motivation,samveg ias dehradun

Conclave on Asian elephants for conservation think tank in India, Myanmar, Bhutan

The two-day conference on Asian elephants concluded here on Friday with a resolve to establish a regional think tank with nodal officers from Indian, Bhutan and Myanmar.

The meet also stressed the need for bringing back focus to manage elephant ranges as cornerstone to achieve clearly defined and measurable targets of conservation of elephants both in the wild and in captivity in the three neighbouring countries.

Briefing journalists on the outcome of the conference, Ranjit Barthakur, Chairman and Founding Trustee of the Balipara Foundation, which organised the conference, said that elephants experts and conservationists who participated in the discussions, resolved that trans-national green corridors should be protected and strengthened. Other resolutions include increased coordination between enforcement agencies of the three neighbouring countries, involvement of younger generation in conservation programmes to infuse dynamism in initiatives, and enabling trans-boundary protection of Asian elephants.

The conference, while noting fragmentation of elephant reserves and corridors due to setting up of railway lines, construction of highways, building of dams and tea gardens have given rise to man-elephant conflict also resolved to initiate innovative measures to reduce man-elephant conflicts.

The experts said that along with protection of trans-boundary corridors, the protection of elephant reserves and corridors within north-east region of India was equally important.

The region has, according to experts, 58 elephant corridors and a population of about 9,300 elephants, some of which undertake trans-boundary movement to neighbouring Myanmar and Bhutan.

Dr Khyne U Mar, Research Associate and Project Co-ordinator, Myanmar Elephant Research Project, Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield a.k.a “Elephant Lady of Myanmar”; Dasho Palijor J Dorji of National Environment Commission, Government of Bhutan; Mr Nicholas Claxton, Director Wow Media and Founding Trustee of The Elephant Family; Dr Ajay Desai, Co-Chair Asian Elephant Specialist Group; Ms Belinda Wright, Executive Director of Wildlife Protection Society of India; Professor Raman Sukumar of the Centre of Ecological Studies; and Dr Jagdish Kishwan, former Additional Director General (Wildlife) at the Ministry of Environment and Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) and presently Chief Adviser, Wildlife Trust of India were among the experts who took part in the discussions.

Dengue drug can give Sanofi $1-bn India biz Dengue, a mosquito-borne viral disease, has been estimated to be a billion-dollar burden every year in India, according to a study

French drug major Sanofi's dengue vaccine discovery could open a $ 1-billion opportunity in India alone. The Paris-based global drug giant announced last week that it would have the vaccine available by the first half of next year.

According to a report by Brandeis University scholars, dengue, a mosquito-borne viral disease, has been estimated to be a billion-dollar burden every year in India, with no specific treatment. It is a health priority in many countries of Latin America and Asia. The World Health Organizationestimates up to 100 million infections yearly, of which about six mn cases are from India.

Sanofi Pasteur, the French drug maker's vaccine unit, would file for registration and subject to regulatory approval, the world's first dengue vaccine could be available by the second half of 2015, the company has said.

The report says the number of cases is almost 300 times higher than government figures. "Between 2006 and 2012, India reported an annual average of 20,474 dengue cases. Our results suggest that after correcting for under-reporting, India had nearly six mn clinically diagnosed dengue cases." The report puts the medical cost for dengue per annum at close to $550 mn in India.

Stephan Barth, country head, Sanofi Pasteur, says: "Over recent months, we have seen a worrying increase in cases, putting a huge strain on health care systems. India is part of Sanofi Pasteur's global development strategy for the dengue vaccine."

The results of the final stage of the clinical study reportedly demonstrate that the vaccine shows a 95.5 per cent protection against severe dengue and 80.3 per cent reduction in the risk of hospitalisation.

While India itself would be a big opportunity for Sanofi on the vaccine, the opportunities elsewhere are also handsome. Brazil, Australia and Southeast Asian countries are also hugely affected by the disease.

