No rise in CO2 emissions globally for 2nd yr in a row

Subodh Varma





Trend Being Linked To Surge In Renewable Energy Production

In a surprising bit of good news concerning the bleak climate change scenario, preliminary data shows that global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning of fossil fuels did not increase in 2015.This was the second year in a row when carbon emissions from energy-related use stayed flat.
Burning of fossil fuels contributes nearly twothirds of all carbon dioxide emissions globally with the rest arising from agriculture, deforestation etc.
While this stagnation is welcome news, and an indication that emissions can be controlled, it does not mean that global warming has stalled. That's because there are already excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris on Tuesday , the data pegged 2015 CO2 emissions at 32.1 billion tonnes, virtually the same as in 2014.
This led several experts to claim that economic growth and emissions are no longer coupled or linked to each other because average global economic growth in these two years was over 3% per year, and yet carbon dioxide emissions were not increasing.
“The new figures confirm last year's surprising but welcome news: we now have seen two straight years of greenhouse gas emissions decoupling from economic growth,“ said the energy agency's executive director Fatih Birol.
In absolute terms, the total carbon dioxide release from energy use in 2015 was more than double what it was in 1975, and over a third more than in 2001.But the average 4% per year rate of growth seems to have been checked. The main reason for st alling of CO2 emissions from energy consumption appears to be the surge in renewable energy produc tion, the slowdown in the Chinese economy and re placement of oil with natu ral gas in the United States China and the US are the world's largest emitters.
In 2015, 90% of new elec tricity generation was from renewable sources, with wind energy alone produ cing half of it, preliminary date of the International Energy Agency suggests.
In the more than 40 years that the energy agency has been providing information on carbon dioxide emissions, there have been only four periods when emissions stood still or fell compared to the previous year. Three of those occasions -the early 1980s, 1992 and 2009 -were associated with global economic weakness.
But the current brake on emissions increase is the first time that this has happened during a global economic expansion. However, this link is still tenuous as China did slow down from the zooming growth it has enjoyed in previous years.
In China, emissions de clined by 1.5%, as coal use dropped for the second consecutive year. In 2015, coal generated less than 70% of Chinese electricity , ten percentage points less than four years ago (in 2011).
Over the same period, low-carbon sources jumped from 19% to 28%, with hydro and wind accounting for most of the increase.
In the US, emissions declined by 2%, as a large switch from coal to natural gas use in electricity generation took place.
In the European Union, too, renewables accounted for 15% of energy generation, up from 11% in 2011, according to a report of the EU released recently .





Source: Times of India, 18-03-2016

Girls as good as boys in maths: NCERT survey

The notion that girls are not good with numbers and science is just a myth, if data from a nationwide survey of more than 2.7 lakh students is any indicator.The survey conducted on Class X students showed girls performed on an equal footing with boys in mathematics, science and social sciences.The study, however, upheld another common belief-that girls have better language skills. Girls outperformed boys in English and other lan guages in the survey conducted in 2015 by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) in 7,216 schools following different boards across 33 states and Union territories.
The study also highlighted rampant under-performance among students in rural settings, those studying in govern ment schools and hailing from underprivileged backgrounds such as Dalits and tribals.
Another disturbing trend was the poor showing in science and maths by students in a majority of states. Scores in science were below the national average in 24 states. In maths, the survey showed 21 states falling below the average. In general, students struggled the most in subjects that involved numerical problems and practicals.
The study also showed that a few states were far ahead of the rest. In mathematics, only four states and UTs performed way above the national average while students from 21 states and UTs were assessed to be significantly below the average.In science, as many as 24 states and UTs were below the national average even while a large variation was found in scores within states.
“The survey revealed that the majority of the states and UTs are performing below the overall average score in all subject areas... Low achievement is largely an outcome of lack of conceptual clarity and understanding,“ says the report.
On average, just 41% of the questions on English were answered correctly . In mathematics, the percentage was even less (40%). It was slightly better for science (43%) and social sciences (47%). It was only in modern Indian languages (MIL) that students on average managed to answer more than half the questions correctly (53.5%).
Shockingly , more than one-third of the students scored between 0 to 35%. Only 2% of them could score 75% and above in science and social studies while none could score as much in English and mathematics.
Among states, Karnataka performed the best, with students achieving scores significantly higher than the national average in four of the five subjects assessed. In English, the north-eastern states of Mizoram, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Sikkim were among the seven best performers.
The report also summarised the performances of various central and state Boards -in subjects as well as range of correct answers.In English, the top three boards were ICSE, CBSE and Nagaland board while in mathematics, ICSE, CBSE and Odisha board had the highest scores.
In science and social science, too, ICSE students performed better than the rest. In MIL, West Bengal board students outperformed the rest.

