Anuradha Prasad
On the morning of March 25, 2020, less than 12 hours after the nationwide lockdown announced by the Indian Government to curb the spread of COVID-19, the nation woke up to heartbreaking visuals of thousands of migrant workers walking on national highways. According to the Ministry of Labour and Employment, more than 1.06 crore migrant workers returned to their homes during the lockdown. The journey turned out to be both arduous and fatal with at least 29,415 workers having lost their lives, official figures revealed. While the affluent city dwellers struggled with the new world order of working at and from home, a section of our society was exposed to the threats of Covid-19 as well as hunger, unemployment and displacement.
The first relief response to this humanitarian crisis came from India's social sector and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) ensured that the marginalised population, especially the migrant and daily wage labourers, were not starving. So, CSOs provided 30.11 lakh meals during the first phase of the lockdown. In many States, civil society responded even before the Government did. It was a critical initiative where the Public Distribution System was not accessible until a few days after the lockdown was announced.
According to the report, ‘COVID-19 Pandemic: Civil Society Response and Challenges Ahead', by the Azim Premji University, CSOs initiated relief services and partnered with local governments to deliver food grain to remote areas. Besides immediate relief, CSOs played a major role in creating awareness about the COVID-19 health protocols. Distributing masks and sanitisers could only help as much; the CSOs needed to generate awareness about social distancing and hygiene, too. Initiatives such as the Bundelkhand Initiative for Water Agriculture and Livelihoods, led by Self-Reliant Initiatives through Joint Action, attempted to revive the traditional water bodies in Bundelkhand, to tackle water scarcity and avoid crowding at hand-pumps and wells.
Women were disproportionately affected by the contagion. Their labour force shrunk by 13 per cent, as compared to two per cent for men, making them impoverished, jeopardising their health and exposing them to increased dangers of domestic violence. The National Commission of Women recorded 13,410 complaints of gender-based crimes between March-September last year, including 4,350 cases of domestic violence. The social sector spearheaded the response to this shadow pandemic of violence. Organisations such as Shakti Shalini, a Delhi-based CSO, ran a 24-hour helpline. Association for Advocacy and Legal Initiatives helped the women register complaints and get shelter while Self-Employed Women's Association devised a long-term strategy to tackle the fallout of the lockdown by adopting a three-fold strategy: Safeguarding health, restoring livelihoods and extending social protection and food security.
The social sector attracted attention during this pandemic, but it has quietly led many relief initiatives in the past too. Be it cyclone Amphan or more recently, the Uttarakhand floods. So, if India has to achieve its Sustainable Development Goals or realise a more equitable form of development, then the role of CSOs cannot be ignored. The sector needs investments of different kinds: Money, people and intent. We need skilled and sensitive citizens who can contribute in meaningful ways to the sector apart from pressing the donate now button on Facebook.
(The writer is founder and director, India Leaders for Social Sector. The views expressed are personal.)
The new face of terror in Kashmir
Anil Gupta
Desperate for an image makeover, Pak is recruiting locals in order to label its insidious plans against India as home-grown resistance against atrocities committed by Govt forces
Post August 5, 2019, Islamabad has tried different tricks to remain relevant in Kashmir. However, most of the Pakistani moves have either failed or backfired. But as far as Pakistan-sponsored terror is concerned, it is once again threatening to thwart the desire of the Indian Government to restore normalcy and peace in Kashmir. It is a last-ditch attempt by Pakistan which might fail but, it is certain to succeed in delaying the process of normalisation.
A new wave of terror is emerging in Kashmir with indigenous flavour. Having been recognised the world over as the fountainhead of terrorism and the biggest promoter of cross-border terror, Pakistan is desperately trying an image makeover. It is recruiting locals in order to label its insidious plans against India as home-grown resistance against the atrocities committed by Government forces. The fear of being blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force, a global watchdog for terror funding and financing, has also compelled Islamabad to remain a latent promoter of cross-border terror.
