The Quantum Hub

An open digital ecosystem that brings job seekers, employers, skills providers and government agencies can be implemented with ease, with a little help from government and technology

Authors: Rohit Kumar & Deepro Guha
Published: July 26, 2021 in the Hindu Business Line

With the receding number of Covid cases, roll-back of lockdowns and cautious optimism about a recovering economy, skilling initiatives are in the spotlight yet again. On the occasion of ‘World Youth Skill Day’, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has put his weight behind the Skill India Mission and called skill development of the new generation a national need, important to building a strong foundation of Aatma Nirbhar Bharat.

Skilling India’s youth should undoubtedly be a high priority. But government initiatives to improve India’s skilling track record have not been very successful in the past. An analysis by the Sharda Committee (2016) found that skill development courses often offered poor placements to participants and added limited value to their employment opportunities.

While some skilling schemes have since been restructured, the problem has not been fully addressed. For instance, when the government introduced the Garib Kalyan Rozgar Yojana (GKRY) last year to address skilling and unemployment issues that emerged in the wake of reverse migration, it did not pan out as anticipated. Many reports suggest that GKRY’s demand-driven skilling initiatives were not successful; they did not reach the intended beneficiaries.

This hints at a systemic problem that affects the talent ecosystem in India.

Think about Asha — a young woman contemplating her next career move. How should she go about finding her calling? Where should she get trained? And what kind of jobs would be open to her? Stories of many youth in India today mirror that of Asha’s. While they have a strong drive to better their lives, they are limited by a lack of access.

A major challenge that India currently faces with respect to its talent pool is one of ‘matching’ — between jobseekers and jobs, and between skill-seekers and skill-training providers. Search costs are prohibitive for employers and a candidate’s qualifications are difficult to verify. For jobseekers, there seem to be many available jobs but listings are spread across different platforms and there is no real way to establish quality of job roles. For someone like Asha to successfully navigate through this maze would be almost impossible.

Similar issues plague the arena of skilling; candidates looking to upskill find it difficult to connect with credible skill providers, and ‘certified’ trainees often do not have the required skills to make them employable. Data from India’s biggest skilling programme, PMKVY, testifies to this fact. Over the last few years, only one in four persons who trained under PMKVY, were actually placed.

Designing the future of work
Technology can potentially bridge these gaps that we observe in the labour market. Already, several employers conduct recruitment through digital platforms, and there has been a significant ramping up of State level employment initiatives such as the Delhi Rozgar Bazaar — a government job portal.

To extend support to blue and grey collar workers, the Central Government has also announced a beta version of the Unnati platform. Meanwhile, there are a number of promising private sector initiatives that have come up, such as a new hyperlocal job search portal named Jobsgaar as well as other established platforms like QuikrJobs and AasaanJobs.

While these initiatives are impressive, connecting them through a common digital platform can yield immense benefit. In fact, the government has already indicated its plans to develop Unnati as a “platform of platforms” to facilitate interoperability and bring together the entire ecosystem, in the form of a national open digital ecosystem — a Talent NODE.

People like Asha can benefit greatly from such a Talent NODE. In one place, they can find information on accredited skilling programmes including placement records, as well as details about employment opportunities. Private players can seek insights from this platform to create value-added services such as counselling, aptitude testing and credit transfers between training institutes. As more initiatives get integrated into this platform, it can host a wealth of information, offering a bird’s eye view for India’s talent.

Building a robust Talent NODE
While the Talent NODE is a promising idea, its execution will need innovative solutions to address several dogged challenges. The first issue is the verification of existing skills — a problem that has been especially hard to solve. Looking to international examples, Singapore uses “OpenCerts”, a blockchain platform to validate educational certificates.

While this could work for university/college degrees, verifying skillsets for grey collar jobs could prove tricky. This would require further standardisation and certification of vocational courses — a task which the Ministry of Skill Development has already started on through the National Occupational Standards.

The second related issue is that of universal access. The informal sector accounts for approximately 93 per cent of the employed population in India. In the case of the Talent NODE, this population could face a high risk of exclusion. Mitigating the exclusion risk would require engagement with marginalised groups, via both online and offline channels.

Common Service Centres (CSCs), for example, could be used to facilitate last-mile reach. Similarly, user-friendly, vernacular interfaces could greatly benefit job and skill seekers across segments.

The Talent NODE is by no means a silver bullet. But if done right, through an innovative and inclusive approach, between 50-80 million people can be expected to benefit from new jobs or jobs that are better matched to their skills. A million different opportunities firing up a million ‘ashas’ or aspirations, for millions like Asha — all through one inter-connected ecosystem.

Authors: Shilpa Kumar & Shivani Gupta
Published: July 29, 2021 in the Indian Express

India is set to double its urban population between 2018 and 2030, with estimates projecting that by 2028, New Delhi would become the most populous city on the planet. This large-scale migration to urban centres in India is bound to create pressure on housing markets. As per the Report of the Technical Group (TG-12) on Estimation of Urban Housing Shortage (2012), the economically weaker sections and low-income groups currently face 96 per cent of the total housing shortage in India. In such a scenario, building a market for affordable and reliable rental housing is an important policy objective to achieve.

According to the 2011 Census data, nearly 11 million housing units were vacant in the country. This combined with a shortage of nearly 19 million units in 2012 presents a perplexing picture. There are several policy bottlenecks due to which homeowners prefer to keep their homes vacant instead of renting them out. Firstly, the existence of pro-tenant rent control laws across Indian states continues to be an obstacle. These laws protect the rights of the tenants while diluting those of the homeowners. In the case of housing that was not vacant, as per the National Sample Survey Organisation’s data of 2012, 71 per cent of households living in rented accommodations did not have a written contract. This informality could be, in part, a result of this pro-tenant character of the rent control laws and partly because of the large proportion of informal housing. Secondly, judicial delays in case of disputes have dampened the spirits of homeowners over time.

