Vishakhapatnam: Best Performing Civic Body in Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Awards

• The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has selected Vishakhapatnam Municipal Corporation as the best-performing civic body.
• Vishakhapatnam was placed under the Annual Awards for Excellence which recognises the outstanding contribution of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban in 2019.
• Andhra Pradesh bagged a special category award in innovative construction technology and project monitoring tools.

Other Awards

• Mirzapur won the best performing Municipal body.

Analysis of COVID-19 situation in 2021

• The course of the coronavirus pandemic in the new year presents a picture of contrasts, with some rich countries running out of vaccines, experiencing a tide of new cases and deaths, and poorer countries going without access to vaccination, while India reports a case decline.
• Vaccine hesitancy may even be wasting precious vials in some States. Amidst suggestions that the worst is over, the Home Ministry has proposed further relaxations in the protocols for public activity from February, including occupancy levels in cinema theatres, holding of exhibitions and access to swimming pools.
• This will come as a relief to some of the outlying sectors that could not fully unlock so far, although, as the Ministry points out, all other activities have been permitted.
• The January 27 guidelines for Surveillance, Containment and Caution also create a window for further relaxation of international air travel, but the DGCA has decided to maintain the status quo on scheduled flights till February end.
• Full-fledged inter-city rail services await a decision too.
• In an economy struggling with a demand contraction for goods and services, a graded opening is the prudent course, with strict enforcement of public health measures.
• It would be wrong to read the MHA’s unlock advisory, without taking cognisance of the protocols that must continue to be followed: use of face masks, healthy distancing, staggering of working hours, workplace sanitisation and firm action against spitting in public. These legal requirements, however, have been rendered moot in many instances by crowded election campaigns, agitations and gatherings. The many States are not even trying to persuade recalcitrant people in public.
• India’s declining infections have prompted a further relaxation of activity curbs, but there is no cause to lower the vigil.
• Genetic mutations of the coronavirus in South Africa, the U.K. and Brazil pose a new worry, with implications for those who have avoided infection so far or have recovered after a difficult battle.
• Poor communication and lack of transparency on vaccine efficacy data have produced hesitancy, resulting in low uptake in some States.
• On the other hand, the virus variants have turned the spotlight on second-generation vaccines that are expected to protect against them but will take time to arrive.
• Without ready pharmaceutical remedies, citizens and policymakers have to fall back on the default toolkit of safe behaviour.
• There will be considerable interest in new measures in Europe, where governments now require use of masks of N95 or FFP2 standards, to offer higher protection in public places and transport; Germany is to give these free to people over 60 and to vulnerable individuals.
• In India, even with a sizeable population exposed to the virus, as seropositivity surveys show, the spate of infections in Kerala and Maharashtra underscores the value of the precautionary principle on the road to universal vaccination.

Analysis of the Whatsapp and its Monopoly

• There are ongoing investigations worldwide, including in the European Union and the United States, on the abuse of monopolistic power by the Big Tech firms, especially Facebook and Google.
• Many compare this with the earlier antitrust investigations in the U.S. on the telecom industry and the break-up of the AT&T dictated by the Department of Justice in its Modified Final Judgment in 1982.

What is different this time?

However, there are important differences this time around when compared with the earlier investigations.

1. First, the information good that is being provided by the Internet firms of today, is largely non-rival. The consumption of information by one does not alter the value of others. However, in telecom, due to limited network capacity, the consumption by one has an effect of decreasing value for the others and, hence, is rival in nature.
2. Second, telecom services are within the jurisdictional boundaries of regulators and, hence, the regulators have the power to lay down rules for the orderly behaviour of the licensed telecom operators. On the other hand, Internet firms operate globally, thanks to the ubiquitous Internet. Therefore, it is often difficult to lay down international rules of obligation and fulfilment by the different country regulators.
3. Third, while it is debatable whether the goods and services provided by the Internet firms are excludable, telecom is certainly excludable due to the need for consumers to obtain connections from the respective telcos and pay the subscription charges for the same.
4. It is this factor that was leveraged by the Internet firms to provide search, navigation, and social connectivity with no charge to the consumers, and, consequently, making these services non-excludable.
5. In fact, the Internet, started as the Department of Defense project in the U.S., was created to be non-excludable.
6. However, the commercialisation of the Internet has created this new avatar of non-excludability that includes subtle trade-offs of personal information for availing services of Internet firms.

Monetisation models

It must be pointed out that such non-excludable and non-rival goods, also known as public goods, are provided by governments. On the other hand, in a peculiar way, the information goods as described above are being provided by private firms. This arrangement poses several problems.

1. First, while governments can cover the expense of providing public goods (such as police protection, parks and street lights) through tax-payers money, private firms need to have monetisation models to cover the costs of providing their services. Hence, the Internet firms have resorted to personalised advertisements and third-party sharing of the personal information of their users for monetisation purposes.
2. Second, the strong network effects present in these Internet platforms warrant increasing the subscriber base and garnering as much market share as possible. This results in the near monopoly of some firms in their defined markets. In order to retain their pole position, these firms may resort to anti-competitive behaviour including acquiring rivals to vertically integrate; erecting entry barriers by refusing to interconnect and inter-operate with competing firms, and leveraging their capital base, thereby engaging in predatory pricing, and driving out competitors.