Source: Times of India, 18/03/2016

EDUCATION IS ALWAYS POLITICAL

Galileo was pronounced “vehemently suspect of heresy” by the Church in 1632 and lived the last nine years of his life under house arrest, for his espousal of heliocentrism. Curiously, Copernican heliocentrism had been used by Pope Gregory himself in 1582 to alter his eponymous calendar. This schizophrenic behaviour of the Church can be substantially explained by its assessment that Galileo’s espousal questioned the authority of the Church to decide what was true. This blow at the basis of the then political order had to be crushed—while Copernican calculations as a tool to change the calendar were perfectly acceptable.

Most certainly such heretical ideas had no place in schools and universities; the Church controlled that well. In fact, over the next two centuries, the Protestant and the Catholic churches and their institutions often vied for the claim of being more geocentric than the other. It’s only by the 19th century that geocentrism withered away from the curriculum in schools.

Let’s not fool ourselves that such things are memories of an “unscientific” past. As one example, all world maps that schools use (and Google uses) are wrong, and they feed Eurocentrism. The subtle nudge is in the choice of placing Europe at the centre of the world, but what is egregiously wrong is the relative proportions of the countries and continents. The geographies of “the North”— Europe and North America—are represented ludicrously bigger than they are; the 48 million sq km of “the North” is shown to be bigger than the 94 million square kilometer of “the South”. Open a map and look at these remarkable distortions: in reality, South America is about twice the size of Europe but shown to be equal, Greenland looks bigger than China but is actually one-fourth, and the Nordic countries look bigger than India but are actually one-third.

Even matters of the physical world are learnt and taught in schools often on the basis of political values and choices. These may be very deliberate choices, like the Church on heliocentrism or unthinking espousal as in the case of the Eurocentrism in the maps.

Let’s take another example from economics. Textbooks in economics from the 1960s and ’70s in India would be full of the virtues of central planning and arcane details of the Mahalanobis model, which seems very strange today. Equally strange are today’s economics text books, which are influenced by market fundamentalism and dominated by the idealized rationality-individualism-equilibrium nexus, which exists only in these books; this stuff is as disconnected from reality as was the planning model. What must we know in economics to say that we know economics is a substantially political and not a purely epistemic issue?

The content of education in any society is politically influenced. This political influence operates at both levels: to accept what is “true knowledge” (for instance, the planning model versus market theory) and to choose “worthwhile knowledge” that finds place in the curriculum from the universal set of “knowledge”. I have deliberately taken examples from areas which are not usually referred to when discussing how politics determines the content of education, while in certain subjects and areas, this issue is well-known—say, in the content of history and sociology, in the treatment of matters of gender and caste.

The processes and practices of education are as political as the content. What is the language of the medium of instruction? Who all do we include in education? If we want universal equitable education, how do we make it happen? Do we think “merit” takes precedence over affirmative action? Do the pedagogical approaches adequately factor for the diversity in the class? Every one of these questions, and many more which determine education, are political in nature.

Even more political than the content and processes of education are the aims of education. Education that aims to develop autonomous, critical thinking individuals and to help develop a just and democratic society is sharply political. And as sharply political would be education that aims to develop individuals who are not questioning but conforming to some existing order. In fact, the aims of education shape the processes and content of education, including significantly determining their political tilt.

Views from the extremes, both the left and the right, regarding the recent happenings in some university campuses, have been unsurprising. Ugly, unethical politics anywhere must be condemned. But what has been surprising is a view stated by some which amounts to “there must be no politics in educational institutions”. This view reflects either a very naïve understanding of education or an insidiously political (even if unconscious) choice. And that choice is for education to aim to develop people who do not engage with the most important issues around them, do not question and do not think for themselves. This amounts to deep politics in education of a kind that must be rejected.

We need education that energizes our democracy and builds an India as envisioned in the Constitution by developing the abilities of students to think and contribute as autonomous individuals; this education is certainly political. One way or the other, all education is political.

Anurag Behar is chief executive officer of Azim Premji Foundation and leads sustainability initiatives for Wipro Ltd. He writes every fortnight on issues of ecology and education.