Acknowledging the issues with the rental housing sector today, the Union cabinet recently approved the Model Tenancy Act, 2021, which can significantly boost India’s rental markets.

The Act calls for the repeal of existing rent control laws in all states and Union territories, removing monetary ceilings on the rent amount and allowing for negotiation on the duration of tenancy between homeowners and tenants based on market standards. The Act addresses various challenges that exist in the rental market for both homeowners and tenants, ranging from the fear of illegal occupation/eviction, arbitrary security deposit and structural maintenance-related demands, and high transaction and legal costs.

The Act facilitates another long pending demand of experts for special fast-track courts to settle rental disputes. In India, an average commercial civil suit was disposed of in 1,445 days in a district court, as per World Bank’s Doing Business Report in 2018. To fast-track the disposal of rental disputes, the Model Tenancy Act, 2021 envisions improved contract enforcement through a three-tier dispute redressal mechanism. However, protracted litigation remains a risk. While the adjudicatory bodies at the second and third-tier of appeal are required to dispose of cases within a 60-day timeline, no such time limit is placed on the first tier, the rent authority.

Nonetheless, the Model Tenancy Act, 2021 is expected to provide a fillip to private participation with the formalisation of rental housing markets in India. With a legal framework in place, the private sector can enter into affordable rental housing markets through models like “Build to Rent” and “Rent to Own”. Under the “Build to Rent” model, private residential properties, when built in the right locality such as employment and educational hubs, with the target demographic in mind, can serve as a reliable option for prospective tenants, while providing lucrative and regular returns to the owners. Under the “Rent to Own” model, the owner agrees to sell the house to the tenant in the future and the initial contract contains the necessary clauses to affect the future transfer of ownership. This model is popular across the housing markets of United Kingdom, Middle East and Africa and can serve well in Indian cities where developers are sitting on a large inventory of unsold ready-to-move in stock.

Finally, while the Model Tenancy Act, 2021 provides a promising framework for tenancy agreements in the future, past rental agreements under the states’ respective rent control laws will continue. The meagre rents that homeowners are allowed to charge under the rent control laws are the reason behind a large number of dilapidated housing units and chawls, such as in the case of Mumbai. Due to low rents, the homeowner does not have an incentive to improve the quality of their rental units. The low quality of these units is a major threat to the safety of the low-income groups and migrants living in them. This points to the need for a separate mechanism beyond the Model Tenancy Act that ensures the provision of safe and good quality rental units for tenants, while ensuring a fair economic return for homeowners.

As the Model Act has been circulated by the central government amongst the states, it is yet to be seen what changes are incorporated by the latter to suit the local context. While the Act is a much-needed reform for India’s housing sector, one hopes that states use this opportunity to unlock the economic value of vacant housing and increase access to good quality housing, for all demographics.

Kumar is a partner at Omidyar Network India and Gupta is a former Senior Policy Analyst at The Quantum Hub

Authors: Mayank Mishra & Aparajita Bharti
Published: September 16, 2021 in the Hindustan Times

The rise of big data and machine learning has caused an immense growth in powerful technologies and applications. But simultaneously, the same technologies have become a privacy nightmare for their users. The algorithms behind these technologies amass a huge amount of data from individuals, which is then used (or sold to other firms) to target, persuade, reward, or penalise users. While privacy issues have been extensively debated, a discussion on how data governance laws might impact women differently than men and affect their agency on the internet has been mostly missing.

 

“As India moves towards an increasingly digital society, how privacy and data governance laws may impact women’s safety and agency on the internet should not come as an afterthought.”

Women and men use digital technologies differently. According to a 2017 survey, women use social media (such as Facebook and Instagram) significantly more than men. At the same time, there appears to be a huge disparity in mobile ownership. The National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-20) indicates significant diversity between states and union territories (UTs) in terms of the percentage of women having a mobile phone, with figures ranging from 49% in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh to 91% in Goa. Areas with less penetration of phones among women indicate shared use of mobile phones in Indian families, which, in turn, impact women’s behaviour on the internet.

Women also face a higher risk of reputational loss online. Between 2017 and 2018, cases of cyberstalking or bullying of women or children increased by 36% while the conviction rate fell from 40% to 25%. Such issues can negatively affect the mental health of victims resulting from humiliation, diminishing self-esteem, and social isolation. These incidents also lead to a perception of the internet as an unsafe place for women.

Given these sensitivities around women’s data and its impact on their ability to use the internet, India’s various data governance proposals that are under discussion currently must be evaluated from a gender lens.

For example, the proposed Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill, 2019 imposes a blanket requirement for parental consent for processing the personal data of anyone below the age of 18 years. This effectively gives parents control over teens’ access to any internet platform. While protection of minors’ data is indeed important, a blanket requirement such as this coupled with the shared usage of mobile phones, may compromise the agency of teenage girls far more than boys, as families exert control over their usage. Most other countries have this age requirement at 13 years as teenagers make use of the internet to learn new skills, build new relationships and explore their identities.

Another example is the governance of non-personal data, a framework that will facilitate the usage of aggregate data to build Artificial Intelligence (AI) to deliver better services to Indian citizens. The Krish Gopalakrishnan Committee on non-personal data has come out with two different frameworks to facilitate this sharing of data. However, a larger discussion around algorithmic biases against women has been missing. AI algorithms learn the patterns in the training datasets to utilise that learning for predictive analytics, among other things. There are multiple ways in which this could lead to discriminatory outcomes for women.

