Scenes and pictures have been circulating of broken earth, lacking moisture, cracked and yearning. But these are not from traditional drought-stricken parts of the planet, where the animal carcass assumes near totemic power amidst dry riverbeds or desert expanses. Neither Australia nor Africa feature on these occasions – at least in a prominent way. Europe, continent of historical arable sustainability, is drying up.
This is not to say that the continent is immune to drought. The International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River notes the impacts of a number of dry and severe summers from the 1990s till 2015. In 2015 alone, “drought phenomena” were recorded in countries from Austria to Ukraine.
What makes the current crisis in Europe significant is its scale. According to the European Drought Observatory, 64% of the land in the European Union is being affected by drought, with 47% of the territory classed as having “warning” conditions, and 17% facing “alert” conditions. The European Commission Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC) has gone so far as to warn that the current drought may be the worst in 500 years.
That particularly bold assessment, to be more precise, comes from senior researcher Andrea Toreti. “Just to give you an idea, the 2018 drought was so extreme that, looking back at least the last 500 years, there were no other events similar to the drought of 2018, but this year I think it is really worse than 2018.”
The story, however, is the same across the Northern Hemisphere. Deutsche Welle showed alarm in declaring that, “from Hungary to Hawaii, from the drying Rhine River to the now-recovering Rio Grande, or from Casablanca to California, summer droughts and high temperatures are having a serious impact on everything from agriculture to the freight industry.”
The German broadcaster then goes on to note the lowering of Lake Garda’s levels, and the observation from one tourist. “We came last year, we liked it, and we came back this year.” Unfortunately, the landscape had altered. “We were a bit shocked when we arrived because we had our usual walk around, and the water wasn’t there.”
Across Europe, water levels in famed aqueous bodies have been falling and vanishing. Italy’s River Po has fallen to such a level that rice fields can no longer be watered consistently, nor clams sustained. In France, the warming of the Rhône and Garonne have made their water prohibitively hot to cool nuclear reactors.
Europe’s major waterways have been suffering a fall, producing colossal headaches for those involved in the transportation sector. (The focus on economic matters has the effect of ignoring the more attritive consequences that climate change has for both environment and species.) For countries such as Germany, which rely on suitably filled inland waterways, the signs are ominous, a point not helped by the ongoing problems with reduced delivery of Russian natural gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
The Rhine River has been so depleted that the standard number of vessels have been unable to sail with regularity and appropriate tonnage. The Rhine Waterways and Shipping Authority (WSA Rhein) confirmed that the lower water levels would lead to the passage of fewer barges transporting petrochemicals and oil products. Those that did could only make use of the river with reduced capacity.
For logistics wonks in the petrochemical business, this has meant sharp increases in costs, though a spokesperson for WSA Rhein tried to suggest that the “exceptionally low level” of water at this time of the year “was not significant.” The German logistics company HGK also urges calm, suggesting that things are “not as dramatic yet as in 2018”. The consultancy Elwis, which specialises in German waterways, disagrees. Were the water levels to fall to 20cm by mid-August, nothing would be able to navigate along the Rhine.
A spokesperson for the world’s largest chemical producer, BASF, summarised matters with gloomy precision: “The mark of 60cm of the Rhine has been undercut at Kaub. Levels in the range of 35-55cm are forecast for the next two weeks. For the predicted levels, some types of ships can no longer be used and will stop sailing; all others will sail with reduced loads.” To alleviate problems with cost, the company has been resorting to alternative modes of transport, including rail.
Another astonishing European waterway – the Danube – is also diminishing, suggesting how climate change is, quite literally, altering landscapes and transport systems. In Romania, Greenpeace activists tried to draw attention to the issue by dragging kayaks to a stretch of shoreline exposed by the retreating water. “We want Danube waves, not heat waves,” the protests declared in their banners.
In less transport related matters, scenes of parched earth have been beamed across the globe from the UK, a country famed for its rather mild climate. Parts of the country have experienced their driest July on record. Hosepipe bans have been introduced, and one can almost hear Britain’s drought-hardened cousins in Australia: shower less and shower together. Exacerbating the problem of decreased rainfall has been the unusually high temperatures, at times rising savagely beyond 40 degrees Celsius.
