“There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.”
Denis Waitley
“जीवन में दो मूल विकल्प होते हैं: स्थितियों को उसी रूप में स्वीकार करना जैसी वे हैं, या उन्हें बदलने का उत्तरदायित्व स्वीकार करना।”
डेनिस वेटले
– PM inaugurates month-long ‘Kashi Tamil Sangamam’ in Varanasi, UP; objective is to celebrate age-old links between two ancient seats of learning
– Arunachal Pradesh: PM inaugurates Donyi Polo Airport, Itanagar and 600 MW Kameng Hydro Power Station
– India’s longest train, Dibrugarh-Kanyakumari Vivek Express, to run twice a week; 4,189 kms, 80 hours
– Bulldozing of houses in name of investigation not provided under law: Gauhati High Court
– Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama (87) given Gandhi Mandela Award of Gandhi Mandela Foundation in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh
– Centre unveils Digital Data Protection Bill for public consultation; bill will provide legal framework for right to privacy of citizens
– Former bureaucrat Arun Goel appointed as Election Commissioner
– Tabassum, actor & popular Doordarshan talk show host, dies at 78
– J&K: 3 soldiers killed in avalanche in north Kashmir’s Machil Kupwara sector
– Second edition of ASEAN India Music Festival being held in Delhi on Nov 18-20
– 3rd “No Money For Terror” Conference (Counter-Terrorism Financing) organised in New Delhi
– USA tops Network Readiness Index 2022 of US-based Portulans Institute, India 61st
– Women’s Entrepreneurship Day celebrated on Nov 19
– Govt cuts export duty on steel, iron ore; hikes import duty on some raw materials
– 21st World Congress of Accountants being held in Mumbai on Nov 18-21
– “Homer” is word of the year for 2022: Cambridge Dictionary; is an informal American English word for a home run in baseball
– Nord Stream leaks of Sept 27 confirmed as sabotage, Sweden says; Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines link Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea
– APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Economic Leaders meeting held in Bangkok; theme: “OPEN, CONNECT and BALANCE”
– Elon Musk reinstates celebrity accounts on Twitter, says ‘no decision’ on Trump
– World Toilet Day observed on Nov 19
– Russian fertiliser blocked at European ports to be shipped from Nov 21: UN
– India’s Manika Batra wins bronze medal in Asian Cup Table Tennis tournament in Bangkok
– India launches its first privately developed rocket, the Vikram-suborbital developed by Skyroot Aerospace, from ISRO’s launch site in Sriharikota (AP)
– India wins Excellence in Leadership in Family Planning (EXCELL) Awards-2022 at International Conference on Family Planning in Thailand.
– ‘No Money for Terror’ Ministerial Conference on Counter-Terrorism Financing being held in New Delhi on Nov 18-19
– 5th Naturopathy Day celebrated on Nov 18; theme: theme, ‘Naturopathy: An Integrative Medicine’
– Veteran Punjabi actress Daljeet Kaur dies at 69 in Ludhiana
– Maximum tenure of CEO and MD of public sector banks increased to 10 years
– UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik) levy on airlines to double from January 1; currently, the levy is ₹5,000 per departure
– Govt extends tenure of ED (Enforcement Directorate) Director Sanjay Mishra for one more year
– First World Day for Prevention of and Healing from Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Violence observed on Nov 18
– Dutch court convicts three MH17 suspects, acquits one; Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was downed by missile over Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on July 17, 2014
– Asian Airgun Championships in South Korea: Rhythm Sangwan & Vijayveer Sidhu clinch gold in Air Pistol Mixed Team event
– Gulam Abbas Moontasir, Arjuna awardee and former captain of Indian men’s basketball team, dies at 80
India has set a stellar example of reserved quotas for women in local governance for a country that has a poor record of its overall commitment to women’s rights. It is an example of how a country can successfully empower women, politically, economically, and socially.
India is far from perfect in ensuring women’s rights, but quotas at the local government level are making a real impact. Development experts are discovering that societies and cultures that invest in and empower women are on a virtuous cycle. They become more affluent, better governed, stable, and less prone to violence.
