FULL VIDEO OF TALK BY PROF HEMA RAMANATHAN
EDUCATION
With private players gaining a stronger foothold in public education in India, Prof Hema Ramanathan shares (video above) cautionary examples from the US on how privatisation has led to compromising the quality and ethics of teaching.
For access to additional resources, visit the dedicated page.
As part of our initiative to engage with law and policy makers, the Technology and Society Initiative at CPR launched a new series on ‘Navigating Interactions between Technology and Policy’. The focus audience for this initiative are Legislative Assistants to Members of Parliament (LAMP) fellows, parliamentary aides and others directly involved with law and policy making in India. This three-part series of workshops, consisting of talks and presentations by experts from and outside CPR, followed by lively interactions, aims to shed light on current debates pertaining to technology.
The first workshop in this series, with its focus on informational privacy in the digital age, was conducted at the CPR Conference Room on 22nd August. The discussion had three segments and was led by key resource persons in the form of individual presentations, followed by an open round of questions and answers. The open round was moderated by Ananth Padmanabhan, Visiting Fellow at CPR.
This workshop shed insights on several critical aspects of ‘informational privacy’ – The meaning of such privacy within the context of digital technologies, deficiencies in the current legal and policy framework to optimally safeguard the same, proposed regulatory framework to address the current gap in the form of the Personal Data Protection Bill, its significance and potential impact, and the need to constantly engage with this theme in the light of emerging technologies like automated facial recognition.
The first resource person, Lalit Panda, Research Fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, discussed the fundamentals of privacy, focusing on the need for sui generis protection and the concepts and tools required to offer such protection. Privacy entails control over personal information, which then secures the freedom of thought and political association, the freedom to make self-defining life choices, and from surveillance. The debate on secrecy versus privacy needs to be seen in the light of justificatory principles and values which are rooted in social norms and political structures, and which broadly impact economic development as well. These principles and values have found new meaning in the digital era as a consequence of all-pervasive technologies expanding exponentially alongside conditions of weak regulatory capacity. The possession of data by third parties and the concepts of permanence and traceability of information on individuals complicates matters further. Panda therefore emphasised the need for special data protection rules.
Nehaa Chaudhari, public policy lead at Ikigai Law, built on this insight and detailed the regulatory structures and compliance and enforcement regime envisaged under the draft Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018. The bill has been centred around the concepts of personal and sensitive personal data, the obligations on data fiduciaries who make determinative choices on how such personal data may be processed, and the rights of citizens whose data is being collected, processed and monetised. In the draft bill, both data fiduciaries and data processors have obligations, but the latter are saddled with a lesser number of such obligations. The bill fundamentally reiterates well-accepted data processing principles including purpose limitation, collection limitation, lawful processing, notice and consent, data accountability, quality and storage limitations. It is imperative that fiduciaries must adopt ‘privacy by design’ in their business operations and ensure that privacy is protected at all points of processing. By design, the systems should be able to anticipate, identify and prevent harms to data principals. Chaudhari discussed the role of two key players, the Data Protection Authority of India (DPAI) and the Central Government, in shaping regulations and enforcement norms under the bill. The DPAI is in charge of enforcement but the Central Government has a crucial role in tasking this independent regulator. The DPAI is designed as a highly centralised regulatory institution, with wide-ranging authority including the power to issue directions and codes of practice addressed to the data fiduciaries/processors, request information from them, conduct inquiries, appoint investigators, and decide on the merits of a case and pass final orders. The DPAI also has the task of increasing the public awareness on data protection. With these multiple and diverse functions vested in it, DPAI runs the risk of becoming an overburdened regulatory body with limited resources and capacity.
