Author: cprindia

Watch the full video (above) of the panel discussion on ‘Bringing Voters to the Polling Booth: What can we learn from the Banda Model?’ featuring S Y Quraishi, Heera Lal, Rama Lakshmi, and moderated by Rahul Verma.

During the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Banda’s District Magistrate (DM), Heera Lal, IAS, conceptualised a massive voter mobilisation drive to increase the turnout by over 90%. He undertook various initiatives, coordinated with stakeholders, encouraged his team to share ideas, and applauded team members at every stage. The district administration’s efforts paid rich dividends and the increase in voter turnout in Banda district was substantial, one of the highest in Uttar Pradesh and perhaps in the country, if one accounts for state-level factors.

In this panel discussion, the district magistrate presented details of the measures his administration undertook to increase voter participation.

S Y Quraishi is the former Chief Election Commissioner of India. Heera Lal is IAS and District Magistrate, Banda, Uttar Pradesh. Rama Lakshmi is Opinion Editor of ThePrint. Rahul Verma is a Fellow at CPR.

Following the announcement of Budget 2016, CPR faculty analyse it from different aspects:

Sanjaya Baru writes in The Economic Times that ‘the nine pillars of the Modi-Jaitley macroeconomic strategy provide adequate basis for ensuring that India remains the world’s fastest growing large economy during the current fiscal, and hopefully beyond.’
Baru also adds in Mister Jaitley’s Mid-Course Correction that ‘the government has tried hard to maintain a balance between its social commitments and investment in the rural economy, on the one hand, and the ease of doing business and promotion of small and medium enterprise, on the other.’
In Budget 2016: The triumph of centrism, Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes how the budget ‘signals macroeconomic credibility by adhering to fiscal deficit’, while showing a ‘deep consensus on the welfare state’.
Rajiv Kumar says in Jaitley’s Political Budget that the budget bears the hallmark of Modi’s approach of ‘hastening slowly’. It continues with ‘broad based inclusion of, and appeal to, farmers, poor, women, and significant segments of the middle class, including small and medium entrepreneurs.’
Researchers at the Accountability Initiative analyse budget 2016’s commitment to the social sector. While Avani Kapur says in Social sector gets lip service that despite funding commitments to education, health, and sanitation (as key areas), a closer look at the numbers suggest only ‘modest increases’, Yamini Aiyar writes that the rhetoric does not add up to a ‘clear vision and narrative for social policy’ in Social sector investments in 2016 are no different than what they were in 2015.
Kiran Bhatty adds that the budget Evades the Real Issues in the Social Sector through ‘a new conceptualisation for the “social sector” that appears to be focused on skills, employment and entrepreneurship rather than education or even basic health.’

Post the announcement of the interim budget on 1 February 2019, the budget briefs by the Accountability Initiative at CPR analyse the trends in allocations, expenditures, and outcomes of key flagship social sector programmes.

Briefs for the following schemes can be accessed below:

Samagra Shiksha: As India seeks to realise its demographic dividend by improving learning outcomes, what does the integration of education programmes mean for service delivery?
Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS): Since 1975, ICDS has contributed to reducing and improving maternal and child health. How has ICDS responded to its expanded scope in pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?
Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY) and Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY): Have cash transfers furthered the goal of improving maternal and neonatal health? Know how the programme has performed in two years.
Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana (PMAY-G): Seeking to provide housing for all by 2022, how far has India come towards attaining the ambitious interim target of 1 crore houses by 2019?
National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP): As water scarcity rises with the depletion of groundwater, is the Government of India’s primary instrument for rural drinking water provision reaching its objectives?
Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM-U and SBM-G): SBM aimed to make India Open Defecation Free by 2019. As we enter the final year of the programme, weigh the progress achieved by the Mission.
National Health Mission (NHM): With the government’s sharp thrust towards universal coverage, how far has the National Health Mission bolstered India’s healthcare delivery systems?
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS): As rural distress mounts, is the world’s largest employment generation programme able to bring relief to households?

Watch the video (above) of the Budget Seminar on ‘The Union Budget 2019-20: Reforms and Development Perspectives’, co-organised by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), the Indian Development Foundation (IDF), the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) and CPR.

The Union Budget in India remains the bellwether of where the government is headed with its economic policies. The 2019-20 Union Budget is particularly important since it suggests how the new government is looking at the next five years. But much of the immediate commentary and eager dialogue on TV and the newspapers takes a narrow, short-term view.

