📰 Caste census of Backward Classes difficult: Centre
“It has suffered, and will suffer, both on account of completeness and accuracy of the data,” an affidavit filed by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in the Supreme Court said.
•The government has made it clear in the Supreme Court that a caste census of the Backward Classes is “administratively difficult and cumbersome”.
•The Centre reasoned that even when the census of castes were taken in the pre-Independence period, the data suffered in respect of “completeness and accuracy”. It said the caste data enumerated in the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) of 2011 is “unusable” for official purposes as they are “replete with technical flaws”.
•“The issue has been examined at length in the past at different points of time. Each time, the view has consistently been that the caste Census of Backward Classes is administratively difficult and cumbersome; it has suffered and will suffer both on account of completeness and accuracy of the data, as also evident from the infirmities of the SECC 2011 data, making it unusable for any official purposes and cannot be mentioned as a source of information for population data in any official document,” the affidavit filed by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment said.
Maharashtra’s plea
•Though the Ministry was replying to a writ petition filed by the State of Maharashtra to gather Backward Classes’ caste data in the State while conducting Census 2021, the Centre takes it a step forward to clarify that “exclusion of information” regarding any other caste — other than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes — from the purview of the census is a “conscious policy decision”.
•The government said caste-wise enumeration in the Census was given up as a matter of policy from 1951. It said there was a policy of “official discouragement of caste”.
•On the specific issue of collecting caste data during Census 2021, the Centre explained that a population census was not the “ideal instrument” for collection of details on caste. There is a “grave danger” that the “basic integrity” of census data would be compromised. Even the fundamental population count may get “distorted”.
•Besides, the Centre said, it was too late now to enumerate caste into the Census 2021. Planning and preparations for the census exercise starts almost four years earlier. The phases of Census 2021 had been finalised after detailed deliberations with ministries, data users, recommendations from technical advisory committees, etc. Preparatory work was already in place. The census questions were finalised in August-September of 2019. Instruction manuals were ready.
Unusable
•To Maharashtra’s plea to reveal the SECC 2011 “raw caste data” of Other Backward Classes (OBC), the Centre said the 2011 Census was not an “OBC survey”. It was, on the other hand, a comprehensive exercise to enumerate caste status of all households in the country in order to use their socio-economic data to identify poor households and implement anti-poverty programmes.
•The Centre said the raw caste/tribe data of 2011 was unusable. For example, Mappilas in Malabar region of Kerala were spelt in 40 different ways, resulting in the listing of 40 different castes.
•The government said the data was stored in the Office of the Registrar General and had not been made official. It cannot be used as a source of information for population data in any official document.
Bail orders to be transmitted instantly
•In a big fillip to the fundamental rights of life, dignity and personal liberty, the Supreme Court has introduced a new system by which crucial decisions, including orders on bail and stay of arrest, can be communicated electronically to prison authorities and investigating agencies through a secure channel.
•Following an order on July 16 by a Special Bench led by Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana, the top court introduced the “Fast and Secured Transmission of Electronic Records” (FASTER) system. The Bench approved its use on Thursday.
•The system is meant to ensure that undertrials are not made to wait for days on end behind bars to be released because the certified hard copies of their bail orders took time to reach the prison.
•The system would also prevent unnecessary arrests and custody of people even after the court had already granted them its protection. It may even communicate a stay on an execution ordered by the final court on time.
•The process to develop the FASTER system began with the CJI’s observations in court on July 16, “In this modern era of technology, why are we still looking at the skies for pigeons to deliver our orders?”
•The court hearing was based on a suo motu case.
•The suo motu case was taken after The Hindu reported the plight of 13 prisoners in an Agra jail, who suffered imprisonment for up to two decades despite the Juvenile Justice Board declaring them ‘juveniles’ at the time of commission of their crimes. The top court had granted them bail on July 8, but they were released by the prison authorities after a delay of four days.
