In 2023, the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP), initiated an annual conference—India in Asia: Deeper Engagement. These conferences are designed to help deepen the current and future engagement between India and Asia. They are aimed at building and deepening intellectual engagement among experts who have government, academic, private sector or think-tank experience across the Asian region spanning South, Southeast, and East Asia. The focus is on geo-economic issues along with inter-weaving relationships with political and strategic developments.

The theme chosen for the second India in Asia: Deeper Engagement conference, held in March 2024 was New Industrial Policy: Asian Perspectives.

Industrial policy trends in developing and advanced economies raise questions of central importance for policymakers in Asia. What explains the recent explosion of industrial policies in the advanced economies? How effective have industrial policies in Asia been in achieving their stated objectives? What have been the cross-border consequences of industrial policies in Asia? What should be their response to these emerging policy developments in the advanced economies? Is there a new economic growth and development paradigm that needs to be discussed in the Asian context?

The second India in Asia: Deeper Engagement conference discussed these issues and much more. The conference was held on March 1-3, 2023 at the Neemrana Fort-Palace, Rajasthan.

There were five sessions, apart from an opening and closing session. The sessions were as follows:

• Opening Session: Continuing India’s Engagement with Asia
• Session I: Geopolitical Rivalry and Use of Industrial Policy as a Strategic Weapon
• Session II: New Industrial Policies: How are They Different From Those That Promoted Growth in Asia?
• Session III: New Industrial Policies and Geo-economic Fragmentation: Implications for Trade and Global Value Chains
• Session IV: Climate Change, Decarbonisation, Energy Transition: Options for New Industrial Policies?
• Session V: New Growth Policy Paradigms for Asia in a Fragmenting Global Economy: Impact of New Industrial Policies
• Closing Session: Further Engagement: Looking Into the Future

Details about each session are available in the Conference Agenda and the Conference Compendium.

India’s approach to Universal Health Coverage (UHC) has focused on the two pillars of demand-side financing of secondary/tertiary healthcare and strengthening primary healthcare services.

The Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY), a government-subsidised health insurance, was launched in 2018 to provide health coverage to the economically lower 40 per cent of India’s population; the largest tax-funded health insurance program globally. This complemented other risk pools such as those for existing and former government employees, defence personnel, railway personnel, and formal sector employees earning less than a prescribed salary. Several states have, additionally, introduced state-level tax-financed insurance over a period of time.

Primary healthcare received attention through the National Health Mission (NHM, previously National Rural Health Mission) and more recently in the form of the Health and Wellness Centres (now rebranded Ayushman Arogya Mandirs, AAM), with a focus on the integration of digital infrastructure. NHM focused on strengthening primary health infrastructure and fostering community engagement, while the AAMs seek to provide comprehensive primary healthcare, in response to the previous limited focus on maternal and child healthcare.

Together, the two provide a foundation for universal health coverage, offering the potential to cover primary, secondary and tertiary levels of care. They constitute a continuum of care approach under the Ayushman Bharat program, a flagship scheme of the Government of India, emerging from the recommendations of the National Health Policy 2017, to achieve the vision of Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Ambitious in their vision, these have witnessed gains: innovations leading to progress on many fronts, increase in footfall at the primary level in some contexts and reduced patient load on higher-level services for primary care needs.

While progress has been visible, access, quality and affordability of healthcare services remain inequitable and incomplete. Despite multiple risk pools, approximately 35 per cent of the population continues to remain without health cover and out-of-pocket expenditure on health, though improved, remains high. India’s mixed health system remains heterogeneous and fragmented across public and private providers, across states and levels of services, leading to rural-urban and cross-class divides, and inequities resulting from variable benefits across schemes. Despite the technological and organisational shifts, access to health services, both physical and financial, remains a challenge for sections of the population. Concerns about quality and efficiency are evident with respect to both the public and private systems, leading to inefficiencies in use of public resources and a lower than desired health status.

