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21. The Evolution of India’s Welfare System from 2008-2023: A Lookback

Author:
Centre for Policy Research
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
In the 15 years that have gone by, India has seen a significant transition in the social sector, and lived through a pandemic. At the Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research, we have tracked the provision of welfare services and entitlements since 2008, in-step with the country’s evolution over these years. The year 2023 marks a moment to pause and reflect for us as we celebrate our 15th anniversary, and the Centre for Policy Research reaches its milestone of 50 years. But, aside from our legacy of evidence-based knowledge sharing, this reflection is important in one more way. In 2024, India will choose a new government. A lookback on welfare spending and outcomes is an essential first step to understanding future priorities and pathways to development. Drawing from previous Union Budgets, this Special Brief will dive into six major aspects. Firstly, reviewing the sources of funding available with the government. Secondly, analysing trends in expenditures including social sector allocations for key ministries and schemes. Thirdly, the devolution of funds to states who are primary spenders on welfare services. Fourthly, unpacking social sector schemes over the years. Fifthly, analysing select outputs and outcomes over time. Lastly, we offer our own experience by providing a snapshot of the changes in government Management Information Systems which are critical to monitoring welfare schemes, among other aspects. For the purpose of this Special Brief, we are covering the period from 2009-2023. Actual Government of India (GoI) expenditures have been used till Financial Year (FY) 2020-21. For FY 2021-22, figures are Revised Estimates (REs) and Budget Estimates (BEs) for FY 2022-23.
Topic:
History, Governance, Budget, Welfare, and Public Spending
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

22. The Role of Export Incentives and Bank Credit on the Export Survival of Firms in India During COVID-19

Author:
Radeef Chundakkadan, Subash Sasidharan, and Ketan Reddy
Publication Date:
08-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
Abstract:
The aim of this study is threefold. First, we analyse the relationship between export incentives on firm survival during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis; second, we explore the nexus between bank dependency and survival in the export market; and finally, we test the complementarity and substitutability effect of export incentives and bank dependency on export market survival. We use firm-level information on Indian firms from 2016 to 2022, covering 4 years of the pre-pandemic period and 2 years of the post-pandemic period. We find that both export incentives and bank dependency improve the probability of export market survival in the post-pandemic period. These results are applicable to both the manufacturing and services sector, stand-alone firms, and business group affiliates. Our results remain robust while employing alternative proxies for the primary variable of interest and different methodologies.
Topic:
Business, Banks, Exports, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

23. Industry Agglomeration, Urban Amenities, and Regional Development in India

Author:
Subash Sasidharan and Shandre Mugan Thangavelu
Publication Date:
09-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
Abstract:
Industrial agglomeration is an important component to create efficiency and externalities for industrial growth and competitiveness for the Indian economy. In this paper, we examine the spatial location of Indian firms and industry agglomeration at district and township level for the Indian economy. Particularly, we examine the impact of urban amenities in driving the industrial agglomeration in the Indian economy using firm-level data. We carefully control for township-level urban amenities, as well as firm level characteristics in affecting the industry agglomeration. As opposed to previous state- and district-level studies, we examine the impact of urban amenities at a more disaggregated township level for 2011. The study also examines the impact of urban amenities on manufacturing, as well as the services sector. The empirical analysis findings indicate a positive correlation between town-level disparities in industry agglomeration and various amenities, including education, healthcare, energy, transportation, finance, and cultural resources. These results remain consistent when considering alternative measures of agglomeration and conducting sub-sample analyses.
Topic:
Development, Manufacturing, Services, and Industry
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

24. Honoring Diplomats Punished for Doing their Job Well

Author:
Ismini Lamb and Chris Lamb
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
The Department of State recently set a useful precedent by honoring Archer Blood, the U.S. consul general in Dhaka during Pakistan’s brutal suppression of free elections in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). He reported Pakistani atrocities and complained when the United States refused to denounce them. Henry Kissinger, then the National Security Advisor, viewed Pakistan as a strategic ally. He had Blood recalled to Washington, clobbered with a career-ending poor evaluation, and stuck in a dead-end job. Blood’s story is told in the award-winning book, The Blood Telegram. By celebrating Blood and naming a conference room after him, the Department corrected an injustice. It should now do the same for George Horton, another diplomat punished for telling the truth and promoting humanitarian values. The Horton and Blood cases are remarkably similar. Both men were consuls general who witnessed horrendous attacks on civilian populations. Both argued the United States should condemn these horrors, and both intervened to save lives and make the truth known. Both were punished by the Department of State for reporting the truth and challenging extant policy. Both later went public with their accounts, and both have been posthumously vindicated. The major difference is that Horton’s experience came half a century earlier and he was treated even worse.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, and History
Political Geography:
Pakistan and South Asia

