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In most sectors share of female employees is low. Where the share is close to 50 per cent there are few women in top roles

The NCAER Skills Report 2018 has emphasised on the importance of female role models to encourage employability and eventual employment. Where are these role models? The numbers from the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2017 inform us that the labour force participation rate (LFPR) of females aged between 15-59 years according to usual status was barely 25.9 per cent and the worker population ratio (WPR) was 23.8 per cent.

Majority of the women (55.3 per cent) aged 15 were employed in the agricultural sector in 2017-18. The corresponding number for men was 39 per cent.

The next top four sectors which employed women in 2017-18 were education (8.3 per cent); retail trade except of motor vehicles and motorcycles (4.6 per cent); manufacture of wearing apparel (3.5 per cent); and activities of households as employers of domestic personnel (3.3 per cent). Together they employed 75 per cent of women aged 15 and above.

In this article we specifically examine the role of female leaders — that is females who fall in Division 1 of National Classification of Occupations 2004 classified as legislators senior officers and managers (henceforth referred to as ‘managers’).

For that reason we leave out agriculture and allied activities and activities of households as employers of domestic personnel from our analysis. While the former sector has its own peculiarities the latter category primarily includes domestic assistants in various capacities with limited scope for managerial roles.

Divisions 2 (Professionals) and 3 (Associate Professionals) are clubbed together in one group referred to as ‘professionals’. Divisions 4 to 9 are clubbed together and referred as ‘workers’ and include clerks; service workers and shop and market sales workers; skilled agriculture and fishery workers; craft and related trades workers; plant and machinery operators and assemblers; and elementary occupations.

The 12 sectors listed in the table account for 76.6 per cent of all female employees outside agriculture and domestic services. The share of female employees amongst all employees is greater than 50 per cent only in the case of the tobacco sector. It is 45-50 per cent for education and human health activities.

Stark difference

However the nature of the sectors differ starkly. Majority of the females engaged in the tobacco sector were ‘workers’ whereas they were ‘professionals’ in the education and health sectors — that is signalling different skills levels.

Within the manufacturing and construction sectors barring the latter the share of female ‘managers’ as a percentage of all managers was approximately equivalent to the share of all female employees as a percentage of all employees.

Majority of the females in these sectors were ‘workers’. The share of ‘professionals’ was the smallest.

In contrast the service sectors show variations. Two sectors namely retail trade and food & service beverage activities behave in a similar manner as the above mentioned manufacturing sectors.

Even though other personal service activities is similar to the other two sectors discussed above the share of female ‘managers’ is lower than the share of female employees signalling presence of glass ceiling in this sector.

There are three sectors — education health and computer programming and consultancy and related activities — where the share of female ‘managers’ is lower than the share of overall female ‘employees’. These sectors are characterised by a very high share of ‘professionals’.

Two sectors namely public administration and financial services fall between the two extremes. The share of female ‘managers’ is the same or higher than the share of female employees.

There is no suggestion of glass ceiling though the share of female employees was overall relatively low compared to health and education. There is a fair share of ‘professionals’ in these sectors.

Double whammy

The numbers suggest a double whammy for women. First in a majority of the sectors the share of female employees is relatively low. And in sectors where the share of female employees is close to 50 per cent glass ceiling seems to be at work.

This is despite the fact that some of these sectors are characterised by a high share of professionals.

Third there is a concentration of women employees in certain sectors — agriculture and education. This is true despite educational attainment.

Majority of the female employees with graduate level education and above were engaged in education (45.6 per cent) and health (10.7 per cent) sectors as opposed to men being engaged in education (17.3 per cent) and retail trade (12 per cent).

To encourage female leadership at work demand side policies have to work along with supply side (education and skilling)

Bornali Bhandari is a Senior Fellow and Ajaya Sahu is a Senior Research Analyst at NCAER. Views are personal.

From the perception that few women are found in the fields of science technology engineering and mathematics emerges the paradox that the disbalance is by choice rather than any constraint

As the world celebrated another Women’s Day on March 8 this time under the shadow of the lethal Coronavirus with scientists and medical professionals across the globe working round the clock to develop a vaccine to counter the virus it is pertinent to reflect on the rather ambivalent relationship between gender on one hand and research and technology on the other. From the almost unanimous perception that much fewer women than men are found in the fields of science technology engineering and mathematics (STEM) emerges the paradox that the gender gap in science education is the result of choice rather than any constraint. Women particularly in advanced societies voluntarily pursue careers in other fields rather than STEM. This paradox needs to be unbundled especially in the current grim environment wherein men and women need to stand shoulder to shoulder to decimate the killer virus and restore normal life and health in the world.

