| ISSUE BRIEF
Strategic and Managed Retreat as Adaptation: Addressing Climate Vulnerability in the Sundarbans Anamitra Anurag Danda | Nilanjan Ghosh | Jayanta Bandyopadhyay | Sugata Hazra Storm strikes are common in the Indian Sundarbans Delta on the northern Bay of Bengal and will only become more frequent and intense in this era of climate change. Every time a cyclone has hit the Sundarbans, the attempt has been to adapt in situ by creating protective infrastructure, and later return to the same conditions prevailing prior to the disaster. Such reliance on the notion of 'resilience' has become increasingly unsustainable and will only keep the region and its people poor. This brief argues that managed retreat from at-risk locations will simultaneously deliver development and conservation goals besides building climate risk resilience. It makes policy prescriptions for pursuing strategic retreat that is integrated into long-term development goals.
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Getting to the Green Frontier Faster: The Case for a Green Frontier SuperFund Jayant Sinha | Tanushree Chandra This paper outlines the importance of green enterprises in ushering in an era of resilient and sustainable growth. It examines the industries that will propel the Indian economy towards global competitiveness while drawing the country closer to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a development approach that can be called 'Getting to the Green Frontier'. The paper also highlights how market creation underlies the process of green transformation by demonstrating that market ecosystems are critical for jumpstarting green industries. Finally, it defines the contours of an investment fund (the Green Frontier SuperFund) that can spur the growth of competitive green industries by providing necessary equity and debt financing.
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BIMSTEC and Disaster Management: Future Prospects for Regional Cooperation Sohini Bose The Bay of Bengal is highly prone to extreme weather events, many of which result in massive disasters. The sub-regional grouping, BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral and Technical Cooperation), took a long time to begin nurturing their collective capabilities in disaster mitigation. It was only after the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, which caused overwhelming devastation in the region, that BIMSTEC identified the area of 'Environment and Disaster Management' among its priorities for cooperation. Since then, however, the Bay littorals have achieved little progress in cooperating towards disaster management. This brief analyses the reasons for such inertia, and explores future prospects..
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Investing in Adolescent Health: Harnessing India's Demographic Dividend Debarati Mukherjee | Shreya Behal | Oommen C. Kurian Adolescents comprise a significant proportion of India's population. Despite improvements in various outcomes, this demographic continues to face serious challenges to their health and well-being, including high levels of teenage pregnancies, low rates of antenatal care checkups for adolescent pregnancies, and lack of safe menstrual practices among adolescent girls. Investing in adolescent health should therefore be a policy priority. This report outlines adolescent health issues and makes an assessment of initiatives across the country to address them. It also explores the potential for scaling up some of the best practices among these measures, and highlights the need for policy to be supported by reliable data. Read more | | | | ISSUE BRIEF
COVID-19 Vaccine: Development, Access and Distribution in the Indian Context Sahil Deo | Shardul Manurkar | Sanjana Krishnan | Christian Franz The race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine is gaining ground in many parts of the world. This brief examines the challenges that India must hurdle to successfully manufacture and distribute a vaccine. It argues for a fair and equitable distribution of vaccines with an aim to save the maximum number of lives. It suggests a multi-parameter model based on age, comorbidity, income and profession to justify one's claim for a vaccine. The imperative is to develop a rules-based regime for the distribution of vaccines and the allocation of scarce healthcare resources in this time of public health crisis. Read more | | | | ISSUE BRIEF
Employing AI to Improve Healthcare Delivery Ashish Airon | Ayesha Jhunjhunwala Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already made inroads into healthcare. The increasing availability of healthcare data has allowed for the deployment of powerful AI techniques to assist drug development as well as clinical practice. These run the gamut from machine learning (ML) techniques that analyse structured data, to natural language processing (NLP) that can extract meaningful information from unstructured data, such as doctors' notes. This brief examines the promises, risks and challenges of adopting AI in healthcare, drawing on evidence from across the globe. It explores how AI can reshape the Indian healthcare ecosystem and what that means for existing stakeholders including hospitals and doctors, as well as technology and insurance companies. Read more | | | | ISSUE BRIEF