25. A Mongoose Walked into a Narcotics Den…

Author:
Ed Marks
Publication Date:
08-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
The American embassy in Sri Lanka, like its counterparts worldwide, has the task of liaison and coordination with local authorities on the subject of narcotics. When I served there from 1986 to 1989, narcotics’ use was not a major problem, nor was the country an exporter or a major transit point. Nevertheless, these are relative terms, and the Sri Lankan government was worried that narcotics activity in the country was growing. Both governments were concerned about the increasing evidence that at least one of the Tamil separatist groups was funding its activities by drug smuggling from South Asia to Europe. Soon after my arrival in Colombo, a young colleague who held the narcotics portfolio (among his other duties) arranged a luncheon with four of his most important contacts in the narcotics area: police, customs, etc. We discussed various aspects of the problem and of our bilateral cooperation in the field. At one point, we discussed inspection and control mechanisms at airports and ports, and especially the virtues of specially trained sniffer dogs. The subject interested me as I had some knowledge of the subject from my days in counterterrorism. We all realized that, useful as they are, dogs have disadvantages: scarcity, cost of procurement and maintenance, difficulty of adaptation to tropical climates, and a negative cultural reaction to them among many Moslems. I cannot remember exactly who first broached the thought (although I would like to take credit), but suddenly we were discussing the possibility of replacing sniffer dogs in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in Asia with an indigenous animal, to wit, the mongoose. The more we talked, the more the idea seemed worth pursuing. The senior police officer present claimed experience with local mongooses as pets and insisted that they were clever and trainable, and notable for their ability to smell.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Memoir, and Drugs
Political Geography:
South Asia, Sri Lanka, and United States of America

26. Strange Intimacies: Indo-Afghan Relations and the End of the War on Terror

Author:
Mou Banerjee
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Fletcher Security Review
Institution:
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Abstract:
Riding the Afghan tiger has always been an incredibly risky venture, as history is witness, and getting off safely has almost always been impossible. There is no reason to believe that the new political dispensation in Afghanistan will not experience or exercise more violent changes in the near future. This is a tinderbox situation, and as always, Afghanistan is serving as a proxy for external neo-imperial ideologies and political maneuvers. This genealogical pattern is not unfamiliar to historians—Afghanistan served the same purpose in the nineteenth century between Britain and Russia, in the twentieth century between the USSR and the United States at the height of the Cold War, and in the twenty-first century between the so-called enlightened and liberal Western world order led by the United States and the dark forces of “jihadi” terrorism. China, India, and Pakistan are perhaps setting the board for a new iteration of this eternal “Great Game.”
Topic:
Security, Bilateral Relations, Geopolitics, and War on Terror
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, South Asia, and India

27. Can the Belt and Road Initiative Succeed in Afghanistan?

Author:
Sudha Ramachandran
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
China Brief
Institution:
The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
At a trilateral meeting in Islamabad on May 9, the foreign ministers of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed to extend the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) into Afghanistan and reaffirmed their support for multilateral infrastructure projects already underway, including the Central Asia-South Asia (CASA) power project and the Trans-Afghan Railways (People’s Republic of China Ministry of Foreign Affairs [FMPRC], May 9). Earlier on January 5, the Taliban regime signed an agreement with the Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Company (CAPEIC), a subsidiary of the state-owned China National Petroleum Company (CNPC), for the extraction of oil from the Amu Darya basin, under which China will invest $150 million annually for three years and increase it thereafter to $540 million for the contract’s 25-year duration (Kabul Now, January 5). Then on April 13, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum announced that the Chinese company Gochin had expressed interest in investing $10 billion in Afghanistan’s lithium reserves (Kabul Now, April 13). Meanwhile, China is reported to be in talks with the Taliban regime over renegotiating the terms of a 2008 contract to mine copper from the Mes Aynak reserves in Logar province (The Print, June 8, 2022). The agreements, including plans to extend CPEC—a key leg of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—into Afghanistan, are a significant development. The deal relating to oil extraction in the Amu Darya basin is the Taliban regime’s first major foreign investment deal. However, in the past, major Chinese projects have failed to take off. Will the recent deals remain in limbo as well? China’s growing role in Afghanistan faces formidable challenges.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Development, Infrastructure, and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, China, and South Asia

