The Quantum Hub

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.

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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.

Authors: Aparajita Bharti and Bindushree D
Published: December 24, 2020 in the Hindustan Times

A continued focus on land and property rights is important — these cross-cutting issues not only impact the growth of India’s economy but play an important role in the lives of all Indians.

The year 2020 drew sharp focus to land and property rights issues in India. The year began with protests against the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which — if implemented — would have relied on citizens having their land records in place to prove citizenship. Many commentators lamented how landless migrant labour would meet these stringent requirements in a country where land records management is in an abysmal shape with limited digitisation.

With the onset of the pandemic, and India going into an unprecedented lockdown, the shocking sight of migrant labourers walking the highways for days exposed the lack of inclusive housing in our cities. They were forced to leave cities not only due to the lack of affordable housing, but also because informal rent agreements enabled abrupt evictions. While many developed countries enforced rent moratoriums and protections against evictions, in India, authorities could not create such a safety net. Informal tenancy in urban and semi-urban India and landlessness in rural India plunged the most vulnerable populations into further despair.

Lockdowns across the world also forced businesses to consider diversification of their supply chains. This turned the attention of policymakers to the ease of doing business to make India an attractive destination for companies looking to invest in new locations. Again, land reforms became a central part of this conversation. While the central government explored the idea of creating land banks, some states focused on structural reforms. Karnataka amended laws to remove restrictions on buying and selling of agricultural land by non-agriculturalists.

Other developments that brought focus to property rights include the SVAMITVA (Survey of villages and mapping with improvised technology in village areas) scheme launched in April 2020. The scheme aims to survey non-agricultural inhabited land in rural India. The stated goals are connecting rural Indians with institutional credit through better property records, and empowering Panchayati Raj institutions through property tax collection.

In October 2020, in response to the migrant crisis, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs announced the Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHCs) Scheme. The scheme aims to fill the affordable housing gap in cities by utilising government-funded vacant houses along with construction, operation and maintenance of new affordable housing projects by private players.

In an unrelated development, the Supreme Court passed a landmark judgement; it ruled that daughters have equal coparcenary rights in Hindu Undivided Family properties, even if the father died before the enactment of the 2005 Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act. Gender activists celebrated the judgment as this ambiguity had presented a big hurdle for women across India in accessing their property rights.

Though these developments seem disparate, it is worth noting that land and property rights dominated people’s lives and public narrative even in an extraordinary year such as 2020. The year highlighted the fault lines in our land governance and exacerbated the effect of existing inefficiencies in our system.

As we look to kickstart recovery in 2021, one hopes that policymakers will retain focus on making land records services citizen-friendly, undertaking surveys of previously unsurveyed areas, improving land markets and continuing to invest in affordable housing in our urban centres. Presently, there are interesting policy proposals under discussion to achieve these goals. Apart from ARHC and SVAMTIVA that may be scaled up, a Model Tenancy Act aimed at bridging the trust deficit between tenants and landlords is under consideration. The Centre and states are mulling subsidies in stamp duty rates to boost the real estate market and property registration. Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are making huge investments in new surveys and technology to improve land governance.

A continued focus on land and property rights is important — these cross-cutting issues not only impact the growth of India’s economy but play an important role in the lives of all Indians. Among other things, 2020 has also been a stark reminder that governments must prioritise securing land and property rights for all its citizens.

Authors: Rohit Kumar and Sneha Narayana Pillai
Published: February 05, 2021 in the India Development Review

To make substantial strides in women’s economic empowerment, it is clear that a gender lens needs to be incorporated at every stage—from policy design to data collection for monitoring and evaluation.

In the year 1990, renowned economist Amartya Sen shared with the world an intriguing phenomenon he had come to observe, about the 100 odd million women who were simply ‘missing’. In an essay for The New York Times, he wrote, “These numbers tell us, quietly, a terrible story of inequality and neglect leading to the excess mortality of women.” Exacerbating this phenomenon, he noted, were a myriad of social, cultural, and economic factors, including poor access to education, nutrition, health, and economic rights (including property rights). Thirty years later, the UNFPA’s State of the World Population Report 2020 estimates that India accounts for 45.8 million of the world’s 142.6 million missing women.

