Main idea

For achieving inclusive growth there is a critical need to rethink the role of the State. The early debate among economists about the size of the Government can be misleading. The need of the hour is to have an enabling Government. India is too large and complex a nation for the State to be able to deliver all that is needed. Asking the Government to produce all the essential goods, create all the necessary jobs, and keep a curb on the prices of all goods is to lead to a large cumbersome bureaucracy and widespread corruption.

The aim must be to stay with the objective of inclusive growth that was laid down by the founding fathers of the nation and also to take a more modern view of what the State can realistically deliver.

This is what leads to the idea of an enabling State, that is, a Government that does not try to directly deliver to the citizens everything that they need. Instead, it (1) creates an enabling ethos for the market so that individual enterprise can flourish and citizens can, for the most part, provide for the needs of one another, and (2) steps in to help those who do not manage to do well for themselves, for there will always be individuals, no matter what the system, who need support and help. Hence we need a Government that, when it comes to the market, sets effective, incentive-compatible rules and remains on the sidelines with minimal interference, and, at the same time, plays an important role in directly helping the poor by ensuring that they get basic education and health services and receive adequate nutrition and food.

A country under foreign domination seeks escape from the present in dreams of a vanished age, and finds consolation in visions of past greatness. That is a foolish and dangerous pastime in which many of us indulge. An equally questionable practice for us in India is to imagine that we are still spiritually great though we have come down in the world in other respects. Spiritual or any other greatness cannot be founded on lack of freedom and opportunity, or on starvation and misery. Many western writers have encouraged that notion that Indians are other worldly. I suppose the poor and unfortunate in every country become to some extent other-worldly, unless they become revolutionaries, for, this world is evidently not meant for them. So also subject peoples.

As a man grows to maturity he is not entirely engrossed in, or satisfied with, the external objective world. He seeks also some inner meaning, some psychological and physical satisfactions. So also with peoples and civilizations as they mature and grow adult. Every civilization and every people exhibit these parallel streams of an external life and an internal life. Where they meet or keep close to each other, there is an equilibrium and stability. When they diverge conflict arises and the crises that torture the mind and spirit.

A species that exerts an influence out of proportion to its abundance in an ecosystem is called a keystone species. The keystone species may influence both the species richness of communities and the flow of energy and materials through ecosystems. The sea star Pisaster ochraceus, which lives in rocky intertidal ecosystems on the Pacific coast of North America, is also an example of a keystone species. Its preferred prey is the mussel Mytilus californianus. In the absence of sea stars, these mussels crowd out other competitors in a broad belt of the intertidal zone. By consuming mussels, sea star creates bare spaces that are taken over by a variety of other species.

A study at the University of Washington demonstrated the influence of Pisaster on species richness by removing sea stars from selected parts of the intertidal zone repeatedly over a period of five years. Two major changes occurred in the areas from which sea stars were removed. First, the lower edge of the mussel bed extended farther down into the intertidal zone, showing that sea stars are able to eliminate mussels completely where they are covered with water most of the time. Second, and more dramatically, 28 species of animals and algae disappeared from the sea star removal zone. Eventually only Mytilus, the dominant competitor, occupied the entire substratum. Through its effect on competitive relationships, predation by Pisaster largely determines which species live in these rocky intertidal ecosystems.

New India's children have a right to receive at least eight years of education, the gnawing question is whether it will remain on paper or become a reality. One hardly needs a reminder that this right is different from the others enshrined in the Constitution, that the beneficiary a six year old child cannot demand it, nor can she or he fight a legal battle when the right is denied or violated. In all cases, it is the adult society which must act on behalf of the child. In another peculiarity, where a child's right to education is denied no compensation offered later can be adequate or relevant. This is so because childhood does not last. If a legal battle fought on behalf of a child is eventually won, it may be of little use to the boy or girl because the opportunity missed at school during childhood cannot serve the same purpose later in life. This may be painfully true for girls because our society permits them only a short childhood, if at all. The Right to Education (RTE) has become law at a point in India's history when the ghastly practice of female infanticide has resurfaced in the form of foeticide. This is "symptomatic of a deeper turmoil" in society which is compounding the traditional obstacles to the education of girls. Tenacious prejudice against the intellectual potential of girls runs across our cultural diversity and the system of education has not been able to address it.

Today's developing economies use much less energy per capita than developed countries such as the United States did at similar incomes, showing the potential for lower-carbon growth. Adaptation and mitigation need to be integrated into a climate-smart development strategy that increases resilience, reduces the threat of further global warming, and improves development outcomes. Adaptation and mitigation measures can advance development, and prosperity can raise incomes and foster better institutions. A healthier population living in better-built houses and with access to bank loans and social security is better equipped to deal with a changing climate and its consequences. Advancing robust, resilient development policies that promote adaptation is needed today because changes in the climate, already begun, will increase even in the short term.

The spread of economic prosperity has always been intertwined with adaptation to changing ecological conditions. But as growth has altered the environment and as environmental change has accelerated, sustaining growth and adaptability demands greater capacity to understand our environment, generate new adaptive technologies and practices, and diffuse them widely. As economic historians have explained, much of humankind's creative potential has been directed at adapting to the changing world. But adaptation cannot cope with all the impacts related to climate change, especially as larger changes unfold in the long term.

Countries cannot grow out of harm's way fast enough to match the changing climate. And some growth strategies, whether driven by the government or the market, can also add to vulnerability — particularly if they overexploit natural resources. Under the Soviet development plan, irrigated cotton cultivation expanded in water-stressed Central Asia and led to the near disappearance of the Aral Sea, threatening the livelihoods of fishermen, herders and farmers. And clearing mangroves — the natural coastal buffers against storm surges — to make way for intensive farming or housing development, increases the physical vulnerability of coastal settlements, whether in Guinea or in Louisiana.

For fourteen and a half months I lived in my little cell or room in the Dehradun jail, and I began to feel as if I was almost a part of it. I was familiar with every bit of it, I knew every mark and dent on the whitewashed walls and on the uneven floor and the ceiling with its moth-eaten rafters. In the little yard outside I greeted little tufts of grass and odd bits of stone as old friends. I was not alone in my cell, for several colonies of wasp and hornets lived there, and many lizards found a home behind the rafters, emerging in the evenings in search of prey.

The subject of democracy has become severely muddled because of the way the rhetoric surrounding it has been used in recent years. There is, increasingly, an oddly confused dichotomy between those who want to ‘impose’ democracy on countries in the non-Western world (in these countries’ ‘own interest’, of course) and those who are opposed to such ‘imposition’ (because of the respect for the countries’ ‘own ways’). But the entire language of ‘imposition’, used by both sides, is extraordinarily inappropriate since it makes the implicit assumption that democracy belongs exclusively to the West, taking it to be a quintessentially ‘Western’ idea which has originated and flourished only in the West.

