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Building ties Sex and AIDS |
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Human capital to fuel GDP growth
The ring and the mouse
Time to focus on paid ecological services
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Building ties External
Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's tour of Bangladesh is another visible reminder of how New Delhi is giving priority to its neighbours. Naturally, this was to reach out and build relationships between the key players in the governments that will now have to deal with each other, and thus Swaraj met various Bangladeshi leaders. While various issues of mutual concern were discussed, no specific results were expected. The choice of the destination of the External Affairs Minister's first trip alone highlighted Bangladesh's importance. The spirit of good neighbourliness was expressed by various leaders who met Swaraj, including Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who had not been able to attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi's swearing-in ceremony. Swaraj also met President Abdul Hamid and had delegation-level talks with her counterpart A H Mahmud Ali. The sharing of the Teesta waters and implementation of the Land Boundary Agreement are two issues that have been hanging fire for long. The agreement, which is yet to be ratified by Parliament, would redraw the international boundary between the two countries by exchanging territories so that the border becomes more manageable. Swaraj has promised to address the two issues "in a manner that improves the welfare and well-being of both our people". On the Indian side, it is the issue of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh that has caused concern, which was raised by the Indian delegation. The External Affairs Minister had done well in the choice of destination and in initiating a positive dialogue with the Bangladesh government. Such a visit was necessary, both to state the neighbourhood-first agenda of the government as also to remove any disquiet that might have arisen in Dhaka. India needs to strengthen economic ties with Bangladesh, even as it increases the level of engagement with the nation that it shares a special bond with. There are both short term and long-term projects that can achieve this result and the good will that has been generated by this visit will pay rich dividends if it is followed by prompt action on at least some of these projects.
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Sex and AIDS If
Adam and Eve had sex education that made them aware of the consequences, would they have still eaten the forbidden fruit? Perhaps, they would have delayed it and who knows the delay might have made them change their mind. Ignorance cannot be bliss when one's existence is squeezed amidst a billion people. And one cannot afford to squirm at the idea of sex education when the challenges are as formidable as AIDS and teenage pregnancy-related deaths. Any number of arguments on morality and culture cannot justify the denial of live-saving information to adolescents and the young. Information may be presented in an age-appropriate and culturally sensitive way, but there can be no compromise on the need for sex education. There are indeed cultural variations on the expression of sexuality but consequences of unsafe sex are the same. It is, therefore, absurd to invoke the glorious traditions of marital loyalty as a preventive step for AIDS in times when many of the young delay tying the knot till they are in their thirties. Pre-marital sex has increasingly gained social acceptance and adolescents should be well-equipped with the knowledge to make informed choices about their sex life. Any knowledge that saves one's life and prevents fatal diseases cannot be a cultural or moral violation. Denial of such knowledge, however, amounts to a human rights violation. The contentious material that the Health Minister, Dr Harsh Vardhan, has referred to -- the Adolescent Education Programme introduced by the Central Government in association with the National AIDS Control Organisation in 2007 -- was banned by 12 states for its alleged vulgar content. Education and health are state subjects and private schools are free to accept or reject sex education or modify the content. Demystifying sex through school education is the best way to prevent the young from using 'vulgar' means of gaining information. The Health Minister should show his commitment to public health by making sex education compulsory.
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Thought for the Day
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. —Robert Frost
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The sale of proprietary right in land in the Punjab British citizenship LALA Lajpat Rai has written two letters on this subject to the Daily News and Leader of mail week. In the first letter he refers to the position of the Hindus aboard the Komagata Maru and reminds the British readers that those Hindus are Sikhs, "the descendants, compatriots and co-religionists of those who saved His Majesty's Eastern Empire in the time of England's greatest peril in India, viz., in 1857. He also reminds them that they have shed their blood for the Empire in Egypt, in the Soudan, in China, in Abyssinia and in Burma. It is from their ranks that a considerable part of the British army is recruited and, indeed, the Sikhs form the "flower" of the Indian army.
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Human capital to fuel GDP growth Today's
India has young demographics and yes it has contributed a large as well as fast-growing workforce in the past. It is a matter of debate if this phenomenon will yield a comparable growth impulse in future too. Theory says that there is much more to the human capital of a country than a headcount of the workforce. In case of India, the competence of the labour force is going to perk up significantly in the coming years. This sturdy upgrade in human capital will fuel higher Indian GDP growth for the coming 30 years or so. At this juncture it is pertinent to look into the quality of the labour force in terms of education. When economic reforms began in 1991, only 60 per cent of the 21-year-old women, which is the entrant cohort in the labour force, were literate as compared to men who were 70 per cent literate at the same age. At present, we have a rather rosy picture with 85 per cent of women and 90 per cent of men at age 21 who are literate. Every year the quality of fresh blood in the labour force is getting better. Going by the numbers, we may hope that pretty soon, 100 per cent of the 21-year-olds going into the labour force will be literate. This change is even more remarkable when we look at passing the 12th standard. In 1990 just 6 per cent of the 21-year-old women had passed high school. At present this is at 16 per cent. For men, this has gone up from 8 per cent in 1990 to 20 per cent today. Forecasts show that within five years, this number will go up to 25 per cent for both men and women. Each year, we are adding a batch of 21-year-olds into the labour force which is qualitatively superior to what was coming into the labour force in 1990. Another scorching issue is the female labour market participation. As soon as poor people turn out to be middle class, there is often a decline in women's labour market participation. To begin with, rising incomes have damaged women's participation, as households have graduated from poor to middle class. But at the same time, GDP growth is pushing millions of households from being middle class to rich, and they are coming into the labour force. Today the daughters of the affluent are a novel force in the economy as compared to the preceding decades. Further, a not-so-much silent revolution has been running parallel in our lives i.e. the mobile phone revolution, and we are a little inured to it. We believe that all this happened in the past and it is no longer a force for change now. However, India's mobile phone revolution is still in transition. The mobile revolution is working its wonder each day, with more men and much more women receiving a shoot in their competence with a mobile phone. If we, somehow, attain 100 per cent dissemination of smart phones, it is going to yield colossal gains, predominantly for the emancipation of the fair sex. Finally, the most important part of learning is learning by doing. When we start off in the labour market occupation we do not know too much. With the passage of time, we put on experience. Here is the dilemma! A young man of 20 years in the decade of 70s used to spend his seminal years in the order of Indian socialism and being cut off from the world of ideas and competition, the enhancement in awareness over those decisive 20 years was somewhat feeble. The stuff has changed qualitatively. An adolescent who was initiated at the age of 21 in the workforce in 1991 has now turned into a 43-year-old veteran who has been facing competition, globalisation, modern technology, global firms, etc. The 45-year-old of India today is qualitatively superior to the 45-year-old of 1990. Every year in India a cohort of the old leaves the labour force, and a cohort of the young joins the labour force, and everyone in between adds one more year of experience in modern India. This is yielding big gains in the quality of the labour force. To conclude, it is very likely that for the coming 40 years, the improvements in the labour force, particularly with women, are going to be elemental in India. If we merely tot up the number of workers, the growth of labour will be meager, but there is a lot more to human capital than just headcount. The writer is the Chairman, Department of Economics, Kurukshetra University
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The ring and the mouse Five
year old, shy yet sharp, studying in the first standard in a primary school of urban Punjab. And, above all, a diehard fan of Mithun Chakraborty, Viv Richards and Kapil Dev. That was me. Just on the verge of starting my life as a
perpetual loser. Psychology says that a 6-year-old may have a tendency to be
attracted to the opposite sex. But in my case God lowered the eligibility age by one year. Ekta was there to capture the corners of my eyes and the centre of my thoughts. Ekta, the daughter of a proprietor of an atta chakki. I always wanted to engage in long talks with her, play with her and, just like Mithun Chakraborty, take her for a ride on my imaginary motorcycle. Soon Bablu was aware of the epicentre. He (living up to the reputation of a genius of evil) even coined code names for us: Sun & Sunflower. What next? It was a rock solid belief in the conservative 80s of Mithun da; that if you love a girl, it is your moral duty to marry her. As explained to me by Bablu, "The Cupid", I was in love with her. So I must try to marry her by putting a wedding ring on her finger. So we procured a plastic ring from a small shop of Gianiji; it came free with a 25-paise packet of sweet imli. After school hours, when Ekta was on way to her nearby home, I ran after her, and as instructed by the Guru, took her hand and put the pink-colored plastic ring on her finger, saying "This is our wedding ring. So we are married now. You cannot marry any other person" (first come, first serve). The next morning I was summoned by the Principal. There I saw Ekta's mother standing with her, explaining the audacity of her son-in-law. The Principal was furious. But I was searching for Ekta. She was nowhere. She must be there to stand by her husband in such a testing time. When my thrashing was about to begin, just to save my skin, I transferred the blame on Bablu. It was his plan. After all, it was the Guru's duty to help his pupil in getting rid of his bad karma. So after a brief thrashing with a scale of steel, both of us were dragged to the door of 'The Dark Room'. The Dark Room was a place where some giant mouse was believed to live with his clan who could eat any person within no time. We resisted with all our logic and strength, but finally succumbed and were locked up. There was absolute darkness around us and within us. Waiting for the giant mouse to come and consume us. It was the Guru's turn to cry. The Ghost of Darkness was overpowering the Cupid. No mouse turned up. After 10 minutes of 'mousetherapy' I was free; this time from the thoughts of Ekta . At that time all I wanted was the sacred symbol of my love, that wedding ring, back. A girl afraid of the 'zamaana' in general and her mother in particular cannot be a worthy lover and hence a worthy wife.
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Time to focus on paid ecological services An
ecosystem is a dynamic, complex, functional unit of diverse living organisms, physical environment and humans are its integral part. The wellbeing of mankind depends upon food, water, fibre, medicine, flood and disease control. Predators, pollinators, microbes, nutrient recycling, scenic beauty affect the spiritual and recreational services of the environment. Biodiversity is the operating system of the earth and diversity within and among species. It ensures the energy flow in a healthy and balanced ecosystem to sustain the eco-services. Agro-ecosystems Agriculture uses as well as provides ecosystem services. However, intensive agricultural practices degrade these, become input-and-cost intensive, lack climate resilience and are unsustainable. In the 1930s, mechanised tillage in the central great plains of the US led to the loss of top soil, degraded 91 million hectare of land and the region became famous as a dust bowl. The growers in that region have since adopted conservative and sustainable tillage practices to rejuvenate the agro-ecosystem in the region. However, the political economy of food from the 1960s in the last century, has now led to the degradation of large tracts of irrigated agro-ecosystems in the world because of the intensive cultivation of few selected crops of commercial value. Agriculture has gone beyond the land, including fertilisers, pesticides and machinery, creating a sink for pollution.
International trend According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Report (MEA, 2005), the global intensive irrigated terrestrial and aquatic food production practices were no longer sustainable. These were being further affected by “climate change, rising temperatures and weather uncertainties”. The economic crisis in 2008, the market-led agriculture and food market speculations have added another dimension to the uncertainty to the sustainability of food security. The increasing world population and changing dietary preferences’ in spite of agricultural production having increased by 145 per cent, has added to the overshooting of the ecological footprint. Recent researches indicate that at the current state of consumption, one quarter more capacity/year of the biosphere is needed and this would accumulate as ecological debt on mankind. Situation in Punjab Similarly, the intensive cereal monoculture in Punjab that has long been the major contributor to national foodgrain security has degraded the environment for the last three decades. Agriculture in the state has become input as well as cost-intensive. Increasing pest problems compel more use of the pesticide (pesticides used in the state during Rabi 2010-11 was 1,840 m tonne and in Kharif 2011-12 it was 3,760 m tonne). In addition, to manage the high-crop intensity (185 per cent), save on time and cost, farmers resort to burning of the crop residue, causing black carbon emission that add to air pollution and warm up the atmosphere. To mitigate this natural resource degradation, conservation technologies such as zero or minimum tillage practices, raised-bed cultivation and drip irrigation are recommended. Legislative measures, (Punjab Prevention of Sub-Soil Water Act, 2009, roof top water harvesting for recharging) to check the depleting water table; and construction of low-cost dams and micro-irrigation schemes, have been made.The diversification efforts are being made since late 1980s and so far 2.79 lakh hectares area is under horticulture, 1,034.85 hectares under fish culture and efforts are on to develop dairy farming. In addition, a ban was imposed on burning crop residue in Amritsar. However to fast-track commercial agriculture alone, without giving an impetus to sustainable agricultural practices, will further add to the problems of the environment. Rebuilding degraded farms entails cost and time to internalise the externalities associated with intensive farming. Although environmental services generated by sustainable agricultural practices benefit all stakeholders, farmers, consumers, traders and the tourists — but the sustainability onus is being expected to be borne individually, ignoring the inescapable interconnectedness of agriculture. However, the cost of avoiding maintaining the ecosystem, collectively or at individual farms, are also relatively high for mankind. Food can be produced in another way, by in-built provisions for ecological services. Payments for ecosystem services Payment for ecosystem services for agriculture or PES is an economic instrument designed to provide incentives to increase positive externalities from agriculture, meet the conservation costs and benefit the society as a whole. The concept encourages the cost sharing of food production (using conservative practices) with users, beneficiaries and the government. Market for PES develops systematically by making consumers aware of the importance of fresh, local food and healthy environment as a shared and societal approach to sustainability. Social, industrial and institutional establishments can help create trends in the consumption of such food, assist in branding, labelling (pesticide-free, grown naturally, traditional quality, organic etc.) and marketing.
