Prolonged closure of schools due to Covid poses threat to gender equality: UNSECO

 

Drawing on evidence from about 90 countries and in-depth data collected in local communities, the report shows that gender norms and expectations can affect the ability to participate in and benefit from remote learning.

Educational disruption due to prolonged closure of schools across the globe will not only have alarming effects on learning loss but also poses threat to gender equality, a new study by UNESCO has pointed out.

The global study titled “When schools shut: Gendered impacts of COVID-19 school closures” brings to the fore that girls and boys, young women and men were affected differently by school closures, depending on the context.

“At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, 1.6 billion students in 190 countries were affected by school closures. Not only did they lose access to education, but also to the myriad benefits of attending school, at an unparalleled scale,” said Stefania Giannini, UNESCO, Assistant Director-General for Education.

“Educational disruption of this extent has alarming effects on learning loss and school dropout. Beyond this, it poses threats to gender equality, including effects on health, wellbeing and protection that are gender-specific,” Giannini said.

Drawing on evidence from about 90 countries and in-depth data collected in local communities, the report shows that gender norms and expectations can affect the ability to participate in and benefit from remote learning.

“In poorer contexts, girls’ time to learn was constrained by increased household chores. Boys’ participation in learning was limited by income-generating activities. Girls faced difficulties in engaging in digital remote learning modalities in many contexts because of limited access to internet-enabled devices, a lack of digital skills and cultural norms restricting their use of technological devices,” the report said.

The study pointed out that the digital gender divide was already a concern before the COVID-19 crisis.

“The in-depth studies on Bangladesh and Pakistan in the global report revealed its gendered effects on remote learning during school closures. In the study on Pakistan, only 44 per cent of girls in participating districts reported owning mobile phones for their personal use, whereas 93 per cent of boys did so. Girls who did not own mobile phones reported that they relied on their relatives’ devices, typically those belonging to their fathers,” it said. “While some of the girls were able to use family members’ phones, they were not always able to do so. Their access was restricted since some parents were concerned that providing girls with access to smartphones would lead to misuse and could result into romantic relationships.”

“The longer girls were out of school, the higher was the risk of learning loss. From April to September 2020, the share of girls reporting that they did not study at all increased from 1 to 10 per cent,” it added.

Noting that the pandemic is a timely reminder that schools are sites not only for learning but also lifelines for girls and boys, an essential space for their health, well-being and protection, the report has several recommendations on how to challenge gender-based barriers for participation in remote learning.

“To advance equal access to gender-responsive and inclusive remote learning, it is recommended to provide a range of remote learning options including low-tech and no-tech solutions spearhead and support efforts to reach the most at-risk learners design, develop gender-responsive educational resources and tools besides providing appropriate teacher support and training use formative assessments to track learning outcomes,” it said.

Source: Indian Express, 22/11/21

Quote of the Day November 18, 2021

 

“The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.”
Oscar Wilde

“जीवन का लक्ष्य है आत्मविकास। अपने स्वभाव को पूर्णतः जानने के लिऐ ही हम इस दुनिया में है।”
ऑस्कर वाइल्ड

e-Shram: 70% informal workers SC, ST, OBCs

 On India’s first centralised database of unorganised workers, e-Shram portal, more than 7.86 crore registrations have been done till date. Out of this number, 40.5 percent belong to Other Backward Classes (OBCs), 27.4 percent general category, 23.7 percent scheduled castes (SCs) and 8.3 percent to scheduled tribes (STs)

Highlights

• These estimations are significant as they offer an indicator of social profile of informal sector workers in India.
• As per 2011 census, population share of SCs was 16.2 per cent and that for STs was 8.2 per cent.
• The count of OBCs is not detailed in 2011 Census. However, as per a survey conducted in 2007 by National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) had estimated the population share of OBCs as 40.9 per cent.
• Population share of general category population was around 34 per cent.

Occupation-wise registration data

• Maximum registrations (53.6 percent) have been seen in agriculture sector.
• It is followed by construction sector (12.2 per cent) and domestic & household workers (8.71 per cent).
• The e-Shram portal has been recording primary as well as secondary occupation of unorganised sector workers. Workers in rural areas are routinely recording two occupations.