Globally, the earth is changing in violent, displacing fashion. Climate change will cause displacements in the order of tens of millions, if not more. Whole territories are vanishing, while other tracts of land are being exposed. Nature is not just being reordered but doing much of the reordering. What will humanity’s response be?
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Taliban fighters violently dispersed dozens of female protesters in Kabul. About 40 Afghan women marched through the capital city demanding rights, before the Taliban broke the protest march up by firing into the air. This women’s protest march occurred almost a year after the Taliban seized power.
The protesters chanted demands for “bread, work and freedom”, carrying a banner reading “August 15 is a black day” – a reference to the day the Taliban captured Kabul in 2021.
The fighters seized the women protesters’ mobile phones, stopping one of the first women’s protests in months.
After the protest was dispersed, some women attempted to take shelter in nearby shops but were reportedly pursued and beaten by Taliban fighters using the butts of their guns.
Since the Taliban takeover, women rights’ have been severely restricted.
“They didn’t beat us much this time,” one of the protesters told the BBC.
“They acted differently than earlier protests [when we were beaten]. They fired shots in the air. Though we were afraid we came out to advocate for the rights of girls, so that at least the Taliban will open schools for them.”
In the year since the Taliban returned to power, they have issued various orders restricting the freedom of women – barring them from most government jobs, secondary education and from travelling more than 45 miles (70km) without a male guardian.
In May, the militants decreed that Afghan women will have to wear the Islamic face veil for the first time in decades. If a woman refuses to comply, her male guardians could be sent to jail for three days – although this is not always enforced.
There have been minor sporadic protests over the past year, but any form of dissent is being crushed.
Only Country
Afghanistan is the only country in the world that officially limits education by gender – a major sticking point in the Taliban’s attempts to gain international legitimacy. Girls have been banned from receiving secondary education, the ministry for women’s affairs has been disbanded, and in many cases women have not been allowed to work.
An AFP report said:
The protesting women approached the education ministry. One video, apparently recorded in Kabul and posted on social media, shows Taliban militants firing their weapons into the air to break up an approaching female crowd.
The demonstrators also reportedly demanded the right to work and participate in politics.
Journalists Assaulted
Several journalists covering the rally were assaulted by Taliban members.
Local media also reported that the militants detained more than 10 journalists and media workers.
Women’s Lives Devastated
An Amnesty International report released in late July claims that “the Taliban crackdown” is devastating the lives of women and girls, who are being stripped of their rights to education, work and free movement.
The human rights watchdog also reported that those who peacefully protest against the new rules, “have been threatened, arrested, detained, tortured, and forcible disappeared.”
Roll Back the Clock
A New York Times report said:
In Afghanistan, girls are barred from secondary schools and women from traveling any significant distance without a male relative. Men in government offices are told to grow beards, wear traditional Afghan clothes and prayer caps, and stop work for prayers.
Music is officially banned, and foreign news broadcasts, TV shows and movies have been removed from public airwaves. At checkpoints along the streets, morality police chastise women who are not covered from head to toe in all-concealing burqas and headpieces in public.
A year into Taliban rule, Afghanistan has seemed to hurtle backward in time. The country’s new rulers, triumphant after two decades of insurgency, have reinstituted an emirate governed by a strict interpretation of Islamic law and issued a flood of edicts curtailing women’s rights, institutionalizing patriarchal customs, restricting journalists and effectively erasing many vestiges of an American-led occupation and nation-building effort.
For many Afghans — particularly women in cities — the sense of loss has been devastating. Before the Taliban seized power, some young people realized ambitions of becoming doctors, lawyers and government officials, and explored international opportunities, as well.
The report said:
“Now it is gone — all of it,” said Zakia Zahadat, 24, who used to work in a government ministry after she earned a college degree. She is mostly confined to home these days, she said. “We have lost the power to choose what we want.”
Door-to-door Searches, Arbitrary Arrests
The report added:
To enforce their decrees and stamp out dissent, the new Taliban government has employed police state tactics like door-to-door searches and arbitrary arrests — drawing widespread condemnation from international human rights monitors. Those tactics have instilled an undercurrent of fear in the lives of those who oppose their rule, and have cut off the country from millions in development aid and foreign assistance as it slips again into pariah state status.
