Author: cprindia

Proving most exit polls wrong, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) crossed the mid-way mark in the 243-member Bihar Assembly, winning 125 seats. The Bihar election of 2020 has been especially significant due to several reasons. This is the first state election in the country since the COVID-19 pandemic. What do the results mean for the future of the state and its leaders, particularly Nitish Kumar? How will the verdict affect the course of coalition politics? As young leaders like Tejashwi Yadav and Chirag Paswan emerge, how will the political dynamics in the state change? And what does this verdict tell us about the popularity of BJP and particularly Prime Minister Modi?

Watch (above) the video of the discussion on ‘Analysing the Bihar Election Result’ organised by CPR and the Trivedi Centre for Political Data, Ashoka University (TCPD). The discussion featured Vandita Mishra (Opinion Editor, The Indian Express); Taberez Neyazi (Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore); Gilles Verniers (Co-Director, TCPD & Assistant Professor, Ashoka University and Senior Visiting Fellow, CPR); Neelanjan Sircar (Assistant Professor, Ashoka University and Senior Visiting Fellow, CPR); and Rahul Verma (Fellow, CPR).

Scholars at CPR have closely followed the electoral developments in the Bihar. Read the analysis below:

In Hindustan Times, Rahul Verma analyses how the NDA managed to turn the rising tide against Nitish Kumar, Tejashwi Yadav’s failure to build on the groundswell of support evident in his rallies, and why the exit polls went wrong. Verma writes that the Bihar verdict confirms that elections are won and lost during the campaign and that our focus must remain on understanding the opportunities and constraints each campaign reflects.
In Hindustan Times, Neelanjan Sircar highlights how the tables have turned in the NDA with BJP no longer relying on Nitish Kumar and his JDU to stay in power in Bihar. Sircar writes, in this new era, politics in Bihar will revolve around the competition between a nationally dominant BJP with Modi at the helm and a resurrected RJD led by an ascendant Tejashwi Yadav.
In Economic Times, Gilles Verniers observes that this election confirms a long tradition in Bihar of political fragmentation. He notes that the result shows a vast gap in performance between members of both coalitions. Further, Verniers highlights that local volatility is an important factor contributing to the aggregate outcome.
In Hindustan Times, Gilles Verniers and Samridhi Hooda analyse why women’s representation went down in the Bihar election despite an increase in the number of women candidates from major parties. They highlight that it is only when women find substantial representation across parties that we can hope to see a change.
In Hindustan Times, Neelanjan Sircar analyses the affect of centralisation of welfare by the BJP and Modi. Sircar highlights that the sheer popularity of Modi, and the “vishwas” that voters have placed in him, has changed the way the state-level leaders must do politics.
In a discussion on Mirror Now, Yamini Aiyar and Neelanjan Sircar discuss BJP and JDU’s electoral performance. Aiyar highlights that the BJP’s ability to centralise welfare schemes and mobilise the electorate around it has lead to its success. This she says, left Nitish Kumar facing the consequences of anti-incumbency. Sircar highlights that Nitish Kumar won’t have bargaining power and may have to bend on the will of his alliance partner, given that the BJP has a strike rate of 67%, compared to JDU, which had a strike rate of 37%.
In a discussion on India Today, Rahul Verma highlights key takeaways from the Bihar verdict. He highlights that elections are decided during the campaign phase and the party that remains vigilant to what is happening on the ground wins.
In Hindustan Times, Gilles Verniers and Basim U Nissa analyse the role of caste in Bihar politics. They highlight that the inclusive strategy that most parties claim to follow in Bihar does not ultimately translate into substantial political empowerment of non-dominant groups, which remain fragmented and divided.
In Scroll, Gilles Verniers, Mohit Kumar and Neelesh Agrawal decode the Bihar verdict in 32 charts. They analyse that except for perhaps the Congress, all the other parties can find some reason to be satisfied with the result. Further, they highlight that the NDA won the election by the skin of its teeth and the diminishing popularity of Nitish Kumar almost cost them the election.
In ThePrint, Asim Ali and Ankita Barthwal highlight how the BJP’s success in an assembly election is determined, above all, by its ability — or inability — to make ideological issues salient. They further analyse that the party manages to win handsomely as a challenger, often aligning with non-dominant castes to mount an attack on existing power equations in the state. As an incumbent, however, the BJP has had only a modest showing.
In Scroll, Gilles Verniers, Basim U Nissa, Neelesh Agrawal and Mohit Kumar analyse the profile of the new Bihar assembly. They find that most MLAs are male, fairly well-educated, rich, in contradiction with the law and tend to belong to groups that exert local dominance.

