Sustainable health care model possible in India

The piece came in Governance Now on March 20, 2017

Web link: http://www.governancenow.com/views/columns/sustainable-health-care-model-possible-in-india

Pradeep Baisakh 

The book is very useful for the policy makers and researchers.

Book: Health Care Reforms in India: Making up for lost decades
Author: Rajendra Pratap Gupta
Publisher: Reed Elsevier India Pvt. Ltd. 
Pages: 456
Price: Rs 995
Year: 2016

“Health care systems across the world are on a state of total disarray and yet there appears to be no transformational solution in sight. Everyone has an agenda, and it may not be in the best interest of the patient.” With these words of caution, Rajendra Gupta, who is currently the advisor to the union health minister, has written a comprehensive account of the heath system in India; its evolution, performance and the way forward. 

Pressing for keeping health on priority list, chapter one of the book has made situational analysis of UK, USA, Canada and India to warn that the politicians can ignore the healthcare system at their own peril. A World Health Organisation (WHO) report (2008) suggests that about 40% of Indians cited health as their major concern before other issues. It laments that India’s expenditure in health, as percentage of GDP remains lower than many of the emerging economies, notwithstanding the recent increasing budgetary allocations in education and health sector. 

Some glaring facts on health sector come as warning bell for the policy makers. India houses world’s 17 % population and at the same time accounts for 26% of the childhood vaccines preventable deaths, 20% of the maternal deaths, 68% of the leprosy cases, 30% of TB and 10% of HIV infection, globally. 

Giving a correlation of human health with the modern lifestyle, it says that with the advent of liberalisation there has been a change in the value system in India. The new generation has been quick to adopt new lifestyle. No wonder that alcohol consumption in India has increased in last three decades. And alcohol and tobacco pose serious challenge to the millennium kids (Born after 2000). The author warns, “We might be drifting towards a surge in cancer and TB cases due to tobacco and alcohol”. Sexual health and mental health will pose big challenge in future. 

The book succinctly deals with the ‘economics of health’ as a sub-topic. Centuries ago European countries could reduce poverty not by economic progress but by better health care and education. This underlines why we should invest adequately in these sectors to address key problems in India. Making an in-depth analysis based on the personal experience and interaction with number of Indian families, the author puts forward that social inequalities in India are a key challenges of healthcare. There are several examples where a family loses its stability if its breadwinner dies of any disease. Many poor families sell their assets to treat their family member, which brings them on the streets. 

The irony is, notes the author, even after seven decades of independence ‘health for all (HFA) remains a rhetoric; in reality it is ‘health for a privileges few’!

The book consists of five chapters in total and has many sub-chapters. It discusses, among others, the politics and economics of health, women’s and children health, health care challenges, decision making structure in India, list of national programme on health, history of health care reforms in India, ground realities, foreign influence on the health care systems, pollution and health, universal health care, etc.

In the second chapter, the health care market is assessed from various accounts and the structures of decision-making. The health care market in India is huge and has crossed a $100 billion by 2015. Though it’s a state subject and the centre has influence on the subject. The nodal agency at the centre is the ministry of health and family welfare. The erstwhile planning commission used to influence the health policy and financing of the country. 

A lot of hard work has gone in collecting reports of important committees on health care reforms in India since the British Raj and succinctly presenting them in chapter four. Though implementation of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) is considered as the starting point of health reforms in India, it actually dates back to 1859 with the setting up of the Royal Commission. Despite so many reforms, the unchanged reality is that the country suffers from huge infrastructural gap and financial constraints in this sector. The author reveals that our health care system worked always under the influence of knowledge drawn from foreign countries. 

In chapter five, the book discusses the challenges to health care as historical, developmental and procedural. There has been negligence in investment in the sector; neo-life style has brought forth new health risks and diseases and finally the challenge remains in form of managing an inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy. Rising pollution and impacts of climate change are emerging as major health care concerns. Despite all these, the author is optimistic about the future. It believes that India has potential to adopt innovations in the health care policies and make the heath care sustainable, as “It has no past baggage or powerful corporate lobbies in health care”. It proposes a pre-emptive care model by shifting the focus from ‘medical care’ or the ‘payment and treatment model’. The adage, “prevention is better than cure” goes well with the suggested framework. 

The author has more than two decades of experience in the sector and has been an advisor to several leading health care organisations across the world and has won several awards. The book is very useful for the policy makers and researchers. 

