What Marrakesh achieved

The proclamation on climate change has just about managed to make sure that the pre-2020 commitments made by the developed world remain on the discussion table.

A fortnight ago, when the delegates to the Marrakesh climate change conference were sitting down to discuss the scope and design elements of the rules for implementing the Paris agreement, news of developments across the Atlantic came in. Although too early to be taken seriously, it was difficult not to notice the gathering clouds on the post-Paris actions. They could have easily dampened the celebratory mood arising from the early ratification of the Paris agreement. However, it must be said to the credit of the governments and non-government players that they stayed the course in Marrakesh. The spirit of Paris was re-affirmed through the Marrakesh Proclamation on Climate and Sustainable Development. The proclamation is, in this sense, a small but determined step after Paris.

This small step was, however, taken after some struggle. There are still four years to go before the Paris agreement kicks in. But the pact is increasingly being seen as a licence to extinguish the pre-2020 commitments. The proclamation’s title reflects this tension. While the concern for climate is immediate, sustainable development is the context for differentiated and climate-just actions in the long term.

While it is easy to hang all the concerns on the peg of future developments in the US, it is useful to recall that there are commitments and pledges made under the Cancun agreements (2010) that are yet to be realised. Doha amendments to the Kyoto Protocol, although older than Paris agreement by three years, are yet to be ratified. The targets of Kyoto Protocol parties are not only low (the European Union’s 20 per cent from the 1990 level against the 40 per cent recommended by the IPCC) in the context of global ambition and historical responsibility, but they also depend on the reduction of emissions in the “land, land use change and forestry sectors” — such reductions are cheap and do not last long. (Interestingly, a school of thought makes similar arguments against the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris agreement because their total impact is not large enough). The US may not be a party to the Kyoto Protocol, but is party to the Cancun Agreements that were reached as early as 2010. The Cancun pledges are, in fact, the precursor of the NDCs under the Paris agreement. All developed countries that are signatories to Cancun had pledged to raise as much as $100 billion every year by 2020 to support climate change actions but, as of now, the Green Climate Fund, the officially constituted international body for climate has received less than $3 billion. Instead, the solutions recommended now emphasise the flow of private investments, to be attracted with fiscal and non-fiscal incentives, and use of risk mitigation financial instruments.

The catch is that the developing country governments are expected to bear the cost of incentives.

It seems improbable that the Paris agreement could be constructed despite such odds. The secret perhaps lies in the fact that the pivot of the Paris agreement is not the global ambition to stablise climate — as it appears to be — but “transparency of actions”, which is a tool for mutual/collective verification and review of actions from a competitive perspective. This has already been achieved and is likely to remain the focus of rule-making under the Paris agreement. Hence, the major threat to the Paris agreement may come not from the intractability of domestic environmental policies in major economies of the West, but from their unwillingness to address pre-2020 actions. The willingness to fulfill the pre-2020 commitments fully and effectively was the central assurance exchanged by all countries when the Durban platform for post-2020 arrangements was set up. The Marrakesh conclusions, hopefully, keep this assurance alive on the table.

The Moroccan presidency had a modest ambition in delivering the Marrakesh Conference of Parties (CoP) as an action-based meeting, and of safely launching the process of facilitative dialogue for 2018. In the past year, it had projected Marrakesh as a place where all players will re-commit or declare new actions. This was implicitly a call to all governments and non-government players to make contributions for climate stabilisation, in addition to those that had already been made by the governments under the Paris agreement. Notably, the Paris agreement has, for the first time, recognised that the basket of international actions could include actions taken by NGOs, civil society, sub-national or constituent units of states, business coalitions, and/or international bodies. In fact, two climate champions appointed at Paris had been working through the year to showcase such actions at Marrakesh. There were two significant developments just before Marrakesh that typified such additional actions that would be promoted outside the UNFCCC process. The Montreal Protocol amendments effected at Kigali (bringing HFCs into the regulatory regime of the Montreal Protocol on Ozone Depleting Substances) and the ICAO resolution on a market-based mechanism to regulate international civil aviation emissions, both agreed to in October this year, are cases in point. While these supplementary efforts may be welcome as long as they follow the agreed principles of cooperative actions for climate, they must not detract from the commitments made before or under the Paris Agreement.

