It was around ten at night and pitch dark. A rustling sound woke up Mehendra. He rushed outside with his brother and their father. As they suspected, a herd of cattle was eating through their clump of banana trees. Their shouts startled the bulls and cows and they ran up a hill nearby. Mehendra realised with dismay that the cattle would run over the top and fall in a ravine. The fall would break their legs or worse. To intercept the stampeding herd, he started to climb a rock face. As he pulled himself up using a tree branch, the branch snapped and Mehendra fell. He banged his head against a rock and was lucky to escape with a big gash and a concussion.

I narrate this anecdote to illustrate some of the reasons that make increasing farmer’s income very difficult. As we have discussed, a farmer faces many challenges in making money from farming. He may not have water. The market may be so far that the cost of transportation may be higher than the price he gets in the mandi. He could face difficulties like pests and may not have anyone who could advise him. Add another difficulty to the list – local culture.

Mehendra is a tribal farmer from the village of Palsunda. The village is located in the hilly region of Palghar district in Maharashtra. The region gets very heavy rainfall, but the thin topsoil is not able to retain the water that falls down in the three monsoon months. Consequently, most farmers in the region grow crops only during the rainy months. Mehendra is the only farmer in his village who farms after October. One key consequence of this fact is that the villagers keep their cattle penned up only in the monsoon season. After that, the cattle are free to graze the grass which has grown in the monsoon.

And the villagers take the right of the cattle to graze very seriously. When I heard this story, my first reaction was why did Mehendra need to put himself in danger to save cattle that was trespassing on his lands. Mehendra was unequivocal. If the oxen or cows had fallen and broken their legs or worse died, he would have had to compensate the owner. The other villagers agreed with this assessment. It did not matter that the cattle was eating his banana trees. What mattered was that it was after monsoon and hence the cattle was free to move around. Mehendra had the right to chase them away from his fields but not cause them harm.

If you are farming in village like Palsunda outside of the Monsoon months, then you would need to live in your farm hut. The farm hut would be in the middle of your fields away from the village and will not have luxuries like electricity or toilets. Snakes could slither into you house from the fields nearby. And of course, you would need to sleep with an ear open to any sounds of wandering cattle. No wonder most villagers prefer to engage in casual labour instead.

When we discuss increasing farmer’s incomes, we usually talk about what the central government can do. Yes, measures like crop insurance would help all farmers and yes good quality of local healthcare would have helped Mehendra a lot and the central government can help in such cases. However, most of the challenges that farmers face have to be addressed very locally. At the village level or even at the farmer level. Challenges like soil and climatic conditions, the distance from markets, the availability of water and the knowledge level of the community. And challenges arising from local culture. With treatment and time, Mehendra made a full recovery and continues to face these challenges every day.

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More from the author on Palsunda and farming.

1. There are no Yoga teachers in Palsunda.

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Author –

Yogesh Upadhyaya

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is one of the founders of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views.)

Follow Yogesh Upadhyaya on @Uppi89

Follow AskHow India on @AskHowIndia

Image for illustration. Clothes on the line may or may not be German and may or may not be underwear.

I have many friends that love technology. So naturally my Facebook timeline keeps serving me articles on machines taking over all the jobs in the world. I see headlines like ‘Machines will take away your work!’all the time. Most of these articles however, make only half the argument. They could benefit from the German underwear story to understand what is missing from the picture that they paint.

But first, does automation lead to job losses? Of course it does. If a machine produces 100 units of output which is the work of five people, then it is likely that it would replace at least four of them. That however, is true only if 100 units of output are produced. The world does not work that way.  The higher productivity of automation creates its own demand.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Germany of the 1950’s. Labour saving devices, like washing machines and dishwashers, were introduced in bathrooms and kitchens across that country. People expected that the leisure time of German housewives would increase sharply. This did not happen and it was because people changed their standards of cleanliness! As Frank Trentman writes^[1],

“The washing machine transformed how it felt to be clean or dirty; a mere 5 percent of German men changed their underwear daily in 1966; by 1986 it was 45 percent.”

I have seen people’s expectations in India change over my lifetime. I didn’t know anyone who had an Air Conditioner, when I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s. Today many households in metros have at least one unit and some more than three! I am guessing that even as automation reduced per unit labour in AC factories, the total output in those factories went up immensely. More importantly, many people are now employed in installing and servicing these units. And all these people demand other goods and services. Services like personalised Yoga teachers for example. In the 80’s of Udaipur, if you wanted to learn Yoga, you went to a camp with around 200 other people to learn from a single teacher. Now, a teacher comes to your home and teaches you!

Job destruction is very easy to see but new jobs are very difficult to imagine. Two decades back nobody would have thought that there would be professional video game players just as nobody would have imagined in the 1950’s that so many German men would change their underwear daily!

Automation destroys jobs but the higher productivity creates demand for more goods and services, in turn creating more jobs. So the key question is if automation will destroy jobs faster than the new jobs created? Only data can answer this question. However, in India, most employment surveys measure work (kaam) and not jobs (Naukri) and work -especially unpaid or low paid work – can reduce with prosperity. Workers can make a choice of not taking low paid work. There are other issues with surveys as well which we have detailed. Then there is the fact that with its youthful population, more people are entering the workforce than are leaving. Put this all together and it is very difficult to know the net impact technology has on job creation.

So next time you share an article on jobs destruction by machines, do remember the Germans and their underwear habits!

^[1] Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty First

Author –

Yogesh Upadhyaya

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is one of the founders of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views.)

If you draw up a list of the top three Non Governmental Organizations (NGO) in India, Pratham would be one of them.  Established twenty five years ago, Pratham has worked with children in urban slums and poor villages to improve their education levels. The organization and its founders have been recognized many times and rightly so.^[1] It is thus very disheartening to realize that there is only so much that even excellent institutions like Pratham can achieve.

It is well known that primary education in India is in a woeful state. In its 2019 report, ASER stated that only 1 in 2 students in Class V in rural India could read even Class II text. Less than 1 in 3  in Class V could do division. ASER has been carrying out these surveys for more than a decade and the results have always been very bad.

Pratham was set up to address this situation. On its website, Pratham claims to have reached 6.8 Million kids through partnership with the government.^[2] This sounds like a huge number and it is. However, it is less than the 3% of the 260 Million kids in our schooling system. India has many other NGOs working in the education sector such as Azim Premji University (APU), Akanksha, Akshay Patra. However, it is very unlikely that all of them put together reach 10% of the school going children in the country!

Why is the scale of our largest NGOs so small? One big reason is money. The annual budget of Pratham is only 54 Crore whereas the different state and central governments spent Rs. 234, 738 Crore on school education in 2014-15. NGOs, howsoever efficient, cannot come close to matching the sheer size of government.

Of course, organizations like Pratham and APU know this and that is why they leverage their learning and expertise to change the education policy in addition to teaching kids directly. In fact, I think that Pratham actually understates its own impact as its survey ASER, has changed the dialogue on education across the country.

However, all NGOs come across one formidable hurdle. The system does not prioritise improvement. We know from experience that no amount of knowledge of exercise is going to help if we do not wish to be fitter. Similarly, the impact of these NGOs (and of well meaning teachers and officers in the system) is blunted in face of indifference.

Why this indifference? On the face of it basic primary education should be a bipartisan issue. Right leaning folk would agree that a good quality basic education is an essential ingredient of a strong nation. Similarly, no left leaning person would disagree that our lousy primary education is a massive human rights violation, taking away opportunities for advancement from large swathes of population. And yet, most of the debate on education I see is on what is in the text books and not whether the children can actually read those books.

The debate on textbooks can get pretty animated because we get excited about what divides us. Consensus is boring. If Kauravs and Pandavs had worked out their differences without going for a big war, the epic would not have been written.  If Game of Thrones ended with Cersi, Sansa and Daenerys sharing power after talking it over a cup of tea, it would have been the most disappointing ending of all times^[3].

Therein lies a clue perhaps. We need to make improvements in primary education newsworthy so that the incentives of the system changes. Maybe if there were awards for the states that made the most improvement in primary education every year? Or any other measures that focus the energies of hard core political parties on the subject. Because without such focus, many students are destined to go through the school system, barely able to read or do math. The excellent efforts of many NGOs and individuals notwithstanding.

What do you think? What would be some interesting ideas on increasing the importance of education in public discussions

^[1] I do not understand the process / criterion of giving national awards but I find it surprising that stalwarts like Madhav Chouhan, founder Pratham, have not received any.

^[2] The direct number of children reached is much smaller.

^[3] Yes even more disappointing than the HBO ending!

Author –

Yogesh Upadhyaya

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is one of the founders of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views.)

Raghav Madhukar is a student.

NB:

A. Although the  article has been written in first person singular, both authors have contributed to it.

B. For the record, this piece is not a criticism of Pratham or any other NGO. If a NGO impacts even 1 student, it is immensely creditable.

