Topic 1 : The future of water
Introduction: Bloomberg has reported on the 1.1-billion-dollar spot water market in California. Water was being traded as a future spot commodity in Wall Street's future spot market.
Water as a future commodity and concerns related to it
- On December 7, 2020, a company called the CME Group launched the “world’s first water futures contract for trading with the aim to help water users manage risk and better balance the competing demands for water supply and demand amidst the uncertainty that severe droughts and flooding bring to the availability of water.
- The new futures contract allows buyers and sellers to barter a fixed price for the delivery of fixed quantity of water at a future date.”
- Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation responded to this by stating that “you can’t put a value on water as you do with other traded commodities. Water belongs to everyone and is a public good.”
- He added, “I am very concerned that water is now being treated as gold, oil and other commodities that are traded on Wall Street futures market.”
- The Special Rapporteur’s concerns were that if water was traded as a futures commodity, then hedge funds, banks, large industrial and agricultural players would buy into it and marginalise vulnerable sectors of the economy like small-scale farmers.
- According to Al Jazeera, these water futures options were announced in September 2020 when heat and wildfires ravaged the West Coast of the US.
Status of drinking water scarcity across the world
- Water is probably the most increasingly scarce and yet eternally indispensable resource for the human species.
- That its scarcity would result in efforts to trade it or privatise its supply is unsurprising.
- Water scarcity is caused by the overuse of groundwater, climate change, a warming planet and rapid migration to already overpopulated large cities.
- The UN 2023 World Water Development Report notes that 26 per cent of the world’s population does not have access to safe drinking water.
India and water scarcity
- India is not exempt from water scarcity.
- The World Bank explains that India has 18 per cent of the world’s population, but only four per cent of its water resources, making it among the most water-stressed in the world.
- Water and access to water is an issue that has occupied the minds of the drafters of the Constitution as well as the judges of the Supreme Court.
Safeguards for water disputes in India
- Water disputes were constitutionally envisaged during the founding of our Republic.
- Article 262 of the Constitution provides that Parliament may by law provide for the adjudication of any dispute or complaint with respect to the use, distribution or control of the waters of any inter-State river or river valley.
- Hence, Parliament enacted the Inter-State Water Disputes Act, 1956 which provides for the constitution of Water Disputes Tribunals that will hear complaints by various state governments against each other.
- Such disputes may arise out of the use, distribution, or control of water that flows between states.
- States have triggered this water disputes statute such as the dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka which resulted in the Cauvery water disputes tribunal being established in 1990.
- This tribunal delivered its final verdict in 2007.
- Not satisfied with the outcome, the parties were soon at the SC which arrived at a distinct verdict using different parameters to determine water allocation for each state.
- The Court has often engaged issues of distribution of water.
- In Narmada Bachao Andolan v Union of India (2000), the Court concluded that water is part of the right to life enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution.
- Subsequently, in A.P. Pollution Control Board II v Prof. M.V. Nayudu (2001) the apex court declared that it is the duty of the state under Article 21 to provide clean drinking water to its citizens.
- What the Court and the Constitution did is that they established a fundamental right for every Indian to access safe and clean water.
- This may be the eventual bulwark against pricing water outside the reach of the average Indian.
Water is a common good in India
- In India, water pricing is determined by states in terms of the mandates of their respective municipality frameworks.
- There is no central authority for the regulation of water pricing.
- What we do have is a Constitutional principle regarding the distribution of natural resources.
- Water would fall within this category of natural resources.
- Article 39 of the Constitution in the Directive Principles of State Policy chapter provides that the state shall direct its policy towards securing that the ownership and control of material resources of the community are so distributed to subserve the common good.
- There is a strong movement to privatise water supply called “water sector reforms”.
- In 2010, Manthan Adhyayan Kendra in its report Water: Private Limited noted that “water sector reforms” would involve “processes like unbundling, independent regulatory authority to free the sector from ‘political interference’, increasing tariffs, retrenchment, full cost recovery, elimination of subsidies, cutting off supplies for non-payment, removal of public standposts, public-private partnerships, allocation of water to highest value use through market mechanism.”
Conclusion: The future of water must not be that it is simply unaffordable to many of our species. For when water is traded or privatised out as a scarce commodity and not treated as a constitutionally protected natural resource to be distributed for the larger common good, then thirst will be the norm and quenching it unaffordable for many.
Topic 2 : Language and learning
Introduction: According to a report in the Indian Express Newspaper, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has proposed a major overhaul in the academic framework for secondary and higher secondary education.
More about framework
- Students will be required to study three languages — instead of two — till Class X, at least two of which must be native Indian languages.
- At the higher secondary level, students will have to study two languages instead of one, at least one of which must be a native Indian language.
- Secondary-level students will now have to clear 10 subjects, as opposed to the current requirement of five.
- Graduating from high school will require clearing six subjects, instead of five.
- The shift is in accordance with NEP 2020’s objective of doing away with the rigid separation between academic and extracurricular streams.
- A credit bank system will ensure that the student is rewarded for skills obtained outside the classroom.
Significance of the current framework of CBSE
- The CBSE’s plan gives the learner the space to combine academic training with vocational education.
- It is, therefore, a welcome departure from pedagogic strategies that have contributed to the country’s skill deficit by devaluing hands-on training.
- The examination authority must, however, make sure that the new system does not impose an extra burden on already stretched students.
Three Language Formula according to NEP 2020
- As a medium of instruction: Wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least Grade 5, but preferably till Grade 8 and beyond it will be the home language/mother-tongue/local language/regional language.
- The three-language formula will continue to be implemented to promote multilingualism as well as promote national unity.
- NEP states that there will be greater flexibility in the three-language formula. But no language will be imposed on any State.
- To learn three languages will be the choice of States, regions, and students themselves, as long as at least two of the three languages are native to India.
- According to the Ministry of Education, the three-language formula will continue to be implemented in schools "with greater flexibility" but "no language will be imposed on any state."
The benefit of three language formula and concerns of Southern states
- A wealth of scholarship has underlined that knowledge of multiple languages improves learning outcomes and helps skill acquisition.
- At the same time, the three-language formula remains a politically fraught issue, especially in South India, which has a long history of language-based sub-nationalism.
- The Tamil Nadu government, for instance, has opposed the NEP even though the policy does not require non-Hindi-speaking states to include the language in school curricula.
- Linguistic activists in the state fear the implementation of the three-language formula could push schools to teach Hindi because of the scarcity of teachers in other languages.
- When it was first framed in 1968, the formula envisaged teaching a modern Indian language, apart from Hindi and English till Class VIII in schools in North India.
- But Hindi-speaking states have never had more than a handful of schools with teachers who can teach Malayalam, Kannada or Tamil — or, for that matter, Bengali, Marathi or Gujarati.
- The CBSE’s proposal should occasion conversations on finding a greater play for the country’s linguistic diversity in school curricula.
Conclusion: The CBSE has not specified a time-frame for rolling out the new system. The agency must hold wide consultations before finalising its plan. It must ensure that all sensitivities are respected and old fault lines are not reopened.