Secrets to Self Love in Microsteps with Brigitte Tritt – Press Release – Digital Journal

Posted on by

Its no secret that the world were currently living in provides us with more than enough anxiety, stress and doubt.

This truly is a time of true crisis that we are faced with. #SelfLoveMicrosteps: A Simple, Easy and Fun Way to Fall in Love With Yourself, by Brigitte Tritt, available on Amazon in July of 2020, is exactly what is needed to reset, and retrain, our minds to give ourselves the self-love that we all need to remain positive, hopeful and fulfilled with our lives.

Brigitte Tritt is a rapid transformational therapist and certified life coach, wellness entrepreneur, holistic lifestyle advocate and best-selling author. Over the years, Brigitte has participated in events with some of the worlds top thought leaders such as Jack Canfield and Bob Proctor. She is a passionate and inspirational voice, supporting people on their journey to self-love, healing and wellness by helping them create the opening for the dream life they have always desired.

In #SelfLoveMicrosteps: A Simple, Easy and Fun Way to Fall in Love With Yourself, Brigitte uses her proven methods to take overwhelmed, stressed individuals, who are consistently on a merry-go-round of exhaustion in life, through six easy steps with a goal of discovering that mind, body connection in just 21 days. This is a journey of identifying your truest self through self-awareness, self-exploration, self-discovery, self-understanding, self-love and self-mastery. With these tools, Brigittes secret to living the life your heart desires, becomes yours for the taking. Continuously practicing #SelfLoveMicrosteps will have massive results and will have you glowing from within, feeling worthy and valuable and will allow you to attract others with similar energies.

The best part about #SelfLoveMicrosteps is that its simple and EASY! With over 100 self-love ideas, that are either free or inexpensive, #SelfLoveMicrosteps will help readers begin understanding how self-forgiveness, self-compassion and gratitude can be a game-changer in your own life. Getting stuck and frustrated, and feeling unfulfilled, can be a thing of the past once you fully understand how to celebrate your own personal wins and lead the way for yourself!

Another simple strategy that Brigitte refers to as selflove5 is crucial for drawing in the life you deserve. Whether it be through silence, stretching, meditation or reflection we can all find that 5 minutes of precious time to dedicate strictly to ourselves. And by doing this daily, it will allow you to radiate joy outwardly and attract love, peace and calmness to your life.

If you are ready to feel balanced, blissful and full of energy, in #SelfLoveMicrosteps: A Simple, Easy and Fun Way to Fall in Love With Yourself, is what you need for that next chapter of living a life full of joy and contentment.

You are the only person who will provide you the well being and life you want. Brigitte Tritt

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brigitte Tritt is an award winning author, rapid transformational therapist and certified life coach, wellness entrepreneur and a holistic lifestyle advocate. Her company, BEmpowered Thoughts, is a go-to resource for men and women around the world. Her practice focuses on personal empowerment. She empowers her clients with techniques, tools and resources so they are resilient and can handle lifes ups and downs and quickly stay on course as well as be their authentic self. Brigittes proven systems provide her clients with the ability to achieve even more health, wealth and love. Brigitte can be seen across multiple social media platforms located on Brigitte360.com. Having participated in events with some of the worlds top thought leaders including Jack Canfield and Bob Proctor, Brigitte herself believes the world is a better place when you are practicing self-love daily.

Media ContactCompany Name: TMSP AgencyContact Person: Mark Stephen PoolerEmail: Send EmailPhone: +447930691683Country: United KingdomWebsite: https://contactmark.me/

Original post:

Secrets to Self Love in Microsteps with Brigitte Tritt - Press Release - Digital Journal

Empowering India Policy, action or both? – The Times of India Blog

Posted on by

The visuals of the migrant labor lugging off on foot a hundred miles or more, back to their villages in search of safety security and food was a horrific sight. It raised the most fundamental questions as to why should that large a chunk of the population still continue to fend for basic needs. The story is not confined just to the misery that was brought about by the spread of Coronavirus but it also exposed the saga of missed opportunities and the consequent low levels of human development. As per the latest release of the Human Development Index, India ranks at 129 out of 189 countries surveyed.

Even after more than 73 three years of independence and planned development, a vast majority of the Indian population still has to struggle with existential challenges. The socialism of the Nehru era and the legacy thereof coupled with a penchant for state controls validated by the left inspired ideologies; from each according to his ability to each according to his need, has proactively promoted idleness and fatalism and fed the vote banks on doles and subsidies. This on one hand discouraged and discounted entrepreneurship and wealth creation and by its very design, it failed to empower and enable large populations in earning decent livelihoods and contribute to the development and evolution of a vibrant society.

India has for long gloated over its demographic advantage. We all seem to agree that a young population could be an asset; but only when this segment of the population is well educated, trained, and deployed for the reconstruction of India, through manufacturing, services and tertiary sector. Or else, this demographic advantage could well turn out to be a demographic disaster; meaning mounting unemployment and resultant social and economic unrest and disaffection. Mere statistics will not resolve our immediate and pressing challenges of combating poverty want and squalor.

Addressing these challenges together with Indias desire to become the worlds 3rd largest economy and the Vishwa Guru, it is imperative that India creates and builds an empowered and able population. In doing so, Education and Training should thus become Indias overriding priority. The existing archaic and grossly underperforming structures of education & training must be overhauled as we prepare to transact and deliver the new knowledge and competencies required in the 21st century for India to emerge as a world leader.

The first and the foundational link in building an educated and skilled population will be the K12 segment of school education. Building and fostering of skills require a firm base of good quality preparatory education starting with the preschool through Class 12. The government schools in this sector are known to have performed poorly and thus creating a vacuum which was quickly filled up by the private edupreneurs and they have apparently done, comparatively speaking, a much better job in providing contemporary quality of education. I am not saying that the governments in the past, regardless of their party or the color of their beliefs, have not attempted but those were some marginal incremental changes without first tackling the very basics. The accountability of teachers, educational professionals, and the state bureaucracy, all together, has been one of the principal reasons for the underperformance of government schools. The state board results and in particular, the performance of government schools have been around 60% pass percentage or less in class 10 and 12 board exams.

As for the private schools let us understand that private education is not philanthropic anymore and most people entering this arena do look for profits. Given the huge investments it requires for starting a private school, it is only reasonable to expect that investments must yield surpluses. The not for profit pretense is a sham and must soon be cast away.

There has been a lot of debate around whether education is a Service or Public Service. If it is Public service, then the governments must provide this public service against the taxes it collects. And if it is considered as a Service then the service providers have a right to charge for it commensurate with its quality as in any other comparable case. Since quality education creates and adds value by way of knowledge, skills & competencies leading to enhanced earning capacities of an individual, there is absolutely no harm that the individual, as a beneficiary of that value creation, pays for that value.

Such individuals not only create value for themselves and their families they also cascade that as employment and wealth creators, impacting and influencing families and lives around them. So the financial and social returns on financial investment in quality education are far greater when compared with seemingly free but valueless education. So, I would plead that instead of controlling and impeding private education, Governments must proactively partner with the private schools in lending support where needed and partner with them in leveraging their educational and intellectual resources in improving the quality of teaching-learning in the government schools in the vicinity. The left legacy of Private vs. State must be dispensed with.

As it stands today 47.5% of the student enrollments at the national level in the K12 segment are in private schools. In some states, these enrolments are as high as 83%. In the urban areas, the all India average is 73%. The aspiring middle class sends its wards to the private schools and in fact even the lower middle class wherever possible opts in favor of private school education. Such preferences clearly indicate the quality perceptions by the large aspiring Indian population.

As I pen this piece, the New Education Policy has been announced by the Government of India. While I do welcome some of the provisions, for that matter even the older policies of 1986 and 1992 pointed more or less in the same direction, it is the issues of poor governance and apathetic implementation that failed those policies. I would, therefore, urge that the government creates innovative structures and processes and fosters a culture of high accountability, transparency, and performance and purge the current system of petty politics. Without structural reforms and a vibrant work culture required in this digital century, this policy too may meet the same fate as its predecessors.

In fact, the poor quality of education imparted by government schools is not free. It is the taxpayer who pays for it and some recent studies have conclusively proved that the total cost of education that includes capital, operating, and maintenance costs, in the government sector is substantially higher as compared to private schools. Furthermore, as you compare the value creation by way of units of learning outcomes and skills & competencies, the equation emerges to be far more adverse. The cost of lost opportunities, for individuals and collectively for the society and nation, are far greater as such losses endure the whole life cycle of a generation. But if we were to view from macro levels, the expenditure, whether private or public, is a part of financial and opportunity cost at the National level. The nation needs to maximize returns on national investments and every single citizen becomes not only the beneficiary but also the benefactor in due course. That is the only way, the nations and vibrant societies are built and sustained.

The state bureaucracies that have failed to operate their own schools are now exercising control and supervision over some very successful private schools and treat them as personal fiefdoms. The District Education Officer and thorough this office, State directorates or governments keep issuing directives and threats to schools resulting in a very high number of cases pending in courts across the country. This must stop.

As a first step, the governments must stop meddling in the operations of private schools except for such supervisory as was recommended by the Supreme Court in the TMA Pai Foundation case.

Secondly, the government must immediately explore the possibility of socializing the educational assets belonging to the governments and vest all academic and financial operations with the teachers bodies who are currently assigned to these schools. The basic premise of this argument is that limited ownership rights, coupled with the financial gains tagged to performance, will help lift the standards of education & training countrywide.

In line with the grant of ownership rights to tillers of the land, India abolished zamindari and with it, the exploitation of the farmers. Over time, such a move also led to growth in agricultural production. In a similar vein and taking a cue therefrom, with limited ownership rights and financial gains tagged thereto, the same teachers and schools could well begin to flourish and teachers may ensure full enrolment and attendance together with desired learning outcomes. The details, however, of such a scheme can be worked out separately. While such teachers effectively run the schools they would also be held accountable for the overall enrollment rates as well as the quality of learning outcomes and the results of those schools. Instead of giving fixed salaries and wages, the government should examine the possibility of giving the schools and its teachers, school vouchers of such value that does not exceed the current per capita expense on students and the teachers be allowed reasonable freedom to manage their finances and their revenues and expenditure together with the academic processes and learning outcomes.

A separate independent regulator should be set up to oversee the functioning of the schools and ensure 100% enrollments and minimize, over time abolish school dropouts. Together with the local Industry and Busines, a viable and a well-defined vocational training program be launched followed by apprenticeship opportunities for the students passing out of such schools. The options of higher education shall, of course, remain open. A strong and well defined Industry-academic partnership will be essential.

In line with the postulates of the New Education Policy, separate silos must be abolished and a trans-disciplinary department of Skills and training at the central government and also in states must be merged with HRD or Education.

Given the track record of the Modi government, this could well be the best chance for the education sector to embrace a transformational change and get ready for the goals that India is pursuing. While Modi will throw his full weight behind a transformational change, it is for the centre and state governments directly in charge of education to grab this change opportunity.

The Covid disruption has created a very piquant situation for private schools caught between the devil and the deep sea. The governments and the High Courts have confounded the situation by passing conflicting orders. Schools are not able to realize their fees. With the fee revenues scaled down considerably more than the reduction in expenses, some schools are not able to pay their teachers or for other essential expenses. There is a crisis brewing up. A fair amount of schools are in a grave financial mess and may face closure in the near future. It is not just about some private educational enterprises winding up, it is about the future of students going to such schools. The process of finding new schools and the attendant changes in learning environments and social arrangements will be tough for our young school goers.

Going forward, Education, Skills, Training and Empowerment shall be the key drivers we can only ignore this at our own peril.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

More:

Empowering India Policy, action or both? - The Times of India Blog

74% of Internet Users Feel They Have No Control Over the Personal Information Collected on Them – Security Boulevard

Posted on by

New research conducted by the Ponemon Institute reveals a substantial lack of empowerment felt by consumers when it comes to their data privacy. There is also a gap between the data protection individuals want and what industry and regulators provide, pointing to a dire need for digital identity protection solutions on a consumer level.

According to the report (Privacy and Security in a Digital World: A Study of Consumers in the United States), consumers are still waiting on or expecting the federal government to drive data protection initiatives.

More than half of consumers (60%) believe government regulation should help address the privacy risks facing consumers today. Of those, 34% say government regulation is needed to protect personal privacy and 26% believe a hybrid option (regulation and self-regulation) should be pursued.

The study found that 64% of consumers think its creepy when they receive online ads that are relevant to them. And 73% of consumers want advertisers to allow them to opt-out of receiving ads on any specific topic at any time.

It is worth noting that the social microblogging platform Twitter indeed offers this opt-in/opt-out feature. This cannot be said about other popular online services, though.

The research reveals a lack of empowerment that consumers feel in their ability to protect their privacy, coupled with a bit of negligence on the users end.

While 74% of consumers say they have no control over the personal information that is collected on them, they are also not taking much action to limit the data they provide to the online services they employ on a daily basis, like Facebook and Google.

In fact, the report notes, 54% of consumers say they do not consciously limit what personal data they are providing.

This lack of empowerment can have devastating effects on consumers privacy if it goes unchecked, the researchers said.

Other key findings include:

According to Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of Ponemon Institute, these findings make a compelling case for the important role identity protection products and services play in protecting consumers privacy.

The study shows that many consumers are alarmed by the uptick in privacy scandals and want to protect their information, but dont know how to and feel like they lack the right tools to do so, Dr. Ponemon stressed.

At Bitdefender, we believe the more we control our digital footprint, the easier it is to manage our individual online reputation and personal data. Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection lets you see if your personal info has been stolen or made public, or in case the answer is Yes how much of it has actually been leaked.

Bitdefender DIP offers continuous identity monitoring, meaning you are alerted if any sensitive information that relates to your identity is found on the Dark Web or public databases. You get alerts about identity-theft attempts, data breaches, account take-overs and social media impersonations, and you can immediately take action to secure your online identity with only a few clicks. Learn more at https://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/digital-identity-protection.html.

Recent Articles By Author

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from HOTforSecurity authored by Filip Truta. Read the original post at: https://hotforsecurity.bitdefender.com/blog/74-of-internet-users-feel-they-have-no-control-over-the-personal-information-collected-on-them-23848.html

Excerpt from:

74% of Internet Users Feel They Have No Control Over the Personal Information Collected on Them - Security Boulevard

Law banning triple talaq: A year ago today, we reached a defining moment in empowerment of women – The Times of India Blog

Posted on by

Exactly a year ago today, the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019, was passed by both Houses of the Parliament. This Act, in substance, declared the triple talaq, ie talaq-e-biddat or any other similar form of talaq, illegal. Any Muslim husband who pronounces such talaq to his wife can suffer imprisonment for a term of three years and also be liable for fine.

The offence under this law is cognisable only if the information given to the police is either by the married Muslim woman to whom the talaq is pronounced or by any person related to her by blood or marriage. This is designed to prevent misuse by outsiders. Under the Act, bail can be granted only after hearing the victim woman and on reasonable grounds.

There is provision for subsistence allowance for the wife and her dependent children as determined by the magistrate, including the right of the wife for the custody of her minor children. Significantly, the offence punishable under the Act has also been made compoundable but only at the insistence of the Muslim woman and with the permission of the magistrate on appropriate terms, which the court may determine.

It is indeed a sad commentary that in spite of more than 20 Islamic countries having regulated triple talaq in one form or the other, it took us more than 70 years since Independence to pass such a law in Parliament, after so much opposition and campaign by vested interests. I had repeatedly argued in Parliament that this legislation is only designed for gender justice, equity and empowerment and has no religious overtones at all.

Should an India be governed by constitutional principles including fundamental rights, which so proudly proclaim gender justice and empowerment, allow a big segment of our women to suffer this rank discrimination, that too when majority of the victims came from economically weaker sections? Prime Minister Narendra Modi was very clear that the government must work to ensure justice to victims of triple talaq, support their cause in the court and also bring out a robust law.

While doing the homework for the Bill, I was distressed to learn about many instances wherein triple talaq, irrevocably annulling the marriage, was pronounced for the flimsiest of reasons which included food not being cooked properly, or the wife waking up late in the morning. An IT professional, who reached out to me, had to suffer the ignominy of triple talaq through WhatsApp from her husband from a Middle Eastern country, because her third child was also a daughter.

Today is also the occasion for me to salute the great courage shown by many Muslim women organisations and victims, who took up this cause and challenged it in court. The Supreme Court ultimately declared triple talaq as unconstitutional in a majority judgment. Two judges declared triple talaq to be manifestly arbitrary and therefore violative of Article 14 of the Constitution.

All India Muslim Personal Law Board vehemently argued before the court that they will themselves educate their community against this form of divorce and the court shouldnt intervene. Regrettably, instead of educating their community effectively they took the lead in opposing the proposed law itself when it was under parliamentary scrutiny.

