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New evidence for northern movement of eastern Himalayan syntaxis

New evidence for northern movement of eastern Himalayan syntaxis
The region is ideal to study the effects of erosion on tectonics.

The eastern Himalayan syntaxis (convergence of mountain ranges, or geological folds), a gorge along the Parlung river in Tibet, is tectonically active. The coincidence of high mountains and strong rivers that cause erosion makes it a good place to study the role of surface activity, such as erosion, in controlling tectonics. A recent study, published on August 18 in Science, finds that the syntaxis is moving northwards.

This contradicts a belief that the surface erosion due to the powerful river and other factors would pin the high-erosion zone to its location. For this purpose the researchers use a new technique called Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) thermochronometry.

In general, the topography of mountain ranges comes to be as a result of various factors such as tectonics, climate and surface processes. In this context, the study contributes to a debate about the relevance of surface processes such as river erosion and other activities to tectonics. Georgina King, Head of the Cologne Luminescence Laboratory, University of Cologne, and the lead author of the paper, explains in an email: “The control of tectonics by surface processes was thought to be demonstrated by pinning of a high erosion zone by the very erosive rivers. Our new data show that this zone was not pinned, but rather continued to migrate northwards.”

The eastern Himalayan syntaxis is an ideal location to study the effects of erosion on tectonics — very tall mountains over 7,000 metres high and powerful rivers. Because the surface processes are so intense, the erosion is rapid. As Dr. King puts it, “If surface processes are able to control tectonics, we would expect to be able to record it here.” The researchers used a new technique to measure the migration of the fold of land known as OSL thermo chronometry. As rocks get “exhumed,” or rise to the surface from the earth’s crust, they start cooling down. At specific temperatures, the minerals such as quartz contained in the rocks start capturing electrons while continuing to rise, and they cool correspondingly. By observing the history of concentrations of electrons, the researchers estimate the temperature profile against the time and then translate this into knowledge of the depth as a function of time. This gives them an understanding of the rate at which the rocks rose to the surface.

The researchers made their measurements at five regions along the Parlung River which were across the northern end of the exhuming area, and three regions to the south. While the samples from the northern regions were in the range of 30 to 150 thousand years, the ones from the south yielded ages of about 200,000 years. This variation was crucial in inferring the drift.

Dr King explains, “We contrasted our new OSL data with data from existing studies, based on other thermochronometers. Our new data showed that the rate of erosion had increased in the last 1 million years, to rates which could not be explained simply by river incision. Instead we needed tectonic uplift as well to explain our data. We looked at previous studies on the wider geological context, which indicate continued northward migration of the dome, which our data are consistent with.”

Miles to go before we reap

When India won six medals at the 2012 London Olympics, it was considered a watershed moment. The significance of this accomplishment lay in the fact that until then the country had earned a sum total of just seven individual medals. The performance was expected to provide a springboard for future successes. Four years hence, on the back of heightened expectations and hopes of a double-digit tally, how should a return of two medals from the Rio Olympics be assessed? An outright dismissal signifying a certain regression may be too simplistic, for there were a few near-misses — Dipa Karmakar and Abhinav Bindra both finishing fourth, Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna losing the bronze medal match, the women’s archery team coming close, and men’s hockey showing substantial improvement. Yet, it was no doubt underwhelming from the largest contingent of Indian athletes at the Olympics ever. This leads to questions about the lack of a ‘sporting culture’. Does India have the infrastructure and coaching facilities to produce medal winners consistently?

India’s lone individual gold-medallist Bindra, alluding to the vastly improved performance by the British athletes backed by massive funding, says one must not “expect much until we put systems in place”. However, developing a sporting culture means more than improving facilities. It demands that people cease to see sport in archaic terms, of being nothing more than a pastime. While it is true that it cannot be a substitute for life-subsistence needs of the disadvantaged, the disdain for it transcends classes. It is important to understand that modern-day sport is professional at its core and helps in creating jobs and businesses. It is also an important tool for human resource development. In fact, the success of P.V. Sindhu and Sakshi Malik is representative of what a good sporting culture can achieve. In addition to shooting, badminton and wrestling enjoy more patronage than other Olympic sporting events. But it is also enabled by parents and coaches willing to show faith and patience in their wards. It can be safely assumed that the careers of Malik and Sindhu wouldn’t have been considered as failures even in the event of their not winning a medal. After an Olympics in which Usain Bolt sprinted towards sporting immortality, Michael Phelps further stretched the all-time record medal haul, and Mohammed Farah completed his second 5,000m and 10,000m double, India needs to purposefully chart the journey from aspirations to their realisation.