Indispensable applications

• However, network effects create a huge consumer surplus. Even without our knowledge, these Internet firms have now become an indispensable part of our lives.
• We cannot do without Google Maps for our day-to-day commute to various destinations; Google Searches are indispensable in our quest for information and news; Google Scholar is a necessary tool for academicians to explore relevant research artefacts.
• There are positive externalities as well. For example, Google Maps Application Program Interface (APIs) is being used by almost all logistic and transport companies; Facebook APIs are used for advertisement by almost all firms across the industry. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, recently announced that its Search is being expanded to provide accurate and timely information on vaccine distribution to enable quick recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Hence, the question before policymakers is how to regulate these Internet firms from abusing their monopoly power while at the same time encouraging the positive externalities and consumer surplus they create.
• This is a tough nut to crack as it is often very difficult to prove that the firms engage in the abuse of their monopoly power.
• Due to strong network effects, it is not possible to ban or curtail these services. Even if other options are available (such as Signal and Telegram for messaging), the network effects bind customers to their often used platform (WhatsApp), even if it is not their favourite.

Possible solutions

A traditional view is to subsidise the good that creates positive externalities.

• Should the governments provide tax subsidy to these Internet firms in return for their orderly behaviour in the marketplace?
• Should the governments mandate sharing of Non-Personal Data (NPD) owned by these firms for societal and economic well-being as pointed out in the expert committee on NPD?
• It is legitimate as pointed out by the Australian government in its media legislation, that Google and Facebook must negotiate a fair payment with news organisations for using their content in Facebook’s newsfeed and Google’s Search.
• Controlled expansion of products and services without hurting the interests of consumers and smaller competing firms shall be the mantra used by these firms to minimise litigation, lawsuits and, eventually, wastage of tax-payers money.

The other way to control any abusive behaviour of Internet firms is to use the power of the public voice.

• The million mails that were sent to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India in March 2015, effectively put an end to the Free Basics programme of Facebook in India, thereby prohibiting any violation of Net Neutrality principles.
• Similarly, the huge public outcry and subsequent government actions have delayed the recent changes to the privacy policy relating to the sharing of personal information between WhatsApp and its parent firm, Facebook.

While governments and regulators deal with these dilemmas, should not Internet firms adhere to core ethical principles in conducting their businesses?

• Lessons from the Enron scandal, and collusions between large banks and financial institutions during the 2008 financial crisis, indicate that firms that aim at super monopoly profits and are greedy to become powerhouses of the world, often end up in the ditch.

Vaccines are safe for those who are on blood thinners: ICMR

• Both COVID-19 vaccines approved for emergency use in India — Covaxin and Covishield — are safe for people on blood thinners, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Director-General Balram Bhargav said on Thursday.
• At a Health Ministry press conference, he said manufacturers of both the vaccines had approached the Drugs Controller-General of India (DCGI) for revision of this contraindication on their fact sheets.
• “Relative contraindications regarding blood thinners have been mentioned in the fact sheets of both the vaccines and both the companies have written to the DCGI regarding revision of this. The revision will happen every soon. Blood thinners are of two categories — anti-platelets and anti-coagulants. For those on anti-platelets like aspirin, the vaccine causes no problem but for those on anti-coagulants, the tendency to bleed is much higher. This is also a relative contraindication and the anti-coagulant can be stopped a day or two before administering the vaccine,” Mr. Bhargav said
• The Health Ministry added that it was engaging with private stakeholders to look at increasing the future coverage of COVID-19 vaccines.
• “The Ministry is also actively working at reducing wastage of the vaccine by bringing in a more flexible digital platform and issuing an exhaustive guideline to States/UTs to manage waste below 10%,” Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said.

COVID-19 “performance index”

• New Zealand and Vietnam were ranked the best performing countries in their response to the pandemic, according to a COVID-19 “performance index” put together by the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank, which sought to assess the impact of geography, political systems and economic development in assessing outcomes.
• The index, which was based on six different indicators, including confirmed cases and deaths per million people and the scale of testing, sought “to gauge the relative performance of countries”, assessing 98 countries in the 36 weeks that followed their hundredth case.
• “Fewer reported cases and deaths, both in aggregate and per capita terms, point towards a better response to the virus,” the Sydney-based think tank said.
• “More tests conducted on a per capita basis reveal a more accurate picture of the extent of the pandemic at the national level. Lower rates of positive tests, meanwhile, indicate greater degrees of control over the transmission of COVID-19.”
• India ranked 86 out of 98 countries, while the U.S. stood at 94 and Brazil at the bottom of the index. Taiwan, Thailand and Cyprus were in the top five. Sri Lanka was the best faring nation in South Asia, ranking 10, while the Maldives was at 25, Pakistan at 69, Nepal at 70, and Bangladesh at 84.
• The think tank said China was not included “due to a lack of publicly available data on testing”.
• Assessing regional responses, the institute found that although the outbreak began in China, the Asia-Pacific region fared the best, while Europe and the U.S. were initially overwhelmed. Europe, however, “registered the greatest improvement over time of any region” before succumbing to a second wave, which it attributed to more open borders.
• Population size was one factor. Smaller countries with fewer than 10 million people “consistently outperformed their larger counterparts throughout 2020”.
• The level of economic development and regime-type were less significant than expected, which it attributed to “the relatively ‘low-tech’ nature of the health measures used to mitigate the spread of the virus” which “may have created a more level playing field between developed and developing countries”. “In general, countries with smaller populations, cohesive societies, and capable institutions have a comparative advantage in dealing with a global crisis such as a pandemic,” the think tank concluded.