India needs a new social contract

 

Harsh Mander writes: The pandemic exposed the horrors of the existing economic and social arrangements that privilege some but treat others as expendable

The pandemic has dramatically laid bare the catastrophic public costs of inequality. Thousands of lives could have been saved if much greater investments had been made in public health provisioning. The explosion of mass hunger and joblessness and the dislocation of millions of working poor people could have been averted had labour protection, social security, and wage levels of workers been secured.

“Inequality Kills” is the apt title of a devastating report by Oxfam India released at the time of the World Economic Forum in Davos. For India’s super-rich, the pandemic became a time to swell their wealth dizzyingly. The worst year of the pandemic for India was 2021. In this year, the net wealth of just one Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani, multiplied eight times, from $8.9 billion in 2020 to $50.5 billion in 2021. The net worth of Mukesh Ambani doubled to $85.5 billion in 2021, rocketing him from India’s to Asia’s richest man. In fact, Ambani added Rs 90 crore to his wealth every hour right from March 2020, the start of the pandemic. In 2021, the number of dollar billionaires in India expanded by 39 per cent. India is home today to the largest number of dollar billionaires, after the US and China, with more billionaires than France, Sweden and Switzerland combined. In 2020, 98 families held more wealth than 555 million Indians. India’s top 10 per cent owned 45 per cent of the country’s wealth. Three-fifths of India’s top 100 added $1 billion or more to their wealth in 2021 over the previous year.

In this same period, as many as 84 per cent Indian households suffered a fall of income, for many into deep and stubborn poverty. The RBI estimated a GDP contraction of minus 8.7 to 7 per cent. 120 million jobs were lost, of which 92 million were in the informal sector. In 2021, FAO reported there were 200 million undernourished people in India and India was home to a quarter of all undernourished people around the world. Pew estimated that the number of poor people in India doubled from 55 million in 2020 to 120 million in 2021. Oxfam reports that daily-wage workers topped the numbers of people who committed suicide in 2020, followed by self-employed and unemployed individuals.

Evaluations in the media do not adequately recognise that the greater part of the grim economic devastation that surrounds us in India today — deaths, joblessness, hunger — is not caused primarily by the Covid-19 virus. They are the consequence of market-led public policies that have fostered unequal life chances. This got exposed more in these times of global calamity.

Imagine a vastly different India. Imagine, for instance, a country that has secured free and quality healthcare for every citizen, a guarantee of food for all, workers’ rights to social security and wage payments to all during lockdowns, and decent housing and clean water. The deaths and unemployment that engulfed a large section of Indians could have been eschewed. If millions of working people had more money in their hands, the greatest contraction of the economy since Independence could have been forestalled. If decent social housing and clean water supply had been secured by governments for all residents, it would have enabled the millions forced into overcrowded shanties to protect themselves by keeping distance in well-ventilated tenements and washing their hands regularly. Millennials might then argue: All of this is unattainable; what, then, is the point of painting scenarios of utopias?

But just as the humanitarian crisis today could have been prevented, the alternative is eminently feasible if people and government commit themselves to the goals of the Constitution. India spends only 3.54 per cent of its budgetary resources on healthcare, much less, as noted by Oxfam, than other middle-income countries like Brazil (9.51), South Africa (8.25) and China (5.35). Income inequalities reduce life chances in India even more for those disadvantaged by caste, gender and religious identities. A Dalit woman, for instance, has 15 years lower life expectancy than an upper-caste woman. Confronted by a broken and starved public health system, even the poor have to rely on private health providers, and 60 per cent of health spending in India is out-of-pocket, among the highest in the world, and a major cause of poverty. In the pandemic, the exclusions were even more spectacular. Oxfam found middle-class families spending Rs 4 lakh a day in private hospitals during the second wave — sometThe starting point of our vision of a new India is for the state to assume responsibility to provision quality healthcare, education, food, pension, clean water and housing, free or in affordable ways for all citizens. Economist Prabhat Patnaik, in his contribution to the India Exclusion Report brought out by the Centre for Equity Studies, says that to resource all of this would demand a public resolve to expand taxation of the super-rich. Sufficient to fund all of this, he calculates, is two taxes levied only on the top 1 per cent of the population — a wealth tax of 2 per cent and an inheritance tax of 33 per cent. Our government is doing the opposite; it withdrew the wealth tax in 2015 and reduced the already low levels of corporate tax. The result is regressive taxation burdening the poor and abysmally low public spending.

Those who care for a kinder world must not miss this moment when the pandemic has revealed to us the horror of our moral collapse; of economic and social arrangements that privilege some lives, but treat the rest as expendable. The struggle of our times must be for a new social contract based on solidarity and inclusion.hing a casual worker earns in 1,000 days.

