“To have great poets, there must be great audiences.”
‐ Walt Whitman, poet (1819-1892)
“महान कवि हों, इसके लिए ज़रूरी है कि अच्छी श्रोता भी हों।”
‐ वाल्ट व्हिट्मेन, कवि (1819-1892)
Thursday, September 03, 2020
Quote of the Day September 3, 2020
What is Mission Karmayogi?
Dubbed as the biggest bureaucratic reform initiative, the Union Cabinet Wednesday approved ‘Mission Karmayogi’, a new capacity-building scheme for civil servants aimed at upgrading the post-recruitment training mechanism of the officers and employees at all levels.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said this exercise will “radically” improve the government’s human resource management practices and asserted it will use state-of-the-art infrastructure to augment the capacity of civil servants.
Announcing the scheme, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said officers and employees in the government will get an opportunity to improve their performance under the Mission Karmayogi. “Mission Karmayogi aims to prepare Indian civil servants for the future by making them more creative, constructive, imaginative, innovative, proactive, professional, progressive, energetic, enabling, transparent and technology-enabled,” he said.
How will Mission Karmayogi unfold?
Mission Karmayogi programme will be delivered by setting up a digital platform called iGOTKarmayogi. Empowered with specific role-competencies, a civil servant will be able to ensure efficient service delivery of the highest quality standards, the government said.
The platform will act as a launchpad for the National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB), which will enable a comprehensive reform of the capacity building apparatus at the individual, institutional and process levels.
NPCSCB will be governed by the Prime Minister’s Human Resource Council, which will also include state Chief Ministers, Union Cabinet ministers and experts. This council will approve and review civil service capacity building programmes.
Besides this, there will be a Cabinet Secretary Coordination Unit comprising of select secretaries and cadre controlling authorities.
Also, there will be a Capacity Building Commission, which will include experts in related fields and global professionals. This commission will prepare and monitor annual capacity building plans and audit human resources available in the government.
Finally, there will be a wholly-owned Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), which will govern the iGOT-Karmayogi platform. It will be set up under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013.
The SPV will be a “not-for-profit” company and will own and manage iGOT-Karmayogi platform. The SPV will create and operationalise the content, market place and manage key business services of iGOT-Karmayogi platform, relating to content validation, independent proctored assessments and telemetry data availability. The SPV will own all Intellectual Property Rights on behalf of the Government of India.
How will it be funded?
To cover around 46 lakh central employees, a sum of Rs 510.86 crore will be spent over a period of 5 years from 2020-21 to 2024-25. The expenditure is partly funded by multilateral assistance to the tune of $50 million.
Besides the setting up of the SPV, an appropriate monitoring and evaluation framework will also be put in place for performance evaluation of all users of the iGOT-Karmayogi platform so as to generate a dashboard view of Key Performance Indicators.
Source: Indian Express, 3/09/20
Digital India’ is not prepared for digital education
Transition from teacher-class based teaching to digital-education will need multi-pronged efforts over time. For parents, students, teachers and institutions, investment and infrastructure are needed.
Education is empowering and redefining. For hundreds of millions of the young in India, education is also about discipline, development, curiosity, creativity and a path to breaking the cycle of ignorance and poverty leading to employment and prosperity. I know this because as a poor kid from a tribal village in Odisha, I was lucky enough to get a Masters in Physics in 1964 in India for just over $10 in fees. Where else in the world can you do that? Having studied Physics in India and Electrical Engineering in the US, I acquired a new caste — an engineer — and helped lift my entire family of five sisters and three brothers to college education, enlightenment and lifelong prosperity. This is the dream of many young students in India.
As the government announced the New Education Policy 2020, I was heartened to see education at the forefront of the national agenda. Today, the growing aspirations of children and parents in India are reflected in an increasing demand for education, which has far exceeded the supply. We at the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) (2004-2009) brought the idea of educational transformation for 21st-century needs into the mainstream thinking of the government, with an emphasis on expansion, excellence, and equity. The recommendations of the Commission impacted the education sector through far-reaching initiatives of the UPA government on multiple fronts leading to almost 900 universities, many new IITs and IIMs, increased funding for education in the 11th Five-Year Plan and the Right to Education Bill. NEP 2020 as a statement of intent has much in it that is positive. The challenge, as always, is in the details and in delivering on promises.
For instance, allocating 6 per cent of GDP on education spending is needed and welcome. But how and when? In 2020-2021, the government spent only 3.2 per cent of GDP on education, down from 4.14 per cent in 2014-2015. The government that reduced education spending by 25 per cent in good times is going to double it in bad times? Please show how this is possible before promising a pie in the sky.
The COVID crisis has shown that hoping for the best does not help. We must plan for the worst and hope for the best. The migrant labour crisis was a recent example of our inability to execute.