📰 Defence Ministry places ₹7,523-crore order for 118 indigenous Arjun Mk-1A tanks
They would ensure effortless mobility in all terrains, besides precise target engagement during day and night
•The Defence Ministry on Thursday placed an order with the Heavy Vehicle Factory (HVF), Avadi, for the supply of 118 indigenous Arjun Mk-1A Main Battle Tanks for the Army at a cost of ₹7,523 crore.
•“The state–of-the-art MBT Mk-1A is a new variant of Arjun tank designed to enhance fire power, mobility and survivability. Infused with 72 new features and more indigenous content from the Mk-1 variant, the tank would ensure effortless mobility in all terrains, besides precise target engagement during day and night,” the Defence Ministry said.
•The MBT Arjun Mk-1A was designed and developed by the Combat Vehicles Research and Development Establishment (CVRDE) along with the other laboratories of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
Employment opportunities for 8,000 people
•In February, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had formally handed over Arjun Mk-1A to Army Chief Gen. Manoj Naravane in Chennai. The Army has two regiments of Arjun Mk1 tanks in service inducted between 2005 to 2010. “This production order to HVF, Avadi opens up a large avenue in defence manufacturing for over 200 Indian vendors including MSMEs, with employment opportunities to around 8,000 people,” the Ministry said.
•As reported by The Hindu earlier, the Arjun Mk-1A has 14 major upgrades over the Mk1 variant which were formulated and approved in October 2018 and subsequently limited user validation trials were carried out of all the upgrades. The Mk1A will be without missile firing capability and will be incorporated as and when the development is complete, an official said. An Arjun hub has been set up in Jaisalmer where 248 rotables have been deposited to ensure quick support and maintenance for the fleet.
•The DRDO has also taken up indigenisation of various assemblies and sub-assemblies including the Commander’s Panaromic Sight (CPS) and Gunner’s Main Sight (GMS). The CPS has already undergone various rounds of trials while the GMS is in the process of being integrated. Once the indigenous CPS and advanced GMS are incorporated, the indigenous content of the MBT Arjun Mk-1A will go up from 41% to 54.3% during production, officials said earlier.
📰 Winter: Environment Ministry, States outline plans to stem pollution
All representatives have agreed to aid the farmer and not vitiate the air, says Bhupendra Yadav
•The Union Environment Ministry convened a meeting on Thursday with representatives from Delhi and neighbouring States that see pollution levels soar during winter.
•While the meteorological conditions exacerbate pollution, emissions from vehicles, thermal plants and the burning of rice chaff in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh ahead of the winter-sowing of wheat are key man-made reasons for the noxious winter that puts the capital city and several cities in these States on global lists of the places with the worst air.
•Following the meeting, no new measures were announced and the focus appeared to be on strengthening existing programmes.
•The Haryana government will be spending ₹200 crores to dissuade farmers from burning the rice stubble. Uttar Pradesh is deploying an organic chemical, a ‘decomposer,’ that will dissolve the collected straw and turn it into manure. Though small pilot projects were launched last year, the State this year will be deploying it in at least six lakh acres. The Haryana government’s target is one lakh acres, Punjab’s five lakh acres and 4,000 acres is the Delhi government’s.
•Other measures, which are being reinforced this year, are mandating the use of bio-mass with 50% paddy straw as a supplement fuel in coal plants in the National Capital Region, and setting up a committee which will look at ways to repurpose the stubble as fodder for cattle in Rajasthan and Gujarat.
•The Commission for Air Quality Improvement in the NCR & adjoining areas, which became an executive body through an Act of Parliament in August, is frequently following up with these States to ensure that these plans are adhere to. “Clean air is in the interest of all States and these are issues beyond politics. In today’s meeting, all representatives are agreed on implementing plans that will aid the farmer and not vitiate the air, Environment Minister Bhupendra Yadav told reporters.
