The politics of otherisation has now reached the chambers of our minds with a stamp of officialese, courtesy a regime that predicates religion as not only proof of identity but loyalty
Now that the embers of the Delhi riots are being washed away by an unseasonal rain, drowning the sad memories of how we can become refugees in our own land, there is talk about “heroes.” There are reports of how Hindu families sheltered Muslim neighbours in the city’s northeastern parts as the mob rampaged through their homes and hearths. There have been umpteen reports about Hindu samaritans helping the battered and bruised, rushing them to hospitals, arranging aid supplies and setting up shelters. There was also this report of a Hindu man taking down a saffron flag from atop a desecrated shrine and restoring our faith in humanity. Some would say this represents the syncretism of our civilisational ethos, the fabric of a cultural legacy that can never be torn asunder, the equality of humans as it is meant to be. Others, depending on which side of the discourse they are on, would probably call it the big-heartedness of a triumphalist faith over another. But in the end, it is all about characterising a good deed, even lionising it as one, rather than normalising it that is deeply troublesome. It is this need for categorising our behavioural pattern that represents why “otherisation” has deeply penetrated us at the societal level.
So much so that the majoritarian guilt syndrome is just as consciously executed or recognised as the awareness of minority victimhood. I am glad I grew up in Kolkata, where the cheek by jowl co-existence that we need to define so fervently these days was always a lived experience. During my kindergarten years, it was the Muslim weavers at my father’s jute factory who would drop me to school and back, bicycles on normal days, atop their shoulders on rainy days. My parents thought nothing about me playing with their children in the common playgrounds in front of their staff quarters. I cannot forget Qurbaan, who would buy me clothes from his meagre budget during Eid, along with those for his children. His wife would cook an elaborate feast that he would bring over to the house and we would all partake of the flavours and joys together. He and his family were a constant in my life till the day I got married. Then there was Abdul at my grandfather’s home in Lucknow, who embodied the summer afternoons of my long and lazy vacations, when I would read in the courtyard and he would tell me stories while pounding and mincing meat on his wooden board for the finest kebabs that I could almost swallow. If my grandfather encouraged my reading those afternoons, Abdul would regale me with animated stories and legends of Lucknow nagri, so much so that I am still teary-eyed about this city even when both have gone. Feel it in my pores as the lanes of Qaiserbagh and Aminabad. There were many others, drivers, shopkeepers, the candyman, gardener, the barber and what not, what you would call service-deliverers in today’s terms. But my bond with them was never about a relationship of convenience. Growing up with them was in the normal flow of everydayness. It was never to be screamed out as exception, simply because it was the rule. It was also about an informal but worldly-wise education. Today, in retrospect, such experiences would be labelled as my father’s liberal experiments with classlessness, his brashness in entrusting a significant part of my childhood to strangers who were just about skilled but not educated enough, and along with my missionary education, an erosion of my Hindu mooring. The fact is he had strengthened it in the process.
Nowhere is every puja, be it of Lakshmi, Saraswati or Narayan, solemnised at home with such frequency as it is in Bengal. Be it a bout of jaundice or malaria, my mother would immediately perform a puja for gratitude and fortitude. The home pujas made divinity supreme over rituals and prioritised the personal God over the regimented one. The worship of Durga and her Kali avatars, which the zamindars turned into huge community, all-faith affairs, has historically codified plurality as a socio-cultural-religious credo. In the Bengal that I grew up in, pujas were a matter of people’s pride, an efflorescence of its creative expression, not an emotion to be whisked and shredded to prove a point. By throwing me into this eco-system, my father had never ever betrayed his pain and anxieties over the Partition, of which he was a sufferer. He knew displacement, denial and destruction first hand but chose to resolve it his way like many others, levelling the furrows than upturning them further. He was very particular about not privileging anyone over any other.
He found solace along the river at Dakshineswar, a Shakti peeth dedicated to Kali and her most ardent devotee, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, who embraced a multi-faith approach to divinity as a cosmic essence, soul evolution as the only enlightenment. Swami Vivekananda, who carried on his legacy and who kept Hinduism relevant as a world religion, is sadly only quoted for exhibitionism while his plurality gets trampled day in and day out.
Midway through life now, through its many comedies and tragedies, weddings and funerals, there have been Muslim friends, peers and colleagues who have stood by me as steadfastly as family. Quite naturally. So it bothers me immensely when they question their Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb, when they ask whether their parents and grandparents were right in choosing India as homeland during Partition or when they wonder about applying for citizenship or work visas overseas. How does one console them for their systematic marginalisation, the dilution of their stakeholdership in nationhood? There is no explaining to young Muslims how their ancestors fought the elitist Muslim League’s imagined fears of slavery in a majoritarian land, when current truth is stranger than past fiction. Would we have imagined marking the entrance to our homes with religious motifs as a necessity than choice? Or thought about reconverting shrines that are few centuries old than building new ones? Would we have imagined classifying vegetables and meat as Hindu or Muslim? That’s precisely what is happening in Uttar Pradesh, with vendors tagging their religion on their signages. So after identity theft, there is going to be an economic denial. As a “not so god-fearing Hindu,” hosting guests for dinner with decided preferences could now be tricky business.
The politics of otherisation has finally set in. It is an accumulation of prejudices, both latent and overt, simply because it now has a stamp of officialese courtesy a regime which predicates religion as not only proof of identity but loyalty. It has seeped in because of a nationalist thought factory that spins history lessons as a retrospective duel with invasions than learning lessons from them. You cannot blame the fundamentalist fringe like Bajrang Dal or Vishwa Hindu Parishad anymore. For their thinking is mainstream now, accepted by the educated elite in drawing rooms. They may have pushed in from the fringes but it is the porosity of the intelligentsia which has yielded to their osmotic pressure. Because we need an excuse to justify our failures. And an easy one at that. Unlike the economy, global trade winds and poverty that we have no control over, we need an aggressor we can tame visibly. So we have created a new enemy within our own and transferred all our non-functioning abilities to “termites” and “viruses” detected after 70 years of incubation. Mainstream acceptance is the most dreaded monster, for it means obeying handed down guidelines and abjuring any responsibility towards nation-building.
