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Gift a Reading Life to a Child this Festive Season

What is a good time to introduce a child to books? Different parents may have different answers. I found the right age to be six months. For both my children, I had cloth, plastic or board books about animals or very simple stories with repetitive words. I would show them the books, and slowly read them out. At that stage they were mostly interested in consuming the books rather literally, trying to taste them with their mouths. By eight months though, they would be eager for the books, actually picking up the ones they liked. By three years, my daughter was reading simple books to my infant son, who would gurgle happily as though he understood it all. It was their first bonding experience.

We had the same experience with my grandson. By six months, he was being read to at sleep time, a pile of books kept ready next to the bed. His favourites were the four board books published by Tulika Books, including Dosa Amma Dosa. He wouldn’t wait even for a few seconds between books and would begin a mock cry as the last page of a book was read, as if to say, “Hurry up, I want the next one.”

These are common experiences in many households around the world. Yet far too many families simply do not have access to good books for their children.

There are many reasons for this. Parents may not be readers themselves, for example. This would influence whether or not their children have books. Yet many parents who are not avid readers still want their children to read. They understand the importance of having good stories that unleash a child’s imagination, improve her vocabulary and of course, also keep her out of one’s hair for a bit!

Yet books can be expensive, or impossible to find, or simply not be in the right language. Or they can be alienating, with stories and characters that are too unfamiliar, or culturally unapproachable.

Luckily, the past two decades have been extremely good for children’s publishing in India. While the National Book Trust and the Children’s Book Trust have been publishing good, affordable books for decades, many publishers have recently come into play, offering attractive books in several languages for India’s 300 million children.

Pratham Books has been part of this journey. I co-founded Pratham Books in 2004 with the mission “A Book in Every Child’s Hand”. It was a non-profit born from the Pratham network which had helped thousands of children to become fluent readers. But there simply were not enough books in enough languages that were accessible and affordable, for them to practise their new skill. So we decided to become publishers ourselves. We saw it as a societal mission, involving samaaj, bazaar and sarkaar, to influence the world of children’s publishing, and to democratise the joy of reading.

Fortunately, we succeeded in quickly becoming India’s largest children’s publisher, innovating a new model to publish books simultaneously in up to 12 languages. We inched closer to our goals in 2008, when we put up our books online, under an open source creative commons licence. Suddenly, lots of books in many languages became available to parents, children and teachers, completely free. Today, the leadership team has taken this idea even further via our open source digital repository, StoryWeaver, with incredibly diverse books in dozens of languages, all free for children anytime, anywhere in the world.

What a marvellous opportunity this is for parents and teachers to introduce children to all kinds of books, without worrying about cost. Thanks to many new publishers as well as non-profits such as Room to Read and the International Children’s Digital Library, Indian parents now have many reading experiences to choose from. They are empowered to give their children perhaps the best gift of all—a reading life.

There is much evidence to bulwark this statement. Research has linked all manner of benefits in life to reading.

A 2018 Ohio State University study looked at the relationship between children’s vocabulary and reading in children younger than five years. The study found that children who are never read to, hear about 5,000 words, whereas those whose parents read them one book a day hear about 300,000 words before entering kindergarten.

Similarly, research has shown that parent-child book reading (PCBR) is effective at improving young children’s language, literacy, brain and cognitive development. Reading to children during early childhood is also a strong predictor of children’s brain development and performance in school.

There is one more study I can personally vouch for. Caitlin Canfield of Boston University reports that shared book reading at six months is associated with increases in observed and reported parental warmth and decreases in parenting stress at 18 months. These findings suggest that early parent-child book reading can have positive collateral impacts on the parent-child relationship over time. I could go on citing research. But the important takeaway is that there is no better time for parents to encourage reading in very young children.

Please buy books if you can. Download free books if you can’t. Leave books lying around the house; get siblings to read to younger kids; ask children about the stories they read. Get as many kinds of books as you possibly can—books of different cultures, in different languages, with a range of illustration styles. In the festival season, let children feast on books.

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Livemint

पक्षियों और मनुष्यों का आपसी संबंध

पूरी दुनिया को प्रभावित करने वाले वर्तमान कोरोना वायरस संक्रमण ने हम सभी को इस बात का एहसास करा दिया है कि समय-समय पर जानवरों की बीमारियां मनुष्यों में प्रवेश कर भयंकर महामारी का रूप ले सकती हैं। ऐसी स्थिति में गिद्धों की बहुत जरूरी भूमिका है। वे मृत जानवरों के अवशेषों का जल्द निपटारा कर कीटाणुओं के इंसानी संपर्क की संभावना को कम करते हैं।

