A chapter in the October 2020 edition of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) biannual publication, Fiscal Monitor, argues that as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to support the recovery as COVID-19 induced lockdowns are relaxed and the world moves to a post-pandemic phase, enhancing public expenditure is crucial. So, governments, the IMF argues, must bother less about increasing their levels of indebtedness and choose to spend instead.
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Amid the ongoing phase of partial lockdowns of varying severity, spending must focus on saving lives and livelihoods. As these shutdowns are relaxed and the world finally moves to a post-pandemic era, spending should be sustained to strengthen infrastructure with planning for long-term infrastructural investment that is green, digital and inclusive, according to the IMF.
To anyone engaged with economic policymaking in some form, that recommendation would sound like familiar sage advice received from a grandmother when young. Given the need to ramp up expenditures to address the health emergency, to support those whose livelihoods and businesses are threatened or lost, and address the pandemic’s fallout in the form of compressed demand and increased unutilised capacity in industry, this recommendation is nothing more than just obvious.
Yet, the IMF’s view seems to be material enough to make the news and even headlines. The reason is not the substance of what the IMF is saying but the fact that it is the IMF that is saying it. For long the fountainhead of conservative fiscal policy, which recommended a stance that falls within the narrow range stretching from “fiscal discipline” to austerity, a plea for enhanced public expenditure from the IMF is seen as a telling shift.
Not that governments needed the IMF’s advice to do what it recommends. Ever since the severe impact of the pandemic on economic activity was recognised, governments all over the world have resorted to stimulus packages that relied heavily on borrowing. The magnitude of the immediate fiscal impulse has been estimated by European think tank Bruegel at close to 10 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany and 5 per cent in France and Denmark, for example.
Policy recommendations
Given the exceptional nature of the COVID-induced crisis and the range of expenditures required to address the multiple challenges it poses, this was the route any half-sensitive government would follow. The IMF, to the extent it has modified its recommended stance, is only striving to remain relevant in a changing context. But even when doing so, the IMF has by no means given up on its traditional conservatism. It identifies three phases and details the phase-specific fiscal policy responses.
In the first phase, with lockdowns of varying intensity, the focus of fiscal policy should, according to the IMF, be on providing lifelines to people and firms, with some minimal spend on ongoing public sector projects and on maintenance. Meanwhile, planning must begin for larger spends in subsequent phases.
In the second phase, when lockdowns are relaxed to restart activity wherever safely possible, the lifelines, while continuing, must be gradually phased out, and support must be targeted and workers must be persuaded to take up new jobs. In that phase too, public investment must be focussed on maintenance and ready toimplement projects that are labour-intensive and have large multiplier effects.
Finally, in the third, post-pandemic phase, innovative projects informed by the lessons of the pandemic and aimed at advancing a green, digital and inclusive agenda, which had been planned for in the preceding phases, need to be emphasised, the IMF said.
In some senses even these recommendations are a departure from tradition for the IMF. The organisation is advocating increased public spending in the medium and long terms. It backs financing that spending with borrowing, even if at the expense of increasing public debt to GDP ratios.
And, as opposed to the position it often adopted in the past that such spending “crowds out” private investment by absorbing credit and raising interest rates, it holds that public investment, in fact, “crowds in” private investment, which is low and stuck in a trough.
Public expenditure
The justification for this case for public spending is interesting, however. The conventional Keynesian case for increased spending in the midst of a recession is the presence of substantial unutilised capacity that depresses private investment and aggravates the recession.
Public expenditure in that context not only revives demand and incentivises private investment, it increases tax revenues because of the resulting increase in output and employment, and therefore in part finances itself. The case here is for increased public expenditure of any kind, with any preference for current or capital expenditures in the total being justified on other grounds.
