Day 2, CPP conference
Day 2 of XIII International Conference on Public Policy and Management, organized by IIMB’s Centre for Public Policy, at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, on Friday (August 24) had panel discussions on Open and Distance Learning in Secondary Education; Alleviating India’s Agricultural Crisis; Scaling Livelihoods for Persons with Disability; Contemporary Policy Issues in Agriculture; The Politics of Knowledge in Policy, among others.
Opening the session on Open and Distance Learning in Secondary Education, Jyotsna Jha, Centre for Budget and Policy Studies (CBPS), Bengaluru, said clarity was needed on the status of the New Education Policy. Shreekanth Mahendiran, CBPS, Bengaluru, presented his research on ‘Secondary Education: Inequalities in Reach and Access’, and observed that the drop in enrollment was drastic from primary to upper primary.
Neha Ghatak, CBPS, Bengaluru, spoke on the need to rethink the role of Open and Distance Learning (ODL) in secondary education in India. According to her, transition to secondary and senior secondary levels are very low in India, for reasons such as high opportunity cost, and sparse availability of schools. “In this context, there is a reason to examine the potential of Open and Distance Learning to meet this unmet gap.”
While discussing potential and limitations of Open and Distance Learning, Prof. JBG Tilak, NUEPA, said: “ODL at the school education level is very different from that of ODL at university. We should provide the ODL system to those who cannot afford formal schooling.”
Prof. Shyam Menon, University of Delhi, remarked: “Most of the theories in ODL are normative and haven’t really looked at the constraints imposed by structures – such as caste and gender. The use of ODL at secondary level has taken place in South Asia alone; in the rest of the world, ODL has been employed at the university level.”
The session on ‘Politics of Knowledge in Policy’ had participation from Prof. Madhulika Banerjee, Prof. Pushpa Singh, Abhishek Handa and Arun Kumar Singh, all from the University of Delhi, and Pankaj Kumar Jha, MLNC, New Delhi.
The panel on ‘Scaling Livelihoods for Persons with Disability’ had Arundhati Bhattacharya, former chairperson, SBI, Dr Prabodh Seth, Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disability, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, and Shanti Raghavan (EnAble India). It was moderated by Dr Meenu Bhambhani, from Mphasis.
In her opening remarks, Dr Bhambahni said, “The focus on this arena has been mainly in terms of allocating government jobs through reservation. After the RPWD Act, 1995 things started changing. Several job opportunities in the private sector have opened. With the Disability Act, 2016, the commitment of government towards rights of PWD, can be observed.”
Adding to that, Shanti Raghavan said, “It is important today to realize that there is an economic imperative on working for scaling livelihoods for PWD. Working age population, which must grow at 2 per cent, is at 1.5 per cent in India. Almost 20-50 million become disabled in road accidents every year. By excluding persons with disability there is a cost on GDP.”
Giving an insight from the industry, Arundhati Bhattacharya said, “We started the SBI initiative – 3% mandatory jobs for persons with disability. In order to make sure the initiative was productive, a four-pronged approach (identify suitable jobs, create enabling work through necessary training, sensitize, and create equal opportunities) was adopted. Without inclusion, scaling of the job is not possible.”
Prabodh Seth added, “While skilling is very important in economic empowerment of persons with disability, scaling livelihoods is not just skilling people – we need to look at it in totality.”
The panel on ‘Contemporary Policy Issues in Agriculture’ saw Vikrant Panwar and Subir Sen, from IIT Roorkee, share their work on the economic impact of floods in selected Indian states. “Understanding the impact of floods is important, as 60-70% of India’s land is prone to flooding,” said Sen. He quoted studies to show that developed countries absorb the impact of natural disasters more efficiently than developing countries. The findings showed that in the medium term (five years) there was a negative impact on growth in GDP. However, there was a positive impact on agricultural growth. “There is negative and significant impact on the manufacturing and service sector. The success of the agriculture sector did not spill over to the others (as other countries have shown), as the Indian agricultural sector is not as robust as that of other countries,” he added.
Aparna Krishna, PAD, Ahmedabad, spoke on ‘Enhancing Agricultural Productivity through Customized Agricultural Information: Evidence from an RCT Experiment’. “The motivation of the study was to evaluate the impact of agriculture extension on agriculture outcomes. Farmers need information to correct this imbalance (yield gap in produce) and it was found that there is low access and low implementation of the information available. Farmers had no resources to implement the advice and information they received. There was also no follow up technical meetings to check how the information was being implemented,” said Krishna based on the results of her study.