📰 The road to productivity
Investing in roads reduces travel time, increases economic output and helps upgrade human development
•It has taken a pandemic to know how important cities are. One reason why our progress towards a $5 trillion economy could be stifled is the pandemic-induced lockdowns in cities which play an important role in realising national and macroeconomic growth targets. Even as early in the pandemic as April 2020, a Barclays report found that “the absolute economic loss was likely the largest from the shutdown of Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Delhi and Mumbai, ranging from $1 billion-$1.7 billion per week.”
Travel time
•One aspect of cities that we know very little about, which contributes to their economic productivity, is that they are labour markets where the labour force exchanges their labour and creates knowledge spillovers. As the famous French planner Alain Bertaud points out, a lot of economic and productive activity takes place in cities and its jobs.
•There is no doubt that the commute time for the labour force to the workplace plays a very important role in determining their productivity in cities. The travel time to work was one of the slowest in our cities in 2016: Bengaluru being the slowest at 22 km per hour, Delhi at 25 km per hour, and Chennai the highest at 33 km per hour.
•Travel time continues to be long in our post-pandemic cities which are fiscally stressed and battling the problem of potholes following heavy rains. The longer the commute time in a city, the smaller is its effective labour market and vice-versa. While the nominal labour market of the city refers to all jobs created in the metropolitan area, the effective labour market refers to the jobs accessible within a certain commute. From the viewpoint of enlarging a city’s effective labour market and economic output, it is therefore very important to keep the commute time short and commuting cost cheap within a city as it keeps growing in population. It should be clear that a short commute is desirable not only from the micro perspective of the commuter who otherwise wastes time, health and productivity with the delays in traffic, but also from a macro, city-level perspective, to enable a large effective labour market. In this context, it is instructive to note that in the pre-pandemic period, firms in Bengaluru threatened to leave the city and relocate if the traffic problems were not fixed, as it was affecting the productivity of their employees.
•There is no doubt that the larger a city’s effective labour market, the greater its agglomeration economies and knowledge spillovers will be. A study found that within a 45-minute commute on public transit, only 66,427 jobs were accessible in the Phoenix metropolitan area in the U.S. compared to the nearly 2,02,724 jobs which were accessible in the Philadelphia metropolitan area within the same commute time, even though the two cities have the same population(about 1.6 million). Therefore, there is no doubt that Philadelphia’s effective labour market is bigger than its counterpart in Phoenix. This is reflected in the higher per capita income of $22,874 in Philadelphia compared to $21,907 in Phoenix in 2010.
A priority
•One way in which urban local bodies (ULBs) directly impact the city’s economic output is through their infrastructure. Why aren’t our cities investing adequately in roads? In recent research, taking the case of Karnataka’s cities, we found that road length has a positive effect on the city’s tax base. This is because roads lead to easy access to jobs and increased economic activity; that also gives the public more confidence and motivation to pay taxes. Our estimate indicated that for every one km increase in the road length of a ULB, there is an increase in the ULB’s own revenues by roughly ₹430 per capita. So, for a ULB with an average population of 78,415, the extent of increase in its own revenues can be to the extent of ₹33 million, for an increase of 1 km of roads per 1,000 of its population. So, cities should not view investment in road networks as expenditure; rather, roads add to the city’s revenue base which the city can use to improve infrastructure and public services. Even simple things such as fixing potholes and puddles on roads lead to significant reductions in travel time and should be an important city government priority.
•Investing in roads not only reduces travel time and enlarges effective labour markets of cities and their economic output, but also improves access to schooling for children as well as healthcare, thereby upgrading human development. This is indeed the road to the $5 trillion economy along with improvement in human well-being.
Valuable observations on health need to be delinked from outdated theories, implausible conjectures and superstitions
•Ayurveda, India’s traditional medicine, has been in practice for close to three millennia. Even today, this ancient system serves the health-care needs of millions of Indians. The adaptation of a traditional knowledge-system for current use comes with its challenges, which, if dealt with lackadaisically, can endanger the welfare of its users. A few challenges that the Ayurveda establishment has for long failed to skilfully address are discussed here.
Speculations versus facts
•Ayurveda’s ancient treatises, for obvious reasons, cannot be expected to retain relevance in their entirety. They contain useful portions alongside obsolete ones. Therefore, a dispassionate sifting through their contents is a prerequisite for their prudent practical use. Valuable observations relating to health promotion and illness management need to be carefully sifted from outdated theories, implausible conjectures, and socio-religious superstitions.
•An example would make this point clear. While documenting its observations on the benefits of physical exercise, an Ayurveda classic notes: “A sense of ease, improved fitness, easy digestion, ideal body-weight, and handsomeness of bodily features are the benefits that would accrue from regular exercise.” These observations are as valid today as they were 1,500 years ago when they were first documented. But, such continued validity cannot be claimed for the physiological and pathological conjectures the same text contains.
