Tag: telangana today

Why Trump became unbearable.

On By rchennIn Newspaper, telangana todayLeave a comment

From dividing people to convincing them that they are cheating, Trump is now undermining the electoral system itself

Nicholas Goldberg wrote an interesting observation in the Los Angeles Times on Nov 4. “But this much is clear: On one level, Donald Trump has already won. He’s won because he has sown exactly the kind of discord he thrives on. He’s won because he’s divided us still further in ways that will stay with us long after he has left office. He’s turned adversaries into enemies, undermined our democratic institutions and convinced us we’re cheating one another. At the moment, he is continuing to undermine the electoral system itself with unsubstantiated charges of voter fraud.”

Though it’s still uncertain who will occupy the White House on January 20, 2021, assuming Joe Biden wins, the path ahead of him is daunting: an electorate divided; a likely Republican Senate disinclined to compromise; and a Trump-enhanced Supreme Court poised to frustrate him at every turn. Biden has, wisely and appropriately, promised to govern as President for all Americans — that is, the opposite of Trump’s divisive approach. But even winning the popular vote does not erase the fact that Biden would inherit a country whose citizens are as angry and polarised as at any moment in the recent past.

THREE DISASTERS

At least three important developments played a key role in the elections and it is necessary to know them to understand the voters’ perspective. This may also provide us some first signs of what type of a shift one may expect from the new US government.

Poor Economic Policy

As we all know, the economic policy of the Trump administration is characterised by individual and corporate tax cuts, attempts to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’), trade protectionism, immigration restriction, deregulation focused on the energy and financial sectors, and responses to the Covid-19 pandemic.

A key part of Trump’s economic strategy was to boost growth via tax cuts and additional spending, both of which significantly increased federal budget deficits. The positive economic situation he inherited from President Obama continued, with a labour market approaching full employment and measures of household income and wealth continuing to improve significantly.

Trump also implemented trade protectionism via tariffs, primarily on imports from China, as part of his ‘America First’ strategy. However, two important implications of these policies were that because of cuts in Obamacare, the number of Americans without health insurance increased under Trump, while his tax cuts worsened income inequality. The administration’s most direct and craven contribution to growing inequality, of course, is the 2017 tax cut. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, $205 billion of the roughly $325 billion in revenue foregone by changes to the tax code went into the pockets of the richest 20%. Under $40 billion went to the poorest 60% of American taxpayers—about the same share that went to foreign investors.

Since the beginning of this year, pandemic concerns and mitigation measures resulted in over 40 million people filing for unemployment insurance until the end of March 2020. This has resulted in rapidly widening inequality in wages, incomes, and wealth where the poor and vulnerable were hit hard. For example, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the number of uninsured persons under age 65 rose from 28.2 million in 2016 to 32.8 million in 2019, an increase of 4.6 million or 16%.

Trump’s failures during the pandemic run the gamut from the rhetorical to the organisational. Every time the President speaks, he seems to add to the fear and chaos surrounding the situation: telling Americans it was not serious by asserting his “hunches” about data, assuring people that everyone would be tested even when there were very few tests available, telling people we are very close to a vaccine when it is anywhere from 12 to 18 months away, etc.

Bombastic and Racist

Trump was bombastic and racist from the outset, openly courting White xenophobic voters by falsely blaming immigrants and foreign nations for many of America’s woes. It seemed hardly a recipe for political success in a nation proudly built by immigrants and their descendants and led at the time by a Black president who, like Trump himself, was the son of an immigrant.

The peak situation was that there were more than a thousand protests—most of them peaceful, though some devolved into violence—which swept across America caused by outrage over the death of George Floyd, recorded as a Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee to his neck for nearly nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down. Floyd was one of approximately 1,100 people killed annually, most of them African-American, by police use of force in the US in recent years.

Withdrawal Syndrome

The US, on November 5, became the first country across the globe to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. The Paris Agreement was drafted in 2015, with nearly 200 nations signing it to ensure and encourage a global response to the threats posed due to climate change. The US government, under the leadership of Trump, officially ended its association with the Agreement, over three years after the decision was first declared.

According to a report by BBC, the US represents around 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions and remains the world’s biggest and most powerful economy. While on one side, Trump withdrew from the Agreement, his political rival Biden took to social media and made a contrasting announcement. Biden announced that the US government, under his leadership would be rejoining the Agreement “in exactly 77 days”. This is a good sign not only to strive towards improving the global climate but also a real hope that global cooperation towards a more peaceful, fair and egalitarian world can be expected from this global leader in future.

Original post: https://telanganatoday.com/why-trump-became-unbearable

Crossover for corporates

On By rchennIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

The three farm Bills green signal corporate agriculture and parting of ways with the nationally-accepted ‘Small Farmer Economy’

Amid strong protests by opposition parties, Parliament passed three agriculture sector Bills recently without meaningful discussion and voting. The opposition parties have called them “anti-farmers”. The genuine issues and fears flagged by them include gradual end of Minimum Support Price (MSP), irrelevance of state-controlled Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) ‘mandis’, risk of losing out land rights under contract farming, reduction in price of farm produce due to market domination by big agri-businesses and exploitation of farmers by big contractors through contract farming practices.

The three Bills have to be seen holistically, as they are interdependent. Their basic objective clearly is to create enabling conditions to establish corporate agriculture in the long run, including foreign direct investment (FDI) in the retail sector. In other words, for the first time after Independence, India is preparing to part ways with its nationally accepted ‘Small Farmer Economy’ concept.

