The power of parity: Advancing women’s equality in India:-
Achieving gender equality in India would have a larger economic impact there than in any other region in the world—$700 billion of added GDP in 2025—but comprehensive change is needed.
Gender Parity Score (GPS) measures the distance each country has traveled toward gender parity, which is set at 1.00. The regional GPS is lowest in South Asia (excluding India) at 0.44 and highest in North America and Oceania at 0.74.
Advancing gender equality can deliver sizeable additional economic growth and broad-based prosperity to the world—nowhere more so than in India. Delivering that impact, however, will require tackling significant gender gaps in society and driving a national agenda for change in eight areas that involve all stakeholders.
The economic potential of India’s women is not achievable without gender gaps in society being addressed. To bring 68 million more women into the non-farm labour force over the next decade, India’s policy makers, business leaders, and social-sector leaders need to focus concerted action in eight areas:
(1)Closing gender gaps in secondary and tertiary education in India’s large states;
(2) Lowering barriers to job creation;
(3) Expanding skills training for women in key sectors;
(4) Expanding the reach of financial and digital services to enable women entrepreneurs;
(5) Stepping up gender diversity policies and practices in private-sector organizations;
(6) Further strengthening legal provisions for women and the enforcement of laws;
(7) Improving infrastructure and services to address the high burden of routine domestic work, childcare and elder care; and
(8) Reshaping deep-rooted attitudes about the role of women in work and in society.
India to accede to the Ashgabat Agreement:-
The Ashgabat Agreement has Oman, Iran, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan as founding members. Kazakhstan has also joined this arrangement subsequently. Accession to the Agreement would enable India to utilise this existing transport and transit corridor to facilitate trade and commercial interaction with the Eurasian region. Further, this would synchronise with our efforts to implement the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) for enhanced connectivity.
India’s intention to accede to the Ashgabat Agreement would now be conveyed to the Depository State (Turkmenistan). India would become party to the Agreement upon consent of the founding members.
Udaan-Special Industry Initiative for J&K
Udaan provides exposure to the youth of J&K to the best of corporate India and corporate India to the rich talent pool available in the State. So far, 67 leading corporates have partnered with National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) under UDAAN with a commitment to train youth from the State covering Organized Retail, Banking, Financial Services, IT, ITES, Infrastructure, Hospitality etc.
The era of plastic-degrading bacteria has begun
It is hardly a hundred years since chemists learnt to make long molecules called polymers and plastics in the lab. Polymers have since been hailed on one hand as the greatest boon to mankind for their manifold uses, and the greatest bane – thanks to the way that they have cluttered the environment.
The most common synthetic polymer or plastic used in everyday life is polyethylene terephthalate or PET (also known as Terylene or Dacron). An estimated 311 million tonnes of plastics are produced every year (and 50 million tons of PET alone). Unfortunately many of them, such as PET, are not degraded, digested or broken down like naturally occurring polymers (such as proteins, carbohydrates and fats).
We use plastic in everyday life, use and discard them, hardly recycling them (to the extent we actually can), and as a result plastics have cluttered the earth and its oceans. J.R. Jambeck and others have estimated that as much as 5 trillion pieces of plastic have reached and are found in ocean beds across the globe (Science, 13 February 2015). That is anywhere between 5 to 13 million tonnes of them, lying and affecting the health of ocean life (and an area of about 1.4 million square kilometers, or the area of Northern India). There is no clear estimate of how much plastic is fouling the land mass of the earth, surely it has to be an equal amount.
If only we can find ways to degrade such huge amounts of accumulated plastics! And the best agents to do so would be biological life forms such as bacteria which multiply by the millions in days and are themselves completely biodegradable! (Indeed, way back in 1980, Dr Anand Chakraborty of GE R&D Center at Schenectady, NY, isolated one such microbe that would eat off oil spills). It is towards this challenge that research has been going on, and the latest effort which shows some success has been published in the March 11, 2016 issue of Science by a Japanese group, led by Dr Kanji Miyamoto of Keio University, Kanagawa. The group concentrated on looking for and identifying bacteria from the PET bottle recycling sites, and found one such microbe that they have named Ideonella sakaiensis (the first name identifies the family and the second honours the geographic location where they found the bacterium).
I. sakaiensis sticks to the surface of the PET bottle, secretes one molecule named which they named PET-ase (the suffix “– ase” denotes an enzyme molecule), which breaks down PET into a smaller building block abbreviated as MHET. MHET is now taken up and broken down by another enzyme in the microbe’s cell (called MHET hydrolase) and hydrolysed to produce ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid – the two small molecules (called monomers) using which the polymer PET is made in the first place! We should admire I sakaiensis for its efficiency as a safe biodegradable agent. Biologists will now wonder about how this microbe, which all these centuries and millennia had never known PET (until 70 years ago) has suddenly found (or generated) enzymes to degrade this new man-made polymer. Myriad and wonderful are the ways of mutations and natural selection!
