Indian Parliament: Going Green

The concept of e-Assembly or Paperless Assembly refers to the involvement of electronic means to facilitate the workings and proceedings of the Assembly. In India, this will enable the automation of the entire law-making process; legislative functions, tracking decisions and documents and sharing information via hand-held devices like mobile phones and tablets, using cloud technology (Meghraj), for efficient access by all citizens, legislatures and departments anywhere and at any time. This will also include the live webcasting of Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha TVs as well as Doordarshan.
 
Based on this concept, the National e-Vidhan Application (NeVA) Project has been rolled out by the Ministry of Parliament Affairs, the nodal ministry. It is a device-neutral and member-centric application that aims to bring all the legislatures of the country together on one platform, to create a massive data depository, without having the complexity of multiple applications. This includes collating information regarding member contact details, rules of procedure, list of business, notices, bulletins, bills, questions and answers, papers laid, committee reports etc.
 
NeVA will completely eliminate the process of sending out notices/requests for data collection that often involve a bulk of paperwork. Phase One involves data processing only, while in Phase Two, cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies will be utilized, possibly sometime in 2019, to make voluminous information available in different formats. Its analysis via intelligent data processing will study patterns and suggest improvements on the basis of insights drawn from the system.
 
Surendra Nath Tripathi is the head of the nodal ministry driving the ambitious national E-Vidhan project. “When this information will be ‘cooked’ properly and becomes ‘digestible’ for use in artificial intelligence system, then we will use AI.”
 
The platform has been developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) by all the state legislatures. It was implemented in Himachal Pradesh as a pilot project where it was successful and the state assembly has amended its rules to accept Q&As through the e-platform. Based on the insights drawn from the pilot project, staff in 11 states have been trained and more states are poised to adopt the system soon.
 
Under the auspices of PM Modi’s Digital India Mission, this ambitious project to digitalize each legislature in the country, is valued at INR 740 crores, to be jointly shared by the central and state governments. The e-Parliament in South Korea provided some inspiration for this. The coming years will be witness to how successful or not this attempt will be, under the Digital India Mission, which aims to leverage digital technologies in each sphere of the government to enhance efficiency in functioning and reduce the time and costs involved.
 
India Outbound
December 31, 2018
 
 

source https://indiaoutbound.org/indian-parliament-going-green/

The South China Sea Conundrum: India’s Role and Involvement

Having established the current position of the various territorial claims in the South China Sea, we now take a closer look at the Indian Government’s involvement in the matter, despite not being geographically privy to the dispute nor having a territorial claim of their own.
 
INS Airavat Incident
 
On 22 July 2011, an Indian amphibious assault vessel, INS Airavat, heading towards Vietnam on a friendly visit, was contacted by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (“PLA Navy”), 45 nautical miles from the Vietnamese coast. The PLA Navy claimed that the INS Airavat was entering the territorial waters of China. Though the incident did not escalate and the INS Airavat was allowed to complete its journey, it did allow the Indian government to elaborate on their position in the South China Sea. India reiterated their belief in the freedom of navigation, in accordance with international law and the UNCLOS. In addition, it also shed light on the Chinese objections to Indian naval presence in a region, which they are rapidly scouring for oil, natural gas and other non-renewable resources.
 
Geopolitical Relations Between India and China
 
While the INS Airavat was the first incident that required a direct official statement by both countries on their respective positions in the South China Sea, the regional dispute has proven to be a nagging obstacle to the bilateral relations between India and China, due to several reasons.
 
Firstly, India has always been wary of China’s strong bilateral relations with Pakistan. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often emphasised the importance of keeping the threat of Pakistan at bay. In light of the pre-existing and continuing tensions between India and Pakistan, particularly on the border front, a strong Asian ally in the form of China could allow Pakistan to be more aggressive in their approach towards dealing with India.
 
Secondly, China remains wary of Indian naval presence in the South China Sea, which was well documented during the aforementioned INS Airavat incident. While China faces multiple competing claims from the likes of Vietnam and the Philippines (to name a few), none of these countries have the military size and prowess to rival that of China’s. India’s extensive military forces on the other hand could serve as an effective check on China’s ever expanding network of extraction (through off shore drilling sites) and naval presence, much like the US Navy does at present.
 
Thirdly, PM Modi’s attempts at fostering healthy bilateral relations with China has been stifled due to the eagerness of the Indian government to endorse the importance of freedom of navigation and the reluctance of the Chinese government to discuss the South China Sea issue in various multilateral forums.
 
Fourthly, the India-China relations have soured in the past year following the military “stand-of” at Doklam in 2017. The incident involved the Chinese military attempting to extend an existing road in Doklam further south. This drew the immediate attention of the Indian troops as Doklam was a disputed territory upon which Bhutan, India’s ally, had laid claim as well. This resulted in a series of accusations exchanged between both countries with respect to the transgression of the UN Charter and a violation of the 2012 India-China cross-border agreement. Both governments wisely chose a diplomatic route and the stand-off never escalated into a military conflict. However, it did succeed in significantly altering the respective views of India and China towards each other.
 
Lastly, there are a number of economic and political considerations at play here. PM Modi has facilitated a transition from the ‘Look East’ policy of the previous governments to the ‘Act East’ policy, which saw a greater emphasis placed by the Indian government on strengthening ties with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Two members of ASEAN, Philippines and Vietnam, serve as primary oppositions to China’s territorial claims based on the nine-dash line. This appears to be in conflict with India’s current position where China remains India’s largest trade partner. While there is a risk that India’s trade flow may take a hit, the Indian government has maintained their firm opposition towards what they perceive as an attempt by China to bully their way through international conflicts by way of their importance as a trade partner, status as the premier Asian superpower, and the might of their military forces.
 
Importantly, the upcoming 2019 elections could potentially result in a structural change in India’s government. If the recent elections in India are anything to go by, it remains uncertain if PM Modi will retain his position as the head of the government, which in turn could drastically affect the various policies adopted in the South China Sea.
 
In conclusion, like with all precarious and delicate geopolitical issues, the ever changing political landscape will continuously shape the factors at play, to hopefully achieve diplomatic solutions while avoiding military tensions and conflicts. The South China Sea dispute is no different.
 
Aditya Bhattacharya
December 28, 2018
 
 

source https://indiaoutbound.org/the-south-china-sea-conundrum-indias-role-and-involvement/

The South China Sea Conundrum: Competing territorial claims

Sandwiched between the Pacific and Indian Oceans lies the South China Sea. As a treasure chest of untapped resources, which multiple countries covet, it is the poster child of modern-day territorial disputes. This two-part article explores the origins of the claims by the countries involved, lays out likely developments that may take place in the foreseeable future as well as discusses India’s role in the conflict.
 
Origins of China’s Claims
 
Following the conclusion of World War II, China proceeded to reclaim several islands in the South China Sea, namely, the Paracel, Pratas and Spratly Islands. This reclamation stemmed from the Chinese assumption of Japan’s eventual surrender, during the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation in 1943 and 1945 respectively.
 
Soon after the Japanese Surrender, China faced competing claims from the Philippines and Vietnam. The Chinese government proceeded to provide a map documented with eleven-dashes in 1947, meant to demarcate the portions of the South China Sea (and its contained islands) belonging to China. The map was amended in 1949 to reduce the demarcation to nine-dashes, as the Chinese government withdrew claims over the Gulf of Tonkin.
 
This created the oft-cited basis for China’s territorial claims over the South China Sea, succinctly referred to as the nine-dash line.
 
Strength of China’s Claims based on the “Nine-dash Line”
 
China was never explicitly granted sovereignty over the archipelagos in question, despite the declarations during the Cairo and Potsdam conferences. Essentially, this is where the Chinese government’s “nine-dash line claim” appears to be folly, to this day.
 
This was firmly established during the South China Sea Arbitration tribunal between the Philippines and China in The Hague. The tribunal ruled in favour of the Philippines, while the Chinese government, in an act of defiance, did not attend any of the scheduled hearings. The tribunal clarified that it would not “…rule on any question of sovereignty over land territory and would not delimit any maritime boundary between the Parties” and that China has “no historical rights” based on the “nine-dash line” map.
 