That international isolation is exacerbating an economic and humanitarian crisis that has engulfed the country since the Western-backed government collapsed last year, and the country’s alienation is likely to deepen, since U.S. officials accused the Taliban of harboring the leader of al-Qaida this month.
Millions Unemployed
The New York Times report said:
Millions became unemployed after jobs with foreign embassies, militaries and nongovernmental organizations vanished practically overnight, malnourished children have flooded Kabul’s hospitals in recent months and more than half the population faces life-threatening food insecurity, according to the United Nations.
Peace
The report said:
In one way the country has been better off: It is largely at peace, after decades of war that tore families apart and left no corner of Afghanistan untouched.
When Western troops withdrew last year and the war ended, so did a scourge that claimed tens of thousands of Afghan civilian lives. Gone were the American raids and airstrikes, the crossfire between the Afghan security forces and the insurgents, and the indiscriminate Taliban roadside bombs and devastating suicide attacks.
The relative calm has offered a welcomed respite for Afghans living in rural areas, particularly in the south, whose lives were upended by fighting over the past two decades.
So far, the Taliban have also avoided returning to the brutal public spectacles of flogging, amputations and mass executions that marked their first rule in the 1990s and widely turned international opinion against their rule.
But the Taliban’s restrictions, and the economic collapse that accelerated after they seized control of the country in August 2021, have had an outsize effect on the capital, Kabul, where the long occupation by Western forces had profoundly affected day-to-day life in the city.
Before the Taliban seized power, men and women picnicked together in parks on weekends and chatted over cappuccinos in its coffee shops. Girls in knee-length dresses and jeans tore around skate parks and built robots in after-school programs. Clean-shaven men wore Western suits to work in government offices, where women held some high-ranking positions.
Reshaping The Social Fabric
The report added:
Over the past two decades, Western donors touted many of those facets of life as signal achievements of their intervention. Now the Taliban’s vision for the country is once again reshaping the social fabric.
Thousands of women who served as lawyers, judges, soldiers and police officers are no longer at their posts. Most working women have been restricted to jobs in education or health care, serving fellow women.
The Taliban’s scrubbing of women from public spaces today feels like being jerked back in time, many say, as if the lives they built over the past 20 years seem to disappear more with each passing day.
Marghalai Faqirzai, 44, came of age during the first Taliban government. She married at 17 and spent most of her time at home. “Women did not even know they had rights then,” she said.
But in recent years, Faqirzai earned a university degree, attending school alongside one of her daughters. Another daughter, Marwa Quraishi, 23, attended a university and worked in a government ministry before she was fired by the Taliban last summer.
“I always assumed my life would be better than my mother’s,” Quraishi said. “But now I see that life will actually get much worse for me, for her — for all us.”
Lost Hope
The report said:
With the restrictions on women, crackdown on freedom of expression and policymaking in the Taliban’s interim government confined to a select few men and religious scholars, most Afghans have lost any hope of having a hand in molding the future of their country.
“Many people have lost their sense of safety, their ability to express themselves,” said Heather Barr, associate director of the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. “They have lost their voice — any feeling that they could be part of building a country that looks the way they want it to.”
Before the Western government collapsed last year, Fereshta Alyar, 18, had been in 12th grade and preparing to take the national university entrance exam. Every day she spent her mornings doing homework, went to school and to an after-school math program in the afternoons, then returned home to study more.
For months after the Taliban seized power and closed girls’ secondary schools indefinitely, she fell into a deep depression — the seemingly endless possibilities for her future vanished in an instant. Now she spends her days at home, trying to muster the willpower to study her old English language textbooks alone. Like many of her old classmates, Alyar survives on the hope of one day leaving the country, she said.
The Taliban insist that they have deep public support for these changes. The Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention, which has issued the decrees, says that the edicts have helped restore Afghanistan’s traditional status as a strictly observant Islamic nation.
“All these decrees are for the protection of women, not the oppression of women,” said Mohammad Sadiq Akif, the spokesperson for the ministry.
Woman, A Helpless Creature
Asked about the women’s travel decree, Akif, 33, responded: “A woman is a helpless and powerless creature. If a woman goes on a journey alone, during the journey she could face a problem that she cannot solve by herself.” He said long-haul buses and taxis had been instructed not to transport women traveling alone.
