📰 The process of electing India’s President
Will the recent Assembly Elections impact the presidential election in July? How is the vote value for each MP/MLA calculated?
•The story so far: The tenure of the current President of India Ram Nath Kovind is set to end in July this year, which is also when the 16th Indian Presidential election will be held to elect his successor. The Assembly elections held in five States this year, and the changes in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), are expected to alter the dynamic of votes in the upcoming presidential race.
How is the President elected?
•The Indian President is elected through an electoral college system, wherein the votes are cast by national and State-level lawmakers. The elections are conducted and overseen by the Election Commission (EC) of India.
•The electoral college is made up of all the elected members of the Upper and Lower Houses of Parliament (Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha MPs), and the elected members of the Legislative Assemblies of States and Union Territories (MLAs). This means, in the upcoming polls, the number of electors will be 4,896 — 543 Lok Sabha MPs, 233 MPs of the Rajya Sabha, and 4,120 MLAs of all States, including the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi and Union Territory of Puducherry.
•Before the voting, comes the nomination stage, where the candidate intending to stand in the election, files the nomination along with a signed list of 50 proposers and 50 seconders. These proposers and seconders can be anyone from the total of 4,896 members of the electoral college from the State and national level. The rule for securing 50 proposers and seconders was implemented when the EC noticed, in 1974, that several candidates, many without even a bleak chance of winning, would file their nominations to contest the polls. An elector cannot propose or second the nomination of more than one candidate.
What is the value of each vote and how is it calculated?
•A vote cast by each MP or MLA is not calculated as one vote. There is a larger vote value attached to it.
•The fixed value of each vote by an MP of the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha is 708. Meanwhile, the vote value of each MLA differs from State to State based on a calculation that factors in its population vis-a-vis the number of members in its legislative Assembly. As per the Constitution (Eighty-fourth Amendment) Act 2001, currently, the population of States is taken from the figures of the 1971 Census. This will change when the figures of the Census taken after the year 2026 are published.
•The value of each MLA’s vote is determined by dividing the population of the State by the number of MLAs in its legislative Assembly, and the quotient achieved is further divided by 1000. Uttar Pradesh for instance, has the highest vote value for each of its MLAs, at 208. The value of one MLA’s vote in Maharashtra is 175, while that in Arunachal Pradesh is just 8. The total votes of each Legislative Assembly are calculated by multiplying the vote value of each MLA by the number of MLAs.
•Finally, based on these values, the total number of votes of all Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha MPs would be 5,59,408 (776 MPs X 708), and the total votes of all MLAs from State Legislative Assemblies would come up to 5,49,495. Thus, the grand total vote value of the whole electoral college comes up to 10,98,903.
What is required to secure a victory?
•A nominated candidate does not secure victory based on a simple majority but through a system of bagging a specific quota of votes. While counting, the EC totals up all the valid votes cast by the electoral college through paper ballots and to win, the candidate must secure 50% of the total votes cast + 1.
•Unlike general elections, where electors vote for a single party’s candidate, the voters of the electoral college write the names of candidates on the ballot paper in the order of preference.
What can be expected in the upcoming presidential polls?
•Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu is reportedly the frontrunner for the presidential race nominated by the ruling NDA unless a second term ticket is given to Mr. Kovind. Meanwhile, Opposition parties are contemplating jointly putting up a candidate for the race. As per data after the Assembly elections held in five states —U.P., Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur, and Goa, the BJP-led NDA alliance can secure a total vote value of 5,39,827 if all its MPs and MLAs cast their vote.
•This is still around 9,625 votes short of the halfway mark. It is important to note, however, that victory will be calculated based on those who actually cast their votes this time; their vote value will then be divided by 50, with the number one being added to the figure. In the Upper and Lower houses of Parliament, if all NDA MPs cast their vote in favour of its nominated candidate, it can secure a vote value of 3,23,556, and this number in the case of all NDA MLAs voting is 2,16,271.
•Things have changed for the NDA from the 2017 Presidential polls.
•In Maharashtra, which has a high total vote value of 50,400; the BJP is no longer allied with the Shiv Sena, which supported the NDA candidate in 2017. The NDA now has a vote value of 19,775 from Maharashtra’s total. In Punjab, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) broke away from the BJP-led alliance over the farmers' agitation issue. Punjab has a total vote value of 13,572, of which the NDA’s vote value comes up only to 464. In this year’s Assembly polls in Punjab, the BJP did not win any more than the two seats it already had.
•After the recent U.P. Assembly election, the NDA’s tally of MLAs in the State Legislative Assembly went up to 273, which if multiplied by the value of each member's vote (208), comes up to 56,684, which is more than half the total value of all U.P. MLAs.