पर्यावरण में फैले जहरीले रसायन की वजह से हमारे गिद्ध दोहरे संकट का सामना कर रहे हैं। हमें मिलकर यह प्रयत्न करना होगा कि गिद्ध जल्द से जल्द विलुप्तप्राय श्रेणी से उभर कर दोबारा प्रचुर हों।

भारत में पक्षी सभी जगह पाए जाते हैं। हमारा देश परिंदों की सर्वाधिक विविधता वाले मुल्कों में गिना जाता है।

जहां पूरे विश्व में पक्षियों की करीब 10000 किस्में हैं। इनका एक बड़ा भाग यानि लगभग 1300 प्रजातियां या तो भारतीय उपमहाद्वीप की स्थायी निवासी हैं या फिर यहां अपने जीवन चक्र का एक बड़ा भाग बिताती हैं। प्रवासी पक्षी साइबेरिया जैसे दूर- दराज क्षेत्रों से भारत आते हैं और वे यहां से अफ्रीका तक भी जा सकते हैं।

कौन मानेगा कि नन्ही सी चिड़िया इतने बड़े कारनामे कर सकती हैं। इन्हीं कारणों से इन अद्भुत प्राणियों पर शोध और उनके संरक्षण के लिए हमारा देश एक विशेष भूमिका निभाता है। पक्षियों के बारे में वैज्ञानिक जितना कुछ समझ पाए हैं उससे कहीं ज्यादा अभी भी जानना बाकी है।

मसलन प्रवासी पक्षी बिना रास्ता भटके हजारों मील लंबा सफर कैसे तय कर लेते हैं या फिर परिंदों के संगीत की बारीकियों के पीछे क्या राज छिपे हैं। पिछले कुछ दशकों में पक्षियों की आवाज पर हुए अध्ययन से हमें कई बातें पता लगी हैं।

अक्सर पक्षी हमें दिखाई देने से पहले सुनाई दे जाते हैं। हमें लुभाने वाले मधुर गीत आमतौर पर नर पक्षियों द्वारा प्रजनन के मौसम में गाए जाते हैं। इन गीतों की अवधि कई मिनटों की हो सकती है और अक्सर ये अनेकों बार दोहराए जाते हैं।

गीत के अलावा पक्षी अन्य प्रकार की ध्वनि का भी प्रयोग करते हैं जिसका उद्देश्य झुंड के अन्य सदस्यों से संपर्क करना या खतरे का संकेत देना हो सकता है। शोधकर्ताओं ने यह भी पाया कि ट्रैफिक का बढ़ता शोर पक्षियों की बोली को भी प्रभावित कर रहा है।

प्रकृति के पारिस्थितिक तंत्र को कायम रखने में पक्षियों की महत्वपूर्ण भूमिका है। वे पेड़ पौधों के परागण और उनके बीजों का प्रसार भी करते ही हैं। इसके अलावा हमारी लोककथाएं धार्मिक ग्रंथों और संगीत व अन्य कलाओं में परिंदों की खास जगह है।

Amarj Ujala

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‘महिलाओं के साथ पुरुषों में भी आत्मविश्वास जगाना होगा हमें’

हाल ही मैकिंजी ग्लोबल इंस्टीट्यूट की एक रिपोर्ट आई थी, जिसके मुताबिक महिलाओं को कोविड-19 से जुड़ी आर्थिक और सामाजिक समस्याओं का सामना सबसे ज्यादा करना पड़ा है। उसकी वजह यही है कि वे लैंगिक भेदभाव का शिकार सबसे ज्यादा होती हैं लेकिन लैंगिक भेदभाव ने कोविड से जन्म नहीं लिया है।

यह परिस्थिति इसलिए है कि आज भारत के 20 करोड़ नौजवान आजाद तो हैं लेकिन उनमें से अधिकतर अपने भविष्य को लेकर चिंतित हैं। ज्यादातर संपूर्ण रूप से शिक्षित नहीं हैं। उनके पास रोजगार के सीमित संसाधन हैं और इन कठिनाइयों का सामना करने के लिए वे किसी सहारे की तलाश में हैं। दुर्भाग्य से, इन सब चीजों की कुंठा ये नौजवान कभी-कभी स्त्रियों पर निकाल देते हैं। यदि हम चाहते हैं कि पुरुष अपनी समस्याओं का सामना कर पाएं, तो पहले उनकी समस्याओं को गहराई से समझना होगा।