Two interesting points emerge from the Japanese work. One is: can we now isolate the ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid, the two monomers, and reuse them to make PET? This offers a nice self-contained set up where the PET bottles and plastics discarded after use are biodegraded back to the starting materials in a bio-reactor, and then taken to the polymer synthesising unit which remakes the PET.
The other point is more challenging and surely there are molecular biologists already working on it. That is: why not clone the genes that express the enzyme PET-ase and MHET hydrolase into some other properly chosen microbe (other than I.sakaiensis), using genetic engineering methods and thus attempt to biodegrade the vast mountains of PET fouling the earth? If one can do this for PET, surely it can be done for other polymers and plastics. To write these sentences is easy, but to work on it and succeed takes effort and single minded devotion, but worthy of a Nobel.
Even more changeling is the issue of how to clear the millions of tons of plastics fouling the oceans beds. Even if bugs are founds that can biodegrade them, will they be safe for the oceans and their life forms? But this needs to be done and as they say “nothing ventured nothing gained”. It can perhaps first be done in silico using the methods of computational and system biology, to look for optimal ways to do so and then try on a lab scale. Clearly the Kanagawa group has kindled an exciting chapter in environment sciences with their work.
Chandesvarar Sculpture:-
A sculpture of Chandesvarar, believed to belong to 10th century AD, has been found at Sundaikkai village near Umaiyalpuram in Tamil Nadu. The sculpture was an early Chola icon.
- Chandesvarar is one of the 63 Nayanmars of the Saivite sect and was the first among them to find a place in temples. He is housed in a separate shrine on the northern side of all the Saivite temples, facing the presiding deity.
- The most distinguished shrine of Chandesvara was built by Rajaraja I at the Rajarajesvaram at Thanjavur.
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Seated in ‘suhasana’ with one leg folded and kept on the seat, his other leg rests on a pedestal.
Implementation of the rural housing scheme of Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana — Gramin to achieve Housing for All by 2022.
The details of the Scheme :-
a) Implementing the rural housing scheme of Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana -Gramin
b) Providing assistance for construction of 1.00 crore houses in rural areas over the period of 3 years from 2016-17 to 2018-19.
c) Enhancing the unit assistance to Rs. 1,20,000 in plain areas and to Rs. 1,30,000 in hilly states/difficult areas /IAP districts.
d) Meeting the additional financial requirement of Rs 21,975 crore by borrowing through National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) to be amortised through budgetary allocations after 2022.
e) Using SECC-2011 data for identification of beneficiaries.
f) Setting up of National Technical Support Agency at national level to provide technical support in achieving the target set under the project.
Implementation strategy and targets:-
i. Identification of beneficiaries eligible for assistance and their prioritisation to be done using information from Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) ensuring total transparency and objectivity.
ii. The list will be presented to Gram Sabha to identify beneficiaries who have been assisted before or who have become ineligible due to other reasons. The finalised list will be published.
iii. The cost of unit assistance to be shared between Central and State Governments in the ratio 60:40 in plain areas and 90:10 for North Eastern and hilly states.
iv. Annual list of beneficiaries will be identified from the total list through participatory process by the Gram Sabha. Gram Sabha will need to justify in writing with reasons for any alteration of priority in the original list.
v. Funds will be transferred electronically directly to the account of the beneficiary.
vi. Inspection and uploading of geo referenced photographs will be done though a mobile app. Beneficiary will also be able to track the progress of his payments through the app.
vii. The beneficiary is entitled to 90 days of unskilled labour from MGNREGA. This will be ensured through a server linkage between PMAY and MGNREGA.
viii. Locally appropriate house designs, incorporating features to address the natural calamities common to the region will be made available to beneficiaries.
ix. To address the potential shortage of masons training for masons will be undertaken as an ongoing process.
x. To meet the additional requirement of building materials, manufacture of bricks using cement stabilised earth or fly ash will be taken up under MGNREGA.
xi. The beneficiary would be facilitated to avail loan of up to Rs.70,000/- for construction of the house which is optional.
xii. The unit size is to be enhanced from the existing 20 sq.m to up to 25 sq.m including a dedicated area for hygienic cooking.
xiii. Intensive capacity building exercise for all the stake holders.
xiv. Support will be provided at district and block levels for technical facilitation and addressing quality issues in house construction.
xv. A National Technical Support Agency will be set up to provide technical support to the Centre and States to facilitate construction of the houses targeted and to ensure their quality.