But the thesis and the pessimism it generates about the possibility of democratic practice in the world would be extremely hard to justify. There were several experiments in local democracy in ancient India. Indeed, in understanding the roots of democracy in the world, we have to take an interest in the history of people participation and public reasoning in different parts of the world. We have to look beyond thinking of democracy only in terms of European and American evolution. We would fail to understand the pervasive demands for participatory living, on which Aristotle spoke with far-reaching insight, if we take democracy to be a kind of a specialized cultural product of the West.

It cannot, of course, be doubted that the institutional structure of the contemporary practice of democracy is largely the product of European and American experience over the last few centuries. This is extremely important to recognize since these developments in institutional formats were immensely innovative and ultimately effective. There can be little doubt that there is a major ‘Western’ achievement here.

The law in many parts of the world increasingly restricts the discharge of agricultural slurry into watercourses. The simplest and often the most economically sound practice returns the material to the land as semisolid manure or as sprayed slurry. This dilutes its concentration in the environment to what might have occurred in a more primitive and sustainable type of agriculture and converts pollutant into fertilizer. Soil microorganisms decompose the organic components of sewage and slurry and most of the mineral nutrients become available to be absorbed again by the vegetation.

The excess input of nutrients, both nitrogen and phosphorus – based, from agricultural runoff (and human sewage) has caused many ‘healthy’ oligotrophic lakes (low nutrient concentrations, low plant productivity with abundant water weeds, and clear water) to change to eutrophic condition where high nutrient inputs lead to high phytoplankton productivity (sometimes dominated by bloom-forming toxic species). This makes the water turbid, eliminates large plants and, in the worst situations, leads to anoxia and fish kills; so called cultural eutrophication. Thus, important ecosystem services are lost, including the provisioning service of wild-caught fish and the cultural services associated with recreation.

The process of cultural eutrophication of lakes has been understood for some time. But only recently did scientists notice huge ‘dead zones’ in the oceans near river outlets, particularly those draining large catchment areas such as the Mississippi in North America and the Yangtze in China. The nutrient-enriched water flows through streams, rivers and lakes, and eventually to the estuary and ocean where the ecological impact may be huge, killing virtually all invertebrates and fish in areas up to 70,000 km² in extent. More than 150 sea areas worldwide are now regularly starved of oxygen as a result of decomposition of algal blooms, fuelled particularly by nitrogen from agricultural runoff of fertilizers and sewage from large cities. Oceanic dead zones are typically associated with industrialized nations and usually lie off countries that subsidize their agriculture, encouraging farmers to increase productivity and use more fertilizer.

Ecological research over the last quarter of the century has established the deleterious effects of habitat fragmentation due to mining, highways and such other intrusions on forests. When a large block of forests gets fragmented into smaller bits, the edges of all these bits come into contact with human activities resulting in the degradation of the entire forests. Continuity of forested landscapes and corridors gets disrupted affecting several extinction-prone species of wildlife. Habitat fragmentation is therefore considered as the most serious threat to biodiversity conservation. Ad hoc grants of forest lands to mining companies coupled with rampant illegal mining is aggravating this threat.

In recent times, India has grown fast not only compared to its own past but also in comparison with other nations. But there cannot be any room for complacency because it is possible for the Indian economy to develop even faster and also to spread the benefits of this growth more widely than has been done thus far. Before going into details of the kinds of micro-structural changes that we need to conceptualize and then proceed to implement, it is worthwhile elaborating on the idea of inclusive growth that constitutes the defining concept behind this Government’s various economic policies and decisions. A nation interested in inclusive growth views the same growth differently depending on whether the gains of the growth are heaped primarily on a small segment or shared widely by the population. The latter is cause for celebration but not the former. In other words, growth must not be treated as an end in itself but as an instrument for spreading prosperity to all. India’s own past experience and the experience of other nations suggests that growth is necessary for eradicating poverty but it is not a sufficient condition. In other words, policies for promoting growth need to be complemented with policies to ensure that more and more people join in the growth process and, further, that there are mechanisms in place to redistribute some of the gains to those who are unable to partake in the market process and, hence, get left behind.

A simple way of giving this idea of inclusive growth a sharper form is to measure a nation’s progress in terms of the progress of its poorest segment, for instance the bottom 20 per cent of the population. One could measure the per capita income of the bottom quintile of the population and also calculate the growth rate of income; and evaluate our economic success in terms of these measures that pertain to the poorest segment. This approach is attractive because it does not ignore growth like some of the older heterodox criteria did. It simply looks at the growth of income of the poorest sections of the population. It also ensures that those who are outside of the bottom quintile do not get ignored. If that were done, then those people would in all likelihood drop down into the bottom quintile and so would automatically become a direct target of our policies. Hence the criterion being suggested here is a statistical summing up of the idea of inclusive growth, which, in turn, leads to two corollaries: to wish that India must strive to achieve high growth and that we must work to ensure that the weakest segments benefit from the growth.

It is essential that we mitigate the emissions of greenhouse gases and thus avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change that would take place in coming years and decades. Mitigation would require a major shift in the way we produce and consume energy. A shift away from overwhelming dependence on fossil fuels is now long overdue, but unfortunately, technological development has been slow and inadequate largely because government policies have not promoted investments in research and development, myopically as a result of relatively low prices of oil. It is now, therefore, imperative for a country like India treating the opportunity of harnessing renewable energy on a large scale as a national imperative. This country is extremely well endowed with solar, wind and biomass sources of energy. Where we have lagged, unfortunately, is in our ability to develop and to create technological solutions for harnessing these resources.

One particular trajectory for carrying out stringent mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) clearly shows the need for ensuring that global emissions of greenhouse gases peak no later than 2015 and reduce rapidly thereafter. The cost associated with such a trajectory is truly modest and would amount, in the estimation of IPCC, to not more than 3 percent of the global GDP in 2030. In other words, the level of prosperity that the world would have reached without mitigation would at worst be postponed by a few months or a year at the most. This is clearly not a very high price to pay for protecting hundreds of millions of people from the worst risks associated with climate change. Any such effort, however, would require lifestyles to change appropriately also. Mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions is not a mere technological fix, and clearly requires changes in lifestyles and transformation of a country’s economic structure, whereby effective reduction in emissions is brought about, such as through the consumption of much lower quantities of animal protein. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has determined that the emissions from the livestock sector amount to 18 percent of the total. The reduction of emissions from this source is entirely in the hands of human beings, who have never questioned the impacts that their dietary habits of consuming more and more animal protein are bringing about. Mitigation overall has huge co-benefits, such as lower air pollution and health benefits, higher energy security and greater employment.

The Himalayan ecosystem is highly vulnerable to damage, both due to geological reasons and on account of the stress caused by increased pressure of population, exploitation of natural resources and other related challenges. These aspects may be exacerbated due to the impact of climate change. It is possible that climate change may adversely impact the Himalayan ecosystem through increased temperature, altered precipitation patterns, episodes of drought and biotic influences. This would not only impact the very sustenance of the indigenous communities in uplands but also the life of downstream dwellers across the country and beyond. Therefore, there is an urgent need for giving special attention to sustain the Himalayan ecosystem. This would require conscious efforts for conserving all the representative systems.

