Virtues of Solitude

Gregarious by nature, human beings need company to talk to, to intermingle and interact with one another. To be alone is, therefore, perceived as a curse, and so, solitary confinement is considered appropriate punishment for grave offenders of law. In colonial India, solitary prison cells of the Cellular Jail in the Andaman Islands were reserved for freedom fighters (‘traitors’). But the narrow, lonely cells failed to daunt their spirited inmates. On the contrary, the stunning isolation led prisoners to attain true realisation, strengthening them with vigour; they embraced death with a smile when condemned to the gallows. The body is like a piece of attire that with death is shed as worn-out garments. Likewise, the embodied soul casts off worn-out bodies and enters into other, new ones. Nothing that you gain or earn is eternal; and nothing is in your control. When revealing His Vishwaroop (world vision) on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, Krishna told Arjuna that he should not be depressed and sad at having to wage war with his kith and kin because their death had been destined to happen with Arjuna being a mere instrument. There is a Supreme guiding force to whom you should surrender — lay your acts and deeds at the lotus feet of this Supreme Guide and be duty-bound without expecting reward or result. The Bhagavad Gita says, “A stable mind is one which remains unperturbed amid joys and sorrows, is free from passion, fear and anger and is unattached to worldly pleasures.”

Source: Economic Times, 14/02/2019

A case for Commons sense

There needs to be a review of how biodiversity and natural resources are governed  

When 196 countries met at Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, last November for the 14th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a key question on top of the agenda was how to govern biological resources (or biodiversity) at different levels for the world’s sustainable future.

The meeting had come at a significant time: it was the CBD’s 25th year of implementation, countries had approximately 350 days to meet global biodiversity targets, and there was the backdrop of a damning report that humans have mismanaged biodiversity so badly that we have lost 60% of resources (which can never be recouped). Finally, there was growing concern on how the Convention’s objectives of conservation, sustainable use and equitable sharing of benefits were being compromised, including by the parties themselves.

For thousands of years, humans have considered natural resources and the environment as a global public good, with communities having diligently managed these resources using the principle of ‘Commons’.

In simple terms, these are a set of resources such as air, land, water and biodiversity that do not belong to one community or individual, but to humanity. All developments we see in the establishment of civilisations across the world as well as agricultural development feeding the world today are a result of such ‘Commons’ being managed by communities for centuries.

Then came the urge of those with money and power to privatise these resources for individual prosperity in the form of property management principles, intellectual property rights and others. In one form the CBD — a multi-lateral environmental agreement that has provided legal certainty to countries through the principle of sovereign rights over biodiversity — also contributed to states now owning the resources, including their rights on use and management.

Today, states control and manage biodiversity with strict oversight of who can use what and how. The intent of the CBD and having sovereign rights was to manage resources better. But the results of such management have been questionable. A key reason cited is that ‘Commons’ and common property resource management principles and approaches are ignored and compromised.

Why ‘Commons’?

According to estimates, a third of the global population depends on ‘Commons’ for their survival; 65% of global land area is under ‘Commons’, in different forms. At least 293,061 million metric tonnes of carbon (MtC) are stored in the collective forestlands of indigenous peoples and local communities. This is 33 times the global energy emissions in 2017. The significance of ‘Commons’ in supporting pollination (the cost estimated to be worth $224 billion annually at global levels) cannot be overlooked.

In India, the extent of ‘Common’ land ranges between 48.69 million and 84.2 million hectares, constituting 15-25% of its total geographical area. ‘Common’-pool resources contribute $5 billion a year to the incomes of poor Indian households. Around 77% of India’s livestock is kept in grazing-based or extensive systems and dependent on ‘Commons’ pool resources. And 53% of India’s milk and 74% of its meat requirements are met from livestock kept in extensive ‘Common’ systems.

Despite their significance, ‘Commons’ in India have suffered continued decline and degradation. National Sample Survey Office data show a 1.9% quinquennial rate of decline in the area of ‘Common’ lands, though microstudies show a much more rapid decline of 31-55% over 50 years, jeopardising the health of systemic drivers such as soil, moisture, nutrient, biomass and biodiversity, in turn aggravating food, fodder and water crises. As of 2013, India’s annual cost of environmental degradation has been estimated to be Rs. 3.75 trillion per year, i.e. 5.7% of GDP according to the World Bank.