Constitutional Provisions, Laws and Tribes:-
Tribes in India have come to be conceptualized primarily in relation to their geographical and social isolation from the larger Indian society and not in relation to the stage of their social formation. This is why a wide range of groups and communities at different levels of the social formation have all come to be categorized as tribes. By virtue of the fact that tribes lived in isolation from the larger Indian society, they enjoyed autonomy of governance over the territory they inhabited. They held control over the land, forest and other resources and governed themselves in terms of their own laws, traditions and customs. It was the advent of colonial rule that brought tribes and non-tribes into one single political and administrative structure by means of war, conquest and annexation. This was followed by introduction of new and uniform civil and criminal laws as well as setting up of administrative structures that were alien to tribal tradition and ethos.
All these developments led to large scale alienation of land from tribes to non-tribes through such processes and means as fraud, deceit, mortgage, etc. This being the case, the nationalist leadership showed special concern for tribes in the post-independent India.This is reflected in the provisions enshrined for them in the constitution. Tribes as citizens of free India were extended civil, political and social rights in equal measure as others. Civil and political rights have been enshrined within the purview of the Fundamental Rights of the Indian Constitution while social rights have been envisaged in the Directive Principles of the Indian Constitution.
Besides the ones stated above, tribes were also extended certain special rights as being members of a distinct community. Such rights, among other things, include provisions for statutory recognition (article 342); proportionate representation in Parliament and state legislatures (articles 330 and 332); restriction on the right of the ordinary citizen to move freely or settle in particular areas or acquire property in them (article19(5)); conservation of one’s language, dialects and culture, etc (article 29). The Constitution also has a clause that enables the State to make provision for reservation in general (article 14(4)) and in particular, in jobs and appointments in favour of tribal communities (article 16(4)). There is also the Directive Principle of the Constitution that requires that the educational and economic interest of the weaker sections of society, including tribes, is especially promoted (article 46). Besides these, there are provisions in the 5th or 6th schedule of the Constitution (Articles 244 and 244(a) that empower the state to bring the area inhabited by the tribes under special treatment of administration. The provisions in the Constitution range from creation of the scheduled and tribal areas, to providing representation in Parliament and State legislatures including special privileges in the form of reservation of a certain per centage of posts in government services and seats in educational institutions. In short, the Constitution aimed at safeguarding, protecting and promoting the interest of tribal people.
Of all the provisions, protective discrimination has been seen as one of the most important rights given to tribal people. The government evolved specific measures with a view to executing rights conferred on tribal people in the Constitution. It earmarked 7.5 per cent of the jobs in government, semi-government and also educational institutions for people hailing from the scheduled tribe category. Protective discrimination in favour of the group is also evident in relaxation granted to candidates from the scheduled tribe category.
Despite these provisions, the result is far from satisfactory, more so in the case of scheduled tribes than scheduled castes. Nevertheless, the inability of the State to fill up the quota is not considered as a violation of the rights enshrined in the Constitution. This is so, because in the first place, necessary measures have been taken in pursuit of the rights enshrined in the Constitution. Secondly, the extensions of reservation to candidates from the category are not automatic. Rather, it is contingent upon certain conditions stipulated in the Constitution itself. Article 335, for example, stipulates that the claims of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes can be taken into consideration, consistent with maintenance of efficiency of administration in making appointments to services and posts. Thirdly, though such rights have been given to tribes, they can avail of them only as members of the tribal community.
It is an individual’s right to secure access to these provisions on equal terms with others. The right is also individual in the sense that the individual is required to take some action to ensure that he gets it. In view of issues such as these, there is an inbuilt difficulty in challenging the negligence or indifference of the state in the court of law. Only specific cases of discrimination or denials can be taken to court, but these could be defended by taking recourse to article 335 of the Constitution. In short, the provision of protective discrimination is not sufficient in itself. To become effective, the provision must be supplemented by what may be called substantive equality i.e. ability, resources and actual opportunity must be created to make the formal equality or in the case of tribes, even protective discrimination, effective.
This means there was a need for making provisions for economic and social rights for the tribes not only through legislation or constitutional provision but also through effective legal, administrative, infrastructure and financial support. In respect of provisions for which, certain support systems were made available, for example, the provision of protective discrimination. such arrangements did lead to some results, no matter how inadequate they might have been. However, where such measures were non-existent or largely ineffective, the provisions made in the Constitution have hardly led to any desirable results in favour of tribes.
It is not only that effective social and economic rights were not evolved and extended to tribes, but even rights that they enjoyed, such as rights over land and forest were taken away from them by the colonial state to begin with and later by the post- independent Indian state. It is a well-established fact that tribes live mainly off land and forest. Yet, the process of land alienation that began during British rule has gone on unabated in the post-independence period. This has already been referred to earlier. In order to deal with the problem of land alienation to non-tribals, laws have been enacted in almost all states where there are tribal populations. In some parts, such acts have been in existence since the British period like, Chotanagpur Tenancy Act 1908 and The Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act 1940. The British initiated such measures not so much out of concern for the tribes but for reasons of administrative and political expediency. These were more in the direction of protection from land alienation of the tribes and restriction of the movement of the non-tribal population into tribal areas.