Research suggests that investing in Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) has important linkages with gender equality. As a result, India has witnessed several schemes and progressive legislation—both at the central and state levels—that aim to empower women and increase their participation in the economy. However, despite the government’s targeted efforts, India has had limited success. The Global Gender Gap Report 2020 has ranked India among the five worst countries in the ‘Economic Participation and Opportunity’ index.

The COVID-19 pandemic has only heightened this gendered vulnerability. National Sample Surveys’ data reveals that the Female Labour Force Participation Rate (FLFPR) has been in decline in rural areas, and has remained stagnant in urban areas since the late 1980s. Similarly, a close look at this data by the Initiative for What Works to Advance Women and Girls in the Economy (IWWAGE) finds that despite the priority accorded to skilling programmes by the government, less than two percent of women received formal training in 2017-18. But even as 84 percent of formally trained men joined the labour force, less than half of the trained women did so.

There are several reasons that can explain why WEE policies in India may not have had the anticipated impact. However, in the absence of rigorous evaluations of government schemes and policies, evidence remains thin and fragmented. As a first step to addressing the problem, The Quantum Hub (TQH), where we work, has undertaken an exercise to map the landscape of policies and synthesise all available evidence. Additionally, we also undertook a design analysis of some prominent interventions to identify patterns in shortcomings and opportunities, if any. Our hope is that learnings from this exercise will facilitate decision-making until such time when rigorous evidence becomes available, especially since many of these interventions are supported by substantial budgetary commitments.

The approach

The landscape of policies relating to WEE is vast and cross-cutting, and therefore we adopted a clear methodological approach to go about the exercise. We adapted the Longwe Gender Analysis Framework, which uses a progressive hierarchy to measure women’s empowerment. We supplemented this with policy lenses (alignment of incentives of stakeholders and state capacity required for implementation) to understand each policy’s likely effectiveness. These lenses were then used to assess policies and schemes across the core areas for WEE identified by the Overseas Development Institute–collective action, unpaid work, skill development, quality work, social protection, access to property and assets, and financial inclusion.

Well-intentioned schemes, with some unintended consequences

When it comes to policy, it is inevitable that some schemes, no matter how well-intentioned, can have an underwhelming impact, and at times may even contribute to unforeseen adverse effects. Consider the case of the 2017 amendment to the Maternity Benefits Act, 1961. The amendments attempted to boost female workforce participation by increasing maternity leave for working women in the formal sector from 12 weeks to 26 weeks. A 2018 report by TeamLease Services noted that though this amendment may have positive outcomes in the long-term, in the short-term it was likely to deter the hiring of women, and could affect a net job loss for 11-18 lakh women in the first year.

New research by TeamLease confirms that the amendment is yet to show positive outcomes for women’s labour force participation. Many countries in the developed world rely on a mix of maternity and paternity leave and social security support to alleviate this problem, and to align incentives of the employers with the broader objective of supporting women in infant care. Unfortunately, this has not been done in the Indian context.

Another example is the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana that aimed to increase the uptake of clean fuel by subsidising LPG. While the scheme consistently achieved its target in terms of LPG connections, a study by the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics found that it has not been as successful in its primary objective of displacing the use of firewood. Reasons for this range from the unaffordable cost of refills to a gendered bias due to which women are reluctant to spend on their own well-being. Reconsidering pricing and disbursal mechanisms in the design of the scheme, while also increasing distributor incentives to reach remote areas, may have improved overall outcomes.

