Go for an“inclusive growth dividend” in India

We propose a more modest beginning towards using income transfers to mitigating extreme poverty in India. Specifically, we propose an “Inclusive Growth Dividend” (IGD) pegged at 1% of GDP/capita

India spends substantial amounts on welfare programmes but delivers them inefficiently. After accounting for administrative costs, leakage, and targeting errors, even official government documents estimate that a considerable fraction of fiscal outlays on government-implemented programmes do not reach the intended beneficiaries.

As a result, several leading economists have suggested that India should adopt a Universal Basic Income (UBI) as its main anti-poverty strategy, replacing existing welfare schemes with direct income transfers into bank accounts of beneficiaries (or their mothers, in the case of children). Such an approach, they argue, could yield a UBI worth between 3.5% and 10% of GDP, depending on which programs were replaced, and nearly eliminate extreme poverty in India.

This approach has several attractive features. It would eliminate targeting costs and errors of exclusion (since the programme is universal), reduce administrative costs and leakage, and directly reduce poverty. Several studies from around the world have shown that income transfers have yielded a variety of positive impacts in the lives of the poor with no evidence of increased spending on temptation goods like alcohol or tobacco. This idea of a UBI gained policy prominence in the 2017 Economic Survey, which discussed its merits extensively. Yet little has been done since to try it out in India. One reason is that it is very difficult politically to replace existing schemes – even the inefficient ones – leaving limited fiscal space for a UBI.

We propose a more modest beginning towards using income transfers to mitigating extreme poverty in India. Specifically, we propose an “Inclusive Growth Dividend” (IGD) pegged at one per cent of GDP/capita. At current income levels, this translates to Rs 100 a month per person. If we start with pilots in the 100 poorest blocks in India (covering ~2.5 crore people), the cost would be Rs 3,000 crores/year. This can easily be financed from the Rs 65,000 crores of savings reported by the Government from using Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) in welfare programmes.

A modest IGD can deliver several benefits. First, it minimises the risks to the poor by supplementing rather than substituting away existing benefits. Given implementation challenges that we have observed in our own research, we do not consider it prudent to replace existing welfare programs with DBT by fiat. The first goal of an IGD would simply be to demonstrate the government’s capacity to credibly and consistently deliver an income supplement to all citizens, even in the poorest areas.

Second, the amount is meaningful for the poorest households but too small to reduce incentives to work. While global evidence has consistently found that unconditional transfers do not reduce work, UBI critics in India continue to voice this concern. Indeed, we prefer the term IGD to UBI as “basic income” connotes an amount that is enough to live on. An IGD would instead be one component of people’s income which reaches all citizens and grows equally for all with the country’s growth. It would thus be a powerful practical and symbolic commitment to universally shared prosperity.

Third, global evidence suggests that an IGD can promote female empowerment. A mother with two children would receive Rs 300/month -- a considerable amount when the flagship national maternity benefits scheme provides Rs 500/month for only 12 months and for only the first pregnancy.

Fourth, an IGD would promote the government’s goal of universal effective financial inclusion. While millions of bank accounts have been created under the Paradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yajana and other schemes, a substantial fraction have no balances or are inactive. A regular monthly transfer can catalyse the use of these accounts as a vehicle for savings, build household comfort with interacting with the formal financial system, and improve supply-side incentives for creating last-mile cash access solutions.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, building the infrastructure to deliver an IGD can improve the accountability of other government programs by making cash transfers an attainable benchmark against which they can be evaluated. The hypothetical question of “should we do a programme or simply give the money directly to intended program beneficiaries” would become a very real one. In many cases beneficiaries themselves can exercise this choice (as we discussed in our previous column on the PDS).

In other words, income transfers would become a low-implementation cost “index fund” for development spending and in-kind programmes and subsidies would need to demonstrate that their targeting, administrative and implementation costs deliver more value than their cost. Over time, programs that deliver less value than their cost could be replaced with income transfers while those that deliver more value can be retained.

The Jan-Dhan, Aadhar, Mobile (JAM) infrastructure is making it easier to deliver income support to Indians at scale, but this potential has not yet been realised. An IGD pilot (financed by central/state governments, foundations, or a combination) covering all citizens in some of India’s poorest blocks provides a fiscally and practically feasible way of testing this potential.