As compared with this, the IMF’s case is primarily for an increase in debt-financed public investment in infrastructure. The justification is also specific to circumstances and the type of expenditure. Thus, debt-financed spending is considered acceptable because of the low levels of interest rates currently prevailing and that prevailed prior to the onset of the pandemic. That is, a proactive fiscal policy stance is seen as warranted because of the cheap and easy money environment created by the monetary policy stance that Central banks, especially in the developed countries, adopted prior to and after the 2008 global financial crisis. It is not the unutilised capacity resulting from the crisis, but the liquidity overhang and low interest rate regime created by monetary policy, that in the IMF’s view justify debt-financed spending.
This ties in with the IMF’s position that, other than for the unavoidable increase in current expenditures needed to address the health emergency, the policy focus must be on increasing capital expenditure in the form of public investment in infrastructure. Within infrastructural investment, the type of investment matters inasmuch as the focus has to be on “efficient” infrastructural investment involving projects that can be implemented quickly and which deliver the greatest impact in terms of generating jobs immediately and having large multiplier effects.
Thus, in phase two of the post-COVID recovery process, when the lockdown is withdrawn and economic activity revives, the IMF recommends spending on maintenance and renovation of pre-existing infrastructure and some investment in small-sized, job-intensive projects ready for implementation and with large short-term multiplier effects.
The case is not for just any autonomous spending (current or capital) that raises aggregate demand, improves capacity utilisation, and triggers new private investment. Rather, it is for a specific kind of capital spending. Paulo Mauro of the IMF, one of the authors of the study, made this clear in an interview to Financial Times, where he refers to John Maynard Keynes’ idea that in a recession, public spending can even be directed towards employing workers to dig holes in the ground only to fill them up, since that would achieve the aim of increasing employment, incomes and demand, with salutary multiplier effects that trigger further investment. “We are certainly not talking about digging holes,” Mauro reportedly said. “Investment provides an asset for the country and is not wasteful. Right now, we are not at the point of literally trying to stimulate aggregate demand.”
But even within public investment, the IMF emphasises infrastructural investment in particular. Its argument seems to be that investment in infrastructure in phase 2 of the recovery would deliver most in terms of jobs and growth. The authors of the study hold that their estimates indicate the following: “Increasing public investment by 1 per cent of GDP could strengthen confidence in the recovery and boost GDP by 2.7 per cent, private investment by 10 per cent, and employment by 1.2 per cent if investments are of high quality.”
The implication seems to be that governments should, in the first instance, focus on quick-yielding projects and profitable projects that can be financed with cheap credit, and only in the longer term plan for projects that are “green, digital and inclusive”. For reasons unexplained, the IMF sees only infrastructural investment as possessing these characteristics. This also raises the question as to why the IMF’s favoured agents, private sector investors, cannot be called upon to take over this task. That cannot happen, the study argues, for two reasons.
Private sector
The first is the environment of uncertainty that has engulfed economies, resulting in a reticence on the part of private players to invest. The second is the burden of indebtedness carried by overleveraged firms, which will not be willing to borrow more to invest. That is, the public sector is needed because the private sector is unwilling or incapable of ramping up investment currently. The public sector must step in to revive private sentiment and crowd in private investment.
But there are conditions. Public spending cannot be of the Keynesian type but must focus only on investment spending. Second, investment must be in quick-yielding infrastructural projects which, while reviving private sentiment, also makes up for long years of ideologically inspired public underspending in areas that the private sector has not found attractive enough to step in to make up for public sector absence. Having come in, the public sector must contribute to sustaining investment that meets the longer-term goals of rendering growth green, digitally empowered and inclusive. All routine profit-making opportunities must be left to a revived private sector.
In sum, the IMF has stepped beyond its conservative fiscal policy framework only because there seems to be no option to address the post-COVID growth crisis. This is as much an agenda for private sector revival as it is for economic recovery. And it is predicated on the existence of an environment where private financial markets can be approached for cheap credit to finance the required public spending.