The establishment’s segregatory policies and practices have hurt and alienated the enlightened “Indian Muslims” whom it is so desperate to reassure in public. Not that the latter aren’t trying; if the recent protests over the citizenship law are any indication, then Muslims have emerged as rightful citizens protecting their existence than outsourcing their crusade to either the clergy or votebank politicians. Many elite Muslims, so far confined to their own spheres of excellence, are now stepping up as demanding citizens. Yet they feel vulnerable without the armour of a stereotype. Though there have been no major separatist protests that you would associate with minorityism in other nations, we could see a radicalisation of an unknown kind if justice fails them now. For the “Indian Muslims” have never sought any autonomy or privileges as their co-religionists in Kashmir have, and they have existed pan-India with local sensibilities. They have considered India their holy land.
The public parade of anti-CAA protesters in Uttar Pradesh, some of them proven activists, presenting them in a rogue’s gallery and recovering costs of damage to public property from them, legitimises this hatred as mainstream and taints an entire community with the same brush. There is no room for dissent, just acquiescence. No space for conscience, but extremism.
What we once dismissed as hilarious is dead serious. Consider the diktat warning Muslim men against marrying Hindu girls or women or the toxic masculinity of Hindu men declaring their right to marry Kashmiri women post the abrogation of Article 370. Such claims are finding a ready receptacle in drawing room chatter over evening drinks. A Hindu may not know all stanzas of Vande Mataram but a Muslim unable to recite them — albeit under fear of the gun as seen in the Delhi riots — is a traitor. It is not that Muslims haven’t been ghettoised or targetted before for political gains. They have. But the problem now is that we have cast them away in the poisonous gas chambers of our minds.
(Writer: Rinku Ghosh ; Courtesy: The Pioneer)
From the perception that few women are found in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, emerges the paradox that the disbalance is by choice rather than any constraint
As the world celebrated another Women’s Day, on March 8, this time under the shadow of the lethal Coronavirus, with scientists and medical professionals across the globe working round the clock to develop a vaccine to counter the virus, it is pertinent to reflect on the rather ambivalent relationship between gender, on one hand, and research and technology, on the other. From the almost unanimous perception that much fewer women than men are found in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) emerges the paradox that the gender gap in science education is the result of choice rather than any constraint. Women, particularly in advanced societies, voluntarily pursue careers in other fields rather than STEM. This paradox needs to be unbundled, especially in the current grim environment wherein men and women need to stand shoulder to shoulder to decimate the killer virus and restore normal life and health in the world.
Traditionally, several scholars and policymakers have pointed out male domination of STEM fields, with historically low participation of women in these professions. The reasons for this gender disparity are reportedly lack of encouragement from parents to daughters for pursuing higher studies in mathematics and science and laboratory experiences and financial resources needed to study these subjects, all of which favour men over women. The fact that the privileged professions with high remunerations in STEM fields are dotted with men is an undisputed corollary of this gender gap.
A 2018 survey conducted by Mastercard and Incite, titled Revisiting Women in STEM, carried out among 136 Indian women, working in both STEM and non-STEM jobs, arrived at some intriguing results. It found that 45 per cent of the women respondents working in STEM jobs were dissatisfied with their current career choice and also did not expect to continue in the job for their entire work life. Regarding the reasons for this discontent, 46 per cent cited the need for constantly updating their skills in STEM careers, 39 per cent were unable to adjust to the long hours and commitment needed in these jobs and 36 per cent were apprehensive of working in a male-dominated office environment. In addition, 24 per cent complained that women were less likely to be paid as much as men in these high-profile occupations. All of these are valid reasons for women to be wary of joining the science and technology bandwagon but they have serious implications for attracting bright, young women into these streams.
The situation is complicated further by the play of discriminatory forces constantly seeking to limit the frontiers of higher education and employment for women, especially in conservative societies across India. Academics and experts in the field of education also argue that the gender gap in India’s technological workforce is an outcome of the lack of both infrastructure and quality teachers in technical institutions of higher learning that fail to accommodate more women students. This discrimination is exacerbated by the persistent male-female and urban-rural divide in India’s pedagogical landscape.
In consonance with these findings, scholars using data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) have also repeatedly asserted that gender inequality in educational outcomes in India is a product of social backgrounds, access to learning resources and cultural attitudes, which lead parents to prioritise their son’s education over daughter’s education.
The IHDS, carried out by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in collaboration with the University of Maryland, in two waves, in 2004-05 and 2011-12, points out that the prevalence of a gendered education system stemming from India’s patriarchal society has created all-round fissures in educational attainments.
This issue is also flagged up in a 2019 paper by leading IHDS researchers at the University of Maryland’s Sociology Department titled, The Emergence of Educational Hypogamy in India. The paper argues that though women today are more likely to be involved in higher education than before, often even being more educated than their spouses, in terms of subjects, they are still more representative in traditionally considered “feminine” fields such as humanities and social sciences, while men are more likely to be in the STEM fields, which generate higher economic returns in the labour market.
Coming back to the Coronavirus, in an article in The Independent last week, Ian Hamilton, lecturer in mental health at the Department of Health Sciences, University of York, takes the discrimination argument further. He claimed that due to differences in the immune systems of men and women, there is a need to develop two different strains of the vaccine as women often have more severe adverse reactions and higher antibody responses to disease. But sexism is likely to prevent woman-centred research.
In such a situation, women may end up receiving sub-optimal treatment, leading to higher mortality. He cites the example of the last global pandemic, SARS, when even the World Health Organisation (WHO) had pointed to the gender gap in data, specifically relating to the serious impact of the disease for pregnant women that was not sufficiently addressed by the SARS vaccine.
“From cancer to Coronavirus, there isn’t an area of health research or science that is not gender-blind. Science, it seems, is institutionally sexist,” fulminates Hamilton. He links this medical sexism to the paucity of women in senior research roles and a gender imbalance in technological laboratories dominated by men who may never be able to fully understand a woman’s health experiences. It is also widely suggested that women may be found aplenty in early-career levels of medical research but their male peers are more likely to ascend the professional ladder and become professors.
However, there is light beyond the tunnel, as women scientists are currently seen to be increasingly pro-active in their fight against the Coronavirus. Among the most prominent of them is an all-women team of four scientists, led by India-born Nita Patel, Director for Vaccine Development and Antibody Discovery at the Novavax Laboratory in the unassuming neighbourhood of Gaithersburg, Montgomery County of Maryland, USA. And there are other women scientists around the world involved in the same pursuit.
