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Inaugural IEPFA-NCAER Investor Awareness and Protection Webinar of 2022-23

August 17, 2023

NCAER, in collaboration with the Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority (IEPFA), organised a webinar on “Investor Protection Framework in India: Challenges and Road Ahead’’, on 17 August 2023, to promote financial literacy and investor awareness and protection among investors. The webinar, which was attended by the investor community, and NCAER and IEPFA staff, among others, was organised under the aegis of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India.

The Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority (IEPFA), set up on September 7, 2016, by the Government of India, is a landmark initiative of the Union Government, aimed at ensuring refunds of shares, unclaimed dividends, and matured deposits/debentures, among other things, to investors; distributing disgorged amounts to rightful applicants; promoting awareness among investors; and ensuring the protection of their interests. This mandate for the IEPFA is part of the government’s efforts to make all citizens equal partners in the country’s financial development.

The IEPFA has been dedicatedly fulfilling this mandate since its inception. It has organised a record number of Investor Awareness Programmes to help achieve inclusive financial literacy for stakeholders in rural, semi-urban, and urban areas besides enabling the rightful claimants to get their due unclaimed shares, dividends, and debentures speedily.

The event featured a keynote address by Ms. Anita Shah Akella, CEO of IEPFA and Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Ms. Akella’s address underscored the criticality of financial education and protection in the rapidly evolving financial landscape. She highlighted the need for informed decision-making and of safeguarding investor interests in an environment where financial markets are subject to rapid transformation. She elaborated on the concept of a “financially educated” individual, encompassing a comprehensive understanding of economic fundamentals, adept money management, and insightful decision-making, spanning budgeting, savings, investments, and consumer choices. This holistic understanding empowers individuals to navigate the intricate realm of financial resources, assets, credit, insurance, and taxes, and make prudent choices that resonate beyond individual households, creating positive impacts on communities and societies.

Ms Akella’s address was followed by a panel discussion on the challenges confronting the investor protection framework in India. The following panellists shared their expertise on various topics, including insurance, digital initiatives, cybercrime awareness, evolving banking systems, and the pivotal role of regulatory bodies in fostering investor awareness.

Mr. Dhirendra Kumar, founder of Value Research, delved into the practicality of insurance tools and the need for simplified and comprehensive information disclosure to investors prior to making investment decisions. Mr. R.K. Nair, former Member of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), elaborated on insurance matters, emphasising the practicality and transparent information disclosure about insurance tools to investors. Mr. Neeraj Nigam, Executive Director at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), provided insights into evolving banking systems and the RBI’s role in promoting investor awareness in modern times. Mr. Gangesh Varma, Principal Associate of Technology and Policy at Saraf and Partners, discussed digital initiatives for investor awareness and the indispensable need to educate investors about cybercrime prevention.

The panel discussion was adeptly moderated by Dr. C.S. Mohapatra, IEPF Chair Professor at NCAER. The IEPF Chair has been established at NCAER with the support of the IEPFA under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India. Dr Mohapatra stated that investor protection is a two-way process: while the regulators, government and agencies need to work on policies and their implementation, the investors need to be alert and aware enough to be able to take sound financial decisions. The stakeholders need to strive collectively towards a secure and enabled environment, and investors need to be well-informed, and wary of frauds and mis-selling. He stressed the need for comprehensive research and surveys to guide policy, apart from intensified efforts to build the trust and confidence of investors, both domestic and foreign, as also to ensure the availability of simplified processes and products.

Concluding the event, Mr. Sumit Agarwal, AGM at IEPFA, extended a vote of thanks, acknowledging the invaluable contributions of all the participants, speakers, and attendees. He lauded the collaborative spirit of the webinar, aligning stakeholders towards the shared goal of enhancing financial literacy and safeguarding investor interests. As global economies embrace digital transformation and financial inclusivity, the event illuminated the pivotal role of financial literacy in unlocking the true potential of these advancements.

India Policy Forum 2023

NCAER, India’s premier economic think tank, hosted its marquee event, the India Policy Forum (IPF) during July 6-7, 2023. The event was held in person at the NCAER India Centre, New Delhi.

Every summer, the NCAER India Policy Forum brings to New Delhi a unique combination of intense scholarship and policymaker engagement. This annual Forum aims to promote rigorous empirical economic research on India through commissioned papers presented at the Conference, which are published in an international journal. In addition, the IPF features policy lectures and a Roundtable discussion on critical issues.

The 2023 IPF is special because it marks the 20th Anniversary of the Conference. In the past two decades, the Forum has engaged in policy conversations that have contributed to a profound transformation of the Indian economy and society. Since its inception in 2004, the IPF has been a platform carrying forward NCAER’s mandate of ensuring quality, relevance, and impact. Accordingly, the Forum has enabled honest conversations among world-class researchers using evidence-based research. The Forum has since emerged as a leader of ideas and a unique forum for driving policy.