•Meanwhile, despite winning in Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur, the tally of seats won by the BJP came down in all three States compared to the previous presidential election.
Under the new Indian Railway Management Service, training its future leaders is the most important task ahead
•A recent Gazette notification regarding the creation of the Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS) marks a paradigm shift in the management of one of the world’s largest rail networks. Eight out of 10 Group-A Indian Railway services have been merged to create the IRMS. They are: Indian Railway Traffic Service (IRTS), Indian Railway Personnel Service (IRPS), Indian Railway Accounts Service (IRAS), Indian Railway Service of Electrical Engineers (IRSEE), Indian Railway Service of Signal Engineers (IRSS), Indian Railway Service of Mechanical Engineers (IRSME), Indian Railway Service of Civil Engineers (IRSE) and Indian Railway Stores Service (IRSS).
Through the UPSC
•This marks one of the biggest bureaucratic transformations in India since Independence. A nearly 8,000 strong cadre of the erstwhile eight services is now merged into one.
•Besides removing silos, this restructuring also aims at rationalising the top-heavy bureaucracy of the Indian Railways. Rather than getting into a debate over the decision to create the IRMS, it is worthwhile discussing what lies ahead for future IRMS applicants. About four lakh applicants will apply for the IRMS through the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC); it is important to figure out what the job demands for the next 30-odd years of their career and whether they have the right aptitude for the role the job demands.
Coordinated work
•A typical day for an Indian Railways officer (in field postings) begins at 6 a.m.; there are also control office calls at odd hours in the night. For a railway officer, every day of the year is practically a working day, and he/she has to prove their mettle every single day. Maintaining safety of operations and ensuring the punctuality of trains require a wide set of skills, from engineering to coordination. The adoption of the latest technology and improving the efficiency of logistics operations require continuous updating of knowledge. The job of a railway officer is not meant for those looking for a fixed hours work profile.
•Training the future leaders of India’s public transporter in the rapidly evolving logistics sector of the country is the most important task ahead. The fact remains that even after the creation of the IRMS, the 8,000 strong (already serving) officers of the Indian Railways will need to work in coordination and not in silos, as they will be serving in the organisation for decades to come. Though the UPSC will recruit a few hundred IRMS officers each year from now, they will remain much less in number when compared to already serving officers for a long time to come. This highlights the importance of training of the existing cadre of officers as they will have to deliver on the ambitious Gati-Shakti projects.
•The task of training such a dynamic talent pool assumes importance in view of India’s aspirations of becoming a $5 trillion economy and an economic powerhouse in the near future. The Indian Railways will play a very crucial role in achieving key objectives with its prestigious projects such as a network of dedicated freight corridors, high speed rail corridors, station re-development projects, the induction of Vande Bharat trains on a large scale, and other projects of strategic importance. All this will require a massive revamp of the capacity building ecosystem of the Indian Railways.
Chance for revamped training
•The merger of services provides an opportunity to redesign the training for newly recruited IRMS officers to make them future ready. Initial training along with mid-career training programmes may be reoriented. The focus should be to create capacity to manage the verticals of operations and business development, infrastructure development and maintenance, traction and rolling stock, and finance and human resource management.
•The IRMS training needs to be a design based on competencies required for different leadership roles. Mission Karmayogi of the Government of India provides for competencies based postings of officers. Accordingly, domain, function and behaviour-related competencies will need to be mapped for the IRMS. The Integrated Government Online Training (iGOT) programme of the Government of India will be instrumental in shaping the career progression of IRMS officers.
•Future IRMS officers should be ready to face the challenges of working in an organisation which is involved in round the clock and round the year operations, has substantial social obligations to meet and, at the same time, which must earn for itself. Leading the transformation of more than a million workforce to meet the needs of Gati Shakti goals is not an easy task. Young graduates who will be opting for the IRMS through the civil services examination should be aspirational and agile learners. They have the opportunity not only to serve the country’s lifeline but also to turbocharge the engine of the economy.
📰 Healthcare As An Optional Public Service (HOPS) as a route to universal health care
‘Healthcare as an optional public service’ would ensure the legal right to receive free, quality care in a public institution
•The lingering COVID-19 crisis is a good time to revive an issue that is, oddly, slow to come to life in India — universal health care (UHC). Meanwhile, UHC has become a well-accepted objective of public policy around the world. It has even been largely realised in many countries, not only the richer ones (minus the United States) but also a growing number of other countries such as Brazil, China, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Some of them, such as Thailand, made a decisive move towards UHC at a time (20 years ago) when their per capita GDP was no higher than India’s per capita GDP today. The time has come for India — or some Indian States at least — to take the plunge.