Our post-Independence history has always witnessed progressive laws designed to curb instances of atrocities against women. Dowry Prohibition Act 1961, or Section 32 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, or Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) relating to cruelty against a woman by her husband or his relatives, are all cognisable and non-bailable offences and they are religion neutral. Further, Section 304B of the IPC made the offence punishable with life imprisonment if death because of harassment of the wife occurs within seven years of marriage. Requisite amendments were also made under the Evidence Act about presumption of abetment to suicide and dowry death.

In 2018, we amended Section 376 of the IPC where deterrent punishments of death in case of rape has been provided if the victim is 12 years or below in age. I need to acknowledge that all these legislations were supported over the years by all the political parties where religion of the offender or victim was irrelevant. Why is it that in case of triple talaq, such progressive evolution of Indias society and polity was found to be wavering? The only inference is that from Shah Bano in 1985 to Shayara Bano in 2017, vote bank politics continued to dominate vested political interests at great cost to Muslim women.

While moving the Bill in the Parliament, I had shared statistics on the continuation of practice of triple talaq even after the judgment of the SC. I am happy to learn that the department of minority affairs has elaborately examined the state wise data, after getting feedback from various Waqf Boards and other sources, and found out a significant decline in number of cases of triple talaq after the enactment of this law, as compared to the number reported earlier. Further, in many cases, respectable compromise has also been achieved. This is an assuring sign of empowerment and redemption. Getting this historic legislation passed by the Parliament was indeed personally very satisfying for me.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Here is the original post:

Law banning triple talaq: A year ago today, we reached a defining moment in empowerment of women - The Times of India Blog

There Are Nearly $337 Million Outstanding Stimulus Payments for Pennsylvania Residents – Business Wire

Posted on by

PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Millions of individuals and families could miss out on stimulus payments because they dont know how to get them. An estimated 360,000 people in Pennsylvania alone are considered non-filers, which means they will not receive their government stimulus checks. They will need to file a tax return or complete an online IRS form by October 15 to get the payment this year. Campaign for Working Families (CWF) is assisting all PA residents in completing their tax returns for free so they can receive their stimulus dollars.

The outstanding payments amount to roughly $337million for Pennsylvanians, which if delivered and spent couldreduce hardship and givestate and local economiesamuch-neededboost.These payments would go to low-income individuals and families at a time when the need isrising due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes families with children and people who have been disconnected from work opportunities for a long period.

We know people in Pennsylvania are struggling to get by, and these payments could make a big difference in their lives, said CWF Director of Partnerships, Graham ONeill. We also know theres a lot of confusion about who qualifies and how to get their checks. This is even harder for people who dont typically file tax returns, and we are here to help.

CWF is helping people understand their eligibility to get the payments through their virtual and in-person IRS-certified tax prep programs at CWFphilly.org/stimulus. Anyone who earned more than $12,200 ($24,400 if married) or more than $400 in self-employment income in 2019 is required to file taxes and needs to do so to get their payment.

Economic Impact Payments commonly referred to as stimulus checks or recovery rebates are a key provision of the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act legislation that Congress passed to help reduce the financial burden of COVID-19 on individuals and their families. The payments are an advance of a temporary tax credit for 2020 (which you file taxes for in 2021).

The full stimulus payment of $1,200 is available to individuals who have no income or earn less than $75,000, or under $150,000 if married filing taxes jointly. Some people with higher earnings may receive a smaller payment. Dependents under age 17 with a social security number or an adoption taxpayer identification number qualify for an additional $500 credit. To receive a payment, each filer must have a social security number and cannot be claimed as a dependent on someone elses tax return. Married military couples only need one social security number.

The IRS is automatically sending payments to people who already filed taxes for 2018 or 2019; receive Social Security, Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Insurance (SSI); or who are a railroad retiree or Veterans Affairs (VA) beneficiary. During the first month of release, the IRS delivered over 5 million payments worth $8.8 billion in Pennsylvania alone.

People who arent required to file taxes and who earned less than $12,200 ($24,400 if married) in 2019 can visit CWFphilly.org/stimulus to complete an online form so the IRS knows where to send their payment.

Going to CWF will also help individuals avoid scams. The IRS refers to this money as an Economic Impact Payment and will not contact people by phone, email, text message, or social media to request personal information or a processing fee. The IRS will send a written correspondence.

For more information, call 215-982-2217 or visit https://cwfphilly.org/stimulus/.

About Campaign for Working Families

Campaign for Working Families, Inc. (CWF), is a non-profit organization based in Philadelphia. As our name indicates, we are committed to helping working families and individuals achieve economic empowerment by providing free tax preparation, resource building and asset development.

Through the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program (VITA), a national initiative sponsored by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), CWF facilitates increased financial stability and asset accumulation for families by connecting them to valuable tax credits, quality financial services, savings options, wealth building resources and public benefits. We operate community-based tax sites offering e-file, direct deposit, public benefits applications and screening to help clients save money. We also offer access to saving products and prepaid debit cards. Our services allow families to maximize federal and state tax credits, including the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). To learn more about CWF, visit CWFphilly.org.

Link to photo:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ojNfGuySf1m-3zGtn2OnDRJefyQ-P-Lm/view?usp=sharing

View post:

There Are Nearly $337 Million Outstanding Stimulus Payments for Pennsylvania Residents - Business Wire

The Collapse of Healthcare in Peru – The Bullet – Socialist Project

Posted on by

Latin America August 4, 2020 Yanis Iqbal

On 11 March 2020, Peru declared a 90-day national sanitary emergency. Subsequently, the country announced a total lockdown beginning 16 March, 2020. Despite implementing one of the earliest and strictest COVID-19 containment lockdowns in Latin America, Peru has gotten trapped in the turmoil of rising COVID-19 cases. With more than 420,000 Coronavirus cases, Peru has become the third-worst hit country in Latin America. The country also has the highest excess death rates (count of deaths relative to a normal year) with the number of deaths between 16 March and 31 May being 87 per cent more than a normal year.

The current COVID-19 catastrophe in Peru is a natural corollary of an unbridled process of the self-valorization of capital. As a result of this aggressive accumulation of capital, the healthcare sector in todays Peru is teetering on the edge of an abyss. In this country, public health facilities for molecular testing are sparse and only 500 beds in intensive care units exist for a population of 32 million. Further, private hospitals are charging $3000 per day for Coronavirus care, a price that is absurd if we take cognizance of the fact that 1 out of every 5 Peruvian is impoverished, earning less than $105 per month. Discontented with and devastated by the massive deficiencies of public hospitals and the avarice of the private sector, Peruvians have taken to the streets to demonstrate against these patent injustices.

In the southern city of Arequipa, people agitated against Perus President Martin Vizcarra who had come to visit the Honorio Delgado Hospital. It was during these protests that Celia Capira ran after the presidents motorcade, desperately shouting Mr. President, dont go. Capiras 57-year old husband, Adolfo Mamani, had been kept in a bedraggled tent outside the Honorio Delgado Hospital, where he died on 21 July, 2020. While running behind the presidents vehicle, Capira said, Mr. President, you have to go to the tent, dont leave the hospital until youve seen the condition [patients] are in.

The dizzying scale and sheer grimness of Coronavirus deaths in Peru is not an isolated and sporadic event. In the city of Iquitos, too many people are dying and patients are forced to be seated outside the hospital in rocking chairs or in makeshift hospitals on football fields. The number of deaths is so high that Venezuelan immigrants are being employed to collect the carcasses of COVID-19 victims. These immiserated immigrants collect dead bodies from poor neighborhoods, from homes where people cant afford to hire a funeral director to handle the burial.

The current health crisis in Peru is deeply anchored in the neoliberal reforms that were introduced by successive governments beginning in the 1990s. Through these neoliberal policies, the US-imported model of managed competition was installed. The core idea of this health arrangement was to set up a privately managed corporatist framework that would operate simultaneously with public hospitals. But these private hospitals would not prosper if public hospitals continued to offer good services at a low cost. Therefore, the problem framed by neoclassical economists was this: If people can obtain healthcare for free or at a uniformly low cost, they will not have much incentive to pay insurance premiums to cover unexpected health hazards.

In order to make private hospitals prosper, the public health sector had to be sapped because no one would want to visit profit-minded private hospitals over good quality public hospitals. This was done through a reduction in social spending, which decreased to 9.4 per cent of the GDP in 2012, below the Latin American average of 19 per cent. There were two direct results of this undercutting of public health sector.

Firstly, due to fewer resources, urban health services sharply separated into an organized social security system for formally employed urban workers and a disorganized defunded public health system for the poor. In this arrangement, the social security health system offered urban formal sector workers a sanitized health system of higher quality and better resources than the public health system that served the poor. In patient safety level, for example, it has been found that richer patients (enrolled in the urban security health system) receive better attention than poorer patients (visiting public hospitals).

This is a frightening defect in the Peruvian health sector considering the fact that the public hospitals serve 73.8 per cent of the population. In spite of being the primary health facility for the entire country, public hospitals have not improved, and this has led to low-income patients seeking the services of local pharmacies. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in reality most public hospitals are so under-funded, or payment procedures by AUS [Universal Health Insurance] are so lengthy and bureaucratic that many patients eventually buy their own medicines, facing significant out-of-pocket expenditures. In some cases, these out-of-pocket health expenditures have become catastrophic health expenditures, i.e., healthcare spending equal to or higher than 40 of the households capacity to pay.

Catastrophic health expenditure occur frequently in Peru because this country gives enormous tariffs exemptions to multinational corporations, and thereby, loses tariff revenues that could have been used to fund public health services and provide free medicines to the populace. But an end to the predatory practices of multinational corporations has not happened in Peru, and medicinal prices are continuing to rise. In 2014, for example, the cost of the antiretroviral drug atazanavir (Reyataz) was eating up fully half of Perus budget for AIDS medicines. Peru was paying $10.50 per pill, while the same pill cost $3.60 in Brazil and as little as 50 cents on the international market To look at it another way, a years treatment was costing Peru $3,832 per patient, while the Pan American Health Organizations Strategic Fund was obtaining generics for only $182 per patient.

In the current conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, Perus health situation has drastically worsened due to the systematic defunding of public hospitals and the populations consequent heavy reliance on out-of-pocket health expenditures. According to the Volume 1 of Financing Health in Latin America, in times of health shocks, poor and uninsured households will need to drastically adjust their current consumption to afford large OOP [out-of-pocket] health expenditures. Furthermore, these temporary adjustments may have permanent consequences. If food expenditures are reduced, childrens nutrition may suffer, with possibly permanent effects on their learning abilities, thus affecting their future performance at school and in the labour market. Children may also be forced to drop out of schoolif the health shock lasts long enough. In any event, either catastrophic health expenditures or income losses may push the family of a severely ill or injured person into poverty. It is pertinent to note that out-of-pocket or catastrophic payment indicators understate the gravity of the problem since there are people who do not utilize health services when needed because they are unable to afford out-of-pocket payments at all.

Secondly, as a result of the gradual weakening and privatization of public hospitals, the rural regions have been effaced from the socio-medical imaginary. With the erosion of public health services to an extent that it barely sufficed for the urban population, the frayed rural edges of Peru started receiving what was left of an outstretched public health sector. It is estimated that 90 per cent of public hospitals and health clinics are in urban areas, 7 per cent in marginal urban zones and only 3 per cent in rural areas. In 2009, Lima concentrated 53 per cent of the countrys physicians, 40 per cent of its nurses and 44 per cent of the dentists. In these urban areas, there are select private hospitals which offer acceptable care covering a wide range of specialties, with many doctors trained in Europe and the US.

While European and American doctors cater to the need of rich patients in urban areas, rural patients in Peru receive medical care which is gruelingly inadequate. In the rural areas, there are four main problems: i) lack of tools to address challenging types of diagnostic problems, ii) health system-related barriers to the diagnostic process, iii) patients barriers in following through with diagnostic referrals, and iv) lack of ideas for technological innovation to enhance the diagnostic process. Apart from these four problems directly related to the defunding of the public health system, another issue has been doctors unwillingness to work in public hospitals.

As per an OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) study, even though health professionals are trained in both public and private universities, the majority do not end up working for public health providers and even less in rural and marginal areas. To remedy this, the Rural and Urban Marginal Health Service (SERUMS) was implemented wherein it was made mandatory for health professionals to work in rural or peri-urban areas for normally one year. One year after the completion of SERUMS, it has been shown that only 25 per cent of health professionals were working in the public sector, evidencing more attractive working conditions elsewhere. Moreover, only 10 per cent of specialists were working in the public sector two years after completing their residencies.

SERUMS has proved to be fruitless because as long as a profit-maximizing logic exists in the health sector, doctors will choose an occupation which guarantees the greatest returns on their skills. A generalized framework of capital self-valorization in which surplus accumulation is an end in itself, the medical sector gets economically embroiled in the unending circuit of capital and is re-patterned as a profession concerned with profiting from patients. In Peru, SERUMS was not able to reconstruct the highly unequal urban-rural medical divide because capital-centered health practices remained untouched and unaffected by piecemeal health initiatives.

Perus inherently unequal health system differs strikingly from the socialist medical administration in Cuba. A study by the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research documents how Cubas revolutionary system has given it the strength and ability to survive in the face of blockades and pandemics, integrating workers, peasants, scientists, mass organizations, and civil defence systems with a party and a government that puts human life at the centre of its attention. Being a socialist medical administration wherein profit motives are secondary to collective ethics, Cuba has doctors who prioritize cooperative feelings over individualistic sentiments. Using Lenins words, one can say that in Cuba, [t]he majority [of the doctors] are of the kind who are willing to struggle to solve the fundamental problem of the salvation of our culture, and these doctors are devoting themselves to this hard and difficult task with as much self-sacrifice as a military specialist. They are prepared to give their strength to the promotion of the common cause.

As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses in Peru, the immense inequalities of the entire health system are being laid bare. Through neoliberal policies, public hospitals have been destabilized, exposing innumerable Peruvians to the vagaries of the COVID-19 health shock. The number of people left unprotected from the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru has increased in the last few months due to urban job losses in the formal sector. By analyzing the electronic payroll, a major indicator of formal employment, we can see that during the COVID-19 pandemic, informalization has increased. When this indicator is compared with the same period in 2019, it emerges that the figure fell nearly 30 per cent in March 2020 (the lockdown was imposed on 16 March) and nearly 80 per cent in April and May. Now, many more people are living outside the social security system, totally dependent on out-of-pocket expenditure and a disintegrating public health system. In the current period, one should finally realize that capitalist medical system marginalizes the masses, sacrifices them for profit and has to be replaced by a socialist medical regime.

Yanis Iqbal is a student and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India and can be contacted at yanisiqbal@gmail.com.

Here is the original post:

The Collapse of Healthcare in Peru - The Bullet - Socialist Project

Understanding Hezbollah’s complex planning behind the events on Har Dov – The Jerusalem Post