Further, it needs to be emphasized that the endemics with restricted distribution, and most often with specialized habitat requirements, are among the most vulnerable elements. In this respect the Himalayan biodiversity hotspot, with rich endemic diversity, is vulnerable to climate change. The threats include possible loss of genetic resources and species, habitats and concomitantly a decrease in ecosystem services. Therefore, conservation of endemic elements in representative ecosystems/habitats assumes a great significance while drawing conservation plans for the region.

Towards achieving the above, we will have to shift toward contemporary conservation approaches, which include a paradigm of landscape level interconnectivity between protected area systems. The concept advocates a shift from the species-habitat focus to an inclusive focus on expanding the biogeographic range so that natural adjustments to climate change can proceed without being restrictive.

By 2050, the Earth’s population will likely have swelled from seven to nine billion people. To fill all those stomachs — while accounting for shifting consumption patterns, climate change, and a finite amount of arable land and potable water — some experts say food production will have to double. How can we make the numbers add up? Experts say higher yielding crop varieties and more efficient farming methods will be crucial. So will waste reduction. Experts urge cities to reclaim nutrients and water from waste streams and preserve farmland. Poor countries, they say, can improve crop storage and packaging and rich nations could cut back on resource-intensive foods like meat.

Set against a rural backdrop, ‘Stench of kerosene’ is the story of a couple, Guleri and Manak, who have been happily married for several years but do not have a child. Manak’s mother is desperate to have a grandchild to carry on the family name. Hence, she gets Manak remarried in Guleri’s absence. Manak, who acts as a reluctant but passive spectator, is meanwhile, informed by a friend that Guleri, on hearing about her husband’s second marriage, poured kerosene on her clothes and set fire to them. Manak is heartbroken and begins to live as if he were a dead man. When his second wife delivers a son, Manak stares at the child for a long time and blurts out, “Take him away ! He stinks of kerosene.”

Vast numbers of Indian citizens without bank accounts live in rural areas, are financially and functionally illiterate, and have little experience with technology. A research study was conducted in a particular area in which electronic wage payments in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) are meant to go directly to the poor. It was observed that recipients often assume that the village leader needs to mediate the process, as was the case under the previous paper-based system. Among households under this research study area who claimed to have at least one bank account, over a third reported still receiving MGNREGS wages in cash directly from a village leader.

We generally talk about democracy but when it comes to any particular thing, we prefer a belonging to our caste or community or religion. So long as we have this kind of temptation, our democracy will remain a phoney kind of democracy. We must be in a position to respect a man as a man and to extend opportunities for development to those who deserve them and not to those who happen to belong to our community or race. This fact of favouritism has been responsible for much discontent and ill-will in our country.

The existence/establishment of formal financial institutions that offer safe, reliable, and alternative financial instruments is fundamental in mobilising savings. To save, individuals need access to safe and reliable financial institutions, such as banks, and to appropriate financial instruments and reasonable financial incentives. Such access is not always available to all people in developing countries like India and more so, in rural areas. Savings help poor households manage volatility in cash flow, smoothen consumption, and build working capital. Poor households without access to a formal savings mechanism encourage immediate spending temptations.

India has suffered from persistent high inflation. Increase in administered prices, demand and supply imbalances, imported inflation aggravated by rupee depreciation, and speculation — have combined to keep high inflation going. If there is an element common to all of them, it is that many of them are the outcomes of economic reforms. India’s vulnerability to the effects of changes in international prices has increased with trade liberalisation. The effort to reduce subsidies has resulted in a continuous increase in the prices of commodities that are administered.

No Right is absolute, exclusive or inviolable. The Right of personal property, similarly, has to be perceived in the larger context of its assumed legitimacy. The Right of personal property should unite the principle of liberty with that of equality, and both with the principle of cooperation.

The conflict between man and State is as old as State history. Although attempts have been made for centuries to bring about a proper adjustment between the competing claims of State and the individual, the solution seems to be still far off. This is primarily because of the dynamic nature of human society where old values and ideas constantly yield place to new ones. It is obvious that if individuals are allowed to have absolute freedom of speech and action, the result would be chaos, ruin and anarchy.

Climate change is a complex policy issue with major implications in terms of finance. All actions to address climate change ultimately involve costs. Funding is vital for countries like India to design and implement adaptation and mitigation plans and projects. Lack of funding is a large impediment to implementing adaptation plans. The scale and magnitude of the financial support required by developing countries to enhance their domestic mitigation and adaptation actions are a matter of intense debate in the multilateral negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Convention squarely puts the responsibility for provision of financial support on the developed countries, taking into account their contribution to the stock of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. Given the magnitude of the task and the funds required, domestic finances are likely to fall short of the current and projected needs of the developing countries. Global funding through the multilateral mechanism of the Convention will enhance their domestic capacity to finance the mitigation efforts.

Accountability, or the lack of it, in governance generally, and civil services, in particular, is a major factor underlying the deficiencies in governance and public administration. Designing an effective framework for accountability has been a key element of the reform agenda. A fundamental issue is whether civil services should be accountable to the political executive of the day or to society at large. In other words, how should internal and external accountability be reconciled? Internal accountability is sought to be achieved by internal performance monitoring, official supervision by bodies like the Central Vigilance Commission and Comptroller and Auditor General, and judicial review of executive decisions. Articles 311 and 312 of the Indian Constitution provide job security and safeguards to the civil services, especially the All India Services. The framers of the Constitution had envisaged that provision of these safeguards would result in a civil service that is not totally subservient to the political executive but will have the strength to function in larger public interest. The need to balance internal and external accountability is thus built into the Constitution. The issue is where to draw the line. Over the years, the emphasis seems to have tilted in favour of greater internal accountability of the civil services to the political leaders of the day who in turn are expected to be externally accountable to the society at large through the election process. This system for seeking accountability to society has not worked out, and has led to several adverse consequences for governance.

Some special measures can be considered for improving accountability in civil services. Provisions of articles 311 and 312 should be reviewed and laws and regulations framed to ensure external accountability of civil services. The proposed Civil Services Bill seeks to address some of these requirements. The respective roles of professional civil services and the political executive should be defined so that professional managerial functions and management of civil services are depoliticized. For this purpose, effective statutory civil service boards should be created at the centre and in the states. Decentralization and devolution of authority to bring government and decision making closer to the people also helps to enhance accountability.

In general, religious traditions stress our duty to god, or to some universal ethical principle. Our duties to one another derive from these. The religious concept of rights is primarily derived from our relationship to this divinity or principle and the implication it has on our other relationships. This correspondence between rights and duties is critical to any further understanding of justice. But, for justice to be practiced; virtue, rights and duties cannot remain formal abstractions. They must be grounded in a community (common unity) bound together by a sense of common union (communion). Even as a personal virtue, this solidarity is essential to the practice and understanding of justice.

In the last decade, the banking sector has been restructured with a high degree of automation and products that mainly serve middle-class and upper middle-class society. Today there is a need for a new agenda for the banking and non-banking financial services that does not exclude the common man.

