CPR Annual Report 2019-20

A leading public policy
think tank
Conducting research in
multiple disciplines
Contributing to a more
robust public discourse
1
Foreword
It is a privilege to present the Centre for Policy Research’s (CPR) annual report for 2019-20. We bring you this
report in unusual circumstances. COVID-19 has upended all that we take for granted, both in terms of how
we work and the established frameworks through which we seek to address policy challenges. I am proud,
that in these trying circumstances, CPR has proved resilient, reinventing itself to respond to this particular
policy moment, while discovering new ways of remaining creative and prolific, despite work from home and
the tyranny of Zoom.
Like every year, CPR’s faculty have kept the tradition of publishing scholarly, field-defining books alive. In
2019-20, CPR faculty published important books in fields as diverse as climate change, public administration
and urbanisation. I would like to make special mention of Dr. Navroz K Dubash’s edited volume titled,
India in a Warming World: Integrating Climate and Development. Published by the Oxford University Press, with
contributions from more than 30 leading researchers, policymakers, diplomats, and activists, this book is
one of the most definitive contributions to the debate on climate mitigation and policy pathways for India.
The book has received popular recognition, even featuring in all the major literature festivals held across the
country. CPR’s scholarly contributions were complemented by as many as 442 articles and opinion pieces
in the mainstream press and non-academic journals, as CPR scholars valiantly sought to infuse evidence
and nuance in an increasingly polarised public sphere. A particularly exciting initiative this year was the
publication of a volume of short policy essays titled, Policy Challenges 2019-2024. This volume pulls together
years of research undertaken by CPR faculty to offer a comprehensive view of the key policy questions and
solutions confronting India today. For anyone interested in policy debates of 21st-century India, at the risk of
being immodest, I strongly recommend reading this collection!
Even as we continue to produce field defining scholarship, CPR has remained actively engaged in the
everyday life of policymaking, shaping ideas and offering technical expertise to resolve difficult policy
problems. In 2019-20, we broadened our approach to work at the sub-national level. It is often said that the
future of India lies in the States of India. In recognition of this, CPR too has begun to engage more directly
with States. Our state engagement involves direct ground level partnerships and technical problem solving.
The Accountability Initiative, for instance, signed a three year Memorandum of Understanding with the
Government of Meghalaya to provide research support to their planning and budgeting processes. The
Scaling City Institutions for India (SCI-FI) program, our urban sanitation and housing initiative, is working
closely with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Government of Odisha, providing
technical advice in the areas of land, housing and planning. Individual faculty have also been appointed to
provide technical support to State Governments in key areas. Philippe Cullet, was appointed as a member of
the Group of Experts on the Madhya Pradesh Water Strategy by the Government of Madhya Pradesh. Yamini
Aiyar was appointed a member of the State Advisory Council, Government of Punjab.
In early March 2020, days before lockdowns, social distancing and masks entered our everyday vocabulary,
CPR organised the second edition of the CPR Dialogues. Launched in 2018, CPR Dialogues is an important
addition to our repertoire of public engagement efforts and marks a strategic shift in CPR’s public
engagement. This shift is, partly, a response to the growing polarisation of the public sphere in India, which we
believe needs sober, evidence-based discourse. It is also a consequence of a growing recognition that policy
processes and long-term change need to be driven through the creation of a coherent and shared public
narrative on the nature of the problem and policy prescriptions. Shaping this narrative and developing a
shared understanding of the range of policy prescriptions available is a critical role that CPR can play. To this
end, we have sought to move beyond the confines of our seminar room to create newer spaces for dialogue
with stakeholders, civil society and the public. CPR dialogues is one such effort. The 2020 edition featured
over 60 speakers across 20 panels and was attended by more than 1000 participants. The Dialogues were
also an opportunity to celebrate milestones, including the formal launch of the State Capacity Initiative, five
years of the Land Rights Initiative and a decade of expenditure tracking through Planning, Allocations and
Expenditures, Institutions Studies in Accountability (PAISA), the Accountability Initiative’s flagship survey.
2 Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019

Once COVID-19 struck and India went into lockdown, CPR faculty shifted gear to respond to the particular
policy challenges India now confronts. Our response has been wide ranging, focusing both on the public
health challenge as well as the pathways for economic relief and recovery, social protection particularly for
informal, migrant workers, climate change and the environment, urbanisation and issues of federalism.
Select CPR faculty came together to form a research collaborative working closely with State Governments.
In April 2020, CPR signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Government of Punjab to provide real-
time data analysis and design a testing strategy to identify COVID-19 cases. In addition, CPR is part of civil
society collaboratives, working at the grassroots, providing relief, often in partnership with district and block
administrators and documenting the effects of the pandemic. Through this work, CPR faculty have sought to
highlight ground realities and bring evidence to shape policy responses to the COVID-19-induced economic
crisis. As always, CPR sought to influence the public debate, infusing knowledge and expertise into the noise,
through multiple new media including podcasts, webinars and opinion writing.
None of this would have been possible without our talented faculty and researchers, who never once allowed
the trials and tribulations of COVID-19 and work from home to interfere with their passion and commitment
to respond at this critical policy juncture. I am really proud to have the privilege of leading this wonderful
community of scholars.
I am as always, grateful to the CPR board, under the leadership of Dr Meenakshi Gopinath, who’ve helped
us traverse an increasingly complex regulatory environment while holding us to the highest standards of
rigour and integrity. I would be remiss not to thank our wonderful administration and communications
teams. Led by Mr Ravi, our administration team has patiently ensured that we maintain high standards of
governance. Mr. Ravi, an institution within CPR, retired in August 2020 after three decades of service. We
owe deep gratitude to him for all that he has done for us. He is the reason why CPR faculty can stay focused
on research, unfettered by the daily demands of administration and paperwork. Our communications team,
led by Ms Hemali Sodhi who joined us in 2020, has taken on the difficult task of pushing us to leave the
comfort of our ivory towers. They are the reason why CPR has been able to pivot towards greater public
engagement and find its way into the 21st-century world of social media and digital communication, with
grace and style.
I would also like to remember Ved Marwah, a long-term associate of CPR, who passed away in June 2020. His
life’s work, his passion and commitment to excellence inspired many generations of CPR faculty. His passing
is an immeasurable loss to CPR and to the wider community and we miss him deeply.
Before signing off, I would like to thank all of you, our friends, collaborators and funders. This report offers
but a glimpse into the variety, scale and rigour of work that we do at CPR, all of which has been made possible
because of you. We remain deeply grateful.
With warmest thanks
Yamini Aiyar
President And Chief Executive
Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019 3

ENVIRONMENTAL INTERNATIONAL LAW,
LAW AND RELATIONS AND REGULATION,
GOVERNANCE SECURITY AND THE STATE
5 15 21
URBANISATION ECONOMIC RESEARCH AND
POLICY ENGAGEMENT ON
THE COVID-19
PANDEMIC
41 55 61
POLICY CPR DIALOGUES
CHALLENGES 2020
2019-2024
67 69
Environmental Law and Governance
Environmental Law
and Governance Image Source: www.nmtv.tv
CPR is commited to fostering an evidence-based

conversation about how to ensure a clean and sustainable
environment for a growing India. The Centre’s expert
research topics ranging from environmental jurisprudence
to the constructioin industry, and they engage directly with
domestic and international environmental institution.
Climate, Energy and
Image Source: Pixabay

Environment
In 2019, the Initiative on Climate, Energy and Environment (ICEE) contributed to

global discussions on climate and energy governance and continued its engagement
with policy and regulatory frameworks that are shaping climate and development
outcomes in India. The initiative’s research focused on four key areas: climate policy
and institutions, the political economy of India’s electricity sector, low-carbon energy
demand patterns in urban areas, and air quality governance in India.
Climate Policy, Institutions and Governance

Navroz K Dubash participated in global meetings for the upcoming Sixth
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as
Coordinating Lead Author for the chapter on national and sub-national policies
and institutions. In October 2019, in the backdrop of the IPCC Working Group III
(Mitigation of Climate Change) meeting in New Delhi, ICEE co-hosted a panel
discussion on What are Countries Doing to Address Climate Change? with insights on
climate action from policy experts from around the world.
In the lead-up to the United Nations Climate Action Summit in September 2019,
Dubash was appointed to the Science Advisory Group for the Summit. He reflected
on growing climate ambition and target-setting in journals such as Nature and
WIREs Climate Change. He also commented on India’s role in the climate regime in a
time of gridlocked nationalist politics in The Hindu and Hindustan Times.
Navroz K Dubash and Ritu Mathur

(Senior Fellow, The Energy and Resources
Institute) co-moderated a discussion on
climate policy and action featuring IPCC
authors Fei Teng (Institute of Energy,
Environment and Economy, Tsinghua
University, China), Heleen de Coninck
(Department of Environmental Science,
Radboud University, The Netherlands),
Harald Winkler (University of Cape
Town, South Africa), Karen Seto (Yale
University, USA), and Roberto Schaeffer
(Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil), with closing remarks by Jim Skea
(Co-Chair, IPCC Working Group III).

The editorial board of Environmental Research Letters recognised India’s Energy and
Emissions Future: An Interpretive Analysis of Model Scenarios – a journal article by Dubash,
Radhika Khosla, Narasimha D Rao and Ankit Bhardwaj – as the 2018 recipient of its
Best ‘Emerging Regions’ Article. The article, which finds that India’s emissions from
energy will at least double from 2012 levels by 2030, also received wide coverage in
Physics World, Carbon Brief, Ideas for India, NDTV, and Live Mint in 2018.
As part of a new research project – Varieties of Climate Governance - Dubash and Aditya
Valiathan Pillai started work on a comparative analysis of climate institutions and
governance in eight countries, including India. The project brings together leading
academics, and aims to deepen understanding of institutional structures for
climate mitigation and adaptation in different countries.
Reviews of
India’s Climate and Energy Future India in a Warming World
Navroz K Dubash published a comprehensive edited book on climate change titled ‘...an important compilation
India in a Warming World: Integrating Climate and Development [Oxford University that’s an invaluable resource
Press (OUP) 2019], with contributions from more than 30 leading researchers, for journalists, academics,
policymakers, diplomats, and activists. The book is freely downloadable from OUP, civil servants, researchers
the first such book from OUP India. Dubash was also invited to discuss the book and anyone who’s more than
at literature festivals in Kolkata, Bangalore, Kozhikode, and Delhi, and featured as instrumentally curious about
a panellist at the Jaipur Literature Festival in an event co-hosted by CPR. The book all matters climate change of
has been positively reviewed in major publications, including The Hindu, The Indian relevance to India...this book
Express, Business Standard, Live Mint, and The Hindu BusinessLine. serves as a valuable guide to a
complicated future.’
The Hindu
‘The authors’ list reads like a

Who’s Who of those involved in
this domain...why this volume
works very well is not only the
multi-disciplinary take on the
issue of climate change, but
also the focus on getting to the
details.’
Business Standard
‘…climate change is the

gravest issue of our times,
and given how much India
stands to lose, an anthology
like India In a Warming World:
Integrating Climate Change
ICEE contributed to strategic thinking on climate law and policy in India. Shibani and Development is a welcome
Ghosh published a review paper on climate litigation in India in the American addition to the literature…For
Journal of International Law (AJIL) Unbound. Lavanya Rajamani and Dubash published a coherent action plan to be
a strategic roadmap for long-term climate policy and diplomacy as part of CPR’s articulated at the highest levels
Policy Challenges compendium. Dubash also continued to inform public dialogue of policymaking, a book like
on climate change in India via articles and quotes in outlets such as Hindustan Times [this] is essential.’
and India Today magazine. Live Mint

Navroz K Dubash, David Wallace-

Wells, Prem Jha and Marcus Moench
discussed climate change in India
at the Jaipur Literature Festival in
January 2020.
The Political Economy of Electricity in Indian States

ICEE launched a new project that aims to promote the development of state-
specific approaches to India’s electricity transition and stimulate engagement with
political opportunities and constraints in national electricity policy.
Dubash, Ashwini K Swain and Parth Bhatia published an article in The India Forum
on the political and institutional underpinnings of the current electricity system,
and what they mean for the expansion of renewable energy.
ICEE co-hosted several agenda-setting meetings on India’s energy transition with

Prayas (Energy Group) and the Regulatory Assistance Project, bringing together a
community of scholars and practitioners in the field.
Dubash and Swain analysed barriers to electricity access in a policy brief in CPR’s
Policy Challenges compendium, and ICEE frequently contributed to The Indian Express
to contextualise developments in the sector, discuss the importance of clean and
sustainable electricity, and highlight the institutional and regulatory challenges in
the sector.
Air Quality Governance and Regulation in India

Santosh Harish, Shibani Ghosh and Navroz K Dubash published a roadmap
to achieve clean air as part of CPR’s Policy Challenges compendium and wrote
extensively on the issue for various media outlets. Dubash and Harish frequently
appeared on TV and radio media, including NDTV, CNN, and All-India Radio to speak
about India’s approach to air quality governance; they were quoted extensively in
Hindustan Times, The Wire, Bloomberg News, and The Economic Times, among other
major print publications.
ICEE has been invited to share their recommendations with the Ministry of
Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), the Central Pollution Control
Board (CPCB), and the Ministry of Finance in its pre-budget consultations.
Harish contributed to civil society-led responses to the air pollution crisis, including
the United Residents Joint Action’s (URJA) clean air manifesto for the Delhi state
elections, and the Clean Air Collective’s broader efforts to mobilise Members of
Parliament (MPs) to drive action on air pollution.

Energy Demand in Urban India

Radhika Khosla, Neelanjan Sircar and Ankit Bhardwaj published research on
electricity demand transitions and climate mitigation in low-income urban
households in the journal Environmental Research Letters. ICEE co-hosted the second
annual roundtable on residential electricity consumption in India with Prayas
(Energy Group) and the University of Oxford. Participants shared experiences on
measuring residential electricity consumption in India and tracking changes in
cooling consumption.
Image Source: www.The Financial express.com

The Indian Coal Industry
Rohit Chandra contributed a chapter on the history of the Indian coal

industry to Brookings India’s forthcoming volume on the Indian coal
industry.
Chandra presented on Four Perspectives on the Indian Coal Industry

at TERI’s Future of Coal in India workshop in May 2019. Further, he
attended and presented original material at Prayas (Energy Group)-
CPR joint roundtables on market-based economic dispatch and
managing a fair transition away from coal.
Chandra also presented on Technological Evolution of India’s Coal Industry

(1947-Present) at the India Institute of Management Ahmedabad’s
Economic and Business History Conference.

Infrastructures and
Ecologies
Set up in 2019, this research theme advances multidisciplinary and applied research
on the political ecology of large infrastructures. It houses a cluster of new and
ongoing projects, at the intersection of infrastructure development, natural resource
management and legal governance frameworks at trans-national, national and
state levels.
Environmental Non-Compliance and Institutional Responses

The CPR-Namati Environmental Justice Program is a community-based action
research initiative that builds evidence on the environmental performance of
industries and infrastructure to inform policy and institutional responses to
compliance. This year, the Program published Closing the Enforcement Gap: A
community led groundtruthing of the expansion of a National Highway Project in Uttara
Kannada. This report documents the socio-economic, environmental and health
impacts arising out of the non-compliance of environmental safeguards of a road
project in Karnataka.
The Program continued its grassroots engagements through its network of

paralegals to shape state and national level research and policy efforts. Out of 141
cases of industrial non-compliance studied, institutional action to address impacts
were obtained in more than 100 instances. Affected communities and government
regulators such as pollution control boards, district collectorates, and State Ground
Water Boards conducted joint site inspections in 45 such cases. This is a shift in
regulatory practice that has usually involved only project authorities, and not those
affected by project operations.
Lessons from cases were compiled by CPR’s researchers and partner organisations
in the publication titled Making the law count – version 2. The publication was
compiled by Vidya Vishwanathan and has contributions by several CPR researchers.
Manju Menon and Kanchi Kohli contributed a paper titled Regulatory Reforms to
Address Environmental Non-Compliance to CPR’s Policy Challenges compendium. The
paper highlights the absence of an effective compliance regime that has led to a
large number of polluting projects operating with impunity and outlines steps to
establish monitoring of projects and their overall environmental performance.

