A New Policy Imagination for the Rural Economy

11.30 AM - 12.45 PM, 30th September, 2022 | Silver Oak Hall, India Habitat Centre

The rural economy, especially agriculture, proved to be the real shock absorber during the COVID-19 pandemic. Agricultural activity carried on unimpeded through and beyond the lockdown, providing both food and sustenance to the millions who suffered severe livelihood disruptions. However, the last two years or more have also revealed the frailties of rural India, including susceptibility to climate change (seen in the damage to last year's crops both from excess rains and spike in temperatures) and inability to achieve structural transformation through creation of meaningful non-farm employment. There is also evidence of stress in incomes, resulting from the pandemic and the war, affecting consumption and reflected in stagnant FMCG sales growth. This panel discussion will seek to throw light on these challenges and also craft a new policy imagination for rural India.

Panel members:

• Harish Damodaran, National Rural Affairs & Agriculture Editor, The Indian Express and Senior Visiting Fellow, CPR

• Sudhir Sitapati, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Godrej Consumer Products Ltd

• Amit Basole, Head, Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University

• Moderated by: Mekhala Krishnamurthy, Senior Fellow, State Capacity Initiative, CPR

Digital Ecosystems and Female Labour Force Participation

11.30 AM - 12.45 PM, 30th September, 2022 | Gulmohar, India Habitat Centre

From how we buy groceries and hail a cab, to how we access various household services, technology is transforming the way we live and work. Platforms that digitally mediate the provision of goods and services are creating new opportunities and challenges in the world of work.

Do the benefits outweigh the costs? Is this form of digitalisation creating good quality jobs? And can platform jobs change the gendered norms of work that exist offline to increase women’s labour force participation?

This panel will address some of the most pressing questions on the growing platform economy and the emerging ecosystem of digital work.

Panel members:

• Ayesha Zainudeen, Senior Research Manager, LIRNEasia

• Sabina Dewan, President and Executive Director, JustJobs Network and Senior Visiting Fellow, CPR

• Himanshu Wardhan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Thevasa and Founding Managing Director, Etsy India

• Devesh Taneja, Co-Founder, Vyre

• Moderated by: Mukta Naik, Fellow, Initiative on Cities, Economy and Society, CPR"

Casting a Shadow: India and the Neighbourhood

1.15 PM - 2.30 PM, 30th September, 2022 | Silver Oak Hall, India Habitat Centre

Despite its 'Neighbourhood First' policy, recent events in India's neighbourhood are part of an ongoing trend where New Delhi’s influence in the region is being challenged by an increasingly assertive Beijing. Friendly neighbours have been sucked into increasingly fractious domestic Indian politics and concerns about economic growth and social indicators have diminished its power of example and emulation. This session will examine how India can regain its pre-eminent position in the region and exercise influence over its immediate neighbourhood, by reassessing the realities and crafting a new role for itself.

Panel members:

• Shivshankar Menon, Former National Security Advisor and Foreign Secretary, India

• Sushant Singh, Senior Fellow, CPR

One Thousand Land Laws: Land, Democracy and the Rule of Law

2.00 PM - 3.15 PM, 30th September, 2022 | Gulmohar, India Habitat Centre

At this panel, the Land Rights Initiative at CPR will launch the mobile version of the Mapping Indian Land Laws (MILL) website, India's first-ever comprehensive exploratory online archive of officially authenticated copies of all central and state laws from a geographically representative sample of eight states, namely Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Punjab, and Telangana. Embedded in the website is a subject-wise classification of all the laws according to thirty-one parameters and English language summaries of the laws for easy comprehension by a lay audience.

This will be followed by a discussion with a distinguished group of panelists on the importance of the MILL website in mitigating land conflict, creating an informed citizenry, and deepening democracy.

Panel members:

• Ravi Rebbapragada, Executive Director, Samata, and Chairperson Mines, Minerals and People

• Shipra Deo, Director, Women's Land Rights, Landesa

• Chakshu Roy, Head of Outreach, PRS Legislative Research

• Kumar Sambhav, Founder, Land Conflict Watch and Co-Founder, The Reporters' Collective

• Moderated by: Namita Wahi, Senior Fellow and Founding Director, Land Rights Initiative, CPR

The Future of Discoms in a Green Electricity World

2.45 PM - 4.00 PM, 30th September, 2022 | Silver Oak Hall, India Habitat Centre

Electricity distribution companies (discoms) have long been the bedrock of India’s electricity system. But discoms, and the sector as a whole, is changing due to the rise of renewable energy (RE). How will discoms weather this transition and with what impacts for reliability, access and cost of India’s electricity?

One pathway of impact is the need for substantially higher investment in the sector to facilitate a green transition. How will the backdrop of rising outstanding dues, the limited impact of two decades of central bailouts, and efforts to plug financial gaps affect the ability to attract investment to the sector? What are the implications of a new generation of legislative and policy reforms, including proposed amendments to the Electricity Act 2003, and far-reaching policy changes, including to the framework for Renewable Portfolio Obligations? The panel will discuss the pathways to making the sector economically viable in the context of a green transition.