In the post-independence period, all states with tribal population enacted legislation, not only for prevention of alienation of lands from tribes to non tribes, but also for its restoration. In some states, acts have even been amended with a view to protecting the interest of non-tribes. The Andhra Pradesh (Selected Areas) Land Transfer Regulation, 1959, was amended in 1970, in an attempt to accommodate the interest of non-tribes. The Kerala Scheduled Tribes (Regulation of Transfer of Land and Restoration of Alienated Land) Act, 1975 has even been repealed to give effect to concessions made to non tribes (Verma 1990; Rao 1996; Bijoy 1999). As a recent of such acts, tribal land continued to pass from tribes to non-tribes.
To reinforce the constitutional provisions for protection of the tribals, two important laws have been enacted in more recent years. One was the Provisions of the Panchayat (Extension to the Scheduled Areas), Act, 1996. The act empowers the scheduled tribes to safeguard and preserve the traditions and customs of the people, their cultural identity, community resources and customary mode of dispute resolution through the gram sabha. Interestingly, the provisions of the Panchayat Act hardly find its due place in letter and spirit, for example, in provisions on the pattern of the sixth schedule, in the acts enacted by the different states. Further, though no enactment has been made to extend part IX A (The Municipalities) to the scheduled areas, the same is steadily being pushed in all states having scheduled areas.
The other act in the direction has been the ‘The Scheduled Tribe and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Act, 2006. The act is aimed at undoing the age old injustice done to tribals by restoring and recognizing their pre-existing rights. The recognition and restoration has been, however passing through rough weather in respect of its implementation.
Under the Constitutional provisions of Directive Principles, the State’s major concern for tribes has been their welfare and development. This was to be pursued under a kind of constitutional provision, the letter and spirit of which was the most evident in the five principles (panch shila), Nehru is credited to have enunciated in a foreword to a book entitled, ‘A Philosophy of NEFA’ by Verier Elwin. Since then, those principles have been taken as the ethos of tribal development in post independence India. The principles entailed development along the lines of their own genius, respect of tribals’ right in land and forest, training and building up a team of their own people to do the work of administration and development, not over- administering the areas with a multiplicity of schemes, working through, and not in rivalry, to their social and cultural institutions.
Yet the approach adopted towards tribes was quite to the contrary. This was mainly due to the imperatives of national development. The issue of tribal development could not be pursued outside of the issues of national development. In fact, measures undertaken for bringing about rapid national development were seen as a kind of important mechanism whereby integration of tribal society could be achieved. In fact, the national objective to build up a productive structure for future growth and resource mobilization was far more important than issues concerning the welfare and interest of the tribes. So, tribal interest and welfare were invariably sacrificed in the name of national development.
Tribes have been unable to safeguard and promote their language, culture and religion; even though Article 19(5) of the Constitution states that a cultural or linguistic minority has the right to conserve its language and culture. This means that tribes as individuals and groups have right to use their own language, to practise their own religion, to study their own history, culture, tradition, heritage, etc. The state cannot, by law, enforce upon them any other culture or language. While the state may not have enforced any language or culture on them, neither has it taken any positive steps worth the name towards meeting this provision of the Constitution. Rather, the steps taken are far from being in consonance with the provisions laid down in the Constitution. The posture they have adopted has invariably been in the direction of assimilation into the language and culture of the major community, rather than protection and promotion of the distinct language and culture of the tribes. Schooling extended to tribes, for example, has invariably been made in the language of the dominant regional community of the respective States. The result is that tribes are increasingly losing knowledge of their own language and culture. Indeed the promotion of language and culture has been left to tribals themselves. Yet, because of lack of control over human, organizational and financial resources, the tribes have not been able to take effective measures in this direction. Only where such support has been made available in some form or the other have tribes been able to protect and safeguard their culture. This explains why in western, northern and southern India, there has been much more erosion of the tribal language and culture.
In eastern India,especially the northeast, the scenario is somewhat better. This has been mainly due to the fact that in north- east India, there was a kind of institutionalized arrangement that facilitated such development. This has received a major boost with the creation of tribal states and autonomous districts. This shows that a collective right such as this can be better realized only where tribes see themselves as a nationality or nation, to govern themselves.
It is ironical that despite a large number of well meaning constitutional provisions and laws aimed at protecting and safeguarding the welfare and interest of the tribal communities, the process of marginalization of the tribals has gone on unabated. Paradoxically, at the root of such marginalization are the laws themselves. Tribes had no tradition of reading and writing and had, hence, no tradition of record keeping and dealing with such laws. The court language and practice had been alien to them. In the absence of such tradition, the non tribes have taken advantage of such laws and have been depriving tribals of their lands through variety of ways and means. The local administration, which is generally manned by the non tribals has been working hand in hand with their ethnic kinsmen to ensure smooth transfer of land from tribes to non-tribes.