The Three Bills

The key provisions of these Bills are intended to help small and marginal farmers (86% of total farmers), who don’t have means to either bargain for their produce to get a better price or invest in technology, to improve productivity. The Bill on agri market — The Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020 — seeks to allow farmers to sell their produce outside APMC ‘mandis’ to whoever they want. Most farmer organisations agree that there is excessive political interference and want reform as far as the functioning of mandis is concerned.

The Bill on contract farming — Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020 — allows them to enter into a contract with agri-business firms or large retailers on pre-agreed prices of their produce. This is supposed to help small and marginal farmers as the legislation will transfer the risk of market unpredictability from the farmer to the sponsor.

The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020, seeks to remove commodities like cereals, pulses, oilseeds, edible oils, onion and potatoes from the list of essential commodities. This means there would be no imposition of stockholding limits on such items except under extraordinary circumstances such as war and natural calamities. This provision is expected to attract private sector/foreign direct investment into the agriculture sector.

Adverse Implications

Agriculture, together with horticulture, animal husbandry, fisheries and agro-forestry, is the main source of income for our population and is the most obvious engine for social equity and economic growth. However, due to small holdings, fragmentation, low investment capacities, lack of access to technologies, credit and marketing institutions, small farming economy is in a serious crisis.

Moreover, agri-food systems are undergoing rapid transformation. Increasing concentration in processing, trading, marketing and retailing is being observed in the production-distribution chains. So, contract farming is seen by proponents as a way to raise small-farm income by delivering technology and market information to small farmers, incorporating them into remunerative new markets. Does this work? In reality, this strategy facilitates agri-business firms to pass production risk to farmers, taking advantage of an unequal bargaining relationship. There is also a concern that contract farming will worsen rural income inequality by favouring larger farmers.

Though APMCs account for less than a fourth of total agricultural trade in the country, they do play an important role of price discovery essential for agricultural trade and production choices. The vilification of APMCs and the middlemen who facilitate trade in these mandis reflects a poor understanding of the functioning of agricultural markets. In the absence of any collective governance system of farmers, the middlemen are a part of the larger ecosystem of agricultural trade, with deep links between farmers and traders.

The dominant concern regarding MSP has been expressed by farmers of Punjab and Haryana. They are genuinely concerned about the continuance of the MSP-based public procurement given the large-scale procurement operations in these States. These fears gain strength with the experience of States such as Bihar, which abolished APMCs in 2006. After the abolition of mandis, farmers in Bihar on average received lower prices compared with the MSP for most crops. For example, as against the MSP of Rs 1,850 a quintal for maize, most farmers in Bihar reported selling their produce at less than Rs 1,000 a quintal. Despite the shortcomings and regional variations, farmers still see the APMC mandis as essential to ensuring the survival of the MSP regime.

World’s Experiences

As experiences from other parts of the world show, multinational companies are not famous for improving the situation of farmers by paying better prices. They need reliable supplies and, therefore, favour contract farming and large-scale suppliers because they are more reliable, which gags the small farmers and pushes prices down. They will definitely induce more efficient supply chains through improved infrastructure (roads, cold storages) but who will profit from these efficiencies is the question.

They will certainly introduce new technology, more variety in choice, but there is no guarantee that they will source this only from India as the earlier 30% mandatory local sourcing in FDI has been scrapped by this government. They are usually able to achieve price reductions through economies of scale, but certainly at the cost of a huge number of jobs loss in informal traditional sectors. The quality of food produced and the environmental implications of this production are also under severe criticism worldwide.

Shadows of Crony Capitalism

Economic success becomes premised on people’s capacity to harness government power to rig the game in their favour. The market economy’s outward form is preserved, but its basic protocols and institutions are slowly subverted by businesses seeking to secure preferential treatment from regulators, legislators, and governments. This can take the form of bailouts, subsidies, monopolies, access to “no-bid” contracts, price controls, preferential tax treatment, tariff protection, and special access to government-provided credit at below-market interest rates, to name just a few.

Ever since the decision towards 100% FDI in retail market, along with scrapping of earlier condition to procure 30% local sourcing, was approved by the present government in January 2018, the path towards these Bills was clear. Along with favourable conditions for the entry of FDIs, these Billsaim to do away with government interference in agricultural trade by creating trading areas free of middlemen and government taxes outside the structure of APMCs along with removing restrictions of private stockholding of agricultural produce. Given this background, farmers see these Bills as part of the larger agenda of corporatisation of agriculture and withdrawal of government support.

Although the government has clarified that these Bills do not imply withdrawal of procurement by the State at MSP, there is a genuine fear among farmers, their organisations and State governments about the true intentions of the Central government. The mistrust is not unfounded given the track record of this government on many issues, including demonetisation, introduction of Goods and Services Tax (GST), CAA, privatisation efforts of railways, airports, insurance, defence, power and so on. The entry, in a big way, of two of the biggest corporate groups (Adani and Reliance) in food and agricultural retail and their timing have added to their fears.

Collective Action  

The last decades of reforms and privatisation in India have convincingly proved that the market has absolutely little to offer to a large number of producers, savers, consumers and borrowers. These are millions of small and marginal farmers, agricultural labourer, artisans and people working in petty business in informal sectors. In today’s India, where economic reforms and privatisation have shown little or no impact in combating rural poverty, special promotion programmes, collective action and cooperatives undoubtedly have more to offer to economic growth and social development than most other forms of enterprise.

Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has launched a comprehensive agriculture policy to support and revive the economic viability of small farmers. Apart from recent introduction of new cropping pattern under which farmers need to cultivate crops in demand as recommended by the government to organise their remunerative marketing through own corporation, Telangana is providing free electricity, direct transfer of subsidies through investment support, free insurance, substantially increasing irrigation, crop procurement and other input facilities as well as extension services and reforms in revenue and administration to farmers in the State. This promotion, which also saw about 40% of budgetary allocations to agriculture and allied activities, ended six decades of agriculture crisis in Telangana and for the first time, small and marginal farmers have started producing large quantities of agricultural output for profitable marketing.

The efforts of the Telangana government to organise farmers and their organisations through their own Rythu Sanghalu to overcome economies of scale address precisely this gap in designing an ideal value chain and disseminating knowledge to them. This enables small farmers collectively to compete in the market through increasing their bargaining power. An ideal value chain looks forward to bring all the stakeholders engaged in production, processing system, financial and marketing agencies.

An efficient linkage of various stakeholders improves production, price realisation and profitability. This inevitably needs collective action by the producers, or in other words, they have to organise their agricultural production efficiently through their corporations, producer organisations or cooperative enterprises. This can be any producer organisation, Producers Company (Companies Act of 1956), Producers Cooperatives, registered Farmers Federations (Rythu Sanghalu), Mutually Aided Cooperative Society (1995 Act) etc.

Cooperative Economies

Today, there is an alternative, secure, stable and sustainable model of business owned and controlled by 800 million people worldwide. Agricultural cooperatives with over 400 million member farmers are responsible for over 50% of agricultural production and marketing in the world. It is a model of business that is not at the mercy of stock markets or corporates because it relies instead on member funds for its value; and is not subject to executive manipulation and greed because it is controlled by local people for local people.

It is a business where the profits are not just distributed to its shareholders, but are returned to those who trade with the business, thus keeping the wealth generated by local businesses in the local community for the good of the local environment and families. This is the cooperative sector of the global economy, which employs 100 million people worldwide. It is no coincidence that the world’s most successful and stable economies generally also happen to have the world’s most cooperative economies. There are a number of successful examples from the US and European community. Specific examples from India and Telangana also endorse this trend.  (See Shining Examples)

So, let us not forget that as an alternative to private, corporate enterprises favoured by neoliberal economic policies, there are indeed viable people-centred economic models to combine efficiency and equity, which are member-driven rather than investor-driven. There can undoubtedly be regionally organised corporations, companies and cooperatives in agriculture, horticulture, fisheries in producer and consumer spheres, artisans as small and medium business enterprises (including textile and powerloom enterprises) etc, thus establishing socio-economic stability to their members as well as the community.

Shining examples of Cooperative Economies

Amul

Dairy cooperative Amul is jointly owned by about 28 lakh milk producers in Gujarat. It is the largest food brand in India and world’s largest pouched milk brand with an annual turnover of $1,700 million.

Telangana’s Mulkanoor

Mulkanoor Cooperative Rural Bank and Marketing Society Ltd of Telangana is another role model. It has a turnover of over Rs 100 crore with total lending in a year exceeding Rs 20 crore and doesn’t have a single defaulter. Its operations range from dairies to a modern rice mill. But few know that Mulkanoor has one of the largest paddy seed growing and selling operations in the country. It consistently places the second biggest request for paddy foundation seeds to the State’s Prof Jayashankar State Agriculture University (after the State’s seed development corporation). Every year, it lifts 40 tonnes of foundation seeds of 13 paddy varieties, for multiplication into certified seeds for sale to farmers. It produces about ten million tonnes of paddy seeds that are sold across the country.

Karimnagar Dairy

Yet another cooperative success story is Karimnagar District Milk Producers Mutually Aided Cooperative Union Limited known as Karimnagar Dairy with 70,000 farmers as members. It has achieved a distinction in the Telangana region with procurement of two lakh litres per day and sales of 1.7 lakh litres per day. This has been possible through their excellent marketing network, introducing hybrid milch animals, promoting growth of fodder, constant veterinary services, etc.

Original post: https://telanganatoday.com/crossover-for-corporates

Profitable Plates

On By rchennIn Newspaper, telangana todayLeave a comment

Producing what buyers want with focus on nutrition and enabling policy prescriptions can make farming a permanently rewarding profession

Telangana has launched a comprehensive agriculture policy by introducing new cropping patterns, under which farmers will have to cultivate crops in demand as recommended by the government. The State already provides free electricity, investment support, free insurance, increasing irrigation, crop procurement and other input facilities as well as extension services to its farmers. For the first time, small and marginal farmers have started producing large quantities of agricultural output for profitable marketing.

As traditional monoculture of rice was leading to marketing problems and there is ample demand for other crops, a way forward towards sustaining farm income was designed. This policy of introducing new cropping pattern, among others, is aimed at making farming a permanently profitable profession and promote Telangana’s agricultural products at home as well as in other parts of India and the world market.

Though the initial focus is correctly on cropping pattern, thereby kicking off a win-win strategy, a comprehensive agriculture policy will have to address step by step a number of other related challenges in future, for example, the issue of reforming India’s domestic support policies, safeguarding sustainable agriculture and exploring the export potential for agriproducts.

Cropping Pattern

Agri-food systems are undergoing rapid transformation. Increasing concentration on processing, trading, marketing and retailing is being observed in all segments of production-distribution chains across regions. The traditional way in which food is produced, without farmers having a clear idea in advance of when, to whom and at what price they are going to sell their crops, is being replaced by practices, which resemble manufacturing processes, with far greater coordination between farmers, processors, retailers and others in the supply chain. Farmers have to increasingly produce to meet the requirements of buyers rather than relying on markets to absorb what they produce.

