The Peninsula Foundation

Category: Democracy & Governance

  • Indian Philosophy and religion: Abolishing the caste system as an attempt in Intercultural Philosophy

    Indian Philosophy and religion: Abolishing the caste system as an attempt in Intercultural Philosophy

    We start the year 2023 with an examination of philosophy and society and through it the social evil of caste. The origin of the caste system in Hindu society lies buried in many myths and misconceptions. Caste is often linked by many to the core of Hindu philosophy. This is a deeply flawed understanding. The caste system has been and continues to be a tool of power and economic exploitation by oppressing large segments of the population. It is largely an invention by the clergy to establish their power and domination through rituals and codes and by ascribing to them a forced religious sanctity. As it also becomes convenient to the rulers, caste and class are prevalent in all societies. Philosophy and true religion, as Andreas points out in this working paper,  have had nothing to do with caste or class.                                        – TPF Editorial Team

     

    Introduction

    Intercultural philosophy is absolutely necessary in order to cope with the current and new phase of hybrid globalization, which is dissolving all kinds of traditional identities. Whereas the current reaction to this process is the development of ideologies centred on the idea of “we against the rest”, whoever the “Rest” might be, we need to construct positive concepts of identity, which does not exclude but include the other. These can be based on the mutual recognition of the civilizations of the world and their philosophies. According to Karl Jaspers the godfather of intercultural philosophy, between the sixth and third century BC the development of great cities, and the development in agriculture and sciences led to a growth of the populace that forced humankind to develop new concepts of thinking. He labelled this epoch as the axial age of world history in which everything turned around. He even argued that in this time the particular human being or human thinking was born with which we still live today – my thesis is that all human religions, civilizations and philosophies share the same problems and questions but did find different solutions.

    A vivid example might be the relationship between happiness and suffering. In the philosophy of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, to achieve eudemonia or happiness in your earthly life was the greatest aim whereas in a popular understanding of Karma, life is characterized by suffering and the aim is to overcome suffering by transcending to Nirvana. You see, the problem is the same, but there are different solutions in various philosophies. Although Jaspers didn’t share the reduction of philosophy and civilization to the European or even German experience and included mainly the Chinese and Indian civilization, he nevertheless excluded the African continent and both Americas, Muslim civilization as well as the much older Egyptian civilization. So, although he enlarged our knowledge and understanding of civilizations his point of reference was still “Western modernity” and within it, the concept of functional differentiation played the major role.

    Another solution is embodied in the belief of the three monotheistic religions, that an omnipotent god is the unifying principle despite all human differentiations and even the differences between the living and the dead, love and hate, between war and peace, men and women, old and young, linear and non-linear understanding of time, beginning and ending, happiness and suffering.  In this belief system, we are inevitably confronted with unsurpassable contrasts, conflicts and contradictions – but an all-powerful and absolute good god is the one who is uniting all these contrasts.

    In principle in Chinese philosophy, we have the same problem – but instead of an all-powerful God, we as humans have the task to live in harmony with the cosmic harmony. So, I really think that we humans share the same philosophical problems – how to explain and overcome death, evil, suffering, and the separation from transcendence. Although Karl Jaspers could be seen as the founding father of intercultural philosophy, I think he put too much emphasis solely on the functional differentiation that an ever-growing populace could live together without violence. In my view, the questions of life and death are running deeper. I would not exclude functional differentiation as one of the driving forces of human development but at least we also need an understanding of human existence that is related to transgressing the contrasts of life.

    In this draft, I would like to give some impressions concerning this same problem based on my limited knowledge of Indian philosophy and religion and try to show that both are opposing the caste system as well as any kind of dogmatism. An Indian student asked me in the run-up to this draft how one could understand Indian philosophy if one had not internalized the idea of rebirth since you are a baby. From her point of view, the whole thinking on the Indian subcontinent is thus determined by the idea of rebirth – this problem will still occupy us in the question of whether the terrible caste system in India is compatible with the original intentions of the Indian religions, whether it can be derived from them or contradicts them. I will try to give a reason for the assumption that Indian philosophy is quite universal and at the same time open to different strands of philosophical thought, retaining its core.

    In its essence, it is about Karma, rebirth, and Moksha. An understanding of Atman and Brahman is essential. Atman is the soul, indestructible, and is part of Brahman (omnipresent God). When Atman continues to reform and refine itself through rebirths aspiring to become one with Brahman, that is Moksha. To attain Moksha is the purpose of each life. Moksha is being one with God…a state where there is no more rebirths. Of course, differences are there in interpreting Atman and Brahman, depending on the Advaita and Dwaita schools of philosophy. Ultimately both narrow down to the same point – Moksha. Karma is the real part. True Karma is about doing your work in life as duty and dispassionately. Understanding that every life form has a purpose, one should go about it dispassionately. Easier said than done. Understanding this is the crux. In an ideal life where one has a full understanding of Karma and performs accordingly, he/she will have no rebirth. Indian philosophy is careful to separate the religious and social practices of the common folks and the high religion.  Hence Caste and hierarchy are not part of the philosophical discourse, although many make the mistake of linking them. Caste, like in any other religion, is a clergy-driven issue for power and economic exploitation.

    Indian Philosophy (or, in Sanskrit, Darshanas), refers to any of several traditions of philosophical thought that originated in the Indian subcontinent, including Hindu philosophy, Buddhist philosophy, and Jain philosophy. It is considered by Indian thinkers to be a practical discipline, and its goal should always be to improve human life. In contrast to the major monotheistic religions, Hinduism does not draw a sharp distinction between God and creation (while there are pantheistic and panentheistic views in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, these are minority positions). Many Hindus believe in a personal God and identify this God as immanent in creation. This view has ramifications for the science and religion debate, in that there is no sharp ontological distinction between creator and creature. Philosophical theology in Hinduism (and other Indic religions) is usually referred to as dharma, and religious traditions originating on the Indian subcontinent, including Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, are referred to as dharmic religions. Philosophical schools within dharma are referred to as darśana.

    Religion and science

    One factor that unites dharmic religions is the importance of foundational texts, which were formulated during the Vedic period, between ca. 1600 and 700 BCE. These include the Véda (Vedas), which contain hymns and prescriptions for performing rituals, Brāhmaṇa, accompanying liturgical texts, and Upaniṣad, metaphysical treatises. The Véda appeals to a wide range of gods who personify and embody natural phenomena such as fire (Agni) and wind (Vāyu). More gods were added in the following centuries (e.g., Gaṇeśa and Sati-Parvati in the fourth century CE). Ancient Vedic rituals encouraged knowledge of diverse sciences, including astronomy, linguistics, and mathematics. Astronomical knowledge was required to determine the timing of rituals and the construction of sacrificial altars. Linguistics developed out of a need to formalize grammatical rules for classical Sanskrit, which was used in rituals. Large public offerings also required the construction of elaborate altars, which posed geometrical problems and thus led to advances in geometry.

    Classic Vedic texts also frequently used very large numbers, for instance, to denote the age of humanity and the Earth, which required a system to represent numbers parsimoniously, giving rise to a 10-base positional system and a symbolic representation for zero as a placeholder, which would later be imported in other mathematical traditions. In this way, ancient Indian dharma encouraged the emergence of the sciences.

    The relationship between science and religion on the Indian subcontinent is complex, in part because the dharmic religions and philosophical schools are so diverse.

    Around the sixth–fifth century BCE, the northern part of the Indian subcontinent experienced extensive urbanization. In this context, medicine became standardized (āyurveda). This period also gave rise to a wide range of philosophical schools, including Buddhism, Jainism, and Cārvāka. The latter defended a form of metaphysical naturalism, denying the existence of gods or karma. The relationship between science and religion on the Indian subcontinent is complex, in part because the dharmic religions and philosophical schools are so diverse. For example, Cārvāka proponents had a strong suspicion of inferential beliefs, and rejected Vedic revelation and supernaturalism in general, instead favouring direct observation as a source of knowledge. Such views were close to philosophical naturalism in modern science, but this school disappeared in the twelfth century. Nevertheless, already in classical Indian religions, there was a close relationship between religion and the sciences.

    Opposing dogmatism: the role of colonial rule

    The word “Hinduism” emerged in the nineteenth century, and some scholars have argued that the religion did so, too. They say that British colonials, taken aback by what they experienced as the pagan profusion of cults and gods, sought to compact a religious diversity into a single, subsuming entity. Being literate Christians, they looked for sacred texts that might underlay this imputed tradition, enlisting the assistance of the Sanskrit-reading Brahmins. A canon and an attendant ideology were extracted, and with it, Hinduism. Other scholars question this history, insisting that a self-conscious sense of Hindu identity preceded this era, defined in no small part by contrast to Islam.  A similar story could be told about other world religions. We shouldn’t expect to resolve this dispute, which involves the weightings we give to points of similarity and points of difference. And scholars on both sides of this divide acknowledge the vast pluralism that characterized, and still characterizes, the beliefs, rituals, and forms of worship among the South Asians who have come to identify as Hindu.

    Here I would like to mention some of the scriptures in Hinduism: The longest of these is the religious epic, the Mahabharata, which clocks in at some 180000 thousand words, which is ten times the size of the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer combined. Then there’s the Ramayana, which recounts the heroic attempts of Prince Rama to rescue his wife from a demon king. It has as many verses as the Hebrew bible. The Vedas which are the oldest Sanskrit scriptures include hymns and other magical and liturgical; and the Rig-Veda, the oldest, consists of nearly 11 000 lines of hymns of praise to the gods.

    But the Rig Veda does not only contain hymns of praise of God but a philosophical exposition which can be compared with Hegel’s conceptualization of the beginning in his “Logic”, which is not just about logic in the narrow sense but about being and non-being:

    In the Rig Veda we find the following hymn:

    Nasadiya Sukta (10. 129)

    There was neither non-existence nor existence then;
    Neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond;
    What stirred? Where? In whose protection?

    There was neither death nor immortality then;
    No distinguishing sign of night nor of day;
    That One breathed, windless, by its own impulse;
    Other than that there was nothing beyond.

    Darkness there was at first, by darkness hidden;
    Without distinctive marks, this all was water;
    That which, becoming, by the void was covered;
    That One by force of heat came into being.

    Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it?
    Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation?
    Gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe.
    Who then knows whence it has arisen?

    Whether God’s will created it, or whether He was mute;
    Perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not;
    Only He who is its overseer in highest heaven knows,

    Only He knows, or perhaps He does not know.

    —Rigveda 10.129 (Abridged, Tr: Kramer / Christian)

    Nasadiya Sukta begins rather interestingly, with the statement – “Then, there was neither existence nor non-existence.” It ponders over the when, why and by whom of creation in a very sincere contemplative tone and provides no definite answers. Rather, it concludes that the gods too may not know, as they came after creation. And maybe the supervisor of creation in the highest heaven knows, or maybe even he does not know.

    The philosophical character of this hymn becomes obvious when stating that there was something or someone who created even the gods. This question might be similar to the one that created the big bang thirteen billion years ago. In my view, the Rigveda is the most elaborate Veda opposing any kind of dogmatism, any ideology. Instead, it gives reason for the assumption which is of paramount importance in an ever-changing world, that there is no absolute knowledge, there is an increasing sense of unsureness, and we can’t rely on fixed rules – but that we are responsible for our actions.

    Müller made the term central to his criticism of Western theological and religious exceptionalism (relative to Eastern religions) focusing on a cultural dogma which held “monotheism” to be both fundamentally well-defined and inherently superior to differing conceptions of God.

    The second problem is related to the question of whether this hymn should be interpreted as monotheistic, dualistic or polytheistic. Some scholars like Frederik Schelling have invented the term Henotheism (from, greek ἑνός θεοῦ (henos theou), meaning ‘of one god’) is the worship of a single god while not denying the existence or possible existence of other deities. Schelling coined the word, and Frederik Welcker (1784–1868) used it to depict primitive monotheism in ancient Greeks. Max Müller (1823–1900), a German philologist and orientalist, brought the term into wider usage in his scholarship on the Indian religions, particularly Hinduism whose scriptures mention and praise numerous deities as if they are one ultimate unitary divine essence.  Müller made the term central to his criticism of Western theological and religious exceptionalism (relative to Eastern religions) focusing on a cultural dogma which held “monotheism” to be both fundamentally well-defined and inherently superior to differing conceptions of God.

    Mueller in the end emphasizes that henotheism is not a primitive form of monotheism but a different conceptualization. We find a similar passage in the gospel of John in which it is stated:

    1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him, nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

    It is clearly written that in the beginning there was the word – not God. In the original Greek version of this gospel, the term logos is used, and Hegel made this passage the foundation of his whole philosophy. Closely related to the Rig Veda is the concept of Atman. Ātman (Atma, आत्मा, आत्मन्) is a Sanskrit word which means “essence, breath, soul” and which is for the first time discussed in the Rig-Veda.  Nevertheless, this concept is most cherished in the Upanishads, which are written precisely between the 8th to 5th centuries B.C., the period in which according to Jaspers the axial age began. Again, this concept is an attempt to reconcile the various differentiations which were necessary for the function of a society with an ever-increasing population.

    I want to highlight that Hinduism – in its Vedic and classic variants – did not support the caste system; but that it rigorously opposed it in practice and principle. Even after the emergence of the caste system, Hindu society still saw considerable occupational and social mobility. Moreover, Hinduism created legends to impress on the popular mind the invalidity of the caste system – a fact further reinforced by the constant efflorescence of reform movements throughout history. The caste system survived despite this because of factors that ranged from the socio-economic to the ecological sphere, which helped sustain and preserve the balance among communities in a non-modern world.

    It would be absolutely necessary to demolish the myth that the caste system is an intrinsic part of Hinduism as a religion as well as a philosophy.  Although, there is a historically explainable link between both but not one which I would label a necessary or logical connection. Of course, the proponents of the caste system tried to legitimize the caste system by using references from the ancient scriptures – but as we maintain we must not understand Hinduism just in relation to Dharma if we would understand it just as jati or birth-based social division.

    The myth of the caste system being an intrinsic part of Hinduism is a discourse in the meaning in which Foucault has used this concept as just exercising power.

    I’m not sure whether this interpretation represents the major understanding in India, but I think it might be essential in a globalized world to debunk this only seemingly close relation, which has just a historical dimension and would therefore be a vivid example just of a discursive practice. The myth of the caste system being an intrinsic part of Hinduism is a discourse in the meaning in which Foucault has used this concept as just exercising power.

    This discourse is believed by orthodox elements in Hinduism as well as propagated by elements outside of Hinduism who are trying to proselyte Hindus. I would like to treat this problem a little bit more extensively because it might be used for other religions and civilizations, too, in which suppression and dominance are seemingly legitimized by holy scriptures but by taking a closer look this relation is just a discourse of power.