Follow AskHow India on Twitter. @AskHowIndia

Want to read up more on primary education?

1. How can we have quality education for all?
2. Headmaster / entrepreneur.
3. The goal of education system must be to teach.

Image Credit : Image by Welcome to all and thank you for your visit ! ツ from Pixabay

In an article in Indian Express, Ashok Khemka noted that In the last fifteen months, Rs. 2,722 Crore has been donated through the non transparent electoral bonds.  Almost 95% of this amount went to BJP. We have argued that electoral bonds are a step back in regulation of  political funding. Transparency is a key element of political funding regulation and it should not be sacrificed on the altar of reducing influence of black money. We should note however, that the amount of money coming in through electoral bonds is a very low percentage of the total political funding and even if these bond go away, the battle for transparency is far from won.

How much is the total spending in Indian elections? Here are some estimates.

If we take the CMS estimates of Rs. 30,000 Crore for the 2014 elections, then the money through electoral bonds is less than 10% of total spend. CMS has estimated that the spend in 2019 would be more than Rs. 50,000 Crores and that means that the electoral bonds would be around 5% of the total money being deployed in elections.

As Mr. Khemka pointed out in the same article, in 28 days days since declaration of elections, the Election Commission has seized cash, alcohol, precious metal, etc. worth Rs. 1800 Crores! Mr. Khemka has argued that the seized amount can fully finance 5 candidates each in the 543 constituencies if we take the Rs. 70 Lakh per candidate limit as the actual spending! Clearly, the actual spending will be much much more than the seized amount by the time elections are over.

So yes, we should oppose the electoral bonds, but we should we aware the we are tackling only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Mr. Kehmka argued in favour of public funding as we have and it is time to work out some serious and detailed proposals for the same!

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Interested in more on elections?

1. Why would your MP work on Job creation?
2. How can we put voters ahead of funders?

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Follow AskHowIndia on Twitter — @AskHowIndia .

Author –

Yogesh Upadhyaya

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is one of the founders of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views.)

On May 23, 2019, you will have a new Member of Parliament (MP). In the run-up to the elections, all candidates have spoken a lot about job creation. Surveys have also indicated that better employment prospects are on top of mind for all voters. You would expect your MP to work on job creation as soon as he[1] is elected, right?

Wrong. That will not happen and here is why.

MPs have very limited formal powers

Just before the 2014 elections, Mr. Yashwant Sinha, a powerful politician at the time, wrote about the very limited powers of MPs. In a particularly evocative passage, Mr. Sinha wrote how he promised electricity to a village but was unable to deliver for nearly four years. Needing approvals from multiple agencies, he kept moving from one to another and was trapped in a bureaucratic maze. And at the end of four years, the villagers got the job done by illegally connecting to the nearest sub station.

According to the constitution, a Member of Parliament is supposed to make laws, hold the government to account and represent his constituency. He does not have any formal powers over the District Collector, who is in charge of most projects. This limits his ability to do anything constructive for job creation.

For example, he cannot expedite the process of getting the permissions required to start and run restaurants, as they would be mainly under the state and the local government. He cannot even do much about changing central laws as in the Indian system changes in law are initiated by the government, and a MP is legally bound to toe the party line. Deviating from the party line could mean expulsion as well as disqualification as a Member of Parliament. Of course, it would be different if your MP became a minister but not only is that statistically unlikely but also he would need to be in charge of the relevant ministry.

MPs do have some de facto power. Government officers are likely to pay more attention to their requests than they are to requests from people like you or me. Furthermore, the system is at least mildly apprehensive of the rabble-rousing abilities of the MP. It is possible for a MP to use this power to influence the state or the central governments to do something. However, he is unlikely to use this power if his impact is not going to be visible to his constituents and that brings us to our second point.

Most work is invisible to a MP’s constituents

Let us consider the example of a constituency that is a tourist destination. The MP could spend a lot of time with the tourism ministry in Delhi ensuring that his constituency is marketed well with foreign tourists. However, there is no way that the voters would credit any increase in tourist numbers to the efforts of the MP.

Let us take another example of a MP who wishes to increase factory jobs for his constituents.  One way of doing that could be by setting up industrial parks in the state. It may make sense to set up these parks in a few selected districts and not in all. This is because the selected locations could be more connected to the rest of the world, have access to electricity supply and water, and have access to trained labor because of presence of other industrial units.

However, a MP would be a fool to back such parks outside his constituency even if his constituents migrate to those districts in search of jobs. This is because his constituents would never credit him with jobs created outside his constituency.

Surely there are some actions that result in job creation and are visible to the voters? Yes, but there is another problem.

Many job may go to immigrants

If you live in Mumbai, talk to a watchman, a vegetable vendor or a waiter. The chances are that this person is an immigrant. This is increasingly true in the other metros in the country too.

Recently, I visited Chennai after almost a decade, and was startled to notice how many North Indians were there in the city. Even in a Sangeetha, a traditional restaurant, only one in eleven waiters could speak Tamil. This harried headwaiter went from table to table and translated orders of the patrons for his subordinates. In another instance, I was stopped by a security guard at the gate of an IT park and my driver tried to explain in Tamil who I was. The guard listened to him in increasing bewilderment and finally turned to me to ask if I spoke Hindi. The expression on the face of my driver was worthy of best of comedy sketches!

I understand that this is true in industrial units too. Especially, in labor intensive sectors such as textile or leather garments. This is because of a preference of both the businessmen and the employees.

The businessmen are wary of employing too many locals as ‘they create trouble.’ Many have told me that they either employ out of state workers or at least people from the next district. On the other hand, many of these jobs are either too low paying and /or of low status for the local populations. My interactions with job seekers suggest that many of them would rather work as a salesperson in an air-conditioned showroom, than as a factory worker or a construction worker. That is why a bulk of construction workers in Kerala comes from other states.

The voters would not credit a MP for creating any jobs that they believe are good only for ‘outsiders.’ So what do the voters actually want the MP to do?

Constituency versus Constitutional expectations

A few months ago I attended a conference organized by PRS. In this conference, many politicians talked about how the expectations of their constituents were very different from what the constitution expected them to do. One prominent BJP politician talked about MBA – having to attend, Mundan, Barat and Antim Sanskar. Another mentioned that he had to attend more than ten functions a day in the wedding season. The best story however, came from a veteran congress leader.

This leader was invited along with 19 other parliamentarians from different political parties to visit Pakistan. The group was able to get all permissions required after a lot of effort and when he was about to leave, his campaign manager reminded him that he was going to miss the wedding of the campaign manager’s daughter. The leader apologized and told the manager that he wouldn’t have missed the wedding were it not for the fact that no MPs had visited Pakistan for decades and hence, the visit was historic. The manager calmly told him that in the next elections, the leader should seek votes from Pakistan too!

An MP is much better served getting exposure all across his constituency rather than working on a project that could increase jobs in the medium term, but is invisible. He can get exposure by agitating for the rights of particular communities, liaising with government departments on behalf of voters or just by being visible everywhere.

Even if it is in a politician’s interest to attend weddings rather than work on job creation, shouldn’t some of them work against their own self-interest. Not really.

The first priority of a politician…

A few years back I read this statement, “The first priority of a politician is to get elected. His second priority is to get reelected.”[2] This is a very crucial insight although it seems obvious. You don’t see politicians who do not care to get elected because well, they don’t get elected and hence drop out of public attention.

It is like the Darwinian theory of evolution. The organisms that were not fit for today’s environment went extinct and in a similar way the politician that does not care to win does not remain a politician. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. Dynastic politicians are able to survive for a few terms even when their will to win is not strong. However, if a dynastic politician manages to survive for more than a few terms, you can bet that he is clear about his priorities.

Job creation is a complex process that requires governments – central, state and local – to work with businesses and with people. Your MP would be a very small part of the process and that too if you are lucky.

Author –

Yogesh Upadhyaya

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is one of the founders of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views.)

[1] It is statistically likely that the MP would be a he and not a she

[2] I don’t remember where I read this statement and hence cannot attribute it properly. Please do comment if you happen to know who first made it. Also, this statement is from memory and hence I might be paraphrasing it quite a bit.

Since the leaking of the NSSO Periodic Labor Force Survey (PLFS), there has been a lot of commentary about whether we have been seeing ‘job less’ growth and what that says about the performance of the government. On one side have been writers who have criticized the government for non-performance and for suppression of data. On the other side columnists have argued that the problem in India is not jobs but wages and have pointed at robust growth in EPFO numbers or at indirect indicators such as high volume sales of Commercial Vehicles and leasing of new office space. I believe that most of this commentary has been at best incomplete.

Most commentary cannot be anything but incomplete. Employment in India is very complex and anyone trying to understand the problem is like the proverbial blind man trying to understand the elephant by touching one part of it. I know that my perspective would be at least as limited as that of the other commentators. It is my hope that if we are able to put together many such perspectives, we would be able to understand the issue better.

