Background-
On May 30 2017, a severe cyclonic storm ‘Mora’ crossed the Bangladesh coast in the forenoon, with a peak surface wind speed of 130 kmph (IMD, 2017). The cyclone claimed 9 lives in Bangladesh along with massive damage to property.
Mizoram reported heavy rainfall accompanied with strong gusts of wind that is reported to have damaged about 80 buildings, most particularly in Siaha district, where damages were reported at the district headquarters and the district hospital buildings. Cyclone Mora exhibited an example of the devastation that can be caused by strong wind flows.
The destructive effects of certain types of wind types, such as in hurricanes, are symbolically characterized in the Hindu myth of the wind God Vayu, who is seen as a destructive and intemperate God – a benevolent God in the earlier Vedic era. This change in the status of the God could possibly be attributed to the milder wind flows in the Steppes, from where the Aryans are said to have originally migrated. India’s coastal and tropical climate with devastating cyclones could have impacted the God’s impetuosity, although the matter is subject to speculation.
The Tower of the Winds, as homage to the various wind Gods in ancient Greece, was used to note the seasonal changes in wind patterns. The ancient Greeks had four wind Gods according to the four seasons, namely, Boreas (winter), Zephyros (spring), Notus (summer) and Euros (autumn). The divine keeper of the winds was Aiolos. Roman mythology retained the wind Gods of the Greeks, along with their designation to certain seasons.
In scientific terminology, winds are flows of gases that make up the atmosphere. It can be of many types and is attributed to the nature of forces producing them. Their scale and spatial dimensions, geophysical location, velocity and also their effects thus constitute the subject matter of study.
Early assumptions of winds were based on their utilities, such as for transport, or for mechanical uses such as in windmills, along with their general impact on the weather and climate. However, it was only after the development of the natural sciences that scientific assessments of wind patterns and mechanisms were analyzed.
However, certain types of winds are also utilized as wind energy for beneficial uses such as sailing, which served to establish trade routes due to global wind patterns, in windmills and for generating electricity.
Mechanism of Wind Flows
Winds are horizontal movements of air in the atmosphere, in contrast to currents, which are vertical movements. Winds usually occur due to uneven distributions of pressure at a global climatic or local scale that wind movements act to balance.
A universal rule of thumb is that whenever an area of high air pressure exists adjacent to an area of low air pressure, the difference in pressure causes wind flows from the high pressure area to the low pressure area. Certain factors contribute to affect wind motion in terms of direction and speed. These are the pressure gradient, the Coriolis effect, friction and centripetal acceleration.
The pressure gradient force is the force generated when pressure differences impacts the intensity of wind flows from areas of high pressure to those of low pressure. The more closely spaced the pressure gradient, the more pronounced the pressure change, resulting in wind types with higher wind speeds.
The wind flows in the direction of the change in pressure, which is perpendicular to the isobars (areas with same air pressure), as shown in the Fig 1.
Fig 1: Wind flow perpendicular to the isobar due to the pressure gradient
However, the flow of wind is not exactly perpendicular to the isobar, but deviates somewhat, and this is due to the forces exerted by the Earth’s rotation on its axis from the west to the east. This deviation of wind flows due to the earth’s rotation is called the Coriolis effect.
In the Coriolis effect, according to Ferrel’s law, the winds in the Northern hemisphere get deflected to the right and in the Southern hemisphere get deflected to the left. The effect changes the direction of winds but not their speed. However the deflection tends to increase with an increase in wind velocity, mass and latitudinal position on the Earth, as shown in Fig 2.
Fig 2: Increase in amount of Coriolis effect with decrease in latitude
As the air rushing in towards the low pressure area moves towards the centre of rotation, and due to the Coriolis effect, the winds follow a curved path around a local axis that can be of high or low pressure. This phenomenon is due to the force of the centripetal acceleration of winds. The winds might also form different wind types due to another force – friction – that acts to offer resistance to wind motion due to the nature of the earth’s surface.
This frictional force can determine the angle of wind flows, wind velocities, as well as determine the direction of wind flows. Thus for example, while over the ocean, the lack of resistance due to friction can produce high surface wind speeds (P. Tiwari, 2017). The four constitute the four principal factors that contribute to the occurrence of winds and their various types, which shall be discussed below.
Primary or Prevailing Winds
Primary or prevailing winds are types of winds that are consequent to global wind circulation patterns. Other than transporting warm, cold and moist air worldwide, winds can transport even airborne pollutants all over the globe.
