The People’s Republic of China has proven itself to not act in good faith. This hitback was coming ever since June 15

The news that India has banned 59 Chinese-made apps did not really come as a huge surprise to many ever since the unfolding of events on June 15. Highly popular applications such as TikTok, Shareit and WeChat have been banned. Some of these apps count India among their biggest markets. For example, India is the biggest driver of the TikTok app and the ban is expected to hit its owner Bytedance hard as it had plans to invest $1 billion here. So, it would be prudent for the Government to make a watertight data security and privacy case for banning these apps, much of which have been surreptitiously used for data mining and surveillance. As it is China is countering the ban as a violation of WTO and fair trade rules. Which is why India should be thorough in making a case for national security. This wouldn’t be too difficult for some apps such as TikTok. It is unfortunate though that several Indian youth, particularly from the subaltern classes, are shedding crocodile tears. That said, two and a half decades of the rise of the internet has taught us that platforms like these come and go. So, these “creators” will clearly find something new. Already similar Indian apps like ShareChat are registering higher traffic. Of course, the banning of social platforms is a very small step to counter the Chinese aggression. Nevertheless, the step has been met with widespread approval, even by some of those who have been directly impacted.

The fact is that over the past few years, China has proven that it is not a “good faith” actor. It has been in its interest that until now India remained weak, both economically and militarily. The fact that Indian soldiers stood up to colleagues despite having lost 20 of our men gave the Chinese a dose of their own medicine. That our soldiers were able to kill many Chinese personnel is telling. Banning apps is one thing and acting against Chinese consumer products will  possibly be next in the line. But extricating Indian industry from the Chinese supply chain is next to impossible. Industries in our country are heavily dependent on Chinese-made capital goods such as power-generating turbines and industrial machinery as well as China-made intermediates such as active pharmaceutical ingredients. Various sectors would collapse in the absence of Chinese products. We have only ourselves to blame for being in this situation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi should harbour some of the blame. His perceived bonhomie with Chinese President Xi Jinping was just an act for the latter. And Xi took Modi for a ride. At the same time, the entire philosophy of selling cheap products and the lowest bidder concept has led to India actively importing from China instead of building up additional capacity or even consider an alternative. Here, the Kolkata and Nagpur metro rail systems are guilty of getting new rolling stock from Dalian instead of encouraging local production lines. India must make it clear that it will not allow Chinese companies to bid for infrastructure projects. Most Chinese companies are beholden to the Chinese Communist Party and, thus, to Xi. We cannot trust the Chinese or their companies. The Ladakh standoff will continue for some time but we have to make it clear to China that India can stand on its own feet. We must reject the Chinese temptation of cheap products and consumer goods. Enough is enough. What is needed is a firm will of the Government to build our own self-sufficiencies and end this dependence.

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)

If work from home is to become a sustainable strategy, there is a need to understand and plan for the effects of this on the whole urban ecosystem

Historically, high urbanisation has been one of the major drivers of economic growth. As cities grow and offer new opportunities, they become attractive to the rural population. In turn, this inflow of workers helps sustain urban economic growth. However, the COVID-19  has brought cities to a standstill and one of the crisis’ most visible effects — the shift from an office-based system to work from home (WFH) arrangements — is likely to have spillover effects on many sectors of the urban economy. With many firms planning long-term strategies for WFH and reducing office space, remote working is here to stay. For example, Infosys recently announced permanent WFH for 33 per cent of its employees.

Though adapting to this new normal may be initially difficult, white-collar workers stand to benefit from low travel costs and the stress associated with travelling in a congested and polluted environment.

However, the effect of this shift to a WFH culture on informal workers, who largely depend on formal sector demand, has not received much attention. In India, 80 to 90 per cent of the workers are employed in the informal or semi-informal sector. For many who work in the cities, livelihoods are heavily dependent on demand from an office-based working system. So, it is clear that workers who are going to be badly hit include cycle rickshaw pullers, autorickshaw and taxi drivers, and street vendors who sell food and other commodities outside offices and Metro stations. Additionally, with the lower in-person presence of professionals in the workplace, offices will also require fewer personnel for housekeeping and administrative services. Thus, remote working has created long-term uncertainty for the informal workers.

More than 10 million street vendors in India are likely to be impacted. A common sight in most cities used to be vendors selling a wide cornucopia of products outside Metro stations and large office spaces. A significant share of this workforce also relied on street-food vendors for their meals. However, the fear of COVID-19 exposure and normalisation of WFH has led many people to switch to the more contactless online ordering and the livelihoods of street vendors are now in question. Many have already chosen to go back to their villages or are at the mercy of donations and Government aid to make ends meet.

In order to provide relief to these vendors, the Government recently announced its scheme for the provision of loans. However, many vendors have not been able to avail of this benefit due to the requirements of the associated paperwork and registration process. Additionally, many vendors are not willing to take the loan scheme as it will only put an extra burden of repayment on them in a no-business scenario. Hence, apart from additional reforms to safeguard the livelihoods of street vendors, there is a need to build back consumer confidence to shop from vendors. If demand continues to stay low, the State Governments will need to rethink how alternate livelihoods and support programmes could be provided for these vendors.