Delhi switches over to Piped Natural Gas
•The air quality commission on Wednesday had said Delhi had completely switched over to Piped Natural Gas (PNG)/cleaner fuels in 1,635 identified industries. In the NCR, Haryana has so far shifted 408 of the 1,469 identified industrial units. In U.P., 1,167 of the 2,273 units and 124 of the 436 industries in Rajasthan have been shifted to PNG.
•All the identified 124 border entry points of Delhi were equipped with Radio Frequency Identification System to facilitate cashless toll/cess collection thus avoiding huge traffic congestions and resultant heavy air pollution at the border points.
•Those who attended the meeting were Chief Minister of Haryana Manohar Lal, Environment Ministers of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and officials from Punjab and Ministries of Agriculture, Power, Animal Husbandry. Chairman of the Air Quality Commission MM Kutty was also present.
📰 Another grouping: On AUKUS
AUKUS presents both challenges and opportunities for India as a Quad member
•In its first reaction to AUKUS, the new partnership between Australia, the U.S. and the U.K., India has made it clear that it does not welcome the announcement, nor does it wish to link AUKUS to Indian interests. Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla said that AUKUS, which was launched a week before the first in-person summit of leaders of the Australia-India-Japan-U.S. Quadrilateral, will not affect plans to strengthen the Quad. He called them two very different groupings, describing AUKUS as a security alliance, and indicating that security is not the Quad’s main focus. Brushing aside criticism from China and Iran on the plans within the partnership for the U.S. and the U.K. to develop nuclear-propelled submarines for Australia, he said that India does not see AUKUS as nuclear proliferation. But New Delhi has noticed the protests from others, especially France, that has lost a lucrative submarine deal in the bargain, prompting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar to reach out to their French counterparts. France has recalled its Ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia, accusing them of betrayal by negotiating their defence partnership with the U.K., and without informing European allies. The EU and ASEAN countries have been reserved in their reactions. U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have now spoken to French President Emmanuel Macron, but it remains to be seen whether the damage to ties can be reversed.
•Given the different reactions and widespread impact of the AUKUS partnership, India’s non-committal note is not surprising. There are two sides to it. The promising possibilities of the alliance include strengthening the Quad’s agenda to keep the Indo-Pacific region free, open and inclusive. The alliance could also extend itself to bolstering the Quad’s efforts on maritime exercises, security and efforts in countering COVID-19, climate change, cooperating on critical technologies, and building resilient supply chains. More broadly, the U.S.’s three-fold messaging on AUKUS seems to be in line with India’s hopes: that “America is back” after four years of retrenchment from global issues; is as engaged with its Indo-Pacific flank as it is with its Transatlantic flank, and is focused on partnerships with fellow democracies in particular. But the concerns over AUKUS are considerable too: that the timing of the announcement of the deal just before the Quad leaders meet could overshadow the latter, and also signal that the U.S. is relegating the Quad to less substantive issues in the Indo-Pacific. With the sudden announcement of AUKUS, a worry for New Delhi is that the U.S. is now promoting a security partnership with its “Anglo-Saxon” treaty allies that it is excluded from, possibly upsetting the balance of power in the region, and setting off new tensions to India’s east, adding to the substantial turbulence in India’s west caused by the developments in Afghanistan.
📰 A climate change narrative that India can steer
The Glasgow COP26 meet offers New Delhi a chance to update its Nationally Determined Contributions to meet targets
•In a keynote speech on September 8 in a seminar organised by a think tank, R.K. Singh, Union Minister for Power, New and Renewable Energy stated, “Environment is something we are trustees of and have to leave behind a better environment for our children and great grand children.” However, a recent report, “Assessment of Climate Change over the Indian Region” by the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) reveals that India has warmed up 0.7° C during 1901-2018. The 2010-2019 decade was the hottest with a mean temperature of 0.36° C higher than average. Heatwaves continued to increase with no signs of diminishing greenhouse gas emissions despite lower activity since the novel coronavirus pandemic. Prolonged exposure to heat is becoming detrimental to public health, especially the poor unable to afford support for coping with the heat. Assessment by the MoES shows that India may experience a 4.4° C rise by the end of this century.
