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EPW January 2015

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Content
From the Planning Commission to the NITI Aayog

Role and Functions of NITI Aayog

Long on Eloquence, Short on Detail

Improving Healthcare Services at Reduced Prices

Revenge of the East

Right to Abort in Surrogacy Contracts

Natural Disasters: Equity and Coordination

12

Still Searching for the GST

13

Massive Achievement

15

The Dead We Did Not Mourn

16

Volte-face on Food Security

17

No Transparency in Nuclear Deal

18

'Lima Call to Climate Action'

19

Mobama's China Spectre

22

The Academic Performance Indicators Regime and Its Follies

23

Notes by vineetpunnoose on www.kiwipaper.com

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From the Planning Commission to the NITI Aayog

Sat, Jan 24, 2015

planning commission, EPW, economics, Niti Aayog,

The transition from the Planning Commission to the Niti Aayog reflects the completion
of the transition from a state professing anti-imperialism to a neo-liberal state.Niti
Aayog will oversee a greater centralisation of powers in the central government, and
with the abolition of the National Development Council and its replacement by regional
councils, the limited say the states had on policies and the flow of funds stands further
eroded.
The idea of "national planning" had been in the air long before independence. Indeed,
the Planning Commission established in the Nehru era was the descendant of the National
Planning Committee that Subhas Chandra Bose had set up at the suggestion of Meghnad
Saha when he was the president of the Congress, with economist K T Shah at its head.
The idea of planning, in short, was closely linked to overcoming colonial exploitation
and to redeeming the pledge of the anti-colonial struggle to the people of India (expressed
inter alia through the Karachi Congress Resolution of 1931).
It is a travesty, therefore, to see the Planning Commission as a relic of the "Soviet era",
a sort of ideological baggage borrowed from the Soviet Union that has outlasted the
Soviet Union. Only a person unaware of and unconnected with the anti-colonial struggle
can make such a claim. Though the Soviet achievements of the time may have inspired
the particular course that "planning" took after its inception, the process itself was
embedded in the formation of the post-colonial state; it was a necessary legacy of the
anti-colonial struggle.
Not only were the country's natural resources to be brought back under national control
(which was the economic essence of decolonisation, and necessary for mobilising all
available means for the nation's development, without any "drain" on account of the
dominance of foreign capital), and the production pattern altered from what had been
dictated by the colonial division of labour, but the benefits of all these measures were
to accrue to the people at large by ensuring that wealth and income inequalities were
kept in check.
The fact that neo-liberalism entails a break with this perception, the fact that the
neo-liberal state is qualitatively different from the postcolonial dirigiste state (even
when both promote capitalism in different ways), underlies the extinction of the old
Planning Commission. Its extinction is not linked per se to the collapse of the Soviet
Union (though it is obviously not unrelated to the change in the international scenario
following this collapse); it is linked directly to the abandonment by the Indian state of
any anti-colonial, or more generally any anti-imperialist, agenda, and to its embrace of
international capital with which the domestic corporate-financial oligarchy is closely
integrated.

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It is not just the policy direction of the neo-liberal state that precludes a "planning"
body of the type that the Nehruvian era had envisioned; the very structure of a neo-liberal
state, where the Ministry of Finance is elevated to a domineering status above all other
official organs and is in turn peopled by employees of the World Bank, the IMF
(International Monetary Fund) and other institutions of finance capital, who are thereby
basically put in charge of the economy, has little room for any such autonomous Planning
Commission.
Niti Aayog and Centralisation of Power
What does need discussion, since it has received little recognition as yet, is the tremendous
centralisation of economic power that the transition toNiti Aayog entails. The old
Planning Commission had two serious failings. The first, an obvious one, was that in
an economy in which the means of production were largely privately owned, there were
no effective mechanisms for the " realisation" of the plans formulated by it. And it was
not even the case that plans could be "realised" only in the public sector but not in the
private sector; the "non-realisation" of plans in the private sector also entailed in a
"resource-constrained system" (whose being resource-constrained was in fact the sign
of a "good" plan, since it meant the absence of any "slack") the "non-realisation" of
plans in the public sector.
Various instruments were tried, such as a licensing policy, to make the private sector
conform to the overall plan. But these, as is well known from a host of official committees,
were ineffective, which also resulted in a significant trend towards centralisation of
capital, and hence an increase in wealth and income inequalities.
There was however a second flaw of the plan process. The Planning Commission,
though it was meant to effect " national economic planning", was a central government
entity with no representation from the states. It thus went against the spirit of federalism,
and gave expression to that strand of thinking within the Constituent Assembly which
saw the central government as the continuation of the British imperium.
Further Control over States
Even so, however, the three bodies, the Finance Commission, the Planning Commission,
and the Ministry of Finance, can be ranked in that order in terms of the looseness of
the restrictions they impose on the transfers effected through them from the centre to
the states. The disappearance of the Planning Commission, which would mean that
what used to be plan transfers would now be doled out through the finance ministry,
would entail both a possible reduction in the total magnitude of transfers, and a definite
increase in the centre's control over states' plans.
There is a second reason for believing this to be so, and that has to do with the abolition
of the National Development Council (NDC), where the state chief ministers were

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represented. This, though not a constitutional body, had a commanding presence, where
the states, deriving strength from one another, made a definite impact. Since its decisions,
which included the ultimate approval of plans, were taken through a consensus, the
centre was often forced to yield on certain matters (though this did not prevent it from
flouting the unanimous views of chief ministers on some occasions, such as the funding
of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan).

Role and Functions of NITI Aayog

Sat, Jan 24, 2015

NIti Aayog, EPW, economics, Planning Commission,

1 Demise of the Planning Commission

In the cabinet resolution passed on 7 January, the government has come out with the
broad contours of the new institution, National Institution for Transforming India (NITI).
The remit and functioning of NITI Aayog will become clearer as it evolves over time.
This note analyses the possible role it can take and the challenges it is likely to face in
carrying out remit assigned to it.
. In fact, the previous prime minister himself had called for redefining its role to suit
changing realities. The planning exercise that was followed had hardly any relevance
for the market economy. It did very little to plan and implement even public sector
investments for infrastructure and its role in promoting public-private partnership was
mostly seen as obstructive. The whole exercise of giving approvals to state plans
smacked of dispensing patronage.
There were two contradictions between the Indian development strategy and the
institutional framework constraining economic environment over the years. The first
is the contradiction between the planning framework and the role of the market. The
initial years after Independence required a planning frame to allocate the low levels of
savings to invest in much needed infrastructure and priority sectors to overcome severe
infrastructure deficits and the lack of competitiveness of the economy.
The second contradiction was between the centralised command over resource allocation
and the developmental role of the states in a federal polity. The end of single party rule
and the emergence of coalition governments and regional parties as members of the
central coalition brought to the fore the contradiction between centralised planning in
a federal framework. The response of the central government was to further centralise
even by intruding into the legislative domains of the states by various means including
the proliferation of CSS. The consequence of the above was that the two important
sources of economic dynamism, the private sector and the states, had to function in a
constrained environment.
First, economic liberalisation has created a vibrant private sector and the new institution

