India@75, Looking@100: An education system that fosters fraternity and humility

 

India at 100 in my imagination will evolve from the certitudes of a Vishwaguru to the resilience of a ‘Shreshta Shishya’, with the humility of the eternal seeker, ever learning, ever flowing, malleable enough to put her own truths to stringent scrutiny.

Anniversaries invariably evoke expectations. To set out a vision for India at 100 from where we are today at 75 is daunting, given the bewildering pace at which the world is changing. Yet, having spent most of my working life in the higher education space, I have learnt the value of the audacity of hope.

Maria Montessori said, “establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is to keep us out of war”. The need for education to play an effective role in nurturing “cultures of peace” is internationally acknowledged. Change, complexity, fragility and uncertainty define the world today, with Covid reminding us of the need for leveraging cooperation, collective action and an ethic of care for a sustainable planet.

In multi-ethnic, multi-religious societies like India, which are fractured along the lines of class, caste, region, religion and gender, the transformative potential of education to play a peace-sustaining role faces challenges. Populism and jingoism the world over have deepened divisions, triggered sectarian violence and reinforced prejudices. Indian education must set itself the task to provide effective antidotes to the “militarisation” of the mind and proactively nurture the canvas of coexistence. Critical thinking, dialogue, civic participation, community engagement and non-violent action are integral to this moment. In 1995, UNESCO endorsed a declaration on the Integrated Framework of Action on Education for peace, human rights and democracy. It was the first international instrument that established the link between the practice of democracy and learning about diversity and “the wealth of cultural identities”. Education can provide the conceptual alphabets for a vocabulary of peace, only through the consistent interrogation of pedagogical frames that overtly — or even subliminally — transmit prejudice and intolerance. The implementation of the new National Curriculum Framework (NCF) must provide the context to not only mould “global citizens” but also “intelligent patriots” with the courage to hold up the mirror and question the shibboleths we live by.

Critical thinking, beyond “proscribed texts” and “prescribed” curricula, is needed to propel education towards nourishing predispositions and an inclination for peace in societies. Education must be open to the not-always harmonious reverberations of learning. The pluriverse of the global Learning Commons can potentially arrest our cartographic anxieties and processes of “othering”. Its sheer diversity can inure education from proselytising tendencies, sectarian impulses and partisan agendas. (The contestations over the writing of history are all too familiar to us). History is replete with examples of “heretical” interrogations within “dissenting traditions,” opening new continents of thought. The contributions of an Aryabhata, Buddha, Copernicus, Galileo, Al-Zahrawi, Descartes, Newton, Marx and Einstein were built on paradigm shifts that disrupted settled comfort zones. The oft-invoked Nalanda tradition too excelled in pushing the Sutras to evoke new voices through reasoned debate — from “safe spaces” to “brave spaces”.

In the Preamble, our Constitution foregrounds justice, liberty, equality and fraternity as interlinked foundational principles. The one value, however, that has received the least attention both in policy and legislation is fraternity. It is time to address that lacuna, with education playing a decisive role.

I imagine an India at 100, that inscribes the spirit of sa vidya ya vimuktaye (that alone is knowledge which leads to liberation) into its educational initiatives. I imagine pedagogical practices imbued with a social purpose to remove all forms of discrimination. I imagine an India at 100 that provides a hospitable space for pedagogies that cultivate the intellect and also integrate body, mind and spirit to balance our ecological, ethical, emotional, creative and spiritual needs — emphasising what makes us human — not merely our global competitiveness. The emphasis on self-knowledge with the recognition of the interconnectedness of all sentient beings and context sensitivity has been integral to our traditions of learning. How well can we retrieve these values?

Civic responsibility in an interdependent world requires perspectives on how every considered action can potentially impact multiple lives across time and geography. This to me appears as fundamental to the spirit of “Vasudhaiva kutumbakam”.

I dream of an India where institutes of learning will cease to be domesticating spaces and will reconstruct themselves as transformative, and above all, engendered spaces. These spaces do more than assure mere numeric representation for women. They ensure substantive equality to counter the violence and exclusions of class, caste and patriarchy. For instance, although women constitute an unprecedented 49.3 per cent in the higher education space in India, they still face several obstacles to the full and equal participation guaranteed by our Constitution.

At 100, women will not remain the hugely underutilised resource they are today. They will drive and helm processes of change for a more inclusive, humane world, crafting a new social compact that fulfils the emancipatory potential of education. This calls for opening up more spaces to converse in the metaphoric mother tongue (the potent utterance of the sacred Vac) the language of empathy in which maps can change and scripts be rewritten to include invisibilised histories and that can speak truth to power.