Implementation-intensive design lowers efficiency

In our analysis, we noticed that policies which are implementation-intensive, such as those that require local discretion and extensive monitoring and/or reporting are likely to suffer from inefficient implementation as well as leakages. A case in point is the Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency (MUDRA) scheme which aims to enhance lending for small businesses, with special incentives to lend to women entrepreneurs. The scheme is implementation-intensive and requires officials in financial intermediaries such as banks to take decisions on disbursement of loans to beneficiaries with limited credit histories, assess business plans for risk, and closely monitor the use of approved loans. These aspects can be administratively difficult, especially in the context of smaller loans. Some commentators have argued that the MUDRA scheme has not been very successful in increasing access to credit; instead, financial intermediaries have simply reclassified existing loans under different MUDRA categories to meet targets.

This is not to say that all implementation-intensive policies are problematic. Schemes such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) that require higher state capacity for implementation still perform reasonably well, because the incentives of stakeholders are better aligned. Under MUDRA, given high transaction costs and potential credit risk, the incentives for financial intermediaries to push MUDRA loans may not be adequately aligned.

The missing lens in policy design

Certain schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) which aims to upskill young adults to make them job-ready have prominent gaps in their design, owing to a missing gendered perspective. The PMKVY, for instance, does not factor in the unique issues faced by women. An important reason why skilling programmes often do not work for women is the lack of flexibility in schedule, lack of crèche facilities, concerns regarding safety, and inadequate support in terms of counselling and placement. Stereotyping of the skills offered to women results in further occupational segregation. Policies that allow for credit transfers and induct more female teachers, especially in courses traditionally considered unsuitable for women, can make a difference.

Contrast this with a scheme such as NREGA. It reinforces the concept of gender parity by making a deliberate choice to allocate at least one-third of the total workdays to women, provisioning for worksites near places of residence, and by ensuring uniformity in wages between men and women. As a result, women’s participation in this scheme has been consistently higher than that of men.

A similar gender lens is also much-needed in data collection, where the lack of disaggregated data on scheme implementation has made it harder to understand the impact of policies on women. For instance, in the case of a gender-neutral scheme like Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), which was launched in 2018, gender-disaggregated data was not available until 2020. Consequently, it was impossible to understand how effective the scheme was in providing affordable healthcare to women or in addressing women-specific medical conditions. A gender study on PM-JAY published in 2020 by the National Health Authority noted that, “Out of total 50 top procedures from top 10 specialities (excluding obstetrics and gynaecology as they are utilised by females only), percentage utilisation is higher for males in 60 percent procedures, and 32 percent procedures are utilised more by females,” thus revealing a gender gap in the utilisation of the scheme. Gender disaggregated evidence is a critical marker for the responsible ministry to undertake corrective measures to make the beneficiary base as inclusive as possible.

What works for women’s economic empowerment?

Several studies have noted that one of the more successful schemes targeting women’s empowerment is the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM). This scheme has been instrumental in creating self-help groups (SHGs) and has helped empower women at the grassroots, both socially and economically through collective action, especially during crises such as the recent pandemic. By bringing women from poor families into the SHG network, NRLM has empowered them with opportunities for employment or self-employment and access to finance. These community-level institutions have also helped in creating sensitive support structures right up to the block level, with women members often assisting each other with issues such as domestic violence, financial savings, skilling, and participation in local governance. Through the experience of NRLM, it is evident that collective action schemes can play a vital role in women’s empowerment as numerous other interventions can also piggyback on SHGs.

The Indian Stamp Act, 1899 is another example that stands out. Under this act, many state governments have reduced stamp duty applicable on property held by women, thereby incentivising the family to register the property in the name of women. As a policy intervention, it is also relatively simpler to implement, which makes it work well for WEE.

The way ahead

To make substantial strides in women’s economic empowerment, it is clear that a gender lens needs to be incorporated at every stage—from policy design to data collection for monitoring and evaluation. A stronger focus on policies where stakeholders’ incentives are aligned and those that impose lesser demands on state capacity, while giving greater visibility to women in decision-making can lead to better outcomes. Every policy that does not take into account these lenses is a lost opportunity to address the barriers that impact women’s economic empowerment; a lost opportunity to stop women from going ‘missing’.