If not evident from their absence at the hearings, China rejected the tribunal’s ruling by stating that it was not binding on the Chinese government’s sovereign decisions and continued with extraction activities within the South China Sea.
 
Current Position
 
Apart from The Hague ruling on the matter and the lack of explicit evidence to support China’s claims, the nine-dash line is also in contravention of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The UNCLOS defines an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) as “an area beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea, subject to the specific legal regime established in this Part, under which the rights and jurisdiction of the coastal State and the rights and freedoms of other States are governed by the relevant provisions of this Convention”.
 
Based on this definition, China’s territorial claims related to the nine-dash line appears to infringe on the EEZ’s of several countries such as Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. This proves to be a significant problem as most of the countries involved have ratified and accepted the UNCLOS. In fact, India is one of the countries that has continuously emphasised the importance of the freedom of navigation and abiding by the UNCLOS.
 
Ultimately, while several countries have made territorial claims based on the principles of sovereignty and the mandate of the UNCLOS, the importance of the South China Sea region as an untapped supply of resources due to the abundance of oil and natural gas deposits must be acknowledged.
 
Among these countries, China has already undertaken the necessary steps to begin its extraction of oil from the seabed. The “Ocean Oil 981” was China’s first independently designed and constructed oil drilling platform in the South China Sea, with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (19%) serving as the majority shareholder. Controversially, China shifted the operations of the “Ocean Oil 981” closer to the Paracel Islands in 2014, despite Vietnam asserting a violation of its territorial claims. Chinese officials justified the shift by stating that the operations were to take place in the waters surrounding the Paracel Islands, occupied and controlled by China and its military.
 
Thus, the South China Sea is a contentious hotspot with multiple countries jostling for territorial claims. Other countries have also become involved, while engaging in related discussions. For example, to ensure the protection of its economic and geopolitical interests, the USA has put in place naval patrols to counter the Chinese military presence in the area. However, such actions have intensified disagreements as the USA continues to lament about freedom of access, while not being a member of the UNCLOS.
 
Furthermore, the ever-changing political dynamics of the individual countries make it virtually impossible to expect the implementation of a consistent policy that reduces tensions in the South China Sea. Given such factors, it is unclear how each country is likely to proceed, especially as continuing developments in the region remain Asia’s most threatening flashpoint.
 
Aditya Bhattacharya
December 27, 2018

 

source https://indiaoutbound.org/the-south-china-sea-conundrum-competing-territorial-claims/

Progress towards Zero Hunger: SDG India Index 2018

The SDG India Index 2018 report provides critical insights on the status of SDGs in India, with insights into state performances and outlines of the national schemes for each goal. Goal 2 (Zero Hunger) of the SDGs is fundamental to human development as it pivots around the issue of food security, determined by the availability of food and shaped by domestic food production, capacity to import food as well as the determinants of food access, utilization and vulnerability.
 
In India, crop surpluses exist but the issues of food access, utilization and vulnerability remain critical challenges. These issues are shaped by the structural societal inequalities (gender, class, caste etc.), purchasing power of households and consequently, access to government programmes. Other factors of influence include malnutrition caused by micronutrient deficiencies, lack of education, poor quality of food, sanitation and water or vulnerability to disasters, economic shocks etc.
 
The Indian scenario of nutrition is characterised by high levels of malnutrition, anemia, stunting and wasting, despite rising economic growth and falling poverty levels. According to the National Family Health Survey (NHFS-4), almost half of the pregnant women in India, aged between 15-49 are anemic and more than one-thirds of women have a low body mass index. 38.4 children below the age of 5 have low height for age (stunting) and 21% have low weight-for-age (wasting).
 
According to the report, the measurement of India’s overall performance as well as comparisons between the states’ performances towards Zero Hunger is based on the identification of four national level indicators that capture three out of eight SDG targets under Goal 2.
 

Based on these indicators, the performances of the states and UTs in India are reflected in the map below. The article on the SDG India Index: Baseline Report 2018 explains the scoring process.
 

 

 
The highlights of the report are as follows:

• Food subsidy:

  roughly one rural household is covered under the public distribution system (PDS) for every rural household (with the monthly income of the highest earning member less than INR 5,000 as per the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census). Manipur and Delhi have recorded best performance for this indicator.

• Stunting:

  Only Kerala and Goa have achieved the target of reducing stunting to 21.03% (by 2030). No UT has achieved this target yet. Andaman and Nicobar Islands have the lowest rate of stunting among the UTs at 23.3%.

• Anaemia among women:

  The national average of anemic women in India is much higher than the national target of 23.57%. Only Kerala has successfully reduced this rate to below the national target and Sikkim is close to achieving it. Amongst the UTs, Puducherry showed the best performance at 26%.

• Agricultural Productivity:

  India currently produces 2,509 kg of agricultural produce (rice, wheat and coarse grains) from 1 hectare of land annually. India aims to double this by 2030 to 5,018kg/Ha. While no State or UT in India has achieved this target as yet, Chandigarh is nearing the targeted productivity with current levels at 4,600kg/Ha, followed by Punjab’s annual productivity at 4,297kg/Ha.

 
Three years after the adoption of the SDGs, 14 of the 36 Indian states and UTs are Aspirants, 12 are Performers and 10 are Front Runners, in terms of progress in achieving Zero Hunger. Thus, India has significant ground to cover, both in terms of policy design and implementation to achieve the targets under Goal 2. The panacea of India’s hunger problem lies in the implementation of well-designed public policies of income redistribution, grounded in social justice and social security objectives rather than neo-liberal objectives of economic efficiency.
 
India Outbound
December 26, 2018
 
 

source https://indiaoutbound.org/progress-towards-zero-hunger-sdg-india-index-2018/

The SDG India Index: Baseline Report 2018

The Sustainable Development Goals, a universal and unprecedented set of 17 Goals and 169 targets, reflect an ambitious commitment by world leaders to achieve inclusive and interconnected economic, social and environmental well-being of their societies, by 2030. These constitute the Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by 193 Member States of the United Nations, which came into effect on January 1, 2016.
 
The global success of Agenda 2030: Sustainable Development Goals is decisively dependent on India’s progress in the next decade. This critical dependence can be attributed to India’s massive population, scale of national interventions and unique convergence of extraordinary economic growth, commitment to sustainability as well as social and technological innovations. Indian success stories in the 3 years since, can provide lessons for other countries.
 
Since India played a prominent role in the formulation of the SDGs and a significant part of the country’s National Development Agenda mirror those, the SDG India Index: Baseline Report 2018 is an advocacy tool for assessing the 3-year performance of Indian states and union territories (UTs), based on available social data sets, to trigger action based on existing strengths, areas of opportunity and identification of the way forward vis-à-vis development policies and practices.
 
The rationale for this report is that the state governments are instrumental for the advancement of the national development agenda. The Indian Government’s commitment towards the SDGs will be fruitful, only if complimented by the state governments, urban local bodies, panchayati raj institutions and civil society organisations, as necessitated by the federal governance structure and the gaping geographic, demographic and socio-economic disparities in the country.
 
India’s diverse ground realities call for long-term strategic planning, budgeting, monitoring, possible course corrections and implementation of development programmes at the sub-national level. For this purpose, the index allocates each state and UT a composite score, based on aggregate performances across 13 of the 17 SDGs. The index will also be used for monitoring on a real-time basis across 62 of 306 national indicators and self-reporting progress annually.
 
India scored a 57 out of 100. As per the scale, those with a rank of 100 will be termed Achievers, ranks between 65-99 are the Front Runners (green), those between 50-64 are Performers (yellow) and ranks between 0-49 are the Aspirants (red). This same scoring scale applies to individual states in the country as well. No state in India has achieved a perfect score of 100 yet.
 
According to Amitabh Kant’s note, cooperative federalism, infused with healthy competition, is key for the country’s holistic transformation at the grass-root level. The first-of-its-kind SDG index can be used by states to institutionalize the SDGs, benchmark their progress against national targets and other state performances and identify the limitations/interventions for priority areas, to put India ahead of the development curve.
 
