23-02-2017 (Important News Clippings)
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Date:23-02-17
India has to do its bit for multilateralism
One is rejuvenating a listless multilateral process of reaching agreement on trade, which had been squeezed, on the one side, by shortsighted refusal on the part of member countries, including India, to reach agreement even on subjects on which differences between parties are minor, and, on the other, by a shift in preference to regional trade agreements. Now that protectionist tendencies are raising their head in several advanced countries, including in the US, it makes eminent sense to reinforce the multilateral trade forum, the WTO.
The other perspective from which India’s present initiative is welcome is that services, trade in which has been growing faster than trade in goods, permit India to make common cause with industrial countries, which dominate the trade. India’s rank in trade in services is several notches higher than its rank in trade in goods. Information technology-related professional services occupy the spotlight, thanks to the proposed tightening of H-1B visas in the US.
But India is unable to tap in full the potential for, say, medical tourism because insurance in the home country of the tourist is not readily portable across borders and hospitals in India do not get accredited for treatment. In the jargon, H-1B visas relate to Mode 4 delivery of services, in which people cross borders to that end. Medical tourism is Mode 2 trade in services, in which the service buyer travels to the exporting country. Issues in all four modes have to be tackled. The growing trade in audio-visual content offers common cause for Hollywood and Bollywood, provided India demonstrates the will to enforce protection of intellectual property.
The government’s move to rally support from G20 and Brics nations is sound. What India must prepare for is to give, not just take, when it comes to trade negotiations.
राजनीतिक दलों को आरटीआई के दायरे में लाएं
Date:23-02-17
यूरोप पर फिर छा रहे अनिश्चितता के बादल
यह विडंबना ही है कि उत्तरी अटलांंटिक इलाका राजनीतिक जोखिम का केंद्र बन चुका है। यूरोप के आसन्न संकट के बारे में विस्तार से बता रहे हैं क्लॉड समद्जा
Date:22-02-17
Lending a hand, filling a gap
Government, philanthropists and business can forge partnerships and blend financial models to achieve sustainable development goals
The world’s governments have agreed on an ambitious agenda to transform our world by 2030, adopting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that aim to ensure no one is left behind, and everyone benefits from development efforts. Agenda 2030 is unprecedented in scope and significance: The SDGs are multi-dimensional and interconnected, and the scale of the challenge at hand is vast. Realising these 17 goals will require deep commitment, trillions of dollars in investment, and innovative ideas and approaches. It will also require institutions and individuals to bring together the very best they have to offer in order to achieve this shared vision of prosperity for all.
India is pivotal to the eventual outcome of these SDGs. Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed the declaration on behalf of the country, and the Government of India and state governments have taken full ownership of this ambitious agenda. Many of the central and state governments’ existing flagship schemes and policies, and their strategic vision for achieving prosperity for all, link clearly to the SDGs. Crucial to the world meeting the SDGs by 2030 will be our ability to build opportunities for meaningful collaboration between all stakeholders, including governments, businesses and community organisations. It is therefore important to develop creative models that can strategically harness financing for development, private capital and philanthropic funds to bridge the gap between the quantum of funds required and public funds.
Investment from the private sector into social development is an important piece for solving the financial puzzle, particularly when it comes to mobilising capital to maximise development spending in priority areas for the government. India’s philanthropic and business sectors can play a critical role in supporting and accelerating ongoing work in these areas. Renewed commitment, coordination and alignment between the government and the philanthropy sector could well bring much-needed funds to the table, as well as contribute technical knowledge, skills and energy for development programmes.
The India Philanthropy Report 2015, which tracks the growth of philanthropy in India, paints a very encouraging picture. Since 2009, India has added more than 100 million private donors, and they are contributing to a wide array of causes. According to the Asia-Pacific Wealth Report 2016, the number of high net worth individuals in India has grown faster than in other developing countries. This, and India’s impressive economic growth, suggest plenty of untapped potential to unlock funds for social development. Philanthropy can also complement efforts underway to forge more partnerships and blended financial models to achieve the SDGs. India has already adopted an innovative method of getting businesses to pitch in through the new Companies Act.