But there is a catch there. As the IMF economists themselves recognise, not all countries would be in a position to tap private markets for the cheap money needed to pursue this agenda. If that be the case, these countries should not be overambitious but opt for “a gradual scaling-up of public investment financed by borrowing”, ensuring that “rollover risks (risks associated with the refinancing of debt) and interest rates do not increase too much”. In some cases, this would imply little or no additional investment. This differential approach would mean that pre-existing international inequalities would only widen. But that is an unavoidable price to pay, the IMF would argue, for being fiscally “prudent” and focusing on the task of reviving the private sector rather than on pushing development with whatever means are available.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.
On March 31, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its annual Gender Gap Report 2021. The Global Gender Gap report is an annual report released by the WEF. The gender gap is the difference between women and men as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes. The gap between men and women across health, education, politics, and economics widened for the first time since records began in 2006.
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The Global gender gap index aims to measure this gap in four key areas : health, education, economics, and politics. It surveys economies to measure gender disparity by collating and analyzing data that fall under four indices : economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
The 2021 Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks 156 countries on their progress towards gender parity. The index aims to serve as a compass to track progress on relative gaps between women and men in health, education, economy, and politics.
Although no country has achieved full gender parity, the top two countries (Iceland and Finland) have closed at least 85% of their gap, and the remaining seven countries (Lithuania, Namibia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Rwanda, and Ireland) have closed at least 80% of their gap. Geographically, the global top 10 continues to be dominated by Nordic countries, with —Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden—in the top five.
The top 10 is completed by one country from Asia Pacific (New Zealand 4th), two Sub-Saharan countries (Namibia, 6th and Rwanda, 7th, one country from Eastern Europe (the new entrant to the top 10, Lithuania, 8th), and another two Western European countries (Ireland, 9th, and Switzerland, 10th, another country in the top-10 for the first time).There is a relatively equitable distribution of available income, resources, and opportunities for men and women in these countries. The tremendous gender gaps are identified primarily in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
Here, we can discuss the overall global gender gap scores across the index’s four main components : Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.
The indicators of the four main components are
(1) Economic Participation and Opportunity:
o Labour force participation rate,
o wage equality for similar work,
o estimated earned income,
o Legislators, senior officials, and managers,
o Professional and technical workers.
(2) Educational Attainment:
o Literacy rate (%)
o Enrollment in primary education (%)
o Enrollment in secondary education (%)
o Enrollment in tertiary education (%).
(3) Health and Survival:
o Sex ratio at birth (%)
o Healthy life expectancy (years).
(4) Political Empowerment:
o Women in Parliament (%)
o Women in Ministerial positions (%)
o Years with a female head of State (last 50 years)
o The share of tenure years.
The objective is to shed light on which factors are driving the overall average decline in the global gender gap score. The analysis results show that this year’s decline is mainly caused by a reversal in performance on the Political Empowerment gap.
Global Trends and Outcomes:
– Globally, this year, i.e., 2021, the average distance completed to gender parity gap is 68% (This means that the remaining gender gap to close stands at 32%) a step back compared to 2020 (-0.6 percentage points). These figures are mainly driven by a decline in the performance of large countries. On its current trajectory, it will now take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide.
– The gender gap in Political Empowerment remains the largest of the four gaps tracked, with only 22% closed to date, having further widened since the 2020 edition of the report by 2.4 percentage points. Across the 156 countries covered by the index, women represent only 26.1% of some 35,500 Parliament seats and 22.6% of over 3,400 Ministers worldwide. In 81 countries, there has never been a woman head of State as of January 15, 2021. At the current rate of progress, the World Economic Forum estimates that it will take 145.5 years to attain gender parity in politics.
– The gender gap in Economic Participation and Opportunity remains the second-largest of the four key gaps tracked by the index. According to this year’s index results, 58% of this gap has been closed so far. The gap has seen marginal improvement since the 2020 edition of the report, and as a result, we estimate that it will take another 267.6 years to close.
– Gender gaps in Educational Attainment and Health and Survival are nearly closed. In Educational Attainment, 95% of this gender gap has been closed globally, with 37 countries already attaining gender parity. However, the ‘last mile’ of progress is proceeding slowly. The index estimates that it will take another 14.2 years to close this gap on its current trajectory completely.
