📰 Gender bias caused ‘excess’ deaths of girls under 5: Lancet study
Problem most pronounced in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh
•There have been 2,39,000 “excess deaths” per year of girls under the age of five in India, and 29 out of 35 States contributed to this mortality, according to a study in the online, open access, peer-reviewed journal Lancet Global Health. That works out to about 2.4 million deaths in a decade, and the additional deaths were found in 90% of districts in the country.
•“Around 22% of the overall mortality burden of under-five females is therefore due to gender bias,” said lead author Nandita Saikia, at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria, in a statement.
•Excess mortality is the difference between observed and expected mortality rates in both genders.
46 countries
•To arrive at this number for India, the researchers calculated the difference between these two numbers in 46 countries that consistently did not have a problem with gender discrimination. They then used that to define an equation and arrive at numbers for India.
•Most studies of India’s skewed sex ratios have focussed on pre-natal mortality.
•The National Family Health Survey in 2017 said that India’s sex ratio at birth has increased to 919 in 2015-16 from 914 in 2004-05. This study, however, focuses on mortality after birth and says that the problem is most pronounced in northern India, where the four largest States in the region, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh, accounted for two thirds of the total excess deaths of females under five. In Uttar Pradesh, excess female mortality was calculated at 30.5. In Bihar, the rate was 28.5, in Rajasthan it was 25.4, and in Madhya Pradesh, it was 22.1.
Consistent data
•The average level of excess mortality in girls aged 0-4 in the study period of 2000-2005 was 18.5 per 1,000 live births, compared to the expected mortality of girl children aged under five in areas of the world without known gender discrimination. This study period was chosen, said Dr. Saikia, because it had the most consistent district-level data.
•The worst affected areas were all rural, agricultural areas with lower levels of education, high population densities, low socio-economic development and high levels of fertility.
•Many deaths of females under five are partly due to unwanted child bearing and subsequent neglect. “The sustained fertility decline currently observed in north India is likely to lead to a reduction in postnatal discrimination. Unless son preference diminishes, lower fertility, however, might bring about a rise in gender-biased sex selection as was observed 20 years ago in western India,” Dr. Saikia added.
📰 What the Kathua rape means
The intent behind some rapes is to render abject the communities to which victims belong
•A spate of rapes in India, with the accused in most cases being ordinary citizens, or politicians and police officials in some instances, suggests an alarming sickness of the body politic.
•Public debate in India has been raging around violence against women, with efforts to craft stronger laws to deal with sexual harassment in the workplace, punish rape, and provide gender justice ever since the brutal gang rape and murder in Delhi of a physiotherapy student in 2012. But with the ongoing rape of female children, especially though not exclusively those from minority and marginalised communities, this form of endemic gendered violence has entered a new phase. The virulent pathogen that now courses through the political organism of Indian democracy is not familiar patriarchy but genocidal majoritarianism.
Rape and ethnocide
•At least four examples of the organised rape of minority women come to mind. The first is in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s, where Bosnian, Croatian and Albanian Muslim women were raped in the thousands by Serb Christian supremacists. Those rapes were not just a routine part of civil war but a deliberate attempt at ethnocide and demographic manipulation. Women of the minority community were confined in notorious “rape camps”, subsequently investigated by an especially constituted international tribunal at The Hague. The rapes and sexual slavery occurring at these locations were designated a war crime, second only to the ethnic cleansing that eventually led to the dismemberment of the Yugoslavian nation.
•Rape as a weapon of war in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) in 1971 and during Partition in 1947 are violent passages we remember well in India, regardless of how little these pasts are memorialised or examined. The rape of Rohingya women as part of the genocide of Muslims in Myanmar continues even now. In such instances, communities and groups within multiethnic cultures become terminally estranged from one another and larger political entities are dismembered into smaller, relatively homogeneous units. Complex societies can survive different kinds of political upheaval. But when war targets women and children — the biological substrate for the survival of our species and the social reproduction of any human collective — then nations cannot hold together.
•Hindu nationalists scoff at the suggestion that their growing violence against Muslims, Christians, Dalits, tribals and women could add up to the destruction of India as a cohesive political unit. After all, India is not in any declared state of war with an external enemy or indeed with itself. But when majoritarian and fratricidal violence exceeds the targeting of the designated ‘other’ through hate speech and derogatory propaganda; through institutional mechanisms; through caste discrimination; through prejudice, both casual and calculated; and through persistently negative portrayals of targeted communities; when violence becomes physical and enters into the home, the family and the bodies of women and children, then there is only one outcome — the end of the social compact, the death of the polity.
