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Subject: Governance

Important aspects of Society

  • [pib] SDG India Index, 2021

    The third rendition of India’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Index will be launched by NITI Aayog today.

    First launched in December 2018, the index has become the primary tool for monitoring progress on the SDGs in the country and has simultaneously fostered competition among the States and UTs.

    SDG India Index

    • The index measures the progress at the national and sub-national level in the country’s journey towards meeting the Global Goals and targets.
    • It has been successful as an advocacy tool to propagate the messages of sustainability, resilience, and partnerships, as well.
    • From covering 13 Goals, 39 targets, and 62 indicators in the first edition in 2018-19 to 17 Goals, 54 targets and 100 indicators in the second; this third edition of the index covers 17 Goals, 70 targets, and 115 indicators.

    Aims and objectives

    • The construction of the index and the ensuing methodology embodies the central objectives of measuring the performance of States and UTs on the SDGs and ranking them.
    • It aims at supporting States and UTs in identifying areas which require more attention; and promoting healthy competition among them.

    Methodology and Process

    • The index estimation is based on data on indicators for the first 16 goals, with a qualitative assessment for Goal 17.
    • The technical process of target setting and normalization of scores follow the globally established methodology.
    • While target setting enables the measurement of the distance from the target for each indicator, the process of normalization of positive and negative indicators allows for comparability and estimation of goal wise scores.
    • The composite score of a State is derived by assigning each goal the same weight, keeping in mind the indivisible nature of the 2030 Agenda.
    • The selection of indicators is preceded by a consultative process undertaken in close coordination with MoSPI, Union Ministries and stakeholders from States and UTs.

    Highlights of the 2021 Report

    *The launch has been postponed due to model code of conduct by the Election Commission.

    Its significance

    • The index represents the articulation of the comprehensive nature of the Global Goals under the 2030 Agenda while being attuned to the national priorities.
    • The modular nature of the index has become a policy tool and a ready reckoner for gauging the progress of States and UTs on the nature of goals including health, education, gender, economic growth and climate change and the environment.

    Back2Basics: Sustainable Development Goals

    • The UN General Assembly in its 70thSession considered and adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the next 15 years.
    • The 17 SDGs came into force with effect from 1st January 2016.
    • Though not legally binding, the SDGs have become de facto international obligations and have potential to reorient domestic spending priorities of the countries during the next fifteen years.
    • Countries are expected to take ownership and establish a national framework for achieving these Goals.
    • Implementation and success will rely on countries’ own sustainable development policies, plans and programmes.

  • Implications of increasing prices of subsidised LPG on Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY).

    Price increase of subsidised LPG

    • Subsidised LPG prices have increased by a massive 50% in this financial year alone.
    • This would have a significant impact on the government’s flagship scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY).
    • Since 2016, PMUY has provided LPG connections to 80 million poor households to reduce women’s drudgery and indoor air pollution.
    • Providing an upfront connection subsidy of ₹1,600, PMUY helped expand LPG coverage to more than 85% of households.

    Challenges

    • Large-scale primary surveys by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) suggest that, on average, recent PMUY beneficiaries consumed only about half the LPG compared to long-standing regular consumers.
    • Limited uptake of LPG among poor households has two main reasons.
    • First, the effective price of LPG is not affordable for such households, despite the subsidy.
    • Second, many rural consumers have access to freely available biomass, making it difficult for LPG to displace it.
    • Beyond causing indoor air pollution, biomass use for cooking contributes up to 30% to the ambient PM2.5 at the national level, more than the contribution of transport, crop residue or coal burning.

    Impact of price rise

    • The recent increases in the subsidised LPG price have made it more difficult for the poor to sustain LPG use.
    • As the pandemic set in, the LPG subsidised price began to rise, even when global LPG prices plummeted.
    • Now with LPG prices rising globally, a 50% reduction in the LPG subsidy budget for FY22 (versus FY21) does not bode well.
    • The information about LPG price build-up and subsidy has become more difficult to obtain in recent years.