The earnings of taxi, autorickshaw drivers and other informal mobility service providers have also taken a hit, even after easing up of lockdowns. The revenues of Ola and Uber driver partners have fallen significantly, and about 2,000 drivers have been removed by these platforms till date. Those still in business are struggling to stay afloat; many claim that their earnings are down by up to 80 per cent.

This situation is likely to persist, as a large volume of demand for these services came from work trips. Much before the lockdowns, cab driver earnings had already fallen due to changes in incentive schemes. Whereas a driver could earn over Rs 50,000 in the initial years of cab aggregation, their earnings have fallen to around Rs 20,000 in recent years. Most are struggling to afford basics and pay rent, and the situation is even worse for those who had purchased vehicles on EMIs.

The informal mobility services providers such as rickshaw, autorickshaw and Grameen Sewa drivers are also struggling due to lack of demand. Social distancing measures have necessitated business at reduced capacity, making the trips unaffordable for shared mobility services like Grameen Sewa and shared autos. These services were also used heavily as a last and first-mile option, and this demand is also likely to remain low with Metro services shut and public transport limited. Some State Governments had provided monetary help to all these operators when the lockdown had begun. But this could not be availed by many due to lack of paperwork. Now with the lack of demand likely to sustain due to WFH being mainstreamed and reduced leisure trips, these workers are still in need of major assistance. Since a large percentage of them also own vehicles, shifting to alternate livelihoods will also be difficult.

If remote working is to become a sustainable strategy, there is a need to understand and plan for the effects of this on the whole urban ecosystem. While WFH may benefit companies and foster some environmental benefits, it will also negatively affect other parts of the system. The most affected are from lower-income groups and those not covered by most Government safety nets. There is also likely to be very little scope to shift to alternate livelihoods with the expected economic contraction. Many people had already invested in physical capital which will now no longer be able to generate the expected income, leaving them burdened with unpayable debts. In addition to providing further loans, the Government must consider how to provide immediate relief to these sections of society. Immediate relief can be provided in terms of waiving penalties and permits such as challans for transport service providers. Many vendors also face undue evictions and are forced to bribe officials; theft of property or goods is another threat that their community faces. Hence, the regulatory systems need to be strengthened to safeguard vendors from such incidents.

The Centre needs to expand the unemployment claims programme to include the informal sector workers. They should be able to avail benefits for a certain number of days in a year, in case their businesses become unsustainable. If we can’t provide sustainable livelihoods to them, then the actual cost of the pandemic will be much higher.

(Writer: Promit Mookherjee | Aakansha jain; Courtesy: The Pioneer)

Unlike a brick-and-mortar business, the beauty of an online business is its instant reach to a huge target audience, not only locally but across borders. But you need to carve a niche first

Covid-19 has changed the world as we know it. We all have to get used to the new normal, both in our personal and professional lives. Businesses have to reinvent and re-engineer themselves to face the challenges thrown up by the Novel Coronavirus. This is especially true of entrepreneurs who are the fountainheads of innovation and creativity. Now more than ever, entrepreneurs need to think out-of-the box to survive these unprecedented times. And the first step towards this is to take advantage of the technological advancements mankind has made and go online. Gone are the days when there was a raging debate on the pros and cons of online business versus an offline one. The question now is how to convert an offline  brick-and-mortar business into a click-and-mortar one.

Setting up an online business is by no means an easy task as cyberspace is a different sphere altogether. It requires careful planning, which is the same for any regular offline business. It needs vision, access to funds, hard work and plain old grit and determination. However, unlike a brick-and-mortar business, the beauty of an online business is its instant reach to a huge target audience, not only locally but across borders. But to set up a successful online business, you need to carve out a niche. For example, Amazon created a niche for itself by offering the largest collection of book titles (over one million), which was more than 10 times the range of books in the largest physical bookstores around the world. So, the first step is to develop a clear understanding of the niche you want to address as a business.

Next, try and identify your  unique selling proposition (USP). Your business idea may not be totally unique but a support environment can make it exclusive. A great website, a good sales pitch, innovative marketing strategies, smooth supply chains and a responsive customer care can do wonders for a business and help a start-up carve a niche to take on well-established, deep-pocketed competitors. However, don’t become disheartened if you are unable to put a finger on your USPs, they will become obvious at the planning stage. Entrepreneurs have the habit of trying to do all things on their own. Don’t succumb to this habit. Delegation is as important as careful planning. Take the help of experts wherever required in planning, development and deployment of your online business. A successful business person can make a distinction on where and when to use external or expert resources and when to do things on their own. Developing a website, systems administration, database development among others can be such areas where external expertise is required. Employing a third party to manage and maintain your website is a good business decision, which will allow time for focussing on your other USPs. You can surely run a successful online business even if you have no inkling of technology. Outsourcing your technical requirements will cost you but having a good website is like having a great start for your online business.