The 2018 facilitative dialogue between parties and stakeholders was the other engaging issue at Marrakesh. This dialogue is often regarded as an euphemism for exploring the ways and possibility of updating and increasing the NDCs. Very often, one hears complaints about the inadequacy of the commitments, particularly of the mitigation variety, made under the Paris agreement. IPCC has already been requested to come up with a special report on the global climate scenarios for achieving a 1.5 degree climate stabilisation goal. This is designed to put additional pressure on countries and persuade them to take more ambitious and early actions for stabilisation of climate in view of the projected gravity of situation. There are many who genuinely believe that all should contribute to this exercise, little realising that the ambition expressed for a post-2020 period is rooted in how finance and technology is delivered now. Dialogue will be meaningful only if it is able to advance the two key concerns that have remained unaddressed so far: How shall the countries having the largest potential of reducing emissions get the necessary finance, and how will the needs of the countries, most vulnerable to adverse impacts of climate change, be met.

It was crucial for the parties gathered at Marrakesh to demonstrate that their commitment to the Paris agreement is real and there is no slippage. It is in no one’s interest to retract from the Paris agreement. While all international agreements work on the principle of cooperation and reciprocity, the Paris agreement needs special attention. For the first time, the private sector and businesses have started genuinely believing in climate change actions as a strategy for their future growth. These actions will be sustained not merely because of global expectations but imperatives of sustainable development. All assurances under the Cancun pledges need to be redeemed well in time. The Marrakesh Proclamation serves the purpose of underlining this assurance, if not redeeming it.

The writer is special secretary in the government of India. Views are personal.

Source: Indian Express, 24-11-16

Fearsome Unknown

JANINA GOMES





Life has a way of challenging us and pushing us to the edge, when our fears could get the better of us and we refuse to move either forward or upward.All the while we feel threatened, alone and fearful. God, like a mother eagle, hovers over us, protecting us on all sides. And then suddenly , the nest is knocked from under our feet and we are left to negotiate the air and the winds alone.When it seems we would have a free fall and dash ourselves to death, suddenly , the protective hand of God -whether through family , friends or compassionate strangers -covers us and we are able to right ourselves again. Repeatedly , we are thrust into the unknown, the uncharted and the uncertain. But just as we develop cold feet and fall from fear and fright, God hovers over us and protects us.
Sometimes our sense of timing could be all wrong. We may have a set of plans and believe we could chart our future. Yes, sometimes, our sense of timing could agree with God's, at other times, not. But like the mother eagle, God is in control.
At times, we believe that we can no longer handle the uncertainty . We cling to the familiar, but the only constant in life is change. Then, like the eagle and the eaglet that learns to fly, we will have to trust in the larger scheme of life and the universe, to believe that we have it in us to meet and overcome all that has to be overcome and that we rest in the palm of God's hand. We may yet flounder, but God's protective hand will bear us up and enable us to walk and to fly .

Nalanda University governing board: Amartya Sen, Sugata Bose out

Founding chancellor and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen is no longer a part of the governing board of the Nalanda University (NU).

President Pranab Mukherjee has approved a reconstitution of the governing board in his capacity as the Visitor of NU, according to a government order.

Professor Arvind Sharma, faculty of religious studies, McGill University (Canada), Prof Lokesh Chandra, president, Indian Council for Cultural Relations and Dr Arvind Panagariya, vice-chairman of the NITI Ayog, are the new faces in the reconstituted board.

Along with Amartya Sen, Harvard professor and Trinamool Congress MP Sugata Bose and UK-based economist and Labour politician Lord Meghnad Desai are out of the board.

“President Pranab Mukherjee, in his capacity as Visitor of NU, is pleased to approve the constitution of the governing board with immediate effect in accordance with clause 7 of the NU Act,” said the November 21 order from the ministry of external affairs.

