The surge in the second wave of COVID-19 in several parts of the country in 2021 once again brought attention towards the significance of decentralization and the need for local governments in India to be financially and administratively empowered. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) model of proactively managing the pandemic emerged as a case study… Continue reading Atmanirbhar Abhiyaan: Making Municipal Revenues resilient in India
Background The power sector consists of five stakeholders- energy sources, power generators, transmitters, distributors, and consumers (figure 1). The draft National Electricity Plan 2016 projects that the peak demand at the end of 2021-22 would be 235 GW.1 As per the 2019 CRISIL report, India’s installed capacity of power generation is 344 GW. Produced electricity could… Continue reading The Electricity Buzzar
India’s struggle to make schools accessible to girls, and to ensure they stay in school, has been a long and uphill journey. Enshrining the right to education as a fundamental right for all children between 6 and 14 years of age through the Right to Education (RTE) Act in 2008, and the National Education Policy… Continue reading Impact of School Closures on Girls due to COVID-19: In Conversation with Dr. Vimala Ramachandran
In the wake of COVID-19, our global public discourse and policy execution measures have frantically adopted “unprecedented” into routine vocabulary. As the virus rapidly pushes globally interdependent socio-economic systems into isolation, the notion of “public” in public health is simultaneously evolving. While our pandemic-centric histories do not deliver frameworks of certainty, they leave us with… Continue reading What the Tuberculosis Foreign Aid Trajectory Tells Us about COVID-19: An Analysis
The crisis of COVID-19 has led to a global surge in surveillance activities. The World Health Organization, in its guideline for “Global Surveillance for human infection with coronavirus disease (COVID-19)” rolled out implementable steps for nations to track and trace coronavirus infections.1 In order to figure out mechanisms for contact tracing and to prevent the infections… Continue reading COVID-19 – A Reckoning: Rethinking Surveillance in Times of Crisis
The novel coronavirus pandemic has cast a long shadow of financial uncertainty for both the Centre and states. The impact of the pandemic on the economy and the lives of the economically and socially disadvantaged requires a sizeable government funding exercise to try and limit the ripple effects of the pandemic. Livelihoods need to be… Continue reading State of Public Finance in India during COVID-19
The Union government proposed India’s first National Urban Policy (NUP) framework in March 2018. The rationale behind the draft NUP was to frame a comprehensive national policy for India’s plans to facilitate sustainable and inclusive urbanisation. As COVID-19 tightens its grip on Indian cities and reveals fault lines in the structures of governance, the details… Continue reading COVID-19, Urbanisation and the Role of the Draft NUP for India’s Way Forward
Introduction “Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down or our heads from a blue sky.” – Albert Camus (The Plague, 1948) The world today is grappling with global COVID-19 public health emergency and its social, economic and… Continue reading Regulations and COVID-19 Response: Concerns in the Indian context
The Socratic Paradox has presented itself to the world once again. If there is one thing we know for certain about COVID-19 at this point in time, it is that we don’t know anything for certain. This uncertainty around the absolute knowledge is necessary to establish upfront since it ideally opens us up to the fact that… Continue reading India and Covid-19: Economic Challenges, Impact and Policy
