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In 2014, India Better Only Than Bangladesh Among Neighbouring Nations In Electricity Access

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India provided electricity access to less than 80% of its population in 2014, according to data from the World Bank.

 

Only Bangladesh’s population, among India’s neighbours, had lower electricity access at 62.4%.

 

Countries like Bhutan, China and Maldives have provided 100% population with access to electricity while Pakistan has provided electricity access to 97.5% of its population.

 

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Source: World Bank

 

Access to energy, including access to electricity and clean cooking fuel, is essential to reduce poverty, according to this April 2017 report by the World Bank.

 

Globally, 1.06 billion people did not have access to electricity in April 2017, only a slight improvement from 1.3 billion without access in 2012. At this rate, the world will reach only 92% electrification by 2030, the year by which the United Nations sustainable development goal on energy, including universal access to clean and affordable energy, is to be achieved.

 

(Patil is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

 

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More Education, Fewer Child Brides, Healthier Children

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Over 13 million adolescent girls between 10 and 19 years–equivalent to the population of South Sudan–were married in India in 2011, according to census data, but fewer literate women were married as children or had children early compared to those who were illiterate, according to an analysis by Child Rights and You (CRY), a Mumbai-based child rights nonprofit.

 

The number of child brides and mothers have not improved substantially from 2011. In 2015-2016, an estimated 4.5 million girls between the age of 15 and 16 years were pregnant or had already become mothers, according to data from the National Family Health Survey 4 (NFHS 4).

 

Becoming a child bride initiates a process for the girl where societal pressure, expectations and the responsibilities she is supposed to shoulder in her new role could make her lose focus from education and eventually drop out of school.

 

She is also at the risk of facing violence, abuse and exposure to HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases and is also exposed to underage motherhood as adolescents. Adolescent pregnancy can lead to several health problems – anaemia, malaria, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, postpartum haemorrhage and mental disorders, according to the World Health Organization.

 

In 2011, about 3.8 million adolescent girls in India had children. Of these, 1.4 million have 2 or more children, even before completing adolescence, data show.

 

Early childbearing also increases the risk of childbirth complications such as obstetric fistula (a condition which causes a hole between the vagina and rectum or bladder that is caused by prolonged obstructed labor, leaving a woman without control of urine or feces or both, called incontinence), which commonly occurs among young girls who give birth before their bodies are physically mature and causes chronic incontinence, often resulting in, among other things, social exclusion, according to a 2014 report on women empowerment by the World Bank.

Source: Census 2011

 

But education could delay pregnancy. As many as 39% of Indian girls who were illiterate had begun child bearing, compared to 26% of those who were literate, data show.

 

In West Bengal, for instance, in 2011, among married adolescent girls (1.35 million), aged between 10 and 19 years, more than 50% of the girls who were illiterate had reached motherhood, compared to 37% of the girls who were literate.

 

Over the next seven years, India could save $5 billion (Rs 33,500 crore) in healthcare and related costs if it eliminates child marriage and early childbirth, IndiaSpend reported in July 2017.

 

Lack of education could make child marriage more likely

 

“Lack of education is both a risk factor and an outcome of child marriage,” as highlighted by a 2014 study,  and subsequently quoted by the authors of a 2015 paper titled ‘Child Marriage: A Critical Barrier to Girls’ Schooling and Gender Equality in Education.’

 

“Across 18 of the 20 countries with the highest prevalence of child marriage, girls with no education were up to six times more likely to marry than girls with a secondary education,” the study said, using research from the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW).

 

“Child marriage virtually puts an end to a girl’s education” according to a 2011 report on solutions to end child marriage by ICRW.

 

Out of the 1.35 married adolescent Indian girls, 242,613 girls (17.97%) were illiterate.

 

The greater the duration of girl’s education, the lower the chances of her getting married early, found a 2002 study on Uttar Pradesh. Research suggests that education could even delay girls’ marriage beyond the legal age, according to a global analysis of child marriage by ICRW.

 

Lack of education is also associated with higher risks of violence, child marriage and early pregnancy, and the ability to negotiate within a sexual relationship, such as the ability to refuse sex with a partner or to ask a partner to use a condom,” which makes the woman more vulnerable, found the 2014 report on women’s empowerment by the World Bank.

 

Educated mothers, healthier children

 

Mothers who are educated, are also healthier mothers; they are better prepared for child birth and motherhood, and are more open to accessing healthcare facilities and understanding the implications of their health on their children.

 

For instance, in 2015-2016, more mothers (63%) who had completed secondary education, or higher levels of education, had at least four antenatal visits, compared to those who has no education (28%) or had completed only primary education (45%), according to NFHS 4 data.

 

Source: National Family Health Survey 4

 

As many as 90% of mothers who had completed secondary education, or more, had institutional births compared to 62% of those who were illiterate, data show.

 

Further, higher the level of education of mothers, better are the health outcomes of their children.

 

Source: National Family Health Survey 4

 

More children get access to full immunization if their mothers are educated. In 2015-2016, 67% of children whose mothers completed secondary education received a full course of immunizations versus 52% of those whose mothers had no education, according to NFHS data. ,

 

Source: National Family Health Survey 4

 

Stunting, low height for age, is more common in children whose mothers had no education (51%) than those whose mothers had completed secondary school or more (31%).

 

Source: National Family Health Survey 4

 

Komal Ganotra is director of policy research and advocacy at Child Rights and You (CRY).

 

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11% Decline In Dowry Death Cases & 6% Fewer Murder Cases In 5 Years To 2015

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In five years to 2015, there was a 11% decline in cases of dowry deaths and 6% decline in murder cases despite a 31% increase in violent crimes in India, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau.

 

The 335,901 violent crimes recorded include murder, robbery, rape, kidnapping, dacoity, dowry deaths, arson, riots and attempted homicide.

 

The number of rape cases increased by 43% and kidnapping and abductions increased by 86%, contributing to the overall increase in violent crimes in India.

 

Source: National Crime Records Bureau – 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015

 

(Abraham is an intern with IndiaSpend.)

 

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Why Indian Women Must Eat With Their Families, And How It Can Change India

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Morthala (Sirohi district): When the women of this southwestern Rajasthan village sat down to eat, it was usually after the rest of the family had finished its meal — the men first, the children next and themselves last.

 

This is a common practice in many Indian households, but among the rural poor it makes women and children, some of the weakest in the world, hungrier and sicklier, sparking a cascade of slow development, eventually implicated in holding back national economic progress.

 

“Particularly among the rural poor, food distribution in households is not based on need,” reads Right to Food in India, a 2003 paper of the Centre for Economic and Social Studies, Hyderabad. “The breadwinner gets sufficient food, the children get the next share, and women take the remains.”

 

A two-year-old project in Rajasthan used an unusual strategy to break this pattern among poor tribal communities in the southwestern district of Sirohi and eastern district of Banswara. Instead of simply increasing their food supply and access — the standard approach for dealing with malnutrition — it attempted to break the tradition of prioritising men’s needs first.

 

“We were advised to serve meals only after all the family members are seated so that everyone gets served equally and we discuss food,” said Rukmani (who uses only one name), one of the project beneficiaries.

 

Behind this strategy of the Rajasthan Nutrition Project, launched in 2015, was a baseline survey of 403 women. It revealed that those with a lesser say in running their household were more likely to have less food for their children and were themselves vulnerable to malnutrition.

 

Malnutrition is one of the leading causes (about 50%) of all childhood deaths in India, and malnourishment at an early age can lead to long-term consequences, as it affects motor, sensory, cognitive, social and emotional development, IndiaSpend reported in July 2014.

 

“Stunted children (low height for age) face a lifetime of lost opportunities in education and work,” said a global study called End of Childhood Report 2017. “They are also more likely to succumb to illness and disease, and can die as a result.” Only one child in 10 in India gets adequate nutrition, IndiaSpend reported in May 2017.

 

So, the Rajasthan campaign, executed by Freedom from Hunger India Trust and Grameen Foundation, both nonprofits, through local partners Pradan and Vaagdhara, made women more health and nutrition-aware and sensitised their husbands to gender equality.

 

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Source: Freedom from Hunger India Trust and Grameen Foundation

 

“We chose to address intra-household food consumption disparity — the fact that in one household alone, the women and children could be food insecure while the men are food secure,” said Saraswathi Rao, CEO, Freedom From Hunger India Trust.

 

Over two years, the project has touched the lives of 30,000 people and among the 403 women who were sampled, more than doubled the number of women and children who always have enough to eat.

 

Before the intervention, 31% women had reported that their husbands alone decided how much food to serve the family. After being told to make decisions jointly, no more than 3% of men continued to take this call alone, while the number of couples making joint decisions increased from 12% to 19%. Also,  53% households reported eating more meals together as a family.

 

Why better nutrition for women needs a change in attitude

 

The Rajasthan Nutrition Project’s approach is significant in another respect. Economists have long wrestled with a problem often referred to as the India Enigma: Despite greater economic progress India’s child health indicators fare worse than that of sub-Saharan African nations.

 

India has more malnourished children than sub-Saharan Africa, IndiaSpend reported in May 2017. Indian babies are more than twice as likely to have lower birth weights than those born in sub-Saharan Africa, 28% to 13%, IndiaSpend reported in November 2016. Low birth weight is the single largest predictor of undernutrition, write S Mahendra Dev and Alakh Sharma in a 2010 Oxfam publication.

 

The problem, Dev and Sharma said, could be empowerment. “Women in South Asia tend to have lower status and less decision-making power than women in sub-Saharan Africa,” wrote the authors.

 

So, the solution does not appear to lie in increasing household food supply and access to food—as the government does through the Public Distribution System and Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), respectively, as a baseline study conducted at the start of the project confirmed. The ICDS is a national programme that provides medical services to preschoolers through a local anganwadi (creche).

 

Interviews with 403 women revealed who made household decisions about food, mobility and communication. This, in turn, was found to closely correlate with their own and their children’s food security. Nine in 10 were married, of tribal origin and had an average of 3.21 children, including at least one under the age of two, and a third were from families with monthly income Rs 2000-2500.

 

Among the women who reported having greater autonomy, 39% respondents and 42% of their children had enough to eat. Only 12% women with lower levels of autonomy and 17% of their children reported having enough to eat.

