A three-point plan to improve tech policy formulation:
Relevance: mains: G.S paper II: Government policies
Technology regulation is hard. Governments struggle to keep up with all they need to do to stay abreast of new technology. No sooner do they figure out what restrictions to impose on a particular business than that business itself becomes yesterday’s news and they find themselves having to deal with a whole new set of challenges. As a result, the regulations that govern the sector are a patchwork quilt of rules, guidelines and notifications that individually make sense but when viewed as a whole look like something Piet Mondrian dreamed up.
Bureaucrats are simply not equipped to anticipate the outcomes of new technologies. As a result, laws only get enacted when the harmful consequences of a given businesses model become so apparent that they are impossible to overlook. This is most acute when businesses use technology to transform established industries, and in particular when they indulge in regulatory entrepreneurship—a term coined by Prof. Jordan Barry and Elizabeth Pollman to describe the strategy where “changing the law is a significant part of the business plan”.
In recent times, we’ve seen many examples of regulatory entrepreneurship. The sharing economy came to be because entrepreneurs promoting their app-based ride-hailing and apartment-renting businesses consciously chose to operate in a regulatory grey zone that potentially violated taxi and hotel regulations, knowing full well that had they sought permission before rolling out their services, they may never have been permitted to scale up as quickly as they did.
Regulators particularly detest models that straddle multiple sectors without fitting neatly into one bucket or the other. They like certainty and abhor ambiguity—which is why they try and force-fit every new technology model into convenient pigeon-holes so that they can regulate them better. This is how the government of Karnataka ended up classifying ride-hailing services as radio-taxi operators—even though doing so had the absurd consequence of requiring drivers install physical meters in their vehicle when the real reason behind the business model was to provide a more convenient mobile alternative. This is also why we’re the only country in the world that distinguishes between inventory and marketplace models in e-commerce and why our telecom regulations have features so unique that global cloud service providers carve India out of their network design like an island where the rules of physics that apply to rest of their global network have to be suspended.
Regular readers of this column will know that I often use my column inches here to highlight the flaws in various technology regulations. It is my hope that by shining a light on consequences overlooked or misunderstood, subsequent revisions of the law might consider these suggestions favourably and make necessary amendments to change the regulatory outcome. But this is legislation in hindsight—an exercise that rarely serves any purpose beyond the purely academic. It would be far more useful if we could develop a framework that the Indian government could use while framing future technology policies—a workflow they could follow as they go down the path of regulating newer areas.
Here, then, is my three-point suggestion for what the government should start doing if it wants to better regulate the technology sector.
(1) Identify the real objective: Too often, technology laws end up missing the real issues they should be addressing, focusing instead on hot-button issues that we are led to believe are more immediate. When we regulated the sharing economy, our focus was on making these new business models comply with the rules that taxi companies and hotel businesses had to follow. As a matter of fact, all these businesses were doing was providing a platform on which offers could be exchanged. We might have been better off regulating them as platforms, requiring them to ensure transparency and traceability in their operations so that the customers using their services could be protected against unfair trade practices.
(2) Think principles not details: Too often, our technology laws get lost in the weeds trying to come up with more and more detailed regulations for technology that is changing too quickly to govern. It is impossible to make laws future-proof. This is why we should never aim to have our laws articulate anything more than broad principles, leaving it to the executive to translate these principles into specific details. At the very least, regulations need to be technology-neutral—both in the definitions of their terms as well as in the specific procedures they spell out. The Personal Data Protection Bill drafted by the Justice Srikrishna Committee is an excellent example of how to set out broad principles in the statute while allowing for a greater level of detail to be spelled out through “codes of practice” that are issued subsequently.
(3) Get help: Technology is complex. If it is to be effectively regulated, it needs to be well understood. As astute as our bureaucrats are, they are generalists and, in this age of specialization, cannot hope to appreciate the many layers of nuance necessary in order to properly regulate technology. They should never attempt to go it on their own, but instead should actively co-opt experts from all relevant fields—behavioural economists, technologists, lawyers and the like— so thatthe laws we pass can be truly robust.
(Source: LiveMint)
- The brunt of the systemic problems of the National Register of Citizens is being borne by the poorest
Relevance: mains: G.S paper II & III
Apart from the floods in Assam, an annual event affecting thousands of families, another humanitarian crisis awaits the State this year. The date is already set for it. It is July 31.
On that day, the final list of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) will be released, the culmination of a fraught process conducted since 2015 at the urging of the Supreme Court, and monitored by it.
While reports of the many anomalies that dog the process of determining citizenship, including the constantly changing list of documents that are (or are not) accepted, are known, the sheer enormity of the crisis facing the State is yet to register in the rest of India.
