We need to reengineer India’s entire system of administration

This article was first published in The Mint.Following Adar Poonawalla’s statements to the British media, on 3 May India’s government issued a media release stating that it had placed new orders for 110 million doses of Covishield and 50 million doses of Covaxin from Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech, to be delivered over the next three months. Refuting allegations that fresh orders had not been placed, the government revealed that these purchases had been paid for in advance in the last week of April. The release also noted the government’s previous order of 100 million and 20 million doses of the two respective vaccines, of which 87% and 44% had been fulfilled as on that date. The earliest order was perhaps placed in January, after vaccines received regulatory approval and before India’s vaccination programme started in the middle of that month.

In contrast, the British government ordered 90 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine as early as May 2020, enough to cover 67% of its population. The same month, the US government ordered 300 million doses, adequate for 46% of its population. By September 2020, Japan, the EU, Australia, Canada, Germany and Brazil had all placed significant orders. Now here’s the most important part—all these countries placed orders for a vaccine that didn’t exist back then. These were not purchases. They were bets. Of course, by placing such large bets, they reduced their risks as more money raises the likelihood of the development of a successful vaccine.

Can the Indian government purchase things that do not yet exist? The answer, of course, is yes. It is very powerful. Both the Constitution and extant rules can be interpreted or changed for it to do what it wants. That’s the theory. But the practical question is this: Which public official, minister or civil servant would want to sign off on such a purchase? It would take a very courageous joint secretary (in the Humphrey Applebyan sense) to even recommend as much. In case the purchased non-existent vaccine fails to materialize, not only would careers come to a premature end, jail terms would beckon. Indeed, there is nothing to prevent an ambitious government auditor or opportunistic politician from raking up a ‘scam’ years later, long after people have forgotten the context.

So it should not surprise us that India ordered its first vaccines in January, after they came into existence. It should also not surprise us that the order quantities were small, for without a directive from the top political level, the system dare not commit to more than the production capabilities of manufacturers.None of this is to absolve political lapses. But if we are to secure better governance outcomes, we must understand the limitations of our administrative structures and decision-making culture. As we saw over the past decade, it is a comforting myth that enacting a legislation, securing a Supreme Court verdict or electing different leaders will change outcomes. Unless we reform how India is governed, the structures, processes and culture of government, we will continue to be disappointed by what the system actually delivers.Take another case. Given that healthcare capacity is exhausted in many places and families and civil society groups are frantically arranging vital supplies from across the country and abroad, it would be prudent to remove all duties, taxes and bureaucratic friction on them until the pandemic is under control. Yet, while the finance ministry waived customs duties on many medical goods, GST is a different matter. Many goods received as donation for free distribution are tax exempt until 30 June, but firms and non-profit organizations that buy them even for free distribution are not automatically exempt. Chief secretaries of states have been asked to appoint nodal officers so that “entities desirous of importing COVID relief material for free distribution may approach them for certification". I am sure that ministers and civil servants know that the best thing to do at this time is to waive GST and paperwork on anything remotely related to healthcare, and not sit in judgement on whether the item is useful for covid treatment or not. Yet, they find this extremely difficult to do, for the rate structure is not the only thing that is complicated about the GST framework.If a system works, it is because the outcomes of the actions of its good people outweigh those of the bad ones. If those good people do not have the power, authority and incentives to act, then the system does not deliver. We cannot depend on exceptional, courageous, heroic and career-suicidal officers. All officials should be able to exercise judgement within their scope of duties and act in the public interest. The pandemic highlights the need for a fundamental rethink of our administrative goals, structures and processes. From national defence to public health, India has been let down by the inability of our government to act early, take necessary risks and procure what’s needed.Political responsibility is easy to identify, and in elections we have a regular accountability mechanism. Whether and how citizens choose to exercise it is another matter. What is less obvious is the task of re-engineering government that has been overdue for two decades or more. It would be a shame if the immense pain and suffering we are now going through does not push us to pay attention to it.

It's time to bid goodbye and good riddance to board examinations

This article was originally published in The MintGuess where these words are from: Examinations have “grown to extravagant dimensions, and their influence has been allowed to dominate the whole system of education in India, with the result that instruction is confined within the rigid framework of prescribed courses, that all forms of training which do not admit of being tested by written examinations are liable to be neglected." Answer: From a report on education policy prepared by the government of George Nathaniel Curzon, Viceroy of India, in 1904. What about this one? “The system of examinations prevailing in our country has proved a curse to education". Answer: The Congress’s Zakir Husain Committee report on Basic National Education, 1938. I found these damning indictments of board examinations in a powerful essay by Azim Premji University professor B.S. Rishikesh on why school board examinations must be scrapped permanently.

