EADI/ISS Series | Resource Grabbing in a Changing Environment

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By Adwoa Yeboah Gyapong, Amod Shah, Corinne Lamain, Elyse Mills, Natacha Bruna, Sergio Coronado and Yukari Sekine

We are living in an era where people’s daily lives are deeply intertwined with the impacts of global markets and the threats of climate change. Even good intentions for mitigating and adapting to climate change can jeopardise natural resources and rural livelihoods. Examples from Mozambique, Colombia, and the Eastern Himalayas show how local communities affected by resource grabbing engage in both overt and covert responses against dispossession and exploitation.

We are living in an era where people’s daily lives are deeply intertwined with the impacts of global markets and the threats of climate change. Even good intentions for mitigating and adapting to climate change can jeopardise natural resources and rural livelihoods. These seemingly abstract issues are becoming increasingly clear through both research and the role of the media, sparking questions such as: How do attempts to address climate change prevent farmers from working their lands, or negatively affect the livelihoods of forest users? Why are fishers organising themselves to resist interventions intended to protect marine areas? How do human rights groups and indigenous communities resist the state and powerful companies despite civil society space being increasingly limited?

The rapid rise in the scale and scope of the commodification and exploitation of natural resources can be linked to four broad, interlinked drivers: the expansion of the industrial food system; increasing privatisation of the commons; changes in governance mechanisms; and the growing prominence of climate mitigation and adaptation responses. Both local and global issues shape and complicate the dynamics of contemporary resource grabbing, many of which are still not fully understood – and will be explored further in our workshop on  “Resource grabbing: impacts and responses in an era of climate change” at the EADI/ISS General Conference 2020.

The social and environmental impacts of resource grabbing

Resource grabbing impacts can include limited access to resources, insecure livelihoods, diminishing ecological sustainability, and restricted participation and political incorporation, all of which are embedded in broader power dynamics. In some cases, governance instruments (e.g. labour laws) can further exacerbate the impacts of resource grabbing. Four examples illustrate these diverse impacts.

Conservation in global fisheries

Small-scale fishers globally are facing an overlap of existing and newer processes of exclusion. Existing forms of exclusion caused by industrialisation and privatisation in fisheries have more recently overlapped with exclusionary processes stemming from climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives. Prominent examples include the increasing establishment of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and blue carbon initiatives, which are presented as approaches to conserve and protect marine ecosystems. Such initiatives are often established close to the shallow coastal domains of small-scale fishers and involve the banning of fishing activities, leaving them with limited access to fisheries resources, territories and markets to sustain their livelihoods.

Climate funds in Mozambique

With 25% of its territory designated as conservation areas, Mozambique is the third-largest recipient of climate funds in Sub-Saharan Africa, having received approximately US$ 147.3 million in 2016. Most of these funds are directed to land-based conservation and climate change mitigation and adaptation projects. The Gilé National Reserve, a decade-old REDD+ project, combines such policies with the implementation of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) in the reserve’s buffer zone. This has limited rural livelihood strategies and local people’s control over land and decision-making processes, due to restrictions placed on fishing, hunting, cattle rearing and gathering forest resources (e.g. charcoal, medicinal plants).

Mining in Colombia

Since the 2008 commodity-boom, open-pit coal mining in the Colombian Caribbean region of La Guajira has expanded rapidly, leading to intensified land and environmental conflicts between mining companies, the state, and the affected communities. Land previously used for agriculture and grazing livestock is no longer accessible. Both the landscape and the local economy are now dominated by mining, which has consumed more than 12,000 hectares of land and displaced 16 local villages.

Hydropower dams in the Eastern Himalayas 

In the Eastern Himalayas (North-East India and Nepal), numerous hydropower dams are being planned or are already being constructed. Many of these are funded through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), an internationally developed climate finance initiative aiming to stimulate the development of renewable energies. However, evidence suggests that dams contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions through the creation of reservoirs and changes in land-use. Large dams particularly disturb ecological systems, upstream and downstream river flows, and limit people’s access to riverside lands.

Political responses generated by resource grabs

Local people and communities affected by resource grabbing engage in both overt and covert responses against dispossession and exploitation. Overt responses include formal, organised actions, often by social movements. In contrast, covert responses may include everyday acts of resistance and adaptation through different livelihood strategies, such as migration or incorporation into projects. The dynamics of such political responses have implications for solidarity with and building alliances between affected groups, particularly those seeking social and environmental justice. Three examples illustrate these diverse responses.

Using legal tools in India and Colombia

Indigenous communities facing displacement stemming from hydropower and mining in India have effectively stalled land acquisition processes through court action.  These rulings have enforced existing laws mandating their prior consultation and consent. Similarly, in Colombia, more than ten popular consultation processes have been carried out at the provincial level since 2010. In each of them, large numbers of local people voted against the installation and expansion of mining or oil extraction projects. Legal battles have also taken place between companies, the state, and human rights defenders over the implementation of consultation results.

Scaling-up ‘agrarian climate justice’ struggles in Myanmar

The recent re-emergence of overt, organised resistance related to land, environment and climate mitigation issues in Myanmar has ranged from advocacy aiming to influence national-level land laws and policies that facilitate privatisation and concentration, to more localised resistance against large-scale oil palm concessions, mines and forest conservation initiatives that exclude small-scale farmers and forest users. Scaling up across struggles for agrarian climate justice has become imperative to counter elite power at national and regional levels. However, it sometimes triggers external threats, like repression, and ‘divide-and-rule’ strategies from above. Fault-lines within movements may also emerge, particularly due to competing political tendencies and legacies of ethnic conflicts.

Everyday strategies in Ghana

Farmworkers on an oil palm plantation in Ghana have engaged in covert strategies such as absenteeism, non-compliance to rules, and continuous production to resist exploitation. Workers on farms near the plantation occasionally use company vehicles on their own farms, while they absent themselves from plantation work. Casual workers use various tactics to obtain paid medical leave, while others do shoddy work, knowing there are few monitoring supervisors.  Through these everyday individual responses, workers can maintain a small supply of staple foods (e.g. corn and cassava), earn extra income, and rest.  However, their everyday actions also restrict their upward workplace mobility, such as moving from casual to permanent contracts, and productive autonomy on their own farms in terms of scale and crop choices.

This article is part of a series launched by the EADI (European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes) and the ISS in preparation for the 2020 EADI/ISS General Conference “Solidarity, Peace and Social Justice”. It was also published on the EADI blog.

About the authors:

Adwoa Yeboah Gyapong, Amod Shah, Corinne Lamain, Elyse Mills, Natacha Bruna, Sergio Coronado and Yukari Sekine are all PhD researchers in the Political Ecology research group at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS).

Image Credit: Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash

Love in a time of internet shutdown: heartache and hope in Kashmir by Haris Zargar

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Our dependence on the Internet as a way to build, strengthen, and maintain personal relationships has grown along with global advances in digital technologies. A prolonged Internet blackout has taken a heavy toll on residents of India’s disputed Kashmir region, showing how the sudden absence of connectivity affects the dynamics of personal relationships. With authoritarian regimes blocking access to the Internet more often, it is time to ensure unhindered Internet access under international law.

The Internet has become an inseparable part of our daily lives, to the extent that our dependence on it goes largely unnoticed. Access to this cyber infrastructure is almost deemed  a fundamental right. But what happens when a community is forced offline at a time when almost every aspect of life is managed by internet-based tools? How does the absence of the internet reshape individual attitudes, social interaction, or reconfigure intimate personal relationships?

For months, residents of the Indian-controlled Kashmir region were cut off from the outside world after the Indian government on 5 August 2019 scrapped Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which until then had granted this state’s population a certain degree of autonomy. The communications blackout turned this Himalayan valley into a virtual information black hole.

The impact of the Internet clampdown on Kashmir’s economy, governance, healthcare system and educational institutions, as well as on the mental wellbeing of its people, were widely reported. In addition, a  report by the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimated that the months of shutdown cost the valley’s economy $2.4 billion and resulted in thousands of job losses.

Amidst this, little attention has been paid to how the absence of the Internet affects personal relationships, considering that technology now functions as a third element in these bonds. The nature of daily human interaction has been reshaped by video calls, chatting apps and social media platforms, effectively mediating the exchange of intimate information and expressions of love, concern, and care.

Anxiety and distress

A childhood friend pursuing his higher education in Germany was gripped with anxiety for weeks following the internet shutdown in Kashmir. He kept reaching out, almost frantically, to ask how we could communicate with his family, particularly to get information about whether his brother with epilepsy was still able to get his chronic medication.

Another Indian friend whose estranged Kashmiri partner was in the state during this blackout period had to contact her ex-partner’s sibling based outside of the country, “risking all the embarrassment”, to ask about his wellbeing. For another acquaintance, it was counting down the days until she could hear from her fiancé, regularly urging me to send some someone in person to his house to ask about him and his family.

A news report in Indian national daily The Telegraph captured the intimate moments of a teenage couple following the partial restoration of mobile connections in mid-October last year. When the lines were opened, the first call made by Faesal Ahmad, a college student, was to his sweetheart. “Are you still mine?” he asked, voice quivering in excitement at being able to speak to her for the first time in months. “Always yours,” came the reply, as Faesal later told the paper.

Away from the public gaze

In a traditionally conservative place like Kashmir, premarital relationships are still frowned upon and even though attitudes towards such relationships have eased over the years, couples avoid being seen together in public. The internet thus played a significant role in romantic relationships in the valley, making it easier for couples to interact using smartphones rather than having to find comfortable public spaces such as parks or cafés, which also remained inaccessible in the wake of the political turmoil. Online dating platforms have reportedly also provided safe spaces for the valley’s LGBTQIA+ residents.

Another news report by VICE India detailed how the internet shutdown and restrictions on public movements wrecked relationships and marriages in the valley. For many couples, the report underlined, the lockdown meant no calls, no WhatsApp messages, and no exchange of romantic voice notes.

Days after the restrictions were imposed, local newspapers in Kashmir were filled with announcements cancelling marriage functions that usually span several days. Couples who had made elaborate arrangements were either forced to reschedule or curtail their marriage programme. Instead, ceremonies were conducted in an austere manner with family members having to queue outside government offices to get curfew passes for guests.

Given the scale of our digital dependence, it’s difficult to truly comprehend the impact of the Internet being down for a prolonged period. Authoritarian regimes are now regularly shutting down the Internet to curb dissent, and as such, this undemocratic exercise must be made illegal under international law.

This is a shortened version of an article originally published by New Frame.

HarisAbout the author:

Haris Zargar is a PhD researcher looking at links between land reforms, social movements and armed insurgencies in Indian-controlled Kashmir. He has been a journalist for the past nine years, writing on the intersection of politics, conflict and human security. He worked as a political correspondent based in New Delhi with leading Indian new outlets including The Press Trust of India and The Mint. He holds degrees in Journalism and Development Studies from the University of Kashmir, and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

Image Credit: Mike Licht on Flickr

Creative Development | Moving national narratives: artistic expressions of flight, refuge and belonging by Roy Huijsmans

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National historiography often takes the form of a single story propagated by those in power, thereby muting alternative experiences of ordinary citizens of these celebrated events. In Laos, the country’s National Day coincided with an international dance festival, showing different ways of recounting histories. In this blogpost Roy Huijsmans suggests that in the creative realm and performing arts we may find articulations of the subjugated narratives of the collective memory of the nation.

When visiting the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) late November 2019 for the Fang Maekhong International Dance Festival I found myself also witnessing the preparations for the celebration of the 44th Lao National Day. Government buildings were being adorned with freshly purchased national flags, always flanked by the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party flag in bright red and sporting the familiar hammer and sickle in yellow. There were the inevitable banners, too, carrying slogans celebrating the nation and the progress made under the leadership of the communist Lao People’s Revolutionary Party.

In Lao historiography, the establishment of the Lao PDR is presented as the logical endpoint of a long struggle by the Lao peoples against imperial forces – first French colonial rule, then Lao Royalist Governments backed by the United States of America as part of its broader stakes in the Second Indochinese War. Around each national day (2 December), the various Lao newspapers and television stations contribute their bit to the reproduction of the national narrative, with specials about revolutionary heroes, heroic battles, and by detailing the development progress made under revolutionary rule. The same narrative is presented in school text books, musea, and in public speeches by officials.

