Learning beyond textbooks / Disha Nawani

A few ‘toppers’ from some Delhi schools affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)have asked the Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani to reintroduce the board examinations in Class 10. The main argument presented against the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system was that it did not prepare them for competitive exams such as the Joint Entrance Examinations for Indian Institutes of Technology and pre-medical exams. The students also demanded that content in the latest National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks be increased and reoriented towards clearing such exams.

Such grievances can be understood better if a perspective which regards schools as sites which select, eliminate and celebrate the high scores of a few meritorious students, who succeed by virtue of the social-cultural capital that they possess, is believed, as opposed to a view which regards schools as inclusive, egalitarian and just learning spaces. These demands also reflect a belief which equates ‘learning’ with ‘performing well’ in exams. To understand these concerns better, it is important to examine recent educational reforms initiated in India.

The much-awaited Right to Education (RTE) Act 2009, besides making education a fundamental right for children in the age group 6-14 years, also made it mandatory that “no child admitted in a school shall be held back in any class or expelled from school till the completion of elementary education.” It also proposed “Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation of a child’s understanding of knowledge and his or her ability to apply the same” and said, “no child shall be required to pass any board examination till completion of elementary education.”

While these provisions were to be applicable to all schools in the country, the CBSE made the Class 10 board exam optional for those students who wanted to continue studying in the same school. However, all students, including those who opted for CCE, would still have a choice to take the on-demand exam. This was in keeping with the recommendation of the National Focus Group Position Paper on Examination Reforms, National Curriculum Framework (NCF), 2005.

Providing equal opportunities

In a country which is still struggling to universalise elementary education, the dropout rate increases while moving up the educational ladder. In view of this, the purpose behind the ‘no detention’ policy was to give all children, especially the disadvantaged, equal opportunities to complete elementary schooling.

The CCE similarly was a result of several years of deliberation and reflection. It sought to bring reforms in the traditional system of evaluation, which had a written exam at the end of the academic term, placing children under enormous stress. The nature of this exam was such that it essentially tested students’ skills to memorise and reproduce textbook content, which in most cases presented disjointed information and facts as ‘ultimate truth,’ with little relationship with children’s experiences. The CCE on the other hand proposed a school-based, teacher-conducted continuous assessment, which would extend beyond the cognitive domain, and therefore serve as a tool for diagnosis and further learning. The idea underlying CCE was to integrate assessment with teaching-learning, so that it would seamlessly be woven with pedagogic processes, both inside and outside the classrooms. This marked a significant shift from an exam-centric system which dictated not just the way students approached learning but also determined the ‘worth’ of knowledge.

Despite the child-centred focus and enthusiasm with which these reforms were introduced, they were not only received uncritically, but viewed with scepticism as well. In 2012, the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) constituted a subcommittee for assessment and evaluation of CCE in the context of the ‘no detention’ provision of the RTE. The committee, which was headed by former Education Minister of Haryana, Geeta Bhukkal, pointed out in its report several limitations in the implementation of these provisions, placing them in the context of declining learning levels of children and migration of children towards private schools. The committee (not unanimously though) recommended implementation of ‘no detention’ in a phased manner, and reiterated the need to link assessment of learning outcomes with promotion of students to the next class beyond Grade 5. The committee also said that ‘no detention’ was often misunderstood as ‘no assessments’ or ‘no relevance of assessment’ and therefore adversely affected the drive to perform, as the policy seemed to indicate that performance did not matter.

It is important to ascertain the location and validity of such concerns. Both the CCE and the ‘no detention’ policy were meant to address the needs of especially those learners who are either disadvantageously placed or those who get pushed out of the school system with a low self-esteem, because of the lopsided view of learning which celebrates cramming of textbooks in examinations. The projection of such issues appearing in national dailies mistakes the concerns of a bunch of high scoring students from a few elite schools from a metropolitan city as being representative of all the student voices in the country. The aspirations of such students, which is to crack the prestigious engineering and medical exams straight after school, is sharply different from millions of those aspiring to simply survive in the system. It is this view of equating ‘performance in exams’ with ‘learning’ that the NCF 2005, and before that the Yashpal Committee report, tried to address by differentiating between learning and knowledge, and reiterating the need to view learning beyond textbooks. In line with this vision, the new textbooks developed by NCERT, post NCF 2005, recognised the agency of the learner, emphasised a constructivist understanding of knowledge and learning, and endeavoured to make learning more meaningful by presenting domain-specific perspectives by which children could relate to textbook content and make sense of the world around them.

Addressing challenges

Having said that, it also does not mean that the ‘no detention’ policy and CCE should not be examined critically. However, it may not be legitimate to expect them alone to bring about significant educational reform, ignoring the hugely deficit learning environments in which most schools exist, and also the challenging circumstances in which most children learn. The CCE, which is conceptualised differently and is being implemented by almost all States, suffers from several limitations both at the level of ‘design’ and ‘implementation,’ besides other school-related challenges such as inadequate teachers, absent/irregular students, huge pupil-teacher ratios and lack of basic infrastructural facilities. Similarly, the biggest challenge that the ‘no detention’ policy faces is the need to address learning gaps and suitably equip children with grade-appropriate competencies. There is also a problem when one associates CCE and the ‘no detention’ policy with ‘no assessment,’ equates absence of board exams with absence of learning, and confuses the achievement of educational objective with the success and glory of a minuscule minority over the ignominy of several thousands of students who are mercilessly pushed out of the formal school system.