•On a smaller scale — laboratory conditions, so to speak — this type of civic breakdown has already occurred in Gujarat after the 2002 pogrom against Muslims. Hindu-Muslim coexistence and integration in Gujarati society, a fact of life for centuries, has collapsed irreversibly. What happened in Kathua, Jammu, where an eight-year-old Bakherwal Muslim girl was raped and murdered, does not fall into the usual pattern of violence against Kashmiris in the rubric of counterinsurgency, ongoing for close to three decades. As the senior lawyer and legal activist Vrinda Grover stated recently at a demonstration in the capital against the Kathua and Unnao rapes, rapes such as these, as well as in the Northeast, in Naxalite areas, and in Kashmir are not just sexual crimes — they are political crimes. The intent behind these rapes is to render abject the communities to which the victims belong, to frighten and marginalise them.
The bulwark of secularism
•The Hindu Right has long maligned and undermined Indian secularism, but does so now with bravado because anti-secular discourse apparently enjoys popular support and pays electoral dividends since 2014. Processions of Hindu nationalists are taken out, a Bar Association has defended the accused, BJP spokespersons undertake exercises in whataboutery, and respected figures maintain a screaming silence about these rapes. At a citizens’ protest in Delhi in April demanding justice for the Kathua victim, I found myself unable to hum along with an activist who sang the perennial anthem of struggle and resistance, “We shall overcome”. I could not muster the political hope necessary to sing these lines. I could only experience the profound despair and sense of moral failure that all secular Indians feel, because we have abdicated our most precious political value and allowed bigots and fascists to run away with our historical narrative.
•Indian secularism has constitutional anchors in equal citizenship, freedom of religion and the protection of minority rights. But fundamentally, Indian secularism is not just a legal relationship between state and religion. It is a complicated infrastructure of laws, conventions, practices, habits, norms and traditions, an invisible but ubiquitous scaffolding that holds up the massive layered weight of a multireligious, multiethnic, multilingual and multicultural society. Secularism is the hard currency held in reserve without which the entire transactional economy of Indian democracy would crash. In Ashis Nandy’s terms, it is our tacit and shared understanding of how to “handle” difference, how to “host the otherness of the other” within our self, how to coexist in a common political space — like with unlike, self with other, us with them — every aspect of diversity represented and protected within the mosaic that is India.
•If we discriminate against weaker sections of our society; if we persecute those who are already vulnerable — “minor” in multiple senses, whether by age, by population size, by faith, or by access to economic and cultural capital — we cannot fight off the majoritarian monster riding on our back. The rape of a little girl inside a place of worship, violating everything sacrosanct to us, whether the innocence of a child or the precinct of a temple, is the logical culmination of majoritarian aggression.
•That the Supreme Court has shifted the Kathua rape trial outside Jammu and Kashmir to Pathankot in Punjab and has ordered in camera proceedings indicates the extent to which it is openly acknowledging that a free, fair and fearless investigation into the crime cannot even begin to be conducted in a communally divided context. The larger message here is plain to see: without the guarantee of secularism, the rule of law, democratic rights and the promise of justice will continue to elude not just minorities but all Indians.
📰 Creating jobs for women in the renewable energy sector
India’s transition to clean energy could improve the quality of life of women
•India can increase its GDP by up to 60% by 2025 by enabling more women to participate in its workforce, a 2015 study by the McKinsey Global Institute had stated. However, social and cultural constraints can prevent this from becoming a reality. Many women who work outside home still have primary household and parenting responsibilities that need to be balanced with their work life.
•Studies estimate that India’s ambitious target of achieving 175 GW of renewable energy (RE) by 2022 could create 3,30,000 jobs in the wind and solar energy sectors alone. Can this rapidly growing industry create jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities for women? And can these opportunities provide better salaries and health-care benefits, skilling and training opportunities, and enhance the quality of life for women and their families? What can decision-makers — in government and in the private sector — do to support the inclusion of more women in this growing sector?
Low participation of women
•The problem and the opportunity are both clear. According to the World Bank, more than 270 million Indians live in poverty. Further, studies by the International Energy Agency, an autonomous intergovernmental organisation, show that about 240 million people lack basic electricity services. The government has committed to installing 175 GW of RE by 2022. Several of these installations will be in rural areas, where a large number of the poor live. Can the new RE projects be planned in a manner that also creates good quality jobs for women in these areas?
•Currently, India’s RE industry sector, as with other sectors, has low participation of women. India ranks a poor 120 among 131 countries on female labour force participation, according to World Bank data. A majority of women currently employed in the RE sector work at project sites, doing civil masonry work, which is temporary and labour-intensive with little potential for future growth. Moreover, the working conditions on many sites are not always suitable for women as they are devoid of safety and support systems.
