Impact of Pandemic on Vulnerable Section: SC, ST and OBC

SC/ST and OBC have been impacted disproportionately by the pandemic as various social indicators shows vulnerabilities of this communities.

Impact of pandemic on education

On the one hand, with policies mandating the promotion of students, promotion rates at the secondary school level rose significantly and repetition rates nosedived during the pandemic years (2020-21 and 2021-22).

On the other, the inability to attend physical school and the lack of access to digital education caused a massive drop in learning levels after the COVID-19 outbreak.

Impact on education of SC, ST and OBC

Increasing promotion rate: Notably, the promotion rate among Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) students increased sharply after the outbreak. The promotion rate among Other Backward Classes (OBC) students continued to rise unabated.

Repetition rate declining: The repetition rates too drastically came down in the pandemic years with some 1% students repeating their class across all communities. Notably, the gap in the repetition rate between SC/ST students and general category students declined greatly after the outbreak.

Declining learning outcomes: While the promotion rate surged and the repetition rate declined, the marks scored by school students in National Achievement Survey (NAS) exams dropped significantly across classes and in most subjects.

Disproportionate impact: There is a disproportionately greater impact on SC and ST students as their learning outcomes reduced the most while their promotion rates saw the highest degree of rise among all the communities.

Impact on livelihood of vulnerable sections of the society

High job loss probability: The researchers found that compared to workers from upper castes, the probability of job loss was three times higher for those who are SC and two times higher for OBC workers.

Comparatively higher unemployment: In December 2019, 39% of upper caste workers were employed and by April 2020, the percentage had dropped to 32%. The fall was more pronounced for SC workers, 44% of whom were employed in December 2019, but only 24% were employed in April 2020. For OBCs and STs the fall was from 40% to 26% and 48% to 33%, respectively.

Poor education poor Opportunities: According to researchers, the upper castes are endowed with higher human capital, i.e. educational achievement, and are in jobs less vulnerable to pandemic disruption. What is surprising is that the impact on scheduled caste is three times worse. Not only has the pandemic exposed the pre-existing inequities but has amplified them.

How women are affected due to the pandemic?

Effect on mental health: Women in low-caste women may be at a greater risk for worse mental health outcomes and higher perceived loneliness relative to high-caste women.

Social exclusion and job losses: Prior research has found that low-caste women have been found to experience greater social exclusion greater job loss and greater barriers to healthcare and thus may experience both worse mental health and higher loneliness.

Rising loneliness: Women in SC/ST and OBC groups will experience worse mental health, and higher perceived loneliness relative to women in the general caste group. We expect that this difference will be robust even when accounting for sociodemographic factors.

Victims of systemic disadvantage: Women in general and women of weaker sections in particular, are victims of multiple systemic disadvantages, which exacerbated during the pandemic. Rural women, especially the female wage workers, endured greater socio-economic difficulties as their livelihood opportunities were abruptly halted by the lockdown.

Visible gendered impact of pandemic: There is nothing natural in the gendered impact of pandemic, but the social norms and behaviour put them at greater risks due to unequal gender preference that is inbuilt in the social structure and culture.

Tackling the Urban Pollution

More than 1,10,000 infants are likely to have been killed by air pollution in India in 2019, almost immediately after being born while long-term exposure to outdoor and household air pollution was estimated to be responsible for about 1.67 million annual deaths amongst the adult population in the country.

What is pollution?

Pollution is the introduction of harmful materials into the environment. These harmful materials are called pollutants. Pollutants can be natural, such as volcanic ash. They can also be created by human activity, such as trash or runoff produced by factories. Pollutants damage the quality of air, water, and land.

Menace of air pollution in urban areas

Demands for air purifiers: Demand for air purifiers has boomed. Recently, in Delhi, pollution-related curbs were lifted and schools opened, despite air quality continuing to be in the “very poor” category.

Health related problems: For the majority of urban north Indians who can’t afford air purifiers, life continues amidst dust, cough and breathlessness.

Children are most affected: Our children in urban localities are growing up with stunted lungs, amidst poverty.

High percentage of respiratory problems: Eighty per cent of all families in Delhi are noted to be suffering respiratory ailments due to severe pollution.

How we can reduce the air pollution?

Expand green cover across urban areas to reduce dust pollution: Ahmedabad’s municipal corporation, for instance, has experimented with urban forests, with the city’s 43rd urban forest inaugurated in June 2021 over 20,000 trees have been in 7,625 sq. metres. Chandigarh has about 1,800 parks. Close to 46 per cent of the city was classified as a green area in 2019.

Use of Miyawaki technique: Civil society could also help in Chennai, the NGO Thuvakkam, with a volunteer force of 1,800, has been able to grow 25 Miyawaki forests, raising over 65,000 trees. Such plantations are now being replicated in other cities including Tuticorin, Vellore and Kanchipuram.

Push for airshed management: With a focus on understanding meteorological, seasonal and geographic patterns for air quality across a large region. In the US, the passage of the Air Quality Act (1967) saw the state of California being divided into 35 districts which had similar geographic and meteorological conditions and pollution was regulated at the state level. This approach was successful in reducing emissions by 98 per cent from 2010 to 2019.

Heavy penalty on polluting cars: Inspiration can also be taken from London’s air pollution revolution an Ultra-Low Emission zone has been established in Central London, with hefty daily fees on cars that emit more than 75g/km of pollution.