First, through the underlying bias in the training datasets. For example, if an algorithm is trained on outcomes that are unfavourable for women, it will replicate the same in its predictions. Second, if women are underrepresented in the training dataset (very likely due to the existing digital divide), then it will result in products that aren’t designed for women, furthering the digital divide over time. For instance, if an automated speech recognition system is trained on a dataset that has disproportionately fewer voice snippets of women talking, it will make errors while trying to comprehend women’s voices. Therefore, perhaps a policy around AI development is more urgent and needs guardrails around ensuring that underlying datasets are not biased.

Further, from a privacy perspective, the risks of identification by piecing together different sets of non-personal data are far higher for women than men. For example, non-personal data from women’s health apps, when pieced together with shopping data, may risk revealing their identities and their reproductive health issues.

As India moves towards an increasingly digital society, how privacy and data governance laws may impact women’s safety and agency on the internet should not come as an afterthought. We need to have these discussions front and centre as these regulations can be a key building block to women’s agency on the internet and their participation in the economy of the future. We risk deepening the existing chasms in an increasingly digital world, if we do not get this right.

Author: Sonakshi Chaudhry
Published: June 22, 2021 in the Hindu Business Line

With the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, India has been battling a Hydra, with new issues emerging from the wounds of older ones. In response, the Centre and States have been working on two key points critical for our country’s recovery from the pandemic — the immediate healthcare response, and inoculation drives across the country. While the immediacy of these concerns is undoubtable, in addition to the health contours of this crisis, an equally close watch on its socio-economic aspects is essential towards designing a relief and recovery plan that is both inclusive and sustainable.

Reports have highlighted how different groups have been affected by the pandemic in myriad ways. A slew of measures, tailored to addressing the varying needs of these vulnerable groups, are therefore critical towards ensuring that households and families can sustain themselves through the pandemic. The announcement of the extension of the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana till November is a welcome step, but many more interventions like this are needed.

Need for more data
Perhaps the most fundamental first step towards pandemic relief is the collection of granular data, which can build a path to recovery. Reliable datasets will help assess deaths owing to the pandemic, reach vulnerable families such as those who have lost their primary breadwinners, plan healthcare and social expenditure, and measure adverse outcomes like school dropouts and job losses to better design policy responses. Also, while gender-disaggregated data has always been a consistent need, in light of the current situation — with mounting evidence of the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women and girls — these datasets are critical.

The next pressing concern that we need to focus on is livelihoods. According to CMIE data, in the week ending 30 May 2021, the unemployment rate stood at 12.3 per cent, a sharp spike from 8 per cent in the month preceding it, and then inched up still further to 13.6 per cent in the first week of June.

Job schemes
This calls for a priority towards generating sustained periods of rural employment through schemes such as MGNREGA, which proved to be a vital support system for returning migrants in the first wave. For urban centres, States could also consider exploring urban employment schemes which guarantee a minimum number of days of work in urban areas. Odisha, Jharkhand, Kerala and Himachal Pradesh have already implemented such programmes.

Relief efforts must also consciously endeavour to provide support to bereaved families. This is important in light of the fact that official Ministry of Health and Family Welfare data reflects that deaths in India have crossed the 3.5 lakh mark. Support schemes have already been announced in several States such as Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir and Madhya Pradesh, among others. These schemes may also aim to provide quotas and special job counselling for individuals from families that have lost primary breadwinners, and businesses can be further incentivised to hire people from the identified families.

Innovative moves
States such as Madhya Pradesh have also introduced schemes such as Anukampa Niyukti to employ dependents of deceased government employees on compassionate grounds. Simultaneously, institutions such as old-age homes, Anganwadis, and paediatric health facilities must be strengthened to support young children and elderly people who have been left without care. State governments must find ways to collaborate with non-governmental organisations in this regard to be able to counsel impacted families according to their unique circumstances.

The negative impacts of this pandemic are intergenerational. For example, families that have lost their primary breadwinners may be forced to compromise on their long term goals to meet short term needs, children who have lost their parents may lose access to care, women who have not been able to access government services may see a drop in nutrition and institutional deliveries leading to adverse outcomes, and children — especially girls — may be forced to drop out of education altogether.

States and the Centre therefore need to proactively identify the most impacted groups and create targeted interventions to help them rebuild their lives. This has to be done through robust data collection, a focus on livelihoods, and the creation of resilient social infrastructure. Combatting this behemoth needs collective, effective responses, planning not just for current requirements but also taking a long term view towards the impact of the pandemic on people’s lives.

Seven way to bring women back to the labour force, provide livelihood and income security, and increase women’s agency in cities

Author: Nikhil Iyer
Published: June 2, 2021 in the India Development Review

With localised restrictions in 34 states and union territories, the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic has effectively led to a national lockdown, yet again. Data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) suggests that the urban unemployment rate neared 12 percent in the week leading up to May 9, 2021—up from 9.5 percent in the week ending April 25. In April 2021, India’s labour force participation rate fell to 39.9 percent. This is the third consecutive month for which it has fallen and is the lowest since May 2020. Experience from the past year, when the urban unemployment rate shot up to nearly 25 percent in April 2020, puts the precarious nature of urban employment into sharp focus. This is particularly so for informal workers, nearly 80 percent of whom lost their livelihoods during April and May 2020, as per the State of Working India 2021 report. The economic shock due to the second wave might further worsen the unemployment crisis.