Source: Mintepaper, 17-03-2016

Caste atrocities and political abdication

The murder of a 22-year-old Dalit man at Udumalpet in western Tamil Nadu has brought to the fore the worst aspects of today’s Tamil society: the resurgence of caste pride, a shameless disregard for individual rights when they are in conflict with the hegemonic order, and an anachronistic belief in the notion of caste purity and pollution. That a group of mercenaries could casually surround V. Shankar and his 19-year-old wife Kausalya, and brutally slay one of them and leave the other seriously wounded on the edge of a busy road does not merely indicate a lack of fear of the law. It demonstrates a disquieting confidence that no one would dare challenge or pursue them. Often characterised as ‘honour killings’ because their motivation arises from the idea that a woman marrying outside her community brings dishonour to the family, such murders in India normally involve family members rendering brutal ‘justice’ to the ‘transgressor’ within. In recent years, it appears to work in a different way in Tamil Nadu. In such murders, the victims are often Dalits, for daring to transgress social mores to marry someone deemed to be above their station in life. Thus, E. Ilavarasan, a Dalit youth whose marriage to a Vanniyar woman led to caste riots in November 2012 and whose body was found on a railway track in July 2013, and Gokulraj, another Dalit youth murdered for talking to a Gounder girl last year, were clearly victims of caste atrocities.

In the case of Shankar, too, the emphasis seemed to be mainly on wreaking vengeance against a Dalit man; though the element of punishing the family member too was present, as Ms. Kausalya was also attacked with long knives and remains in hospital. Whether in alleged defence of imaginary family honour or as a strike against Dalit assertion, such murders have become disturbingly frequent. The regrettable part of the entire episode is that major political parties tend to condemn such murders only in general terms, and avoid any mention of the role of dominant castes. Seldom do they confront the arrogance of some castes that enjoy political patronage and operate as enforcers of norms in some regions, especially targeting Dalits. Caste groups have become powerful political lobbies. Caste associations attract young and educated members of the community. Shockingly, Shankar’s murderers drew fulsome praise on social media from committed caste adherents. There is a shallow debate over whether present-day caste consciousness indicates the failure of the Dravidian social reform movement in Tamil Nadu. It is futile to blame social reformers who fought for caste-based reservations when it is the political leadership of recent years that has given credence and credibility to caste icons. Tamil society, which prides itself on its cultural moorings, needs to look inwards. Freedom to choose who to love has been seen to be a distinguishing sign of progressive societies. That it can be denied in this day and age is a disgraceful commentary on our times.

Keywords: honour killings, Dalit youth killing, caste atrocities, political abdication, murder of Dalit youth

Source: The Hindu, 17-03-2016

The Way To Gain Is To Give Selflessly

Jaya Row





The Bhagwad Gita is a scientific manual on self-management. It explains the nature of the world, your personality and the technique of right contact with the world. It insulates you from shocks of life and enables you to enjoy the thrills without pain and suffering.The world is a mix of pairs of opposites; it is constantly changing and is unpredictable. In this scenario to count on a fixed pattern that suits you is like expecting to always win at gambling! Assess the world, your surroundings and the people you interact with regularly . Understand all these elements for what they are and accept them. Everyone is bound by their inherent nature and cannot act apart from inborn traits. Once you come to terms with this you will not expect an angry person to be gentle or a hysterical person to be sane. You will know exactly how to deal with them without getting upset.
Look within. What motivates you and drives you to action? How is it that at times you are serene and tranquil, at most times agitated and disturbed, and at still other times lazy and indolent? What are your strengths and weaknesses?
Are you happy being the way you are or do you want to become a better person?
Arjuna, an outstanding warrior, collapses on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, unable to face the war. Krishna, his dear friend and charioteer, delivers the sermon of the Gita that revives and rehabilitates him. Arjuna then fights the battle and wins it! So will you be able to overcome your problems and emerge victorious.
The first lesson the Gita teaches is to act on the sane counsel of the intellect and not on the whims and fancies of the mind. Use your existing intellect.Strengthen it. Think, reflect, question.The mind tricks you, distracts you and eventually destroys you. It is the intellect that keeps you on course.
Fix a goal beyond your limited, self centred interests. Develop a larger world-view. Rise above myopic concerns. Shift from profiteering to offering your talent for benefit of others.Then prosperity will rain down on you. The way to gain is to give. People who think of themselves and make demands on others are miserable. The few who think of others and serve them are happy . When your thought shifts from u' your desires drop and you `me' to `you' your desires drop and you evolve spiritually .
Move from a strongly entrenched feeling of separateness to that of oneness. The Rig Veda speaks of the whole universe being one family . Today you see enemies within the family! Partners are viewed as opponents, benefactors as malefactors. But the spirit of oneness can turn drudgery to revelry , mediocrity to excellence. Loving people are happy .People with negative emotions feel isolated and despondent. Most importantly , oneness paves the way to Enlightenment.
Shankaracharya defined knowledge as ­ nitya anitya viveka vichara ­ reflection on the distinction between the permanent and impermanent. Everything in the world is passing, ephemeral, transient. The wise one does not invest in the world. He looks for the permanent in and through the impermanent. And you merge with the permanent.
Live life wisely. Do not sell yourself short. Go for infinite happiness ­ your birth right. The world will be at your feet.