The nature of the legal imperatives in any given state corresponds to the effective demands that state encounters, and that these, in their turn, depend, in a general way, upon the manner in which economic power is distributed in the society which the state controls.

As we look to 2050, when we will need to feed two billion more people, the question of which diet is best has taken on new urgency. The foods we choose to eat in the coming decades will have dramatic ramifications for the planet. Simply put, a diet that revolves around meat and dairy, a way of eating that is on the rise throughout the developing world, will take a greater toll on the world's resources than one that revolves around unrefined grains, nuts, fruits and vegetables.

The man who is perpetually hesitating which of the two things he will do first, will do neither. The man who resolves, but suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of a friend—who fluctuates from opinion to opinion and veers from plan to plan—can never accomplish anything. He will at best be stationary and probably retrograde in all. It is only the man who first consults wisely, then resolves firmly and then executes his purpose with inflexible perseverance, undismayed by those petty difficulties which daunt a weaker spirit—that can advance to eminence in any line.

During the summer in the Arctic Ocean, sea ice has been melting earlier and faster, and the winter freeze has been coming later. In the last three decades, the extent of summer ice has declined by about 30 per cent. The lengthening period of summer melt threatens to undermine the whole Arctic food web, atop which stand polar bears.

Why do people prefer open defecation and not want toilets or, if they have them, only use them sometimes? Recent research has shown two critical elements: ideas of purity and pollution, and not wanting pits or septic tanks to fill because they have to be emptied. These are the issues that nobody wants to talk about, but if we want to eradicate the practice of open defecation, they have to be confronted and dealt properly.

The very first lesson that should be taught to us when we are old enough to understand it, is that complete freedom from the obligation to work is unnatural, and ought to be illegal, as we can escape our share of the burden of work only by throwing it on someone else’s shoulders. Nature ordains that the human race shall perish of famine if it stops working. We cannot escape from this tyranny. The question we have to settle is how much leisure we can afford to allow ourselves.

We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intends them to be. We are citizens of a great country, on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or action.

A successful democracy depends upon widespread interest and participation in politics, in which voting is an essential part. To deliberately refrain from taking such an interest, and from voting, is a kind of implied anarchy; it is to refuse one’s political responsibility while enjoying the benefits of a free political society.

Disruption of traditional institutions, identifications and loyalties is likely to lead to ambivalent situations. It is possible that some people may renew their identification with traditional groups whereas others align themselves with new groups and symbols emergent from processes of political development. In addition, political development tends to foster group awareness of a variety of class, tribe, region, clan, language, religion, occupation and others.

We live in digital times. The digital is not just something we use strategically and specifically to do a few tasks. Our very perception of who we are, how we connect to the world around us, and the ways in which we define our domains of life, labour and language are hugely structured by the digital technologies. The digital is everywhere and, like air, invisible. We live within digital systems, we live with intimate gadgets, we interact through digital media, and the very presence and imagination of the digital has dramatically restructured our lives. The digital, far from being a tool, is a condition and context that defines the shapes and boundaries of our understanding of the self, the society, and the structure of governance.

Really I think that the poorest he that is in England has a life to live, as the greatest he, and therefore truly, I think it is clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under the government, and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he has not had a voice to put himself under.

It is no longer enough for us to talk about providing for universal access to education. Making available schooling facilities is an essential prerequisite, but is insufficient to ensure that all children attend school and participate in the learning process. The school may be there, but children may not attend or they may drop out after a few months. Through school and social mapping, we must address the entire gamut of social, economic, cultural and indeed linguistic and pedagogic issues, factors that prevent children from weaker sections and disadvantaged groups, as also girls, from regularly attending and complementing elementary education. The focus must be on the poorest and most vulnerable since these groups are the most disempowered and at the greatest risk of violation or denial of their right to education.

The right to education goes beyond free and compulsory education to include quality education for all. Quality is an integral part of the right to education. If the education process lacks quality, children are being denied their right. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act lays down that the curriculum should provide for learning through activities, exploration and discovery. This places an obligation on us to change our perception of children as passive receivers of knowledge, and to move beyond the convention of using textbooks as the basis of examinations. The teaching-learning process must become stress-free; and a massive programme for curricular reform should be initiated to provide for a child-friendly learning system, that is more relevant and empowering. Teacher accountability systems and processes must ensure that children are learning, and that their right to learn in a child-friendly environment is not violated. Testing and assessment systems must be reexamined and redesigned to ensure that these do not force children to struggle between school and tuition centres, and bypass childhood.

Being a member of the WTO, India is bound by the agreements that have been signed and ratified by its members, including itself. According to Article 6 of the Agriculture Agreement, providing minimum support prices for agricultural products is considered distorting and is subject to limits. The subsidy arising from ‘minimal supports’ cannot exceed 10 per cent of the value of agricultural production for developing countries. PDS in India entails minimum support prices and public stockholding of food grains. It is possible that, in some years, the subsidy to producers will exceed 10 per cent of the value of agricultural production.

Monoculture carries great risks. A single disease or pest can wipe out swathes of the world’s food production, an alarming prospect given that its growing and wealthier population will eat 70% more by 2050. The risks are magnified by the changing climate. As the planet warms and monsoon rains intensify, farmlands in Asia will flood. North America will suffer more intense droughts, and crop diseases will spread to new latitudes.

The quest for cheap and plentiful meat has resulted in factory farms where more and more animals are squeezed into smaller lots in cruel and shocking conditions. Such practices have resulted in many of the world’s health pandemics such as the avian flu. Worldwide, livestock are increasingly raised in cruel, cramped conditions, where animals spend their short lives under artificial light, pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormones, until the day they are slaughtered. Meat production is water-intensive. 15000 litres of water is needed for every kilogram of meat compared with 3400 litres for rice, 3300 litres for eggs and 255 litres for a kilogram of potatoes.

A male tiger was removed from Pench Tiger Reserve and was relocated in Panna National Park. Later, this tiger trekked toward his home 250 miles away. The trek of this solitary tiger highlights a crisis. Many wildlife reserves exist as islands of fragile habitat in a vast sea of humanity, yet tigers can range over a hundred miles, seeking prey, mates and territory. Nearly a third of India’s tigers live outside tiger reserves, a situation that is dangerous for both human and animal. Prey and tigers can only disperse if there are recognized corridors of land between protected areas to allow unmolested passage.

Political theorists no doubt have to take history of injustice, for example, untouchability, seriously. The concept of historical injustice takes note of a variety of historical wrongs that continue into the present in some form or the other and tend to resist repair. Two reasons might account for resistance to repair. One, not only are the roots of injustice buried deep in history, injustice itself constitutes economic structures of exploitation, ideologies of discrimination and modes of representation. Two, the category of historical injustice generally extends across a number of wrongs such as economic deprivation, social discrimination and lack of recognition. This category is complex, not only because of the overlap between a number of wrongs, but because one or the other wrong, generally discrimination, tends to acquire partial autonomy from others. This is borne out by the history of repair in India.

