Archives: Working Papers

From this week, voters will queue up for the final three phases of the five-phase election in Bihar, choosing either the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) or the Janata Dal (United)-Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress “Grand Alliance” (mahagathbandhan). Over the past few weeks, we have been traveling extensively across Bihar to get a sense of how voters are making up their minds, focusing on constituencies that went to the polls in the first two phases of this election. A spate of contradictory opinion polls and an aggressive campaign between bitter foes, Nitish Kumar and Narendra Modi, and bonhomie between once bitter foes, Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav, have only served to confuse the situation further in Bihar. No one knows how it will all shake out.

This has all the makings of political suspense film, and, at times, it feels as if everyone in Bihar is in on the script. At a roadside teashop in Jehanabad district, we met a man who argued his case with precision, full of emotion with perfect inflection and timing. A bystander whispered to one of us, “He’s really good, isn’t he? He’s already been on television.” We quickly realised that unless we moved away from the main roads, well-trod by journalists and researchers, we would only hear well-rehearsed sound bytes instead of the concerns of the average Bihari voter.

Even in more isolated villages, we observed that voters often displayed sophisticated and well-reasoned political preferences. No one we met was making up his or her mind based upon a single comment by Lalu or Bhagwat, or a promise by Nitish or Modi. As researchers and analysts, it is in our nature to read too much into each comment, each twist and turn of the campaign, when voters themselves make decisions in a more holistic way. Our conversations convinced us that our efforts would best be put to use by characterising the larger narratives and debates that impact voters’ choices.

The exit polls are out in Bihar, and we are none the wiser. It is seemingly a photo finish between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Janata Dal United [JD(U)]-Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-Congress Grand Alliance. The Bihar election is ending as it began, full of theatre and intrigue. We can only guess how it ends. We were making our way to East Champaran; we didn’t realise Narendra Modi’s rally would be in Gopalganj district that day. The rally was over, but traffic had stopped moving 2 km from the rally site; we would be stuck at the same spot for the next few hours. Nowhere else to go, we got out of the car and started chatting with rally-goers. An exuberant BJP supporter exclaimed, “We have 8-10 lakh people today!” This was clearly an overestimate, but the crowd was bigger than we had seen elsewhere. We stopped in at a roadside stand where 4-5 men were being served their thalis and asked from where they had come to attend the rally. “Dewaria,” responded one man (Dewaria is in Uttar Pradesh (UP), not Bihar). He went on, “None of us are from Bihar. People are coming from Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Allahabad. The Party gives us enough money to eat lunch as well.” The Muslim shopkeeper who was cooking for them, the only person there who would actually be voting in Bihar, was clearly supporting the Grand Alliance, but he was happy for the extra money generated from the rally. The real reason for the traffic bottleneck then became clear. The road had narrowed to a single lane. While we headed further into Bihar, bus after bus, each with a “UP” license plate, was headed the other way. We analysts often mistakenly use rallies to gauge the hawa for a party. But, ultimately, rallies are about theatre and spectacle, while elections are won on the strength of the ground-level campaign.

Privately, a section of BJP workers have been telling us that they can now see the NDA losing in this election, not something we heard in the first couple of weeks of the campaign. In our previous piece, using available data, we argued that the NDA would have to do very well in the third and fourth phases of this five-phase election if it is to win, something that even BJP leaders have now said publicly. Given that the NDA was well ahead in 2014, the NDA might still pull off this victory. It is clear, however, that the Grand Alliance has run a stronger ground campaign than the NDA, and that the campaign has had a major impact on changing voters’ minds. The NDA now seems unlikely to get near the 172 assembly constituency (AC) segments it won in 2014. In the remainder of this piece, we assess the structure of the Grand Alliance, how it shaped the campaign, as well as how the campaigns, for both NDA and the Grand Alliance, conducted themselves during this election.

To assess socioeconomic differences in access to high-quality health care services, we collected novel data on illnesses that required primary care from 23,275 households in 100 villages in Madhya Pradesh, India. We matched the primary care visits for those illnesses to characteristics of the health care providers that members of the households visited. People in the average village in our sample could access eleven providers, of whom 71 percent were in the private sector and 49 percent had no formal medical training. The private sector accounted for 89 percent of the primary care visits in our sample, with 77 percent of the visits made to providers with no formal training. Both access to and use of more knowledgeable providers increased with socioeconomic status, mostly as a result of differences across districts and villages. Strikingly, people in high- and low-socioeconomic-status households in the same village visited equally knowledgeable providers. It was the poor people who lived in poor communities who received especially low-quality care.

