📰 Centre to promote dragon fruit cultivation
Plan is to increase cultivation from 3,000 hectares to 50,000 hectares in five years
•Following in the footsteps of the Gujarat and Haryana governments, the Centre has decided to promote the cultivation of dragon fruit, known as a “super fruit” for its health benefits. The Centre feels that considering the cost effectiveness and global demand for the fruit due to its nutritional values, its cultivation can be expanded in India. At present, this exotic fruit is cultivated in 3,000 hectares; the plan is to increase cultivation to 50,000 hectares in five years.
•The Gujarat government recently renamed dragon fruit as kamlam [lotus] and announced an incentive for farmers who cultivate it. The Haryana government also provides a grant for farmers who are ready to plant this exotic fruit variety. The fruit is considered good for diabetic patients, low in calories and high in nutrients like iron, calcium, potassium and zinc. Addressing a national conclave on the fruit here on Thursday, Union Agriculture Secretary Manoj Ahuja said the demand for the fruit is high in domestic and global markets because of its nutritional values.
Win-win situation
•“50,000 hectares in five years is an achievable target. The demand for the fruit will remain. Prices for farmers will also be good. The benefit is that this fruit can be cultivated in degraded and rainfed land,” Mr. Ahuja said. He added that the Centre will assist States in providing good quality planting materials to farmers.
•Talking to The Hindu on the sidelines of the conclave, he said the Centre can also provide specific target-based help to States and farmers under the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH). “Processing infrastructure can also be developed with the help of the Food Processing Ministry. Its cultivation will be beneficial for farmers and consumers. It is a win-win situation for all,” he added.
•According to the authorities, and the Indian Council of Agriculture Research, the fruit plant doesn’t need much water and can be cultivated on dry land, too. Horticulture Commissioner Prabhat Kumar told The Hindu that dragon fruit is now sold at a price of ₹400 per kg and the effort is to make it available to consumers for ₹100 per kg.
The mental illnesses and challenges that India’s LGBTQIA++ people face need comprehensive and long-term solutions
•During the recent celebration of Pride month (June) globally and in India, we witnessed an incredible social media presence filled with striking images and stories. It would not have been amiss to also pause and reflect momentarily on the state of mental health of LGBTQIA++ communities in India. The reflection would undoubtedly have been a sobering one.
•Despite the reading down of Section 377, the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) judgment as also successive progressive movements, India’s class, caste and regionally diverse LGBTQIA++ communities remain at risk of life-long mental illnesses and challenges. This can take the form of severe mental illness or transient and long standing dysfunctional harmful behaviours.
Stigma and suffering
•Why? This is caused by life-long dissonance, deep-rooted stigma, discrimination and often abuse, that the community experiences. It often leads to extreme distress and poor self-worth, resulting in self-hate and suffering. The community is often fearful and has such deeply internalised stigma that it is challenging to even articulate what it feels like — forget about seeking help.
•While the mental health needs of the LGBTQIA++ communities are not different from others, their identities, social contexts and the discrimination give them stressors that impact their mental health, relentlessly, from a young age. Sexual orientation and gender identity are rarely discussed in our social, educational or familial environments, and if ever done, these discussions are stigmatising. Society marginalises LGBTQIA++ people throughout life, no matter how accomplished they may be. This is payment extracted by a heteronormative society that demands assimilation .
•In such an environment, it is hard to come out to yourself; forget the others. Even within the LGBTQIA++ communities, the lines are easily fractured by caste, class, and, more recently, by religious affiliation. It is difficult to find friends and family who understand what the person feels.
•If they are able to cope with this, there is the constant othering. The life one leads and lived experiences have little or no overlap with those around oneself. In every sense, the person remains an outsider. If a person’s gender identity is different from the sex assigned to them at birth, this conflict and othering is extreme. The person feels trapped and conflicted, that feeds their gender dysphoria.
•This relentless dissonance and othering can result in internalised homophobia, often leading to anxiety, loneliness and substance use. It is not surprising then, that LGBTQIA++ youth are likely to suffer 1.75 times more anxiety and depression than the rest of society while the transgender community is even more vulnerable as its members suffer 2.4 times higher anxiety and depression.