•India has also suffered two of the 10 most expensive climate disasters in the last two years. Super-cyclone “Cyclone Amphan” that hit India in 2020, cost more than USD13 billion even as the country was just recovering from “June-October Monsoon Flooding” that cost USD10 billion and around 1,600 lives. It was India’s heaviest monsoon rain in the last 25 years and the world’s seventh costliest. In early 2021, India suffered two more cyclones: Cyclone Tauktae hitting the west coast and Cyclone Yaas from the east.
India’s rising IDPs
•According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, India’s Internally Displaced Populations (IDPs) are rising due to damaging climate events. Uttarakhand residents began deserting their homes after the Kedarnath floods in 2013 due to heavy precipitation that increases every year. Within 2050, rainfall is expected to rise by 6% and temperature by 1.6° C.
•To make things worse, India lost about 235 square kilometres to coastal erosion due to climate change induced sea-level rise, land erosion and natural disasters such as tropical cyclones between 1990-2016. About 3.6 million out of 170 million living in coastal areas were displaced between 2008-2018. Recent figures are more alarming with 3.9 million displaced in 2020 alone, mostly due to Cyclone Amphan.
•India’s Deccan plateau has seen eight out of 17 severe droughts since 1876 in the 21st century (2000-2003; 2015-2018). In Maharashtra and Karnataka (the heart of the Deccan Plateau), families deserted homes in 2019 due to an acute water crisis. Hatkarwadi, a village in Beed district of Maharashtra State, had as few as 10-15 families remaining out of the previous population count of 2,000 people.
Good policies, weak practices
•India held the top 10 position for the second year in a row in 2020’s Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI). The country received credit under all of the CCPI’s performance fields except renewable energy where India performed medium.
•India vowed to work with COP21 by signing the Paris Agreement to limit global warming and submitted the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) with a goal of reducing emissions intensity of GDP by 33%-35% and increasing green energy resources (non-fossil-oil based) to 40% of installed electric power capacity by 2030.
•India cofounded with France at COP21, in 2015, the International Solar Alliance (ISA) — a coalition of about 120 countries with solar rich resources— which aims at mobilising USD1 trillion in investments for the deployment of solar energy at affordable prices by 2030. Despite leading ISA, India performed the least in renewable energy according to the CCPI’s performance of India. The question is, are these global alliances and world-leading policies being practised or are merely big promises with little implementation?
•Experts agree that India can achieve the 2° C target of COP15 Copenhagen in 2009. But it also observes that the country is not fully compliant with the Paris Agreement’s long-term temperature goal of the NDCs and there are still risks of falling short of the 2° C goal. According to India’s carbon emission trajectory, the country is en route to achieve barely half of the pledged carbon sink by 2030. To achieve the Paris Agreement’s NDC target, India needs to produce 25 million-30 million hectares of forest cover by 2030 — a third of current Indian forestation and trees. Going by the facts, it seems India has overpromised on policies and goals as it becomes difficult to deliver on the same.
Why COP26 matters
•The Glasgow COP26 offers India a great opportunity to reflect on the years since the Paris Agreement and update NDCs to successfully meet the set targets. India is expected to be the most populated country by 2027, overtaking China, contributing significantly to the global climate through its consumption pattern. India is in a rather unique position to have a significant influence on global climate impact in the new decade.
•Alok Sharma, President of the COP26 met Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav in August to persuade India to deliver a more ambitious NDCs for 2030 to which the Minister responded by stating, “India believes that climate actions must be nationally determined... UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement for developing countries should be at the core of decision-making....”
•Being one of the observer states of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) as well as an influential member of COP26, India has the ability to improve its global positioning by leading a favourable climate goal aspiration for the world to follow. The country has the opportunity to not only save itself from further climate disasters but also be a leader in the path to climate change prevention.