Deriving the full value of policy interventions will require addressing current challenges in the form of gaps in healthcare cover, inequities across a range of axes, fragmented financing and provision, and gaps in quality, accountability and regulation, to name a few. Efforts to achieve UHC therefore, will require ongoing assessment of policy and its implementation and the re-imagining of policy informed by innovations and successes in different contexts, both within India and beyond. Experience of health systems design and implementation across comparable countries provides the opportunity to draw insights and inform thinking both in India and elsewhere.

It is in this context and with a view to identifying gaps, assessing the barriers to realising the full potential of reforms undertaken, and examining broader experience (both in country and beyond), for its applicability to inform thinking on UHC, that the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP), in discussion with NITI Aayog, is organising a day-long deliberation on the dual theme of demandside health financing and primary healthcare.

Climate change represents a major threat to long-term growth and prosperity. The delayed transition towards a carbon-neutral global society will require a more challenging and abrupt transition if the 2015 Paris goals are to be reached. Recognising that climate and development priorities need simultaneous attention, emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs), along with advanced economies (AEs), face significant challenges related to climate transition, such as the uncertain impact on growth and jobs of the transition to net zero emissions, how to finance mitigation and adaptation in the context of already high debt ratios, the potential negative spillovers from climate-related policies, the bottlenecks to a fair transition to climate neutrality, and the weak international cooperation on climate targets. This calls for an urgent need to integrate climate aspects into macroeconomic analysis and policy considerations.

Mainstreaming Climate in Macroeconomics

The macroeconomic dimensions of climate action have yet to be mainstreamed into macroframeworks used for policy analysis. Climate change poses multiple shocks and potentially large macroeconomic impacts. Understanding the transmission channels and impacts of both climate change as well as policies and financing to adapt to and mitigate climate change including transitions are important.To mainstream climate-macro dimensions, the IMF has been incorporating climate aspects throughout all the branches of its work—economic surveillance, research, and capacity development—when engaging with its member countries. Research on climate change also constitutes a major priority in the research programme at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP).

Climate Finance

Beyond climate-macro considerations, stakeholders are increasingly focused on how the international financial architecture can be adjusted to accelerate climate finance. Under G20 Sustainable Finance Roadmap, G20 and relevant international organisations aim to identify the opportunities to promote scaling up of climate and sustainable-aligned financial instruments, products, and markets, while addressing climate-related financial risks. The IMF has established the Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST) in April 2022 to help countries tackle the challenges of climate change through policy support and long-term affordable financing, while catalyzing much needed private capital. Leveraging official financing from existing sources (e.g., regional development banks, World Bank) and crowding in private finance, requires new thinking and international coordination.

Objective of seminar

This high-level event, co-organised by the IMF and the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP), aims at strengthening the policy dialogue on how to mainstream climate action in macroeconomic management, while considering the challenges faced by EMDEs. The event brings together leading policy makers from the region, think tanks, IMF staff, and other international financial institutions to discuss the integration of climate change into macroeconomic analysis and policies, the challenges and opportunities of climate action, and options for growth-friendly climate policies and financing.

The India in Asia: Deeper Engagement Conference has been initiated by the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) to help deepen person-to-person and non-governmental institutional engagements with the Asian region.

This annual conference is aimed at building and deepening intellectual engagement among experts who have government, academic, private sector, or think-tank experience about the Asian region. The first of these conferences was organised from March 3-5, 2023 at the Neemrana Fort-Palace, Rajasthan.

The Conference brought together academics, influencers, and policymakers to discuss and explore the implications of Asia’s growing significance. It served as a platform for knowledge exchange and collaboration, with the aim of strengthening relationships and furthering research in the region.

There were five sessions at the India in Asia: Deeper Engagement Conference, apart from an opening and closing session. The sessions were as follows:

• Opening Session: Setting the Stage: Deepening India’s Engagement with Asia
• Session I: Impact of Geopolitics on Asia’s Economic Options
• Session II: Human Development and Health Policy in Asia
• Session III: Trade Integration and Global Value Chains in the Asia Pacific Region
• Session IV: The Geopolitical Effects of Economic Changes: Politics in Command
• Session V: Climate Change and Sustainability
• Closing Session: Making up for Lost Time: Towards an Annual Conference

Details about each session are available in the Conference Agenda and the Conference Compendium.