In Health and Survival, 96% of this gender gap has been closed, registering a marginal decline since last year (not due to COVID-19), and the time to close this gap remains undefined. For both education and health, while progress is higher than economy and politics in the global data, there are important future implications of disruptions due to the pandemic and continued variations in quality across income, geography, race, and ethnicity.
India-Specific Findings:
India had slipped 28 spots to rank 140 out of the 156 countries covered. The pandemic causing a disproportionate impact on women jeopardizes rolling back the little progress made in the last decades-forcing more women to drop off the workforce and leaving them vulnerable to domestic violence.
India’s poor performance on the Global Gender Gap report card hints at a serious wake-up call and learning lessons from the Nordic region for the Government and policy makers.
Within the 156 countries covered, women hold only 26 percent of Parliamentary seats and 22 percent of Ministerial positions. India, in some ways, reflects this widening gap, where the number of Ministers declined from 23.1 percent in 2019 to 9.1 percent in 2021. The number of women in Parliament stands low at 14.4 percent. In India, the gender gap has widened to 62.5 %, down from 66.8% the previous year.
It is mainly due to women’s inadequate representation in politics, technical and leadership roles, a decrease in women’s labor force participation rate, poor healthcare, lagging female to male literacy ratio, and income inequality.
The gap is the widest on the political empowerment dimension, with economic participation and opportunity being next in line. However, the gap on educational attainment and health and survival has been practically bridged.
India is the third-worst performer among South Asian countries, with Pakistan and Afghanistan trailing and Bangladesh being at the top. The report states that the country fared the worst in political empowerment, regressing from 23.9% to 9.1%.
Its ranking on the health and survival dimension is among the five worst performers. The economic participation and opportunity gap saw a decline of 3% compared to 2020, while India’s educational attainment front is in the 114th position.
India has deteriorated to 51st place from 18th place in 2020 on political empowerment. Still, it has slipped to 155th position from 150th position in 2020 on health and survival, 151st place in economic participation and opportunity from 149th place, and 114th place for educational attainment from 112th.
In 2020 reports, among the 153 countries studied, India is the only country where the economic gender gap of 64.6% is larger than the political gender gap of 58.9%. In 2021 report, among the 156 countries, the economic gender gap of India is 67.4%, 3.8% gender gap in education, 6.3% gap in health and survival, and 72.4% gender gap in political empowerment. In health and survival, the gender gap of the sex ratio at birth is above 9.1%, and healthy life expectancy is almost the same.
Discrimination against women has also been reflected in Health and Survival subindex statistics. With 93.7% of this gap closed to date, India ranks among the bottom five countries in this subindex. The wide sex ratio at birth gaps is due to the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices. Besides, more than one in four women has faced intimate violence in her lifetime.The gender gap in the literacy rate is above 20.1%.
Yet, gender gaps persist in literacy : one-third of women are illiterate (34.2%) than 17.6% of men. In political empowerment, globally, women in Parliament is at 128th position and gender gap of 83.2%, and 90% gap in a Ministerial position. The gap in wages equality for similar work is above 51.8%. On health and survival, four large countries Pakistan, India, Vietnam, and China, fare poorly, with millions of women there not getting the same access to health as men.
The pandemic has only slowed down in its tracks the progress India was making towards achieving gender parity. The country urgently needs to focus on “health and survival,” which points towards a skewed sex ratio because of the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices and women’s economic participation. Women’s labour force participation rate and the share of women in technical roles declined in 2020, reducing the estimated earned income of women, one-fifth of men.
Learning from the Nordic region, noteworthy participation of women in politics, institutions, and public life is the catalyst for transformational change. Women need to be equal participants in the labour force to pioneer the societal changes the world needs in this integral period of transition.