Just like any business, careful planning and adequate funds can make an online business successful. There are two reasons why a meticulous business plan is necessary. One is to make your proposal attract funding and the second is to create an internal blueprint to plan, launch and execute your venture. Basically, you should develop a business plan for yourself. There are no rights and wrongs in developing a business plan and there are several online templates available to guide you. However, a well-written business plan should answer the following five questions: What are your business’ aims and goals? Why would your business satisfy or fulfil customer needs? Where will you be present? Who are your potential customers and your target audience? And how are you going to launch and continue the daily operations of your business? These five questions will cover all aspects of the venture.

Any business plan is not complete without market intelligence. Competition is a part of life and somewhere, someone would be having a similar product or service that you are planning to offer. So a competitor analysis is an absolute necessity, in terms of the products/services offered, USPs, website layout, quality of information to customers, delivery times, packaging, customer care, complaint handling and so on. Addressing any drawbacks your competitor has will make you popular and increase your consumer base.

Start-up funding and investments are an important requirement for any business. It would be prudent to combine some of the financing options available like your personal savings, loan from family and friends, bank loans, Government grants, angel investing and venture capital. Projecting your income and expense is not one of the easiest tasks. We project our income and expenses based on assumptions which tend to change. Be ready to adapt to changing income and expense figures. Once you have developed a careful plan, you are ready to execute it by establishing the online avatar.

To create a successful website, you should be clear about what you want. Make a list of all your requirements. How many pages do you need? How many products or services do you want to list? Do you want a website that changes frequently? What is the type of user interface needed? Discuss these aspects with your carefully-chosen website developer, who is your partner in one of the most important aspects of online business. You could consider previous experience, technical knowledge, client portfolio, references from clients, commitment and workload as some of the attributes of choosing a good web development partner.  If you are planning to capture customer data or receive payments online, you should take responsibility and accountability to protect the information of your customers by pursuing necessary and vital checks and balances.

Once this is done, shop around to have the best payment gateway for your business. Managing content is one of the crucial aspects of online business. Writing quality content takes longer than it sounds and would make the first impression on your customers. The ordering process and experience for the customers has to be hassle-free, so make sure that the order pipeline is easy to navigate and customers do not leave your website without spending. What use is creating a wonderful website, planning and launching the products or services, if it is not monetised?

Apart from the primary source of revenue, secondary sources like advertising become important as you can take advantage of the traffic you receive on your website. Running a successful online venture requires strong backend operations and a robust supply chain mechanism. A reliable supplier network is one of the most important areas that any business should develop. Choosing a good supplier and managing good relations with them are the key to a successful online business.

The next step is to make customers aware of your online business. Search Engine Optimisation is one of the ways with which you can achieve this. The key is to make your website visible to any Search Engine by adding unique content that would be picked up by the bots. For example, Google uses a software called Googlebot to examine the internet for useful content on websites and accordingly ranks them based on that. Good quality content is very attractive to any Search Engine which can hope to satisfy the query of customers. Connecting with your customers through various ways like forums, social media platforms, emails, surveys or through telephone will help build your reputation. Also, be sure to deliver on the claims and promises you make on the website to gain their confidence. Try and go over and above customer expectation and aim for customer delight. Remember under-promise and over-deliver.

So the big question is whether this is the right time to launch your online venture? Marred with the uncertainties unleashed upon the world by the pandemic, setting up a business, particularly an online venture, can be very disheartening.

However, one should know that setting up a business in a depressed economy has its benefits. You can negotiate good terms with your vendors; hire knowledgeable staff of other companies who have been laid off, buy some companies at lower valuations and get your business off the ground. Identify the silver lining in the dark cloud, set up a strong online presence, back it up with a robust operational plan, deliver what you promised, listen to your customers and run a successful online business.

(Writer: Hima Bindu Kota; Courtesy: The Pioneer)

When one tech billionaire wants another’s company to be broken, should authorities listen?

Elon Musk is a provocateur, not a particularly good undercover one but a sampling of his Twitter feed makes for some very interesting reading if nothing else, second only to US President Donald Trump. One of his latest missives on the social media network was his demand to break up Amazon, the e-commerce and web-hosting giant founded by Jeffery Bezos. Should this be taken seriously? Is Amazon too powerful, not just in the e-commerce space but also through its web services? The huge money-spinning web-hosting behemoth that it has become today, it runs almost half the internet. This is indeed a question that competition authorities across the world should seriously ponder about. Amazon is a giant which has outsized shares of e-commerce and web-hosting providers. Its sheer size and scale makes it impossible for newer, smaller players to enter this space. In countries like India, it may be challenged by the likes of Walmart and Reliance Jio but in other parts of the world, that bird has flown. And unlike China, which is flexing its muscles to portray strength at a time of international weakness after the spread of COVID-19, Amazon has used the pandemic to acquire strength (and cash). Jeff Bezos actually became richer during the pandemic.

But competition is a funny thing. The last tech company that almost broke up was Microsoft during the bruising browser wars of the late 1990s. By the time anything could be done, Internet Explorer was already the “king” of browsers. But today, Microsoft doesn’t even make Internet Explorer anymore. It has pivoted itself towards becoming a quieter and more socially responsible tech company. Its former boss Bill Gates is known as the world’s great philanthropist today. So it isn’t out of the question that another company will come and take on Amazon, we just don’t know which one. But Amazon’s dominance highlights the dangers of big tech. And as for Musk, he is only starting his dominance in the electric car industry but with the technological lead Tesla Motors has, one could conceivably ask the question whether in a decade’s time, we will be asking for Tesla’s break-up?