As he argues, the pandemic has exposed the pointlessness of these expensive ritual ordeals. We found that we could easily cancel Grade 10 board exams without any significant consequences. Grade 12 board exams are somewhat different—they perform some functions for which there are no immediate alternatives—but there is a case to eventually get rid of them too. Today, these examinations mostly serve the interests of education bureaucracies, the coaching industry, test-preparation publishers and unscrupulous entrepreneurs who try to make a quick buck by exploiting the hopes and insecurities of parents. To the extent that they have any useful role in education itself, there are cheaper and less harmful alternatives that can replace exams.The case against Grade 10 examinations is clear. There was perhaps a time, 40 years ago, when formal schooling up to secondary school would have been adequate. Thus, the secondary school leaving certificate and equivalent qualifications acted as credentials signalling the completion of essential basic education. This is no longer the case. A young person anywhere in the world cannot expect lifelong employability without, at the very least, having 12 years of schooling. Indeed, science and mathematics are no longer optional for generations that have to deal with the complexities of life, work and citizenship in the Information Age.In today’s world, Grade 10 is no different from Grade 5 or 7, in that it is merely another step in a 12-year journey. Therefore these students can be evaluated just as those in grades below them. Not only are board exams unnecessary at this level, but to the extent they signal that schooling is ‘complete’, they discourage students from studying further. We should immediately do away with secondary school board examinations.While Grade 12 exams have limited utility from an educational perspective, they function as a gateway to higher studies, vocational education and employment. Also, while subjective assessments—as done in many Western countries—appear to be more suitable than examinations, there are a number of sociocultural and capacity-related prerequisites for them to work effectively. This calls for a more measured approach in transitioning away from the current system. As much as I favour jettisoning board examinations, I am sceptical about the political economy of subjective assessments, for there is no reason why schools will be able to avoid the favouritism, corruption and discrimination that are extant in the rest of our society. It is prudent to set a transition period of five or more years to reach a more desirable equilibrium, during which the school system can create the mindset and capacity required for it.

What does a better alternative look like? Students completing Grade 12 can be issued certificates of their educational performance, extra-curricular activities, sports and social service record by their own schools. Below this level, the Central Board of Secondary Education and other boards can offer optional standardized tests. These will be useful when students have to change boards.As a student, I had to move across four boards in five cities, my parents concerned whether transfer certificates would be recognized. With increased national mobility, we should expect that the number of students who will shift cities and boards will grow. The availability of a standardized test will facilitate student mobility across the country. Schools can recognize these tests or conduct their own to grant admission.At the Grade 12 level, instead of a single mandatory board examination, there can be optional tests on demand, taken if and when students need them. Universities should be free to determine what courses of study require such tests. Professional courses already have national entrance tests for which board exams are superfluous.We have lost sight of the purpose of schooling: it is to equip future citizens with a good grasp of language, mathematics, the scientific method, humanities and civic values. It is ultimately about enabling them to exercise their capacity for reason and make good decisions. Many of these qualities are not examinable. Excising board exams from education has long been necessary. The pandemic has shown us that it can easily be done.

Vaccinate people in areas worst affected by COVID's second wave

This article was first published The Mint. You can read the original piece here.In the past month, we have learnt two things about the pandemic. First, that relaxed behaviour by previously better-protected populations across the country is causing a surge in new coronavirus infections; and second, that the speed of the vaccination programme is constrained by hesitancy, mismatch of demand and supply, and perhaps short-term challenges in scaling up vaccine production. In the light of what we know now, there is a case to review the national vaccination strategy and direct it at quelling a widespread second wave.