ANALYSIS OF THE RESULTS

By rejecting Raghubar Das, Jharkhand sends a message to the BJP by Rahul Verma
Rahul Verma writes in explaining the negative vote swing against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the last six months. Verma highlights that the party shouldn’t impose leaders with no mass base; must address the economy; and should be prepared for a tough poll cycle ahead. Addressing the loss of Raghubhar Das, he writes that ‘when an incumbent chief minister loses along with many of his cabinet colleagues there’s a straightforward interpretation of the mandate. Voters have outrightly rejected the existing government.’ Verma further elucidates the need for the opposition to create and campaign on an alternative ideological vision to challenge the BJP’s hegemonic position.

Urban-rural divide, disgruntled regional allies sparked poll reversal in Jharkhand by Neelanjan Sircar
Neelanjan Sircar writes in highlighting that the BJP cannot disregard its coalition partners to win at the state level, despite its national dominance. He analyses reasons behind the party’s poor performance in Scheduled Tribe and urban areas. Further he writes, ‘it is time for serious introspection for the party, as it heads into important contests in Delhi and Bihar.’

BJP can continue with its ideological projects, but they won’t work until Modi govt fixes economy by Rahul Verma
Rahul Verma writes in Talkpoint by ThePrint about whether the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah combine is no longer a decisive factor in state elections. Verma writes that while the Modi-Shah duo is still by far the best election team any party can hope for, of late, the BJP has been witnessing electoral reversals at the state level. He highlights that the party is now contesting as an incumbent party and voters are judging it by its performance. In addition, the party is not following the coalition dharma, forcing smaller parties to come together for survival. Lastly, Verma points to the unprecedented economic slowdown, highlighting that until the Modi government does not fix the economy, its ideological projects will not work.

On Friday, July 5th 2019, Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman tabled the new government’s first budget. Against the backdrop of a resounding election mandate and an economic slowdown, expectations from this budget were high. Scholars at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) keenly watched the budget. We are delighted to share with you a compilation of analysis and commentary by CPR faculty.

Union Budget: A lost opportunity
Yamini Aiyar
In Hindustan Times, Aiyar calls the budget ‘a lost opportunity’, highlighting that the government has chosen an incrementalist approach rather than announcing radical structural reforms despite its mandate, making clear that Modi 2.0 is going to steer the familiar course. In particular, Aiyar argues that the government has failed to articulate a vision for rural economy, particularly agriculture, overlooking several fundamental issues such as a regressive subsidy regime, badly regulated markets and weak procurement infrastructure.

What the quest for a $5 trillion economy entails
Partha Mukhopadhyay
Partha Mukhopadhyay writes in Hindustan Times that ‘a first budget could have tried harder’ especially given the massive mandate the government received in the elections. Mukhopadhyay questions whether the inertia of the budgetary process sabotaged the claimed novelty of the budget, pointing out that budget shares of several older major schemes have been reduced, even as their absolute allocations have risen.

Budget 2019 Fails to Give Education the Radical Boost it Needs
Kiran Bhatty
Kiran Bhatty writes in TheWire about how the budget fails to give education the radical boost it needs. Bhatty sheds light on the National Education Policy – a policy that recognises correctly the critical juncture at which the sector is poised and the need to invest in it, but highlights that all its good intentions and recommendations are likely to come to naught if the finance ministry does not find a way of opening its purse strings.

Farm to health to education, Modi govt’s Budget has no clear vision for India’s social sector
Avani Kapur
Avani Kapur writes in ThePrint about how the budget missed an opportunity to articulate a comprehensive vision for the social sector and instead ‘reverted to the Narendra Modi government’s old avatar – a focus on infrastructure and a mission-mode model of meeting targets, this time for water’. In particular, against the backdrop of several health disasters faced by the country and the worrying results of NITI Aayog’s Health Index, Kapur writes that the budget needed to focus more on coordinated efforts and convergence across departments and ministries for health, education, WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene), food and social security.

Budget 2019 Is Ambitious on Healthcare. But More Can Be Done
Avani Kapur and Ritwik Shukla
Avani Kapur and Ritwik Shukla write in TheWire that while the budget is ambitious on healthcare and has taken a few steps in the right direction, there is a need to intensify public expenditure on health. While budget allocations have increased compared to the interim budget focusing on quality of public health services, Kapur and Shukla write that more attention needs to be paid to convergence across ministries, such as MohHFW, MWCD, MJS, among others.