Traditionally several scholars and policymakers have pointed out male domination of STEM fields with historically low participation of women in these professions. The reasons for this gender disparity are reportedly lack of encouragement from parents to daughters for pursuing higher studies in mathematics and science and laboratory experiences and financial resources needed to study these subjects all of which favour men over women. The fact that the privileged professions with high remunerations in STEM fields are dotted with men is an undisputed corollary of this gender gap.

A 2018 survey conducted by Mastercard and Incite titled Revisiting Women in STEM carried out among 136 Indian women working in both STEM and non-STEM jobs arrived at some intriguing results. It found that 45 per cent of the women respondents working in STEM jobs were dissatisfied with their current career choice and also did not expect to continue in the job for their entire work life. Regarding the reasons for this discontent 46 per cent cited the need for constantly updating their skills in STEM careers 39 per cent were unable to adjust to the long hours and commitment needed in these jobs and 36 per cent were apprehensive of working in a male-dominated office environment. In addition 24 per cent complained that women were less likely to be paid as much as men in these high-profile occupations. All of these are valid reasons for women to be wary of joining the science and technology bandwagon but they have serious implications for attracting bright young women into these streams.

The situation is complicated further by the play of discriminatory forces constantly seeking to limit the frontiers of higher education and employment for women especially in conservative societies across India. Academics and experts in the field of education also argue that the gender gap in India’s technological workforce is an outcome of the lack of both infrastructure and quality teachers in technical institutions of higher learning that fail to accommodate more women students. This discrimination is exacerbated by the persistent male-female and urban-rural divide in India’s pedagogical landscape.

In consonance with these findings scholars using data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) have also repeatedly asserted that gender inequality in educational outcomes in India is a product of social backgrounds access to learning resources and cultural attitudes which lead parents to prioritise their son’s education over daughter’s education.

The IHDS carried out by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in collaboration with the University of Maryland in two waves in 2004-05 and 2011-12 points out that the prevalence of a gendered education system stemming from India’s patriarchal society has created all-round fissures in educational attainments.

This issue is also flagged up in a 2019 paper by leading IHDS researchers at the University of Maryland’s Sociology Department titled The Emergence of Educational Hypogamy in India. The paper argues that though women today are more likely to be involved in higher education than before often even being more educated than their spouses in terms of subjects they are still more representative in traditionally considered “feminine” fields such as humanities and social sciences while men are more likely to be in the STEM fields which generate higher economic returns in the labour market.

Coming back to the Coronavirus in an article in The Independent last week Ian Hamilton lecturer in mental health at the Department of Health Sciences University of York takes the discrimination argument further. He claimed that due to differences in the immune systems of men and women there is a need to develop two different strains of the vaccine as women often have more severe adverse reactions and higher antibody responses to disease. But sexism is likely to prevent woman-centred research.

In such a situation women may end up receiving sub-optimal treatment leading to higher mortality. He cites the example of the last global pandemic SARS when even the World Health Organisation (WHO) had pointed to the gender gap in data specifically relating to the serious impact of the disease for pregnant women that was not sufficiently addressed by the SARS vaccine.

“From cancer to Coronavirus there isn’t an area of health research or science that is not gender-blind. Science it seems is institutionally sexist” fulminates Hamilton. He links this medical sexism to the paucity of women in senior research roles and a gender imbalance in technological laboratories dominated by men who may never be able to fully understand a woman’s health experiences. It is also widely suggested that women may be found aplenty in early-career levels of medical research but their male peers are more likely to ascend the professional ladder and become professors.

However there is light beyond the tunnel as women scientists are currently seen to be increasingly pro-active in their fight against the Coronavirus. Among the most prominent of them is an all-women team of four scientists led by India-born Nita Patel Director for Vaccine Development and Antibody Discovery at the Novavax Laboratory in the unassuming neighbourhood of Gaithersburg Montgomery County of Maryland USA. And there are other women scientists around the world involved in the same pursuit.