Instead of pursuing a progressive nationwide expansion of vaccination prioritized by age-groups, the Narendra Modi government should open up vaccination to all adults in cities and districts where there is a surge in new covid cases. This is not only the most effective way to use available vaccine supplies, but also to avoid pressure on the national vaccination programme by reducing the risks of more serious second waves elsewhere in the country.Not only should the government make every adult in the worst affected areas eligible for vaccination, but massively expand the vaccination points by permitting all registered clinics to administer the vaccine. As the government is currently the sole distributor of vaccines, it should ensure that these worst-hit areas are supplied as a matter of urgent priority. India would be better off with a dynamic vaccination strategy of ‘quelling the surge’ wherever it occurs.Contrary to what its critics say, India’s vaccination programme has demonstrated a good mix of caution and flexibility so far. A gradual ramp-up was justified, given that two new vaccines are being administered to hundreds of millions of adults. So is the careful expansion of vaccination points and age-groups. But this programme was drawn up when many experts and analysts—including your columnist—didn’t expect such a severe second wave. Circumstances have changed. What the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration Working on Management of Covid-19 Vaccine Roll-Out (Negvac) and the Union cabinet must now take into account is the risk that the current path of the programme might not be fast enough and focused enough to prevent second waves in many more parts of the country. To use a military metaphor, we would do better to adopt a war footing, concentrating forces to win decisive battles, instead of spreading them thinly all across the front. Indeed, the very case for centralized management of national vaccination is the ability it grants to focus resources in a strategic manner across regions and populations.The main disadvantage of central planning is that it can never equal the market’s efficiency in matching demand and supply. Cases of wasted vaccines that worry our public officials would disappear if allocations were done by markets instead of administrators. Similarly, raising the daily vaccination rate and extending the coverage require private-sector involvement. No public service in India has been delivered by the government alone. There is some justification in keeping vaccines under government control in the early stages, when supply is limited and the vaccines’ impact on the population unknown. But once supply is no longer a serious constraint—perhaps a quarter hence—vaccination should be fully deregulated. As long as a good vaccine is available free at government hospitals and inexpensively at private ones, opening up the market for vaccinations will enable India to reach its targets faster. It makes little sense for the government—even if it were not facing severe fiscal constraints—to insist on subsidizing vaccines for people who can easily afford them. The only requirement would be to ensure all vaccinations are registered on a reinforced Co-Win backbone.In many Indian cities today, the younger population is more mobile and exposed, as it is driving economic activity. This is desirable, as it fuels a national recovery from the devastation caused by the pandemic. Yet, this is the very population that is last in queue for the vaccine, while being both vulnerable to the disease as well as responsible for its spread. The older population is more vulnerable, yes, but is relatively less required to move around. In the face of a surge in infections, from both epidemiological and economic standpoints, it is better to prioritize higher-risk younger adults for vaccination and isolate the older ones until more supplies come aboard.This is arguably the most ethical approach too, as public policy ought to be judged more by outcomes, less by intentions, and least by emotions. Redirecting limited vaccine supplies to highly-affected populations will mean that other populations and regions will have to wait longer. This in itself is not inequitable, for we must consider the network effects of an epidemic. Quelling a surge helps not only the population and a region that is prioritized, but also others who might face their own surges if the situation is not tackled. In any event, it is now only a matter of a few months before adequate supplies of several vaccines are available. But the next few weeks can save a lot of people across the country from avoidable suffering if enough vaccines reach the few affected districts in time.

Fukushima's lesson is the need for effective nuclear regulation

This article was first published in The MintIt has been a decade since 11 March 2011, when the most powerful earthquake recorded in Japan triggered a tsunami and killed over 19,500 people and displaced over 230,000. It was the country’s worst natural disaster since 1995. The ‘Great East Japan Earthquake’ or ‘Great Tohoku Earthquake’ is better known as the ‘Fukushima nuclear disaster’ and often cited as Exhibit A in the case against nuclear energy. Yes, the quake and tsunami caused a catastrophic failure of three reactors at Fukushima Daiichi power plant, leaving a contained radioactive mess that will take decades to clean up, and triggered a mass evacuation during which 2,313 people died. Yet, for all the horror stories, the actual number of deaths or cases of radiation sickness due to the accident is—take a deep breath—zero. Coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the disaster, a United Nations scientific committee confirmed findings that there have been no adverse health effects linked to radiation exposure. Nobody died and no one fell sick due to the reactor accident.