India’s Forest Laws and Governance

Kanchi Kohli and Manju Menon were part of a team that
developed a free online learning tool on the history, legal
frameworks and grievance redressal mechanisms related to
forest governance in India. This project was undertaken with
Oxfam-India and Nagrik Learning, and its English version
was launched on March 21, the International Forest Day. The
course material included topics such as forest rights, forest
diversions, land acquisition, protected area management and
compensatory afforestation.
Kanchi Kohli authored an article on the contentious Supreme Court case on the Forest Rights
Act. The article puts the issue of ‘bogus’ forest claims within a larger context of infrastructure
uses of forests, exclusionary conservation projects and the framework of forest rights in
India. The article was published by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, New Delhi, in their dossier on
Investigating Infrastructure: Ecology, Sustainability and Society.
Urban Infrastructure Projects and Environmental Discourses

This participatory research, done in collaboration with several urban planning and ecology
experts and urban activists, analyses the socio-ecological aspects of urban infrastructure
and construction projects in Indian metro cities. The research includes case studies and
legal analyses of specific commercial and infrastructure projects. This work enabled policy
interventions and public engagements on aspects such as financialisation of public lands,
Transit Oriented Development (TOD), and urban tree transplantation policies. The research
team published a series of commentaries on the redevelopment of government housing
colonies in Delhi in various news portals.
Research and Policy Engagements

As part of the ongoing engagement with environment law amendments, CPR’s researchers
submitted detailed responses to several national legal and policy proposals on environment
law. In March 2020, the MoEF&CC released a draft Environmental Impact Assessment
Notification 2020 for public comments. Manju Menon and Kanchi Kohli wrote to the Ministry
requesting them to withdraw the notification and defer the process of public comments due to
the COVID-19 pandemic. The letter emphasised that the lockdown would hinder meaningful
public participation in the process of amending a legal instrument that has wide ramifications.
Manju Menon and Kanchi Kohli authored a paper on the historical and political economy
aspects of Environment Impact Assessments in India in the Research Handbook on Law,
Environment and the Global South, co-edited by Philippe Cullet and Sujith Koonan. Drawing
on their earlier work on the regulatory failure to protect coastal ecologies, they also
contributed a chapter on India’s coastal regulation law in Nature Conservation in the New
Economy: People, Wildlife and the Law in India, an edited volume by Ghazala Shahabuddin, K
Sivaramakrishnan and published by Orient Blackswan.
Manju Menon authored an article on the legal and environmental implications of

the government’s re-engagement with large hydropower development in Northeast
India for the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung’s web series on Investigating Infrastructure: Ecology,
Sustainability and Society.
The research analyses and perspectives generated on these themes have been widely
quoted by national and regional media and policy networks.

National Water Policy and
Transboundary River Water
Governance
As the Ministry of Jal Shakti (MoJS) Research Chair, Srinivas Chokkakula has been closely
engaging with the MoJS and associated institutions, in addition to pursuing critical
research interests around India’s transboundary governance issues, with a particular
focus on interstate river water disputes resolution. In November 2019, Chokkakula was
appointed as a member of the Drafting Committee for the National Water Policy. This
committee is entrusted with the responsibility of revising the national water policy, taking
into account the emerging challenges in water governance for long-term security.
The Transboundary Rivers, Ecologies, and Development Studies (TREADS) group that
Chokkakula leads has extended its interests to other relevant issues. TREADS collaborated
with the Accountability Initiative and other colleagues at CPR to conduct research on
federal governance for the World Bank and submitted the report on Water and Federalism.
The research findings were presented in a national workshop in May 2019 and received
much attention from policymakers. Federal water governance is evolving into a core
research interest for the group.
Chokkakula’s engagement as the Research Chair with key institutions of water governance
in the country included institutions like the National Water Academy (NWA), the Upper
Yamuna River Board (UYRB), the Yamuna Basin Organisation (YBO), the National
Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), and the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI).
The engagement involved invited talks, requests for inputs and conversations on future
collaborations for research and policy engagement. Some of these are evolving into
interesting research partnerships. In December 2019, the UYRB requested for a proposal to
study the implications of the Delhi-Himachal Pradesh Memorandum of Understanding.
Additionally, the YBO called for inputs into the proposed National Water Museum.
The TREADS group extended its engagement to states and their institutions in their efforts
to explore India’s history of interstate river water cooperation. These agencies include
the Cauvery Technical Cell in Tamil Nadu, the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory
Authority (MWRRA) and the Water Resources Departments in various states including
Gujarat, Karnataka, and Telangana.
The TREADS group, in collaboration with the Central Water Commission (CWC), has
organised six TREAD Talks under the CPR-CWC Dialogue Forum, a mandate of the Research
Chair. CPR also partnered with the CWC to organise sessions at the MoJS’s annual event,
the Sixth India Water Week on two themes – the increasing complexities of interstate river
water disputes and federal water governance challenges.
Chokkakula was invited as a resource person by the NWA, Pune. He conducted sessions for
the Mandatory Cadre Training Program of senior scale officers, and other special training
programs for senior officers of Central agencies and State water resources departments.

Chokkakula also delivered public lectures and talks on contemporary water

governance issues, addressing a variety of groups and platforms – civic society
forums, international development agencies, and academic conferences. Select talks
are listed below:
India’s ‘Water Crisis:’ Deconstructing the Discourse, Toxics Link Public Lecture, India
International Centre, New Delhi, 28 August 2019.
Transboundary Politics in the Kosi River Basin, Hans Siedel Foundation Conference,
Dhaka, 16-19 November 2019.
Interstate River Water Governance, Plenary talk at the conference on Transboundary

River Water Sharing in South Asia, UMISARC, Centre for South Asia Studies,
Pondicherry University, 20-21 February 2020.
Policy Engagements
The CWC requested Srinivas Chokkakula to give detailed inputs on the Interstate
River Water Disputes Amendment Bill 2019, passed by the Lok Sabha on 31 July
2019. Chokkakula has also been requested to provide inputs for the proposed River
Basin Management Bill, and the ongoing conversations between India and Nepal
over the Pancheshwar Project.
Chokkakula provided inputs for the Task Force on Jal Jeevan Mission on larger
water sector reforms for enduring outcomes of the Mission. Upon request, he
also developed several concept notes for discussion at various levels targeting
knowledge products and policy engagement. Some
of these include: Jal Jeevan Mission – an opportunity for
consensus building on Water Sector reforms; A Roundtable
of States on Progressive Pathways; Building New Federal
Consensus for Water Sector Reforms: Learning from GST
Council; An analytical frame for an evolutionary history of
MWRRA.
Chokkakula’s work has also informed the public

discourse over the Interstate River Water Disputes
Amendment Bill 2019. Several MPs consulted him for
their debates in parliament on the subject. His writings
have been read and used during the debate in the Lok
Sabha. He has also been cited and quoted extensively in Dr Chokkakula also
popular media outlets like The Economic Times, Business appeared in The Big Picture
World, and Nature India. of Rajya Sabha TV
As the expert member of the International Commission on Irrigation and

Drainage (ICID) Task Team on Transboundary Water Management – Agriculture
Water Management (TT-TWM-AGM), Chokkakula’s active participation has been
instrumental in shaping the Task Team’s agenda. The Task Team is set to put
together a repository of knowledge on transboundary water governance building
in the ICID member countries.

Image Source: scroll.in
Environmental Law
Research Handbook on Law, Environment and the Global South, co-edited by Philippe
Cullet and Sujith Koonan was published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This
comprehensive research handbook offers an innovative analysis of environmental
law in the global South and contributes to an important reassessment of some
of its major underlying concepts. The research handbook discusses areas rarely
prioritised in environmental law, such as land rights, and underlines how
these intersect with issues including poverty, livelihoods and the use of natural
resources, challenging familiar narratives around development and sustainability
in this context and providing new insights into environmental justice.
-taken from book description
Philippe Cullet was appointed as a Member of the Group of Experts on the Madhya
Pradesh Water Strategy by the Panchayat and Rural Development Department,
Government of Madhya Pradesh. Among the tasks assigned to the Group of
Experts, Cullet is most closely associated with the drafting of the proposed
Madhya Pradesh Right to Water (Conservation Sustainable Use) Act, 2019. Further,
Cullet also made a submission on Legal Aspects of Water to the the Committee set
up to draft the National Water Policy by the MoJS.
Cullet authored a chapter, The Human Right to Water – A Testing Ground for Neoliberal
Policies in the book, Human Rights in India, edited by Satvinder Juss. He also wrote
an article, Fostering the Realisation of the Right to Water: Need to Ensure Universal Free
Provision and to Recognise Water as a Common Heritage in the National Law School of
India Review.

International Relations
and Security
CPR’s experts analyse the past and present of India’s role in the
shifting global order through a range of disciplinary lenses.
From nuclear strategy and military history to trans-boundary

water sharing and social narratives of India’s borderlands, the
Centre explores international relations from both traditional
and alternative perspectives.
Image Source: Hindustan Times
Understanding China
Nimmi Kurian delivered a set of four lectures on Development Shyam Saran served as a member of the Governing Board of
and Inequality in India and China, at the School of International the Institute of Chinese Studies, India’s premier think tank
Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), in April and for the study of China.
May 2019.
Saran participated in the annual India-China dialogue at
Kurian was invited to deliver a talk on Designed to Fail: What the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore. He
is Wrong with the India-China Dialogue on Water? organised was also the lead speaker at the Conference on International
by the Department of International Relations, Ashoka Cooperation in Beijing in May 2019; a conference on the
University, in September 2019. European economy and India-China relations in Genoa,
Italy, in June 2019; and at the India Forum on China, held in
Kurian was an invited speaker at the roundtable on US-China Goa in December 2019.
Strategic Engagement during Xi Jinping’s Leadership, organised
by the Centre for East Asian Studies, JNU, in November 2019. Zorawar Daulet Singh authored an article titled Rethinking
India’s Approach to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, published in
Kurian was invited to review a manuscript proposal for a the June 2019 edition of Economic and Political Weekly.
Special Issue titled Small States and India-China Issues in the
Northern Indian Ocean Region for the Journal of the Indian Ocean Daulet Singh delivered an address on History of India-China
Region in December 2019. relations since the 1940s at the National Defence College,
New Delhi.
Kurian was invited to deliver a talk on China and Hong Kong
for the Indian Foreign Service Officer Trainees Induction Training
Program at the Foreign Services Institute in January 2020.

South Asia
Nimmi Kurian’s research paper, Re-engaging the International: Kurian was an invited speaker at the panel discussion on
A Social History of the Trans-Himalayan Borderlands, was Tibet and the Himalayan Borderlands, organised by the India
published in the Journal of Borderlands Studies (Joensuu, International Centre in August 2019.
Finland), as part of a Special Issue on Post-Colonial and Post-
Partition South Asia, in March 2020. Kurian chaired a talk by Douglas Hill on De-securitising
Himalayan River Basins: People, Ecology and Multi-Stakeholder
Kurian’s review of the book, India’s Spatial Imaginations Dialogues, organised by the Department of International
of South Asia: Power, Commerce and Community, (Oxford Relations and Governance Studies, Shiv Nadar University, in
University Press, 2019) was published in the India Quarterly August 2019.
in March 2020.
Kurian was invited to serve as External Academic Expert
Kurian’s research paper entitled, Tibet and the Himalayan (2019-2021) by the Centre for East Asian Studies, JNU.
Borderlands: Thinking Sub-regionally about Sustainable
Development, was published in the edited volume titled Kurian conducted the viva voce as the external examiner
The State of Ecology of the Tibetan Plateau, (Academic for the MPhil dissertation titled Hosting Rohingya Refugees:
Foundation, 2019). Explaining the Factors Influencing Bangladesh’s ‘Humanitarian’
Response, at the South Asian University in October 2019.
Kurian presented a paper entitled, Foreshadowing Faultlines:
Tracing the Intellectual Roots of Ethnocultural Conflict in Shyam Saran served as a Member of the Advisory Council of
Myanmar, at the international conference on Conflict in the World Bank South Asia Champions’ Group.
Southeast Asia, organised by Synod College and North
Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong, in November 2019.

India and the World
Nimmi Kurian, Bharat Karnad, Shyam Saran, and Zorawar Saran continued to serve as a Life Trustee at the India
Daulet Singh wrote articles in CPR’s Policy Challenges International Centre, and a Trustee at the World Wildlife
compendium on issues of foreign policy and national security. Fund (India). He is an Independent Director on the board of
the Press Trust of India and a Member of the advisory council
Kurian delivered the inaugural address on The United Nations of the Confederation of Indian Industries. Additionally, he is
and Youth at the Model United Nations event conducted at the also on the editorial advisory board of Business Standard.
DAV Public School in October 2019.
Saran continued to serve as the Co-Chair of the India-
Kurian was invited to be the reviewer for the Fulbright- Bhutan Eminent Persons’ Group.
Nehru doctoral, post-doctoral and Professional Excellence
Fellowships in the field of International Security and Strategic Saran also served on the board of the Welham’s School in
Studies from August to September 2019. Dehradun and on the board of Sahapedia, a web based
portal on India’s cultural heritage.
Kurian reviewed a manuscript for the International Feminist
Journal of Politics in July 2019. Gautam Mukhopadhaya delivered the convocation address
at the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Guwahati
Shyam Saran was conferred with Japan’s second highest on A Regional Strategy for the North East of India in May 2019.
national award, the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star,
for his contributions to strengthen strategic ties and enhance As part of the Distinguished Lecture Series organised by the
mutual understanding between India and Japan, in May 2019 . Ministry of External Affairs, Mukhopadhaya delivered
lectures on Geopolitics, Act East and the North East of India
and Indian Foreign Policy: Changing Dynamics at the National
Institute of Technology, Arunachal Pradesh and the Indian
Institute of Technology, Guwahati, respectively.
Mukhopadhaya analysed the US-Taliban peace deal and

the developments in Afghanistan in the media through
commentaries in popular platforms such as Outlook, ThePrint
and The Hindu.
Zorawar Daulet Singh authored an article titled India’s

Civilisational Identity and the World Order, published in the
Saran was a lead speaker at several national and international September 2019 edition of Economic and Political Weekly. The
conferences, including the World Bank Conference on article explores the changing world order and how India can
International Mediation in Nepal, India Connect in Dubai, the navigate it using its civilisational ethos of reconciling different
JP Morgan International Advisory Council meeting in Delhi, the ideas.
World Bank Champions’ meeting in Kathmandu, and the Jaipur
Literature Festival in Jaipur. Daulet Singh authored an article titled India’s Grand Strategy
Needs a Second Act, published in the December 2019 edition
Saran conducted a course on foreign policy at the Indian of Economic and Political Weekly. The article explores the
School of Business in November 2019. chasm India faces between its global aspirations and the
reality of its national power.

