Message from Ms Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO on the occasion of the celebration of World Wildlife Day 2017 under the theme "Listen to the young voices"
3 March 2017

The stakes are higher every day.
Crimes against wildlife have been increasing over the past years, fuelled by conflicts and the trafficking of wildlife and wildlife products. The impact is devastating on the populations of both iconic and lesser-known species. Despite a range of decisions and actions, UNESCO Biosphere Reserves and Natural World Heritage sites have not been safe from these crimes.
This calls for a new commitment by everyone to prevent these crimes and promote justice. Young women and men have a special role to play here, as change-makers today and future custodians. We must listen to them and nurture their engagement, to craft new forms of action to conserve and protect wildlife on the basis of solidarity.
This is the meaning of the 2017 World Wildlife Day, under the theme of “Listen to Young Voices.” We must support young people in connecting the ‘local’ and the ‘global’ for more effective wildlife conservation. This has never been so important at a time when Governments are working all-out to take forward the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Climate Agreement, to build a world that is more resilient, inclusive and sustainable and to forge new ties of harmony between development and the planet.
For this, we need young voices. We need young people to speak out, to join hands and to collaborate in shaping new paths to sustainable development in ways that conserve wildlife and protect the shared wealth of biodiversity. This is UNESCO’s message today.

Irina Bokova

DG/ME/ID/2017/11 – Original: English

Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy

Table of Contents

: Current Issue

Volume 5, Issue 1, April 2016

Editorial

Gender Relations and the Changing Agrarian Political Economies in the South First Published January 16, 2017; pp. vii–xii |  |  |

Articles

Gender, Land Tenure and Agrarian Production Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa Dzodzi  Tsikata First Published November 15, 2016; pp. 1–19

Adivasi Women, Agrarian Change and Forms of Labour in Neo-liberal India Archana Prasad First Published November 29, 2016; pp. 20–49

Social Reproduction and the Agrarian Question of Women’s Labour in India Sirisha C. Naidu, Lyn Ossome First Published November 21, 2016; pp. 50–76

Farm to Factory Gendered Employment: The Case of Blue Skies Outgrower Scheme in Ghana Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey, Joseph Awetori Yaro, Joseph Kofi Teye First Published January 3, 2017; pp. 77–97

Women’s Agential Power in the Political Economy of Agricultural Land Govind Kelkar, Santosh Kumar Jha First Published November 15, 2016; pp. 98–122

Book Reviews

Book Review: Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasongo (Ed.) (2016), Land Rreforms and Natural Resource Conflicts in Africa: New Development Paradigms in the Era of Global Liberalization Walter Chambati First Published January 16, 2017; pp. 123–125

Book Review: Ndèye Sokhna Guèye (Ed.) (2015), Mouvements sociaux des femmes au Sénégal Rama Salla Dieng First Published November 25, 2016; pp. 126–128 Book Review: Lorenzo Cotula (2013), The Great African Land Grab? Agricultural Investments and the Global Food System Alexandre Cesar Cunha Leite, Maria Eduarda de Andrade e Sousa First Published January 16, 2017; pp. 128–130

Amartya Sen errs on Modi

Criticism of the Modi government while sparing erstwhile Congress-ruled governments does little for Sen’s stature

Amartya Sen is back in town. As usual, when he visits, a new book follows. In this case, Prof. Sen is here to promote an expanded version of his 1970 book, Collective Choices and Social Welfare. Sen, 83, a former Master of Trinity College, Cambridge University, now teaches at Harvard. In recent years he has been involved in a bitter war of words with the Narendra Modi government over his role as former Chancellor of Nalanda University. Sen makes no secret of his distaste for Prime Minister Modi’s style of governance. Under the BJP-led NDA, Sen says dissent has been stifled, autonomy of universities compromised, and institutions of governance subverted.

Some of this may well be true. But Sen misses the bigger picture. Universities in India have always been subjected to governmental interference. When the Congress-led UPA government was in office between 2004 and 2014, it passed the Right to Education (RTE) legislation that has not helped modernise the Indian educational system. Its implementation has been severely criticised by educationists.

Sen rarely critiques this failure or the appalling state of government-run primary schools where the educational foundation among the rural poor is laid. Who is responsible for the abysmal state of our schools? The three-year-old Modi government or 55 years of Congress governments under Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh? Sen’s trenchant criticism rarely extends to them, opening him up to the charge of intellectual flexibility. It is important to criticise the Modi government – on my part I have done so in several columns across a broad spectrum of issues. But visceral one-sided criticism traduces the critic, not the target of the criticism. A man of Sen’s acuity should know that.

Dissent is the life-blood of democracy. Sen is saying little original when he emphasises this, as he frequently does. But he errs grievously when he calls the Indian government a “minority government” as he did in one of his interviews last week. This is what Sen said: “Anti-national is a peculiar term to come from a minority government. It shows that there is a level of arrogance there. A 31 per cent vote share certainly does not allow you to label the remaining 69 per cent to be anti-national.” Sen’s comment represents a misstatement of facts. Every government in India since Independence has been, by Sen’s own definition, a “minority government”.

