Background :-
“Udta Punjab” is a bollywood movie which was a topic of debate for the past week across media and social media.It was fighting against the censor board for certification.The reason behind the conflict was that it supposedly “maligns the image of an Indian state” .
The movie portrays the realities of drug abuse by youths in Punjab .Akin to any other movie , it might have gone through artistic renditions where it may not connect well with the realities.Fantasy or drama has its own landscape , probably with its own latitude and longitude .
Anyway , drug abuse was rampant in Punjab and was widely reported by various section of media since 2013(as far as we can remember).
Drug abuse has serious consequences as far as the individual or society as a whole is concerned.The Individual may suffer the physical pain , but it undoubtedly leaves scars in psyche of near and dear ones of the victim.
As far as the certification of movie is concerned , Shyam Benegal recently said that it does not project Punjab is bad light.A recent high court judgement gave it green nod.
In-depth:-
There are two prominent issues at stake here :-
1)Certification of Movie :- In this regard , Shyam Benegal Panel’s recommendation is probably the most rational one that finds a balance between artistic freedom and morality.The core of the recommendation is – ” Let the artist show what they want to show” and depending on the content of the movie give the certification to movies(The spectrum of certification ratings has to widen in this regard) , so that , certain do’s and don’t can be prescribed to theaters and tele broadcasters , also appropriate age restriction and warning can be put in place for this regard so the movie does not reach the unintended audience.
That settles the certification issue.
The next one is the content of the particular movie – 2)”Drug Abuse”
In this regard , there was an article in thehindu in 2013. We are publishing as is and the analysis follows after wards.
Editorial published as is :-A Lost Generation
She is barely 20: thin, pale, her eyes glazed and vacant with the habit accumulated through her short life, of suffering without hope or end. Her father succumbed to drugs when she was a small child. Her mother was forced to marry her husband’s younger brother. He too fell to drugs, and died a few years later. Her brother, just years older to her, emulated his father before he even became a teenager. Her mother married her off at 17, hoping she would build some kind of life for herself in her new home. But the girl soon discovered that her husband also used hard drugs.
Like several hundred wives, daughters, mothers and sisters in the working class settlement Maqboolpura in Amritsar, her life-sentence is of hard labour. She cleans dishes in people’s homes, desperately trying to keep her family alive.
When in 1999, Tribune reporter Varinder Walia found that 30 women were widowed in this neighbourhood in three years, he named it ‘widows’ colony’. The name has stuck, and local social workers today have recorded 330 widows, all martyrs to the assault of intoxicants and drugs that have penetrated the soul of proud Punjab. The government pays some of them a monthly pension of as little as Rs. 250.
In an affidavit to the High Court, the Punjab government itself admitted that in two-thirds of rural Punjabi households, at least one male is addicted to drugs. The administration is reluctantly awakening to this deadly social epidemic. An estimated 5000 men undergo treatment in 51 centres across the state, too small for the scale of the crisis. But a much larger number fall prey to illegal centres with untrained staff, where they are chained and beaten.
Elders across Punjab today mourn the loss of an entire generation. Punjab is reportedly the transit route for international drugs to Indian cities, and overseas. But it quickly became also a destination, as young people in Punjab learnt both to use and traffic drugs. A recent UN report estimates that Punjab has the second highest numbers of drug addicts in the country. They abuse charas, country liquor, smack, heroin, painkillers, amphetamines, opium and even lizards’ tails. Those who fall prey to drugs are mostly men in their prime, stricken when they should be working and raising families. Instead they are recklessly sharing injections, swallowing sometimes a 100 pills a day, peddling their blood, stealing, falling into debt, forcing their wives and mothers to part with money earned to fill their children’s stomachs, selling even their homes. Children grow hungry and frightened, watching violent and irresponsible fathers wasting away. But sadly boys also learn to imitate their fathers. Sociologist Amanpreet Singh found that a third of the addicts said they learnt drugs by imitating their fathers, and nearly a fifth their siblings.
