#269 In Fits and Starts

Insights on current policy issues in India

— RSJ

Violence against women in India is so normalised that only an act so heinous as to be almost unimaginable manages to shake up the society. That’s what happened a couple of weeks back at R.G. Kar Medical College, where a trainee doctor, resting within the hospital premises after a 36-hour shift, was brutally raped and murdered.

The Supreme Court took suo motu cognisance of the case, and the CJI, D.Y. Chandrachud, has asked for a National Task Force to be set up to recommend measures to improve safety and basic facilities at hospitals and to prevent violence against healthcare professionals, especially women. The gruesome details of this case and the fact that it involved a doctor in a metropolis ensured that it got widespread media coverage. Outrage followed almost in a replay of the Nirbhaya case that had rocked the national capital in 2012. Fake news about the investigation swirled, street violence in Kolkata followed, and we had the bizarre spectacle of the CM of the state leading a protest march against, possibly, her own government. The politicisation of this case has been quick, with all sorts of whataboutery traded among parties. There are more than 50,000 rape cases that get reported every year, and possibly a multiple of that number goes unreported. India ranks 128th on the index on women’s inclusion and security conducted annually by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. The episodic nature of outrage is useful to focus our attention on how badly we let our women down, but it shouldn’t take away from the reality that violence against women is not restricted to a location or a community and that it is relentless. This is a colossal failure of the state.

The state’s response every time the citizens take to the streets on this issue is to establish another commission or a task force to examine the issue and come back with recommendations. Over the years, we have had multiple such reports with extensive groundwork done, multiple stakeholders spoken to, an in-depth analysis of the issues and multiple experts coming together to suggest a roadmap to improve women’s safety. How effective have these committees been? As if to mock any new efforts to set up another judicial commission, this week, we had the Justice Hema Committee publish a report revealing sexual exploitation in the Malayalam film industry seven years after the brutal rape of an actress in Kochi.

Some background will help here. Back in 2017, a famous Malayalam woman actor was abducted and assaulted, which she alleged was done at the behest of powerful men in the film industry. The Kerala police investigated the case, and a high-profile arrest was made, after which more women spoke up about the misogyny, sexual predation and abysmal working conditions for women in the industry. Outrage followed, and a group of women from the film industry came together to form the ‘Women in Cinema Collective’ (WCC) to push for a judicial commission. The Justice Hema Committee was formed by the state government in 2017 itself to study issues of sexual harassment and gender inequality in Malayalam cinema. The three-membered Committee spent two years interviewing people across the industry and specifically speaking to women who had alleged sexual and workplace harassment in the past. It submitted its report on Dec 31, 2019 complete with 1500 pages of documents, screenshots, voice clips and USB storage devices.

What happened next? Nothing. The state government sat on the report for 3 years without making its recommendation public. Multiple requests through RTI filings for the report were rejected on flimsy grounds. In Jan 2022, the state government formed another three-member panel to study the ‘study’ and put out a roadmap for implementing the recommendations. Nothing much was heard thereafter about this panel or its work.

In 2024, on the back of repeated RTIs and a likely move to court by the WCC about the original Justice Hema Committee report, the State Information Commission directed the State Public Information Officer to reasonably disseminate the information in the report while ensuring the privacy of the individuals is respected. After a couple of attempts by a producer and an actress to move the court to stall the publication of the report, a heavily redacted version of the report was made public last week by the government. Seven years since the incident that triggered it and five years after the report was submitted. There is still no sign of the other panel or its implementation roadmap. Your guess is as good as mine on where we are headed with this. Meanwhile, the alleged mastermind of the abduction and assault of the actor is out on bail.

The simple point is this – another judicial commission or task force sounds impressive and, possibly, a solution to those who have taken to the streets protesting this. But who is interested in implementing whatever comes out of it? The government? The police? Or even the judiciary?

The other knee-jerk action after every such episode is the demand for capital punishment for rape. There are two problems with this. The conviction rate for rape cases in India, at below 3 per cent, is among the lowest in the world. It is lower than other crimes like murder or robbery, even in India. The existing punishment is stringent and can be an adequate deterrent if we do the right things – improve reporting of such crimes, make the police proactive in filing the cases and then investigate them with rigour, and ensure the courts hear and dispose of these cases in a time-bound manner. But demanding police and judiciary reforms is hard work. Such demands don’t work for the political parties too who have created the status quo to benefit them. It is easier for them to work towards legislation that will deliver capital punishment for rape and satisfy the blood-thirsty masses than do something that will actually deter sexual violence against women in society. And it isn’t as if there haven’t been committees already that have recommendations on police and judicial reforms in the past. There have been many, and two of them, the Padmanabhaiah Committee on Police Reforms and the Malimath Committee Report on Criminal Justice Reforms, have specific recommendations on how we can make a start in these areas. Despite the Supreme Court asking the union and the state governments to act on them, these recommendations have been ignored. Who in the political system in their right mind will want to increase the autonomy of the police and free them from political interference when that helps them in instrumentalising the criminal justice system to their advantage? The outraged citizens on the streets should ideally be asking questions of the entire political system instead of directing their anger at one or the other party. They should be demanding the immediate implementation of the already existing reports on police and criminal justice reforms and their recommendations. That will go some way in finding a solution to these issues than episodic anger.