A majority of the TB infected in India are poor and lack sufficient nutrition, suitable housing and have little understanding of prevention. TB then devastates families, makes the poor poorer, particularly affects women and children, and leads to ostracisation and loss of employment. The truth is that even if TB does not kill them, hunger and poverty will. Another truth is that deep-seated stigma, lack of counselling, expensive treatment and lack of adequate support from providers and family, coupled with torturous side-effects demotivate patients to continue treatment — with disastrous health consequences.

What stands in the way of the widespread and careful adoption of 'Genetic Modification (GM)' technology is an 'Intellectual Property Rights' regime that seeks to create private monopolies for such technologies. If GM technology is largely corporate driven, it seeks to maximize profits and that too in the short run. That is why corporations make major investments for herbicide-tolerant and pest-resistant crops. Such properties have only a short window, as soon enough, pests and weeds will evolve to overcome such resistance. This suits the corporations. The National Farmers Commission pointed out that priority must be given in genetic modification to the incorporation of genes that can help impart resistance to drought, salinity and other stresses.

The interests of working and poor people have historically been neglected in the planning of our cities. Our cities are increasingly intolerant, unsafe and unlivable places for large numbers of citizens and yet we continue to plan via the old ways — the static Development Plan — that draws exclusively from technical expertise, distanced from people's live experiences and needs, and actively excluding large number of people, places, activities and practices that are an integral part of the city.

Although most of the Genetically Modified (GM) crops cultivated now are genetically engineered for a single trait, in future, crops genetically engineered for more than one trait will be the norm. Thus, biotechnology’s role in agriculture and the regulation of the same cannot be understood solely in the context of the current generation of GM crops. Instead, there is a need to take a comprehensive look, taking into account various aspects, including socio-economic impacts, so that the potential of the technology can be harnessed while minimizing negative impacts. Given the importance of biotechnology in developing varieties that can help in climate change mitigation and adaptation, not using biotechnology as a part of the climate change action plan cannot be an option. Domestic regulation of biotechnology cannot be viewed in isolation of trade policy and obligations under various international treaties and conventions.

Our urban bodies cannot possibly ensure sustainable delivery of water in our cities unless financing mechanisms are put in place. Water delivery requires heavy investment in collecting it from a natural source, treating it to make it potable, and laying a distribution network of pipes for delivery to the users. It also requires investments in sewerage infrastructure and sewage treatment plants so that the sewers can carry the wastewater to these plants to ensure that no untreated sewage is discharged back into natural water bodies. If our cities were rich enough to meet the entire cost, water could be delivered free. They are not.

In India, agriculture still engages about half of its workforce, and about 85 per cent of its farms are small and marginal. Compared to China and Vietnam, which have experienced fast structural and rural transformation, India’s story is of slow transformation. As a result, poverty reduction in India was at a much slower pace during 1988–2014, compared to China and Vietnam. India’s poverty reduction was slow during 1988–2005, but during 2005–2012, it accelerated dramatically—almost three times faster than during the earlier period. What did India do during this period? Research reveals that the relative price scenario changed significantly (by more than 50%) in favour of agriculture in the wake of rising global prices. This boosted private investments in agriculture by more than 50%. As a result, agri-GDP growth touched 4·1% during 2007–2012 as against 2·4% during 2002–2007. The net surplus of agri-trade touched $25 billion in 2013–2014; real farm wages rose by 7% per annum. All this led to unprecedented fall in poverty.

Spanish ships in the late 16th century first brought the potato tuber from South America to Europe whereby in the early 19th century, it had become a reliable backup to cereal crops, particularly in the cold, rain-soaked soils of Ireland. The Irish were soon almost wholly dependent on the potato as their staple food. And they were planting primarily one prodigious variety, the ‘Lumper’ potato, whose genetic frailty would be cruelly exposed by the fungus ‘Phytophthora infestans’. In 1845, spores of the deadly fungus began spreading across the country, destroying nearly all the Lumpers in its path. The resulting famine killed or displaced millions.

Many people understand the connection between solid waste management and health in terms of the consequences of unattended heaps of dry garbage which become home for flies and other vermin. However, there is another aspect that is not well-understood, that is, what happens when unscientific solid waste management combines with poor drainage and dumping of untreated sewage into drains which are meant to carry storm water during rains. The result is choked drains which are full of stagnant water breeding mosquitoes, resulting in the spread of water-borne diseases.

A study conducted on the impacts of climate change over the Cauvery basin of Tamil Nadu using regional climate models showed an increasing trend for maximum and minimum temperatures, and a decrease in the number of rainy days. These climatic shifts will have an impact on the hydrological cycles in the region, lead to more run-off and less recharge, and affect the groundwater tables. Further, there has been an increase in the frequency of droughts in the State. This has driven farmers to increase dependency on groundwater resources to secure their crops.

India faces a challenging immediate future in energy and climate policy-making. The problems are multiple: sputtering fossil fuel production capabilities; limited access to electricity and modern cooking fuel for the poorest; rising fuel imports in an unstable global energy context; continued electricity pricing and governance challenges leading to its costly deficits or surplus supply; and not least, growing environmental contestation around land, water and air. But all is not bleak: growing energy efficiency programmes; integrated urbanisation and transport policy discussions; inroads to enhancing energy access and security; and bold renewable energy initiatives, even if not fully conceptualised, suggest the promise of transformation.

There are reports that some of the antibiotics sold in the market are fed to poultry and other livestock as growth promoters. Overusing these substances can create superbugs, pathogens that are resistant to multiple drugs and could be passed along humans. Mindful of that, some farming companies have stopped using the drugs to make chickens gain weight faster. Since Denmark banned antibiotic growth promoters in the 1990s, the major pork exporter says it is producing more pigs — and the animals get fewer diseases.

Aristocratic government ruins itself by limiting too narrowly the circle within which power is confined; oligarchic government ruins itself by the incautious scramble for immediate wealth. But even democracy ruins itself by excess of democracy. Its basic principle is the equal right of all to hold office and determine public policy. This is, at first glance, a delightful arrangement; it becomes disastrous because the people are not properly equipped by education to select the best rulers and the wisest courses. The people have no understanding and only repeat what their rulers are pleased to tell them. Such a democracy is tyranny or autocracy. — Plato

Nothing can exist in a natural state which can be called good or bad by common assent, since every man who is in a natural state consults only his own advantage, and determines what is good or bad according to his own fancy and insofar as he has regard for his own advantage alone, and holds himself responsible to no one save himself by any law; and therefore sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, which is decreed by common consent what is good or bad, and each one holds himself responsible to the state.

The best universities like Harvard and MIT, despite having the luxury of having some truly excellent teachers on their payroll, are increasingly embracing the “flipped classroom” format, where students listen to video lectures at home, and spend class time applying their knowledge, solving problems, discussing examples, etc. Professors guide that discussion and fill in wherever necessary, explaining those bits that seem to be eluding the students and throwing in advanced ideas that happen to be topical. These universities have made their video lectures available free for anyone in the world. They are also encouraging colleges and universities all over the world to integrate these online courses into their own pedagogy, picking the pieces that are appropriate for their needs and building a package around them.

