1.Next vax phase: Second doses for adults, first doses for children, vigil on breakthrough infections must proceed concurrently

India is entering another phase in the anti-Covid fight with daily aggregate second doses on the verge of outnumbering first doses nationally and already exceeding first doses in many states. Most states now have single-dosed at least 50% of adults; Himachal became the first state to cross 50% adult coverage on both doses. Cumulative vaccination doses have also crossed 90 crore, signalling a sort of a halfway mark in vaccinations given the total adult population of 94 crore. With daily vaccination in September averaging 79 lakh, the challenge of fully vaccinating adults looks possible by early 2022.

The same enthusiasm for enrolling recipients for the first dose must be sustained for the second dose too. Countries like Israel, the US and UK are already offering third doses despite criticism from experts. With India now planning to meet its Covax commitments, vaccine production and supply must keep scaling up. India has to simultaneously satisfy both the domestic and international constituencies going forward, given the Delta variant continuing to wreak huge damage abroad.

Covaxin remains the worry. Its average daily jabs rose to 9 lakh between September 20 and  October 3 compared to 7 lakh in the fortnight prior. Bharat Biotech has promised to supply 5.5 crore doses in October, which would make available 18 lakh jabs daily, allowing the company to meet around 20% of India’s vaccination burden. BB must also press hard on WHO approval. With international travel resuming, vaccine passports have become reality. Many Indians, 10.4 crore doses and counting, have opted for the atmanirbhar Covaxin, but their international travel prospects aren’t looking good. WHO approval would be a starting point for persuading all countries to accept Covaxin.

Alongside second-dosing adults, the next vaccination challenge will be to first-dose children. That a clutch of vaccines – Covaxin, Corbevax, Covovax – is undergoing trials on children is reassuring. ZyCov-D is set for rollout and children above 12 are expected to be its beneficiaries. But its limited production numbers and three-dose regimen will require all vaccines in trials presently to pull their weight together to ensure speedy child immunisation. Currently, authorities are lacking the confidence to fully reopen schools until the festival season is over. India has done well in vaccination but the general disregard for masking in public could end up robbing those gains. This is also the moment for intensive surveillance of breakthrough infections to study waning immunity, which triggered the booster shot debate in the West.

2.Be future ready: Are you worried that the beginning of the end of WFH is here? Or that it will carry on?

Diversity has acquired a new face in companies – some employees are working entirely on site, others entirely at home, and still others in hybrid mode, clocking in only select days or hours at the physical office. An air of provisionality hangs heavy around all of them, fingers crossed that the dip in cases will outlast the festival season. But either way, as more and more companies complete vaccination drives, white-collar employees are now asking if this is the beginning of the end of WFH.

What bears reminding is that the experiment that was forced upon us all early last year was one that select employees and managers had been pushing long before the pandemic. If the former were pursuing a better work-life balance the latter, cutting costs. The pandemic has allowed both these groups to win over untold numbers, but not unanimity by any means. Responding to diverse employees’ preferences will require companies to assess their job profiles and compensations in complex ways. Employees will also be asked to show matching flexibility, such as openness to retraining and adjusting to different work modes within a team.

If the future of work is hybrid, and the many unknowns make for anxiety, the upsides are equally notable. With a recent survey by a recruitment firm suggesting that the India Inc hiring from locations other than where it has offices has shot up to 35% from just about 5% pre-pandemic, folks from Tier II and III cities could see an expansion of good opportunities right where they are. The history of work shows that every age expresses sorrowful nostalgia for bygone conditions, yet this does not preclude job satisfaction levels from rising. If some of us are in office and some at home, we can happily continue hybrid meetings interlaced with, ‘Can you hear me?’

3.Farm laws: The onus is on the SC

The Supreme Court (SC) has again been scathing in its criticism of protests that block roads. Its most recent observations have come in the context of the farm protests. Last week, one bench observed that the protests were “strangulating” the Capital. Indeed, since last November, many of the arterial roads leading into Delhi have been blocked by protesters, and also by barricades put up by the police to prevent them from reaching the Capital. Entire “protest cities” have come up on the sites, inconveniencing local residents and commuters who now have to take diversions.

Such observations by the court are not new. There have been similar observations in the past, in other cases dealing with other issues, but apart from noting that such protests that block roads aren’t on and that it is the responsibility of governments (the Union and the states) to prevent roads from being blocked interminably by protests, the country’s apex court has done nothing. While this may be in keeping with the division of responsibilities between the executive and the judiciary, the SC has never let this come in the way of its (sometimes justifiable) interventions in matters of State in the past. An order by it may well be all that is needed to clear the roads.