•Where there is a need for more skilled or semi-skilled labour, fewer women can respond due to existing barriers to formal education and training. Technical training institutes do not admit applicants who have not graduated Class 12. And even where they meet the prerequisite for admission into training institutes, the institutes tend to be located in towns and cities, making it difficult for rural women to effectively participate, especially when they are also expected to carry out other household responsibilities. Consequently, there are very few women in production, facilities, and operations and maintenance roles in the RE sector.
Tweaking the existing system
•So, what will it take for women from poorer and rural communities to access jobs in the RE sector? In a recent study, we found that jobs in the RE sector can impact poverty, provided several “tweaks” are made to the existing systems. Particularly with the growth of the decentralised RE and off-grid energy sector, there is significant potential to include local women in the workforce. Overall, the study concluded that if the government, clean energy enterprises, training institutes and civil society work together to implement these “tweaks”, India could create good-quality employment opportunities that can support the inclusion of more women. But such interventions need to be designed with women at the centre and not as an afterthought.
•Training institutes could reduce the bar on entry, allowing for less formally educated women to learn new skills and receive training. Training should be customised to respect specific needs like location, hours of engagement, safety and sanitation. Mobile training modules that can cater to small groups of women in remote areas can be developed. Training institutes and civil society organisations should collaborate and strengthen connections with clean energy enterprises to help trained women secure employment. This sensitisation to women’s specific needs can help increase participation of women in the RE workforce. If the public and private sectors come together to bring such jobs to women, particularly in poorer communities, India’s transition to clean energy could also improve the quality of life for women and their families.
📰 Contractors to compile sex offenders’ registry
Private sector will design and maintain the database
•The Home Ministry plans to outsource the preparation of the proposed sex offenders’ registry to the private sector. Private contractors are expected to design and maintain the database that will be integrated with the Aadhaar database.
•A Ministry document said the database would contain details of persons who posed a “low danger to the community” as they were not likely to engage in criminal sexual conduct on account of being involved in “technical rape” pertaining to “elopement, consensual sex [with major]”.
Criminal history
•The Home Ministry said the offenders would be classified on the basis of their criminal history to ascertain if “they pose a serious danger to the community”. The data will be stored for 15 years in the case of those who pose a low danger, 25 years for those posing “moderate danger” and lifetime for “habitual offenders, violent criminals, convicts in gang rape and custodial rapes”.
•The information on “arrested and chargesheeted” offenders will be available only to law enforcement agencies, whereas the data for “convicted” offenders will be accessible to the public and can be searched on various parameters such as State, district, police station and even modus operandi.
•The database will contain records (including photographs and fingerprints) related to offenders across India and will also include records on juvenile offenders and paedophiles based on reports by district nodal officers. It will also contain the current status of the offender as updated by the police station and the district nodal officer.
•On Monday, the Home Ministry floated a request for proposal document for “Development and Implementation of National Registry of Sexual Offenders” seeking to select a System Integrator to “design, procure/develop, supply, implement, operate and maintain” the database.
•On April 27, 2016, the Centre informed the Rajya Sabha that the registry would be maintained by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). On April 21, in the wake of outrage against the gangrape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua district of Jammu, the Union Cabinet reiterated that a sex offenders’ registry was being created to compile the data on such offenders.
•A Home Ministry spokesperson said the private contractors would only develop the platform and the confidentiality of data would be maintained.
•“The private operator will only design the platform, the input and management of data will be available with law enforcement agencies. The data pertaining to passports has been developed by a private party, it is being run efficiently,” the spokesperson said.
📰 Centre’s say is final on Cauvery, SC told
Draft water management scheme submitted before court
•The Centre will have the final say in inter-State disputes over Cauvery water. The decision of the Centre will be “binding.”
•This is the crux of the draft Cauvery water management scheme filed in the Supreme Court on Monday during the short pause between polling and counting in the crucial Karnataka Assembly elections.
•With the Centre facing the threat of contempt of court, the apex court saw Union Water Resources Secretary U.P. Singh, with copies of the draft scheme in hand, present in the courtroom in response to a summons issued on May 8.
•The draft scheme originally proposes as final any decisions taken by the implementing authority under the proposed Cauvery Water Management Scheme, 2018 in furtherance of the Cauvery Tribunal award as modified by the Supreme Court verdict of February 16.