Water pollution in Indian cities

Untreated water into freshwater bodies: 72 per cent of urban sewage is untreated in India’s urban freshwater bodies. The Central Pollution Control Board reckons that more than 50 per cent of 351 river stretches (on 323 rivers) are polluted. Over 4,000 septic trucks (with each truck having 5,000 litres of human waste) dispose of their waste in the Ganga every day. In Delhi, about 941 MLPD of raw sewage finds its way to the river, killing off fish and preventing rituals on the banks.

Riverine Pollution: Riverine pollution causes due to raw sewage overflowing from sewage treatment plants, untreated waste from unauthorized colonies, industrial effluents, sewer water from authorized colonies and inter-state pollution.

Water scarcity: More than 40 per cent of Indians are expected to face water scarcity by 2050 and close to 35 million will face annual coastal flooding with sea level rise.

Lack of planning: Apathy prevails as of May 2021, only 16 Indian cities had disclosed their plans to tackle climate change to international institutions, with only eight having actual sustainability-related targets in their urban master plans. Only 43 per cent of all Indian cities surveyed actually sought to address climate change adaption as a topic in their master plans, while only five had a GHG emission reduction target.

How to fight water pollution?

Improving sewage treatment plant capacity: ensuring linkages with the drainage network. Mangalore’s City Corporation (MCC) has wastewater treatment plants with end-user linkages. The MCC offered to supply treated water to such industrial end-users in the city’s special economic zone if the latter agreed to fund about 70 per cent of the operations and maintenance cost of the pumps and the sewage treatment plant.

Developing a sanitation network: The problem of untreated waste and sewer water from unauthorized colonies can be solved by investing in a sewerage network. Consider the example of Alandur, a small suburb of Chennai in 2000, it had no underground sewage lines, with most houses dependent on septic tanks. In the late 1990s, the local municipality in partnership with local resident welfare associations conducted collection drives to gain deposits (ranging from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,500) for developing a sanitation network.

Pump house: The project was launched with a push for creating a pump house, setting up over 5,650 manholes and providing sewerage connections to 23,700 households, a sewage treatment plant with a 12 MLD capacity was also set up. Going forward, many other municipalities in Tamil Nadu have sought to adopt this model.

A systems-based approach should be adopted: along with a push for protecting “blue infra” areas places that act as natural sponges for absorbing surface runoff, allowing groundwater to be recharged. At the household level, we can encourage citizens to take up rainwater harvesting, urban roof terrace greening, urban roof water retention tanks and having a green corridor around residential buildings.

Water permeable roads: Municipalities could be encouraged to make existing roads permeable with a push for green landscaping and rain gardens. At the city level and beyond, policymakers should push for “sponge cities” and incorporate disaster planning. A mindset shift, in citizenry and policymakers, is urgently needed.

Kerala govt. moves to divest Governor of Chancellor Role

In the latest escalation of its running battle with Governor, the Kerala government has decided to remove him as Chancellor of State universities, seeking to replace him with “renowned academic experts”.

Who is a Chancellor of a University?

In India, almost all universities have a chancellor as their titular head whose function is largely ceremonial.

The governor of the state, appointed as the union’s representative of state by the president, is the honorary chancellor of all State owned universities.

The de facto head of any government university is the vice-chancellor.

In private non-profit universities, normally the head of the foundation who has established the university is the chancellor of the university and is the head of the university.

Role of Governors in State Universities

In most cases, the Governor of the state is the ex-officio chancellor of the universities in that state.

Its powers and functions as the Chancellor are laid out in the statutes that govern the universities under a particular state government.

Their role in appointing the Vice-Chancellors has often triggered disputes with the political executive.

What about Central Universities?

Under the Central Universities Act, 2009, and other statutes, the President of India shall be the Visitor of a central university.

With their role limited to presiding over convocations, Chancellors in central universities are titular heads, who are appointed by the President in his capacity as Visitor.

The VCs too are appointed by the Visitor from panels of names picked by search and selection committees formed by the Union government.

The Act adds that the President, as Visitor, shall have the right to authorize inspections of academic and non-academic aspects of the universities and also to institute inquiries.

What is Kerala attempting to do?

Education comes under the Concurrent List.

In an official statement, the Kerala Cabinet noted the M.M. Punchhi Commission had vouched against granting Governors the power of Chancellors.

In many states, the elected governments have repeatedly accused the Governors of acting at the behest of the Centre on various subjects, including education.

Centre constitutes 22nd Law Commission

The Centre has constituted the Law Commission of India by appointing former Karnataka High Court Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi as its chairperson.

Law Commission of India

It is an executive body established by an order of the Government of India. First law commission of independent India was established post the Independence in 1955

Tenure: 3 Years

Function: Advisory body to the Ministry of Law and Justice for “Legal Reforms in India”

Recommendations: NOT binding

First Law Commission was established during the British Raj in 1834 by the Charter Act of 1833

Chairman: Macaulay; It recommended for the Codifications of the IPC, CrPC etc.

Its’ composition

The 22nd Law Commission will be constituted for a period of three years from the date of publication of its Order in the Official Gazette. It will consist of:

Full-time Chairperson;

Four full-time Members (including Member-Secretary)

Secretary, Department of Legal Affairs as ex-officio Member;

Secretary, Legislative Department as ex officio Member; and

Not more than five part-time Members.

Terms of reference

The Law Commission shall, on a reference made to it by the Central Government or suo-motu, undertake research in law and review of existing laws in India for making reforms therein and enacting new legislations.

It shall also undertake studies and research for bringing reforms in the justice delivery systems for elimination of delay in procedures, speedy disposal of cases, reduction in cost of litigation etc.