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should assist in policymaking to enable private entrepreneurs to unleash their animal

spirits and not to constrain them. Second, horizontal and vertical competition in a
multilevel fiscal system can be an important source of economic dynamism so long as
a certain measure of "competitive equality" and "cost-benefit appropriability" are
ensured and predatory competition is prevented. "Laboratory federalism" can be a
source of innovations, imitations and learning and facilitating this is important. Third,
coordination costs are higher when there are coalition governments and the parties in
power in the states are different from that of the centre.
NITI Aayog: Role and Remit
The cabinet resolution lists 13 different tasks to it which may be grouped under four
major heads, namely: (i) fostering cooperative federalism by providing structured
support to states on a continuous basis; (ii) formulation of a strategic vision and long-term
policies and programme framework both for the macroeconomy and for different sectors;
(iii) acting as a knowledge and innovation hub and providing research inputs by
undertaking and accessing globally available research; and (iv) providing a platform
for interdepartmental coordination. Each of these functions is discussed here in some
detail.

Long on Eloquence, Short on Detail

Sat, Jan 24, 2015

National Health Policy, social, EPW, health,

Over 63 million persons in India face poverty every year due to healthcare costs alone
with the share of out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure on healthcare as a proportion of
total household monthly per capita expenditure being 6.9% in rural areas and 5.5% in
urban areas in 2011-12. In view of this, the central government's draft National Health
Policy (NHP) 2015, which is in the public domain and open to suggestions and comments
until 28 February, is particularly significant. The draft NHP intends to make health a
fundamental right and therefore its denial a justiciable matter.
Undoubtedly, this is a welcome proposal but the right to education, which was declared
a fundamental right in 2009, comes immediately to mind. The parallels with healthcare
are many: the quality of education in government schools and the quality of services
in public hospitals and primary health centres; the insistence, as a result, of even poor
parents on their children attending private schools, however badly run; the beeline to
private hospitals even by poor patients; and the small and large glitches in the
implementation of the law. The lesson is obvious: what looks excellent on paper becomes
a different proposition when it has to be put into practice.
The draft policy proposes increasing the expenditure on healthcare from its present
level of 1.04% to 2.5% of grossdomestic product (GDP) in the next five years. The
draft policy hopes to create a health cess (similar to the education cess) on liquor and

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tobacco products. One will definitely need to examine whether such a cess will be even
close to adequate. Nevertheless, the draft policy promises that there will be universal
access to free drugs and diagnostics in hospitals even as it notes the fact that the national
health programmes leave out 75% of the non-communicable diseases and not all
communicable diseases are covered either.
However, it does seek to broaden the definition of primary healthcare to accommodate
reproductive and child health as well as some non-communicable diseases. The draft
also seeks to involve panchayati raj institutions in a big way and lists seven "priority"
areas to get the community and media to participate. Among these are the Swasth Nagrik
Abhiyan (of which the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is a part), the Nasha Mukti Abhiyan
(anti-tobacco and alcohol measures), Yatri Suraksha (prevention of accidents) and
Nirbhaya Nari (against gender violence, sex determination tests, etc).
The draft has just one paragraph on mental health noting that it needs urgent attention
since the gap between service availability and needs is widest here with 43 facilities in
the nation and 0.47 psychologists per million people. It includes the Mental Health Bill
(there are a few others too) among those that need to be reviewed. Considering the state
of the mentally ill in this country, this section needed to be much more comprehensive
and well thought out.
Ultimately, the devil is in the detail. India's public health services need so much more
basic infrastructure, medical and paramedical personnel, ironing out of the implementation
wrinkles in the health insurance schemes like the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana,
promoting computer-enabled systems to reach out to patients (like Tamil Nadu has
done), straightening out of the corruption-ridden system of procurement and distribution
of drugs, these among a long litany of requirements. The private sector needs a massive
dose of regulation and monitoring in almost all aspects, from pricing to crooked
third-party administrators to patient-care standards. At the government level, there has
to be a deep commitment to make health-for-all a deliverable right, starting with plugging
the leaks and poor utilisation of funds under various schemes.

Improving Healthcare Services at Reduced Prices

Sat, Jan 3, 2015

social, EPW, healthcare,

The key to improving the quality of healthcare services in India and reducing costs at
the same time can be found by enacting legislation which lays down minimum standards
of patient care. In the absence of such standards and the reluctance of health insurance
companies to standardise either price or quality, healthcare services continue to be
expensive and of doubtful quality.
Expecting improved healthcare services at reduced prices seems contradictory. Surely
any improvement in any service must necessarily entail a rise in cost? While there is a

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need to increase expenditure on health there is also a dire need to cut down costs. Cost
escalation is needed where existing pricing systems have little slack.
Before doing that, we would like to say that existing high prices for facilities in the
private healthcare sector are no guarantee of high quality just as the low prices of
facilities in the public sector are no indicator of poor quality. he one factor that makes
such a contradictory state of affairs possible is the fact that there is no professional
consensus on what constitutes good patient care, and nor is there any legislative mandate
on delivering it or on establishing controls on how this is being done.
Self-regulation by the market just does not work where healthcare is concerned. The
externalities in healthcare are too many. he main reason for the contradiction is this:
clinically it may make better sense to conduct a normal delivery on a female or to give
drugs to angina patients but economically it makes better sense for the health facility
to conduct a costlier procedure like a caesarean section or an angioplasty. The only
way to resolve this situation is to have transparent standards of patient care coupled
with effective regulatory mechanisms to enforce these.
Quite simply regulating healthcare means two things: first, drafting standards of patient
care, and second setting up implementation machinery for monitoring the same. It
sounds simple but as with all good things, it is rather difficult to do.
Standards of patient care would mean, among other things, pricing standards. Developing
such standards means that the hospitals would need to work out the costs of carrying
out any specific procedure.
Limited supply means that the facilities charge whatever they think the market can take.
If poorer people are priced out altogether, that would not affect the hospitals much since
supply is so scarce in the first place and they have sufficient takers.
Public hospitals could have prevented this by making independent calculations and
then making them public. They do not do so perhaps because this would put pressure
on them to offer cashless transactions for a variety of ailments which they are unable
to.
So the private sector will not and the public sector cannot take on the task of developing
packages for specific ailments. Here comes the third party in this transaction which is
the insurance company. The insurance companies say clearly that it is not their task to
regulate the healthcare sector. Perhaps this is the single-most important reason for the
inflated healthcare premiums which they charge and patients unwillingly pay.
Registering Clinical Establishments
If developing standards is such a desirable process, how does one go about doing it?
A first step has already been taken by the Government of India (GoI) in enacting the

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Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act in 2010.