•The basic idea of UHC is that no one should be deprived of quality health care for the lack of ability to pay. This idea was well expressed — in archaic words perhaps — by Aneurin Bevan, the fiery founder of the National Health Service (NHS) in Britain. “No society,” he said, “can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.” The same idea inspired the Bhore Committee report of 1946, where a case was made for India to create its own NHS-type health-care system.
Routes to UHC
•In concrete terms, UHC typically relies on one or both of two basic approaches: public service and social insurance. In the first approach, health care is provided as a free public service, just like the services of a fire brigade or public library. If this sounds like socialist thinking, that is what it is. Interestingly, however, this socialist project has worked not only in communist countries such as Cuba but also in the capitalist world (well beyond the United Kingdom).
•The second approach allows private as well as public provision of health care, but the costs are mostly borne by the social insurance fund(s), not the patient, so the result is similar: everyone has access to quality health care. Social insurance is very different from a private insurance market. The simplest variant is one where insurance is compulsory and universal, financed mainly from general taxation, and run by a single non-profit agency in the public interest. That is how it works in Canada (province-wise), and to varying extents in other countries with “national health insurance” (e.g., Australia and Taiwan). This single-payer system makes it easier for the state to bargain for a good price from health-care providers. But some countries have other models of social insurance, based, for instance, on multiple non-profit insurance funds instead of a single payer (Germany is one example). The basic principles remain: everyone should be covered and insurance should be geared to the public interest rather than private profit.
Some challenges
•Even in a system based on social insurance, public service plays an essential role. In the absence of public health centres, dedicated not only to primary health care but also to preventive work, there is a danger of patients rushing to expensive hospitals every other day. This would make the system wasteful and expensive. As it is, containing costs is a major challenge with social insurance, because patient and health-care provider have a joint interest in expensive care — one to get better, the other to earn. One possible remedy is to require the patient to bear part of the costs (a “co-payment”, in insurance jargon), but that conflicts with the principle of UHC. Recent evidence suggests that even small co-payments often exclude many poor patients from quality health care.
•Another challenge with social insurance is to regulate private health-care providers. Here, a crucial distinction needs to be made between for-profit and non-profit providers. Non-profit health-care providers have done great work around the world (including the U.S., where most hospitals were non-profit institutions just a few decades ago). For-profit health care, however, is deeply problematic because of the pervasive conflict between the profit motive and the well-being of the patient. This calls for strict regulation, if for-profit health care is allowed at all.
•Today, most countries with UHC rely on a combination of public service and social insurance. For all we know, however, the NHS model based on plain public service may be the best approach. Private non-profit health care can be regarded as a form of public service, and private for-profit health care tends to defy discipline. A vibrant NHS is hard to beat.
•The word “vibrant”, of course, is critical. I am referring not only to good management and adequate resources but also to a sound work culture and professional ethics. A primary health centre can work wonders, but only if doctors and nurses are on the job and care for the patients. India’s public health services have a bad name in that respect, but they are improving, and they can improve more.
Right to health care
•What would be a possible route to UHC for India today? The private sector is too entrenched for a NHS to displace it in the near future. But it is possible to envisage a framework for UHC that would build primarily on health care as a public service, and have a chance at least to converge toward some sort of NHS in due course.
•This framework might be called “healthcare as an optional public service” (HOPS). The idea is that everyone would have a legal right to receive free, quality health care in a public institution if they wish. It would not prevent anyone from seeking health care from the private sector at their own expense. But the public sector would guarantee decent health services to everyone as a matter of right, free of cost.
•In a sense, this is what some Indian States are already trying to do. In Kerala and Tamil Nadu, for instance, most illnesses can be satisfactorily treated in the public sector, at little cost to the patient. There is a thriving private sector too, begging for better regulation and restraint. But health care of decent quality is available to everyone as an optional public service.
•HOPS would not be as egalitarian as the NHS or national health insurance model where most people are in the same health-care boat. But it would still be a big step toward UHC. Further, it is likely to become more egalitarian over time, as the public sector provides a growing range of health services. If quality health care is available for free in the public sector, most patients will have little reason to go to the private sector.
•What about social insurance? It could play a limited role in this framework, to help cover procedures that are not easily available in the public sector (e.g., high-end surgeries). Social insurance, however, carries a risk of tilting health care towards expensive tertiary care, and also towards better-off sections of the population. The extension of social insurance to for-profit health-care providers is especially risky, given their power and influence. There is a case for social insurance to work mainly within the non-profit sectors (public and private), leaving out for-profit health care as far as possible.