Every effort must be directed towards achieving gender parallelism by facilitating women in leadership and decision-making positions. Social protection programmes should be gender-responsive and account for the differential needs of women and girls. Research and scientific literature also provide unequivocal evidence that countries led by women are dealing with the pandemic more effectively than many others.
Gendered inequality, thereby, is a global concern. India should focus on targeted policies and earmarked public and private investments in care and equalized access. Women are not ready to wait for another century for equality. It’s time India accelerates its efforts and fight for an inclusive, equal, global recovery.
India will not fully develop unless both women and men are equally supported to reach their full potential. There are risks, violations, and vulnerabilities women face just because they are women. Most of these risks are directly linked to women’s economic, political, social, and cultural disadvantages in their daily lives. It becomes acute during crises and disasters.
With the prevalence of gender discrimination, and social norms and practices, women become exposed to the possibility of child marriage, teenage pregnancy, child domestic work, poor education and health, sexual abuse, exploitation, and violence. Many of these manifestations will not change unless women are valued more.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]2021 WEF Global Gender Gap report, which confirmed its 2016 finding of a decline in worldwide progress towards gender parity.
Over 2.8 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men. As many as 104 countries still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs, 59 countries have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace, and it is astonishing that a handful of countries still allow husbands to legally stop their wives from working.
Globally, women’s participation in the labour force is estimated at 63% (as against 94% of men who participate), but India’s is at a dismal 25% or so currently. Most women are in informal and vulnerable employment—domestic help, agriculture, etc—and are always paid less than men.
Recent reports from Assam suggest that women workers in plantations are paid much less than men and never promoted to supervisory roles. The gender wage gap is about 24% globally, and women have lost far more jobs than men during lockdowns.
The problem of gender disparity is compounded by hurdles put up by governments, society and businesses: unequal access to social security schemes, banking services, education, digital services and so on, even as a glass ceiling has kept leadership roles out of women’s reach.
Yes, many governments and businesses had been working on parity before the pandemic struck. But the global gender gap, defined by differences reflected in the social, political, intellectual, cultural and economic attainments or attitudes of men and women, will not narrow in the near future without all major stakeholders working together on a clear agenda—that of economic growth by inclusion.
The WEF report estimates 135 years to close the gap at our current rate of progress based on four pillars: educational attainment, health, economic participation and political empowerment.
India has slipped from rank 112 to 140 in a single year, confirming how hard women were hit by the pandemic. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two Asian countries that fared worse.
Here are a few things we must do:
One, frame policies for equal-opportunity employment. Use technology and artificial intelligence to eliminate biases of gender, caste, etc, and select candidates at all levels on merit. Numerous surveys indicate that women in general have a better chance of landing jobs if their gender is not known to recruiters.
Two, foster a culture of gender sensitivity. Take a review of current policies and move from gender-neutral to gender-sensitive. Encourage and insist on diversity and inclusion at all levels, and promote more women internally to leadership roles. Demolish silos to let women grab potential opportunities in hitherto male-dominant roles. Work-from-home has taught us how efficiently women can manage flex-timings and productivity.
Three, deploy corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds for the education and skilling of women and girls at the bottom of the pyramid. CSR allocations to toilet building, the PM-Cares fund and firms’ own trusts could be re-channelled for this.
Four, get more women into research and development (R&D) roles. A study of over 4,000 companies found that more women in R&D jobs resulted in radical innovation. It appears women score far higher than men in championing change. If you seek growth from affordable products and services for low-income groups, women often have the best ideas.
Five, break barriers to allow progress. Cultural and structural issues must be fixed. Unconscious biases and discrimination are rampant even in highly-esteemed organizations. Establish fair and transparent human resource policies.
Six, get involved in local communities to engage them. As Michael Porter said, it is not possible for businesses to sustain long-term shareholder value without ensuring the welfare of the communities they exist in. It is in the best interest of enterprises to engage with local communities to understand and work towards lowering cultural and other barriers in society. It will also help connect with potential customers, employees and special interest groups driving the gender-equity agenda and achieve better diversity.