Posted on by

The events at Mount Dov earlier this week, in order to be understood, need to be placed in the broader context of Israels ongoing undeclared military campaign against Iran. They also cannot be separated from Hezbollahs current status as the de facto ruler of Lebanon.In the Israel-Iran conflict, at the present time, Lebanon is a secondary front. A state of de facto mutual deterrence has largely held in this area since the 2006 war. The preference of both Israel and Hezbollah for the moment is that this situation should hold.Israel, in addition to the quiet and ongoing campaign against Iran in Syria, and beyond it, is focused at present on the pandemic and its various economic, social and political costs.Lebanon and Hezbollahs focus is of necessity the same. Hezbollah is today the dominant force in Lebanese public life. The bloc of which it is a part holds a majority in the 128-member parliament and a majority in the cabinet. Prime Minister Hassan Diab is its obedient servant.This means that the profound economic crisis currently gripping the country falls squarely in Hezbollahs lap. It is required to operate and to make decisions as a governing force, responsible for the avoidance of general socioeconomic collapse, which is now a real possibility in Lebanon.The aforementioned dynamic ought to support the continuation of uneasy quiet along the border. The problem is that Hezbollah is not only or primarily a successful local political actor. Rather, it is a franchise of Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Indeed, its local political predominance is a direct function of the outsize strength and capacity afforded it in the Lebanese context by Iranian support.As an IRGC franchise, Hezbollah forms an integral and important element in Irans larger regional strategy. Israel is currently engaged in an ongoing campaign to degrade and roll back a particular element of that strategy namely, the effort by Iran to consolidate and extend its presence in Syria.For Hezbollah, the extension of this presence is a cardinal interest. The Iranian deployment in Syria provides Hezbollah with a strategic hinterland and a potential extended front line against Israel in the event of war. Syria also contains nodes along the land and air bridges by which Iran seeks to supply its Lebanese franchise and improve its capacities and capabilities.The Iranian presence in Syria is not maintained only or mainly by Iranian personnel. Tehran maintains a variety of both local Syrian and international (Arab and non-Arab) proxies to advance its interest in this area. This includes Afghan, Iraqi and Pakistani elements. The Lebanese IRGC franchise is also an integral and prominent element in Syria.For this reason, despite the narrow mutual interest in quiet along the Israel-Lebanon border, Israel and Hezbollah are engaged in an ongoing, direct conflict on neighboring soil.Israel has neither the desire nor the ability to avoid harm to the specific Lebanese component of the IRGCs deployment in Syria.So the question arises as to how to manage the continued current narrow mutual desire for quiet on the border, even as this conflict continues.CLEARLY, HEZBOLLAHS desire is to deter Israel to a point where it ceases to cause harm to its personnel in the Syrian context. This appears to be unachievable. Failing this, it needs to show (not least to its own public and also to its Iranian masters) that the blood of its fighters cannot be shed without cost.To do this, the movement needs to extract a serious price from Israel for all such actions in this regard. But it needs to do this without causing a large-scale Israeli retaliation into Lebanon, which it can ill afford and does not want. This is a difficult balancing act to perform.The process was put to the test again this week. The death of Hezbollah operative Ali Mohsen in an alleged Israeli bombing in the Damascus area on July 20 made a response along the border inevitable. Israels forces deployed in expectation of enemy action along the border. An abortive effort, according to the IDF, took place on July 27, in which a section of Hezbollah fighters crossed the border. The force was spotted, engaged by the IDF, and then it rapidly retreated.This was the third such occurrence in the last half decade. There has been a decline in the potency of Hezbollahs responses across this period. But from the beginning, the counterstrikes were not proportionate to the damage the movement was experiencing.In January 2015, in retaliation for the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander, an Iranian general and five others in the Quneitra area, Hezbollah succeeded in launching an anti-tank missile at an IDF jeep. Two IDF infantry soldiers were killed.In September 2019, the movement responded to an Israeli drone strike in Beirut on August 25 and the killing of two operatives in an airstrike on Damascus on August 24. On that occasion, Hezbollah made do with firing anti-tank missiles at an IDF outpost and an ambulance along the border. There were no fatalities.On the present occasion, still less appears to have been achieved. A group of fighters crossed the border, were engaged, and retreated, apparently without loss of life.Following the incident, a Hezbollah statement in the evening denied that any incursion had been attempted. Hezbollahs statement in the evening of the 27th included an assertion that our retaliation for martyr Ali Mohsen is surely coming. The IDF will no doubt remain in a heightened state of alert in the coming days.But the declining level of Hezbollah response to IDF killings of its members in Syria in recent years is notable. The rule that Israel appears to be trying to impose is that the killing of Lebanese Hezbollah members outside of Lebanon will continue, and that the movements situation is such that it will be obliged to make only a token response to this. In this regard, Israels greater conventional military strength and hence capacity for damage is one side of this.The other side is Hezbollahs domestic situation in Lebanon. Ibrahim Amin, editor of the pro-Hezbollah Al Akhbar newspaper, often reflects the thinking of Hezbollahs leadership in his editorials. In an article this week, Amin wrote that the resistance did not initiate the declaration of war, but on the contrary, it has always said and it means what it says that it does not want war. But not at any cost. In the sense that the resistance, which does not want war, also does not want to surrender in order not to have war.The oddly defensive tone of this statement is at odds with the usual timbre of Amins editorials. These tend to read like the haughty edicts of a triumphant general. The article was written in Arabic, and is meant for local consumption. It is clearly intended to assure the Lebanese public, at a moment of unprecedented domestic crisis, that Hezbollah is not seeking to embroil them in renewed conflict. The movements dominant domestic position matters to it (and its masters in Tehran). It cannot be maintained by coercion alone.This leaves Hezbollah caught between the desire to maintain a general deterrence against Israeli strikes against its members, and the urgent need not to provoke a new war. The consequent possibility is that it may have to settle for rules of engagement in which Israel leaves it alone in Lebanon (unless provoked) while reaping a toll of its fighters in Syria. The period ahead will show whether or not, given unavoidable realities, this latter arrangement is for now acceptable to the Lebanese IRGC franchise.Following the 2006 War, Hezbollah moved into a more overt and political role in Lebanon. Since 2018, the coalition of which it is a part has ruled the country. Some observers in Israel maintained in the post-2006 period that Hezbollahs hybrid status was its main asset, which would begin to evaporate as it became the overt ruler of the country in which it was established by the IRGC in 1982. This theory is now being put to the test.

Here is the original post:

Understanding Hezbollah's complex planning behind the events on Har Dov - The Jerusalem Post

The coronavirus pandemic and the growing mental health crisis – WSWS

Posted on by

By Ben Oliver 1 August 2020

The coronavirus pandemic and the ruling class negligent response to it is a traumatic event for world humanity. Studies show the pernicious impact the crisis is having on the mental health of billions. Drawing on research of past disasters and disease, psychologists predict that a mental health shadow pandemic will last for years after the disease has subsided.

This mental health pandemic has various causes and manifestations. As World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said, Social isolation, fear of contagion, and loss of family members is compounded by the distress caused by loss of income and often employment.

World COVID-19 cases will soon eclipse 20 million and there have been more than 675,000 deaths to date. After lockdowns wreaked economic havoc for the ruling class, and forced workers and their families into poverty and hunger, corporations and governments are now seeking to drive workers back into unsafe workplaces.

Although resilience to disaster is natural, the pandemic isnt like a wildfire or hurricane. Dealing with the insidious uncertainty of its spread is more like living with a domestic abuser or being deployed to a war zone. Being witness to brutal repression of protests compounds the distress.

In the United States, the spread of the virus has had an immediate effect on mental health. Calls to a Disaster Distress Hotline, run by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, increased by 338 percent in March. In April, 42 percent of Americans reported feelings of hopelessness and calls to the hotline climbed 900 percent. One in 25 Americans had lost a close family member or friend. By June, a University of Chicago survey reported 40 percent of Americans had depressive symptoms, and in July, 56 percent reported at least one negative effect on their well-being.

Internationally, much research has already been conducted on the psychological impacts of the pandemic. In the United Kingdom, the Mental Health Foundation has been conducting a study since March on the psychological impacts of the pandemic. Half of the UK population has reported anxiety. Half of the Spanish population reported mild-to-severe psychological impacts, and more than half of the Chinese population reported moderate-to-severe psychological impact.

To begin to get a sense of the immensity of mental distress caused by the pandemic, half of the combined populations of China, Spain, the UK and the US is almost a billion people; nearly one-eighth the worlds population.

In the US, the second surge started to hit Southern states and California in June. In Louisiana, which has been especially hard-hit, the seven-day new case count is 15,870, 42.9 percent of residents have experienced symptoms of anxiety or depression, a 3.9-fold increase since last year. Feeding America predicts food insecurity among 52.5 percent of children in East Carroll Parish, Louisiana, the highest level nationally.

Physicians in Louisiana are observing new physical symptoms suggestive of the psychological burden: weight gain, high blood pressure, and high blood sugar. A lot of folks who would come in with one or two problems now have 10, said Dr. Chad Braden of Baton Rouge, speaking to the New Orleans Advocate.

The pandemic, mass unemployment and financial precarity are caustic to mental health and compound previous inequalities. As the UK study cited above states:

The distribution of infections and deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown and associated measures, and the longer-term socioeconomic impact are likely to reproduce and intensify the financial inequalities that contribute towards the increased prevalence and unequal distribution of mental ill-health.

In June, 44.7 percent of the unemployed in the UK worried about having enough money for food, and a quarter were suicidal, double the rate in the general population. In the US, 40 percent of households have had difficulty affording basic necessities in the past three months.

Just as the pandemic has led to a redistribution of wealth, the UK study shows a divergence in psychological impacts between those already at risk financially, socially, medically and psychologically and the rest of the population. People with previous psychiatric conditions have suffered the most. One-on-one therapy, peer support, volunteering and supported employment are impossible. The suicidality rate for this population is almost triple the rate in the general public. People with preexisting physical disabilities are also isolated from essential psychosocial support, and many live in high-risk residential facilities, as do the elderly, for whom loneliness and the fear of death have been exacerbated.

Women report greater psychological impacts owing to a disproportionate representation in affected industries, being the primary caregivers at home, and an increase in domestic abuse. In June, 43 percent of Americans with children reported feeling hopeless. Children are at particular risk for mental health impacts. According to the WHO, they have experienced an increase of restlessness and difficulty focusing, which may indicate a psychological impact. Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may have more difficulty adjusting to lockdown, and children with autism may suffer from a change in habit and ritual.

The UK study found a spike in the numbers of single parents seeking support. Sixty-three percent are anxious or worried, 43 percent are lonely, and 28 percent are afraid. Many were reliant on insecure, casual employment and suffer from a loss of income and social isolation. The risk of postnatal and perinatal mental health problems has increased, these conditions are less likely to be identified, and care is more difficult to access. Concern is warranted for infants and toddlers of single parents, as these years are critical to social and cognitive development.

Various studies and surveys document a disproportionate mental health impact on youth globally. The population between the ages of 18 and 24 are more likely than any other age group to not cope well, with 22 percent reporting suicidality. Education has been cut, job prospects are greatly lessened, youth are isolated from their peers, and their lives are less structured. As one respondent to the UK study said, It feels like their whole, like, their whole generation is being wasted.

The pandemic has worsened the mental health of 83 percent of UK teens with a mental health history, and 60 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 22 report symptoms of depression. High risk factors for youth, include losing a parent, having an infected relative or acquaintance, lost family income, more time invested in social media, increased family conflict or violence and the ubiquitous issues of death. The distress that is affecting nearly everyone is particularly felt by young people. Three-quarters of mental health problems arise before the mid-20s, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) peaks at ages 1624. For teens, the disruption in their social environment could slow their cognitive and psychological maturation, posing life-long consequences.

Nowhere is mental anguish more acute than in the health care field. Anywhere the virus breaks containment, workers battle overwhelming influxes of patients for whom there are no proven treatments. They risk their lives with insufficient protective equipment and staffing, knowing first-hand the limitations of the system to care for them if they fall ill. Already experiencing a crisis of burnout, the New England Journal of Medicine describes a surge of physical and emotional harm that amounts to a parallel pandemic facing the US clinical workforce.

Three New York City health workers have been driven to take their lives. John Mondello, 23, a rookie emergency medical technician (EMT), died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on April 24. Lt. Matthew Keene, a veteran EMT, shot himself on June 19. Dr. Lorna Breen killed herself on April 26 while visiting family. The emergency room at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, where Breen was a supervisor, became a brutal battleground during the surge.

The pandemic comes at a time soon after suicide became the 10th leading cause of death in the US, increasing 35 percent from 1999 to 2018. Drug overdoses in 2020 have increased by 13 percent over the previous year, one-tenth of the general UK population has reported suicidal thoughts. According to the Chicago Tribune, suicides in the US could increase by 20 per day. Models on the 2008 recession crisis predict a 1.6 percent increase in suicide for every 1 percent rise in the unemployment rate. At levels of 20 percent unemployment, 18,000 suicides can be predicted along with 22,000 drug overdoses. Adjusting for misclassified and undercounted workers, the true unemployment rate now is 27.4 percent.

Lessons from studies on the impact of past pandemics may predict the psychological impacts of COVID-19. Thirty percent of children whose families were quarantined during the H1N1 and Sars-CoV-1 pandemics developed PTSD. Anxiety and depressive symptoms among health care workers, and a high prevalence of psychiatric symptoms in the general public lasted for months and years after Sars-CoV-1. Income reduction was the highest predictive factor in the development of psychological disorders after the Sars-CoV-1 pandemic. The 1918 influenza increased first-time asylum admissions in Norway by 7.2-fold, and US influenza death rates significantly and positively related to suicide.

To address the burgeoning mental health crisis, more studies and intervention are needed. Clinicians are intervening, but armies of mental health workers must be rallied. In the US, experts have called for $38.5 billion in funding. The CARES Act set aside one-half of one one-hundredth that amount.

The May 6 UK study stated: there will be no vaccine for these population mental health impacts. One should add: under capitalism. To think that the prevailing conditions exacerbated by the negligent policies of the ruling class will improve, or even return to their prior state, would be nave. The only corrective to the myriad social and economic factors critical to mental well-being is the organization of society to meet the needs of humanity.

The health care system in the US and globally, of which mental health treatment is an integral part, must be wrested from the control of the private health insurance industry, the pharmaceutical companies and the giant for-profit health care chains and placed under workers control. This requires the socialist reorganization of the entire economy under a workers government.

The author also recommends:

Two New York City health care workers commit suicide within 48 hours [28 April 2020]

New York City EMS worker commits suicide [8 July 2020]

An interview with Dr. Mona Masood, founder of the Physician Support Line [17 June 2020]

US drug overdose deaths soared to record highs in 2019 [17 July 2020]

Read the original post:

The coronavirus pandemic and the growing mental health crisis - WSWS

Sanwo-Olu, the Governor who Empathises – THISDAY Newspapers

Posted on by

By Adeola Akinremi

If youre looking for a good telling of humans of Lagos stories, you should check out the social media handles of the Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu. He connects in ways his colleagues around the country hardly do and he has surpassed his predecessors record in meeting people where they are.

To use common, everyday words, Sanwo-Olu is a man of the people.

Its obvious, time and chances are at play but rarely, do we see a governor walk into a room and instantly put everyone at ease.

Last week, after the video of a boy (Oreoluwa) who stalled his mom from spanking him for his offence went viral with his calm down catchphrase, the smiley governor reached out with a request to meet the boy. He even adopted the boys catchphrase to pass a message of sobriety and safety to Lagosians as they grapple with coronavirus during Eid-el-Kabir celebration.

I think that offers lots of insights into the real man of the governor.

First, Governor Sanwo-Olu convinced the people of Lagos State that he cares about families and children and that his eyes will catch even the small things that people think may not have much appeal to leaders like him.

And by asking to meet the boy, the governor elevated his real message of reassuring vulnerable people that someone is on their side.

In March, when fire disaster took the lives of several Lagosians with multiple properties destroyed at Abule Ado, Sanwo-Olu carried the images of destruction to Abuja to show President Muhammadu Buhari, a sign of deep sense of loss combined with desperate search for help for his people.

You see, the ability of a leader to be empathetic and compassionate or otherwise will let you know his capability to put policies behind any social-economic crisis that could alter the lives of the citizens he leads.

I can tell two related stories. In March 2001, I was sitting in an office at the International Press Center in Ogba, when an explosion rocked Ikeja Cantonment. The vibration reached nearly every part of Lagos, including where I was in Ogba and everyone was terrified. After much delay before visiting the disaster scene, the former President Olusegun Obasanjo showed up with arrogance. Obasanjo arrived at the scene with no empathy for the people. He uttered words that pushed people deeply into dejection. I am not supposed to be here, he said, as he crafted his words to respond to victims of the blast on why he delayed.

In a most recent history, when the late governor of Oyo State, Abiola Ajimobi, was faced with a situation that required empathy, he didnt surprised anyone that he had none after he threatened frightened Ladoke Akintola University of Technology students whose university have been shut for several months due to disagreement between Oyo and Osun States governments on funding of the institution. For his action, he earned the stripe of constituted authority, till he died.

Beyond the personal, empathy is the ability to recognize, understand, and feel the emotions of other people. It provides those who have it to respond appropriately to some other persons thoughts and feelings.

In a time of isolation, despair, deprivation, confusion, and shock, connecting with citizens matters most but when a leader shows he cares and understands their situations, it is impressive.

Apparently, Oreoluwas story by its very nature and channel caught the attention of everyone but the other story of a man that the governor rescued from plunging into the lagoon in a suicide attempt on the Third Mainland Bridge revealed more about the blow-back effect of the social economic crisis that COVID-19 and past situations have forced on Nigerians.

Across Nigeria, deaths of despairs commonly called suicides are rising and were pretending it is not there.

Before now, it is common to hear people say Nigerians dont commit suicide but that no longer reflect our current situation.

Think about this for a moment. What happens to Nigerias future if its young people are taking the hard choices of committing suicides?

Thats exactly what Daily Trust emphasised with its screaming headline of June 2019, that says students top list as 42 Nigerians commit suicide in 6 months,

With its headline, Daily Trust showed the impact of stress on a demographic that we should not have to worry about. Unfortunately, right now the spate of deaths of despair among that population should get us worried.

On July 31, Governor Sanwo-Olu wrote on twitter that earlier in the morning, we rescued somebody who was planning to jump into the Lagoon at the Third Mainland Bridge because he had a debt of N500,000. We rescued him and paid the debt. These details are what makes the difference.

We need to always show the humane side of us while not losing sight of the big picture. Yes, we want to build roads, bridges and schools but we certainly need to create time for the little things as well.

Make no mistake, this COVID-19 crisis that has stretched and tested everyone beyond the normal and unforeseen ways, is revealing resilience and grit of some people just as it is showing us how some people are driven to the edge by global anxiety. So, the governors gesture is simply right.

However, to simply cast himself as a handout governor without addressing the issues that are at the heart of suicide will be damaging to the reputation of Governor Sanwo-Olu who caught the sight of a leader who takes policy decisions based on foolproof research and data analysis of a trending subject.

At present, were seen uptick in the number of suicides across Nigeria. Indeed, hardly will you open a newspaper daily or hook up unto social media without a suicide story. It is depressive to see depressed people die by taking their own lives.

