Monday, April 01, 2019
The arrogance of the ignorant
It is tragic that ‘New India’ chooses to attack Adivasis and forest-dwellers instead of those destroying its ecology
When the tsunami hit the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in 2004, thousands perished. However, some of the oldest Adivasi tribes, the Jarawas and the Onges, lost nobody. These communities followed animals to the highlands well before the waves hit. Formal education was of little survival value in a context where you needed swift instincts.
When Western drug and pharma corporations send their scouts to remote regions in India to look for herbs to patent, the scouts do not consult top Indian doctors or scientists first. They smuggle their way into jungles inhabited by Adivasis where, in a moment of weakness, an elderly woman adept in the healing arts may divulge a secret or two. Later, the companies might test the herb in their labs and find that the woman’s claims were correct. This has long been the staple of biopiracy.
That those forests inhabited by Adivasis are some of the best conserved in the subcontinent is a long-standing fact contrary to the understanding of supposedly educated Indians. What is invaluable is what is often described as ‘indigenous knowledge’ — as though the knowledge gained over centuries of lived experience is of somehow lower valency than the literacy acquired in a school, or perhaps of no value at all.
Relationship with nature
Sadly, the articulate arrogance of ‘New India’ is such that it is unable to see any virtue in the lives of Adivasis and other forest-dwellers who have lived in and by the forests since times immemorial. Ensconced as it is in the air-conditioned offices of metropolitan India, duly estranged from any living ecology of the earth, while fully predatory on it, it sees people who live in and by the jungles as ‘underdeveloped’ criminals who are among those responsible for the thinning of the forests.
This appears to be the view held by petitioners, including retired forest officers and conservation NGOs, in a lawsuit filed in the Supreme Court in 2008. They seem to believe that humans are not a part of nature and can never coexist with it. It is far from their imagination to distinguish between Adivasis who know something about living sensibly with nature and the rest of us, who do not.
That even the courts would fall to such abysmal levels of understanding has become a defining feature of the reforms era. On February 13, the Supreme Court ruled that over 1.12 million households from 17 States, who have had their claims rejected under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006, are to be evicted by the State governments before July 27. It is not clear what fraction of these are individual claims and what fraction are community claims. Nor are all of these Adivasi households. Some might fall under the ‘other traditional forest-dwellers’ category. Critically, the Central government failed to send its attorney to the court. Ironically, the FRA contains no legal provision for the eviction of rejected claimants. In the face of loud protests from around the country, the court issued a stay order (till July 10) on its ruling. This suits the political goals of the incumbent BJP as it prepares for the polls. Many States are yet to give their details to the courts. Once they do, the number of households to be evicted may rise. Close to 8-10% of the Adivasi population may be asked to vacate their traditional homes and abandon their livelihoods. Has the court contemplated the gravity of the implications? Where are these people supposed to live and make a living? What justice is there in acting in such an inhumane manner?
It betrays ignorance. The judges know that we live in an ecologically imperilled time when metropolitan India has much to answer for its corporate-consumer excesses. And yet, it is among the weakest and the wisest that they choose to attack. The world’s largest refinery is coming up in the Konkan, uprooting 17 villages, over half a million cashew trees and over a million mango trees. Thousands of acres of Himalayan forests and over a hundred villages will be submerged by one of the world’s tallest dams coming up in Pancheshwar in Uttarakhand. Are the conservationist petitioners and courts doing anything to stop any of this? They show little courage when it comes to tackling the land mafias, builder-developers, realtors, constructors and miners, but their conscience is ablaze over conserving Adivasis in the jungles.
A dying civilisation
This is the arrogance of ignorant India and it shall not abdicate till it has laid to rest the last hopes of what was ‘a wounded civilisation’, and is now a dying one. For, let us be clear about one thing: freeing the forests of their traditional inhabitants is almost certain to expose their erstwhile habitats in short order to the speedy, organised depredations of the forces of what has come to be seen by the elites as ‘development’.
If remote habitats are emptied of Adivasis, there may be nobody to forewarn us when ecologically perilous tipping points are crossed in the future. To make matters worse, worrying amendments that have been proposed to the Indian Forest Act, 1927, which further strengthen the stranglehold of forest officials over India’s jungles and its inhabitants, have now been made public.
