पॉलिसी बज़्ज़

विभिन्न कल्याणकारी योजनाओं में क्या घटित हो रहा है, यह पॉलिसी बज़्ज़ आपको हर 15 दिन के अंदर ख़ास ख़बरों के साथ अपडेट करता है |

 

नीतियों से संबंधित समाचार :

  • केंद्र सरकार ने चुनाव कानून (संशोधन) विधेयक, 2021 पारित किया  है, जोकि मतदाता सूची को आधार डेटाबेस से जोड़ने का प्रयास करेगा। 
  • केंद्रीय मंत्रिमंडल ने जया जेटली समिति की सिफारिशों के आधार पर लड़कियों की शादी की न्यूनतम उम्र 18 से बढ़ाकर 21 कर दी है।
  • केंद्र सरकार ने सहायक प्रजनन तकनीक (विनियमन) विधेयक, 2021 और सरोगेसी (विनियमन) विधेयक, 2021 पारित किये हैं। बिलों का उद्देश्य सरोगेट माताओं के शोषण और लिंग चयन के संबंध में अनैतिक प्रथाओं को रोकना है।
  • केंद्रीय मंत्रिमंडल ने प्रधानमंत्री आवास योजना (ग्रामीण) को तीन और वर्षों  यानी मार्च 2024 तक जारी रखने की मंजूरी दी  है।

 

कोविड –19  को लेकर राज्यों की प्रतिक्रिया:

  • केंद्र ने घोषणा के अनुसार 15 से 18 वर्ष की आयु के किशोर 3 जनवरी 2022 से कोविड-19 टीकाकरण के लिए पात्र होंगे। डॉक्टरों के परामर्श पर 10 जनवरी 2022 से एहतियात के तौर पर तीसरी खुराक के लिए फ्रंटलाइन और स्वास्थ्य कार्यकर्ता और सह-रुग्णता वाले 60 वर्ष से अधिक आयु के वरिष्ठ नागरिक पात्र होंगे
  • सात राज्य; असम, गुजरात, हरियाणा, कर्नाटक, मध्य प्रदेश, महाराष्ट्र, उत्तर प्रदेश, और राष्ट्रीय राजधानी दिल्ली ने रात्रि कर्फ्यू लागू किया है।
  • केंद्रीय स्वास्थ्य मंत्रालय कार्यालय द्वारा जारी एक ज्ञापन के अनुसार, 10 राज्यों में बहु-विषयक केंद्रीय टीमों को तैनात किया गया है जो की ओमीक्रॉन और कोविड-19 मामलों की बढ़ती संख्या एवं धीमी टीकाकरण की गति रिपोर्ट कर रहे हैं।

 

अन्य समाचार :

  • सर्वोच्च न्यायालय ने व्यवसाय की परवाह किए बिना मौलिक अधिकारों की गारंटी को दोहराते हुए सेक्स वर्कर्स को मतदाता पहचान पत्र, आधार और राशन कार्ड जारी करने की प्रक्रिया तुरंत शुरू करने के निर्देश दिए है।
  • पंजाब सरकार, ‘उड़ान योजनाके तहत, राज्य के सभी 27,314 आंगनवाड़ी केंद्रों पर हर महीने मुफ्त सैनिटरी पैड उपलब्ध करवायेगी।
  • संसद की संयुक्त समिति ने डेटा सुरक्षा बिल पर अपनी रिपोर्ट पेश की है

 

यह लेख पॉलिसी बज़्ज़ के अंग्रेजी संस्करण पर आधारित है जो 29 दिसंबर 2021 को प्रकाशित हुआ था।

Policy Buzz

Keep up-to-date with all that is happening in welfare policy with this curated selection of news, published every fortnight.

Policy News

 

Covid-19 State Measures 

  • The Centre announced that teenagers between the ages of 15 and 18 would be eligible for COVID-19 vaccination from 3 January 2022. Frontline and health workers and senior citizens above the age of 60 with co-morbidities on the advice of doctors will be eligible for a precaution or third dose from 10 January 2022.
  • Seven states i.e. Assam, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and the national capital, Delhi have implemented night curfews.
  • According to a memorandum issued by the Union Health Ministry office, multidisciplinary central teams have been deployed in 10 states which are are reporting either an increase in number of Omicron and COVID-19 cases or a slow vaccination pace.