The move coincides with vice-chancellor (V-C) Gopa Sabharwal’s tenure, which ends on November 24 and the process for her successor is already on.

The governing board has a chancellor, presently George Yeo of Singapore, V-C, representatives of five member countries, including India, China, Australia, Laos and Thailand, secretary (east), ministry of external affairs (MEA), two representatives from the government of Bihar and one representative from the ministry of human resources and development (HRD).

The only member of the mentor group, to have retained his position in the new governing board, as government of India representative, is former Rajya Sabha MP NK Singh. Other countries would name their representatives later.

Sen was with the NU since its inception and was its founding chancellor. He had resigned last year after being reportedly upset over the “delay in extension of his tenure and political interference” despite board’s recommendation for his second term.

NU outgoing V-C Sabharwal said the decision to reconstitute the governing board was surprising.

“It has come midway through the process of appointment of a new V-C, bypassing the chancellor. It was the NU governing board, which was hitherto insisting on fresh constitution of the board. However, it was not done then on the plea that amendments to the NU Act would first need to be carried out. Now, the board has been suddenly reconstituted,” she said.

Singh said though the board had recommended another year’s extension for Sabharwal, it was not found legally tenable following consultation with the attorney general.

Sabharwal had got a year’s extension after completion of the stipulated five-year tenure in 2015.

As per the Nalanda University Act, the senior most dean of NU will take V-C’s charge till a new incumbent is appointed.

The NU search committee had invited applications for the V-C’s post in October. The last date for applying is November 30. The Visitor makes the appointment from the panel of names recommended by the governing board.

Source: Hindustan Times, 24-11-2016

The majoritarian Indian has replaced the argumentative Indian

Change can be looked at in two ways. One can look at it functionally like a piece of plumbing or change can be seen as a mentality, a framework of thought, combining theory and myth, creating certain rituals of action. Like any citizen, I want less violence and poverty, a childhood that does not succumb to Darwinian entry exams. I want better roads. But it is the second kind of change which I find intriguing. I am not too worried about the idea of India but I do want an India of ideas, where Indians think differently. I do not want a change marked by standard human indicators of economic development. I want a society where India thinks differently where that touch of difference adds to the creativity of democracy.

It is one of the ironies of the time that the argumentative Indian has been replaced by the majoritarian Indian. The argumentative Indian was the hero of Indian folklore and democracy. The majoritarian Indian was created out of elections in a society which equated elections to democracy, reducing a way of life to an idiot mechanism. The irony was that India proud of its myth of being a great democracy had to face the fact that democracy can threaten democracy. We had to understand that democracy in its populist variants can account for Brexit and the rise of Trump. Change in a democracy can be full of ironies and ambiguities.

For me change in India has to be anchored around three words, three worlds: Fraternity, diversity, plurality. I want an India where change is not a fetishism of progress as it eliminates alternatives. I want an India that understands that its strength, its creativity, and its sense of playfulness lies in the fact that India is a cosmos of defeated knowledges, a place where the last Victorian and the last tribal can rub shoulders with the last Marxist as each plan a revival of their worlds.

The change I am talking about must not erase people or the storyteller. When a storyteller dies, cost benefit analysis is born. Think of the recent death of a waterfall in Odisha. The tribals in Odisha complained that a myth, a religion, a cosmos had been destroyed. The economist dismissed it as so many cusecs of water. I want an India where the tribal wisdom finds a place in the economic calculus of our time.

Change must be such that it does not eliminate a people or their ideas. Change must not reduce living traditions to museums. I think this is why the Indian national movement wished to fight a guerrilla war against the museum, because memory was not a living tradition but smelt of death and formaldehyde, as AK Coomaraswamy observed. India has to be plural, allow for diversity, sustain 150,000 varieties of rice, a thousand languages and be simultaneously oral, textual and digital.