हम पुरुषों पर अपने बहुत सारे विचार थोप देते हैं, जैसे कि उन्हें मजबूत होना होगा, कमाने वाला बनना होगा और किसी भी हाल में सफल होना होगा। छुटपन से ही, हम लड़कों को कहते हैं कि रोना लड़कियों का काम है। जब वो थोड़ा बड़े होते हैं, वो सुनते हैं कि मर्द को दर्द नहीं होता। उनकी मनोस्थिति से उनके घर पर कोई वाकिफ नहीं होता। उन्हें अपने साथियों के सामने अपनी मर्दाना छवि प्रस्तुत करनी होती है और सब कुछ ठीक होने का दिखावा करना पड़ता है। इन सब चीजों का किशोरों के विकास पर हानिकारक प्रभाव पड़ता है।

अगर हम एक अच्छा समाज और समृद्ध देश चाहते हैं, तो हमें पहले इन 20 करोड़ नागरिकों की जरूरतों पर ध्यान देना होगा। उन्हें भी सुने जाने का, देखभाल का, शिक्षित और सशक्त होने का पूरा हक है। लड़कों के लिए सकारात्मक रोल मॉडल्स होने चाहिए औऱ उनके पास खुद को व्यक्त करने का विकल्प होना चाहिए। क्या नागरिक सामाजिक संगठन एक ऐसा सुरक्षित मॉडल बना सकते हैं, जहां लड़के बिना हिचकिचाए एक-दूसरे से बात कर सकें, अपनी परेशानी साझा कर सकें? जैसे महिलाओं के पास आज स्वयं सहायता समूह होते हैं। एक संतुलित समाज के लिए हमें महिलाओं के साथ-साथ पुरुषों के आत्मविश्वास को उभारना होगा।

इसके मायने यह नहीं है कि हम महिलाओं के सशक्तीकरण को लेकर किए जा रहे कार्यों को कमतर आंके या उन्हें रोक दें। यह भी उतना ही जरूरी है और जारी रहना चाहिए लेकिन इसके साथ महिलाओं के सशक्तीकरण के लिए किशोरों और युवाओं का सशक्तीकरण करना क्यों आवश्यक है, इसे एक उदाहरण से समझते हैं। आपने एक महिला को सशक्त कर दिया लेकिन शादी होकर वो एक ऐसे परिवार में जाती है, जहां पुरुष दकियानूसी सोच रखते हैं, तो सोचिए क्या होता है?

ऐसे में उस महिला के पास दो ही रास्ते रह जाते हैं, पहला वह विद्रोह कर दे या शायद वह भी अपनी आधुनिक सोच को पीछे छोड़ दे। दोनों ही स्थितियां घातक हो सकती हैं। सोचिए, अगर उस घर के पुरुष सदस्यों का आत्मविश्वास ऊंचा हो और वे प्रगतिशील सोच रखते हों तो दोनों मिलकर परिवार का कितना भला कर सकते हैं।

मैं कुछ दिलचस्प संस्थाओं के साथ इस विषय पर काम कर रही हूं और चाहती हूं कि प्रत्येक घर इस काम में सहयोग करे। एक ऐसे देश में, जहां की आबादी का 50 प्रतिशत से ज्यादा हिस्सा नौजवान हैं, हमें इस विषय को गति देने की जरूरत है। हर घर में चर्चा होनी चाहिए कि महिला और पुरुष, दोनों को अपनी मानवीय क्षमता हासिल करनी है तो घर में किस प्रकार का वातावरण होना चाहिए?

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Patrika

Daan Utsav: Investing For A Better ‘Samaaj’

From the beginning of October and through the end of December, our minds are more attuned to giving and sharing. The giving season starts with Gandhi’s birthday and goes on well past Christmas. In between, there are many festivals of sharing, and gratitude, including Dassera and Diwali.India’s Daan Utsav is well-timed to enhance the feeling of fellowship and to encourage people to open up their hearts, minds, and pockets.

This year, the pandemic gives us even more reason to share the burdens of others, and to practice kindness to strangers. We have learned in these past few months what the state and the markets can and cannot do for us. We have also learned what the samaaj or society can do. We have seen generosity pouring out across the country; we have seen a rise in the philanthropy of ordinary citizens, both in terms of their time and money. We have seen the civil society sector, and the voluntary sector, rise up to stem the worst of the suffering.

This is a beacon of hope in these bleak times. It is the signal in the midst of all the noise. It tells us that when people engage in concerted action to help others, then we are on a strong foundation to nurture a society that all of us, not just some of us, would like to live in and belong to. I have personally always structured my philanthropy around this simple idea. If we can continue to build a good, resilient samaaj, which derives its energy from a moral leadership; which is inspired by the interconnectedness of our fates; and which is driven to co-create positive change, then we can face any future with the optimism that is unique to our human species.

So how do I help this idea along? Luckily, there are hundreds of organisations in India that are trying to do something similar: they want to help people become part of the solution rather than remain part of the problem. They want to unleash innovation, find change-makers, and support them to become leaders and institution builders. They want people to engage as citizens, especially at their local level and figure out how to come together to resolve societal issues. These cover a wide spectrum from water, health, education, livelihoods, public infrastructure, environment, and also issues of access and voice.