Sanofi recently made headlines after dismissing its first non-French chief executive, Chris Viehbacher. Serge Weinberg, chairman of the board of directors, was appointed interim chief till a successor was finalised. According to reports, some of the best known names in the pharma world are in the race for this job.

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BATTLING DENGUE

• Dengue, a mosquito-borne viral disease, has been estimated to be a billion-dollar burden every year in India, according to a study
   
• It still does not have any specific treatment
   
• WHO estimates up to 100 million infections yearly, of which about six million cases are from India

Imagine a future where everyone could express himself…’

Deb Roy founded and leads the Laboratory for Social Machines at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which studies human interaction online to create more responsive governments and systems. He is also Chief Media Scientist at Twitter. He spoke toRukmini S . in New Delhi about the lab’s plans in India

For the laboratory’s work on governance change, I believe that two of the main issues you’re looking at are gender inequality and literacy?

Yes. My view from the outside is there is a lot of attention these days in India to gender inequality in general and safety for girls and women in particular, and to the degree to which there is an intersection between those issues and the public sphere, we may have relevant work.

To give you a very simple example: look at the share of men versus women in the public sphere. Take the elections in India and all the conversation on Twitter, of which I know there was a significant scale — tens of millions of tweets reaching far more people. One could ask the question — whose voices are being heard in an important event like that and what’s the share of voice?

Let’s say you believe that the share of voice should match the share of feet on the ground, then maybe there are things that can be done to start moving that. Our little lab at MIT is not going to move share of voice of India, but we may be able to analyse and shed some light on what it looks like and why and there might be interesting, actionable insights for people who do have their hands on levers.

When you talk about effecting governance change through the internet, the most marginalised Indians are also the ones without access. In addition to connectivity, you’ve talked of alternatives to text to bring in these people.

Yes, definitely. Say you set the goal of universal access to the internet for every person in India. Then you work backwards: what are all the barriers to having universal access? There’s a set of technological and economic barriers, and then there’s a set of human skill barriers.

On the technology side, it is things like connectivity. What I’ve been learning over my last week here is that there are massive changes in the works for the footprint of 3G and 4G connectivity.

That still leaves standing the economics of what it would take to access that data. From what I’m learning of the shifts in the government in India with the Narendra Modi transition, there’s probably going to be a lot of support to have universal access so that may help with the economics. So that’s connectivity.

Then there’s the actual device that you connecting with. The good news there is you can now get a smartphone that runs apps on a serious operating system that connects to the internet for under Rs.2,000 and we all know which direction those prices will move and the speed. On the technological barriers, you can see the right direction for change for both data and hardware.

On the human side, there are two kinds of literacy blockers. There’s literacy in being able to understand the information, and then there’s computer or digital literacy challenge. First of all, both of them are clearly bridgeable — it requires the person to have the time and support to learn.

I think digital literacy is very easy to learn, even for grown-ups, let alone children. And then it comes to the literacy of dealing with letters. “Literacy versus letteracy” is a wonderful turn of phrase that one of the founders of MIT’s Media Lab, Seymour Papert taught me years ago. He said: why is literacy equated with ‘letteracy’? From a technology point of view, what that suggests is that there might be alternative paths to knowledge.

I’m actually ‘pro-letteracy’. But I think there’s interesting technology that can in the short term create bridges. If you are a 40-year-old woman with four children in rural Uttar Pradesh and trying to bootstrap your own savings account, maybe you’re not going to sit back and learn ‘letteracy’. It’s kind of a luxury because every day you’ve got priorities that are immediate.

However if there was an app on your smartphone that helped you do that thing you’re trying to do today and you could just speak or listen and use it, you probably would get over the digital literacy gap that much easier.

Then if every time you interacted with the information in spoken form, there was a textual version next to it, maybe that would become an en route to ‘letteracy’ without having to create all this learning time and space separately which is a luxury a lot of people don’t have. So for those reasons I see the work on spoken interfaces as highly relevant particularly in India because of the scale of impact that it could have.

