This Part 2 of the Ethics Series – What is Good and What is evil?
Part I can be read from here – Click Here
Note :- Not all names of philosophers to be remembered or used. The idea is to show the under current of thought and processes that shaped the idea of good and evil. So, a word of caution, don’t be over-whelmed by the reference to various philosophers.
The Ethical Views of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle:-
SOCRATES was stimulated by the Sophists but was unwilling to go all the way with them. He, too, was most interested in the problems related to living a good life. Thus a great deal of his teaching dealt with the meaning of right and wrong.
Arguing that ‘man is the measure of all things’, the Sophists were skeptical about the existence of the gods and taught a variety of subjects, including mathematics, grammar, physics, political philosophy, ancient history, music, and astronomy.
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It was Socrates’ firm belief that there must be a basic principle of right and wrong, a measure which would apply far beyond the beliefs of any one individual. Thus, he asked time and again: What is the good? What is the highest good by which all else in the universe is measured? And his answer was that knowledge is the highest good.
If one knows what is right, he argued, he will do it “No man,” he said, “is voluntarily bad.* When one knows that a thing is good he will choose to do that thing. Therefore the most important endeavor of man is to discover what is good. Socrates spent his life trying to help men discover what is good. Thus, for him, a life which is always inquiring and trying to discover what is good is the best kind of life, the only life worth living.
PLATO took up the problem of good and evil where Socrates left it. For him, goodness is tied up with his theory of the nature of the universe. The world of sense, he taught, is unreal, fleeting, changing. This is evil. The real world of pure, unchanging ideas is the world of good. Man can know this real world only through his reason. Therefore, reason is the highest good for man. The end or goal of life is release of the soul from the body so that it can contemplate the true world of ideas.
But man may live a just life even though he is held down by the body and remains in a world of changing shadows of real things. This can be done, Plato believed, so long as the rational part of man rules his every action. Plato thought of man as consisting of three parts. The appetites are concerned with bodily functions and desires. The will, or spiritual part of man, is concerned with action, courage, bravery. And the reason is concerned with the highest and best in man. A man is living a good life when reason rules the will and the appetites, and when, as a result, he is wise, brave, and temperate.
Thus, a life of reason is the highest good for man, a life noted for wisdom, courage, and self-control. And, Plato taught, this kind of life will be the happy life. Happiness and goodness go together. However, one should not seek pleasure as the end of life. Pleasure comes when one has attained the good life, a life in which the highest, reason, rules the lower, will and appetites.
ARISTOTLE pointed out that every action of man has some end in view and that these ends seem to be an endless chain. One acts in order to get something, but this something is obtained in order to get something else, and so on. What, he asked, is the highest good, the good for which all else is done?
He reached an answer to this question by pointing out that the aim of everything in the universe is to realize itself to the fullest. Each thing is different from all others. It has certain talents, abilities. Thus, it is good when it has realized these talents and abilities to the fullest. Thus, self-realization is for Aristotle the highest good, the goal of all else that is done.
Now, the distinguishing feature of man is his reason. No other entity in the universe possesses reason. Man alone has this characteristic, ability. Therefore, the highest good of man is the complete realization of his reason. This, Aristotle believed, brings happiness. Pleasure accompanies the full realization of man’s reason; it is a natural result of such realization.
But, as Plato also taught, reason is only a part of man. He also has feelings, desires, appetites. Therefore, a good life is one in which all these factors are realized in perfect harmony, in which reason rules and the feelings and desires obey. The goal of human life is a rational attitude toward the feelings and desires.
What is this rational attitude? Aristotle taught that it consisted of the “golden mean.” For example, courage is to be thought of as a mean between cowardice and foolhardiness. The good man is one who lives a life according to this golden mean, who does not go to extremes in action but balances one extreme over against another.
Thus, the good life for Aristotle is one in which man realizes to the fullest the supreme part of his nature, reason. Such a man will be noble, just, honest, considerate, and will give evidence of all the other virtues of life. And he will do these things because he desires to do them from the depths of his own being. He is not forced to act in this way by some authority outside of himself, but is driven to good actions by his own nature. As Aristotle wrote, “Virtue is a disposition, or habit, involving deliberate purpose or choice, consisting in a mean that is relative to ourselves, the mean being determined by reason, or as a prudent man would determine it”
Good and Evil According to the Epicureans and Stoics:-
What was for Plato and Aristotle a part of a whole philosophic system became for later philosophers the dominant problem. Both Plato and Aristotle thought of the good life as a natural and logical result of their entire philosophic theories. The Epicureans(disciple or student of the Greek philosopher Epicurus), however, made this problem central to their thinking.
