XKDR Newsletter - Issue 20
Indian finance • Women's ownership in land • Technology in land market • India's procurement laws • Increasing work hours • Market failure in airlines • Digital Public Infrastructure • 14th EMC.
The journey of Indian finance
Ajay Shah has contributed to a chapter in a forthcoming book, Cambridge Economic History of Modern South Asia, edited by Latika Chaudhary, Tirthankar Roy, and Anand V. Swamy, published by Cambridge University Press.
This paper emphasises the significance of economic history in understanding economics as a field. The paper adopts an epsilon-delta tradition, combining precise data analysis with a strategic overview in 10 key areas including banking, equity markets, capital controls, bankruptcy, household finance, and monetary policy.
The author suggests two interpretations of the Indian finance journey: a market failure view, emphasizing learning about state intervention to address market failures, and a public choice view, highlighting power conflicts over control of the financial system. The author argues that, while there has been considerable progress in the Indian financial system over the past decades, the basic machinery of markets and financial firms is still incomplete and needs reorientation of state coercion towards addressing market failures.
Read the full paper here and a summary here.
Women's ownership in land, their agency and tenure security: A case study of Maharashtra
Ajay Shah, Teesta Shukla and Diya Uday carried out a study with the objective of undertaking an accurate and comprehensive mapping of women's land rights. The study converges de jure rights and de facto control over land and perceptions of tenure security using a novel methodology which is a combination of desk and fieldwork. Their findings provide a data-backed foundation for answering questions on women's rights in land, their control over their land and their perceptions of tenure security for better-informed policy interventions.
Read the full report here.
Technology in Land Administration
Brijkumar Aggarwal and Diya Uday, have authored a chapter in the book Technology and Analytics for Law and Justice from DAKSH Centre of Excellence for Law and Justice and IIT Delhi.
In this chapter, the authors examine the current applications of technology in the field of land in India for administration and the delivery of citizen services including what is working and what is not and question whether technology is leading to the desired outcomes. They explore path-breaking innovations in the field that might be applied in India and propose a first-principles framework for evaluating the application of technology in the field of land administration in India.
Read the full chapter here.
Reinventing India's procurement laws: a global perspective
A unified law is viewed as a panacea for the current challenges in public procurement in India. But what should India's legal framework for public procurement be? In this new working paper, Diya Uday provides a comparative analysis of the similarities and differences in procurement laws aimed at identifying fundamental rules that underpin a well-designed procurement framework.
Read the full paper here.
OP-ED & COMMENTARY
In his column in the Business Standard for November, Ajay Shah writes about
what the 70-hour work week would mean for an individual, an organisation and the country. He suggests that, merely amping up the work hours or labour force would not be sufficient to match the GDP levels of advanced economies of the world. Instead, he focuses on questions that hints at low productivity in India.
market failures in the Indian airline industry and how to address them. He identifies three problems currently facing the industry: undeserved destinations, market power and consumer protection, and spells out the role for the state, in addressing each of them.
VIDEOS AND PODCASTS
New episodes of Ajay Shah’s YouTube show Everything is Everything with Amit Varma are out:
How to think about cricket and life: Ep 19.
Our population is our greatest asset: Ep 20.
The beauty of finance: Ep 21.
Three great leaps by firms: Ep 22.
Ajay Shah joins Vasant Dhar in Ep 72 of Brave New World to discuss the perils of state coercion in digital public infrastructure.
EVENTS
We hosted Seminar #5 of the Indian Legal System Reform. In this series, Joseph Rajesh, Deputy Director (IT), High Court of Kerala discusses key learnings from the “IT Transformation of the Kerala High Court”; and Siddarth Raman presented “An approach to measure court performance in India”.
We are running a monthly seminar series in collaboration with TrustBridge Rule of Law Foundation on contracts and contract performance. This seminar series builds knowledge and community on the subject of the design and functioning of contracts, both private and public. The first seminar in this series was held in November in Delhi. In this series, Karan Gulati and Anjali Sharma, discussed “Mediation as a mechanism for contractual disputes resolution”; and Siddarth Raman presented his work on “Delays in S. 138 NI Act cases: are cheques an effective lever of contract performance”.
We hosted a talk by Misha Sharma, Practice Head-Household Finance at Dvara Research and Risha Ramachandran, Research Consultant at Dvara Research who shared their insights on the financial lives of the platform workers in Bengaluru, based on a study conducted by Dvara Research. They highlighted the workers' experience, financial behaviour and time-use patterns within the monopsonist platform economy in India.
UPCOMING
The 14th edition of the Emerging Markets Conference will take place between 12th to 15th December 2023 in BKC, Mumbai. View the detailed agenda here.
We welcome your comments and suggestions on our work. Please write them to pavithra.manivannan4@gmail.com. To know more about our work and to collaborate with us visit xkdr.org.