📰 SC asks States to respond to plea that says citizens are still being booked under Section 66A of IT Act
‘The cooperation of the States was necessary to put the brakes on the police from registering FIRs under Section 66A,’ says Bench.
•The Supreme Court on Monday asked States to respond to a petition that citizens continue to get booked and prosecuted under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act for expressing themselves freely on social media. Section 66A was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in a judgment in 2015.
•A Bench led by Justice Rohinton F. Nariman said State governments, which control the police force, had to answer for this violation of the Supreme Court judgment. The Supreme Court said the judiciary could be reined in from wrongly charging under Section 66A, but the cooperation of the States was necessary to put the brakes on the police from registering FIRs under Section 66A. The court said it intended to pass a wholistic order after hearing the States. The court listed the case after four weeks.
•On July 5 this year, Justice Nariman had found it “distressing”, “shocking” and “terrible” that people were still booked and tried under Section 66A even six years after the Supreme Court struck down the provision as unconstitutional and a violation of free speech.
•An NGO, People’s Union of Civil Liberties, represented by senior advocate Sanjay Parikh and advocate Aparna Bhat, had drawn the court’s attention to the violations. Justice Nariman had authored the judgment, trashing Section 66A in a petition filed by law student Shreya Singhal, who highlighted cases of young people being arrested and charged under the ambiguous provision for their social media posts.
•In its response, the Centre said the police and public order were “State subjects” under the Constitution.
•“Prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of crimes and capacity-building of the police are primarily the responsibility of the States,” the Centre submitted in an affidavit to the Supreme Court.
•It said law enforcement agencies shared equal responsibility to comply with the Supreme Court judgment. They took action against cyber-crime offenders as per the law.
•The Centre said the Ministries of Information and Technology and Home Affairs had done their best to disseminate knowledge about the Supreme Court judgment in Shreya Singhal case.
•Section 66A had prescribed three years’ imprisonment if a social media message caused “annoyance” or was found “grossly offensive”. The Supreme Court had concluded the provision to be vague and worded arbitrarily.
•Justice Nariman had agreed with Mr. Parikh on July 7 that the “state of affairs is shocking”.
•Mr. Parikh had urged the court to intervene and work out a mechanism to disseminate the Shreya Singhal judgment to every police station and trial court in the country.
•“Section 66A of the IT Act has continued to be in use not only within police stations but also in cases before trial courts across India. This information was available on a website — Zombie Tracker website — developed by a team of independent researchers... The findings of the website reveal that as on March 10, 2021, as many as a total of 745 cases are still pending and active before the Districts Courts in 11 States, wherein accused persons are being prosecuted for offences under Section 66A of the IT Act,” the PUCL has submitted.
•The NGO has urged the Supreme Court to direct the government, through the National Crime Records Bureau or any other agency, to collect all the data/information regarding FIRs/investigations under Section 66A and pending cases in the District and High Courts.
📰 Experts raise concerns over mandatory fortification of food items
Letter to FSSAI warns of adverse impact of policy on health and livelihoods.
•In a pushback against the Centre’s plan to mandatorily fortify rice and edible oils with vitamins and minerals, a group of scientists and activists have written to the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), warning of the adverse impacts on health and livelihoods. They cited multiple studies to show that dietary diversity and higher protein consumption are key to solving undernutrition in India, rather than adding a few synthetic micronutrients which could harm the health of consumers.
•The letter, sent on Monday to the FSSAI as well as the Food, Agriculture and Health Ministries and the Ministry of Women and Child Development, was signed by 170 individuals and organisations including eminent nutritionists, economists, doctors and farmers groups.
‘Inconclusive evidence’
•One of the signatories is the National Institute of Nutrition’s former deputy director Veena Shatrugna, who warned that “evidence supporting fortification is inconclusive and certainly not adequate before major national policies are rolled out.”
•The letter points to recent studies published in the medical journal Lancet and in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition which show that both anaemia and Vitamin A deficiencies are overdiagnosed, meaning that mandatory fortification could lead to hypervitaminosis.
•It also notes that many of the studies which FSSAI relies on to promote fortification are sponsored by food companies who would benefit from it, leading to conflicts of interest. Studies funded by the Nestle Nutrition Institute and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition were mentioned as cases in point.