With 100 per cent substantive literacy, India at 100 will be home to the finest citadels of learning that mould sensitive, global citizens who make their voice count in world affairs, providing ethical and intellectual leadership in every field of human endeavour. India at 100 in my imagination will evolve from the certitudes of a Vishwaguru to the resilience of a “Shreshta Shishya”, with the humility of the eternal seeker, ever learning, ever flowing, malleable enough to put her own truths to stringent scrutiny.

Written by Meenakshi Gopinath

Source: Indian Express, 18/01/23

How human disturbance can alter habitats, routines of animals

 Hours, minutes or even seconds can make the difference for an animal between stumbling upon a predator and avoiding one, between finding a bush loaded with berries and discovering branches that have already been gnawed bare. Mere moments can determine whether a raccoon comes face-to-face with a bobcat at night, whether a flock of cocky turkeys finds its field already occupied by cranes, whether a deer disappears into the trees before a coyote appears on the scene.

An animal’s fortunes, and the health of entire ecosystems, can hinge on these ephemeral encounters — or lucky non-encounters. “An animal must be at the right place, at the right time, to avoid predators, find food, reproduce successfully,” said Neil Gilbert, a postdoctoral researcher at Michigan State University. In that way, the interactions between the animals in a given ecosystem are like a theatrical production, he said, adding, “For the production to be a success, each actor has to be onstage, in the right place, and they must act and deliver their lines at the right time.” Now, a new study reveals how humans might unwittingly rewrite these ecological scripts, altering how the characters interact and fueling more interspecies encounters.

To conduct the study, Gilbert and his colleagues analyzed images captured by Snapshot Wisconsin, a citizen-science project run by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Since 2016, volunteers have deployed more than 2,000 wildlife cameras across the state, capturing tens of millions of images of Wisconsin’s fields, farms and forests — and the fauna that frequent them.

Wild animals of different species were more likely to lead overlapping lives — appearing at local camera sites in quicker succession — in human-altered landscapes, like farms, than in more undisturbed locations, such as national forests, scientists reported in PNAS last month.

The finding suggests that human disturbance can squeeze animals closer together, increasing the odds that they bump into each other. “There’s a little less elbow room,” Gilbert said.

Although more research is needed, that interspecies squeeze could have effects such as making it harder for prey to evade predators, intensifying competition for resources or increasing the risk of interspecies disease transmission, the researchers say.

“The compression of species niches will likely lead to new interactions among species with unknown consequences,” Benjamin Zuckerberg, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an author of the study, said in an email.

Strangers on a Plain

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources created Snapshot Wisconsin in an effort to collect continuous, statewide data — at all hours of the day and during all seasons of the year — on local wild animal populations. It relies on an army of volunteer camera hosts to install, monitor and maintain wildlife cameras, on both public and private land across the state.

The cameras, which are triggered by motion and body heat, have captured a menagerie of animals going about their everyday lives: bald eagles scavenging in the snow, bear cubs climbing trees, a newborn fawn, a bevy of otters gamboling down a grassy trail. “It’s just so many otters,” said Jennifer Stenglein, a quantitative research scientist at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and an author of the new study.

(The department posts many of the photos on Zooniverse, an online citizen science platform, where volunteers from around the world can help identify the creatures in each shot.)

For the new study, the researchers analyzed nearly 800,000 photos of animals captured over the course of four years. To assess species “co-occurrence,” they calculated how much time elapsed between the moments when members of 74 species pairs — turkeys and deer, for instance, or coyotes and skunks — appeared at a given camera site.

If coyotes and skunks are routinely showing up in the same place within an hour or a day of one another, they are more likely to have habitats and routines that overlap — and to encounter one another in the real world — than if days or weeks pass between appearances, the scientists reasoned. The time intervals between detections varied enormously. Sometimes the cameras captured the odd animal couples in the same frame; other times, days or weeks might pass between their appearances.

But overall, across all animal pairs, the trend was clear: In relatively pristine habitats, such as national forests, roughly six days elapsed, on average, between detections. In the most human-altered habitats, that interval dropped to an average of four days. Over a three-month period, the researchers estimated, highly antagonistic pairs — that is, duos in which one species was likely to kill the other, such as bobcats and rabbits or foxes and squirrels — would encounter each other seven additional times in the most highly disturbed landscapes compared with the least disturbed ones.

(Even when the animals do not come face-to-face, simply hearing or smelling a predator can have “dramatic effects” on the behaviors of prey species, Gilbert noted.)

“It will be fascinating to see who will be the winners and who will be the losers in this human-compressed niche space,” Zuckerberg said.

“For example, will prey and lesser competitors need to adapt new defenses or behaviors?” he wondered. Can they even do so?

The scientists also found that much of the effect appeared to be driven by differences in relative abundance; species such as raccoons and squirrels tended to be more numerous in human-disturbed landscapes — where dumpsters overflow and fields are thick with grain — than in wilder ones.