So what can we do as a country? We need to begin to act to prevent suicide and I think governor Sanwo-Olu can be a champion. He can define suicide as a national problem with mental illness as an underlying cause and then put it on the agenda during policy meetings at the federal level, in Lagos State and within the governors forum where his status as a cosmopolitan governor commands attention.

Based on facts, rates of suicide, for instance, are higher during economic recessions and periods of high unemployment. They are also higher during periods of social disintegration, political instability and social collapse, according to World Health Organization

Now, what is this telling us? Elevated suicide rates as being experienced in Nigeria may indicate a high burden of mental illness triggered by socioeconomic variables and other factors.

To reduce suicide, there are important policies that government needs to act upon.

One of the poor narratives about Nigeria is that as a country we know how to create laws but not how to implement the laws.

Does it surprise you that since Nigeria created a national policy on mental health in 1991, the implementation across states has stalled. At best it remains a paper that continues to gather dust with no serious implementation.

While strengthening economic policies that can improve household income is critical to changing the situation, addressing the gap in treatment and access to mental health care is important too.

In Nigeria, few people with mental health disorders go for treatment because of the stigma that goes along with having those conditions and being transparent about it. This barrier can be removed where the government is serious about offering solutions.

The danger of ignoring to act on mental health can have a spiral effect on lives and economy, so acting timely to make people comfortable in using the services will save the day.

The federal neuropsychiatric hospitals in Nigeria are not many. They are eight, poorly staffed with shoestring budget and out of reach as people must travel miles from their homes to access care.

It is not a good story for Nigeria on the global map. Nigeria leads in depression data for Africa and sits almost at the top as the 15th country in the world with suicides rate, according to WHO.

Sadly, psychiatric care is least on Nigerias priority. We can look at the math together. In 2018, according to a report, Yabapsychiatric hospitalsubmitted a budget of 133 million naira ($372,000) but only 13 million naira ($36,000) of that amount was released by the federal government.

I dont know where Lagos stands currently on mental health, except that its health ministry posted a proposed mental health policy for Lagos State on its website, but I know that Mr. Sanwo-Olu can bring necessary changes to mental health in Lagos State, just as hes strategically positioned to be a champion of this change at the federal level.

Quote: So what can we do as a country? We need to begin to act to prevent suicide and I think governor Sanwo-Olu can be a champion. He can define suicide as a national problem with mental illness as an underlying cause and then put it on the agenda during policy meetings at the federal level, in Lagos State and within the governors forum where his status as a cosmopolitan governor commands attention

Side Effects

Classof2020It must have been a big relief for young people who are facing this years West African Senior School Certificate Examination to hear the news that they would commence the examination on August 17. Now it is time to turn your despair to hope and get the best out of this. I know everything has been in limbo for months but that surely should an advantage to get safely to the end of your curriculum. Ill leave you with the words of Robert Kiyosaki. Dont let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning. Goodluck!

IsaiasNotIsaiahThe names of hurricanes in the U.S can be funny. Weve heard of Hurricanes with fancy names. Weve heard of hurricanes with human names. Hurricane Andrew, Sandy, Katrina, Maria, Harvey and now it is Isaias. But dont twist it, this is not Isaiah the prophet coming as a flood. This hurricane is pronounced ees-ah-EE-ahs. The important issue here is that Florida is facing double crisis with COVID-19 surging in the state and storm settling on its coast. Lets pray for Florida to have peace in storm. Troubling

Merit Vs Mediocrity

The issue of power rotation is a touchy issue in Nigeria. For all you care, it is not in our constitution. It is just some political capitalists trading and distributing political power like family biscuit among themselves in a non-binding agreement. But it has helped for inclusion, otherwise I dont know how someone from the Niger Delta will ever become Nigerias president. If you ask where I stand, I will go for merit, regardless of how we interpret Mallam Mamman Dauras message. The turn by turn, power shift or rotational presidency has not improved Nigeria in any way, but it helps for inclusion and avoidance of crisis. Sensitive!

See original here:

Sanwo-Olu, the Governor who Empathises - THISDAY Newspapers

As trucking evolves, the pneumatic tire will likely play the same role it always has – Fleet Owner

Posted on by

When the entire world was thrown into a lesson on modern survival, our reliance on the trucking industry became even more pronounced. Since then, theres been some appreciation in the press and a few signs in some yards, but the unsung system of moving freight continues to remain anonymous. It will always be a constant struggle to manage multiple distribution channels so goods and services can reach the consumer. Practically all of it depends on trucking at some point, but most people still have no idea that society would collapse without trucks.

Business leaders have become more focused on the fragility of supply chains, so I applied that to the trucking industry and came up with three critical areas: trucks, fuel, and drivers. I put drivers last for a specific reason because there is a real possibility that trucks could be driven in the same or a similar way to drones being flown from thousands of miles away. Imagine an integrated network of vehicles that do not have physical drivers in the seat and are driven with sensors and GPS. One person could control multiple vehicles on different monitors and even step in to drive the truck remotely when alerted or needed.

Fuel is better described as an energy source. Electric trucks are interesting, but the limited range and time to recharge are severe obstacles that must be overcome at a price thats lower than diesel. Without a national network of hi-speed charging stations, the next best thing would be rechargeable batteries. They would be similar to the batteries on cordless tools but a lot more powerful and probably a lot larger/heavier. Like my driverless truck, its possible.

The truck itself will always be the most important link in the supply chain. It can get large quantities of anything to any destination as long as there is a passable road or path. On my driverless rechargeable truck in fantasyland, every component would be electric and simply swapped out when it didnt work. No more fuel, fluids or compressed air. Technology like electric motors and regenerative braking systems have the potential to change the concept of the commercial motor vehicle.

Of course, the only thing that is unlikely to change at Fantasyland Trucking is the tires. Everything else could look completely different in the immediate and not-too-distant future, but Im betting the pneumatic tire will continue to play the same role it has played for over a century. There might even be some advances in securing it to the vehicle, but the tubeless radial truck tire has been so reliable and adaptable for so long that it is going to be impossible to replace in my lifetime.

That level of reliance is troubling given what weve learned about the dependence on foreign countries for strategically important products or materials. Manufacturing isnt an issue. Theres enough domestic truck tire capacity to avoid any long-term disruptions and physical space for expansion will not be an issue for most tire companies. If for some reason the supply of imported tires was interrupted for an extended period of time, there would be some short term pain and almost certain price increases, but the trucks would keep moving.

Natural rubber (NR) will always be the weakest link in the vehicle transportation system and more than 70% of the world supply goes to the tire industry. Its an agricultural product that is constantly subjected to drought, disease and various environmental threats. It only grows in the subtropical regions of Southeast Asia and while other plant alternatives have shown some promise, there will never be enough Russian dandelions and/or guayule to meet the demand from tire manufacturers. The possibility of developing synthetic materials to replace NR still exists, but as far as I know, there are certain performance characteristics of the latex from the Hevea brasiliensis that have yet to be recreated in a lab.

During the rubber shortages of 1942-1945 due to World War II, the effort to ration tires and rubber led to a national Victory Speed of 35 mph on all roads, streets and highways. Given the continued fragility of NR production and the fact that about 95% of global output is located in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, India and China, tire manufacturers have a collective interest in maintaining a steady supply of a key raw material that will never be sourced domestically. As a result, they are founding members of the Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber (GPSNR) to lead improvements in the socio-economic and environmental performance of the natural rubber value chain.

Approximately 85% of global NR production is categorized as smallholders where local people cultivate scattered patches of Hevea brasiliensis. Many of these small co-ops are either unaware of or unable to afford sustainable farming practices. The GPSNR is trying to change that and help them develop environmentally sound practices. Given the long term strategic importance of tires in the trucking industry, supporting their efforts will help ensure the sustainability of NR to keep things like victory speeds in the history books where they belong.

Read this article:

As trucking evolves, the pneumatic tire will likely play the same role it always has - Fleet Owner

The Education Sector as an Engine for Inclusive Growth in Mauritania – Modern Diplomacy

Posted on by

The fight against plastic pollution is being hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, as the use of disposable masks, gloves and other protective equipment soars, but UN agencies and partners insist that, if effective measures are put into place, the amount of plastics discarded every year can be significantly cut, or even eliminated.

1) Pollution driven by huge increase in mask sales

The promotion of mask wearing as a way to slow the spread of COVID-19 has led to an extraordinary increase in the production of disposable masks: the UN trade body, UNCTAD, estimates that global sales will total some $166 billion this year, up from around $800 million in 2019.

Recent media reports, showing videos and photos of divers picking up masks and gloves, littering the waters around the French Riviera, were a wake-up call for many, refocusing minds on the plastic pollution issue, and a reminder that politicians, leaders and individuals need to address the problem of plastic pollution.

2) A toxic problem

If historical data is a reliable indicator, it can be expected that around 75 per cent of the used masks, as well as other pandemic-related waste, will end up in landfills, or floating in the seas. Aside from the environmental damage, the financial cost, in areas such as tourism and fisheries, is estimated by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) at around $40 billion.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has warned that, if the large increase in medical waste, much of it made from environmentally harmful single-use plastics, is not managed soundly, uncontrolled dumping could result.

The potential consequences, says UNEP, which has produced a series of factsheets on the subject, include public health risks from infected used masks, and the open burning or uncontrolled incineration of masks, leading to the release of toxins in the environment, and to secondary transmission of diseases to humans.

Because of fears of these potential secondary impacts on health and the environment, UNEP is urging governments to treat the management of waste, including medical and hazardous waste, as an essential public service. The agency argues that the safe handling, and final disposal of this waste is a vital element in an effective emergency response.

Plastic pollution was already one of the greatest threats to our planet before the coronavirus outbreak, says Pamela Coke-Hamilton, UNCTADs director of international trade. The sudden boom in the daily use of certain products to keep people safe and stop the disease is making things much worse.

3) Existing solutions could cut plastics by 80 per cent

However, this state of affairs can be changed for the better, as shown by a recent, wide-ranging, report on plastic waste published by The Pew Charitable Trusts, and sustainability thinktank Systemiq.

The study, Breaking the Plastic Wave: A Comprehensive Assessment of Pathways Towards Stopping Ocean Plastic Pollution, which was endorsed by Inger Andersen, head of the UN environment agency UNEP, forecasts that, if no action is taken, the amount of plastics dumped into the ocean will triple by 2040, from 11 to 29 million tonnes per year.

But around 80 per cent of plastic pollution could be eliminated over this same period, simply by replacing inadequate regulation, changing business models and introducing incentives leading to the reduced production of plastics. Other recommended measures include designing products and packaging that can be more easily recycled, and expanding waste collection, particularly in lower income countries.

4) Global cooperation is essential

In its July analysis of plastics, sustainability and development, UNCTAD came to the conclusion that global trade policies also have an important role to play in reducing pollution.

Many countries have introduced regulations that mention plastics over the last decade, an indicator of growing concern surrounding the issue, but, the UNCTAD analysis points out, for trade policies to be truly effective, coordinated, global rules are needed.

The way countries have been using trade policy to fight plastic pollution has mostly been uncoordinated, which limits the effectiveness of their efforts, says Ms. Coke-Hamilton. There are limits to what any country can achieve on its own.

5) Promote planet and job-friendly alternatives

Whilst implementing these measures would make a huge dent in plastic pollution between now and 2040, the Pew/ Systemiq report acknowledges that, even in its best-case scenario, five million metric tons of plastics would still be leaking into the ocean every year.

A dramatic increase in innovation and investment, leading to technological advances, the reports studys authors conclude, would be necessary to deal comprehensively with the problem.

Furthermore, UNCTAD is urging governments to promote non-toxic, biodegradable or easily recyclable alternatives, such as natural fibres, rice husk, and natural rubber. These products would be more environmentally-friendly and, as developing countries are key suppliers of many plastic substitutes, could provide the added benefit of providing new jobs. Bangladesh, for example, is the worlds leading supplier of jute exports, whilst, between them, Thailand and Cte dIvoire account for the bulk of natural rubber exports.

Theres no single solution to ocean plastic pollution, but through rapid and concerted action we can break the plastic wave, said Tom Dillon, Pews vice president for environment. As the organizations report shows, we can invest in a future of reduced waste, better health outcomes, greater job creation, and a cleaner and more resilient environment for both people and nature.

Related

View post:

The Education Sector as an Engine for Inclusive Growth in Mauritania - Modern Diplomacy

The State and Local Stake in a Federal Digital-Commerce Tax – Governing

Posted on by

New taxes are always unpopular. Macroeconomists and policy wonks generally agree that It is counterproductive and unwise to impose new taxes in the middle of a recession, with the possible exception of a fat-cat income surtax that would not materially impact the economy. However, governments at all levels are desperate for new post-COVID-19 revenue sources.

Meanwhile, the stock market and the economic data both reveal a growing "COVID chasm" between leading digital businesses and smaller companies that rely on local storefront sales and services. The global technology giants' shareholders have recently enjoyed new all-time-record highs. Yet most economists expect that when federal pandemic-stimulus aid dries up, small-business bankruptcies will increase. And the pandemic has accelerated America's migration away from shopping malls and Main Street shops.

Local governments, which are the most highly dependent on property-tax revenues, see this erosion of local commerce most vividly. The stomping elephant in the room is Amazon: Its pre-COVID e-commerce sales were at least seven times those of its nearest competitor, Walmart, and its market share has surged during the pandemic.

All of this sets the stage for policymakers in Washington to begin looking at what might have seemed unthinkable just a few months ago: federal taxation of interstate digital commerce, which could have significant revenue implications for state and local governments if they play their cards right.

President Trump might love to see a tax on Amazon alone: He harbors a personal grudge because of its founder's ownership of the editorially unfriendly Washington Post and because of the recent suspension for "hateful conduct" of the president's campaign-rally videos by Twitch, an Amazon-owned streaming service. Putting Oval Office ire aside, however, it's not far-fetched to think that there could be popular and congressional support for a targeted federal tax on the interstate Internet revenues of all of the goliath digital oligopolies, not only Amazon but also companies like Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix and Twitter. A federal tax might also apply to the online sales of other giant retailers with big-box storefronts, such as Walmart.

One rationale for such a tax is the same as the argument for the levies on online sales that states already collect: that it would help to level the playing field for smaller home-town competitors. By some estimates, the behemoth online retailers enjoy a 5 to 10 percent price advantage over local vendors. Aside from products, cloud and software services often escape sales taxes, as do online ads. A federal levy on those revenue streams would appeal to antitrust progressives who want to help smaller, local businesses compete.

The point here is to respectfully spur state and local government officials to start thinking now about how they can tap into a national tax on digital commerce. Even though the total revenue potential today is probably less than $100 billion across all market segments, it's almost inevitable that Congress will eventually need to target this superfast-growing sector of the economy. Whether it's to help pay for swelling federal debt service, national defense, new infrastructure or something like Medicare for All, the low-hanging revenue streams in this sector of the economy cannot be ignored much longer on Capitol Hill. The European Union is already staking its claim.

State and local governments have been fighting U.S. meddling in the administration of their own online sales taxes, in legal disputes over remote commerce. They also have advanced congressional proposals for "marketplace fairness," which would allow states to tax online sales of companies with no physical presence within their borders. My suggestion here is that their policy teams should think outside their sandbox and start working for a healthy piece of a bigger federalist pie. Presuming that Uncle Sam will never tax e-commerce is like believing the earth is flat. There is no state and local constitutional monopoly for sales taxes, and the Constitution's Commerce Clause clearly tells us who holds the winning cards on interstate taxing authority.

Of course, such a tax would have powerful enemies. Industry lobbyists will howl bloody murder while their clients keep raking in billions. Stalwart Tea-Party conservatives in Congress will oppose any new tax reflexively, arguing that it would impede vital economic growth. Alarmists will suggest that it's just a foot in the door for a national value-added tax (VAT) or a federal general sales tax (GST).

Some liberals will resist as well, pointing out that sales taxes are socio-economically regressive. That is untrue, however, for cloud-services revenues and software-as-services for affluent customers. A digital advertisement tax hits businesses, not households. And if richer investors in these mega-cap companies suffer a negative wealth effect from reduced market share, the overall economic impact would not be regressive. Eventually those who complain that the United States is the only developed economy without national health care will someday realize that, alarmists' concerns notwithstanding, we are also the biggest outlier without a national VAT or GST. They could pair any such tax with fat-cat levies such as an income surtax on One Percenters. Political moderates would say this is just the price Americans must eventually pay for years of federal fiscal irresponsibility.

The novel concept of revenue sharing through federal taxation of a broad spectrum of e-commerce is complex and needs thoughtful policy analysis. Many tech startups rely on ad revenues before they can lure users into paying for services directly, so a small-business exemption is essential. Where to draw the line on taxing software as a service and data storage for consumers versus companies will be an issue. An equally obvious challenge will be determining which companies must collect and pay over such taxes, and how to exclude small retailers that use a common platform like Shopify for their online sales. Whether a federal tax on interstate e-commerce should apply to the local or in-state sales by the goliaths that also have physical stores is debatable, unless the in-state revenues are passed down entirely. (While Congress is at it, lawmakers should consider taxing lucrative online gambling, leveraging federal criminal enforcement power over tax evasion by large illegal operators.)

