BLOG BASED ON NEW WORKING PAPER BY DEEPAK SANAN
ENERGY RESEARCH
The ongoing farmers’ agitation is a pointer to the stark global reality that successful reform programmes have been consultative and accompanied by a comprehensive outreach exercise designed to allay concerns of all stakeholders. Policymakers in the power sector would do well to carefully study the contours of the farmers’ agitation before going ahead with the ambitious reforms programme unveiled in May this year. A roll back of the proposed electricity reform (as a smaller sub text) is part of the demands being raised by the farmers.
Electricity reform was the first of the ‘lockdown reforms’ unveiled by the Government of India. The proposed amendments to the Electricity Act 2000, announced on 17th April, 2020 were followed by a letter from the Finance Ministry on 13th May, 2020 to fast forward action by states on some of the proposed amendments. Agriculture reforms came later but have of course taken centre-stage now.
There are several parallels in the two reforms initiatives. Many issues and tradeoffs are similar. Free markets and consumer choice versus the reality of market imperfections. Issues pertaining to the degradation of the environment, financial viability, prices, incomes and access, the roles of the centre and the states, fears, genuine or otherwise, of exploitation by faceless corporates, balancing the interests of consumers and producers.
In agriculture, the affected party quickly understood the body blow being dealt to them and began to rally its numbers to force a dialogue. A nationwide debate has begun. In electricity, possibly because the bill is still at the draft stage and that consequences may be more diffuse, less evident, seemingly more distant, the response has been more muffled. Still, the fact is that there are issues of import and that there is cause for concern, may be equally pressing in relation to this sector. There is an opportunity to introspect.
Evaluating recent proposals to reform the power sector in India is a paper that seeks to fill this gap by flagging facts and scenarios worthy of further debate and discussion. Through a simple scenario building exercise, this paper cautions that the parlous financial position of the distribution utilities after lockdown requires that “reforms” follow “recovery”. The concurrent roll out of stringent reform measures on several fronts during a period of severe financial stress could seriously impair the prospects of a viable power sector in the near future. This, in turn, will not only hamper our planned promotion of renewables- based electricity but act as a brake on the entire process of economic recovery. In designing the reform itself, lessons from the experience of earlier sectoral reform programmes and recommendations emerging from the limitations of the general architecture of central interventions need to be taken on board. The current exercise may hold no hope for an electricity sector in which the problems hold no easy answer.
READ THE PAPER BY KANCHI KOHLI
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
This essay examines the role of India’s 2006 Forest Rights Act in the procedures that regulate transfer of forest land to large infrastructure projects. Specifically, it shows the gap between the legally mandated requirements and how these are implemented in project approval processes. This is illustrated through a case study of the coal mining approvals in the Hasdeo Arand forest region in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. The essay also outlines the different actors who have influenced the discourses on forest rights of Adivasi and other forest dwelling communities and what they identify as factors that challenge the implementation of this law on the ground. It juxtaposes this analysis in the context of the recent decision of the Supreme Court of India on eviction of forest dwellers and examines whether that would bring in any structural change in the way the law is implemented.
FULL VIDEO OF THE DISCUSSION
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
Watch the full video (above) of the discussion on ‘How East Differs from West? A Tale of Two Globalisations’, featuring Stephan Shakespeare, Pramit Bhattacharya and moderated by Rahul Verma.
Drawing on data from the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism project that consists of extensive multidimensional surveys conducted in 23 countries, the discussion centred around the changing geography of globalisation as it is not just shifting economically but also publicly. The pro-globalisation public consensus that used to characterise Western politics is essentially moving to the East. This raises an important question: has the traditional link between globalisation and the spread of Western liberal norms around the world been permanently broken?
Stephan Shakespeare is the CEO and Co-founder of YouGov. Pramit Bhattacharya is a Data Editor at Mint. Rahul Verma is a Fellow at CPR.
READ THE BLOG BY SHYLASHRI SHANKAR
IDENTITY DISCRIMINATION POLITICS RIGHTS
The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019, when viewed in combination with the Modi government’s intention to compile a National Register of Citizens (NRC) for India, will create a situation where being a Muslim and document-less could deprive one of citizenship rights. We may find more conversions out of Islam, and perhaps more takers for the Sangh Parivar’s ‘Ghar Wapsi’ programme. All this could occur even if the state governments in non-BJP ruled states do not cooperate with the Modi government on implementing the NRC. Ironically, it is the very process of democracy – elections and manifestoes – that will end up damaging the citizenship rights of the Muslim minority in India.