Authors: Deepro Guha and Soumya Kapoor Mehta
Published: February 14, 2021 in the Economic Times ETHRWorld

While the need for a centrally administered UEGS has been acknowledged by the central Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, funds availability remains a constraint.

The pandemic and subsequent lockdown measures have taken a toll on all aspects of life in India, particularly employment. Over 21 million salaried jobs have been lost between April and August 2020 and urban unemployment is as high as 7.5 percent as of October 25, 2020. Job losses also seem to have affected women disproportionately. Reports show that the number of men who reported themselves as employed dropped by 29 percent between March 2020 and April 2020, while for women the change was much greater at 39 percent.

Given the gloomy prospects induced by the pandemic, leading policy experts have urged the government to step in and ensure some semblance of livelihood guarantee in urban areas, as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) does for rural areas.

Advocates for an urban employment guarantee scheme (UEGS) argue that such a scheme would provide multiple benefits and alleviation measures during a crisis such as now. First, it would provide livelihood options to over 7 percent unemployed persons in urban areas.

Second, an urban employment guarantee scheme may provide an opportunity to increase female labour force participation rates (FLFPR) in urban areas, much like it has in rural areas. Close to 50 percent (or more) workers under MGNREGA are women, who participate in the scheme on account of factors like insufficient agriculture work, migration of men to cities, lack of skills to do other work, illiteracy, or the availability of wages higher than other available options in rural areas.

Third, the works undertaken under the UEGS may create assets that improve the town’s ecology and quality of public services, which have a direct impact on productivity and quality of life.

Recognizing the need to provide livelihood support in urban areas, various state governments have stepped in with their own urban employment guarantee schemes. For example, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, and Jharkhand have announced their own urban employment schemes after the onset of the Coronavirus epidemic. Apart from these states, Kerala has an existing Ayyankali Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme (AUEGS). The AUEGS has been successful in creating work opportunities for women, with 80,735 and 96,259 women benefiting from the scheme in 2018-19 and 2019-20 respectively.

There are also global experiences to draw from: Argentina introduced Plan Jefes, in response to its 2001 currency crisis, which offered voluntary job opportunities to unemployed heads of households in community projects; the programme specifically targeted women. South Africa implemented its Expanded Public Works Programme in 2004 which created paid work opportunities for large numbers of unemployed people, primarily women and youth; the programme, interestingly focused on developing home-based care and early childhood development centres in communities, services that women benefit from as well as run themselves.

However, while the need for a centrally administered UEGS has been acknowledged by the central Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, fund availability remains a constraint.

Designing an urban employment guarantee scheme with a gender lens

Based on state level and global experiences, we outline a few principles that may be followed if the UEGS were to be implemented to the maximum benefit of women in urban areas.

First, the nature of jobs provided under the scheme should be acceptable as much to women as to men, as well as should take into account the aspirations of the urban women. It is important for policymakers to consider that women residing in urban India, may have different aspirations than women in rural areas who avail MGNREGA wages. This could be achieved by providing for a list of work appropriate for women as well as a list of community assets that reduce gender vulnerabilities, e.g., community sanitation facilities, planting of trees near slums for shade, assistance in healthcare/educational facilities, running of community kitchens etc.

Second, distance to the workplace is a critical factor for women in urban areas in deciding whether to take up a job. Therefore, jobs under any urban guarantee scheme should be available around the city so that women can avail work at a place near their residence.

Third, equal wages as those promised to men is one of the key reasons that attracts women workers to MGNREGA works, and should be provided for even under a proposed UEGS. This can be achieved through publication of standard rates for jobs offered under the scheme.

Fourth, various studies have shown that women prefer forms of employment that allow them more flexibility at work as they juggle paid work and unpaid work during a given day. Experts, therefore, suggest including elements of a gig economy model in the UEGS, giving flexibility to women to work certain number of days per week or getting remunerated for the number of jobs done rather than being paid on a per day basis.