All this is not particular to the Lao PDR. National historiography often takes the form of a single story told from the vantage point of the victors. Thereby it silences the many different experiences that were generated by these very same historical events (Evans 1998). For example, the narrative of a united revolutionary struggle against foreign powers and influence hides the many internal conflicts and civil war that were also part of the making of the Lao PDR.

A key element missing from the Lao narrative is the fate of the about 10 per cent of the then population that left the country throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. They left because they found themselves on the wrong side of history or simply escaped the impoverishment and repressive political climate characterising the infant years of the Lao PDR.

Virtually everyone in the today’s Lao PDR knows someone who has fled the country. Stories of flight, refuge, and increasingly also about return are told, yet often in private. These are the stories of uncles and aunts now living in France, the USA, or Australia. These stories have found no place in school textbooks or in any of the official commemorations around the Lao national day. Yet these stories matter because these, too, are a part of the collective memory of the nation.

The arts: subtle propositions going beyond the national narrative

Artistic initiatives are turning the tide to make the voices of migrants and refugees heard, however. Parallel to the preparations for the Lao National Day celebration, Vientiane also witnessed the 10th edition of the Fang Mae Khong International Dance Festival. The French-Lao dancer Thô Anothaï was part of the impressive line-up comprising Lao national and international dancers. In his contemporary dance titled Mekong, Thô enacted his personal experience of fleeing Laos at a young age. Through his dance, by means of movements rooted in hip-hop and contemporary dance, he represented memories of his flight, such as a boats man paddling him across the Mekong River in the deep of the night.

As Thô took the stage, the first lines of a Lao traditional song were played. Soon the music gave way to soundbites of women’s voices in French, Lao, and the Vietnamese language that graphically described moments in the experience of flight and refuge. The song accentuated Thô’s personal account as a Lao story; the women’s voices referenced the broader context of the aftermath of the Second Indochinese War in which we must understand Thô’s experience. Through his performance Thô invited the audience to accompany him in his journey across the Mekong River, recalling his childhood experience of flight expressed through the serene and stunning beauty of his dance.

The themes of flight, refuge and identity are also central to Nith Lacroix’s 2007 documentary film titled Pierre & Pierrot. The film focuses on twin brothers of a French father and a Lao mother who were separated at a young age in their flight across the Mekong River into Thailand.

Thô Anothaï and Nith Lacroix’s artistic work are first and foremost works of art. Yet, by staging their work for audiences in the Lao PDR, the art may become more than just that. For more inclusive celebrations of national events, it is important to recognise the suffering and pain that is also part of the collective memory of the nation.

References
Evans, G. (1998). The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance: Laos since 1975. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books.

This article is part of a series on Creative Development. Read more articles of this series here.

Color 2 Roy Huijsmans

About the author:

Roy Huijsmans is a teacher/researcher at the ISS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inside Delhi’s Doorstep Public Services Delivery Scheme by Sushant Anand

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Informal brokers and middlemen are essential for the delivery of public services in India. In 2018, the government of Delhi launched a programme that seeks to formalise these informal public service providers through an external agency. Examing the programme, Sushant Anand finds that despite its rising popularity, traditional methods are still prevailing. He points out a number of challenges the government has yet to overcome.

My blog published in 2019 discussed brokers and their role in the delivery of public services. The Government of NCT Delhi (GNCTD) in 2018 launched a programme that seeks to formalise these informal public service providers through an external agency. While 40 services were covered in September 2018, this was soon increased to 70 (across 12 departments) by July 2019, and a scale-up to 100 was expected to be reached by the end of 2019. I take a look at the working of the doorstep delivery of public services project.

As part of the project, citizens can call ‘1076’ and book an appointment with a mobile sahayak (facilitator). The mobile sahayak visits the service seekers’ residence at the given time and collects all requisite documents for the service, submits these documents with the concerned department in exchange of Rs 50 as facilitation fees. The sahayak then collects the final certificate from the government department, and delivers it back to the citizen to complete the transaction.

The services in this project include provision of certificates from the revenue department, driving licences and related services from the transport department, and availing access to certain social sector schemes. Most of these services are in high demand, and it can take days for service seekers to apply for and obtain important documents that can be essential to get benefits from government welfare schemes.

As per an annual report card, the GNCTD claims to have been able to service approximately 99.5 per cent of the 2,00,000 requests booked. As many as 13 lakh calls (1.3 mn) were made by the public. The facility currently operates with more than 125 mobile sahayaks, 100 call centre executives, 11 supervisors, 35 dealing assistants and 25 coordinators[1].

The institutionalisation of informal broker practices does incentivise assistance to the general public, however, there still are some teething issues observed through a year of the project’s operations.

  • Technical readiness: The launch of the scheme was accompanied by a series of glitches in the system due to fluctuating demand and the backend team modified the software multiple times. The mobile sahayaks and the call centres were also initially working in silos, and delivery of services reportedly suffered due to lack of coordination.
  • Traditional methods are still more popular: While the scheme was primarily launched to minimise the complexity of Government to Citizen (G2C) services from multiple departments through intermediaries, it was seen that more than 50 per cent of applications were still made directly at the window.
  • Rationalising resources: The scheme also faced issues with respect to planning its human resource base as most sahayaks initially quit their jobs due to low wages, and it was difficult to replace them. Among the requirements was for sahayaks to have their own motorcycle for conveyance, which is difficult to fulfill.
  • Understanding scale: Even as 1.3 million calls were made to the toll-free number, only 200,000 requests were booked and 150,000 were successfully resolved. While the churn rate of successful completion was high, it appears that the scale and demand of services was underestimated, resulting in only 15% cases being booked out of the total calls received.

Source: Hindustan Times, 16 July 2019

All the challenges have important lessons. Donald F. Kettl, a scholar of government and administrative reforms, has suggested that New Public Management (NPM) (such as the doorstep delivery of public services project) aims to “remedy a pathology of traditional bureaucracy that is hierarchically structured and authoritatively driven”. The accommodation of the role that brokers have played in service delivery in this case can be considered as a good example of NPM techniques. The government has attempted to eliminate rent-seeking, and create a leaner, incentive-driven local administration.

Ketll suggests that the six key characteristics of the NPM approach are productivity, marketisation, service orientation, decentralisation, policy oriented and being accountable by design. NPM clearly articulates a result-oriented relationship, specifying performance in a clear manner.  This scheme was understood to be one-of-a-kind offering in India. While I would acknowledge it to be a constructive innovation by the GNCTD, the lack of technical capacity, public readiness and average resource allocation makes it less likely that the project will become a norm.

Any government service, when offered to the public, largely aims to ease public life or welfare, taking into account some degree of compatibility for uptake and reception by its beneficiaries. For a megacity like New Delhi, strong migration patterns, ad hoc living conditions for many, and the comfort associated with informal systems of access to public service delivery can become additional challenges.

This article was originally published by the Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research.

 References
[1]‘Delhi Government delivered on 99.5% of doorstep service requests,’ Hindustan Times, 10 September 2019. Access it here.

sushant.pngAbout the author:

Sushant Anand is a senior officer at the Accountability Initiative. He has a vast spectrum of experience to work in areas including health, education, WASH, resource management and climate change in organisations like FICCI, IPE Global, Ipsos and TERI.
Sushant is a public policy professional by training and completed his MA in Development Studies from the ISS. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Holding Myanmar accountable for acts of genocide is just the start of a long process of justice for the Rohingya by Lize Swartz

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Public hearings are currently underway at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where Myanmar stands accused of committing genocide against the Rohingya minority after violent crackdowns since 2012 left thousands dead and forced more than one million Rohingya to flee the country. This follows shortly after the Minister of Justice of The Gambia at the International Conclave on Justice and Accountability for Rohingya held at the ISS in October declared that what has transpired in Myanmar over the past years must be named genocide and that The Gambia would lead efforts to hold the Myanmar state accountable through international legal mechanisms. However, this is just the first of several steps to ensure justice for the Rohingya—the human side of what has become a ‘refugee crisis’ needs to be acknowledged, writes Lize Swartz.

The desire to hold perpetrators accountable for crimes committed against the Rohingya[1], to improve the living conditions and well-being of Rohingya refugees[2], and to ensure their eventual safe return to Myanmar was unanimously expressed at the recent International Conclave on Justice and Accountability for Rohingya. At the conclave, a number of high-level dignitaries and specialists working on justice for the Rohingya at both the international and local level came together at the ISS in October this year to discuss key short-, medium- and long-term objectives in ensuring the eventual safe return of the Rohingya to Myanmar and ways in which to reach them.

His Excellency Abubacarr Marie Tambedou, Minister of Justice of The Gambia, at the conclave declared to a sizeable audience that The Gambia would lead the process of holding the Myanmar state accountable—a declaration that was enthusiastically welcomed by attendees as an important first step in ensuring justice for the Rohingya. The Gambia accordingly instituted proceedings [3] against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice, the principal judiciary organ of the United Nations, in November this year. Laetitia van den Assum, an independent diplomatic expert who was previously part of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State and who also attended the conclave[4], told a Dutch news website that The Gambia had launched the application because the UN Security Council due to resistance from Russia and China had not undertaken any action in this regard over the past few years.

While the declaration of genocide and the filing of the recent application are steps in the right direction, the complexity of processes of ensuring justice and accountability have not been sufficiently recognized at the conclave, where discussions focused on holding perpetrators accountable and returning Rohingya refugees to Myanmar under safe conditions. Bangladesh, who has assumed a leadership role in housing Rohingya refugees, was praised at the conclave for its hospitality, while representatives of Bangladesh highlighted the difficulties of housing almost a million refugees.

The discussions made me wonder whether the humanity of the Rohingya is sufficiently recognized by those working on ensuring justice for them. In particular, the Rohingya genocide has become a ‘refugee crisis’, gaining increasing attention due to the sheer numbers of refugees residing in host countries. This is transpiring while the Rohingya in fact have been victims of policies of exclusion and direct violence within Myanmar for over forty years. It seems that it is only now that the issue is receiving attention—but perhaps for the wrong reasons.

At the conclave, it became clear that the Rohingya were seen as temporary residents hosted by benevolent neighbouring countries. However, it became evident during the conclave that repatriation is not straightforward, as changes in national policies, laws and leadership in Myanmar are crucial for the creation of conditions of safety and security as a sustainable solution to the long-term crisis. Conference attendees agreed that without such conditions, the cycle of violence and exclusion is likely to repeat itself as it has done before.

While the proceedings against Myanmar at the ICJ are a first step, host countries and the international community all have to come to terms with the fact that the process of ensuring justice could span several decades and that ongoing collaborative effort is required for the entire duration of the process. It is important to recognize the human side of the ‘refugee crisis’ and to ensure that besides holding perpetrators accountable through formal international legal mechanisms, the well-being of the Rohingya should be prioritized now—whether they are temporary or permanent residents of host countries. The following things should be kept in mind:

Bangladesh and other host countries are now the Rohingya’s home, and they may remain so for many years to come.

When humans settle somewhere, they grow new roots that anchor them to a place. The international community may not want to recognize that the Rohingya has already grown roots in host countries and that they will continue to do so until their return to Myanmar, if they choose to return. It is crucial for host countries to accept that the Rohingya might not be going anywhere anytime soon and that their integration into host communities is crucial, whether temporarily or permanently. Host countries have already been generous in providing resources and a safe space for the Rohingya, but they now needs to direct their gaze towards the social dimensions of well-being among the Rohingya, including the creation of a sense of belonging and the creation of education and employment opportunities by doing the opposite that the Myanmar state has done—by acknowledging the Rohingya minority as part of their society and accepting them despite their origin or citizenship status. At the conclave it became clear that the lack of access to education was one of the most pressing problems facing the Rohingya.

The Rohingya should acquire an understanding of the process of change, not only in repatriation, but also in holding the perpetrators responsible.

Importantly, the Rohingya also need to understand that their return to Myanmar, even though desired by some of them, may not take place in the coming year or years, which will help them make long-term decisions about where they could settle. CSOs and local grassroots actors working with Rohingya on the ground can play a crucial role in helping the Rohingya understand why the cogs are turning slowly and why their return to Myanmar is being delayed. In addition, information on the proceedings and outcome of pending ICJ or ICC cases will play an important role in the Rohingya’s gauging of the level of safety and security of Myanmar and, therefore, in their willingness to return to Myanmar when it is possible.

The process of justice and accountability does not end when the Rohingya return to Myanmar – it only begins then.