•But in a situation where the riparian States of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala or the Union Territory (UT) of Puducherry do “not co-operate”, the authority would turn to the Centre for help. The decision of the Centre “in the matter will be final and binding on all parties concerned.”
•A three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said the court would not get into “the propriety or legality” of the scheme. It said it did not want to trigger another round of litigation among the three States and the UT.
•But while thus leaving the Centre as the final arbiter of inter-State Cauvery disputes, the draft scheme does not mention if an aggrieved State can approach the Supreme Court in appeal against the Centre’s decision itself.
Based in Bengaluru
•The Centre, represented by Attorney-General K.K. Venugopal, asked the court to name the implementing authority. Mr. Venugopal said the Centre was open to any nomenclature — Board, Authority or Committee.
•However, the Centre wants the Cauvery authority to be headquartered in Bengaluru. From there, the authority would monitor storage, apportionment, regulation and control of the water. It shall supervise the operation of reservoirs and regulation of water releases with the assistance of the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee. The authority would also decide the “distress formula” in water-sharing. Mr. Venugopal submitted that the riparian States and UT could be given copies of the draft.
•The court scheduled the next hearing for May 16.
•After the scheme is discussed by the parties, the court could direct the Centre, through the Union Cabinet, to finalise the draft scheme under Section 6A of the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956, Mr. Venugopal said.
•The draft said the Chairman of the authority would be appointed by the Centre. He would be a serving officer, who is an eminent engineer or a Secretary-rank officer. The Chairman would have a proposed tenure of five years or till the age of 65, whichever is early.
•Besides, the Centre shall appoint two whole-time members and two part members, equally drawn from water-engineering and agricultural fields of expertise. The Centre would appoint a Secretary from the Central Water Engineering Services.
•The draft scheme gives ample voice to the three States and the UT. Four part-time members would be nominated by the States to the authority. They shall be administrative secretaries in charge of the water resources departments of the respective States and the UT. Decisions would be taken on the basis of a majority. All members would have equal powers.
•Among its duties, the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee would collect data of daily water levels, inflows and storage positions in Hemavathy, Harangi, Krishnarajasagar, Kabini, Mettur, Bhavanisagar, Amaravathy and Banasurasagar; ensure 10 daily releases of water on monthly basis from the reservoirs as directed by the authority and data of the water released; prepare seasonal and annual reports of the water account and submit them to the authority. Reservoirs would be operated in an integrated manner under the overall guidance of the authority. In June every year, the authority would gauge the residual storage capacity.
•Karnataka and Tamil Nadu would share 40% each of the expenses of the authority. Kerala would provide 15% and Puducherry 5%.
📰 Alien versus alien: On Assam Citizenship Bill
Disquiet in Assam should convince the Centre to reconsider the new Citizenship Bill
•In Assam, where illegal migration, in fact as well as in exaggeration, has defined the political landscape since the 1980s, public hearings and meetings held by a Joint Parliamentary Committee over the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, have inevitably taken place in a charged atmosphere. Parties and civil society groups have argued that the Bill provides legitimacy to Hindus who have migrated from Bangladesh post-1971. It precludes individuals from six religious minorities from three “Muslim-dominant countries” (Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan) from being defined as “illegal immigrants” under the Foreigners Act, 1946. The intent behind this Bill, promised by the BJP in the run-up to the 2014 general election, is to clear a path to citizenship for minorities persecuted in the three countries. The National Register of Citizens, on the other hand, does not distinguish migrants on the basis of religion and regards all post-March 24, 1971 migrants, irrespective of their religion, as illegal aliens who need to be deported. Clearly, the Bill is seen by detractors to be breaking the general consensus on the NRC forged after years of political differences and legal challenges to the Assam Accord, of which the ongoing exercise to update the register is an outcome. Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal has responded saying his government will continue to protect the rights of the citizens, and hinted that the JPC should take the detractors’ views on board.
•The Bill is indeed discriminatory and problematic in limiting accelerated citizenship to non-Muslims. As the case of the Rohingya highlights, Muslims in neighbouring countries who are fleeing persecution are being denied refuge in India currently. Besides, the detractors, although some of their objections stem from a native chauvinism, have a point. The Bill conflates the definition of migrants, people who shift voluntarily, with that of refugees, who are forced to do so under duress giving them a claim to humanitarian protection. The NRC puts the onus on migrants to prove their status of residence prior to 1971 based on a series of documents that would lead to registration as a citizen. The Bill seeks to bring in considerations of religious identity. There are unresolved issues with the NRC process as well. There is the question of modalities of deportation, which would involve negotiations with Bangladesh. As of now Assam has six detention centres for illegal migrants. If the NRC process identifies more illegal aliens for deportation, they would have to be detained in such centres and there is no knowing how long they would have to stay there. Besides, the implementation of the Bill will mean non-Muslims will not be subject to these steps, thereby clearly discriminating against Muslims identified as illegal aliens. The Centre needs to apply much more thought before pushing the Bill, for its contradictions in Assam and for its larger religious assumptions.