As a counter, the executive directors of five of India’s leading economic policy research institutes came together in March 2007 for the first time to present their assessment of the longer term reform and development implications of the Budget. As we have done for the past 12 years, these five institutions again came together in 2019 to present their more reflective assessment of the Union Budget 2019-20.

As might be expected from a government starting its term and a new Finance Minister, the 2019-20 Budget presented on July 5 has generated much interest. The slowing of the economy and the need to kick-start the investment cycle sits uneasy with the promise of fiscal consolidation and poor monetary transmission. Other trade-offs reflected in the Union Budget include domestic compulsions such as ‘Make in India’ versus international engagement, bank recapitalisation vs. the need for public investment, structural reforms vs. handling short-term exigencies and the political imperatives of the three upcoming state elections. In the budget she has presented, the Finance Minister has tried to balance these and other needs, but her task remains an envious one.

Against this backdrop, the heads of the five institutes shared a reflective view of the Union Budget and its longer-term implications for the Indian economy under the leadership of the Modi-led NDA Government, now decisively in its second term.

India promulgated a series of environmental legislations between 1980 and 2005 to ensure that environmental and social impacts of infrastructure development and industrialisation are kept in check and timely mitigation is undertaken. However, since their inception, these laws have undergone numerous amendments, with very little attention being paid to the aspect of monitoring and compliance of these laws.

As a result, answers to key questions, listed below, remain ambiguous:

What happens to the projects once they are granted approvals?
Do they comply with all the conditions imposed on them for mitigating or minimising environmental and social impacts?
Who oversees these processes and what is the extent to which compliance is achieved?
Although in May this year, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change has indicated ‘that its focus over the next three years will be on compliance of rules and laws’, challenges such as lack of human resources, limited reach on the ground and other constraints continue to remain unaddressed.

A new study by the CPR-Namati team, titled How Effective are Environmental Regulations to Address Impacts of Industrial and Infrastructure Projects in India, addressed these pressing concerns.

The study identifies the institutions responsible for monitoring and compliance under various environmental laws and their procedures and practices. It also observes and documents how affected communities engage with these institutions to seek mitigation of impacts of various kinds such as damage to common property, loss of livelihoods and loss of access to public spaces. The study:

details the existing environment and compliance framework;
provides concise flowcharts explaining clearance and monitoring and enforcement procedures of responsible institutions;
analyses the publicly available government data available on compliance under different laws;
presents and analyses case studies on efforts of affected communities to engage with institutions to craft remedies for existing environmental impacts;
discusses a range of findings related to limitations of monitoring protocols, data inconsistences, and need for third party monitoring by affected communities as well as the need for linking compliance to decision making.
This study shares critical lessons, which if turned into concrete policy on environment monitoring and compliance could address the chasm between enforcement of environmental regulations and the ever-growing difficulties of meeting environmental challenges.

The full report can be accessed here

The Public Accountability and Governance in Education (PAGE) project at CPR analysed the government monitoring system in public schools through intensive field surveys in five states over a period of five months during the last year.
Findings showed internal incoherence in institutional arrangements; lack of ownership by government officials; very poor state capacity at the frontline level; misplaced accountabilities; and emphasis on ‘form over function’.

Findings were shared at a recent seminar at CPR to be followed by state level disseminations.

Please find below:

An audio recording of the findings: Are Government Schools Monitored Effectively?
A presentation on the survey findings
A photo-film capturing the field work (above)

Watch the full video (above) of the panel discussion on ‘Article 370: The Road Ahead’ featuring Tilak Devasher, Member of the National Security Advisory Board and Consultant at Vivekananda International Foundation; Ambassador Shyam Saran, Senior Fellow at CPR and former Foreign Secretary; moderated by Yamini Aiyar; President and Chief Executive at CPR.

The panel examined the implications of the abrogation of Article 370 and 35A in early August on domestic and international politics. It explored questions related to national security, centre-state relations, geo-politics in South Asia, and Indo-US relations. It concluded with a discussion on the road ahead for India.

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

Over the years, CPR faculty has closely studied the history and politics of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). Former Senior Fellow, Late B G Verghese’s scholarship on J&K brought nuance and clarity to the complex discourse around the region. A primer written by him presents the story of Jammu and Kashmir post 1947, contextualising various events and issues, to help better understand the history of the region. The primer can be accessed here.

