Take corrective steps on toilet data, states told





A serious gap between the actual number of toilets constructed and the number on the sanitation ministry's website in states such as Gujarat, Karnataka, Jharkhand and Rajasthan has been revealed by a field survey report of select districts commissioned by the rural development ministry .National level monitors (NLMs) reported that in Arunachal and Manipur, the gap between official data and the monitors is over 41%. The situation is also worrisome in Jharkhand, Gujarat, Karnataka and Rajasthan with a mismatch of 19%, 23%, 27% and 28% respectively . Barring Andhra, J&K, MP, Meghalaya, Mizo ram and Nagaland where a higher number of la where a higher number of latrines have been constructed, it is the reverse in other states. Only in Sikkim, which is the first state to become open defecation free (ODF), both the NLMs report and the Swachh Bharat mission-ministry of sanitation data match. The findings provide planners a reason to seek course corrections, revamp programme design and improve follow up on the Modi government's ambitious Swachh Bharat mission.
Rural development ministry empanels retired civil and defence service officers and reputed non-government institutions with experience in rural development programmes as individual and institutional National level monitors (NLMs). The NLMs covered 24.22 lakh households randomly across select districts in each state and they found 51.46% of them having individual latrines.
Some of the findings of this report are quite surprising. For example, it mentions that Khagaria district in Bihar has the highest percentage of household toilets at 98% and Lakhisarai only 2%. Khagaria is one of the most backward districts in the state.
The report also mentions that 48% of the households surveyed by them are not using latrines despite having one. This strongly contradicts National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) data that shows nearly 96%of the population in villages and nearly 99% in urban areas who have access to sanitary toilets do use them.
Meanwhile, taking note of the difference between the MIS data and NLMs report, the sanitation ministry has written to two dozen states to go through the NLMs report and “take corrective measures“.
On the status of solid and liquid management in rural areas, the NLMs report finds that such a system is non-existent in more than 76% of the villages surveyed by them.

Source: Times of India, 19-08-2016

Dear Reader

Greetings

Kindly click on the following link to  access Global Sustainable Development  Report 2016.

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/2328Global%20Sustainable%20development%20report%202016%20(final).pdf


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HOW TO IMPROVE EDUCATION

There

is hardly a country in the world that is not attempting to improve its school education. Countries like Canada and Finland, which already have excellent school systems, are still trying to improve. These countries have confidence in their own approach and remain committed to those fundamentals. Like top-notch sportspeople, they are only refining nuances, many of which most other countries have not even begun appreciating.

Then there are countries like Estonia and Korea which have much improved systems, but they want to improve more, since in their assessment the situation is not fully satisfactory. These countries are sweating the details, and are also tweaking some of the fundamentals.

And then there is the large majority of countries which are dissatisfied with the state of their school systems. They think that they need fundamental and big changes. This list is large and has a wide range, from countries as developed as the US, UK and Sweden to developing countries such as India, China and Malaysia— and also the most disadvantaged countries, for example, in sub-Saharan Africa.

To be sure, this is a very rough categorization. It also doesn’t reflect many important dimensions of this issue, like the reasons for dissatisfaction, including high dropout rates, poor learning levels, overburdened children, a sense of getting “left behind” in the global school education “race”, etc.

As can be expected, there is such enormous complexity in the efforts to improve school education systems that each country and society must be understood in itself. Any efforts to draw out commonalities is fraught with risks of oversimplification and over-abstraction.

One of the very few things which are common across these efforts, and would attract neither of the two charges that I have referred to, is the importance of the teacher in school education and its improvement. The teacher is so central to education that this is not surprising. To deal with this centrality of the teacher, four broad approaches have been adopted.

The central idea of the first approach is that teachers must be incentivized to do a better job, which will then lead to improvements. This includes negative and positive incentives: for example, punishment for lack of improvement in learning levels of children or better pay for clear improvements. The hardwired “teacher accountability” versions of this approach (such as “No Child Left Behind” in the US) have only succeeded in causing deep damage to school education. Other variations, such as the attempt to incentivize teachers through market-based competition fostered by privatization have proven ineffective in improving learning levels in school systems, and have worsened inequity.

The second approach has been to try and attract “better” people to become teachers. The issues that can be worked on to influence this matter—for example, reasonable compensation, good recruitment practices, conditions to support professional satisfaction—are important. However, the relative attractiveness of any profession is determined by a complex interplay of economic, sociocultural, geographic and historical factors, in addition to the characteristics of the profession. And given that the number of teachers is a significant proportion of the overall population in employment in any country, this matter is very hard to influence at a systemic level.