In our schools; we teach our children all that is there to know about physics, maths and history and what-have-you. But do we teach them about the bitter caste divide that plagues the country, about the spectre of famine that stalks large parts of our land, about gender sensitivity, about the possibility of atheism as a choice, etc.? Equally important, do we teach them to ask questions, or do we teach them only to passively receive our wisdom? From the cocooned world of school, suddenly, the adolescent finds himself/herself in the unfettered world of university. Here he/she is swept up in a turmoil of ideas, influences and ideologies. For someone who has been discouraged from asking questions and forming an opinion, this transition can be painful.

Medieval merchants risked the hazards of the Silk Road to reach the markets of China; Portuguese caravels in the 15ᵗʰ century sailed beyond the bounds of the known world, searching less for knowledge than for gold and spices. Historically, the driver for opening frontiers has always been the search for resources. Science and curiosity are weaker drivers. The only way to open up space, whether the space of solar system or interstellar space is to create an economic engine and that engine is resource extraction.

“In simple matters like shoe-making, we think only a specially trained person will serve our purpose, but in politics, we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a State. When we are ill, we call for a trained physician, whose degree is a guarantee of specific preparation and technical competence—we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one: well then, when the whole State is ill should we not look for the service and guidance of the wisest and the best?”

With steady economic growth, higher literacy and increasing skill levels, the number of Indian middle-class families has gone up exponentially. Direct results of the affluence have been changes in dietary patterns and energy consumption levels. People have moved to a higher protein-based diet like milk products, fish and meat, all of which need significantly more water to produce than cereal-based diets. Increasing use of electronic and electric machines/gadgets and motor vehicles needs more and more energy and generation of energy needs water.

For two or three generations past, ever-increasing numbers of individuals have been living as workers merely, not as human beings. An excessive amount of labour is rule today in every circle of society, with the result that man’s spiritual element cannot thrive. He finds it very difficult to spend his little leisure in serious activities. He does not want to think; or he cannot even if he wants to. He seeks not self-improvement, but entertainment which would enable him to be mentally idle and to forget his usual activities. Therefore, the so-called culture of our age is dependant more on cinema than on theatre, more on newspapers, magazines and crime stories than on serious literature.

In an economic organization, allowing mankind to benefit by the productivity of machines should lead to a very good life of leisure, and much leisure is apt to be tedious except to those who have intelligent activities and interests. If a leisured population is to be happy, it must be an educated population, and must be educated with a view to enjoyment as well as to the direct usefulness of technical knowledge.

The majority of people who fail to accumulate money sufficient for their needs, are generally, easily influenced by the opinions of others. They permit the newspapers and the gossiping neighbours to do their thinking for them. Opinions are the cheapest commodities on the earth. Everyone has a flock of opinions ready to be wished upon by anyone who will accept them. If you are influenced by opinions when you reach decisions, you will not succeed in any undertaking.

In India, a majority of farmers are marginal and small, less educated and possess low adaptive capabilities to climate change, perhaps because of credit and other constraints. So, one cannot expect autonomous adaptation to climate change. Even if it was possible, it would not be sufficient to offset losses from climate change. To deal with this, adaptation to climate change is paramount, alongside a fast mitigation response. Another solution is to have a planned or policy-driven adaptation, which would require the government to come up with policy recommendations. Perception is a necessary pre-requisite for adaptation. Whether farmers are adapting agricultural practices to climate change depends on whether they perceive it or not. However, this is not always enough for adaptation. It is important how a farmer perceives the risks associated with climate change.

The emissions humans put into the atmosphere now will affect the climate in the middle of the century and onwards. Technological change, meanwhile, could make a future transition away from fossil fuels cheap or it might not, leaving the world with a terrible choice between sharply reducing emissions at huge cost or suffering through the effects of unabated warming. Businesses that do not hedge against the threat of uncertain outcomes fail. The world cannot afford such recklessness on climate change.

Many people are not eating the right food. For some, it is simply a decision to stick with food they enjoy but which is not too healthy. This is leading to an increase in non-communicable diseases. This in turn leads to major burden on our health-care systems that have the potential to derail the economic progress which is essential for the poor to improve their lives. For others, it is about limited access to nutritious food or a lack of affordability, leading to monotonous diets that do not provide the daily nutrients for them to develop fully. Part of the reason nutrition is under threat worldwide is that our food systems are not properly responding to nutritional needs. Somewhere along that long road from farm to fork, there are serious detours taking place.

In India, the segregation of municipal waste at source is rare. Recycling is mostly with the informal sector. More than three-fourths of the municipal budget goes into collection and transportation, which leaves very little for processing/resource recovery and disposal. Where does waste-to-energy fit into all this? Ideally it fits in the chain after segregation (between wet waste and the rest), collection, recycling, and before getting to the landfill. Which technology is most appropriate in converting waste to energy depends on what is in the waste (that is biodegradable versus non-biodegradable component) and its calorific value. The biodegradable component of India’s municipal solid waste is a little over 50 per cent, and biomethanation offers a major solution for processing this.

There is a claim that organic farming is inherently safer and healthier. The reality is that because the organic farming industry is still young and not well-regulated in India, farmers and consumers, alike, are not only confused about what products are best for them, but sometimes use products in ways that could harm them as well. For example, since organic fertilizers are difficult to obtain on a large scale in India, farmers often use farmyard manure, which may contain toxic chemicals and heavy metals. Certain plant sprays, such as Datura flower and leaf spray, have an element called atropine. If it is not applied in the right dose, it can act on the nervous system of the consumer. Unfortunately, how much and when to use it are not well-researched or regulated issues.

A global analysis of nitrogen use efficiency — a measure of the amount of nitrogen a plant takes in to grow versus what is left behind as pollution — says that using too much fertilizers will lead to increased pollution of waterways and the air. Currently, the global average for nitrogen use efficiency is approximately 0·4, meaning 40 per cent of the total nitrogen added to cropland goes into the harvested crop while 60 per cent is lost to the environment, says a study. More than half of the world’s population is nourished by food grown with fertilizers containing synthetic nitrogen, which is needed to produce high crop yields. Plants take the nitrogen they need to grow, and the excess is left in the ground, water and air. This results in significant emissions of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse and ozone depleting gas, and other forms of nitrogen pollution, including eutrophication of lakes and rivers and contamination of river water.

Along with sustainable lifestyles, climate justice is regarded as a significant principle in environmental parlance. Both the principles have bearings on political and economic choices of the nation. So far, in our climate change summits or compacts, both the principles have eluded consensus among nations. Justice, in the judicial sense, is well defined. However, in the context of climate change, it has scientific as well as socio-political connotations. The crucial question in the next few years will be how resources, technologies and regulations are used to support the victims of climate change. Justice in climate is not confined to actions relating to mitigation, but includes the wider notion of support for adaptation to climate change and compensation for loss and damage.

