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Wednesday, January 09, 2019

The feminisation of Indian politics is an exciting phenomenon of our time

Women legislators in India raise economic performance in their constituencies by about 1.8 percentage points per year more than male legislators. When average growth is 7%, this implies that the growth premium associated with female legislators is about 25%

Raising the share of women in India’s state legislative assemblies is not only likely to lead to better representation of women’s and children’s concerns in policymaking, it is also likely to lead to higher economic growth. Research suggests that women favour redistributive politics and, thus, have a tolerance of higher taxes. This makes it plausible that, at least in the short to medium term, women politicians are less effective than men at promoting economic growth. Using comprehensive data for 4,265 state assembly constituencies for 1992-2012, we — T Baskaran, B Min, Y Uppal and I — show that the opposite is the case.
Women legislators in India raise economic performance in their constituencies by about 1.8 percentage points per year more than male legislators. When average growth is 7%, this implies that the growth premium associated with female legislators is about 25%.
To understand the mechanisms underlying this striking finding, we explored differences between male and female legislators in corruption, efficiency and motivation, each of which has been associated with economic growth in developing countries. We found evidence in favour of women in each case.
Male legislators are about three times as likely as female legislators to have criminal charges pending against them when they stand for election, and we estimate that this can explain about one fourth of the difference in growth between male and female-led constituencies. We buttress this result with estimates of actual corruption in office, measured as the rate at which women accumulate assets while in office. We find this is 10 percentage points lower per year than among men. These findings line up with experimental evidence that women are more fair, risk-averse and less likely to engage in criminal and other risky behaviour than men.
Since economic infrastructure is an important input to growth in developing countries, we analysed MLA performance in implementation of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, the massive federally-funded village road construction programme. We find that male and female politicians are equally likely to negotiate federal projects for road building in their constituencies. However, women are more likely to oversee completion of these projects. The share of incomplete road projects is 22 percentage points lower in female-led constituencies.
Source: Hindustan Times, 8/01/2019
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Can the US actually elect a woman president?

If the American voters are increasingly open to candidates who are not white males, then breaking the gender barrier should be more than possible.


With the academic Elizabeth Warren announcing her candidacy for the presidency last month, the United States will have a chance to ask itself whether it is capable of voting a woman to its highest office. One key difference in the political landscape of the world’s oldest democracy is the sheer number of female names who are being scrutinised for their presidential potential. The roster today includes but is not limited to Kristin Gillibrand, Kelly Ayotte, Joni Ernst, Tulsi Gabbard, and, remarkably, includes two women politicians of Indian-origin: Kamala Harris and Nikki Haley.
In theory, over 40 women have run for the US presidency in the country’s history. Hillary Clinton, however, was the first female candidate for one of the major political parties and thus the only one who had a credible chance of becoming president. The fact that she lost, and lost to a man who was among the worst qualified to lead the world’s most powerful nation, has been held up as evidence that the US voter continues to have a gender block. While Ms Clinton’s gender played a role, it is also true that a majority of the ballots were cast in her favour, she made some key campaign mistakes and the electoral mood, to put it mildly, was unusual. That she was a female, by most analyses, was only a minor factor in her defeat. After all, the US voter had already shown the maturity to elect, twice, a black American president which had long been seen as a far more difficult barrier to cross.
There are four reasons why the chances of a female US president has become far more likely in the past two years. One, the sheer number of woman politicians at all levels in the US has increased exponentially. The present US Congress, for example, is a quarter female — the highest percentage in US history. Two, women are more likely to actually vote than men in presidential elections and they are much more politically aware and active. This gap has only grown over the past several years. Three, the consecutive elections of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, neither mainstream candidates, is evidence of a degree of restlessness among the US electorate. If voters are increasingly open to candidates who are not white males, then breaking the gender barrier should be more than possible.
Source: Hindustan Times, 9/01/2019
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Conscious of the Cosmos