Budget 2019: Will Welfare Policy Under Modi 2.0 be About Entitlements or Empowerment?
Yamini Aiyar
In the run-up to the budget, Yamini Aiyar writes in TheWire about how the budget is an opportunity to chart the policy course for the next five years through bold welfare reforms, especially given the government’s historic mandate. Aiyar explains the challenges of financing welfare expansion while balancing the concerns of extensive fiscal slippage. She writes that the budget must address the relationship between income support and existing subsidies as well as the existing basket of welfare schemes.

[WATCH]: Yamini Aiyar analyses key takeaways from the Union Budget 2019
Yamini Aiyar
Yamini Aiyar participated in a panel of experts analysing key takeaways from the budget on NDTV. Aiyar sheds light on the challenge of strengthening the Indian manufacturing sector, the critical reforms that need to be undertaken in the agricultural sector, and the need for rational and leaner financing of social sector welfare schemes.

Budget’s flawed swadeshi objective
Shyam Saran
Ambassador Shyam Saran writes in the Business Standard about how the policy objective of import substitution in the budget is worrying. He highlights that the goal to make India a $5 trillion economy is only possible when the economy is a globalised one and will not be realised through protectionist policies. As tariffs on a range of imports are raised, Saran warns that the country runs the risk of slipping to the pre-1991 sub-optimal strategy of growth, based implicitly on import substitution and protected domestic production, pointing out that this will make Indian industry less competitive.

Budget Briefs by Accountability Initiative: Social Sector Analysis
Find the complete set of budget briefs by Accountability Initiative analysing trends in allocations, expenditures and outcomes of 10 social sector schemes of the Government of India in the areas of education, rural development, water and sanitation, health, and maternal and child nutrition.

Between March 15, 2017 and June 15, 2017, 207 projects that violated the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification applied for an environmental clearance. These applications have come as a result of a notification that the Environment Ministry had passed on March 14, 2017, which gives an opportunity to projects that have violated conditions of the EIA Notification to apply for a clearance within a period of six months, that is by September 15.

This notification was passed despite much criticism of the notification that was issued on May 10, 2016. Read Manju Menon and Kanchi Kohli’s comments on the draft notification here. They also wrote an opinion piece titled Environment Ministry to Bend Over Backwards to Whitelist Illicit Projects for The Wire.

The CPR-Namati Environmental Justice Program has analysed these applications to see what are the kinds of geographical and sectorial spread of these violations and whether there are any trends emerging out of the applications that have come in till June 15, in its working paper From Prior to Post: Legalising Environmental Violations.

The Environment Ministry has already started looking at the applications through a Committee that has been set up for this. This Committee is headed by Dr S R Wate and had its first meeting on June 22, 2017. The Committee, in its first meeting, has examined ten applications. Out of these ten applications, the committee has already recommended seven for grant for a Terms of Reference subject to conditions, which means that these projects are eligible for environmental clearance.

This working paper would be updated with further analysis of these applications as well as of new ones, and will also track the progress of all applications.

The governing board of the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and its chairman Eric Gonsalves are delighted to announce the selection of Yamini Aiyar as the new President and Chief Executive of the Centre for Policy Research. She will assume her responsibilities from 1 September, 2017.

Yamini Aiyar, currently a Senior Research fellow at CPR, has had a distinguished career in the field of social policy and development. Yamini’s research on social accountability, elementary education, decentralisation and administrative reforms has received both academic and popular recognition. She has published significant papers and contributed widely to public debate. At CPR, she founded the Accountability Initiative. Under her leadership, the Accountability Initiative pioneered a new approach to tracking public expenditures for social policy programmes including the country’s largest expenditure-tracking survey in elementary education.

Yamini is an alumnus of the London School of Economics, Cambridge University and St. Stephen’s college, New Delhi. She is a TED fellow and a founding member of the International Experts Panel of the Open Government Partnership. Yamini has also been a member of the World Economic Forum’s global council on good governance.

The CPR Board is pleased to have found a new President with exceptional leadership skills and integrity, who will take forward the Board’s commitment to excellence and academic freedom at CPR.

The CPR Board also takes this opportunity to thank the outgoing President Pratap Bhanu Mehta for his exemplary leadership of the last 13 years. During his tenure, Dr. Mehta infused CPR with renewed intellectual excitement and rigour, leading the institution to its current standing as one of India’s leading public policy think tanks.