As incomes increase, food consumption is changing. Demand for fruits and vegetables (80% from outside), animal products and oilseed crops (40% from outside), red gram (70% from outside) is growing and farmers have to diversify production for profits. Cropping pattern in agriculture too has to transform from the point of view of nutrition security. This is again a win-win strategy as a change in cropping pattern has the potential to tap the demand gap for nutritious food, fully explore export possibilities, increase soil fertility, reduce investments in fertilizers and pesticides apart from containing crop damages by animals.

Therefore, this strategy of linking farmers to markets, the intervention model to achieve remunerative prices for agriculture products proposed by the Telangana government through its own corporation is highly necessary and will have to be strengthened to tame our highly imperfect conventional market.

On the production front, the choice of product to grow must take into account not just market demand but also farmer location, social structure, infrastructure, farm size, suitability of the land, land tenure situation, farmers’ assets, capacity to establish new enterprises, etc. Consideration of the risk that farmers may face in diversifying into new products is important as well as the technologies promoted by the government should be viable for the type of farmer. Research, technology transfer studies and extension guidelines will have to play a key role in this process.

Nutrition Security

Food security denotes the availability and the access of food to all people; whereas nutrition security demands the intake of a wide range of foods, which provide the essential nutrients. Despite historically high levels of food production in India, undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies persist. According to a recent National Nutrition Survey, Telangana finds itself saddled with a large number of cases of stunting, underweight and anaemia, and Vitamin A deficiency among children and adolescents. About 29% of the children below five years in Telangana have stunted growth while the national average is 34%. Close to 33.4% of children in India below the age of five are underweight, while in Telangana it is 30%.

Thus, improving the health of the people requires improving their nutrition through more nutritious food. This is where agriculture plays an important role not only as a means of producing diverse, nutritious, safer food that is affordable but is also the pathway to improved household access to nutritious food, improved income and women’s empowerment.

Strengthening the agriculture-nutrition pathway when considering food system development in Telangana is key to addressing these challenges. The main issues now in discussion are ensuring agriculture is represented in our nutrition policy so that cultivation technologies for fruits and vegetables, animal products and oil crops are developed; creating market-based solutions for producers by creating the incentives that are aligned with choices of nutrition-dense products such as vegetables, fruits and animal products near urban centres; creating incentives for consumers through price and non-price mechanisms; and addressing safety and other issues along the value chains for healthy and fresh foods.

Support System

There is ample evidence today that ineffective and inefficient implementation of Centre’s spending in the form of input subsidies, general services or support to consumers through the food distribution system has indeed led to a negative amount of total support to the farmer.

Minimum Support Price or MSP, apart from export restrictions and prohibitions in certain times, is an important factor contributing towards depressing the domestic prices of agriculture. While the system covers 24 crops, it only involves significant purchases at guaranteed prices for rice, wheat and cotton. Apart from Telangana, where a 100% purchase by MSP is guaranteed, the overall India’s picture of just 6% of farmers participating reflects its inefficient implementation.

Input Subsidies constitute the largest category of government disbursements, with roughly Rs 2 lakh crore. The largest input subsidies are provided for fertilizers, electricity and irrigation, and, to a lesser extent for seeds, machinery, credit and crop insurance. While these transfers have played a critical role in increasing production, their indiscriminate use without considering natural resource management is contributing to unsustainable agriculture and fiscal deficit. The most striking example of it is agriculture in Punjab. While intensive farming played havoc with soil fertility, necessitating application of more chemical fertilizers year after year — resulting in a decrease of real output, excessive use and abuse of chemical pesticides — has contaminated the food chain.

Consumer Subsidies are implemented through PDS in India. While PDS provides a means to strengthen consumers’ purchasing power, the main weakness of the system relates to the high level of ‘leakage’ of foodgrains – due to poor targeting, wasteful management of stocks or, in certain cases, outright corruption. Purchases made to support the MSP have also tended to overshoot requirements, leading to the accumulation of stocks far in excess of the norms.

From a policy perspective, correcting the critical inefficiencies that contribute to depressing producer prices remains a priority. In this respect, the objectives of achieving simultaneously affordable food for poor consumers and remunerative prices for producers are indeed a challenge for the government. A possible way forward consists in moving from output and input subsidies towards less trade-and-production-distorting forms of support, including direct payments to producers as has been initiated for the first time by the Telangana government in the form of Rythu Bandhu.

As far as consumer support is concerned, a possible option would consist of moving from an in-kind food distribution to cash transfers to enhance the purchasing power of the target group. This could help reduce the costs of stockpiling and food distribution while addressing leakage and waste. For example, Telangana has initiated a move wherein consumer preferences of rice varieties of the local people within PDS are taken into account by encouraging the cultivation of such varieties for local consumption. The data network to identify the needy consumers for eventual cash transfers should be developed comprehensively as has been done through ‘Sakala Janula’ survey in Telangana.

Agriculture Exports

In contrast to policies of the US and Europe where farmers were offered heavy subsidies to export their produce in the past, policymakers in India used restrictive export policies for most of the agriproducts to keep domestic prices low. To compensate farmers, the government introduced MSP and input subsidies, especially for rice and wheat leading to their excessive cultivation.