Women were disproportionately impacted by the economic shock of the pandemic last year, as COVID-19 guidelines prevented work in sectors like construction, beauty and wellness, domestic work, sex work, among others. Estimates suggest that nearly 70 percent of women in the working population in December 2019 had lost their jobs by April 2020, compared to 35 percent of men. The State of Working India 2021 report also states that 90 percent of men employed in late 2019 were employed in late 2020 as well, whereas the corresponding figure for women was only 50 percent. The second wave may also affect the female labour force participation rate, which was already down to seven percent in urban areas by November 2020, even as female enrolment has improved at all levels of education.

The livelihood insecurity of urban workers led to discussions on a centrally sponsored urban employment scheme (though these fizzled out due to an apparent financial crunch). Instead, 2020 saw three new state-level urban employment schemes (in Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, and Jharkhand) and continued budget allocations for two existing ones (in Kerala and West Bengal). Additionally, Madhya Pradesh is running a similar scheme with a limited scope, the Yuva Swabhiman Yojana, which is available to those aged 21-30 years. Tamil Nadu too is considering such a scheme, as we learn from the Finance Minister’s recent budget speech.

It is vital that such schemes be designed to bring women back to the labour force, provide livelihood and income security, and increase women’s agency. An analysis of the existing schemes provides us with seven key design principles to improve the gender-responsiveness of urban employment guarantee schemes (UEGS).

Evaluating existing urban employment schemes
Of the existing schemes, the ones in Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, and Jharkhand are structured as a guarantee with unemployment allowances, while West Bengal and Odisha offer work when available. There are three similarities in how these schemes are designed:

• First, the eligibility criteria require individuals to be willing to do unskilled manual work.
• Second, beneficiaries must reside within the jurisdiction of Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) which are the implementing agencies for the scheme.
• Third, subject to local conditions, these schemes include development works and creation of urban infrastructure assets under their ambit.

Kerala was the first state to provide 100 person-days of guaranteed wage employment through the Ayyankali Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme (AUEGS)—which was launched in 2011. The scheme guidelines require ULBs in Kerala to prioritise women, such that they comprise at least 50 percent of the beneficiaries under the scheme. As a result, over the past decade, nearly 90 percent of the job-card holders are women, many of whom are also members of neighbourhood groups under the Kudambashree Mission.

In FY 2020-21, the scheme was allocated a budget of INR 75 crore. In this period, 89,160 households, and 81,958 women received employment under the scheme. This suggests a healthy uptake for the scheme by women. For FY 2021-22, an increased amount of INR 100 crore has been earmarked by the Kerala government—an indicator of the scheme’s sustained relevance.

Odisha adopted an Urban Wage Employment Initiative in April 2020, initially up to September 2020, and later extended till March 2021. Work allocation depended on the availability of work in labour-intensive projects in 114 ULBs in the state. In doing so, Odisha was able to provide 13 lakh person-days of work by December 2020. Seeing the positive reception to the scheme, the state government decided to re-christen the scheme as the Mukhyamantri Karma Tatpara Abhiyan (MUKTA) to continue it in FY 2021-22, earmarking INR 200 crores for the scheme. Reports suggest that nearly 3.5 lakh workers have benefitted from the scheme, with women apparently making up about 40 percent of the beneficiaries. State officials are also looking to target women through urban self-help groups, informal workers associations, among others—a welcome step to leverage the networks shared by women.

In May 2020, Himachal Pradesh began the implementation of the Mukhya Mantri Shahri Aajeevika Guarantee Yojana, which guaranteed 120 days of wage employment to unskilled workers. The government also aims to impart skills training to beneficiaries, in partnership with the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Urban Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NULM), to enable workers to create other work opportunities. Though the scheme design does not explicitly prioritise women, nearly 72 percent of applications approved under the scheme are by females.

Lastly, in September 2020, the Jharkhand government initiated the Mukhyamantri Shramik Yojana, guaranteeing 100 person-days of unskilled work. This scheme has received INR 10 crores in the Budget 2021-22. The state received a significant number of migrant returnees in the summer of 2020, which spurred the government to this action. Even though the government sought to target five lakh urban poor through the scheme, the actual uptake has been less than impressive. A report from December 2020 mentions that only 474 workers out of approximately 15,000 approved applicants, had availed of work. The reasons for the muted enthusiasm are unclear, though state officials have been quoted saying that the menial nature of work on offer may be unattractive to the workers.

Designing an urban employment scheme with a gender lens
In designing a women-oriented urban employment scheme, the following principles may inform the discussion.

1. Providing quality jobs appropriate for women
The quality and nature of work should be in line with local demographics and the aspirations and skills of women. For example, the convergence of the Kerala scheme with the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban) has been noted to improve women’s participation in the scheme as well as better fund utilisation by ULBs. Likewise, in places where women have attained high levels of education but are unable to find gainful employment, the scheme should include skilled work in its ambit.

2. Ensuring geographical proximity to the place of residence
Jobs need to be located close to where women workers reside. Distance from the place of work often becomes a barrier for women due to concerns of safety, time spent travelling, and poor connectivity of public transport. Therefore it is important that UEGS jobs are spread across the city for women to easily access work.

3. Guaranteeing equality of wages
Similar to NREGA, an urban employment scheme should mandate equality of wages for men and women.

4. Providing flexible work arrangements
Women must be given flexibility in timings such that it allows them to juggle wage work with their unpaid work. A gig work model where payment is made on the completion of a task rather than on a per-day basis could be considered.

5. Creating an inclusive administrative system
The procedures to apply, avail work, and change personal details should be inclusive in nature. Online portal-based registration systems, as in the case of Jharkhand and Himachal Pradesh, may be exclusionary due to low internet access and digital literacy among women.

