Volume 51 Issue 4, December 2021
Durgabai Deshmukh Memorial Lecture
Wednesday, January 05, 2022
Women and sustainability
A sustainable future calls for a systematic dismantling of the current order of under-representation of women in the fields of energy, transport and more
I peered at the pile of newspapers resting immaculately inside the drawer, unsure of whether I will be able to craft a garbage bag out of them. In what was touted as a “no glue and no-stapler pin paper bag”, the instructions for crafting it on my phone screen seemed rather daunting. My origami skills were put to test as I made the first crease, the last and all folds in-between.
More than two years ago, I decided to cut down on single-use plastics at home. When my attempt at making bin liners turned out to be successful, I began reusing old newspapers to replace plastic garbage bags with manually made paper-liners. Likewise, I favour paper or fabric for regular storage purposes. Additionally, I prepare batches of homemade bio-enzymes for surface-cleaning instead of using store-bought chemicals.
Sustainability readily finds a place within the larger framework of mindful living. Naturally, even at the peak of the lockdown, such practices were sacrosanct.
Growing concerns around climate change and environmental degradation have heralded sustainability as a way of life. Within little more than a century since the pre-industrial era, we have warmed the earth by around 1.2 degrees Celsius. This in turn is leading to periods of intense and unrelenting heat globally that is affecting lives and destroying habitats. Further, as COVID-19 pandemic necessitated use of single-use plastics such as masks, gloves and face-shield, it has increased the overall level of plastic waste generated exponentially.
The stakes are high. Changing climate and deterioration of environment together are mankind’s moment of truth. Interestingly, the world over, women have been at the forefront of leading initiatives that tackle challenges associated with both climate and the environment. A study of 25 developed and 65 developing countries shows that countries with higher female parliamentary representation are more likely to reserve protected land areas. In the world of commerce, research shows corporations that have more women on its boards invest better in renewable energy. It takes the presence of at least two women on the primary governing body of a business for it to integrate more environment-friendly activities in its practices. Similarly, better outcomes await forest conservation initiatives when women are the vanguards of forest management, as evidence from India and Nepal indicates.
In poor households and in rural areas, women routinely assume additional labour in the form of fetching drinking water, walking long distances to collect firewood, initiating solutions to prevent their homes from getting too hot during summers, amongst others. These tasks, if left unfulfilled can threaten the well-being of women and their families, while also declining the quality of their lives. Tapping into this resourcefulness of women, advocacy groups and organisations across the world have launched programmes to empower communities at the grassroots to respond to the effects of changing climate. These communities, spearheaded by women, have been implementing climate resilient solutions such as rainwater harvesting and sprinkler taps, low-cost roof cooling options to reduce temperatures within homes, and soil conservation and tree plantation, among others.
In certain situations, women might be bereft of any choice and hence, pro-environment or climate sensitive initiatives then are outcomes of the lack of choice. In yet other scenario, pursuance of such activities might be a purely individual decision. That said, the correlation between women and sustainability is wholesome. The relationship is almost inextricable, though not entirely inexplicable. Women are chiefly charged with roles of nurturers, comforters and tending to others at the expense of forgetting to care for themselves. Of particular importance is the proverbial ‘maternal instincts’ inbuilt in women that hardwires them to the long-term security and prospects of those they are surrounded with. Because these aspects are concerned with the future, it requires regulating behaviour and exercising caution in the present. Such nuances aptly place women in the position of preservers — prowess of the larger good definitely demands a certain refinement. Women’s role as caretakers of families renders them ideal as stewards of natural resources. So while society preaches health over wealth, conservation over waste and cleanliness over carelessness; women, in one way or the other, have been diligent actors of the same.
Expectedly, this has prolific policy implications. For a future where sustainability is a way of life, a more gender diverse labour force is one way to go. It calls for a systematic dismantling of the current order of underrepresentation of women in fields of energy, transport and more. Crisis unites and this time, it presents a fresh opportunity to lower the gender disparity in workforce and include more women in decision making. Or perhaps, the challenge of gender inequity has repackaged itself in a new bottle of climate and environmental deterioration. Whatever may be the lens used for examining this emergency, justice-based solutions will be the mainstay of dealing with it.