As Yamini Aiyar takes over from Pratap Bhanu Mehta, CPR would like to thank all CPR’s partners, interlocutors, and funders who have supported the organisation over the years with engagement, advice, and support. Going forward, we will continue to count on you and are confident that CPR will scale new heights with your backing.

Dear Friends,

On 2nd November 2020, the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) will complete 47 years. I write to you all, to express my sincere gratitude for your consistent and unflinching support over these four decades. It is this that emboldens us and pushes us to remain committed to our core values of intellectual rigour, strict non-partisanship and fierce independence.

In recent years, CPR has sought to step out of the ivory towers of policy research and deepen its public engagement. This, is in part a response to the growing polarisation of public discourse in India and across the globe. In equal measure it is a recognition that long-term policy change requires forging a new public consensus. The need for evidence-based, sober and coherent communication is urgent and pressing and CPR strives to make a small contribution in response to this challenge.

Against this backdrop, we are introducing a survey that helps us get to know you better and enables us to send you content that is tailored to your interests. Please do consider answering these questions (I promise it’ll take only a minute!), so we can have the latest analysis by CPR in your inbox. We will also be launching a brand new fortnightly newsletter on the 2nd. Do lookout for this and stay tuned for some exciting updates from us!

Once again, thank you all for your constant engagement with us. We look forward to more such platforms for debates and discussions.

With warmest thanks,

Yamini Aiyar,
President and Chief Executive,
Centre for Policy Research

The availability of good jobs on the scale that India requires is a significant challenge. Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and JustJobs Network (JJN) are launching a new partnership to generate new, innovative and fresh ideas to help tackle the nation’s jobs crisis.

This Jobs Initiative will include cutting-edge, applied research to find solutions to specific employment challenges in areas such as technology, migration and informality and differentiated impacts based on gender and age. As rapid transformations in these areas, coupled with urbanisation and climate change alter the way Indians live and work, this initiative will provide insights on how government policies can adapt to create jobs and support workers. This initiative will engage the government, the private sector, academia, and grassroots organisations to harvest good ideas and promote collaboration.

We expect this partnership with JJN, the only single-issue, applied research institution of its kind in India focusing solely on jobs, education/skills and labour market matching, to add significant value to CPR’s work on urbanisation, economic policy and technology; jointly, we look forward to effectively engaging in shaping the narrative and action on jobs in the country.

Over the last four decades, courts in India have developed a rich jurisprudence on environmental issues. The large body of environmental case-law reflects the judiciary’s predominant approach to environmental grievance redressal – directing regulatory institutions to take action against persistent violations and injustices, expanding the scope of environmental regulation and recommending special environmental adjudicatory mechanisms to make environmental justice more accessible. However, apart from a few judgments there has been less judicial attention, and resultant executive action, to strengthen existing structures and processes for effective redressal against administrative arbitrariness or inaction. This paper focuses on an often overlooked aspect of environmental grievance redressal, viz., the effectiveness of existing redressal forums. Such assessments of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) are already emerging. But, here the authors evaluate the effectiveness of a set of much older environmental redressal forums viz., the Appellate Authorities constituted under the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974 (the Water Act) and the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981 (Air Act) on two broad dimensions – ability to deliver good quality decisions and accessibility.

The large number of affordable homes to be built in the next few years has spurred the interest of cities, real estate developers, technology providers, amongst others. From an energy perspective, the unbuilt homes provide an important advantage. Because the bulk of low-income housing is yet to be constructed, the type of construction undertaken, the appliances they are designed for, and how they expend energy to cool and heat will shape the electricity consumption trajectories through the multi-decade lifetimes of these buildings. More so, new housing provides a physical setting for shaping preferences and practices around appliance purchase and electricity consumption that once set are not easily reversed. In this piece, we examine the energy services demanded within affordable housing, and identify which appliances households buy as their ability to consume increases.

We conducted a survey in 2017 in low-income houses in Rajkot, Gujarat to understand their electricity use patterns and the underlying drivers. This is part of our ongoing study on energy use in low-income urban households under the CapaCITIES project. Lighting, fans, televisions and fridges form majority of the appliance compositions in the affordable housing blocks.

Households use the services provided by these appliances most in the evening between 7-10 p.m., with usage of lighting and TV dominating. As shown in Figure 1, 59% of all households reported they used lighting in the previous evening and 33% of households watched television in that time slot. Fan usage peaked during the night, whereas a small number of fridges, on the other hand, were switched off during the night to save on the electricity bill.

