Editorial 1 : Gender reality check
Recent Context:
- Recently, 2023 Nobel economics prize in economics has been awarded to Claudia Goldin, ‘for having advanced our understanding of women’s labor market outcomes’.
- Her research reveals the causes of change, as well as the main sources of the remaining gender gap
Gender discrimination in the labour market
- Women have disadvantageous outcomes in terms of occupation and wages, even when they are just as qualified as men.
- Over the years, Goldin’s and several feminist economists, the sub-field within economics, highlighted on male-female gaps and gender discrimination has grown exponentially, making it clear that labour markets work very differently for men and women.
- Therefore, by choosing Claudia Goldin as the recipient of the highest award in Economics, the Nobel committee has provided the official stamp of legitimacy to this body of analysis.
Major outcomes and significance of Claudia Goldin work
- Goldin has focused on the big picture questions of how women’s labour force participation (LFP) and gender wage gaps have evolved historically.
- She suggested the U-shaped relationship between economic development and women’s LFP based on cross-sectional data from over 100 countries.
- Countries at low levels of economic development have relatively higher levels of female LFP as women are engaged in agriculture, often as unpaid workers on family farms.
- As incomes rise, due to industrialisation and introduction of new technologies, women withdraw from paid work and retreat into the home.
- Their hours of work do not change but their labour force participation does. This is the so-called “income effect”. As countries develop and women’s education rises further, women move back into paid work.
- In her 2021 book, Career and Family: Women’s Century Long Journey towards Equity, Goldin examines the gender wage gap among college-educated US women over a century.
- She shows that since the 2000s, especially, the wage gap between college-educated men and women has stagnated.
- While in earlier decades, men earned more because they were better educated, that is no longer the case. Women today are more likely to have a college degree than men.
What explains the wage gap then?
- One factor is occupational segregation: Women work in stereotypically feminine jobs that are lower paying.
- Goldin argues that in the US, gender wage gaps at entry level are not stark. Going up the occupational ladder, she highlights the phenomenon of “greedy” jobs, which have massive wage premiums but, in return, require long work hours, networking, late-night meetings, travel
- In a family of two working parents with kids, only one parent would be able to afford to work this way. The other would be on the “mommy track”, continuing in less demanding jobs which would allow taking care of the kids’ school, homework, sports, music lessons, and doctor visits.
- This creates a large pay gap between men and women, because the man is in the greedy job and the woman is on mommy track (in most cases).
Conclusion:
- The gender inequalities in the world of employment get mirrored in allocation of domestic work. Goldin’s analysis of gender gaps has highlighted it.
- Therefore, the best way to celebrate her contribution would be to make all economic analysis and policy-making gender sensitive, incorporating nuance that recognises heterogeneity and intersectionality.
Editorial 2 : Going Nuclear
Context:
- India’s economy is growing rapidly and it is expected to surpass Germany and Japan and move up from number five to number three position before the end of this decade.
- Economic growth triggers demand for energy and there is significant growth in our primary energy consumption which is already the third-highest globally. Most of this is based on fossil energy.
Achieving the target of Net Zero carbon emission
- Fossil fuel consumption is a major contributor to global warming, which has now become an existential crisis for humanity.
- Deep and immediate emission cuts, leading to net zero, have become unavoidable.
- There is now a global consensus to reach this goal before a 2045–2070-time frame. Transition to net zero involves massive transformation of energy systems, involving new technologies, restructuring of energy systems at supply-and-demand ends and large costs.
- For a large and developing country like India, the challenge of reaching net zero is much bigger.
- Our developmental aspirations require a manifold increase in per-capita energy use even as we transition to net-zero GHG emission.
- Our inability to meet this dual challenge would mean either compromising on development or failing to realise the net-zero target timeframe or both.
Solar based energy generation is not enough to meet net zero target
- The total clean energy requirement to support a developed India would work out to around 25,000 — 30,000 TWhr/yr. This is more than four times our present energy consumption.
- Hypothetically, even if the entire barren uncultivable land in India is used up for setting up solar plants (which, clearly, is not possible), it would still fall way short of the target.
- The potential of wind energy is even smaller. The only way out then is a rapid scale-up of nuclear energy.
The significance of nuclear based energy generation
- Today, nuclear energy has emerged as one of the cleanest and safest of energies capable of effectively countering climate change. Since we pursue a closed nuclear fuel cycle, waste issue is also reduced to a negligible level.
- Based on a study done by Vivekananda International Foundation, with due analytical back-up from IIT-Bombay, it appears that nuclear energy would need to be scaled up to a couple of thousand GWe for an optimum solution to reach net-zero in a developed India.
- On the technology front, we are capable of self-reliance.
- Therefore, nuclear energy have to play a significant role in achieving the status of a developed nation and to achieve it India need to be guided by our own sui generis strategy and not be driven by foreign vendors.
Multi-pronged national strategy for a rapid scale up of nuclear energy
- Indigenous 700 MWe PHWR, the first unit of which is already in commercial operation, should be the prime workhorse for base load electrical capacity addition.
- Fifteen more such units are already under construction in fleet mode. One should take up many such fleets for implementation leveraging multiple PSUs in addition to NPCIL.
- Secondly, build indigenous SMRs at a large number of sites that would be vacated by retiring coal plants in the coming decades.
- As the experience with large PWRs has shown, importing these units would make electricity production unaffordable.
- NTPC, being the owner of the largest number of coal plants in the country, is a natural partner in this process. More industrial partners could be involved.
- 220 MWe PHWR units can be offered as partially owned captive units for electricity and hydrogen for energy-intensive industries such as metals, chemicals, and fertilisers.
- AHWR300-LEU developed by BARC can also be offered for this role after demonstrating a prototype.
- Develop a high temperature reactor for direct hydrogen production without resorting to electrolysis.
- This would enable cheaper green hydrogen production and reduce pressure on excessive electrification of the energy system in the country, which otherwise appears inevitable.
- Bhabha Atomic Research Centre has the requisite capability.
- Speed up second and third stage nuclear-power programme development to unleash thorium energy potential in accordance with the pre-existing plans for long-term sustainable energy supply.
- PHWRs: Emerging-economy countries, where one expects maximum net growth in energy consumption, should see rapid deployment of new nuclear-energy capacity to credibly address the climate-change challenge at the global level. Our PHWRs are globally competitive both in terms of performance and capital cost and are a good fit for meeting these requirements.
- Thorium-HALEU fuel in PHWR can make these reactors even more attractive in terms of economics, safety, waste management and proliferation resistance. India should encash this opportunity through piloting a major international co-operation for global efforts to address climate change challenges.
Conclusion:
- Reaching 25,000-30,000 TWh per year from where we are today by the year 2070 corresponds to a CAGR of around 4.8 per cent.
- Therefore. A large and growing economy like India can certainly implement this, provided it is driven as a national programme guided by a bold policy support that provides a level playing field for nuclear energy on par with renewable energy.