•In India and elsewhere, from an early age, everyone is pressured, openly or structurally, into accepting gender roles and sexual identities. Those who do not comply are bullied, abused, and assaulted under the pretence of correcting them.
Inadequate health services
•When help is sought even by the most empowered, queer affirmative mental health services are hardly available. A large majority of the psychiatrists in India still consider diverse sexual orientations and gender identities as a disorder and practice ‘correctional therapy’. This is also true of general health care as well. In an ongoing study, the Raahat Project found that a large number of trans and gay men preferred to pay and seek help in the private sector rather than access government health care due to harassment and stigma.
•How then do we build communities that sustain the good mental health of LGBTQIA++ communities? What we need is a national focus on LGBTQIA++ mental health that has become further acerbated by the global COVID-19 pandemic.
•We need comprehensive long-term solutions that make queer mental health a priority and address community needs but also engage everyone to change the environment in which they exist. These solutions must engage with all stakeholders, including educational institutions, communities, health-care providers, mental health professionals, police personnel and families who are often a key source of mental health stress. This is not easy as this is not a priority for the Government and funding agencies, and is also neglected in society.
Awareness and other steps
•One way to change the status quo is to ensure that every aspect of mental health work in India must include aspects of queer mental health issues, especially in schools and universities, to destigmatise diverse gender and sexual identities. A key aspect is building self-care skills among queer adolescents and youth. Strong components of behaviour change and awareness and also building capacity are important ways to build agency among these youth populations. What we need is a movement on queer mental health guided by non-discrimination and public awareness in order to change social attitudes.
•Community building is an important part of improving the mental health for LGBTQIA++ people. We need to create supportive, safe and educative spaces, access points for health care and information on mental health. One such project that the Raahat Project has been working on through participatory methods has opened a host of issues that LGBTQIA++ communities face in leading colleges on an ongoing basis. The challenge is on how to address these issues in a holistic way when institutions are so queerphobic.
•In the end, ignoring the mental health needs of LGBTQIA++ communities comes at a great cost to them and to society. Without addressing both the preventive and support aspects of the mental health of LGBTQIA++ people we will compound an already neglected problem of mental illness that will be hard to handle in the future. This would not just be injustice, but also a crisis created by deliberate neglect .
📰 Chhattisgarh gets nod for school project funded by World Bank
Centre gives in-principle approval for $300 million borrowing over five years
•The Chhattisgarh government has received an in-principle nod from the Centre to go ahead with a $300 million (approximately ₹2,100 crore) school education project the State is negotiating with the World Bank.
•Confirming this, Principal Secretary (Planning, Economics and Statistics, Implementation of 20pts. Programme, Science and Technology) Alok Shukla said on Thursday that the Department of Economic Affairs under the Union Finance Ministry had given an in-principle approval for the project. “A team of the World Bank is visiting Chhattisgarh later this month for the first stage of discussion,” Mr. Shukla added.
•The proposal, discussions on which started two months ago, was sent to the Centre after the State Finance Department cleared it, Mr. Shukla said. If it goes through, the initiative will allow the Chhattisgarh government to borrow $300 million over a period of five years at significantly lower than market rates, and repay it over a period of 20 years. The pooled resources will be a shot in the arm for the Bhupesh Baghel-led Congress government, which has education as one of its key planks.
•An in-principle nod means that the Centre has no objection to the State borrowing money from an external financial institution such as the World Bank. This is not the final approval but it paves the way for the State to proceed with subsequent discussions. Similarly, the World Bank has also in-principle approved that it’s willing to fund the project.
•“This will be followed by a World Bank team’s visit to Chhattisgarh. The team is scheduled to arrive later this month. Then we will prepare the Detailed Project Report (DPR) with the Centre and the World Bank, which will be put up before the World Bank Board and the Centre for a final approval. We are hopeful that all the clearances will be received by the end of this year,” Mr. Shukla said.
•The DPR will also have a detailed plan on how the money will be spent.