One consequence of such an approach is that we are far from being secure in the field of edible oils among a number of other products such as pulses, vegetables and fruits. India produces less oilseeds and imports about 65% of its annual requirement of 23 million tonnes at a cost of Rs 75,000 crore and by 2030, it will be importing 70% of edible oils with about Rs 1 lakh crore. To make amends, certain policy reforms are necessary, including:

• Phasing out the built-in consumer bias (that is anti-farmer) in agri-policies

• Creating business space for private players (including Farmer Producer Organisations) to have integrated markets

• Using income policy approach (through direct cash/benefit transfer) to protect both poor        consumers and small farmers

• Creating a predictable and stable agri-trade policy and streamlining high Customs duties on India’s export-competing products like rice

Source: https://telanganatoday.com/profitable-plates

Follow South Korean Covid plan

On By rchennIn Newspaper, telangana todayLeave a comment

The Asian nation’s virus strategy of ‘trace, test and treat’ is helping Germany get ahead of the situation

In the race against the coronavirus, Germany is betting on widespread testing and quarantining to break the infection chain, a strategy borrowed from South Korea whose success in slowing the outbreak has become the envy of the world. There are a few important indicators, which Germany is leveraging.

Germany has a population of 83 million (8.3 crore) living in 16 States. The country’s proposed plans echo the “trace, test and treat” strategy that appears to have helped South Korea bring its outbreak under control. It has included mass screening for potential cases and heavy use of technology to monitor patients.

Leveraging Smartphones

Although Germany and South Korea are two very different countries, the Asian nation’s virus strategy “can be an example”, according to Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for disease control. Germany is already carrying out more coronavirus tests than any other European country at a rate of 300,000 to 500,000 a week, according to officials.

The government aims to ramp that up to at least 2,00,000 tests a day. The goal would be to test all those who suspect they have caught the virus, as well as the entire circle of people who have come into contact with a confirmed case. The current testing criteria are focused on those who are sick with Covid-19 symptoms and have had contact with a confirmed case.

A crucial weapon in the battle would be the use of smartphone location data to trace a patient’s recent movements, to more accurately track down and isolate potentially infected people. While government officials and epidemiologists have come out in favour of cell-phone tracking, it remains a controversial idea in privacy-minded Germany, a nation haunted by the surveillance of the Nazi era and the communist-era Stasi secret police.

The mortality rate of Germany due to Covid- 19 is 1.4% — compared with around 10% in hardest-hit Italy, 9% in France, 8% in Spain and 4% in Switzerland. Due to intensive testing, the average age of a German infected with coronavirus is 46, whereas in Italy it is 63. About 80% of all people infected in Germany are younger than 60. In Spain, the number of affected over 60s is around 50%, 12% in Italy and 7% in the Netherlands.

According to medical experts, older people are far more likely to die from the coronavirus, and most deaths occur in those with pre-existing health conditions, which are more common in older people. For example, highly older populations in the most badly affected areas, such as the Lombardy and Bergamo regions in Italy, as well as in regions of France, had very high fatality rates.

Strong Public Healthcare

The solid and publicly-funded German healthcare system is also a reason for Germany’s relatively low death rate. With 28,000 intensive care beds equipped with ventilators, Germany is in a better position than many countries to deal with an influx of patients in respiratory distress.
Germany spends $5,848 per person each year on healthcare, which is higher than most other nations. It has compulsory health insurance for all and the cost of testing is free. It also has the second-most critical care beds per capita in Europe, 621 beds per 1,00,000 people. Italy has 275, and Spain 293.

However, in recent months, some intensive care beds have had to be put out of action because of a lack of staff. Germany currently has some 17,000 unfilled vacancies in nursing care. As a result, many hospitals have resorted to drafting in retired health professionals or student medics to help with the coronavirus onslaught, including at Berlin’s renowned Charite University Hospital of Humboldt University.

Changing Strategy

In view of this situation and increasing number of infections by the day, German Health Minister Jens Spahn has warned that the country could face “a storm” of new cases in the weeks ahead. Germany’s health specialists, however, warn that the dramatic scenes at Italian hospitals at breaking point could happen in Germany as well. Therefore, the government strategy is now to replace the previous method, based on the motto “we test to confirm the situation,” by the approach “we test to get ahead of the situation”.

Germany is following South Korea, which has used mass tests and the isolation of infected people to slow down the spread of the virus without bringing public life to a standstill, as a role model. Unlike China, South Korea did not impose any general curfews.

Experts say that the testing capacity in Germany should be increased “very quickly”, with the aim to carry out 1,00,000 a day from April 13, and 2,00,000 by the end of April. Berlin-based senior virologist Christian Drosten estimated last Thursday that around 5,00,000 tests are currently being carried out per week.

Beyond the plans for mass testing and the preparedness of the healthcare system, many also see Chancellor Angela Merkel’s leadership as one reason the fatality rate has been kept low. Merkel has communicated clearly, calmly and regularly throughout the crisis, as she imposed ever-stricter social distancing measures on the country.

The restrictions, which have been crucial to slowing the spread of the pandemic, met with little political opposition and are broadly followed by all sections of the people. This is a strategy many countries could adopt.

Source: https://telanganatoday.com/follow-south-korean-covid-plan

Changing dynamics of monsoon

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More lead time for forecasts is crucial for planning and strengthening capacity to respond effectively to disasters

With global warming, monsoon is changing, breaking well-established ‘rules’, and becoming more and more erratic and unpredictable. So the criteria of monsoon onset need to be refined accordingly. Climatological norms, which are a 30-year average of a weather variable, must be reconsidered in the context of climate change.

The Indian summer monsoon is likely to withdraw from the central part of India between October 14 and 24. This unique forecast, made for 70 days in advance, is the only available forecast for India from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, which has proved successful for three years in a row.

Long-term Forecast
The monsoon withdrawal date is of crucial importance for the Indian people. In a warming world, severe storms and floods during monsoon retreat are becoming frequent. Such a long-term forecast could help the government do strategic planning, consolidate resources and strengthen capacity to respond effectively to disasters.