Education is in crisis at the moment. Most probably, schools and colleges campuses will be closed through 2020 due to an increasing number of COVID cases. This could even extend to 2021.
Can we ensure the safety and security of our students, teachers and staff? How do we discipline students? How can we protect older teachers? Will testing be available at every school and college? How do we redesign classrooms? Do we have supplies for the schools? Can we afford to pay teachers without students? Can parents afford to pay fees without work? There are many unanswered questions.
Our answer to the education crisis during the pandemic has been to offer online education. However, there are serious issues related to access, devices, content, curation, teachers, training, testing, exams, grades, funding, facilities, salaries, parents and fees. It is estimated that only about 25 per cent of Indian households have an internet facility. For rural households, that number drops to 15 per cent. The worst affected, as always, will be the marginalised, rural and poor populations.
Digital education is not about videos of lectures on blackboards by teachers on the internet. It is about appropriate platforms, technology, tools, interactivity, curation, content and a lot more. We are completely underprepared. Government schools and colleges do not have the resources to provide digital education. Private schools and colleges are no different. However, they all want parents to pay full fees to be able to pay their staff and maintain facilities. The financial model for education is falling apart everywhere during this pandemic. In India, the situation is even more complex because of the lack of a proper policy on digital education, infrastructure and multiple languages.
There are many other challenges for the parents beside fees for services which schools and colleges are not equipped to provide. Who will assure uninterrupted broadband connectivity for several hours a day? Who will pay for the data? Is there adequate space and peace at home for students to concentrate? What happens when the power goes out? How to train kids at home to follow digital discipline? These are huge problems for working parents and poor people in slums and rural areas.
At the end of the day, education is about motivation, time and content. If you are motivated and willing to spend the required time to learn, there is enough content by global experts on the internet. The challenge is curation and mentoring. Unfortunately, teachers are trained to teach and not mentor. Digital education requires flipped classrooms where you do exactly the opposite of what you do today. As opposed to listening to lectures by teachers in classes, you listen to lectures at home. Similarly, as opposed to doing homework at home you do homework with others in the classrooms. All of this requires a new mindset and framework.
In the past, we took two bold initiatives to help digital education in the future: NOFN — National Optical Fibre Network (Now called Bharat Network) to connect all 2,50,000 panchayats at the cost of over Rs 40,000 crore and the National Knowledge Network (NKN). The NOFN is still not completely operational, after almost eight years. However, it has reached many rural areas telecom operators did not want to serve due to lack of profitability. The Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund was used to build NOFN.
NOFN was planned as a part of the National Information Infrastructure (NII) to enable the free flow of information to all. Education and health were the first services that were planned to be rolled out. It was conceptualised as a bulk broadband common infrastructure for the country. Overlaying education and health services up to panchayats and villages was an important component of the strategy.
The NKN was established as a high bandwidth, low latency network to connect all knowledge-creating organisations comprising IITs, IIMs, universities, research labs and other e-governance institutions up to the district level. It was aimed at encouraging collaborative development and building a repository of knowledge in all fields. This network exists and is fully functional. But only a few institutions take full advantage of it because of a lack of understanding, local facilities, funding and technical expertise. The new policy makes no mention of leveraging this network effectively. In fact, the government’s entire e-Gov programme works on the backbone of NKN.
The driving force behind NOFN and NKN was to build an IT-based teaching system, which could address the shortage of teachers — more so of quality teachers — and school infrastructure at the bottom of the economic pyramid. For this, free 100 Mbps to 1Gbps bandwidth was planned at each panchayat.
The NKC also experimented on the use of IT in panchayat schools. It was realised that the present teacher-centric education and IT-based teaching were not in sync because of the old mindset and vested interests. The transition from teacher-class based teaching to digital-education will need multipronged efforts over time.
I understand that NKN is being expanded soon, which is a positive step. There is, however, an urgent need to relook at the NOFN (BBNL) and make it a core component of the Digital India initiative and leverage it to provide e-services at the bottom of the economic pyramid. It is time to use NOFN and NKN to connect all our schools and improve the digital education ecosystem.
All of this will take a long time and substantial resources. The key question at this time is: Why should parents pay fees when the education system is not prepared to deliver the required services? People will and should pay only when services are delivered to their satisfaction. In the process, children are at home, waiting to get the real education they need to succeed. This is a drain on national resources. The long-term implications of this crisis will be felt in the workforce in the future.
“Digital India” is not prepared for digital education.
This article first appeared in the print edition on September 3, 2020 under the title ‘The digital over-promise’. The writer is former chairman of the National Knowledge Commission and the National Innovation Council
Source: Indian Express, 3/09/20
Tuesday, September 01, 2020
Quote of the Day September 1, 2020
“Confidence comes not from always being right but not fearing to be wrong.”
