Archives: Event

As the nation hopefully begins its recovery from the Coronavirus pandemic through a massive vaccine rollout, assessing the speed of recovery in different arenas of life will require a better understanding of the overall impact of the pandemic and the level of willingness among individuals to get vaccinated. In spite of the opening of the economy in recent months, employment and income levels have not seen a uniform recovery. Schools and colleges have remained shut since March 2020, and classes have begun only recently in some States. Moreover, the disruption of routine health services has emerged as a major area of concern in the wake of COVID-19. The recovery appears to be taking different pathways for different people, what some have called a K-shaped recovery.

NCAER hosted Sonalde Desai and Santanu Pramanik from its National Data Innovation Centre to share the results of Round 4 of its Delhi NCR Coronavirus Telephone Survey (DCVTS-4) launched on December 23, 2020 and completed on January 4, 2021. NCAER Director General Shekhar Shah moderated the discussion

DCVTS-4 builds on the three earlier rounds of the NCAER DCVTS, which were carried out in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic in April and June 2020. This fourth webinar will report its key findings on:

• The extent to which individuals are willing to get vaccinated and their willingness to pay for the vaccines;
• The extent to which students have been able to participate in online classes held by schools, and coaching centre-based and home-based learning during the period when schools have been closed;
• The manner in which health providers have coped in providing routine and emergency health care while dealing with the pandemic;
• Economic recovery, occupational shifts during the pandemic, and vulnerability among different occupational groups; and
• The levels of distress and financial hardship experienced by households and whether the most vulnerable households have had access to safety nets.
• DCVTS-4 resurveyed households contacted in the earlier rounds of DCVTS and completed interviews of 3,168 households (at a 61% response rate) from the rural and urban areas of Delhi NCR, which includes Delhi as well as rural and urban households from selected districts of Haryana, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. The webinar was attended by over 100 participant

NCAER DCVTS ‘Round 4’ Results and the ‘Press Release’ is available on this webpage.

As the world changes calendars after a grim, tumultuous year, Indians have been greeted with the welcome news of two domestically produced COVID-19 vaccines nearing emergency approval. If ever humankind needed reminding that healthcare is central to all economic and social wellbeing, 2020 certainly achieved that. Countries that had robust healthcare systems, and these were not necessarily the world’s richest countries, fared much better than others. Never before in India have health issues received the kind of attention they have in the past year. How can we leverage this attention to drive long-awaited health system reforms? Learning from the fault lines the pandemic has exposed, and the grit and valour healthcare workers have shown, how can we deliver affordable, accessible, comprehensive, and accountable healthcare to all Indians?

The challenges are many. There are deep structural weaknesses in India’s health systems, including inadequate financing, medical supplies, and personnel; irrational treatments, rampant profiteering, and a breakdown of trust and accountability. Gender, caste, class, religion, and community barriers exacerbate health inequalities. There is much to be done on all dimensions, promotive, preventive, and curative. But if ever there was a time to do it, it is now.

For its first Coronavirus Briefing of 2021, on Thursday, January 7, NCAER will host the well-known authors of this recent book to discuss what the pandemic is teaching us about critical health sector reforms that India needs. Speaking about this will be authors Chandrakant Lahariya, health systems and public policy expert, Gagandeep Kang, FRS, Professor at CMC Vellore, and Randeep Guleria, Director and Professor at AIIMS, New Delhi.  Professor Kang is also Co-Chair of the just-established Lancet Citizens’ Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System.

Sharing their insights on the book and on health system reforms will be Preeti Sudan, until mid-last year the Union Health Secretary and now a member of the International Panel for Pandemic Preparedness & Response, Devi Prasad Shetty, Chairman, Narayana Health, and NCAER Director General, Shekhar Shah. The discussion will be chaired by N K Singh, Chairperson of the 15th Finance Commission that has just completed its work and has paid special attention to health issues.

The world is on the brink of winning the fastest vaccine race in history. As of this writing, two mRNA vaccines have been approved for emergency use in some countries and are being administered. An end to the Coronavirus pandemic appears to be in sight. But questions loom about large countries like India being able to buy, distribute and deliver the vaccine in an orderly and equitable way. And larger questions are emerging about the differential vaccine access between high-income countries and others, despite attempts by WHO and the Global Vaccine Alliance GAVI to build distribution protocols that are fair.

