12 April 2025 : The Hindu Editorial Analysis
1. The Beijing India Report as a milestone and opportunity
(Source – The Hindu, International Edition – Page No. – 6)
| Topic: GS2 – Social Justice |
| Context |
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Beijing Declaration and Its Gaps
- 30 years after the Beijing Declaration on gender equality, India has made progress in laws like the Domestic Violence Act and POSH Act.
- However, poor implementation continues to create a gap between women’s rights and their real experiences.
Need to Connect Gender and Climate Issues
- Gender inequality and climate change are closely linked, especially in rural communities.
- India’s Beijing+30 Report lacks a strong climate perspective, missing a crucial opportunity to integrate gender and climate concerns.
Climate Impacts on Rural Women
- Women in rural areas face inequality, lack of resources, and decision-making power.
- They are highly affected by climate events like droughts and heatwaves, leading to malnutrition, infertility, and menstrual health issues.
- These issues contribute to income loss and distress migration.
- Nearly 33% of income is lost, especially from non-farm work.
Low Focus on Gender in Climate Policies
- Only 6% of climate policies mention women, 1% mention the poor, and 6% mention farmers.
- Climate change increases women’s unpaid care work like water collection and fuel gathering.
- Women in India work over 8 hours daily, with 71% of their work being unpaid.
- Without action, unpaid work could rise to 8.3 hours daily by 2050.
Health and Violence Issues
- Over 50% of pregnant women in India are anaemic, worsened by food insecurity.
- Women with food insecurity are 1.6 times more likely to suffer from anaemia.
Women’s Role in Climate Adaptation
- Women, especially in rural areas, hold key traditional knowledge for sustainable farming.
- They preserve climate-resilient seeds and respond first during disasters.
- Indigenous women prioritize forest livelihoods, safety due to resource conflict, and managing migration issues.
Need for Climate-Gender Integration in Plans
- The national and state climate action plans need to include gender-specific focus.
- Climate budgeting must be gender-audited to avoid greenwashing.
- Rural women should have platforms to make climate-related decisions and access support services.
Promoting Women’s Leadership and Research
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- Community climate meetings must involve women and encourage them to lead green projects.
- Better data, indicators, and research on the gender-climate connection are needed.
- Closing gender gaps in agriculture could boost food production by 20%-30% and feed 100-150 million more people.
Policy and Livelihood Support
- Disaster preparedness, protection against trafficking, elderly care, and non-farm job training for women are essential.
- Gender-responsive climate policies must be implemented at the ground level.
Role of Private Sector and Partnerships
- Green funds should support women-led innovations and climate-friendly businesses.
- The private sector must promote gender-inclusive climate solutions and resilience-building technologies.
- Cooperation among government, civil society, businesses, and international groups is vital for empowering women and ensuring a sustainable future.
| Practice Question: Discuss the interlinkages between gender inequality and climate change in rural India. How can gender-responsive climate action contribute to sustainable development and social justice? (250 Words /15 marks) |
2. Giving shape to the university of the future
(Source – The Hindu, International Edition – Page No. – 6)
| Topic: GS2 – Social Justice – Education |
| Context |
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NEP’s Vision for Higher Education
- The National Education Policy aims to end the siloed system of higher education in India.
- It promotes large multidisciplinary institutions that support cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary education.
- The focus is on encouraging communication, debate, research, and integrated thinking across subjects.
Understanding the Terms
- Multidisciplinarity means different disciplines working in the same space without interaction. Each maintains its own methods.
- Cross-disciplinarity involves collaboration and dialogue between disciplines but without merging methods or knowledge.
- Interdisciplinarity goes further by integrating methods and knowledge from different disciplines to solve complex problems.
Developing Multidisciplinary Campuses
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- The NEP proposes phasing out single-stream institutions to create multidisciplinary campuses.
- This can be done in two ways:
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- Adding new departments to broaden focus (e.g., engineering institutions adding humanities).
- Creating university clusters by connecting nearby institutions (e.g., arts and commerce colleges collaborating).
- According to AISHE 2020-21, 35% of undergraduate colleges are single-stream, many offering only B.Ed., making clustering difficult.
- New multidisciplinary universities will need to be built, ideally one in every district by 2030, instead of scattered campuses, to improve efficiency.
- Public universities are more efficient in education but less so in research, especially with multiple campuses.
Promoting Cross-disciplinary Practice
- Future universities must not only host different departments but also promote collaboration and openness.
- Students and faculty should be exposed to diverse subjects beyond their core areas.
- Cross-disciplinary learning starts with students taking courses from other departments.
- The next step is joint research projects involving faculty and students from different disciplines.
- Sustaining such efforts needs long-term funding and incentives.
Encouraging Interdisciplinary Thinking
- Cross-disciplinary efforts lay the foundation, but interdisciplinary thinking requires integrating knowledge deeply across fields.
- Some combinations (like biotechnology and medicine) succeed, but others (like engineering and architecture) face publication and career challenges due to lack of fit in existing academic structures.
- To support interdisciplinarity, there is a need to reform funding, faculty recruitment, promotions, and academic publishing practices.
Conclusion
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- These transformations will require major investments over many years.
- Public spending must be reprioritised, and regulatory changes should be carefully designed.
- The goal is to build a higher education system similar to successful international models that evolved over decades.
| Practice Question: Other than creating multidisciplinary institutions, what structural and systemic reforms are required to foster cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research and education in India? (150 Words /10 marks) |
