Public Policy

COVID-19: Time to Review Governance Structure of Global Institutions? COVID-19: Time to Review Governance Structure of Global Institutions? Chandrasekaran Balakrishnan March 28, 2020 Public Policy A laboratory worker places a test tube containing a patient’s sample into a box during coronavirus detection tests in the virology research labs at UZ Leuven university hospital in Leuven, Belgium, on Friday, Feb. 28, 2020. China has kick-started a clinical trial to speedily test a drug for the novel coronavirus infection as the nation rushes therapies for those afflicted and scours for vaccines to protect the rest. Photographer: Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Bloomberg via Getty Images[/caption]   Today, most nations (over 196) of the world have declared an unprepared war against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) which first erupted in the Wuhan city of China in December, 2019. This pandemic, a huge threat to humanity, is by far the biggest since the First World War and the Flu of 1918–1919. The outbreak has become a global phenomenon in a record span of time, posing the biggest threat to healthcare systems. The situation has become more frightening in the developing economies which are now strategically tweaked as emerging economies for reaping the market potentials which are not entrusted often in mutual interests. Global institutions like the United Nations (UN), the World Health Organization (WHO), etc. seem to have underestimated the menace erroneously for at least a few crucial weeks of January and February, 2020. These institutions failed to sense the spread of the virus and communicate it to the developing countries and the rest of the world to get prepared for taking necessary actions to prevent the spread. Of late, on 11 March, 2020, the UN had announced a state of emergency that sent shock waves across the world. Given the fragile system of functioning of the WHO during crises, it is really not surprising. The global institutions have at times misused their power leaning towards the West vis-à-vis East benefiting neither but resulting in their failure. Despite having many international organisations of governance and collective efforts and voices stretched after the World War II, the world does not seem to be united, breaking the egos of national interests of countries, for peace and prosperity in the larger interests of humanity. In the past, unprecedented events of ideological revolutionary leaning of nations, territorial disputes, cross-border terror threats, sharing of natural resources, economic depression, economic co-operation, climate change, technology revolution, space exploration, etc. have really tested the efficacy of global institutions’ resilience and manifestation of remedies beyond mere lip services rendered for the strategic nudge. This casts doubt on the ability of global institutions like the United Nations (UN) and its allied institutions like the World Health Organization (WHO), The World Bank Group, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), etc. Besides, given their last three decades of experience in dealing with emergency situations, the best these institutions could do was merely document what had happened in the past rather than taking any efforts towards prevention of such events in the future. In the wake of the novel COVID-19 outbreak, some of the advanced economies like the United States, Spain, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Europe, etc. were in the belief that they were prepared to face human sufferings and horrific deaths, but were unable to do so despite having the most advanced healthcare systems in the world. For the past several decades, almost every global institution is coercively controlled by these nations with their colonial mentality and preaching to the Third World Countries. The coronavirus outburst across the world is a strong case to assess the governance structure of the UN-funded institutions like the WHO, having 194 member states, which miserably failed to gauge the real situation in Wuhan city and Italy for several weeks after the massive outburst. During a pandemic, is it wise to divide the affected people according to their nationalities and deport them to their countries? Does it not further lead to the spread of the disease among millions of people? We should try to answer these questions and think of the possibility of setting up a powerful and well-equipped global institution with a good governance system that can support the medical treatment of people affected by diseases like COVID-19 in the same country where they work and live. History has taught us many lessons and we should learn from our past mistakes. Unlike in 2020, there was no influential global institution in 1918–19 to manage the Flu epidemic which rampaged and complicated world humanity during the First World War. Nevertheless, the world has changed since 1918. The Chinese government should have acted promptly and taken seriously the outbreak of coronavirus in the month of January 2020 itself, and communicated about the disease to the world much faster than their usual suspect mode without relying solely on the WHO. Siddharth Chandra and Eva Kassens-Noor’s 2014 research paper titled “The Evolution of Pandemic Influenza: Evidence from India, 1918–19” has scientifically documented the devastating pandemic of Spanish Flu of 1918–19 and its impacts on India. The data on peoples’ death were collected for a five year period from 1916 to 1920 covering 9 provinces like Assam, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, Bombay, Central Provinces, Madras, Northwest Frontier Province, Punjab and United Provinces. They have estimated that about 10 to 20 million people died due to the Spanish Flu in 213 districts across 9 provinces in British India. Across the world, the death toll was between 20 and 50 million people. The study concludes that the entry point of the first wave of the disease and the time taken for calibrated efforts towards emergency management are crucial. A basic analysis of the study reveals that the focal point of a pandemic spreading across the country from the entry of its first wave needs to be studied for the future course of action which seems to be terribly missed out by both China and WHO in the case of COVID-19 outbreak. Perhaps, the world is divided