It's hard to imagine the status quo in this realm standing much longer, particularly given the direction Europeans are heading and the mounting congressional discomfort with Big Tech. State and local policy advocates need to play to where the puck is heading.

Governing's opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing's editors or management.

Go here to see the original:

The State and Local Stake in a Federal Digital-Commerce Tax - Governing

More than 50 years of remarkable transition of ASEANPhnom Penh Post – The Phnom Penh Post

Posted on by

On August 8, ASEAN will celebrate the 53rd anniversary of its establishment. Along this remarkable growth journey, ASEAN has undergone significant transitions.

The bloc turned from a region of conflicts and diversity, which characterised the region until the 1980s, to a region inspired by and united under One Vision, One Identity and One Caring and Sharing Community.

From a less developed region, ASEAN has become much more prosperous and a dynamic region. ASEAN successfully weathered economic headwinds such as the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the global economic recession of 2008-2009. The regions gross domestic product (GDP) has been raised to early $3 trillion in 2018, more than four times the figure of 1999, making it the fifth largest economy in the world.

For almost two decades, ASEAN has been growing at an average annual rate of 5.3 per cent, consistently above the global average.

ASEAN has managed to balance economic growth with human development to lift millions of people out of poverty across the entire region. The development gap over the past 20 years has been gradually narrowed.

If almost half the ASEAN population in 1990 lived below the poverty line ($1.23 purchasing power parity per day), after 25 years, the proportion reduced to 14 per cent. Notably, the reduction was not restricted to the major economies, but also included the less developed CLMV countries (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam) where poverty rates fell from 66 per cent of the population in 1990 to 18 per cent in 2015 when ASEAN Economic Community was announced to be established.

In terms of living standards, improvements in access to health care, increases in the availability of safe water and sanitation facilities have helped strongly decrease the infant mortality rate which reached a figure of 26 per 1,000 live births in 2016, compared to a global average of 41.

Access to education has also been improved with enrolment rate in primary education in the region reaching 96 per cent in 2016, seven percentage points higher than the global average. The rate in the CLMV nations beat expectations to reach 98 per cent in 2016.

The positive transition of ASEAN is also recognised in terms of the openness of trade, investment, tourism and services, both intra-regional and inter-regional, and economic integration.

In 2018, ASEAN received $154.7 billion of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows, the highest in its history and a 30.4 per cent increase from total FDI inflows of $118.7 billion in 2015.

ASEANs efforts in economic integration have also paid off with intra-ASEAN accounting for the highest shares in trade and investment at 23 per cent and 15.9 per cent, respectively.

Efforts to boost intra-regional trade openness was manifested by the fact that 98.6 per cent of intra-ASEAN trade flows are now tariff free, not to mention the ongoing harmonisation of technical standards, a facilitation for greater labour mobility for eight industries (engineering, nursing, architecture, medicine, dentistry, tourism, surveying and accountancy).

From a divided ASEAN with a weak position in the global arena, the region has become a community internationally recognised with the role of centrality in initiating and developing various regional architectures.

ASEANs voice has gradually been raised strongly in regional and global forums, which is of great importance to international institutions. Despite disparities among member countries and rising global uncertainties, ASEAN is still able to maintain its stability, peace and development.

ASEAN secretary-general Lim Jock Hoi said: Such achievements are not to be taken for granted, as they are the outcomes of decades of trust-building, cooperation, and mutual market opening.

From the achievements, the world has had perspectives of ASEAN significantly different than before.

Economically, ASEAN now is deemed a hub for global trade and investment. When foreign investors look for investment destinations in the Southeast Asia, they not only aim to seek a base in ASEAN member countries for their factories, but also seek a market of 600 million people and the whole world.

Politically, ASEAN used to be criticised for its weak connection among member countries, weak institutions and too much dependence on consensus while there are still variations in the economic and social status among individual nations.

However, so far, the ASEAN connection is a successful story, showing the attachment and commitment to objectives, based on international and inter-governmental mechanisms.

All countries in Southeast Asia now belong to a community working together to achieve the aims and purposes inscribed in the ASEAN declarations. The association has succeeded in defusing tensions in the region and has helped maintain potentially explosive situations at a manageable level.

The association has succeeded in transforming a region riddled with disputes and rivalries into a generally stable neighbourhood. ASEAN has proved its vitality and become an important factor in ensuring an environment of peace and stability and promoting cooperation and development in the Asia-Pacific.

The central role of ASEAN is clearly manifested in ASEAN forums and meetings held annually with partners such as the ASEAN Regional Forum, the East Asia Summit, the ASEAN+1, the ASEAN+3 and the ASEAN+6.

In the future, ASEAN will likely face more challenges and uncertainties caused by tensions between major powers and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Despite growing at 4.6 per cent in 2019, ASEAN economy is expected to contract by 2.7 per cent due to the substantial impact of Covid-19.

Since the outbreak, and as lockdowns and quarantines were enforced in many ASEAN member states (AMS), job losses and business closures have mounted. This led to a sharp fall in productive economic activities particularly in the hardest hit sectors such as tourism, aviation, manufacturing, as well as the vulnerable groups.

The pandemic is likely to have a prolonged impact on the macro-economy. A well thought out recovery plan to restore in particular fiscal discipline in the AMS is vital in the post-pandemic period.

At the regional level, ASEAN should formulate a regional socio-economic recovery plan post-Covid-19 to facilitate regional growth. A detailed plan for the regional post-Covid-19 recovery would require close coordination across sectors and community pillars, as well as a dialogue with various stakeholders.

ASEAN should also further promote the sense of Community through further deepening economic integration, strengthening political-security and socio-cultural pillars with more people-centre institutions.

Victoria Kwakwa, the World Banks vice-president for East Asia and the Pacific was quoted in the ASEAN Economic Integration Brief publication last month as saying: Even in ASEAN, which has suffered less than other parts of the world, we cannot take the transition to a post-pandemic stage for granted in either health or economic terms.

To make that transition, she said that ASEAN must not treat containment of the disease and mitigation of the economic pain as separate goals to be achieved with separate instruments. Instead, the bloc needs to take an integrated view of policy where health and economic authorities work together to help preserve both lives and livelihoods.

If ASEAN could do these tasks effectively, we have a firm foundation to believe that its central role and position in shaping the wider regions future would be maintained.

VIET NAM NEWS/ASIA NEWS NETWORK

Vo Tri Thanh is a senior economist at the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) and a member of the National Financial and Monetary Policy Advisory Council.

Read the original here:

More than 50 years of remarkable transition of ASEANPhnom Penh Post - The Phnom Penh Post

The 19th, a new nonprofit newsroom dedicated to women and politics, officially launches – Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard

Posted on by

The 19th, a nonprofit news organization dedicated to women and politics, has launched with a diverse and overwhelmingly female newsroom and publishing partners to bring its politics and policy coverage through a gender lens to a wider audience.

The first (digital) front page led with a feature on the pandemics disproportionate economic effect on women (Americas First Female Recession) and a slate of election-related coverage, including interviews with potential vice presidential picks Susan Rice and Elizabeth Warren co-published with The Washington Post. The 19th has also cemented partnerships with USA Today Network (which will republish work across their 250 local news markets), Univision, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Early on, Ramshaw and Zamora (previously the editor-in-chief and chief audience officer of The Texas Tribune, respectively) knew they wanted a newsroom that reflects the racial, ideological, socioeconomic and gender diversity of American voters. As New York Magazines The Cut noted, 2020 might be the perfect year to build that diverse newsroom from the ground up:

While legacy media grapples with the fact that most employees are overwhelmingly white (77%) and male (61%) and facing pandemic-fueled hiring freezes that make those statistics hard to change the 19th* staff of 22 people is 99% female (the only man on staff is the CFO) and 75% nonwhite.

(OK, one out of 22 is closer to 95%, but the point stands.)

The 19th also sought geographic diversity while hiring and counts residents of Philadelphia, Orlando, Des Moines, and New Orleans among its staff. Editor-at-large Errin Haines told The Cut that The 19th will cover women as issues voters, as rural voters, as educated voters, as blue-collar workers, as Southerners, and as Midwesterners and not treat them as a monolith or single special-interest group.

The 19th has adopted a nonprofit business model and will rely on donations, sponsorships for live events, digital advertising, and paid memberships starting at $19/year. At launch, The 19th counted 611 members giving between $5 and $999 and another 174 giving $1,000 or more.

Read more from the original source:

The 19th, a new nonprofit newsroom dedicated to women and politics, officially launches - Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard

The day after tomorrow: Africas battle with Covid19 and the road ahead – Observer Research Foundation

Posted on by

The COVID-19 pandemic has been widely described as unforeseen, and a black-swan event. It is, however, nothing of the kind.[1]Scientists had long warned the world about the eventuality of such a pandemic. It is therefore nothing short of a failure of policy for the international community to have been caught unawares by the magnitude of the COVID-19 outbreak.

For a long while, it seemed that the African continent had been spared the same magnitude of the pandemic that many countries in other regions were suffering. As of 30 June 2020, the continent had reported only 3.9 percent of the total global case count.[2] Since then, however, the crisis has caught up with Africa, and at the time of producing this report, there were 736,288 COVID-19 cases (5% of all cases globally) and 15,418 deaths in the continent. Among all African countries, South Africa (68.4 percent), Egypt (4.3 percent), Algeria (3.1 percent), Nigeria (3.2 percent), and Kenya (2.8 percent) accounted for 82 percent of all COVID-19 cases reported in the continent.[3]

This report provides an account of Africas battle against COVID-19, maps a profile of the continents vulnerabilities that render it susceptible to systemic collapse, and analyses ways in which it can build resilience in the face of future crises. The report takes a systemic perspective, and provides analyses oriented around four axeshealth, economic, socio-political and technological systems; and three key elementsrisk, response and resilience.

Even as the report is divided into these elements for purposes of clarity, it is crucial to understand the complex, interconnected nature of these systems. Inevitable trade-offs arise when crises hit, but their effects tend to cascade across systems.[4] The devastation caused by COVID-19 in Africa, for example, is made formidable not only due to weaknesses in healthcare systems but also the precarity of economies, varying degrees of socio-political turbulence, as well as the inability of technology to buffer the impact of the crisis.

An even more critical caveat relates to the scope of this report. The African continent is not a monolith, and capturing the nuances of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic is beyond the scope of a single report. It is therefore our endeavour to provide policy blueprints and recommendations in broad strokes, and map trends rather than magnify peculiarities.

The report opens with mapping pre-existing risks and vulnerabilities in Africa that the pandemic has the potential to exploit and exacerbate. Chapter 1 is a broad health and demographic profile of the continent. Prachi Mittal and Oommen C. Kurian analyse the demographic risks: including age distribution and population density, and healthcare risks: including the continents non-communicable disease (NCD) burden, access to clean water, food and nutritional insecurities, and its progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. The chapter also analyses the gaps in health capacities in Africa: with a profile on hospital infrastructure and healthcare workers, and provides an assessment of healthcare expenditure.

Chapter 2 profiles the economic vulnerabilities of the continent. The continents experience with COVID-19 has been defined so far more by economic upheaval than overwhelmed healthcare systems, due to early lockdowns and the precarious nature of economies in the continent. The coming recession is likely to reverse hard-won development gains for Africa, pushing millions back into extreme poverty. The chapter draws an estimate of the differential impact of the pandemic on various economic indicators. High levels of debt and trade dependence are highlighted as particular weaknesses for African economies, leaving them overexposed to the virus impact. Annapurna Mitra and Alisha George draw some insightful conclusions, for instance, that the impact on growth so far has been most striking in relatively well-off countries in Africa, even as the impact on poverty levels is disproportionately worse for poorer countries.

Chapter 3 is an exposition of the political factors that may amplify and complicate response to crises in Africa. While these risks are not exclusive to the continent, the specificities of their manifestation in Africa is discussed. Leo Kemboi and Jackline Kagume argue that instability, corrosive corruption and conflict have rendered some states politically fragile, and they will require assistance to bolster state capacity and combat the pandemic effectively. Weak state capacities, corruption and neopatrimonialism encumber crisis response, as does the lack of political legitimacy and authority. The pandemic is only likely to exacerbate instability unless managed properly.

The world has turned to technology solutions to keep economies afloat as the pandemic struck. However, the shortcomings of Africas technology ecosystem have prevented it from leveraging the full range of benefits that innovation has to offer, in providing a buffer against the pandemics effects. In Chapter 4, Arjun Jayakumar discusses the nature of three broad technological risks faced by the African continenti.e., low R&D capacity, a gaping digital divide, and poor technological capabilities.

The second section of the report presents an analysis of Africas response over the first four months of the COVID-19 pandemic, along the four axes of health, economic, political and technological response. In many ways, Africas response to the pandemic was both timely and robust. As the first wave of the pandemic sweeps across the continent, an analysis of successful practices as well as erroneous steps which cost the continent over the past months, can help enable a much more informed response.

Chapter 5 presents an analysis of the healthcare response mounted by African countries, by examining indicators such as testing rates, the progression in clinical management of cases, private sector response, as well as the ways in which countries like Nigeria and Sierra Leone have leveraged their experience of tackling the Ebola and HIV epidemics, in managing the current pandemic. Meghna Chadha and Ananya Pushpa Gandhi provide an assessment of Africas response, including the importance of addressing stigmas and mental health as crucial elements of the healthcare response, and the need to train professionals accordingly. The chapter also provides insights into Africas progress towards developing a vaccine for COVID-19.

The world has responded to the wholesale economic devastation caused by the pandemic by deploying a range of ameliorative fiscal and monetary policies, and Africa is no exception. Noah Wamalwa, John Mutua and Raphael Muya summarise the fiscal, monetary and tax policy measures deployed by 31 African countries to tackle the economic impact of the COVID-19 outbreak in Chapter Six. The chapter also discusses the role of international support extended by the World Bank, IMF, African Development Bank and bilateral partners in addressing deteriorating fiscal positions and debt burdens across the region.

Chapter 7 provides a critique of the politics of pandemic response in Africa. Meghna Chadha discusses the range of measures deployed by countries to ensure compliance, from social distancing to the imposition of lockdowns. The chapter also includes an analysis of the best and worst performers in the region, and explores whether political regimes matter when it comes to crisis response.

The pandemic has catalysed the use of technological solutions across the world. In Chapter 8, Sadhika Sasiprabhu takes a sweeping look at the acceleration of innovation in Africa sparked by the pandemic. Crucially, technological innovation in the field of healthcare and diagnostics has tremendous potential to bolster weak healthcare capacities in the continent. The chapter demonstrates how a number of African countries have also deployed innovations in the field of contact tracing, e-learning, supply of essential commodities and e-commerce and e-money, to ameliorate the pain inflicted by COVID-19-induced lockdowns.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the state of unpreparedness of countries across the world. The upheaval presents an opportunity to recognise the pressing need to build resilience into the complex systems we inhabit, as we navigate the crisis and work to rebuild and recover from the devastation it has wrought.

In Chapter 9, Abhishek Mishra and Alisha George address the question of the moment: how to make Africas healthcare systems more robust and resilient to crisis. Their chapter analyses four significant elements of developing health resilience in the continent: household capacity, healthcare workers, training and capacity building, and financing. The chapter also analyses the role of international coordination in bolstering health-system resilience, and in this regard, explores the synergies and potential for cooperation between India and Africa.

Chapter 10 asks what building economic resilience implies for the African continent. Maureen Barasa, Annah-Grace Kemunto and Kwame Owino outline a number of policy priorities for Africa, in its quest to build back better after the COVID-19 pandemic. These include a drive towards structural transformation and economic diversification across the region, the need for social security frameworks to be strengthened and decoupled from formal employment, a green stimulus to help combat the looming climate crisis in time, a push towards investing in human capital and capabilities, resilience across production, banking and financial systems, as well as the dire state of debt unsustainability in the continent. The pandemics impact will affect the ability of African countries to work towards these goals, but with the state driving policy agendas proactively, economies can begin moving in a more sustainable direction.

Chapter 11 focuses on the underlying dynamic driving resilience across systems: socio-political resilience. The pandemic will be a stress-test for the strength of communities and political systems. The COVID-19 crisis has revealed that resilience is not only a function of better healthcare and economic systems, but is also fundamentally determined by political will and social cohesion. Sangeet Jain discusses the five critical components of resilience at the nation-state level in the African context: political legitimacy and trust, collaborative governance, leadership, combating corruption, and the need for transparent communication. The chapter also examines the role of global collaboration, knowledge-sharing mechanisms and foreign aid in enabling Africa to weather crises more effectively in the future.

The final chapter of the report, Chapter 12, envisions an agenda for building technological resilience in the African continent. Sangeet Jain and Sadhika Sasiprabhu offer a blueprint for fostering an inclusive, people-centred technological transformation, and the need to incentivise innovation that meets pressing societal needs. The chapter also discusses the key constraints for digitalisation in Africa, such as lagging investment and the digital divide, and advances policy recommendations to help circumvent them.