A word of caution here. The story of Indian governance is about a series of well-meaning
measures which fail at the implementation stage. While embarking on this task, we
need to be sensitive to the reasons for the failure of the present legislation and to ensure
that these mistakes are not repeated.
One of the basic reasons why the existing Nursing Home Acts extant in some states do
not function is that no machinery has been created for its implementation. The healthcare
personnel in the service of various state governments are tasked with providing healthcare,
not regulating it. For carrying out this function, separate machinery needs to be created.
Second, to make things simpler for all concerned, web-enabled applications are needed
with a user friendly interface to facilitate self-registration by the various clinicians and
hospitals. This would ensure that the hospitals and clinics would not need to actually
visit any office unless there are some deviations from the standards proposed.
Finally, having citizen stakeholders on board in each of these authorities would certainly
help achieve more transparency and also provide a much-needed feedback mechanism.
Currently a great problem in existing government functioning is that citizens are rarely
entrusted with civic duties which would give them some idea of the complexity of
problems facing the state.
Some countries like Bangladesh have for decades implemented a drug policy emphasising
generics and have prohibited the manufacture of branded drugs deemed to be either
hazardous or of no therapeutic value. As a result almost 80% of drugs sold in Bangladesh
are generic drugs but this is not the case in India. And prices of branded formulations
are far higher than generic ones. Given the trajectory of development of the private
pharma sector in India, it seems difficult to enact legislation as Bangladesh has done.
Still there is much that can be accomplished even given the adverse incentive structure
of the pharma sector.
A way out for government hospitals is to use the single payer mechanism. To implement
this, the first requirement is to take away the burden of procuring all but emergency
items from government hospitals. Staff in these institutions is over worked, less than
required, under constant pressure and ill equipped to handle the challenges of procurement.
Such procurement teams rarely exist in the government machinery; the result is that
the same medicine is being procured by a variety of different hospitals in the same
state; the same medicine is procured under different budget heads and often one
department head has no idea what the other is doing. Each individual transaction adds
its own price component to the final price.
To break this cycle, first an essential drug list needs to be drawn up by the procurement
team. This exercise when conducted in Rajasthan and Maharashtra showed that the

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actual list of essential medicines needed for all levels of care was fewer than 500 while
routinely procurement was being done for over 2,000 drugs. This rationalises the entire
procurement exercise a great deal, saves much time and effort.
Problems with Insurance
Once some healthcare regulation is in place, bringing insurance premiums down is
much more feasible. The logic of single payer systems remains valid for this just as
much as for medicine prices. Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have shown that for large
populations running into crores, floating tenders for health insurance for a defined set
of families fetched a per family premium of Rs 333 in Maharashtra and Rs 497 in Tamil
Nadu for an annual coverage of Rs 1.5 lakh and Rs 1 lakh, respectively. These prices
also include administrative charges. The reason for such low premiums is that while
six out of 100 families may fall ill in any specific year, premium is paid for all 100.
With these premiums and an average per claim cost of Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000, the
insurance company just about breaks even.

Revenge of the East

Sat, Jan 17, 2015

social, EPW, freedom of speech,

The resurrection of the debate on the freedom of speech - its ideology and its practice
in the world today - is perhaps the best tribute that can be paid to those who were shot
for their writings and drawings.
Most people who had never heard of or read Charlie Hebdo reacted with disbelief at
these cartoons as these were, where they pertained to Islam and Muslims, clearly
provocative and meant to lampoon. While the condemnations of the killings were
forthright, many started asking questions whether these cartoons were appropriate and
could be defended.
However, those who criticise Charlie Hebdo 's humour and contents point out that
laughing at a group of people who are discriminated and marginalised is very distinct
from lampooning those in power. There are also questions about the politics of its
aesthetics and the manner in which the caricatures reinforce racist prejudices against
an already stigmatised minority.
The differential treatment of Jews and Judaism, who are not caricatured in the same
manner as are Muslims and Islam, is used as an example to buttress the argument that
Charlie Hebdo is racist.
What has been quite unprecedented is how quickly this has become a global debate, a
conversation over time zones and political, cultural and legal divides. It is not the first
time that there has been such a global conversation but this may be the first time that

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it has happened in a world connected through social media. The ramifications - that a
rapidly growing number of people in the world are in something akin to direct conversation
with each other - are enormous and will take time for us, its participants, to fully
understand and appreciate.
To return to Charlie Hebdo , the question that has emerged at the centre of this global
conversation is whether the right to free speech is absolute or whether it is inherently
contextual and conditioned by its genealogies stretching through capitalism and
colonialism. it is clear that both sides to the argument need to rethink and rework their
positions. Just when the established middle ground of the old debates between rights
and responsibilities, and between the rights to equality and liberty were beginning to
get clarified into their two pole positions, new ways of looking at these old debates
have begun to emerge.
The larger, long-term implications of this debate are still unclear to us, caught up as
we are in the heat and dust of the present intellectual and political skirmishes. Yet it
does seem that the debate will only flourish in the days to come, opening up new ways
of understanding our world and of building solidarities, despite, it must be added, all
the cynical attempts to appropriate the slogan of freedom of speech by those with blood
on their hands.

Right to Abort in Surrogacy Contracts

Sat, Jan 10, 2015

surrogacy, social, abortion, EPW,

Surrogacy is a contract for services which are highly personal in nature, and which are
intended to bring social and familial contentment to the commissioning parents through
childbirth. Artificial reproduction gives childless families a chance to fulfil a basic
human need, that would otherwise be impossible to achieve. However, surrogacy
contracts raise several critical questions, abortion being one of them.
The issue of abortion is essential inasmuch as it constitutes a breach of contractual
obligations. The commissioning parents contract with the surrogate and take significant
steps to set the gestational process in motion, by relying on the reasonable expectation
that there would be no abortion. If the contract is breached by the surrogate, the parents
are left without alternatives.
The draft Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Bill to regulate surrogacy which
was introduced in Parliament in 2010 made an attempt to resolve the issue of abortion
by mandating that any woman agreeing to act as a surrogate shall be duty-bound not
to engage in any act that would harm the foetus during pregnancy, 1 thus offering some
legal "guarantee" to the commissioning parents.
This article's first contention to the anti-abortion clause in the draft bill is that it is in

