ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

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Political Reservation for OBCs

The reluctance of the ruling state government of Maharashtra to conduct an empirical inquiry into the backwardness and refusal of the union government to share the Socio Economic and Caste Census data of 2011 has resulted in a conundrum over the Other Backward Class es reservation in the local self-governance bodies. The responses of the ruling state government and the opposition to the retention of the OBC reservation are explored. The impact of this decision on the OBC politics is also analysed.

Evaluation of Land Pooling Policy in Delhi

Institutional innovations in land development and planning like public–private partnerships, negotiable developer obligations, and flexible zoning regulations have taken centre stage in policy discussions. Given this, an unprecedented large-scale land pooling policy has been enacted in Delhi to facilitate planning and development by making landowners partners in development. The policy is proposed to be implemented in land pooling zones by sector-based planning. Although the policy proposes a paradigm shift in its approach by empowering private sector and landowners, rigidity in land use distribution and development control regulations at the sector level make implementation difficult. The development of city-level commercial and public/semi-public facilities is difficult in the sector sizes proposed by the Delhi Development Authority. Alternatives would be the optimisation of “developable area” in sectors and making land use regulations and development control norms open to negotiations with private developers or landowners.

 

Is Covid-19 an Exogenous Shock?

This note argues that COVID-19 is not an exogenous shock, but an endogenous shock, resulting from the interaction or exchange of human society with the animal world. Recognising the endogeneity of the COVID-19 shock is important to devise and adopt methods of mitigating future virus shocks, such as ensuring biosafety in livestock production or reducing the interaction of humans and domestic animals with wildlife. Dealing with the endogeneity of virus transmission is also important for developing an economic theory that recognises the co-creation and co-evolution of human systems within and with the natural universe.

COVID-19 and Fiscal–Monetary Policy Coordination

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic stimulus packages announced by the national government are analysed and an attempt is made to identify the plausible fiscal and monetary policy coordination. When credit-linked economic stimulus packages are partial in its impact on growth recovery, an accommodative fiscal policy stance in the forthcoming Union Budget 2022–23 is crucial for the economy.

 

Are We Reforesting Adequately?

Reforestation or afforestation should aim at providing carbon sink and a much-needed biodiversity.

 

The National Disaster Management Plan, 2019

This article reflects on the disaster resilience responsibility framework within the National Disaster Management Plan, 2019. It argues that the DRRF lacks clarity as a guidance document for the central ministries identified as nodal agencies for addressing individual hazards. The nodal ministries and agencies require guidance for understanding how their existing epistemologies can evolve to speak to the social conceptualisation of disasters in order to carry out tasks assigned to them under the DRRF. It goes on to suggest that the plan can provide this guidance and facilitate this epistemological transition by creating new knowledge spaces for these nodal ministries/institutions.

 

The Second Wave of COVID-19 and Beyond

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic coupled with long-standing systemic, functional, and health inequities put the rural communities at an increased risk. Sustainable long- and short-term measures are suggested to efficiently develop strategies to control the pandemic and strengthen the health system in rural India.

 

Portability in the Public Distribution System

The public distribution system in India is a major instrument for achieving the goal of “Zero Hunger.” Despite the vast amounts of resources spent, the PDS suffers from several inefficiencies largely attributable to the monopoly of agents involved in the last-mile delivery of grains. To address this issue, several state governments in India have started implementing a novel intervention called portability. This intervention offers beneficiaries the choice of when and where they can avail of their food entitlements while the government controls what and how much. We use detailed and large-scale programme data from Andhra Pradesh to analyse the uptake of portability among the beneficiaries and identify its underlying drivers.

 

Need for a Comprehensive Monitoring Framework of Indian Forests

Forests are one of the crucial ecosystems in the world covering about 31% of the global terrestrial area (FAO 2020). More than 1.6 billion people worldwide are dependent on various forest resources and about 350 million people rely directly on them for their livelihoods, also contributing greatly to strengthen the overall gross domestic product (GDP) of nations (World Bank 2002; Li et al 2019). This has led to a decrease in forests globally due to the conversion to other land use and unsustainable extraction of timber and non-timber forest products (NTFPs) to meet the demands of the growing population (FAO 2020). Owing to the numerous benefits that forests provide, a comprehensive framework focusing on a multidimensional aspect is necessary for sustainable management and effective utilisation.

Challenges in Regulating Water Pollution in India

With rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, the problem of water pollution in India has escalated dramatically over the last few decades. The regulatory apparatus, has, however, lagged behind. Major gaps in standard setting, including lack of standards for ambient water quality, poor monitoring and weak enforcement by the pollution control boards are the major proximate causes. Controlling water pollution will require a concerted effort to address these regulatory failures.

 

Agro-food Systems and Public Policy for Food and Agricultural Markets

This transcription of a presentation, commentary and a discussion at IIM Banglore in 2020 has three parts. In Part 1, contested definitions of food, urgent food questions and concepts of food systems are clarified before considering the ways agricultural markets are integrated in food systems, the contradictory principles at work in policies for their regulation, and the ways such policy practices are imagined. Sixteen multidisciplinary depictions of global food systems, agricultural markets and food policies are analysed, concluding that their conceptual fracturing results from a disregard of theory. New models of the Indian food system will need to give rigorous attention to institutions for policy.

Part 2 problematises the empirical granularity needed to understand market behaviour that policymakers ignore as they shift agriculture from being the driver of industrialisation to being a residualised welfare sector. By continuing to ignore and misunderstand existing physical markets, regulatory reforms like the new central laws assume that the deregulation would somehow automatically bypass the vast number of private intermediaries necessary for distribution whose relatively easy-to-enter, small-scale activity undercuts the transaction costs of corporate agribusiness. In doing so, they lose sight of the original purpose and need for public regulation in primary agricultural markets in the first place.

Part 3 discusses the need for consultative policy processes for policy and the implications for small scales and informality in agriculture and its markets of the close integration of self-employment in the rural non-farm economy.

Regional Variations in Multidimensional Poverty

Regional variations in multidimensional poverty and inequality are analysed for the two different administrative regions of Tripura—village committees under the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council and gram panchayats under the panchayati raj institutions—using a primary survey. Special emphasis is laid on the deprivations of households with regard to health, education, and the standard of living across these two administrative regions as well as the rural development blocks. The level of multidimensional poverty and incidence appears to be higher in village committees than gram panchayats even though the average deprivation among the poor is around 40% for both the areas with robust between-group inequality.

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