The familiar names of terror organisations active in Kashmir, like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), are gradually being replaced by new ones like The Resistance Force (TRF), Lashkar-e-Mustafa, Ghaznavi Force and Al-Badr. Most of these groups are old wine in a new bottle with the majority of the cadre being locally recruited. However, their operational and financial control remains with their bosses in Pakistan.
These new terror outfits are not as well-equipped as their parent organisations and rely mainly on the arms smuggled into the Valley through various means using the over ground network. Local youth are lured into militancy in the name of jihad after being radicalised through social media platforms and venomous speeches of the mullahs and anti-India leaders. They are not being trained in the jihadi training camps in Pakistan-occupied Jammu Kashmir (PoJK) or Afghanistan but locally in the jungles of South Kashmir and are initiated into terrorism by lobbing grenades at security forces' pickets or crowded places. The focus is also shifting from rural to urban insurgency, with encounters taking place in and around Srinagar, while Jammu is emerging as another preferred base of these terrorists. Target selection, too, has undergone a change. The earlier modus operandi of large-scale attacks on security forces or suicide attacks on their camps has been given up and the terrorists are now concentrating more on targeted killings and use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). Now, instead of azadi (freedom), establishing Nizam-e-Mustafa (Shariya rule) and retaining the monolith character of Kashmir is the main motivator of local terrorists. Minorities and police personnel form the main targets of motivated and targeted killings.
Earlier, the weapons recovered from the terrorists used to be a big proof of Pakistan's involvement as they either had Pakistani or Chinese markings. To overcome this, Islamabad is now encouraging Kashmiri terrorists to buy weapons from Bihar. Smuggling through tunnels and dropping arms with the help of drones also continue since the supply from Bihar and its transportation all the way to Kashmir is prone to interception by law enforcement agencies. Bihar, also being a major source of arms supply to Maoists active in the ‘Red Corridor', is not able to meet the full requirement of Kashmiri terrorists. Pakistan's intention in all this is very clear, it wants Kashmir to remain a flashpoint on the international radar; keep it on the boil; discourage outside investment which is likely to generate employment and wean away the youth from militancy and also create a 1990s-like environment of insecurity among the minorities so that the possible return of Kashmiri Pandits is thwarted. By ensuring that the youth remain unemployed and frustrated, it wants to ensure that the ready supply of fodder to the jihadi cadre is not affected.
An insecure environment will also keep tourists away from Kashmir and hence prevent the revival of the tourism and handicrafts industry, the backbone of Kashmir's economy. To this end, Pakistan has been successful in selling a narrative of demographic invasion and minimising the Muslim-majority character of Kashmir and promoting the Hindutva agenda of the RSS-backed BJP Government at the Centre. Unfortunately, many so-called nationalist mainstream leaders in Kashmir have been vociferously promoting the Pakistani narrative.
The ‘Deep State' in Pakistan is not satisfied with indigenous uprising being confined only to Kashmir as this makes its case weak globally. A concerted effort post August 2019 has been diverted towards reviving militancy in Jammu as well. Many sleeper cells have been created and the terrorists are being trained for lone wolf attacks to disturb communal harmony.
There are other reasons for shifting the focus towards Jammu by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Jammu's location close to the International Border (IB) and its heterogeneous population with close proximity to Punjab — another target of the ISI — provides the ideal breeding ground for militancy. Also, the murders of Kashmiri Muslims by terrorists, both Pakistani and local, have created huge resentment among Kashmiris.
The citizens are not only fed up but are turning against the terrorists and not helping them as much as they used to. They are sharing information about the presence of terrorists with the security forces, as a result of which most of the top commanders have been killed.
Thus, safe havens in Jammu are considered more lucrative. But the latest successes of the J&K Police in capturing top commanders of the TRF as well as Lashkar-e-Mustafa in Jammu have sent shockwaves not only among them but also among their bosses in Pakistan.