6. Building awareness via relevant platforms
Awareness measures should account for sources through which women receive information. ULBs can tap Aanganwadi networks, urban self-help groups (SHGs), slum development community associations, among others, and rely on offline modes apart from multimedia campaigns to reach out to potential beneficiaries.

7. Collecting gender-disaggregated data
It is extremely critical that gender disaggregated data be collected from the time states begin to implement their schemes. Currently, of the four states discussed above, only Kerala and Himachal Pradesh publicly publish such data, and even that is not granular in nature. Collected data should also note trends regarding choice of jobs, usual times of the year when women access these jobs, education levels of women opting for the scheme, and so on. This data can potentially inform the future design of these schemes and suggest corrective action where required.

There are other suggestions to enhance the impact of UEGS on women. States may also look to converge their schemes with the DAY-NULM, to tap into urban SHG networks, and to supply labour for community projects such as those under AMRUT, Swachh Bharat Mission Urban, among others. Economist and activist Jean Drèze, through a modification to his DUET proposal, states that women be given preference over men whenever work is available. Women can also be put in charge of placement agencies that facilitate work allocation.

Apart from these, policymakers need to reimagine Indian cities to make them more women-friendly, which has a direct correlation in their ability to work. Substantial investments need to be made in creating adequate child-care facilities to free up women’s time. Similarly, cities need to make large-scale investments in improving last mile connectivity and other provisions to improve safety and accessibility of public transport for women. These long-term initiatives need to go hand in hand with a UEGS for women to be able to access more jobs.

An improvement in the female labour force participation rate is known to have a significant multiplier effect on the well-being and development of women and their families and is an accepted policy goal. A gender-responsive UEGS is a unique opportunity to move closer to this goal.

The Joint Parliamentary Committee must take cognisance of the far-reaching impact of these issues and lay the foundation of a robust institution that is transparent, competent, independent, predictable and not-overzealous in its rulemaking

Authors: Aparajita Bharti & Nikhil Iyer
Published: October 12, 2021 in the Hindustan Times

The Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 is back in action. Twenty-one months after it was set up, the JPC is reportedly drafting a fresh report under the newly appointed Chairperson PP Chaudhary.

This is an opportunity for the JPC to relook at the proposed Data Protection Authority (DPA) under the Bill, whose structural independence and functional competence will be central to India’s data governance and will have huge ramifications for the growth of India’s digital economy.

According to the 2019 draft of the Bill, the DPA is proposed to be a seven-member body appointed by a “Selection Committee” composed solely of three top-level central bureaucrats. The Centre has a virtual monopoly on appointments to the DPA and can also remove any member on various grounds. The absence of any representation either from the judiciary, as the Justice Srikrishna Committee had suggested, or from the Opposition, in the Selection Committee, exacerbates the influence of the central government. Most worryingly, the central government can issue binding directions to the DPA under clause 86, which many have rued as eroding any semblance of independence enjoyed by the DPA.

From an industry perspective, the potential for the central government’s interference does not bode well for policy certainty and ease of doing business. Given the present structure, the government’s political dispensation is likely to influence rulemaking by the DPA which will affect stakeholder confidence and investor sentiment over time.

This becomes even more relevant as the DPA is charged with functions which can change the scope of data regulation significantly through executive action, without bringing these debates to the Parliament. For instance, the DPA can issue regulations specifying “reasonable purposes” for processing of personal data without consent, mechanisms for taking consent, codes of practice to promote compliance, security safeguards and transparency requirements to be implemented by businesses, and so on. In addition, it will also conduct inquiries upon receiving complaints and take appropriate action under the Bill, in effect acting as a quasi-judicial body.

While this delegation of power is necessary to ensure regulation keeps pace with technological innovation, the Bill lacks clearly defined consultation procedure for issuing new regulations and directions. Clause 50 in the Bill mandates that the DPA holds consultations with sectoral regulators and other stakeholders before specifying codes of practice; however, no such corresponding requirement exists for other regulations and directions.

Also, since consultations can be sometimes performative in nature, we need a well-defined procedure to make consultations more transparent, such as publishing the inputs received. DPA should also provide detailed rationale for new rules and directions and publish its orders to record its reasons and develop data governance jurisprudence over time. This will help organisations in the data ecosystem to bake these aspects into their “Privacy by design” principles over time.

Finally, DPA in its current form is expected to micro-manage the implementation of the Bill and is overburdened with routine functions. For example, one of its key functions is to monitor cross-border transfers of personal data. Each transfer of sensitive personal data outside India by a data fiduciary must be approved by the DPA, even if the data principal consents to such transfer and processing. These transfers may be done pursuant to a contract, an intra-group scheme, or otherwise be allowed by the DPA for any specific purpose. This oversized role for the DPA is anachronistic in today’s globalised world, where businesses regularly transfer data across jurisdictions to innovate and develop their products. It also downplays the vitality of individual consent, which is seemingly the bedrock of the PDP Bill, 2019.

Instead, the DPA can publicise and encode best practices in the Codes of Practice for intra group cross border data flows, which can organically become an industry practice, and take action only in cases of violations.

In 2019, India was in the 48th percentile out of 214 countries in the World Bank’s Regulatory Quality Index, posing questions on its ability to “formulate and implement sound policies and regulations that permit and promote private sector development”. A weak Data Protect Authority, a likely super-regulator, given the size and scale of data usage across industries, can risk India’s reputation in this regard further.

The Joint Parliamentary Committee must take cognisance of the far-reaching impact of these issues and lay the foundation of a robust institution that is transparent, competent, independent, predictable and not-overzealous in its rulemaking.