The Rising Fourth Wave: Feminist Activism on Digital Platforms in India Shruti Jain Feminist movements have historically lacked inclusivity, often growing within a limited Western upper-class psyche, based on their own challenges and needs. The digital revolution has paved the way for a new iteration of feminism. The digital space can bolster feminist activist movements by encouraging inclusion and improving accessibility in organising collective action. It also helps weave local stories with global narratives to highlight common structural inequalities. At the same time, however, the digital space can also become a breeding ground for sexism and misogyny. This brief attempts to analyse how digitisation can affect women's movements, especially in emerging economies like India. It does so by viewing contemporary cyberfeminism through postcolonial and postmodern feminist theories. The brief also highlights the strengths and deficits of digital activism. Read more | | |  | | ISSUE BRIEF
Unified Payment Interface: Towards Greater Cyber Sovereignty Sunil Abraham On 1 July 2020, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) of India celebrated #5YearsOfDigitalIndia. Given the recent call by the prime minister for Atmanirbhar Bharat ('self-reliant India') the IT minister found the occasion apt for trumpeting a crowning jewel of Digital India — the Unified Payment Interface that was launched almost four years ago. This indigenous innovation has prepared India for both the restrictions on movement required by the pandemic and also more prohibitions against foreign technologies like the ban against China-made apps. This brief outlines the lessons from India's UPI experience that can be emulated by other countries aiming to provide affordable, ubiquitous and quality digital payment services to their public. While many other countries are still waiting for the magic of the market, the interventionist approach and private-public partnerships fostered by the Indian government has paid off. Course corrections are required, however, to protect the UPI. Read more | | | | MONOGRAPH
The Day after Tomorrow: Africa's Battle with Covid-19 and the Road Ahead Sangeet Jain | Meghna Chadha | Kwame Owino | John Mutua This report provides an account of Africa's battle against COVID-19, maps a profile of the continent's vulnerabilities that render it susceptible to systemic collapse, and analyses ways in which it can build resilience in the face of future crises. The report takes a systemic perspective, and provides analyses oriented around four axes — health, economic, socio-political and technological systems; and three key elements — risk, response and resilience. Read more | | |  | | OCCASIONAL PAPER
Gender-Responsive Budgeting in India, Bangladesh and Rwanda: A Comparison Aditi Ratho Gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) is a targeted fiscal instrument that several developing countries have cemented into their growth plans. GRB is used to ensure that policy prescriptions to alleviate gender inequality translate into outputs by linking them to budgetary allocations. Although the concept was introduced in India, Bangladesh and Rwanda at around the same time (the early 2000s), the three countries have followed different routes and are at varying stages of creating fiscal plans to advance the role of women in the public, economic and social sphere. This paper will analyse the differences in approaching a gender-budgeting framework, the ministry-level implementation and the extent of its inclusion in the planning process. It will also compare India, Bangladesh and Rwanda through the Gender Gap Index, Gender Inequality Index and Human Development Index to gauge which areas the GRB should focus on. Finally, it will compare observations from all three countries that can be incorporated to improve the efficacy of GRB. Read more | | | | COMMENTARY
Assam floods Reinforce the Need for Climate-resilient Infrastructure Aparna Roy As extreme events are becoming the 'new normal' in an increasingly climate-constrained world, India's critical infrastructure must be built to withstand, respond to, and recover rapidly from the disruptions they cause. Read more | | | | COMMENTARY
India's Clean Energy Sweep Stakes Sanjeev S. Ahluwalia Solar energy prices have crashed and electricity storage prices are decreasing. This technological disruption dilutes the niche role, envisaged earlier for gas, in reducing carbon emissions. Read more | | | | EXPERT SPEAK
