Category Archives: Social/Political issues

‘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.

US economic crisis almost ‘over’

The article was published in Global Times (US Edition)

Even as long-term fiscal problems remain, after a long economic winter, the US stock market is booming, housing prices are rebounding; mortgage providers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, long demonized by Republicans, are returning profits to the Treasury. Job growth has accelerated and consumer confidence has reached its highest level in almost six years.
According to the Commerce Department, economic growth in the first quarter was only marginally below the 2.5% rate originally estimated, but still much faster than the 0.4% growth during the October-December quarter. Hiring has been solid and in the past six months, employers have added an average of 208,000 jobs per month – up from an average of only 138,000 in the previous six months. The Commerce Department also added that the unemployment rate has fallen to a four-year low of 7.5%, down from 10% in October 2009.
According to a survey by Manpower Group, the global employment services giant, more US employers plan to hire workers in the next quarter than in any period since the fourth quarter of 2008.
Dr Mukul Majumdar, Prof of economics, Cornell University, New York, is also upbeat. Speaking to Global Times, he said: “There are several encouraging signs from the long-run perspectives. Housing sector has recovered; major players in the auto industry are not struggling to avert bankruptcies; financial world recognizes the role of regulation and vigilance; the country is expecting fundamental shifts in the patterns of energy production/consumption/import and moves are underway for designing infrastructure improvements.”
Dr Majumdar, however, expressed misgivings about health care reforms. “We are yet to sort out health care problems; to enrich the human capital to ensure meaningful employment opportunities; and carry the standards of science and technology in a more competitive world.”
Explaining the current state of economy, he said: “I wish I could say the days of uncertainty are “over” or that the problems of cycles have been “solved”…We surely have a better understanding of the forces that led to the recent debacles. But I don’t foresee an Arrow-Debreu world with complete contingent markets in which all agents have the same information.”
Dr Majumdar said he was always reminded of Galbraith’s concluding observations in “A Short History of Financial Euphoria”: “When will come the next great speculative episode, and in what venue will it recur — real estate, securities markets, art, antique, automobile? To these, there are no answers; no one knows, and anyone who presumes to answer does not know he does not know.”
Meanwhile, the IMF annual report has said the US growth this year would have been as much as 1.75% higher than the sluggish 1.9% forecast, had spending cuts and tax increases been introduced more slowly. It forecast 2.7% growth for 2014. “The deficit reduction in 2013 has been excessively rapid and ill-designed,” the IMF said. “These cuts should be replaced with a back-loaded mix of entitlement savings and new revenues, along the lines of the administration’s budget proposal.”
“The IMF’s advice is to slow down but hurry up: meaning slow the fiscal adjustment this year, which would help sustain growth and job creation, but hurry up with putting in place a medium-term road map to restore long-run fiscal sustainability,” Christine Lagarde, IMF managing director, said.

Food wastage! Think of starved souls

This article was published in Global Times (US Edition)