Importantly, the process of preparation of the index has revealed that the selection of indicators was constrained by the absence of comprehensive statistical systems to generate data at the state level. Improved data availability and quality will make this real-time monitoring more robust. In order to strengthen the capacities for monitoring SDGs, NITI Aayog will ensure the refinement of the methodological processes and explore the potential for disaggregating data.
 
The index excludes state-specific schemes and sources of data and has assigned equal weightage for all indicators across all goals, possibly causing some data biases. For instance, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana(PMGSY) are less relevant in well-performing Punjab and Haryana, making their progress on these schematic indicators seem poorer in comparison to other States.
 

 

 

 
These images extracted from the index report, highlight the state rankings as well as the specific states that have emerged as leaders under each goal that was assessed. 4 goals i.e. sustainable consumption and production (Goal 12), climate action (Goal 13), sustainable use of marine resources or life below water (Goal 14) and partnership for the goals (Goal 17) have been excluded due to lack of data at the state level.
 
Thus, the SDG India Index 2018 report provides critical insights on the status of SDGs in India, with detailed insights about state performances vis-à-vis national schemes for each goal, despite lack of comprehensive representations of overall baseline. Subsequent reports will measure incremental progress with improvements in data availability and new estimation techniques. Until then, states can use this index as a valuable starting point for measuring progress and identifying intra-state disparitiesat district levels.
 
India Outbound
December 24, 2018
 
 

source https://indiaoutbound.org/the-sdg-india-index-baseline-report-2018/

The 2018 #Climatescope report is out. How do we make the world a cleaner place? Here's our take. https://t.co/JSIC9dc9Fb

The 2018 #Climatescope report is out. How do we make the world a cleaner place? Here's our take.https://t.co/JSIC9dc9Fb

— India Outbound (@india_outbound) December 24, 2018

from Twitter : https://twitter.com/india_outbound

Conceptualising Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger

Goal 2 or Zero Hunger of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) pivots around profoundly changing the global food and agriculture system, for nourishing 821 million hungry people (as of 2017), along with the additional 2 billion global populaces, expected by 2050. Goal 2 encompasses multiple targets (provided below as well) to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition as well as promote sustainable agriculture by 2030.

The underlying rationale is that extreme hunger and malnutrition remains a barrier to sustainable and social development and creates a trap from which people cannot escape easily. This leads to less productive individuals who are more disease-prone and hence, are unable to earn more and improve their livelihoods.

The reversal in progress made in terms of food security over the last three years, with hunger levels returning to those a decade ago, signals the urgent need for interventions to ensure that Goal 2 is achieved by 2030.

The question that needs to be reiterated time and again is that in a scenario where there is sufficient food to feed everyone on Planet Earth, why are such huge chunks of the population still suffering from hunger? Factors that have contributed to this oxymoronic state of food scarcity, can primarily be attributed to poor harvesting practices and food wastage. Other factors include environmental destruction as well the occurrence of violent crises or wars.

Agriculture is a source of livelihood (income and jobs) for 40% of the global population, making it the single largest employer in the world, especially for rural households. 500 million small farms are responsible for 80% of the food consumption in the developing world. Unfortunately, since the 1900s, 75% of the crop diversity has been lost.

Agricultural biodiversity leads to nutrition diets, enhanced livelihoods for farming communities and sustainable and resilient farming systems. Also, if female farmers are granted the same access to resources as the male farmers, the number of people who suffer from hunger will reduce by around 150 million. Another fundamental barrier to reducing hunger is the problem of energy poverty, given that 4 billion people living in rural areas in the developing world, have no access to electricity worldwide. This hampers the production of food.

The costs of ending world hunger by 2030 include an additional annual investment of approximately $267 billion, in rural and urban areas for social protection programmes that enable people in the marginalised sections or fringes of society to access food and improve their livelihoods. Investments in small-holder farms that are largely rain-fed to encourage food production for local and global markets, is critical for increasing food and nutrition security.

The targets include:

• Ensuring by 2030, year-long access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food for all people (including infants), particularly poor and vulnerable ones
• Ending all forms of malnutrition by 2030; achieving by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age; addressing nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant/lactating women and older persons
• By 2030, doubling agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, particularly women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, through secure/equal access to land, productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets/opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment
• By 2030, ensuring sustainable food production systems and implementing resilient agricultural practices to increase productivity/production, help maintain ecosystems and progressively improve land/soil quality by strengthening capacity for adaptation to disasters like climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding
• By 2020, maintaining genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed/ domesticated animals and their related wild species, through soundly managed and diversified seed/plant banks at the national, regional and international levels; promoting access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits, by utilizing internationally accepted genetic resources/associated traditional knowledge
• Increase investment through enhanced international cooperation, in rural infrastructure, agricultural research and extension services, technology development and plant and livestock gene banks to enhance agricultural productive capacity in developing countries, in particular least developed countries
• Correct/prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets, parallel elimination of all forms of agricultural export subsidies/export measures with equivalent effect, in accordance with the Doha Development Round mandate
• Ensure proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives; facilitate timely access to market information and food reserves, to help limit extreme food price volatility

Thus, achieving Zero Hunger is resolvable provided its myriad aspects and underlying challenges are effectively addressed. Importantly, the success of the other Sustainable Development Goals is dependent on Goal 2, vis-à-vis positive impacts on global health, economies, education as well as social development and equality.

India Outbound
December 21, 2018

source https://indiaoutbound.org/conceptualising-sustainable-development-goal-2-zero-hunger/

Challenges in decarbonising power sectors

The 2018 Climatescope Report, titled Emerging Markets Outlook 2018: Energy transition in the world’s fastest growing economies states that in 2017, new coal-fired capacity additions fell to their lowest level in the last decade but the actual year-on-year generation from coal-fired plants increased by 4% to 6.4TWh. Even the generation of natural gas rose by 3%. Even though, there is ample evidence to support that new-build renewables can underprice new-build coal-fired plants, 193GW of coal is currently under construction in developing countries. Three of the five BRICS i.e. China, South Africa and India, along with Indonesia are responsible for 86% of this.

The displacement of existing coal-fired plants by clean energy poses a longer-term challenge, especially for India and China, wherein three quarters and two-thirds of the power demand respectively, is met by coal. Between 2010 and 2017, both countries have together added 432GW of coal capacity. Overall, around 81% of all emerging market coal-fired capacity is located in these countries. Policy-makers will be reluctant to decommission these new plants anytime soon because of the significant pressures exerted on India in terms of energy access expansion and China in terms of affordable pricing of power.

Another fundamental challenge is posed by the question of how to accommodate large volumes of intermittent clean generation into existing power markets. Renewable energy projects operate at effectively zero marginal cost since they require no fuel inputs. Thus, in flooding the grids of liberalized power markets, they can potentially decimate wholesale power prices for all generators, thereby leading to the collapse of older and less efficient fossil plants in the short run to keep carbon dioxide emissions under check.

However, in the long-run, high clean energy penetration can destabilize markets if not properly managed and clean output does not neatly overlay the electricity demand. In such situations, clean energy projects can become highly dependent on the goodwill of grid operators. For instance, in China, over-capacity is acute in some regions and the production in wind/solar projects has been curtailed in favour of coal-fired power plants, at times.

Developing countries are actively seeking to implement various solutions to confront these challenges posed by rising levels of clean power generation. Brazil is planning to have auctions for the development of transmission lines into regions that are rich in natural resources. The World Banks’s Scaling Solar program in Madagascar includes incentives to build power storage and South Africa’s state-owned utility has declared a 800MWh storage goal for 2019. Meanwhile, countries such as Algeria and Tajikistan have aggressively promoted the use of smart meters, vital to demand-response programs.

With the progressive drop in clean energy costs and rise in deployment, the developing countries must ensure that their grids must go beyond matching and surpass the sophistication of those in wealthier countries. This will entail the opening up of enormous economic opportunities for the government, private companies and financial institutions. However, they will need to supplement these by concerted efforts vis-à-vis policy development, investment and deployment of latest technological advancements.