These numbers indicate that not all households use lights in the evening, turn on fans while sleeping or always keep the fridge on. In discussions, some residents indicated that their work did not allow a ‘9 to 5’ schedule where they spent the evening at home; others said they did not turn on lights as the street and hallway lights were enough to illuminate the homes.

Figure 1: Proportion of households availing energy services by time of day
Source: Rajkot affordable housing energy survey (Khosla et al., in preparation)
To understand appliance use better, we categorised results according to the three types of government affordable housing: BSUP or Basic Services for the Urban Poor (built 2007 onwards); EWS or Economically Weaker Sections; and LIG or Low Income Groups housing (EWS and LIG are built under the Housing for All programme, 2015 onwards) (Figure 2). The categories broadly correlate to income – BSUP residents, on average, being the poorest in the sample, and LIG, the best off.

We find that fans are the most owned appliances across housing types, followed closely by televisions. Even in the lowest income BSUP homes, the rates of TV penetration are not dramatically different from the rates in higher income EWS and LIG homes. The difference in rates of appliance ownership between the three categories are most pronounced in fridges, where the LIG homes have the most fridges.

Figure 2: Appliance penetration rates in the affordable housing sample
Source: Rajkot affordable housing energy survey (Khosla et al., in preparation)
This trend is corroborated in Figure 3 which maps appliance ownership with a household’s overall assets or ability to consume, as measured by an asset index. Most homes, even in the early deciles of the asset index, own a fan, and this number increases to two fans or even more as a household’s assets increase. Fan ownership is followed by a TV, and the probability of owning a TV is quite high even though households may not own many other assets. TVs are more ubiquitous than coolers and fridges, in spite of the hot and dry climate and peak summer temperatures of the region. This result aligns with the literature that shows that over the past few decades, TV viewing has become the most important information and entertainment activities for middle class and increasingly for lower-income families. Fridges, on the other hand, follow a more conventional pattern where their ownership rises gradually as households get wealthier (with an increased probability of ownership around the 9th and 10th decile of the asset index).

Figure 3: Appliance ownership across the consumption asset index for the affordable housing sample
Source: Rajkot affordable housing energy survey (Khosla et al., in preparation)
It is clear that fans, televisions and fridges, form the bulk of appliances used within affordable housing units. These appliances, once bought, likely persist in households for a decade if not more, and can often then be passed on, second-hand, to other families. Further, because of the immense transition to affordable housing units that is ahead for India, the number of appliances, which will be bought for the first time is significant. As discussed in the previous piece of this series, appliances drive electricity consumption in homes and the adoption of energy efficient, or star rated, appliance models can significantly reduce this electricity use. We take a further look at the appliances used in the affordable housing sample to examine the number of appliances that are star-rated (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Percentage of star-rated appliance owned in the affordable housing sample
Source: Rajkot affordable housing energy survey (Khosla et al., in preparation)
Two striking insights emerge from Figure 4. First, while fans and TVs are by far the most ubiquitous appliances used within affordable housing, the number of rated appliances within these categories is minimal. Appliance shops in the vicinity of the affordable housing blocks corroborated that consumers had little awareness of energy savings from efficient fan and TVs, and that rated versions were only now entering the market. This presents a significant opportunity for scaling up the standards and ratings programme for fans and televisions, the energy savings from which are dramatic.

Second, the ratings programme for fridges is much more effective, as seen across the affordable housing types. Part of the reason for this is that BEE (Bureau of Energy Efficiency) has mandatory and stringent standards for frost-free refrigerators (as opposed to a voluntary labeling for ceiling fans). In all cases, there is large scope for increasing the efficiency of appliances through a rigorous ratcheting up of standards and labels. Compared to the lack of consumer awareness of TV and fan ratings, shop attendants indicated that consumers were aware of fridge ratings, often asked for input on savings, and were wary of costs of running energy intensive fridges. This is also seen in the data by a proportion of households that turn off their fridges at night to save costs.

As more formalised housing and rising incomes set to increase the use of energy intensive appliances, their usage patterns suggest the enormous scope for this transition to be an energy efficient one. In the next post of this series, we continue to examine energy intensive appliances, with a view from the National Capital Region, which has the highest residential electricity consumption in the country.

This piece is authored by Radhika Khosla and Ankit Bhardwaj at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.

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
India’s LED Lighting Story
Illuminating Affordable Homes
The Efficiency of Appliances
Electrifying the National Capital Region
Exploring the different uses of household appliances
Role of human behaviour in driving electricity use