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)

The COVID pandemic has impacted education the most, compelling nations to embrace e-learning. India needs to invest in infrastructure and put right policies in place

Nations across the world have taken different yet significant measures to limit the spread of COVID-19. The most immediate one taken by almost all countries was to cancel physical face-to-face teaching in schools and higher education institutions. All kinds of social and religious gatherings and public events, too, were banned. With a sudden shift from the classroom to e-learning, many wondered whether the adoption of online education would continue to persist post-pandemic and how such a shift would impact the education market.

Indeed, in India, too, physical classrooms have replaced online classes. The transition has mostly been smooth in private universities though public institutions are yet to adapt to the changes. This has led to widespread debates on the future course of classes — whether they should be conducted online or not. Realising the long-term impact of COVID-19, faculty members, too, are finding it hard to conduct online classes with ease. On the other hand, students have been left clinging on to their mobile phones, laptops and computer screens. What, however, is certain is that a post-COVID world must gear itself to adapt to some changes. Being physically present in a classroom may not be the only learning option anymore — not with the rise of the internet and new technologies, at least. As long as there is access to a computer with a robust internet connection, students can attend live sessions or watch pre-recorded classes. Does this mean that online education will soon replace classroom education?  It should be kept in mind that even though there have been huge technological advancements, they aren’t flawless. E-learning comes with its own set of challenges.

Challenges and possibilities: In the case of traditional classrooms, lack of engagement is problematic for teachers and students alike. Unlike online education, here, they cannot pause or rewind the classes in case they miss out certain chapters. On the other hand, online education is not as easy as speaking into the microphone at the one end and connecting a laptop or phone and listening on the other. There are other challenges with this form of education that have to be faced by both — faculty as well as students. While the former will have to put in extra labour to generate lectures, it will be difficult for the latter to make sense of it online. Then, how will this form of education compensate for the academic loss suffered by students? Practically speaking, there is no alternative to classroom activities.

Most important of all, even after so much digitisation, rural India will face unprecedented challenges due to poor connectivity and frequent power cuts that would affect the productivity of the classroom. Talking about access to electricity, according to Mission Antyodaya, a nationwide survey of villages conducted by the Ministry of Rural Development in 2017-18, 16 per cent of India’s households received one to eight hours of electricity daily, 33 per cent received 9-12 hours and only 47 per cent received more than 12 hours a day. Further,  according to data collected by the National Sample Survey as part of the Survey on Education (2014), only 27 per cent of households in India have some member with access to internet. Access to internet does not necessarily mean that a household actually has internet at home.

While increasing ethernet connectivity should be the larger goal, in the short term, data on mobile phones must be subsidised. Device ownership, too, is a problem and for this, the Government must provide for cheap smartphones for students to get on with the business of teaching. Organisations such as the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL), IGNOU and other such bodies offering distance education as well as the Government must assess current and future infrastructure requirements for digital age and bridge the gap.

But what if e-learning becomes the way of life for education? What would be the major issues and areas that require introspection? And what does this mean for the students going forward?

Most universities are now offering web-based file-sharing services to their faculty members and research communities. However, there are several other ways to make multimedia resources accessible over the internet. Certainly, the most familiar one is YouTube, which though ubiquitous and easy-to-use, does present challenges to classroom use that must not be ignored. The most glaring one is the comments section. The instructor can take it for granted that some comments will not be suitable for projection on a classroom screen.

Similarly, advertisements found lining the video could be a problem, too. Regardless of the product being promoted, the classroom need not be turned to a search service in order to access multimedia resources. To avoid this, a number of web browser extensions are available that provide for an unsullied viewing experience, hiding comments, menu side bus and advertisements from the view. A number of cloud-based tools, too, are available that allow files to be stored and shared across a remote host, which at the very least offer the instructor the flexibility to adapt. Foremost among these are Dropbox, which is a file hosting service that offers free data storage across several operating platforms. Amazon cloud drive offers 5 GB of free storage and provides a straight forward web-based interface for uploading and retrieval of files. Similarly, GoogleDocs allows for the uploading of entire folders to the cloud, making remote storage of a set of organised files quite easy.

Make the digital transition: Technological prospects for classrooms have evolved in remarkable ways since the COVID-19 pandemic. We have witnessed the successful introduction of smartphones that are capable of running audio-visual clips and interactive language drills; tablets are now replacing the laptop as an essential classroom gear; and there has been a rich array of online dictionaries. Further, news media and unicode blogs are now searchable in original scripts; a sea of websites are dedicated towards the study and dissemination of literature. The worldwide popularity of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google classroom, Zoom, Cisco Webex and the user-centred design of web has addressed concerns of language use. Even mini tablets are now equipped with built-in digital camera. In fact, they allow students to use audio and video editing software immediately upon recording.  All of these advancements offer promising ways for the students to do their homework, going far beyond just a paper and pen.