India Outbound
December 20, 2018

source https://indiaoutbound.org/challenges-in-decarbonising-power-sectors/

There's more to the recent high level visits from #Mauritius than what's on the surface. Here's the #FTA, deconstructed. https://t.co/PHHwfuXn1z

There's more to the recent high level visits from #Mauritius than what's on the surface. Here's the #FTA, deconstructed.https://t.co/PHHwfuXn1z

— India Outbound (@india_outbound) December 20, 2018

from Twitter : https://twitter.com/india_outbound

Energy transition in the world’s fastest growing economies

The 2018 Climatescope Report, titled Emerging Markets Outlook 2018: Energy transition in the world’s fastest growing economies, reports that the world’s developing countries are driving the global clean power transition, fuelled by sinking technology costs and surging electricity demand. Earlier, the 2017 Climatescope Report had documented a noticeable shift in the locus of clean energy activity from the Global North to the Global South.
 

 
According to the 2018 report, India has ranked 2nd, as opposed to last year’s 5th position due to its increased investments, clean energy installations and world’s largest and most competitive renewables auction market. In 2017, the Indian market contracted over 10.5 GW from solar and wind. Also, the solar market in the country doubled in size with a record 8GW of annual PV installations. Chile has emerged at top in this ranking in light of its strong government policies, demonstrated track record of clean energy investment and commitment towards decarbonisation, despite prevalent grid constraints.
 

 
In comparison, China fell from 1st to 7th position due to curtailment issues, suspension of subsidies and openness to international investors over the availability of local manufacturing. However, China remains critical to the global clean energy story given its unrivaled clean energy investment and potential for decarbonisation. Brazil’s 4th position can be attributed to its pioneering and competitive auctions to contract clean energy that led to the addition of 24.8GW of renewable energy in 2009-2017. Despite its economic crisis, cancelled auctions and plummeting clean energy investment, Brazil’s clean energy sector appears to be poised for new growth.
 

 
These rankings support the progress made by the BRICS countries are dominating the global landscape for solar energy. Other countries in the Top 10 of the 2018 Climatescope rankings include Jordan (3rd), Rwanda (5th), Philippines (6th), Mexico (8th), Peru (9th) and Thailand (10th). However, according to the 2018 Climatescope Report, there is a long way to go before these developing countries are able to leverage their successes in achieving clean energy so far, in completely de-carbonising their power sectors in the future.
 
India Outbound
December 19, 2018

source https://indiaoutbound.org/energy-transition-in-the-worlds-fastest-growing-economies/

Indo-Mauritian Free Trade Agreement

Diplomatic and trade relations between India and Mauritius have been infused with new momentum, after a brief deterioration in February 2018, when President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s predecessor, Abdulla Yameen, imposed an emergency due to domestic political turmoil. President Solihis currently in India, for his first official overseas visit,after taking over as President in September 2018. During the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)’s India-Maldives Business Forum, he invited the Indian business community to invest in his island country by assuring them that they will not face obstacles.
 
President Solih acclaimed India’s economic success post liberalization and hailed it as Mauritius’ closest friend and largest trading partner. He reiterated Maldives’ commitment to protect foreign investment by providing legal cover for foreign investors to grow their businesses. Moreover, as a fast-growing emerging economy, Mauritius is especially focused on developing its tourism industry and infrastructure, in terms of harbours, airports etc.
 
As per Suresh Prabhu, India’s Commerce and Industry Minister, India and Mauritius must explore avenues of cooperation across sectors like agri-products and services, fisheries etc. He expressed his desire to send a high-level delegation of officers to Mauritius to work out details for the same. Following President Solih’s talks with Prime Minister Modi and completion of the 7th round of negotiations, the free trade agreement is expected to be signed before or during the Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth’s visit to India in January 2019.
 
Negotiations over the India-Mauritius free trade agreement, officially known as the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation and Partnership Agreement (CECPA), started in 2006 but was suspended in 2013, due to a stalemate over the Double Tax Avoidance Agreement (DTAA). The DTAA waives the payment of capital gains tax by foreign investors in India. In 2017,disagreements were resolved by signing the DTAA.
 
Elements of the CECPA include economic cooperation and investments across goods and services but textiles and marine products remain tricky for India. Mauritian interests lie in India either eliminating or substantially reducing tariffs on these products, for it to broaden its scope for access to the Indian market in these two sectors. The domestic sector will possibly remain unaffected since Sri Lanka and Bangladesh also have zero duty access for multiple textile products in the Indian market.
 
India may not benefit much from Mauritius’ removal or reduction of duties because it is a small market providing tariffs on limited products like certain engineering goods, furnishings, bed linens and agricultural items including processed food. India will need to establish a strict conditionality of origin so that its domestic markets are not flooded with products not of Mauritian origin. More than goods, India is likely to benefit from the tourism and services sector, if the CCPA grants it concessions.
 
Countries including the US, Switzerland, Japan, Norway, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan offer Mauritius benefits under the Generalised System of Preferences, a preferential duty-free system that formally exempts specific developing countries from high tariff payments. Mauritius is also an FTA Member of the Common Market for Southern and Eastern Africa and the Southern African Development Community. Thus, if India and Mauritius sign a CECPA, Indian industries will be able to use Mauritius as a base with multiple countries under favourable trading terms and conditions.
 
At present, the bilateral trade between India and Mauritius is valued at USD 222.68 million with a surplus in favour of India. India has been the largest exporter of goods and services to Mauritius since 2007. At an increase of 22%, Indian exports to Mauritius crossed $1 billion and imports to India reached $20.6 million at a 12% increase. As per Indian central bank data, at USD 15.72 billion in 2016-17 and USD 13.4 billion in 2017-18, Mauritius is India’s top source of FDI.
 
Mauritian duty imposition is not more than 5%, so the economic gains for India from the agreement are limited. However, the free trade pact will be strategically crucial as through the CECPA, India will gain access primarily to French-speaking African markets. Moreover, as Mauritius benefits from India’s mammoth market, shared historical and cultural ties between both countries will also be strengthened.
 
India Outbound
December 18, 2018

source https://indiaoutbound.org/indo-mauritian-free-trade-agreement/

UK-India investment funds: pivot of UK-India Tech Partnership

In June 2018, Ascension Ventures, a London-based early-stage venture capital firm, announced a joint venture with Mumbai-based Unicorn India Ventures (UIV) to launch the first cross-border and evergreen UK-India Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) Fund, called the Unicorn Ascension EIS Fund (UAF). The aim is to support and enable investments into UK-based technology start-ups that are looking to expand into the Indian market. The first close for the fund was expected to be valued at $2.3 million or INR 15.5 crores and investment/capital deployment started from September onwards.
 
Now, the first cross-border investment made through this evergreen fund is an undisclosed sum to Custom Materials Ltd., the London-based parent company of a social commerce startup called Moteefe. These fresh funds will be used to expand services in India during 3rd and 4th financial quarters in 2019. Moteefe was founded in 2015 as a B2B2C platform to provide end-to-end solutions to monetize social presence and provide customer support using white-label store technology, production and fulfillment networks and custom design tools.
 
This is the first step towards their goal of exposing the Indian market and ecosystem to trailblazing technological products and services of UK-based startups. The fund is geared towards technological manufacturing and developments in sectors like the Internet of Things, finance, robotics, security and surveillance, AI software for services, content and learning, agriculture, preventive healthcare, e-commerce etc.
 
Collaborations between the startup ecosystems in India and UK have been strengthened through multiple such initiatives. In 2015, UK exported £358 millions worth of digital services to India. In April 2018, Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Theresa May announced the launch of an ambitious UK-India Tech Partnership for the identification and pairing of businesses, universities and venture capital to provide routes of market access for entrepreneurs of small and medium enterprises in both countries.
 
The MoU that was signed underlined the need to boost their respective economies and improve the lives of citizens via improved governance, cybersecurity, healthcare and jobs creation. In order to crystallize this, the UK-India Fast Track Startup Fund was established, with the UK government committing to approximately $48 million investments in key areas similar to the ones mentioned above. NASSCHOM and TechUK have also signed an MoU for the UK-India Tech Alliance.
 
Pivotal features of the India-UK tech partnership include: the establishment of a technology hub in New Delhi for increased skills training and R&D; forging tech cluster partnerships (eg. Midlands Engine-Maharashtra Cluster and Northern Power House-Karnataka) for innovation sharing and technological exchange; launching a £1 Mn programme for the alignment of AI healthcare solutions from the UK with health reforms under Ayushman Bharat; raising funding for 40 fintech companies annually via the Fintech Rocketship Awards.
 