EPICURUS taught that the goal of all human activity is pleasure, that happiness is the supreme good for all. But, he cautioned, man should be careful when choosing pleasures. Some immediate pleasures eventually result in pain and suffering. Here is an excellent meal and it is a pleasure to eat it, I eat and eat far beyond reason. I enjoy it all immensely. But later I suffer with indigestion, gout, and other discomforts. Therefore, we need to be able to see way ahead to the consequences of all the pleasures which we enjoy. This will often mean that we will avoid certain immediate pleasures because their eventual consequences are bad.
Further, for Epicurus, mental pleasures are better than physical pleasures, and it is wise to choose pleasures of the intellectual life.
Experience shows, he pointed out, that we obtain pleasure by satisfying desires or by being free from desires. Therefore, we should seek to get rid of desires by satisfying them completely. This brings freedom from pain, the pain of desire, and is therefore good.
The Stoics taught that man’s highest good lay in acting in harmony with the universe. Man, for them, is part of the universe, with a definite function to perform for the complete development of the whole universe. As the ruling power in the universe is reason, so reason should rule each man in his individual actions.
Further, man should submit to the rule of the laws of the universe; he should live according to nature. The good man is one who lives so that he fits into the scheme of nature, obeys its laws, and is determined in all he does by reason which is part of the universal reason.
Thus man must know the laws of the universe. If he knows the good, knows his place in the scheme of things, knows what is expected of him by nature, he will be good. And the result of such living is happiness. Happiness is not to be sought after nor is it to be gained by itself. We do good, live a virtuous life, and happiness inevitably follows.
The early Greek thinkers conceived goodness as a harmony within the universe. Evil for them was only imaginary, the result of a failure to see that apparent evil was actually part of a whole which is good, a discord which is harmony when heard in relation with the rest of the music.
The later Greeks were interested primarily in man’s relation with his fellows. Thus, goodness to them was a matter of the good life. The Stoics sought to reconcile these two positions, but leaned more in the direction of the early Greeks.
Stoicism, a school of thought that flourished in Greek and Roman antiquity. It was one of the loftiest and most sublime philosophies in the record of Western civilization. In urging participation in human affairs, Stoics have always believed that the goal of all inquiry is to provide a mode of conduct characterized by tranquillity of mind and certainty of moral worth.
The Position of the Greco-Religious Thinkers
With the rise of the definitely religious movement in philosophy a sharp distinction was made between the principles of good and evil. This is easily traceable to the Babylonian, Assyrian, and other religious traditions from which the religion of the Western world received much.
These early religions drew a sharp line between light and darkness, life and death, good and evil. Indeed, in many instances they conceived of special gods ruling each realm. Although some of the Greek thinkers relegated evil to matter, they were not as definite about the distinction as were the more religious thinkers
PHILO, for example, thought of God as perfect purity, in no way whatsoever in contact with matter. God was the source of all good, and matter the source of all evil. Like-wise, the spiritual part of man, his mind or soul, is the seat of good; and his body, which is thought of as matter, is the seat of evil.
Consequently, when the soul is incorporated in the body it suffers a fall from divine perfection and becomes predisposed to evil. Thus, the goal of man is freedom from the body and all its sin, and return to Cod and perfect goodness. The position of PLOTINUS was very similar. Matter is the source of evil and God the source of good.
The Ethical Views of the Early Christian Thinkers:-
Thus a definite dualism is to be seen throughout the Western religious tradition, a dualism borrowed in substance from the religions of the early East Christianity accepted this dualism and made it basic to its treatment of the whole problem of sin and redemption.
The Apologists taught that God had created man good, but he turned from God to the flesh, the body. By this, sin came into the world. The Christian interpretation of the story of Adam, the first man, is a picture in symbolic terms of the coming of sin, a sin which was then transmitted to all men as original sin.
Because man is man, a descendant of the first man, he is harassed by evil and must seek salvation through the divine grace of God. SAINT AUGUSTINE found that the presence of evil in the universe gave him no end of trouble.