International Relations and Security
Daulet Singh participated in a session on Redefining Eurasia Daulet Singh delivered a series of lectures as part of the first
– Managing the Supercontinent at the conference on Indian- Special Course for diplomats of various countries including
Russian Relations in a New Strategic Context, organised by Egypt, Angola, and Botswana at the Ministry of External
the Valdai Club in partnership with the Observer Research Affairs in New Delhi.
Foundation (ORF) in Moscow, Russia.
Key Events
CPR scholars continued to analyse the geopolitical implications of critical
developments in India and the world through timely discussions, lectures and
workshops. Some of these include:
Panel Discussion on Article 370: The Road Ahead | September 2019

This panel examined the implications of the abrogation of Article 370 and 35A
on domestic and international politics, including questions related to national
security, Centre-state relations, geopolitics in South Asia, and Indo-US relations.
Speakers: Tilak Devasher (Member,

National Security Advisory Board and
Consultant, Vivekananda International
Foundation); Shyam Saran (Senior Fellow,
CPR and former Foreign Secretary); and
moderated by Yamini Aiyar (President and
Chief Executive, CPR) .
Panel Discussion on Options for Afghanistan : The Trump Tweets and After
| September 2019
This panel examined the status and contents of the US-Taliban talks and the
importance of the Presidential elections in Afghanistan.
Speakers: Saad Mohseni (Director, Moby
Group); Tahir Qadiry (Chargé d’Affaires,
Embassy of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan,
New Delhi); Jayant Prasad (former Indian
Ambassador to Afghanistan); Amar Sinha
(Member, National Security Advisory
Board and former Indian Ambassador to
Afghanistan); Gautam Mukhopadhaya
(Senior Visiting Fellow, CPR and former
Ambassador of India to Afghanistan,
Syria, and Myanmar); and chaired by Jyoti
Malhotra (Editor, National and Strategic
Affairs, ThePrint)

International Relations and Security
Talk on Afghan Peace & Regional Dynamics: India’s Role | October 2019
The talk explored India’s role in the peace process in Afghanistan post Donald
Trump’s announcement to call off the meeting with Taliban representatives at
Camp David.
Speaker: Muqaddesa Yourish (former Deputy Minister of Commerce for
Afghanistan); chaired by Nimmi Kurian (Professor, CPR)
The West Asia: Conflicts series discussion on The Syrian Conundrum and
Conflict | October 2019
The West Asia: Conflicts series is a series of events focusing on tensions and conflicts
in parts of West Asia with which India has historically had close ties, and which
have wider regional and geopolitical ramifications. The first event in the series
aimed to understand the state of affairs in Syria.
Speakers: Gautam Mukhopadhaya (Senior

Visiting Fellow, CPR and former Ambassador
of India to Afghanistan, Syria, and Myanmar);
V P Haran (former Ambassador of India to
Syria and Bhutan); Niraj Srivastava (former
Second Secretary, Embassy of India, Damascus
and former Ambassador of India to Denmark
and Uganda); Kabir Taneja (Fellow, Strategic
Studies Programme, ORF); and chaired by
Bhaskar Balakrishnan (former Counsellor and
Charge D’Affaires Embassy of India in Syria
and former Ambassador of India to Greece and
Cuba).
Discussion on Getting Off the RCEP Bus : Is There an Alternative Route for
India? | November 2019
The discussion focused on the geopolitical implications of India’s decision to not
join the Regional Comprehensive Cooperation Partnership (RCEP).
Speakers: VS Seshadri (former

Vice-Chairman, Research and
Information System for Developing
Countries); and Shyam Saran (Senior
Fellow, CPR and former Foreign
Secretary)

Law, Regulation,
and the State Image Source: thewire.in
CPR seeks to understand the deep drivers of India’s democratic

experience, engaging scholars and practitioners to explore
fundamental questions about governance and social change.
The Centre’s experts examine how laws, institutions, and the
Constitution shape the lives of Indians, and what they mean for rights
ranging from human and religious to intellectual property and land.
Tracking Social Policy
Image Source: scroll.in

Implementation
In 2019, the Accountability Initiative (AI) invested time and effort in growing
activities and building on ideas with policymakers, scholars, and citizens, whose
contribution is critical to enabling Responsive Governance – the vision of the initiative.
AI’s flagship Planning, Allocations and Expenditures, Institutions Studies in

Accountability (PAISA) methodology was expanded to include three new areas –
nutrition, child protection, and water, apart from education. An extensive process
tracking study to understand bottlenecks and best practices in implementing
publicly funded direct nutrition interventions such as the Integrated Child
Development Services (ICDS), was completed in six districts across three states.
Preliminary findings have been shared with NITI Aayog and have also been
presented to different stakeholders.
The year also marked a significant milestone for AI in providing long-term, direct
institutional support to state-level policymakers. In January 2020, AI, in partnership
with the State Capacity Initiative at CPR, signed a three-year Memorandum of
Understanding (MoU) with the Government of Meghalaya to provide research
support to the state. Further, AI’s second study for the 15th Finance Commission
using a sample survey of Gram Panchayats to determine the quantum of funds
received, their implications on panchayat financing and how they were spent, was
completed and is available on the Finance Commission website.
In 2019, AI extensively studied schemes for women and Volunteer surveyors of the PAISA
children. One such study, supported by UNICEF Maharashtra study with a beneficiary.
as part of a longer MoU with UN Women and the Government
of Maharashtra, mapped Maharashtra government’s efforts
towards protection against violence for women and children.
Recommendations on formulating legislative and policy
measures to strengthen the system have been shared, and the
policy brief is available on the AI website. As part of another
project, the status and fund flow mechanisms of three different
schemes over two years (Financial Years 2018-19 and 2019-20)
were analysed in sample districts. The schemes were: Child
Protection Services (CPS), the Supplementary Nutrition Program
(SNP) under the ICDS scheme, MAMATA scheme of Odisha, and
the Rashtriya Kishore Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK) focussing on
adolescent health in Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh.

Law, Regulation, and the State
A glimpse of Hum Aur

Humaari Sarkaar classroom
Offering learning opportunities to potential changemakers was a top priority for AI.
sessions in progress.
AI’s flagship learning program – Hum Aur Humaari Sarkaar – primarily aimed at Civil
Society Organisations (CSOs), publicly invited applications for four open courses
in 2019. Courses were held in Jaipur, Udaipur, Bhopal, and Patna. A customised
one for the Bhopal School of Social Sciences supported by the University Grants
Commission was also conducted. A new website – humaarisarkaar.in – was launched
to share resources on governance in Hindi to facilitate community building among
state-based practitioners, an opportunity that they seldom have. To complement
the website, a newsletter called Pahel was released later in the year.
In order to spark dialogues on critical issues related to Responsive Governance,

AI extensively made use of strategic communication efforts. A priority in 2019
was providing the digital community with a strong online platform to engage on
governance matters. In May, a revamped website, fit-for-purpose to a variety of
readers was launched. The Edit, AI’s monthly newsletter was subsequently launched
in August. Free of subscription cost, it features exclusive research insights, expert
analyses and commentary.
Four major events were organised. The first, organised in Jaipur, included research
organisations, NGOs, and the media to discuss the recent school consolidation
policy, and broader challenges of the public school education system in Rajasthan.
Second, as part of the flagship Policy In-Depth discussion series, the role of Centrally
Sponsored Schemes in the Indian welfare system was detailed. A special session
on Responsive Governance, was hosted with Dr Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner, Assistant
Professor of Politics and Global Studies at the University of Virginia. Drawing on
extensive fieldwork in rural India, she presented invaluable insights into whether,
how, and why citizens engage with public officials to secure their entitlements.
Dr Jonathan Fox, known for his work on citizen participation, transparency, and
accountability, also had a wide-ranging discussion on accountability with the AI
team in Delhi.
TR Raghunandan, advisor to AI, authored a book titled, Everything You Ever Wanted
to Know about Bureaucracy But Were Afraid to Ask, published by Penguin India. The
book aims to deconstruct the structure of the bureaucracy and how it functions for
the understanding of the common person, and replaces the anxiety that people
feel when they step into a government office with a healthy dollop of irreverence.
- Taken from book description
Yamini Aiyar co-edited the May 2019 issue of Seminar Magazine with Louise Tillin.
The issue focussed on the future of federalism in India and contained articles by
Avani Kapur, Rahul Verma, and Neelanjan Sircar from CPR.

Other Highlights from AI

AI’s flagship Budget Briefs series entered their eleventh year of publication with the
preparation of two volumes – one during the Interim Budget and the other after the
tabling of the full Budget by the new government in July 2019. The Budget Briefs analysed
trends in allocations and expenditures of ten major Centrally Sponsored Schemes.
The draft National Education Policy (NEP) released in May 2019 has mooted the creation
of school complexes for better resourcing of government schools and curbing low student
enrollment. AI released a working paper in 2019, a first-of-its-kind account of this process.
An analysis entitled, Towards ‘Cooperative’ Social Policy Financing in India, authored by Avani
Kapur, was published as part of CPR’s Policy Challenges compendium.
The following training sessions were conducted for top bureaucrats:

. Comptroller and Auditor General’s Advanced Management Group on the importance of
probing deeper and considering the why, what and how of social policy evaluations in
audit and accounts.
. A session on understanding social accountability (tools) in public policy formulation as part
of the Workshop on Public Policy Formulation (WPPF) for Director-level government officials in
the Union Government at the Indian Institute of Secretariat Training and Management.
. Finance Officers, Government of Odisha on the relevance of earmarking resources for
children and child budgeting as a policy tool.
. Planning secretaries on the changes in the state machinery, specifically looking at the role of
the Planning Commission, its dismantling and the subsequent creation of the NITI Aayog.
. Indian Civil Account Service (ICAS) probationers at the National Institute of Public
Finance and Policy (NIPFP) on Accountability Initiatives in Public Service Delivery as part of
the Emerging Issues and Challenges in Public Finance and Policy.
Workshops for the next generation of development leaders were held at: Harvard EPoD
Fellows; LAMP Fellows; Flame University; Young India Foundation, and the University of Delhi.
Hum Aur Humaari Sarkaar learning program fostered institutional partnerships with:
Pratham India to train their state-level staff based on their needs; Ibtada, an NGO
operational in Rajasthan; and Nehru Yuva Kendra for their volunteers in Rajasthan.
Understanding State Capabilities learning program was held for students of the University of
Chicago Fellowship, and the Indian School of Development Management. The courses,
conducted in English, explored the root causes of administrative and fiscal failures.
Civil society engagement:

. AI held sessions on the fundamentals of public policy with the international NGO,
World Vision.
. A
I participated in a multi-national event organised by Community of Practitioners
on Accountability and Social Action in Health (COPASAH), sharing ideas on building
responsive governance.
. A s a panellist, AI staff shared insights on the adoption of technology in governance as
part of a session organised by the Indian Institute of Public Administration, Delhi. The
program included officers of All-India Services, Central Services, Defence Services, and
the Technical Services.
. A I contributed to a Digital Dialogue Roundtable held by Department of Information
Technology, Government of Rajasthan, on the Jan Soochna Portal.
. AI researchers were invited to participate in a colloquium organised by the National
Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA).

Image Source: pixabay.com

Contributing to Education
Policy Debates
Kiran Bhatty worked on a research project on open government in education,

which was part of an eight-country study sponsored by the International Institute
for Educational Planning (IIEP-UNESCO) in Paris. This study involved evaluating
social audits in education conducted in Delhi and Udaipur, Rajasthan.
Bhatty also did research on the public-private divide in elementary education,

the links between fascist regimes, privatisation, and the role of non-state actors in
education. The first resulted in a research proposal on drawing the boundary between
public and private in education, to be pursued at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. The second led to a journal article for International
Sociology, and the third to a proposal to write the South Asia Regional Report as part
of the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report 2021, brought out by UNESCO.
Bhatty was a member of the editorial team for the Critical Issues in Education and
Development book series set up by the Open University, UK. She was also a member of
the advisory group on the research project, A Fair Chance for Education: Gendered Pathways
to Educational Success in Haryana, being undertaken by Warwick University, UK.
Bhatty continued to serve on the advisory committee at NIEPA to formulate the

policy research strategy for the institute. She is also a Member of the curriculum
advisory committee at NIEPA to develop the curriculum for programs on education.
Additionally, she organised and participated in several policy workshops around

the draft NEP and provided inputs to members of the committee on the draft. She
also lectured at the Ambedkar University and Jawaharlal Nehru University among
others and published in the mainstream media. She has also participated in a
number of seminars on education policy and state capacity in education.
Bhatty authored an article titled, The Numbers Game: Suggestions for Improving School
Education Data, published in CPR’s Policy Challenges compendium, highlighting how
better data can improve public education in India. Yamini Aiyar authored an article
titled, Schooling is not Learning, published in the same compendium, highlighting
the learning crisis in the country.
Jishnu Das co-authored an article titled, Teacher Value Added in a Low-Income Country,
with Natalie Bau, published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. The
article demonstrates the importance of teachers for learning as well as the variation
between teachers in their ‘value-added’. Das also worked on the study, Upping the
Ante: The Equilibrium Effects of Unconditional Grants to Private Schools, forthcoming in
The American Economic Review.

Image Source: landportal.org
Land Rights in India
CPR’s Land Rights Initiative (LRI) completed five years in 2019. Credited with pioneering
land rights research in the policy space, LRI’s milestone year witnessed important
research outputs, extensive policy engagements, stakeholder consultations, and the
development of national and international research collaborations.
Understanding Land Conflict

Namita Wahi wrote a piece on Understanding Land Conflict in India: Suggestions for Reform
for CPR’s Policy Challenges compendium, outlining legislative, administrative, and
judicial factors responsible for land conflict. She also wrote an op-ed summarising
some of the key findings of the paper.
Land Acquisition in India

LRI’s report, Land Acquisition in India: A Review of Supreme Court cases from 1950 to 2016, the
first ever comprehensive study of all Supreme Court cases on land acquisition, was cited
by the Solicitor General before a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court deciding
between competing interpretations of Section 24 of the Right to Fair Compensation
and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013.
Namita Wahi advised various senior advocates appearing on behalf of landowners on
the law of land acquisition, and findings from the research study.
For the second year, Wahi lectured in a training program organised by the National
Institute for Defence Estates Management (NIDEM) on the law and practice of land
acquisition in India.
Wahi also participated in workshops on land acquisition and land disputes organised
by the Centre for Rural Studies (CRS) at the Lal Bahadur Sastri National Academy of
Administration (LBSNAA).
Land Rights in Scheduled Areas

Namita Wahi served as an expert advisor to the National Commission for Scheduled
Tribes on a report prepared for the Commission on Tribal Land Alienation in India.

Wahi participated in a national seminar organised by the Dr Ram Dayal Munda

Tribal Welfare Research Institute in Ranchi to help draft a Jharkhand Tribal Sub Plan
Law. At the seminar, she presented research from the report, The Legal Regime and
Political Economy of Land Rights of Scheduled Tribes in Scheduled Areas of India, which she
co-authored with Ankit Bhatia. Wahi and Bhatia also presented research from the
report at the Tribal Leadership Programme organised by Tata Steel in Panchgani, and at
Samvaad 2019, a tribal conclave organised by TATA Steel in Jamshedpur, respectively.
Wahi presented findings at a discussion organised by the National Human Rights

Commission on Securing Tribal Rights through PESA: Issues, Challenges and Way Forward.
The Right to Property

Namita Wahi worked on her forthcoming book manuscript, The History of the Right to
Property in India, for which she was awarded the New India Fellowship, 2018.
Wahi was also a discussant for a World Bank discussion on Women’s Land Rights in the
Context of Agriculture and Women Economic Empowerment Interventions.
Land Rights Initiative team at

India Land and Development
Conference 2020
(L-R) Vrinda Bhardwaj, Ankit
Bhatia, Aakansha Jain, Namita
Wahi, Kaustuv Debiswas,
Sanjana Sethi
New Areas of Research

LRI co-organised the fourth India Land and Development Conference (ILDC), where it
hosted two panels which outlined its future projects – Data Analytics for Legal Texts
(DALTON) and Mapping India Land Laws (MILL):
DALTON: LRI hosted a panel discussion on Accessing Justice: Deciphering Decisions

LRI team conducting
through Data Analytics, at which Namita Wahi, Kaustuv DeBiswas and Ankit Bhatia fieldwork in Gujarat
showcased preliminary findings from their pilot project on using machine learning to
analyse legal texts in order to speed up legal analysis and enable more comprehensive,
cross cutting studies on legal databases.
MILL: At ILDC, LRI also hosted a masterclass, One Thousand Land Laws: From Archive to
Architecture, where Wahi, DeBiswas, and Aakansha Jain, gave a preview of a forthcoming
interactive web portal featuring the most comprehensive repository of land laws in
India. Wahi, Bhatia, Jain, and Avaneendra Khare conducted extensive archival and field
research for collecting land laws, and understanding the social and political context
within which these laws operate in the states of Gujarat, Jharkhand, and Punjab.
Wahi also participated in a webinar on Building Land Information Ecosystem in India,

organised by Land Portal at ILDC.
Further, DeBiswas and Jain participated in a pre-conference event, Geospatial Round

Table on Land Tenure.