Even as the reach of education has expanded enormously in India in the last few decades, it has been accompanied by differential access and the continuing spectre of inequalities. This inequality could take various forms but the extent to which opportunities, access, and outcome are distributed across different sections of the population, broadly describes a measure of the inequality that exists. There are different causes of inequality in education – the most common being the consequence of inequality in income, wages and living standards. But, in addition, social parameters also affect access to education. While some of these, such as caste, tribe and religious minority affiliation, might have bases in economics as well, others such as gender run across economic and social categories. Needless to say, girls from lower caste or tribal communities, thus suffer the burden of multiple disadvantages.

While outcomes have dominated the discourse on education in recent years, in order to understand inequality more comprehensively, it is important to move beyond measuring inequality as the difference in the final outcomes and encompass the differences in equality of opportunity as well. The latter approach pays greater attention to the wider social, political and economic circumstances, which hinder individuals from accessing and competing at the same level. Various sets of contingencies affect the real opportunities people have, generating variations in the process of converting economic resources or social contexts into educational achievements. This approach follows the shift in twentieth century thought on inequality and justice, which made a distinction between “outcomes” (i.e., utility and welfare) and “opportunities” (i.e., primary goods; capabilities etc.). 2 The main arguments in this system of thought are that the process of acquiring outcomes must also be considered in determining justice (Dworkin, 1981) and that the process is dependent not only on initial endowments but on individual agency as well. This shift from a utilitarian approach, which focused on equality of outcomes to one that highlighted equality of opportunity as the basis for social justice marked a major shift in the philosophical traditions surrounding social policy. Not only did it give primacy to the “original position” (Rawls, 1971) it brought in the idea of individual responsibility, which had been the major criticism of anti-egalitarian thought. However, in recognizing the extent to which individuals are responsible for the outcomes they enjoy allowance must be made for the fact that outcomes may also be determined by factors beyond individual control. This is especially so for children, where inequalities experienced by them are predominantly due to their circumstance, and thus mostly beyond the pale of their agency. Primary and secondary education, for instance, take place when the person is still, arguably, below the age of consent, that is, the age at which children could be held at least partially responsible for the various choices they make (Paes de Barros et al 2009, Reomer 1998). In other words, the contribution of this tradition is to suggest that a just society could be achieved through ensuring equality of opportunity by providing “primary goods” (Rawls, 1971) or a set of “capabilities” (Sen, 1980) that would enable every citizen to achieve his/her life plan.

Following this approach, we examine the broad trends in education in India to unpack the implications for social policy with respect to the objective of equality of opportunity.

In 2011, Mamata Banerjee and party, Trinamool Congress, stormed to power in West Bengal under the simple slogan poriborton (change). In this piece, Bhanu Joshi, Ashish Ranjan, and Neelanjan explore how Mamata went about demonstrating this change to the West Bengal, as well as the architecture of Trinamool Congress’ thumping victory in the 2016 state election.

This paper explores the interaction of politics and business through the lens of the city. The power of business to influence politics in India would lead to a prediction that Indian cities are, in the classic sense of the term, growth machines. Yet we argue in this paper that fundamental problems of governance in India’s megacities have precluded the possibility of business coalitions exerting cohesive influence over investments policies in cities. The result has been the predominance of what we call cabals, that are expert at extracting rents from the city, but in the end fail to promote development in the sense of an institutionalized process of economic and social improvement in the city. Where there has been high growth, it has not been accompanied by the expansion of the cities’ infrastructure and overall coordination capacities. In the end, what is good for business and politicians had neither been good for capitalism in terms of dynamic accumulation nor for inclusion of middle and poorer social groups.

Even as the Joint Parliamentary Committee’s report on the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (RFCTLARR) is awaited, several states have already brought about changes that severely compromise the scope of clauses related to consent, Social Impact Assessment (SIA), food security and higher compensations. These changes also restrict the applicability of the 2013 law at state level.

States have executed these changes through Rules under Section 109 of the Act, or have enacted their own state level land acquisition legislations using Article 254(2) of the Constitution of India. States, which have exercised the latter option, have managed to override the provisions of the central law. In the present case this has meant doing away with the provisions of consent and Social Impact Assessment. This paper traces how, and to what extent, the provisions of the central law have been diluted by the states. Hindi translation of this paper is available here.

Despite sustained efforts to reform the sector, electricity distribution in India remains amidst complex problems, manifested in the form of loss-making distribution utilities, poor quality of service, governance ambiguities, and absence of basic data. The current wave of reforms seeks to turnaround the sector’s performance by transforming the generation mix, strengthening the network infrastructure, ensuring universal access and better consumer experience, and financial revival of discoms. While policy signals from the centre appear to be promising and ambitious, given the past records, execution of these reform plans at the state level is uncertain.