•The letter explains that one major problem with chemical fortification of foods is that nutrients don’t work in isolation but need each other for optimal absorption. Undernourishment in India is caused by monotonous cereal-based diets with low consumption of vegetables and animal protein.
•“Adding one or two synthetic chemical vitamins and minerals will not solve the larger problem, and in undernourished populations can lead to toxicity,” it said, citing a 2010 study that showed iron fortification causing gut inflammation and pathogenic gut microbiota profile in undernourished children.
Cartelisation
•The letter also argued that mandatory fortification would harm the vast informal economy of Indian farmers and food processors including local oil and rice mills, and instead benefit a small group of multinational corporations who will have sway over a ₹3,000 crore market.
•“Just five corporations have derived most of the benefits of global fortification trends and these companies have historically engaged in cartelising behaviour leading to price hikes,” said the letter, noting that the European Union has been forced to fine these companies for such behaviour and asked how the FSSAI proposed to regulate price in India.
•Dietary diversity was a healthier and more cost-effective way to fight malnutrition, said the letter. “Once iron-fortified rice is sold as the remedy to anaemia, the value and the choice of naturally iron-rich foods like millets, varieties of green leafy vegetables, flesh foods, liver, to name a few, will have been suppressed by a policy silence,” it warned.
•“It is ridiculous that the government is promoting polished rice, which has lost a lot of its nutrition on the one hand, and talks about chemical fortification on the other hand,” added another signatory, Debal Deb of the Basudha Laboratory for Conservation in West Bengal.
📰 Lok Sabha passes Bill to amend insurance Act amid protests
It will allow govt to bring down its stake in State-owned general insurance companies.
•Amid Opposition protests and sloganeering over the Pegasus snooping issue and the three controversial farm laws, the Lok Sabha on Monday passed a law to amend the general insurance business Act without a debate.
•The Bill – The General Insurance Business (Nationalisation) Amendment Bill, 2021 – will allow the government to bring down its stake in State-owned general insurance companies, generate required resources and help public sector general insurers design innovative products.
•But the Opposition and the Treasury benches got into a war of words as the Bill was being moved for passage.
•Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury accused the government of handing over decades-old institutions to a handful of capitalists and and termed the bill “anti-people and anti-national”.
Nirmala’s charge
•Hitting back at Mr. Chowdhury, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman accused the Opposition of spreading falsehood and asserted that she would respond to his charges if they [Opposition members] agreed to debate the provisions of the Bill.
•“If they are serious, they should sit down, debate and ask questions. Since you are afraid that truth will come out, you don’t want a discussion,” she stated while moving for the Bill’s passage.
•The Bill was passed through a voice vote after some of the amendments to it, moved by Revolutionary Socialists Party’s N K Pramachandran, were defeated. The BJP’s Rama Devi, who was in the Chair, adjourned the House for the day soon after the Bill’s passage.
•As per the statement of objects and reasons, the proposed amendments to the General Insurance Business (Nationalisation) Bill seeks to remove the mandatory requirement of the Central government holding not less than 51 percent of the equity capital in a specified insurer.
•The Bill stated that certain amendments had become ‘necessary’ to provide for greater private participation in public sector insurance companies, enhance the penetration of the insurance sector, provide social protection by securing the interests of the policyholders better and contribute to faster pace of the economic growth.
Privatisation agenda
•In her Budget speech for 2021-22, the Finance Minister had announced a ambitious privatisation agenda, including two public sector banks and one general insurance company. Of the public sector general insurance companies - the National Insurance Company Limited, New India Assurance Company Limited, Oriental Insurance Company Limited and the United India Insurance Company Limited-- the government will dilute its shareholding in one company. The name of the company, however, is yet to be finalised.
•The first half of the Lok Sabha proceedings also witnessed protests by the Opposition members, resulting in two adjournments before lunch.
•While the Ms. Sitharaman introduced the Tribunals Reforms Bill, 2021, after withdrawing an earlier bill on the issue, Mr. Chowdhury accused the government of “bulldozing one legislation after another”. He said the Congress was willing to discuss all issues but the Pegasus matter should be taken up first for a debate, something the government hasn’t agreed so far.