Read the entire report here.

[1]Bernard Avishai, The pandemic isnt a black swan but a portent of a more fragile global system, April 2020.

[2] Outbreak Brief 24: Covid-19 Pandemic, Africa CDC, 30 June 2020.

[3] Outbreak Brief 27: Covid-19 Pandemic, Africa CDC, 21 July 2020.

[4] Tackling coronavirus: contributing to a global effort, OECD, June 2020.

More:

The day after tomorrow: Africas battle with Covid19 and the road ahead - Observer Research Foundation

Ravages of acute hunger will likely hit six in 10 in Zimbabwe – Modern Diplomacy

Posted on by

Testimonies published by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, with the DRCs Mixed Migration Centre (MMC), reveal random killings, torture, forced labour and beatings.

Other people on the move said they had been burnt with hot oil and melted plastic, while others faced electrocution and being tied in stress positions.

Officials complicit

Smugglers and traffickers were key abusers, but so too were State officials, to a surprising extent, Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR Special Envoy for the Central Mediterranean, told journalists at the UN in Geneva.

In 47 per cent of the cases, the victims reported the perpetrators of violence are law enforcement authorities, whereas in the past we believed that it was mainly smugglers and traffickers, he said. Yes, they are key perpetrators of violence, but the primary perpetrators of violence are people who are supposed to protect.

Although accurate data is extremely difficult to gather, data suggests that at least 1,750 people died leaving western or eastern African nations en route to countries including Libya, Egypt or Algeria in 2018 and 2019.

70-plus deaths each month

This represents more than 70 deaths a month, making it one of the most deadly routes for refugees and migrants in the world, UNHCR said in a statement.

Almost three in 10 people died as people attempted to cross the Sahara Desert, according to the UN agency. Other lethal hotspots included locations in southern Libya such as Sabha, Kufra and Qatrun, in addition to the smuggling hub of Bani Walid southeast of Tripoli and several places along the west African section of the migrant route, including Bamako in Mali and Agadez in Niger.

To date this year, at least 70 people are known to have died, including 30 killed in June by traffickers in Mizdah, southern Libya, whose victims came from Bangladesh and African countries.

In a note accompanying the report, UNHCR noted that overland deaths are in addition to the thousands who have died or gone missing in recent years trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe, usually in vessels unfit to make the crossing.

More than 70 per cent perish on land

We can consider that an estimate of 72 per cent minimum died overland even before reaching Libya or Morocco or Egypt, their place of initial destination on their journey, Mr. Cochetel said. Thats a low estimate in our view, in the sense that the number of deaths on land is more or less the same than the number of deaths at sea for 2018/2019.

Among the reports findings is clear evidence that Libya is by no means the only place where migrants and refugees face life-threatening dangers.

Abuse begins early

Abuse actually is along the route and even sometimes it starts within the country of origin and follows people as they move, said Othman Belbeisi, IOM Senior Regional Advisor to the Director General on Middle East and North Africa.

Especially as they are moving at the hands of those smugglers and traffickers. People do not know their locations and they do not have communications, so even if people die or go missing, its very difficult to verify or to know where those people get missed.

Describing the reports findings as unacceptable and calling for action to help vulnerable people on the move, Mr. Cochetel noted that internationally agreed measures to target business and individuals involved in people smuggling had shown limited success.

We have had no new names of traffickers listed for the last two years, we have not had one single arrest of a UN-sanctioned trafficker over the last two years, he said. So why cant States do like they do with trafficking of weapons, terrorism or drug trafficking; why dont we follow the money-flows, why dont we seriously go after those people and try to combat impunity.

Most stay in first country of arrival

Around 85 per cent of refugees usually stay in the first country where they arrive, the UNHCR Special Envoy insisted, before underscoring the need for investment in countries of origin, to provide desperate people with an alternative to having to put their lives in the hands of traffickers.

Access to education is difficult, socio-economic inclusion is inexistent in many countries, Mr. Cochetel said. Access to medical care is not available, weve seen it during COVID-19 in many of those transit countries for migrants or for refugees, so there is a lot to be done under this umbrella of inclusion.

Highlighting the fact that Libya is not safe for refugees and migrants returned from dangerous sea crossing attempts by the Libyan coast guard, IOMs Othman Belbeisi called for solutions beyond the war-ravaged nation.

The situation is not only in one country, (the) other side of the Mediterranean has also a big responsibility, he said.

Related

Follow this link:

Ravages of acute hunger will likely hit six in 10 in Zimbabwe - Modern Diplomacy

Impact Finance Bulletin: Tipping Point Fund makes first grants of $750k to influence US impact investing policy | The Social Enterprise Magazine -…

Posted on by

The Tipping Point Fund on Impact Investing, created in December 2019 to scale up impact investing, has announced its first batch of grantees.

Eight organisations will share $752,000 to help raise the voice of impact investors and to encourage leaders in Washington DC to consider how US federal policy can catalyse the flow of private capital towards urgent social, economic and environmental challenges.

The Tipping Point Fund was created with funding from organisations including Blue Haven Initiative, Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and Omidyar Network; as of July 2020, it had raised $14m. The US Impact Investing Alliance facilitated the co-design and fundraising of the fund.

The eight grant recipients intended to present a wide array of policy solutions in the run-up to this years presidential election are:

The government-backed Youth Endowment Fund awarded 6.5m to 130 organisations in England and Wales as part of its Covid-19 grant round having received some 1,000 applications requesting over 54m in total.

The funding will help grantees charities, social enterprises, local authorities and youth organisations to work with young people at risk of getting involved in violent crime and to tackle problems arising due to the pandemic, through online programmes, work in schools and youth work.

The Youth Endowment Fund was established in 2019 with a 10-year, 200m endowment from the Home Office to reduce youth offending; it is delivered by Impetus, the Early Intervention Foundation and Social Investment Business. The full list of Covid-19 grantees is here.

Looking for funding?

Were publishinga regular update of funding announcements, upcoming deadlines and funds you may have missed.Find opportunities here.

Rethink Ireland (formerly Social Innovation Fund Ireland, having rebranded in June) confirmed a 1.27m, multi-year investment in GIY Ireland, with support from the Irish governments dormant accounts fund. The money will allow GIY, a social enterprise helping people to grow some of their own food at home, at work, at school and in the community, to reach 1 million new food growers by next year.

Last month Rethink Ireland also opened round 2 of its Innovate Together Fund, which backs social innovation projects responding to Covid-19. The fund has raised 500,000 from Z Zurich Foundation, the private foundation funded by the Zurich Insurance Group.

Separately, Nestl Ireland announced a 110,000 partnershipwith FoodCloud, which redistributes surplus food to families in need via its 700+ partners, and which has seen a significant rise in demand since lockdown. FoodClouds other corporate partners include Tesco and Lidl.

Sellafield Ltd the legal entity responsible for the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria, north-west England has relaunched its social impact programme and unveiled a first fund for vulnerable people.

SiX, which stands for social impact, multiplied, describes its work as significant shift and a new approach to social impact which prioritises projects co-created with the community and stakeholders. Sellafields latest social impact strategy says it aims to deliver the maximum social impact from the 2bn of taxpayer money that we spend at Sellafield every year.

The 2.2m Transforming West Cumbria fund is financed by Sellafield Ltd and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, and will be delivered by Cumbria Community Foundation. Initiatives include a 1.3m fund for community and voluntary groups, 660,000 to support families, 175,000 to fund financial education, and schemes supporting young entrepreneurs.

Social investment firm Resonance has created a new fund to help some of the thousands of adults with learning disabilities, autism or mental health problems who live in inappropriate housing or remain on long waiting lists due to housing shortages.

The Supported Homes Fund was created with learning disability housing provider Reside Housing Association and learning disability charity United Response. It has secured initial investment from Greater Manchester Combined Authority (5m), Big Society Capital (5m) and the Barrow Cadbury Trust (250,000).

The fund will buy, refurbish and adapt or potentially build residential properties, initially with half of the money invested in property in Greater Manchester and the rest in other regions, and aims to provide investors with a financial return from rent and capital appreciation. The charity partners will help people to move out of unsuitable accommodation and into homes of their choice in their local communities, and providefurther specialist support.

A Texas car repair social enterprise that aims to fill a skills gap and talent pipeline shortage has secured $3m seed investment from the Dallas-based Perot Foundation.

On the Road Garage is a new, year-long apprenticeship programme teaching advanced auto repair skills to vulnerable people, such as victims of domestic violence or former prisoners. It aims to train about 150 people over the next few years, according to Dallas News and trained apprentices have the potential to go on to earn a six-figure income.

The programmes founder, Michelle Corson, also created On the Road Lending in 2013, which provides low-interest loans, and On the Road Motors, a vehicle dealer that sources cars for clients directly at auction as a way to providea low-cost option. Corson also created Champion Impact Capital to make investments in social enterprises, and On the Road Sustainability Funds, a private equity fund.

Omidyar Network India has allocated the full budget of its Rapid Response Funding Initiative for Covid-19 to 67 organisations.

Announced in March with a $1m commitment, the fund was extended to $1.4m through personal contributions by Omidyar employees.

It aims to support what Omidyar calls the next half billion the people in the bottom 60% of Indias income distribution, including daily wage earners, gig-economy workers, and small businesses, who are among the most vulnerable to health and economic shocks of Covid-19.

Some 2,000 applications were received with most focusing on physical health, and nearly half technology-focused primarily online and mobile based solutions.

NGOs and nonprofits have responded rapidly... they are adopting new technologies at a fast pace -Roopa Kudva, Omidyar Network India

Roopa Kudva, managing director at Omidyar Network India, called the response of the nonprofit sector to the crisis truly awe-inspiring.

NGOs and nonprofits have responded rapidly to provide cost-effective solutions. They are adopting new technologies at a fast pace. They are collaborating with each other to create a more effective response. If they continue to be funded adequately, these organizations will continue to play an increasingly greater role in Indias response to the pandemic both in the medium and the long term.

Nordea Asset Management has become a founding member of The Big Exchange the new venture co-founded by The Big Issue which aims to make impact investing and saving open to all.

The mobile-first Big Exchange service will offer hand-picked funds to retail investors, charging among the lowest possible rates in the market (0.25 for every 100 invested, excluding management fees), while investing in businesses with a positive impact on society and the planet. It is currently in beta phase with launch expected by the end of the summer.

Nordeas responsible investment team is one of the largest in Europe in terms of pure ESG analysts. Anders Madsen, CEO of Nordea Asset Management UK, said: Delivering returns with responsibility is more than just a statement for Nordea Asset Management it has long been ingrained in our culture and business model. We are extremely pleased to support The Big Exchange, which will provide individual investors with the power to make a difference in helping to address todays environmental and societal challenges.

Nordea Asset Management joins 12 other founding members of the Big Exchange: Aberdeen Standard Investments, AllianceBernstein, Alquity, Civitas Social Housing plc., Columbia Threadneedle, Liontrust, Pictet, Quilter, Stewart Investors, Tortoise, UBP, and WHEB.

Jill Jackson, managing director of The Big Exchange, said: For the first time, people can see how their own money can count for more benefitting their financial future and the wider world Nordea fit with that philosophy perfectly It is fantastic to get the support of an industry leader like Nordea to add to the already impressive group of founding members, putting their weight behind our mission.

London-based ETF Partners has closed its third Environmental Technologies Fund at 167m, which will back innovative companies in Europe helping deliver long-term, sustainable economic prosperity.

ETF Partners was launched 14 years ago to identify and invest in high-impact companies in digitally-led sustainability. The third fund has invested in firms working in smart mobility, ethical cybersecurity, microbiome AI and software, and energy efficient data centres, among others. It was raised from a combination of existing and new limited partners, including British Patient Capital which provided a 20m cornerstone commitment and the European Investment Fund.

Patrick Sheehan, managing partner at ETF Partners, said Covid-19 had propelled us into a digital age while also making people think about the future of our planet making digitisation and sustainability the defining themes of the future.

Throughout this recent crisis, many digital companies have proved themselves to be robust, and they are also scalable able to grow fast in relatively capital-efficient ways, he said. So, by harnessing the right digital tools, the world can move quickly to achieve both sustainability and prosperity. Thats where we invest. By viewing the world through the lens of sustainability, we can see opportunities that may not be immediately obvious to all, but these companies can grow quickly to be large and significantly important.

By viewing the world through the lens of sustainability, we can see opportunities that may not be immediately obvious to all, but these companies can grow quickly - Patrick Sheehan, ETF Partners

Vital Capital, a private equity fund focused on sub-Saharan Africa, is to partner with the US governments Kenya Investment Mechanism a five-year programme funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to unlock financing for businesses affected by Covid-19.

The Kenya Investment Mechanism, managed by impact advisory and management firm Palladium, aims to unlock $400m in investment for key sectors of Kenyas economy, including agriculture, and for regional trade and investment opportunities.

Under the new deal, Vital Capital will identify and execute at least five completed transactions, providing at least $5m in financing and sustaining 500 jobs.

The news follows the launch in April of the Vital Impact Relief Facility, a $10m emergency loan facility offering critical funding to promising African businesses during the pandemic. The facility is now operational with loans ready to be deployed.

In Kenya, Covid-19 threatens livelihoods and food security in a nation that is already grappling with the worst locust infestation in 70 years and trying to recover from extensive flooding. Around 27% of households are suffering from food shortages, according to a recent survey by the World Bank, while in May, the Central Bank of Kenya warned that some 75% of the countrys SMEs face collapse without funding from banks or equity partners.

USAID has awarded $2.5m to financial inclusion nonprofit Kiva to develop a $100m gender-focused impact fund.

The funding comes from the White House-led Womens Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, billed the first whole-of-government approach to womens economic empowerment.

Kiva Capital, an impact-first asset manager and wholly-owned subsidiary of kiva.org, will work with major asset owners and gender lens investing experts over 18 months to develop the new Kiva Invest in Women Fund. It aims to ultimately support 1 million women worldwide.

Since its founding in 2005, Kiva has deployed $1.4bn through its marketplace; more than 80% of these loans have gone to nearly 3 million women around the world.

We're working hard to provide the most up-to-date news and resources to help social businesses and impact investors share their experiences and get through the Covid-19 crisis. Butwe need your support to continue. As a social enterprise ourselves,Pioneers Postrelies on paid subscriptions and partnerships to sustain our purpose-led journalism so if you think it's worth having an independent, mission-driven, specialist media platform for the impact movement, please click here tosubscribe.

Read the original:

Impact Finance Bulletin: Tipping Point Fund makes first grants of $750k to influence US impact investing policy | The Social Enterprise Magazine -...

‘Individualisation Of Merit A Strategy To Justify Inequality’ – IndiaSpend

Posted on by

Bengaluru: In June 2020, the Deparment of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) in California, USA, filed a lawsuit against IT company Cisco Systems for caste discrimination. The lawsuit by DFEH--the state agency responsible for enforcing Californias civil rights laws--noted that higher caste supervisors and co-workers imported the discriminatory systems practices into their team and Ciscos workplace, the Los Angeles Times reported on July 2. The caste of a Cisco employee, an Indian-American Dalit engineer anonymised as John Doe, was allegedly revealed--and passed on to others at work--by an upper caste colleague who had studied with him, over two decades ago, at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and knew that Joe had been admitted to the premiere institution through reservation because his name was not on the general merit list.

The case lays bare the complex issue of caste dynamics that operate in the garb of merit while undermining affirmative action such as reservation. While India has for decades had reservation for marginalised groups such as the scheduled castes (SCs), scheduled tribes (STs) and other backward classes (OBCs), in January 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government also introduced a 10% quota for the economically weaker sections among the general category in government jobs and higher education institutions, IndiaSpend reported.

India needs to reimagine the idea of affirmation, says Surinder Jodhka, professor of sociology, Centre for the Study of Social Systems at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), in this interview on caste, race and reservation. The idea of reservation needs to be opened up and the government needs to collect more data on caste identities in consultation with academics, the private sector, and other stakeholders.

Jodhka is a 2012 winner of Indian Council of Social Science Research-Amartya Sen award for distinguished social scientists. His recent publications include Indias Villages in the 21st Century: Revisits and Revisions (edited with Edward Simpson) and Mapping the Elite: Power, Privilege and Inequality (edited with Jules Naudet). He has also published Inequality in Capitalist Societies (co-authored with Boike Rehbien and Jesse Souza), and The Indian Middle Class (co-authored with Aseem Prakash).

Edited excerpts from the interview:

The Department of Fair Employment and Housing in California has launched a lawsuit against Cisco for caste discrimination against an employee. In a 2007 Economic and Political Weekly article based on interviews with human resource managers in Indias organised private sector, you (and co-author Katherine Newman) had noted that their opposition to reservations was the relationship between modernity and meritocracy. How do you now perceive the idea of merit, and the problems posed by caste in India, particularly in the private sector?