The unbearable weight of scorched earth

The piece came in GovernanceNow magazine in February 16 - 28, 2017 issue

Web link: http://www.governancenow.com/views/columns/the-unbearable-weight-scorched-earth

Pradeep Baisakh

Scientists have declared 2016 as the hottest year since 1880. Population growth, climate change and accompanying extreme weather events are a problem we can no longer ignore

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in independent analyses, have declared 2016 the hottest year since 1880. Scientists have said that the planet witnessed three consecutive years of record heat.  

The rise in global temperature in these years has been mostly due to human influence. According to the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014, “human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history.” 

Though the global mean temperature has been more or less stable for the last 11,000 years, the global surface temperature, on an average, has risen by 0.8 degree centigrade since 1880. In the last 100 years, each decade, broadly speaking, has been warmer than the previous one. 

The World Bank’s report, ‘Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided’, released in 2012 forecasts that by the end of the century, global temperature may rise by 4 degree centigrade above the pre-industrial level (before 1750). This is likely to create devastating conditions, mainly to the poor and vulnerable, and may play havoc to the existence of humans and earth in the long run.  

Rise in sea level

The sea level has risen by 20 centimetres since 1880 – a result of global warming. This spike has taken place in last two decades; the seal level had been stable for the past 2,000 years before the late 19th century. Not only is warming of seawater due to rising temperature making water expand, melting of mountain glaciers and big ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland are also raising the level. By the end of the century, the sea level is tipped to rise approximately by 1 metre in the absence of any mitigation measures and by 0.6 metre if measures are undertaken. 

Moreover, the rise will not stop by the end of 2100 as glaciers respond slowly to rising temperature. By effect, even if we slow down global warming, the consequent impact on melting of glaciers will not be immediate. The Greenland ice sheet has enough ice to raise the sea level by 7 metres if completely melt, which is possible beyond a threshold level of temperature! And one of the glaciers – Totten glacier – of the Antarctic ice sheet, which faces the risk of melting, could raise the sea level by 3 metres. The complete melting of the Antarctic glacier has the potential to raise the sea level by 60 metres, which is also possible if we burn all the fossil fuels existing on earth. 

Paris climate deal 

Scientists suggest that the globe can afford the rise of its temperature by 2 degree centigrade from the pre-industrial level. Beyond this point, the impacts of climate change will be irreversible. The small island countries in the Pacific however fear that this level of rise may be catastrophic to them. Meanwhile, a recent paper by William Nordhaus, an economist at Yale University, questions the feasibility of achieving the 2 degree target set in the Paris deal. 

The Paris Climate Agreement, adopted in December 2015, aims at “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C”.   

Most of the members submitted the intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) before the Paris deal. INDCs specify the voluntary target by a country to cut emission of greenhouse gases by a specified timeframe. India has committed to cut the emission intensity by 33-35 percent by 2030 from the 2005 levels. As part of the commitment towards increased use of alternative energy, it has committed to adopt 40 percent of non-fossil fuel energy by 2030. 

Effects of climate change in India 

As many as four states have suffered floods in the last few years. They include: Uttarakhand in 2013, Jammu and Kashmir in 2014 and 2015, and Assam and Arunachal Pradesh in 2016. We regularly hear about the fury of floods in Bihar. Add to this, India has been reeling under drought for more than two years now, affecting farmers and the whole economy. Drought and floods are not new to India, but their frequency and intensity in recent years have been worrying. The inference: impact of climate change is getting starker day by day in India as well. 

Since agriculture in India is predominantly rain-fed, the risks of climate change on food production and food security could be immense; predictions include low availability of water and health hazards. 

The melting of the Himalayan glaciers could increase the flow of water in the Brahamaputra river system and the Indus system. The sea level rise would inundate the coastal areas and affect people’s livelihood sparking displacement, migration and conflicts. 

Challenge remains

India’s GDP growth was 7.6 percent in 2015-16. It aims to grow at 9-10 percent per annum. Pro-growth economists say that economic growth is a pre-condition to poverty alleviation and to finance welfare schemes. But, economic growth has a direct correlation with energy consumption. As things stand today, the dominant mode of energy in India is fossil fuel (coal, oil and natural gas) that emits greenhouse gases contributing to climate change. The days ahead will see how the government plans to shift towards cleaner energy. The challenge for the government is to strike a balance between maintaining economic growth and addressing poverty and still not harm the environment. 

Baisakh is associated with Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP), which works on the issues of sustainable development and climate change

Two Ladies, Who Made The Mission Possible!