📰 PM Modi launches digital payment solution e-RUPI
seRUPI voucher will help everyone in targeted, transparent and leakage free delivery, said Narendra Modi
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday launched digital payment solution e-RUPI, a person and purpose specific cashless digital payment solution, via videoconference. Speaking on the occasion, he said the eRUPI voucher was a symbol of how India was progressing by connecting people’s lives with technology. He expressed happiness that this futuristic reform initiative had come at a time when the country was celebrating the Amrit Mahotsav on the 75th anniversary of Independence.
•In addition to the government, he stated, if any organisation wanted to help someone in their treatment, education or for any other work, then they would be able to give an eRUPI voucher instead of cash. This would ensure that the money given by him was used for the work for which the amount had been given.
•The Prime Minister observed, “eRUPI will ensure that the money is being used for the purpose for which any help or any benefit is being provided’’. There was a time when technology was considered a domain of the rich people and there was no scope for technology in a poor country like India. “Today we are seeing technology as a tool to help the poor, a tool for their progress,’’ he pointed out.
New opportunities
•Mr. Modi asserted how technology was bringing in transparency and integrity in transactions and creating new opportunities and making them available to the poor.
•For reaching today’s unique product, the foundation was prepared over the years by creating the JAM system, which connected mobile and Aadhaar. “Benefits of JAM took some time to be visible to people and we saw how we could help the needy during the lockdown period while other countries were struggling to help their people,’’ he stressed.
•More than ₹17.50 lakh crore had been transferred directly to the accounts of people via the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT). “More than 3,000 schemes are using DBT and 90 crore Indians are being benefited in some way or the other through in areas like LPG, ration, medical treatment, scholarship, pension and wage disbursal. Also ₹1,35,000 crore had been directly transferred to farmers under the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi. A sum of ₹85,000 crore for government purchase of wheat was also disbursed in this manner. The biggest benefit of this all was that ₹1,78,000 crore was prevented from going to the wrong hands,” he remarked.
Record UPI transactions
•The development of digital transactions had empowered the poor and deprived, small businesses, farmers and tribal population. This could be felt in the record 300 crore UPI transactions in July, amounting to ₹6 lakh crore, he highlighted.
•India was proving to the world that “we are second to none in adopting technology and adapting to it” through innovations and use of technology in service delivery. The country had the ability to give global leadership alongside major countries of the world, he added.
📰 Preventive detention a necessary evil only to prevent public disorder: Supreme Court
“State should not arbitrarily resort to ‘preventive detention’ to deal with all and sundry ‘law and order’ problems”
•Preventive detention, the dreaded power of the State to restrain a person without trial, could be used only to prevent public disorder, the Supreme Court held in a judgment on Monday.
•“Preventive detention is a necessary evil only to prevent public disorder. The court must ensure that the facts brought before it directly and inevitably lead to a harm, danger or alarm or feeling of insecurity among the general public or any section thereof at large,” a Bench led by Justice Rohinton F. Nariman observed.
•The State should not arbitrarily resort to “preventive detention” to deal with all and sundry “law and order” problems, which could be dealt with by the ordinary laws of the country.
•“Whenever an order under a preventive detention law is challenged, one of the questions the court must ask in deciding its legality is: was the ordinary law of the land sufficient to deal with the situation? If the answer is in the affirmative, the detention order will be illegal,” Justice Nariman wrote.
•The court said two drunks fighting on a road was a law and order problem, and not ‘public disorder’. The solution here was not preventive detention.
Four corners of Article 21
•Preventive detention must fall within the four corners of Article 21 (due process of law) read with Article 22 (safeguards against arbitrary arrest and detention) and the statute in question, Justice Nariman said.
•“Liberty of a citizen is a most important right won by our forefathers after long, historical and arduous struggles...We must confine the power of preventive detention to very narrow limits, otherwise the great right to liberty won by our Founding Fathers, who were also freedom fighters, after long, arduous and historical struggles, will become nugatory,” the court noted.
•“Mere contravention of law, such as indulging in cheating or criminal breach of trust, certainly affects ‘law and order’, but before it can be said to affect ‘public order’, it must affect the community or the public at large,” Justice Nariman stated.
•The judgment cane in an appeal filed by the wife of a man placed under preventive detention under the Telangana Prevention of Dangerous Activities Act shortly after he was granted bail in a cheating case.
