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Policy Watch
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Policy Watch No.13

The Migrant Economy During the Pandemic: An Exploratory Study in Baisi Block, Bihar

Girija Shankar, Rakhi Kumari

Migration from India's villages is linked to poverty, the lack of livelihood opportunities and, in some States, feudal structures that dominate rural societies.  COVID-19 and the lockdown implemented on March 24, 2020, to contain the spread of the pandemic resulted in traumatic conditions for mig ...
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Policy Watch No.12

COVID-19: Crisis-hit Rural India Needs Effective Farm Policy Implementation

Sangeeta Shroff

India's farm sector, which is still the country’s largest employment provider, suffered heavy losses in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. The sector, which is socio-economically both diverse and complex, has always faced institutional constraints ranging from debt-dependency to exploitative ...
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Policy Watch No.11

India’s Public Distribution System and the Pandemic – Revisiting Delhi’s Beneficiaries

O. Grace Ngullie, Arib Ahmad Ansari

Never since the founding of the Indian republic have so many millions depended directly on India’s government machineries for sustenance. One reality that the COVID-19 pandemic has driven home is that the welfare state cannot be replaced and needs to be strengthened. In addition to market failure ...
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Policy Watch No.10

Revisiting Bogaram: Liberalisation and Caste in an Indian Village

Anil Kumar Vaddiraju

Bogaram, a village in present day Telangana, which is studied in this Policy Watch for the socio-economic impact of liberalisation on a rural community, was initially the subject of the author’s research in 1996. This Policy Watch is based on a revisit made to the same village in Ramannapet Manda ...
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Policy Watch No.9

Can the Ten per cent Quota for Economically Weaker Sections Survive Judicial Scrutiny?

K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty

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 ...
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Policy Watch No.8

Fixing Child Malnutrition in India: Views from a Public Policy Practitioner

Venkatesan Ramani

India is home to the one of the world’s largest flagship programmes for under-6 children, the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), which was introduced more than four decades ago on October 2, 1975. Tragically, India continues to languish way down in international rankings on child nutri ...
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Policy Watch No.7

Winning Voter Confidence: Fixing India’s Faulty VVPAT-based Audit of EVMs

K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty

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 ...
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Policy Watch No.6

Making Electronic Voting Machines Tamper-proof: Some Administrative and Technical Suggestions

K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has been consistently claiming that its Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) are unique and that tampering is not feasible under real election conditions with its security protocol and administrative safeguards in place. Notwithstanding the ECI’ ...
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Policy Watch No.5

The ‘One Nation’ Fallacy in a ‘New’ India

Praveen Chakravarty, Vivek Dehejia

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....
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Policy Watch No.4

Slow Agricultural Growth and Agrarian Crisis

A. Vaidyanathan

India’s agricultural growth in the past two decades has been slower than the rest of the economy. This has led to resentment among the rural population that the bulk of the benefits of development have gone to the urban areas and that public development policy is more concerned with promoting urban interests at the cost of ignoring the concerns of rural areas. This resentment is widespread, strong and grows to crisis proportions whenever there are severe natural calamities as witnessed in the last few years. This paper is an effort to explore the deeper issues underlying the past experience and future prospects of growth of agriculture and the rural economy. It also examines how this growth has impacted (and is likely to impact) various sections of the rural population....
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Policy Watch No.3

Reservation in Educational Institutions: Who Gains from Abolishing the Common Entrance Test (CET) in Tamil Nadu

R. Srinivasan

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....
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Policy Watch No.2

Net Neutrality and Keeping the Internet Free in India

Iravati Damle

In February 2016, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) released the "Prohibition of Discriminatory Tariffs for Data Services Regulations, 2016". The Regulations have triggered a debate on the issue of pricing access to the internet. Supporters of net neutrality welcomed the February 2016 Regulations, but others criticised it as 'over-regulation'. This paper seeks to understand the issue of network neutrality, the principles underlying the debate, the key outcomes of the Regulations, the impact on stakeholders, and answer some main criticisms....
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Policy Watch No.1

Passive Police: Institutional Learning Through Inquiry Commissions

Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan

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....
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Policy Report

Farmer Producer Companies: Preliminary Studies on Efficiency and Equity from Maharashtra

Bridging Multiple Gaps: Strengthening India’s Research Protocols for Assistive Aids

The Phenomenon of Political Dynasties Among the Muslim Legislators of Uttar Pradesh

‘Nobody's Children, Owners of Nothing’: Analysing the Indian State’s Policy Response to the Rohingya Refugee Crisis

Living with Pain: Women’s Everyday Lives and Health in Rural Bihar

The Politics and Governance of Social Policies in Delhi: Comparing Cash and In-kind Transfers

Enabling Social Accountability: The Community Health Worker Programmes of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand

At the City’s Margins: Coal, Land and Livelihoods in Chennai

Rural India on the National Optic Fibre Network: What Happens Next?

Modern Day Slavery: A Study of Tribals and Dalits as Bonded Labour in Brick Kilns

Issue Brief

Uniform Civil Code: The Importance of an Inclusive and Voluntary Approach

Uniform Civil Code: The Importance of an Inclusive and Voluntary Approach

Governance by Fear in Tamil Nadu: A Template from Thoothukudi

Simultaneous Elections: Striking at the Roots of Parliamentary Democracy

Public Health in India: Gaps in Intent, Policy, and Practice

Banning Cow Slaughter by Stealth

Formalising Finance, Informalising Labour: Demonetisation and the Informal Economy

Drought Relief: Harnessing Native Genius for Water Storage

Droughts, Famines, and Scarcities: Time for a Proactive State Mechanism

Telangana - Dealing with the Costs of Division: A Dialogue Towards Reconciliation

Background Notes

Public Policy and the Child in Tamil Nadu

Demonetisation and Black Money

Cinema and the Voter

Union Budget 2017: A Panel Discussion

How India’s Economy Changed Track: A Retrospective of Politics and Public Policy

The Politics of Welfare in Tamil Nadu

Free Speech and Sedition in a Democracy

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