The time has come for us to adapt to new and innovative teaching methods. So, what next? Most experts and researchers across academic institutions agree that there is a need to create standardised online education platforms.  Besides students and teachers must be trained to get accustomed to using digital technologies. Others highlight the necessity to introspect on the nature of these platforms and how students must be taught using different online tools and methods while keeping accessibility and the challenges in mind.

To look for possibilities, there is lack of clarity among teachers and researchers about the plan of action, especially with respect to teaching, examination, results, internships and placements. Challenges are many that need to be overcome. Some students without reliable internet access and technology struggle to participate in digital learning. This gap is seen across countries. Education is going to be digital in the foreseeable future. We will be better prepared to handle it only with the right kind of infrastructure and policies in place. The Government must pay heed.

(Writer: MJ Warsi; Courtesy: The Pioneer)

Blended finance combines public sector and philanthropic monies as catalytic capital to raise multiples of private sector monies, which help scale up the flow of funding to sustainable projects

As sustainability becomes mainstream, it is becoming a well-acknowledged fact that the planet just does not possess the resources required for us to maintain our current consumption patterns and emulate the aspirational lifestyles of the West. The estimated growth in global population to 10 billion in the not too distant future is an added headwind. This situation has meant that driving efficiencies in resource usage is fast coming into public discourse to reduce the carbon footprint. This is translating into necessary assets that would need funding. Such examples abound, like fuel-efficient cars, migration of public transport to e-vehicles, high-speed rail in place of airlines, urban Mass Rapid Transit trains substituting fuel-run vehicles, micro grids for far-flung communities instead of diesel generators and so on.

While these assets, which are typically part of large-scale transformational projects, are funded either by the Government or by concessional loans from development financial institutions, public capital is not going to fulfil the need for the trillions of dollars of investment the planet requires to scale up projects that would usher in the desired sustainability goals.

However, the biggest challenge to bringing  private capital at scale is the fact that most projects do not offer commercially-viable returns, owing to high upfront costs, long payback, remote location of some projects, nascent technologies and in certain cases, political uncertainties, weak institutional frameworks and so on.

This is where blended finance has come up as a solution in this context. It combines public sector and philanthropic monies as catalytic capital to raise multiples of private sector monies, which help scale up the flow of funding to sustainable projects, while yielding substantial economic benefits to all stakeholders.

The blended finance structure addresses the projects’ perceived risks, thereby helping increase the size and number of funding opportunities. It comprises funding, which may or may not be concessionary, supported with one or more elements like guarantees, political risk insurance, performance insurance, outcome-based funding, interest subvention, concessional or off-market local currency hedging, project preparation grants and so on.

This combination makes the projects’ terms viable for private sector capital and for the project developer, who otherwise may not have met the criteria without the assistance these supporting mechanisms bring in.

Among the emerging markets, India is leading the way by developing successful blended finance models. These are worth emulating in other markets that have a similar development profile as India in order to bring blended finance to a global scale.

In India, the Government’s Viability Gap Funding (VGF) model is one such success-story. Launched in 2004, it supports projects under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) mechanism. VGF grants were made essentially for infrastructure projects where private sector sponsors were selected via competitive bidding. The grant was disbursed at the construction stage after the private sector developer made an equity contribution towards the project. This grant is typically 20 per cent of the project’s capital cost and is allocated from the Government’s budget.

The Government then went a step ahead by defining the norms of how VGF would apply to utility-scale renewable energy projects, specifying the role of the Solar Energy Corporation of India in terms of evaluation, disbursement and monitoring.

Another example is that of cKers Finance and Rockefeller Foundation. Inked in 2018, their partnership involves an investment by Rockefeller in the Delhi-based sustainable energy Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) to build a $50 million asset financing portfolio for scaling up India’s decentralised renewable energy segment (DRE).

The Rockefeller investment would help cKers provide funding access at reasonable rates and terms to build the sustainable energy portfolio about 10 per cent of which would be in mini-grids. While the national grid has reached almost all places in India, the quality of supply remains erratic and thus DRE solutions like micro and mini-grids hold value.

Then there is the US-India Clean Energy Finance (USICEF) programme, which supports distributed solar power projects through grants specifically for early-stage project preparation support. Managed by the Climate Policy Initiative, it is a partnership between India’s renewable energy ministry, the US’ Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and others. Developers apply to the USICEF, which maintains an empanelled list of service providers (legal and professional services consultancies and so on) and engages them with the grant.

The project preparation support makes these developers investment-ready to raise funding from OPIC and other like-minded firms. The average grant is only about $0.1 million or so but this is a significant challenge for the developers given their small scale and the limitations they face in resources and talent acquisition.

This programme, with a total $3.5 million grant committed so far, has supported several rooftop solar, small ground-mounted and solar home system projects across more than a dozen Indian States. Last is the “pay for success” outcome funder model. Grameen Impact Investment, a Mumbai-based impact NBFC, launched social impact bonds addressing women’s livelihood and empowerment, youths’ skill-development and clean energy. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) spending by organisations in India has risen exponentially in recent years, mostly towards health and education. However, India’s Human Development Index score, which includes mostly health and education indicators, has hardly improved.