	దేశం
	1 United States		46		37		38		121
	2 Great Britain		27		23		17		67
	3 China		26		18		26		70
	4 Russia		19		18		19		56
	5 Germany		17		10		15		42
	6 Japan		12		8		21		41
	7 France		10		18		14		42
	8 South Korea		9		3		9		21
	9 Italy		8		12		8		28
	10 Australia		8		11		10		29
	67 India		0		1		1		2

Diplomacy and the diaspora

We should have a comprehensive plan involving both the Centre and the States to invest remittances intelligently and to find alternative ways of livelihood for those who return

If there is one issue on which all political parties agree, it is the imperative to include overseas Indians in India’s economic development and to take care of their needs and aspirations. Successive governments have been vying with each other to give more and more concessions to them as acknowledgment of their contribution by way of remittances, investment, lobbying for India, promoting Indian culture abroad and for building a good image of India by their intelligence and industry.

India was initially sensitive to the view that championing the cause of overseas Indians might offend the host countries, who should be fully responsible for their welfare and security. The Indian community and our diplomatic missions interacted on national days or other important occasions, but diaspora diplomacy was low key.

Rediscovering Indians abroad

Rajiv Gandhi was the first Prime Minister who changed the diaspora policy by inviting Indians abroad, regardless of their nationality, to participate in nation-building, much like the overseas Chinese communities. In return, he promised them opportunities to work with India, like in the celebrated case of Sam Pitroda, who was entrusted with the task of modernising telecommunications in India. The response was not ecstatic, but many volunteered to help out in various ways. But this brought to focus the many inadequacies of the Indian system for the diaspora to collaborate with India or to invest in the country. Grievances like red tape, multiple clearances, distrust of government in fulfilling promises were addressed through hesitant reforms and promotional measures.

The first test of the new diaspora policy came in 1987 when Sitiveni Rabuka ousted an Fiji Indian majority government in Fiji and reduced them to second-class citizens. Rajiv Gandhi, in a major departure from established policy, protested vehemently, imposed trade sanctions against Fiji, got it expelled from the Commonwealth and raised the issue at the United Nations. This bewildered those Fiji Indians who did not want to disturb the race relations in Fiji, but energised the Indian diaspora, generating faith in them that India would not be a silent witness, as it was in the past, to discrimination, racism and disenfranchisement of Indians abroad. The Indian position was instrumental in democracy and racial harmony returning to Fiji after 10 years.

After India and the overseas Indians rediscovered each other under Rajiv Gandhi, there came a host of measures such as a separate Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, the Person of Indian Origin (PIO) Card, Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award, Overseas Citizen of India Card, NRI funds and voting rights for Indian citizens abroad, some from the United Progressive Alliance and some from the National Democratic Alliance governments. The response from the diaspora was diverse, as these affected different categories of Indians in different ways. For the Indian nationals in the Gulf and elsewhere, welfare measures and resettlement facilities were more important, while the prosperous communities in the West, who were clamouring for dual citizenship, felt short-changed. But, on the whole, they were energised into espousing Indian causes in the U.S. Of course, their support to Indian interests was not automatic and they often urged India to modify its policies to suit American sensitivities. Indian-Americans contributed little by way of remittances or investments, but the establishment of the India Caucus in the House of Representatives and turning around doubting legislators into voting for the India-U.S. nuclear deal were major accomplishments.

The Modi outreach

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the diaspora a centrepiece of his foreign policy and, during his foreign visits, addressed mammoth meetings of the community to project India’s priorities and needs. But he did not address any of their demands or announce any new plans for removing their grievances like travel issues and protection of their properties in India. If anything, the merger of the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs with the Ministry of External Affairs, though pragmatic, has been construed as a negative step. The irregularity of diaspora conferences and awards has also caused some concern in the diaspora.

Together with the new hopes and expectations raised by the government, there are new fears and concerns among and about the overseas communities. The volatility in West Asia, together with the fall in oil prices, has caused fears of a massive return of Indian nationals, curtailing remittances and making demands on the job market. In Kerala, for instance, workers from other States have bridged the demand-supply gap in various sectors. The Gulf countries will require foreign workers for some more time, but India’s relations with many of them remain in the employer-employee mode. Of course, it was heartening to see Saudi Arabia resolve a serious issue relating to a starvation among Indian workers, but we should be ready for the eventuality of Indian workers returning, though a massive “Indexit” is unlikely.