Tied up with the above have also been laws that protect tribes and the laws that are meant for general citizenry and human beings. The latter is articulated in terms of citizenship and human rights. Indeed, rights meant for tribes have invariably been pitied against citizenship rights and more importantly human rights. In the process, specific laws meant for a group, even though marginalized, have invariably come to be subjected to general laws. On the same vein are the laws aimed at protecting tribes and those aimed at public interest such as land acquisition act, conservation act, forest act, wildlife sanctuary act, etc. The latter have invariably held sway over the former under the garb of public interest and purpose. Tribal rights have come to be sacrificed to the greater cause of the nation and public interest. In short, those who are in charge of tribal rights are in general insensitive to the constitutional provision and legal entitlements of the tribal communities.
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- The scale of rations
- The price of items distributed through FPS across states.
- Kyoto Protocol of 2001
- Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) as well as REDD+ mechanisms proposed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
- United Nations-mandated Sustainable Developmental Goals (SDG)
- Paris Agreement
- Carbon Neutrality
- multistrata agroforestry,
- afforestation,
- tree intercropping,
- biomass production,
- regenerative agriculture,
- conservation agriculture,
- farmland restoration,
- silvopasture,
- tropical-staple tree,
- intercropping,
- bamboo and indigenous tree–based land management.
Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Rajalakshmi, from a remote Karnataka village spots a business opportunity.
She knows that flowers, discarded in the thousands by temples can be handcrafted into incense sticks.
She wants to find a market for the product and hopefully, employ some people to help her. Soon enough though, she discovers that starting a business is a herculean task for a person like her.
There is a laborious process of rules and regulations to go through, bribes to pay on the way and no actual means to transport her product to its market.
After making her first batch of agarbathis and taking it to Bengaluru by bus, she decides the venture is not easy and gives up.
On the flipside of this is a young entrepreneur in Bengaluru. Let’s call him Deepak. He wants to start an internet-based business selling sustainably made agarbathis.
He has no trouble getting investors and to mobilise supply chains. His paperwork is over in a matter of days and his business is set up quickly and ready to grow.
Never mind that the business is built on aggregation of small sellers who will not see half the profit .
Is this scenario really all that hypothetical or emblematic of how we think about entrepreneurship in India?
Between our national obsession with unicorns on one side and glorifying the person running a pakora stall for survival as an example of viable entrepreneurship on the other, is the middle ground in entrepreneurship—a space that should have seen millions of thriving small and medium businesses, but remains so sparsely occupied that you could almost miss it.
If we are to achieve meaningful economic growth in our country, we need to incorporate, in our national conversation on entrepreneurship, ways of addressing the missing middle.
Spread out across India’s small towns and cities, this is a class of entrepreneurs that have been hit by a triple wave over the last five years, buffeted first by the inadvertent fallout of demonetization, being unprepared for GST, and then by the endless pain of the covid-19 pandemic.
As we finally appear to be reaching some level of normality, now is the opportune time to identify the kind of industries that make up this layer, the opportunities they should be afforded, and the best ways to scale up their functioning in the shortest time frame.
But, why pay so much attention to these industries when we should be celebrating, as we do, our booming startup space?
It is indeed true that India has the third largest number of unicorns in the world now, adding 42 in 2021 alone. Braving all the disruptions of the pandemic, it was a year in which Indian startups raised $24.1 billion in equity investments, according to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report last year.
However, this is a story of lopsided growth.
The cities of Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai together claim three-fourths of these startup deals while emerging hubs like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Jaipur account for the rest.
This leap in the startup space has created 6.6 lakh direct jobs and a few million indirect jobs. Is that good enough for a country that sends 12 million fresh graduates to its workforce every year?
It doesn’t even make a dent on arguably our biggest unemployment in recent history—in April 2020 when the country shutdown to battle covid-19.
Technology-intensive start-ups are constrained in their ability to create jobs—and hybrid work models and artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated unemployment.
What we need to focus on, therefore, is the labour-intensive micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME). Here, we begin to get to a definitional notion of what we called the mundane middle and the problems it currently faces.
India has an estimated 63 million enterprises. But, out of 100 companies, 95 are micro enterprises—employing less than five people, four are small to medium and barely one is large.
The questions to ask are: why are Indian MSMEs failing to grow from micro to small and medium and then be spurred on to make the leap into large companies?
At the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), we have advocated for a National Mission for Mass Entrepreneurship, the need for which is more pronounced now than ever before.
Whenever India has worked to achieve a significant economic milestone in a limited span of time, it has worked best in mission mode. Think of the Green Revolution or Operation Flood.