Many jobs and many jobless – A seeming contradiction

Many news reports on the leaked PLFS study have stressed that the unemployment rate has been the highest in 45 years! This higher than before unemployment rate is also corroborated by the quarterly unemployment data from CMIE. Furthermore, both PLFS and CMIE report a very high unemployment level in the youth. However, if you talk to employers, especially in large metros, they will tell you that the attrition levels in their industries are very high. So, even when the overall unemployment is increasing, many of the people who do get jobs, leave those jobs very soon.

At AskHow India, we have been trying to find an answer to the question “How can we create more jobs in India?” In this context, we have been meeting business people whose decisions lead to job creation. Our target is to meet hundred such people and we are nearly half way through. In these interviews many people have spoken of a high voluntary attrition rate, especially in unskilled blue-collar jobs.

Sample this. A senior manager in a Quick Service Restaurant chain (QSR – think chains of fast food restaurants), told me that their attrition was between 8 and 10% per month in Mumbai. A security service company CEO in Delhi complained about the high level attrition in his company. This is not limited to blue collar job– The founder of a Knowledge Process Outsourcing company in Thane said that it was routine for most of his employees to leave within three to four months.

What do these people do?  The two possibilities are that they either get another job or they prefer to be unemployed rather than continue to be in the same job. From talking to both employers and employees, we believe that for a significant number of people it is the latter. In the pithy words of the manager of a grocery warehouse in Mumbai, “Many of them come from interior villages in Maharashtra and survive on a diet of Vada Pav and chai. By the end of three months, they are physically sick in addition to being homesick. They save enough so that they can buy a smart phone and a data pack and then leave.” This tendency was present in employees from the same city as well.

So what am I saying here? That it is possible that a lot of the unemployment could be ‘voluntary’. If a person decides to work for a few months and is not even looking for a job for the remaining months, it would mean a reduction in Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR). Alternately, the person could be looking for a much better job and that too not in a big city far away from home where they are more likely to find it. This could lead to an increase in Unemployment Rate.

Why would a person do that? Here are some possible reasons.

Job is not the same as a career

One of the people I met in the last six months is Dr. Pranab Sen, the first Chief Statistician of India. One moment of epiphany in understanding employment was when Dr. Sen told me that when they (NSSO) asked someone if the had a job (or naukri), the person was likely to say no. However, if they asked the person if they had work (or kaam), the answer was yes most of the time. As we have discussed in our piece, Understanding the different ‘jobs’ debate in India, most of the employment in the country is not single employer, regular wage paying work. The 2105-16 Labor Bureau Survey found that regular wage-paying job was only 23% of total employment (excluding contract labour). This news report states that as per PLFS, the share of regular salaried jobs in employment was 13.1% in rural areas (Up from 8.1% in 2011-12) and 47% in urban areas (up from 43.4% in 2011-12).

It is equally important to understand that many of the jobs available are not the first step in a long career. The CEO of a training company called most of the available blue collar jobs ‘MNREGA type jobs’. A job where the father and the son get the same wage. Or in other words there is no premium for skills. If a person in such a job makes a decision to work only a few months a year, it is totally understandable, especially, given other reasons given below.

Jobs are far away from home

It is well established now that states of North and East – Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Orissa have a very young population. The states of West and South are doing much better economically and hence creating more jobs. If a person from Uttar Pradesh has to go and live in Kerala to work on a construction site, it is understandable if they decide to not work for the whole year, thousands of kilometers away from home in an alien culture.

This issue is well recognized by many companies, which take active measures to address it. Many construction companies make living arrangements for their laborers so that people from the same region live together. Additionally, they give leave to a couple of laborers in a group on a daily basis so that these guys can cook food for the rest. These companies report that they are able to reduce attrition significantly by such simple measures.

The issue of alienation can be true even if the job is in the same state but far away from home. The culture of Mumbai could be very alien for a young guy from a small village in Ratnagiri for example.

Living in city can be costly and very hard

If you are not a local and you get an unskilled blue collar job anywhere in Mumbai, it is likely that you will live far away and would share a room with anywhere between half a dozen to dozen people. The rent you pay for such accommodation may take up a significant part of your income.

In a village in contrast, you would stay at your own home. You would mainly eat the food grown by your own family and would not need to commute on a daily basis. Home life would be much cheaper in addition to be being more pleasant. It is entirely feasible that people may make the choice of living very frugally when in the city and saving enough so that they go back home sooner.

A local employee would not have to pay for accommodation but even they can decide to work only for a few months and spend their savings in the remaining months.

Shrinking farm sizes and changing aspirations

Farm sizes in India are very low. In 2014, the Directorate of Economics and Statistics estimated that 87% of farmers farmed owned less than 2 Hectares of land and 69% owned less than 1 Hectares! At such sizes, the farms do not make much money for the farmer especially of the farm is not irrigated.

Perhaps because of this, most rural youth does not want to be a farmer. In 2017, ASER questioned rural youth across India and only 1.2% of the youth aspired to be farmers!

It is possible that a village youth who works in a city part time of the year, has no need to declare that he is a farmer for the remaining part of the year.

Summary and Implications

• The latest official survey on employment – PLFS has shown that the unemployment rate is at a 45 year high.
• Many employers see a very high attrition rate in their businesses, especially in large metros. The employees resigning from these jobs are either get other jobs or prefer to be jobless.
• Most employment in India is not regular wage paying single employer job. Most jobs are not the first step in a long fulfilling career.
• The jobs that are available may be far away from job seekers both geographically as well as culturally.
• The job may require the employee to live in uncomfortable housing and may also require him to travel long distances. Furthermore, the cost of living would be much higher than at home.
• Given the above, the job seeker may make the perfectly rational decision to not work all twelve months a year.
• Farm sizes in India make farming unremunerative for most. Furthermore, for the young, there is not pride in being a farmer. Thus, a youth who works part of the year far away from home may not have any compulsion of saying that he is ‘working’ on a farm when he is back home.

If this explanation is even partially true, then policy makers have a much more complex job than previously thought. They are not just charged with creating more jobs but are responsible for enabling creation of high paying, fulfilling jobs for people in their own community!

Best of luck to the winners of the 2019 elections!

Author –

Yogesh Upadhyaya

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is one of the founders of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views.)

It was a typically pleasant December morning. We were sitting in the headmaster’s room in a government school near Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan. Around ten schoolteachers, mostly women, sat in their sweaters and shawls on one side and on the other side were us visitors. We had been invited by a Non Government Organization (NGO) to see the kind of work they were doing.

Between sips of hot, sweet tea from small plastic cups, the headmaster, dressed in a smart coat, detailed the achievements of the school. The thrust of his speech was how he and his staff had significantly increased the enrollment. He and the teachers had repeatedly visited surrounding villages to persuade parents to shift their kids from private schools to their school. They emphasized the facilities available and that these facilities were free. The persuasion team also used the achievements of the girl’s volleyball team – which had done well at the state level – as a selling point. When a few villagers complained that the school was too far, the headmasters and teachers arranged for a taxi service.

It was not just selling of course. Money had to be raised for all that was promised. For infrastructure upgrades such as paving the driveway of the school and for expenses such as the jerseys for the Volleyball team. And of course money had to be raised for the taxi service. The teachers helped the headmaster in fund raising from private donors and some of them even contributed directly. They were proud to point out their names on the funder’s board displayed prominently. If it were not for the setting, the headmaster could have been confused for a modern entrepreneur pitching to a bunch of Venture Capitalists! I couldn’t but wonder, what was going on?

A couple of years before we met the headmaster, the government of Rajasthan had significantly changed its primary education policy. In face of falling enrollment numbers the government had started closing and consolidating many of the schools. Presumably, this decision was accompanied by pressure on headmasters to increase the enrollment number in their school. Presumably too, the headmasters also had significant autonomy – to take decisions like starting taxi services and to raise money for the same!

It is known that the standard of primary school education in rural India is awful. ASER has been carrying out large-scale surveys and they reveal that half of class V students cannot even read class II text. The results for writing and arithmetic are equally dismal. What is worse is that these bad numbers have got worse over the last decade! We have argued that one of the main reasons for this woeful state of affairs is that ensuring that children learn is not the target of anyone in the system. Not the teachers, not the headmasters, not the government officers in education department. Targets matter. Here was an example of one school where when the headmaster was given a clear target to increase enrollment and he behaved like a go-getting entrepreneur.

This is not the full story though. In 2016, when ASER had done its last survey of rural India, it had found that the Rajasthan was one state that had improved quite a lot in its outcomes. The percentage of students in class V that could read Class II text went from 46% to 54%. Rajasthan was of course also the state with the education minister who had interesting things to say about the respiration of cows.