Aurobindo Ghosh explained the different types of human minds: between the upper and lower hemispheres, there was a link plane, the ‘supermind’. This was not, as the name might suggest, a higher activity of mind. It was a different power altogether, as different from mind as mind is from life, and life is from matter. Between supermind and the lower levels, there is an intermediate plane of ‘superconscient cosmic mind’, the ‘overmind’. The mental being in me became a free intelligence, a universal mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought as a labourer in a thought factory, but as a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms of being and free to choose what it willed in this thought empire. The Srimad Bhagavatam says that when the mind is steady in divine contemplation, it expresses sattwa overcoming rajas and tamas. No more is there feverish hankering after worldliness. Tranquillity comes to a heart that is no longer stirred by desires, as stillness to a fire when no more fuel is added. Krishna tells Arjuna that one who has good mind is dear to Him. He adds, “Controlling all the senses, confining the mind in the heart, drawing the ‘prana’ into the head, occupied in the practice of concentration, uttering the one-syllabled “Om” — the Brahmn, and meditating on Me — he who so departs, leaving the body, attains the supreme goal.” To gain steady wisdom, Krishna advises casting away of all desires of the mind, satisfied in the Self alone by the Self. You become free from affection, fear and wrath.

Source: Economic Times, 9/01/2019
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Monday, January 07, 2019

Economic and Political Weekly: Table of Contents


Vol. 54, Issue No. 1, 05 Jan, 2019

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In Economics, what is life-cycle hypothesis?


his suggests that individuals even out their consumption in the best possible manner over their life cycles. The hypothesis is that people who are young usually have several years of productive employment ahead of them, so they tend to borrow money to fund their education and consumption needs, while people who are older tend to be more conservative about their borrowing and spending habits as they have fewer years of productive employment ahead of them. The life-cycle hypothesis was proposed by Italian economist Franco Modigliani and his student Richard Brumberg in 1957.

Source: The Hindu, 7/01/2019
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Removing fear

The private member’s Bill aimed at protecting literary freedom from threats is welcome

Literary freedom is taken for granted in democracies, but forces that threaten or undermine it are always at work. Each age has to fight the battle afresh. In recent times, several attempts to get books withdrawn, pulped or sanitised of offending content have achieved full or partial success in India. Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History was withdrawn from circulation, and A.K. Ramanujan’s essay ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas’ was dropped from a Delhi University syllabus. Tamil writer Perumal Murugan’s Madhorubagan was withdrawn by the author under mob pressure but resurrected by a Madras High Court verdict. Public order, national unity and social or religious harmony are the principles commonly invoked against the practice of literary freedom. Threats to free expression, especially artistic freedom, in our times mainly come from those claiming to espouse the interests of a particular religion or social group. It is in this context that Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP and writer, has introduced a private member’s Bill in the Lok Sabha seeking to protect freedom of literature. Its objective — that “authors must be guaranteed the freedom to express their work without fear of punitive action by the State or by sections of society” — commends itself to any society that upholds liberal values. It seeks the omission of three IPC sections, including 295A, in effect a non-denominational blasphemy law, as it targets deliberate or malicious acts to outrage religious feelings.
Section 295A is a grossly misused section, often invoked in trivial ways to hound individuals, harass writers and curtail free expression. It deserves to be scrapped. Sections that relate to the sale of obscene books and uttering words that hurt religious feelings are also sought to be omitted. However, it is unclear why Section 153A, which punishes those who promote enmity between groups on grounds of religion, race or language, and Section 153B, which criminalises words and imputations prejudicial to national integration, do not draw Mr. Tharoor’s attention. In the process of proscribing a book, he proposes a tweak in the form of a 15-day prohibition. Thereafter, the onus should be on the State government to approach the High Court to seek a permanent ban. It favours the scrapping of the provision in the Customs Act to ban the import of books, but makes a public order exception. It wants to limit the bar on obscenity in the Information Technology Act to child pornography. Private Bills rarely become law, but they are useful in highlighting gaps in the body of law. Seen in this light, Mr. Tharoor’s initiative is most welcome as a step towards removing or diluting penal provisions that inhibit literary freedom.
Source: The Hindu, 7/01/2019
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Artificial Intelligence is not the silver bullet for human development

If its potential to do good is to be fully realised, focus more on the obstacles that is preventing its uptake.