Responding to the complex question of interaction between emerging technologies and privacy, Smriti Parsheera, Fellow at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, deep-dived into facial recognition technologies (FRTs) to present her insights. FRTs are essentially algorithms used to run captured video feed against pre-existing databases of facial images and then identify matches between the two. FRTs are prone to high error rates as disclosed by compelling research studies. Even where they work, it is usually for verifications done with the cooperation or consent of individuals, such as in airports, classrooms, or for biometric attendance systems at workplaces. Importance of discussing this technology emerges from the availability of a large database of pictures uploaded from social media accounts or collected through CCTVs, and the computational advances in processing these large data sets. Alongside FRTs, drones and self-driving cars which use similar software could potentially interfere with individual and collective privacy. In India, FRTs were earlier proposed to be used as part of Aadhaar identification / authentication, though this project finds little mention now. Additionally, the National Crime Records Bureau has issued a tender for an Automated Facial Recognition System, and airports have initiated DigitYatri for seamless and hassle-free check-in. While the technology debate is swinging between ‘convenience and efficiency’ on one side, and ‘human errors and privacy concerns’ on the other, national security remains to be the most dominant rationale offered by public authorities in support of this technology. In this scenario, one needs to ask and answer the following questions: Is this technology reliable enough given instances of false identification of women and people of colour? Can it be considered legally tenable, considering that data is being collected and processed ubiquitously for an altogether different purpose without the consent of individuals? Would it end up being a tool that supports discrimination, considering the reliance on this technology on biased input feeds? Parsheera stressed the need for applying the Puttaswamy standards to a rights-based assessment of this technology, and the additional need for self-regulatory and ethical frameworks that work alongside statutory protection
A CONVERSATION BETWEEN RAHUL VERMA AND RICHA BANSAL
Listen to the full CPR podcast, ThoughtSpace (above) featuring Fellow, Rahul Verma, where he discusses his new book, ‘Ideology and Identity: The Changing Party Systems of India’, co-authored with Pradeep K Chhibber.
The book challenges the contemporary and common view that party politics in India is bereft of ideology and develops a new approach to how ideology is defined in a multi-ethnic country like India. Using survey data from the Indian National Election Studies (NES) and other studies along with evidence drawn from the Constituent Assembly debates, it shows that Indian electoral politics, as represented by political parties, their members, and their voters, is in fact marked by deep ideological cleavages, with parties, party members, and voters taking distinct positions on statism and recognition.
The link to the book can be found here.
A review of the book by C P Bhambhri in the Business Standard can be accessed here.
Rahul Verma discussed findings of his book in an episode of The Seen and the Unseen podcast with Amit Varma. Listen to the podcast here.
About the authors
Rahul Verma is Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), Delhi. He is also a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley, and his doctoral dissertation examines the historical roots of elite persistence in contemporary Indian politics. His research interest includes voting behavior, party politics, political violence, and media. He is a regular columnist for various news platforms and has published papers in Asian Survey, Economic and Political Weekly, and Studies in Indian Politics.
Pradeep K Chhibber is Professor of Political Science and Indo-American Community Chair for India Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, he is currently the Director of the Institute of International Studies at UC Berkeley. He has published widely on the party politics of India, party systems, and religion and politics.
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.
Center for Policy Research (CPR) along with partners International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Energy Resource Centre- Cape Town (ERC), and Prayas (Energy Group), has published a set of policy briefs to inform India’s climate contribution for the upcoming global negotiations in Paris. This set of briefs lays out ways for India’s climate approach to meet both sustainable development objectives and create momentum towards an effective global climate agreement. These include:
These policy briefs are produced by produced by the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) as part of a larger project: Toward a Robust Development Focused INDC.
Watch the full video (above) of the launch of CPR’s policy document, Policy Challenges 2019-2024. Policy Challenges 2019-2024, is a compendium of essays written by CPR scholars articulating key policy challenges and possible solutions across a range of issues that confront India today. These include foreign policy and national security; environment, energy and climate change; the economy and welfare; regulation and resources; federalism and urbanisation. This is a multi-sectoral, multi-disciplinary document that reflects on how India can negotiate the policy challenges it confronts and build a 21st century policy environment. The document can be accessed here.
The document was launched through conversations with:
Navroz K Dubash, Professor, CPR; Ambassador Gautam Mukhopadhyay, Senior Visiting Fellow, CPR; Yamini Aiyar, President and Chief Executive, CPR; and Partha Mukhopadhyay, Senior Fellow, CPR, moderated the different conversations.
Abstract:
India is at an important juncture in its development trajectory. From rapid urbanisation to declining agricultural productivity; from weak human capital to the need for creating productive jobs; from new security threats to the need to re-position itself in a changing global order; from growing energy demands to the need to address rapid environmental degradation, India today has to negotiate multiple and conflicting socio-economic challenges. Decisions and actions taken over the next five years will be likely to shape the future of our economic and political trajectory. This document is an effort to spark debate and ideas on how India can negotiate these transitions across a range of sectors.
ThePrint was the digital partner for this event.
Coverage of the event by ThePrint can be found below:
In the first instalment of the ‘Dialogues on Sanitation’ series titled Legal Perspectives on Sanitation in Urban India, Scaling City Institutions for India: Sanitation (SCI-FI) cerebrates mechanisms to improve the regulatory regime on urban sanitation.