Fifth, proper worksite facilities such as availability of potable drinking water, first-aid services, child care facilities, shade facilities, toilets etc should be ensured. Worksite managers/organisations should also be mandated to ensure strict implementation of the prevention of sexual harassment (POSH) guidelines.

A well-designed scheme that uses a gender lens from the outset can not only reduce the immediate problem of unemployment in urban areas but can also (potentially) revive the stagnant and abysmally low FLFPR in urban areas, which has been a long-standing worry for India.

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Soumya Kapoor Mehta is the Head of the Initiative for What Works to Advance Women and Girls in the Economy (IWWAGE), an initiative of LEAD at Krea University; and Deepro Guha is a Manager at The Quantum Hub (TQH), a policy research and communications firm.

Author: Sneha Narayana Pillai
Published: May 10, 2021 in the Indian Express

More women are voting than before, and this rise in political agency could mean that their rights and issues are no longer an afterthought for policymakers.

The results of the assembly elections in Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal have made one point clear – the rising significance of women’s role in shaping political outcomes. High voter turnout was noted among women across all states, with women voters exceeding men in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

Political commentators as well as several exit polls have noted the influence of women voters in determining the performances of parties across states in these assembly elections; a phenomenon that has been increasingly observed in the last decade. For instance, Himanta Biswa Sarma, now chief minister of Assam, has publicly said that they owe their victory to the women voters. In West Bengal as well, many commentators have credited high women turnout for the victory of Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress.

Most leading parties, cognisant of the power of the female vote, had also tailored their political campaigns and election manifestos to speak to the needs of women in these states, with poll promises including financial assistance to homemakers and women-led households.

From a monthly stipend of Rs 500 being promised for female heads of a family by the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, to a monthly “value rights assistance” of Rs 3,000 promised to homemakers in Tamil Nadu by the Kamal Haasan-led Makkal Needhi Maiam, the amounts varied, but the target beneficiaries remained the same across the states.

Free and subsidised transport for women, free home appliances, increase in maternity benefits, reservation for women in government jobs were some of the other electoral promises made in a bid to win women’s votes. However, even as these women-centred promises did not lead to a higher representation of women in candidate lists, especially in states like Assam and Tamil Nadu, there are several reasons why the rise of the “female voting bloc” is remarkable.

Studies by various organisations have shown that men and women vote quite differently, with women more likely to vote for change and prefer a welfare-oriented party, prioritising access to basic provisions such as healthcare, water and sanitation, while men lean towards infrastructural investment.

This was also observed during the victory of the Aam Aadmi Party during the 2020 elections in New Delhi, with exit polls noting that the party was the preferred choice among women voters, who found schemes such as free bus rides, subsidised water and electricity to be politically relevant. This trend has also previously been observed during Jayalalithaa’s victory in Tamil Nadu in 2016 and Nitish Kumar’s return to power in Bihar in 2015, among others.

Over the last few years, the gender gap in voter turnout has reduced significantly. While men held an 8.4 percentage-point turnout advantage over women in national elections in 2004, within a decade, that gap had shrunk to just 1.8 percentage points.

Based on a close look at the gender-wise voting choices in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, LiveMint observed that female voters were likely to prefer women-led parties. In the long term, as women emerge as an even stronger voting bloc, it could also encourage parties to field more female candidates and ensure better political representation among women.

It would be naive to think of the female voting bloc as a homogenous group who care about the same issues. Women in India, much like everyone else, continue to vote on the basis of other identities, including caste, religion, etc., but given their similar lived experiences, there are certain considerations (some of which have been discussed above) that shape the way they vote.

The hope is that with the recent trend of catering to the female voting bloc, that political parties across the spectrum become more gender-responsive, ultimately leading to policy changes that improve the lives of women.

