India’s urbanization is on the rise, but the country is predominantly rural with 833 million (~70%) residing in villages. Odisha, with a rural population share of 83%, reported toilet access among rural households to be merely 14% in 2011. Since 2014, under SBM-G, the state has built 6.6 million rural toilets and all the 30 districts had declared themselves ODF. To further leverage these gains made by the State, the Chief Minister outlined a vision of a ‘Swachha Odisha, Sustha Odisha’ in 2018. In this context and in line with the imperatives of both the SBM-G Phase II and Odisha’s Rural Sanitation Policy, the district of Angul is undertaking an endeavour to attain district-wide safely managed sanitation. The report evaluates the existing sanitation situation in the rural areas of Angul district to understand the prevailing gaps towards achieving safely managed sanitation that the endeavour must seek to address. The assessment also seeks to analyse the scope of utilizing the operational wastewater treatment facilities (FSTPs/STPs) in the urban areas and industrial townships of the district to cater to the rural need.
Archives: Briefs Reports
Towards District-wide Safely Managed Sanitation: Template for District-level Faecal Sludge Management (FSM) Planning
At the culmination of Swachh Bharat Mission – Gramin (SBM-G) Phase I in 2019, rural India had declared itself Open-Defecation Free (ODF). However, ODF is only the first step in India’s journey toward the Sustainable Development Goal 6 of ensuring ‘availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all’. While toilets ensure the safe collection of faecal waste, access to toilets necessitate the safe management of the septage and sludge accumulating over time in the accompanying on-site sanitation systems. The present Template for Faecal Sludge Management (FSM) Planning aims to aid state and district governments, practitioners, and developmental partners in creating a District-level FSM Plan. The Template is founded on two approaches to enabling FSM services for rural households, viz. plug-in and greenfield, aligned with the guidance from the SBM-G Phase II and leveraging the rapid strides in urban FSM in the country. The Template has been prepared under and informed by the Pilot Project for Solid and Liquid Waste Management, being implemented by the Dhenkanal and Angul District Administrations with support from the Centre for Policy Research and UNICEF.
Evictions and due process in Delhi
In the absence of an enforceable substantive right to housing, communities living in slums and other informal settlements have mobilized over the years, using both courts and political advocacy to try and protect themselves from eviction. This has resulted in a series of judgments, policies, and some legislation, relying on Constitutional provisions and India’s commitments under international law, extending at least some procedural safeguards (and limited substantive rights) to these communities. This brief documents these processes and provisions in the National Capital Territory of Delhi.
Abiding by nature, not national borders: Institution building in the Himalayas
Mountains are hard to govern. National boundaries rarely reflect mountain geography and carve mountains into ecologically and socially incomplete sections. Mountain ecosystems, glaciers, rivers and communities are deeply intertwined, bearing all the complexity of systems that have evolved over millennia. Understanding this complexity and then governing it is an especially challenging task. In the Himalayas, the borders that divide the mountains are hard and sometimes militarized, and states have traditionally been only been mildly interested in cooperating on cross-border issues, such as melting glaciers because of global warming, river basin governance, and disasters.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for BASERA
Chief Ministers’ Slum Development Program – ‘BASERA’, guided by the Punjab Proprietary Rights to Slum Dwellers Act, 2020 (PSD Act) along with the allied Rules, is a milestone step towards inclusive urban development and planning of the Government of Punjab. BASERA lays the foundation for mainstreaming of slums with the rest of the city by involving just and inclusive city development paradigms in practice.
Through the following set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), this document elucidates various process and procedure that should be undertaken for grant of proprietary rights to the urban poor in Punjab in accordance with BASERA, PSD Act and the allied Rules. However, in the event of any discrepancy, the provisions of the PSD Act along with the allied Rules will prevail.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Ukraine’s Refugee Crisis and the (B)ordering of Europe
Europe appears to be experiencing a ‘we are all in this together’ moment in the face of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine with an unprecedented show of solidarity towards asylum seekers. For sure, it ticks several political boxes for Europe: from presenting a unified front against Russia and seeking to strengthen regional stability to salvaging its own image as a normative actor with an incentive to shape the discourse on rights and responsibilities. But this seemingly golden moment of solidarity has a dark side to it. It paradoxically speaks of Europe’s abdication of, and not adherence to, universal refugee protection norms. The feel good narrative also conceals entrenched hierarchies of protection that are aimed at keeping out the ‘outsider’ (read non-European). The brief will look at how institutionalised biases within EU’s decisionmaking process are changing the notion of the border in fundamental ways with enormous consequences for the rights of the vulnerable.
Private Sector Participation in Faecal Sludge & Septage Management
The Policy Brief Series is prepared under the research programme, Scaling City Institutions for India (SCI-FI) funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). As part of its research programme on urban sanitation, SCI-FI has been undertaking studies since the launch of the NFSSM Policy on the nature and scope of private sector participation in urban sanitation services. Based on SCI-FI’s interventions and research, a series of five Policy Briefs have been prepared in an effort to summarise the sector characteristics and the gamut of private participation in the collection, conveyance and treatment part of the FSSM sector. Culminating the findings from the research, SCI-FI has designed a tool for ULBs to evaluate their ‘Doing Business’ score for small-scale FSSM businesses engaged in collection, conveyance and treatment of faecal sludge.
The five policy briefs in the series on 1) Evaluating PPP experiences of key infrastructure sectors: Learnings for FSSM, 2) Designing a framework to facilitate private investments in FSSM, 3) Characteristics of the FSSM sector, 4) Business needs and good practices in the FSSM sector, and 5) Framework for finance flows in the FSSM value chain, have been developed under this partnership for documenting the learnings from the above endeavours. It further brings out the critical aspects of on-ground implementation, challenges, and opportunities.