Numbers alone do not indicate this. What is known today is that of the 32.9 million who have applied to be listed as “genuine” Indian citizens in the NRC, roughly 29 million have been accepted. The future of the four million excluded so far, a number that might reduce when the final list is published on July 31, provides the foundation for the impending human crisis awaiting Assam. Even if half of this number is excluded, we are looking at the future of two million stateless people.
What will happen to me and my family after July 31? That is the question that haunts hundreds of men and women as they wait hours in inclement weather, clutching plastic bags full of documents, to meet anyone willing to answer this question. This was the scene that confronted us as we travelled to three districts in Assam at the end of June.
The majority left out of the NRC so far are abjectly poor; many are unlettered. They cannot understand the legal complications of the process, nor do they have the money to hire legal help. As a result, thousands stand in danger of being declared “foreigners” even though they could be “genuine” Indian citizens.
Three categories
The people affected by this process of verification of citizenship fall into three different categories. Those labelled as ‘D voters’, or doubtful voters, were categorised as such when the electoral rolls were revised in 1997 and thereafter. Their names are excluded from the NRC unless they can establish their credentials before a Foreigner’s Tribunal. There are currently just under 100 such tribunals in Assam. The opacity that surrounds the way decisions are made in these quasi-judicial courtrooms is a part of this larger crisis.
In the second category are people who have been picked up by the police on suspicion of being illegal immigrants. The border police, present in every police station, picks up people, often poor workers in cities, fingerprints them, and then informs them in writing that they must appear before a Foreigner’s Tribunal.
In the third category are those who have registered with the NRC, but have been excluded because there was a discrepancy in the documents they submitted. Two lists have been published so far: one with 4 million names last year and another with just over 0.1 million on June 26 this year. Their fate will be known on July 31.
In addition, there are people who have already been declared “foreigners” by the tribunals. In February 2019, the government informed the Supreme Court that of the 938 people in six detention centres, 823 had been declared foreigners. How long will they be held? Can they be deported? To which country? These questions remain unanswered. In this haze of numbers and judicial processes, the real and tragic stories of individuals often go unheard.
Left out
Take Anjali Das, 50, in Bijni, Chirang district. Dressed in a rust saree, Anjali cannot hide her anxiety. Her maternal home is in Jalpaiguri, West Bengal, where her father and brother still live. Anjali came to Assam in 1982 when she married. She has no birth certificate, like many in India. She has a school certificate that confirms she was a student up to Class 5 and gives her date of birth as June 1, 1969. She also has a certificate from the Panchayat and her father’s Aadhaar card as proof that she is Indian. But this will not suffice. Anjali’s name has been excluded from the NRC, the only one in her marital home.
Anjali is only one of thousands of married women who have been left out of the NRC for similar reasons. Although disaggregated data is not yet available, it is estimated that more than half of those excluded from the NRC are women like her.
Then there are women who are struggling to understand why only some members of their families have been excluded. In Hanchara village in Morigaon district, Jamina Khatun pulls out a photocopy of the June 26 list of names excluded from the NRC. It has the names of her husband, her two sons, and her 11-year-old granddaughter. But not hers, or that of her daughter-in-law. Jamina’s son, Nur Jamal Ali, was referred to the Foreigner’s Tribunal based on a complaint by his landlord in Jorhat, where he worked as a construction labourer. As a result, Nur Jamal was fingerprinted by the border police, sent a notice to appear before a Foreigner’s Tribunal, and then declared a foreigner. His only daughter has also been excluded from the NRC.
After July 31, the focus will shift to the Foreigner’s Tribunals. The State government plans to set up 200 by the end of this month and eventually 1,000, as all those excluded from the NRC will have to present themselves before these tribunals.
Expensive and time-consuming
Only the litigants and their lawyers know what happens within the four walls of these tribunals as neither the public nor the media are permitted there. I tried to get a peek into one in Guwahati. Foreigner’s Tribunal Court Room 3, Kamrup Metro district, Guwahati, is located in a residential colony on the ground floor of a building. The small room is arranged like a courtroom. A white railing separates the podium on which the tribunal member sits from the litigants. The railing becomes a small witness stand at one end. The tribunal member has the help of an assistant who sits on the side. According to him, cases are heard simultaneously, stretching out to five days. But a lawyer tells a different story. The case he has come for began in March. It is still being heard in July.
This then is the other problem. Poor people travel long distances to appear before these tribunals. Their cases stretch out over months. They have to spend on travel and lawyers’ fees, unaffordable for most. If they give up, or cannot afford to make the journey, their cases will be judged “ex parte”. In a statement in the Lok Sabha on July 2, the Minister of State for Home Affairs, G. Kishan Reddy, said that from 1985 to February 2019, 63,959 people had been declared foreigners in ex parte rulings.
The citizenship issue in Assam is layered and complex. It is not easy for people outside the State to understand the multiple threads. What is clear though is that the brunt of the systemic problems of establishing citizenship in this manner, and in such haste, is being borne disproportionately by the poorest.