 

Rajasthan Nutrition Project Salient Findings
How Some Empowerment Indicators Improved During The Project Period
Criteria At the start of the project At the end of the project
Received benefits from the ICDS centre in the last 12 months 61% 93%
Received supplementary food from the ICDS centre 84% 90%
Child with diarrhea was given more to drink 7% 42%
ORS used to treat diarrhea 34% 84%
Delayed medical treatment for children in past year due to cost 55% 16%
Delayed medical treatment for herself in past year due to cost 62% 28%
Who breastfed within 1 hour of birth 47% 83%
Who exclusively breastfed first 6 months 27% 36%
Feels very confident that she can afford nutritious foods for all of her family 15% 33%
In the last 12 months, was afraid of husband/partner (% most of the time) 17% 5%
Set aside savings for health in past 6 months 65% 80%
Saved or set aside any money to cover future food expenses in past 6 months 62% 80%
Husband takes decisions on how money should be spent 71% 16%
Couple takes decisions on how money should be spent 24% 51%
Husband takes decision on whether wife seeks healthcare for herself 69% 28%
Couple takes decision on whether wife seeks healthcare for herself 27% 55%
Husband takes decisions on food purchases 37% 18%
Couple takes decisions on food purchases 25% 49%
Husband takes decision about how much food to serve family members 31% 3%
Couple takes decision about how much food to serve family members 12% 19%

Source: Freedom from Hunger India Trust and Grameen Foundation

 

Women who had a greater say in household decisions were more likely to use government health services, breastfeed their children and enjoyed a better relationship with their husbands.

 

The study revealed that any effort designed to improve food security and nutrition had to aim at improving women’s autonomy and decision-making within the household, Kathleen Stack, executive vice president of the Grameen Foundation said.

 

The other benefits of abandoning gender hierarchy

 

In a one-room tenement in Morthal, with a television blaring in the background, a group of women were talking of what they had learned: How control over nutrition, health and household finance helps their families become healthier.

 

Zuhra Bano and Meera Gujjar, leaders of local Self Help Groups (SHG), were the most vocal. With 1,250 other mostly illiterate leaders of SHGs, they had signed up for training under the nutrition project.

 

SHG

The 1250 trained Self Help Group (SHG) leaders were called Community Nutrition Advisors, and given the job of imparting information to their SHG members and the women’s husbands. They also held rallies to spread the word.

 

Having qualified as community nutrition advocates, Zuhra, Meera and the other SHG leaders disseminated their new knowledge to their group members—women like Santosh, Hemlata, Rukmani.

 

One of the project aims was to increase the food available for the sample set of women and children. This was measured by moving them up at least one point on a four-point scale.

 

How The Rajasthan Nutrition Project Defined Food Security
Status Meaning
Food secure Have enough food and of the kinds of nutritious foods we want to eat
Food insecure without hunger Have enough food but not always nutritious food
Food insecure with moderate hunger Sometimes not enough food to eat and was sometimes hungry
Food insecure with severe hunger Often not enough food to eat, was often hungry

Source: Freedom from Hunger India Trust and Grameen Foundation

 

Women were also encouraged to use the food distributed to pregnant and lactating women and young children under the ICDS. Some women had not used this service because they did not know of it, others because their families restricted their movements.

 

“We never knew that the anganwadi provides children (aged 3 to 6 years) a free daily meal, a variety of meals like daliya (porridge) and khichdi (a rice and lentil preparation), and take home rations for infants,” said Meera, the SHG leader.

 

SHG leader Meera (in green) with her SHG members

The Rajasthan Nutrition Project, an initiative in Rajasthan’s Sirohi and Banswara districts involved training 1250 mostly illiterate Self Help Group (SHG) leaders in health, nutrition and managing household finances. Here, Meera (in green), a SHG leader, is seen with a few members of her SHG, with who she shared her learning. The 1250 SHG leaders reached out to over 8000 women, and through them, touched the lives of 30,000 people.

 

Having learned of what was available, the women of Morthala wondered if they would be permitted to walk to the nearest anganwadi, a couple of kilometres away, in the neighbouring village.

 

To address this social constraint, community facilitators like Baldev Kumar, also trained under the project, and community nutrition advocates conducted gender dialogues to explain to husbands why it was important for couples to make decisions jointly.

 

After these conversations, more than  twice the number of women were permitted to visit a market or healthcare centre than before, increasing the use of anganwadi services by 32%. The number of couples taking joint decisions about buying food also doubled.

 

Ensuring dietary diversity in a few, cost-effective steps

 

To improve their family’s nutrient intake, women were advised dietary diversity, especially to eat more fruit and vegetables. This was unthinkable for many of the tribal women, who had no money to buy extra food.

 

“So, we sourced seeds from local government agencies and helped them create kitchen gardens, even those with limited water supply started using waste wash water to grow a few vegetables,” said Baldev.

 

Women now reported consuming an average of three additional foods a day. Their intake of green leafy vegetables increased 344%, their consumption of yellow/orange coloured veggies rose 940% and their milk intake rose 70%.

 

Nutrition tips the women took to implementing included guidelines such as “cook in an iron pot” and “make more nourishing rotis (Indian flat bread) by mixing a couple of grains like wheat, corn and pearl millet instead of using only wheat” and “breastfeed your children in the first hour after birth”, reported Zuhra and Meera.

 

Among the 403 study participants were 21 pregnant women, an intentional inclusion to gauge how women’s autonomy affected breastfeeding.

 

When the women were first interviewed, it turned out that those with a say in their household finances were more likely to report exclusively breastfeeding their child for six months.

 

Over the course of the engagement, the percentage of new mothers who breastfed infants within the first hour of birth increased from 47% to 83%.

 

Autonomy empowers rural women to deal with illness more promptly

 

Having been shown how to make Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS) and to keep a child with diarrhoea well hydrated, the number of women who had treated a child with diarrhoea with ORS increased by 140%—from 34% to 84%.

 

“Now we take care of diarrhoea ourselves by making ORS,” said Meera, the SHG leader

 

Better knowledge of health services at the anganwadi encouraged more women to promptly seek healthcare for themselves as well as their children.

 

Savings on health increased from 65% to 80% while 52% women reported an overall increase in savings.

 

“Now we put aside a little money every month for our health, just in case we need it,” said Zuhra.

 

Zuhra - SHG

Zuhra Bano (in orange), a Self Help Group (SHG) leader, signed up to be trained as a Community Nutrition Advisor, which meant she would share health, nutrition and household finance information with members of her SHG and interact with the women’s husbands to tell them how important is it to make decisions about health and food jointly.

 

Make the community a part of the solution

 

“We found the methodology effective because it involves the community; making local women a part of the solution always works better than advocacy by an external agent,” Roli Singh, secretary of Rajasthan’s department of women and child development told IndiaSpend.

 

“Also, the initiative is cost-effective, and the kitchen garden component to enhance the supply of fresh and nutritious food can be made more effective by synergising it with a livelihoods initiative and agriculture extension schemes,” said Singh.

 

To involve the community even more closely, Singh would also like the manufacturing, packaging and supply of supplementary nutrition to be outsourced to SHG clusters with experience in health and nutrition advocacy.

 

At recent national and state level consultations in Delhi and Jaipur, Arun Panda, (then) additional secretary and mission director, National Rural Health Mission, released a policy brief and a technical guide based on the Rajasthan project.

 

Prepare nutritional dos and don’ts in simple language, including Hindi, and share these with the ministry of health and family welfare to be disseminated in other states, Panda requested the Freedom From Hunger India Trust. “Simple and cost-effective solutions can easily be understood, adopted and sustained,” he said.

 

Back in Morthala, Meera and others’ lives are changed forever. Thanks to a small change in their mealtime routine.

 

(Bahri is a freelance writer and editor based in Mount Abu, Rajasthan.)

 

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As India Plans Healthcare Privatisation, New Study From Rural Chhattisgarh Reveals Pitfalls

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As India prepares a national plan to privatise large swathes of healthcare, a new study reveals how the poor in Chhattisgarh already prefer private care, even though it is twice as costly as public healthcare and likely to push them into financial emergencies.

 

The study, published in the July 2017 issue of the Journal of Health Management, a health policy journal, also showed that 84% of rural Chhattisgarh families pushed to “hardship financing”–selling assets or taking costly loans–already had government insurance cover, indicating the depth of rural poverty and the failure of public healthcare.

 

About one in seven (15%) rural Chhattisgarh households used hardship financing for hospitalisation, (around 10%) maternity (around 10%) and even outpatient department (OPD) care (7.91%), said the study, conducted between July and August 2013, using survey data of 4,600 rural households across four blocks (Chhuriya, Ambagarh Chowki, Mohal and Dongargarh).

 

Private healthcare twice as costly as public, yet private facilities favoured

 

Although hospitalisation at a private healthcare facility was more than twice as expensive as public care, sampled households preferred private hospitals and clinics.

 

While 34% visited a private facility, only 7% visited a government facility for the OPD. For hospitalisation, nearly 69.97% visited a private hospital.

 

The average cost of hospitalisation in a private facility was Rs 20,098, against the average cost of hospitalisation (Rs 9,152) in a government facility.

 

In the year preceding the survey, about 43.14% reported a “health event”, 31.25% reported OPD visits over the past month, and 7.3% of sampled households reported hospitalisation over the year. Around 50% of the population visited a rural medical practitioner.

 

Households spent an average of Rs 1,027 over a 30-day period for OPD care.The
average cost for hospitalisation was substantially higher at Rs 24,481.70, followed by maternity and OPD.

 

“It was generally assumed that households are able to cope with outpatient care expenses as these are smaller in amount,” said N Devadasan, director, Institute of Public Health, a Bengaluru-based public health research and training institute. “However, this study clearly shows that households do suffer from hardship even to finance their outpatient care.”  Devadasan was not associated with the study.

 

Around 46% of the hospitalisation events exposed to hardship financing were from the private sector, compared to 26% in government care.

 

After household savings, loans with interest was the second most common source of financing an illness event among surveyed households.

 

84% of families in healthcare crises already covered by state insurance

 

Among the surveyed population, 84% households were covered by the Rastriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), a national health insurance programme, or Mukhyamantri Swasthya Bima Yojana (MSBY), the chief minister’s insurance programme. Yet, all households were exposed to hardship financing, which means the schemes are not providing adequate financial protection.

 

The Chhattisgarh government provided the RSBY for unorganised-sector workers and MSBY to every household not covered by RSBY to prevent health spending that caused families to slip into poverty.

 

“Catastrophic” maternal healthcare expenses push 46.6% of mothers in India into poverty, IndiaSpend reported on May 22, 2017. Catastrophic expenditure is greater than or equal to 40% of a household’s non-subsistence income, i.e. income available after basic needs have been met, according to the World Health Organization.

 

Both the schemes provide health insurance coverage up to Rs 30,000 per family every year on what is called a “family floater basis”, a technical term that means the insurance cover is available for one person or up to five members of the family.

 

Households that had at least one family member engaged with a social group, such as a self-help group (SHG), have a higher propensity to use hardship financing. Since these members have access to low-interest loans from social groups, they preferred this option to financing healthcare rather than use savings or borrow from friends and relatives.

 

 

“Healthcare is financed in India primarily through out-of-pocket payments (OOP) made by individual households at the point of care,” Devadasan said. “This is one of the most regressive forms of financing healthcare and most countries are shifting to a pre-payment system, either through tax based revenues or through insurance premiums.”