The policy note, synthesised from the Dialogue, analyses several aspects such as the role of law and regulation in Faecal Sludge Management (FSM), rights of sanitary workers, and public-private participation in urban sanitation. The seminar had four thematic sessions focussing on managing public and private sectors in FSM, law of sanitation, FSM journey through the lens of the law and understanding environmental regulations and technical standards to build legal mandates. The sessions featured Madhu Krishna, Santhosh Raghavan, Rajesh Rangarajan, KB Oblesh, Arkaja Singh, Vishnu Sudarshan and Krishna K. This was followed by a session on ‘key take-aways’ that explored possible solutions to understand the emerging interfaces between markets and regulatory frameworks.
The event brought together senior policymakers, city and state level implementers, technocrats, members of the civil society and legal experts to learn from their experience in states and in implementation to initiate a broader discussion on the potential for roles and responsibilities for FSM from the viewpoint of legal frameworks.
Access the policy note here.
Access the videos from the event here.
About the series
This is the 1st Dialogue in a series planned by the Scaling City Institution for India: Sanitation (SCI-FI) initiative with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). This dialogue series builds on the CORP lecture series and seeks to provide a platform for discussing the experiences of the researchers and practitioners on urban sanitation across various thematic areas.
Listen to the full talk by guest speaker Geetha Nambissan on how private actors are attempting to change education policy in India by promoting low-cost, unregulated schools as a cost-efficient, high-quality and equitable solution for education of the poor. This attempt to develop a model that delivers ‘high quality’ education at the lowest of costs, yet ensuring profits, has serious implications for social justice in education for the poor, argues Prof Nambissan.
To access the full paper by Prof Nambissan, visit the dedicated page.
The notion that a monolithic idea of ‘nonalignment’ shaped India’s foreign policy since its inception is a popular view. In his new book Power and Diplomacy: India’s Foreign Policies During The Cold War, Zorawar Daulet Singh challenges conventional wisdom by unveiling another layer of India’s strategic culture. In a richly detailed narrative using new archival material, the author not only reconstructs the worldviews and strategies that underlay geopolitics during the Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi years, he also illuminates the significant transformation in Indian statecraft as policymakers redefined some of their fundamental precepts on India’s role in in the subcontinent and beyond. His contention is that those exertions of Indian policymakers are equally apposite and relevant today.
Whether it is about crafting a sustainable set of equations with competing great powers, formulating an intelligent Pakistan policy, managing India’s ties with its smaller neighbours, dealing with China’s rise and Sino-American tensions, or developing a sustainable Indian role in Asia, Power and Diplomacy strikes at the heart of contemporary debates on India’s unfolding foreign policies.
Reviews of the book can be found below:
‘The alternative explanations for each of the foreign policy events and the Indian reaction are the book’s most tantalisingly portions, making Zorawar, the Yuval Noah Hariri of Indian foreign policy during the Cold War years, because of his dissection of every possible motive.’
‘It is not often that a young scholar of international relations takes the plunge to offer original insights, based on extensive research, on the evolution of India’s foreign policy, with particular reference to the Cold War period. In Power and Diplomacy, Zorawar Daulet Singh has not hesitated to question the analysis and assessments of prominent Indian and foreign scholars and has come up with some persuasive interpretations. He deserves commendation…’
‘This work would be valuable to strategic analysts for studying the contours of India’s foreign policy choices in the Cold War period. It would be a useful input for practitioners and experts grappling with India’s possible response to the Cold War-II emerging between USA and China right on India’s periphery.’
‘The author throws light on the ways in which the competing ideas of Indian officials, their reactions to regional and world events — and the personalities of both prime ministers — shaped India’s diplomacy.’
‘Power and Diplomacy is a piece of outstanding historical and evidence-based scholarship that makes a timely contribution to today’s policy debates on the direction and degree of India’s multiple alignments.‘
‘The book throws new light on India’s foreign policy, including a full account of the internal debates on policy options within the foreign policy establishment.’
‘Power and Diplomacy is an enriching (read) for the serious student of foreign policy.’
‘Power and Diplomacy is an intellectual tour de force, impressive on many counts.’
‘…an interesting read in the evolution of India’s foreign policy.’
‘Daulet Singh adds depth to the otherwise oversimplified description of Indian foreign policy as a procession from Jawaharlal Nehru’s idealism to Indira Gandhi’s realism‘.
‘It is a carefully researched, cogently argued, and well-organised work.’
Carnegie India hosted a discussion on the book featuring Zorawar Daulet Singh, Suhasini Haidar, Srinath Raghavan and Rudra Chaudhuri. Details of the discussion can be accessed here.
More information about the book can be found here.
An excerpt of the book was featured in ThePrint. It can be read here.