Why the concern?

‘Commons’ becoming uncommon is a major socio-political, economic and environmental problem. While the state can have oversight over resource management, keeping people away from using and managing ‘Commons’ is against effective governance of ‘Commons’.

The sovereign rights provided for, legally, under the CBD should not be misunderstood by the state as a handle to do away with ‘Commons’-based approaches to managing biodiversity, land, water and other resources.

Current discussions under the United Nations should focus on how and why ‘Commons’ have been negatively impacted by progressive pronouncements to save the earth and people.

Another key concern is the changing socio-political impact of migration. Gone are the days when we can consider ‘Commons’ as resources relevant only for rural communities. ‘Commons’ are now a major provider of livelihood options for both urban and peri-urban populations. The relevance of ‘Commons’ impacting urban dwellers cannot be overlooked with more urbanisation happening.

Approaches for the future

There needs to be a review of current governance of biodiversity and natural resources. After 18 years of action to reduce the rate of loss of biodiversity, it is very likely that the same 196 countries will meet in 2020 to apologise to the world for having failed to meet the objectives of the convention.

In addition to seeking more money, time and capacities to deal with biodiversity and natural resource management, we need to focus on three specific approaches: one, to re-introduce more strongly, the management and governance principles of ‘Commons’ approaches into decision-making and implementation of conservation, use and benefit sharing action; two, to use Joseph Schumpeter’s approach of creative destruction to put resource management in the hands of the people; and three, to re-look at Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize winning principles of dealing with ‘Commons’.

The time for corrective approaches and action is now.

Balakrishna Pisupati, currently working on the promise of ‘Commons’, is Chairperson, Forum for Law, Environment, Development and Governance (FLEDGE) and former Chief of Biodiversity, Land Law and Governance at the United Nations Environment Programme

Source: The Hindu, 13/02/2019

The shape of the jobs crisis

India has no industrial policy or employment strategy to ride the wave of its demographic dividend

Job creation has slowed since 2011-12, the year of the last published National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) labour force survey. I used Labour Bureau annual survey (2015-16) data and Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt. Ltd. (CMIE) data (post-2016), which has a sample size larger than the NSSO labour force surveys, to reach this conclusion. Both surveys cover rural and urban, and organised and unorganised sector employment; in other words, they capture both the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation/National Pension Scheme (organised) as well as such employment as might be generated by Micro Units Development & Refinance Agency Ltd (MUDRA) loans or platform economy jobs. The latter two job sources are precisely what the government claims were not being captured by jobs data available. We have repeatedly stated that government claims on absence of ‘good’ data on jobs are simply untenable.

My analysis prior to the leak of NSSO 2017-18 data had shown that the jobs situation has turned grim since 2012.

A jump now

What the leaked NSSO 2017-18 data have shown is that while the open unemployment rate (which does not measure disguised unemployment and informal poor quality jobs that abound in the economy) by the usual status never went over 2.6% between 1977-78 and 2011-12, it has now jumped to 6.1% in 2017-18. This was expected. In the last 10-12 years, more young people have become educated. The tertiary education enrolment rate (for those in the 18-23 age group) rose from 11% in 2006 to 26% in 2016. The gross secondary (classes 9-10) enrolment rate for those in the 15-16 age groupshot up from 58% in 2010 to 90% in 2016. The expectation of such youth is for a urban, regular job in either industry or services, not in agriculture. If they have the financial wherewithal to obtain education up to such levels, they can also “afford” to remain unemployed. Poor people, who are also much more poorly educated, have a much lower capacity to withstand open unemployment, and hence have lower open unemployment rates.

What NSSO 2017-18 also shows is that as open unemployment rates increased, more and more people got disheartened and fell out of the labour force; in other words, they stopped looking for work. The result is that labour force participation rates (LFPR, i.e. those looking for work) for all ages, fell sharply from 43% in 2004-5 to 39.5% in 2011-12, to 36.9% in 2017-18 (a reflection mainly though not only of the falling female LFPR). This shows up in the growing numbers of youth who are NEETs: not in education, employment or training. They are a potential source of both our demographic dividend but also what is looking to be a mounting demographic disaster.