You’ve worked on creating response loops between people and governments — but is the problem really one of bringing people’s voices to governments, or what governments choose to do or not do with it?

Totally agree. I think there’s huge amount of work ahead to get towards workable responsive systems for a feedback loop….The kind of social action today that you see enabled by social media, especially real-time and fast and at-scale digital networks, is best characterised as ad hoc and disruptive. It’s easier to protest, easier to have suddenly in a moment a big voice and suddenly to have big impact in the moment.

There’s a lot of theory on paper, legal structures, governance structures that are supposed to work like that — they just don’t work, because of the friction in the system that buries information.

If you are a high-ranking person in the government of India, just imagine looking down at a picture of the country you serve and the billion-plus people. Or let’s say you’re in some ministry and you are supposed to be doing something for your ministry — beyond knowing that there’s this couple of million people, this mass out there and you can slowly broadcast some policies, you’re in the dark; you’re staring into the darkness. You don’t know where they are, what they’re doing and the feeling is mutual.

The internet opens up this mutual visibility which sets a new set of possibilities in motion. Lots of work to be done, but I’m a technology optimist — it is technology that is opening up this set of possibilities but it is raw right now.

What work are you going to be doing in India?

We don’t know yet. My purpose here for these two weeks was to in various settings explain ourselves and explain what we’re interested in doing here. I have had some conversation with high-level folks in the government to get an understanding of the issues.

It is clear that there is a serious embrace of digital technology. I think the Prime Minister’s personal embrace of Twitter is symbolic of a much bigger embrace of the government’s leveraging Twitter specifically and the internet more generally. So lots of interesting areas where I think my lab at MIT could be helpful.

Imagine a future where everyone could express himself and you had a way to coalesce and map the conversations down to children in every village — it is hard to comprehend how that can change this country. There is something about literacy and language in particular in rural India that I find personally very interesting.

Likewise with gender equality, I think that a lot of issues around gender equality have such deep-rooted origins in culture, in what happens privately in the homes which are not areas that we’re trying to go into. I think that we’re very interested in the public sphere and at the interface of the private and public.

For example, in a public setting in a street in Delhi, what happens if people do adopt a behaviour of publicly reporting things in the moment on a smartphone?

What if police could be responsive to that? What if journalists had access to the same data and analytics? Now, there are citizens on the streets of Delhi who think it’s worth taking personal action, because there’s a system. That system doesn’t exist today on the streets of Delhi, but technologically we can make it happen.

Moving towards income transfers

A recent working paper on the ministry of finance's website provocatively titled 'Crossing the Rubicon' calls for a paradigmatic shift in the country's current system of foodgrain management. The paper moots the transformative idea of shifting from the current system of open-ended procurement at minimum support prices (MSP) to an income support based policy regime. Though such a move is likely to encounter resistance owing to its political implications, Alok Sinha, former head of the Food Corporation of India (FCI), says, "such a shift is possible, provided fears of various stakeholders are addressed."

Critics of the current regime argue that the policy of open-ended procurement from farmers at MSP, by assuring farmers of a minimum price, has created a perverse incentive in favour of rice and wheat production. Under an income policy, instead of direct procurement, farmers would be given a lump sum amount as income support, inclusive of all farm subsidies (fertiliser, power and others), on a graded per hectare basis. It is argued that as subsidy would be provided irrespective of the crop sown, it would induce farmers to shift to crops based on market signals. A shift in production towards vegetables and fruit, in line with the changing consumption patterns of households, would also ease pressure on food inflation.

The importance of the paper stems from the fact that while the views put forth by the author are held by many in the government, putting it up on the ministry of finance's website does seem to suggest radical reforms are in the offing. Although the government is yet to clarify its position, the articulation of such radical ideas, coupled with recent initiatives undertaken by the government laid out in the paper, do indicate a new direction of thinking on policy within the government.