While CSR is only one component of India’s social sector spending, this does give some indication that actual achievement of outcomes is perhaps found wanting at times. The outcome funder model attempts to close this gap. The pre-defined outcome metrics are independently verified by third-party evaluators for on-ground achievement, only upon which the outcome funder (a philanthropy or CSR fund) would meet the enterprise’s interest and/or principle obligations — thus “pay for success.”

This ensures that the philanthropic resources are leveraged in a manner that will help achieve outcomes far more than what direct spending could possibly do.

Other blended models abound globally, each of which can potentially be replicated in India. The US-India Catalytic Solar Finance Facility used catalytic, first-loss capital to create risk-mitigation facilities. The Grid Solar Fund, which funds off-grid solar companies, raised $10 million in political risk insurance from OPIC to attract investments from the private sector.

Climate Investor One Fund raised blended capital at about 1.7 times multiple with a tiered-structure, which bifurcates capital into first-loss, subordinated equity and debt with credit guarantee to make lenders comfortable. Denmark’s Climate Investment Fund raised blended capital at over 1.7 times multiple, by using a preferential model where losses are shared equally by public and private investors but the latter enjoy a preferential return and a catch-up option.

At the same time, a preferential model based on share classes was less effective. The Global Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Fund, which paid principal and interest in batches between its A and B share classes, could raise blended capital only at about 0.8 times multiple.

Models apart, another merit of blended finance is that it can cover areas traditionally unserved by conventional funding, like US’ Prime Coalition, which invests in early-stage clean energy technologies, the Africa Clean Energy Facility, which focusses on project preparation and expects to raise a multiple of about 20 times its grants and IFC-GEF’s China Utility Energy Efficiency Programme, which helped local banks lend for energy efficiency.

Blended finance can also mobilise commercial bank participation as seen in Dutch bank FMO’s Guarantco that grants partial credit guarantees to local banks, Indonesia’s Sarulla geothermal project that used a political risk guarantee from Japan’s JBIC and a guarantee letter from the Indonesian Government to bring in commercial bank funding, German KfW and ResponsAbility’s Global Climate Partnership Fund that refinances green lending schemes of local banks or Africa Development Bank’s Facility for Energy Inclusion that combines commercial capital for small-scale energy access projects.

In the end, compulsions like climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, substituting the import cost of fossil fuels and driving economic growth through “green sectors” will necessitate an urgent scale-up in sustainability projects. To achieve this, innovative mechanisms to raise dedicated green capital will hold the key, especially as Indian banks cannot always fund the long maturities that sustainability projects entail. While blended finance cannot solve all the issues, it can certainly address some of the barriers. The models discussed in this article have already shown demonstrable value which makes them worth emulating. Most of them can be potentially replicated and scaled up further to fund India’s multitude sustainability challenges. Emerging markets with similar challenges to India should also take note.

(Writer: Sourajit Aiyer/ Sandeep Bhattacharya; Courtesy: The Pioneer)

With changing transnational contours of the app economy, where the jurisdictional functionality of service providers is questionable and operates in clouds, India needs to strengthen data laws  

The Government’s directive to all public and private sector employees to install the Aarogya Setu app in their mobile phones has raised eyebrows in some quarters. But the fact is that a post-COVID world is going to be equated with a digital society. It will be the new normal, where the use of diverse and converged digital technologies will help people maintain social distancing and facilitate secured living in an age of pandemic.

The Aarogya Setu app is designed to keep the people informed about the risk of them being infected with Coronavirus. Self-assessment begins with a request for information such as gender, full name, age, countries travelled to in the last 30 days and professional details. The app, which makes the use of GPS to get the user’s location, discovers other available applications near his/her device using bluetooth. By cross-referencing the location details with that of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)’s database and by collecting records of nearby users, it does a risk assessment and returns with a colour-coded message. It appears that the app continuously collects the user’s data and uploads them to a Government server along with a DiD, which is a unique digital id. Data in the server is anonymised in such a manner that personalised features are suppressed without affecting the statistical features of the data ensembles.

The fact that devices exchange information, continuously collect location data of registered users and maintain a record of the places where they may have come in contact with other people has given rise to a sense of distrust among the people. Hence, the controversy. Arguments can be drawn into two fields: One of data privacy and the other on surveillance. While debate around the Aarogya Setu app is unsubstantiated and unfounded, questions related to data privacy will very much be a talking point in a post-COVID society.  

Data is now widely being treated as the new “oil”, “gold” and is a valuable resource  from the perspective of society, economy, polity, privacy and human progress. For a society to make progress from an information age to a knowledgeable, digital world (data-driven society), the effective use of data and information, while qualifying with privacy parameters, will be a cornerstone of public discourse. Privacy is as old as mankind and has a close connection with human dignity, freedom and independence of an individual. Maintaining privacy will be more challenging in an age of informed society. Data privacy is a necessity so as to preserve and protect personal information that is collected by organisations. The fear of it being used by a third party is always there.