By contrast, countries that limit women’s educational and employment opportunities and their political voices get stuck in a downward spiral. They are poorer, more fragile, and have higher levels of corruption. In the last two decades, the gender landscape in rural India has been slowly greening, and women are now on the cusp of a powerful social and political revolution. The harbinger of this change is a unique policy experiment in village-level governance that has brought transformative results for the weakest of the weak and the poorest of the poor: the village women.
In 1993, India introduced the Panchayati Raj Act, mandating a three-tiered structure of local governance at the village, block, and district levels with reservation of one-third of all posts in Gram Panchayats (village councils) at the bottom tier of India’s decentralised governance system, for women. The vision was that these women-headed councils would bring greater transparency and better governance to their villages.
It revitalised an age-old method of rural local government whose name “panchayat” is drawn from Sanskrit, meaning the council of five wise men. This new law was a step towards the fruition of Mahatma Gandhi’s dreams of village-level self-governance with gender justice as a critical pillar.
Gandhi believed that if implemented correctly the Panchayati Raj system would alleviate the alienation of the common people from governance and preclude the external intervention of higher-level civic officials, who might not be familiar with the concerns of local people.
Earlier politics was considered a foul word, and women were expected to keep a hygienic distance from it. However, development scientists and social activists now acknowledge that the modern development paradigm has political salience and that politics underpins all facets of development. Politics is the firing engine for all the cylinders of development. It is true that political power needs to be sanitized and has to be reinforced with ethical underpinnings to make it more benevolent.
This can come about only when more educated and development-oriented individuals embrace politics as a critical arena for innovation and change. Politics is the fulcrum of governance, and unless the quality of political timber is improved, governance will continue to limp.
Experience of this social and political experiment has shown that women are not just equal to the task but also orientate public-good provision more towards the preferences of their gender, namely more water, healthcare, and roads. Though less politically savvy and often only semi-illiterate, these women had an advantage in being actively mentored by trainers who are building the district bureaucracy.
Several NGOs also designed programmes to skill them in governance. Women face a host of difficulties in handling political power – cultural norms, social hierarchies, and patriarchal practices ~ which together tend to favour and attract men and discourage the participation of women. India has set a stellar example of reserved quotas for women in local governance for a country that has a poor record of its overall commitment to women’s rights.
It is an example of how a country can successfully empower women, politically, economically, and socially.
In 1993, an amendment to India’s constitution formally established Panchayati Raj (local democracy), a three-tiered local governance structure at the village, block, and district levels, to represent small rural communities. It has been called a silent revolution, the most significant social experiment of our time, and one of the greatest innovations in grassroots democracy. It is one of the crown jewels in India’s democracy.
And thanks to quotas reserving spots for female representatives, several women have been making their way up India’s governance ladder. More than thirty lakh women have become politically active, with over ten lakh of them being elected to public office every five years. They are no longer puppets, rubber stamps, or proxies for their husbands.
The rise of Indian women as heads of Gram Panchayats is a spectacular achievement, given that India has one of the worst records concerning how it treats females. Malnourished, suppressed, uneducated, violated, and discriminated against, Indian women have the odds stacked against them. Remarkably, they are now setting Indian demographics and social indices right.
These elected women are now role models to other women in their communities and are altering the development agenda to address issues critical to them. Their impact touches other areas, which may lead to enduring overall change. This role model effect can help close the gender gaps in other realms because higher aspirations translate into more significant investments in girls by their parents and themselves.
Several women who started their political careers as self-described “rubber stamp” officials are now asking about budget allocations. They stride about in government offices with polished informality sharing their concerns with officials in tones of supportiveness and assertiveness. They successfully challenge the traditional village male elite by defying social codes of female bias and are now powerful aspirational symbols and role models.
Women leaders today are more than just mouthpieces for their politically-savvy husbands. However, the path they have trodden after the initial euphoria of winning elections has not been easy. There have been growing pains and many early entrants retreated, never to emerge again.
The avalanche of social and cultural mores rained heavily on them. Although the resistance is whittling down, it is clear that achieving gender equality in leadership will require sustained policy actions that favour women over a long time. The vision is not as romantic as many would like us to believe.
