📰 Cooperative spirit: On the new Union Ministry of Cooperation
The new Ministry should seek to be a catalyst, and not the command centre, of the sector
•Alongside the state and the market, cooperatives play a vital role in the country’s development but are seldom the focus of policy planning. The creation of a new Union Ministry to oversee the cooperatives sector will redeem it from negligence, according to the Government. Critics fear that this Ministry is purposed to concentrate even more powers in the hands of the Centre. Cooperatives are dominant in agriculture, credit and marketing, but not limited to those. Some are big — IFFCO has around a third of the market share in fertilizers. In milk, cotton, handlooms, housing, edible oils, sugar and fisheries, they are formidable. As market conditions are evolving, cooperatives in States such as Kerala have got into complex operations: running IT parks and medical colleges. More avenues for expansion, such as insurance, remain untapped and the regulatory regime must evolve in step. The legal architecture of the sector began evolving since 1904 under colonial rule, and in 2002, the Multi State Cooperative Societies Act was passed, taking into account the challenges arising out of liberalisation. Considering the fact that cooperatives fall in the State list of the Constitution, the Centre will have to innovate to provide legal sanctity for the new Ministry. A separate Ministry can marshal the diffused capacity of the sector, however.
•That said, this move will turn disastrous if the attempt is to appropriate the political capital of the sector, which is significant. Cooperatives are not meant to operate by the market logic of maximising profits but to share the benefits to all stakeholders equitably. Though not uniform across India, cooperatives have made significant contributions in poverty alleviation, food security, management of natural resources and the environment. True, the sector has become an instrument of patronage and pilferage. Mismanagement and corruption destroyed the sector in some States. The potency of cooperatives as an apparatus of political control is personally known to Minister-in-charge Amit Shah, once president of a district cooperative bank. Besides serving localities and segments that markets might ignore, cooperatives are also effective in mediating politics at the local level, outside of the parliamentary system. Despite regulatory oversight by the RBI and States, there is considerable autonomy for the sector which is often misused. The remedy is not an overarching Ministry and diktats from Delhi. The premise of a cooperative is that decisions are made by those affected by them. The case for transparency and efficiency in the sector is strong; that goal must be pursued not by scaring the very soul of the sector but by advancing the cooperative spirit. The new Ministry could indeed be a catalyst, but it must not fashion itself as a command authority.
It is critical that we safeguard young people’s well-being because India’s welfare hinges on them
•World Population Day is marked on July 11 every year to focus attention on the importance of population-related issues. It was first observed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1989 and aims to raise the discourse on sustainable ways to safeguard each life that adds up to a population.
•As flagged by a UNDP report last year, and subsequently in a global study by The Lancet, India will stabilise its population 12 years earlier than expected. Therefore, the window India has to leverage its ‘demographic dividend’ is narrower than we had thought. Fears of a ‘population explosion’ are misplaced; instead, it is critical that we focus our attention on safeguarding young people’s well-being because India’s welfare hinges on them.
Impact of the pandemic
•At 253 million, India’s adolescent population is among the largest. Over 62% of India is aged between 15 and 59 years, and the median age of the population is less than 30 years. India’s ‘demographic dividend’ represents the potential for economic growth based on the age structure of the population. However, transforming this potential into reality requires adolescents and the youth to be healthy and well-educated.
•Even before COVID-19 caused country-wide school closures, India’s underfunded education system was inadequately equipped to provide the skills young people need to take advantage of emerging employment opportunities. According to the World Bank, public expenditure on education constituted 4.4% of GDP in 2019 and only 3.4% of GDP in 2020. Another report revealed that India stands 62nd in terms of public expenditure per student, and fares badly in quality of education measures such as student-teacher ratios. Coupled with the impact of COVID-19, this paints a bleak picture of the state of education today.
•In India, more than 32 crore students have been affected by the nationwide lockdown due to COVID-19. Of these, about 15.8 crore are female. The number of schoolgirls who are impacted is 158 million and many of those who have dropped out are unlikely to go back to school. Schools have remained closed even in remote areas where the effect of the pandemic has been minimal. Studies show that school closures have a serious impact on the lives and mental well-being of children.
•The impact of the pandemic on adolescents has been severe. A survey by the International Labour Organization reveals that 65% of adolescents worldwide reported having learnt less during the pandemic, and 51% felt that their learning would be further delayed. It also highlighted that adolescent mental well-being has taken a big blow, with 17% of young people likely to be suffering from anxiety and depression.
•It is important, therefore, for policymakers to balance the risks of transmission through children with the harm of prolonged school closures. By prioritising the vaccination of teachers and school support staff and also allowing a decentralised approach where district-level officials may reopen schools based on local COVID-19 transmission rates, schools could be opened in a safe and phased manner. In Odisha, for example, community schools have re-opened in some areas. Students wear face masks and sit physically distanced from each other outdoors under sheds or tents. With some innovation and creativity, opening schools with a mix of online and offline options could be an important step to addressing the learning needs and mental well-being of adolescents.