Against the backdrop of the contemporary political moment, CPR scholars have been closely watching and studying the implications of the Government of India’s recent move to abrogate Article 370 and Article 35A. Read the analysis in the curated media commentary below:

Risky moves in Jammu and Kashmir by Ambassador Shyam Saran
Ambassador Shyam Saran writes in Business Standard about the implications of abrogating Article 370, highlighting that ‘things may not go according to the government script’ and hence there is a need to evaluate and minimise risks. Saran sheds light on the risk of increased militancy and violence in the Valley and chances of the situation being exploited by Pakistan, leading to an increase in cross-border terrorism. He further highlights that downgrading Jammu and Kashmir’s status to a Union Territory, albeit temporary, will be seen as ‘demeaning and humiliating’ by the Valley’s population.

Global battleground after Operation 370 by G Parthasarathy
G Parthasarathy writes in Livemint about the international response to the abrogation of Article 370, shedding light on the immediate diplomatic offensive New Delhi launched to pre-empt any possibility of major power centres like Moscow, Washington, Beijing, Tokyo, London and Paris, issuing ill-advised statements like Donald Trump’s comments offering mediation during his meeting with Imran Khan in Washington. Against the backdrop of diplomatic pressure from Pakistan, Parthasarathy highlights that ‘India can tackle an international diplomatic offensive around Kashmir, but sensitivity on the ground is crucial’, given that what the region requires most of all, is ‘effective, sensitive, and corruption-free governance.’ ​

J&K move: The real test begins now by Brahma Chellaney
Brahma Chellaney writes in Hindustan Times about how ‘India will need to display political will to tackle Pakistan — which is emboldened by US support.’ Chellaney sheds light on Donald Trump’s Faustian bargain with the Taliban and Pakistan’s role in extricating the US from Afghanistan. Chellaney writes that through the abrogation of Article 370, India ‘has pre-emptively sought to safeguard its security before America hands Afghanistan back to the same terrorist militia it removed from power in 2001.’

No, Modi’s Kashmir policy isn’t new. He’s only continuing what Nehru started in the 1950s by Sandeep Bhardwaj
Sandeep Bhardwaj writes in ThePrint about how successive governments since the 1950s have eroded Kashmir’s autonomy and taken greater control of its governance structure. Bhardwaj points that the people of the state have been denied their democratic voice and highlights that ‘the ‘integration’ process has less to do with winning the trust of Kashmiris and more to do with finishing the nationalist project.’ He further explains that the Centre’s move will ‘undermine mainstream Kashmiri leadership; further alienate Kashmiri people; give a new propaganda tool to the militants; and offer diplomatic ammunition to Pakistan.’

India’s journey towards centralisation by Yamini Aiyar
Yamini Aiyar writes in Hindustan Times about how the abrogation of Article 370 and Article 35A has substantially weakened India’s federal aspiration, a dangerous development for Indian democracy. Aiyar points to how federalism is now positioned as an impediment to development and the undermining of the moral authority of regional parties to safeguard India’s federal system. Aiyar writes that ‘India is now firmly on the path to centralisation of power and may well be inching toward transforming into a unitary rather than federal state.’

The Morning After by Shyam Saran
Ambassador Shyam Saran writes in India Today about the domestic and international repercussions of India’s decision to abrogate Article 370. He points to the concern of the northeastern states regarding Article 371, which confers special status on northeastern states. He explains that downgrading Jammu and Kashmir’s status to a Union Territory could set a dangerous precedent and constrain the autonomy of states. Saran also highlights that widespread violence in the Valley and heavy-handed pacification will turn the international spotlight on the troubled region and diminish India’s standing, and thus the situation must return to relative calm soon, with heavy security presence thinned out.

India’s bold action, new posture take Pakistan and China by surprise by G Parthasarathy
G Parthasarathy writes in The New Indian Express about how in abrogating Article 370, India’s bold action directly challenged China’s control over territory ceded to it illegally by Pakistan, in Jammu and Kashmir, through reviving claims on Aksai Chin. Parthasarathy highlights that ‘Beijing now realises that India could well use this in future negotiations.’

Standing up to China-Pak Nexus by Brahma Chellaney
Brahma Chellaney writes in Open, the Magazine about how the constitutional change of abrogating Article 370 can enable India to tackle the Pakistan-China nexus more ably. Chellaney highlights that Beijing views the Indian portion of Jammu and Kashmir as India’s Achilles heel and Pakistan saw Article 370 as Indian acceptance that Kashmir is a disputed territory. He highlights that while in the short run, the security situation in the Kashmir Valley could worsen, over the longer term, the region’s greater integration and development are likely to contribute to the normalisation of the situation in the Valley.

