Gist of EPW April Week 5, 2022

The Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) is an important source of study material for IAS, especially for the current affairs segment. In this section, we give you the gist of the EPW magazine every week. The important topics covered in the weekly are analyzed and explained in a simple language, all from a UPSC perspective.

1. The Sustainable Development Goals
2. Exploring Conflicts in Development
3. Rice Fortification: A Reconsideration

1. The Sustainable Development Goals

Context

This article assesses India’s progress in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

• The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of 17 targets that all the United Nations members agreed to work upon for the better future of the country. 
• The SDGs were established in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and are intended to be achieved by 2030.
• The Sustainable Development Goals are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. 
• They address the global challenges which include poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice.

Know more about – Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

India’s progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

• India adopted SDGs along with all countries in the world at a United Nations (UN) summit on sustainable development in 2015.
• As there are only eight more years remaining (2030) to achieve the SDGs, many reports suggest that India is falling behind many countries and may not achieve many of the SDGs. 
  • Studies point out that about eight of the 15 SDGs are unlikely to be achieved, which includes crucial goals.
• Inadequate attention and lack of discussion on India’s progress towards the SDGs have resulted in mixed outcomes for India.
• Also, the coronavirus pandemic has severely impacted India’s progress on the SDGs.
  • The World Bank and Asian Development Bank have reported that COVID-19 has adversely impacted the progress towards the SDGs.

Comparison with the progress made by other countries

• India’s progress in achieving the SDGs is compared with the 
  • World average (which includes 155 developing countries with over 84% of the world’s population)
  • Average of countries of East Asia and the Pacific (EAP) (which includes China, Southeast Asian countries and developing Pacific countries)
• Out of the 41 indicators selected for comparison from the World Bank’s SDG database,
  • 19 of them indicate that India’s current SDG indicator has a lower value than both the world and EAP averages. 
  • 13 of them indicate that India’s attainment is poor compared to the world’s or that of EAP average. 
  • Together these two sets of indicators account for about 78% of all the indicators and reflect a relatively lower state of attainment of India’s SDG indicators.

Goals with which India is lagging and its associated concerns

• Goal 2: Hunger – particularly among children and due to low agricultural productivity by low cereal yields.
• Goal 3: Health – the prevalence of non-communicable diseases and inadequacy of health personnel. 
  • The high number of fatalities due to road accidents is also a cause of concern.
• Goal 4: Education – issue with the education systems at pre-primary, primary, and secondary levels.
• Goal 5: Gender equality – various reports show the existence of gender inequality.
• Goal 7: Clean energy – issues with the accessibility of clean energy sources for daily needs.
• Goal 8: Decent work – increase in the unemployment levels.
• Goal 9: Industry and innovation – issues with the shortfall in the manufacturing share in the GDP and inadequate funding for R&D.
• Goal 10: Reducing inequalities – increasing inequality levels is a key concern.
• Goal 11: Liveable cities – increasing levels of pollution and the problem of congestion in the major cities of India.
• Goals 14 and 15: Protection of natural resources – lack of measures aimed at the protection of marine and terrestrial natural resources.

Recommendations

• Regular assessment and monitoring of India’s progress on SDGs are crucial.
• Measures of developing an SDG index and dashboard by the NITI Aayog is a welcome move but the SDG reports must also deal with the country’s progress as a whole, which has been largely missing.
• Efforts must be increased in the lagging areas to make sure that India achieves the targets on time.
• Steps must be undertaken to improve the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates.
• Allocation of more funds and resources towards SDGs by the governments at the centre and states.
• Introducing the required changes in policy and institutional arrangements that help attain the SDGs.

Conclusion

As India’s current progress is lagging compared to other developing countries on SDGs which includes critical economic, human, and environmental areas of development, immediate actions are required to make a thorough assessment of India’s overall SDG performance which helps to rectify the current situation and help attain all the SDGs within the timeline.

2. Exploring Conflicts in Development

Context

This article provides a socio-economic perspective on the major forms of land dispossession in post-colonial India.

Details

• The article takes about the problems caused due to the advancement of development projects such as hydel power, mining, industrial development, and special economic zones in India.
• It envisages examining the process of land appropriation, dispossession, and displacement faced by the poor and marginalised groups such as the Dalits and Adivasis in Indian society. 