    Way forward

    • The central government tread should balance between LPG subsidies and sustained clean fuel consumption in poorer households by better targeting of subsidy.
    • One approach for such targeting is to rely on the existing LPG consumption patterns of consumers. 
    • Provide households exhibiting low consumption or a decline in LPG consumption over time with greater subsidy per cylinder to sustain health gains.
    • Further, the subsidy levels could be dynamic with different slabs reflecting the previous year’s consumption.
    • Alongside, the de-duplication efforts must continue to avoid subsidy leakages.

    Consider the question “What is the social impact of the Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY)? What are the challenges in its success.”

    Conclusion

    In the post-pandemic rebuilding, the continued support to the economically poor for sustaining LPG use is not merely a fiscal subsidy but also a social investment to free-up women’s productive time and reduce India’s public health burden.

  • What we must consider before digitising India’s healthcare

    As India seeks to create digital health infrastructure, it must consider several issues.

    Integrated digital health infrastructure

    • The National Digital Health Mission aims to develop the backbone needed for the integrated digital health infrastructure of India.
    • This can help not only with diagnostics and management of health episodes, but also with broader public health monitoring, socio-economic studies, epidemiology, research, prioritising resource allocation and policy interventions. 
    • However, before we start designing databases and APIs and drafting laws, we must be mindful of certain considerations for design choices and policies to achieve the desired social objectives.

    Factors to be considered

    1) Carefully developing pathway to public good

    • There must be a careful examination of how exactly digitisation may facilitate better diagnosis and management, and an understanding of the data structures required for effective epidemiology.
    • We must articulate how we may use digitisation and data to understand and alleviate health problems such as malnutrition and child stunting.
    • We need the precise data we require to better understand crucial maternal- and childcare-related problems.

    2) Balancing between public good and individual rights

    • The potential tensions between public good and individual rights must be examined, as must the suitable ways to navigate them.
    • Moreover, for the balancing to be sound and for determining the level of due diligence required, it is imperative to clearly define the operational standards for privacy management.
    • Conflating privacy with security, as is typical in careless approaches, will invariably lead to problematic solutions.
    • In fact, most attempts at building health data infrastructures worldwide — including in the UK, Sweden, Australia, the US and several other countries — have led to serious privacy-related controversies and have not yet been completely successful.

    3) Managing the sector specific identities

    • Even if we define and use a sector-specific identity, the question of when and how to link it with that of other sectors remains.
    • For example, with banking or insurance for financial transactions, or with welfare and education for transactions and analytics.
    • Indiscriminate linking may break silos and create a digital panopticon, whereas not linking at all will result in not realising the full powers of data analytics and inference.

    4) Working out the operational requirement of data infrastructure

    • We need to work out the operational requirements of the data infrastructure in ways that are informed by, and consonant with, the previous points.
    • In other words, the design of the operationalisation elements must follow the deliberations on above points, and not run ahead of them.
    • This requires identifying the diverse data sources and their complexity — which may include immunisation records, birth and death records, informal health care workers, dispensaries etc.
    • It also requires an understanding of their frequency of generation, error models, access rights, interoperability, sharing and other operational requirements.
    • There also are the complex issues of research and non-profit uses of data, and of data economics for private sector medical research.

    5) Issue of due process

    • Finally, “due process” has always been a weak point in India, particularly for technological interventions.
    • Building an effective system that can engender people’s trust not only requires managing the floor of the Parliament and passing a just and proportional law, but also building a transparent process of design and refinement through openness and public consultations.
    • In particular, technologists and technocrats should take care to not define “public good” as what they can conveniently deliver, and instead understand what is actually required.
    • While we can understand the urge to move forward quickly, given the urgent need to improve health outcomes in the country, deliberate care is needed.

    Consider the question “While seeking to develop digital health infrastructure through the National Digital Health Mission, we should be mindful of certain considerations for design choices and policies to achieve the desired social objectives. Comment.”

    Conclusion

    Developing a comprehensive understanding of the considerations related to health data infrastructure may also inform the general concerns of e-governance and administrative digitisation in India, which have not been all smooth sailing.