Earlier this year, I was privileged to be a part of discussions on an initiative that aims to make it easier for philanthropists, causes and partners to work together. The SDG Philanthropy Platform, soon to be launched in India, is an initiative of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, the Foundation Center and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Already operational in seven pilot countries (Colombia, the US, Indonesia, Kenya, China, Ghana and Zambia), it aims to bring the philanthropy sector into the partnership of those addressing the world’s grand challenges as identified by the SDGs. The platform stems from the notion that only a collective push and deeper partnerships can achieve lasting systemic change.
This means expanding and deepening strategic collaboration with the private sector across multiple SDGs while increasing awareness of the benefits of greater coordination among private and public donors, and between donors and grantees.In Kenya, for instance, the platform facilitated the creation of the Kenya Philanthropy Forum (KPF). The KPF was instrumental to the Kenyan government’s recognition of the need for more and better data to be shared by development partners across sectors, which led to the creation of the Kenya Data Forum.
In Colombia, the platform fostered a collaboration between the government and other partners to create a database that tracks social initiatives led by foundations, community groups and other stakeholders. The map allows both foundations and governments to customise and manage projects, design and monitor indicators, and track in real-time the progress of projects. This effort is being deployed as a powerful and transformative tool in the peace-building process that is now at the core of the Colombian government’s agenda.
The platform could also work as a targeting mechanism at the national, state or city level and help build capacity, which can aid funders to make grants with greater confidence and impact. For India, this could help businesses identify credible development partners and ensure that their funds are properly utilised. By mapping intervention data, the platform will promote innovations and avoid duplication. It will also accelerate development spending, and target it where it is most needed, where it will have the maximum impact on the ground. The platform could similarly help India realise its enormous contribution to solving global development challenges and employing creative technological solutions.
Shepherding the achievements of the SDGs is an enormous task that requires the involvement of every sector and each level of society. The experiences of the pilot countries illustrate the opportunities the platform can create for India to build meaningful and lasting state-philanthropy partnerships to achieve the prime minister’s vision of “sabka saath, sabka vikas (collective effort, inclusive growth)”.
When the unelected set the agenda
We are slowly losing our autonomy to define ourselves — who we are and who we want to be seen as
Sometimes, it seems that to understand our complex society, all that we need to do is to understand our behaviour at traffic lights. Every day, I see countless people on bikes and cars driving through red lights. Earlier, I used to get upset that these people were blatantly flouting a rule that many others were following, more so when they did it right in front of indifferent traffic police. Now I realise that while this might be just another instance of rule-breaking that seems to be an essential definition of being Indian, at a deeper level it is also reflective of a far greater problem confronting our society.
Rules and individual agency
Following rules is very easy, and at the same time also difficult. Following a rule has at least two components: one, the action corresponding to the rule, and the other our interpretation of the intention of that rule.
So to follow the simple rule, “Stop at a red light”, is to follow the physical action of stopping the vehicle but it is also to accept the intention or reason behind this rule. Typically, we are expected to follow the action corresponding to a rule and not worry about the intention.
Most times, when motorists jump a signal, they are not breaking a rule per se as much as interpreting it in terms of its original intention. They recognise that there is no traffic in front of them and then act based on their decision that red lights are not meant to be followed when there is no traffic. They are acting as independent decision-makers who feel that their judgment of the situation overrides rules set by a society or government. But there are also some who jump signals because they feel they are not bound by any social norms.
This ambiguity of what it is to follow a rule is really the source of many conflicts in our society today. Should we blindly follow social norms, or should we be independent interpreters of the rules of society? Sometimes it may seem that our individual decision is better than the social norm. Some might suggest that it is useless to wait for two minutes at a signal when there is no traffic at all on the roads. How should we act in such cases? Does the social norm, even when not appropriate in a particular context, always supersede rational individual decision? Or is it better to have a thinking citizenship, one that refuses to blindly follow rules without interpreting them to see what really suits the context? But the chaos that results when each of us interprets social rules is what leads to traffic jams every single day in every corner of our cities and towns!