The 20th edition of the IPF was attended by a galaxy of eminent policymakers, economists, academics and researchers, who focused on the key economic challenges facing India, and deliberated on five research papers, covering a range of diverse sectors and subjects, including the public debt and deficit dilemma in India, the financial sustainability of widespread electrification across the country, the need for investing in skills for workers by firms to enhance productivity, the gender implications of preference for sons over daughters, and the status of finance in India.

Contextualising the 20th IPF, the NCAER Director General, Dr Poonam Gupta stated, “The IPF has, over the years, mirrored the momentous developments in India’s economic landscape while also flagging key socio-economic issues of concern for the country. The numerous issues that have found a voice at the IPF, and thereby in the papers featured in the IPF journal, include macroeconomic finance and fiscal policy; GDP growth and development; political economy; human development parameters including health, nutrition, education, and social welfare; poverty and inequality; domestic and international trade; macrofinance and banking; gender equality and empowerment; and environment and climate change, to name just some of them. And some of the key issues from this category have found their way into the 20th IPF as well.”

While discussing the evolution of the IPF over the last 20 years, the former Director General of NCAER and current Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog, Mr Suman Bery, who had launched the IPF Conference in 2003, said, “The IPF has been instrumental in facilitating a constructive interface between policy-makers, on one hand, and academia and the research fraternity, on the other hand, to bring critical issues impacting the Indian economy to the notice of policy-makers.”

The first paper presented at the IPF 2023 was on ‘India’s Debt Dilemma’, in which the authors highlighted the prevalence of high fiscal deficit and public debt prevalent in India, and the need for fiscal consolidation by achieving lower primary deficits through greater tax revenue generation and privatisation. The paper also assesses the sustainability of the public finances, with a focus on the next five years.

The authors of the second paper titled, ‘Is Electrification in India Fiscally Sustainable?’ analysed the fiscal health of State electricity distribution companies (discoms) in India and the impact of this indicator on the supply of electricity in the country. They pointed out that though India has recently achieved near-universal household electrification, State discoms continue to record losses, largely because of Central and State transfers to bail them out. This necessitates the provision of incentives to discoms for ensuring both their fiscal independence as well as reliable supply and service of electricity across the country.

Another paper presented at the IPF 2023 was on ‘Workers, Managers, and Productivity: How Investments in Workers Can Fuel India’s Productivity Growth’, delineated a stylised data set on productivity in the manufacturing sector in India, which points to an average decline in aggregate growth of productivity in India over the last several years. The authors of this paper also deconstructed the various reasons for the systematic under-investment in workers by firms, and the need for a better understanding of firm behaviour with regard to employment of different types of workers across regions.

An important gender-based paper titled, ‘Ten Facts about Son Preference in India’, authored by Seema Jayachandran, Princeton University, generated a lot of debate and discussion on the issues of patrilocal and gender-based outcomes that characterise the sex composition and the ostensible practice of sex selection among Indian families. The author pointed out the need for implementing State policies such as the introduction of public pensions for elderly parents as an alternative to old-age support from sons, increased delivery of health services for girl children through schools, and interventions that can trigger a transformation in attitudes and norms to counter the patriarchal preference for sons over daughters in Indian families, and the differential investments made on male children vis-à-vis their female counterparts.

The last paper presented at the IPF 2023, titled, ‘The Past and Future of Finance’, was authored by Ruchir Agarwal, Yale School of Management and Harvard Kennedy School. The paper outlined the financial crisis India faced during the period 2018-20, followed by an analysis of the fiscal slowdown in the country commencing in 2018, which was signified by a serious decline in its GDP and recession in various sectors of the economy. The paper also delineated the subsequent policy response in order to strengthen India’s financial system to protect it from future fiscal crises, and the potential future challenges and opportunities and a roadmap for key reforms to foster economic growth in India.

In addition to the five papers, the India Policy Forum Conference of 2023 also featured three lectures, including the IPF Annual Lecture by Professor Hélène Rey, of London Business School, on “Monetary and Macroprudential Policies with Global Financial Cycles”; the Policy Maker’s Lecture, titled, ‘Discretion is the Bitter Part of Advice’, delivered by the Chair of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, Dr Bibek Debroy, who focused on how policy-making is often hampered by the ambivalence or recalcitrance of policy advisors to deliver actionable  recommendations for executing State policies; and the T.N. Srinivasan Lecture titled, ‘Poverty and Inequality in India: An Exploration of Undercurrents at the Village Level’, by Peter Lanjouw, VU University, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Lanjouw’s lecture focused on poverty at the micro level, that is, the level of the village, and how measuring poverty at the local level can drive welfare policies implemented by both Central and State governments.