The daily tragedy of this lost generation plays out in almost every home in Maqboolpura in Amritsar, not far from the Golden Temple. Its erstwhile predominantly Muslim population emptied out during Partition, and was replaced by poor working class Sikhs and Hindu refugees from across the border. Women mainly work as domestic help; men when they can mostly pull rickshaws or drive auto-rickshaws. But, as they slip into the world of drugs, manual work becomes impossible; women and children often survive by brewing and selling illicit country liquor and then graduate to even more deadly drugs. It is not uncommon to see small children adeptly negotiating with drunken customers. Many drop out early from school to help their mothers bring home money to feed the family.
The predicament of these small children moved a local teacher Ajit Singh, popularly known as Masterji, to create a safe haven for them to study and stay ‘clean’ of drugs in the years that they grew. His wake-up call was when, a decade back, his young son — then around 10 — asked his father for money to buy a ‘gillasi’, a glass of country liquor sold openly in every street corner of Maqboolpura.
Masterji desperately wanted to protect his son. But he thought of all children in his son’s age being raised in Maqboolpura. His wife Amandeep and he, both government schoolteachers of modest means, agonised for a while. They then decided to move all their belongings into a single room of their small house, and convert all the other rooms into classrooms. They taught the children after school hours, when they returned from their government day jobs.
More than the academic engagement, children found welcome escape for many hours into an environment free from drugs and violence. As the years passed, donations and awards came in and the teacher couple was able to build more classrooms. Today they teach and take care of more than 400 children and have the money to employ teachers as well, all young survivors from drug-abusing families. They are proud that most children who sit in their benches never fall to drugs.
They organised many of their student volunteers into an anti-drug abuse squad, which travels during vacations across the state, warning young people about the dangers of drugs, how it traps not just the drug user but his entire family into cycles of suffering, violence, unemployment and crime.
I met some of these young people. They spoke of growing crime in their neighbourhood, of desperate drug-users on motor-cycles who snatch their bags to buy drugs, of corrupt complicit policemen, of alcoholic fathers, brothers and uncles, of unsafe violent homes, of fearful deprived childhoods.
But they also spoke of their dreams — to join the police to battle against drugs, to become IAS officers, doctors and teachers. In other homes, parents raise and protect their children. Here, children were drawing up plans to protect their elders. Punjab has lost one generation to militancy, and the next to drugs. Maybe a third will cure it of this sickness that has entered deep into its soul.
Analysis :-
Are the drug abusers are victims or culprits ?
They are probably both , first they become the victims and then actions under the influence drugs leads to unintended consequences such as crime, drug peddling etc when the youth transitions in to culprit. The reason is simple, there is never enough money to buy drugs for addicts and the vicious circle catches up.One sells drugs to buy drugs for self.
Why it happens :-
Empty mind is evil mind. Educated youth , without proper employment may result in “time-pass”. And too much of it leads one thing to another.
Of course , the reasons above are over generalization. Every individual might have his/her own set of particulars to become addicts.For example- “Failure in love-affair” or “Failure in exams” or just to “enjoy high impulse of ecstasy “or simply becasue of ” rebel attitude”
No one ever said he/she was typical or ordinary.And to become atypical – people , especially youth do a number of things where the reasoning to do so may not be logical one.But in youth , who cares logic ?. “Youth is the age to enjoy the life to the fullest” – at least that is what being sold in movies and soap operas and the impressionist mind falls prey to it.
So , if we run behind finding reasons , we may find thousands . Some may have pattern and some will be arbitrary.
So , it is better to find a solution than to chase behind the infinite reasons of doing drugs.
How to solve it :-
The solution has two fold :-
- Protect the future – by safeguarding the youth who may fall prey to drug abuse.
- Revive the past – by establishing rehabilitation centers , counseling centers and most of all De-addict the addict. Various means and methods can be employed for this- dance, drama, movies, literature, awareness campaigns etc.
