Bringing The 'Public' Back Into Public Policy
Tucked into a corner of Page 43 of the December 4, 1960 edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune was a news report about how Rear Admiral Paul D. Stroop had strategised a new way of doing things at the US Navy Weapons Bureau, of which he was the chief.
Stroop wanted to increase the reliability of the munitions and simultaneously reduce the cost of producing and storing them. There is no evidence of whether he came up with this strategy in his dream-like German chemist August Kekulé did with the structure of the Benzene molecule, but it was this: Keep It Simple, Stupid; or simply, KISS.
Thirty-two years later, Bill Clinton, then the Democratic Party candidate for President of the United States, adapted KISS into a political slogan that contributed significantly to his victory over Republican incumbent and Ronald Reagan successor George H.W. Bush — ‘It’s The Economy, Stupid’. Clinton would often say that politics and public policy are nothing if there is no ‘Public’ in them. And the way to get the public involved is to make these topics simple enough for them to participate. The 1992 US presidential election was all about the economy, and Clinton’s slogan forced the American people to think about what impacted them the most. It was indeed the economy, stupid!
But that’s an American example, and it was 31 years ago. Where are the Indian examples of getting the public involved in public policy? Where is the Indian context? What affects Indians the most?
Takshashila Institution Deputy Director and the chair of its High Tech Geopolitics Programme Pranay Kotasthane is acutely aware of these questions. What is public policy, after all, if there is no public in it?
In a talk given to members of the Young Scholars Initiative (YSI), a division of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (a New York-city based think tank), Pranay emphasised just that — can we get the public back into public policy, because, ‘Yeh public sab nahin jaanti hai’. Pranay spoke about eight ideas in his latest blockbuster book he has co-authored with Raghu Jaitley titled ‘Missing In Action: Why You Should Care About Public Policy’.
It is a fascinating book, but let us not say that ourselves. See what Ambica Prasad Patnaik said on Amazon:
“The storytelling is witty. The number of movie references will definitely add the masala to the reading. But in the process, one gets to learn so much interesting insights which every Indian should know, i.e., how our government functions, and how, instead of focusing on few critical things, the government tries to do everything and ends up not doing anything right! Also, cautions us that we should hold the government accountable on outcomes of a public policy rather than the so called intent. Few standouts for me were the stories on sandalwood, India's love for "ban", price fixing, etc, that shows how the everyday life issues that a common man faces are actually outcomes of bad policy making. Though the first section has more academic angle to it, the "bazaar" and "samaaj" sections are written very lucidly.”
We rest our case. You can listen to Pranay’s talk to YSI here, and you can buy Missing In Action here.
Who Moved My Diplomatic Immunity?
Even if you are not a diplomat (some of our readers are, though!), you’d know that there is such a thing called diplomatic immunity. It is a pretty simple concept, and it has been practised across the world for eons. We find versions of diplomatic immunity even in ancient Indian mythological texts such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata which unambiguously state that messengers and diplomats from even enemy kingdoms should not be meted out capital punishment.
In the Ramayana, for instance, when the demon king Ravana orders the killing of Hanuman, his younger brother, and counsel Vibheeshana reminds him that the divine monkey companion of Lord Rama cannot be touched as he is acting as a messenger.
In the modern world, diplomats from around the world are protected by the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, a document that has been ratified by almost every country.
So, why is China changing the rules of the game? Here’s what has happened, as Takshashila’s Anushka Saxena points out in her piece for The Diplomat:
“Among the many legal drafts reviewed and adopted at the recently concluded session of the Standing Committee of China’s top legislature, the National People’s Congress, was the Law on Foreign State Immunity. On September 1, the concluding day of the session, the NPC Standing Committee adopted the bill, and the law is scheduled to come into force on January 1, 2024. It joins a line of foreign policy-affecting legal changes introduced at the NPC in the past few months, such as the Foreign Relations Law enacted in June.”
What does it mean? Well, “it is accepted as a principle of customary international law that sovereign states and their properties are immune from the jurisdiction of national courts of other states. This is also enshrined in the 2004 United Nations Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and Their Property.”
China wants to change all that. Under a new Foreign State Immunity Law, China has laid out several exceptions where foreign states will have to cede immunity and their activities will be subject to the jurisdiction of Chinese courts.
What does this mean for India? Anushka explains:
“With the enactment of China’s new law, India may be subject to suits pertaining to infringement upon the free and open conduction of Chinese “commercial activities” within the country. For example, a part of “commercial activities” as understood by Article 7 of the new Chinese law is investments made between a foreign state and China. If India chooses to restrict domestic investment opportunities for Chinese state-owned enterprises amidst heightened tensions in bilateral relations, the Indian government may be subject to a civil suit filed by concerned SOEs in Chinese courts.”