(Source: The Hindu)
- Project to digitise Ayushman Bharat records should be alive to concerns of privacy and rights of patients.
Relevance: mains: G.S paper II: Government policies and interventions and G.S paper III: health.
The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has released a National Digital Health Blueprint (NDHB) to “manage and analyse” the big data generated by the Centre’s flagship health programme, Ayushman Bharat. Released by the MoHFW Minister, Harsh Vardhan, on Monday, the document recommends the “setting up of a National Digital Health Mission” to create an “ecosystem” that would bring together the health records of people who have benefited from Ayushman Bharat. Given that doctors in both the public and private sectors regularly complain about the lack of comprehensive records of their patients, the digital registry envisaged by the NDHB could fulfill a longstanding requirement of the health sector. The proposed data compendium is also in keeping with global trends in healthcare where digital technology is used to make treatment options more personalised and precise. Big data can also be used to prevent epidemics and improve the efficiency of drugs.
Concerns about the large-scale creation, collection and sharing of health data are, however, pressing. The most serious of these pertain to the privacy of patients, and data breaches. Sections 43(a) and 72 of the Information Technology Act do provide the broad framework for the protection of personal information in India, including medical data. However, data breaches in the digital domain are not uncommon. In 2016, for example, the electronic medical records of over 35,000 patients held by a Maharashtra-based pathology lab were leaked. The NDHB does seem to be alive to such concerns. It states that the architecture of the digital systems will have in-built safeguards to ensure privacy. However, it must also be kept in mind that Ayushman Bharat targets the poorest section of the country’s population with low levels of digital literacy. In such a context, a system that places the onus of control on the user, with an assumption that they can control the flow of information, can end up doing more harm than good.
Last year, the MoHFW framed a draft Digital Information Security in Healthcare Act (DISHA). The proposed legislation recognised that existing laws were inadequate to protect the privacy of patients in the digital domain. In contrast with the blueprint released on Monday, DISHA placed the onus of data protection on the service provider. The draft was criticised by industry bodies, which feared the stifling of medical research. DISHA never made it to Parliament. In view of its recent emphasis on digital medical data, the MoHFW would do well to revisit this draft legislation — and seek a balance between the concerns of industry and the rights of patients.
(Source: Indian Express)
- Tapping the potential of communities to end AIDS:
Relevance: mains: G.S paper III: Health
Success is achieved where policies and programmes focus on people, not diseases
The UN Sustainable Development Goals include ensuring good health and well-being for all by 2030. This includes the commitment to end the AIDS epidemic. In many countries, continued access to HIV treatment and prevention options are reducing AIDS-related deaths and new HIV infections. But there are still too many countries where AIDS-related deaths and new infections are not decreasing fast. In fact, they are rising in some cases, though we know how to stop the virus. Why are some countries doing much better than others?
The road to success
Success is being achieved where policies and programmes focus on people, not diseases, and where communities are fully engaged from the outset in designing, shaping and implementing health policies. This is how real and lasting change is achieved and this is what will reduce the devastating impact of AIDS. Adopting the latest scientific research and medical knowledge, strong political leadership, and proactively fighting and reducing stigma and discrimination are all crucial. But without sustained investment in community responses led by people living with HIV and those most affected, countries will not gain the traction necessary to reach the most vulnerable. And only by doing that can we end the AIDS epidemic. Community services play varying roles depending on the context. They often support fragile public health systems by filling critical gaps. They come from — and connect effectively with — key populations such as gay men, sex workers, people who use drugs, and transgenders. They provide services that bolster clinic-based care and they extend the reach of health services to the community at large. They also hold decision-makers to account.
By signing the 2016 UN Political Declaration on Ending AIDS, countries affirmed the critical role that communities play in advocacy, coordination of AIDS responses and service delivery. Moreover, they recognised that community responses to HIV must be scaled up. They committed to at least 30% of services being community-led by 2030. However, most countries are nowhere near reaching that commitment. And where investment in communities is most lacking, there is often weaker progress being made against HIV and other health threats.
Reliable partners
All over the world, communities are demonstrating time and again that they can, and do, deliver results. Since the beginning of the epidemic in India until now, communities have been the most trusted and reliable partners for the National AIDS Control Organization and the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS. They are fully engaged in many aspects of the National AIDS Response, including prevention, care, support and treatment programmes. There are over 1,500 community-based organisations reaching out to key populations. In India, there are around 300 district-level networks of people living with HIV which are supporting treatment programmes through psychosocial support, treatment literacy and adherence counselling.
Our communities present us with a lot of untapped potential. Unleashing this is the key to gaining the momentum we need to make faster progress towards reaching UNAIDS Fast-Track targets. The more we invest in communities, the closer we get to ending the AIDS epidemic.
(Source: The Hindu)