That’s not all. The popular narrative often neglects to mention that there were 11 operational reactors—including the three at Fukushima Daiichi—at four nuclear power plants in the region. All of them shut down automatically, but the three at Fukushima failed to complete the process. Sixty kilometres away, three reactors at Onagawa were undamaged and shut down safely, despite being closer to the epicentre and suffering a more powerful tsunami. None of this is to downplay the human, environmental and economic damage that the Fukushima accident caused, or indeed the risks arising from nuclear power plants; only to put it in perspective. What we have is a case for greater attention to safety and governance, not a knee jerk rejection of nuclear energy as we saw in many Western countries soon after the incident.A dispassionate assessment of technology and economics suggests that nuclear energy has to be part of the civilizational response to climate change. In its latest report, the International Energy Agency points out that while wind and solar power are already competitive compared to fossil-fuels, nuclear “remains the dispatchable low-carbon technology with the lowest expected costs in 2025." The cost structure for renewable energy must include that of energy storage systems if it is to replace coal and gas for base-load capacity. Even if, in line with current expectations, the economics of renewable energy become more attractive over time, nuclear will remain an important source of low-carbon diversity. As a country dependent on fuel imports, India must invest in renewable energy, but cannot afford to ignore nuclear.Vaclav Smil, one of the world’s most thoughtful energy analysts, calls nuclear energy “a successful failure" for its inability to gather public support despite its ability to deliver. Despite the facts, ‘Fukushima’ is a one-word argument made around the world to silence any debate on building new nuclear power stations.The derogation of nuclear energy is not a failure of technology or economics. It is a failure of public policy. In that sense, India’s 2010 civil liability law is not unique in preventing greater investment, innovation and development of nuclear energy. It is a nearly global phenomenon. Other than Russia and China that have used the decade since the Fukushima accident to become global leaders in the field, almost every other country has adopted statutes and policies that strangle the development of the nuclear industry.India has done well to remain invested in nuclear despite the adverse global sentiment, but the pace has been slower than estimated, and, more importantly, the industry governance structure remains unreformed. Against the promise of producing 20,000MW of nuclear power by 2020, India currently has operational capacity of 6,780MW, constituting only 2.4% of the electricity generated. In addition to the eight under construction, the government has approved 12 more reactors, targeting 22,480MW by 2031.In a reply to a Lok Sabha question, the government stated that it has no plans to promote domestic and foreign investment in the sector.This makes Fukushima’s lesson especially relevant for India. The causes of that accident were traced to a poor safety culture arising from regulatory capture and poor oversight. Investigators blamed a “mindset that emphasises hierarchy and acquiescence and discourages asking questions."If India’s nuclear industry is government-run for the foreseeable future, then it is all the more important to restructure its governance. The case for an industry regulator and safety auditor independent of the India’s atomic energy establishment has been clear since 1995, a point re-iterated in a 2015 review by an independent international expert group.The Narendra Modi government should restructure the civilian nuclear energy establishment in the manner it did the space sector last year: structurally separate the policymaker, regulator, research and development, and commercial operators. Safety requires more, timely and better information. Not everything needs to be in the public domain, but an effective governance structure will give the government better-quality information on the state of affairs in the sector.

We should not forget the equity dimension of PSU privatization

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement that “the government has no business to remain in business" is the clearest articulation of the reason why India must privatize the hundreds of public-sector enterprises that its Union and state governments run. In doing so, he departs from earlier prime ministers, who preferred incremental dilution of government shareholding, or a cautious one-by-one approach in the sale of public enterprises. The invention of the term ‘disinvestment’, which for two decades has been used to describe the privatization of public sector enterprises in India, showed both a lack of clarity of purpose on the part of previous governments and also their need to apologetically cloak the policy against criticism from ideologues across the political spectrum. It is to Modi’s credit that he has decided to use his political capital to declare that privatization of public sector enterprises is in the national interest and thus ought to be carried out whole-heartedly. This is a welcome break from the past.