Let me explain how the combined threat of CAA and NRC could play out. Currently there are four ways to become an Indian citizen: birth, descent, registration and naturalisation. The Citizenship Bill of 1955 does not allow illegal migrants to acquire citizenship but the recent amendment allows non-Muslim minorities escaping persecution from three countries to do so.
The CAA welcomes Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis, Buddhists and Jains who arrived in India before 31 December 2014 to escape religious persecution as minorities in neighbouring Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. All three happen to be Islamic states. The CAA, however, does not include Muslim minorities like the Rohingyas of Myanmar (with whom we share a border).
Let’s move to the NRC exercise. It is not yet clear what sort of documentary proof would be required to prove citizenship because the exercise would be conducted by state governments, and perhaps each state government could have its own specifications. Let’s assume that one of the documents is a birth certificate. UNICEF figures from 2012 report that about 40% of urban births and 65% of rural births are not registered in India. A similar picture is probably the case for the older generations. In Assam, reports suggest that large numbers (about 19 lakh people) did not possess the necessary documents in the recently conducted NRC exercise under the supervision of the Supreme Court. Detention camps have already been set up in Assam. ‘We want to root out illegal infiltrators coming from Bangladesh and other neighbours to other parts of India,’ the Union Home Minister Amit Shah has already said while defending their intention to carry out the NRC. He has also made public threats that those who cannot produce the necessary documentation will be herded into detention camps.
For a non-Muslim who may have lived in India for centuries but who doesn’t have a birth certificate, all is not lost. He or she can argue that they have no place to go or that they have fled these neighbouring countries to escape persecution (and have left their documents behind). But a document-less Muslim cannot make such an argument because the CAA does not include Muslim minorities. Being branded as an illegal and put in a camp would loom large in the realm of awful possibilities for such a person.
Wouldn’t the dispossessed have recourse to the courts? Would the courts stop the NRC process? Well, after the Ayodhya judgment which favoured Hindu claims over a disputed site, and in the face of the government’s contention that the NRC exercise is necessary in the interests of national security (an argument that usually ensures that the court favours the government in anti-terror cases), it seems a chancy business to rely on the court.
As for the constitutionality of the CAA, which has already been challenged, the Supreme Court judges will probably decide using the concepts of ‘intelligible differentia’ and ‘rational relation to the goal’ in Article 14 (equality before the law).
The specification of the minority communities in the CAA could be challenged in court on two grounds:
a) That citizenship eligibility of these migrants pertains to religious attributes and excludes ethnic and racial ones. Ahmedis and Shias of Pakistan suffer discrimination but will not be eligible under the CAA because they belong to the majority religion (though Ahmedis have been categorised as ‘non-Muslims’ by the Pakistani laws).
b) That the exclusion of ethnic attributes was deliberate in the Act because including it would allow Rohingyas (who are mainly Muslim) to apply for Indian citizenship.
The court’s response would depend on whether they immediately extend the persecution argument to more categories such as ethnicity, or accept the government’s assurance that it would do so in the future (a more likely scenario).
Opponents of the amendment could point out that the Constituent Assembly (CA) had vetoed the notion that India would be the homeland for Hindus. A CA member (P.S. Deshmukh) had proposed an amendment to include as Indian citizens every Hindu or a Sikh who was not a citizen of any other state because Hindus and Sikhs had no other country to look to for acquiring citizenship rights. The amendment was rejected by the majority.
The opponents of the CAA could also argue that the constitution framers wanted to ensure that independent India adhered to the principles of a secular State. They may point to the words of a CA member Alladi Krishnaswamy Ayyar: ‘We may make a distinction between people who have voluntarily and deliberately chosen another country as their home and those who want to retain their connection with this country. But we cannot on any racial or religious or other grounds make a distinction between one kind of persons and another, or one sect of persons and another sect of persons.’ Ayyar had gone on to explain that Article 5A, clause (a) of the draft constitution did precisely this: it provided for ‘all cases of mass migration-if I may use that expression-from Pakistan into India… We do not in that article make any distinction between one community and another, between one sect and another. We make a general provision that if they migrated to this country and they were born in India as defined in the earlier Constitution, then they will be entitled to the benefits of Citizenship.’
It is true that India’s constitution framers did not expect the articles dealing with citizenship to be set in stone. A CA member noted that the ‘articles dealing with citizenship are, therefore, subject to any future nationality or citizenship law that may be passed by Parliament. Parliament has absolutely a free hand in enacting any law as to nationality or citizenship suited to the conditions of our country.’ So there is nothing wrong in amending the Citizenship Act.
