Taking policy discussion to common man

Link to the original post: http://indiapolicywiki.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/platform-to-promote-policy-discussions/

What is and should be the law to allot 2G or 3G spectrum? What is the best way to implement NREGA? Why is Land Acquisition Act using which Government acquires land from people has not been changed from 1894? Why our Police department still follows a rule book written in 1861? How to mass publicize power of RTI?

These are few of the questions that come to our mind when we read newspapers. Even though consequences of most of the bills passed in parliament are for next 75 to 100 years, it doesn’t get the debates and discussions it deserves. Onus is on educated citizens like us to make common man aware of policy matters and make their opinions heard on issues that matters to everyone.

India Policy Wiki was created to be a platform that provides information about policy issues and also provides space for policy discussions. I got involved in this work about a year back. Our initial idea is to simplify policy issues by translating summaries of recent bills in parliament and use both internet and other media (regional newspapers etc.) to educate and inform common man. We are looking for people to come on board to take this initiative forward. We need ideas and people who can execute. Our goal is simple and crisp - make common man aware of public policy issues. Specifically, we are looking for people who can lead India Policy Wiki team in following positions:

• Chief Editor
• Language Editors (Any major regional language)
• VP – Public Relations
• VP – Technology
• VP – Media Relations
• VP – Sponsorship
• VP – New Initiatives

Roles and responsibilities of the positions can be found here. If you are interested in any of the above positions or if the idea of India Policy Wiki seems exciting and you want to be a part of it even though you are not sure how, please write to us at  contact@indiapolicywiki.org or to me at vikasargod@indiapolicywiki.org

We seek your help in reaching out to any interested people. Please forward this to as many people as you can.

A good policy and an informed citizen are both increasingly becoming an exception than a rule. We need your help to reverse that!

Achieving Millennium Development Goals by 2015 – are we there?

Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is set by United Nations in 2000 for inspiring development efforts in developing regions. As UN prepares for MDG summit in September of 2010, it is a good idea to track the progress of our country at this point. Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation released a status report in 2009 and can be accessed here. MDG comprises of well-defined 8 goals with 18 targets.Broadly these 8 goals are as follows:

1. End Poverty and Hunger
2. Universal Education
3. Gender Equality
4. Child Health
5. Maternal Health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS
7. Environmental Sustainability
8. Global Partnership

These 8 goals have been converted to 18 set of well-defined targets. Further these 18 targets have been defined with the help of about 48 indicators. Out of these 18, 12 are significant and applicable to India (as per Ministry of Statistics and Programme implementation report). Achieving the overall target implicitly means achieving all those indicators. Performance of India so far is not so good compared to other leading countries with ‘developing’ tag. For the amount of resource and investment, India should have or rather could have achieved more. Following table gives a quick view to our performance.In the subsequent posts, i intend to expand on these goals. This post is intended to be like an executive summary.

Target Number	Description	Progress
1.	Halve, between 1990 and 2015, proportion of population below national poverty line	Slow or off- track considering all the indicators Poverty headcount ratio estimated to reach 23% by 2015 and the target is 25.6%
2.	Halve, between 1990 and 2015, proportion of people who suffer from hunger	Almost off-track considering all the indicators Reducing underweight children is far from the target of 26%, with an estimation of reaching 40% by 2015
3.	Ensure that by 2015 children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary education	Fast on track in terms of the indicators Net Enrollment Ratio is at 97% in 2007 and is expected to reach 100% by 2015
4.	Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015	On track in terms of most of the indicators Gender parity is also estimated to reach by 2015 after missing 2005 mark Gender parity in tertiary is going slow with only 0.7 in 2007
5.	Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate	Slowly on- track in one indicator and off-track in terms other Under five mortality rate is estimated to reach 70 per 1000 live births whereas the target is to reach 42 per 1000 live births One year old immunized rate is expected to reach 96.8% by 2015
6.	Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio	Slow or off-track in terms of all the indicators Maternal mortality rate is expected to reach 135 per 100,000 live births while target is 109 by 2015 Proportion of deliveries attended by skilled personalities is expected to reach 62% by 2015 with 46.6% in 2006
7.	Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS	On track with all the indicators Number of AIDS people living has gone from 0.45% in 2002 to 0.34% in 2007
8.	Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases	On track with one indicator and slowly on track with other indicator Malaria deaths have not reduced significantly with 0.07 deaths per 100 cases in 2009 increased from 0.05 in 2005 Mortality due to TB has reduced from 42 in 1990 to 26 in 2007 (death per 100,000 population)
9.	Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies andprograms and reverse the loss of environmental resources	On track Total forest area has increased by 0.03% of total geographic area
10.	Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation	On track with one indicator and off-track with other Drinking water facilities are expected to reach the target of 100% by 2015 Basic sanitation goal of 38% without sanitation will be missed as projected is 46% without sanitation by 2015
11.	By 2020, to have achieved, a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers	Due to lack of sufficient data, status cannot be determined 32% of urban population comprises of slum dwellers (as of 2007)
12.	In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communication	On track Tele-density has increased from 0.67 per 100 population in 1990 to 36.98 per 100 in March 2009