With the third largest startup ecosystem in the world, India has collaborated with many countries to provide support and opportunities to local entrepreneurs internationally. Yet, the UK remains the destination of choice for technological partnerships with Indian enterprises, even post BREXIT.
 
India Outbound
December 17, 2018

source https://indiaoutbound.org/uk-india-investment-funds-pivot-of-uk-india-tech-partnership/

Strengthening India-Myanmar relations

India and Myanmar are neighbors sharing waters, forests, hills, Buddhist culture, cuisine, language, heritage of ethnic, linguistic and religious ties and a history of similar anti-colonial struggles. India’s ancient technique of meditation, Vipassana, is believed to have come from Myanmar. Historically, India and Myanmar’s regional interests have been shaped by the geo-strategic realities of sharing land and maritime borders in South Asia. Importantly, Myanmar is the sole ASEAN country that shares boundaries with India.
 
Hence, it can become India’s gateway to South East Asia, especially for greater economic engagement and high-level bilateral agreements under India’s “Act East”/“Neighbourhood First” and Myanmar’s “Look West” policies. Myanmar’s membership into ASEAN, BIMSTEC and Mekong Ganga Cooperation introduced a regional/sub-regional dimension to their bilateral relations.Both countries are committed to cooperate for preserving their territorial integrity and aspirations for peace and prosperity.
 
Myanmar is undergoing an economic transition within the context of an ongoing peace process, national reconciliation and economic recovery and India has emerged as the fastest growing major global economy. Thus, India’s growth story provides ample economic and investment opportunities for sharing experience/expertise of capacity building and skills development in Myanmar.
 
This motivated Indian President Ram Nath Kovind to visit Myanmar to promote the strengthening of bilateral economic and commercial relations via a multi-pronged approach that leverages both countries’ competencies (resources) and boosting engagement through increased connectivity, capacity-building and commercial/cultural exchanges. The President inaugurated the Fifth Enterprise India Show i.e. a convention of leading businesses and small/medium-size enterprises engaged in cutting-edge manufacturing to deepen business/banking ties and forge joint ventures.
 
He hailed Myanmar’s vibrant Indian community, present since the mid-19th century and mainly engaged export-import businesses and MNCs based in India, Singapore and Thailand, for providing an organic link between both countries. Since December 1, Myanmar has a visa-on-arrival policy for Indian air travelers.
 
Multiple institutional mechanisms and high-level visits have infused dynamism to their bilateral ties, especially vis-à-vis defense and security in terms of training for the army, air force and naval staff. Since, cooperation in the banking sector is crucial for trade and investment, the United Bank of India signed banking agreements with 12 banks in Myanmar. In March 2016, State Bank of India was awarded a Commercial Banking License and started operations from 3 October 2016.
 
In 1970, the first bilateral trade agreement was signed. Even though India is Myanmar’s fifth largest trading partner, the potential of India-Myanmar trade and investment relations have not been fully realized. Currently, India’s trade is dominated by import of beans, pulses and timber and exports of sugar and pharmaceuticals. As of 2017, India is the tenth largest investor with an approved investment of US$ 740.64 million across 25 Indian companies (mostly in the oil and gas sector). 100% FDI is allowed in select sectors and Myanmar is an important partner in India’s energy relations with other countries.
 
India has committed to providing grant-in-aid assistance valued at INR 4000 crores for the Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport Project and the Trilateral Highway Project (an East-West corridor connecting Northeast India to Myanmar and Thailand). Aid includes development of roads, bridges, schools, health centres, institutions for higher learning and research etc. In the past, India has provided disaster relief and supported capacity-building for disaster risk mitigation after natural calamities like Cyclone Mora (2017), Komen (2015), Cyclone Nargis (2008) etc. During the President’s visit, one of the agreements that will be signed include provisions for prefabricated housing for displaced Rohingya refugees under the 2017 Rakhine State Development Programme.
 
Indian companies can offer the best products, services, digitally driven choices, finance, innovations and know-how for business partners, start-ups, incubators and customers in Myanmar. Tourism and trade is being bolstered through infrastructure projects for land-border crossing and connectivity between the commercial capitals. Ongoing efforts will possibly be complemented by a Motor Vehicles Agreement for people living along the border to source goods and services more efficiently and economically and exchange eco-friendly products made from bamboo, water hyacinth and other natural vegetation.
 
Two MoUs have been signed for (i) cooperation in science and technology and (ii) conducting judicial training and capacity building for Myanmar judges and law officers.New avenues of collaboration will be explored in the fields of digital economy, e-commerce, sustainable products and green solutions via new projects and proposals, especially in renewable energy, power, light engineering, agro-products and machinery, IT, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and education sectors. Thus, there is an overall commitment to fuel and diversify partnerships for mutual growth and development.

 
India Outbound
December 14, 2018

source https://indiaoutbound.org/strengthening-india-myanmar-relations/

Combating anemia in women and girls

Health challenges specific to women often do not garner sufficient public attention and hence, resources or action. One such issue under malnutrition that has long-term impacts upon the health of the mother and child is anemia. Almost 80% of all instances of anemia is a result of iron deficiency, spurred by malnutrition, imbalanced diets, poverty and poor sanitation. It affects people across age groups but young children, adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women are the most vulnerable. The risks of abnormalities, pre-term deliveries and fetal deaths is higher in case of anemia during pregnancy.
 
According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 4 (2015-16), 53% women, 50.3% pregnant women and 22.7% men are anemic. Occurrence is considerably higher in rural areas than urban areas, among disadvantaged communities and women and children of households lower in the wealth quintiles. Overall, anemia levels in girls and women has stagnated from 55.3% in NFHS-3 (2005-06) to 53% in the past decade.
 
Government schemes like the National Nutritional Anemia Prophylaxis Program (NNAPP) since 1970, the Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls (RGSEAG) and the 2013 National Iron Plus Initiative (NIPI) administer iron and folic acid supplementation,however, public health experts have argued against this strategy of simply handing out iron tablets. The Rapid Survey on Children 2014 revealed that only 23.6% pregnant women consumed more than 100 iron and folic acid tablets out of the 31.2% who received them.
 
The National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau released a report in 2017 on nutritional statuses and diets in urban India. It stated that since cereals comprised a bulk of the prevalent diets, the intake of folic acid met the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) but iron’s intake fell short. The solution for this lay in a combination of iron supplementation as well as diversified diets, which would be rich in iron, iodine, phosphorous, calcium, protein and vitamins.
 
Nepal is an example of a low-income and resource-poor country that has made significant progress in reducing the prevalence of anemia in women. The intensification of its maternal and neonatal micronutrient program yielded success in reducing maternal anaemia and its key preventable causes on the basis of integrated community-based delivery platforms and strengthened monitoring and logistics systems. This ensured early identification, increased awareness and high compliance via early initiation in schools, overall demand for quality care, effective implementation and expanded access/supply of improved products.
 
However, the 2018 Global Nutrition Report has deemed the overall global progress made in addressing anemia as “extremely slow.” No country is on track to meet their anaemia reduction targets and the number of anaemic women has actually increased since 2012. Yet, by 2022, India aims to reduce cases of anemia amongst children, adolescent girls and women of reproductive age to 33% of the NFHS-4 levels. This is in tandem with the SDG to achieve 50% reduction in anemia among women of reproductive age.
 
In order to achieve the national and global nutrition targets, the government, private and development sector will need to collaborate upon making interventions effective in reach and implementation. Women need to be made aware of their special nutritional needs and health-related threats, especially in for curbing anemia,in order to be able to seek timely care not limited to their pre-natal and post-natal requirements. The significance of a healthy lifestyle, rich and diversified diets and enrichment via nutritional supplements cannot be reiterated enough.
 
Aditi Rukhaiyar
December 13, 2018
 
 

source https://indiaoutbound.org/combating-anemia-in-women-and-girls/

A child’s right to breathe safe air: part 3

The 2018 WHO report titled Air Pollution and Child Health: Prescribing clean air, highlights the latest scientific data that links air pollution with adverse health impacts upon children as well as the significance of interventions that curb their exposure within the broader 2030 agenda of sustainable development. The report also outlines the crucial role of effective communication of risks and solutions vis-à-vis air pollution.
 