 

Other News

  • The Supreme Court, reiterating the guarantee of fundamental rights irrespective of vocation, gave directions to immediately start the process of issuing voter ID cards, Aadhaar and ration cards to sex workers.
  • The Punjab government, under the ‘Udaan Scheme’, will be providing free sanitary pads every month at all 27,314 Anganwadi centres across the state.
  • The Joint Committee of Parliament tabled its report on the Data Protection Bill. 

The False Dawn of IT-enabled Governance Services

Every now and then, across India’s currently dormant urban civil society, there is a buzz that something good is about to happen soon. I was part of one such awakening, where the government – one need not mention which one; a state or the Union government – sought the help of civil society groups in creating an information portal on the internet.

The idea of an information portal is one that rises like a phoenix from the ashes of previous efforts, with unfailing regularity. It is typically born from the efforts of one or two good bureaucrats in the system – sometimes the same bureaucrat over and over again – to fulfill the promise that the government will henceforth be transparent.

These efforts also follow a predictable pattern. Civil society is asked what they need, meetings are held, portals are inaugurated with great fanfare. 

And then they fail. 

The information portal, I mean.

Why does this happen? There are several reasons.

First, while some individuals in the government sincerely want change and want real transparency, the government, by and large, doesn’t want it. Furthermore, there is a delightful hypocrisy – delightful because it is based on transparent double standards – in how different wings of the government interpret the idea of transparency. Primarily, it is for others to follow, but not for themselves.

So, for instance, the finance secretary holds meetings and delivers homilies to other departments to make available all information, while it will hold all its information — where the money comes from, where it goes, when, to whom and why, close to its chest. 

Second, those who drive information transparency in the government have never used information all their lives. So they have no clue what information is important and how it needs to be provided.

Third, civil society itself is often clueless as to what it needs to do with information. The principle that information ought to be transparently provided is one they hold dear to their hearts. But they often don’t know how to use information to hold the government to account

Fourth, government knows that it can never be held accountable. There are many ways available to the government now to divert attention from its failures. There are short-lived sensational news, jingoism, social media wars, cricket matches that can be used profitably to pull the wool over peoples’ eyes. 

There is also the problem that once the event of opening a government information portal is over, or when a certain process is IT-enabled, the government declares a premature victory and moves on. This happens time and time again in departments known to be corrupt.

Conversations with a friend of mine are informative. He is a cynic with whom I constantly have wrangles because I argue that the government can improve and he responds with cheerful stories of how he was forced to pay bribes for this and that. We spoke recently about his experiences in dealing with the registration department to obtain a certain certification.

I had told him with some happiness and relief that the registration department, considered to be chronically and incurably corrupt, had introduced some far-reaching reforms that had the potential to considerably reduce corruption. I mentioned to him that an honest officer had introduced online payment of the registration fee for documents. Online formats had been introduced for the usual transactions such as sale deeds, which could be downloaded and used by customers of the service. Once equipped with the document required and having paid the registration charges online, getting one’s transactions registered would be a piece of cake, I assured him.

To my surprise, he shed his cynicism and tried to undertake his transactions that way. He came across the typical, usually successful hindrance that reduces every online effort to naught. 

The password and captcha challenge.

It turned out that the website where one could begin the process of registering one’s transactions required each customer to create a password. The system first assigns the customer a password, which has to be used to enter the site. Then, a new password has to be created by the customer. 

In the password assigned by the system to my friend, there were both zeros and ‘O’s. That led to my friend trying every possible permutation and combination of entering the assigned password before he was able to pass through the pearly gates of the site into electronic paradise.

Then, while creating his own password, he was tersely informed that his password needed to meet a complex range of conditionalities. It needed a capital letter, a numerical, a symbol, and so on. Needless to say that when his password, resembling a corner of an obscure mathematical theorem, was entered, the system crashed. 