Was this sharp improvement an aberration? We will know the answer to this question when ASER’s results of its 2018 survey come out on January 15, 2019. We will also know whether the country has a whole has been able to reverse the trend of last ten years of falling educational standards. If India does reverse the trend then it would be mainly due to the entrepreneurial efforts of headmasters and teachers all over the country.

Author –

Yogesh Upadhyaya

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is one of the founders of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views.)

In my thirties, I had to change apartments frequently and I became an expert at assessing new homes. How far is the building from my office and can I walk to work? Does the bedroom window face the main gate? If yes, then you are sure to be woken late at night up by cars honking at the watchmen to open the gate. Is the building near an open drain? If yes, reject the apartment or you would have a much higher chance of getting Dengue and Malaria. After the 2005 floods, I started to notice if the building was in a low-lying area and hence prone to flooding. If I had to look for apartments now, I would add another criterion. How far is it from busy traffic junctions and other sources of air pollution?

Last year, my colleagues and I worked on How can every Indian breathe cleaner air? This piece was from a point of view of what the society as a whole could do but I came across information that is useful for individuals who live in cities with very high air pollution. So I have put together a few suggestions on what you could do to reduce the risk of ill health from dirty air. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list and I welcome you to give your tips and suggestions below.

But first, is Air Pollution a serious issue? Or,

Should I be worried about Air Pollution at all?

Short answer, yes. Very worried.

New evidence keeps coming up on linkage of air pollution with many diseases and not just those of lungs. A recent report from Lancet suggested that there is a strong causal association between air pollution and Heart disease and Hypertension! Our own Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has suggested that air pollution (Including indoor air pollution) is a bigger risk factor than Tobacco and Alcohol!

More worryingly, most of the robust studies on these linkages are from the Western world where the pollution levels are much lower than that seen in India. At our much higher levels the impact could be much worse.

Hence, our first recommendation was that if you live in one of the more polluted cities in India, leave. However, if you cannot leave than do as much as you can to reduce your exposure to air pollution.

Reducing exposure to Air Pollution

Ambient air pollution is not the same as your exposure to that pollution. To take a simple example, a measurement station at a busy traffic junction would record high level of many pollutants. And yet, you can reduce your exposure to these pollutants simply by not staying at the junction more than necessary. We have very little control on ambient air pollution but have more control on our exposure to it.

Limiting exposure starts with choosing where you live. Make sure that your building is as far away from traffic junctions and main arterial roads. In the building choose apartments that face away from sources of air pollution. It makes sense not to live anywhere close to a landfill – as the garbage in landfill frequently catches fire. Make sure that your home is not near any of the common sources of air pollution such as power plants, brick kilns, factories (including small factories located in slums) and construction sites.

Construction sites are a very big source of pollution in a rapidly growing India and it makes sense to changes homes if a Metro or even an apartment complex is being constructed next to you.

Do note that there is a limit to how much you can control your exposure. If you stay in Delhi and farmers in North Indian states start burning crop stubble in October – November and your fellow citizens burst crackers, the already high pollution levels will spike further. If at that time, the atmospheric conditions cause a fog, then the poison in the air will be impossible to avoid. Definitely use an indoor air purifier and facemasks in such situations. If an air purifier reduces your exposure even for a third of your twenty-four day while you sleep, it is beneficial.

Pro tip: Many of the Air Purifiers are a simple combination of filters (most importantly a filter called the HEPA filter) and an exhaust fan. The filters need to be replaced periodically and many companies design their products such that the filters are of a particular size and shape. Why? Because you have to go back to the same company to buy the filter and of course, it is expensive. Think cheap razors and expensive razor blades! So if you aren’t too fussed on how your purifier looks, you can get a filter and fan strapped together from the local market and that may work out much cheaper in the long run!

Are you someone who likes to exercise in the open? If yes, then another way of reducing your exposure would be to check the pollution levels in your locality and choosing your exercise time and route accordingly! Here are links (Scroll to sub heading ‘Actual Pollution levels”) for checking the pollution levels in your area.

Reducing the ambient pollution in your area

Here is a summary of the main sources of pollution and suggested solutions.

It is very difficult for most individuals to implement most of these solutions. A citizen of Delhi has very little power over a factory situated in NOIDA or over a farmer burning crop stubble in Haryana. Come to think of it, even the Chief Minister of Delhi has limited power in such situations!

However, there is still something that you can do in your neighborhood that would reduce your exposure to the poison in the air. Some measures

• Encourage your building or your society to grow trees and creepers as green curtains especially between your place of residence and a source of pollution like a busy road.
• Help provide electric heaters to people whose work may force them to stay outdoors at night for example, watchmen. When it gets cold they may burn wood or worse plastic waste and negatively impact their health and yours.
• This report suggested that local governments have started implementing rules for construction and for storage of construction material. Help ensure that the rules are followed for construction projects in your area.

Be aware and spread awareness

If all the preceding paragraphs sound like too little then it is because it is too little. The power of an individual to attack a collective problem like air pollution is limited. The society as a whole needs to act and the first step is understanding the problem. Click here to quickly and sharply increase your understanding of the issue. Check out these resources if you want to dive deeper into the subject.

Author –

Yogesh Upadhyaya

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is one of the founders of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views.)

Almost daily, I come across articles gushing about renewable energy. It could be a single column piece in a newspaper or a video or a blog passed on to me in one of the too many social media platforms. Some of these pieces are thoughtful and well written. However, most of them seem to be produced by partisan drumbeaters. People, who I am sure, moonlight as supporters or opponents of President Donald Trump or Prime Minister Narendra Modi, given their black and white way of seeing things.

In hyping up Renewable Energy, these articles make many conceptual and technical errors. In the process these articles end up ignoring what we call the hidden costs of renewables. I have detailed here three common types of errors of omission or commission. I end with why the hype created by these erroneous articles may be bad for the sector.

I should clarify here that I am talking mainly of Solar Photo Voltaic (Solar PV) and wind based electricity generation plants – units that generate electricity only when the conditions are right and not when the user need the electricity. Such plants are called Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) plants. Hydro power plants and plants based on waste are also classified as renewables but they are not the same as VRE as we have some control on when the electricity from these plants would be generated.

Country ABC gets xx% of its electricity from Renewables

Wind power generates 140% of Denmark’s electricity demand. You see many variations of this headline, in which we are told that Solar or Wind has generated a very high percentage of a country’s or a region’s electricity requirements. The first question I ask myself when I see such a headline is did this happen on a part of the day, or did it happen for a whole day or more? More importantly, what does the country do when the wind is not blowing (or the sun is not shining)? To answer these questions in context of Denmark, we have to understand how that country gets its electricity.

Denmark’s electricity grid is a part of Nordic Synchronous Area (NSA). A significant part of the NSA’s electricity comes from hydro power plants based in Norway. Hydro power plants are particularly good for starting and stopping and this flexibility is an excellent technical fit for the intermittent nature of wind power. Also, many of these hydro power plants are pump storage units. In such plants, any excess electricity generation can be used to pump water back up the dam and this water can be used to generate electricity again when the wind is not blowing or when the demand is high during the day. As the article points out, the electricity from wind turbines was being produced in excess of demand in Denmark and this excess was exported to neighboring countries. So, the Nordic Synchronous Area acted as the storage for Denmark’s excess electricity generation.

Most grids around the world will not have a similar level of hydro power plants and would need to invest in storage to cater to the intermittent nature of wind or solar plants. For example, California is planning to invest in 1.3 GW of stationary storage by 2024. The cost of this storage would be much higher than that of pumped storage and this will significantly increase the cost of electricity for the consumers. Furthermore, battery technologies are not yet mature.

We should also note that Denmark is small. The population of the country is 5.7 Million. When we say all of electricity of Denmark was generated by wind power, it is like saying all of electricity of Bangkok (population 5.8 Million) or London (population 8.8 Million) or Ahmedabad (population 7.02 Million) was generated by wind power.

In short while it is a positive that Denmark has managed to invest so much in wind energy, it is able to do that because it is a relatively small part of large grid that is flexible. The grid is providing reliable power generation and / or storage to back-up the intermittent nature of wind power and this reliability comes at a cost. Other grids may have to find ways to overcome the challenges presented by VRE in a different way and at much higher costs.

The electricity price in country xyz crashed to zero

Chile Is Producing So Much Solar Power, It’s Giving It Away For Free. Articles such as these, especially in not so thoughtful publications, imply that the low electricity prices are somehow a triumph of renewables energy over fossil fuel. Not so.

The demand for electricity varies through the day. The generation from solar power plants is highly correlated. That is, solar plants work at the same time of the day. Also, they do not work at same times of the 24-hour cycle such as nights, early mornings and evenings. So, when VRE capacity becomes a large proportion of the grid’s capacity, there is a surplus of electricity when the conditions for VRE generation are good. That is because both VRE and conventional power plants are available to generate electricity at those times.