Can a digital database help improve access to social welfare schemes?

Authors: Aishwarya Viswanathan & Deepro Guha
Published: October 12, 2021 in the India Development Review

With the increasing digitisation of our lives, we are witnessing a paradigm shift in the way digital solutions are being deployed to deliver social welfare programmes and create societal impact. Open Digital Ecosystems (ODEs), or population scale platforms, are key examples of digitisation that have great potential to revolutionise welfare service delivery. ODEs are defined as “open and secure digital platforms that enable a community of actors to unlock transformative solutions for society, based on a robust governance framework.” An example of such an ecosystem is IndiaStack, built on the Aadhaar base layer and offering multiple services to citizens of India.

Such ODEs are steadily being built and mainstreamed by the government in multiple sectors such as health, education, and agriculture. The goal is to streamline welfare delivery by helping establish identities, digitising record-keeping, tracking progress, and aiding grievance redressal. If designed and implemented well, ODEs can help fix delivery gaps, payment leakages, coordination failures, and other inefficiencies that plague our current systems of welfare delivery.

Social registries are crucial to ensuring welfare delivery through the ODE tech architecture. A social registry is essentially a database of welfare beneficiaries that has the potential to connect disparate pieces of information that the government might have about an individual/family (such as income, property, education, marital status, employment, disability, etc.). Once set up, it can function as an information system to support outreach, application, registration, and determination of potential eligibility for social welfare programmes. But, in the absence of privacy preserving safeguards and other suitable measures, a social registry can also be a risk to civil liberties and may magnify the problems of exclusion.

In this article, we focus on how best to design social registries that can leverage technology to secure the developmental gains promised by the ODE architecture.

Countries across the world have made building social registries a policy priority. Brazil’s Cadastro Único, the Philippines’ Listahanan, Senegal’s National Unique Registry (RNU, Registre National Unique), and Malawi’s Unified Beneficiary Registry (UBR) are examples of some prominent social registries that have a wide population coverage and provide a number of welfare schemes through them. India too has been swift to embrace this development. The 2011 Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) helped in facilitating targeted interventions under various schemes. In August 2021, the Ministry of Labour and Employment also launched the e-Shram portal—a database for unorganised sector workers. This national effort towards creating a social registry is now also being bolstered at the state level, owing to the sheer diversity of vulnerabilities and priorities across the country. The Samagra Portal in Madhya Pradesh, the Parivar Pehchan Patra Yojna in Haryana, and the upcoming State Family Database in Tamil Nadu are all efforts towards the correct targeting of individual beneficiaries and households while extending government welfare benefits.

Despite the progress being made, it is imperative that we remain cautious in our optimism regarding the use of social registries as a basis for eligibility under welfare delivery schemes. Given India’s digital divide and the lack of awareness regarding technological solutions, committing exclusionary errors in social registries will mean exacerbating existing structural inequalities. Moreover, without strong safeguards, these systems may be employed for surveillance, thus posing a risk to civil liberties.

What lessons can we learn from other experiences?
The Centre for Internet and Society’s report Rethinking Data Exchange and Delivery Models: Principles for Privacy Preserving Data Sharing in Digital Governance examines diverse architectural, regulatory, and data collection frameworks of social registries in countries around the world.

Building on the report, we outline some principles and best practices that can help reduce potential dangers, while accentuating benefits of using social registries:

1. Decentralisation
Accumulation of data in a singular database is more likely to result in operational failures and security threats due to the existence of a single point of failure. For instance, if all the data for a social registry is contained within a single database, a potential data breach will bring down the whole system of welfare delivery, having a magnified impact on socio-economic outcomes. In comparison, a decentralised model where responsibilities and vulnerabilities are shared across the system is likely to be a more secure framework.

The arrangements for managing and running social registries vary around the world. For example, in the Philippines, the database Listahanan is managed and operated by a central agency. However, in Brazil, control of the Cadastro Único registry and overall database management is entrusted to the central government, and collection of household registry data and other management tasks are assigned to municipalities, with the state government providing additional support.

For a national registry in India—given the number of beneficiaries, unique development contexts across regions, and multiple welfare schemes—adopting a decentralised model and investing in building capacity of state and local governments is prudent. In such a system, the state and local government can be responsible for linking welfare schemes with the social registry at the local level, while oversight can be the responsibility of the central government.

2. Openness
Given the high-cost structure and dependence on developer support that proprietary software entails, open-source software and open licenses are more desirable in the digital governance context. The flexibility of open source allows for peer review and participation, which in turn increases innovation and ensures security and transparency in government. It also allows more options to customise solutions as well as scale these solutions for wider use.

Malawi’s UBR information system was entirely built using open-source software components, which facilitated independent audits and improved transparency and accountability in the system.

While the use of open-source software is widespread in India, there are parts of the critical public digital infrastructure such as IndiaStack which, although built on open-source software, have not been made publicly available under an open-source license.

In India we can create a national free and open-source software (FOSS) alliance, where a network of committed and relevant stakeholders can work together to facilitate FOSS projects that are aimed at solving India’s biggest societal challenges. This can include using FOSS to develop robust social registries.

3. Independence
Instituting independent bodies for oversight and implementation can help not only in detecting and deterring delivery gaps and leakage, but also as an important source of subject matter expertise. In Kenya, a special Social Protection Secretariat was established to provide technical and subject matter expertise to perform the core functions required to maintain a digitised social registry. These core functions included supporting collection, collation, and dissemination of social protection data, and establishing strategic coordination mechanisms across and between actors.