Myths of Kashmir by Brahma Chellaney
Brahma Chellaney writes in Project Syndicate about how China and Pakistan have consistently undermined India’s territorial sovereignty in Jammu and Kashmir by defying fundamental international rules and norms. He highlights that while neither country has granted autonomy to its portion of the region, they have hypocritically protested India’s revocation of its special status. Chellaney states that until China and Pakistan change their ways, ‘India will have little choice but to take all necessary steps to protect itself.’

A frustrated Imran may step up offensive by G Parthasarathy
G Parthasarathy writes in The Hindu Business Line about how a combatant Pakistan will make the road to normalcy in Jammu and Kashmir doubly hard. Given the failure of efforts by Imran Khan to internationalise the Kashmir issue, Parthasarathy predicts that Pakistan could foment and revive violence in the region once curbs are eased.

The interplay between Kashmir and India’s democratic project by Neelanjan Sircar
Neelanjan Sircar writes in Hindustan Times about the health of Indian democracy in the light of the government’s Kashmir decision. Sircar highlights that ‘the litmus test for a democracy is not whether policy decisions have popular support. It is whether the policy decisions themselves are made through democratic procedure.’ He warns that democracies break down when masses start exhibiting anti-democratic preferences and when courts abdicate their constitutional responsibilities to block centralisation.

The Centre for Policy Research (CPR), Delhi in association with the Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence Research Programme (GI-ACE) hosted a workshop focused on ‘Audit and Anti-Corruption Measures in India’ with a special focus on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY). The workshop took place on Tuesday, 24th September 2019 and was conducted at CPR. The co-conveners of the workshop were Amrita Dhillon, who is currently Professor of Economics at King’s College London and Yamini Aiyar, President and Chief Executive of CPR.

The workshop sprung from a belief in the necessity to bring together government officials, policy activists, and researchers to deliberate on finding possible complementarities with two seemingly opposite methods of ensuring transparency and reducing inefficiency in government schemes. While policy activists have focused on the power of public audits as a forum to bring to light inefficiencies and corruption and have sought to formalise them into schemes thereby empowering beneficiaries, the government seems to have shifted to a technology based approach to deliver greater efficiency and target corruption. With a view towards securing a holistic view of this question, the workshop was successful in bringing together participants from the government, civil society, and academia. They ranged from organisations such as the Ministry of Rural Development, Comptroller and Auditor General’s Office, Indian Statistical Institute, Social Accountability Resource Unit, IDInsight, Azim Premji University, Accountability Initiative and the Brookings Institution to name a few.

The first session was chaired by Farzana Afridi from the Indian Statistical Institute and titled ‘Leakages in Central Schemes, Centralised Monitoring and Interaction with New Technologies’. It featured speakers from academia, policy practitioners, and the government who each sought to contextualise their experience within the ambit of either framing anti-corruption policy or studying its efficacy on the field.

Yamini Aiyar from CPR began the session by recounting her experience gleaned from having observed the implementation of MGNREGA since its inception and closely studied social audits in MGNREGA. She pointed to the importance of the scheme as an experimental ground for governance and citizen engagement through vehicles like social audits. However she also cautioned against an overemphasis on corruption at the cost of building state capability for effective implementation and the tensions between greater decentralisation and anti-corruption efforts. To reduce leakages, she underscored the importance of the need for enhancing capacities of the panchayats while roping in the government to be a part of the social audits which can be a rich source of feedback to judge the workings of their technological interventions. This was a point also echoed by Karan Nagpal, an economist at the consulting group IDInsight, who drew upon the firm’s groundwork experience as well as his own doctoral thesis research that emphasised the need to build capacity at the grassroots to overcome the difficulties that arise from a technological intervention.

The government officials who attended the session provided an invaluable insight into how the establishment looks at the issue of corruption through the lens of auditing and how technological innovations are conceived, adopted, tweaked and finally institutionalised.

Alka Upadhyay, Additional Secretary at the Ministry of Rural Development, detailed how the Ministry has moved to plug the main sources of leakages in MNREGA—namely wage siphoning, creation of fake beneficiaries and assets not getting created. According to her, aside from the oft cited Direct Benefit Transfer, an important technological intervention to obtain a finished asset has been geotagging- particularly in the PMGSY. She also highlighted the Ministry’s efforts to ensure transparency across multiple levels while still acknowledging that more needs to be done in this matter; an example cited was the possibility of making data on road maintenance mapped through geotagging and MIS publicly available thereby making it a powerful tool for social audits. Another area of improvement mentioned by her was in empowering citizen monitoring and building better mechanisms to track their complaints.