To realize the ambition of raising over ₹2.5 trillion from the monetization and sale of state-owned businesses and assets, the Modi government will have to get two crucial things right.The first is well known: Process. After Niti Aayog recommends what to do with each of the 300-odd public enterprises, it will be examined by a committee of secretaries, then by a committee of ministers, before the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) puts it to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) for ‘in-principle’ approval. Instead of this long route, either Niti Aayog or DIPAM should directly take it to the CCEA.The Union government currently does not have an administrative setup and sufficient talent with the professional skills needed to carry out what is at its core a corporate mergers and acquisitions role. What is more, good civil servants will hesitate from taking up the job for fear of a career- or retirement-ruining scandal. Outsourcing the job to private investment banks could bring greater efficiency to the process if done right, but opens up a host of conflict-of-interest issues that would be difficult to manage in the Indian context. The ideal setup is a special purpose department that has political sponsorship, administrative clout, professional talent, incentives for transparency, rewards for performance, and insulation from scandal. So it will have to be a new hybrid species of the genus Governmenta, incorporating many genes, functions and adaptations from the genus Privata. For if we continue with the current administrative machinery and processes, the gap between the country’s disinvestment targets and actual proceeds will yawn even more widely.The second issue is perhaps more important but gets a lot less attention: Equity. Not equity as in shares, but equity as in fairness. The Prime Minister mentioned stakeholder mapping in the context of transparency and competition in implementation. For privatization to be successful, widely accepted and in the public interest, stakeholder mapping should be vastly expanded to cover all sections of society that will be affected by the reforms.The government has done well to announce that the proceeds from the sale of public-sector enterprises will be routed “to public welfare schemes in areas like water and sanitation, education and healthcare." Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman noted that the money is "not being raised to fill acertain hole in the Consolidated Fund of India. The money being raised from disinvestment will go towards infrastructure." The promise that the sale of public assets will be used for long-term investments in human and physical infrastructure addresses the baseline equity issue. It will be a good idea to put legislative safeguards on this promise, to prevent governments from violating the compact in the future. Let’s recall that the National Investment Fund (NIF), set up in 2005 with similar intent, saw a withdrawal in 2009 “in view of the difficult economic situation caused by the global slowdown of 2008-09 and a severe drought in 2009-10".Next, there are misgivings that privatization will lead to job losses and that candidates entitled to job reservations will be worse off. The former can partly be addressed as part of the privatization agreement. The latter requires political engagement and policy solutions. One way is for the government to upgrade its investment in promoting Dalit entrepreneurship in particular. Equity considerations thus demand that public policy creates better upfront pathways for people to attain a higher socio-economic status than they stand to lose once public sector enterprises are privatized.Many public sector businesses were created by governments at a time when India was poorer, incomes were smaller, the tax base narrower and tax rates higher. They were financed using large parts of our parents’ and grandparents’ incomes. Is it not fair that the original investors should benefit from the sale of assets that the government created with their money? There is an argument for putting part of the proceeds in the retirement accounts and pensions of our oldest taxpayers, as a way to compensate them for the sacrifices they made to finance the socialist state. Their voice is not politically strong, their demands not strident, but recognizing their contribution is the right thing to do.This piece was originally published in The Mint