Registration across states

• In agriculture sector, West Bengal is at the top slot with 13.38 per cent share. It is followed by Odisha (10.5 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (9.15 per cent), Bihar (5.71 per cent) and Jharkhand (3.03 per cent). Highest registrations were seen for crop & farm labourers and field crop & vegetable growers.
• In construction, top four countries with highest number of registrations are- West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha. Highest registrations were recorded for building and construction workers.

Current Affairs- November 18, 2021

 

INDIA

– 21st Indian Ocean Rim Association Annual Council of Ministers’ Meeting held in Dhaka

– Kartarpur Corridor reopens after a 20-month gap; links Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan, the final resting place of Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev, to Dera Baba Nanak shrine in Gurdaspur district

– IGNCA (Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts), New Delhi organising Kashi Utsav in Varanasi on Nov 16-18

ECONOMY & CORPORATE

– CCEA approves continuation of PMGSY (Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana) and RCPLWEA (road connectivity project for left wing extremism affected areas)

– Cabinet clears proposal for mobile services in 7,287 uncovered villages in in 44 Aspirational Districts of 5 states by utilisation of Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF)

– Ministry of Food Processing Industry (MoFPI) signs MoU with Department of Animal husbandry and Dairying to improve livestock sector

– Indian Railways gets first pod hotel at Mumbai Central station

– National Export Excellence Awards of the Council for Leather Exports given

– Grants, non-philanthropic donations to attract 18% GST, says Maharashtra bench of the Authority for Advance Ruling (AAR)

– Tenure of Enforcement Directorate (ED) Chief Sanjay Kumar Mishra extended by one year

– ‘Bengaluru Tech Summit-2021’ being held from Nov 17 to 19

WORLD

– Patrick Radden Keefe wins 50,000 pounds ($67,000) Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction for the book “Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty”

– Twitter redesigns warning labels to help users identify fake news, misinformation easily

– European Union top court rules against Polish Justice Minister’s powers to endorse judges for high criminal courts and to end their terms

– Pakistan’s Parliament enacts law to give Kulbhushan Jadhav right to file review appeal against conviction

SPORTS

– India win bronze in compound men’s team event at Asian archery championships in Dhaka

– Sourav Ganguly appointed Chairman of the ICC men’s Cricket Committee

Sharp spike in students with smartphone access, but UP, Bihar and Bengal lag: ASER survey 2021

 

The ASER report also underscored that the likelihood of a household owning a smartphone goes up with the parents' educational level.

Even as smartphone availability in households across the country has registered a sharp rise since 2018, many states have left Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal miles behind, show findings of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) survey 2021.

Overall, the availability of smartphones in homes of enrolled students has nearly doubled from 2018 to 2021, from 36.5 per cent to 67.6 per cent. But state-wise numbers show that the rise has been highly uneven, with some states that were laggards catching up with better positioned ones, while a few require further push despite showing some improvement.

For example, in 2018, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland had 58 per cent, 53.4 per cent and 50 per cent households of enrolled students respectively having at least one smartphone. In 2021, the corresponding shares have increased to 95.6, 92.9 and 92.9 per cent respectively. In Kerala, where 80.9 per cent families of students had smartphones even in 2018, the share has further risen to 97.5 per cent.

In contrast, Bihar has reported 54.4 per cent households of surveyed students with smartphones, up from 27.2 per cent in 2018; West Bengal 58.4 per cent as against 26.8 per cent in 2018 and 58.9 per cent in Uttar Pradesh compared to 30.4 per cent in 2018. The findings mirror a recent report of the Union Ministry of Education which showed that the digital divide has hit some states like Bihar disproportionately hard.

The ASER report also underscored that the likelihood of a household owning a smartphone goes up with the parents’ educational level. “In 2021, over 80% of children with parents who had studied at least till Class 9 had a smartphone available at home, as compared to just over 50% of children whose parents had studied till Class 5 or less,” it says, capturing the impact of the pandemic-induced disruptions on the marginalised and economically downtrodden.

But in a sign that even those at a position of disadvantage tried to catch up, numbers show that even among children with parents in the low education category, over a quarter of households had bought a new smartphone for their children’s studies since the lockdown began in March 2020.

Be that as it may, access of children to smartphones in a family was found to be limited across income groups. “Although over two thirds of all enrolled children have a smartphone at home, just over a quarter of these have full access to it for their studies (27%), while close to half have partial access (47%) and the remaining quarter have no access at all (26.1%),” the report states.

Even in terms of access, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal find themselves towards the bottom of the rankings. In Bihar, 53.8 per cent children of households with a smartphone cannot access it, in UP 34.3 per cent and 46.5 per cent in West Bengal.