It is also this same attitude of individual interpretations of social norms that drives much of the conflicts in India today, including the problem of corruption. I am referring in particular to the conflicts largely understood to be based on identity politics: for example, the attack on Sanjay Leela Bhansali in connection with his film Padmavati, the debate on jallikattu, and the actions of the self-appointed protectors of religions, traditions and the nation. Identity politics is really not that different from the problem of dealing with traffic signals.
Identity is primarily about rules and how we follow these rules. Identities such as gender, caste and religion are largely decided by the norms of a larger society, and most times, socialisation is nothing but learning how to follow these norms. So how we behave according to our gender, or our religious and caste identities, is influenced by a set of social rules, some explicit and many implicit. Living in society is then largely a matter of following these rules, stopping at the ‘social red lights’ as required.
But since identity is intensely personal, we also repeatedly jump the social red light. We break social rules constantly and in doing so assert our own individual decision-making capacity. Choosing our own identity — how we see ourselves — is one of the most cherished autonomies that we have. However, this autonomy is what is being challenged today by small groups who take on the authority of defining what our identities should be.
Today, it is not easy to belong to anything since our belongingness is constantly challenged by others. If you thought that being an Indian was a simple matter, then think again, for protesting against the policies of a ruling government, questioning the cynical use of the national anthem in movie halls or even thinking that there are actually decent ordinary people in Pakistan are all reasons for your identity as an Indian to be questioned. We are slowly losing our autonomy to define ourselves, to define who we are and who we want to be seen as.
In the recent jallikattu case, the claims and counterclaims were not as much about bulls as it was about the identity of being Tamil. People who wrote in support of the ban on jallikattu were labelled as anti-Tamil. Movie stars, among others, who supported jallikattu repeatedly invoked jallikattu as embodying the essence of being Tamil. This was indeed a new public definition of being a Tamil.
In all these cases, small groups are defining the rules of what an identity is. Instead of the state or the larger society which earlier did this task, it is increasingly smaller vocal groups that have anointed themselves as judge and enforcers of identity. This is exactly like having a group of people standing at signal lights waiting to catch those who jump the signals.
We have come to this point only because those who are supposed to do the job of creating meaningful social rules have abdicated their responsibility. Just like the lack of traffic police leads to individuals who suddenly decide to regulate traffic, so too the lack of political leaders leads to small groups taking over the task of regulating society.
This is a consequence of the nature of democratic politics. Representative politics is a system where we voluntarily give away our autonomy to politicians. Voting for somebody is to voluntarily give a “power of attorney” to that individual to speak and govern on our behalf. We gift the politicians the right to govern us in the hope that they will do the right thing by us. Alas, this is a hope that is no longer possible in democracies around the world and in India.
Democracy is the contract by which we voluntarily agree to follow the rules created by a group of people whom we elect. The other direction of the contract is that the politicians not only make rules that benefit the citizens but also communicate the intention behind those rules in clear terms. When these intentions are left ambiguous, social conflicts arise since individuals and groups interpret the intentions behind rules to suit their interests, leading to the failure of the democratic contract.
One of the first signs that the system has failed is when the unelected start dictating the society with their definition of what social rules mean instead of democratically negotiating these rules. They then run through society like they run through signal lights while the rest of us sit and watch helplessly waiting for the lights to change.