The excitement surrounding artificial intelligence nowadays reflects not only how AI applications could transform businesses and economies, but also the hope that they can address challenges like cancer and climate change. The idea that artificial intelligence could revolutionise human well being is obviously appealing, but just how realistic is it?
To answer that question, the McKinsey Global Institute has examined more than 150 scenarios in which artificial intelligence is being applied or could be applied for social good. What we found is that artificial intelligence could make a powerful contribution to resolving many types of societal challenges, but it is not a silver bullet – at least not yet. While artificial intelligence’s reach is broad, development bottlenecks and application risks must be overcome before the benefits can be realised on a global scale.
To be sure, artificial intelligence is already changing how we tackle human-development challenges. In 2017, for example, object-detection software and satellite imagery aided rescuers in Houston as they navigated the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. In Africa, algorithms have helped reduce poaching in wildlife parks. In Denmark, voice-recognition programmes are used in emergency calls to detect whether callers are experiencing cardiac arrest. And at the MIT Media Lab near Boston, researchers have used “reinforcement learning” in simulated clinical trials involving patients with glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer, to reduce chemotherapy doses.
Moreover, this is only a fraction of what is possible. Artificial intelligence can already detect early signs of diabetes from heart rate sensor data, help children with autism manage their emotions, and guide the visually impaired. If these innovations were widely available and used, the health and social benefits would be immense. In fact, our assessment concludes that artificial intelligence technologies could accelerate progress on each of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
But if any of these artificial intelligence solutions are to make a difference globally, their use must be scaled up dramatically. To do that, we must first address developmental obstacles and, at the same time, mitigate risks that could render artificial intelligence technologies more harmful than helpful.
On the development side, data accessibility is among the most significant hurdles. In many cases, sensitive or commercially viable data that have societal applications are privately owned and not accessible to non-governmental organisations. In other cases, bureaucratic inertia keeps otherwise useful data locked up.
So-called last-mile implementation challenges are another common problem. Even in cases where data are available and the technology is mature, the dearth of data scientists can make it difficult to apply artificial intelligence solutions locally. One way to address the shortage of workers with the skills needed to strengthen and implement artificial intelligence capabilities is for companies that employ such workers to devote more time and resources to beneficial causes. They should encourage artificial intelligence experts to take on pro bono projects and reward them for doing so.
There are of course risks. Artificial intelligence tools and techniques can be misused, intentionally or inadvertently. For example, biases can be embedded in artificial intelligence algorithms or data sets, and this can amplify existing inequalities when the applications are used. According to one academic study, error rates for facial analysis software are less than 1% for light-skinned men, but as high as 35% for dark-skinned women, which raises important questions about how to account for human prejudice in artificial intelligence programming. Another obvious risk is misuse of artificial intelligence by those intent on threatening individuals’ physical, digital, financial, and emotional security.
Stakeholders from the private and public sectors must work together to address these issues. To increase the availability of data, for example, public officials and private actors should grant broader access to those seeking to use data for initiatives that serve the public good. Already, satellite companies participate in an international agreement that commits them to providing open access during emergencies. Data-dependent partnerships like this one must be expanded and become a feature of firms’ operational routines.
Artificial intelligence is fast becoming an invaluable part of the human-development toolkit. But if its potential to do good globally is to be fully realised, proponents must focus less on the hype and more on the obstacles that are preventing its uptake.
Michael Chui is a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute. Martin Harrysson is a partner in McKinsey & Company’s Silicon Valley office.
Source: Hindustan Times, 7/01/2019
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