But when seen in tandem with the NRC exercise, the CAA is not simply an amendment to provide safe haven to persecuted minorities, none of whom are Muslim. It would be more precise to say that the CAA is pro-non-Muslim persecuted minorities. The NRC exercise is being conducted to find illegal migrants from neighbouring countries particularly Pakistan and Bangladesh (which also has the third largest Hindu population after India and Nepal). A possible impact of the NRC-CAA combine would be the following: A document-less Muslim in India who may have lived here for centuries may be more likely to be branded an illegal migrant, but without recourse to the CAA that a Hindu Bangladeshi migrant would have. Wouldn’t such an awful possibility create fear in the hearts of Indian Muslims?
Even worse, such fears, and perhaps even the reality of being stripped of citizenship are a result of the very democratic process that allows a victorious political party to make the claim that all its pledges are backed by the people’s mandate. But we all know that as voters, we may vote for a party without agreeing with all parts of its manifesto. In the 2019 UK elections, Labour party strongholds turned conservative because those voters preferred Boris Johnson’s stance on leaving Europe even though they may have championed the Labour party’s strategy for the economy. A similar argument can be made for voters who may have voted for Modi in 2019 on other issues. CAA and NRC may not have the endorsement of a majority of Indians but we have no way of knowing that unless we conduct a referendum.
More crucially, the CAA-NRC combine inflicts a deep wound on the constitution’s fabric. Even if the NRC exercise doesn’t happen, the damage would have been done to several fundamental rights including the right to practice religion. It would cause the ‘mischief of Partition’ to travel across decades. As a constitution framer said, ‘I see no reason why a Muslim who is a citizen of this country should be deprived of his citizenship at the commencement of this Constitution.’ But the CAA-NRC does precisely that by creating a fear psychosis among document-less Muslim citizens of India about their citizenship rights and about their ability to remain in their religion.
The views shared belong to individual faculty and researchers and do not represent an institutional stance on the issue.
RECENT NEWS
29 DECEMBER 2021
‘Know Your Regulator’: Mr P.K. Pujari, Chairperson, Central…
23 DECEMBER 2021
The future of MSP
10 DECEMBER 2021
Briefing Note: Central Electricity Regulatory Commission
NEWS ARCHIVE
FILTER BY TAGS
Identity Discrimination×Politics×Rights×
Type Here
Identity DiscriminationPoliticsRightsAir PollutionBudgetBureaucracyClimate ChangeClimate ResearchCoastal GovernanceCPRCPR ViewsEconomyEducationElection StudiesEnergy ResearchEnvironmental JusticeFiscal DevolutionGovernanceHealthHousingIndia-PakistanInternational PoliticsKashmirLandLand AcquisitionMigrationObituariesParis AgreementPlanningPodcastSanitationSanitation ManagementSecuritySocial Sector SchemesSouth AsiaTechnologyUrban EconomyUrban GovernanceUrban ServicesUrbanisationUrbansanitationWater ResearchWater Resources
FILTER
RAJIV KUMAR PARTICIPATES IN PANEL DISCUSSION ON ET NOW
ECONOMY
Rajiv Kumar participates in a discussion (full video above) on ‘remonetising’ India, a Times Network initiative, after the expiry of the 50-day-deadline
Earlier this week, the Narendra Modi government extended the distribution of free foodgrains under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) for another five months till November 2021. The move reinforced the primacy of “food” – more specifically, rice and wheat channeled through the public distribution system (PDS) – in its social safety net programmes during the current pandemic.
Till 2019-20, annual offtake of rice and wheat from the Food Corporation of India’s (FCI) godowns averaged hardly 62 million tonnes (mt); it actually fell from almost 66 mt to just over 60 mt between 2012-13 and 2017-18. Much of this comprised PDS rations under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) of 2013. This law, passed during the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime (https://bit.ly/3pChsfv), entitles 81.35 crore Indians to receive at least 5 kg of wheat or rice per month at Rs 2 and Rs 3 per kg, respectively. The annual foodgrain allocation under NFSA – which includes a higher 35-kg monthly ration for 2.37 crore families identified as “poorest of the poor” under the Antyodaya Anna Yojana – is estimated at nearly 55 mt.
Under PMGKAY, the NFSA beneficiaries were provided an extra 5 kg grain per month free of cost during April-November 2020. While that translated into an additional allocation of over 32 mt, actual lifting under PMGKAY, the Atmanirbhar Bharat Package (for returning migrant labourers) and assorted schemes launched in the wake of the Covid-19-induced lockdown last year totaled about 31.5 mt.