From across various states, there are enough examples of approaches that work to catalyse mass entrepreneurship.
The introduction of entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in schools through alliance mode of working by a number of agencies has shown significant improvement in academic and life outcomes.
Through creative teaching methods, students are encouraged to inculcate 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and leadership which are not only foundational for entrepreneurship but essential to thrive in our complex world.
Udhyam Learning Foundation has been involved with the Government of Delhi since 2018 to help young people across over 1,000 schools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
One pilot programme introduced the concept of ‘seed money’ and saw 41 students turn their ideas into profit-making ventures. Other programmes teach qualities like grit and resourcefulness.
If you think these are isolated examples, consider some larger data trends.
The Observer Research Foundation and The World Economic Forum released the Young India and Work: A Survey of Youth Aspirations in 2018.
When asked which type of work arrangement they prefer, 49% of the youth surveyed said they prefer a job in the public sector.
However, 38% selected self-employment as an entrepreneur as their ideal type of job. The spirit of entrepreneurship is latent and waiting to be unleashed.
The same can be said for building networks of successful women entrepreneurs—so crucial when the participation of women in the Indian economy has declined to an abysmal 20%.
The majority of India’s 63 million firms are informal —fewer than 20% are registered for GST.
Research shows that companies that start out as formal enterprises become two-three times more productive than a similar informal business.
So why do firms prefer to be informal? In most cases, it’s because of the sheer cost and difficulty of complying with the different regulations.
We have academia and non-profits working as ecosystem enablers providing insights and evidence-based models for growth. We have large private corporations and philanthropic and funding agencies ready to invest.
It should be in the scope of a National Mass Entrepreneurship Mission to bring all of them together to work in mission mode so that the gap between thought leadership and action can finally be bridged.
Heat wave is a condition of air temperature which becomes fatal to human body when exposed. Often times, it is defined based on the temperature thresholds over a region in terms of actual temperature or its departure from normal.
Heat wave is considered if maximum temperature of a station reaches at least 400C or more for Plains and at least 300C or more for Hilly regions.
a) Based on Departure from Normal
Heat Wave: Departure from normal is 4.50C to 6.40C
Severe Heat Wave: Departure from normal is >6.40C
b) Based on Actual Maximum Temperature
Heat Wave: When actual maximum temperature ≥ 450C
Severe Heat Wave: When actual maximum temperature ≥470C
If above criteria met at least in 2 stations in a Meteorological sub-division for at least two consecutive days and it declared on the second day
It is occurring mainly during March to June and in some rare cases even in July. The peak month of the heat wave over India is May.
Heat wave generally occurs over plains of northwest India, Central, East & north Peninsular India during March to June.
It covers Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, parts of Maharashtra & Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telengana.
Sometimes it occurs over Tamilnadu & Kerala also.
Heat waves adversely affect human and animal lives.
However, maximum temperatures more than 45°C observed mainly over Rajasthan and Vidarbha region in month of May.
a. Transportation / Prevalence of hot dry air over a region (There should be a region of warm dry air and appropriate flow pattern for transporting hot air over the region).
b. Absence of moisture in the upper atmosphere (As the presence of moisture restricts the temperature rise).
c. The sky should be practically cloudless (To allow maximum insulation over the region).
d. Large amplitude anti-cyclonic flow over the area.
Heat waves generally develop over Northwest India and spread gradually eastwards & southwards but not westwards (since the prevailing winds during the season are westerly to northwesterly).
The health impacts of Heat Waves typically involve dehydration, heat cramps, heat exhaustion and/or heat stroke. The signs and symptoms are as follows:
1. Heat Cramps: Ederna (swelling) and Syncope (Fainting) generally accompanied by fever below 39*C i.e.102*F.
2. Heat Exhaustion: Fatigue, weakness, dizziness, headache, nausea, vomiting, muscle cramps and sweating.
3. Heat Stoke: Body temperatures of 40*C i.e. 104*F or more along with delirium, seizures or coma. This is a potential fatal condition.
Norman Borlaug and MS Swaminathan in a wheat field in north India in March 1964
Political independence does not have much meaning without economic independence.
One of the important indicators of economic independence is self-sufficiency in food grain production.
The overall food grain scenario in India has undergone a drastic transformation in the last 75 years.
India was a food-deficit country on the eve of Independence. It had to import foodgrains to feed its people.
The situation became more acute during the 1960s. The imported food had to be sent to households within the shortest possible time.
The situation was referred to as ‘ship to mouth’.
Presently, Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns are overflowing with food grain stocks and the Union government is unable to ensure remunerative price to the farmers for their produce.
This transformation, however, was not smooth.
In the 1960s, it was disgraceful, but unavoidable for the Prime Minister of India to go to foreign countries with a begging bowl.