After the twenty-third try, when my friend’s password was accepted, he needed to tackle the captcha challenge. The captcha was obscured by a psychedelic grid of shimmering lines and had the ‘zero’ and ‘O’ problem to solve, for good measure. It took him an hour of struggling to cross the captcha hurdle. 

After that, happily, the site gave in without a fight and my friend got what he wanted.

That made me feel good, but I reflected. How many people actually use the website to obtain their services? How many of them prefer to listen to their agent; or the builder’s agent, whilst registering their properties and paying ‘transaction charges’, which are nothing but a euphemism for corruption? 

Things will not change merely by civil society being co-opted by the government to hastily sign off approval on shoddily put together portals. As long as citizens remain naïve and submissive, information portals will remain a sham. Websites can change as much as they want, they have little effect if human behavior does not change.

T.R. Raghunandan is an Advisor at Accountability Initiative.

Also Read: The 2 Big and Emerging Ideas on Accountability

पॉलिसी बझ

कल्याणकारी धोरणात जे घडत आहे त्या प्रत्येक पंधरवड्यात प्रकाशित झालेल्या बातम्यांच्या निवडीसह अद्ययावत रहा.

 

धोरणा संबंधित बातम्या:

  • केंद्रीय मंत्रिमंडळाने सप्टेंबर 2020 मध्ये संसदेने पारित केलेले तीन कृषी कायदे रद्द करण्यासाठी शेत कायदे निरसन कायदा, 2021 मंजूर केला आहे.
  • राष्ट्रीय अभ्यासक्रम आराखडा तयार करण्यासाठी शिक्षण, महिला, मुले, युवक आणि क्रीडा या विषयावरील संसदीय स्थायी समितीने ‘शालेय पाठ्यपुस्तकांची सामग्री आणि डिझाइन सुधारणे’ या विषयावर आपला अहवाल सादर केला आहे. राष्ट्रीय अभ्यासक्रम आराखडा देशातील अध्यापन आणि शिकण्याच्या पद्धती तसेच अभ्यासक्रम आणि पाठ्यपुस्तकांसाठी मार्गदर्शक तत्त्वे म्हणून काम करते.
  • केंद्रीय मंत्रिमंडळाने प्रधानमंत्री ग्राम सडक योजना (PMGSY) अंतर्गत आदिवासी भागात 33,822 कोटी रुपये खर्चून 32,152 किलोमीटरचे रस्ते बांधण्यास मंजुरी दिली आहे.

इतर:

  • नीती आयोगाने राष्ट्रीय बहुआयामी गरीबी निर्देशांक आधारभूत अहवाल प्रकाशित केला आहे. बिहार या निर्देशांकात सर्वात गरीब राज्य म्हणून उदयास आले, त्यानंतर झारखंड, उत्तर प्रदेश, मध्य प्रदेश आणि मेघालय यांचा क्रमांक लागतो.
  • राष्ट्रीय कुटुंब आरोग्य सर्वेक्षण (NHFS-5) आपल्या नवीनतम चरणाचे प्रमुख निष्कर्ष प्रसिद्ध केले आहेत.
  • कोविड-19-संबंधित कर्तव्यांमुळे मरण पावलेल्या 1,509 आरोग्य कर्मचाऱ्यांच्या कुटुंबांना प्रधानमंत्री गरीब कल्याण पॅकेज (PMGKP) अंतर्गत प्रत्येकी ₹50 लाखांचा विमा देण्यात आला आहे: कोविड-19 सी लढणाऱ्या आरोग्य सेवा कर्मचार्‍यांसाठी विमा योजना.

 

हा लेख पॉलिसी बझच्या इंग्रजी आवृत्तीवर आधारित आहे जो 5 दिसंबर 2021 रोजी प्रकाशित झाला.