Documents:
Policy Brief 1: Evaluating PPP experiences of key infrastructure sectors: Learnings for FSSM
Policy Brief 2: Designing a framework to facilitate private investments in FSSM
Policy Brief 3: Characteristics of the FSSM sector
Policy Brief 4: Business needs and good practices in the FSSM sector
Policy Brief 5: Framework for finance flows in the FSSM value chain
Policy Challenges 2019-2024: The Key Policy Questions for the New Government and Possible Pathways
India is at an important juncture in its development trajectory. From rapid urbanisation to declining agricultural productivity; from weak human capital to the need for creating productive jobs; from new security threats to the need to re-position itself in a changing global order; from growing energy demands to the need to address rapid environmental degradation, India today has to negotiate multiple and conflicting socio-economic challenges. Decisions and actions taken over the next five years will be likely to shape the future of our economic and political trajectory. This document is an effort to spark debate and ideas on how India can negotiate these transitions across a range of sectors.
Contents
Foreign Policy and National Security
- India’s Foreign Policy in an Uncertain World by Shyam Saran
- Time for Disruptive Foreign and National Security Policies by Bharat Karnad
- Need for a Comprehensive National Security Strategy by Shyam Saran
- Managing India-China Relations in a Changing Neighbourhood by Zorawar Daulet Singh
Climate, Energy and the Environment
- Rethinking India’s Approach to International and Domestic Climate Policy by Navroz K. Dubash and Lavanya Rajamani
- Beyond Poles and Wires: How to Keep the Electrons Flowing? by Ashwini K. Swain and Navroz K. Dubash
- Clearing our Air of Pollution: A Road Map for the Next Five Years by Santosh Harish, Shibani Ghosh and Navroz K. Dubash
- Regulatory Reforms to Address Environmental Non-Compliance by Manju Menon and Kanchi Kohli
Economy
- Big Potential, Big Risk: Underachieving Indian Capitalism and the Middle Income Trap by Michael Walton and Noopur Sen
- A Relook at Infrastructure by Partha Mukhopadhyay
- A Clarion Call for Just Jobs: Addressing the Nation’s Employment Crisis by Sabina Dewan
- Back-End First: A National Agenda for India’s Agricultural Markets by Mekhala Krishnamurthy
- Of Investment and Jobs by Partha Mukhopadhyay
The Welfare State
- The Opportunities and Challenges Confronting India’s Welfare Architecture by Yamini Aiyar
- Should PM-KISAN and MGNREGS Co-Exist? by Yamini Aiyar and Partha Mukhopadhyay
- Schooling is not Learning by Yamini Aiyar
- The Numbers Game: Suggestions for Improving School Education Data by Kiran Bhatty
Federalism
- Towards ‘Cooperative’ Social Policy Financing in India by Avani Kapur
- Bridging the Local: Beyond the 73rd and 74th Amendments by Mukta Naik, Sama Khan and Shamindra Nath Roy
- Interstate River Water Governance: Shifting the Focus from Conflict Resolution to Enabling Cooperation by Srinivas Chokkakula
- The Future is Federal: Why Indian Foreign Policy Needs to Leverage its Border States by Nimmi Kurian
Urbanisation
- Multiply Urban ‘Growth Engines’, Encourage Migration to Reboot Economy by Mukta Naik
- Regularizing Unauthorized Urban Industrial Areas by Partha Mukhopadhyay and Eesha Kunduri
- The Challenge of Indian Cities and Female Labour Force Participation by Neelanjan Sircar
Regulation and Resources
- Understanding Land Conflict in India and Suggestions for Reform by Namita Wahi
- Protecting Water While Providing Water to All: Need for Enabling Legislations by Philippe Cullet
- Safeguarding the Fragile Ecology of the Himalayas by Shyam Saran
- Regulating New Technologies: Three Central Principles by Ananth Padmanabhan
Inclusive Citizenship
- Courts, Tradition and Citizenship by Shylashri Shankar
- In Need of Structural Repairs: The Social Justice Project by D. Shyam Babu
- Safe and Dignified Sanitation Work: India’s Foremost Sanitation Challenge by Arkaja Singh and Shubhagato Dasgupta
Improving social protection portability for Migration-affected children – Uttar Pradesh
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 national lockdown in March 2020, India saw the mass movement of an estimated 11.4 million migrants back to their home states. Many more remained stranded at worksites and destination cities, and experienced hunger, indebtedness and sickness. The vulnerability of migrants was substantially exacerbated by their inadequate incorporation in social protection mechanisms, which have consistently failed to recognize circular and seasonal mobility patterns, despite being aimed at reducing the vulnerability of the poor. In particular, portability mechanisms that allow migrants to access entitlements across locations have remained inadequate.
This policy note focuses on initiatives and measures to improve portability and access to social protection and welfare for women and children affected by migration in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The study considered all children (up to the age of 18) affected by the migration process, including independent child migrants, those who accompany their parents and those left behind after their parents migrate for work.
Improving social protection portability for Migration-affected children – Odisha
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 national lockdown in March 2020, India saw the mass movement of an estimated 11.4 million migrants back to their home states. Many more remained stranded at worksites and destination cities, and experienced hunger, indebtedness and sickness. The vulnerability of migrants was substantially exacerbated by their inadequate incorporation in social protection mechanisms, which have consistently failed to recognize circular and seasonal mobility patterns, despite being aimed at reducing the vulnerability of the poor. In particular, portability mechanisms that allow migrants to access entitlements across locations have remained inadequate.
This policy note focuses on initiatives and measures to improve portability and access to social protection and welfare for women and children affected by migration in the state of Odisha. The study considered all children (up to the age of 18) affected by the migration process, including independent child migrants, those who accompany their parents and those left behind after their parents migrate for work.