•Increased poverty levels during the pandemic may well have led to a worrying spurt in early marriages of girls in India. As demographers like Shireen Jejeebhoy note, while child marriage as a strategy to address household poverty has been noted in India in general, it has registered an alarming rise during the pandemic. This is linked with increases in gender-based violence. Adolescent girls are at high risk during times like these, given their vulnerability to abuse and trafficking, especially if primary caregivers fall ill or die. Restricted mobility due to lockdowns puts girls at risk of violence at home at the hands of caregivers or partners. The impact of the crisis on adolescents, especially girls, is of gigantic proportions, but the problem is not irredeemable, provided we display firm commitment to implementing quick and effective strategies to overcome the challenges.
The way forward
•We are living through a global crisis and the road ahead is uncertain. This will have long-standing effects on adolescents and youth. Recognising that COVID-19 has affected all dimensions of the lives of youth, collaborative actions by key ministries, government agencies, and civil society will be central to developing a holistic and meaningful solution. It is imperative that we have in place mechanisms for better inter-sectoral collaboration as we move to safeguard the futures of our adolescents. School mid-day meals, for example, exemplify how improved nutrition benefits learning. Not only do they provide an incentive for parents to send their children to school on the assurance of one nutritious meal; they also provide the calorie intake required to stay alert in the classroom. Studies have established strong links between nutrition and cognitive scores among teenagers. Coordination across departments can enable better solutions and greater efficiencies in tackling the crisis that our adolescents face.
•Much could be gained if the Ministry of Education took steps to ensure that adolescents, especially girls, continue their education during the pandemic. Simultaneously, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare must collaborate with the Education Ministry to disseminate key information to help adolescents safeguard their health and ability to learn.
•Given that school closures have impacted access to schemes such as the delivery of menstrual hygiene products to adolescents, teachers can work as volunteers for collaborating with frontline health workers to distribute sanitary napkins to girls. To address the mental health of adolescents, the Health and Education Ministries should strengthen outreach via existing helplines and by enabling conversations on critical issues regarding their reproductive and sexual health.
•There is enough academic research to demonstrate how the demographic dividend contributed to growth in other countries, especially during East Asia’s economic miracle of 1965-1990. During that period, East Asia's working age population grew at a faster rate than its dependent population, thereby expanding the per capita productivity of these economies. This occurred because East Asian countries developed social, economic, and political institutions and policies that allowed them to realise the growth potential created by the transition.
•Improving the lives of our adolescents in mission mode would lift their lives, but also generate a virtuous cycle with healthier and educated young adults contributing substantially to securing India’s future.
📰 Shaping a trilateral as Rome looks to the Indo-Pacific
In the pushback against China, strategic cooperation between India, Italy and Japan can ensure a free Indo-Pacific
•One of the signs of India’s growing centrality in the Indo-Pacific strategic architecture is its burgeoning engagement with key western nations. Even countries which have been lackadaisical in their regional outreach so far have begun to approach the Indo-Pacific with a new seriousness and have been reaching out to New Delhi.
•The growth of India’s weight in Indo-Pacific affairs comes at a time when it is becoming clearer that complex regional geopolitical problems cannot be addressed adequately by rigid and structured traditional alliance frameworks. This aspect is even more evident in the context of the Indo-Pacific, where the geographical vastness of the area and the criticality of the challenges posed by China’s assertive initiatives clash with a region lacking multilateral organisations capable of solving problems effectively.
•But as a new pushback against China takes shape and as Indian foreign policy becomes strategically clearer, there is a new momentum to initiatives such as the Quad. Countries that share similar values and face similar challenges are coming together to create purpose-oriented partnerships. In doing so, they are making it possible for participating nations to address specific common challenges, from maritime security to a coordinated pandemic response, including consolidating and further developing strong reciprocal trade relationships, without compromising the political autonomy of each participant.
Italy’s outreach
•Recently, Italy has also begun to signal its intention to enter the Indo-Pacific geography. It has done so by seeking to join India and Japan in a trilateral partnership. This initiative comes after years of Rome’s relative absence from the geopolitical affairs of the region as it sought to concentrate more on the Atlantic and European dimensions while maintaining good, albeit well below potential, bilateral relations with India.
•The Italian government headed by Prime Minister Mario Draghi has started to pay attention outside its immediate neighbourhood again. At the same time, Italy has become more vocal on the risks emanating from China’s strategic competitive initiatives. Recently, Mr. Draghi described Chinese competitive practices as “unfair” and invited the European Union (EU) to be franker and more courageous in confronting Beijing on its violations of human rights, reiterating that with respect to China “the reciprocal visions of the world are very different”.
•On the Indian side, there is great interest in forging new partnerships with like-minded countries interested in preserving peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific. During a recent India-Italy-Japan trilateral, organised by the Italian embassies in India and Japan, Riva Ganguly Das, Secretary (East) of the Ministry of External Affairs, reiterated that the responsibility of keeping the Indo-Pacific free and open, and working for the welfare of its inhabitants falls on like-minded countries within and beyond the region.