  • Clustering educational institutes and research centres

    National Education Policy 2020 (NEP) envisions establishing large multidisciplinary universities to promote research directed to solve contemporary national problems, and provides the option of setting up clusters of higher education institutes.

    Q. Discuss the salient features of Cluster Universities as propounded by the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP).

    What are Education Clusters?

    • This new concept is dedicated to students who want to discover & learn new things regardless of the field/branch/discipline they’re in.
    • Currently, higher educational institutions (HEIs) follow the structure of single-stream education.
    • Generally, what happens is that a student who has taken a major is allowed to study relevant subjects. He/she can’t opt for subjects from other majors.
    • This may restrict students to widen their thinking & learning capability.
    • With the introduction of Cluster University, the single-stream approach of teaching-learning will be ruled out.
    • All the institutions including the ones that are offering professional degrees will be transformed into a rationalized architecture that is popularly being referred to as- multidisciplinary clusters.

    What are the Key Benefits of Cluster Universities?

    More Space for Student-Teacher Collaboration

    • With HEIs getting merged to form a large unit, there would be more space for better student-teacher collaboration.
    • Students that are genuinely interested in learning a particular course would come together helping faculties to achieve better student learning outcomes.

    Inculcating Leadership Qualities in Students

    • Students would be more confident as they pursue their choice of subjects. They would get an open field to polish their skills and also develop new ones.
    • Thus, the process would ultimately lead to the inculcation of leadership qualities in students.

    Accelerate Institutional Networking

    • Since the Cluster University concept of the new education policy speaks of merging multidisciplinary HEIs, institutional networking would obviously go uphill.

    Fewer Resources & More Expertise

    • Many students would be able to learn under a single entity. It is bound to increase the outcomes with comparatively fewer resources.
    • Such universities would increase faculty strength, both in terms of numbers and diversity of disciplines, and facilitate the conduct of research on real-life problems.

    Way forward

    • For moving away from single-discipline institutions to multi-disciplinary universities, clustering is a promising model to achieve a critical mass in a university to invigorate research.
    • Many industry associations have established research centres and more could be encouraged to do.
    • India needs to earnestly pursue this model.

  • What changes after COVID-19 vaccination?

    As the vaccination drive gains momentum, questions have emerged about appropriate behaviour after being vaccinated.

    What does being vaccinated mean?

    • Being fully vaccinated means a period of two weeks or more following the receipt of the second dose in a two-dose series, or two weeks or more following the receipt of a single-dose vaccine.
    • In India, currently, both vaccines being used — Covishield and Covaxin — follow a two-dose regimen.
    • Typically, the immune response takes a while to build up after a vaccine shot.
    • After the first jab of a two-dose vaccine, a good immune response kicks in within about two weeks. It is the second dose that boosts the immune response.

    Is the COVID threat averted?

    • It is still unclear how long immunity lasts from the vaccines at hand now.
    • Whether or not the immune response is durable, how it performs with the passage of time, and how long it lasts can be found out only by monitoring people who have already been vaccinated over a period.
    • If the vaccinated individual is still carrying the virus, the vaccine may provide immunity from severe disease for him or her, but the individual could still transmit the virus.

    What changes after you get a vaccine shot?

    • After vaccination, one risk of severe disease from COVID-19 goes down dramatically.
    • There is not enough evidence yet of vaccine response for some age groups, and vaccines are in short supply in the community.

  • Women’s needs are key to Swachh Bharat success

    The article highlights the central role of women in the success of the Swacch Bharat Mission.

    Recognising the gender dimensions of sanitation in India

    • The Swachh Bharat Grameen Phase I guidelines (2017) state that requirements and sensitivities related to gender are to be taken into account at all stages of sanitation programmes.
    • Planning, procurement, infrastructure creation, and monitoring are the basic tenets of implementation in Swachh Bharat and the guidelines for the first phase of the mission called for strengthening the role of women.
    • The states were accordingly expected to ensure adequate representation of women in the village water and sanitation committees (VWSCs), leading to optimal gender outcomes.
    • The department of Drinking Water and Sanitation released the guidelines, recognising the gender dimensions of sanitation in India.
    • Swachh Bharat Mission 2 .0 speaks of sustained behavioural change while embarking on the newer agendas of sustainable solid waste management and safe disposal of wastewater and reuse.
    • Besides the government, the role of non-state actors like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Unicef and several NGOs, must be lauded as we pursue sustainable sanitation using a powerful gender lens.