📰 Singapore sling: When Trump meets Kim Jong-un
Donald Trump’s Iran decision will loomover his meeting with Kim Jong-un
•President Donald Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12 cannot be viewed in isolation from the unilateral American decision to withdraw from the nuclear pact with Iran. While the decision could undermine confidence in his word, he is also visibly trying hard to amp up pre-summit goodwill. He has, for instance, effusively greeted the North Korean decision announced over the weekend to destroy its nuclear testing zone — though sceptics argue that the site is unusable anyway and that it is premature to hail the North’s decision. Any which way, the meeting between the U.S. and North Korean leaders will be historic, something that would have been unimaginable even a few months ago. Tensions between the two countries had risen to an all-time high over the winter, and Pyongyang’s series of nuclear and intercontinental missile tests were met with an increasingly stringent international sanctions regime and extremely stern diplomacy. The recent thaw in relations between Pyongyang and Washington has been aided by attempts by both North and South Korea to restore normalcy on the divided peninsula, beginning with cordiality during the Winter Olympics and then a meeting between the two Korean leaders. Seoul and Washington too had suspended their annual military exercises, to reassure North Korea of their intentions. For its part, the North has announced the release of three American prisoners accused of “hostile activities”. It has also ceased further nuclear and missile tests. Whether Mr. Kim will agree to a freeze on the North’s nuclear programme is, however, still in the realm of speculation.
•Mr. Trump has seized the opportunity afforded by the summit, an unprecedented feat for any U.S. leader, to project himself as the archetypal peacemaker. But the summit cannot escape a fundamental and glaring contradiction. From the standpoint of global nuclear non-proliferation, it is hard to reconcile Washington’s desire to broker peace with Pyongyang with its abrogation of the multilateral pact with Tehran. Neither the threat nor the actual use of force has been enough to significantly advance global nuclear non-proliferation objectives. Recognition of these inherent limitations led to the adoption last year, by over 120 nations, of the UN treaty to prohibit and eventually abolish nuclear arms. Mr. Trump could well view the summit as a chance of a lifetime to turn the tables on a festering issue and earn his legacy. But the deal-maker in him may find the diplomatic deftness required of the task difficult to marshal, given the hawkish defence and foreign policy team around him. Having alienated his European allies over the Iran nuclear deal, world trade and climate change, Mr. Trump needs positive atmospherics in Singapore.
📰 SC to examine if pleas challenging Article 35A should be referred to Constitution Bench
SC to examine pleas saying special status granted to Jammu and Kashmir is unconstitutional
•The Supreme Court will examine fervent pleas for a five-judge Constitution Bench to decide whether special status granted to Jammu and Kashmir is unconstitutional.
•“That [reference of the petitions to a Constitution Bench] we will see... yes, we will examine,” Chief Justice Dipak Misra responded to the pleas for a Constitution Bench to take over the issue on Monday.
•The three-judge Bench posted the case for August 6 to hear arguments.
•Attorney General K.K. Venugopal, for the Centre, said the issue was ‘sensitive.’
•The Centre’s interlocutor has had a series of talks with the stakeholders and should be given more time.
•Mr. Venugopal said the case should be taken up by the court after three months. He said the Centre would also make submissions on the constitutionality of Article 35A , which gives Jammu and Kashmir special status.
•Article 35A of the Constitution gives the State Legislature carte blanche to decide who all are the “permanent residents” of the State and grant them special rights and privileges in public sector jobs, acquisition of property within the State, scholarships and other public aid and welfare programmes.
•The provision mandates that no act of the State legislature coming under the ambit of Article 35A can be challenged for violating the Indian Constitution or any other law of the land.
•Petitioner said Article 35A was a violation of the fundamental right of equality under Article 14.
•Article 35A was incorporated into the Indian Constitution in 1954 by an order of President Rajendra Prasad on the advice of the Jawaharlal Nehru Cabinet.
•Parliament was not consulted when the President incorporated Article 35A into the Indian Constitution through a Presidential Order issued under Article 370.
•Article 368 (i) of the Constitution mandates that only Parliament can amend the Constitution by introducing a new Article.
•The court is hearing a writ petition filed by non-governmental organisation, We the Citizens, which challenges the validity of both Article 35A and Article 370.