Sundar Sarukkai is Professor of Philosophy at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru
परंपरा के बहाने लोकतंत्र पर आघात
आजादी के 70 साल बाद एक राज्य के मुख्यमंत्री को महिलाओं के कानूनी हक दिलवाने की कोशिश करने की वजह से पद छोड़ना पड़ा है। ऐसी चिंताजनक घटना हुई है नगालैंड में, जहां के मुख्यमंत्री टी आर जेलियांग को प्रचंड बहुमत के बावजूद नगा संगठनों के विरोध के कारण मुख्यमंत्री का पद छोड़ना पड़ा। जेलियांग चाहते थे कि बाकी राज्यों की तरह नगालैंड के स्थानीय निकाय के चुनावों में भी महिलाओं को 33 फीसदी आरक्षण दिया जाए। उन्होंने इसका एलान भी कर दिया। पिछले साल सुप्रीम कोर्ट ने नगा महिलाओं के संगठन की अर्जी पर स्थानीय निकायों में महिलाओं को 33 फीसदी आरक्षण को जायज ठहराया था। सुप्रीम कोर्ट के उस आदेश के बाद जेलियांग ने एक फरवरी को होने वाले स्थानीय निकाय के चुनाव में महिलाओं को 33 फीसदी आरक्षण की घोषणा करके चुनाव करवाना चाहा था।
फैसले के बाद से ही वहां हिंसक विरोध शुरू हो गया। नगा होहो और अन्य आदिवासी संगठनों ने सरकार के इस फैसले का विरोध शुरू कर दिया। महिलाओं को चुनाव में आरक्षण दिए जाने के विरोध में नगा संगठनों के कार्यकर्ताओं ने न केवल नगरपालिका के कार्यालय को फूंक दिया, बल्कि मुख्यमंत्री के दफ्तर पर भी हमले कर दिए। विरोध की आग में जल रहे नगालैंड में पारंपरिक तौर पर पुरुष प्रधान नगा संगठनों ने मुख्यमंत्री जेलियांग का विरोध शुरू कर दिया और आखिर में इन संगठनों के दबाव में जेलियांग को पद छोड़ना पड़ा। वह भी तब, जब 60 सदस्यीय विधानसभा में जेलियांग की नगालैंड पीपुल्स पार्टी के 46 विधायक हैं व बाकी उनके समर्थक। परंपरा के नाम पर यह लोकतंत्र को बंधक बनाने जैसा है।
यह सही है कि आदिवासियों के जो संगठन वहां के चुनाव में महिलाओं के आरक्षण का विरोध कर रहे हैं, वे संविधान में वहां की जनता को मिले अधिकारों की अस्पष्टता की आड़ ले रहे हैं। इन संगठनों का दावा है कि संविधान आदिवासियों को अपनी परंपरा और रीति-रिवाजों की हिफाजत का अधिकार देता है। संविधान के अनुच्छेद 371(ए) के मुताबिक नगालैंड की धार्मिक और सामाजिक परंपराओं के मामलों में संसद का कोई कानून वहां लागू नहीं होता है। वे अपनी परंपरा के हिसाब से काम करते हैं। इसके अलावा नगा आदिवासियों की लंबे समय से चली आ रही रूढ़ियों और प्रथाओं के अलावा संपत्ति के मामले भी इसी दायरे में आते हैं। संविधान के इसी अनुच्छेद को ढाल बनाकर इस राज्य में महिलाओं को उनका हक नहीं दिया जा रहा। नगा आदिवासियों के संगठन में महिलाओं का प्रतिनिधित्व नहीं है और अगर देखा जाए, तो 1964 में हुए पहले विधानसभा चुनाव से लेकर अब तक वहां की विधानसभा में कोई महिला विधायक नहीं चुनी गई है। इससे पता चलता है कि नगालैंड में पितृ-सत्तात्मक समाज की जड़ें कितनी गहरी हैं। संविधान के उपरोक्त अनुच्छेद की अस्पष्टता और उचित व्याख्या न होने की आड़ लेकर पुरुषवादी सामंती सोच को वैधता प्रदान की जाती रही है।