In India, a National Health Authority (NHA) has been constituted under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare as an autonomous body of experts responsible for overseeing the implementation of the National Digital Health Mission (including matters related to the National Health Stack). Creation of other such sector-specific bodies which can provide independent expertise and evaluation of the programme must also be considered.

4. Data collection
Data collection is perhaps the single most important step in the process of creating a social registry. Apart from ensuring population coverage to avoid exclusionary errors, data collection protocols must be established to inform citizens of its purpose, function, and their rights in this process.

In Senegal, during the data collection phase for the RNU, special efforts were made to inform households about the purpose of the social registry, potential users, right not to respond, and more.

Given that only 38 percent of households in India are digitally literate, efforts to build awareness and sensitivity regarding social registries is needed. It is important to design mechanisms that build awareness around consent and privacy among the masses. Businesses, regulatory bodies, governments, and industry must take it upon themselves to raise this awareness by running campaigns aimed at disseminating information and building trust.

Incorporating the principles listed above into the design of social registries will ensure that we realise the promise of development gains from technology, while enabling transformative innovations for welfare delivery at scale.

Authors: Aparajita Bharti and Rohit Kumar
Published: July 09, 2021 in the Indian Express

In the wake of the second wave of COVID, our failure as a country to hold our government accountable is evident. Many voices from within the media acknowledged that a large section of the press had been too busy following the cues, the distractions and the narratives set by the government, so much so that it stopped questioning the government on issues that really mattered. These lapses came to haunt India at the peak of the second wave. But while the media took a share of the blame, civil society perhaps also needs to re-examine its role. Didn’t we too – as members of the civil society – fail in holding the government accountable?

The civil society in India is a thriving milieu of actors – grassroots organisations that connect to the last mile and provide essential services, the think-tanks and academia that churn new policy ideas and generate evidence, the advocacy organisations that amplify and build support for causes, and the large impact funds and philanthropists who decide how these organisations get funded. As with everything else in the economy, India’s civil society has transformed into a more professional sector in the last two decades, drawing talent from the best institutions within India and abroad. There’s more structure now, and more strategic focus on evidence-based policy design and implementation. Committed young Indians championed by well-intentioned philanthropists and donors are keen to contribute to better the lives of all Indians.

However, successive governments have also been wary of this tribe and its energy. Both the UPA and the NDA governments have significantly curtailed the kind of activities that civil society actors can engage in. Philanthropists and donor organisations often find themselves constrained in not being able to support initiatives that strengthen India’s democracy and its accountability mechanisms, for the fear of retribution. Many civil society actors have also holed themselves into engaging with narrow policy problems to be able to measure impact and demonstrate quick ‘wins’, ignoring the fact that ‘small tweaks’ can never fundamentally alter the way India is governed. By ignoring the politics around policy and focusing disproportionately on technocratic solutions, the civil society has also missed the wood for the trees.

Today, it is easier to find money to fund a policy tweak than a campaign to reform the parliament or the judiciary, because such a campaign is harder to measure, harder to sustain and involves taking the power of the day head on. A report by Mckinsey and Company estimated that close to 90 percent of total donor interest in India was targeted towards primary education, primary health care, rural infrastructure and disaster relief, leaving areas such as human rights and governance with minimal funding.

Unfortunately, in the absence of a strong push from the civil society, our democratic institutions by themselves have no intrinsic incentive to reform. With the result that in India’s gravest hour, we had no effective mechanism to hold a sitting government accountable that oversaw a state failure of gigantic proportions. There was palpable helplessness in the judiciary, when judges found it difficult to get answers from the government. Even the Parliament was unable to perform its oversight duty; it barely met in 2020 and the precedent seems to be continuing with the noticeably short monsoon session planned for 2021.

While those of us who study India’s democratic institutions have always been worried about the crumbling system of checks and balances in our democracy, the pandemic has brought the issue into the spotlight. Even to the naysayers, it is clear now that this system needs serious repair. We need to re-look at parliamentary rules that are heavily tilted in favour of the sitting government, strengthen the hands of the judiciary, bolster federalism and independent media, while creating transparency in decision making within the executive. The civil society has an important and irreplaceable role to play here, and philanthropists need to put their might behind this.

A framework by the University of Pennsylvania’s Centre for High Impact Philanthropy suggests that philanthropists need to fund initiatives that empower citizens, build fair processes, call for responsive policy, strengthen information and communication networks, and bolster social cohesion. These are the forces that fundamentally shape a democracy. Civil society organisations too, on their part, need to broaden their agenda of work to include cross cutting issues that strengthen India’s institutions while collaborating with each other to present a strong unified voice that demands more transparency and accountability in all areas and levels of policymaking. This involves taking more fights to the courts on transgressions by the government, building public opinion about expectations from a well-functioning democracy and creating tools and fora that help citizens engage with policymaking more readily.

Unfortunately, no matter how many small tweaks we make to policy, how many platforms we build to deliver citizen services and how much evidence we gather to solve specific developmental challenges, unless we preserve the political incentives to act in the interest of people, we risk all our efforts coming to naught. To not be able to see strengthening of institutions and deepening checks and balances as important areas of work is our collective failure, one we must correct immediately.

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The authors are co-founders of Young Leaders for Active Citizenship and The Quantum Hub (TQH) Consulting

Authors: Sona Mitra and Sonakshi Choudhry
Published: February 14, 2021 in News18

While there have been some small announcements for women in the budget, women’s core concerns over food and nutrition, employment and livelihoods, and prevention of violence and safety after a year of unprecedented hardship need a further boost.

The Finance Minister’s speech in the Union Budget 2021-22 acknowledged the role of frontline workers in battling the pandemic throughout last year and expressed gratitude for their efforts. It is important to note that almost all of these frontline workers are women and budget announcements have an important impact on the lives of women.