This piece came in Counter Currents on August 27, 2016

Web link: http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/08/27/two-ladies-who-made-the-mission-possible/

A 6-14 year old minor girl could be an‘object’used for dispute settlement between two parties. No matter how absurd it may sound, this practice, known as “Swara” (http://bit.ly/1PWTLKm), is prevalent in some parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, mostly in tribal belts. This is a 400 year-old tradition based on principle of “blood for blood” for dispute settlement where virgin girls are forcibly married off. If not all, at least one woman had the courage the fight it out in her community in Swat valley. Tabassum Adnan, a lady from Swat valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan was awarded with the Nelson Mandela–Graca Machel innovation award 2016 in Bogota, Columbia in April 2016 during the International Civil Society week held by CIVICUS for her valiant work on violence against women in her community.

“Our fear is our biggest obstacle and cause of our failure. If you get one success, you get motivated. The biggest achievement will be to shed fear and demand our rights.” Said Tabassum. Her journey to fight for the cause of women started with a case of acid attack by a man on a girl, who eventually succumbed to the injury. Tabassum and other women approached the Jirga, the traditional body of elders for dispute settlement, asking justice for this girl. It resulted in nothing. “So we decided to start our own Jirga – Khwendo Jirga(Sisters’ council), consisting only women in 2011.” Said Tabassum.

In the particular case of Swara in the community, where Tabassum lives, a married man had kidnapped the wife of another man. In the dispute settlement, the first man was asked to give his 7 year old daughter Fatima (Name changed) to the other man for ever, who could use her as his property. Aggrieved and helpless, the mother of the Fatima approached Tabassum for help. The women brigade of Khwendo Jirga rescued the minor girl from the captivity defying the order of the men Jirga. “We forcefully took the girl out of the custody of that man. Several men there opposed us, but we did not relent.” Said an assertive Tabassum. Thus started her fight for the helpless women in her area. “Khwendo Jirga” is the Centre of hope for several vulnerable and languished women. We have dealt with girls’ trafficking cases, have given shelter of women having five-six children deserted by family and husband etc” added Tabassum. Tabassum, 38 is a victim of child marriage and of an abusive husband. She decided to walk out of the marriage after 20 years and started working for justice for women.

The men’s brigade reacted. She was issued with Fatwa(order made under Islamic Law) by the traditional Jirga in 2011-12, which was eventually withdrawn. Appreciation for her work started pouring in even within her community. She was made the member of the district dispute settlement committee. She got international acclamations with ‘Best human right defenders’ award’given by government of Netherland in 2014 and ‘International Women of Courage award’ conferred by US state department in 2015.

Apart from dispute settlement, issues relating access of women to the decision-making bodies and justice for women, Tabassum’s group has worked for education of girl child, heath of women, and advocated against child marriage.

The work of Smriti Nagpal, 26 from New Delhi, India also is similarly inspiring for which she was conferred with the Nelson Mandela –Graca Machel innovation award 2016. Smriti has stared an initiative, Atulyakala (Unparalleled art forms) in 2012 to give a platform for marketing the art and crafts by the people with speech and hearing impairment. “Once, a guy with speech impairment having a masters degree, who was doing manual job in a NGO, approached me asking where his paintings could be sold. I had no answers. I was just a graduate then. But it did give me an idea.”

Smriti has two siblings having hearing and speech impairments. Her best way to communicate with them was through her hands. Shetherefore knows the use of sign language, which helps her to communicate with people with similar impairments. She has been a sign language interpreter in National Association of Deaf and interpreted republic day parade in national TV.

“The kind of paintings and crafts by the people with hearing and speech impairment are just immaculate. Therefore, I thought why not to start an institution with help of all fascinating artists. This is a way of taking them away from a stigmatized life, and to live a life of dignity,” narrates Smriti.

Atulyakala markets online the products like like mugs, wallets, journals etc designed by the person with hearing and speech impairments with their signatures on all products. This gives them the identity and confidence. Apart from social enterprising, Atulyakala also conducts awareness programme in universities about the Indian sign language and inclusion of such people. India is the place for highest numbers of population of 18 million with speech impairment in the world.

She was chosen as the 100 most inspiring women by BBC in 2015.As many as 200 people with such impairments have been benifitted from Atulyakala.It has centers in the country and a center in Denmark. Atulyakala plans to replicate it’scenter and training model in different cities.

In the message for the young generation, Smritisays “I am a dream, and I’ve believed dreams shape your life. Whatever you are passionate about, work on it. Your small effort can bring changes in many lives.”

