Articles | IndianPolicyC

Aug 26, 2020

The War on Poverty during COVID-19: 3 Strategies for Governments to Use

Francois Gerard, Clement Imbert and Kate Orkin recommend that developing nations provide social protection to their most vulnerable citizens through broad ‘safety nets’ during the COVID-19 crisis. They outline three strategies governments can use. COVID-19 lockdowns, across the globe, have carried heavy economic costs, but those in developing countries have been hit particularly hard because of lower income levels and larger unorganised economic sectors (in India, this compri

Aug 16, 2020

Inclusive Growth Dividend: A Universal Income Transfer That Might Work

As COVID-19 sinks the economy deeper each day, Maitreesh Ghatak and Karthik Muralidharan propose an alternative anti-poverty measure that’s different from the Universal Basic Income and targeted schemes. Basic income transfers have been promoted by a number of development economists as an important tool with which to fight poverty. There are also, however, strong opponents of such transfer schemes who critique them for reasons of infeasibility, further claiming that they will

Aug 3, 2020

Why India Should Consider Compulsory Licensing For COVID-19 Related Drugs

As part of our continuing series on healthcare, here is an explainer on Compulsory Licensing, its pros and cons, what other countries are doing and where we are at now. With the ongoing public health emergency in India - the COVID-19 pandemic, overcrowded hospitals, a shortage of medical equipment and an ever-rising case count - any feasible measures that may ease the burdens of the people must be considered. No drug has been specifically identified as being able to treat COV

Jul 28, 2020

Why Are India’s Poor Not Demanding Better Healthcare?

Madhvi Gupta and Pushkar look for the answer to this question - of missing collective action by India’s poor - in a chapter of their book Democracy, Civil Society and Health in India. Despite high levels of economic growth and many decades of democracy, India’s health failures abound. We may realise this more surely today, when confronting the COVID-19 crisis, but this has been a sad truth of our country for many years now. Authors Madhvi Gupta and Pushkar, in their book Demo

Jul 23, 2020

Environment Impact Assessment Notification 2020: Pro-Industry, Anti-People?

Here is a page for all you wanted to know about the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) and the central government’s draft notification that has so many up in arms. You have till the 11th of August to understand. And, if you want to, express your views. You can listen to this story here: What is the EIA? Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) can be defined, simply, as the study made to predict the effect of a proposed activity or project on the environment. Often used as a deci

Jul 18, 2020

Messaging Can Help Fight COVID-19: Evidence from an RCT by Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee

There is new evidence, from West Bengal, that messaging by celebrities can act as a ‘nudge’ to help in prevention and early diagnosis of COVID-19. We explain the implications of this study for India. We are in the midst of an unprecedented health emergency in independent India. The challenges of low human development indicators, poverty, poor public health infrastructure, low levels of education, and population density compound the threat of a highly infectious pandemic. In t

Jul 10, 2020

Should India Nationalize Healthcare?

Drawing from an online session Roli Books organised with healthcare experts, we examine the pros and cons of nationalized healthcare. This article is a part of IPC’s series on the public health debate. The Covid 19 pandemic in India brought massive changes across all areas of both the public and private sectors. Arguably, the most directly affected sector has been healthcare. Having to treat a virus with no known cure has put a severe strain on healthcare systems across the

Jul 9, 2020

The Economy is Broken. Montek Singh Ahluwalia Tells You How to Fix It.

How did we get here? How do we get out of here? Montek Singh Ahluwalia, former Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, answers this. IPC breaks down his insights and recommendations for you. Backstage: The Story Behind India’s High Growth Years, an autobiography by Montek Singh Ahluwalia examines the great transformative changes the Indian economy has experienced. It does so through the eyes of one of the most significant architects of the Indian economy. Mr. Ahluwalia ha

Jul 8, 2020

COVID-19 is Destroying the Creative Economy

A report titled 'Taking the Temperature' surveys the impact of COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdown on the creative economy. The results are not heartening, but possible solutions are at hand. As India continues to reel under COVID-19 and the economic downturn that has been exacerbated in its wake, the British Council, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and The Art X Company have come up with a report titled ‘Taking the Temperature’ which analyses

Jul 6, 2020

It's Time to Talk About Healthcare

Indian Policy Collective is announcing a series aimed at collating facts, figures and policy recommendations to inform the public health debate. Do read, spread the word, and write in. As India began to emerge from a stringent and devastating lockdown, news of its crumbling public health infrastructure began to filter in: lack of beds, of medicines, of basic hygiene, food and water, and care in wards, of hospital staff and of PPE and adequate compensation for them, and of mea

Jul 3, 2020

The Future Of Higher Education: A White Paper

COVID-19 changes substantially how the higher education sector must operate. This brings with it new challenges that must be urgently met, and new opportunities. Based on a virtual conference organised by Ashoka University and Harappa Education on this subject, IPC has written up a white paper that lists out insights and challenges, as well as possible solutions and opportunities. The Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 drastically changed the nature of India’s higher education sect

Jul 1, 2020

GST at Three: Hits, Misses, Reform

Today marks three years since the Goods and Services Tax was implemented in India. Sumit Dutt Majumder, former chairman, CBEC (Central Board of Excise and Customs, now Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs) and author of three books on GST tracks the journey of this tax so far, and lists suggestions for the road ahead. Since its implementation on July 1, 2017, the Goods and Services Tax has travelled a rocky road. Sumit Dutt Majumder, former chairman, CBEC and author of

Jun 28, 2020

What Ails the Police Force?

