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South Asia: India
No full textThe Ministry of Environment and Forest and Climate Change (MoEF and CC) is the leading agency working under the central government that looks after environment-related issues in India. Apart from the MoEF and CC, the Supreme Court of India (SC) and the National Green Tribunal play a crucial role in regard to protecting the environment.
The MoEF and CC attended the twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties (COP-26) to the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was held in Glasgow. India discussed and highlighted the following: (i) India’s non-fossil energy capacity to reach 500 gigawatts by 2030; (ii) India will meet 50 percent of its energy requirements with renewable energy by 2030; (iii) India will reduce its total projected carbon emissions by one billion tonnes from now to 2030; (iv) India will reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by 45 percent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels; and (v) by 2070, India will achieve the target of net-zero emissions. India also highlighted that the transfer of climate finance and low-cost climate technologies are the major hindrances to the implementation of climate actions by developing counties. The Indian delegation also participated in side events of COP-26, which included: the South Asia Co-operative Environment Programme; International Solar Alliance; the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure; the Leadership Group for Industry Transition; and the Namami Gange Programme (MoEF and CC, Year-End Review (29 December 2021
India’s green energy goals: Pragmatic way forward
Get PDFOf late, discussions around the greenhouse gases have become very important in the context of climate change and global warming. Several developed and developing nations have already declared or are in the process of firming up the timelines to achieve “net zero” emission with regard to the greenhouse gases.
The term “net zero” indicates a scenario where a balance between the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere and that removed from the atmosphere by various means (including capture) is achieved. Although such a situation is highly idealistic, wholehearted efforts are needed from all the advanced countries to make meaningful progress. At the same time, it is imperative that different countries firm up different timelines in this regard, based on the current level of preparedness and more importantly the access to the necessary resources
Aspirational Labour and Self-Making: A Study of Retail Workers in Delhi Malls
No full textWith the liberalisation of the Indian economy in the 1990s, there has been an expansion in consumption-driven organised services such as real estate, retail and hospitality, manifested in the proliferation of expensive shopping malls, multiplexes, gated communities, cafes and restaurants -- particularly in the urban metropolises. This new service economy employs a large youth workforce, who usually come from under-privileged backgrounds and many of whom are migrants. The nature of labour and employment in this sector is distinctive, shaped by neoliberal management ideas and practices that promote self-making, self-maximisation and self-disciplining. While all of us have encountered these young men and women in shopping malls and large retail stores, few studies have investigated their social backgrounds, their educational or employment trajectories, or the processes that mould them into modern service workers. Given that organised services employ a growing proportion of the workforce in India, an examination of the nature of these jobs and the kinds of labour that these young men and women perform warrants sociological attention. My dissertation explores the lives of retail workers in malls of Delhi and Gurgaon, specifically within the apparel and beauty segments. The thesis is framed as a workplace ethnography and is situated within the anthropology and sociology of work and labour. It traces how young retail employees are crafted into appropriate service workers through management practices, how they engage with the requirement to perform aesthetic labour, and how they negotiate with practices of self-making and self-maximisation encountered in the workplace. I describe the life histories of retail workers in three large stores, their entry into the retail workforce, the aspirations that they associate with these jobs, and the kinds of labour they perform. Through an ethnography of retail spaces and retails workers’ lives, I discuss how their expectations and aspirations are altered by their work and how they negotiate their identities as they come to inhabit the novel environment of the shopping mall and interact with managers and customers. The thesis examines the implications of neoliberal employment practices and middle-class and elite consumer cultures for the subjectivities of service workers, and the ways in which working in elite mall spaces shape social identities
Why India Needs a Coal Mines Environment Authority
No full textGiven India’s continued dependence on coal to supply
power for industrial and residential consumers at affordable
prices, the country needs a unified coal mines environment authority staffed with multidisciplinary expertise to assess and minimise the adverse environmental impacts of coal mines with an integrated approach to ensure more effi cient, effective, and transparent environmental governance. This authority must be created by enacting a sustainable coal mining bill before private sector commercial coal mines commence operations
All pain and no gain: Factors impacting local and regional sustainability due to COVID-19 pandemic with respect to the Indian marine fisheries
No full textMonitoring frameworks under a non-disaster scenario can be helpful to identify the various socio-technical
constraints of local and regional origin which influence the economics and resources management of marine
fisheries. However, local-scale manifestations of regional/global changes due to the rapid onset of a disaster
scenario may lead to unprecedented distortion of the market demand-supply value chains for the fisheries sector
at shorter temporal scales. The global pandemic of COronaVIrus Disease (COVID-19) provided a unique short,
temporal window to study the evolution of socio-economic challenges to sustainable fishing in the Bay of Bengal
(BoB), India. The present study provides a detailed multi-source assessment of the factors that lead to massive
complications of market disruption beginning with a public curfew on 22nd March 2020, followed by a
nationwide complete lockdown of 54 days beginning from 25th March 2020, indicating an “all-pain no-gain”
scenario for the fishers. Aggravating factors as a cessation of food services, and the restriction of exports of
perishable commodities indicated negative spin-offs for allied activities sectors such as food processing due to
low or negligible demand. The present investigation also indicated that as part of rehabilitation, policies related
to overfishing are necessary to promote sustainable fishing practices in the BoB region in a post-pandemic period.