National and International Research Collaborations
Namita Wahi and Aakansha Jain at

Bergen Exchanges, at the roundtable on
“Indigenous Rights as Political Tools -
Struggles over Land and Identity”
International Partnerships for Excellent Education Centre for Rural Studies (CRS), LBSNAA: CPR and
and Research (INTPART) Collaboration: Pursuant CRS, LBSNAA signed an MoU and entered into a
to the INTPART collaboration between LRI and the research collaboration that recognises both CPR and
Centre on Law and Social Transformation, University CRS as centres of excellence, and enables them to
of Bergen (LawTransform), Namita Wahi spent three design trainings, research programs, seminars and
months in Bergen teaching and developing research workshops, and to disseminate research on areas of
collaborations with researchers at the University of shared interest. Wahi and Yamini Aiyar are the two
Bergen, and Chr. Michelsen Institute where she is a representatives of CPR on the core committee to
Visiting Fellow. Wahi lectured on The Right to Land execute this research collaboration.
and Indigenous Rights in the PhD program on Effects of
Lawfare, and led a group of PhD scholars in developing Property Rights Research Consortium: LRI is part of
their research proposals. Aakansha Jain participated a four-institution research consortium supported by
in the PhD program, and wrote a research paper titled, the Omidyar Network, which includes the Brookings
Understanding Left Wing Extremism in the Context of Lack Institute, the National Institute for Public Finance and
of Effective Political Representation of Scheduled Tribes in Policy (NIPFP), and the National Council for Applied
India. Wahi and Jain also participated in the Bergen Economic Research’s (NCAER) Land Policy Initiative.
Exchanges, a week-long scholarly exchange organised The LRI team comprising of Namita Wahi, Ankit
by Siri Gloppen and Malcolm Langford, Co-Directors Bhatia, Aakansha Jain, and Sanjana Sethi, outlined
of LawTransform. Wahi chaired, and Jain participated its Vision 2022 with respect to its research projects on
in a roundtable on Indigenous Rights as Political Tools - DALTON and MILL at the consortium. Wahi is on the
Struggles over Land and Identity. Jain also participated Advisory Committee of NCAER’s Land Policy Initiative
in a roundtable on Innovative Teaching on Law and Social and has advised them on the making of the National
Change: Student Perspective. Land Records and Services Index, 2020. She has been a
discussant for NIPFP’s paper, Legislative strategy to
Stanford Law School: Wahi developed a research amend the Hindu Succession Act, and has participated
collaboration with the Rule of Law program at the in a roundtable organised by Brookings Institute on
Stanford Law School led by Erik Jensen, pursuant to Critical Connectivity Infrastructure Projects: Accelerating
which she helped Dinsha Mistree, Research Fellow and Land Acquisition Abroad to Enhance India’s Regional
Lecturer at the program, to organise the Global Poverty, Connectivity.
Corruption and the Law: India Field Study. Wahi gave a
lecture on Comparative Fundamentals of the Indian and
US legal system, and Rahul Verma lectured on Indian
politics at the program.

Social and
Economic Rights
Namita Wahi wrote a research paper titled, Social and Economic rights and Distributive
Justice: Land and Health Care based on a summer course she taught at the Academy
of European Law, European University Institute in 2018. The paper will be part of a
forthcoming volume to be published by Oxford University Press.
Wahi participated in the eighth meeting of the International Social and Economic
Rights Programme (ISERP), co-organised by the Northeastern University Law School
and the Free State Centre for Human Rights, Free State University, Bloemfontein,
South Africa.
Wahi presented a paper, Litigating Right to Water in India, at a panel on Elevating

Water Rights to Human Rights: Has it Strengthened Marginalised People’s claim to
Water at the annual meeting of the Law and Society Association, Washington DC.
Wahi participated in a roundtable on the topic as part of the Natural Resources and
Climate Lawfare cluster at the Bergen Exchanges. Further, Wahi and Arkaja Singh
also participated in a book workshop on this project, where Wahi presented her
paper on Litigating Right to Water in India and Singh presented her paper, The Right
to Water in Indian Cities: Negotiation, Tactics and Law. Singh will be co-editing this
forthcoming book.
Wahi participated in deliberations and drafting of arguments with lawyers

representing petitioners challenging the constitutional validity of the Citizenship
(Amendment) Act, 2019.

State Capacity
In 2019, CPR launched the State Capacity Initiative, a new interdisciplinary research
and practice program focused on addressing the challenges of the 21st-century Indian
state. Through the Initiative, CPR aims to place the critical challenges of building
state capacity at the heart of the field of policy research in the country, where it has
always belonged but remains surprisingly marginalised. The Initiative’s work focuses
on the changing roles of the Indian state; institutional design, implementation and
administrative capacity, local bureaucracies and frontline functionaries; the particular
challenges of regulatory and fiscal capacity; and the complex and changing relations
between society, politics, and state capacity in India.
In its first year, the State Capacity Initiative has focused on building a core team
and developing a program of work in partnerships with a range of individuals and
organisations.
The team is multidisciplinary with a range of professional skills and diverse sectoral
experience and expertise. Researchers are trained in law, economics, anthropology,
sociology, political science, statistics, engineering, public management, and
public policy from leading Indian and global universities. They bring professional
experience as academics, policy researchers, civil servants, engineers, consultants,
development practitioners, lawyers, and grant managers.
In 2019, two highly engaged brainstorming and partnership building workshops

were led by Yamini Aiyar and Mekhala Krishnamurthy (Senior Fellow & Director of
the Initiative), in New Delhi in April 2019, and at the London School of Economics
(LSE) in September 2019. Both were attended by senior bureaucrats, public sector
leaders, global funders and development institutions, and leading scholars in the
field of state capacity. Both workshops generated collaborative ideation, project
development, and major grant proposals.
The Initiative is currently engaged in research on the moral economy of the

bureaucracy, bureaucratic norms and organisational cultures; consultants;
resource support structures and state capacity; the administrative life of the district
and frontline functionaries of the Indian state; urbanisation and state capacity; and
state capacity and the economy.
Rahul Verma, Rahul Sharma, and Priyadarshini Singh conducted a survey during the
Delhi Assembly Election 2020 to understand the effect of public goods provision on
voting decisions. Preliminary findings were shared at a seminar held in February 2020.
Rohit Chandra conducted an evaluation of the Ministry of Commerce’s Trade

Infrastructure for Export Scheme (TIES).

BIARI 2020
CPR’s State Capacity Initiative and the Brown International

Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI) based at Brown
University’s Watson Institute for International and Public
Affairs, Providence, United States, organised a week-long
residential workshop in Delhi from January 8-14, 2020.
BIARI is a unique platform that convenes early career
participants across academic and professional fields
working on pressing global issues around the world.
BIARI 2020, titled Seeing the State: Unpacking the Challenge

of State Capacity and Development, was co-convened by
Patrick Heller, Mekhala Krishnamurthy, and Yamini
Aiyar. Distinguished international faculty from Brown
University, CPR, and partners institutions in Argentina,
Colombia, and Mexico, as well as leaders from the civil
services and civil society conducted lectures and seminars
at the workshop. Thirty early career and rising scholars focus on local governments; core welfare functions and
participated from India, US, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, emerging challenges facing the Indian state such as
and South Africa. urbanisation and cultures; and practices and norms of the
Indian state. A key objective of BIARI 2020 was to examine
BIARI 2020 focused on contemporary challenges of state capacity in India in a comparative international
state capacity in India and the broader methodological context. The program also aimed to encourage a wider
approaches to study the state, particularly at the frontline. set of researchers to study the state collaboratively, and
Thematic focus areas included the bureaucracy and through this, contribute to the currently thin body of
administrative reforms; federal structures with a particular empirical knowledge on how the Indian state works.

Key Events
The State Capacity Initiative launched a seminar series to bring
both multi-disciplinary academic research and institutional
learnings and diverse case studies from the field to a wider
public audience. Seminars held in 2019-20 include:
Why Does the Indian State Both Succeed and Fail by Devesh
Kapur, Starr Foundation South Asia Studies Professor
and Asia Programs Director at the Paul H. Nitze School
of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins
University, Washington, DC (July 2019)
Bringing Voters to the Polling Booth: What
State Capacity for Cities: Staffing and Cadre Restructuring in can we learn from the Banda Model?
Madhya Pradesh by Neelesh Dubey, Deputy Director, Urban
Administration and Development Department, Government
of Madhya Pradesh (September 2019)
Bringing Voters to the Polling Booth: What can we learn from the
Banda Model? by Heera Lal, IAS, District Magistrate, Banda,
Uttar Pradesh (October 2019)
Government at the Grassroots: A Case Study of Field Administration

by Rashmi Sharma, Former IAS Officer, Senior Fellow, ICRIER
(November 2019)
Growth and State Capacity: Rules, Deals and Short and Long Run
Effects by Lant Pritchett, Senior Visiting Fellow, CPR, and RISE Building Regulatory Capacity: The
Research Director at the Blavatnik School of Government, Experience of MahaRERA
University of Oxford (November 2019)
Building Regulatory Capacity: The Experience of MahaRERA by

Gautam Chatterjee, Chairperson, Maharashtra Real Estate
Regulatory Authority (December 2019)
A panel discussion on What Ails India’s Statistical System ?

featuring Somesh Jha, Special Correspondent, Business
Standard; Rukmini S, Data Journalist; and Pramit
Bhattacharya, Data Editor, Mint; and moderated by Rahul
Verma, Fellow, CPR (March 2020)
A panel discussion on What Ails India’s

Design Support to States Statistical System ?
The Government of Meghalaya has entered into a three-

year collaboration with CPR (State Capacity and the
Accountability Initiatives) on budgets and public finance.
Yamini Aiyar was appointed by the Government of Punjab

to serve as a member of the Punjab State Advisory Council
to aid and advise the State Government in defining and
implementing transformation governance reforms.

Sensitising Policymakers
The Governance and Public Policy Initiative (GPPI) engaged with various Lok Sabha
and Rajya Sabha members and other multi-party groups of political leaders focusing
on a range of issues around social implications of technology and policy requirements
in India. In this regard, during the 2019 Budget Session and the Winter Session, GPPI,
in collaboration with the Omidyar Network, with participation from the Technology
and Society (TechSoc) Initiative at CPR, held the following two roundtable discussions:
Roundtable discussion on
Artificial Intelligence: Social
Impact and Implications
Roundtable discussion on Artificial Intelligence: Social Impact and Implications in June 2019.
This discussion examined how AI is being conceptualised and deployed to address
persistent development challenges such as in healthcare, education, agriculture,
infrastructure and mobility in India, and the current limitations of developing such
AI systems. Monojit Choudhury, Researcher, Microsoft Research Lab; Urvashi Aneja,
Founding Director, Tandem Research; Pooja Rao, R&D Head & Co-founder, Qure.ai;
and Vikrom Mathur, Founding Director, Tandem Research explained various aspects
and implications of AI in India, particularly in the health sector.
Roundtable discussion on
Regulating the ‘Big Tech’ (FB,
Twitter & Others )

Roundtable discussion on Regulating the ‘Big Tech’ (FB, Twitter & Others ) in December
2019. This discussion aimed to address the implications of Big Tech and growing
privacy concerns in the Indian context. Deepak Maheshwari, Director, Government
Affairs, India, ASEAN & China, Symantec; Urvashi Aneja, Founding Director, Tandem
Research; and Smitha Krishna Prasad, Associate Director, Centre for Communication
Governance, National Law University, Delhi discussed the growing ‘tech-lash’ against
Big Tech companies for their growing market capture and political and social
influence, particularly in influencing voter behavior. The TechSoc Initiative also
prepared a primer on the issue of Pegasus, a mobile phone spyware which is known
to be used by governments for snooping and surveillance. The brief highlighted
the recommendations by the United Nations (UN) in addition to the immediate
moratorium placed by the UN on the sale, transfer and use of surveillance technology
until human rights-compliant regulatory frameworks are in place.
Image Source: indiatoday.in

Technology, Law and Society
During the Winter Session of Parliament, the Personal Data Protection Bill,
2019 was introduced. Following the introduction, comments were invited from
stakeholders, civil society organisations and individuals. The TechSoc Initiative
at CPR made submissions on certain fundamental issues with some of the policy
choices and specific provisions in the Bill. These were classified under three
broad types of implications: rights and fairness; trade and innovation; and lack of
regulatory vision.
The TechSoc Intiative launched a new series on Navigating Interactions between

Technology and Policy. The focus audience for this series includes Legislative
Assistants to Members of Parliament (LAMP) fellows, parliamentary aides and
others directly involved with law and policymaking in India. The following two
workshops were organised:
. The first workshop, Privacy in the Times of Live, Constant and Mass Data Processing,
shed light on critical aspects of informational privacy. Lalit Panda, Research

Fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, discussed the fundamentals of privacy,
focusing on the need for sui generis protection and the tools required to offer
such protection. Nehaa Chaudhari, Public Policy Lead at Ikigai Law, detailed the
regulatory structures and compliance and enforcement regime envisaged under
the draft Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018. Smriti Parsheera, Fellow at the
National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, deep-dived into facial recognition
technologies to present her insights.
Workshop: Privacy in the

. The second workshop, Regulating Emerging Technologies and Digital Businesses, Times of Live, Constant and
focussed on emerging technologies and related regulatory frameworks. Akhilesh Mass Data Processing
Tilotia, former Officer-on-Special Duty to the Minister of State for Civil Aviation,
shed light on the debates around drone regulations in India. Arjun Sinha, a
legal and policy consultant to multiple e-commerce businesses, provided an
overview of the e-commerce regulations in India. Shantanu Sharma, President
of Blockchain Chamber of Commerce (India Chapter), addressed the regulatory
issues surrounding blockchain technology, bitcoins and cryptocurrencies.
Workshop: Regulating
Emerging Technologies and
Digital Businesses
Ananth Padmanabhan authored a working paper, Civilian Drones: Privacy Challenges

and Potential Resolution, as part of the New America US-India Public Interest
Technologies Fellowship 2019. The paper examines the privacy implications of drones
in civilian airspaces. Padmanabhan made a presentation on the same subject at the
Global Technology Summit, organised by Carnegie India in Bangalore.
Kanksshi Agarwal was a panellist at a discussion organised as part of the How Safe
is your Harbour? Discussions on intermediary liability and user rights event organised by
the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

Image Source: thedailybeast.com
India’s Political Economy
The Politics Team at CPR provides high quality research to understand the changes
taking placing in India’s democracy at this critical juncture of our history. The team
aims to become a pre-eminent hub of political research that both informs and shapes
the discussions taking place around politics in the country.
The team is led by Rahul Verma and features Neelanjan Sircar and Gilles Verniers,
both of whom are also Assistant Professors at Ashoka University. This year, the
team inducted four new Research Associates – Talha Rashid, Ankita Barthwal, Asim
Ali, and Jatin Rajani. All members of the team regularly contribute to the media
through commentaries in leading dailies such as Hindustan Times, Indian Express,
ThePrint India, Scroll.in, Firstpost etc. They also appeared on various television
debates, shaping opinions around key political issues.
Members of the team

shaped public debate on
politics in India.
The team organised five closed-door roundtable discussions on various themes

related to Indian politics, attended by leading academicians, journalists, activists,
and politicians. These roundtables aimed to create a wider community that can
engage in free-flowing discussions on key questions.
Discussions on assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand, and

Delhi were organised, offering timely and high-quality data-driven analysis. The The team offered data-driven
team also held a briefing on the Delhi elections for the foreign press corps and the analysis on assembly elections.
diplomatic community, expanding its institutional network of relationships.