Sourcing food from non-agricultural lands (uncultivated systems such as forests, wetlands, pastures, etc) in addition to agricultural lands enables a systemic approach to food consumption. It allows rural and tribal communities to sustain themselves for the whole year and steer clear of natural disasters and season-induced shortfalls of agricultural food. Since the productivity of trees is often more resilient to adverse weather conditions than annual crops, forest foods often provide a safety net during periods of food shortages caused by crop failure; forest foods also make important contributions during seasonal crop production gaps.

While awareness on use/misuse and abuse of antibiotics is common knowledge, as is the impact of dosing poultry with antibiotics, the environmental impact of antibiotics-manufacturing companies not treating their waste has scarcely been discussed at any length or seriousness thus far. Pollution from antibiotics factories is fuelling the rise of drug-resistant infections. The occurrence of drug-resistant bacteria surrounding the pharma manufacturing plants is well known.

Benefits of good quality school education accrue only when students complete and leave school after having acquired the gateway skills. Like one learns to walk before running, similarly one picks up advanced skills only after picking the basic foundational skills. The advent of the knowledge economy poses new challenges, and one of the severe consequences of having an uneducated workforce will be our inability to keep pace with the global economy. Without a strong learning foundation at the primary level, there can be no improvement in higher education or skill development.

The paradox of choice is illustrated by the story of Buridan’s ass. Jean Buridan, the 14th century philosopher, wrote about free will and the inability to choose due to numerous choices and uncertainties. In the story, a donkey stands between two equally appealing stacks of hay. Unable to decide which to eat, it starves to death. Changes in technology and innovations such as smart phones and tablets only exacerbate our glut of choices. Constant connectivity and overconsumption of real-time data and social media can leave little room for self-reflection and rest, making decisions more difficult. Life is about choices. Many people are overwhelmed with attractive life choices, yet find themselves unhappy and anxious.

In India, while the unemployment rate is a frequently used measure of poor performance of the economy, under conditions of rising school and college enrolment, it paints an inaccurate picture. The reported unemployment rate is dominated by the experience of younger Indians who face higher employment challenges and exhibit greater willingness to wait for the right job than their older peers. The unemployment challenge is greater for people with secondary or higher education, and rising education levels inflate unemployment challenges.

“Science by itself is not enough, there must be a force and discipline outside the sciences to coordinate them and point to a goal. It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed. What science needs is philosophy — the analysis of scientific method and the coordination of scientific purposes and results; without this, any science must be superficial. Government suffers, precisely like science, for lack of philosophy. Philosophy bears to science the same relationship which statesmanship bears to politics: movement guided by total knowledge and perspective, as against aimless and individual seeking. Just as the pursuit of knowledge becomes scholasticism when divorced from the actual needs of men and life, so the pursuit of politics becomes a destructive bedlam when divorced from science and philosophy.”

“The last end of the state is not to dominate men, nor to restrain them by fear; rather it is so to free each man from fear that he may live and act with full security and without injury to himself or his neighbour. The end of the state, I repeat, is not to make rational beings into brute beasts and machines. It is to enable their bodies and their minds to function safely. It is to lead men to live by, and to exercise, a free reason; that they may not waste their strength in hatred, anger and guile, nor act unfairly toward one another.”

Not every voice on the internet commands the same kind of audience. When anonymous private entities with high capital can pay for more space for their opinions, they are effectively buying a louder voice. If political discourse in the digital sphere is a matter of outshining one’s opponent till the election is won, then the quality of politics suffers. The focus of social media is restricted to the promotion of content that generates more user engagement, regardless of how inflammatory the content may be.

By the time children reach class 8, the bulk of them tend to be in the age range of 13 years to 15 years. But in our country, about a quarter of all children in class 8 struggle with reading simple texts and more than half are still unable to do basic arithmetic operations like division. Every year about 25 million young boys and girls from elementary school move into the life that lies for them beyond compulsory schooling. They cannot enter the workforce at least in the organized sector till they are 18. For many families, these children are the first from their families ever to get this far in school. Parents and children expect that such ‘graduates’ from school will go on to high school and college. Hardly anyone wants to go back to agriculture. On the other hand, abilities in terms of academic competencies are far lower than they should be even based on curricular expectations of class 8.

We take it for granted now that science has a social responsibility. The idea would not have occurred to Newton or Galileo. They thought of science as an account of the world as it is, and the only responsibility that they acknowledged was to tell the truth. The idea that science is a social enterprise is modern, and it begins at the industrial revolution. We are surprised that we cannot trace a social sense further back, because we nurse the illusion that the industrial revolution ended a golden age.

When a child reaches adolescence, there is apt to be a conflict between the parents and the child, since the latter considers himself to be by now quite capable of managing his own affairs, while the former are filled with parental solicitude, which is often a disguise for love of power. Parents consider, usually, that the various moral problems which arise in adolescence are peculiarly their province. The options they express, however, are so dogmatic that the young seldom confide in them, and usually go their own way in secret.

Evolution has endowed caterpillars that feed on corn with a unique ability, they can induce the plant to turn off its defence against insect predators. This helps caterpillars to eat more and grow faster. The agent that causes this effect is the caterpillar’s faeces or frass. The find could throw new light on compounds associated with plant response to pathogens like fungi or bacteria.

In a robust democracy, reality, howsoever inconvenient it may be, finds its expression both in the speech of political leaders and the other social forms of assertion. The existence of the real has to be transparent, both through its circulation in and by the media as well as its argumentative articulation in deliberative democracy. A normatively responsible media through its communication effect has the responsibility to circulate the content of reality without distortion.

Now-a-days there is a growing trend to use interconnected home devices. As consumers increasingly network their homes, the connected home device manufacturers and service providers will seek to overcome “thin profit margins by gathering more of our personal data—with or without our agreement—turning the home into a corporate storefront”. Corporate marketers will have powerful incentives to observe consumer behaviour to understand the buying needs and preferences of the device owners.

Green growth involves rethinking growth strategies with regard to the impacts on environmental sustainability and the environmental resources available to poor and vulnerable groups. In rethinking growth, we need to focus on the current reality of a resource-constrained world. Resource intensive and, in particular energy intensive processes will need to make way for more efficient and resource frugal development strategies if we are to avoid an economic dead end or a world in which only a small elite is able to enjoy affluence in the midst of a sea of poverty.

Unlike religion and science, poetry does not posit or expect any belief in absolute truths. Those forces or individuals who claim to have absolute truths in their grasp tend to turn dictatorial and tyrannical. Truth usually does not admit any contradictions or imperfections. It is unitarian. It is, therefore, not of much use for poetry. Poetry abides by the plurality of life and existence. Perhaps poetry follows reality which is plural, anachronistic, full of contradictions. Against the tyranny of truth, poetry remains a partisan of democratic reality. Against the arrogance of power, wealth and hierarchy, poetry proposes both humility and defiance.