 

Studies, both in India and elsewhere (click here, here and here), have highlighted the harmful effects of OOP payments, ranging from reducing access to quality healthcare services to impoverishment of the household, Devadasan said.

 

Despite being covered by the RSBY and MSBY, patients still made OOP payments for inpatient care. It would “be useful” to understand why this was so, as it would help programme implementers tweak schemes to close this gap, said Devadasan.

 

Why further research is important to tweak healthcare design

 

The study, which revealed medical costs in Chhattisgarh to be three to four times higher than average national health estimates, also provides an insight into more accurate ways of measuring impoverishment caused by health expenses.

 

“Traditionally, the financial burden on households due to healthcare expenditure was measured either by calculating catastrophic health expenditure or the extent of impoverishment,” said  Devadasan.

 

But catastrophic health expenditure and impoverishment are difficult to calculate and may misrepresent economic hardship. “So, a new indicator like hardship financing that actually captures the hardship of the family when it spends on healthcare is a more accurate one,” said Devadasan, who explained it was also important to gauge the long-term effects of hardship financing. “How long does a family continue in debt or does it bounce back soon? What are the drivers for this? These could be areas for future research.”

 

Managers of government programmes could use the definition of hardship financing to survey patients at private and public healthcare facilities to understand how low-income households or those with no access to health insurance, use and finance healthcare in rural areas.

 

The findings could be useful to improving the designing of some of government health programmes and state-supported health-insurance schemes.

 

(John is a public health professional, and works as Evidence Synthesis Specialist with the Campbell Collaboration based in New Delhi.)

 

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Killer Potholes: 29 Accidents Reported Every Day Over 3 Years

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Even as radio jockey Malishka and radio channel Red FM 93.5 are embroiled in a controversy with the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) over a satirical video about the bad condition of the city roads, almost 29 accidents per day, or one accident every 50 minutes, were reported due to potholes across the country between 2013 and 2015, according to this reply by the Ministry of State for Road Transport and Highways to the Rajya Sabha (upper house of Parliament) on March 27, 2017.

 

 

Soon after Malishka’s video went viral, the youth wing of Shiv Sena, the party in power at the MCGM, asked the municipal body to sue the radio jockey and the FM radio station for defamation.

 

Following the furore, Red FM released a follow-up video challenging the critics.

 

 

As many as 10,876 road accidents due to potholes were reported across the country in 2015, the latest figure available. The data for 2016 are yet to be compiled, according to this reply by the ministry to the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament).

 

Over three years, 31,681 accidents were reported due to potholes.

 

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Source: Lok Sabha

 

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Source: Lok Sabha

 

Madhya Pradesh reported the maximum road accidents (3,070) due to potholes in 2015 followed by Maharashtra with 1,867 accidents, Uttar Pradesh (1,196), Tamil Nadu (1,112) and Gujarat (584).

 

(Mallapur is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

 

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How India’s Sunny, Solar Forecast Could Become Reality

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On May 12, 2017, India recorded its lowest-ever solar tariff of Rs 2.44/unit of electricity. That is a 73% fall since 2010, and compares favourably with India’s cheapest power source–coal, electricity from which now ranges between Rs 3/unit and Rs 5/unit.

 

The new low solar cost was announced at a reverse auction–in which the role of buyer and seller is reversed and the seller with the lowest bid obtains the business–by the state-owned Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited (SECI) at the Bhadla solar park in north-west Rajasthan. This was mainly possible due to a drop in the cost of solar modules (largely due to technology advances), the prices for which fell 29% in India in the first quarter of 2017 over the previous year.

 

Renewable energy could generate 49% of electricity in India by 2040 because more efficient batteries–to store electricity when the sun does not shine–will provide flexibility of use and boost the reach of renewables, cutting the cost of solar energy by a further 66% over current costs, according to the Bloomberg New Energy Outlook 2017 report.

 

Tim Buckley

Tim Buckley, Director of Energy Finance Studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a think tank based in the US.

 

In an email interview with IndiaSpend, Tim Buckley, Director of Energy Finance Studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, (IEEFA), a think tank based in the US, acknowledges the sunny investment climate for solar technology in India but warns that a failure to honour legal and policy commitments could destabilise investor confidence in the whole solar programme.

 

Buckley, 50, has been a financial analyst through his career, 17 years of which were spent as a managing director at Citigroup, a bank. A long-distance runner in his private life, Buckley  became involved with the energy sector a decade ago after a discussion with his then Chairman, Chris Cuffe (an Australian financial markets leader). Buckley asked Cuffe why he was interested in the technology development of renewable energy and his reply stuck: Along with food and water security, energy security drives strategic thinking in all nations.

 

Buckley believes that the rise of technology innovation in energy markets is driving “profound change” globally, and he is “fascinated” by India’s commitment to pursue an energy transformation that aims at increasing non-fossil fuel capacity in its generation mix from about 33% currently to 40% by 2030.

 

Q: What is causing the cost of solar-cell technology to drop so drastically and how much of a contributor is this to the drop in price of solar power?

 

The cost of solar modules is free falling due to rapid and sustained technology improvements adding to the massive economies of scale being achieved. Production volumes globally are growing 10-30% annually for the last decade. By selling at close to zero profit margins, China continues to subsidise the production and exporting of solar modules to gain global market share, and India is a key beneficiary of this.

 

Solar’s sustained volume growth is driving the construction of whole new plants every month, and this is accelerating the deployment of the latest technology at very fast rates, and makes old solar module manufacturing plants of just four to five years of age to be outdated. The only choice the plant owner has is to upgrade the technology employed or heavily discount the price of old module production. So module prices have halved in the last two years, and IEEFA expects this decline to continue over the coming decade.

 

This is a key contributor, but not the only one. India has a very strong, clear and transparent renewable energy policy framework, and this provides investors the certainty to invest.

 

Indian solar has also benefited from the falling cost of debt (from 12-14% per annum two years ago to 8.5-9.5% today), following exchange rate stability, falling inflation rates and the government’s provision of strong counterparty risk management on renewable tariffs (through NTPC, India’s largest power utility, and the central government’s SECI).

 

The cost of debt is a major input into the cost of solar generation, given the operating costs are near zero once built. The rapid upscaling of investment has also encouraged learning by doing, driving the costs of implementing solar down along the entire value chain from finance, regulatory approval, engineering, procurement and construction (EPC), and land acquisition to grid connection.

 

Global capital flows into India are playing a key role as well, endorsing, supporting and encouraging the positive policy moves of the Indian government. Energy Minister Piyush Goyal is also taking the learnings of each solar tender and replicating the factors that are driving down tendering prices. For example, land acquisition, grid connections and payment certainty are all major risk factors affecting power sector investment in India, so the latest solar tenders provide clarity on all of these pre-bidding. Tenders also have 12-18 month time limits and performance requirements to ensure the state governments get clarity and on-time project delivery in return.

 

Q: How sustainable is this trend of dropping prices? Do you expect prices to fall further or have they reached the lowest point, staying steady now?

 

IEEFA would expect some stabilisation of solar tariffs around these record lows of Rs 2.44-2.62/kWh (kiloWatt hour, a unit of energy) seen in May 2017. These new low prices are truly phenomenal, prices don’t need to go lower, at these levels solar is the low cost solution for India’s growing electricity needs. A major long term win for Indian electricity consumers, is also that these solar tariffs are fixed in nominal terms for the 25-year contract duration. This means contracted solar prices will fall some 5% annually in real terms over the long term. Electricity’s long history of inflationary pressures is now looking to a future of sustained deflation, a powerful added incentive for India.

 

But at US$38-40/MWh (Megawatt hour, which is 1000 kWh), Indian solar is still 20-30% above the record low global prices seen in 2016 of US$24-30/MWh in the UAE, Mexico and South America. Chilean solar prices have also come in lower than in India. So, as Indian borrowing costs continue to fall, and technology advances, medium term, IEEFA would expect India will see even lower solar prices.

 

Q: Will falling prices make developers wary of further investment in the sector, and if so, to keep the momentum going, what kind of policy interventions might be required?

 

The bids of May 2017 were extremely competitive with a multitude of global and Indian majors tendering into the very transparent bidding process; they all went in with their eyes open.

 

But investors will be alarmed that solar tenders signed off and won back in 2016 are now being stalled by lack of approval progress from the state governments, who are questioning if they should honour solar contracts entered into 12-24 months ago at tariffs that were commercial back then i.e. Rs 4-7/kWh, but now in hindsight look expensive. Failure to honour legal and policy commitments could destabilize investor confidence in the whole solar programme.

 

Given targets of 100GW of solar by 2022, catalyzing US$100 billion of investment requires global investor confidence. Moves by state governments to undermine the rules of engagement could damage this. Short term penny pinching undermines massive transformational long term gains for the people of India and the economy overall.

 

Q: The levelised cost of electricity from solar photovoltaics (now almost a quarter of what it was in 2009), will become cheaper than coal in China, India, Mexico, the U.K. and Brazil by 2021. It is already at least as cheap as coal in Germany, Australia, the U.S., Spain and Italy. (Levelized cost of electricity is all expenses of generation from a power generating plant, including site development, permitting, equipment and civil works, finance, operations and maintenance) But if we count the price of solar power and storage together, it is far higher than thermal (coal) power, so can we really say that cost of solar generation has fallen below or is at par with coal powered electricity?

 

Solar today represents only 3% of installed capacity and just 1% of total Indian electricity generation, so there is no storage cost involved, solar helps solve the peak power shortages evident in the middle of the day when industry is operating.

 

When we fast forward to solar being 10-20% of generation across the whole of India – say in five to eight years time, then grid integration and supply/demand balancing will really become a material barrier to ever more solar additions. That is why it is important that India also continue to develop other generation capacities, eg. biomass, wind and hydro, particularly pumped hydro storage capacity, and invest aggressively in both expanding overall national grid capacity and modernising the grid infrastructure. International grid connectivity (Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka) can also play a larger role in the next decade, as it already does across Europe.

 

The grid system also needs to become smart – so storage costs will rise, but if there is a smart grid system, pricing signals will improve – the development of time of use pricing structures will then incentivise all electricity producers to generate and/or supply electricity at times of peak demand. These technologies already exist, and are getting cheaper by the month. So India’s grid will need to expand and transform, along with generation. PowerGrid Corp of India (the state-owned electric utilities company) is leading well, but sustained state-owned electricity distribution company reforms are a critical prerequisite to India’s successful electricity transformation.

 

Looking at solar and storage costs combined means looking at the cost and more importantly the value of peak electricity demand – best served by a time of use tariff to address the evolution and modernisation of the Indian grid. Entirely manageable with the right regulatory signal and leadership.

 

Q: How will the solar renewable sector be affected when subsidies are removed or reduced gradually, say, in five years time?