The long-term objective of helping the Rohingya deal with trauma should be highlighted; this shows dedication to the cause of the Rohingya and not just to addressing the immediate refugee crisis. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was discussed at the conclave, is effective not only in gathering evidence of crimes against humanity, but also in helping victims of crimes against humanity deal with trauma. The wounds that have been created over the last forty years will not heal instantly, but they can heal more effectively with the creation and efficient functioning of such mechanisms and institutions that facilitate dialogue and interaction among all ethnic groups in Myanmar.

[1] Following violent crackdowns on the Rohingya starting in 2012, more than one million Rohingya have fled Myanmar, many to neighbouring country Bangladesh.

[2] At present, Cox’s Bazar near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border houses more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees in what has become a massive slum.

[3] According to ICJ Press Release No. 2019/47, available at https://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/178, The Gambia alleged “violations of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the ‘Genocide Convention’) through ‘acts adopted, taken and condoned by the Government of Myanmar against members of the Rohingya group’ ”.

Image Credit: Zlatica Hoke on Wikimedia

16177487_1348685531818526_4418355730312549822_oAbout the author:

Lize Swartz is a PhD researcher at the ISS working on the intersection of sustainability and climate crises and the influence of power on understandings of and responses to such crises. She was a conference reporter at the International Conclave on Justice and Accountability for Rohingya. 

Do skill building training programs improve labor market outcomes among rural youth in India? by Bhaskar Chakravorty

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In India, 54% of the country’s population is below the age of 25 and faces a high rate of unemployment. The government of India is implementing job-linked skill building training programs to improve labour market outcomes among disadvantaged rural youths across India. The study[1] conducted in rural Bihar suggests the outcomes to be short-lived while caste discrimination and low paying job placements play a crucial role in negating the initial returns of the training.    

India is an example of a developing country facing a pressing need to devise strategies to provide regular employment to its youthful population. India is among the youngest nations in the world, and the expected ‘bulge’ in the 15–59 age group over the next decade offers an opportunity but also a challenge. The opportunity stems from the expected global shortage of 56 million young people (15–35 years), and India could potentially serve as a worldwide sourcing hub for skilled manpower (Ministry of Labour and Employment 2014). On the other hand, a failure to provide opportunities to the youth population as they enter the labour market may translate into a ‘demographic disaster’ rather than a dividend.

The twin challenge of creating jobs while at the same time bridging the skill gap is well recognized by the Indian government. Consistent with this policy priority, on September 25th, 2014, the government launched the ‘Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushal Yojana’ (DDUGKY), a program for training, skill building and job placement intended for rural youth from poor families.

The scheme implements skill development through a public–private partnership mode, whereby registered private sector partners or project implementation agencies (PIA) plan and implement skills training and placement program for participants. The scheme is supposed to train rural youths of the age group 15–35. They are eligible as candidates if they belong to below poverty line (BPL) category or any member of the family is a member of a self-help group (SHG). Depending on the course, the training can be of three, six, nine or twelve months. Training courses offered by the PIA are approved by the National Council for Vocational Training (NCVT) or Sector Skill Councils (SSCs). Post-training, PIAs are required to place a minimum of 70% of trained individuals in jobs which offer regular monthly wages at or above a minimum monthly wage of Rs. 6000. Post-placement financial support of Rs.1000 is provided to the on-job candidates for a duration of two to six months.

The intention of the DDUGKY and other similar skills training programs is to attenuate unemployment and poverty, but this is possible only if social structures do not hinder voluntary participation in the program. If there are differences at the level of program accessibility based on caste, gender or other social markers, either in program participation or in job placement after training, then increasing government spending and augmenting the supply of trained individuals may achieve little towards the final goal of enhancing welfare and equity.

To understand whether skill building programs improve the labour market outcomes and social mobility among disadvantaged youth, the study was conducted with 263 DDUGKY participants of a three-months residential training program and 263 non-participants in mid 2016 in the Darbhanga district of Bihar, India.

The analysis of the findings is based on comparing individuals who had attended a training course sponsored by the scheme (termed “DDUGKY participants”) with individuals who had applied but did not eventually attend the training (termed “non-participants”). Analysis showed that the scheme is very well targeted, and more than 90% of those who attended the training and showed an interest in the scheme belonged to below-poverty-line families. While the NGO appeared to have well-qualified personnel, the bulk of the participants (64.6%) were not satisfied with the training they had received. With regard to employment effects, 42% of the graduates were placed immediately after the training, which translates into a 29% percentage point impact of training on employment.

However, these gains were short-lived and within two to six months after training, the impact of the scheme on employment was statistically not different from zero. About a third of the placed graduates left their jobs due to caste discrimination and a third exited as the salaries offered were too low to cover their expected living costs. While employment effects were zero, the training did help graduates move from agricultural to non-agricultural positions.

In conclusion, the analysis presented here focused on one training course in one district of rural Bihar. While this study does not paint a very optimistic picture of scheme-induced employment effects nor is it overtly negative about the scheme itself. Indeed, in the current case the positive effects of the scheme appear to have been partially undone by deep-rooted discrimination. It is entirely possible that other courses offered in other parts of the country are able to achieve higher placement rates and that trained graduates are not subject to post-placement discrimination.

Notwithstanding this possibility, what this study highlights is the urgent need for credible analysis of the slew of skills and job training programs that have recently been launched by the government. These should focus not only on initial job placement but also examine employment status after a time lag. Finally, while simply dictating job creation through such skills training courses and demanding 70% placement is unlikely to succeed, the analysis presented here shows that employment effects in the range of about 15% are likely to deliver a nonzero return.

[1] MA Dissertation (2015-16) at International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Hague, The Netherlands

Image Credit: Atharva Tulsi on Unsplash

About the author:

BhaskarBhaskar Chakravorty is a development professional with more than 13 years of experience working on a range of development issues. At present, he is pursuing a PhD at Warwick Institute for Employment Research (IER) and is a Chancellor’s International Scholar (CIS) at the university. Previously, he completed a MA in Development Studies with specialization in Poverty Studies and Econometric Evaluation of Development Policies from the ISS. He was awarded the prestigious Joint Japan World Bank Graduate Scholarship (JJ/WBGSP) for undertaking the MA program.

 

 

 

What is happening to civic space in India? by Nandini Deo, Dorothea Hilhorst and Sunayana Ganguly

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We were fortunate to be part of a two-day workshop on civil society relations in India, organised in the framework of a research on advocacy in the Dutch co-financing programme. There were fascinating presentations of research on civil society and civic space with a loose connection to the Dutch development programme of ‘Dialogue and Dissent’. In the fantastic company of some of India’s most outstanding civil society activists and scholars, we discussed the diverse realities of organisational life in today’s India. Here are some take-aways…

Is Civic Space Shrinking or Changing?

This is definitely a period of the shrinking of civic space.  Some argued that it is simply a part of the normal cycles of opening and closing space, while others suggest that there is something particularly worrying about the current moment. One of the participants stated that there is hardly any space left to talk about human rights or to criticise the government. But the picture remains varied. The Indian government selectively provides civic space, inviting NGOs to co-create policies, that may or may not be implemented. However, other parts of civil society are oppressed, and jail-time or violence against social activists is no exception. ‘It takes a lot of sacrifice today to be an activist’. Newspapers worldwide observe how central identity politics have become in India and how religious minorities face increasing discrimination. What was interesting in this respect were the testimonies of participants of the workshop who explained that the harshest treatment is not for the identity movements, but for those movements that fight to protect their natural resources against national or multinational companies aiming to exploit forests, water reserves or mineral deposits.

However, civil society is also changing. NGOs adapt and find different roles, varying from facilitating or implementing government schemes to groups that retain more confrontational strategies. While participants of the workshop grieved for the loss of space for critical development discourses, they conveyed a sense of determination to make the best of the space that was still available and some were even optimistic about the transformative power they may have. One of the dualisms that was questioned in the workshop was the distinction between co-optation and autonomy. One of the participants made a strong claim that  one can always seek transformative power, even if one is merely contracted to implement a welfare scheme of the government. ‘In every policy it is the implementation that matters, and showing a different practice is already transformational’.

With the government retreating from the key areas of governance, civil society’s role becomes even more crucial at a time when their operational space is shrinking. It was also felt that despite the need to defend the constitution and to uphold dissent in public life, civil society must engage with policymakers in order to not only promote people-friendly policies but also to prevent a policy-hijack by the powerful. There was a lively debate on civil society’s legitimacy and its role as a representative or a translator between marginalized groups and policy-makers.

Importance of Case Studies and Context

A recurring message from the activists was that the research on civil society needs to be embedded. On the one hand, the case of India is unique, with millions of  NGOs, many of them with a long history of commitment to social transformation. But India can also be analysed as a case of several ‘somethings’. India is a case of a diverse and strong civil society. It is also a case standing for the many countries where civil society needs to operate in a shrinking space and a controlling government. It is also a country facing the pressures of neoliberalism to adopt ‘business-friendly’ policies while trying to reduce poverty and create environmentally sustainable practices.  To study these broader phenomena, participants argued that it is most powerful to do case studies. In that way, ‘readers are invited to picture and even smell the local realities’, and most people learn more from a case than from a pile of aggregated, dislocated data.

Hate is in the air

In between the fine-grained presentations on the roles, complementarities, and everyday practices of development agencies, the conversation kept drifting back to civic space. When we say that civic space is shrinking, this usually refers to legislative measures, human rights violations, and other oppressive practices to curb the space for civil society. But what we see today in many places, including India, is a change in atmosphere. People seeking social justice find themselves increasingly operating in restricted spaces, where populist speech demonises reformers, and legitimises opinions that were until recently unsayable in public. As someone said: ‘Hate is in the air, in many ways and against many‘. Hate of all kinds of ‘others’ extends to hate for people who promote inclusion. How to survive as an ‘NGO’ in a time when the Indian government excludes millions of Indians with Bengali roots from citizenship, when the US president shamelessly advertises his white American dream, and when increasing numbers of Europeans opine that those rescuing drowning Africans in the Mediterranean should be imprisoned? One coping mechanism is simply to make sure that we keep seeking out the company of the likeminded. Ending the workshop with an evening of songs, poetry and beauty was a healing experience indeed, refilling us with the courage to invent new spaces and redefine our roles in a changing world.

Image Credit: SiamlianNgaihte on Pixabay

About the authors:

photo nandini

Nandini Deo is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Lehigh University.  She is working on a book about  corporate influence over civil society in India.  Her previous books are Postsecular Feminisms: Religion and Gender in Transnational Context, Mobilizing Religion and Gender in India: The role of activism, and The Politics of Collective Advocacy in India: Tools and Traps (written with Duncan McDuie Ra).  She has been collaborating with a group of researchers on a study of representation and collaboration by civil society organizations in India sponsored by the Dutch foreign ministry.  She is spending a sabbatical year in Mumbai and can be reached at ndd208@lehigh.edu.

TheaDorothea Hilhorst is Professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is a regular author for Bliss. Read all her posts here. 

photo sunayana

Sunayana Ganguly is currently Assistant Professor at the Azim Premji University in Bangalore. She has previously worked with the Industrial Ecology Group, University of Lausanne (Switzerland) and the German Development Institute (Bonn). Her work explores environmental governance, civil society, deliberative democracy and sustainable consumption with a focus on South Asia. Her book ‘Deliberating Environment Policy in India – Participation and the role of Advocacy’ was published by Routledge in 2015. She can be reached at Sunayana.ganguly@apu.edu.in.

Does attending preschool benefit Indian children at a later stage? by Saikat Ghosh

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Colourful pens

Despite having one of the world’s largest early childhood education and care program named ‘Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS)’ in operation since 1975, the impact of such provisions on children’s later development is still largely unknown in India. Empirical evidence from India suggests that attending preschool makes children more sociable but does not improve their cognitive ability.

Does Early Childhood Education (ECE) matter?

Childhood is the most important phase of human life and the strong foundation made during the early years can lead to improvements in children’s cognitive and social development. It has already been witnessed that ECE contributes substantially to children’s development and well-being and children attending early education programs is associated with improved performance in school1, 2. ECE is considered extremely effective for children from disadvantaged backgrounds as it can narrow the gap in early development between children from different socio-economic classes3.

On the contrary, evidence also suggests that early, extensive, and continuous nonmaternal care may have some development risks for young children and the larger society4, 5. Although ECE may increase cognitive skills at school entry, it may also increase behavioural problems and reduces self-control6. Therefore, there also exist some sort of disagreements regarding the effects of ECE programs on children’s development.