The third approach is to carry out better teacher preparation. Since models of teacher preparation, including the curriculum and institutional design, are easily comparable, weaknesses (such as with the Indian Bachelor of Education system) are easily identifiable. Fixing all this, however, is another matter. It is about investing significantly more in teacher education and battling vested interests. This calls for political will. But there is no substitute to good teacher preparation; unless teachers are well prepared, their capacity to perform their roles is limited.

The fourth approach is about developing the capacity of teachers currently serving in the system. It’s quite clear that unless this is done, education systems won’t improve for decades, even if other things are somehow done perfectly. Professional development of such a large and distributed workforce, involved in roles that are inherently creative and requiring human empathy, is very complex. But it can be done if attempted on the basis of sound principles and with an intent to empower.

The incentives approach fails because, among other reasons, of the social-human nature of education, which demands the teacher to be creative, highexpertise, empathetic and ethical. This is almost the classical prototype of a role which can only be played effectively when someone has high capacity and is internally driven. While external conditions and incentives can certainly demotivate and derail, they can’t motivate. Far more effective than any such crude notion of incentives would be better organization of schools and the system, including elimination of corruption and political interference.

On attracting “better” people to teaching, we would do well to remember John Dewey’s wise and pithy comment: “Education is, and forever will be, in the hands of ordinary men and women.” To improve education we have to invest in teacher education and professional development of teachers. There are no shortcuts for improving education.

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, 18-08-2016

Uniting the divided world order

Reviving multilateralism will require structural changes to cope with regional powers, an empowered civil society, and multinational corporations

Multilateralism is fraying at the edges. While global problems, requiring effective global coordination, abound, multilateral cooperation has been gridlocked recently. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was driven to irrelevance by the collapse of the Doha trade round in 2008. The last successful global trade talks were held in Uruguay, almost 23 years ago. While multilateral relevance in trade talks seems questionable, the world has forged ahead with a cluster of regional and bilateral trade agreements such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Isolationist populism has thrived — when Donald Trump speaks about a 45 per cent tariff on foreign goods, he is perceived to represent blue-collar workers. Immigration worries cloud the horizon. Even geopolitical competition is gradually eschewing multilateral institutions. China’s rejection of the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s decision in the South China Sea case, despite signing up to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, along with Russia’s absorption of Crimea, shows changes in the global order. The march of liberal democracy and free trade, in tandem, in lockstep with global institutions, has seemingly stopped.

Towards regionalism

This shift towards greater regionalism is not new; globalisation has broken down before. The British Free Trade system, established by 1860 (post repealing Corn Laws in 1846), replaced the protectionist state of the late 18th-19th centuries with cheap imports of food and raw materials for industry. This saw Britain’s agricultural and industrial sectors being subjected to intense competition while subsidies were done away with, stimulating a service economy and promoting British liberalism. With protectionism rising in Europe, free traders instead sought the imposition of “free trade” in the colonies and India.

The First World War combined with the rise of the U.S. and Germany as manufacturing powers soon reversed this order. World trade was split into imperial trading blocs. This liberal retreat was soon characterised as the victory of fascism and communism amidst the ruins of social democracy.

Declining openness

Multilateralism’s rise was the product of unique post-war factors such as American hegemony combined with a post-war consensus on the benefits of democracy. Its decline remains structural. Multilaterals have continued to remain self-servingly rigid, their memberships with associated power hierarchies inflexible — for instance, India’s struggle to gain its rightful place at the UN Security Council. Such institutions have also increasingly become prone to conflict instead of consensus, with gaming of system through votes and agenda dilution. The rise of rival institutions — the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in response to the World Bank, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in response to NATO and the G-7 — have all hogged aid resources while standing as tombstones to an eschewed past. Meanwhile, developed societies have changed, embracing individualism over social democracy — the trend towards atomisation continues apace.

Something similar to pre-war liberal retreat is afoot now. The European welfare state, once a model of social constitutionalism, is fraying at the edges, unable to cope with an influx of immigrants, refugees, and rise in inequality. Globalisation, once sold as offering promising service economies to the citizens of the West, has stalled in lieu of a hollowed-out manufacturing sector. Transatlantic multilateral institutions have failed to manage global challenges such as global warming and financial instability. Global powers are no longer a cosy club. The West has had its energy sapped by the European crisis, the morass in West Asia, and domestic political gridlock.