Written by Harsh Mander

Source: Indian Express, 29/01/22

Quote of the Day January 27, 2022

 

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
Benjamin Franklin

“ज्ञान में पूंजी लगाने से सर्वाधिक ब्याज मिलता है।”
बेंजामिन फ्रेंकलिन

National Tourism Day

 Every year the National Tourism Day is celebrated on January 25. The day is celebrated to create awareness about the growth aspects of tourism sector. Also, the day aims to spread the impact of tourism sector on the economic development of the country.

Theme of National Tourism Day, 2022

Rural and Community centric tourism

History

The tourism sector was first introduced in India in 1948. A tourism committee was formed in 1948. Later in 1958, a separate tourism department was created under the Ministry of Tourism and Communication.

What is National Tourism?

It includes activities of domestic tourism and outbound tourism. Domestic tourism includes activities of the residents of the country and the also the activities of the foreign tourists within India. Outbound tourism includes activities of residents of the country in foreign soil.

Who is Father of Tourism?

Thomas Cook. He was an English innovator who founded Thomas Cook and Son, a world famous travel agency. He is the inventor of modern tourism.

State – wise Tourism in India

Maharashtra has the highest number of tourists visiting the state. More than five lakh tourists visit the state annually. After Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu ranks second in tourism with more than four lakh tourists visiting the state. After these two states, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi are at third and fourth places respectively. UP has more than three lakh tourists visiting the state and Delhi has more than two lakh visitors.

Tourism in India

According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, the tourism sector in India generated 220 billion USD of revenue annually. Also, the tourism sector contributes to 9.2% of the total GDP of the country. The sector contributes 8.1% of employment. The medical tourism of India is 3 billion USD and is expected to grow more.

Interesting Facts about tourist spots in India

• There are 40 UNESCO Heritage sites in India. The last UNESCO heritage site added was the Dholavira. Dholavira is a Harappan city.
• Sikkim is the organic state of India. The state has 47.3% of its land area under forest cover. It has banned pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, single use plastics and packaged drinking water bottles.
• Highest Rail Bridge: Chenab bridge. It is 1,315 metres and is 35 metres higher than the Eiffel tower.
• The Sentinelese people have isolated themselves from the rest of the world. They live in Sentinel island.
• Kangra fort in Himachal Pradesh is the oldest fort in the country.

Applications Open For HBCU Student Scholarships

 Los Angeles – BeGreat Together, the nonprofit arm of newly launched online educational platform Assemble.fyi, has opened applications for $5,000 scholarships to be awarded to three, full-time junior, senior, or graduate students attending a Historically Black College or University. Chosen students will support them in conducting research for their upcoming short documentaries.

Starting Spring 2022, the organization will film four short documentaries focused on Black and Latino community changemakers and the work that they are doing to transform their communities. Each program will contain historical and present-day facts and statistics related to the community where the change is being catalyzed. Topics will include Black and Latino maternal health, advocacy and art within Latino communities, housing advocacy, engaging the justice system, and more.

 

It is the cultivation of our own natures that is aimed at and not the imitation of the nature of another.

The powers of our own mind are to be drawn out.

– Hallie Quinn Brown

“Launching this scholarship allows us to support the institutions that were founded as a beacon of hope for the Black community. Future generations have been invested in and built through HBCUs. Over time, that hope and investment has reverberated and reached others in our society, as we have seen significant enrollment of minorities from various ethnicities in HBCU institutions. We see this as an opportunity to join a longstanding endeavor to uplift and give opportunity to students who have historically been overlooked,” said Avrell Stokes, Co-Founder of Assemble.fyi and President of BeGreat Together.

 

Any full-time students enrolled in an accredited Historically Black College or University are encouraged to apply by submitting a short essay. Experience with qualitative or quantitative research is not necessary, but preferred. An interest in Black and/or Latino community building is strongly encouraged. Applications close February 22, 2022 at 11:59 CST. The three winners will be notified by the school email address provided by February 28, 2022 and the funds will be distributed directly to the institution they attend.

Source:indiaeducationdiary.in, 27/01/22

Thich Nhat Hanh taught us to live in the moment

 

Avijit Pathak writes: Amid the tyranny of the clock time and calculation of ‘productivity’, he showed how to live in the here and now

“When we look at a chair, we see the wood, but we fail to observe the tree, the forest, the carpenter, or our own mind. When we meditate on it, we can see the entire universe in all its inter-woven and interdependent relations in the chair.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh

Am I capable of invoking Thich Nhat Hanh —the Buddhist monk, who died on January 22, and whose engaged religiosity sought to illumine our consciousness, and inspire us to live with mindfulness and the art of deep listening? I ask this question because I often fear that the age we live in — techno-capitalism with its unlimited greed, militant nationalism with its inherent brute instincts — has made me incapable of living with love, peace and meditative calmness. I never visited Plum Village in France — the illuminating space that used to attract many modernists so that they could heal their wounded selves through his lessons of wisdom. However, over the years, Thich Nhat Hanh’s books became my intimate companions. Neither Rene Descartes nor Karl Marx, neither Sigmund Freud nor Jean Paul Sartre could deprive me of the joy of his books. I forgot the “methodology” of social sciences, and I began to sing with him:

Breathing in, I know I am alive. Breathing out, I smile at life. Just sitting there and enjoying our in-breath and out-breath is already happiness. We are alive, and that is worthy of celebration.