Music Banned
Music had been banned, Akif said, “because our Prophet says listening to music develops hypocrisy in the human heart.” Foreign news reports and entertainment programs “turned people against Afghan culture,” Akif said.
May Look At Other Women
Men may only visit parks on days reserved for men, he said, because “a man who goes to a park with his family may look at other women in the park, which is not a good thing.”
The Taliban’s initial pledge to open secondary schools for girls nationwide had been viewed by the international community as an important indicator of the Taliban government’s willingness to moderate. When the group’s top religious ideologues reneged on that promise in March, many Western donors halted plans to invest in long-term development programs, aid workers say.
“Among the donor community there is a talk about before March and after March,” said Abdallah Al Dardari, the United Nations Development Program’s resident representative in Afghanistan.
Corruption
The New York Times report said:
In rural areas, where conservative, patriarchal social customs have dominated life for decades, many Afghans chafed under the American-backed government, which was stained by corruption and often incapable of providing public services or security.
There is little doubt that the sense of constant peril that dominated the country both in its cities and the countryside through 20 years of war has eased.
“Now I can walk freely, the change is like the difference between the ground and the sky to me,” said Mohammad Ashraf Khan, 50, a resident of Zari district of Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.
For most of the past two decades, Khan was unable to escape the brutality of the war. His 27-year-old grandson was killed on his farm after soldiers with the former government mistook him for a Talib fighter, he said. His 17-year-old nephew was killed by a roadside bomb. The gas station he owned once burned down after fighting broke out on the highway beside it.
Free Of Fear
Now he can drive for hours down the road to Kandahar city, free of the fear that he could be killed in a sudden flash of fighting. His modest income has been slashed by more than 70% with the economic downturn, he said, but that matters less to him than the freedom that came with the end of the war.
“I’m just happy the fighting is over,” he said.
Economic Collapse
The report said:
But for many Afghans, the sudden economic collapse, soaring food prices and rampant unemployment have been devastating.
One recent morning in the village of Alisha, a cluster of mud brick homes tucked into the mountains of Wardak province, dozens of mothers and rail-thin children gathered outside a home serving as a temporary clinic.
Lahorah, 30, arrived early that morning, her 1-year-old son, Safiullah, tucked beneath the folds of her long, cotton scarf. Before the Taliban seized power, her husband worked as a laborer, building people’s homes or cultivating their farms. He earned a few dollars a day — a meager living, but enough to put food on the table, she said.
But after the economy crashed last year, the work dried up. Her family survived the winter on stores of food they had saved. When those ran out this spring, her neighbors and relatives in the village offered what they could to her and her five children. But now, even they do not have any food left to share.
“I have never in my life experienced such difficulties as we have now,” she said.
Belongings
The report added:
Across major cities, informal markets hawking desperate people’s household belongings have taken over entire streets. Makeshift stalls are packed with shiny blue and pink curtains, flimsy wardrobes, TVs, refrigerators and multiple piles of red Afghan rugs.
Sitting in his stall in Kabul one recent afternoon, one vendor, Mohammad Nasir, thumbed a string of red prayer beads in his hand, musing on the city’s seemingly sudden economic decline.
Crying For Food
Earlier that day a mother had come with her two young sons, who were crying for food, to bring Mohammad a rug to sell. But even more heartbreaking was what he saw during his commute home earlier that week, he said.
Stale Bread
“Beside a river, someone was throwing away stale bread, and people were there collecting the stale bread to eat,” he said. “I’m 79 years old and I have never seen such a thing in Kabul.
“Even under the previous regime of the Taliban — people were hungry, but I didn’t see that,” he added.
Across the country, the Taliban’s crackdown on dissent has injected a different kind of stress. Armed Taliban intelligence and security agents show up unannounced at people’s homes to rifle through them, and search their phones at checkpoints across the city.
Journalists have been detained, beaten, jailed and subjected to media guidelines warning them not to “contradict Islamic values” or report “against national interests” — effectively gutting the robust, independent Afghan news media sector that had developed over the past 20 years.
Small protests of women’s activists have been broken up violently as the Taliban seek to stamp out any show of dissent.
Morality Police
The report said:
Many vaguely worded decrees have led to confusion among residents and harsh enforcement by the morality police tasked with interpreting them.