Written by Sourav Roy Barman

Source: Indian Express, 18/11/21

Understanding why the informal sector really shrank during the pandemic

 

R Nagaraj, Radhicka Kapoor write: It was not because of micro and small informal firms’ transition to formality, but because they were squeezed out by large formal enterprises

In 2017-18, as per the latest official statistics, India’s informal sector accounted for approximately 52 per cent of its GDP, employing 82 per cent of the total workforce. These ratios have broadly remained unchanged over the last decade. A recent study by SBI has reported that the Indian economy witnessed accelerated formalisation under the distressed conditions of the pandemic and the lockdown last year. The study estimates that the share of the informal economy has fallen to a mere one-fifth of GDP — a figure comparable to many advanced economies.

As the informal (unorganised) sector bore much of the brunt of the economic contraction during 2020-21, a decline in its share in GDP is unsurprising. The sector had neither the financial strength nor the technical wherewithal to face the Covid shock. Additionally, policy support, mostly supply-side measures, was mainly focused on firms in the formal sector, with the informal sector left to fend for itselfIn the absence of official data, one can only speculate the extent of the decline in the share of the informal sector in GDP. Whether the decline is as sharp as the SBI report has suggested — to 20 per cent of GDP in 2020-21 from around 50 per cent over a two-year period — is anyone’s guess. A pertinent question that arises is whether the decline in the informal sector’s share in GDP represents a temporary one-time shock or a long-term (desirable) structural shift towards a more productive sector.

Before examining this issue, it is essential to understand the concept of informality. The ILO’s globally accepted framework for definitions is as follows: Informal sector enterprises are defined as private unincorporated enterprises owned by individuals (or households) that are not constituted as separate legal entities independently of their owners. And for which no complete accounts are available that would permit a financial separation of the enterprise’s production activities from its owner’s other activities. They are not registered under specific national legislation (such as Factories’ or Commercial Acts). Formal workers in India, on the other hand, are defined as those having access to at least one social security benefit such as a provident fund or healthcare benefits.

Transitioning to formality requires a reduction in dualism in production and an improvement in employment quality. Undeniably, the informal sector’s share in GDP is likely to have shrunk due to the Covid shock. However, alarmingly, the purported decline in the informal sector’s share in GDP has not been accompanied by an expected reduction in its employment share. Data from the official annual Period Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2017-18 and 2019-20, where the latter includes the period of the Covid shock from April to June 2020, shows the following. The employment share in non-agricultural informal enterprises has increased from 68 per cent in 2017-18 to 69.5 per cent in 2019-20. These figures do not include the agricultural sector, where employment is almost entirely in the informal sector. The increasing share of the formal sector in terms of GDP but declining share in employment only widens the schism (or dualism) between the two sectors.

What is more, if the informal sector is producing as small a share of GDP as suggested by the SBI report, but employing as significant a share as suggested by PLFS data, it means that much of India’s workforce is engaged in low productivity and low-paying work. The lack of remunerative jobs for the vast majority of Indian consumers implies that eventually the lack of growth in demand will adversely impact investment and economic growth. After all, a mere 17-18 per cent of the workforce in the organised sector cannot sustain growth of the economy in the long run.

The increase in the formal sector’s share in GDP due to Covid-19 is a result of large, formal enterprises squeezing out informal enterprises. Many of them have ceased production, weighed down by Covid and lockdown effects, albeit temporarily. It is important to note here that the increase in formalisation is not a consequence of micro and small informal firms transitioning to formality. Further, as formal sector firms have rationalised their workforce, laid-off workers have found themselves seeking employment in the informal sector, resulting in a rise in the share of informal employment.

Over the last five years, the economy has officially witnessed a significant drive towards formalisation. This push has entailed significant efforts to register firms under relevant laws and obtain a tax number. However, it is crucial to recognise that firms exist in the informal sector for various reasons and not simply to evade regulations and taxation. Many own account enterprises and MSMEs cannot afford to survive in the formal sector due to their low productivity. For such enterprises, formalisation is not simply about legal considerations. Importantly, it is about increasing their productivity to enable an organic path to formality. Hence, it is essential to view the process of formalisation as a development strategy that requires stepping up investment in physical and human capital to boost productivity and the extension of social security benefits for all workers, not just a registration strategy on myriad portals.