With my amazing team’s help, I try to find and support ideas, individuals, and institutions that resonate with the vision of building a strong samaaj, a good samaaj, through personal action. We call this portfolio – Active Citizenship. Citizenship is typically seen through the lens of voting during elections, making claims of the state, and sometimes of active resistance.

But there is ample space for deepening this idea of citizenship. Here’s just one example. We are a young nation coming of age in a digital era. This can upend the traditional imagination of citizenship and citizens’ engagement. Emerging digital technologies, now widely adopted around the world, increase the possibility and space for participation. They can allow you to better understand your community’s issues but also your own rights and duties. They can help find allies outside one’s narrow circles. They can increase the discovery of other people’s solutions.

Luckily, India’s voluntary sector is just beginning to tap into this potential. There are many initiatives, both urban and rural, rising up from the samaaj, to expand citizen participation. There are instances of new, diverse institutions of the people – from neighbourhood societies to digital, issue-based affinity groups.

I have been able to support about a dozen wonderful organisations, most led by young, dynamic leaders. Organisations like India Rising Trust and Reap Benefit work to build more opportunities for civic engagement at scale, to solve hyper-local problems. Jhatkaa works to mobilise citizens around issues and help them take action. Other grantees work to reduce the friction between the citizen and the state. Civis is a platform that helps citizens understand and give feedback on drafts of legislation and government policies. Nyaaya works on the other side, helping citizens understand laws and regulations. Socratus Foundation for Collective Wisdom looks to understand wicked problems and bring all stakeholders together through a deliberative, outcome-oriented process.

I find great inspiration from the work of these leaders and institutions, no matter their size. I do believe that this space needs to be better seeded with magnanimous philanthropic capital. I hope much of it will come from small givers giving big. I hope some of it will come from big givers giving big. During and beyond Daan Utsav, we must support organisations that activate people to become better citizens – first for themselves, and then for society. So that we can all thrive in a better samaaj.

Bloomberg Quint

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Distributing the Ability to Solve

Water is the key sector when it comes to climate change related challenges. It is ever changing and complex, with equity, quality and quantity issues rising routinely. Usually, water issues have to be dealt with locally, in context. For example, even if you planned to bring water from a faraway river to a city, it is the city planners who need to engage with how equitably that new water will be used; they will have to design to carry away excess flow and sewage and so on.

For that, you need local talent. You need communities to come together along with trained professionals and local leaders to understand how THEIR water behaves, both above and below the ground. They must be able to find granular solutions that accommodate upstream and downstream solutions created by others. For example, to manage groundwater sustainably in one panchayat, you need to find out if you are sharing an aquifer with another panchayat, and co-create an equitable system.

This means that we cannot push for one size fits all solutions. Instead, we must design capacity building in order to distribute the ability to solve. A technology backbone, which is unified but not uniform, which allows local, contextual problem solving at scale is the need of the hour. Our teams at Societal Platform.org and Arghyam are beginning to build just such an open, digital, shared public infrastructure.

Nurturing community capacity and resilience in the face of climate change is critical. In the water sector, for life and livelihoods, it is especially so.

[Written for the September 2020 issue of the ICC Newsletter]

How to Leverage Trained Water Professionals

If we have to effectively tackle the current and future pandemics, and collectively address climate-related emergencies, flexibility, adaptation and resilience are not just words. They are critical skills that communities must build quickly. The water sector is a good place to innovate in service of this imperative

Water is a key sector to overcome public health, livelihood and climate crisis-related challenges. To create lasting water security, the State has to actively engage with empowered local communities and innovative markets to enable the improved flexibility, adaptation and resilience that the sector demands.

Water projects can be imagined at any scale, but contextual, local responses remain critical. For example, even if you planned to bring water from a faraway river to a city, you would need to understand how that new water will be used, design for excess flow and for sewage to be carried away.

For this, you need trained professionals, local leaders and citizen volunteers who understand how local water behaves, both above and below the ground. They must be able to find granular solutions that accommodate upstream and downstream solutions created by others.

Over the decades, successive governments have become more and more ambitious about scaling up water infrastructure. The ministry of jal shakti (MoJS) has budgeted ₹30,000 crore for water-related works in this year alone. And the Jal Jeevan Mission hopes to cover all the 145 million unreached rural households with Functional Household Tap Connections (FHTC) by 2024. The Atal Bhujal Yojana aims to improve groundwater management in 8,353 gram panchayats in five years.