Panel members:

• Raj Pratap Singh, Chairman, Uttar Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission

• Ann Josey, Fellow, Prayas (Energy Group)

• Anish De, Global Sector Head, Energy & Natural Resources, KPMG

• Moderated by: Ashwini Swain, Fellow, Initiative on Climate, Energy and Environment, CPR

How Indians View India and the World: A discussion based on findings from the CPR-C-Voter Survey

3.30 PM - 4.45 PM, 30th September, 2022 | Gulmohar, India Habitat Centre

This session is based on findings of a survey conducted in collaboration by CPR and C-Voter in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. As part of this panel, we will release the India report which draws on a survey of 6000 citizens on major achievements and failures since Independence. The survey also captures their preferences on questions related to partition, trust in institutions and the state of India's democracy, political participation, economic aspirations, gender-related norms, social harmony, amongst others.

Panel members:

• Shrayana Bhattacharya, Senior Social Protection Economist, World Bank in India

• Yashwant Deshmukh, Founder, C-Voter

• Pallavi Raghavan, Assistant Professor of International Relations, Ashoka University

• Gerry Shih, India Bureau Chief, Washington Post

• Moderated by: Rahul Verma, Fellow, The Politics Initiative, CPR

Closed-Door Roundtable Discussion on Mapping Governance

4.00 PM - 5.30 PM, 30th September, 2022 | Mahogany, India Habitat Centre

India’s federal structure is a complex maze of people and processes. Decentralised functioning results in public services that are produced by a combination of functionaries. Coupled with the role of elected representatives, bureaucrats, and quasi-government bodies, the web of governance increases in complexity. In an attempt to understand this extensive, complex system better, the Accountability Initiative at CPR has been ‘mapping’ governance. This multi-sector mapping exercise has enabled us to unpack complexities in key areas such as decentralisation, convergence and public fund flow. This roundtable will see the launch of the education track of Mapping Governance. It will bring together experts who have extensively worked on education in India to discuss the challenges they face in visualising this complicated governance. It will introduce the audience to Mapping Governance, a dynamic and visual learning platform that is a living culmination of the initiative’s research informed by the field for sectors such as education and nutrition.

This is a closed-door round table discussion. Entry is by invite only.

Know Your Health Regulators

4.15 PM - 5.30 PM, 30th September, 2022 | Silver Oak Hall, India Habitat Centre

Regulation of health is one of the most difficult areas of public policy. This agenda in India is delivered by a vast array of public agencies at the Union and State levels. Each of these agencies is unique, in terms of its regulatory mandate and the nature of challenges that it is set up to address. We will discuss the instrumental functions that these agencies perform in implementing the health regulation agenda, setting up laws, regulations, norms and standards for professionals and healthcare organisations, and monitoring compliance. Improved outcomes in the overall health of the population depends on the performance of two distinct, but related sub-areas -- public health and healthcare. In this session, we will explore the nature of regulatory activity in the health sector, covering both sub-areas.

Panel members:

• Rajesh Bhushan, Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India

• Balram Bhargava, Professor, All India Institute of Medical Sciences and Former Director-General, Indian Council of Medical Research and Secretary, Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India

• VG Somani, Drugs Controller General of India, Central Drugs Standard Control Organization, Government of India

• Aruna Vanikar, President, Under-Graduate Medical Education Board, National Medical Commission

• Moderated by: KP Krishnan, Honorary Research Professor, CPR and Former Civil Servant

Cities of Delhi: an Overview of CPR's Multidisciplinary Enquiry into Delhi

5.00 PM - 6.00 PM, 30th September, 2022 | Gulmohar, India Habitat Centre

Scholars at CPR have long studied the capital city of Delhi from a variety of lenses. With more than 30 million people, the city witnesses sharp differentiations along the lines of class, caste, gender, employment status and education. Different settlements defined by diverse degrees of formality, legality and tenure are a window into the hierarchies that exist within the city. This panel seeks to bring out CPR's multidisciplinary research on Delhi and understand the many complexities and paradoxes that exist in the capital city.

Panel members:

• Partha Mukhopadhyay, Senior Fellow, Initiative on Cities, Economy and Society, CPR

• Neelanjan Sircar, Senior Fellow, CPR

• Manju Menon, Senior Fellow, India Infrastructures and Ecologies Program, CPR

• Yamini Aiyar, President and Chief Executive, CPR

• Mukta Naik, Fellow, Initiative on Cities, Economy and Society, CPR

• Moderated by: Mekhala Krishnamurthy, Senior Fellow, State Capacity Initiative, CPR

War and Inflation: The World Economy in the Grip of Polycrisis

6.30 PM - 8.00 PM, 30th September, 2022 | Silver Oak Hall, India Habitat Centre

This session will begin with a keynote address by Adam Tooze, who holds the Shelby Cullom Davis chair of History at Columbia University and serves as Director of the European Institute. In 2019, Foreign Policy Magazine named him one of the top Global Thinkers of the decade. The keynote address will be followed by a conversation with Suman Bery and Yamini Aiyar.

Keynote by: Adam Tooze, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History and Director, European Institute, Columbia University

Followed by a conversation with:

• Suman Bery, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, Government of India

• Moderated by: Yamini Aiyar, President and Chief Executive, CPR