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conflict with the constitutional rights of the parties to a surrogacy contract. The
commissioning parents have a right to procreative freedom, which includes the right
to contract with collaborators for the purpose of bearing children. Likewise, the surrogate
has the right to make an intimate personal decision about reproduction, which would
also include abortion. Although not enumerated in the Constitution, both the right to
procreation and the right to abortion are two competing variants of the right to life and
personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution, 2 they represent a woman's right
to choose whatever she does with her body 3 and hence, the choice to procreate or abort
should essentially belong to her if Article 21 has to have any meaning for her.
In the first situation, a surrogate may want to abort, but the commissioning parents
decide to defend their right to procreative freedom by bringing a suit for specific
performance of the contract. In this situation, it needs to be determined whether a court
would impose an injunction upon the surrogate, for the reason that if a surrogate has
no right to abort, it amounts to battery and undue hardship in the form of physical
imposition of compulsory pregnancy and abrogates her right against exploitation.
the commissioning parents may wish to abort the foetus if they discover serious
complications in prenatal or postnatal health of the foetus or even for personal reasons.
If the commissioning parents intend to get the foetus aborted, then the surrogate may
treat it as a breach of contract. But when the surrogate decides not to abort, then the
dilemma that courts would face is whether it is just and proper to order an abortion-on-demand.
Some proponents of surrogacy would argue that the surrogacy contract was entered
into with the free will of the surrogate. Some others would argue that the surrogate is
in a relationship of trust with the commissioning parents and such duty of trust and
loyalty requires that a surrogate refrain from exercising her personal interests against
the interests of the beneficiaries.
However, on a closer look, it is worth noting that in traditional reproduction, parenthood
is not derived from mere spousal relationship, but rather from the intention of the couple,
which means that any decision to bear children is to be mutually agreed upon by both
partners. At the same time, agreeing to an intercourse does not mean that the wife has
no right to abort. The law grants the decision to abort exclusively to the woman and
she can terminate the foetus, if she so wishes. If we were to treat traditional reproduction
from the perspective of contract law, it would mean that for the reproductive process
to be valid, free consent to carry the foetus should exist throughout the term of the
contract, not just at the time when the contract is made by the couple.
The moment this underlying consent is lost, the contract of reproduction stands breached
and thereafter there is no contract between the couple. If that be so, then why should a
surrogate, who is only a substitute carrier, be deprived of equal protection under law
for the same act? A surrogate undergoes the same bodily conditions and mental
associations with the foetus as is the case in traditional reproduction and it would be a

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legal fiction to claim that a surrogate woman is not in the same position as an ordinary
woman.
Test of Ethics
To fully answer the question of who holds the right to abort, one must also pass the test
of ethics. Many critics have held that in surrogacy the interests of wealthy commissioning
parents are better served than those of the surrogates. 4 Surrogates, especially in the
third world countries like India, belong to a lower socio-economic segment and the
monetary compensation is necessary to motivate many women. As the United States
Supreme Court had pointed out in the landmark case of Baby M 5 that the "essential
evil is...taking advantage of a woman's circumstances", an anti-abortion clause would
therefore impose a totalitarian intervention into a woman's life.
Hence, any disregard by the court of the decisions of a surrogate will ultimately
subordinate the surrogate by establishing the notion that her reproductive capacity is a
mere mechanical device, and may create mala fide incentives to employ poor women
as providers of commercial service to consumers.
Can the Right to Abortion Be Waived?
The doctrine of waiver is based on the premise that a person is his best judge and being
so, he has the liberty to waive the enjoyment of his rights. From the literal meaning of
Section 34(23) of the bill, it seems that the intent of the law is to require the surrogate
to irreversibly waive her right to abort in advance
In Basheshar Nath vs CIT, 1959 AIR 149 1959 SCR Supl (1) 528, it was held that there
could be no waiver not only of the fundamental right enshrined in Article 14, but also
of any other fundamental right guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution. The Constitution
made no distinction between fundamental rights enacted for the benefit of the individual
and those enacted in the public interest or on grounds of the public policy.
A precondition to waive a right in advance by consent, is that a person doing so must
not lack sufficient awareness of the relevant circumstances and likely consequences of
the waiver. The judge in the Baby M case indicated that surrogate never makes a
completely voluntary, informed decision because any decisions prior to the childbirth
are compelled, by contractual and monetary concerns.
In addition to this, if the surrogate does not have the choice to exercise her bodily
integrity and personal will during the time of service, then the commissioning parents
are not only purchasing the surrogate's labour, but also acquiring rights over her body
for their benefit. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the surrogate is not under a
binding agreement because then the surrogate retains control over her body while using
it for the benefit of the other party.

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Commercial surrogacy has been a legal practice in India since 2002, and the ART Bill
allows the payment of any sum of money to the surrogate other than that which is
needed to meet her medical and insurance costs. I
In India's ART Bill it is settled that a surrogate must relinquish parental rights, 6 which
will only logically follow when we presume that there is a sale of the baby.
The author believes that no rational parents who arrange for surrogacy would like to
admit either that the price paid is the price of the child, but rather this payment is just
an end reward or fee for the services of the surrogate. Such an admission, however,
leaves the commissioning parents with no remedy against the surrogate who aborts
against their wish.
Some surrogacy proponents may argue that a reasonable monetary penalty should be
imposed upon the breaching surrogate (as is the practice in many other contracts), but
considering the subjective nature of a parent's association with a newborn child, the
author believes that no amount of penalty would really leave the disheartened parents
satisfied.
Thus, simply put: where the surrogate's service gets interrupted by abortion, no damages
would probably be available to the parents; the latter should, from the time of entering
into contract, compulsorily take on the risk that the surrogate may not carry the child
to term. With regards to the sums already paid to the surrogate, it is unlikely that any
claim for recovery will be sustained given that in a personal services contract, the party
not in breach "accepted" the performance of the party in breach until the date of breach,
and has an obligation to pay for such performance.
In the circumstance where the surrogate ignores the parents' demand for abortion, the
commissioning parents should be absolved of their obligation to pay rewards, fees or
any other costs for the surrogate, otherwise it would be highly inequitable for the parents
who no longer have a contract or expect to have a child.

Natural Disasters: Equity and Coordination

Sat, Jan 3, 2015

disaster management, social, EPW,

The controversies that followed the rescue and rehabilitation efforts in the aftermath
of almost all these disasters put the spotlight on issues like early response, financing
for humanitarian response and long-term preparedness. Among the many ongoing
discussions on what has changed in terms of the humanitarian response since the 2004
tsunami, the issues of making humanitarian funding more equitable and increasing the
role of pooled humanitarian funds are critical.
The 2010 Pakistan floods, for example, which affected around 20 million people failed

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to mobilise the level of generosity that was seen after the Indian Ocean tsunami. This
is true of many other slow onset natural disasters and conflicts, one prime example
being the 2004 Bangladesh floods. In private donations (which roughly comprise one
quarter of the international ones) a host of factors - the type of emergency, perceptions
about the impact of donations and ability to identify with affected populations - come
into play. On the other hand, government donors have stated commitments to providing
impartial, needs-based assistance. Yet, other factors - strategic geopolitical and economic
factors, international pressure and media coverage - continue to influence them.
Do we have enough funding for the multiple humanitarian - natural and human-created
- crises? There are two parts to the answer. First is how the resources are controlled
and allocated, and the second is how we gear up for the increasing level of insecurity
and vulnerability. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts
rising wind speeds of tropical cyclones, increasing intensity of droughts, and an increase
in heavy precipitation events, potentially increasing the frequency of floods.
An increasing amount of international humanitarian assistance is now channelled through
pooled funds. These funds are designed to aid flexibility and speed when responding
to humanitarian crises and to make funding more impartial.
The 2004 tsunami marked a watershed in terms of the scale of response and the number
of agencies that stepped in. It has arguably shaped the way humanitarian responses are
planned and executed while bringing home the importance of comprehensive regional
and global coordination - not just during disasters but at all times.
In an increasingly vulnerable world, natural disasters and humanitarian crises affect
the lives and livelihoods of millions with many disasters having far-reaching sociocultural
consequences. That it is the socially and economically vulnerable who shoulder the
brunt of the after-effects and slip deeper into poverty and misery has been proved over
and over again. In fact, poverty spells greater vulnerability towards natural disasters.
Even as developing countries strive to better coordinate efforts and resources to deal
with such disasters, the global community too must continue to work towards adequate,
needs-based funding.