A recent phenomenon is that of “discovering” Indians wherever there is a crisis. India does not have any precise data on the number of Indians in different parts of the world. The amount of risks that Indians are capable of taking to get medical education, for instance, is phenomenal. Whether it is in Ukraine, Yemen or Syria, Indians are discovered eking out an existence in difficult circumstances. General V.K. Singh (retd.), Minister of State for External Affairs, has become virtually the Chief Repatriation Officer, flying into hotspots with chartered flights to rescue Indians and bring them home. He was often bewildered when many Indians refused to use the facility for return and insisted on staying on in difficult situations either to seek alternative jobs or to settle their claims. Back home, disquiet has been expressed that public money is being spent on bringing people who have gone on their own for their benefit.

Even more serious is the suspicion that some Indians are travelling to the Islamic State areas either to join the jihad or to settle there in what is considered a Promised Land. Adventurism of this kind needs to be stopped. We used to take pride in the fact that Indians never joined terrorist organisations, but the latest trends are very disturbing.

The dilemma for India is whether movements of Indians abroad for education or employment should be curbed. This will be against the spirit of freedom; but there should be at least an accurate count of Indians in different countries and projections should be made of future prospects. States must be prepared with plans for rehabilitation of Indians, with the possibility of offering the same kind of jobs they were doing abroad. Asking them to turn into entrepreneurs overnight would be counterproductive. There should also be a clear division of labour between the Central and the State governments in crisis situations.

The Indian diaspora is more prosperous than before and its involvement in India’s development is increasing. Indians overseas are conscious of their opportunities in India. At the same time, new fears about scaled-up return of Indians or their involvement in global terrorism are raising their heads. Firefighting is not enough. We should have a comprehensive plan involving both the Centre and States to invest remittances intelligently and to find alternative ways of livelihood for those who return.

SWIFT – A Transformative Approach towards Ease of Doing Business

  

As part of the Government's initiatives for improving the Ease of Doing Business, several facilitation measures are being taken by the Central Board of Excise & Customs (CBEC) in last two years. In line with the Budget announcement made by the Union Finance Minister and as part of the “Ease of Doing Business” initiatives, the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) launched the Customs’ SWIFT (Single Window Interface for Facilitating Trade) Clearances Project with effect from 1^st April 2016.

SWIFT will help India to improve its ranking in World Bank’s Doing Business Report 2016. India now ranks 130 out of 189 countries in the Ease of Doing Business, moving-up four places from last year’s (2015) adjusted ranking of 134.

The Customs’ SWIFT enables importers/exporters to file a common electronic ‘Integrated Declaration’ on the Indian Customs Electronic Commerce/Electronic Data Interchange (EC/EDI) Gateway i.e. ICEGATE portal. The Integrated Declaration compiles the information requirements of Customs, FSSAI, Plant Quarantine, Animal Quarantine, Drug Controller, Wild Life Control Bureau and Textile Committee. It replaces nine separate forms required by these 6 different agencies and Customs. With the roll-out of the Single Window, CBEC has also introduced an Integrated Risk Management facility for Partner Government Agencies (PGAs), which will ensure that consignments are not selected by agencies routinely for examination and testing, but based on the principle of risk management.

It will also help the participating agencies in handling their respective work areas (related to human and animal health, bio-safety and environment safety) more effectively. With this development today, Indian Customs is amongst the few select countries in the world that have functional Single Window clearances, inclusive of multiple PGAs and integrated risk based selection.

Implementation of Single Window is by far one of the most complex systems integration efforts that have been taken-up by the Directorate General of Systems. To introduce the Single Window and the ‘Integrated Declaration’, IT Systems of both the Government Departments and private sector agencies had to be changed. The whole exercise has been coordinated well and all this was made possible due to unstinting efforts put in by the officers of Directorate General of Systems and Single Window team.

The Single Window system is a crucial implementation of trade facilitation measure for goods’ clearances at the country’s points of entry and exit. Efficiency in the import and export procedures would save large sums of money for the importers and exporters due to reduced trade-related costs and delays. By requiring all participating Government agencies to publish Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and timelines, the Committee of Secretaries headed by the Cabinet Secretary has set benchmarks and goals for all related Regulatory Agencies. In order to work collaboratively with the agencies and industry stakeholders, port and central level Customs’ Clearance Facilitation Committees (CCFCs) have been established to simplify and streamline their inter-agency procedures and documentary requirements for import and export of cargo.

According to the Chairman, CBEC, Shri Najib Shah, the time and cost associated with import and export clearances has been a matter of concern for the Government. In order to reduce the transaction costs and decrease cargo release time, a number of steps have been initiated by the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) in last two years. A significant leap in this direction is the launch of the Customs’ Single Window clearances. Shri Shah added that there was strong willingness and support from all stakeholders for the Single Window project. The Department’s outreach program and enthusiastic private sector participation helped the department to launch the project in a timely manner.  