Meanwhile, government economists have repeatedly told us that there is no jobs crisis.

Between 2004-05 and 2011-12, as many as 7.5 million new non-agricultural jobs were being created every year. The unemployment rate was only 2.2%. The volume of open unemployment was almost constant (at around 10 million) until 2011-12, but it increased to 16.5 million by 2015-16. Increased open unemployment, post 2011-12, suggests that those in education prior to 2011-12 would start searching for non-agricultural jobs but did not find them. The latest NSSO data suggest that this situation had worsened further by 2017-18.

Across education categories

A sharp increase in the unemployment rate of the educated (based on our estimates of the Annual Survey, Labour Bureau) should have worried the government. My estimate is that the unemployment rate rose over 2011-12 to 2016 from 0.6% to 2.4% for those with middle education (class 8); 1.3% to 3.2% for those who had passed class 10; 2% to 4.4% for those who had passed class 12; 4.1% to 8.4% for graduates; and 5.3% to 8.5% for post-graduates. Even more worrying, for those with technical education, the unemployment rate rose for graduates from 6.9% to 11%, for post-graduates from 5.7% to 7.7%, and for the vocationally trained from 4.9% to 7.9%.

While NSSO 2017-18 data show the share of regular wage jobs rising, especially in urban areas (and the share of self-employed and casual wage work falling), this rise in nowhere close to the number of educated youth entering the labour force.

For an economy at India’s stage of development, an increase of workers in agriculture (of 20 million that took place over 1999-2004) is a structural retrogression, in a direction opposite to the desired one. Between 2004-5 and 2011-12, the number of workers in agriculture fell sharply, which is good, for the first time in India’s economic history. Similarly, the number of youth (15-29 years) employed in agriculture fell from 86.8 million to 60.9 million (or at the rate of 3 million per annum) between 2004-5 and 2011-12. However, after 2012, as non-agricultural job growth slowed, the number of youth in agriculture actually increased to 84.8 million till 2015-16 and even more since then (as the CMIE data would attest). These youth were better educated than the earlier cohort, but were forced to be in agriculture.

Drop in manufacturing jobs

Even worse, manufacturing jobs actually fell in absolute terms, from 58.9 million in 2011-12 to 48.3 million in 2015-16, a whopping 10.6 million over a four-year period. This is consistent with slowing growth in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), which consists of manufacturing, mining, and electricity. The IIP had sharply risen from 100 in 2004-5 to 172 by 2013-14 (in the 2004-5 series), but only rose from a base of 100 in 2011-12 in the later series to 107 in 2013-14, and to 125.3 in 2017-18. This is also consistent with exports first falling after 2013, then barely recovering to levels still lower than 2013. It is also consistent with investment-to-GDP ratio falling sharply since 2013, and still remaining well below 2013 levels. This holds for both private and public investment.

What is tragic is the growing number of educated youth (15-29 years) who are “NEET”. This number (70 million in 2004-5) increased by 2 million per annum during 2004-5 and 2011-12, but grew by about 5 million per annum (2011-12 to 2015-16). If that later trend continued (as there is evidence it has) we estimate it would have increased to 115.6 million in 2017-18. That is a 32 million increase in “NEETs” in our society over 2011-12 to 2017-18 — potential lumpen fodder.

These youth (“NEET” and unemployed) together constitute the potential labour force, which can be utilised to realise the demographic dividend in India. Will a new government at least recognise there is a crisis?

I estimate that the number of new entrants into the labour force (currently at least 5 million per annum), and especially educated entrants into the labour force will go on increasing until 2030. It will thereafter still increase, though at a decelerating pace. By 2040 our demographic dividend — which comes but once in the lifetime of a nation — will be over. China managed to reduce poverty sharply by designing an employment strategy (underpinned by an education and skills policy) aligned to its industrial strategy. That is why it rode the wave of its demographic dividend. Unfortunately, India has neither an industrial policy nor an employment strategy, let alone the two being aligned.