The end of the season is shifted due to very high temperature on the periphery of monsoon in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It takes longer time when the whole continent cools down to the temperature of monsoon withdrawal. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) said, “we hope this alert in August will be taken into account at carrying out preventive measures in the system of dams in order to prevent its overfilling and floods in October.”

Crucial For Planning
Close to half of the global population depends on the monsoon rainfall. Floods in different States raise questions about the understanding of monsoon, preparedness to deal with rivers in spate to reduce the gap between climate research and its application in policy, business and societal decisions, particularly regarding agriculture, hydrology and water resources, and migration issues.

Prior knowledge of the date of monsoon onset is of vital importance in India. More lead time for monsoon forecasts is crucial for planning agriculture, water and energy resources management.

The southwest monsoon has left a trail of destruction this year. Nearly 500 people have reportedly lost their lives in Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Assam and Bihar. In Kerala, which experienced its worst deluge in a century last year, over 80 people have lost their lives in five days since August 8. In neighbouring Karnataka, the toll stands at over 48. Northern Karnataka, which was facing drought-like conditions in May, is now under water and the State is witnessing its worst floods in 45 years. In Maharashtra, more than 40 people have lost their lives in Sangli and Kolhapur districts, while the Marathwada and Vidharbha regions are reeling under a drought.

Flood Fury
The floods this year have drawn attention to the changing dynamics of the southwest monsoon. Take the case of Kerala. According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the State recorded over 25% deficit in rainfall between June 1 and August 7. But Kerala has nearly made up the deficit in the past five days. Similarly, on August 8, Karnataka received nearly five times the rainfall the State receives in a day. Kodagu, the State’s worst flood-hit district, received 460% cent above normal rainfall between August 5 and 11.

In fact, monsoon rains in the past five years have followed a pattern: A few days of intense rainfall sandwiched between dry spells. But this behaviour of monsoon has changed all over the Indian subcontinent.

The focus this year, as in the past, has been on providing relief to the flood-affected. But questions must also be asked about the ways States prepare for, and deal with, floods. The vagaries of weather, for example, demand cooperation between States that share a river basin. This year, Maharashtra and Karnataka bickered over opening the gates of the Almatti dam on the river Krishna. By the time the two States agreed over the amount of water to be discharged from the dam’s reservoirs, the damage was already done.

The floods also drive home the urgency of focusing on nature’s mechanisms of resilience against extreme weather events. Policymakers and planners have shown little inclination to place wetlands, natural sponges that soak up the rainwater, at the centre of flood control projects.

Misplaced Priorities
Flood governance in the country has placed inordinate emphasis on embankments. But the floods in Bihar and Assam showed — for the umpteenth time — that these structures are no security against swollen rivers. Of course, what is true for the Western Ghats States may not hold for Assam and Bihar. But the message from the floods this year is clear: there is a need to revisit the understanding of the monsoon, particularly under changing climatic conditions, and find ways to deal with its fury.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, July’s global average temperature matched (and maybe broken) the record for the warmest-ever logged month – July 2016. Global heat in July was replaced by torrential rains in August in Asia and North part of Europe. Heavy rainfall has also triggered flooding in central and northern parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal leaving tens of thousands displaced and millions affected.

The summer monsoon rainfall is the most important source of water in India. About 80% of the river flow occurs during the four to five months of this season. India collects and stores rainwater in the system of dams in the monsoon season to sustain itself in the dry season. In particular, hydroelectric power plants are driven by the water collected during the monsoon.

Taking into account very intensive rainfall in August, dams are supposed to be full in September. It is very important to alert the management of the dams that monsoon is unlikely to stop at the beginning of October in the central part of India.

Looking back to 2018, the severe cyclonic storm Titli appeared unexpectedly around October 11, and it was still rainy until October 18. In 2017, monsoon withdrew from the region around October 15. It is now well-established that the monsoon is changing with climate change. In view of this, a new approach must be evolved.

Source: https://telanganatoday.com/changing-dynamics-of-monsoon

Rise, Fall and Rise of the Right

On By rchennIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Eight decades after World War II and 30 years after the fall of Berlin Wall, the world is seeing a retreat of liberalism and an upsurge in right-wing nationalism

Ralph, 8 years old, will never forget that cold December day in 1938 when he and his sister, 17 years, boarded a train in Hamburg, Germany, bound for England with few belongings, but many questions. “I remember it like yesterday,” he says. “The first thing I said to my sister was: ‘Where are our parents?” His sister tried to calm her little brother’s nerves. Their parents would join the siblings in England in three months, she replied. Then they would all sail to America together to start a new life. “I always thought about them, that they’ll come,” said Ralph. “But they never did. They couldn’t.”

Ralph hadn’t the slightest clue what was in store for them after arrival — or the tragic fate of their parents. “I got a card from the International Red Cross in 1942 saying that “your parents were victims of the Holocaust, we’re very sorry, and we have to tell you that they’re murdered,” he recounted.

Ralph was part of 10,000 mostly Jewish children transported from Nazi Germany to England between December 1938 and September 1939, a rescue effort known as the ‘Kindertransport’, or ‘children’s transport.’

Nazi Regime
Eight decades have passed since the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe in September 1939. Nazism and the acts of the Nazi German state profoundly affected many countries, communities, and people before, during and after the war. The regime’s attempt to exterminate several groups viewed as subhuman by Nazi ideology was eventually stopped by the combined efforts of the wartime allies headed by Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States.