The change I hope to see is that a majoritarian intolerant India becomes plural, playful and loses the rigidity of official ideas like patriotism, development and nation-state. A syncretic India where religions talk to each other. For example, think of a Kashmir where Sufism provides voice against fundamentalism; or a Manipur which is not rigid about dissent, where as Irom Sharmila put it love and democracy sustain each other. My favourite example is the Indian National Movement, which was hospitable to the British, which sought to liberate India by rescuing it from the British and their repressive modernity. Nationalism was a theory of change where its advocates realised that nationalism was a rainbow of cultures while the nation-state was an oppressive entity which emasculated the imagination, where the official and the bureaucratic destroyed the diversity of culture.

India must have a unity which allows for the collage, the quilt patch, the oxymoron, where change adds to the infinity of diversity. Not a development that creates more refugees than the wars we have fought. Or an innovation which makes crafts obsolescent. Or an industry that creates a junkyard of wasted people. I want an India which is a commons between the tribal, peasant, craft and industrial, where time is multiple not linear. An idea where change increases the intensity and playfulness of conversation. An India where the dialogue of medical systems and a dialogue of religions embraces a dialogue of civilisations. An India that is simultaneously Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jain, Christian in its diversity, where crafts survive and where languages multiply. A democracy of livelihoods and lifestyles that anchors sustainability, plurality and justice.

Change must be a process, not a product, an India where change produces a different attitude to change itself, where Hind Swaraj and Communist Manifesto converse with each other, where the defeated West finds a home, where translation and hospitality of cultures defines a society, where plurality marks the cosmos, the syllabus, the Constitution and the commons. The change we need is a change in the idea of change itself.

Shiv Visvanathan is professor, Jindal Global Law School and director, Centre for the Study of Knowledge Systems, OP Jindal Global University

Source: Hindustan Times, 23-11-2016

The decline of India’s universities is an attack on the young and nation

India has been internationally known for its great learning centres but many of the State universities face serious decline today, disappointing students and teachers. Many are performing poorly and do not have adequate opportunities to do research . Others that are better in research and performance face delegitimisation for being ‘different’. Universities generate ideas, inform citizens and form the basis of a democracy. They need urgent and appropriate attention.

All Indian governments — past and present — claim human resources and knowledge are precious assets. But when it comes to investing in these universities, they are lacking.

One problem is that successive governments use public universities for political and personal patronage. The political class has always tried to usurp university positions ‘for their own,’ starting from the top positions. The ‘open position’ is often seen as a placement opportunity for favoured clients of politicians, political parties and powerful individuals. Good universities have tried to resist this, but have not always succeeded. This has often led to a choice of candidate who has a patron as opposed to the one who has better teaching abilities. The earlier power elite did this, the current one believes that their turn for this ‘fix’ has finally arrived. So it goes on.

Why blame the politicians only? Public universities are often held hostage by the bureaucracy in the form of the University Grants Commission (UGC) and other bodies. Many committees have been appointed to look into courses, appointment guidelines, scholarship exams, qualification criteria, etc. The Committee to Advise on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education (Yashpal Committee) made some good suggestions such as giving more autonomy to teachers and students, increasing funding, bringing state and central universities on a par with creative measures, bringing liberal arts into technology institutes and assisting more research in universities. It also recommended that the UGC be replaced by a national higher education authority, since it was felt that it was beyond reform.

Similarly, the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) suggested an independent regulatory authority for higher education which would ensure the autonomy and freedom for knowledge creation and dissemination and avoid conflict of interest . All the good, the controversial and the valid suggestions of these various committees have been shelved. Now another education committee has been set up.

The Supreme Court set up the controversial Lyngdoh Commission to curb student activism and elections in campuses. The belief that the rot in universities comes from student politics is mistaken. Student activism is part of the national political activism as long as it is balanced with academics. Leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, AB Vajpayee, Sitaram Yechury and Arun Jaitley — to name a few — were honed by student activism. So to put unreasonable curbs like being elected only once appear rather draconian.