Perhaps some day, when their decisions affect them, the folly of their pronouncements will dawn upon those who preside on the fates of millions today. But it shall be too late then. Before July, the safe-keepers of justice might wish to ponder Gandhi’s words: “A time is coming when those, who are in the mad rush today of multiplying their wants, vainly thinking that they add to the real substance, real knowledge of the world, will retrace their steps and say: ‘What have we done?’”
Aseem Shrivastava is a Delhi-based writer and teaches Ecosophy at Ashoka University; Abhinav Gupta is an independent researcher who has worked on forest issues and the FRA
Source: The Hindu, 1/04/2019
Analysis | What is forcing Indian women to stay at home?
Early marriage is not responsible for the low female labour force participation. Blame the male backlash effect for it.
India has one of the lowest female labour force participation rates in the world. In 2017, only 27% of adult Indian women had a job or were actively looking for one. The comparable figure for the rest of world was 50%. Equally alarming is the fact that the earnings and wages of women who are employed are low. According to the Global Wage Report 2018-19, the hourly wages of women are 34% less than men in India, a disparity that is highest among 73 countries mentioned in the report. It is often suggested that a major reason for the poor labour market outcomes of Indian women is the high incidence of child marriage in India. Advocacy group ActionAid estimates around 33% child marriages in the world happen in India. The average age of marriage for women also continues to be significantly lower compared to that in many other developing countries such as countries such as Brazil, Chile, Kenya and Pakistan.
Early marriage hampers labour market prospects of women in two ways. First, it interrupts a woman’s formal education, which negatively impacts her labour market outcomes. Second, early marriage leads to early motherhood. This causes younger brides to focus more on the home (raising children, for example), in turn, reducing their likelihood of participation and productivity in the labour market. In light of this, it is often proposed that one way to address the issue of dismal labour market prospects of Indian women is through policies that can potentially delay their marriage.
Can marriage delaying policies improve women’s labour market prospects in India? I recently collaborated with Gaurav Dhamija (a doctoral student at the Shiv Nadar University) to examine this question.
Using nationally representative household data of close to 40,000 women from the Indian Human Development Survey 2012, I found that delaying the age of marriage for women does not lead to better labour market outcomes for them.
One possibility is that delaying the age for marriage does not lead to more education and lower fertility for Indian women. This, however, does not seem to be the case. Indeed, older brides in my sample, are more educated and have lower fertility (as measured by the number of children).
According to this theory, the more educated (and hence empowered) a woman, greater is her chance of facing domestic violence. This is because when gender roles and power relations are redefined, men resort to violence to reinstate a culturally prescribed norm of male dominance and female dependence. In fact, in a recent study published in Population and Development Review, based on data from the National Family Health Survey 2005-06, sociologist Abigail Weitzman finds unequivocal evidence of Indian women who are at least as educated as their husbands have a higher likelihood of experiencing frequent and severe intimate partner violence than women who are less educated than their spouses.
Since the theory of backlash effect predicts a positive relationship between violence and educational attainment of women, and because education increases with women’s age at the time of marriage in my sample, it is reasonable to claim that older brides, as compared to younger brides, are likely to face more male backlash and be denied the freedom to work. This male backlash effect could nullify the positive effects of more education and lower fertility and, therefore, Indian women’s labour market prospects.
These findings suggest that for improving labour market outcomes of Indian women, conventional policies that talk about delaying marriage and laws to prevent child marriage may not be sufficient. Such policies must be complemented by smart and effective interventions to curb the male backlash effect. For example, gender quotas in politics and the corporate sphere could be useful in reducing male backlash. These steps must be taken through coordinated efforts of the government, panchayats, and NGOs to ensure that outdated gender role and age role beliefs do not serve as impediments for women to enjoy the fruits of delayed marriage.
Punarjit Roychowdhury is assistant professor of Economics, Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore.