The author is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi. He can be reached through e mail: 2006pradeep@gmail.com

BRICS And Civil Society

This piece came in Counter Currents on July 16, 2016

Web Link: http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/07/16/brics-and-civil-society/

India is going to host the 8th BRICS Summit in Goa on October 15-16, 2016 as part of India’s chairmanship of BRICS this year. BRICS is the acronyms of its member nations: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, all of which are fast growing developing economies. The formation came to existence in 2009 but South Africa was taken as member in 2010. In BRICS summits, the heads of state or heads of government e.g. Presidents and Prime Ministers of the partner countries participate.

How important is BRICS for India? In the 7th summit of BRICS in Ufa, Russia last year, Prime Minister Modi announced his 10-point programme on future engagement of BRICS nations. This year in March the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj narrated the core theme for the Chairmanship as “Building Responsive, Inclusive and Collective Solutions (BRICS)”. It’s going to organize more than 50 sectorial meetings at the ministerial, official, technical, and track II levels. Among them are BRICS Film Festival, BRICS Youth Forum, Young Diplomat’s Forum, BRICS Trade Fair, Think-Tank and Academic Forums etc. This signifies how engrossed is India in BRICS process and sees value in the formation.

India’s focus will be five prong: institution building, implementation, integration, innovation, and continuity with consolidation, I4C, in short.

BRICS initiated New Development Bank (NDB) has already come into existence and started operating. It is widely believed that the NDB has been visualized in response to the hegemony of west, particularly United Statesover the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB)and answer to the growing discontent of the developing countries against these institutions. NDB has been instituted “with the objective of funding infrastructure projects in the developing countries and meet the aspirations of millions through sustainable development.” The bank will have initial authorized capital of $100 billion.

Why civil society intervention?  

Despite the economic slowdown witnessed in some member-states, the formation assumes a lot of significance to its members. With the functioning of NDB, the possible impact of the bloc on its member-states is likely to increase.

The five countries together account for 43 percent of the world’s population, 46 percent of the global labour force, 30 percent of the earth’s landmass and 25 percent of the world’s share of global gross domestic product (GDP) and more importantly almost 50 percent of world’s poor live in BRICS countries.

Given the vastness of the bloc in terms of population and poverty, the civil society feels it appropriate to engage with the formation to influence its agenda. Civil society’s interest is to see that the agenda of BRICS is inclusive of the interest of the poorer and excluded sections in each of its member counties. In the backdrop of jobless growth, and the pattern growth that has led to rising inequality; civil society wants to ensure that the growth visualized by BRICS is sustainable and reckons with the adverse impact of economic growth on environment. It also is anxious to see that the NDB does not end up becoming another international financial institutions (Read IMF and WB), whose role toward the developing countries and the LDCs, so also for the larger benefit of the people has been questioned. It should ensure that the bank invents not only in infrastructure development but also in building social capital.

Engagement of civil society with BRICS  

The first formal engagement of BRICS bloc with the civil society, termed as Civil BRICS, took place in Ufa, Russia during the 7th BRICS Summit. The meeting discussed about the necessity of dialogue of the civil society with the decision makers. It discussed on variety of social issues like heath care, equality, conflict management etc.

In 2013,Brazil took the initiative to hold dialogue with the civil society of Brazil for their inputs into BRICS process. This was an independent decision of Brazil. Later however the information and outcome of the meeting with civil society was shared with other BRICS member states. This was followed by the South Africa to hold several regional consultations with the civil society of South Africa in 2014.These interactions led to formalization of process of engagement of BRICS with civil society.

This year FIDC (Forum for India’s Development Cooperation), a think tank of Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) proposes to hold the 2nd Civil BRICS in New Delhi in first week of October. This is a space for interaction with the civil society with agenda like civil society partnership in implementation of SDGs; food security, nutrition and health; inequality, economic growth and job creation; multi-lateral trade and sustainable development and sustainable urbanisation and urban poverty.  This is very good development.

It is also equally heartening that the Ufa declaration of BRICS (declaration on July, 2015 by 7th BRICS summit held in Ufa, Russia) discussed about poverty, income inequality, gender inequality and gaps in international tax regimes as major challenges and reiterates its commitment to act towards them. All these are fulfilling to civil society as these are the agendas which it pushes for.

However, two issues remain. One, if the NDB lives up to its promise towards environmental protections. In the name of funding the mega infrastructure projects it should not destroy environment and undemocratically usurp the land from the tribals and poor. Development has to be democratically accepted and is sustainable to preserve natural resources for the coming generations.

The other concern remains about the “Institutionalisation of Civil BRICS”. Last year in the declaration of the official BRICS, there was only a mention about the interface of civil society. No one knows what happened to the recommendations of the civil society. Amitabh Behar of Wada Na Todo Abhiyan , a conglomeration of civil society in India opines “This year the process interface with the civil society should be institutionalized and the recommendations emerging out of the Civil BRICS should be reflected in the official BRICS process.”