•The World Bank has been associated with India’s school education system since 1994, according to its website. One of its more recent projects, inked in 2021, is the $500 million Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States Programto improve the quality and governance of school education in six Indian States. That list, however, does not include Chhattisgarh.
📰 Just fine
Justice for environmental crimes must be dispensed quickly and equitably
•The Union Environment Ministry, tasked with safeguarding India’s forests and its environmental assets, proposes to amend sections of key environmental legislation and make them less threatening to potential violators. India has eight cornerstone pieces of legislation that define a regulatory framework to ensure that natural resources are not wantonly exploited, acts of pollution are apprehended and there is a mechanism to punish and deter violators. Under provisions in the existing legislation, violators are punishable with imprisonment up to five years or with a fine up to one lakh rupees, or with both. Were violations to continue, there is an additional fine of up to ₹5,000 for every day during which such failure or contravention continues after the conviction. There is also a provision for jail terms to extend to seven years. Under the new amendments proposed, the Ministry says it wants to weed out “fear of imprisonment for simple violations”, and therefore have such violations invite only monetary fines. However, serious environmental crimes that cause grave injury or death would invite imprisonment under the Indian Penal Code. These penalties would be decided by an ‘adjudication officer’ and transferred to an ‘Environment Protection Fund’. Moreover, the quantum of potential fines has been raised from beyond the one lakh rupees to as much as five crore rupees. These proposals are not yet law and have been placed in the public domain for feedback.
•The question of whether the threat of imprisonment acts as a deterrent has a long history with both proponents and opponents. The proposed amendments do not cover the destruction of forests and wildlife, which make up a substantial fraction of environmental crime, and would continue to invite existing penal provisions. Research on environmental crime in the United States and Europe suggests that fining is the most common mode of punishment. India has a long history of corporate violations as well as a woefully slow redress system. An analysis by the Centre for Science and Environment found that Indian courts took between 9-33 years to clear a backlog of cases for environmental violations. Starting with 2018, close to 45,000 cases were pending for trial and another 35,000 cases were added in that year. More than 90% of cases were pending for trial in five of seven major environmental laws. While fines could theoretically help with faster redress, large environmental fines will continue to be contested in courts, adding to the prevailing practice of tardy justice. The threat of imprisonment might have acted as a deterrent in India where the effectiveness of environment regulation is under par. Justice for environmental crimes must be dispensed quickly and equitably before tinkering with the law to make it less foreboding.
📰 The proposal for an India-specific norm for assessing vehicular safety in collision
How does the new draft on the Bharat New Car Assessment Program compare with the Global NCAP? How has the automobile industry responded?
•On June 24, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari approved a Draft GSR (general statutory rules) Notification seeking comments on a proposal to introduce the Bharat New Car Assessment Program (Bharat-NCAP).
•New Car Assessment Programs (NCAP) provide reliable information about the crash safety of a vehicle based on certain common criteria and procedures. This then helps vehicles acquire a foothold in international markets.
•Bharat NCAP would assign vehicles between one and five stars on parameters such as Adult Occupant Protection (AOP), Child Occupant Protection (COP) and Safety Assist Technologies (SAT).
•The story so far: On June 24, Union Minister for Road, Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari approved a Draft GSR (general statutory rules) Notification seeking comments on a proposal to introduce the Bharat New Car Assessment Program (Bharat-NCAP). It would accord vehicles a star rating based on their performance in crash tests. They are intended to increase the export-worthiness of vehicles and competition on safety parameters among manufacturers, as well as instil consumer confidence in their safety. “Bharat NCAP will prove to be a critical instrument in making our automobile industry Aatmanirbhar with the mission of making India the Number 1 automobile hub in the world,” he tweeted.
What is the purpose of an NCAP?
•New Car Assessment Programs (NCAPs) provide globally reliable information about the crash safety of a vehicle based on certain common criteria and procedures. This then helps vehicles acquire a foothold in international markets. They are separate from country-specific motor standards in the sense that the latter restricts itself to assessing the vehicle’s roadworthiness and not necessarily how it would ensure safety in a collision. However, a zero rating in an NCAP cannot prevent a car from being sold in any geography.