Patel and her team are working day and night to isolate the virus and find a breakthrough vaccine against Covid-19 using recombinant nanoparticle technology. When an ABC7 news reporter asked her what signal it would give young girls if the vaccine came from the hands of women, Patel said, “Well, that’s encouraging for young girls to become scientists. You know, I’m a woman (and can say) that’s awesome.” Novavax is aiming at an extremely aggressive timeline, having reached phase-II of development of the vaccine. If they get the next phase of trials right, they could hit the market with a viable vaccine in as little as three months.
However, Patel and her team are not the only women engaged in the grim battle against Coronavirus. Kathleen Neuzil, director of the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine’s Center for Vaccine Development, who co-leads a consortium established by the National Institutes of Health at Emory University in Atlanta, to quickly tackle new infectious diseases, is also working in this area.
Another notable STEM researcher is Lauren Gardner, a civil engineering professor at Johns Hopkins University, who has led a team to build a map based on information collected from various sources in China, the US and elsewhere to track the spread of the virus and locate areas where the virus is taking hold in real time and where it may attack more in future. Surely, these path-breaking endeavours by women would not only provide succour by saving thousands of lives against the killer disease but also influence STEM research and policymaking in the long term. Can we still say that STEM is not for women?
(Writer: Anupma Mehta ; Courtesy: The Pioneer)
Given the abject failure of our political class in preventing and/or controlling riots in the national capital, has the time come for the idea of a new politics?
The clutch of recent developments centred round the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the stomach-turning communal rioting in north-east Delhi raises a couple of fundamental questions: Have India’s politics and politicians failed the country? What is the future of politics in the country? The questions are relevant given the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) claim that its victory in the recent Delhi Assembly elections heralds the advent of a new kind of politics in the country — kaam ki rajneeti or the politics of work.
AAP’s work in improving schools, healthcare services in the form of mohalla (neighbourhood) clinics, providing up to 20,000 litres of water free to each household and drastically reducing electricity bills has brought it 62 out of the 70 seats in the Delhi Legislative Assembly. Nevertheless, the conduct of its leaders and legislators during the recent communal riots in Delhi has launched a thousand arguments.
Two things require attention. The first is their claim that they are not responsible for the Delhi Police’s abysmal performance as the force is controlled by the Union Home Ministry. The second is their overwhelmingly perceived absence from the scenes of violence. Both require critical examination.
As to the first claim, the fact is that the Union Home Ministry directly controls the Delhi Police. The question of the latter’s as well as the Delhi Government’s respective roles, however, comes up in the context of preventing and/or controlling violence. While police action is critical in the matter, the fact is that the police act in a social, political and administrative context and the Delhi Government might have been able to compel it to act even though the Union Home Ministry controlled it. The presence of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and AAP Ministers and leaders in troubled areas might, for example, have put policemen on the ground under pressure to act, particularly if the netas had stepped forward and confronted the mobs. Otherwise, the men and women in uniform would have been held responsible if anything had happened to them.
Chief Minister Kejriwal visited the hospitals. He also visited some of the riot- affected areas along with Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia. But that was after the violence had more or less subsided. He had also called for curfew to be imposed and the deployment of the Army besides announcing a slew of measures, including the payment of various amounts of compensation, ranging from Rs 10 lakh to the kin of those killed to Rs 25,000 for each rickshaw destroyed. All this, however, is what any Government is expected to do in the aftermath of a serious communal riot and the AAP Government should have been seriously remiss if it had not. Neither is it the same as visiting affected areas when violence is raging; nor does it make up for failure to do so.
Had they been present, AAP leaders might have confronted the mobs with their followers and halted them in their tracks. If groups of common people in some localities could do it and save lives, homes and places of worship, there is no reason why they could not do so. AAP spokespersons have waxed indignant on television and elsewhere, saying that their MLAs and leaders were very much on the ground, forming peace committees, asking people not to resort to violence, providing relief and solace to the disconsolate and those rendered destitute. Since one does not want to believe that what they were saying was not true, and given that the overwhelming majority of the people seem to hold that AAP leaders were conspicuous by their absence, one can only conclude that they were present but not visible.
This writer can only speculate on how this could have happened. One possibility is that those in the higher echelons of AAPs hierarchy have received pills that make them invisible for pre-determined periods. These might have been originally given to them to inspect unseen the effectiveness of the Government’s delivery systems on facilities provided to the people but were now put to use during the riots. The other possibility is that they have achieved a level of spiritual elevation that enables a person to leave his/her corporal body behind and traverse the cosmos in his/her invisible astral self. Only they did not travel millions of light years in seconds to explore distant galaxies but visit riot-torn areas offering solace in subsonic voices that most people did not hear.
Of course, as invisible as them were leaders of most other political parties. Did they also have the invisibility pill and the capacity for travelling in their astral bodies and speaking subsonically? Whatever the reason, their invisibility shockingly underlines their lack of concern for the people and political inertia. All this leads us to the sentiment whose relevance has not been withered by the years — politicians and political parties in India have failed the people.
This lack of faith in politicians and parties has clearly led to spontaneous protests like the Shaheen Bagh sit-in and meetings, rallies and processions by students’ and citizens against the Citizenship Act. The question is whether the development would prove ephemeral or the protests would coalesce, widen their concerns and transmogrify themselves into a new political formation with a well-defined ideology and programme.
One must go beyond kaam ki rajneeti for this to happen. Work gets done in a political, economic, social and cultural environment and a moral universe. It will not benefit the people if a Government prioritises crony capitalist interests; liberty will not be realised on the ground if sections remain in economic bondage and/or suffer discrimination. One would need a philosophy of freedom based on compassion, humanity and a commitment to liberty, cradling a programme to further social and economic justice and India’s cultural and religious diversity, to realise the goals of the Constitution. Also, one would need money to build up such a political formation. Corporate entities would not provide it; they would bet on parties in power. One would have to depend on crowd-funding, which will not be easy. Finally, the architects of such a movement must have the wisdom to keep their ambitions on hold and weave an intricate tapestry of plural relationships to make a nation-wide political structure possible. But then, as Victor Hugo said, “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.” Has the time come for a new and very different political formation in India?