•On urine formation, for instance, the text posits that tiny ducts from the intestines carry urine to fill the bladder. This simplistic scheme of urine formation has no role for the kidneys at all. Needless to say, this very outdated idea can have no place in current medical education except as an anecdote from history. Placing such conjectural ideas side by side with modern physiology and implicitly equalising the truth value of both is a serious malaise that has been plaguing the current approach to Ayurveda. Teachers of Ayurveda physiology have the unenviable job of constantly grappling with the difficulty of reconciling ancient speculations with established scientific facts.
Factors responsible
•Two main factors — one theoretical and the other epistemological — have led to this sad situation. The tridosha theory of Ayurveda is a rough-and-ready model that the ancients devised to systematise their medical experience. Clinical features of illnesses and therapeutic measures to manage them were all classified on the basis of this heuristic model. In the absence of a cogent understanding of the biological processes underlying health and illness, speculations on these topics were also woven around the same model. The theory thus has aspects that are heuristically tenable alongside those that are merely conjectural. Recasting the theory in a way that retains the relevant aspects while jettisoning the obsolete parts is a priority area in Ayurvedic research. The research centres under the Ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy) have remained oblivious to this important work and their omissions have resulted in retaining the theory, lock, stock, and barrel. Consequently, outdated pathophysiological conjectures have become fossilised in the current approach to the subject.
•The other factor that has been instrumental in choking the renewal of Ayurveda is the widespread belief among its academics that ancient texts, by virtue of their being divined by sages in deep yogic states, retain timeless relevance. This notion of epistemic superiority has its roots in the hugely influential memorandum on the Science and Art of Indian Medicine authored by G. Srinivasa Murti. The memorandum formed part of two reports: of the Usman Committee (1923) and later, of the Chopra Committee (1948). The flawed idea, antithetical to the yukti-vyapashraya (reason-based) character of classical ayurveda, has kept the field from demystifying its theories and achieving the reforms long overdue. In short, the belief in epistemic superiority has dethroned ancient medical writings from being revisable scientific treatises into being dogmatic scriptures.
•A century ago, P.S. Varier of the Arya Vaidya Sala Kottakkal noted that the “Sareerasthana (section on body structure and function in the Ayurvedic classics) must firstly be revised and made clearer and the remaining parts must be suited to it (sic). Secondly, after this, the other important works should also be corrected. Necessary additions must be made either by translations or by collaboration with experts in portions still deficient.” Ironically, Varier’s submission also forms part of the Usman Committee report alluded to earlier. His suggestions though appear to have fallen on deaf ears. More recently, scholars such as Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya and Priyavrat Sharma have also drawn attention to the myth of epistemic superiority that has rendered Ayurveda texts non-revisable. But the Ayurveda establishment and its research centres have stayed intellectually inept to address the issue. What can enhanced funding do in a field that lacks a vibrant intellectual resource?
A renewed plea to reform
•A recent article in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics has renewed the plea to reform and update Ayurveda. Titled “Confessions of an Ayurveda Professor”, the article is authored by Kishor Patwardhan, a faculty member of Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. Prof. Patwardhan has candidly admitted that the anatomy and physiology contained in the Ayurvedic classics is mostly outdated and that the official approach to this subject is misguided. He has also disclosed the ecosystem-influences that made him adopt a wrong approach to the subject and the ill-effects this approach has had. While implicitly retracting his bookHuman Physiology in Ayurveda, he has called for a thorough change in the curriculum.
•This article also points out the flawed approach of making ancient concepts sound relevant by super-imposing current scientific findings upon them. In addition to resulting in a travesty of truth, such misinterpretations in a practical field such as Ayurveda carry the risk of leading to dangerously wrong clinical choices. While petitioning for a scientific scrutiny of Ayurveda’s foundational theories, the professor hopes that Ayurveda students get to unreservedly study current anatomy and physiology.
The basic truth
•The Ministry of AYUSH must wake up and take cognisance of the points made here. Academics drawing handsome salaries from government-run AYUSH institutes need to see how sinful it is to hand over an unprocessed proto-science to gullible youngsters and then mislead them into believing that it is a super-sophisticated advanced science. As a medical system, Ayurveda is valuable immensely for its observations, only marginally for its theories, and not at all for its speculations. The sooner the establishment comes to terms with this basic truth, the better.
📰 Twitter’s petition on Section 69A of the IT Act
What is main point of contestation between the microblogging platform and the Central government?
•On July 5, Twitter moved the Karnataka High Court seeking to set aside multiple blocking orders of the Central government as well as to alter their directions to identify specific violative content than imposing a blanket ban on individual accounts.
•Section 69A of the IT Act empowers the government to restrict access to any content in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of the country. Twitter holds that the government has allegedly not shown why the restrictions were necessary in the interest of public order or for any other reason.
•The disparity in assessment of what constitutes ‘free expression’ and harm to public order among the two entities is the premise of the entire contestation.