Karthik Muralidharan is Tata Chancellor’s Professor of Economics at UC San DiegoPaul Niehaus is Associate Professor of Economics at UC San DiegoSandip Sukhtankar is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Virginia

Source: Hindustan Times, 6/11/2018

Liberation for All

Who pursues the spiritual path and why? In the Bhagwad Gita, Krishna says that ‘only one out of thousands of men tries to attain me; and from amongst those who try to attain me, only a rare person really understands (realises) me’. Sant Jnaneshwar, in his commentary on the Gita, says that Arjuna asked why do only some engage in spiritual pursuit while others do not, and Krishna replied, “This yogabhyas is indeed one that leads to moksha. But then, even an ordinary thing cannot be achieved without qualification.” The Gita specifically mentions that the less privileged are also are entitled to pursue the path of liberation through bhakti. Krishna clearly indicates that varna is not inherited as a family legacy, but is decided by every individual’s makeup and actual occupation undertaken by him. The Gita refers to the different categories of people in terms of their occupation in worldly life. In olden days, those engaged in laborious occupations did not have the facility or environment conducive to pursuit of spiritual practice. Yet, Krishna assures that even they can attain Self-realisation by being God-conscious. A guru was pestered by a disciple to show him God. Finally, one day, the guru took the disciple to the river and forced the disciple’s head under water till the disciple started to get breathless. Then he let the disciple come up above water. When the disciple asked the guru why he did that, the guru answered that the disciple would see God when he would be as desperate for Him as he was for air when under water

Source: Economic Times, 9/11/2018

Percentage of desi women pilots twice that of world’s

India not only has the highest percentage of women airline pilots in the world, but the percentage of women pilots in India is more than double the global average, according to latest data released by International Society of Women Airline Pilots (ISA+21). According to the latest statistics, the percentage of women airline pilots in the world stands around 5.4%. In India, the percentage of women pilots currently is 12.4 %. India employs a total of 8,797 pilots of which 1,092 are women and 385 of these are female captains, according to ISA+21. Globally, the total number of airline pilots is over 1.5 lakh of which only 8,061 are women and 2,190 are women captains. TOI was the first to report that the percentage of female pilots in India was way above the global average. In a report carried on September 11, 2006, TOI had quoted ISA+21 data which said that the global percentage of women pilots was 5.9%. Back then, the percentage of women airline pilots in India was 11%, which still was double the global average. Delhi-based regional carrier Zoom employs the highest percentage of women pilots in the world, at 30%. IndiGo has the second highest percentage of women pilots at nearly 13.9%. Of the 2,689 pilots that it employs, 351 are women. Of the 1,867 pilots in Jet Airways, 231 are women (12.4%). SpiceJet has 853 pilots of which 113 are women (13.2%), while Air India has 1,710 pilots of which 217 are women pilots (12.7%). IndiGo and Jet Airways are the only two carriers in the world, other than some USbased carriers, where the number of female captains is currently in three digits. IndiGo has 118 women commanders and Jet Airways 100. However the percentage of women pilots in US-based carriers is just above global average. An IndiGo spokesperson said, “In the past five years, the number of women pilots has increased from 80 to over 330. We have women pilots flying as trainers and some are in managerial positions as well. Two of our women pilots have been nominated as flight operations inspectors with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).’’ The official added: “IndiGo is the only airline to have crèches, which enable both women and men to strike a balance between their early parenthood responsibilities and professional obligations.

Source: Times Of India, 9/11/2018

No respite from poverty for Muslims

Government intervention is required to improve educational and economic indicators

The National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) labour force survey reports that the economic condition of Muslims does not show any signs of improvement despite India being the fastest-growing large economy. An analysis of the data on economic and educational indicators for various religious groups reveals that Muslims are facing a vicious circle of poverty.

Lowest education levels

The NSSO’s 68th round (2011-12) provides estimates of education levels and job market indicators across major religious communities in India. The educational attainment of Muslims is the least among all these communities. In urban areas, the number of male Muslim postgraduates is as low as 15 per 1,000. This number is about four times lower than that of other communities, including Hindus, Christians and Sikhs. The situation is similar for Muslim women. The number of male graduates among Muslims is 71 per 1,000, less than even half the number of graduates (per 1,000) in other communities. Similarly, the number of Muslims educated up to the secondary and higher secondary levels is 162 and 90 per 1,000 persons, respectively, again the least among all the communities.