•It challenges that Article 35A is against the “very spirit of oneness of India” as it creates a “class within a class of Indian citizens.”
•“One of the lawyers claimed that someone from Pakistan can stay in Kashmir, but someone who has been here is hit by Article 35A,” senior advocate Ranjit Kumar, for one of the petitioners, submitted.
•A second petition filed by Jammu and Kashmir native, Charu Wali Khanna, has challenged Article 35A for protecting certain provisions of the Jammu and Kashmir Constitution which restricts the basic right to property if a native woman marries a man not holding the Permanent Resident Certificate.
•One of the lawyers claimed that someone from Pakistan can stay in Kashmir, but someone who has been here is hit by Article 35A Ranjit Kumar Senior advocate.
📰 More tests required for GM mustard: regulator
Opinion remains divided on its release
•The Centre has demanded more tests for genetically modified mustard, a year after clearing the crop for “commercial cultivation.”
•The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee, the apex regulator of genetically modified crops, in a March meeting said that in light of several representations both “for and against” the release of GM mustard, there was a need for more tests.
•“Applicant may be advised to undertake field demonstration on GM mustard in an area of 5 acres at 2-3 different locations with a view to generate additional data on honey bees and other pollinators and honey, and on soil microbial diversity,” said the minutes of the meeting made public on May 13.
•Activists said the demand fell short. “What about the fact that GM mustard has never been tested as a herbicide tolerant crop, for its environmental and health ramifications… a point that has remained unaddressed by the regulators,” the Coaltion for a GM-Free India queried in a statement.
•The clearance for GM mustard has been mired in confusion. On May 12, last year the then GEAC chairperson Amita Prasad said that the crop had been recommended for cultivation. In October, the government did a volte-face and said there was an “inadvertent error” in the announcement regarding mustard and said that “…subsequent to receipt of various representations from different stakeholders, matters related to environmental release of transgenic mustard are kept pending for further review.’’
•Union Environment Minister, Harsh Vardhan — who had the final say on the matter said that wider consultations on the release of the crop were needed.
•Dhara Mustard Hybrid (DMH -11), the transgenic mustard in question, had been developed by a team of scientists at Delhi University, led by former Vice-Chancellor Deepak Pental under a government-funded project.
📰 Is it possible to slow global warming?
There is growing frustration after more than two decades of intense climate talks
•This is an important year for making progress on the Paris Agreement (PA), which was discussed at the climate meeting called the Conference of Parties (COP-21) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in December 2015. The Paris Agreement entered into force in November 2016. A two-week-long meeting was recently concluded in Bonn (April 30-May 10) where the operational guidelines for implementing the PA were to be discussed and agreed upon by all parties. What one was looking for was a common, consistent framework of how each country would define and measure its commitments. It would also include proposals for how action taken could be monitored, accounted for and kept transparent while providing some level of flexibility.
•This meeting was the 48th session of the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), referred to as SB48. With insufficient progress towards goals, another interim meeting has been proposed in Bangkok ahead of COP-24 in Katowice, Poland, in December 2018. A good draft on the rulebook ought to be ready before the COP. Ideally, these guidelines should help countries develop ambitious targets for the next level of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). There should also be a regularised and dependable flow of funds from rich countries so that climate action can be implemented in developing nations. Countries can then develop along a path of sustainable development that is low carbon and inclusive of poor and other marginalised communities.
The barriers
•The roadblocks at the Bonn meeting seemed predictable. On the issue of the NDCs, the question was the scope of the rulebook. Developing countries want them to cover mitigation targets, adaptation and the means of implementation for the NDCs. Developed or rich countries would like the rulebook to be limited to mitigation, the reduction of greenhouse gases. But since most countries require adaptation programmes in a warming world and need support to implement their national targets, it is essential that these be included too. In fact, most NDCs require support for operationalising them. The “means of implementation” are about financial support and technology transfer to build capacity in poorer countries and have always been contentious. At various sessions and discussions on climate change, this issue has turned out to be a deal breaker.
•At the Copenhagen summit, it was agreed that from 2020, rich countries would provide a minimum of $100 billion each year to poor and developing countries. There is little sign that these funds will be available. Instead, the discussion on finance has veered towards: how to increase the number of donors who will provide funds; which countries should perhaps be excluded from these funds; and whether these funds are a part of or distinct from the official development assistance, and so on. According to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities of the UNFCCC, while actions need to be ambitious to limit warming, providing support is essential for equitable action.