Sunil Dadhe—Director General of Audit (Central Expenditure)—sought to demystify the Audit approach to handling corruption. He explained the three approaches that Audit employs: a system-oriented approach which focuses on the system that creates a scheme where delivery doesn’t match expectations, a result-oriented approach which is focused on meeting pre-decided targets, and a problem-oriented approach which looks at specific instances that enhance audit risks. He highlighted the need to embrace technology in audits and bring about correlating data sets across various fields—something China has done to better combat air pollution.

An interesting point that arose during these discussions was the role of the citizen in demanding accountability. Keshav Desiraju, who retired as Secretary, Health & Family Welfare, spoke about how the state expects the citizen to demand accountability and is not predisposed towards providing it; a factor which perhaps explains the social audit falling out of favor as an anti-corruption measure.

The second session was chaired by Amrita Dhillon and titled ‘Accountability Initiatives’. The speakers in this session were practitioners and civil society activists from the social audit sphere who provided an incisive view on how grievance redressal works at the ground level and the multiple roles played by social audits as mechanisms for increasing awareness, providing a platform for complaint redressal and, formulating processes for grievance redressal against mistakes caused by technological intervention.

Rakshita Swamy from the State Accountability Resource Unit (SARU) built on the points made in the previous session by Sunil Dadhe and pointed out that Social Audit reports have great potential to be used in compliment to CAG audit reports—a practice already in place in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. While highlighting the importance of an audit as a mechanism for spreading awareness and demanding accountability, they are also rich sources of qualitative data which can explain the ‘who, why, and how’ of scheme operations.

Anjor Bhaskar, faculty at Azim Premji University, drew on his fieldwork experiences in Jharkhand to illustrate the role social audits play as grievance redressal mechanisms when technological interventions create a plethora of new problems, probably most commonly seen with the stories of starvation deaths coming out of Jharkhand due to PDS denial caused from inefficient Aadhar linkage. Rajendran Narayanan, also at Azim Premji University, provided more detailed case studies expressing what he termed his ‘wariness about the techno-utopian way of making schemes efficient’. An interesting observation that Narayanan brought up was the use of messaging services like WhatsApp by frontline bureaucrats to convey decisions which obfuscates accessibility and erases trails which citizens cannot appeal against later.

A second point that Bhaskar sought to underscore was the availability of multiple datasets of rich data with the government but none of them are available for public scrutiny. The most obvious one he highlighted was the lack of Action Taken Report (ATR) availability in the public domain or on the internet. Another opaque avenue rich with data that he mentioned was the possibility of studying Gram Panchayat Development Plans (GPDP) to better understand the workings of the panchayat as well as its priorities.

Anindita Adhikari, currently a PhD student at Brown University, shared experiences from fieldwork conducted in Bihar as part of her ongoing doctoral thesis. She sought to explain the widespread adoption of Jaanch culture or a culture of inspections, often unplanned, random ones, comprising of surprise checks, individual checks, Lokpal inspections and, social audits. It was found that a lot of these random visits and checks are not explicitly audited but a way of maintaining a regular flow of work. However, it was observed that some of the reports coming out of these social audits were ambiguous and difficult to take action on. Another important factor was that panchayats were being kept out of the process of the social audits pointing to the need for giving them more formal responsibility when it comes to social audits.

The workshop culminated with a note of thanks delivered by co-convener Amrita Dhillon who drew notice to the breadth of topics covered throughout the day as well as appreciation for the sheer diversity of experts around the table. The daylong session was a fascinating, and rare, insight into a topic where two major stakeholders- the government and civil society are often at loggerheads, unable to see the other’s side. By bringing not just representatives from these two sectors, but also formal academics and private practitioners, the workshop helped foster substantive discussions based on a holistic understanding of the sector and generated avenues for further improvement, study, and implementation.

Auto rickshaws

Getting around cities of the Global South usually involves travelling on cycle or in auto rickshaws, mini-buses, jeepneys and various such vehicles, all clubbed together under the term intermediate public transport or IPT. ‘Intermediate’, though, is a misnomer for auto rickshaws in Kolkata, where they function like a mainstream mode of transport.

