Category Archives: Social/Political issues

Education in Bengal: A teacher’s trauma

Destination: Kalitala High School, Hingalganj block, on the India-Bangladesh border, 120 km from Kolkata
Protagonist: A young teacher
This is the story of a teacher, of her intense passion for teaching, of her undying spirit and above all her daily struggle for survival. She’s been taking the long and arduous journey from Dum Dum to a remote hamlet called Kalitala in Hingalganj in north 24 Parganas on the India-Bangladesh border over the past five years.

More than 200 scribes in jail across the world

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has identified as many as 221 journalists in jail around the world in 2014. In 2013 the number was 211. The tally marks the second-highest number of journalists in jail since CPJ began taking an annual census of imprisoned journalists in 1990.
I wonder why freedom of expression is taken away by those countries which have thrown valiant journalists into prisons. I condemn all these attempts at muffling free press.
Jail those scribes who are dishonest, tell lies and resort to falsehood, but not those who are apostles of honesty and rectitude and who always stand by truth, come what may.
Let truth prevail.

Where have all those feminists gone?

Arup Bhandari laid down his life on February 2 fighting to protect women’s dignity. The brave soul fought goons single-handedly but slumped to ground when he was hit with sticks and rods. The intrepid 23-year-old from Salkia, Howrah, who sometimes worked as a civic police volunteer, faced the fury and wrath of five young men when he raised his voice and protested against women’s harassment.
He died unnoticed, unsung.

‘Save the lives of girls’

Today (24 January) is Rastriya Balika Diwas.

Haryana has the worst sex ratio (number of females per 1,000 males) and child sex ratio in India. Out of the 100 worst districts in India for sex ratio, Haryana accounts for 12 districts.
That’s why Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose Haryana to launch the nationwide campaign called Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao (Save Girl Child, Educate Her). The scheme will focus on fighting female foeticide and empowering women through education.

Time to overhaul workplace policies in US

Lack of flexibility at workplace, paid family leave and affordable childcare make things difficult for working parents in the U.S. It is time for implementing workplace policies that give all workers the best chance to succeed at work and at home.

Denmark world’s happiest country

According to the 2013 World Happiness Report released by Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Denmark is the world’s happiest country. The report says Denmark is followed by Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden in happiness index. Rwanda, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Benin and Togo — all nations in Sub-Saharan Africa — are the least satisfied with their lives, according to the survey of 156 countries.
The US comes in at number 17 in the world in terms of overall happiness, but it still lags behind Canada (6), Australia (10), Israel (11), the UAE (14) and Mexico (16), according to the Earth Institute.
The report ranks the UK as the 22nd happiest country in the world. Other major nations included Germany (26), Japan (43), Russia (68) and China (93).
The global survey was conducted between 2010 and 2012 and follows the Earth Institute’s first rankings released last year. While “the world has become a slightly happier and more generous place over the past five years,” economic and political upheavals have resulted in greatly reduced levels of well being for some nations, the report said.
Rankings for Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain fell dramatically because of the impact of the eurozone crisis, while Egypt, Myanmar and Saudi Arabia registered a steep fall in the wake of recent political and civil turmoil.
Egypt had the greatest fall in happiness levels. On a scale of 1 to 10 — with 10 rated as happiest — Egypt averaged 4.3 in 2012, compared to 5.4 in 2007.
“We expect, and find, that these losses are far greater than would follow simply from lower incomes,” the report said, noting that the greatest single factor reducing happiness levels in these countries was a reduction in people’s perceived “freedom to make key life choices.”
Angola, Zimbabwe and Albania experienced the largest increases across all the countries surveyed.
“On a regional basis, by far the largest gains in life evaluations in terms of the prevalence and size of the increases have been in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in Sub-Saharan Africa,” the report said. Reduced levels of corruption also contributed to the rise.
Governments seeking to improve the happiness of their populations should spend a higher proportion of their health budgets on mental illness, which is the single biggest “determinant of misery” in countries assessed, the study authors said.
“People can be unhappy for many reasons — from poverty to unemployment to family breakdown to physical illness,” the report said. “But in any particular society, chronic mental illness is a highly influential cause of misery. If we want a happier world, we need a completely new deal on mental health.”
The 2013 World Happiness Report comes on the back of a growing global movement calling for governments and policy makers to reduce their emphasis on achieving economic growth and focus on policies that can improve people’s overall well-being.
An idea first proposed in 1972 by Bhutan’s former King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the concept of “happiness economics” has now gained traction in many countries across the world, including the UK, Germany and South Korea. The UN first encouraged member countries to measure and use happiness of their people to guide public policies in July 2011.
“It is important to balance economic measures of societal progress with measures of subjective well-being to ensure that economic progress leads to broad improvements across life domains, not just greater economic capacity,” the report said.