Of the world’s 15 million Jews in 1939, over a third was killed in the Holocaust (3 million in Poland alone). Of the estimated 50 million deaths in WWII, about 26 million Soviet citizens perished as a result of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, including around 10 million soldiers who died in battle against Hitler’s armies or died as prisoners in camps. Millions of civilians also died from starvation, atrocities and massacres. Undoubtedly, it was the patriotic Red Army’s advancement from the East and its other Allied armies (the US, Britain and France) from the West converging on Berlin that ended the war in Europe on May 8, 1945.

Devastated Germany
Over 8 million Germans, including almost 2 million civilians, died. Germany and its economy were devastated, with most major cities destroyed by the bombings of the Allied forces, sovereignty taken away by the Allies and the territory filled with millions of refugees from the former eastern provinces, which the Allies had decided were to be annexed by the Soviet Union and Poland, moving the eastern German border westwards to the Oder-Neisse line and effectively reducing Germany in size by roughly 25%.

The rest of Germany was divided among the Allies and occupied by British (the north-west), French (the south-west), American (the south) and Soviet (the east) troops. The expulsions of Germans from the lost areas in the east — the Sudetenland, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe went on for years. Roughly 15 million Germans were expelled. This was the dimension of an unbelievable human tragedy and even today millions of families reel under this trauma.

The aftermath of WWII was the beginning of a new era, defined by the decline of all European colonial empires and the simultaneous rise of two superpowers: the USSR and the USA.

Post World War II
After the world viewed the Nazi death camps, Europeans began to outwardly oppose ideas of racial superiority. Liberal anti-racism became a staple of many governments, with racist publications looked down upon. Since the collapse of Nazi Germany, European populations have been wary of racial political parties and have actively discouraged white ethnocentrism, fearing the return of a catastrophe similar to the purges carried out by Nazis. It can be argued that multiculturalism as one of the pillars of contemporary European society gained importance because of the same reaction.

However, the US and the USSR –allies during WWII — became competitors and engaged in the Cold War. The United Nations, an organisation for international cooperation, was created. Members of the UN agreed to outlaw wars of aggression to avoid a third world war. The devastated great powers of Western Europe formed the European Coal and Steel Community, which later evolved into the European Economic Community and ultimately into the current European Union with 27 countries as members.

This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, symbolising the collapse of Europe’s communist regimes and the end of the Cold War. For many, this moment represented the victory of freedom, the spread of liberal democracy and peaceful international relations in much of the Western and Eastern world. Consequently, a good number of former communist countries later joined the European Union. Liberal values seemed to overcome dictatorships and autocracies.

Divided Europe
However, since recent past, across the world, there has been a consistent shift to the political right, as voters abandon the centre-left and centrist parties, which once held power in many democracies, after years of austerity and economic downturn. The early years of the 21st century have not been good for global capitalism. An international credit crisis and a widespread recession have shaken public support for free-market processes within democratic setups.

With no alternative policies to such contradictions, right-wing nationalism has returned, forcefully and virulently, in an illiberal form to young democracies such as Hungary and Poland, and in a right-wing chauvinist and anti-immigrant guise to more politically established countries such as Britain, Germany and the US. Besides, issues of migration, Brexit, US-Russia trade war (which will harm Europe) have accelerated it. These anti-establishment networks are not only taking advantage of divisions across the European Union: elites Vs the public, Europhiles Vs Euroskeptics and far-right nationalism Vs liberalism, but also some ambiguous positions of the centre-right toward issues such as identity and immigration.

European societies are now more fragmented, and some traditional (especially Left-wing) parties are in decline. Identity politics has been exacerbating the contradictions of globalisation as well as Europeanisation. The overall political system has moved rightward. This has also meant the decay of anti-fascism as a main value in national institutions as well as at the European and global level. Here lies the greatest danger for democracies and democratic values all over the world.

In an unprecedented way, politics is driven even by hatred utterings poisoning the very basic democratic and human values. US President Trump recently called openly on several Democratic congresswomen of colour to “go back.” He was referring to four congresswomen — three who were born in the US and one who came as a child refugee. His remarks were widely condemned as racist.

Last month, Walter Luebcke, president of the Kassel regional council in central Germany, was shot in the head. Sixty-five-year-old Luebcke was a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrats and an outspoken supporter of government’s pro-migrant policies in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis. Merkel opened Germany’s doors to over a million migrants in 2015. But her policy, hailed by humanitarians all over the world, also attracted fierce criticism from the right, particularly following a number of terrorist attacks across the country in summer 2016.

In India
Recent elections in India and the European Union have resulted in gains for politicians with strident nationalist messages. In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi easily secured a second term, shrugging off a challenge to paint him as a threat to India’s secular pluralism. However, it is of serious concern that violent Hindu nationalism and anti-Muslim rhetoric are increasingly becoming socially acceptable.

Mahua Moitra, a Trinamool Congress MP, in a very thought-provoking speech in Parliament recently opined that India is displaying early signs of fascism. “We have to decide which side of history we want to be on… the side that upholds the Constitution or the side that becomes its pallbearers,” she said.

A few days ago, Aparna Sen and 48 other eminent citizens, including filmmaker Shyam Benegal, vocalist Shubha Mudgal, historian Ramchandra Guha and sociologist Ashis Nandy, wrote to Modi saying ‘Jai Shri Ram’ has become a ‘provocative war cry’ with many lynchings taking place in its name. The letter underscored the significance of dissent in a democracy. “There is no democracy without dissent. People should not be branded anti-national or urban naxal and incarcerated because of dissent against the government,” it said.

