The previous low was in the year 2000 when four women were voted to the assembly in a state which until recently had India’s worst sex ratio at birth, and the fourth highest rate of crime against women nationwide in 2017.

The Manohar Lal Khattar-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won (or was leading in) 40 seats as it attempted to win a second successive term in Haryana (as of 6.25 pm). This is seven seats fewer than the 47 it won in 2014. The Congress has won/was leading in 31 seats.

The BJP now governs 15 of the 29 states in India, including Maharashtra where the party has won/was leading in 103 seats while its ally, the Shiv Sena, has won/was leading in 57 seats in the 288-member assembly.

The trends in Haryana indicate a hung assembly, which would mean that the independents and the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP)–a splinter group of the Indian National Lok Dal, led by Dushyant Chautala–would play a decisive role in forming the next government. Khattar is reportedly set to stake claim to form the government.

In the 2019 general elections, the BJP had won all 10 parliamentary seats in the state. Only one of the members of parliament elected, Sunita Duggal, was a woman. 

BJP had 12 women candidates, Congress 10
The BJP gave tickets to 12 women this year, compared to 10 women candidates from the Congress.

Three women candidates from the BJP won their races–five fewer than the party’s eight women legislators in 2014; five women candidates from the Congress had won.

This time, the JJK fielded seven women candidates. One of them, Naina Singh Chautala, Dushyant Chautala’s mother, has won.

In 2014, women formed 14% of Haryana’s members of legislative assembly (MLAs), four percentage points more than in 2009. But this is less than the 33% representation for women in parliament and state assemblies sought in a bill (the One Hundred and Eighth Amendment or the women’s reservation bill) introduced in 2009, which has since lapsed.

In 2014, Haryana had, as we said, 13 women MLAs–the highest in the two decades since 2000. Of the 13, four were re-elected in 2014 and have contested for a third term in 2019. Of these, three have won.
 

Overall, eight of the sitting women MLAs have re-contested in 2019. Two of them, Shakuntla Khatak and Geeta Bhukkal, contested from Kalanaur and Jhajjar, respectively, both constituencies reserved for scheduled castes (SC) candidates.

The BJP’s Kavita Jain, contesting for a third successive term from Sonipat, was trailing by nearly 33,000 votes. 

“It is difficult to make an assessment of women politics depending on how many women win,” Rahul Verma, fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, told IndiaSpend. Despite having low social development indicators, Haryana has one of the largest representations of women, he added, “But many of the candidates and previous winners are either from political families or celebrities.”

Gilles Verniers, co-director of the Trivedi Centre for Political Data and head of the political science department at Ashoka University, agreed with Verma. “Until this result, Haryana had the highest representation of women in assemblies,” he told IndiaSpend. “This often comes as a surprise given the state’s reputation on women’s welfare, but we observe that in India, states with the worst women welfare-related statistics like skewed sex ratio, illiteracy, infant mortality etc. tend to have more women politicans than those with better indicators.” 

“One explanation is the prevalence of dynastic politics in those states, which creates opportunities to women to run,” Verniers said, “The traditional, conservative, North Indian political tradition tends to have a prevalent culture of political dynasticism than other parts of India.”

Haryana has fourth-highest rate of crime against women
Over five years to 2017, female representation in state assemblies was the highest in Haryana (14%) along with Bihar and Rajasthan, according to the 2017 data released by the ministry of statistics and programme implementation.

Haryana has had one of the lowest sex ratios in the country–it had 833 girls for 1,000 boys at birth in 2011. But for close to a decade now, the state has shown a steady improvement in its sex ratio at birth, and reported 920 girls for 1,000 boys in August 2019, IndiaSpend reported on October 20, 2019.

A skewed sex ratio has led to villages with few female children, brides being bought for money as there are too few local women for men to marry, and forced marriages with women outside the state, The Guardian reported in March 2018.

The state had India’s fourth-highest rate of crime against women–88.7 crimes per 100,000 women, according to 2017 crime data. Female literacy, at 75.4%, is above the national average of 68.4%, and nearly 46% of girls in the state have completed more than 10 years of schooling, also above the national average of 35.7%, IndiaSpend reported on August 12, 2017, as a part of our Women@Work series.

The state is among the wealthiest in the country with a per capita income (at current prices) of Rs 2.3 lakh per annum, nearly 77% more than the all-India per capita income of Rs 1.3 lakh, noted the 2018-19 Economic Survey of Haryana.

The labour force participation rate among those aged 15 years and above (LFPR or percentage of persons in the labour force in a population) in Haryana is 45.5% for rural and urban areas, 4.3 percentage points less than the national average, according to 2017-18 Periodic Labour Force Survey released by the government in May 2019. India’s unemployment was pegged at a 45-year high at 6.1% based on the report.

Women’s LFPR was even lower–14.7% in rural areas (nearly 10 percentage points lower than the national rural LFPR for women) while in urban areas it was 13.7% (6.7 percentage less than national urban female LFPR).

“Unemployment may or may not be a voting issue,” said Verniers. “Women do outvote men in Haryana as they do in many states in the Hindi belt. But lack of access to employment means household confinement, which is a strong barrier to women’s participation in the public sphere.”

“The trouble is that the bar is so high that a man of ordinary capability and more than ordinary ambition can enter politics, but women have to cross many thresholds to be able to enter politics,” Yogendra Yadav, psephologist and president of Swaraj India party, had told IndiaSpend in an interview. His party had fielded 27 candidates, including five women candidates, all of whom have lost.

“If you filter the women in the Haryana assembly for those from political families, you would realise that their number [women’s representation] is close to zero,” Yadav said.

There are a number of barriers for women because parties still think they make weaker candidates, or that they cannot perform the tasks expected from an elected representative, according to Verniers. “In some states, like Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, voters turn against women candidates, giving them less votes than their male counterparts. There is an issue of self-selection where elections are seen as masculine and brutish, which may discourage women to run. And then there is the cost of entry of elections which affects women adversely.”

At the time of publishing, repolling had been ordered in five booths in as many constituencies–Natnaul, Kosli, Beri, and Uchana Kalan, Prithla–due to ”some shortcomings” according to Inder Jeet, the state’s joint chief electoral officer, NDTV reported.

(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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The first priority in Swachh Bharat must be to free dry-latrine cleaners, who, for many years, have been waiting for their liberty, says Bezwada Wilson, 53, national convenor of Safai Karmachari Andolan and 2016 Magsaysay Award winner.

The son of a manual scavenger–the term used to describe about 180,000 Indians (as per Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 data), almost all Dalit, who clean excreta from dry toilets by hand–Wilson and his SKA aim to eradicate a practice that was banned by law 26 years ago but continues in practice. Without mechanisation and localised solutions for sewage treatment and modern sewer systems, Swachh Bharat is “an illusion,” Wilson told IndiaSpend in the course of an interview. Those who clean sewers, he said, have never been counted: 817 of them died over 26 years to 2019.

On October 2, 2019, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi said that “rural India and its villages have declared themselves ‘open defecation-free'(ODF).” This comes five years after the launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission (clean India mission or SBM). Although 110 million toilets have been built, the claim that India is free of open defecation is not true, FactChecker.in reported on the same day as the PM’s announcement.

Wilson’s father and elder brother were manual scavengers in Kolar Gold Fields in Karnataka, a couple of hours’ drive east of Bengaluru. Swachh Bharat must start by rehabilitating manual scavengers–160,000 of whom are women–and not just constructing new toilets, he said.

In 2016, he was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay award for “leading a grassroots movement to eradicate the degrading servitude of manual scavenging in India, reclaiming for the dalits the human dignity that is their natural birthright”.

Wilson explained why manual scavengers must be compensated and rehabilitated, how the SBM must look outside just building toilets and how technology can end manual scavenging. Edited excerpts:

With the Gates Foundation presenting its Goalkeepers Global Goals Award to PM Narendra Modi for improved toilet access through the SBM, to what extent do you think has SBM managed that since its launch in October 2014? How do you assess the programme?

I do not have a comment about the award to the Prime Minister by the foundation. But a new ideology is being promoted where open defecation is being looked at as a crime. I agree that open defecation is not good for various reasons, and that is the view held globally. But if you consider that 1.8 million are homeless in India according to 2011 census, and that there are still hunger deaths [India is ranked 103 in the 2018 Global Hunger Index], such a country cannot make such a declaration just for the sake of achieving Sustainable Development Goals or for [meeting targets of] any other agency. You want to declare ODF and at the same time kill citizens. This cannot be accepted. 

We must condemn this [death of two Dalit children in Madhya Pradesh]. We are a democratic country and must follow certain norms and procedures to implement any scheme.

Parameswaran Iyer, secretary, department of drinking water and sanitation, told us in a 2018 interview that “the central government promotes technology that completely removes the direct engagement of a human being with human waste. The compost created by the twin-pit technology [encouraged in Swachh Bharat] is 100% safe and the pits may be emptied by anyone and everyone”. Do you agree, and does the programme work towards ending manual scavenging?

He is also aware that about 85% are not twin-pit [type of pit latrine recommended under SBM]. Even if it is a twin pit, in Indian climatic conditions, it is not going to work perfectly. And when Parameswaran Iyer entered a [twin-pit] and brought out faecal matter [in Daund, Maharashtra on May 17, 2018], it was 100% drama and he also knows it. If he wants to enter the septic tank or sewage, ask him to enter one in Delhi. The conditions are so bad that human beings cannot enter and come back.