•The Supreme Court said the State should have contested the bail order in a higher court rather than slap an Executive order of preventive detention on him on the ground that, if set free, he would cheat more people.
•“This may be a good ground to appeal against the bail order, but certainly cannot provide the springboard to move under a preventive detention statute. We, therefore, quash the detention order,” the court ordered.
📰 Criminalising welfare issues
Before the legislature adopts coercive legal measures, a welfare response should be considered
•The Supreme Court recently issued notice on a writ petition on the condition that the petition’s prayer seeking a direction to “restrain beggars and vagabonds/homeless from begging on traffic junctions, markets and public places to avoid the spread of COVID-19 pandemic in all the States and Union Territories across India” be modified to focus on the rehabilitation of those forced to beg for a living. In doing this, the court rightly observed that being compelled to beg was a socio-economic issue that could not be remedied by directions of the kind originally sought. It required, instead, a welfare response from the state. This order points to the largely ignored nexus between coercive measures and welfare issues, which can be a useful guide to making and implementing criminal law in three ways.
What should be criminalised?
•First, when decisions about criminalisation are being taken by the legislature, an important point of consideration should be whether the issue sought to be addressed might be better suited to a welfare response. Salient examples of welfare issues against which the coercive force of criminal law has inappropriately been deployed serve to illustrate the point. In holding the criminalisation of beggary under the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959 (as extended to the NCT of Delhi) unconstitutional, the High Court of Delhi, in Harsh Mander & Anr. v. Union of India (2018), had noted that the criminalisation of beggary served only to invisibilise beggars without doing anything to address the structural deprivations that drove people to beg. Similarly, the criminalisation of triple talaq by the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019, purportedly to ‘protect’ Muslim women, does nothing to address the structural gender inequality, social stigma, poor employment options, and lack of state support which actually cause the deprivations associated with divorce (and not just with triple talaq).
•Second, socio-economic marginalisation and poverty may frequently make people susceptible to exploitation, whether through poorly paid/unpaid labour, trafficking and sex work, or indeed, begging. A criminal response to those who seek to take advantage of such vulnerability (but never the vulnerable themselves) might be appropriate, but it would amount to little more than lip service to the predicament of the exploited without accompanying welfare measures. In other words, it is important to ensure that pimps, brothel owners, and traffickers are held criminally liable for sexually exploiting a person. Equally important is to create alternative, well-paying and dignified employment, to make such employment accessible by imparting requisite education and skills, and to have social security nets to ensure that no person feels that sex work is their ‘least worst’ option. This is essential not only to prevent exploitative practices, but also to rehabilitate those who have been rescued (and/or those who would like an exit option) from such practices. To ‘rescue’ a sex worker is meaningless unless they have a legitimate way out of such work, an option that is materially (not morally) better for them.
•Focusing on the welfare aspect of exploitative practices also sheds light on structural forms of impoverishment, and on who is most likely to be exploited as a result. It is, thus, largely those marginalised and discriminated against based on gender, caste, class and even age who occupy the ranks of beggars, sex workers, bonded labourers, and child labourers. Such a focus also exposes the culpability of the state and society in creating or enabling the vulnerabilities of those prone to exploitation. This recognition is reflected in the apt remarks of the High Court in Suhail Rashid Bhat v. State of Jammu & Kashmir and Others (2019), “Begging is also in fact evidence of the failure of the Government as well as the society at large to protect its citizens from debilitating effects of extreme poverty and to ensure to them basics of food, clothing, shelter, health, education, essential concomitants of the right to life ensured under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.”
Criminal law for whom?
•Finally, when evaluating the function or necessity of a criminalisation response to something that is essentially or even partly a welfare issue, it is crucial to question whose interests the law does, in fact, serve. Does it help the vulnerable and/or the exploited, or is it a tool of persecution? Does it cater to the morality and sensibilities of the powerful? Does it hide the failures of the state? Or is it a quick fix that allows the government to abdicate and divert attention away from its welfare responsibilities? Only by following these interests can we, as citizens, hope to hold the state accountable in its use of the power to criminalise conduct.