New policy frameworks must consider the community-centric factors which facilitated the alleviation of the
impacts of anthropogenic activities related to fishing and the slow restoration of the demand-supply chain, with
long-term benefits for natural resources sustenance and to aid marine conservation efforts
Post-Covid World and New Humanism
No full textAnaplastic Astrocytoma (AA) is a relatively rare cancer, and is associated with a median life expectancy of 3 years after conventional therapy. Complete cure of the highly infiltrative AA is uncommon, and reports of positive outcome in cases of partial resection of AA are rare. Further, integrative approaches to the management of AA remain underexplored. This paper contributes to the limited literature in this domain by presenting a case that was successfully treated through integrative conventional and Ayurvedic interventions. A patient diagnosed with AA in the left parieto-occipital lobe underwent partial lesion resection followed by post-operative radiation and chemotherapy. The patient was given a conservative post-surgical life expectancy of two years, and was referred to an Ayurveda hospital for further treatment. The Ayurvedic intervention was focussed on redressal of radiation and chemotherapy side-effects, improvement of quality of life, and improving the patient’s strength and immunity. Following this novel integrative model of care, the patient was able to resume all personal and professional routines, and a contrast MRI revealed absence of residual lesion allowing the patient to outlive his initial prognosis by several years till date. We posit that the findings of this report merit further examination in the interest of potential improvements to existing models of care
Satellite Remote Sensing Data Policy: Benefits of Free & Open Data (NIAS Policy Brief No. NIAS/NSE/U/PB/04/2021)
Get PDFThe economic benefits of remote sensing data are largely
from the utilization of data in diverse applications. Free,
open and timely access of satellite data has the potential of
greatly enhancing the use of such data at national, regional
and global levels and their potential for economic and
societal benefits. Such data becomes valuable when they
are transformed into information that could be used for
decision making. Typical examples are, disasters & crisis
management, advisory services to fishermen and farmers,
assessment of forest wealth, crop production forecasts,
ground water targeting, etc. It may be interesting to note that
atmosphere and ocean related satellite data are already open
and free for access and use
Reading the Entanglements of Nature-culture Conservation and Development in Contemporary India
No full textIn this article we argue for greater attention to the practice of (nature-culture) conservation as a specific form of intervention with implications for development. Outlining the dominant frameworks through which the often vexed relationship between conservation and development has been understood, the article offers an alternative analytical framework that is grounded in ethnographic attention to everyday practice. Applying this framework, the three papers in this special section examine conservation-development dilemmas at diverse conservation sites in India—Rushikulya, Orissa, a globally significant site for the conservation of marine turtles; Nagarahole, in southern Karnataka, one of India’s most successful tiger reserves; and the Hampi region, northern Karnataka, where the archaeological remains of the medieval Vijayanagara Empire have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS). The papers reveal a relationship between conservation and development that is paradoxically both more structurally imbricated and more contingent and variable than a focus on official frameworks, discourses and plans would suggest. They lead us to argue that, rather than focusing on the stated objectives of the formal conservation plan alone, attention to its ambivalent adoptions and unintended outcomes, as well as to negotiations between diverse actors and forms of knowledge, can contribute to both a more balanced theorization of conservation’s relation to development as well as to more effective conservation practices