Formalisation is indeed a desirable process both for enterprises and workers in the Indian economy. The final objective of formalisation is to improve the working and living conditions of those in the informal economy. The supposed formalisation that happened during the pandemic is mainly an outcome of shrinkage of the informal sector under extreme duress. The informal sector will come back to life as much of it represents the survival efforts of the working poor. Celebrating formalisation based on the misery and devastation of poor informal workers (and their meagre productive assets) is not just misplaced but also callous.

Source: Indian Express, 18/11/21

Digital divide in education can’t be bridged by laptops and smartphones alone

 

M Kunhaman writes: Its roots lie in socio-economic inequalities, which can only be addressed through systemic changes

The switch to online education under the inexorable pressure of the Covid-19 pandemic has thrown into relief certain realities, which would not have otherwise received much attention. The most basic is the divide between the digital haves and have-nots, a reflection of economic inequality. Distributing smartphones and laptops to children in this context is like treating the symptom rather than the disease. The lasting solution would be in taking all-encompassing policy decisions. Paradoxically, those who need a change cannot bring it about and those who can do not want it. Going behind the façade of the digital divide enables us to unravel the real dynamics.

Globally, the neoliberal era has seen paradigm shifts in education. The shift towards a materialist philosophy in education has been caused by four structural developments: One, the entrepreneurship-led economic growth powered by innovation and technology; two, increasing knowledge intensity of production; three, a borderless world facilitating knowledge flows; four, knowledge explosion, coeval with knowledge implosion. The networked world of flexi-specialisation and changing skill matrix prioritises learning (lifelong) over study (terminal). Knowledge obsolescence involves “creative destruction”, not only of goods and machines, but also of ideas, knowledge, values and attitudes. As the shift from resource-/labour-intensity to knowledge-intensity occurs, knowledge becomes a commodity, leading to commercialisation of education, predicated on creativity and innovation.

While the Industrial Revolution was the first systematic attempt at coordinated/syncretic application in the production of knowledge, today knowledge production, collation, transaction and application are themselves independent economic activities, employing burgeoning armies of scientists, scholars, supporting personnel and using a vast array of labs, libraries and computer networks. The knowledge economy is booming.

The Indian education sector has been undergoing an unprecedented transformation. There has been a rapid increase in student enrolment and diversity; quality and relevance considerations are dominant. Parents and students consider education an assured instrument of mobility. This was, till recently, a middle-class feature, but is now seen across the class spectrum, leading to demands for an inclusive system. Knowledge is a commodity with a thriving market. Commodification leads to commercialisation, attracting private investment. This must be welcomed.

The question of who provides education and with what motives is less important than value re-orientation and attitudinal change. Modern values — quality, competence, competitiveness, optimism, confidence, innovation — must replace older ones — discipline, obedience, hard work, respect, compliance, allegiance. A system of education extolling hard work is anti-human, unproductive and regressive. The importance of creative/productive work done in non-exploitative, self-actualising, self-fulfilling atmospheres must be flagged. Raising questions and seeking answers should form the bedrock of education.

The digital inequality in Indian education is a cause for concern. There is a digital divide which is not educational, but a socio-economic one. The material poor are also the digital poor. The digital revolution, with its emphasis on robotics, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing, will bypass the “capability poor”. The solution hinges on guaranteeing economic security with assured basic income through provision of universal property rights. Article 21A now guarantees the right to education for children in the six-14 age group. This progressive step should be extended to all sectors and levels of education.

Modern education is costly. The exponential growth of demand cannot be curtailed as it is linked to rising democratic and human rights consciousness. The solution lies in exploring the scope for financing on a larger canvas, tapping into the hitherto unexplored avenues, the bottomline being that no student drops out due to an inability to pay. The steps towards this solution could include: One, enhancing budget allocation by reordering fiscal priorities, and applying methods like zero-based/ outcome budgeting etc. Two, put education at the centre of economic/ development policy formulation. Involve the corporate sector in meeting the demand for publicly funded education, not just through CSR, but as part of academic social responsibility, in return for special concessions and incentives. Three, require parents to pay for education by ramping up their economic base through the measures mentioned above. Parents in the new scenario won’t grudge payment. Four, institute endowments and enhance diaspora contributions. Education today is not a question of charity, but a matter of right.

Written by M Kunhaman

The writer is an economist and former professor at TISS, Tuljapur campus

Source: Indian Express, 18/11/21