You cannot create a laboratory and show that it is a model for the whole country. Laboratories and demonstrations are different while cleaning [pits] physically in a large country like ours is difficult work.

So, just because you [government] agreed to complete a project and to achieve that you cannot change the pattern of implementing schemes, you use whistles to prevent people from defecating in the open, or [threaten to] put people behind bars. Now we [society] have reached a stage where we are killing people. This cannot be accepted. This is problematic in any democratic society. If people are defecating outside, there seems to be a necessity. To prevent it we have to provide sanitation facilities. It may take some time, but you cannot do it in a hurry.

Although Swachh Bharat looks at construction of toilets, one of the challenges would be the cleaning of pits. Does it continue to put the burden of cleaning toilets on Dalit communities?

There is no need to say it. In India, where (the) caste system exists, caste is linked with sanitation. Everyone knows the community that will clean a septic tank or sewage. Without mechanisation for emptying pits the government is going ahead with constructing new toilets at such a pace. It is not just a burden, it will lead to more deaths in the next two or three years. It seems that we have invested our money to kill Dalits. The government must look into the issue.

The Supreme Court took a serious view recently on manual scavenging deaths, observing on September 18, 2019 that “in no country, people are sent to gas chambers to die”. The government has identified 54,130 manual scavengers in India. Your comments?

Through the survey the government has identified dry-latrine cleaners. Septic tank and sewage cleaners have never been enumerated in the country. That is yet to be done.

We have been saying for a long time what the Supreme Court has just stated. The court could have said that since the 2013 Act [Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013], the government has not done anything, and then [proceeded] to place a deadline. It could have asked the government that from tomorrow you cannot allow any human being to enter into a sewer line or septic tank. If the court places such a deadline the government will rush to achieve it. Instead the court has given a passing remark.

We do not require the Supreme Court’s sympathy, but we need a hard decision to protect life, dignity and self-respect of citizens.

There is a two-fold increase in the number of manual scavengers identified in the survey under Manual Scavenging Act 2013 and the 2018 national survey. Why do we have such disparity in documentation? What are the challenges?

In 2017 we approached the NITI Aayog stating that scavenging still continues in 100 districts. It suggested that we do the survey for the entire country. But Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment said that they would like to do the survey on their own, and not through NITI Aayog. We worked with the ministry’s National Safai Karamcharis Finance & Development Corporation (NSKFDC) to identify [workers]. We gave the data and they agreed to the data shared. But many states have contradicted [the data].

This [survey] is not for the whole country but for selected districts. The rest of the districts also need to be enumerated to arrive at a final figure. We are claiming that 160,000 women carry human excreta in India. You must start Swachh Bharat from there; instead the focus is on creating new toilets. The first priority in Swachh Bharat must go to dry latrine cleaners who have been waiting for their liberty for many years. This has not happened.

The documentation is supposed to be done by the government, and a district magistrate must have a reason to suspect there is manual scavenging. The reason [for survey] is offered when we provide data on such toilets. Then the magistrate must undertake a district survey and declare the numbers identified. If names are missing, a self-declaration can be accepted. But this process has never happened in a systematic manner.

There have been 419 deaths of sanitation workers and only two arrests, according to The Wire’s database. Why is there a problem in charging the administration or those employing workers without following proper guidelines for their protection, under the appropriate legal provisions?

The government has to respond to the reasons for no arrest. In majority of the cases, the government is not taking responsibility. They say that they are not employing the workers directly. The Act says that [employing workers for] clearing, carrying, disposing human excreta in any manner by a contractor or anyone is a punishable crime. 

So if it is punishable, the government should have filed a case immediately. When we put pressure, they file a case for a few incidents. But after a few days they release them. An FIR may get filed, but no chargesheet is filed. The government must respond to these issues. The reason is that there is no political will.

Safai Karmachari Andolan data say that there are 37,167 railway cleaners. We had reported that sanitation experts and various studies–including those commissioned by the railways–have pointed out that most of the new “bio-toilets” on Indian trains are ineffective and the water discharged is no better than raw sewage. Has the installation of bio-toilets made a difference considering the railways is the largest employer of manual scavengers?

The government has no clear understanding about the problems we are talking about. They want to avoid court or police cases, or they say that they are implementing the Act. But if they want to do that in its true spirit, human beings must not be cleaning excreta. In this regard the government is not moving even a single step.

The railways filed a false affidavit in the Supreme Court saying that it was not employing a single person [as a manual scavenger]. The case is still pending in the Delhi High Court. They say that they are converting 500 toilets [a year in coaches] to bio-toilets. This will take a long time given the number of coaches in the railways.

The railways has already wasted money on cemented aprons (built on platform lines to clean garbage and toilet waste), and then tried to implement a control discharge toilet system (to eliminate spillage of toilet waste), which has also failed. Crores have been invested. Now the bio-toilets are also ineffective [according to the report]. As of now, they have no solution for manual scavenging.

A private company in Kerala has developed a manhole-cleaning robot last year. The Delhi government had also planned to use the technology. How do you assess the role of such innovations and mechanisation in ending manual scavenging?

Mechanisation is possible, but it has to be initiated by the government of India, and later it can be taken to the state governments. But they do not want to do that. Here, a few private individuals or students are developing the technology. We have to welcome and appreciate them. With more than 1.3 billion people, do you think that a small group will find a solution? Caste system and mindset never allow the brain to even think about cleaning [septic tank and sewer] because we think that it is a Dalit or scheduled caste activity.

In 2018-19, 18,045 manual scavengers received one-time cash help of Rs 40,000 each under a self-employment scheme. The transfer increased 13 times to Rs 72 crore over a year from 2017-18 to 2018-19, according to a 2018 ministry of social justice and empowerment report. How beneficial are such transfers in rehabilitating manual scavengers? What are the policy changes needed?

The one-time cash assistance is not rehabilitation. It is support for manual scavengers who have left that work and are looking for another vocation. The rehabilitation [loan] is supposed to be between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 15 lakh, which the government is supposed to provide. This has not been initiated, and I can say that the government has done nothing for rehabilitation. It has only been given to over 18,000 [in 2018-19] when there are more than 54,000 identified. The one-time cash assistance is only relief.

So, what must be done for rehabilitation?

The government must give Rs 1 lakh to Rs 15 lakh to each person. We are demanding that this should not be a loan but a compensation for the community. All safai karmacharis are eligible for compensation from the government. There must be rapid mechanisation, and modernisation of sewage systems is important. Sewage treatment plants have to be developed in a decentralised manner (create localised solutions based on the local context) and private and public establishments must have a system to treat sewage water. Without all this, just constructing toilets will not make Swachh Bharat. You are creating an illusion and asking people to believe it.

(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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In these six years, the year 2017-18 saw the most waivers, reaching 12% of the gross fiscal deficit (total expenditure in excess of income) in seven of these states–Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Karnataka. Altogether, they provided nearly Rs 49,000 crore in their respective budgets for loan waivers during 2017-18.

While loan waivers for highly indebted farm households can “free up lines of credit enabling them to make new investments”, the waivers “do impact the credit flow to agriculture” and create a “moral hazard” whereby borrowers default strategically in anticipation of a loan waiver, regardless of whether they will benefit from the waiver or not, noted the internal working group.

As a result, non-performing asset (NPA) levels in states that announced loan waivers showed an increase, while most other states either showed a decrease or no change.

The internal working group was created to understand the reasons for regional disparity in agricultural credit, and to suggest workable solutions. It recommended that centre and state governments must evaluate the “effectiveness of current subsidy policies” for agri inputs and credit to make agriculture a viable and sustainable sector.

Extent of waivers

Farm loans are justified “on social welfare grounds with the Government citing urban-rural divide in growth, social unrest and farmers’ suicides as the justifications for the national ADWDRS [Agricultural Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Scheme, 2008] programme,” the report said.

The loan waivers in the six years are 24 times the Rs 10,000 crore waived by the Centre in 1990 (Rs 50,600 crore at 2016-17 prices using the GDP deflator) and nearly five times (Rs 52,500 crore) the loans waived in 2007-08 (or Rs 81,200 crore at 2016-17 prices using the GDP deflator), the study noted.

Source: Report of the Internal Working Group to Review Agricultural Credit (September, 2019)

In the six years to 2019-20, nearly 64% or Rs 1.5 lakh crore has been allocated in the 10 state governments’ budgets for waivers. In 2017-18, this accounted for nearly 12% of seven state governments’ gross fiscal deficit. The deficit dropped by 4.2 and 5.3 percentage points in 2018-19 and 2019-20, respectively.

The increase in the share of farm loan waiver in a state’s expenditure “could potentially depress the state governments’ capital expenditure in agriculture” and “the deferment of budgetary provisions to meet the expenditure towards the announced loan waivers result [in an] increase in NPA levels”, the report noted.

State-Wise Agricultural Sector NPAs in 2016-17 And 2017-18

Source: Report of the Internal Working Group to Review Agricultural Credit (September, 2019)

Size of the bubble is based on relative share of the state in agriculture credit outstanding in 2017-18. Bubbles coloured red denote the states that announced loan waivers in 2017-18; bubbles coloured yellow denote the states that announced farm loan waiver in 2018-19.

Nearly 41% of the Rs 2.4 lakh crore waived was in 2017-18, including in Punjab, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.

Low farm incomes

About 70% of rural households depend primarily on agriculture, and nearly 86% of India’s farmers are categorised as “small and marginal”, meaning they own less than two hectares–the size of 2 football fields–according to the agriculture census 2015-16, IndiaSpend reported on January 28, 2019.