Maintaining an ecosystem just to conserve biodiversity will affect its commercial potential as well as the livelihoods dependent on the ecosystem. There is also a conflict between using an ecosystem only for livelihoods, for commercial exploitation, or strictly for conservation. Deforestation caused due to commercial exploitation will lead to indirect harm like floods, siltation problems and microclimatic instability, apart from adversely affecting livelihoods dependent on forests. These conflicts are particularly acute in developing countries where the dependence of people on the ecosystem is significant, and commercial exploitation has the potential to boost national income.

The history of renewable energy suggests there is a steep learning curve, meaning that, as more is produced, costs fall rapidly because of economies of scale and learning by doing. The firms’ green innovation is path-dependent: the more a firm does, the more it is likely to do in the future. The strongest evidence for this is the collapse in the price of solar energy, which became about 90% cheaper during the 2010s, repeatedly beating forecasts. Moving early and gradually gives economies more time to adjust, allowing them to reap the benefits of path-dependent green investment without much disruption. A late, more chaotic transition is costlier.

Each State in India faces a distinctive set of challenges regarding the impact of warming, but also offers its own set of opportunities for reducing emissions depending on its natural resources. For example, coastal States need to take action to protect their shores from sea level rise, districts that are drier need to prepare for variable monsoon precipitation. Himalayan regions have their own unique challenges, and selected parts of peninsular India and offshore areas offer great opportunities for harnessing wind power. These various aspects need to be considered for developing clear and sustainable goals for the future.

If the social inequality is the most acutely felt social problem in India, insecurity, more than poverty, is the most acutely felt economic problem. Besides those below the official poverty line, even those just over the poverty line are subject to multiple economic insecurities of various kinds (due to wealth and/or health risks, market fluctuations, job-related uncertainties). Many Government policies are actually intended towards mitigating these insecurities.

In our country, handlooms are equated with a culture that ensures a continuity of tradition. This idea has become part of the public policy-framing and provides a legitimate basis for the State to support the sector. But the notion of tradition as a single, linear entity is being strongly contested today. The narratives dominant in defining culture/tradition in a particular way are seen to have emerged as the identities and histories of large sections. The discounted and, at times, forcibly stifled identities are fighting for their rightful place in history. Against this backdrop, when we promote handloom as a traditional industry, it is not surprising that large sections of our population choose to ignore it.

In our country, regrettably, teaching and learning for the examination have been our forte but the new demands of society and the future of work require critical and independent thinking, learning through doing, asking questions from multiple disciplinary perspectives on the same issue, using evidence for building arguments, and reflecting and articulation. Higher education should not “either be a mere servant of the government policy or a passive respondent to public mood.” Higher learning is all about how to think rather than what to think. Teaching has to be re-invented.

If there is inequality in the pattern of population growth, there is greater inequality in food production and utilization. As societies become wealthier, their consumption of animal products increases. This means that a greater proportion of such basic foodstuff as grains and legumes that could feed humans directly is instead being converted into feed for poultry and large farm animals. Yet this conversion of plant-based food into animal food for humans is far from efficient. Only 16% of the calories fed to chickens are recovered by us when we eat them. This conversion rate goes down to five to seven per cent in large animals that are fed grain to add fat and some protein before slaughter.

Over the next 30 years, many countries are promising to move to net-zero carbon, implying that household emissions will have to be cut to close to nothing. A leading climate scientist reckons that, at best, half the reduction might be achieved through demand-side measures, such as behavioural changes by individuals and households. And even that would require companies and governments to provide more incentives to change through supply-side investments to make low-carbon options cheaper and more widely available.

In only 50 years, the world’s consumption of raw materials has nearly quadrupled, to more than 100 billion tons. Less than 9% of this is reused. Batteries of old vehicles contain materials such as lithium, cobalt, manganese and nickel that are pricey and can be hard to obtain. Supply chains are long and complicated. Buyers’ risks are being aggravated by their suppliers’ poor environmental and labour standards. Reusing materials makes sense. Once batteries reach the ends of their lives, they should go back to a factory where their ingredients can be recovered and put into new batteries.

It is hard to predict how changes in the climate and the atmosphere’s chemistry will affect the prevalence and virulence of agricultural diseases. But there is a risk that such changes will make some plant infections more common in all climatic zones, perhaps catastrophically so. Part of the problem is that centuries of selective breeding have refined the genomes of most high-value crops. They are spectacular at growing in today’s conditions but genetic variations that are not immediately useful to them have been bred out. This is good for yields but bad for coping with changes. A minor disease or even an unknown one could suddenly rampage through a genetically honed crop.

“A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise he will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But, though it hurts, he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense. The national unity of free people depends upon a sufficiently even balance of political power to make it impracticable for the administration to be arbitrary and for opposition to be revolutionary and irreconcilable.”

There has been no democracy that has grown economically without corporate capitalism. It helps in modernizing the economy and enabling the transition from rural to urban, and agriculture to industry and services, which are inevitable with growth. It generates jobs — and there is no other way to fix a country’s unemployment challenge without a further impetus to private business. Big companies can operate on a large scale and become competitive both domestically and externally. A vibrant corporate capitalist base also leads to additional revenues for the State — which in turn, can be used for greater welfare for the marginalized and creating a more level playing field in terms of opportunities.

“A network of voluntary associations stands as a ‘buffer’ between the relatively powerless individual and the potentially powerful State.”

A single number for inflation is an aggregate across different commodities and services — the price rise differs for different items of consumption. So, the single number is arrived at by assigning weights to different commodities and services. For WPI, the weights in production are used; for CPI, the consumption basket is used. But people are not homogeneous. The consumption basket is vastly different for the poor, the middle classes, and the rich. Hence, the CPI is different for each of these classes and a composite index requires averaging the baskets.

Trust stands commonly defined as being vulnerable to others. Entrepreneurship implies trust in others and willingness to expose oneself to betrayal. Trust in expert systems is the essence of globalizing behaviour; trust itself emerges as a super-commodity in the social market and defines the characteristics of goods and services in a global market. Trusting conduct also means holding others in good esteem, and an optimism that they are, or will be, competent in certain respects.

When SARS-CoV-2 was first detected in 2019, it was a truly novel virus for the world. At that time, no one in the world had been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 or had specific immunity against it. In contrast, people across the world have been exposed to HMPV for decades and the virus is well-studied. HMPV and SARS-CoV-2 belong to two very different virus families with fundamentally different characteristics and epidemiology, with strong seasonality seen in HMPV, unlike SARS-CoV-2. Both viruses cause different severity of symptoms, particularly over the long term, and the affected population segments do not fully overlap. In general, HMPV causes milder illness with deaths being very rare and with no long-term post-viral symptoms.

Previous waves of customer-service technology, including email and those pesky voice menus, stoked concerns of job losses, only for them to fail to materialise. AI could yet prove different. And if it does, its effects may be salutary. Human agents could be freed up to spend more time on creative and rewarding tasks, like using feedback to make products and services better—and thereby spend less time listening to irate customers!