Ralph was “lucky” that he was saved. But his parents were not. The main question that haunts us is “Why”. If one critically and sensitively analyses the recent developments in the largest democracies such as in Europe, the US and India, many such questions, concerns and apprehensions arise. This, even after eight decades of the end of WWII, a war in which extremist, racist, radical authoritarian and ultra-nationalist ideologies were grown, spread out and deliberately tried to destroy the most basic humanistic rights and values of mankind.

Time is nigh to remember German Pastor Martin Niemoeller’s post-war confession of 1946, which is about the cowardice of German intellectuals and certain clergy (including, by his own admission, Niemoeller himself) following the Nazis’ rise to power and subsequent incremental purging of their chosen targets, group after group. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum quotes the following of the speech:

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

Original post: https://telanganatoday.com/rise-fall-and-rise-of-the-right

Go for holistic learning

On By rchennIn NewspaperLeave a comment

Get perspectives right and develop well-rounded citizens by facilitating linkages between science, social sciences and humanities

The concept of holistic academic education was an idea of Wilhelm von Humboldt, a Prussian philosopher, government functionary and diplomat of Germany. The Humboldtian model of higher education is a concept of academic education that emerged in the early 19th century, whose core idea was a holistic combination of research and studies.

Sometimes called simply the Humboldtian model, it integrates the arts and sciences with research to achieve both comprehensive general learning and cultural knowledge, and it is still followed today. Humboldt’s model was based on two ideas of the Enlightenment: the individual and the world citizen. Humboldt believed that the university should enable students to become autonomous individuals and world citizens by developing their own reasoning powers in an environment of academic freedom.

Academic Freedom
He envisaged an ideal education, which aimed not merely to provide professional skills through schooling along with a fixed path but rather to allow students build individual character by choosing their own way.

Humboldt believed that teaching should be guided by current research, and that research should be unbiased and independent from ideological, economic, political or religious influences. The Humboldtian model strives for unconditional academic freedom in the intellectual investigation of the world, both for teachers and students. The study should be guided by humanistic ideals and free thought, and knowledge should be formed on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism rather than authority, tradition or dogma.

In line with the basic concept of Science (Wissenschaft), Humboldt regarded philosophy as the link between the different academic disciplines, which include both humanities and natural sciences. Humboldt encouraged the University of Berlin to operate according to scientific, as opposed to market-driven, principles such as curiosity, freedom of research, and internal objectives. The University of Berlin, founded in 1810 under the influence of Wilhelm von Humboldt and renamed the Humboldt University of Berlin after World War II, is seen as the model institution of the 19th century.

Driven by Research
The above mentioned principles, in particular, the idea of the research-based university, rapidly made an impact both in Germany and abroad. The Humboldtian university concept profoundly influenced higher education throughout central, eastern, and northern Europe as well as in the US. This European brand of research-intensive universities became the role model for universities in the US such as Harvard (Cambridge, MA), Yale (New Haven, CT) and Cornell (Ithaca, NY).

In the 1970s, breakthrough discoveries in biotechnology and patent legislation favouring market-oriented research such as the Bayh–Dole Act in the US allowed for the creation of research partnerships between universities and industry with the objective of rapidly bringing innovations to market.

A similar development took place in all industrial countries, based on proposals of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. This innovation of the ‘market university’ as an economic engine, which first emerged in the US, diverges from Humboldt’s principles. Recent developments and changes like widening participation in and the marketisation of higher education related to the emergence of neoliberalism have challenged those old ideals.

However, outside the academic realm, the world has also changed markedly since Humboldt’s time. The ‘advanced’ nations have been moving away from the manufacturing-based economies that sustained them throughout the 20th century, towards so-called knowledge-based economies that rely heavily on scientific research and a trained workforce. As such, these nations no longer compete for industrial capacity or access to natural resources but rather for skilled workers, intellectual property and knowledge.

In this context, philosopher Julian Nida-Ruemelin criticised discrepancies between Humboldt’s ideals and the contemporary European education policy, which narrowly understands education as a preparation for the labour market, and argued that we need to decide between McKinsey and Humboldt.

Education is free in Germany and many European countries and these countries have been taking forward and reinventing novel teaching and research experiments based on Humboldt’s model where students would receive all-around education in natural sciences, social sciences and humanities, and where teaching and research are integrated.

Life Sciences Show Way
Life Sciences truly reflect the conceptual idea of Humboldt’s model. While biology remains the centerpiece of life sciences, technological advances in molecular biology and biotechnology have led to a burgeoning of specialisations and interdisciplinary fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology and economics.

It is about creating something new by thinking across boundaries. It is related to an interdiscipline or an interdisciplinary field, which is an organisational unit that crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions emerge.

For example, the faculty of Life Sciences aims to strengthen research and teaching in the Life Sciences at Humboldt University of Berlin and in the Berlin region, anchoring it as a pioneer in the regional, national and international research landscape.

The faculty is devoted to current and future-orientated scientific, technological and social topics across the entire spectrum of life forms: from molecular building blocks to microbial, vegetable, animal and human organisms, including how they interact with their experience realm and the environment.

It primarily follows a scientific approach and supplements this with an economic perspective, with additional connection to the humanities, social sciences and medicine. Agriculture, horticulture, biology, psychology are all integrated and students have excellent opportunities for integrated learning, research and an international orientation.

It is this ‘Life Sciences’, approach, which could open new perspectives for both the Telugu States, if a sincere effort is made to fundamentally reform and restructure higher education and research.

Source: https://telanganatoday.com/go-for-holistic-learning