(Writer: Hiranmay Karlekar ; Courtesy: The Pioneer)
The Govt can’t turn away and must allow a debate on who is guilty of the Delhi violence
The confrontationist positions taken by the ruling BJP and the Congress-led Opposition in Parliament over the Delhi riots cannot be simply dismissed as a breakdown of decorum or institutional morality. It is an indication of helplessness when the glorious tradition of debate and discussion that characterises parliamentary democracy is at stake, when dictated silence replaces Question Hour as the real national agenda. It is a desperation of the representative legislature to make itself heard when a determined executive brooks no opinion and has its way. It signifies the erosion of another institution where citizens could express their angst through their representatives. And when the Speaker stays away from a session upset over what he claims is legislators’ pillorying behaviour, then he is abdicating the huge responsibility of the Chair in ensuring debate in the first place. The Opposition wants an immediate discussion on the riots while the Government wants to postpone it after Holi. Frankly, Delhi, which has been ripped apart by unprecedented violence in decades, with more generational damage to people and their way of living than just the toll of 53, is an issue burning enough. And even on the extreme end of the polarised arc, the Government could have appeared “muscular” enough to take questions than appear fragile in its evasiveness. In the end, it is Delhiites who are forlorn in a cross-fire of narratives that obfuscate the real provocateurs and perpetrators. First, the Delhi Police is at its worst crisis of credibility with allegations and videos ranging from it being a mute spectator to acting in a partisan manner. And although the tipping point of the riots was the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which privileges religion as an eligibility criterion and has both defenders and protesters, it is only the latter who are being demonised selectively. In such circumstances, the nation does need to know facts as they are and not propaganda that has acquired the stamp of officialese. Even a Government driven by the ideological push of majoritarianism cannot survive a hitback if it doesn’t attempt some sort of an outreach to the people. Courtesy its segregatory policies, it has hurt and alienated the enlightened “Indian Muslims” whom it is so desperate to reassure through grandiose statements and who have not stirred up major separatist protests that you would associate with minorityism in other nations. Yet, with the latest brand of “otherisation” politics and by predicating legacy data and religion as proof of identity, the Muslim community is vulnerable. If the law and order machinery now fails minorities and there is no perceived sense of justice, then we may end up radicalising them. The public parade of anti-CAA protesters in Uttar Pradesh, presenting them in a rogue’s gallery and recovering costs of damage to public property from them, legitimises this hatred for dissent as mainstream. The cost of creating a new enemy within our own and transferring our non-functioning abilities to “termites” and “viruses” detected after 70 years of incubation may just be too unmanageable.
People can mount pressure only in Parliament through their legally elected voices. For civil society has found no solace even in the judiciary, which has doubted its intentions instead of granting it a listen. Former civil servant and activist Harsh Mander, who assumed a humanitarian role to calm the blaze of fury, helping and rehabilitating abandoned survivors, is now an enemy of the State, guilty by suspicion. It doesn’t matter he has had a clean record so far, he is just as bad simply because he had questioned the judiciary’s emaciated role in restoring civic discourse over CAA. It is deeply distressing that the Supreme Court should deny him a hearing over an egoistic tit-for-tat battle about his earlier remarks instead of hearing his plea for registering FIRs against those who made hate speeches. In the end, this action has diluted the seriousness of the plea itself. The hand-out executive has tamed all institutions into submission no doubt. But it still owes accountability to the people who voted it, not the other way round.
(Courtesy: The Pioneer)
Given the freeze in the relations between India and Nepal, it is time for New Delhi to engage with Naya Nepal in a way that it is assured of the sincerity of its words
Soon after the peaceful conclusion of the civil war in Nepal in 2006, several political observers were of the view that it be referred to as “Naya Nepal.” Naya, a Hindi-Nepali term, refers to a “new” nation that emerged at the cost of 17,000 lives after a decade-long civil war. Changes primarily included the ouster of the centuries-old monarchy and Nepal’s transition into a democratic State, where the king was no more considered to be the sole administrator/protector, the restructuring of the country from a Hindu State to a secular one, the inclusion of the Maoist guerrilla fighters into the mainstream political process, reinstating of the multi-party political system and providing political freedom and adult franchise to the people.
Naya Nepal also faced the challenge of writing a democratic Constitution, giving justice to families who had lost their loved ones during the civil war, maintaining political stability, narrowing the thaw between the Pahadi and Madhesi groups and improving the state of the economy, which was in a shambles due to the war. While the civil war affected the internal structure of the country, it had an enormous impact on its foreign policy, especially towards India. It is often believed that Nepal, a country that falls between the two Asian giants, India and China, has been a ground for competition between them to strengthen their influence, precisely due to its strategic location. While China aims to focus on protecting its interests in Tibet, India wants a stable neighbour. Traditionally, India has been a friend of Nepal. The India-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship, signed in 1950, recognises the “special relationship” shared between them. The uniqueness of this pact is characterised by open borders, free movement of people, deeply rooted socio-cultural ties and people-to-people relations.
However, with a change in its internal structure, there has been a change in the thought process of the new regime. Today, Nepal’s narrative is so-called nationalistic, extreme and abhors pro-India sentiments. The anti-India tirade among the Nepalese population is not new. Despite all efforts to improve bilateral relations, distances have only grown. It is here that sincere engagement is essential to reduce differences.
Need for a template: The anti-India sentiment is acutely “political” and has become a part of everyday life, where a daily dose of dislike is being given to the Nepalese population, based on selective information. While in the past, several attempts were made to isolate Nepal from India, in the last five years, differences have become grave.
During several democratic movements in Nepal, in 1960, 1990 and 2006, India played the role of a well-wisher to bridge the gap between the erstwhile monarchy and the democratic forces. Amid these natural ties, a fallout in the relations is not unnatural, considering the nature of interaction between the two countries in the last five years.
The beginning: The year 2014 was promising for India-Nepal relations for two reasons. One, Nepal was the second neighbouring country Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited after taking charge in August 2014. This was also the first bilateral trip by an Indian Prime Minister to the Himalayan nation in 17 years. This signalled the priority the new Government accorded to better the strained relationship with Nepal. Then again, the Prime Minister returned to Kathmandu in November 2014, to attend the 18th Annual Summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). This summit was another opportunity for India to minimise the existing trust deficit with Nepal and other regional neighbours.