It is a larger problem of liberal social order. The emphasis was to move from ascription to individual-based achievement. There is a foundational problem with modernity and that can be seen in the public sphere. The legitimacy of inequality is sought through invisibilisation of identities. Identities, like cultural capital, soft skills, social network, come from ascription. At some level it is not just an Indian problem where individual success is legitimated on the basis of IQ and hard work; these are facades.

In the last 20 years, literature shows that [social] mobility has stopped [even] in most of the Western countries.

Reservation allows upper castes to claim success on the basis of merit and [believe that it has] nothing to do with identity. They do not realise their own privileges. So when corporate managers say that they only value merit and give no credence to caste, they only blind themselves to the pre-existing disparities. They tend to also look for soft skills and call them merit. The desired social skill, in reality, are monopolies of the relatively privileged. Individualisation of merit works as a strategy to justify inequality.

Is this narrative of meritocracy witnessed more in the private sector than in the public or government sector?

Even in the government sector there is a narrative of merit. The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) refuse to implement quota despite being funded by the state. Similarly, the armed forces do not implement reservations, and the upper judiciary, too, has been a privilege of the privileged.

There has been a debate around extending reservation to the private sector, and there has been a pushback too. Must reservations be extended to the sector? If yes, then how should it be done?

This is a difficult proposition. It will not be easy to implement or even justify. If I have a small company and want to hire five people [and are required to meet reservation criteria], it would create all kinds of issues [including legal ambiguity]. However, this does not mean that [the] private sector should have no social responsibility. Caste remains an important indicator of disadvantage and must be recognised to be so by everyone, and everyone must work towards levelling the field.

We need to reimagine the idea of affirmation away from how diversity has been classically understood in the Indian context. Diversity is not simply about language, region and religion. Caste should also be recognised as an important axis of diversity. Though caste is not everything and other identities also matter, such as gender and religion, it can be a very important variable in the measurement of diversity.

If the corporate or private sector has to be encouraged to introduce affirmative action, they should be allowed to open it up and individualise deprivation by recognising a number of variables, such as nature of schooling, rural residence or even gender. This could be operationalised through the notion 'deprivation points'. JNU has been using such a system for its admissions--giving deprivation points based on caste, education (rural government school or private), migration from rural areas, gender, etc.

Affirmative action must be based on identity, otherwise it is not affirmative action. But identities must be imagined more openly through constant research and dialogue. The Indian state continues to work with fixed categories of classification that originated in colonial times.

What is the best way of reimagining identities considering that we generally follow a classification made by the government?

It is not just the government, there are other vested interests too, even from within the Dalits, who would not like the reservation policy to be touched. They also have their apprehensions because they do not trust the elite. However, we need to move from [a] fixed notion of caste to a more general culture of promoting equal opportunities and affirmation in favour of the historically marginalised, and caste should be recognised as an important axis of deprivation though not the only one. Any kind of discrimination should be severely punished, like it is done in many countries of the West.

Diversity is good for the private sector because merit is not restricted to the elite. Most of merit gets confused with what is understood as soft skills in the private sector. Bringing in more diversity will change it. When it comes to employment it is not about eradicating caste, but it is about getting opportunities [of social mobility].

If quota is presented to the private sector in the form of meeting certain percentages in employment, it becomes a problem. They should also be incentivised [for instance, an independent agency could be asked to rate private companies pursuing affirmative action, which can be a determining factor in their consideration for government contracts or companies could be put on a list of good business practices companies for the general public.] That may change the status-quo.

Further, Indian society is changing very fast. There are others demanding quotas. In the last few years we have seen agitation by Jats, Patels and Marathas. These are dominant communities whose next generation has moved away from villages and agriculture, and are educated and aspirationally want to be in the cities.

While this is good for the country, we need to make space for them. Currently these spaces are monopolised by bania-brahmin [upper castes] clusters. Even though there are problems with their [dominant communities] methods of agitation, they are also trying to make an important point and could be seen positively. They are not just asking for backward class status, they are asking for dignified education and employment in cities. They also represent transformative aspirations and energies.

The 10% reservation for the economically weaker sections among the general category in government jobs and higher education institutions by the BJP-led government has already, in a way, diluted the idea of affirmative action in India. With a new and aggressive nationalist narrative emerging against caste-based reservation, what is your projection about the future of this policy?

I think the policy will continue though its value is declining. It will remain confined to public institutions and government jobs. However, the quality of public institutions has been declining and it may further decline. Our education system is getting fast differentiated, where most of the quality education happens in privately run institutions. This has already happened at the level of school education and it is happening quite rapidly at the level of higher education as well.

The job front is also changing. Jobs at the lower end are mostly being outsourced, leaving no scope for the newly mobile rural SCs to get into the system. Some of the higher-level jobs [in the government] are also being taken out of the system and are being opened to consultants and those joining through lateral entries.

The Supreme Court recently observed that the right to reservation is not a Fundamental Right. In 2016, we reported how reservations help students from disadvantaged social groups to pursue higher education. How do you assess the courts observation and its impact?

Reservation as a whole has had a positive impact on India, not just for the marginalised groups. It has developed stakes of those on the margins in the economic, democratic and educational system.

Education is a medium through which mobility can be attained, which implies that they have a stake in the system. I think people on the margins need to be reassured that their rights will not be taken away. Now, education has shifted from government to private institutions. Those from the reserved categories tend to see such pronouncement by the Supreme Court as a message against them. I am not sure if putting it like this serves any purpose.

There has been a demand for a fresh census to capture data on caste, which was last done in 1931. The Bihar state legislature passed a resolution that the demand be met. The Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) has not been updated in nearly a decade. How has this affected social mobility and opportunities?

The idea of reservation needs to be opened up. We need to collect more data on caste identities. For the first 50 years [after Independence] we were working with this illusion that modernisation will erase and eradicate caste. We know that it has not worked that way. Collective identities continue to matter almost everywhere and shape opportunities in everyday lives.

We need to collect rigorous data. It should be collected in consultation with academics, the corporate sector, and others [stakeholders]. The last time it [SECC data collection] was done in a hurry. There was no consultation.

Caste is not a pan-India system, and [is] not only about varna hierarchy or SC, ST and general category. There are many aspects that are regional and we need to look at how regional patterns of caste mobility have worked over the last half-century or more, like which are the castes and sub-castes that have gone up or down [in hierarchy]? These are aspects that the earlier generation of bureaucrats understood. For example, Jats in some pockets of Rajasthan are listed as OBCs, while in others they are not. Such bureaucratic wisdom may not exist now. So, we will need to generate data regularly (every five to 10 years), and need a body which is engaged in developing and understanding these aspects.

Inequality is a big issue that everyone is facing. If inequalities persist and become worse, [the] corporate sector may not be able to generate demand because wealth is getting centralised. Inequality is a systemic question. When it gets tied to categories and identities, they become politically dangerous. As a healthy society we must be able to do this, like through the use of technology. Brazil was able to connect socio-economic variables during [former President Lula Incio Lula da Silva] Lulas regime and were able to implement social welfare programmes effectively.

It is the only way to deal with poverty and exclusions in a society like ours. Even in situations like the current pandemic, we need systematic data to protect people from vulnerabilities, such as those of the migrant workers we witnessed recently.

The COVID-19 health crisis has exposed inequalities in India, particularly witnessed in the exodus of migrants from urban areas. Many migrants, usually from the marginalised castes and religious groups, continue to be employed in low-paying informal jobs. Governments and industry leaders have talked about extending work hours and relaxing labour laws. How do you look at social structures and the idea of labour change as a result of the pandemic?

People need to be assured that they would be taken care of. We need to change the narrative and say that we are with them, rather than create a narrative around [economic] opportunity [during a pandemic].

This is a moment of crisis and as a state system our resources and energy must be mobilised to make sure that people on the margins are offered all possible support. Everyone feels vulnerable in a situation like this.

The pandemic will have an effect. We can see how students are struggling with online teaching. Many have poor or no connectivity in rural areas. It is hard for research students to step out to do fieldwork. These social contexts are not liberating or opportune moments. If we do not have classroom education, it is going to collapse. If students have to study from home the next few years, we may not have a skilled population. We cant do science experiments or innovative research online. There is an entire supply chain [which will get affected].

Race relations are tense in the US which is witnessing the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd, and violence around it. India reported nearly 43,000 cases of atrocities against SCs and more than 6,500 against STs in 2018, as per NCRB data. How do you compare issues of caste and race, and why do we not see such an outpouring against discrimination in India?

We are a very different kind of society. Culturally and temperamentally, we are still not [a] very democratic people. We love our joint family, patriarchs and traditional orders. We are a political democracy, but substantively we are fine with having our gender and caste differences.

The race issue has been historically different. Although it is not easy to create binaries in understanding race, it is more clear [compared to caste]. Much of the Black population in the US is urban and the country is also urban. India is also going through this process [of urbanisation] but it is still rare to see non-Dalits joining Dalits in a protest.

[The] Khairlanji massacre [in 2006] led to Maharshtra being paralysed. Similarly, when a visiting Dalit religious leader was killed in Austria [in 2009], Punjab was paralysed. We witness such mass reactions occasionally, but they are all exclusively by Dalit groups, generally by a specific community of the Dalits. Even Dalits rarely come together on such issues. Caste-based divisions among them also continue to be strong and they continue to shape their politics and mobilisations.

Despite urbanisation and economic changes, and political parties like the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party gaining support in the last three decades, SC and ST households earn 21% and 34%, respectively, less than the national average while OBC households fare better but still earn 8% less. How much has class-based politics changed the socio-economic structure in rural areas compared to caste-based politics? Do urban regions fare differently?

There has been [a] churning in our society and in the way we approach inequalities or vulnerabilities. For example, very rarely did social scientists focus on caste while talking about poverty and inequality during the early decades after Independence. [The] ground situation was also different. A large proportion of the rural population (20%-30% or more) was engaged in agricultural labour. They also had their unions. There was clearly a question of class in the rural context.

Similarly, farmers mobilised around question of price [of their produce] and their discrimination in urban markets. Nationally also there was [a narrative of] class politics. With mechanisation and growing use of technology, these identities have become fragile. There is hardly any working class politics in India today. Left politics and trade unions have declined.

There has also been a rise in right-wing religious groups. Do you find India becoming more religious in the last few decades?

Changes taking place on ground have created spaces for identity politics. Globalisation-led mobility has also created anxieties and insecurities. So one way was to go back to the perceived identity pride like in nationalism and religious identity. This is also a response to ontological anxieties (ones existence and the meaning or purpose of life) produced by the changes on ground. We see a growing fascination for religious identity--new babas, deras in Punjab and elsewhere. There is a new kind of demonstrative and mobile religiosity. This is also because community- and kinship-based ties have weakened and people feel lost. It is not only in rural areas that such changes are happening though these trends are generally more visible among mobile populations.

(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

We welcome feedback. Please write to respond@indiaspend.org. We reserve the right to edit responses for language and grammar.

Bengaluru: In June 2020, the Deparment of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) in California, USA, filed a lawsuit against IT company Cisco Systems for caste discrimination. The lawsuit by DFEH--the state agency responsible for enforcing Californias civil rights laws--noted that higher caste supervisors and co-workers imported the discriminatory systems practices into their team and Ciscos workplace, the Los Angeles Times reported on July 2. The caste of a Cisco employee, an Indian-American Dalit engineer anonymised as John Doe, was allegedly revealed--and passed on to others at work--by an upper caste colleague who had studied with him, over two decades ago, at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and knew that Joe had been admitted to the premiere institution through reservation because his name was not on the general merit list.

The case lays bare the complex issue of caste dynamics that operate in the garb of merit while undermining affirmative action such as reservation. While India has for decades had reservation for marginalised groups such as the scheduled castes (SCs), scheduled tribes (STs) and other backward classes (OBCs), in January 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government also introduced a 10% quota for the economically weaker sections among the general category in government jobs and higher education institutions, IndiaSpend reported.

India needs to reimagine the idea of affirmation, says Surinder Jodhka, professor of sociology, Centre for the Study of Social Systems at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), in this interview on caste, race and reservation. The idea of reservation needs to be opened up and the government needs to collect more data on caste identities in consultation with academics, the private sector, and other stakeholders.

Jodhka is a 2012 winner of Indian Council of Social Science Research-Amartya Sen award for distinguished social scientists. His recent publications include Indias Villages in the 21st Century: Revisits and Revisions (edited with Edward Simpson) and Mapping the Elite: Power, Privilege and Inequality (edited with Jules Naudet). He has also published Inequality in Capitalist Societies (co-authored with Boike Rehbien and Jesse Souza), and The Indian Middle Class (co-authored with Aseem Prakash).

Edited excerpts from the interview:

The Department of Fair Employment and Housing in California has launched a lawsuit against Cisco for caste discrimination against an employee. In a 2007 Economic and Political Weekly article based on interviews with human resource managers in Indias organised private sector, you (and co-author Katherine Newman) had noted that their opposition to reservations was the relationship between modernity and meritocracy. How do you now perceive the idea of merit, and the problems posed by caste in India, particularly in the private sector?

It is a larger problem of liberal social order. The emphasis was to move from ascription to individual-based achievement. There is a foundational problem with modernity and that can be seen in the public sphere. The legitimacy of inequality is sought through invisibilisation of identities. Identities, like cultural capital, soft skills, social network, come from ascription. At some level it is not just an Indian problem where individual success is legitimated on the basis of IQ and hard work; these are facades.

In the last 20 years, literature shows that [social] mobility has stopped [even] in most of the Western countries.

Reservation allows upper castes to claim success on the basis of merit and [believe that it has] nothing to do with identity. They do not realise their own privileges. So when corporate managers say that they only value merit and give no credence to caste, they only blind themselves to the pre-existing disparities. They tend to also look for soft skills and call them merit. The desired social skill, in reality, are monopolies of the relatively privileged. Individualisation of merit works as a strategy to justify inequality.

Is this narrative of meritocracy witnessed more in the private sector than in the public or government sector?

Even in the government sector there is a narrative of merit. The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) refuse to implement quota despite being funded by the state. Similarly, the armed forces do not implement reservations, and the upper judiciary, too, has been a privilege of the privileged.

There has been a debate around extending reservation to the private sector, and there has been a pushback too. Must reservations be extended to the sector? If yes, then how should it be done?

This is a difficult proposition. It will not be easy to implement or even justify. If I have a small company and want to hire five people [and are required to meet reservation criteria], it would create all kinds of issues [including legal ambiguity]. However, this does not mean that [the] private sector should have no social responsibility. Caste remains an important indicator of disadvantage and must be recognised to be so by everyone, and everyone must work towards levelling the field.

We need to reimagine the idea of affirmation away from how diversity has been classically understood in the Indian context. Diversity is not simply about language, region and religion. Caste should also be recognised as an important axis of diversity. Though caste is not everything and other identities also matter, such as gender and religion, it can be a very important variable in the measurement of diversity.

If the corporate or private sector has to be encouraged to introduce affirmative action, they should be allowed to open it up and individualise deprivation by recognising a number of variables, such as nature of schooling, rural residence or even gender. This could be operationalised through the notion 'deprivation points'. JNU has been using such a system for its admissions--giving deprivation points based on caste, education (rural government school or private), migration from rural areas, gender, etc.

Affirmative action must be based on identity, otherwise it is not affirmative action. But identities must be imagined more openly through constant research and dialogue. The Indian state continues to work with fixed categories of classification that originated in colonial times.

What is the best way of reimagining identities considering that we generally follow a classification made by the government?

It is not just the government, there are other vested interests too, even from within the Dalits, who would not like the reservation policy to be touched. They also have their apprehensions because they do not trust the elite. However, we need to move from [a] fixed notion of caste to a more general culture of promoting equal opportunities and affirmation in favour of the historically marginalised, and caste should be recognised as an important axis of deprivation though not the only one. Any kind of discrimination should be severely punished, like it is done in many countries of the West.

Diversity is good for the private sector because merit is not restricted to the elite. Most of merit gets confused with what is understood as soft skills in the private sector. Bringing in more diversity will change it. When it comes to employment it is not about eradicating caste, but it is about getting opportunities [of social mobility].

If quota is presented to the private sector in the form of meeting certain percentages in employment, it becomes a problem. They should also be incentivised [for instance, an independent agency could be asked to rate private companies pursuing affirmative action, which can be a determining factor in their consideration for government contracts or companies could be put on a list of good business practices companies for the general public.] That may change the status-quo.

Further, Indian society is changing very fast. There are others demanding quotas. In the last few years we have seen agitation by Jats, Patels and Marathas. These are dominant communities whose next generation has moved away from villages and agriculture, and are educated and aspirationally want to be in the cities.

While this is good for the country, we need to make space for them. Currently these spaces are monopolised by bania-brahmin [upper castes] clusters. Even though there are problems with their [dominant communities] methods of agitation, they are also trying to make an important point and could be seen positively. They are not just asking for backward class status, they are asking for dignified education and employment in cities. They also represent transformative aspirations and energies.