Source: Hindustant Times, 1/04/2019
Don’t Try to be Perfect
Many a time, you become angry or miserable because of the feverishness for perfection. If you are too much of a perfectionist, you are bound to be an angry person. In a state of ignorance, imperfection is natural and perfection is an effort. In a state of wisdom or enlightenment, imperfection is an effort; perfection is compulsion and is unavoidable. When you are in ‘vairagya’ (dispassion), you can take care of even insignificant things with perfection. Perfection is the very nature of the Enlightened One. When we are joyful, we don’t look for perfection. If you are looking for perfection, then you are not at the source of joy. Joy is the realisation that there is no vacation from wisdom. The world appears imperfect on the surface but, underneath, all is perfect. Perfection hides; imperfection shows off. The wise will not stay on the surface but will probe into the depth. Things are not blurred; your vision is blurred. Infinite actions prevail in the wholeness of consciousness and, yet, the consciousness remains perfect, untouched. Realise this now and be natural. In this world, everything cannot be perfect all the time. Even the best, the greatest of actions, performed with the noblest of intentions, will have some imperfections. But the tendency of our mind is to grab the imperfection and hold on to it. And, in the process, we end up making our moods, our minds imperfect and our souls reel with this nonsense. It is imperative to get out of these cycles, and to become strong and courageous from within.
Source: Economic Times, 1/04/2019
Friday, March 29, 2019
Economic and Political Weekly: Table of Contents
Vol. 54, Issue No. 12, 23 Mar, 2019
Education reform needs a systematic approach
Academic interventions like competence-linked teaching, learning and assessments need to be accompanied by an overhaul of the existing governance structures.
Approximately 29% of India’s population is below the age of 14, and, at 250 million, we have the highest number of school-going students in the world. Unfortunately, we also have a public education system that is failing the young population by denying them quality education.
To effect a large-scale transformation in education, a systemic approach, consisting of comprehensive and coordinated set of academic and administrative reforms, is needed. Academic interventions like competence-linked teaching, learning and assessments need to be accompanied by an overhaul of the existing governance structures.
Some states like Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha have implemented these system-level reforms, leading to many early successes. Here are five key lessons that emerge from these comprehensive change programmes that can be useful for other states in their effort to improve their public education systems.
One, embed grade competence in all classroom transactions: More than half of our children studying in government schools lack competencies appropriate to their grade levels, which when accumulated over the years, lead to significant learning gaps. This is because teachers focus on syllabus completion instead of emphasising the attainment of competencies. Haryana has instituted a system of saksham taalika that takes the shape of a table that defines grade competencies for all subjects for each two-month cycle in an academic year. These grade competencies are mapped to all teaching and learning material — specific chapters in the text books, state designed remedial programmes and teacher training programmes. To close the loop, assessments are conducted and mapped to the grade competence framework with standardised statewide Summative Assessment Tests (SATs), conducted every two months to track progress on these metrics over time.
Two, ingrain human enablement in the system: For quality delivery of education, it is important to empower frontline workers such as teachers as well as those working in the background such as education officers, state board officials, etc. with appropriate skills and resources. In recognition of this, states have taken several steps. Himachal Pradesh, for example, has launched the TeacherApp, which is a tech-based teacher training platform that provides bite-sized content for easy consumption by teachers. Remote training ensures that teachers do not lose time in travel and can upskill themselves continuously. Another great example of human enablement comes from Andhra Pradesh where an assessment cell has been created with 13 subject matter experts. This cell aims to build capacity of relevant stakeholders.
Three, leverage data/ technology to improve efficiency: According to a report by the National Institute of Education Planning and Administration (NIEPA), teachers spend less than one-fifth of their time on teaching activities, with more than double their teaching time being spent on administrative activities such as data collection, material distribution and redressing their human resource and personnel issues. It is widely accepted that accountability in delivery of services is achieved when stakeholders are enabled to better perform their core functions by minimising time and labour on tasks removed from their primary responsibilities. In acknowledgement of this, states like Rajasthan have sought to free up teacher time by creating an enterprise system like the shaala darpan web portal. This portal allows for faster grievance redressal, online transfers and postings, and acts as a single source for all school-related data, eliminating the need for repeated data collection for various material distribution and other activities.