 

The solar sector in India is not based on massive subsidies. That is one of the great positives that Energy Minister Piyush Goyal has achieved. Any subsidies are generally available to all power generator technologies, for example, tax holidays and accelerated depreciation. So any gradual move to level the playing field and remove all subsidies for power generation will actually help drive solar investment, given coal fired power generation has the most subsidies of all – that being the right to externalize many of their operating costs in terms of air, particulates, carbon and water pollution, and insufficient coal ash waste disposal compliance.

 

(Patil is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

 

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How Govt Skills Training Programmes Aimed For Wrong Targets & Wasted Public Funds

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India’s goal of skilling 400 million people under the National Skills Development Programme 2015 is too large, unnecessary and unattainable, a government-appointed committee has found.

 

The previous goal of skilling 500 million people, set in 2009 under the National Policy on Skill Development, was also fixed without any basis, the report by the Committee for Rationalization & Optimization of the Functioning of the Sector Skill Councils (SSCs), issued April 25, 2017, said. SSCs are autonomous, industry-led, sector-specific skill builders that ensure skills training meets employer needs.

 

The government has missed its skills training targets for each except one of the last five years, official data show.

 

Why ‘Skill India’

 

About 64% of India’s population is expected to be in the working age group of 15-59 years by 2026, according to Ernst and Young, a professional services consultancy. India is expected to have the largest workforce in the world by 2025, with an estimated 2 billion English-speaking people by the end of 2020.

 

By the same year, the world is expected to face a shortage of 56.5 million skilled workers, while India is projected to have a surplus of 47 million, Indian government statistics say.

 

Yet, 30% of India’s youth are neither employed nor in education or training, Bloomberg reported on July 7, 2017. Unless employed gainfully, India’s “demographic dividend” can turn into a socio-economic nightmare.

 

For instance, 4.69% of India’s workforce is formally skilled, as against 52% in the USA, 68% in the UK, 75% in Germany, 80% in Japan and 96% in South Korea. In fellow emerging economy China, skilled workers account for 24% of the workforce.

 

This is noteworthy because the largest contributor to India’s economy, the services sector, requires highly-skilled workers. Manufacturing, which the government is seeking to boost through its Make in India initiative, also needs trained workers.

 

To address this imperative, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Skill India programme on World Youth Skills Day on July 15, 2015, announcing the aim to skill 402 million people by 2022.

 

The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE)’s estimate for the number of people who needed skills training was more modest–126.87 million people in 34 sectors across industries by 2022, its Annual Report 2016-17 said. Of these, the top 10 sectors would account for 80% of the total requirement, it was estimated.

 

Source: Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Annual Report 2016-17

 

Even as India struggles to provide basic skills to millions of potential job-seekers, it needs to address the challenge of automation and prepare to impart skills for jobs where humans will not be replaced by robots or algorithms.

 

No less than 69% of Indian jobs are susceptible to automation, the labour ministry told the Lok Sabha on March 27, 2017.

 

Automation is already affecting the manufacturing and engineering sectors; factory jobs are more vulnerable to automation than those in the IT companies, The Economic Times reported on June 28, 2017.

 

Government steps in

 

Mindful of the challenge, India issued a National Policy on Skill Development in 2009 with the aim of skilling 500 million people by 2022.

 

The 2015 National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship issued subsequently estimated the need to skill 402 million people over the next seven years—to train 104 million fresh entrants and re-skill/up-skill the existing 298 million farm and non-farm sector workforce.

 

However, the government has been unable to meet its annual targets–set by various ministries and departments–for any but one of the last five years.

 

Source: National Skill Development Agency; Annual Report 2016-17

NOTE: *Figures upto December 2016; Achievement data for various ministries is not available for 2016-17.

 

The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) achieved 58% of its total skills training target in 2015-16, while the remaining 19 ministries together met 42%, the committee which studied SSCs reported.

 

Key ministries responsible for sizeable employment generation such as human resources development, textiles, commerce and industry, and tourism have not been allocated the work of skill development, the report found. “Some ministries have been allocated role of ‘employment generation’ which, ipso facto, doesn’t mean that they will do skill development also,” the report said.

 

The report pointed out numerous shortcomings in India’s vocational education and training systems, including: absence of nation-wide Vocational Education and Training (VET) standards, lack of an integrated on-site apprenticeship training, inadequate industry interface, insufficient financing of the VET system, scarce training capacity, poor quality outcomes, and shortage of qualified trainers.

 

It found that many ministries imparting skills training are short of infrastructure and qualified trainers, and hence impart substandard training.

 

SSCs, which are responsible for developing and conducting programmes as well as assessing trainees, were themselves established randomly, the committee found. One of the criteria for establishing an SSC–that a sector have 1 million existing workforce–was itself not strictly followed. For instance, the Media and Entertainment SSC was created despite employing 400,000 people in 2013. The data used by the National Skills Development Council, which oversees SSCs, were based on a study “whose authenticity was difficult to establish,” the report said, adding that setting up of SSCs created “confusion and mess” instead of resolving any issues.

 

There are about 40 SSCs covering high-growth sectors such as automotives, retail, healthcare, leather and food processing, and informal sectors such as beauty and wellness, security, domestic work and plumbing.

 

Targets were overblown, loans went unpaid

 

The committee said SSCs proposed “huge physical targets” of training and certifying institutions and people–both trainees and trainers–on an “arbitrary basis,” without formulating a sectoral labour market information system and sectoral skill development plan.

 

Fund allocation to SSCs was based on achievement of these targets. Representatives of many SSCs told the committee that these high targets were allocated arbitrarily by the National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC), and SSCs were told to sign on the dotted lines so as to claim funding.

 

As a result, the quality of training, assessment and certification suffered even as targets were shown to have been achieved, the report noted.

 

The NSDC was set up in 2008 as a public-private organization to generate skilled manpower. It gave soft loans, equity and grants to private-sector training partners.

 

Many of its initial loans of around Rs 1,500 crore–nearly equivalent to the cost of setting up an Indian Institute of Technology (Rs 1,748 crore)–were not paid back.

 

NSDC Loan Defaulting Companies
Sr. No Defaulting Companies
1 Everone Skill Development Limited
2 Gras Education Services Ltd
3 JobSkill Solution Pvt. Ltd
4 Vidyanta Skill Institute Pvt. Ltd
5 Institute of Advanced Security Training and Management Pvt. Ltd
6 Globsyn Skill Development Ltd
7 Involute Institution of Indust Training Pvt. Ltd
8 Microspin Works Pvt. Ltd
9 The Gems & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (IIGJ)
10 Smart Edusol Services Pvt. Ltd
11 Talent Sprint Private Ltd
12 ESMS E Source Consulting Pvt. Ltd
13 Saksham Training & Facility Management Pvt. Ltd
14 GOLS Skills Pvt. Ltd
15 TMI E2E Academy Pvt. Ltd
Name of company with restructured loan
1 ILFS Skills Development Corporation Ltd
2 Empower Pragati Vocation and Staffing Pvt Ltd
3 Edubridge Learning Pvt ltd
4 GRAS Education and Training Services Pvt Ltd

Source: Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship – Report of the Committee for Rationalization & Optimization of the Functioning of the Sector Skill Councils in its observation

 

“NSDC and the MSDE have taken cognizance of this fact and are taking actions which are both supporting as well as penalizing to ensure timely repayment,” Manish Kumar, CEO and MD, NSDC, told IndiaSpend. As of June 14, 2017, the total amount overdue to NSDC from its non-performing assets account stood at Rs 58.24 crore, he said.

 

“NSDC Training Partners service the loan as per the terms of the loan agreement with NSDC. NSDC has a rigorous system for project appraisal and consists of independent due-diligence and multiple levels of approvals by investment committees,” Kumar said. (The NSDC’s complete response to IndiaSpend is here.)

 

A revised estimate of the incremental human resource requirement during 2017-2022 is 103.4 million across 24 high priority sectors, as per the MSDE’s annual report 2016-17.

 

Incremental Human Resource Requirement Across 24 Sectors
Sr.No Sector Projected Employment Incremental Human Resource Requirement
2017 2022 (2017-2022)
1 Agriculture 229 215.5 -13.5
2 Building Construction & Real Estate 60.4 91 30.6
3 Retail 45.3 56 10.7
4 Logistics, Transportation & Warehousing 23 31.2 8.2
5 Textile & Clothing 18.3 25 6.7
6 Education & Skill Development 14.8 18.1 3.3
7 Handloom & Handicraft 14.1 18.8 4.7
8 Auto & Auto Components 12.8 15 2.2
9 Construction Material & Building Hardware 9.7 12.4 2.7
10 Private Security Services 8.9 12 3.1
11 Food Processing 8.8 11.6 2.8
12 Tourism, Hospitality & Travel 9.7 14.6 4.9
13 Domestic Help 7.8 11.1 3.3
14 Gems & Jewellery 6.1 9.4 3.3
15 Electronics & IT Hardware 6.2 9.6 3.4
16 Beauty and Wellness 7.4 15.6 8.2
17 Furniture & Furnishing 6.5 12.2 5.7
18 Healthcare 4.6 7.4 2.8
19 Leather & Leather Goods 4.4 7.1 2.7
20 IT & ITeS 3.8 5.3 1.5
21 Banking, Financial Services & Insurance 3.2 4.4 1.2
22 Telecommunication 2.9 5.7 2.8
23 Pharmaceuticals 2.6 4 1.4
24 Media and Entertainment 0.7 1.3 0.6
Total 510.8 614.2 103.4

Source: Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Annual Report 2016-17

 

The MSDE has also distanced itself from the 500m-by-2020 target.

 

“The figure of 500 million was a part of the National Skill Development Policy of 2009 which provided for a review after five years,” MSDE told IndiaSpend in a statement. “The policy was duly reviewed and a new policy for skill development and entrepreneurship was launched in 2015, post the formation of the MSDE.”

 

Kumar added that the 2015 policy identifies the challenge more clearly: the need to skill a huge workforce of which only 4.69% is formally skilled; and gives a clearer break-up–104.62 million fresh entrants by 2022, in addition to 298.25 million existing farm and nonfarm sector workforce. (Read the ministry response to IndiaSpend here.)

 

Funds lined private pockets

 

The committee found that vocational trainers and assessing bodies were private entities who utilized government funds, but the youths who enrolled did not get proper training and were not placed. Nor were sector-wise skill needs met.

 

The National Skill Certification and Monetary Reward Scheme (STAR) launched in 2013 by the NSDC was “very ill conceived” and poorly implemented, and displayed poor placement outcomes,  the committee found.

 

STAR was a reworked version of the Skill Development Initiative Scheme (SDIS) launched in 2007 with an outlay of Rs 2,000 crore. Both functioned in parallel, with the only difference being that the former was implemented by the NSDC, the committee report noted.

 

Without evaluating STAR, the NSDC launched the Prime Minister Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) in July 2015 with a further outlay of Rs 1,500 crore. This “ambitious scheme” too was “badly implemented with very poor employment outcomes,” the report noted.