To avoid such situations, the government motivated agricultural scientists to make India self-sufficient in food grain production.
As a result, high-yield varieties (HYV) were developed. The combination of seeds, water and fertiliser gave a boost to food grain production in the country which is generally referred to as the Green Revolution.
The impact of the Green Revolution, however, was confined to a few areas like Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh in the north and (unified) Andhra Pradesh in the south.
Most of the remaining areas were deficit in food grain production.
Therefore the Union government had to procure food grain from surplus states to distribute it among deficit ones.
At the time, farmers in the surplus states viewed procurement as a tax as they were prevented from selling their surplus foodgrains at high prices in the deficit states.
As production of food grains increased, there was decentralisation of procurement. State governments were permitted to procure grain to meet their requirement.
The distribution of food grains was left to the concerned state governments.
Kerala, for instance, was totally a deficit state and had to adopt a distribution policy which was almost universal in nature.
Some states adopted a vigorous public distribution system (PDS) policy.
It is not out of place to narrate an interesting incident regarding food grain distribution in Andhra Pradesh. The Government of Andhra Pradesh in the early 1980s implemented a highly subsidised rice scheme under which poor households were given five kilograms of rice per person per month, subject to a ceiling of 25 kilograms at Rs 2 per kg. The state government required two million tonnes of rice to implement the scheme. But it received only on one million tonne from the Union government.
The state government had to purchase another million tonne of rice from rice millers in the state at a negotiated price, which was higher than the procurement price offered by the Centre, but lower than the open market price.
A large number of studies have revealed that many poor households have been excluded from the PDS network, while many undeserving households have managed to get benefits from it.
Various policy measures have been implemented to streamline PDS. A revamped PDS was introduced in 1992 to make food grain easily accessible to people in tribal and hilly areas, by providing relatively higher subsidies.
Targeted PDS was launched in 1997 to focus on households below the poverty line (BPL).
Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) was introduced to cover the poorest of the poor.
Annapoorna Scheme was introduced in 2001 to distribute 10 kg of food grains free of cost to destitutes above the age of 65 years.
In 2013, the National Food Security Act (NFSA) was passed by Parliament to expand and legalise the entitlement.
Conventionally, a card holder has to go to a particular fair price shop (FPS) and that particular shop has to be open when s/he visits it. Stock must be available in the shop. The card holder should also have sufficient time to stand in the queue to purchase his quota. The card holder has to put with rough treatment at the hands of a FPS dealer.
These problems do not exist once ration cards become smart cards. A card holder can go to any shop which is open and has available stocks. In short, the scheme has become card holder-friendly and curbed the monopoly power of the FPS dealer. Some states other than Chhattisgarh are also trying to introduce such a scheme on an experimental basis.
More recently, the Government of India has introduced a scheme called ‘One Nation One Ration Card’ which enables migrant labourers to purchase rations from the place where they reside. In August 2021, it was operational in 34 states and Union territories.
The intentions of the scheme are good but there are some hurdles in its implementation which need to be addressed. These problems arise on account of variation in:
It is not clear whether a migrant labourer gets items provided in his/her native state or those in the state s/he has migrated to and what prices will s/he be able to purchase them.
The Centre must learn lessons from the experiences of different countries in order to make PDS sustainable in the long-run.
For instance, Sri Lanka recently shifted to organic manure from chemical fertiliser without required planning. Consequently, it had to face an acute food shortage due to a shortage of organic manure.
Some analysts have cautioned against excessive dependence on chemical fertiliser.
Phosphorus is an important input in the production of chemical fertiliser and about 70-80 per cent of known resources of phosphorus are available only in Morocco.
There is possibility that Morocco may manipulate the price of phosphorus.
Providing excessive subsidies and unemployment relief may make people dependent, as in the case of Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
It is better to teach a person how to catch a fish rather than give free fish to him / her.
Hence, the government should give the right amount of subsidy to deserving people.
The government has to increase livestock as in the case of Uruguay to make the food basket broad-based and nutritious. It has to see to it that the organic content in the soil is adequate, in order to make cultivation environmentally-friendly and sustainable in the long-run.
In short, India has transformed from a food-deficit state to a food-surplus one 75 years after independence. However, the government must adopt environmental-friendly measures to sustain this achievement.
Agroforestry is an intentional integration of trees on farmland.
Globally, it is practised by 1.2 billion people on 10 per cent area of total agricultural lands (over 1 billion hectares).
It is widely popular as ‘a low hanging fruit’ due to its multifarious tangible and intangible benefits.
The net carbon sequestered in agroforestry is 11.35 tonnes of carbon per ha
A panacea for global issues such as climate change, land degradation, pollution and food security, agroforestry is highlighted as a key strategy to fulfil several targets:
In 2017, a New York Times bestseller Project Drawdown published by 200 scientists around the world with a goal of reversing climate change, came up with the most plausible 100 solutions to slash–down greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Out of these 100 solutions, 11 strategies were highlighted under the umbrella of agroforestry such as:-
Nowadays, tree-based farming in India is considered a silver bullet to cure all issues.