This celebration does by no means indicate that we remain indifferent to the world — the violent world with hunger, malnutrition, war and terrorism. It would not be wrong to say that the monk who felt and experienced the violence of the Vietnam War gave us the lessons of engaged Buddhism — the quest for ending violence and moving towards a compassionate world. He was truly an apostle of peace. Was it, therefore, surprising that he always pleaded for mindful and compassionate listening? We must understand that most of us — mighty nation-states, or we with our inflated egos— have lost this art of communion and empathy. However, we should not forget that “the intention of deep listening and loving speech is to restore communication”; and once communication is restored “everything is possible, including peace and reconciliation”. Amid suicide bombers and carpet bombing, he could remind us that the foreign policy of the US is often characterised by the “lack of deep listening”. No wonder, he could say: “If I were given the opportunity to be face to face with Osama bin Laden, I would try to understand all the suffering that had led him to violence.” After all, peace is impossible without the redemptive power of love and communication. We cannot negate this truth simply because our army generals, foreign policy experts, security strategists and politicians do not understand it.

Thich Nhat Hanh was a great teacher. With the rhythmic flow of his enchanting words and art of using metaphor, he could make us understand the meaning of living with the realisation of “interbeing”. Nothing is discrete and insulated; everything is connected. For instance, the chair on which I am sitting is made of all “non-chair elements”; in a way, “the chair has no boundaries, no beginning, and no end”. With the realisation of the “interdependent nature of all things”, we could possibly overcome the violence implicit in our alienated, disenchanted and fragmented existence. Even though I live in a world that normalises violence, and separates one from others, I allow myself to be possessed by his prophetic wisdom. “If someday I have to kill a caterpillar”, I too might feel, “something of ourselves dies with the caterpillar”.

It is true that the discourse of scientism and secularism has not succeeded in eliminating religion from the world. At the same time, we also know the discontents of the politics of religion — the way even today the non-reflexive priests of organised religions perpetuate all sorts of obnoxious practices; or the way, the gross emotions are often used by the alliance of spiritually impoverished fundamentalists and militant nationalists. Furthermore, in the age of instantaneity and consumption, we are also aware of the proliferation of all sorts of “self- help books”. From life coaches to new-age gurus, the neoliberal industry is continually selling instant capsules of “enlightenment”. However, this critical consciousness, for me, is not cynicism. Even in a desert, the flower, I believe, still blooms; and Thich Nhat Hanh was like this flower. With him, I too could echo with Walt Whitman, and sing: “I am large, I contain multitudes”; and I could also understand why even physicist David Bohm could say that “science must start from the wholeness of the implicate order to be able to see the real nature of each phenomenon”.

As I write this piece, I begin to contemplate on the title of one of his books, Present Moment, Wonderful Moment. We know that we miss the moment. While the trauma of the past haunts us, the worry of the future causes stress. When we do not live “here and now”, or when we miss this very moment, how can it be wonderful? But Thich Nhat Hanh reminded us of the “miracle of mindfulness”. Amid the tyranny of the clock time and calculation of “productivity”, my restless soul is healed by his wisdom: “Don’t drink your tea like someone who gulps down a cup of coffee during a work break. Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the whole earth revolves — slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.”

Yes, the monk has only changed his form: From a flowing river to floating monsoon clouds.

Written by Avijit Pathak 

The writer taught sociology at JNU

Source: Indian Express, 27/01/22

For a republic where women matter

 

Mrinal Pande writes: The state needs to take the first step towards examining women’s actual experiences in the contexts of unequal pay, allocation of inferior work and denial of rights over their minds and bodies

“One man’s word is no man’s word; we should quietly hear both sides.” —Goethe

When all is said and done, reality is not made of laws and data, but the actual experiences of human beings. Real-life stories of women surfacing from time to time in our republic reveal how despite constitutional guarantees of equality, the state has seldom, if ever, intervened systematically to ensure that women are treated equally. We have a very progressive Constitution on paper. Article 14 guarantees equality before law to all the country’s citizens. Article 15 prohibits discrimination on various grounds, including religion, caste, race and gender. Article 16 provides for equality of opportunity and equal pay for equal work to all in matters of public employment. But our laws have never seriously improved the unequal terms of male entitlement over women’s labour and/or their bodies.