Poor achievement at higher levels of education is partly a reflection of sinilarly low levels of school education or of illiteracy. Around half the Muslim population over 15 years is either illiterate or has only primary or middle school education. The number of illiterate people is highest among Muslims (190 per 1,000), followed by Hindus (84), Sikhs (79) and Christians (57). The number of persons (over 15 years) who have obtained just primary or middle school education among Muslims is 257 and 198 (per 1,000 persons), respectively. Thus, as compared to other communities, the distribution of the Muslim population is least at the higher levels of education and highest at the lower levels of education.

Likewise, the current attendance rate among Muslims is least across all age groups. The number of Muslim males of 5-14 years in urban areas attending educational institutions is 869 per 1,000 persons, which is the least among all religious groups. It is higher among Christians (981), followed by Sikhs (971), though it is lower among Hindus (955), possibly because Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have lower rates. The gaps in the current attendance rates of Muslims and those of other religious groups are increasingly pronounced at higher age groups.

That Muslims have the lowest attendance rates and educational attainment, especially in higher education, can be explained by their income level and higher costs for post-secondary education. According to the NSSO survey, the average per capita consumption expenditure (used as an indicator of income) among Muslims is just Rs. 32.66 per day, which is the least among all religious groups. It is highest among Sikhs (Rs. 55.30), followed by Christians (Rs. 51.43) and Hindus (Rs. 37.50). As per the 71st NSSO survey on education (2014), the average course fee for college degrees in technical courses in government and private unaided institutions was Rs. 25,783 and Rs. 64,442, respectively. That is too high for Muslims to afford, given their per capita income.

Although children up to age 14 have a right to free and compulsory education, the average course fee per student for upper primary education is still Rs. 508 for the academic session. While the course fee is the same for all religious groups, its burden is highest among Muslims due to their per capita income. The course fee for upper primary education accounts for 8.5% of the yearly per capita spending for Muslims, followed by Hindus (7.4%), Christians (5.4%) and Sikhs (5.03%). The higher burden of the cost of education among Muslims, relative to their incomes, could be one of the factors responsible for their lowest attendance rates.

The high level of illiteracy among Muslims and the low levels of general education ensure that they are trapped in a vicious circle of poverty. The lack of higher education is adversely affecting their job indicators. The dynamics of labour markets are largely a function of the degrees of knowledge and skills. For example, the labour force participation rate (LFPR), defined as the number of persons either employed or seeking jobs, is significantly linked to the desire for work, which in turn is dependent upon educational attainment. Similarly, the quality of employment is strongly linked to levels of education and skills. Therefore, if a community is lagging in education, it risks being trapped in a vicious circle of poverty. This is a situation that is difficult to break out of without government intervention.

The signs of Indian Muslims being caught in a vicious circle of poverty are visible in terms of their low consumption expenditure and poor job market indicators, including LFPR, employment status, and worker population ratio. The NSSO data show that LFPR among Muslims is 342 and 337 (per 1,000) in urban and rural areas, respectively, the least among all the religious communities. This implies that only 342 persons per 1,000 persons of working age among Muslims in urban areas are employed or available for work. Similarly, the LFPR among Muslim women is worse than that among women of other communities. Given that Muslims live predominantly in urban areas (unlike other poorer communities like SCs/STs), where work outside the home could be available, this low LFPR is likely explained by their low levels of education.

Likewise, the worker population ratio (WPR), defined as the number of persons employed per 1,000 persons, is lowest among Muslims, both in rural and urban areas. Further, among urban males, the number of Muslims employed in regular jobs is only 288 per 1,000 employed persons, while the corresponding figure among urban Muslim females is merely 249, which is the lowest among all other communities. The number of regular employees per 1,000 employed persons is higher among Christians (494 among urban males and 647 among urban females), followed by Hindus (463 and 439), and Sikhs (418 and 482). Similarly, the proportion of households with their major source of income from regular salaried jobs is the lowest among Muslims.

What could be done

The Central and State governments could take concerted steps to help Indian Muslims escape this vicious circle of poverty. One way to improve their situation is to provide a special incentive and subsidy system for higher education. That will ensure that schoolgoing students continue to higher levels of schooling and higher education. Similarly, students who don’t wish to continue in general academic education must have access to vocational education from Class 9 onwards.