How will SWIFT help:

·         It will provide a single point interface for clearance of import goods.

·         Replaces 9 separate documents with one Integrated Customs Electronic Declaration

·         Facilitates trade by reducing Dwell Time & improving Ease of Doing Business

·         Reduces Documentation & Cost of Clearance

·         Brings 6 participating Government agencies on a single platform

·         Eliminates need for tax-payers to interact separately with these agencies.

SWIFT will indeed go a long way in order to take the new trade facilitation initiatives of the present Government to new heights in times to come.

How to improve education

How to improve education

There is no substitute to good teacher preparation; unless teachers are well prepared, their capacity to perform is limited
There is hardly a country in the world that is not attempting to improve its school education. Countries like Canada and Finland, which already have excellent school systems, are still trying to improve. These countries have confidence in their own approach and remain committed to those fundamentals. Like top-notch sportspeople, they are only refining nuances, many of which most other countries have not even begun appreciating.

Then there are countries like Estonia and Korea which have much improved systems, but they want to improve more, since in their assessment the situation is not fully satisfactory. These countries are sweating the details, and are also tweaking some of the fundamentals.

And then there is the large majority of countries which are dissatisfied with the state of their school systems. They think that they need fundamental and big changes. This list is large and has a wide range, from countries as developed as the US, UK and Sweden to developing countries such as India, China and Malaysia—and also the most disadvantaged countries, for example, in sub-Saharan Africa.

To be sure, this is a very rough categorization. It also doesn’t reflect many important dimensions of this issue, like the reasons for dissatisfaction, including high dropout rates, poor learning levels, overburdened children, a sense of getting “left behind” in the global school education “race”, etc.

As can be expected, there is such enormous complexity in the efforts to improve school education systems that each country and society must be understood in itself. Any efforts to draw out commonalities is fraught with risks of oversimplification and over-abstraction.

One of the very few things which are common across these efforts, and would attract neither of the two charges that I have referred to, is the importance of the teacher in school education and its improvement. The teacher is so central to education that this is not surprising. To deal with this centrality of the teacher, four broad approaches have been adopted.

The central idea of the first approach is that teachers must be incentivized to do a better job, which will then lead to improvements. This includes negative and positive incentives: for example, punishment for lack of improvement in learning levels of children or better pay for clear improvements. The hardwired “teacher accountability” versions of this approach (such as “No Child Left Behind” in the US) have only succeeded in causing deep damage to school education. Other variations, such as the attempt to incentivize teachers through market-based competition fostered by privatization have proven ineffective in improving learning levels in school systems, and have worsened inequity.

The second approach has been to try and attract “better” people to become teachers. The issues that can be worked on to influence this matter—for example, reasonable compensation, good recruitment practices, conditions to support professional satisfaction—are important. However, the relative attractiveness of any profession is determined by a complex interplay of economic, sociocultural, geographic and historical factors, in addition to the characteristics of the profession. And given that the number of teachers is a significant proportion of the overall population in employment in any country, this matter is very hard to influence at a systemic level.

The third approach is to carry out better teacher preparation. Since models of teacher preparation, including the curriculum and institutional design, are easily comparable, weaknesses (such as with the Indian Bachelor of Education system) are easily identifiable. Fixing all this, however, is another matter. It is about investing significantly more in teacher education and battling vested interests. This calls for political will. But there is no substitute to good teacher preparation; unless teachers are well prepared, their capacity to perform their roles is limited.

The fourth approach is about developing the capacity of teachers currently serving in the system. It’s quite clear that unless this is done, education systems won’t improve for decades, even if other things are somehow done perfectly. Professional development of such a large and distributed workforce, involved in roles that are inherently creative and requiring human empathy, is very complex. But it can be done if attempted on the basis of sound principles and with an intent to empower.

The incentives approach fails because, among other reasons, of the social-human nature of education, which demands the teacher to be creative, high-expertise, empathetic and ethical. This is almost the classical prototype of a role which can only be played effectively when someone has high capacity and is internally driven. While external conditions and incentives can certainly demotivate and derail, they can’t motivate. Far more effective than any such crude notion of incentives would be better organization of schools and the system, including elimination of corruption and political interference.

On attracting “better” people to teaching, we would do well to remember John Dewey’s wise and pithy comment: “Education is, and forever will be, in the hands of ordinary men and women.” To improve education we have to invest in teacher education and professional development of teachers. There are no shortcuts for improving education.