📰 The hacking of Indian democracy
tional security is important, but it can have an impact on human rights and civil liberties
•The Pegasus revelations reflect an attack on Indian democracy and Indian citizens. Was the government directly responsible for the surveillance of a select group of Indian activists, politicians and journalists and others? Or was the surveillance at the instance of a private player? With the government in denial, a commission of inquiry by a sitting Supreme Court judge can alone unravel the mystery.
•National security is important, but it can have an impact on human rights and civil liberties. The use of surveillance has serious implications for privacy. But the list of people targeted prima facie shows that national security is a pretext to suppress political and societal dissent in India.
Acting according to conscience
•Pegasus is a technology sold to governments to fight terrorism. The Israeli Supreme Court, in September 1999, said in Public Committee Against Torture in Israel v. Israel that shaking, waiting in the ‘Shabach’ position, the frog crouch, excessively tight handcuffs and sleep deprivation were illegal. It held that they granted General Security Service investigators “the authority to apply physical force during interrogation of suspects suspected in involvement of... terrorist activities, thereby harming suspects’ dignity and liberty”. This, it said, “raises basic questions of law and society, of ethics and policy and of the rule of law and security.”
•Speaking for the Court, President A. Barak declared, “This decision opened with a description of difficult reality in which Israel finds herself... We are aware that this decision does make it easier to deal with that reality. This is the destiny of a democracy... A democracy must sometimes fight with one hand tied behind its back. Even so, a democracy has the upper hand. The rule of law and the liberty of an individual constitute important components in its understanding of security.” He concluded, “We are aware of the harsh reality of terrorism in which we are, at times, immersed. The possibility that this decision will hamper the ability to... deal with terrorist and terrorism disturbs us. We are, however, judges... in deciding the law we must act according to our purest conscience.”
•NSO Group and the Indian government must be reminded of these words. In the name of fighting terrorism, democracy cannot be undermined. Indian democracy is founded with the cherished ideals enshrined in the Constitution. It belongs to the people and not to political parties. The surveillance of the target group raises doubts about the functioning of democracy in India. The chilling effect, if the government were to succeed, would be to turn democracy into a dictatorship. The government has a constitutional duty to protect the fundamental and human rights of its citizens, irrespective of who they are. Even if the government is not complicit in the surveillance, it has miserably failed in discharging this duty. There is clear evidence that the rule of law has been undermined. More evidently, this reflects extremely poor governance. The Intelligence Bureau, the Research and Analysis Wing, and the National Security Council Secretariat should have forewarned the government and citizens against such surveillance seriously violating privacy and fundamental rights. Their silence speaks volumes about either complicity or poor governance. This being the case, an inquiry at the highest level under the supervision of the judiciary is a constitutional necessity. If this does not take place, India will cease to call itself a democracy.
•The Supreme Court, in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), declared privacy a constitutionally protected value. The right to privacy is not absolute and its curtailment can take place only under a law which is just, reasonable and fair and subject to constitutional safeguards.
•India is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 12 provides that “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.” The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, also signed by India, in Article 17 states, “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.” In K.S. Puttaswamy, the Supreme Court noted India’s commitments under international law and held that by virtue of Article 51 of the Constitution, India has to endeavour to “foster respect for international law and treaty obligations...” The Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 is a fallout of this commitment.
Recommendations of UNHCHR
•The annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) in 2014 made fundamental observations and recommendations on “digital communications technologies”. It said, “by amplifying the voices of human rights defenders and providing them with new tools to document and expose abuses, these powerful technologies offer the promise of improved enjoyment of human rights.” But “communications technologies also have enhanced the capacity of Governments, enterprises and individuals to conduct surveillance, interception and data collection....”
•Earlier, due to concerns of member states, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 68/167 affirming that rights held by people offline must also be protected online and called upon all states to respect and protect the right to privacy, including in digital communication.
•The UNHCHR report also stated, “Judicial involvement that meets international standards relating to independence, impartiality and transparency can help to make it more likely that the overall statutory regime will meet the minimum standards that international human rights law requires. At the same time, judicial involvement in oversight should not be viewed as a panacea...” It recommended an independent oversight body to keep checks and stated, “The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requires states parties to ensure that victims of violations of the Covenant have an effective remedy....” The report also dealt with the role of businesses and stated that when a state requires that an information and communications technology company provide user data, it can only supply it in respect of legitimate reasons.