Certain concrete steps must be taken in order to reduce the exposure of pregnant women, children and adolescents to the globally high levels of household and ambient air pollution. The underlying motivation of the report is to inform healthcare professionals worldwide to urgently help prevent damage to children’s health due to exposure to air pollution, via individual and collective action, at the individual, community as well as policy level, both nationally and globally. Thus, the broader health sector must become more engaged in comprehensive approaches to addressing the air pollution crisis, especially by managing exposure.
 
As trusted sources of information and guidance in society, healthcare professionals can not only treat the ill-health caused by air pollution but also leverage their knowledge and influence to provide evidence to shape public health policy and social and behaviour change communication strategies, by advocating effective solutions of care and prevention within the communities they serve in. This can be amplified by:

• Being informed about existing and emerging impacts of air pollution on children’s health by identifying causative risk factors, related health conditions, sources of environmental exposure

• Researching, publishing and disseminating knowledge about effects, potential treatment, management and prevention

• Educating families and communities by prescribing solutions, which may be transitional and offer some incremental health benefits, in contexts where barriers exist to the adoption of clean household energy

• Providing relevant information about government and non-profit programmes/resources

• Training and engaging with colleagues/students in the fields of health and education across workplaces, local health care centres, conferences, professional associations, to widen the reach of messages about health risks and strategies

• Supporting the inclusion of children’s environmental health in school curricula in medical, nursing schools etc.

• Sharing solutions with policy/decision-makers, local governments, school boards and community leaders by accurately emphasizing upon the health burden of air pollution, conducting/monitoring health-based assessments, endorsing improved standards/policy

 
Exposure to air pollution is a lifelong burden of suffering and illness that can alter the trajectory of a child’s life, but it is a largely preventable crisis. Informed action by healthcare professionals can be a panacea for low-income families, wherein the means to improve the air quality in their homes, even if not awareness levels, may be limited. Market and other forces beyond their control may render clean fuels and technologies unaffordable, unavailable or inaccessible.
 
Outside the house, individuals and families have even lesser control over what is emitted into the air that they breathe. Individual action like use of clean stoves for cooking can mitigate household air pollution and improve the health of the whole family. However, these are not unstainable or equitable on a larger scale. The reduction of ambient air pollution requires wider action, especially at the policy level.
 
Air pollutants are not limited by political borders and their dispersal is governed by prevailing weather patterns. This demands regional and international cooperative approaches to achieve substantial and effective reductions in exposure. Such preventive approaches must be complementary and mutually reinforcing in scale at every level i.e. houses, clinics, health care institutions, municipalities, national governments and the global community.
 
In such a context, healthcare professionals can collectively push for strong action from decision-makers to protect children, the most vulnerable and voiceless citizens, who have little or no control over the air they breathe. Individual efforts and actions can cumulatively contribute to collective action by changing minds, policies and consequently, the overall quality of air, thereby eventually ensuring that children are breathing freely, devoid of the burdens of air pollution.
 
India Outbound
December 12, 2018

 
 

source https://indiaoutbound.org/a-childs-right-to-breathe-safe-air-part-3/

A child’s right to breathe safe air: part 2

According to the 2018 WHO report titled Air Pollution and Child Health: Prescribing clean air, 93% of the world’s children are exposed daily to environments with levels of air pollution that have crossed WHO guidelines. The report summarises the latest findings related to air pollution and children’s health. It also highlights the broader implications of air pollution and related risks on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
 
The report states that low- and middle-income countries deal with higher levels of air pollution, particularly household air pollution, in comparison to the high-income countries. Thus, poverty levels share a high degree of correlation with greater exposure to environmental health risks. Poverty compounds the adverse impacts of air pollution vis-à-vis limited access to information, health care treatment and other resources.
 
In 2014, the WHO-issued Guidelines for indoor air quality: household fuel combustion were the first to define particular heating, lighting and cooking technologies and fuels as clean at the point of use. These included electricity, liquefied petroleum gas, biogas, ethanol and solar stoves, some high-performing biomass stoves etc. The use of unprocessed coal and kerosene was discouraged due to their hazardous impact on health. However, kerosene is still used for lighting purposes in countries like India, by those who do not have access to electricity. An updated version of the threshold limits set by the WHO air quality guidelines that must be met in order to protect the health of individuals will be published in 2020.
 
Poverty compels people to rely upon such polluting sources of energy for their basic needs as well as limits their abilities to improve their environment for the benefit of their children’s health. Thus, household air pollution is a chronic problem in resource-poor settings, characterised by poor-quality and temporary housing. In such a context, the achievement of universal access to clean and safe household energy is reflected on the global sustainable development agenda, under Goal 7 i.e. “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all”.
 
The government and other relevant actors can adopt multiple proven solutions for reduction in ambient and household air pollution the government like: reducing over-dependence on fossil fuels in the global energy mix, investing in improving energy efficiency, cleaner transport, energy-efficient housing and urban planning, low- or zero-emission power generation, cleaner and safer industrial technologies as well as facilitating the uptake of renewable energy sources. Community-level air pollution can be reduced by better municipal waste management methods that reduce the burning of waste. Such shifts need to eventually lead to the exclusive use of clean technologies and fuels for household cooking, heating and lighting activities, in order to drastically improve the air quality within homes and in the surrounding community.
 
Curbing air pollution levels is interconnected with multiple other SDGs that encompass targets related to alleviation of poverty and the protection of environment and health: ensuring healthy lives for all (SDG 3), making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable (SDG 11) and combatting climate change (SDG 13). Reducing the exposure of children to pollutants can help avoid disease, reduce mortality and improve their health and well-being. Estimates suggest that climate change will be responsible for 2,50,000 deaths annually by 2030. The same pollutants (black carbon, ozone) that cause air pollution are also agents of global warming and interventions that reduce their emissions will benefit both, the climate and children’s health.
 
Thus, the implementation of evidence-based policies and practices that protect children’s health from the undermining effects of air pollution is essential to the realisation of the 2030 sustainable development agenda.
 
India Outbound
December 11, 2018
 

source https://indiaoutbound.org/a-childs-right-to-breathe-safe-air-part-2/

A child’s right to breathe safe air: Part 1

The 2018 WHO report titled Air Pollution and Child Health: Prescribing clean air is a compendium of the latest scientific knowledge that links the exposure to polluted air with adverse health impacts upon children. This report is timely given the fact that significant media coverage and public conversation around major environmental threats currently centres around air pollution. It is reported that the exposure to anthropogenic and natural pollutants in the household and ambient environment results in around seven million premature deaths annually. According to WHO, while this public health crisis has been receiving considerable attention, one aspect has been critically overlooked i.e. how air pollution affects children in uniquely damaging ways, due to a plethora of physiological, environmental and behavioural factors, thereby impacting their health and survival.
 

 
Ambient air pollution is caused by fossil fuel combustion, waste incineration, agricultural and industrial processes as well as natural factors like volcanic eruptions, dust forms, wildfires etc. They vary across rural and urban areas but no region is safer than the other. In 2016, ambient air pollution resulted in 4.2 million premature deaths, out of which 3,00,000 were children under five years of age. Household air pollution is caused by the incomplete combustion of fuels as well as cooking, heating and lighting technologies. According to WHO estimates, 41% of the population in low and middle-income countries used polluting sources of cooking in 2016.
 
Combined with household air pollution, respiratory tract infections caused 5,43,000 children under the age of 5 and 52,000 children aged 5-15 to die in 2016. Exposure to pollutants in-utero or during early life result in adverse birth outcomes like preterm birth, low birth weight, stillbirth and infant mortality. In case they survive, they suffer from hampered neuro and cognitive development, childhood cancers (retinoblastomas and leukaemia) or behavioural disorders. Other consequences include hampered motor development, metabolic outcomes (utero and postnatal weight gain or attained body-mass index for age, insulin resistance), impaired lung development and function/chronic lung disease as adults, ALRI, asthma otitis media.
 