Agricultural and rural distress have peaked in the Indian economy in recent years, with farmers staging massive protests to demand better and remunerative farm prices. One of the promises made by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party was to double farm incomes by 2022.

“Like loan waiver, this [doubling farm income] might also take the easier route of direct payments as already witnessed in some states,” Seema Purushothaman, faculty at the school of development in Azim Premji University and an expert on agriculture, told IndiaSpend.

“Addressing the availability of land for cultivation itself could address the issue in many parts of the country,” Purushothaman said, explaining that land ownership helps families avoid farm distress and escape poverty.

As for farm prices, they depend at least partly on the Centre’s approach in international trade and politics, Purushothaman said. By the time small landholders make cropping changes in response to trends in global trade, markets have entered newer cycles.

Indebtedness and distress

Nearly 70% of India’s 90 million agricultural households spend more than they earn on average each month, pushing them towards debt, a primary reason in more than half of all suicides by farmers nationwide.

Low levels of absolute income and disparity between farmers and non-agriculture workers is a factor in the emergence of agriculture distress, noted a March 2017 NITI Aayog study.

Farm income per cultivator was 34% of the income of a non-agriculture worker in the early 1980s, which fell to 25% in a decade to 1993-94, the study noted. Although there was a slight improvement in the eight years to 2011-12, it showed “no change over the 1983-84 level”.

Further, real income per cultivator grew 3.4% per year in over two decades to 2015-16, but for doubling farmers’ real income (income adjusted for inflation) over the base year of 2015-16, farm incomes would have to grow annually at 10.41%, the NITI Aayog study noted.

By contrast, farm income growth for the October-December 2018 quarter was the lowest in 14 years, The Indian Express reported on March 3, 2019, at 2.04%.

Although income mobility improved country-wide in the seven years to 2012, the progress was unequal between states, and the likelihood of children pursuing the same occupation as their fathers declined for those employed in the low-productivity agricultural sector, IndiaSpend reported on July 18, 2019.

While average monthly expenditure for all households in rural India was Rs 6,646, agricultural households–that is, households that received value of produce in excess of Rs 5,000 from agricultural activities–reported 15% more expenses compared to non-agricultural households (Rs 6,187), IndiaSpend reported on September 24, 2019, based on the All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey 2016-17.

Non-performing assets increase 

While most states that did not announce farm loan waivers have “shown either no material change in their NPA level or have actually registered a decline between 2016-17 and 2017-18” (with the exception of Bihar, Odisha and Haryana), the NPA levels of all states that announced farm loan waivers in 2017-18 and 2018-19 went up.

The RBI described this as a “moral hazard”, suggesting that loan waivers encourage defaults among beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries.
However, farmer rights activists and researchers draw a parallel with corporate loan waivers, suggesting that farmers are unfairly singled out.

The entire agriculture sector owed the banking system the same amount (Rs 7.7 lakh crore) as borrowed by the top 10 Indian corporate borrowers, IndiaSpend reported on February 18, 2019.

“NPAs may have increased because the states have written off farmer loans, but I wonder why the RBI does not say the same of the corporate NPAs?” said Devinder Sharma, an agricultural expert, to IndiaSpend. “Farmers and corporates borrow from the same banks, but the economic thinking on both are different. This sort of discrimination against agriculture must end.

The RBI should refine its approach, and should not make state governments responsible for waivers, Sharma said. There should be a uniform policy where, like the corporate write-offs, farm loan waivers should also be a responsibility of the bank.

Kerala’s loan-to-output ratio three times national average

The all-India average loan-to-output ratio–the value added compared to the agriculture loan provided–was 0.32. Eleven states’ ratios were higher, with Kerala’s being the highest at 0.90 and West Bengal’s the lowest at 0.09.

Although Rajasthan, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have a ratio above the national average, they do not receive enough credit for crop input requirements, possibly “due to higher share of low value crops in their overall crop output”.

Further, agricultural credit in Kerala and Tamil Nadu was nearly 180% of the states’ agriculture gross domestic product in 2015, 2016 and 2017, “indicating the possibility of diversion of credit for non-agricultural purposes”.

“There are people who avail crop loans or agriculture gold loans at special interest rates just by producing the land ownership documents, though the concerned piece of land may either be cultivated by someone else or may be lying fallow,” said Purushothaman.

Analysts have previously commented on the diversion of farm loans towards large corporates that have interests in agri-business, as in this May 26, 2019 report in The Hindu, which pointed out that farm credits were increasingly cornered by agri-businesses, away from actual cultivators, between 2000 and 2007 in Maharashtra. “The number of loans of less than Rs 50,000 are slashed by 50%, while the number of loans of over Rs10 crore to Rs 25 crore doubled or even trebled,” P Sainath, founder editor of People’s Archive of Rural India, wrote. 

(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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Farmers’ children were 21.1 percentage points less likely to take up farming in 2012 than in 2005, their likelihood down to 32.4%, while the children of agricultural and other labourers were 4.1 percentage points less likely to pursue the same occupation as their fathers, the likelihood, 58.6%, the study noted.

For the first time since Independence, India saw a shift of surplus labour from agriculture to the non-agricultural sectors, as employment in agriculture fell in absolute numbers, Divya Prakash, co-author of the study and a research associate at JustJobs Network told IndiaSpend. (Read more about India’s unemployment crisis at https://www.indiaspend.com/category/indias-job-crisis/.)

Reduced employment in agriculture can largely be explained by the fact that more young people are acquiring an education, and with it comes the expectation of a better job, Sabina Dewan, co-author of the study, and president and executive director of JustJobs Network, told IndiaSpend, “The quality of jobs is as important as the quantity of jobs.”

The study examined the evolution of the international discourse on job quality and economic mobility, the “missing ingredient” in the discourse on job quality.

It used the Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS-I), a nationally representative survey of 41,554 households conducted in 2004-2005, and IHDS-II (2011-12), which re-interviewed 83% of the same households.

“This dataset provides a unique opportunity to study whether economic mobility improved over 2005-2012,” the study noted.

Fewer farmers’ children taking to farming
The intergenerational mobility index,which measures the likelihood of children pursuing the same occupation as their fathers, showed that the likelihood declined for agricultural and other labourers from 62.7% to 58.6%, and from 53.5% to 32.4% for farmers.

“During [2005-2012], for the first time in a post-Independence era, India saw a Lewisian structural change–shift of surplus labour from agricultural to non-agricultural sector–as employment in the agricultural sector fell in absolute numbers,” said Prakash. “There was a decline in the share of children following in their fathers’ footsteps; many left agriculture or other rural labour and farming-related occupations moving into the non-agricultural sector.”

This means that children moved out of agriculture to non-agricultural sectors, especially construction, for higher wages. A;though there was intergenerational income mobility, there was no evidence for upward intergenerational occupational mobility for children-fathers of both occupational groups, he added. 

Seventy-six percent of farmers would prefer to do some work other than farming and 61% would prefer to be employed in cities because of better education, health and employment avenues, Down To Earth reported on March 12, 2018, based on a survey report by the Centre for Study of Developing Societies.

India’s fast-expanding gig economy, involving app-based cab hailing and food delivery services, employs many workers who hail from rural or semi-urban homes, many of them either farmers or children of farmers, IndiaSpend reported on June 4, 2019.

According to the National Sample Survey, between 2004-05 and 2011-12, the number of farmers in rural areas fell by 19 million to 141 million and the number of landless labourers declined 19% to 69 million, Prakash added.

Yet, the number of people working as professionals (scientists, economists, teachers, jurists, etc.)  whose parents were low-skilled workers (launderers, carpenters, miners, painters, etc.) declined by 8%, while their share in low-skilled occupations increased by the same amount.

This implies that opportunities for “upward mobility are few and [those] for backward mobility are very high,” said Prakash. Persons from upper castes and urban regions have a higher probability of moving up in terms of occupation and vice-versa.

Source: The Evolving Discourse on Job Quality From Normative Frameworks to Measurement Indicators: The Indian Example (January 2019)

Source: The Evolving Discourse on Job Quality From Normative Frameworks to Measurement Indicators: The Indian Example (January 2019)

Meanwhile, the number of people who followed their fathers into professions and lower-skilled occupations increased 3.1 percentage points and 8.1 percentage points, respectively.
Improvement in real income between 2005 and 2012

The non-directional income mobility index, which measures the magnitude of income change, is 1.165 for India as a whole, while the directional mobility index is 0.949–both over the period 2004-05 to 2011-12. The positive index value for directional mobility implies that real income has increased, indicating improved economic well-being.

Every state in India has witnessed positive income mobility, although the change has been “unequal”, the study noted. Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya have witnessed the highest income mobility, in that order.

Income mobility was positive for the three north-eastern states (Mizoram, Sikkim, Tripura) but low in magnitude. The proportion of households here that saw their overall household income decline was higher than the proportion of households that experienced an increase, Prakash said, adding that this is why overall income mobility was unequal. The overall household income of these three states was marginally higher in 2012 compared to 2005, said Prakash.

The difference between the indexes (0.216) shows that there are a number of households that have seen their real income–income after considering the effects of inflation–decrease.

Among social groups, upward movement in income is the highest among Other Backward Class (OBC) households, followed by forward castes, Brahmins, Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST).

Marginalised caste groups such as the SC, ST and OBC earn much less than the national household income, IndiaSpend reported on January 14, 2019.

Yet, in real terms, these social groups saw an improvement in their income levels in the seven years to 2012, showing that although disparity is wide, the gap is closing, Dewan said.

