#129 To Kill A Mocking Mosquito 🎧

While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways.

Audio narration by Ad-Auris.  

Global Policy Watch: Global Order - Where Will It Come From? 

Bringing an Indian perspective to burning global issues

- RSJ

A couple of recent events made me wonder about the state of global affairs these days and an excuse to write about Hedley Bull and his famous book, The Anarchical Society – A Study of Order in World Politics (1977).

Take the incredible story of Belarus forcing down a Ryanair flight while it was in its airspace to arrest Roman Protasevich, a dissident who runs a popular Telegram channel widely used to protest against the regime of the dictator Alexander Lukashenko. A MiG 29 fighter jet was used to force the flight carrying 170 passengers to make a u-turn and land at the Minsk airport. This was a state sponsored hijacking with overt support from President Putin of Russia.

The EU condemned the incident and banned any carriers from flying over the Belarusian airspace. But barring strong press statements and warnings there wasn’t much teeth in the response from the West. Meanwhile, Russia and Belarus upped the ante. On Thursday, Russia refused to let planes land in Moscow that were planning to bypass Belarus. The EU plans to apply sanctions on Belarus who is a signatory to the 1944 Chicago convention that established common rules of aviation safety. But Belarus could hardly be bothered. It was their airspace, their perception of threat to their sovereignty and they are going to apply their laws. And they have Russia backing them. Who are you to ask questions?

That’s their dare to the NATO and EU.

The other story that broke in the middle of last week is of Whatsapp suing the government of India over the Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 which came into effect in May 26.

Now there are reasons why the Government wants to regulate social media platforms. We have often spoken about radically networked societies (RNS) here and how difficult it is for a hierarchical setup to counter the speed with which RNS mobilise themselves. This speed or the virality of the social media platform can pose real danger to society when used to spread rumours, hate speech and abusive content. So, regulations are welcome if they address this problem.

There are two points of contention in the Intermediary rules though for Whatsaspp.

The first is the demand for the traceability as written in Rule 4(2) of the guidelines. It requires a messaging platform to enable the identification of the first originator of information when demanded through a judicial order or an order passed by a competent authority as per IT Rules, 2009. This is a problem for Whatsapp (or any end-to-end encryption messaging service). They can only know the first originator if they start tagging each message with a unique identifier and create a metadata for tracking and marking every message on its platform. This is non-trivial technical problem to solve but more pertinently this will mean the ability of the platform to trace every message and know its details. This violation of privacy of every user of the platform to know the details of a select few doesn’t pass the test of proportionality. So, this should be unacceptable to any end-to-end encrypted messaging platform.

The second issue here is the very broad nature of what can constitute grounds for seeking this information. Like most laws this involves messages that are specifically criminal in nature like child pornography, sexual abuse etc. But like the definition of free speech in the Indian Constitution, they also include subjective grounds like threatening sovereignty and security of India or creating law and order problems. These subjective interpretation could be abused to seek information about anyone. Any rule should be drafted with a view on how it could be used for wrong ends by anyone in the future. The current reassurance given in the law that there will be no requirement of disclosure of the message or the sender has no meaning when the demand for the originator is made based on the message itself.

There are three arguments being made against Whatsapp on this case that merits discussion.

One, Facebook (that owns Whatsapp) has built a business model by collating all kinds of data about its users (with or without consent). So, irony kills itself when Facebook claims to be a champion of privacy. This is true except for one important point. Facebook isn’t a state. It abuses data for its commercials gains. You can call it an exemplar of the surveillance economy. But a state having access to that kind of data is different. The state has the monopoly of violence over its subjects. No company has that. A surveillance state is a completely different ball game than a surveillance driven business model.

Two, Whatsapp cannot wash its hands off any responsibility for the messages that flow through its platform. This is correct and Whatsapp should be asked to provide mechanisms through which messages that are flagged by its users, a judicial or a competent authority as abusive or illegal can be restricted from being passed along any further. This must be asked of all social media platforms. Asking for the originator of a message, however, opens up a Pandora’s box that directly impinges on individual liberty.