The core of the solution is simple -isolate drugs from society. To do this both legal and administrative muscle has to be put in place according to the need of the particular region.And last of all, make the economy of drugs unattractive , and that can be done when the cost of doing business outweighs benefit.
After all, drug is good business too , when it looses the allure of being profitable, it will wither away.Make the penal provisions harsh and the human cost harsher for the supplier and the drug business will collapse.
This is an exclusive UPSCTREE write up except the editorial , if you have any suggestion , please write to us at – upsctree@upsctree.com
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.
On March 31, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its annual Gender Gap Report 2021. The Global Gender Gap report is an annual report released by the WEF. The gender gap is the difference between women and men as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes. The gap between men and women across health, education, politics, and economics widened for the first time since records began in 2006.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]No need to remember all the data, only pick out few important ones to use in your answers.
The Global gender gap index aims to measure this gap in four key areas : health, education, economics, and politics. It surveys economies to measure gender disparity by collating and analyzing data that fall under four indices : economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
The 2021 Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks 156 countries on their progress towards gender parity. The index aims to serve as a compass to track progress on relative gaps between women and men in health, education, economy, and politics.
Although no country has achieved full gender parity, the top two countries (Iceland and Finland) have closed at least 85% of their gap, and the remaining seven countries (Lithuania, Namibia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Rwanda, and Ireland) have closed at least 80% of their gap. Geographically, the global top 10 continues to be dominated by Nordic countries, with —Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden—in the top five.
The top 10 is completed by one country from Asia Pacific (New Zealand 4th), two Sub-Saharan countries (Namibia, 6th and Rwanda, 7th, one country from Eastern Europe (the new entrant to the top 10, Lithuania, 8th), and another two Western European countries (Ireland, 9th, and Switzerland, 10th, another country in the top-10 for the first time).There is a relatively equitable distribution of available income, resources, and opportunities for men and women in these countries. The tremendous gender gaps are identified primarily in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
Here, we can discuss the overall global gender gap scores across the index’s four main components : Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.
The indicators of the four main components are
(1) Economic Participation and Opportunity:
o Labour force participation rate,
o wage equality for similar work,
o estimated earned income,
o Legislators, senior officials, and managers,
o Professional and technical workers.
(2) Educational Attainment:
o Literacy rate (%)
o Enrollment in primary education (%)
o Enrollment in secondary education (%)
o Enrollment in tertiary education (%).
(3) Health and Survival:
o Sex ratio at birth (%)
o Healthy life expectancy (years).
(4) Political Empowerment:
o Women in Parliament (%)
o Women in Ministerial positions (%)
o Years with a female head of State (last 50 years)
o The share of tenure years.
The objective is to shed light on which factors are driving the overall average decline in the global gender gap score. The analysis results show that this year’s decline is mainly caused by a reversal in performance on the Political Empowerment gap.
Global Trends and Outcomes:
– Globally, this year, i.e., 2021, the average distance completed to gender parity gap is 68% (This means that the remaining gender gap to close stands at 32%) a step back compared to 2020 (-0.6 percentage points). These figures are mainly driven by a decline in the performance of large countries. On its current trajectory, it will now take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide.
– The gender gap in Political Empowerment remains the largest of the four gaps tracked, with only 22% closed to date, having further widened since the 2020 edition of the report by 2.4 percentage points. Across the 156 countries covered by the index, women represent only 26.1% of some 35,500 Parliament seats and 22.6% of over 3,400 Ministers worldwide. In 81 countries, there has never been a woman head of State as of January 15, 2021. At the current rate of progress, the World Economic Forum estimates that it will take 145.5 years to attain gender parity in politics.
– The gender gap in Economic Participation and Opportunity remains the second-largest of the four key gaps tracked by the index. According to this year’s index results, 58% of this gap has been closed so far. The gap has seen marginal improvement since the 2020 edition of the report, and as a result, we estimate that it will take another 267.6 years to close.
