The National Monetisation Pipeline is a welcome move
Dear Reader,
I hope you are doing well. Over the past week, our work included a policy advisory on vaccine mandates in India, views on the national monetisation pipeline, China’s engagement in Afghanistan, and much more.
COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates In India
Arjun Gargeyas and Shambhavi Naik authored a policy advisory on vaccine mandates in India. Vaccine mandates are instruments for the government or private institutions to make it compulsory for citizens/employees/students to be vaccinated for a specific disease to avail benefits and services from the state or the institution.
As various countries mandate the use of COVID-19 vaccines, this assessment recommends the checks and balances that India must consider when mandating the COVID-19 vaccine in the country. The broad recommendations include:
The Union government should authorise vaccines based on clinical trials and ensure that there is sufficient vaccine supply.
All employers – government (Union, states, and local bodies) or private, should be given the freedom to mandate the vaccine proportionate to the public health threat.
Even when electing to issue a mandate, the employer should ensure vaccine supply, extra sick leave, and business continuity (in the case of government services).
Special cases must be considered for exemptions from the vaccine mandate.
National Monetisation Pipeline
Nitin Pai analysed the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) in his fortnightly column in the Mint. Welcoming the move, he wrote:
Ambitious financial targets apart, to the extent that it creates public awareness that the government should extract value from its assets, it marks a desirable shift in thinking. Niti Aayog’s policy documents show how the monetisation model can be adopted by state, municipal and rural governments. If the idea catches on, post-pandemic revenue-starved governments across the country could find new resources to finance higher demands on public expenditure.
The NMP leases out assets instead of selling them outright in an attempt to strike a middle ground between statists and reformers. This, according to Nitin, is a major drawback because:
As anyone who has rented out a home knows, the tenant somehow takes less care of the property than the owner would like. The friend who borrows your vehicle somehow seems to return it in a poorer condition. Some of this is to do with the psychology of ownership, but some of it is objectively true. Owners and tenants have different incentive structures.
Now the government faces the remarkable situation of ensuring that a private-sector lessee maintains an asset to standards the public sector itself is not capable of. Competition and market forces can help to some extent, but the private-sector management can just as well decide to cut costs by skimping on the maintenance of assets it doesn’t own. So the NMP implementation should allocate assets in a way that the lessee has a natural incentive for their upkeep.
India’s Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill
Priyal Lyncia D’ Almeida wrote a blog about the Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Bill, which was introduced in the Lok Sabha on September 14th, 2020, and was listed for debate in the monsoon session. She identified a few clauses that require further scrutiny. For instance:
The bill mandates Pre-Implantation Genetic Testing to screen pre-existing heritable and genetic diagnoses which is expensive and an extremely risky procedure. The cost of PGD testing in India starts at $1500 per 4 embryos and varies with the complexity and goal of the test and the number of embryos tested [4]. There is also an added risk of damage during the biopsy even when the tested embryos are normal. Making PGD testing mandatory even to couples with no history of genetic disorders may make ART inaccessible to people from relatively modest economic backgrounds. Furthermore, with the disorders being unspecified, it further increases the risk of eugenics as well as sex selection. Specifying the disorders for Pre-Implantation Genetic Testing reduces the risk of eugenics, in which case, the board needs to create a list of disorders with well-understood mutations that will be assessed. Instead, couples should be given the option to choose PGD, with couples with known pre-existing genetic conditions being strongly encouraged to test the embryos for mutations. This reduces the unnecessary risk on the normal embryos while making ART accessible to more couples.
Ethical Design For Financial Apps
Trading in stocks, funds, cryptocurrency and other financial assets has been made super easy by smartphone-based apps. A dark side to this ease of use is that many users can make trades without understanding the associated risks and lose money. User interaction design of such apps plays a big part in the user experience.
In the August 31 episode of All Things Policy, Mihir Mahajan spoke to Anirudh Tagat and Saksham Singh to understand these issues and how responsible design practices can help protect investors while not impeding the investing opportunities enabled by smartphone apps.
Anirudh Tagat is a research author at the Department of Economics, Monk Prayogshala, Mumbai.
Saksham Singh is a researcher with the Centre for Social and Behaviour Change, Ashoka University. He is also a part of India’s Behavioural Insights Unit at the NITI Aayog.
China’s Engagement In Afghanistan
In Hindustan Times, Manoj Kewalramani wrote about how China is likely to play its cards in Afghanistan following US withdrawal. Manoj argued that while many commentators believe that China is the greatest winner of the US’s missteps in Afghanistan, the situation poses strategic challenges for China. He wrote:
While China was never entirely comfortable with the US presence in Afghanistan, this did serve Beijing’s strategic interests. There were, of course, trade-offs such as having the US military along China’s western periphery and contending with prolonged instability in West Asia along with the spread of transnational terrorism. But, overall, China has benefited from the US war on terror. It kept the US distracted and embroiled in long-drawn-out anti-insurgency and State-building operations. It provided China with the opportunity to free-ride in a regional security environment underwritten by American military power. And it allowed China and the US to cooperate on tackling threats posed by terrorism, while also creating an enabling narrative for the Communist Party to crack down on minorities in Xinjiang and Tibet.
