Recognising the role of health in India’s social and economic growth

 Focus on a system that responds to the capacity of the State and other stakeholders in the immediate-term, while building on such capacity in the longer term. Better responsiveness to the needs of citizens can drive trust between citizens and the State.

As India begins marking its 75th year of Independence, it is an appropriate time to take stock of the priority we have accorded to our biggest resource — human capital. Today, India has the largest population of young people; an enviable resource that can move India on to a stronger economic path. Research has highlighted the links between building human capital (through nutrition, health, and education) and growth. And yet, data on nutrition, health, and education suggests that the value of this resource has not been recognised.

When we focus on health, there has been progress, but India remains well below peer countries — and where it needs to be — in terms of the well being of citizens. This stems from multiple reasons.

One, it is not clear if national and political incentives to improve health have been clear to leaders. There are two aspects to this. The first is linked to the limited attention to the links between health and human capital, and growth promotion — a case that positions health not merely as a welfare issue, but as an influencer of India’s growth.

The second is the limited attention to the impact of health care on poverty. Health-related expenditures are estimated to push 3.5% of the population below the poverty line; with those already below the poverty line pushed only deeper. Anirudh Krishna’s research across four continents found health-related expenses to be the prime reason for households descending into poverty and that millions of households live “one illness away” from poverty.

Political incentives could also be a factor of “credit”, and in India’s federal system, a lack of clarity in “credit” from the improved health care services may further diffuse political incentives. Reforming the health care system may also be viewed as too long-term an agenda, and, therefore, not conducive to immediate political gains. Additionally, the pathways at different governance and administrative levels are often not evident, constraining political interest from relevant leaders. Two, the absence of health as an electoral demand dilutes its political salience. Data from multiple CSDS Lokniti polls has highlighted that health figures low among voter priorities. The middle-class has exited from the use of public services, and increasingly, the poor are moving in the same direction.

It is, therefore, not surprising that the health sector has one of the lowest public investments at 1.3% of the Gross Domestic Product, with a disproportionate use of private services, and 64% of health care expenditure being out of pocket at the point of service.

However, leaders have sought political legitimacy through attention to targeted sectors and the initiation of reforms. Regime shifts in several countries such as Turkey, Indonesia, and Brazil saw leaders prioritising health to establish credibility with the voter base and reaping electoral benefits. Well implemented reforms fuelled citizen expectations, leading to demand, and creating the space for further reform. India has not witnessed too many examples of this.

State capacity is a central variable in the cycle of well-implemented reforms, tangible benefits, a social compact between the government and its citizens, and electoral gains. The absence of this confidence in capacity will likely lead to a clientelist model of delivering services, rather than a systems approach.

What is the path that India should take? One, focus on a system that responds to the capacity of the State and other stakeholders in the immediate-term, while building on such capacity in the longer-term. Better responsiveness to the needs of citizens can drive trust between citizens and the State. And do this while highlighting the role of health in a nation’s journey, and building citizens’ understanding of the primacy of health and its impact on their economic status.

A lot more needs to be done to identify paths to reform, through a combination of public and private provisions, with the State as a regulator. This can offer a coherent response to constraints and political benefits at the national, state and sub-state levels.

Sandhya Venkateswaran is member, Lancet Citizens Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System and Centre for Social and Economic Progress.

Source: Hindustan Times, 29/09/21

Challenges like climate change call for farm research to take centre stage, just like during the Green Revolution

Agriculture and climate change are too important to be left only to generalist bureaucrats, economists and activists.

Indian agriculture’s major challenge in the initial decades after Independence was to increase crop production and yields at any cost. Today, it’s about boosting farm incomes, while simultaneously ensuring production that is cost-competitive, resource-use efficient and climate-smart. The release of a new herbicide-tolerant rice variety by the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) that can be directly sown, instead of requiring transplantation, is therefore welcome. Farmers transplant and grow paddy in flooded fields mainly to control weeds, which cannot emerge under water that acts as a natural herbicide. The IARI variety contains a mutated gene making the paddy plant “tolerant” to Imazethapyr, a herbicide effective against a wide range of weeds. This chemical when now sprayed will kill only the weeds, while the paddy can be cultivated without any nursery preparation, transplanting, puddling and flooding. Farmers would save about 30 per cent water, Rs 3,000-per-acre labour costs and 10-15 days’ time from direct seeding, compared to conventional transplantation.