Second, the two countries revised their diplomatic channels of communication. This was indeed a strong message for other competitive powers that India would continue to maintain its goodwill and developmental works in Nepal. India’s swift despatch of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams to Nepal during the 2015 earthquake to carry out rescue operations in affected areas was a major friendly operation. Later, India’s financial assistance to Nepal for relief and reconstruction of the damaged property showcased the “naturalness” of its relation with Nepal.
Blockade: In September 2015, the Constituent Assembly of Nepal promulgated a new democratic-republican Constitution. This happened seven years after Nepal’s transformation into a democracy. While Kathmandu rejoiced the hasty completion of a new Constitution, issues like the rights of women, demarcation of the federal boundaries and marginalisation of the Madhesis took a violent turn. As a result, movement of goods and people were obstructed due to violence and arson at the India-Nepal border.
Nepal was quick to call it an India-imposed blockade, which was outrightly rejected by the latter. This saw a heated discussion in the Upper House of the Indian Parliament and was categorised as the biggest national emergency in Nepal. The alleged blockade was used as a tool to influence masses in Nepal during the 2017 local and 2018 national elections, too. Since then, the blockade has become an issue of national emergency in the neighbouring country.
Threat perception: In 2016, Nepal implemented its first National Security Policy (NSP). While the then Nepali Congress-led Government hesitated to use blockade as a national security threat, the present KP Oli-led Government has amended the NSP and categorised “blockade” as a national security threat. It needs to be mentioned here that through the 1950 Indo-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship, New Delhi had assured Kathmandu that it would not face any external aggression on its part. In the past 65 years of diplomatic interactions, Nepal has felt secure. Therefore, Kathmandu’s sudden change on matters of mutual security is worrying because it has more political connotations rather than a will to resolve issues.
Cutting people-to-people ties: The updated National Security Policy 2019 under the Communist regime in Nepal has not yet been made public and it is believed that it is the use of the term “blockade” that has ruffled feathers in New Delhi. Meanwhile, during an interaction, an advisor to the Nepalese Prime Minister indicated that Nepal intends to regulate its borders. The word “regulate” incorporates limiting the transit points at what has been a largely open border, establishing a dedicated Border Security Force and treating travelling through land routes at par with air routes in terms of document requirements for citizens of the two countries.
Nepal may well cite security reasons for these upcoming upgradations but this will impact the movement of people from the bordering regions. Notably, people-to-people contact cannot be established between the two countries, a move that seems to be acceding to China’s request. While India and Nepal enjoy natural people-to-people relations, restrictions on the free movement will come at a cost to India.
Border disputes: Last November, Nepal objected to the release of a new map of India. It said that the boundaries in the Kalapani region were shown wrongly and sent diplomatic notes to New Delhi. India clarified that in no way does “the new map revisit boundaries with Nepal.” It still maintains this position on the issue. The two countries have resolved 98 per cent of border disputes. The Indian side believes that an objection on Kalapani, too, can be resolved diplomatically. However, this does not seem to be the case in Nepal.
Eminent persons group: In 2016, the two countries appointed an Eminent Persons Group (EPG), consisting of relevant experts from India and Nepal, to review bilateral treaties and agreements between the two countries, including the 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship. While the group has submitted its report with recommendations to both Governments, it remains under wraps. Reasons are unknown but it stands as a ticking bomb for India. The EPG report may not be a critical issue for us but it is a matter of national prestige for Nepal. Not making it public will put all the blame on India.
In international relations, diplomacy is considered to be the first and the last best resort to resolve bilateral or multilateral issues. India may have assured full diplomatic support to Nepal. However, until these issues are part of the political mandate, the present challenges cannot be resolved. From a foreign policy perspective, Naya Nepal is more challenging and complex for India. The alleged border blockade, the Madhesi movement and now the Kalapani dispute have all become part of our neighbour’s national narrative which is undoubtedly hateful and extreme. While all is not lost for the two countries, the increasing presence of China in Nepal and pending bilateral issues between New Delhi and Kathmandu require the best efforts from India’s side.
(Writer: Rishi Gupta ; Courtesy: The Pioneer)
The Govt must ensure operational readiness and a healthy obedience of protocols if we are to beat the Coronavirus
As the rapidly spreading Covid-19 has hit home with returning travellers picking up the virus in transit or from the countries they visit, India, like China, has a huge challenge in arresting the contagion in densely knitted communities. Except, unlike China, this is an uncharted territory administratively and preventive behaviour requires human conditioning without setting off a panic economy. The first hurdle is the nature of the virus itself, which can be asymptomatic in some cases, lying dormant in the host for up to a fortnight and yet infecting others before s/he can manifest full-blown symptoms. Such carriers could easily make it past the airport thermal screens. Sometimes the carrier may have a relatively mild infection with generic symptoms — most Indians are known to tackle the flu virus comparatively better. This means that many cases have not been counted and estimates could be flawed. Many hosts may be unaware and be in normal circulation. Yet others may be using medicines to lower fever to avoid a 14-18 day quarantine. Which is why the World Health Organisation’s (WHO’s) updated travel advisory said temperature screening alone at ports of exit or entry is not an effective way to stop the international spread of the virus. This is precisely what happened with the parent of a Noida school student, who, on returning, hosted his child’s birthday party, resulting in that school now being sanitised and students in direct contact quarantined. Or the man in Delhi who went to visit his family in Agra or the tourist dining at Delhi’s Hyatt Regency. The second toughest barrier thus happens to be contact tracing through an integrated disease surveillance programme. This involves identifying people that the infected person has come in touch with or within breathing distance, screening, monitoring and isolating them and mitigating the domino effect. China has been pretty aggressive about mitigation procedures but in India, the normal behavioural tendency is denial rather than willful submission. That hiding and blending in can be India’s toughest obstacle in containing the spread. For fear of quarantine may stop many people from voluntary health declarations on arrival or listing details. There needs to be an immediate awareness drive to demystify health status checks as a preventive cure and eliminate fear psychosis. The third weakest link in the chain is our stretched surveillance system and a poor public health infrastructure, which may not allow for aggressive detection and compromise accuracy of data collection. While the Kerala template in tackling the deadly Nipah virus has been cited and adopted, the Coronavirus spread is multifarious and needs a unified protocol. With 15 laboratories under the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) capable of identifying the virus, the Health Ministry is planning to scale that number up to 50.