But these differences did not entirely account for the findings, suggesting that some species might also change their behavior in human-altered habitats, becoming active at different times of day or ranging less widely. (Animals with less space to roam would be more likely to collide, like gas particles in a shrinking vessel, Gilbert noted.)

Still, many questions remain, including whether the findings generalize to other species and ecosystems and what, precisely, is happening when these creatures meet, even when the encounters are caught on camera.

How did the bobcat chase off the coyote? Who won the skunk-raccoon faceoff? And why does that deer look as if it’s about to kick a snarling opossum in the face? (“Like, what did this poor opossum do?” Gilbert wondered.)

More broadly, are species like deer and raccoons actually engaging with one another when they meet on a dark trail? Or are they simply passing by, like sentient ships in the night? “It is difficult to fully tease apart,” Zuckerberg said.

But the study illustrates the potential for using wildlife cameras to probe aspects of animal behavior that might otherwise be difficult to observe, Stenglein said. “We didn’t sit in the field and watch animals interact,” she said. “But there’s so much power in being able to use this trail camera data to understand how animals are behaving. It just, to me, opens up a floodgate of possibilities.”

(Written by Emily Anthes)

Source: Indian Express, 18/01/23

Quote of the Day January 16, 2023

 

“Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?”
George Bernard Shaw

“सौन्दर्य पहली नज़र में तो अच्छा है; लेकिन घर में आने के तीन दिन के बाद इसे कौन पूछता है?”
जॉर्ज बरनार्ड शॉ

What is ‘Saharsh’ Initiative of Tripura?

 Tripura government has launched a special education programme called ‘Saharsh’ in an effort to encourage social and emotional learning. The initiative was launched on a pilot basis in August last year in 40 schools in the state, and from January 2023, it will be extended to all government and aided schools of the state. The programme is aimed at empowering children to learn with happiness and contribute to empathetic development.

What is Social and Emotional Learning?

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults learn the skills they need to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions. SEL is critical for students to succeed in school and in life. The ‘Saharsh’ initiative is designed to help students develop these skills and become well-rounded, resilient individuals.

Effectiveness of the Program

The ‘Saharsh’ initiative is based on a similar programme that was found to be effective in social and economic development in research studies of Harvard and Columbia Universities. The programme is being contextualised with local realities of India before implementing it in Tripura. The state government has already trained 204 schools for the ‘Saharsh’ curriculum while 200 more will be trained soon. Thirty assistant headmasters from different districts of Tripura were also selected to work as Saharsh implementation ambassadors.

What is the “Pineapple Express” Phenomenon?

 Over the past two weeks, California and other parts of the West Coast have been hit with a series of what meteorologists call atmospheric rivers. Forecasters have said that the rain arriving in California on January 12 is being caused by a “true Pineapple Express” – a specific example of a common atmospheric phenomenon that resembles a conveyor belt for moisture. This article will examine the “Pineapple Express” phenomenon and its impact on California’s recent storms.

What is the “Pineapple Express” Phenomenon?

“Pineapple Express” is a specific example of a common atmospheric phenomenon known as atmospheric rivers. These rivers in the sky, also known as “rivers in the sky” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, are long, narrow regions in the atmosphere that transport most of the water vapor outside the tropics. They carry a lot of moisture – enough water vapor to equal or sometimes exceed the average flow of the Mississippi River at the point where it flows into the Gulf of Mexico.

For an atmospheric river to be classified as a “true Pineapple Express,” its location is key. The tail end, where the moisture is pulled into the atmosphere, must start near Hawaii. Then the river must stretch continuously through the atmosphere to the U.S. West Coast. This type of atmospheric river is known to bring heavy precipitation to the West Coast, as it is a continuous flow of moisture.

Is the “Pineapple Express” a common phenomenon?

Atmospheric rivers occur often on the West Coast but can happen in other locations, including the eastern United States, where they often channel moisture from the Caribbean. They are an essential part of the livelihood of coastal states, which rely heavily on precipitation for their water supply. Between 30% and 50% of the annual precipitation on the West Coast occurs from just a few atmospheric river events, according to the NOAA.

What are the effects of “Pineapple Express” storms?

When the atmospheric rivers are particularly strong – or come back-to-back in what are called “atmospheric river families” – the effects can be serious. This is the case in California, where the recent storms have led to extensive flooding. The “Pineapple Express” can be a double-edged sword, as it brings much-needed water to the state but also leads to destructive flooding if the storms are too strong.

The “Pineapple Express” is a common atmospheric phenomenon that brings much-needed precipitation to the West Coast. However, when the storms are particularly strong, as is the case in California, the effects can be severe. Understanding the “Pineapple Express” and its impact on the state’s weather patterns is essential in being able to predict and prepare for future storms.

Economic & Political Weekly: Table of Contents

 

Vol. 58, Issue No. 2, 14 Jan, 2023

Editorials

Heading towards a ‘W’-shaped Recovery?