In grids that have a relatively freer pricing, the price of electricity falls at the time of peak VRE generation and this is bad for VRE producers. This happens in other commodities too. For example, Maharashtra has seen years of excess production of onions, chilies and most recently eggplant. The crash in price of these vegetables forces farmers to dump their produce and suffer ruinous losses.

In grids without free pricing, the distribution companies take the financial hit and could instruct solar plants not to generate electricity in case of excess supply. My discussion with industry experts leads me to believe that it is already happening in China and to some extent even in India.

In either case, the enthusiasm of investors to back renewable energy plants will be severely reduced. This can but not have negative consequences for Variable Renewable Energy.

What about the oil rich states investing in Solar?

Periodically, my Facebook timeline gets filled up with stories about the oil rich Gulf States investing in solar plants. Indeed, many countries have invested or have announced an intention of building large solar capacities. However, these investments may not be about these oil rich countries seeing the solar writing on the energy wall as many of us would love to believe.

Varun Sivaram, in his excellent book Taming the Sun, has a very interesting passage about him speaking on the future of solar in the Middle East Electricity Summit. He describes how there was no interest in his keynote address while he spoke of solar coating on skyscrapers, slower rates of climate change and cheap power for developing world. However, he observed everyone perking up as soon he spoke about how Solar PV could offer Middle Eastern countries a way to burn less oil and gas at home.

The delegates at the conference were very interested in this proposition. If they could meet their domestic obligations using solar, they would have more oil to sell abroad! Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar provide electricity to their citizens at a very low rate and this electricity is generated from oil or Natural Gas. The more the citizens consume, the less the country has available to sell abroad. Saudi Arabia, with its relatively large population, is especially vulnerable as it consumes a quarter of the oil it produces in generating electricity for its citizens!

Of course, if the solar electricity generation in these countries could be exported to distant Europe then the world as whole would be reducing its dependence on fossil fuel. However, such exports would need large investments in transmission capacity and perhaps more dauntingly would need to leap over almost intractable geo-political hurdles.

Why does it matter?

VRE technologies have made very significant measurable progress. So if news writers take creative liberties while writing about it, what is the harm? At least this hype is about an unquestionably good thing.

The problem is that there are many challenges left to be tackled in VRE and there is a danger that decision makers, swayed by this hype, may ignore them. A dispassionate view of Renewables would allow decision makers to mitigate some of the hidden costs of VRE. For example, here is an idea on how Electric Vehicles could be used to store the electricity generated from VRE.  If such mitigating measures are not taken, there is a danger that these hidden costs would fall on consumers and the government.

That will not be good for the future growth of Renewable Energy.

Author –

Yogesh Upadhyaya

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is one of the founders of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views.)

(Image not of Ganga and used only for representational purposes.)

Ganga is holy to a majority of Indians. The river and its tributaries supply water to hundreds of Millions and cleanliness of this water is crucial to their health. The political returns to any leader that manages to visibly clean it would be thus, immense. Politicians recognize this. After his election in 2014, the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi said, “Ma Ganga is screaming for help. She is saying, ‘There must be one of my sons who will come and pull me out of this filth’.” Long before this, in 1986, the then Prime Minister Shri Rajiv Gandhi launched the first Ganga Action plan.

How is it that the most powerful persons in the country haven’t been able to clean the river for decades?

I got the answer to this question in the book River of Life and River of Death by Victor Mallet^[1]. As is usually the case, this answer raised further questions.

Why does a river, or any water body, become filthy? At the most basic level it is because of two reasons. The first one is easily understood; a river becomes dirty because we put shit and other pollutants in it. How to stop these pollutants from entering Ganga is what I call the hard problem. The second reason that a river gets dirty is perhaps not so intuitive – it is because we take large quantities of water out for our use and that is a much harder problem to solve.

The hard problem

One hundred and eighteen towns dump their sewage in the river[2]. The water in Ganga and its tributaries is much cleaner upstream of the towns and much dirtier downstream. A Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) study pointed out that as its worst, the Yamuna (which meets Ganga at Allahabad) has 1.1 Billion faecal coliform bacteria per 100 millilitres. That is 500,000 x the Indian recommended bathing limit of 2,500. According to the CBCB only one tenth of the sewage[3] produced along the main stream of the Ganga is treated.

The challenge is to connect all inhabitants of the towns on Ganga and it tributaries to sewage lines and build Sewage Treatments Plants (STP) on these lines so that the water discharged back in the river is clean. Of course, STPs have been built in the past. Many of them are however, non operational. For example, when the author of the book visited the STP on Assi Nala, just a little distance upstream of where the city takes in its water supply, he found that it was locked up. Why are these plants non operational? Is it because they were not designed well? Or is it because we have never budgeted for their operational expenses? Or is it because some of our government departments are simply dysfunctional?

The current government has awarded contracts for many STPs. Some of them on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model, under which the builder of the plant would get the money as an annuity and the payment will be linked to the performance of the plant. Press Releases suggest that the plants are not very costly. Rs. 171.53 Crore and Rs. 153.2 Crores for plants of 82 MLD at Varanasi and 50 MLD at Hardwar respectively. So why weren’t these plants bid out and commissioned much earlier? At least in the major cities.

Seven hundred and sixty four factories dump their pollution into Ganga. The challenge of stopping polluting industries should be more straightforward. After all it should be possible to measure the pollution coming out of the wastewater of a factory.

Around four hundred tanneries in Kanpur discharge their effluents into the river. The book has an estimate that a common effluent treatment plan for these could be built at a cost of Rs. 800 Crores. That would increase the price of the output of the tanneries by not much. 90 Paise for a leather belt, 7 Rupees for a pair of shoes and 15 Rupees for a horse saddle. The book also suggests that the current common treatment plant does not work very well because most tanneries do not carry out the pre-treatment required.

Why aren’t our Central and State Pollution Bodies not able to force factories to stop polluting? Is it because they do not have the capability to monitor the pollution? Or is it because the law the way it is written is not easily implementable. Or is it because it is easier and cheaper for a polluter to drag court cases forever? Or is it just good old-fashioned corruption?

The very hard problem

Nearly 250 Million people in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar live in villages and many of them depend on agriculture. The water from Ganga and its tributaries is crucial to their livelihood. As this map shows, many dams and barrages have been built on the Ganga and its tributaries and most of the water is taken by agriculture. Here is Victor Mallet,

“It is the driest time of the year (in May 2016) and Ramesh Chandra, the ‘signaller’ or water regulator, tells me the situation. The barrage upstream at Haridwar is normally supplied with water from melting snow in the mountains and should be receiving 12,000 cusecs, but it getting only half the amount due to drought. Of that, only one-tenth or 600 cusecs, is released for the Ganges (with the reminder diverted to the vital Upper Ganga Canal; the barrage normally sends water to the Eastern Ganga Canal too, but that is closed for lack of water).”

Thus, 90% of the river water is taken by agriculture. This is in line with various estimates that suggest that more than 80% of fresh water use in the country is for agriculture. The challenge is that irrigation is very crucial to agriculture and nearly 40% of our population depends on farming.

As we have pointed out in this piece, the yield of a farm can go up three times due to irrigation. The impact on net income would be many times that. Hence, it is not at all easy to reduce this diversion of water. You could use water saving practices like drip irrigation, but that requires investment. It would be even harder for an inefficient government to put in water saving techniques field-by-field, village-by-village than it is for it to run a few hundred STPs and to stop polluting industries.

Across the country our air is dirty, our water filthy and our land polluted. Cleaning of Ganga is crucial to tackling this challenge. After all, if we cannot clean a river which supplies water to a large number of Indians and which is considered holy by an overwhelming majority, what hope is there for the rest of the country?

Author –

Yogesh Upadhyaya

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is one of the founders of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views.)

______________________________________________________________________________

[1] I recommend reading the book in full. It is about much more than just how dirty the river is. It talks of the history, the mythology and many other aspects of the great river.

[2] All facts and figures are from Victor Mallet’s book unless otherwise stated.

[3] I have used the terms sewage and shit interchangeably and that is inaccurate. A city’s sewage would have much more than shit, although my guess is that shit would be a large part of it.

We have been working on understanding and simplifying air pollution for the past few months. Whenever I work on a new topic, I converse about it with practically everyone I meet. Such conversations help me understand the gaps in my knowledge and in that of the audience. I discovered that one of the more widespread confusing aspects in people’s minds seems to be that air pollution and climate change is the same thing. The reality? Air pollution is linked to climate change but not always in the way we would think.

What is climate change? 

A more precise question would be what is anthropogenic climate change or how are humans changing the climate? This is a large and complex topic but a very short answer is that in the last two centuries, humans have burnt a lot of fossil fuel (Coal and Oil mainly). This burning of fuel has increased the concentration of Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that does not allow the heat reflected by Earth to escape the atmosphere. This increases the temperature of the atmosphere and could have catastrophic consequences.

