Now that the lockdown has been eased, we need to manage our actions in a manner in which we can balance economic activities and containment of the Coronavirus infection
With the relaxation of the lockdown in non-containment zones, the spike in the number of Coronavirus cases is setting new records daily. India has reached the 3,33,255-mark and the country now has the dubious distinction of ranking fourth in the world. What is even more concerning is the fact that the pandemic is spreading evenly across India. The percentage of cases in the worst-affected States like Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan is going down whereas the number of infections is rising in north-eastern States, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Goa. Ladakh added 198 infections in one day, taking the cases up to 437.
However, despite all the risks associated with the easing of the lockdown, it was a necessary step to save the collapsing economy of the country and the livelihoods of the people. Therefore, we need to manage our actions in a manner in which we can balance economic activities and containment of the Coronavirus infection.
To achieve this, the Government has undertaken a slew of measures. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued a notification allowing religious places, hotels, restaurants and shopping malls to open from June 8 under the Standard Operation Procedures (SOPs) issued by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW). According to these SOPs, it is mandatory to maintain a distance of six feet at all public places and use a face shield or mask.
However, it is not clear how these measures are going to be monitored. The MHA has issued penalty provisions to hold any person violating these measures liable under the Disaster Management Act, 2005. Nevertheless, there is no reliable mechanism to spot violations and ensure compliance. In the case of offices, employers have been entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring installation of the Aarogya Setu app by all employees. This measure has drawn a lot of flak as the responsibility has been shifted to a non-State actor who might find it difficult to ensure compliance with the SOPs. People are questioning the fairness of this move.
To address this question, let us go back in time. In the 1990s, the Indian leather industry was hit after Germany banned two commonly-used chemicals, pentachlorophenol (PCP) and Azo dyes. At that time the leather industry was the fourth-largest foreign exchange earner for India and Germany was the largest export market. PCP and Azo dyes were widely used in the tanning and dyeing of leather as they were cheap and easy to produce. Banning the use of these chemicals was ineffective from the point of view of compliance as nearly 75 per cent of India’s tanneries were small in scale. The banned chemicals could have always entered the value chain through spatially-fragmented upstream processes. However, if these chemicals were not checked, then the products sent to Germany would have got rejected after testing and exports would have incurred huge losses. This would have impacted the livelihood of thousands of informal workers in tanneries.
This situation is very similar to the present one, where it is very difficult to ensure compliance and non-compliance would cause loss of life and livelihoods. However, the Government of that time handled the situation deftly. It bought time from Germany to reorganise the process and initiated technology transfer from Germany for testing of finished leather goods. It also banned production of the prohibited chemicals and dyes. It was easier to monitor the chemical producers as 60 per cent of the industry’s output was coming from large firms and 40 per cent from small and medium firms. Thus, the input producers became enforcers of the ban. This is the same as entrusting employers with the responsibility of ensuring employees’ compliance with the Aarogya Setu mandate. It would reduce the cost of monitoring as it is easier to monitor employers rather than employees and may increase compliance at the end.
In the case of leather exports, the Government took a few additional measures and with the help of the Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI), small tanneries were imparted technical know-how and guidance to use the approved chemicals. Plus, the chemical and dye manufacturers were encouraged to innovate and make approved dyes, which they did. In this whole exercise, compliance was not State-driven.
Meenu Tewari and Poonam Pillai in their research paper, Global standards and the dynamics of environmental compliance in India’s leather industry, published in Oxford Development Studies in 2005 argued that the Government engendered a process of negotiated collective action, taking into account the exporters, firms across the value chain, business associations, research and development institutes and regional environmental agencies. The conformity was based on a peer-monitoring system; hence the Government was not overburdened with the cost of compliance. The resultant acquiescence was widespread even among the small firms that were difficult to monitor.
Let us consider another, more recent case. This is the success story of a society in peri-urban Bengaluru in complying with improved water management practices and the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board’s (KSPCB) zero liquid discharge norms. A residential society, Rainbow Drive on Sarjapur road made constant efforts to build institutions at the level of the society for sustainable water management and finally comply with State norms.
Without sustainable water management practices, the society would have encountered a major water crisis in the near future. So Rainbow Drive took a series of measures, including banning of private borewell drilling, water pricing and mandatory water harvesting.
In 2015, the society became the first residential society in Bengaluru to apply to the KSPCB to recharge the groundwater table. The society has also installed a Sewage Treatment Plant to comply with the KSPCB’s discharge norms, although it is yet to comply with it fully. Through the peer monitoring system, the society ensured compliance within and upheld its responsibility to obey Government rules.
The two cases discussed above show that citizens or stakeholders have to share the responsibility of compliance with any Government regulation. It is impossible for the Government to ensure full acquiescence due to the prohibitive monitoring cost if stakeholders are many and segregated.
Conformity is plausible only when citizens take the responsibility of peer monitoring within a group by setting up a formal or informal institution. The Government may monitor only the institution, which in turn would monitor the individuals. If the Government attempts to monitor each individual, then it would encounter the problem of omission and commission.
Hence, if the Government has entrusted the employers to ensure that the employees download the Aarogya Setu app, then it is a rational policy decision. Thus, the cost of monitoring would get internalised by employers, in whose interest the lockdown was relaxed. The offices should be held responsible to implement the SOPs and the offices that are not following the rules should be penalised for their failure to do so.
However, it is imperative to build confidence that the data will not be misused. The trust and confidence between the Government and its citizens is the key to success in the war against the Coronavirus. The citizens or stakeholders should form local institutions within their group to devise a strategy for the containment of the Coronavirus and thus make compliance easier. Close supervision of over 135 crore citizens by the Government is an unachievable goal.
It is true that law enforcement agencies like the police are keeping a watch on citizens in many cities and imposing fines if they are found violating social distancing norms. But this is not very effective as they cannot monitor everyone, always.
For instance, people would reposition themselves as and when the police patrol vehicle approaches the shopping centres, only to huddle back when it leaves. It should be the responsibility of the market associations to maintain social distancing norms. They should develop rules by which they can impose fines on shopkeepers who fail to enforce the norms among customers. If every shopkeeper does so, then customers would also appreciate it and fall in line. The police may in turn hold the association responsible for the enforcement of rules and sanction those who fail to maintain order.
This does not suggest that the Government remains passive about compliance with norms. It should facilitate the process to make offices, business or citizens’ associations responsible. It should provide more timely and clear information to avoid the spread of the disease. The Government should counsel and train offices and associations on the formation of local institutions.
The most important element of a local institution is provision of penalty for not conforming. This would develop trust between the implementing authorities and other stakeholders and further between the authorities and the Government. Compliance can only be co-produced by both the Government and citizens through development of trust between them. It cannot be produced by only one of them.
(The writer is Associate Professor, Institute of Rural Management, Anand. The views expressed are personal)