The chart below shows offtake of rice and wheat from the Central pool crossing an all-time-high of 93 mt during 2020-21, roughly 50% higher than the previous fiscal year. This was largely courtesy of PMGKAY, which has been re-launched this year as well, following the pandemic’s second wave. The Modi government initially allocated the 5-kg extra free grain per month to NFSA beneficiaries only for May and June 2021. But on June 7, the Prime Minister announced its extension up to Diwali, i.e. November. That is expected to, again, boost offtake by an estimated 28 mt in 2021-22.
Offtake is for fiscal year (April-March) and inclusive of lifting under other welfare schemes and open market sales.
Source: Department of Food and Public Distribution.
But it is not only food offtake that has hit an all-time-high. Government agencies have, as on June 9, procured 42 mt of wheat and 55 mt of rice from the 2020-21 crops. This, as can be seen from the next chart, has broken even the record 39 mt and 52 mt that got procured in the previous year. The Modi government has, in the post-pandemic period, both distributed as well as procured more rice and wheat than ever before!
rocurement is for crop year (July-June); figures for 2020-21 are as on June 9.
Source: Department of Food and Public Distribution.
While the spike in offtake is a result of the pandemic – free food has arguably been the single biggest relief intervention, ahead of even MGNREGA (another UPA legacy programme), for those worst affected by the economic disruptions after March 2020 – the increased procurement is, perhaps, a fallout of the movement against the Centre’s farm reform laws. The minimum support price (MSP) value of the paddy and wheat bought by government agencies since October 2020 – the three farm laws got passed the previous month – comes close to Rs 237,000 crore. Approximately 39% of that amount has gone to Punjab and Haryana, whose farmers have been at the forefront of the protests. The Modi government’s going all out to convince farmers, that its reform laws aren’t aimed at ending the MSP-based procurement regime, can be seen in paddy and wheat purchases from Punjab scaling new highs in the 2020-21 crop year. Record grain paddy procurement has been its strongest defense against allegations of being anti-farmer!
This links up with a third record. Even after the unprecedented 93 mt-plus offtake, stocks of rice and wheat in the Central pool crossed the 100 mt-mark for the first time on May 1, surpassing the previous high of 97.27 mt reached on June 1, 2020. The chart below shows that stock levels have been rising since 2017, reversing a declining trend of the preceding 4-5 years.
Stocks include rice equivalent of un-milled paddy.
Source: Department of Food and Public Distribution.
If stock accumulation has primarily to do with the political economy compulsions of MSP-based procurement, Covid-time distress has actually provided an opportunity for whittling down FCI’s massive grain mountain. FCI’s “economic cost” of procuring, handling, transporting, storing and distributing grains was estimated at Rs 39.99 per kg for rice and Rs 27.40/kg for wheat in 2020-21. The subsidy on the 31.5 mt of grains (20.8 mt rice and 10.7 mt wheat) distributed free of cost under PMGKAY and other special relief programmes would have, then, worked out to around Rs 112,500 crore. The actual cost, though, would have been lower, because FCI also incurs interest and storage expenses in holding excess stocks in its godowns. This “carrying cost of buffer”, pegged at Rs 5.40/kg in 2020-21, is saved even when grain is given out free. The corresponding annual savings on 31.5 mt would have been in excess of Rs 17,000 crore. Similar savings would accrue on the 28 mt additional grain allocations under PMGKAY for 2021-22.
Source: Department of Commerce.
Now is the final record: 2020-21 saw all-time-high PDS offtake, government procurement and stock buildup. It also saw the country exporting a record 19.8 mt of rice and wheat. On paper, virtually this entire quantity that got shipped out was grain procured from the open market. According to the department of food and public distribution, a mere 75,000 tonnes of wheat and 4,000 tonnes of rice were exported from the Central pool in 2020-21. This was wholly on “humanitarian grounds” through the Ministry of External Affairs.
Foodgrain exports from India have been significantly aided by the surge in international prices. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Cereal Price Index hit a 95-month-high in May. While the hardening of global prices has definitely helped, the competitiveness of Indian rice and wheat may have also been enabled by recycled/leaked grain from the PDS (https://bit.ly/3vjVm2I). Given the massive quantities that were offered free/near-free under PMGKAY/NFSA, it should not surprise if some of this grain got diverted to the open market or even exports.
But at the end of the day, it is the abundant crop produced by farmers that has made all four records – PDS offtake, procurement, stocks and exports – possible even amidst the country’s worst pandemic in over a century.
Find all previous notes as part of the series here:
A LITERATURE REVIEW AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY BY SUSAN E CHAPLIN
SANITATION URBAN SERVICES RIGHTS
Susan E Chaplin finds that existing literature provides little evidence of how sanitation inequalities impact the daily lives of poor women and girls.