•Surprisingly, NSO, in its Transparency and Responsibility Report 2021, informed interested parties that it “strives to guarantee that our products are used... safely, effectively and ethically.” If described options available if one of its customers “has acted in bad faith, or used one of our tools to target the electronic communications of someone who falls outside the prescribed target scope.” It outlined the range of options available to it if this happened, including “completely ending a customer’s access to our systems, as a situation may warrant.” It stated, “We very much see today’s release as a newly added necessity to the complex, ongoing international debate over electronic surveillance. We are opening our own processes to even deeper scrutiny...” Was this report prepared fearing the worst in the wake of the ongoing international debate?
•Indians have a right to call upon NSO to terminate the agreement, if any, with the Indian government or any private player and to cooperate with citizens to unravel the truth.
📰 We need more creators
Educators must upgrade their engagement strategies while integrating technology into their approach
•The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has rightfully identified 21st century skills as fundamental to developing creators. Critical thinking and problem solving, communication and collaboration, creativity and innovation, flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social and cross-cultural interactions, and productivity and accountability all strengthen the individuals’ abilities at the workplace. Relying on traditional literacy and numeracy alone will not suffice and tends to marginalise differently abled learners. Educators could consider a design-based approach where students concentrate on a subject for two-three weeks to examine how it can be applied in the real world. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who studied happiness and creativity, said that creation requires ‘deep work’. An individual must be motivated enough to remain immersed in a specific activity to be creative and happy.
Teacher training
•But does our current classroom and content-heavy syllabus enable deep work? Also, how do we retrain teachers who have been trained in traditional systems? They know terms like ‘constructivism’ but do not know how it should be used in a classroom that is focused on exams rather than learning. And how ready are our future educators?
•In a semester-long study that used Wikipedia as a pedagogical tool for teacher training, 65 pre-service (B.Ed) teachers were asked to improve the pages on Wikipedia related to educational concepts. Excluding a few, the content created by most participants was either sent back to them or deleted by neutral editors of Wikipedia. The content, it was found, was plagiarised, did not provide citations, lacked basic writing and grammar skills, etc. After three iterative cycles that were emotionally intense, the teachers were able to contribute content to over 75 Wikipedia articles in English and over 50 articles in Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Malayalam, Gujarati, Assamese and Punjabi. All the content was related to educational technology. The critical feedback from various Wikipedia editors was crucial because it was unbiased. This feedback forced the learners to re-evaluate their skills. This shows that constant engagement, an emotional connect, and immersive learning are important parts of education.
Using technology
•EdTech apps can deliver content that caters to multiple learning styles, learning curves and pace of learning. The pandemic has shown that traditional teacher and brick-and-mortar schools may become obsolete if radical pedagogical changes do not follow. However, over-reliance on technology comes at a cost. Technology tools are forcing human beings to remain consumers rather than become creators. For example, social media forces you to scroll mindlessly rather than contemplate or engage meaningfully. Entertainment channels create addictive content that makes you suspend reality till all the seasons are done. And with the pandemic shutting down schools, children have lost all personal contact with their social group and parents are forced to rely upon technology to provide their children constant gratification to keep them engaged. With so many immersive distractions from deep work, is it even possible to develop creators? Can technology replace emotional and social engagement?
•The disruptive nature of digital tools has thrown up interesting challenges to the traditional education system. Educators will have to find ways to upgrade their engagement strategies while integrating technology into their approach through hybrid learning. And while the NEP is catchy, policymakers will have to look again at the school education system if 21st century skills are to be truly actualised.
📰 A disconcerting picture behind the headline numbers
There is evidence to suggest that the PLFS data may underestimate the loss of earnings and fall in consumption
•The third annual round of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data conducted during July 2019-June 2020 was released recently. The PLFS captures key indicators of the labour market such as the labour force participation rate (LFPR) — the proportion of population working or seeking work; worker-population ratio (WPR) — the proportion of population that is working; and the unemployment rate (UR) — the proportion of population in the labour force that is seeking but unable to find work. It also provides data on the earnings of different segments of workers.
•The PLFS 2019-20 was expected to provide official estimates of the labour market distress that followed dwindling GDP growth and a lockdown following the novel coronavirus pandemic that brought several economic activities to a standstill. The data, however, show a decline in the unemployment rate to 4.8% in 2019-20 — the lowest in three years. While the headline numbers may seem pleasing, a detailed analysis paints a rather disconcerting picture.