28. Assessing the Role of the PLA Southern Theater Command in a China-India Contingency

Author:
Suyash Desai
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
China Brief
Institution:
The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
Soon after Xi Jinping assumed charge as the Central Military Commission (CMC) Chairman in November 2012, he set the stage for a sweeping military restructuring. On February 1, 2016, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) moved away from the old Soviet-inspired Military Regions (MR) system to the U.S.-inspired Theater Command (TC) model. Under this new model, the seven Military Regions—Shenyang, Beijing, Jinan, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Lanzhou—were reorganized into five geographic TCs, each with a specific “strategic direction” (战略方向). [1] Following the force restructuring, the three TCs that concern India are the Western Theater Command (WTC) along with Tibet and Xinjiang Military Districts (TMD and XMD), the Southern Theater Command (STC) and the Central Theater Command (CTC). WTC’s 76th and 77th Group Armies (GA) under the PLA Army’s (PLAA) jurisdiction are mandated to ensure the security of China’s land boundaries with Central Asian states, India, Nepal, and Bhutan. The TMD and XMD were retained to oversee security on the Chinese border with the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and the Union Territory of Ladakh, respectively. In addition to the PLAA, the PLA Air Force (PLAAF), the PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) and the PLA Logistic Support Force (JLSF) are also significant services under the WTC command, while the PLA Navy (PLAN) plays a minor role at Pangong Tso in the Aksai Chin region. Elsewhere, PLAN forces under the STC’s jurisdiction are responsible for securing Chinese interests not only in the South China Sea but also possibly in the Indian Ocean Region and the Western Pacific Ocean. The CTC is mandated to protect the capital but also acts as an anchor to provide additional troops to other theaters in case of a contingency, including WTC. This is an important division of responsibilities for the Chinese armed forces after Xi’s recent military reforms. [2] However, recent developments have highlighted that the STC’s 75th Group Army could also play an important role in securing the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial integrity in Tibet, especially in the eastern sector bordering the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Furthermore, the troops from the STC’s 75th Group Army could be used for rotation in the Tibetan theater, and the 75th GA’s artillery could be mobilized during a contingency with India. The four major reasons that the STC’s 75th GA could play such a role are improving connectivity between Tibet and the Southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan, minor changes to the 75th GA’s force composition, recent military exercises by STC’s 75th GA in Tibet and historical precedent.
Topic:
Bilateral Relations, Armed Forces, People's Liberation Army (PLA), and Regional Security
Political Geography:
China, South Asia, India, and Asia

29. Poverty of Circumstances and Poverty of Opportunity

Author:
Anirudh Krishna and Sujeet Kumar
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
Ordinary people in rural Bihar and in Patna and Delhi have virtually no opportunity to be tested for a hidden talent, be it for athletics or singing or chess or mathematics or art. Not one of more than 800 young people we interviewed has ever competed at the national, state or district level in any of eight activities of different kinds. Alternative careers pass them by. Future champions can remain unidentified and unrewarded. Something better is necessary to make equality of opportunity less a slogan and more a reality. Examples from across the world show what can be done.
Topic:
Poverty, Economic Inequality, and Opportunity
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

30. Cooperative Federalism in India: Statutory Regulatory Authorities and the Federal System in India

Author:
K. P. Krishnan, Amrita Pillai, and Karan Gulati
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
Since the 1990s, there has been a marked expansion of the regulatory state in India. Statutory Regulatory Authorities (SRAs) are empowered to create and enforce regulations in their respective fields and often have the authority to issue licenses, conduct inspections, and take enforcement action against individuals or organisations that violate their regulations. This essay recognises the twin-deficit issue with SRAs in India. It focuses on the federal deficit issue and resists exploring the more obvious democratic deficit in them. Our analysis shows that over the twenty-three-year period between 1999 and 2022, the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) has reviewed 4 regulations by SRAs. For context, the securities regulator has issued 661 regulations since its inception in 1992. Such a federal deficit of a lack of State representation disallows decentralisation and restricts means for individuals and communities to have a greater say in the decisions that affect their lives.
Topic:
Governance, Regulation, Deficit, Domestic Policy, and Cooperative Federalism
Political Geography:
South Asia and India