•The story so far: On July 5, microblogging platform Twitter moved the Karnataka High Court seeking to set aside multiple blocking orders of the Central government as well as to alter their directions to identify specific violative content than imposing a blanket ban on individual accounts. According to Twitter, the blocking orders were “procedurally and substantially” non-compliant with Section 69A of the Information Technology Act (IT Act).
What has happened so far?
•The U.S.-headquartered tech company had been speaking to the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology since May about a reconsideration of some of the blocking orders. However, in June the Ministry gave it a last opportunity to comply with the orders, setting out serious consequence for non-compliance. The Hindu learnt from a source privy to the development that it was owing to the seriousness of these warnings that Twitter filed the current writ petition challenging several of the blocking orders. Responding to the development, Minister of State for Information and Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar stated that while all foreign intermediaries have the right to judicial review, they also have the unambiguous obligation to comply with Indian laws.
What is the legality behind blocking content?
•Section 69A of the IT Act empowers the government to restrict access to any content in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of the country, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states or for public order. All directions to restrict information or content in circulation must be recorded in writing. Social media intermediaries failing to comply with the regulations are liable to be monetarily penalised along with an imprisonment term which may extend up to seven years. The procedures for executing the provisions of the act are enlisted in the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009. It entails that a government-designated officer along with an examination committee assess the content in question within 48 hours of receiving the takedown request. It must enable an opportunity to the author or originator of the content to provide clarifications. The recommendations are then sent to the Secretary of the Dept of Information Technology for approval to forward a request to the social media intermediary for restricting access. Emergency provisions stipulate that the clarification be sought after the content has been blocked for specified reasons, but within 48 hours. They can be revoked after due examination. Internet advocacy groups have been particularly critical of Rule 16 that suggests strict confidentiality be maintained on all requests and actions taken thereof — often attributed to be the cause for lack of transparency. The mentioned legislations are to be read under the purview of Article 19 of the Indian Constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech and expression. However, Clause 2 of the article permits the state to impose ‘reasonable restrictions’ for the same reasons as those for Section 69A.
What is Twitter’s claim?
•The microblogging platform states that it respects user expression while also taking into consideration applicable local laws. The disparity in assessment of what constitutes ‘free expression’ and harm to public order among the two entities is the premise of the entire contestation. Twitter restricts access to an allegedly violative content only based on a “valid and properly scoped request” from an authorised entity. However, the curtailment is limited to the jurisdiction that has issued the legal demand. Its policies stipulate that the author of the content must be informed if such a request is received or acted upon.
•As per its transparency report for January to June 2021, India accounted for 11% of the overall legal requests received globally by the micro-blogging platform for moderating access to certain content. Moreover, during the period, internationally it received 43,387 legal demands to remove content specifying 1,96,878 accounts — the greatest observed spike since it started writing the transparency reports in 2012. It attributed the spike in accounts withheld to blocking orders issued under the IT Act. Its petition points to two structural problems, firstly, the absence of a case-specific rationale for blocking content and accounts, and secondly, not according the originators of the content the mandatory hearing.
What procedural issues has Twitter described?
•Twitter holds that the government has been merely reproducing the words of Section 69A as reasons for blocking URLs and accounts. The government has allegedly not shown why the restrictions were necessary in the interest of public order or for any other reason. The Supreme Court’s ruling in The Superintendent, Central Prison, Fatehgarh vs Ram Manohar Lohia (1960) had held restrictions made in public interest must possess reasonable connection to the objective being achieved. They need to be set aside should the co-relation be “far-fetched, hypothetical or too remote”, in other words, bearing no proximity to public order.
•The concerns are further aggravated when the directions are aimed at blocking individual accounts (in other words, temporary or permanent revocation of an individual’s presence on the platform) and not the specific content. Therefore, the contestation now extends to interrogating if the scope of the legislation is restricted to already-existing content or content that could be potentially generated in the future (by the censored individual). One of the prime reasons why the Supreme Court had upheld the constitutionality of Section 69A in Shreya Singhal vs Union of India (2012) was its adherence to accord a hearing to the author of the content as well as the intermediary. It is guaranteed under Rule 8 of the procedural norms but Twitter stated that the government has neither provided any notice nor any hearing.
What kind of content has fallen under the purview of Section 69A?
•Between February 2, 2021 and February 28 this year, Twitter received directions to block 1,474 accounts and 175 tweets in India. Of these, it is challenging 39 URLs with its latest petition. Several of these URLs had journalistic or political content. Previous judgments of the Supreme Court have suggested the content must be viewed from the standards of a “strong-minded, firm and courageous” person. The assessment must not be from the standpoint of a “weak” and “vacillating” individual who may sense danger in every hostile point of view. It is in this light that Twitter has argued the blocked content does not meet the “threshold” for restricting access. Twitter has also argued that the vast majority of people who consume the content under scrutiny are necessarily literate and can reasonably perceive the full context of the content.