Come October, how seriously outcome of the Civil BRICS meeting is taken by the government, which has a step-sisterly attitude toward NGOs, remains to be seen.

Pradeep Baisakh is a Journalist based in New Delhi.

Have we gained or lost?

ECONOMY / 25 YEARS OF LIBERALISATION

Pradeep Baisakh looks at the effects of the economic reforms started 25 years ago.

This piece came in India Together on September 17, 2016

Web Link: http://indiatogether.org/have-we-gained-or-lost-economy

With the budget presentation by the then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh in July 1991, India began its bonhomie with the model of liberalization, privatization and globalization, transforming itself from a closed interventionist economy.

India completed 25 years of liberalization in July 2016. Each successive government have taken ahead the process of economic reforms by reducing the role of state and giving more and more space to the Indian corporate and the multi-national companies to invest in industrial and service sectors.

What has changed in these 25 years

Percentage of persons below poverty line, which stood at 45.3 percent in 1993-94, has declined to 22 percent in 2011-12 as per the Planning Commission’s estimation. Critics may question the official definition of poverty figures, to which I quite agree; but the facts remains that money has flown to the hands of people and there has been visible expansion of opportunities in varied directions.

The children of middle class families are employed as software professionals in Bangalore or Hyderabad and Indian dominate the human resources in the Silicon Valley of United States. India could produce young and new generation entrepreneurs like the owners of Flipkart, the online shopping giant and Ola, an app based taxi service and Micromax, the mobile company.

Most of the macro economic indicators are strong. As the figures stand today, India is one of the fastest growing economy in the world with GDP growth of 8.3 percent from 2004-05 to 2013-14, 7.2 percent in 2014-15 and 7.6 percent in 2015-16 while from 1984-85 to 1994-95 it was 5.9 and earlier it has been lower.

BSE sensex breached the 30,000 mark on March 4, 2015. It stands at 28,078 now (August 6, 2016) in comparison to 714 in 1989 and 781 in 1990!

India received foreign investment of above $70 billion in 2014-15, which was abysmally low before the era of liberalization. The per-capita income has gone up by 13 times in 2016 from 1991. The GDP stands at $2073 billion in 2015, which is 4 times to the GDP in 1991. India is now the seventh largest economy of the world (in nominal GDP). You will get similar whopping figures of forex reserve and the export and import. All these figures show that India is now a clearly established economic power of the world.

With India emerging as the global economic power, the power dynamics has also undergone a change not only with the United States but also with many other nations. India’s claim for a permanent seat in UN is much stronger than ever before. India’s leadership in global trade and climate negotiations and in alternative blocs like BRICS is noteworthy. The pre-1991 India certainly did not enjoy this height in the power ladder.

Now we have more and more social schemes in forms of MGNREGA (Rural Employment Law), Right to Education law, National Health Mission and now the National Food Security Law. The government coffer has now enough resources to fund these schemes.

At what cost

However, it is necessary to analyse the cost at which we have achieved this growth.

There are several pockets of the country witnessing unrest among the local people, threatened by loss of land and livelihood due to industrialization. As many as 182 districts in 9 states (of total of 29 states) of the country are declared to have some activities of Maoist insurgency, of them in 82 districts the scenario is serious (Government data in 2011).

It’s in common knowledge that the Maoist cadres have grown in the most backward areas of the country. There has been visible subversion of democracy while it comes to taking away land by the government from the people against their wishes. The state has trained guns or used forces against its own people in Singur and Nadigram (West Bengal) and in Kalinga Nagar (Odisha) for Tatas and in Jagatsingpur (Odisha) for POSCO, the global steel giant-all to acquire land for them. Several people have been killed in such incidences.

The level of inequality has risen with wealth getting into fewer hands. Instead of trickle down, we have witnessed a trickle up phenomenon. The report by OXFAM, an International development organisation released in 2014 suggests that since 1995 the gap between the bottom 40 percent and the top 10 percent in India is increasing.

Lifestyle has undergone vast change in India during the phase of liberalisation. From a low-cost economy and a cautiously spending population, India has now become a consumerist and to some extent flamboyant economy, particularly for the elite and middle classes. This is gradually creating a class structure where the bottom 40 is fighting to meet daily needs, the top 10 percent lead a life of extravagance. Many may defend it as necessary driver for growth though!

