Author: cprindia

This year Uttarakhand’s state electricity distribution company (discom) was awarded an A+ by the Ministry of Power for its strong performance. This is an impressive achievement. Every year the Ministry of Power evaluates the financial and technical performance of India’s state discoms, giving each a rating between A+ and C. The Uttarakhand Power Corporation Limited (UPCL) was the only discom outside of Gujarat to secure an A+ rating. Only five of forty-one state discoms in India were given the top mark.

Uttarakhand’s power sector has undergone a remarkable transformation over the last two decades, to arrive at the position today where the state’s lone public discom is able to out-perform most of its peers around the country. At the root of this transformation have been two crucial elements: plentiful cheap hydro power coupled with rapid industrialisation in the state. Together these have been a golden combination for Uttarakhand. With cheap power and plentiful industry revenue, the UPCL has been able to improve its financial performance. This has happened even while the UPCL continues to report high commercial losses among non-industrial consumer groups.

When setting out as a newly formed state in 2000, Uttarakhand was under-developed, with low levels of industry and subpar electricity transmission infrastructure. Shortly after the state was formed, the UPCL’s industry users made up 21 percent of consumption, and the discom was reporting aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses of 54 percent. The consumer mix and loss levels were akin to neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, from which Uttarakhand was carved-out. Yet while Uttar Pradesh has seen little change in its power sector situation in the years since, Uttarakhand’s power sector was soon to be on a path of transformation.

First, Uttarakhand had inherited a large amount of hydro power generation capacity. In 2003, the total energy available to Uttarakhand was 5,300 million units, while the state’s requirement was just 3,900 million units. In 2003, the newly set-up Uttarakhand Electricity Regulatory Commission (UERC) capitalised on this advantage, ordering a reduction in electricity tariffs. In its first tariff ruling, it significantly reduced the tariff that the UPCL had to pay the state’s hydro power generation company, which allowed it to then order the UPCL to reduce the tariffs that it charged to all consumer groups, except farmers. This firmly established Uttarakhand as a low tariff state, attractive for industry.

Second, in 2003 the Government of India launched an industrial policy for Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, which included generous tax and central excise benefits to industry investing in the state. The policy was a huge success. Between 2000 and 2011, the number of factories in the state more than tripled. The result of this was that a favourable consumer mix was won for the UPCL. By 2011, industrial consumers contributed 63 percent of the UPCLs revenue, even while they only made up 1.1 per cent of its customers. Industry revenue is important, because industry users pay higher tariffs, cross-subsidising discom losses made supplying domestic and agricultural consumers at lower tariffs.

Plentiful cheap hydro power and a large revenue stream from industrial consumers transformed the position of the UPCL. In 2016-2017 the UPCL’s reported AT&C losses of just 16.28 percent. Power cuts in Uttarakhand are limited, universal electrification has been achieved, and the state government does not subsidise electricity tariffs.

Figure 1: Revenue Mix in 2016-17

The UPCL has been able to secure its A+ rating even as clear problems remain. Beyond industry consumers, AT&C losses associated with all other users in the state were 27 percent in 2016-2017. In seven distribution divisons, AT&C losses are in excess of 30 percent, including Roorkee where they are 36 percent. For years the UPCL has moved slowly to deal with these losses. Every year the UERC orders the discom to act on high levels of provisional billing, to replace mechanical meters and defective meters, and to claim outstanding arrears. Each year the UPCL makes little progress on these problems.

Having a state discom ranked A+ for its performance makes Uttarakhand an outlier state in terms of its power sector. Looking to the future, several road bumps lie in view. Rapid economic growth and industrialisation in the state has meant that electricity demand has risen fast. Yet there has been insufficient cheap hydro power capacity added to meet this demand. Instead, the UPCL is increasingly purchasing much more expensive gas-based generation. This is feeding through to higher tariffs. Coupled with this, central government incentives are now expiring which brought many industry players to the state. Industrial consumption over recent years has decreased marginally in Uttarakhand. The UERC puts this down to growing use of open access mechanisms that allow industry to buy power from generators outside the state, the installation of rooftop solar, and the effects of energy efficiency programs. If Uttarakhand fails on providing quality and reliable supply of power at competitive rates then industry consumption may fall further. In such a scenario, the UPCL’s performance is likely to suffer, and its A+ rating will be at risk.

Jonathan Balls is a New Generation Network (NGN) Post-Doctoral Scholar at the Australia India Institute, University of Melbourne, Australia. This research is based on work presented in full in the book Mapping Power, edited by Navroz K Dubash, Sunila S Kale, and Ranjit Bharvirkar.

Op-Eds in the Mapping Power Series:

• Reform is All About Getting the Politics Right
• How to Reform Uttar Pradesh’s Troubled Power Sector
• Consumers Upfront in Tale of Two Reforms in Andhra
• Taking Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
• Karnataka’s Power Politics
• AAP and the Politics of Power in Delhi
• New Trends Demand New Strategies in Maharashtra
• Electricity Distribution in Gujarat: A Sustainable Energy Future Roadmap?
• Small Gains Behind Mounting Losses in Jharkhand
• Power Politics at Play
• The Saga of the Subsidy Trap in the Tamil Nadu Power Sector

More details about the Mapping Power Project can be accessed here.

Watch the full video (above) of the talk by Nicolas Bautès where he discusses the various social and legal strategies adopted by different actors in the context of urban restructuring in the Port zone of Rio de Janeiro, with focus on the particular case of landmarking Pedra do Sal, an Afro Brazilian historical and religious monument located in this zone.

Through the claims of inhabitants who have faced the consequences of historical injustice as well as the current urban reforms, Bautès discusses ways informal power games, social pressure and intimidations permeate the harbor district as it undergoes profound structural changes, and operate decision making processes, influence speculation and promote economic benefits through producing and marketing heritage.

Nicolas Bautès is Research Fellow at the Department of Social Sciences of the French Institute of Pondicherry, and works in the field of urban studies, social and political geography.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here. Find all the available videos of our previous workshops, here.

Watch the full video (above) of the talk by Priya Deshingkar, based on research conducted in different locations in Africa and Asia (including India), to understand the conditions in which low-skilled migrants are recruited and employed.

In this talk, Deshingkar highlights the often complex and contradictory outcomes of migration, and the difficulties this creates for dichotomies of forced and free labour.

The Q&A session that followed can be accessed here.

Watch the full video (above) of the talk by Priya Deshingkar, based on research conducted in different locations in Africa and Asia (including India), to understand the conditions in which low-skilled migrants are recruited and employed.

In this talk, Deshingkar highlights the often complex and contradictory outcomes of migration, and the difficulties this creates for dichotomies of forced and free labour.

The Q&A session that followed can be accessed here.

Watch the full video (above) of the seminar by Dr Tanya Zack where she presents a photo essay on ‘Making Do in a Crowded City: Infrastructure Facing up to In-migration in Johannesburg’s Inner City’.

Johannesburg’s modernist infrastructure was built to last and is highly flexible. Buildings and spaces in many parts of the city have been informalised, and appropriated for uses and densities that exceed the limits of official plans and policies. These are the spaces where people are making do for themselves. Sometimes these ways of living and of making a living are survivalist. It’s a place where life happens under extreme and hazardous circumstances and survival is chanced and carved from inadequate, stressed infrastructure. And often they are entrepreneurial. And they are the places where innovation and learning emerge. In-migrants extract from the city, exploit its infrastructure, but they also adapt it and, in this way, may lay the foundation of a new city form.

The photo essay combined documentary visuals with narrative, relying on combination of sensitive observational narrative and first person insights to provide an intimate view into the particular intersection of people with infrastructures in the inner city. These are contextualised views, grounded in ethnographic documentary work that has formed the basis of the photo book series ‘Wake Up This is Joburg’.

Dr Tanya Zack is a South African urban planner, writer and reflective practitioner who straddles the worlds of planning practice, policy, academia and creative writing.

This is the 17th in a series of the Community of Research and Practice (CORP) seminar planned by the Scaling City Institution for India: Sanitation (SCI-FI: Sanitation) initiative. This seminar series seeks to provide a platform for discussing the experiences of the researchers and practitioners on urban sanitation.

Watch the full video (above) of the discussion on ‘Making Sense of the December 11 Results’ featuring Gilles Verniers and Neelanjan Sircar, moderated by Yamini Aiyar, as part of the CPR-TCPD (Trivedi Centre for Political Data, Ashoka University) Dialogues on Indian Politics.

The state elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telengana and Mizoram are the last electoral tests for before the 2019 general elections. What do these results say about the state of strength of both national parties? How does the Congress-TDP alliance prefigure future opposition alignment? What do we learn about the verdict returned by voters in the three Hindi belt states governed by the BJP? These were some of the questions that two elections experts – Neelanjan Sircar and Gilles Verniers – addressed by diving into the outcomes’ data.

Gilles Verniers is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Ashoka University and Co-Director of the Trivedi Centre for Political Data.

Neelanjan Sircar is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Ashoka University and Visiting Senior Fellow at CPR.

Yamini Aiyar is President and Chief Executive at CPR.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here.

About the CPR-TCPD Dialogues

This was the sixth event in the CPR-TCPD Dialogues on Indian Politics series, launched in a partnership between Centre for Policy Research and Trivedi Centre for Political Data (TPCD) at Ashoka University. This is a monthly event that brings together academicians, policy and political practitioners, and civil society actors to grapple with important social and political issues in India. It provides a forum for intellectually rigorous, non-partisan commentary to strengthen public discourse on politics in India. In these polarised times, debates on politics in India have tended to be increasingly noisy, blurring the lines between critical engagement and partisan endorsement. This dialogue series is an effort to carve out a space for critical, nuanced engagement to understand the changing dynamics of Indian political parties, the impact of new and emerging social movements and the use of new instruments of mobilisation in our polity.

The CPR-Namati Environmental Justice Programme trains and supports a network of community paralegals or grassroots legal advocates who work with communities affected by pollution, water contamination and other environmental challenges. They use the legal empowerment approach to make communities aware of laws and regulations that can help secure much needed remedies for these problems that often arise out of non-compliance or violation of environmental regulations. As part of their work, the community paralegals write about their cases to create public awareness on the use of law outside of courts as well as engage the readers in these issues.

This is an updated collection of published stories written by paralegals and their team members working in coastal Gujarat, Northern Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Keonjhar, Odisha. These are a combination of case stories and opinion pieces on issues of industrial non-compliance that have adversely affected many local communities. Each article tries to highlight the gap between the law on paper and its implementation in reality, while putting forth the conviction that putting law in the hands of ordinary people can shift the balance of power in support of justice.

The full report can be accessed here.

Across the world, poor communities bear a disproportionate burden of the environmental cost of development. Harmful projects such as polluting industrial units, municipal disposal sites or mining projects are usually situated close to poor neighbourhoods. These communities grapple on a daily basis with environmental impacts which exposes them to toxic contamination, adversely affect their livelihoods and impose restrictions on their access to common resources and mobility. These environmental impacts are often an outcome of years of gross violation or non-compliance of environmental regulation governing these projects.

The CPR-Namati Environmental Justice Program has developed a strong network of grassroots legal advocates or community paralegals across four states in India, who work directly with these affected communities. They help the communities to understand relevant laws and environmental regulations and assist them to build evidence about the impacts, approach relevant institutions and seek practical remedies for their problems.

As part of their work, the community paralegals write about their experiences to create public awareness on the use of law outside of courts as well as engage the readers in these issues. This is a collection of published stories written by paralegals working in coastal Gujarat, North Karnataka and Keonjhar, Odisha. Each story chronicles the focussed efforts and creative strategies undertaken by the paralegals and affected communities to close the legal enforcement gap and seek remedies for environmental impacts.

Click here to access the full publication by CPR- Namati Environmental Justice Program.

By Zorawar Daulet Singh

The importance of India-China relations in India’s overall foreign policy cannot be overstated. Not only is China’s rise changing Asia’s geopolitical landscape and the global balance of power, its involvement in South Asia in recent years has augmented its position from being India’s largest neighbour to an engaged great power across the subcontinent. Unlike in the Cold War era, when a backward China had been confined to a limited role in South Asia’s security and economy, four decades of reform and opening up to the world have equipped the country with the financial wealth, industrial strength and military capacities to pursue, should it choose to do so, an ambitious role in South Asia.

Thus, India’s China policy choices are profoundly consequential for the Indian government. It entails opportunities as well as risks with implications across a gamut of issues such as India’s global status and effectiveness in international institutions, geopolitical security and economic transformation. The persistence of an unresolved border dispute in this context only reinforces the importance of crafting a sensible and effective China policy. As India’s foreign secretary told members of the Lok Sabha in February 2018, ‘We cannot see the relationship with China the way we perhaps saw it thirty years ago, or even 15 years ago … both countries share the belief that this relationship is slated to become one of the defining relationships of this century, certainly in our region…’¹ One of the areas that India’s China policy needs to focus on is the neighbourhood because it is the arena where India-China competition and mistrust have tended to be most acute in recent years. If not managed sensibly, it could undermine India’s interests and regional position, along with unravelling the prospects for cooperation on other important fronts.

The Policy Challenge 

For the past decade, India and China have been working according to rival geopolitical visions. Although China has been a direct neighbour of South Asia and India since 1950, it is only in the past decade that Chinese policymakers have reformulated their regional policy to pursue more sustained political and economic relationships with several states in the subcontinent and the Indian Ocean littoral. Following Xi Jinping’s foreign policy guidelines of 2013 and 2014, China has adopted a policy aimed at enhancing the development options of its neighbours as well as promoting new lines of communication or corridors with its southwestern periphery. Much of this impetus has been provided by the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) – a grand connectivity plan that envisions a network of states economically linked to China through a variety of commercial-financial relationships and industrial projects. South Asia is one of five regions or subregions identified as areas to expand China’s geoeconomic footprint.

Since the 1990s, India too has contemplated ways to reconnect with its South Asian neighbours and inculcate a spirit of integration and interdependence in the subcontinent. While this process has found bipartisan political appeal, the ideas, resources and institutions to advance meaningful regional integration remain at a fragmentary level. Nothing underscores the meagre level of interdependence than the following stark statistics: merely 5% of South Asian trade is intra-regional; intra-regional investments constitute less than 1% of total investment in the subcontinent.

Although India and China are today seen as regional competitors, neither power has succeeded in implementing its vision fully. Arguably, the main reason has been the inability of both countries to situate their rival visions in a region-wide approach. India has not fully come to terms with the utter lack of intra-regional trading and infrastructure networks; nor has New Delhi been able to allocate adequate resources and capacities or adapt or renew institutions to match its aspirational rhetoric. Despite possessing far greater economic strength, and considering the scale and ambition of the BRI, China too has been unable to make a meaningful regional impact. Recent experience has proven that circumventing India – given its geopolitical centrality and market size – is not a viable path for any sustainable connectivity plan for the subcontinent.

Yet, unbridled competition poses grave risks for a fragmented subcontinent in the coming decades, a future that would undermine Indian interests far more than Chinese. Transforming South Asia must, therefore, be predicated on tapping India’s unique advantages: the size of its domestic market, which makes any geoeconomic plan’s success dependent on India’s participation and involvement, and the overt and subtle geopolitical influence the country continues to wield across the neighbourhood; it must also leverage China’s financial and industrial capabilities to construct infrastructure and connectivity capacities in the neighbourhood.

In short, both countries have strengths that are not being fully leveraged to advance an open subregional geoeconomic order. What has been missing from the policy discourse is an attempt to explore alternative futures and more constructive frameworks; there have been no attempts to visualize the changing regional setting in ways that would still secure vital Indian interests, advance stability and deepen regional economic development, while also enabling China to pursue its engagement with South Asia.

Intersection of Indian and Chinese Interests 

The first step in such an exercise would be to undertake a brief assessment of how Indian and Chinese interests interact in the region. What can we observe about China’s involvement in South Asia? China usually works with whatever regime is in power and avoids interfering in domestic political battles. Beijing’s main priority is protecting its economic investments. In some cases where China has deeper geostrategic interests, particularly in Pakistan and Myanmar, it has cushioned adverse reaction from the US towards these states. Hence, in limited ways, China is already a security provider – certainly at the political and diplomatic levels. And this factor shapes how many neighbourhood regimes now perceive China: as potential insurance against possible Western pressure and as a hedge against uncertainty about Indian positions in times of domestic crises in these states. There is little doubt that China’s engagement has improved the bargaining position of India’s neighbours vis-à-vis India and other major external powers.

India and China’s regional policies suggest that there are both overlapping features as well as geopolitical faultlines at play. Both neighbours have a common interest in (i) managing non-traditional threats such as terrorism, extremism, separatism and distress migration that impact regime stability of smaller South Asian states; (ii) promoting secular and stable regimes; (iii) promoting open sea lanes and ensuring the security of their maritime trade routes; and (iv) geoeconomically connecting South Asia with East Asia.

At the same time, there are some key differences in India and China’s regional approaches. First, China appears to be more interested in inter-regional interdependence and connectivity, while India is mainly interested in subregional integration. Put another way, China seeks to connect South Asia with China; while India seeks to bring South Asia closer from within as well as more connected with Eurasia and South East Asia. Second, there is a large measure of uncertainty about the geopolitical implications of the BRI in South Asia. India’s main concern is that deeper connectivity between India’s neighbours and China will reorient the foreign policies of South Asian states in ways that could eventually undermine Indian interests and challenge its claims to regional authority. More broadly, China’s engagement in South Asia might also adversely influence domestic politics in the subcontinent and strengthen anti-India political forces; the latter could spill over onto the domestic politics in India’s states, thereby impacting periphery security and social stability. Third, a major faultline would be the militarizing of China’s regional connectivity projects. Such a hypothetical scenario would pose military security challenges to India as well as place China in a position to act as a direct security provider in the subcontinent, an outcome that would have profound consequences for the geopolitics in the region.

Policy Recommendations 

One of the key geopolitical challenges for Asia over the next decade is whether and how a rising India and a rising China can learn to be sensitive to each other’s core interests while pursuing engagement with each other’s neighbours. In the April 2018 ‘informal summit’ in Wuhan, both political leaderships had sought to arrest the escalating tension and competition in the relationship. While their differences and disputes remain unresolved, both sides have come to recognize the costs and disadvantages of a semi-hostile and contentious relationship. In particular, building trust and ‘strategic communication’ in the neighbourhood have now been recognized by both leaderships as shared policy goals.

1. Capacity building and assisting weak states: Although India and China have a common interest in regime stability, both sides have yet to explore structured cooperation on this front. One form such cooperation could assume is joint assistance of weak states through coordinated capacity enhancing projects and training programmes. Indeed, the April 2018 talks have laid a framework for ‘India-China plus one’, that is, India-China cooperation in third countries in the region.² In October 2018, India and China launched a programme to train Afghan diplomats as an initial step in a long-term effort for trilateral cooperation (India-China-Afghanistan).³ This confidence-building measure, albeit modest, has opened a window for precisely the type of coordination between two regional powers that has often been ambivalent of their shared interests. Such third-party cooperation should be extended to other states confronting domestic challenges; for example, the two nations could together support Bangladesh’s secular forces in their struggle against extremism or assist Myanmar in responsibly managing domestic order.

2. Coordinating geoeconomic plans: Lacking in finance capital and industrial resources, India cannot undertake the sole burden of lifting South Asia from underdevelopment and low interdependence, especially given the growing domestic claims within the country itself. If Indian requirements in the subcontinent are to advance connectivity (both within and between South Asian states) and deepen the developmental process, China’s engagement can be nudged or leveraged in directions that also advance India’s long-term interests. Building constructive regional partnerships are unavoidable and China is one of the key players that need to be engaged more strategically by India.

Can China’s infrastructure projects increase South Asia’s internal connectivity and economic interdependence? Much of the viability of logistical networks and energy projects is linked with India’s economy and access to its large market. For example, hydropower projects developed by China with India as the main eventual market could be a form of trilateral cooperation. Another instance is China’s construction of a new terminal at the Chittagong port in Bangladesh, which complemented India-Bangladesh coastal shipping cooperation.⁴ Similarly, projects like the BCIM (Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar) corridor could reconcile India’s vision to deepen connectivity with its smaller neighbours with China’s vision to connect its southwestern provinces with South Asia.

More broadly, India-China geoeconomic coordination and cooperation, including through joint bilateral and multilateral projects, is necessary to avoid duplicating large infrastructure projects that could otherwise burden the region with excess supply-side capacities and fiscal burdens. India’s official position on the BRI (beyond the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor that contradicts India’s sovereignty over Jammu and Kashmir) is based on legitimate questions around sustainability, viability, transparency and industrial benefits to the local communities of some of China’s economic projects. India-China coordination in third countries could help in addressing these issues by giving India a say in the choice and design of projects, along with making China’s economic involvement more in sync with the subregional political economy as well as with established international norms. The second BRI forum held in Beijing in April 2019 indicates Chinese leaders might be responding to the critique from India and other countries. The communiqué called for ‘extensive consultation’; ‘green’, ‘people-centred and sustainable development’; and ‘high-quality, sustainable infrastructure’ that is ‘inclusive and broadly beneficial’.⁵ But for India to explore whether the BRI’s adaptation does genuinely augur a consultative and sustainable geoeconomic approach by China in the subcontinent, its own position on the initiative needs to evolve such that its legitimate sovereignty concerns do not constrain the formulation of a more sophisticated policy.

3. Maritime cooperation: In recent years, India has recognized China’s ‘Malacca dilemma’ – a reference to the long and insecure lines of communication through the northern Indian Ocean that China relies upon for much of its international trade – and its corresponding interest in improving the security of its Indian Ocean trade routes. China, for its part, too needs to reassure India on its port projects and the military aspects of its regional involvement, particularly in the South Asian littoral. Even as they recognize some of China’s maritime security concerns, Indian policymakers must be prepared to counteract any attempts at militarization or conversion of Chinese infrastructure investments in South Asia into forward-basing facilities for the Chinese military. A failure to do so might impel other great powers to respond to China with their own military bases on the subcontinent’s maritime periphery, a process that would pose adverse consequences for regional geopolitics and also erode India’s influence in the neighbourhood.

Competitive Coexistence in a Common Neighbourhood

India and China’s policies are beginning to resemble each other. Just as Beijing’s engagement with India’s neighbours increases the status and bargaining position of these smaller states vis-à-vis India, New Delhi too engages with many South East Asian states who seek to hedge their dependence on China by developing more economic and geopolitical options. Yet, neither side is under any delusion that India’s neighbours can be rallied against India or that India can rally South East Asian states to balance Chinese power. The balance of power simply would not allow such a thing in practice. The defence budget of the entire South East Asian region is about $45 billion. China’s is four times that figure and with far more modernized and balanced capabilities. Similarly, the asymmetry between India and its neighbours is even higher. In South Asia – with the exception of Pakistan – none of the other states are in any position to present a threat or challenge to India, even with outside assistance. This proposition is likely to be even truer over the course of the next five years.

If we look at the official rhetoric from the region, what stands out is a similar discourse being espoused by most of the smaller South Asian states. Nearly all of India’s neighbours have expressed a preference for (i) non-alignment or strategic autonomy as a guiding principle in their foreign relations; (ii) multi-directional economic engagement with India, China, the US, Japan and other powers; and (iii) sensitivity towards India including publicly disavowing any move towards offering military facilities or bases to external powers and thus reassuring India on its vital interests. As one recent study observed, smaller South Asian countries ‘largely still see India as the dominant power in South Asia, suggesting that Chinese economic activity, while welcome, will not necessarily translate into major military or strategic gains’.⁶ Another discernible trend is that neither India nor China seems to be pressuring or cajoling smaller South Asian states to make hard choices, or persuading these states to adopt postures and policies that run contrary to the main interests of its regional competitor.

In short, we do not see a Cold War-style competition, which suggests some sort of a tacit acceptance of competitive coexistence in their overlapping peripheries. So while India and China are competing they are doing so within a framework of self-restraint. This could gradually pave the way for a conception of a regional order with informal norms on the ‘rules of the game’ in the subcontinent. Other things being equal, internally resilient and economically vibrant neighbours are likely to be in both India and China’s interests. If stability in their overlapping peripheries is a common interest, it should pave the way for more sustained bilateral conversations to mitigate some of the uncertainty-induced competition and mistrust; these could also seek to proactively exploit the untapped overlapping interests likely to be emanating from China’s growing involvement in South Asia.

Far-sighted and pragmatic voices in the West are advocating for ‘stable competition’ or ‘responsible competition’ with a rising China to avoid precipitating a second and costly Cold War. Indian policymakers must take the long view and pursue an approach of peaceful competition in the neighbourhood. India and China need to engage in a strategic conversation on the subcontinent and its various parts towards coordinating some of their regional connectivity visions and policies. The failure to pursue such a dialogue, and to arrive an understanding on an agreed framework for Indian and Chinese policies, would constitute a recipe for regional instability and a costly zero-sum rivalry that neither country can afford in a rapidly changing international environment.

Other pieces as part of CPR’s policy document, ‘Policy Challenges – 2019-2024’ can be accessed below:

• The Future is Federal: Why Indian Foreign Policy Needs to Leverage its Border States by Nimmi Kurian
• Rethinking India’s Approach to International and Domestic Climate Policy by Navroz K Dubash and Lavanya Rajamani
• India’s Foreign Policy in an Uncertain World by Shyam Saran
• Need for a Comprehensive National Security Strategy by Shyam Saran
• A Clarion Call for Just Jobs: Addressing the Nation’s Employment Crisis by Sabina Dewan
• Time for Disruptive Foreign and National Security Policies by Bharat Karnad
• Multiply Urban ‘Growth Engines’, Encourage Migration to Reboot Economy by Mukta Naik
• Schooling is not Learning by Yamini Aiyar
• Clearing Our Air of Pollution: A Road Map for the Next Five Years by Santosh Harish, Shibani Ghosh and Navroz K Dubash
• Protecting Water while Providing Water to All: Need for Enabling Legislations by Philippe Cullet
• Interstate River Water Governance: Shift focus from conflict resolution to enabling cooperation by Srinivas Chokkakula

¹ Ministry of External Affairs, ‘Sino-India relations including Doklam, border situation and cooperation in international organizations’, Sixteenth Lok Sabha, 4 September 2018, 2-3.
² After the Wuhan meetings, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Kong Xuanyou had briefed the media on such trilateral cooperation: ‘The two sides will enhance policy coordination in their neighbourhood to discuss cooperation in the form of China India plus one or China India plus X.’ ‘Modi-Xi summit: India, China to step up policy coordination’, PTI, 29 April 2018.
³ ‘India, China launch joint training for Afghanistan, plan more projects’, Reuters,15 October 2018. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-china-afghanistan/india-china-l….
⁴ Nilanthi Samaranayake, ‘China’s Engagement with Smaller South Asian Countries’, Special Report No. 446, April (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2019), 13.
⁵ Joint Communique of the Leaders’ Roundtable of the 2nd Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, 27 April 2019. https://eng.yidaiyilu.gov.cn/qwyw/rdxw/88230.htm.
⁶ Samaranayake, ‘China’s Engagement with Smaller South Asian Countries’, 3-4.

Read the full working paper produced by the CPR-Namati Environmental Justice Program on the dilutions made to the central law of Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, over a period of two years.

Even though the fate of the amendments brought to the Act by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, through a series of ordinances, currently rests with the Joint Parliamentary Committee report, several states have already brought about changes through Rules under Section 109 of the Act.

This paper attempts to trace and analyse how the state governments have modified and built upon the central Act, and especially at how they have diluted the applicability of progressive clauses like consent, Social Impact Assessment (SIA), food security provisions, clear compensation related provisions, as well as clauses which allow for unused land to be returned to original owners.