Insights on current policy issues in India

— RSJ

We had the Union Commerce Minister earlier this week make some eyebrow-raising comments about e-commerce, specifically on Amazon, ironically at an event for the launch of a report titled ‘Net Impact of E-commerce on Employment and Consumer Welfare’. He has since backtracked on these comments, saying the usual guff about “fair play, fairness to customers and suppliers and to our people.”

The backtracking was necessary because of the backlash his comments generated from the same set of stakeholders who he was supposed to be protecting. E-commerce portals have enabled millions of entrepreneurs to set up their businesses and deliver good value to customers all over India without the hassles of the past. Yes, this might lead to some loss of business of the local stores but policy making should be guided by a more comprehensive cost-benefit analysis.

Maybe there was some kind of political message being delivered. But even that doesn’t make these passages from his speech logical:

“When Amazon says we are going to invest a billion dollars in India and we celebrate, we forget the underlying story that this billion dollars is not coming for any great service or investment to support the Indian economy,” Goyal remarked.

“If you make Rs 6,000 crore loss a year, doesn’t it sound like predatory pricing to you? They are, after all, an e-commerce platform, and they are not legally allowed to do B2C. However, the reality is all of you buy on these platforms. How are they doing it? Should it not be a matter of concern for us?

How many mobile stores do you see now on the corner? And how many were there 10 years ago? Where are those mobile stores? Will only Apple or the large retail sell mobile phones and their accessories?”

Somebody should hand him that old Schumpeter’s piece on creative destruction. Otherwise, the state might ‘creatively destroy’ a lot of value here.

Insights on current policy issues in India
—Pranay Kotasthane

Last week served as another reminder of the difficulty of having a reasoned conversation about reservations and quotas. I guess this might well be a litmus test for any diverse group—does it have the social capital to sustain and survive a conversation on reservations? Perhaps no other policy issue invites bad-faith assumptions about either side of the argument as this one.

In any case, the commotion over the UPSC advertisement for lateral entry of 45 mid-level specialists started and subsided pretty quickly. Once the government retreated, the issue lost political mileage, and soon, other issues occupied our mind space.

With all System 1 thinking responses flushed out, let’s take a System 2 Thinking approach. Start with the advertisement itself, which I am sure most people on either side haven’t had the time to pick and read. These are some salient features worth noting:

The lateral entry idea isn’t new. Many experiments have taken place before. Check this article by Sidin Vadukut titled Lateral Entry in Civil Services: Old Wine in a New Bottle. That bottle was opened in 2018. The article itself discusses a lateral entry scheme called the Industrial Management Pool (IMP) from 1959!
In recent times, lateral entry has happened in a trickle. Some 50-odd lateral entrants are currently working in the union ministries.
The recent UPSC advertisement was different in that it tried to recruit a comparatively large number of officers simultaneously—45 joint secretaries, directors, and deputy secretaries across 24 ministries.
All entries were meant to be on a contract basis for a three to five-year period only, meaning that these officers could not displace the ones recruited through the regular route.
Although there is no quota, all the posts are open for candidates belonging to the ‘Persons with Benchmark Disability (PwBD)’ category.
Most advertised positions are in niche specialised areas where reservations and quotas just don’t make sense. These recruitments are only open to applicants with extensive industry experience. For instance, consider this job opening for the post of Director/Deputy Secretary (Manufacturing—Auto Sector (ACC Batteries), Ministry of Heavy Industries. Check out the specific requirements, qualifications, and responsibilities.

Screenshot from the UPSC advertisement that’s now been called back by the government

Similarly, there are other job openings for niche areas such as semiconductors, petrochemicals, cybersecurity, international law, etc. All these positions require candidates with industry experience to apply for a three to five-year temporary stint in the government at a fraction of the pay that the private sector provides. It’s not as if the industry folks are crawling over each other to work in the government. The government’s failed efforts to recruit an industry leader for its flagship Indian Semiconductor Mission (ISM) is a case in point. In these areas which demand specific skills, it would be ridiculous to add a caste filter over and above the recruitment conditions.
Some job descriptions seem to have been framed in a hurry. The position in the Ministry of Law & Justice is a case in point. It’s as if the UPSC sent a circular to all ministries to recommend some posts for lateral hiring and some ministries complied only reluctantly.