 

4.Locked in a stalemate: On need to restore normalcy along India-China border

India, China need to restore normalcy along the border before cooperation on other issues

In the coming week, military commanders from India and China are expected to hold the 13th round of talks to continue the effort to find a way out of the LAC crisis. Sharp exchanges between Beijing and New Delhi have served as a reminder that relations are undoubtedly at their lowest since 1988. On September 24, the Chinese Foreign Ministry, while responding to a question about new border management protocols, laid the blame for last year’s border crisis entirely on India’s doorstep, saying India’s “illegal trespass” caused the dispute. The Foreign Ministry repeated this charge in even stronger language, describing, on September 29, India’s actions last year as a “forward policy”, implicitly invoking the 1962 war. New Delhi in turn reminded Beijing that it was its “provocative behaviour”, and amassing of troops in April 2020 following annual military exercises, that led to the flashpoints. The envoys of both countries have also made statements, at a virtual dialogue, that suggest a gulf in the state of relations. The Chinese envoy to India, Sun Weidong, called on both countries to “place the border issue in an appropriate position” and said “it is not the whole story of bilateral relations”. His Indian counterpart, Vikram Misri, said the Chinese side was “shifting goalposts” in how both countries have, for three decades, managed the border areas peacefully. This, he said, was predicated on “a well-understood distinction” between managing the border areas and resolving the boundary question.

It is clear that this understanding, along with the four border agreements, has now broken down on account of China’s actions last year to unilaterally re-draw the LAC in Ladakh in the Western Sector. This week’s military commanders talks will take up disputes in Hot Springs, while disputes in Demchok and Depsang remain unresolved. Since the crisis last year, both sides have set up buffer zones in Galwan Valley and on the north bank of Pangong Lake, and have disengaged on the south bank and in Gogra. This temporary arrangement has helped prevent the recurrence of clashes, but with past agreements in disarray, a longer term understanding to keep the peace still eludes both sides. Recent incidents in Uttarakhand, and a continued military build-up in the Eastern Sector, underline the pressing need for reaching one. Mr. Misri suggested a way out of this stalemate, saying “it cannot be that only one side’s concerns are of relevance…” and acknowledging that “safeguarding territorial integrity and national security holds equal value for both sides.” He maintained both sides still had the space to cooperate on issues including tackling the pandemic, concerns about terrorism in the region and the situation in Afghanistan. Doing so will certainly build trust. Finding that space, however, will hinge on first restoring normalcy along the border.

5.Crime and the pandemic: On Crime in India report

The lockdown had a bearing on the patterns of crimes that were registered in 2020

The annual report, ‘Crime in India’, released by the National Crime Records Bureau in mid-September this year needs to be carefully parsed before gleaning insights or making State-wise comparisons. The reason is the significant variances in case registration across States and Union Territories, especially serious crimes pertaining to rape and violence against women. States/UTs such as Tamil Nadu with 1808.8, Kerala (1568.4) and Delhi (1309.6) recorded the highest crime rate (crimes per one lakh people) overall. But it is difficult not to see these numbers as a reflection of better reporting and police registration of cases in these States and the capital city, respectively. On the other hand, while there was an 8.3% decline in registered cases of crimes against women in 2020 (of which the bulk of them, 30.2%, were of the category “Cruelty by husband or his relatives”), this number has to be assessed along with the fact that the year saw prolonged lockdowns during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic (between late March and May 2021 in particular). This period coincided with a high number of complaints of domestic violence — the number of complaints received by National Commission for Women registered a 10-year high as of June 2020. The seeming mismatch between the NCW and NCRB data must be studied and can only be explained by a lack of registration of cases in some States where crime reporting remains sluggish either due to a fear of doing so or a lackadaisical approach to such cases by law enforcement. On the other hand, the lockdown also led to an overall fall in crime related to theft, burglary and dacoity.

The COVID-19 related disruption also led to a greater registration of cases overall (a 28% increase in 2020 compared to 2019) largely due to a 21-fold increase in cases related to disobedience to the order duly promulgated by a public servant and over four times in cases involving violations of other State local laws. This is not surprising either. India had one of the most stringent lockdowns and law enforcement spared little in enforcing strictures on physical distancing. The question of registration does not apply to some types of cases such as murders — which showed only a marginal increase of 1% compared to 2019. Worryingly, while there was a reduction in the registered number of economic offences (by 12% since 2019), cybercrimes recorded an increase of 11.8% . The increase in cybercrimes is cause for concern as this requires sharper law enforcement as seen even in highly developed societies. While cases related to sedition declined from 93 in 2019 to 73 last year, Manipur and Assam led with 15 and 12 cases each. Sedition has increasingly been used as a weapon to stifle dissent and this trend needs to be reversed urgently.