Comment

FCR 2022: An Attempt to Subvert the Power of Gram Sabhas

From the Editor's Desk

Environmental Justice Caught in the Cleft

From 50 Years Ago

From 50 Years Ago: On the Asians in East Africa

H T Parekh Finance Column

Resolving the Debt Crisis - Grim Lessons from Africa

C P Chandrasekhar

Commentary

Modernity with a Brand - Reflections on the NDTV Takeover

Bhupen Singh

Non-performing Loan Auctions - A Failed Effort

Ashish Pandey

Musk’s Twitter Acquisition - Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire

Gurumurthy Kasinathan

Book Reviews

Agrarian Relations in West Bengal

Sejuti Das Gupta

When Silence Speaks

Swati Moitra

Perspectives

The Multipolar Global Political Economy

Anuradha M Chenoy

Special Articles

COVID-19 Forecasting and Investigating the Impact of the Lockdown in India

Kalluru Siva Reddy, Mehuli Paul, Meghanto Majumder

The Labour Act of 1938 under the ‘Nationalist’ Government - Strike, Violence, and an Ideological Paradox

Santosh Suradkar

Targeted versus Non-targeted Catch - A Study of Marine Fisheries in Andhra Pradesh

Jeena T Srinivasan, Jyothis Sathyapalan

Current Statistics

Current Statistics

Postscript

Generational Capital and the ‘Privileged Bahujan’

Ankush Pal

Notes on Seeing, Observing, and Exclusion

Shakti Shukla

Last Line

​​​​​​​Deconstructing Kantara - A Heady Mix of Metaphysics, Local Traditions and Class Struggle

Sunayan Bhattacharjee, Amrita Chakraborty

Letters

Practising and Teaching Law in India

Rajashree K

India’s Fintech Industry and the G20 Summit

Sonal Shree

India’s road deaths are not accidents — they are a public health crisis

 It’s time to stop labelling the thousands of deadly incidents that happen on India’s roads as “accidents.” Across India, the National Crime Records Bureau reported over four lakh road “accident” cases in 2021, with 1.6 lakh fatalities — up by four per cent from 2017. Despite the fact that each of these casualties leaves a human tragedy in its wake, society remains numb and unresponsive. The fact that road deaths are routinely labelled “accidents” contributes to public inaction against this preventable killer. It carries with it the connotation that they are unavoidable and an accepted cost of travel, wherein “accidents just happen”. But they do not “just happen”.

Fortunately, in December and September of 2022, the Maharashtra Highway Police and the Delhi Traffic Police both proved that change is possible and broke away from this practice. In its report, the Delhi Traffic Police noted that an “accident” is “an event that happens by chance or that is without apparent or deliberate cause,” and as such, they will retire the word going forward when discussing road crashes. This change reflects a commitment to treat crashes not as inevitable but as preventable — thanks to evidence-based public health interventions, such as road redesign with all users in mind. Evidence from places with sterling road safety records shows that road deaths can be prevented by strong government action. This includes a comprehensive approach to road safety, including prioritising accessibility over mobility, and walking, cycling, and smart urban planning (such as public transport, crosswalks, and bike lanes) over high-speed driving and car dependency. In other words, low-cost, low-tech interventions can be adopted in every city and state, as long as there’s political will. By framing road crashes as “accidents,” people perceive crashes with less urgency and support for crucial interventions that can prevent crashes. Rightly using the term “crash”, is a commendable step by the Delhi Traffic Police, and it is hoped that others — spanning government agencies, media outlets, and the general public — will similarly follow suit.

In fact, this shift has happened before. We hear of “car accidents,” but when was the last time one heard of a “plane accident”? The term “plane accident” in the aviation industry is a misnomer but it wasn’t always so. The term was discarded in the first half of the 20th century as governments pressured the industry to improve safety. Investigators now work to determine the root causes of any aircraft crash, or even a near miss, and put in place more stringent safeguards to ensure that future events are prevented. Preventative actions such as safe infrastructure, professional management by highly trained and skilled staff, maintenance of all equipment, and strictly followed standard operating procedures all contribute toward making air travel the world’s safest form of transport per kilometre.

We need to adopt a similar approach to road travel. For example, thoughtful urban planning and safe road designs that encourage low speeds can reduce crashes. Communities that are walkable and bikeable, and less car-dependent have fewer deaths on the road. These are low-cost and straightforward interventions, and they can save lives today. Every road crash is preventable. Evidence-based interventions can radically decrease crash fatalities, and the language used to describe crashes is critical in building public demand and political will for these changes.

Written by Sudeep Lakhtakia , Grant Ennis

Lakhtakia is a retired Indian Police Service officer and currently Senior Road Safety Advisor-India, Vital Strategies.

Source: Indian Express, 16/01/23