Based on the above backdrop, a study was recently conducted to understand whether attending preschool provide any benefit to children at the later stage of their life. Based on a sample of 1369 first graders, the study took place in India which is home of approximately twenty percent of the world’s child population in the age group of 0-6 years. The key question asked in this context was: do the children who attended preschool possess greater skills at the primary school level? Children’s accumulation of cognitive and social skills was assessed by respective class teachers using twelve indicators such as their attention towards class, ability to remember lessons, friendliness towards peers, etc.

Does attending preschool help Indian children?

The results from the study suggest that the ECE provisions in India are able to contribute to child development, but only partially. Children who attended preschool were found performing better, but this association was not uniform over different skill types. Although attending preschool seems to help children in improving their social skills, there was no such effect with respect to cognitive skills. Furthermore, in contrast to the parental notion about the private preschools being better than the ICDS ones, there was no such evidence found of any of the preschools having a relative edge over the other.

Given the fact that not only preschool attendance but also the quality of the preschool matters, one can hold the quality of preschools in India as responsible for not being able to provide any cognitive incentive to children. The focus of the ICDS programme seems more on the feeding aspects than on promoting behavioural change in childcare practices. The people responsible in these settings are often not very well educated and do not have the required skills to take on this responsibility7( p.30). Besides, the curriculum followed in the private preschools were also criticized for its quality and suitability for children8, 9. Therefore, both types of preschools seem lacking the quality to contribute to children’s cognitive development.

On the other hand, regardless of the quality of care and curriculum, attending preschool allows children to interact and communicate with peers and integrate themselves. Normatively, first friendships are established during the preschool years, and the acquisition of social skills such as helping and sharing, etc. during preschool predict later school engagement and academic success10, 11.

Therefore, by providing an improved and more scientific curriculum to the children, ECE provisions in India can help children in greater skill accumulation. Taking into account that parents mainly send their children to preschool for early education and school readiness12, emphasizing on the educational component of the ICDS programme could attract more parents towards it. Given the fact that the ICDS programme is mainly targeting the marginalized section of the society, expanding its coverage and improving the quality of service provisions would certainly help children from the disadvantaged backgrounds to build a strong foundation.

References:
  1. Weiland, C. & Yoshikawa, H. (2013). Impacts of a prekindergarten program on children’s mathematics, language, literacy, executive function, and emotional skills. Child Development, 84(6), 2112–2130.
  2. DeCicca, P. & Smith, J. D. (2011). The long-run impacts of early childhood education: Evidence from a failed policy experiment. National Bureau of Economic Research. Working Paper 17085.
  3. UNICEF (2016). The state of the world’s children: A fare chance for every child. Retrieved from: https://www.unicef.org/publications/files/UNICEF_SOWC_2016.pdf
  4. Belsky, J. (2002). Quantity counts: Amount of child care and children’s socioeconomic development. Development and Behavioural Pediatrics, 23(3): 167-170.
  5. Belsky, J. (2001). Developmental risks (still) associated with early child care. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry & Allied Discipline, 42(7): 845—859.
  6. Magnuson, K. A., Ruhm, C. J. & Waldfogel, J. (2004). Does prekindergarten improve school preparation and performance?. NBER Working Paper No. 10452
  7. UNESCO (2006). Select issues concerning ECCE India. Paper commissioned for the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2007, Strong foundations: early childhood care and education.
  8. Kaul, V. & Sankar, D. (2009). Early childhood care and education in India’. New Delhi: NUEPA.
  9. Swaminathan, M. (1998). The First Five Years: A Critical Perspective on Early Childhood Care and Education in India. New Delhi: SAGE.
  10. Howes, C., Hamilton, C. E., & Philipsen, L. C. (1998). Stability and continuity of child-caregiver and child-peer relationships. Child Development, 69, 418–426.
  11. Ladd, G. W., Price, J. M., & Hart, C. H. (1988). Predicting preschoolers’ peer status from their playground behaviors. Child Development, 59, 986–992.
  12. Ghosh, S. (2019). Inequalities in demand and access to early childhood education in India. International Journal of Early Childhood. DOI: 1007/s13158-019-00241-8

    Image Credit: Jay Galvin on Flickr

About the Author:

saikatDr. Saikat Ghosh is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LifBi), Germany where he is leading a project focusing on early childhood education in India.  He is a former ISS Graduate (2011-12) and awarded his Ph.D. from the University of Bamberg in 2018. His research interest centers on poverty, education, inequality, and social policy analysis with a particular focus on developing countries. Formerly, he has worked for the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences (BAGSS), Germany, UNU-WIDER, Helsinki, and the State Government of West Bengal, India.

Sri Lankan President Sirisena’s political war on drugs by Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits

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Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena’s answer to drug-related crimes is bringing back the death penalty. According to recent reports, international drug smugglers are increasingly turning to Sri Lanka as a transit hub in Asia, while drug-related arrests are on the rise. The question is whether the war on drugs is winnable and whether the death penalty will help. Framing the anti-narcotics efforts as a war has been a selling point for the public who are getting weary of everyday drug abusers and dealers.

On 26 June 2019, Sirisena signed death warrants for four prisoners serving sentences for drug-related crimes. His signature brought an end to a 43-year moratorium on the death penalty which begun following a final capital punishment case in 1976.

Sirisena’s return to the death penalty has provoked mixed responses. Some point out that Sirisena cannot present evidence to show that the death penalty can save future generations from the scourge of narcotics and drug trafficking. His attempt to link an undisclosed drug mafia with the April 2019 Easter bombings did not prove convincing for most observers. The claim was flatly contradicted by a Special Presidential Committee appointed to probe the Easter attacks and statements issued by Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. As Sirisena’s arch rival in politics, Wickremesinghe points the finger at home-grown jihadists. Linking drugs with terrorism is a familiar fable in the history of war in Sri Lanka.

Fearing that he might lose the support of his own government, President Sirisena has announced that he will declare a day of ‘national mourning’ if the government does not agree to his reinstatement of capital punishment or seeks to abolish it. For many in Sri Lankan politics, whatever the scale of the drug problem at hand, bringing back capital punishment for drug offences sounds like an over-reaction.

Legal experts point to pitfalls in the road ahead. Reinstating the death penalty requires approval both from an extremely divided national legislature and the Supreme Court. Their legal–moral appeal seems to have had some effect on Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhala–Buddhist population. But the President’s efforts to convince the public by citing blessings he received from a number of Buddhist clergymen have mostly fallen on deaf ears.

Sirisena’s move to bring back the death penalty is not out of character. Almost immediately after being sworn into office in 2015, Sirisena started a morality-inspired war against narcotics. He launched an anti-drug elite task force and increased police powers to deal with drug offenders. An island-wide anti-drug awareness campaign led to the establishment of thousands of committees in schools and villages to combat drugs. Yet in December 2018, Sri Lanka voted in favour of a final moratorium on the death penalty at the United Nations General Assembly. This vote was retracted just six months later. The background to this turn is developing dynamics in Colombo’s political settlement and the huge political stakes involved in the gamble to bring back capital punishment.

Sirisena has tied the war to his personal as well as political agenda. Like his predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa, who won the ‘war against terrorism’, Sirisena wants to go down in history for having saved Sri Lanka in the war on drugs. One can attribute President Sirisena’s toughness and bravado of his resolve to an inspirational meeting with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in January 2019. This ‘toughness’ is an effort to politically re-brand himself as stronger and more powerful than Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, a competitor in the December presidential elections.

As a former defence secretary, Rajapaksa has already earned a reputation for being ‘tough on crime’. Contrary to Rajapaksa’s hard-man political image, Sirisena is often depicted as softly spoken and temple-worshipping — an ordinary man of the village. Although Sirisena has yet to officially declare his intention to contest the presidency, his decision to bring back the death penalty could be a sign that he is preparing such an announcement. Reinforcing a reputation for ‘toughness’ is vital for Sirisena given his rapidly declining public approval ratings following the disastrous Easter bombings.

The question is whether the war on drugs is winnable and whether the death penalty will help. Framing the anti-narcotics efforts as a war has been a selling point for the public who are getting weary of everyday drug abusers and dealers. Considerable political momentum was created by the ending of almost 25 years of civil war, and people are accustomed to the warfare frame of reference.

As intended, the reintroduction of the death penalty received the expected reaction from local and international civil society organisations, the United Nations and Western governments — the so-called ‘coalition of enemies’ of the majority Sinhala–Buddhist constituency. Ultimately Sirisena’s political fate will depend on this constituency, which so far seems supportive of his gambit.

Although there are no clear signs that Sirisena will be re-elected, he is making small gains by drawing political attention to himself, while distracting the electoral mass away from compelling issues of national security and economic development. Sirisena’s choice of battleground has been executed with almost military precision, reminding us of Clauzewitz’s claim that ‘war is politics by other means’.

This article was originally published by the East Asia Forum.

About the author: 

shyamika

Dr. Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits is an Assistant Professor in Conflict and Peace Studies at ISS/Erasmus University Rotterdam. She holds a PhD in Development Studies from  the ISS and an MA in Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding from Eastern Mennonite University, Virginia, USA. Her current research agenda covers a wide variety of themes including, security sector reform, challenges of post-conflict transition and diaspora politics.

What does Modi 2.0 mean for the world’s largest democracy? By Meenal Thakur

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The mandate of India’s general election silenced the ‘if not Modi then who’ debate which had been brewing given the country’s economic instability and rising communal polarization.  The historic re-election of Narendra Modi as India’s Prime Minister fundamentally re-ordered the country’s political landscape and reaffirmed people’s faith in him to fulfil their economic aspirations. While critics are wary of the ethno-nationalism that fueled social turmoil under the new government, others look forward to Modi’s promised vision of a ‘New India’ in his second term.

Political analysts called the phenomenon a ‘Modi wave’ that gripped the nation, when in May 2014, Narendra Modi – leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was first elected as the Prime Minister of India by the greatest mandate the country had witnessed in over 30 years.

Five years later, Modi was expected to come back to power but with reduced numbers, however, Modi proved the naysayers wrong. Not only did he get re-elected, but his party won 303 of the 542 parliamentary constituencies, breaking its own record of 282 in 2014. The Modi wave, stronger than ever before, consumed whatever came in its way. BJP candidates, including one with terrorism charges against her, piggybacked on Modi’s popularity and rode their way to the Parliament. The biggest casualty being India’s Grand Old Party- The Indian National Congress which was sent back to the pits as it failed miserably to even win enough seats to become the leader of opposition.

The two sides of Modi’s staggering victory were captured by the Time Magazine days before the election ended. The magazine’s May cover called Modi “India’s Divider-in-chief”- a play on his religious nationalism which has resulted in a hostile environment for Muslims who constitute 14% of India’s population.

However, the magazine also carried a counter-view –‘Modi the Reformer’ where it pinned Modi as India’s best hope for economic reform. A similar line was towed by many publications and political analysts back home- India needs change, the opposition is in shambles and Modi remains the only person who can deliver.

The unassailable megalomaniac

This election and the BJP’s historic mandate raises fundamental questions about the values of secularism and liberalism that are the cornerstones of the world’s largest democracy. While India has taken pride in its diverse social fabric- something that its founding fathers and mothers had cherished deeply as the nation’s strength- Modi’s victory acted as a mirror to the Indian society. Blow by blow, he decimated the popular perception of ‘Unity in Diversity’ and appealed to the darkest corner of the middle-class Hindu’s mind.

Modi fanned, and vehemently so, the burning yet unexposed cauldron of religious intolerance in the Indian society. Issues of rising unemployment and farm distress raised by the opposition were overshadowed by Modi’s hyper nationalism. A strategically crafted election campaign coupled with Modi’s gift of the gab roused powerful emotions in the electorate who were made to believe that Modi was the one who would protect the cow (a sacred animal for Hindus) and the country (in the wake of attacks by Pakistan-based terrorist groups).

To be sure, if the BJP’s thumping victory was a result of a toxic ethno-nationalism which painted the country saffron (the colour of India’s Hindu right wing), it also reflected a resonance with Modi’s economic and foreign policies in the last five years. To his credit, Modi’s first tenure saw improved relations with the United States, China, and Japan. Hugging his counterparts on foreign visits not only made for great optics but also earned him the praise of millions of voters for putting India on the world map.