Police reform is imperative but we first have to understand the key issues involved. A 188 page report created by Common Cause and the Lokniti programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies helps us with this. We break down the highlights for you. From bias to brutality, the police force has come to be the face of the failure of India’s criminal justice system. Even so, police reform, though long overdue, has been neglected by successive governments. Arguably,

Jun 26, 2020

Population Control & Policymaking: A Lesson from the Emergency

An excerpt from Gyan Prakash’s Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy’s Turning Point outlines the questionable lineage of flawed and problematic policies, whose effects were exacerbated during the Emergency. If this were 1975, today would be the first ‘day’ of the dreadful Emergency (it was declared shortly before midnight on the 25th of June). If you ask someone to name some of the Emergency’s worst excesses, forced sterilizations will be near the top of many peo

Jun 16, 2020

Questions for the 15th Finance Commission to Answer

The 15th Finance Commission is expected to submit its five year report. Read on to know how and why this is important, especially for centre-state relations and a list of questions the commission will have to confront. The bulk of the responsibility to fight the virus is upon the states. This battle has exponentially increased their expenditure burden. Meanwhile, revenues have been hit by the various phases of lockdown. Against this backdrop, the 15th Finance Commission is ex

Jun 11, 2020

The Adivasi and the State

Scheduled tribes constitute over 30 percent of Chhattisgarh’s population. IPC spoke to officials in the Chhattisgarh state government to better understand the issues they face and what the government is doing to try and resolve these. At the national level, Scheduled Tribes constitute a little over 8 percent of the Indian population. In Chhattisgarh, however, they constitute over 30 percent of the total population. In some districts, such as Bastar and Surguja, more than 70 p

Jun 9, 2020

IPC Explainer: Tech Vs. Privacy During COVID-19

What are the key contours of the tech vs privacy debate when it comes to fighting the coronavirus? What have other countries around the world done? Kanksshi Aggarwal breaks it down for us. The world has been fighting the outbreak of the COVID-19 disease for months now. Some countries acted before others. Some have managed to flatten the curve; others are still planning an exit strategy out of stringent lockdowns. But most importantly, almost all the countries have resorted to

Jun 1, 2020

How Healthy is the Aarogya Setu?

On the issue of the Aarogya Setu App, IPC has collated a list of demands that the government needs to meet now. The central government's health tracking application - Aarogya Setu - has generated a lot of debate in recent times. The central issue, as with a lot of technological interventions in governance, is two-fold - Is the app likely to malfunction? Is the app open to misuse? Given the extent and nature of the health and humanitarian crises, these issues are urgent and

May 28, 2020

IPC’s Big Think: Abhijit Sen (Part 2)

This is part two of the first of IPC’s series of ‘big think’ interviews, with Abhijit Sen. The idea behind the series is that experts present crucial policy issues and solutions, in the simplest way possible, for laypeople to understand. In this part, Sen, economist and former member of India’s planning and finance commissions, shines a light on the economic measures necessary to get India out of the medical and economic crisis that is COVID-19. What the economic package to g

May 27, 2020

The Law Behind the Lathi

The images of police brutality you have witnessed during this lockdown point to a systemic failure. We tell you how. We tell you what must be done for lasting police reform. We tell you why it isn’t being done. An essay by Avi Singh. The onus of enforcement of the lockdown and quarantining is on the police force. The police, often rightly, have been strongly criticized for the use of disproportionate and arbitrary force in the implementation of the lockdown, but with little u

IPC

The War on Poverty during COVID-19: 3 Strategies for Governments to Use

Inclusive Growth Dividend: A Universal Income Transfer That Might Work

Why India Should Consider Compulsory Licensing For COVID-19 Related Drugs

Why Are India’s Poor Not Demanding Better Healthcare?

Environment Impact Assessment Notification 2020: Pro-Industry, Anti-People?

Messaging Can Help Fight COVID-19: Evidence from an RCT by Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee

Should India Nationalize Healthcare?

The Economy is Broken. Montek Singh Ahluwalia Tells You How to Fix It.

COVID-19 is Destroying the Creative Economy

It's Time to Talk About Healthcare

The Future Of Higher Education: A White Paper

GST at Three: Hits, Misses, Reform

What Ails the Police Force?

Population Control & Policymaking: A Lesson from the Emergency

Questions for the 15th Finance Commission to Answer

The Adivasi and the State

IPC Explainer: Tech Vs. Privacy During COVID-19

How Healthy is the Aarogya Setu?

IPC’s Big Think: Abhijit Sen (Part 2)

The Law Behind the Lathi

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