What is Marshall-Lerner condition in economics?

This refers to the proposition that the devaluation of a country’s currency will lead to an improvement in its balance of trade with the rest of the world only if the sum of the price elasticities of its exports and imports is greater than one. For instance, if total export revenue falls due to inelastic demand for a country’s exports and total import expense rises due to inelastic demand for its imports, this will lead to a further worsening of the country’s trade deficit. So devaluing its currency may not always be the best way forward for a country looking to reduce its trade deficit. The Marshall-Lerner condition is named after British economist Alfred Marshall and Russian economist Abba P. Lerner.

Source: The Hindu, 30/11/2018

The children left behind

UNESCO report highlights the gaps in education policy for children of migrants.

People move around India all the time. Around 9 million move to live in another state every year while the rates of those migrating within their state have doubled over just 10 years. If you were an education minister tasked with making sure schools are flexible enough to deal with this, what would you do?

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UNESCO has published a global report on migration and displacement. Entitled ‘Building bridges’ not walls’, it looks at countries’ achievements and bottlenecks in helping migrant and displaced children benefit from a quality education. People have always moved away from their homes, in search of better education opportunities, for work. In India, education was the main reason young men gave for moving within the country.

A lot has been done to help internal migrants. In 2009, the Right to Education Act made it mandatory for local authorities to admit migrant children. National-level guidelines allow for flexible admission of children, for providing transport and volunteers to support mobile education, and creating seasonal hostels. The guidelines are designed to improve coordination between sending and receiving districts and states. And because central directives may not cover all bases, many states also did their part. Gujarat introduced seasonal boarding schools and started an online child tracking system. In Maharashtra, village authorities worked with local volunteers to provide after-school psychosocial support to children left behind by seasonal migrating parents and Tamil Nadu provides textbooks in other languages.

Some of the children most in need of new solutions are the children of seasonal workers. In 2013, 10 million children lived in rural households with a family member who was a seasonal worker. This movement is common within the construction industry: A survey of 3,000 brick kiln workers in Punjab found that 60 per cent were inter-state migrants.
The Global Education Monitoring Report shines a light on these children. Eight out of 10 migrant children in worksites across seven Indian cities did not have access to education. Among young people who have grown up in a rural household with a seasonal migrant, 28 per cent identified as illiterate or had an incomplete primary education. The report shows that up to 40 per cent of children from seasonal migrant households are likely to end up in work rather than school.

One reason for this is that the interventions designed by states are aimed at helping children who are in their home communities, but they do not actively address the challenges faced by those who are on the move. There are other challenges. Despite efforts, a pilot programme used on brick kiln sites in Rajasthan to track the progress of out of school children did not improve learning in any substantial way. Teachers on the sites reported culture, language, lifestyle, cleanliness and clothing as major barriers between them and the kiln labour community.

While analysing migration and its links to education, it is hard to ignore one of its most visible results on Indian cities: The growth of slums. But policymakers seem to turn a blind eye to them. Our estimates are that an additional 80 million children will live in slums around the world by 2030.

It was positive to see the 2016 India Habitat III national report commit the government to universal provision of basic services including education. Yet, research from the same year showed that urban planners were not being trained to understand the needs of slum dwellers. Our research shows there is only one urban planner for every 1,00,000 people in India, while there are 38 for the same number of people in the UK.

With shifting goalposts, the task of education ministers is not enviable. But I believe that our work over this past year can help. It is time for states to address the education needs of children and youth who have already migrated. The government must face up to the permanence of informal settlements. Like it or not, education is on the move

Source: Indian Express, 30/11/2018

India needs more good Samaritans

Unfortunately for victims of road accidents, crowds are just observers, and often hesitate to help, and with good reason. With accidents come the police, and with the police come investigations. Assistance is therefore, not always easy or instinctive. This is primarily because people are unaware of Section 134A of the Motor Vehicles Act – the Good Samaritan Law.

According to the World Health Organisation, 2015 saw over a million people across the globe losing their lives in road-related accidents, and in a call to action, stated that road accidents are a “massive and largely preventable economic toll”. Many developed countries in the west now consider this a top priority. Their action plans include immediate medical care through bystander intervention. Bystanders, who witness these accidents, are not just expected to help, but in some countries are even punished for negligence if they don’t. Through France’s Non-assistance à personne en danger (or Duty to rescue), the liability of the photographers who pursued Princess Diana’s car on the day that she died was investigated. The charges against them were that of negligence – they failed to render assistance to the victims (they were taking photographs of the dying celebrity in the car) .Eventually, the prosecutor dropped the charges as the driver was to blame. But because of the high-profile case that was, the question of ‘moral duties’ of citizens was raised.