Patel and her team are working day and night to isolate the virus and find a breakthrough vaccine against Covid-19 using recombinant nanoparticle technology. When an ABC7 news reporter asked her what signal it would give young girls if the vaccine came from the hands of women Patel said “Well that’s encouraging for young girls to become scientists. You know I’m a woman (and can say) that’s awesome.” Novavax is aiming at an extremely aggressive timeline having reached phase-II of development of the vaccine. If they get the next phase of trials right they could hit the market with a viable vaccine in as little as three months.

However Patel and her team are not the only women engaged in the grim battle against Coronavirus. Kathleen Neuzil director of the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine’s Center for Vaccine Development who co-leads a consortium established by the National Institutes of Health at Emory University in Atlanta to quickly tackle new infectious diseases is also working in this area.

Another notable STEM researcher is Lauren Gardner a civil engineering professor at Johns Hopkins University who has led a team to build a map based on information collected from various sources in China the US and elsewhere to track the spread of the virus and locate areas where the virus is taking hold in real time and where it may attack more in future. Surely these path-breaking endeavours by women would not only provide succour by saving thousands of lives against the killer disease but also influence STEM research and policymaking in the long term. Can we still say that STEM is not for women?

(The writer Anupma Mehta is Consultant Editor at the National Council of Applied Economic Research. Views expressed are personal)

The 2020 Union Budget has failed to provide any fiscal stimulus based upon the assumption that there is no fiscal space for providing growth stimulus. In doing so it missed out on the opportunity of leveraging an additional fiscal space of around 10% of the gross domestic product that could have been tapped through revenue and expenditure rationalisation measures.

The 2020–21 Union Budget was expected to provide a strong fiscal stimulus to revive faltering economic growth. Those expectations have been belied. The revenue projections though still overly optimistic are more realistic than the revenue projections of the past two years. But in aligning expenditure plans to these revenue projections without any effort to mobilise additional revenues this budget has failed to provide the required fiscal stimulus. In the sections that follow we discuss in sequence the fiscal stance of the budget its revenue measures expenditure allocations and missed opportunities that the budget could have addressed to revive growth.

Growth Revival and Fiscal Dominance

Taking advantage of the low inflation environment the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) repeatedly lowered the repo rate since February 2019 in an effort to bring down the structure of lending rates and finally announced a pause in December 2019 as inflation rose. It also undertook open market operations and other monetary measures to stimulate investment and growth. However these monetary policy measures have proved to be ineffective. Transmission has been weak with little decline in the weighted average lending rate on fresh loans and the spread between the policy rate and the benchmark 10-year g-sec rate remaining elevated at 171 basis points. Credit growth has declined in all categories except personal loans. Meanwhile the growth in investment expenditure has declined sharply and so has growth.

That monetary policy has failed to revive the investment and growth cycle is not really surprising given the strong fiscal dominance of the financial sector. Large-scale sovereign borrowings by the central and state governments at relatively high riskless rates set a high threshold for lending rates for the private sector. Fiscal dominance in fact extends well beyond the government’s market borrowing to include high rates on National Small Savings Fund government provident fund deposits etc. Further government-owned banks and non-bank financial institutions dominate the financial market. In this fiscally dominated environment outcomes even in the financial sector the core domain of monetary policy are driven by fiscal policy. Hence it is fiscal policy that has to do most of the heavy lifting for reviving growth. The macroeconomic stance of the 2020–21 budget has to be assessed against this background.

There is a wide consensus that the sharp decline in growth is largely attributable to weak aggregate demand. Hence growth revival requires a strong public expenditure push. However an expenditure push does not necessarily have to be financed by a larger deficit. It can be financed through additional revenue mobilisation tax policy measures as well as additional non-tax revenues through asset sales to finance capital expenditure. The expansionary impact of increased central government expenditure can vary depending on how it is financed and also on how the expenditure is structured. This is because the multiplier effect of tax-financed spending is weaker than the expenditure financed by non-tax revenues asset sales or a larger deficit. Similarly the expansionary impact of capital expenditure is higher than that of revenue expenditure (Mundle et al 2011). Mundle and Sikdar (2020) have also argued that the multiplier effect of income support for the poor is stronger than that of other forms of revenue expenditure.