पॉलिसी बज़्ज़

विभिन्न कल्याणकारी योजनाओं में क्या घटित हो रहा है, यह पॉलिसी बज़्ज़ आपको हर 15 दिन के अंदर ख़ास ख़बरों के साथ अपडेट करता है | 

 

नीतियों से सबंधित खबरें

  • केंद्रीय मंत्रिमंडल ने सितंबर 2020 में संसद द्वारा पारित तीन कृषि कानूनों को रद्द करने के लिए कृषि कानून निरसन अधिनियम, 2021 पारित किया है।
  • शिक्षा, महिला, बाल, युवा कार्यक्रम और खेल संबंधी संसदीय स्थायी समिति ने राष्ट्रीय पाठ्यचर्या रूपरेखा तैयार करने के लिए ‘स्कूल की पाठ्य पुस्तकों की सामग्री और डिजाइन में सुधार’ पर अपनी रिपोर्ट प्रकाशित करी है। राष्ट्रीय पाठ्यचर्या रूपरेखा देश में शिक्षण और पढाई के साथ-साथ पाठ्यक्रम और पाठ्यपुस्तकों के लिए एक दिशानिर्देश के रूप में कार्य करती है। 
  • केंद्रीय मंत्रिमंडल ने प्रधानमंत्री ग्राम सड़क योजना (पीएमजीएसवाई) के तहत जनजातीय क्षेत्रों में 33,822 करोड़ रुपये की लागत से 32,152 किलोमीटर सड़कों के निर्माण को मंजूरी दी है।

 

अन्य

  • नीति आयोग ने राष्ट्रीय बहुआयामी गरीबी सूचकांक पर रिपोर्ट प्रकाशित की है। सूचकांक में बिहार सबसे गरीब राज्य के रूप में उभरा । उसके बाद देश में सबसे गरीब राज्य  झारखंड, उत्तर प्रदेश, मध्य प्रदेश और मेघालय हैं।
  • राष्ट्रीय परिवार स्वास्थ्य सर्वेक्षण (एनएफएचएस-5) ने अपने नवीनतम चरण के प्रमुख निष्कर्ष प्रकाशित किए हैं।
  • प्रधानमंत्री गरीब कल्याण पैकेज (पीएमजीकेपी): कोविड-19 से लड़ने वाले स्वास्थ्य कर्मियों के लिए बीमा योजना के तहत कोविड-19 से संबंधित कर्तव्यों के कारण निधन होने वाले 1,509 स्वास्थ्य कर्मियों के परिवारों को ₹50 लाख के बीमा का भुगतान किया गया है।

 

यह लेख पॉलिसी बज़्ज़ के अंग्रेजी संस्करण पर आधारित है जो 5 दिसंबर 2021 को प्रकाशित हुआ था।

Policy Buzz

Keep up-to-date with all that is happening in welfare policy with this curated selection of news, published every fortnight.

Policy News

  • The Union Cabinet has passed the Farm Laws Repeal Law, 2021 to repeal the three farm laws passed by the Parliament in September 2020. 
  • The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports has submitted its report on ‘Reforms in Content and Design of School Textbooks’ to frame the National Curriculum Framework. The National Curriculum Framework serves as a guideline for teaching and learning practices as well as the syllabi and textbooks in the country. 
  • The Union Cabinet has approved the construction of 32,152 kms of roads in tribal areas under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), at a cost of ₹33,822 crores.

Other News

  • The Niti Aayog has published the National Multidimensional Poverty Index baseline report. Bihar emerged as the poorest state in the index, followed by Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Meghalaya.
  • The National Family Health Survey (NHFS-5) has released the key findings from its latest phase.
  • Families of 1,509 health workers who died due to COVID-19-related duties have been paid insurance of ₹50 lakh each under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package (PMGKP): Insurance Scheme for Health Care Workers Fighting COVID-19

 

Policy Buzz

Keep up-to-date with all that is happening in welfare policy with this curated selection of news, published every fortnight.