Greenhouse gases like Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for a long time and hence climate change is a long-term problem with potentially catastrophic consequences for the entire planet.

There are many other greenhouse gases in addition to carbon dioxide.

What is Air Pollution?

When we burn stuff, we release a lot of gases and particles into the atmosphere in addition to carbon dioxide. Additionally, dust kicked up in the air and chemicals released in the air also make it dirty. These gases and particles pollute the air and are bad for our health.

Of course, some of the gases that pollute the air may also be greenhouse gases and may cause warming. Equally important – some of the particles released in the air may reflect heat entering the atmosphere and have a cooling affect instead.

Most air pollutants do not stay in the atmosphere for a long time but have consequences for human health.

TL; DR: Air Pollution and Climate Change are related but separate issues!

Author –

Yogesh Upadhyaya

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is one of the founders of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views.)

Suggested Reading – Air Quality

(Image not of actual village. For representational purposes only.) 

“You can easily earn an income of Rs. 15,000 for an investment of Rs. 6,000/-.” This was a representative of an NGO working in the area of ‘livelihoods’ talking to the women of Palsunda, a small village in Thane district. The word ‘easily’ was at best an exaggeration. 

At AskHow, we have analyzed ‘How the income of small farmers in Indian can be increased.’ The farm yields are low and farmers get a very small portion of the final retail price for their crop. ‘Grow more and Get more’ thus, is a simple enough mantra to understand. The devil however, is in details, and made an appearance at Palsunda. 

Palsunda is a tribal village of around a hundred families in the Mokhada Taluka of Thane district. The area is hilly and that has two implications. First, it is very difficult to store most of the heavy rainfall that pours in the area every monsoon season. Second, it takes a lot of time to reach any of the two nearby major cities of Mumbai and Nashik. 

All farmers in the village, except one, grow only one crop. This monsoon crop usually allows the farmers to grow enough rice and nachini (finger millet) for their own consumption and leaves a little bit for sale. 

In the meeting between the women of the village and a few NGOs, the women described their previous attempts at increasing their income. They had tried to raise poultry but all their hens / roosters died in the summers and they could not even figure out what disease had hit them. Their experience of growing green chilies was not much better. They just couldn’t get a good price for their produce and had to throw most of it away. 

One of the NGO representatives suggested growing the flower Mogra. He said that the flower plant was very hardy and could survive dry conditions. It did not require too much care and also that it commanded a good price in the Dadar market. The nearby village of Amli had done very well with this crop.

Further discussions revealed the challenges.

Water: The plant can survive in dry conditions but still requires some water and that could be a challenge in the dry season. The hilly terrain and the soil characteristics of the area means that all the rainfall runs off. The denudation of forests around have further reduced the capacity of the soil to retain moisture. This is the reason that no farmer in the village except one, grows a second crop. 

The NGO representative stated that they could help build small water ponds that would have a plastic lined bottom. The ponds would hold enough water for the plants in the drier months. I later learnt that the village has been selected for government assistance in building such ponds this year.

Market access: If the villagers had to reach the Dadar market in time, they would need to leave by the first bus at 6.30. Which meant that the flower pluckers would need to get up early in the morning and pluck the flowers between 3.30 and 5.30 in the morning. It should be remembered that this is not merely an inconvenience – fields are the habitats of snakes and many other dangerous animals.

Market price: The market price of Mogra varies through the year and in the past has been high enough to make the crop remunerative. However, there is absolutely no guarantee that the price would continue to be high fifteen months or so down the line when the flowers are ready for plucking.

Collectivization: To make it worth the while for the person taking the produce to market every day, enough flowers should be ready for plucking. This means that many farmers would need to take the decision to invest in this initiative.

Knowledge transfer: The villagers have never grown Mogra. Imagine that they have invested a significant part of their life savings in growing this crop and mid-way through the season they face a pest infestation. They would need help from people with experience in growing Mogra and such people may live more than fifty kilometers away. Moreover, they may have their own priorities. The village does not have Internet access and anyway the net may not be a great resource for such specific problems.

As I sat in for the nearly three-hour meeting, some initial thoughts / conclusions that came to my mind were

• The steps required to improve income in one village, cannot be transplanted without change to another. This is true even of the villages that are close by. Differences in geography, transport link, etc. matter.
• Another reason that makes such a copy paste approach unviable is people. People being asked to invest money, effort and most importantly hope need to be convinced and this is a slow process. The process becomes slower because of the cynicism of the people who have tried and failed in many such previous initiatives.
• The NGO representatives I saw that day were impressive. They knew the details of solutions they were suggesting and were good at communication. In other words, they could talk the talk. But can they walk the walk? It would be presumptuous of me to conclude either way after a day’s visit!                                

The village women agreed to talk amongst themselves and come back to the NGOs. Everyone expects them to proceed cautiously. I will be following this space and keep posting.

Author –

Yogesh Upadhyaya

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is one of the founders of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views.)

Imagine a cricket team. It could be the national team or your favorite IPL franchise. The fast bowlers in this team are very strong, the spinners very cunning and the batsmen have great technique and skill. All of them are fantastic athletes too. There is only one problem – the team does not win matches. Would you say that the team is doing well? You would if you come from the wonderful world of policy.

ASER came out with its 2016 report more than a month ago and my simplified summary of this extremely detailed report is, “We are doing much better on almost all inputs such as working toilets, mandated pupil teacher ratio and kitchens to prepare mid day meal. However, there is no improvement in the learning levels of kids. In fact, the learning levels have worsened.”

As the accompanying chart shows, we have working toilets for girls in two out of three schools in rural India. The pupil teacher ratio is also improving. I have selected four out of the many Right To Education (RTE) indicators that ASER measures but India has made progress in nearly all other measures too. For example, percentage of schools with boundary walls has gone up from fifty-one to sixty!

There is only one problem. The kids. Their learning levels are falling. Note that this is so even when ASER sets a very low bar. For example, it measures percentage of class V and class VII students that can read Class II text.

If the aim of the education system was to provide mid day meals and toilets, we could have been very happy. But surely, as laudable as working toilets and nutritious food are, that is not what the education system is supposed to be doing? It is supposed to be teaching kids, right?

Not really. Everyone in the system – teachers, principles, education officers have many responsibilities. None of these responsibilities include making sure that kids learn. For example, a teacher is supposed to complete the syllabus but is not officially mandated to make sure that kids learn. If she cares enough to make the effort to make the kids learn, she is literally going beyond the call of duty.

I saw news reports recently that the government is amending RTE rules to make improvements in outcomes a part of what states are supposed to achieve. Great. How much time will it take for norms to be made, debated and accepted? Who knows. In the meanwhile, Crores of kids can curse their luck that they were born in a future superpower called India.

Please note: This post is not against toilets and mid-day meals. In fact, AskHow India and this author believe that sanitation is probably the biggest intervention we can make to significantly improve the life of citizens of India. Mandating these measures may have helped children in many ways but have definitely not helped them learn more.

Author –

Yogesh Upadhyaya

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is one of the founders of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views.)

The recent demonetization exercise and the consequent scarcity of cash made all of us explore non-cash payments for many transactions where cash payment was the default option. These include payments to vegetable vendors, milk vendors and our drivers and maids.

For many, while payments to the subjiwaala may have long reverted to the old cash habit, those to the doodhwaala may still be resisting a reversion to cash. But, our convenience must never cause payments to the driver and maid to revert to cash – for their sake. Here is why…

It is well documented that marginal class in India – those whose regular incomes and living expenses are very closely matched – are the most vulnerable to financial shocks viz. unanticipated and/or lumpy expenses on sickness of self or family, children’s education etc. These financial shocks cause them to approach the informal lenders like chit funds, money-lenders, pawn shops etc. as the formal financial system shuts its doors to them without ‘income proof’.
The usurious interest rates charged by informal lenders oftentimes ensnare these marginal earners in a debt-trap. As a result, what started out a temporary cash flow problem turns into a crushing debt problem that leads to permanent misery.

A ‘record of income’ for these marginal earners can be an effective defense against such debt driven misery. Receiving their salaries by cheque can help the marginal earners generate the ‘income proof’ that can help them borrow from formal sector lenders like banks, in times of need. Moreover, and equally importantly, a ‘cheque salary’ does not impose any tax burden on most of them as the present budget requires no tax to be paid on a monthly income of Rs.25,000 or less.

This needs to be effectively communicated to our drivers and maids so that they ask for a cheque salary.

We would do well to do our bit in this communication effort and help them sidestep potential misery.

Author –

Ajay Dwivedi

(Ajay Dwivedi is one of the founders of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views.)

Are you tired of the ‘endless stating and re-stating of own opinions’ aka social media debates?

I have a solution. A 3-point list that would improve any discussion that you participate in.

What qualifies me to give these suggestions?

