Policy Watch: Governance and Development – October 2021

This issue of Policy Watch cuts across several of the above themes and deals with the theme Governance and Development.

The RGICS has been conducting study of award winning Panchayats all over the country to understand what distinguishes their leadership and institutional processes from the others. While the study is ongoing, we also looked at some well-known panchayats. The first article by Dr. R. Elango describes the remarkable work of the Kuthambakkam Panchayat in the Thiruvallur Dt, Tamil Nadu.

Within the Governance and Development theme, the RGICS has endeavoured to cover the education and health sectors. The second article lays out A Road Map for Universal Healthcare. It is the result of a study by Mr. Ajay Shankar, Distinguished Fellow and Chairman, Centre for Policy Studies at JK Lakshmipat University (JKLU) and Chitranjali Tiwari, Policy Researcher at JKLU. Given its importance in the post-COVID planning for the upgradation of the healthcare system, we are republishing it with the permission of the authors.

Another sub-theme within the Governance and Development theme that the RGICS has endeavoured to cover is how our welfare programmes and delivery systems work. Due to the pandemic and the resulting lockdowns, there has been a massive loss in livelihoods. Now that the economy is reviving, a lot of the new jobs, even in the formal sector are not the old-style “permanent” or “regular” jobs, but increasingly employers are preferring to hire workers on casual, contractual basis. The new term for this is gig work. The third article is by Ms. Bharti Gupta Ramola, who was a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. She now serves on the Boards of a number of companies, social enterprises and works with some development NGOs. She examines how the gig-workers could be provided social security benefits such as Provident Fund, Life and Health Insurance and Pensions, using the numerous government schemes for unorganized sector workers. She argues in favour of using technology platforms to ease enrolment, mobility and benefit availment by workers.

The fourth article is a report of a set of 102 Padayatras that were organized by the Ekta Parishad all over India between 21st Sep, the International Day of Peace and 2nd Oct, the International Day of Non-violence, by citizens asserting the need for justice and peace.