Nasrin Hamedi, 49, said she was accosted by a gun-toting enforcer from the Virtue and Vice ministry while riding in a minibus in Kabul. She was wearing modest and concealing clothes, she said, but her face was uncovered — a new degree of infraction under Taliban rule. She said the Talib screamed at her, questioning whether she was truly a Muslim.
“He shouted at me: ‘If you are going to dress like this, you have to leave the country,’ ” she said.
Push Back
The New York Times report added:
Still, some Afghans in the city are determined to push back against the welter of Taliban decrees on daily life. After female TV presenters were ordered to cover their faces on the air, the staff of Tolonews — men and women — wore black masks on the air and posted photos of themselves on social media with the comment: “We are in a deep grief today.”
Afghan rights leader heartbroken after year of Taliban rule
FILE – Sima Samar, a prominent activist and physician, who has been fighting for women’s rights in Afghanistan for the past 40 years, gives an interview to The Associated Press, at her house in Kabul, Afghanistan, on March 6, 2021. A year after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, prominent Afghan rights activist Sima Samar is still heartbroken over what happened to her country. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)More
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A year after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, prominent Afghan rights activist Sima Samar is still heartbroken over what happened to her country.
Samar, a former minister of women’s affairs and the first chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, left Kabul in July 2021 for the United States on her first trip after the COVID-19 pandemic, never expecting Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to flee the country and the Taliban to take power for the second time soon after on Aug. 15.
“I think it’s a sad anniversary for the majority of people of my country,” Samar said, particularly for the women “who don’t have enough food, who do not know what is the tomorrow for them.”
A visiting scholar at the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Kennedy School at Harvard, she has written the first draft of an autobiography and is working on a policy paper on customary law relating to Afghan women. She is also trying to get a Green Card, but she said, “I honestly cannot orient myself, where I am, and what I’m doing.”
She wishes she could go home — but she can’t.
In an interview Friday with The Associated Press, she recalled a Taliban news conference a few days after they took power when they said if people apologized for past actions they would be forgiven.
“And I said, I should be apologizing because I started schools for the people?” said Samar, a member of Afghanistan’s long persecuted Hazara minority. “I should apologize because I started hospitals and clinics in Afghanistan? I should apologize because I tried to stop torture of the Taliban? I should apologize to advocate against the death penalty, including (for) the Taliban leadership?”
“All my life I fought for life as a doctor,” she said. “So I cannot change and support the death penalty. I shouldn’t apologize for those principles of human rights and be punished.”
Samar became an activist as a 23-year-old medical student with an infant son. In 1984, the then-communist government arrested her activist husband, and she never saw him again. She fled to Pakistan with her young son and worked as a doctor for Afghan refugees and started several clinics to care for Afghan women and girls.
Samar remembered the Taliban’s previous rule in the late 1990s, when they largely confined women to their homes, banned television and music, and held public executions. A U.S.-led invasion drove the Taliban from power months after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, which al-Qaida orchestrated from Afghanistan while being sheltered by the Taliban.
After the Taliban’s ouster, Samar returned to Afghanistan, moving into the top women’s rights and human rights positions, and over the next 20 years schools and universities were opened for girls, women entered the workforce and politics and became judges.
But Samar said in an AP interview in April 2021 — four months before the Taliban’s second takeover of the country — that the gains were fragile and human rights activists had many enemies in Afghanistan, from militants and warlords to those who wanted to stifle criticism or challenge their power.
Samar said the Afghan government and leadership, especially Ghani, were mainly responsible for the Taliban sweeping into Kabul and taking power. But she also put blame on Afghans “because we were very divided.”
In every speech and interview she gave nationally and internationally over the years, she said Afghans had to be united and inclusive, and “we have to have the people’s support. Otherwise, we will lose.”
As chair of the Human Rights Commission, she said she repeatedly faced criticism that she was trying to impose Western values on Afghanistan.
“And I kept saying, human rights is not Western values. As a human being, everyone needs to have a shelter … access to education and health services, to security,” she said.
Since their takeover, the Taliban have limited girls’ public education to just six years, restricted women’s work, encouraged them to stay at home, and issued dress codes requiring them to cover their faces.
Samar urged international pressure not only to allow all girls to attend secondary school and university, but to ensure all human rights which are interlinked. And she stressed the importance of education for young boys, who without any schooling, job or skill could be at risk to get involved in opium production, weapons smuggling or in violence.