Climate change is a global phenomenon. But we have clearly felt its impact in forms of flood in Mumbai in 2005, flood in Uttarakhand in 2013 and flood in Kashmir in 2014 and 2015. Country also has witnessed severe drought consecutively for three years now leaving the farm sector hi and dry. 

Natural disasters are not new in India but the nature and fury of the aforesaid disasters clearly has established the linkage to the climate change. India now is the 4th largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in absolute terms though in terms of per-capita emission it’s 10th.

In absolute terms China is the biggest emitter followed by US and European Union. India’s emission constitutes 6.96 percent of the total global emission (Source: World resources Institute 2015). The amount of emission of GHGs by India has almost been doubled from 1994 level to 2010 (data comparison of Ministry of Environment and Forest, Govt of India and World Resource Institute). This is result of pursuing aggressive industrialization and the consumerist life style.

The period of liberalization has witnessed gross negligence of farm sector, which grew at a very abysmal rate since 1991.

Agro sector has become unproductive forcing farmers to leave farming and many have committed suicide. The number stands at 0.27 million (2.7 lakhs) in a period from 1995 to 2014, which is unprecedented. No sane government can defend such mass scale suicide of people in a democratic country due to faulty policies and inability of government to protect its agro-sector, on which nearly 60 percent of population is dependent. The current situation also does not show any signs of revival of situation of farmers.

Therefore, the gain from liberalization has been accrued in terms catapulting India to a near super power. But we have lost by way of creating new class structure on basis of differential income, so also unsustainable use of natural resources. The exploitative development model should be re-looked at to make it sustainable; otherwise next generation will be left with no resources for survival.

The author is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi.

2 Years On, Modi Govt Has Stalled On Anti-Corruption Laws, Social Development: Report

The piece came in the Huffington Post on May 25, 2016

Web Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.in/pradeep-baisakh/2-years-on-modi-govt-has-stalled-on-anti-corruption-laws-socia/

As it completes two years in power on 26 May, 2016, the Modi government has accumulated plenty of criticism and a smattering of praise on its performance from civil society. A report released on Monday by Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (WNTA), a conglomerate of civil society groups, delved deep into several areas of governance and gauged the NDA government's performance against its electoral promises. 

The report criticized the government for faltering on its promise to bring down corruption in the country, noting that there was an attempt to "dilute" the Lokpal and whistleblowers' protection laws by introducing amendments in Parliament. "Instead of putting in place an effective grievance redress mechanism to ensure proper delivery of rights and services to people, the government is seeking to amend the existing Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) to make all bribe givers offenders, which would criminalize even those who are forced to pay a bribe to get their legal entitlements," added the report.

The report [noted] that there was an attempt to "dilute" the Lokpal and whistleblowers' protection laws...

In the budgetary allocation in 2015-16, the major thrust for development was on investment in infrastructure. On the other hand, most allocations to the social sector fell short or increased only marginally in comparison to last year, leaving unaddressed critical concerns regarding healthcare, education and civic amenities. The government encourages private investment in the health and education sectors, but this has a debilitating effect on the poor and marginalized. "While India is making its mark at the global level, social and economic inequalities continue to grow and marginalize communities and their quality of life," claimed the report.

Despite the rhetoric on young people as the future of India, the 29% budget cut for children in 2015-16 has been the highest ever. There has even been an attempt by the government to bring in amendments to the child labour law that legitimize certain types of work done by minors.

While the passage of the amendments to the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act is a welcome step, the continued poor allocation and implementation of economic provisions under the SCSP and TSP (Scheduled Caste Sub-Plan and Tribal Sub-Plan) holds the communities in the grip of poverty and underdevelopment, sayid the report. 

Crop loss, mounting debt and acute drought continue to drive farmers to commit suicide in states like Maharashtra, Punjab, Telangana, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. The government could have done better to address the critical situation of rural distress. Rural insurance schemes have not given enough relief to farmers, and agricultural credit, rural electrification and a thrust on increasing the irrigation cover are major challenges that need to be addressed by the government. 

Despite the rhetoric on young people as the future of India, the 29% budget cut for children in 2015-16 has been the highest ever. 

It is reassuring that the MGNREGA programme is being continued. But the question of community say on their land remains unresolved and the final shape of the Land Bill will be known only after the government's stand towards the outcome of its examination by a parliamentary committee. The balancing act that the government eventually does between industrial development and market growth on the one side and the rights of the vulnerable sections on the other has to stand the test of time.

Similarly, the impact assessment of the government's Make in India push -- which intends to transform the country into a global manufacturing hub -- is being eagerly awaited. Despite many commitments, the anticipated foreign investment is not evident. By now, however, there is no doubt that the government has opted for trade and a market-driven economy as its core mantra for development. Concerns, therefore, over livelihood of small landowners, farmers, rural households and economically weaker sections are not misplaced, says the report.