Need for a clear strategy
•With the expression of interest on the Italian side, the first step towards this trilateral has been taken, yet it needs to evolve into something more significant. The Italian government must formulate a clear Indo-Pacific strategy that must indicate its objectives and, above all, the means and initiatives it is willing to implement on its own and in cooperation with its partners. Italy’s tendency to privilege diplomatic action through the mechanisms of the EU can be a resource for consolidating the EU-India strategic relationship. But Rome must go beyond that in defining and implementing, at the margins of the EU’s common initiatives, its own policy with respect to the Indo-Pacific.
Trilateral cooperation is key
•The India, Italy and Japan trilateral initiative can, and should, be a forum to foster and consolidate a strategic relationship between these three countries, and specifically expand India-Italy bilateral relations. As it stands, relations between Rome and Tokyo are historically strong, and those between New Delhi and Tokyo are a strategic pillar of the free and open Indo-Pacific. A trilateral cooperation can be the right forum for India and Italy to learn more from each other’s practices and interests and consolidate a strategic dialogue that should include the economic, the security and the political dimensions. The next G20 leaders’ summit in Rome, in October, before the presidency handover to India in 2023, should be the right opportunity for further trilateral coordination on economic and political issues at an institutional level. To consolidate the trilateral cooperation in this field, the three countries need to define a common economic and strategic agenda.
•A strategic trilateral between India, Italy and Japan has, in the medium to long term, a lot of potential. Their compatible economic systems can create a virtuous and mutually beneficial contribution to the reorganisation of the global supply chains that is now being reviewed by many players as a natural result of the Chinese mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the security level, the well-defined India-Japan Indo-Pacific partnership can easily be complemented by Italy, already present in the western Indian Ocean where it is engaged in anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia. At the multilateral level, the three countries share the same values and the same rules-based world view. Despite these fundamental convergences, the risk inherent in missing this opportunity also exists. For this reason, a clear political will is needed from all sides, and Italy, in particular, should recognise its interests in playing a larger role towards the maintenance of a free and open Indo-Pacific. Robust India-Italy strategic ties can be the first step towards the realisation of this goal.
📰 A ride to safety
Uber and UNESCO are coming together to offer a ‘Free rides for teachers’ vaccination’ campaign
•The world is not yet out of the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to take a high toll on populations and economies. This unprecedented health crisis has also severely impacted the gains made in the education sector over the last few years. In India alone, 1.5 million schools shut down in 2020, affecting 320 million learners and impacting their education, protection and well-being.
•Throughout this pandemic, the exceptional effort undertaken by teachers must be highlighted. Using the resources available to them, Indian teachers mobilised as one and have remained on the front-lines of education to ensure continuity of learning, often against formidable odds, even though the pandemic claimed the lives of many of them.
•As the country steps up its efforts to tackle the devastating effects of the second wave of COVID-19, the national vaccination campaign has assumed greater importance than ever before, so that we can finally move to a ‘new normal’. There is an urgent need to better recognise teachers as front-line workers and prioritise them in the vaccination campaign.
•While this has already been done by many State governments, the model should be replicated nationwide. This will not only speed up the reopening of schools so that students can get back to ‘in person’ learning, but will also provide safety.
Barriers to vaccination
•Mass vaccination campaigns do not solely depend on the availability of vaccines. Such efforts are always hindered by a lack of suitable transport facilities, and difficult or prolonged travel time to the vaccination sites.
•Teachers, like anyone else, may be worried about travelling long distances to the vaccination centres for fear of contracting the virus on public transport and may not be able to access other means of conveyance.
•Keeping these limitations in mind and to support the process of swift vaccination for teachers initiated by the government, the ride-sharing company Uber and UNESCO are coming together to offer a ‘Free rides for teachers’ vaccination’ campaign to provide teachers with the means to travel to the vaccination centres in a safe manner while offsetting the costs of traveling long distances.
•The initiative offers 1,00,000 rides to 25,000 teachers to and from vaccination centres to get the two vaccine doses. The offer will be implemented in Chennai, Coimbatore and Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu. The rides will be made available via a promotional code communicated to the teachers with a detailed pictorial brochure to help them download the application and use the code.
Global partnerships
•The impact of the pandemic across the globe necessitates a coordinated response. Last year, UNESCO launched the Global Education Coalition (GEC), a platform for collaboration to protect the right to education during the pandemic and beyond.
•The coalition brings together more than 175 members from the UN family, civil society, academia, and the private sector focusing on three key issues, namely connectivity, teachers, and gender to ensure continuous access to education for all.
•As we now begin to re-imagine education in a post-COVID-19 world, we must remember that renewed cooperation between governments and the private sector can go a long way in combating this crisis. Through our partnership with Uber, we wish to acknowledge the continued commitment of teachers to their students and their critical role in contributing to the achievement of the 2030 targets under Sustainable Development Goal 4.
•In this crisis, teachers have shown great leadership and innovation in ensuring that #LearningNeverStops, and that no learner is left behind. They have also helped in communicating measures that prevent the spread of the virus and providing assistance to ensure the mental well-being of all children. An accelerated vaccination process will enable them to stand fully ready when schools reopen.
