Author: cprindia

Senior Visiting Fellow, Rajshree Chandra and Fellow, Namita Wahi, were awarded the prestigious New India Fellowship this year. The Fellowship acknowledges scholars and writers working on different aspects of the history of independent India. In this interview, Chandra and Wahi shed light on the projects they will be working on as part of the Fellowship and what the final outcome is going to be.

What is your fellowship project on?

Rajshree: The project is to work on my grandfather, Jagat Narai Lal’s political biography. Jagat Narain Lal was a writer, a political leader, a freedom fighter, member of the Constituent Assembly, member of the Dhar Commission (the first linguistic reorganisation commission, 1948), Professor of economics at Bihar Vidyapith (inaugurated by Gandhi on 4 Feb, 1921), a practicing lawyer, editor of journal Mahavir (till 1928) and also a person who was very religious and spiritual, his religiosity often spilling into his politics.

I have recently acquired a bunch of his diaries and writings that have been digitised and donated to the Nehru Memorial library. His writings and speeches cover a variety of subjects that range from socio-political themes – like property, citizenship, identity, secularism, minority status, linguistic reorganisation of states, etc., to a deep meditation on Advaita philosophy, Upanishads and the Gita. In his philosophical explorations, in his ideological dilemmas and philosophical predicaments, in the duality of his political loyalties lies the story of our collective inheritance that is marked by the contradictions and the contrarian ambiguities of our inheritance. His is perhaps an oeuvre that needs a more defined place in Indian history. Through his political biography I hope to do that.

Namita: My fellowship project is an attempt to write a book on ‘The History of the Constitutional Right to Property in India from 1947 to 1978’. The Fundamental Right to Property enjoys the unique distinction of not only being the second most contentious provision in the drafting of the Indian Constitution, but also the most amended provision, and the only fundamental right to be abolished (in 1978). Neither a mere doctrinal excursion through a litany of judicial precedents about property, nor simply an intellectual history of the idea of property in India, my book is an attempt to write a history of legal doctrine about property in India, in the context of both the intellectual history of the right and its social and political background during the period 1947-1978.

In my book project, I seek to correct a deeply rooted, conventional political and scholarly narrative about the trajectory of the fundamental right to property, which goes as follows. The Fundamental Right to Property was enforced by a ‘reactionary’ and ‘pro property’ rights Supreme Court in order to protect the rights of rich property owners, particularly zamindars, and to impede Parliament’s ‘progressive’ land reform agenda. Consequently, these provisions were amended several times by Parliament during the three decades following independence and were abolished by the Forty-Fourth constitutional amendment in 1978. The same amendment inserted a tempered right to property in Article 300A of the Constitution. This narrative echoes similar accounts about the implications of entrenched property clauses in other Constitutions, like the Lochner era US Supreme Court and more recently, the South African Constitutional Court.

My revisionist history will show that as the post-colonial Indian state, ruled by a ‘dominant political party’, namely, the Indian National Congress, embarked on a project of economic and social transformation, the right to property as drafted by India’s Constituent Assembly, and enforced by the Supreme Court, served as the site for mediating tensions between the state and citizens, that arose as a result of these processes of transformation. Constitutional courts are often critiqued for being counter majoritarian institutions. At other times, they are criticised as elitist or ineffective. Rarely are they seen as important consensus builders and mediators in a democracy. In my book project, I will show that due to two peculiar institutional features, the Supreme Court’s role in mediating tensions between state and citizens, as the state transformed socially and economically, was not counter majoritarian, or elitist, but rather democracy enhancing.

Moreover, my history of the fundamental right to property will hopefully include voices of marginalised groups like women, Dalits, and Tribals that have not been included in previous accounts of constitutional right to property.

How is the Fellowship going to support this?

Rajshree: The New India Foundation Fellowship is like a writing fellowship. It is in the form of a grant that would enable me to take time off teaching and devote time to working full-time on the project.

Namita: The Fellowship will provide me the necessary financial support that will allow me to focus entirely on this book project in the coming year. In addition, the esteemed board of trustees for the Fellowship, which includes eminent scholars and historians like Ramachandra Guha and Srinath Raghavan, will hopefully give feedback on the book as it develops and help bring it to a form that will make it into a good publication.

What is the final project outcome?

Rajshree: The outcome will be in the form of a book tracing his political journey, plus a companion volume of his collected works.

Namita: The outcome of the fellowship will be an academic book on the subject as described above, which will also be of interest to a general audience.

This paper analyses residential segregation over time in Indian cities. We examine the change in caste-based segregation longitudinally, while exploring how caste dynamics manifest differently across city size and region. The paper uses successive rounds of decennial census data, from 2001 and 2011. Contrary to expectations, we find residential segregation by caste/tribe persisting or worsening in 60 per cent of cities in our all-India sample, with differences by region and city size. For example, in the states of Karnataka, Haryana, Punjab and Tamil Nadu, a majority of cities experienced decreasing levels of residential segregation by caste/tribe, while in Maharashtra and Gujarat, 34 and 29 per cent of cities, respectively, experienced an increase. A greater proportion of small cities (population 20,000–49,999) than large cities (100,000–999,999) experienced an increase in residential segregation between 2001 and 2011. Across all city-size categories, the dominant trend has been no improvement in residential segregation by caste/tribe over time.