(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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While most of these jobs are expected to be long-term, women constitute only a quarter of the workforce in this sector. With this addition, the DRE sector’s workforce could double in size–from about 95,000 jobs in 2017-18 to 190,000 jobs by 2022-23–if the mini-grid market “continues to expand at a rapid pace”.

The number of informal jobs in the DRE sector is expected to remain stable at around 210,000, noted the first Powering Jobs Census 2019: The Energy Access Workforce report by Power For All, a coalition campaigning to scale DRE, released on July 15, 2019.

This comes at a time when India is facing a 45-year high unemployment rate, according to the Periodic Labour Force Survey released by the National Sample Survey Office in May 2019. Of nearly 61 million jobs created in India over 22 years post-liberalisation of the economy in 1991, 92% were informal jobs, according to an IndiaSpend analysis.

The report captures DRE employment data for 2017-18 to establish a baseline that explores the link between Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 (access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all) and SDG 8 (inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment, and decent work for all).

The report covers India, Kenya and Nigeria: The DRE sector is estimated to add more than 260,000 direct, formal jobs in these countries by 2022-23. In India, 36 companies in the sector were surveyed.

Renewable appliance firms are the “job engine”
End-user product providers–that is, companies that sell pico solar appliances (that use small amount of power for gadgets such as calculators, cameras and mobile phones), solar home systems, and other small, off-grid appliances directly to customers–are the “job engine of the sector”, the report said, adding that they are expected to add 86,000 direct, formal jobs nationwide by 2022-23.

These companies alone accounted for 97% of 95,000 DRE jobs created in 2017-18. In addition, they added 470,000 “productive-use jobs”–created by the DRE end users as a result of newly-acquired or enhanced electricity access–in the same year.

“The bulk of these direct, formal jobs (85%) are full-time and long-term, or lasting more than a year, as the average employee retention period is 39 months,” the report noted.

The renewable energy sector created 47,000 new jobs in India in 2017, employing 432,000 people, according to a report by the inter-governmental International Renewable Energy Agency, IndiaSpend reported on July 5, 2018. The solar photovoltaic industry was the largest employer of all renewable energy technologies, accounting for close to 3.4 million jobs worldwide, including 2.2 million in China and 164,000 in India, it added.

It is estimated that project developers and installers–companies that generally work with larger projects ranging from a few hundred watts to a few kilowatts–provided about 770 direct, formal jobs and 190 direct, informal jobs to deploy 9.5 megawatts (MW) of standalone and grid-tied solar in 2017-18. By 2022-23, the number of direct, formal jobs in this area is expected to rise 108% to 1,600 and direct, informal jobs by 111% to 400.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy “targets to achieve deployment of at least 10,000 RE [renewable energy] based micro and mini grid projects across the country with a minimum installed RE capacity of 500 MW in next 5 years”, according to this 2016 draft national policy on RE based mini/micro grids.

Renewable energy technologies that are decentralised have substantial potential to provide a reliable and secure energy supply as an alternative to grid extension or as a supplement to grid-provided power, particularly in rural areas.

In case of high mini-grid penetration, where 500 MW is expected to be installed by 2022-23, “the mini-grid operators would provide more than 90,000 direct, formal jobs” and under a low mini-grid penetration scenario “of 60 MW worth of mini-grid energy, 11,000 direct, formal jobs would be provided”, the report noted.

The government’s support for productive-use applications such as solar water pumping could add about 10,000 additional jobs, the report added.

Over a five-year period till 2022-23, the government plans to deploy 1.75 million solar water pumps through the Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan (farmers’ energy protection scheme) or KUSUM scheme, the report noted. The government “must educate the distribution companies that this [KUSUM] can revolutionise the Indian energy economy, especially because the farm sector uses around 23% of the electricity generated but is responsible for nearly 85% of the losses,” Tushaar Shah, economist and public policy expert, told IndiaSpend in an interview on May 7, 2018.

Of India’s targeted 175 gigawatt (GW) renewable energy capacity by 2022, the government plans to produce 100 GW. Of this, India has achieved 30 GW of utility and rooftop solar capacity, and the remaining 70 GW would add 220,000 jobs in the sector, Neeraj Kuldeep, programme lead at Council For Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), a research partner in the survey, told IndiaSpend. About 199,000 of these would be in the labour-intensive rooftop solar sector, he added.

“The growth of the distributed renewable energy sector holds significant potential in providing employment at various stages within the ecosystem, thereby increasing economic opportunities for rural communities,” said Arunabha Ghosh, chief executive officer of CEEW, in a press statement. “Increasing income levels further increases the purchasing power for these communities, making them value reliable electricity supply and, in turn, positively impact their quality of life.”

Fewer women, increasing youth workforce in DRE companies
Women’s participation in almost every type of DRE company is low, except for sector service providers–such as research and advocacy organisations. India’s workforce has fewer women than it did six years ago: no more than 18% in rural areas are employed, compared to 25% in 2011-12 and 14% in urban from 15%, IndiaSpend reported on July 2, 2019.

All companies have shown “high willingness to employ young people”, the report said. India will need to create 8 million jobs per year, noted a 2018 World Bank report on jobless growth.

Only 25% of the direct, formal jobs are held by women in the end-user product provider segment–in line with the average (23%) in the three countries surveyed. In India, women reportedly make up just 11% of the rooftop solar sector’s workforce compared to 32% globally. 

The end-user product providers employ more women–about 60%–informally. Further, 86% of the direct, formal jobs created by such companies are skilled compared to less than half in the renewable energy industry globally. Youth (aged 15-24 years) constitute half the workforce in these companies.

DRE companies actively engage women from local communities in sales and distribution activities, and these women act as social networkers, influencers and entrepreneurs in the community, according to Kuldeep from CEEW.

While project developers and installers have 25% women among direct, formal employees and 44% of youth in their workforce, mini-grid companies have a poor gender balance, with women comprising only 2% of the workforce.

The manufacturing and upstream supply chain companies are hiring more women than the industry average, with women accounting for 37% of direct, formal jobs, the report added. These companies also employ a highly skilled, young workforce, at 80% and 68%, respectively. 

Since these jobs are primarily based in rural India, “hiring and retaining a skilled workforce is more challenging”, Kuldeep said. “Companies prefer to hire people with basic technical knowledge–such as Suryamitras [who attend a skilling programme]–and skill them by providing training during their employment period.”

Among the sector service providers such as research, advocacy, and awareness-raising organisations, women constitute half the workforce. The required workforce is also highly skilled: about 96% of the workforce is skilled, yet only 6% are youth.

“This is because sector service providers generally comprise a small number of highly experienced sector experts to carry out research and advocacy work,” the report noted. “Therefore, skill level is high and youth participation is low.”

(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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Bengaluru Rural district improved its ranking by 11 positions to rank third in Karnataka state in the 2018-19 secondary school examinations. Some 1,983 students who scored poorly in the mid-term examination were given additional attention and support from teachers and officials, in a project financed by the corporate social responsibility arm of the Bangalore International Airport Limited. Nearly 70% of these students passed the exam.

Nitin, who scored 83% in the 2018-19 senior school leaving certificate (SSLC, or class 10) examinations in Karnataka, is the topper among 1,983 vishesha pariganitha gumpu (VPG, or special category) students who got special coaching in mathematics, science, english and social science for the exam.

Some 1,983 students who scored poorly in the mid-term examination were given additional attention and support from teachers and officials, in a project financed by the corporate social responsibility arm of the Bangalore International Airport Limited. Nearly 70% of these students passed the exam. 

Compared to its performance the previous year, the district improved its rank by 11 positions to take the third place among the 34 school districts listed for the SSLC exam in 2018-19, as per a 2019 report on the SSLC results accessed by IndiaSpend. More than 88% of all students passed, up six percentage points from 2017-18 and 15 percentage points more than the state average (73.7%). Two of the four taluks (administrative units within districts)–Devanahalli and Nelamanagala–secured the fifth and sixth positions in the state, respectively.

The district’s performance is significant as Karnataka state as a whole had the worst SSLC pass percentage among the south Indian states–73.7% to Andhra Pradesh’s 94.88%, Kerala’s 98.11%, Telangana’s 92.43% and Tamil Nadu’s 95.2%.

Many Indian children leave school without the basic skills required in adult life, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2018 showed, as IndiaSpend reported on January 15, 2019. Class 10 students performed the worst in mathematics in the 2018 National Achievement Survey conducted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training.

A special category 
The project aimed to improve the performance of students who had scored less than 40% in the mid-term examinations held in September 2018. It succeeded to a large extent–70% of VPG students passed, with 30% (584) securing first class (60%-70% marks) and 31% (618) obtaining second class (50-59%).

For the five months between the mid-term and SSLC exams, the project provided VPG students with intensive coaching, as we said, in four subjects–math, science, English and social science–in free-of-cost weekend classes held at centres set up especially for the purpose. The curriculum was custom-made, and the best teachers were deployed. The students were also given transport service and food. “The objective was not to just help students pass, but allow them to learn to the best of their capability,” said R Latha, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Bengaluru Rural district, led the initiative.

“I think that any initiative that helps students who are falling behind in their learning path is a good one,” Sreekanth Sreedharan from the Bengaluru district institute of the Azim Premji Foundation, a philanthropy funding education initiatives in rural areas, told IndiaSpend. “In this case around 2,000 such students were identified and given support in their studies. Such initiatives should be extended to all such students, not only in Class 10, but also from Classes 1 to 5 too.”