Is our political class listening? Or are our educated unemployed and NEETs meant to be merely used as political fodder? That is the trillion rupee question for the fastest growing large economy in the world, about to become the fifth largest in the world.

Santosh Mehrotra is Professor of Economics and Chairperson, Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Twitter:@smehrotra1

Source: The Hindu, 13/02/2019

Pseudo-social justice

Policy is not based on assessments of deprivation — it merely addresses specific groups

The Gujjars of Rajasthan are back on the streets. This could be seen as an attempt to corner the newly-formed Congress government in the state. Both Congress and BJP have had the taste of Gujjar wrath earlier. It could also be seen as an extension of intra-party factionalism playing out in the open for the Congress. Nevertheless, the renewed agitation alerts us to the larger complications facing policy-making. Reservation appears to be the only answer to all our socio-economic complications. Thus, over and above party competition and internal factionalism, the Gujjar agitation represents the difficulties and distortions that have crept into the reservation regime. And it is not the only agitation of this type.

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A similar agitation is waiting to happen in Maharashtra — by the Dhangar community, over their demand for inclusion in the ST category. Unrest among the Patidars of Gujarat and Jats of Haryana is simmering and can explode any time into another round of agitation for reservation. At the same time, the Bombay High Court is hearing a petition demanding that the state’s decision to extend 16 per cent reservation to Marathas be stayed/struck down. The apex court, similarly, is hearing a petition against the constitutional amendment extending reservations to economically weaker sections. Petitions over expansion of reservation beyond 50 per cent are already pending before the court. Thus, even as reservation appears to be the only solution for demands by many communities, the reservation regime is becoming more and more litigation-prone.

For staunch proponents of reservation, these troubles can be resolved by doing away with the 50 per cent cap altogether. The latest amendment giving reservation to the poor has already opened the doors for such parliamentary adventurism. It has done away with the constitutionally permitted gatekeeping mechanism of social and educational backwardness and opened up reservation to everyone — irrespective of social backwardness.

In other words, the solution is to free the reservation policy of the chains of constitutional reasonableness as mandated by the judiciary. This overemphasis on the idea of reservation is marked by four critical aspects that signify a move away from the constitutional scheme of positive discrimination.

One, as we recently witnessed in Parliament, there is a complete absence of genuine debate on the question. No party could take a nuanced position on the issue of “reservation for poor”. In a sense, this is only to be expected if one considers the political fallout of such nuance. Post-Mandal, there has seldom been any serious review or re-examination in our public political life of the way in which the reservation policy is moving. The political arena is much more strongly affected by this new consensus that quietly took shape in the post-Mandal era. So much so that, recently, a lawyer arguing on behalf of the petitioners challenging Maratha reservation was manhandled outside the court. No political party or politician can raise questions about the matter. This is a classic case of consensus as closure. There is a complete closure of the public debate on reservation.

Two, over the quarter century since Mandal, the reservation regime has expanded in many directions. Ironically, most of the times, expansion has contributed to the de-legitimation of the original idea behind reservation. When the reservation policy went beyond SCs and STs, despite the fact that the expansion was justified, it effectively diluted the sharpness of the tool — that it would be employed for extreme cases of discrimination and exclusion. Down the line, when different communities began to claim that they are backward and deserving of reservation, the political clout of these communities and their relatively less deprived conditions meant that the logic of discrimination got diluted. Finally, when the idea of reservations is used to address economic infirmity, the entire basis of the reservation policy gets displaced.

Now, the reservation policy will no more be seen as an intermediate tool to address ingrained social injustice in the Indian social order. As a result, the moral basis of the reservation policy is almost lost. The enabling provision in the Constitution was predicated on the logic that the social order is fundamentally unjust and therefore the state should intervene in favour of the most oppressed sections to enable them to compete in the public sphere and stake their claims for a share in public power. This logic is no more applicable. Instead, the logic now is that there are different groups in society and they need to be accommodated, as far as possible, in a proportionate manner (as I argued earlier too, ‘The New Reservation’, Indian Express, August 1, 2018). This new logic implies that reservation is not a remedy for traditional social ills but a routine policy tool to arrange political and administrative power.