Back home, his social sector schemes helped him expand the BJP’s voter base from upper-caste Hindus and penetrate the lower caste votes.

Road ahead

The pro-incumbency votes mean that people still believe in Modi’s hallmark motto ‘Sabka saath, sabka vikas’ (Collective effort, inclusive growth) and expect him to deliver on reviving economic growth and addressing rising unemployment and farm distress.

Just a day after the BJP government was re-elected, unemployment figures were released showing unemployment at a 45-year high in India. Many allege that the government suppressed the information until the election was over. While the Modi government’s aversion to transparency is the subject matter for another article, let’s just say that the next five years will make or mar the aspirations of millions of unemployed youth constituting more than 50% of the country’s population.

The government also has the task of reviving India’s aviation sector and continue working on the hard-pressed infrastructure sector with the same rigor as shown in its previous term. Challenges will also arise in the health sector for which the government has announced affordable universal health coverage, popularly known as ‘Modicare’- another testament to Brand Modi.

Economic policies aside, Modi’s next term will also shape what political scientist Yogendra Yadav calls ‘the idea of India.’

Concerns have been expressed about the alarming rise of anti-intellectualism as well as subversion of democratic institutions under the BJP government. For example. the appointment of Hindu nationalist ideologue, Swaminathan Gurumurthy (the key person credited with advising Modi to undertake the disastrous demonetization drive in 2016) to the board of the Reserve Bank of India in 2018. However, this is just one of the salvos of the BJP government privileging Hindu religion and identity politics over science and rationality. BJP ministers have in the past dismissed Darwin’s theory of evolution as unscientific.

The next five years will also be crucial for minorities (mostly Muslims and Dalits) who have suffered episodes of mob lynching by self-appointed cow vigilantes who seem to be getting emboldened since the BJP came to power. Silence on Modi’s part and inflammatory statements made by BJP leaders to incite communalism do not bode well for the minorities in India.

The absolute majority with which Modi won has bolstered the already aggressive Hindu right wing and has heightened fears of India heading towards an authoritarian democracy. Nevertheless, the mandate also gives him the legitimate power to decide, act and deliver and, take India on the path of progress.

Meanwhile, the world watches India to see whether the absolute power wrested in Modi would make our worst fears come true. I hope not.

Image Credit: narendramodiofficial on Flickr

Screenshot_20190707-213122About the author:

Meenal Thakur is from India and is currently pursuing her masters in Governance and Development Policy at The International Institute of Social Studies. A former journalist, she wrote on politics and development for one of India’s leading national dailies before joining ISS.

Brokering India’s public service delivery by Sushant Anand

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Informal mediation peopled by brokers, touts, middlemen has over the years embedded itself within public service delivery. Even as they are not within the government system, brokers have come to play an important role, and have reshaped it. The Municipality of Delhi is no exception. Through this article I discuss as to who are these people, and how do broker practices impact governance?

I met Pankaj Sharma, 36, while researching a paper on informal institutions. For the past 15 years, he has been assisting people to complete their documentation for any work they may have at the zonal office of New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) in Karol Bagh, a popular locality in the national capital of India. He is not employed by the government, and carries out his business sitting on a boulder or under a tree. He likes to be known as a consultant, but came into this line of work by accident as a result of unemployment.

Driven mainly by patronage networks, brokers, fixers or touts behave as ‘gatekeepers’ may block or expedite access to public services based on the payment of a fee based on his/her special position as an access provider (Kumar & Landy, 2012: 130-131). Brokers and other such informal networks effect a new understanding amongst citizens seeking to make use of public services – services that are out of reach for citizens if not for them.

With respect to the citizen’s services at the South and North Municipalities of Delhi, service seekers had trouble finding their way in the maze of departments at the institutional premises, and thus preferred approaching the broker at a nominal fee. The officers within the institutions viewed these brokers as a complementary part of the service delivery owing to the fact that these are legal consulting type entities. The brokers themselves, however, felt that they should be institutionalised as service partners due to the high volume of services seekers, usual technical glitches, steep learning curve for officials to keep up with systemic interventions, and the general acceptability of the public.

The Helmke & Levitsky (table below) framework of 2004 offers an understanding of the linkage between the existence of informal institutions and formal government systems.

graph

The typology provided by Helmke and Levitsky (2004: 728) is based on the outcomes of informal rules and effectiveness of the formal rules in a given context. The outcome variables dictate whether the result of these rules are in line or against what one may expect from strict adherence of formal rules. The effectiveness variable on the other hand is the extent to which the formal rules are realised in practice. It is understood that where the rules and procedures are ineffective, the probability of enforcement will be low (Helmke and Levitsky, 2004: 728).

The study findings based upon service-seeker surveys & interviews confirmed a direct dependence on these brokers outside any and every municipal office in New Delhi. A sample of 30 service seekers across two municipal zone offices conveyed that 80% of them usually approached brokers to speed up the process of their work at a minimal fee irrespective of their economic status. While the less educated clients seemed more vulnerable to exploitation, the educated, upper class clients too waited for their turns for calculation of property tax, if not for arrangement of paperwork to obtain birth/death certificate. There seemed to be a process oriented equilibrium where an imperfect system seemed to be working well, both at supply and demand side.

The modus operandi of broker-led governance was further mapped against the recent doorstep delivery of public services policy initiated by the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) to understand the inherent complexities in the system of delivery of public services. The doorstep delivery of public services was a set-up where mediation was institutionalised as part of the system to prevent exploitation of service seekers by the brokers who established ‘temporary power centres’ that could exacerbate access problems (Media reports in 2017-18). The public institution arrangement had been plagued with weeding brokers and touts, especially to ease the citizens off the red tape myriad, information asymmetries and bureaucratic violence (Gupta, 2012) especially in matters related to water, electricity and transport authorities.

Mediated governance has no accountability to its users but brokers are usually risk averse and efficient in delivering services to ensure the leverage of positive marketing and, maintaining their space in the ‘mediation market’. In other words, the system is far from being transparent as nobody knows the legitimacy of the means used by fixers. The mediation of public services may well be offering services to citizens at a price in the short-term, but it is a larger reflection of the lack of capacity, complacency and poor design of service delivery systems in the long-run.

This is a shortened version of an article published here by the Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research.

 References
Gisselquist, R.M. (2012) Good Governance as a Concept, and Why this Matters for Development Policy. WIDER Working Paper
Gupta, A., 2012. Red tape: Bureaucracy, structural violence, and poverty in India. Duke University Press.
Helmke, G. and S. Levitsky (2004) ‘Informal Institutions and Comparative Poli-tics: A Research Agenda’, Perspectives on politics 2(4): 725-740
Kumar, G. and F. Landy (2012) ‘Vertical Governance: Brokerage, Patronage and Corruption in Indian Metropolises’, ‘Vertical Governance: Brokerage, Patronage and Corrup-tion in Indian Metropolises’, Governing India’s Metropolises, pp. 127-154. Routledge India

 

sushant.pngAbout the author:

Sushant Anand is a senior officer at the Accountability Initiative. He has a vast spectrum of experience to work in areas including health, education, WASH, resource management and climate change in organisations like FICCI, IPE Global, Ipsos and TERI.
Sushant is a public policy professional by training and completed his MA in Development Studies from the ISS. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do teachers discriminate in occupational expectations and grading? by Shradha Parashari

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Marks assigned by teachers tend to motivate students, have bearing on their career choices, admission to universities and affect students’ self-esteem. Existing literature shows that teachers may hold preconceived stereotypes and implicit biases based on their students’ ethnicity, caste, class, and sex, which influence the grades that the teachers award. Consistent with that, my own research among 120 teachers in 8 private and 11 Indian government schools found evidence of teacher discrimination on the basis of students’ caste and socioeconomic status. 

Marks assigned by teachers tend to motivate and incentivize students (Van Ewijk, 2011). Even basic in-class tests are important for students and in the long term are likely to have a bearing on their career choices (Hanna and Linden, 2012). Lavy (2008) points out that marks given to students by teachers not only determine students’ class ranking and admission to universities, but also act as a reward or punishment that can either boost or lower students’ self-esteem.

With regard to teacher influence on test scores, existing research suggests that teachers hold preconceived stereotypes, implicit biases that affect teachers’ expectations based on students’ ethnicity, socio-economic status, caste, sex and physical attractiveness which may influence the grades that they award. Psychological research shows that teachers may look hard for errors while marking essays or tests of minority students so that the results conform to their expectation. That is called an expectation confirmation bias (Sprietsma, 2012).

Experimental studies in the economics literature confirm this. For example, Hanna and Linden’s (2012) study on India shows that teachers assigned lower marks to low caste students relative to high caste students. Similarly, Sprietsma (2012) shows evidence for Germany of low marks assigned to essays written by students with Turkish names relative to essays by students with German names. Tenenbaum and Ruck (2007) find that US-American teachers hold lower expectations for minority African-American students relative to their Caucasian peers.

Consistent with these findings, my own research in 8 private and 11 government schools among 120 teachers in Delhi found evidence of teacher discrimination in occupational expectations (expectation of career paths of students) and grades awarded on the basis of students’ caste and socioeconomic status. To uncover this discrimination, I utilized a randomized experiment.

The experiment of the study was conducted in three stages. In the first stage, students were randomly selected and invited to write essays on the topic “My future career ambition” in which student’s described their background, occupational paths/career paths and challenges to achieve those career paths. In the second stage, I randomly manipulated students’ caste and socioeconomic status on the set of essays. The last and third stage involved visiting schools and requesting teachers to mark essays on a score of 100 and rate occupational expectations (expectations about student’s career paths) on a score of 5. The findings from my research are in line with existing literature on teacher discrimination in schools.

Discrimination confirmed

I found that teachers discriminate in holding occupational expectations and grading. Teachers assigned lower occupational expectations for essays assigned to low caste and low socio-economic status relative to high caste and high socio-economic status. However, high socio-economic status mitigates the effect of low caste. Consistent with this bias in occupational expectations estimates show a bias in grading which is consistent with Sprietsma’s (2012) findings that lower expectations of teachers against  minority students might further perpetuate discrimination in grading.

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Figure 1 and 2: Mean teacher’s occupational expectations and Marks

Essays assigned low caste and low socio-economic status characteristics are assigned 3.64 points lower marks relative to essays assigned to high caste and high socio-economic status. Given the ultra-competitive nature of schooling in India and the importance of grades in determining access to higher education, a 3.6 point disadvantage is substantial. There is also a trade-off between caste and socio-economic status. Belonging to high socio-economic status lowers the extent of discrimination faced by low caste students as marking bias falls by 0.8 points for low caste and high socio-economic status students. The research further explains the origin of these results and finds that the discrimination against low caste students arises from a majority number of high caste teachers in the sample and not from the low caste teachers.

Conclusion

Education has the power to transform lives of students who belong to minority classes and castes. However; they may not be able to reap advantage of education if teachers discriminate in occupational expectations and grading. Since discrimination is associated with feelings of inferiority among students and low self-esteem adversely affects their admission to universities, their career choices and their overall development (Hoff and Pandey, 2006), teacher discrimination is a matter of concern. There is an urgent need for proper training mechanisms in schools that address teacher discrimination, requesting teachers to take implicit bias tests, educating teachers about stereotypes and implicit bias that might bias teachers’ expectations against minority students and perpetuate discrimination in grading. Further formulating a policy of standardized objective grading can also aid in minimizing discrimination in grades awarded.

Link to the author’s research paper: https://www.iss.nl/en/news/teacher-discrimination-occupational-expectations-and-grading-shradha-parashari

References
Casteel, C.A. (1998) ‘Teacher–student Interactions and Race in Integrated Class-rooms’, The Journal of Educational Research 92(2): 115-120.
Ferguson, R.F. (2003) ‘Teachers’ Perceptions and Expectations and the Black-White Test Score Gap’,  Urban Education 38(4): 460-507.
Hanna, R.N. and L.L. Linden (2012) ‘Discrimination in Grading’, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 4(4): 146-168.
Hoff, K. and P. Pandey (2006) ‘Discrimination, Social Identity, and Durable Inequalities’, American Economic Review 96(2): 206-211.
Lavy, V. (2008) ‘Do Gender Stereotypes Reduce Girls’ Or Boys’ Human Capital Out-comes? Evidence from    a Natural Experiment’, Journal of Public Economics 92(10-11): 2083-2105.
Sprietsma, M. (2012) ‘Discrimination in Grading: Experimental Evidence from Primary School Teachers’,            Empirical Economics 45(1): 523-538.
Tenenbaum, H.R. and M.D. Ruck (2007) ‘Are Teachers’ Expectations Different for Racial Minority than for European American Students? A Meta-Analysis.’, Journal of Educational Psychology 99(2): 253.
Van Ewijk, R. (2011) ‘Same  Work, Lower Grade? Student Ethnicity and Teachers’ Subjective Assessments’, Economics of Education Review 30(5): 1045-1058.