The children are particularly vulnerable during their fetal development (depending on mother’s exposure to household air pollution) and early childhood because their brain, lungs and other organs are still developing and become inflamed or damaged easily. Their breathing is much faster than that of adults as a result of which they take in more air and hence, more pollutants. They are usually closer to the ground where the pollutants are often at peak concentrations. Those that spend a lot of time outside playing and engaging in other physical activity are susceptible to ambient air pollution, while newborns and infants spend most of their time indoors and are thereby closer to polluting fuels and devices. Overall, their growth as productive and healthy individuals is hampered.
 

 

 
More than half of all deaths amongst children under five years of age is caused by ALRI, making it one of the leading killers of children across the world. The two maps given above depict the burden of only ALRI. However, the total burden of morbidity and mortality amongst children due to exposure to household and ambient air pollution is much higher.
 
At a glance:

• Worldwide, 93% children (1.8 billion) under the age of 15 years breathe polluted air daily and their health and development is under severe risk

• In low- and middle-income countries, 98% of the children under five years of age are exposed to PM2.5 levels above the WHO air quality guidelines

• In high-income countries, 52% of the children under five years of age are exposed to pollution levels above WHO quality guidelines

• More than 40% of the global population, including one billion children under the age of 15, have been exposed to high levels of household pollution

 
Air pollution is a global crisis but, the burden of particulate matter that causes it is the greatest in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), particularly in Africa, South-East Asia, Eastern Mediterranean and Western Pacific regions. The African Region especially records the highest levels of exposure to household air pollution, due to the widespread use of polluting fuels and technologies for basic daily needs, such as cooking, heating and lighting.
 
India Outbound
December 10, 2018

source https://indiaoutbound.org/a-childs-right-to-breathe-safe-air-part-1/

There's a critical need to change the widespread understanding of #hunger and #food security. https://t.co/RD3ZeOdxIj

There's a critical need to change the widespread understanding of #hunger and #food security.https://t.co/RD3ZeOdxIj

— India Outbound (@india_outbound) December 11, 2018

from Twitter : https://twitter.com/india_outbound

Check out the big picture of a roadmap for the future with possible avenues of collaboration being formulated between India and #UAE to consolidate the unprecedented heights that bilateral ties have achieved in the last few years. #UAENationalDay https://t.co/A52tAkHohj

Check out the big picture of a roadmap for the future with possible avenues of collaboration being formulated between India and #UAE to consolidate the unprecedented heights that bilateral ties have achieved in the last few years.#UAENationalDayhttps://t.co/A52tAkHohj

— India Outbound (@india_outbound) December 8, 2018

from Twitter : https://twitter.com/india_outbound

India-UAE relationship

India-UAE relations are grounded in bonds of friendship forged due to age-old religious, economic and cultural ties between both the countries. The relationship flourished in 1966, after the accession of H.H. Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the Ruler of Abu Dhabi. The UAE Federation was created in 1971, the UAE Embassy opened in India in 1972 and the Indian Embassy opened in UAE in 1973. Thus, diplomatic relations were established that have been subsequently sustained via high-level ministerial visits on both sides.
 
Political relations were boosted with the historic visit of PM Modi to UAE in August 2015. The Joint Statement issued after this visit highlighted the start of a new comprehensive and strategic partnership, with an agreement to consolidate achievements in existing domains as well as explore new avenues of cooperation. In February 2016, H.H. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of UAE Armed Forces, visited India for wide-ranging discussions on regional, bilateral and multilateral issues of mutual interest and signed MoUs related to: (i) facilitation of Institutional Investors in Infrastructure, (ii) Cooperation in Renewable Energy, (iii) Cooperation in Combating Cyber-Crimes, (iv) Cultural Exchange, (v) Space, (vi) Skill Development, (vii) Insurance and (viii) Currency swaps.
 
India is the largest trading partner for the UAE while the latter is the former’s third largest trading partner, after China and the US. Their bilateral trade is valued at roughly $50 billion. In 2016-17, at 30 billion USD, UAE was the second largest export destination for India. Major Indian export items include minerals, food (fruits, vegetables, meat, seafood, tea), textiles (cotton, yarn, synthetic fibre), machinery, while imports include petroleum products, precious metals/stones/gems, jewellery and wood. UAE is the sixth largest source of Indian oil imports.
 
UAE’s FDI is the tenth largest in India, concentrated in sectors like services, construction, power, air transport and hotel and tourism. UAE is home to 3.3 million Indians, the largest expatriate community in the UAE. These include the business community, professional qualified personnel, white-collar non-professionals and blue-collar workers. The Indian community has significantly contributed to the economic development in UAE.
 
To cater to the large chunk of blue-collar Indian workers, grievance-redressal mechanisms have been developed. Moreover, a comprehensive online NRI registration system and an online portal called E-migrate allows Indian residents to register their details and get recruited respectively. An Indian Community Welfare Fund (ICWF) provides short-term economic assistance (food, shelter, passage expenses) to destitute workers/housemaids in distress. The Indian Workers Resource Centre (IWRC) has a 24- hour helpline operating in Dubai since November 2010. Another IWRC was opened in Sharjah in September 2017. The embassy and consulate officers regularly visit jails and labor camps to ensure regular communication with the Indian community.
 
In this context, the 12th session of the India-UAE Joint Commission Meeting for Economic and Technical Cooperation is a landmark in India-UAE relations. Two significant deals were signed between External Affairs Minister Sushma SwaraJ and her counterpart Sheikh Abdullah bin ZayedAl Nahyan. The MoU titled, Development Cooperation in Africa, will entail collaborations to launch joint aid projects in Africa, based on Indian expertise and UAE’s funding and goodwill, starting with the establishment of an IT Centre of Excellence in Ethiopia. UAE had played a crucial role in brokering peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea. India has a similar deal with another “third country” i.e. Japan, for partnerships in Africa.
 
The second deal refers to the currency swap agreement to reduce exchange rate risks and transmission costs. Both countries will be able to import and export trade in their own currencies at a pre-determined exchange rate, without the introduction of the third-party US dollar.
 
In addition to this, the inauguration of a Gandhi-Zayed Digital Museum in Abu Dhabi marks 150 years of Gandhi’s birth and 100 years of Sheikh Zayed, the founder of the modern UAE. Through interactive digital content and cutting-edge technologies, the museum will showcase rare phots, videos and memorabilia from the lives and works of the two leaders, thereby reaffirming the historically shared philosophies and values of peace, tolerance and sustainability. This museum will be open for a week and then will be reopened in March 2019.
 
Swaraj has requested the UAE to not grant work permits to Indian women workers who have migrated to UAE on tourist visas in order to curb the exploitations of illegal agents and employers. Instead, she has urged these workers to travel through legal channels for employment. She hailed the members of the Indian community as permanent Indian ambassadors to the UAE.
 
The UAE’s National Advisor Bureau Limited has suggested the possibility of connecting Mumbai and Fujairah via an underwater rail network. Ultra-speed floating trains are a futuristic mode of transport that could help boost bilateral trade via exchange of goods and oil, import of excess water from Narmada River etc.
 
This is just another example of a roadmap for the future with possible avenues of collaboration being formulated between India and UAE to consolidate the unprecedented heights that bilateral ties have achieved in the last few years.

India Outbound
December 7, 2018
 
 

source https://indiaoutbound.org/india-uae-relationship/

Reformulation of the Hunger Problem in India

India’s performance in the Global Hunger Index has shown a downward trend in the last few years. It seemed to be improving between 2008 and 2014 but its score has fallen from 38.8 in 2000 to 31.1 in 2018, with a ranking of 103rd amongst 119 countries. This can be juxtaposed with India’s rising economic growth and increasing levels of food production during the same period. This entails a critical need to change the widespread understanding of hunger and food security.
 

Source: https://www.globalhungerindex.org/india.html

 
In 2015, the conception of malnutrition was expanded and reformulated, with the introduction of new parameters, including stunting and wasting amongst children, in order to achieve a more accurate perception and estimation of the hunger problem.
 