I am a founder of AskHow India, a group dedicated to improving the quality of public debate in India. In the last three years, I have observed more bad discussions on social and conventional media than is good for my health. That has given me some insights into bad discussions.

More importantly, for more than three decades I have contributed to making discussions worse! I realized how much I was responsible for the problem only when I started observing others!

So here are three tips from an embarrassed poacher turned jungle warden.

1. Say “I don’t know” at least once a day :

Some of the most enriching discussions I have been a part of have been so because someone said the magic words. We all know that there is no way we can know everything there is to know about every topic in the world but in a discussion we pretend otherwise. The first person to say “I don’t know”,  allows others to admit their own ignorance and the discussion soon turns from a
verbal slug-fest to a harmonious attempt to increase your own understanding.

If you are like me and you feel that uttering these words is more difficult than saying, “I concede defeat” or even tougher, “I love you” you may set a goal of saying them at least once a day.

Pro tip: Once you have had enough practice saying “I don’t know” you could really challenge yourself and start on, “I was wrong.”

2. Use the back of an envelope (and Google):

Every summer, parts of India go through droughts and we see social media posts exhorting us to save water. Last year, suggestions ranged from playing dry holi to cancelling IPL matches in drought hit states.

I did some quick and rough calculations on the relative importance of each measure being suggested, and was astonished to realize that urban Indians can make very little impact by curtailing their direct use of water but can make significant impact if they understood the concept of ‘embedded water’ in every product they use. Such back of the envelope calculations are very useful in many discussions.

Pro tip: There is a temptation to be very precise in your calculations and assumptions. Avoid it. Many times, rough calculations may show a factor to be of much lower significance than you originally thought and even a 100% error in your answer may not change your conclusions too much. If people ask you to change your assumptions, just do it. Don’t argue. 

3. Beware of Confirmation Bias:

Wikipedia defines Confirmation bias as “…the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities.” In other words, facts rarely change our minds.

Unfortunately, this bias like most other biases is much easier to spot in others than in yourself. One way of discovering it in yourself is to record what would make you change your mind about an issue. If after a while, you go back and read these jottings, you would be surprised how stronger evidence than you initially thought has come up and you have still not changed your mind.

Pro tip: Don’t make your jottings public. Reservoirs of confirmation bias can be embarrassingly large.

These are my top three tips. What are yours? Post techniques that you have used to make discussions more productive in the comments section below.

On behalf of AskHow India, I wish everyone a 2017 filled with productive discussions!

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is a founder of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views)

The IT / BPM sector in India is faced with the risk of increased automation and of backlash against outsourcing in developed countries. The industry is also one of the large employers in the country. I did some back of the envelope calculations to get an estimate of how much of the total job requirement in the country is provided by IT / BPM. Here are the calculations.

A) Number of new additions in IT BPM in 2015 = 230,000

Source: NASSCOM

 B) Number of students enrolled in undergraduate programs across the country = 25,500,325

Source: All India Survey of Higher Education, 2013-14 (page 12)

 C) Number of graduates looking for employment = B / 4 = 6,375,081

Assuming ¼th of students will be looking for jobs. This adjusts for dropouts, a mix of 3 and 4 year undergraduate courses and for students who opt for higher studies.

D) Percentage of graduate youth that can expect to get jobs in IT / BPM = A / C

= 3.6%

IT / BPM jobs are relatively high paying ones and demand for goods and services from IT / BPM professionals can generate many indirect jobs for both graduates and non graduates. For example, an IT professional may buy / rent an apartment, frequently go to restaurants and take vacations in all parts of India. The number above does not include this indirect job creation.

 AskHow India Back of Envelope calculations try to quantify the impact of current events. They are meant to give an approximate estimate and start a conversation. We show our sources and calculations. Use them to arrive at a different answer and leave that answer in the comments section if you disagree with us! We would love that!

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is a founder of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views)

You are a warrior. Social media is your battleground. You know that you are marching behind the greatest leader the world has ever seen and together you will take this country to a glorious future. Or you believe that you are the only thing standing against India’s rush towards fascism and total destruction. In other words you are a Bhakt or a Tkahb, zealots at either end of spectrum.

The November 8 demonetization move is the perfect opportunity for you – a chance to prove to the other side how wrong they are.

I am here for you. I will give you facts and more importantly a way of arguing these facts that leave no doubt in any reasonable person’s mind about the correctness of your position. Let us dive right into it.

Issue: How much money has come into the system? 

Around 8.5 trillion Rupees or 56% of the cancelled Rupees have been deposited with the bank till November 28, 2016.

Bhakt argument: First of all, the pace of deposits will slow down. So it is likely that a large proportion of the cancelled notes will not get deposited. That will impact the government’s Fiscal Deficit. Additionally, the IT department will be able to identify part of the deposits as undeclared income from previous years and that will attract taxation at nearly 50%. Even if businesses show deposits as current year’s income, the profits out of these will get taxed at the current tax rates. There will be a tax jump that can be used in nation building.

Tkahb argument: If 56% of cancelled notes were deposited in 20 days imagine what will happen in 30 more days! The total deposits will cross 100% of outstanding because fake currency will also get deposited in banks!

Note: This fact has a shelf life. The deposit figures around December 31 will tend to give an answer one-way or the other. Better use this quickly.

 Issue: The squeeze in liquidity will lead to a slow down

The cancellation of high denomination notes led to a severe reduction in demand in the economy. This will negatively impact the GDP of the country. The cash crunch has also led to difficulties for farmers at the time of crop sowing.

Bhakt argument: The Bhakt argument in the purest form is to deny that consumption has fallen even in the last two weeks. However, if you are constrained by an analytical brain, argue that this demand destruction has been temporary. You could also point to news report that say that people used the cancelled notes to clear very old dues with banks and electricity companies. In many cases, the old notes have been used by businesses as advance payments to their suppliers and their employees.

 Tkahb argument: Reports suggest that FMCG sales were down by at least 50% in the first two weeks. Most economists suggest that there would be at least a short-term slowdown. However, you would be letting your side down if you did not predict doom and gloom in the long term. Argue that the cash squeeze will cause many small enterprises and even families to go bankrupt causing more than a short-term demand destruction. Argue that the bankruptcies will cause unemployment, which will further reduce demand causing more bankruptcies. India is on the precipice of a recession!

Note: It is useful to give links to articles that support your argument. Luckily you do not have to search too much. For example, a Bhakt can use this piece from Indian Express to support his argument and a Tkahb can use this one from the same paper (same page) to support his.

Issue: This measure will cause behavior change in many individuals and businesses

It is now well understood that the problem of Black Money is not of stashes of illicit wealth stowed away but of people not reporting parts of their income or gains and hence avoiding taxes. There is uncertainty on how much of black income people keep in cash. By definition this is not reported anywhere. So will this measure change behavior in future? Will people start declaring more of their income?

Bhakt argument: Government officers who accept bribes and professionals like doctors and lawyers who take their fees in cash and do not declare it are the worst hurt. They usually have very few avenues to launder their cash and hence they are now paying a very high price for converting their black money into white. It is likely that in future these people will declare a higher portion of their income because the cost of not doing so just went up.

Furthermore, Mr. Modi has just shown that he has the political will and capital to take tough steps and the ability to sell those steps to people. This fact alone will change a lot of behavior. People will think, today it was currency notes, tomorrow it could be land and / or gold. You could point out other measures against Black Money already taken or in the works.

Tkahb argument: Focus on the fact that very small portion of Black Wealth is parked in cash and most of it would be in land / apartments and gold. Also, stress on the fact that as soon as cash starts building up in the economy corrupt officers will start taking bribes and businesses would start evading taxes. You could also keep pointing out that this measure does not do anything about the Black Money parked outside the country.

Issue: Quality of implementation

RBI and Ministry of Finance have made and changed rules on a daily basis since November 8.

Bhakt argument: India is a large and complex country and secrecy was needed to implement this measure. The high number of rule changes just means that the government is responsive to emerging situations. It is commendable that the government is carrying out its operations in an entrepreneurial manner.

Tkahb argument: The changes in rules have been necessitated because of a total absence of planning. Did nobody even realize that the new notes were of a different size and that all the ATM machines in the country would need to be re-calibrated?

December has begun and a lot of data will pour in. Speed is of essence. Do not spent time trying to see how the data fits the big picture or even if there is a big picture. Pick up that data and fire.

Copy-paste the relevant parts of my article in your posts. In fact, you can link my entire article. Your social media posts are now being clicked only by other Bhakts or Tkhabs. They will use their own confirmation bias to read only the relevant portions.

PS: Do you have other factoids that can be argued both ways? Post them in the comments section below.

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is a founder of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views)

Demonetization: All predictions about the future are at best educated guesses.

Are you totally confused by the flood of articles, FB posts and Whatsapp forwards on demonetization? You are not the only one. The issue is really complex and even the experts making predictions are guessing when they say what will happen in the future. Underlying their guesses are explicit and sometimes not so explicit assumptions. Big assumptions.