Image Credit: Shradha Parashari

ShradhaAbout the author:

Shradha Parashari is an ISS alumna of the 2017-18  MA batch and a Research Associate at Energy Policy Institute at University of Chicago-India. This blog is concerned with the author’s award-winning research that was conducted under supervision of Professor Arjun Singh Bedi and Professor Matthias Rieger.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nepal’s school-merging programme goes against the right to education by Nilima Rai

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Nepal’s government is increasingly merging schools due to shrinking population numbers in its rural areas, arguing that this will improve the quality of education. However, as Nilima Rai points out, reducing the number of schools actually has an adverse impact on children in remote areas. Hence, the government policies interfer with the children’s right to education.

The Prime Minister of Nepal and his government has named the quality of education in public schools as the topmost priority, with a promise of developing Nepal as an international educational hub. Accordingly, the Nepal Government is aspiring to ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all under Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, with a proposed target of an enrolment rate of almost 100% by 2030.

So, the governmental authorities believe that merging schools will help to improve the quality of education in public schools. However, it is necessary to understand whether the existing education policies and infrastructures of public schools, particularly in remote areas of Nepal, are inspiring children’s enrolment, or whether it has an adverse impact on them. This article is based on the informal conversations with people I met during my visit to Annapurna Base Camp and a governmental official of Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) Nepal, reflections of different field visits (other research purposes), and policy reviews and grey literatures relevant to Nepal’s education system and children’s rights.

Context of the Study

I met a girl, three or four years old, in a small teahouse. Like any kid, she was happily playing outside her house. I asked her mother, the teahouse owner, if she went to school. Her reply evoked introspection: “Yes, she does, but she just came home a few days ago for the Dashain vacation.” Wasn’t she too young to leave her mother to travel far just to join school?

Later, I discovered that the little girl was staying with her elder siblings in Pokhara (17 miles away) to study, since the neighbourhood primary school had merged with another school and was now located some distance away. Her story is not a new phenomenon, particularly in the remote villages of Nepal where school-merging policies and programmes are being implemented.

Implications of School Merging Policies on Children’s Education

Consequently, the implications of the existing education policies in sparsely populated areas of Nepal are evident. A large corpus of literature on migration and remittances suggest that remittances have improved the living standards of remittance-recipient households and led to internal migration, mostly for the children’s education, because student numbers in remote areas have dropped. To address the decreasing number of students in public schools, the government introduced the School Merging Implementation Directives 2014, but the long-term impacts of school-merging policies on children were not considered prior to its design and implementation.

The Directives followed the scheme to restructure the education system from classes 1 to 12 by creating uniformity as per the School Sector Reform Plan 2009-15. According to the Directives, schools located within 30 minutes’ walking distance from home and serving a small population, that are unable to meet the minimum criteria of a full-fledged foundation, primary or upper primary school, can be merged together and run as a full-fledged school. According to the Status Report 2014-15 of the Department of Education, out of the 35,223 schools in the country, 443 schools were merged with neighbouring schools, 627 were closed, and 43 were downsized. This number might have increased since then.

The provision of merging schools located within 30 minutes’ walking distance from home overlooks the grim realities of a difficult topography and the absence of transportation in remote areas. The addition of 15-20 minutes to the commute time has exacerbated the children’s problems and increased the chance of dropouts. Taking into account the widespread poverty in Nepal and the country’s dependency on intensive agriculture, the Government of Nepal (Ministry of Health and Population and Ministry of Education) in support of different UN agencies and INGOs introduced the mid-day meal programme to support families in need and encourage children who have to walk long distances to school simply in search of enrolment. Due to irregularities and the insufficiency of such programmes, cases of children not getting the mid-day meal exist.

Children’s Rights and School Merging Policy

It is said that the practice of merging schools is intended to enhance the quality of education by centralising scattered resources, but it is very crucial to assess the feasibility for each and every child before merging schools. When schools are merged, children have no alternative but to quit school, endure the hardship of commuting over longer distances, or leave their parents and live in another place.

Hence, my study finds that the school-merging programme goes completely against the children’s right to education. When seen from the lens of child rights and the perspective of local communities, it has actually aggravated the children’s problems and driven them away from school. Therefore, it is imperative to analyse the long-term consequences of such policies on children’s education and exercise to find a better and comprehensive solution.

This post is a summarised version of the author’s article in the Kathmandu Post.

Image Credit: Simona Cerrato on Flickr.

nilima.jpgAbout the author:

Nilima Rai is an ISS alumni. She is currently working for CESLAM on various research studies, and previously worked for several National and International NGOs. Her primary research interests are issues of International/National migration and labour, forced migration, ethnic relations, and gender issues
.

A zero-waste Philippines is possible by Froilan Grate and Jed Alegado

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January is Zero Waste month in the Philippines, celebrating the month in which a law on waste management was signed in 2000. Since the law came into force, various cities and towns in the Philippines have shown leadership in implementing the law. But strong political will and robust policies are needed to ensure that government leaders and an engaged citizenry can transform the Philippines into a zero-waste country.

Five years ago, Presidential Proclamation No. 760, signed by former president Benigno S. Aquino III, officially declared the month of January as Zero Waste Month. The proclamation defined ‘zero waste’ as “an advocacy that promotes designing and managing products and processes to systematically avoid and eliminate the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, and to conserve and recover all resources, and not indiscriminately dispose or burn them.”

Even before the issuance of the proclamation, various nongovernmental organizations in the Philippines have been trying to mainstream zero waste as a goal for our government. In fact, PP 760 traces its roots to the first-ever Zero Waste Youth Convergence organized by Mother Earth Foundation, in which 5,000 youth leaders issued a Zero Waste Youth statement calling for the celebration of a Zero Waste Month.

January was chosen as Zero Waste Month because this was the month when Republic Act No. 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, was signed. Many countries around the world have expressed admiration for this landmark Philippine law, as it calls for a decentralised waste and resource management system that also bans waste incinerators.

According to the National Solid Waste Commission, waste in Philippine cities and municipalities is mostly composed of organics (52 percent). Recyclables comprise 28 percent, and residuals (waste that can’t be reused, recycled or composted) 18 percent. Much of the waste (80 percent, which is organics and recyclables combined) can be safely returned to nature or industry without resorting to landfills and incineration.

Through proper segregation, organics can be composted in our homes, schools and offices. In a linear waste management approach, organics are wasted instead of being turned into a resource. Under a zero-waste approach, recyclables are reused and recycled and become a source of livelihood for waste workers as well.

Various cities and towns in the Philippines have shown leadership in implementing the law, hoping to transform into a zero-waste city. A good model is San Fernando, Pampanga, which achieved a 78-percent waste diversion record (or the amount that was composted or recycled instead of going into the landfill) in 2017, from 12 percent in 2012. Tacloban City was also able to increase the coverage of waste collection but managed to decrease the volume of waste sent into landfills.

However, the work does not end at the local government unit (LGU) level. Many LGUs that have already been implementing zero-waste policies need strong support from national government agencies and legislators. They have the power to enable an environment that supports these policies by enacting laws and supporting the implementation of such laws that can scale up the successes of LGUs doing the zero-waste approach.

For instance, cities like San Fernando, Pampanga, that are trying to reduce nonrecyclable plastic waste through local ordinances cannot implement zero waste effectively unless there is a law at the national level to mandate businesses to stop the production of single-use disposable plastic packaging. Having a national law will ensure that materials such as disposable implements or throwaway sachet packaging are not produced in the first place. Thus, it removes the burden from LGUs to have to manage plastic waste that can neither be recycled nor composted.

With strong political will and robust policies in place, government leaders and an engaged citizenry can transform the Philippines into a zero-waste country. The coming midterm elections is an opportune time to ensure that we are on the right track.

This article was originally published in The Inquirer: https://opinion.inquirer.net/119378/a-zero-waste-philippines-is-possible#ixzz5fyE854dE

froilan-1.jpegAbout the authors:

Froilan Grate is the regional coordinator of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives Asia-Pacific.

 

kuya jedJed Alegado is the communications officer for Asia-Pacific of #breakfreefromplastic.

 

 

Reclaiming control of Indonesia’s oceans by Salena Tramel

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At once unexplored and overexploited, the oceans surrounding Indonesia represent neoliberal development’s final frontier. But Indonesian activists are building a global movement to resist the financialisation and privatisation of the world’s oceans.

Indonesia, the largest archipelago in the world, holds some stunning coastal and deep-water resources. With more than 17,500 islands straddling two oceans, the sea is not only a way of life, but also a source of it.

Fisheries account for a significant part of Indonesia’s trillion-dollar economy – the largest in Southeast Asia. More than 30 percent of global maritime trade finds its way through the Strait of Malacca, which is among the busiest of international shipping lanes. Tourist havens are seemingly everywhere, from the palm-fringed beaches of Bali, to the abundant shallow-water reefs of the Coral Triangle.

Managing marine ecosystems is therefore an unsurprising priority for the vast number of actors that have a stake in Indonesia’s coastal economy. At once unexplored and overexploited, the oceans represent neoliberal development’s final frontier. The twin processes of ocean acidification and global warming, and related international political responses further complicate matters.

Blue economy 

New analysis was recently published in the journal Science, indicating that oceans are heating up 40 percent faster than a United Nations panel of experts predicted in a study carried out five years ago.

The study further concluded that in 2018, seawater temperatures reached an all-time high and were expected to escalate further in the coming years. Theses studies mirror those on land, where combined data from NASA and NOAA show that the five hottest years ever have occurred in the 2010s.

For many, marine ecosystem management, fisheries management, and climate change mitigation strategy are embodied in a redoubled commitment to the blue economy – the idea that the financialisation of oceans can reap economic profit and save the environment at once.

But what kind of development does the blue economy seek, and for whom? In Indonesia, small-scale fishers and their communities are holding fast to various manifestations of traditional knowledge that they see as key to ensuring the survival of the seas and of future generations.

Whose Oceans?

The Indonesian islands have long been at the forefront of oceanic policy and development circles, in large part because of their sheer numbers and strategic location.

One such high-level process held recently was the Our Ocean conference, which took place in late October in Bali. The meeting brought together a large number of powerful actors to debate some of the most pressing oceanic issues: climate change, fisheries, the blue economy, pollution, maritime security, and marine protected areas.

As is the case in many top decision-making spaces, representatives of governments, corporations, and intergovernmental institutions were given a seat at the table. Notably absent, however, were those closest to the sea – the fishers.

Marthin Hadiwinata, Chief Executive of the Indonesia Traditional Fisherfolk’s Union (KNTI), said: “Policies on marine issues cannot be addressed in the absence of fishing communities who have direct linkages to the ocean”.

Hadiwinata explained that the issue of marine pollution, for instance, most deeply affects people living around the coastal areas and small islands: “Rather than inviting fishers to share their solutions,” he added, “companies who are involved in mining and other forms of extractive industry that dump their waste into the sea are regarded as corporate partners in cleaning up dirty waters”.

Blue carbon 

Likewise, climate change mitigation and adaptation projects often turn to the problems that caused the environmental crisis in the first place as a way of responding to it. Take for example Blue Carbon, where, as with other carbon sequestration programs such as REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation), polluters are allowed to continue their practices so long as they purchase ‘offsets’ in ecosystems elsewhere.

Most often, the burden falls on the shoulders of peasant and indigenous rural working communities, converting their crops and gathering spaces into monocultures such as industrial tree plantations.

Blue Carbon applies this logic to mangrove, coral, and seagrass ecosystems, while small-scale fishers who work in these areas are treated as nuisances and prohibited from future access to their fishing grounds.

Blue Carbon has been championed in high-level policy spaces such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) processes, as well as through ‘big green’ organisations like the Nature Conservancy. It is currently being pioneered in Indonesia.

People’s movements 

Indonesian social movements and grassroots organisations have long been in the business of carefully protecting the islands’ cornucopia of natural resources. In the rapidly evolving marine sector, fishers are forced to be quick on their feet when putting their solutions on the national agenda.