    Challenges and solutions

    • There were inevitably cases where women were fronts for spouses.
    • This capturing has happened in panchayat seats as well but research has shown that over time, women do pick up the challenge, and if voted back are likely to assume charge.
    • The government has also very effectively used over 8 lakh swachhagrahis, mainly women, who for small honorariums work to push through behavioural change at the community level.
    • There are no quick solutions other than adopting concerted approaches to ensure the survival and protection of the girl child through good health from sanitation and nutrition.
    • Information, education, and communication, which aims at behaviour change of the masses, is key to the success of the swachhta mission 2.0.
    • Changes in SBM messaging reflects major transformations attempting to popularise and portray stories of women groups and successful women swachhta champions.

    Need for monitoring and evaluation system

    • A national monitoring and evaluation system to track and measure gender outcomes in SBM is necessary.
    • Several researchers in this space have commented that gender analysis frameworks have a long history in development practice.
    • We can learn from these frameworks to support design, implementation, and measurement.

    Conclusion

    There is no doubt that women can help to drive change and bring about lasting change as the jan andolan for swachhta, health and sanitation gains momentum.

  • [pib] Ease of Living Index (EOLI) 2020

    The Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs has announced the release of the final rankings of the Ease of Living Index (EoLI) 2020 and the Municipal Performance Index (MPI) 2020.

    For any such index, always note the verticals i.e. the various parameters.

    Ease of Living Index (EoLI)

    • It is an assessment tool that evaluates the quality of life and the impact of various initiatives for urban development.
    • It provides a comprehensive understanding of participating cities across India based on the quality of life, the economic ability of a city, and its sustainability and resilience.
    • It examines the outcomes that lead to existing living conditions through pillars of Quality of Life, Economic Ability, Sustainability.

    Municipal Performance Index (MPI)

    • It was launched as an accompaniment to the Ease of Living Index.
    • The five verticals under MPI are Services, Finance, Policy, Technology and Governance.
    • The Ease of Living Index encapsulates the outcome indicators while the Municipal Performance Index captures the enabling input parameters.

    Performance of cities

    • Bengaluru emerged as the top performer in the Million+ categories, followed by Pune, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Surat, Navi Mumbai, Coimbatore, Vadodara, Indore, and Greater Mumbai.
    • In the Less than Million category, Shimla was ranked the highest in ease of living, followed by Bhubaneshwar, Silvassa, Kakinada, Salem, Vellore, Gandhinagar, Gurugram, Davangere, and Tiruchirappalli.

    Why need such indices?

    • The EoLI primarily seeks to accelerate India’s urban development outcomes, including the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
    • The findings from the index can help guide evidence-based policymaking.
    • It also promotes healthy competition among cities, encouraging them to learn from their peers and advance their development trajectory.

  • India’s migrant workers need better policies

    The article analyses the draft policy document for migrant labourers prepared by the NITI Aayog.

    Draft policy by NITI Aayog

    • The Niti Aayog, on the request of the Ministry of Labour and Employment, has prepared an umbrella policy document for migrant labourers, including informal sector workers.
    • The draft policy makes significant strides in providing a perspective on recognising the magnitude and role of migrant workers, their problems and vulnerabilities, and the role and responsibilities of various stakeholders in addressing these.
    •  It states that a sound policy must be viewed from a “human rights, property rights, economic, social development, and foreign policy lens”.
    • It reiterates that policy should lead to the fulfilment of ILO commitments and the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 8.8 on the protection of labour rights and providing a safe and secure working environment for all workers, particularly migrants.