Against this backdrop, the paper analyses the distribution reform initiated from the centre and the role played by the central government in shaping ideas and stimulating change at the state level. Looking into various diagnoses of the challenges and subsequent reform initiatives, the paper seeks to explain the political economy of successive reform attempts and their outcomes. It also identifies gaps in the current wave of reforms and raises questions for further exploration.

Suggested Citation
Swain, Ashwini K (2016): ‘Political Economy of Distribution Reforms in Indian Electricity’, Working Paper, Initiative on Climate, Energy and Environment, New Delhi: Centre for Policy Research.

For further information on the paper, please contact Ashwini Swain at ashwini@ashwiniswain.net

India emerged as a key player in the recent international climate talks in Paris. On the global stage, India reiterated its commitment towards clean energy and reducing carbon emissions.1 India’s increased thrust on renewable energy is outlined in the 2015 national budget, which set a five-fold increase in renewable energy targets to achieve 175 GW by 2022. This comprises 100 GW solar, 60 GW wind, 10 GW biomass and 5 GW small hydropower capacity, supported by a substantial budgetary allocation. The existing generation capacity is dominated by conventional coal-fired thermal power (211 GW as of May, 2016, 70% of total capacity).

State distribution companies (Discoms) are by far the largest purchaser of electricity, including that from renewable energy sources. Therefore, the ability of the Discoms to purchase such power lies at the heart of the success of the national level directional shift from conventional to renewable power. However, presently, Discoms are reeling under massive debts and their actions are often dictated by local political factors rather than the achievement of operational and technical efficiency. Working towards the ambitious national renewable energy targets necessarily requires a revamp of the electricity distribution sector. Major legislative amendments and policy changes have been made and are underway at the central level to create an enabling environment for the nationwide growth of renewable energy.

This paper proposes to analyse the existing constitutional and regulatory framework within which Discoms and other key stakeholders in the renewable power sector operate. The implications of the recently proposed amendments to the Electricity Act, 2003 (Electricity Act), the National Tariff Policy and provisions of the Draft Renewable Energy Act will be discussed in detail. A discussion on renewable energy is incomplete without an understanding of the legislative and judicial trends that govern the Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO) imposed on Discoms. The paper offers an insight into the perspectives of Discoms, regulators and governments on RPO compliance. Further, the larger debate surrounding electricity sector reform and its implications for the renewable power sector have been analysed.

Suggested citation
Kaladharan, Megha. 2016. ‘Renewable Energy in India: An Analysis of the Regulatory Environment and Evolving Policy Trends’. Working Paper, Initiative on Climate Energy and Environment, New Delhi. Centre for Policy Research.

For further information on the paper, please contact Megha Kaladharan at megha.kaladharan@gmail.com

Introduction of competition and providing consumers choice of supplier have been two of the main aims of reform of the electricity sector in India. This paper examines the experience with three measures to fulfill these aims: (1) open-access to the transmission and distribution system; (2) allowing multiple distribution licensees in an area; and (3) proposed Electricity Act Amendments (EAA) for separation of carriage and content in the distribution system for electricity. Open access and multiple distribution licenses have not been very successful for two main reasons. First, there is a mismatch between the perspective of the Centre and the States; the Centre has a long-term perspective focused on competition and efficiency while the States are concerned about more immediate issues of protecting the discoms’ revenues and maintaining affordable tariffs. Second, incomplete and/or faulty legislation and regulations have resulted in ad-hoc rule-making and the Courts having to step in to fill the legislative and regulatory gaps. Two particularly significant examples are: (1) provision in the Electricity Act allowing multiple distribution licensees in the same area that has led to duplication of resources and high tariffs for consumers in Mumbai; and (2) the lack of comprehensive regulations defining the relationship between discoms and open access consumers that has led to difficulties for discoms in managing load swings and in power procurement planning; development of model regulations would be useful. The paper also identifies difficulties in achieving retail competition due to fragmented fuel markets, and suggests ensuring effective wholesale competition first. The proposed framework for separation of carriage and content in EAA is very cumbersome and may not achieve the stated goals. In addition, there are concerns about the impact on small consumers and the finances of the provider of last resort. The implications of EAA should to be thought through more thoroughly before implementation.

Suggested citation
Singh, Daljit. 2016. ‘Competition and Choice in Electricity Distribution in India’, Working Paper, Initiative on Climate Energy and Environment, New Delhi. Centre for Policy Research.

For further information on the paper, please contact Daljit Singh at daljitss@gmail.com