KNTI, the small-scale fisher’s movement that is present in nearly all of Indonesia’s 34 provinces, is playing a leadership role in turning the tide of both discourse and policy towards justice and sovereignty for fishers. This task is done at scale, targeting national and transnational political dynamics.

When word of the Our Ocean conference and its lack of grassroots representation reached KNTI’s members, they were quick to clap back by organising their own participatory meeting: the Ocean’s People Conference. Unlike its ‘official’ counterpart, the parallel meeting reflected the diversity of Indonesia’s small-scale fisheries sector.

The gathering strategically took place in Jakarta – not just to make it more accessible, but also to shed light on marine megaprojects encroaching on the busy capital. The most notorious of these has been a land reclamation project supported by Indonesia’s former colonisers, the Dutch.

This project has been centred on protecting Jakarta from floods by installing a network of fake islands and a giant seawall in Jakarta Bay. While the Governor of Jakarta finally revoked some of the permits necessary to complete the project – thanks, in large part, to a strategic battle fought at the hands of social movements like KNTI – much of the damage had been done.

Local activists 

Ipah Saripah, a fishworker from North Jakarta, explained that the reclamation issue has profoundly impacted her family’s livelihood: “Even though the reclamation stopped, they’ve already constructed four islands,” she said, “and that development is right in the middle of our fishing areas.

“We have been bribed, intimidated, displaced, and even tortured to make way for this reclamation,” she added.

Saripah and other activists from the fishing communities feel that big reclamation projects like the one stalled in Jakarta Bay serve as a blueprint for coastal development in Indonesia. Similar megaprojects are being rolled out in other parts of the country, and they are woven together with the common thread of replacing traditional fishing practices with profit-seeking industries backed by big Asian and European capital.

That’s what the Ocean’s People Conference and related gatherings of people’s movements are attempting to shut down. Ibu Rofi’ah, a representative of a peasant organisation in East Nusa Tengarra, Indonesia’s southernmost province, said: “We are not looking for money, but for means to spread our knowledge.”

Ibu Rofi’ah travelled to Jakarta to explain how she played a leadership role when her community put an end to an iron-mining operation. Today she is working with fisheries cooperatives that find themselves in standoffs with corporations in the mining and tourism sectors.

Movement building

Members of KNTI recognise that their struggles reflect those of fishing communities elsewhere. To this end, the movement is an active member of the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP), a transnational social justice movement dedicated to serving the unique needs of fishers and fish workers.

Since the issues affecting fishers have become increasingly entangled – for instance, when climate change adaptation policies meet big capital – WFFP has doubled down on its attack strategies to protect the communities it represents.

A key part of that is actively promoting the Small Scale Fisheries Guidelines, which is the only comprehensive global governance instrument intended to protect fishers and traditional fisheries. KNTI has been doing this work across Indonesia, and making its demands global through social movement gatherings and even United Nations processes.

Marthin Hadiwinata said: “Here in Indonesia, we are pushing the government to immediately recognise and protect fishers’ rights. And at the same time, we are building the global movement to resist financialisation and privatisation of the world’s oceans.”

This article was originally published in The Ecologist: https://theecologist.org/2019/feb/01/reclaiming-control-indonesias-oceans?fbclid=IwAR2E4tVd0ylFjOcEJKqtD4EKG_mxVRaBVsd9dmyMyW-CNdGigsoA-Zep_74

18033356_10155194755021449_220274621249703711_nAbout the author:

Salena Tramel is a journalist and PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, where her work is centered on the intersections of resource grabs, climate change mitigation, and the intertwining of (trans)national agrarian/social justice movements.

Creative Development | Rap Against Dictatorship: Thai lessons in history, politics, and belonging by Roy Huijsmans

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On December 30th, 2018, when the end-of-year music charts were nearing their annual climax, music history was made in Thailand: the music video of Thai collective Rap Against Dictatorship called Prathet Ku Mi ([What] My Country’s Got) reached 50 million views on YouTube. This blog post explains that appreciating rap as social critique requires going beyond lyrics to contextualise its multiple and at times subtle messages and references.

Thailand has a long history of military coups.[1] The most recent one took place on May 22nd, 2014. Since then, Thailand has been ruled by the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), formed by the military. Various observers have expressed concern about the human rights situation in Thailand under the NCPO. In 2018, Freedom House cautioned that the government ‘has exercised unchecked powers granted by the constitution to impose extensive restrictions on civil and political rights, and to suppress dissent’.[2] Next to rewriting the constitution, the NCPO has used various legal instruments to supress critical voices, including a new Computer Crime Act and restrictions on political gatherings.[3]

Within this context, academic conferences are monitored, too. Recently, charges were pressed against Thai academics who protested this at the 2017 International Conference on Thai Studies (Chiang Mai) by holding up handwritten Thai language signs declaring that ‘an academic forum is not a military camp’. This peaceful protest was deemed violating Order No.3/2015 that forbids political gatherings of five people or more.[4]

Rap as critique

The country free of corruption which doesn’t even investigate on it,
The country whose prime minister’s watch is made of corpses
The country whose parliament is the playground of its soldiers,
The country in which a constitution is written so that its army’s paws can trample all over it,
…

This is my country, this is my country.[5]

Holding up some handwritten signs at an academic conference seems gentle protest compared to the language used in Prathet Ku Mi. It thus came as no surprise that within days of its YouTube release (October 22nd, 2018), the Thai newspaper The Nation reported that ‘police had already been ordered to identify the rappers and explore the option of pressing charges’.[6] The day after, The Nation continued reporting on the song, stating that it ‘went to the top of Thailand’s iTunes download list’ and had already attracted millions of viewers.[7] Possibly because it went viral, to date no actual charges have been pressed against the rappers.

The lyrics are only a small part of what makes Prathet Ku Mi such a remarkable song. James Mitchell explains on New Mandala that the real power of the song perhaps lies in the moving images of the music video.[8]

From lyrics to visuals

The music video restages an iconic image of what is known as the Thammasat massacre or the 6 October event. At 3:20 minutes into the clip a guitar solo sets in. The camera zooms in on an electric guitar in the colours of the Thai flag – the only colour scene in the music video. The next scene makes clear what the audience in the background has been cheering to: a hanging, and a young man beating the hanged body with a chair.

On 6 October 1976 Thai state and paramilitary forces violently ended a student protest at Thammasat University in Bangkok. Students protested the (invited) return to Thailand of the former military dictator Thanom Kittikachorn. Suchada Chakpisuth, a then first year student at Thammasat, recalled that the violence was triggered by a mock-hanging students staged to demand justice following an actual hanging of students by state forces. Unfortunately or deliberately, the Thai radio reported it as ‘a play lynching the Crown prince’ by communist students unleashing disproportionate countermeasures.[9]

To date, no one has ever been charged for the violence and many questions have remained unanswered. The music video returns to this moment in Thai history in a musical genre that appeals to the young. As James Mitchell argues, the music video thereby ‘accomplished what the Thai education system cannot’ because school books do not discuss this moment in Thai history in much detail.[10]

Prathet Ku Mi: a statement of belonging

With the long-delayed elections in sight (March 24th, 2019), Rap Against Dictatorship has released a timely and youthful lesson in political consciousness and citizenship. Their message is one of critique, but a deeply engaged one. This is realised by juxtaposing the listing of criticism with the phrase prathet ku mi (ประเทศกูมี).

Coupling the Thai term prathet (ประเทศ) for country with the first person pronoun ku (กู), the English translation as ‘my country’ does not do justice to the intricate meanings conveyed through this phrase. First, connecting the collective notion of prathet to the personal deviates from common expressions used by politicians such as prathet Thai (ประเทศไทย; Thailand) or prathet rao (ประเทศกเรา; our country). Next to this individual claim on a collective concept, ku is not a neutral personal pronoun. Ku is what is used informally among friends as a means to bond but also to convey anger. This intricate use of language not only fits the style of the rap genre – it also conveys a very firm sense of belonging. It is a personal statement, yet reclaiming the collective. It is informal, yet referring to the formal construct of country. It is full of anger, yet it is all but disengaging. After all these rappers suggest learning from the troubled history of ‘my country’.

Hyperlink to Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZvzvLiGUtw
[1] https://www.newmandala.org/counting-thailands-coups/
[2] https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/thailand
[3] https://asiancorrespondent.com/2016/12/understanding-thailands-revised-computer-crimes-act/
[4] https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1314859/charges-against-academics-harm-nation
[5] https://lyricstranslate.com/en/%E0%B8%9B%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B0%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%A8%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B9%E0%B8%A1%E0%B8%B5-prathet-ku-mi-my-country.html
[6] http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/breakingnews/30357295
[7] http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/breakingnews/30357314
[8] https://www.newmandala.org/thailands-rap-against-dictatorship/
[9] https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/unforgettable-unrememberable-the-thammasat-massacre-in-thailand/#!
[10] https://www.newmandala.org/thailands-rap-against-dictatorship/

This article is part of a series on Creative Development. See the first article of this series here.

Image Credit: Pauliepg. The picture has been cropped.

Color 2 Roy Huijsmans

About the author:

Roy Huijsmans is a teacher/researcher at the ISS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Religion within development, or development within religion? by Fernande Pool

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Religion should not be considered one among many wellbeing dimensions that development enables people to engage in, but one among many ontological sources that enables people to engage in development, Fernande Pool, postdoctoral researcher at the ISS, argues. A truly inclusive and respectful dialogue on development would go beyond a secular/religious binary and allow for alternative sources and conceptualisations, whether embedded in religious or non-religious sources.

What is the place of religion in development? Since the 1970s, development practitioners and theorists have gone ‘beyond GDP’ to describe people’s wellbeing. Committed to value-driven, human development, they have started to pay attention to religion. In human development, religion is no longer merely considered an obstruction to, or instrumental to, development, but itself is a valuable part of wellbeing. Yet, if religion is regarded as one dimension of wellbeing, the development framework usually remains secular, whereas this does not align with the lived reality everywhere. So I argue that we still need a cognitive turn.

Engaging development through religion

My contribution is based on two years of ethnographic research with devout Muslims in an Indian village I call Joygram. I suggest that religion should, when appropriate, not (only) be considered a sub-category of development—something development allows people to engage in. Instead, it can form the basis from which to engage with development to begin with. Human development implies some normative ideas of what being human means and what kind of society would allow one to be ‘more human’.

For the research participants, notions of what being human means, and the ethical freedom to discuss these normative ideas, are embedded in the Islamic dharma. To approach religion as a sub-category in an otherwise secular development framework excludes these religious life experiences and ideas from the outset. The scope of this blog is merely to show how different ontological notions underpinning human development can be, and that a proper understanding of these differences requires a cognitive turn.

Including different ontologies

A next question to ask would be: if secular and religious ideas of being would be considered as equally valid in an inclusive dialogue on worthwhile development, would development interventions be not only morally better as a process but also better in terms of their outcomes? A brief example from Joygram seems to suggest so.

In Joygram, the values driving development, including conceptualisations of the human person, life, and society as mentioned above, are embedded in what I call the Islamic dharma: the locally specific, all-encompassing ethics of justice and order to which religion—in this case Islam—is integral. Muslims in Joygram foster a dynamic concept of the human as emerging from divine submission and constant interactions within social networks. First, humanity emerges from the acknowledgment of the eternal indebtedness to the creator-god for the gift of life. Subsequently, the being is made a ‘human person’ through exchanges within a network of social relationships.

So, Joygramis believe that relationality comes into existence before the individual. This doesn’t take away, however, that every person has a right to the same human dignity. It is just that the human is conceptualised differently from, for instance, the human as a sovereign individual in most liberal theories. What it means to be human is deeply embedded in dharma, which includes religion. So without the notion of dharma as the basis for dialogue, one cannot even begin to talk about humans, let alone human development. Indeed, outside dharma, there is no humanity, because there are no values. So, if development in Joygram is to be worthwhile, it has to be embedded in dharma, too. Development dialogues outside the space of dharma would be reduced to purely technocratic and instrumental measures.

The need for a cognitive turn

A dialogue on development that would include and respect the Islamic dharma would require a cognitive turn, otherwise the starting position of a discussion is still within the hegemonic secular ontology. This is not unlike the cognitive turn required to shift the focus from GDP to individual capabilities. Perhaps development should not merely take religious values into account, or enable or liberate people to engage in religion. A development dialogue could be more inclusive if it acknowledges that the entire meaning of the world, the human, and key values like freedom and dignity may be informed by religious ideas and experiences. This means allowing for alternative conceptualisations of being human, but also of autonomy, relationships, and so on.