‐ Anonymous
“आत्मविश्वास हमेशा सही होने से नहीं आता, बल्कि गलत होने का डर न होने से आता है।”
‐ अज्ञात
Environmental regulatory system should be bridge between community, industry
The pandemic presents an opportunity for us to think of a new recovery path, one that can decouple economic growth and environmental degradation
In a conversation, the moment it is evident that I am from Kerala, the first comment usually is that it is a beautiful state. The conversation typically extends to saying that no industry can survive in Kerala. I defend my state by stating that, not many companies are mature enough to operate in Kerala. Having said that, the Kerala diaspora is a well-known story. The state also has a high debt ratio and in recent times, has been one of the slow economic growth states. I am not implying that the industrialised states of India are much better, but there is something not quite right.
The pandemic presents an opportunity for us to think of a new recovery path, one that can decouple economic growth and environmental degradation. It becomes more important as India sees opportunities on the global call to diversify the supply chain and its internal call for Atmanirbhar Bharat. For that, we need to strengthen our production and manufacturing capabilities.
Indian cities feature high in the list of polluted cities in the world, and the country features very low on quality of life. At the same time, any discussion on more production facilities, mining, utilities and construction evokes fears about where we are going wrong. We have all the environmental regulations we need, but the biggest gap lies in monitoring and implementing them. Take the municipal solid waste rules. Two decades after the regulations came into effect, their status is for all to see. A comparatively recent regulation, centred around Extended Producer Responsibility, has also posed challenges in monitoring and implementation. In a recent ruling, the judiciary not only ruled against the industry but also blamed officials responsible for implementing the regulations. This will not help us in capitalising on the current opportunity. Regulatory infrastructure is supposed to be the bridge of trust between the community and industry. If the bridge is not stable, the community and industry feel the impact, which, over a period of time, spreads to the nation.
No community wants an industrial facility, a key economic engine, shut unless there are very serious issues. Other than an accident, such problems don’t happen over a day. When early signs from the environment are neglected, they reach thresholds leading to a community upsurge. Then the political system intervenes. It is a battle that nobody wins. Even as a nation, we have shown inability to showcase growth in a sustainable manner.
Diluting regulatory requirements is not a solution — in the long run, it will create more adverse impacts resulting in greater community upsurge. The focus has to be to improve the system’s capabilities to monitor and implement regulatory requirements. There needs to be greater transparency and accountability; there is no dearth of technology to facilitate this. Around the world, we are also debating another issue of extreme surveillance. Since somebody is always watching, spotting, noticing or identifying the problem should not be a challenge. But what happens after that is a challenge. The intention and capacity to take action, rectify and diffuse is critical. The right ecosystem between the industry, community and regulator is crucial — if the three stakeholders remain isolated and get activated only in a crisis, we will not make any progress towards solving the issue.
I will go back to Kerala to discuss an initiative by the state’s police — Janamaithri Suraksha. It aims to bridge the gap between the police and public with citizens’ involvement. We need similar maithri, an improved level of trust, between the regulator, community and industry on environmental protection. The conventional manner of waiting for an agitation, investigating and then knocking on the doors of justice is not the way to sustainable development.
Any anthropogenic activity will have impacts. It is important to understand whether we have a net positive effect from all stakeholders’ perspectives, wherein the future generation is also a key stakeholder. I wrote earlier that the way forward is to decouple economic growth and environmental degradation. However, it would be more right to say that we need to couple growth and environmental protection. Environmental health will be the key enabler of socio-economic growth in the future.
It is important for us to get this right quickly. Community activism in terms of environmental damage is surging and we will have more judgments from the courts. Nobody benefits from such outcomes in the long run. We need to grow to keep progressing, and for that we need industries. When trust between the industry and community erodes, there are more agitations.
By focusing on the bridge element of the regulatory system, I am not undermining the role of industry and the community. Industry needs to realise that it is a part of an ecosystem and not at the centre of it. Communities get impacted, either positively or negatively. They need to empower themselves through education, so that they are not driven by the agenda of individuals with vested interests.
We need to accept that we have a challenge in implementing environmental regulations. The community does not trust that the industry is meeting its compliance requirements. The regulatory system’s role is to improve this trust quotient. There is a need to evolve a more effective implementation involving all stakeholders, and a more transparent monitoring system. There is, thus, a necessity for a maithri system.
As we plan our recovery past the pandemic, we have a good chance to create a new normal. We need to align towards a common cause and goals. We should not miss this chance.
This article first appeared in the print edition on September 1, 2020 under the title ‘Address the trust deficit’. Jayaram is partner and head, Climate Change and Sustainability Advisory, KPMG India
Source: Indian Express, 1/09/20
Government needs to act urgently to conclude NRC process in Assam
The authorities have not been treating this matter with the gravity that it deserves. Shifting the goalposts for political gains reflects an extraordinary lack of regard for the people who have been excluded.