NCAER  hosted policymakers, economists, and public health specialists in a special, end-of-the-year, extended NCAER Coronavirus Briefing to discuss how India will vaccinate its billion plus people. The event opened with Indu Bhushan, CEO of Ayushman Bharat, and Ajay Shah, former Professor at NIPFP, laying out of the issues from a public health and public economics perspective. Renu Swarup, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, Srinath Reddy, President, Public Health Foundation of India, Keshav Desiraju, Former Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and Mohammed Suleman, Additional Chief Secretary, Directorate of Health Services for Madhya Pradesh, then offered their comments and insights. Finally, Junaid Ahmad, India Country Director for the World Bank and Harish Iyer, Senior Adviser for Scientific Programs, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, offered a global perspective. NCAER Director General Shekhar Shah  moderated the discussion.

Panellists sought to answer questions such as: Whether imported or produced at facilities like the Serum Institute of India, how will the vaccines be stored, distributed and ultimately administered? In what way can the private sector participate, in what capacity, and in which part of the supply chain? Or should it be a state monopoly? What will be the regulatory regime? Can individuals or private firms import vaccines freely? Are the vaccines a “public good” or a “private good,” as economists think of these terms?

Who will get which vaccine, when, and what will be the implications? There is consensus to first target health and other essential workers and priority groups such as the elderly with co-morbidities. Initial estimates suggest a priority group of 300 million, requiring at least 600 million doses, assuming a two-dose vaccine. This is roughly equivalent to the entire US demand for the vaccine. By when will such scale be reached? How will priority targeting be done? How will Aadhaar help?

What will be the price? Or prices? How can the Centre and States prepare for the cost of import, production and roll-out when fiscal resources are already strained? What role will international agencies like the World Bank, WHO, GAVI, and the Gates Foundation play in India? More immediately, how will these preparations and costs be reflected in the upcoming FY2021-22 Union Budget, due in just over a month’s time?

Whichever way we see it, India’s COVID-19 vaccination strategy and its implementation and monitoring will be India’s grand public health challenge of the century — met hopefully by the right vaccines, made available on a priority basis to the right people and at the right price. It will also be an opportunity to fill gaps in our health policy and regulatory capacities, our information and data systems, our health infrastructure, including cold chains and personnel, and in our consultations with communities and beneficiaries.

The presentation is available on this webpage

Five investor education workshops with financial regulators

Workshop I: Investor Education and Protection in the Securities Markets

NCAER’s newly established Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF) Chair Unit’s organized the first of its series of five workshops on Investor Education and Protection with financial regulators. This session, focusing on the securities markets, was held virtually and was attended by more than 60 participants.

India’s 2014 Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana programme helped create robust digital financial services, increasing the proportion of those above the age of 15 with a bank account to nearly 80% in 2017, compared to just about 35% in 2011. Digitization has brought banking to many more during the pandemic. But many are first-time users and don’t trust unfamiliar ways of handling their money. At the same time, the demand for entry into investment markets has surged. This surge in interest in India’s financial markets places a big responsibility on the financial regulatory authorities to demystify finance and encourage informed and safe investing. The National Strategy for Financial Education 2020-25 recognizes the unique challenges of creating a financially aware and empowered India, and the need for convergence of efforts by multiple stakeholders that regulate and manage India’s financial resources.

Even as the Strategy lays out the broad contours for protection and education, there is a need to understand its coverage of specific operations in the securities markets. Besides its large retail participation, the securities market is also perhaps the most ‘reformed’ markets of India. It is endowed with a regulatory architecture that is recent, and it operates through institutions like exchanges, clearing corporations and depositories that are based on the most contemporary design. It has intermediated impressive sums of finances, whether that be through Initial Public Offerings, or in secondary market volumes. Depending on the segment of the market that is being discussed, both inadequate retail participation (in bonds, gold exchange traded funds and others) and excessive retail participation (in derivatives, for example) reflect likely absence of widespread information about different market segments among participants. Assessing the design and implementation of the strategies for investor education and protection are the key goals of the workshop series.

This workshop featured insights from leading securities markets experts, as well as the regulators. Manoj Pandey, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Corporate Affairs & CEO, IEPFA, delivered the keynote address and the workshop was chaired by G Mahalingam, Whole-Time Member, Securities and Exchange Board of India.

Inaugurated on December 21, 2020 with a keynote address by RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das, this series of five NCAER workshops covers investor education issues in securities market, insurance, pension funds and credit markets. These workshops with key regulators are an opportunity for participants to both learn from key regulators about their strategies for investor education and to contribute to refining the priorities for action and for creating relevant further research and knowledge base in this area.