Due to a strong anti-infiltration grid created on the Line of Control by the Indian Army, terrorists and their handlers have been preferring the IB sector for infiltration; hence Jammu acts as a suitable base for their further despatch to Kashmir or Punjab. Similar is the argument for smuggling and distribution of narcotics. Hence, Jammu has emerged as an ideal base for narco-terrorism.
Like Kashmir, the ISI also wants to trigger insecurity in the Jammu region so that future investors are discouraged. It has not gone down well with the ISI that the J&K Government is not planning to confine new industries to the Jammu-Kathua belt but is encouraging investors to set up industry in far-flung districts, too.
The new wave of terror in J&K, if not nipped in the bud, may prove costly and damaging, as has happened many times in the past. Surely, our leaders, experts and planners would have learnt lessons from the past and would not let another opportunity for ensuring lasting peace slip away. Terrorism, whether local or imported, is the enemy of peace and jihadis are the enemies of humanity.
Unfortunately, Pak apologists operating in India continue to remain silent and accord their latent support to the madness. They refuse to condemn, name and shame Pakistan or take a firm stand against targeted killings of minorities, quite similar to their response in the 1990s. Only a united approach would lead to elimination of the menace of terror and return of peace.
The writer is a Jammu-based political commentator, columnist, security and strategic analyst. The views expressed are personnel.
Ways to assess the value of start-ups abound
Hima Bindu Kota
However, it is important that a venture capitalist or an angel investor also delves into the importance of human capital
The number of entrepreneurs increased manifold last year, making India a global start-up hub. The start-up story in India has seen a very encouraging growth with a vibrant ecosystem of incubators and venture capitalists, with total funding reaching the $70 billion-mark between 2014-2020.
Using the time series forecasting technique, Inc42 Plus has predicted that start-ups are likely to raise capital to the tune of $13 -$14 billion across 1,000 deals in 2021. Since new business ventures by entrepreneurs emphasise on launching new products or services using unique ideas or technologies, the methods to assess their value are also different.
The ‘Berkus Approach' is a technique given by the famous angel investor, Dave Berkus, wherein both qualitative and quantitative factors are assigned to every risk faced by a start-up on five elements: The basic sound idea; prototype; management team; strategic relations and sales.
Each element is assigned a monetary value as well, that can reach up to $5,00,000. So, a value is assigned between zero and $5,00,000 for each of the elements given above. For instance, a start-up with a team having high domain knowledge can be assigned a value of $3,50,000.
While, if a start-up has finished 45 per cent of the prototype, a value of $2,25,000 can be assigned to it. Similarly, an appropriate monetary value is allotted to each of the other elements to create a valuation of the new venture.
The ‘Scorecard Valuation' method is an extension of the Berkus Approach, where start-ups are compared with others of the same industry using the assigned values and then using the scorecard to arrive at the right valuation.
There are several elements involved in a scorecard like the quality of the management team; the type of opportunity; uniqueness of the product or service; competition; promotion and marketing; requirement of future investment and other similar factors.
A range of percentages is assigned to each element which also provides flexibility in valuation as all beginners will have different strengths in different areas.
Another future-looking valuation technique is the future valuation multiple approach that evaluates long-term Return on Investment (ROI), usually for a period between five and 10 years.
The value of the start-up is based on the projections including sales and growth, cost and expenditure projections and similar data. Taking the ROI forward, the risk factor summation approach takes into account all the business risks that can have a negative impact on the ROI.
Some of the business risks considered are management; political; obsolete technology; competition; manufacturing; investment; legal risk and so on. Once an initial valuation of the start-up is established using any of the valuation techniques, the impact of business risks is either added or subtracted from the initial value for a positive and a negative risk, respectively.
The ‘Venture Capital Method' is one of the quickest approaches to value an early-stage company and is used by venture capitalists globally. This is calculated by using the exit value, the value at which any venture capital sells its portion of stock and exits a start-up and the expected ROI.
However, a drawback of this approach is that it does not take into consideration any future dilution.
Another approach that can be used is the cost-to-duplicate approach that takes into account all costs and expenses associated with the start-up, including the development of its products and the purchase of any physical assets.