68% of milk adulterated, new kit to test in 40 sec

New Delhi TIMES NEWS NETWORK





With over 68% of the milk in India found adulterated in a 2011 Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) study , the government is working towards providing an accurate, portable test kit for the important staple.Science and technology minister Harsh Vardhan told the Lok Sabha that a new scanner had been developed which can detect adulteration in milk in 40 seconds, and pinpoint the adult rant.
Earlier, for every type of adulteration, a separate chemical test was required.Now a single scanner can do the job, he added. The scanner is priced at about Rs 10,000, and each test would cost a mere 5 to 10 paisa.
Most common adulterants found in milk are detergent, caustic soda, glucose, white paint and refined oil, a practice considered “very hazardous“ and which can cause serious ailments. Vardhan said in the near future, even GPS-based technology could be used to track the exact location in the supply chain where the milk was tampered with.
Source: Times of India, 17-03-2016

Source: Mainstream, VOL LIV No 12 New Delhi March 12, 2016

Lord, Why am I Banned from Your Abode? Women’s Entry into Places of Worship

by Ram Puniyani

One is witnessing strange incidents where the women from Muslim and Hindu community are facing similar obstacles. This relates to the issue of entry into places of worship. While the women from the Bhumata Brigade are struggling to get entry into the Shani Shingnapur temple (Ahmednagar, Mahrashtra), the Muslim women are fighting a legal battle to restore their access to the mazar of Haji Ali Dargah in Mumbai. In yet another incident, the women are trying to get the right of worship in the Sabarimala temple. The Hindu women in an act of brave initiative landed up in many buses to the Shani Shingnapur temple, where they were denied entry while the police had to resort to some force to prevent their entry.

In the case of Shani Shingnapur, while men are allowed entry to the Chabutara (raised platform), it is believed that going to the Chabutara will be a bad omen for women as Lord Shani (Saturn) will cast an evil eye. So it is claimed that prohibiting women to enter is a matter of spiritual science. Sanatan Prabhat, the Rightwing daily, says that the movement of women must be prevented to save the Hindu traditions. In response to the agitation led by Trupti Deasai of the Bhumata Brigade, the spiritual Guru Sri Sri Ravishankar of Art of Living tried to mediate between the women’s group and the temple trustees. Interestingly, he advised that neither the women nor the men should be allowed to the Chabutara. The matter is being negotiated; a solution does not seem to be in sight. Also the RSS mouthpiece Organiser opines that while initiating any move to amend the existing regulations, care should be taken to preserve the tradition and prestige of these places.

In the case of the Sabarimala shrine, the argument is that the Lord is a celibate and the women in the menstrual age-group will be distracting him. One recalls that one IAS officer, who happened to be a woman, had visited the shrine for overseeing the arrangements in readiness for the pilgrimage in her official capacity. She was also denied entrance on the ground of her being a woman. In the case of Haji Ali in Mumbai the local women’s group, the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, has filed a writ in the court demanding that the entry of women to the mazar be restored. The women’s groups have cited different clauses of the Constitution where one has equality before the law and that one cannot be discriminated against on the ground of gender. The argument of the Dargah trustees is on the ground of security of women, which, to say the least, is ridiculous. In the case of Sabarimala the earlier argument that the path to the shrine is difficult for women on the ground of security was later clarified by the Devaswom Board, Travancore by stating that the ‘real’ reason for denying entry to women was the celibacy of Lord Ayappa.

Muslim women have a varying degree of access to the mosques, much lesser in the South Asian countries than in countries like Turkey, for example. In Hindu temples the entry is again not uniform; there are different pretexts to prevent their full access to the places of worship. While in many countries the law for equality is very much there, the traditions and controllers of these places have been preventing the women from having full access to the holy deity. The patriarchal control over access to top places of worship is there in varying degrees.