Tens of thousands of people across the country have been trained for such programmes. Across the country, they may be called bhujal jankars, dhara sevaks, or jal surakshaks. This excludes all the rojgar sahayaks, krishi mitras and swacchata doots who work in allied areas.

Yet, if we had to map where all these trained people are, we would be in a fix. Nobody has a comprehensive idea of how effective the training has been either. What has been the impact on the livelihoods of these trainees? How has the knowledge transferred taken root in communities for ongoing problem-solving? There is no system to understand the latent, dispersed knowledge about water. There is a societal memory loss.

These millions of skilled workers are hard to discover, but even if we could find them, there would be little trust in their prior knowledge and experience. So each training effort starts afresh, rarely building on the foundations that exist.

How can we change this?

What if we could “light up” all the people who have already undergone training in a way that programme leaders and also communities know who and where they are; what they already know; and what they have already done? Everybody would then have the ability to seek out exactly the people they need. Equally, trained practitioners would have the agency to access this information for their own purposes.

Such discoverable, certifiable water leaders could be critical to create verifiable impact at scale in any water initiative. If done right, we believe that this can contribute to half a million jobs across the country.

As we make skilled people more visible, what if we also digitally map and attest resources that they engage with, use and produce? There could be electronic registries of master trainers, teaching modules, water security plans, and water assets such as wells and farm ponds. Capacity-building budgets could then be redirected to fill only the gaps in training. The money saved could be used to pay for services delivered. This would incentivise people to remain in the sector, and both receive and provide value across time.

Arghyam has recently funded the deployment of one simple digital attestation service, to begin with, in a few large programmes being implemented in some states together with non-governmental organisations. The pandemic has forced some physical training to go virtual. Interestingly, people are now experiencing the convenience of any time, anywhere, atomised learning sessions with expert trainers. Through this process, the trainees receive a digital attestation that they can own, access and share to leverage new opportunities. Our efforts are aligned with the tech design and the principles behind capacity-building platforms adopted by the government such as Diksha, ECHO and iGot.

The early results are promising. Open data sets and a shared digital infrastructure can be very powerful in restoring the agency of samaaj through community institutions, of sarkaar through local government, and of bazaar through new livelihoods for skilled workers.

Hindustan Times

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Kabini:A Heritage to Conserve

The Japanese have long propagated the joys of Shinrin-Yoku, or ‘forest bathing’, as a meditative practice, especially for urbanites. I was very lucky to spend a few days in the Kabini forest, just before the parks closed. Though partially work-related, it was my most healing experience since the pandemic emerged.

The forest was lush green, and the dreaded lantana weed was flowering profusely, adding a blaze of joyous colour through the occasional shafts of sunlight that pierced the rain-drenched canopy. The lantana’s beauty let us forget, for the moment, just how much it has invaded territory and crowded out other species of flora.

We were incredibly lucky with sightings, especially because we saw five bears in a high-decibel interaction full of tree-rubbing and running! There were hunts, and kills, and wounded tigers. There was a face-off between a herd of mighty gaur and a young leopard. There were majestic elephants, some familiar, some new.

For me, Kabini is a very special place. It defies many notions of wilderness. It challenges ideologies of pristine perfection. While it is part of a continuous protected area of 2,600 sq. km., the Kabini forest is as much man-made as it is wild. For one, it is adjacent to the backwaters of the approximately 13,000 sq. ft. reservoir built in 1974. With dead tree stumps littering the waterscape, and remnants of shrines surfacing in the summer, it is a constant reminder of the true cost of the submergence. Secondly, the natural dry deciduous and moist deciduous forest is dotted with teak and eucalyptus plantations, an old practice that the Forest Department has now mercifully abandoned. Add to that the invasive species of lantana, cassia and parthenium, among others, and you might be fooled into thinking there is little biodiversity in the Kabini forest.

You would be wonderfully wrong. Kabini is thriving with flora, and especially fauna. It is a haven for big cats, elephants, gaur and, of course, the ubiquitous langurs and chital deer, along with innumerable other species. Kabini nurtures sustainable livelihoods for its forest-dwelling tribal communities, like the Jenu Kurubas, who live there despite all odds. Though less than 10% of it is open to the public, it attracts adoring tourists from around the country and the world, creating a thriving local economy. There is much work ahead to realise Kabini’s exceptional potential for responsible eco-tourism, and tourists from Karnataka can lead the way.

The Kabini safari has surfaced at the top of people’s bucket lists partly because it is home to the world’s most famous living black panther. Because of his beautiful coat, he is simply referred to as ‘kariya’. This black panther is as elusive as he is magnificent, and I belong to the humbled hordes that have not seen him despite several attempts.