 

A programme called Recognition of Prior Learning–under which people with prior learning experience or skills were assessed and certified–was misused. People were certified “after giving 2-3 hours of training” in order to inflate numbers, the report noted.

 

Without rectifying any of the problems with PMKVY, the government launched ‘PMKVY 2.0’ in July 2016, proclaiming an aim to skill 10 million youth during 2016-2020 and setting aside an outlay of Rs 12,000 crore. The professed aim was to overcome implementation challenges and “make it more effective, transparent and beneficiary oriented,” the ministry said in a reply to the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) on March 15, 2017.

 

Of the 1.8m people trained under PMKVY during 2015-16, 12.4% received placements; 8.5% of the 1.4 million people trained under STAR were placed, the committee found.

 

“The unmistaken conclusion is that an amount of Rs 2,500 crore of public funds was spent to benefit the private sector without serving the twin purposes of meeting the exact skill needs of the industry and providing employment to youth at decent wages,” the report stated.

 

Kumar of NSDC said, however, that low placement figures belie the real employment picture. “The objective of STAR and PMKVY 1.0 Scheme was to encourage skill development of youth by providing monetary rewards for successful completion of training,” he said, “The actual numbers will be many times higher but since training partners were not mandated to report back, only a few have shared placement data…”

 

He was alluding to the fact that under PMKVY (2015-16) it was not mandatory for NSDC’s training partners to report employment data, while PMKVY (2016-20) made it mandatory.

 

Some action was taken against irregularities: five training partners and 11 skills training centres under PMKVY 2015-16 were suspended for violating marketing guidelines, making mass or fake enrollments and not adhering to PMKVY branding, according to this reply to the Lok Sabha on February 8, 2016.

 

Training Partners Suspended Under PMKVY (2015-16)
Sr. No. Training Partner Name Date of Suspension Reasons of Suspension
1 Achariya Technologies 16th June 15 Violation of marketing guidelines
2 RVS Rise Skills Solutions PVT LTD 20th July 15 Mass enrolments
3 Central Footwear Training Institute (CFTI Agra Center) 10th Sep 15 Center did not exist at the SDMS Address Non-adherence to PMKVY branding Non-Availability of Training Documentation
4 IQBRI Telecom PVT Limited 9th Oct 15 Mass enrolment
5 Leela Foundation for Education & Health 10th Mar 16 Fake enrolments Non-adherence to PMKVY branding Non-Availability of Training Documentation

 

Training Centres Suspended Under PMKVY (2015-16)
Sr. No. Training Partner Center Name Location Date of Suspension Reasons of Suspension
1 Skills Academy Expert Solutions Institute Sehore, MadhyaPradesh 12th Mar 16 Fake enrolmentsCenter did not exist at the SDMS Address
2 All India Technical & Management Council (AITMC) AITMC Chhattisgarh Durg, Chhattisgarh 16th May 16 Fake enrolments Non-adherence to PMKVY branding guidelines Non-Availability of Training Documentation
3 IIMT Engineering College IIMT Engineering College Meerut, Uttar Pradesh 16th May 16 Fake enrolments Mass enrolments
4 Innovision Ltd Innovision Training Centre Durg, Chhattisgarh 16th May 16 Fake enrolments Non-adherence to PMKVY branding guidelines Non-Availability of Training Documentation
5 Innovision Ltd Innovision Training Centre Durg, Chhattisgarh 16th May 16 Fake enrolments Non-adherence to PMKVY branding guidelines Non-Availability of Training Documentation
6 Centum Workskills India Ltd PMKVY -Lead Academy Durg, Chhattisgarh 16th May 16 Mass Enrolments Non-adherence to PMKVY branding guidelines
7 GRAS Education and Training Services Private Ltd GRASAcademy -Gaya Bihar Gaya, Bihar 16th May 16 Fake enrolments and Fake attendance sheet Trainers was not aware of PMKVY guidelines
8 GRAS Education and Training Services Private Ltd Paliganj Patna Patna, Bihar 16th May 16 Fake enrolments Trainer was not aware of PMKVY guidelines
9 AISECT Skill Mission Society AISECT Training Center-G265 Mehsana, Gujarat 16th May 16 Fake enrolments
10 AISECT Skill Mission Society AISECT Training Center-G322 Mehsana, Gujarat 16th May 16 Fake enrolments
11 Aspire Knowledge and Skills Aspire Knowledge and Skills -ChinchawadPune Pune, Maharastra 16th May 16 Mass Enrolments Non-adherence to PMKVY branding guidelines

Source: Lok Sabha

 

Nearly 40% of the enrolled trainees in skill development centres in three states—Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan—are ghost entries, the Hindustan Times reported on June 29, 2017. Following this, the ministry suspended allocation of new centres in these states, the report said.

 

Not enough trainers

 

The committee report highlighted that many ministries lack training infrastructure and impart substandard training. Some of the short-term courses offered are as short as eight hours and neither meet the skills needs of employers nor provide decent livelihood opportunities.

 

“The NSDC and SSCs made a mockery of trainers training by giving fresh diploma and engineering graduates 2-5 day training to become a qualified trainer,” the report said.

 

India needs to train 20,000 skills trainers of various kinds every year, but currently has a capacity to produce 8,268, the committee reported, suggesting that trainers’ selection criteria include basic entry qualification, pedagogy skills and minimum six months’ industry experience.

 

The way forward

 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of making India the “skills capital of the world” seems a long way off. The committee has suggested a framework, though: “If we take it up as a national goal we can transform India into a developed country by 2040 and make it the “Skills capital of the world.”

 

One of its key recommendations is implementation of ‘Reimbursable Industry Contribution’–2% of industry’s annual wage bill be collected to create the corpus for a National Skill Development Fund. Small, medium, large public and private enterprises employing 10 or more workers contribute to promote in-firm training as per industry’s own requirement. The employers manage this fund through SSCs, with their costs reimbursed depending on their annual training plans and performance.

 

“With this effort, the enterprises will be able to train youth according to their requirement, and over a period of time, we can think of an India, which will have 100% skilled manpower,” the report said.

 

(Mallapur is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

 

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Southern, Western States Hit By H1N1 Virus

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As many as 13,188 cases of Influenza A (H1N1) and 632 deaths due to the virus have been reported across the country this year till July 2017 compared to 1,786 cases and 265 deaths in 2016, according to this reply by union health minister J P Nadda to the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) on July 21, 2017.

 

Southern and western states have been the most affected by the disease this year. Tamil Nadu (2,904) has reported the highest number of cases followed by Maharashtra (2,738), Karnataka (2,480), Telangana (1,450) and Kerala (1,169).

 

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Source: Lok Sabha

 

Maharashtra has reported the highest number of deaths (303), almost half of the deaths this year.

 

H1N1 is a respiratory disorder, similar to the seasonal flu, and symptoms include sudden onset of fever, chills, sore throat, headache, cough and body ache.

 

It can cause complications like pneumonia and lung infection, and elderly, infants and those with pre-existing ailment like diabetes are vulnerable. Since the virus spreads through droplets when an infected person sneezes and/or coughs, the transmission is swift.

 

India had the worst outbreak of H1N1 influenza in 2015 when over 42,000 were infected and almost 3,000 died.

 

Apart from increasing the diagnostic capacity of laboratories where samples are tested, “central teams were also deployed to assist Kerala, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Telangana where large laboratory-confirmed H1N1 cases have been reported in 2017,” Nadda said.

 

Oseltamivir, the drug for the treatment of Influenza, can now be sold by all licenced chemists under prescription unlike earlier when only certain select pharmacies were authorised to stock the medicine, the minister said.

 

(Yadavar is principal correspondent with IndiaSpend.)

 

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Women Migrate For Work At Double The Rate That Men Do

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Women migrating for work and education between 2001 and 2011 grew at a rate that outpaced men who moved for similar reasons, shows an IndiaSpend analysis of Census data.

 

In this period, the number of women migrating for work grew by 101%, more than double the growth rate for men (48.7%). Also, the number of women who cited business as a reason for migration increased by 153% in 2001-11, more than four times the rate for men (35%).

 

Women’s migration is still driven primarily by marriage. In absolute numbers, 97% of Indians migrating for marriage were women in Census 2011, IndiaSpend reported on December 15, 2016, a marginal drop from 98.6% in Census 2001.

 

Scholars have, however, argued that women do work post-migration even if their first reason for the move was matrimony. “Women’s migration is not adequately captured because the surveys ask for only one reason for migration to be stated. This is usually stated as marriage and the secondary reason, that is finding work at the destination, may not be mentioned,” Priya Deshingkar and Shaheen Akhtar of London’s Overseas Development Institute’s had argued in an April 2009 UNDP paper.

 

“Many of the women who migrate for marriage do join the labour force,” said a January 2017 housing and urban poverty alleviation ministry report on migration, echoing Deshingkar and Akhtar.

 

Between Censuses 2001 and 2011, the number of men who migrated for education rose by 101%, less than half that for women, at 229%.

 

GIF (Desktop) (1)

Source: Census 2001, 2011

 

Migration for work usually results in relief from poverty even if it means a rough life in India’s metros, IndiaSpend reported on June 13, 2016. A migrant from Maharashtra’s drought-stricken Marathwada region, for example, triples her income temporarily after moving to Mumbai, according to the report.

 

A two-round survey of 904 households spread across Bihar in 1998-2000 and 2011 by Amrita Datta at the Institute for Human Development showed that on average households with migrants earned about Rs 11,000 more than households without migrants in 2011, the business newspaper Mint reported on August 4, 2016. The study was published in the Economic and Political Weekly on July 30, 2016.

 

Marriage remains the biggest reason for migration

 

In the 11 years to 2011, the rise in the number of men who migrated for marriage grew by 176.6%, more than four times the growth rate for women who moved for similar reasons (41.5%).

 

Between the two Censuses, marriage has remained the biggest reason for migration, dropping marginally to 49.35% of all migrants in 2011 from 50% in 2001.

 

The number of men saying they migrated either after birth or with the household rose at a slightly faster pace than women in 2001-11: 207% and 74% for the first reason and 199% and 54% for the latter.

 

Numbers dropped for both genders reporting other reasons in 2001-11, but it fell more for women (17.5%) than men (15%).

 

(Vivek is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

 

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Acid Attacks Nationwide Up 9%, Stalking 33% In 2015

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Acid attacks increased 9% to 222 in 2015 from 203 in 2014, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau, a division of the home ministry.

‘Attempts to acid attack’ declined 11% (from 52 to 46 ), data show.

 

NCRB started classifying acid attacks as a separate crime only in 2014.

 

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Source: National Crime Bureau

 

The number of stalking cases have gone up 33% over the same period (4,699 to 6,266).