Trichy’s Initiatives to Enhance Ease of Living Trichy’s Initiatives to Enhance Ease of Living Chandrasekaran Balakrishnan March 2, 2020 Public Policy   The article discusses the challenges before the Trichy City Corporation in achieving the vision of ‘ease living for all’. It also sheds light on how a slew of innovative initiatives undertaken by it, involving citizens in most of the programmes, have yielded good results. The southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu has 15 City Corporations which play a pivotal role in economic development. These 15 cities account for one-third of the State’s population and 11 among them were selected under the Smart Cities Mission to transform ease of living by adopting technology and innovative approaches. But cities in Tamil Nadu are facing many challenges due to the dearth of adequate civic facilities. Even after close to three decades of the reforms of the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act of 1992, which recognised the importance of local self-governments for the delivery of essential services, they are yet to be fully implemented. The will of the people was time and again betrayed by the elected representatives who make the laws on behalf of the people. This was mainly due to two factors: the lack of citizens’ engagements in the implementation of policies by the authorities and the failure of the overall governance system in which the citizens’ role has been undermined.  Click on to read the article Views expressed by the author are personal and need not reflect or represent the views of Centre for Public Policy Research https://www.cppr.in/articles/trichys-initiatives-to-enhance-ease-of-living     Facebook Instagram X-twitter

School Vouchers for RTE Access to Poor Students School Vouchers for RTE Access to Poor Students Chandrasekaran Balakrishnan January 27, 2020 Public Policy   The issues relating to the RTE Act implementation are becoming predominant year after year and parents are forced to think alternative ways to get quality school education for their children, what is the way forward? Some suggestions are put forward in this concluding part of the series written by B Chandrasekaran, Research Fellow-CPPR.  Major Implementation Challenges Faced by the RTE Act It has been a decade since the RTE Act came into effect. The fact is many states are yet to make it more efficacious. The following are key challenges observed across the country with regards to access to the 25 per cent reservation of admission for children of economically weaker sections in private and unaided schools: Year after year, the number of court litigations concerning availing of 25 per cent reservations in private and unaided schools has been increasing. Parents face the challenges of finding good quality private schools for getting admission for their children; whether it is government or private school, what matters them is quality of education. In some states, the students from economically weaker sections and disadvantaged communities can now only avail a reserved seat in a private school, if there are no government schools in their neighbourhood. This change in the Act leaves a large number of 25 per cent reservation seats unfilled across states. This comes to the advantage of private and unaided schools admitting poor children taking hefty fees from them. Many private and unaided schools complain of not receiving the reimbursement from the Government for 25 per cent reserved seat admission provided to poor children. This undermines the priority of education for poor children. Any delays in reimbursement of the cost of education to private schools mean humiliation and embarrassment to poor children and their parents. There are challenges in getting 25 per cent reservation under the RTE to the CBSE schools across the country. The CBSE schools start admission in the month of April–May but other state board schools start admission in the month of June. Poor children’s parents face a lot of handicaps which have not been carefully looked into by policymakers to fix them even after 10 years of implementation. In states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra, the admission processes are fully computerised with a lottery system for admission amidst complaints from parents that the list of CBSE schools has not been featuring on the portal for admissions under the RTE Act. In rural areas, poor parents are often not aware of the computerised process of admission; this, in turn, helps private schools for not filling all eligible seats under the RTE. Even the lottery system to allot seats under RTI Act is ludicrous. Oddly, the capacity to implement the RTE Act is still lingering on weak foundations of the school education departments across the country. The states/UTs have to give top priority to augment more resources to increase the capacity to implement the constitutional mandate of the RTE Act. Otherwise, there will be a compelling need to find alternative solutions to provide universal access to primary education for poor children. Thousands of private schools across the country failed to declare the seats under 25 per cent reservation of the RTE Act. The enforcement of the RTE Act and monitoring the implementation process is still weak. The above challenges become predominant year after year and the parents in many states are forced to think alternative ways to get quality school education for their children. The Draft National Education Policy, 2019, has rightly envisaged that a comprehensive and detailed review of the RTE Act…is needed and…the RTE Act may be suitably amended. Further, the draft policy also emphasises that the RTE must focus more on educational outcomes and less on inputs. It must also not have a mechanistic and deterministic approach on inputs and processes of outcomes. School Vouchers: An Antidote Therefore, the way forward for the above issues is to make amendments in the RTE Act on 25 per cent reservation to empower economically poor parents by giving them a school voucher through Direct Benefit Transfer linked with Aadhaar for the amount currently spend as per child reimbursements to private and unaided schools. This will also resolve the major issues of non-filling of seats in private and unaided schools and create competition among schools for providing good quality primary education for all children. We need to fund students directly through their parents, and not schools, by adopting the school voucher model. Thus, the parents, especially women, will be empowered to demand quality school education for their children. Voucher schemes are a form of “demand-side financing” and are specifically targeted at economically poor and low-income groups. Banerjee (2012) noted that “If schools are funded, then the basis and proofs of admission of the 25% remains a challenge. If students are funded, then the challenge is to establish intended usage by children or their parents.” He further pointed out that “Studies have shown that education vouchers do help in enhancing access and quality, especially for the needy families. Further, it introduces more accountability and transparency in all stakeholders: governments, schools and students, thereby raising the quality of governance. Vouchers are extremely helpful in allocating convenience and benefits to citizens at large.” Recent field-level studies have shown that the choices given to parents to select private schools for their children have widened with the mandate of 25 per cent reservation under the RTE Act and girl students were benefited more than the boy students (Damera 2018; Dongre, Ankur, and Karan2018). During the last decade, many states in India have implemented the voucher system for the targeted beneficiaries in healthcare services by collaborating with the Union Government and International agencies. By introducing the voucher system in school education, the school governance system enabled with information technology would ensure universal access to primary school education for children belonging to economically weaker sections of the society. There