She also urged the international community to continue humanitarian programs which are critical to save lives, but said they should focus on food-for-work or cash-for-work to end peoples’ total dependency and give them “self-confidence and dignity.”
Samar said Afghan society has changed over the past two decades, with more access to technology, rising education levels among the young and some experience with elections, t even if they weren’t free and fair.
She said such achievements leave the possibility of positive change in the future. “Those are the issues that they (the Taliban) cannot control,” she said. “They would like to, but they cannot do it.”
Samar said she hoped for eventual accountability and justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity. “Otherwise, we feel the culture of impunity everywhere, everywhere — and the invasion of Russia to Ukraine is a repetition of Afghanistan’s case,” she said.
Her hope for Afghan women is that they can “live with dignity rather than being a slave of people.”
Timeline of events in Afghanistan since Taliban takeover
Arefeh 40-year-old, an Afghan woman leaves an underground school, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, July 30, 2022. She attends this underground school with her daughter who is not allowed to go to public school. For most teenage girls in Afghanistan, it’s been a year since they set foot in a classroom. With no sign the ruling Taliban will allow them back to school, some girls and parents are trying to find ways to keep education from stalling for a generation of young women. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)More
Women Fight For Lost Freedoms
A Reuters report said:
Monesa Mubarez is not going to give up the rights she and other Afghan women won during 20 years of Western-backed rule easily.
Before the hardline Islamist Taliban movement swept back to power a year ago, the 31-year-old served as a director of policy monitoring at the finance ministry.
She was one of many women, mostly in big cities, who won freedoms that a former generation could not have dreamed of under the Taliban’s previous rule in the late 1990s.
Now Mubarez has no job, after the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islamic law severely limited women’s ability to work, required them to dress and act conservatively and closed secondary schools to girls across the country.
Under the new government, there are no women in the cabinet and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs was shut down.
“One war ended, but the battle to find a rightful place for Afghan women has started. We will raise our voice against every injustice until the last breath,” said Mubarez, who is among the most prominent campaigners in the capital Kabul.
Despite the risk of beatings and detention by Taliban members patrolling the streets in the weeks after the Western-backed government was toppled, she took part in several protests that broke out, determined to protect her hard-fought rights.
Those demonstrations have died down – the last one Mubarez took part in was on May 10.
But she and others meet in homes in private acts of defiance, discussing women’s rights and encouraging people to join the cause. Such gatherings would have been virtually unthinkable the last time the Taliban governed Afghanistan.
During one such meeting at her home in July, Mubarez and a group of women sat in a circle on the floor, spoke about their experiences and chanted words including “food”, “work” and “freedom” as if they were at an outdoor rally.
“We fight for our own freedom, we fight for our rights and status, we work for no country, organization or spy agency. This is our country, this is our homeland, and we have every right to live here,” she told Reuters.
The report said:
The country representative for UN Women in Afghanistan, Alison Davidian, said stories like Mubarez’s are being repeated across the country.
“For many women across the world, walking outside the front door of your home is an ordinary part of life,” she said. “For many Afghan women, it is extraordinary. It is an act of defiance.”
While rules on women’s behavior in public are not always clear cut, in relatively liberal urban centers like Kabul they often travel without a male chaperone. That is less common in more conservative regions, largely in the south and east.
Sticking Point
The Reuters report added:
The Taliban’s treatment of girls and women is one of the main reasons why the international community refuses to recognize Afghanistan’s new rulers, cutting off billions of dollars in aid and exacerbating an economic crisis.
Senior officials at several ministries said that policies regarding women were set by top leaders and declined to comment further. The Taliban leadership has said all Afghans’ rights will be protected within their interpretation of sharia.
Rights groups and foreign governments have also blamed the group for abuses and thousands of civilian deaths while fighting an insurgency against U.S.-led foreign troops and Afghan forces between 2001 and 2021.
The Taliban said they were resisting foreign occupation, and since returning to power have vowed not to pursue vendettas against former enemies. In cases where reprisals were reported, officials said last year they would investigate.
In March, the group announced that female secondary schools would reopen, only to reverse its decision on the very morning that many girls had turned up excitedly for school.
Some have managed to enroll for private tutorials or online classes to continue their education.
