The Constitution (103rd Amendment) Act, 2019 has empowered the state to provide up to 10 per cent reservation in education and public employment for "economically weaker sections" (EWS) of citizens other than the Scheduled Castes (SC), the Scheduled Tribes (ST), and the non-cr ...

As the world’s largest democracy gears up for a season of elections, including the 2019 General Election, there is an urgent need to examine the integrity of the electoral process. Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) are ‘black boxes’ in which it is impossible for voters to verify whether their vot ...

The early years of the Indian republic saw an emphasis on nation building, accomplished through a top-down policy paradigm driven by the Centre and flowing down to the States. This was appropriate then and helped establish the ‘Idea of India’, a unified and stable political union.There is now a new ‘Idea of India’. An India that is marked by large and widening divergence amongst major States, in terms of income per person as well as in social indicators. An India that is growing further apart economically, socially and demographically. Our research establishes that the divergence among India’s large States skyrocketed after the period 1990/1, suggesting a link with the liberal economic reforms initiated at that time. We also posit that the nature of contemporary economic development driven by agglomeration benefits is a better explanation for India’s divergence than quality of governance and political leadership. Policy makers must strive to strike a balance between efficiency of governance through a ‘one nation’ policy framework and the growing disparities among India’s large States.Embedded in these policies are features that redefine the nature of India’s federal framework, as fashioned by its founders. This Policy Watch argues that this ‘new’ India demands a drastic shift towards maximum regional autonomy. Policies such as the Goods and Services Tax (GST), which further integrate the market while removing policy levers from States, can only exacerbate regional inequality. A ‘one nation one policy’ paradigm can fan fissiparous tendencies in a diverse polity and create sub-nationalism fault lines. Our policy prescription is to adopt "place-based" policies, which maximise policy and fiscal autonomy for the States....

At a time when the need for and effectiveness of a Common Entrance Test (CET) to professional colleges is debated across the country, The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy’s third Policy Watch looks at the working of the professional college admissions system. It studies the efficiency of the implementation of affirmative action policies in Tamil Nadu’s professional education institutions to meet the underlying social justice objectives by looking at the mechanism used to determine admissions to these courses. This analysis points out that the abolition of the CET in Tamil Nadu has benefitted students from the Other Communities and the Backward Classes more than those from other socially deprived classes, such as the Most Backward Classes, and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The solution to work out an efficient affirmative action policy, according to the author, lies in reorienting both the school education system and the CET mechanism....

Commissions of inquiry set up by the Indian state in three instances – the anti-Sikh riots (1984), the Mumbai riots (1992-93), and, the post-Godhra riots in Gujarat (2002) - have repeatedly pointed to police inaction and passivity as contributing to a worsening of the immediate tense communal situation, resulting in a higher death count. In this paper, Vasundhara Sirnate examines the findings of three official reports of commissions of inquiry that dealt with these specific communal riots. She finds that in New Delhi in 1984, in Mumbai in 1992-93 and in Gujarat in 2002, the reports suggest similarities in the behaviour of the local police. She argues that a combination of factors affects institutional learning in this context – pre-existing police biases that translate into inaction and passivity and the lack of institutionalised mechanisms to transfer learning to the local levels of the police at lower ranks....