The team organised monthly panel and book discussions that brought together
academicians, policymakers, political practitioners, and civil society actors. These
discussions aim to provide a forum for intellectually rigorous, non-partisan
commentary to strengthen public discourse on Indian politics. The CPR-Trivedi
Centre for Political Data (Ashoka University) Dialogues on Indian Politics series continued
this year. The book discussions organised included – Jennifer Bussell’s Clients &
Constituents; Amit Ahuja’s Mobilizing the Marginalized: Ethnic Parties without Ethnic Regular discussions brought
Movements; Philippe Van Parijs’ Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a together a range of stakeholders.
Sane Economy, among others.
With support from partner organisations like Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RLS), the
team is expanding its research interests to fill existing gaps in the understanding of
Indian politics. CPR in collaboration with PRAMAN is in the process of assembling
an edited volume that seeks to provide a new lens to understand Dalit politics in the
new millennium. Research is also ongoing on the importance of political manifestos,
nature and forms of student politics in the country, the political representation of
religious minorities at the grassroots, and the emerging ideological framework of
India’s political system.
Analysing the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections

The team has emerged as a central hub of electoral analysis in the country. To analyse
the result of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the factors that led to the election
verdict, an event titled, How India Voted: Making Sense of the 2019 General Election was
organised. Rahul Verma and Neelanjan Sircar made a presentation based on Election
Commission data. This was followed by a panel discussion featuring Yogendra
Yadav, National President, Swaraj India; Shekhar Gupta, Founder, ThePrint India;
Tariq Thachil, Associate Professor of Political Science, Vanderbilt University; Vandita
Mishra, National Opinion Editor, Indian Express; G Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The
Hindu; and was moderated by Yamini Aiyar, President and Chief Executive, CPR.
Left to right: Shekhar Gupta, Founder,

ThePrint India; Vandita Mishra,
National Opinion Editor, Indian
Express; Yamini Aiyar, President and
Chief Executive, CPR; Tariq Thachil,
Associate Professor of Political Science,
Vanderbilt University; G Sampath,
Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu; and
Yogendra Yadav, National President,
Swaraj India

The Election Adda event series, launched in March 2019, continued to shed light on
key issues that dominated the Lok Sabha elections. The themes of some of these
discussions include, Modi & Millennials: Who will India’s Young Voter Choose?; 2019 Elections
and the Future of the Indian Party System; An Uncertain Future – What the 2019 Elections
mean for the Future of the Congress Party; Inside the BJP’s Election Machine and more.
The Election Adda series was

live-streamed on social media.
The team organised the August 2019 issue of Seminar Magazine on how India voted.
The issue featured transcripts of CPR’s event on the results of the elections and the
Election Adda discussion on the future of the Congress party. Further, it featured
articles by Rahul Verma, Neelanjan Sircar, Gilles Verniers and other prominent
names in academia and journalism.
Rahul Verma and Pradeep Chhibber published an article titled, Rise of the Second
Dominant Party System in India: BJP’s New Social Coalition in 2019. The article shed
light on how the BJP attracted new voters in the 2019 elections and has contributed
to the framework for many contentious discussions on contemporary politics.
Book discussion on 2019:

How Modi Won India by
Rajdeep Sardesai
The team organised a book discussion on 2019: How Modi Won India by Rajdeep
Sardesai featuring the author; Pradeep Chhibber, Professor of Political Science,
University of California, Berkeley; Rahul Verma, Fellow, CPR; and Yamini Aiyar,
President and Chief Executive, CPR.

India’s Democracy and
Image Source: thewire.in

Political Legacy
Currently on a sabbatical, Rajshree Chandra worked on the manuscript of the

political biography of her grandfather, Sri Jagat Narain Lal – member of the
Constituent Assembly, member of the first Linguistic Reorganisation Committee,
poet, writer, scholar, professor of economics, and one of India’s founding fathers.
The first draft of the book will ready by August 2020. Chandra also continued to
write in popular newspapers like The Wire, Indian Express, Mint, commenting on a
host of contemporary social issues.
Shylashri Shankar published two essays in Open, the Magazine, which is part of a
monograph on the roots of India’s attitude to democracy. In The Shifting attitudes of
Indian democracy, she tackled the question – how to understand how Indians think
about democracy when over 50% of those surveyed approve of authoritarian rule,
and direct and representative democracy. In the essay, How democratic processes
damage citizenship rights, she analysed the debate on the Citizenship Amendment
Act-National Register of Citizens combine, to show how the fulfilling of election
promises end up damaging the rights of Muslim minorities in India.
Shylashri Shankar wrote a chapter, Using Storytelling Techniques in the Legal Process:
The Counter-Story of Adivasis challenging ‘Encounter’ Killings, in Fiona Anciano and
Joanna Wheeler edited Broken Promises? Rethinking political values and resistance in
post-colonial developmental states (Routledge, forthcoming).
Shylashri Shankar co-led the theme on Political Subjectivities, Hope and Storytelling at
the Margins at a workshop on Rethinking Citizenship at York University in June 2019.
The multi-disciplinary discussions at the workshop helped prepare a collaborative
research proposal on the theme. Scholars from the UK, Canada, South Africa, Brazil
and India participated in it.

Image Source: ndtv.com
Identity, Cuisine and Place
Shylashri Shankar submitted the final manuscript of her forthcoming book, Turmeric
Nation: A Passage Through India’s Tastes (Speaking Tiger, 2020). The book examines
questions such as – how do we talk about ‘Indian’ identity in connection with food?
Do we, Indians, have a sense of collective self when it comes to cuisine? Or did the
hierarchy of the caste structure and the social control exercised by the higher castes
create barriers to culinary exchanges? It explores the annals of history, archaeology,
anthropology, science and literature to discover how and why what we eat influences
and shapes who we are. The book examines the creation and re-creation of mosaic
bundles of food identities for different groups and regions and in different eras
in India. The picture that emerges is one where identities are constantly being
transformed in these encounters. The book draws on her monthly column in Open,
the Magazine on how the way we think about food shapes different facets of our
identity, including our sense of family, nation, religion, leisure, and class.
Shylashri Shankar also wrote a chapter on maps and cultural memories in the old
city of Hyderabad for her next book manuscript provisionally titled, Memoir of a
Walled City. It explores questions such as – if some types of memories pass down
generations, such as violence like riots or Partition, what sort of identity do they
draw? How did settlement patterns change for religious groups? It juxtaposes three
maps – 1914 (Leonard Munn), 1986 (Ratna Naidu), 2016 - of Hyderabad’s original
boundaries (now the Old City) and explores questions of cultural memory. The 2016
map is based on a survey conducted by her team, supplemented by her interviews
with residents over ten years.

Urbanisation Image Source: thewire.in
Rapid urbanisation presents new and substantial challenges,

ranging from governance and citizenship to infrastructure, housing,
and the environment.
CPR engages with the process of urban transition in India from
many perspectives, working to understand how urbanisation
is evolving, how it is managed, and how it affects people’s
engagement with the state.
Image Source: outlookindia.com
Urban Governance
CPR works on governance issues at various scales, viz. metropolitan, small towns and
urban neighbourhoods.
Outputs from a three-year collaborative study with the JustJobs Network (JJN) on
the role of small cities in the employment of migrant youth in India and Indonesia
were released on a dedicated website, https://smallcitydreaming.org. In-depth case
reports on Mangalore, Karnataka and Kishangarh, Rajasthan offered insights into
labour market structures and experiences as well as governance arrangements
in non-metro urban centres, which impact migration pathways. CPR researchers
also engaged with governance challenges and frameworks for settlements that are
transitioning from rural to urban, highlighting the need to think about rural-urban
continuities.
In late 2019, the Government of India announced a process for regularisation of

unauthorised colonies in Delhi and providing titles to their residents, following
the passage of a law by Parliament. Building on work on metropolitan governance,
CPR researchers analysed the new legal framework and conducted research on the
impact of regularisation on the ground and the quality of life of people living in
these colonies.
As part of the Tacit Urban Research Network (TURN) project, CPR researchers worked
with peers from the Indian Institute of Human Settlements, Bengaluru (IIHS), the
Hyderabad Urban Labs (HUL) and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai
(TISS) on a number of comparative enquiries on informality and knowledge
structures in urban India. Researchers actively participated in a series of workshops,
which reflected on themes like the role of the state, theoretical frameworks for
exploring tacit phenomena, and methodology.
CPR continued its close engagement with the Main Bhi Dilli campaign, a civil
society initiative to increase public participation in the process of preparing the
Master Plan for Delhi 2041. Researchers participated in multiple deliberations and
contributed to the preparation of thematic fact-sheets covering various chapters of
the master plan, basis which a consultation with the Delhi Development Authority
and the National Institute for Urban Affairs (NIUA) – which is preparing the plan –
was organised in Delhi in November 2019.

Urbanisation
Marie-Hélène Zérah authored a book titled, Quand l’Inde s’urbanise: Paradoxes et

diversité d’un urbanisme bricolé, published by Editions de l’Aube. The book paints
an uncompromising portrait of the paradoxes of an urbanising India, paying
attention to large metropolises as well as urbanised villages, passing through
medium-sized cities.
Partha Mukhopadhyay, Mukta Naik, Sama Khan, Shamindra Nath Roy and
Eesha Kunduri contributed to CPR’s Policy Challenges compendium, analysing
various issues of urban governance such as the 73rd and 74th Amendment,
regularisation of unauthorised urban industrial areas and migration as a means
to reboot the economy.
The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdown threw up sudden and extensive
governance and service delivery challenges, especially in big cities. CPR
researchers documented issues faced by migrant workers and other marginalised
groups on the ground, engaged with government and civil society initiatives and
provided policy inputs and guidance. Ashwin Parulkar and Mukta Naik authored
a report titled, A Crisis of Hunger: A ground report on the repercussions of COVID-19
related lockdown on Delhi’s vulnerable populations.
Urban Economy
The participation of women in the urban workforce is an emerging
area of research. Shamindra Nath Roy and Partha Mukhopadhyay co-
authored a working paper analysing the numbers behind India’s falling
female labour force participation. A version of this paper was earlier
published as a chapter in Oxfam India’s report, Mind the Gap: The state of
employment in India.
The Lok Sabha elections in 2019 provided an opportunity for CPR

researchers to engage with the interface between larger policy issues
around the economy and more localised issues of urbanisation and
urban labour markets.

Image Source: www.indiafellow.org
Urban Services
The Scaling City Institutions for India (SCI-FI) initiative deepened work around
water and sanitation and expanded to new research areas related to land, housing
and planning.
Water and Sanitation

This year, the SCI-FI initiative successfully completed Project Nirmal in Odisha.
Through enabling institutional and financial arrangements and increased private
sector participation, the project has demonstrated sustainable sanitation service
delivery in small towns (Angul and Dhenkanal), leading to increased household
coverage. The one of its kind community mobilisation model gave directions to
the State Government to adopt the same in 114 other Urban Local Bodies (ULBs)
and to upscale Faecal Sludge Management (FSM) services. The key processes and
learning outcomes of Project Nirmal were consolidated in the form of eight notes
for wider dissemination.
Under Project Nirmal, a Faecal Sludge

Treatment Plant in Angul, Odisha with
18 KLD capacity was developed, the trial
run for which was a success. The plant
is going to be commisioned post the
coronavirus-induced lockdown.
CPR researchers compiled a Compendium of Best Practices on Community Engagement on

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) that includes primary research, a desk review
and case studies from Angul and Dhenkanal. The compendium also includes case
studies of other states by Water Aid, the Centre for Advocacy and Research and Ernst
and Young.

Urbanisation
CPR researchers explored the nuances of the prevalence of on-site sanitation systems PERCEPTIONS:
Understanding On-Site Sanitation System Choices in Large Dense Villages in India
in large and dense villages of India, showing that households in large and dense
RESEARCH REPORT
PERCEPTIONS:
villages including Census Towns, exhibit a preference for septic tanks. The report UNDERSTANDING
ON-SITE SANITATION SYSTEM CHOICES IN
titled, Perceptions: Understanding On-Site Sanitation System Choices in Large Dense Villages LARGE DENSE VILLAGES IN INDIA
in India, also revealed that of all the toilets in a nationally representative survey, 26%
were twin pits – underscoring the compelling need to safely manage faecal waste
beyond the household-level unit, integrating planning for contiguous urban and ADITYA BHOL
SHUBHAGATO DASGUPTA
rural areas.
ANINDITA MUKHERJEE
CPR researchers continued to engage with research and policy inputs on the living and
working conditions of sanitation workers, and the need to enforce legal protections
more strictly. Shubhagato Dasgupta and Arkaja Singh analysed the plight of manual
scavengers in CPR’s Policy Challenges compendium.
CPR researchers undertook a study to understand content consumption patterns

of the urban poor – especially women – looking at Over The Top (OTT) content
through household surveys in six cities (Delhi, Jaipur, Coimbatore, Guwahati, Pune,
and Kolkata). The study was used to examine the success and potential of using
OTT platforms versus traditional ones for information and education campaigns of
government programs like the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM).
CPR also turned its attention to the issue of water security. Researchers developed a
framework to understand the nation’s water crisis and identify the role of domestic
wastewater treatment and FSM for enhancing water security. The study also
developed the broad contours of an integrated water program for urban India.
Land, Planning and Housing

CPR is working towards creating an institutional space for research on the complex
correlation between land tenure security and the different social, economic, and
political aspects of human life. CPR has been supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft
für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) India to conduct primary research on the
linkages between land rights and housing for the urban poor in Odisha and Kerala.
Further, researchers are also documenting the learnings from the implementation
of the beneficiary led construction/enhancement vertical under the Pradhan Mantri
Awas Yojana (PMAY) in these states.
GIZ India is also supporting the SCI-FI initiative to conduct research on the relationship
between economic growth and demand for housing and basic services in secondary
cities through an assessment of vulnerability and urban distress.
CPR started work on the India Housing Report, an online archive and periodic report that
brings together the rich but disparate analytical work on housing in India, weaving
together key debates on housing affordability, adequacy, technology, finance and
tenure with ongoing urban transformations. The archive and associated report seek
to catalyse a debate on current issues and explore new directions to study housing
and its complexities, intersections and novelties.
CPR researchers continued to work on urban homelessness in Delhi, examining the

role of homeless shelters and labour markets. Besides ethnographic and quantitative
documentation, researchers engaged with litigation on housing, and living
conditions of workers, and conducted fieldwork at the sites of two large industrial
fires that occurred in the city during the year.

Urbanisation
Other Select Publications
RESEARCH REPORT
WORKING PAPER / DECEMBER 2019
U N E A RT H E D
FACTS OF ON-SITE
SANITATION IN URBAN INDIA Slipping Through the Cracks:
The Demolition of a
Government Homeless Shelter
in an Informal Settlement
Mukta Naik authored an article titled, Negotiation, HOW GOVERNMENTS
COLLABORATING The Case of Amir Khusro Park
mediation and subjectivities: how migrant renters experience

WITH CITIZENS COULD
EVOLVE SAFER AND Ashwin Parulkar,
MORE SUSTAINABLE Senior Researcher, CPR
SANITATION
informal rentals in Gurgaon’s urban villages, published in OUTCOMES Manish,

Research Associate, CPR
Sunil Kumar,
the Radical Housing Journal. The article focuses on the

Research Assistant, CPR
Image Credit: Sunil Kumar

experience of low-income migrant renters in the informal
rental markets that are controlled and managed by
Shubhagato Dasgupta | Neha Agarwal | Anindita Mukherjee
village landlords.
Sama Khan authored an article titled, Understanding

the Smart Cities Mission in India, published in the Hitachi Shubhagato Dasgupta, Anindita Mukherjee and Aparna
Souken Journal. The article studies the execution of the Das co-authored a paper titled, State of Urban Poor Rental
Smart Cities Mission and compares it with other urban Housing in India and Emerging Policy Trends, for the World
schemes like the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Bank Land and Poverty Conference 2020. The paper reviews
Renewal Mission. the evolution of housing policies since independence
and shows that the emphasis on rental housing has not
Anju Dwivedi and Ranjita Mohanty co-authored an been a central part of housing programs to date.
article titled, Culture and Sanitation in Small Towns: An
Ethnographic Study of Angul and Dhenkanal in Odisha, Anindita Mukherjee, Aparna Das and Baisakhi Sarkar
published in the Economic and Political Weekly. The article Dhar co-authored a paper titled, Can the Revenue
decodes the cultural determinants of sanitation. Department Remain Urban Agnostic in India? for the World
Bank Land and Poverty Conference 2020. The paper argues
Philippe Cullet, Lovleen Bhullar and Sujith Koonan studied for a reimagination of the Revenue and Registration
Faecal Sludge and Septage Management (FSSM) in three Departments in order to achieve the full potential of
Indian states (Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Odisha). The land titling programs.
studies mapped the legal and regulatory framework
governing sanitation, examined its’ various issues, and Véronique Dupont and Éric Denis co-authored an
suggested opportunities for regaulatory reform. article titled, Identifying and Counting of Slums in Indian
Cities: From the Colonial Beginnings to the Multiplication
Shubhagato Dasgupta, Neha Agarwal and Anindita of Measures since Independence, published in Histoire et
Mukherjee co-authored a report titled, Unearthed - Facts Mesure. The article analyses the emergence of the slum
of On-Site Sanitation in Urban India. The study is a novel category in colonial India through two contrasting cases
attempt to systematically analyse the state of on-site of the metropolises of Delhi and Chennai.
sanitation in urban India through a sample survey of
3000 households and more than 50 key informant- Véronique Dupont and Shankare Gowda co-authored an
interviews across ten cities in four states. article titled, Slum-free city planning versus durable slums:
Insights from Delhi, India, published in the International
Ashwin Parulkar, Manish and Sunil Kumar co-authored Journal of Sustainable Urban Development. The article bring
a working paper titled, Slipping Through the Cracks: a challenging perspective to slum studies in Delhi by
The Demolition of a Government Homeless Shelter in contrasting the attempts at ‘slum-free city planning’
an Informal Settlement - The Case of Amir Khusro Park. (referring to housing programs for the urban poor) with
The study aims to understand the factors that make the ‘durability’ of certain slum settlements.
homeless shelters in Delhi vulnerable to government
sanctioned demolition and eviction and the overarching CPR scholars regularly wrote in leading media platforms
implications of the demolition in the Amir Khusro Park such as the Indian Express, ThePrint India, The Wire,
on other shelters in the city. Hindustan Times, analysing issues of urbanisation, urban
governance and sanitation.