The IPF 2023 concluded with the IPF Policy Roundtable, titled, ‘The World in a Polycrisis’, which featured a keynote speech by noted financial journalist, Martin Wolf of Financial Times, and moderated by Arvind Panagariya, Columbia University and NCAER. The Discussants for this session included V. Anantha Nageswaran, Chief Economic Adviser, Government of India, and Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP). In his presentation, Mr Wolf highlighted key global developments that have fomented  disruptions and crises across the world, including demographic shifts, de-globalisation or ‘slowbalisation’, global warming, technological changes; shocks such as the pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine War, and rise in energy prices; and the consequent fragilities in international systems fuelled by these shifts and shocks, such as mounting global inflation and public debts, advent of populist and divisive politics, and the erosion of international institutions. The Discussants’ comments and the subsequent general discussion focused on possible solutions to these shifts and shocks, the roadmap for the future, and the potential leadership role of India in forging ties with other nations to deal with the global polycrisis.

DataTalk: An Online Conversation between Data Journalists and Data Producers

NCAER’s National Data Innovation Centre (NCAER-NDIC) hosted a webinar entitled, “DataTalk: An Online Conversation between Data Journalists and Data Producers”, on Thursday, 15 June 2023.

In recent years, the field of data and statistical journalism in India has grown in sophistication and depth. However, this also puts substantial demands on data systems. At the same time, data systems have faced tremendous challenges, particularly with the absence of face-to-face data collection during the pandemic. As we recover from the pandemic, we have a unique opportunity to build a more robust data infrastructure and empirically grounded public discourse. This will also enable us to return to some of our traditional data collection activities while utilising innovations and tools developed during the pandemic. However, this is only feasible if we can create a common ground between data producers and journalists.

The panel discussion with eminent data journalists and leading data producers focused on the challenges and opportunities faced by both sides. Following are some of the questions that were discussed at the webinar: How do journalists cope with deadlines when deciding which data to report and how? How can data producers work with data journalists to place information in the public domain without fearing being misquoted? What skill sets do both sides need to make this a fruitful collaboration? What are the constraints under which each side operates?

The panellists in this discussion included some of India’s leading statistical journalists and data producers. The discussion was moderated by NCAER Professor, Sonalde Desai.

Moderator:

Sonalde Desai is a Professor at NCAER with a joint appointment as Distinguished University Professor in Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland. She directs the NCAER-National Data Innovation Centre (NDIC). She is an internationally known demographer whose work deals primarily with human development in developing countries with a particular focus on gender and class inequalities. At present, she is leading the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), India’s only nationally representative panel study spanning two decades.

Panellists:

Rukmini S. is an independent data communicator based in Chennai, India. Her work focuses on inequality, gender, caste, and politics. She was earlier National Data Editor of The Hindu and HuffPost India, and has written for a range of Indian and international publications. She won the Likho Awards for Excellence in Media in 2019. In 2020, she received an Honourable Mention for the Chameli Devi Jain Awards for an Outstanding Woman Journalist. Her pandemic podcast, The Moving Curve, won an Emergent Ventures COVID-19 India Prize in 2020. Rukmini’s work on estimating COVID deaths in India won a 2022 Sigma Award, the global data journalism awards, and a Jury’s Special Mention (Investigative Reporting) at the Asian College of Journalism Awards 2022. Her first book, Whole Numbers & Half Truths: What Data Can and Cannot Tell Us About Modern India, was published by Westland in December 2021. It won the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award (Non-Fiction) 2022. Her second book will be published by Westland in 2023.

Pramit Bhattacharya is a columnist who writes on statistics and economics. His Truth, Lies, and Statistics column appears in Mint, and the Simply Economics column in Hindustan Times. He was earlier the data editor at Mint, where he helped set up one of the country’s first data journalism units, Plain Facts in 2014. He won the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award 2015 in the ‘Commentary and Interpretative Journalism’ category.

Mahesh Vyas is Managing Director and CEO of Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt Ltd. (CMIE). He has been an observer of the Indian economy over the past four decades. He is the chief architect of CMIE’s databases including, Prowess, CapEx and Consumer Pyramids Household Survey. Prowess is India’s largest database on the performance of Indian companies, CapEx is India’s largest database on the implementation of investment projects to create new capacities in India, and the Consumer Pyramids Household Survey is India’s largest panel household survey. Mahesh writes regularly on the Indian economy for CMIE’s Economic Outlook service. His writings focus on labour markets, consumer sentiments, performance of enterprises, and capex investments.