India must ensure operational readiness and a healthy obedience of protocols. Every basic healthcare unit staff needs to be trained in quarantine drills. There must be enough stock of protective gear, supporting drugs like lopinavir and ritonavir, and space for isolation wards, especially in areas underserved by the health network. The Government has already stopped exports of paracetamol and vitamins. We also need a military-like discipline on public hygiene protocols for the virus can stay on metal, glass and plastic surfaces from two hours to nine days. Spreading trained medical personnel in the event of a massive outbreak could affect critical care in hospitals. As of now, the average Government allopathic doctor to population ratio is 1:10,926. Which is why community surveillance and a first crisis responder system need to be developed. That’s why information dissemination has to keep pace with its absorption at the neighbourhood level. Over and above everything else, we need to keep calm and stop spreading untruths. Yes we have a sizeable older population, who are at the greatest risk and, therefore, we have to be especially vigilant about the chronically ill among them. Also, there must be a mechanism to sort coronavirus from ordinary flu patients as the symptoms are mostly similar. Unnecessary overcrowding can overwhelm the healthcare delivery capacity of both the private and public sectors. Unless we have a targetted approach, those in need of real care might just get left out and more carriers could roam free. The virus is not as fatal as say an ebola but the difference between crisis and containment is a reasoned approach and a reorientation of personal healthcare as we know it.
(Writer: PNS ; Courtesy: The Pioneer)
The impact of the riots is not restricted to lost lives and economic opportunities. Its reverberations have also been felt in the way in which the global community has responded
History tells us that the myth of Roman emperor Nero fiddling while Rome was burning was just that, a myth. For one, the fire that burned Rome to the ground occurred in 64 AD and the violin was invented in the 12th century, more than a thousand years after Nero’s reign. So, whatever Nero may have played, if he really did play something, it certainly wasn’t the fiddle. There is, however, no such doubt about what Prime Minister Narendra Modi was doing while Delhi burnt recently. His obsequious fawning over US President Donald Trump and his family was there for all to see on prime television and along with Delhi’s reputation as a progressive Capital, Narendra Modi’s own standing as a statesman on the global stage turned to mud and ashes.
Funnily enough, his fall from grace was best reflected on American late night talk shows, such as John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, where Modi became a butt of low humour. Moreover expressing anger over the issue at this late stage, as some papers suggest he has done, only adds to his credibility problem, as trust is no longer a tradable commodity available to him.
However, the seriousness of this tragedy can best be understood once we look at the issue in its larger perspective. Forty-seven dead and counting is the official death toll with over 250 injured. And, as in most such cases, the likelihood of gross underestimation cannot be ruled out. Even using official figures, the seriousness of the incident can be gauged from the fact that while over the last 70 years 90-odd souls have perished in all the previous Hindu-Muslim conflagrations in Delhi, more than half that number perished in just the 72 hours of rioting that we recently witnessed. Crucial 72 hours, in which the Delhi Police added to its glorious tradition of utter ineptness, shame and unprofessionalism as men in uniform waited for the murderous rage of the unhinged to spend itself. If allegations are to be believed, some of them even joined in the mayhem. Certainly, they are undeserving of the uniform they don, especially of the former Police Commissioner, whose inaction just days prior to his retirement showed him up as wholly unworthy of respect or that rank. Sadly, 40 years of a wasted legacy to leave behind.
As is often the case, violence, especially mob violence, tends to be motivated by fear of the unknown and a dread of the other. True to form, here, too, fear has been the key that has been used to divide communities, consolidate hate and finally to destroy lives and livelihoods.
Among politicians and even civil society, there are no innocents here. Many among the Opposition parties, supported by the anti-BJP set, went about stoking terror among minorities, suggesting that the Citizen Amendment Act (CAA) was just the first step towards their exclusion from citizenship, without a shred of evidence to support their accusations. They are as much to blame for the targeting of the Muslim community as those non-entities from the BJP, who encouraged goons to resort to violence and whose only claim to fame is being second generation politicians. Thus, their only hope of impressing Modi was through a display of zealous fealty. Of course, for some of them, revenge was certainly a motive after the drubbing the BJP got in the Delhi Assembly Elections, despite the saffron party’s best efforts.
It was patently obvious to most, except the politically-illiterate, that the CAA was an ill-conceived attempt by the BJP to win brownie points in Assam, after it had committed hara-kiri in the manner that it went about organising the National Register of Citizens exercise there. The fact that the Home Minister continues to vociferously support the CAA suggests that the obvious fact that the issue in Assam is not about religious identity but ethnicity, has been beyond his comprehension.
It is only a matter of time before their wishful thinking that CAA will help them in the Bengal elections turns out to be a mirage, despite the pathetic performance of the Trinamool Congress till date. As that old proverb goes, “for want of a nail a kingdom was lost.”
Just as following the money trail helps catch fraudsters, the body count clearly points to those who were responsible for this conflagration. It is bound to haunt them for times to come, despite all denials. What it does also reveal is that the leadership that permitted such violence was utterly bereft of common sense. To initiate such attacks when President Trump was visiting, with the Western media being focussed on the country, shows a spectacular lack of foresight with regard to timing. More so, when the economy that is in the doldrums stares at a unique opportunity to turn things around because of Chinese manufacturing having been stymied by the effects of COVID19. But now the nation finds itself held hostage by the very violence that was permitted to be unleashed. Unfortunately, the impact of these riots is not restricted to lost economic opportunities only, as its reverberations have also been felt in the manner in which the international community has responded with outrage, especially our friends in West Asia.
Given the fact that over the last few years Modi had expended a fair amount of energy on improving and expanding ties with both Saudi Arabia and its allies, as well as with Iran and its friends, the violence has meant taking two steps backwards.
This attention to the region paid handsome dividends when Modi decided to act in Jammu and Kashmir to abrogate Article 370, in all but name. While Pakistan attempted to exert pressure in the international fora on the issue with the help of Malaysia and Turkey, its actions were largely unsuccessful because of the position taken by both Saudi Arabia and Iran.