Now the most major assault on universities comes from a set of ideas — termed neo-liberal — that propose: Cuts in social and public spending on education; outsourcing research to non-teaching research institutes and think tanks while the universities’ focus is put on teaching. Even though teaching barely counts for purposes of promotion or accreditation, the emphasis is on skills and vocations in tandem with downgrading social sciences; rejecting critical thinking and dissent, and making an attempt to reverse autonomy; emphasising technology without looking at the philosophy of science; encouraging expensive private and foreign universities; and so on.

Indian universities face an attempt at homogenisation that includes injecting ‘neo-nationalism’ into syllabi, as if the former was anti-national. The truth is that most of the university syllabi has been reviewed by generations of scholars though some may need upgrading. There is also a prevailing false consciousness that assumes social sciences is subversive and thus we hear arguments like: “Make JNU into IIT”. Funding support for technology and not science, skills and management courses is a ploy to depoliticise, control critical thinking and dissent. If this view prevails it will undo academia as a whole.

Great thinkers and teachers from Socrates to Einstein have stood for autonomous universities. Nobel laureate JM Coetzee and Henry Giroux argued that a university “is nothing if it is not a public trust and social good”. And if a university loses its critical insights, modes of questioning, struggles for social, economic and other justices, it loses its reality.

Indian universities can be revived if development is on our agenda. For this universities should be made accountable to the public. This accountability has to start from vice-chancellors, directors, principals of colleges and education bureaucrats to each layer of the academic system. Universities must have autonomy with social responsibility. They must expand to include the marginalised in terms of gender, caste and communities. They need funding and support. The VCs and principals should be agents of the university/college and not of the political regime.

There should be no externally dictated agendas on university functioning. Higher education needs to be expanded, the Knowledge Commission had recommended a 100 new universities. Let us start with at least 20. The private universities must come under public scrutiny with regard to standards.

Old reports on education should be looked at and the best suggestions should form a consensus by the political class and public as a whole and be implemented. This is the only way to save universities and save democracy.

The decline of universities is an attack on the young people and the nation. There is a need to revitalise Indian universities. Reconstructing the university to suit a particular brand of politics is a rejection of the centuries-old accumulated wisdom and plural heritages. This will not be forgiven. The rethinking on universities must be a collective responsibility.

Anuradha Chenoy is professor at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Source: Hindustan Times, 23-11-2016

Women powering a clean future

There is a clear link between energy access and women’s economic empowerment and well-being

The lack of access to clean energy has a direct link to violence against women

India ratified the Paris Agreement last month on Gandhi Jayanti—the birth anniversary of M.K. Gandhi, one of the strongest proponents of living in harmony with nature and the environment. India committed to generating at least 40% of its electricity from non-fossil sources by 2030. Currently India accounts for 4.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Its efforts are key to achieving the goal of halting the effects of climate change by restricting the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

At the 22nd Conference of Parties (COP22) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Marrakech, Morocco, delegates from 200 nations declared that fighting climate change was “an urgent duty”. India’s increasing focus on expanding the use of clean energy is therefore critical. It is also a step towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 7, which emphasizes universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy and increasing the share of renewables in the global energy mix.

In addition to the established avenues towards a cleaner future, it is becoming increasingly evident that women play an important role as agents of change in the transition to cleaner, affordable and sustainable energy. There is a clear link between energy access and women’s economic empowerment and well-being.

In India, for example, women still spend up to 5 hours a day collecting fuel for cooking, as part of their unpaid, unrecognized and unaccounted care work—work that restricts the opportunity for education, paid employment and economic advancement. Further, the use of biomass fuel causes severe and long-term health problems such as respiratory diseases. The World Health Organization reports that in India 500,000 deaths occur every year due to unclean cooking fuels.

The lack of access to clean and affordable energy also has a direct link to violence against women. Women often venture out to collect firewood in remote, isolated and difficult geographic terrains, and are therefore more vulnerable to violence. In addition, reliance on wood disrupts natural resilience buffers and produces vulnerabilities and even accelerates climate change.