This is of particular significance in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, where it’s widely observed that the impact of the pandemic has been the harshest on women. In a bid to reach out to the female voting bloc, all political parties attuned themselves to such gendered disparities and it is hoped that they will follow through their election promises, to provide extra support to women to tide through this crisis.

In the current scenario, where a gender gap continues to exist in most spheres in India, ranging from digital access to labour force participation, there’s hope that with the increasing recognition of the power of the female voting bloc, women’s interests will no longer an afterthought in policymaking; taking us closer to realising the objectives of the early suffragists.

Author: Mayank Mishra
Published: February 01, 2021 in the Financial Express

The rationale for government intervention seems unclear and needs further debate. Even if there are positive externalities to some data, there seem to be significant potential costs for the whole digital economy under the NPD framework.

With the exponential rise in the use of data by businesses, several regulatory challenges have emerged. Issues pertaining to data sharing pose some of the biggest challenges. In July 2020, the MeitY released a report on non-personal data (NPD) governance framework with an aim to promote data sharing by businesses for public welfare. It intends to regulate data sharing so that the benefits accrue to India, its communities and businesses. While the purpose of data sharing for public welfare is commendable, the suggestions made to govern NPD were met with widespread disapproval from many stakeholders. It was noted that the framework was wide-ranging in its recommendations which could be misused against larger data businesses.

Taking into account the feedback from the first report, the government released a second version in December 2020. While it brings more clarity, there are still issues that need serious attention.

Analysing the government’s decision to intervene: Economic theory states that a government should only intervene in economy when there is market failure, i.e. when the forces of demand and supply do not lead to an efficient outcome. The market failure that the government envisages in the case of NPD is positive externalities associated with sharing of data. According to this rationale, the data collected by a firm can benefit firms and communities beyond the one that collected it. The committee has given many examples, such as road data collected by cab aggregators, which can be used by municipal bodies to improve road design, or cancer hospitals sharing their data for medical research. However, while there are benefits of sharing data with the community, there are also potential costs and risks.

Potential impact of the NPD framework on firms: Firms that invest in collecting data incur a significant cost in doing so. The cost is incurred in order to reap future revenue by providing innovative products and services, enhanced user experience or efficient operations of firms. The data collected, in effect, gives competitive advantage to a market player compared to its competitors. However, if the proposed NPD framework is implemented, a business can potentially lose its competitive advantage if its data could be accessed by its competitors through data trustees. This could disincentivise businesses to collect data in the future, thereby hampering the data economy. Unlike the popular adage ‘data is the new oil’, data doesn’t exist naturally. Datasets are built over time through conscious efforts of companies collecting data. Therefore, by destroying the incentive to collect data, we risk defeating the whole purpose of this framework.

The rationale for government intervention seems unclear and needs further debate. Even if there are positive externalities to some data, there seem to be significant potential costs for the whole digital economy under the NPD framework. The government, therefore, needs to do a thorough cost-benefit analysis of the framework and implement it only where it establishes that benefits outweigh the costs.

Finally, apart from distorting the market, the NPD framework could lead to negative externalities by compromising the privacy of the individuals. While the framework specifies that only anonymised, non-personal data can be shared through data trustees, there still remains a possibility that data is de-anonymised by an entity, thus revealing personal information. Further, under this framework, once the datasets are amalgamated in HVDs with different data trustees, it will be extremely difficult to track and control downstream usage of these datasets. Experts suggest that by triangulating different datasets, there is a high risk of identification of individuals and groups of individuals. Once a dataset is shared outside of the purpose for which it was originally collected, it is almost impossible for any regulator to control its end-usage. It can be argued that while Indian policymakers, on one side, are proposing purpose limitation and progressive rights for individuals under the PDP Bill, we are, in fact, risking diluting those protections through forced non-personal data sharing.

Owing to the myriads of issues with the NPD framework, the government should tread cautiously in regulating such a fast-moving and dynamic field. We risk stifling the digital economy by fighting too many battles together. Privacy and innovation should continue to be core goals for regulation of the digital economy, compulsory sharing of NPD is a potential affront to both.