Gender-responsive budgeting in India was adopted in 2005 and since then there have been steady budgetary allocations to different programmes specific to women and in women–related programmes, which are usually part of the gender budget statement of the Annual budget documents. This year has also not been an exception. However, it will be important to note that the pandemic year witnessed hardships for women in terms of securing food and nutrition security, a crisis of employment and livelihood opportunities, increased burden of unpaid work for women and also increased incidence of violence. It is in this backdrop we look at the provisions made for women in this budget.

Two significant announcements that directly impact women’s labour force participation were made by the Finance Minister in her speech.

The first was to universalise water supply facilities through the Jal Jeevan Mission in both rural and urban areas and allocating a massive Rs. 50,000 crores to the programme. This allocation needs to translate into the reality of providing clean drinking water facilities across households in the remotest parts of the country. This is a welcome step that has the potential to reduce women’s time spent on collecting water. The recent time use survey 2019 shows that women spend on an average up to 55 minutes daily to fetch water for the household. Having provided a steady source of water supply has immense potential to reduce this time and cater to the urgent need to improve household infrastructure for women.

The second announcement pertained to extending the coverage of social security benefits for gig and platform workers. It is important in the current context as these are emerging avenues of women’s employment in urban India. The IWWAGE report shows how attractive these opportunities are for women and extending the social security coverage makes the sector even better.

The budget allocations under the social security schemes for workers show an increased allocation of Rs. 3100 crores under Atmanirbhar Bharat Rojgar Yojana – a programme launched as a new scheme to encourage new employment in post lockdown period by providing a fixed share of wages into the EPF funds. While this may be important, the budget does not provide extra allocations for social security of gig and platform workers separately.

In the wake of the pandemic and its unequal impact on women, an analysis of the gender budget (GB) however reveals certain underwhelming trends. The GB stands at Rs. 153,326 crore for 2021-22 BE. Last year’s allocation was Rs. 143,461 crore (BE). As a proportion of total expenditure, the current allocation has fallen to 4.4%, from 4.7% last year.

In the same vein, the allocations to women-specific programmes, reported in the part A of the GB statement Rs. 28,568 crores last year to Rs. 25,261 crores – a decline of almost 12%. Similarly, allocations to the Ministry of Women and Child Development also show a decline of 18.5% since last year.

While the quantum of allocations to most important programmes for women reported in the budget 2021-22 show a status quo or a decline, few accounting changes and a couple of interesting allocations towards women could be located. The announcement of Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0 clubs the erstwhile umbrella ICDS, Poshan Abhiyan, Scheme for Adolescent Girls, and National Crèche Scheme and allocates only Rs. 20,105 crores, the Mission Shakti –SAMARTHYA clubs smaller programmes including Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana, and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao. The detailed breakups and comparisons are provided in Figure 1 and 2. below:

Figure 1. (all scheme heads taken from pg. 351 of the Statement of Budget Estimates)

Figure 2. (all scheme heads taken from pg. 351 of the Statement of Budget Estimates)

The numbers show that allocations to crucial programmes catering to nutrition, creches, and women’s safety and protection have at best stayed the same if not reduced. The allocation to the umbrella ICDS schemes that are under the new ‘SAKSHAM’ head clearly shows a 23% decline of Rs. 5952 crores. We also do not see separate allocations for One Stop Centres, women helpline, Swadhar Greh, Ujjawala and so on which were overwhelmingly used during the pandemic, with heightened reports of violence against women. Instead, those have been clubbed under Mission Shakti— SAMBAL (See Figure 3 below).

Figure 3. (all scheme heads taken from pg. 351 of the Statement of Budget Estimates)

Both MGNREGA and NRLM show increments in budgets since last year. However, the increase in the MGNREGA budget by Rs. 11,500 crores will also need to cater to the increased demand for jobs under the programme. In fact, the GB reports an allocation of only 33% of the total NREGA allocations for women while the Economic Survey itself highlights that almost 50% of all NREGA employment are held by women. These figures itself reveal the need for greater allocation even without expanding the number of days of employment generated under the programme.

The NRLM budget also shows an increase of almost Rs. 4000 crores from the previous year on account of the programme component. However, the allocations do not make it clear whether the increment is on account of increased expenditure on DDU-GKY, or on account of interest subventions to SHGs or the loan moratoriums.

Despite these dampers, an interesting allocation in the GB geared towards closing the gendered digital divide is also spotted. According to the NSS-MoSPI data from 2017-18, only 38% of women own mobile phones and 12.8% use computers compared to the respective male figures of 71% and 20%. Given the need to be digitally included, the GB includes Rs. 120 crores (or almost 40%) of the allocations to Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan – digital literacy programme for rural areas. Albeit small yet in the last few years, this is the first time that GB has included part of the PMGDISHA in its statement. This may have the potential for improving women’s access to opportunities created through digital platforms.

So while there have been some small announcements for women in the budget, women’s core concerns over food and nutrition, employment and livelihoods and prevention of violence and safety after a year of unprecedented hardship need a further boost. These concerns assumed importance in all pre-budget discussions and also made space in the Economic Survey.

While announcements in the budget indicate acknowledgement of these issues, which is a significant first step, budgetary allocations to support them would be truly transformative for half of India’s population.

—
Sona Mitra is the Principal Economist at Initiative for What Works to Advance Women and Girls in the Economy (IWWAGE) an initiative of LEAD at Krea University. Sonakshi Chaudhry is a Senior Analyst at The Quantum Hub (TQH), a policy research and communications firm.