Editorial 1: A Time for south-south learning
Recent Context:
- Recently, India successfully conducted the G 20 summit with the adoption of ‘New Delhi Leaders' Declaration’.
- It will also be remembered as a catalyst in reshaping the mindset of developed nations and integrating the aspirations of the Global South, particularly Africa, into the mainstream
Africa as a vital partner in global development and stability
- Africa Union was added as a new member in G20 in New Delhi summit, the inclusion of the African Union in G20, acknowledges the significance and potential of Africa as a vital partner in global development and stability.
- The new G21 will now comprise of 84 per cent of the world’s population, up from about 66 per cent earlier. India and Africa, constituting 36 per cent of the global population, unfortunately, are home to nearly 69.4 per cent (503 million) of the world’s undernourished people in 2020-22.
- These regions together account for 67.0 per cent and 75.8 per cent of the world’s children under five afflicted with the malnutrition problems of stunting and wasting
Ensuring food and nutritional security for Africa in the face of climate change:
- Food and nutrition security are key challenges for the global south that become more vulnerable in the amid of climate change
- Keeping international borders open for agricultural trade is the need of the hour.
- In this context, it is worth noting that in the last three years, India exported 85 million tonnes of cereals to the world, contributing to global food security.
- Against this backdrop, India’s recent restrictions on exports of rice and wheat will not go very well with G21 as it hurts the African countries the most.
- Developed countries must commit to providing $100 billion for the loss and damage caused by climate change.
- This commitment will pave the way for large-scale climate mitigation and adaptation efforts in developing economies. Subsequently, the World Bank could play a catalytic role in mobilising funds even from the private sector to address the global challenges of poverty reduction, ensuring food and nutritional security and combating climate change through adaptation and mitigation policies.
- The G20 estimates that an additional investment of $3 trillion will be required annually through 2030 to address these issues, including debt relief for low-income countries
- Promoting the private capital investment:
- Recently, World Bank President emphasised that, in addition to contributions from developed nations, private capital investments are essential to complement the current sources of financing.
- That is every dollar raised from developed nations should be matched with a dollar from hybrid capital and this could unlock more than $6-7 billion in lending for poorer nations to fight climate change over the course of a decade.
- Fostering South-South learning and collaboration
- with Africa’s inclusion in G20, the challenges posed by rapid population growth, persistent poverty, and widespread undernourishment become more serious. Initiating a comparative analysis between India and Africa could foster South-South learning and collaboration in the pursuit of sustainable agriculture and food systems.
- Further, addressing the abnormally high nutritional insecurity in the two regions requires agriculture policies to be more nutrition-sensitive.
- Scaling up bio-fortification of staple crops, an innovative and cost-effective technique, can ensure availability of nutritious diets in areas affected by chronic malnutrition in India and Africa.
- Adoption of targeted and multi-pronged strategies to accelerate nutritional security
- Access to nutritious food alone cannot address the multi-dimensional problem of undernutrition in these regions.
- It requires targeted and multi-pronged strategies to accelerate nutritional security.
- As India’s empirical analysis at ICRIER using the latest unit-level NFHS (2019-21) data (with a sample of 205,641 children under five), highlights that mothers’ education, particularly higher education (12 or more years), and mothers with normal BMI index have a strong association with reducing undernutrition among children.
- Educated women are more informed about nutrition and healthcare, tend to delay marriage, and have fewer children and healthier babies
- Investment in women’s higher education is necessary to ensuring a significant increase in the female labour force participation and fostering long-term economic growth. These findings need to be shared widely with African nations for cross-learnings in Global South collaboration.
- Investments in WASH initiatives: It could bring about a multiplier effect on nutritional outcomes.
- As India, under the aegis of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, has significantly increased the coverage of households with improved sanitation facilities from 48.5 per cent to 70 per cent between 2015-16 and 2019-21.
- The scheme which aimed to eliminate open defecation and eradicate manual scavenging has multiplier effects. This could be another area of learning between India and Africa to tackle the high levels of malnutrition.
Conclusion:
- The inclusion of the African Union in the G20 (now G21) is the hallmark of India’s G20 presidency. But it will have meaning only if India and Africa can collaborate effectively to deal with their food and nutrition security in the face of climate change. It is challenging, but achievable with science and open trade policies.
Editorial 2: Invisible women of science
Recent Context:
- Recently, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Awards for 2022 were declared for the young scientists.
- It is known to be a significant boost not just to the scientific career of the winner, but also to the profile of their institution. But there is concern that Its consistent failure to recognise women scientists.
About Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Awards
- It was Instituted in 1958 by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), about 12 scientists under the age of 45 years win this prize every year.
- The prizes cover seven domains of science — physical, chemical, biological, medical, engineering, mathematics and atmospheric.
Lack of recognition of women’s contribution:
- Recently, the set of winners was announced and for the second time in a row, there is not a single woman scientist was nominated who had made a sufficiently “outstanding contribution to science and technology”.
- The 23 winners across disciplines in 2021 and 2022 are all men. This means that only 19 out of the almost 600 awarded Bhatnagar prizes have gone to women scientists
- For e.g. When scientist Asima Chatterjee won it in the Chemical Sciences category in 1961, it took a 14-year-long wait for the next woman laureate, and a 48-year-long wait for a woman to win it in her category.
- Women make up around 14 per cent of India’s working scientists. While this figure is concerning, it renders the argument “there aren’t enough women” moot.
- In 2018, Aditi Sen De, a quantum information and computation scientist, became the first woman to win a Bhatnagar Prize in the Physical Sciences category. When we interviewed her for our book Lab Hopping, she told us that along with pride, she also felt “embarrassment”, knowing that she had won, while so many of her worthy predecessors and contemporaries remained unrecognised.
- The Nobel Prizes have a similarly pathetic gender ratio. Only 24 of the 343 science prizes have gone to women.
- However, for all its faults, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the prizes, has indicated that they are conscious of the gap. Encouragingly, 31 of the 61 prizes for women (across all categories) came since the year 2000. There are no comparably encouraging signs from the Bhatnagar awards.
The reasons raised for selection of low no of women scientists (Criticism)
- Holding of top position by male counterparts: A scientist stands a chance at a Bhatnagar only if they are nominated by those at the very top, including vice-chancellors, directors, presidents of academies, deans, members of the governing body of CSIR, as well as former winners. All of these are predominantly men — men who are failing to nominate their women colleagues
- Lack of Public accountability: The composition of the Advisory Committee, tasked with picking the winners, has always been wrapped in secrecy, making them immune to public accountability
- This is in contrast to the Infosys Science Prize, which lists and even celebrates its jury chairs on its website.
- Lower participation of women in STEM: Women make up only 28% of the workforce in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) which make themselves vulnerable for nomination.
- Lack of Funding: As gender parity survey in CSIR, which revealed that less than 20 per cent of its scientific staff were women and disclosed that the share of funding received by women was not commensurate with this.
Way forward:
- A recent news report claims to have insider information that a revamp of the Bhatnagar awards is underway and the updated version is expected to be more transparent.
- One can only hope that CSIR will finally open up to the possibility of making information about nominations and advisory committees public. Without this, there is no possibility for a study of nomination patterns and a subsequent data-led strategy to improve the gap.
Conclusion:
- The women-in-science discourse has spiked in recent years but there is need to maintain the accountability for the issues affecting the careers of women scientists.
- Therefore, women’s contribution is science and technology should be recognised without any biasness if we want to achieve any form of inclusivity in the Indian science community.