Call it a byproduct of affluence or what you will.
At a time when hunger is staggering in the world, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) revealed a shocking truth: 40% of food in US, which equals to about $165 billion, is uneaten every year.
An average American family of four, the report says, tosses up to $2,275 worth of food annually. Since the 1970s, food wastage has skyrocketed by 50%, while food wastage is the largest element of solid waste in US landfills, the report adds. Food waste, as it decays in landfills, also produces methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas.
A UN report says nearly 1 billion people suffer from hunger today and 19 millions are children under the age of five at immediate risk of dying. This results in 3.5 million children deaths annually.
Asked how much baby food is being wasted in the US that can feed babies in Third World countries, Dana Gunders, project scientist at NRDC, San Francisco, CA, told Global Times: “I don’t know about baby food specifically. The UN’s FAO estimates that the average consumer in North America wastes 10 times that of someone in South Asia. This is really an ethical tragedy. While it’s hard to imagine that food from an individual’s kitchen in one country has any relation to hunger across the world, we are facing a global increase in demand for food. As that demand grows, we will need to become less wasteful and ensure any food grown is going to its best use. Just as energy efficiency reduces demand for energy, wasting less food can do the same.”
According to US Department of Agriculture, the energy embedded in wasted food represents about 2% of annual energy consumption.
The NRDC report says even a 15% cut in food supply losses could feed as much as 25 million Americans per year.
Andrew Shakman, co-founder and president of LeanPath, Inc. in Portland, OR, said: “Due to food loss and food waste, approximately 40% of the food produced in the US is never consumed. This vast amount of waste consumes financial resources and generates adverse environmental impacts. It also drains money and food, which might otherwise be available to help needy Americans who don’t know the source of their next meal…Americans need to prioritize food waste reduction and focus efforts to prevent and minimize food waste.”
LeanPath has devised an automated food waste tracking system that has helped cut food waste and run greener, more sustainable operations.
“Americans must realize the consequence of food waste when specters of droughts loom over parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, S Carolina, and N Carolina,” said Amit Sengupta, an Indian-American from Cambridge, Mass.
Unsold fruits and vegetables in grocery stores comprise an enormous amount of this waste. But, consumers and restaurants are also to blame. “The first time I went to Costco, I was shocked by the giant cold storage room where frozen fruits were kept. It’s literally a frozen fruit mountain… In restaurant, a deluxe version burger could feed at least two guys… Look the amount of coffee served in a cafe. It’s impossible for one person to consume it,” said Zongpu Yue, a Chinese student at Columbia University, NY.
Talking about reducing food waste, Vineet Kumar, a software engineer, in Bear, Delaware, said: “We must teach our kids about the consequence of food wastage… Less food waste would lead to more-efficient land use, better water resource management, more sustainable use of phosphorus, and it’d have positive impact on climate change…If we stop being wasteful and become a little bit frugal, we can save millions of starved souls across the globe.”

Obama faces gun-control blues

The article was published in Global Times (US Edition)

Many Americans expressed disappointment and anger at the Senate’s rejection of a plan to expand background checks for gun purchasers recently.
Despite emotional pleas from families of victims of the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, and public support, the plan to extend background checks for sales made online and at gun shows failed on a 54-46 vote, six short of the 60 votes it needed to clear a procedural hurdle in the Senate, Reuters reported Wednesday.
“All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” an angry Obama said of the vote, adding that the effort “is not over”, according to Reuters.
President Barack Obama said on March 28 in no uncertain terms that it would be a “shame” if Americans forgot the kids at Newtown. He told the American public: “Raise your voices and make yourselves unmistakably heard” so lawmakers “don’t get squishy.”
Obama has made universal background checks his top priority. Public polls suggest that as many as nine out of 10 Americans support the idea. “Right now, 90 percent of Americans support background checks,” Obama said. “How often do 90 percent of Americans agree on anything? It never happens.”
“American politics is plagued by timidity and paralyzed by opportunism whenever it considers taking action to curb gun violence. No other developed country in the world has these massacres on such a regular basis. In no comparable nation do citizens have such easy access to guns,” Dr Suparno Chaudhuri, director of marketing at software firm Ringio, told the Global Times.
“The NRA’s logic on mental health to justify firearms possession is ridiculous… Obama must use all his powers to pass stringent laws which will make access to guns extremely difficult,” Chaudhuri added.
“I am really scared of sending my daughter to school after the Newtown massacre. My friend’s son was a victim there,” said Sanchita Sengupta, an Indian living in Boston.
“Nearly all mass shootings in recent years – not just Newtown, Fort Hood and Columbine – have been committed by white men… Imagine if African American men and boys had committed mass shootings, articles would have poured in and we’d have debates demanding that African Americans be held accountable,” said Jonathan Mok, a software professional from Silver Spring, Md. “I admire Bloomberg and CNN host Piers Morgan’s efforts to reduce gun violence.”
“If the federal ban on military-style assault weapons had not been allowed to expire, we might have seen less gun violence,” said Dr Subrata Mukherjee, a dentist from Albany, NY.
“Mayors Against Illegal Guns has gathered more than 1.4 million signatures demanding that Congress take action,” said Elvin Daniel, an NRE member and associated with Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group demanding action against gun violence.
A Chinese-American policeman in LA said on condition of anonymity: “Stricter gun control might prevent some crimes, but people’s horrible choice is the problem. We need to educate people how to deal with personal life issues. Anger management will be more efficient to reduce gun violence.”
“Our hearts are broken. Our spirit is not,” Mark Barden, father of a victim of the Newtown shootings, said at the White House after the vote, according to Reuters. “We always knew this would be a long road.”