Data privacy assumes significance as people live with the app economy for the entire day, every day and every hour. Digital citizens, while accessing various apps, give in to the consent clause and in reciprocation forfeit intimate details to data companies by accepting the fine print of services that they receive through the app. Further, several devices often track our movements, preferences and any information they can mine from our digital existence. This without the consent of the user.

Let us be clear at this stage that collecting data, however private it may be, with the user’s consent, implicit or explicit, for any purpose and using it for data analytics in anonymised form is not a breach of privacy. Of course, unless the data is personalised and shared with other platforms or a third party. This seemingly is not the case with the Aarogya Setu app at present.

The nation has just seen that all efforts to curb the rapid spread of the Corona pandemic can be seriously affected due to contact tracing. This can be minimised with the help of data-driven technology that collects contact history of individuals. Undoubtedly, contact history is private but is used for a public cause. Aarogya Setu ensures just that and is a proof that India is growing to be a digitally matured State.

Post the COVID pandemic, India will witness a rise in app-driven socio-economic activities. Every aspect of the digital society — spanning from e-commerce, digital marketing and learning, digital art and culture, digital banking and transactions, social networking and social media, to digital Government interventions — will spread ominously.

Collection of data, private or otherwise, is inevitable and unavoidable in a data-intensive and algorithmically governed society. At the same time, the use of data responsibly while also preserving privacy should be the order of the day.

This brings us to an important question: Is India prepared to regulate data laws in the cyberspace? Further, are the citizens digitally educated to understand the trade-off between “comfort” and “luxury” while using digital technologies or when they share their data for a purpose? Are they aware of the privacy concerns arising thereof? These questions need to be addressed by digital communities of a post-COVID society.

India’s legal system, too, can be construed as half prepared to deal with concerns arising out of data privacy violation in the app economy and highly integrated digital age, even though the Information Technology Act (2008, amended in 2011) provides the necessary legal regime for cybersecurity and protecting privacy concerns thereof.

With changing transnational contours of the app economy, where the jurisdictional functionality of service providers is questionable and operates in clouds, India needs to consolidate and strengthen data laws on priority.

The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, which is still stuck in Parliament, intends to regulate the processing of personal data of individuals (data principals) by the Government and private entities (data fiduciaries). The Bill must provide legal teeth to data protection authorities to prosecute the data fiduciaries with penal actions. Such regulation, even if passed, cannot be effectively compliant in the context of lacking digital citizenship practices and etiquette.

A post-COVID society and democracy in India will be digitally driven and will be converged around data privacy and security that should not be devalued due to the current political bickering on the installation of the Aarogya Setu app. The app has only a limited purpose to contain the spread of the Corona infection. At the same time, developers of the app must take care to ensure that the data collected for the purpose is not intruded, de-anonymised or exploited by any other party.

(Writer: Arun K Pujari; Courtesy: The Pioneer)

‘Bois locker room’ chats show how boys of elite Delhi schools engage in deviant behaviour against fellow girl students

When teen boys in elite schools in our metropolitan cities talk about raping or gang-raping their classmates, share nude pictures of underage girls, objectify them and post sexually explicit chats, it means just one thing, that India, as a nation has failed its women/girls. That bestiality is a natural response even among the young, too easily molly-coddled as “raging hormones.” And that education is basically an exchange value for a good life and not true knowledge or enlightenment. How else does one explain this abominable, unhealthy and sexist mindset among the privileged lot of society that continues to see the opposite gender through a medieval stereotype? As an object of prey of possession. How else will we then rationalise the sexual deviance of uneducated juveniles? So, it shouldn’t surprise us when our sensibilities are repeatedly shocked by the outing of “bois locker room” chats of the kind that came out this Sunday. Or the one a few months ago, in which the “bois” in question were as young as 12. What is more frightening is that all these cases involve children of well-heeled parents, who come from “good families” and have had entitled and privileged lives. Liberated even, without developing a mindset to handle the spirit of liberalism. And if these boys think that it is their right to treat women as sex objects then we, as parents, have done a bad job of bringing them up. We have not raised them to respect women/girls, treat them as equals and not objectify them. We have not brought up gentlemen but brutes and misogynists. Spare the rod and spoil the child goes an old adage. That changed when post-liberalisation, the world opened up and millennials were exposed to unfiltered content as part of their experiential education in a new, wider world, courtesy the internet and cellphones. With corporal punishment banned in 2010 and severe strictures against teachers if they overstepped child rights, schools, too, became cagey about stepping into or monitoring extra-curricular or non-school activities. So what do we do now? We have a generation of spoilt, brazen and sexually-depraved boys, who will one day be men and wield power of some sort over someone of the opposite sex. How many Weinsteins have we raised?