The IARI variety — there’s a need for many more of these — highlights the importance of investing in public agricultural research. The first challenge that India confronted, of feeding its population and achieving a modicum of grain self-sufficiency, couldn’t have been met without the high-yielding semi-dwarf varieties bred during the 1960s and 1970s. The same goes for today’s challenges, especially from climate change. Average temperatures are rising, winters are getting shorter and the number of rainy days is falling even with overall “normal” monsoons. Growing crops and rearing animals under such circumstances — of extreme hot and cold or prolonged dry weather and intense downpours — is becoming increasingly tough, with farmers also facing problems of depleting water-tables, soaring energy costs and emergence of new pests and diseases. Coping with these stresses requires new breeding approaches (including gene modification and editing) and low-input, high-output agriculture technologies.

All this also means putting farm research on centre stage just like during the Green Revolution. Agriculture and climate change are too important to be left only to generalist bureaucrats, economists and activists. Research, unlike subsidies and welfare schemes, may not yield political dividends or pay in the short run. But the returns from farm research — IARI varieties alone account for over 95 per cent of India’s Rs 32,000-crore annual basmati rice exports and nearly half of its total wheat area — are more sustainable.

Source: Indian Express, 30-09-2021

What gives rise to the rural debt trap?

 

Sonal Ann D’Souza, Sunit Arora write: Inadequate access to affordable credit lies at the heart of rural distress

The All-India Debt and Investment Surveys (AIDIS), carried out by the National Statistical Office are among the most important nationally representative data sources on the rural credit market in India. Easy, timely access to formal-sector credit enables households to invest in income-generating activities. In its absence, non-institutional sources help meet short-term consumption needs. The AIDIS report published this month reveals that non-institutional sources have a strong presence in the rural credit market, notwithstanding the high costs involved in borrowing from them.

According to the report, the average debt per household in rural India is Rs 59,748, nearly half the average debt per household in urban India. A key indicator of access to credit is the incidence of indebtedness (IOI) — the proportion of households having outstanding loans on June 30 of the year in which the survey is conducted (2019 in this case). As per the latest AIDIS report, the IOI is 35 per cent in rural India — 17.8 per cent of rural households are indebted to institutional credit agencies, 10.2 per cent to non-institutional agencies and 7 per cent to both. Dependence on institutional sources is often seen as a positive development, signifying broadening financial inclusion, while reliance on non-institutional sources denotes vulnerability and backwardness.

The share of debt from institutional credit agencies in total outstanding debt in rural India is 66 per cent as compared to 87 per cent in urban India. In non-institutionalised debt, professional and agricultural moneylenders remain the primary sources of credit. Continuing dependence on informal credit points to interlinkages between labour/input markets and the rural credit market. This is troubling, as the rate of interest charged on 45 per cent of institutional debt is between 10 and 15 per cent, whereas on 44 per cent of non-institutional debt it falls between 20 and 25 per cent.

To know how socio-economic inequality shapes household indebtedness, the purpose of borrowing must be examined. Institutional credit is taken mainly for farm business and housing in rural India. A significant portion of debt from non-institutional sources is used for other household expenditure. The data indicates that better-off households have greater access to formal-sector credit and use it for more income-generating purposes. The top 10 per cent rural households in terms of asset ownership spend almost two-thirds of their institutional debt and 40 per cent of non-institutional debt on farm/non-farm business, whereas the bottom 10 per cent spend half of their total debt on household expenditure.