However it turns out that the sources of financing central government expenditures have been fairly stable. Total expenditure amounting to about 15% of the gross domestic product (GDP) has been more or less evenly financed by tax revenue and the other sources taken together (Table 1).¹ The structure of spending has also been fairly stable. Hence the growth impact of central government expenditure has primarily depended on how it has increased and not so much on its financing or its composition.

Total expenditure in 2020–21 (budget estimate or BE) is expected to grow by 9.2% compared to 14.7% in 2019–20. This deceleration of expenditure growth entails a weakening of the fiscal impulse. Even the 14.7% growth in central expenditure in 2019–20 failed to arrest declining growth. Hence the weaker fiscal impulse this year is unlikely to revive growth. In the absence of a strong fiscal stimulus we can expect to see yet another year of low GDP growth unless there is strong growth in other components of aggregate demand.

A comment is needed here on the issue of reforms versus fiscal stimulus. Reforms are important for sustaining high growth but it takes time for their growth effects to play out. A fiscal stimulus can revive growth in the short term thereby buying the time required for reforms to take effect over the medium to long term. Fiscal stimulation and reforms therefore are complementary policies and not competing alternatives.

Revenues and Receipts

On the revenue side of the budget one of the two most significant developments in direct taxes is the conditional reduction in the corporate tax rate. While in December 2019 the corporate tax rate was reduced from 30% to 22% for existing companies and 25% to 20% for new manufacturing companies the current budget has now extended the reduction to new service companies. The other is the introduction of a similar conditional graded reduction in income tax rates for taxable income up to `15 lakh. The condition to become eligible for these lower rates is that the tax payee must forgo all exemptions and concessions.

The move to eliminate exemptions and concessions is most welcome at first glance. The government at last seems to want to plug the huge revenue loss on account of these exemptions and concessions. However in linking the elimination of exemptions and concessions to lower tax rates and providing this as an option instead of mandating it the government has left taxpayers the option of staying with the old rates along with concessions and exemptions. Taxpayers will obviously choose the regime that minimises their tax liability resulting in significant revenue loss to the government. The government appears keen to reduce the tax liability of taxpayers rather than its own revenue loss. Given the large shortfall in tax revenue in 2019–20 (revised estimate or RE) compared to BE and the government’s own assessment of revenue forgone in 2020–21 it is curious how it has projected direct taxes to grow by 12.7% in 2020–21 when it grew by only 2.9% in 2019–20 (Table 2 p 21).

Indirect taxes are also projected to grow by 11.1% as compared to only 5.3% last year. This optimism is presumably on account of the goods and services tax (GST) which grew by 12.3% last year despite all its implementation problems. It is projected to grow by 12.8% in 2020–21. There is also the growing share of cess and surcharges which are not shared with the states.

In contrast total central tax revenue net of states share is projected to grow at a conservative rate of 8.7% though it grew by over 14% in 2019–20. This is presumably attributable to the large shortfall in the GST compensation cess compared to the mandated volume of compensation to be transferred to the states. In sum though some projections are unduly optimistic the overall projection of tax revenue (net to centre) is more realistic than the fairy-tale tax revenue projections of the last two years.

Non-tax revenue growth is projected to decelerate sharply to 11.4% in 2020–21 (BE) down from 46.6% in 2019–20 (RE) (Table 2). This is mainly on account of the projected decline in dividends and profits by over 22% after having grown by a massive 76.2% in 2019–20 (RE). The flip-flop derives mainly from the huge transfer of RBI surpluses last year based on the recommendations of the Jalan Committee.

Non-debt capital receipts which declined by 2.5% in 2018–19 and a further 27.6% in 2019–20 (RE) are now projected to increase by nearly 176% in 2020–21 (BE). This reflects the planned disinvestment of government equity amounting to `210 lakh crore in public enterprises like the Life Insurance Corporation of India the Industrial Development Bank of India etc. Such large divestment will be a challenge of considering that the government managed to divest only `65000 crore in 2019–20 against a target of `105 lakh crore (Table 2). More important is the question of whether the proceeds will be spent on capital formation or on revenue expenditure. That would be akin to a distressed household selling off family assets to meet consumption expenses.