It requires a high level of due diligence and is also the most practical. One of the major drawbacks of this method of evaluation is that it fails to take into account any future potential of earnings and growth. It also fails to recognise the impact of intangible assets, like brand value, goodwill and patent, on the valuation of start-ups.
The discounted cash flow technique uses a suitable discount rate to find the present value of the future cash flow of new businesses. Since the start-ups are generally considered high risk for investments, a higher discount rate is applied for calculating the present values. A market multiple approach is one of the most popular valuation techniques where a base multiple is calculated based on the worth of any recent investment in a start-up in the same industry. The business in question is then analysed based on this base multiple.
So, there are numerous valuation techniques available to value any start-up. No one technique is superior to the other. A slight change in technique can change the perception about investing in new ventures.
Overall, the monetary aspect is just one side of valuation. It is also important that a venture capitalist or an angel investor delves into the importance of human capital.
The writer is Associate Professor, Amity University, Noida. The views expressed are personal.
The challenge of climate change
Hiranmay Kashyap
The Biden Administration has an ambitious agenda for stepping up action to cope with global warming but there are hurdles in the way
The Trump Administration, an unmitigated disaster for the fight to save the environment, has been defenestrated. Thanking the heavens for that, however, will not be enough. Wise leadership, massive allocation of funds and unflagging political will are needed at the global level to undo the damage done during the last four years and step up action to cope with global warming, which can wipe out humankind.
Two questions arise here. How deep is President Joe Biden's commitment to fight global warming? What kind of hurdles will his administration have to overcome? As to the first, he has declared that climate change poses an “existential threat to the planet”. He has been called a “climate change pioneer” who believes that people have a moral and economic imperative to address the issue. He has a $2 trillion clean energy plan, and is on record as stating before assuming his current office that, as the President, he would ensure that the US achieved a 100 per cent clean energy economy and net-zero emissions by 2050. As clearly a part of this goal, he wants to make the US power grid carbon neutral by 2035.
His commitment is reflected in his track record. In 1986, he introduced one of the first climate Bills in the US Congress. In 1998, he played a critical role in the enactment of the Tropical Forest Conservation Act, which allowed the US to reach agreements with foreign Governments to conserve tropical forests in exchange for debt relief. As chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee (2001-2003 and 2007-2009), he organised several hearings on climate change and garnered support for a number of non-binding resolutions on the issue.
As the President, he is making climate change the central issue of his administration and the subject of a two-pronged approach to combat it. The first is the establishment of a formidable administrative infrastructure; the second is the conceptualisation of the problem in all its dimensions and appointment of competent and dedicated people to cope with it.
He has already made progress with the second. In November 2020, not long after winning the presidential election, he named John Kerry, who was the Secretary of State in the Obama Administration and a principal architect of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (December 2015), as his special presidential envoy for climate change. He has set up a White House office of domestic climate change policy to coordinate the implementation of his climate agenda. Indeed, as the President, he has gathered the largest team of climate change experts ever assembled at the White House. More, on the anvil is a national climate task force comprising 21 Government agency leaders, and an environmental justice inter-agency council to address racial and economic inequities exacerbated by climate change and air and water pollution.
President Biden has already taken certain important steps. On his first day in office, the paperwork for the US' return to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change was completed. He revoked the permission granted to the TC Energy Corporation to construct the Keystone XL Oil pipeline for brining oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. The Obama Administration had denied permission to it in 2015 for the severe damage it would cause to the environment but the Trump dispensation had allowed it to proceed. Also, according to a White House statement, Biden was directing the Department of Interior to pause all oil and gas drilling leases on federal land and water and, as far as possible, launch a review of the existing energy leases. Besides these and other measures related to his domestic climate agenda in the works, his administration is giving a hard look at the environmentally harmful measures taken by the US Environment Protection Agency during Trump's tenure. Many of them will be up for scrapping.