Image Source: todayonline.com
Policy Engagement
Multilateral
CPR researchers were involved in advising the Asian Development Bank on the
theme chapter of the Asian Development Outlook 2019 on Fostering Growth and Inclusion
in Asia’s Cities.
Centre
Shubhagato Dasgupta, Anindita Mukherjee and Anju Dwivedi presented emerging
findings from the study on developing an Integrated Urban Water Management
(IUWM) program for the country to the Joint Secretary, Atal Mission for Rejuvination
and Urban Transformation (AMRUT).
Anju Dwivedi and Anindita Mukherjee met the Advisor (SDE&MU), NITI Aayog
to brief him about the work related to urban sanitation and FSM undertaken by
the SCI-FI initiative at CPR. Further, Shubhagato Dasgupta, Anju Dwivedi and
Neha Agarwal met with the Joint Advisor and Advisor, Cental Public Health and
Environmental Engineering Organisation (CPHEEO), Minsitry of Housing and
Urban Affairs (MoHUA), to shed light on the same.
Anindita Mukherjee, Aditya Bhol and Neha Agarwal met with the Deputy Director
General, at the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commussioner, India,
to discuss possible changes in the proposed Census 2021 questionnaire to account
for FSM.
Neha Agarwal met officials of the Delhi Jal Board to discuss their interventions
for the eradication of manual scavenging under the Small Scale Sustainable
Infrastructure Development Fund (S3IDF).
The SCI-FI team met with the Additional Secretary (Water), Department of
Drinking Water and Sanitation, Ministry of Jal Shakti (MoJS), to discuss the water
use challenges in rural and peri-urban areas in the wake of the Ministry’s focus on
providing universal access to all rural households.

Urbanisation
CPR researchers engaged intensively with the MoHUA, post the formation of a
new government, to explore the reorganisation of central support to urbanisation,
through improved integration of schemes and more outcome-based support to
local bodies. They were also involved in mentoring the inaugural group of Smart
City Fellows at the MoHUA.
CPR researchers are part of an advisory group working with the Managing
Urbanisation vertical at NITI Aayog on their visioning document, looking at
urbanisation in 2035 and 2047, within the broad framework of national objectives.
State
CPR has been supporting the Housing and Urban Development Department,
Government of Odisha through technical advice in the areas of land, housing and
planning. Key areas of advisory support include legislative changes for land and
budget earmarking for the urban poor, preventing slum proliferation in the city,
and comments on the draft Zero Slum Behrampur Plan.
Based on the Operations and Maintenance (O&M) plans of Angul and Dhenkanal
FSTPs, a sustainable FSM plan was developed for Odisha, comparing models
of Bhubaneswar, Sambalpur, and Dhenkanal FSTPs. Various recommendations
on models, including operational and financial were proposed to the Principal
Secretary and Odisha Water Supply and Sewerage Board (OWSSB) officials to
ensure efficient FSM delivery in the state.
CPR engaged extensively with the Department of Panchayati Raj and Drinking
Water (PRDWD), Government of Odisha for drafting the Odisha Rural Sanitation
Policy 2020, kicking off the process through a conception meeting with Roopa
Mishra, Director, PRDWD; UNICEF, and partner organisations in January 2019.
Over the course of the year, a number of consultations were held with D K Singh,
Principal Secretary and Director, PRDWD, along with the members of the state-
level project management unit and UNICEF to receive feedback on and review the
draft policy. The final draft of the policy was submitted to the State Government
in February 2020. CPR is also supporting the department in piloting two modes of
sanitation service delivery for rural areas in Dhenkanal district, with the objectives
of leveraging available urban FSTPs to safely manage faecal sludge.
Local
Working closely with Udaipur Municipal Corporation (UMC) to streamline the FSSM
value chain for the city, CPR scaled up its effort in strengthening capacities of ULBs,
especially on developing O&M models, sustaining FSM services and organising
information, education and communication activities. A number of consultations
have been carried out with district officials and other stakeholders in the past
year to discuss the funding arrangements for the upcoming FSTP. CPR researchers
also participated in site visits to successful projects in Vadodara, Gujarat and Wai,
Maharashtra.

Public Engagement
Anju Dwivedi, Ambarish Karunanithi and Prashant Arya presented on Designing

and Implementing FSSM Policies and Strategies in Small Cities and on Private Sector
Participation in Sanitation Value Chain at the SFD Week organised by the Centre for
Science and Environment in April 2019 in Nimli, Rajasthan.
Mukta Naik presented her work on informal rentals and migrant housing at the
India China Institute, New School, New York in April 2019.
Marie-Hélène Zérah presented on Exceptional governance structures at the heart of the

SCM: an evaluation of Special Purpose Vehicles at a workshop titled, How sustainable are
India’s Smart Cities? at the Centre for Indian and South Asian Studies (CEIAS), Paris,
in May 2019.
Anju Dwivedi was invited as a speaker in the National Conclave on Institutionalising

Gender-Responsive Sanitation organised by the Center for Study of Science, Technology
and Policy (CSTEP) in June 2019.
Véronique Dupont and Shankare Gowda presented their paper on Construction and
deconstruction of the neighbourhood’s idea: Kathputli Colony, a ‘slum’ in Delhi, through
outsiders’ eyes and as revealed by the ecology of local action at the International Convention
for Asian Scholars (ICAS11), in the panel on Neighbourhoods and the city in Leiden, The
Netherlands in July 2019.
At the same conference, Mukta Naik presented two papers titled, It’s complicated!
Articulating ‘the urban’ through migrant experiences in small cities in India and Indonesia
and At the receiving end: How small cities in India and Indonesia reconcile top-down
investments with localised policymaking.
Mukta Naik taught a session on Thinking through housing demand at a Faculty

Development Program at Apeejay School of Architecture and Planning, Greater
Noida, in July 2019.
Kanhu Charan Pradhan presented a paper titled, Does state border matter in migration
in India? at the YSI Asia Convening 2019 in Hanoi, Vietnam, in August 2019.
Marie–Hélène Zérah presented on Following the panels: a bottom up lens to see

urban changes in the peripheries of Delhi as well as a paper titled, New Powers for
Cities: Are India’s Smart Cities transitioning to low-carbon energy, co-authored with
Ankit Bhardwaj at the Royal Geographical Society-Insitute of British Geographers 2019
Conference in London, UK in August 2019.

Urbanisation
Anindita Mukherjee participated in a podcast put out by the Indian Express on the
issue of open defecation in India in October 2019.
Mukta Naik remotely presented her work on small cities in India at the Cities, Mobility
and Membership Research Collaborative Launch held in Florence, Italy in October 2019.
Véronique Dupont spoke at the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata on Slum-

free city planning versus durable slums: Insights from Delhi, India in October 2019.
Sharonee Dasgupta presented an ethnographic study on Women’s role and

contribution in Mobilisation across bastis/slums in Delhi at a conference titled,
Movements: Body, Space, Politics, organised by the English Department at Jadavpur
University, Kolkata in November 2019.
Partha Mukhopadhyay presented on At the Frontiers of the Urban: thinking concepts

and practices globally and Marie–Hélène Zérah spoke on Is the ‘neoliberal’ trope enough
to think (through) water infrastructure? Reflections from Indian urban diverse realities at
a conference titled, At the frontiers of the urban: thinking concepts & practices globally,
organised by University College London in November 2019.
Several CPR researchers participated in the International Water Association Water and
Development Congress & Exhibition held in December 2019 in Sri Lanka. Anju Dwivedi
and Ambarish Karunanithi presented a poster on Faecal Sludge Management Solution
for smaller towns in India: A Case Study of Partnership Model. Anindita Mukherjee and
Prashant Arya presented a paper on Scaling up Small-Scale Business Models of Informal
Cesspool Operators- Lessons from Eight Indian Cities. Anju Dwivedi presented on
Inclusion in Sanitation in the session titled, Missing Link in The Sanitation Chain: Health
and Safety of Sanitation Workers, organised by WaterAid India. Shubhagato Dasgupta
and Ambarish Karunanithi organised a workshop on Water and Sanitation-Wise
Secondary and Small Cities in South Asia at the conference.
Marie–Hélène Zérah, Eric Verdeil and Bérénice Girard presented on Thinking about
energy transition in the Global South at the World Resources Institute, New Delhi in
December 2019.
Kanhu Charan Pradhan presented on Workforce Composition and internal migration

in India at the 61st ISLE Labour Economics Conference in Patiala in December 2019. He
also presented this paper at the XXIXTH Annual General Conference, Department of
Economics, Jadavpur University, Kolkata in the same month.
Mukta Naik was a panellist at Space10’s event on How Can We Create a Liveable,
Affordable and Sustainable City?. She also co-conducted a creative workshop with
Space10 and Unbox on What If We Were Nomadic In The Future? in February 2020.
Mukta Naik taught about internal migration and urbanisation at the Fourth
Orientation Program on Migration held by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences Patna
Centre in February 2020.
Mukta Naik was a panellist on Interrogating inequalities at the Ambedkar University

Delhi’s School of Global Studies in February 2020.
Mukta Naik was a panellist at the Localising Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
in Secondary Cities conference held by Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) in New
Delhi in February 2020.

Urbanisation
Key Events
National Workshop on WASH Futures: Subsidiarity for
Service Delivery | November 2019
CPR and Water Aid India jointly organised

a poster exhibition during the workshop,
covering various themes of the sanitation
landscape of India.
The inaugural session saw unveiling of research work by Nicholas Osbert,

Chief of WASH, UNICEF India; Rajiv Ranjan Mishra, DG, National Mission for
Clean Ganga; Yamini Aiyar, President & Chief Executive, CPR India; and VK
Madhavan, Chief Executive, Water Aid India.
Supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the SCI-FI initiative, in
partnership with UNICEF, Water Aid India and GIZ, organised a two-day National
Workshop to deliberate issues related to safe and wise water and faecal sludge
management through improving subsidiarity practices.
The workshop promoted cross-learning between stakeholders including governments

at all levels, academics, researchers, National Faecal Sludge and Septage Management
(NFSSM) Alliance members, policymakers, Civil Society Organisations, and other
development partner agencies. The deliberations yielded key recommendations and
strategies to strengthen institutional capacities at all levels for delivering integrated
WASH solutions and provided insights in the formulation of such schemes.

Urbanisation
RC21 Research Conference on In and Beyond the City:

Emerging Ontologies, Persistent Challenges and Hopeful
Futures | September 2019
CPR, along with Ambedkar University and Delhi Contemporary hosted the RC21
annual international conference, which unfolded across 43 streams, 17 panel
discussions, five round tables, two book discussions and five plenary sessions. More
than 600 registered delegates from over 30 countries participated.
Part of the International Sociological Association, Research Committee 21 on Sociology

of Urban and Regional Development (RC21) is a premier international association for
theory and research in the sociology of urban and regional development. The 2019
conference was the first RC21 event in a developing country.
Several CPR researchers presented their work at the confernece. Mukta Naik co-
chaired a stream on Boundaries, Contestations and Citizen/State/Capital interfaces.
Asaf Ali Lone co-ordinated a stream on Discrimination and the city. Kanhu Charan
Pradhan and Shamindra Nath Roy convened a panel on Diffuse Urbanisation: Regional
Landscape across the Globe. Véronique Dupont and Shankare Gowda presented their
paper, Multi-layered illegalities: The production of illegal residents within illegalised
settlements in Delhi, India. In addition, Manish presented work on urban transport
regulation; Ashwin Parulkar, Manish and Sunil Kumar presented their working paper
on the Khusro Park homeless shelter; and Mukta Naik, Eesha Kunduri and Sharonee
Dasgupta co-presented their work on the use of the RTI Act to negotiate services in
Delhi’s informal settlements.

Urbanisation
Sanitation Insights at CPR Series| October 2019

On the occasion of 2nd October, celebrated as Swachh Bharat Diwas, the SCI-
FI initiative launched a series of webinars on the sanitation landscape of India,
highlighting various aspects from key challenges to progress made.
Tacit Urban Research Network (TURN): Events and

Convenings
Research Workshops
The TURN collaborative leveraged cross-institutions and interdisciplinary workshops
to ideate and evolve research. The following workshops were held this year:
. Cross Informing through Mapping, April 2019 in Hyderabad
. Inter-referencing and Outputs, May 2019 in New Delhi Stills from the Sanitation
. Gesturing the Tacit, July 2019 in Bangalore Insights at CPR webinars
. Deliberating the Tacit State, September 2019 in Mumbai
RC21 Special Event | September 2019
Additionally, the collaborative organised a special session at the RC21 Conference to

introduce its thinking and work to Indian and international scholars. CPR’s Partha
Mukhopadhyay, HUL’s Anant Maringanti, IIHS’a Gautam Bhan and TISS Mumbai’s
Ratoola Kundu made short presentations and conducted an interactive session with
the audience.
Do Din | December 2019
Against the backdrop of intense public debate on issues of citizenship and identity,
Do Din – an annual event – was organised around the theme of the Incomplete City.
Discussions explored the urban as a dynamic, ever-changing and evolving system,
site and experience. Besides panel discussions and presentations, several visual,
theatrical, musical and poetic explorations enriched the event.
RC21 special event Do Din event

Urbanisation
Ongoing Workshop and Seminar Series

The Community of Research and Practices (CORP) seminars continued to disseminate
research on various topics related to access to safe sanitation and issues around
sanitation work.
The monthly events of the CPR-Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH) Urban Workshop
series were conducted uninterrupted during the year, with speakers addressing
themes like technology and digital platforms, labour and migration, politics,
housing, regional planning as well as art and culture.

Economic Policy Image Source: forbes.com
A modern nation’s economy must both ensure growth and

productivity and maintain equity and participation for its citizens.
CPR’s faculty approach India’s economic policy with this balance in
mind, working on topics ranging from macroeconomic dynamics
and trade policy to the intellectual foundations of service delivery
and the design of welfare schemes.
Image Source: resize4.indiatvnews.com
Jobs
2019 marked the first year of the Jobs Initiative – a research partnership between CPR
and the JustJobs Network (JJN). As data in the freshly published Government of India’s
Periodic Labour Force Survey (released May 2019) underscored the labour market challenges
confronting the nation, the Jobs Initiative engaged with a range of stakeholders – from
policymakers and private sector representatives to grassroots organisations – to provide
analysis and insights toward improving employment outcomes in India and abroad.
Comparing Indian States on Just Jobs

The Jobs Initiative was a partner in the launch of a State-level JustJobs Index (S-JJIndex) for
India – compiled by JJN, and supported by the Azim Premji University. A comprehensive,
data-driven tool to measure the quantity and quality of jobs at the state level in India,
the S-JJIndex analyses fifteen indicators along five dimensions – employment, formality,
benefits, income equality and gender equality. The launch of the Index and the
ensuing workshop, co-organised by the Jobs Initiative, drew business representatives,
policymakers, experts and practitioners as well as significant media attention.
From the left: Sabina Dewan (President

and Executive Director, JustJobs
Network and Senior Visiting Fellow,
CPR); Anurag Behar (Vice Chancellor,
Azim Premji University and CEO, Azim
Premji Foundation); Amitabh Kant
(Chief Executive Officer, NITI Aayog);
Dilip Chenoy (Secretary General,
Federation of Indian Chambers of
Commerce and Industry); Partha
Mukhopadhyay (Senior Fellow, CPR);
Future of Work: Technology, Jobs and Gender and Divya Prakash (Senior Research
Associate, JustJobs Network)
Sabina Dewan participated in a range of international meetings and working groups
examining aspects of the global jobs crisis that also help place the challenges confronting
India in context. These engagements include being a member of the Think Tank 20’s
Working Group on Migration as well as the working group on the Future of Work aimed at
providing policy inputs to global leaders in the Group of 20 (G20). These working groups
met on the fringes of large global summits where Dewan was a speaker including the
Global Solutions Summit 2019 in Berlin and the Think Tank 20 Summit in Japan co-organised
by the Asian Development Bank.