Expenditure Allocation

From the perspective of demand generation and equity the allocation of expenditure is mixed. Among the broad categories of expenditure expenditure on social services has grown the fastest at 11.8% while expenditure on economic services has grown at 5.7% (Table 3 p 22). However this is mainly a small base effect. Total social services expenditure accounts for less than 5% of the total expenditure compared to about 34% for economic services. The maximum share goes to general services at 43.6% with interest payments—the largest component—eating up as much as 22%. This is a large leakage from the demand-generating expenditure stream. The second largest component defence is projected to grow by only 2% in this budget. Between 2017–18 and 2020–21 (BE) its share has declined from 11.5% to 10% that is a 15% drop. This is surprising in view of the emphasis given to national security by this government.

Within social services the high increase is mainly on account of health services at 12.5% with expenditure on education budgeted to grow by only 4.1%. Among economic services the maximum increase is in infrastructure services (17.5%) a priority for the present government. This will have a strong demand-generating impact. Expenditure on agriculture and allied activities will also grow rapidly at 12.4% its largest components being crop production mainly the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan) scheme and warehousing and storage. But the increase in agriculture and allied services has come at the cost of a reduction of over 13% in expenditure on rural development including the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MgNREGA) an adverse move both for equity as well as demand stimulation. Especially so because a large part of expenditure on warehousing and storage—constructed under MgNREGA—is interest payments again a leakage from demand.

Missed Opportunities

The budget has failed to provide a fiscal stimulus mainly because it is based on the assumption that there is no fiscal space to provide such a stimulus. This is true if increasing the deficit is considered the only means of financing a fiscal stimulus since the true fiscal deficit or more appropriately the total public sector borrowing requirement is already very large. But there are other ways of financing a stimulus.

An estimate from the Accountability Initiative project of the Centre for Policy Research revealed that appropriated funds for various schemes amounting to 1.7% of the GDP have actually not been spent. A large part of this could be released by rationalising fund flows. Further revenue forgone on account of various tax concessions and exemptions amount to another 3% of the GDP² much of which could have been recovered if the withdrawal of such exemptions and concessions had been made compulsory without linking them to an optional lower tax regime. Finally it has been estimated that unwarranted non-merit subsidies amount to another 5% of GDP (Mundle and Sikdar 2020).

Thus there is a potential additional fiscal space amounting to a massive 10% of the GDP. Mobilising even half of this through the rationalisation of revenue and expenditure could give a huge fiscal stimulus to revive faltering growth. Mundle and Sikdar (2020) cited above had proposed such a stimulus package consisting of (i) an income support programme of Rs12000 per household per year preferably without targeting amounting to 2% of the GDP³ (ii) an additional 1% of the GDP investment in labour-intensive infrastructure projects like the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana and (iii) an additional outcome-linked expenditure of 1% of the GDP each on education and health. All this could be done without any increase in either tax rates or the fiscal deficit. In fact the balance fiscal space could be used to actually reduce the fiscal deficit.

Notes

^1. Despite greater transparency in this budget the budget documents remain fairly opaque because of the financing of large amounts of expenditure through off-budget borrowing and other reasons. Thus there is a difference between “Total expenditure through budget” reported in Budget at a Glance (Table 1 Row 6) and “Total expenditure excluding loans advances and debt repayments” reported in the Annual Financial Statement (Table 1 Row 7). There is a similar difference between the fiscal deficit reported in Budget at a Glance (Table 1 Row 10) and the true fiscal deficit (Table 1 Row 12).

² Receipts Budget Ministry of Finance Government of India (2020) Appendix 7. This excludes revenue foregone under GST.

³ The Mundle and Sikdar (2020) paper had inadvertently implied that the `12000 income support would be per person rather than per household. We are grateful to Rahul Khullar for pointing out this error.

References

Chinoy S (2019): “A Pragmatic Balancing Act” Times of India 2 February.

GoI (2020): Receipts Budget Appendix 7 31 January Government of India Ministry of Finance.

Mundle S N R Bhanumurthy and S Das (2011): “Fiscal Consolidation with High Growth” Economic Modelling Vol 28 pp 2657–68.

Mundle S and S Sikdar (2020): “Subsidies Merit Goods and Fiscal Space for Reviving Growth” Economic & Political Weekly Vol 55 No 5 pp 52–60.