It was promoted under the Green India mission of 2001, six out of eight missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) and National Agroforestry and Bamboo Mission (NABM), 2017 to bring a third of the geographical area under tree cover and offsetting GHG emissions.
These long-term attempts by the Government of India have helped enhance the agroforestry area to 13.75 million hectares.
The net carbon sequestered in agroforestry is 11.35 tonnes of carbon per ha and carbon sequestration potential is 0.35 tonnes of carbon per ha per year at the country level, according to the Central Agroforestry Research Institute, Jhansi.
India will reduce an additional 2.5-3 billion tonnes of CO2 by increasing tree cover. This extra tree cover could be achieved through agroforestry systems because of their ability to withstand minimum inputs under extreme situations.
Here are some examples which portray the role of agroforestry in achieving at least nine out of the 17 SDGs through sustainable food production, ecosystem services and economic benefits:
SDG 1 — No Poverty: Almost 736 million people still live in extreme poverty. Diversification through integrating trees in agriculture unlocks the treasure to provide multifunctional benefits.
Studies carried out in 2003 in the arid regions of India reported a 10-15 per cent increase in crop yield with Prosopis cineraria (khejari). Adoption of agroforestry increases income & production by reducing the cost of input & production.
SDG 2 — Zero hunger: Tree-based systems provide food and monetary returns. Traditional agroforestry systems like Prosopis cineraria and Madhuca longifolia (Mahua) provide edible returns during drought years known as “lifeline to the poor people”.
Studies showed that 26-50 per cent of households involved in tree products collection and selling act as a coping strategy to deal with hunger.
SDG 3 — Good health and well-being: Human wellbeing and health are depicted through the extent of healthy ecosystems and services they provide.
Agroforestry contributes increased access to diverse nutritious food, supply of medicine, clean air and reduces heat stress.
Vegetative buffers can filter airstreams of particulates by removing dust, gas, microbial constituents and heavy metals.
SDG 5 — Gender equality: Throughout the world around 3 billion people depend on firewood for cooking.
In this, women are the main collectors and it brings drudgery and health issues.
A study from India stated that almost 374 hours per year are spent by women for collection of firewood. Growing trees nearby provides easy access to firewood and diverts time to productive purposes.
SDG 6 — Clean Water and Sanitation: Water is probably the most vital resource for our survival. The inherent capacity of trees offers hydrological regulation as evapotranspiration recharges atmospheric moisture for rainfall; enhanced soil infiltration recharges groundwater; obstructs sediment flow; rainwater filtration by accumulation of heavy metals.
An extensive study in 35 nations published in 2017 concluded that 30 per cent of tree cover in watersheds resulted in improved sanitisation and reduced diarrheal disease.
SDG 7 — Affordable & Clean Energy: Wood fuels are the only source of energy to billions of poverty-stricken people.
Though trees are substitutes of natural forests, modern technologies in the form of biofuels, ethanol, electricity generation and dendro-biomass sources are truly affordable and clean.
Ideal agroforestry models possess fast-growing, high coppicing, higher calorific value and short rotation (2-3 years) characteristics and provide biomass of 200-400 tonnes per ha.
SDG 12 — Responsible consumption and production: The production of agricultural and wood-based commodities on a sustainable basis without depleting natural resources and as low as external inputs (chemical fertilisers and pesticides) to reduce the ecological footprints.
SDG 13 — Climate action: Globally, agricultural production accounts for up to 24 per cent of GHG emissions from around 22.2 million square km of agricultural area, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.
A 2016 study depicted that conversion of agricultural land to agroforestry sequesters about 27.2± 13.5 tonnes CO2 equivalent per ha per year after establishment of systems.
Trees on farmland mitigate 109.34 million tonnes CO2 equivalent annually from 15.31 million ha, according to a 2017 report. This may offset a third of the total GHG emissions from the agriculture sector of India.
SDG 15 — Life on Land: Agroforestry ‘mimics the forest ecosystem’ to contribute conservation of flora and faunas, creating corridors, buffers to existing reserves and multi-functional landscapes.
Delivery of ecosystem services of trees regulates life on land. A one-hectare area of homegardens in Kerala was found to have 992 trees from 66 species belonging to 31 families, a recent study showed.
The report of the World Agroforestry Centre highlighted those 22 countries that have registered agroforestry as a key strategy in achieving their unconditional national contributions.
Recently, the Government of India has allocated significant financial support for promotion of agroforestry at grassroot level to make the Indian economy as carbon neutral. This makes agroforestry a low-hanging fruit to achieve the global goals.