Nurjehan Begum, a 45-year-old home maker from the flood-ravaged Bongaigaon district in northwest Assam, struggles to be optimistic. The devastating combination of the recent floods and COVID-19 lockdown has exacted a significant toll on her family. But that is not her biggest fear: 2020 marks the end of Nurjehan’s three-year confinement in one of Assam’s six dreaded detention centres, the final destination for those who are deprived of their right to citizenship in the state. While she is silent about the trauma she has experienced, Nurjehan does not hesitate to share her deepest fear — her family could now face the same fate, as they too have been excluded from the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
On August 31, 2019, the final list of the NRC in Assam was released. This was considered to be the culmination of decades of strife and agitation in the state over the question of continued presence of “illegal immigrants” and the urgent need to identify and deport them. The NRC was envisaged as a comprehensive record of citizens in Assam, identified by the law of the land as persons who had migrated to Assam before March 25, 1971. The legal home for the NRC is found in the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003. The updation of the NRC was sanctioned by the Supreme Court, which, in 2014, began monitoring the entire process.
Five years, 5,5000 employees, and Rs 1,200 crore were only the visible administrative costs — this does not include the lives that were lost, primarily out of fear of exclusion. The loss of citizenship, after all, is the loss of one of the most crucial rights a person can have; in its absence, one’s entire body of rights disappears. Conversations on the ground revealed that initially, people from across the spectrum agreed on the NRC. People who belong to the ethno-religious category of Bengali-Muslim origin were relieved at the prospect that inclusion in the NRC would end the cloud of suspicion over their heads. On the other end, of the spectrum, the indigenous Assamese population welcomed the NRC as fulfilling the aim of weeding out “immigrants”.
The result of the NRC list has been well documented — 1.9 million people were excluded from its ambit and now face the prospect of filing appeals against this exclusion before the quasi-judicial body known as the Foreigners Tribunal (FT).
Set up in 1964 under the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order, the FT is the main legal body with the power to determine who is a citizen in the context of Assam. As has been extensively documented, this process of citizenship determination is riddled with flaws. The burden of proving one’s status is on the person who faces scrutiny. S/he is expected to provide stringent documentary proof of citizenship, despite there being no clarity from the state on what documents meet this evidentiary standard. (It has been held that Aadhaar cards, PAN cards, land records, birth certificates and passports may not amount to proof.) Oral testimony is frequently disregarded, and the tribunal is quick to dismiss paperwork on flimsy grounds such as minor errors in spelling or dates. The main test of citizenship according to the Tribunal is the ability to trace one’s legacy to a person who had been residing in the state before 1971. Applying such a high standard of documentary evidence flies in the face of the ground realities of the country. Moreover, there are serious concerns around the judicial independence of the tribunals. Members are appointed by the home and political departments of the Assam government, and the performance of tribunal members is incentivised based on the number of persons they declare as foreigners. This implies biases entrenched in the system. As a result, around 1.3 lakh people have been declared foreigners since the inception of the FTs. Like Nurjehan, many declared foreigners are sent to languish in detention centres.
The potential repercussions from the NRC exclusions could be catastrophic. It does not help that the appeals process is fraught with delays; one year on, there is no sign of when this process will begin and decisions such as the re-checking of rejection orders to exclude people only add to the uncertainty.
Vulnerable populations are poised to suffer grave consequences in the absence of legal clarity. For instance, there are multiple instances of children who have been excluded from the NRC. Will they be extended protections as per the law governing juveniles in the country? Will they be separated from their parents and sent to detention if they are unable to prove their citizenship? What guarantees are in place for the protection of their rights? We only have questions to which there seem to be no answers.
The state machinery’s track record is one of see-sawing. In 2019, the Ministry of External Affairs described the NRC process as “statutory, transparent, legal”, a “fair process based on scientific methods”. In almost the same breath, it has called for the NRC to be scrapped. Shifting these goalposts for political gains reflects an extraordinary lack of regard for the people who have been excluded. Those included in the NRC are also waiting for the final list to be gazetted.
The authorities have not been treating this matter with the gravity that it deserves. Justice delayed, as the adage goes, is justice denied. The state needs to take urgent steps to move the NRC process forward as soon as possible and to ensure that guarantees of due processes are in place. Otherwise, in the words of Nurjehan Begum, “citizenship will remain a dark cloud looming over (our) lives”.
This article first appeared in the print edition on September 1, 2020 under the title ‘Year of uncertainty’. Baruah is a Guwahati-based lawyer and graduate student at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Boston. Wadud is a Guwahati-based human rights lawyer. Both work with the Justice and Liberty Initiative, which takes on cases of those deprived of citizenship in Assam
Source: Indian Express, 1/09/20
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