But as women have shown, they have all that is needed to ride out these storms. The men know this very well, but they don’t want to concede that women possess the ability to be the better halves because they are afraid of losing their last refuge, that is, politics.
In the long term, the journey will be harder than policy wonks can imagine. The wait could potentially be eternal. But if bureaucrats can muster the will, they can succeed. They know from past lessons that they have the tools and need to vigorously back reforms that can engender greater empowerment for women. For sustainable change to happen, women must actively compete in the present political game.
Legislation and policy pronouncements seldom penetrate the surface of social and political barriers. They are ultimately impotent against the grid of the established power structures inherent in most rural households and villages.
The great strength of democracy, according to Amartya Sen, lies in that “it gives people in need a voice and, by so doing, plays a protective role against so many different forms of political and economic abuse.” Panchayati Raj is just the beginning; it is only one step on the way, but it is the right step on the right ladder.
These women are reconfiguring gender and social dynamics and have started exploring their wider responsibilities as stakeholders and citizens of a polity. However, decentralisation is not easy. The skill levels in impoverished communities are very low.
And in a country where democracy has been established in a top-down manner, a feudal mindset may still prevail. The people may not be aware that the government should be accountable to the people, and not the other way around. A lot of positive changes are coming in better-governed villages.
There are still large swathes where discriminatory traditions continue to dominate. Several factors constrain the effective participation of women leaders, including a lack of basic familiarity with political governance and the absence of legal literacy. Women need to be given adequate advocacy tools to strengthen democratic engagement and gain control over local resources.
Village assemblies are a critical participatory institution in providing equal access to all members of the community to the deliberations and negotiations in local governance. Still, elite control of these bodies has prevented functional democracy from taking root. This is the reason why, in several remote and tribal pockets, Panchayat Raj has failed to enhance the social outcomes for most citizens.
The social pecking order of villages cannot be overturned easily, and several challenges remain to fuller empowerment. Legitimately-elected women representatives remain vulnerable to manipulation and harassment and are often reduced to mere proxies, while the actual decision-making authority remains with their husbands or power brokers from higher castes.
At the policy level, we must understand the structural impediments in the full evolution of Gram Panchayats as functional governance units remain. The Panchayati Raj Act created these bodies but did not endow them with various governance functions like financial authority for the provision of education, health, sanitation, and water.
Instead, the law simply enumerated the functions that could be transferred and left it to the State Legislature to devolve them. There has been very little devolution of authority and functions till now. Gram Sabhas were expected to be the primary legislation of rural governance with responsibilities to catalyse local planning by conducting ‘needs assessment’ exercises and devising plans for development projects aggregated at the panchayat level.
These would become official inputs into the state government’s annual budgeting process when further aggregated and rationalized at the district level. Gram Sabhas did remain a pivotal institution in local planning but had a little real role in governance.
Despite the noble intention, they have struggled to stay relevant. They continue to be plagued by low participation and frequent hijacking by influential interests and have not been able to mature into viable democratic units. The dip in popular participation and weak political will has had significant implications for the future of democratic decentralisation in India.
The heroic stories of tenacious women scripting tales of success are significant signs of a brighter tomorrow. Women’s empowerment is a journey that yields simple policies, not a fixed point.
MOIN QAZI
Source: The Statesman, 17/11/22
We are threatened simultaneously by poly-crises from war, climate change, technology, social injustices, and geopolitical rivalries. There is no super prophet available who has the sufficient moral and credible standing to lead us all out of the current wilderness.
We are threatened simultaneously by poly-crises from war, climate change, technology, social injustices, and geopolitical rivalries. There is no super prophet available who has the sufficient moral and credible standing to lead us all out of the current wilderness.
Change is coming so rapidly and bewilderingly from all directions that in a world of specialist experts, each in their own narrow fields, no single person has the breadth and depth of knowledge to explain simply to 8 billion people how to act for social progress.
Young climate activist Greta Thunberg has 2 billion followers, but no concrete plans on how to make change for climate warming. Just saying Net Zero by 2050 is just blah blah blah does not make serious change. In 2018, 300 leading global social scientists (International Panel on Social Progress) worked together to produce a multi-disciplinary three-volume report called “Re-thinking Society for the 21st Century”, considered then the cutting edge thinking on what is social progress and how to achieve it.