Still Searching for the GST

Sat, Jan 10, 2015

EPW, economics, GST,

While there has never been any disagreement between the central and state governments
on the benefits of a comprehensive Goods and Services Tax (GST) to replace the
complex indirect tax system currently in operation, differences on a number of issues
have meant that a proposal announced in the 2007-08 Budget has taken more than seven
years to fructify into another legislative bill on GST. The introduction of the Constitution
(122nd Amendment) Bill, 2014 in the Lok Sabha in the winter session to facilitate

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introduction of the GST regime from 1 April 2016 indicates some progress. If in spite
of the unresolved issues another bill has been drafted, the expectation seems to be that,
however imperfect, enactment of the legislation would simplify the tax system, end the
cascading effect of current taxation, foster development of a common domestic market,
and result in revenue buoyancy and higher growth of the economy.
The 2014 bill visualises a dual GST that would be levied both by the centre and the
states on an overlapping tax base. It provides simultaneous power to union and state
legislatures to legislate on the GST. The centre would levy a Central Goods and Services
Tax (CGST), the states a State Goods and Services Tax (SGST), and the centre would
levy and collect the Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST) on all interstate supply
of goods and services, and distribute the IGST proceeds among the states. The GST
Bill seeks to create a system of seamless flow of input tax credit from one state to
another.
All goods and services other than alcohol (for human consumption) are to be under the
GST which is a welcome move to reduce selectivity in taxation in a GST regime. The
draft legislation proposes that the rate of the GST will be uniform across the country
with a limited amount of flexibility to vary the CGST and SGST rates within a narrow
tax band above a floor rate. A uniform rate across the country appeals to trade and
industry. However, the question is if such harmonisation should be at the cost of fiscal
autonomy. A state's ability to levy a tax should mean the ability to fix the tax rate as
well. In order to harmonise rates, the power to fix tax rates is to be given up almost
entirely under the proposed legislation. It needs to be noted that tax harmonisation does
not only mean harmonisation of rates but harmonisation of many other processes within
the tax system to facilitate easy tax compliance by business and industry. A uniform
rate is no guarantee of creation of a common market, if the tax compliance processes
remain very complex and different across states.
A huge compromise in the design of the GST is the proposal to impose a "non-VATable"
additional tax of not more than 1% on the supply of goods in the course of interstate
trade. This tax is to be collected for a period not exceeding two years, or for longer as
recommended by the GST Council. This essentially means the current origin-based
distortionary Central Sales Tax (CST) system will continue in the initial years of GST
if not abolished after two years, resulting in significant tax exportation from the richer
producing states to the poorer consuming states.
The architecture of GST as it now stands is definitely not ideal. It is a compromise to
accommodate the conflicting interests of the states and the union. Although the most
significant aspect of the GST Bill is the inclusion of petroleum products under the
purview of the tax at a future date, a non-VATable CST levy of 1% is another compromise
on the application of a destination-based principle and continues the element of the
cascading effect of indirect taxation in place.

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All said and done, the speedy implementation of GST calls for a resolution of the most
contentious and critical issue of the rates at which CGST and SGST are to be applied.
The "flawless GST" proposed by the Thirteenth Finance Commission recommended
an abysmally low combined 12% GST rate. Given much higher current rates of indirect
taxation, it is certainly not possible to have a GST of 12%. Rigorous independent studies
have shown that a combined GST that will minimise revenue loss initially to the states
(and thereby reduce the compensation that the centre will have to pay) must be around
20%.

Massive Achievement

Sat, Jan 17, 2015

EPW, international, Sri Lanka,

In what was a remarkable result in Sri Lankan presidential elections, strongman Mahinda
Rajapaksa of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) has been defeated by Maithripala
Sirisena, the candidate of a united opposition. It was barely a month and a half ago that
Sirisena, a member of Rajapaksa's ministry, announced his defection from his parent
party. In this short period, a realignment of the opposition forces took place. The leading
opposition party, the United National Party (UNP), declared its support to Sirisena, and
more defections from the SLFP - most notably, former President Chandrika Kumaratunga
- coincided with withdrawal of support to Rajapaksa from the Buddhist party, the
Jathika Hela Urumaya. The tacit support from the leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna
for the opposition and the announcement by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and
Muslim parties that they too favoured Rajapaksa's opponent turned Sirisena into a
strong candidate against the president who had enjoyed two terms in office.
The choice of Sirisena as a candidate was itself dictated by the fact that this member
of the Rajapaksa cabinet, with agrarian roots and having served previously in the
ministries of agriculture and health in earlier regimes, enjoyed vast support among the
Sinhala rural populace. The TNA and other Tamil parties gave their support without
any preconditions on devolution of power as these parties realised that this was a unique
political moment that they too should be part of and contribute to the ousting of Rajapaksa.
Following the triumph of the Sri Lankan government forces in the war against the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Rajapaksa regime had the opportunity
to promote reconciliation and foster a post-war democracy. Instead, the regime embarked
upon a programme of further militarisation - enhancing the presence of security forces
in the north and expanding the role of the military into economic sectors - and greater
concentration of executive powers in the presidency.
The Rajapaksa regime had also presided over a rapid shrinking of the space for dissent
and had sought to control the media, even resorting to a violent suppression of critical
voices in the press. The rise of Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism had also alienated other

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minorities such as the Muslims who were at the receiving end of several incidents of
violence over the past year which had been orchestrated by right-wing organisations
such as the Bodu Bala Sena and which had received overt support from officials in the
Rajapaksa regime.
For the Tamils and other minorities who have sought greater devolution of power and
federalisation, the defeat of Mahinda Rajapaksa is not necessarily going to advance
their agenda. Sirisena and other leaders among the new coalition have explicitly ruled
out any moves towards devolution of power and they are also wary of any adverse
backlash from the Sinhala majority. Yet, the defeat of Rajapaksa opens up new spaces
of political engagement for the Tamils and the Muslims, as they, along with sections
of the Sinhala electorate, had played a decisive role in defeating the Rajapaksa regime.