– Gender gaps in Educational Attainment and Health and Survival are nearly closed. In Educational Attainment, 95% of this gender gap has been closed globally, with 37 countries already attaining gender parity. However, the ‘last mile’ of progress is proceeding slowly. The index estimates that it will take another 14.2 years to close this gap on its current trajectory completely.
In Health and Survival, 96% of this gender gap has been closed, registering a marginal decline since last year (not due to COVID-19), and the time to close this gap remains undefined. For both education and health, while progress is higher than economy and politics in the global data, there are important future implications of disruptions due to the pandemic and continued variations in quality across income, geography, race, and ethnicity.
India-Specific Findings:
India had slipped 28 spots to rank 140 out of the 156 countries covered. The pandemic causing a disproportionate impact on women jeopardizes rolling back the little progress made in the last decades-forcing more women to drop off the workforce and leaving them vulnerable to domestic violence.
India’s poor performance on the Global Gender Gap report card hints at a serious wake-up call and learning lessons from the Nordic region for the Government and policy makers.
Within the 156 countries covered, women hold only 26 percent of Parliamentary seats and 22 percent of Ministerial positions. India, in some ways, reflects this widening gap, where the number of Ministers declined from 23.1 percent in 2019 to 9.1 percent in 2021. The number of women in Parliament stands low at 14.4 percent. In India, the gender gap has widened to 62.5 %, down from 66.8% the previous year.
It is mainly due to women’s inadequate representation in politics, technical and leadership roles, a decrease in women’s labor force participation rate, poor healthcare, lagging female to male literacy ratio, and income inequality.
The gap is the widest on the political empowerment dimension, with economic participation and opportunity being next in line. However, the gap on educational attainment and health and survival has been practically bridged.
India is the third-worst performer among South Asian countries, with Pakistan and Afghanistan trailing and Bangladesh being at the top. The report states that the country fared the worst in political empowerment, regressing from 23.9% to 9.1%.
Its ranking on the health and survival dimension is among the five worst performers. The economic participation and opportunity gap saw a decline of 3% compared to 2020, while India’s educational attainment front is in the 114th position.
India has deteriorated to 51st place from 18th place in 2020 on political empowerment. Still, it has slipped to 155th position from 150th position in 2020 on health and survival, 151st place in economic participation and opportunity from 149th place, and 114th place for educational attainment from 112th.
In 2020 reports, among the 153 countries studied, India is the only country where the economic gender gap of 64.6% is larger than the political gender gap of 58.9%. In 2021 report, among the 156 countries, the economic gender gap of India is 67.4%, 3.8% gender gap in education, 6.3% gap in health and survival, and 72.4% gender gap in political empowerment. In health and survival, the gender gap of the sex ratio at birth is above 9.1%, and healthy life expectancy is almost the same.
Discrimination against women has also been reflected in Health and Survival subindex statistics. With 93.7% of this gap closed to date, India ranks among the bottom five countries in this subindex. The wide sex ratio at birth gaps is due to the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices. Besides, more than one in four women has faced intimate violence in her lifetime.The gender gap in the literacy rate is above 20.1%.
Yet, gender gaps persist in literacy : one-third of women are illiterate (34.2%) than 17.6% of men. In political empowerment, globally, women in Parliament is at 128th position and gender gap of 83.2%, and 90% gap in a Ministerial position. The gap in wages equality for similar work is above 51.8%. On health and survival, four large countries Pakistan, India, Vietnam, and China, fare poorly, with millions of women there not getting the same access to health as men.
The pandemic has only slowed down in its tracks the progress India was making towards achieving gender parity. The country urgently needs to focus on “health and survival,” which points towards a skewed sex ratio because of the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices and women’s economic participation. Women’s labour force participation rate and the share of women in technical roles declined in 2020, reducing the estimated earned income of women, one-fifth of men.
Learning from the Nordic region, noteworthy participation of women in politics, institutions, and public life is the catalyst for transformational change. Women need to be equal participants in the labour force to pioneer the societal changes the world needs in this integral period of transition.