On the human rights front, civil society continues to get strictures from the government. Communal tensions are palpable and there has been a clampdown on the voices of students expressing dissent. Fissures along the lines of caste in universities are evident. 

Communal tensions are palpable and there has been a clampdown on the voices of students expressing dissent. 

Participating in the report release event in New Delhi on 23 May, Brinda Karat, a politburo member of the CPI (M), said, "There has been drought for more than two years. Thus... food security is in peril. There is class bias in the current establishment. There is huge concession to the corporate [sector] in forms of tax benefits, where as the budget allocation is cut in social sectors." She added that civil society has been attacked under the current dispensation. 

Even more scathing was D Raja of the CPI, who said, "This government is also pitting the Lok Sabha vs. Rajya Sabha. How they have [sic] declared the Aadhaar bill as a money bill and presented to the Parliament? This government is full of rhetoric: Skill India, Make in India, Start up India! They should now get to work."

Sandeep Dixit of the Congress said, "There is attack on the very idea of India by NDA government," while the AAP's Raghav Chadha opined, "The government has failed in the foreign policy front, fighting against corruption, bringing back black money to the country, maintaining communal harmony and controlling inflation." 

Amitabh Kundu, a professor at JNU, posited that the government has policy confusion on the Smart City mission given its dilly-dallying on resource allocation and expenditure in the last three budgets. 

Amitabh Behar of WNTA said that the report looks at the government's performance from the prism of Constitutional provisions. Thomas Pallithanam and Annie Namala, the conveners of WNTA added that the report's assessment of the government was intended to highlight its performance on "how it has impacted on the poor and the marginalized."

How sustainable are the SDGs?

http://indiatogether.org/how-sustainable-are-the-sdgs-government

This piece came in India Together on December 9, 2015

Can we look at ending poverty without looking at the structural reasons and dimensions of poverty and inequality? Pradeep Baisakh looks at this and at other objectives within the UN SDG framework and analyses how realistic their achievement would be.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are a set of development goals framed by the United Nations in 2000, to be achieved by 2015, is now set to be replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2016.

The MDGs aimed at addressing extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, reducing child mortality and improving maternal health, combating various forms of disease, promoting gender equality, protecting the environment and developing global partnership.

The performance of the MDGs so far has been mixed. The United Nations claims that 700 million people have come out of extreme poverty globally between 1990 and 2010, access to education has increased and the gender gap in access to primary education has been substantially reduced. However, on child and reproductive health, the achievement has not been encouraging.

Learnings from the implementation of MDGs and the changing developmental realities have guided the formulation of the SDGs - another set of goals for the next 15 years – that is from 2016 to 2030. It promises a developmental framework, which is ‘sustainable’ and equitable, and one that will ‘leave no one behind’.

The biggest criticism of the MDGs was its exclusivity and the reductionist approach in shaping them. It is alleged that a handful of people sitting in the UN office framed those goals, which were eventually adopted by the member nations. Keeping these criticisms in mind, the formulation of the SDGs involved representation from several sections, including civil society, and saw phases of inter-governmental negotiation before the draft was actually finalised.

A little over two years of consultation resulted in the framing of a set of 17 goals and 169 targets to achieve. The goals were adopted by the heads of states of 193 member nations in a deliberation held from 25-27 September 2015 in the United Nations Summit, which was convened as a high-level plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly. It may be pointed out that the SDGs are not legally binding on the member nations though they certainly influence the national laws and policies.

The SDGs cover a range of important issues: socio-economic, political and environmental. They embrace energy and governance, ending poverty and hunger, achievement of food security and of sustainable economic growth and productive employment.

Some of the other objectives encompassed within the set of SDGs are:

• Promotion of sustainable agriculture
• Reduction of inequality
• Provision of quality education
• Access to universal healthcare
• Ensuring gender equality and justice
• Combating climate change
• Conservation of oceans
• Protection of wildlife and forest management
• Increasing the share of renewable energy
• A peaceful society and global partnership
• Enhanced infrastructure
• Addressing issues of migration
• Respect for ethnicity
• Promotion of a just trade regime
• Development assistance and technological transfer from the developed countries to the developing and least developing countries (LDCs), and others

More importantly, SDGs chart out the ways of implementation and participatory monitoring and review of the goals and targets. The global leaders deserve kudos for creating a framework which at least aims to save ‘Mother Earth’!