 

Stalking often leads to some form of harassment, assault or violence and acid attacks in most cases, according to this report by the Acid survivors Foundation India, a Kolkata-based organisation helping acid attack victims.

The ministry of child and development released Rs 200 crore in 2016 to all states/union territories as compensation to victims of violence/acid attacks, according to this statement by the ministry on February 3, 2017.

 

Uttar Pradesh reported the highest number of acid attacks (55), followed by West Bengal (39), and Delhi UT (21), according to this reply to the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) on February 7, 2017.

 

Desktop 2

 

Source: Lok Sabha

 

(Salve is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

 

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In Mumbai, TB Deaths Spark Data Dispute Between Govt, NGO

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India’s richest municipal corporation has denied nonprofit Praja Foundation’s assessment–made from the corporation’s own data–that 18 people die of tuberculosis every day, even as Praja Foundation claims the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has no way of knowing if the assessment is wrong because it cannot access its own death-related data ever since it moved to a new software.

 

The assessment, released two weeks back, was based on data accessed through Right to Information (RTI) filings from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), which refutes its conclusions saying the data has been put together “unscientifically.”

 

Praja Foundation alleges that the BMC switched to a new software in December 2015, whose design prevents it from accessing its own data on mortality, leaving it with no way of knowing if Praja Foundation’s estimate is incorrect.

 

What the report said

 

In its The State of Health of Mumbai report, Praja Foundation assessed that 6,472 Mumbaikars died of tuberculosis during 2016-17–nearly 18 people every day.

 

It showed a 37% increase in the number of TB cases in Mumbai–from 36,417 in 2012-13 to 50,001 in 2016-2017.

 

Source: Praja Foundation Report

NOTE: *calculated through predictive model

 

Data for the report were compiled through Right to Information (RTI) filings with municipal and government hospitals and dispensaries.

 

Data on the cause of death were not available from December 2015 onwards. Praja, working in collaboration with data analytics company Hansa Cequity Solutions, extrapolated the cause of death from January 2016 to March 2017 using a predictive model that Praja Foundation claims gives “the closest possible accuracy of up to 95.5%.”

 

TB data now on central platform but cannot be accessed

 

Until December 2015, cause-of-death information was made available by all 24 BMC wards in System Application Protocol (SAP) software, which was managed locally by its public health department.

 

After that, the BMC moved from SAP to the Civil Registration System (CRS) managed by the central government. The system’s design is such that the Medical Officers of Health of all 24 wards are unable to access mortality data.

 

“We have written to the central government to allow this access about two months ago,” Padmaja Keskar, Executive Health Officer, BMC, said.

 

“Medical Officer of Health who is the sub-registrar should have access to this data since he or she is responsible for all deaths and births registered in the ward,” said Milind Mhaske, Programme Director, Praja Foundation. “However, after adopting the CRS system, they have no way to access data and they aren’t following up with the IT department of CRS to get it.”

 

Fewer patients treated, more TB programme defaulters

 

The number of TB cases treated through DOTS, the standard treatment programme for TB, has fallen by 50% over four years–from 30,828 in 2012 to 15,767 in 2016.

 

Simultaneously, the percentage of defaulters–patients whose TB treatment was interrupted for more than two months–in DOTS centres has increased from 9% in 2012 to 19% in 2016, even as the government has been promoting its “TB haarega, desh jeetega” (TB will lose, India will win) campaign.

 

A ward-wise compilation of the number of TB cases shows that from 2012-2013 to 2016-2017, TB incidence was highest in L ward (Kurla), which had 1,254 patients.

 

The report also reveals a discrepancy in the number of TB deaths reported by different sources. The  Tuberculosis Control Unit of the BMC reported 1,459 deaths in 2015, while the public health department issued 5,680 death certificates in which the cause of death was recorded as across 24 wards in 2016.

 

This means the municipal corporation is not accessing data from private-sector and other sources such as trust hospitals even though 75% of patients seek private treatment.

 

Source: Praja Foundation Report,

NOTE: *calculated through predictive model

 

BMC’s written response to Praja

 

The BMC has written to Praja Foundation to refute its findings.

 

“..the interpretation of the results should be based on the knowledge of the programme and the field situation and adopt scientific methodology,” Dr Padmaja Keskar, executive health officer, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation and Sunil Dhamne, Deputy Municipal Commissioner, Public Health, wrote to Nitai Mehta, Founder Trustee of Praja Foundation on July 13, in a letter reviewed by IndiaSpend. “It seems you have done random collection of data from various health facilities and added it which is vague.”

 

In a letter back to the BMC on July 17, which IndiaSpend has also reviewed, Praja Foundation has said it collected data from various health facilities in formats chosen by the facilities themselves because in its past experience, “whenever we have applied for data/information to a centralized department we have always been advised to [go] to the local units for information.”

 

The foundation has suggested that the public health department bring out an annual statistical health report for various diseases and ailments, causes of death and similar data. It has also stated that it would support the department in this exercise.

 

Councillors show little concern for TB

 

Despite the widespread prevalence of TB and rising deaths, Praja Foundation’s report notes, Mumbai’s municipal councillors asked 68 questions about the naming or renaming of hospitals, health centres and cemeteries in the house during the past five years, and 45 questions about TB.

 

“Five questions were raised regarding renaming of Jogeshwari Trauma Hospital. Corporators first suggested the name Hinduhridaysamrat Shivsena Pramukh Manviya Shri Balasaheb Thackeray Trauma Hospital and later, other corporators came asking for removal of the word ‘Shivsena Pramukh’ over a series of queries,” The Indian Express reported on July 15, 2017.

 

(Marbaniang is an intern with IndiaSpend. Yadavar is principal correspondent with IndiaSpend.)

 

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In 2015, India Better Only Than Afghanistan In South Asia In Providing Access To Basic Drinking Water Services

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With 88% of its population able to access “basic drinking water services” in 2015, India ranked 165 among 233 countries/regions globally, according to the 2017 report of the Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene produced by the World Health Organization and UNICEF. The global average was 89%.

 

Among its South Asian neighbours (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka), India ranked better only than Afghanistan, where 63% of the population had access to basic drinking water services.

 

The report, published on July 12, 2017, evaluated 233 countries/regions globally based on the percentage of population that sourced its drinking water from ‘basic services’, ‘limited services’, ‘unimproved services’ of water or from ‘surface water’.

 

GIF

 

Source: Progress on drinking water, sanitation and hygiene

 

Basic services: Drinking water from an improved source, provided collection time is not more than 30 minutes for a round trip, including queuing;

 

Limited services: Drinking water from an improved source for which collection time exceeds 30 minutes for a round trip, including queuing;

 

Unimproved services: Drinking water from an unprotected dug well or unprotected spring;

 

Surface water: Drinking water directly from a river, dam, lake, pond, stream, canal or irrigation canal.

 

In 2015, 4% of India’s population sourced its drinking water from ‘limited services’, 7% from ‘unimproved services’ and 1% from surface water; the global average was 4%, 6% and 2%, respectively.

 

(Vivek is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

 

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In 2016, India Had 4th Largest Number Of Threatened Mammal Species In The World

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India, with 92 threatened mammal species, was fourth in a list of 218 regions across the world, according to data from the World Bank.

 

In 2016, six of 10 regions with the most threatened mammal species in the world were in Asia, in particular Indonesia, China, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

 

Indonesia, with 188 threatened species of mammals, was ranked highest.

 

VIz

 

Source: World Bank

 

Notes: “Threatened” refers to species classified under the the red list categories of vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered by International Union for Conservation of Nature, a global environmental network.
Regions include 196 countries and areas like West Bank and Gaza, Virgin Islands (USA) and Macao (an autonomous region on the Chinese coast).

 

(Patil is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

 

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No Improvement In Drinking Water For Elementary Schools Over 6 Years

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Over 85% of rural government elementary schools had a provision for drinking water in 2016, compared to 83% in 2010, while only about 74% of schools had drinking water facilities that were useable, compared to 73% in 2010, showing little progress in access to drinking water over six years, according to data collected for the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), a citizen-led survey of rural schools.

 

Drinking water facilities include handpumps taps, any other form like an earthen pitcher or other storage vessels etc.

 

In 2016, the ASER survey was conducted in 589 out of 619 rural Indian districts, and surveyors visited 17,473 elementary schools. ASER has been collecting data on water and sanitation infrastructure in rural government elementary schools since 2009.

 

Almost 200 million students are enrolled in elementary government schools in India. It is important to ensure that these students are provided with safe and potable water to avoid the risk of bacterial infections that lead to conditions like diarrhoea. Studies have shown that early childhood diarrhoea is linked to absenteeism in schools, malnutrition, and even stunted growth and development.

 

Drinking water facilities face similar problems as sanitation facilities in schools. In 2016, as many as 96.5% of rural elementary government schools in India had toilets, but more than one in four toilets (27.79%) were dysfunctional or locked, as IndiaSpend reported on July 19, 2017.

 

In September 2014, the central government launched the Swachh Bharat Swachh Vidyalaya (Clean India Clean School) program, “a new government roadmap for WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) in Schools”, according to a handbook on ‘Clean India: Clean Schools,” prepared by UNICEF for the Ministry of Human Resource Development.  It stresses the importance of the “provision of child-friendly and sustainable safe drinking water”, amongst other things.

 

But the government does not track the usability of drinking water infrastructure, and nor is this addressed in various government documents on water and sanitation.

 

The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for all) framework for elementary education specifies that provision for drinking water in every school is a must. The “department of drinking water supply in the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India has a provision under the National Rural Drinking Water Mission to provide drinking water facility in rural schools,” the framework said, but does not explicitly mention the usability of such facilities.

 

Source: Annual Status of Education Report

 

Are students drinking safe water?

 

Like usable drinking water facilities, the District Information System for Education (DISE), the main source of data on school drinking water, does not collect data on the quality of drinking water. Although there is a provision to test drinking water under government guidelines, there is little information on the frequency of testing, and the findings of such tests, which are supposed to be recorded with the district administration, are difficult to access.

 

In 2011, half of the schools in seven districts across India had contaminated water, according to a rapid human development assessment called PAHELI (People’s Assessment of Health Education and Livelihoods) by ASER, which conducted faecal coliform tests on rural school drinking water.

 

Source: ASER People’s Assessment of Health Education and Livelihoods (PAHELI) survey

 

Little progress in provision of drinking water in schools

 

In many states, even the availability of infrastructure for drinking water seems to be a problem that is getting worse.

 

Nationally, the proportion of rural schools with availability of drinking water facilities has grown from 83.03% in 2010 to 85.25% in 2016, a two-percentage point increase over a six-year period. The growth in useable drinking water facilities has been equally marginal: 1.33 percentage points between 2010 (72.74%) and 2016 (74.07%).

 

Data show a similar picture at the state level.

 

The proportion of schools with a usable drinking water facility declined between 2010 and 2016 in Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Sikkim, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Meghalaya.