With this overview out of the way, let’s analyse the advertisement. The bone of contention seems to be that the government tried to club these disparate positions together, causing a backlash not just amongst those in fervent support of quotas but also civil services aspirants.

Next, recruiting government employees with experience and technical skills for specialised tasks, even if for three years, is better for state capability-building than the current situation, in which such jobs are offloaded to external consultants who are far less invested in the policy outcome. Moreover, no quota provisions apply for consulting arrangements.

Third, a competent officer handling specialised tasks under the supervision of experienced civil service officers is surely better for all Indians, regardless of their caste. This is a point Sudheendra Kulkarni highlights in his Indian Express article:

“For example, officers in education, healthcare or any of the employment-promoting departments, regardless of their caste or community identity, will contribute more to the cause of social and economic justice if they are highly competent and dedicated. Competence and commitment, which are caste-agnostic, are also imperative in other fields of governance — from justice delivery to scientific research, from rural development to women’s empowerment — since everything cumulatively promotes or hinders the holistic development of society, especially those left behind.”

….

“Some may argue: Let there be lateral entry, but with strict adherence to reservations for SCs, STs and OBCs. This defeats the very raison d’être of the reform. Rahul Gandhi recently posed the wrong question in Parliament by wanting to know how many officers from quota categories were among secretaries to the Government of India. The question to be debated is different. What contributes more to social and economic justice for SCs, STs, OBCs and other marginalised communities? Is it a small number of elite quota beneficiaries in the higher levels of government service or competent, efficient, accountable and high-quality governance that can benefit millions of people from the very same communities? Sadly, the debate on the lateral entry scheme has been hijacked by quota “Brahmins” at the expense of multitudes who remain victims of poor governance. Their opposition to the creamy-layer concept also shows their exclusionary touch-me-not mindset.” (Sudheendra Kulkarni, Indian Express)

Regardless of the potential benefits, the government apparently sleepwalked into announcing this policy. There is no policy without politics, and the government yet again failed to get the politics right. One, advertising 45 positions together sparked fear from various quarters. Two, it failed to take its political allies (and opponents) into confidence that these positions were for specialised responsibilities and not meant to displace quotas in regular civil service intakes. Third, it made a hasty retreat as soon as the opposition raised its voice, demonstrating that it wasn’t committed to lateral hiring in any case.

The net result is that, much like the farm laws, this failed attempt has pushed reforms further down the road. Improving state capacity itself requires high state capacity. Quite a chicken-and-egg problem.

Tools for thinking public policy
— Pranay Kotasthane

We know that there can be no policy without politics. Yet, we often make the mistake of seeing these two streams as water-tight compartments. So, what could a framework combining the two look like?

Perhaps one strand of a conciliatory approach could be that every policy solution should explicitly address both the stock and flow of a policy problem. Here’s why.

Policy problems often reach the top of the government agenda when they become urgent. That means the government wants to usually stop some undesirable flow or generate a desirable flow immediately. For example, PLIs are a potential way to increase the flow of FDI in India to capitalise on the China+1 sentiment which exists right now. The opportunity won’t remain open for too long once other countries occupy the space vacated by China.

A policy analyst’s response (including ours) to such a move is generally along these lines: “The PLI won’t be enough and hence should be done away with. It’s trying to apply a band-aid over a bullet wound. It doesn’t address the stock or the root cause of the problem. Hence, the focus should be on liberalising labour, tax, and trade policies.

A political policymaking view acknowledges that addressing both stocks and flows matters. While going to the root of a problem is vital, offering a political win by stopping or generating an immediate flow cannot be ignored. Taking this idea further, perhaps every policy document should expressly state which of its directives will address the flows and which might solve the stock problem. This acknowledgement of politics in policy will also help get citizen expectation-setting right.

(Article) This Wall Street Journal article explains why exports remain crucial to China’s growth model despite the dreams of dual circulation
(Journal Issue) The latest edition of the Indian Public Policy Review has several good articles on technology policy and technology geopolitics.
(Article) The Missing Piece in China’s Innovation Power by the special Competitive Studies Project.
(Course) The intake for the next (39th!) cohort of our awesome Graduate Certificate in Public Policy is open. Get equipped to understand and transform India’s policy landscape.