Fortunately, the world has enough existing solutions to ensure that a greater number of women have access to opportunities of participation in the economy. There is nothing quite like hindsight and past experiences are reminders to negotiate traps of stereotyping, slotting and judging women - instead, making a case for having women at the heart of a sustainable future requires a fine-toothed comb. Oh and speaking of combs — I recently switched to one made of neem wood.
Source: The Hindu, 26/12/21
Tuesday, January 04, 2022
Quote of the Day January 4, 2022
“Never Hesitate to hold out your hand; never hesitate to accept the outstretched hand of another.”
Pope John XXIII
“अपना हाथ आगे बढ़ाने से कभी मत हिचकिए। दूसरे का आगे बढ़ा हाथ थामने से भी कभी मत हिचकिए।”
पोप जॉन त्रयोदश
Current Affairs- January 4, 2022
INDIA
– Nationwide COVID Vaccination of children between 15 and 18 years begins; besides Aadhaar & other national identity cards, children can use school ID cards for registration
– Union Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla releases CyberPravah – newsletter of Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre
– Ayush Ministry makes available ‘Ayush Aahaar’ at its canteen in New Delhi
– Education Minister and Skill Development Minister Dharmendra Pradhan launches NEAT 3.0 (National Educational Alliance for Technology 3.0)
– Defence Minister Rajnath Singh inaugurates Kalpana Chawla Centre for Research in Space Science & Technology at Chandigarh University
– PM pays tributes to Rani Velu Nachiyar, the Sivaganga queen in Tamil Nadu who waged war against the British, on her birth anniversary
ECONOMY & CORPORATE
– RBI releases framework on offline digital payments; will be capped at Rs 200 per transaction
– India’s December jobless rate hits four-month high of 7.9%: CMIE
– India achieved highest-ever monthly exports of $37 bn in Dec 2021: Piyush Goyal
WORLD
– Fire ravages South Africa’s historic 138-year-old Parliament complex in Cape Town
District Level Good Governance Index
The Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory is to get a district – level Good Governance Index. The index is modelled on Good Governance Index 2021.
What is District Good Governance Index?
The index will assess the governance in different districts of Jammu and Kashmir. It is to be calculated considering 58 indicators in ten different sectors. The Centre for Good Governance (CGG) provided the technical support to create the framework of the index. The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) is to prepare the index.
What is the plan?
The index is to be calculated based on the performance of the districts in 10 sectors such as citizen centric governance, public safety and judiciary, welfare and development, economic governance, public infrastructure and utilities, public health, human resource development, commerce and industry and agriculture and allied sector.
Significance
The index will help Jammu and Kashmir increase its district governance to the level of other best administered districts in the country. The next step is to take good governance to block levels and tehsil levels. The index aims to change the work culture in government organizations. It will help the Union Territory march towards “Maximum governance and minimum government”. Also, the index will help in time bound disposal of office files, Increased citizen participation, increased accountability and transparency.
Key Points on District Good Governance Index
It was first announced at the regional conference organised by DARPG (Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances) in Uttar Pradesh. The DARPG operates under the Ministry of Personnel, public grievances and pension. It is the nodal agency for administrative reforms and public grievance redressal.
Good Governance Index
It was released by DARPG on Good Governance Day (December 25). Gujarat topped the ranking and was followed by Maharashtra and Goa. It is essential to release these indices in order to assess the governance in the state.
The 21st century challenge for democracy
Suhas Palshikar writes: A renewed public discourse around questions of its meaning, repertoire, purpose and limits will have to be enriched.
The New Year brings a challenge. Corrosion of democracy forms the backdrop to the 75th year of freedom, overshadowing the celebrations. The official website calls the moment “azadi ka amrit mahotsav”, though in the recent past, those talking of azadi were hounded as the tukde-tukde gang. Such is the fracture in our public psyche that azadi can be equated with an anti-national position on the one hand and on the other hand, a myopic view of azadi allows dismemberment of its core — democracy. The challenge, therefore, is to keep India’s democracy alive. Are we up to it?
The unexpected spread of democracy at the fag-end of the last century produced a global overuse of the term, denuding it of its meaning. Even as the industry of measuring and ranking democracies thrived, the practice of trading off democracy’s substance for its skeletal form became a booming business. Just as the “D” word became politically the most useful and used word, it also became so vague that its adversaries no longer needed to argue against it. Rather than anti-democratic arguments, we now witness the skillful taming of democracy.