    Portability of social protection to address vulnerabilities

    • The policy describes many sources of vulnerabilities of migrant labourers, ranging from their invisibility and political and social exclusion to informal work arrangements, exploitation and denial of labour rights, lack of collective voice, exclusion from social protection arrangements, formal skills, health, education, and housing.
    • Following from this, it identifies portability of social protection, voting rights, right to the city (the collective ownership and participation of citizens in cities they have helped build) and health, education and housing facilities as key issues to be dealt with.
    • It also reflects on the need for pro-poor development and provision of livelihoods in the source areas.

    Governance structure

    • The draft policy proposes a governance structure with the Ministry of Labour as the nodal ministry and a dedicated unit under it which will act as a focal point for inter-ministerial and Centre-state coordination.
    • It also proposes mechanisms for coordinating the effort on inter-state migration, especially on principal migration corridors.
    • The policy document creates a framework under which migrant workers and their families can access entitlements and possibly work in a safer and better environment.

    Issues need to be addressed

    1) Failure to address cause of migration of labour

    • The National Commission for Rural Labour argued way back in 1991 that unequal development was the main cause of labour migration.
    • In the last three decades, disparities in development and inequalities have grown ceaselessly, calling for deep correctives.
    • Without such correction, migration and the adverse inclusion of migrants in labour markets is bound to grow unchecked.
    • The report falls short of acknowledging this.

    2) Exclusion of migrants urban local governments

    • While the report correctly pinpoints the exclusion of migrants by urban local governments in the provision of basic entitlements, it fails to acknowledge the root cause of the lopsided urban development strategy.
    • The urban strategy has catered to national and global capital and the urban middle classes, marginalising the poor, particularly the migrants.

    3) Denial of social security

    • The report also makes a false dichotomy between approaches which rely on cash transfers and special dispensations and a second approach which enhances the agency and capability of migrants and removes constraints on these.
    • The denial of the first approach has led the report to brush aside the migrants’ and informal workers’ right to social security.
    • Social security is acknowledged as a universal human right in international covenants to which India is a signatory and is given due place in the Constitution.
    • The National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) showed in 2006 that providing a minimum level of universal social security was financially and administratively feasible.
    • The Commission also recommended a universal registration system and issuance of smart social security cards, but its recommendations have unfortunately remained a dead letter.

    4) Approach towards labour rights and labour policy

    • By putting grievance and legal redressal above regulation and enforcement on which it remains silent, the report puts the cart before the horse.
    • Surprisingly, the report does not take stock of the new labour codes, mentioning only the defunct laws that were subsumed by them.
    • The Codes accentuate the very problems — informality, precarity, the role of contractors and the lack of organisation — which the report itself describes.
    • The Codes, in promoting ease of business, have tilted the balance firmly in favour of capital.

    Conclusion

    In essence, the draft policy framework identifies the problems but fails to address the policy distortions which lie at their root. Hopefully, however, the draft will be opened up for further discussions and feedback to enrich and complete what is already a significant beginning.

  • The IT Act new rules and the challenge of Big Tech

    The article discusses the issues with the new rules issues under the IT Act.

    Issues with the new rules

    1) No discussion

    • Last week, the Union Government issued a set of rules under the Information Technology Act, superseding rules issued under Section 79 of that statute in 2011. 
    • This has happened in the absence of open and public discussion and without any parliamentary study and scrutiny.

    2) Concerns over legal basis

    • The Union Government has chosen to pass these rules under the requirement to outline the due diligence that Internet intermediaries have to follow in order to be able to claim their qualified legal immunity under Section 79 of the IT Act.
    • These rules at the outset appear unlawful even with respect to whether they could have been issued under the Information Technology Act in the manner chosen by the government, leave alone their constitutionality with respect to fundamental rights.
    • The government’s gazette notification has further claimed that the rules were also issued under the legal authority to specific procedure for blocking web content under Section 69A of the IT Act.
    • However,  rules overseeing government web content blocking powers have already been issued for that section in 2009, and not superseded.