Three, and paradoxically, while reservation for economically weaker sections delegitimises social justice as the basis for reservations, at the same time, the post-Mandal churning has brought forward caste as the primary basis for making claims on the state. Not the injustice perpetrated by the caste system, but caste in itself has emerged as the primary social group for which demands are made, robbing policy-making of the more justifiable bases of deprivation. Instead of an expectation that policy should be directed at and based on some agreed ways of assessing deprivation and its amelioration, now policy can be based merely on the fact that it addresses specific groups. Besides, such public display of caste claims leads more to strengthening identity than ensuring advancement. The identity excess this has brought about has been seldom taken into consideration but effects of this development spill over beyond the policy realm. India’s entire public discourse and political calculus are deeply influenced by single-caste considerations. Caste and caste identity are not new factors but the traction they have now received not just in political calculations but in more routine social relations and personal identifications is a new factor in shaping the public sphere.

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Finally, the language of pseudo-justice being popularised by the “quota-for-poor” policy is symptomatic of a larger failure. It replaces the principle that welfare should be the basic raison d’être of public policy, it hides the colossal failure of the state in handling questions of poverty and deprivation and, at the same time, it indicates a dead end in policy making.

What is common between the demands of Jats, Gujjars, Marathas, Dhangars, Patidars, etc on the one hand, and the recently effected coup against the Constitution through the quota-for-poor amendment is a public admission of the absence of imagination and innovation in policy-making. Post-Mandal, the first section to ignore the possibilities of imaginative policies for social justice consisted of the intellectuals. In their haste to brand parties as pro-social justice and anti-social justice, they latched on to reservation as the only policy tool to address social injustice.

The political players were quick to succumb to the temptation of postponing the substantive social justice agenda in favour of decorative policy measures of limited effect. In the process, the fundamental task of politics that it throws up alternatives and enables the imagination, got stunted. We have a consensus on reservation and yet social groups continue to agitate for reservation — representing the closure of imagination in public policy-making.

Source: Indian Express, 13/02/2019

ONGC Recruitment 2019: Apply online for 900 vacancies before February 15, check important dates, eligibility, direct links

ONGC Recruitment 2019: Over 900 vacancies for engineers and other graduates. Application window closing soon. Here are the details of posts, eligibility and educational qualification.

Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC) India has invited applications for recruitment of over 900 vacancies in different posts at various regions. ONGC is hiring for posts like non-executive, trainee and class III and IV.

The notifications were issued in the last week of January and the application process had begun on the same day. However, the last date to apply for the vacancies is near. The selections process for the recruitments include Computer based test (CBT), skill test (physical measurement test/ physical efficiency test/ typing test etc) .

Source: Hindustan Times, 8/02/2019

Legitimise informal rental agreements in slums

For slum housing policies to be truly inclusive, the State must recognise diverse tenurial arrangements

Following in the footsteps of Odisha, the government of Tamil Nadu in January drafted a housing policy that emphasises leveraging technology for conducting accurate spatial surveys of slums. The Odisha government’s policy has been lauded for providing a clear roadmap towards granting land titles to slum dwellers. However, it does not take into account the different tenural types in slums and risks excluding some of the most vulnerable groups — tenant slum households. For Tamil Nadu, and other states formulating housing policies, it is critical to recognise the importance of rental arrangements.

New migrants in a city prefer to rent. When migrants belong to low-income groups, they usually find a shelter in the city’s slums thanks to kinship and other social networks. Renting is also a preferred choice for those who cannot afford the time and money spent on long commutes to the place of work. Therefore, an informal system of thriving rental markets has emerged in India’s slums. According to the 2011 Census of India, 26% of slum households lived in rented accommodation. In the city of Mumbai, 24% of slum households are tenants. In Bangalore and Chennai, rental households constitute 46% and 45% of slum households respectively.