Four, strengthen monitoring and evaluation systems: Most states have an established system of inspection of schools by the education department to ascertain their quality, but the reality is that the target numbers of school inspections are rarely met because of manpower shortages. Mindful of this, states like Andhra Pradesh have created systems that set in place publicly available, real time and data backed monitoring mechanisms.
Five, build momentum through a public campaign: All the above interventions are dependent on stakeholder commitment and their consistent high performance. This can only be brought about by a steadfast political and bureaucratic commitment to the goal of improving learning outcomes. A dynamic campaign with the support of highest levels of political leadership needs to be built to provide momentum and align all stakeholders on a single transformation road map.
While these interventions are replicable everywhere, their success or failure ultimately rests on a state’s ability to move these parts simultaneously. Given the right momentum, these interventions can, over time, mature into transformative juggernauts such that they both individually thrive, and collectively drive the education system to produce consistently better outcomes.
Amitabh Kant is CEO, NITI Aayog
Source: 25/03/2019
The fourth industrial revolution will further marginalise the subaltern
The new economic reality demands more tech skills and creative thinking for which the segment is not equipped
The fourth industrial revolution promises to transform the entire economic structure as we know it. By changing the economic basis of social organisations, technological revolutions fundamentally transform the entire social structure. In India, apart from economic classes, we also have caste and the intricate web of relations between castes. In simple terms, castes are endogamous social groups organised around hereditary professions.Even though hereditary professions are breaking down in the past few decades, there still exists a strong correlation between the caste and broad professional category with forward castes concentrated in the upper echelons of the value chain in the production process while backward castes are at the lower end.
And as the old village economy melts away in the face of urban-industrialisation, many of these caste-based professions have become obsolete, already throwing millions of people into a crisis of survival. Since India has failed to invest in social goods like health and education, these sections of society have been unable to move to different professions ,which require educational capital. This lies at the root of the “late convergence stall” in India. Late convergence stall refers to the phenomenon of a late comer being unable to make the jump to a higher-income status and remaining stuck in the low-income category. One of the main reasons is the increasing technological divide between countries and the inability of the late comers to bridge the gap by investing in human capital. It is extremely difficult to train an illiterate and unskilled workforce to handle new hi-tech production processes.
The problem is daunting in India. The advent of the modern capitalist economy under the colonial rule and acceleration of the industrialisation after independence reinforced the economic and social distance between castes. The backward castes stayed where they were while forward/dominant castes leapfrogged into the modern economy due to higher social and educational capital. The difference between them was now overlaid with the urban-rural divide as well as with the divide between high-productivity modern and low-productivity traditional sectors of the economy. This process exaggerated the intercaste inequality far beyond what was possible in the rural-agrarian economy where all the castes shared the same, albeit an unequal, space.
Now Artificial Intelligence and the fourth industrial revolution may herald another phase where those with requisite skills due to the higher social and educational capital can further move up the economic value chain under the new structure of production leaving those at the bottom further behind. This can lead to mass social antagonism and unrest, which can potentially become a breeding ground for radical and anarchist ideologies and groups. Already the old stable permanent jobs are disappearing, which so far have been the most crucial and, for some castes, the only way up the socioeconomic ladder. The new economic reality demands more flexibility, technological skills and creative thinking for which a large section of the marginalised castes is unequipped. The technological disruptions also demand frequent retraining, which involves an economic cost that might be unaffordable for those who are already marginalised.
But the political discourse in India, especially of the champions of social justice, remains oblivious to these developments. There is no focus on how to train the subaltern for the new economic structure or how to ensure social security when permanent jobs can no longer be guaranteed. What we fail to understand is that rhetoric is no substitute for a policy roadmap. And it is time that we start demanding it from our politicians. What is the reason that in states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, political parties ruling for decades in the name of the subaltern and social justice failed to invest in quality health and education?
What India needs is a new political discourse which locates social justice in ensuring universal health and education, skill development, easy market-entry for entrepreneurs from the subaltern castes, and next-generation social security delinked from the job and place of work. What we need is a fundamental rethinking of our social and economic future. Twentieth century ideologies and discourse can no longer work.
Abhinav Prakash Singh is an assistant professor at SRCC, Delhi University
Source: Hindustan Times, 27/03/2019
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)