Further, the government's renewed commitment to the Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) programme or Aadhaar and the recently launched Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana should be seen to this end. Taken together, the two schemes would enable rationalisation of food and fertiliser subsidies through better targeting and create a platform to facilitate a shift towards cash transfers. Shifting to income transfers would not only lower the governments subsidy burden but would also take care of the objections raised by the World Trade Organization as income support is classified as non-trade distorting under the rules. Also, as the author argues, the recent government initiative to provide soil health cards to each farmer should be viewed as a step towards formulation of an income policy.

The paper also calls for limiting the role of the government in agricultural markets to encourage greater private participation in the sector. This, as the author lays out, can be achieved by limiting the role of FCI to procuring foodgrain on the requirements of select states/UTs and for maintaining buffer stocks which would effectively "end the policy of open ended procurement", thereby easing the food subsidy burden of the government. Recent government initiatives highlighted in the paper seem to suggest some movement in this direction. The decision to import rice for northeastern states rather than depending on transportation from surplus states like Punjab, if economical, is likely to further limit FCI's procurement activities. This, coupled with the formation of a committee to suggest ways to restructure FCI, which is expected to give its report shortly, could be construed as signs that reforms in these areas are imminent.

Although the government is yet to articulate its position, indicating the contentious nature of such reforms, Biraj Patnaik, Principal Advisor to the Commissioners of the Supreme Court, who is deeply sceptical of the proposals in the paper says "winding down procurement operations is an anti-poor and anti-farmer step that will set us back decades".

Under an income policy, instead of direct procurement, farmers would be given a lump sum amount as income support, inclusive of all farm subsidies, on a graded per hectare basis

Jobless growth casts shadow over G20's target

BJP's new Cabinet member Suresh Prabhu on Sunday said the G20 resolution to increase global economic growth by two percentage points over five years is challenging.

Prabhu, who is expected to play a crucial role for India and guide Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the G20 meeting in Australia, reminded the global community that growth has to be accompanied by employment creation, which has not been the case in recent years. The G20 Summit is scheduled for November 15-16 in Brisbane.

"This summit will take place to discuss how to bring about higher growth rate in the global economy. The target is two per cent growth more than what happens normally. It looks like a very easy task. But now, from the recent survey by the IMF, it seems that even two per cent will be challenging because some parts of the world have not seen growth as it should have," Prabhu said in the India Global Forum.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) had last month cut global growth projections by 0.1 percentage points at 3.3 per cent for 2014, and 0.2 percentage points to 3.8 per cent the next year. The global economy grew 3.3 per cent in 2013.

Prabhu said the European Union and some parts of Asia are showing slow growth. Therefore, it is a big challenge to raise global output by two percentage points.

"How do we bring back the growth? Fortunately, a few countries which will contribute to this two per cent target are economies such as India. We will make sure that we not only fufill our own target but also try to surpass it," he said.

India's economy is projected to grow over 5.4-5.9 per cent officially in the current financial year against the sub-five per cent growth in the last two years. Prabhu said this is also a time to think about several issues related to growth.

One of the things is how employment should rise.

"We are seeing that the growth has taken place even when unprecedented numbers did not get as many jobs. Many parts of the world are now agreeing that it was like a jobless growth," he said, adding that said growth has not really created winners in the last few years. "We really need to find out how that happened."

The new Cabinet member said growth cannot come unless all sectors of the economy - agriculture, manufacturing and services - expand.

He called for removing hurdles in the movement of services and said that India has been saying that restrictions on free movement of labour can stifle a sector that can contribute to global growth in the years ahead.

Highlighting the importance of the infrastructure sector, Prabhu said: "It should be a top priority for the world community to find out how we can invest more and more resources into infrastructure."

Obviously, India would be the biggest beneficiary because it is going to be the single largest market for infrastructure over the time.

"If India grows at that rate (seven per cent)... and if you decide to put only 10 per cent of the total GDP in infrastructure, the amount of money that would be needed would be far in excess several other countries put together," he said.

Investments in infrastructure should not only benefit deficit nations but countries that make the investment, he added. G20 is also going to discuss energy - another big challenge for the world.