A month after Latha took charge as CEO in March 2018, the SSLC results for 2017-18 were announced. The district was ranked 14, down five places from the previous year. The then district minister, Krishna Byre Gowda, expressed his concern about the district’s performance during a review meeting and “left it to me to decide on a strategy”, Latha told IndiaSpend.

Nitin Kumar, Keerthana S, Rakshita M and Nethra K were students in the special coaching initiative of Bengaluru Rural district and obtained first class in the secondary school examinations in Karnataka. Scoring 83%, Nitin topped among the students who were part of the initiative.

An “informal committee” which included the CEO, an education consultant brought in to monitor the initiative, the chief accounts officer, chief planning officer, deputy director of public instruction and an education officer, decided to focus on students who had received less than 40% in the mid-term exams. “We included even those students who failed one subject in VPG,” said Latha. Nitin was one among them.

The committee felt various factors such as “unsystematic way of teaching, lack of professional touch from teachers, shortage of staff in some school[s] and surplus of staff in some other[s], lack of individual attention to slow learners, lack of feedback to students to improve their performance” were responsible for the low percentage, noted the report.

By October 2018, VPG students from different schools in a cluster were accommodated in a nodal centre under the charge of the headmaster or headmistress (HM). Each class in a centre had up to 50 students. “We ensured that a school with the best infrastructure in the cluster was chosen as a nodal centre,” said Latha. In all, there were 42 classrooms in 33 nodal centres.
Source: CEO, Zilla Panchayat, Bengaluru Rural

A team consisting of the “best teachers” in the district, identified with the help of education department officials, created a VPG syllabus. The respective subject teachers shortlisted the topics. Time tables were allotted and teachers at the nodal centres were assigned topics to cover each Saturday.

“We had orientation for HMs and teachers. We wanted to take them into confidence,” R Nagarajaiah, educational consultant and a part of the core committee, told IndiaSpend. “During the HMs’ orientation we clarified that their cooperation, goodwill, and leadership was necessary.”

“Although social science was introduced only by December we conducted a two-day orientation for teachers,” Bhasker R N, a social science teacher at the government high school in Bashettihalli, who was part of the committee that designed the syllabus, told IndiaSpend. “There is a lot of study material, but we had to decide on what and how to teach in a short period of time for the VPG group.”

Though selecting students was an important aspect, creating a syllabus to suit the need and the small window of five months between October and February was priority.

“A group of math teachers created a syllabus that contained 40% of the entire syllabus,” Swamy H R, a math teacher with 15 years of experience who was a part of the team, told IndiaSpend. “Last year the teachers faced a problem because the state government introduced CBSE [Central Board of Secondary Education] syllabus. This was the first batch and we did not know the pattern of the question paper.”

Classes were held every Saturday, and transportation and food was provided to the students using financial assistance of about Rs 31 lakh ($45,000) from the Bangalore International Airport Limited.

The nodal centres were supervised closely by the HMs, who reported to Latha. “I used to check weekly and expect HMs to tell me the status,” she said.

R Latha, CEO of Bengaluru Rural district, led the vishesha pariganitha gumpu initiative. The district stood third in the 2018-19 secondary school examination in Karnataka state, up 11 positions from the previous year.

First preparatory results inadequate
The results of the first preparatory exams in December were underwhelming. While Latha was expecting around 90% of the VPG students to pass, only 70% did. A part of the issue was the change in syllabus, she was told.

All math teachers in the district were summoned to analyse the first preparatory exam papers of all 1,983 students. “We wanted a wider opinion since math is seen as a difficult subject, generally, and had the potential to affect the final results,” said Latha.

After discussion it was decided that a workbook be created. Five of the most experienced math teachers were exempted from other responsibilities. “We created a workbook with 66 questions so that a student did not feel intimidated by the whole syllabus. It was 25% of the syllabus,” said Swamy, the math teacher and one of those who helped create the workbook. Questions in the workbook were based on construction and drawing, and were the most probable questions based on the teachers’ experience.

“Our focus was on ensuring basic topics like diagrams, theorem and classifications were taught and rehearsed thoroughly to the students,” added Rohini Hegde, a science teacher with over a decade of experience.

A page from the math workbook created for Bengaluru Rural district’s special category students. You can access the workbook here.

Source: CEO, Zilla Panchayat, Bengaluru Rural

Later, the use of the workbook was extended to all students in the district, Latha said, adding, “[W]e wanted to ensure that VPG students worked on it for certain. Around 44 marks [worth of questions] came from this workbook in the final exam.”

In smaller groups, students found the confidence to ask questions and clear their doubts, Nitin told IndiaSpend. “My aim was to score more than 90%. Now my sister who will appear for her SSLC this year says that she will get more than I did,” he said.

The teachers in four subjects–Math, English, Science, and Social Science–created a syllabus to suit the needs of the VPG initiative. 70% of the VPG students passed with 30% securing first class.

“The classes made it easier for me to clear my doubts and it was refreshing to meet new teachers, and make new friends,” said Rakshita M, another VPG student who got 79% and wants to work in a bank after graduating in commerce. Her father, Muniraju K M, who studied up to class 6 and is a labourer, said he was keen that his daughter continues her studies. “I think it is a good initiative for the children and should be continued,” he added.

Happy Home Schools
After three preparatory exams, 20% of the students were still failing, having received fewer than 28 marks. In consultation with Nagarajaiah, the education consultant, an initiative called ‘Happy Home Schools’ was started, which would teach a small group of up to 20 students at each school. There would be no teacher migration as classes would be taught by regular teachers.

“It is based on [Johann] Pestalozzi’s educational philosophy to help children learn in their own style,” said Nagarajaiah, explaining why students would sit on a mat on the floor with the teachers. “Each student was expected to repeat a particular topic being taught, which would then be repeated by the larger group.” They were called A1 group and a syllabus was quickly formulated as they had only 10 days before the exams were to begin.

Children were not branded as academically good or bad. “There are slow learners. We cannot expect everyone to learn at the same pace,” said Nagrajaiah.

Happy Home School was developed to help students who secured less than 28% in the third preparatory exams. It was developed by R Nagarajaiah, an educational consultant,  using Johann Pestalozzi’s philosophy.

Students including Nethra K and Keerthana S benefited.

Keerthana is the first to pass SSLC in her family. While her mother has studied till class 7, her father is not educated, and both work as cement mortar workers. Her brother is a driver who dropped out of school after class 9.

“We sat around our teachers. The group was smaller than our VPG classes which helped me more,” she told IndiaSpend.

Nethra K, who had failed most of her subjects in the last preparatory, scored 67% after attending Happy Home School. Her mother, Gayathri, who works in a canteen, was glad that the initiative had borne fruit.

“Initially we did not think some of the students would pass. But the results were good,” said Roopa, an English teacher in Channahalli involved with the project. “Children were initially reluctant about VPG classes fearing that they would be called ‘dull’ students.”

Going forward: Formal and streamlined process
Government schools often have to accommodate students let go of by private schools for performing poorly (so that private schools’ performance in the SSLC is not affected), officials and teachers told IndiaSpend.

At the same time, enrolment in government schools is decreasing, overall, leading to a “very segmented and stratified education being provided to vast numbers of children by the private sector”, Sreedharan said. Old infrastructure and teacher shortages in some pockets are also big challenges.

While the effort has yielded results, the challenge is to continue the momentum next year. The initiative had to be micromanaged by the CEO, and coordination took regular updates on six WhatsApp groups.

“We have some wonderful teachers and officials which allowed us to do well,” said Latha. “But we need to formalise and streamline the process. I do not want it to end when I get transferred and move to a different district. It should continue and not require any individual’s presence.”

Individual-driven programmes lose steam very easily and we have seen this time and again, said Sreedharan, suggesting that the new method should be formalised and incorporated into the system. “[A]nd the well-structured education bureaucracy can help this scale across the state,” he said, adding that respective district CEOs can helm the project.

Sreedharan also warns that initiatives that prepare students to perform well in standardized assessments do not necessarily enhance students’ learning. “Nevertheless, given that performance in such high stakes assessments is one of the key measures of performance training students to take such assessments will be of use to them as they move on from school to higher education,” he added. 

(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)
 

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Despite efforts to propel adoption of digital payments, such as the creation of India Stack, which uses Aadhaar to make transactions cheaper and efficient, and a government-supported unified payment interface (UPI), the “the cash-to-GDP ratio was already back to pre-demonetisation levels by May 2018,” the March 2019 study noted.

Conducted by the University of California, the study focused on digital adoption by small-scale fixed store merchants in Jaipur, Rajasthan. It surveyed 1,003 fixed store merchants (“businesses conducting enterprise activities outside the household but within permanent structures”) in August-September 2017, following a census listing that identified 6,011 households and enterprises in Jaipur. It did not include street vendors, home-based business, and service providers.

Catalyst, an initiative funded by United States Agency for International Development under the mSTAR or Mobile Solutions Technical Assistance and Research programme to increase adoption of digital payments in India, collected the data.

Advocates of digital payments say they provide more security than cash, ensure transparency by making transactions traceable and hence taxable, and improve financial inclusion by spreading access to financial services, including savings accounts, especially among women. It was claimed as a key objective of the November 2016 demonetisation, as we explain below.

Although critics point out that a hasty move towards digitalisation can leave behind the already disadvantaged who are not digitally literate, policy-makers seem to concur on the benefits of digital payments for economic growth, and the RBI aims to increase the annual per capita digital transaction 10 times to 220 by March 2021.