Subsequently, faith in “single undertakings” associated with multilateral institutions has dropped, with bilateral diversification being considered as offering better deals through regional economies, that offer broad access to deep market, while balancing free trade with social goals. Multilateralisation is increasingly perceived to be a straightjacket, in cahoots with great powers and industrial lobbies. Consider agriculture. The past half century has seen a rise in agricultural subsidies in developed countries, with trade negotiations seeing countries operate in a mercantilist model, loath to give up subsidies that foster their farmers. Developing countries, with significant agricultural surplus produced at low prices, find market entry barred on various grounds. Instead, preferential trade agreements have developed a momentum of their own.

What history teaches

In the long view of history, multilateralism remains surprisingly rare. The Peace of Westphalia sought to end the Thirty Years’ War in the Holy Roman Empire. The Westphalian treaties established the principle of ensuring peace through a democratic congress, while establishing a new political order in Europe based on national sovereignty. The end of the Napoleonic wars in Europe saw the establishment of the Concert of Europe, with the great powers redrawing European borders peacefully at the Congress of Vienna. The First World War destroyed this European Concert — its replacement was the farcical League of Nations. The post-World War II world saw the creation of a new world order, sustained by a cornucopia of multilateral and supranational institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This post-war liberal order was the product of an institutional response to social conflicts stemming from the working class and its interaction with raw capitalism. As with the 1900s, this liberal order is seemingly in the process of being shrugged off. Reviving multilateralism with new players will require structural changes in the world order, which will have to cope with a diverse set of regional powers in addition to an empowered civil society, multinational corporations, and transnational flows by HNIs. The trade-off between deepening globalisation and a country’s sovereignty and democracy will have to be rethought, all while managing the complex problems left over from yesteryear. Great power rivalry needs a new mechanism to manage conflict. The decline of multilateralism leaves uncertainty in its wake. The dividing world order will take decades to settle.

Feroze Varun Gandhi is a Member of Parliament, representing the Sultanpur constituency for the BJP.

Keywords: Multilateralism

Source: The Hindu, 18-08-2016

Tolerance And Patience Vital To Freedom

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan





In my village in Uttar Pradesh, at an early age, i witnessed an incident so upsetting that even today i have a vivid memory of it. There was a mango tree, which was laden with fruit. One day i saw a boy throwing stones at the tree till mangoes rained down on him.What impressed me was that while the boy was giving the mango tree stones, the tree was giving him fruit in return.I did not react to this incident, but learnt a positive lesson from it. I was in the school of nature, which was teaching me this: `If someone throws stones at you, even then you should give him fruits in return.' This would epitomise the highest of values in life. Moreover, this is the greatest way to further one's intellectual and spiritual development.
In the present world, someone or the other is bound to `throw stones' at you. If you react, you will get nothing but anger in return. But if you curb any reaction on your part, you will have demonstrated certain great things ­ the spirit of tolerance, the spirit of forgiveness and the capacity to maintain your positivity even in negative situations.
Later on in life, i discovered that in this world of problems, this is the only way to maintain one's spirituality . This is the only way of living by which you can satisfactorily develop your personality .
This was the first lesson of my life. This lesson told me what spiritual culture was, how one could maintain one's mental balance sufficiently to develop a spiritual personality . In my childhood, i understood this lesson unconsciously , but in my later life, this lesson became rooted in my conscious mind. Now it has become second nature to me. Having a nature like this has proved invaluable.
I am an even-tempered person who is not easily provoked or allows his thinking to become negative. Having such a personality is my greatest asset, and perhaps the credit goes to the village boy who made me learn this lesson through a shocking experience.
We all love freedom. Every one wants to live with total freedom. But this freedom culture creates a serious problem. That is, when i exercise my freedom, say , by swinging my arms, it is very likely that i will hit another person's nose. The freedom of one person can be a problem for another. Such a situation is an integral part of our lives. No one has the power to eliminate this problem.
When we react to a negative experience and start fighting with another, we are not merely fighting with a person, but are rather infringing on his freedom, which is part of nature and not part of that person. Because we cannot abolish freedom, the result will be that we will be fighting all the time.Thus, we will live in frustration and negativity , and that being so, we will lose our greatest assets ­ spirituality and positive thinking.
To save our own freedom, we have to tolerate the freedom of others. And to save our own spirituality , we have to overlook the misuse of freedom by others so long as it is within limits. We have to ensure that our own personality development will proceed along the right lines.
The wise way of living in this world is the way of patience. It is the realistic approach to life. Sometimes, we must simply accept things as they are.