For now, we have to be satisfied with the fact that one of the 22 schoolboys has been taken into custody and more have been identified as the police investigate the horrific Instagram group chat that has been deactivated. The teen has identified 21 of the boys who were active on the group and his phone has been seized by the Cyber Cell of Delhi Police. But what of all those groups that no one knows about. And can we truly just blame the boys? What about unsupervised teens left to their own devices by busy parents? What about the expensive gadgets they are showered with to assuage parental guilt or just to get them out of our hair? Do we ever take the time and see what they are getting up to in their free time or locked away in their rooms? Have we ever taken the time or trouble to sit with them and talk about sex and the importance of consent? Have we ever given them the confidence that if they have questions about sex they can come to us and we will educate them as we do for every other thing? And what about the easy access to porn? Most are initiated into sex through these sites which objectify and degrade women. Violent images that get seared in their impressionable minds and desensitise them, making them think that women are meant to be violated. What of the criminal justice system that teaches them that you can get away with it? Our power brokers and politicians don’t make the best role models for our youth. So it is not enough or done to point fingers at the boys, we as a society have a lot to answer for. And some of the answers to these tricky questions are certainly not going to be of our liking. This is reflected in our crime graph. If the latest NCRB data is anything to go by, 33,356 incidents of rape were reported during 2018 involving 33,977 victims, an average of 89 rapes a day. Overall, 72.2 per cent  of rape victims were above 18 years and 27.8 per cent below 18. And social media platform owners ought to monitor such base content.

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)

With concerns over privacy, is the Chinese app masking data mining and surveillance?

Months before the deadly Coronavirus virus struck the world, we had never even heard of Zoom, the US-based video conferencing app that was first founded in 2011 by a Chinese immigrant Eric S Yuan. With countries facing a nationwide lockdown, almost the entire world population was compelled to work from home and it is here that it became a critical component of an enabling technological infrastructure. So much so that after TikTok and Whatsapp, it ranked as the third-largest downloaded app. According to data, in India itself, in the 10 days between March 1 and 11, when work from home arrangements were just beginning to kick in, there were 1.25 lakh Zoom downloads. But at the same time, concerns regarding an increasing dependence on this platform were already red-flagged. In fact, there are serious questions about privacy and security. This is why the Union Government’s latest advisory warning against the usage of the application as it was “unsafe” and “vulnerable to cyber crimes” doesn’t spring a surprise. But the popularity of the app cannot be denied. From conducting business meetings to facilitating religious services, to conducting online classes and even meeting friends for virtual hangouts, it has become the default social chatroom. The benefits are far too many to lure in a network of users. Its services are free (superior services are charged though), it can accommodate up to 100 users in a single video call and has additional features, for example, foregrounding the speaker. It is a saviour for people in self-isolation, who are dying to catch a glimpse of another human face. Undoubtedly, when world stocks are plummeting, its share price has doubled. Makes one wonder if anybody had anticipated a work from home scenario?

But now it appears if this was another Chinese effort to mine data of its users to create a world surveillance network. Perhaps this is the reason the Government is warning against its use in secure communications. Accusations involve the already-established concerns on privacy and end-to-end encryption. Its ease of use also encouraged bad actors — there have been several cases where users have taken recourse to making racist attacks, child abuse, even pornography. While the company is still making amendments on a daily basis, it has also cultivated an image of being a snooper on the prowl. And its admission that some calls were “mistakenly” routed to China is not reassuring at all. Nobody knows the shape of a post-COVID world but politics is in full play.

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)

Aerial mobility may be a solution to urban overcrowding but we should stop putting money in ill-conceived ideas

While planning for the Allied invasion of Europe in World War II, experts realised that they needed mechanised troops on the ground, which is infantry backed up by the armour of tanks. The problem was that tanks were heavy and wouldn’t quite float. So the Americans came up with an ingenious solution, the Sherman “Duplex Drive” or “DD” tank, with floatation devices and a propeller. Nicknamed by American troops as the “Donald Duck” tanks, they proved to be a tactical failure. Many of them can still be found at the bottom of the sea outside the beaches of Normandy. They were not a complete failure but once on the ground, they weren’t as effective as plain-jane Sherman tanks. This brings us to the idea of flying cars. Over the years, many firms have experimented on developing a viable working plane that could double up as a car but have failed. This is because these two engineering marvels are fundamentally different. Reconciling them is not easy. It isn’t about a mobile phone that can be made into a smart phone by combining the functions of a phone, computer, tablet, camera and location sensor among others because that was essentially electronic miniaturisation. A plane still needs wings and a car still needs four wheels. And because they need to carry a human, rather be capable of carrying four people, the end product cannot be too small. As large commercial aircraft companies like Airbus and Boeing have proven time and again, building aircraft according to modern safety norms is not an easy task even for professionals. So why persist on a path that doesn’t have a viable solution?

Maybe some engineer might make a viable portmanteau of a car and an aeroplane. A couple of car firms themselves are looking at an aerial solution but this is a stand-alone solution, one that appears to be more driven ironically by drone design than by a car or a plane. These flyable drones, one showcased by Hyundai and another by Mercedes-Benz as a form of shared high-speed intra-urban transportation, could potentially be a solution to reach distant suburbs quickly, particularly in disaggregated urban areas with high speed mass transit systems doing the rest. A Dutch firm has even decided to set up a unit in Gujarat to roll out personal air-land vehicles (PALVs). The flying car has remained a dream since the 1950s and while we may not have achieved the future, we have made astounding progress. With limited resources, we should concentrate our efforts on things that work and those that can be deployed quickly. The flying car is not one of them.

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)