Irfan Ahmad Sofi is Assistant Professor of Economics, BGSB University, Rajouri (irfan.sofi@bgsbu.ac.in). Santosh Mehrotra is Professor and Chairperson, Centre for Labour, JNU (santoshmeh@gmail.com)

Source: The Hindu, 6/11/2018

Indian students bag US award for developing innovative app to check air quality index levels

A team of Delhi-based engineering college students has won a competition by US’ prestigious Marconi Society for developing an innovative mobile application that estimates the quality of air in one’s neighbourhood by analysing the images taken by a smartphone camera.

A team of Delhi-based engineering college students has won a competition by US’ prestigious Marconi Society for developing an innovative mobile application that estimates the quality of air in one’s neighbourhood by analysing the images taken by a smartphone camera.

The application developed by Tanmay Srivastava, Kanishk Jeet and Prerna Khanna of Bharati Vidyapeeth’s College of Engineering won the top spot in the contest organised in India under the Celestini Program, supported by the Marconi Society, according to an official release issued by the Mountain View, California-based Marconi Society.

The Celestini Program, named for the hill in Italy where Guglielmo Marconi conducted his first wireless transmission experiments, is run by winners of the Society’s annual Young Scholar Awards, who work with technical undergraduate students in developing countries, to use technology to create social and economic transformation in their communities, it said.

The winning team, which won USD 1,500 for their solution, developed an inexpensive, portable and real-time air quality analytics application: Air Cognizer. In this, a user uploads an image taken outdoors with half of the image covering the sky region.

“Using image processing techniques, features are extracted and the machine learning model estimates the Air Quality Index (AQI) levels for the user’s location. The machine learning model is deployed on smartphones using Tensorflow Lite and Machine Learning (ML) Kit from Google,” the release said.

An Android app of the same name is available at Google Play. “Air Cognizer is simple to use and free -- and will prove to be very useful for citizens in cities like Delhi, where air pollution is particularly acute now,” the Marconi Society said.

In India, the Celestini Program was started in 2017 in partnership with IIT-Delhi by Aakanksha Chowdhery, an ML Engineer with Google AI, who was selected as a Marconi Young Scholar in 2012 for her work in high-speed last-mile internet connectivity.

The other IIT-Delhi partners include Prof Brejesh Lall and Dr Prerana Mukherjee.

So far, 14 students have been hosted in India under this programme. In 2018, the second year of the Program in India, three teams from over 100 applicants were selected to work during the summer at IIT-Delhi on problems related to air pollution and road safety in New Delhi, the release said.

The second prize went to the team of Divyam Madaan and Radhika Dua, from UIET Chandigarh, Punjab University.

They created a website that forecast air pollution levels in Delhi over the next 24 hours using advanced machine learning techniques such as Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) to predict the major pollutant and its cause (for example, road traffic, industry emissions, or agricultural wastes) in every location based on historical data.

The website prototyped by the students updates in real-time using Google Cloud platform and Cloud ML engine.

The team that secured the third spot was also from Bharati Vidyapeeth’s College of Engineering. It included Sidharth Talia, Nikunj Agarwal and Samarjeet Kaur. They prototyped a low-latency platform to transmit vehicle-to-vehicle alerts about potential road safety hazards or collisions using computer vision techniques on Raspberry Pi and Xbee radio modules.

Source: Hindustan Times, 5/11/2018

How climate change can affect national security

As predicted, parts of the earth would become too hot to sustain life and the rising sea levels would submerge islands and low-lying coastal areas of various countries. Resultantly, the rising seas, droughts, food and water shortages will trigger large scale relocation of people both within their countries as also trans-international borders.

The recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released at Inchon, South Korea, has said that to avoid far-reaching effects of global climate change, the international community must act with greater urgency. As per its assessment, global warming is likely to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius between 2030 and 2052, if it continues to rise at the current rate. The planet has already warmed up by about one degree Celsius as compared to the pre-industrial age temperatures and every 0.5 degree Celsius rise in warming, portends dire consequences. The report has also underscored India’s vulnerability.

As predicted, parts of the earth would become too hot to sustain life and the rising sea levels would submerge islands and low-lying coastal areas of various countries. As a result, the rising seas, droughts, food and water shortages will trigger large scale relocation of people both within their countries as also across international borders. These movements will drive intrastate and interstate instability and future conflicts.