What is the research about?
In this working paper, Susan Chaplin examines existing literature to find out what is known about how inequalities in urban sanitation access impacts the lives of poor women and girls, who have to queue up each morning to use public toilets, or have to decide which open defecation sites are the least dangerous to use.
How was the research conducted?’
The 68 articles and reports discussed in this literature review were largely collected using Google Scholar searches and the website Sanitation Updates, which provides regular email alerts on recently published journal articles and reports. Most of the evidence-based research and grey literature focused on India, Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and South Africa
What are the key findings?
Despite the focus on gender inequalities and sanitation in low income countries, within development goals, programmes, and projects, only 16 articles and reports either addressed gender inequalities or used gender analysis in examining results from their research projects.
The urban sanitation inequalities faced by working women, along with those who were ageing, disabled or living on pavements, has been largely ignored in the literature.
The linkages between gender-based violence and the lack of urban sanitation are poorly researched, documented or addressed in practice.
There is a lack of understanding in urban sanitation policies of how gender inequalities create toilet insecurity for millions of women and girls.
Conclusion
To understand how gender inequality operates at multiple levels across societies in the cities of the Global South, in relation to sanitation access, there is a critical need for better data collection which is gender aggregated. Most national statistics, at best, often just provide a very broad overview of sanitation facilities at the household level. These statistics don’t provide an adequate overview of the everyday lives of poor women and girls who are compelled to develop strategies to cope with lack of access to safe sanitation facilities. For many poor women and girls, this specifically means finding ways to cope with gender-based violence that occurs around community/public toilets and open defecation sites.
There is an urgent need to develop gender-sensitive understanding of the heterogeneous nature of slums and informal settlements, the diversity of the people who live in them, and the relationships between them, if urban sanitation inequalities are to be addressed to meet Sustainable Development Goals.
Data and research is also needed on how this lack of access impacts poor women and girls, women working in informal sectors, women with disabilities, ageing women, and homeless women. The understanding created by this new research could then be used to develop more appropriate and effective strategies to reduce gender inequalities in urban sanitation provision.
Watch the full video of the talk (above) by Anthony Acciavatti focusing on a decade-long-project to create a dynamic atlas of the Ganges Machine–a method of mapping that exposes the juxtaposing layers of infrastructure and adjoining built forms. The goal of this dynamic atlas is to not only map space, but also map how spaces change over time.
Acciavatti also discusses the importance of mapping the choreography of water and human settlement at a time when the Government of India is beginning to invest a $1.5 billion loan from the World Bank to clean up the Ganges river.
ANALYSING THE PM’S RESPONSE
POLITICS KASHMIR INDIA-PAKISTAN
SOUTH ASIA
CPR faculty G Parthasarathy comments on the Prime Minister taking stock of the situation in Kashmir following the death of Burhan Wani on DD News.
EXCHANGE OF VIEWS BETWEEN EXPERTS FROM INDIA AND AUSTRALIA
POLITICS INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
Watch the full video (above) of a public forum organised by the Centre for Policy Research, which brought together experts from Niti Aayog (government of India’s think tank) and Australia, to discuss policy reforms, and how these can be enacted.
There was an exchange of views between the two coutnries on how to manage the policy environment, assess and analyse government and non-government stakeholders, and effect good policy. Particularly, since designing and implementing effective policy reform in multi-tiered complex democracies is difficult and challenging, especially where there are vocal and entrenched interests and stakeholders involved.
STATEMENT
January 17th, 2024
On 10th January 2024, CPR received a notice from the Ministry of Home Affairs cancelling its FCRA status. The basis of this decision is incomprehensible and disproportionate, and some of the reasons given challenge the very basis of the functioning of a research institution. This includes the publication on our website of policy reports emanating from our research being equated with current affairs programming.
During the tenure of our suspension, we sought and obtained interim redress from the honourable Delhi High Court and will continue to seek recourse in all avenues possible.
This cancellation comes after a decision to suspend the FCRA status in February 2023. These actions followed an Income Tax “survey” that took place in September 2022. The actions have had a debilitating impact on the institution’s ability to function by choking all sources of funding. This has undermined the institution’s ability to pursue its well established objective of producing high quality, globally recognised research on policy matters, which it has been recognised for over its 50 years’ existence. During this time the institution has been home to some of the country’s most distinguished academics, diplomats and policymakers.
CPR firmly reiterates that it is in complete compliance with the law, and has been cooperating fully and exhaustively at every step of the process. We remain steadfast in our belief that this matter will be resolved in line with constitutional values and guarantees.