Three, there’s an interesting argument made that Whatsapp cannot go against the law of the land. This is a bit troubling. Whatsapp has been in India for many years following the law of the land. It disagrees with a particular clause in a new set of rules and it is contesting that in the court of law. This is usual judicial procedure. This isn’t an MNC challenging the sovereignty of India as it is being made out. Those making these arguments either want to use the easiest crutch of nationalism to obfuscate the principle of privacy on which Whatsapp is making the argument or have their own vested interests in ‘digital nationalism’. In any case, there isn’t a final privacy law that has been debated and passed by the parliament. So, the point of challenging the law of the land on this topic is itself moot.

Enforcing Global Order

There is a broader point I want to discuss based on these incidents. Is there any legitimate global authority left that can enforce any kind of global order any more? Who will stand up for basic human rights like the freedom to dissent, to question the powerful or the right to privacy? Is there a need for a global policeman, a competent and empowered multilateral institution or a rules based order, that will question a nation-state about its actions? Or, will nations justify all their acts under the cover of sovereignty?

We talk about international relations quite often here. Pranay uses Matsyanyaya (big fish eating small fish) as the principle that guides relations between nation-states. This is what’s termed as the realist view. Nations act in their self-interest and they form alliances or take positions that furthers it in the long term. A cynical view of this would be to think of nation-states in a Hobbesian ‘state of nature’.

Of course, the reality isn’t exactly this. Nations help other nations, agree mutually on a common set of rules to guide their behaviour and set up multilateral organisations to follow a code of conduct in global affairs. Yet the realist will say these sound great on paper but cannot be enforced unless there is a real possibility of a more powerful nation or nations threatening real harm to another nation which isn’t toeing the line. Stripped of all niceties, multilateral organisations depend on a global power to maintain world order. It is matsyanyaya after all.

After the fall of USSR, the overwhelming consensus was the liberal, democratic global order will have a long, uninterrupted reign. Nations will recognise this to be the ultimate political and social end and they will strive to be co-opted into this order. History, in that sense, had ended. But that was not to be.

There were two reasons for that. One was philosophical: an ideology without a counter loses it raison d'etre. The nature of the political rests on the Schmittian ‘friend’ versus ‘enemy’ divide like we often say here. It will splinter from within over time and find its own enemies. That’s what happened eventually to the liberal, democratic hegemony as the extremes on both left and right pared it away. The second reason or a set of reasons was rooted in specific events and it was more substantive. The Iraq War based on fake reports of weapons of mass destruction possessed by the regime, the global financial crisis (GFC) and the policy response that led to delegitimisation of globalisation among the masses, and the spectacular rise of China that benefitted from global trade but didn’t turn into a liberal, democracy as was expected - all of these events fanned populist movements across democracies and turned them insular. The liberal democratic world order lost its bearings. It was the light that failed.

So, here we are.

Notwithstanding the recent moves of the Biden administration to undo the Trumpean ‘America First’ stand, it is evident the US remains reluctant to lead a world order to promote liberal democratic values in the way it did during the Cold War. Then we have Xi Jinping advocating a ‘community of common destiny’ that conveniently sidesteps any values that are inconvenient to China. And global MNCs and tech giants with user base larger than most countries aren’t interested in taking a stand on liberal internationalism. That has dissolved any hopes many had on globalisation countering great power rivalries, trumping rules of non-intervention in matters of sovereign states and promoting an order based on commercial interests. That old Friedman chestnut about no two nations that both had McDonald’s will ever fight a war against each other is well and truly buried.

So, what kind of a world order should we hope for in a future?

Bull And Neo-Medievalism

Strangely, that’s what brings me to Hedley Bull’s The Anarchical Society. Bull accepts the idea of Matsyanyaaya but argues for an international society that’s built on anarchy with some kinds of overlapping natural checks and balances. Bull argued any kind of hegemonic world order like what the liberal democratic order aspired for post Cold War or the dreams of some kind of universal government are bound to end in disappointment. Instead, he suggested the society could move towards what he termed ‘neo-medievalism’, a system that would:

“avoid the classic dangers of the system of sovereign states by a structure of overlapping structures and cross-cutting loyalties that hold all peoples together in a universal society while at the same time avoiding the concentration inherent in a world government"

He used neo-medievalism from the order that was prevalent in western Christendom in the middle ages:

“It is also conceivable that sovereign states might disappear and be replaced not by a world government but by a modern and secular equivalent of the kind of universal political organisation that existed in Western Christendom in the Middle Ages. In that system no ruler or state was sovereign in the sense of being supreme over a given territory and a given segment of the Christian population; each had to share authority with vassals beneath, and with the Pope and (in Germany and Italy) the Holy Roman Emperor above. The universal political order of Western Christendom represents an alternative to the system of states which does not yet embody universal government.”