Obama’s bold rhetoric to combat climate change

The article appeared in Global Times (US Edition)

President Barack Obama made a forceful plea to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in his speech at Georgetown University last month. His administration, he said, would impose tighter pollution controls on coal- and gas-fired utilities and establish strict conditions for approval of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline (which would carry crude oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico).
Obama plans to cut carbon pollution, prepare the country for the rising number of extreme weather events such as hurricanes and droughts, invest more in clean-energy sources and help lead international efforts to combat climate change.
“It’s a serious challenge, but it’s one uniquely suited to America’s strengths. We’ll need scientists to design new fuels and farmers to grow them…We’ll need engineers to devise new sources of energy and businesses to make and sell them,” he said.
Obama is trying to frame climate change as a make-or-break political issue, urging Americans to vote only for those who will protect the country from environmental harm, AP reported. He says US is already paying a price, both in lost lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. “If you agree with me, I’ll need you to act,” Obama said in his latest weekly radio and Internet address.
According to a World Bank Group report published last month, global temperatures will rise by 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) in the next 20 to 30 years. The report said forty per cent of the land used to grow maize in Africa could no longer support the crop; parts of major cities in South Asia, including Bangkok, could be underwater; and the fish stocks in parts of Southeast Asia could decline by 50 per cent.
Asked what the US government should do to minimize mounting economic and human costs of climate change, Harvard University Prof Jeffrey Frankel said: “The US should stop subsidizing fossil fuels, and tax them instead.”
There’s no substitute for aggressive national targets to reduce emissions. Today, the burden of emissions reductions lies with a few large economies, including the US, China, India and the European Union. The moves by the US and other big emitters to cut emissions from coal-fired plants are an important step forward.
Obama said: “The federal government will partner with communities seeking help to prepare for droughts and floods, reduce wildfires risks, protect dunes and wetlands that pull double duty as green space and as natural storm barriers.”
Recently, China and the US agreed to phase down production and consumption of HFCs. This could cut two years’ worth of global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, slowing the arrival of a warmer world.
In the US, states and cities have been taking the lead. California, for instance, has started by aggressively reducing diesel emissions. These emissions have a warming impact 460 to 1,500 times stronger than carbon dioxide.
Speaking to Global Times, Werner Baer, prof of economics, University of Illinois said: “The US government must provide increased tax incentives to produce more efficient cars and especially to encourage more people to use public transportation.”
Obama said his government would take climate change into consideration in its everyday operations. The shift could affect decisions on a range of issues, including bridge heights and flood insurance rates.
The actions make clear that the President will bypass Congress in seeking to reshape the federal government and the nation’s electricity sector. The aggressive posture also sets up major confrontations with the fossil fuel industry and its Republican allies.
According to the Edison Electric Institute, a utility trade group, there are 1,142 coal-fired utilities in the US and 3,967 natural-gas-fired plants, all of which would face new carbon limits under Obama’s proposal.
Even though there are enormous political and technical challenges, President Obama has injected a new sense of hope in the fight against climate change.