 

Nagaland reported the sharpest drop of 14-percentage points in the proportion of schools with functional drinking water provisions from 37% in 2010 to 22.56% in 2016, followed by Madhya Pradesh (78.51% to 73%) and Kerala (85.66% to 80.5%). The drop in Uttar Pradesh (from 82.18% to 82.02%), Karnataka (from 75.76% to 75.25%) and Punjab (83% to 81.67) was comparatively small.

 

Source: Annual Status of Education Report

 

The decline in drinking water facilities, even with resources and policy directed towards the construction of new water provisions, suggests that maintenance and regular evaluation of old infrastructure is important.

 

In Maharashtra, for instance, the proportion of schools with facilities for drinking water, functional or not, increased from 81.3 to 85.49% between 2010 and 2016. But the proportion of schools with usable drinking water declined marginally from 68.98 in 2010 to 67.1% in 2016. In other words, even the miniscule progress made in the availability of drinking water provisions was discounted by the poor quality of the infrastructure.

 

Source: Annual Status of Education Report

 

In no state in India did more than 90% schools have a usable water facility, according to ASER 2016. Bihar (89.48%) came closest to the 90% threshold, followed by Chhattisgarh (84.99%), Himachal Pradesh (84.70%), Gujarat (84.58%), Tamil Nadu (82.50%), Uttar Pradesh (82.02%), Punjab (81.67%), Jharkhand (81.51%), and Kerala (80.50%).

 

States with the lowest proportion of schools with usable water facility included Nagaland (22.56%), Meghalaya (19.84%) and Manipur (15.25%).

 

(Bhattacharyya leads the water and sanitation activities of ASER Centre. Gangwar is an undergraduate student of political science and economics at Ashoka University, Haryana, and recently interned with the ASER Centre.)

 

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Forest Cover In India Increased By 3,700 Sq Km In 2015

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In 2015, forest cover all over India increased by 3,775 sq km–six times the size of Mumbai–as compared to 2013, according to the State of Forests Report.

 

The highest increase was in Tamil Nadu (2,501 sq. km) followed by Kerala (1317 sq. km), Jammu and Kashmir (450 sq. km) and Karnataka (289 sq. km).

 

The greatest reduction in forest cover were in Mizoram (306 sq. km), Uttarakhand (268 sq. km) and Telangana (168 sq. km).

 

 

Source: India State of Forests Report 2015

Notes with the data: Forest areas include all tree species including bamboos, orchards, coconut, palm etc, within recorded forest, private, community or institutional lands.

The change can be attributed to conservation measures, management interventions, harvesting of short ‘rotational’ plantations, clearances in encroached areas, biotic pressures, shifting cultivation and more, the report said.

State-wise reasons for the change can be found here.

 

(Shah is a reporter/writer with IndiaSpend.)

 

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Only 17 of 100 Biharis support JD(U): Unravelling The Nitish Kumar Myth

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Nitish Kumar, the Chief Minister of Bihar, is a very popular leader in that state, with virtues of probity in public life and governance focus on development, the English press and the larger media narrative would have us believe.

 

Do actual voters in Bihar think the same? Not according to our analysis. Nitish Kumar’s party has only been above the Congress in electoral popularity, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been the state’s most popular party–its popularity preceding Prime Minister Narendra Modi–and no more than 17 of 100 voters chose to vote only for Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), or JD (U), according to our analysis of electoral results over six elections since 2004.

 

Over the last decade, voters in Bihar have voted in six elections – 2004 Lok Sabha, 2005 Vidhan Sabha, 2009 Lok Sabha, 2010 Vidhan Sabha, 2014 Lok Sabha and 2015 Vidhan Sabha. Over this period, of every 100 Bihari voters, roughly 37 voted only for the BJP, 30 only for Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), no more than 17 only for the JD (U), and 10 only for the Indian National Congress (INC).

 

In other words, Nitish Kumar’s supposed popularity in Bihar is not borne out in electoral numbers. So, how has Nitish Kumar been chief minister for nearly 13 years since 2005? The answer lies in Nitish Kumar’s manoeuvring of electoral alliances and taking advantage of India’s first-past-the-post electoral system.

 

Over the course of six elections in Bihar since 2004, electoral alliance partners have always changed, with inter-breeding across the four main parties: JD(U), BJP, RJD and INC. So, it has been difficult to accurately judge voter support for each of these parties.

 

But there was at least one instance across these six elections when each of these parties went solo, and that gives us a way to reasonably gauge standalone support for the party and/or its leader. In 2009 and 2010, the RJD and INC contested on their own. In 2014, it was the JD(U) and BJP. In 2015, the BJP went solo. Here is the electoral map of the six elections:

 

map_d

 

Why the BJP has the least to gain from any alliance

 

The BJP is the most popular stand-alone party in Bihar, chosen exclusively by–as we said–37 of every 100 voters, regardless of alliances. The BJP’s support in Bihar has been the most stable (37-39%), and they appear to have the least to gain from any alliance.

 

The BJP’s popularity in Bihar predates Narendra Modi’s 2014 general election victory. Lalu Yadav’s RJD is the second-most popular party on a stand-alone basis with roughly 30 of 100 voters.

 

Nitish Kumar, contrary to perception, is the least popular among the three, with 17 of 100 Biharis voting for him alone. The chart below shows the contested vote share for each of these parties across these four elections, and the highlighted vote share is their smallest vote share when they contest on their own.

 

VS_D_final

 

To delve further, there are 55 assembly constituencies in Bihar that had a JD (U) candidate in each of four elections between 2009 and 2015. In these 55 constituencies, only 22% of the voters chose JD(U) when it contested alone, but when it allied with either the BJP or the RJD, 43% chose the JD(U).

 

In other words, a large number of Biharis only vote for the JD(U) only when it is in an alliance. In contrast, there were 58 constituencies with an RJD candidate in each of the four elections we mentioned: 33% chose the RJD when it stood alone and 45% chose it when it entered into an alliance. The RJD has a much stronger stand-alone support than the JD(U).

 

What is more striking is that Nitish Kumar is Chief Minister largely due to Lalu Yadav’s RJD. In the 2015 elections when Nitish Kumar, Lalu Yadav and the Congress joined hands, it was Lalu Yadav’s supporters that turned this alliance to victory. The RJD and JD(U) contested in 101 constituencies each as alliance partners in the 2015 election. In more than half of these constituencies, the JD(U) could not transfer all of its votes to this alliance, while the RJD transferred all its votes from 2014 to this alliance in nearly three-fourths of constituencies.

 

The direct beneficiary of this transfer was JD(U), which saw its vote share rise from 17% in 2014 to 41% in 2015.  It is clear from the data that Nitish Kumar would not be the Chief Minister of Bihar today had RJD’s core supporters not been as loyal and deserted this alliance.

 

Only when Nitish Kumar was left to contest on his own in 2014 did it become very clear that his support base is not nearly as large and loyal as was perceived. Nitish Kumar needs either the BJP or the RJD more than they need him. As the legendary investor Warren Buffet famously said: “Only when the tide goes out do you know who is swimming naked.”

 

(Chakravarty is Founding Trustee, IndiaSpend. Research support by Ishita Trivedi of IDFC Institute)

 

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258 Of 336 Posts For Professors At AIIMS Vacant

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76% posts for professors at six All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) institutions are vacant, health minister J P Nadda informed the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) on July 21, 2017.

 

The six AIIMS at Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Jodhpur, Patna, Raipur and Rishikesh were established under the first phase of the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY, Prime Minister’s Health Protection Scheme), 2003.

 

The objective was to correct regional imbalances in affordable and reliable tertiary healthcare services and augment quality medical education.

 

As many as 178 of the 258 posts were advertised while 76 posts were re-advertised, Nadda told the Lok Sabha.

 

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Source: Source: Lok Sabha

 

As many as 1,300 posts were advertised for AIIMS at Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Jodhpur, Patna, Raipur and Rishikesh last year. Only 300 were selected and 200 finally joined, the Indian Express reported on July 5, 2017.

 

“While substantially higher salary structures in the private sector for specialities such as nuclear medicine and neurosurgery is one factor, making recruitment for senior posts like professor and additional professor extremely difficult, the other factor is the lack of facilities in smaller centres where AIIMS have come up,” the Express reported.

 

The government has doubled the allocation for PMSSY to Rs 3,975 crore from Rs 1,953 crore.

 
G2

Source: Compilation of union budget by CBGA

 

Six more AIIMS are planned at Nagpur in Maharashtra, Kalyani in West Bengal, Guntur in Andhra Pradesh, Bathinda in Punjab, Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh and Kamrup in Assam.

 
(Yadavar is principal correspondent with IndiaSpend.)
 

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MP Mob Attacks Muslim Women Over Beef Rumour; 27th Attack in 2017, Most In 8 Years

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The video shows two Muslim women being slapped, kicked and abused for nearly half an hour by a mob of cow vigilantes, as police stand by. “Gau mata ki jai! (hail mother cow),” the attackers scream, as onlookers–one of whom filmed the video–watch but do not intervene.

 

 

After the attack, reported by NDTV on July 27, 2017, the two women were arrested on suspicion of carrying beef, which is banned. The police later said it was buffalo meat, carrying which is not banned. The women were charged for trading meat without a permit. No action was taken against the attackers, the report said.

 

The attack on the two women in the town of Mandsaur in western Madhya Pradesh was the 26th in 118 days since 55-year-old Pehlu Khan died after a mob attack on April 1, 2017, bringing the count to 27 cases of cow-related violence in seven months this year, the most in eight years, according to an IndiaSpend database that records such violence in India. We have now recorded as many as 70 cases of cow-related violence over eight years.

 

Created through a collection and content analysis of reports in the English media–which tend to have the greatest spread of national news–the database shows that 97% (68 of 70) of such incidents were reported after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government came to power in May 2014. More than half or 54% of the cow-related violence–38 of 70 cases–were from states governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), when the attacks were reported, revealed our analysis of violence recorded until July 27, 2017.

 

The data show that Muslims were the target of 51% (36 of 70) cases of violence centred on bovine issues over nearly eight years (2010 to 2017) and comprised 86% (24 of 28) killed in 70 incidents.

 

As least 136 people were also injured in these attacks, and more than half (54%) of these attacks were based on rumours, our analysis of the IndiaSpend database revealed.

Despite the increase in violence related to bovine issues, particularly over the last three years, the ministry of home affairs does not collect data on lynchings, said this government statement to the Lok Sabha (parliament’s lower house) on July 25, 2017.

 

National or state crime data do not distinguish general violence from cow-related attacks and lynchings, so the IndiaSpend database is the first such statistical perspective to a growing national debate over such violence.

 

In nearly half the attacks (49%), police register cases against victims

 

Of 70 attacks over eight years, 68 (97%) occurred, as we said, after Modi’s government came to power (2014-2017), with most attacks within seven months in 2017. The year 2016 reported the second-most cases of cow-related violence at 25 incidents, as IndiaSpend reported in June, 2017.