53,700 vehicles registered across country every day

Dipak Dash

New Delhi:





Worried Experts Press For Alternative Transport System

The decrepit state of public transport in the country is driving up sales of private vehicles at an alarming rate. Private vehicle sales are believed to be largely responsible for the spurt in registration of vehicles which touched an all-time high of 1.96 crore in 2015 --that's almost 53,720 vehicles hitting the streets every day.While the annual registration of vehicles was less than 10 lakh till 1993, registrations continued to grow steadily after that with 2010 seeing a quantum leap. In 2014, the total registrations stood at 1.94 crore.
According to vehicle registration details, UP saw the highest number of registrations of 24.38 lakh vehicles in 2015. Maharashtra was se cond highest at 19.91 crore registrations followed by 15.15 lakh in Karnataka. Delhi re gistered 6.27 lakh vehicles.
Sources said though the number of new registration includes re-registration of vehicles, their number is very less. “But we must also keep in mind that over 75% of vehicles are two-wheelers. This segment is growing fast as price of two-wheelers is within common man's reach and the transport cost per kilometre is less than what is charged by buses,“ said a transport ministry official said.
Urban transport expert N Ranganathan said the situation is expected to get worse as the country's vehicle population is likely to touch at least 35 crore from the present 18.6 crore in the next 20-30 years.He said a 7% growth in GDP usually results in a 10% increase in demand of transport.“If we don't provide visible and alternate mode of trans port, people will buy more personal vehicles,“ he said.
He said the problem is gigantic and most decisionmakers don't seem to be adequately exercised by it. “Now Delhi has about 8% of country's vehicles, which is nearly 80 lakh. You can well imagine the chaos that will prevail on the roads when this number increases two-fold,“ he said.
Other experts also said that the solution lies in improving the availability of buses. They pointed out it's easy to get loan for cars and two-wheelers than for buying a bus. While a private vehicle owner needs to pay the road tax for 15 years, bus owners need to pay annual taxes per seat. So, there is little encouragement or incentive for people to become entrepreneurs in the public transport sector.

Source: Times of India, 18-08-2016

Economic and Political Weekly: Table of Contents

Vol. 51, Issue No. 33, 13 Aug, 2016

Editorials

Sharmila's Message

Drone Missile Assassination Inc

Comment

Moderating the Hype

50 Years of EPW

50 Years of EPW: Dealing with the ‘War of the Future’

H T Parekh Finance Column

Brexit and Other Harbingers of a Return to the Dangers of the 1930s

Avinash Persaud

Commentary

Kashmir: When Ignorance Begets Tragedy and Farce

Gautam Navlakha

Subramaniam vs Subramanian

Saurabh Chandra

1966, 1917, and 1818

Bernard D'Mello

Karnataka's Changing Fiscal Landscape

Pranay Kotasthane, Varun K Ramachandra

Marriage Dissolution in India

Suraj Jacob, Sreeparna Chattopadhyay

Ambedkar Bhavan Controversy

Anand Teltumbde

Brexit Effect

Britain's Global Chickens Coming Home to Roost?

Radha D'Souza

Freedom of Movement Restricted

Kaustav Bhattacharyya

Spoils of Brexit for India

Abhijit Sarkar

Can Income Transfers Help Explain Brexit?

Rahul Menon

Fall of Market Democracy in Europe

Shamba Dey

Loser's Poker

Sumit K Majumdar

The Big Exit and Its Global Bricolage

Sachin Nikarge

Europe after Britain's Departure

Bharat Wariavwalla

Book Reviews

Songs at the Confluence

Shraddha Kumbhojkar

'Meeting the Unmet'

Charumita Vasudev

Insight

How Zakir Naik Appropriated Liberalism’s Flaws—and Won

Shireen Azam

Special Articles

Living Together Separately

Shashi Bhushan Singh

Child Malnutrition in Rajasthan

Pavitra Mohan, Kumaril Agarwal, Priyanka Jain

Notes

Multiplier Effect of Self-help Groups

Disha Bhanot, Varadraj Bapat

Discussion

California Textbooks Issue

Vamsee Juluri

Debate or Debasement?

Chinnaiah Jangam

Current Statistics

Current Statistics

Postscript

Picture Postcard Idyll

Sreya Dutt

Lingo Bingo

Avner Pariat

Last Lines

Appointments/Programmes/Announcements

Appointments/Programmes/Announcements

Letters

Intellectual Analysis of Religion

Dilip Kumar P J

Contesting Hindutva

Paresh Malakar, Sumanta Banerjee

Prejudiced Hangover

C S Dwarakanath, T N Chandrakanth, B Gopal, A S Prabhakar, Arun Joladkudligi, Harshakumar Kugwe, Krishnaraj, Kaveri Kodagu,Satya S, Lohitaksha and Sridhara Aghalaya

Why This Harassment?

Amiya Bagchi

Web Exclusives

The Missing Periyar and the Curious Tamil Nationalism of Kabali

Karthick Ram Manoharan