Rental agreements between tenants and landlords are either oral or written on paper having no legal validity. Rental payments are often made in cash and tenants are not provided proofs of payment. With no system of law and framework for dispute resolution to undergird rental agreements, both tenants and landlords face a very high degree of risk and uncertainty. To an extent, private ordering of different types has emerged to mitigate risks. Tenants are afforded some protection against unfair evictions and landlords can expect some guarantee of regular payments due to informal modes of contract enforcement. Often, tenants and landlords belong to the same community or might be related, which creates a degree of trust as well as a need to maintain a good reputation in the community. In some cases, slumlords or local leaders act as enforcers in case of disputes or reneging of contracts.

This existing system is inadequate and far from efficient. There is anecdotal evidence showing that tenants may be asked to vacate their homes at short notice and that their homes are not properly maintained by landlords. Once the duration of negotiated rent ends, increases in rents are often very high. This is partly to dissuade tenants from staying for too long and claiming some sort of de facto ownership. A potential cause for this is the high degree of insecurity landlords face in renting out their premises due to the general nature of informal ownership tenure. A 2001 paper by Sunil Kumar of London School of Economics and Political Science finds that in Surat, when tax officials visited, landlords would remove partitions in the house separating themselves and the tenants and report that the tenants were relatives living with them temporarily. In Dharavi, during a slum census being conducted by Mashal, a Pune-based NGO, surveyors reported that landlords did not allow them to speak with tenants — who often resided in lofts above their homes — due to fear among landlords that tenants may become eligible for benefits or even ownership rights.

Reforms for improving the situation have to be designed carefully so that the incentives they create do not lead to a complete breakdown of private ordering or drive rental markets further underground. Rent control-like regulations will be too onerous and will quickly and effectively thwart supply. The ideal reform is providing a foundation of clear property rights in the form of tenure security upon which the transactions and contracts can be built. Tenure security can be of different types, ranging from full property rights to the dwelling — and, therefore, freedom to develop, rent or sell — to partial rights that guarantee protection of slum dwellers against eviction for occupying public or private land and provide eligibility for basic amenities and services.

The benefits to landlords from tenure security that recognises their right to rent are obvious. The risks they face from illegally renting out will dissipate. Since landlords often themselves live in slums and have low incomes, earnings from rent are an important revenue source and help smoothen consumption. But this policy is equally beneficial for tenants, who can expect better condition of dwellings and getting access to basic amenities. A 2017 study of slums in Pune by Shohei Nakamura of the World Bank provides empirical evidence to show that tenants are willing to pay a premium for living in slums that have been granted tenure security in order to get the aforementioned benefits. Therefore, for slum housing policies to be truly inclusive, they must recognise diverse tenurial arrangements instead of assuming a single type, that is, ownership, and legitimise informal rental arrangements. State governments that wish to create housing solutions for the poor cannot afford to overlook and undermine the solutions the poor have found for themselves.

Vaidehi Tandel is Junior Fellow at IDFC Institute, Mumbai

Source: Hindustan Times, 12/02/2019

Spreading Fragrance

We are entitled to our own space. If for some reason, we are denied it, we have the ability to design our inner space, create our own sky, lush gardens of fragrance with colourful birds that chirp songs dear to our heart and take flight into realms of imagination. But how authentic are our birds and skies if we are not in tune with ourselves? Why can’t we shed debris and burden of a cumbersome past to assimilate the best that nature has to offer, like a stunning rose or lotus do? By bragging about our species’ superiority, we have unwittingly limited our growth by undermining all other, much more rewarding and potent possibilities that lie within our reach. Our deep-rooted conditioning devises our fate. We always have enough excuses to justify our wrongs because the ‘rights’ are difficult to come by, involving too much effort and a high degree of integrity. We look for an easy way out. Unhealthy compromises have become the norm, be it at work or in relationships, compromises that often camouflage our uncertainties and inferiority complexes, making us feel like inflated superstars. By all means, let us run the race but, with our own, individual inner self, challenging our own potential, honing our own skills, in tune with our own inner, peaceful self. Then we stand a good chance of becoming flowers and genuinely creative in all our relationships. As Osho put it, “It does not matter whether you are a rose or a lotus or a marigold, what matters is the flowering… let your fragrance

Source: Economic Times, 13/02/2019