Some 200 years ago, the eccentric Raja Gangadhar of Jhansi had understood that if there is one universally accepted symbol of powerlessness, it is a woman. When asked by the British resident why he dressed in women’s attire every few days, he replied that the British sarkar had effectively emasculated all native princes by divesting them of their power as regents. The British alone were men and erstwhile native rulers had been forced to wear bangles, he said. (Maaza Pravas by Vishnu Bhatt Godshe).

From Raja Gangadhar’s point of view, law combines coercion with authority. In our time, one of the country’s sharpest legal minds, Justice Leila Seth, raises the same point. In Talking of Justice: People’s Rights in Modern India, she asks: “What at root is justice? When I speak to children about the Preamble to our Constitution, I explain justice as being fair. But how can one be fair if the laws are not adequate and the interpreters of the law not sensitive?”

Let’s talk of concrete instances. Last year, an interim order was passed by the Supreme Court allowing eligible women to appear for the entrance exam of the National Defence Academy (NDA) and the Naval Academy conducted by the UPSC. The Government of India said that the implementation of the court’s order in 2021 may be difficult. A year later, on January 18, the court revisited the subject and asked the state to explain why of the 1,002 women who had cleared the entrance test in 2021, only 19 women had been admitted to the prestigious NDA in 2022?

The usual approach taken by Indian men in authority towards working women remains protectionist at best and severely critical at worst. A cringe-worthy example of sexism is a recent comment by the health minister of Karnataka, who rued that too many women in India are westernised and wish to stay single. Even if they do get married, they refuse to “give birth”, preferring surrogacy, he said.

This mindset repeatedly surfaces in electoral politics too. When it comes to ticket distribution, women — even those with a record of winning elections — must remain at the mercy of party bosses, mostly male. This is justified by pointing out biological factors — family responsibilities, child-bearing, etc. In UP, for instance, a sitting woman MLA is being challenged in her own constituency by her husband, a party post holder, for a ticket. An MLA’s daughter, who had married against her father’s wishes, has moved the High Court to ask for police protection for her husband and herself, and later released a video requesting her father to recall his goons who had roughed them up outside the court.

As party workers, men have a clearly articulated agency for change and decision-making when tickets are distributed or portfolios are assigned. Women, by and large, remain abstractions with abstract rights and are deemed suitable mostly for the reserved categories men cannot fill. Even pro-women intervention by the state is made without seeking female opinion, though steps such as Ujjwala Yojana, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and Jan Dhan Yojana are all glibly defined as a compassionate means for the “empowerment” of women. On addressing women’s actual debasement by rape, pornography, and sex discrimination, factors that eat into their sociopolitical status, the state remains schizoid.

Since the Justice Verma committee’s tweaking of the older rape laws, our judiciary has begun accepting a supposed distinction between sex and gender. But when the matter of female sexuality is discussed and adjudicated upon, women are seldom seen as having an agency of their own. If a menstruating woman enters a temple or a married woman denies her husband consent to have sex, their defiance becomes not a question to be debated under equality laws but as social questions, and are finally adjudicated upon not as a question of basic rights of a citizen but as a part of a certain social structure.

The Indian state has, so far, not fully confronted the relationship between state and society. The NDA echoes its bitter rival, the UPA, in the matter of keeping the bedroom out of bounds for India’s rape laws. It stated (in an affidavit to the Delhi High Court): “What may appear to be marital rape” to a wife “may not appear so to others”. And, that criminalising marital rape may “destabilise the institution of marriage apart from being an easy tool for harassing husbands.”

The point to note is that whether in a bedroom or in a cave, in a woman’s experience, a rape is a rape. What married men want from their wives may not always automatically be what wives also want from husbands. Why must the state, instead of protecting a woman’s sexuality from forced violation and expropriation, continue to present or treat her merely as family property when a crime is committed against her?

If we truly wish to rethink the republic as one in which women really matter, we need to move beyond reflections about family relationships. The state needs to take the first step towards examining women’s actual experienced reality in contexts of unequal pay, allocation of inferior work (compare numbers of men in the formal sector to women), and denial of rights over their minds and bodies.

Did we, the women, ever give our consent to be ruled by a toxic brand of masculinity that would treat us as merely a vote bank and/or second-class citizens? We may occasionally be handed crumbs of progressive or revised legislation, but what do they matter? Like the native princes of Raja Gangadhar’s era, in the name of loyalty to the queen or Hindu Rashtra, we are still largely denied our essential status as independent and equal citizens. A feminist theory of state has barely been shaped much less articulated. But, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, every reform was once an opinion.

Written by Mrinal Pande

Source: Indian Express, 26/01/22

Quote of the Day January 25, 2022

 

“A man is great by deeds, not by birth.”
Chanakya

“व्यक्ति कर्मों से महान बनता है, जन्म से नहीं।”
चाणक्य