📰 Vital relief: On COVID-19 death compensation
The court-mediated decision for COVID-19 death compensation will help the poorest
•It took an assertive Supreme Court to persuade a reluctant Centre, and in a welcome turn of events, families of those who died of COVID-19 are to get ex gratia financial relief of ₹50,000 per deceased individual within 30 days of submitting the necessary documents. The staggering impact of the pandemic cannot be meaningfully addressed with a token sum, but it nevertheless provides immediate succour to families that have lost breadwinners and productive members. No other scourge in living memory has taken a toll of tens of thousands of lives in 18 months, although India has high chronic and invisible mortality due to disease and road traffic accidents. As of September 13, WHO recorded 4,45,768 COVID-19 deaths in India and 3,35,31,498 confirmed cases, indicating that the current ex gratia outlay would be of the order of ₹2,300 crore. The relief amount proposed by the National Disaster Management Authority is to be paid out of the State Disaster Response Fund, which represents a dedicated facility to deal with notified disasters, including COVID-19; State authorities will create a people-friendly claims mechanism. Fresh audits and recertification of deaths have become an important factor, given the move by several States to keep virus mortality numbers low, attribute a significant number of deaths to co-morbidities rather than the infection, and the indisputable undercounting of lives lost in the two phases of the pandemic.
•The ex gratia payment decision puts the issue of compensation on a sound footing, and provides clarity for future cases, but the task before the States is to ensure that the process is easy, accurate and empathetic. It should be possible for such claimants to submit a simple form electronically. More challenging will be the issue of resolving cases where the medical certification of cause of death has not acknowledged it as COVID-19. In fact, such disputes have already entered the realm of litigation, with families seeking judicial relief, because doctors refuse proper certification and cite underlying conditions of patients based on Government instructions. Also, the Centre must consider providing additional compensation in the future, treating COVID-19 on a par with other disasters such as cyclones, major accidents, building collapses and industrial mishaps, where the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund has been sanctioning ₹2 lakh for death and ₹50,000 for serious injury. In a positive move, the demand for inclusion of COVID-19 cases for compensation where people took their own lives due to mental agony has been accepted. Going forward, the Centre must now quickly set up risk insurance for disasters as suggested by the XV Finance Commission, to which States will readily contribute.
📰 A disease surveillance system, for the future
Diseases and outbreaks are realities and a well-functioning system can help reduce their impact
•A defining moment in the history of epidemiology was the removal of the handle of a water pump. This is a spectacular story. In 1854, when a deadly outbreak of cholera affected Soho area of London, John Snow (1813-1858), a British doctor and epidemiologist, used the health statistics and death registration data from the General Registrar Office (GRO) in London, to plot on a map of the area, the distribution of cholera cases and deaths. He observed that a majority of cases and deaths were in the Broad Street area, which received supply from a common water pump, supporting his theory that cholera was a waterborne, contagious disease.
•The collection of health data and vital statistics by the GRO had improved over the previous decade-and-a-half due to untiring efforts put in by another medical doctor, William Farr (1807-1883). Based upon the data on the time, place and person distribution of cholera cases and deaths, supplemented by a map, Snow, on September 7, 1854, could convince the local authorities in London to remove the handle of the water pump, which they reluctantly did. The cholera outbreak was controlled in a few weeks. It started the beginning of a new era in epidemiology. John Snow is often referred to as the father of modern epidemiology and William Farr as founder of the modern concept of disease surveillance system.
A nodal point
•In the years to follow, epidemiology became a key discipline to prevent and control infectious diseases (and in present context for non communicable diseases as well). The application of principles of epidemiology is possible through systematic collection and timely analysis, and dissemination of data on the diseases. This is to initiate action to either prevent or stop further spread, a process termed as disease surveillance.