Incomplete task
•The issues related to loss and damage (L&D) are another thorn in the negotiations. L&D is a means to provide assistance to poor countries that experience severe impacts from climate change but have contributed very little to the greenhouse gases responsible for the warming and its effects. This is a very important issue for the least developed countries and for small islands, which are already experiencing the brunt of sea level rise. But there was little progress on the funds that could be used to support L&D.
•Participants could not come to an agreement on any significant issue and thus have not produced a draft document to guide full implementation of the PA. Some commentators have said that the pace of the discussions was slow and that there was an absence of urgency.
•The NDCs put forth prior to the Paris COP would lead up to 2030. Discussions on raising the bar beyond that would be discussed at COP-24 in Poland. Even if the current NDCs were implemented, the world would be on track to be warmer by about 3°Celsius.
•The discussions at Bangkok in early September are therefore crucial and continue the incomplete task from this Bonn meeting. The UN is also expected to release the report on the impacts from a 1.5°C warming around the same time.
•Given the growing frustration of experienced negotiators on all sides after more than two decades of intense climate talks, it appears that pressure from youth, especially in rich countries, is vital. Unless they remind governments and the public of the responsibilities of their countries towards mitigation, adaptation and support for means of implementation, keeping global warmingunder reasonably safe levels for humankind could be impossible.
📰 Robots will not take over all our jobs
A study shows that the fear may be far-fetched
•Today, advanced machines like robots pose a significant threat to jobs traditionally performed by human beings. So it’s no surprise that new technological developments in the market are faced with stiff resistance from interest groups like labour unions. Moreover, there are some economists and others who believe that robots could lead us into a future where there are no jobs left to be done by human beings. How realistic are such fears? What in particular does history tell us about the effect of machines on employment?
•A 2017 paper by Katja Mann and Lukas Püttmann, “Benign effects of automation: New evidence from patent texts”, seeks to answer this question by looking into a particular period in the history of the U.S. when technological innovation flourished. The authors use a machine-learning algorithm to identify patents filed in the U.S. between 1976 and 2014 that were related to automation. A total of five million patents were granted during this period. They found a tremendous increase in the share of automation-related patents from 25% to 67% between these years. Further, regions which experienced greater automation due to these inventions witnessed an increase, rather than a decrease, in employment. Thus, automation over the years has had a positive effect on U.S. employment. It seems like jobs that were lost in the manufacturing sectors of the economy were more than compensated for by additional jobs created in the services sector.
•These findings should not come as any surprise to anyone familiar with the “lump of labour” fallacy, which makes many ordinary people believe that there is only a fixed amount of work to be done to satisfy human wants. Economists, however, have for long assumed that we live in a world of scarcity, where only limited resources are available to satisfy people’s unlimited wants. If so, while robots and other technological advancements can definitely help people produce a lot more than we ever did in our past, they will never be enough to satisfy all human wants. Thus, fears of machines obliterating human labour may be far-fetched.
📰 Towards a ceasefire in J&K?
Much groundwork and political consensus are needed to pull off the Ramzan ceasefire proposal
•Finally, after four bleak years of unremitting conflict, a small ray of light appears to be struggling to get through in Jammu and Kashmir. Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s proposal for a Ramzan ceasefire, backed by a State all-party delegation, has gained some traction in the policy community. Though we are yet to see how Prime Minister Narendra Modi responds, there is little doubt that a ceasefire would be hugely welcomed, most of all by the Jammuites of the border areas and the Kashmiris of the Valley, who have had little respite from violence since 2014.
Then and now
•Yet there is a sting in the proposal. Ms. Mufti talked about a unilateral ceasefire as was declared by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in November 2000. In response, Chief of Army Staff General Bipin Rawat has asked who would then guarantee that the security forces would be defended from attack. The question is not idle. During the first three months of the 2000 ceasefire, casualties amongst security forces rose sharply, despite the fact that there was considerable public pressure on the separatists as well as Pakistan to reciprocate, including from the ‘azaadi’ constituency.
•Gen. Rawat is right in anticipating that there will be continuing attacks on security forces under a unilateral ceasefire. Nevertheless, it is imperative to curtail the violence that people in Jammu and Kashmir suffer, and a ceasefire might provide the best opportunity to de-escalate. As the rising number of youth turning to arms attests, the last four years of counterinsurgency have not succeeded in ending insurgency. We could have learned this lesson from past experience too — the counterinsurgency of the 1990s did not end insurgency. But it did pave the way for a peace process and it was this peace process that made progress towards ending armed conflict until Pakistan’s then leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, put it on a back burner.