Falling unemployment rate
•The LFPR, WPR and UR are measured using two approaches — usual status and current weekly status. The usual status considers the activity of an individual over a relatively long period during the last 365 days, whereas the current weekly status is based on activity performed during the reference period of the last seven days.
•The unemployment rate, as measured by the usual status, fell from 6.1% in 2017-18 to 4.8% in 2019-20. This is because even as the LFPR increased from 36.9% to 40.1%, the WPR increased from 34.7% to 38.2% during the same period. In other words, while there was an increase in the share of the population in the labour force over the last three years, there was an even higher increase in the share of those who were able to find work, and hence unemployment fell.
•A fall in the unemployment rate would be heartening, except, it seems puzzling as it comes at a time of unprecedented economic distress. The quarterly GDP growth declined for successive quarters, sliding from 8.2% in January-March 2018 to 3.1% in January-March 2020, after which the economy contracted by 23.9% during April-June 2020.
Workforce composition
•How were more people able to find jobs when economic activities were slowing down? The answer lies in the changing composition of the workforce.
•The PLFS categorises the workforce into self-employed (which includes own account workers, employers and unpaid helpers in family enterprises); regular wage/salaried workers and casual labourers. Own account workers run small enterprises without hiring any labour but may take help from family members, while employers hire workers. Of all the worker categories, only the proportion of unpaid family workers has gone up significantly in the last three years. In fact, between 2018 and 2019, while the workforce increased by 2.9%, the proportion of all other employment categories in the workforce declined, except unpaid family helpers.
•Over the same period, almost the entire rise in the workforce was accommodated by agriculture. Agriculture continues to perform the function of a sink — absorbing the workforce that cannot find remunerative employment elsewhere.
•There is also a gendered dimension to the changing composition of the workforce. The category of unpaid family workers is dominated by women. The story of the declining unemployment rate can largely be explained by a movement of women from primarily being engaged in domestic work to agriculture and other petty production activities as unpaid family helpers, possibly in the hope of increasing family income in the times of unprecedented distress and lack of alternative employment opportunities.
•The usual status is based on a loose definition of work that underestimates open unemployment. This is where the alternative measure of unemployment is relevant. Using the current weekly status approach, the unemployment rate was estimated to be 8.8%, unchanged during the last three years.
Impact of the lockdown
•The PLFS survey for April-June 2020 overlapped with the national lockdown. The current weekly status unemployment rate in this quarter was 14%, and the urban unemployment rate was around 20%. Corrected for inflation, the average monthly income for the salaried increased by 2% in April-June 2020 over April-June 2019. The monthly earnings of the self-employed declined by 16% and the daily wage for casual workers declined by 5.6% over the same period. The real monthly per capita consumer expenditure declined by 7.6%.
•The rise in the average income of salaried workers and the muted impact on consumer expenditure, as estimated from the PLFS, do not concur with other data for the lockdown period. Private final consumption expenditure declined by 26.7% in April-June 2020 over the same quarter in 2019. Numerous small-scale surveys also reported massive earnings loss during the lockdown. There is overwhelming evidence to suggest that the PLFS data may underestimate the loss of earnings and fall in consumption during the lockdown. This is a missed opportunity for the official survey to capture the labour market dynamics during the lockdown.
Strengthen statistical system
•There is no official data on poverty after 2011-12 or on farm income after 2013, and no recent data on migrant workers. While the consumer expenditure data for 2017-18 was buried, the data on situation assessment of agricultural households are not yet released, despite being conducted between January-December 2019, before the latest PLFS.
•Minor tweaks in future PLFS surveys can fill the data gaps. Currently, the PLFS captures incomes from agriculture and monthly consumer expenditure, but the questions on these aspects lack credibility. The predecessor to the PLFS, the National Sample Survey employment and unemployment surveys, collected data on consumer expenditure using a detailed schedule. There is no reason why the PLFS cannot do the same. Adding questions on costs and returns from cultivation and related activities can also capture more accurate data on agricultural incomes. Lengthening the questionnaire has its costs — but the costs of the absence of reliable and timely data on important policy-relevant indicators are far higher.