This is certainly not good news. Not for India, not for anyone.
You can read Anushka’s detailed analysis of this important, but little-known development here.
On China and Indo-Pacific
Serious question: How should nations respond to the China Challenge? Indeed, how should India respond? This is a question that has dominated the foreign policy thought process of India (and that of several other countries) for a while. In that context alone, what does the Indo-Pacific mean?
Well, to begin with, Manoj Kewalramani says in this insightful podcast episode on Interpreting India, the Indo-Pacific is a geostrategic construct. “The idea of South Asia, the idea of West Asia, the idea of MENA, those regions are strategic imaginations,” he says in the podcast in response to a question of what the Indo-Pacific means. It is no secret that the Indo-Pacific has emerged as a strategic reimagination of a region where today’s geopolitical and geoeconomic heft lies.
As head of Takshashila Institution’s Indo-Pacific Programme, it is Manoj’s and his team’s job to not only understand the region but also interpret the goings-on to our readers and policymakers in general.
In this podcast episode of Interpreting India, Manoj joins Shibani Mehta to discuss how China views the Indo-Pacific region. As the geopolitical competition between China and the United States intensifies, how does China conceptualise its role in this region? How will Beijing’s foreign policy choices impact the region’s security environment? What can India learn from the "mental map" through which China views the Indo-Pacific?
Listen to this riveting conversation here.
The Devil Is In The G20 Details
Anybody who has worked at Takshashila or has interacted with Shambhavi Naik will tell you that she is a tour de force when it comes to managing complex research topics. So, when she told us that she had been invited to be a co-chair of a Think 20 (or T20) task force on Sustainable Development Goals, we were not surprised. She told us that she was surprised at the call she got when she was at Brussels airport about to take a flight to return to India, but in response, we told her the exact opposite.
Together with other members of the task force, Shambhavi came up with several policy briefs that would help propel collaboration between the G20 nations on issues as diverse as Circular Bioeconomy and India’s Tuberculosis Elimination Programme to Gender-Equitable Family Policies and The Consequences of Arctic Amplification in a Warming World.
These are complex issues indeed, and this is why brilliant minds like Shambhavi help the decision-makers tackle them.
In this brilliant episode of All Things Policy, Shambhavi sits down with Anushka Saxena to decode what she did at the T20 and explain what it means in the larger G20 context.
You can listen to the episode here.
Is The Gig Economy’s Golden Age Dead?
A recent report by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) titled “Socio-economic Impact Assessment of Food Delivery Platform Workers” informs us that real wages (nominal wages adjusted for inflation) of delivery workers have dropped significantly.
Nominal wages have increased, but at a slower rate (a paltry 4 percent) as food delivery companies are improving their unit economics in a bid to become profitable. Crucially, retail inflation, which includes fuel costs, has been on the rise, which makes real wages decrease by 11 percent.
The other finding that stood out was that gig workers were far more qualified than required. The study found that about a third (32 percent) of the food delivery workers had a graduate degree, a number that rose to 39.7 percent in tier-2 cities. Nearly all of them (93 percent) have finished 10th grade and about half of them have finished up to 12th grade. Further, 12.5 percent even had a technical and vocational degree or diploma.
This is just the beginning of an excellent op-ed by Prof Anupam Manur of Takshashila Institution, who, in effect, tells us that while the gig economy is a welcome oasis, it neither is nor should be seen as a long-term solution for job creation in India.
Anupam writes:
“For the larger problem, three things need to be done: One, focus on manufacturing to create mass-scale employment. Two, create a basic social safety net for gig and informal workers in the country. While Rajasthan has taken the first steps, there are better ways to do this. Three, focus on skilling of India’s youth. Apart from known solutions such as fixing India’s schooling system (no easy task), an idea like Career Impact Bonds can also be seriously considered.”
There are so many aspects to Anupam’s astute column that it’s better if you read it in full yourself and digest his thoughts. You can read it here.
Anupam then explained it further in a podcast episode with Harshit Pai, his student at Takshashila’s Post-Graduate Programme in Public Policy. You can listen to it here.
Wait, There’s More: A Postcard From Delhi
A couple of weeks back, our current PGP (Post-Graduate Programme in Public Policy) cohort was treated to an awesome workshop in Delhi as part of the coursework. There were three eventful days of discussions, unconference-styled sessions, and informal gatherings.
Glimpses from the event can be found in this Twitter thread here.
That’s all from us this week. Take care!