Access the article here.

Listen to the 30th episode of the CPR podcast, ThoughtSpace (above) featuring Mukta Naik, Fellow, CPR and Gregory Randolph, Executive Vice President, JustJobs Network, discussing their research on the role of small cities in shaping youth employment in India and Indonesia.

Sharing key findings, Naik and Randolph shed light on the similarities and differences between the two countries and how their research can feed into policy.

All project resources, including research reports, academic papers, blogs and films are available on smallcitydreaming.org

Listen to the full CPR podcast, ThoughtSpace (above) featuring Senior Fellow, Shubhagato Dasgupta and Fellow, Arkaja Singh, talking about deaths due to manual scavenging.

Manual scavenging has emerged as one of the biggest challenges of sanitation in India. In very simple terms, manual scavenging is work that involves directly handling raw or partly treated human excreta. Historically, this practice was associated with ‘dry latrines’, in which fresh excreta is lifted manually, and on a daily basis.

We have not as yet completely eradicated dry latrines, even though it has been banned since 1993, but in the meantime, many newer forms of sanitation infrastructure have proliferated, which also involve unsafe sanitation work and often manual scavenging. This includes the work of cleaning septic tanks, latrine pits, drains and sewerage systems, and also in cleaning railway tracks and other open defecation spots where sanitation workers directly interface with faecal matter. All of this work is prohibited under the manual scavenging law, as we have pointed out in our policy brief Manual Cleaning of Sewers and Septic Tanks. This work as it is performed currently, is also degrading and humiliating, and has a long association with caste discrimination.

We also now have an understanding of manual scavenging as extremely hazardous work that kills its workers. According to a recent estimate by the National Commission of Safai Karamcharis, 123 people have died in cleaning sewers and septic tanks since 1 Jan 2017, which adds up to one death in every five days. Official numbers estimate that approximately 53,000 people are engaged in manual scavenging work, but other estimates, such as from Dalberg, suggest that as many as 5 million people are engaged in some form of manual scavenging work. It is also worth pointing out here that unsafe sanitation work and manual scavenging is almost an everyday practice – safety norms and protocols are routinely flouted in cleaning and maintenance services – and this includes sanitation infrastructure in the most upmarket hotels, commercial complexes and gated communities, in publicly managed sewerage systems, and in private septic tanks, which proliferate across urban India.

Meanwhile there are severe inadequacies in our legal and institutional response, which need urgent attention. In our podcast, we try to disentangle some of the issues around unsafe sanitation infrastructure and the reasons why our current infrastructure cleaning and management practices are killing people. These deaths are largely on account of poisonous gases that accumulate in closed septic tanks, sewer lines and in sewerage treatment facilities. Much of this work could be significantly mechanised: emptying work in septic tanks should be carried out by vacuum tankers, and limited problem-solving human interventions in sewerage systems should be carried out by highly trained people, following protocols to ensure that their intervention is limited and made entirely safe.

Faecal Sludge Management

In our work on sanitation in non-sewered areas, we emphasise that Faecal Sludge Management (FSM) interventions are needed to squarely address the challenge of establishing safe and hygienic systems for management of our sanitation infrastructure.  At the same time, we need deep and systematic reform in the management of sewerage systems, to ensure that no worker is made to do dangerous sanitation work. Our current work on sanitation in CPR, under the Scaling City Institutions for India project (SCIFI) is focused on FSM, which has the potential to address the sanitation needs of 60% of our urban population and an even larger and growing proportion of the population in non-urban areas, who currently live in non-sewered areas and rely on septic tanks for their sanitation needs. For safe and improved FSM services however, states and cities implementing FSM need to articulate and implement a coherent FSM plan that emphasises the elimination of manual scavenging and dangerous sanitation work as a central objective. And on our part, we need to continuously engage with the issue, understand the reasons for its persistence, and hold our governments, our residents’ associations and ourselves to account for its complete eradication.

Listen to the full CPR podcast, ThoughtSpace (above) featuring Senior Fellow and former Foreign Secretary, Ambassador Shyam Saran, discussing the recent turmoil in Sri Lanka’s politics.

With the sacking of Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa’s appointment as the new Prime Minister, the island nation grapples with political unrest. In such a scenario, it becomes important for India to understand how these developments affect the larger scheme of things in South Asia, especially given China’s position. Saran sheds light on how India should best approach this crisis and what the future course of action should be.