•However, in the late 19th century, with the emergence of understanding that germs cause the diseases, and then in the early 20th century, with the discovery of antibiotics and advances in modern medicine, attention from epidemiology somewhat shifted. The high-income countries invested in disease surveillance systems but low- and middle-income countries used limited resources for medical care. Then, in the second half of Twentieth century, as part of the global efforts for smallpox eradication and then to tackle many emerging and re-emerging diseases, many countries recognised the importance and started to invest in and strengthen the diseases surveillance system. These efforts received further boost with the emergence of Avian flu in 1997 and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2002-04.
Surveillance in India
•A major cholera outbreak in Delhi in 1988 and the Surat plague outbreak of 1994, nudged the Government of India to launch the National Surveillance Programme for Communicable Diseases in 1997. However, this initiative remained rudimentary till, in wake of the SARS outbreak, in 2004, India launched the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP). The focus under the IDSP was to increase government funding for disease surveillance, strengthen laboratory capacity, train the health workforce and have at least one trained epidemiologist in every district of India. With that, between 2004 and 2019, nearly every passing year, more outbreaks were detected and investigated than the previous year. It was on this foundation of the IDSP (which now has become a full fledged programme) that when COVID-19 pandemic struck, India could rapidly deploy the teams of epidemiologists and public health experts to respond to and guide the response, coordinate the contact tracing and rapidly scale up testing capacity.
•The disease surveillance system and health data recording and reporting systems are key tools in epidemiology; however, these have performed variably in Indian States, as we know now from available analyses, be it seroprevalence-survey findings or the analysis of excess COVID-19 deaths. As per data from the fourth round of sero-survey, Kerala and Maharashtra States could identify one in every six and 12 infections, respectively; while in States such as Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, only one in every 100 COVID-19 infections could be detected, pointing towards a weak disease surveillance system. The estimated excess deaths are also higher in those States which have weak disease surveillance systems and the civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems.
•In a well-functioning disease surveillance system, an increase in cases of any illness would be identified very quickly. An example is Kerala, arguably the best performing disease surveillance system amongst the India States, as it is picking the maximum COVID-19 cases; it could pick the first case of the Nipah virus in early September 2021. On the contrary, cases of dengue, malaria, leptospirosis and scrub typhus received attention only when more than three dozen deaths were reported and health facilities in multiple districts of Uttar Pradesh, began to be overwhelmed. The situation is not very different in States such as Madhya Pradesh and Haryana, where viral illnesses, most likely dengue, are causing hospitalisation but not being correctly identified or are being reported as mystery fever. This is a bit concerning as 18 months into the COVID-19 pandemic and a lot of political promises of strengthening disease surveillance and health systems, one would have expected a better performance. It raises the question: if the pandemic could not nudge the governments to strengthen the disease surveillance system, then what will? Or is it that difficult to strengthen the disease surveillance system?
What should be done
•A review of the IDSP by joint monitoring mission in 2015, conducted jointly by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Government of India and World Health Organization India had made a few concrete recommendations to strengthen disease surveillance systems. These included increasing financial resource allocation, ensuring adequate number of trained human resources, strengthening laboratories, and zoonosis, influenza and vaccine-preventable diseases surveillance. Clearly, it is time all these recommendations are re-looked and acted upon. At a more specific level, the following should be considered by health policy makers.
•First, the government resources allocated to preventive and promotive health services and disease surveillance need to be increased by the Union and State governments. Second, the workforce in the primary health-care system in both rural and urban areas needs to be retrained in disease surveillance and public health actions. The vacancies of surveillance staff at all levels need to be urgently filled in. Third, the laboratory capacity for COVID-19, developed in the last 18 months, needs to be planned and repurposed to increase the ability to conduct testing for other public health challenges and infections. This should be linked to create a system in which samples collected are quickly transported and tested and the reports are available in real time. Fourth, the emerging outbreaks of zoonotic diseases, be it the Nipah virus in Kerala or avian flu in other States as well as scrub typhus in Uttar Pradesh, are a reminder of the interconnectedness of human and animal health. The ‘One Health’ approach has to be promoted beyond policy discourses and made functional on the ground. Fifth, there has to be a dedicated focus on strengthening the civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems and medical certification of cause of deaths (MCCD). These are complementary to disease surveillance systems and often where one is weak, the other is also functioning sub-optimally. Sixth, it is also time to ensure coordinated actions between the State government and municipal corporation to develop joint action plans and assume responsibility for public health and disease surveillance. The allocation made by the 15th Finance Commission to corporations for health should be used to activate this process.