The Dead We Did Not Mourn

Sat, Jan 24, 2015

Nigeria, EPW, Boko Haram, international,

Some deaths are mourned by thousands, even millions; others go unmourned, unnoticed.
This is the tragedy of our modern times. So even as more than a million people turned
out on the streets of Paris in January to mourn the deaths of the 17 people killed during
and after the attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo , the death
of around 2,000 people at the hands of the Boko Haram in northern Nigeria went
virtually unnoticed by the rest of the world.
Whatever the reasons, it is time we woke up and took note of what is happening in
Nigeria and attempt to understand the genesis of the crisis a part of the country faces.
To begin with, we have to understand Boko Haram, how it rose and grew and what it
hopes to achieve. The group's official name is Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati
Wal-Jihad, which means, "People committed to the propagation of the Prophet's
teachings and jihad" the group was founded in 2002 by Mohammed Yusuf who focused
on the poverty and deprivations faced by the largely Muslim population in the area.
Despite its oil wealth, Nigeria is one of the poorest countries in Africa and also highly
unequal. The group (Boko Haram) itself is an effect not a cause; it is a symptom of
decades of failed government and elite delinquency finally ripening into social chaos."
Ethnic violence in a country with 350 ethnic groups speaking 250 languages, and almost
equally divided between Christians and Muslims, is nothing new. Yet, while some of
these differences have been negotiated in the past, the challenge thrown up by Boko
Haram appears to have gone beyond that.
Since 2009, international human rights groups estimate that around 13,000 people have
been killed by Boko Haram and almost 1.5 million people displaced by the violence.
The world community did note some of its more egregious crimes, such as the kidnapping

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of over 200 schoolgirls last year. Nothing is known about them except Boko Haram's
claim that they had been married off to their fighters.
Although the US government has declared Boko Haram a terrorist group, its links with
other Islamist groups have yet to be established. What is known is that many people
living in northern and eastern Nigeria, even if they do not support Boko Haram, do
hold a grudge against the leadership ofNigeria's Christian President Goodluck Jonathan.
Instead of accepting that the North and the East's social and economic grievances need
addressing, the Nigerian government prefers a military solution to the challenge posed
by Boko Haram.

Volte-face on Food Security

Sat, Jan 31, 2015

social, EPW, food security, National Food Security Act,

Shanta Kumar happens to be the chairperson of the High Level Committee on Reorienting
the Role and Restructuring of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) (hereafter "HLC"),
which submitted its report earlier this month. The HLC report, aside from calling for
sweeping changes in the mode of operation of the FCI, makes strong recommendations
aimed at downsizing the NFSA. These include reducing the coverage of the public
distribution system (PDS) from 67% to 40% of the population, raising issue prices to
half of the relevant minimum support price (instead of Rs 3/kg for rice and Rs 2/kg for
wheat), and a gradual transition to cash transfers.
The crux of the committee's argument is that PDS leakages are unacceptably high, and
that cash transfers would save money. The report disputes the view that the recent PDS
reforms have led to reduced leakages and cites an alarming figure of 47% leakage in
2011-12. Indeed, the decline of PDS leakages over time is particularly clear in states
that are known to have implemented bold PDS reforms in recent years, e g, Chhattisgarh,
Odisha, and - more recently - Bihar.
Signs of improvement emerged from 2011 onwards, notably with the introduction of
a system of tracking coupons. Further progress was achieved in the past two years
within the framework of the NFSA. Broad coverage (about 75% of the rural population),
low issue prices (Rs 3/kg for rice and Rs 2/kg for wheat), clear entitlements (5 kg per
person per month), and - last but not least - political competition in the run-up to this
year's assembly elections, all contributed to stronger public pressure for a functional
PDS. For instance, households with a ration card (74% of the sample) were able to
secure close to 80% of their PDS entitlements during the month preceding the survey.
Major irregularities remain, and the battle is far from won, but, nevertheless, Bihar's
recent experience suggests that effective PDS reform is possible even in the worst-governed
states.
The HLC report pays little attention to the wealth of recent evidence on these matters.

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Instead, it pronounces a summary sentence on the PDS based on tentative leakage

estimates from NSS data. The report is equally casual in its wholesale endorsement of
cash transfers as an alternative to the PDS.
This is not to deny that there are valid arguments for cash transfers as a possible
alternative to the PDS, especially in urban areas and the richer states. The HLC report,
however, does not shed much light on the appropriate timing and modalities of this
transition.
Meanwhile, the implementation of the NFSA is being held up in many states due to
prolonged delays in the release of Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) data.
State governments need SECC data to identify eligible households.
Finally, it is important to remember that NFSA entitlements are not confined to subsidised
foodgrains under the PDS. There are also important entitlements to nutritious food for
young children, and to maternity benefits for pregnant women. Maternity benefits of
Rs 6,000 per child have been a legal entitlement of Indian women since July 2013, but
nothing has been done about it. The central government seems to think that it is above
the law.

No Transparency in Nuclear Deal

Sat, Jan 31, 2015

Nuclear Liability Act, EPW, international, nuclear deal,

American objections to the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act (CLNDA), 2010,
have centred on two provisions that open the possibility for US vendors to be held liable
for accident claims. The overall scheme of the CLNDA is to hold the operator of a
nuclear plant strictly liable for an accident regardless of whose fault the accident is.
This liability is capped at Rs 1,500 crore. Section 17(b) of the Act gives the operator
the right to recover whatever he pays out as no-fault liability from his supplier, if the
accident for which strict liability was channelled to him had resulted from an act of the
supplier or his employees, including the "supply of equipment or material with patent
of latent defects or sub-standard services". Obviously, exercising this "right of recourse"
would require the operator proving his charge in a court of law.
If the channelling of no-fault liability to the operator is intended to ensure that victims
receive immediate compensation without going to court, the quantum of this liability
is capped at Rs 1,500 crore to compensate the operator for taking on the burden of an
accident that others might have contributed to. But Parliament wanted to make it clear
that the rights of the victims went beyond and were not compromised by the government's
unwillingness to compensate them for their loss and suffering. That is why Section 46
says the CLNDA will be "in addition to and not in derogation of other laws in force"
(such as ordinary tort law against anyone the victims feel is responsible for an accident),
and that payment of civil damages would not exempt the operator from other proceedings,

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such as the filing of a criminal case.