Access to institutional credit is largely determined by the ability of households to furnish assets as collateral.The report shows that the top 10 per cent of asset-owning households have borrowed 80 per cent of their total debt from institutional sources, whereas those in the bottom 50 per cent borrowed around 53 per cent of total debt from non-institutional sources. Moreover, the Debt-Asset Ratio (DAR) of the bottom 10 per cent asset-owning households in rural India is 39, much higher than the DAR of 2.6 estimated for the top 10 per cent households. This, coupled with higher borrowing from non-institutional sources, acts as a debt trap for households with fewer assets.

Access to credit is complicated by the interplay of social identities. The average asset ownership of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe households in rural areas is one-third as compared to upper-caste households. The low asset ownership of marginalised social groups curtails their access to institutional credit.

Inadequate access to affordable credit lies at the heart of the rural distress. Lack of marketable collateral, credit demand for consumption purposes and informational constraints have been the primary reasons for a large proportion of the rural population being excluded from institutional finance. The credit policy needs to be revamped to accommodate the consumption needs of the rural poor and to find alternatives for collateral to bring the rural households within the network of institutional finance.

This column first appeared in the print edition on September 30, 2021 under the title ‘The rural debt trap’. The writers are research scholars at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, JNU

Source: Indian Express, 30/09/21

Quote of the Day

 

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.”
Robert Brault

“छोटी छोटी बातों का आनंद उठाइए, क्योंकि हो सकता है कि किसी दिन आप मुड़ कर देखें तो आपको अनुभव हो कि ये तो बड़ी बातें थीं।”
रॉबर्ट ब्राल्ट

Current Affairs-September 29, 2021

 

INDIA

– PM Modi dedicates 35 crop varieties with special traits like climate resilience and higher nutrient content to nation; developed by the ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research)

– PM inaugurates newly constructed campus of National Institute of Biotic Stress Tolerance in Raipur

– Agriculture Minister launches ‘Amul Honey’- a product of GCMMF (Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation) Ltd.

– 17th Foundation Day of NDMA (National Disaster Management Authority) celebrated on Sept 28

– Home Minister Amit Shah releases training manual of Aapda Mitra Scheme and plan documents of Aapda Mitra and Common Alerting Protocol

– Bombay HC issues guidelines for safety of victims in workplace harassment cases

– DRDO successfully tests new version of Akash surface to air missile Akash Prime from Integrated Test Range at Chandipur, Odisha

– Defence Ministry increases income limit of disabled dependents for family pension

– Supreme Court lashes out at firecracker manufacturers for violating the spirit of its 2018 judgment banning toxic ingredients like barium in fireworks

– Country’s first Pan-India helpline for senior citizens: Elder Line (Toll Free No- 14567)

– Flight crew, air traffic controllers to be tested for drugs from Jan 31: DGCA

– Haryana extends ban on gutkha, pan masala till September 2022

– External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar meets with Mexican President Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico City

ECONOMY & CORPORATE

– S&P retains India’s 9.5% growth forecast for FY22; consumption, domestic macro indicators weak

– Bombay HC vacates stay granted two years ago on the 1,504 km Western Dedicated Freight Corridor connecting Dadri in Uttar Pradesh and Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra

– Govt to support 75 startup innovations for healthcare challenges through ‘Amrit Grand Challenge Programme’

– 22,000 compliances reduced, 103 offences decriminalised: Government

– Govt. dissolves Ordnance Factory Board, transfers assets to 7 PSUs: Munition India Ltd., Armoured Vehicles Nigam Ltd., Advanced Weapons and Equipment India Ltd., Troop Comforts Ltd., Yantra India Ltd., India Optel Ltd. and Gliders India Ltd.

WORLD

– International Day for Universal Access to Information observed on Sept 28; theme: “The Right to Know – Building Back Better with Access to Information”

NCW Launches Training Program for Women in Dairy Farming

 

Key Facts

• To launch the training programme, NCW is collaborating with agricultural universities in India in order to identify and train women working in the field of dairy farming and allied activities in several like value addition, quality enhancement and packaging & marketing of dairy products.
• First programme under this project was organised on ”Value Added Dairy products” at Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences in Hisar for women self-help groups. It was organised in collaboration with the Haryana State Rural Livelihood Mission.