This does not mean, however, that universal values have to be discarded in favour of cultural relativism. It means, rather, that certain universal values or development goals, such as Martha Nussbaum’s list of basic capabilities, may be pursued on the basis of different ontological grounds. The Joygrami worldview and Nussbaum’s capability approach are not incompatible, even if they are based on different notions of what being human means. Yet in Joygram, the capabilities would be striven after within dharma, not as side by side with dharma, because then they would lose their ultimate value.

I reiterate that religion is more a complex social phenomenon than a static and compartmentalised set of norms and symbols, and dynamic religious ideas of being and sociality interact with ideas of being and sociality outside of that discreet religion—if there ever was one. Religions constantly change, partly because of those interactions, but also because of internal reasoning. Moreover, religion is nothing special, yet central: it seems likely that every human being lives with ideas of being and sociality, whether consciously or not, and there are always elements that transcend everyday life, whether directly associated with a particular religion or not. A truly inclusive and respectful dialogue on development would go beyond a secular/religious binary and allow for alternative sources and conceptualisations, whether embedded in religious or non-religious sources.

Image Credit: Jorge Royan / http://www.royan.com.ar / CC BY-SA 3.0

About the author:

Picture-d5a9-41db-ab99-ac23fa465eb8.jpgFernande Pool is a Marie Skłodowksa Curie “Leading” Fellow at ISS. Her current ethnographic research with Muslims in the Netherlands aims to destabilise hegemonic conceptualisations of religion and secularism, wellbeing and development. Her PhD thesis, completed in March 2016 at the London School of Economics anthropology department, explored the ethical life of Muslims in West Bengal, India. She is the co-founder and co-director of Lived Religion Project and AltVisions

 

 

Creative Development | Migration and musical mobilities in Sudan and Laos by Roy Huijsmans, Katarzyna Grabska and Cathy Wilcock

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How are belonging, citizenship, and rights contested through creative practices such as music and dance? What role do the creative industry, international cultural institutions, and the mobilities of performing artists play in this? And what is the significance of all this for rethinking development in post-conflict settings such as Sudan and Laos? This article briefly reflects on these questions that are driving a new ISS-funded research project.

Researching development through creative practice

A new research project led by ISS researchers Katarzyna Grabska, Roy Huijsmans, and Cathy Wilcock called Creative Development: Migration and musical mobilities in Sudan and Laos seeks to investigate the intersection of migration and creative practice. The project commences in 2019 and involves qualitative, arts-based and ethnographic field research in France, Laos, Sudan, and the UK. This research will contribute to an emerging body of work studying the relations between arts, popular culture, migration, and development.

In development studies, there is some recognition of the role of popular culture in development practice, perhaps most noticeable in research on the phenomenon of ‘celebrities’ as goodwill ambassadors (e.g. David Beckham, Shakira, Angelina Jolie). In migration and refugee studies, the engagement with the arts has been more profound and has gone beyond a focus on the rich and famous, also breaking with a western-centric view of development.

A good example is the collaborative project led by Dave Lumenta at Universitas Indonesia. The project is entitled ‘Performing out of Limbo’. It is a musical/research collaboration between Oromo refugee youth from Ethiopia and musicians, students and academics from Indonesia (see a short YouTube clip here, and a write up here).

Music and dance as acts of citizenship

The project’s conceptualisation of citizenship and belonging draws on the work of Engin Isin. In the social sciences, citizenship is mostly treated as a ‘status’. In their 2008, book ‘Acts of Citizenship, Isin and Neilsen depart from such a view and approach citizenship as an act. Such a conceptualisation of citizenship enables us to rethink ‘who’ can be a citizen based on ‘collective and individual deeds that rupture socio-historical patterns’ (p13).

This approach enables viewing music and dance performances as acts of citizenship, as explored by Aoileann Ní Mhurchú in her article ‘Unfamiliar Acts of Citizenship’. Here she engages with the experiences of young migrants in Ireland and their engagement with hip hop and vernacular languages. Their practices do not fit into conventional categories of belonging based on language use, ethnicity, or nationality, and are better described as processes facilitating ‘creative hybrid refashioning of self’ (p163) through which political identities and relations of belonging are renegotiated. Although these songs, like much hip hop, come with a message, the focus on processes and effects lead us to go beyond a discursive analysis of the lyrics to ask what senses of belonging those involved in these musical practices realised through them.

Creative development and contested acts of national belonging in Laos and Sudan

This research project will build on the work of Ní Mhurchú and others through examining music and dance as acts of citizenship in post-conflict settings. With recent histories of violent internal conflict, followed by regime change Laos and Sudan offer fertile terrain for studying acts of citizenship in and through (re)emerging creative practices.

In both Laos and Sudan, questions of national belonging are delicate matters. Expressions of citizenship are not only regulated through legal practices, but also actively promoted through national education curricula and state-censored media. This indicates that citizenship in these contexts is much more than a matter of status, but also a matter of conduct, and one that comes with a strong national(ist) morality. From such a perspective, it is not difficult to see why a music video by the popular Thai national country singer Lumyai shot in the Lao tourist site of Vang Vieng stirred debate in Laos. Although the lyrics hardly refer to national belonging, other elements of the clip do. The music video is shot in a famous rural Lao location, and in her dance moves Lumyai weaves together elements from the traditional Lam Fong dance with sexually provocative moves. As such, Lumyai transgressed norms about proper (gendered) conduct on Lao soil.

Emplacement and movement in creative development

Due to recent histories of violent conflict, there are significant Lao and Sudanese diaspora, and the diaspora play an active role in the creative scene. Migration, like popular culture, is a transnational phenomenon. Moreover, culture is also transnationalised through international cultural institutions. This is evident from the work of the Institut Français in Laos and in Sudan and the Goethe Institute in Sudan. Culture has always flown, but this is particularly true in the present-day social media landscape. In addition, diaspora networks and international cultural institutions also facilitate the movement of artists and creative development. At the same time, dance and citizenship become acts of citizenship when they are emplaced—that is, when these creative expressions become meaningful in relation to more territorialised relations of belonging. Hence, the research project will pay close attention to the dynamics of mobilities and placemaking in the manifestations of creative development under study. Stay tuned!

On 5 February 2019, the ISS will host a workshop on ‘Moving methods: creative approaches to experiences of displacement, migration, social justice and belonging’.

Color 2 Roy HuijsmansRoy Huijsmans is a teacher/researcher at the ISS.

 

 

 

 

 

Kasia Grabska_

Katarzyna (Kasia) Grabska is a lecturer/researcher at the ISS and a filmmaker.’

 

 

 

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Cathy Wilcock is a postdoctoral researcher at the ISS, with a background in critical development studies. In her role at ISS, she is continuing her work on political belonging in the context of forced migration. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Development Dialogue 2018 | Do children entering preschool early develop more quickly? by Saikat Ghosh and Subhasish Dey

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Colourful pens

Despite fierce debate among scholars regarding the age at which children are ready to enter preschool, the issue remains contentious. This article based on an empirical footing argues that earlier preschool entry is better for children living in developing countries like India, as it can help to ‘level the playing field.’

ENTRY AGE: A LONG-DEBATED ISSUE

There is considerable debate regarding the age at which children are ready to enter preschool. However, scholars seem not to have been able to reach any conclusion regarding the link between children’s development and schooling age. There are two principal views on this issue that shape the age-of-entry debate both at the policy and practice level: First, entry with maturity, and, second, entry followed by maturity.

The first view is a maturational point of view that expects the child to be mature and ready for school. Reaching only a specific age does not ensure that a child is ready for school, nor does it guarantee a specific level of development. The conventional wisdom is that older children are more likely to have the necessary skills and maturity to succeed in school and therefore learn more in each grade (Cmic & Lamberty 1994; Krauerz 2005; Graue & DiPema 2000). Therefore, advocates of maturational view propose a delay in entrance to kindergarten for a child who is not ready, and such delay gives the child an extra year to become developmentally ready. This trend was described by the phrase “graying of kindergarten” (Bracey 1989), which is recently known as “redshirting” (Katz, 2000).

On the other hand, people holding the alternative view believe that the only determining factor for entry into kindergarten should be chronological age. This entry criterion is exogenous and less susceptible to cultural or social biases (Brent et al. 1996; Kagan, 1990; Stipek 2002). Besides, development is uneven and multidimensional, and thus, a threshold cannot be identified, as children’s level of development varies across different dimensions and children are not likely to achieve the level considered important for school success in all domains at the same time (Stipek 2002: 4).

Yet, very little is known in the context of developing countries, and whether the variation in the age of entry in preschool has any impact on children’s later development is still an open question. The authors took the initiative[1] to explore the same debate in the Indian context. As children from developing countries like India face several challenges from the very beginning, therefore, it is utterly significant to examine whether early entry in preschool provides them with an edge.

DOES AGE OF ENTRY MATTER?

The answer in this context is yes, it matters, and it is evident form the study that the age of entry into preschool is utterly significant for children’s later development. Empirical evidence indicates that early entry into preschool may help children to acquire better cognitive and socio-emotional skills. The study has also found significant variation in children’s development depending on their socioeconomic background viz. parents’ level of education, their ethnic origin, etc. Considering the socioeconomic and cultural background of Indian society (as reflected within the household and parents characteristics), the results suggest that early entry into preschool has significant effects both on social and cognitive development of the child at least after a one-year completion of primary education. Therefore, the study advocates in favour of early preschool entry which has been referred by the authors as ‘Green-Shirting’.

Considering children from developing countries, where various forms of inequalities are already present, several differences may exist between children of lower socio-economic status and those of higher socio-economic status even before they enter preschool. Therefore, it is particularly necessary to provide children with a strong foundation from the very beginning so that these early disadvantages can be tackled.

Early childhood education and care provisions can be important intervention for children’s development. For example, the publicly provided preschool education in India, known as the ‘Anganwadi Centre’, which is the predominant type of preschool in India, represents an important and an effective initiative in ensuring both the social and cognitive development of children in the later stage of their life. Early entry into preschool and therefore, longer preschool experiences, can help to ‘level the field.’

[1] The study on which this article is based was carried out by the authors in India and is based on a primary data of 1,369 households. Ten different parameters were used to measure children’s development, which was further disentangled into cognitive and social development.
References
Bracey, G. (1989). Age and achievement. Phi Delta Kappan, 70(9): 732.
Brent, D., D. May & D. Kundert (1996) ‘The incidence of delayed school entry: A twelve-year review’, Early Education Development 7(2):121-135.
Cmic, K. & G. Larnberty (1994) ‘Reconsidering school readiness’, Early Education and Development 5(2): 91- 105.
Graue, E. & J. DiPerna (2000). Redshirting and early retention: Who gets the gift of time and what are its outcomes?. American Educational Research Journal, 37(2): 509-534.
Kagan, S. L. (1990). Readiness past, present and future: Shaping the agenda. Young Children 48(1): 48-53.
Katz, L. (2000). Academic redshirting and young children. ERIC. Washington, DC, Office of Education Research and Improvement.
Krauerz, K. (2005). Straddling early learning and early elementary school. Journal of the National Association for the Education of Young Children 64(3): 50-58.
Stipek, D. (2002). At what age should children enter kindergarten? A question for policy makers and parents. SRCD Social Policy Report 16(2): 3-16.

This blog article is part of a series related to the Development Dialogue 2018 Conference that was recently held at the ISS.

About the authors:ghosh

Dr. Saikat Ghosh has recently received his doctorate from the University of Bamberg, Germany. His research interest centres on poverty, education, inequality, and social policy analysis with particular focus on developing countries. Formerly, he has worked for the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences (BAGSS), Germany, and UNU-WIDER, Helsinki. He also served the Government of West Bengal, India for six years between 2007 to 2013.

deyDr. Subhasish Dey is an Associate Lecturer at the Economics Department of University of York, UK. He is an applied microecometrician working in the field of development and political economy. He completed his PhD in Economics from University of Manchester in 2016. His research interests include social protection programme, impact evaluation of social policies, electoral politics, affirmative action and routine immunisation. He served government of West Bengal for five years between 2003 and 2008 in education and Panchyat and rural development departments.