Policy News

Other News

पॉलिसी बज़्ज़

विभिन्न कल्याणकारी योजनाओं में क्या घटित हो रहा है, इसको लेकर आपको हर 15 दिन के अंदर यह पॉलिसी बज़्ज़ अपडेट करता है।

नीतियों से सबंधित खबरें

  • प्रधानमंत्री गरीब कल्याण पैकेज: कोविड-19 से लड़ने वाले स्वास्थ्य कर्मियों के लिए बीमा  योजना को 180 दिनों के लिए और बढ़ा दिया गया है | 2020 में लॉन्च किये गए इस पैकेज में तकरीबन 22 लाख से अधिक सामुदायिक स्वास्थ्य और निजी स्वास्थ्य कार्यकर्ता – जो कोविड-19 रोगियों की देखभाल करने में शामिल हैं – उन्हें 50 लाख रुपये का व्यापक व्यक्तिगत दुर्घटना कवरेज प्रदान करता है |
  • केंद्र सरकार द्वारा राज्यों को वस्तु एवं सेवा कर के अंतर्गत 17,000 करोड़ रुपये मुआवजा जारी किया गया है |
  • प्रधानमंत्री आयुषमान भारत स्वास्थ्य अवसंरचना मिशन  की शुरुआत की गयी है | आने वाले 5 वर्षों में भारत के स्वास्थ्य सेवा नेटवर्क को ग्रामीण स्तर से लेकर राष्ट्रीय स्तर तक मज़बूत करने के उद्देश्य से यह शुरू किया गया है | मिशन का उद्देश्य डायग्नोस्टिक सुविधाओं को स्थापित करना और महामारी अनुसंधान को बढ़ावा देने के साथ अन्य मुद्दों पर कार्य करना है |
  • भारत और विश्व बैंक ने मेघालय में स्वास्थ्य ढ़ांचे को मजबूत करने के लिए एक समझौता किया है | मेघालय स्वास्थ्य प्रणाली सशक्तिकरण परियोजना 40 मिलियन अमरीकी डालर की होगी।

अन्य

  • विश्व स्वास्थ्य संगठन ने कोवैक्सीन को आपातकालीन उपयोग के लिए लाइसेंस प्रदान किया है |

यह लेख पॉलिसी बज़्ज़ के अंग्रेजी संस्करण पर आधारित है जो 7 नवंबर 2021 को प्रकाशित हुआ था।

Parastatals and Understanding India’s Governance Executive

During some of its training programmes, the Accountability Initiative team begins classes by explaining the structure of India’s governments – the executive facet of it – as distinguished from the legislature and the judiciary, with a table and appropriate visuals.

The Executive, we say, comprises the political executive (such as the Cabinet, the Prime Minister, chief ministers and other ministers) and the ‘permanent’ executive or the bureaucracy. We then deconstruct the bureaucracy into various sections, such as the secretariats, the field offices, parastatals, PSUs, think tanks, regulators, quasi-judicial bodies.

Within each category we further sub-divide them into groups. For instance, parastatals in India can be statutory corporations, companies registered under the Companies Act or registered societies. Regulatory bodies can be temporary or permanent, or statutory (like the Electricity Regulatory Authorities) or Constitutional (such as the Election Commission).

However, even as we explain our visuals, one can sense that our students struggle with understanding how the government executive is structured and run. We can give all the examples possible during a two-hour lecture session, but doubts remain. Sometimes, the question asked by our students stump us too. What is the RBI, they ask. Is it a statutory regulator, or a parastatal? We falter in our answers.

Government is complex.

The government is perfectly comfortable with its complexity. They do not feel duty-bound to explain to anybody how they run their systems. Indeed, they like and revel in their complexity. It protects them from being overwhelmed by demands for accountability. The more complex the government structure, the easier it is to blame someone else for what goes wrong. When a city corporation officer says that he cannot do anything about potholed roads because road repairs are being done by the Smart City Private Limited – a Johnny Come Lately in the urban governance space – it is not a lament, it is an exultation. ‘You cannot hold me responsible, so there,’ that is what the officer is saying to you!

Yet, this fuzzy structure, where a number of differently configured bodies straddle varied responsibilities and elbow and jostle for space, can be counterproductive to the government itself. Government officers will never admit it, but they too have a hard time making out who is answerable to whom. The complexity is so chronic, that even the progenitors of the system cannot understand it.