     Nevertheless, there is a very old text of Hinduism in which the caste system is legitimized. It is called  Manusmṛiti (Sanskrit: मनुस्मृति), also spelt as Manusmruti, is an ancient legal text. It was one of the first Sanskrit texts to have been translated into English in 1794, by Sir William Jones, and was used to formulate the Hindu law by the British colonial government.

    Over fifty manuscripts of the Manusmriti are now known, but the earliest discovered, most translated and presumed authentic version since the 18th century has been the “Calcutta manuscript with Kulluka Bhatta commentary”.

    How did caste come about?

    Manusmriti, widely regarded to be the most important and authoritative book on Hindu law and dating back to at least 1,000 years before Christ was born, seems to “acknowledge and justify the caste system as the basis of order and regularity of society”. The caste system divides Hindus into four main categories – Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and the Shudras. Many believe that the groups originated from Brahma, the Hindu God of creation.

    At the top of the hierarchy were the Brahmins who were mainly teachers and intellectuals and are believed to have come from Brahma’s head. Then came the Kshatriyas, or the warriors and rulers, supposedly from his arms. The third slot went to the Vaishyas, or the traders, who were created from his thighs. At the bottom of the heap were the Shudras, who came from Brahma’s feet and did all the menial jobs. The main castes were further divided into about 3,000 castes and 25,000 sub-castes, each based on their specific occupation. Outside of this Hindu caste system were the achhoots – the Dalits or the untouchables.

    How does caste work?

    For centuries, caste has dictated almost every aspect of Hindu religious and social life, with each group occupying a specific place in this complex hierarchy. Rural communities have long been arranged on the basis of castes – the upper and lower castes almost always lived in segregated colonies, the water wells were not shared, Brahmins would not accept food or drink from the Shudras, and one could marry only within one’s caste. The system bestowed many privileges on the upper castes while sanctioning repression of the lower castes by privileged groups.

    New research shows that hard boundaries between the social groups were only set by British colonial rulers who made caste India’s defining social feature when they used censuses to simplify the system, primarily to create a single society with a common law that could be easily governed.

    Often criticized for being unjust and regressive, it remained virtually unchanged for centuries, trapping people into fixed social orders from which it was impossible to escape. Despite the obstacles, however, some Dalits and other low-caste Indians, such as BR Ambedkar who authored the Indian constitution, and KR Narayanan who became the nation’s first Dalit president, have risen to hold prestigious positions in the country. Historians, though, say that until the 18th Century, the formal distinctions of caste were of limited importance to Indians, social identities were much more flexible, and people could move easily from one caste to another. New research shows that hard boundaries between the social groups were only set by British colonial rulers who made caste India’s defining social feature when they used censuses to simplify the system, primarily to create a single society with a common law that could be easily governed.

    So, the caste system in its strict interpretation is an invention of British rules – of course, it existed already in some form around three thousand years ago. However, it is disputed whether in ancient times it was more of a kind of functional differentiation in the meaning of Karl Jaspers, whereas since colonial times it became a separation boundary between the various groups. I assume that the colonial rulers transformed an existing variety of functional differentiations of identities into strictly separated castes for reasons of securing their rule. As in other colonial rules like in Africa, the colonizers were puzzled by the plurality of social groups, their ability to change from one group to the other and transformed social groups based on functional differentiation into castes and classes to facilitate their own rule. Overcoming the caste system thus involves overcoming colonialism.

  • For Democracy to be real and vibrant it needs people with impeccable Integrity at the Helm

    For Democracy to be real and vibrant it needs people with impeccable Integrity at the Helm

    Democracy at its core is the power of the people. But all over the world, it is becoming anything but that. Truly the fear is that democracy is dying, as most nations that call themselves democracies are in effect controlled by capitalist oligarchs and majoritarian fascists. The power of money and vested interests have vitiated democratic processes worldwide. Michael Hudson calls the USA, once the beacon of democracy, a deep state controlled by three main oligarchic groups: Military Industrial Complex (MIC); Oil, Gas, and Mining (OGAM); and Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE).  Add the new emerging giant group – Big Tech – as the fourth. The UK, the world’s oldest parliamentary system, is in shambles as a democracy. India, seen as the world’s largest democracy, is heading the majoritarian way. Majoritarianism is not democracy but tyranny. This is what the Father of the Nation had to say about democracy at the height of the freedom struggle:

    “My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest should have the same opportunity as the strongest….No country in the world today shows any but patronising regard for the weak….Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism….True democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the centre. It has to be worked from below by the people of every village.”    – Mahatma Gandhi

    His words could not have been more apt for the times we live in. This quote is placed in the Sabarmati Ashram. One wonders how many take a moment to stop by to read it carefully and take in the import of his words. The Mahatma is the shining example of personal integrity, character, and moral courage. Since democracy is primarily driven by people and politics, it is vital that those at the helm of governance display impeccable integrity to ensure real democracy.

    Professor Arun Kumar PhD, an eminent economist and our adjunct Distinguished Fellow, writes eloquently on the subject and says ‘absence of persons with impeccable integrity is the bane of India’s democracy’. TPF is happy to republish this article.

    A version of this article was published earlier in theleaflet.in

    –TPF Editorial Team

     

    Gandhiji said that institutions reflect what the people are, and that they cannot function as they are intended to unless those manning them are people of integrity.

     

    A Supreme Court Constitution bench recently said that the Chief Election Commissioner should be one “with character” and who would not get “bulldozed” – a self-evident truth. Further, it suggested that the selection committee for the post should consist of an independent person like the Chief Justice of India (‘CJI’). It added that people and bureaucrats like the former Chief Election Commissioner late T.N. Seshan, who could act independently, “happen once in a while”.

    Perhaps without meaning to, these comments indict the election commissioners appointed since Seshan’s time. Therefore, they have given voice to recent public concerns about the independence of the institution.

    Integrity of Constitutional authorities

    Will the CJI’s presence in the committee to appoint the Election Commissioners make a difference? The CJI is a member of the committee to appoint the Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (‘CBI’). But the Supreme Court itself has called the CBI a “caged parrot”. The problem arises since the party in power would prefer a sympathetic person as an Election Commissioner, not an independent person.

    The appointment of Supreme Court judges has become contentious, with the judges and the Union Law Minister currently at loggerheads. Judges themselves have talked of pressures and counter pressures from within and from the government. Appointments of some who are seen to be inconvenient have been withheld. Earlier this week, a division bench of the Supreme Court mentioned that by delaying appointments, good people are dissuaded from becoming judges. It is suspected that the appointment of certain judges is delayed so that they do not become CJI in due course of time. It appears that pliability is a desirable attribute to becoming a judge.

    The Supreme Court, by raising the issue of the appointment of the Election Commissioner, has also brought into question the integrity of the Prime Minister (‘PM’), who is key to the appointment. Thus, doubt has been raised about the country’s constitutional authorities, including the judiciary. The executive, in any case, does the bidding of the political masters. So, where are the people of integrity in the corridors of power in India?

    Defining integrity

    Institutions can run as they ought to only if they are manned by people with integrity. Its absence from the top down is a societal challenge. Mahatma Gandhi in ‘Hind Swaraj’ (Indian Home Rule), more than a century back, said, “As are the people, so is their Parliament.” Since the Parliament is key to the functioning of a democracy, this flaw afflicts institutions down the line.

    PMs heading the government are political persons. Since politics is about power, they try everything to keep themselves and their party in power. Their election depends on the support of vested interests who fund both them and their party and therefore, dominate the working of the party. So, staying in power is a high stake business which requires manipulation of the systems in their favour.

    The Supreme Court, by raising the issue of appointment of the Election Commissioner, has brought into question the integrity of the Prime Minister, who is key to the appointment. Thus, doubt has been raised about the country’s constitutional authorities, including the judiciary. 

    There is then a separation of the interest of the nation, and of the party and its head, the PM. Consequently, for the party, integrity means that which serves its interest, which is not necessarily what the nation needs. This separation is what Gandhi implies in Hind Swaraj. No wonder, it is only a rare PM who has the moral integrity to select independent people for important Constitutional positions like the Election Commission and the judiciary.

    Politicians go through years of such conditioning before becoming PMs and it becomes their second nature. It cannot be expected to change upon becoming the PM. The opposition in a democracy is supposed to check the misuse of power. But the leaders of the opposition also go through the same conditioning as leaders of the ruling party and therefore, act no differently. Politicians often pride themselves on managing conflicts by making compromises and accepting the manipulation of power. So, politicians take a pliable stand, based on the chair they occupy – in power or out of it.

    Gandhi on parliamentary democracy

    Gandhi, commenting on the British Parliamentary democracy in Hind Swaraj, wrote, “The Prime Minister is more concerned about his power than about the welfare of Parliament … [and] upon securing the success of his party.” He added that they may be considered to be honest “because they do not take what is generally known as bribes… [but] …they certainly bribe the people with honours.” Therefore, “… they neither have real honesty nor a living conscience”.

    Regarding the Members of Parliament who could keep the PM in check, he wrote, “… Members are hypocritical and selfish. Each thinks of his own little interest. … Members vote for their party without a thought.” Regarding the media, another institution that could help check misuse of public authority by creating public awareness, he wrote that they “are often dishonest. The same fact is differently interpreted … according to the party in whose interest they are edited.” Gandhi was also scathing about the legal profession when he wrote, “… the profession teaches immorality …”.

    Gandhi was pointing to the fundamental flaws in the functioning of democracies. It also applies in the current Indian context. He was pointing to weak public accountability of those in power since public awareness was low. The public has little choice but to accept the existing imperfect political system. The British Parliamentary democracy may be the best available system, but it is highly flawed and its defects appear more starkly in weak democracies like that in India.

    We may be called the largest democracy in the world and we have succeeded in preserving it in the last 75 years, but it is frayed, as made clear by the current political problems facing us.

    Feudal attitudes and democracy

    Indian democracy’s weakness is a result of the persistence of feudal consciousness among a majority who easily accept authority. This is true even in institutions of higher education, where people are expected to be the most conscious. Most of these institutions are headed by academics with a bureaucratised mindset, who expect compliance and treat dissent as a malaise to be eradicated. In turn, they yield to politicians and bureaucrats.

    A feudal system has its own concept of integrity. The ruler’s interest is broadly the nation’s interest. This congruity breaks in a parliamentary democracy where the consciousness is feudal. In such a case, integrity as defined by national interest is likely to be subverted, as is visible in India.

    In 1947, India with its feudal consciousness ingrained and copied parliamentary democracy, not because people were ready for it, but because the leadership desired it since they wanted to copy Western modernity. People blindly accepted it since it came from their leaders, not because they understood it. Liberality at the top frayed post mid-1960s, as retaining power became more difficult and leaders turned increasingly authoritarian. So, while retaining the façade of democracy, it increasingly got hollowed out.

    In 1947, India with its feudal consciousness ingrained and copied parliamentary democracy, not because people were ready for it, but because the leadership desired it since they wanted to copy Western modernity. People blindly accepted it since it came from their leaders, not because they understood it.

    The political economy also pushed policies that marginalised the majority in the interest of the few. The black economy grew rapidly, making elections formalistic and draining them of their representational character. Most importantly, the rulers realized that neither the people ask for liberality nor do they demand accountability from leadership.

    Need for accountability at the top

    Accountability has to come from the top, whether in politics or in the government or the courts. It is not going to automatically come about without public pressure. A few freebies are enough to divert public attention. So, is accountability a luxury when basic issues are many?

    The lack of integrity in public life is costly. The nation’s energy is diverted. Reforms favouring the marginalised are circumvented. Laws are framed ostensibly to improve matters, but when the spirit is not willing they fail to deliver. Perfect laws are not possible, since human ingenuity can circumvent any law. The result is more complex laws and growing cynicism.

    What Gandhi pointed out is playing itself out in India. He said institutions reflect what the people are, and that they cannot function as they are intended to unless those manning them are people of integrity. But, can people with integrity emerge when it is missing all around, feudal consciousness pervades and people bend to authority?

    Reform requires us to resolve the contradiction between parliamentary democracy and the prevailing feudal consciousness. This cannot happen from above. It requires the transformation of the people’s consciousness – Gandhi’s unfinished agenda.

     

    Opinions expressed are those of the author.

    Feature Image Credit: Gandhi in a public address – Painting at Sabarmati Ashram.
  • India’s Self-Inflicted Economic Catastrophe

    India’s Self-Inflicted Economic Catastrophe

    Noted economist Jayati Ghosh reviews India’s economic recovery from the impact of the pandemic. She asserts that the major economic problems of unemployment, poverty, and inadequate healthcare are due to poor strategies and policies implemented by the government. In her analysis, COVID-19’s devastating impact on India has been compounded by the BJP government’s disastrous decision to impose nationwide lockdowns without providing any support to workers. Instead, the BJP used the pandemic to consolidate its power and suppress dissent. Even with existing socio-political constraints, she says India can do much better as there is scope for different economic strategies.

    This article was published earlier in Project Syndicate. The views expressed are the author’s own.

                                                                                                                                                                          -TPF Editorial Team

    Nearly 80% of the estimated 70 million people around the world who fell into extreme poverty at the onset of COVID-19 in 2020 were from India, a recent World Bank report has revealed. But even this shocking figure could be an underestimate, as the lack of official data makes it difficult to assess the pandemic’s human costs.

    What accounts for this alarming rise in Indian poverty? COVID-19 was undoubtedly India’s worst health calamity in at least a century. But the pandemic’s economic and social consequences go beyond the direct effects on health and mortality. As I argue in my recent book, The Making of a Catastrophe: The Disastrous Economic Fallout of the COVID-19 Pandemic in India, very significant policy failures – owing to government action and inaction – were responsible for widespread and significant damage to Indian livelihoods and for the country’s decline in terms of many basic indicators of economic well-being.

    But the devastating impact of the pandemic on India has been compounded by economic policies that reflected the country’s deeply-embedded inequalities.

    This judgment may seem excessively harsh. After all, India’s government did not cause the pandemic, and many other countries experienced economic setbacks after they failed to control the virus. But the devastating impact of the pandemic on India has been compounded by economic policies that reflected the country’s deeply-embedded inequalities.

    To be sure, the pandemic did not create India’s many economic vulnerabilities. But it did highlight India’s many societal fissures and fault lines. And while the country already suffered from glaring inequalities of income, wealth, and opportunities long before COVID-19, the government’s pandemic response has taken them to unimaginable extremes.

    Even as Indian workers faced poverty, hunger, and ever-greater material insecurity due to the pandemic, money and resources continued to flow from the poor and the middle class to the country’s largest corporations and wealthiest individuals. The intersecting inequalities of caste, gender, religion, and migration status have become increasingly marked and oppressive. The result has been a major setback to social and economic progress.

    At the beginning of the pandemic, the central government imposed a prolonged nationwide lockdown with little notice. It then adopted containment strategies that were clearly unsuited to the Indian context, with immediately devastating effects on employment and livelihoods.

    The grim state of affairs reflects the priorities of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) response. At the beginning of the pandemic, the central government imposed a prolonged nationwide lockdown with little notice. It then adopted containment strategies that were clearly unsuited to the Indian context, with immediately devastating effects on employment and livelihoods.

    Instead of using the breathing space provided by the lockdown to bolster local health systems, the central government left state authorities to manage as best they could with minimal and inadequate resources. And when the resulting economic disaster threatened to spiral out of control, the government eased restrictions to “unlock” the economy even as the number of cases mounted, thereby putting more people at risk.

    At a time when governments worldwide were significantly increasing public spending to fight the pandemic and mitigate its economic impact, the Indian government preferred to control expenditures (after adjusting for inflation) as its revenues declined.

    But at the heart of India’s self-inflicted economic catastrophe is the government’s decision to provide very little compensation or social protection, even as COVID-19 lockdowns deprived hundreds of millions of their livelihoods for several months. At a time when governments worldwide were significantly increasing public spending to fight the pandemic and mitigate its economic impact, the Indian government preferred to control expenditures (after adjusting for inflation) as its revenues declined.

    But in a country where median wages are too low to provide more than the most basic subsistence, losing even a week’s income could lead millions to the brink of starvation. Given that more than 90% of all workers in India are informal – without any legal or social protection – and that around half of those are self-employed, the effect was immediate and devastating.

    The government’s decision not to increase spending aggravated the shock of the lockdown, generating a humanitarian crisis that disproportionately affected women and marginalized groups, including millions of migrant workers who were forced to return home under harrowing conditions.

    But the effects of the official response to the pandemic are only one side of the story. COVID-19 safety measures have been a natural fit for the country’s still-pervasive caste system, which has long relied on forms of social distancing to enforce the socioeconomic order and protect those at the top. It also further entrenched India’s persistent patriarchy.

    Instead of taking appropriate countermeasures, like providing greater support to the population, the BJP used the pandemic to consolidate its power and suppress dissent. This, in turn, limited the central government’s ability to generate the widespread social consensus and public trust needed to contain the virus.

    Even within India’s deep-seated social and political constraints, there is scope for a different economic strategy that would enable a just, sustainable, and more equitable recovery.

    None of this was inevitable. Even within India’s deep-seated social and political constraints, there is scope for a different economic strategy that would enable a just, sustainable, and more equitable recovery. To ensure that most Indians, not just the stock market or large companies, benefit from growth, India’s voters must reject the BJP’s policies, which threaten to impoverish them further.

    Feature Image Credit: textilevaluechain.in

  • Right to Work: Feasible and Indispensable for India to be a Truly Civilized and Democratic Nation

    Right to Work: Feasible and Indispensable for India to be a Truly Civilized and Democratic Nation

    Executive Summary of
    Report of People’s Commission on Employment and Unemployment
    Set up by Desh Bachao Abhiyan

    Introduction

    When society faces a problem and is unable to resolve it, it implies that something basic is wrong. One needs to look for its basic causes to solve the problem. The causes may lie in the system that has evolved over time and which conditions the dominant social and political thinking in society. The onus of finding the solution and rectifying the problem is on the rulers. Their failure to do so over time implies a lack of motivation/commitment to solve the problem.

    All this applies to the issue of employment generation and unemployment in India which has been growing over time and affects the vast majority of the citizens.

    The Basic Issue

    Gandhi said that India is the only country capable of giving a civilizational alternative. The time has come to take this seriously since unemployment has become a critical issue that needs to be urgently tackled. The issue is multi-dimensional since it is a result of multiple causes and has widespread implications. It impacts the growth of the economy, inequality, poverty, etc. It has a gender dimension and impacts the marginalized sections adversely reflecting a lack of social justice. It is entrenched among the youth. The more educated they are greater the unemployment they face. Consequently, it has political and social implications, like, social relations.

    The rapidly growing incomes of the top 1% in the income ladder indicate that the economy has the resources but they are mal-distributed. The rich at the top has created a system that enables them to capture most of the gains from development with little trickling down to the rest.

    This Report presents a framework that spells out the causes, consequences, and possible remedies. Further, it looks at the historical process underlying the evolution of policies so as to understand how they can be changed.

    If any form of distortion persists over a long period, as unemployment in India, its origins lie in society’s perceptions and priorities. In India, these can be traced to the adoption of state capitalism and persisting feudal tendencies of the elite policy makers who in their own self-interest adopted a trickle-down model of development.

    Further, Capitalism has globally taken the form of marketization which promotes `profit maximisation’. But is it then legitimate to keep workers unemployed? It implies loss of output and therefore reduces the size of the economy which leads to a lower level of profits. So, by the logic of individual rationality, the system should create productive employment for all.

    The market’s notion of `efficiency’ is status quoist since it seeks to perpetuate the historical injustice in society. `Consumer sovereignty’ implies that individuals should be left free to do whatever they wish. The collectivity should not intervene in their choices no matter how socially detrimental they may be. It promotes the notion that if I have the money I can do what I like. The ratio of incomes is 10,000 times and more between the big businessmen and the poor workers. The market sees nothing wrong in this; in fact, society has come to celebrate it.

    Marketization is determining society’s choices through its principles penetrating all aspects of society. One of these principles is the `dollar vote’. The policy makers accept it and prioritize the choices of the well-off over those of the marginalized. The well-off dictate the social judgments of policy makers. Consequently, not only equality is not on the agenda even equity is not.

    With marketization stripping off the social aspect of life, individuals become automatons. Their individual distress and situation in life are no one’s or society’s concern. Unemployment becomes just a switching off of a machine. No social concern need to be attached to it. In fact, capitalists welcome unemployment as an efficient’ device to discipline labour and neo-classical economics considers it as natural. Inflation further weakens large numbers of workers as they lose purchasing power.

    In essence, whether or not society should aim to give productive employment to all reflects its view of individuals. Society needs to choose what is more important – profits or the welfare of the marginalized majority. The Gandhian view, largely rejected by the Indian elite, was `last person first’ which defined what the priority should be.

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    Disclaimer:

    The views represented herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Peninsula Foundation, its staff, or its trustees.

    The report’s executive summary is republished with the permission of the author.

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  • How blockchain can help dismantle corruption in government services

    How blockchain can help dismantle corruption in government services

    As India celebrated its 76th independence day with great fanfare and jubilation, it is time to introspect on the most serious threat to India’s growth and emergence as a world. This threat is corruption, which is internal and societal. Over the 75 years of modern India’s journey, corruption has become endemic in Indian society. Infused by the political culture, corruption has seeped into every aspect of governance, be it the executive, legislature, or judiciary. This is so because an average citizen has come to accept bribing as a routine and inevitable part of daily life. Hence, if India has to eliminate the scourge of corruption it needs a massive transformation of its society. This can come only through the sustained practice of transparency, ruthless accountability, efficiency, and deterrent punishment. Corruption is commonly perceived as related to monetary benefits but it is much more in terms of misuse of power, coercion, disinformation, lack of transparency, non-performance, inefficiency and delay tactics, and the lack of accountability/responsibility. There is a misconception that digitisation will overcome corruption. Unless timelines, tamper-proof records, and transparency are ensured the corrupt will find ways to get around. These are clearly seen in the revenue tax systems, licensing systems, land registration systems etc. Even though these departments have digitised the processes well, there is a proliferation of middlemen linking the client and the department. This can only be eliminated by the right policies that enforce strict timelines, respond to citizens’ complaints, enforce accountability and transparency on the officials and create clarity for the public in the usage of such systems. The adoption of blockchain technologies could go a long way toward eliminating corruption in India. Widespread corruption has been India’s greatest threat and it is never more urgent than now to address this problem through innovative technologies like blockchain.

    TPF republishes this article on ‘Blockchain and Governance’  from the World Economic Forum under the creative commons license 4.0

    – TPF Editorial Team

    Key Points

    • Blockchain could increase the fairness and efficiency of government systems while reducing opportunities for corruption;
    • Blockchain could improve the transparency and disclosure of procurement processes, investment in which can be lost to corruption;
    • The emerging technology can also enhance the property and land registry systems, streamlining lengthy processes and protecting people’s rights.

    Governments regularly have to make trade-offs between efficiency and fairness in their services. Unfortunately, choosing one over the other often increases the likelihood of corruption. In efficient systems, the public is largely content to operate within the bounds of that system; inefficient systems cause large numbers of individuals to seek less-than-legal workarounds. Similarly, fair systems engender trust, pride and a sense of community; while unfair systems encourage individuals to seek out illegal alternatives without remorse.

    Occasionally, new technologies come along that offer the opportunity to increase both efficiency and fairness. Blockchain is one such opportunity and it has a variety of use-cases for government applications. Here are two in more detail:

    Blockchain and procurement

    Public procurement is the process of governments acquiring goods, services and works. It represents a significant portion of governmental budgets, accounting for 29% of general government expenditure totalling €4.2 trillion in OECD countries in 2013. With so much money at stake, it is unsurprising that OECD estimates that 10-30% of the investment in publicly funded construction projects may be lost to corruption.

    Public procurement is vulnerable to corruption for a number of reasons. Parties in the procurement process, both on the public and private sides, are induced into corrupt acts by the size of potential financial gains, the close interaction between public officials and businesses, and how easy it is to hide corrupt actions. Blockchain has the potential to protect against these weaknesses at almost every stage of the procurement process.

    In the planning stage, public officials create evaluation criteria by which bidding companies will be judged. In the bidding evaluation stage, public officials assign scores to companies using the evaluation criteria as their rubric. Without transparency, there are many opportunities for compromised public officials to rig the outcome of the evaluation process. Evaluation criteria could be retroactively changed or company bids altered, for example. Blockchain can guarantee any change is public, the original information is retained and there is a record of who made the change.

    Blockchain can also encourage a wider coalition of stakeholders to participate in and monitor procurement cycles. Too often, the most active stakeholders in any given procurement process are the public officials and the businesses directly involved – a potential problem when more than half of all foreign bribery cases likely occur to obtain public procurement contracts. Watchdog organizations, end-users, the media and citizens are discouraged from participating because procurement information is not readily available, untrustworthy, modified and/or delayed. Blockchain can provide an easily accessible, tamper-proof and real-time window into ongoing procurement processes

    Projects integrating blockchain into procurement, such as this pilot programme in Colombia, conclude that “blockchain-based e-procurement systems provide unique benefits related to procedural transparency, permanent record-keeping and honest disclosure.” The Colombia project noted several drawbacks, such as scalability and vendor anonymity, but newer proposals like this one to overhaul India’s public procurement system are taking steps to overcome those and other shortcomings.

    Blockchain and registries

    Land title registries track the ownership of land and property for a given region. Registration titling systems have had important consequences for the economy, leading to “better access to formal credit, higher land values, higher investment in land, and higher income.” Yet they are far from perfect. They are inefficient, for example, closing a property sale can take months and typically consumes 2-5% of the purchase price of a home. Registration systems can act as bottlenecks for land transactions. There are complaints going back to 2015 of England’s Land Registry having six-month transaction delays and similar complaints persisted in 2020.

    The inefficiencies in land titling systems are a major source of corruption. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project’s 2019 report on land registry corruption in Bangladesh found that obtaining a licence as a deed writer incurs a bribe to the highest-level administrators. Land registry corruption is not restricted to developing regions: in regions with longer histories of legal stability, it simply becomes more complex. Anti-corruption NGO, Global Witness, estimated in 2019 that £100 billion worth of property in England and Wales was secretly owned by anonymous companies registered in tax havens.

    A good first step to fighting corruption is by cutting down on inefficiencies. Blockchain can streamline much of the process. Take, for example, the number of steps required in the UK for one person to sell the property to another person and compare this with a blockchain-based registry system.

    Some countries are already experiencing positive results. In 2018, Georgia registered more than 1.5 million land titles through their blockchain-based system.

    An urban land registry project underway in Africa uses blockchain to address the problems of digitizing urban land registries. In many densely populated impoverished urban areas, no pre-existing land registry or paper trail exists. Relying on the meagre data available often causes legal disputes. Courts quickly become overwhelmed and digitization efforts stall.

    Blockchain is now being added to the project. To confirm property rights, the new system seeks out and consults community elders. Through a blockchain-based application, those elders receive the authority to confirm the validity of land registry claims. The elders can check directly with residents if they consent to the land assessment. By delegating cryptographically guaranteed authority to respected community members, the quality of the data is improved and the number of land dispute cases handled by the judiciary should decrease. Finally, the remaining cases should resolve faster since the elders’ cryptographic confirmations are admissible as evidence for land dispute resolution.

    The final challenge: Adoption

    The government blockchain-based projects referenced in this article represent just a few of a growing number of pilot or in-production applications of blockchain. This shows that governments are serious about fixing inefficient and unfair services. The potential gains from blockchain are substantial, yet as a new technology, there are many challenges in designing and implementing blockchain-based applications. For large institutions such as governments to deploy blockchain-based applications in a timely fashion and reap the benefits, education and tools are imperative.

  • Indian Economy at 75: Trapped in a Borrowed Development Strategy

    Indian Economy at 75: Trapped in a Borrowed Development Strategy

    In 1947, at the time of Independence, India’s socio-economic parameters were similar to those in countries of South East Asia and China. The level of poverty, illiteracy, and inadequacy of health infrastructure was all similar. Since then, these other countries have progressed rapidly leaving India behind in all parameters. ‘Why is it so?’ should be the big question for every Indian citizen in this time of our 75th anniversary celebrations.

     

    Introduction

    India at 75 is a mixed bag of development and missed opportunities. The country has achieved much since Independence but a lot remains to be done to become a developed society. The pandemic has exposed India’s deficiencies in stark terms. The uncivilized conditions of living of a vast majority of the citizens became apparent. According to a report by Azim Premji University, 90% of the workers said during the lockdown that they did not have enough savings to buy one week of essentials. This led to the mass migration of millions of people, in trying conditions from cities to the villages, in the hope of access to food and survival.

    Generally, technology-related sectors, pharmaceuticals and some producing essentials in the organized sectors have done well in spite of the pandemic. So, a part of the economy is doing well in spite of adversity but incomes of at least 60% of people at the bottom of the income ladder have declined (PRICE Survey, 2022). The great divide between the unorganized and organized parts of the economy is growing. The backdrop to these developments is briefly presented below.

    Structure and Growth of the Economy

    In 1947, at the time of Independence, India’s socio-economic parameters were similar to those in countries of South East Asia and China. The level of poverty, illiteracy, and inadequacy of health infrastructure was all similar. Since then, these other countries have progressed rapidly leaving India behind in all parameters. So, India has fallen behind relatively in spite of improvements in health services and education, diversification of the economy and development of the industry.

    In 1950, agriculture was the dominant sector with a 55% share of GDP which has now dwindled to about 14%. The share of the services sector has grown rapidly and by 1980 it surpassed the share of agriculture and now it is about 55% of GDP. The Indian economy has diversified production `from pins to space ships’.

    Agriculture grows at a trend rate of a maximum of 4% per annum while the services sector can grow at even 12% per annum. So, there has been a shift in the economy’s composition from agriculture to services, accelerating the growth rate. The average growth rate of the economy between the 1950s and the 1970s was around 3.5%. In the 1980s and 1990s, it increased to 5.4% due to the shift in the composition. There was no acceleration in the growth rate of the economy in the 1990s compared to the 1980s. This rate again increased in the period after 2003 only to decline in 2008-09 due to the global financial crisis. Subsequently, the rate of growth has fluctuated wildly both due to global events and the policy conundrums in India.

    There was the taper tantrum in 2012-13 which cut short the post-global financial crisis recovery. Demonetization in November 2016 adversely impacted growth. That was followed by the structurally flawed GST. These policies administered shocks to the economy. Then came the pandemic in 2020. The economy’s quarterly growth rate had already fallen from 8% in Q4 2017-18 to 3.1% in Q4 2019-20, just before the pandemic hit.

    1980-81 marked a turning point. Prior to that, a drought would lead to a negative rate of growth in agriculture and of the economy as a whole. For instance, due to the drought in 1979-80, the economy declined by 6%. But, that was the last one. After that, a decline in agriculture has not resulted in a negative growth rate for the economy. The big drought of 1987-88 saw the economy grow at 3.4%. After 1980-81, the economy experienced a negative growth rate only during the pandemic which severely impacted the services sector, especially the contact services.

    Employment and Technology Related Issues

    Agriculture employs 45% of the workforce though its share in the economy (14%) has now become marginal. It has been undergoing mechanisation with increased use of tractors, harvester combines, etc., leading to the displacement of labour. Similar is the case in non-agriculture. So, surplus labour is stuck in agriculture leading to massive disguised unemployment.

    India is characterized by disguised unemployment and underemployment.Recent data points to growing unemployment among the educated youth. They wait for suitable work. The result is a low labour force participation rate (LFPR) in India (in the mid-40s) compared to similar other countries (60% plus).The gender dimension of unemployment and the low LFPR is worrying with women the worst sufferers.

    India’s employment data is suspect. The reason is that in the absence of unemployment allowance, people who lose work have to do some alternative work otherwise they would starve. They drive a rickshaw, push a cart, carry a head load or sell something at the roadside. This gets counted as employment even though they have only a few hours of work and are underemployed. So, India is characterized by disguised unemployment and underemployment.

    Recent data points to growing unemployment among the educated youth. They wait for suitable work. The result is a low labour force participation rate (LFPR) in India (in the mid-40s) compared to similar other countries (60% plus). It implies that in India maybe 20% of those who could work have stopped looking for work. No wonder for a few hundred low-grade government jobs, millions of young apply. The gender dimension of unemployment and the low LFPR is worrying with women the worst sufferers.
    These aspects of inadequate employment generation are linked to automation and the investment pattern in the economy. New technologies that are now being used in the modern sectors are labour displacing. For instance, earlier in big infrastructure projects like the construction of roads, one could see hundreds of people working but now big machines are used along with a few workers.

    Further, the organized sectors get most of the investment so little is left for the unorganized sector. This is especially true for agriculture. Thus, neither the organized sector nor agriculture is generating more work. Consequently, entrants to the job market are mostly forced to join the non-agriculture unorganized sector, which in a sense is the residual sector, where the wages are a fraction of the wages in the organized sector. The unorganized sector also acts as a reserve army of labour keeping organized sector wages in check

    Lack of a Living Wage

    To boost profits, the organized sector is increasingly, employing contract labour rather than permanent employees. This is true in both the public and private sectors. So, not only the workers in the unorganized sector, even the workers in the organised sector do not earn a living wage. Thus, most workers have little savings to deal with any crisis. They are unable to give their children a proper education and cannot afford proper health facilities. Most of the children drop out of school and can only do menial jobs requiring physical labour. They cannot obtain a better-paying job and will remain poor for the rest of their lives.

    The Delhi socio-economic survey of 2018 pointed to the low purchasing power of the majority of Indians. It showed that in Delhi, 90% of households spent less than Rs. 25,000 per month, and 98% spent less than Rs. 50,000 per month. Since Delhi’s per capita income is 2.5 times the all India average, deflating the Delhi figures by this factor will approximately yield all India figures. So, 98 per cent of the families would have spent less than Rs.20,000 per month, and 90 per cent less than Rs.10,000 per month. This effectively implies that 90 per cent of families were poor in 2018, if not extremely poor (implied by the poverty line). During the pandemic, many of them lost incomes and were pauperized and forced to further reduce their consumption.

    Unorganized Sector Invisibilized

    In the unorganized sector, labour is not organized as a trade union and therefore, is unable to bargain for higher wages, when prices rise. It constitutes 94% of the workforce and has little social security. No other major world economy has such a huge unorganized sector. No wonder when such a large section of the population faces a crisis in their lives, the economy declines, as witnessed during the pandemic. India’s official rate of growth fell more sharply than that of any other G20 country.

    The micro sector has 99% of the units and 97.5% of the employment of MSME and is unlike the small and medium sectors. The benefits of policies made for the MSME sector do not accrue to the micro units.

    Policymakers largely ignore the unorganized sector. The sudden implementation of the lockdown which put this sector in a deep existential crisis points to that. The micro sector has 99% of the units and 97.5% of the employment of MSME and is unlike the small and medium sectors. The benefits of policies made for the MSME sector do not accrue to the micro units.

    Invisibilization of the unorganized sector in the data is at the root of the problem. Data on this sector become available periodically, called the reference years. In between, it is assumed that this sector can be proxied by the organized sector. This could be taken to be correct when there is no shock to the economy and its parameters remain unchanged.

    Demonetization and the flawed GST administered big shocks to the economy and undermined the unorganized sector. Its link with the organized sector got disrupted. Thus, the methodology of calculating national income announced in 2015 became invalid.

    The implication is that the unorganized sector’s decline since 2016 is not captured in the data. Worse, the growth of the organized sector has been at the expense of the unorganized sector because demand shifted from the latter to the former. It suited the policymakers to continue using the faulty data since that presented a rosy picture of the economy. This also lulled them into believing that they did not need to do anything special to check the decline of the unorganized sector.

    Policy Paradigm Shift in 1947

    Growing unemployment, weak socio-economic conditions, etc., are not sudden developments. Their root lies in the policy paradigm adopted since independence.
    In 1947, the leadership, influenced by the national movement understood that people were not to blame for their problems of poverty, illiteracy and ill-health and could not resolve them on their own. So, it was accepted that in independent India these issues would be dealt with collectively. Therefore, the government was given the responsibility of tackling these issues and given a key role in the economy.

    Simultaneously, the leadership, largely belonging to the country’s elite, was enamoured of Western modernity and wanted to copy it to make India an ’advanced country’. The two paths of Western development then available were the free market and Soviet-style central planning. India adopted a mix of the two with the leading role given to the public sector. This path was chosen also for strategic reasons and access to technology which the West was reluctant to supply. But, this choice also led to a dilemma for the Indian elite. It had to ally with the Soviet Union for reasons of defence and access to technology but wanted to be like Western Europe.

    Both the chosen paths were based on a top-down approach. The assumption was that there would be a trickle down to those at the bottom. People accepted this proposition believing in the wider good of all. Resources were mobilized and investments were made in the creation of big dams and factories (called temples of modern India) that generated few jobs. They not only displaced many people trickle down was minimal. For instance, education spread but mostly benefitted the well-off.

    The Indian economy diversified and grew rapidly. An economy that for 50 years had been growing at about 0.75% grew at about 4% in the 1950s. But, the decline in the death rate led to a spurt in the rate of population growth. So, the per capita income did not show commensurate growth, and poverty persisted. Problems got magnified due to the shortage of food following the drought of 1965-67 and the Wars in 1962 and 1965. The Naxalite movement started in 1967, there was BOP crisis and high inflation in 1972-74 due to the growing energy dependence and the Yom Kippur war. Soon thereafter there was political instability and the imposition of an Emergency in 1975. The country went from crisis to crisis.

    Planning failed due to crony capitalism. The prevailing political economy enabled the business community to systematically undermine policies for their narrow ends by fueling the growth of the black economy.

    The failure of trickle-down and the cornering of the gains of development by a narrow section of people led to growing inequality and people losing faith in the development process. Different sections of the population realized that they needed a share in power to deliver to their group. Every division in society — caste, region, community, etc. — was exploited. The leadership became short-termist and indulged in competitive populism by promising immediate gains.

    The consensus on policies that existed at independence dissipated quickly. Election time promises to get votes were not fulfilled. For instance, PM Morarji Desai said that promises in the Janata Dal manifesto in 1977 were the party’s programme and not the government’s. Such undermining of accountability of the political process has undermined democracy and trust and aggravated alienation.

    Black Economy and Policy Failure

    The black economy has grown rapidly since the 1950s with political, social and economic ramifications. Even though it is at the root of the major problems confronting the country, most analysts ignore it.

    So, the black economy controls politics and to retain power it undermines accountability and weakens democracy.

    It undermines elections and strengthens the hold of vested interests on political parties. The compromised leadership of political parties is open to blackmail both by foreign interests and those in power. When in power it is willing to do the bidding of the vested interests. So, the black economy controls politics and to retain power it undermines accountability and weakens democracy.

    The black economy controls politics and corrupts it to perpetuate itself. The honest and the idealist soon are corrupted as happened with the leadership that emerged from the anti-corruption JP movement in the mid-1970s. Many of them who gained power in the 1990s was accused of corruption and even prosecuted. Proposals for state funding of elections will only provide additional funds but not help clean up politics.

    The black economy can be characterized as ’digging holes and filling them’. It results in two incomes but zero output. There is activity without productivity with investment going to waste. Consequently, the economy grows less than its potential. It has been shown that the economy has been losing 5% growth since the mid-1970s. So, if the black economy had not existed, today the economy could have been 8 times larger and each person would have been that much better off. Thus, development is set back. In 1988, PM Rajiv Gandhi lamented that out of every rupee sent only 15 paisa reaches the ground. P Chidambaram as FM said, `expenditures don’t lead to outcomes’.

    The black economy leads to the twin problem of development. First, black incomes being outside the tax net reduce resource availability to the government. If the black incomes currently estimated at above 60% of GDP could be brought into the tax net, the tax/GDP ratio could rise by 24%. This ratio is around 17% now and is one of the lowest in the world. Further, as direct tax collections rise, the regressive indirect taxes could be reduced, lowering inflation.

    India’s fiscal crisis would also get resolved. The current public sector deficit of about 14% would become a surplus of 10%. This would eliminate borrowings and reduce the massive interest payments (the largest single item in the revenue budget). It would enable an increase in allocations to public education and health to international levels and to infrastructure and employment generation.

    In brief, curbing the black economy would take care of India’s various developmental problems, whether it be lack of trickle-down, poverty, inequality, policy failure, employment generation, inflation and so on. It causes delays in decision-making and a breakdown of trust in society.

    Due to various misconceptions about the black economy, many of the steps taken to curb it have been counterproductive, like demonetization. Dozens of committees and commissions have analysed the issues and suggested hundreds of steps to tackle the problem. Many of them have been implemented, like reduction in tax rates and elimination of most controls but the size of the black economy has grown because of a lack of political will.

    Policy Paradigm Shift in 1991

    Failure of policies led to crisis after crisis in the period leading up to 1990. The blame was put on the policies themselves and not the crony capitalism and black economy that led to their failure. The policies prior to 1990 have been often labelled as socialist. Actually, the mixed economy model was designed to promote capitalism. At best the policies may be labelled as state capitalist and they succeeded in their goal. Private capital accumulated rapidly pre-1990. The Iraq crisis of 1989-90 led to India’s BOP crisis and became the trigger for a paradigm change in policies in favour of capital. The earlier more humane and less unequal path of development was discarded.

    Marketization has led to the ’marginalization of the marginals’, greater inequality and a rise in unemployment.

    In 1991, a new policy paradigm was ushered in. Namely, ’individuals are responsible for their problems and not the collective’. Under this regime, the government’s role in the economy was scaled back and individuals were expected to go to the market for resolving their problems. This may be characterized as ’marketization’. This brought about a philosophical shift in the thinking of individuals and society.

    Marketization has led to the ’marginalization of the marginals’, greater inequality and a rise in unemployment. These policies have promoted ’growth at any cost’ with the cost falling on the marginalized sections and the environment, both of which make poverty more entrenched. So, the pre-existing problems of Indian society have got aggravated in a changed form.

    Poverty is defined in terms of the ’social minimum necessary consumption’ which changes with space and time. Marketization has changed the minimum due to the promotion of consumerism and environmental decay imposing heavy health costs.
    The highly iniquitous NEP is leading to an unstable development environment. The base of growth has been getting narrower leading to periodic crises. Additionally, policy-induced challenges like demonetization, GST, pandemic and now the war in Ukraine have aggravated the situation. These social and political challenges can only grow over time as divisions in society become sharper.

    Weakness in Knowledge Generation

    Why does the obvious not happen in India? No one disagrees that poverty, illiteracy and ill health need to be eliminated. In addition to the problems due to the black economy and top-down approach, India has lagged behind in generating socially relevant knowledge to tackle its problems and make society dynamic.

    Technology has rapidly changed since the end of the Second World War. It is a moving frontier since newer technologies emerge leading to constant change and the inability of the citizens to cope with it. The advanced technology of the 1950s is intermediate or low technology today.

    Literacy needs to be redefined as the ability to absorb the current technology so as to get a decent job. Many routine jobs are likely to disappear soon, like, driver’s jobs as autonomous (self-driving) vehicles appear on the scene. Most banking is already possible through net banking and machines, like, ATMs. Banks themselves are under threat from digital currency.

    So, education is no more about the joy of learning and expanding one’s horizon. No wonder, the scientific temper is missing among a large number of the citizens.

    India’s weakness in knowledge generation is linked to the low priority given to education and R&D. Learning is based substantially on `rote learning’ which does not enable absorption of knowledge and its further development. So, education is no more about the joy of learning and expanding one’s horizon. No wonder, the scientific temper is missing among a large number of the citizens. Dogmas, misconceptions and irrationalities rule the minds of many and they are easily misled. This is politically, socially and economically a recipe for persisting backwardness.

    In spite of policy initiatives regarding education, like, the national education policy in 1968 and 1986, there is deterioration. This is because the milieu of education is all wrong. Policy is in the hands of bureaucrats, politicians or academics with bureaucratized mindsets. So, policies are mechanically framed. Like the idea that ’standards can be achieved via standardization’.

    Learning requires democratization. So, institutions need to be freed from the present feudal and bureaucratic control. Presently, institutions treat dissent as a malaise to be eliminated rather than celebrated. Courses are sought to be copied from foreign universities. JNU is told to be like Harvard or Cambridge. This is a contradiction in terms; originality cannot be copied. Courses copied from abroad tend to be based on the societal conditions there and not Indian conditions. Gandhi had said that the Indian education system is alienating and for many it still is.

    The best minds mostly go abroad and even if they return, they bring with them an alien framework not suited to India. So, as a society, we need to value ideas, prioritize education and R&D and generate socially relevant knowledge.

    Learning is given low priority because ideas are sought to be borrowed from abroad. So, the rulers have little value for institutions that could generate new ideas and inadequate funds are allotted to them. The best minds mostly go abroad and even if they return, they bring with them an alien framework not suited to India. So, as a society, we need to value ideas, prioritize education and R&D and generate socially relevant knowledge.

    Conclusion

    The growth at any cost strategy has been at the expense of the workers and the environment. This has narrowed the base of growth and led to instability in society — politically, socially and economically.

    India is a diverse society and the Indian economy is more complex than any other in the world. This has posed serious challenges to development in the last 75 years but undeniably things are not what they were. The big mistake has been to choose trickle-down policies that have not delivered to a vast number of people who live in uncivilized conditions. Poverty has changed its form and the elite imply that the poor should be grateful for what they have got. They should not focus on growing inequality, especially after 1991, when globalization entered the marketization phase which marginalizes the marginals.

    The growth at any cost strategy has been at the expense of the workers and the environment. This has narrowed the base of growth and led to instability in society — politically, socially and economically. The situation has been aggravated by the recent policy mistakes — demonetization, flawed GST and sudden lockdown. The current war in Ukraine is likely to lead to a new global order which will add to the challenges. The answer to ’why does the obvious not happen’ in India is not just economic but societal. Unless that challenge is met, portents are not bright for India at 75.

    This paper is based substantially on, `Indian Economy since Independence: Persisting Colonial Disruption’, Vision Books, 2013 and `Indian Economy’s Greatest Crisis: Impact of Coronavirus and the Road Ahead’, Penguin Random House, 2020.

    This article was published earlier in Mainstream Weekly.

    Feature Image Credit: Financial Express

    Other Images: DNA India, news18.com,  economictimes, rvcj.com

  • Gendered Politics at the Local Level: An Analysis of Tamil Nadu

    Gendered Politics at the Local Level: An Analysis of Tamil Nadu

    The institution of panchayat raj, a milestone in the journey of administrative institutions at the grass-root level, is not an exception to proxy candidature, caste-based violation of rights or gendered politics

    The political domain continues to be considered a male bastion, with women in politics often seen as a paradox. The domain is conspicuous by the very low presence of women, with very few of them making it to positions of power. Elizabeth I, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, and Golda Meir have often been regarded as minorities in politics despite being some of the most powerful women in domestic and international politics. In the minuscule group of women politicians, ‘self-made’ women are often considered an exception rather than a rule. The political transitions are short-term solutions to break the pattern of exclusion. From the suffragette of the 20th century up till now, feminists have fought a lengthy battle for women’s right to vote and hold office. With the development that is slow and choppy, women continue to be underrepresented in politics, and parliament. While we talk about women’s political participation, it is easy for us to imagine empty seats in the parliament. However, women in India have been involved in politics since pre-independent times even when they had no voting rights. The aspect of politics that has always held an uncertain position in our minds is the relationship between women and politics.

    Constitutional Provision

    The world of urban local politics associated with political decentralisation in India was constitutionalised in 1992 through the 74th Constitutional Amendment. It ensured a reservation of at least one-third of the total number of seats for women. Additionally, for the office of chairperson one-third of the seats are reserved for women in the Urban Local Body (ULB). However, the bill for the reservation of seats for women in parliament has remained pending for years. The Constitution allows 50% of seats to be reserved for women in the local body elections. In Tamil Nadu, the High Court has directed the State Election Commission to ensure that the reservation stays at 50% in ULB as mandated by law.

    Proxy Politics and Tamil Nadu

    Despite the reservation mandated by law, the participation of women in state and national politics has barely improved. Gender inequality, hierarchy, and stigma against women in politics along with structural, social, economic and cultural barriers continue to obstruct women’s effective participation in politics. Within the urban local body, it is witnessed that husbands or male relatives wield actual power and control even though women relatives or wives are the ones elected for the position and appointed officially. Men continue to control the wards while most elected women work as proxies. This is evident in the case of the Tambaram corporation where Nagarajan, husband of DMK councillor Geetha, took the chair on her behalf in official meetings, a clear violation of legislative procedures and law. In such cases, women are shadowed and they are not free to make their own decisions. Proxy politics is rampant at the grassroots level of panchayat and local body elections where women get posts filled with responsibilities but without effective power or control.

    The term ‘proxy women’ needs further elaboration. In the 2022 urban local body elections in Tamil Nadu, while women councillors were elected in accordance with the 50% reservation policy, the actual power and control were exercised by their husbands. Though the Greater Chennai Corporation has a majority of women in elected seats, it is effectively run by men. In a few wards, for instance, in wards number 24 and 34, it was the husbands who were attending to complaints, and deciding over issues, while operating the office. In some wards, husbands address themselves as councillors.  And while people in the ward complain of not having seen their councillor since her election to the post, it is to be noted here that this problem does not end with councillors. Even the top-most positions held by women in the municipal body continue to be dictated by her veteran politician family members or, they are in the hands of the political party itself. 

    Participation in PRI

    The institution of panchayat raj, a milestone in the journey of administrative institutions at the grass-root level, is not an exception to proxy candidature, caste-based violation of rights or gendered politics. Retired IAS officer Ashok Varadhan Shetty stated a case in Dindigul in 2008 where the husband of a woman member of block panchayat was caught participating in council meetings while she stayed at home. Even when the obstacles for women in politics and panchayats in specific are diverse, male dominance automatically tops the list of obstructing women’s participation in politics.

    Theories of Representation

    The gendered pattern of politics in most parts of India is deeply patriarchal with low sex ratio, patrilocal marriage, and patrilineal inheritance, with women being denied access to the public sphere. In Omvedt’s words, “Girls are socialised to be mothers, wives and domestic workers under other’s authority”. As literature explains, women in political bodies argue that mere representation is not sufficient. A formal seat is not the same as active participation. In India, most women are less educated, less exposed, and more dependent, and proxy women are more likely to be seen as token representatives in political organisations.

    Philip’s study of the political representation of women has set up a foundation to shift from ‘politics of ideas’ to ‘politics of presence’. The twin democratic principles of equality in politics and popular control, help in ensuring equal representation of men and women. He has presented four arguments for politics of presence: the importance of symbolic representation; the need to tackle exclusion inherent in ideas of the political party; the need for vigorous support to the disadvantaged groups; and the importance of politics of presence in arriving at policy options.

    Does the concept of proxy politics leave a mark on female politicians alone? Certainly not. Various male politicians act as mere mouthpieces of the political party. Hence, it is not just women who become prey to proxy politics, the practice is widespread at the lower level. But the difference that lies here is men are instructed while women are dominated. Gender equality is, thus, an essential element for the sustainable progress of any nation. The goal of all-round development can be achieved only through equal representation of all genders in various fields. In the Global Gender Gap Report, released by the World Economic Forum, based on the key dimensions of Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health, Survival and Political Empowerment, India has ranked 140 out of 156 countries slipping 28 ranks from the 2020 report. It is evident how deep and strong the roots of discrimination in the country are.

    References

    The Constitution 112th Amendment. (n.d.). Amendment to Article 243T of the Constitution to provide for 50 percent reservation for women in Urban Local Bodies. Retrieved August 9, 2022, from https://mohua.gov.in/upload/uploadfiles/files/243T_Constitution_15.pdf

    Mahanta, K. (n.d.). Home | Government of India. Retrieved August 9, 2022, from https://censusindia.gov.in/census.website/

    Menon, J. (2021, October 8). Tamil Nadu: Many women in panchayat race, but will they take the podium? | Chennai News. Times of India. Retrieved August 9, 2022, from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/tamil-nadu-many-women-in-panchayat-race-but-will-they-take-the-podium/articleshow/86858818.cms

    Omvedt, G. (n.d.). Women in governance in South Asia. Economic and Political Weekly.

    Phillips, A. (1998). The Politics of Presence. Clarendon Press.

    Sarpanch Pati Culture: DMK’S Women Councillors, Their Proxy Husbands, Relatives Abuse Power in TN. (2022, April 9). Times Now. Retrieved August 9, 2022, from https://www.timesnownews.com/videos/times-now/specials/sarpanch-pati-culture-dmks-women-councillors-their-proxy-husbands-relatives-abuse-power-in-tn-video-90747544

    Tamil Nadu Municipal Laws (Amendment) Act, 2016. (2016, February 27). TAMIL NADU GOVERNMENT GAZETTE. Retrieved August 9, 2022, from http://www.stationeryprinting.tn.gov.in/extraordinary/2016/56-Ex-IV-2.pdf

    Feature Image Credits: The Federal

  • Roe overturned: What you need to know about the American Supreme Court abortion decision

    Roe overturned: What you need to know about the American Supreme Court abortion decision

    Despite the terminal decline of the American Empire or the Deep State, the American Republic still remains an inspiration for people across the world, for reasons of its vibrant democracy and peoples’ liberty ensured through robust institutions, law and order, and the strong constitutional process. To paraphrase Johan Galtung – ‘the US is a fabulous Republic but a terrible empire’. But even that seems to be changing as society’s democratic values, ethics, and morals are in serious decline.  The rise of right wing politics has led to a decline in the standards and values, and in the independence of institutions most notably the Judiciary. Separation of the Church and the State is a core tenet of the American Constitution and governance. That seems to be compromised as many judges bring their personal and religious beliefs in to their work. This was in demonstration in the American Supreme Court’s judgement that ends one of the most critical fundamental rights of women to their bodies and their choices for abortion. 

    After half a century, Americans’ constitutional right to get an abortion has been overturned by the Supreme Court.The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization – handed down on June 24, 2022 – has far-reaching consequences. There is a strong religious influence to this judgement. This could influence many other countries, particularly in an environment where right wing politics, influenced by narrow religious overtones,  is on the upswing in many countries across the world, including the world’s largest Democracy, India. Fortunately, India’s abortion laws are governed by medical advice and womens’ safety (and so it is termed MTP – Medical termination of Pregnancy). The MTP Act of 1971 was further liberalised through an Amendment Act of 2021 wherein the gestation limit for abortions is raised from 20 to 24 weeks. While India’s laws are considerate by supporting abortion decision to rape and incest survivors, the American judgement will deny this freedom or choice to the victim women.

     Nicole Huberfeld and Linda C. McClain, health law and constitutional law experts at Boston University, explain what just happened, and what happens next. This article was published earlier in The Conversation. TPF is happy to republish this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives 4.0-International (CC BY-ND 4.0).

    – TPF Editorial Team

    What did the Supreme Court rule?

    The Supreme Court decided by a 6-3 majority to uphold Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. In doing so, the justices overturned two key decisions protecting access to abortion: 1973’s Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, decided in 1992.

    The court’s opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, said that the Constitution does not mention abortion. Nor does the Constitution guarantee abortion rights via another right, the right to liberty.

    The opinion rejected Roe’s and Casey’s argument that the constitutional right to liberty included an individual’s right to privacy in choosing to have an abortion, in the same way that it protects other decisions concerning intimate sexual conduct, such as contraception and marriage. According to the opinion, abortion is “fundamentally different” because it destroys fetal life.

    The court’s narrow approach to the concept of constitutional liberty is at odds with the broader position it took in the earlier Casey ruling, as well as in a landmark marriage equality case, 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges. But the majority said that nothing in their opinion should affect the right of same-sex couples to marry.

    Alito’s opinion also rejected the legal principle of “stare decisis,” or adhering to precedent. Supporters of the right to abortion argue that the Casey and Roe rulings should have been left in place as, in the words of the Casey ruling, reproductive rights allow women to “participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation.”

    The ruling does not mean that abortion is banned throughout the U.S. Rather, arguments about the legality of abortion will now play out in state legislatures, where, Alito noted, women “are not without electoral or political power.”

    States will be allowed to regulate or prohibit abortion subject only to what is known as “rational basis” review – this is a weaker standard than Casey’s “undue burden” test. Under Casey’s undue burden test, states were prevented from enacting restrictions that placed substantial obstacles in the path of those seeking abortion. Now, abortion bans will be presumed to be legal as long as there is a “rational basis” for the legislature to believe the law serves legitimate state interests.

    In a strenuous dissent, Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor faulted the court’s narrow approach to liberty and challenged its disregard both for stare decisis and for the impact of overruling Roe and Casey on the lives of women in the United States. The dissenters said the impact of the decision would be “the curtailment of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens.” They also expressed deep concern over the ruling’s effect on poor women’s ability to access abortion services in the U.S.

    Where does this decision fit into the history of reproductive rights in the U.S.?

    This is a huge moment. The court’s ruling has done what reproductive rights advocates feared for decades: It has taken away the constitutional right to privacy that protected access to abortion.

    This decision was decades in the making. Thirty years ago when Casey was being argued, many legal experts thought the court was poised to overrule Roe. Then, the court had eight justices appointed by Republican presidents, several of whom indicated readiness to overrule in dissenting opinions.

    Instead, Republican appointees Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter upheld Roe. They revised its framework to allow more state regulation throughout pregnancy and weakened the test for evaluating those laws. Under Roe’s “strict scrutiny” test, any restriction on the right to privacy to access an abortion had to be “narrowly tailored” to further a “compelling” state interest. But Casey’s “undue burden” test gave states wider latitude to regulate abortion.

    Even before the Casey decision, abortion opponents in Congress had restricted access for poor women and members of the military greatly by limiting the use of federal funds to pay for abortion services.

    In recent years, states have adopted numerous restrictions on abortion that would not have survived Roe’s tougher “strict scrutiny” test. Even so, many state restrictions have been struck down in federal courts under the undue burden test, including bans on abortions prior to fetal viability and so-called “TRAP” – targeted regulation of abortion provider – laws that made it harder to keep clinics open.

    President Donald Trump’s pledge to appoint “pro-life” justices to federal courts – and his appointment of three conservative Supreme Court justices – finally made possible the goal of opponents of legal abortion: overruling Roe and Casey.

    What happens next?

    Even before Dobbs, the ability to access abortion was limited by a patchwork of laws across the United States. Republican states have more restrictive laws than Democratic ones, with people living in the Midwest and South subject to the strongest limits.

    Thirteen states have so-called “trigger laws,” which greatly restrict access to abortion. These will soon go into effect now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe and Casey, requiring only state attorney general certification or other action by a state official.

    Nine states have pre-Roe laws never taken off the books that significantly restrict or ban access to abortion. Altogether, nearly half of states will restrict access to abortion through a variety of measures like banning abortion from six weeks of pregnancy – before many women know they are pregnant – and limiting the reasons abortions may be obtained, such as forbidding abortion in the case of fetal anomalies.

    Meanwhile, 16 states and the District of Columbia protect access to abortion in a variety of ways, such as state statutes, constitutional amendments or state Supreme Court decisions.

    None of the states that limit abortion access currently criminalize the pregnant person’s action. Rather, they threaten health care providers with civil or criminal actions, including loss of their license to practice medicine.

    Some states are creating “safe havens” where people can travel to access an abortion legally. People have already been traveling to states like Massachusetts from highly restrictive states.

    The court’s decision may drive federal action, too.

    The House of Representatives passed the Women’s Health Protection Act, which protects health care providers and pregnant people seeking abortion, but Senate Republicans have blocked the bill from coming up for a vote. Congress could also reconsider providing limited Medicaid payment for abortion, but such federal legislation also seems unlikely to succeed.

    President Joe Biden could use executive power to instruct federal agencies to review existing regulations to ensure that access to abortion continues to occur in as many places as possible. Congressional Republicans could test the water on nationwide abortion bans. While such efforts are likely to fail, these efforts could cause confusion for people who are already vulnerable.

    The Supreme Court’s rolling back a right that has been recognized for 50 years puts the U.S. in the minority of nations, most of which are moving toward liberalization.

    What does this mean for people in America seeking an abortion?

    Unintended pregnancies and abortions are more common among poor women and women of color, both in the U.S. and around the world.

    Research shows that people have abortions whether lawful or not, but in nations where access to abortion is limited or outlawed, women are more likely to suffer negative health outcomes, such as infection, excessive bleeding and uterine perforation. Those who must carry a pregnancy to full term are more likely to suffer pregnancy-related deaths.

    The state-by-state access to abortion resulting from this decision means many people will have to travel farther to obtain an abortion. And distance will mean fewer people will get abortions, especially lower-income women – a fact the Supreme Court itself recognized in 2016.

    But since 2020, medication abortion – a two-pill regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol – has been the most common method of ending pregnancy in the U.S. The coronavirus pandemic accelerated this shift, as it drove the Food and Drug Administration to make medication abortions more available by allowing doctors to prescribe the pills through telemedicine and permitting medication to be mailed without in-person consultation.

    Many states that restrict access to abortion also are trying to prevent medication abortion. But stopping telehealth providers from mailing pills will be a challenge. Further, because the FDA approved this regimen, states will be contradicting federal law, setting up conflict that may lead to more litigation.

    The Supreme Court’s rolling back a right that has been recognized for 50 years puts the U.S. in the minority of nations, most of which are moving toward liberalization. Nevertheless, even though abortion is seen by many as essential health care, the cultural fight will surely continue.

    Featured Image Credit: Evening Standard

  • Valuing Folk Crop Varieties for Agroecology and Food Security

    Valuing Folk Crop Varieties for Agroecology and Food Security

    India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has recently, through an office memorandum, excluded the new generation genetically modified (GM) plants – also known as genetically edited (GE) plants – from the ambit of India’s biosafety rules. The use of GMO plant seeds like Monsanto’s Bt Cotton gave promising results initially but over a longer period it has resulted in many problems leading to large number of marginal farmer suicides. Based on this bitter experience the Government of India has brought in place very stringent bio-safety rules. However, with new biotech breakthroughs like Genome Editing techniques, there is a huge pressure from corporate giants like Monsanto, Bayer etc to open up agricultural markets in major countries like India and the global south. There is a fear that American capitalism driven biotech companies may destroy indigenous bio-diversities that could result in food insecurity in the long run. India adopted ‘Green Revolution’ in a big way to increase its food production. It lead to the use of High Yield Variety seeds and mono-cultural farming in a big way. Half a century later, there is a need to review the after effects of the ‘Green Revolution’ as the country is plagued by over use of fertilisers, pesticides, water scarcity, increasing salinity, and battling loss of nutrition in farmlands due to the loss of traditional crop diversity. India was home to a vast gene pool of 110000 varieties of native rice before the Green revolution, of which less than 600 are surviving today. The use of GMO crops will lead to further destruction of Indian food diversity. Genome editing, a newer technology, should be examined carefully from a policy perspective. The European Union treats all GMO and GE as one and therefore it has a single stringent policy. Dr Debal Deb has done a pioneering work in saving many of the indigenous rice varieties and campaigns against the industrial agriculture. His is a larger and vital perspective of Agricultural ecology. The Peninsula Foundation revisits his article of 2009 to drive home the importance of preserving and enhancing India’s bio-diversity and agricultural ecology as pressures from capitalist biotech predators loom large for commercial interests.

    – TPF Editorial Team

    On May 25, 2009, Hurricane Aila hit the deltaic islands of the Sunderban of West Bengal. The estuarine water surged and destroyed the villages. Farmer’s homes were engulfed by the swollen rivers, their properties vanished with the waves, and their means of livelihood disappeared, as illustrated by the empty farm fields, suddenly turned salty. In addition, most of the ponds and bore wells became salinized.

    Since Aila’s devastation, there has been a frantic search for the salt-tolerant rice seeds created by the ancestors of the current Sunderban farmers. With agricultural modernization, these heirloom crop varieties had slipped through the farmers’ hands.

    But now, after decades of complacency, farmers and agriculture experts alike have been jolted into realizing that on the saline Sunderban soil, modern high-yield varieties are no match for the “primitive,” traditional rice varieties. But the seeds of those diverse salt-tolerant varieties are unavailable now; just one or two varieties are still surviving on the marginal farms of a few poor farmers, who now feel the luckiest. The government rice gene banks have documents to show that they have all these varieties preserved, but they cannot dole out any viable seeds to farmers in need. That is the tragedy of the centralized ex situ gene banks, which eventually serve as morgues for seeds, killed by decades of disuse.

    The only rice seed bank in eastern India that conserves salt-tolerant rice varieties in situ is Vrihi, which has distributed four varieties of salt-tolerant rice in small quantities to a dozen farmers in Sunderban. The success of these folk rice varieties on salinized farms demonstrates how folk crop genetic diversity can ensure local food security. These folk rice varieties also promote sustainable agriculture by obviating the need for all external inputs of agrochemicals.

    Folk Rice Varieties, the Best Bet

    Not only the salinization of soil in coastal farmlands but also the too-late arrival of the monsoon this year has caused seedlings of modern rice varieties to wither on all un-irrigated farms and spelled doom for marginal farmers’ food security throughout the subcontinent. Despite all the brouhaha about the much-hyped Green Revolution, South Asia’s crop production still depends heavily on the monsoon rains and too much, too late, too early, or too scanty rain causes widespread failure of modern crop varieties. Around 60 per cent of India’s agriculture is unirrigated and totally dependent on rain.

    In 2002, the monsoon failure in July resulted in a seasonal rainfall deficit of 19 percent and caused a profound loss of agricultural production with a drop of over 3 percent in India’s GDP (Challinor et al. 2006). This year’s shortfall of the monsoon rain is likely to cause production to fall 10 to 15 million tons short of the 100 million tons of total production forecast for India at the beginning of the season (Chameides 2009). This projected shortfall also represents about 3 percent of the expected global rice harvest of 430 million tons.

    In the face of such climatic vagaries, modern agricultural science strives to incorporate genes for adaptation — genes that were carefully selected by many generations of indigenous farmer-breeders centuries ago. Thousands of locally-adapted rice varieties (also called “landraces”) were created by farmer selection to withstand fluctuations in rainfall and temperature and to resist various pests and pathogens. Most of these varieties, however, have been replaced by a few modern varieties, to the detriment of food security.

    Until the advent of the Green Revolution in the 1960s, India was believed to have been home to about 110,000 rice varieties (Richharia and Govindasamy 1990), most of which have gone extinct from farm fields. Perhaps a few thousand varieties are still surviving on marginal farms, where no modern cultivar can grow. In the eastern state of West Bengal, about 5600 rice varieties were cultivated, of which 3500 varieties of rice were shipped to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) of the Philippines during the period from 1975 to 1983 (Deb 2005). After an extensive search over the past fourteen years for extant rice varieties in West Bengal and a few neighboring states, I was able to rescue only 610 rice landraces from marginal farms. All others–about 5000–have disappeared from farm fields. The 610 extant rice varieties are grown every year on my conservation farm, Basudha. Every year, these seeds are distributed to willing farmers from the Vrihi seed bank free of charge.

    Vrihi (meaning “rice seed” in Sanskrit) is the largest non-governmental seed repository of traditional rice varieties in eastern India. These varieties can withstand a much wider range of fluctuations in temperature and soil nutrient levels as well as water stress than any of the modern rice varieties. This year’s monsoon delay has not seriously affected the survivorship and performance of the 610 rice varieties on the experimental farm, nor did the overabundant rainfall a few years earlier.

    Circumstances of Loss

    If traditional landraces are so useful, how could the farmers afford to lose them? The dynamics are complex but understandable. When government agencies and seed companies began promoting “miracle seeds,” many farmers were lured and abandoned their heirloom varieties. Farmers saw the initial superior yields of the high input–responsive varieties under optimal conditions and copied their “successful” neighbors. Soon, an increasing number of farmers adopted the modern, “Green Revolution” (GR) seeds, and farmers not participating in the GR were dubbed backward, anti-modern, and imprudent. Seed companies, state agriculture departments, the World Bank, universities, and national and international development NGOs (non-governmental organizations) urged farmers to abandon their traditional seeds and farming practices–both the hardware and software of agriculture. After a few years of disuse, traditional seed stocks became unviable and were thereby lost. Thus, when farmers began to experience failure of the modern varieties in marginal environmental conditions, they had no other seeds to fall back on. Their only option was, and still is, to progressively increase water and agrochemical inputs to the land. In the process, the escalating cost of modern agriculture eventually bound the farmers in an ever-tightening snare of debt. After about a century of agronomists’ faith in technology to ensure food security, farming has become a risky enterprise, with ever greater debt for farmers. Over 150,000 farmers are reported to have committed suicide between 1995 and 2004 in India (Government of India 2007), and the number grew by an annual average of 10,000 until 2007 (Posani 2009).

    The government gave ample subsidies for irrigation and fertilizers to convert marginal farms into more productive farms and boosted rice production in the first decade that GR seeds were used. Soon after, however, yield curves began to decline. After 40 years of GR, the productivity of rice is declining at an alarming rate (Pingali 1994). IRRI’s own study revealed yield decreases after cultivation of the “miracle rice variety” IR8 over a 10-year period (Flinn et al 1982). Today, just to keep the land productive, rice farmers in South Asia apply over 11 times more synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and 12.8 times more phosphate fertilizers per hectare than they did in the late 1960s (FAI 2008). Cereal yield has plummeted back to the pre-GR levels, yet many farmers cannot recall that they had previously obtained more rice per unit of input than what they are currently getting. Most farmers have forgotten the average yields of the traditional varieties and tend to believe that all traditional varieties were low-yielding. They think that the modern “high-yielding” varieties must yield more because they are so named.

    In contrast, demonstration of the agronomic performance of the 610 traditional rice varieties on Basudha farm over the past 14 years has convinced farmers that many traditional varieties can out-yield any modern cultivar. Moreover, the savings in terms of water and agrochemical inputs and the records of yield stability against the vagaries of the monsoon have convinced them of the economic advantages of ecological agriculture over chemical agriculture. Gradually, an increasing number of farmers have been receiving traditional seeds from the Vrihi seed bank and exchanging them with other farmers. As of this year, more than 680 farmers have received seeds from Vrihi and are cultivating them on their farms. None of them have reverted to chemical farming or to GR varieties.

    Extraordinary Heirlooms

    Every year, farmer-researchers meticulously document the morphological and agronomic characteristics of each of the rice varieties being conserved on our research farm, Basudha. With the help of simple equipment–graph paper, rulers, measuring tape, and a bamboo microscope (Basu 2007)–the researchers document 30 descriptors of rice, including leaf length and width; plant height at maturity; leaf and internode color; flag leaf angle; color and size of awns; color, shape and size of rice seeds and decorticated grains; panicle density; seed weight; dates of flowering and maturity; presence or absence of aroma; and diverse cultural uses.

    Vrihi’s seed bank collection includes numerous unique landraces, such as those with novel pigmentation patterns and wing-like appendages on the rice hull. Perhaps the most remarkable are Jugal, the double-grain rice, and Sateen, the triple-grain rice. These characteristics have been published and copyrighted (Deb 2005) under Vrihi’s name to protect the intellectual property rights of indigenous farmers.

    A few rice varieties have unique therapeutic properties. Kabiraj-sal is believed to provide sufficient nutrition to people who cannot digest a typical protein diet. Our studies suggest that this rice contains a high amount of labile starch, a fraction of which yields important amino acids (the building blocks of proteins). The pink starch of Kelas and Bhut moori is an essential nutrient for tribal women during and after pregnancy, because the tribal people believe it heals their anemia. Preliminary studies indicate a high content of iron and folic acid in the grains of these rice varieties. Local food cultures hold Dudh-sar and Parmai-sal in high esteem because they are “good for children’s brains.” While rigorous experimental studies are required to verify such folk beliefs, the prevalent institutional mindset is to discard folk knowledge as superstitious, even before testing it– until, that is, the same properties are patented by a multinational corporation.

    Traditional farmers grow some rice varieties for their specific adaptations to the local environmental and soil conditions. Thus, Rangi, Kaya, Kelas, and Noichi are grown on rainfed dryland farms, where no irrigation facility exists. Late or scanty rainfall does not affect the yield stability of these varieties. In flood-prone districts, remarkable culm elongation is seen in Sada Jabra, Lakshmi-dighal, Banya-sal, Jal kamini, and Kumrogorh varieties, which tend to grow taller with the level of water inundating the field. The deepest water that Lakshmi-dighal can tolerate was recorded to be six meters. Getu, Matla, and Talmugur can withstand up to 30 ppt (parts per thousand) of salinity, while Harma nona is moderately saline tolerant. No modern rice variety can survive in these marginal environmental conditions. Traditional crop varieties are often recorded to have out-yielded modern varieties in marginal environmental conditions (Cleveland et al. 2000).

    Farmer-selected crop varieties are not only adapted to local soil and climatic conditions but are also fine-tuned to diverse local ecological conditions and cultural preferences. Numerous local rice landraces show marked resistance to insect pests and pathogens. Kalo nunia, Kartik-sal, and Tulsi manjari are blast-resistant. Bishnubhog and Rani kajal are known to be resistant to bacterial blight (Singh 1989). Gour-Nitai, Jashua, and Shatia seem to resist caseworm (Nymphula depunctalis) attack; stem borer (Tryporyza spp.) attack on Khudi khasa, Loha gorah, Malabati, Sada Dhepa, and Sindur mukhi varieties is seldom observed.

    Farmers’ agronomic practices, adapting to the complexity of the farm food web interactions, have also resulted in selection of certain rice varieties with distinctive characteristics, such as long awn and erect flag leaf. Peasant farmers in dry lateritic areas of West Bengal and Jharkhand show a preference for long and strong awns, which deter grazing from cattle and goats (Deb 2005). Landraces with long and erect flag leaves are preferred in many areas, because they ensure protection of grains from birds.

    Different rice varieties are grown for their distinctive aroma, color, and tastes. Some of these varieties are preferred for making crisped rice, some for puffed rice, and others for fragrant rice sweets to be prepared for special ceremonies. Blind to this diversity of local food cultures and farm ecological complexity, the agronomic modernization agenda has entailed drastic truncation of crop genetic diversity as well as homogenization of food cultures on all continents.

    Sustainable Agriculture and Crop Genetic Diversity

    Crop genetic diversity, which our ancestors enormously expanded over millennia (Doebley 2006), is our best bet for sustainable food production against stochastic changes in local climate, soil chemistry, and biotic influences. Reintroducing the traditional varietal mixtures in rice farms is a key to sustainable agriculture. A wide genetic base provides “built-in insurance” (Harlan 1992) against crop pests, pathogens, and climatic vagaries.

    Traditional crop landraces are an important component of sustainable agriculture because their long-term yield stability is superior to most modern varieties. An ample body of evidence exists to indicate that whenever there is a shortage of irrigation water or of fertilizers–due to drought, social problems, or a disruption of the supply network– “modern crops typically show a reduction in yield that is greater and covers wider areas, compared with folk varieties” (Cleveland et al. 1994). Under optimal farming conditions, some folk varieties may have lower mean yields than high-yield varieties but exhibit considerably higher mean yields in the marginal environments to which they are specifically adapted.

    All these differences are amply demonstrated on Basudha farm in a remote corner of West Bengal, India. This farm is the only farm in South Asia where over 600 rice landraces are grown every year for producing seeds. These rice varieties are grown with no agrochemicals and scant irrigation. On the same farm, over 20 other crops, including oil seeds, vegetables, and pulses, are also grown each year. To a modern, “scientifically trained” farmer as well as a professional agronomist, it’s unbelievable that over the past eight years, none of the 610 varieties at Basudha needed any pesticides–including bio-pesticides–to control rice pests and pathogens. The benefit of using varietal mixtures to control diseases and pests has been amply documented in the scientific literature (Winterer et al. 1994; Wolfe 2000; Leung et al. 2003). The secret lies in folk ecological wisdom: biological diversity enhances ecosystem persistence and resilience. Modern ecological research (Folke et al. 2004; Tilman et al. 2006; Allesina and Pascual 2008) supports this wisdom.

    If the hardware of sustainable agriculture is crop diversity, the software consists of biodiversity-enhancing farming techniques. The farming technique is the “program” of cultivation and can successfully “run” on appropriate hardware of crop genetic and species diversity. In the absence of the appropriate hardware however, the software of ecological agriculture cannot give good results, simply because the techniques evolved in an empirical base of on-farm biodiversity. Multiple cropping, the use of varietal mixtures, the creation of diverse habitat patches, and the fostering of populations of natural enemies of pests are the most certain means of enhancing agroecosystem complexity. More species and genetic diversity mean greater complexity, which in turn creates greater resilience–that is, the system’s ability to return to its original species composition and structure following environmental perturbations such as pest and disease outbreaks or drought, etc.

    Ecological Functions of On-Farm Biodiversity

    Food security and sustainability at the production level are a consequence of the agroecosystem’s resilience, which can only be maintained by using diversity on both species and crop genetic levels. Varietal mixtures are a proven method of reducing diseases and pests. Growing companion crops like pigeonpea, chickpea, rozelle, yams, Ipomea fistulosa, and hedge bushes provide alternative hosts for many herbivore insects, thereby reducing pest pressure on rice. They also provide important nutrients for the soil, while the leaves of associate crops like pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan) can suppress growth of certain grasses like Cyperus rotundus.

    Pest insects and mollusks can be effectively controlled, even eliminated, by inviting carnivorous birds and reptiles (unless they have been eliminated from the area by pesticides and industrial toxins). Erecting bamboo “T’s” or placing dead tree branches on the farm encourages a range of carnivorous birds, including the drongo, bee eaters, owls, and nightjars, to perch on them. Leaving small empty patches or puddles of water on the land creates diverse ecosystems and thus enhances biodiversity. The hoopoe, the cattle egret, the myna, and the crow pheasant love to browse for insects in these open spaces.

    Measures to retain soil moisture to prevent nutrients from leaching out are also of crucial importance. The moisturizing effect of mulching triggers certain key genes that synergistically operate to delay crop senescence and reduce disease susceptibility (Kumar et al. 2004). The combined use of green mulch and cover crops nurtures key soil ecosystem components–microbes, earthworms, ants, ground beetles, millipedes, centipedes, pseudoscorpions, glow worms, and thrips — which all contribute to soil nutrient cycling.

    Agricultural sustainability consists of long-term productivity, not short-term increase of yield. Ecological agriculture, which seeks to understand and apply ecological principles to farm ecosystems, is the future of modern agriculture. To correct the mistakes committed in the course of industrial agriculture over the past 50 years, it is imperative that the empirical agricultural knowledge of past centuries and the gigantic achievements of ancient farmer-scientists are examined and employed to reestablish connections to the components of the agroecosystem. The problems of agricultural production that arise from the disintegration of agorecosystem complexity can only be solved by restoring this complexity, not by simplifying it with technological fixes.

    Further Reading and Resources: in situ conservation and agroecology

    References

    Allesina S and Pascual M (2008). Network structure, predator-prey modules, and stability in large food webs. Theoretical Ecology 1(1):55-64.

    Basu, P (2007). Microscopes made from bamboo bring biology into focus. Nature Medicine 13(10): 1128. http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v13/n10/pdf/nm1007-1128a.pdf.

    Challinor A, Slingo J, Turner A and Wheeler T (2006). Indian Monsoon: Contribution to the Stern Review. University of Reading. www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/Challinor_et_al.pdf.

    Chameides B (2009). Monsoon fails, India suffers. The Green Grok. Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/monsoon_india.

    Cleveland DA, Soleri D and Smith SE (1994). Do folk crop varieties have a role in sustainable agriculture? BioScience 44(11): 740–751.

    Cleveland DA, Soleri D and Smith SE (2000). A biological framework for understanding farmers’ plant breeding. Economic Botany 54(3): 377–394.

    Deb D (2005). Seeds of Tradition, Seeds of Future: Folk Rice Varieties from east India. Research Foundation for Science Technology & Ecology. New Delhi.

    Doebley J (2006). Unfallen grains: how ancient farmers turned weeds into crops. Science 312(5778): 1318–1319.

    FAI (2008). Fertiliser Statistics, Year 2007-2008. Fertilizer Association of India. New Delhi. http://www.faidelhi.org/

    Flinn JC, De Dutta SK and Labadan E (1982). An analysis of long term rice yields in a wetland soil. Field Crops Research 7(3): 201–216.

    Folke C, Carpenter S, Walker B, Scheffer M, Elmqvist T, Gunderson L and Holling CS (2004). Regime shifts, resilience and biodiversity in ecosystem management. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 35: 557–581.

    Government of India (2007). Report of the Expert Group on Agricultural Indebtedness. Ministry of Agriculture. New Delhi. http://www.igidr.ac.in/pdf/publication/PP-059.pdf

    Harlan JR (1992) Crops and Man (2nd edition). , p. 148. American Society of Agronomy, Inc and Crop Science Society of America, Inc., Madison, WI.

    Kumar V, Mills DJ, Anderson JD and Mattoo AK (2004). An alternative agriculture system is defined by a distinct expression profile of select gene transcripts and proteins. PNAS 101(29): 10535–10540

    Leung H, Zhu Y, Revilla-Molina I, Fan JX, Chen H, Pangga I, Vera Cruz C and Mew TW (2003). Using genetic diversity to achieve sustainable rice disease management. Plant Disease 87(10): 1156–1169.

    Pingali PI (1994). Technological prospects for reversing the declining trend in Asia’s rice productivity. In: Agricultural Technology: Policy Issues for the International Community (Anderson JR, ed), pp. 384–401. CAB International.

    Posani B (2009). Crisis in the Countryside: Farmer suicides and the political economy of agrarian distress in India. DSI Working Paper No. 09-95. Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science. London. http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/DESTIN/pdf/WP95.pdf

    Richharia RH and Govindasamy S (1990). Rices of India. Academy of Development Science. Karjat.

    Note: The only reliable data are given in Richharia and Govindasamy (1990), who estimated that about 200,000 varieties existed in India until the advent of the Green Revolution. Assuming many of these folk varieties were synonymous, an estimated 110,000 varieties were in cultivation. Such astounding figures win credibility from the fact that Dr. Richharia collected 22,000 folk varieties (currently in custody of Raipur University) from Chhattisgarh alone – one of the 28 States of India. The IRRI gene bank preserves 86,330 accessions from India [FAO (2003) Genetic diversity in rice. In: Sustainable rice production for food security. International Rice Commission/ FAO. Rome. (web publication) URL: http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/y4751e/y4751e0b.htm#TopOfPage ]

    Singh RN (1989). Reaction of indigenous rice germplasm to bacterial blight. National Academy of Science Letters 12: 231-232.

    Tilman D, Reich PB and Knops JMH (2006). Biodiversity and ecosystem stability in a decade-long grassland experiment. Nature 441: 629-632.

    Winterer J, Klepetka B, Banks J and Kareiva P (1994). Strategies for minimizing the vulnerability of rice to pest epidemics. In: Rice Pest Science and Management. (Teng PS, Heong KL and Moody K, eds.), pp. 53–70. International Rice Research Institute, Manila.

    Wolfe MS (2000). Crop strength through diversity. Nature 406: 681–682.

    This article was published earlier in Independent Science News and is republished under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

    Feature Image Credit: www.thebetterindia.com

  • National Education Policy, 2020 – Policy Brief

    National Education Policy, 2020 – Policy Brief

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    Executive Summary:

    In line with the New Education Policy (NEP) 2020 mandate, the UGC released the draft National Higher Educational Qualifications Framework (NHEQF) in February 2022. Its release has reignited the controversy over the policy that was criticized and even rejected by many state governments. The inclusion of Education in the concurrent list gives overriding powers to the centre. However, the sweeping changes the NEP is set to bring have raised concerns that the states would turn into mere implementing agencies while all the decisions regarding education will be taken by the centre. At the root of the controversy lies the federal structure of India which would be jeopardized by the implementation of the policy. Hence, significant and appropriate amendments to the draft are required to address the grievances of the states.

    What is NEP (2020)?

    The NEP, released in July of 2020 by the Union Government, seeks to overhaul the entire education system of the country by replacing the thirty four-year-old National Policy on Education (1986). In the domain of pre-University education, the new policy aims to transform the curricula structure from 10+2 to 5+3+3+4, mandates the Three Language Formula (TLF), reduces the syllabus to make board exams “easier” and gives thrust to vocational training and skill development. In the realm of higher education, it envisions a single regulator- the Higher Education Council India (HECI)- for Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) by merging UGC, AICTE and other regulatory bodies. The HECI is further divided into four verticals, namely the National Higher Education Regulatory Council (NHERC), National Accreditation Council (NAC), Higher Education Grants Council (HEGI) and General Education Council (GEC). 

    The policy introduces four-year undergraduate programmes with multiple exit options, along with proposing a national Academic Bank of Credit and a national entrance exam for all universities. It further allows higher education to be taught in regional languages. Additionally, it proposes the National Testing Agency (NTA) conduct a “high quality” common entrance test and a common specialized subject exam in sciences, humanities, language, arts, and vocational subjects, at least twice a year. It blurs the distinction between research-oriented and employment-oriented education, emphasizing a multidisciplinary approach to education. Additionally, it proposes facilitation to top global universities to set up campuses in India and to top Indian Universities to establish campuses abroad.

    The policy also touches upon the issue of Adult Education. It proposes strong and innovative government initiatives to achieve 100% adult literacy, educate about critical life skills (including financial literacy, digital literacy, commercial skills, health care and awareness etc.), impart vocational skills and provide basic education to adults. It also ensures providing the necessary infrastructure for adults to facilitate its implementation.  

    Why is it a problem? 

    Since its release, the policy has been opposed by a few states. Though other states have voiced their reservations, none have been as vocal and vehement as Tamil Nadu. 

    • The foremost reason pertains to the Three Language Formula. The policy states that out of the three languages that ought to be taught at the pre-University level, two must be Indian. This leaves the students from the southern states to learn Hindi, along with English and the regional language in their curriculum. The formula was brought forward in 1968 by the then Indira Gandhi government as recommended by Kothari Commission. All states adopted the policy except Tamil Nadu, which continued its two language policy.

    The Three Language Formula finds its explicit mention in Section 4.13 of the Draft policy. In order to promote multilingualism, the draft states that, “The three-language formula will continue to be implemented”. Moreover, a student is given the option to change one of the three languages only once- in Grade 6 or 7. Though the formula has been in continuance since the 1970s, an exclusive emphasis upon it raises eyebrows. The draft further falls short of assuring the states unwilling to implement the formula of any compulsion by the centre, instead offering “greater flexibility” in its implementation. 

    Learning Hindi has always been a controversial issue in Tamil Nadu. The state has seen numerous instances of violence and public protests against the imposition of Hindi. The state has also actively promoted Tamil learning in schools. In 2006, the state enacted Tamil Nadu Tamil Learning Act, making it compulsory for every school operating in the state to teach Tamil. The state government is also opposed to the establishment of Navodaya Schools by the centre in the state.

    • The draft also places an unprecedented emphasis on learning Sanskrit. Section 4.16 stresses the need for learning Sanskrit since most of the Indian other languages attribute “their origins and sources of vocabularies” to it. Section 4.17 emphasizes the importance of classical literature possessed by the language. It thus offers its teaching “at all levels of school and higher education”. Moreover, it promotes the teaching of the language through its classical literature in mathematics, philosophy, grammar, music, politics, medicine, architecture, metallurgy, drama, poetry etc.

    Laying such a huge emphasis upon an archaic language in schools and even HEIs at “all levels” would leave a student burdened with an unnecessary curriculum. Offering courses in Sanskrit to college students, for instance, in non-Hindi speaking states would decrease their grades. Worse still, in Central Universities- mostly dominated by Hindi speakers, such courses will make naked and even exacerbate the language barrier the non-Hindi speaking students face. Further, the postulate that most of the major Indian languages owe their “origins” to Sanskrit is not even remotely true. Additionally, the literature in Sanskrit can be discriminatory against varna, caste or group, especially in social sciences. 

    • However, the major concern relates to the federal structure of India. The policy proposes the establishment of the all-powerful HECI and its verticals. The NHERC, one of its verticals, reserves the power to regulate every facet of HEIs, including financial probity, good governance, and the full online and offline public self-disclosure of all finances, audits, procedures, infrastructure, faculty/staff, courses, and educational outcomes[Section 18.3]. It further envisions a “graded accreditation” system to be given by the NAC, that will “specify phased benchmarks for all HEIs to achieve set levels of quality, self-governance, and autonomy…to attain the highest level of accreditation over the next 15 years” [Section 18.4]. The GECI, another of its verticals, will frame “expected learning outcomes for higher education programmes” and mandate the identification of “specific skills that students must acquire during their academic programmes” [Section 18.6].

    Owing to its vague language, the draft lacks clarity on the extent of jurisdiction of HECI and its verticals. It reserves the power to regulate the faculty/staff, courses, educational outcomes etc., thus infringing upon the state’s rights on reservations and education. Moreover, the students are required to acquire “specific skills” and “learning outcomes” framed by the central government, making it difficult for them to cater to the needs of their respective states. Further, the vocabulary used, such as “good governance”, leaves room for significant manipulation in the future.

    • The policy veritably promotes the centralization of education at every level. For instance, it envisages a nation-wide “high-quality” common aptitude test for admission into the universities, as well as “specialized common subject exams in the sciences, humanities, languages, arts, and vocational subjects” [Section 4.42], which it assumes will reduce the burden on students. Moreover, an all-India test is to be conducted by NTA for admission into pre-service teacher preparation programmes of Teacher Education Institutions (TEIs) [Section 15.7], which it envisions to convert into multidisciplinary institutions [Section 15.4]. Moreover, it places an undue emphasis on centralized vocational training in all schools and HEIs which would be overseen by the National Committee for the Integration of Vocational Education (NCIVE) [Section 16.8]. In the field of academic research, the policy envisions the establishment of the National Research Foundation to provide funding for research [Section 17.9]. Further, it proposes to establish the National Research Foundation (NRF) which is meant to provide funding for research to the institutions, and “undertake major initiatives to seed and grow research at the state universities and other public institutions”[Section 17.9], centralizing disbursement of research-oriented funding. It is further empowered to ensure that the Research Scholars are “constantly made aware of the most urgent national research issues” to allow breakthroughs to be optimally brought into policy [Section 17.11(c)].

    Tamil Nadu’s objection to a country-wide entrance test is premised upon the recommendations of the M. Anandakrishnan committee. Constituted in 2006, it recommended the abolition of the Common Entrance Test (CET) in the state from the academic year 2007-08 (Srinivasan, 2016), due to the unaffordability of the high fees of coaching for the rural and underprivileged students. Furthermore, the NRF is empowered to fund the research on urgent “national” issues, thus again leaving the door ajar for manipulation of their jurisdiction, and depriving state-funded institutions of funding for research on regional issues.

    • The policy seizes the administrative autonomy from both public and private HEIs. It mandates every such institution to establish a Board of Governors (BoG) which would be empowered to govern the institution[Section 19.2], including the selection of leaders of the institution [Section 19.4]. Further, the policy subjugates the BoG to guidelines formulated by NHERC[Section 19.3]. Additionally, it makes it compulsory for every institution to formulate its own Institutional Development Plan [Section 19.5] to strategize its roadmap.

    In subjugating the administrative system of the colleges to a central body, the central government ignores the urban-rural divide and caste-based discrimination entrenched in them. Moreover, drafting the same guidelines for urban, rural, minority etc. institutions would, along with waning their autonomy, undermine the purpose they are meant to serve. 

    • The policy provides multiple exit and entry options to the students pursuing higher education[Section 11.9], along with the creation of an Academic Bank of Credits to digitally store credits earned by the student and different designs of Master’s programmes [Section 11.10].  

    The central government does not contemplate the unintended consequences of the above proposition, especially for the backward communities and female students. It leaves the students of the said groups with multiple exit options but few entry options. Multiple choices of exit will compel such students facing monetary or familial issues to quit their education in the middle. Further, it burdens a teenage student with critical life-changing decisions.  Moreover, the proposed system disallows a student to carry backlogs into the next year, bringing about the apprehension of exacerbation of the dropout rate, which currently stands at 12.6%.

    • Both the draft NHEQF and the draft policy suggest, in multiple instances, that all colleges either become multidisciplinary or merge with existing universities. However, both the documents do not provide any provision regarding how the same will be executed without any monetary assistance. This has raised concerns about many state government colleges becoming defunct due to a lack of finances to become multidisciplinary, thus depriving a large number of students of educational opportunities. 
    • The policy makes no mention of the Reservation System in educational institutions, both in admission and faculty recruitment, making it non-inclusive to all sections of the society. Further, it does not mention the drop-out rates among the backward communities, let alone ways to tackle them. The NEP policy-makers veritably fail to view education as a tool to uplift the poor and backward classes while formulating it.
    • The proposal also lacks a grievance redressal mechanism, either for the states or the institutions regarding any facet of the policy. The institutions and state governments are left with no choice but to follow the guidelines of the would-be central institutions. Institutions failing to comply with the guidelines are feared to become defunct. Moreover, the power of ‘light but tight’ regulation bestowed upon the central bodies also leaves the door ajar for manipulation of their jurisdiction. 

    Tamil Nadu’s response to NEP

    Since early on, Tamil Nadu’s policies have emphasized education as a modus operandi to uplift the backward castes. As early as 1919, certain legislations were in place to encourage and mandate local education authorities to establish schools at places that were accessible to everyone, thus broadening the social base of its educated bracket. The reasons for the Tamil Nadu government opposing NEP are manifold. 

    Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin has explicitly stated that the policy will not be implemented in the state. He has called it a policy “for elites” and, if implemented, education “will be confined and limited to a few sections”. The state government has even set up a committee to formulate its own State Education Policy in a bid to replace the NEP. Furthermore, the state plans to implement only some ‘good aspects’ of the central policy (Sathyanarayana, 2021). It claims that the policy negates the efforts of more than a hundred years of social justice aspirations that were carefully envisaged in Tamil Nadu. State Education Minister K. Ponmudi noted that mandating entrance exams for getting admissions to arts and science colleges would affect the students from rural areas.

    Similar concerns were raised by L. Jawahar Nesan, head of the All India Save Education Committee, while complaining that the proposed Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) could result in “students dropping out of higher educational institutions before completing their course”. “The proposed system aims at furthering vocational education and creation of a workforce pool”, he added (“Academics call for the withdrawal of draft”, 2022). The State Platform for Common School System- Tamil Nadu (SPCSS-TN) termed the framework “a crude form of diarchy”(Sathyanarayana, 2022). Regarding the mandatory entrance test akin to NEET, PB Prince Gajendra Babu, General Secretary of the body, said that the students don’t have sufficient time and their family circumstances do not permit them to undergo separate coaching for entrance exams(ibid). In September last year, the Coimbatore-based Aram Seiya Virumbu Trust filed a writ petition in Madras High Court challenging the constitutionality of Section 57 of the 42nd Amendment that brought education in the concurrent list as a response to the policy, whose implementation, the trust alleged, will lead to “autonomy of the states in education be completely taken away thereby striking at the very root of the federal structure”(Imranullah S., 2021).

    The issue of centralization of education has always been a hot potato in the state. Back in 2006, M. Karunanidhi’s government constituted a committee under the chairmanship of M. Anandakrishnan to recommend measures for the abolition of the Common Entrance Test (CET) in the state from the academic year 2007-08. On the recommendations of the committee, the state government terminated its practice of conducting CET for admission into technical and medical courses, making it easier for underprivileged students to pursue the said graduate courses (Rajasekaran, 2021). Other policy decisions taken by the state for similar causes include the 50% ‘in-service’ super speciality seats quota in government medical colleges which was recently upheld by the Supreme Court. Prior to NEET, the quota had provided opportunities to the lower strata of society to enter the colleges which in turn helped the state government in providing an uninterrupted supply of doctors in primary health centres (P.M., 2019). 

    Other States’ Response

    Among other states, West Bengal has most emphatically opposed the implementation of the policy. Within a month of its release, Partha Chatterjee, the state Education Minister, announced the government’s unwillingness to implement the policy in the state “any time soon”, due to its undermining of the federal structure and non-inclusion of Bengali in the list of classical languages(“No NEP 2020 in West Bengal”, 2020). He also said that no one in the state government was consulted for its formulation. Kerala has also protested against the policy in the report of the six-member committee, chaired by Professor Prabhat Patnaik. 

    Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia accused the central government of encouraging the privatisation of education and reducing its responsibility as a government to provide quality education to all, while questioning the need to make board exams easier. Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel termed it as centralization of education which goes against the federal structure of the country(Sharma, 2020). Rajasthan Education Minister Govind Datasra also criticized the draft for lack of clarity.

    Conclusion

    The policy possesses strong tendencies of centralization of education, contravening federalism as a basic structure of our constitution. It establishes bodies that are empowered to determine policies and curriculum for all educational institutions, including state institutions, with little or no role of the states in formulating them, turning them into mere implementing bodies. Moreover, it imposes teaching of Hindi and Sanskrit in all schools across the country with no consent of the states. The policy violates numerous Supreme Court rulings that have upheld federalism as a basic structure of the constitution. The central government must make significant changes to the draft policy to make it more reflective, just and fair to India’s diversity.

    Recommendations

    • The draft policy is an onslaught on federalism as a basic structure of our constitution. The concerned authorities, while acknowledging the competence of the states in educational planning and execution, and its role as a determinant of their development, must re-draft the policy to omit the provisions that dilute the federal structure.
    • The Three Language Formula must be waived off for the states unwilling to pursue it. Additionally, the students of the states that choose to implement the formula must be given the option to change any of the languages in secondary schooling.
    • In view of the large endemic socio-economic disparity in India, the states must be allowed to formulate their own processes of enrolling the students into higher education. Imposing a central exam on constituents of the backward community might disrupt the smooth process in which they have been uplifted from their backwardness in the last few decades.
    • The proposed provision of multiple exit options in higher education must be reformulated so as to prevent dropouts in the middle of the courses. The policy must also consider instating multiple options to clear backlogs to further reduce the number of dropouts.
    • The colleges must be given more autonomy in deciding their curriculum. To turn a vast number of government colleges into multidisciplinary ones might be expensive for the state governments, which could possibly result in these colleges being permanently closed.
    • The attempts to centralize education must be clamped down to address the grievances of various states. Moreover, the necessary central bodies proposed in the draft must be given adequate representation by all the states.
    • The policy must explicitly uphold the reservation system in educational institutions regarding admissions and jobs.
    • The draft lacks clarity on the extent of jurisdiction of the proposed central bodies. Hence, the government must elaborate on the roles of these institutions
    • The undue emphasis on vocational education must be dialled down. Instead, emphasis must be placed upon academic education and critical thinking.  

    References

    1. “Academics call for withdrawal of draft National Higher Education Qualification Framework”,(2022, March 9) The Hindu. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/academics-call-for-withdrawal-of-draft-national-higher-education-qualification-framework/article65207193.ece
    2. Imranullah S., Mohamed. (2021, September 14) “Case in Madras HC challenges constitutional amendment shifting education from state list to concurrent list” The Hindu. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/case-in-madras-hc-challenges-constitutional-amendment-shifting-education-from-state-list-to-concurrent-list/article36448046.ece
    3. “No NEP 2020 in West Bengal, it undermines role of states: Education minister”(2020, September 7) Livemint. https://www.livemint.com/politics/news/no-nep-2020-in-west-bengal-it-undermines-role-of-states-state-education-minister-11599477761391.html
    4. P.M., Yazhini.(2019, June 8) “Common Entrance Exams Like NEET Ignore India’s Gender and Social Realities”. The Wire. https://thewire.in/education/neet-tamil-nadu-caste-gender
    5. Rajasekaran, Ilangovan.(2021, May 29) “M. Anandakrishnan, an educationist who democratised technical education in Tamil Nadu, passes away”. Frontline. https://frontline.thehindu.com/dispatches/m-anandakrishnan-educationist-who-democratised-technical-education-in-tamil-nadu-passes-away/article34677215.ece
    6. Sathyanarayana, R.(2021, December 30) “Tamil Nadu to accept ‘good aspects’ of National Education Policy”. DT Next. https://www.dtnext.in/News/TopNews/2021/12/30135026/1336439/Tamil-Nadu-to-accept-good-aspects-of-National-Education-.vpf
    7. Sathyanarayana, R.(2022, February 22) “Experts flay draft higher education framework”. DT Next. https://www.dtnext.in/News/TopNews/2022/02/22022833/1354869/Experts-flay-draft-higher-education-framework.vpf
    8.  Sharma, Nidhi. (2020, August 18) “New Education Policy an attempt to centralise education: Opposition-ruled states” The Economic Times. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/new-education-policy-an-attempt-to-centralise-education-opposition-ruled-states/articleshow/77604704.cms?from=mdr
    9. Srinivasan, R.(2016). Reservation in Educational Institutions: Who Gains from Abolishing the Common Entrance Test (CET) in Tamil Nadu. The Hindu Centre. https://www.thehinducentre.com/incoming/article23697651.ece/BINARY/Policy%20Watch%20No_3.pdf

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