The total volume of digital transactions increased 58.8% to 23.4 billion digital transactions between 2017-18 and 2018-19, noted a June 11, 2019, RBI report. Payment and settlement systems are at the “heart of a modern economy” and provide the infrastructure for channelising savings and investments for the entire economy, it added.

Merchants meet prerequisites, but reluctant
Of the 1,003 respondents, 582 said the top three reasons for not adopting digital payments were lack of customer demand (54.7%), lack of awareness (41.7%) and a fear of being cheated (41.7%).

The reasons for adoption, as per 421 respondents, were demonetisation (73.8%), customer demand (62.9%), and ease of use (37.2%).
Both adopters and non-adopters stated customer demand as a top reason. “This suggests that adopters may have (or at least believe they have) more customers who demand to pay digitally than non-adopters,” the study noted.

“Supply-side barriers” such as the costs of digital payment systems and related infrastructure were not listed as reasons for low adoption. Nearly 98.6% of respondents were found to be “feasible prospective digital payment users, in that they have the necessary documents, business income, and literacy so that they could satisfy all of the prerequisites for digital payment adoption if they so chose,” the study noted.

Nearly 54.2% of the sample merchants satisfied all requirements: 97% of merchants had a bank account, 79% had an internet-accessing device, 55% had internet access, just under 100% could afford the related usage fees, and 96% were technologically literate. Yet only 42% had adopted digital payments.

Among current digital payment users, “usage is low, with around 80% of their transactions with customers still being done in cash,” the report added.

Low adoption “may depend mainly on other demand-side factors” such as the price of adoption (the charges that apply), the study noted. Beliefs about customer demand to pay digitally, and increased tax liabilities associated with digital payments, also seem to play an important role in merchants’ decisions to adopt digital payments, the study added.  

“There are huge differences in adoption across countries,” Ethan Ligon, associate professor at the University of California and a co-author of the study, told IndiaSpend. “In the US and Europe the dominant payment system is credit or debit cards which has already squeezed out cash for most retail transactions save for small-value in-person transactions.” This can be seen in the US where cash accounts for less than 10% of transactions by value, and in major cities it is now common for retailers not to accept cash at all.

In India, penetration of credit or debit cards remains fairly low, but the dangers of carrying cash are much lower than in some other low-income countries, he added. This means mobile money is not competing against credit or debit cards, as in the US or Europe. It is competing with cash.

Digital transactions in India have seen a near tenfold increase to 22 transactions per capita from 2013 to 2019, but remain fewer than in other BRICS countries: China (97), Brazil (149), Russia (179), South Africa (79), a May 2019 Reserve Bank of India (RBI) report said.

With the right measures, per capita transactions could grow by a factor of 10 in three years and reach 220 by March 2021, said the RBI report, which was penned by its Committee on Deepening of Digital Payments, led by Nandan Nilekani, the architect of the Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI, or Aadhaar).

Digital payments are more widespread in sub-Saharan Africa, with 97% of adults in Kenya making a digital payment in 2017 and 60% in South Africa, compared to 29% in India, IndiaSpend had reported on May 17, 2018. Up to 80% of Indians had a bank account, the same proportion that had a mobile phone, but financial inclusion levels were still among the world’s worst, we reported.

India’s density of ATMs per geographical area (69 ATMs per 1,000 sq km) is second only to China (100 ATMs) among the major emerging markets, but it is still not enough given India’s higher population density, Livemint reported on October 23, 2018.

Demonetisation impetus not enough

In November 2016, the government had announced demonetisation (withdrawal of high-value currency notes, amounting to 86% of currency by value). Its objectives were “quite substantially” met, economic affairs secretary Subhash Chandra Garg was reported to have said in the Economic Times on August 29, 2018.

The stated objectives, which changed over the following days, included promoting digital transactions, and checking black money, terror financing, and circulation of fake currency notes. More than 99% of the withdrawn Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes were returned, while Rs 11,000 crore were not.

Merchants in Jaipur reported an increase in the percentage of customers demanding to pay digitally after demonetisation, “followed by a decrease in demand in the subsequent period (though not all the way to pre-demonetisation levels),” said the study.

“The demonetisation temporarily reduced consumers’ ability to use cash, and had India not remonetised (albeit with some hiccups), I’m confident that digital payment adoption would have been given a big boost,” Ethan Ligon, co-author of the study, told IndiaSpend. “The catch is that without remonetisation the government would also have been dealing a serious blow to the economy.”

A comparison between adopters and non-adopters shows that “before demonetisation, 6.65% of customers of the adopters and 2.88% of customers of the non-adopters demanded to pay digitally. Directly after demonetisation these percentages were 26.09% and 12.36%, and at the time of the survey they were 15.10% and 5.22%.”

“It is possible that post-demonetisation there was a surge in the use of digital payments because of the lack of cash, and that once cash supply was restored, people only use digital payments as a fallback option,” Reetika Khera, a development economist, told IndiaSpend. “Contrary to the rhetoric, there is a debate about [to] what extent we should be celebrating digital payments.”

Payment fraud enabled by digital payment systems has been reported in India, and the abstinence from digital payments could be attributed to “people’s raw wisdom”, she added.

“Bank accounts simply aren’t that important to people who prefer to use cash in transactions, and who store wealth in physical assets such as land, grain, or gold,” Ligon said. “A preference for cash and physical assets makes sense if one doesn’t trust the financial sector, or the government, which plays such a large role in regulating it, as in India.”

Basic literacy, and access to and ease of using the modern banking system, have a bearing on why digital payments are low, and India’s priority should be to ensure that people have easy access to a robust, reliable and friendly banking system, Khera added.

Goods and Services Tax (GST) an incentive?
Digital payments tend to “promote business transparency, as they aid in creating an official transaction record for enterprises”, the study noted. Nearly 74% of those who adopted digital payment methods said they had registered for the Goods and Services Tax (GST), while only 48% of non-adopters said they had.

Out of the subset of businesses who report they are mandated to register for GST,

78.4% were adopters and 60.63% non-adopters. This showed that “digital payment users are significantly more likely to report that they are already registered to pay GST,” the study added.

Ligon is skeptical about the influence of tradition in people’s reluctance in moving from cash to digital payment methods. The key difference “is that transactions involving cash are anonymous, and so less transparent,” said Ligon. “People who value this anonymity and lack of transparency will always have a reason to prefer cash.”

However, the top takeaway from the research is that digital payment adoption depends on the incentives provided by the tax system, not the characteristics or costs of the digital payment platform itself, added Ligon.

“When new technologies are introduced, the existing ones should be phased out slowly based on a careful, independent evaluation of whether new technological interventions are achieving the desired effect. However, that has not happened,” Narayanan of Azim Premji University said.

People have been forced to migrate to new platforms without seeking their consent. For instance, the mapping of rural bank accounts with the Aadhaar Payment Bridge System was done without the consent of the pensioners or MGNREGS (rural jobs programme) workers concerned. Workers’ money was reportedly diverted to Airtel wallets and ICICI bank accounts, he said, adding, “Such experiences serve only to increase the misgivings of people.”

(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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Children work at a stone crushing unit in Churaibari area of Tripura

Children constitute nearly 40% of India’s population, yet the funds allocated for their education, development, health and protection remained almost constant, the analysis noted.

The largest chunk (68%) went towards education, followed by development (26%), health (3%) and protection (2%). While allocation for education fell 1.1 percentage points, the allocation for protection increased 0.6 percentage points from last year
.
“The interim budget 2019 has shown positive trends towards the vulnerable sections of our society, including farmers, small entrepreneurs and the tax-paying middle classes,” said Puja Marwaha, chief executive officer, CRY. “Yet, for almost 40% of India’s population comprising of its children, it failed to address the expectations of the nation as children were neither a part of the budget speech nor were they visible anywhere in the 10-point vision for 2030.”

Education allocation declines, post-matric scholarships shrink
There has been a “clear but gradual decline” in the share of education from almost 79% in 2015-16 (budget estimate or BE) to 68% in 2019-20 (BE), the report noted.

Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan or integrated scheme for school education has been allocated Rs 75,000 crore for the period between April 2018 and March 2020, the report noted.

Launched in June 2018, the scheme aims to bring all programmes–from pre-school to matriculation–including Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (education for all), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (national middle education mission) and teachers’ training programmes–under one umbrella.

After five years of schooling, at age 10-11 years, just over half (51%) of students in India can read a grade II-level text (appropriate for seven- to eight-year-olds), IndiaSpend reported on January 15, 2019. This was lower than in 2008 when 56% grade V students could read a grade II-level text.

The allocation for the post- and pre- matriculation scholarship for marginalised groups such as scheduled castes (SCs) and other backward castes (OBCs) has “remained stagnant or in fact reduced”.

Allocation to post-matriculation scholarships across the groups has declined while pre-matriculation scholarships have increased.
The increase (in percentage terms) in pre-matriculation scholarships was the highest for SCs (156%), followed by minorities (122%) and OBCs (53%), while the fall in post-matriculation scholarship was the highest for SCs (-60%) and the least for OBCs (-17%).
 

Source: Child Rights and You, 2019
Note: All figures in Rs crore are budget estimates

Health budget declines, anganwadi services get a boost
Health saw a 0.5-percentage-point decline to 3.4% in overall allocation for children. The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)–the world’s largest integrated early childhood programme to reduce child mortality–saw a 19% increase to Rs 19,428 crore. The “substantial increase” may “not be adequate” to meet the demands in anganwadis (childcare centres), the analysis said.