Killing the Slow Brain

This article was originally published in OPEN magazine.The proliferation of social media presents a clear danger to liberal democracy, free markets, political order and, indeed, to human civilisation. The threat is greater and more urgent than that presented by climate change, Artificial Intelligence, nuclear war, pandemics and terrorism. While we recognise many of the latter as constituting global threats and are aware of how to address them (even if we find it difficult to do so in practice), public opinion around the world is yet to fully recognise that not only is social media a threat to society, but also that the threat is existential in nature.To be sure, the rose-tinted view of the internet and social media that we entertained in the mid-2000s has given way to greater skepticism as the downsides of global interpersonal connectivity have come to fore. Techno-pessimism has grown as societies deal with diverse problems ranging from cyberbullying to surveillance capitalism, from internet-enabled terrorism to foreign interference in electoral politics. If the threat from social media and transnational technology platforms over which they run were limited to problems such as these, it would have been relatively easier for the world’s governments and societies to manage. The problem, unfortunately, is of a vastly different nature.For now, let us set aside the economic challenges, such as taxing digital transactions in a multi-crossborder setting and controversial business models employed by global tech platforms. Let us focus on the sociopolitical ones as they are more important.We confront these challenges at three levels. First, while popular attention is mostly focused on controversies around free speech and privacy, these are actually superficial in nature. More serious is the underlying second level, involving political power that technology platforms have come to wield through their ability to shape international and national narratives, to micro-target and influence human behaviour. But most serious of all is the third, deepest level concerning the effect of social media on how we process information, how we think and how we make judgements.Today, we are intensely caught up at the first level, amid passionate debates concerning online free speech. The debate here is about who should govern what is expressed on the platform; private corporations, national governments or civil societies. In the US, this debate centres around whether social media companies are publications that exercise editorial choice or platforms that do not. The companies have long enjoyed the protections of the latter and escaped legal responsibility for the content that is expressed on their networks. After all, unlike newspapers or television companies, they do not have editors deciding what gets published or broadcast. Yet, their claims to being mere platforms are questionable because even if they do not have human editors making decisions, they do employ computer algorithms that determine what users see. What you see on a Google search, Facebook feed or Twitter stream is neither random nor reverse-chronological. It is algorithmic. So if lawmakers in the US want to review the statute that treats them as platforms, they have a case. Meanwhile, Europe has long had rules prohibiting hate speech, which it seeks to impose more strongly on big tech companies that conveniently happen to be mostly American. In India, governments have long taken an elastic view of the constitutional restrictions on free speech, succumbing either to competitive intolerance or political partisanship. Indeed, one of the grounds for demanding that content be taken down under the Information Technology Act, 2000 is the bewildering offence of ‘blasphemy’ which is absurd in a secular state and ought to be unconstitutional. Yet, it remains on the books. In other words, whether it is in the US, Europe or India, governments are attempting to seize greater control over gatekeeping content from technology platforms. This is a battle that governments will eventually win. They will also win the battle over privacy norms.The world’s more deliberative political systems are paying greater attention to the second level issue: how to deal with the political power that tech platforms have come to acquire. Even if their ability to make or break political careers is overestimated, their extraordinary ability to shape the public narrative is no longer in doubt. The world’s nation-states, shaped as they were by the Industrial Age, lack effective mechanisms to deal with this new power centre. The old formula of separating legislative, judiciary, executive, monetary and religious authorities, and ensuring that the media is free and there is competition in the economy, does not work satisfactorily in the Information Age. Lacking suitable instruments, the world’s lawmakers are using what they have—anti-trust laws—to literally cut big technology firms down to size. A far more effective way would be to curb the narrative dominance of tech companies by compelling them to open up their platforms to competing algorithm providers. Even so, the broader task of accommodating information power centres and rebalancing power among social institutions is a task that all countries face.IT IS AT the third and deepest level that we confront the most serious threat from social media, because it hijacks our ability to think. Addictive and relentless, social media interferes with our ability to use the reflective, rational part of the mind—what psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls the ‘slow brain’—and instead makes us leap from one instinctive reaction to the other. Instead of making our own judgements, we rely on social proof, ‘what others say’, even if it contradicts our own lived experience. We do not reflect. Indeed, we cannot reflect because the feed has refreshed and we must respond quickly. There is no time to reason. Yet, liberal democracy and free markets are based on the human capacity for reason. Take that away and the edifice of society stands on much weaker legs. It is not a coincidence that liberal democracies around the world have seen a weakening of liberal norms, the rise of demagogues and ceaseless moral panics over the past decade. The Right is currently not too concerned about this—and often celebrates it—as it is reaping the political benefits of the phenomenon. This is myopic. Nationalists, conservatives and traditionalists must be concerned too, for the whirlwind of unreason will not spare any political or social order. Liberal democratic order is merely the first victim. Social media undermines order itself and will not distinguish one form from the other. It is rapidly eating away at the cognitive machinery of humankind, at our capacity to think and use our better judgement. This is a path that leads to anarchy, authoritarianism or both. So even authoritarians cannot rest easy.We have no idea how to stop this slide. The world is getting more connected, data is getting cheaper, video is replacing text and literacy is no longer a hurdle. But we do not know how to get off the smartphone, nor, indeed, how to get our kids off it.The world’s governments will find that it is easier to sort out who gets to control free speech on the internet, and even to accommodate tech platforms into democratic power structures, than it is to unlock the stranglehold social media has over the human mind. As individuals, we can start acting now.

Private sector can be govt’s useful ally in Covid vaccination, not an adversary

Despite being the second-fastest country to vaccinate over 10 million people and currently having the third-highest number of people vaccinated against Covid-19, it is fair to say that India’s vaccination programme has gotten off to a slow start. At around 300,000 per day, the current vaccination rate is only a quarter of the 1.3 million per day that was estimated by the government in January. As Naushad Forbes, co-chairman of Forbes Marshall, pointed out in Business Standard a few days ago, at this rate it could take up to 17 years to administer two doses to 800 million adults.