Check the right pump
•The emergence and re-emergence of new and old diseases and an increase in cases of endemic diseases are partly unavoidable. We cannot prevent every single outbreak but with a well-functioning disease surveillance system and with application of principles of epidemiology, we can reduce their impact. Sometimes, the control of a deadly disease could be as easy as the removal of a handle of a water pump. However, which handle it is to be can only be guided by coordinated actions between a disease surveillance system, a civil registration system and experts in medical statistics, and, finally, informed by the application of principles of epidemiology. Indian States urgently need to do everything to start detecting diseases, which will prepare the country for all future outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics. This is amongst the first things, which Indian health policy makers should pay attention to.
📰 Make departments smart, first
E-governance holds the promise of improving local governance, but only if we pay attention to the basics
•As India grows more urban, the importance of effective governance and service delivery by city governments becomes central to the well-being of Indians. We hope to live in ‘smart cities’, where digital systems enable the use of data — generated by people living and working in the city itself — to continuously improve how the city functions.
•A smart city requires good data to inform decision-making. The only reliable way to get good data is to design ‘smart systems’ that generate such data by default. Given the complexity of our cities, and the various entities that are involved in their governance, this journey will have to be undertaken one step at a time.
•More precisely, it will be one function at a time, then one department a time, finally building up to the city as a whole. A department refers to a specific administrative entity, with the mandate to deliver a defined set of services, and the resources it is assigned for delivering them; a function is any such set of services and the people who deliver them. A smart city is a network of smart functions and departments.
Digitisation
•What makes a department smart? In a recent white paper, we lay out a five-level framework for assessing where a given function, department, or city stands in its journey of e-governance. This framework looks at how the department has been able to apply digital technologies across three domains — processes, human resources, and citizen-centricity — in order to work more smartly.
•The core insight of our paper is that even the most advanced e-governance systems stand on the foundation of a simple behavioural change: when doing their work, local government employees have to switch from using pen and paper and records to using digital tools and systems. This is the first step in the e-governance journey. The reality in most local government offices in India is that records are kept on paper; if they do get digitised, it is as part of a post-facto data entry exercise. This creates scope for errors and manipulation.
•To ensure digitisation, city leaders must use a combination of expectation-setting and incentives. They can demonstrate the time saved and ease of work gained when digital tools automate away record creation and retrieval. In Andhra Pradesh, for instance, ULB employees reported saving an average of 11 hours every week after a digital system was adopted. At the same time, leaders can set phased targets for adoption of the new tools, and ensure adequate technical support and education for employees during the transition. These changes are reflected in the ‘process’ and ‘human resources’ levers of the framework.
Citizen centricity lever
•In implementing such changes, however, administrators must ensure that e-governance is not reduced to an exercise in performance management alone. The framework incorporates a ‘citizen centricity’ lever to emphasise that urban local bodies are service delivery organisations, and that internal reforms have to reflect in better experience and empowerment for citizens.
•All the benefits we associate with e-governance — the ease of interaction, the gains in efficiency through both performance management and process reform, and the potential for data-driven preventive maintenance of infrastructure — hinge upon adoption of the system by local government employees and citizens themselves. In turn, adoption leads to the richer datasets that will bring various departments in a city to collaborate with each other — and indeed with non-governmental partners as well — to create a virtuous cycle of co-creation, learning, and efficiency. This is how smart cities emerge, not from the top down, but from organic collaboration between departments, employees, and citizens, who are simply looking to do their own jobs more effectively.