Even in India’s first general election in 1952, the near-monopolistic Congress led by Jawaharlal Nehru won a “minority” 45 per cent national vote share. In 1957 it won 47.7 per cent vote share. In the 1962 Lok Sabha elections, the Nehru-led Congress won 44.7 per cent. In her “landslide” 1971 Lok Sabha win, Indira Gandhi captured 43.6 per cent national voteshare. As Indian politics became more fractured in the 1990s, voteshares declined. Narasimha Rao won 35.9 per cent in 1991. Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi accounted for 26.5 per cent national voteshare in 2004 and 28.5 per cent in 2009. None of these governments were branded “minority governments” by Sen. Such selectivity does him no credit.

At nearly 40 per cent, the NDA’s voteshare in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections came close to Nehru’s victories (when the Congress had little opposition) and is higher than Indira’s 1971 win which Sen would be mortified to categorise as having led to the formation of a “minority government ”. Promoting his book last week, Sen told The Economic Times: “But I am also worried that people are feeling less free and less confident to express their points of view. That decline has been quite prominent in India.” That flies in the face of facts. Ever since the Modi government took office, college campuses, TV panelists, newspaper op-eds and opposition leaders have engaged in more dissent against this government and more criticism of its actions (as indeed in democracies they should) than the silent Manmohan Singh and stentorian Sonia Gandhi ever had to endure. Freedom of speech has never been so robust. Albert Einstein used to say that the clever simplify complicated things. Those attempting to be clever complicate simple things.

MINHAZ MERCHANT 

The writer is author of The New Clash of Civilizations: How The Contest Between America, China, India and Islam Will Shape Our Century.

Source: DNA, 2-03-2017

Trolled into silence

Gurmehar Kaur’s is a textbook case of victimisation through heightened levels of gender-based violence

Gurmehar Kaur, the 20-year-old student from Delhi University who started a social media campaign in opposition to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, has been trolled into silence, and has reportedly left Delhi due to rape and death threats. She is not the first youngster to be at the receiving end of the binary of the nationalist/anti-national.

Progressive politics

Ms. Kaur’s politics, similar to vast sections of the student community across the country, is aimed at questioning the narrowing of freedom of speech and expression, aided by the state in conjunction with a society that harbours an increasingly majoritarian attitude. Rohith Vemula of the University of Hyderabad could be demeaned for being a Dalit. Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), with their Muslim identity, could be slotted as traitorous, and their fellow comrade Anirban Bhattacharya could be projected as a menace for being a follower of left-wing ideology.

It was harder to slot Ms. Kaur with such ease. She is a student at one of the most elite colleges of Delhi University, Lady Shri Ram College (as opposed to JNU, much reviled in the popular imagination as the hub of ‘anti-national’ activity). She belongs to one of India’s most celebrated and prosperous minority communities, the Sikhs. Most significantly, her father, Capt. Mandeep Singh of the Indian Army, lost his life battling militants in Jammu and Kashmir in 1999.

Ms. Kaur has disrupted the narrative of the dying soldier that is brought out by the right wing at the drop of a hat to shut down dissent. The fact that sections of the Army veterans and relatives of those who died on the battlefield in Kargil have come out in her support reflects that there is some discomfort within the Army too over its facile politicisation.

Patterns of abuse

Ms. Kaur’s abusers used two distinct reactions. The first was what has become a standard issue response to the articulation of progressive views by women — sexual harassment. Rape threats and death threats flew thick and wild.

The second was to shame her for using her father, the soldier’s death as a plank for contrived morality. The strategies were used in combination, becoming a textbook case of the militarised society with heightened levels of gender-based violence.

When celebrities such as cricketer Virender Sehwag and actor Randeep Hooda jumped into the fray, they did so in the face of a very real intimidation that Ms. Kaur was facing, providing the cue for hundreds of trolls to move in swiftly with a barrage of abuse and threats. Their cavalier intervention, as also tweets and subsequent comments by Kiren Rijiju, the Union Minister of State for Home, show that the reality that a young woman could possibly have agency and think independently, without any assistance whatsoever from male members of society, has entirely bypassed our leaders and icons of sport and entertainment.

Other types of politics have also played out wherein representatives within the government used the Delhi University brouhaha and student violence to push further the agenda of curbs on freedom of speech and expression.

Identity politics

The incident has also stoked regional identity politics, with some prominent voices supporting Ms. Kaur remarking with condescension on the brawny, sexist Haryanvi in the context of Sehwag and Hooda, and wrestlers Geeta Phogat, Babita Kumari and Yogeshwar Dutt, all belonging to Haryana, reacting with hostility. The space of social media is admittedly a free-for-all. But progressive-minded people using stereotypes constitutes a weak defence and poor strategy. By that logic, the harassment of Ms. Kaur would also end up constituting ‘free speech’, which it is not.