Voting as an obligation

Voting defines democracy. It is a fundamental right of the citizens, but can it be considered as an obligation? Elections provide a mechanism of aggregating the preferences of individuals. Higher participation in this process might result in more responsive and accountable governments. Making voting compulsory, undoubtedly increases voter turnout. But does that translate to a fairer election?

Voter turnout has stabilized at 58% in India over the last three general elections. About half of the urban population abstains while rural voters account for the maximum share of the turnout. The current ruling party has the approval of just 248 million people to govern more than 1 billion people. The most recent election witnessed 84% turnout in the north-east regions but 48% in Bihar. Looking at these numbers, there seems to be a need for electoral reform. Compulsory voting is one of the ways to achieve this. As the name suggests, it makes voting a civic duty, rather than just a right. The concept of compulsory voting has existed in Belgium since 1892 and in Australia since 1924. Currently 32 countries, including Singapore, Brazil, and Argentina, follow such a rule achieving around 90% voter turnout. In India, the Gujarat state assembly recently passed a bill to enforce compulsory voting in local body elections. A law for compulsory voting increases the voter turnout and makes election results reflective of demography. If everyone is required to vote by law, political parties would spend much less money to increase voter turnout. It is estimated that political parties spent about $2.5 billion to bring people to polling booths in the 2009 general elections. If everyone has to vote, the focus of political manifestos will be more inclusive and less populist. It completely dismantles ‘vote bank politics’ from the Indian political domain.

Proponents of this law argue that the legitimacy of the government increases when higher proportions of population participate in elections. But, there is the philosophical debate about it’s infringement of individual freedom associated with democracy itself. Such debates often make it difficult for policymakers to formulate such a law. Difficulty in implementation is a commonly given argument in the Indian context. If policymakers are determined, there will be a successful implementation of compulsory voting. Absentee voting ballot, easy voter registration, electronic voting machines with biometric identification are some of the many ways.

Compulsory voting increases the voter turnout. However, will compulsory voting increase the political awareness of the citizens? Outcome of the election is more important than just the act of voting. Forcing everyone to vote might be treating the symptoms rather than the cause itself. Poor turnout may be the sign of frustration of people due to lack of good choices. If forced to vote in such a situation, voters might resort to whimsical votes, causing more harm than otherwise. The Gujarat government has taken a step in the right direction through the introduction of a ‘None of the above’ option on the ballot. If a considerable number of people opt for this option, there is a re-election with a different set of candidates. This has the potential to stop ‘donkey votes’ from non engaged, apathetic voters. One more argument that skeptics make against compulsory voting is that it criminalizes non-voting. It gives a tool in the hands of the government to discriminate and harass citizens. If nonpayment of taxes as a criminal offense is justified. why can’t nonvoting be considered a criminal offense?

Policies are better designed when based on real data. There is a need for election data analysis to understand relations of voter turnout with governing policies, various developmental indices and more importantly people’s perception of elections. Will compulsory voting help solve the basic problems of the country is a question yet to be answered; hopefully by numbers and not by perception. It’s worth the experimentation for Indian democracy.