This does not apply to churches in general, where access is not the issue; what is talked there is why women do not have the right to be on the higher levels of priesthood. In Hindu temples, Muslim mosques and shrines the women priests are practically not there; some claims of such positions are more as an exception than as a rule or norm.

In the case of India where equality is guaranteed by law, these laws of equality cannot ensure entry into the places controlled by the conservative trusts. The controllers of insti-tutions of religion generally turn them into exclusive male bastions, though the degree of control and its expression could be of varying magnitude. In the Hindu fold there is an additional factor—that of caste. One understands there is ‘caste in the practice’ of Muslims and Christians also, but so far as the places of worship are concerned, they are accessible to all, irrespective of caste. One recalls the struggles of Babasaheb Ambedkar for temple entry, the Kalaram Temple agitation, before he decided to renounce Hinduism by describing it as Brahminic theology. As such most religions do have the hierarchical structure in-built into the institution of religion.

Talking of South Asia as a whole, the mosques, dargahs and temples have a lot of rigid rules as far as women are concerned. These are the norms which are imposed by tradition. Thus we see a bit of variation in different religions, as far as treating women is concerned. As such it is the differential treatment and this depends on the degree of secularisation of the particular institution and particular country and region. By seculari-sation we mean the extent of erosion of hold of the landlord-clergy combine on the society. No uniform pattern is discernible but at the core there is the understanding which regards women as inferior beings, secondary to men, being regarded as the property of men, so to say.

Earlier it was regarded that their secondary position is purely due to biological functions; with time and with the impact of the women’s movement, it is clear that the gender roles are psychological and social, determined by time and location. In early matriarchal societies women had a predominant role in the family and social affairs. With the rise of the slave society and later the feudal society, women’s subservient role came to be the norm. Again, with Industrial Revolution and the values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity gaining political ground, women started entering into the social space and the social equations started changing towards those of equality. As the degree of secularisation is different, the degree of success of women towards equality is different. In nations which saw industrial revolutions, the path to women’s equality there was paved by the underlining slogan of revolutions or social transformations. Still, the equality of women has not been automatic, there was a path of struggle through which women expressed their aspira-tions, longings and struggled for new equations towards equality.

The movement for gender equality again has highs and lows, ups and downs. Currently one understands that politics in the name of any religion, fundamentalism-communalism, is the politics of the status quo to begin with and then it aims to throw back the society to the earlier feudal values of caste and gender hierarchy. Talking of recent times, the world witnessed this first in the form of the rise of Christian fundamentalism in America in the decade of the 1920s, in the face of the rise of the industrial society with modern education and industrialisation coming to the fore. In the societies which had to undergo the painful experience of Fascism, Nazism, there also the role of women was defined to be in the confines of ‘Kitchen, Church and Children’ by the political ideology, which can be regarded as the close cousin of religious nationalism. With the coming of Islamic fundamentalism again an attempt was made to further subjugate women to lower positions in society. The cover of Islam was used for this social-political agenda. Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan are a few examples of that.

Here in India we saw the rise of majoritarian and minoritarian communalism. Both these again try to push back the women, to restrict their social space, all in the name of religion. With the rise of religious nationalism in India, various issues came up giving a glimpse of the attitude towards women. Many of these are not fully blown-up pictures, but they are rooted in the goal of subjugation of women, in the language of the Sharia or a sophisticated version of the Manu Smriti. In India while the secularisation process, the overthrow of the hold of the landlord-clergy combine, remained half way through, with the assertion of religious nationalism, primarily Hindutva, the striving of women for equality is being countered strongly.

In the ideology of dominating Hindutva, the subordination and secondary position of women is asserted by invoking the noble traditions. In the literature from Gita Press, Gorakhpur, the major publication promoting traditional conservative values amongst Hindus, which is generally the base of Hindutva politics, one can see millions of books being distributed which advise the home-making role, the ideal of sati (women being burnt on the funeral pyre of their husband), the stree dharma (duties of women as ordained by their religion) are propounded, Instructions to women about the dress code and choice of life partner are handed down. One of the major agenda of the divisive lovejihad campaign is to restrain the Hindu girls, to do away with their choice in matters of life and choice of life partner.

Overall the role of religious institutions has been to maintain the social status quo, And the issues related to priesthood in holy places, the entry to these shrines do reflect the same in varying degrees. It seems that despite the obstacles, the women from different religious communities are making their statement loud and clear that their march towards equality cannot be halted by these institutions, and that is the portent of these moves for entry to the abodes of the Lord!

The author, a retired Professor at the IIT-Bombay, is currently associated with the Centre for the Study of Secularism and Society, Mumbai.