It took a while for apologies to be tendered to Ms. Kaur by some of the personalities who contributed to her painful experience. Nonetheless, she has been vilified for lacking courage for withdrawing herself from the campaign, regardless of the actual grit she has displayed till this point. The Union Home Minister’s attempt at defusing the situation — by referring to her as a daughter who requires protection — continues to infantilise and patronise, in keeping with the attitude of a nanny state.

Sucharita Sengupta

Sucharita Sengupta is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi

Source: The Hindu, 2-03-2017

Really Close to God

SWAMI SADYOJAT SHANKARASHRAM





Once upon a time, a musk deer went searching for musk. Round and round the forest she went, month after month, unaware that the heady fragrance so desperately sought by her, lay beneath her own belly button. Many times, we humans, too, behave like the musk deer. We search for Self-realisation outside, blissfully unaware that it lies within us, untapped.To experience this bliss, however, the seeker has to put in a different sort of effort with regularity and devotion. One way lies through the world of forms through the path of bhakti where the seeker concentrates on any manifest form of the Ultimate. The more arduous way of knowledge involves seeking the truth as the Unmanifest without any attribute: the saguna upasana and the latter nirguna upasana of no-attributes.
“Of the two, which is superior?“ the Pandava prince Arjuna asks Sri Krishna his divine charioteer, in Chapter 12 of the Bhagwad Gita. Both have the same goal, but the way of noforms is not an easy journey for ordinary mortals, Krishna replies. How do you grasp That which lies beyond all epithets and qualities even as you control your senses?
The best way to get immediate and everlasting peace, Krishna finally tells Arjuna, is through renunciation of the fruit of all action. This means doing your duty with the full faith that the fruit, whatever it may be, is the prasad or blessing gifted by the Divine. One who is thus enlightened relates to the world out of his own fullness and not out of any calculated need to seek anything from anyone.

Use of contraceptives down 3% in a decade

Sushmi Dey

New Delhi





The use of contraceptives declined by nearly 3% in the last 10 years, the latest health survey conducted by the government across the country has shown.However, the decrease in contraceptive prevalence does not add up with other indicators in the space like decline in the total fertility rate and increased awareness about use of contraceptives. The data also showed an increasing trend in use of pills and condoms.
According to the fourth National Family Health Survey , which covered 6 lakh households, prevalence of contraceptives dropped from 56.3% in 2005-06 to 53.5% in 2014-15. While the use of modern methods also declined marginally , the decline was mainly triggered by a drop in the sterilisation rate.
Male sterilisation, already low, dropped from 1% to 0.3% between NFHS-3 and NFHS-4. Moreover, rate of female sterilisation also witnessed a decline from 37.3% to 36%. Use of modern methods dropped from 48.5% to 47.8% during the period.
Health ministry officials said the “incongruous“ data was mainly because of sociocultural reasons. “People often hesitate to answer questions related to use of contraceptives. We do not get correct responses and often silence is taken for negative.We agree that the data is incongruous,“ an official said.
Health secretary C K Mishra said, “The health ministry will conduct a detailed study to assess the situation so that it can take immediate steps if required.“
India's total fertility rate (TFR), reflective of population control measures, dropped from 2.7 children per woman in NFHS-3 to 2.2 children in the latest survey . The study also noted a considerable decline in the TFR in each of the 30 states. The unmet needs for family planning also declined over the last decade from 13.9% to 12.9%.

Source: Times of India, 2-03-2017

38% of women own house andor land, finds survey





India has witnessed an impressive jump in financial inclusion of women, with 53% of the female population now having bank accounts as compared to a mere 15% a decade ago, according to the latest national family health survey.The study made public on Tuesday reveals a heartening increase in the number of women operating their savings bank accounts, owning houses and participating in decision-making in households as well as opting for antenatal check ups and hygienic methods for protection during menstrual period.
The data also show that violence against married women has come down. The percentage of women facing marital violence has dropped from 37.2% to 28.8%. The survey also shows only 3.3% such women faced violence during pregnancy . This indicator seems to reflect a better awareness of their rights and improved social standing.
The 38% jump in women with bank accounts is complemented by the survey finding that 84% married women in the age of 15-49 years are increasingly participating in decision-making as compared to 76% in the third round of NFHS conducted in 2005-06. The data also show 38.4% of women own a house and or land -alone or jointly with others.
Not surprisingly , im provements in banking and an enhanced role in the household are accompanied by an increase in the female literacy rate that has gone up to 68.4% as compared with 55.1% in the pre vious survey . The female literacy rate, however, continues to lag men who have a literacy rate of 85.6%. Women with more than 10 years of schooling also grew from 22.3% to 35.7% between NFHS3 and NFHS4.

Source: Times of India, 2-03-2017