In India, it doesn’t take much for a crowd to gather (not just photographers). Curiosity tends to get the better of most people on the streets, many of whom often will stop traffic just to get a quick (or long) peek at whatever is happening. Even accident spots aren’t spared. WhatsApp forwards that preach road safety are almost always accompanied by gruesome, bloody videos of fatal accidents with a crowd often circling the scene.

Unfortunately for victims of road accidents, crowds are just observers, and often hesitate to help, and with good reason. With accidents come the police, and with the police come investigations. Assistance is therefore, not always easy or instinctive. This is primarily because people are unaware of Section 134A of the Motor Vehicles Act – the Good Samaritan Law. It defines a good Samaritan as a bystander at the scene of an accident who offers to provide medical or non-medical assistance to the injured, by either calling for an ambulance, the cops or even taking the victim to the hospital themselves. These eyewitnesses, who are assumed to have acted in good faith and no expectation of reward, are shielded from legal inquiries by the police or hospitals. No personal details are required from them, their identity needn’t be disclosed, and they cannot be pulled into any investigation that may occur after the accident: no civil or criminal liability. This is to ensure that an act of goodwill driven by empathy and a sense of social responsibility is respected. But this law, enacted for all the right reasons, is not implemented.

According to a multi-city survey conducted in 11 cities by the not-for-profit SaveLIFE Foundation with a sample of 3667 people, including the police and hospital administrations, nearly 90% were unaware of this law and a little under 53% of good Samaritans have been detained by the police. Another aspect of the law which saw a shocking 0% compliance is mandatory charters which are meant to be placed in hospitals; which were not. This isn’t just alarming, it’s unlawful.

This is a recent addition to the larger Motor Vehicles Act, having been incorporated following the directions of the Supreme Court in Save Life Foundation vs. Union of India. England, Wales and Ireland have similar laws, all having been recently enacted. England and Wales have “Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act” which looks at some Samaritans as ‘heroes’.

The roads in our country are dangerous, for pedestrians and vehicles, alike. Roads everywhere are either congested, narrow, falling apart or un-navigable, making accidents a common occurrence. According to data by the ministry of road transport and highways, Uttar Pradesh tops the list of maximum number of road deaths and Maharashtra isn’t far behind. An average of about 150,000 people die in road accidents every year. The WHO in its ‘World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention, 2004’ has projected that by 2020, road accidents will be one of the biggest killers in India.

Let’s piece these statistics together: 150,000 deaths, of which about 50% died due to the lack of immediate medical care, during what’s called ‘the golden hour’, the first hour of injury (WHO). According to the survey, only 29% of the participants were willing to escort a victim to hospital, 28% were willing to call an ambulance, and only 12% would agree to call the police. This is a worrying minority vis-à-vis the number of deaths. While the main reason for their hesitation comes from the fact that they fear the police, what is also significant is the fact these percentages prove that police interrogations deter people from the moral choice of saving a life. And that points to a larger problem of empathy. Respondents shouldn’t just be empowered to act but also encouraged to, taught to act swiftly and consider it their social responsibility for the benefit of society. Also, and more importantly, the police and hospital administration must ensure compliance to the SC judgment and protect the rights of good Samaritans.

Source: Hindustan Times, 30/11/2018

 18 TISS students fined 1,000 each for trespassing

 Committee says they disrupted administrative work in March; students say protest was legitimate.



 The Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, has imposed a fine of Rs 1,000 each on 18 students for forcibly entering the registrar’s office and disrupting administrative work during a protest on March 23- 24 against the institute’s decision to withdraw financial aid to SC/ST students eligible for the Government of India Post-Matric Scholarship Scheme. According to a memorandum issued on Thursday, the institute has found 22 students guilty of trespassing and breach of peace. The memorandum – of which Mirror has a copy – is based on the findings of an independent committee set up in August to look into the students’ roles in ‘violating rules’ of the institute. Of the 22 found guilty, charges against 18 have been found to be ‘serious and even criminal in nature’. The fines collected from the students will go towards Students’ Aid Fund. The rest of the students have been let off with a warning. A massive student protest had rocked all the four TISS campuses – Mumbai, Tuljapur (in Maharashtra), Guwahati and Hyderabad – in February after the institute decided to withdraw financial aid to existing and future SC and ST students eligible for government scholarship. The institute continued to waive the tuition fee but eligible students had to pay the hostel and dining hall charges upfront. Earlier these costs were borne by the institute. However, the institute claimed that there was no reimbursement from the Centre and it was turning out to be a financial burden. With the new policy kicking in, students had to bear the hostel and dining hall costs and later apply to the central government for refund under the Post-Matric Scholarship scheme. The students’ union had demanded that the 2016-18 and 2017-19 batch be exempt from this decision. They had demanded a dialogue with the institute but when the negotiations with the TISS management had failed, they had called for a massive bandh in March. The protesting students had blocked the administrative building, stalled work and boycotted classes. On May 12, the institute had issued show cause notices to 27 students for ‘forcefully trespassing and occupying the office of the registrar’. They were asked to tender an explanation against the show cause notice. In August, an independent committee was set up to look into their role in disrupting the academic decorum of the institute. The committee had found 22 of these students guilty, said sources in the institute. While the institute officials were unavailable for comment, students told this newspaper that the fine was unfair and that the institute was targeting protesting students. “This is hypocrisy on part of the institute. We have been fighting to mobilise aid for students from marginalised communities and now the institute has pitted students against each other,” said Fahad Ahmad, former general secretary of the student union. He, too, has been fined by the institute.