Anganwadis provide services such as supplementary nutrition, pre-school non-formal education, nutrition, health education and immunisation. This has been the highest allocation over the last three years, according to the report.

Note: All figures in Rs crore are budget estimates and have been rounded off

“Under Anganwadi and Asha Yojana, honorarium has been enhanced by about 50% for all categories of workers,” Piyush Goyal, interim finance minister, said in his budget speech on February 1, 2019.

India utilises the services of 1.18 million anganwadi workers (AWWs) and 1.16 million anganwadi helpers (AWHs) under ICDS, IndiaSpend reported on February 23, 2018.

As many as 11 states and four union territories have not announced any change in the additional salary paid to AWWs and AWHs since 2015, the report added.

The increase in honorarium “ought to induce much-needed positivity and improved accountability”, the CRY report said.

Allocation for child protection doubles while Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao remains stagnant
The allocation for the Integrated Child Protection Scheme doubled to Rs 1,500 crore from last year. The centrally sponsored scheme aims at building a protective environment for children through government-civil society partnership.

The allocation for Beti Bachao Beti Padhao programme, aimed at preventing gender-biased sex selective elimination and ensuring survival, protection and education of the girl child, has remained stagnant since the last budget at Rs 280 crore.

Over 56% funds allocated for Beti Bachao Beti Padhao from 2014-15 to 2018-19 were spent on “media-related activities” and less than 25% were disbursed to districts and states, The Quint reported on January 21, 2019.

“I can say with pride that with Beti Bachao Beti Padhao campaign, there has been a rise in the number of girls (female ratio) in Haryana, Rajasthan and many other states,” prime minister Narendra Modi was quoted by NDTV in this report on October 13, 2018.

“Many innocents have got rights. The meaning of life is not only to live, but live with dignity.”

The budget reduced the allocation for the National Child Labour Project–to rehabilitate working children–by 17% to Rs 100 crore from the last budget. Nearly 10.1 million children–equal to the population of Uttarakhand–are working, either as ‘main worker’ or as ‘marginal worker’, according to International Labour Organisation data.

(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy : India Spend
 

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The government can help by creating more market options for farm produce and lowering transaction costs, says Sukhpal Singh, professor and former chairperson of the Centre for Management in Agriculture at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Income support, as announced in the budget and by the state governments of Odisha (KALIA) and Telangana (Rythu Bandhu), is “definitely better than loan waivers”, says Sukhpal Singh, professor and former chairperson of the Centre for Management in Agriculture at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. But India cannot afford to give cash payments to such a large population, he says, adding that waivers do not apply to landless and tenant farmers (because they do not have bank loans in the first place), and disincentivise farmers who repay loans on time.

Singh was a member of the working groups on agricultural marketing infrastructure and disadvantaged farmers of the erstwhile Planning Commission for the 12th Five Year Plan. He has advised the state governments in Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Karnataka, among others, on agricultural marketing.

In an interview on agriculture-related policies in India, Singh speaks about the need to make institutional credit available to small farmers, who are often tenants and hence without a title; his perspective on loan waivers and income support; and, more generally, how the farm sector can be made viable.

One basic equation that an urban consumer cannot grasp is how a farmer gets paid Rs 1 per kg of, say, onions, when she pays Rs 20. How does the price rise 20 times with no benefit to the farmer? How can this situation be improved? And how does it work in other countries?

This has been a much-debated issue for some time now. Some part of this price gap between the producer and the consumer comes from the usual wastage involved in perishables, which can be of the order of 10% to 15% in vegetables.

It is also due to the involvement of a large number of intermediaries between the producer and the consumer, and also the very high margins of supermarkets (30-40%), who have about 8-10% of the produce unsold at the end of the day.

More importantly, farmers sell only in wholesale, but most of the margins are in retail and semi-wholesale. Unless farmers get a foot in the retail market, they cannot expect a larger share of the consumer rupee as others also invest their time and energy in taking the produce to the retail buyer.

So, farmer benefit should not be measured in terms of producer share in the consumer rupee but in terms of whether farmers recover their costs and get a decent return on their investment.

The government can help by creating more market options for farmers, and making markets fair to farmers by lowering transaction costs. The government must also incentivise farmer groups and collectives (such as producer companies) who have better bargaining power to sell in these markets, as well as to sell to larger buyers, large processors, exporters and supermarkets.

In other countries, the supply chains are much shorter and more efficient and there are farmers’ markets for perishable produce where they directly sell to consumers.

Agriculture policy-related issues are often blamed for contributing to the malaise in the farm sector. This is contrary to a section of public opinion that sees taxation-free income, free power and loan waivers as undue benefits. Can you explain some of the key policy issues that work against the Indian farmer’s interest?

There is no doubt that there are several policy distortions in the farm sector. First of all, there is no cohesive policy for this sector at the union level and in most states. Most subsidies, except fertiliser subsidy, are actually cornered by large farmers even though they are given in the name of small farmers.

In fact, there are no policies specifically targeted at small farmers except priority-sector lending (banks must provide a prescribed share of loans to farmers) and micro-irrigation guidelines.

Inefficient agricultural produce markets and poor delivery of crop insurance raise farmers’ marketing and production risk. So, despite producing bumper crops, farmers lose money as they cannot sell it well. Besides, there is an interlocking of produce and input [in the form of credit] markets–arhtiyas (commission agents) who are supposed to facilitate purchase also lend money, which is illegal and exploitative. Most markets are in the clutches of arhtiyas and traders, whose lobbies are strong and do not allow farmers to sell directly to buyers or agencies.

While talking about farmers, we do not speak of tenant farmers and farm workers. Most of the latter are women. In fact, they are equally distressed but their concerns are not taken on board as there is a conflict of interest between land-owning farmers and landless workers, as seen in the Andhra Pradesh crop holiday a few years back [when loss-making farmers decided not to grow crops at all] and the opposition to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme from farmers’ unions and farmers in general.

Nearly 61% of the farmers surveyed said they would prefer to leave farming if they found employment in the city, according to a 2018 CSDS report. Over 45 years to 2016, according to the agricultural census, the average size of the Indian farm has shrunk by more than half–from 2.28 hectares to 1.08 hectares. Plus, of 146 million farms, nearly 100 million are marginal, or smaller than one hectare in size. What policy measures could be taken to make farming a viable source of livelihood for the majority of Indian farmers?

Empirical evidence shows that the size of the farm is not an issue, neither in terms of yield nor profitability. China, with its average farm size being half of India’s average, has average yields double of India’s. Studies based on secondary (National Sample Survey) data also show that small farms are the most productive in India in terms of value of output per unit area.

It is a different matter that given the cropping pattern on most of the small farms, as indeed all farms, in India, the income from such farms may not be enough to provide a decent livelihood for all family members of the households. [This is because small and marginal farmers grow low-value crops such as wheat and paddy, which are land-intensive and get minimum support price, which is inadequate; and also because their yields are low.] But you cannot fault farm size for that. To me, it is not the size of the farm but what you do on it, how, how much, for whom, and why that matters.

In our study, “Replicating Small Farms, Prosperous Farmers in India: Lessons for Policy and Practice”, we found millions of small farms in India (up to 5 acres in size) that have a cropping intensity of more than 300% and make a few hundred thousand rupees in net profit per acre per year. This showed that what is needed is access to investment resources for such farms–formal credit at low interest rates–and other public investments such as in irrigation and markets.

There is no need to tinker with the farm size or promote co-operative farming. There is a need for aggregation to deal with markets that are large, ruthless and standard-driven, to help farmers buy and sell through groups and producer companies.

In the November 2018 Kisan Mukti March in Delhi, one of the demands was that “the government should write off all outstanding agricultural loans of the farmers from all sources including institutional and non-institutional loans”. Between April 2017 and December 2018, eight states wrote off a total Rs 1.9 lakh crore in farm loans. Agricultural indebtedness is a problem, but at the same time farm loan waivers have fiscal implications and political benefits. Your comments?

Loan waivers may be seen as temporary relief measures but the problem with this measure is that it is not fair to those large or small farmers who repaid on time. Further, in most states, landless and tenant households are being excluded on the pretext of [lack of] land titles, which is the basis for such waivers.

Small, marginal and tenant cultivators need better access to institutional credit to not just lower the cost of borrowing but also to get them out of the interlocking of credit and produce markets that has led to over-pricing of inputs and under-pricing of output, leading to indebtedness.
The arhtiyas’ engagement in moneylending is completely illegal and informal as they are licensed only to deal in produce as facilitators or buyers.
State governments such as in Telangana and Odisha are providing income support for farmers. Now, the Centre has also announced income support for small and marginal farmers. Is this the way forward to alleviate farm distress? How do you assess these initiatives and their viability?
It is definitely better than loan waivers as it is more equitable and widespread in its reach, though in Telangana it leaves out tenants and landless households. Further, in Telangana it is called a farm-investment scheme, but is being given for two seasons even though the cropping intensity (number of crops on a piece of land in a year) is 1.5 crops on average because it is an arid state. So, it is partly being given for even not producing anything. KALIA in Odisha is much better as it covers all rural households including the landless and provides substantial support per household.

That makes it similar to universal basic income (UBI) in a sense. I am of the view that India cannot afford to give cash payments to its large population unless all subsidies are merged into such income-support programmes. Further, removing some subsidies may affect farm production levels as what is considered essential support by the government may not remain so. We have alternative institutions such as producer companies and NGOs to take up that role to some extent.