A recently concluded study by Centre for Policy Research (CPR), Innovative Transport Solutions (iTrans) and Centre for Urban Economic Studies (CUES), Calcutta University, found that auto rickshaws are considered affordable, accessible, regular and safe, and comprise a significant component of the overall transportation network of the Kolkata. The study used GIS mapping to determine the routes and functioning of the IPT system in the city.

Why are auto rickshaws so popular in Kolkata?

High frequency operations, affordability and the convenience of doorstep-to-doorstep connectivity are some factors that make autos popular in the city. Almost 70 per cent of the respondents in the user survey used auto-rickshaws between every day and a few times a week while only 30 percent of the respondents used auto-rickshaws occasionally. The majority cited autos as the mode of choice for not just last mile connections but multiple legs of their daily commute. The study found that about 72% of the city’s municipal area is only half a kilometre away from an auto route.
The convenience of autos is also underscored by their intense usage even by those who own private vehicles. In a city where private vehicle ownership is low–12% of households in Kolkata own two-wheelers as opposed to 38% in Delhi and 8% own four-wheeled vehicles as compared to 20% in Delhi as per the Census. Interestingly, the study survey finds that 58% and 48% of daily auto users own four-wheelers and two-wheelers respectively. The emissions savings achieved by this set of users opting for a shared mode of transport over private vehicles is substantial; these savings are augmented by autos using LPG, a cleaner fuel than petrol or diesel and utilising less road space.
Auto rickshaws are also perceived as safe, even by women who use them for a variety of trips through the day as well as to commute to work. These results belie media reports that generally describe autos as unsafe and unruly; a narrative that needs to be re-examined in the light of this and other data.
Regulation of auto rickshaws in Kolkata:

As opposed to the on-contract, for-hire system in most Indian cities, auto rickshaws in Kolkata operate on fixed routes and on a shared basis. From a regulatory perspective, the West Bengal state transport department regulates auto-rickshaws in Kolkata through regional transport authorities (RTAs) that function at the district level, issuing route-based permits and other documents like fitness certificates, pollution under control certificates, etc. Operationally, auto-rickshaw operators are disciplined by the police and traffic guards.

Auto rickshaws’ responsiveness to user needs and processes that facilitate it:

A defining feature of Kolkata’s auto system is its responsiveness to user needs. Irregularities from the permitted routes–deviations, shorter routes and extensions, for example–emerge in response to changing needs, for instance the difference between peak and non-peak hour traffic, the need to service new areas of the city and to accommodate special requirements during Durga Puja festival in Kolkata. This last accommodation, in fact, is made under the aegis of the regional transport authorities (RTAs) and the police.

This responsiveness can be largely attributed to the evolution of a regulatory system that leverages informal stakeholders to fill gaps in the formal regulatory process that is currently inflexible. By mediating interactions between formal actors like the RTA and the auto-rickshaw operators, auto unions wield considerable power over the auto rickshaw system in the city. These formally registered–and usually politically affiliated–unions play a role in determining routes and fixing fares through the route committees set up by the RTAs.

While rent seeking behaviour in the form of agents who help operators negotiate bureaucratic process at the RTA, appear to be outside their purview, the unions play an important role in organising individual operators and representing them before the state. Vitally, unions coordinate the functioning of the auto-rickshaw stands at the local level, often through individuals called ‘starters’, streamlining aspects like frequency and resolving disputes with passengers.

In the peripheral areas of Kolkata, the study finds a proliferation of IPT options, chiefly the battery operated ‘toto’, which is thriving due to low costs and negligible regulation. With the recent inclusion of e-rickshaws under the mandate of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 in 2015, ‘totos’ are expected to become more accessible forms of IPT in the Kolkata Municipal Area (KMA), especially in the light of poor coverage of public transport. However, what kind of regulatory framework emerges for these ‘totos’ remains to be seen.

Study recommendations to strengthen the auto rickshaw system:

The report suggests that the auto rickshaw system be strengthened by primarily; i) rationalising permits and routes based on periodic data obtained by robust data collection systems; ii) improving regulatory efficiency at the RTA through digitisation and moving processes online; iii) and formalising currently informal processes of stakeholder consultation, among other methods.

Further, frameworks that enable improved coordination across district-level RTAs are necessary to achieve efficiencies, responsiveness as well as integration with the city’s transportation network.

At the user end, access to information like route maps and fare charts, improved design of physical infrastructure like stands; improved access especially for the differently abled; and the development of a system involving smartcards or coupons that eliminate the need for daily cash transactions would go a long way in improving passenger comfort.