The 10% reservation for the economically weaker sections among the general category in government jobs and higher education institutions by the BJP-led government has already, in a way, diluted the idea of affirmative action in India. With a new and aggressive nationalist narrative emerging against caste-based reservation, what is your projection about the future of this policy?

I think the policy will continue though its value is declining. It will remain confined to public institutions and government jobs. However, the quality of public institutions has been declining and it may further decline. Our education system is getting fast differentiated, where most of the quality education happens in privately run institutions. This has already happened at the level of school education and it is happening quite rapidly at the level of higher education as well.

The job front is also changing. Jobs at the lower end are mostly being outsourced, leaving no scope for the newly mobile rural SCs to get into the system. Some of the higher-level jobs [in the government] are also being taken out of the system and are being opened to consultants and those joining through lateral entries.

The Supreme Court recently observed that the right to reservation is not a Fundamental Right. In 2016, we reported how reservations help students from disadvantaged social groups to pursue higher education. How do you assess the courts observation and its impact?

Reservation as a whole has had a positive impact on India, not just for the marginalised groups. It has developed stakes of those on the margins in the economic, democratic and educational system.

Education is a medium through which mobility can be attained, which implies that they have a stake in the system. I think people on the margins need to be reassured that their rights will not be taken away. Now, education has shifted from government to private institutions. Those from the reserved categories tend to see such pronouncement by the Supreme Court as a message against them. I am not sure if putting it like this serves any purpose.

There has been a demand for a fresh census to capture data on caste, which was last done in 1931. The Bihar state legislature passed a resolution that the demand be met. The Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) has not been updated in nearly a decade. How has this affected social mobility and opportunities?

The idea of reservation needs to be opened up. We need to collect more data on caste identities. For the first 50 years [after Independence] we were working with this illusion that modernisation will erase and eradicate caste. We know that it has not worked that way. Collective identities continue to matter almost everywhere and shape opportunities in everyday lives.

We need to collect rigorous data. It should be collected in consultation with academics, the corporate sector, and others [stakeholders]. The last time it [SECC data collection] was done in a hurry. There was no consultation.

Caste is not a pan-India system, and [is] not only about varna hierarchy or SC, ST and general category. There are many aspects that are regional and we need to look at how regional patterns of caste mobility have worked over the last half-century or more, like which are the castes and sub-castes that have gone up or down [in hierarchy]? These are aspects that the earlier generation of bureaucrats understood. For example, Jats in some pockets of Rajasthan are listed as OBCs, while in others they are not. Such bureaucratic wisdom may not exist now. So, we will need to generate data regularly (every five to 10 years), and need a body which is engaged in developing and understanding these aspects.

Inequality is a big issue that everyone is facing. If inequalities persist and become worse, [the] corporate sector may not be able to generate demand because wealth is getting centralised. Inequality is a systemic question. When it gets tied to categories and identities, they become politically dangerous. As a healthy society we must be able to do this, like through the use of technology. Brazil was able to connect socio-economic variables during [former President Lula Incio Lula da Silva] Lulas regime and were able to implement social welfare programmes effectively.

It is the only way to deal with poverty and exclusions in a society like ours. Even in situations like the current pandemic, we need systematic data to protect people from vulnerabilities, such as those of the migrant workers we witnessed recently.

The COVID-19 health crisis has exposed inequalities in India, particularly witnessed in the exodus of migrants from urban areas. Many migrants, usually from the marginalised castes and religious groups, continue to be employed in low-paying informal jobs. Governments and industry leaders have talked about extending work hours and relaxing labour laws. How do you look at social structures and the idea of labour change as a result of the pandemic?

People need to be assured that they would be taken care of. We need to change the narrative and say that we are with them, rather than create a narrative around [economic] opportunity [during a pandemic].

This is a moment of crisis and as a state system our resources and energy must be mobilised to make sure that people on the margins are offered all possible support. Everyone feels vulnerable in a situation like this.

The pandemic will have an effect. We can see how students are struggling with online teaching. Many have poor or no connectivity in rural areas. It is hard for research students to step out to do fieldwork. These social contexts are not liberating or opportune moments. If we do not have classroom education, it is going to collapse. If students have to study from home the next few years, we may not have a skilled population. We cant do science experiments or innovative research online. There is an entire supply chain [which will get affected].

Race relations are tense in the US which is witnessing the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd, and violence around it. India reported nearly 43,000 cases of atrocities against SCs and more than 6,500 against STs in 2018, as per NCRB data. How do you compare issues of caste and race, and why do we not see such an outpouring against discrimination in India?

We are a very different kind of society. Culturally and temperamentally, we are still not [a] very democratic people. We love our joint family, patriarchs and traditional orders. We are a political democracy, but substantively we are fine with having our gender and caste differences.

The race issue has been historically different. Although it is not easy to create binaries in understanding race, it is more clear [compared to caste]. Much of the Black population in the US is urban and the country is also urban. India is also going through this process [of urbanisation] but it is still rare to see non-Dalits joining Dalits in a protest.

[The] Khairlanji massacre [in 2006] led to Maharshtra being paralysed. Similarly, when a visiting Dalit religious leader was killed in Austria [in 2009], Punjab was paralysed. We witness such mass reactions occasionally, but they are all exclusively by Dalit groups, generally by a specific community of the Dalits. Even Dalits rarely come together on such issues. Caste-based divisions among them also continue to be strong and they continue to shape their politics and mobilisations.

Despite urbanisation and economic changes, and political parties like the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party gaining support in the last three decades, SC and ST households earn 21% and 34%, respectively, less than the national average while OBC households fare better but still earn 8% less. How much has class-based politics changed the socio-economic structure in rural areas compared to caste-based politics? Do urban regions fare differently?

There has been [a] churning in our society and in the way we approach inequalities or vulnerabilities. For example, very rarely did social scientists focus on caste while talking about poverty and inequality during the early decades after Independence. [The] ground situation was also different. A large proportion of the rural population (20%-30% or more) was engaged in agricultural labour. They also had their unions. There was clearly a question of class in the rural context.

Similarly, farmers mobilised around question of price [of their produce] and their discrimination in urban markets. Nationally also there was [a narrative of] class politics. With mechanisation and growing use of technology, these identities have become fragile. There is hardly any working class politics in India today. Left politics and trade unions have declined.

There has also been a rise in right-wing religious groups. Do you find India becoming more religious in the last few decades?

Changes taking place on ground have created spaces for identity politics. Globalisation-led mobility has also created anxieties and insecurities. So one way was to go back to the perceived identity pride like in nationalism and religious identity. This is also a response to ontological anxieties (ones existence and the meaning or purpose of life) produced by the changes on ground. We see a growing fascination for religious identity--new babas, deras in Punjab and elsewhere. There is a new kind of demonstrative and mobile religiosity. This is also because community- and kinship-based ties have weakened and people feel lost. It is not only in rural areas that such changes are happening though these trends are generally more visible among mobile populations.

(Paliath is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

We welcome feedback. Please write to respond@indiaspend.org. We reserve the right to edit responses for language and grammar.

The rest is here:

'Individualisation Of Merit A Strategy To Justify Inequality' - IndiaSpend

Who Are The 8 Best U.S. Chess Players Ever? – Chess.com

Posted on by

On July 4, the day the United States of America celebrates its independence, let's take a look at the best chess players in American history.

The United States has long produced top chess talent, with some of the game's finest players, authors and theoreticians calling the U.S. home.

In recent years, the U.S. has been a force on the international chess scene, and its "big three" grandmasters are staples at the world's top tournaments. The United States had a world-championship contender in 2018, with GMFabiano Caruana coming up just short against the world champion, GMMagnus Carlsen.

Caruana obviously makes the list of the best-ever U.S. players, but where does he rank? And who is ahead of him?

There are many ways to make a "best-of-all-time" list. Your selections will be different from mine. I am using peak playing strength as my primary metric, not overall career achievement because I am most interested in the best possible chess produced by each American on this list.

Peak rating: 2763

Gata Kamsky is a true chess prodigy. He became a strong grandmaster at age 16 and reached his peak in the 1990s. His career pinnacle was in the 1996 FIDE world championship bracket, where he made the finals but dropped the championship match against the reigning FIDE world champion, GMAnatoly Karpov.

Kamsky was born in the Soviet Union but moved to the United States early in his career. Kamsky won the U.S. chess championship five times (1991, 2010, 2011, 2013, and 2014), cementing his status as an American chess legend.

Here is a 22-year-old Kamsky beating the super-GM Nigel Short in 26 moves.

Peak rating: 2768

Even with much recent success, Leinier Dominguez Perez remains an underrated American chess talent.

Dominguez Perez officially became an American chess player less than two years ago, in December 2018, when he transferred federations to the United States. Before that, he was the five-time Cuban chess champion.

His career peak was likely his sole first place in the 2013 FIDE Grand Prix leg in Greece, finishing ahead of 11 other super-GMs, including three others on this list.

Dominguez Perez's attacking prowess was on full display in 2014 when he practically wiped future-compatriot GMWesley So's kingside off the board in this brutal miniature.

Peak rating: 2811 (estimated by Edo)

It's not a stretch to call Paul Morphy the father of American chess.

A true prodigy, Morphy was not just a chess force at an early age. His game was also about 100 years ahead of its time in terms of style and even tactical strength.

GM Bobby Fischer called Morphy "the most accurate player who ever lived," which should tell you something because many chess fans give that title instead to Fischer.

Morphy's game peaked quite early, and the apex was his European tour in 1858 at age 21. Morphy pretty much destroyed every strong player the European continent could throw at him, and by the time he returned to the United States, he was recognized as the unofficial world champion.

Morphy retired from competitive chess a year later to begin his law practice, never returning to the game before his death at age 47.

Morphy is the author of arguably the most famous chess game ever played, an exhibition against the Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard at an opera house in Paris. If you're going to show a chess beginner one game, use this one.

Peak rating: 2816

Hikaru Nakamura, while quite a formidable traditional chess force, is truly a chess player of the modern age.

Nakamura has made his mark as unquestionably the best American blitz chess player ever, and also the best American online chess player ever. Since most chess games in 2020 are both played online and at fast time controls, these are fairly important arenas.

Nakamura has also established a tremendous following on the live-streaming site Twitch and was called "the grandmaster who got Twitch hooked on chess" by Wired magazine. On Chess.com, Nakamura has won the two most recent editions of the Speed Chess Championship (2018-2019).

Of course, Nakamura has enjoyed solid over-the-board success as well, winning the U.S. championship five times.

No game quite captures the modern, fun, and online-friendly nature of Nakamura's style like his thorough trolling of the computer engine Crafty back in 2007, when Crafty was one of the world's strongest engines and Nakamura was just 20 years old.

Peak rating: 2822

Wesley So transferred to the United States federation six years ago, and since then he has established himself as one of the world's best players.

So is 26 years old and it's reasonable to think that his chess peak is just getting started. So's style of play is precise and safe, rarely getting himself into trouble. This less-risky approach has been cited (mostly unfairly) as evidence that So is not an exciting chess player.

That argument went right out the window last November when So destroyed the classical world chess champion, Carlsen, in the finals of the first FIDE world Fischer random chess championship. So ran up the score, winning the match 13.5-2.5, putting to rest any doubts of his brilliance and creativity.

In this famous game against the top Chinese GM Ding Liren, So answers any lingering questions you might have about whether three pieces are better than a queen.

Peak rating: 2844

Fabiano Caruana is currently at the top of his career and sits just 28 rating points behind Carlsen on the live list. Caruana and Carlsen are the only players above 2800. The pair fought a close battle in the 2018 world chess championship, with Carlsen needing the tiebreaks to retain his title.

Caruana is still in contention for the next world championship whenever that process resumes, with the American one game off the lead of the 2020 candidates' tournament at the time of its postponement halfway through the schedule.

Caruana's chess highlight reel is too extensive to fully appreciate in this space. He won the U.S. chess championship on his first try in 2016, and he was the four-time Italian chess champion before transferring to the U.S. federation.

Why pick a draw for Caruana's showcase game, when all the other players get wins?

This game against Carlsen in the 2018 world chess championship represents the peak of chess on two levels. On the surface, you have the tremendous underdog Caruana outplaying and pressuring the world champion Carlsen, who was lucky to escape with the draw and maintain an even match.

On a deeper level, there is a beautiful and inscrutable endgame lurking in this game that astounded everyone who analyzed it. The chess super-computer "Sesse" found a forced checkmate for Caruana in 30 moves in real-time, as millions watched the game around the world. The legendary former world champion GMGarry Kasparov said no human could ever spot the win. Yet it was in there, on the board as surely the 64 squares themselves.

I still get goosebumps playing over this endgame.

Peak rating: 2785

Bobby Fischer stands as the most legendary U.S. chess player ever and is universally considered one of the three greatest world champions, along with Carlsen and Kasparov.

Fischer was responsible for a renaissance in American chess in the 1970s as he racked up ridiculous winning streaks on his way to the world title over GMBoris Spassky in 1972. Fischer elevated the game of chess to geopolitical philosophy, representing American individualism against the Soviet chess machine.

The most striking aspect of Fischer's chess was how far ahead he was of his competition. His peak rating of 2785, earned before the considerable rating inflation in the 50 years since would place him near the top of the chess world even today.

Computer studies have confirmed Fischer's strength and accuracy as other-worldly for his time. His style was universal, elegant and above all, accurate. His fierce competitive spirit is something the computer engines can't measure; Fischer had one of the strongest wills to win in chess history.

Fischer's career was cut short by disagreements with chess organizers along with mental and physical health problems. Nonetheless, in the short time he spent at the top of the game, he changed it forever with the millions of American players he inspired.

Almost as a side note, Fischer invented Fischer random chess (chess 960), which is considered one of the most creative chess variants. Fischer also held a patent for a chess clock with an increment, which is the preferred time control today of many players.

The below game, one of the most famous in chess history, shows the stunning chess clarity possessed by Fischer even as young as age 13 when he eviscerated a leading American chess master, Donald Byrne.

Peak rating: 3500+

I can already see the objections in the comment section. But the headline in this article said "chess players," not chess humans, and I am a big fan of non-human chess.

AlphaZero is an artificial intelligence project that plays chess. Given just the rules of the game, AlphaZero taught itself to play chess to superhuman levels in mere hours using machine-learning techniques.

It stormed onto the chess scene in late 2017 when its operators released the results of a 100-game match with Stockfish, the traditional champion chess engine.

AlphaZero plays chess differently from most computers, possessing an almost-intuitive understanding of the game and handling many positions in a beautiful, human-like manner. Of course, AlphaZero is stronger than any human, but if you played through its games you'd think it had a distinct personality. Maybe it does.

AlphaZero inspired a whole wave of neural-network chess engines, including the international open-source project Lc0, which currently sits second behind Stockfish on the computer ratings list. The machine-learning approach pioneered by AlphaZero transformed the scientific basis of computer chess, and it will be the neural-network engines that evolve the game to its next levels, wherever that may be.

Is AlphaZero American? AlphaZero runs on American TPUs. The project's inventor, the AI company DeepMind, is headquartered in the United Kingdom, but the company has been owned by an American corporation (Google/Alphabet) since before there was an AlphaZero.

If George Washington was born a British subject but can still be considered a founding father of the United States, we can extend that same leeway to AlphaZero, especially on the American day of independence from Great Britain.

Of course, there are many other American chess engines, most of them far stronger than the human players on this list, but here they are collectively represented by the intrepid AlphaZero, which changed computer chess forever.

I'll never forget where I was when I saw this game by AlphaZero against the reigning top computer engine Stockfish, and if you care about the evolution of chess, you might not either.

Who do you think are the top chess players in American history? Let us know in the comments.

View post:

Who Are The 8 Best U.S. Chess Players Ever? - Chess.com

Ahmed Albasheer: if freedom of speech is under threat in the West, the rest of us will never have it – Telegraph.co.uk

Posted on by

There are lots of channels supporting militias that are killing Iraqis and coalition forces, but when we call for them to be shut down or taken to court, it never happens because their supporters control the government, he says. All of which gives him a complex perspective on the cancel culture debate in the West. On the one hand, he wants TV shows that promote bigotry shut down: in Iraq, he points out, such material is far more likely to lead to actual violence.

On the other hand, though, he is alarmed at any moves to silence opposing views, as long as theyre expressed peacefully. If the West doesnt have it [freedom of speech], it means the whole world wont have it, he says. Unless it gets to the point of people carrying guns and blood on the streets, I think people should argue and have debates, it is fine.

Theres even been calls for Albasheer to enter politics, following in the footsteps of fellow comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, who became president of Ukraine last year. After all, in countries with chaotic, dysfunctional politics, a sense of the absurd is arguably advantageous.

So when does he think Iraq might be tolerant enough for him to return to do a few stand-up gigs in Baghdad? Once they take down the militias in Iraq,once Iran stops interfering in our country, and once we have people who understand each other, he says, laughing. In other words, dont try to book any time soon.

Once Upon a Time in Iraq continues tonight on BBC Two

View post:

Ahmed Albasheer: if freedom of speech is under threat in the West, the rest of us will never have it - Telegraph.co.uk