Chronicling this wonderful jewel of a forest is another tribe — that of documentary filmmakers and wildlife photographers. In Karnataka, and especially in Bengaluru, we are lucky to have several extremely talented, globally renowned lensmen, who have spent months and years patiently capturing the beauty, fragility, resilience and danger in the Kabini forest.

Just recently, three of them have released documentaries that include many stars from Kabini. Sandesh Kadur of Felis has filmed Wildcats of India and India’s Wild Leopards (Disclosure: I am part of the team). Amoghvarsha and Kalyan Varma created Wild Karnataka in partnership with the government. And then there is Shaaz Bin Jung’s ode to the “The Real Black Panther.”

I have missed others too numerous to name, and we should support and celebrate them all. Some reveal the histories and predicaments of forest-dwellers, the expert stewards of the jungle. Others let the world get a peek into the rich natural treasures of our state. They exhort us to realise that even if we cannot witness these wonders ourselves, it is enough that they exist and thrive. These photos and documentaries awaken us to our intergenerational responsibilities as well – that we all have a role to play to protect and enrich our bio heritage.

Many of these intrepid photographers spend hundreds of hours in dangerous, rough conditions to capture just the right light, angle or behaviours in the jungle. The most unexpected and dangerous encounters are usually with tuskers, who can flip over a jeep with one angry swipe. And sometimes do. There are unpredictable bears, tigers and leopards as well. One mistake could cost you your life.

These risks are ever-present for forest guards and officers. Every day, they must walk through the jungle, be it in sweltering heat or pouring rain, to keep fires and poachers at bay, among other gruelling tasks. Admittedly, they can be overzealous against locals, and there is a robust dispute about whether some fires should be allowed to regenerate the forest floor. Yet, the Forest Department has played a critical role in Karnataka topping the list of states that showed significant gain in forest cover, as per the recently released India State of Forest Report (ISFR) 2019.

That is good news for these terrible times. We cannot go at will into the forest anytime soon. But we can invite Kabini into our homes through its many documentaries. Our virtual, vicarious Shinrin-Yoku could be a rehearsal, so that we can later return, not just as tourists, but also as trustees of this remarkable forest.

Deccan Herald

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Digitisation Makes Welfare Schemes Possible. It can be Discontinued When Pandemic Ends

In a welcome move, the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana, which targets 800 million people for free rations through the Public Distribution System, has been extended until November. As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, a massive effort is being undertaken to minimise the economic impact on our most vulnerable population. Schemes such as Jan Dhan, PM Kisan and PM Ujjwala aim to transfer Rs 532 billon to 420 million people. These efforts have proved to be reasonably successful. With this success, and with so many people now in danger of slipping into poverty, it is imperative to create a regime, even with a sunset clause, of universal benefits.

We have commissioned a multi-round survey of 47,000 households, mostly below poverty line, across 15 states. The surveys explore whether relief schemes have been working as intended, who is missing out and what more is needed. Our data revealed the immediate, and likely long-lasting ,nature of the economic shock. Primary income earners in two-thirds of the households have lost their jobs or wages. The average family has lost more than 60 per cent of its pre-crisis income and is now making just Rs 4,000/month.

Twenty four per cent of low-income households have run out of money and supplies. Forty per cent families are in debt. In some states, as many as one in five primary income earners do not expect to find work in the near future.

In this dire situation, government relief has been an important lifeline. Ninety four per cent of eligible families had received extra PDS rations by end May and 80 per cent had received cash entitlements averaging close to Rs 2,000. Our data also suggests that about five million households could have both run out of savings and not received any cash transfer from the government.

We estimate that over 55 million workers, who were earning above poverty line incomes, have lost jobs, temporarily or permanently, during this crisis. Many such workers would not show up as eligible under standard lists. The scale of current urban-rural migration makes this challenge worse. If we shift to universal benefits we can minimise a situation where millions miss out on critical relief. Whoever turns up to a ration shop needing free/subsidised rations should be able to get it. People should be able to sign up for a cash relief transfer with minimal paperwork. The good news is that now it’s more possible than ever before.

Digitisation has created efficiencies that can be leveraged to expand the welfare net. The vast amount of leakage in the welfare system was not due to fraud by citizens, but because of fraud and inefficiency by those delivering the benefits. Successive governments should be applauded for the steep reduction in such problems. Implementing the JAM trinity has helped lower transaction costs, reduce leakages and reach beneficiaries quickly. Aadhaar can prevent identity frauds. Our sophisticated payments infrastructure enables direct benefit transfers. The speed at which MGNREGA payments are made to beneficiaries has improved more than threefold since 2015. Pilots for the One Nation-One Ration Card project have shown that inter-state portability is possible.

