Political and Social Issues

Clean up the air

City-dwelling Indians are at higher risk for respiratory illnesses, heart disease, and lung cancer — because the concentration of fine particulate matter in the air is way above the guidelines of the World Health Organisation.
The recently released WHO data related to Particulate Matter measuring 10 micrometres or less (PM10) for 33 Indian cities are staggeringly high.
These particles enter the bloodstream through the lungs, with grave consequences for health; urban outdoor air pollution is thought to cause 1.3 million deaths a year worldwide.
The cities with the worst air quality are Ludhiana, Kanpur, Delhi, Lucknow, Indore, and Agra, in that order.
Achieving good air quality requires intervention at the policy level in key areas — vehicular emissions, polluting small-scale manufacturing, and burning of biomass and coal.
Thus far the response to the problem has been directed towards improving the quality of automotive fuels, mandating higher emission standards for automobiles, using CNG for commercial vehicles in Delhi and LPG in some other places, organising surprise checks on polluting industries, and so on.
The answer lies in providing alternatives to fossil-fuel driven vehicles, taxing inefficient use of cars, and encouraging non-motorised transport such as cycling.
Unfortunately, India is motorising at a rate much faster than the United States or countries in Europe did in the 20th century.
The imperatives of economic growth do demand better and faster mobility but this has to be achieved in smart ways that do not subject entire populations to terrible health risks.

Bitter almonds from the capital

Seven-year-old Gita (name changed) jumps on a huge mound of almond nuts. At first sight, you would think that she was just playing a game like any little girl her age. However, a closer look tells you Gita's acrobatics are no child's play.
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Like dozens of other children, Gita is a worker in one of the thriving almond-shelling units in the nation's capital, Delhi. Her nimble feet serve as a machine to break open the almonds that have been imported from California.
Crammed into dust-filled rooms, illegal child labour is used to service a million-dollar industry.
These human factories — quite literally — do the job of an entire automated plant in the United States, manually removing and separating the hulls, shells, and kernels of the almonds to prepare them for the market.
Almonds are the leading U.S. agricultural export item to India
India now imports over $100 million worth of Californian almonds.
While the average price of almonds ranges from Rs.360-400 per kg, children working in these units are paid a paltry sum of Rs.2 for every kilo shelled.
While almond shelling is a round-the-year business, the supply and demand peaks between Diwali and Christmas (October to December). The working hours during this period extend between 12-15 hours per day.
In December 2009, at the peak of winter, about 3,000 workers of Karawal Nagar under the banner of the Badam Mazdoor Union went on a strike. Their demands included higher wages, regularisation of work, and implementation of labour laws in the almond industry. The struggle resulted in increase of wages from Rs.45 to Rs.60 per day, still far below the basic minimum wage for unskilled labour in Delhi, presently fixed at Rs.247 per day
Indeed, at present there is no regulation of the industry. Almond shelling falls within an ambiguously defined category of “household production,”
With globalisation and the re-organisation of production across several national boundaries, the informalisation of the labour force has become increasingly common in both developed and developing countries.
outsourcing of production to smaller firms located in far-off countries allows multinationals to take advantage of lower unit costs without necessarily engaging in the risks associated with direct ownership of facilities.
Most people enter the informal economy not by choice but as a last recourse at a livelihood that will keep hunger at bay. Most informal sector workers are landless migrants who have left their villages due to drought, floods and lack of work.

Harvard, Yale not likely to set up campuses in India: Sibal

The culmination of the one-day India-United States Higher Education Summit here did not generate any ‘big bang' announcements
Kapil Sibal ruled out top-tier universities coming to India, saying: “I do not think, personally, that we will have Harvard or Yale or Princeton coming in and setting up campuses.
Top officials on the U.S. side also indicated a strong interest in helping India set up institutions based on the U.S. community college model, which could cater to the “local ecosystem” of various regions in India and boost vocational training, for example in the automobiles industry.
He referenced several sections of the Indian Foreign Educational Institutions Bill, including the requirement that any foreign university seeking to invest in India would have to be accredited in its home country, have a 20-year record in the industry and provide a corpus of $10 million as a condition of investment.
Government of India indicating its intention to sponsor up to 1,500 faculty and junior scholars to leading universities and research institutes in the U.S.