Improving energy access would reduce the drudgery of women’s unpaid and care work, enable them to access education and employment options and enhance their livelihoods. Clean cooking fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), biogas and other options such as solar energy could help eliminate the hazards of indoor air pollution in the nearly 140 million Indian households that rely on open fires and biomass for cooking.

Access to energy for women also results in positive gains for the ecosystem. For example, the electrification of rural communities can result in a 9 percentage points increase in female employment, and a staggering 23% increase in the probability of rural women working outside the home. According to a recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute, empowering women to participate in India’s economy on an equal basis with men would add $3 trillion to the nation’s economy by 2025.

Enabling women’s access to energy also results in improvements to their social conditions. Women invest 90% of their income back into their families and their welfare—which has a positive knock-on effect, with lasting effects for generations to come. Investments in women’s access to energy are therefore critical. The government’s Ujjwala scheme, which provides LPG connections at reduced rates to women from Below Poverty Line households, is a useful example. The scheme will be bolstered by public investment in clean energy, incentives such as subsidies and taxes, and communities’ access to finance, awareness and education. Earlier this month, at a side event at COP22, UN Women unveiled its partnership with the ministry of new and renewable energy, government of India, and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to address barriers holding up women entrepreneurs, enable women’s participation and leadership in energy policies, and the productive use of sustainable energy. Launched last year, together with the ministry and UNEP, at COP21 in Paris, the new flagship programme on “Women’s Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Energy” is supported by the UK’s department for international development, and will be implemented in four states—Madhya Pradesh, Nagaland, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh—in 2017. It will have an impact on 100,000 disadvantaged women, by providing better access to sustainable energy.

The flagship programme, which yokes together women’s economic empowerment and sustainable energy for all, is seen as a key means of implementation of the gender equality and women’s empowerment compact.

The partnership is an example of a concrete commitment to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goal 5 on gender equality and women’s empowerment and Goal 7 on energy access.

As we call on governments across the world to “Step It Up” for gender equality, this initiative by the Union government will set a standard for many other countries, and accelerate the momentum towards a more equal world, a Planet 50-50, by the year 2030. Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com

Source: Mintepaper, 23-11-2016

Richest 1% Indians own 58.4% of wealth

The richest 1% of Indians now own 58.4% of the country’s wealth, according to the latest data on global wealth from Credit Suisse Group AG, the financial services company based in Zurich. Credit Suisse has published the report every year since 2010.

The share of the top 1% is up from 53% last year. In the last two years, the share of the top 1% has increased at a cracking pace, from 49% in 2014 to 58.4% in 2016. The accompanying Chart 1 has the details.

Does that mean the trend of the very rich getting richer is because of the Modi government? Not really—as the chart shows, the share of the top 1% in the country’s total wealth improved from 40.3% in 2010 to 49% in 2014. But the numbers do suggest that the very rich are expanding their share at a faster clip now. The richest 10% of Indians haven’t done too shabbily either, increasing their share of the pie from 68.8% in 2010 to 80.7% by 2016. In sharp contrast, the bottom half of the Indian people own a mere 2.1% of the country’s wealth.

Data from Credit Suisse shows that India’s richest do well for themselves whichever government is in power. In 2000, for instance, the share of the richest 1% was a comparatively low 36.8% of the country’s wealth. In the last 16 years, they have increased their share from a bit more than a third to almost three-fifths of total wealth.

Very clearly, most of the gains from the country’s high rate of economic growth have gone to them.

How does India compare with other countries? Well, the Credit Suisse numbers confirm what we see on a daily basis— that India is one of the most unequal societies. Consider this: while the top 1% in India own 58.4% of the country’s wealth, the top 1% in China own 43.8%, in Indonesia they own 49.3%, in Brazil 47.9%, in South Africa 41.9%. Chart 2 has the details. But perhaps our richest need to try harder—the top 1% in kleptocratic Russia own 74.5% of the nation’s wealth.

Source: Mintepaper, 23-11-2016