Economic Policy
The Jobs Initiative is leading a collaborative project entitled, Ecosystems of Engagement:

Women’s Work and Platforms in India and Sri Lanka, funded by the Canadian International
Development Research Centre. The project examines how Indian and Sri Lankan women
access and engage with the emergent ecosystem of digital work to improve their livelihoods
and empowerment. CPR is collaborating with LIRNEasia, Sri Lanka; the Indian Institute of
Human Settlements; and the World Resources Institute, India for this project. With this
project, CPR has joined a wider consortium of researchers from around the globe that focus
on the nexus of technology and work, particularly Women, Work and the Gig Economy.
In CPR’s Policy Challenges compendium, Dewan highlighted how India can address its
employment crisis. Dewan also contributed frequently to the discourse around jobs and
employment in the media. She was quoted in leading platforms including Livemint, Al
Jazeera, IndiaSpend, Indian Express and ThePrint India.
Social Change and

Enterprise Development
D Shyam Babu advised Tata Sons Private Limited on refashioning their affirmative
action policies to promote the interests of Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST)
individuals in ways that have not been tried by the company and the government. In
November 2019, he addressed senior executives of the company, who are in-charge of
the group’s affirmative action initiatives and its corporate social responsibility policies.
Continuing his involvement in promoting entrepreneurship among SC/ST Image Source: scroll.in
communities, D Shyam Babu served as a Member of the Governing Board the Centre
for the Study of Caste and Capitalism (CSCC), whose twin mandates are to study
how an open society (both as a prerequisite and a consequence of capitalism) helps
bring down the walls that separate one group from another within a society, and to
encourage SC/ST communities to take up entrepreneurship.
D Shyam Babu continued to serve on the Editorial Board of Dalit Enterprise, a monthly
magazine that seeks to provide a forum for news, views and policy debates on
entrepreneurship among SC/STs.
D Shyam Babu continued his research work on social change and social justice. In CPR’s
Policy Challenges compendium he highlighted how India’s social justice system is in
need of structural reform. His commentaries appeared in The Hindu, The Times of India,
ThePrint India and Deccan Herald. He commented on a range of issues including the
Uttar Pradesh government’s move to include several backward castes in the list of SCs;
the Central Government’s move to grant quotas to the poor among the upper castes;
India’s language policy and how it is inimical to the interests of poor, lower castes and
rural masses; the failure of lower-caste mobilisation to promote social justice; and
Jawaharlal Nehru’s Kashmir policy.

Infrastructure, Economy
and Finance
Rohit Chandra attended India Infrastructure’s private roundtables,

co-convened with the NITI Aayog on Asset Monetisation and Recycling Chandra initiated a series of seminars on the
in October 2019 and on the Future of Non Banking Financial Companies Indian economy. Events organised as part of
(NBFCs) in Infrastructure Financing in January 2020. this series included the following:
Chandra presented on Developments in Infrastructure Finance in India: Panel Discussion on Misfortune at the Bottom
1990 – Present, at Ahmedabad University’s Conference on 50 Years of of the Pyramid: The State of Rural Demand in
Bank Nationalisation in November 2019. India | October 2019
Chandra co-authored an article with Michael Walton titled, Big Speakers: Himanshu (Associate Professor,
Potential, Big Risks? Indian Capitalism, Economic Reform and Populism in the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Centre for
BJP Era, to be published in India Review in May 2020. The article includes Economic Studies and Planning); Harish
research that Chandra had presented in a workshop organised by the Damodaran (Rural Affairs and Agriculture
Centre for Advanced Study of India (CASI) and Carnegie Endowment in Editor, The Indian Express); Kunal Bhardwaj
September 2019. (Vice President of Business, Ninjacart); and
moderated by Rohit Chandra (Fellow, CPR
In an article co-authored with Noopur Sen in CPR’s Policy Challenges The discussion shed light on the collapse
compendium, Michael Walton explored how India can create dynamic in rural demand, its impact on the Indian
capitalism to realise its growth potential and avoid a middle-income economy and measures governments and
trap of low productivity growth and entrenched inequality. companies can take to address the downturn in
consumption.
In an article titled, A Relook at Infrastructure, in CPR’s Policy Challenges
compendium, Partha Mukhopadhyay explored how India can ensure
better infrastructure to meet its economic goals, outlining key actions
that need to be taken in the major sectors to make them financially
viable. In another article titled, Of Investments and Jobs, published in the
same compendium, Mukhopadhyay explored the Indian economy’s
attractiveness for investment and its potential to provide jobs.
Book Discussion on The Lost Decade (2008-

18): How India’s Growth Story Devolved into
Growth Without a Story by Puja Mehra |
November 2019
Speakers: Puja Mehra (Economic Journalist);
Rathin Roy (Director, National Institute of
Public Finance and Policy); Nitin Desai (Former
Chief Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance);
Partha Mukhopadhyay participated in a workshop on A Dialogue and moderated by Rohit Chandra (Fellow, CPR)
toward a New Global Aid Regime, co-hosted by the Peking University
and Tsinghua University, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation in The discussion shed light on India’s economic
Bellagio in May 2019. The workshop discussed emerging forms of aid slide and the political context in which the
and new countries in the international aid regime, including China. economy failed to recover lost momentum.

Image Source: theprint.in
Agriculture
Mekhala Krishnamurthy and Shoumitro Chatterjee co-authored an article titled,

Understanding and misunderstanding e-NAM, published in the January 2020 issue of the
Seminar Magazine. The article explored the opportunities e-NAM presents and how it
can be used to address challenges in Indian agriculture.
In an article titled, Back-End First: A National Agenda for India’s Agricultural Markets,
published in CPR’s Policy Challenges compendium, Mekhala Krishnamurthy explored
how India can reform its agricultural markets against the backdrop of growing agrarian
distress, declining agricultural productivity and low farm incomes.
Mekhala Krishnamurthy was invited to be the keynote speaker at the Rural Development
and Food Security Forum, organised by the Asian Development Bank in Manila, Philippines
in October 2019.
Mekhala Krishnamurthy was the Co-Principal Investigator (along with Co-PI Shoumitro
Chatterjee, and collaborators Marshall Bouton and Devesh Kapur) on a major multi-
state, multi-district, multi-commodity study of agricultural markets and farmers’
incomes in India with a focus on Bihar, Odisha and Punjab. The study is anchored at
the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania and
funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The first publications from the study
will be released later in 2020.
In an article titled, Should PM-KISAN and MGNREGS Co-Exist?, published in CPR’s Policy
Challenges compendium, Yamini Aiyar and Partha Mukhopadhyay discussed how the
government should take the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme
forward.

Image Source:ft.com
Healthcare
Philippe Cullet and and H Yuanquiong co-authored an article titled, Medical Patents and
the Right to Health – From Monopoly Control to Open Access Innovation and Provision of Medicines,
published in the German Yearbook of International Law.
Jishnu Das worked on the study, Antibiotic prescription practices in primary care in low- and
middle-income countries: A systematic review and meta-analysis, along with Giorgia Sulis,
Pierrick Adam, Vaidehl Nafade, Genevieve Gore, Ben Daniels, Amrita Daftary, Sumanth
Gandra and Madhukar Pai, to be published in PLoS Medicine in June 2020. The authors
performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies conducted in primary care in
low and middle income countries to estimate the prevalence of antibiotic prescriptions as
well as the proportion of such prescriptions that are inappropriate.
Das worked on the paper, Two Indias: The structure of health care markets in rural Indian villages
with implications for policy, along with Benjamin Daniels, Monisha Ashok, Euy-Young Shim
and Karthik Muralidharan, to be published in Social Science and Medicine in June 2020. The
study is a first of its kind nation-wide survey of rural healthcare in India.
Das published papers on the use of standardised patients (SP) in the measurement of
quality of healthcare. He co-authored an article titled, How to Do (Or Not to Do) … Using
the Standardised Patient Method to Measure Clinical Quality of Care in LMIC Health Facilities,
along with Jessica King, Ada Kwan, Benjamin Daniels, Christina Makungu, Tim Powell-
Jackson and Catherine Goodman, published in Health Policy & Planning. He co-authored
another article titled, Use of standardised patients for healthcare quality research in low- and
middle-income countries, along with Ada Kwan, Benjamin Daniels, Sofi Bergkvist, Veena
Das and Madhukar Pai, published in BMJ Global Health. Further, he co-authored an article
titled, Lessons on the quality of tuberculosis diagnosis from standardised patients in China,
India, Kenya, and South Africa, along with Benjamin Daniels, Ada Kwan and Madhukar
Pai, published in the Journal of Clinical Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacterial Diseases.
Das co-authored an article titled, Use of standardised patients to assess gender differences
in quality of tuberculosis care in urban India: a two-city, cross-sectional study, along with
Benjamin Daniels, Ada Kwan, Srinath Satyanarayana, Ramnath Subbaraman, Ranendra
K Das, Veena Das and Madhukar Pai, published in Lancet Global Health. The authors used
data from SP visits to assess whether gender differences in quality of care occur because
of provider practice.
In an article titled, Zen and the art of experiments: A note on preventive healthcare and the 2019
nobel prize in economics, published in World Development, Das discussed Banerjee, Duflo and
Kremer’s work on preventive healthcare in low-income countries. In another commentary
titled, The viability of social accountability measures, published in Lancet Global Health, Das
discussed the work of Camilla Fabbri and colleagues.

Research and Engagement
on the COVID-19 Pandemic
COVID-19
Leveraging Existing Research

to Tackle New Challenges
The COVID-19 pandemic brought to light challenges that were never
experienced before. Apart from minimising the health impact and
containing the spread of the virus, crucial questions arose about India’s
welfare architecture, its federal dynamics, the already-strained economy,
and the country’s approach to migration, mobility and public service
delivery. Since its inception, CPR has been engaging on these issues,
producing groundbreaking research. It is this longstanding commitment
to academic rigour that enabled CPR scholars to respond swiftly to the
COVID-19 crisis. Leveraging CPR’s on-going research on urbanisation,
federalism, state capacity, agriculture, health and other areas, scholars
offered critical analysis and policy inputs through dialogues
and discourse with a range of stakeholders.
Engaging with Stakeholders at all Levels:

From Grassroots to Government
CPR worked closely with several state governments like Punjab, Delhi, West Bengal and Odisha to
provide advice on combating the COVID-19 challenge and on formulating post-COVID economic
recovery plans. CPR also worked with local-level bureaucracy and grassroot organisations, building
a network to address the challenges of COVID-19. Among some of the significant steps in CPR’s
involvement with COVID-related initiatives and post-COVID recovery plans were:
Yamini Aiyar was appointed to the Group of Experts to shape Punjab’s post-COVID economic recovery.
CPR signed an MoU with the Government of Punjab to advise the state on its testing
and containment strategy.
CPR scholars were involved in relief efforts with other organisations in Delhi-NCR.
Jishnu Das was appointed to the West Bengal global advisory board to fight COVID-19.
CPR scholars advised the Government of Odisha on its urban employment guarantee programme.

CPR scholars advised the Government of Delhi on its policy of emergency relief
The Accountability Initiative at CPR initiated the Platform to Understand, Learn, Share and
Exchange (PULSE) for Development. This is a knowledge-sharing collaborative of 60+ social sector
organisations working on the challenges of the pandemic.
CPR researchers engaged with block-level officials, panchayat functionaries and frontline workers in
five Indian states to understand the challenges and best practices while dealing with COVID-19.
Additionally, through existing long-term relationships, CPR scholars engaged with state and central
government officials informally, offering sharp insights and advise on their COVID-19 strategies.
Key Areas of Research and Engagement
Public health Social protection Economic and

for migrant and federal challenges
informal workers
Environmental Impact on the Challenges of

Impact global order urbanisation

COVID-19
Key Research and Publications
Redesigning India’s
Photo Credit: Business Today

Social Protection
Financing Architecture
to meet the Challenge
of COVID-19
Testing for the Yamini Aiyar, Avani Kapur, Partha Mukhopadhyay,
Coronavirus
Manish, Mukta Naik, and Arkaja Singh1
A Crisis of Hunger
A ground report on the repercussions of COVID-19 at the State Level RESEARCH REPORT | JUNE 2020
STATE
related lockdown on Delhi’s vulnerable populations
NEELANJAN SIRCAR | JISHNU DAS
EDUCATION
Ashwin Parulkar | Mukta Naik
PARTHA MUKHOPADHYAY
FINANCES
21 April 2019
This brief discusses desirable strategies and important considerations to implement

coronavirus (COVID-19) testing and data analysis. The suggestions are consistent with a
modern statistical understanding of how to detect infection and understand where and
how much it has spread across each state in India and, most importantly, minimise its
transmission. All this has to be done in an environment of scarcity of tests. India’s level
of testing (in terms of tests per million) is one-hundredth that of levels seen in countries A Deep-Dive into School Education
such as Italy and Spain.
Finances in Eight States
Image Credit: Atish Patel
Crammed In
Or Shut Out?
Implications of Delhi’s Homeless
PURSUING
REPORT
Shelter System’s Floor Space
Constraints- with Attention to
the Potential Public Health Risks
A CLEAN AIR
of Overcrowded Shelters during
COVID-19
AGENDA IN
Ashwin Parulkar
INDIA DURING Mridusmita Bordoloi | Sharad Pandey | Vastav Irava | Ruchi Junnarkar
THE COVID
1 CENTRE FOR POLICY RESEARCH, NEW DELHI Image Credit: Rajesh Kumar SPOTLIGHT 1 CENTRE FOR POLICY RESEARCH, NEW DELHI
CRISIS
July 2020
INVISIBLE SANITATION WORKERS

@ COVID 19 LOCKDOWN:
VOICES FROM 10 CITIES
Santosh Harish
S H U B H A G AT O D A S G U P TA | T R I P T I S I N G H | A N J U D W I V E D I
Fellow, Centre for Policy Research
Shibani Ghosh
Fellow, Centre for Policy Research
WWW.CPRINDIA.ORG
CPR’s longstanding commitment to rigorous research enabled the faculty to respond swiftly to the COVID-19
crisis on multi levels: leveraging ongoing research, scholars offered critical analysis and policy inputs, and
tracked government welfare policies and testing systems, offering key recommendations and solutions.
Through cutting-edge and field-defining research, CPR effectively bridged the gap between policy and
implementation when it came to the COVID crisis; it also helped shape the public debate on COVID-19
through a series of reports and studies, increased digital engagement, and new media tools.
Some examples:
CPR scholars authored a report on desirable strategies and important considerations to implement
COVID-19 testing and data analysis at the state-level.
CPR scholars authored a report titled, Redesigning India’s Social Protection Financing Architecture to meet the
Challenge of COVID-19, highlighting an agile financing system responsive to needs of individual states.
CPR scholars authored a report titled, A Crisis of Hunger: a ground report on the repercussions of COVID-19
related lockdown on Delhi’s vulnerable populations. The report highlighted key recommendations for the
Delhi Government to address the hunger crisis.
CPR scholars also authored groundbreaking studies on the impact of COVID-19 on India’s environmental
discourse, the challenges of sanitation during the pandemic, the geopolitical implications and India’s
regional recovery, and the Atmanirbhar Bharat economic package.
The International Relations team at CPR authored a report titled, India as the Engine of Recovery for South
Asia: A Multi-Sectoral Plan for India’s COVID-19 Diplomacy in the Region. The report highlights how India can
take the lead in the region and includes practical policy recommendations for critical areas of health,
food security, ecology, trade and finance.
A series of research notes were released based on CPR’s collaboration with the Government of Punjab
to design active learning-oriented testing strategies and analyse testing data to better understand the
spread of COVID-19. The notes covered critical aspects of the disease and its spread, including the role of
asymptomatic carriers and the spatial dimensions of COVID-19 spread.