 

In nearly half or 49% (34 attacks) of cases reported, police registered cases against victims/survivors–as they did in Mandsaur–an analysis of our cow-related-violence database revealed.

The police response to the mob in Mandsaur is contrary to the Prime Minister’s recent rhetoric against violence perpetrated in the name of cow protection.

 

On June 29, 2017, a day after protests in Indian cities, London and New York against the government’s slow response and silence after nationwide attacks against mostly Muslims and Dalits, Modi, speaking at the centenary celebrations of Sabarmati Ashram in Gujarat, said:

“Killing people in the name of gau bhakti (cow worship) is unacceptable. This is not something Mahatma Gandhi would approve of.”

 

“No one has the right to take law into his/her hands. We belong to a land of non-violence. Violence is not the solution to any problem.”

 

“No one spoke about protecting cows more than Mahatma Gandhi and Acharya Vinobha Bhave. Yes it should be done,” the prime minister said. He ended the statement saying, “Let’s all work together. Let’s create an India our freedom fighters would be proud of.

 

 

A day before the start of the monsoon session in Parliament on July 15, 2017, the prime minister, at an all-India meeting of the BJP, once again criticised cow vigilantes and put the onus on state governments to stringently act against them. He said :

 

“We believe cow is our mother, she is tied to people’s emotions. But it must be understood that there are laws to protect cows and there is no option to break it,” the prime minister tweeted on July 16, 2017.

 

“In the name of cow-protection, some anti-social elements are trying to spread chaos. People are taking advantage of this to spoil the fraternal spirit of this country.”

 

“This is impacting the country’s image. State governments should take strict action against such anti-social elements.”

 

Offences promoting enmity between different groups up 41% over last 3 years

 

As many as 1,235 cases related to offences promoting enmity between different groups–under section 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion, race, place of birth, etc.) and 153B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration) of the Indian Penal Code–were reported during 2014-16, according to a July 25, 2017 Lok Sabha reply to a question on lynchings.

 

“[Under sections 153A and 153B of the Indian Penal Code] the National Crime Records Bureau [NCRB] maintains data on offences promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion, race, place of birth etc… However, it does not maintain data on cases relating to cow ‘vigilantes’, cow trade and trafficking,” Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, minister of state for the home ministry, told the Lok Sabha in his reply.

 

“Offences promoting enmity between different groups” increased 41% over three years to 2016, rising from 336 to 475. Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s most-populous state, reported the most (202) cases, registering a 346% increase, from 26 in 2014 to 116 in 2016. UP was followed by Kerala (151), Karnataka (114), Telangana (104) and Maharashtra (103), among the top five states, over three years.

 

Cases in Uttarakhand increased at the greatest rate nationwide, 450%, from four in 2014 to 22 in 2016.

 

Source: Lok Sabha

 

The government also said that there is no proposal to promulgate a law against lynching.

 

With mob violence in the name of cow protection rising, the National Campaign Against Mob Lynching, a committee of civil society members, has proposed a new law. The Manav Suraksha Kanoon (MASUKA) suggests no bail for those accused of mob lynching, life imprisonment for those convicted and immediate suspension of the concerned station house officer. An online petition demanding MASUKA has received over 34,000 signatures.

 

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By Ending ‘Zombie Energy’, India Could Cut Premature Deaths From Air Pollution by 65%

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  • In 2013 and 2014, India provided subsidies worth $16.9 billion/year (Rs 1.08 lakh crore/year) to produce energy from fossil fuels, mostly through support for state-owned or controlled enterprises.
  • The estimated health cost from burning fossil fuels during the same time was $140.7 billion (Rs 9.02 lakh crore) every year, over eight times the value of the subsidies.
  • For $16.9 billion, India could provide 375 million households with solar lamps and train nearly 32,000 more doctors at the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) than it does now.
  • Alternatively, $16.9 billion is enough to pay for about a quarter of the amount needed for universal health coverage for all Indians.
  • By eliminating fossil fuel subsidies and implementing corrective taxes on oil, coal and gas, India could avoid 64.5% of 1.4 million premature deaths that occur every year because of air pollution.

 

These are some of the highlights of a new report, released on July 27, 2017 by The Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL), a not-for-profit alliance based in Brussels.

 

Box One - Desktop

 

The report analyses the damage to health caused by government subsidies, what other researchers have called “zombie energy”–fossil fuels inaccessible without subsidies–and compares the health costs of fossil-fuel use with subsidies paid by governments to the coal, oil and gas industry.

 

Box Two - Desktop

 

G20 governments paid $444 billion (Rs 28.47 lakh crore), or about 1/5th India’s 2016 gross domestic product (GDP), in subsidies to fossil-fuel companies in 2014. However, fossil fuels created health costs estimated to be at least six times this amount: $2.76 trillion (Rs 176.93 lakh crore), or 1.2 times India’s GDP, with premature deaths caused by air pollution in the G20 alone estimated to be 3.2 million–almost the population of Uruguay– according to the HEAL report.

 

The G20 is an international forum for governments and central bank governors from 20 major economies in the world, including the USA, the UK, Russia, Germany, France, Japan, Australia, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, China and India.

 

“Government funding of fossil fuels never pays off for the public,” the report said. “On the contrary, citizens pay twice – first for the subsidies, and second through the harm these fuels do to their health, which leads to higher healthcare costs and lost productivity.”

 

In 2009, G20 said will phase out fossil-fuel subsidies; 7 years later, phase-out date unclear

 

In 2012, an estimated 6.5 million deaths (11.6% of all global deaths) were associated with indoor and outdoor air pollution together, with close to 3 million linked to exposure to outdoor pollution, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

 

In 2009, the G20 said it would start phasing out of fossil-fuel subsidies. By 2016, a phase-out date was still undecided, while the G20 continued to subsidise fossil fuels–an average of $71.8 billion of public finance for fossil-fuel projects per year between 2013-2015, 3.8 times more compared with the $18.7 billion for renewable energy, the Guardian reported on July 5, 2017.

 

Subsidies given to fossil fuels unlock what is called “zombie energy”, energy from deposits that would not be commercially viable to produce without government help, according to this 2017 paper published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD),  a global not-for-profit organisation based in Canada.

 

These subsidies not only skew the market by artificially lowering the cost of producing energy from fossil fuels but make investments in clean energy and energy efficiency appear less attractive because of the distortion of prices, the paper added.

 

Increasing energy access, reducing the health burden from air pollution

 

In 2017, nearly a quarter of India’s population in India did not have access to electricity and 40% was without access to clean cooking fuel, according to the new draft National Energy Policy (NEP) released in June 2017. The government aims to provide continuous, affordable power to all Indians by 2019.

 

As much as 75% of India’s electricity was produced from coal in 2014, and by 2016, India was the world’s second largest producer and consumer of coal, second only to China.

 

Coal remains the mainstay of India’s energy needs, with its share in India’s commercial energy projected to remain over 66% in 2021-22, as it has been since 2000, as IndiaSpend reported on July 12, 2017.

 

Coal-fired power plants put out significant emissions of particulate matter (PM), sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, and carbon dioxide. PM 2.5–toxic particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, or 30 times finer than a human hair, that embed themselves in respiratory and cardiac systems–is one of these emissions.

 

In 2015, exposure to PM 2.5 was the fifth-highest risk factor for death, responsible for 4.2 million deaths from heart disease and stroke, lung cancer, chronic lung disease, and respiratory infections, according to data from the Global Burden of Disease project.

 

Over 50% of these deaths occurred in China and India, which is now close to China in terms of deaths attributable to PM 2.5. China remained highest in terms of mortality at 1,108,100 in 2015.

 

Source: State of Global Air Report, 2017

NOTE: *For All Ages And Sexes

 

Why India needs careful subsidy reform

 

In 2012, household air pollution was responsible for 4.3 million deaths, or 7.7% of global mortality, according to the WHO, of which India recorded 1.25 million deaths caused due to household air pollution, over a quarter of the global total.

 

“Some fossil fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) can have significant health benefits if they are used to substitute biomass or coal as household cooking fuel,” the HEAL report said, noting that about 700 million households in India still burn biomass for cooking and heating, and that a switch to LPG would result in better indoor air quality for these households.

 

Subsidy reform need to be addressed in a “manner that benefits the poor, reduces energy poverty, and empowers women as the main users of household fuels and improves the health of the most vulnerable in society”, the report added.

 

By 2014, India was spending Rs 40,000 crore ($6.24 billion) in budgetary and non-budgetary expenditure to subsidise LPG consumption, the benefits of which went disproportionately to wealthy households in urban areas, with the majority of the population in the bottom two thirds of the income distribution scale receiving little or no direct benefit from LPG subsidies, according to a 2014 paper by the IISD.

 

In May 2016, the government launched the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, aimed to provide 50 million LPG connections to below poverty line households (BPL) by 2019, with a budget of Rs 8,000 crore. The programme used money saved in LPG subsidy through the ‘Give-it-Up’ campaign. As of April 2017, the country had 198.8 million active LPG consumers.

 

Given that India already imports 50% of its domestic LPG requirements and international prices of gas and oil are volatile, if electric cookstove-use spreads, then universal electrification could encourage universal clean cooking, according to this 2016 blog post by Arvind Panagariya, vice chairman of the Niti Aayog, the government’s main think tank.

 

A ‘National Mission on Clean Cooking’ is in the pipeline, which aims to achieve full clean cooking fuel coverage by 2022, according to the 2017 draft NEP.

 

Phasing out kerosene subsidies

 

As many as 55.6% of rural households in India used kerosene as the primary energy source for lighting in 2001, which reduced to 43.2% in 2011, according to census data, as The Energy and Resources Institute, a not-for-profit research organisation based in New Delhi, reported.

 

Household Distribution, By Lighting Source

Source: The Energy and Resources Institute

 

Government subsidies make kerosene more affordable by selling it for half its market value, the HEAL report said. However, not only is the light produced from kerosene lamps of low quality, with associated health impacts like poisoning, fires and explosions, but over 40% of subsidised kerosene was lost due to ‘leakages’ in 2011-12, according to the government’s economic survey.

 

“A switch to solar power is desirable, but remains unattainable as long as subsidies for kerosene represent an obstacle, discouraging the poor to switch to solar,” the HEAL report said.

 

A range of solar lanterns (entry level, mid level and high end) are cheaper than kerosene over their lifetime, if kerosene subsidies are removed from the equation, according to a 2016 analysis by IISD.

 

However, since poor households often struggle to afford solar appliances–the consumption of which is not spread over time, as it is with kerosene–kerosene-subsidy reform must be coupled with tackling the barriers to greater off-grid solar penetration, including innovative payment options, the IISD analysis said.

 

(Patil is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

 

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