Abhishek Singh is a Professor in the Department of Public Health and Mortality Studies at the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, India. He has published more than 100 research papers in peer-reviewed national/international journals. His areas of interest are mortality analysis (including maternal mortality), maternal and child health, gender issues, designing, implementing, and analysing large-scale surveys, among other things. He was instrumental in designing and implementing NFHS-4 (2015-16). He was visiting faculty as a Gates Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and during the 2011-2012 academic year, was a recipient of the prestigious Leverhulme Fellowship to collaborate on research with faculty and students of the School of Health Sciences and Social Care University of Portsmouth UK. He is currently heading the Centre of Demography of Gender at IIPS and leading the Gender Equity and Demography Research (GENDER) project. He is also a co-Principal Investigator of NFHS-6.

P.C. Mohanan was a member of the Indian Statistical Service till 2015. He has worked in various capacities in the Central Statistical Office and the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO). In the NSSO, he was involved in surveys on employment and unemployment, migration, literacy, and housing, among others. He also worked extensively for making government data open to research access. He was also a member of several Government Committees like the Post-Sachar Evaluation Committee, Expert Committee on Agricultural Statistics, Technical Group for Estimating Housing Shortage, and Committee on the Slum Index. He has published papers on various topics, including employment, migration, and housing conditions. He also contributes to newspapers on statistical issues. After retirement, he worked as a short-term consultant for international agencies like FAO, UNDP, and ILO. He was appointed as a member of the National Statistical Commission in 2018. Currently, he is the Chairman of the Kerala State Statistical Commission.

Jayant Banthia is former Registrar General and Census Commissioner who retired as Chief Secretary, Maharashtra. He has extensive experience with housing and population censuses, in both India and a range of developing countries such as Nigeria, Myanmar, and Lebanon. As a member of the Indian Administrative Service, in addition to being a demographer trained at the London School of Economics, he brings both an academic and a policy perspective to this discussion.

What is Women’s Work? Challenges of Measurement for Policy Design

The NCAER Gender Hub and FESDIG (Feminist Economics Saturday Discussion Group) jointly organised a hybrid discussion on “What is Women’s Work? Challenges of Measurement for Policy Design” on 12 June 2023, at NCAER.

Despite the strong policy interest in women’s low and declining work participation in India, data and research on this subject continues to show contrasting and puzzling results. This discussion explored these puzzles and examined how far the definition of women’s work and its measurement are consistent with policy needs.

The discussion was held in two parts. During the first hour, participants from different backgrounds briefly offered their perspectives on definitions and measurement of women’s work, including work in the digital economy, the informal sector, and data biases in collection. The second hour was devoted to an open discussion on the topic.

The discussion was hosted by Sonalde Desai, Professor, NCAER; Pallavi Choudhuri, Senior Fellow, NCAER; and Bina Agarwal, Founder, FESDIG.

The other eminent participants, who joined the discussion both online and in person, included Renana Jhabvala, SEWA Bharat; Poonam Muttreja, Population Foundation of India; Nayantara Sarma, World Bank; Deepita Chakravarty, Ambedkar University, Delhi; Shiva Kumar, Harvard Kennedy School;  Paromita Sen, SEWA Bharat; Bornali Bhandari, NCAER; Amit Basole, Azim Premji University; Aiman Haque, SEWA Bharat; Saba Ahmed, SEWA Bharat; Nandini Dey, SEWA Bharat; Rosa Abraham, Azim Premji University; Ellina Samantroy, V.V. Giri National Labour Institute; Aasha Kapur Mehta, Institute for Human Development; Jeemol Unni, Ahmedabad University; Amaresh Dubey, NCAER and Jawaharlal Nehru University; Kieran Walsh, ILO; Ratna Sudarshan, former Institute of Social Studies Trust; and Sona Mitra, IWWAGE, Krea University.

Presentation on “User Beware: The Promises and Pitfalls of Using Tax Data to Study U.S. Internal Migration”

NCAER organised an internal seminar titled, ‘User Beware: The promises and pitfalls of using tax data to study U.S. internal migration’ by Jack DeWaard, Scientific Director of Social and Behavioral Science Research, at The Population Council, New York, on Tuesday, 16 May 2023.

Jack DeWaard is Scientific Director of Social and Behavioral Science Research at the Population Council. Prior to joining the Population Council, he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Graduate Faculty of Population Studies in the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota. His research interests focus on migration systems and networks, climate and environmental migration and displacement, and inequality and incorporation.

In the Seminar, Dr DeWaard pointed out that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) makes publicly and freely available period migration data at the state and county levels. Among their uses, these data inform estimates of net-migration as part of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Program, which, in turn, are used for producing other annual statistics, survey design, business and community planning, and federal funding allocations. In his talk, he detailed a highly concerning, apparently systemic, and presently unresolved problem with the IRS migration data since the IRS took over responsibilities for preparing these data from the U.S. Census Bureau in 2011. Unless and until this problem is addressed by the IRS, he concluded that the post-2011 data should not be used.

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