Shaping the Public Debate through
New Media Tools
130+
Media commentaries
CPR launched a dedicated website for research and policy analysis on the
COVID-19 pandemic. This repository was updated daily and saw a monthly
traffic over 16,000+ users from around the world.
CPR scholars contributed to the discourse on the issue through a variety

of opinion pieces and interviews in national and international media, in
platforms like Hindustan Times, NDTV, AlJazeera, ThePrint India, Indian Express,
Scroll, The Wire etc.
80+
Blogs
13+
Podcasts
35+
Webinars
20+
Research outputs
COVID-19
CPR launched a podcast series on the pandemic as part of its podcast,

ThoughtSpace. The podcast episodes featured renowned experts like Dr Jishnu
Das, Dr Rathin Roy, Shyam Saran, Dr Mahesh Vyas etc. who offered possible
solutions to the challenges posed by COVID-19.
Substituting regular offline events with webinars, CPR engaged with Indian and
global audiences on various facets of the COVID-19 pandemic. CPR faculty also
participated in webinars organised by several reputed organisations.

Policy Challenges 2019-2024:
The Key Policy Questions for the New
Government and Possible Pathways
India is at an important juncture in its development trajectory. From rapid urbanisation

to declining agricultural productivity; from weak human capital to the need for creating
productive jobs; from new security threats to the need to re-position itself in a changing
global order; from growing energy demands to the need to address rapid environmental
degradation, India today has to negotiate multiple and conflicting socio-economic
challenges. Decisions and actions taken over the next five years will be likely to shape the
future of our economic and political trajectory. To spark debate and ideas on how India
can negotiate these transitions across a range of sectors, CPR launched a compendium
titled, Policy Challenges 2019-2024: The Key Policy Questions for the New Government and
Possible Pathways.
Policy Challenges 2019-2024
Authored by 31 CPR scholars, the compendium articulates key policy challenges and
possible solutions across a range of issues that confront India today. These include:
Foreign policy and national security Federalism
Climate, energy and the environment Urbanisation
The economy Regulation and resources
The welfare state Inclusive citizenship
The compendium was launched in July 2019 through a set of three panel discussions
featuring:
Suhasini Haider (National Editor, The Hindu) and Gautam Mukhopadhaya (Senior
Visiting Fellow, CPR)
Ajay Mathur [Director General, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)] and
Navroz K Dubash (Professor, CPR)
KP Krishnan (Former Secretary, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship,

Government of India); Devesh Kapur (Director, Asia Programs and Starr Foundation
Professor of South Asian Studies, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced
International Studies); Jyoti Malhotra (Editor, National and Strategic Affairs,
ThePrint India); Partha Mukhopadhyay (Senior Fellow, CPR); and Yamini Aiyar
(President & Chief Executive, CPR)
ThePrint India was the digital partner for the event. Shorter versions of the essays from
the compendium were also carried by ThePrint India in the run up to the launch.

CPR Dialogues 2020
Policy Perspectives for

21st-century India
On 2nd and 3rd March 2020, CPR held the second edition of CPR Dialogues, an annual CPR Dialogues 2020
public forum where leading policy practitioners, academics, and thought leaders
featured over 60
address the most critical policy issues of our times. The theme for this year was Policy
Perspectives for 21st-century India. speakers and more
than 1000 attendees.
CPR Dialogues 2020 provided a window to the India of the future. Experts from around
the country and the world engaged with and debate the very significant development
and policy challenges that India faces in the coming decade.
ThePrint India was the media partner for the conference.

CPR Dialogues 2020
Some of the issues addressed during the CPR Dialogues are:

As norms of engagement and the global order change, how should India define its
geopolitical position?
Can the Indian state deliver cutting edge public services to all its citizens and build
21st-century public institutions?
How can India create productive jobs while responding to challenges of technology,
rapid urbanisation and global economic changes?
How can India move towards a more inclusive and environmentally sound future
while responding to its energy needs as a growing economy?
How can citizen-state engagement create more inclusive citizenship?
What are the underlying dynamics and emerging trends in India’s politics and how
do these shape policymaking in the 21st century?
Key sessions included:
Inaugural address by Hon’ble

Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar
(Minister of External Affairs, India)
Panel Discussion on At the Threshold

of a New Decade: Navigating the
Emerging Geopolitical Landscape
featuring James Steinberg
(Professor, Maxwell School of
Citizenship and Public Affairs;
Former United States Deputy
Secretary of State); Frank N Pieke
(Professor of Modern China Studies,
Leiden University); and Shyam
Saran (Senior Fellow, CPR; Former
Foreign Secretary, India)

CPR Dialogues 2020
Panel Discussion on Creating an Inclusive Economy

in a Digital World featuring Himanshu Wardhan
(Managing Director, Etsy India); Rituparna
Chakraborty (Co-founder & Executive Vice
President, TeamLease Services); Berges Y Malu
(Director, Public Policy & Policy Communications,
ShareChat); and Sabina Dewan (Senior Visiting
Fellow, CPR; President & Executive Director,
JustJobs Network)
Panel Discussion on What would happen if we were to

believe in Indian Agriculture? featuring Saurabh Garg
(Principal Secretary, Department of Agriculture &
Farmers Empowerment, Government of Odisha);
Harish Damodaran (Rural Affairs and Agriculture
Editor, The Indian Express); Ajay Vir Jakhar
(Chairperson, Bharat Krishak Samaj); Ramesh
Chand (Member, NITI Aayog); and Mekhala
Krishnamurthy (Senior Fellow, CPR)
Panel Discussion on Technology and Administrative

Reform: Experience from India and the World featuring
Arun Sharma (Director, DBT Mission, Cabinet
Secretariat, Government of India); Saurabh Garg
(Principal Secretary, Department of Agriculture &
Farmers Empowerment, Government of Odisha);
Shrayana Bhattacharya (Senior Economist, Social
Protection and Jobs, World Bank in India); Varad
Pande (Investment Partner, Omidyar Network); and
Yamini Aiyar (President & Chief Executive, CPR)
Panel Discussion on Rights in Times of AI: Emerging

Technologies and the Public Law Framework featuring
Shashi Tharoor (Member of Parliament, India);
Madhav Khosla (Associate Professor of Political
Science, Ashoka University); Smriti Parsheera (Fellow,
National Institute of Public Finance and Policy); and
Ananth Padmanabhan (Visiting Fellow, CPR)

CPR Dialogues 2020
Panel Discussion on What would it take to build a

21st-century state for India? Launch of CPR’s State
Capacity Initiative featuring Mekhala Krishnamurthy
(Senior Fellow, CPR); Sanjay Mitra (Former Chief
Secretary, West Bengal); T V Somanathan (Secretary,
Department of Expenditure, Government of India);
Junaid Ahmad (Country Director, World Bank
in India); and Yamini Aiyar (President & Chief
Executive, CPR)
Panel Discussion on The role of ideas in shaping policy

featuring Lant Pritchett (Senior Visiting Fellow,
CPR); Navroz K Dubash (Professor, CPR); Partha
Mukhopadhyay (Senior Fellow, CPR); and Yamini
Aiyar (President & Chief Executive, CPR)
Panel Discussion on Tracking Government Spending:

Challenges in Social Policy Financing featuring
Rathin Roy (Director, National Institute of
Public Finance and Policy); TR Raghunandan
(Adviser, Accountability Initiative; Former Indian
Administrative Service Officer); Jeffrey Hammer
(Senior Visiting Fellow, CPR); and Avani Kapur
(Fellow & Director, Accountability Initiative, CPR)
Panel Discussion on Article 21 and India’s Social and

Economic Rights featuring Sudhir Krishnaswamy
(Vice-Chancellor, National Law School of India
University, Bangalore); Namita Wahi (Fellow and
Director, Land Rights Initiative, CPR); Shibani Ghosh
(Fellow, CPR); Kiran Bhatty (Senior Fellow, CPR); and
Arkaja Singh (Fellow, CPR)

CPR Dialogues 2020
Panel Discussion on Are India’s financial institutions

in crisis? Understanding India’s Economic Slowdown
featuring B Sriram (Former Managing Director,
State Bank of India and IDBI Bank); Upendra Kumar
Sinha [Former Chairperson, Securities and Exchange
Board of India (SEBI)]; Naina Lal Kidwai (Former
Chairperson, HSBC India & Senior Adviser, Advent
Private Equity); and KP Krishnan (Former Secretary,
Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship,
Government of India)
Panel Discussion on Emerging Trends in Indian Politics

featuring Rahul Verma (Fellow, CPR); Vandita Mishra
(National Opinion Editor, Indian Express); Mukund
Padmanabhan (Consultant & former Editor, The
Hindu); Mukulika Banerjee (Director, South Asia
Centre, LSE); Gilles Verniers (Senior Visiting Fellow,
CPR; Co-Director, TCPD, Ashoka University); and
Neelanjan Sircar (Senior Visiting Fellow, CPR;
Assistant Professor, Ashoka University)
Panel Discussion on Indo-US Relations featuring

James Steinberg (Professor, Maxwell School of
Citizenship and Public Affairs; Former United
States Deputy Secretary of State); Shivshankar
Menon (Former National Security Advisor & Foreign
Secretary, India); and Shekhar Gupta (Founder,
ThePrint India)
Panel Discussion on Political Elites and Local

Bureaucratic Capacity featuring Rahul Verma
(Fellow, CPR); Shekhar Gupta, (Founder, ThePrint
India); Deepak Sanan (Senior Visiting Fellow, CPR);
Patrick French (Dean, School of Arts and Sciences,
Ahmedabad University); Jayant Chaudhary (Former
Member of Parliament, India); and Mukulika
Banerjee, (Director, South Asia Centre, LSE)

CPR Dialogues 2020
Panel Discussion on Challenges in Public Education:

Balancing State and Non-State Actors featuring
NV Varghese (Chancellor, National Institute of
Education Planning and Administration); Rashmi
Sharma (Senior Visiting Fellow, ICRIER; Former
IAS Officer); Priyadarshani Joshi (Global Education
Monitoring Team, UNESCO); Parth J Shah (Founder
President, Centre for Civil Society); and Kiran Bhatty
(Senior Fellow, CPR)
Panel Discussion on The Air Pollution Crisis :

Making Political Salience Count featuring Gaurav
Gogoi (Member of Parliament, India); Rohit Negi
(Associate Professor, Ambedkar University Delhi);
Shreya Gadepalli (South Asia Director - Institute for
Transport and Development Policy); Shibani Ghosh
(Fellow, CPR); and Santosh Harish (Fellow, CPR)
Panel Discussion on Land and the Constitution : Solving

Land Conflict in India featuring Shyam Divan (Senior
Advocate, Supreme Court of India); KP Krishnan
(Former Secretary, Ministry of Skill Development
and Entrepreneurship, Government of India); Nitin
Sethi (Independent Journalist); Usha Ramanathan
(Independent Law Researcher); and Namita Wahi
(Fellow & Director, Land Rights Initiative, CPR)

CPR Governing Board CPR Executive committee
(As on 31st March 2020) (As on 31st March 2020)
1. Dr Meenakshi Gopinath – Chairperson 1. Dr Meenakshi Gopinath – Chairperson

Director, Women in Security Conflict Management & Director, Women in Security Conflict Management
Peace (WISCOMP) & Peace (WISCOMP)
2. Subodh Bhargava – Member 2. Shyam Saran – Member

Former Chairman, Tata Telecommunications Ltd. Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research
3. Rakesh Bharti Mittal – Member Subodh Bhargava – Member

3.
Vice Chairman, Bharti Enterprises Former Chairman, Tata Telecommunications Ltd.
Shyam Saran – Member

4. 4. Vinita Bali – Member
Former Foreign Secretary and Independent Director & Strategy Adviser
Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research
5. Yamini Aiyar – Member
5. Vinita Bali – Member President & Chief Executive, Centre for Policy Research
Independent Director and Strategy Adviser
6. Rama Bijapurkar – Member CHIEF, ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES

Independent Management Consultant and L Ravi
Professor of Management Practice, IIM Ahmedabad
7. Chandrashekhar Dasgupta – Member

Former Ambassador and well-known Historian
8. Keshav Desiraju – Member

Former Secretary, Government of India
9. Shyam Divan – Member

Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India
10. Member-Secretary – Member

Indian Council of Social Science Research
11. Yamini Aiyar – Member-Secretary

President and Chief Executive,
Centre for Policy Research

CPR@2020
4 Books
9 Working papers
11 Book Chapters
23 Faculty
25 Journal Articles
25 Staff
32 Events and
Conferences Attended
35 Policy Briefs
and Reports FUNDING
*1 lakh = 1,00,000
56
Research
Associates
90
Talks/Seminars/
Workshops by
CPR
DIGITAL REACH Rs.3,600.97 lakh*

MONTHLY AVERAGE 2018–19
33,300
Website
Visitors
40,900 minutes
Time spent on
YouTube
442
News articles
Rs. 3616.04 lakh*

2019-2020
101,500
Website Page
Views
List of Granting Organisation
Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi
IDRC, Canada
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USA
William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, USA
Ford Foundation, USA
Oak Foundation
The Asia Foundation, USA
NAMATI Inc., USA
Omidyar Network Foundation, USA
Mac Arthur Foundation, USA
Chr. Michelsen Institute, Norway
Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, USA
World Bank
Nxtra Data Ltd

DHARMA MARG, CHANAKYAPURI NEW DELHI 110021
WWW.CPRINDIA.ORG

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A leading public policy

2 Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019

With warmest thanks

Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019 3

CPR is commited to fostering an evidence-based

Image Source: Pixabay

In 2019, the Initiative on Climate, Energy and Environment (ICEE) contributed to

Climate Policy, Institutions and Governance

Navroz K Dubash and Ritu Mathur

6 Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019

‘The authors’ list reads like a

‘…climate change is the

Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019 7

Navroz K Dubash, David Wallace-

The Political Economy of Electricity in Indian States

ICEE co-hosted several agenda-setting meetings on India’s energy transition with

Air Quality Governance and Regulation in India

8 Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019

Energy Demand in Urban India

Image Source: www.The Financial express.com

Rohit Chandra contributed a chapter on the history of the Indian coal

Chandra presented on Four Perspectives on the Indian Coal Industry

Chandra also presented on Technological Evolution of India’s Coal Industry

Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019 9

Environmental Non-Compliance and Institutional Responses

The Program continued its grassroots engagements through its network of

10 Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019

India’s Forest Laws and Governance

Urban Infrastructure Projects and Environmental Discourses

Research and Policy Engagements

Manju Menon authored an article on the legal and environmental implications of

Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019 11

12 Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019

Chokkakula also delivered public lectures and talks on contemporary water

Interstate River Water Governance, Plenary talk at the conference on Transboundary

Chokkakula’s work has also informed the public

As the expert member of the International Commission on Irrigation and

Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019 13

14 Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019

From nuclear strategy and military history to trans-boundary

16 Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019

Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019 17

Mukhopadhaya analysed the US-Taliban peace deal and

Zorawar Daulet Singh authored an article titled India’s

18 Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019

Panel Discussion on Article 370: The Road Ahead | September 2019

Speakers: Tilak Devasher (Member,

Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019 19

Speakers: Gautam Mukhopadhaya (Senior

Speakers: VS Seshadri (former

20 Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019

CPR seeks to understand the deep drivers of India’s democratic

Image Source: scroll.in

AI’s flagship Planning, Allocations and Expenditures, Institutions Studies in

22 Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019

A glimpse of Hum Aur

In order to spark dialogues on critical issues related to Responsive Governance,

Centre For Policy Research, Annual Report, 2019 23

Other Highlights from AI

The following training sessions were conducted for top bureaucrats: