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How tech rebooted economics and platforms broke the invisible hand - 360 Paul McCarthy Published on May 23, 2022 Growing evidence and new research explain the evolution of economic diversity and the need to rethink monopolies in the age of technology. A cursory glance at the myriad apps and platforms that clutter our online lives would suggest rich competition. In reality, online diversity — now a reflection of offline competition — is in long-term decline. The online economy’s lack of diversity can be seen most clearly in technology itself where in most of the Western world Google dominates search unchallenged; Facebook reigns supreme in social media and Amazon rules in online retail. But it’s not limited to the technology space – recent research examining global competition across all industries over the last decade finds that across all industries a small number of companies (as represented by the domains they control) account for an ever increasing share of the total online attention.. The economic law of diminishing returns, relied on for centuries as a handbrake on monopolies arising organically in new industries, no longer applies in this context. The familiar pattern of a leading company or brand existing alongside challengers and niche brands (think Coke, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper) in a market oligopoly, has not been translated online. Competition regulators around the world are struggling to come to terms with this new economy, and what constitutes a monopoly within it. When a US Judge found the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust case against Facebook lacked evidence, it became clear how challenging it is for regulators to define what type of business platforms like Facebook are in, let alone measure and prove dominance or lack thereof in that domain. In the last century acquisitions, mergers and implosions were rife, but oligopolies where four or five major players carved up a market were common. This century, the digitisation of the economy removed much of the fundamental ‘friction’ in business and with it many of the natural barriers to monopoly. Digital technology adoption across all industries has unleashed a new set of economic forces including increasing returns, interoperability, network effects and switching costs, that together can be referred to as ‘Online Gravity’. Online software companies see the marginal cost of attracting additional customers go down, not up, as market share increases. In the business-to-business market, companies build services into their “stack” and an entire ecosystem based on interoperability grows around them. Multi-sided marketplaces such as Airbnb offer greater utility to both hosts and guests by tapping a larger network. And when staff become adept at using an enterprise software system such as SAP, no-one wants to relearn a rival system, nor the time cost that comes with it. These new rules of platform economics mean many sectors are now characterised by one very large and dominant leader and much smaller niche players. And so there’s a conundrum. Is technology a malevolent force contributing to the growth of monopolies or is it a benign wellspring of innovation and healthy competition? The answer is it’s both – depending on how you look at things. With its low barriers to entry, the frictionless online world is often thought of and portrayed as intensely competitive with a constant stream of innovation arising from an army of dorm-room entrepreneurs and increasingly patient investors willing to back them. And yes, that is true. But alongside sits platforms that are becoming the largest companies in history — many of whom dominate their corners of the world. Most platforms are not malevolent forces but they do have some unintended consequences: they work like pine trees whose needles fall in a wide arc around where they stand, preventing new shoots emerging in their space. And there is evidence that that arc around established companies worldwide is growing . EMBED START Image {id: "editor_4"} EMBED END Image {id: "editor_4"} Research published last year examining the global “infant survival rates” of newborn enterprises over the last decade found them to be in long-term decline. Links in social media as a measure of whether an enterprise was “alive” after its first appearance found that, while almost 40 percent of those born in 2006 were active five years on, only a little over 3 percent of those born in 2015 are active today. This is partly due to the power of tech giants to acquire or bundle features of early stage innovators into their platforms often at no cost. Microsoft famously made its web browser Internet Explorer the default for all pre-installed Windows PCs worldwide and incorporated web server software into its dominant operating system, spelling an early death for web pioneer Netscape. Many recent innovations in social media pioneered by SnapChat (ephemeral messaging); TikTok and before it Twitter’s Vine (short videos) have now been incorporated as new features into Instagram Stories and Instagram Reels. The regulation of online platforms and the companies that operate them present some special challenges for governments due to their scale and global nature. They are naturally born global, yet the business of government itself and its related functions — of promoting a level playing field for businesses, collecting tax and ensuring citizen privacy is protected — is rarely global. Moves are afoot on this front with the OECD coordinating a plan for new international taxation rules among 130 countries. US Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan has paved the way for a rethink of monopolies and the need to look beyond pricing and market share in her earlier work as an academic In Khan’s words: “The long-term interests of consumers include product quality, variety and innovation — factors best promoted through both a robust competitive process and open markets.”Understanding the future of competition in this new economy also requires making an important distinction between structural and functional competition. For example, Facebook claims many of its users also use other services such as YouTube and Twitter. But simply because they share users or even advertisers doesn’t necessarily mean they are in direct competition. Google and Facebook do compete for consumer advertising revenue but in the way Ferrari competes with say Tesla or Hyundai for a share of the broad automotive pie. Many Ferrari drivers also own other cars such as family sedans or SUVs by other companies but it doesn’t mean these companies compete in any meaningful way with Ferrari. They are structurally similar (all in the automotive industry, all with four wheels etc) but functionally totally different (offroad and family transport vs sports car). While there’s clear evidence that economic structural diversity is in long-term decline, there is an upside too — analysis shows clear, continued growth in functional diversity. Technology continues to support the emergence of new categories of applications (like ephemeral social messaging), services (online movies) and products (electric vehicles) and each one goes through a now predictable cycle of explosive growth, competition and dominance by a leading company. While it’s important to find ways of regulating today’s global technology platforms, it’s perhaps equally if not more important to promote innovation through the cycle of ongoing functional diversity: in the platforms as pine trees analogy, encouraging new species of trees to grow in new areas. To date most of the world’s largest global technology giants have emerged from the US or China. But with increasingly global venture capital investments, we’re now starting to see a new wave of global tech giants emerge from other centres such as London (Checkout.com), Stockholm (Klarna) and Sydney (Canva). Despite the rise of trade protectionism, the economics of online gravity are here to stay, so our best economic bet is to ensure more tech-enabled ecosystems flourish in a greater range of communities worldwide. National digital infrastructure is going to become more important to economic development and productivity. And governments and regulators will need to get better at measuring and promoting the benefits that flow from greater global economic diversity. Professor Paul X. McCarthy is a CEO, computational social science research leader and author.  His bestselling book Online Gravity explains how technology is rebooting economics worldwide. McCarthy is CEO and co-founder of League of Scholars, an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW Sydney and an Honorary Fellow at Western Sydney University. He declares no conflicts of interest in relation to this article. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “Platforms and power” sent at: 16/05/2022 10:46. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 23, 2022

How the Australian Open is acing its heat policy - 360 Grant Lynch, Ollie Jay Published on January 25, 2024 Cutting-edge research and practical decision-making is helping the Australian Open make a call when the weather gets too hot to handle. A blockbuster match at the Australian Open is going the distance. A palpable stillness blankets Rod Laver Arena as beads of sweat gather on the athletes’ skin, cascading to the floor ahead of yet another arduous point. Under the scorching sun, beneath a stifling heat, a universal question lingers — how hot is too hot to continue? This year, heat hasn’t been a major talking point: Novak Djokovic’s verbal spat with a spectator is about as hot as the tournament has been so far, with temperate conditions meaning that play has been largely uninterrupted. But a Grand Slam tennis tournament is just one example of the many major events held all over the world during the hottest months of the year, where the urgency to manage risk to help improve conditions for players, operational success and spectator welfare are becoming increasingly important. For spectators and organisers alike, a common strategy to try and help answer this question is to take out a phone — if it hasn’t already overheated — and check the temperature as provided by the nearest weather station. While tempting, this method doesn’t provide the complete picture. For starters, air temperature (measured in the shade) is only one of four factors to consider when trying to understand how weather impacts people. Heat added by the sun (radiant temperature), the movement of air around the individual (air velocity), and the amount of water vapour in the air (humidity) all also contribute to how someone responds to the heat. EMBED START Image {id: "editor_5"} EMBED END Image {id: "editor_5"} Then, at an individual level, outside of risk factors that could compromise someone’s ability to regulate their body temperature during heat stress (e.g. medications, illness), the intensity of the activity being performed and the thermal properties of the clothes people wear will also change how hot they ultimately become. Next is the nature of weather stations themselves. While vitally important, information drawn from stations sometimes situated kilometres away from the specific local geography of each event (e.g. stadium structures, playing surfaces) makes on-site measurements imperative to ensure a more precise understanding of the immediate environment. This level of accuracy, provided the right devices are used, allows for high-quality information to be collected and cited to help tailor decisions to the unique circumstances of the event. When striving to make informed decisions, acquiring a comprehensive set of information becomes essential. A full assessment of human heat balance involves considering all the factors listed above, but the next challenge lies in transforming this data into actionable insights. If Rafael Nadal wants to understand the risks of playing his match scheduled for 1pm that afternoon, presenting him with a list of environmental stressors and biophysical intricacies might only add confusion. To bridge this gap between data and decision-making, researchers employ climatic stress indices. These indices aim to distill the complex interplay of temperature, humidity and other factors into a single, comprehensible number. Notable examples of this include the Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT), Heat Index (HI), and Predicted Heat Strain (PHS) models, each offering varying levels of complexity and ease of use. EMBED START Image {id: "editor_10"} EMBED END Image {id: "editor_10"} This single number doesn’t entirely solve the issue. If there is no actionable step to take, the number doesn’t provide any additional insight beyond each composite part used to construct it. This number must be paired with clear, evidence-based strategies that can be employed to help mitigate risk and optimise performance. Some examples of these strategies include personalised hydration plans and frequent breaks, providing athletes the opportunity to cool down with interventions that have proven efficacy like electric fans or ice wrapped in wet towels. This problem is being tackled by researchers at The University of Sydney who have developed, and are now commercialising, EMU systems to help manage the safety and performance of athletes, fans and officials. By integrating specialist devices with an intuitive assessment of heat stress and clear, graded evidence-based strategies specific to the sport, organisers and athletes know what the risk is and what they can do about it. In pursuit of success on the courts of the Australian Open, the marriage of cutting-edge research and practical decision-making is essential. As the stakes rise and temperatures soar, the ability to navigate the fine line between athletic achievement and human well-being becomes a defining characteristic of successful sports management. When watching this summer, the blockbuster matches may be reaching their climax. But behind the scenes, the careful orchestration of climatic data, tournament logistics and athlete engagement ensures that the heat of the moment remains a spectacle rather than a threat. Grant Lynch is a research associate for the Heat and Health Research Incubator in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney. Ollie Jay is a professor in the Faculty of Medicine and Health, and director of the Heat and Health Research Incubator at the University of Sydney. Prof Jay has received funding from Tennis Australia to develop and implement a heat management system for the Australian Open since 2019. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on January 25, 2024

How the Bahrain judicial system fails its migrant workers - 360 Lucy Harry, Carolyn Hoyle, Jocelyn Hutton Published on September 5, 2022 From labour exploitation to torturous conditions in confinement, the rights of foreign workers facing the death penalty in Bahrain are often neglected. Between January 2016 and December 2021, 626 foreign nationals were sentenced to death or executed in Persian Gulf nations. The details of the cases behind this statistic give an insight into the exploitative work conditions of foreign workers, and the failures of the host countries and sending governments in safeguarding their rights. It is a tale of human rights abuses in the criminal justice system, from criminal investigation to conditions of incarceration. Bahrain, for example, is an Islamic constitutional monarchy that retains the death sentence by firing squad for offences such as murder, rape, and drug trafficking. The last known execution occurred in 2019 (when three people were executed). No new death sentences were recorded in 2021. But, foreign nationals are over-represented on death row, especially for murder, and when looking at the details of the cases, it appears the crimes are often motivated by financial hardship related to their poor employment conditions. Once sentenced, they are subjected to conditions that are tantamount to torture. The latest data on Bahrain, gathered by the University of Oxford’s Death Penalty Research Unit with the help of the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) and human rights NGO, Reprieve, revealed 19 cases of foreign men either sentenced to death or executed between January 2016 and December 2021. In 17 instances, they were convicted of homicide. Of these 19 cases, three defendants have since been acquitted and one executed, leaving 15 foreign nationals currently on death row. Comparing this statistic to the latest Amnesty International annual report, which shows there are at least 26 people under sentence of death in Bahrain, it can be surmised that foreign nationals are over-represented on death row; they constitute 45 percent of the Bahraini population and 58 percent of the death row population. The data shows that in murder cases, foreign nationals are particularly over-represented, making up 87 percent of those awaiting execution for murder, and Bahrainis only 13 percent. Bangladeshis in particular are sentenced to death for murder at a disproportionately higher rate. They represent 31 percent of the death row population and 47 percent of the murder cases but only 5 percent of the general population of Bahrain. The only foreign national to have been executed in Bahrain since 2011 was a Bangladeshi. Many death row inmates convicted of violent crimes lived in precarious circumstances, financially and about their migratory status. It placed them in situations of danger and desperation. Most were employed as migrant workers. More than 600,000 migrant workers live in Bahrain, the majority of whom are from South Asia. Human rights organisations have reported that they are subject to abuse and lack of human rights under the much criticised kafala guest-worker system. In particular, they lack protection against exploitative practices such as withholding salaries, charging recruitment fees, and confiscating passports. Significantly, in all of the 17 cases of foreign nationals convicted of homicide, both the perpetrator(s) and victims were foreign nationals, suggesting that migrant workers live somewhat separate lives from Bahrainis. And while there are no rich data on the circumstances surrounding all of the cases, 12 crimes were identified to be financially motivated, and/or the crime was related to their employment. For instance, two Bangladeshi workers were convicted of murdering a Bangladeshi national following a dispute over 50 Bahraini dinars (US$132). In 2019, a Filipino man was sentenced to death for killing a Pakistani national, who had confiscated his passport as collateral for a loan. Evidence from Amnesty International suggests there may be due process concerns in foreign nationals’ cases. In 2014, two men, Mohamed Ramadhan and Hussain Ali Moosa were sentenced to death for killing a police officer. However, the two defendants claim they were coerced into signing false confessions after being subjected to torture – including beatings, electrocution, and being suspended by the limbs for several days. Reprieve and BIRD documented that this torture continues once in detention. Those sentenced to death in Bahrain are held at Jau Prison, where there are widespread reports of abuse and torture, particularly regarding the use of solitary confinement. In November 2016, prison authorities raided the cells of those on death row, subjected the detainees to verbal and physical abuse, and confiscated their food, Shia religious items, air conditioning units, and bathroom fixtures. Death row inmates are also reportedly subject to random beatings and deprived of sleep, food, and water. Those under the death sentence have described their living conditions as “extremely cramped and unhygienic,” with some being held in their cells for more than 23 hours a day. Access to communication and visits can be revoked as a form of punishment; in 2019, at least 13 people under sentence of death took part in a hunger strike to protest these conditions. These human rights abuses are exacerbated by the lack of independent oversight mechanisms and complaint procedures. One mechanism that seeks to protect foreign nationals’ rights is the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations 1963. The convention states that when a foreign national is arrested, detained, or pending trial in another nation, the authorities of the host state must inform the individual without delay that they are entitled to have consular officials informed of their detention, and if the individual requests it, the consulate must be notified immediately. The consulate can act as a source of legal and pastoral support for the detainee and safeguard their rights while in detention. Bahrain acceded to this convention in 1992. The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty is calling for capital punishment to be recognised as “torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” under a 1984 Convention, which Bahrain has ratified. It is clear that in Bahrain, as elsewhere in the region, the criminal process and conditions of detention for those charged with capital offences often amount to torture and that foreign nationals are particularly affected by injustices within the system. Lucy Harry is a post-doctoral researcher at the Death Penalty Research Unit, University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the death penalty for drug trafficking in Southeast Asia, with a particular interest in gender-based perspectives. Carolyn Hoyle is a Professor of Criminology at the University of Oxford and Director of the Death Penalty Research Unit. Author of The Death Penalty: A Worldwide Perspective, she has published extensively on the death penalty around the world, and her recent empirical research focuses on Asia and Africa. Jocelyn Hutton is a Research Officer at the University of Oxford and member of the Death Penalty Research Unit. She is particularly interested in migrant rights, particularly migrant workers in the Middle East. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “Death penalty” sent at: 29/08/2022 09:36. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on September 5, 2022

How the global economy affects Australia - 360 Pascalis Raimondo, Sara McGaughey Published on June 26, 2023 Being open to international trade can help mitigate recession and maintain economic growth. Everyone remembers March 2020. COVID-19 was spreading and people were queueing in supermarkets for necessities. News about vaccine types and the race for developing them (and later, for purchasing them) dominated the breakfast hour. Government policy responses in most countries were overwhelmingly simple and blunt: close the borders and restrict people’s movements. One of the most extreme examples of such an isolationist policy was implemented in Australia and, in many respects, it worked. The vaccines were developed quickly enough by global pharmaceutical companies, Australia was able to obtain them and the borders opened again in January 2022. The same isolationist policy response does not work when an economy is about to get sick. When an economic recession hits, a successful policy response tends to be quite the opposite: opening up the economy even further and finding new trading partners and strengthening existing trade relationships becomes paramount. Australia is again an extreme and successful example for this. The period between mid-2007 and early 2009 when global financial markets and banking systems experienced extreme stress is known worldwide as the Great Recession. In Australia, however, it is referred to as the Global Financial Crisis. The reason is simple: Australia managed to be one of the few countries in the world that did not experience negative economic growth over two consecutive quarters. Developing commodity trade was one of several instrumental policy responses in Australia to the GFC, including significant and hotly-debated tax concessions for the export-intensive mining sector. This ability to avoid a recession partly through Australia’s improved terms of trade (i.e. export prices rose more than import prices) reinforced the long-standing perception of Australia as ‘The Lucky Country‘. That said, international trade and global markets can be a double-edged sword. The large benefits of trade in good times are typically followed by large losses if trade stops suddenly due to pandemics (e.g. COVID), wars (e.g. in Ukraine), sanctions (e.g. against Russia), diplomatic conflicts (e.g. with China), or threat of a government bond collapse (e.g. in the US). As Tasmanian lobster producers found out the hard way, securing new markets for their lobsters was not easy after the China-Australia diplomatic conflict in 2020 led to ongoing sanctions. Australian universities also had a similar wake-up call when they suddenly lost significant revenue with the loss of international students during COVID. These examples are a good reminder to not put all our eggs in one basket. Heavy reliance on a single market inevitably carries risk. Diversification across products and geographic markets is an important strategy to manage such risks. Operating within a global economy can also lead to a ‘recession contagion’, as the GFC showed for many countries. Such contagion occurs when the consequence of one major economy going into recession is transmitted to other countries through trade and foreign direct investment. That, however, should never make a country want to isolate itself from the global economy. Tasmanian lobster producers would never be better off by not selling to the world economy. Nor should Australian universities reject the opportunity to export their education services worldwide. Indeed, the global economy is the single most important reason for the prosperity that the world has experienced since World War Two, including poverty reduction. Currently, there seems to be a reversal going on, with many countries restricting their trade. This can have long-lasting negative effects. Australia’s experience shows how openness to international trade can be a valuable ingredient in the basket of policy responses to mitigate recession and maintain economic growth. Recessions may even have an upside: they force us to look carefully at current policies and create opportunities to bring about sometimes difficult but necessary structural reforms. Professor Pascalis Raimondo is Head, School of Economics and Finance at the Queensland University of Technology. His main research interests are in international economics, trade and public finance in particular. Professor Sara McGaughey is Professor of International Business at QUT Business School, in the School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations. Her research is at the intersection of international business strategy, organisation and entrepreneurship. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on June 26, 2023

How the Gulf oil and gas states will play their hand at COP27 - 360 Manal Shehabi Published on November 7, 2022 There is little room for grandiose ambitions at COP27. Instead, the 27th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, hosted this week by the African regional group in Egypt and dubbed the “African COP”, aims to meet COP26 commitments with practical solutions. In fact, the COP presidency’s website named it the “Climate Implementation Summit.” But what was always a colossal task of landing practical solutions has been made more difficult by the economic, geopolitical, and energy challenges of 2022 such as the weakened international ties following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and recent OPEC+ announcements. Among the practical solutions that are likely to be advanced, are those by wealthy oil and gas exporting economies in the Gulf, especially de facto leader Saudi Arabia, that centre around fossil fuels. COP27 may well be remembered as the conference that saw fossil fuels strongly shoulder their way back to the negotiating table. Prior to COP26, the reliance of Gulf states on oil and gas drove their resistance to the energy transition, which in turn won them the reputation of being climate obstructionists. Yet in an unexpected and unprecedented policy shift, these states joined pro-climate endeavours in 2021. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Pledges by Saudi Arabia and Bahrain by 2060 followed. These states, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have positioned themselves as leaders in providing clean energy globally. Not only do they have expertise in oil and gas, they also have a potential advantage in renewable energy, having some of the best solar and wind resources and, therefore, some of the cheapest renewable energy globally. Some have welcomed these announcements as major advancements of the climate agenda, especially as the Middle East is warming at twice the global average. Others viewed them as greenwashing. After all, Gulf economies are over-dependent on oil and gas exports, which contribute between 69-92 percent and 60-91 percent of their exports and government revenue, respectively. They are also among the world’s highest per capita carbon emitters and have been slow to adopt renewable energy. Renewable sources generate around 1 percent of electricity in the Gulf Cooperation Council states, except in the UAE where the share is 12 percent – compared with 20 percent in energy-poor Egypt, 26 percent in Jordan, and 37 percent in Morocco. But the reality is more complex than that. A key feature of these states’ net-zero emissions targets is their continued production and exploitation of oil and gas, but with a twist: it is coupled with decarbonisation technology. This feature is explicit in the position of Saudi Arabia, the region’s largest fossil fuel exporter and a G20 economy and leader of the bloc of Arab States. It is also a leader in the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) Group and the Group of 77 & China, all of which Egypt is a member. To meet its net-zero targets by 2060, Saudi Arabia launched the Saudi Green Initiative and Middle East Green Initiative to plant 10 billion and 40 billion trees in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, respectively. This announcement followed it joining the Net-Zero Producers Forum (along with Qatar, Norway and the US) in 2021. These initiatives support the ‘circular carbon economy’ framework, which was endorsed by the 2020 Saudi-presided G20 in Riyadh as the cornerstone of the country’s solution for decarbonisation, carbon reduction, and recycling. The framework encompasses the production of fossil fuels as well as new energy sources, most notably clean (blue or green) hydrogen, and heavy industries (hard-to-abate sectors). The framework intends to decarbonise all of these industries using carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technology. At COP27, we can expect to see Saudi Arabia and other wealthy oil and gas exporters of the Gulf region position themselves as climate leaders. Saudi Arabia will hold the Middle East Green Initiative Summit and the Saudi Green Initiative Forum in Egypt on the sidelines of COP27, and will invest US$30 million in Egypt. Saudi Arabia will showcase the Regional Voluntary Carbon Market (recently established by the Saudi Public Investment Fund), which auctioned the largest carbon credits to date (1.4 million tonnes) during the 6th edition of the Future Investment Initiative Summit in Riyadh (also dubbed “Davos in the Desert”) in October 2022. The Saudi message will focus on a central point: that fossil fuels have a critical position in the global energy market along with other energy sources, but that it is through CCUS technology and the circular carbon economy framework that future energy paths can be pro-climate. In addition, wealthy oil and gas countries are also likely to support holding advanced economies accountable to their broken promise of channeling US$100 billion in climate finance to developing economies for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Consistent with its assumed leadership position, expect to see Saudi Arabia announce other practical initiatives and solutions at COP27. This position of keeping fossil fuels at the centre of climate discussions is not unexpected from leading fossil fuel producers. Such a position is also common among other resource-dependent economies, including India, Norway, Australia and others. Beyond these states, the position is consistent with arguments of the least developed countries for which fossil fuels can offer an affordable solution to energy access, especially the 770 million people without access to electricity and the 2.5 billion people without access to clean cooking fuel. The position will also be supported by many developing economies (especially those in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia) that seek to develop their own oil, gas, hydrogen or critical minerals resources. Supporters of the ongoing need for fossil fuels will point to a similar argument adapted by Europe in its response to the energy crisis that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Phasing out fossil fuels has seemingly been abandoned as Europe favoured energy security over climate targets (for which Europe was accused of hypocrisy in Bonn in June during the lead-up talks to COP27). COP27 will thus set the stage for other fossil fuel exporters to attempt to steer climate negotiations. As the host of COP28, the UAE will naturally assume a similar leadership position. For that, it will refer to being the regional pioneer in establishing zero-carbon nuclear power, expanding renewable expansion and co-funding a Renewable Energy Fund that supports renewable energy projects in developing countries. It will also refer to being the host of the first Middle East and North Africa climate week in March 2022 and the first Gulf state to announce net-zero targets. As an advocate for technology and an aspirant to host the region’s innovation, decarbonisation technology will be central to the UAE position, but without abandoning fossil fuels. Whether Gulf oil and gas exporting economies will meet their ambitious renewable energy, net-zero, and hydrogen targets remains to be seen. And whether they will become global leaders in energy transitions which will contribute to putting the world on track to avert the worst climate breakdown also remains to be seen. Indeed, adherence to climate targets is urgent and requires phasing out fossil fuels all together. But the use of fossil fuels will offer energy access and continue to attract support – and increasingly so. So how can we then globally advance net-zero targets in this environment? For short-term visions, where fossil fuels will remain central to economies, targets must include plans, finance, and technology to reduce energy consumption and emissions. This can be through nature-based solutions, expandable renewable energy, and decarbonising the fossil fuel supply chain. Saudi Arabia’s circular carbon economy framework promises to provide this required short-term solution, but the necessary technology is not yet fully available. Therefore, ensuring the world achieves necessary decarbonisation will require technology development by technologically-advanced countries along with adoption across a wide range of industries. Achieving net-zero emissions will also require the adoption of internationally-agreed decarbonisation regulations and measures that can hold countries accountable to their targets and provide a level playing field to all. Solutions must also target the long-term aim of phasing out fossil fuels and expanding clean energy sources. A collaborative approach is crucial; encouraging all countries to contribute to mitigating climate change given their own resources and economic circumstances. This collaboration will not be possible without adhering to elements of climate justice and of just energy transition. This is important as the countries most impacted by climate change have historically not contributed to the emissions that caused it. It is these countries that also aspire to access energy and/or develop their fossil fuel industries to achieve economic growth and development. Without such a collaborative, net-positive sum approach, countries will have neither incentives to comply nor accountability if they do not, and both climate and energy targets will remain merely ink on paper. Manal Shehabi is visiting academic at St Antony’s College of the University of Oxford, and Founding Director of SHEER Research & Advisory. Her work focuses on economic diversification, energy transition, sustainability and policy in resource economies, with a focus on the Middle East. She was a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special report on the ocean and cryosphere, and an expert to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on November 7, 2022

How the hottest year unfolded - 360 James Goldie, Chris Bartlett Published on December 29, 2023 The signs 2023 would be a record breaker were there from the start. 360info has the statistics. 2023 was the hottest year on record. As 360info analysis of European data found in early December, the first 11 months of 2023 were so hot that December would have had to break all sorts of cold weather records for 2023 to avoid being the hottest year ever. December would have needed to be nearly 0.25°C colder than any recorded in the last 80 years in order for 2023’s average temperature to avoid breaking the current record from 2016. That was always unlikely, and the scientists at Copernicus made the call at the start of December, declaring 2023 the hottest year on record. The declaration follows the World Meteorological Organization, which made the same call just days earlier, saying 2023 “shattered climate records, accompanied by extreme weather which has left a trail of devastation and despair”. The signs 2023 would be a record-breaker were there from the start. Wind back 11 months to when Europe had its warmest January on record, the eastern United States’s winter was among its warmest ever and the sea ice at each pole was at record lows for the start of the year. Things really began to heat up in May and June, which was the warmest June on record since scientists began keeping track in the 19th century. By the July, in the midst of the northern hemisphere summer, heat records were falling around the world. August was the hottest on record and so was September. Heat is the silent killer of thousands each year and is only going to get worse. Research has demonstrated that a ‘wet-bulb’ temperature of 35 degrees Celsius or higher would make it impossible for humans to exhaust metabolic heat, due to our fixed core body temperature. One story that dominated climate headlines in 2023 was El Nino. Would there be one or would there not? After three consecutive La Ninas and, as the northern hemisphere sweltered for the second year in record temperatures, in early July the World Meteorological Organization declared an El Niño was underway, increasing the likelihood of hotter temperatures in many parts of the world. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology followed suit in September. El Niño and La Niña events are likely to get stronger over the next few decades before possibly weakening towards the end of the century, new research predicts. EMBED START Image {id: "editor_15"} EMBED END Image {id: "editor_15"} It was not only on land that things heated up. The ocean has too. Marine heatwaves have become more prevalent and widespread over the past two decades and in 2023 records were broken in oceans around the world, which could have devastating consequences for marine life. The effects of marine heatwaves can be significant, impacting marine ecosystems and coastal communities that rely on the oceans for sustenance and livelihoods. Apart from resulting in the loss and/or the degradation of ecosystem services, the most significant repercussions of marine heatwaves are in marine organisms. These include unprecedented mass deaths of marine species, seabirds, kelp forests, seagrass and other coastal vegetation. With heat record being broken, solutions are urgent. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2022 report, Mitigation of Climate Change, makes it clear that no one technology can reduce humanity’s carbon emissions enough to get to net zero. But action is needed. And quickly. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. This article has been republished for Climate Outlook 2024 package. It was first published on 11 December, 2023.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on December 29, 2023

How the Houthis have threatened the global shipping order - 360 Reece Hooker Published on March 13, 2024 Houthi attacks have put the global supply chain at risk. Here’s how the world economy is responding. The deaths of three seafarers on a merchant ship in the Gulf of Aden marks the first fatalities since the Houthis began attacking trading corridors in and around the Red Sea in November. The Yemen-based Houthi rebels joined the fray in support of Hamas as it contends with Israel’s all-out assault on Palestine. The response from outside has been fast and lethal. Militaries from all over have descended on the region to defend the trade corridor. The United States and United Kingdom are leading airstrikes aimed at disrupting and weakening the Houthis. India has at least a dozen warships in the region, the European Union is offering a fleet while navies from Singapore and Sri Lanka are joining the fight to defend trade. EMBED START Image {id: "editor_7"} EMBED END Image {id: "editor_7"} So far, the disruptions have not plunged the world into economic turmoil. Instead, shipping companies are using alternate routes and managed to find ways to limit price rises to moderate levels, relative to what they could have been. 360info has consulted the experts to explain what happens next and what the shipping industry can do to better prepare for a shifting geopolitical climate.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on March 13, 2024

How the Indian Constitution advances the Hindu state - 360 Suryapratim Roy, Rahul Sambaraju Published on August 30, 2023 The Indian Constitution has supported the movement towards a Hindu state by accommodating communal nationalism. A cursory glance at recent news reports suggests India is a very different place today than it was a decade ago. There is rampant and extreme violence against those who identify as Muslim, dissenters irrespective of their religion, or who do not sing the national anthem in public. Vigilantes inflict violence in the name of protecting the cow. Student and faculty are arrested for opinions and scholarship deemed ‘anti-national’. Statements made on social media that criticise the government lead to dismissal from the workplace. Permits for overseas funds for NGOs are taken away, think tanks become targets of investigative agencies, and passports are withheld. This may sound like a textbook authoritarian theocracy, in which the rule of law, democracy and secularism have been swept aside. Or – given the prevalence of street violence and state-sanctioned vigilantism – perhaps a more precise label would be populist authoritarian theocracy. If this were the case, then the Indian story would be similar to the rise of authoritarian governments across the world. In India, however, these developments have not been brought about by an erosion of formal legal institutions and a disregard for the Constitution, but rather in many ways facilitated by them. India’s identity has been shaped by ethno-religious nationalism and aided by ‘constitutional accommodation’ – the inclusion of elements in the text which can be mobilised to create division. Animating ethno-religious nationalism within the scope of the Indian Constitution is what has led to the erosion of democratic values. A key component in this process can be found in the policy of Indian citizenship. While some leading constitutional law scholars hold that the Indian Constition is dying, it is very much alive – but it has been appropriated for political ends, in part through constitutional accommodation. This accommodation of ethno-religious nationalist elements offers legitimacy to the politics of the current government and allows for the construction of a Hindu state that can exist in perpetuity. Two primary elements have facilitated this situation. The first is a ‘notwithstanding’ clause on citizenship inserted into the constitution to allow the legislature to deal with thorny questions of citizenship at the time of the Partition of India in 1947. While discussions in the Constituent Assembly Debates (CAD) were ongoing, the Indian Independence Act 1947 resulted in the dissolution of the British empire and divided the Union into two separate dominions – India and Pakistan, separated by the Radcliffe Line. Partition was characterised by raging communal violence. The death toll was more than a million people. There were countless rapes, loss of property, mutilation and disease. After Partition, the tone and substance of the CAD changed. One area where this change was noticeable was on the question of citizenship. Prior to Partition, citizenship was accepted on jus soli (citizenship by birth) terms, but the discussion increasingly featured an ethnicity-based idea of jus sanguinis citizenship, where one has to prove lineage. While the text adopted included a citizenship by birth clause and some Partition-specific clauses, there was also an inclusion of a ‘notwithstanding’ clause in Article 11 of the Constitution that deferred questions of citizenship to be settled by ordinary law. This meant that Indian citizenship effectively became a legislative rather than constitutional question. As one scholar puts it, “What does the Constitution say about citizenship? The answer: nothing”. The absence of constitutional safeguards allowed for the Citizenship Amendment Act, National Register of Citizens, and citizens who needed to prove themselves. Such deferral could be explained by the belief of the liberal drafters of the Constitution such as Bhimrao Ambedkar that the Partition was provisional (the provisions on citizenship were decided ‘ad hoc for the time being‘), or there was simply too much faith in subsequent governments by the Indian National Congress. Thus, the process of reaching a consensus while placating ethno-religious nationalists required ‘avoidance of clear decisions’, and using ‘ambivalent, vague legal language’. In 1971, with the secession of East Pakistan from Pakistan and the formation of Bangladesh, new fears were politically inflamed in the state of Assam on the dilution of an ethnic and linguistic majority. The solution was the National Register of Citizens (NRC), and the interpretation given by courts drawing on the Foreigners Act 1946 where citizens needed to prove themselves, creating the category of the ‘doubtful voter‘. The deferral of citizenship to ordinary law without constitutional guidance allowed for the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The CAA, passed by Parliament in December 2019, means that ‘illegal migrants’ of Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi or Christian faith from Afghanistan, Pakistan or Bangladesh who escaped persecution and arrived in India before 2014 can be fast-tracked to citizenship. But not if they are Muslim. Thus, the notwithstanding clause that was constitutionally accommodated allowed for two key legislative acts on citizenship: the NRC and revival of colonial legislation on the foreigner who needs to prove their citizenship, and the CAA that allows for privileged access of Hindus. In addition to citizenship, the other significant instance of constitutional accommodation is the textual presence of ethno-religious nationalism through the prohibition against cow slaughter in the Directive Principles of State Policy. This provision was lobbied for by the All-India Hindu Mahasabha and supported by the heavily funded Anti-Cow Slaughter League during the drafting of the Constitution. Unlike fundamental rights, the Directive Principles are unenforceable in courts. However, as the Constitution requires states to have regard to these principles in law-making, they have the potential to acquire potency during elections. The provision against cow slaughter was interpreted as a beef ban, and states such as Haryana, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh experienced mass agitation. One scholar observes that “embedding cow protection in the Constitution represented the first substantial victory of the nascent Hindu right”. The prevalence of the Partition, the seepage of colonial legislation into ordinary law via a notwithstanding clause on citizenship and the potency of the Directive Principles are all but ignored in current leading accounts of Indian constitutionalism. Such accounts present a benign view of the past when the Constitution was drafted, which has been diluted in an aberrant violent present. In contrast, these factors created a context for the CAA and NRC to be put in place, along with its attendant discourse on citizens and non-citizen others. The constitutional accommodation and mobilisation of communal nationalism in constructing a Hindu state challenges the received wisdom that India’s secular constitution can be contrasted against Pakistan’s religious constitution. Even the Supreme Court has interpreted secularism as rooted in Hindu scriptures that exemplify an Indic way of life. This explains why there is state interference with school curricula, such as removal of content on the Partition. Rather than denying history, in India there is the rewriting and glorification of an Indic history, a history of the Hindu state. Dr Suryapratim Roy is Assistant Professor, School of Law, Trinity College Dublin. He leads a seminar on Emergency Law, and writes on climate law, citizenship, and Indian constitutionalism. Dr Rahul Sambaraju is a Lecturer in Qualitative Social Psychology at The University of Edinburgh, UK. He uses discursive methods to examine nationalism,  race and racism, and migration and refuge-seeking. Editors Note: In the story “Regressive laws” sent at: 27/08/2023 18:00. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on August 30, 2023

How the Indo-Pacific can beat the SDG cash crunch - 360 Naoko Ishii Published on September 18, 2023 The Indo-Pacific has much to lose as global events hinder international cooperation on sustainable development, but it also shows promising examples of success. A handful of initiatives in the Indo-Pacific region show what can be achieved through international partnerships, even while fallout from global events hinders cooperation on development and climate action. Global cooperation is the central theme of Sustainable Development Goal 17, but also the key to success across the other 16 goals. The past year has shown why that success is so critical. This year has seen the hottest summer on record, with average global temperatures projected to continue to rise, and more extreme weather conditions, including raging wildfires across the world. It is clear that the impacts of climate change have reached a breaking point. These signs only further confirm what scientists have long warned us — that we have already passed several of the Earth’s tipping points. At the midpoint of the 2030 Agenda, we are also far off track on achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and fulfilling the commitments agreed by member states for the Paris Agreement in 2015. These challenges are particularly acute in many countries in the Indo-Pacific region and at the current rate, the region is on track to miss the 2030 SDG target by several decades. The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and climate change and related natural disasters have resulted in a ‘polycrisis’ across the region, placing enormous pressure on government revenue and increasing the need for large stimulus spending. This has resulted in elevated debt levels and inflation in many Asia-Pacific countries and rising inequalities. In May 2022, Sri Lanka’s government was forced to default on its debt for the first time and other countries in the region, such as the Maldives, Papua New Guinea and Tonga, are facing a high risk of debt distress. The SDG financing gap, which globally is estimated at USD$4 trillion, has also widened significantly in many developing countries in the region. Indonesia, for example, saw a significant increase in the projected funding gap from $1.1 trillion (up to 2030) before the pandemic to $4.7 trillion in 2021. Addressing these challenges by 2030 and beyond will require coordinated multi-stakeholder regional partnerships and cooperation to mobilise financing and human resources. Sustainable Development Goal 17 cuts across all the goals and is foundational for achieving all of them. It includes advancing multi-stakeholder and public-private partnerships, mobilising financial resources for developing countries, assisting countries in debt sustainability, increasing exports from developing countries, and deepening regional and international cooperation and capacity-building. Achieving the goal is particularly critical for the Indo-Pacific region, where the economies of India and China are expected to account for nearly 75 percent of the world’s GDP growth this year. Their growth will have significant negative international spillover effects over the rest of East and Southeast Asia, which hold an enormous amount of natural capital through trade. Negative spillover effects are economic externalities passed across countries, such as environmental degradation, typically seen in developing countries when high-consumption, richer countries utilise their resources. The Indo-Pacific region is home to more than 60 percent of the world’s population, and efforts towards decarbonisation and conservation of the region’s vast forests and natural ecosystems — which transcend national borders — cannot be made by individual countries in isolation. The intense geopolitical competition in the region has hampered climate cooperation between many of the countries. For instance, China, Japan, and South Korea — which together account for more than a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions — have each declared separate carbon-neutral goals. Securing adequate climate financing also remains problematic. Financing large-scale regional green energy projects is often hampered by increased foreign exchange risks that limit local financial institutions’ capacity to provide long-term loans. Sovereign guarantees essential to removing financial risk from large-scale projects are more difficult to obtain due to sovereign debt risks in the region. Additionally, poorer countries in the region, particularly Small Island Developing States, are often unable to borrow levels of capital sufficient to meet their long-term sustainable development needs, and they face high borrowing costs, short maturities on debts, and poor credit ratings. However, recent initiatives at the regional, national, and subnational levels in support of goal 17 that improve climate cooperation and financing across countries show what’s possible in the region. In 2020, stakeholders endorsed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation, which includes the ASEAN Power Grid to help produce and trade clean, cheap energy across the region. Later that year, 15 countries, including members of ASEAN and five regional partners, signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, to promote trade in the region, resulting in arguably the world’s largest free trade treaty. The Belt and Road Initiative, an outbound infrastructure and investment initiative led by China, also has significant potential to promote global and regional cooperation on sustainable development, with more than 150 countries involved. Yet, it faces debt and environmental sustainability challenges, and its success depends largely on deep policy reforms. Australia’s low emission technology partnerships with India, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea, established as part of its efforts towards decarbonisation, have also shown promise. At the national level, there are promising public-private partnerships to increase financing for Sustainable Development Goals in the region. This has included the establishment of the SDG Indonesia One: Green Finance Facility, in partnership with the Asian Development Bank and Indonesia’s Ministry of Finance. It is the first green finance facility in Southeast Asia and aims to address the lack of a large-scale pipeline of bankable green infrastructure projects in the country. The initiative has the potential to kickstart more than $1 billion in green projects with opportunities for replication in other Indo-Pacific countries. Elsewhere, Singapore’s Ministry of Finance and the country’s Central Bank — the Monetary Authority of Singapore — have formed a network with seven other central banks worldwide to promote best practices and sharing in green finance with other countries. Singapore’s central bank and government have also established a ‘Green Bond Grant’ scheme to promote and ensure the issue of green bonds in Singapore. These innovative financing partnerships and instruments are important for ensuring that financing solutions address both country and region-specific needs and vulnerabilities. Improved partnerships and cooperation within the region between the public and private sectors can also further attract the capital and political support needed to fund critical sustainable development projects. Countries could also take a collective approach to discussing solutions to broader international spillover impacts while acknowledging the private sector’s role in curbing spillovers. This can be a practical way to start valuing natural capital assets like air, water, soil, and energy while also making the global supply chain more resilient. The Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures‘ framework offers potential for companies and financial institutions to integrate natural capital into their decision-making and risk management. Despite the challenges facing the Indo-Pacific region, with integrated regional cooperation and increased financing, countries can accelerate the move to a decarbonised world and towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Naoko Ishii is the Executive Vice President and the inaugural Director of the Center for Global Commons at the University of Tokyo. This article is part of a special report on the ‘State of the SDGs’, produced in partnership with the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on September 18, 2023

How the pandemic set back drug safety - 360 C. Michael White Published on July 27, 2022 The best form of inspection is an unannounced one, but the pandemic changed the game for regulators. They’ll need to work together to protect consumers. Manipulating data, destroying documents, altering staff training records, retesting samples and only recording those that pass – drug companies have been caught doing all these things. The only thing stopping them: the element of surprise in the hands of strong regulators. The regulators may still be vigilant, but the pandemic put the brakes on unannounced inspections. Restoring them could save lives. When prescription drug manufacturing largely migrated to China and India in the 1990s and early 2020s, major regulatory agencies were unprepared for the shift. Instead of inspections, they mostly relied on the manufacturers’ honour system. Even though 54 percent of finished products and 74 percent of active ingredients were manufactured outside the United States in 2010, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducted only 440 inspections of offshore factores, compared with  1148 inspections of US factories.. Unannounced inspections continued in the US, but overseas manufacturers were given notice, allowing them time to clean house or alter documents. Regulators worried about international relations and logistical issues such as lining up translators. The results were less than ideal. It took a whistleblower to alert the FDA that Ranbaxy Laboratories, one of the largest generic-medicine manufacturers in the world, was allegedly falsifying drug quality data and manufacturing drugs it knew had impurities and would not maintain their expected shelf life. In 2013, with 1600 documented issues, Ranbaxy pled guilty and paid a US$500-million penalty to the US government to resolve false-claims allegations, good-manufacturing-practice violations and making false statements to the FDA. This was nearly a decade after the World Health Organization withdrew three Ranbaxy antiretrovirals due to the appearance of fraudulent data in 2004.The FDA stepped up its oversight in 2007, and by 2019  annual foreign manufacturing inspections were up to 966, shrinking the number of plants never inspected to 16 percent. But drug manufacturing quality issues persist. Millions of pills or vials of injectable medication have been recalled because of impurities or contaminants, or issues with product dissolution. Cancer-causing nitrosamines have been found in some commonly used blood pressure (valsartan, losartan, irbesartan), blood-sugar reducer (metformin), acid reducer (ranitidine, nizatidine), smoking cessation (varenicline) and muscle spasm (orphenadrine citrate) products in the US. They get into the products when manufacturers use contaminated solvents and catalysts (agents that drive the chemical reactions needed to produce active ingredients). European and FDA rules call for manufacturers of active ingredients to test for nitrosamines and for manufacturers using these active ingredients to create final products to test them as well. But there can still be a disconnect between the rules and how well the facilities follow them. One of the major producers of the nitrosamine-contaminated active ingredients valsartan and losartan was Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceuticals, a company with a history of quality issues. When the FDA inspected the company in 2017, it found the manufacturer had not disclosed that drug batches had failed to meet US quality standards and instead erroneously recorded passing grades. The pandemic all but shut down inspections of foreign manufacturers, with only three FDA overseas inspections from March 2020 to the end of the year. Both the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the FDA have piloted remote inspections to continue providing oversight. In April 2022 the FDA was set to restart more routine foreign inspections, but both the EMA and FDA are looking to retain aspects of their remote inspection process.The EMA is clear that these remote inspections are not a sufficient substitute for in-person inspections. For the past several years the major regulatory agencies have been collaborating, so that if one inspects a facility, the results are shared and redundancy is reduced. Meanwhile, FDA laboratory analysis on active ingredients and finished products has occurred at a low level from 2013 and continues to this day (but with no disclosure of findings since 2017). In 2013, just 55 products were analysed for cause (customer or health-professional complaints or adverse events) and 12 were randomly assessed. In 2015 and 2017, the number of products analysed for cause fell to 15 and eight, respectively, while the number randomly sampled increased to 40 and 55. Much progress has been made from the 1990s to the present in terms of the number of inspections of manufacturing plants in India and China, remote inspections, regulatory cooperation across countries, and the initiation of limited laboratory testing of the products themselves. Many facilities had to be taken offline and revamped to meet quality standards and other companies voluntarily took their facilities offline to pre-emptively revamp them. But the COVID-19 pandemic has set regulators back in terms of in-person inspections, they need more unannounced inspections, and they need more inspectors who can speak the local language so they are not beholden to the companies to provide them. Greater use of laboratory verification of product quality would also boost the incentive for manufacturers to adhere to quality standards. Dr C. Michael White is Distinguished Professor and Chair of Pharmacy Practice at the University of Connecticut. He has written more than 470 published research articles assessing the safety and effectiveness of prescription and over-the-counter drugs, substances of abuse, and dietary supplements, including articles in JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine and The Lancet. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on July 27, 2022

How the Rohingya mobilised digital solidarity - 360 Suruchi Mazumdar Published on March 27, 2024 Rohingya social media activists not only harbour creative ambitions but are also using digital platforms for the community’s empowerment. In January this year, a raging fire spread through crammed Rohingya refugee settlements at Kutupalong in Bangladesh’s coastal district of Cox’s Bazar, destroying shelters and displacing thousands. An army of independent Rohingya digital content creators, who lived in the camps, took it upon themselves to catch the global attention by making short videos of the damage and arson. They were then circulated across multiple platforms. S, a popular digital content creator from the Kutupalong camp with more than 10K followers on his public page on Facebook, for instance, made several posts and videos on the incident. One post documented how the victims not only lost their shelters but also their meagre savings as the fire gutted 50,000 Bangladeshi Taka (about USD$456) among other belongings. The Rohingya are an exiled ethnic minority Muslim population from Myanmar that faced discrimination for decades and was made stateless through changes in citizenship laws in the home country. In 2017, the community was subject to a genocide and was displaced within and outside the national borders. The largest exiled groups found refuge in Kutupalong and Nayapara refugee camps in the Cox’s Bazar region of Bangladesh. Some were relocated to Bhasan Char, an island in the Bay of Bengal, a few years later. India, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia and Saudi Arabia are some of the other countries where the diaspora remains scattered. Over the past decade, and especially since the pandemic, the online footprint of the Rohingya diaspora grew. The genocide and mass exodus of 2017 put their plight in global spotlight, as a section of the diaspora actively drew attention to their marginalisation. Such developments marked a departure from the past, as the Rohingya, unlike other exiled  groups, remained dispersed across different countries and failed to mobilise via digital networks. Some of the exiled community members lived in relatively better conditions in the United States and other parts of the global North. Most, however,  remain restricted to remote borderlands, informal settlements, and isolated refugee camps with limited digital infrastructure in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, and other parts of the global South. Despite this,  the digital participation of the exiled population has been on the rise. Malaysia, for instance, has more than 100,000 Rohingya who are registered with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) although there is no system to process applications for asylum seekers. Many refugees live as undocumented migrants and are often engaged in precarious, exploitative, low-paid jobs. Despite such challenges, the Malaysian activists remain at the forefront in digital infrastructure development and digital rights campaigns and employed blockchain and Web 3.0 platforms. A Malaysia-based non-profit social enterprise called Rohingya Project, composed of stateless Rohingya and founded by Malaysia-based Rohingya activist Muhammad Noor, attempted to inscribe aspects of Rohingya individuals — biometric data, genealogy information, and records of community participation — on a digital blockchain ledger. It mimicked the national census and circumvented state rejection. In Bangladesh, the Rohingya population is denied the right to work and formal education and the freedom of movement. A pilot study conducted by this writer among digital content creators in Bangladesh’s Rohingya refugee camps revealed that Facebook, along with YouTube, remained the most popular platform. Young people also preferred TikTok, although the Chinese app faced intermittent bans in Bangladesh. In contrast, Twitter/ X remained popular for activist discourses. Thanks to the growing digital connectivity across large parts of the global South, “native social media entrepreneurs” — short video producers, vloggers, and stand-up comedians — are making widespread use of social media platforms for both advocacy and for their calling in audio-visual industries. Notwithstanding the economic precarity, digital platforms afforded content creators the promise of social and cultural empowerment, the hope of success in screen industries, and possibly the bettering of living conditions. The network of independent Rohingya digital content creators in Bangladesh’s refugee camps reached out to the  public with serious messages of hardships and the trials of refugee life as well as comedic videos and rap music. Many also nurtured creative aspirations and the dreams of becoming an actor, rapper or filmmaker. Creative practices doubled as the tool to inspire and boost the self-esteem of a community that coped with mental health crises and a demoralised sense of the self as genocide survivors. Kuala Lumpur-based Noor, who founded an online/satellite channel called Rohingya Vision and a digital training network called R-Academy, among other activist projects, in an interview expressed his commitment to the use of digital networks to encourage the community’s socio-economic empowerment. Research also shows that “family-making” practices remained pertinent as community members established connected presence through the Internet with not only their biological family but the larger community. Diasporic groups in Australia, who enjoy better socio-economic conditions, often use digital platforms to care for/send or raise money for the family that they left behind in Bangladesh’s camps. By narrating Rohingya folktales through animation and visual storytelling, digital content creators in Kutupalong refugee camp evoked the memory of and reclaimed the motherland that they left behind. Myanmar remained the homeland they wished to return to. Non-governmental organisations and international humanitarian agencies, which remain active in Bangladesh’s refugee camps, advocated for access to information especially during the pandemic. Digital rights and access to information could go a long way in the fulfilment of Rohingya digital content creators’ creative aspirations. Suruchi Mazumdar is Associate Professor at Jindal School of Journalism and Communication, O.P. Jindal Global University. This article is part of a Special Report on the Rohingya refugees produced in collaboration with the Calcutta Research Group and the Asian Broadcasting Union. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on March 27, 2024

Video: How the Ukraine war is being fought on TikTok - 360 Lachlan Guselli Published on June 28, 2023 Olga Boichak from The University of Sydney tells 360info how the war in Ukraine is being fought on TikTok Conflict being documented on social media is not a new phenomenon, however, the war in Ukraine is redefining the importance platforms such as TikTok play in shaping a global narrative. Olga Boichak from the University of Sydney tells 360info that the surge in demand for content became known as participatory war, which created fertile ground for various kinds of mis and disinformation. EMBED START Audio {id: "editor_1"} EMBED END Audio {id: "editor_1"} “Russia’s war against Ukraine has been very prominently represented on social media. It has generated a massive amount of user involvement, something that we refer to as participatory war. That created fertile ground for various kinds of mis and disinformation, around the war.” “So many platforms. Twitter has been very prominent in kind of representing this real-life stream of events, but so has TikTok. And I guess that was a surprise by many, especially those who didn’t take TikTok seriously in the beginning.” “Right now. It’s interesting because there is in fact different TikToks, with the “splinter net”. Since Russia had decided to censor Western platforms, TikTok has come up with a solution where they would effectively censor the Western … basically cut off Russian users from the rest of the world while still allow them to use TikTok.” “And so what ended up emerging is this Russian TikTok where which is almost exclusively in the Russian language, and as a result, it’s much more radicalised than, say, the TikTok that we’re all part of that we can think of. There was also a very interesting social phenomenon, and that’s the rise of this political micro influencer where these are strategic communicative actors that propagate certain beliefs and ideas on behalf of states and some even non-state entities.” “And so in the events such as wars, it becomes really important. And there have been a lot of countries that decided to sanction Russian media after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “These political micro-influencers have become the key communicators of these strategic narratives on behalf of the Russian state. And this is something that’s very hard to regulate. But when there are attempts to regulate those spaces, it is really important where that user base shifts to and when, for example, when different channels get sanctioned on YouTube, we can see that user base moving to some more kind of clandestine and obscure platforms, which further which may further radicalise them.” “There really seems to be a lot of overlap between conspiratorial thinking and COVID denialism and support for Russia and I think it all comes down to the faith in institutions to trust in institutions. And that is one key thing that would explain why the same person, what could be an anti-vaccine advocate and also to be a supporter of Russia, because if we do not have the trust in our government and our media organisations, in our academia, right, and science. “This absence, this lack of trust in public institutions is increasingly deteriorating. The social fabric, it’s leading to the emergence of these extremist positions.” Dr Olga Boichak is a lecturer in Digital Cultures and Director of the Computational Social Science Lab at the University of Sydney. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “The TikTok test” sent at: 26/06/2023 10:25. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on June 28, 2023

How the US could easily avoid default - 360 Steven Pressman Published on May 17, 2023 As the US hits its $31 trillion debt ceiling, there’s a danger it could default. Yet the solution to avoiding the debt ceiling is surprisingly simple. The US government is close to running out of cash. It hasn’t been able to borrow any new money since January, when it reached its debt ceiling of $31 trillion. If the government defaults on its debts, there are fears it could crash the global economy. Intense negotiations between Democrat President Joe Biden and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to avoid this scenario are ongoing. A positive result is not guaranteed. And the window to reaching an agreement is closing. Fast. If and when it does run out of cash, the US will default on its obligations to repay borrowers and make payments to individuals and businesses. Current estimates put D-day or default day sometime during the US summer, although US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that D-day could be as early as June 1. It could also be a month or two after summer. This will depend largely on how the US economy performs. Slow growth and high unemployment will bring in less tax revenue and make D-day come sooner. Rapid growth will generate more tax revenue and push it back. When the US reaches its borrowing limit, the US Treasury can engage in ’emergency measures’ to conserve cash. Typically it stops paying into the retirement accounts of government employees, with the understanding that once the debt ceiling issue has been resolved the government will make good on this money. It also defunds special government accounts until the debt ceiling is raised. For example, the government allocates $23 billion to the Treasury to stabilise the value of the dollar. Defunding gives the government more money to pay its bills. But make no mistake: the issue has to be confronted at some stage. There is, however, something else that can be done to prevent a government default: Congress could increase the debt ceiling. The problem is Republicans, who control the US House of Representatives, have refused to do this unless Democrats (who control both the Senate and the White House) agree to large cuts in government spending. This won’t happen, leading to the distinct possibility of a default. Worse yet, the Republican Party has become extremely dysfunctional. During the first week of January the House went through 15 ballots before electing Republican Kevin McCarthy to be Speaker — even though no other Republican wanted the job. To get votes from Donald Trump-supporting MAGA Republicans and become House Speaker, McCarthy promised that any Republican could put in motion a vote to recall him as Speaker. If McCarthy were recalled, the result would be continual votes for a House speaker, as occurred in January. Even with votes from Democrats supporting McCarthy, there could be dozens of recall votes, keeping the House from doing any business for weeks. While all these votes take place, the US government could go into default, which would have catastrophic consequences. People, businesses, and non-profit organisations that loaned money to the US government would not get repaid. Questions would arise about whether the US government would repay the money it borrows and make good on its financial obligations, such as paying its employees (including the military) and merchants who sold goods to the government. In addition, recipients of Social Security may not get paid the benefits they have come to expect and have always received. More seriously, the credit rating of the US government would be downgraded, as occurs when people don’t pay their bills on time. US government debt currently exceeds $31 trillion, so a one percentage point increase in its borrowing costs would raise government debt by more than $310 billion when all existing government debt has rolled over. In the short term, the annual cost would likely be half this amount or less, but still a hefty sum. A bigger problem is that US government bonds are used as collateral on many loans — not just in the US but worldwide. They back loans between financial institutions, they back loans from banks to companies and they back loans from central banks to banks. Concerns about the value of these bonds will reduce lending and threaten to throw the entire world economy into a severe recession. Fortunately, the Biden administration can do a few things if the US government comes close to defaulting. Although it can’t print money, the US Treasury can mint platinum coins of any denomination. Minting a $1 trillion coin, and depositing it into its account at the Federal Reserve (the US central bank), would enable the government to pay its bills and repay bondholders. Such action can be justified by appealing to the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which states: “The validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned.” Another possibility is that when existing bondholders are repaid, the US sells bonds paying an interest rate premium at maturity. With this bonus, the new bonds will bring in more money when auctioned off. Yet, the government won’t borrow any more money; they would only promise to pay more interest in the future. However, the best solution would be to just abolish the debt ceiling. The US is one of only two industrial economies with a debt limit that is a specific amount. The other is Denmark and its debt ceiling is set so high that it is unlikely to become a problem for a long time. The US Congress enacted the debt ceiling in 1917 to let President Woodrow Wilson spend the money he deemed necessary to fight World War I without waiting for often-absent lawmakers to act. Congress, however, didn’t want to write the president a blank cheque; so it limited borrowing to $11.5 billion and required Congressional legislation to increase this figure. But times have changed. In 1917 it took days for many elected representatives to reach Washington by rail. Today, with air travel and the possibility of voting online from home, quick votes are possible. Congress approved all the spending and tax bills that created the government debt, implicitly approving a higher debt ceiling. Congress now needs to step up and either raise the debt ceiling or eliminate it. is Professor of Economics at The New School for Social Research, Emeritus Professor of Economics and Finance at Monmouth University, and Associate Editor of the Review of Political Economy. He has published more than 190 articles in refereed journals and as book chapters, and has authored or edited 18 books. He is also a frequent contributor to newspapers and popular periodicals such as Challenge Magazine, The Washington Spectator and Dollars and Sense. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “Governments in the red” sent at: 17/05/2023 09:45. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 17, 2023

How the war in Gaza is reshaping geopolitics - 360 Bharat Bhushan Published on November 13, 2023 The tremors of the Israel-Hamas war are being felt not just in the Middle East, but around the world. The Israel-Hamas conflict has once again brought the Palestinian quest for a viable country to the forefront. The Hamas attack on October 7 and Israel’s retaliation have also destroyed the prospect of peace in the Middle East anytime soon. As major pro-Palestinian protests erupt in response to the Israeli onslaught, the threat of wider regional war seems all too real. The Palestine-Israel conflict comes in the aftermath of the Abraham Accords in September 2020 – so named for the patriarch of the three Abrahamic religions – signed between Israel, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, facilitated by the US under then-President Donald Trump. The Accords recognised the sovereignty of Israel and established full diplomatic ties between the signatories. While doing so, the Palestinian issue was consigned to the back burner. The Accords were followed by normalisation agreements between Israel, Morocco and Sudan, leading to the prospect of more Arab countries recognising Israel. US President Joe Biden continued the Middle East policy of Trump and took it to another level by trying to normalise relations between two hitherto implacable adversaries – Israel and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps a fear of Iran’s growing assertiveness also drove the Arab countries towards establishing friendly ties with Israel. These policy shifts inevitably meant backing away from their traditional position on Palestine and aligned well with US policy towards the Middle East. In the process, the hopes and aspiration of the Palestinian people turned to outrage, anger and despair. They were ignored, and the eruption of that anger is now all too evident. The Israel-Hamas war, therefore, is not really the ‘black-swan’ event some have made it out to be. And its tremors now threaten to shift the tectonic plates of geopolitics – not only in the Middle East, but also globally. The basic assumption of the Abraham Accords – that there could be peace in the Middle East without addressing the Palestinian question – has come unstuck. The process of Arab-Israel normalisation is in tatters. Even those Arab countries that sought to normalise ties with Israel have been forced to back off and criticise Tel Aviv. The countries of the Global South today largely stand with the Palestinians. Most of them voted for a ‘humanitarian pause’ in the fighting in Gaza in a resolution passed by the UN General Assembly, with 121 countries voting in favour and 14 against, with 44 abstentions. More than half a dozen countries, including South Africa, have withdrawn ambassadors or all their diplomats from Israel, in protest against its violence in the Gaza Strip. Surprisingly, the Global South stands with Russia and China against the US-led pro-Israeli geopolitical formation, in stark contrast to its condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This could pose serious long-term threats to US strategic goals not only in the Middle East, but also in Africa and the Asia-Pacific, where it seeks to contain the influence of China. On the other hand, countries like India which were historically at the forefront of espousing the Palestinian cause are today unwilling to make Israel uneasy by condemning its actions in Gaza. Although the final contours remain hazy, the war in Gaza is clearly reshaping geopolitics. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “Gaza crisis” sent at: 09/11/2023 11:18. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on November 13, 2023

How to cut a home’s energy usage to zero - 360 Gill Armstrong Published on March 17, 2023 Energy efficiency for homes is about getting design right and making it airtight. The challenge is making these changes affordable. People looking for cost-effective ways to heat or cool their home can spend hours comparing the energy efficiency of products on the market. But even the most energy efficient appliance won’t make up for a poorly-constructed building. As we head toward 2 degrees warming and more heatwaves, something needs to change. Rather than prioritising new appliances — or even rooftop solar — many experts are encouraging householders to pursue a ‘fabric first’ approach to creating a comfortable living space. A fabric first approach is about starting with the components and materials that make up the building itself, maximising their performance. For example, homeowners could prioritise upgrading their home’s thermal shell (external walls, ground floor and roof) by increasing air tightness through sealing gaps left by old vents and around doors and windows. A home’s thermal shell can also be improved with insulation, shading to north and west facing windows and upgrading old windows to UPVC frames and double glazed. There is a saying when renovating thermal shells which is easy to remember – ‘insulate tight, ventilate right’.  A home with an efficient thermal shell is easier to keep cool in summer and warm in winter. This reduces energy bills — and carbon emissions. Approximately 40 percent of household energy is used for heating and cooling. This could be cut to almost zero through effective, climate-appropriate design. In Australia, implementing the recently updated National Construction Code  will go some way towards new homes and major renovations being built with efficient thermal shells. As most Australian homes were built before any energy performance standards existed, and may not have had upgrades recently, households are being exposed to the choice of either unsafe temperatures or high bills. The Australian Housing Dataset measures the energy efficiency of homes and apartments built since 2016, which are covered by mandated energy star minimums And while many homeowners have some ability to renovate their homes’ thermal shell, this is not an option for the more than 30 percent of Australians who rent. People on low incomes are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of poorly built homes. A recent report by the Australian Council for Social Services found nearly two-thirds of those on income support have difficulty keeping their homes cool in summer. Another survey, of over 13 000 renters across Australia, showed that about one quarter of renters struggle to stay comfortable in both summer and winter. But more renters in Brisbane, North Coast and eastern Melbourne report discomfort in summer heat than in the cold of winter. Earlier research by the University of New South Wales found people living in social housing in Sydney experienced temperatures ranging from 5°C in winter to 39.8 °C in summer. But the investment in a home does not have to be enormous to produce positive results. In 2022, Sustainability Victoria released a report on the Victorian Healthy Homes program, which installed thermal comfort and energy efficiency upgrades in 1,000 homes of low-income Victorians. It found that a modest average investment of under $3,000 produced nearly $1,000 in savings on health and energy bills over a three-month winter period. Monash University-based not-for-profit Climateworks Centre has launched a project called Renovation Pathways with the aim of kickstarting the energy performance upgrade of Australia’s existing building stock. Renovation Pathways has identified the most prevalent types of homes to help homeowners, across Australia’s different climate zones, decide what is a cost-effective renovation to achieve a sustainable and healthy home in different regions. In a recent submission to the Australian government on the National Energy Performance Strategy, Climateworks recommended ways the government could promote targeted approaches to energy-efficient and zero carbon renovation of existing buildings across all climate zones. These included providing financial incentives such as targeted tax rebates, subsidies and loans, and working with banks on normalising energy upgrade requirements for mortgages. Grant programs could specifically target low-income households to improve access to energy efficiency audits and upgrades as well as rooftop solar. To have the greatest impact, the group recommended targeting financial support to social housing providers, private landlords in low-socio economic areas and apartment complexes with strata bodies, as both landlords and renters have the least agency to upgrade these homes. It also suggested new regulations for existing buildings, including minimum rental standards by 2025 and that government lead by example by prioritising investment in upgrading social housing and supporting low income households. Doing so could stimulate the market and improve supply chains, skills and materials in fabric-first design and construction. Dr Gill Armstrong is Senior Project Manager in Climateworks’ Cities team, leading research and policy projects to decarbonise Australia’s buildings sector, including residential and non-residential buildings, and both new and existing builds. Her background spans more than 10 years’ experience as a registered architect (UK) and Chartered Architectural Technologist, specialising in adaptive reuse of residential and commercial buildings. Renovation Pathway is funded by philanthropic organisations, including Energy Consumers Australia and the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “Hot house” sent at: 13/03/2023 10:57. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on March 17, 2023

How to end the deadly government debt spiral - 360 Grace HY Lee, Nafis Alam Published on February 27, 2023 COVID-19 triggered a massive increase in government debt, mainly in low-income countries. But it would be economically wrong to put all the blame on COVID. The debt crisis wrecking ball is smashing through Asia. First Sri Lanka defaulted and now Laos is facing a similar crunch. The small landlocked country of 8 million bordering China owes more than half its foreign debt to its neighbour including ‘hidden obligations’, and experts say it could end up bartering away land and resources for relief. These countries are shut off from capital markets because they’re deemed uncreditworthy by debt rating agencies. Malaysia is no exception as the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased government debt. The government has had to increase spending to support the economy and respond to the COVID crisis. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim recently revealed the country’s national debt had ballooned to RM1.5 trillion (USD$ 348 billion), more than 80 percent of GDP. There is no doubt COVID triggered a massive increase in government debt, mainly in low-income countries, but it would be economically wrong to put all the blame on the pandemic. Before COVID engulfed the world, it was evident government and private debt levels were already on a worrying rise. The pandemic added to this by increasing government debt in many economies as they spent big to support their populations and economies. The dramatic fall in trade, investment, and employment along with currency volatility added pressure to public finances. The relationship between government debt and economic development is tricky, and many people believe it might hinder growth. Debt may boost long-term growth and development, but it can also strain an economy and reduce its resilience to crises. Public debt helps fund infrastructure, education, and healthcare, which will benefit the economy and society in the long run. During recessions, government debt allows the government to increase expenditures and sustain demand. However, without economic growth and higher taxes, debt may become a burden. Sri Lanka borrowed nearly USD$1.4 billion in 2020 and 2021 to sustain itself during the pandemic when lockdowns and the loss of the tourism industry hit the economy hard. To meet its payments the government cut services. Protests and riots ensued as prices spiked and living standards plummeted. Eventually, the debt burden became too large and the country defaulted in May 2022. Understanding the effects of borrowing and debt levels in various nations is critical. Although external factors influenced the crisis in Sri Lanka, the main cause of the protest and anger among the citizens was due to government mismanagement. The previous administration, led by Mahinda Rajapaksa (the brother of Sri Lanka’s ousted prime minister, Gotabaya Rajapaksa), took on heavy debt to fund infrastructure projects such as building a luxurious port that has yet to generate income. Sri Lanka saw 71.4 percent of its revenue going to interest payments on debt in 2020, making it one of the countries with the highest debt service charges worldwide. Developed economies such as Singapore and Japan have developed strategies and policies to avoid falling into the debt trap. Singapore has a high gross debt of 140 percent of GDP but the city-state receives more investment returns, which make up around one-fifth of the government’s annual income, giving the city-state flexibility to keep taxes low. Singapore’s seemingly high headline debt to GDP ratio is not debt taken to fund general government operations but to facilitate investment needs. The country incurs low debt service charges, less than 0.5 percent of revenue in 2020, which is compensated by its investment returns. The country has laws that prevent its government from spending more. The Singapore government mandates a balanced budget for each term of government, which means that it cannot spend more than what it collects in revenue for the fiscal year, except in exceptional circumstances such as the COVID pandemic. Japan, with a gross debt-to-GDP ratio of 263.1 percent of its GDP, has the highest level of government debt in the world. Its situation is unique as its debt issue is largely driven by the country’s attempts to stimulate the economy via expansionary fiscal and monetary policies. Expansionary fiscal policies comprise increasing government spending, cutting taxes, or both, while expansionary monetary policies involve boosting the money supply by purchasing government bonds and lowering interest rates by the Bank of Japan to encourage economic growth and avoid deflation. Japan is the top creditor country despite its high debt. In addition, Japanese investors own 90 percent of the debt. This means Japan borrows entirely in yen and mostly from its own citizens, reducing the likelihood of a sovereign default. Each nation has unique challenges. Despite these variations, governments can implement major structural changes to resolve their debt problems and maintain long-term economic stability. Political will, fiscal discipline and a desire to adopt these measures to address their debt issues are required. The problem does not lie with the accumulated high level of government debt but with countries getting stuck in a debt trap and needing clear policies to come out of it. The best policy any government can have is to have key structural reforms. Policymakers can focus on having a clear strategy and a strong will to improve business conditions, attract foreign direct investment and increase the ease of doing business. Governments could move quickly with fiscal reforms and tax administrations leading to greater productivity and increasing repayment ability. It is crucial to managing debt responsibly to avoid increasing government borrowing costs, restricting private investment and economic development, raising prices and lowering purchasing power and limiting the government’s capacity to react to unanticipated occurrences or pursue other important policy objectives. Grace Hooi Yean Lee is the Head of the Department of Economics, School of Business, Monash University Malaysia. Nafis Alam is a finance professor and the Head of the School of Business at Monash University Malaysia. His research mainly focuses on financial regulation, and he is among the top global influencers on FinTech and RegTech. He tweets at @nafisalam. Editors Note: In the story “Government debt” sent at: 24/02/2023 09:47. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on February 27, 2023

How to even-up the climate change playing field - 360 Grace Jennings-Edquist Published on January 31, 2024 As climate change grows increasingly deadly, every country needs to build climate resilience. But that can be costly — and poor countries can’t cover the bill. The whole world needs to adapt and prepare for climate change. The problem is, lower-income and less developed countries are often unable and unprepared to do so, as The University of Notre Dame’s Global Adaptation Initiative Country Index shows. These poorer nations face a double-bind: They urgently need to build climate resilience — but they tend to have fewer resources, and often lack the necessary institutional capacity and financing to do so. The Loss and Damage Fund established at COP27 means there’s new money on the table. That’s a start. But in reality the gap between adaptation funding needs and available financing has drastically increased in recent years. While Norway is among the most ready and least vulnerable, Chad is notably vulnerable to, and unprepared for, climate change, as The University of Notre Dame’s ND-GAIN data shows. There are also inequalities between individuals and social groups when it comes to climate change vulnerability and resilience. Broadly, poor individuals and communities tend to be less resilient, as their economic status often means they have limited adaptive capacity. Those who are economically, culturally, politically, institutionally, or otherwise marginalised are especially vulnerable to climate change. This can include women, the elderly, young people and Indigenous populations. Marginalised groups generally have less access to information and resources, which makes coping and rebuilding after a crisis more challenging. Discriminatory laws and social norms also mean some groups typically have less access to employment and when weather patterns change, they are less able to adapt their livelihoods and recover. Groups whose livelihood is dependent on agriculture, are often among the most vulnerable to climate change. With rice supply under threat from droughts caused by El Nino, for example, the livelihoods of some farmers in Indonesia, India and elsewhere is in jeopardy. Food insecurity linked to climate-related crop failure can also cause malnutrition, especially in poor communities that have not yet adapted through food diversification and other measures. It’s clear that investment in climate resilience — and the closely related concept of climate adaptation — is needed. Ideally, every country would have comprehensive climate resilience and adaptation mechanisms that target the needs of disadvantaged groups. But while vulnerable groups are acknowledged in key international agreements including the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, the Cancun Adaptation Framework and the Paris Agreement, national governments and international bodies don’t always walk the talk. One out of six countries doesn’t yet have a National Adaptation Planning instrument — a key approach to climate resilience established under the Cancun Adaptation Framework. Many nations have adaptation and resilience plans that don’t address the needs of disadvantaged populations: Two-third of climate adaptation communications make no reference to targeting vulnerable groups at all, the 2023 UN Adaptation Gap report found. Other countries have plans for climate resilience that look comprehensive on paper, but fail to track outcomes. Australia, for instance, submitted a national adaptation plan to the UN in 2021, yet it doesn’t contain a mechanism to ensure progress on adaptation measures happens, nor does it state how often the assessments should occur. Addressing these shortcomings is impossible without adequate investment. Climate resilience is grossly underfunded. The gap between what’s needed and what’s being pledged is a staggering US$194-366 billion per year, the 2023 UN Adaptation Report found. The Loss and Damage fund agreed upon at COP27 in 2022 is a step forward. But that fund will need to embrace more innovative financing mechanisms such as debt relief, taxation and debt swaps to reach the necessary scale of investment. Climate resilience measures including National Action Plans are also of limited use if they fail to consistently measure outcomes, including impacts on vulnerable groups. Countries could also better meet the needs of disinvited and vulnerable groups by engaging and integrating those groups’ experiences in resilience planning. The need to better integrate Indigenous knowledge about nature, land use and fire management is becoming better recognised. Along similar lines, climate resilience planning must engage with disability communities. The consequences of sidelining disabled voices in climate action can be dramatic: Bangladesh’s 2022 floods, for example, highlighted how people with disabilities face disproportioned difficulties when evacuating disaster areas and accessing services and infrastructure when disability-inclusive climate resilience planning is overlooked. Outside the formal national adaptation plan process, climate resilience can be built in a range of ways — within communities, and across public and private sectors. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to climate resilience planning, as the needs of vulnerable group differ between regions and countries. What’s clear is that a range of sectors including agriculture, food and waste, health, energy, transport and building all have important roles to play. Likewise, improving or increasing affordable housing can help reduce the poorest individuals’ vulnerability to extreme weather. Healthcare systems must also prepare for an increased burden of human ill-health from climate change, especially in developing countries with low income. As climate change increases the spread of various infectious diseases, vaccines remain among the most effective vulnerability reduction measures for health. Displacement and migration as a result of climate change is on the rise and will increase with time. As is the case in the Indian Sunderbans, the poorest residents often most urgently need to locate, but many feel they have nowhere to go, or report feeling overlooked in government assistance packages. Expanding opportunities for mobility can reduce vulnerability for such populations. Including migration in National Adaptation Plans can play an important role in achieving this, but there is much to be done in this space. For example, National Adaptation Plans currently generally provide little detail on how to facilitate migration when needed. Thus, instead of just preventing unwanted ‘distress migration’ displacement, National Adaptation Plans could better focus on facilitating beneficial movements that enable better adjustment to the impacts of climate change. Ultimately, without a lens of vulnerability — and active efforts to target the build resilience of the most disadvantaged — adaptation action can instead lead to maladaptation, and can lose credibility, relevance and legitimacy. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on January 31, 2024

How to help older Australians cope with disasters - 360 Liz Halcomb, Sharon James Published on December 6, 2023 Bushfires can take their toll on the physical and mental health of older Australians, but there are things communities can do to help. In the summer of 2019/2020 Australia experienced what came to be known as Black Summer. It was a season of ongoing bushfires that left 24 million hectares of the country burnt, and led to more than 470 deaths — 33 people were killed in the fires and around 445 died from smoke inhalation. For some communities on the south coast of New South Wales, Black Summer came only 18 months after the Tathra bushfire in 2018 which destroyed 65 homes and shortly before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown restrictions. Disasters can take a heavier toll on older people, in part due to the higher likelihood they’re already living with chronic health conditions Research has revealed the impact the bushfire crisis had on the physical and mental health of older Australians living on the NSW south coast. For one woman in her late sixties, the fires had a profound effect on her mental health: “Poor sleep, clouded thinking, obsessive thinking about the fires, general feeling of anxiety. The air quality was so poor some days that I was unable to exercise … which is helpful for physical and mental health.” A man in his early seventies was similarly affected: “Fear of what happens next and concern for others worse off.” For older people with mental and physical health problems, their ability to prepare, evacuate and/or potentially defend their property can be limited. Managing their health can require a level of independence, social support, mobility and independence. For example, if someone lives with a chronic condition such as mental health issues, diabetes or emphysema, this can worsen their ability to self-manage their health. For those living in rural areas and with limited financial resources, these issues are exacerbated due to challenges accessing some healthcare services. More than 150 people over the age of 65 were surveyed for the study, living between Wollongong in the north to Eden in the south. Sadly, this region experienced a significant share of property loss and fire-related fatalities during the 2019/2020 bushfires. While COVID-19 lockdown restrictions were less severe in rural areas, travel restrictions and supply shortages of groceries and materials for rebuilding occurred. The bushfires led to a range of health impacts. Some 86 percent of survey participants felt anxious or worried about the bushfires. One woman in her early seventies described how she felt after losing her home: “Grief and anxiety over loss of home and all possessions, delayed reaction — panic attack — after having to escape by driving through the fire, initial difficulty securing food, clothing, toiletries caused distress and anxiety, sleeplessness.” Difficulties in physical health due to the impacts of bushfire smoke, such as sore eyes and breathing problems, were also common. Some survey participants reported coughs continuing for months afterwards. The impacts of bushfires on locals’ physical and mental health were often interrelated. Difficulties in physical health were largely due to the impacts of bushfire smoke such as sore eyes and breathing problems. These also led to anxiety, depression and stress. As one woman in her late sixties described: “I am an asthmatic so the smoke made it much worse. We lost our home and everything. Life has been very stressful since. Living in a caravan is not conducive to a healthy lifestyle.” Interestingly, those who felt more impacted by bushfires had lower levels of reported self-rated health, resilience, social connection and support. While 72 percent indicated an increased level of worry and anxiety in relation to COVID-19, the impact of the pandemic was perceived to impact both people’s mental and physical health less than the bushfires. However, the impact of COVID-19 was higher for women and those who had less resilience, fewer social connections and support, and lower self-rated health. During the bushfires, some participants reported difficulties accessing their usual general practice, screening and treatment. This was particularly true for those travelling for cancer treatment and surgery. Health issues were compounded due to reduced opportunities for exercise, resulting in weight gain. By better supporting people’s mental and physical wellbeing, the health impact of future natural disasters can be reduced. This includes communities developing strategies for older people that encourage social connection, and support their mental health and resilience. These could include interventions to bring older people together through social activities, support groups and health education resources. However, there is also a role for healthcare providers in meeting these needs. Supporting the healthcare needs of older people includes, where possible, encouraging people to manage their own health needs so that when healthcare is disrupted their ability to care for themself is optimised. It also requires health care professionals to be alert for downstream effects of disasters on older people such as delays in seeking treatment. This study has revealed new knowledge and highlights the need for healthcare professionals and communities to work together to plan and manage disaster response and recovery. works at the Sexual and Reproductive Health for Women in Primary Care Centre of Research Excellence at Monash University as a research fellow and project manager on the Australian Contraception and Abortion Primary Care Practitioner Support Network. She is a qualitative and mixed methods researcher with interests in women’s health, lifestyle risk, preventive care, interconception health, and nursing roles in primary health care. Dr James resides in an area impacted by the 2019/2020 bushfires. is Professor of Primary Health Care Nursing in the University of Wollongong’s School of Nursing. Her research interests include the nursing workforce in primary care, chronic and complex disease and lifestyle risk factor reduction. Other team members involved in the research included: Cristina Thompson, Professor Marijka Batteham, Darcy Morris, Tasmin Dilworth and Dr Katherine Haynes. The project was funded by the University of Wollongong’s Global Challenges Program. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on December 6, 2023

How to help the young buy a home - 360 Rachel Ong ViforJ, Christopher Phelps, Melek Cigdem-Bayram Published on May 31, 2023 Cashed-up parents and governments hold the key to helping a generation of Australians buy a home. For generations, the great Australian dream of owning your own home was a given. But now Australians under 30 are the generation which has had the home ownership door slammed in their face. House prices have risen so quickly (more than 60 percent from 2015-2022) they have vastly outpaced wages growth. Even if young people can scrape together a deposit — many can’t — repayments are prohibitive. As a result around two-thirds of young people are giving up on home ownership completely while older generations, who bought in their 20s and benefited from the real estate boom of the 2000s, can accumulate even more. The challenge is how best to help the young get their foot on the ‘property ladder’. Targeted housing policies which address this growing generational divide are needed urgently. It is to be expected that the housing wealth of older Australians will exceed younger Australians, due to higher home-ownership rates later in life. However, this intergenerational gap is widening at an alarming rate. In 2018, nearly nine in 10 aspiring first homebuyers were locked out of home ownership because they were unable to meet the deposit requirement or service a loan. Using Australian Bureau of Statistics data, we can estimate that in 1997-98, the primary home equity of Australians in their 50s was 161 percent greater than that of Australians in their 30s. Twenty years later, this gap had increased to 234 percent. Expanding wealth gaps are not limited to age differences alone. As depicted in the table below, the gap favouring income-rich Australians over the income-poor doubled to 191 percent in 20 years. Similarly, the gap between urban and regional areas doubled from 46 percent to 93 percent, favouring city dwellers. Nevertheless, the disparity in housing wealth based on age remains notably larger than those based on income and geography. Those with access to the ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’ have a substantial advantage. Using data on the ownership status of young non-owner Australians from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, we can estimate those who received a cash transfer or inheritance from their parents – in excess of AUD$5,000 – were more than twice as likely to enter into home ownership in the subsequent year. Parents also provide indirect support. Young people living in rent-free dwellings provided by family or friends were three times as likely to buy their own home. Those co-residing with home owning parents experienced similar ownership outcomes as those in the private rental market. Disturbingly, those co-residing with non-owner parents were 70 percent less likely to enter ownership than either group. Those from disadvantaged backgrounds are then more likely to continue the cycle of being excluded from home ownership, following in their parents’ footsteps. Successive Australian governments have introduced first home purchase assistance schemes, most notably the First Home Owners Grant that offers a subsidy to eligible first homebuyers to assist with the deposit. Such grants have often been criticised for not being targeted enough. Perhaps less well-known are shared equity or shared ownership schemes, which are usually more targeted. The newest such scheme offered by the Australian government is the Help to Buy scheme, introduced to enable low-to-moderate income households to become homeowners while also helping to make mortgage repayments more sustainable. The homebuyer can purchase a home with as little as 2 percent deposit without incurring lenders mortgage insurance. The government contributes 30-40 percent of the purchase price, substantially reducing the mortgage loan for the home buyer. The scheme has strict property price caps and income limits. Modelling shows that 31 percent of first homebuyers will meet the property price and income criteria. Among those eligible, 41 percent will be assisted into first homeownership if there were no limits placed on the numbers who can access the scheme. The ‘catch’ is that the homebuyer will only gain equity on the portion of the property they own. Such schemes are also complicated. Homebuyers bear the responsibility of maintenance costs, council rates and other ongoing costs, and may face restrictions on their freedom to renovate. However, homebuyers are not required to pay rent on the share owned by the government and can also increase their share over time via ‘staircasing’, where they can buy more of the property later. While parental assistance for home purchases is becoming more common, it entrenches inequality. Young people from affluent backgrounds are more likely to benefit and become homeowners. Those from disadvantaged family backgrounds are less likely to receive parental transfers or become homeowners. Schemes like Help to Buy may alleviate inequality. Because of its targeted nature, it has appeal for disadvantaged households, facilitating home ownership for those who would otherwise be excluded from the market. There is one big problem with any scheme that helps first time buyers. All forms of direct assistance will increase demand and push up prices in entry-level housing markets in the face of supply constraints. The reality is assistance for home buyers must be balanced with a steady supply of affordable housing. Right now government policy which gives generous tax concessions to property owners will continue to push house prices out of reach of younger generations. This can only be addressed by implementing structural tax reform, such as winding back capital gains tax concessions on property assets. Rachel Ong ViforJ is a John Curtin Distinguished Professor and Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow at the School of Accounting, Economics and Finance, Curtin University. Christopher Phelps is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Accounting, Economics and Finance, Curtin University. Melek Cigdem-Bayram is an Economic Analyst and Advisor at Jesuit Social Services and Associate Senior Research Fellow at the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University. This research was undertaken with ARC Future Fellowship grant FT200100422 and AHURI grant 81274. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 31, 2023

How to make life better for people living with ADHD - 360 Suzannah Lyons Published on October 18, 2023 ADHD diagnoses are increasing, but the condition remains under-resourced and under-supported. Next month, one of the Australian Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs will report back on its inquiry into Assessment and support services for people with ADHD. Specifically, it’s been examining the “barriers to consistent, timely and best practice assessment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and support services for people with ADHD”. The report is timely, following the world marking ADHD Awareness Month this October. Globally, it’s thought between 2.5 and 5 percent of people live with ADHD, but barriers to timely diagnosis, problems accessing treatments and enduring stigma remain. What roles can technology play in diagnosing the condition? And how can education systems better serve students with ADHD so that they don’t get left behind academically and socially? Read what the experts say needs to improve in 360info’s special report on The ADHD challenge. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “The ADHD challenge” sent at: 16/10/2023 15:02. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on October 18, 2023

How to prepare for a recession and thrive - 360 Jayanta Sarkar Published on June 26, 2023 Recessions are part of the economic cycle. How you prepare can determine how badly affected you will be. A recession can make or break a company or individuals. Just ask Amazon.com, the online bookseller that survived the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 by raising funds just in time.  Or ask millions of Australians who faced the country’s first recession in 29 years due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Recessions are hard to predict and avoid. They can be triggered by various factors, such as shocks, crises, policy errors or structural changes. Therefore it is wise to prepare for a recession before it hits, rather than wait until it is too late. Preparing for a recession can help you cope with any downturn, mitigate its impacts, and seize any opportunities that may arise. Here are some tips on how to prepare for a recession. High-interest debt, such as credit cards, personal loans or payday loans can quickly spiral out of control when income falls or expenses rise during a recession. For instance, Australians had $45 billion in credit card debt in June 2020, with an average interest rate of 19.94 percent. Paying off or lowering high-interest debt can save money, ease monthly payments and improve a credit score. An emergency fund can help when dealing with income loss, unexpected costs, or other financial shocks that may occur during a recession. It can also provide financial security and stability in uncertain times. Ideally, people should aim to save enough money to cover at least three to six months of essential expenses, such as rent or mortgage payments, utilities, food and medical bills. During a recession asset prices tend to fall across the board, but some may recover faster than others. Having a diversified portfolio across different asset classes (such as stocks, bonds, cash), sectors (such as technology, healthcare) and regions (such as Australia, US) can reduce the impact of any negative event or trend that affects one part of the market. By checking your investments, you can also find any opportunities to buy undervalued assets that may offer higher returns in the long run. However, this requires careful research, due diligence and patience, as timing the market is very difficult and risky. You should also avoid selling your investments when prices drop, as this may lock in losses and miss out on potential rebounds. During a recession, unemployment tends to rise, as businesses cut costs, lay off workers, or close down. This means competition for jobs becomes fiercer and employers become more selective and demanding. The best way to enhance employability is to boost your professional value. This can involve updating your skills and qualifications; expanding your network and contacts; seeking feedback and mentoring; and showcasing your achievements and contributions. By boosting your professional value, you can increase your chances of keeping your job, finding a new one, or negotiating better terms and conditions. For example, Germany used its well-known short-time work subsidy scheme Kurzarbeit during the Great Recession and COVID-19 recession. This scheme allows employers to reduce working hours for their employees instead of laying them off while the government covers up to 67 percent (for workers with children) of their lost net income. Workers without children have 60 percent of their wages covered. This helps preserve jobs, stabilise incomes, and maintain workers’ skills during the crisis. It also reduces the need for retraining and rehiring when the economy recovers. Businesses can build resilience by adapting to changing consumer behaviour and demand. During a recession, consumers tend to spend less, save more, and prioritise their needs over their wants. They also tend to shift their preferences towards cheaper, more reliable, and more sustainable products and services. By adapting to changing consumer behaviour, businesses can retain their existing customers, attract new ones, and increase their market share and profitability. This can involve offering discounts, bundles, or loyalty programs; improving quality, service, or delivery; and innovating new solutions that solve customer problems or create value. For example, online shopping rose in Australia during the pandemic, as consumers avoided physical stores and sought convenience and safety. Online retail sales increased by 55.7 percent in 2020 compared to 2019, reaching a record high of $50.5 billion. Businesses that adapted to this trend by improving their e-commerce capabilities, offering contactless delivery options and expanding their product range online were able to benefit from the increased demand and customer loyalty. Recessions are inevitable and unpredictable events that can have serious consequences for people and businesses. However, by preparing for a recession before it happens, it’s possible to reduce its negative effects and take advantage of its opportunities. Dr Jayanta Sarkar is an Associate Professor at Queensland University of Technology. He completed his PhD degree in Economics from Southern Methodist University in 2006, then worked as an Assistant Professor at Louisiana Tech University before moving to Australia in 2010. Dr. Sarkar’s research interests are wide and cover various issues in macroeconomics and development. His more recent research focuses on human behaviour and decision-making, primarily in the areas of health and education. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on June 26, 2023

How to save Indonesia's independent media voices - 360 - Masduki Published on May 3, 2023 Journalism has to stop sustained attacks on alternative media outlets. Konde.co, an alternative media site that actively reports on cases of sexual violence against women was hacked last October. This incident followed the media’s coverage of a rape case involving officials from the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs in Jakarta. Konde.co experienced a denial of service attack aka DOS attack, which meant the public could not access the site. It was the second DOS attack on the non-profit news platform since it launched in 2016. It wasn’t the only site targeted, two weeks earlier a digital political news site called Narasi was also hacked. Not only was there a DOS attack, but several personal accounts belonging to the Narasi journalists were hacked and monitored. Digital news channels such as Konde.co, Project Multatuli (a news platform for investigating social and political cases managed by journalists cum social activists in Jakarta) and Narasi exist as alternative media alongside mainstream media which are powerless to provide a critical and accurate news item. They fill the ’empty space’ amid the spread of clickbait journalism, an oasis during the crisis of quality journalism in Indonesia following the country’s digital revolution. Scholars call it non-profit journalism, media without a profit motive which carries public interest issues. The digital revolution can be seen as either a gift or a disaster. It brings more transparency, ensures equality of voices in public debate, allows almost anyone to own an outlet or become a journalist without economic and geographical constraints, and has less bureaucracy of news production. It has, however, loosened stringent demands for high journalistic skills and opened up political-economic control over the social and political behaviour of its users, including journalists, being overseen by giant forces from both government and global corporations with vested interests. As a result, the digital space is not a truly safe room. It can trigger social conflict, political polarisation, even acts of terrorism. Professional journalists working for critical media are directly affected and often become the targets of digital surveillance. The ICJR and LBH Press report for 2021 found that at least 125 journalists in Indonesia experienced digital violence, related to their reports on the COVID-19 pandemic or political news in general. In the pre-digital media era, the perpetrators were easy to identify, usually security officials and radical groups. But now perpetrators of violence against journalists tend to be anonymous. Before 2010, journalist violence occurred in public areas ranging from confiscation of reporting tools, verbal threats up to murder. In the post-2010 era, the form has evolved into the hacking of social media accounts. In the past decade, internet politicisation and the commodification of social media have fuelled violence from state officials or state-sponsored hackers/cyber troops against journalists. One Australian researcher found that in the 2014 and 2019 presidential elections, both Prabowo Subianto and Joko Widodo deployed cyber troops to create a positive image and tackle negative perceptions on social media. Prabowo Subianto and Joko Widodo attacked each other. Their respective cyber troops attacked newsrooms and journalists who criticised their idols. Tempo magazine, with its investigative pieces, was often targeted. From bullying journalists to the reproduction or manipulation of the magazine’s content, this digital army or ‘buzzer’ (paid active social media users for the practical political campaigns of presidential candidates) engages in rampant political disinformation and the politicisation of the internet to defeat quality journalism — a fundamental need for Indonesian citizens. Watchdog journalism is close to death because the digital news ecosystem is based on ‘speed and popularity’, not accuracy. The danger is a democratic society unravelling. The media face more battlefronts, especially with money. The public has little idea of how much quality news costs to produce. The lack of funding puts quality journalism and the economic wellbeing of journalists at risk. Platforms such as Facebook and Google cannot be controlled by Indonesian news corporations. With not-for-profit journalism, which relies on idealists and volunteers, in danger of being unsustainable, government intervention (or crowdfunding and corporate donations) is key to maintain quality journalism for the public good. To protect press freedom, quality news outlets need to be protected from rising costs. Without this, digital attacks and journalist security (physical and economic) as experienced by Konde.co and other investigative news platforms will continue. These platforms are needed in an open and empowered society, especially ahead of the 2024 elections. The growth of digital media in Indonesia since 2010 was not accompanied by a healthy political climate or policy. Media organisations that support digital journalism and/or non-profit journalism emerged amid a new authoritarian media system which confronted alternative media. There are no regulations that particularly protect the existence and guarantee the sustainability of digital and alternative journalism, against political power. Since 1999, Indonesia has had a press law which only regulates the sustainability of the press in general, and it strongly favours pro-government mainstream media, not alternatives. Initiatives to revise this law were not well received by the mainstream press and media activists, who are worried the results will actually worsen press freedom. Indonesia is pursuing several initiatives to save news media companies. In the US there is a scheme to migrate hundreds of local print media that carry investigations from commercial to social (non-profit) institutions. Local media are entitled to subsidies from local authorities, assistance from philanthropic agencies and communities through subscriptions as a form of public appreciation. Another solution is to strengthen local public broadcasters, combining them with local print media houses to promote local journalism. The yearly funds US authorities allocate to local public broadcasters can be shared with local newspapers through collaborative public journalism production. A plan to produce a Presidential Decree on media sustainability in Indonesia since 2021 can be seen as a government intervention in the national interest to ensure the sustainability of good journalism. This means media corporations being able to continue operating as well as the public’s right to reliable news services and sound journalism activities. The decree could be an entry point for maintaining good journalism, which in the digital era is not only served by mainstream media, but also digital-only alternative media. Masduki is an associate professor and researcher in the Department of Communication, Universitas Islam Indonesia, Yogyakarta. He is a member of several advocacy organisations such as Media Regulation and Regulator Watch (PR2Media), AJI Indonesia, the Public Broadcasting Clearing House of Indonesia, and the Society of Concerned Media Yogyakarta. His work focuses on public service media systems and journalism studies, comparative media systems, digital media policy and activism. Dr Masduki declared that he has no conflict of interest and is not receiving specific funding in any form. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 3, 2023

How to save our cities from going under - 360 James Goldie Published on May 17, 2023 Cities across Asia are developing at such an astounding rate, the pressure on water tables is causing many to slip into oblivion. Coastal cities in Southeast Asia are sinking the fastest, scientists have discovered. This coupled with rising sea levels and weather changes will worsen the severity of flooding in prone areas. What form solutions should take would depend on the nature of the cities affected. 360info looks into what would work best to avert future disasters and why the time to act is now even if it means moving. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “Sinking cities” sent at: 15/05/2023 09:26. This is a corrected repeat. Minor fix to map embed to facilitate sharing.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 17, 2023

How to stop space rocks hitting Earth - 360 Sara Phillips Published on March 15, 2023 With NASA announcing an asteroid is on a possible collision course with Earth 23 years from now, 360info looks at the planet’s early warning systems. An asteroid is on a possible collision course with Earth, although the risk is rather small. According to NASA, the asteroid, known as 2023 DW, is nearly 50 metres in diameter and could arrive on Valentine’s Day in 2046. It has about a one in 600 chance of hitting Earth and has since been placed on the European Space Agency’s risk list, a catalogue of all objects floating through space that have the potential to hit Earth. While a collision with 2023 DW seems unlikely, scientists have been preparing for such an encounter for years. Last October, NASA confirmed the agency’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) mission had successfully changed the travel path of a small asteroid by slamming a spacecraft into it. We’ve been tracking a new asteroid named 2023 DW that has a very small chance of impacting Earth in 2046. Often when new objects are first discovered, it takes several weeks of data to reduce the uncertainties and adequately predict their orbits years into the future. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/SaLC0AUSdP — NASA Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) March 7, 2023 Our solar system is full of rogue rocks. Millions of them orbit around the Sun or around other objects, the shattered remains of planets, moons or comets. If they are within one-third the distance from Earth to the Sun, they are classified as near-Earth objects (NEOs), and are of special interest because of their potential to destroy our planet. The first NEO was spotted in 1989. In 1994, US Congress asked space agency NASA to identify 90 percent of NEOs with planet-destroying potential — those 1km in diameter or larger — by 2005. That task complete, NASA was given a new target of 90 percent of NEOs 140m or larger. That goal has remained more elusive — it is estimated only 40 percent of all NEOs in that category have been discovered. Even with millions of dollars in funding and the best technology NASA can muster, asteroids still catch us unawares. NASA completely missed one that smacked into the Norwegian Sea in March in 2022. A Hungarian astronomer, Krisztián Sárneczky, spotted it with only hours to spare. Scientists believe it’s a matter of when, not if, a big one will chart a collision course with Earth. If spotted far enough out, humanity has time to prepare. Time to send out warnings, time to evacuate cities, time to nudge its trajectory, time to hit it with nukes. The key to planetary defence is early detection. The world’s early warning systems are surprisingly informal. Collections of observatories volunteering time and resources make up our principal defence. But NEOs are a relatively new global concern. In time, our collective need for a comprehensive asteroid alert system may pave the way for international collaboration on projects of undeniable importance. Of the 1.2 million objects floating in our solar system, 29,264 are near-Earth objects. Every day, 80 to 100 tonnes of dust and small meteorites falls from space onto planet Earth. Almost all of it burns up in our atmosphere. An asteroid’s potential danger is a function of its size, its speed relative to Earth’s, its mass and the angle of the collision. Big, fast, heavy rocks coming in at a steep angle are the most dangerous. The first ‘asteroid’ discovered was in fact a dwarf planet, Ceres. It was spotted by Giuseppe Piazzi, a Catholic priest and astronomer, in 1801. Dispute about whether Ceres is a planet or an asteroid was responsible for the 2006 demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet status. This article was originally published in June 2022. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “Deflecting asteroids” sent at: 29/06/2022 11:48. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on March 15, 2023

How to use our content - 360

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

How Tonga strikes a balance between king and democracy - 360 Mele Tupou Vaitohi Published on May 5, 2023 The Pacific’s last remaining monarchy has taken a unique approach to balancing executive powers between the king and the parliament. Tonga knows how to do coronations. When the current King Tupou VI was crowned in 2015 the celebrations lasted 11 days, unlike the more modest three-day programme planned for Britain’s King Charles III. They began with a kava ceremony and traditional gifts from local chiefs being presented to the king, reached their zenith with the formal crowning of the king and queen at the Royal Palace grounds and ended with a military tattoo. The crowning of King Tupou VI was also notable for being the first under Tonga’s more democratically-elected government, following the most significant constitutional reforms in the country’s history in 2010. Multiple attempts have been made to further amend the constitution since then, but they remain the only significant amendments to have been passed. The people of Tonga pride themselves on being the last remaining monarchy in the Pacific and having never ceded their sovereignty, despite coming under Britain’s protection in 1900, and joining the Commonwealth in 1970. Eminent Pacific researcher, the late Guy Powles, attributed Tonga’s political stability to this “unique amalgam of Tongan chiefly authority and British forms of government and law” which was adopted and accepted by the people of Tonga since 1875. The Tongan monarch had significant political power and authority as the head of government and the head of state under the 1875 Constitution of Tonga, up until the 2010 democratic reforms. But the monarch still has absolute discretion on appointments to the Privy Council — who today serve as advisors to the monarch and also hear appeals from the Land Court but are no longer part of the executive branch of government — and the power of pardon under special clauses of the constitution. That the king did not lose all his executive powers during the 2010 reforms can be looked at from two points of view. Traditionalist Tongans believe people have trusted their monarch for so long that the best course of action is to continue to do so. The monarch’s wide influence as the hau or traditional leader entitles him or her to exercise royal prerogatives wherever there are gaps. This means there is no need to scrutinise the law in great detail in order to define terms, to draw lines and pursue strictly correct answers. In fact, it is rather disloyal to do so. Another view is that the monarch is also not immune from taking on new ideas and seeking new directions and policies for the nation. Accountability will be raised by an ever-vigilant population. The 2010 reforms represented the first major change to Tonga’s political landscape since 1875 and were introduced relatively peacefully, which was seen as a great credit to the Tongan cultural values of restraint, respect and responsibility. They diluted the power of the monarch by shifting some of his executive power to the Legislative Assembly, primarily the cabinet. Prior to the 2010 reforms, the prime minister and other members of the cabinet were appointed and dismissed by the monarch. The monarch hence had a substantial degree of control over the government: ministers were directly responsible and accountable to the monarch and not to parliament or the people of Tonga. But by the early 1990s, demand was growing for a more democratic government. The first official step toward reform occurred after the general election in March 2005, when King Taufa’ahau (Tupou IV, who died on 10 September 2006) appointed to Cabinet two elected nobles’ representatives and two elected people’s representatives and appointed one of the people’s representatives as Prime Minister in March 2006. This was the first commoner to hold the position of Prime Minister. The pressure on the government and the monarch came from public service strikes and protest marches about public service reforms and utility costs as well as political change between 2005 and 2006. In October 2006, the new King George V (who reigned until his death on 18 March 2012) publicly announced his support for political reform and volunteered to relinquish his constitutional authority. Although George V was credited with his immediate support for political reform, he was criticised by many for insisting on some areas of influence, particularly in the appointment of key people such as all the judiciary, the Attorney-General, the Lord Chancellor, the Police Commissioner, in addition to existing powers such as ‘to pardon’, to appoint the commander of the armed forces and the powers in relation to law-making (assent/veto) and the legislature (convoke/dismiss). This could explain why, on 16 November 2006, riots broke out. The pressure eventually led to the establishment of the Constitutional and Electoral Commission in July 2008, which reported back in November 2009 proposing 82 specific recommendations and draft amendments to the Constitution and other relevant statutes. The majority of the 52 recommendations accepted were directly related to shifting the majority of executive power from the monarch to the people’s elected representatives, who are ultimately accountable to the electorate. Not only was this a political process, it also impacted the traditional and cultural powers of the monarch enshrined in the Constitution. The most important power that people now possess is that for the first time their representatives make up the majority of parliamentarians, almost 70 percent. And there is now a mechanism for a vote of no confidence, which had never existed before, despite being present in most other Pacific countries. However, there was overwhelming public support for enshrining the monarch’s position as a safety measure to guard against unconstitutional actions by the government. The king is no longer part of the executive, which precludes him from intervening directly in day-to-day conduct of the administration of ministries or government departments. The head of government is the prime minister, who is now an elected member of parliament elected by the members of parliament and appointed by the king according to the wishes of parliament. Since 2010, Tonga has gone through multiple significant events which tested its new dual executive system of king and parliament. Two attempts to further democratise the government through constitutional amendments have been unsuccessful, with bills passed by the Legislative Assembly in 2014 rejected by the king due to the lack of evidence the cabinet was unanimously in their favour. It has since been resolved the bills need consultation with the public. Five governments have been elected, one of which was after the king dissolved Parliament in 2017 and one resulted after the then prime minister died in 2019. There have been three motions of votes of no confidence — in 2012, 2017 and 2021, all unsuccessful. Although any one of these events may have given rise to a constitutional crisis, they so far have not, showing Tonga’s success at managing to weave together different principles which favour both democratisation and the status quo. The perfect balance between king and democracy. Dr Mele Tupou Vaitohi is the research lead for the Pasifika Legal Education Hub at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. She is a leading legal scholar on Tongan constitutional law. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “Monarchies in modern democracy” sent at: 03/05/2023 11:38. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 5, 2023

How universities are beating sexual predators - 360 Lidwina Inge Nurtjahyo Published on November 25, 2022 It’s been a long fight but the battle against sexual violence in Indonesia’s universities is slowly being won. In 2019, five students from the University of Indonesia sat in a room at the Faculty of Law. The four men and one woman came from two very different institutions: the University of Indonesia Student Executive Board and Hopehelps UI, a volunteer-led community network that provides help to victims of assault. It’s rare to see representatives from these two groups come together and sit down to talk. But one thing united them: sexual violence. The meeting came at a time when sex assaults on university campuses were in the news with Tirto.id, The Jakarta Post, and VICE Indonesia all reporting on the issue in the wake of the high profile Agni case — which became a trigger for the movement against sexual violence on campus — and the case of a poet artist who allegedly raped students at the University of Indonesia. In 2019 there had been five cases reported to Hopehelps which involved catcalling, peeking and even taking pictures of female students in the toilet. At the time there were little or no avenues for victims to seek justice. “We were very sad every time we got reports of sexual violence” said M. Wildan Teddy, the director of Hopehelps at the time. “We could only listen to the stories of the victims. But that’s not enough. Victims sometimes don’t want to report to the faculty because … there is no follow up on their cases. Or victims are often blamed. They’re broken.” The student groups developed procedures for the prevention and handling of cases of violence on campus. After the guidelines were published, other campuses followed suit. The government then enacted laws in 2021 with the Prevention and Handling of Sexual Violence Act followed by the Sexual Violence Act in May 2022. The University of Indonesia Rector’s Decree was enacted last month. At the time of the Agni case, there was no legal protection for victims of sexual violence in Indonesia. The Sexual Crime Act was still in the pipeline, with debate swirling around the word “consent”. Considering consent meant the Indonesian government tacitly recognised all sexual relations, including infidelity or between unmarried partners — a controversial idea in a predominantly religious country. In 2021, with sexual violence on university campuses in the spotlight, The Education Ministry enacted a ministerial regulation mandating all educational institutions to provide a safe and comfortable environment for all. But it hasn’t been smooth sailing. There was a debate between moralist, religious hard-line groups and activists about the definition of sexual violence, protection of victims and who even qualifies as a victim. Religious groups rejected the regulation because it was deemed not to regulate adultery, thereby allowing adultery to occur on campus. They argued the law did not reflect cultural and religious values in Indonesia and submitted a Judicial Review to the Supreme Court to have it annulled. In response, more than 1000 academics and students signed an open letter rejecting the Judicial Review and supporting the Ministry of Education Regulation No 30/2021. The battle against sexual violence was strengthened by the Sexual Violence Crime Act. which expanded the definition of sexual violence to include non-physical forms, such as social media harassment. There were other wins. Previously, victims needed to provide two witnesses to prove an assault. Now, testimony from the victim alone —with supporting evidence — is sufficient. In addition, victims can testify online and there are regulations around improved counselling for victims. Still, there are many challenges ahead. There are question marks over whether local officials and police will accept the changes, or pursue cases given budget restraints. But lessons have been learned. Legal protection is required; it’s not enough just to have good intentions. While bringing perpetrators to justice is important, a prevention program could change attitudes in Indonesia’s universities. And prevention and handling of sexual violence requires a combined effort from the academic community, NGOs, service providers, and government institutions. The hope is that many obstacles will be overcome and sexual violence in college will be a thing of the past. Lidwina Inge Nurtjahyo is a lecturer and researcher in the Faculty of Law University of Indonesia. She has developed women and children legal clinic in UI. She declares that he has no conflict of interest. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on November 25, 2022

How useful is the air quality index? - 360 Azliyana Azhari, Raksha Pandya-Wood Published on January 10, 2024 While the air quality index is a useful tool, it has its limitations. There’s still a greater need for robust monitoring to ensure cleaner air. Imagine you’re walking through polluted city streets. Despite wearing a N95 mask, you can still smell the smoky, sulphuric, gassy, solvent-like air. The pollution is so bad you can even taste the air’s oily, dirty residue. The skyline is obscured by a thick layer of smog, transforming the horizon into a hazy, fog-laden panorama. From the annual transboundary haze shrouding Southeast Asia for decades to Delhi’s recent acrid smog, a toxic tide of air pollution is choking cities worldwide. Beijing’s winter smog, a noxious cocktail of traffic fumes and factory spew, paints a horrifying picture: this invisible enemy isn’t a distant threat, it’s in the air we breathe. The main sources of these air pollutants are exhaust emissions, incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, power stations and industrial activities, all of which result in harmful chemicals and pollutants blanketing the air. Air pollutants are categorised as primary pollutants (environmentally damaging materials produced by man-made or natural processes) and secondary pollutants (products of chemical changes of the primary pollutants). Usually colourless and odourless, air pollutants are an invisible threat which poses a grave risk to public health, our ecosystems, and the delicate equilibrium of our planet. A way to keep track of air pollution daily is by understanding how to minimise our exposures using readings of the Air Quality Index (AQI), also sometimes referred to as Air Pollution Index (API). This is the global language used for assessing air quality conditions. It informs people how clean or polluted the air is based on a simple number from a scale of 0-500 with known impact to human health. Thirty-seven of the 40 most polluted cities in the world are in Southeast Asia with almost 99 percent of the population living in areas where the WHO has deemed the air quality to be unsafe due to pollution. Our health is intricately linked to what we breathe. Just like smoking, breathing unclean air is equally bad. Just like how smoking is bad for our health, breathing in unclean air is equally bad. Polluted air particles can cause irritation, swelling and inflammation in our nose, throat, sinuses, eyes and in our lungs. Gut microbiota is also affected. For babies and children with developing lungs, people living with pre-existing medical conditions such as heart disease, people with disabilities, and the elderly, poor quality air can have serious and lasting implications such as emphysema, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and even some cancers such as lung, breast and pancreatic cancers. The number on the scale is based on concentrations of chemical pollutants of any given day into one reading. The reading takes account of all the major air pollutants, including particulate matter, ground level ozone, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. Daily reading allows the government and the public to understand the air quality surrounding them and when the air quality is at its best or worst, helping people to make their own choices about when to venture out or avoid going out. An air quality index is useful in indicating the condition of air quality which reflects the effect on human health and is easily understood by the public. Each index value corresponds to a colour-coded category and specific health risks Five major pollutants are used in calculating air quality. The calculation is based on the Pollution Standard Index (PSI) that has been used and accepted internationally. It involves measuring pollutant concentrations, applying specific formulas, and interpreting the results to provide a simple, colour-coded scale. API Guide The continuous air quality monitoring stations record hourly concentrations of the major pollutants. Following their different averaging time, the concentrations of each primary pollutant is converted into a sub-index using a specific mathematical equation following the requirement of country specific ambient air quality standards breakpoints. These standards are the Malaysian Ambient Air Quality Standard (MAAQS) for Malaysia, the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) in the US, and the National Environmental Protection (Ambient Air Quality) Measure (NEPM) in Australia. When a specific sub-index for each primary pollutant is calculated, the highest sub-index is determined as the air quality for the particular time period. An air quality index is a useful tool, but it has limitations. Index values can differ from country to country due to variable emission sources, meteorological conditions and environmental regulation and enforcement. The specific formulas used to convert their concentrations into sub-indexes can differ in the weighting of the pollutants, the different standard breakpoints used in different countries, which means the same concentration of a pollutant might trigger a higher or lower sub-index depending on the local standards. As the air quality index focuses on five primary pollutants, it may not capture emerging threats like ultrafine particles which can penetrate deeper into our lungs and bloodstream. These ultra fine particles can cause various health impacts. They are volatile organic compounds which contribute to formation of surface ozone; and airborne heavy metals like lead, arsenic and chromium which can cause damage to organs and nervous system. An index gives an overall number and does not take into account how different people’s exposure can be depending on things like where they are and how active they are. While the air quality index provides a valuable metric for quantifying air pollution and its public health implications, there are limitations. By advocating for stricter regulations, adopting sustainable practices and encouraging collective action, we can claim our right to clean air — a lifeline not only for our lungs, but also for the future of our planet and its diverse inhabitants. is a postdoctoral research fellow in climate change communication at the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub (MCCCRH), Monash University Malaysia. Her expertise is within the climate-related atmospheric hazards and emission management and her current research is centred on communicating the impacts of climate change and promoting the importance of climate action. is a postdoctoral fellow and project manager at MCCCRH, Monash University Malaysia. Raksha brings expertise from the social science and global health disciplines to climate change. She specialises in community engagement. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on January 10, 2024

How victims can pay polluters for a win-win result - 360 Euston Quah Published on January 18, 2022 With smoke haze posing a significant pollution issue in Southeast Asia, a victim-pays approach could result in cleaner air for all. By Euston Quah, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) The dry season is the period for slash and burn in Southeast Asia. Each July to October, smoke from agriculture and clearing of forests chokes not only the countries burning (mainly Indonesia), but also neighbouring countries, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, and Southern Thailand. Forest fires and smoke haze in Southeast Asia have, over the years, resulted in serious health risks, environmental damage and economic ramifications well beyond borders. Fining the perpetrators is risky. Boycotts of haze-linked products such as palm oil penalise well-behaved plantations as well as errant ones. What if, instead, the victims were to pay? Paying polluters to adopt fire-free land clearing practices could be the economic solution the region needs. Particularly if countries were willing to overlook narrow national interests and acknowledge the transnational effects of haze on economies and societies. Preventing the economic consequences of forest burning is among the many activities undertaken by developed countries and international institutions like the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank under the label of development assistance. If those wanting a haze-free life contributed financing, farmers and plantations would find it possible to ditch slash and burn. Payments could be used to fund appropriate land-clearing equipment, and financial incentives and disincentives to small landholders to adopt land-clearing practices without the use of fire. Funding and fund transfer among the stakeholders could pay for fire monitoring and prevention activities in a bid to control and influence the polluters. On the other side of the ledger are the many tangible and intangible costs associated with transboundary haze. The tangible costs of haze pollution include health costs, productivity loss due to restricted activity days, loss of tourism and its knock-on effects, and the cost of mitigation and adaptation by government agencies and households. Intangible costs may be difficult to measure but nonetheless have a real impact on society, such as general discomfort suffered by the public and loss of enjoyment of outdoor activities. It may seem unfair — extortionate even — to ask the victims to pay to avoid being harmed. But realistically, many in Southeast Asia may be willing to pay to end the annual haze. A central tenet of welfare economics sees welfare enhanced if those who are better off can compensate those who lose and still be better off. The cost of controlling the haze pollution could be shared by the victim nations in proportion to the damage they experience from the pollution. Game theory could be used to set the rules so no country would be tempted to walk away. In 2004, it was suggested that 93.8 percent of the victim damages were in Indonesia, 5.1 percent in Malaysia and 1.1 percent in Singapore. A calculation of the tangible and intangible costs of the haze impacts amounts to about S$1.83 billion (US$1.2 billion). If the costs of direct fire damages in Indonesia were factored in as well, the relative proportions of victim damages suffered by each country could then be calculated by dividing the total damage costs to each country over the total costs of forest fires and haze to the region. Therefore they should contribute approximately US$1.125 billion, US$61.2 million, and US$13.2 million a year, respectively. This method only works if the amount paid is less than or equal to the harm suffered. For example, if the cost of reducing land-clearing activities is lower than the cost of the fires for its own country, Indonesia could manage the fires themselves. International expertise and financial support could improve environmental conditions in Southeast Asia, saving the region’s countries billions of dollars while modernising production methods used primarily by small landholders. The benefits of transforming the agricultural sector in Malaysia and Indonesia might deliver spinoffs to other sectors in the economy including agricultural machinery. Over the long term, the health benefits might be considerable and lead to an improvement in the sector’s image. Another source of transboundary haze mitigation funding might be ordinary people who are willing to pay for not enduring pollution. In 2018, a willingness-to-pay survey found that, for a one-month haze episode, Singaporeans were willing to reach into their own pockets for approximately S$51.31 if it meant the skies remained haze-free. Calculating the cost of Southeast Asian haze in victim countries would help each country to better decide whether and how much aid to offer Indonesia, and how best to assist sectors hurt by the haze. Balancing the costs of haze pollution damages and the costs of spending on controlling and reducing these damages is important for policy decisions both internationally and locally. Euston Quah is Albert Winsemius Chair Professor of Economics, and Director, Economic Growth Centre at the Nanyang Technological  University, Singapore. He is also president of the Economic Society of  Singapore. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “Wildfires” sent at: 13/01/2022 12:45. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on January 18, 2022

How virtual humans might help our lonely elderly - 360 Hamid Laga, Mohammed Bennamoun, Farid Boussaid Published on October 4, 2023 Intelligent virtual human companions could help address the social isolation felt by many older people. They can walk, talk, sit on your couch and until recently, belonged only in the realm of science fiction. Soon computer-generated humans could become some of our best friends as more people try to overcome the kind of loneliness that can come with ageing. Technology is making it possible, but it is our changing demographics that might drive us towards these virtual humans. Many developed economies in Asia, Europe and North America are also rapidly ageing societies. For example, more than one-fifth of Australia’s population is projected to be 65 or older by 2066. This poses major socio-economic challenges, from a reduction in the skilled workforce through to unprecedented pressure on health and social services — and demands some equally significant solutions. Social isolation is one of the key issues faced by ageing populations. Most elderly people live either in aged-care facilities or in their own homes but with little to no social interactions with other family members or friends. Intelligent virtual human companions have the potential to help alleviate this problem. An intelligent virtual human companion is an avatar — a computer-generated human that can be placed in and integrated into physical worlds like your living room, similar to a hologram seen through augmented reality glasses. Such a companion is unique because it integrates seamlessly with the physical world so you will see this computer-generated human as if it is a real person, breaking boundaries between real and virtual worlds. It can look, behave and converse like a human, for example a beloved family member. And it understands and interacts with the environment and other people in the same way a person would. So it can move around, sit or lie down and chat with others in the same way. It can’t pick up or move things or make a cup of tea — the technology is not there yet. Unlike robots — which have also been considered a solution to social isolation among the elderly — virtual humans are not expensive, are easy to deploy and are customisable. They can be shaped in any form and simulate the look and behaviour of anyone — something which isn’t possible with a robot. This could perhaps explain why, despite significant investments — especially in countries like Japan — the adoption of robotics in aged care has been minimal. The technology behind intelligent virtual humans has a range of possible applications. In ageing societies, virtual humans can play the role of companions as well as help service providers. With more people relying on telehealth, especially in remote areas that lack facilities and health-care workers, intelligent virtual human technology can holoport doctors, other health practitioners and even patients to where they are needed. Holoportation allows three-dimensional models of people to be transmitted anywhere. The technology could be used in a similar way for education and training providers or customer support. Making virtual human companions look and act like real humans, and equipping them with the intelligence necessary for their seamless integration into people’s physical environments and daily lives, is key to their widespread adoption. Five years ago, this goal sounded more like science fiction. Today, technological developments in augmented reality, computer graphics, artificial intelligence and machine learning and computer vision are turning it into a reality. Augmented reality devices are becoming more powerful and more accessible to common users. Computer graphics algorithms — now empowered with generative AI — enable realistic visualisation of virtual worlds in general and virtual humans in particular. Computer vision algorithms — which greatly benefited from the deep learning revolution — now achieve unprecedented performance in object recognition and scene understanding, and in recognising and predicting people’s emotions and behaviours. Advances in AI and machine learning have paved the way to developing machines that can learn from and reason like humans. All this means life-like virtual human companions equipped with advanced artificial intelligence have huge potential to improve the mental health and quality of life of ageing populations around the world. But there are still obstacles and challenges to overcome before this becomes a mature technology. Augmented reality technology, despite many decades of research, is still in its infancy. Augmented reality devices are physically cumbersome and the images rendered on their glasses are low resolution and low quality compared to what can be done on desktop computers. And importantly, the health impacts of using augmented reality devices for long hours is yet to be understood. User privacy also needs to be addressed, since this technology learns from user data and continuously collects it while operating to provide the right and personalised services, but also to refine its knowledge. From a technological perspective, making virtual humans realistic and intelligent is an ongoing area of research, although significant advances have been made towards achieving this goal. These include developing novel machine learning techniques for scene understanding, 3D reconstruction and modelling, 4D humans, Bayesian neural networks and spiking neural networks, which are essential towards modelling virtual humans that can reason in the same way humans do. Despite the benefits they could bring, whether people are ready to accept intelligent virtual human companions living with them and sharing their physical space remains to be seen. is a professor in information technology at Murdoch University. His research interests include machine learning, 3D computer vision and computer graphics, and their applications across agriculture, animal science, biosecurity and healthcare. is a Winthrop Professor at the University of Western Australia. His areas of interest include computer vision, machine/deep learning, robotics, signal/image processing and control theory. is a professor at the University of Western Australia. His research interests include neuromorphic engineering, smart sensors, and machine learning. Intelligent Virtual Human Companions is a joint research project between the University of Western Australia and Murdoch University, led by Professor Mohammed Bennamoun and Professor Farid Boussaid from UWA and Professor Hamid Laga from Murdoch. It has been funded by the Australian Research Council. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on October 4, 2023

How we can stop losing teachers - 360 Fiona Longmuir Published on January 27, 2023 COVID-19 further exposed existing cracks in the teaching profession which need to be fixed urgently. Education faces huge challenges after COVID-19. Teacher numbers and resourcing, unequal access and outcomes and widespread student disillusionment, disengagement and mental ill-health are not new — but have been blatantly exposed and exacerbated by the pandemic. How we respond now will be crucial for future generations. The past three years of pandemic-interrupted schooling put extreme pressure on all involved: school leaders and administrators, teachers, students and families. Teacher shortages have reached critical levels in the United States,  United Kingdom, Australia, Europe and Africa. The supply and demand of teachers, particularly in ‘hard-to-staff’ locations, continues to be an issue and was heightened over the pandemic due to a lack of effective policy solutions. The expectations of teachers’ performance have increased over time as schools increase their reliance on standardised tests. Teaching has become more time-consuming and more physically and emotionally demanding while the pay and social rewards are often perceived as unsatisfactory. This was already contributing to teachers’ intentions to leave the profession prior to COVID-19, according to 2019 research on Australian teachers. The crisis in teacher supply is only one facet of the deeper, more complex combination of problems modern education faces. The mix of global pressures, such as competitive education and employment opportunities, political tensions, technological advancements and environmental degradation and climate change, have created younger generations that struggle to find hope — disengaged and struggling with mental health in increasing numbers. The problem of teacher supply and student well-being is worse in communities with the least resources, particularly during the pandemic. The class of 2022/2023 and those in the next five years are likely to bear the brunt of these issues. There is a generation at risk of having their futures defined by COVID-19. Addressing teacher shortages should be a priority. Teachers not only provide high-quality learning — they are also key figures of emotional support, social development and students’ well-being. High-quality, dedicated and caring teachers who have the time and resources to develop positive relationships and support high-quality learning can make immeasurable differences in students’ lives and in communities that will thrive in the future. But many teachers are struggling and considering leaving. The Australian Government has declared the teacher shortage an “unprecedented“ challenge and developed a National Teacher Workforce Action Plan. It outlines five priority areas of improving teacher supply: strengthening initial teacher education, keeping the teachers we have, elevating the profession and better understanding future teacher workforce needs. Two of these five, keeping teachers and elevating the profession, are an immediate priority to address two issues contributing to the rates of teacher attrition — workload and disrespect. Monash University research has found these are often cited by teachers as contributing to increased rates of burnout and attrition. Australia is on a precipice, with up to 70 percent of teachers considering leaving the profession.  Working through the pandemic was the final straw due to the further intensification of expectations and workload. Now in a ‘post-COVID’ period, they are not seeing changes that suggest a more manageable way forward. But if disillusioned teachers can be convinced to stay and if some who have left in recent years could be convinced to return, the crisis might be diminished. This will only occur by improving teachers’ working conditions and ensuring the public discussions and perceptions about teaching (in the media and through policy) are positive and respectful. Teachers in the Monash University survey recommended solutions such as: reducing administrative burdens, providing more specialised staff to assist with students’ social and behavioural challenges and reducing class sizes to allow more time for teachers to meet the individual and social needs of students. Respondents also suggested better pay and greater trust in teachers through the removal of excessive accountability requirements. Doing so would help them to feel more valued and appreciated. The solutions to the immediate teacher supply issues are not simple, nor are they cheap. It would be cheaper and easier to call for improved teacher preparation programs or to investigate long-term workforce trends, but this won’t have the short-term impact that is needed. If governments and administrators are able to hone in on what teachers are crying out for right now, we might be able to stem the attrition, and also have the long-term benefit of the profession being seen as an attractive career. It’s really a pretty simple equation — the stronger and more committed our teachers are, the better educated our societies will be. Fiona is a Lecturer in Educational Leadership in the Faculty of Education, Monash University, with a background of 15 years of teaching and leadership at schools in disadvantaged, urban communities. Fiona’s research interests are in intersections of educational leadership, educational change and student empowerment. The author declares no conflict of interest. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on January 27, 2023

How we stay connected even when fast asleep - 360 Dana Zarhin Published on February 12, 2024 When we sleep we are in our own world, or are we? The reality is far more complicated. Sara loves design and spends late nights on her phone browsing home decor ideas. She is an active member of various WhatsApp groups and enjoys sharing messages, videos and memes. She frequently uses her phone at bedtime to stay connected with family members. Since his son moved out of home, Ahmed has become quite anxious and frequently wakes up during the night to check his phone. Whenever he receives messages that confirm his son’s safety or whereabouts, Ahmed feels calm and is able to go back to sleep without worrying. Clara uses her mobile phone as her alarm clock and keeps it close to her all night. She doesn’t mind having her phone nearby although her husband’s snoring is another matter. That keeps her awake and Clara believes it’s affecting her health and job performance.   Despite that, Clara is reluctant to sleep separately from her husband. What Sara, Ahmed and Clara have in common, like many other people, is they habitually use their mobile phones before bedtime, or while in bed. They also share a bed with disruptive sleepers, such as snoring partners, restless children, and even pets. This urge to stay connected flies in the face of all the expert advice on the importance of sleep, which is well understood. Experts recommend following “sleep hygiene” practices to maintain good sleep habits such as avoiding screens, caffeine, and alcohol before bedtime, keeping a regular schedule, exercising regularly,ensuring the bedroom is dark and quiet, etc. Some experts also advise against sharing a bed with a disruptive sleeper (e.g., due to snoring or frequent tossing and turning). There are reasons why people ignore this advice. A recent series of studies based on interviews with everyday Israelis sheds some light on these questions. Although sleepers are often referred to as being “dead to the world”, many of them wish to and are even expected to stay connected with the outside world. Sleep is typically viewed as a time for rest and detachment, enabling people to be free from social commitments and withdraw from the usual responsibilities of daily life. But sleep does not entail a complete detachment from one’s social world, as some social obligations persist and as many wish to sustain bonds even amid unconsciousness. This means mobile phones not only become a crucial tool for fostering and maintaining social connections, but — and this may sound counter-intuitive — also safeguard sleep during late hours. Many people use their phones as an alarm clock to wake up on time for work and caregiving duties. They also use their phones to stay connected with the world and communicate with their friends and family. This gives them an opportunity to read articles and updates at their leisure when they are too busy during the day. Some people keep their phones on overnight with sound or notifications enabled in case someone needs to contact them. Others keep their phones on to receive reassuring messages from their loved ones or children while they are out at night. This way, they can communicate without fully waking up, which helps protect their sleep. Mobile phones play a crucial role as a lifeline to loved ones, providing comfort and security during times of separation. At the same time, many people use their phones to relieve stress and fall asleep. The phone provides a distraction from anxious thoughts that keep them awake. Thus, mobile phones provide the opportunity for individuals to both connect and disconnect while sleeping. The use of mobile phones at night can have both positive and negative effects. While some find that their phones help them relax and transition into sleep, others experience sleep disruption due to ongoing connectivity. And while being constantly connected may have its benefits, it may eventually undermine the right to disconnect. The desire to maintain social connections is also the reason many couples insist on co-sleeping despite their partners’ disruptive sleep. Research participants believed that sharing a bed with their partner is vital to their relationship. Participants said it fosters intimacy and helps enhance communication between partners. Sleeping in separate rooms, however, can create a sense of distance between them. Simultaneously, they recognised that frequent sleep interruptions caused by their partners diminished both their quality of life and the quality of their relationship. As Clara said: her husband’s snoring was “ruining my life”. Most considered the bed as the most private space in the house, exclusively allowing partners, children and sometimes pets inside. This co-sleeping practice, they believed, strengthened their bonds. Sleepers stay connected to the social world in other ways as well. Sometimes, worries and concerns shaped by their social identity may keep them awake even against their wishes. This may “pull” them into wakefulness. For instance, those with lower socioeconomic status may worry more about financial issues, which can disrupt their sleep. These people are also more limited in their ability to purchase technologies, such as sleep masks, white noise machines and others, which could help them disengage from the world and improve their sleep. These studies shed light on the fact that sleep is a time of both attachment and detachment, social engagement and disconnection from the outside world. This paradoxical nature of sleep is one of the reasons why people may yearn for a perfect night’s sleep but cannot always achieve it. Further research could explore sleep not as an individual, private matter, but as a social time that both shapes and is shaped by social relationships and identities. Dana Zarhin is senior lecturer in the sociology department at the University of Haifa. The latest research conducted by the author was supported by the Israel Science Foundation [grant No. 1170/19]. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on February 12, 2024

How will El Niño change in the future? - 360 Nicola Maher, Malte Stuecker Published on September 22, 2023 Current evidence suggests both El Niño and La Niña could change significantly over the next 70 years, which will have consequences for how they impact us. El Niño and La Niña events are likely to get stronger over the next few decade before possibly weakening towards the end of the century, new research predicts. After three consecutive years of La Niñas, in early July the World Meteorological Organization declared an El Niño is underway, increasing the likelihood of hotter temperatures in many parts of the world. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology followed suit this week. But over the next 70 odd years expect to see much changed El Niño and La Niña events, according to the results of simulations using climate models from all over the world. Such modelling is extremely complex though, so uncertainties still remain. Increases or decreases in rainfall due to El Niño or La Niña events are projected to become more extreme, and these events will tend to be even more concentrated in the Southern Hemisphere summer rather than the rest of the calendar year. These projections are consistent with observations of more extreme El Niño events in recent decades. The models also predict that the warmest El Niño sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific will likely move more frequently from the east towards the central Pacific, and that stronger and longer La Niña events will follow El Niños. These predicted changes are important because of the impacts El Niño and La Niña events have globally. Locally in Australia, an El Niño typically causes bushfires or forest fires and drought, while a La Niña yields flooding rain. In Indonesia it results in a prolonged dry season. Scientific research has shown that El Niño-related rainfall over the tropical Pacific Ocean consistently increases in a warming world regardless of whether El Niño strengthens. However, the strength of El Niño and La Niña events is also vitally important in understanding how their impacts may change. If El Nino gets stronger its rainfall impacts will be even more severe. This means even less rainfall in some parts of the world and even more rainfall in others. Overall, recent research suggests that in many regions of the world current El Niño and La Niña impacts will be enhanced or become more extreme with warming. How El Niño and La Niña are predicted to change with time is linked to the world’s CO2 emissions pathway — that means, which decisions humans take in terms of carbon emissions will be extremely important in how the events evolve in the future. The climate models that were used to investigate the future of El Niño and La Niña are state-of-the-art computer simulations also used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate scientists run these models out to the year 2100 using a variety of possible future carbon emission scenarios. These include scenarios in which emissions are reduced significantly as well as business as usual scenarios in which the current greenhouse gas emission trajectory is continued. While climate model experiments provide a representation of how that future might look, any given climate model trajectory includes both the changes due to increasing greenhouse gases and the natural variability of the system. The natural variability can be thought of similar to the butterfly effect where a small change can result in a different trajectory. This natural variability and the changes due to greenhouse gases are intricately intertwined and are hard to disentangle. Simulations named ‘large ensembles’ are run many times with the exact same carbon emission trajectory. The climate variability within these large ensembles captures the butterfly nature of the system, whereas the average of all the ensemble members is the change due to the carbon emissions. This approach allows for a clear disentanglement of the response of the system to increasing greenhouse gases and the natural variability. A remaining challenge is understanding how exactly the warming pattern of the tropical Pacific will pan out over the near future. This is the focus of a coordinated international research effort under the World Climate Research Programme. Better understanding the biases in climate models, the time-dependent nature of the changes to El Niño and La Niña, and the mechanisms behind the changes is an active and important area of research. Such research is vital to better understanding how regional climates will evolve in the future. Dr Nicola Maher is a Research and DECRA Fellow at The Australian National University, Canberra. Her research uses global coupled climate models to investigate the dynamics, impacts and future changes modes of climate variability. Dr Malte Stuecker is an assistant professor in the Department of Oceanography and the International Pacific Research Center at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. His research investigates various aspects of climate variability and change in the past, present, and future. These range from regional to global scales, from the tropics to the poles with much of his group’s work centred on the climate of the Pacific. The authors’ research referred to in this article was supported by the Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, the Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the National Science Foundation and the Division of Ocean Sciences. This article has been updated and republished after Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology declared an El Niño on 19 September 2023. It was originally published on 10 July 2023. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “El Nino returns” sent at: 22/09/2023 17:36. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on September 22, 2023

How will Modi play his hand with Biden? - 360 Atul Mishra Published on June 21, 2023 Modi’s visit to Washington could answer some of the big questions around the India-US relationship. There good reasons to believe Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the United States could be a landmark moment. Agreements likely to be signed could, over time, seriously augment India’s defence capabilities and ease its long-term security concerns. India-US relations comprise an extensive portfolio. But the big question in the relationship is about international order and the role of geopolitics in shaping it: how the two nations overlap, how they read the contemporary crisis in international affairs and the need for a new order, and what role they see for geopolitics in shaping the emergent order. Ever since bilateral relations began transforming in the late-1990s, the US has courted India, hoping that it will become a core pillar of America’s global policy. The Clinton and Bush administrations sought to enlist India in their efforts to spread and consolidate the liberal international order even as balancing China with Indian assistance remained an important but a medium-to-long-term concern. The liberal international order began unravelling during the Obama years and the Trump presidency did much to destroy it even as the latter sharpened its China policy and brought the US-China great power rivalry to the centre stage of international relations. The strategic component of India-US relations drifted during the Obama presidency and relations in general became mutually transactional while Trump was in office. President Joe Biden has inherited a full-blown return of geopolitics with Russian and Chinese revisionism. Given its investments in developing relations, the US  has unsurprisingly expected India to take a similar view as it does of the threats to international order posed by Moscow and Beijing. Indian leaders have responded astutely to American courtship and expectations during this period. Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh were sympathetic to the liberal international order but not its committed partisans. They supported global democratisation but not western-style democracy promotion. They were also sensitive to the inequities that capitalism produces as it spreads and deepens. And they were sceptical of American hegemony, professing support for a multipolar world. Above all, they were reluctant to give India’s foreign policy a geopolitical orientation normally associated with great powers. China was an emergent geopolitical rival, but India during their leadership preferred bilateral engagement over systemic policies such as balancing and containment, which would have invariably involved aligning policy with the US. India during Modi’s premiership has faced an international situation in which its reluctance to acting geopolitically has been severely tested. Over the past decade, China’s profile in South Asia and the wider Asian and Indo-Pacific regions has steadily risen. It has also become increasingly aggressive along the contested border with India. For six years before summer 2020, when the crisis in eastern Ladakh region broke out, the Modi government’s China policy involved pushing Beijing to prioritise the resolution of the boundary dispute while trying to strike a political understanding at the level of President Xi Jinping and Modi himself on the overall tenor of the relationship. That the crisis of mid-2020 put paid to those efforts made it clear that India’s China challenge was systemic rather than bilateral. India needed more than itself to mount an effective response. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has complicated the picture. In India’s semi-official discourse, the war is considered Europe’s problem. That may be so, but the changes it has set in motion have made it harder for New Delhi to avoid power politics. The war has compelled Europe to transform itself into a military power. It has also  alerted western nations and their Indo-Pacific allies to the fact that the revisionisms of Moscow and Beijing, though separate and different for now, pose a direct challenge to the fundamental rules and arrangements of international politics set in place after the Second World War. India’s global ambitions run through this geography of wariness. And its security is imperilled by aggression from China, increased Chinese influence over Russia, and India’s dependence on Russia for military hardware at the time when western sanctions cripple Russia’s ability to meet its obligations to India. Realpolitik would demand that India balance China by working purposefully with the West and its Asian and Indo-Pacific allies. Puzzlingly, however, India has been overly careful to not let its Quad and Indo-Pacific strivings be seen as attempts to balance China. Its China posture has been remarkably unassertive, which can be gleaned by comparing the words New Delhi has used for Beijing and Islamabad in recent times. While its reluctance to criticise Russia over Ukraine is understandable, what is unclear is why it has turned sharply critical of the West in the past year, accusing the grouping of being insular, hypocritical and much more. Why has it risked distancing and antagonising a global force whose strategic ambitions overlap with its own, especially when they share at least one rival in common? A plausible explanation is that New Delhi believes there is enough international room for it to pursue conflicting priorities. Its cautious and careful China posture stems from the massive power differential with that country, but its unwillingness to add muscle to its Indo-Pacific strivings with the West comes from its belief that it constitutes an independent pole in international politics rather than a potential element in a Western alliance. India’s neutrality over the Ukraine war highlights a preference for nonalignment that never really left its foreign policy framework. It reads the contemporary international crisis as one in which the two pillars of the western-crafted international order — liberalism and capitalism — have been discredited. This explains both the extensive criticism of the West and the  prominence of the Hindutva reading of India’s civilization, and not liberal democracy, as the country’s primary international identity. More importantly, there appears to be a belief that the West needs India more than the other way around. India’s strategic location, vast continental and maritime profile, its large market, its demographic potential, and its leadership position within the Global South all are seen as resources that the West needs to build a credible Indo-Pacific strategy that goes beyond balancing China to actually helming the new international order. India believes it has considerable room to drive a hard bargain with the West in general and the US in particular as it responds to their overtures. American expectations that the China threat will cause New Delhi to become more open to moving beyond a strategic convergence are also frustrated by the dominant position of the Modi regime in the country’s domestic politics. Had the territorial incursions and gains made by China on the borders since mid-2020 happened under another government, it would have been severely cornered and compelled to respond more assertively. But the regime’s hold on foreign policy narrative is strong and it can drown out even the strongest criticism of its conception and handling of India’s national interest. Having managed the Chinese threat perception, it faces negligible domestic pressure to respond according to the realist logic. Modi’s impending state visit to the US must be seen against this backdrop. Breakthrough agreements in defence and security cooperation may be inked. And we may just see substantive beginnings in India’s quest to lessen its dependence on Russia for its military needs. But it is highly unlikely that India would commit to such geopolitical roles vis-à-vis China and Russia that the US expects it to adopt. American expectations could only be moderately met. In India, however, the symbolism of the state visit will dominate the narrative. Atul Mishra teaches international politics at Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, in NCR Delhi. @atulm01 Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on June 21, 2023

How women holding flowers held Japanese courts to account - 360 Kanoko Kamata Published on November 25, 2022 For a protest movement to succeed, it must fit within the cultural landscape of its environment. At 7pm on an April day in 2019, more than 400 people stood near Tokyo station, one of Japan’s busiest pedestrian areas, with flowers in their hands. It was a protest against four court acquittals of alleged rapists and a notorious case of alleged incest, by a father against his 19-year-old-daughter. Many people, especially women, felt betrayed by the Japanese justice system. The court decisions were seen to cast shame on the survivors and it created a damaging legal precedent, undermining the validity of sexual assault victims and their path to justice. Since then, Flower Demos have been held on the 11th of every month around the country. And Japan is beginning to slowly shift the legal dial for sexual assault survivors. In Japan, where an overarching value is placed on conformity, speaking about politics is commonly considered socially taboo. Demonstrations seen in other parts of the world, where people chant criticisms of the government and march down the street holding placards, are considered offensive by many in Japan. Yet, the Flower Demos brought aggrieved people out to discuss their experience and protest the silence behind the societal treatment of women. Japanese feminist author Minori Kitahara called on people to gather at Tokyo station on Twitter to support survivors who’d been let down by the system and listen to the experiences of activists, journalists and authors who have been sexually assaulted, or know someone who have. She asked people to come with flowers and only expected several people to come given Japan’s conformist culture. But hundreds of people, mainly women, arrived carrying signs saying #metoo, #withyou and “I stand against sexual violence”. The Flower Demos provide a particularly Japanese form of protest — one that is quiet, respectful and safe for survivors to speak up and share their experience. It created a community that acknowledged sexual violence as a social problem,in contrast to the common narrative, particularly in Japanese society, of the onus and blame being on individuals. “We don’t talk but want to show that ‘we exist’. I feel a certain kind of power from it,” Akemi (not her real name) from the Hokuriku region in northwestern Japan, told a researcher. Very few Japanese citizens have participated in demonstrations or social movements over the past five decades.Japan, a democratic country, guarantees the legal right to assembly and free speech. But mobilising protests is exceedingly difficult because people often avoid activities that could be perceived as disrupting the social order or “causing trouble”. This aversion is the result, in part, of mass protests in the 1960s and 1970s that were associated with politically radical activities, casting an unfavourable light on protest as a tool for change. But the Flower Demos mobilised people all over Japan and gained nation-wide media attention. Demonstraters stood in silence together and listened as others spontaneously spoke about their experiences of sexual violence for the very first time. NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster, filmed the Flower Demos in the cities of Okinawa, Gunma, Tokyo, and Fukuoka in 2019 and spoke to the women who led them, as did other major news organisations around the country. Women interviewed about their attendance said they believed people engaging in noisy demonstrations must have political qualifications, or a sound understanding of Japan’s wider social issues. They saw a floral vigil as less intimidating. The Flower Demos have created a lasting impact despite fewer people participating three years on. Three of four lawsuits that triggered the Flower Demos were revisited by the Japanese regional high courts which reversed their acquittals to guilty verdicts in early 2020. Organising members of the Flower Demos have collaborated to form Spring, a sexual assault survivors’s advocacy group, to push for a reform of the criminal code. Japan’s current criminal code requires sexual assault survivors to prove they vigorously resisted for a sex act to be considered rape. Advocates have been pushing for the acknowledgment of non-consensual sex acts to be considered rape. Consent is still a new idea in Japanese culture. This is despite increasing media reports and many non-government organisations, such as Chabujo, advocating for change since 2016. Legal scholars and defence lawyers have voiced concerns that consent is hard to prove and a reform would increase false accusations. The Japanese government selected a representative from Spring to sit on the criminal code reform committee in 2020 — previously only scholars and experts had been invited for such a role. The reform bill is expected to be formalised by 2023 at the earliest. An effective social mobilisation, of any cause, will always need to have a deeper understanding of the culture, society and the barriers to participation. It will never be one size fits all. The quiet solidarity of Flower Demos resonates with a more reserved Japanese culture, while also addressing a societal problem which until then had largely remained in the dark. Kanoko Kamata is a PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh, Department of Sociology. Her research interest is driven by her first-hand experiences as an organiser and activist on gender issues, particularly gender-based violence. The author declares no conflict of interest. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on November 25, 2022

How you could rent your way to buying a first home - 360 Hal Pawson Published on May 31, 2023 Fewer young people have the means to buy their first home, but is there a way to shortcut a failing system? If you’re an Australian born after 1995 it’s increasingly unlikely you’ll be buying your home anytime soon. The 2021 Census confirmed what had been suspected: the number of people aged between 30 and 34 who owned their own house, had slipped to just 50 percent That’s a drop of 14 percent in 50 years. The age when people typically first buy a home has gone up from 26 to 32. With young people facing seemingly insurmountable hurdles to home ownership, policymakers are scrambling to address the problem. While many of the ideas being floated to help fix the crisis have been around for a while, there are some gaining renewed interest. Among them, ‘Rent to buy’ (or ‘rent to own’) and ‘Build to Rent to Buy’ (BtRtB) are being seen as possible solutions to add to the housing mix. The basic ‘rent to buy’ (RtB) idea is simple: the aspiring first home buyer leases their dwelling while saving to eventually buy it. Both rent and ensuing purchase price are usually fixed at the start, providing housing stability during the savings period. But there are  hazards. Rent to buy schemes are generally offered by developers and property companies on the basis that you pay a market rent for your home, plus an additional fee for the option to buy it later. However, depending on the exact terms of your agreement, this can place you at risk of forfeiting your excess rent credit if the property’s value fails to increase as expected. Similarly, you may face difficulties in securing a mortgage if the property turns out to be overpriced at the point of purchase. Historically, many rent to buy offers were dangerously risky for renter/buyers as, in an unregulated market, customers were open to exploitation by unscrupulous operators. Recognising this hazard, the state of Victoria recently clamped down by introducing new consumer protections: option fees must be banked, and either go to the purchase price or be refunded. But these rules have yet to be adopted nationwide. A new RtB variant that has recently emerged in Australia is the ‘Build to Rent to Buy’ (BtRtB) model; where the home to be acquired is newly constructed for the purpose. Offering a version of BtRtB as a market product without explicit state support, Assemble Communities has attracted attention for its ongoing plan to generate 450 units on three Melbourne sites. A government-backed version of BtRtB has been developed by the Commonwealth Government’s National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NHFIC). This factors in a community housing provider as property developer and manager until the tenant takes full ownership after 10 years (if possible). It seeks to use the (assumed) growth in the occupied property value as a contribution to the occupier’s eventual mortgage deposit. The NHFIC model is now being piloted by Community Housing Canberra, particularly targeting older women in housing stress or at risk of homelessness. Build to rent to buy is interesting as an innovative new approach, but in terms of scale, the most significant recent Australian development in this area has been the huge expansion in the provision of government-backed low-deposit mortgages. That resulted from the Morrison Government’s 2020 launch of its First Home Loan Deposit Guarantee Scheme — now the NHFIC First Home Guarantee program. This emulates initiatives long-established in Western Australia and South Australia. By effectively insuring the mortgage lender against possible borrower default, the government enables qualifying applicants to secure their housing loan for 5 percent deposit rather than the standard 20 percent. While this doesn’t make home ownership affordable for lower income households, it does offer moderate income earners the chance to achieve it much more quickly. Potentially more effective in enabling slightly lower-income households to access home ownership is the shared equity model. This involves a qualifying first home buyer benefiting from a third party stake in their acquired property. This share, typically around 30 percent, is held by a developer or government agency under a second mortgage. The buyer, meanwhile, can secure their home for a 30 percent smaller mortgage than would be otherwise needed; this at the cost of sharing subsequent capital gains with the co-investor. When the buyer sells or refinances their home, the third party equity is reclaimed, ideally for re-issuance to a new scheme participant. As well as the shared equity programs already operated by Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria, the Commonwealth Government has pledged to establish a national shared equity scheme named ‘help to buy’. A number of privately-initiated schemes have also been recently launched. These types of schemes complement the cash grants and stamp duty concessions which were, until quite recently, the overwhelmingly dominant forms of first home buyer assistance in Australia. They have the advantage of being less inflationary and more cost-effective than those longer-established schemes. A new comparative analysis has also assessed shared equity as more advantageous than RtB from the perspective of both residents and investors. But none of these models does much to bring first home ownership within reach for people otherwise permanently excluded from it by inadequate means. Instead, for most, the main effect is the somewhat lesser gain of bringing forward home ownership for moderate income earners. This limitation links to the wider concern that sustainable home ownership growth demands systemic change to tackle the much tougher challenge of easing Australia’s broader housing affordability problem. Thanks to Dr Chris Martin, UNSW, for input into this story. Hal Pawson is a Professor of Housing Research and Policy and Associate Director at UNSW’s City Futures Research Centre and lead author of the Assisting first homebuyers: an international policy review report. Professor Pawson has received funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute to undertake some of the research referred to in this article. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 31, 2023

How young people’s anger might spur climate action - 360 Justin See Published on March 4, 2024 Across the globe, political campaigns are targeting young people for their votes, but are they listening to their growing anger over climate inaction? This year has been lauded as an enormous test for global democracy. Nations across the globe will vote on their futures, which will test the foundations of their democratic institutions. Many candidates will target the youth vote despite being quite old themselves.  In India, a nation with a median age of 27,Prime Minister Narendra Modi is 73.US President Joe Biden, age 81, is looking to young people to secure his second term in November’s election, a presidency that he would complete at 86. The votes of this youthful demographic were crucial in February’s Indonesian election, where candidates narrowed in on TikTok and the community’s affinity with K-Pop to get young people to vote for eventual winner, 72-year-old Prabowo Subianto. However, it’s debatable whether courting young voters will extend to listening to them about the world that they wish to live in. Reactionary voices tend to undermine the advocacy of young voters due to their supposed inexperience of hard times. From clickbait articles calling Gen Z lazy, all the way back to Aristotle, who termed young people “high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life.” Yet, when it comes to climate change, hundreds of thousands of young people have made their beliefs clearly felt. In 2018, 15-year-old schoolgirl Greta Thunberg sat outside the Swedish parliament, demanding climate action. Six years later, Thunberg’s solo protest has grown into a global youth movement, involving millions of young people from around 270 countries. In 2019, Thunberg told the European parliament that “our house is falling apart and our leaders need to start acting accordingly.” In Australia, a student-run network made history with a 350,000-strong rally across the country in 2021, the largest climate mobilisation in Australia’s history. The protesters ignored pleas from the government to stay in school, arguing that more action is needed to address the climate crisis. As the window to curb global warming to 2 degrees Celsius closes, more young people are getting angry about climate change. And researchers think that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Anger is a common emotional response to a perceived injustice, immorality or an obstacle to a desired goal. Psychologists associate anger with a moral violation, often attributed to external agents who intentionally act against or fail to act towards a preferred objective. People concerned about climate change often mention feeling angry or frustrated, which experts refer to as ‘climate anger’ or ‘eco-anger’. A 2022 study discovered that climate change evoked feelings of anger, shame, guilt and disappointment among its 530 respondents aged 16 to 24 in the UK. They felt guilty about their own contributions to climate change and were uncertain that their actions to combat it would have any significant effect. Researchers in the US also reported an increase in climate anger among young people. Drawing from a survey of 20,000 respondents, they found younger generations felt greater anger because they felt their futures were at risk, blaming older generations for the crisis. However, people in the Global South feel quite different about climate change. In a survey of 10,000 young people from 10 countries, more respondents from the Philippines, India and Brazil reported feelings of fear and anxiety than respondents from Australia, UK and France. Heightened worry was lowest in the United States, where only 46 percent of young people surveyed felt concerned about climate change. The anger of young people towards climate change has a few causes. One is human action or inaction. In a study conducted among 2000 young people in Norway, anger was associated with ongoing activities that accelerate global warming, as well as beliefs about poor government response. Human qualities such as indifference, denialism and prioritising money over the environment also infuriated respondents. The double injustice of climate change where the least responsible for causing it are most harmed and have the fewest resources to cope with its consequences, also drew anger from younger generations. Other scholars found expressions of anger were related to an inability to create change for the future. Anger was also relevant when participants felt a lack of engagement from those in power or people in general. Young people who felt their emotions and concerns about climate change were not listened to or silenced felt angry and betrayed. While conventional wisdom indicates that anger has negative effects on health and well-being, recent studies show that anger is a powerful enough emotion to spur climate action. Researchers from the London School of Economics stress the power of mobilising anger to increase collective action to remedy a perceived injustice. They claim that anger works as a motivational signal that convinces more people that others will soon act and this makes them want to join. A growing body of research also indicates that expressions of public outrage are more likely to be re-shared on social media sites than neutral content. Other scholars contend that collective anger expressed through climate marches helped promote information-seeking about climate change. A study in Australia further revealed that expressions of anger can help one’s mental health. Given our climate predicament, young people are right to be mad. Some will eventually feel overwhelmed and burned out. Providing safe spaces for them to continue to voice their climate anger may help prevent that. Being heard can help address feelings of powerlessness, as well as build camaraderie and support. The adults also need to do their part. Adult allies who acknowledge intergenerational injustices, validate emotional experiences and support youth capabilities can help provide reassurance and fuel transformative action. These strategies will help ensure that the fight of our young people for a more liveable and sustainable future will not lose its momentum. Dr Justin See is a postdoctoral research fellow in climate change adaptation from the Sydney Environment Institute at the University of Sydney. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on March 4, 2024

How young women suffer chasing an Instagram beauty ideal - 360 Ritika Pahwa, Priyanka Tiwari, Anika Magan Published on October 9, 2023 Young women are bombarded with Instagram images that can define beauty and how they see themselves. While empowering for some, it can cause many to suffer. Madhvi, 21, follows about 575 profiles on Instagram. She has a mental image of how she wants to look but lacks confidence about her appearance — she’s short, and has facial hair and pimples — in public and on social media. She follows more than 50 microcelebrities — what many people call influencers — for new beauty trends and compares herself to others on Instagram and Snapchat. She often feels depressed when she sees fit, good-looking, clear-skinned girls wearing fashionable outfits in their online posts. Madhvi is not her real name, but for the Indian beauty industry, she is a typical consumer relying heavily on the advice of microcelebrities for product reviews and recommendations. Instagram, an image first, text second platform with more than one billion monthly active users, has emerged as the space where such influencers have gained popularity. Microcelebrity refers to the practice of self-presentation and self-branding in the virtual world, which involves being recognised as public personalities, creating relationships with followers, particularly young women, and influencing their decisions and attitudes. They shape acceptable standards of beauty and affect buying decisions and even their followers’ self-perceptions and self-worth. Studies have shown individuals tend to make social comparisons with others they see as having similar abilities. According to Hootsuite, 70.1 percent of Instagram users are under 35. Instagram’s younger audiences are heavily influenced by the flamboyant, fashion-forward lifestyles endorsed by microcelebrities. Microcelebrities connect with their followers through content and life stories and provide recommendations about products, services and brands. Those with mass followers are often approached by brands and paid to endorse them, capturing consumers from within their followers and influencing their perceptions. It’s how they contribute to cultivating ideas, trends and stereotypes on appearance and fashion. Followers, especially young women, often look up to such influencers as relatable celebrities they can imitate and use for advice. Their ‘authenticity’ makes them an effective communication intermediary for organisations to sell their products and services. Microcelebrities are often considered to be informed, connected and experienced and have had a significant influence on norms of beauty, culture and individual self-worth. Their most direct influence is the redefinition of beauty standards. They challenge conventional beauty norms by showcasing varied body types, skin complexions and aesthetics. Some segments of the beauty industry have propagated rigid and narrow ideas of beauty but a smaller segment of microcelebrities pushes ideals that broaden the definition of beauty and promote inclusivity, encouraging people to embrace their unique features. Another important area of influence is the increased use of filters and Photoshop culture. While some microcelebrities promote authenticity, others rely heavily on filters and photo editing tools to present an ‘ideal’ image. Such heavy use of filters distorts perceptions of beauty, making it challenging for people to differentiate between reality and edited representations. Microcelebrities’ brand collaborations can make their followers equate happiness and self-worth with material possessions. That potentially leads to feelings of inadequacy for those who cannot afford those products. Constant exposure to curated, glamorous images on Instagram can damage an individual’s self-esteem and mental health. Constant comparisons with these microcelebrities can lead to feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. However, some influencers can empower individuals to express themselves authentically. They often use their platforms to discuss body positivity, self-acceptance and mental health issues. Across many interviews similar to Madhvi’s, girls reported feelings of comparison and inadequacy when seeing content promoted by microcelebrities. More recently, Madhvi has realised the effort that goes into making microcelebrities look so glamorous and that they don’t look so perfect in real life. She has also hinted that she needs to improve her own health. Most women in the ongoing study have reported feeling more comfortable in their own skin as they get older. They also realise that a lot of social media content has been manipulated to look so picture-perfect. However, the toll that such social influence takes on the mental health of young people is still high. A constant sense of self-inadequacy and inferiority often engulfs some if they cannot represent themselves in ways admired and promoted on social media. Despite a lot of users identifying the often-unreal portrayals seen on social media, there is still internal pressure to best represent themselves. It means users need to be aware of what’s really being promoted when they browse Instagram. Any person given microcelebrity status should be verified by the app so followers are told exactly what is being promoted and why. Making it ‘normal’ to seek help when it is needed is also important. Making mental health assistance accessible would help ensure that an individual’s self-worth is not undermined by exposure to social influence. If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, visit https://findahelpline.com/i/iasp. Ritika Pahwa is a PhD scholar in the Department of Applied Psychology at Manav Rachna International Institute of Research and Studies in Faridabad, India. Dr Priyanka Tiwari is a professor and Head of Applied Psychology at Manav Rachna International Institute of Research and Studies in Faridabad, India. Dr Anika Magan is an assistant professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at Manav Rachna International Institute of Research and Studies in Faridabad, India. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on October 9, 2023