Ramping-up Solar Energy Generation and Equipment Manufacturing Can Make India's Economy Sustainable and 'Atmanirbhar' Shreyans Jain The central government had cited job creation as a rationale for the Solar Mission. It is estimated that by 2022, the solar energy industry would generate as many as 1.6 million jobs with over 600,000 jobs focused on the construction vertical alone. Read more | | | | EXPERT SPEAK
Overcoming the Triple Burden of Malnutrition in China Shoba Suri For China many opportunities exist to overcome the problem of the triple burden of malnutrition. There is a need for a comprehensive framework along with a strong monitoring system to closely keep track of childhood stunting and obesity. This calls for scaling up the nutrition programmes and implementing the commitments to bring change. Read more | | | | EXPERT SPEAK
The Curious Case of 'Excess Deaths' in Delhi Oommen C. Kurian Unless a cautious and systematic plan of reverse quarantine of the high-risk population, mixed with physical distancing, masks, hand-washing, and selective mobility control is put in place; taking the current decline in case and mortality load for granted would be disastrous. Read more | | | | EXPERT SPEAK
Declaring the Right to Health a Fundamental Right Nishant Sirohi It is time India declared the right to health a fundamental right. Strong health laws will help build societal resilience to future pandemics and public health emergencies. Emergency responses can't come at the cost of neglect of human rights obligations. Read more | | | | EXPERT SPEAK
Innovating for Prosperity Rajeev Mantri Aadhaar and the India Stack infrastructure have demonstrated what digitalisation can deliver for governance, welfare delivery and payments. They stand out as trailblazing exemplars of govtech innovation globally. Read more | | | | EXPERT SPEAK
Innovation in the Times of COVID-19: Do Companies Really Need to Build Something "New"? Silvana Lopez From health to entertainment, the impact that technologies will have in our daily lives is yet to be assimilated. It almost seems that companies are more focused on digitalising what before COVID-19 was more brick-and-mortar like. Read more | | | | EXPERT SPEAK
Post Covid-19 World: How AI Can Ensure a More Inclusive Digital Economy Namrata Yadav Developing economies with large informal sectors can take advantage of the 'impact sourcing' model to create a digital economy where the low skilled are essential. Read more | | | | EXPERT SPEAK
COVID-19: Need for an Overarching Gender Agenda in the SDGs Soumya Bhowmick Despite having a dedicated goal towards achieving Gender Equality — SDG 5 — disadvantageous positions for women and girls get flagged in each realm of the sustainability objectives. Read more | | | | VIDEO
Rethinking Cities in a Post-COVID-19 World This conversation explored the fissures that COVID-19 has exposed in city-planning today, and how urban planning systems can equip themselves better for future pandemic management. The webinar touched upon the relationship between the pandemic and factors like urban health infrastructure, climate resilience, informal settlements, work and social infrastructure. Cities around the world have faced the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic due to widespread international connectivity, the movement of people and goods, and commercial and recreational activities in constricted spaces. The longer the pandemic rages on, the more important becomes the question of how we live and grow in urban conglomerations. What are the fissures that COVID-19 has exposed in city-planning today? How can urban planning systems equip themselves better for future pandemic management? Watch here | | | | VIDEO
African Development: Looking Back, Taking Stock, and Moving Ahead This inaugural conversation is between Amb. Navdeep Suri, Distinguished Fellow and Director of the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy (CNED) at ORF, and Dr K.Y. Amoako, Founder and President of the African Center for Economic Transformation. CNED Development Dialogues will engage with African, South and South-East Asian scholars, business leaders, policy makers, and social entrepreneurs for a deeper understanding of the most important development challenges of the developing world, discover solutions and build transnational partnerships. Watch here | | | | VIDEO
The Future of India-Africa Cooperation | CNED Development Dialogues This conversation between Amb. Navdeep Suri, Director of the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy (CNED) at ORF, and Mr Kwame Owino, the Chief Executive Officer at Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Kenya, explores the development challenges in Africa and India's development cooperation programs. Kenya's ideas on how India can make the development assistance more effective in Africa are also discussed.Mr. Owino has been instrumental in leading IEA Kenya's strategic intervention into the go-to think tank for Sub-Saharan Africa and the region. Watch here | | | | | |