It appears to me we are in this kind of a nether space today. In the foreword to the 2012 edition of Bull’s book, Andrew Hurrell wrote perceptively about why Bull remains relevant in this age:

“And yet, it remains plausible to argue that alternative global frameworks for order are either pluralistic and contested (for example transnational civil society) or efficient but highly unstable (as in case of markets and the global economy). Yes, the past 35 years have seen an intensification of economic and social globalisation , but the inequalities and discontent of globalisation have generated increased political strains both internationally and within many states, and have undermined the notion that globalisation will lead easily or unproblematically to shared values, resilient institutions, or to a meaningful global moral community. Yes, the density of the norms, rules and institutions of international society has increased tremendously, often pushing in liberal direction. And yet Bull’s scepticism may still be merited: whose solidarist or liberal order? What kind of liberal and liberalising order is it that seeks to promote democracy but ignores distributive justice and brushes aside calls for the democratisation of global decision making? How stable and how legitimate can a liberal order be when it depends so heavily on the hegemony of the single superpower whose history is so exceptionalist and whose attitude to international law and institutions has been so ambivalent?

How will international society confront its current triple challenge - a power transition driven by rise of new emerging powers; a structural transition in the scope of cooperation as governments have to face a series of complex and often inter-connected global challenges; and a cultural transition as both state power and the dynamics of the global economy move beyond the West.”

In a world still fighting a pandemic where the absence of global order was felt in our uncoordinated response and our inability still to inoculate the world together, Bull’s warning about premature celebration of global solidarity rings true.

A reimagining of the world order is necessary. But no one knows where it will come from.

PolicyWTF: Ek Machchar…

This section looks at egregious public policies. Policies that make you go: WTF, Did that really happen?

- RSJ

There’s that old joke about Roger Federer (RF) and his Indian Fan (IF).

IF: Do you know Indians buy the maximum number of tennis balls and racquets in the world?

RF: Oh! Must mean a lot of Indian kids playing tennis then.

IF: No. We play cricket with tennis balls.

RF: Then what do you do with the racquets?

IF: We use them to kill mosquitoes.

The mosquito killing electronic racquets are ubiquitous in India. You will find them at homes, at shops and with anyone who works outdoors in the evenings (watchmen especially).

There are reasons, of course. First, the excessive use of DDT and then liquid mosquito repellents have meant mosquitoes that have mutated to resist them. Two, liquid mosquito repellents are expensive with a refill costing Rs. 50-70 that are needed almost every two weeks. Three, liquid repellents need constant supply of electricity and are useless outdoors.

I don’t want to go into the familiar lament of the state not being able to provide safe air and a mosquito-free environment to its citizens in 70 years. In fact, things have gotten worse. Almost no one who grew up in 70s-90s remembers dengue or chikungunya being the kind of epidemic they have turned out to be in the last two decades.

The electronic mosquito-killing racquet was therefore a lovely little contraption. Priced between Rs 200-300, these could last a few months and once charged could be used for a few days uninterrupted. Importantly, they could be used outdoors which made it popular among those who worked outdoors in the evenings. Indian traders mostly imported these racquets (at likely import price below Rs 120) and incurred the import duties, costs of storing and distributing these racquets far and wide.

Now read this.

The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) in a notification dated April 26 has prohibited the import of “mosquito killer racquet” (their words) if the C.I.F. (cost, insurance and freight) value is below Rs. 121 per racquet.

Of course, the process that led to the threshold being precisely Rs. 121 is something I want to study when I grow up.

Anyway, the general idea appears to be to become Aatmanirbhar in making these racquets and not allow cheap imports dumped in India.

We have elaborated on the unintended consequences of such steps in umpteen editions. But we are never tired of repeating them. Here’s what will happen:

* Jugaad will set in quickly. Traders will ask importers to increase the prices of their racquets above Rs. 120 and overinvoice them. The same racquets will now cost more.

* Once this jugaad is noticed, we might prohibit any import. There will then be a short term shortage in supply of racquets as we won’t be able to up our domestic production capacity to meet demand. The price of racquets will go up.

* In the absence of imports, there won’t be an incentive for domestic manufacturers to compete with the best. This could lead to poor quality of racquets and a permanent higher prices for them in future. In any case, there is a price floor set now of Rs. 121. We have seen this film play out all through the 60s-80s across sectors.

* Unfortunately, the poor will suffer the most. The short term supply shortage will hurt and then the elevated prices will bite (apart from the mosquitoes whose karma is to bite)

There’s a lot that ‘mosquito killer racquets’ and their import prohibition tells about our public policy over the past seven decades.

But I will let Nana Patekar do the talking.

India Policy Watch: The Wicked Problem of the Shrinking Women’s Workforce

Insights on burning policy issues in India

— Pranay Kotasthane

India’s continually declining female labour force participation rate from 30 per cent in 1990 to nearly 20 per cent in 2019 is a cause of much concern. Despite a rise in education levels and a drop in fertility rates, a greater proportion of women are unable to secure paid jobs.

Thanks to a robust research community that has developed over the last decade or so, we know a lot more about this worrying trend. To crudely summarise their work, it seems that this wicked problem is not just a government failure but also an enduring social failure.

Take the social failure. Ambedkar had written that the caste system is not merely a division of labour but an unnatural division of labourers into watertight compartments. This description partly applies to social norms regarding female employment as well. A false notion that women are better suited for domestic work — both household chores and child care — while men are suited only for outside work has created an unnatural division of workers. This is not merely a division of work as there is no evidence to show that men have an innate comparative advantage over women in doing outside work or that women have an edge over men in doing domestic work.

Solutions for addressing this social problem by the government include familiar ideas such as reducing income tax for women, family leave policies and mandating childcare facilities at workplaces. But such solutions are likely to make no dents on female unemployment in an overwhelmingly informal economy. Instead, there is still one underrated measure where governments can help. By enabling economic growth. The last decade has been one of missed opportunities, regulations that make it difficult for companies to hire people, and falling economic pace. Consequently, the economy has not been able to absorb India’s growing working age cohort, both male and female. Unless the overall supply of non-agricultural jobs increases, the problem of falling women’s labour force participation cannot be addressed in any meaningful way.

As far as the social failure is concerned, it requires solutions far beyond the government. In my view, the fantastic research and storytelling in this area is our best bet at creating what Cass Sunstein calls ‘norm entrepreneurs’. Social norms are more fragile than they are thought to be. Entrepreneurs who challenge existing norms can create fast-paced norm cascades. On that note, I want to plug a Puliyabaazi conversation with Mahima Vashisht, creator of the Womaning in India newsletter. I increasingly feel that this is perhaps the most important topic that we have ever discussed on the podcast. Do listen.

A Framework a Week: 8 Things to Unlearn before Learning Public Policy

Tools for thinking public policy

— Pranay Kotasthane

Last week, we made a short video on things to unlearn before learning public policy. It’s based on edition #6 of this newsletter. The aim is to clear some cobwebs in our heads before thinking about public policy.

HomeWork

Reading and listening recommendations on public policy matters

* [Video] "World on the Edge": the crisis of the western liberal order: An LSE discussion between Professor G. John Ikenberry, Professor Beate Jahn and Professor John J. Mearsheimer with Professor Michael Cox in the Chair.

* [Book] ‘Why Loiter?’, by Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan, and Shilpa Ranade, on the absence of women from public spaces in Mumbai.

* [Podcast] Alice Evans and Shruti Rajagopalan on the Great Gender Divergence, Ideas of India Podcast.

* [Article] How Did East Asia Overtake South Asia?, by Alice Evans.

* [Report] ‘Working or Not: What Determines Women’s Labour Force Participation in India?’ gives a good overview of the literature on female workforce participation in India.

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