The US administration says Section 17(b) of CLNDA lies outside the scope of the
Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC), which India agreed to ratify, a
claim the Indian government has always disputed. The US has also echoed the views
of its companies that Section 46 will expose them to potentially unlimited damages in
the event of an accident. While the proposed insurance pool is what has led the US to
drop its objections to Section 17(b), it seems the Modi government has committed itself
to providing a written legal assurance to the US that Indian victims will not be allowed
to sue American suppliers under Section 46 of the CLNDA.
Since US suppliers always had the option of buying insurance cover from any provider,
the attractiveness of the proposed Indian pool probably lies in the low premium that
might be charged. The lower the premium, the greater the extent to which Section 17(b)
loses its effectiveness. it is essential that the prime minister make public all assurances
given to the US, and that the insurance pool idea also be subject to proper public scrutiny
to make sure the Indian taxpayer does not end up subsiding Westinghouse or General
Electric for an accident caused by defective equipment.
Ever since the 1960s, the manufacturers of nuclear equipment have been exempted
from accident liability worldwide. While an "infant industry" argument might have had
plausibility back then, there is no justification today for nuclear suppliers to be subsidised
in this manner. The Indian Nuclear Liability Act broke ground by attempting to force
suppliers to internalise the risk of an accident, just as companies operating in other
hazardous industries must do. This might well lead to higher projected tariffs for the
electricity their reactors will produce but given the kind of expenses involved in the
clean-up of an accident - the final bill for the Fukushima disaster stretches anywhere
from $15 billion to $100 billion - it is best that policymakers be aware of the true cost
of nuclear energy when planning for increased capacity.

'Lima Call to Climate Action'

Sat, Jan 3, 2015

environment, EPW, lima call to climate action, Lima, climate change,

The United Nations climate talks in Lima, Peru, were important as the last preparatory
meet ahead of the Paris talks in late 2015, where a new global agreement to combat
climate change is to be negotiated. the Lima call represents progress and will stand
countries in good stead as the drum roll for Paris begins.
The United Nations climate negotiations in Lima, December 2014, marked an important
moment in the ongoing negotiations towards the 2015 climate agreement due to be
concluded in Paris. That the Lima Conference was able to arrive at an outcome, however
weak, is in itself remarkable, given many countries had come to Lima determined not
to foreclose options for themselves in the 2015 agreement, even if it came at the cost

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of failure in Lima.
Durban to Lima and Beyond
The international climate change regime consists principally of the 1992 United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 1 the 1997 Kyoto Protocol 2
and the decisions of Parties to the UNFCCC (hereafter "the parties") under these
instruments. Although these instruments are important first steps towards addressing
climate change and its impacts, they are widely regarded as inadequate and inadequately
implemented. At the Durban Conference 2011, the Parties launched a process to negotiate
a climate agreement that will come into effect and be implemented from 2020. 3 This
process, christened the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced
Action (ADP), is intended to craft the agreement that will govern, regulate and incentivise
the next generation of climate actions. The ADP process is expected to conclude its
work and yield agreement by 2015. 4 The international community has, since Durban,
engaged in intense negotiations, both in the context of this process and in other
complementary plurilateral and multilateral fora, to inform and design an agreement
that builds on, complements and may even replace part of the existing climate change
regime. To assist them in meeting the 2015 deadline and managing their negotiating
time, the Parties decided at the Doha Conference, 2012 to erect milestones along the
way. Parties agreed to consider "elements for a draft negotiating text" no later than the
Lima Conference 2014, "with a view to making available a negotiating text before May
2015". 5
At the Warsaw Conference in 2013, the Parties were invited to prepare and submit
"intended nationally determined contributions" in 2015. The ADP was also mandated
to "identify...the information that Parties will provide when putting forward their
contributions". 6 These two outcomes resulted from the general agreement between
the Parties that they needed to engage in 2014 in the domestic preparations necessary
to arrive at commitments that can be inscribed in the 2015 agreement or be part of the
2015 package. This was deemed necessary not just to arrive at realistic and realisable
commitments but also to generate ownership of and responsibility for them. There was
also general agreement that these commitments would need to be accompanied by
information sufficient to generate clarity about the nature, type and stringency of the
commitments, such that it would assist in comparability across commitments and
assessments of adequacy.
There were thus two key deliverables for the Lima Conference: countries were tasked
with arriving at the "elements of a draft negotiating text" for the 2015 agreement; and,
the ADP was tasked with identifying the information that must accompany the intended
nationally determined contributions the Parties would submit in 2015.
the carefully negotiated language of the Warsaw decision raised two further sets of
issues that would also need to be addressed before countries submitted their contributions.

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The first set of issues relates to the scope of the intended nationally determined
contributions. The Warsaw decision left it unclear whether contributions would only
cover mitigation or also adaptation, finance, technology and capacity building. Whether
mitigation would be a compulsory or optional component of a Party's contribution?
Whether the Parties could submit conditional contributions - conditioned on the provision
of support or on action by other parties - or only unconditional ones? The second set
of issues relates to the possibility of an ex ante assessment process that would apply to
these contributions once they are submitted. The Warsaw decision contained no explicit
reference and thus only the flimsiest of hooks for such an ex ante assessment process.
The use of the word "intended" suggests that the nationally determined contributions
of the Parties are expected to be provisional in that it may not be a Party's eventual
contribution inscribed in the 2015 agreement. This created two possibilities - that the
intended contribution could be revised by the Party itself, or as a result of a multilateral
assessment process.
The Lima Call to Climate Action
The Elements Text for the 2015 Agreement: Parties did arrive at an "elements text",
albeit a 38-page text littered with options and alternatives with little of it representing
agreed language.
Scope of Contributions: The second of the Lima deliverables - identifying information
to accompany countries' intended nationally determined contributions - proved harder
to deliver, and the Lima decision provides only limited guidance to states as they prepare
to submit their contributions next year. The issue of accompanying information is
inextricably linked to the issue of scope as different types of contributions would require
the submission of different types of information. There proved to be irreconcilable
differences on the issue of scope. There were a range of views cutting across north-south
lines, with some states insisting that contributions should only cover mitigation, and
others arguing that mitigation and adaptation should be accorded legal and material
parity.
There are, however, two general reassurances provided in the initial paragraphs of the
decision relating to the treatment of issues other than mitigation. First that the 2015
agreement will address mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology development and
transfer, capacity building, and transparency of action and support, in a balanced manner
And, second, urging developed countries to provide and mobilise enhanced financial
support for ambitious mitigation and adaptation actions in developing countries

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Mobama's China Spectre

Sat, Jan 31, 2015

USA, EPW, international, pivot to asia, China,

The New York Times (NYT) (26 January 2015) reported that the first 45 minutes of
the first meeting that Obama had with the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi were
dominated by just one issue, China. And, to their delight, Obama and his aides found
that Modi's assessment of China's rise and its impact in the Asia-Pacific, and the Indian
Ocean, seemed so close to that of their own. Modi was as concerned as Obama is about
China's influence in the region and of how to jointly (with the US) counter it. What
resulted was the "US-India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and the Indian
Ocean". This joint strategic vision statement said "Regional prosperity depends on
security", going on to "affirm the importance of safeguarding maritime security and
ensuring freedom of navigation and over flight..., especially in the South China Sea "
(our emphasis). The statement particularly calls attention to resolution of territorial and
maritime disputes in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of
the Sea (UNCLS).
Modi's first bilateral US-India summit also made explicit references to the South China
Sea and all the rest of the issues just mentioned, as also the commitment to work more
closely with other Asia-Pacific countries to advance India's "Act East" policy and the
US's "rebalance to Asia" (better known as "Pivot to Asia") strategy, all parroted in an
American idiom.
The other instrument to advance the objective of containing the rise of China is the new
"2015 Framework for the US-India Defence Relationship", a top secret, 10-year
agreement that will replace the 2005 Defence Framework pact that expires later this
year. Already the US stages more joint military exercises with India's armed forces
than with the militaries of any other country, and these are going to be stepped up and
made more intensive.
The US-India Defence Trade and Technology Initiative is going to get a big boost with
the Pentagon establishing a "dedicated rapid reaction team" to move the various weapons
projects in the pipeline forward, including those involving co-production and even
co-development. If this succeeds, India's military will become more and more dependent
on the US military-industrial complex, displacing Russia, New Delhi's long-standing
collaborator in defence equipment and technology.