While the issue is being dealt with by the signatory nations to the Paris Agreement through comprehensive strategies, militaries all over the world, will have to innovate, adapt and transform to remain ready and relevant to fulfil their national security mandates in an environment beset by the perils of climate change. In the Indian context, melting of glaciers, flash floods, encroaching seas, cyclones, rising temperatures in the deserts and plains, forest fires and higher water levels in the riverine terrain will necessitate a conscious re-examination of the ways we fulfil our constitutional obligations. Our military’s peacetime locations, operational deployments, equipment profile, organisational structures, logistic sustenance, tactics, operational art and war fighting strategies will have to be revisited. Internal security management architecture, too, would require sprucing up. Since transformation in large organisations is a time consuming process, we need to act fast to think through the challenge with collective wisdom and draw up necessary road maps.

The policymakers will have to be mindful of the littoral surrounding the Bay of Bengal, which is among the most vulnerable regions of the world and can be the source of regional instability. As per the assessment of some subject matter experts, additional global warming will submerge the coastal areas in Bangladesh, Myanmar and the Indian states of West Bengal, Orissa and parts of Andhra Pradesh thus setting off large scale migration of the so called climate refugees towards India. As per Muniruzzaman, the chairman of the Global Military Advisory Council on climate change, the number of such refugees could well be around 20 million. Preventing their entry via our land borders and the coastline will be a huge challenge for the security forces. It will require a review of the border and coastline management resources along with the rules of engagement, which will require revision in the backdrop of our national policy in the 2030s. This policy will have to strike a balance between our national security interests and the humanitarian obligations.

We should strengthen the regional collaborative mechanisms as part of our national strategy on climate change. The defence cooperation between the militaries of the region should focus on creating joint parallel command structures to facilitate a synergised response in the wake of a natural or a man made calamity. These mechanisms should also be effectively interfaced with the UN agencies and other non-governmental organisations operating in the region. As an emerging great power, India should be seen leading this initiative.

We could consider raising additional ecological Territorial Army battalions with the retired military personnel to undertake the much needed afforestation in areas that have been plundered over the years by some unscrupulous elements of our society. Moreover, the retired military engineers could also be co-opted in the climate geo-engineering initiatives, when launched to remove carbon dioxide from the air and limiting the sunlight reaching the planet surface.

The IPCC report will certainly raise the awareness levels of the international community on the stark reality of climate change. Hopefully it will also urge President Trump to further tone down his obdurate stance on the issue. Incidentally, the United States had ranked second among 20 countries that were identified as major emitters of carbon dioxide by the International Energy Agency in 2015. Political will is the key to successful implementation of the Paris Agreement, which aims at ensuring the temperature levels remain below 1.5 degree Celsius. Since time is running out, all nations must remain focused in fulfilling their commitment to climate change goals.

Source: Hindustan Times, 5/11/2018

Kali Puja and Diwali

The autumn festival, or Sharodotsab, ends with Kali Puja and Diwali centring around worship of Mother Goddess Kali and Lakshmi. Durga is the goddess of protection and progression; Kali is the goddess of destruction, the other side of the cycle of creation concerning cosmic law of constant transformation. Kali is the first of 10 incarnations of Durga. Depicted with a fierce face, Kali is regarded as a more aggressive form of Durga. Kali is believed to destroy evil and egoism and fights for justice. Kali was born from Durga’s forehead to save heaven and earth from cruel demons. Being the cosmic energy and element behind creation, Kali took no colour and remained black. She remained naked but on finding cosmic consciousness, existence and bliss embodied and lying behind creation in the form of Shiva, she stuck out her tongue, remembering that even omnipotence is just an essential property of the ultimate Absolute. Kali Puja is celebrated on amavasya, no moon night, coinciding with Diwali, the festival of light. Diwali signifies inner and outer illumination. In north India, it marks the day of the return of Rama after defeating Ravana, a symbol of evil. It is also associated with Goddess Lakshmi as she emerged from the sea — according to the mythical tale of the ‘samudra manthan’, meaning ‘churning of the ocean’. The celebration commemorates Rama’s final return home from exile and welcome with a glittering row of lights radiating from every household. It also coincides with the Pandavas’ return from the forest.

Source: Economic Times, 6/11/2018