Authors: Nikhil Iyer and Aparajita Bharti
Published: March 08, 2021 in the Hindu Business Line

India’s privacy law must balance the rights of children with online safety

The Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill, 2019, is expected to submit its report soon. Among other things, observers will keenly follow the Committee’s discussion around children’s personal data. Currently, the Bill imposes a blanket requirement for parental consent for processing the personal data of anyone below the age of 18. In effect, children’s access to online social media, ed-tech platforms, forums for personal interest and development, gaming and so on will be governed by this provision.

While the necessity to protect the interests of children online is a foregone conclusion, the challenge is to do so while respecting their autonomy. The blanket provision in the PDP Bill assumes similar maturity for all children under 18. The Bill inks them as incapable of understanding the risks, benefits and other consequences associated with their online activities.

In contrast, in the offline world, the law variously acknowledges that maturity changes over time. Under India’s criminal law, those below age 12 are deemed incapable of giving informed consent, whereas the maturity of those between ages 12 and 18 is decided by a court of law. Even the laws on child labour allow children under 14 to work autonomously in non-hazardous industries. However, according to the PDP Bill, the same children cannot sign up for online jobs without parental consent. Even a rigorous law such as the Juvenile Justice Act now recognises the difference in maturity among teenagers in different age groups.

This dichotomy between the offline and the online world is especially problematic given the number of Indian teenagers on the internet today. India has one of the largest numbers of active internet users anywhere in the world. Out of an estimated 504 million internet users, nearly one-third are aged under 19. As per the Annual Status on Education Report (ASER) 2020, more than one-third of all schoolchildren are pursuing digital education, either through online classes or recorded videos. Given the ubiquitous reliance on the internet through the pandemic for education, more students have likely come online in the past year.

The implications of these trends on the PDP Bill’s mandate are worth evaluating. To consent on behalf of the child, parents need to be aware of all online activities that the child engages in, even as the child may be digitally more literate and tech-savvy than them. This problem is exacerbated in families of children who are first-generation learners. There is also a huge risk of a chilling effect as the requirement of parental consent inhibits the ability of the child to use the internet as a medium of ‘self-expression, growth and education’. Children are likelier to worry about their right to privacy being infringed by their parents or peers, than by the State or commercial actors.

This is especially so as the child seeks to find an outlet for aspects of their personality that do not find an immediate audience due to social taboos. These may be on questions of sexual orientation, religion and other sensitive issues.

Further, the blanket provision may put Indian children at a comparative disadvantage as compared to their peers in other countries. In the UK and the US, parental consent is needed for those below age 13, while in China this threshold is at age 14. In the EU, this threshold is at age 16, with an option for member states to reduce it to age 13.

Adolescents in these countries will be freely able to use the internet to learn about opportunities, socialise, hone their skills and so on, while those in India will be singularly reliant on their parents to facilitate this. It is highly unlikely that all parents have the ability to fulfil this role proactively.

Instead of strict age-gating provisions, we must update our school curriculum to equip children to keep themselves safe online. One’s relationship with technology is one of themost inalienable aspects of our life today, therefore at every age, children, even those below the age of 13 must be exposed to the potential harms online. We should not only make them aware about the obvious harms on the internet such as phishing, identity or data theft, but also expose them to technology-enabled conundrums that we are dealing with as a society today, such as echo chambers, fake news and the risk of profiling for political gains. Just as we teach students good touch and bad touch to defend themselves in the physical world, we must equip them to make their decisions in the online space.

The question of how children’s maturity could be ascertained and parental consent be verified is gaining traction in other countries. In India, too, the blanket requirement for parental consent for those aged below 18 years must make way for a graded approach along with a comprehensive digital literacy curriculum. In adopting such an approach, we will bring India’s children on a parwith their global peers, and account for internet-based opportunities for their development.

