This post presents our monthly curation of developments in the Indian policy landscape – highlighting (recent and upcoming) I4I content pertaining to the issue of women’s safety at home, the need to prepare for ‘ageing India’, and the non-health impacts of air pollution. We take a look at state anti-rape bills, new health coverage for seniors over 70 years of age, and the Unified Pension Scheme for central government employees.

The matter of women’s safety in public spaces and at home

Against the backdrop of the Kolkata incident involving the brutal rape and murder of an on-duty female doctor, the August Policy Roundup discussed how the threat of sexual violence impacts the participation of women in the workforce. In the aftermath of the incident, the State Legislative Assembly of West Bengal unanimously passed the Aparajita Women and Child (West Bengal Criminal Law Amendment) Bill, 2024 on 3 September. Also known as the Anti-Rape Bill, this legislative proposal seeks to create a safe environment for women and children by introducing more stringent provisions pertaining to rape and sexual offences. A significant provision of the Bill is capital punishment for those convicted of rape in cases where the crime results in the victim dying or entering a vegetative state. Further, it mandates the completion of investigation within 21 days of the initial report (down from two months under existing laws) – aided by a special task force and fast-track courts. The Bill also proposes stricter penalties for individuals found guilty of violating the privacy and dignity of victims. 

As the Bill awaits approval of the Governor of West Bengal and the President of India to become a law, it is noted that anti-rape bills by two other states – Maharashtra Shakti Bill, 2020 and Andhra Pradesh Disha Bill, 2019 – are still awaiting Presidential assent.  

Besides public spaces, women’s safety may be under threat at home as well. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in three women are subjected to physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner or sexual violence from someone other than their partner. A factor that may impact the probability of a woman experiencing violence post-marriage is the woman’s age at marriage. Analysing data from India’s National Family Health Survey (NFHS), 2015-16, Dhamija and Roychowdhury (2018) find that a delay in a woman’s marriage by a year reduces the likelihood of less severe physical violence by 7 percentage points, and of severe physical violence by 4 percentage points. Recently, the state of Himachal Pradesh has passed the Prohibition of Child Marriage (Himachal Pradesh Amendment) Bill, 2024, to raise the minimum age for marriage for women from 18 to 21 years (which is also the minimum age for marriage for men) – in order to support gender equality and higher education. While such a Bill was also introduced in the Parliament in December 2021, it has lapsed with the dissolution of the 17^th Lok Sabha. 

Social security: 70+ health coverage, Unified Pension Scheme

The Union Cabinet has announced that all senior citizens aged 70 and above would receive health coverage of Rs. 5,00,000 under Ayushman Bharat¹. The benefits can be availed by individuals irrespective of their socioeconomic status. Less well-off households with members aged 70+, who already had annual coverage of Rs. 5,00,000 under the programme, would now receive a top-up of Rs. 5,00,000 that may be shared among the seniors. This ambitious plan that may potentially benefit an estimated 45 million families, aligns with concerns raised by researchers such as Sonalde Desai (see her recent I4I Conversation with Farzana Afridi here) regarding India’s upcoming demographic transition from a young to an ageing population and the associated need to invest more in social security.   

Last month saw another development in India’s social security landscape – although impacting only a small proportion of the population, that is, about 23,000 central government employees – the Unified Pension Scheme (UPS). Similar to the Old Pension Scheme (OPS) which was in place in India until 2003, UPS assures employees a lifelong, monthly payment of 50% of the last-drawn salary, among other benefits. Under the present system (New Pension Scheme or NPS), pension payments are linked to the accumulated value of contributions made by the government and the employee, over the latter’s working life. A key difference between the OPS and UPS is that the former involved no contributions by employees or employer; the UPS, like the NPS, will be a contributory scheme². From 1 April 2025, employees who have joined service since 2004 will have the option to switch to UPS.   

World Clean Air Day

7 September marked the fifth annual International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies, with the 2024 theme calling for “investment in clean air solutions now, as air pollution causes increasing public health, environmental, and economic harms.” Examining data from 10 Indian cities for the period 2008-2019, a new study published by Lancet Planetary Health links 33,000 deaths annually to air pollution levels that exceed WHO guidelines. Perhaps less well-known are the ‘non-health’ impacts of air pollution: in their I4I post, Aguilar-Gomez et al. (2023) discuss a growing body of research showing that exposure to air pollution can also have significant adverse effects on physical and cognitive performance. While these effects are not diagnosable as diseases, they can dampen well-being and economic output. For example, on particularly polluted days, blue-collar workers may experience lower productivity, and white-collar workers can suffer from impaired decision-making.   

A major reason why the Indo-Gangetic plains of North India are engulfed in thick smog in the month of November year after year, is the practice of burning crop residue to clear agricultural land after harvest.  Based on their study of Indian data from 1998-2022, Jagnani and Mahadevan (2023) demonstrate that women legislators are more successful than their male counterparts in decreasing the incidence of crop fires and lowering particulate emissions. The researchers attribute this to female leaders being more likely to consider crop fires as a serious issue, weigh their impacts on child health, and implement crop residue management policies. In another study at the intersection of environment and political economy, Bandyopadhyay et al. (2023) find a 6% increase in forest cover following the election of a female politician. One of the co-authors, Bipasha Maity (Ashoka University), will be presenting this research at the upcoming LSE Environment Week (23-26 September), which is co-organised by the International Growth Centre (IGC). 

As we go into the winter season, look out for more I4I content on the state of knowledge on ambient and indoor air pollution, assessment of existing policy interventions, lessons from other countries, coping strategies at the household level, the political economy of air pollution, and so on.

Notes:

1. Launched in 2018, Ayushman Bharat is a public health insurance programme that provides cashless hospitalisation coverage of Rs. 5,00,000 per household per year to the bottom 40% of the population, for secondary- and tertiary-level care at empanelled public and private hospitals.
2. Under NPS, employees currently contribute 10% of salary and the government contributes 14%. Under UPS, the government will raise its contribution to 18.5% of salary – adjusted higher or lower as per the funding requirements of the scheme.