वैसे इस पूरे मसले पर संविधान में भी भ्रम की स्थिति है। एक तरफ तो संविधान अपने अनुच्छेद 371(ए) में नगालैंड के अदिवासियों को अपनी परंपरा और रीति-रिवाजों के संरक्षण का अधिकार देता है और दूसरी तरफ अनुच्छेद 243(डी) में महिलाओं के आरक्षण की बात करता है। इससे भी अधिक महत्वपूर्ण है कि यह संविधान में प्रदत्त समानता के अधिकार की राह में बाधा बनकर खड़ा हो जाता है। आमतौर पर जब भी मौलिक अधिकारों के रास्ते में कोई पारंपरिक कानून अड़चन बनकर खड़ा होता है, तो मौलिक अधिकारों को ही तरजीह दी जाती है। संविधान में मिले मौलिक अधिकार से किसी तरह का समझौता नहीं किया जा सकता। जरूरत पड़ने पर इसके लिए संविधान में संशोधन से भी नहीं हिचकना चाहिए। हमारी लोकतांत्रिक प्रकिया में कोई राज्य या कोई संगठन महिलाओं को दरकिनार करके लोकतांत्रिक प्रक्रिया को मजबूती नहीं दे सकता है। इस वक्त नगालैंड में अजीब द्वंद्व की स्थिति है, जहां एक तरफ महिलाएं अपना हक मांग रही हैं, तो वहीं दूसरी तरफ आदिवासियों की पंचायतें परंपरा और रूढ़ियों के नाम पर उनको सांविधानिक अधिकारों से वंचित करने का खुला खेल खेल रही हैं। नगालैंड में कोई भी विधायक जातीय संगठनों के इस फैसले के खिलाफ खड़ा होने की हिम्मत नहीं दिखा पाया।
वैसे नगालैंड में तो संविधान की अस्पष्टता विरोध करने वालों को एक आधार दे रही है, लेकिन अन्य प्रदेशों में भी जातीय पंचायतें महिलाओं के मसले को लेकर कितनी अनुदार होती हैं, यह समय-समय पर देखने को मिलता रहता है। समान गोत्र में प्रेम विवाह के विरोध से लेकर ऑनर किलिंग तक में पुरुष सत्ता अपने क्रूरतम रूप में सामने आती है। देश की महिलाओं को बराबरी का हक देने-दिलाने की खूब बातें हमारे रहनुमा करते हैं। चुनावों के वक्त नारी शक्ति की बातें फिजां में जोर-शोर से गूंजती हैं, लेकिन जब कानूनी रूप से उनको हक देने की बात आती है, तो पुरुष सत्ता अपना असली रूप दिखाती है। संसद और राज्यों की विधानसभाओं में महिलाओं के आरक्षण का मुद्दा दो दशक से भी अधिक समय से अटका हुआ है। साल 1996 में देवगौड़ा के प्रधानमंत्रित्व काल में इस महिला आरक्षण बिल को लोकसभा में पेश किया गया था। दो साल बाद फिर से अटल बिहारी वाजपेयी के शासनकाल में इसको लोकसभा में बिल को पेश किया गया, लेकिन हंगामे के अलावा कुछ हो नहीं पाया। संसदीय कमेटियों से होते हुए इस बिल को कई बार संसद में पेश किया गया, लेकिन राजनीतिक इच्छाशक्ति के अभाव में यह पास नहीं हो पा रहा है। पिछले साल सितंबर में इस बिल को संसद में पेश हुए 20 साल हो गए। यह पास क्यों नहीं हो पा रहा है, इसके पीछे की सोच पर विचार करने की जरूरत है।
हमारे पुरुष प्रधान समाज के नेता इस तरह के बयान देते हैं कि अगर संसद और विधानमंडलों में महिलाओं को आरक्षण देने का कानून बन जाता है, तो फिर सदन में सीटियां गूंजेगीं। महिला आरक्षण के विरोध को पूरे देश ने देखा था कि संसद किस तरह से एक सांसद की करतूत से शर्मसार हो गया था। अगर हम सचमुच महिला अधिकारों को लेकर संजीदा हैं, तो समग्रता में संविधान के तमाम विरोधाभासों को दूर करना होगा, ताकि परंपरा के नाम पर लोकतंत्र बंधक न बने।
(ये लेखक के अपने विचार हैं)