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The Academic Performance Indicators Regime and Its Follies

Sat, Jan 31, 2015

UGC, EPW, higher education, science & tech,

The University Grants Commission does not seem to view higher education and research
as having anything to do with the culture of intellectual activity. Rather it looks at
research as a matter of regulation, monitoring and measurement of academic "output".
Measuring Academic Performance
The point is technological infrastructure is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition
for strengthening academic performance, if we do not have a way to cultivate human
abilities along with technological provisions. Measuring academic performance through
quantitative measures of output cannot ensure that the output is of good quality unless
we have a social mechanism like the formation of academic community and peer
influence to motivate people to conduct serious research. Equating material infrastructure
and sheer output with academic excellence is not good for any science, definitely not
for the social sciences
In the past, societies have fostered cultural and intellectual creativity by promoting both
institutional norms and non-institutional channels as part of an atmosphere for learning.
But the UGC does not seem to view higher education and research as having anything
to do with the culture of intellectual activity. Rather it looks at research as a matter of
regulation, monitoring and measurement of academic "output".
Language Issues
One of the key problems of the API system of measuring academic performance in the
university system is that it treats capabilities in social science and natural science
research as the same. Social sciences rely more on language skills than the natural
sciences; they require far more reading ability as part of training and research and the
felicity with language to bring out observed complexities of social life.
There is little or no translation of social science writings in most regional languages;
there is very little even in Hindi, which is the national language. South Indian students
from upwardly mobile communities resolve the language problem by either avoiding
the social sciences altogether in favour of vocational or professional courses or, adopt
the survey method and bring out statistical results that could be discussed with limited
linguistic skills in English. But this may not be adequate for disciplines like social
anthropology and sociology and the enrolments for philosophy and literature are
dwindling. This is not a good sign because a narrow growth-centred education system,
where social sciences are reduced to surveys evaluating government projects, will
completely undermine the civilisational future of this country Several generations of
social science professors in India have addressed the gulf ingeniously by using classroom

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teaching as an "epistemological bridge" between the world that the student is familiar
with and the world that the social science books represent. Teachers also often explain
several arguments in the regional language. But these things are not written up for
publication and so there is little available by way of social science books and articles
in the regional languages, except probably in Malayalam and Bengali.
History of ideas shows that the quality of social science research is deeply linked to
the social thought of a region, namely, the literary, cultural and political debates outside
the university. There are vibrant debates in literary and cultural circles in languages
like Tamil, Marathi and other languages which deal insightfully with the subject matter
of the social sciences, but academic social science departments in the university mostly
keep themselves aloof from these initiatives. Where the curriculum and teaching is able
to establish the link between the social thought and social science, we have pockets of
creativity. Students with weak knowledge of English also do exceedingly well, while
working upon materials in their language, rather than researching on a textbook topic
in an unknown language.
Need of a Well-Thought-Out Pedagogy
While there is a lot of emphasis on the bureaucratic requirements of affirmative action
and reservations in the academy, there is scant attention to the need for an informed
and well-thought-out pedagogy for a heterogeneous classroom as in the Indian university.
At best UGC may focus on infrastructure like chairs, tables, buildings and amount
sanctioned for remedial classes in English. There is generally no reference to strengthening
the human element of teacher-student relationship and between student interactions.
It is common for us to hear about the expansion of higher education in purely quantitative
terms, as an expansion of the number of central universities or Indian Institutes of
Technology (IITs). Rarely does the discussion venture into substantive issues about
what kind of abilities do the MA or PhD in social sciences are expected to create, what
the non-tangible (social) benefits of social science education are and how to assess
them. The UGC policy on higher education does not seem to be based on an engagement
with issues of pedagogy, translation of reading material and their connection to academic
performance in the social sciences.
Today the government directives in public education do play a significant role in shaping
the modalities of learning and research and there are no powerful cultural and intellectual
movements to counter the bureaucratisation of higher education. There is no doubt that
a purely managerial approach to higher education will have an adverse impact on the
intellectual culture of this subcontinent.
An education system that places high premium on academic performance in terms of
marks and focuses heavily on technical education marginalises the social sciences and
humanities also. This eliminates the possibilities of sensitising youngsters to think

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critically about prevalent social practices in a growth-driven economy. Youngsters

could take to cutting-edge science and technology while remaining uncritical of social
inequalities and deprivation. The official bodies of social science on their part have
reduced the social sciences into mute degree-producing disciplines in which the
curriculum has little connection to the linguistic and cognitive universe of the students.
The urban middle class is already alienated from the idea of tradition as knowledge of
body, ecology, proverbs, folk tales, etc, and largely experience tradition in terms of
caste rules or religious rituals. Youngsters who are more and more estranged from the
regional knowledge traditions of their region in the broader sense - mother tongue,
dialects, music, dance, literature, folk arts, medical lore and philosophy - end up holding
on to narrow religious identities and practices in the face of economic prosperity.
This is happening in other Asian countries which have adopted growth-centred and
managerial models of development in the education sector. While their universities
have all the amenities, there is little work in social science and virtually no possibility
of contribution to philosophy, literature and creative arts from the university system,
nor any link between university education and social thought outside the formal system.
The system of global ranking of universities is oblivious to the social and cultural role
of the university as an institution in heterogeneous societies of the global South. The
managerial approach to higher education is devoid of a vision of intellectual and creative
potential of the people and will lead to a lopsided civilisation.
In Conclusion
This does not mean that evaluation is not desirable, but that the criteria should be
context-sensitive and the interventions should take human and cognitive aspects of
learning along technological and administrative considerations. Holding separate
workshops to collate suggestions from teachers in the humanities, creative arts and the
social sciences, strengthening students' participation in curriculum design and supporting
reading and discussion groups could be some steps in these directions. But this is
possible only under two conditions: the narrow mindset that privileges science and
technology and neglects the significance of philosophy, linguistics, arts, social sciences,
etc, has to go and the managerial approach of reducing everything to tangible quantitative
measures and to encashability has to be substituted by a more inclusive approach.

Notes by vineetpunnoose on www.kiwipaper.com

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