PES for sustainable agriculture is a way to green agricultural subsidies for adopting conservative practices for the restoration of the degraded agro-environments and landscapes. FAO analysed 286 local PES and PES-like schemes from 57 countries, and found that the concept of PES for agricultural sustainability was spreading. The effort in this direction is more in Latin America. This mechanism induces modest, positive environmental, social benefits but requires legal and institutional frameworks for assistance to small farmers and rural communities, who are traditionally the major contributors. Academic efforts are needed to develop standards, certifications, market awareness and price margins that will pay for rural conservation. New concept PES concept, as such is new in India, but it has been ingrained in the lifestyle of traditional rural and tribal societies and these readily accept the norms governing the conservation of nature. A government initiative in Kullu’s Great Himalayan National Park, pays Rs 5,000 annually to the communities if no fires occur in the area they patrol. The Forest Conservation Law also mandates that the projects converting forestland make payment to the users, which is deposited in a centrally managed fund with Compensatory Afforestation Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA). However, the fund remains unutilised as the scheme lacks clarity. Although the need to invest in resources has been recognised by the 12th Finance Commission, which earmarked Rs 1,000 crore resources, agriculture has remained out of the PES domain, except for the recent payment of labour days from MNREGA in South India to small and marginal farmers who have adopted sustainable agricultural practices of sustainable rice intensification or SRI. India needs to formulate PES schemes to enhance adoption of various sustainable agricultural practices, particularly for Punjab. Since national agricultural policies encouraged intensive-agricultural practices to sustain foodgrain security, it makes a strong case for PES support to the state to acclerate efforts for adoption of sustainable agricultural practices to rejuvenate degraded agri-eco-systems and environmental services in the region for addressing farm crisis. It would be a good begining to progress towards PES-based sustainble agriculture, as Haryana is soon going to face similar natural resources constraints, as the production from input-intensive agriculture was increasing. Policy shift Recent policy shift and focus on eastern and central states of India for foodgrain security should also make provisions to incentivise PES and acclerate the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices in Punjab, the epicentre of the Green Revolution. It should be an income-support measure for small and marginal farmers of the state, who have been reeling under debt for long and leaving their profession under duress. They were the forerunners in contributing to the central food grain pool and deserve their sweat equity. Environmentally sustainable agriculture is the one in which production, processing, distribution, marketing, acquisition, and consumption focus on environmental health, economic vitality, human health and social equity. Hence to meet our present needs and that of the future generations to meet theirs, it is important that we adopt “sustainable, economically viable, environmentally sound, and socially beneficial economic development and food security solutions”. It is hoped that the new regime in the Centre will rise to the challenge. The writer is former Dean Postgraduate Studies, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana
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Although India has young demographics, yet the rate of population growth is declining. In the previous 40 years, the headcount of the working age population grew by 90 per cent, however, in the coming 30 years it will barely grow by 28 per cent. By this sense, the growth impulse that we got in recent decades from a growing headcount of the workforce will slow down in the upcoming decades. 
In a school having a total strength of 100 with a majority from
nearby colonies, I had my own handful of buddies. Vicky, Sunny, Bobby, and then there was Bablu, “our Guru”. Others were humans; Bablu was evil and, as we know, “humans adulate evil”, although unconsciously.