Development projects in the 20th century and their impacts

• In the 20th century, large hydel power stations and dams were constructed and were regarded as the cornerstones of development in India. 
• River valley projects accounted for the largest land dispossession not just in India but also across the developing world. 
• While these large projects were largely beneficial in terms of providing irrigation and electricity to farmers, they resulted in the disproportionate displacement of vulnerable groups of the population such as Dalits and Adivasis.
• The government hesitated to recognise the customary land rights and as a result, many families were displaced without compensation. 
  • Even for the families with land rights, the compensation extended was very meagre and were unable to procure alternative pieces of land. 
• As the resettlement and rehabilitation (R&R) policies were non-existent for the lost common property resources (CPR), reports suggest that the deprived sections were excluded from the benefits of the project. 
• This resulted in an increase in aggregate poverty levels followed by low levels of health outcomes. 
• The most affected by the loss of CPRs were women who depended on livestock rearing in rural economies as there was a large-scale reduction in the grazing land for animals.
• The large dams during the initial phases of development resulted in “development-induced displacement” in India, and the shift to a neo-liberal economic model in the last 20 years has led to an increasingly “privatised form of deprivation”. 
  • This is because in the 20th century the creation of special economic zones (SEZs) gained prominence which could be developed by private companies.
  • Since 2005, the government has approved about 581 SEZs throughout the country ranging from 10 to 5,000 hectares in size.
  • The land was initially acquired to produce goods for the public, but with the advent of the neo-liberalisation era, the land is being acquired increasingly for its market value. 

The concept of Primitive Accumulation 

• Karl Marx defined Primitive Accumulation Based on his analysis of the problem of British enclosures in the 18th century.
• According to Marx, Primitive Accumulation mainly consisted of three aspects namely: 
  • Removal of peasants from the land by enclosures and abolition of customary rights.
  • Creation of a group of landless labourers who become wage labourers under capitalists and flocked to towns in search of jobs.
  • Concentration and centralisation of wealth through monopolised production by a few individuals.
• David Harvey redefined the concept of primitive accumulation as “accumulation by dispossession” to address the diversity of dispossessions seen in recent times by industrialists and capitalists.
• The concept of “accumulation by dispossession” extends its scope to include the number of land grab events in India due to developmental projects such as building dams, roads, SEZs, mining, and slum destruction. 

The concept of “accumulation by dispossession” in the Indian context

• The land acquisitions for the development of SEZs have adversely affected rural surroundings by widening the existing inequalities in the rural class structure. 
• This agrarian transformation in the neo-liberal regime resulted in an increase in the number of unemployed labourers among the marginalised sections.
• Since liberalisation in India, the government has limited its role in setting the macroeconomic policy frameworks within which capital operates and the state governments negotiate directly with capitalists to compete against one another in order to attract their investment. 
• In India, the land grab is facilitated by the colonial Land Acquisition Act of 1894, the deregulation of investments and commerce through neo-liberal policies with a few greedy individuals who look to exploit resources for their profits.
• In the current context, there is a growing demand for land by the domestic and international capitalists based on public-private partnerships (PPP) looking for spaces to create factories, offices, residential townships, and various infrastructure. 
• The problem seems to be much bigger with the issues of land acquisition, deprivation, denial of rights, and livelihood loss. These development projects pose a threat to property rights distribution and access to common resources along the lines of class, caste, and gender. 

Case studies of social movements by rural and tribal communities in India

• Movement during the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) 
  • The protests started against the construction of hydel power projects on the Narmada. 
  • About 245 villages were expected to be evicted by the project without any information on flood levels. 
  • About 250 thousand people were displaced by the project (which was funded by the World Bank) out of which 70% belonged to Scheduled Tribes whose main source of income was through pastoralism, slash and burn agriculture and hunting and gathering. 
  • A movement started with thousands of villagers questioning the issue of livelihood, ecology, human rights, and the thousands of acres lost to submergence and waterlogging. 
  • The cost of irrigation was up to 10 times the cost of local watershed development. 
  • This resulted in the World Bank formulation of a new Inspection Panel to examine the human rights violations for the bank-funded project.
• Conflicts between the Dongria Kondh tribe and the Vedanta company
  • The Vedanta company had planned to undertake bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri hills in Odisha. 
  • The indigenous Dongria Kondhs revolted against the move to vacate their region for mining as the mining operations would affect about 8,000 Dongria, Kutia, and Jharania Kondh in 112 tribal and Dalit villages in Kalahandi and Rayagada districts of Odisha.
  • The unanimous vote by 12 gram sabhas of indigenous communities rejected Vedanta Aluminium and the Odisha Mining Corporation’s mining plan.
  • It is historic and significant as it brought forth the religious and cultural rights over their habitat and habitation, recognized by the Supreme Court under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act famously called the Forest Rights Act (FRA) of 2006. 