“The model Agricultural Produce and Livestock Contract Farming and Services (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2018, opens up agricultural markets to contracting agencies without adequate safeguards for farmers,” you wrote. How does it affect small and marginal farmers and is it a step down from the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) Act? What were the problems with APMC that the model law tried to correct? What could have been a better solution?

In fact, there was no need for a separate law on contract farming as it has been going on under the amended APMC Act since 2003 without much conflict of interest. There is a bigger conflict of interest in the provision of private wholesale markets under the APLM Act, but that has not been taken out of its purview.

A separate Act on contract farming is more of an escapism from reforming the APMCs. The new model Agricultural Produce and Livestock Marketing Act, 2017, and the model Contract Farming and Services Act, 2018, focus more on facilitation and promotion rather than regulation. They aim at opening agricultural produce markets to give buyer choice to farmers, which is a good thing, but they fall short on farmer interest protection. For example, there is no provision for group contracts in the contract farming Act to make it inclusive of small producers who are generally excluded from such arrangements.

The APLM Act still gives a central role to arhtiyas, even providing for payment to farmers through them. This is completely avoidable as now buyers can buy directly from farmers and many government agencies have been keen to buy directly and pay directly. Further, there are many alternative agencies such as primary agricultural co-operative societies (PACS), producer companies and others that can facilitate selling and buying between farmer and buyer (and are doing so in some states). In fact, it is a ripe time to abolish the system of arhtiyas (as Madhya Pradesh did in 1985), but the model Act strengthens this outdated institution.

Over 16 years to 2017-18, overall procurement of rice and wheat by government agencies for the central pool has been 31% and 27% of production, respectively, according to an agriculture committee report presented in the Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) on January 3, 2019. Low procurement affects incomes, especially of small and marginal farmers. What are the challenges and solutions for procurement given the recent record-setting production of food grains?

The procurement of food grains at minimum support price or MSP [government procurement price] is restricted to only a few states and a few crops, and that is why only fewer than 10% of farmers get its benefit. It is not enough to procure large volumes. To make MSP-based procurement fair and equitable, there is need to fix the ceiling per acre for each farmer as is the case in Chhattisgarh [where a 15-quintal-per-acre limit has been fixed for paddy procurement]. Further, payments need to be made in time and quality norms enforced so that those who produce quality output get a better price.

We also need to move away from focusing on just two crops and include crops from dryland regions, as well as decentralise procurement as is happening in Bihar and other states where PACS are procuring at the village level. This lowers the transaction cost for farmers. Also, farmer producer companies need to be given this role rather than involving large-scale private traders/companies as proposed by Niti [Aayog] recently.

India plans to double agriculture export to more than $60 billion by 2022 as part of doubling farmers’ income. Although “all the measures proposed in the Agriculture Export Policy are compatible with World Trade Organisation (WTO) norms”, according to thisreport, do you think an increase in government procurement price may be in conflict with India’s WTO commitment? What are the challenges that persist?

Though it is a constraint, it can be managed by some other trade-off. The more important issue is whether India can offer and sustain higher prices of crops under MSP if it is backed by effective procurement across all crops and regions. MSP is not the way to double farmer income. More market channels and efficient markets are the only sustainable way to do it, besides reducing cost of production in the short- and medium- term.
Ministers in the union cabinet such as Arun Jaitley and Parshottam Rupala have said that the ‘farmer producer organisations’ (FPO) model can help double farm incomes. Given the issue of infrastructure and training to handle matters of finance and access to finance, do you think FPOs are sustainable and scalable across the country?

FPO is too broad a term to use for such entities. What is being encouraged is the farmer producer company, which is more business-like because it is totally farmer-owned and -controlled.

But, the targets by government and other agencies are leading to their quick setting up without the necessary spadework and due process of building a collective.

They are very promising structures as they can help reduce the cost of production and realise better prices for farmers, by improving buying (of farm inputs and services) and selling (of farm and allied produce, and other value-added products). But they are not a quick-fix; they take time to build and perform because they work in situations of market failure and have to compete with various other players in the same market despite being collectives. This makes it doubly difficult for them to succeed. But, there are encouraging signs and the government and development agencies have come forward to help. I am of the view that if this structure does not deliver, there are not many alternatives left for small and marginal farmers.

Given that there are legal issues with land leasing, what are some possible solutions?

The Model Land Leasing Act proposed by the Niti [Aayog] provides for opening up the farm land leasing market to all kinds of players. But I am not sure that is the way to go as it can lead to further concentration of land control in fewer hands, where only some, more resourceful farmers benefit from the various farm policies of the central and state governments. Many small and marginal farmers may be left jobless as has been the case with reverse tenancy[when small landowners lease their land to large landowners as rent is higher than income from farming] in Punjab and other parts of India over the last three decades.

Unless landless, marginal and small farmers are encouraged and enabled to lease-in land and do farming with credit and other types of support, a liberal land-leasing policy may prove counterproductive given the widespread landlessness in rural India. Just as there are ceilings on owned land, there should be ceilings on leased land so that liberalised land leasing in the name of small farmers does not end up encouraging corporate farming.

(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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This decline in vote-share is significant because in nearly 20% of the seats contested across UP in 2017, the winner was decided by a margin of 3 percentage points or less, the study, Coordinating Voters against Criminal Politicians: Evidence from a Mobile Experiment in India, released in November 2018, said.

Uttar Pradesh has the largest proportion of candidates with criminal charges fielded by major political parties such as the Samajwadi Party, Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress and Bahujan Samaj Party, IndiaSpend reported on March 10, 2017.

The Election Commission of India made it compulsory for candidates to advertise their criminal antecedents on TV and in newspapers at least thrice during electioneering, NDTV reported on October 11, 2018.

The study shows the potential of mobile phone-based information campaigns in helping voters make informed choices.

In the 2017 UP assembly elections, the proportion of candidates with serious criminal cases almost doubled to 15% and of candidates with criminal cases dropped one percentage point to 18% over the previous election in 2012, according to data from the Association of Democratic Reforms, an NGO.

In the 2018 assembly elections in the Hindi heartland states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh (in the second phase of elections), nearly 9%, 11% and 9% of candidates, respectively, had serious criminal charges against them.

Four types of messages before polls
The present study ran randomised control trials in 3,800 villages. Control villages received no messages, while for villages in which messages were sent, the recipients were chosen randomly. In all, 450,000 people received at least one voice message and one text message two days before the election.

The messages were any of the following four:

1. Basic information message: These urged recipients to get to know their candidates and think carefully before casting their vote, and additionally provided recipients with information on the number and type of criminal charges, if any, against all of their major party candidates.
2. Information plus coordination message: These basic information messages were accompanied by content informing voters that many other residents of their area had received the same message.
3. Information plus ethnic-voting message: In these messages, voters were provided criminality information and additionally urged to break the habit of voting along caste lines.
4. Women’s mobilisation message: These contained the same request that recipients must get to know their candidates and think carefully before voting, plus a message to encourage higher female turnout.
5.  

Source: Coordinating Voters against Criminal Politicians: Evidence from a Mobile Experiment in India (November, 2018)

The study chose villages with a population greater than 150 and less than 5,150 and “excluded villages in the bottom percentile in terms of village-level population share covered as Vodafone+Idea subscribers (corresponding to roughly a 10.6% coverage rate or lower)”.
The study was supported by J-PAL Governance Initiative, the Harvard Lab for Economic Applications and Policy, and the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. They partnered with three Indian telecom companies–Idea, Airtel and Vodafone.

Candidates with murder charges lost vote share
The study found that among those with murder charges, there was an overall decrease in votes of 12%. Those with attempted-murder charges saw a smaller decline in votes of 5%, and those with non-murder-related charges saw almost no difference in votes.

In a set of polling stations in constituencies where at least one candidate had a murder-related charge, the total votes across all candidates without any criminal charge increased by an average of 6.7% and votes for candidates with murder-related charges dropped by 7.7%. “These effects, together with a statistically insignificant increase in votes for candidates with only non-murder-related criminal charges, yield a combined increase in total turnout of 1.6%,” the study noted.

The experiment found that in polling stations where no candidates had a murder-related charge, the positive impact on votes for “clean” candidates disappeared. This showed that “having the reference point of a competing candidate with a severe criminal charge is needed for the information treatment to increase votes for non-criminally-charged candidates”, the study noted.

There is no bar on candidates charged in criminal cases from contesting elections in India. The Supreme Court refused to bar candidates facing criminal charges from contesting elections, leaving the matter in the hands of parliament, Livemint reported on September 25, 2018.
Earlier, in November 2017, the Supreme Court had asked the government to devise a scheme to set up special courts for trying criminal cases against legislators, Live Law reported on December 14, 2017. The central government had informed the court that special courts would dispose of all 1,581 criminal cases pending against politicians in one year, the report added.

Impact of coordination
The impact on “clean” candidates was different with a coordination message, relative to only basic information.

There was a 0.8-percentage-point decline in the vote share of candidates with murder-related charges in polling stations that received the basic information treatment, and a 1.5-percentage-point decline for stations that received the ethnic-voting message, the study noted. However, the vote share of those candidates at polling stations that received coordination messages declined by a larger 2.5 percentage points.

Overall, those facing murder charges experienced a 12% decline in the number of votes they received, leading to a 3-percentage-point decline in their vote share. “This is a non-trivial magnitude when we consider the winning margins of the election we targeted with this campaign. Of the 403 races held across UP in 2017, roughly 20% were determined by a margin of 3 percentage points or less,” the study noted.

(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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