Several states have experimented with a more universal approach with positive results. Tamil Nadu’s PDS system has strong coverage and equitable pricing, delivering 20 kg of rice at Rs 1/kg every month to all families who need it. More recently, Chhattisgarh universalised PDS to provide for their returning migrants with encouraging results. MGNREGA has always been open to all rural households.

We could factor in voluntary opt-outs. The “Give up LPG Subsidy” campaign offers many lessons. By highlighting the real intended targets of the relief effort and the adverse impact on millions of people, others could be inspired to give up their own benefits. This could reduce some of the burden on the exchequer.

We are in a marathon when it comes to this pandemic. People will need support for longer than anticipated. During a crisis, the emphasis needs to be on including those who really deserve the help rather than making sure the wrong people are kept out. It’s precisely because the current systems are largely working that we can contemplate a universal benefits approach. This approach can be discontinued once the pandemic ends and the economic shocks abate. The PM’s recent announcement is a strong starting point.

Let’s extend that further by making it universal — free basic rations to whoever claims to need it.

Indian Express

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Democracy’s Handmaiden: Humour. In today’s India, we need more of a funny bone in our public life

In these dark times, there is no harm in easing up with some sharp humour. Like the coronavirus, humour is infectious, but can spread much needed joy. The world over, social media is lighting up with witty memes around the pandemic. Bumbling politicians have been prime targets, and especially President Donald Trump. “Calm down, everyone,” reads one meme, “A six-time bankrupted reality TV star is handling the situation.”

But that is the US, where comics can get away with a lot, without political backlash. Where in fact, politicians themselves can create the humour.

In 1985, I was lucky to be a reporter in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where former President Gerald Ford hosted a three-day conference on ‘Humour in the Presidency’. Ironically, Ford was hardly known for his sense of humour. When asked why he had hosted a conference where he himself might be the butt of many jokes, he disarmingly said, “I thought a look at the lighter side of politics may help us to realise that perhaps sometimes we take ourselves too seriously.”

This is the crux of the issue, then and now. When politicians take themselves too seriously, and when the public takes its politicians too seriously, unintended yet harmful consequences can emerge. Imagine if more people had laughed outright at the self-important demagogues of the past century. Could that have prevented some from taking their own absurd and dangerous ideas to fruition? We don’t know; but it is worth thinking about.

The Ford conference was a refreshing change after the humourless years of the Nixon presidency, where America had perforce to look into the dark soul of its politics and its president. There was a steady stream of jokes about US presidents, with Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and John F Kennedy as the favourites. Conference speakers remarked on how the smarter politicians would make self-deprecating jokes before others could mock them.

President Kennedy had the best flair for it. Criticised for bankrolling his campaign with his father’s money – he retorted, “I just had a telegram from my famous Daddy: Dear Jack. Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I am going to pay for a landslide.” Similarly, Reagan was very skilled at winning over crowds and critics with his jocular manner. “I’m not worried about the deficit,” he famously said. “It’s big enough to take care of itself.”

In today’s India, perhaps we need more humour in our public life. Are our politicians able to joke about themselves? Or do they mainly use ridicule? And what about us? Do we lack a political funny bone?

India has had a long, strong history of political satire. The kingdoms of India appointed court jesters or vidushaks to lighten the atmosphere. They would take pot shots at the public, at visitors and sometimes at the king himself. Remember the stories of Tenali Ramkrishna, Birbal, Gopal Bhar and Gonu Jha? Their job was to bring wit and humour to expose oppression and injustice.

Through India’s freedom struggle too, there were many lighter moments. Sarojini Naidu’s descriptions of the Mahatma as Mickey Mouse and Little Man did not anger him. Instead, he signed off as Little Man in his letters to her.

Today, too, we have a burgeoning number of stand-up comics, especially in Hindi. At increasing personal risk, they take sure-fire aim at our politicians, who manage routinely to generate great material for satire. But in India, this is still a cottage enterprise compared to the full-fledged industry in the US, now in full spate through Trump’s term.

Arguably, today, there has been a chilling effect on our humorists. Cases of sedition have been initiated on cartoonists and others, for criticising the government or the ruling party. Intensive trolling and threats have inundated those who raise important issues in jest. Certainly, today’s humorists have to be braver than their profession should require them to be.

As citizens, we should renew our understanding of why political humour is critical to society. Historically, too much power and secrecy has often coincided with a lack of tolerance for satire, leading to a breakdown of trust between the public and the government. Humour can provide a safety valve when social pressures are building. It can inform us about social relations.

Concentrated power without feedback loops is dangerous. We all know the story of the emperor’s new clothes. When they mock elites, humorists can hold leaders accountable. They create safe space for us to think through things, to question our beliefs and to change our minds.

That’s precisely why governments and politicians don’t like humorists. They hate to be challenged. But it is also why the samaj must support humorists. We need mirrors held up to us; we need new ways to refract reality.

Of course, there is a Laxman Rekha that is crossed at great peril to both humorists and society. Comics need to practice both restraint and sophistication. They need sensitivity to local histories and culture. But offence is taken, not given. Even if some humour makes people in power uncomfortable, it may simply be because the truth sometimes hurts.

The best example often comes from the top. At the White House, when Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin Roosevelt was asked where the President was, she said, “Where the laughter is.”

Would that we could say the same, here, and soon.

Times of India

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Lockdown: Online Classes – Let’s Plan, not Ban

In its wisdom, the state has recently banned all online teaching for classes 1-5. The state comes with honourable intentions. The arguments being made are on the grounds of equity, public health and learning.

The equity argument is that online learning necessitates reliable access to digital devices, which not all children have. The health argument is about the ill-effects of screen time on young children’s eyes, and more importantly on their minds and behaviours. The third argument is that young children do not learn well online. They need physical, hands-on learning opportunity in a social setting.

A fourth concern comes from parents, and teachers. Parents do not want to pay extra for poor imitations of physical classes. It is also hard to supervise children online, especially with more work at home. For teachers, it is tough in online classrooms to gauge the learning of distant and distracted children.

All these arguments have merit. In a perfect world, we would want universal access to the internet, and for young children to be protected from damage to their eyes or minds. We would want them to be in caring, engaging classroom settings and learning well, too.

Unfortunately, we were not in such a world before the pandemic and we are certainly not in such a world now.

Through the 20 years of my deep engagement with Pratham, Akshara Foundation, Pratham Books and EkStep, which have together worked with tens of millions of young children, there has never been a time when physical proximity itself was considered dangerous for children.

In the short term, we do not know when schools can reopen. In the long term, we do not know when the next pandemic or climate change related event would create the next disruption to the school system. Yet, data from around the world suggests that such events are more probable now than even 10 years ago.

Together, we now need to think ahead and plan for an uncertain future. We must build a flexible and resilient learning infrastructure. We must help teachers, parents and learners to acquire new skills to keep children learning, no matter what.

We need plans, not bans. For the state, bans are the easiest exercise of its authority. But it is a blunt, ineffective instrument. This ban will not prevent the elite from giving their children the best online resources the world can offer. It will not prevent any children from accessing too much screen entertainment.

For months now, young children have had to limit their social interactions, especially in urban areas. They cannot go to school; meet their teachers or their friends. They cannot go into parks and playgrounds. Now, the state government has banned them from resuming their social interaction online, which was better than no interaction at all.

Instead, the government could post guidelines on the size of the online class, the amount of screen time children should have, and the preferred methodologies for making the screen time engaging. Online classes need not count for academic grades; they could be voluntary, not mandatory. There are many possibilities for positive regulation.

We cannot level down in the name of equality. We must level up. Perfection will not happen overnight. But the goal must be a progressive realisation of universal access. Let’s spread abundance, not scarcity.

Governments are already improving access through television and radio. As they continue to expand broadband access, online teaching can also be re-imagined. One private school has broken up its online training into smaller, cohesive groups at the parents’ mutual convenience. States like Himachal Pradesh have tried to include those without connectivity by sending students weekly physical copies of online course material. In Jharkhand, government schoolteachers make house visits to demonstrate the use of digital links and content.

This crisis can be a genuine opportunity. It is inevitable that we will need digital technologies to re-imagine learning beyond physical schooling. Instead of clamping down completely on online classes for young children, can we allow the flourishing of experimentation and innovation? That will enable the system to learn rapidly and deploy that knowledge equally quickly.

Ironically, the Union government and many states, too, have embraced digital technology for education in a big way during the pandemic. Diksha, PM E-Vidya, Vidyadaan and Swayam Prabha are all innovative platforms that scale up the convergence between the education system and the community. Adoption has grown exponentially.

With the heavy-handed ban, the Karnataka government may lose out on opportunities. There is a real danger of rapid and cumulative learning loss for young children after months of separation from their accustomed learning environment. With no proper plan to resume school routines, we must find other ways to keep children curious and learning. Online interactive sessions could be one element of this journey.

I pray that my state government will have a rethink on the total ban on online learning. I hope it will see digital classrooms as a gateway into the future; as an opportunity to innovate and experiment; to keep what works for children; to discard what does not, and to try again and again.

For the first time in my 20-year engagement with education, I truly believe that digital and other innovations allow us to finally equalise access to quality education for every single child.

Let’s not close the window of opportunity to create a safe, creative online learning environment for young children in all schools, public or private. The future is digital, but the digital divide is deep, and we simply cannot let disadvantaged children fall further behind.

Deccan Herald

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