trajectory of the Indian government’s approach to signing the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) with the US in a series of select articles over March and April, 2016, listed below:
India in America’s coils?: Questioning the move by the Indian government to sign the LEMOA, Karnad comments that it would effectively reduce India to a client state of the US.
No LEMOA — possible reasons: In this blog, Karnad analyses the reasons for the postponement in the signing of the LEMOA, and calls it interim relief.
Has PM Modi Developed Cold Feet Over The Logistics Agreement with the US?: Welcoming the move that the signing of the LEMOA was likely postponed indefinitely by the Indian government, Karnad writes that New Delhi must have a grander vision for India’s foreign and strategic policies.
The Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) is one of the three major foundational agreements between India and the US which facilitates the exchange of logistics between military forces of the two nations. The most significant of these will permit the military forces of each country to resupply and replenish, and stage operations out of the other’s military air bases, land facilities, and ports.
FULL VIDEO OF PANEL DISCUSSION AS PART OF CPR DIALOGUES
CLIMATE RESEARCH
Watch the full video of the panel discussion on ‘The International Climate Change Regime: Looking Back to Look Forward’, organised as part of CPR Dialogues, featuring Lavanya Rajamani, Joanna Depledge, Chandra Bhushan, chaired by Ambassador Chandrashekhar Dasgupta.
The international climate change regime is poised at an interesting juncture – after decades of politically charged negotiations to put in place the obligations, rules and institutions to address climate change, the regime is shifting gears towards the day to day business of national implementation. It is a shift that takes the regime into new, less headline-grabbing yet important territory.
Over the course of the three decades that the international climate change regime has been in evolution, Parties have negotiated three legally binding instruments — the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement — and numerous decisions under these instruments. These instruments, in particular the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, represent fundamentally different approaches to regulating climate change. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol represents a top-down prescriptive approach, and the 2015 Paris Agreement a hybrid approach centred on nationally determined contributions from Parties complemented by an oversight system to incentivize more ambitious contributions over time. Since the Paris Agreement, Parties have been engaged in developing rules to operationalize the Agreement, in particular to discipline national discretion, enhance transparency and strengthen the oversight system. The end of the Rulebook negotiations on 14 December 2018 in Katowice marks the end of an era of intense rule-making under the climate change regime. Although minor technical details may remain to be resolved beyond Katowice, the broad contours of the climate change regime will be firmly in place. Yet this represents only the first step and the implementation now to follow will likely to prove to be much more challenging.
This panel:
looked back on three decades of rule-making, in particular at the major shifts in regulatory approaches embedded in this history
discussed the emerging contours of the Paris Agreement as fleshed out in the Katowice rulebook
explored the challenges and (potential) gaps in implementation, review, and ‘ratcheting’ of ambition over time through the Paris framework
identified the key focus areas for research, advocacy and policy influence as the regime shifts gears.
This panel discussion is the latest in a long line of seminars that CPR has held on the climate regime. In particular it forms part of an unbroken chain of annual seminars CPR holds shortly after the UN Conference of Parties (COP) to deconstruct the outcomes of the COP, explore the underlying politics and identify potential challenges on the road ahead.
CPR has worked on the climate regime, at the international and domestic level, for several years, and in various capacities. In addition to our scholarly work which spans award-winning books and articles in influential international journals, we have also worked with governments, including the Indian government, and played a role in drafting IPCC reports and UN FCCC instruments. More importantly we have, through our work over the last decade, helped to inform public understanding, stimulate a broader public debate and shape public opinion and research on climate policy.
Chandrashekhar Dasgupta is a former Ambassador and an Indian climate negotiator.
Lavanya Rajamani is a Professor at CPR.
Joanna Depledge is Editor of Climate Policy journal and Senior Fellow at Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance at the University of Cambridge.
Chandra Bhushan is the Deputy Director General at Centre for Science and Environment.
The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here.
Lavanya Rajamani’s article in the Hindustan Times (print partner for CPR Dialogues) can be accessed here.
Key takeaways about the Dialogues by Joanna Depledge can be accessed here.
Watch all other sessions of the Dialogues below:
Watch all other sessions of the Dialogues below: