Author: cprindia

In this episode of India Speak, Sushant Singh, Senior Fellow at CPR speaks with Ambassador Gautam Mukhopadhaya, former Ambassador to Afghanistan (2010-13) and Senior Visiting Fellow, CPR.

Two weeks before the US was set to complete its troop withdrawal from the region, the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan. Major cities fell in a matter of days as the Afghan military and government collapsed rapidly. Chaos ensued as Afghan citizens thronged the airport to flee, some even clinging on to the wheels of a US military aircraft, in a desperate bid to escape the country. What does a takeover by the Taliban mean for Afghanistan, particularly its citizens who have enjoyed the freedoms of the last 20 years? How were the Taliban able to get control so quickly and efficiently? Did India see it coming?

Mukhopadhaya discusses the geopolitical ramifications of this development, the impending impact on women’s rights, and the state of India-US relations. He also highlights how India should best approach this crisis and what the future course of action should be, given past reluctance to talk with the Taliban.

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO OF THE WEBINAR
ECONOMY

Watch the full video (above) of the webinar on ‘India’s economic engagement in Asia: how should it change after Ladakh?’ featuring Ambassador Shyam Saran (Former Foreign Secretary & Senior Fellow, CPR); Dr C Raja Mohan (Director, Institute of South Asian Studies, Singapore); Ambassador Mohan Kumar [Chairperson, Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS]); Suman Bery [Former Director-General, National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER)]; and Yamini Aiyar (President and Chief Executive, CPR).

India has been engaged with the countries of East Asia through a range of platforms. On security issues the East Asian Summit dominates (which now includes Russia and the United States). On economic cooperation the central structure is ASEAN+6 (ASEAN’s 10 members together with Japan, Korea, China, India, Australia), all of whom also participate in the East Asia Summit.

India withdrew last November from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade agreement, the signature project of ASEAN+6 . Even though Japan, Korea, Indonesia and Australia (all G20 members) are party to the negotiations, the Indian press has dubbed the agreement ‘Chinese-led’. The other 15 members are yet to conclude the agreement.

Since then, Asia has been ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic. Concurrently India is among several countries in the region exposed to a more assertive security posture by China, leading to the tragic death of Indian soldiers at Chinese hands in Ladakh.

A recent report by a group of economists from ASEAN+6 countries argues that economic and medical cooperation across ASEAN+6 can lead the global recovery from the pandemic. China, India and Japan are three of the four largest economies in the G20 and may be able to make headway at a time when tensions between China and the US are high. There is also little doubt that the major ASEAN countries, as well as Japan and Australia, would welcome India’s constructive engagement in such regional cooperation. Yet given its volatile security relationship with China and its own domestic economic and political preoccupations, India may wish to stay away, as it has with the RCEP.

This webinar assessed India’s interests and options in regional economic engagement with other Asian powers in navigating a post-pandemic world.

FULL VIDEO OF THE DISCUSSION ORGANISED BY THE STATE CAPACITY INITIATIVE
ECONOMY

Watch the full video (above) of the discussion on ‘India’s Economy in a Hole: Keep Digging?’ featuring Lant Pritchett and Ajay Shah, organised by the State Capacity Initiative at CPR.

Weak capability for implementation and beautiful rules create complex deals. Complex deals can create a rapidly growing economy, but at the same time prevent the move to rules. Hence, the paradox can be move to rules that can be good in the long run but bad in the short term, or move to deals that are good in the short term but not in the long run. This talk unpacked these relationships and dynamics in the context of the Indian economy and state capacity.

Lant Pritchett is a Senior Visiting Fellow at CPR.

Ajay Shah is a Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.

AS PART OF ‘POLICY CHALLENGES – 2019-2024: THE BIG POLICY QUESTIONS FOR THE NEW GOVERNMENT AND POSSIBLE PATHWAYS’
CPR INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

By Shyam Saran

The foremost foreign policy challenge for the incoming government will be to adapt to a changing world order. Even as Western dominance has diminished, no power has emerged that is capable of inheriting its mantle. Therefore, the current phase of disruption and altered relations among states is likely to continue. It is also becoming clear that the US and China are moving from competition to confrontation. Balancing relations with these two countries will become more difficult and India will have to contend with pressures to join one camp or another. Against this geopolitical backdrop, the new government will have to fashion a foreign policy that offers opportunities for expanding India’s strategic space even as it seeks to tackle increasingly complex challenges. Some of these are discussed below.

Challenges, Old and New

While dealing with China has always remained one of India’s biggest foreign policy challenges, today the asymmetry in economic and military capabilities between the two Asian giants is expanding rather than shrinking. Managing relations with China has involved confronting it whenever Indian interests are threatened but also being willing to work together where interests are convergent. This has served India well and may continue to be the template for the foreseeable future. Currently China has been presenting a more benign and accommodating face towards India. This is the result of pressures it is feeling from the US, not only on trade but also in the realm of security. While China’s current stance is tactical, India should take advantage of this window to advance its interests wherever possible but without losing sight of the fact that the long-term challenge is to narrow the power gap with its northern neighbour. If the asymmetry continues to grow this will inevitably constrict India’s room for manoeuvre.

Moreover, despite the Middle Kingdom’s changed approach, New Delhi will continue to face challenges from it in at least a few aspects of foreign policy. India’s subcontinental neighbourhood is the most critical for its national security, and China’s presence and activism threatens India’s dominant position. India is unable to match the resources China is able to deploy in the countries of the region. This trend is unlikely to change even if China adopts a relatively friendly posture towards India.

Pakistan is unlikely to abandon its use of cross-border terrorism as an instrument of state policy though there may be tactical remissions. Despite the Indian government adopting a more aggressive retaliatory policy recently, it is debatable whether this has changed Islamabad’s strategic calculus.

The Gulf and West Asia remain important for India’s energy security, for the welfare of the six million Indians who live and work there, and because sectarian conflict in the region can have spillover effects on the fragile multi-religious fabric of the Indian state. The new government will have to deal with the ratcheting up of sanctions against Iran by the US. India may have to cut its imports from Iran which is likely to adversely affect its relations with Iran. This may have severe repercussions: Iran is important to India not only for meeting its energy needs but, more importantly, because of the stakes involved in India’s development of the Chahbahar port on the Iranian coast and the Northern highway into Afghanistan and Central Asia from it. Iran will also play an important role in Afghanistan where a political transition seems inevitable with the Taliban regaining a prominent political role. For the new government both Iran and Afghanistan will be key challenges.

Recommendations

Against this background, the new government must add substance and energy to the “neighbourhood first” policy. Fresh emphasis must be laid on regular political level engagement and on expanding the density of economic and trade relations with neighbours. Proximity is a key asset in promoting economic relations but they also require investment in both physical connectivity and the smooth and speedy passage of goods and peoples across borders. India is the transit country for all its neighbours and its transport infrastructure is more than adequate to handle transit traffic from one end of the subcontinent to the other. It will gain more political leverage vis-à-vis its neighbours by becoming the transit country of choice for them rather than by restricting access. India’s economic cooperation programmes in its neighbouring countries do not match China’s, but they are significant. The Achilles heel is poor delivery on those commitments compared to China. The new government should set up an autonomous Economic Cooperation Agency to manage all its economic assistance programmes in foreign countries, including lines of credit, capacity building and project assistance. While such a proposal has been on the table for a few years now, without any action, the changed South Asian dynamic (with China rapidly expanding its footprint) necessitates its reconsideration on an urgent basis.

Relations with Pakistan remain hostage to its addiction to cross-border terrorism. Repeated efforts to improve relations with Pakistan have been stalled due to terrorist attacks inflicted on India by terrorist groups aided and abetted by Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies. As long as Pakistan enjoys a strong Chinese shield and the US seeks Pakistani support for its withdrawal from Afghanistan, India’s efforts to isolate Pakistan internationally will have only limited success. On the other hand, rising tensions between India and Pakistan bring back the hyphenation between the two countries and invite meddling by outside powers. The new government must find a way to bring about relative normalcy in relations with Pakistan without giving up the focus on terrorism. There are signs that Pakistan is uncomfortable with its heavy, almost singular dependence on China. It may be ready to balance this dependence through a measured improvement of relations with India. The opportunity of a summit with Imran Khan at the forthcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit may provide an opportunity to test this proposition.

For the foreseeable future, India is not in a position to single-handedly check rising Chinese power and influence. Therefore, it should seek to be part of a coalition of major powers which share its concerns about China. The new government must continue to strengthen relations with the US, Japan, Australia and South East Asia as part of countervailing and constraining Chinese power. India has been cautious about its role in the Quad, which is a grouping of the US, Japan, Australia and India, and serves as a forum for security consultations and cooperation. The new government should embrace a more significant role for the Quad while ensuring it remains below the threshold of a full-fledged military alliance. Australia should be invited to the next round of the Malabar Naval Exercise, which currently includes the US, Japan and India.

Deepening relations with Europe – particularly with Germany, which is now the most powerful country in the continent – must continue to be high on India’s foreign policy agenda even though Europe has been disappointingly unable to prevent the ongoing fragmentation of the European Union. Africa and Latin America will remain regions of interest, both for their economic potential and for imparting a global reach to India’s foreign policy.

During the past few years India’s relations with Russia have weakened despite regular summit level meetings. There may be a perception that Russia is irrevocably committed to its virtual alliance with China. However, Russia continues to be a major power and is not about to become a subordinate ally of China. Central Asia and Eastern Europe, which it regards as its near neighbourhood, are precisely the areas where China’s influence is expanding most visibly; this cannot but be a matter of concern to Russia. Furthermore, Russia remains a crucial source of high technology weaponry and military equipment, treating India as a privileged partner. The new government must review its Russia policy and endeavour to expand engagement with all levels of the Russian state.

Despite the unpredictability of the Trump administration, India-US relations have been consolidated. This is reflected most visibly in defence and counter-terrorism cooperation. The challenge for the new government will be in managing the economic/trade pillar of the relationship, which has become a contested space over the years. India has been a major beneficiary of globalization. Its economy has seen rapid growth resulting from a more open trade and investment regime. The temptation to walk back from this must be resisted because this will push India towards the margins of the global economy, reduce its political leverage, and put paid to any prospect of catching up with China.

Compared to other major countries of the world, India has an almost skeletal foreign service. In order to sustain foreign policy and live up to its ambitions of playing an active global role, India will need to significantly expand its foreign service corps. Moreover, the budget of the Ministry of External Affairs continues to be paltry compared to other ministries despite the critical role it plays in managing all aspects of India’s external relations. It is imperative that sufficient resources are made available to the ministry to enable it to deliver on its critical mandate in a globalized world.

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
• 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

FULL VIDEO OF PANEL DISCUSSION AS PART OF CPR DIALOGUES
ECONOMY POLITICS

Watch the full video of the panel discussion on ‘India’s 21st Century Transitions’, organised as part of CPR Dialogues, featuring Jamshyd Godrej, T N Ninan, Rajiv Kumar, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, chaired by Yamini Aiyar.

How can India manage its urban transformation so that it builds inclusive, sustainable, green 21st century cities?
How can India meet its energy needs as a growing economy while shifting toward cleaner energy?
How can India overcome the twin challenges of declining agricultural productivity and weak human capital to create productive jobs in a rapidly changing 21st century economy?
How can India leverage its technology advantage and create an innovation eco-system while protecting individual and community rights?
How should India respond to shifting geo-political trends and re-position itself in a changing global order?
India today is at the cusp of significant developmental transitions. Choices made will fundamentally shape its future developmental trajectory. The policy challenge today lies in identifying appropriate pathways and institutional mechanisms to negotiate these transitions and set India on a path toward a sustainable, inclusive future. While identifying appropriate pathways, India has to navigate important tensions in our polity. One important tension is the often conflicting needs of rural vs urban populations, best demonstrated in the on-going agrarian crisis.

The second challenge is institutional. India today needs to build a new institutional framework to respond to changing needs while at the same time building the state’s capacity to manage basic, everyday tasks from health and education to building basic infrastructure. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently stated, ‘India is managing 21st century transitions with a 19th century administration.’

Finally, India is dealing with these transitions at a time when public discourse has become increasingly sharp and polarised often blurring the lines between critical engagement and partisan endorsement of ideas. This polarisation has made sober, objective evaluation of policy choices confronting India today, difficult resulting in the adoption of short term and often unsustainable quick fixes. The opening panel to CPR Dialogues 2018 explored these broad themes with a view to understanding the nature of the policy choices India confronts today, the intersections between them, government’s perspective on the way forward, and the broader political economy.

Yamini Aiyar is the President and Chief Executive at CPR.

Jamshyd Godrej is Chairman and MD, Godrej and Boyce.

T N Ninan is Chairman, Business Standard Ltd.

Rajiv Kumar is Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is Vice-Chancellor of Ashoka University.

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

Yamini Aiyar’s article in the Hindustan Times (print partner for CPR Dialogues) can be accessed here.

Coverage of the panel by ThePrint (digital partner for CPR Dialogues) can be accessed here.

Watch the interviews of Jamshyd Godrej and Rajiv Kumar with ThePrint.

Watch all other sessions of the Dialogues below:

• The International Climate Change Regime: Looking Back to Look Forward 
• Research for Policy Action on Air Pollution, in collaboration with CECFEE
• India’s Technology Transition: The Present and the Possible
• CPR Youth Awards: A Youth-Driven Agenda for Change
• The Emerging World Order and India’s Role
• Understanding India’s Energy Transition in Global Context
• Is the Urban Future Metropolitan? Big Cities in Urban Systems
• Geopolitics and Geo-Economics in a Changing South Asia

CPR FACULTY ANALYSE
POLITICS SOUTH ASIA INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

As India made a bid for NSG membership at Seoul in June, 2016, and was opposed by China, CPR faculty analyse it from different aspects:

In The Hindu, Shyam Saran analyses China’s public stand against India’s membership in the NSG, contextualising it historically, and suggests that India should carefully assess the ongoing geopolitical changes, and ‘fashion an appropriate response strategy’.
In The Great Delusion, Pratap Bhanu Mehta analyses the reasons for India’s failed NSG bid from different angles.
In another interview to Firstpost, Saran writes that despite the failed bid, India ‘should engage in quiet but active diplomacy, to mobilise greater support within the NSG, including winning over China,’ since China was unlikely to risk a setback to India-China relations in the long run.
In a two part interview with The Wire (Part 1, Part 2), Shyam Saran again analyses the reasons behind China’s stance at Seoul, and says that India must not make NSG membership an elemental issue, as well as deal with China taking into account its very complex relationship with the country, which is both adversarial and collaborative in nature.

ACCESS THE FULL JOURNAL ARTICLE
CLIMATE RESEARCH ENERGY RESEARCH

How can India undertake its large projected growth in buildings while simultaneously meeting its development, energy and climate objectives? The Building and Research Information special issue sets out to help answer this question by developing and extending the growing body of research on the topic, with the aim to help define the built environment in India as an emerging and important field of socio-technical enquiry. The special issue’s framing of the problem departs from the often used techno-economic view and instead suggests that both technical infrastructures, such as the built environment, and social infrastructures, such as policies, professions, habits and norms, shape behaviour, and as a consequence offer significant potential for reducing overall energy demand and GHG emissions. This editorial, which contextualizes the special issue, sets a three-pronged multidisciplinary framework for current and future research on India’s building stock, and associates the papers in the special issue with this agenda. It also points to the importance of international research collaborations in seeking solutions to India’s energy and climate change challenges.

NEW JOURNAL ARTICLE CO-AUTHORED BY NAVROZ K DUBASH, RADHIKA KHOSLA, ANKIT BHARDWAJ, AND NARASIMHA D RAO
CLIMATE RESEARCH ENERGY RESEARCH

Over the last few years, India has variously been presented in the global climate debate as an energy-hungry climate deal-breaker, and a forerunner of a low carbon future. Developing clarity on India’s energy and emissions future, however, is challenged by the uncertainties of India’s development transitions. Based on an interpretive analysis of 7 leading studies on CO2 emissions from energy, this paper concludes that given current policies, a doubling of India’s emissions from 2012 levels is a likely upper bound for emissions in 2030, and that this level is consistent with India’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), as the graphic below suggests.

FULL AUDIO OF TALK
URBAN SERVICES

Listen to the full audio of the talk (above) by Kabir Sheikh where he speaks about India’s governance of its human resources for health.

In this talk, Sheikh outlines the inadequacies of prevailing, largely instrumental, approaches to governance of human resources for health, such as retention, substitution and assimilation. He illustrates how deeper socio-political phenomena such as professional dominance, pluralism, parallel systems and regulatory capture have shaped the character and dynamics of the health workforce, rendering it resistant to common policy solutions.

Part 3 of a blog series by the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and Prayas (Energy Group)
The series is titled ‘Plugging in: Electricity consumption in Indian Homes’.

Lighting is the most basic use of electricity in a home. Lighting’s share in the total residential electricity consumption is estimated to be in the range of 18% to 27%. In 2013, about a billion and a half lighting devices were sold in India; half of them being incandescent bulbs followed by CFLs (31%), tube-lights (16%) and a negligible share of LED bulbs. In 2014, the government launched a programme to promote LED bulbs in Indian households and later named it UJALA (Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All).

This is because LED bulbs consume less electricity, last longer, and does not contain mercury. The programme, arguably the world’s largest, has sold more than 27 crore LED bulbs with no subsidy from the government. How did the programme change India’s lighting industry and consumer behaviour? What part of programme design worked and what can be improved? Answers to these questions can improve future programmes designed to improve energy efficiency in India. In this post, we discuss some key findings of our recent report where we surveyed manufacturers, retailers, households, and various stakeholders to understand the impacts of UJALA.

Innovative programme

Energy Efficiency Services Ltd. (EESL), a public sector company, is responsible for implementing the UJALA programme. The company bought LED bulbs in bulk from manufacturers through multiple rounds of competitive bidding. The large volumes and assured sales incentivised the manufacturers to drop the bid price from Rs. 310 per LED bulb in the first round to as low as Rs. 38 in later rounds. EESL sold these bulbs to consumers through contract vendors in co-ordination with the local electricity distribution companies (discoms), bypassing the retail supply chain and further bringing down the final distribution price. As a result, the current price of LED bulbs under UJALA is Rs. 70, about half of the price of the LED bulbs available in the shops. Yet, there is no subsidy from the government or the discoms. EESL also conducted innovative marketing campaigns to create public awareness.

LED bulb sales are up and prices down

The UJALA programme transformed the LED lighting industry in India. Demand for LED bulbs has gone up 50 times in the three years since 2014, while the retail market price (for bulbs sold beyond UJALA) has dropped to a third. The fall in prices can be attributed to the economies of scale achieved due to substantial demand creation by the UJALA programme, in tandem with the global trend of reduction in prices of the LED chips. India’s LED bulb manufacturing capacity has also grown substantially, with about 176 registered manufacturing units in India.

Figure 1: Sales trends of lighting devices in India
Source: ELCOMA
Our surveys show that LED bulbs are now a major source of lighting for the households that participated in the UJALA programme (Figure 2). Most of the households also said that they would buy a new LED bulb from the market when the installed LED bulb reached the end of its useful life.

ncandescent bulbs are still around

The increased demand for LED bulbs seems to replace the demand for CFLs instead of incandescent bulbs. About 810 million incandescent bulbs were sold in 2016, a 5% drop over previous year’s sale whereas the sales of CFLs have dropped by a third since their peak in 2013 (Figure 1). Our surveys corroborate this trend as we find that a considerably large proportion of the UJALA LED bulbs were used to replace CFLs, followed by incandescent bulbs and tube lights (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Lighting options replaced by LED bulbs bought under UJALA for surveyed households
Source: Prayas Consumer survey (January – March 2017)
The more that people replace CFLs with LEDs, the lesser the saving that are actually realized. Our sample of households in Pune was distributed across different income classes. A typical LED bulb saved 2.5 times more in a low income household compared to a high income household. This makes a case for programme to focus more on low income households.

LED bulb quality and warranty is important

Our surveys found that 2% of LED bulbs failed in Pune after a year of launch of the programme, while 14% of the LED bulbs failed in Puducherry three years after the launch. The bulbs sold in Pune carried a warranty of 3 years while the bulbs sold in Puducherry carried a warranty of 8 years. However, very few households got their faulty bulbs replaced. Lower expectations from a government programme and higher tolerance levels for faults in low cost LED bulbs, ignorance about warranty, and hassles in the process were cited as reasons for not replacing the faulty bulbs under warranty.

To conclude, UJALA has created a large and sustainable market for LED bulbs in India using the no-subsidy, bulk procurement model. Demand for LED bulbs has increased manifold and the retail market price (for the LED bulbs sold beyond UJALA) has dropped by a third. It has also created a significant awareness about LED bulbs, further contributing to increasing demand. Going ahead, EESL can ensure stricter monitoring and evaluation of the programme. It can also focus on low income households and small commercial establishments who are still buying incandescent bulbs. We focus on this aspect of LED use in low income households in the next post.

This piece is authored by Aditya Chunekar and Sanjana Mulay from Prayas (Energy Group).

This blog series is also available on the Prayas website here.

This article was republished in Eklavya Magazine in Hindi under ‘स्रोत विज्ञान एवं टेक्नॉलॉजी फीचर्स’, and can be accessed here.

To subscribe to email updates on the series, click here.

Other posts in this series:

• Electricity Consumption in Indian Homes
• Trends in India’s Residential Electricity Consumption
• Illuminating Affordable Homes
• The Efficiency of Appliances
• Appliances used in Affordable Housing
• Electrifying the National Capital Region
• Exploring the different uses of household appliances
• Role of human behaviour in driving electricity use