Author: Rohit Kumar
Published: December 09, 2020 in the Indian Express

India does not spend enough on its young people. It is their opportunities that have been constricted the most by the pandemic.

For an economy ravaged by the pandemic, the 2021 budget is going to be of critical importance. The spread of coronavirus and the uncertainty around its containment has affected the revival of economic activity and disrupted labour markets. Unemployment is at a high of 7.8 per cent in November with youth unemployment exceeding 20 per cent. Educational institutions have not convened physical classes in over 8 months and vocational education/skilling opportunities have gone defunct. No wonder then that these issues have taken centre stage in policy discourse and become key rallying points in elections — the mobilisation around jobs, skilling and social security in Bihar elections is a case in point. The youth, in particular, has been at the forefront of this mobilisation. It is their opportunities and life chances that have been constricted the most by this pandemic.

If anything, the pandemic has highlighted the need to build the resilience of the youth and to place their concerns at the centre stage of policy discussions.

While the government has taken several measures over the last year to address some of these challenges, a lot remains to be done. The pandemic is still far from over and India’s institutional focus on its youth has always been relatively weak. An analysis of the last five Union budgets shows that India spends less than 4 per cent of its annual budget on youth-focused schemes, and the proportion of funding allocated to these schemes has declined in recent years. This is despite the fact that India is home to one of the youngest populations in the world; more than a third of India’s population will be in the age group of 10-34 by the next year.

The spending on higher education has been concentrated in highly selective autonomous institutes, such as IITs and IISc, while that for skilling and vocational education has contracted over the last five years. This is odd given that the government has been focusing on bridging the skill gap in India. Only a small percentage of young people in India pursue degrees in higher education, and a minuscule number get to enrol in prestigious colleges and universities. Most either drop out and enter the labour market directly or look to pursue vocational education/skilling programmes to up-skill themselves for the job market. Government estimates suggest that we need to up-skill upwards of 300 million youngsters to make sure they are gainfully employed. Yet, India’s biggest skilling programme, PMKVY (Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana) with an average annual budget of Rs 3,000 crore aims to skill only 10 million individuals over 2016-2020. The problem is compounded by an overall decline in the skilling budget across ministries. After PMKVY, DDUGKY (Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana) under the National Rural Livelihood Mission is another flagship skilling scheme, but with a much smaller budget — the spending on this scheme has been below Rs 100 crore over the past few years.

While there is a focus on increasing job opportunities for young people by incentivising investments in industry and new enterprises, data suggests that the increase in jobs has not kept pace with the growth of the economy. The Union budget’s focus on employment programmes — specifically those that match young people to opportunities is also very narrow, and most programmes tasked with enabling employment have seen limited success.

Another concern with budgetary priorities is the lack of focus on other areas that affect young people. For instance, the focus on sports and sports infrastructure remains weak and despite the fact that mental health concerns continue to affect young adults in India, an issue that has gained greater prominence during the pandemic, there is no large-scale focused programme to address this problem. The only outlay towards mental health is in the form of disbursals to autonomous institutes such as the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience, Bangalore. In fact, the total outlay towards such autonomous institutes in the 2020-21 budget is only Rs 488 crore. This too, and understandably so, is not focused on the youth.

If anything, the pandemic has highlighted the need to build the resilience of the youth and to place their concerns at the centre stage of policy discussions.

India is one of the youngest countries in the world and if we wish to leverage the power of this young population, and support it through the pressures of the pandemic, there needs to be a strong and concerted effort towards youth-focused interventions. Though there are a wide variety of schemes and initiatives in the government’s policy arsenal, a strong focus on the youth seems to be missing. The allocations specifically meant for youth are concentrated in areas of education and employment, with not enough focus on other critical areas such as mental health or leadership. But even where we do spend on youth, our allocations pale in comparison to the size of this demographic. The upcoming budget is a small window of opportunity to bring focus to this segment and to bridge the chasm that has crept in in terms of access to opportunity due to the pandemic.