In India, the taming of democracy is marked by three maladies. First, electoral majorities are understood to have elected a superhero with unbounded wisdom. The belief that the “king can do no wrong” would pale in the backdrop of faith in the leader’s motives and actions. The popular language of mandate becomes politically central to this phenomenon. Instead of electing (and changing) representatives responsible for governance, elections become the mythical ritual of coronation. While most parties are afflicted with this misconception and sundry representatives invoke it to justify their power and prestige, Narendra Modi has taken it to an unprecedented level. Not only has he assumed the role of being the representative of 125 crore people, he is also seen as the personification of popular will. This personification is then translated into legitimising a fundamental reworking not just of the physical structures of the polity, but its normative practices and ideological bases.
Two, electoral majorities are seen unabashedly as flowing from, and reflecting the majority of one community constructed from many sects and traditions. At an ideological level, attempts to conflate the nation with one community have gained ground. At a more practical level, the public sphere is seized with the issue of what we do with citizens not belonging to the majority faith. In governance terms, they are being pushed into the shadowy recesses of invisibility while in political terms, they are brought forward as enemies of the nation. This violent discourse produces a slippage of democratic rhetoric into nationalist rhetoric, sometimes juxtaposing the nation against democracy and sometimes conflating the national with the democratic.
Three, 21st century manipulations of democracy have almost successfully robbed people’s agency from democracy. An oversized image of the leader, claims of wisdom by the elected autocracy and consistent delegitimisation of any difference as anti-national have meant that the category of people exists as the symbolic legitimiser of power. People also exist as manufactured expressions of public unreason to be unleashed against opponents of the regime. But people as a democratic force do not exist or at least do not count for much.
All three afflictions have global parallels. They run deep in our polity and are shaping our political culture. Above all, they have democratic pretensions, which makes it tough to identify them, critique them and isolate them.
Democracies are adept at countering open attacks. They will have to invent new strategies for facing what scholars have been calling “democratic” ways of subverting democracy. In India, the list of expectations and failures is long. The bureaucracy has pathetically caved in, investigating agencies have practically transformed into a legal mafia, judiciary has become a sermonising priest at best and ideological partner of executive at worst. The media prides itself on being the trumpeting brigade of pseudo-nationalism besides working as PR agencies of the regime.
In this bleak backdrop, three pathways are worth considering. The first is the most attractive and one in which democrats invest a lot — protests, agitations and movements. From students to farmers to minorities, this regime has antagonised many sections of society. Poor governance and callous management of the economy pushes many more to the brink. Ideological varnish may stall or postpone organised protests, but not for long. While these protests have not substantially altered the course of democracy’s erosion, they do have the potential of rejuvenating people’s agency.
But the pathway most readers will be intrigued by is normal politics. Politics centred on a leader has blinded us for far too long. It is time India moves back to “politics as usual” — power politics, intra-party factionalism, competition over leadership, the cocktail of ideas, machinations and routine bargains. Not revolutions but ordinary politics can keep the spirit of democracy alive — that no party, no leader, no idea, no dream is final or invincible. America may not have substantively set aside Trumpism, but a non-dramatic Biden victory set aside the aura of Trump. That is the virtue of normal politics.
Such normal politics, of course, is only a small step in keeping democracy alive. An ideological engagement at the intellectual level is unavoidable. That engagement is not about the classical ideas of left and right, not about nation nor even about religion. All these battles are important, but the critical engagement urgently necessary will be about what we mean by democracy and what we do with it.
The 20th century was seen as the century of democracy’s expansion. If we do not want the present century to be that of democracy’s decay, then renewed public discourse around questions of its meaning, repertoire, purpose and limits will have to be enriched. The idea of democracy will have to be taken to the people once again with an emphasis on inclusion, institutions, procedures and deliberation, but chiefly as the question of power-sharing.
This is a global challenge. From Russia to Brazil, Turkey to Thailand, and Hungary to China, governments have turned into regimes. These regimes are busy controlling people’s destinies and are nearly successful in controlling our minds. The challenge is to rupture the regime-ness of entrenched networks of power and push the powerful for what they are — just power-holders, deservingly scrutinised for their use of power.
This will not necessarily happen through grand theory. Intellectual interventions of a daily nature and untiring responses to the routine distortions of democracy will be required. Democracy can remain alive at the intersection of politics and political criticism.
Written by Suhas Palshikar
Source: Indian Express, 4/01/21
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