In other words, the current pace of India’s vaccination programme is, paradoxically, both impressive and inadequate. To be effective, it must be ramped up 10-20 times, so that 80 per cent of the population can be protected by the end of the year. Speed is important for many reasons: the faster the population is immunised, the quicker the economic recovery, the smaller the risk of new strains, and lower the human cost.Read the full article on ThePrint

Unless China changes thinking, any border agreement is a perishable good

It should not come as a surprise that the Narendra Modi government and some in the media and strategic community have projected the military agreement to disengage on both banks of the Pangong Tso in Ladakh as a triumph. The footage of Chinese forces dismantling their forward stations and retreating behind the agreed positions supports this contention.

It should also not come as a surprise that the Opposition has criticised the agreement as a defeat, with Congress’ Rahul Gandhi accusing the prime minister of “ceding” territory to the Chinese. The fact that Indian troops can no longer patrol the areas between Fingers 4 and 8 — that the Chinese previously recognised as outside their claim, and that the Indian Army used to regularly patrol before the 2020 standoff — lends credence to this criticism.

Read the full article on ThePrint 

Responding to Southeast Asian concerns will raise our influence

An annual survey of Southeast Asia’s policy elite throws up three striking findings. First, despite being both the most influential power in Southeast Asia and providing the most help to ASEAN countries during the covid pandemic, China is increasingly distrusted in the region. Second, despite its insignificant political, strategic and economic influence in the region and posing little threat to any country, most respondents do not have confidence that India will “do the right thing" to contribute to peace, security, prosperity and governance. Third, a mere change of guard in Washington has turned around the region’s view of the United States, which is now looked towards with greater confidence and positivity.Read the full article on The Mint

India shouldn’t worry, Myanmar needs us more to prevent China domination

International reactions to military coups fall into two broad categories — “we demand the immediate restoration of democracy” or “the generals might be bastards, but they are our bastards”. The two responses appear mutually exclusive, but to astute practitioners of statecraft, they are not. One way to accomplish this is to say one thing and do the other. A more sophisticated way is to say and do both things simultaneously. If we were to employ such methods in our personal and domestic lives, it would be rightly considered duplicitous, hypocritical, and immoral. In the amoral world of international relations, however, the same value judgements don’t readily apply. What matters is how well you secure your national interest.Read the full article on ThePrint

Budget’s disinvestment targets are heroic. Modi govt must show unprecedented transparency

More than macroeconomic numbers like fiscal deficits, outlays and revenue targets, we can get a good sense of the Budget by looking at the tax rates. If there are new or higher taxes, or more complicated tax rules, it is usually a bad Budget. If there are lower taxes and compliance simplified, it’s a great Budget. And if, like the Budget Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented Monday, where the taxes remain unchanged amid an attempt to simplify their administration, then it’s a decent Budget. Considering that the Narendra Modi government does not intend to raise direct taxes amid the additional spending in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, by the tax-rate yardstick, we can grant that it is a fairly good Budget.Read the full article on ThePrint

What we must regulate when we regulate social media platforms

The global debate over how to govern Big Tech has intensified after Twitter, Facebook, Alphabet and Amazon de-platformed former US President Donald Trump and some of his supporters in the wake of the mob raid on the US Capitol on 6 January. Clearly, transnational technology platforms not only influence politics and markets through actions of users they don’t control, but directly wield political power themselves. Human society has yet to completely adjust to these new power centres of the Information Age, and all states—from autocracies to liberal democracies—are in their own ways contending with the challenges of how to limit, constrain, regulate and harness them.Read the full article in The Mint

Indians have put their Republic on a pedestal, forgotten to practice it each day

It’s Republic Day. We will celebrate it as usual with a grand military parade in New Delhi, and flag-hoisting functions at government offices, educational institutions, apartment complexes and neighbourhoods. We will sing patriotic songs, honour our soldiers, listen to a speech by a chief guest and enjoy the rest of the holiday. In some of these functions, we will read out the Preamble to the Constitution aloud, a very good practice that started in recent years and one that ought to become more popular. These apart, there are some unusual developments this year with the invited foreign dignitary unable to turn up in New Delhi and uninvited farmers turning up in their thousands instead, for their very own Republic Day parade.Read the full article on ThePrint

Why India will not see a big second wave of Covid-19

There will not be a significant second wave of Covid-19 in India.