Why this programme was launched?

This programme was launched because women in rural India are involved in every part of dairy farming but they have not attained financial independence. Thus, this project was launched with the aim of empower women and help them in achieving them financial independence.

How financial independence would be ensured?

This project seeks to help women in achieving financial independence by training them in aspects like quality enhancement of dairy products, value addition, packaging and marketing of their products and increasing the shelf life of products.

National Commission for Women (NCW)

NCW is the statutory body that advises the government on all policy matters related to women. The body was established on January 31, 1992 under the provisions of the Indian Constitution. It was established by an act called National Commission for Women Act, 1990.

Is the sun the only star visible during the day?

 Gazing into the night sky is undoubtedly one of the most ethereal experiences. Cloaked in a dark canvas studded with tiny glittering stars, the heavens remind us of the wonders and the mysteries of the majestic universe. It is very challenging to ascertain the total number of stars in the cosmos; the milky way galaxy alone is estimated to have nearly a 100 billion stars.  However, about 2500 stars are visible on a clear night on earth.

Stars have some important features in common; they are gigantic, ferocious balls of gas, basically hydrogen and helium, spewing out heat and light due to nuclear fusion. There is nothing tranquil about their world despite what the nursery rhymes and songs entail.Stars are the same, yet diverse. They can be of different colours like white, yellow, red or blue. They can be as small as a planet or so big that the sun is merely a speck in contrast but are very, very far from us.

Sky-gazing is primarily a night time adventure. However, since centuries man has been enthralled by the notion of viewing the stars in the daytime too. Not many know that the Moon, Venus and Jupiter, which are very close to us on the cosmic scale, can be spotted with the naked eye during daylight hours, the only hurdle being one should be sure of which part of the sky to explore.

Are stars “nocturnal” and disappear in the daytime? Of course not, they radiate light during the day as intensely as they do in the night. Although our sun is an average star, neither too big nor too small, not very hot nor cold, its proximity to us makes it shine 550,000 times brighter than the full moon and makes other stars too dull (about a trillion times dimmer) in comparison. It is the bright light from the sun that prevents us from discerning the light emanating from other stars in the daytime.

Just as we cannot see the glow of a candle in a brightly lit room, similarly the dim star light can be seen in the dark background at night and is submerged in the brilliant glare of the sun and the bright blue sky during the day. If one was on the moon, which does not have an atmosphere, there would be no scattering, the sky would be dark and the stars would be visible at all times. So, basically, the visibility of the stars is all about the contrast with the surroundings.

Man’s quest to see the stars in the day dates back to ancient times and is even documented by Aristotle. It was believed that if one gazed over a small section of sky from the bottom of a deep well, a coal pit or shaft of a tall chimney, one could see stars in the daylight. The notion was based on the fact that such a vantage point would reduce the amount of light entering the eye, make the pupil bigger allowing more light from the star to enter thus making it visible. The theory has been tested by many including the noted German scientist and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, and it has failed every time.

So the question still remains, is the sun the only star visible in the day? No. Armed with a telescope of a large aperture, we can see bright stars in the daylight. If the star is located further from the sun in the sky, it is cloudy and if the observation is made from a high spot, daytime star-gazing becomes feasible.

The most opportune time to see stars in the day without a telescope is during a total solar eclipse. With the sun’s disc covered by the moon, the twinkling stars in the sky offer a truly exhilarating experience.

The death of a star, when it becomes a supernova with brightness increasing a million-fold, offers a rare window of opportunity to see a star in the daytime but yet to be established.

Betelgeuse, a red supergiant, and part of the constellation Orion shall become a supernova anytime during the next 100,000 years. This will be a spectacular show with clear visibility of the star even in the daytime for about three months before it fades into a nighttime object visible for many centuries.

The possibility of seeing stars other than the sun in the daytime is surely an exotic and enchanting experience requiring precision and focus as we gaze into the infinite blue sky. It is surely an acute test of patience

,By Rachna Arora 

Source: Indian Express, 26/09/21