Four years ago, the announcement of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) was greeted with general optimism. It claimed to have learnt from the errors of its predecessors, which had been criticised across several quarters. For instance, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) had found that despite over ₹10,000 crore spent between 2009 and 2014, not only were toilet construction numbers overestimated by as much as a 100% in some states, but more than a third of these new toilets were already defunct. Researchers and practitioners attributed this to the programme’s ‘government-led, infrastructure-centred, subsidy-based and supply-led’ approach to implementation. The SBM insisted that it would not repeat these mistakes.

SBM signalled this departure in several ways. A more substantive measure of success was adopted by shifting the focus to outcomes in the form of Open Defecation Free (ODF) villages. A community led approach for sustainable behaviour change was announced as the preferred medium of intervention. Emphasis on Information, Education, and Communication (IEC) was ensured by fixing a minimum threshold of communications expenditure for the states. On site sanitation in the form of twin leach pit toilet technology was recommended as suitable to rural ecology.

As the Mission gathered momentum, districts and then states have rapidly been declared ODF, and the focus has once again become the completion of predetermined (and not necessarily accurate) toilet construction targets.

The impact of this lopsided and construction driven implementation was observed by the Accountability Initiative in its study of ODF panchayats in Udaipur. Although declared (and in a subset of cases, verified) ODF, almost 20% of the surveyed households were found to be lacking a toilet. Usage lagged further behind with more than a third (38%) of even those who owned toilets reporting that they defecated in the open on the day of the survey. While this, in itself, invalidates their ODF status, the lack of awareness generation actually compounds matters further. We found that a majority of the toilets being constructed in Udaipur were (claimed to be) septic tanks or single pits, which the mission discourages.

In Udaipur, the access usage gap reveals that communication efforts did not keep pace with the construction blitz. Indeed, less than half of our sampled households had been visited in the context of SBM. Awareness of important aspects, including sludge management and hygiene, was found to be very low.

In order to understand whether this dissonance between policy and implementation is an aberration, AI has been analysing the administrative data of the mission every year. The figures are telling.

Of the ₹41,111 crores spent by SBM-G (SBM Gramin) from the launch of the mission till January 15, 2018, 96% (close to ₹40,000 crore) was spent on toilet construction subsidies alone. In contrast, less than 2% (close to ₹602 crores) of all expenditure was on IEC efforts. Effectively, this translates to an average overall expenditure of ₹9,207 in each of the 606,095 villages that SBM is active in, or an average annual expenditure of just over ₹2000 per village. Further constraints are placed by the fact that on an average, 16% (almost 99,000) of these villages do not have local swachhagrahis or community mobilisers even now. It is noteworthy that the CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General of India) rejected the ODF declarations of two states in September 2018.

Not only have known mistakes not been pre-empted, but new complications have arisen due to the proliferation of unsuitable toilets. The National Annual Rural Sanitation Survey of 2017-18 observed that 71% toilets were either single pits or septic tanks. Many of these may eventually require manual handling of faecal sludge, and are thus banned under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013. Meanwhile, one manual scavenger has died every five days this year in India, many while cleaning septic tanks. Sludge/Septage treatment and safe disposal facilities, or even mechanised sludge clearance services, remain virtually non-existent in rural India.

To learn more about CPR’s work on manual scavenging and faecal sludge management, tune into a podcast and a blog by the Scaling City Institutions for India: Sanitation project, here .

The challenge before the mission is now two-fold – to sustain the gains already made, and to address the shortcomings in the process. An honest and transparent self-appraisal is an urgent first step.

The more human rights-based approaches have been mainstreamed, the more we expect legislation to provide means for the implementation of rights framed at a generic level in constitutions or by the higher judiciary. India is no exception, having been at the forefront of the broadening of the gamut of fundamental rights, in particular through an expansive reading of the right to life, for instance, to include a human right to sanitation. Surprisingly, there is no legislation that takes forward the mandate laid out by the courts. Yet, given the increasing policy and political importance of sanitation, the Union government has been pro-active in trying to ensure every person gets access to toilets at home. In rural areas, interventions of the Union government have been through administrative directions that are adopted by the executive and regularly modified over time according to changing policy and political priorities. None of the instruments that have guided the sector over time refer to the right to sanitation. While the link is not made directly, these interventions are in effect the mechanism through which the right is at least in part realised. This is confirmed from two different perspectives on the ground. In rural areas, people make no difference between legislation and administrative directions. What the government implements is de facto the law and is seen as such both by the rights holders and by local government officials. This raises multiple questions in the current context of a very strong push towards ensuring the country is open defecation free by 2019. Right holders are known as beneficiaries and thus not in a position to hold the state accountable for its actions or inactions. Increasingly, rights holders are becoming duty holders, indeed in some cases they are required to build toilets. Further, the realisation of the right includes strong arm measures, such as naming and shaming campaigns at the local level and fines for open defecation. This article explores the multiple issues arising from a fast-evolving context where the clear recognition of human rights is not matched by implementation measures that follow the same logic. This must be looked at both from the point of view of the state and the individuals and communities that are at the receiving end of interventions that are meant to be in their favour.

Access the article here.