Last August, using a Cynically Optimistic Back Of The Envelope, or COBOTE, calculation, I estimated that Covid-19 will end its epidemic phase in India by January 2021. Karthik Shashidhar, my collaborator, used the curve-fitting technique to predict that the pandemic will be over in the country by February 2021. It appears that these predictions were not too far off the mark.

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America’s strategic rivalry with China won’t change under Biden

The United States’ Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific, an extant policy document declassified and published last week by the outgoing Donald Trump administration, is mostly music to New Delhi’s ears. Assuming that “a strong India, in cooperation with like-minded countries, would act as a counterbalance [to] China", one of Washington’s objectives is to “accelerate India’s rise and capacity to serve as a net provider of security and Major Defense Partner" and “solidify an enduring strategic partnership with India underpinned by a strong Indian military able to effectively collaborate with the United States and our partners in the region to address shared interests." Becoming India’s preferred partner on security issues is one of the desired ends of the United States’ policy. Much of this has already been stated by US officials over the past two decades. But mere talk is cheap. The cold hard print of an apex policy document ought to make Washington’s intentions a lot more credible in New Delhi.Read the full article on The Mint

DCGI’s Covaxin ‘approval’ is political jumla. It reinforces idea of Modi’s Atmanirbhar Bharat

Other than to the highly credulous, it is pretty obvious that the Drugs Controller General of India’s ‘approval’ for Bharat Biotech’s indigenous vaccine candidate, Covaxin, was announced for extra-scientific reasons. It has neither completed Phase 3 clinical trials, nor has the safety and efficacy data been published. In fact, the drug regulator has not so much approved the vaccine for general public use, but rather granted permission for “restricted use in emergency situation in public interest as an abundant precaution, in clinical trial mode…”.

Again, other than to the highly credulous, it is pretty obvious that such an ‘approval’ was announced alongside that of the Serum Institute’s Covishield for political reasons. The Narendra Modi government did not want to lose the opportunity to score political points: that India has produced an indigenous vaccine under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

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The big convergence challenge that we face in this new decade

We enter the third decade of this millennium amid rising doubts, risks and worries about technology, markets, nationalism, democracy and the world order. The unqualified enthusiasm for them that we saw in the past two decades has given way to concerns about what their right dosage is, and what, if any, are the antidotes should we have willy-nilly overdosed on any of them. This is good. Societies that try to answer them truthfully and thoughtfully can expect to emerge stronger and more successful in 2030. For public policy, as for investors and value creators, the opportunities and risks lie at the intersection of technology, health, society and geopolitics.Read the full article in The Mint

Why blocking Sci-Hub will actually hurt national interest

Earlier this month, three foreign academic publishers sued two foreign websites for copyright infringement in a case before the Delhi High Court. Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society, among the world’s largest publishers of academic papers, wanted the court to block Sci-Hub and LibGen, the largest providers of ‘free downloads’ of their content in India. This case is important because it can have a significant impact on the broader research, academic and education environment in India.Read More on ThePrint

Why India needs two maritime theatres of command, not one

Without doubt, the appointment of a Chief of Defence Staff and the decision to reorganise the armed forces into joint theatre commands are the most significant defence reforms in independent India. The defence ministry and the top military leadership deserve commendation for moving to implement the changes quickly, in the face of multiple challenges: a pandemic, confrontation with China, upsurge in conflict along the western boundaries and a tightening fiscal position. This reorganisation is an extremely rare opportunity to put in place structures, processes and organisational cultures necessary to defend India in the 21st century — for that reason, it is vital to get it all right. As Admiral Arun Prakash, former Chief of Navy Staff and Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, told me “there will not be a second chance”.Read the full article on ThePrint

We must strengthen social trust for truly effective cyber security

Had it not been for over-ambition or arrogance on the part of the hackers—allegedly linked to Russian intelligence agencies—in attacking FireEye, a leading private cyber-security firm, it might have taken the world longer to discover that thousands of government bodies, corporations and even think-tanks around the world had been compromised for months. The culprits had gotten into the target networks by compromising the software update servers of Solarwinds, exploiting the vulnerabilities in the global information technology (IT) supply chain. As the world was dealing with the covid-19 pandemic, the hackers installed back doors, exfiltrated data, and perhaps planted other mischief that we are yet unaware of. The primary targets appear to be in the United States, but systems in several other countries, including India are potentially affected.Read the full piece on Mint