How Climate Change Threatens The Indian Ocean
In the Diplomat, Arjun Gargeyas analysed the effect of climate change on the Indian Ocean region. The Indian Ocean is warming at a higher rate than other oceans. This increases the risk of natural disasters, thus posing an existential threat to many island states in the region. In this scenario, the dormant Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) has the ability – and the need – to take the initiative on protecting the region’s interests amid the unfolding climate crisis. Arjun writes:
The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report mentions how the southwest monsoons in the Indian subcontinent are set to change trajectories due to climate change. Monsoons in the region will soon intensify in the summers, resulting in short spells of heavy rainfall in different places.
Island nations, such as the Maldives, Mauritius, and the Seychelles, are part of the IORA and must be a top priority for the organization. These island states are extremely vulnerable to impending changes and need to be provided support to mitigate the effects of climate change. Southeast Asian nations, such as Thailand and Indonesia, also part of the IORA, suffered the maximum damage during the 2004 tsunami and continue to remain among the nations most prone to flooding. The IORA must collectively develop a framework along with other necessary contingency plans for the region to handle any major environmental disaster in the near future.
Satellites for Climate Change Research
In the seventh edition of Technopolitik, our fortnightly newsletter on the geopolitics of technology, Ruturaj Gowaikar wrote about how remote sensing satellites can be used to fight climate change. This has become pertinent in the wake of two developments in the last month. The first being an announcement about an agreement between BRICS nations on remote sensing satellites and data sharing. And the second being the publication of the 6th assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
This agreement paves a way to form a virtual constellation of six satellites already in orbit and their respective ground stations at Cuiaba in Brazil, Moscow Region in Russia, Shadnagar–Hyderabad in India, Sanya in China, and Hartebeesthoek in South Africa. The satellites are CBERS-4 (jointly by Brazil and China), Kanopus-V type (of Russia), Resourcesat-2 and -2A (of India) and GF-6 and ZY-3/02 (of China).
This is crucial from a climate change perspective because:
Satellite-based sensors have advantages over land-based sensors to monitor essential climate variables (ECVs). They can provide high-quality, continuous data of a region, and the instruments aren’t affected by local weather conditions. Moreover, certain ECVs like gravitational effects of continental ice sheets can only be monitored by satellite-based sensors. The Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) currently specifies 54 ECVs, of which about 60 per cent can be addressed by satellite data.
Ethical Reasoning For Public Policy
Our short credit course in ethical reasoning for public policy is now accepting applications. The cohort begins on 25th September.
This course introduces students to the fundamentals of ethical reasoning in public policy. It provides students with concepts, frameworks on how to think through and resolve an ethical question.
The emphasis of the course is on evaluating and deciding on policy choices through ethical reasoning. The course incorporates elements of moral philosophy but is not a stand-alone course on moral philosophy. It introduces simple tools and frameworks that students can employ in the course of their professional lives.
The course consists of 5 webinars, and participants will be graded based on three debates and one final assignment. Students will receive a certificate on successful completion of all these components of the course.
India’s Global Outlook Survey
The first-ever Takshashila India’s Global Outlook Survey is now live. The survey aims to bridge the knowledge gap around how Indian policymakers, the strategic affairs community and ordinary citizens view the world and India’s role in it.
At Takshashila, we believe that as India rises, it will increasingly play a role in shaping world events. At the same time, events around the globe will impact Indian policy decisions. The future, therefore, will be marked by tricky trade-offs and tough choices.
The survey consists of 26 questions covering domains like India’s bilateral and multilateral engagements, national security concerns, economic diplomacy and attitudes towards the use of force. It closes on 15 September. Register your views now!
What We Have Been Reading
The last book we recommended was The Taliban at War: 2001–2018 by Antonio Giustozzi. I hope you have been enjoying reading it. This week’s book, recommended by me, is Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives by Michael Heller & James Salzman.
Mine! is a book about how ambiguity around ownership of things, from the aeroplane seats we occupy to the smartphones we buy, creates value for companies, drives innovation and shapes our behaviour. Using amusing real-life anecdotes, the authors argue that there are just six simple stories that everyone uses to claim ownership over things. The tug of war between these different narratives is central to high-stakes issues like digital privacy, climate change, and wealth inequality. The book is very accessible and contextualises the economics and the legal underpinnings of ownership in a breezy yet insightful manner.
That’s it from us this week. Take care and stay safe!
Regards,
Atish Padhy,
Assistant Manager, Digital Properties,
Takshashila Institution