God, for him, was all good, all perfection. And God created the universe out of nothing. If this be true, how could a good God, all powerful, create a universe in which there was evil? How account for evil in a world created by an all-good God?
To solve this problem, Augustine taught that everything in the universe is good. Even that which appears to be evil to us is actually good in that it fits into the whole pattern of the universe. Shadows, dark spots, are necessary to the beauty of a painting. If seen by themselves, broken away from the whole picture, they appear bad. But when seen in the picture they make possible the beauty of the whole.
Evil, then, is relative for Augustine, and is actually an absence of good just as darkness is absence of light. The evil which we find in the universe is put there by God to make the whole universe good. Further, for Augustine, the goal of all mankind is complete union with God and escape from the world.
Man should turn his back on the pleasures of this world which are thin and pale, and direct his attention wholly to God who is perfect goodness. This union with God is to be attained through love of God as opposed to love of the world.
The Views of the Medieval Christian Thinkers
The position of Augustine is also held very largely by the philosophers of Scholasticism. Believing in an all-good God who created everything, they had to explain apparent evil as actually a part of the good whole and thus actually good.
ABELABD added a new note when he taught that the rightness or wrongness of an act does not lie in the act itself but in the intention of the actor. If one steals from another, the act itself is neutral. If the thief intended it as something good, it was thereby good. “God,” he wrote, “considers not what is done, but in what spirit it is done; and the merit or praise of the agent lies not in the deed, but in the intention.’
If one acts in terms of what he thinks is right, if he believes he is doing good and seeks to do good, he may err, but he does not sin. Goodness, morality, then becomes a matter of conscience. The truly sinful man is one who acts with a desire to do wrong. He is sinful because he shows in his action a deliberate contempt for God.
THOMAS AQUINAS, in his theory of good and evil we find the philosophy of Aristotle joined with the basic principles of Christianity. God made everything, including man, for a purpose, and the highest good of all things is the realization of this purpose. As one realizes the purpose for which he was created, he reveals God’s goodness. Therefore, the highest good is the realization of oneself as God has ordained.
Further, the highest form of action is the contemplation of God. This may be done through reason or faith, but it reaches its height in what Aquinas called “intuition,” a coming to God which can be completed only in the world to come, in heaven.
Aquinas follows Augustine, also, in holding that the goodness or badness of a particular action depends upon the aim or purpose of the actor. An act may have good consequences, but it is not good unless the actor intended it to have these consequences and knew that they would result. However, Aquinas does not hold with Augustine that an evil act may be good if the actor intended it to be so. Intention will not make a bad act good, but it is the only thing that will make a good act truly good.
The best way to attain goodness is to abandon worldly goods and seek die life of God. Thus, the life of the saint in a monastery devoting himself entirely to service to God is ideal. Evil, for Aquinas, is privation, a lack of the good. All things, created by a good God, aim at goodness. When they fail, evil results
The mystic teachings of MEISTER ECKHART emphasize the unity of God and the individuality of man. Since God is the pure unity of the world, the universe, any individuality must be a breaking away from God and therefore evil Consequently, the good life is one which strives to return to the divine unity and become one with God. “Whoever would see God,” he writes, “must be dead to himself and buried in God, in the unrevealed desert Godhead, to become again what he was before he was *
The good life for Eckhart, then, is not one of deeds but one of being. We do not attain goodness by striving to do good. We reach that which is perfect goodness by losing ourselves in the unity of God.
Western religious movement, emphasized the great gulf between God and all that is less than God. Goodness is created by God and is to be found in adjustment to God’s plan or purpose. Evil is in some way attached to matter, the body, or the world. But God, being the sole Creator of the universe, would not create evil. Therefore, evil must not actually be evil, but must be part of the great good.
Western Religion has never been able to solve the problem of evil and sin. On the contrary, Eastern religions were more realistic in this matter. They did not make their gods the creators of the whole universe. Rather they had at least two gods, one the god of goodness and the other the god of evil.
God is thought of as the source of all good, and the Devil is the evil principle. But, to the question “Did God create the Devil?” there is no answer. A dualism of good and evil works well until the attempt is made to account for the creation of the universe; but that presents difficulties which have not been solved.
To Be continued in Part-III
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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.