However, a closer look at the document may raise doubts about the feasibility of converting some of these ambitious goals into an actionable framework. More fundamentally, while in a way it acknowledges that economic growth has been accompanied by rising inequality in the past few years, it conspicuously avoids discussing the structural aspects of poverty and inequality.

The first goal of the SDGs is to ‘end poverty in all forms and everywhere’. But poverty is defined as ‘people living on less than $1.25 a day’ – which has been the global poverty line since 2005. With the cost of living rising in many countries, ‘ending poverty’ is a pretentious promise to make.

In the same breath, the draft promises to provide equal rights to economic resources, ownership and control over land and natural resources. This is a welcome statement but open to debate and interpretation. Does it refer to ownership of people within the overarching definition of ‘eminent domain’ or does it stand for real ownership by the community?

The last few years have witnessed large scale transfer of various means of peoples’ livelihood to the big industries in the form of control over land, forest, water. How the conflict between a development paradigm based on industry-fuelled GDP growth and community ownership of natural resources can be resolved in the best interest of all, could be an interesting subject for discussion in the coming days.

Reading goal 8 (promoting sustainable economic growth and productive employment), goal 9 (sustainable industrialization) and goal 10 (reducing inequality within and among countries) together will be helpful in deconstructing the SDG-driven approach to development. Let us consider these one by one.

SDGs aim for at least 7 percent GDP growth in the least developed countries and generally sustained per capita-growth globally. This is apparently a pre-condition for achieving full employment. However it has been witnessed globally that growth always does not lead to proportionate employment generation.

In goal 9, it aims at significantly raising the share of industry in employment and GDP. Generally, movement of workforce from agriculture to industry may appear to be a good thing, given that it defines the trajectory of growth that the world has been following so far. However, in India we have witnessed that the thrust in industrial development has been accompanied by negligence of the agro-sector to an extent where the country has witnessed massive socio-economic problems, the most alarming being the widespread suicide of farmers (more than a quarter of a million) in the last twenty years.

In South Africa, where mining-based industries have flourished in the last 100 years, people were forced to leave farming to serve as cheap labour in mining industries. Mining based industries have their own limitations. Today, the rate of unemployment is as high as, or more than 25 percent and almost as many live in hunger.

Consumption for self-production is almost invisible. Barely two percent of households grow their own food. There has been complete corporatization of agro and food produce. People are completely dependent on the markets for purchase of food. Snatching and other criminal activities by unemployed youth are a menace here. Hence, the proposition that growth of industry will automatically increase productive employment is no more a sacrosanct proposition. 

On the issue of inequality, the draft SDG promises income growth of the bottom 40 percent people. It stresses official development assistance from developed to developing countries and increased foreign direct investment in these countries. The irony is that inequality has gone up to the extent where the richest one percent owned 48 percent of the total global wealth in 2014. But there is no discussion in the document about the mechanism for downward flow of wealth, which is necessary for bringing about equality.

Given the rise in global temperatures and the evident destructive impact of climate change, which in turn is the result of industrial activities and lavish consumerism of a section of the people, world leaders have to seriously think about how much natural resources this generation could afford to exhaust to make the rich richer, even if it means the eventual flow of wealth to the poor.

This document speaks about noble intentions of ‘sustainable consumption and production’ but all these will depend on how willing and able the affluent are in adjusting their lifestyles in metro cities across the globe, especially in the western countries.

Another aspect missed out in the discussion on inequality pertains to the more nuanced forms of inequality in different local communities, such as inequality arising out of caste-based discrimination. As many as 260 million ‘Dalits’ spread across Asia, Africa and European countries are facing caste-based discrimination and are treated as untouchables.

Ending hunger, promoting sustainable agriculture, ensuring food security – all of these essentially require deliberation on food sovereignty, which again is missing within the SDG framework.

SDGs aim to correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in the world agricultural market in accordance with the Doha development round under the WTO framework, whereas it is now common knowledge that import restrictions could in fact adversely affect small farmers while enabling large subsidised agri-businesses to capture markets in impoverished countries.

If, alongside the SDGs, one should read the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on financing for development adopted by global leaders in July in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, it will be seen that overwhelming importance has been attached to private capital for financing development. In a way, the Agenda has legitimised the ongoing withdrawal of the state from providing essential services like education, health, water and sanitation and other sectors. This could be dangerous as the public-private partnership model has placed quality education and health care almost out of reach for the people living in poverty and socially excluded groups.

Therefore, while SDGs look quite good on the surface, their implementation will remain a challenge as the fundamental reasons for unsustainable development have not been reckoned with in the document.

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The author is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi, India.