India has witnessed some very significant developments in the education sector in the last decade — a long-pending landmark RTE, an NCF which brought the child to the forefront and linked the problems of quality of education with children’s experiences in schools, reforms in assessment, and strictures against use of corporal punishment. These need to be seen in perspective rather than being viewed in isolation. Rather than dismissing them in haste, the challenges confronting their implementation need to be identified, and mechanisms to support them need to be evolved.

(Disha Nawani is associate professor, School of Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.)

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/learning-beyond-textbooks/article6656710.ece

कविता

एक दिन कविता मेरा पाठ्यक्रम बन गई
और मुझे कविता से बोरियत हो गई!

***

जब कविता कला भी थी
सिर्फ अभिव्यति नहीं.
तब सबसे ज्यादा पढ़ी गई.

जब कविता सिर्फ अभिव्यक्ति बची
कहीं पढ़ी नहीं गई.
क्यूंकि विरूप अभिव्यक्ति सिर्फ चुभती है! 

सुभद्रा कुमारी की कवितायेँ

वीरों का हो कैसा वसन्त 

आ रही हिमालय से पुकार
है उदधि गरजता बार बार
प्राची पश्चिम भू नभ अपार;
सब पूछ रहें हैं दिग-दिगन्त
वीरों का हो कैसा वसन्त

फूली सरसों ने दिया रंग
मधु लेकर आ पहुंचा अनंग
वधु वसुधा पुलकित अंग अंग;
है वीर देश में किन्तु कंत
वीरों का हो कैसा वसन्त

भर रही कोकिला इधर तान
मारू बाजे पर उधर गान
है रंग और रण का विधान;
मिलने को आए आदि अंत
वीरों का हो कैसा वसन्त

गलबाहें हों या कृपाण
चलचितवन हो या धनुषबाण
हो रसविलास या दलितत्राण;
अब यही समस्या है दुरंत
वीरों का हो कैसा वसन्त

कह दे अतीत अब मौन त्याग
लंके तुझमें क्यों लगी आग
ऐ कुरुक्षेत्र अब जाग जाग;
बतला अपने अनुभव अनंत
वीरों का हो कैसा वसन्त

हल्दीघाटी के शिला खण्ड
ऐ दुर्ग सिंहगढ़ के प्रचंड
राणा ताना का कर घमंड;
दो जगा आज स्मृतियां ज्वलंत
वीरों का हो कैसा वसन्त

भूषण अथवा कवि चंद नहीं
बिजली भर दे वह छन्द नहीं
है कलम बंधी स्वच्छंद नहीं;
फिर हमें बताए कौन हन्त
वीरों का हो कैसा वसन्त

झाँसी की रानी की समाधि पर

इस समाधि में छिपी हुई है, एक राख की ढेरी |
जल कर जिसने स्वतंत्रता की, दिव्य आरती फेरी ||
यह समाधि यह लघु समाधि है, झाँसी की रानी की |
अंतिम लीलास्थली यही है, लक्ष्मी मरदानी की ||

यहीं कहीं पर बिखर गई वह, भग्न-विजय-माला-सी |
उसके फूल यहाँ संचित हैं, है यह स्मृति शाला-सी |
सहे वार पर वार अंत तक, लड़ी वीर बाला-सी |
आहुति-सी गिर चढ़ी चिता पर, चमक उठी ज्वाला-सी |

बढ़ जाता है मान वीर का, रण में बलि होने से |
मूल्यवती होती सोने की भस्म, यथा सोने से ||
रानी से भी अधिक हमे अब, यह समाधि है प्यारी |
यहाँ निहित है स्वतंत्रता की, आशा की चिनगारी ||

इससे भी सुन्दर समाधियाँ, हम जग में हैं पाते |
उनकी गाथा पर निशीथ में, क्षुद्र जंतु ही गाते ||
पर कवियों की अमर गिरा में, इसकी अमिट कहानी |
स्नेह और श्रद्धा से गाती, है वीरों की बानी ||


बुंदेले हरबोलों के मुख हमने सुनी कहानी |
खूब लड़ी मरदानी वह थी, झाँसी वाली रानी ||
यह समाधि यह चिर समाधि है , झाँसी की रानी की |
अंतिम लीला स्थली यही है, लक्ष्मी मरदानी की ||

स्मृतियाँ

क्या कहते हो? किसी तरह भी 
भूलूँ और भुलाने दूँ?
गत जीवन को तरल मेघ-सा 
स्मृति-नभ में मिट जाने दूँ?

शान्ति और सुख से ये 
जीवन के दिन शेष बिताने दूँ?
कोई निश्चित मार्ग बनाकर 
चलूँ तुम्हें भी जाने दूँ?
कैसा निश्चित मार्ग? ह्रदय-धन 
समझ नहीं पाती हूँ मैं 
वही समझने एक बार फिर 
क्षमा करो आती हूँ मैं।

जहाँ तुम्हारे चरण, वहीँ पर 
पद-रज बनी पड़ी हूँ मैं 
मेरा निश्चित मार्ग यही है 
ध्रुव-सी अटल अड़ी हूँ मैं।

भूलो तो सर्वस्व ! भला वे 
दर्शन की प्यासी घड़ियाँ 
भूलो मधुर मिलन को, भूलो 
बातों की उलझी लड़ियाँ। 

भूलो प्रीति प्रतिज्ञाओं को 
आशाओं विश्वासों को 
भूलो अगर भूल सकते हो 
आंसू और उसासों को।

मुझे छोड़ कर तुम्हें प्राणधन 
सुख या शांति नहीं होगी 
यही बात तुम भी कहते थे 
सोचो, भ्रान्ति नहीं होगी।

सुख को मधुर बनाने वाले 
दुःख को भूल नहीं सकते 
सुख में कसक उठूँगी मैं प्रिय 
मुझको भूल नहीं सकते।

मुझको कैसे भूल सकोगे 
जीवन-पथ-दर्शक मैं थी 
प्राणों की थी प्राण ह्रदय की 
सोचो तो, हर्षक मैं थी।

मैं थी उज्ज्वल स्फूर्ति, पूर्ति 
थी प्यारी अभिलाषाओं की 
मैं ही तो थी मूर्ति तुम्हारी 
बड़ी-बड़ी आशाओं की।

आओ चलो, कहाँ जाओगे 
मुझे अकेली छोड़, सखे! 
बंधे हुए हो ह्रदय-पाश में 
नहीं सकोगे तोड़, सखे!

Growing Up Fearful in Nigeria / Ukamaka Olisakwe

ABA, Nigeria — Horror calls down to us from northern Nigeria. Most of the 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram rebels last spring are still unaccounted for. On Nov. 10, Boko Haram bombed a high school in Potiskum, killing at least 48 children. Last month, the group killed 48 fish vendors near the border with Chad. And just last week, in apparent retaliation, the central mosque in the city of Kano was bombed, with some 100 people killed.

But fear and religious fanaticism are not new to the north. They are a fate we long ago came to accept. They were already woven into the pattern of life when I was a child there in the 1980s.

My father arrived in Kano one cold morning in the 1970s, with the dry, dusty harmattan wind blowing south from the desert. He was 23, and like many young Christians from Nigeria’s lush southeast, he had gone to the Muslim-majority north after surviving the bloody civil war of 1967-70. Kano was a new business frontier then. But it was uneasy, too: While Muslims and Christians lived side by side, so did hope and fear.

In December 1980, hope took a terrible blow when Yan Tatsine, a group led by the Islamic preacher Maitatsine, took to the streets in a blaze of violence. Like Boko Haram today, Maitatsine reviled Westernization. He had declared himself a prophet and clashed with the police, but was supported by some Muslim clerics. My father remembers shuddering in fear alongside other Christians in their neighborhood, Sabon Gari, as the bloodshed snuffed out 4,000 lives. Eventually, the Nigerian Army arrived, Maitatsine was killed, and his followers fled to neighboring states to continue their insurgency.

A period of peace in Kano followed. My father married. I was born. My parents were protective — too much so, I thought. They hardly ever let me venture outside Sabon Gari or get near a mosque during Friday Prayer. I could not understand why, and eventually began to rebel.

One day in October 1991, when I was not quite 9, I walked toward a large mosque near our home. It was a Friday, and the street was closed. From afar, I could see worshipers on prayer mats in the road. The mosque’s loudspeakers spewed out anger, and I wondered if this anger was why my parents warned us to stay away. Then, suddenly, worshipers spilled from the building, chanting in Arabic, punching the air with their fists.

Continue reading the main story

I ran home, dazed. Later that evening, we were told that a proselytizing German Christian evangelist, Reinhard Bonnke, planned to visit Kano. The following Monday, tension smothered us like a thick veil. School closed early. Some Muslim classmates and teachers didn’t show up at all. Grown-ups muttered in hushed voices.

We children would later learn that hundreds of Muslim demonstrators had taken to the streets that day, protesting Mr. Bonnke’s visit, and rioting ensued in which Christians were attacked and killed — an estimated 200 in the city and nearby. Then Christians counterattacked, killing Muslims. For hours, I tried to wish away the screams I was hearing. For days, the air stank of burned flesh and decaying bodies on the streets. Mosques lay in ruins, charred.

Continue reading the main story

Continue reading the main story

Two days after the crisis started, the Nigerian Army arrived, and within the week, cleanup crews cleared the streets. But the smell lingered.

At home, we no longer laughed. Father returned to his shop, Mother to her food kiosk and we children to school. We all stayed away from mosques. But in time, our memories of the riot were thrust aside, as if into a dusty closet. We talked about almost anything else: the coming harmattan, how we could taste Christmas on our lips if we threw our mouths open and sucked in the cold air. On Christmas Eve, we played with firecrackers. By morning, we wore new clothes to church. We stuffed ourselves full of rice, goat meat and Fanta. And the decade began flitting by quietly, with little special for a child to remember or mourn.

In 2001, fully grown, I left Kano to live with my husband in Aba, a southeastern city near where my father grew up. The air here, I discovered, bubbles with the people’s unrestrained, stomach-clenching laughter, and for the first weeks it made me jittery. I couldn’t put my finger on why. It was not just the southerners’ boisterous talk, or the shocking Western way the women dressed. Here, girls could wear skirts so short they dared not bend over; their makeup stood out like street signs. And when they talked to boys, they stared them straight in the eyes.