However, the ongoing detentions in Jammu and Kashmir and the anti-CAA protests across the country finally forced Saudi Arabia to accede to calling a meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in April 2019, to discuss Kashmir and the CAA, much to the Modi Government’s discomfiture.
We really need not hold our breath over how the Saudis will react to these riots. In any case, we now have the Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, an extremely good friend of India, out rightly denouncing the violence by tweeting, “Iran condemns the wave of organised violence against Indian Muslims. For centuries, Iran has been a friend of India. We urge Indian authorities to ensure the well-being of all Indians and not let senseless thuggery prevail. The path forward lies in peaceful dialogue and rule of law.”
Strong words indeed and while the Government summoned the Iranian Ambassador Ali Chegeni and protested his Foreign Minister’s condemnation of the incident maintaining that it was an “internal matter”, the truth is that the Government finds itself on the back foot with the Foreign Minister becoming a laughing stock as he attempts to defend the indefensible.
Finally, leave alone our interests in West Asia, we seem to have made a mess of things closer home as the Bangladesh Government attempts to come to terms with the fallout of our intemperate actions. All that we now need is a Democrat in the White House and Modi’s cup of joy will overflow.
(Writer: Deepak Sinha ; Courtesy: The Pioneer)
Amit Shah continues to drive the CAA as a key campaign plank for the Bengal polls. What should Mamata do?
No matter what the results of the Delhi elections have been, no matter how people rejected the politics of polarisation and divisiveness, the BJP will not stop running with the flare gun. Even if it burns lives and sears memories, it will go ahead with its identity politics in the name of cleansing and securing the nation. If the promise of development was the access card for the 2014 mandate, May 2019 onwards the rationale is about why development is in ferment because of pollutants among people, because the nation is not secure from “virus” threats of the “alien” kind implanted many centuries ago. This justification works in core factories of the Sangh Parivar, one that has led Union Home Minister and party supremo Amit Shah to unfurl his campaign for the Bengal 2021 polls with a renewed emphasis on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The BJP hopes this will be a trumpcard for three reasons. First, it sharpens the polarity with its harshest critic on its identity and race-profiling policies, Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee. Second, Bengal has become a fertile ground for polarisation with the decimation of both the Left and the Congress as secular entities. It is home to about 27 per cent Muslims that congeal around Mamata and is a swirling petri dish of latent anxieties about Partition and infiltration. Third, Bengal represents the Leftist liberal way of life and, as another bank of the ideological divide, is one that the BJP wants to desperately breach. Emboldened by its performance in the Lok Sabha polls with 18 seats, the BJP is pitching CAA as its arrowhead, hoping to consolidate those numbers. Hindu refugees are a deciding factor in about 80 Assembly seats and spread around 50 others in the 294-member House. Besides, by just talking about the CAA, Shah is selling it as a virtuous proposition in itself, as opposed to Mamata’s linking it with census profiles under the National Population Register (NPR) and National Register of Citizens (NRC). Even at the national level, the BJP is using CAA to explain how it helps persecuted Hindi refugees and covering up what it implies, that it is exclusionary in violation of the Constitution. Or that Muslims left out for want of legacy data in census drives, intentionally or not, have no other way of proving citizenship or seeking redress. Mamata is the only politician to expose a sinister design behind the CAA-NRC combination that has put the BJP on the backfoot in a State that hasn’t taken to divisive politics, except in pockets dominated by migrant labourers or border districts. Hence, Shah’s fervent appeal to Hindu refugees like Matuas and Rajbanshis to vote for the BJP because by protesting against CAA, he argued, Mamata was eroding their settler status vis-a-vis Muslims. Matuas, who migrated from Bangladesh during Partition, matter in 74 seats. Since 2009, they have been with the Trinamool. But ever since the death of their leading matriarch, Boro Ma, who was close to Mamata, they are a house divided. And BJP has successfully used Mamata’s overt minority appeasement of the past to tell Matuas that they have been cheated.
Mamata, too, has wisened up after the Lok Sabha debacle. At her recent rallies in these constituencies, she has run down CAA as a needless exercise, saying she had regularised refugee colonies and that official recognition meant that all Hindu residents were genuine citizens. She, therefore, nullified the need to queue up for fresh documents under CAA. She is also making right noises about “extremists” among minorities and may have to follow through her promises of a Matua Welfare Board, dedicated colleges and a university. While the polarisation of the Hindu and Muslim vote had helped her at one time, the Trinamool chief, like many other Opposition leaders, has realised that the predominant Hindu sentiment is now a decisive factor in the country’s political eco-system. One that is not about winning over Muslim votes but about convincing Hindu voters that they are a priority. Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal also displayed signs of Hindu ritualism, which is the new normal, despite winning a mandate based on his performance. The BJP has successfully supplanted votebank politics with a consolidated Hindu appeasement. Mamata is a Kali bhakt herself and chooses to live her faith than sporting it for political reasons. That is the reason she played to the Muslims through visual rhetoric, landing herself in the BJP’s trap. The question is how reactively Hindu she will be in the light of the local body elections later this year? The bigger question is, can her all-pervasive crusader image afford it? But Didi has a pulse of her people and a personality cult that makes her almost a demi-god to the masses. For the first time, she can’t take that for granted.
(Courtesy: The Pioneer)
Honouring women scientists with 11 Chairs is good provided we find enough candidates to fill them
Not a single woman features in a quick search of India’s top 10 scientists. A name doesn’t even feature in GK quizzes. As per a report published by the World Economic Forum, only 14.3 per cent of science researchers in the country are women. In such a scenario, the Government’s decision to set up 11 Chairs in the name of eminent Indian women scientists in various fields “to inspire, encourage, empower women and give due recognition to young women researchers excelling in various fields” came as a breath of fresh air. For those who missed the news, the 11 eminent women to be so honoured are physicist Bibha Chowdhuri, mathematician Raman Parimala, botanist Janaki Ammal, organic scientist Darshan Ranganathan, cytogeneticist Archana Sharma, chemist Asima Chatterjee, anthropologist Iravati Karve, doctor Kadambini Ganguly, meteorologist Anna Mani, engineer Rajeshwari Chatterjee and biomedical researcher Kamal Ranadive. Even though some would term the move too little and too late, the fact remains that the only woman from India after whom a Chair has been set up till now is the late Mother Teresa. So this is a step in the right direction. Women constitute 35-40 per cent of the total enrollment in science programmes. But just a few of them go on to pursue scientific careers. Nobody asks why till the images of women scientists celebrating the launch of a mission are used to symbolise the great surge forward by them. Even after the film Mission Mangal, how many of us know about the real women portrayed in the film? Just the way most of us don’t watch women’s cricket or even know the names of the cricketers save for a few star players, we are not conditioned to celebrate women who break the glass/mud ceiling or their achievements. It is no wonder then that even in ISRO, which should promote a scientific temper and hence “never rely on pre -conceived notions/biases”, a little over eight per cent women work in its scientific and technical department. Since its emergence, not a single woman has ever headed the organisation.
The Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Agricultural Sciences have awarded only five per cent of their fellowships to women, a patronising and placatory soother really. But, given the dismal figures of women’s participation in different disciplines of science, will they find 11 women eminent enough to fill these Chairs? Only time will tell.
(Courtesy: The Pioneer)
Delhi may be picking up the pieces after a manic bout of violence but its children have been damaged forever
No matter how determinedly we pick up the pieces, we have failed our children by exposing them to Delhi’s worst communal riots in decades and numbing their potential forever. For all the happiness curriculum that has been the showpiece of the city’s schools as inculcating a holistic and value consciousness among them, it has taken mad fury and hate politics to demolish it in one go. We have ended up forcing a moral crisis upon them, one that we have implanted in their minds by attacking them in their homes, their schools and their playgrounds, stripping them of every comfort zone and emotion, leaving them unchaperoned and fearful in a world of adult mess. What do the visuals of the child, distraught and slumping over a father’s body, dead because he was hit by a wayward bullet, tell us? How do we tell students, who have grown up knowing that every school exam would take them closer to a better life, that they cannot attend school in the first place? Spare a thought for the boy who got hit by a stone while returning home after completing an exam, who doesn’t know when the next test schedule would be announced and finds it difficult to study in a home that is in sixes and sevens overnight. The violence outside scares him further into a ghetto of fear. Tuition and coaching classes aren’t safe, too, considering that a boy was shot at while returning from one at Jafrabad on February 25. He could have been saved but he did not get any medical aid or even an ambulance. Imagine the plight of board examinees, who are awaiting alternative dates and venues to clear the first crucial hurdle of student life, qualifying for a higher education. The Delhi High Court has asked the Government to sanitise convenient exam centres that aren’t too far away for students and announce new dates so that their anxieties are taken care of. Yet if the mangled fans and the trail of destruction at schools are any indication, then knowledge is a futile asset in a society which has found new qualifiers for a settled, peaceful life — religion, identity and conformity with a greater cause. Arun Modern Public School principal Jyoti Rani said that she had students of all communities. Now the riots have made them conscious of where they come from. Answer sheets of exams already conducted have been destroyed as have books and computers. Students had been locked up in another school, an inhuman confinement, like lambs to the slaughter. And when men in uniform, that could have been borrowed, stolen or even original, codify a simple citizenship test, on whether you can publicly sing the anthem or chant Vande Mataram or not, then you are telling the young to forget history lessons and learn the new safety bar codes. The divisive politics of the times have propagated a relearning of life as it should be and is turning our children into hunter-survivors than evolved humans. With families fleeing for good, some children will never return and will have to deal with displacement. The rioters have successfully created a deep disturbia to be inhabited by new citizens, who have already been infected and hardened at birth as children of conflict. That explains why so many teenagers were among the arsonists, carrying cricket bats and rods. When prejudice becomes political capital and children are denied their innocence, it is shuddering to think what we are bequeathing as civil society.
It takes no rocket science to understand how children and adolescents exposed to communal violence are deformed in the mind. Studies worldwide have found this group susceptible to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), insecurity, faithlessness, fear, withdrawal and denial, all manifested through physical symptoms like repeated bouts of headaches and stomach aches. With all that they knew gone, the dulling emptiness is often frighteningly filled by memories of the past that will seek closure and result in either revenge or retaliation. The worst injustice we do to children, therefore, is by not punishing the perpetrators of violence. While the Government has detained and demonised protesters and dissenters, there has been no outrage over or action taken against its sympathisers and loyalists, who unleash their worst selves knowing they have the insurance cover as ideological warriors. The dossiers of the marauders at Jamia Millia and Jawaharlal Nehru University are common knowledge. Even their faces are known. But they roam free. In the darkest hour of this city, happiness has lost. And childhood has died.
(Courtesy: The Pioneer)
The appearance of ‘blood snow’ in Antarctica may not be sinister. But it is another sign that the ice is melting
The sudden discovery of red-tinged ice around Ukraine’s Vernadsky Research Base might have puzzled any casual observer but it is nothing more than an appearance of a select species of algae that thrive in near-freezing zones. So those, who see the emergence of this ice as a sign from God or something like that, can rest easy. However, this can actually be seen as a sign from earth. While the particular algae thrives in near-freezing conditions, there is a certain amount of warmth that it needs to survive. This is why climate scientists are getting concerned. Is the appearance of the red-ice yet another sign from the earth that climatic conditions are getting ever warmer and that we might be slipping past a point of no return? Facts are clear, the pack ice in the Antarctic is melting, with swathes of glaciers larger than the State of Goa breaking off. There are fears about the long-term survivability of the Emperor penguin, the isolated continent’s most iconic creature. Up at the North Pole, the disappearance of the polar bear has already become a potent symbol of the rapidly declining sea ice in the Arctic. The last few years have seen record-breaking temperatures. Previous three Januaries have consecutively broken records for the warmest month ever. The wildfires in Australia devastated that part of the planet. Coral reefs are dying, salinity in groundwater near coastal areas is rising as sea levels slowly but surely keep on climbing. The climate apocalypse may not be upon us as yet but we are heading there in a runaway train. And unlike the movie, there are no heroes who can stop it because our politicians are jetting around the world to bicker about who sacrifices how much and who pays how much.
The human race has always risen up to such challenges in the past. We managed to send a man to another celestial object. We can now fly half-way around the world in a single hop. And we have successfully eliminated killer diseases such as smallpox. But currently, we have a critical problem and we must step up to the plate and solve it. Time is running out. Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg is right: We cannot mess up the planet for future generations.
(Courtesy: The Pioneer)
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