How your brain tricks you into pain relief - 360 Lewis Crawford Published on December 14, 2022 Is it possible to trick the brain into thinking a placebo will help reduce pain? The signs are good. Pain is more than a sensory experience. It is an innate survival mechanism with the power to protect and teach us how to engage with the world around us. It is that first experience of touching a hot stove that keeps us wary in the kitchen, the first recovery from an injury that keeps us coming back to doctors for help, and the first heartbreak that helps us learn strategies for future loss. Pain is more than just sensation, but incorporates emotional and cognitive components as well. These myriad dimensions of pain are not only what gives rise to its unique subjective experience but also what researchers and doctors leverage when generating placebo effects. In relation to pain, placebo analgesia is when the brain is “tricked” into thinking an inert substance will work to reduce pain, and does. This idea that pain can be reduced without using actual painkillers has been extensively researched for around 80 years since it was first observed during World War Two. While the details are sometimes disputed, the placebo effect was discovered when American doctor Henry Beecher, having run out of morphine to treat wounded soldiers, administered an inert saline solution instead. After telling the wounded the saline was actually morphine, and administering it in an identical manner, he found some soldiers reported a reduction in pain symptoms, enabling their safe medical evacuation. Placebo effects have now been extensively studied in a variety of settings, with a particular focus on their potential clinical utility. The first breakthrough in placebo research came from the field of psychology, where it was shown that placebo analgesia is formed primarily via a combination of classical conditioning and expectations of improvement. Classical conditioning, made famous by Pavlov’s dogs, is when associations made repeatedly between a cue (a bell) and an outcome (dinner) strengthen over time. Eventually, exposure to the cue alone triggers a response (drooling). Think of the cliche doctor in a white coat, stethoscope draped around their neck. This adornment alone is enough to trigger associations that “this person has been trained to treat my pain”, often conjuring hope and a willingness to listen to their planned course of action. These ritualistic components have experimentally been used to bolster placebo analgesia, with Venezuelan pain researcher Angel Ortega and colleagues recounting the myriad psychological, neurological and endocrine changes in response to the patient-doctor  relationship. Any improvement from these ritualistic associations likely dovetail with positive expectations of going to the doctor. One of the most curious phenomena is “observationally-aquired” placebo effects. A 2019 report by German researcher Lieven Schenk and colleagues says that a patient, having watched someone apply a pain-relief cream, will experience relief when the cream, despite being a placebo, is administered to them. This phenomena is uniquely devoid of any conditioning effects, as the second participant has formed their own expectations over the effectiveness of an — unbeknown to them — inert treatment. Human brain imaging studies then began exploring this phenomenon to better understand placebo responses. What became clear is placebo analgesia is causing a real effect on the perception of pain. Countless brain imaging studies which show altered neural activity when patients believe they are receiving treatment. The “source” of placebo seems to be from a structure connecting the spinal cord and the brain known as the brainstem. While animal investigations conducted in the late 1970s and 80s had revealed the mammalian brainstem capable of reducing incoming painful sensations it was not yet known if these same pathways or neurochemicals played a role in the human phenomena of placebo analgesia. Landmark investigations led by American researcher Tor Wager and German Falk Eippert were the first to demonstrate that not only was placebo analgesia associated with reductions in key pain-processing regions of the brain, but also with changes in brainstem pain centres, and even altered activation at the level of the spinal cord itself. Since then, there have been multiple investigations into the nuances of placebo analgesia. Associations have been made with how optimistic people are, particular genetic profiles, and even cardiovascular systems. Yet no one study has fully and definitively settled the question of what makes a person respond to placebo. Regardless of how they work, placebos are already in place in most clinics today, serving to support the effectiveness of routine medical treatments. The inherent deception required to elicit placebo analgesia may mean it is never an ethical option for practising doctors. But the research shows the effectiveness of most pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapies can be enhanced with specific steps: positive patient-experimenter interactions; previous effective encounters with certain brands of medication; as well as open and thorough explanations of the potential effectiveness of treatments. These together form the power of the placebo. Lewis Crawford is currently conducting a PhD at the University of Sydney, investigating the neural mechanisms behind placebo analgesia and nocebo hyperalgesia. His research focuses specifically on brain imaging, using high powered Magnetic Resonance Imaging to look at brainstem pathways connecting the cortex to the spinal cord, and how the small nuclei which make up these pathways drive these pain-modulatory phenomena. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on December 14, 2022

'Human beings are not illegal' - 360 Paula Banerjee Published on March 27, 2024 Video:  The international community can do much more to help Rohingya. Rohingya refugees face an impossible situation; unable to return to their homeland and unwanted by anyone else. Stuck in camps on the Bangladesh border, many have become victims of human trafficking as they seek asylum. But, as from the Asian Institute of Technology explains, there is plenty the international community can do to help. “The situation has become so much more tense now. There are more killings, there’s more happening,there are more people who cannot be found. “And our networks, people who are working with, you know, research with different agencies and all, tell me that now the main area for trafficking of Rohingyas is into India, largely into India. For no other reason but the fact that they need to survive. “Trafficking, whether in humans, whether in narcotics, whether in fentanyl, all trafficking is attached to the crime cartels. So it is not something that is done independently. So yes, there is connivance, but the connivance is there because people are desperate. “The difference between movement, you know, crossing the border is that of life and death. “If you are not a citizen of any country, then who will be your voice? “Human beings individually are very powerless in front of the megastructures called the international community or state. “And if that is not recognised, if your citizenship is not recognised, then a very incorrect word is used. You are considered as illegal, a human being can not be illegal, your activities can be illegal, irregular. “But the person concerned is considered as irregular, we say irregular migrant, illegal migrants, the terminology is so wrong and that happens because these people are actually not supported by any states and, you know, whether it’s in the UN or in aid, it is always through the state  that you are represented. “United Nations is United Nations. It’s not united human beings or individuals. “So that is why there is a very serious correlation between statelessness and trafficking.You become stateless if you are trafficked because you becomesans-papiersand you are trafficked because you’re stateless. “Whenever there is crises, particularly conflict, because in conflict you have belligerents, you have people actually pursuing you because of your ethnicity, your religion. For the Rohingyas, it’s not just ethnicity, but it is also a question of religion. “Today in Gaza, people are being pursued not just because they are Palestinians, but also because they belong to certain religious denominations. We cannot deny the fact there is also the race factor. All of these creates or compounds your vulnerability. “You know, if you belong to a certain religious denomination, you’ll be more pursued. If you are women within that community, you will be more victimised because we cannot deny the fact that womanhood or a third gender person is, in the totem pole of power, much below the majority of men. “And that is why, you know, it is not just a question of statelessness, it is a question of crises and crises resulting to the fact that if you are considered as unwanted, then you know, your identity is considered as something that the state does not want. “And you see a state is sovereign, a state has a right to decide who they will want and who they will not. And nothing we do can stop the state from doing that. So, you know, the moment the state marks you as unwanted, you become that much more powerless. “If you are a refugee, even when you get asylum, you know, you are not considered as an equal to that of the citizens. “And then if you are displaced, you know, any form of displacement, you are away from your moorings. You don’t have the community networks that are a form of protection. You don’t know the language where you are staying. “You can’t call for help, how many refugees and displaced people could get any help during the pandemic. They died because they could not get any help. It is our hatred, it is our identities that are considered as so different from these people. “And that is why when you are trafficked, you have absolutely no safety net. ” I am not saying that they’re, you know, if you are a citizen, you cannot be trafficked. Of course you can be trafficked. Many poor women, many poor girls, many poor boys, are trafficked. “But there at least you have a family, there, at least you have a network that in the last resort can come for your help. In the case of a displaced person, you have no safety nets. And that compounds the problem. “You become so vulnerable that your life becomes meaningless. “There has to be massive sensitisation. Okay? And if you get asylum in a specific country, the international community has to make sure that people have a healthy life there. And the international community also has to recognise its own responsibility. “You know, Muslim Rohingya’s being thrown out of Myanmar, you know, if the international community says that it is not my problem, then that’s not right. “We have to go back to the colonial past and see what historically has made the Rohingya so vulnerable. So everybody has to pitch in and make the community more empowered, make them sensitise and give them the basic – the absolute basic – in terms of health, education and support system that they that they require. “They can be resettled in third countries. And there are many countries that, you know, if they prove that you’ve been trafficked, allow you to give you safe haven in the global north. “So yes, there are programs where they can settle, you know, they can have a third country resettlement but all of these programs are very dispersed. There is no, you know, nothing that is tantamount to these people having a fixed and immutable set of protection regime or rights to protection. And that needs to be developed, which is, you know, isn’t everywhere. “If you are a Ukrainian refugee, only you get the protection and yet if you are a Rohingya, you don’t get the protection, that should not be the case. “I have no problem with Ukrainian refugees getting more facilities. I applaud them. That is the best practice. “So we shouldn’t say that they’re standards should be pulled down, we should say rather, Rohingya standard should be up there.Every person who is a refugee, a displaced person, should get whatever is being given to the Ukrainians. “So that is how we can make a change. Rather than saying Ukrainians should not get that, I advocate for the fact that we should say Rohingya’s should get exactly what the Ukrainians are getting.” Professor Paula Bannerjee is the IDRC Endowed Research Chair on Gender and Forced Displacement at the  Asian Institute of Technology. This video is part of a Special Report on the Rohingya refugees produced in collaboration with the Calcutta Research Group and the Asian Broadcasting Union. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on March 27, 2024

Hunger in India likely to grow again - 360 Nandini Nayak Published on April 4, 2022 India’s food subsidy programs have the capacity to respond to increased demand. Thoughtful adjustment would reap large-scale benefits. COVID-19 lockdowns aggravated food deprivation in India. The pandemic also revealed opportunities to expand the country’s food subsidy programs. India’s Public Distribution System (PDS) offers subsidised food grains to eligible households. Public pressure during COVID-19 lockdowns led to  a brief expansion in the number of beneficiaries in states such as Delhi. Though temporary, the expansion covered groups who were particularly hard hit by the unforeseen and severe lockdown, such as migrant workers who were suddenly unemployed. Despite continuing hunger and food deprivation, allocation under the distribution scheme  has returned to levels for ‘normal’ times. The scheme is now limited to those who were eligible for it before the pandemic, jeopardising the food security of a large number of impoverished people. A reading of the food security laws that does not factor in yearly population growth has prevented the government from expanding the pool of eligible beneficiaries. In the early days of the stringent lockdown of 2020, many experts urged the government to universalise or at the very least significantly expand the distribution scheme to ensure ease of access to food rations. Indian economist and Nobel prize winner Amartya Sen advocated making “feeding arrangements” on a “national scale” and being attentive to the crisis of employment faced by vast numbers of the poor. To some extent, an expansion of the food distribution system did take place. First, the central government temporarily increased subsidised food rations for existing holders of ration cards (official documents that entitle eligible families to subsidised food grains). Second, some state governments temporarily extended rations to households that did not have ration cards. The expansion of the subsidised grain system for existing beneficiaries was important and expansion beyond existing ration-card holders was also crucial. But the Delhi Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan (Delhi right to food and work campaign) reported access to the scheme for those without ration cards, was initially via e-coupons. This system was inaccessible for many because of rations generally did not have access to the internet or smartphones in order to apply for the e-coupons. Later, the system was modified to allow registration at food-distribution sites. But beneficiary numbers were so limited this translated into long periods of waiting, with no guarantee of receiving grain. Many in need could ill afford to lose a day’s work and were therefore unable to access the rations. A substantial number of those outside the distribution scheme should normally have had access to ration cards: 75 percent of the rural population and 50 percent of the urban population is supposed to be covered under the ‘rights-based framework’ of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) 2013. But the proportion of the population covered in 2020, when the pandemic struck, was far lower than this. The distribution scheme had been capped based on the most recent population figures available in 2013, and these dated back to the 2011 census. India’s food security act relies on population estimates in the census. The government then also applied a ceiling on the population to be covered, based on 2011 Census data, and this ceiling was to be applicable ‘till data from the next population census, became available. The next census is the decadal census of 2021, for which enumeration is yet to begin. Another interpretation of the food security act in keeping with its legal framework is that a yearly revision of the number of eligible persons should be done using an annual projection of population. This projection should be based on population growth rates calculated from census data. The act also specifies that two kinds of entitled households may be covered under the distribution scheme: “priority households”  and Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) households. AAY is a scheme launched by the government in 2000 to address the food security needs of the poorest and most vulnerable households. These included households headed by widows, terminally ill people, the disabled or people aged 60 years or above with no assured means of subsistence or societal support. Because of their vulnerability, the monthly food entitlement of AAY households is usually higher than that of priority households. The government has been capping the number of eligible households covered under the AAY since 2015. When an AAY household becomes ineligible for the scheme, a government control order says “no new Antyodaya household shall be identified in that state and the total number of Antyodaya households shall be reduced to that extent”. The numbers covered under the AAY scheme are now expected to decline over time, and by 2017, two years after the control order was issued, grain allocations under the AAY had reduced to virtually nil. The legal framework of the food security act in no way compels the executive to restrict implementation in such a manner. Effective implementation of rights-based legislation such as the NFSA depends on ongoing assessment of eligibility. To support this, numbers of eligible persons in rural and urban areas could be revised upward each year. Also, state governments should issue ration cards on an ongoing basis. This alone would ensure the entitled proportion of rural and urban populations could access cheap grain. For this, updated lists of entitled households could be made publicly available. This legal requirement is not being followed in Delhi and elsewhere. Regularly expanding the beneficiaries and being transparent about eligibility would help ensure India’s food subsidy program delivers for those who need it. Nandini Nayak is Assistant Professor at the School of Development Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). Her ongoing research is on the implementation of social policy, especially related to the National Food Security Act and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on April 4, 2022

Hydrogen makes itself at home - 360 Hugh Davies Published on December 20, 2023 Hydrogen can revolutionise clean energy, transport, decarbonise industrial processes … and cook your dinner. Among a cluster of new homes on the northern outskirts of Melbourne, there is one house that stands apart. Not that you’d know it by looking from the outside. HyHome, unveiled this year by the Australian Gas Infrastructure Group, is Australia’s first hydrogen-powered home. The demonstration house in Wollert is equipped with hydrogen-powered hot water systems, heating, cooktop and barbecue; some of the first 100 percent hydrogen compatible appliances to be developed for the domestic market. The partners which built HyHome recognise what others, including billionaire mining magnate Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest, have: hydrogen has the potential to revolutionise the way we power our economy. While the hydrogen for HyHome is supplied by on-site gas tanks, the pipe fittings match those that would connect to the gas network. The project therefore serves as an accurate proof of concept for how future homes could run on a 100 percent hydrogen gas network. Hydrogen is a cleaner fuel than natural gas because the combustion of hydrogen in air produces heat and water vapour, a carbon-neutral process, as opposed to the combustion of natural gas, which produces carbon dioxide. Blending hydrogen into the existing natural gas mix, or the use of pure hydrogen in the gas network, reduces the amount of natural gas needed which can help cut carbon dioxide emissions in tricky to decarbonise sectors such as heating or industrial manufacturing processes. The Australian Government’s National Hydrogen Strategy has identified the use of hydrogen in gas networks as a priority area for research, trials and demonstration projects. The testing of hydrogen blending projects taking place across Australia includes energy company ATCO supplying a 2-10 percent (by volume) hydrogen gas blend to 2,700 gas network connections in Western Australia and the Australian Gas Infrastructure Group supplying 4,000 properties in Adelaide with a 5 percent hydrogen gas blend. Currently, 41 countries have hydrogen strategies to help reach net zero targets by 2050. Globally, governments and industry are pursuing hydrogen blending with serious intent. In the UK, the HyDeploy partnership at Keele University successfully supplied 668 houses, a school, several small businesses, and a church in a town in northern England with just a 20 percent hydrogen blend for a year. The project has further successfully trialled using a 20 percent hydrogen blend at an industrial scale, supplying an energy-intensive glass factory and Unilever’s manufacturing plant in the northwest of England. There are, however, several challenges in blending hydrogen into the gas network. Hydrogen is in hot demand. For hydrogen blending to have a positive effect on reducing emissions, green hydrogen, produced via the electrolysis of water, should be used as opposed to grey or brown hydrogen, produced from fossil fuels. Green hydrogen is currently expensive to produce. It requires renewable electricity and lots of clean water, both resources in high demand. Low-emissions hydrogen currently accounts for less than 1 percentof all hydrogen production and use, according to the International Energy Agency. There is an argument that blending hydrogen with natural gas is an inefficient use of an expensive resource, potentially “greenwashing” the continued use of natural gas when the focus could be on transitioning to electric technology such as heat pumps. Hydrogen has a lower volumetric energy density than natural gas. This means a larger volume of hydrogen is required compared to natural gas for the same energy output. The Australian Hydrogen Centre reports that a 100 percent hydrogen network would reduce network capacity by 13 percent, though it adds this wouldn’t impact supply. Hydrogen is also incompatible with certain metals, with potential embrittlement leading to fractures in pipes and storage tanks which can lead to gas leaks. The government-owned Evoenergy and the Canberra Institute of Technology have shown at their testing facility in Canberra that 100 percent green hydrogen is compatible with current Australian Capital Territory gas network pipes and fittings. The facility also measured the performance of everyday household gas appliances when run on hydrogen gas, showing that modern cooktops can safely use a 20 percent hydrogen blend. Hydrogen blends much higher than this would require the replacement of existing gas appliances. One approach is to phase in ‘hydrogen ready appliances’, allowing consumers the continued use of natural gas until the gas network switches to hydrogen. Like natural gas, hydrogen is a clear, colourless and odourless. Odorants are added to natural gas so leaks can be easily detected by its distinctive smell. Odorising hydrogen with this same smell or a new smell will be important for hydrogens use in the home. Hydrogen is easier to ignite than natural gas owing to its much larger range of flammable concentrations in the air and a lower ignition energy. This sounds concerning but with appropriate engineering controls to prevent leaks and mandatory safety measures, such as ventilation and gas detectors, hydrogen in these applications is no more dangerous than natural gas. In fact, some of hydrogen’s properties make it a safer alternative. It is non-toxic and 14 times lighter than air, so in the event of an open air leak it would rise and dissipate very quickly. A less known fact about hydrogen is that it is considered an indirect greenhouse gas.  Hydrogen reacts with molecules in the atmosphere which leads to the prolonged lifetime of certain greenhouse gases, such as methane. Hydrogen’s misleading reputation as a dangerous, highly explosive gas, famously demonstrated by the Hindenburg disaster, is gradually being revised. The success of long-term trials such as Hydrogen Park, in South Australia, which has been safely providing residents in Adelaide with a 5 percent hydrogen blend for over two years, should instil public confidence that hydrogen can be used at scale in the gas network and in our homes. Interestingly, a study has shown that people believe hydrogen’s property of burning with a near-invisible flame would severely disrupt their cooking practices but largely not affect home heating. Australia is moving forward with hydrogen blending as new projects — such as Hydrogen Park Gladstone and HyP Murray Valley, which will deliver a 10 percent hydrogen blend to 700 households in Queensland and to the gas network of Albury and Wodonga in 2024 — continue to receive funding. Replacing gas with electricity appears to be the preferred end game in the extinction of fossil fuels in the home. However, the reality remains that this transition will take time and the gas network that we rely on heavily will likely be part of the energy system for many years to come, perhaps forever. During this time of transition blending green hydrogen into the natural gas mix could provide a quick fix solution that would play a small but important role in decarbonising the gas network and reducing our household emissions. Hugh Davies is a PhD researcher in chemical engineering at the University of Bath and Monash University, his research focuses on energy materials for sustainable energy applications. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on December 20, 2023

Hydrogen rush could shift world energy order - 360 Thomas Sattich Published on November 22, 2021 Analysts predict hydrogen could meet up to 24 percent of the world’s energy needs. In a small room in Delft, Netherlands, a group of engineering students ponder what energy systems might look like in 2050. Across the North Sea in Stavanger, Norway, students of international relations consider how the world order might shift if there were universal access to renewable energy. The engineers know little about geopolitics, the IR students little about energy technology. They’re undertaking a green policy simulation: each represents a fictional country grappling with the energy transition and lays out how they would deliver it, balancing the interests of their citizens with those of the world. Some of the fictional countries are dependent on fossil fuels, others are blessed with abundant renewables. It’s a useful tool to teach the complexity of trade-offs in energy transitions and emission reductions. How could the world order shift if countries not known for renewable energy production or export ended up dominating it? The energy transition’s current darling, hydrogen, has moved from the world of engineering to politics. Governments around the world have already committed more than US$70 billion to stimulate the hydrogen industry. Hydrogen production is moving from grey: using natural gas, to blue: with carbon capture, and green: produced by electrolysis using renewable electricity. Right now, green hydrogen isn’t economically viable. If not for the world running out of time to stop catastrophic global warming, we wouldn’t be talking as much about hydrogen. And in Europe at least, the electricity used to make hydrogen through electrolysis has to compete with electricity use for power purposes. Could hydrogen become the new oil? Energy analysts predict oil demand could peak soon after 2025, and by 2050, hydrogen could meet up to 24 percent of the world’s energy needs. Considering the dominant split of energy today – oil 30.9 percent, coal 26.8 percent and gas 23.2 percent – a 24 percent share is substantial enough to affect world order. Yet to work out how the geopolitics could play out it’s worth asking three questions. One: how much hydrogen will countries use, two: how much will countries trade, and three: how fast will the change happen? Only then can you establish where hydrogen might fit in the global energy mix. The obvious early movers are heavy industry looking to decarbonise, industrial shipping and heavy vehicles. Large power utilities are eyeing it off for storage. All of these players are largely linked to the existing oil and gas industry. As countries transition to sustainable energy, oil and gas led economies could lose US$7 trillion by 2040, the International Energy Agency has warned. Hydrogen could give them a lifeline to extend their business model. Still, electricity is expected to be the energy carrier of the future, powering most other applications in a green world. Trade depends on domestic production capacity, cost differences between countries and strategic considerations. Consider mature countries that don’t want to be reliant on electricity from their nearest neighbours: hydrogen imports could deliver the strategic diversification they’re looking for. Hydrogen simply allows for more long-distance, more flexible, trade. An East Asian hydrogen market stretching between India, Japan and Australia is feasible. Similar markets could develop in the Americas or between the Middle East and Europe. For countries, four scenarios are likely as sustainable energy technology evolves. With the technology, opportunities open up for export of energy, know-how and materials. A fossil fuel exporter becomes a sustainable energy exporter – they win some and lose some. A fossil fuel exporter becomes a sustainable energy importer, a lose lose. A fossil fuel importer becomes a sustainable energy exporter, going from a position of dependence to revenue. A win win. And lastly, the position most countries now find themselves in, a fossil fuel importer misses the opportunity and moves to being a sustainable energy importer. It’s a high risk, high reward scenario for governments betting on green hydrogen ahead of it being economically viable. Then again, invest too little too late and they risk wasting money while still ending up a laggard. The only certainty is that not every country will benefit equally from the transition, and those losing might not be the usual suspects. Thomas Sattich is Associate Professor at the University of Stavanger and Head of the Master in Energy, Environment and Society. He is also coordinating the Erasmus+ funded Geopolitics of Renewables Simulation project. Partly developed at TU Delft, this simulation will allow students of energy and International Relations to engage in the difficult negotiations of transnational solutions for the energy transition. Thomas Sattich declared no conflicts of interest in relation to this article. This article has been republished as part of a package on the Energy transition for the 2022 G20 summit. It first appeared on November 22 2021. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on November 22, 2021

Hysterectomies in younger Indian women are influenced by insurance subsidies - 360 Sisir Debnath, Komal Sareen, Sourabh Paul Published on September 16, 2022 Doctors compensated on a fee-for-service basis in India, were more likely to perform hysterectomy surgeries, whether or not they were clinically necessary. Women in India were more likely to undergo a hysterectomy when a state-provided health insurance programme reimbursed private hospital fee-for-service arrangements, and younger Indian women are more likely to have the procedure. Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, used National Family Health Survey data to show a positive association between hysterectomy rates and access to cashless state health insurance, notably in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The Andhra Pradesh (AP) state government’s Rajiv Aarogyasri health insurance programme (also known as just Aarogyasri), launched in 2007, provided generous cashless coverage for tertiary healthcare to 19.2 million below-poverty-line households, paying higher rates to hospitals than other comparable insurance programmes. Following media reports of a sudden jump in hysterectomy rates in private hospitals, the AP government imposed stricter controls in 2010 requiring detailed pre-surgery reports before performing a hysterectomy on a woman under 35, then in 2011 restricted the procedure to public hospitals only. The research found that women eligible for Aarogyasri health insurance (which reimbursed both public and private hospitals) were 2.8 percent more likely to undergo hysterectomy than women outside the programme – and also found that their odds of undergoing a hysterectomy in a private hospital was significantly higher than in public hospitals. This group was more likely to undergo a hysterectomy below the age of 40, and had a higher likelihood of undergoing a hysterectomy between the years 2008 to 2011, when the procedure was eligible for subsidy in both private and public hospitals. The reason? Doctors in private hospitals in India are typically compensated on a fee-for-service basis, rather than the fixed remuneration typical in public hospitals, where they receive fixed remuneration – potentially motivating private providers to recommend clinically unnecessary procedures. This may be due to cashless public health insurance programmes that typically, don’t involve any payment by the eligible women undergoing the surgery. Private hospitals conducted more unnecessary hysterectomies than public hospitals because of the payment and incentive structures of the newly available government-funded health insurance schemes. Hysterectomy (surgically removing the uterus) is the second most frequently performed medical procedure in women, next to cesarean delivery, and generally will only be conducted in the later phase of a woman’s reproductive life, and as a second-line treatment for life-threatening gynecological disorders. However, an analysis of India’s 2015-16 National Family Health Survey, covering around 700,000 women aged 15 to 49 years, found that between 2012–2016, the rate of hysterectomies in India increased from 1.7 to 3.2 surgeries for every 100 women who had ever been married. Even though this prevalence rate is relatively  low, the average age of undergoing hysterectomy in India is much lower compared to several high-income countries. Such trends, especially among younger women, are a public health concern since serious adverse health consequences may follow as post-surgery side effects. For India, the contribution of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) to the total disease burden rose from 30 percent to 55 percent in the last thirty years. NCDs, unlike communicable diseases, are costly to treat and, in the absence of insurance, can push households towards poverty. As the burden of diseases shifts to NCDs in developing nations, public financing of  tertiary medical care has increased substantially. Many Indian states have recently introduced insurance programmes covering tertiary healthcare treatments for economically weaker sections. These programmes will likely arrest the adverse effects of out-of-pocket catastrophic healthcare expenditure on household savings and income. The downside is that public financing in the form of cashless insurance programmes, often without co-payments or cost-sharing, may result in higher demand for avoidable surgical procedures – such as has been observed in hysterectomies. And it is difficult for the financing authorities to observe and verify the actions of hospitals and patients’ health. Some surgical procedures covered by public health insurance are more likely to experience an increase in demand. These include caesarean section, appendectomy, cholecystectomy, tonsillectomy and hysterectomy. A popular way to deal with the problem of unnecessary procedures is cost sharing in the form of co-payments or deductibles. The co-payment amount for Medicaid in the United States that covers healthcare costs for low-income individuals ranges between $1 to $15 (which translates to 0.1 percent to 1.4 percent of the per adult monthly subsistence income level or poverty line in the USA). However, a higher cost sharing may reduce healthcare usage and discontinuation of therapy. The RAND Health Insurance Experiment conducted between 1974 and 1982 showed that cost-sharing reduced both “inappropriate or unnecessary” and “appropriate or needed” medical care. In the absence of cost-sharing, intensive scrutiny of the claims filed for medical procedures that are more likely to be induced can enhance the gains from public health insurance program,es and reduce the financial burden of unnecessary treatments. Sisir Debnath is currently affiliated with the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and works in the area of Health Economics. Sourabh B. Paul is currently affiliated with the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, and his research encompasses issues such as caste and labor mobility, access to education, female labor market conditions, and the interplay between science and technology policy and macroeconomy, among others. Komal Sareen is a doctoral candidate at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and her research focuses on gender and health economics. The authors have no conflict of interest to declare, and the research was not supported by any external funding. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on September 16, 2022

ICC hurdles more than just legal - 360 Geoffrey Lugano Published on May 23, 2022 The ICC has recorded only a few convictions in its two decades of operation, and it continues to face numerous challenges. The International Criminal Court was expected to deter atrocities. It is after all the world’s foremost and only permanent war crimes tribunal with near universal jurisdiction for such crimes. But its aspiration remains unmet as the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and many others across the world rage. Convictions at the ICC number few, acquittals many. It is not easy to present the accused to the ICC because of the nature of their power position: they are usually senior political elite, state officials, or belligerent groups who wield significant power. Getting suspects to the courtroom, distant from the sites of crimes, is a tall order for a court that has no executive power or police force of its own. As a result, the ICC has to rely on governments to cooperate in the arrest, surrender and prosecution of suspects, which can be a fraught process: some suspects are part of the state apparatus so authorities are reluctant to work with the court, or suspects are beyond the reach of state actors (such as warlords who control their own territories and have military power). Countries including Russia, Ukraine and the US have not ratified the Rome Statute giving the ICC its authority, adding to the challenge. The Rome Statute provides for the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) referral of non-member states to the ICC, but permanent Council members such as the United States, Russia and China have used their veto power to shield allies from the Court’s reach, such as in the Israeli/Palestinian and the Syrian conflicts. The ICC operates in hostile environments, including countries with ongoing conflicts or where there is direct opposition to criminal accountability. Intervening in difficult situations, where institutions have either collapsed or are nearly breaking down, is a difficult task for any judicial body, especially where the political elite have been accustomed to impunity. In such situations, the ICC is simply not welcome. As a consequence, the ICC has to turn to intermediaries or ‘go betweens’ to live up to its mandate, relying on them to collect and preserve evidence, collate witness statements, provide access to victims, understand the context, and more. In the shadow of these arrangements, the ICC has to navigate security threats to its staff on the ground. This reliance on intermediaries has been problematic in other ways, as the defence has often challenged their use and their ‘negative impact on their clients’ fair trial rights, especially in respect to disclosure.’ Additionally, hostile state actors often resort to witness intimidation and interference, and non-cooperation in turning over crucial evidence to the ICC’s officials, weakening the prosecution’s cases, and the accused’s subsequent acquittals. As a leading forum for international justice, the ICC must have checks and balances that respects sovereignty and encourages participation, whilst also giving the court some meaningful power. The challenges — both legislative and practical — are part of the puzzle that explains why the court has produced so few convictions during its two decades of operation, and signals some of the hurdles that lay ahead if the ICC tries to prosecute Putin. Geoffrey Lugano holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, and is a Lecturer of Politics at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya. He researches on the International Criminal Court and local contexts, peacebuilding and African politics. Dr Lugano declared no conflicts of interest in relation to this article. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “Putin and the ICC” sent at: 20/05/2022 12:47. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 23, 2022

Icelandic equality went missing in pandemic - 360 Andrea Hjálmsdóttir University of Akureyri and Valgerður S. Bjarnadóttir University of Iceland Published on November 29, 2021 By Andrea Hjálmsdóttir University of Akureyri and Valgerður S. Bjarnadóttir University of Iceland “We thought that the division of tasks was mostly equal in our everyday life, but now that we are both working from home, it is obvious that he takes his space when he needs to attend to ‘his’ things, and I run, I sprint, from my work much more than he does.” So reads the diary of an Icelandic mother of a 5-year-old and 9-year-old, written during the first weeks of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Perhaps she was surprised because Iceland has been described as “paradise for women”. Iceland has been number one on The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index since 2009. It’s the highest among the OECD for women in the labour force, and fathers’ involvement in childrearing has been improving over the last two decades. A reformed legal framework, higher educational attainment of women, and landmark legislation on parental leave passed in 2000 have been important steps toward more gender equality in Iceland. But comments such as the above show the glossy image masks the lived experience of Icelanders. The labour market is still gender segregated – both horizontally and vertically – with women less likely to occupy managerial positions and much more likely to dominate ‘typical’ female occupations such as in education and healthcare. The gendered pay gap remains unbridged. In Iceland, as in many other countries, families live a busy life: parents work long hours, and the kids participate in plentiful extracurricular activities. All this demands a lot of scheduling and organising; the so-called third shift. Social restrictions and school closures implemented due to COVID-19 brought to light how gendered the work of the third shift is in Iceland. The mothers in a recent study described a demanding mental load: I can’t stand this situation anymore and need a break… not a break from laundry and household chores … rather a break from being responsible for all the decision making. Women surveyed felt their male partners had more control over their time; that they could take the time needed to focus at work. On the contrary, the mothers described how they were constantly trying to multitask, split between work and attending to the needs of their children. British political scientist Valerie Bryson has suggested that time is a gendered phenomenon, that the presence or absence of ‘free’ time reflects economic, social and political inequalities. Such inequalities have been heightened during the pandemic. And these themes are echoed across the world. COVID-19 did not necessarily cause a backlash or change the gendered social structures in Iceland. Rather, the pandemic revealed a situation overlooked in the busy daily lives of Icelandic families. Even though there have been positive changes over the last few decades, deep-rooted gender inequalities, especially around the private lives and families, remain. That might be difficult to face in a country that prides itself of being a frontrunner in gender equality. Now, as many parts of the world try to return to normal, it is important to draw out lessons from the crisis. COVID has revealed even more than before that time and social roles are socially constructed. But now, we have the perfect opportunity to recreate that order. In the aftermath of social restrictions, there are demands for more flexible workplaces. While this can be a positive change, it must take into consideration the gendered realities of our lives. Multitasking women experience their time as more fragile, interrupted by family obligations and childrearing. Any reconstruction of the labour market and increased flexibility needs to take gender perspectives into consideration. Recently one of the largest labour unions in Iceland launched a campaign to raise awareness of the third shift. It’s hoped it will raise awareness among couples and workplaces of gendered division of labour within the home. If the aim is to close the gender gap in both the public and the private sphere, a focus on the gendered division of labour within the home is essential. Adjustments in the labour market that are supposed to benefit families with children must take that into account. True equality is not achieved until women are equal both at home and at work. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Andrea Hjálmsdóttir is an assistant professor at the University of Akureyri and a doctoral candidate at the University of Iceland. Her research area includes work–life balance, gender equality among PhD holders, and adolescents’ attitudes towards gender equality. Valgerður S. Bjarnadóttir is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Education, University of Iceland. Her research areas include educational policy analysis, democracy and education, and gender equality. The research received a grant from Minningasjóður Eðvarðs Sigurðssonar. The authors declared no conflict of interest in relation to this article.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on November 29, 2021

If AI steals our jobs, who'll be left to buy stuff? - 360 Manoj Pant, Sugandha Huria Published on April 22, 2024 Economics has good news for workers fearing joblessness due to the rise of AI – only labour consumes, and the value of consuming populations is growing. The question is one of increasing urgency: What will workers do when technology does most of the work? In April, tech titans Google, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco and SAP, employment website Indeed, along with professional services major Accenture, among others, formed a consortium to explore the impact of Artificial Intelligence on IT job roles. The joint effort will enable workers to find and access relevant training programs and, according to the companies, is expected to help more than 95 million people around the world over the next 10 years. The jobs that AI can do are multiplying by the day. While this may be frightening for some workers, economics, which is often called the “dismal science”,  does offer a rosy outlook. While advancements in AI potentially herald a future with no limits on production and income, the implications for workers, may not be as scary as initially feared. In an economy-wide view (economists call this ‘general equilibrium’), all resources of capital and labour combine to produce all goods and services. Technology then boosts productivity, removing the limits set by resource constraints. However, a study of consumer demand (so-called microeconomics) says that consumption depends on an individual’s income, and only ‘labour’ consumes. The crux is this: Increased productivity is ultimately pointless if there is no market for the goods and services being produced. The focus of many international managers, often reflected in statements given to the media, is thus increasingly on future consumption – and, therefore, on countries with large and growing consuming populations, including India. Author Ruchir Sharma has argued that no country can grow faster than the rate of growth of its population. Since India has a large population where consumers are expected to grow for the next decade or so, the focus of global managers seems justified. Yet, the data is confusing. Even in a metropolis like Delhi, the minimum salary, on average, is about Rs.17,500 (USD$210) per month. It is lower in smaller cities and towns. While the population is large, economic theory cannot answer the quandary of where is India’s purchasing power to drive global growth. Since 2008, the world economy has been on a limited growth path despite massive “pump priming” to stimulate spending by the US, China and other governments in a typical Keynesian response. Yet, after the COVID-19 pandemic, global growth, according to the International Monetary Fund,  slowed from an estimated 6.1 per cent in 2021 to 3.4 per cent in 2022 and 2.8 per cent in 2023. Japan and most of Europe have been on the brink of recession for a while, and New Zealand slipped into its second recession in 18 months in March. These are countries with either ageing or declining populations. China is on its way to joining this list. So here is the conundrum. In developed countries, technological change, particularly AI, seems to indicate no limits on production. On the other hand, the future seems to lie with countries with large populations but limited purchasing power. Consumption requires not only income, as economist J.M. Keynes rightly noted, but also another critical element:  time. Thus, if the population is stagnant and increased production is to find consumers, technology must be time-saving. Empirically, this has been seen in North America and Western Europe where, since the 1980s, much of the technological development has been in time-saving technologies such as pre-cooked food. In sectors like electronics, this has worked through convergence. The phone is now a communication device, a calendar, a supermarket, a travel agency etc. Thus, the demand growth in such economies depends on the extent to which technology could be time-saving. Yet, more than time-saving technology is needed to solve the problem. With consumers having only 24 hours a day, there is a limit to which technical progress could be time-saving. This implies that while time-saving technology could deal with the asymmetry on the production and demand sides to some extent, it cannot offer a long-term demand-supply balance. There are two potential solutions. One is to shift consumers to where the income is generated or advanced technology is available by allowing for immigration (a political no-no). The second is to shift the production base to where consumers are in abundance via foreign direct investment which combines production, technology and global sourcing of resources. This is why emerging market economies (especially India) matter. The “young workforce”, which consumes approximately three times as much as the older cohort, is rising in India, while it has been falling in developed markets for decades, and is falling even in China now. These trends are normally irreversible in the short to medium term. Returning to the original question of what workers will do when technological miracles do all the work – Amazon suffered embarrassment in running “just walk out” stores with no employees when it emerged earlier this month that a thousand or so workers sitting in India were remotely doing much of the work ascribed to AI.  Amazon may however eventually succeed in running such stores without so many humans being involved. But what if there is no one to enter such stores and buy from them? The limits to growth in the visible future seem to lie not in capital and technology but in people. So, with big apologies to Marx – people of the world procreate, you have nothing to lose except global stagnation. Prof Manoj Pant is a former Dean, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Vice Chancellor, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT). Currently, he is Visiting Professor at Shiv Nadar University. Dr Sugandha Huria is an Assistant Professor, IIFT Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on April 22, 2024

If I could earn back time: Workers feel tech benefits - 360 John Hopkins Published on February 28, 2024 Employers have benefited from technological advances for a century. Now it’s employees’ turn. In today’s world of work, there is a precious commodity rapidly increasing in importance in the minds of workers – time. Since the COVID pandemic, the demand for flexible work arrangements has sky-rocketed, with workers seeking better work-life balance and more leisure time. Calls for working from home, hybrid work and the four-day work week have all grown dramatically, as underlined in a recent study by recruitment firm Michael Page, which found flexibility is now the second most important factor for job-seekers, behind salary. What’s also interesting, as Swinburne University research shows, is that a four-day working week can also benefit employers. Over the past century an abundance of new technologies have dramatically disrupted the way we work. From the desktop computer, photocopier and fax machine to the internet, mobile phones and email, technologies have slashed the time it takes to complete many tasks, enabling workers to perform more work in the time allocated to them. However, up to now, workers have not been reaping the benefits. The additional time saved by these technological breakthroughs has been used to increase productivity and company profits. Workers, on the other hand, still follow the 40-hour five-day week model established by Henry Ford in the early 1900s — a time when families typically only had one bread-winner and the average life expectancy of Australian workers was just 55. Rubbing salt in the wound, not only do these technologies enable employees to fit more work into their existing hours, they also make it easier for their employers to contact them outside of their standard working hours. This behaviour has become common in the past two decades, and has led to an average of 5.4 additional hours of unpaid work — commonly known as ‘wage theft’ — being performed each week by Australian workers today. In response, Australia this month followed countries like France, Germany and Canada in introducing ‘right to disconnect’ laws which  discourage bosses from making contact with employees outside of their contracted working hours, and gives employees the legal right to not answer phone calls, emails, or text messages outside of work hours, unless under “reasonable circumstances”. As part of Swinburne University’s research into the four-day workweek in Australia, we interviewed workers following the new 100:80:100 model – 100 percent pay, for 80 percent of the time, in exchange for a commitment to 100 percent productivity. We found employees invested the extra time they gained from working fewer days in lots of positive ways. These included greater participation in hobbies, such as golf and tennis, as well as taking up new pastimes, like learning a new language, learning a musical instrument, painting, or training for a 10km charity run. And the health and wellness benefits don’t end there, with participants in the study indicating they had more time for massages, facials, trips to the gym, and walking. Twenty percent of our survey participants mentioned they now have more time to visit the doctor and take regular health checks; something they didn’t have time to do when they were still working five days each week. While these might be gains that focus on the employee, the advantage of having healthy, rested workers with good work-life balances, will undoubtedly benefit employers too, with many reporting a reduction in absenteeism, improved recruitment, increased worker retention and better productivity. One boss, who held a six-month trial into a shorter working week, said: “Our capacity as an organisation increased by 11 percent, our sick leave reduced by a third, stress levels went down, work-life balance measures increased (and) our electricity usage decreased.” The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools — such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT — and their potential to support work time reduction strategies is now refuelling interest in a shorter working week. Unlike other technological advancements of the past century, there is a growing expectation that at least some of the time saved by GenAI will be gifted back to workers, in the form of a reduction in working hours. Is this the age when employers share some of the gains they make, from advances in modern technologies like GenAI, by giving some of that time back to their employees? Only time will tell. John Hopkins is an Innovation Fellow, and Associate Professor of Management, for Swinburne’s School of Business, Law and Entrepreneurship. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on February 28, 2024

If universities want to be relevant, do more on climate change - 360 Tamson Pietsch Published on May 8, 2024 Universities face a raft of challenges. Is the answer more of the same, or is a rethink needed? The number of young people enrolling in Australian undergraduate degrees is declining. There are immediate causes, including the cost-of-living crisis, expensive tuition fees and student loans, but many young people now doubt how relevant degrees are to getting a job. Like other bodies, universities operate under a kind of social licence — an informal agreement by which the community gives its trust and approval on the basis that the institution meets its needs and serves its common interest. This is an agreement that is redrawn and renegotiated as the needs of communities change. In the 19th century, the public purpose of the university in Australia was to fashion a governing class. During the 20th century it was to produce trusted knowledge, train professionals, fashion citizens and produce workers for a deregulated economy. However, the agreements of the late 20th century no longer meet the needs of our times. The system we have does not acknowledge, let alone engage with, the existential challenge confronting human societies across the world: what naturalist David Attenborough called “the biggest threat to security that modern humans have ever faced”. We know that young people in Australia are deeply worried about climate change and report feeling a high degree of concern, worry, powerlessness and frustration about their futures. Universities will struggle to credibly claim to be preparing young people for their futures if they do not take into account the kind of world they are helping to bring about. The systems of social and ecological extraction that drive climate change, and the forms of adaptation and mitigation that it requires, are already fundamentally altering the conditions in which society operates. They are reshaping what communities want and need and increasingly demand. This is not an imperative that the current policy settings for higher education address, yet it is one that the public will increasingly insist is met. The 2024 Australian Universities Accord Interim Report recognised that universities will be needed to help “lead efforts to ameliorate and collectively adapt to climate change and the development of more resilient and sustainable solutions.” However, neither it, nor the final report, engages with what this might mean more broadly. The higher education system was designed to serve the social and economic conditions of the last 40 years. But now Australia confronts a new set of historical circumstances. Dealing with the challenges of our times has the potential to open a public purpose for universities that redraws their relationship with a generation of young people who feel despair at the world they are inheriting. There are three demands that the public, and young people in particular, might legitimately make of universities as our societies struggle to meet the consequences of the climate crisis. First, universities will be called on to become more sustainable. Where they invest their funds, who they partner with, what they consume, how they use their physical assets and what they teach will increasingly be judged in terms of impact on the planet. Many institutions are already taking steps in this direction, with divestment action and the production of renewable energy key initiatives. But much more can be done, especially when it comes to contracting and partnerships, and at a speed to match the urgency of the crisis. Teaching and research in all discipline areas could also begin to engage with these imperatives. Second, universities will be required to generate the knowledge and skills required to enable a positive societal transition to a lower emissions economy. Expertise and new solutions will be crucial. But producing technical advice will be only one aspect of this contribution, not least because university research is itself vulnerable to climate change. Expensive investments in certain infrastructure and equipment risk becoming stranded assets, as do some skills and competencies. Serving communities confronting climate change will also mean training those who care for and maintain society. School teachers, nurses and medical professionals, social workers, public servants and librarians are just some of those who are explicitly charged with undertaking this work. They will be key workers in a warming world: equally as important as those who strive to produce new technical solutions. Universities will be asked to serve as holding environments for a society in flux. They will be required to be institutions able to “handle coming contingencies and [help] . . . others do the same”. This means embracing their role as homes of meaning-making, where stories are told and retold, uncertainty is named, and the norms of discussion, analysis and action are fostered — not only for those directly enrolled in university courses, but with and alongside the whole of society. Universities can become key players in fostering the social dialogue and building the broad public mandate that will be essential as we find ways to live together in a climate changed world. Reorienting universities so they meet the challenges of our times has the capacity to re-establish their social licence. And what this might mean for young people is profound. A future in which they can believe, and to which they can imagine themselves contributing; a society that has a place for them and values their participation; a culture that helps them make sense of and navigate change — these have long been central to the promise of higher education and key to its purpose. Renewing the purpose of universities can make them so again. Tamson Pietsch is Associate Professor in Social and Political Sciences and Director of the Australian Centre for Public History at UTS. A longer version of this article was published as Tamson Pietsch, ‘Universities, their publics, and climate change’, in J. Horne and A.M. Thomas eds., Australian Universities: A conversation about public good (Sydney University Press, 2022), pp 241-250. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “University challenge” sent at: 05/05/2024 09:40. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 8, 2024

If we’re smart about water, we can stop our cities sinking - 360 Shagun Garg Published on May 17, 2023 As more cities sink, rethinking how we use groundwater can ease pressure on precious aquifers. When you come into land at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International airport it may not be obvious from the sky that the land in the surrounding area has been sinking more than 17cm a year. The main reason for this subsidence is excessive pumping of groundwater. As the water is removed from underground aquifers, the soil above begins to compact and sink. This can happen gradually, over years, or suddenly, in just hours. In either case, the effects can be long-lasting and expensive to repair. India is ranked number one for excessive groundwater usage.  Groundwater is a vital resource for our planet’s survival. It sustains agriculture, provides drinking water and supports ecosystems. However, overuse of groundwater is leading to a new problem: land subsidence which not only causes damage to infrastructure and buildings but  threatens the livelihoods of millions of people around the world. In India, the northern Gangetic plains are exploited more than anywhere else. The impact of disappearing groundwater is accelerating changes on the shape of the land surface.  But residents and authorities are fighting back, changing years of water usage habits to stop the land sinking beneath them. A recent study in Nature reported alluvial aquifers in India in the Delhi NCR region have sunk and continue to sink at a substantial rate. Around Kapashera, near the international airport, land subsided 11cm cm per year during 2014-2016. That increased to more than 17cm per year in the two years that followed. On the vulnerability of Delhi to subsidence, Ryan Smith,  assistant professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology said:  “Aquifers that are pressurised and have lots of clay are most prone to subsidence.” The soil in Delhi is mainly thick alluvium, which is clay-rich and thus vulnerable. It can cause significant damage to buildings, bridges, pipelines, railways and canals. Even minor subsidence in densely populated areas can put lives at risk. In cases where the rate of sinking is differential, It might lead to the weakening of foundations or develop cracks in the buildings. A fifth of the world’s population lives in areas that are at risk of subsidence, according to recent reports.  In some cities, the problem is so severe that buildings have sunk by several metres. The consequences can be devastating, as entire communities are left vulnerable to flooding, infrastructure damage, and water scarcity. There’s been land subsidence in various parts of the world where exploitation of groundwater has been high. One of the most prominent cases is in Mexico City, where buildings have been tilting due to land sinking. In Indonesia, over the last decade, the capital Jakarta has sunk more than 2.5m. The problem is so grave  the government is planning to shift the capital. Countries like Iran and China too, have witnessed prominent land subsidence in the last few decades. It is possible to reduce land subsidence if  groundwater replacement is equivalent to what’s taken out, or by using water sustainably.  Rainwater harvesting is an effective way to boost groundwater, especially in dry cities, which receive low rainfall and have a lot of alluvial soil, which is prone to subsidence due to its softness. In Delhi’s Dwarka region, residents and the government had been working on a plan to supply piped water to the area by 2016. Heavy fines were imposed on buildings still using borewells and residents began harvesting rainwater to increase the water table in the area.  Two large lakes were cleaned up and rejuvenated which helped increase  groundwater levels. The government also decided that only treated sewage and surface water should be used to water public parks and grounds. Town planner Vikas Kanojia said steps like reviving old reservoirs and harvesting rainwater helped Dwarka reduce its reliance on groundwater and reverse the trend of land subsidence. “This can be a model for other areas in Delhi and India”, he said. Dwarka’s example shows that it’s possible to deal with the issue of subsidence, however in more arid regions this process is difficult. Iran, for instance, is home to some of the fastest sinking valleys in the world, but uncontrolled mining continues. Per capita water supplies have plummeted more than 65 percent in recent decades and it could be worse in the future. The government has invested heavily in technologies such as desalination. “Technology can help, but what we need is a long-term program to conserve water resources involving farmers, industries and local communities, and at the moment there isn’t one,” said Mahdi Motagh, a senior scientist from GFZ Potsdam. The issue of subsidence is becoming more serious and widespread, affecting the lives of millions of people around the world. However, there are solutions, as demonstrated by the efforts of residents and the government in the Dwarka region of Delhi. Rainwater harvesting, reviving old reservoirs and using treated sewage and surface water can help to reduce reliance on groundwater and reverse land subsidence. But what’s more important is to address this issue through proper tracking and monitoring, and long-term programs involving farmers, industries and local communities. Shagun Garg is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Future Infrastructure and Built Environment2 (FIBE2 CDT).  He is interested in using satellite images to better understand geohazards such as floods, landslides, and subsidence. The PhD is funded by Vice-Chancellor scholarship and BP. The research is being undertaken with financial assistance from DAAD KOSPIE, MHRD India, EPSRC CDT FIBE2, and BP. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 17, 2023

If your city is sinking, why not make it float? - 360 Katherine Dafforn Published on May 17, 2023 Floating cities are emerging as a possible solution for residents of many of the world’s sinking megacities, if they can be built and operated sustainably. Many of the world’s largest coastal cities are sinking at alarming rates due to factors such as groundwater extraction and the weight of built infrastructure. A potential solution is moving their residents to floating cities, if they can be built without creating a damaging ecological footprint in the ocean. The issue of land subsidence or ‘sinking’ is not a new one. Vertical subsidence of up to 9m has been observed in coastal areas during the 20th century. The issue has been gaining increasing global attention because the areas most prone to sinking are megacities that house almost 20 percent of the global urban population, and these areas are also the most heavily impacted by sea level rise. Given that almost half of the 48 largest coastal cities are sinking at a rate faster than 10mm per year there is an urgent need for viable solutions. Current approaches have tended to focus on trying to hold back the sea and building up coastal defences through hard engineering or nature-based solutions, but when subsidence is combined with sea level rise even the lowest projections will prove challenging for engineering works. So-called sponge cities that can absorb and reuse water have been touted as one potential solution, but they address intermittent flooding rather than creeping sea level rise and eventual permanent inundation. With more than 40.5 million people already displaced as a result of the climate crisis, the need to relocate people, businesses and even cities to safer regions is an increasing reality. Where an inland movement is impossible then floating cities may be a way forward in addressing overdevelopment, sea level rise and land subsidence. The idea that cities could be built to float is not a new concept and apart from existing floating villages in places like Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam there has been an ongoing architectural debate since the 1950s that has recently gained significant traction with the United Nations calling for research into floating cities. Technically, there are two types of structure that could support a floating city — pontoon structures that float on the water’s surface and semi-submersible structures like oil rigs that have submerged pontoons connected to an operating deck by structural columns. While there are still no floating cities in the ocean, the closest proposal is Oceanix which is based on a pontoon structure and so requires shallower waters and some protection from wave energy. A prototype — Oceanix Busan — is due to begin construction in 2023 in South Korea and will start with three connected, floating islands including a lodging platform, research platform and living platform, with the potential to expand to 20 platforms over time. The development of entire cities is creating new opportunities to ensure that they are designed, built and operated with sustainability at the forefront. Oceanix Busan aims to create zero waste, have closed loop water systems, operate efficiently on clean energy, and support food production on a neighbourhood system. Habitat regeneration is also an aim of the project that proposes using biorock to encourage marine growth. Engaging early with marine ecologists and restoration practitioners would help support this goal and ensure that natural tidal cycles are considered for communities such as mangroves and saltmarsh that rely on them. But there are other considerations to ensure that the rush to create new ocean cities doesn’t create new problems for the underwater neighbours sharing this space. Floating cities may have less impact on seafloor communities than artificial islands because they don’t require extensive seafloor scaffolding. Those proposed for coastal environments, like Oceanix Busan, are an extension of the land and wouldn’t require a connection to the seabed. To move further offshore then anchoring to the seafloor might be necessary and mooring blocks or anchors and chains can cause significant scour, impacting on soft sediment communities. Floating cities would also create physical structures where none existed previously and this type of construction can change water flow and may impact on movements and migration by marine life. The creation of floating cities will also create significant shading of the waters and seafloor beneath. This could impact on any organisms that rely on sunlight to create food through photosynthesis and includes sensitive communities like seagrass and corals that have already been decimated worldwide through other types of coastal development and climate impacts. Designing built structures that reduce shading either through the incorporation of ‘skylights’ or using light transmissive materials whenever possible could help to address impacts from shading. At the same time, cities are associated with significant light pollution at night and this has been shown to affect fish behaviour and reproduction. Australia now has guidelines for managing the ecological impacts of light pollution and these or similar guidelines should be considered when planning lighting for a floating city. Research done in parallel with prototype and early-stage floating cities will help inform whether they are a viable solution for sinking cities without extending the impact of our urban footprint further offshore. Katherine Dafforn is an Associate Professor in the School of Natural Sciences at Macquarie University. Her research investigates the impacts of coastal cities on marine life and provides eco-friendly solutions that can benefit humans and nature. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “Sinking cities” sent at: 15/05/2023 09:27. This is a corrected repeat. Minor fix to embed to facilitate sharing.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 17, 2023

Igniting community awareness to prevent peat fires - 360 Tapan Kumar Nath Published on December 6, 2023 Fire prevention is key to protecting peatland swamps and surrounding communities should be at the frontline in such efforts. They may look like unloved bogs nobody would take much notice of but peatlands play a crucial role in soaking up CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions. While peatlands cover only three percent of the global land area, they store nearly 30 percent of the world’s soil organic carbon and contain twice as much carbon as the world’s forests and play a key role in nature-based climate change mitigation. Keeping peat carbon in the ground, therefore, is crucial if the world is to meet the 2 degrees Celsius threshold set by the Paris Climate Change Agreement. Important as they are, the depletion of peatlands continues worldwide at an alarming rate. Massive peatland fires and human activities are mainly responsible. Peatlands are more vulnerable to destruction by fire compared to other forest types due to high organic matter in the peat soil. These are extremely flammable when dry. Peat fires emit large amounts of CO2 and air pollutants that cause adverse health effects and substantial economic loss. Extensive field studies in North Selangor peat swamp forests in Malaysia can shed light on how to prevent peatland fires. These forests were logged extensively until the 1980s then drained for adjacent paddy fields. From June 2001 to  April 2013, about 5,568 hectares of peatland forests were burned here. Peatland fires are mostly caused by fishermen who enter forests to fish and then throw cigarette butts that ignite, or from the burning of nearby agricultural land. Eventually, a peatland fire becomes deadly, can rage for weeks and be very difficult to put out as it spreads above and below the ground. As part of a community-based restoration of peatland swamp forests, the Selangor state Forestry Department, in partnership with an NGO, the Global Environment Centre (GEC),  took action to prevent peatland fires in 1,000 hectares of highly degraded Raja Musa Forest Reserve land, one of the four forest reserves in the North Selangor peat swamps. Repeated peat fires, caused by neighbouring farmers burning off their land, were one of the major challenges in the restoration programme. In 2012 alone, about 200 hectares of planted forests in the restoration site were burned. Action was needed to prevent fires. The GEC made local people aware of the importance of keeping the peatland wet while community teams patrolled the area twice a day to observe any fire incidents. Several community organisations were formed, such as Friends of North Selangor Peat Swamp Forests and the school-level ‘Peatland Ranger’ programme. They have been actively involved in running awareness programmes in surrounding villages on the importance of peatlands and the devastating effects of forest fires. The GEC and the Forestry Department also installed several fire danger rating system signs along the periphery of high fire-risk peatland areas. Patrol teams change the rating daily based on local weather data and the water level of the peatland. If the rating is high to extreme, adjacent communities are alerted via WhatsApp groups and urged to take extra precautions in their agricultural work. Keeping peatlands wet involves canal blocking, clay dyke construction and even pumping water from ponds and surrounding rivers during long drought periods. There were hundreds of active canals in the Raja Musa Forest Reserve, constructed to transport logs, which caused the draining of peatland water. To restore moisture, the GEC, in collaboration with the Forestry Department, volunteers from surrounding villages and environmental enthusiasts, built 132 canal blocks stretching 64.7km from 2010 to 2018. The target was to hit 90 km by 2023. The GEC installed 20 piezometers (pressure measuring instruments) between 2016 and 2018 at the restoration site to estimate the groundwater levels. Patrols took readings every month. Based on their record, the mean groundwater level was -28.6 cm (range -36.0 cm to -17.7 cm) in 2016. In 2017 it was -26.12 cm (-38.6 cm to -12.2 cm). By 2018 it was -20.16 cm (-52.9 cm to 4.7 cm). These negative values of water readings indicate the presence of water below ground level meaning the peatlands were wet. In addition to canal blocking, 1.9 km of clay dykes (at least 5m in depth and width) were built along the boundary of the forests against a targeted length of 17km. The clay dykes serve as retaining walls and for water storage to prevent surface and subsurface seepage in adjacent areas. These dykes maintain high water levels in the forest edges which are more prone to fire as the edges are more degraded and closer to farmland. Improved hydrology and canal blocking could be important factors for reducing fire hazards and creating conditions for forest vegetation re-establishment in degraded peatlands. Thanks to these efforts of regular monitoring, water level improvement, and awareness creation among the nearby farmers, there have been no major fire incidents in the last few years. Their efforts to restore and rehabilitate the degraded area of the Raja Musa Forest Reserve have shown positive results with the incidence of peatland forest fires greatly reduced. Tapan Kumar Nath is a Professor at the School of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, University of Nottingham Malaysia. He is an interdisciplinary researcher with experience in applying socio-ecological approaches, sustainable livelihood frameworks, and natural resources governance frameworks for collaborative natural resource governance and the livelihoods of forest-dependent communities in the Global South. His research was funded by the Malaysian Ministry of Land, Water and Natural Resources (previously Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment) with a research grant under the National Conservation Trust Fund (Grant ID: NRE(S)600-2/1/48/2Jld.2(9): NCTF). Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on December 6, 2023

Ignore, rebut and embrace: how to shut down conspiracies - 360 Zim Nwokora Published on November 20, 2023 Trying to shut down conspiracy theories with laws and regulation isn’t working. It may be time to try something different. Australia’s recent Indigenous Voice referendum was marred by baseless allegations about what it actually meant, including the claim that a successful ‘Yes’ vote would lead to land grabs by the United Nations. In the United States, Donald Trump has consistently led polls in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, even though he has continued to broadcast the ‘Big Lie’ about the 2020 presidential election being rigged – despite overwhelming evidence it wasn’t. Conspiracy theories are flourishing in today’s political environment. The reach of social media, increasing misinformation and a loss of faith in political elites and mainstream news are heightening the threat that conspiracy theories pose to governance, debate and the public interest. Research on tackling conspiracy theories has largely focused on creating new laws, institutions and policies. But these approaches risk placing too many restrictions on speech or creating aggressive monitoring mechanisms, which can ultimately undermine the goal of enhancing democratic debate. Politicians and other opinion leaders could engage with conspiracy theories through discourse — for example, when they field questions at press conferences or write opinion columns in newspapers or online. How should they use such opportunities to counter conspiracy theories and support the conditions for rational democratic debate? There are three main discursive approaches to challenging conspiracy theories: ignore, rebut and embrace. Each can be effective if used in the right circumstances. Sometimes, it may be best to deny the conspiracy theory any airing and, where possible, ignore it, in hopes that it may help suppress it. During the 2008 US presidential election campaign, a speaker at a Minnesota town hall debate said she didn’t trust then-US Senator Barack Obama because he’s “an Arab”. His opponent, Senator John McCain, seized the microphone and denied the conspiracist any opportunity to elaborate on a theory that was false and bigoted. After taking away the speaker’s microphone, McCain shut the conspiracy theory down and moved the debate on, curtly replying that his opponent was “a decent family man [and] citizen” who he “happen[ed] to have disagreements with on fundamental issues”. Sometimes, it’s not possible to stifle a conspiracy theory because it has already spread widely. In that case, direct confrontation and rebuttal may be the best course, especially when armed with substantial evidence that runs counter to the conspiracy. Trump’s claims of a stolen election are undermined whenever someone points to the 63 lawsuits filed by the former President and his allies — all of which either collapsed or were dismissed due to lack of evidence. This still may not be enough to shift the conspiracy’s strongest adherents. Getting them to change their minds may be impossible, especially if belief in the conspiracy becomes part of their political and cultural identity. But the counterarguments that stand the best chance of convincing trenchant supporters depend not only not only on the evidence in the rebuttal, but also on the person presenting it. Someone on the same side as the conspiracy’s adherents can have particular power: for instance, a Republican politician arguing against Trump’s stolen election claims is likely to have more weight than a Democrat defending the legitimacy of their win. Then that rebuttal is likely to carry additional weight. This great power gives political elites great responsibility  —  they must confront the conspiracies that bubble up from their base. Doing so may cost them votes, but that could be offset by other voters who credit politicians committed to supporting rational democratic debate. As another strategy, politicians could embrace a conspiracy theory, or at least take on board some of what it is suggesting. This is the best approach when a supposed theory turns out to be grounded in truth. The Watergate scandal that led to US President Richard Nixon’s resignation in August 1974 started as a conspiracy theory. Acknowledging its truth when evidence emerged resulted in an incumbent president leaving office and the introduction of new political transparency regulations. Even conspiracy theories ungrounded in any truth can still be embraced to some extent, and doing so can be democratically productive. A politician can seek to learn from what a conspiracy theory may indirectly signal without conceding the central point that the theory is false. Engaging with a conspiracy theory allows a seeker to better understand underlying messages: it may point to governance failures (such as rampant inequality or job insecurity) that deserve attention or it may identify a vulnerable group of citizens who are at risk of vilification. For instance, McCain’s suppression of the conspiracist theory about Obama’s ethnicity could have been more democratically powerful if his shutdown had been followed by an embrace: that, even if Obama were an ‘Arab’, there should be no negative association drawn. In engaging with the supposed truth of conspiracy, McCain could have given a defence of a vulnerable ethnic group in the US. Even as it distorts the truth, a conspiracy theory can convey real and useful information, giving well-meaning politicians the impetus to make the case for reforms to strengthen governance. Arguing against a conspiracy theory is a subtle exercise that depends on wise choices that consider, among other things, the nature of the conspiracy theory as well as the context in which it circulates. But, whatever the circumstances, discourse can be a powerful tool to engage conspiracy theories and support the conditions necessary for rational democratic debate. Zim Nwokora is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and Policy Studies at Deakin University. His research and teaching focus on constitutions, political parties and political finance. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on November 20, 2023

Imran casts a long shadow over polling day - 360 Umair Javed Published on February 7, 2024 He may be banned and his party in disarray but Imran Khan will be an influential figure in Pakistan’s election. Pakistan’s elections on February 8 come after one of the most turbulent periods in the country’s history. Around 127 million people will go to the polls on the back of a politically and economically choppy 20 months, dating back to the removal of the then-Prime Minister Imran Khan and his governing Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party through a no-confidence vote in April 2022. Since then, the country has endured riots and came perilously close to economic collapse. It is faced with a large current account deficit and mounting foreign debt payments pushing the country to the brink of a default, staved off only by a bailout from the IMF, with additional support from China, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. While there has been some semblance of economic stability, these elections take place at a time of low economic growth and rampant inflation, which touched a multi-decade high of 37.97 percent in 2023. Politically, the past two years have been significant. There’s been the breakdown of previously close relations between the military and Imran’s PTI over foreign policy postures and military staffing practices. Since the eruption of this conflict, Imran has rallied his supporters and publicly blamed the military high command, opposing parties, and the United States for conspiring to remove his government. Things came to a head when in an unprecedented act Imran’s supporters protested outside, and in some cases attacked, military offices and installations on May 9, 2023. In response, the military cracked down on the party and orchestrated a series of court cases against its leaders, including Imran. These range from fomenting insurrection, financial malpractice, personal moral fallibility and the misuse of state secrets. Imran has been sentenced to two separate jail sentences and remains disqualified from contesting. Several other prominent PTI leaders are in hiding. Despite efforts to marginalise its prospects, the PTI still commands significant popularity among voters. Aided by its successors presiding over a period of high inflation and mass unemployment and a vocal, populist confrontation that targets the military and the United States, the party still has a two point lead over its closest competitor, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, or PML(N). Imran continues to enjoy the highest approval ratings of all national-level politicians. In a relatively fair contest, the PTI would likely convert this popularity into a reasonable shot at forming a government. However, the military establishment is unlikely to allow that to happen. Crackdowns on campaigning by candidates and party workers have continued unabated in the run-up to the election. In January 2024, the Supreme Court further tightened the noose on the PTI by upholding a decision by the Election Commission to strip the party of its ballot symbol – a cricket bat. PTI candidates are now contesting as independents with separate symbols in each constituency, which is bound to hamper their election-day performance. Things, however, look brighter for the PML(N). Memories of a similar tiff six years ago — replete with disqualifications, court cases, and incarceration — between the military and PMLN’s leader and ex-PM Nawaz Sharif seem to have faded. Sharif has returned to the country after four years of self-imposed exile in the UK, with most charges against him hurriedly cleared by an obliging court. Despite enjoying such favoured status, the PML(N)’s path to gaining a reasonable majority in the National Assembly remains less than certain. For the 266 directly elected seats countrywide, the inevitable battleground is the province of Punjab with its 141 seats. About 85 of them are in the PMLN’s historical base of North and Central Punjab, where the PTI’s populist message of haqeeqi azadi or ‘true independence’ has made significant inroads in the past 18 months. PML(N)’s hopes, then, rest on Nawaz’s reminders of past infrastructure projects and promises of post-election economic stability resonating with an inflation and unemployment-burdened electorate. Compensating for expected attrition to its core base will require PML(N) to pick up seats in rural Western and Southern Punjab, as well as Balochistan. Here, its prospects look brighter. The region’s politics is controlled by large, landed families, whose success in recent elections is contingent on voters’ and local elites’ perception of a candidate’s alignment with the military. Since Sharif’s return, and a number of court decisions going his way, this perception has hardened. The provinces of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh are expected to post results similar to 2018. The PTI’s near-hegemonic status in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is likely to continue. In Sindh, the Pakistan People’s Party is expected to hold on to its dominance in rural areas, and may even register some gains in the provincial capital, and largest city, Karachi. In its current configuration, the electoral landscape is unlikely to produce a government with a large majority. A coalition with smaller parties and the cajoled and coerced influx of independent winners – some of whom may even be from the PTI – may see the PML(N) over the line. This will give Sharif the premiership for a second time in 11 years, though in radically different circumstances. A return to power – if it does happen – will likely resemble a slow trudge, and one that features considerable assistance from the military. Economically, the preceding 18 months offer a glimpse of the near-future. The military has progressively taken on larger roles in policy making, through bodies such as the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC). From managing foreign investment and policy decisions to approving public works programs, the SIFC is expected to retain its position of primacy in the short-term, even once a new government is elected. Politically, a thin majority guaranteed by the military is unlikely to prove a very stable or reform-oriented arrangement. Regardless of how they get there, civilian prime ministers tend to find their own voice once in office, leading to yet more conflict with the military establishment, and yet another exercise of coerced political curation. It won’t be surprising at all if today’s outcasts find a way back in over the next few years. The loss, though, will be borne by an electorate desperately in need for stability and a persuasive pathway of sustained and equitable growth. Umair Javed is Assistant Professor in the MAG School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on February 7, 2024

In absentia: a roadblock to trying Putin - 360 Caleb H. Wheeler Published on May 23, 2022 Among the challenges of prosecuting Putin is getting him to physically appear in court. So, why not just start the trial, anyway? The answer lies in the law. Regardless of the crimes of Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of  his country’s invasion of Ukraine, there is little reason to believe he will ever stand trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Rome Statute, from which the ICC draws its authority, sets out two provisions that preclude trials being held in absentia (in the absence of the accused) — meaning Putin would have to be physically present in the courtroom for one to take place. The first provision, found in Article 60, requires the accused to appear in person in front of a Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC before the trial phase of proceedings can begin. It is a necessary triggering event and there is no statutory possibility of holding a trial at the ICC if there is no initial appearance. The existence of this provision means Putin cannot be tried without an initial appearance in person. The second provision relates to the presence of the accused during the trial itself. Article 63(1) specifically states, ‘[t]he accused shall be present during the trial.’ This statement seems to preclude holding a trial against Putin unless he is physically inside the courtroom. There is an exception to this rule in Article 63(2), but it is not applicable to the present situation involving Putin. The ICC’s judiciary has largely supported the idea that trials cannot take place in absentia. In 2013, the Appeals Chamber found that the Rome Statute reinforces the accused’s right to be present at trial and does not permit it to be implicitly waived. Other judges have taken a similar position. In an earlier dissenting opinion, Judge Kuniko Ozaki indicated that the Statute requires the accused to be continuously and physically present throughout the trial. Similarly, Judge Olga Herrera Carbuccia determined that the accused could only be absent after having been removed from the courtroom for being disruptive, and even then they maintained a right to attend trial via video-link. Even when judges have found that some absences from trial may be permissible, as Judge Erkki Kourula and Judge Anita Ušaka did in 2013, they have rejected the idea that the accused can be absent from trial in its entirety. Sentiment may be changing. In May 2020, the Appeals Chamber issued an opinion in which it stated that the Rome Statute, when properly understood, does not prevent trial from continuing when the accused has decided to be wilfully absent. Instead, it is designed to protect those defendants who wish to attend their trial but, through no fault of their own, are not able to. This decision could open the door for trying Putin in his absence if it is determined that he has wilfully refused to appear for trial. This possibility comes with a significant caveat that would almost certainly preclude Putin from being tried in absentia by the ICC. The May 2020 decision recognises that a wilfully absent accused may only be tried in their absence if they appeared in person for their initial appearance before the ICC. If they have not, it acts as an absolute bar to proceeding in their absence. So, unless Putin makes an initial appearance at the ICC, he cannot be tried in absentia regardless of the severity of the charges against him. Putin would either have to agree to voluntarily appear at the ICC, or be arrested and transferred into the custody of the Court for a trial to take place. Both of these outcomes are highly unlikely, meaning there is little chance Putin will be prosecuted by the ICC for his alleged crimes. Trials in absentia are controversial and give rise to concerns they are being used for political, rather than legal reasons. Holding an in absentia trial against Putin could exacerbate tensions between Russia and NATO, raising questions about whether the ICC is being used as a tool to further the political goals of Putin’s opponents. From a practical perspective, it is difficult to justify a long and expensive international criminal trial when the accused is not available to be punished should they be found guilty. It would represent nothing more than a symbolic victory and do little to address the suffering experienced by Putin’s victims. Dr Caleb H. Wheeler is a lecturer in law at Cardiff University and the author of the book The Right To Be Present At Trial In International Criminal Law. Dr Wheeler declared no conflicts of interest in relation to this article. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 23, 2022

In mRNA we trust - 360 Citrawati Dyah Kencono Wungu Published on April 22, 2022 The mRNA vaccines developed to fight COVID were found to be safe and effective, even for pregnant women, inspiring scientists to explore their potential. Scientists believe that mRNA vaccine technology, made famous as the technology behind some COVID-19 vaccines, could be a major breakthrough against several other diseases. A rapid response technology with many advantages, mRNA is considered relatively safe, and can induce strong immunity. Vaccines made with mRNA are also adaptive, cost-effective, and quick to make. Scientists have worked with mRNA since 1987, when Robert Malone tried to combine mRNA with fat droplets, enabling human cells soaked in the mixture to produce protein. However, it took a long time for scientists to believe that the mRNA produced was stable enough, effective in inducing an immune response, and safe. Just as mRNA technology proved its potential, a new coronavirus hit. Vaccine development itself generally takes several years, with the previous record minimum four years for the mumps vaccine. However, the devastating coronavirus pandemic worldwide forced scientists to work at the speed of light. On 2 December 2020, less than a year after the world was first alerted to COVID-19, a vaccine developed by Pfizer in collaboration with BioNTech, a German biotech firm, became the first fully-authorised mRNA vaccine. The vaccines use a molecule called messenger RNA – a cousin of the more familiar DNA – to trigger the human body to produce a protein which is specific for the disease in question.  Our immune system then recognises and remembers the protein as foreign, allowing it to generate a strong immune response if the disease and its specific protein is encountered again. When the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccination began, the government of Indonesia and several other Asian countries chose to play it safe and recommended pregnant women didn’t get the jab. It was only after several trials showed promising results that the Indonesian Obstetrics and Gynaecology Association finally gave a recommendation for COVID-19 vaccination for pregnant women with supervision in July 2021. COVID-19 significantly increases dealth or illness of both mother and baby as well as the risk of complications during pregnancy and birth. A review of published research by Airlangga University, with a total of 48,039 pregnant women, showed that mRNA vaccines provide greater benefits for pregnant women than harm. The mRNA-based vaccines reduced the risk of infection with COVID and did not cause any apparent harm during pregnancy. Further studies are needed to monitor the side-effects of the COVID-19 vaccine over the long term, especially in babies born to pregnant women who were given the mRNA vaccine. In the future, mRNA vaccine technology also has the potential to be developed for other infectious diseases, such as influenza, dengue, zika, and chikungunya fever. Scientists simply need to modify a mRNA component of a vaccine instead of the entire thing for new diseases or strains. This makes developing new vaccines and adapting existing ones easier and faster. With such promise, several vaccine developers are also exploring mRNA vaccines for traditionally difficult diseases such as malaria and HIV. Moreover, mRNA technology has not only been developed for infectious disease, but is also being explored for non-infectious diseases such as cancer. Over twenty mRNA-based immunotherapies have been tested in clinical trials so far, with encouraging results in solid tumour treatments. 2021 saw the launch of a global mRNA technology transfer centre. The idea is to support developing economies to increase their technical know-how on vaccine development and production. It is hoped that in the near future mRNA vaccines will be widely produced not only in developed economies but also developing economies, combating many diseases and helping to fulfill the sustainable development goals worldwide. Citrawati Dyah Kencono Wungu a Lecturer and researcher at the Department of Physiology and Medical Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Airlangga and Institute of Tropical Disease, Universitas Airlangga. Her works focus on Infectious disease, genetics, molecular biology. Citrawati DK Wungu declared that she has no conflict of interest and is not receiving specific funding in any form. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on April 22, 2022

In Pathaan, Shah Rukh shakes up the trolls - 360 Sayandeb Chowdhury Published on March 10, 2023 Pathaan successfully propagates a masculine state, but also pitches for a country in need of healing. Cinema has always faced the simple question of whether it is aligned with propaganda. The answer, however, is enormously complicated.  To accept the idea would mean, among other things, accepting that thrillers canvass on behalf of murder, classical melodrama promotes weeping women and musicals publicise exuberant outbreaks of choreographed gestural articulations. However, that is not generally considered the case for any of them.  One might argue that the assignments of each of these well-wrought genres go beyond the sensorium of spectatorial responses natural to them. In fact, there are now insightful studies about why Hollywood flooded its global footprint with musicals during WW-II; why hard-boiled detectives soothed the distressed American nerve in the Depression-era, or why science-fiction cinema flourished in the age of the Cold War space-race. Similar concerns have attended the works of Sergei Eisenstein or Dziga Vertov in the Soviet Union, and more explicitly that of Leni Riefenstahl in Nazi Germany. One of this year’s Oscars favourites, All Quiet on the Western Front, is part of a long line of films which have pleaded for an end to war-induced violence, cruelty and conflict. Should we then call them propagandists for peace? Or is propaganda something that is just wicked and political, and hence needs to manufacture consent through cinema? These issues have occupied Hollywood scholarship for a while now. The question is whether there is a similar imperative hidden in Bollywood films. Popular cinema in India has been largely a self-perpetuating machine, clumsy in utterance, wanton in consumption, and cluttered in its everyday presence. And yet its popular heft is beyond any doubt. There is not much disagreement with the idea that it has been, for many decades, a naive and unforced vehicle of humane, if not always progressive, values that came clothed in wholesome entertainment. But neoliberalism and the consequent ascent of the right-wing as both as an institutional and a cultural force may have made it subliminally politico-propagandist. For example, two recent films among many middling others — Uri (2019) and Kashmir Files (2022) — were unambiguously right-wing, made with the explicit purpose of influencing public opinion. So, are we to infer that neoliberal Bollywood has ingrained itself with the Indian state in preference over its historical ethos that was grounded in a multicultural Indian nation? It might be interesting to investigate the case of the Shahrukh Khan vehicle Pathaan which merges the video-game format, Marvel-like idiomatic spy universe and Mission Impossible-scale action sequences with South Asian concerns of pop-geopolitics, identity and religion. It takes the task of balancing a purported statist agenda with a gigantic stardom, especially under the circumstances in which Sharukh Khan has faced relentless right-wing vilification in recent years. It would not be an exaggeration to say Pathaan presents a case of competing claims that mirror the tensions of the current Indian political discourse. In the introduction to their edited collection SRK and Global Bollywood, Dudrah, Mader and Fuchs give a hint of what Shahrukh Khan  or SRK as he is popularly known, as a carrier of popular signification, might mean. They write, “SRK not only represents globalised polysemy in the characters he plays on-screen, but also in his entire ‘celebrity ecology’  that includes visual, material, textual, oral, commercial and non-commercial, personal and public components working in tandem.” This has only grown since. However, this time, and more than any time earlier, a counter campaign of right-wing trolls was also pressed into action with the sole purpose of deflating the box-office promise of Pathaan. Why? Because SRK had to be pulled down from the talisman of being a Muslim megastar in a Hindu-majority nation. However, the opposite has happened. Pathaan has already grossed over USD$135 million worldwide, making it the second-most successful Hindi film of all time. This raging success has bolstered Pathaan’s case as a kind of totem of Bollywood in the present. Pathaan is a fit candidate to ask if it embodies or subverts a specifically Bollywood kind of propagandic tendency, but not for its commercial success but because of its furtive self-awareness. On the face of it, the eponymous Pathaan is the centrepiece of India’s robust and secretive state security machinery, protecting, as spies do, the country from international (read Pakistani) terror. He goes on a globe-trotting hunt for Jim, the professional terrorist super-villain, who is commissioned to wage biological warfare on Indian people by a rogue official of Pakistan’s intelligence-wing, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). This thrill-a-minute drama has a ridiculously familiar plot, with stunts that are at war with reason; heart-stopping chases, racy song-and-dance interludes, crisp storytelling and cheeky humour. In other words, Pathaan is every bit that over-the-top potboiler where the typical excesses of popular storytelling merge seamlessly with stunts and VFX from Hollywood. In terms of its official rhetoric, it ticks the right boxes: ISI, Pakistan, Kashmir, a lean and alert state machinery, incorruptible officialdom, dedicated custodians of national honour etc. But at heart, Pathaan is also a spoof, because it makes fun of this very premise, incorporating references that are self-consciously clever. An hour or so into the film, our hero reveals that he is an orphan and was abandoned at a cinema hall (of all places). He also mentions that his name was a referent for an entire clan, for it is at a Pathan village in Afghanistan that Pathaan was given a new life after being heavily wounded in a proxy-war. The second revelation is a clever ploy to deny Pathaan a stable identity, especially one anchored in religion. The first entirely subverts the orphan trope in Indian cinema by making Pathaan’s birth non-denominational. But there is also that hint that SRK’s Pathaan was born in the sovereign republic of cinema itself and Pathaan, as an imaginary character, and Shahrukh by enacting the same, are most functional in that republic. Pathaan falls in love with a Pakistani spy, does not fetishise Pakistan as a rogue country; does not overemphasise India’s geopolitical dominance; or babble the easy rhetoric of jingoism. In a sequence that comes in the middle of the end-titles, Shahrukh and co-spy Salman Khan (as superspy Tiger) regale at their ageing heroics, and decide they must continue to be the custodians of their nation in spite of their age. This refers to younger spies but it is impossible to ignore the symbolism; for they are also India’s two reigning Muslim superstars and can barely hope to pass the mantle of safeguarding the country’s fundamental ethos to those unaware of its dignity and beauty. Pathaan has successfully propagated a masculine state, but also bandied for a country in need of healing. That the public embraced this message, participated in the cheekiness of an imaginary cinematic republic, held aloft a dimpled (and greying) hero and danced with Pathaan all the way shows the nation may not be yet ready to let the warm waters of the Indian popular become amenable to the cold wishes of a hawkish state. Sayandeb Chowdhury teaches in the School of Letters, Ambedkar University, Delhi. More about his work and interests can be found at https://sayandeb.in/. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on March 10, 2023

In the new cold war China is not Russia - 360 Jabin T. Jacob Published on May 24, 2022 With the decline of Russia, eyes are turning to China and a new cold war emerging with the USA. But this one will be different. The Ukraine invasion might not quite be Russia’s last hurrah, but the frailties of a declining power are becoming ever more apparent. The failure of the Russians to achieve a swift victory only confirms a trend for superpowers: even with determination and military superiority, victory, if at all, is a hard slog. Meanwhile, economic sanctions have cut Russia out of the international financial system and it has little back-up, including from China. Even long-standing friends such as India have been unable to offer fuller political support to Russia given its obviously illegal action. The United States, freshly chastened from its failure in Afghanistan, has resisted the temptation to take a more active military role in its support for Ukraine while simultaneously encouraging the Europeans to be more involved both diplomatically and militarily. Russian threats to use nuclear weapons do not change this reality, unless, of course, they actually use them, in which case, every other certainty of global politics, indeed of life, itself will change. Russia’s halting pace and big threats demonstrate that cold wars are the only possibility for superpower rivals with matching destructive military capabilities. With the decline of Russia, eyes turn to China as the upstart power the US might have to contend with. A new cold war with China seems likely. But China is a different contender than the Soviet Union and its successor state. As sharp as the ideological conflict between the US and China is becoming, Chinese communists will have no wish for a while yet, if ever, to imperil regime security by pursuing active conflict. Economic growth and development at home are as much a part of the ideological conflict as political influence externally and military superiority over the US. The Chinese are far more able to prosecute an ideological conflict than a military one. China’s decades-long pursuit of asymmetric military capabilities has received a great deal of attention but this is not all it learned from the sole superpower left standing at the end of the Cold War. The Chinese also learned to pursue political influence across the globe, through large embassies and one of the largest diplomatic corps in the world, huge investments in foreign policy studies at universities and in think-tanks, and training, scholarships and fellowships targeted at foreign government officials and political elites. China’s leaders have worked assiduously for decades to decouple their country’s economy from the global economy in strategic sectors and to build up self-reliance. China’s efforts in these directions suggest it sees dangers from Western dominance of the international financial system. They also suggest that China does not believe active conflict is the only, or most feasible way to undermine such dominance. Rather, Beijing’s toolkit includes non-tariff barriers that block free and fair trade — not just for the US but also for countries like India and even close partners like Pakistan, and economic coercion such as against Australia or Lithuania. The nature and distinct features of the Chinese political system have also meant Beijing has been able to develop some unique approaches of its own. For example, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has developed interactions with political parties in other countries, including training programmes in countries as far apart as Madagascar and Nepal. Frequent high-level diplomatic visits from the Chinese president, premier or foreign minister are complemented by visits from other members of the CPC Politburo Standing Committee, the Central Military Commission, the Politburo and leaders of provincial governments. It has also carefully cultivated ties with business elites as well as the Chinese diaspora in many countries. Together, these elements have buffered China from concerted actions by national governments and their security agencies. In fact, China has multiple reasons to both refrain from direct warfare and seek alternative ways to prosecute its rivalry with the US/West. By the CPC’s own admission, China is only a “moderately well-off” country and says it has only recently eliminated absolute poverty. Income inequality, regional disparities, environmental damage and energy insecurity all remain problems that will require a degree of Chinese dependence on foreign markets and technologies to resolve. China’s territorial aggrandisement from the South China Sea to Nepal and India are unlikely to lead to major conflict because the US — as in the case of Ukraine — does not see these instances as worth a direct conflict with China. Even India, who could have exercised a punitive response to Chinese provocations, refrained. Groupings like the Quad, or a Russia-China dyad, far from setting off active conflict, actually limit its chances. The Quad members have scrupulously stuck to non-traditional security co-operation, which for now precludes collective military action against China. Chinese support for Russia has remained limited to the diplomatic and economic, and even here, not entirely fulsome. The fact that the Chinese are at this moment promoting a new Global Security Initiative is more diplomacy and distancing from Russia than anything else. If co-operation scales up to conventional security co-operation, it will likely set constraints on physical conflict given that the consequences will become clearer to the opposing party. Meanwhile, fears about Taiwan as a flashpoint ignore several facts. The CPC will not want its timetable set by the Russians or anyone else. Unlike Ukraine, which developed over a few short years, Taiwan has long been a problem that the principal players have developed patterns of behaviour and familiarity with. While Taiwan is not a US ally, it is a contingency the US and its allies, including Japan, have planned for. They will very likely get involved in any conflict, increasing the costs for China. Russian military stumbles and the effective Ukrainian resistance will also give the Chinese pause, given that from structure to equipment to doctrines of modernisation, the Chinese Army has drawn a great deal from the Soviet and Russian armies. The domestic political polarisation in China over the Russian invasion will also give the Chinese leadership reasons to think. None of this means that a new cold war between the US and China will be any less consequential than an active conflict or that there will not be proxy wars. The extraordinary risks the chief protagonists of the first Cold War took on were the result of a sense of do-or-die ideological conflict. China has not abandoned the Communist versus non-Communist divide. Rather, it has sharpened the divide between single-party authoritarianism and liberal democracy and overlaid this divide with notions of Chinese cultural and civilizational superiority. The new cold war is only likely to be fiercer than its predecessor. Jabin T. Jacob teaches at the Department of International Relations and Governance Studies, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi NCR. Some of his work can be found at https://indiandchina.com. He declares no conflict of interest. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 24, 2022

In warming seas, marine heatwaves are getting worse - 360 James Goldie, Suzannah Lyons Published on August 21, 2023 Global oceans are facing unprecedented marine heatwaves. In a warming world, it’s not unusual for a place to break temperature records at the hottest time of the year. But this year, the world’s oceans have done it twice — four full months apart. In places like the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida, waters are running as hot as 33C. Experts are worried: corals have been bleaching for weeks, and the North Atlantic usually heats up until the end of August. It’s a series of marine heatwaves that are devastating ecosystems and unsettling fishing communities. Oceans around the world are hotter than ever, and coral reefs are bleaching more and more often. Like the heatwaves that hit our cities, marine heatwaves see temperatures stay high for weeks or months on end. These events have the potential to completely upend marine ecosystems. Every species has a preferred temperature, and when the heat is too much to bear, mobile species leave in search of cooler waters, while neighbours from hotter areas move in. This game of musical chairs disrupts food chains, often leaving fishers empty-handed. Some species, like corals, can’t move at all. Instead they bleach, turning white as they evacuate algae that they depend on to survive. Reefs have recovered from bleaching in the past, given enough time — but with many reefs still early in the recovery process from bleaching events just a few years ago, experts are concerned. When the current heatwaves will end is anyone’s guess. But with global warming fuelling warming trends in every major ocean things are likely to worsen until well after greenhouse gas emissions end. 360info looks at what the future has in store for the world’s oceans, as well as what the data tells us about the warming on and under the waves. Editors Note: In the story “Hot oceans” sent at: 17/08/2023 09:27. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on August 21, 2023

Increase in diabetes numbers hides a ray of hope - 360 Jonathan Shaw Published on October 31, 2022 Reports of a diabetes tsunami are hiding a key part of the picture. There’s a good reason the numbers are increasing. The rate of diabetes is increasing globally. We’re told it’s a tsunami. An epidemic. But that’s only half the story. The real picture has some rays of hope among the dark clouds. Diabetes is a long-term condition where the body fails to regulate the amount of sugar in the blood. In type 1 diabetes, sometimes known as juvenile diabetes, an organ called the pancreas doesn’t make the hormone, insulin, needed to process blood sugar. For the roughly 9 million people with type 1 diabetes, they need daily insulin injections to manage their disease. Type 2 diabetes, in contrast, arises slowly over time; often people don’t know they have it until they experience one of the many complications that result from the disease, such as a heart attack or a foot ulcer. In type 2 diabetes, the body develops a degree of resistance to insulin and the pancreas doesn’t make enough of it. Usually this comes about from an unhealthy diet and a lack of exercise. Over 500 million people worldwide have type 2 diabetes, and treatment often involves medications to manage their blood sugar plus a recommendation for improved diet and exercise. The prevalence of type 2 diabetes is increasing globally, up a staggering 49 percent since 1990. Roughly 5 in 100 people have it. It is statistics like these that cause headlines, alarm and calls for action. Certainly, more people with diabetes is cause for alarm. Roughly 1.5 million people die from diabetes or its complications each year. But there is an important difference between prevalence and incidence. Incidence is the rate at which new cases are developing. In a number of high-income countries, this number is stable, and in some cases, declining. In more good news, the death rate among people with both kinds of diabetes is also declining. And it is the decrease in the death rate that gives rise to the increase in prevalence. Prevalence is the percentage of the population who have a condition. If fewer people are dying, then the proportion of the total population living with diabetes goes up. This is contributing to the ‘epidemic’ of diabetes that we’re seeing. Over time, researchers expect the prevalence to continue rising as we see improved disease management and care contributing to a longer life-expectancy for diabetes patients. New technologies are coming online to help seamlessly control blood sugar levels in type 1 diabetes. For a number of years, continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps have been available to people with diabetes. More recently, sophisticated systems have been developed that link the glucose monitor directly to the insulin pump, so that the delivery of insulin can be continually adjusted according to the glucose level. New drugs are showing far better results than the previous classes of diabetes medications. GLP-1 receptor agonists and SGLT2 inhibitors not only manage blood sugar at least as well as previous drugs, but are more effective in protecting against some of the serious heart and kidney problems that often result from diabetes. And finally strategies that improve the level of care for people with diabetes have been developed. Multi-disciplinary teams with a range of different skills improve outcomes in diabetes. The scale of implementing this is enormous; it’s a social, policy, and economic challenge to reach the growing number of people needing care, particularly in countries whose health systems are not up to the task. But as evidenced by the decline in global diabetes deaths, efforts appear to be paying off, at least in the higher-income countries. Diabetes is a problem that is far from solved. Even with stable incidence, the overall numbers of people with diabetes will increase as the population increases. Diabetes is also a disease commonly found in older people, and with general increased life-expectancy, we will see increased numbers of people with diabetes. The lost lives will affect millions of loved ones, and the cost of care will be an enormous economic burden for us all. But with data showing that people are living longer, and evidence for new treatments and models of care, the evidence points to healthcare moving in the right direction. The gains have been small, thus far, but with more time, research funding, and healthcare support, signs are that the “epidemic” of people with diabetes can be helped to live longer, more fulfilling lives. The challenge is in translating all this knowledge into action. Jonathan Shaw is deputy director (clinical and population health) at Melbourne’s Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute. He has chaired a number of international research groups on diabetes and has received numerous awards and accolades for his contribution to healthcare. He has received honoraria from the following, for lectures and being a member of advisory boards: Astra Zeneca, Eli Lilly; Novo Nordisk; and Boehringer Ingelheim. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on October 31, 2022

India and Pakistan can future-proof their threatened rivers - 360 Medha Bisht Published on February 28, 2022 A shift in perspective can future-proof the Indus Water Treaty. If they had known in the fifties what climate change would do to rivers, would India and Pakistan have signed the Indus Water Treaty? It’s this question the Indian government has triggered in the wake of its 12th report on water resources. A re-negotiation of the Indus Water Treaty may be looming, following an August 2021 parliamentary report published by the Indian government. The Indian Commissioner for Indus Waters is planning to visit Pakistan in March to attend the annual meeting of the Permanent Indus Commission. The report, prepared by the 12th standing committee, worries that climate change is largely ignored by the Treaty, which was agreed based on the knowledge and ‘technological imperatives’ available at the time it was negotiated, the 1950s. These concerns, along with a recently-released report published by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), highlight a need for climate change adaptation. While the WMO report considers Integrated Water Resource Management a panacea for long-term wellbeing and security, it notes that many countries still remain off-track when it comes to the sustainable management of water resources. The Treaty allocates the western rivers (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) to Pakistan and the eastern rivers (Ravi, Beas, Sutlej) to India. But it has also granted India the right to certain non-consumptive uses of water on western rivers which includes generating hydroelectricity through run of the river dams, navigation and fishing, when certain conditions are met. The focus on the Indus Basin is heavily tilted towards western rivers, where building hydrological structures is a priority concern for India. India has dismissed Pakistani reservations over dam development as a tactic to delay construction. When India and Pakistan have bilateral disputes over water, they have tended to revolve around hydro-power projects and rationing water. As a result, vital concerns such as water quality or nutrition security remain largely obfuscated. The stakes are high: if the next major development in the Indus Water Treaty is mishandled, the worst-case scenario could see water conflicts between India and Pakistan become a pressing reality. However, if both countries can keep border claims aside and focus on joint development, a cooperative framework that adapts to contemporary issues can emerge. The challenge will be finding a way to facilitate this partnership. To achieve a stronger Indus Water Treaty, both states must shift from acting based on the rationality of water, and focus instead on its relationality. This means moving from water sharing (rationality) to benefit sharing (relationality). Rationality has a singular  focus on volumetric allocation of water, and relationality expands the definition of water from surface water (water quantity), to water quality, preservation of wetlands and biodiversity, soil erosion, conjunctive use of ground and surface water, and nature based solutions. Doing so may help spur a different approach. The rivers covered by the Treaty are diverse, flowing through different eco-climatic zones. The precipitation rates are different across the lower, middle and upper basins, some rivers are snow-fed, and the impacts of climate change are felt differently across the region. The climate-related threats have been especially emphasised by Pakistan, international institutions and environmentalists. Such threats, dubbed ‘minimum environmental flows’, could reduce the flow of a river by 30-40 percent in future. The Indus Basin has faced a range of ecological issues, including siltation, water logging, the shifting of water tables, water contamination, groundwater extraction, flood management problems, and uncertainty over precipitation patterns. These concerns are overlaid by changing demographics in India and Pakistan, increased urbanisation, and rising demands on the agricultural and industrial sectors. This has contributed to making both countries, particularly Pakistan, among the most water stressed in the world. Maintaining and ensuring environmental flows will be a tall challenge unless a compromise between water resource development and maintenance of the river is agreed. In light of these concerns, a three-pronged approach that reframes the Indus Water Treaty through a relational lens may be most effective. Leaders in India and Pakistan will need to shape a different approach, one that no longer sees water as an instrument for winning bargaining games. If they can’t, a trust deficit, water nationalism, and the securitisation of water could all contribute to escalating tensions, interstate and intrastate. Both countries could also benefit from focusing more on a sub-basin level instead of managing the area with a singular holistic approach. Interventions at the sub-basin level that can account for contextual factors, such as the socio-economic composition of the area and the existing hydrology, would make the action more effective. However, to truly bring the Indus Water Treaty into the present, its governance must be critically examined. The Treaty highlights many times the scope of cooperation and shared governance (in Articles 4, 5 and 7). Translating these words in the Treaty into more tangible action would greatly increase the bargaining range between India and Pakistan. For example, Article 4 emphasises the use of communication channels regarding areas of concern across eastern and western rivers. It also tasks signatories with avoiding measures which cause direct or indirect harm to the other. Article 5 also outlines key areas that can foster cooperation between India and Pakistan, such as collaborating to prevent river erosion, promoting river protection, and treatment of sewage and industrial water at the source point. Article 7 utlines the possibility of optimum river development through a consultative data-sharing process for issues relating to drainage works. A 2021 study found flood management, water quality, minimum environmental flows, exploitation of groundwater with the absence of a regulatory mechanism, were the primary concerns in Pakistan Punjab. Alternatively, priorities which emerged from India were regulating the excessive exploitation of groundwater, reflection on cropping patterns, shifting water tables and shifting river course and water quality. While these value preferences stemmed primarily from the Ravi sub-basin, they offer novel ways of approaching the Indus Water Treaty and Indus Basin in general.  This not only necessitates alternative ways of undertaking suitable interventions to manage the Indus Basin, but also demands that a relational approach to the rivers and the ecosystem of the Indus Basin become a priority concern for both India and Pakistan.  This will not only help us critically engage with what ‘water’ means, but also open up new pathways for benefit sharing mechanisms to future-proof the Indus Water Treaty. Medha Bisht  is senior assistant professor at the Department of  International Relations at South Asian University, New Delhi. The author declared no conflicts of interest in relation to this article. This article has been republished for World Rivers Day. It was first published on February 21, 2022. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on February 28, 2022

India and the US forge a new friendship - 360 Published on June 21, 2023 India PM Narendra Modi’s state visit to the US this week is being viewed with special significance in both Delhi and in Washington. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the US from June 21-24 shows that given the challenge of China in the Indo-Pacific, the US views India as a valuable geo-strategic partner. The visit could deepen India-US collaboration in the Indo-Pacific by outlining the emerging contours of a sturdier structure of cooperation. EMBED START Video {id: "editor_0"} While the US may still be unhappy with India’s relations with Russia, the visit will also show whether pragmatism continues to prevail over India’s refusal to condemn the war in Ukraine and side-stepping sanctions by continuing to import Russian oil. The Biden administration, however, seems to have bipartisan support for balancing the criticism of India’s record on human rights and the treatment of minorities with the  shared geo-strategic interests. This is reflected in inviting the Indian prime minister to address a joint session of the US Congress. However, it remains to be seen whether during this high profile visit, the US would manage to nudge India towards a clearer position on the Ukraine War and on taking on China.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on June 21, 2023

India and US at odds over Bangladesh poll - 360 Sreeradha Datta Published on January 4, 2024 Pragmatism and self-interest influence the Indian attitude while the US sees the Bangladesh elections through the lens of democracy and human rights Despite their burgeoning strategic partnership, India and the US have divergent positions on the impending general election in Bangladesh. Their virtually polar opposite positions have been a subject of discussion in the region and in Bangladesh itself. The Bangladesh government has been trying to portray the January 7 general elections as multi-party and inclusive. A closer look shows an entirely different picture. The electoral landscape of Bangladesh is defined by two large political parties – the Awami League (AL) and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The BNP,  along with 14 smaller parties, is boycotting the elections. These parties believe that under the AL government, seeking a fourth consecutive term in office, there is no possibility of free and fair polls. The near complete absence of the opposition from the elections severely undermines the credibility of the democratic process. The international community, however, is divided in its response to the one-sided election. Bangladesh’s two important neighbours, India and China, have put their faith in the AL government of Sheikh Hasina to hold peaceful, free and fair elections. The US has been the sole critical voice, questioning the repressive and anti-opposition measures of the government. It has repeatedly called for democratic norms and standards to be respected in Bangladesh. Russia and Iran have also lent support to Bangladesh’s electoral process. Russia has even accused the US and Europe of exporting ‘neocolonialism’ and ‘blatant interference’ in the internal affairs of Bangladesh. The EU had sent a mission to Bangladesh to assess the prospects of a fair and free election in July 2023. In December a delegation from the EU met with various political leaders including government officials but there has been no clarity whether the EU will be sending election observers to Bangladesh. While Bangladesh has invited foreign envoys as elections observers, just 25 foreigners have so far applied to the election commission to observe the  poll. Former Jamaican prime minister, Bruce Golding, will lead a 10-person Commonwealth team, including India, to observe the polls. The US is apprehensive that the polls will not be free or fair. It has threatened visa sanctions against those in Bangladesh who are found “complicit” in or “responsible” for “undermining the democratic election process”. The response of the Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been sharp: “So Bangladeshis wouldn’t be able to come to America if sanctions are imposed. So be it. …. We’ve enough employment opportunities in our country now.” It was generally accepted that the US and India shared similar views about South Asia. However, their position on the Bangladesh polls has disproved that assumption. Their perceptions about the electoral situation unfolding in Bangladesh are diametrically opposite. Given the strong Indo-Bangladesh ties as well as India’s traditional friendship with the AL leaders, Delhi’s support for the elections is not unexpected. Indian support for the Hasina government may be due to its rather difficult experience with the BNP government when it was in power from 2001-2006. Bangladesh at that time harboured several anti-Indian insurgents groups and there were terrorist attacks in India originating in Bangladesh. In the famous Chittagong Arms Haul case,  several truck loads of arms seized were apparently intended for insurgent groups operating in India’s northeastern states. With the memories of terrorist attacks continuing to haunt India, Delhi believes  the only hope for stability and secularism lies in the re-election of Sheikh Hasina. The turnaround in bilateral ties since 2010 has further strengthened India’s faith in the Hasina government. Delhi believes that the Hasina government understands India’s core security concerns better than the opposition BNP. The Hasina government has reciprocated this faith by forging partnerships and expanding border logistics infrastructure to boost bilateral trade. For India, any non-Awami League government will upset the positive bilateral dynamics that exist today. That is why pragmatism rather than upholding democratic norms seem to determine the Indian attitude to the impending elections in Bangladesh. India would, therefore, much rather support a dispensation that it believes will preserve political stability than democratic norms. As the US continues to examine Bangladesh through the lens of democracy, for the present, the Indian and the US perceptions on Bangladeshi politics are unlikely to converge. Sreeradha Datta is Professor, Jindal School of International Affairs, O.P Jindal Global University and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at ISAS-NUS, Singapore. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: Sreeradha Datta,

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on January 4, 2024

India can do more to protect workers in war zones - 360 Swetasree Ghosh Roy Published on April 29, 2024 Ironclad regulations for migrants in conflict zones are preferable to the current piecemeal approach. When 65 Indian construction workers landed in Israel on April 2 to start jobs once taken by Palestinians, they were flying into a firestorm. Eleven days after their arrival, Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles on Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities, as the six-month war in the Middle East threatened to spiral out of control. The Indian labourers were the first of a planned 1,500 due to land in Israel in April, as part of a deal struck last November between Jerusalem and New Delhi after Israel cancelled the work permits of about 90,000 Palestinian workers in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attacks and subsequent invasion of Gaza. Two days after the Iranian attack, India halted the dispatch of a second batch of workers. Yet the fate of 18,000 Indian caregivers and agricultural workers already working in Israel hangs in the balance with fears that the conflict might intensify. The government advisory to temporarily halt sending workers to Israel has been roundly criticised by policy experts for being poorly planned and bereft of any “moral justification”, especially when tensions in the Middle East were bound to escalate. The Israel-India labour agreement was signed in November, more than a month after the latest round of hostilities broke out. It’s not only the Middle East where Indian workers are in the firing line. Reports of at least 30 Indians joining the ranks of the Russian army as “helpers” and some subsequently being pushed as combatants in the war against Ukraine also exposes the lack of a coherent policy around Indian labour in conflict zones. At the heart of the current problem is India’s deepening unemployment problem. While 6.6 percent of Indians in urban areas are unemployed, 17 percent youth under age 29 are without jobs, reflecting the country’s so-called economic performance as one of jobless growth. There is no denying that the desire for decent pay is the prime reason behind international migration. People on the move tend to ignore risks associated with countries that are politically unstable. Indeed, migrants are willing to face hardships in the form of appalling living conditions, long working hours, and maltreatment as long as they get paid for their labour. An International Labour Organization study shows that Indian workers earn between one-and-a-half to three times more in places such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.   In 2018,the bulk of Indians living in the Gulf region or Southeast Asia were low and semi-skilled migrants. The India Employment Report 2024 made a stunning revelation, claiming that 83 percent of the total unemployed are young people, aged between 15 and 29. It took only 19 years for the crisis around youth employment and underemployment to deepen. Haryana and Punjab recorded the highest unemployment rates among large states. The government is fully aware of the high levels of outmigration which is as much as 28.9 percent. About 10.8 percent people migrated due to unemployment. Among India’s states hit most by outmigration is Uttar Pradesh, which ranked higher than Kerala. An important indicator of the level of migration from India is the volume of remittances. The World Bank reports that India is the highest recipient of remittances globally, with Mexico and China second and third. In 2022, remittances to India stood at USD$111.22 billion. Overseas migrant workers are as important to the country as the ones still  at home. Despite this, little or no attention is paid to the appalling conditions Indian workers live in abroad. A recent study revealed that the living and working condition of migrant workers in the UK care industry was alarming, with some working 72 hours a week, others underpaid, or not paid at all, others forced into usurious loans and suffering ill-treatment by employers. The preamble to the International Convention on the Protection of Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families ensures the protection of workers’ interests when employed in countries other than their own. The Indian workers’ Russia and Israel experiences reveal inadequate policy preparedness, especially in the context of conflict-hit areas of the world. More often than not, policy has been piecemeal and in the form of executive orders that are not legally ironclad. There is no all-encompassing long-term policy in India to protect her migrant workers in foreign lands. Even as the government rejects migration as a right, the only law which is applicable is the outdated Indian Emigration Act of 1983. In recent time, however, the Indian authorities have launched welfare protection schemes for overseas migrant workers. The government ensures an insurance cover of about $12,000 and registered recruitment agents are duty-bound to rescue workers in the event the latter are faced with any problem. Despite these provisions, there have been reports of gross violation of migrant rights and malpractices by recruiting agencies. A comprehensive policy on overseas labour migration must take into account the entire process – pre-departure, transit, destination and return. International best labour standards and practices must be considered and, wherever necessary and applicable, be instituted within a larger policy framework. The Indian stand on overseas migrant workers is quite fragmented and patchy. The government is spurred into action when workers are faced with violent conflict situations, exhibiting knee-jerk reactions, as in the case of the Indian workers who were dragged into the Ukraine-Russia battlefield or those who died in Mosul, Iraq, in 2018. Media reports on the missing and dead Indians in this conflict arena led the government to make a few statements but nothing more. If Bangladesh can safeguard the interests of its international migrant workers, we should be able to do the same or better. In line with the Dhaka Principles of Migration with Dignity, the Indian authorities could support workers by ensuring they deal with only agents registered under MEA portal, have properly-worded, secure contracts, and extricate workers in emergency situations. The Indian authorities should eschew their piecemeal stand that they often take when migrant workers find themselves in crisis situations abroad. Labour migration occurs in the most extreme cases – people go beyond national borders when faced with little or no means to earn a decent income at home. The government could do more than simply issuing routine advisories when conflicts break out in labour-seeking countries. Swetasree Ghosh Roy is a Professor of Political Science at Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, O.P. Jindal Global University. Her research interests include international and domestic conflict processes, international institutions, political economy, and comparative political systems. Her research interests are in areas of youth bulge and civil unrest. Ghosh Roy obtained a PhD in Politics and Government from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “Migrant workers” sent at: 25/04/2024 05:00. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on April 29, 2024

India, China relations threaten to freeze over - 360 Srikanth Kondapalli Published on May 24, 2022 The invasion of Ukraine has upended world geopolitics, disrupting the already fragile relationship between India and China. As Ukrainians resist the Russian invasion, a renewed cold war is heating up between Russia and the NATO partners. Western sanctions are intensifying on Russia and the situation threatens to engulf other regions, challenging other tense regional dynamics — including the fragile relationship between India and China. India and China’s relations have been plagued by a territorial dispute that flared into a border skirmish on June 15, 2020, resulting in 20 Indian soldiers being killed and an estimated 43 Chinese soldiers injured. This not only restricted the development of bilateral relations, but also sowed seeds of a new cold war between India and China. The Cold War between the US and Russia featured two countries vying for global and regional leadership, engaged in an ideological conflict of democracy versus socialism, and campaigns of military containment and proxy wars. The two countries never broke into person-to-person warfare, nor were there economic interactions, and the massive nuclear weapons threat lingering in the background remained just that. Just as a reminiscent dynamic emerges between Russia and NATO, so too is a cold war of sorts between India and China, a relationship that has been complicated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While India and China have exhibited neutrality during United Nations debates over the invasion, and both countries have good relations with Russia, there are qualitative differences in the type of relationship they have. India’s relations with Russia, specifically its importation of arms, serves mainly to address the challenge from China. Meanwhile, China’s support of Russia shows a united front against NATO and the United States’ hegemony and power politics. On the other hand, India had intensified the 2+2 dialogue mechanism — an approach that pairs India’s foreign and defence ministers with their overseas counterparts — not only with the US, but with other Quad partners. Notably, some Chinese commentators have castigated Quad as an “Asian NATO” in the making. Some of the features of the Cold War US-Soviet hostility are now seen in the Ukrainian conflict, and are also reflected in the differences between India and China. For instance, the 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress in 2017 wished for China to “occupy the centre stage” in global and regional orders, suggesting a potential tussle among major powers was on the cards, including in India-China relations. Chinese President Xi Jinping, addressing the May 2014 Conference on Interaction on Confidence Building Measures at Shanghai, said Asian countries should look after their own security (i.e. resisting any help from the US), a posture that was seen as carving out a leadership position in Asia for China. Both of these are not acceptable to India (or for that matter to Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Turkey or Kazakhstan). A leadership tussle in Asia could trigger a new cold war-type conflict in Asia in the near future. India has instead advocated for multipolarity in Asia in the face of China’s coercive diplomacy over Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, Philippines, India and others. It continues to resist China calling the shots in Asia. Much like the Cold War, containment is all the rage again. Since 2013, through its Belt and Road Initiative, China began constructing infrastructure projects in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and is gradually bringing Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar into its vortex. China’s arms transfers, aid, interference in the internal affairs of these Southern Asian countries has been stepped up to counter India. While China’s efforts may be to acquire allies and friends in different parts of the world as a part of its global hegemonic drive, it could lead to potential full-fledged containment of India. Additionally, the nuclear threat is back. China’s violation of many written agreements, their mobilisation of forces and military casualties have led to both sides mobilising an estimated 200,000 troops across the Line of Actual Control. In addition to the ground forces, air forces have also been on high alert for the past two years. However, unlike in the Cold War between the US and the then Soviet Union, India and China currently have not reported any strategic forces mobilisation. This could be partly due to the fact that both abide by ‘no first use’ nuclear policy. While both tested different types of missile systems, no public display of nuclear deterrence is visible so far unlike between the US and the then Soviet Union. Hence the world has so far avoided another ‘Bay of Pigs’ incident in India-China (although, since 2009, India has been prepared for a ”’two-front war’ under nuclear conditions”). But unlike the Cold War, which saw the US and Russia have no dialogue outside of ‘mutually assured destruction’ posturing and a few secret negotiations, leaders in India and China are amenable to sharing global power in a ‘multipolarity’ phenomenon. India and China interact in multilateral institutions like BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), or at Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit meetings. However, the observable ‘warmth’ generated at Wuhan and Chennai “informal summits” between the Indian and Chinese leaders in 2018 and 2019 has disappeared of late. Trade between the two countries has not only continued, but flourished. Despite the border tensions, the 2021 bilateral trade figures crossed a record US$125 billion, partly due to the items related to the pandemic, such as oxygen concentrators. But, even in the well-performing sector of trade, the tensions are present: India does not allow free trade with China, and will not join China’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or other trade arrangements. This boils down to the lack of market economy status in China, and the restrictions they have imposed on Indian pharmaceutical and IT software products. While both India and China are part of globalisation and cooperate in the World Trade Organisation on protecting developing countries’ interests, at the bilateral level a subtle cold war is emerging. While the Cold War has not been completely copied into the tensions between India and China, the events in Ukraine have unleashed the potential for some type of non-military escalation. Srikanth Kondapalli is Professor in Chinese Studies and Dean of School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Prof Kondapalli declared no conflicts of interest in relation to this article. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 24, 2022

India has ignored infertility for too long - 360 Maya Unnithan Published on November 6, 2023 India has a history of coercive family planning which ignored infertility. A shift in focus will help women’s health. For a long time after the birth of her twin girls, Vimlesh was regarded as banjhdi or infertile. She lived in a state of anxiety, constantly reminded by her in-laws about her inability to produce another child, especially a son. Vimlesh sought healers all around the district and consulted gynaecologists in charitable clinics. She blamed her own body for its kamzori or ‘weakness’. She believed the wandering spirit of her deceased uncle-in-law was responsible for her inability to give birth to more children. When she finally became pregnant with her son after a nine-year gap, she attributed this success to the supportive intervention of the healers rather than the gynaecologists. When India launched its first national family planning programme in 1952, the best reproductive outcomes for women and concerns about policies on families and reproductive health were paramount. Seventy-one years later, despite a rights-based approach to population planning, those questions continue to haunt the nation. Infertility remains ignored in Indian population policy and its absence, understood as a technique of reproductive governance, offers insights on potential solutions. Infertility is the inability to conceive after 12 months of unprotected intercourse (primary infertility) or the inability to give birth to more than one child (secondary infertility). India has a large population but population growth is below replacement level. Current estimates of the Total Fertility Rate or TFR is at 2.1 in rural areas and 1.6 in urban areas. From 2000, the National Population Policy regulated fertility through contraceptives as reproductive ‘choice’. This was done by offering women a range of reversible contraceptive options such as the pill, IUDs and condoms. Sterilisation was also an option. But this only catered to childbearing women, ignoring the prevalence of widespread infertility and the related reproductive rights of women and couples. The solution to the dilemma of coercion and freedom in reproductive governance for countries with high populations such as India, paradoxically, lies in the state’s support for the infertile. High levels of infertility will generate low desire for contraception. Fertility and infertility are social conditions which are intricately connected. Where fertility is highly valued, infertility will conversely be devalued. Though the physiological aspects of infertility are important, it is the cultural and social meaning attributed to the condition that has far-reaching consequences for women’s health and well-being. Infertility affects both women and men globally but has a much more stigmatising effect on women. In patriarchal societies such as Rajasthan, infertility cannot be separated from issues of inequality and power in how women’s husbands, communities and the state make decisions about women’s reproductive bodies. Women who experience infertility in India are regarded as inauspicious, leading to their marginalisation. They may be avoided by other pregnant women, treated with less value in the household, and struggle with access to basic resources. As a result, even women who bear children are afraid of becoming infertile. This has major implications for family planning policies. It suggests health-seeking behaviour is driven more by the quest to be fertile and auspicious rather than in striving to be free from infection. This challenges epidemiologically based notions of reproductive health. Equating fertility with auspiciousness decentres biologically-based ideas of reproductive health as women seek out healers who provide ritual means to navigate the stigma of infertility, helping infertile women reduce the social and economic vulnerabilities of their condition. The focus on reproductive health as narrowly defined in an epidemiological sense fails to capture the social, affective and economic senses in which reproductive well-being is defined and experienced in the region. A recent World Health Organization report revealed  that 1 in 6 people in the world experience infertility issues. Global birth rates are falling and the population is ageing, putting an extra burden on development.  Infertility only exacerbates this issue. The question facing Indian policy makers, following its history of coercive family planning policies is how to exercise fertility control in a participatory, consensual, and rights-based manner. The incidence of secondary sterility, which is primarily a result of reproductive tract infections, is crucial. Access to adequate and appropriate healthcare is critical in alleviating the problem. The fear of infertility, the social consequences of marginalisation for women who are unable to conceive, becomes a social fact when the appropriate quality of medical attention is unavailable. Health services mainly focused on fertility control and contraceptives such as intrauterine devices only serve to exacerbate infections of the reproductive tract such as pelvic inflammatory disease. Ironically, the medical treatment for secondary sterility, though effective, is not widely accessible. India’s National Population Policy could be reoriented to focus on the lack of attention to infertility in its public health services. Doing this would address balancing fertility control with reproductive autonomy. Without bringing infertility into its purview, Indian women’s reproductive health remains at risk. Qualitative data based on narratives and accounts of lived experience on infertility have increasingly shown a spotlight on this looming crisis of women’s reproductive health as linked to sterility. Yet, and as the WHO points out in its report, there has been no collection of quantitative data of any significance in this region of the world. Without the evidence base of combined qualitative and quantitative studies, the reproductive health rights of women are being severely compromised. Poorer women and men are especially being denied their rights to become parents and to reproduce safely and successfully, as expensive fertility treatments remain out of their reach. Maya Unnithan is Professor of Social and Medical Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Cultures of Reproduction, Technologies and Health (CORTH; www.corth.ac.uk) at the University of Sussex. Her book Fertility, Health and Reproductive Politics: Re-imagining Rights in India (2019) is based on ethnographic work in India since 1998. Maya works with health and legal-aid NGOs as well as policy makers to reduce reproductive health inequalities globally. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on November 6, 2023

'India out' as China moves in on Maldives - 360 Bharat Bhushan Published on March 18, 2024 Things are likely to get much worse for India in the Maldives as Male and Beijing expand and deepen their strategic partnership. India has started pulling out its military personnel from the Maldives. The move comes amid an intense diplomatic row, in response to Maldives president Mohammed Muizzu asking India to withdraw its symbolic military presence fully from the archipelago by May 10. Muizzu declared on March 5: “There will be no Indian troops in the country come May 10. Not in uniform and not in civilian clothing. The Indian military will not be residing in this country in any form of clothing.” This “military presence” consists of around 80 Indian troops, along with Indian Air force staff to operate Dornier 228 maritime patrol aircraft and two India-made Dhruv helicopters used for medical emergencies. The Maldives has also decided to discontinue a pact under which India conducted hydrographic surveys in its territorial waters. It has decided to conduct them on its own. While claiming that he is committed to protecting the sovereignty of the Maldives, Muizzu has also signed an agreement for “free military aid” with China. Going beyond normal investment and capital agreements, the defence agreement is expected to provide free non-lethal military equipment and training for the Maldivian security forces. As China gains ground in the Maldives, the bilateral ties between New Delhi and Male have deteriorated fast. On his return from China recently, Muizzu indirectly referred to India as a “bully” and said that the Indian Ocean “does not belong to one particular country”, and that the Maldives “is not in anyone’s backyard”. Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar responded to the “bully” remark saying, “big bullies don’t provide USD$4.5 billion aid”. He added: “Big bullies don’t supply vaccines to other countries when COVID is on or make exceptions to their own rules to respond to food demands or fuel demands or fertilizer demands because some war in some other part of the world has complicated their lives.” These acerbic exchanges point to the geostrategic competition in the Indian Ocean between India and China, in which India finds itself at the losing end because of the change of government in Male. The Indian Ocean contains some of the most important chokepoints for maritime trade: the Strait of Hormuz, Bal-el-Mandeb, Straits of Malacca and the Mozambique Channel. It is a critical route for energy supplies for China and India both as well as for their engagement with Africa, West Asia and the island nations and littoral states across the Indian Ocean. China seeks to present itself as a credible and emerging security and economic partner for the Indian Ocean nations. Many island and littoral nations in India’s backyard tend to play off China against Indian influence to gain foreign policy manoeuvrability. Historically, India has had closer historical ties with the Maldives than China. However, which country has more influence in the Maldives at any time is determined by the domestic political equations in the strategically located archipelagic nation. The pro-democracy forces in the Maldives normally tend to align with India. However, they are not always ascendant and there is a sizeable presence of pro-China political elements in the Maldives. After the election of Muizzu and his Progressive Party of Maldives in September 2023, the geopolitical balance has swung in favour of China. Previous president, Ibrahim Solih of the Maldivian Democratic Party,  followed an “India first” policy, which was countered by the “India out” slogan by those who see Indian policy as heavy handed. For the first four decades since its independence in 1965, the Maldives was firmly under Indian influence. India supported strongman Maumoon Abdul Gayoom as president from 1978 to 2008. Indeed, India helped Gayoom suppress a coup engineered with the help of mercenaries by his opponents in 1978 by sending in its armed forces. India has also been at hand for immediate as well as long-term assistance to the Maldives ranging from trade cooperation, natural disaster relief and supply of fresh water when the island nation’s desalination plants stopped functioning and COVID-19 vaccine assistance.In 2013, just when China was laying the groundwork for its Belt and Road Initiative , a pro-China president, Abdulla Yameen was elected to power. He invited Chinese assistance for infrastructure projects in the Maldives – a new runway for the main international airport, a bridge between capital Male and the island of Hulhumale – and even signed a free trade agreement with China. The Maldives had accumulated nearly USD$ 1.5 billion of Chinese debt by 2018, a large sum considering that its GDP is less than USD$ 9 billion. In  power, Yameen’s authoritarian tendencies’ were on full display. Human Rights Watch accused him of “eroding fundamental human rights in the island country, including freedom of association, expression, peaceful assembly, and political participation” and of blocking the “opposition parties from contesting elections, the arrest of Supreme Court justices, and the crackdown on the media.” Democracy was restored with the election of Solih in 2018. India was on top again. Solih pulled out of the FTA with China with India providing USD$1.4 billion for loan paybacks and other development assistance. And now the tables have once again turned again in favour of China. Besides the Maldives, the strategic competition between India and China in the Indian Ocean is also playing out in Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Seychelles and Madagascar. Deepening US-China rivalry – especially the Chinese forays into the western reaches of the Indo-Pacific and opening up of a military base at Djibouti – has pushed Washington to recognise the geostrategic importance of the Maldives. It would be interesting to see how India-China and US-China geostrategic competition unfolds. What is clear, however, is that things are likely to get much worse for India in the Maldives as Male and Beijing expand and deepen their strategic partnership. Who gets to control the Indian Ocean’s ‘tollgate’? China and India’s intense contest for influence

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on March 18, 2024

India: Substandard medicines threaten the goal of zero malaria - 360 Taruna Arora, Amrita Chaudhary Published on July 27, 2022 Fraudulent and substandard antimalarials drive up case numbers, suffering and death. They are the main obstacle as India pursues malaria eradication by 2030. India has an ambitious goal: to eradicate malaria by 2030. But first it must eradicate low-quality antimalarials. These substandard and counterfeit medicines create antimalarial resistance, increasing case numbers and causing more illness and death. Malaria killed 627,000 people globally in 2020, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). India’s ‘malaria map’ has contracted in recent years as some high-transmission areas have become low-transmission areas, but the country still bears the brunt of Southeast Asia’s malaria burden, with 82.5 percent of the region’s 5 million annual cases. Malarial parasites are developing resistance to the antimalarial agent artemisinin and mosquitoes (which carry the parasites) are developing resistance to insecticides, creating challenges for malaria control and elimination. There is no global system for collecting essential data, such as region- specific information on the clinical and parasitic response to particular antimalarials, and the migration and transmission rate of malarial parasites, which makes it difficult to identify hot spots and eradicate low-quality antimalarials. When 119 random samples of chloroquine-based antimalarials from pharmacies in the Indian cities of Delhi and Chennai were screened, 7 per cent were found to be substandard. In India, regulatory issues such as inadequate testing facilities and lack of uniform enforcement contribute to the problem of substandard medicines. The gold-standard methods for detecting substandard medicines are high-performance liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry, but these are costly and require expertise and special maintenance. Currently, seven central-government laboratories and 29 state- or territory-government laboratories in India use the most advanced techniques for monitoring and quality control of drugs and biologicals. The US medicines authority has devised a counterfeit-detection device equipped with LEDs that detect the reflected light from labels without destroying the blister pack containing the medicines. In India, this counterfeit-detection device could enhance awareness and quick detection of substandard antimalarials in remote areas and villages where sophisticated analytical techniques are not available. Smartphone apps could also be used as accessible anti-counterfeit tools. A shortage of expert entomologists and skilled health workers in India has led to inadequate surveillance of the mosquitoes that carry malaria parasites and incomplete case reporting. Rapid detection tests could make malaria cases easier to track. Many rapid tests use antibody-based detection and cannot differentiate between the different species of malarial parasite. Antigen-based kits provide a more sensitive and specific diagnosis. Although microscopy-based detection is the ideal, rapid immunochromatographic antigen-based detection has the advantages of easy access, fast detection, reduced pathological variations and preventive early diagnosis. There is high demand for tests that detect the protein specific to the Plasmodium falciparum parasite, which is responsible for the great majority of malaria cases in India. But a recent study suggests some rapid tests are returning false negatives, indicating a need for periodic surveillance to track cases more reliably. If pharmaceutical manufacturers that make good-quality generic (low-cost) antimalarials lose income to substandard or fraudulent competitors, they may be discouraged from making these medicines. As a result, countries with endemic malaria, such as India, may have reduced access to genuine antimalarials. Global documentation, regulation and upgrading of guidelines for detecting substandard antimalarials, and better rapid detection tests to improve case reporting, are all essential as India strives for zero malaria by the end of the decade. Dr Amrita Chaudhary is Scientist-II in the Division of Reproductive Biology, Maternal & Child Health, Indian Council of Medical Research, Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India in New Delhi. The authors have declared no conflict of interest in relation to this article. Image published under Creative Commons. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on July 27, 2022

India: tapping into the higher-education boom - 360 Virander S. Chauhan Published on April 11, 2022 Demand for higher education is hitting new heights in India, but the biggest beneficiaries seem to be foreign universities. The number of Indian students seeking higher education abroad may increase to over 1.5 million by 2024, which is more than double the current number of students. The cost of their education will likely balloon from about US$26 billion to US$75 billion per year at the same time. Education is big business. But unless it invests, India will miss out on the opportunity. In recent times, universities in developed countries found themselves charged with many new responsibilities. In addition to teaching and research, they were expected to provide skilled human resources for industrial growth, compete with each other for international rankings, and provide ideas and solutions for solving social problems. All this, with less public funding. It is not surprising, therefore, that what started as a social-service enterprise has increasingly become a business. The high cost of education is borne by foreign students. Attracted by the promise of higher-salaried job opportunities, better living standards and exposure to well-organised, high-quality education, more and more students and their parents make the considerable financial investment an offshore education requires. Students from developing, resource-poor countries such as India pay as much as triple the local fee for their study. Their fees subsidise the education of well-endowed students and universities in the developed world. Yet the number of Indian students and their parents who are willing to pay an astronomically high cost for higher education has risen continuously over the years. Sensing a business opportunity, education brokers have sprung up to facilitate the process of application and placement of Indian students in foreign universities. There is good business all around. Meanwhile, the developed countries grab the most talented, well-trained youth and benefit from their intellect, research and achievement — without having spent anything on their previous schooling. Many of these students do not come back to India. Given the heavy financial investment made by many students to study abroad, the higher-salaried jobs in developed economies — particularly in industries such as manufacturing and management — can help recover the money they have spent. This suggests that if appropriate job opportunities are created, many more Indian students may return to work domestically. Countries such as India would benefit from large investment in its higher-education system, filling the gap between supply and demand of quality higher education as well as creating appropriate job opportunities for its talented and trained labour force. Better future prospects and comfortable living standards will likely attract a larger pool of students to stay and work in India and serve society. In some ways, the boom is already happening — it just needs more support. At the time of independence from the British in 1947, India had about 20 universities and 200 colleges, with a total enrolment of only 120,000 students. Today, India boasts the second-largest higher-education system in the world, with an enrolment of nearly 40 million students. With policymakers aiming to double the number of schoolchildren moving into higher education, this number could grow to more than 75 million students in the next few years. The opportunity for higher-education growth and development is staring India in the face. The only question is whether the nation will seize it. is former chairman of the University Grants Commission of India and distinguished visiting professor, Institution of Eminence, University of Delhi. He declares no conflict of interest. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on April 11, 2022

India-wide subscription to research journals paves path for Global South - 360 Nishant Chakravorty Published on December 26, 2022 Imagine you start reading an important news article on a website and a message flashes on your screen asking for a hefty fee to read the entire article … it would be irritating, to say the least. This is the reality for most scientists. They are locked out of scholarly journals that carry the information they need to progress their research unless they pay a fee to the publisher. And the charges have risen to levels several hundred times higher than inflation. As a University of Missouri librarian calculated in 2020, compared with 1983, charges are 113.78 times higher than inflation for famous scientific journals such as Nature, 189.18 times for Science and 244.49 times for the New England Journal of Medicine. Put another way, NEJM price rises have outpaced inflation by 24,339 percent. Indian researchers and research institutions collectively spend around 15 billion rupees (USD$200 million) on journal subscriptions for scholarly literature every year — a huge cost for a growing economy and a problem not unique to India but similar for all countries of the Global South. Scientific publications are a multi-billion dollar industry dominated by a few big players. Academics are often government funded, do research often funded by taxpayers and then use taxpayer dollars to read about the research in privately owned journals. It’s a massive transfer of wealth from the taypayer to private industry and there have been recent calls to overhaul the system. But to expect publishers to make the literature free for all is a utopian dream. Therefore, the scientific community has been trying to aim for more realistic goals and find mechanisms to make science more accessible to all. India’s “One Nation One Subscription” (ONOS) policy has garnered plenty of attention. India’s ONOS model, first called for in 2017 by the Indian Academy of Science and drafted into government policy three years later, calls for a centrally negotiated subscription deal with publishers, making scholarly articles free to read for all researchers, eliminating the need for individual and institutional subscriptions. The collective bargaining power of the entire nation is expected to allow greater value for money. India’s ONOS policy is intended to allow better access to scientific literature, increased scientific literacy and better use of research grant money. If the policy is successful, it will serve as a role model for other parts of the world and likely be replicated across the Global South. India began the first phase of implementation of ONOS in November 2022, with 70 publishers’ resources considered for access from April 2023. Negotiations for a central subscription for these publishers should commence soon. But the path to implementation of One Nation One Subscription will inevitably have challenges. Its success depends on well-negotiated deals between government and publishing houses. The government would need a team of seasoned negotiators to ensure a good outcome. Another challenge is identifying which resources Indian researchers will need. A well-designed, methodical approach is crucial for success. This is where existing subscriptions lists from institutions and libraries will help. The scattered nature of those lists means a single access portal combined with a monitoring and audit system will be key to pinpointing which journals are most desirable. A country of India’s breadth has many institutions of different sizes and access to funds. The ONOS policy is expected to reduce the burden on small institutions and bring systemic change in access to scholarly articles. The hope is it will create a strong research ecosystem that promotes research for its own sake, as well as more applied and commercial research. Many institutions worldwide have been pushing towards a “transformative agreements”, as the publishers call them, gradually moving from individual subscriptions to nation-wide free-to-read arrangements. These agreements enable all of society to have free access to scientific literature. The catch is such agreements put in place an up-front fee to scientists who want to publish their research findings. It shifts the burden of fees from readers to authors, which in turn is passed on to funding bodies or the taxpayer. The fee to publish for the most reputed journals are often exorbitant and, despite occasional fee waivers, researchers from the Global South many times cannot afford the “pay-to-publish” models. The ONOS policy serves as a formidable alternative to transformative agreements for the Global South. This model will enable countries to stand on stronger negotiating positions through purchase of greater bulk of content and provide people with full access to a large number of journal titles. Although it is not yet clear whether scientists will need to pay up-front fees to publish, a mature ONOS policy is also expected to support access to journals in the Global South, especially for young researchers, by having separate provision for funding free-to-read publications or a one-time licensing agreement to journals with up-front publishing fees. Experts on ONOS policy have recommended a similar plan to promote and support accessibility for India. Some see the ONOS model as a “win-win” for nations and publishers, where all researchers would have full access to scholarly writing and publishers could continue to make a profit. Another winner would be science. Since researchers will not be required to spend their research funds on publication charges, they will be able to use their grants on experimental expenditures and thus generate better findings. More readers would mean more scientific exposure and improved research outcomes and development in the long term. The Global South is under pressure to implement transformative agreements by institutions and consortiums of the Global North presently. A successful ONOS model might be an appropriate alternative to this approach. India’s move to the ONOS policy thus serves as an important transition that the Global South is looking towards. Nishant Chakravorty is associate professor, School of Medical Science and Technology, IIT Kharagpur, India and National Core Committee Member, Indian National Young Academy of Sciences (INYAS), New Delhi. He declares no conflict of interest. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on December 26, 2022

Indian court fighting against a tide of death sentences - 360 Anup Surendranath Published on September 5, 2022 India’s trial courts are issuing more death sentences as capital punishment becomes an option for more crimes. But their highest court is pushing back. India’s capital punishment regime is in crisis, an issue acknowledged by the country’s Supreme Court. But the incremental changes it is making sit at odds with the reality of death penalty sentencing in the country’s trial courts, and the attitudes of the government. Upon the return of physical hearings in August 2021 (following a pause due to the pandemic), the Supreme Court published a list of 40 appeals from death row prisoners to be heard as a matter of priority. The judges hearing the matters have expressed serious reservations about the sentencing exercises of the lower courts that doled out the initial death sentences. At the heart of the concerns is the deviation from the process laid down in previous judgments. In May 1980, India’s five-judge bench of the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of capital punishment but stressed there were conditions on when it should be deployed: only after judges took into account aggravating and mitigatng factors about the crime and the accused. In the four decades since, it appears this judicial framework has collapsed. A big part of that collapse has been the sole focus on crime-related aggravating factors by sentencing judges. In sentencing people to death, insufficient attention has been paid to ensuring that mitigating factors about the accused are presented before the court. EMBED START Image {id: "editor_5"} EMBED END Image {id: "editor_5"} This failure has deep connections to the inequality of the death penalty. Nearly 76 percent of India’s 385 death row prisoners (as it was in 2014) are poor and receive limited access to legal representation. Establishing mitigating factors takes time and resources and requires expertise in different fields like mental health, social work and anthropology. Because India’s death row prisoners most often come from the poorest and most marginalised sections of the community, it is rare that mitigatory information about them ever comes before a sentencing judge. And courts have not safeguarded fairness in the sentencing process by insisting such material be presented in court. The Supreme Court is trying to address this deep structural problem. Led by the incoming Chief Justice of India UU Lalit, the bench has been at the forefront of this reform effort. The bench, composed of Justices Lalit and Ravindra Bhat with an often-changing third judge, has insisted that mitigation material be collected and presented before them through prison reports, psychological reports, and mitigation investigator reports. But they are intervening at the last stage. Before cases reach them, the defendant has gone through the trial court and High Court — both of which have approved of a death sentence. But what most concerns the Supreme Court is the scant mitigatory material that has been gathered and put before them until their insistence. In their reform effort, the Supreme Court has heard arguments in a case that will help lay down guidelines on how information regarding mitigating factors are collected and presented at the trial and appellate stages. Previously, inconsistency has plagued judgements in the Supreme Court. The current effort aims to clarify and lay down a clear law on the essential requirements of a fair death penalty sentencing hearing. Over the last decade, the Supreme Court has set aside the death sentence in 80 percent of the 136 cases (either by acquittal or commutation) it has been called upon to adjudicate. However, their scepticism about the use of the death penalty has not percolated to India’s trial courts. There continues to be an exaggerated and rising use of capital punishment, with 729 people being sentenced to death between 2016 and 2021. And while less than five percent of death sentences issued in the trial courts are upheld by the end of the appeals process, hundreds are being left on death row unnecessarily for long periods. Part of what seems to be driving the expanded use of the death sentences in lower courts is the changing nature of offences that attract the punishment. The proportion of death sentences being imposed by trial courts in cases involving sexual offences (as compared to intentional murder) has been rising, reflecting a changing attitude from the executive and legislature. The 2012 Delhi gang rape case appears to have been a turning point: while the Justice Verma Committee formed in the aftermath to look at rape law reform did not recommend implementing the death penalty for the crime, India’s penal code has since been amended to allow the death penalty for two sexual offences (rape resulting in a permanent vegetative state, and the repeat offence of rape). And, following the protests that followed a January 2018 gangrape of a child, the penal code was amended to allow the death penalty in rape cases where the victim is a female below 12-years-old. More and more, the remit of the death penalty has expanded. In 2019, India’s child protection laws were altered to introduce the death penalty for “aggravated penetrative sexual assault”. At the state level, there have been legislative attempts in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh to punish non-homicide rape against adult women with death. India is at the stage where capital punishment is a possibility in cases involving a range of sexual offences and trial courts are following suit by imposing more death sentences, and doing so more quickly. This trend has gathered steam over the last decade, despite a broad spectrum of women’s rights groups telling the Justice Verma Committee in 2012 that the death penalty cannot be the answer to sexual violence. However, for governments feeling pressure to deliver a strong responses to sexual violence, the death penalty is a convenient tool — even if it is not a meaningful solution. The Supreme Court has been forced to confront the reality of India’s criminal system: it is one thing to provide for it in the law and quite another to have a legal system that can administer it with a modicum of fairness. It has long been evident that dispensation of the death penalty is subjective, arbitrary and judge-specific in India. As the burden of the death penalty rises in India’s legal system on the back of its expansion, the Supreme Court is now engaged in an attempt to reform sentencing hearings in capital cases. However, the Supreme Court’s track record on the death penalty is rather poor. The court’s own judgments and the Law Commission of India have acknowledged that their death penalty jurisprudence is in disarray. It seems tempting for the Supreme Court to reform the death penalty rather than get into a judicial conversation on abolition. Judges often feel that the unfairness and injustices of death penalty administration can be corrected and reformed. Justice Harry Blackmun started a as a judge of the US Supreme Court in June 1970 as someone who believed in the death penalty and made repeated attempts to reform different aspects of its administration from the bench. 24 years later, as he neared the end of his time on the court, he recognised the futility of it and declared that he would “no longer tinker with the machinery of death”. For now, India’s Supreme Court seems content with tinkering. is a Professor of Law and Executive Director of Project 39A at National Law University, Delhi. Project 39A regularly provides legal representation to death row prisoners before the Supreme Court of India and High Courts. Project 39A regularly provides pro bono legal representation to death row prisoners before the Supreme Court of India and High Courts. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on September 5, 2022

Indian democracy's tryst with trust - 360 Ajay Gudavarthy Published on April 22, 2024 Elections in India are a paradoxical see-saw between trust and legitimacy crisis. Indian democracy is at a crossroads. People are more invested in elections even as they become more sceptical about politicians and public representatives. Increasingly, people seem to be voting more to remove a particular party from power rather than proactively choosing an alternative. Voters feel that keeping a party in power for long does not yield results. Change is their way of creating pressure on elected governments to deliver. There is also, however, a curious pro-incumbency trend in some Indian states. While there is an overall disenchantment with democratic outcomes, there still exists greater investment in the electoral processes. India is thus among the few countries in the world witnessing a constant rise in voter turnout. In 2023, there was a six-fold jump in voter turnout compared to the first general election of 1951. On an average, the voter turn-out is 67 percent in the general election and close to 70 percent in many of the recent state assembly elections. In spite of male electors being greater in number, it is the women voters who are turning out to vote in larger numbers. Women voters have not only managed to have more women-oriented welfare policies implemented — such as free passes for women in public buses — but even managed to create positive pressure to implement a long standing demand for the implementation of 33 percent reservation for women in Parliament. Does all of this mean there is greater voter trust in the Indian state and its governance? It does not seem so. There is a steep rise in what is often referred to as anti-incumbency by psephologists, where political parties are often voted out to bring in a new party. At the heart of this crisis of trust in democratic processes in India seems to be the “neoliberal consensus”.  Such a consensus disallows parties to formulate radically different policies. Most political parties today promise transactional welfarism and electoral promises which are increasingly similar. In order to overcome this kind of “trust deficit” and a sense of crisis of legitimacy, political parties develop innovative strategies to circumvent voter anger, without changing the direction of their policy outcomes. The BJP, for example, has constantly changed its candidates and state level leadership. In the recently concluded assembly elections, the BJP changed the chief ministerial candidates in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Even in course of the ongoing run up to the general elections, the BJP has dropped many sitting MPs. It was widely believed that Congress in Rajasthan and BRS in Telangana would have fared much better had they not used again the same set of legislators. To overcome voter fatigue with the same old political faces, the BJP has also introduced a presidential form of election campaign. It contests elections centred on the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and urges voters even in state elections to vote for Modi and not for the local candidates. The argument is that it is Modi who will finally deliver on the election promises. The current campaign for general elections is not only spearheaded by Modi but centres around the slogan of “Modi’s Guarantee”. In an era of faceless globalisation, complex tiers of governance and increasing informalisation of the economy, having a face and a name to rally around is meant to encourage the voters to repose greater trust in the leader and his governance. This shift to a “direct democracy” form of electioneering underlines the trust deficit in governance, which is compensated by increased electoral participation. It is a paradoxical see-saw between trust and legitimacy crisis. Modi, therefore, is accountable directly to the electorate. Constitutional norms, the separation of powers and Rule of Law become dispensable. The discourse of efficiency has made the narrative of aspirational mobility and faster growth look more palpable and tangible. Yet again, greater aspirational mobilisation — Atma Nirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) — reinforces greater trust in and consent for a more centralised and authoritarian form of governance. This could be called libertarian paternalism — a model of governance in which trust in institutions is actively undermined as against the trust in a leader. Greater electoral participation, therefore, is a trust and investment in the electoral process without respect for democratic norms that can turn into a majoritarian ethic. In this model, democracy and authoritarianism become somewhat strange bedfellows. The debate on Indian democracy today is thus eerily polarised. The urban, educated sections of progressive social activists, academics, journalists and the opposition parties are worried about the growing crisis of democracy. They see the crisis reflected in the way institutions are weakened and norms are flouted, state governments are destabilised through defections and horse trading, the role of money power in politics goes up building huge entry barriers and hero-worship of the leader makes public discourse toxic. They see these as signs of a growing democracy deficit. However, most of these issues do not seem to concern the voters when they go out to cast their vote. For the voters, democracy seems to be about policy outcomes, welfare benefits and greater economic opportunities. Neoliberal development creates a model of jobless growth and economic inequalities. This is what the voter responds to but finds that there are no alternatives. All parties speak the same language. How then does the voter influence the parties to breach the neoliberal wall? It is this lingering question in a voter’s mind that will probably decide the changing contours of her trust in Indian democracy. Ajay Gudavarthy is Associate Professor at Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. This article has been republished as part of a series on the 2024 Indian elections. It was originally published on April 17. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on April 22, 2024

India's cities mission a smart earner for private firms - 360 Uttara Purandare Published on August 18, 2023 India’s rapid development needs help, but are the consultants value for money or just cashing in on another big project? It is monsoon season in India. This means heavy rains and as the climate crisis accelerates it can also mean disasters like landslides and floods. It’s been no different in 2023. Indian cities, including the capital New Delhi, the financial centre Mumbai, and the tech centre Bangalore, among others, have been inundated and paralysed by the weather. Indian cities already face significant problems, from a lack of infrastructure and resources to broad inequities on how local governments with limited funds and even less capacity react to disparities and environmental threats. As part of this, the Indian government announced in 2015 a slew of policies that focused on urban development, rejuvenation and infrastructure. The Smart Cities Mission was one of these policies that aimed to embed 100 Indian cities with digital technologies and interventions, capable of collecting and analysing vast amounts of data for governance, planning, and, perhaps in the future, monetisation. The estimated value of these smart projects, across all cities, is a little over USD$22 billion. While the mission was to be completed in five years it has since been extended to 2024. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Smart Cities Mission, he promised bottom-up development, improved quality of life especially for the urban poor, and innovative uses of technology. While there was some excitement regarding the mission, there was also some trepidation given its similarities to previous urban policies and the scope for privatised development. The rains are a reminder that while cities grow, the way they are planned is rarely inclusive or sustainable. India’s urban population is exploding. By 2030 approximately 40 percent of India’s population will be urban meaning these issues will become more widespread and the need to fix them becomes urgent. One of the ways in which the government has addressed this is by calling in the consultants. These companies, represented by McKinsey and the ‘Big Four’ accounting firms (Ernst & Young, Deloitte, PwC and KPMG), started to work with Indian governments in the 1990s. Much of this was stipulated by international organisations and funding agencies like the UN and World Bank. This was seen as a way to both improve the efficiency of governments – which could learn from these private sector actors – and to ensure the efficacy of these large projects. At the time, governments across the world were increasingly depending on consultants for project advice and implementation not only as a way to speed up government projects, but also as a way to reduce the size of public institutions. The importance of fixing urban issues has grown in lockstep with liberalisation and globalisation since the 1990s. Cities in India have become ‘engines of growth’ with increased urban productivity leading to significant increases in the country’s GDP. According to a 2018 World Bank analysis, India’s economy was growing at an annual average of more than 7 percent since the early 2000s compared to 4.4 percent in the 1970s-80s. The smart cities project is part of a global trend of building smart cities and borrows from smart interventions introduced in other countries. Interestingly, the private sector, specifically technology firms and management consulting firms, have played a significant role in the conceptualisation, spread, and implementation of the smart city concept. The design of the policy itself was heavily influenced by consulting firms. One official who has been involved in the Smart Cities Mission since the planning stage told researchers that ‘smartness’ in the Indian context was defined by, and the mission was largely designed by, many of these firms. More than 50 firms, including consulting businesses and technology firms, were invited to present their views on what a smart city is and what the aims of a smart city policy should be. The Smart Cities Mission guidelines incorporated ideas from these presentations and built on these approaches. Subsequently, the guidelines actually required city governments to engage consultant’s services to plan their interventions and the financial distribution across smart city projects. It was thought that local authorities did not have the capacity or know-how when it comes to smart city development and therefore external expertise was necessary. As one management consultant told researchers: “Many times within government there might not be the skillset. It’s very technical. I am not saying that government officials don’t have or a government official might not have that skill but you need a group of people. “So it makes sense for the government to bring in the private sector who bring in the best of know-how and knowledge, and also the best practices from around the world.” While the dependence on private expertise follows a pattern similar to the privatisation of urban services in general, this shift in policy design and decision-making raises a number of questions about the state of local democracies and the future of urban governance as their partnerships with external consulting services grows. Matthias Kipping argues that we are currently in the ‘third wave’ of consultant-government relationship that ‘started in the 1950s and surged since the 1990s’. This trend began in the US, followed by the UK and soon spread to countries like Canada, Germany, France and Australia. In the US, consultants worked closely with the military before becoming more permanent fixtures in other parts of government. Dennis Saint-Martin wrote in 1998 that in countries like the UK, Canada, and France, consultants were first employed to improve administrative processes. They have since played a part in strategising responses to climate change in Australia, municipal performance and benchmarking in Canada, and pandemic response in the UK — among a host of other examples. Prior to the launch of the Smart Cities Mission, McKinsey had already influenced urban policy in India in the form of the ‘Vision Mumbai’ plan, parts of which were scaled up to a national-level policy. Vision Mumbai was accused of squeezing poor people out of their homes, and considered a disaster for its inability to stand up to public scrutiny. Within the Smart Cities Mission project, researchers have interviewed consultants and government officials working at the federal and local levels in order to better understand what consultants bring to the table and whether they are becoming an increasingly integral part of the policy process. They found consultants play a variety of roles from advising and strategising to project management to training and capacity building of government officials and departments. When it comes to the use of digital technologies and data analysis in particular, there is an assumption that government officials do not have the knowledge, skills, or imagination to use these tools for governance. This assumption has always been closely linked with the involvement of management consultants in the public sector who are invited to guide governments on newer interventions and help update their skill sets. The most common justification for why governments engage consulting firms is their expertise. Given India’s relatively closed bureaucracy, this may not always be possible or easy for governments. Critics have, however, questioned this expertise. Some argue that consultants’ presence in government projects or policies is merely assumed. This allows consultants to expand their work in the public sector, thereby gathering more experience and eventually becoming more familiar with government systems and processes. Interestingly, consultants claim that they often tap into their existing knowledge networks to hone this know-how. A team working on smart cities in India might build on knowledge from another team from the same firm that has worked on smart cities in Spain for instance. When asked about conflicts of interest, however, consulting firms often insist that there is limited exchange of information within the firm and that different departments and different branches work as separate entities. On the other hand, consulting firms present their global and local knowledge networks as an advantage and claim that they are in a position to offer viable solutions precisely because of these networks they have access to. Not only is this contradictory, but internal communications, whether formal or informal, are difficult to oversee or regulate. Where many preach about efficiency, another common justification, from within the private sector, it is usually used synonymously with speed in decision making. The efficacy of this is difficult to evaluate or benchmark and it often stems from the assumption that governments are lethargic and slow. While efficiency is desirable, it should not come at the cost of inclusive decision making or democratic processes. Government organisations do not have the same purpose as private firms and it is therefore problematic to mould them in the image of these firms. Governments have a responsibility to citizens and are not expected to turn a profit. Private firms are driven by a profit motive and have a responsibility towards their shareholders. The other two related justifications are capacity in and of government, and taking responsibility. Both the civil service representatives and consultants argue that governments have limited capacity especially when it comes to aspects of digital technology and data-led governance. According to some consultants, this also allows governments to deflect blame onto these so-called experts if things do not go to plan. Government employees told researchers that despite these advantages, not everything is smooth sailing. For government employees, there has been some disillusionment not only with actual expertise but also with the high turnover of consultants which often results in the loss of institutional memory when they leave, then in re-engaging new consultants on the same project. Some government representatives felt that while senior consultants make pitches and attend preliminary meetings they do not remain as involved for the duration of the project. Further, the profile of bureaucrats is changing and increasingly they are leading ideation while consultants implement these interventions as project managers. Consultants interviewed do not share this view and argue that they have not only been instrumental in every aspect of the policy but also that the mission required their presence. The question is, are Indian cities smarter because of these consultants? Or is the question really whether smartness, as defined by the same private sector actors, the measure by which cities should be planned and developed? Even if the answer is yes, the lack of transparency and accountability is worrying. This continued dependence on consultants weakens governance structures and, potentially, democracies. While government officials are aware of these complexities both government officials and consultants are fairly sure that consultant involvement will continue in the foreseeable future. It is also true that hiring consultants could be beneficial. The question then is how should we regulate these consultant-government relationships to ensure accountability and transparency? Such regulation could protect from vague or undisclosed contracts, could ensure the best value for public money, and could allow for greater public scrutiny, all crucial elements to the democratic process. Uttara Purandare is a PhD Researcher in Public Policy at the IITB-Monash Research Academy. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on August 18, 2023

India’s confusing messages on Israel-Palestine - 360 A K Ramakrishnan Published on November 13, 2023 Relations with Israel and Palestine along two independent tracks may not be tenable amid the current crisis, but India hasn’t stopped trying. India has a long history of relations with both Israel and Palestine, informed by its own struggle for independence. But the confusing signals it has sent through various statements and actions put forth in the recent weeks of this deadly war hardly reflect a clear diplomatic strategy. Any policy that ignores historical and structural factors and stresses only on episodic events will not be of great help with regard to the conflict or to the politics of the region as a whole. Immediately after the attack on Israel by Hamas on 7 October, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed shock at what he called ‘terrorist attacks in Israel” in his tweet asserting that “we stand in solidarity with Israel at this difficult hour”. Yet within a few days, on 12 October, the Ministry of External Affairs reiterated India’s earlier commitment to “establish a sovereign independent and viable state of Palestine, living within secure and recognized borders, side by side with Israel”. He also asserted that this is India’s “longstanding and consistent” position on Palestine. There were conflicting positions on the unfolding humanitarian crisis. When Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip intensified with huge loss of Palestinian civilians,  on 22 October, the Indian government sent humanitarian aid consisting of medical and disaster relief to Gaza. But, on 27 October, India abstained during a UN General Assembly vote calling for a humanitarian truce between Israel and Hamas. India’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Yojana Patel, explained the abstentions by referring to terrorism: “terrorism is a malignancy and knows no borders, nationality or race.” There was obviously an unwillingness to make Israel uncomfortable. There was sharp criticism by Indian opposition parties on the government’s position in the General Assembly. Invoking the policy of fighting terrorism as a major prism of looking at a longstanding conflict by sidelining the core political issues may not help in the long run. India’s positioning as a Global South power and as a significant member of BRICS did not compel it to adopt a unified stance in the UN with other BRICS members, as it took a position in sharp contrast to the  other  member states.  The history of India’s leadership in highlighting the Palestinian cause in the Non-Aligned Movement and of sponsoring pro-Palestine resolutions in international bodies stands in sharp contrast with its current position, which seems not to adhere to any meaningful normative content in foreign policy. India was one of the first countries to recognise Palestinian statehood even when Palestinian territories of West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem remained under Israeli occupation. In the past, Indian policy statements on Palestine referred to East Jerusalem as part of a future Palestinian state. Recent  pronouncements do not  mention Jerusalem at all. India’s position on Palestine emerged from the colonial experience of the two peoples. Anti-British struggle in India and the opposition to the British mandate and European Jewish settlements in Palestine shaped, in part, India’s support to the struggle of the Palestinian Arabs. Jawaharlal Nehru’s criticism of the very idea of the Mandatory system emanated from such a position. Mahatma Gandhi’s writings and comments reflected the commonalities of the colonial situation. His opposition to the idea of political Zionism and a Jewish state in Palestine is well-known. The oft-quoted lines from his editorial in Harijan in 1938 that “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense as that England belongs to the English and France to the French” bear witness to this. He added that “surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs” by converting Palestine into a Jewish national home. Things changed fast. After World War Two, Britain referred the Palestine question to the UN, which in turn constituted the Special Commission on Palestine in 1947. India was a member of the Commission, where it opposed the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab entities. It suggested a plan by which both Jewish and Arab populations would live under a federal system. The terrible unfolding of the partition of India was also significant in its position on Palestine. The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and the global sympathy for the Jewish people after the Holocaust influenced  discussions in independent India, which recognised the state of Israel in 1950, even though fuller diplomatic relations were established only in 1992. India-Israel relations grew very fast in the last three decades, especially in defence cooperation. Since the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government came to power in 2014, there has been further intensification of ties with Israel while maintaining the position that India supports a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The attempts at ideological mobilisation in domestic politics have had an impact on policies with respect to the conflict. There was more emphasis on de-hyphenation – asserting that relations with Israel and with the Palestinians were two independent, separate tracks, instead of treating the Israel-Palestine conflict as interconnected. Problems regarding de-hyphenation emerge every now and then. The Ministry of External Affairs statement at the start of the current conflict, proclaiming the government’s support to Palestinian statehood, immediately after the Prime Minister’s statement supporting Israel is such a case. While such endeavours could be called ‘compensatory diplomacy’, intended to have a balancing effect, attempts at de-hyphenation by ignoring the reality of occupation would be a futile exercise. A K Ramakrishnan is a professor at the Centre for West Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on November 13, 2023

India’s digital identity push is reshaping how the state treats its citizens - 360 Bidisha Chaudhuri, International Institute of Information Technology Published on December 1, 2021 By Bidisha Chaudhuri, International Institute of Information Technology In 2016, one month after the number of identification cards issued to Indian citizens crossed the one billion mark, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi tweeted: “Our Government is strengthening systems and eliminating the role of middlemen. We want the poor to lead a life of dignity” Today the everyday experiences of Indians accessing welfare services appear far from this ideal. On top of a range of problems, the digital identity push is steering the relationship between the state and its citizens in a concerning new direction. The Aadhaar scheme collects demographic data and matches it with fingerprints and iris scans of Indian residents, against which a 12-digit unique identity number is generated and issued to the individual by a card. This card or number can then be used by the resident at any institution requiring identity authentication. A Supreme Court order in 2013 forbade the mandatory government use of the Aadhaar number, but a bill since passed by the lower house of Parliament mandates the use of Aadhaar for disbursement of subsidies and benefits to people eligible for them. Nandan Nilekani, former chief executive of Indian IT giant Infosys and the first head of the Unique Identification Authority of India, in his book, Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation, Nilekani argued: “An identity system linked up with an IT-enabled process that interlinks our various departments would, besides making citizen information and identity more verifiable, make the relationship between the state and citizen infinitely less traumatizing in both time and energy wasted.” But economist Sneha Menon says Aadhaar has been rife with technical problems and represents a digitisation agenda wrongly focused on preventing identity fraud rather than preventing welfare fraud or improving efficiency and transparency. Citizens have been prevented from collecting their benefits due to authentication failure on biometric machines, along with mismatches of data in Aadhaar and the welfare database. Welfare fraud persists despite biometric authentication. Citizens in fact, spend on average more time than before using the Aadhaar system to access food subsidies due to connectivity issues, multiple attempts at authentication and so on. Moreover, Aadhaar leads to spatial distancing of the state (from villages to district offices) by shifting loci of control of welfare management to district administrators. This distancing is legitimised by rendering Aadhaar enabled welfare systems opaque, even to local administrators and last mile service delivery personnel. As a result, Aadhaar creates a paradoxical trend in welfare governance in India. On one hand, distancing and opacity of the state leave citizens more reliant on intermediaries (the “middlemen”). The intermediaries, meanwhile, find their autonomy and expertise curtailed by the same system that aims to cut them out. The fact that most Aadhaar enabled welfare schemes cater to a population below the poverty line makes these challenges of welfare governance even more disconcerting. While many compare Aadhaar’s centralising design that dangerously combines information and governance to a surveillance state akin to an Orwellian novel, what gets often ignored is the privacy threats arising from the everyday usage of Aadhaar. ‘Aadhaar cards’ circulate rampantly in paper form, both as originals and photocopies. For example, Pratap a visitor to an internet kiosk in Rajasthan said: “I took my Aadhaar card, both original and photocopy. I wanted to update my phone number on the card. So, first I gave the photocopy to the operator. Then I authenticated my fingerprint on the machine which then would open my details on the computer. I gave him the phone number I wanted to update. I don’t know how it works. I paid him Rs50 for it… I got the original [card] back and he kept the photocopy.” The unregulated sharing, circulation and storage of Aadhaar numbers, cards or data creates more room for inaccurate profiles and data mismatch in the Aadhaar system, increasing the risk that welfare recipients will be denied their benefits. However, such bottom-up threats to privacy through everyday documentary practices of Aadhaar are often ignored as they are framed as consensual sharing of personal data (as Pratap claimed). Moreover, there is no robust legal framework to hold the state or intermediaries accountable for these privacy breaches. Every technology comes with a potential for (re)arranging power relations between citizens and government. In its present form, Aadhaar, promotes centralisation of governance while concerns of exclusion and privacy violation remain unchecked. Solutions to these challenges do not require more technological fixes, such as virtual IDs or digital lockers, that again bypass the political basis of democratic governance. Instead, the state needs to focus on ID systems that treat the population not as mere recipients of economic benefits but as citizens with rights to information, welfare, livelihood, basic services and more importantly, human dignity. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Bidisha Chaudhuri is an Associate Professor at International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore and affiliated to the Centre for IT and Public Policy. The author declared no conflicts of interest in relation to this article.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on December 1, 2021

India’s double edged nutrition problem - 360 Kalyani Raghunathan, Derek Headley Published on September 27, 2022 One in five children in India are too thin, and yet at the same time obesity levels are on the rise. Three in four South Asians who cannot afford a healthy diet live in India. Now, as India looks to fix malnutrition, it finds itself forced to tackle both undernutrition and growing levels of overnutrition as more and more of its people are classified as overweight. Diet quality, already alarmingly bad, is only likely to have deteriorated in India during the pandemic and in the wake of rising food prices in recent months. UN data for 2020 estimated nearly a billion Indians were unable to purchase a wholesome, nourishing diet. And a recent study found more than two-thirds of India’s rural population could not afford a diet that met India’s own dietary guidelines. More than half of respondents in a December 2021-January 2022 survey said they ate fruits, flesh foods, eggs or milk fewer than two or three times a month, while four in five respondents said the nutritional quality of the food they consumed had deteriorated since the pandemic. For a country looking to reap the financial benefits of its growing young workforce, the economic implications of malnutrition among Indian children, adolescents and working-age adults are as significant as the costs for health and quality of life. Rates of stunting among pre-schoolers – a key marker of chronic undernutrition – fell substantially from 48 percent in 2005-06 to 38.4 percent in 2015-16. But by 2019-21 progress against stunting had slowed, falling less than three percentage points to 35.5 percent. One in five children in India are too thin — a statistic that has barely moved since the early 1990s. It’s one of the highest rates in the world, and a major risk factor for child mortality. Simultaneously, each new national health survey reveals growing numbers of overweight or obese Indian men and women, as well as related increases in linked diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and hypertension. In a five-state project surveying close to 3,000 women in 2019, researchers found carbohydrate consumption through cereal was pervasive and more than two-thirds reported eating pulses or starchy vegetables (most likely potatoes) in the past 24 hours. However, only a third had eaten nutrient-dense dark green leafy vegetables, and fewer than one in six respondents had eaten fruits, meat, fish, eggs, nuts and seeds or any dairy products. More than half reported eating sweets, sugary drinks, or other snacks in the preceding 24 hours. This double burden of over- and undernutrition has high social costs. Obesity-related chronic diseases raise health costs, lower productivity and curtail life expectancy. The lack of good nutrition for cognitive and developmental ability in children also lowers productivity and earnings in adulthood. Among the various policy options to tackle malnutrition, those that aim to improve access to high quality diets that are safe, hygienic, diverse and fresh are arguably the most essential. They involve double-duty actions that can address problems of under- and over-nutrition simultaneously. Policy recommendations to improve access to affordable healthy diets need to acknowledge both the scale of the problem as well as the drivers for different segments of the population. For wealthier households in both rural and urban areas, it’s likely current food expenditure is more than the minimum required to meet nutritional guidelines. The need here is one of reallocation. Providing information about what constitutes a healthy diet through social media, or as part of school curricula, could aid this reallocation. Another constraint is time. Many Indian adults work long hours, making processed foods and eating out convenient. Policies to dissuade food processors and vendors from producing and selling unhealthy foods – such as fat and sugar taxes, and better product labelling or ratings – could be useful. For the poor, the binding constraint is far more likely to be inadequate resources. While information undoubtedly has a value here as well, it must be combined with measures that either enhance incomes or reduce the cost of nutritious foods. Policies that improve employment, especially among rural women, are key to raising incomes: these include investing in workfare programmes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, as well as expanding farm and off-farm value-chain opportunities. Improved access to nutritious foods through existing in-kind transfer programmes, like the Public Distribution System or the mid-day meal scheme in schools, can significantly lower the cost of provisioning household diets. These transfer programmes, under threat from many angles, were often what kept many vulnerable families from starvation during the pandemic. Kalyani Raghunathan is an economist and Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), where she works on a variety of topics in agriculture, gender and nutrition in South Asia. Derek Headey is an economist and Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). His research chiefly focuses on agricultural development and nutrition in several countries in Asia and Africa. This research was conducted as part of the Food Prices for Nutrition project, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office of the UK government. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on September 27, 2022

India's electronic voting machines have a trust problem - 360 Deepanshu Mohan, Zahid Iqbal Shah, Najam Us Saqib Published on April 22, 2024 Criticism of EVMs is legitimate, but it shouldn’t overwhelm the devices’ potential to strengthen democracy Electronic voting machines are coming under the spotlight as India prepares for its general election. There are fears about the fairness and openness of India’s voting system, with the previous unwavering faith in the country’s EVMs now in doubt. The Indian Supreme Court will soon hear a plea seeking cross-verification of votes cast in EVMs with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT). The potential for voting machine hacking has cast a shadow over India’s democratic landscape. There is apprehension in some quarters that the devices can be manipulated. The Opposition has directly alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi relies on EVM hacking to win elections. At a recent rally in Mumbai, Rahul Gandhi, the leader of India’s largest opposition party, asserted: “The king’s (Modi’s) soul is in the EVM”. Electoral processes have evolved significantly over time. Initially, voters used traditional ballot papers, manually writing candidates’ names and depositing them in  designated boxes. As India’s population grew and concerns about electoral fraud associated with ballot papers escalated, the People’s Representation Act was amended in 1989 to enable EVMs to prevent electoral fraud. In 1998, EVMs made their debut during legislative assembly elections. Their first use at a general election was in 2004. This transition to voting machines underscores the nation’s commitment to modernising its electoral infrastructure, ensuring efficiency, transparency and integrity of the polling process. In 2017, the Delhi Assembly convened a special session, where Saurabh Bharadwaj, an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislator, demonstrated with a dummy EVM how easily it could be hacked. Bharadwaj claimed that a “manipulator” could enter the polling booth during voting and input a unique secret code, resulting in subsequent votes being directed to a particular candidate. He also claimed an EVM’s motherboard could be changed in just 90 seconds. AAP later posted the results of this demonstration on its Twitter page, showing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) receiving more votes than it  actually obtained in the final results. As the majority party in the Delhi Assembly and now governing Punjab, AAP’s vocal stance against voying maschine integrity has implications for the trust of India’s 969 million voters in the election process. The scepticism surrounding voting machines has intensified, with opposition parties including AAP and INC voicing concerns about potential bias favoring the ruling party. Recent state elections in Rajasthan, Telangana, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh showed discrepancies between election results and exit polls leading to vehement protests. An incident during the Bihar elections further eroded trust. The manipulation of EVMs left citizens questioning the legitimacy of results The Election Commission of India (ECI) attempted to address these concerns but widespread scepticism remained. A critical revelation emerged from a Right to Information (RTI) request: EVMs do not have software permanently burnt into one-time programmable (OTP) chips, as previously claimed by the ECI. Instead, they use chips that can be reprogrammed. While hacking EVMs would still require physical access to the machines used in elections, this revelation has fuelled mistrust among voters. The apprehensions harboured by the general populace regarding the integrity of voting machines have transcended the concerns of political parties to encompass civil society at large. In a noteworthy demonstration of dissent, numerous individuals, including Ambedkarite advocates, legal professionals, and other members of civil society  convened at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on February 2, 2024.demanding the prohibition of EVMs. Advocates of this stance have persistently voiced their reservations regarding EVMs across various regions of India, notably through the #EVM_ban campaign in anticipation of the forthcoming 2024 general elections. Thousands of tweets were made under this hashtag from across the country. Some people even tweeted that they would stay away from the election process if  EVMs are not replaced. The objections regarding EVMs is not a recent development. Intriguingly, its origins go back to the 1980s, predating their actual deployment in elections. The seminal legal case of AC Jose vs. Sivan Pillai represents an early instance, wherein a petition was filed seeking a stay order on the utilisation of EVMs for an impending bi-election in Kerala. The SC ruled in the favour of the petitioner and ordered a repoll in the 50 booths using paper ballots.As a result, Jose defeated Pillai, the winner in the first vote, with a margin of around 2000 votes. During the 1990s, Election Commissioner T.N. Seshan recognised the urgency of addressing ballot frauds. He championed the development of EVMs as a potential solution. While political parties have raised concerns, no concrete evidence has been presented to prove EVM manipulation. Nevertheless, the issue persists. As India prepares for the 2024 general elections, addressing EVM-related apprehensions remains critical. In order to save the democratic ethos of India, EVM hacking must be addressed. Enhancing accountability and transparency in  EVM deployment and procurement processes can boost voter confidence. Robust oversight procedures, such as impartial audits and exacting testing procedures can be employed. Additionally, procuring advanced EVM technology with enhanced security features, such as end-to-end verifiable systems and paper audit trails, can strengthen the integrity of electoral outcomes. Raising public awareness and engagement through comprehensive civic education initiatives can empower citizens to actively participate in safeguarding the electoral process. This will boost the confidence of a common voter in the electoral process. Instead of completely rejecting the use of EVMs, efforts must concentrate on utilising technical innovations to uphold democratic principles (and ensure due process in the machine’s use). It is vital that everyone – the ruling parties, opposition parties, civil society organizations, voters, democratic institutions, and technology centres – are brought together in this democratic exercise to take joint action in securing the sanctity of the world’s largest and most expansive electoral process. Deepanshu Mohan is Professor of Economics and Dean, O.P. Jindal Global University. He is a Visiting Professor at London School of Economics and University of Oxford. Zahid Iqbal Shah is a doctoral student with the Central University of Kashmir. Najam Us Saqib is a doctoral student with Central University, Kashmir, and a Research Analyst with Centre for New Economics Studies, O.P. Jindal Global University. This article has been republished as part of a series on the 2024 Indian elections. It was originally publishedon April 18. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on April 22, 2024

India's energy transition requires a delicate balancing act - 360 Saon Ray Published on October 25, 2023 The most important issue for India is to grow sustainably while adhering to its international climate commitments and keeping its energy constraints in mind. There are less than 40 days to go until the Conference of Parties (COP28). This also marks the halfway point for nations to achieve their self-determined emission reduction goals by 2030 and to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius as part of the Paris Agreement signed at COP21. While most countries agree on the need to reduce emissions and greenhouse gases, there are differences on how this can be achieved. Developing countries like India have been pointing out the implementation gap from the pre-2020 era or the voluntary pledges under the 2010 Cancun Agreement, which ignored the ambitious targets required from developed countries and shifted a portion of the burden onto developing countries. The targets not being met by developed countries puts added pressure on developing countries. At COP 21, ambitious targets for 2030 were announced by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, including 500 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity and reducing emissions intensity — the volume of emissions per unit of GDP — of the economy by 45 percent as part of its nationally determined contributions. There were three goals:  for cumulative electric power-installed capacity from non-fossil sources to reach 40 percent; reducing emissions intensity by 33 to 35 percent compared to 2005 levels; and the creation of an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent through additional forest and tree cover. India has also announced its decarbonisation plans and transition to net zero emissions by 2070. This will depend on the phasing out of coal, which still contributes more than 55 percent to India’s total energy demand. This needs to be accompanied by the use of cleaner coal and technologies that enable energy efficiency. The emissions reduction emerging from this will be comparable to limiting the increase in temperature to 2 degrees. Instead of coal, India hopes to meet 50 percent of its energy requirements through renewable sources — wind, solar, etc. Incidentally, India has achieved the target of 40 percent of its power capacity from non-fossil fuels well ahead of time. There are three issues for India. First, it still needs to provide energy to about 9 percent of its population. Second, phasing out coal is important and needs to be done, but the important domestic conditions that confront India cannot be ignored. A phaseout has to be done in a just manner. Livelihoods will be impacted, which can have consequences for the rest of the country. India’s coal-rich regions are in the east of the country while renewable energy sources are in the west, which could lead to large-scale westward migration. Third, India is dependent on energy imports of oil, gas and coal, and depending on the fuel mix in use, there will be implications for the country’s energy security, with new alliances necessary for imports of minerals for batteries or electrolysers for green hydrogen. The other question is whether greater renewable deployment can meet the technical requirements of grid balance, which means maintaining a balance between production and consumption in an electrical grid and balancing issues like fluctuations or capacity overflow. The most important issue for India is to grow sustainably while adhering to its international climate commitments and keeping all its energy constraints in mind. This could mean using the principles of energy efficiency in all aspects of energy use, including appliances and in the commercial and residential sectors. Decarbonisation of industry and the energy system will be key. While this will be easy in certain sectors, it will not be so in sectors such as iron and steel, bricks, etc. For this, access to technology will be necessary. Finance will be absolutely critical in the context of India and other developing countries. At the same time, countries undertaking the transition should not be getting into debt. It has been suggested that India will need USD$10 trillion for a net-zero transition. At COP28, higher energy commitments are expected to be put forward. The first global stocktake process of five years will conclude at COP28 in Dubai. The global stocktake — launched at COP26 in 2021 to assess the progress of the Paris Agreement goals — will also need to identify the sources of finance that will be available to developing countries. The deliberations will determine how countries respond to the gaps identified in the technical assessment phase (there are three phases of which technical assessment forms the second) and form guidance for future commitments. For a country adversely affected by climate change, the pathways to low carbon growth include reduction of carbon emissions and increasing energy efficiency. International cooperation under the aegis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and other groups like the G20, particularly the Environment and Sustainability Working Group whose mandate is to enhance cooperation, is needed in order to achieve this. Whether COP28 will deliver on all of the above remains to be seen. Saon Ray is Visiting Professor, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), New Delhi. An economist specialising in industry and international trade issues, her areas of interest include global value chains, technological upgrading of Indian industries, free trade agreements and trade creation effects, technology transfer, foreign direct investment, efficiency and productivity of firms, energy and climate change-related issues. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on October 25, 2023

India’s fumbled chance for sharing knowledge - 360 Subbiah Arunachalam, Muthu Madhan Published on December 26, 2022 India was an early leader in sharing research and information for science. But it has fumbled since then. In terms of open access to knowledge, India could have been the Vishwa Guru — the world’s teacher. As early as 2000 India was making moves to allow taxpayer-funded research to be freely available for anyone in the world to read, share and distribute. But India has squandered that advantage. Fast forward to 2022, and much of India’s research is still locked up behind the paywalls of corporate academic publishers while the global science community increasingly questions why taxpayer-funded research should not be available for everyone to read. The Indian government initiated a new science, technology and innovation policy in January 2020. The draft policy, released in December 2020, enshrined open science in chapter one. Its three key features were to set up an Indian Science and Technology Archive of Research (INDSTA), a dedicated portal to provide access to the findings of all publicly funded research; to place the full text of scientific papers immediately upon acceptance into a journal in a publicly available repository or INDSTA; and to make all data from publicly funded research available to everyone. But the policy is not yet in place. The government is instead focusing on a ‘One Nation One Subscription’ project. This would see the government pay academic publishers an eye watering sum to allow Indian scientists to publish in corporate journals and for all Indians to read them. Apart from benefiting the publishers more than science and scientists, this looks crazy in view of the rapidly rising share of openly accessible research papers and the emerging revolution in preprint servers that publish drafts of research papers for free. In 2021, of the more than 2.47 million research papers added to a database known as the Web of Science, half of them were free to read, or ‘open access’. The share of open access papers is increasing at a decent pace: 29.5 percent in 2011; 36.6 percent in 2015; and 50.2 percent in 2021. India, with 121,494 papers (or 4.9 percent of the world’s research output), stood fifth in the number of papers published, behind China, USA, UK, and Germany. Less than one third of Indian papers are free to read. In contrast, in 2021, most papers from the Netherlands (83.43 percent), UK (75 percent), France (69 percent) and Germany (68.8 percent) are open access. But in those countries, the governments and funding agencies provide financial support to scientists to pay up-front fees to publishers to make their papers free to read. It is no coincidence that most of the large academic publishers are in Europe. The governments have a stake in the success of the journal publishing enterprise, one of the world’s most profitable industries. Of the papers that are free to read, a large part (about two thirds) is because scientists have paid up-front fees to the publisher, a practice that should be shunned by low- and middle-income countries. Only 7.2 percent of Indian papers are free to read through publicly available locations. Thanks to recent guidance from the US White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the results of all US taxpayer-supported research will become immediately available to all, at no cost, by the end of 2025 at the latest. Journals of Indian research councils and many medical journals from India are free to read. But the journals of Indian science academies are no longer truly open access, as researchers outside India still pay a fee to German publishing house Springer to access a paper published in them. As early as 2000, when only 3 percent of the 72.4 million hosts on the internet were in the developing world as against 85 percent in the developed economies, many OA champions pointed out that the developing world would benefit most from open archives initiatives, as their scholars are the ones who suffer the most from ever increasing journal subscription prices and dwindling budgets. Stevan Harnad, the arch evangelist of the open access movement, urged Indian scientists and librarians to embrace the culture of institutional repositories that can be accessed and searched from anywhere. In 2002, the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, set up one of the earliest repositories for research papers by its faculty and students in the world, and one of the managers won an international award. Over the next few years, numerous international open access champions were invited to India to talk to heads of scientific agencies about the need for India to adopt open access. Slowly, India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Council of Agricultural Research, Department of Science and Technology, Department of Biotechnology, the Indian Academy of Sciences, and Indian National Science Academy adopted open access, even if it was half-hearted. Many librarians were trained in repository software, a few policymakers got on board and a fledgling Indian publisher of medical journals, Medknow, decided to become an open access publisher (it is now owned by the Dutch publisher Wolters Kluwer). In 2008, Harnad and Alma Swan suggested that if India adopted a national open access self-archiving mandate for all its research institutions and funders, it would set an example to the world: “India’s own research access and impact will be maximised, the rest of the world will follow India’s example, and research progress worldwide will be the beneficiary.” The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and Departments of Biotechnology and Science and Technology initiated both policies and open access repositories but uptake has been poor. The policies are often flouted by scientists with impunity. The world over, the move towards making drafts of papers on preprint servers the main mode of scholarly communication is gaining momentum. But in India a vast majority of researchers — professors and students alike — as well as officials in the science and education ministries, have no clear understanding of open access. It is like they are still clinging to floppy discs and CD-ROM when the world is racing ahead with the cloud. Subbiah Arunachalam belongs to DST-CPR, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and the Centre for Internet and Society Bengaluru. Muthu Madhan belongs to O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat and DST-CPR. The authors declare no conflict of interest. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on December 26, 2022

India’s history holds the answers to its democratic future - 360 Rahul Mukherji Published on December 6, 2021 The rich and resilient history of Indian democracy offers lessons for the participants in the ‘Summit for Democracy’, but its present may serve as a warning. By Rahul Mukherji, Heidelberg University The rich and resilient history of Indian democracy offers many lessons for the participants in US President Joe Biden’s online ‘Summit for Democracy’, but its present may serve as a warning. India’s competitive authoritarian turn since 2014 reflects the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) political propensity to deploy the electoral power of incumbency to gradually weaken opposition and the institutions of democracy. Not only has India declined in democracy rankings, 83 members of the Constitutional Conduct Group comprising non party affiliated senior retired civil servants and judges bemoaned India’s poor performance in democracy rankings and in the rights of women and religious minorities. The comity of nations, global civil society and the media can play a role in consolidating the substantial home-grown forces of democratic resilience. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has rolled back democracy in three ways. First, wherever possible, rules were interpreted differently to project a new morality. Second, where rule change was necessary, incremental changes were made to reflect a new moral purpose. Finally, where political opposition was weak, legal frameworks were radically changed to reflect a new purpose. Modi’s Hindutva brand of Hindu nationalism is the driving force, seeking to perceptibly transform the secular and plural India into a hegemonic nation of majority ethnic Hindus. Hindutva assumed unparalleled power when Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist BJP came back to power with an absolute majority in 2019, after governing since 2014. The BJP won 303 of the 542 seats. The next party secured just 52, three seats less than the minimum required to appoint a leader of the opposition. A weak opposition has enabled  the Hindu nationalist wave. Modi has consolidated his power by transforming Parliamentary procedures. In 2019 and 2020, it became standard practice for the government to surprise the opposition with new bills, passing legislation with their majority before it could be properly debated in Parliament. EMBED START Image {id: "editor_4"} EMBED END Image {id: "editor_4"} Many bills were passed like this: among them, the infamous abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act and the three farm bills of 2020. The three farm bills favouring corporate farming were passed without even a proper vote, despite the BJP’s majority. The bills were passed by a voice vote defying conventions that had evolved over decades. Civil society and opposition parties were also targeted by gradual regulatory changes. Electoral bonds were introduced in 2018 to enhance the ruling party’s electoral resources under the guise of increasing transparency, against the wishes of the Reserve Bank and the Election Commission. Three quarters of the US$457 million in electoral bonds purchased in 2019-20 went to the BJP. But no one can tell who purchased these bonds. The next party — the Indian National Congress — received only 9 percent. Access to resources impacts Indian elections. The Unlawful Activities Prevention Amendment Bill (UAPA) builds on legislation deployed against terrorist groups, making it easier to detain people  without charge. It was used to detain activists such as Gautam Navlakha, Binayak Sen, Sudha Bhardwaj, Anand Teltumbde, Khurram Parvez and Stan Swamy, among many others. Non-governmental organisations were directly targeted by a 2020 amendment to the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). This Act works far more effectively deployed against foreign funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) — Greenpeace and Amnesty had to severely curtail operations even before the Act could be  deployed against them. The FCRA is a powerful tool that empowers the BJP’s social arm — Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh — against its enemies in civil society. Finally, laws were changed where opposition was weak to make old morality look immoral as well. Majoritarian politics were engaged, swiftly passing bills to convert the special state of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories by repealing Article 370. The state’s legislative assembly was suspended and the top leadership was incarcerated. This is a complete reversal of a moral and constitutional commitment. The majoritarian wave was deployed to convert a special state into centrally administered union territory without much political opposition. Jammu and Kashmir is the only Muslim-majority state in India. EMBED START Image {id: "editor_18"} EMBED END Image {id: "editor_18"} The story of India’s democratic resilience lives on, despite these attacks on the fabric of India’s democracy. On Nov. 19, 2021, Modi agreed to repeal the three farm laws that farmers from the green revolution states had opposed for a year. Farmers feared these laws would signal the takeover of farm produce by corporations who would not provide adequate compensation. The effectiveness of a social movement, despite attacks on activists and NGOs, reveals how resilient India’s civil society can be. The voting power of farmers was hard to ignore on the eve of February 2022 elections in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. In 2021, the BJP lost elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. How can the forces of democratic resilience be empowered? The first response has to come from activists and politicians who believe in an alternative India, which can remain a pluralistic democracy. That idea was much better organised within a well-funded Indian National Congress, whose workers penetrated the poverty-stricken masses with a zeal to uplift them through participation. Can the Congress and other opposition forces cultivate that cosmopolitan culture and create an alternative cadre — the likes of which had secured India’s freedom from colonial rule? Such an approach to dealing with society will strengthen the forces of politics away from Hindutva nationalism. Media and world opinion had supported India’s non-violent non-cooperation as an emancipatory route. The association of states, as well as the global civil society, could remind India that its own cultural resources can provide possibilities for humanity at large. The world’s most populous democracy should not forget that it  once astonished the world by remaining democratic despite being poverty-stricken. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Rahul Mukherji is a Professor of Politics and Executive Director at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University. Dr. Seyed Hossein Zarhani, Lecturer and Research Fellow at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, served as an advisor for this contribution.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on December 6, 2021

India’s literacy programs have fallen short - 360 Vachaspati Shukla Published on September 8, 2022 Lack of literacy can have serious implications for employability. Conversely it can also be a major hurdle for applying for public welfare. The lack of basic literacy can influence someone’s resilience to setbacks, stress, feeling of well-being and the extent to which they feel in control of their lives. ‘Literacy’ is a complex and dynamic concept. No one definition of literacy accommodates all its facets. It refers to a context-bound continuum of reading, writing, and numeracy skills, acquired and developed through a process of learning and application. In India, literacy is understood as the definition from the Census of India (held every decade) — the ability to read and write in at least one language. India’s literacy rate has almost doubled over a period of 40 years, from 37.3 percent in 1971 to 74.0 percent in 2011. Although commendable, India still remains far from the goal of achieving universal literacy. The literacy rate is the highest for age-group 10–14 years and lowest for the 80 years+ age-group. In almost every country of the world, older cohorts are less educated than younger cohorts because education is concentrated in the younger age groups and most education systems have expanded over time. There are broadly two different providers of the basic reading, writing and numeracy skills required for literacy — universal elementary education and adult education programmes. In India, priority was given to elementary education on the assumption that the expansion of elementary education would automatically take care of mass illiteracy over time. The Constitution of India, effective from 1950, made a provision for free and compulsory education for all children up to fourteen years of age. Despite rapid expansion of the formal schooling system, India was unable to universalise free and compulsory elementary education within the 10-year-period period originally envisaged. A consequence was adults in the population with no literacy and no means of learning. Against this backdrop, Indian policy makers realised the need for an adult education programme. The National Adult Education Programme, the first country-wide programme in 1978, aimed to cover illiterate people aged 15–35 in adult education centres across the country. In the latter years, it was restructured to be the National Literacy Mission, which is now engaged in imparting functional literacy to these adults. There are more than 281 million illiterate people in India (see table). This large number underlines the failures of both the universal elementary education policy and the National Literacy Mission. Some 25 million are 7–14 years old and 89 million 15–35 years old — together they make up more than 40 percent of total illiterate population. Nearly 88 percent of the children in the 7–14 years age-group are literate, leaving a 12 percent gap from achieving 100 percent literacy. Even highly developed states such as Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Himachal Pradesh were unable to achieve 100 percent literacy in this age-group. The challenge is greater for the poorer states such as Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh which have more than 10 percent illiteracy in the 7–14 age-group. EMBED START Image {id: "editor_0"} EMBED END Image {id: "editor_0"} In 2011, nearly 20 percent of the Indian population between 15–35 years was found to be illiterate, with wide variations across the states. Four states had less than 10 percent illiteracy — Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, but some states, such as Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, had more than 25 percent illiteracy. Effective implementation of adult-literacy programmes could improve literacy rates for the 15–35 age group. If India is to improve its literacy rates, the policies of the National Literacy Mission will need to be revisited and analysed to understand the reason for its limited achievement. A detailed mapping of illiteracy rates at district level would help target resources effectively. Even if India achieved universal literacy for age groups 7–14 and 15–35, the goal of full literacy will not be realised in the near future due to the large number of illiterate Indians in the 35+ age group. Broadening the scope of adult-literacy programmes beyond the 15–35 age group will speed up the achievement of universal literacy. Vachaspati Shukla, an economist, is assistant professor at the Sardar Patel Institute of Economics and Social Research, Ahmedabad. He is engaged in research on poverty and inequality, economics of education and Issues related to employment and development. He received his M.A. in economics from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, M.Phil. and PhD in economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He declares no conflict of interest. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on September 8, 2022

India's long and winding vote - 360 Chris Bartlett Published on May 7, 2024 In what is a big year for democratic elections, none come bigger than India’s incredible exercise in ensuring every voter has a say. India’s 2024 general election is the biggest the world has ever seen. With around 968 million voters, it is an extraordinary exercise in planning and logistics. Voting opened on April 19 and will close on June 1. A result is expected by June 4. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is hoping to win a third successive term, but faces an array of opposition parties which claim the country cannot afford to descend into what they say is more authoritarianism. 360info’s team of South Asia editors are following the campaign closely and engaging with the experts on all facets of the poll and will be updating our coverage regularly. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 7, 2024

India’s millions consume more than the country can sustain - 360 Priyanka Kaushal, Abhijeet Anand Published on July 28, 2022 As the world uses natural resources faster than they can be replenished, India looks to a future of renewable energy. Whether we’re running a country or a household, we always need to spend within our budget. The Earth also has a budget – the ecological budget, where income and expenditure take the form of natural resources. Like every budget, the Earth’s is limited. Today, humans are using the resources replenished by one year of the Earth’s natural processes in only seven to eight months. Earth Overshoot Day is the date by which all of the Earth’s ecological resources and services for the year are consumed. This year, it falls on July 28. According to a report from advocacy group Global Footprint Network, Earth Overshoot Day was on December 25 in 1971 and has been creeping earlier each year. Currently, humans are consuming 1.7 times the resources the Earth can replace in one year. By 2030, humans will require the resources produced on two Earths. In the Indian context, the country will require 2.5 times more natural resources to meet its demand by 2030. Overexploitation of resources by a growing population has reversed the demand-and-supply relationship. Even if its birth rate continues to decline, India is projected to be home to around 1.51 billion people by 2030. India has lower per-capita consumption of natural resources than many countries, but overshoot occurs due to its high population and limited resources. India has about 18 percent of the world’s population, while its land, forest and clean water make up a meagre 2.4, 2 and 4 percent of the world’s respective totals. Represented as land area, the natural resources available to sustain people in India take up 0.5 hectares per person, while consumption is around 1.1 hectares per person. According to the Global Footprint Network report, overfishing, indiscriminate deforestation and excessive carbon-dioxide emissions are the main reasons for the Earth’s overshoot. The Earth cleans the atmosphere by absorbing carbon dioxide. The report finds the natural resources needed to scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere make up about 60 percent of the total ecological footprint. One hundred and fifty years ago, the human carbon footprint was negligible. The world relies heavily on carbon dioxide-releasing fossil fuels to meet its energy demand. According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, about 61.74 percent of electricity demand in 2021 was from fossil sources. About 78.5 percent of electricity in India comes from fossil fuels, followed by renewable sources (19 percent) and nuclear sources (2.5 percent). Coal has the largest share (44 percent) of India’s electricity supply. India ranks third in global electricity generation and consumption. The energy sector in India is the largest greenhouse-gas emitter. According to the GE Gas Power report, although greenhouse-gas emissions from the energy sector in India are more than the global average, they have declined – mainly due to the shift in government policy towards renewable energy since the 2015 Paris Agreement. With a total installed capacity of more than 160 gigawatts in March 2022, renewable-energy-generation capacity has increased about 400 percent in the past nine years. Electricity demand is expected to grow at 5 percent each year over 2018–40, and India has rich potential for renewable-energy sources such as solar, hydro, wind and biomass. As a tropical country, India receives plentiful sunlight. According to the National Institute of Solar Energy, if the country installed solar on just 3 percent of its degraded land areas, its solar-energy potential would increase to 750 gigawatts. The National Institute of Wind Energy has estimated that the country has about 700 gigawatts of wind-energy potential at 120 metres above the ground. About 230 million tonnes of surplus agricultural residues are produced every year in India, representing 28 gigawatts of electricity-generation potential. The country also possesses more than 7,500 kilometres of coastline for tapping tidal, wave or offshore wind energy. In short, India has the renewable resources to meet its current and future energy demands. By 2050, India can achieve a net-zero carbon footprint by reducing emissions from the energy sector and deploying renewable energy quickly and strategically. India is very much on track to achieve 175 gigawatts of installed solar-power capacity by 2022 and 500 gigawatts of non-fossil electricity by 2030. The Government of India also has various initiatives such as the National Clean Air Programme, Bharat Stage-VI vehicle-emissions regulation, the National Action Plan on Climate Change and the UJALA scheme to promote energy-efficient light globes. Overconsumption of the Earth’s resources means anything consumed after July 28 is debt borrowed from the Earth’s future. If it is not slowly repaid, exhaustion of the existing resources on Earth will put human existence in danger. The Global Footprint Network report suggests that if we make Overshoot Day later by five days every year from now until 2050, the resources produced by the Earth will be enough for human consumption. This means natural-resource efficiency and energy conservation are essential. Only then can this Earth continue to support life for all. Abhijeet Anand is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Rural Development and Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Presently, he is pursuing a PhD in the field of carbon capture and sequestration for sustainable development. His research interests include the thermochemical conversion of biomass, carbon sequestration, life cycle assessment, and energy system modelling for sustainable development. Priyanka Kaushal is an associate professor at the Centre for Rural Development and Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Her research area includes biomass-to-energy (torrefaction, pyrolysis, gasification), SYN gas and poly-generation (CHP, Bio-SNG, FT-Fuel, hydrogen enrichment), valorisation of agriculture residues through various biochar applications, and assessment of technologies for climate change mitigation. She has worked at the interface between clean energy technology, society, and climate change for the last eighteen years. The authors declare no conflict of interest. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on July 28, 2022

India's oldest cities offer modern lessons - 360 K. T. Ravindran Published on February 24, 2022 21st century urban designers rediscover centuries-old tradition in India Dholavira, a 4,670 year old city with orthogonal streets, planned urban spaces and underground water and sewage management was recognised as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2021. Hundreds of such planned cities are dotted across the Indian subcontinent. Evolved over centuries, India’s ancient urban heritage offers many lessons in this era of worsening climate change. The idea of ‘vernacular urbanism’ — that is, cities and settlements that respond to local weather and climate patterns is recognised by both academics and the building industry. The old cities of India have much to offer 21st century urban development. Urban development in the 20th century was characterised by urban sprawl and high-rise city cores. Cities expanded up and out. Urban experts from Patrick Geddes to Louis Mumford to Jane Jacobs, have recognised suburbia and high-rise city centres as unsustainable. They involve a massive ecological footprint, water management problems and problematic transportation systems, along with the poor quality of life they offer to the majority of citizens. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, a 21st century invention, point to what was already realised in the pre-industrial city. The fundamental characteristics of the traditional city in India are its compact city form with non-motorised transit systems cutting down wasteful consumption of resources and high pollution load that contribute to climate change. It’s a built form perfected over hundreds of years. Indian cities such as Shahjahanabad (which became Delhi), a living city planned and built in the 17th century, as well as many other traditional cities of the Global South, exhibited exactly the features that the UN SDGs strive for. The old compact cities occupy less land than modern metropolises as many of them are built on geographical high-points, often resulting in a high-density — but not high-rise — living, good public transport networks, and mixed-use areas that embrace work, home and play within the one area. Their hill-top locations reduce the extent of infrastructure, both physical and social, and in a modern context reduce demand for electrical and electronic systems. The resulting savings in fossil fuel consumption and overall capital investment contribute to climate change resistance. Before the term was invented, old cities had already embraced mixed-use zoning. The compact city reduces commuting distances and provides for proximate recreation spaces. Transportation systems within old cities are usually well shaded pedestrian networks, which also ensure cooling airflow. The shaded streets double as open spaces where playing children are within the ‘eyes on the street’ of the family. The compact old city often located larger institutional buildings on higher ground while being connected by the movement lines in the valleys. These large institutional buildings spontaneously generate public open spaces in front of them, functioning as a distribution hub for natural airflow. In the hot-arid regions of India, the continuous air change improves the micro-climate and most recently provided necessary air change during the pandemic. The value of low-rise—high-density development is now well recognised by academics and eminent urban designers like Léon Krier, Charles Correa, Jan Gehl as more sustainable compared to urban sprawl or the energy guzzling high-rise—high-density forms. The pandemic made matters worse where viral movement through lifts and vertical ducts found a free flow. Sealed glass windows and recycled air from the HVAC systems aggravated viral circulation even further. Post-pandemic, low-rise—optimum-density development (optimum density varies from culture to culture, climate to climate) is likely to have a resurgence, not only to address the pandemic but also as a more energy efficient, human-scaled city form. Four to five storey walkups often characterise the old settlements. These contribute less to urban overheating as the heat-absorbing surface area of the building mass is considerably reduced. Modern construction materials — from production to consumption to waste — are undoubtedly unsustainable. Steel, glass, aluminium and plastics have huge impacts in their mining and are highly energy intensive in their production. They also involve long distance, fossil fuel based transportation. But these are, at present, ‘normal  materials’ of construction. The huge embodied energy in modern materials are compounded by the energy required for their upkeep, cooling, and heating. Traditional, organic building materials such as timber, clay, and straw use little energy to create and therefore have a considerably lower ecological footprint than materials such as steel and concrete. The local materials are sourced from short distances with minimal transportation costs, are built in compression-based construction systems with minimum steel and without a globalised supply chain. The resulting aesthetic was also culturally mediated through centuries of building traditions. If the building industry’s contribution to carbon emissions, currently pegged at 40 percent, is to be brought down, the only solution would be to humanise the scale of construction. At present, across the world, vernacular settlements of thousands of square metres are lying neglected. Meanwhile new developments are aggressively conquering more and more land for city expansion. Renewal and adaptation of the neglected housing stock in old cities could yield considerable amount of built form of high thermal comfort. It would mean near zero additional carbon footprint. It would be a tough call for a capital-hungry building industry to restrain itself to reinvention. But the climate crisis is now largely non-negotiable. Urban Design as a discipline thrives on three-dimensional studies and simulation of climate variables on city form. Rediscovering old cities is a possible direction for a climate friendly future. K T Ravindran is a visiting professor at NITTE University, Mangalore, India; Former Head, Dean, Urban Design School of Planning and Architecture Delhi; Dean Emeritus and Senior Academic Advisor, RICS School of Built Environment. The author has no conflicts of interest to declare. This article has been republished in the wake of heatwaves in India, China and Europe. It first appeared on March 11, 2022. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on February 24, 2022

India’s overt and covert chilling of press freedom - 360 Sukumar Muralidharan Published on May 3, 2022 The Pegasus spyware scandal triggered more questions than answers about how long the Indian government has been weaponising social media data. Of the 50,000 mobile phones hit by the Pegasus spyware scandal, it was revealed last year some 1,000 belonged to journalists, civil rights activists and public figures in India. Another 800 or so were from the neighbouring state of Pakistan, according to The Wire. Pegasus, Israeli software intended to help government agencies fight terrorism and crime, was reportedly being used by governments around the world to spy on people for reasons unrelated to national security. The developer of the software, Israel’s NSO Group, has pleaded innocence. The agencies deploying the snooping software remain mostly unidentified. Now, more than five years after India is believed to have contracted to acquire Pegasus, a committee headed by a retired judge of India’s Supreme Court and comprising three technical experts, will inquire into the Pegasus allegations. Caught in Pegasus’ web in India were two founders of The Wire (an independent Indian media outlet), an editor engaged in the specialised field of diplomacy and at least three frequent contributors, along with reporters and commentators on strategic affairs from India’s most important daily newspapers. Other targets included journalists reporting from some of India’s most conflict-prone zones, such as Kashmir, the north-east, and the states subject to left-wing insurgencies, such as Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. Investigative journalists who had uncovered evidence of malfeasance in awarding official contracts were on the list, as were journalists who had reported on business connections the current Indian regime is believed to be promoting. Rajeev Sharma, a freelance reporter on defence and strategic matters, was arrested in September 2020 on charges of espionage. His name had earlier been revealed to have been on the surveillance list. In December 2020, he was granted bail after the police failed to file a case against him. In July 2021 he was arrested on charges of money-laundering by an agency tasked with the investigation of financial crimes. He was granted bail by the Delhi High Court in January this year. Though the fact of surveillance was established beyond ambiguity, there has been little clarity on how long it has been carried out. In testimony before a committee directed by the Supreme Court to probe the surveillance scandal, investigative journalist J. Gopikrishnan, himself a target, spotted a line item in the Indian government’s 2017-18 budget as the probable giveaway. The National Security Agency, headed by a person believed to enjoy the Prime Minister’s absolute confidence, gained an increased budgetary allocation of ₹3 billion (roughly US$44 million) that year, for the declared purpose of “cybersecurity”. In 2019, the firm that owns the instant messaging service WhatsApp detected the use of Pegasus in a hack of user accounts. It has since sued the NSO group in a matter that is yet to be decided. The Indian government in 2019 confirmed the infiltration of some WhatsApp accounts but provided few additional details about how it intended to deal with the breach of user privacy. In an intervention in Parliament soon after the 2021 revelations, India’s Minister for Information Technology, himself believed to be on the hack list, rejected them as utter falsehoods. He said surveillance operations in India were carried out for legitimate national security purposes, after securing all necessary clearances. The story of unauthorised surveillance was, he asserted, part of a conspiracy to defame India’s robust democratic practices. In the days that followed, that narrative was faithfully amplified by a chorus line of ruling party functionaries. But it has been known since the 2014 election that brought it to power, that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) runs a tightly organised influence operation on social media. Since assuming office, the Modi government has made at least seven separate attempts to set up an agency with the mandate to monitor citizens’ social media activity and where possible, influence public attitudes. Nuthalapati Venkata Ramana, Chief Justice of India, has spoken in the context of Pegasus of the “chilling effect” that snooping techniques may have on press freedom, and the importance of the protection of journalistic sources in a democratic society. The Modi government’s ambitions of total control through network connectivity is a dream that dies hard. It is obvious now that alongside the overt efforts at securing that objective, a covert process has been underway for longer than anybody has yet been able to assess. Sukumar Muralidharan is Professor in the school of journalism at the O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat. He has been a print media journalist and a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He declared no conflicts of interest in relation to this article. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “Journalism under digital siege” sent at: 02/05/2022 11:20. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 3, 2022

India’s race to a green hydrogen future - 360 Ajay Shankar Published on November 1, 2023 The march to a net zero future has received a boost with India announcing a suite of green hydrogen plans. India has grand plans for transitioning to a green hydrogen energy. The Green Hydrogen Policy put out by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) envisages the production of 10 million tons of green hydrogen by 2030 with half of that being used as a  substitute for fossil fuels in transport and in the hard to abate industrial sectors.  The other 5 million tons would be earmarked for export. The world urgently needs to stop using fossil fuels and the window of opportunity of saving mankind is closing rapidly. The plan requires a whole-of-government approach. Accordingly an Empowered Group has been put in place to coordinate. Financial incentives and programs are being developed by various departments . These are essential for giving investors the confidence needed for rapid private investment in what is currently an expensive sector. It is hoped that green hydrogen production, supply, and uses would create the ecosystem and the domestic capacities for rapid scaling up by the end of this decade. This would help accelerate India’s journey to net zero as green hydrogen offers promise as a technically feasible substitute for fossil fuels in industrial processes and transport where renewable electricity cannot. For the production of green hydrogen, Rs 13,050 crores (USD$1.62 billion)  in financial incentives have been announced and another Rs 4,440 crores (USD$533 million) for the production of electrolysers. Green hydrogen production incentives will start at Rs 50 (USD$0.60) per kg in the first year then be reduced to Rs 40 (USD$0.48 ) in the second  year and Rs 30 (USD$0.36) in the third and final year. Electrolyser production incentives will be  similarly graded down over five years. Firms would become eligible for these incentives through a bid process. The scramble to hop aboard the green hydrogen bandwagon has begun with numerous private firms such as Reliance, Adani, ReNew Power and L&T lining  up for a piece of the action. Reliance wants to produce green hydrogen for $USD1 a kg by 2030. Ten states have also been identified as potential production hubs. Gujarat is leading the way providing leading energy companies such as Reliance and Adani with land required for producing green hydrogen and generating solar power needed to produce it. Karnataka has similar plans. Maharashtra has unveiled its own green hydrogen program with an outlay of over Rs 8,000 crores (USD$960 million). Kerala aims to become a net carbon zero state by 2050. It’s important, however, to reduce costs across the full supply chain for different uses of green hydrogen to get to net zero quickly. Three ministries — Steel, Road Transport and Posts, Shipping and Waterways — have already had funds allocated for initiating projects. In addition Rs 450 crores (USD$480 million) has been provided for research and development projects by inviting proposals The next step is to generate demand for production. The Maharashtra government provides a subsidy of Rs 50 (USD$0.60) per kg for the blending of green hydrogen into gas. It’s also providing 30 percent of the funds for 20 hydrogen refuelling stations. There  is also a capital subsidy for 500 hydrogen fuel cell passenger vehicles; Rs 60 lakhs (USD$72,000) per vehicle or 30 percent of the capital cost, whichever is lower. Green hydrogen is just the beginning. The production of green ammonia using green hydrogen is also envisaged. Green ammonia can give us green fertiliser, green shipping and green electricity for meeting seasonal peaks. India hopes its green hydrogen mission will make it a globally competitive producer and consumer by 2030. It could then be well placed to move towards becoming a carbon net zero economy. Ajay Shankar is a Distinguished Fellow at the The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on November 1, 2023

India’s rice trade at risk in Red Sea attacks - 360 Tridivesh Singh Maini Published on March 13, 2024 India’s famed basmati rice variety is among the commodities hit by supply chain disruption caused by the Houthi attacks on the Red Sea. India’s lucrative rice trade is at risk after repeated attacks on its ships on the Red Sea. Since mid-November 2023, Iran-backed Houthi rebels have been striking cargo vessels — even some bound for Iran — as part of a wider strategy to disrupt global supply chains. New Delhi is worried its exports of basmati rice, worthUSD$3.97 billion in export earnings (for the period April-December 2023), could be hit.  On an official visit to Tehran in November 2023, Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told his Iranian counterpart the attacks were “…a matter of great concern to the international community” and “obviously, it also has a direct bearing on India’s energy and economic interests.” Jaishankar added that “this fraught situation is not to the benefit of any party and this must be clearly recognised”. The joint statement by Jaishankar and Iranian Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian viewed the Houthi attacks as a “perceptible increase in threats to the safety of maritime commercial traffic in this important part of the Indian Ocean”. The Houthis’ unexpected strikes against Indian shipping on the Red Sea figured high during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s February 13 deliberations with United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan. This happened against the backdrop of the wider geopolitical situation in West Asia. The Yemen-based Houthis attacks on Red Sea shipping have not only had a significant impact on global trade and oil prices, but also in geopolitics. The US and India took little time to respond, throwing in their navy resources to protect shipping lanes and ensure commercial vessels remained safe against the backdrop of the larger Israel-Hamas conflict. The Houthis claimed that the attacks constituted ‘retribution’ for Israel’s disproportionate military response to the October 7 Hamas attacks, especially on Gaza. The Red Sea is an important lifeline for the global supply chain and international trade. It connects to the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal, which accounted for an estimated 10-15 percent of global trade in 2023, including oil exports, according to UNCTAD estimates. An estimated 25-30 percent of global container shipping volumes also pass through the Suez. India’s blue water capabilities have grown remarkably – demonstrated by the Indian Navy’s swift action against Somalian pirates between 2010 and 2024. New Delhi has sought to play a more active oceanic role that is oriented towards protecting its shipping and supply chain interests. Like all major regional economies, India has not been immune to the financial effects of the Houthi attacks, especially  in a climate of steadily rising shipping costs. Freight costs from Shanghai to Chennai rose by 144 percent between November 2023 and January 2024. Freight costs from India to the US and Europe rose 40-50 percent in some sectors, such as pharmaceuticals and cars, between September 2023 and January 2024. India’s basmati exports are significantly affected as over one-third of production is shipped to West Asia, Europe, North Africa and North America via the Red Sea. These regions account for 50 percent of India’s overall exports. The alternate route via the Cape of Good Hope has consequently raised shipping costs. Just over a month after the Houthi attacks began, there were fears that basmati export prices could rise by as much as 20 percent. While the Indian government did not expect basmati demand to be affected, officials cautioned that prolonged disturbance on the Red Sea could cause a further increase in prices. Even as all eyes are on rising oil and basmati prices, disruptions to other areas — such as tea, spices, fruits and buffalo meat — are hitting exporters’ bottom lines. Likewise, there are reports of delays in imports of fertilisers, sunflower oil, machinery parts and electronic goods to India. This in turn raises the risk of hitting consumers’ pockets. India’s concern over disruption in the global supply chain must be understood in the context of the overall international economic impact. Oil tanker transit through the Suez Canal dropped 23 percent in January 2024 compared to November 2023. Rerouting petroleum products and cargo via South Africa also resulted in a significant increases in transit time — as much as 10-14 days. Costs have also increased by 30 percent. Shipping rates from North Asia to Europe had already risen since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict in October 2023, and other routes were impacted. This could lead to global inflation. According to a JP Morgan report, if the Red Sea tumult and the spike in container shipping costs continued, core goods inflation could go up by 0.7 percent, while overall inflation could rise 0.3 percent. There is growing realisation that the Houthi attacks pose a serious challenge to the global economy, especially at a time when it is already in the throes of geopolitical crises in Ukraine and Palestine. While speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai on February 12, IMF Director Kristalina Georgieva and World Bank Chief Ajaypal Banga flagged the Red Sea attacks as a threat to the world economy. The US, which has a significant stake in the Red Sea, has impressed upon China to force the Houthis to show restraint. China conveyed to Iran that economic ties between Beijing and Tehran could be impacted if the Houthis’ Red Sea attacks continued. However, some analysts suspect China is only preserving its own interests in the Red Sea, limiting the degree to which it will intervene. States have responded to the Houthi attacks in different ways — finding alternate trade routes or using diplomacy — but no tangible solution has emerged. India too will likely be impacted significantly, though it remains to be seen how it mitigates the economic damage while searching for a diplomatic solution. Tridivesh Singh Maini is an Assistant Professor at O.P. Jindal Global University’s Jindal School of International Affairs (JSIA). Maini was earlier a visiting fellow at JSIA, a public policy scholar at The Hindu Centre for Politics and Policy in Chennai and an Asia Society India-Pakistan Regional Young Leaders Initiative Fellow. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on March 13, 2024

India's rocky road to social media independence - 360 Pradeep Ninan Thomas Published on May 23, 2022 The prospect of freeing India from the grip of big social media platforms is alluring, but an embrace of local start-ups comes with its own risks. A new wave of local, or ‘swadeshi’, social-media start-ups aims to disrupt India’s reliance on foreign platform–driven communications – but political backing and scant content moderation are red flags. The term swadeshi originally meant economic, political and cultural independence from Britain, but today the word is imbued with nationalist, ‘made in India’ overtones. Swadeshi apps can be loosely defined as apps that are explicitly supportive of the present government’s nationalist agenda and willingly accept governmental control or those that are keen to establish an alternative to the dominance of Big Tech. Given the language diversity in India and the reality of Hindi-English dominance, there is ample scope for language and dialect-specific apps. Large tech platforms can’t ignore India: their Indian user bases are significantly larger than those in the United States. The Indian government, which has a legislative requirement to police content, has attempted some regulatory measures. Its Equalisation Levy (2016) created a tax regime specifically for the online economy, while the Indian Personal Data Protection Bill (2019), Data Accessibility and Use Policy have focused on users’ rights. The need to be actively involved offers the government opportunities to shape platform rules and take down, control and censor content. The government is notorious for its habitual attempts to censor social media in ‘disturbed’ areas, including Kashmir and North-East India, and during the year-long farmer demonstrations in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. These efforts at censorship have been hampered by the government’s inability to make social media companies keep copies of their consumer transactions in India. But there is another approach to curbing the power of global social media companies: to encourage and invest in indigenous social media companies. Following China’s lead, India’s Hindu nationalist government is a keen advocate for a wholly indigenous media infrastructure. China’s indigenous apps, such as WeChat and Weibo, allow the state to exercise more control over the social ecology of its citizens than a multinational platform would grant. Indian yoga entrepreneur and businessman Baba Ramdev launched a swadeshi WhatsApp lookalike, Kimbho, in 2018. It has been plagued by security concerns and has recently reinvented itself as the chat app Bolo Messenger, which has faced some of the same issues. India’s ban on the Chinese short-video app TikTok in 2020, following major border clashes between China and India, led to a flurry of swadeshi apps, including Sharechat, Koo, Josh, Mitron, VerSe, Roposo and Chingari. But Instagram, Facebook and Twitter continue to command a larger market share. The fact that Koo is backed by investors from China has dented its ambitions, while Tooter, the Twitter rival launched in 2021, is allegedly a copy of the right-wing US site Gab. Twitter helps politicians grow their following and communicate their agenda widely, but it continues to be swamped by disinformation and bots. WhatsApp hosts everyday conversations but is also home to groups that recruit, mobilise and organise coordinated extremist actions. While there is implicit government support for swadeshi sites, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been less forthright in explicitly backing any, since none are in a position to challenge the heft of global tech companies like Facebook and Twitter. Tooter has claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Tooter account has 20,400 followers and 778 posts, but BJP officials have pointed out these are just copies of posts he has made on Twitter. Right-wing influencers like Modi are canny enough to recognise the political mileage related to the sentiment of swadeshi start-up enthusiasts, but they favour pragmatism over significant presence on these sites. Like its counterpart in the US, India’s right wing has felt that Twitter and other platforms have been anti-conservative. They have especially decried attempts at content moderation that they feel have unfairly impacted on their belief in and right to free speech (inclusive of hate speech) and the fact that foreign-owned Big Tech platforms have not complied with takedowns directed by the Indian government in full. It is not surprising that lack of content moderation is a pronounced public feature on sites like Koo and Tooter. While these new, domestic start-ups have political support and are trying to exploit the potential for regional content, their global competitors have also begun investing in localisation and language support. The government also has to balance internal dissensions and divisions with respect to social media platforms. The economic wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh political party, the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, has taken a stridently regulatory position. As a government with global ambitions and responsibilities, Modi’s administration must also balance its trading relationship with the US, an economic ally and home to many big social media companies. While competition in the marketplace for social media is an absolute necessity, indigenous social media platforms may do more harm than good in India. Already, the government does not intervene in Hindu right-wing social media activism. Indigenous social media platforms risk being further weaponised against minorities and polarising communities. What does this mean for countervailing power online? Perhaps India does not need many social media platforms to cater to the diverse interests of the Indian public. But if the current state of legacy media in India is anything to go by, this space too will come under the state’s control. The issue will not ultimately be ‘English versus vernacular language social media’ or ‘transnational versus indigenous social media’ but whether social media platforms will remain an independent space for all views. Pradip Ninan Thomas is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland. He has written extensively on the media in India, the latest being Information Infrastructures in India: The Long View, Oxford University Press, 2022. The author declared no conflicts of interest in relation to this article. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: Pradip Thomas, University of Queensland on indigenous social media apps in India

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 23, 2022

India’s social safety net offers lessons as food prices rocket up - 360 Dipa Sinha Published on September 27, 2022 India’s inflation problem is making hunger worse and attempts to fix inflation may just add to poverty. India’s foodgrain rations kept millions of people from falling into extreme poverty during the pandemic. Now, as the government considers whether or not to extend the scheme for the sixth time, it must factor in India’s complex food inflation problem. India’s poor spend more than 40 percent of their incomes on food, compared with 36 percent for welfare-dependent households in Australia, and 27 percent for those on the lowest incomes in the US. For these groups, sustained increases in food prices mean a rise in both hunger and poverty. While the period before the pandemic saw exceptionally low food inflation in India, the pandemic induced increase in food insecurity has not waned since lockdowns ended. In recent months, this has been further exacerbated by food and fuel price inflation. Wholesale and consumer prices indices measure the changes in prices in relation to a reference year. These are estimated based on price data for a representative consumption basket and give a break up of prices for food and non-food commodities. As such, the inflation rate gives the rate of increase in prices compared to the same month in the previous year. The food index within India’s wholesale price index (WPI) increased on an average by 10 percent since the beginning of 2022, reaching a peak of 12.4 percent in June 2022. Food prices in India have been going up due to global as well as domestic factors, primarily related to supply shocks due to various reasons as well as global increases in oil prices. While wheat prices started going up from September 2021, the Ukraine invasion and heat waves in India have also added to global price rises, along with vulnerability in wheat availability. Similar trends are seen in CPI as well, with the inflation in cereals being 7 percent, oils and fats 7.52 percent, vegetables 10.9 percent and food and beverages overall at 6.71 percent in July 2022. Wages have not kept pace with prices. In the two years to June 2022, average agricultural wages (real) declined by 2.67 percent and average non-agricultural wages (real) in rural areas dropped by 4.51 percent. With food becoming less affordable, people tend to switch to inferior quality foods and also cut down on more nutritious items such as fruit, high-nourishment vegetables, milk and meat. A problem given diets in India already lack diversity and essential nutrients. An estimated 70 percent of Indians cannot afford a healthy diet. Inflationary pressures on food prices are expected to continue due to various factors related to climate as well as speculative finance. The introduction of a 5 percent GST on packaged food items including rice, wheat, curd, lassi, papad and honey in July this year could further hike food prices. Although only cereals are distributed through the government rations scheme known as the  Prime Minister’s Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana or PMGKAY, they could prove critical as food prices continue to rise. PMGKAY helps people maintain their cereal consumption even during increases in prices of staples and frees up money which people can then spend on other foods. There is apprehension the scheme may not be extended given the strain on domestic food production and availability of foodgrains. India’s public procurement of wheat in 2022 has been half that of previous years. This was partly due to the fall in production of wheat caused by heatwaves but also because market prices rose above the minimum support price (MSP) offered by the government diverting grain to private trade. Delayed rains and low productivity in the current rice season mean rice production could decline by about 15 percent over last year. How this might impact rice procurement by the government remains to be seen. With rising prices and supply shocks, the government may need to offer farmers higher prices to maintain rice stocks. The expansion of the Public Distribution System as well as using other government schemes such as the school midday meals and anganwadi services (for children under six, pregnant and lactating women), are important measures protecting people from hunger. But there is also a need to understand the structure of food inflation in India and address various issues related to production, trade, storage and transportation for different crops. The solution to food inflation in India then, as some experts have suggested, may not lie in traditional monetary policy interventions. Inflation-targeting may in fact worsen the situation by reducing the incomes of the poor further. Dipa Sinha is Assistant Professor School of Liberal Studies, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University, Delhi. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on September 27, 2022

India's stake in the global hydrogen economy - 360 Ajay Shankar, The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi Published on November 23, 2021 By Ajay Shankar, The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi The pursuit of a hydrogen economy has become the new frontier in technologically advanced countries. Hydrogen can be used to generate clean energy — a key development for many nations transitioning towards net carbon zero. India is the latest to display an  ambitious hydrogen push. In August, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the country’s plan to become a global hub for hydrogen production and exports through a National Hydrogen Mission worth Rs 850 crores (US$114.3 million) over the next three years. He said green hydrogen — energy storage created by using renewables to power the electrolysis of water — will greatly reduce India’s carbon emissions. India is the second Asian nation to announce a pivot towards green hydrogen, but certainly not the first in the world. Japan has been pioneering the green hydrogen economy after becoming the first country to adopt a national hydrogen framework in 2017. It showcased the use of hydrogen gas to run buses, cars, and to generate electricity at the Tokyo Olympics and placed hydrogen as one of its priority technology areas in the 2020 Green Growth strategy. In Germany, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier last year announced Berlin’s aim to become “number one in the world for hydrogen technologies”, more recently allocating around 8 billion euros (US$9.2 billion) to fund its hydrogen projects. Germany’s National Hydrogen Strategy relies on building a strong domestic market and will be mainly used in the industrial and transport sector. In comparison, India’s current hydrogen production is still minuscule. But it’s trying to leapfrog the competition by creating a cost-effective ecosystem, hoping innovation and mass production will push it into a major hub. It plans to do this by creating partnerships and providing momentum to catch up via the National Hydrogen Mission. Several organisations have already begun working on the Mission, with the nation’s largest industrial group, Reliance, announcing  its plan to produce the cheapest green hydrogen in the world at US$1 a kilogram before the end of the decade. India will need to avoid common missteps such as trying to reinvent the wheel or spreading resources too thin if it is to succeed. Getting electrolysers to be cheaper and more efficient through innovation is the key to reducing the cost of green hydrogen, with renewables already being the cheapest source of electricity in the country. India would also need to get companies to use hydrogen in shipping, steel and cement plants and other hard to abate sectors through trial runs. As well as providing government grants and subsidies to these plants to offset the initial higher cost of using hydrogen. Public sector enterprises should be encouraged by the national government to invest in a coordinated manner, such as in storage and the supply chain of hydrogen. Doing so could enable fossil fuel-based government energy companies to transform themselves in a decarbonised economy. Government support through demands, subsidies and regulatory changes and regulations will be crucial. The Indian government can also enact policy and regulatory instruments to create markets with a competitive industry structure. Competitive procurements by government agencies have created a robust industry structure in renewable energy over the last decade. In due course, it can also mandate a progressive increase in the use of hydrogen in steel production or other industrial areas to drive competition and decrease prices. Firms that are developing cutting edge technologies will seek new markets and set up production plants if India can ensure its viability in the industry through attractive returns. The costs of the hydrogen supply chain have come down sharply over the last decade in conjunction with the success of cost reduction in renewables, electric cars and battery storage for the grid. Hydrogen is currently seen as a competitive solution for heavy-duty trucks travelling long distances. It’s the only substitute for fossil fuels in many industrial sectors, particularly where the use of batteries will not suffice. We are also likely to see it used in future aviation services, as Airbus plans to develop planes using hydrogen fuel by 2035. But pure hydrogen does not occur in nature and so far it has been too expensive to use on any significant scale — holding back much of its possibility for progress.The hydrogen car, for example, is more costly than the lithium-ion battery electric car, with Toyota’s Mirai hydrogen car costing twice as much as its similar sized Camry. And while green hydrogen can be made from readily-available water through electrolysis, it’s an energy intensive process. Hydrogen also needs costly high-pressure containers made of specialised materials for storage and transportation. The global effort to develop a competitive hydrogen market should be aided by government investments to create a market large enough for economies of scale, therefore facilitating innovation and lowering overall costs. Government interventions and incentives would cover the process of turning gas and methane to hydrogen, the cost of electrolysers for green hydrogen and the infrastructure for hydrogen fuelling stations. Subsidies could aid the price of hydrogen vehicles, the switch to hydrogen fuel in steel and cement plants, shipping and other sectors which may struggle with the transition from traditional forms of energy. The Indian Hydrogen Mission will need to do the same. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Ajay Shankar is Distinguished Fellow at The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on November 23, 2021

India’s vaccine diplomacy put politics before people - 360 Karthik Nachiappan Published on December 8, 2021 India found itself in an advantageous position to react to the regional need for vaccines, but it used the opportunity to advance its diplomatic interests. By Karthik Nachiappan, National University of Singapore India has been lauded for mitigating the COVID-19 outbreak by ramping up the production and distribution of vaccines. Some by hoarding or stockpiling jabs. But New Delhi’s efforts have advanced the country’s diplomatic and commercial interests at the expense of global health priorities. When the pandemic hit, India found itself in an advantageous position to react to the regional need for vaccines, thanks to its large pharmaceutical manufacturing capabilities. New Delhi embarked on an ambitious through which 66 million vaccines were donated or sold to 95 countries. Both Covishield and Covaxin, vaccines produced by the Serum Institute (SII) and Bharat Biotech, However, India’s vaccine diplomacy could have reaped greater dividends in vaccine equity, particularly to provide reliable access to vaccines for developing countries, had it used the opportunity to do so. Instead, it allowed foreign policy considerations to impact decisions. Vaccines became a source of competition in a crowded geopolitical context in South Asia. Countering China’s influence was a priority, among others. A third of India’s vaccine shipments went to South Asian countries, ostensibly to mend deteriorating ties with Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. These countries . Beijing more recently to realise various development projects, including support to manufacture Chinese vaccines domestically, procuring testing kits, PPEs and rebuilding health infrastructures during the pandemic. EMBED START Image {id: "editor_2"} EMBED END Image {id: "editor_2"} Developing indigenous vaccines allowed India an opportunity to check China’s overtures, reverse Beijing’s recent gains and increase its goodwill. China was also among the first to engage in vaccine diplomacy, particularly for developing countries. Their head start on developing vaccines and the rapid distribution possibly spurred Indian efforts, and New Delhi stepped into this context with a more viable vaccine that it could ship with relative ease. Evidence that China’s COVID-19 vaccines potentially furthered India’s goals as Indian vaccines generally had fewer efficacy doubts. India was a vaccine juggernaut even before the pandemic. Two-thirds of the world’s children are protected by India’s famed SII vaccines, as it produces 60 percent of global vaccines for diseases like measles, tetanus, diphtheria and hepatitis. The coronavirus gave the industry a new mission — to produce COVID-19 vaccines, including Covishield, the brand name for the locally produced AstraZeneca jab. Vaccines also gave the Indian government a way to exercise its capability as a crisis-responder in South Asia and provide immediate solutions to problems, like COVID-19. However, vaccine exports were contingent on having enough domestic stock to immunise Indian citizens.It also created pressure to balance competing needs – including the stockpiling of vaccines for India should third waves and fourth waves hit. In late 2020, , the multilateral vaccine facility created by Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) and the Gates Foundation, to get low-and-middle-income countries vaccinated. COVAX’s mission was to deliver fair and equitable access to safe COVID-19 vaccines, particularly to developing countries that could not buy them on the open market. Covishield became the backbone of the COVAX vaccine-sharing program given the difficulty of procuring Moderna/Pfizer vaccines for developing countries. SII, which receives financial support from the Gates Foundation, pledged to manufacture and to 64 lower-income COVAX economies alongside its commitments to the Indian government. Of the 200 million, were set to be delivered between February and May 2021 to COVAX. But only 30 million Covishield doses were delivered to COVAX for distribution due to increased domestic need during the second COVID-19 wave. By mid-April 2021, the Indian government committed to only 20 million Covishield doses through COVAX, while exporting nearly 47 million doses bilaterallyTwo factors intervened — first, the second wave placed a huge demand on domestic vaccinations and itbecame impossible to supply the amount COVAX required given constraints imposed by the government. And second, SII gave half of its Covishield stock to the Indian government, which shipped them abroad as donations and exports. Nearly half of India’s vaccine exports were commercial deals, some made with diplomatic objectives in mind, particularly in Nepal and Sri Lanka. Official government figures show that commercial deals have since grown to more than 50 percent. EMBED START Image {id: "editor_7"} EMBED END Image {id: "editor_7"} COVAX appears to have been undermined as recipient countries felt it had to  procure doses quicker through bilateral agreements due to delays and competing pressures of multilateral facilities. The initiative’s efficacy and success fundamentally hinged on vaccine producing countries like India sublimating their domestic interests to that of global health needs. COVAX’s reliance on SII’s Covishield relative to other vaccines, which made the abrupt drop in supply devastating. But more than just access to existing vaccine supplies, India’s vaccine diplomacy furthered the private provision of vaccines. This trend gave countries with the financial means to scramble and make deals with vaccine manufacturers directly rather than supplying COVAX or having COVAX negotiate prices with vaccine manufacturers. India’s importance to COVAX was not just as a vaccine supplier but also as a force that would prioritise vaccine equity through a global collective just when the United States and European nations were investing in national efforts to produce and hoard vaccines. India could have concurrently prioritised delivering vaccines to COVAX alongside its vaccine diplomacy before the second COVID-19 wave hit given rising vaccine nationalism globally. For poorer countries, lack of access to vaccines and a lack of means to procure them was a big constraint and remains so today. Vaccines have been a lifeline during the pandemic and had India focused more on COVAX before the second wave struck, it would have given these countries additional life-saving vaccines and made nations less reliant on the market. Originally published under by 360info™. Karthik Nachiappan is a Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. He is the author of Does India Negotiate? (Oxford University Press, 2020). The author decalred no conflicts of interest in relation to this article.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on December 8, 2021

India’s Wire scandal a lesson for media - 360 Sukumar Muralidharan Published on January 19, 2023 A scandal involving a fake email, two computer cryptographers and a politician is a lesson for all media before India’s run of elections. India’s elections over the next 18 months will shape its future. But as focus on voters starts to rise, a scandal has reiterated the fallibility of the media. In October 2022, Delhi news platform The Wire thought it had a scoop. Meta — the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — had supposedly given special online privileges to members of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The story came from a freelancer who had previously brought The Wire a year-long investigation into a so-called “master app” called Tek Fog that could crack social media accounts and influence trends. Although sceptics doubted the reporting, The Wire initially backed it. The first story accused Meta of granting the BJP’s IT head Amit Malviya power to have posts on its platforms removed without independent review. Malviya could also reportedly post without complying with the community standards binding every other user, including former US Presidents. The freelancer’s tip-off was a satirical Instagram post about the BJP that was allegedly taken down for violating the platform’s “nudity” rules, despite all depicted being fully clothed. Instagram denied the story, but The Wire doubled down. It believed it had proof of corruption: an internal email from Instagram’s head of public relations Andy Stone, in which Stone demanded to know how the platform’s closely guarded secrets had leaked to The Wire. The Wire looked past the strange syntax of the purported email (“Send me an activity record of the document for the last one month”, the author of the email says) and would claim that the email’s authenticity had been verified by two experts in computer cryptography. Then, the story unravelled. The experts quoted by The Wire denied verifying the emails. The freelancer could not be contacted. On October 18 2022, with global media watching, The Wire announced a review of its stories. Five days later, the coverage on Meta was formally retracted. In an editorial, the platform’s leadership apologised and claimed they had been deceived into publishing the unfounded stories. The freelancer’s Tek Fog stories have also been removed from public view while an internal review of their veracity takes place. Malviya, the supposed mastermind of the BJP plot, filed a defamation suit, adding charges of cheating and forgery to invite potential criminal prosecution. When police raided The Wire’s office in Delhi and the homes of its three founding editors, as well as one staff member associated with the Meta coverage, N. Ram, former chairman and chief editor of the Chennai based The Hindu, called it “a new low in media freedom”. But the state’s tolerance for the feisty, critical journalism The Wire has practised over its seven years is low. Every transgression, however minor, has invited retribution. Despite The Wire publishing what appears to be a fabricated story, the behaviour it outlined seemed plausible in the light of the BJP’s known record of building influence through social media. The willingness for social media companies to accede to the demands of power is a poorly kept secret in India with a well-recorded history, particularly as it concerns Meta. Sheryl Sandberg, then-Chief Operating Officer of Facebook (later renamed Meta) was among the first international business leaders received by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the BJP took office in 2014. Facebook founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg came calling later that year and, in September 2015, hosted a town hall for Modi during his first visit to the United States as PM. Zuckerbeg mentioned Modi’s government in his February 2017 manifesto as an example of an administration using Facebook “to help people stay engaged” with democracy, amid claims that Facebook had become a “sewer of misinformation” that aided Donald Trump’s US election win three months before. In late 2018, then-BJP President Amit Shah told social media volunteers the party could make anything, true or false, go viral. Shah, who is currently Union Home Minister, has always been Modi’s closest political associate. Documents leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen in late 2020 revealed further details of the BJP’s influence. BJP politician T. Raja Singh’s accounts had been flagged by Facebook moderators for flagrant breaches of community guidelines, with posts that threatened Rohingya Muslim refugees with summary execution and called for the razing of mosques. But documents published by The Wall Street Journal revealed that Ankhi Das, Facebook’s head of public policy in India, turned down staff proposals to shut down Singh’s account for fear of damaging business prospects in India. Das quit months later. The Wire’s recent saga has been a sideshow that has diverted social media companies from fronting up to questions that need answering. Members of the BJP have shared misinformation and violated platform rules without punishment before. With a crucial 18 months looming in India and little indication platforms are going to be able to stop the flow of fake news entirely, domestic and international media will be tasked with serving as reliable gatekeepers of authentic information. To succeed, reputable platforms can’t be outfoxed like The Wire was. Sukumar Muralidharan is a journalist and journalism instructor based in the Delhi region. He has been a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He is on the faculty of O.P. Jindal Global University. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: In the story “Misinformation” sent at: 18/01/2023 17:25. This is a corrected repeat.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on January 19, 2023

Indigenous 6G: can India pull it off? - 360 Manoj Harjani Published on May 16, 2022 India is planning to launch a nationally-developed 6G network, despite falling behind in its 5G network rollout. But don’t count it out just yet. India’s road to 5G has been a bumpy one. In 2018, the country’s Department of Communications laid out a roadmap in its National Digital Communications Policy for a 5G rollout by 2022. Following delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Commercial 5G services are now expected later this year or in early 2023. Despite the delay, the Indian government is still hoping to launch a nationally-developed 6G network by the end of the same year. These almost simultaneous ambitions encompass the government’s push to encourage digital transformation through nationally-developed technology as countries elsewhere begin to view power and national security interests through the lens of technological development. In November 2021, India’s Department of Telecommunications (DOT) announced the formation of a 22-member technology innovation group to develop indigenous 6G technology. Not long after the DOT’s announcement, India’s Minister of Communications Ashwini Vaishnaw announced that 6G development had already started.  “We will have designed-in-India telecom software for running the networks, manufactured-in-India telecom equipment, served-in-India telecom networks, which can go global,” he said. The development of India’s local 5G standard — dubbed “5Gi” — demonstrates India’s capability to contribute to global technical standards. 5Gi spurred controversy with domestic telecom operators and equipment vendors opposing its mandatory adoption, due to interoperability and cost issues. This was despite lower deployment costs designed to encourage rural adoption. However, compromise has now been reached on 5Gi – merging it with the global 5G standard. Spectrum auctions scheduled for later this year, will set the stage for commercial rollouts. Local telecom operator Reliance Jio has also broken new ground by developing its own 5G network equipment and software solutions through joint ventures, paving the way for a similar model being employed in a future 6G rollout. It is as yet unclear how 6G will be used. But more recently, India’s Minister of State for Communications, Devusinh Chauhan, said the country aspires to take a leadership position in 6G, and contribute to global technical standards. This could be driven in part by Prime Minister Modi’s broader vision for a self-reliant India — “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” — as well as the government’s “Make in India” and “Digital India” initiatives. India’s stated timeline for 6G seems unrealistic. Key standard-setting bodies like the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) will only begin defining global 6G technical standards from next year. A significant challenge for India’s ambitions also lies in producing intellectual property (IP). Countries that produce high-quality IP often have the ability to shape how a technology is eventually developed and applied. India did not feature in a 2021 study by the Tokyo-based research company Cyber Creative of 6G patent applications by country. China topped the list with 40.3 percent of total patents, followed by the United States with 35.2 percent. Although patent filings alone do not guarantee ‘success’ in a particular technology, they provide a broad indicator of where technology development is occurring. If India is to realise its desire of taking a leadership position in 6G, it will have to significantly ramp up its production of high-quality IP. This will require investment in its research institutions across the public and private sectors, which currently lack resources compared to other major economies, a result of years of unmet promises. India spent only 0.7 percent of its GDP on research and development in 2020, compared to 2.41 percent in China and 2.32 percent for the European Union. It will be challenging to bridge such a gap in a short period of time, although this certainly does not preclude significant progress from being made. The road ahead is not without obstacles. The government will have to translate its techno-nationalist vision into regulations and investments to facilitate impactful research and applications. It will have to draw on past successes — such as with its national space programme — and apply the lessons learned. India’s space programme is widely admired for its low cost and success in bringing together public and private research institutions. The technical capabilities in India’s research institutions and telecom companies will have to be similarly harnessed through suitable public-private partnership models for India to successfully develop its own 6G network. Manoj Harjani is a Research Fellow with the Future Issues and Technology research cluster at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. The author declares no conflict of interest. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: Manoj Harjani – NTU Singapore

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on May 16, 2022

Indigenous farming knowledge is science, not superstition - 360 Su-Hie Ting, Gabriel Tonga Noweg, Yvonne Michelle Campbell Published on December 21, 2022 The Indigenous people’s respect for the land and their traditional agricultural practices can teach us to adapt to extreme weather conditions. What does it mean when you encounter snakes slithering along paths or find a bird nest with eggs? For Indigenous peoples in Malaysia, these are tell-tale signs passed down by their ancestors discouraging them from using the land. Instead, they must protect the area from unscrupulous developments. In 2021, Malaysia lost 123,000 hectares of natural forest. This is equivalent to 87 million tonnes of carbon emissions. The destruction ruined thousands of food, energy and livelihood sources for Indigenous communities. Researchers say agriculture is a significant contributor to anthropogenic global warming and reducing agricultural emissions — largely methane and nitrous oxide — could play a significant role in climate change mitigation. American economist William R Cline believes global warming reduces yields because crops speed through their development, producing less grain as higher temperatures interfere with the ability of plants to retain moisture. In large-scale farming, using bulldozers and other mechanised farming equipment compacts the soil, reducing the soil’s water storage capacity and increasing surface runoff during heavy rain. According to the German environmental organisation BUND, soil structure and humus levels in the soil are vital for flood protection. The Indigenous peoples in Malaysia have great respect for the land. The Bidayuh’s folktales or dondan teach the people that the land they inhabit does not belong to them, but to the spirits of the land. Their folk wisdom on agricultural practices is based on that respect for the land. They don’t act as masters or owners of the land. To them, the land is a shared treasure, passed down from generation to generation. The Bidayuhs will perform a ‘ngawah’ ritual on a selected piece of land a few months before carrying out any paddy planting activities. A traditional priest performs the Gawai ceremonies and presents offerings to spirits. When they notice a particular creeping plant, the Indigenous people will not disturb or use that area. This isn’t mere superstition. There is science behind it. Companion planting is when two plants are grown close together for the benefit of one or both plants. The presence of certain plant species can indicate that the land is not suitable for crops, like paddy.  Some plants compete for nutrients or space if they are planted too close together. Other plants like sunflower seeds contain a toxin that prevents potatoes from growing fully, and since insects such as tomato hornworm and certain types of fungus thrive on corn and tomatoes, planting them together can contribute to a massive fungus attack The Indigenous communities in Sarawak have adopted environmentally responsive farming practices to adapt to extreme climate changes. A big issue is declining water resources due to unpredictable rainfall patterns. In the past, the farmers in Sarawak knew that there would be the northeast monsoon season at the end of the year until February and there would be dry weather from March to October. Floods, if any, would occur during the monsoon season. However, in recent years rainfall has become unpredictable. Serious flooding in urban areas has been more prevalent in the middle of the year. This is because consecutive rainfall for two to four hours may cause flash floods. Indigenous farmers have ways to adjust their farming activities in anticipation of floods but they don’t have extensive irrigation systems to handle drought. Dry weather can cause crop failure, decrease crop yield and disrupt access to drinking water for livestock. The land needs water to flourish. Soil cover is important to prevent or reduce erosion and flooding. It also acts as a sponge to soak up excess water and stabilise temperature. Soil moisture affects the weather, affecting both temperature and precipitation. As the temperature rises, the evaporation rate of soil moisture increases. The increased soil moisture evaporation helps cool the ground. The Indigenous people know that the forest acts as a sponge, retains water during rainy days, and gradually releases the water during dry periods. The traditional response is to improve the condition of the forest in their catchment area by planting more trees such as timber trees, bamboo, rattan and wild fruit trees. Indigenous communities use plant resources for furniture and construction, consumption and medicinal purposes although different communities use plants in different ways. The Bidayuhs use Tongkat Ali or ‘longjack’, as a remedy for hypertension while the Malays use it to enhance male sexual performance. Planting more trees helps increase soil cover. In the long run, it will improve the capacity of the forest and water catchment areas to retain more water. This will ensure a more sustainable source of drinking water for the villages and maintain a stable temperature for the environment. One of the main means of livelihood for the Indigenous people is wet paddy farming in lowland areas near rivers. The lower floodplain has fertile soil but is subject to flood damage during extreme weather conditions. Villagers use streams to irrigate their fields by making weirs or small dams to divert water to the paddy fields. However, this has become difficult as floods are becoming more frequent and unpredictable. Paddy farmers have two traditional responses to flooding based on traditional knowledge. They farm on the slightly higher ground less likely to be affected by major and prolonged flooding. But since they avoid the lowland, they are left with a smaller area to plant paddy. In addition, paddy planted on higher ground does not grow well due to poorer irrigation and less fertile soil. Farmers also adjust to changing climatic conditions by predicting the likelihood of a wet or dry year. By observing weather trends in the few months before planting season (normally between April and August), they decide whether to plant on the floodplain or higher ground. This Indigenous knowledge for forecasting weather relies on signs from the environment. At the start of the dry season, usually after March, if there is a mist or fog early in the morning, it means it will be a dry year. Birds can predict weather too. To the indigenous, if the ‘Burung Kangkok’ (hawk-cuckoo) chirps loudly and noisily when the fruit trees are about to blossom, it means it will be a good fruiting year. Researchers have discovered birds can detect rising and falling barometric pressure and can predict bad or cold weather when they detect a low-pressure centre or a cold front approaching. Indigenous agricultural practices are different and interesting as a sustainable way of living because they are based on paying respect to the land. The main issue they have to contend with is the lack of water, and they have to develop farming strategies to effectively work with the land – rather than conquering or damaging the land. Traditional agricultural practices can teach us to adapt to extreme weather conditions. However, Indigenous mitigation measures are difficult to implement because their traditional practices are at odds with large-scale farming. Large-scale farming will increase to cater to the global population. Feeding a population of 9.1 billion in 2050 would require raising overall food production by some 70 percent between 2005 and 2050. Large-scale farming causes a reduction of the water storage capacity of the soil and, among other factors, will lead to rising temperatures. Large-scale farming contributes to climate change. Yet it is a necessity to feed the global population. Professor Dr Su-Hie Ting is a lecturer at the Faculty of Language and Communication, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS). Her research interests include ethnic groups and their language and culture. Professor Dr Gabriel Tonga Noweg has a background in natural resource management, forestry, environmental conservation, biodiversity management and ethnobotany. He is currently a Principal Fellow at the Institute of Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation, UNIMAS. His current research interests include ethnobotany (medicinal plants), ecology of conservation areas, conservation of community-owned forests, ecotourism and biodiversity assessment. He is a registered consultant with Natural Resource and Environment Board (NREB) in Sarawak, Malaysia. Dr Yvonne Michelle Campbell from the Faculty of Language and Communication, UNIMAS researches ethnolinguistics and Indigenous worldviews and has published journal papers on folk wisdom and cultural practices of the Bidayuh in Sarawak. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on December 21, 2022

Indigenous lore and the fire knowledge we ignore - 360 Christine Eriksen Published on January 17, 2022 As long as fire strategy prioritises suppression, the valuable knowledge of Indigenous people will continue to be sidelined. The hazy outline of the Sutter Buttes lingers on the horizon on the drive along Highway 32 connecting the Sierra Nevada Mountains with California’s Sacramento Valley. Volcanic in geology, the Buttes are, according to the Plains Miwok creation story, the source of the fire that burnt the world over. The small mountain range teaches a lesson from a time when people had to learn to use fire as a tool or live in fear of the destruction described in the ancient story. Fire has played a key role in the land management practices of Indigenous peoples for millennia. This includes Aboriginal Australians and Native Americans who share many similarities in fire knowledge. At the core of Indigenous approaches to fire is Traditional law and lore. Indigenous law is coded in the lore, the stories that define culture. Both lore and law are rooted in the landscape. According to lore, the landscape will convey its need for burning based on factors such as the accumulation of dead plant material or the decline in resource conditions. These stories may also convey the penalties for not following the laws of the land, as the Buttes do, or as depicted in Aboriginal fire paintings. Early white settlers noted that in the autumn or at the onset of the rainy season, Indigenous people would burn to ‘clean up’ landscape to remove accumulated woody fuels on the ground and facilitate the growth of luxuriant grasses and herbs. This knowledge shapes how a culture interacts with fire and more specifically how, what, where, when, and why burning occurs for cultural and environmental reasons. Indigenous fire knowledge is fluid, changing with changing conditions, and the ability to read the landscape comes with proper training. The concept of ‘proper training’, however, arguably plays out differently today from Indigenous fire knowledge of the past due to the impact of history and politics. After millennia of Indigenous cultural burning, colonisation introduced a new kind of law. Colonisers in both Australia and the USA disrupted Indigenous use of fire through the removal of people from their lands and policy prohibition. Colonial attitudes to fire, forged in the forests of Europe, focused on suppression. Indigenous use of fire, whether for resource harvesting, hunting, vegetation and soil regeneration or maintenance of communal areas, were instead seen as an environmentally degrading practice. Such fires threatened both the property and the social hierarchies of rigidly ordered colonial societies. To this day, in many parts of Australia and the US, colonisation and 20th Century fire suppression policies are continuing to act against Traditional laws. Researchers, policymakers and practitioners still have a tendency to dismiss or ignore fire knowledge that is alive today among Indigenous elders and cultural land stewards. This is despite the growing acceptance of Indigenous knowledge of cultivation systems and wildfire protection. The consequences of the continual dominance of Western environmental narratives over Indigenous land management practices in many fire-prone regions are burning that is illegal under Indigenous law, and catastrophic fires resulting in ecological and economic damage to land and property. Fire knowledge and memories are retained by Indigenous elders, cultural practitioners, and land stewards. There is far more at stake than just managing the risk of wildfire. Burning and fire knowledge can maintain culture by linking people with natural resources for food and other cultural practices. Patterns of land use and occupancy that have been weakened by changing ecosystems, climate change, and urban expansion, can be re-established. Engaging with Indigenous knowledge through fire allows Indigenous peoples in Australia and the US to re-engage as caretakers of their native lands. For example, while burns for basket-making resources have been conducted by US fire agencies in California in coordination with weavers from different tribal areas, they are done on agency time with agency rules. More than just burning to stimulate the right grasses, the fires have a cultural tradition attached to them and fire agency burns often do not achieve the desired cultural outcome. Few Tribal leaders are able to guide the burn, given the certification standards required to be on the front line of the fire, and cultural knowledge may at times not be permitted to be shared outside the Tribal laws and traditions. While we cannot reverse the history of colonisation, the retention, revival and integration of Indigenous fire knowledge with federal fire agencies can inform ongoing debates on how to coexist with fire today. A more cooperative path would, for example, introduce cultural sensitivity training for firefighters as well as awareness of the impacts of not having such training and policies in place. State and federal agencies stand to gain from the knowledge of the Indigenous cultures, which have shaped landscapes since time immemorial. When Indigenous people have not actively asserted customary law and applied fire to care for country, the laws of nature play out through wildfires. Indigenous leaders have recognised the land ‘speaking’ its needs through wildfire. Current struggles to manage the growing frequency and intensity of devastating wildfires will benefit from a greater recognition of this traditional understanding of the environment, if it is acknowledged by, and incorporated into, the practices of fire management agencies. Dr Christine Eriksen is a Senior Researcher with the Center for Security Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology (ETH Zurich). She is the author of 2 books and over 75 articles and book chapters that examine social dimensions of disasters in the context of environmental history, cultural norms, and political agendas. Follow her on Twitter: @DrCEriksen. This article has been republished for a Special Report on Indigenous lessons. It was first published on January 17, 2022. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on January 17, 2022

Indigenous peoples have adapted to drought for millennia - 360 Ademola Oluborode Jegede Published on June 22, 2022 Indigenous communities around the world pioneered drought resilience and adaptation. As extreme heat intensifies, the world needs to heed their lessons. In Kenya right now, even camels are struggling to survive. The worst drought since the 1980s has killed 1.4 million livestock and dried up lakes in the northern part of the country along with the fish in them. Three and a half million people are going hungry. Among the many people imperiled by climate change, indigenous people, who often live in marginal environments less favourable for agriculture, will be devastated. Their access to food and water is already limited, and changing natural rhythms and loss of arable land will further limit them. Drought is the slow-motion car crash in the climate change disaster litany. By 2050, 216 million people are expected to migrate because of drought. A staggering 69.6 percent of the Canadian Inuit indigenous people do not always know where their next meal is coming from. A quarter of 2,878 surveyed households of off-reserve First Nation peoples in Canada experience moderate food insecurity due to drought and more than half of on-reserve First Nation people do. The Afar community in Ethiopia have lost livestock, food and pasture due to dry climate conditions. The Endorois people in Kenya have watched their land degrade crops fail, and livestock die, causing migration and conflicts between members of the community over clean water and pasture land. To mitigate the effects of drought, the Endorois cultivate drought-resistant crops such as cereals and tubers minimising water usage and enhanced food security. Livestock and crop diversification and supplementary livestock feeding is a common practice for the Endorois. Knowledge has long been an important tool for indigenous communities in combatting and addressing the consequences of drought. Groups such as the Tay, Yao and Hmong in Vietnam use indigenous knowledge to aid food preservation, and animal and crop breeding. Native crop varieties (hilly sticky rice and tangerine) and animal breeds (black pig and chicken) are more resistant to drought and suffer less pressure from pests and diseases. Indigenous peoples in the American Pacific Northwest for instance, use dams made by beavers to enhance storage of water in times of drought. They also sow drought-resilient plants such as zucchini plants to prevent drought-related fire. Miriwoong communities in Australia utilise traditional and local knowledge to lessen bushfires through the burning of the native grasses early in the dry season, using small fires lit in a mosaic pattern so as to prevent uncontrollable fires late in the dry season. The Ngemba share stories relating to drought. They record floods with marks on the landscape to help predict the future more accurately. In doing so, they build more resilient communities to survive climate related drought. The Dokpas and Lachenpas people (who constitute the Dzumsa community in India) have weathered low rainfall and deteriorating pastures, leading to the deaths of many flocks of sheep. In mitigation of loss of livestock due to drought-related poor pasturage, the Dzumsa banned the slaughter and sale of sheep from 2007-2011. The move helped prevent total exhaustion of sheep stock. The Dzumsa also migrate to avoid the risks of drought. Adapting to changing climate conditions, at least 80 percent of Lachenpas now cultivate crops such as cabbage, corn and pumpkin that have previously been unable to grow on their land. However, indigenous knowledge is itself under threat. With droughts contributing 15 percent of natural disasters and directly claiming 650,000 lives from 1970 to 2019, adaptive practices of indigenous peoples can only sustain them to a certain extent. If we are to enhance the adaptive capacity of indigenous peoples facing drought globally, respect for indigenous peoples’ human rights and regard for their culture will be important. In the front seat of the slow-motion car-crash, indigenous peoples more than anyone, need to enhance their resilience in the face of increasing drought. Ademola Oluborode Jegede (ORCID) is a professor of law in the School of Law, University of Venda, Thohoyandou, South Africa. He holds degrees from Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife, University of Ibadan and the Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria. He has been a research visitor to the Centre for International Environmental Law, USA and Human Rights Institute at Abo Akademi, Finland. Prof Jegede declared no conflicts of interest in relation to this article. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on June 22, 2022

Indonesia at risk of missing golden economic opportunity - 360 Werry Darfa Taifur Published on November 21, 2022 A difficult road lies ahead for Indonesia. Faced with a rare opportunity to turbo-charge economic growth, it has major problems yet to solve. Indonesia, once an emerging manufacturing powerhouse, is facing an ‘early’ deindustrialisation according to Indonesian economist Ahmad Heri Firdaus. Manufacturing made up 27.7 percent of economic activity in 2000 but as of the second quarter of 2020 it had fallen to 19.8 percent. This is just one of the many factors imperilling Indonesia’s shot at lifting its economy into the big league. When the proportion of the population in their working years (15-65) is more than the dependent population (the old and the young), nations have an opportunity to turbo-charge their economies. Examples include increasing labour productivity, exploring economic potential to be a reality and increasing the nation’s competitiveness, those economies leapt up a notch, as the workers skilled up, earned more and spent their spare money. EMBED START Video {id: "editor_1"} EMBED END Video {id: "editor_1"} The opportunity occurs rarely because as the cohort of working-age people get older the number and proportion of the elderly population increases, relative to dependents. If a nation is not quick to seize the opportunity, it will miss the chance, meaning the road to prosperity is longer, slower and harder. Working-age Indonesians will reach their highest proportion in 2020-2030, opening opportunities for Indonesia to reap the so-called ‘demographic dividend’. But the moment to seize this chance is not the same across all  provinces. Since 2014, Indonesia has grouped its provinces based on the length of the demographic dividend opportunity: absent, short, or long. This grouping was intended to prove that changes in population structure and the incidence of demographic bonuses are not the same by province. There are differences in fertility rates and population mobility. Those with high rates of out-migration, such as West Sumatra and East Nusa Tenggara, experienced a short period of demographic bonus. Provinces in Eastern Indonesia still have high fertility rates. Provinces that experience out-migration and high fertility rates will have a population structure of more unproductive age than productive ones. The economic changes happening in the provinces with no wave of working-aged people cannot be attributed to the demographics. The provinces that only enjoy a short demographic dividend opportunity likewise are unlikely to be feeling the effects of the demography. EMBED START Video {id: "editor_4"} EMBED END Video {id: "editor_4"} But provinces that experience a longer period of demographic dividend opportunity will progress further. This will cause an increase in development inequality between provinces in Indonesia if there is no government intervention. Currently there are six provinces that will miss the opportunity for a demographic dividend. All of these are outside the island of Java. As long as the centres of economic activity or growth centres are concentrated on Java, the chance for the demographic dividend outside of Java is becomes lower and the opportunity shorter. Meanwhile, the opportunity for the provinces in Java becomes longer. This inequality of development is a central issue for realising the demographic dividend for Indonesia more widely. Likewise, the opportunity for the demographic dividend will be missed if the productive age population has a low educational background. Their earnings will always remain modest and so they will not contribute significantly to the development and acceleration of economic growth. The average Indonesian aged 25 years and over has only obtained 8.54 years of schooling — the equivalent of graduating from junior high school around age 15. In terms of health, Indonesia also faces serious problems. Working-age Indonesians cannot be productive if they are not healthy. More than one quarter of children under five years old are stunted though malnutrition, setting them up for a lifetime of health problems. The unemployment rate is still high in several provinces. Nationally the unemployment rate has decreased and is less than 6 percent. But many people of productive age work fewer hours than they would prefer, meaning they are underemployed, with implications for economic development. Indonesia is still overshadowed by threats of a water or energy crisis. If the government fails to manage these crises, Indonesia will miss the demographic dividend opportunity. Realising the demographic dividend is also influenced by the economic structure of a country. It can be led by a high value industrial sector, but in Indonesia deindustrialisation is taking place. The manufacturing sector, which has high productivity, is declining in the contribution to gross domestic product. Value-adding products is not yet well developed, so Indonesia's exports are dominated by primary commodities and semi-finished goods. The obstacles to taking advantage of the demographic window of opportunity that opened in 2012 in Indonesia are getting bigger. Unless there is change in the concentration of economic centres outside Java and family planning programs in the eastern part of Indonesia, Indonesia will remain trapped as a middle-income economy. Werry Darta Taifur is a professor of economics in University of Andalas, Padang Indonesia. He was the rector from 2011-2015. His research interests are in poverty, local finance and development planning. He declared that he has no conflict of interest and is not receiving specific funding in any form. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on November 21, 2022

Indonesia: Challenging ‘exploitative' fly-in, fly-out research - 360 Daniel Reidpath Published on April 11, 2022 Developing economies need research to improve quality of life. Combining developed and developing economies into a research consortium builds capacity. The indigenous Bajau people of southeast Asia live an entirely nomadic existence at sea. They have lived on houseboats for more than 1000 years, free-diving for marine resources to sustain themselves. The explanation of the human genetic changes that allowed the Bajau to adapt to this life was published in 2019. All but one of researchers came from developed economies. The one local researcher had no relevant disciplinary background and was there as logistical support. The Indonesian government saw the study as exploitative, and made moves to tighten restrictions on overseas researchers exploiting Indonesian resources for their own gain. It’s an example of a common problem: the world’s poorest economies suffer health and development deficits that require research, but they are the ones least likely to do research. The highest-income economies graduate the most PhDs per capita — the principal research qualification — whilst the poorest economies graduate the least. The current stop-gap solution is for developing economies to send their best and brightest students away to PhD programs overseas, often in developed economies. But the PhD experience in developed economies is often geared towards research training involving sophisticated techniques and equipment unavailable at home. The student cannot replicate the research environment when they return to their home institutions. A supplementary approach to improving research capacity is through research collaborations. Many developed economy researchers enjoy the opportunity to collaborate with developing economy researchers. The developed economy researchers offer much-needed injections of capital and equipment; they can also provide experience using the latest collection techniques or analytic methods. Through the collaborations, developing economy researchers grow their skills, their networks, and they are also much more likely to become authors of well-cited journal articles, which improves their international standing. However, over the past five years, there have been significant concerns raised about the nature of the developed economies-developing economies research collaborations. The concerns pivot around whether the relationship is exploitative. Are the developing economies collaborators equal partners in the research or are they, as in the case of the Bajau study, logistical support? Improving research capacity in developing economies needs to be realistic about the challenges and the structural deficits. There needs to be mutual respect. And it needs to be resilient to foreseeable shocks. For example, a Wellcome Trust-funded project was based in five institutions in four economies in West Africa with the goal to create a virtual institute for interdisciplinary research on infectious diseases. Two developed economy institutions offered support. But during the project, two of the developing economies had Boko Haram insurgencies and another had a coup. These external shocks effectively ended the network but are not atypical of the challenges of developing research capacity. Political upheaval notwithstanding, the North-South-South (NSS) approach of a network of developing economy institutions with some developed economy institutional support is promising. It is being used by the Norwegian government and in a slightly different way by the World Health Organization. It stands in contrast to one-off projects or the idea of training individuals in their personal capacity as researchers. It is more holistic and looks to the development of infrastructure, governance, and human capital. Because it is based on a multilateral partnership there are opportunities for mutual support between institutions as well as between individual researchers. Governance developments in one institution can be replicated and adapted in another. Depending on the nature of the research, infrastructure can also be shared, for example cloud computing and gene sequencers. PhD training can be based in the developing economy institutions with support from the developed economy institutions in the network, including support of developing economies supervisors. The approach builds the developing economies’ supervisory capacity. It decreases the likelihood of brain drain. The research is relevant to the developing economies setting and relies on available technologies. It is not possible to mandate mutual respect. Developed economy institutions that have been successful over the past half-century in the traditional models of engagement — “send your brightest and we will train them”, or “here’s some money, send the data” — may find the change unappealing. There is no doubt, however, that the NSS approach does require a change in the mindset of institutions and individual researchers, particularly in the developed economy institutions. The research capacity needs of developing economies is enormous. The needs could not be met by the traditional approaches because they do not scale, even if they did not result in a net brain drain. New developed economies institutional players will be needed and they won’t have the baggage of past practice to weigh them down. Daniel Reidpath is Senior Director, Health Systems and Population Studies Division, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh. He has no conflicts to declare. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™. Editors Note: Reidpath

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on April 11, 2022

Indonesia embraces new thinking amid rice crisis - 360 Subejo Published on June 29, 2022 As the effects of climate change become more apparent, long-held traditions will need to be resurrected. Others will need to be abandoned. Indonesia is highly dependent on rice. Indonesians consume 35.6 million tonnes of the staple, an average of 124kg of rice per person per year. But climate change is increasingly impacting the nation’s rice harvests. In recent years, late-starting wet seasons have delayed sowing. Farmers have sometimes tried five times to get their crop in the ground, costing them labour, seeds and fertiliser. Rainy days and non-rainy days are alternating without a clear pattern. In 2023, due to El Niño there was a prolonged dry season. The small number of rainy days caused difficulty for farmers seeking to start farming land preparation and crop planting. The drought has caused many cases of rice harvest failure, posing a risk to national food security. Data from the Central Bureau of Statistics from 2023 shows El Niño has had a significant impact on the stability of national food production. Rice production during January-September 2023 reached 45.33 million tons of milled dried grain, a decrease of 0.11 million tons (down 0.23 percent compared to 2022), as the harvested area decreased by 0.03 million hectares. In late 2023, the Indonesian government announced plans to import 1 million tonnes of rice from India, to ensure a sufficient supply in light of the long drought. These issues highlight the need for Indonesia’s agricultural sector to embrace climate adaptation strategies. These strategies could help boost climate resilience: ensuring Indonesia can prepare for, and recover from, the worst impacts of climate change. In Indonesia, climate change is only just emerging as a serious concern. Even recently, it’s seen simply as an environmental issue – the responsibility only of environmental agencies. For example, at a November 2021 workshop organised by Taiwan’s National Chung Hsing University, development planners and agricultural field officers appeared to have limited understanding of climate change issues, mitigation and adaptation strategies for the agricultural sector in Indonesia. There would be benefits if greater attention was given by a wider range of related agencies and departments, not just environmental agencies. They could incorporate climate change issues in their programs at a range of governmental levels. Agricultural and rural development programmes could develop appropriate strategies for adapting to and mitigating the worst impacts of climate change. Farmers often have only passing familiarity with climate change science and predicted changes to weather patterns. But the agricultural community has a collective knowledge, local wisdom and skills in choosing types of planting suitable for particular rainfall, or lack thereof, and potential damage due to typhoons. Selecting the appropriate timing and cultivation methods have long been practised by agricultural communities to reduce the risk of crop failure. If Indonesia were to tap into farmers’ knowledge, it could develop appropriate and adaptive patterns to be able to guarantee food needs for all its people without neglecting the sustainability of existing natural resources. Assisting and communicating with farmers will not be an easy matter. There are 38.8 million farmers spread over 75,436 villages that are located in 7,232 sub-districts and 514 regencies/cities. Information and communication technology for agriculture and rural areas would allow farmers easier access to information and innovations about food production, prices, marketing and government programmes. Alongside efforts and strategies to increase food production, cultural strategies may come into play. Indonesia disposes of 23 to 48 million tonnes of food waste per year, according to the National Planning Agency: that’s equivalent to 115 to 184kg per person per year. In recent years, Indonesia has imported about 500,000 tonnes of rice per year, an amount that could be reduced if the country succeeded in reducing food loss. It may also be helpful to take structured and comprehensive steps to change patterns of food consumption. This is certainly not a simple matter: it would take the whole nation to change its eating habits, including the cultural aspect of food. In Indonesia, there is a tradition of cooking food in big batches, but this often leaves food to waste. And many households cook traditional foods relating to particular ceremonial events. In these cases, it is almost certain some will not be eaten and will become food waste. But Indonesia may look to other countries for inspiration. In Japan almost all elementary schools have school gardens that grow vegetables. It is a long-term educational model to teach children about food production.  In Swedish culture it is normal to provide food for family but not for guests. While these ideas may not translate to Indonesia, it shows that food culture is not fixed. To boost the agricultural sector’s climate resilience, food diversification may be necessary to reduce rice dependency. Increased use of home gardens could help be one way to promote food diversification. Home gardens for the production of various foods are a local tradition combining production, economic, ecological and socio-cultural functions. In rural Java, the tradition of home gardens is used to grow various vegetables, fruits and wood that can be used to meet daily needs. This tradition also has ecological value due to the diversity of vegetation and conservation functions, as well as socio-cultural value because it allows the exchange and sharing of various products with neighbours and relatives and supports cultural ceremonies. Intensive use of home gardens seems a promising way to produce enough raw material to process more local foods. While promoting the production and processing of a more diverse variety of local foods is challenging, this will be a fundamental strategy in solving the nation food’s security problems. Ultimately, Indonesia has rich cultural traditions around food production and consumption, and rural people in Indonesia have a long history and experience in cultivating many local food crops such various grain, tubers, palm, and bananas, which will be the prospective source of alternative local foods in the future. As climate change increasingly affects food supply, the nation will need to tap into new technologies, as well as the practices of the past, in order to meet with the future. Subejo is a Researcher on Agricultural Extension and Rural Development, Vice-Dean for Research, Community Service and Cooperation, Faculty of Agriculture of Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta Indonesia. Prof. Subejo declared that he has no conflict of interest. This article has been updated with new information and republished as part of a package on Climate Resilience. It originally appeared on 29 June, 2022. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on June 29, 2022

Indonesia tempe production supported by smart agriculture - 360 Eni Harmayani Published on October 13, 2022 A government-research-industry collaboration in Indonesia is boosting production of a national favourite. Tempe is a fermented soybean product originally made by Central Javanese people through fermentation with Rhizopus species. Most people would struggle to place the origins of the popular fermented bean curd, but historical accounts date it from Indonesia, as long ago as thousands of years. Yet today, almost all tempe, the most widely consumed protein in Indonesia, is made from imported beans. Indonesia’s local soybean production systems are old, inefficient and ineffective. But a government intervention to boost the local soy industry is rekindling dreams of truly Indonesian tempe. The Indonesian Central Statistics Agency (BPS) says the national demand for soybeans currently stands at 2.8 million tonnes a year, whilst domestic production is recorded at a mere 800 thousand tonnes a year. Over the past ten years, the volume of imported soybeans has reached up to seven times that of local soybean production. Demand for soybeans continues to increase with rising population and appetite for soybean-based food and feed industries. Meanwhile, national bean production has decreased. Land availability for planting soybeans has reduced as a result of land conversion (from farming to housing) and competition with other crops. Imported soybeans have more consistent quality, further suppressing the competitiveness of local products. At the beginning of 2022, local tofu and tempe producers went on strike, protesting the skyrocketing price of imported soybeans, revealing the heavy reliance on imported raw materials and the instability in the domestic food industry. To remain competitive with imports, local soybean production, both for consumption and for seeds, requires more efficient production and strong quality control. And with the latest technological developments increasing the ease, speed and accuracy of production activities, showing precision agriculture for Indonesia can be possible. Furthermore, the use of information technology, automation, database management and the internet of things (IoT), provides many opportunities to increase speed, accuracy and in turn to improve production. A smart, integrated soybean agroindustry system called Smart Agricultural Enterprise (SAE) has been developed by researchers in Faculty of Agricultural Technology Universitas Gadjah Mada. The SAE system combines integrated agricultural intensification via environmentally friendly cultivation (regenerative agriculture), smart field and weather monitoring systems, real time traceability of the product from planting to harvesting, and efficient postharvest technology and marketing to increase productivity, quality and traceability of soybean production to meet demands as well as improving human resources. The SAE system supports the application of science and technology to harness local wisdom on sustainable agriculture to produce an optimal industrial standard of soybean. The system is also facilitating efficient post-harvest handling and building partnerships with farmers and industry from sowing to market. The platform has been implemented in several areas in Bantul and Klaten regencies in Yogyakarta and Central Java and has improved soybean cultivation by up to 200 percent. The system has now been adopted by governments and farmers and a larger application of the system is in progress. Eni Harmayani is a professor and the Dean at the Faculty of Agricultural Technology, Universitas Gadjah Mada. Her works focus on food and agricultural technology. Prof. Harmayani declared that she has no conflict of interest and is not receiving specific funding in any form. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

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2024-05-27T18:22:32.821463

Published on October 13, 2022