I missed home. On my first visit to the market, I heard a bus conductor call out: “Mosque! Mosque!” I hopped on, and rode to a mosque in front of which men sold suya, a spicy northern meat kebab. I greeted a seller in the north’s Hausa language. Beaming, he returned greetings in Igbo, the language of the southeast. Had I been in the north? he asked. I said I’d just left. I ordered suya, and he served twice as much as I’d paid for. Thanking him, I started to leave. But I kept staring at the mosque.

I realized then what had made me feel unmoored: the absence of fear. I had learned to live with fear in the north. It had become a second skin, and losing it had dazed me. I missed it and the boundaries it set.

I called my parents and told them I wasn’t sure whether I loved this new freedom to laugh loud, to wear red lipstick and miniskirts. Most of the time, I missed Kano itself, and the good memories of peaceful interludes. My mother took to visiting Aba, bearing news of new buildings or improved roads, or simply of peace. My father’s business had expanded. He’d bought a new car. She’d shut her food kiosk to work with him. She wore hope in her eyes, as we used to.

But 2004 brought another riot. Some 300 Christians had died, Mother called to tell me. She said I must never return to Kano. I never have.

Up north, we hear, Boko Haram is the group that spreads fear today. But it has taken cruelty a step further. It focuses its rage on Western education. So its victims are often children.

In the safe southeast, my mind still wanders north. I wonder how the captive girls feel. Do they dare hope for rescue? How does a high-school girl get through the day? Counting the ceiling boards of a cell? Or, worse, dealing with a husband whom Boko Haram has forced on her?

Meanwhile, Christians have relocated southward en masse. Mother and Father live in Onitsha, near me. Father said the Christians of Sabon Gari gave up after a pair of bombings mere blocks from my parents’ home.

They are safe now, but forever marked. Like me and the legions of other Christians who have fled northern Nigeria, Father wears his memories like a badge of loss.

Ukamaka Olisakwe, a Nigerian novelist, is the author of “Eyes of a Goddess.”

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/opinion/growing-up-fearful-in-nigeria.html?emc=edit_ae_20141201&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49615428&_r=1

web filter

“This planned prohibition of pornography and any other objectionable content will ultimately come at a cost to our collective interest in the freedom of expression while simultaneously turning a deaf ear to what science is or isn’t able to account for. A web filter opens the doors to abuse, stupidity, official petty-mindedness and a habit of giving up and reaching for the easiest way out.” In the light of government’s plan to filter the web, critically comment on the statement.

On April 16, 2013, Kamlesh Vaswani, an advocate from Indore, filed a Public Interest Litigation petition in the Supreme Court of India asking for the viewing of pornography to be made a non-bailable offence and demanding that pornographic content on the Internet be blocked. The court subsequently asked the government to respond to the petition. Fast forward to September 2014, by which time both the erstwhile United Progressive Alliance-II and the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party-led governments said they were unable to track the number of cases and block Internet pornography in India.

Then, on September 5, 2014, Information Technology and telecommunications officials from various Ministries, including Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad convened at the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY) to discuss a solution to the pornography question. They discussed not why but how to implement a web filter, which is a technical system that controls what content is blocked on the Internet.

Mr. Vaswani’s petition cited pornography as being the reason for rapes in the country. But is there a demonstrable psychological link between viewing pornography and perpetrating sexual violence?

Social predispositions

Studies have shown show that non-aggressive men’ s reactions to non-violent pornography is markedly different from aggressive men’s reactions to violent pornography (Malamuth et al 2000; Kingston et al 2009). Among women, findings show that those who have experienced coercive sexual behaviour before exposure to pornography are offended by violent pornography but approve of erotica (which is the artistic use of subject matter for sexual arousal) (Senn and Radtke 1990). Similarly, women who have not experienced coercive sexual behaviour before exposure to pornography approve of non-violent pornography in general (Sommers and Check 1987).

Therefore, it is clear that pornography can’t be treated as an undifferentiated mass and that its implications for sexual violence can’t be assessed without accounting for one’s social predispositions. In fact, a 2010 study conducted by the University of Zagreb in Croatia pinpointed a confounding factor: sexual sensation seeking. The study was able to show that while there seemed to be no demonstrable link between viewing pornography and sexual behaviour, the age at which the viewer was exposed to pornography and sexual stimulation-seeking behaviour seemed to affect how aggressive the viewer turned out to be.

In fact, an Indian study published in the Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine in June 2014 was able to go so far as to conclude that “easy access to pornography did not have a significant impact on rape [and crime] rates against women” by comparing “reported incidence of crime” in 1971-2008 and “availability of pornography over the Internet with a particular focus on crime against women.”

Moreover, there are also shortcomings in evaluation hinged on the inability to statistically eliminate the unconscious biases of those designing the tests. In India, as elsewhere, these confounding factors would point at the wider social environment one grows up in. If the DEITY group really wanted to curb sexual violence, they would go after all the black sheep in this environment — from the entrenched culture of misogyny to the objectification of women in popular culture that is consumed en masse — but no. Science is unable to show that pornography causes sexual violence, and so the reason for a web filter is something else, and worthy of suspicion at that.

Some studies even argue that viewing pornography gives men and women a safe way to release their sexual stress in the privacy of their homes without having to resort to publicly dissonant behaviour (e.g. Ferguson & Hartley 2009). With a filter in place, there is a chance that sexual violence could thus increase.

So why is there so much need for a filter at all? A web filter is the answer because it is the perfect technological solution to problems that we would like to sweep under the rug without debate or discussion. It allows parents to avoid coming up with a rational explanation for why pornography is evil; it provides the perfect cover for politicians who cannot define what obscenity is, let alone try and explain how it is “destroying Indian culture.”

The people in favour of a web filter understand this all too well, which is why untenable arguments such as “pornography causes sexual violence and is responsible for crimes against women” are advanced, because they are causes that we can all seemingly get behind and support. Likewise, the war against child pornography is a great rallying call. But while it is a noble objective, it is also a mask that hides the other problems for which a web filter will be used.

The problem with technological solutions in particular, and algorithmic regulation in general, is that they are primarily judged by their efficiency and not by whether they are serving the larger interests of the population. In the pre-Internet and mobile age, we had to decide whether to deliver solutions through the market or the state, which had their own ideological differences as to who the solution was really serving.

Today this clarity is lost as our choice is between analogue and digital solutions and the only criteria by which we judge success is efficiency. When we use technology to create massive databases of citizen data, governments across the world think only about how much more efficient it is compared to the old paper-and-filing-cabinet regime and not about how these databases bring with them the potential for surveillance, tracking and profiling. The transformation from paper-filing to online database brings a number of benefits in terms of costs and convenience. What it also does is make the data more accessible than it should be, to the detriment of citizens.

Bypassing filters

A government-imposed filtering mechanism also fails to serve the larger sections of the population. As the members of the cyber regulation advisory committee pointed out, filters deployed by Internet service providers to block specific online material can be easily bypassed through a number of mechanisms.

Furthermore, it is difficult to argue whether the majority of Indians truly believe that pornography is harming this country’s cultural sensitivities. Data recently released by one of the world’s biggest pornography websites points out that Indians are, and have been, among the most prolific consumers of Internet pornography in the world.

This planned prohibition of pornography and any other objectionable content will ultimately come at a cost to our collective interest in the freedom of expression while simultaneously turning a deaf ear to what science is or isn’t able to account for. A web filter opens the doors to abuse, stupidity, official petty-mindedness and a habit of giving up and reaching for the easiest way out.

Is it worth trading away our assured freedoms for merely speculative benefits?

(Vasudevan Mukunth is a science journalist. Anuj Srivas is at the Oxford Internet Institute, U.K.)

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/the-ostensible-reason-for-a-web-filter/article6653271.ece

Development as a people’s movement / Madhav Gadgil

Development was a key issue in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. In his very first speech after taking over as Prime Minister, Narendra Modi asserted that his government is committed to carrying on development as a people’s movement. This, he has asserted, will draw upon India’s democratic, demographic and demand dividends. But are we genuinely moving towards organising development as a people’s movement while building on these strengths?

At the heart of democracy is access to information. We do have the vital Right to Information Act, but need to do much more since the public is being continually misled. To reap the demographic dividend, our youth should be well nourished. But what is the reality? The government’s statistics show that 28 per cent of school children were malnourished in 1993; this came down to 17 per cent by 1999 and declined further to 8 per cent by 2006. However, this is based on information provided by schools, and many of them are guilty of maintaining bogus records of enrolment and expenses towards the provision of mid-day meals. As a cross-check, we have the data provided by the carefully and professionally conducted National Family Health Survey. According to its very different and shocking results, 53 per cent of school children were malnourished in 1993. This came down slightly to 47 per cent by 1999 and changed a little by 2006, to 46 per cent.

To cater to India’s massive population of consumers, people should have adequate purchasing power, such as that enjoyed by people employed in the industries or services sector. Unfortunately, as the malnourishment statistics indicate, a vast majority of Indians are poor, with barely 10 per cent employed in the organised sector. We are being convinced that vigorous economic growth is generating substantial employment. But this is not so. When our economy was growing at 3 per cent per year, employment in the organised sector was growing at 2 per cent per year. As the economy began to grow at 7-8 per cent per year, the rate of growth of employment in the organised sector actually declined to 1 per cent per year since most of the economic growth was based on technological progress, including automation. At the same time, the increasing pressure of the organised sector on land, water, forest and mineral resources has adversely impacted employment in farming, animal husbandry and fisheries sectors. People who are being pushed out of these occupations are now crowding in urban centres. This is in turn leading to a decline in the productivity of the organised industries and services sector. Evidently, the ship of our development is sadly adrift.

What is development?

Undoubtedly, people aspire for development. But what is development? Joseph Stiglitz, a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics and one-time chairman of Bill Clinton’s Economic Advisory Council, offers an insightful analysis, asserting that development should result in an enhancement of the totality of a nation’s four-fold capital stocks: the capital of material goods, natural capital such as soil, water, forests and fish, human capital including health, education and employment, and social capital comprising mutual trust and social harmony. Our current pattern of economic development is by no means a balanced process resulting in the overall enhancement of the totality of these stocks. Thus, for instance, mining in Goa has severely damaged the State’s water resources and caused high levels of air and water pollution. The ever-increasing content of metals in drinking water reservoirs has adversely impacted health. When thousands of trucks were plying ore on the roads of Goa, the resulting chaos in traffic and accidents seriously disrupted social harmony. Evidently, the single-minded focus on industrial growth is not leading to sustainable, harmonious development, but merely nurturing a money-centred violent economy.

We must, of course, continue to develop modern technology-based industries and services, but these cannot generate employment on the massive scale required. It is therefore imperative that this modern sector must rein in its adverse impacts on labour-intensive, natural resource-based occupations and livelihoods. The modern capital-intensive, technology-based economic sector must nurture a symbiotic relationship with the nature-based, labour-intensive sector. Our democracy provides for fashioning such a mutual relationship through the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments and the Biological Diversity Act, the Panchayats (Extension to Schedule Areas) Act and the Forest Rights Act. We must take advantage of this constitutional framework that promotes decentralised governance and work with nature and people to move forward on a path towards genuine development — a path that would be entirely compatible with making development a people’s movement.

Examples of people’s movements

In Chandrapur and Gadchiroli districts of Maharashtra, both of which are Naxal-torn, there are hopeful examples emerging of how development may be nurtured as a people’s movement. A number of tribal and other traditional forest-dwelling communities of these districts now have management rights over Community Forest Resources under the Forest Rights Act. The state retains ownership over such resources, and these cannot be diverted to other purposes. But now these resources are being managed holistically with a fuller involvement of the people. The citizens of Pachgaon, for instance, have, through two full-day meetings of their entire Gram Sabha, decided upon 40-odd regulations. Tendu leaves are a major forest produce, but their harvest entails extensive lopping and setting of forest fires. So, Pachgaon has decided to forego this income and instead focus on marketing the edible tendu fruit. By stopping the collection of tendu leaves, the trees are healthier and both fruit yield and income from its marketing have gone up. Incomes from bamboo harvest have also gone up manifold, and for the first time the people are moving out of the earlier precarious existence. Notably, they have on their own initiated protecting part of these forests as newly constituted sacred groves. Such community management of forest resources is the only sane way to combat extremism, and I have every hope that the new government, with its commitment to making development a people’s movement, will wholeheartedly support these initiatives.

Verle village, perched atop Sahyadri mountains in Goa’s Sanguem taluk, provides another instance of how we can make development a people’s movement. In this charming village, the locals have initiated a cooperative tourism project. Visitors stay in the homes of the locals, which are now equipped with modern amenities, and enjoy home-cooked food. They can wander around to their heart’s content with three well-trained local youth who serve as nature guides. This is a neat example of how development benefits people at the grassroots level while safeguarding the natural heritage.

Recently, I had requested Goa University students to write an essay on any issue of their interest. Many chose tourism; they were very concerned with the negative fallout of the flourishing hotel industry. These included depletion and pollution of ground water, ever-growing piles of solid waste, encroachments on public beaches and alarming growing drug abuse, associated crimes and women’s insecurity. They also felt that few economic benefits actually reach the people of Goa. Why then can we not focus on enterprises that are nature-friendly and give full scope to local initiatives like Verle to develop tourism? Why do we not organise activities such as these that genuinely promote development as a people’s movement?

Furthermore, Goa could revive its currently stagnating mining business through novel people-oriented initiatives such as the proposal from the tribals in Caurem village in Goa’s Quepem taluka. There, extensive community lands that harbour a large sacred grove — lands that ought to have been assigned as Community Forest Resources — have been encroached upon by palpable illegal mining, which has damaged water resources, affected farming, and created social dissonance. The mines are currently closed because of the illegalities, and the Gram Sabha has unanimously resolved that if they are to be restarted, this should be done through the agency of their multi-purpose cooperative society.

The Goa government ought to seize this golden opportunity and do all that it can to ensure that it succeeds. When the first cooperative sugar factory in the country was established at Pravaranagar in Maharashtra 60 years ago, many doubted if the farmers could manage such an enterprise. But it succeeded beyond people’s wildest dreams because of capable farmer-leaders like Vitthalrao Vikhe Patil and a sympathetic Finance Minister like Vaikunthbhai Mehta. Let us therefore hope that the Goa government with its commitment to making development a people’s movement will vigorously support the Caurem initiative and create for the country a new model of how mining can be developed as a people’s activity.

(Madhav Gadgil is D.D.Kosambi Visiting Research Professor, Goa University.)

Lower petroleum prices: A mixed blessing for India / Mahesh Sachdev

The Oil Ministers of 12 member states of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) concluded their meeting in Vienna on November 27 by deciding to continue with their three-year-old production quota of 30 million barrels per day (mbpd). Thus, they calculatingly ignored nearly one mbpd oversupply in the global oil market which has pushed the crude prices down by over 30 per cent since June 2014. The global oil glut, in turn, has been caused by a number of factors which include OPEC’s own overproduction, rising non-OPEC production (particularly by the U.S.-based “Shale Revolutionaries”) and lower demand from China and Europe. By declining to cut their output to shore up the prices, OPEC in general, and Saudi Arabia in particular, have refused to play the role of global “swing producer.”

As most factors responsible for the current global demand-supply disequilibrium are systemic in nature, the world faces prospects for relatively bearish oil prices over the foreseeable future. Indeed, the prices have continued to fall with the Indian basket touching $72.51/barrel on November 27 — a decline of nearly $9 from the average during the first fortnight of the month.

As the world’s fourth largest importer of crude, India can afford to exult at this precipitous crude price decline. Still, given the strategic importance of this development, a more comprehensive analysis is desirable.

A virtuous cycle in the economy

From the limited perspective of India’s consumer economy, lower global oil prices undoubtedly augur well. Lower pump prices reduce pressure on the consumer who can spend the savings elsewhere, spurring the demand side of the economy. As petroleum products form a large part of the consumer price indices, lower crude prices result in reduced inflation, which in turn paves the way for lower interest rates and greater buoyancy in investments. Thus, lower oil prices can trigger a virtuous cycle in the Indian economy. After all, with India’s imports running at an estimated 3.7 mbpd in 2013, a $30/barrel decline in oil prices amounts to a $40 billion savings bonanza on annual imports. The impact would be best felt on the petroleum sector where marketers have been groaning under subsidy burden. The transport sector would also be a direct beneficiary.

If we widen the impact analysis to consider the totality of the Indian economy, some challenges also appear. First, as oil producers are India’s major markets and investment destinations, their economic decline may affect the country. Recent decline in the share prices of Bharti Airtel and Bajaj Auto due to the devaluation of the Nigerian Naira illustrates this more complex trend.

Second, apart from being the fourth largest oil importer, India is also the world’s sixth largest petroleum product exporter earning over $60 billion annually — nearly a fifth of global exports. A bearish oil market would hurt this segment with reduced demand, lower unit prices and lower margins.

Third, the oil price decline coincides with resumed foreign interest in investing in India. It is difficult to assess their mutual correlation, but lower oil revenues may attenuate arrival of petrodollars into India.

Fourth, whenever oil revenues decline, countries that export Gulf oil try to tighten their belts by emphasising local production and downsizing their foreign labour force in which Indians dominate. Thanks largely to over five million Indian expatiates there, India was the world’s largest recipient of remittances which topped $70 billion in 2013. The possibility of these remittances being reduced cannot be ruled out. This would have a serious impact on remittance-dependent States such as Kerala and Goa.

Fifth, lower crude prices may cast a shadow over the sputtering controversy over natural gas pricing norms in India as the latter generally follow the oil prices. Future investment decisions in oil-related sectors may get delayed.

Sixth, lower pump prices may cause higher fuel consumption as sales of automotive products soar. This would worsen commuter woes as well as cause increased urban pollution.

Finally, a decline in oil prices generally accompanies a global decline in commodity prices, particularly those of minerals and agricultural products. India remains a major exporter of these and would see lower realisation, particularly of Guar Gum, a critical input for the shale industry.

The long-term impact of lower oil prices is likely to be felt beyond the economic domain. Geopolitically, persistent lower oil revenue could propel a number of emerging exporters towards domestic political instability as the ruling elites lose their capacity to provide “stomach infrastructure” to the common man. Countries with lower per capita oil revenue such as Nigeria, Iran, Algeria and Venezuela may be more at risk. In general, however, lower oil revenues may have a dampening effect on regional or domestic disputes.

Measures to leverage oil prices

India can leverage the current low oil prices for long-term gains. To this end, the following measures can be considered. One, it can foster long-term crude supply relationships with exporters in return for stable prices, upstream engagements, inbound investments, etc. Two, it can enter into oil-for-infrastructure barter deals to boost project exports. Three, it can restructure public sector oil companies to make them more productive and globally proactive for leaner times ahead. Four, it can channel some of the oil bonanza to mitigate the increased cost disadvantage of renewable and alternative energy sources. Five, it can build its own strategic oil reserves.

The current downturn in oil prices underlines the cyclic nature of commodity trade and illustrates OPEC’s reduced regulatory capacity consequent to it supplying only a third of global demand. While Shale Revolution may be a new and price-sensitive factor, it is unlikely to vanish with time or with lower prices. During past oil bear-hugs in 1986, 1993-99 and 2008, the lower prices invariably spurred consumption and the oil bounced back. There is no reason to believe that the oil prices shall not rise again. India would do well to recall an old oil adage, “The cure for high oil price is high oil price itself” — and use this rare, cyclic opportunity for long-term gains.

(Mahesh Sachdev has served as Indian ambassador to Algeria, Norway and Nigeria — all major oil exporting countries.)

Source : http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/a-mixed-blessing-for-india/article6645245.ece

A FUNNY CHUTUKLA …

***
Let me tell you a short ‘chutukla’ a dear friend once told me.

***

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. 

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. 
The fifth would pay $1. 
The sixth would pay $3. 
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12. 
The ninth would pay $18. 
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59. 


So, that’s what they decided to do.. 

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner offered “Since you are all such good customers, I’m will reduce the charge of your daily beer by $20″. Drinks for the ten men would now cost just $80. 

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?


They realized that $20 divided by 6 is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.
And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving). 
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% saving). 
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% saving). 
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% saving). 
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% saving). 
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% saving). 



Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.
”I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,”but he got $10!” 

”Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!” 

”That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back, when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!” 

”Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!”


The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill! 



(Never mind all the math, the gist of the chutukla is that rich are overburdened with taxation in our taxation system which suffers from a ‘socialist’ mindset.)