•The 2000 ceasefire experience also showed that casualties among the security forces could have been minimised had more urgent attention been paid to tightening defence of security installations and personnel. The Vajpayee administration did not prepare for continuing attacks and the ceasefire created both resentment among the troops and an understandable but misplaced relaxation of alertness. Gen. Rawat and his corps commanders could work on plugging such lapses and the Modi administration could take rapid steps to improve working conditions for security forces, including shorter service periods in the Valley.
•What impact will a unilateral ceasefire have on the ground? Clearly there will be immediate relief to the beleaguered residents of the State. But the ceasefire can only provide an opportunity for other steps to be taken, such as India-Pakistantalks, dialogue with the Hurriyat and allied groups, and backchannel negotiations for a reciprocal ceasefire by armed groups. It is not clear whether such initiatives are already in the pipeline or whether the State government has presented a road map of how to get them going. What is clear is that taking these steps is far more difficult now than it was in 2000.
•Mr. Vajpayee’s ceasefire took place at a time when there were active negotiations at a multitude of levels — India-Pakistan, Hizbul-Indian Army, Hurriyat-India-Pakistan, civil society and even business groups. He was able to set off the rise in casualties during the ceasefire against the political gains of a peace process, which eventually led to a sharp decrease in violence.
•That context is gone today. There is little public pressure on the armed groups. The impetus for peace has been replaced by communal stand-offs, anger and hatred. More civilians, militants and security forces have died in the first five months of 2018 than in corresponding periods for the previous decade. The State is polarised, and society has become increasingly lumpen, as the death by stoning of a young Tamil tourist and the communal mobilisation around the rape and murder of a child in Kathua indicate. In the Valley, alienation from India is as high as it was in the early 1990s, when insurgency took root.
The Pakistan factor
•For a unilateral ceasefire to have the desired impact, of paving the way for a sustained peace process, it will have to be accompanied by rapid action on two fronts: externally, wide-ranging peace talks between India and Pakistan, the Modi administration and ‘azaadi’ groups; and internally, peace-building on the ground by the Mufti administration and Opposition parties.
•There are faint indications that Pakistan’s military might be nudged into curtailing support for armed groups. The announcement of a unilateral ceasefire would put considerable international pressure on Pakistan’s civil-military leadership to restore the 2003 ceasefire along the International Boundary and the Line of Control. Negotiations with armed groups to reciprocate the ceasefire will be more difficult to get started — there is no Majid Dar today, and here again Pakistan holds the key, with so many instigators lodged there.
•The quid pro quo for Pakistan will be talks on Kashmir. This is a bitter pill for the Modi administration, which has opposed talks while terrorist attacks continue. One way out would be to encourage talks between Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s all-party delegation and Pakistan Parliament’s Kashmir committee. This would allow the Modi administration some flexibility. It has the added advantage of having been proposed by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq back in 2010.
•Talks with the Hurriyat are also complicated. The Mirwaiz Hurriyat is vulnerable, and the Geelani Hurriyat that has some, albeit limited, influence on militants is under a new leader who refused to ask his son to give up arms — how is he to be persuaded to support a ceasefire? Will he be amenable to suggestions from the other members of the ‘Joint Resistance Leadership’ who have supported ceasefires earlier? And what about the Hizbul and other armed groups? Given the lack of youth leadership, despite the plethora of martyr icons, Yusuf Shah, aka Salahuddin, might be the best bet for the first port of call. Alternatively, there is our own short-lived initiative as interlocutors, of putting out feelers through militants safely lodged in jail, which aroused such a howl of protest that we were forced to abandon it.
Opposition within
•Union Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has already opposed Ms. Mufti’s proposal as have Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office Jitendra Singh and the State Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)unit. Mr. Vajpayee was able to silence opponents within his party and alliance. There is little doubt that Mr. Modi could do the same, given that he is feted within the party and his allies in government would in any case support a ceasefire.
•The question is, does he want to? The declaration of a unilateral ceasefire would undoubtedly be to his advantage in the Valley, where the BJP is reviled by many. But Mr. Modi is due to visit Kashmir on May 19, two days after Ramzan begins, and many in Kashmir hope that he might announce a ceasefire then. If he does not do so, he will again have shattered Kashmiri hopes and snubbed Ms. Mufti, as he did her father.
•Yet Ms. Mufti also bears responsibility. If she has not done the groundwork to ensure that a unilateral ceasefire will soon be reciprocated, and a political process follows, then she too has played opportunist politics geared towards restoring the credibility of her failing administration. In that case she would have done better to seek common ground with her coalition partner to curtail the counterproductive counterinsurgency campaign and improve governance on the ground.
•We can only hope that both the Chief Minister and the Prime Minister are in sync.