•Global NCAP is a standardised platform establishing cooperation and coordination among NCAPs internationally whereas regional NCAPs take into account specific local conditions. A car may have attained a good rating elsewhere but it might not be the case in another geography because of potentially separate manufacturing origins and quality. The nature of the domestic markets also matter — consumers may prefer a car with reduced safety specifications for there is greater insistence on affordability.
How would the vehicles be evaluated?
•The voluntary Bharat NCAP would assign vehicles between one and five stars on parameters such as Adult Occupant Protection (AOP), Child Occupant Protection (COP) and Safety Assist Technologies (SAT). It would study frontal impact, side impact and the possibility of a door opening after a crash. The potential impact is studied with the help of dummies, of pre-specified measurements, placed inside the vehicle. The car is crashed into an aluminium deformable barrier impersonating an opposing force of the same magnitude — a crash-like situation, with a 40% overlap.
•Bharat NCAP would conduct its frontal offset crash testing at 64 kmph instead of the prevailing 56 kmph norm. Offset collisions are those where one side of a vehicle’s front and not the full width hits the barrier. Even though the existing regulations adhere to United Nations Regulation 94 for collision testing, its absence in domestic testing norms, and inadequate side protection in vehicles (such as airbags), has been often cited as reasons for the poor performance of Indian vehicles at NCAPs.
•After the test collision, to assess adult protection, the dummy would be checked for injuries on the head, neck, chest, knee, pelvis area, lower leg, foot and ankle. Whether the airbags protect the occupant’s head that moves forward reflexively in the aftermath of a collision would be evaluated. There must not be any rib compression or injury to the knee joint. Additionally, full or partial ejection of an occupant because of a door opening is negatively marked.
•For assessing child protection, the NCAP would evaluate the impact to a child restraint system (CRS) and airbag safety. CRS are portable seats designed to protect children during vehicle collisions. Vehicles that can accommodate a broad variety of child seats available in the domestic market would be rewarded. The child must not be ejected from the CRS and his/her head must be contained within the shell of the CRS preventing any outside blow following a crash.
•Higher ratings would be accorded to vehicles with a permanent warning label on frontal airbags. Sudden braking may propel a child in the front row towards the dashboard, against an airbag which is inflating at an immense speed and having huge volume, causing injury or death. Cars must have manual switches to disable airbags which should not be within the child’s reach.
What does it hold for the domestic automobile industry?
•The proposed move follows Mr. Gadkari’s focus on “zero tolerance for road accidents.” In February this year, he had said efforts must be made to reduce road accidents by 50% by the year 2025.
•With respect to Bharat NCAP, Hemal Thakkar, Director for Transport, Logistics and Mobility at analytics firm CRISIL, said that consumers will have to prepare for an increase in vehicle prices, but will also get safer vehicles. “There could be a dent to the price sensitive lower compact segment as muted income growth has already increased pressure on this segment which will get further accentuated on account of this move,” he stated. Vinkesh Gulati, President of the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA), believes that having the Bharat NCAP rating criteria would emerge as a turning point in the domestic automotive sector in terms of product, technology and safety, since it would provide a platform that would test vehicular safety as per Indian conditions. “There were Indian OEMS (original equipment manufacturers) who were giving lot of importance to passenger safety and getting their vehicle tested under Global NCAP, but lot of MNC OEMs were not interested in this,” Mr. Gulati said. He suggested that the grading system be made mandatory for all OEMs so that the choice is entirely left to the customer.
•Addressing the issue of export-worthiness, Mr. Thakkar said that the proposed norm may not make a difference, since any vehicle that is exported to the EU or North America needs to be homologated in the respective country. However, India exports a lot of passenger vehicles to Africa and Latin America, because of which prices of vehicles would increase, he said.
•If the Bharat NCAP is implemented, domestic testing agencies would conduct tests for M1 category of vehicles, that is, passenger vehicles having not more than eight seats in addition to the driver’s seat, and weighing less than 3.50 tonnes — imported or domestically manufactured. If cleared, it would be applicable from April 1, 2023.