***
And that is how our tax system works. The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is friendlier.

But does this tell us the complete story when applied to the real life? Let me tell you another chutukla…

***

To save the argument of the chutukla, let me reframe it. Let 1 beer every day be essential for a man to survive. Now obviously poor are poor. They can’t afford even 1 beer. Let us now add weight to the argument of the chutukla. Lets say there is only 1 rich man, 2 middle class men and rest 7 are poor. The rich man has the money to pay for 10 beers, middle class to pay for 1 beer each and the poor have zero money.

Lets say richest man goes in a bar alone and drinks his beer there from his own money. Now when he comes out, our other 7 poor guys and the 2 middle class men ask him to go back in and pay for their beer as well. Now in this second visit the richest man doesn’t drink, only the 7 poor and 2 middle class drink and the rich man pays the entire bill (for all 9) happily. Let this be our initial taxation system (even more unfair to the rich man than the initial chutukla, ain’t it?).

Now enter the real life. In real life, the rich man is never happy paying the bill for the other 9 men’s beers. So he goes and tells the government, “I ll pay you 1 beer (for your election spending or whatever purposes) so that you give me an exemption from paying for say 2 beers.” Now both the middle class men will have to buy their own beers (in best case)… less equity but still acceptable. But it doesn’t stop here. Our rich man now goes and tells the government, “I ll pay you 2 beers so that u exempt me from paying for 4 beers.”… Now what? In the best possible case also, 2 poor men will have to die (or be deprived of ‘minimum needed’ economic resources).

***

In real life, it is obvious that the rich man has all the incentive in the world (except should he be otherwise persuaded by a dissenting conscience) to bribe the government to save his taxes… and the government will have all the incentives in the world to accept the bribe since its overriding objective is to win elections. So in all likelihood the second chutukla is going to prevail. At least 2 poor are going to die, the rich man will invest the saved beer in a say beer refinery and produce 5 more beers tomorrow. GDP will grow and we will call this development. Funny…

The poor are worse off in the system. But they are in majority. So how does the system survive in a democracy like ours? Consider this…
***

Lets multiply everything by 2 now and let us assume that 1 beer is essential for physical survival and 1 for other basic needs like education, health, environment etc. which are otherwise essential to lead a minimum “meaningful” life. Now lets eliminate the middle class and club them with poor so that there are 9 poor. Say our rich fellow now bribes the government 4.5 beers so as to save on 9 beers in tax. Now every poor will have his 1 beer of physical survival but thats it. Election time comes and government distributes the 4 beers among the poor (read “populist” fiscal sops or alcohol, cash, mixers etc.), the poor are happy and vote for the government.
***

The rich are happy (they got to save 4.5 beers), the government is happy (it got reelected and also saved 0.5 beers), the poor are happy (they got election time sops). But the poor are still the losers for now they have been condemned to poverty in perpetuity. The poor – they never knew they had a chance of a better life… think of that child who has no future in our society now and yet he finds unparalleled joy in laying his hands upon a kite or playing with dustbin in a park riding it as if it were a horse….

The question we must then ask ourselves is whether in a civilized society (which we claim to be) can we condemn the unfortunate to live lives in perpetual “unfreedoms” (borrowing the term from Sen) given that they may find joy in small things (but which in no way can enable them to overcome their unfreedoms)? Lets not forget that men (and of course women) are human beings and not just a factor called labor used in the process of producing economic goods and services and its only the “accident of birth” which determines whether a man will be poor or rich in an overwhelming majority of cases in a real world society like India. (If you are considering of negating this then I implore you to impartially consider the probability of you being what you are today had you suffered from the “accident” of taking birth in any poor household. In fact at the risk of diverging from the current discussion, I would go to the extent of saying that the only difference between a feudal society and what we have today is that while in a feudal society there was legal sanction to the discrimination based on the accident of birth whereas now we have no such legal sanction but in 90-95% cases, our social and economic construct ensures such a discrimination prevails.)

So what can we do? The most compelling way I think is to “awaken” and “empower” people. Think of this… for 60 years since our independence the state had been providing all social goods to the poor (at least that was the declared aim). I am sure 450 years ago, Akbar would have been doing the same and some 2300 years ago, Asoka would have tried the same… yet none of it worked (or let me claim “could have” worked)… this is because the truth of all such efforts, however praiseworthy was that they were “acts of generosity by the state”. If you are a poor and the state is providing you with food, health and education, it was state’s “generosity”. It wasn’t your right… So if you happened to get nothing there was nothing which you could possibly do to redress the situation. However, if we are to really eliminate deprivation, it should be a matter of “right” for the poor to claim such benefits. Just because they happen to exist, they should have the right to have proper food, proper education and proper health… and if they don’t get it they could take action against the state…

MGNREGA (the national employment guarantee scheme) was implemented on this philosophy by making employment a right and not an act of generosity and dare I say it has been one of the most meaningful and successful schemes ever (true, there are defects but dude, we don’t live in a bookish world. In real world everything has defects).

P.S. A good read on MGNREGS here…http://www.indiawaterportal.org/sites/indiawaterportal.org/files/mgnrega_sameeksha.pdf

-- Gaurav Agrawal

[This article is borrowed from Gaurav Agrawal's (IAS topper 2013) blog 'Khelo India', you can read original article with readers comments HERE ]