In a reversal of the Trump Administration's policy of turning away from the world on the climate change issue, a White House statement has said that the US should “exercise global leadership” in advancing the Paris Agreements objectives. Clearly, combating climate change is a mission with President Biden, which is encouraging given the enormous power and resources the US commands. Nevertheless, tall hurdles remain in the way. The fossil fuel industry lobby will fiercely oppose his policies restricting drilling and oil use conducing to global warming, and will seek to mobilise senators and representatives to derail his plans.
Second, his steps have been taken through executive orders. These can be revised by a future President just as he is doing in respect of Trump's measures. For permanence he needs legislation, which will require careful navigation through the Senate and the House of Representatives where Democrats have a thin majority. Finally, he has to successfully counter the criticism that measures to protect the environment will mean job loss. He has doubtless emphasised the potential for jobs in new industries producing clean energy and research organisations supporting the latter. But then employment must actually follow.
The missing women in India's workforce
Dipa Sinha
According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2018-19, the female labour force participation rates among women aged above 15 years are as low as 26.4% in rural areas and 20.4% in urban areas in India. Both supply and demand factors contribute to the low levels of employment among women — especially the burden of domestic responsibilities, including the reproductive roles played by women, coupled with the lack of adequate and appropriate job opportunities.
Studies have shown that women are willing to be employed, negating the argument that cultural factors keep women from working outside the household. It is also seen that unemployment rates (ie, those who are seeking employment but not finding any) are highest among women who are educated up to secondary and higher levels (17%; this is higher among young women at 26%).
There is also the problem of much of women's work not being counted as work. The All India Time Use Survey (2019) shows the disproportionate amount of time women spend on unpaid activities, much of which is not accounted for as economic activity. For instance, over 80% women participated in “unpaid domestic services for household members”, spending, on an average, 299 minutes a day compared to 26% men spending, on an average, 97 minutes a day.
Even for women who are in the workforce, the nature of their employment is such that most of them are out of the purview of labour laws, including the recently passed Social Security Code. Over 55% of women (71% in rural India), who are counted as being part of the workforce, are in agriculture (vis-à-vis 53% in rural areas and 38% overall in the case of male workers). This is, by its very nature, informal and lacks social security provisions. Moreover, with land in agriculture continuing to be mostly in the name of men, women are not even recognised as farmers, although a large proportion of them are involved in agricultural work. This also keeps women away from accessing various schemes and resources such as priority sector loans, income support cash transfers and so on.
At least 53% of women workers are in the self-employed category (of this, the majority are in the category of “helpers”), 22% receive regular wage/salary, and 25% are casual labour. Even among regular/salaried employees, two-thirds of the women workers had no written contract, about half were not eligible for any paid leave or had any social security benefit. The wages earned are also very low — their average earnings in a month from self-employment work in 2018-19, for example, being only ₹4,919. The average earning of those in regular employment is also only ₹12,000 per month. This category also includes domestic workers, anganwadi workers and so on — basically all those who receive some payment at regular intervals, even though that might be below minimum wages in some instances.
The Social Security Code has minimal provisions for such women workers who are in informal employment. The maternity benefits portion of the Code is simply a reproduction of the Maternity Benefits Act, which includes only those women who work in an “establishment” and have worked for more than 80 days with the employer from whom she claims the maternity benefit. This automatically leaves out women in self-employment and those in informal jobs, together constituting more than 90% of the female workforce. In relation to the workers in unorganised sectors, the Code only specifies that they need to be registered (with mandatory Aadhaar) but does not spell out what they are entitled to. This is left for schemes to be notified by central and state governments.
It is clear that Covid-19 has impacted women's employment even more than that for men. Concerted efforts towards ensuring enabling conditions for women to be employed including transport, safety, women's hostels along with social security provisions for all in the form of maternity benefits and child care arrangements are required for providing a level playing field for women entering the labour market. Unfortunately, these are all absent.
Dipa Sinha teaches at Ambedkar University, Delhi
The views expressed are personal