Power cuts in a time of surplus

Power cuts in a time of surplus

24x7 reliable power supply to all at an affordable price would be the best gauge of power sector growth
Recent bids on power exchanges indicate electricity tariffs are at their lowest ever. In July, the Indian Energy Exchange saw a total 6.74 billion units put on sale, compared with purchases of 3.98 billion units at an average tariff of Rs.2.16 per unit.

Theoretically, this suggests India has finally become a “power surplus” nation, exactly 137 years after the first demonstration of electric light was given in Kolkata by P.W. Fleury & Co.

Yet, the stark reality is that many states are witnessing power cuts of 4-5 hours every day. In Uttar Pradesh, planned load shedding is as much as 11-12 hours in rural areas and 5-6 hours in urban, according to the Uttar Pradesh Power Corp. Ltd website.

What’s causing this anomaly? There are four reasons. The first is that while capacity addition has peaked, industrial and commercial offtake remains low. In the three years ended fiscal 2015, capacity addition was 74.72 gigawatts, the fastest in a decade. However, growth in industrial and commercial consumption—the highest-paying segment under the telescopic tariff structure followed—was only around 4.57%, as per a Central Electricity Authority (CEA) report, Growth of Electricity Sector in India From 1947 to 2015. Only the domestic consumer segment, which puts additional cost burden on the distribution utilities given lower tariffs, saw decent demand growth of 8.9%, as per CEA estimates. In some states such as Maharashtra, industrial and commercial consumption declined 0.73% while domestic consumption increased 7.81% in the three years.

The second is that cost of supply has increased, as have aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses. Domestic consumers do not have the capacity to absorb all the incremental power produced, or pay higher cost. Distribution companies, or discoms, typically incur higher cost on supplies to this segment and earn lower revenues. Small wonder they are resorting to load shedding.

The practice of power cuts is more extensive in rural areas, where the cost of supply is significantly higher, demand density lower and AT&C losses higher than in urban areas.

There is also a limit to how much industrial and commercial consumers can be exploited to recover losses from electricity supplies to homes, or the so-called cross-subsidization. To boot, higher industrial and commercial tariffs are already impacting the competitiveness of domestic firms.

Third, local distribution continues to be a problem for want of infrastructure. In urban centres such as Noida, Faridabad and Gurgaon, inadequate distribution capacity has meant power cuts being extended beyond planned load shedding. Taking cognizance of this, the government has sharpened its focus on fund allocation under the Integrated Power Development Scheme to strengthen networks.

And fourth is the financial health of discoms and the challenges to their revival. Intermittent AT&C losses are a major reason—apart from the humongous debt burden—why discoms are in the doghouse. At the national level, AT&C losses are already high at 22.7%—meaning nearly a quarter of the electricity produced in India is wasted. That national average has been driven up because losses are significantly higher in five states: 46% in Bihar, 39% in Odisha, 32% in West Bengal, 28% in Madhya Pradesh and 27% in Rajasthan, according to a Power Finance Corporation report on the performance of state utilities.

While technical losses can largely be attributed to infrastructural issues and consumption mix at different voltage levels, the bigger problem is poor billing and collection efficiency. Additionally, disbursement of tariff subsidy by states is inadequate and irregular.

To be sure, the government has taken a number of initiatives, including initiating a road map to achieve reliable 24x7 power for all in every state, and improving the financials of discoms through the Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY).

UDAY has immense potential to cure discoms through initiatives proposed under four broad categories: improvement of operational efficiencies; reduction of cost of power; reduction in interest cost; and, enforcement of financial discipline through alignment with state finances. However, success hinges on relentless implementation by states.

In a nutshell, the ills plaguing the sector can be attributed to poor financials of discoms, inadequate investment in transmission and distribution infrastructure and lack of cost recovery from certain consumers.

Also such simple deductions of “power surplus” divert attention from the stark reality that there are more than 55 million households waiting to be plugged in. That latent demand is not part of any “surplus” calculus.

That’s why when measuring power sector growth—and planning to scale up for the future—using just the yardstick of “adequate availability of electricity” will be inadequate. A truer, holistic gauge would be 24x7 reliable power supply to all at an affordable price.

To achieve that objective, states will have to show strong resolve to reduce AT&C losses, invest in infrastructure development, ensure efficient commercial operation of discoms, make timely tariff revisions, and reduce the cross-subsidization that’s impacting the competitiveness of the industry and services sectors.

The time is also right, perhaps, to provide direct, targeted subsidies to electricity consumers who can’t pay much—if at all. The learnings from the LPG direct subsidy transfer project would be very handy here.