    3) Using rule making power to issue primary legislation

    • The ability to issue rules under a statute — i.e. to frame subordinate legislation — is by its nature a limited, constrained power.
    • The executive branch is subordinate to what Parliament has permitted it and cannot use its rule-making power to seek to issue primary legislation by itself.
    • With the present Internet content and social media rules, the Union Government has done precisely that.
    • The executive branch has created new rules that apply only to “significant social media intermediaries” — a term that appears nowhere in the Information Technology Act.
    • The rules have grown to include a chapter on how digital news sites have to be registered before the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
    • However, digital news service registration is not required under the IT Act and streaming video content has not been included under the ambit of the Cinematograph Act.

    Consider the question “What are the challenges in the regulation of Big Tech to democracies? Suggest the measures to deal with these challenges.”

    Conclusion

    Instead of advancing Internet content control, India needs to advancing surveillance law reform or enacting a strong statutory data protection framework.

  • ‘Lateral Entry’ into Bureaucracy: Reason, Process, and Controversy

    This newscard is an excerpt from the original article published in the Indian Express.

    Background

    • Earlier this month, the UPSC issued an advertisement seeking applications for the posts of Joint Secretary and Director in central government Departments.
    • These individuals, who would make a “lateral entry” into the government secretariat, would be contracted for three to five years.
    • These posts were “unreserved”, meaning were no quotas for SCs, STs and OBCs.

    UPSC begins lateral entry

    • The new ad is for the second round of such recruitments.
    • Earlier, the government had decided to appoint experts from outside the government to positions of Joint Secretary in different Ministries/Departments and at the level of Deputy Secretary/Director in 2018.

    Q.In light of the growing need for Lateral Entry in top secretarial posts, discuss the need for enhancing the professional competence of Civil Servants in India.(150W)

    What is ‘Lateral Entry’ into government?

    • NITI Aayog, in 2017 had recommended the induction of personnel at middle and senior management levels in the central government.
    • These ‘lateral entrants’ would be part of the central secretariat which in the normal course has only career bureaucrats from the All India Services/ Central Civil Services.

    What are the ranks invited for this entry?

    • A Joint Secretary, appointed by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), has the third-highest rank (after Secretary and Additional Secretary) in a Department.
    • It functions as the administrative head of a wing in the Department.
    • Directors are a rank below that of Joint Secretary.

    What is the government’s reasoning for lateral entry?

    • Lateral recruitment is aimed at achieving the twin objectives of bringing in fresh talent as well as augments the availability of manpower.
    • Government has, from time to time, appointed some prominent persons for specific assignments in government, keeping in view their specialised knowledge and expertise in the domain area.
    • Indeed, the first ARC had pointed out the need for specialization as far back as 1965.
    • The Surinder Nath Committee and the Hota Committee followed suit in 2003 and 2004, respectively, as did the second ARC.
    • In 2005, the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) recommended an institutionalized, transparent process for lateral entry at both the Central and state levels.

    Why is lateral entry sometimes criticised?

    • Groups representing SCs, STs and OBCs have protested the fact that there is no reservation in these appointments.
    • Some argue that the government is opening back doors to bring its own lobby openly.

    Mentor’s comment: Why is lateral entry necessary?

    For the sake of political economy

    • Pushback from bureaucrats, serving and retired, and the sheer institutional inertia of civil services has existed largely unchanged for decades have prevented progress.
    • The importance of economic effectiveness has risen concurrently.
    • That stagnation means the civil services as they exist today—most crucially, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS)—are unsuited to the country’s political economy in many ways.
    • The need for having bureaucrats act as binding agents, no longer exist.
    • Others, such as socioeconomic development, have transmuted to the point where the state’s methods of addressing them are coming in for a rethink.

    Conclusion

    • Pushback is inevitable since every smallest policy change is resisted in our country.
    • It is both a workaround for the civil services’ structural failings and an antidote to the complacency that can set in a career-based service.
    • The second ARC report points out that it is both possible and desirable to incorporate elements of a position-based system where lateral entry and specialization are common.

    Way forward

    • India’s civil services need reform. There is little argument about this.
    • These are not entirely new in India.
    • Domain experts have been brought in from outside the services to head various committees, advisory bodies and organizations.
    • Internal reforms—such as insulation from political pressure and career paths linked to specialization—and external reforms such as lateral entry are complementary.