Source: Mumbai Mirror, 30/11/2018

Hinduism and Advaita

Hinduism, for most within its fold, is a way of life. It has no one Pope, no one text, no inflexibly prescriptive ritual, no mandatory congregation, and no one presiding temple. It is for this reason that it has continued to flourish from time immemorial, sanatan and anant, because what is ubiquitous but not constrained by the brittleness of form, is by definition imperishable. But it is precisely for this reason, too, that most Hindus, while practising their faith in their own way, are often largely uninformed about the remarkable philosophical foundation of their religion. If Hindus are adrift from the deep philosophical moorings of the religion they practise, they are deliberately choosing the shell for the great treasure that lies within. When religions are largely reduced to rituals, there is always the danger that the form will become more important then the substance. That, I believe, will be a great disservice to Hinduism itself, and to the great seers and sages and thinkers — to whom the book I have authored, titled ‘Adi Shankaracharya: Hinduism’s Greatest Thinker’ is humbly dedicated — who gave to this sanatan dharma some of the most profound philosophical insights the world has seen. Jagat Guru Adi Shankaracharya was, undoubtedly, one of the greatest minds in Hinduism’s unrelenting quest for the ultimate truth. His short life of but 32 years is as fascinating as the Advaita philosophy that he so meticulously crafted.…

Source: Economic Times, 30/11/2018

1/3 of world’s stunted kids are from India, says report

Also Home To Huge Number Of Wasted & Overweight Kids

India is among the countries accounting for the highest burden of stunted, wasted and overweight children, the new Global Nutrition Report, 2018 reflecting the growing concern around child nutrition in the country. With 46.6 million stunted children, India accounted for nearly one-third of the world’s 150.8 million children who are stunted, the report shows. India is followed by Nigeria (13.9 million) and Pakistan (10.7 million). The three countries together are home to almost half of all stunted children in the world. This is despite the improvement made by India in reducing stunting since 2005-06. According to the latest National Family Health Survey-4 data, India recorded a 10 percentage point decline in stunting from 48% during 2005-06 to 38.4% in 2015-16. Stunting, or low height for age, is caused by long-term insufficient nutrient-intake and frequent infections. Underlining the variation in stunting within the country, the report said India is so diverse from state to state, it is important to understand how and why stunting prevalence differs. “The mapping showed that stunting varies greatly from district to district (12.4% to 65.1%), with 239 of 604 districts having stunting levels above 40%,” it said. India also accounts for the largest number of wasted children with low weight for height. India recorded 25.5 million children who are wasted. This is more significant because percentage of wasted children has increased in India. According to NFHS-4, percentage of wasted children under five years increased from 19.8% in 2005-06 t0 21% in 2015-16. Wasting, usually caused by food shortage or disease, is a strong predictor of mortality among children under five years of age. India figures among the set of countries that have more than a million overweight children. “The figures call for immediate action. Malnutrition is responsible for more illhealth than any other cause,” Corinna Hawkes, co-chair of the report and director of the Centre for Food Policy said.

Source: Times of India, 30/11/2018 

What is savanna principle in Psychology?

This refers to the hypothesis that the human brain is adapted primarily to the conditions in which human ancestors survived once upon a time rather than to the modern age. The term was coined by American evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa in an academic article published in 2004 to state that the human brain may be adapted to the time when human ancestors lived in the African savannas. The Savanna principle has been used to explain why a lot of human behaviour in the modern age seems irrational. Since the modern age is relatively recent in evolutionary terms, the human brain may not have evolved sufficiently to deal with the modern environment.

Source: The Hindu, 29/11/2018