“Given that malnutrition is a multidimensional phenomenon (UNICEF 1994), the revised GHI formula is able to depict a relatively truer state of hunger in countries across the globe. Inclusion of stunting ensures consideration of rigid cultural factors, while that of wasting represents aspects of diet quality as well. Also, stunting is an indicator of long-term growth failure, and therefore, must be accounted for in any analysis of potential threat a given level of child malnutrition poses for a country. This is one of the key reasons the sustainable development agenda of the United Nations associate bodies display primary concern towards stunting.”
 
Malnutrition in India has not garnered sufficient policy focus and instead, has been left under the purview of economic development, hinged on the belief that the problem of hunger will be solved by the “trickle-down” effect as money will percolate down through the different strata of society. However, this the orization is based on multiple problematic assumptions about the relationship between hunger and social structures in India.
 
According to a 2013 EPW article, the “unconscionable reality” of those who grapple with critical hunger, their understanding of food formed a particular interface with their understanding of community.“Natural and intimate narratives of food and hunger, reflecting the lives of a majority of children, are generally absent from the discourse of education. What can be found, instead, are clinical and insensitive descriptions of what constitutes a healthy diet, often illustrated with visuals of food far beyond the reach of most children.”
 
The article further debunks the popular perception that lack of food security is an indicator of poverty. In understanding the relationship between poverty and hunger in India, the dependence of the rural and urban poor on private entities, for essential and relatively more expensive services like transport and education, has led them to deal with a “food-budget squeeze.” This is a product of the government’s shrinking social expenditure.
 
“The findings of our study suggest that rather than being a matter of choice, the poor have been increasingly forced to spend more on non-food essential items such as education, healthcare, transportation, fuel and lighting. The share of monthly expenditure devoted to these items has increased at such a pace that it has absorbed all the increase in real income over the past three decades. This has led to a “food budget squeeze”, which has meant relatively stagnant real food expenditure over the last two decades. Several factors have led to or compounded the effects of the food budget squeeze.”
 
Thus, even though the rate of global food production has been consistently greater than the rate of population growth, the persistent and pervasive food security crisis prevails.
 
“In most developing countries one of the biggest issues, with respect to public provisioning towards social protection, to address hunger and food insecurity is organically connected with that of adequate “fiscal” or “expenditure” space. Contrary to the view that countries with low GDP cannot create such a space, we would argue that even at low levels of income it is possible to mobilise adequate resources for the provisioning of social protection. Neither conceptually nor historically, there is no reason to believe that a country needs to wait to reach relatively high levels of per capita income before it can make adequate progress in this regard, even though, higher income of course helps in doing so.”
 
According to a recent EPW editorial, the panacea of the hunger problem in India lies in the implementation of well-designed public policies of income redistribution that are grounded in social justice and social security objectives, rather than those of neo-liberal objectives of economic efficiency. The Brazilian model of curbing malnutrition illustrates the effectiveness of strengthening measures to support smallholder agriculture to curb hunger. Low levels of per capita income cannot serve as a rationale for the lack of creation of adequate fiscal spaces for the social protection of basic human needs.

 
Aditi Rukhaiyar
December 6, 2018
 
 

source https://indiaoutbound.org/reformulation-of-the-hunger-problem-in-india/

South Asia: Snapshot of Solid Waste Management

A recent World Bank report titled What a Waste 2.0: A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management to 2050 provides regional snapshots of the world, in the form of data related to solid waste generation and management.
 
In South Asia, 334 million tonnes of waste was generated daily in 2016, at the rate of 0.52 kilogram per capita, including both rural and urban waste. The total waste generation in the region is expected to double by 2050.
 

 
Most of the waste generated in the South Asia region is organic. Even though, a large proportion of waste is not classified, it is assumed to be inert. The waste cleaned from drains is often mixed into the solid waste disposed of by municipalities. Although the construction and demolition waste is often included in the data, it will gradually be managed separately as a result of new rules in India established in 2016 (Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change 2016).
 

 
Waste-collection services in cities are typically door-to-door. In cities like Kota in India, the residents dispose waste at a primary collection point, from where the aggregated waste is then transported to the disposal site. In such a scenario, the designated primary collection sites are open plots of land that eventually become unofficial sites for dumping. In Navi Mumbai, a waste collector usually notifies the residents to bring the waste to the collection vehicle (India, Ministry of Urban Development 2016).
 
Informal waste collection and recycling is extremely common in South Asia. Delhi has reported 90,000 active waste pickers. They are the most exposed to the hazards of the waste accumulated as they resort to extraction of valuable materials using unsafe methods and often, without any safety gear.
 
On an average, waste transportation takes places across almost 15 kms between city centres and the final disposal sites. The transportation used in primary collection of waste include three- wheeled push carts, tractors and bicycle rickshaws.
 
Out of 53 cities, 38 reported aggregating waste at transfer stations or secondary collection points before transporting it to the final sites. Transfer stations may be designated sites with minimal infrastructure or constructed with technologies for automated sorting. Many aggregation centers are simply temporary storage sites and mostly facilitate manual handling of waste.
 

 
Open dumping is the most common method of waste disposal and treatment in South Asia. However, most of the landfills that currently exist, lack liners, leachate collection and treatment as well as landfill gas collection.The remediation of dumpsites and construction of formal landfills are actively taking place but, the well-functioning facilities are usually privately owned.
 
Four out of the eight countries in South Asia recycle 1-13% of the waste, and seven out of the eight countries have begun composting programs to manage organic waste. The potential of waste-to-energy incineration has garnered interest, but results have not yet been proven substantially.
 
In India, improvement in waste disposal initiatives started in 2014, with the national Swachh Bharat Mission. Indian cities can access the required funds to improve their waste management programs. Many cities are establishing central authorities with the aim to increase the capacity and operations of the waste management sector. The focus lies on the development of locally tailored and cohesive waste disposal strategies that can navigate specific constraints like land, capacity, availability of local operators, financing, alignment of waste technology and composition etc. The consideration of all these factors demands the development and application of more than one solution. Similar interest in other South Asian countries is also growing.
 
The issue of waste management has increasingly been recognised as a social, health and environment issue, but more importantly, also an economic one, as the judicious waste recovery and land use and can ensure massive financial savings.
 
India Outbound
December 5, 2018

source https://indiaoutbound.org/south-asia-snapshot-of-solid-waste-management/

Solid Waste Management: Need of the Hour

A recent World Bank report titled What a Waste 2.0: A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management to 2050 has stated that in the absence of urgent action, the current volume of global waste will rise by 70% by 2050, as a result of rapid urbanisation, population growth and unsustainable consumption patterns.
 
The high-income countries produce one-third of the world’s solid waste, despite comprising only 16% of the global population. A quarter of the waste generated belongs to East Asia and the Pacific regions.
 
More than one-third of the global waste ends up in landfills but over 90% is dumped openly in lower-income countries that lack laws related to the adequate disposal and treatment facilities. Plastics comprise 12% of all the waste and contaminate the waterways and ecosystems for thousands of years.
 
According to the report, solid waste management plays a critical role in ensuring that cities and communities become sustainable, healthy and inclusive spaces for living. Based on the volume of the waste generated, the composition and how it is managed, it was estimated that in 2016, 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent i.e. 5% of global emissions, was generated from the treatment and disposal of waste.
 
“Mismanagement of waste is harming human health and local environments while adding to the climate challenge,” said Laura Tuck, Vice President for Sustainable Development, World Bank. “Unfortunately, it is often the poorest in society who are adversely impacted by inadequate waste management. It doesn’t have to be this way. Our resources need to be used and then reused continuously so that they don’t end up in landfills.”
 
The report further stresses upon the need to build good waste management systems, based on circular economy principles, so that the consumer products are designed and optimized in a manner suitable for reuse and recycling. National and local governments must embrace the circular economy in order to ensure that waste is sustainably managed, thereby promoting efficient economic growth with minimal adverse environment impacts.
 
“It makes economic sense to properly manage waste,” said SilpaKaza, World Bank Urban Development Specialist and lead author of the report. “Uncollected waste and poorly disposed waste have significant health and environmental impacts. The cost of addressing these impacts is many times higher than the cost of developing and operating simple, adequate waste management systems. Solutions exist and we can help countries get there.”
 
 
India Outbound
December 4, 2018
 
 

source https://indiaoutbound.org/solid-waste-management-need-of-the-hour/