Let me explain with an example. It is slightly complex example but bear with me.

1. Rajesh is a salaried employee and his employer deposits his monthly income in the bank. So of course, this income is white. He withdraws some of the money from an ATM and buys a few packs of Gutkha from the local panwala.
2. The panwala passes on most of the money through a wholesaler to the manufacturer. The net income of the panwala is small and he is not liable to pay tax.
3. Unknown to the panwala, the manufacturer is not accounting for this money in his books to evade paying the considerable amount of taxes on Gutkha. Thus, the white money of Rajesh has now become Black.
4. The manufacturer has to share part of this black income with his distributors and retailers. He also keeps a small amount in cash for day to day business expenses.
5. With the remaining part of this black income the manufacturer bribes a government tax official, buys land (partly paid for by cheque) and also buys Tobacco from a farmer.
6. The cash in hands of the tax officer and the land seller is black and in hands of farmer white.
7. The tax officer buys a fancy watch and keeps the remaining amount in cash. The land seller buys jewelry for his daughter’s wedding with some part of the money and keeps the remaining money in cash. The farmer uses some part of the money he got to pay a Doctor his fees.
8. The Swiss watch showroom and the jeweler declare the cash sale making the money white again. The Doctor does not declare a portion of the income making it black.

The main point of this example is that cash moves through the economy in a very complex ways and that the black and white economies are strongly intertwined. When you squeeze the black economy you are squeezing the white economy too.

Also, note that this contrived example is a minuscule part of reality! There would be millions of Rajesh and hundreds of distributors. The manufacturer would have thousands of income and expense entries. And of course across the vast country there are many different types of businesses and even more number of individuals with great differences in incomes. Reality = 1 Billion x this example or maybe more.

When columnists (including this one) give their opinions on the impact of demonetization, it is a guess. Educated guess at best and personal bias at worst.

Let us look at some of the areas of prediction.

Will this measure reduce generation of Black Money in future?

In our example, it depends on how much money the manufacturer, the tax officer, the doctor and the land seller had in cash and the day of demonetization and how much they are able to convert to new notes using both official and unofficial channels. Their tax liability and penalty in case of official channels and the commission they end up paying if they use unofficial channels will be a factor in their future decisions.

How much will be the impact on future Black Money?

It depends on your assumptions.

Will this measure reduce GDP growth in the short term?

Definitely. The panwala will see a drop in sales because people do not have cash. He may make temporary arrangements to get gutkha on credit and sell it to his known customers on credit but he will still see drop in sales and would reduce his own purchases as much as he can. So would everyone in our example. There is no way of accurately knowing how much would this reduction would be.

How much would be the drop in demand and how long will it last?

Depends on your assumptions.

Will this measure impact GDP growth in the long term?

Yes, but this impact is even more difficult to assess. On one hand, the demand shortage and liquidity crunch could force small entrepreneurs to go out of business. On the other hand the government could use the extra tax collection to build social and physical infrastructure, which spurs the economy. There is also a likelihood of organized businesses growing to take place of the dying unorganized business. Additionally, future is not static and individuals, firms and governments will react to the given situation and make the situation worse or better.

How much will be the long-term impact on GDP?

You guessed it right; it depends on your assumptions.

In summary, demonetization is a very big move in a very very complex system viz. the Indian economy. Any prediction about the outcome, whether positive or negative, is at best an educated guess. I would think that even the government of India was guessing about the benefits and costs when it made the move.

Note 1: I have not spoken about the social costs of this move – people going hungry because they cannot get their daily employment for example. This is because I have no way of knowing about these except for anecdotes that I hear and read in media. This does not mean that the social costs are not real.
Note 2: There is nothing inherently wrong with the columnists guessing. It is just that we should not take any one’s view as absolute truth.

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is a founder of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views)

Imagine you sold your flat in Delhi last month for Rs. 1 Crores. As is the market practice, you took 40 Lakh of this money in cash. Imagine also that in the one month since the sale, you spent only a couple of Lakh from the cash pile. After the government’s declaration yesterday that the current five hundred and thousand rupee notes will no longer be legal tender in India, you are screwed. The next time you sell property, you will not be inclined to take such a large portion of the money in cash. What is more your sorry tale will also persuade your friends and relatives to accept large portions of their property sales in cheque.

Now imagine that your neighbor sold their flat two years ago, again getting Rs. 40 Lakh in cash.  However, they immediately spent the cash in their daughter’s wedding and in buying another piece of property. They have probably stepped out right now to give Prasad at the local temple to thank the almighty for their luck! They and their friends would also be cautious about accepting cash next time they sell their property but not as much as you would be.

These two tales illustrate why the move by the government yesterday is good but is not a ‘ramban’ to kill the demon of Black Money.

More formally,

1. Some Businesses and professions like doctors take part of their revenues / fees as cash and do not declare it, to avoid paying tax.
2. However, the black money thus earned is not entirely ‘stashed away’. The business for example may use it to pay bribes or to make political contributions or might simply give it to another business that is selling its goods in cash. The doctor may buy gold or land or even spend the money. Black Money circulates and only a small portion of this money is kept in cash. We have no way of knowing how much that is.
3. The step of stopping use of five hundred and thousand rupee notes makes this stash worthless. This will persuade businesses and professionals to declare more of their income in future. But there are also counter pressures of needing undeclared income to pay bribes, etc. and also to pay lower taxes. A pan masala manufacturer for example, can evade high amount of excise duty today by making cash / undeclared sales.

To summarize this is a good step but will not solve the entire problem. The problem of Black Money is too complex for it to be solved in its entirety by one step alone. And yes, it will be disruptive for our day-to-day lives, but that is a topic for another discussion.

(Yogesh Upadhyaya is a founder of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views)

It is tough to not like an honest attempt and even tougher if the attempt is a courageous one. The move by the Indian Government to withdraw the presently used high denomination currency notes is such an attempt. These currency notes are one of the key enablers in the generation, storage and movement of domestic black money and its movement across our country’s borders. This money is often used to carry out illegal acts in the country such as bribing and terrorism.

This move will render most of the black money currently held as Indian currency unusable. This would include money that is just stashed away for use at a later date, money that has been converted to cash to be moved abroad through the hawala channel, or money that is sitting abroad but destined for use in the country for one of a myriad of illegal activities. It will also render the present infrastructure for printing counterfeit currency – both within the country and outside – worthless.

Though some, or even many, of these activities may well find new routes for their conduct, such ‘innovation’ will impose fresh costs on their practitioners in terms of money, quality of people and time. Till these new methods are found and perfected, the nation will get a breather. And, as and when these activities recommence, they will be rendered more costly than before as the risk of a repeat of this move will have to be priced into their cost of operations.

This “re-pricing” of black money transactions will render some, or even many, of them unviable and cause them to move into the formal (white) economy. This will cause the formal economy to be larger than what it may have been without this move. This will, in turn, improve tax collections and provide greater fiscal capacity to the government for spending on improving the country’s physical and social infrastructure.

Author –

Ajay Dwivedi

(Ajay Dwivedi is one of the founders of AskHow India. Blogs are personal views.)

Can we use our IT giants to help our courts?

Last week, the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence on Vikas Yadav and other accused in the Nitish Kataria murder case, nearly 15 years after Kataria’s death. Unfortunately, this was not an exceptional case in terms of time taken.

We know that the slow speed of justice system impacts crucial issues such as women’s safety, corruption (see graphic) and black money in addition to many others. And yet, when it comes to solutions, most of the discussions in the media focus on the low judge to population ratio.

We covered this issue in AskHow a while back and made many suggestions such as limiting the number of adjournments and making procedural changes to bottleneck laws. However, if there is one thing that frustrates me, it is not using Information technology effectively.

It is not easy to gauge the current state of computerization in our courts but some recent findings can be found here and here. I do think however, that it is ludicrous that the Supreme Court had to make the followings observations in late 2012,

“If E-tickets of Railways can be booked in one part of the country and print generated in any other part of the country, generating information of statistics relating to Judiciary may not be difficult.”

“Data is not based on performance standards – thus, in the absence of time tables or data systems that will track individual cases against established time standards, there is in fact no scientific data on delays in courts today. “

And most damningly,

“Number of available Court Buildings, Court Halls and other infrastructural facilities have not been described clearly. In the absence of correct statistics regarding the number of Court Halls available, transfers and postings effected by the High Courts, have, at times, created piquant situations. Instances have come to fore that number of Judicial Officers posted at a place could not function for want of Court Halls; also, conversely at other places vis-à-vis number of Judicial Officers posted, the number of pending matters were negligible.”

Our IT giants Infosys, TCS, etc. are under growth pressure. Can the country give them the task of setting up a world class IT infrastructure for the justice system in the next three years?

Updated, October 24, 2016: Links added for current status of IT in courts.