RTE Access to Poor Students: Cases of Four States RTE Access to Poor Students: Cases of Four States Chandrasekaran Balakrishnan January 14, 2020 Public Policy This article, second part of the series, written by B Chandrasekaran, Research Fellow-CPPR, gives details about the school admissions under the 25 per cent reservation of the RTE Act in four major states during the academic year 2019–2020 and looks at the reasons for the failure of the implementation of the provision.   B Chandrasekaran The RTE Act, 2009, was one of the landmark laws in primary education. But the implementation of the Act has been facing many challenges across the states in the country, especially the implementation of the provision for 25 per cent reservation in private and unaided schools for children belonging to economically weaker sections. This part discusses the school admissions under 25 per cent reservation of the RTE Act in four major states during the academic year 2019–2020. Click on to read the article Views expressed by the author are personal and need not reflect or represent the views of Centre for Public Policy Research https://www.cppr.in/articles/rte-access-to-poor-students-cases-of-four-states   Facebook Instagram X-twitter

RTE Access to Poor Students: Challenges Faced by the States RTE Access to Poor Students: Challenges Faced by the States Chandrasekaran Balakrishnan January 8, 2020 Public Policy   This article, first part of a series, written by B Chandrasekaran, Research Fellow, CPPR, discusses the challenges faced by some of the state governments in implementing the RTE Act and analyses how they have failed to prioritise the needs of primary education of children belonging to economically weaker sections of the society as mandated in the constitutional provision. The following parts will explore alternative ways to ensure universal access to quality primary education to poor children. RTE Act—Inputs vs Outcomes The access to basic education for all children has been a much-discussed subject for more than a century now. The nationalist liberal leader Gopal Krishna Gokhale was the first person in 1910 to envision universal access to free and compulsory primary education for all children. Since then, given the vast diversity of states in India, each has taken varied measures to provide access to primary education according to its disposable resources on priority basis, but still much need to be done. Most of the states, perhaps except Kerala, did not achieve the goal till 2009. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act or Right to Education Act (RTE) was enacted on August 4, 2009 by the Indian Parliament to provide universal access to free education for children aged 6–14 years. By enacting the RTE law, India also joined the league of 135 countries to have primary education as Fundamental Rights in the constitutional provision under Article 21A as amended in 2002. RTE came into effect on April 1, 2010 with stipulations to states to have all the necessary resources in place by 2013 to achieve access to free and compulsory primary education for all children aged 6–14 years. Unlike other countries where parents are solely responsible for children’s education, India became the first country with the government being responsible for the enrolment, attendance and completion of primary education of children. Click on to read the article Views expressed by the author are personal and need not reflect or represent the views of Centre for Public Policy Research https://www.cppr.in/articles/rte-access-to-poor-students-challenges-faced-by-the-states   Facebook Instagram X-twitter