Since the report was highly technical, Cambridge University Press brought out a simpler version called A Manifesto for Social Progress: Ideas for a Better Society. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s foreword recalled that 170 years ago, the era of social injustices from industrial capitalism produced a Communist Manifesto that claimed “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” The new Manifesto argues that social progress can be enhanced through reforms in institutions and behavioral changes. The difference between the two Manifestos is that the newer version is based on the latest empirical data and research.
The core idea of a good society starts from the premise that every human being is entitled to full dignity, irrespective of gender, race, religion, education, talent, and productive capacities. Since human activity is changing the planet (the Age of Anthropocene), humans should be in the driving seat of change. Indeed, the mantra of Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) means that improvements in the environment and addressing social change must involve better governance.
Since governance quality determines the final delivery of social progress, politics is all about how to achieve the three pillars of social equity (reduce inequalities between and within nations), freedom (expand and deepen basic liberties, rule of law, and democratic rights for all populations); and environmental sustainability (preserving the ecosystem for future generations). Conventional thinking about governance is often presented as a binary choice between state versus market.
But in practice, there are many variants of mixed economies and political systems, in which state and markets are symbiotic, simultaneously working and fighting with each other. Whatever modes of governance, all must have bottom-up legitimacy and accountability, in which the link between leaders and communities have feedback mechanisms of empowerment, representation, participation, and deliberations that mobilize change-makers for social progress.
The alternative is social regression. Amidst all the polarisation and contention, the book draws common lessons about social change, which can come from revolution or evolution, depending on the degree of imbalances.
First, deep social change often comes from people, social movements and civil society organisations, rarely from top down.
Second, democratisation and empowerment require the participation of and pressure by those stakeholders who are affected by change.
Third, many experiments are needed to explore how to implement and adapt general ideas to local needs and possibilities for change to be accepted. In short, the consensus of 300 social scientists is that there is no single model, no single recipe for transformation. Social change comes from diversity and openness to different paths to change, but it is important to adapt general principles of human dignity and needs to local contexts and possibilities, and to exclude all forms of dogmatic approaches.
The latest mid-term elections in the United States reflect this complex but deep shift after nearly six years of Trumpian politics that deeply divided the nation. Past mid-term elections have always been against the incumbent party, but this time round, the “red wave” shift back to the Republicans winning both the Senate and the House of Representatives did not happen. The Democrats did well to retain narrowly the Senate and lost narrowly to the Republicans in Congress.
A new Republican leader in Ron DeSantis has emerged as an alternative Republican candidate to Donald Trump for the 2024 Presidential elections. The election results signal that American voters prefer a move towards the centre after years of traumatic polarization. In Bali this month, the success in their respective elections by President Biden and President Xi gave both the mandate to begin to calm down rhetoric after months of escalating US-China tensions. Differences will always exist, because progress comes from continuous work on change from individual to community to national and then global levels.
To expect top leaders of state or corporations alone to do the heavy lifting will not work. The social scientists’ manifest has six ideas to change one’s own life and the world. Climate change is a complex system change, and there is no silver bullet or instant change possible. First, one could change through family, especially listening more to the young. Second, change can come from the workplace, as one contributes through jobs. Third, we can effect change through community.
Fourth, we can change the market through our consumption and savings choices. Fifth, we can be a torch bearer to all we meet by caring and sharing. Lastly, each of us should be an active citizen, open and adaptive to change. Change must take time, which means often painful or tortuous transitions that cannot be avoided. Each generation must make their own mistakes or create their own opportunities for betterment. Change or be changed. This is an opportunity to either make lunch or be lunch.
ANDREW SHENG
Source: The Statesman, 2011/22
“Who are we to decide: what will be the outcome of our actions? It is God’s domain. We are just simply responsible for the actions.”
Geeta
“हम अपने कार्यों के परिणाम का निर्णय करने वाले कौन हैं? यह तो भगवान का कार्यक्षेत्र है। हम तो एकमात्र कर्म करने के लिए उत्तरदायी हैं।”
गीता