The uneven heating of the Earth combined with the various factors mentioned above contribute to certain global systems of wind patterns whereby winds flow in consistent, steady flows. The Coriolis effect is a major determining factor in determining the direction of prevailing wind patterns globally, whereby winds flow eastwards or westwards to a degree determined by their latitudinal position. There are four principal wind types that qualify as primary or prevailing winds.
Trade winds – They are so called due to their usage by mariners in history in trade through sea routes due to their predictability and reliability. Also called the tropical easterlies, the direction of wind flows in trade winds are generally east to west and the wind flows in these types of winds are located between 0 to 30 degrees latitude at both hemispheres. In the Southern Hemisphere, they flow from southeast to north west, and in the Northern Hemisphere, they flow from northeast to southwest.
Mid-Latitude Westerlies – Occasionally referred to as just the westerlies, these wind types flow from west to east at between 30 to 60 degrees latitude in both hemispheres. The westerlies exhibit more variances and anomalies and are thus considered less reliable than the tropical easterlies. Both the westerlies and the tropical easterlies contribute to impacting the flow of ocean currents.
Polar easterlies – These wind types flow east to west at the polar regions of the earth between 60 to 90 degrees latitude. The air carried by these winds is not as moist and is in fact cold and dry because of the low temperatures in these regions, particularly during the winter season. Sometimes however, the wind direction gets slightly deflected to flow southwestwards in the Northern hemisphere and northwestwards in the Southern Hemisphere (A. Harris, 2017).
Jet Streams – 9 to 16 km above the surface of the earth are jetstreams, which are ribbons of very strong winds reaching speeds of upto 200 mph that affect weather systems across the globe. They are caused by temperature differences between the tropical and polar masses of air. Jet streams can quickly connect one weather event in the globe with another and can lead to explosive deepening of depressions and other such air pressure changes (Met Office, UK, 2015).
There are mainly two jet streams – the polar jet stream and the subtropical jet stream. The polar jet stream flows over the polar and mid-latitudinal regions and the sub-tropical jet stream flows between 30 degrees North and South latitudes of the equator. The subtropical jet stream is weaker than the polar jet stream and is most activated over the western Pacific.
The Tropical Easterly Jet stream helps in the occurrence of the Indian summer Monsoons by providing areas northwards of the Indian Ocean with a deep layer of warm air and areas southwards with cold air.
Synoptic Winds
Large-scale events such as warm and cold fronts constitute weather phenomena that produce synoptic winds. The types of winds constituting synoptic winds include the geostrophic wind, the cyclostropic wind and the gradient wind.
In the Northern Hemisphere, due to the Coriolis effect wind flows are clockwise around high pressure areas and anti-clockwise around low pressure areas. When the wind flows are nearly parallel to the isobars due to the pressure gradient force and the Coriolis effect in balance, these wind types are called geostrophic winds.
These can be gradient winds which have strong curving motion influenced by the Coriolis effect with centrifugal force. When the wind flows are overwhelmed by centripetal force without much influence of the Coriolis effect, such types of winds are called cyclostropic winds. Cyclostrophic winds are responsible for producing extreme weather systems with circular wind flows such as cyclones and tornadoes.
Mesoscale Winds
Synoptic winds are forecastable. However there are other winds that arise and fade over short time periods and small-scale geographical locations such as thunderstorm winds that are difficult to predict. These types of winds are called mesoscale winds.
Microscale Winds
Microscale winds are minute both spatially and temporally compared to the aforementioned wind types and can range from a few meters and a few minutes. Larger wind patterns might consist of many microscale winds.
Local Winds
Certain local winds can also occur due to temperature disturbances. Land and sea breezes are due to differential heating. In locations where land and sea are in close proximity, land breezes flow from land to sea at the night-time and early morning due to quick release of warm air by land and slow release by sea at night. The reverse happens in the daytime to the evenings when sea breezes flow from sea to land due to warm air rising inland that is replaced by the cool sea breeze.
Another sort of local wind types are mountain and valley breezes. In a similar mechanism to land and sea breezes, where a upslope breeze known as valley breeze sweeps up mountains at the start of days due to warming of the mountain slopes. This returns to form mountain breezes by the afternoons as warming of the valley air leads to breezes flowing from the mountain slopes.
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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.
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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.