•The main difficulty with the HOPS framework is to specify the scope of the proposed health-care guarantee, including quality standards. UHC does not mean unlimited health care: there are always limits to what can be guaranteed to everyone. HOPS requires not only health-care standards but also a credible method to revise these standards over time. Some useful elements are already available, such as the Indian Public Health Standards.
•Tamil Nadu is well placed to make HOPS a reality under its proposed Right to Health Bill. Tamil Nadu is already able to provide most health services in the public sector with good effect (according to the fourth National Family Health Survey, a large majority of households in Tamil Nadu go to the public sector for health care when they are sick). The scope and quality of these services are growing steadily over time. A Right to Health Bill would be an invaluable affirmation of the State’s commitment to quality health care for all. It would empower patients and their families to demand quality services, helping to improve the system further. Last but not least, it would act as a model and inspiration for all Indian States.
📰 A model struggling to deliver
Anganwadi workers have the potential to revive early childhood education, but they are underpaid and overburdened
•Evidence on Early Childhood Education (ECE) suggests that children who engage in early and play-based learning activities have better developmental outcomes than those who don’t. The National Early Childhood Care and Education Curriculum Framework in 2013 mandated a ‘play-way’ curriculum in all Anganwadi Centres (AWCs) and preschools. In 2018, the government launched the ‘Transformation of Aspirational Districts’ initiative. One of the components involved capacity building, improving infrastructure, and nurturing a child-centric environment in the AWCs of these districts. The National Education Policy (NEP), 2020, envisions universalising Early Childhood Care and Education through Anganwadis. However, the advent of COVID-19 led to an abrupt halt in ECE services and progress.
•AWCs fall under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme. Preschool education is one of the six services provided in this package. AWCs are expected to provide preschool education through low-cost, locally sourced material that caters to the sociocultural context of mothers, and children below six years. The infrastructure usually consists of an open space and one or two rooms to carry out activities. On the other hand, private preschools usually mimic the formal schooling approach in terms of infrastructure and learning activities.
Learning crisis
•Evidence on AWCs and private pre-schools indicates that neither model provides appropriate inputs for the holistic development of young children. An impact study on early childhood by the Centre for Early Childhood Education and Development at Ambedkar University and ASER Centre found that children who regularly participate in a preschool programme perform better than children who do not. But at the same time, preschool education (AWCs or private preschools) is not developmentally appropriate for children. As a result, children’s early learning outcomes were nowhere close to the expected levels. An all-India survey of young children by ASER in 2019 found that not even half of the enrolled children between the ages of four and eight could perform age-appropriate cognitive tasks.
•The cause of this learning crisis in Anganwadis may lie in the fact that such centres are under-resourced and overburdened. A report on the ICDS by the Ministry of Women and Child Development identified the absence of adequate space, lack of play-based learning materials, low investment in ECE and “constraints of human resources” as some key reasons for this situation. It said the implementation of the ICDS scheme in AWCs was uneven across States. The report also highlighted the lack of research and development in non-formal preschool education, making it one of the weakest dimensions of the ICDS model. The evidence showed a severe deficit in the delivery of quality ECE services even before COVID-19.
•The pandemic has impacted 28 million young children across India due to the sporadic closure of AWCs and private schools (UNICEF). As a consequence, any progress made in ECE may be reversed. However, innovative strategies were devised to continue early education in some States. In Gujarat, the ‘Umbare Anganwadi (doorstep Anganwadi)’ initiative, a video series consisting of educational modules and easy-to-follow activities, was telecast every alternate day and streamed on online platforms to promote interactive learning. Similarly, Anganwadi workers in Haryana, Punjab, Odisha and Bihar visited homes to conduct activities with children. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that access to these strategies was not uniform. They also placed a huge burden on Anganwadi workers. Paramjeet, an Anganwadi worker in Punjab, said, “We give activities for children via WhatsApp, but I cannot reach all children as every parent does not have a smartphone. Sometimes, I cannot track children as the parent who owns the smartphone is at work.” To understand the repercussions of school closures, ASER conducted three field surveys in 2021 and found that the learning abilities of children had regressed. As we move into the third year of the pandemic, more children may be entering primary school severely unprepared.
Improving the model
•The Anganwadi model has been struggling to deliver quality ECE, but the potential of Anganwadis remains enormous. Over the years, Anganwadi workers have ensured last-mile delivery of ECE and education care schemes. It is crucial to leverage their vast reach by filling implementation and infrastructural gaps. If we increase the honorarium of Anganwadi workers, build capacity and invest in research and development of a meaningful ECE curriculum, AWCs will be an ideal launchpad for children entering primary school.