How government complexity comes back to bite those who defend it, happens, sadly, after retirement. Many officers have served in several departments and parastatals. Their life’s journey is captured in a ‘Service Register’, which records vital details such as period of service, salary structure. If this Service Register is lost, which is not an uncommon event, then one’s pension cannot be settled. Thus, the foundation is laid for one’s post-retirement entertainment, which is to ensure that one gets the pension to which one is justified.

However, these stories mean nothing to a classroom full of young ladies and gentlemen who wish to know how the government functions. So we resort to examples, and resign ourselves to answering tricky questions asked of us.

While one may overcome the inconveniences of teaching a drab description of how the government executive is structured, the question that remains unasked is whether the executive needs to have so many layers and structures? While the difference between a policy-determining secretariat and a policy-executing field department is easily understood, it is more difficult to understand the need for so many boards, corporations and authorities to run the executive. It is here that one needs to constantly review the need for such bodies, as governance priorities change.

 

Government officers will never admit it, but they too have a hard time making out who is answerable to whom.

 

Yet, it is easier said than done to shut down government parastatals when they have outlived their agenda. Many parastatals recruit staff for a full 30+ year span, even though they may only have a time frame of a decade or more to fulfil their agenda. To some extent, new age parastatals are peopled by consultants who could be discharged from service, if the parastatal closes down. However, many staff perceive their appointment to be permanent, and they bring pressure to be absorbed and accommodated elsewhere in the government.

Parastatals are thus often continued beyond their useful life.

Those who get absorbed heave a sigh of relief, only to waken up at retirement to realise that their service books are lost and, therefore, their pensions cannot be settled fully, taking into account their entire service in the government.

We cannot teach all that in a classroom. Considering we too barely understand what’s going on.

T.R. Raghunandan is an Advisor at Accountability Initiative.

Also Read More About: The Understanding State Capabilities learning programme

पॉलिसी बझ

कल्याणकारी धोरणात जे घडत आहे त्या प्रत्येक पंधरवड्यात प्रकाशित झालेल्या बातम्यांच्या निवडीसह अद्ययावत रहा.

धोरणा संबंधित बातम्या

  • प्रधानमंत्री गरीब कल्याण पॅकेज: कोविड-19 विरुद्ध लढणाऱ्या आरोग्य कर्मचाऱ्यांसाठी विमा योजना आणखी 180 दिवसांसाठी वाढवण्यात आली आहे. 2020 मध्ये लाँच करण्यात आलेले हे पॅकेज कोविड-19 रूग्णांच्या काळजीमध्ये गुंतलेल्या 22 लाखांहून अधिक सामुदायिक आरोग्य आणि खाजगी आरोग्य कर्मचाऱ्यांना 50 लाखांचे सर्वसमावेशक वैयक्तिक अपघात कव्हरेज प्रदान करण्याचा प्रयत्न करते.
  • केंद्र सरकारने वस्तू आणि सेवा कर अंतर्गत राज्यांना भरपाई म्हणून 17,000 कोटी रुपये जारी केले आहेत.
  • प्रधानमंत्री आयुष्मान भारत आरोग्य पायाभूत सुविधा अभियान येत्या 5 वर्षात भारताचे आरोग्य सेवा नेटवर्क गावपातळीपासून ते राष्ट्रीय स्तरापर्यंत मजबूत करण्याच्या उद्देशाने सुरू करण्यात आले आहे. इतर समस्यांबरोबरच रोगनिदानविषयक सुविधा उभारणे आणि महामारीविषयक संशोधनाला चालना देणे हे या अभियानाचे उद्दिष्ट आहे.
  • भारत आणि जागतिक बँकेने मेघालयातील आरोग्य पायाभूत सुविधा मजबूत करण्यासाठी करार केला आहे. मेघालय आरोग्य प्रणाली सक्षमीकरण प्रकल्प 40 दशलक्ष अमेरिकी डॉलर किमतीचा असेल.

इतर

  • जागतिक आरोग्य संघटनेने कोवॅक्सिनला आपत्कालीन वापराचा परवाना दिला आहे.

हा लेख पॉलिसी बझच्या इंग्रजी आवृत्तीवर आधारित आहे जो 7 नवंबर 2021 रोजी प्रकाशित झाला.