Sudipto Mundle (Distinguished Fellow) and Ajaya Sahu (Senior Research Analyst) are with the National Council for Applied Economic Research Delhi. These are the author’s personal views.

The massive victory of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Delhi Assembly elections is momentous. The Arvind Kejriwal-led party won 62 seats while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) managed only eight and the Congress drew a blank. This is not so because Delhi is the capital of India or because AAP has been re-elected for a third consecutive term or because it has defeated the BJP by such a large margin but because the Delhi elections potentially mark a turning point in Indian politics with implications well beyond the borders of Delhi. I say “potentially” because it remains to be seen whether India has in fact reached that turning point.

For the first time in Indian politics a party has won such a massive victory with a campaign based entirely on its track record in service delivery set against a campaign based on the divisive politics of identity in this case Hindutva. This is not the first time that the delivery of a product or service that enhances the well-being of the electorate has been relied upon to win an election. Indira Gandhi won a landmark victory on the slogan of Garibi Hatao but it was a promise for the future not an established track record. In fact the high incidence of poverty remained entrenched in India decades after her victory. There are other instances as well of welfare-enhancing delivery that have helped win elections: Food subsidies free midday meals in schools free bicycles for girls healthcare subsidies subsidized cooking gas and most importantly the employment guarantee scheme. But in all these instances the schemes—pejoratively described as “populist”—were used not in opposition to the appeal of identity but as supplementary inducements for voters.

What was different in the Delhi elections is that AAP’s actual track record in delivering basic services such as education healthcare water and power formed the backbone of its election campaign. The BJP did try to feebly question its claims as did the Congress. But the BJP’s main campaign plank was based on Hindutva equated to nationalism and the apparent demonization of a religious minority that seemed to be cast as anti-national. The abrogation of Article 370 the Citizenship Amendment Act the National Register of Citizens and the ongoing agitations against these at Shaheen Bagh and elsewhere provided the BJP with a ready-made agenda for its campaign.

Fuelled by hate speeches the BJP did its best to force AAP to take a position on those issues. But AAP steadfastly refused to be drawn into this terrain and stuck to its own turf which was its track record of service delivery supplemented by promises on women’s security transportation pollution etc. It became a direct confrontation between the politics of service delivery and the politics of identity. In the end AAP won a stunning victory marking the triumph of service-delivery-based politics. Home minister Amit Shah later admitted that the BJP’s hate speeches may have been a major factor in the party’s defeat.

It is important to emphasize that AAP’s service delivery-based campaign wasn’t a laundry list of promises but a track record of what the party had already done which was effectively conveyed through a report card. To illustrate Delhi’s education budget has been quadrupled and now accounts for 26% of the total expenditure the highest among all states and union territories. This generous allocation has been used to significantly improve infrastructure—such as buildings classrooms and toilets—as well as teacher training and introduce learning outcome-linked schemes. As a result the pass rate in the Class 12 examinations in Delhi government schools has risen to 91% exceeding the pass rate of 83% in private schools and a national average of 88%.

Similarly ambitious programmes have been launched for enhanced provision of healthcare piped water supply metered power supply etc. Each month consumers get a minimum quantity of water free and 400 units of power for a small flat charge. Despite these revenues of both departments have risen. Also while these ambitious development programmes have led to an expenditure growth of almost 10% per year revenue has been growing at an even faster rate of 13%.

The important question is whether the success of AAP’s politics based on service delivery can have a transformative impact in a country so far dominated by the politics of identity. Delhi is a huge modern high-income metropolis that has little in common with rural or small town India. What works in Delhi may not work elsewhere. India’s political system is a democratic superstructure sitting on what is still a largely feudal political base steeped in identity politics and traditional patron-client relationships. Most political parties in India and not just the BJP and Congress depend on identity be it based on religion caste or region for political mobilization. Their resources influence networks and culture are geared towards this system. Why would they now engage in political competition based on service delivery?

Perhaps the dramatic success of service delivery-based politics in Delhi could lead to its adoption in some of the other metropolises gradually spreading to smaller cities and then eventually to the rural hinterland. Or perhaps that is just wishful thinking.

Sudipto Mundle is a Distinguished Fellow at the National Council of Applied Economic Research. These are the author’s personal views.