Be proactive on climate-change equity

The Indian government has to put forward a counter-proposal on how to operationalise equity. Otherwise, equity is only for blocking consensus; empty words being banged on noisy pansThe Indian government must not use "equity" to blockclimate-change negotiations. It must instead be proactive on equity and put forward a position on how to operationalise the sharing of the carbon budget - accounting for countries' contribution to past emissions and allocating future space - in climate talks.

Iwrote this last year when the last government was in power. I am repeating this as the National Democratic Alliance government prepares for the next conference of parties to be held in December in Peru.

Equity is a pre-requisite for an effective agreement on climate change. In the early 1990, as negotiations began, Anil Agarwal, environmentalist and director of the Centre for Science and Environment, and I put forward the argument that since the atmosphere is a global common, we need equal entitlements to the space. We argued the only way countries would commit to reducing emissions - connected to economic growth - would be if there were limits for all, based on contribution to the creation of the problem.

The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is built on this premise - the group of countries (Annex 1) responsible for creating the problem must create space for the rest to grow. But as the objective is to have a "different" growth pattern to avoid emissions of long-life carbon dioxide developing countries would get money and technology. This was in the past.

The current situation is very different. Countries, which were required to cut emissions, did not do so at the scale or pace needed. The United States "peaked" its emissions in 2012. The situation is worse if the accounting for emissions is done on the basis of consumption and not production. In that case, developed countries increased their emissions in this period. Because all they did was to export manufacturing to other parts of the world.

So the rich did not reduce emissions while the rest of the world increased. While in 1992, Annex 1 countries contributed some 70 per cent of the emissions, by 2014, they are down to 40 per cent. The space is filled and now there is little left for future growth of all. This is where climate-change negotiations are stuck.

The old rich want the differentiation between the past polluters and the current and future ones to go. They say we should forget the historical contribution and divide the carbon cake afresh. They remind developing countries that the present is different - China, for instance, has overtaken the United States as the world's largest contributor on an annual basis. But they forget conveniently that on a per capita basis, there is still a vast difference between the United States and China.

The "firewall" between Annex 1 and the rest, as called by United States negotiators, was first breached at the 2009 Copenhagen conference when countries like India agreed not to discuss historical contribution of the already rich and put their own emission reduction targets on the table.

In 2011, this arrangement was cemented. The Durban conference of parties agreed that the world would work to finalise a new agreement by 2015. This deal would require the "highest possible mitigation efforts by all Parties". The only sweetener was the hard fought phrase that the agreement would be under the "Convention", which, in turn, is based on the principle of equity.

This is also the past. At the 2013 conference of parties in Warsaw it was agreed that "all" countries would submit their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) by early 2015. In other words, now there is no agreement that specifies the targets for each country based on their past contributions. Countries do not put forward their emission target based on common but differentiated responsibility.

It is, however, argued (by top United States negotiators) that the deal is based on equity. This is because each country is free to decide on domestic targets, keeping in mind its contribution to the problem and its capacity to act. Ingenious indeed.

The game is, however, not over. The next step is to put the INDC together and to see how the aggregate of "all" adds to the magic number needed to keep the world below two degrees Celsius, the guardrail of devastating change. It is taken for granted that the sum of all will be way below what is needed. Now the real question kicks in: how to estimate the past, present and future emissions contribution of each country to decide who will reduce how much?

In Warsaw 2013, the African Group proposed an equity reference framework, which has different indicators of development and capability to assess what each country should do. India stridently opposed this. No doubt, the African proposal has flaws, but our government has to put forward a counter-proposal on how to operationalise equity. Otherwise, equity is only for blocking consensus; empty words being banged on noisy pans.

The ultimate question is whether we take climate change seriously. If we believe it is, then we will argue for an ambitious agreement based on equity because that is the only way it can be effective. This is the last chance to get it right. The chips are already down and the die will be cast by the Paris meeting in 2015.