Every effort must be directed towards achieving gender parallelism by facilitating women in leadership and decision-making positions. Social protection programmes should be gender-responsive and account for the differential needs of women and girls. Research and scientific literature also provide unequivocal evidence that countries led by women are dealing with the pandemic more effectively than many others.
Gendered inequality, thereby, is a global concern. India should focus on targeted policies and earmarked public and private investments in care and equalized access. Women are not ready to wait for another century for equality. It’s time India accelerates its efforts and fight for an inclusive, equal, global recovery.
India will not fully develop unless both women and men are equally supported to reach their full potential. There are risks, violations, and vulnerabilities women face just because they are women. Most of these risks are directly linked to women’s economic, political, social, and cultural disadvantages in their daily lives. It becomes acute during crises and disasters.
With the prevalence of gender discrimination, and social norms and practices, women become exposed to the possibility of child marriage, teenage pregnancy, child domestic work, poor education and health, sexual abuse, exploitation, and violence. Many of these manifestations will not change unless women are valued more.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]2021 WEF Global Gender Gap report, which confirmed its 2016 finding of a decline in worldwide progress towards gender parity.
Over 2.8 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men. As many as 104 countries still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs, 59 countries have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace, and it is astonishing that a handful of countries still allow husbands to legally stop their wives from working.
Globally, women’s participation in the labour force is estimated at 63% (as against 94% of men who participate), but India’s is at a dismal 25% or so currently. Most women are in informal and vulnerable employment—domestic help, agriculture, etc—and are always paid less than men.
Recent reports from Assam suggest that women workers in plantations are paid much less than men and never promoted to supervisory roles. The gender wage gap is about 24% globally, and women have lost far more jobs than men during lockdowns.
The problem of gender disparity is compounded by hurdles put up by governments, society and businesses: unequal access to social security schemes, banking services, education, digital services and so on, even as a glass ceiling has kept leadership roles out of women’s reach.
Yes, many governments and businesses had been working on parity before the pandemic struck. But the global gender gap, defined by differences reflected in the social, political, intellectual, cultural and economic attainments or attitudes of men and women, will not narrow in the near future without all major stakeholders working together on a clear agenda—that of economic growth by inclusion.
The WEF report estimates 135 years to close the gap at our current rate of progress based on four pillars: educational attainment, health, economic participation and political empowerment.
India has slipped from rank 112 to 140 in a single year, confirming how hard women were hit by the pandemic. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two Asian countries that fared worse.
Here are a few things we must do:
One, frame policies for equal-opportunity employment. Use technology and artificial intelligence to eliminate biases of gender, caste, etc, and select candidates at all levels on merit. Numerous surveys indicate that women in general have a better chance of landing jobs if their gender is not known to recruiters.
Two, foster a culture of gender sensitivity. Take a review of current policies and move from gender-neutral to gender-sensitive. Encourage and insist on diversity and inclusion at all levels, and promote more women internally to leadership roles. Demolish silos to let women grab potential opportunities in hitherto male-dominant roles. Work-from-home has taught us how efficiently women can manage flex-timings and productivity.
Three, deploy corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds for the education and skilling of women and girls at the bottom of the pyramid. CSR allocations to toilet building, the PM-Cares fund and firms’ own trusts could be re-channelled for this.
Four, get more women into research and development (R&D) roles. A study of over 4,000 companies found that more women in R&D jobs resulted in radical innovation. It appears women score far higher than men in championing change. If you seek growth from affordable products and services for low-income groups, women often have the best ideas.
Five, break barriers to allow progress. Cultural and structural issues must be fixed. Unconscious biases and discrimination are rampant even in highly-esteemed organizations. Establish fair and transparent human resource policies.
Six, get involved in local communities to engage them. As Michael Porter said, it is not possible for businesses to sustain long-term shareholder value without ensuring the welfare of the communities they exist in. It is in the best interest of enterprises to engage with local communities to understand and work towards lowering cultural and other barriers in society. It will also help connect with potential customers, employees and special interest groups driving the gender-equity agenda and achieve better diversity.