Conclusion

• In view of recent events, there have been increased movements and conflicts seen in Odisha on the issue of development and displacement.
• The development initiatives post liberalisation has aggravated the sorry state of tribal populations in India resulting in an increasing amount of migration and political turmoil in various parts of India. 
• The Environmental Justice Atlas suggests that about 346 cases of conflicts were reported in India making it the largest number of environmental justice movements in the world. 
• Over 57% of these reported movements from India saw the participation of Adivasi communities thus highlighting their concerns of acquisition, eviction, deprivation, and displacement.
• It is high time for the governments at both central and state levels to extend aspects such as social impact assessment, restoration of common property resources for the deprived, and ‘land for land’ compensations along with the environmental impact assessment (EIA) before starting any of the developmental projects.

3. Rice Fortification: A Reconsideration

Context

The government of India plans to distribute fortified rice and has announced a schedule for its distribution in India.

Details

• As per the announced schedule, the distribution of fortified rice to the Integrated Child Development Services, midday meals, public distribution system and other nutrition and welfare schemes and programmes will be completed by 2024.
• Reports suggest that the Food Corporation of India and state agencies have already procured about 88.65 MT of fortified rice for supply and distribution.

Fortified Rice

• The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) defines fortification as “deliberately increasing the content of essential micronutrients in a food so as to improve the nutritional quality of food and to provide public health benefits with minimal risk to health”.
• Fortifying rice involves grinding broken rice into powder, mixing it with nutrients, and then making it into rice-like kernels using an extrusion process. 
• These fortified kernels are mixed with normal rice in the ratio of 1:100 ratio and distributed for consumption. 
• According to the Food Ministry, the distribution of fortified rice is a cost-effective, culturally appropriate and comprehensive strategy to increase nutritional content in diets aimed at addressing the micronutrient deficiency in the country.

Read more about – Fortification of Rice

Key concerns about the initiative

• It is said that the fortified rice should not be distributed in an isolated manner and instead, efforts are to be undertaken to include the distribution of other key sources of nutrition such as milk, edible oils, and wheat.
• Experts feel that this distribution of fortified rice would be harmful in many ways.
  • They believe that the excessive consumption of micronutrients such as iron and vitamins which are currently used in the fortification of rice have adverse effects on health.
  • It is found that excessive intake of iron by pregnant women can impact fetal development and birth outcomes.
• The process of fortification also involves the use of machinery which may result in the inclusion of undesirable residual products.
• Fortification of rice will benefit big industries and businesses at the expense of farmers and rice millers thereby affecting the rural economy.
  • Previous experiences suggest that staple food becomes more costly if its processing is done by big companies.
  • Example: Despite the influx of inexpensive corn into Mexico due to a free trade agreement with the United States, the price of tortillas remained costly as the maize milling and flour industry was monopolised by certain business units. 
• The shelf life of the fortified rice is said to be only around 12 months and considering the average storage periods in the Food Corporation of India warehouses, transportation and distribution to the fair price shops, the shelf life might be exceeded.
  • However, the flavour of indigenous rice varieties improves with time.
• Decentralisation of procurement is required in India such that most of the food grains procured from a village ends up in the same village, reducing the time delays associated with food transportation, but it is highly unlikely to be achieved through the distribution of fortified rice.

Way forward

• The government must look to promote only a few varieties of rice by ensuring better prices for only such varieties that are found to have positive impacts on health.
• The government must protect the livelihoods of smaller farmers, village-level processing of rice and all other food and cottage industries that will be affected due to the programme of distribution of fortified rice.
• Various scientific studies have revealed that the currently used milling technique removes essential nutrients from rice.
  • Hence, there is a need to replace these techniques with the latest methods which results in a much lower removal and polishing.
• The nutrition profile of food will automatically get better with the adoption of the social agroecology approach in farming. 
  • This approach is based on improving soil health and the overall conditions of farming. 
  • Healthy soil will balance the micronutrients in the foods.

Conclusion

Measures that are aimed at reducing inequalities at all levels and promoting creative, sustainable, and ecologically protective measures to secure the livelihoods of people along with duly implemented nutrition programmes are the best ways to address the problems of hunger and malnutrition.

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