Harvard University did not praise UP’s handling of the migrant crisis

Harvard University did not praise UP’s handling of the migrant crisis

by

Last week, a number of Indian media reported on a study by Harvard University praising the Uttar Pradesh government led by Yogi Adityanath for dealing with the migrant crisis during the first few months of nationwide exclusion in India. However, the reports did not provide the names of the author (or authors), nor any details of the study itself.

A joint study of the study by BOEM and FactChecker revealed that the news reports were highly misleading – the study was conducted by a Gurgaon Institute known as the Institute for Competitiveness (IFC), and not by Harvard University.

While IFC is a subsidiary of Harvard Business School’s affiliate network Microeconomics of Competitiveness, Harvard had no involvement in the study. Furthermore, the IFC study did not praise the UP government’s handling of the crisis; rather, it analyzed the handling of the government led by Adityanath and made observations and suggestions on what had been done and what could be improved.

BOEM and FactChecker spoke to Amit Kapoor, honorary chair of IFC, who rejected the allegations that it was a ‘Harvard study’ and praised the UP government’s efforts. Our institute is a subsidiary of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness (ISC) at Harvard Business School (HBS), and we did not attribute the study to Harvard anywhere in the report (or otherwise). It is therefore inaccurate to call a study by a MOC branch ‘Harvard study’, “said Kapoor.

“The study is only a documentation of the efforts of UP with the help of an analytical framework. Since it is not a comparative study, it cannot be said that it prices any entity. The study also provides recommendations to the UP government on future pandemic management, ”he added.

The migrant workers crisis

On March 25, the Indian government ordered a nationwide exclusion, initially for 21 days, but eventually extended until May 31. The exclusion was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi a few hours before it took effect. This caused great panic in the country and eventually to shut down businesses and factories almost immediately. This led to an immediate loss of jobs for daily wage earners across the country, most of whom were migrant workers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

A migrant worker carries his 5-year-old son on his shoulders as they walk along a road to return to their town, during a 21-day nationwide lockdown to spread coronavirus in New Delhi, India, on 26 March 2020 to limit. Photo: Reuters / Danish Siddiqui.

As a result, many workers and their families tried to return to their villages to support themselves, sometimes a thousand miles away, mostly on foot – with a number of deaths due to starvation, fatigue, police brutality and suicide. This event has been referred to as a migrant workers crisis or simply as a migrant crisis.

What the media reported

The government’s handles and various media have praised the allegation of a ‘Harvard’ study praising the handling of the migrant crisis.

Newspapers like Hindustan Times, MensXP, the Free Personnel and the Jagran also carried it below their own lines. They quoted a spokesperson of the UP government to make the claims and called the handling of the crisis by the state government as ‘adroit’ and ‘effective’.

Times Now and Swarajya a byline carried by the news agency IANS, which also tweeted the story earlier – with the labeling of Harvard University. BJP leader Vineet Goenka also shared the claim while leading the Aam Aadmi party through the Delhi government for not caring for migrant workers leaving for UP.

Find the archive of IANS’s tweets here.

No, this is not a Harvard study

BOEM and FactChecker accessed a copy of the study and found that it was conducted by the Institute of Competitiveness, which is part of an affiliated network of the Harvard Business School (HBS) called Microeconomics of Competitiveness (MOC), and not by Harvard University not himself.

Source: BOOMLive

MOC is a course platform designed by Michael Porter at HBS’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness; a subsidiary of the MOC network has access to teaching materials, course syllabus, notes, recorded lectures and lecture notes.

There are 121 institutions that are part of this network from 2019, and the Institute of Competitiveness is one of four such institutes in India.

Source: BOOMLive

Kapoor also mentioned that the report does not mention the Harvard Business School, or that the logo is in it anyway. “We did not use the HBS logo in the report. It is a logo of the affiliated network Micro-economics of Competitiveness, of which we are a part. However, the logo would be removed to create the correct messages. The study was also not made public by us in the public domain, ”he said.

What does the study call?

Commenting on the methodology behind the study, Kapoor said: ‘In the study, we assessed UP’s COVID efforts on three parameters: migrant support, health infrastructure and livelihoods. The study is a documentation of UP’s efforts since the start of the pandemic, and is an attempt to provide knowledge in the future for similar crises. ”

When we went through the report, we found several comments on the UP government’s handling of the crisis.

Transport

The report states that a total of 35,28,227 migrants have returned to the state of Uttar Pradesh since March 24, 2020. Of these, 99.54% of other states withdrew in the country, while the other 0.54% returned from other countries. .

The majority of UP migrants live in Maharashtra (35.91%) and Gujarat (20.42%), followed by neighboring Delhi (9.23%), Haryana (7.68%) and Punjab (8.52%). . Of 35,28,227 migrants, 16,129 returned to the state from other countries during March 24, 2020 and July 3, 2020. Of these, (90%) 14,517 came from Nepal, while the rest came from different parts of the world including Dubai, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia etc.

Although efforts have been made to return migrant workers by Shramik trains and other means of transport, ground reports during the closure period have also revealed serious situations where employees return to UP. Here are some cases of numbness shown by the authorities and officials of Uttar Pradesh towards migrant workers during the crisis:

  • At least 25 migrant workers have died after a truck crashed into the truck in which they were traveling on Saturday morning. The incident happened around 3:30 a.m. in Auraiya, Uttar Pradesh. Search the report here.
  • A group of migrant workers in Bareilly were squatted on a road and then sprayed with chlorine-mixed water. Search the report here.
  • Buses were only provided after the migrant workers started walking long distances back home. The provision of buses by Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi has also sparked a political dispute between the BJP-led UP government and Congress. Search the report here.

UP healthcare system

The report states that Uttar Pradesh has only 10 health centers per population, the 7th lowest in the country. Similarly, when it comes to the number of hospital beds and state doctors (per population), UP falls in the bottom five states of the country.

Finally, on page 70, the study reads: ‘Although the government in Uttar Pradesh has taken steps to build economic opportunities for them closer to home by using existing schemes, as well as by signing new signatures, it is important to have a develop long-term development plan. . The plan must be based on existing strengths of the state as well as the skills range of the workforce ”.

While the study investigates how the UP government handled the crisis, it did not praise the handling of the crisis by the government.

BOEM and FactChecker also contacted Navneet Sehgal, an IAS officer and additional general secretary of the UP government, for comment on the matter. Although he did not want to discuss the matter with us, he instructed one of his team members to give us a copy of the study.

This story was originally published by BOOM Live. Read the original here.

.Source