All said, the last thing we want to see is a positive correlation between election dates and the holiday industry.

IndiaGoverns’ RTI initiative

I believe that right to criticize comes with participation. In a democratic setup, people’s participation is contained in the definition itself. In a successful democracy how much free and fair elections are important, people working together to think more deeply and critically about governance and its responsibilities is also important. For Indians, opportunities are immense for participation in this area.  I will write about one such area, taken up by IndiaGoverns, which needs participation of people like you. I got involved recently in IndiaGoverns, an organization working for making development data matter.

Most of us make decisions based on information we have. Giving key information to people is absolutely essential especially when it comes to governance. Right to Information Act of 2005 by Govt. of India is a big step towards giving people the ‘right’ to get ‘right information’. It aims at bringing transparency, there by increasing accountability of the government. It is enacted by parliament allowing citizens of India to access records from any “public authority” (of course, classified documents and other security related information can not be accessed). Section 4(1)(b) of the RTI Act, 2005 also requires public authorities to proactively disclose certain kinds of information and digitization of all the records for wide dissemination. Hence, websites of any government agencies should disclose a set of information proactively. As you might be thinking , the common perception among people like you and me is that rarely our agencies follow this rule. Looking at and experiencing various acts of our government, it is hard for us to change our perception. Most of the web pages either have less of such proactive disclosures or it needs a treasure hunt. Veena (Executive Director of IndiaGoverns Research Institute, New Delhi) discussed this issue with Mr. Shailesh Gandhi from Central Information Commission (CIC). CIC has the responsibility of successful implementation of the act. We, as IndiaGoverns , have taken up a volunteer drive  in which volunteers like you and me have an opportunity to provide inputs on the status of the information disclosed in the websites of the Indian government agencies and also suggestions on the additional information that the government agencies should proactively disclose.  Based on the inputs received from volunteers, we will then request the Central Information Commission (CIC) to take up these suggestions with the respective government agencies. Central Information Commissioner Mr. Shailesh Gandhi has agreed to consider these suggestions for recommendation with the respective Public authorities for implementation. We have already sent one set of such suggestions to which CIC acted by sending directions to all the agencies we had provided feedback. We have started to see the change.

Role of Volunteer

The volunteer would identify a website of a government agency from the list of agencies given in this spreadsheet (‘List of Govt agencies‘).  Inform me (my.chappale@gmail.com) the agency (or agencies) he/she interested in reviewing.  We had made a template (which we will send you as soon as you contact) which will essentially guide you through the process. The volunteer would go through the government agency website in detail by following the steps mentioned and identify the gaps, if any, in the information disclosure. The volunteer would also document the additional information he/she thinks would be good if the corresponding agency proactively discloses. The volunteer would document all the above observations in “DisclosureByGovernmentAgency.xls” file  and share the file with me to be taken up with Central Information Commission and government agencies.

Anyone who takes up this, once finished with at least one review, now has an idea what should be there in a Govt agency web-page. So, you can be cognizant next time you visit any such pages and in case of discrepancies, report to concerned authorities with your suggestions. When we take proactive steps, it motivates officials to take up the work and finish it. So, now i hope to get many emails with your preference to agencies for review.

Any questions, please feel free to contact me (my.chappale@gmail.com).

Chappale begins

Welcome to Chappale, a blog to make some noise. Chappale (ಚಪ್ಪಾಳೆ) means clapping in Kannada. We clap all the time – to motivate, to appreciate, to approve, to draw attention and to call unknown people. With rhythm it can be musical,without it can be chaotic. It can also be a way of expressing sarcasm. Clapping makes noise, for reasons many which again depends on perception and circumstances.

Primary focus of my writing is going to be India. I intend to write on things related to developmental and as well as electrol politics, policy related matters, historical aspects, long advocated issues, cause/effect of various laws enacted by our governments and many more interesting things I ponder about.  I hope noise created by these writings go long way.

Let the chappale begin!