“We are hopeful about schools reopening,” said Kerishma Rasheedi, 16, who started private tuition as a temporary measure. She wants to leave the country with her parents so that she can return to school if they remain shut in Afghanistan.
“I will never stop studying,” said Rasheedi. She moved to Kabul with her family from the northeastern province of Kunduz after their house there was hit by rockets during clashes in 2020.
The international community continues to advocate for female rights and leadership roles for women in public and political life. Some women said they have had to accept the new norms in order to make ends meet.
A Former Female Police Officer
Gulestan Safari, a former female police officer, was forced to change her career after the Taliban stopped her from entering the police department.
Safari, 45, now carries out domestic chores for other families in Kabul.
“I loved my job … we could afford to buy everything we wanted; we could buy meat, fruit.”
We the People
The execution of Sepoy Mangal Pandey on April 8, 1857, by the officers of the Bengal Army of the British East India Company sparked our Independence movement. The rebellion among Indian soldiers that followed, caused the ruling British monarch Queen Victoria to proclaim in 1858, that India would be governed by and in the name of “the Crown”. From being a British corporate territorial possession, India became a political entity as a British colony.
In the following nine decades upto 1947, tens of thousands of common people across India, fought, suffered and died for freedom from British rule and political independence. It is in this context, that the idea of a flag to represent the idea of India and its people, was born. After various proposals and designs, it culminated by adopting our present national flag, lovingly called “tiranga”, on July 27, 1947. All over our country, this tiranga was hoisted on August 15, 1947, as the British union jack was lowered and removed, signifying our Independence.
A Constituent Assembly was proposed in 1934. It was founded in November 1946, and assembled for the first time on December 9, 1946. It functioned as Independent India’s Provisional Parliament.
Meant “to free India through a new constitution, to feed the starving people, and to clothe the naked masses, and to give every Indian the fullest opportunity to develop himself according to his capacity“, the Constitution of India was formally adopted on 26 November 1949, and promulgated on 26 January 1950. On that day, We the People constituted India as a sovereign democratic Republic, and finally broke free of the British yoke. The Constitution of India set out and enabled implementation of the fundamental values of Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. It recognized the hopes and aspirations of We the People.
Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav
On August 15 this year, we proudly observe and celebrate completion of 75-years of Independence.
Undeniably, over the past 75-years, India has made huge strides of progress on social, economic and political fronts, through the continuing hard work, blood and tears, sufferings and sacrifices, of We the People. We have weathered social, economic and political storms. We have repeatedly resisted and punished external aggressors on our borders. We have earned respect among the international community. However, equally undeniably, huge numbers of our Indians continue to suffer hunger and homelessness, and live with little hope.
Therefore, even while it is appropriate to fly our national flag on our homes (Har Ghar Tiranga) to celebrate Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, it is also appropriate to introspect and review our overall performance. This, particularly because there are still millions of Indians who may manage without rancour, to scrape up Rs.24/- to purchase a tiranga, but have no ghar on which to fly it, to prove their patriotism.
Review
A review would address the main questions, namely, “What is wrong?” and “What went wrong?” The first question is easily answered: The aims, needs and aspirations of We the People, liberated through the courage and sacrifice of our Founding Fathers who won Independence and created the Republic of India, have not been realised.
The second question, “What went wrong?”, may be answered briefly: Governance over the decades was focussed on political democracy, by conducting elections to create new legislatures and elect new governments. This is not to argue that governance and administration was or is an easy task, but successive legislatures and governments showed little inclination to create a democratic society with democratic economics.
It is well known that, barring the first few years after Independence, people’s representatives almost across the political spectrum, were mostly engaged in acquiring money and muscle power to perpetuate their public office, or deny it to opponents. Even if they were aware of the details of our Constitution, they neglected their oath of office and constitutional duty towards the people and the country.
Without intending to dampen the celebrative mood of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, it is necessary to note that successive elected State and Central legislatures and governments up to the present, bear responsibilities defined in the constitutional Directive Principles of State Policy. Every elected representative takes oath to perform their constitutional duty.
Four examples are provided to show how the Directive Principles of State Policy have been neglected, even flouted, by elected representatives in legislatures and governments. The examples apply across the socio-economic spectrum, but particularly to Dalits (SCs) and Adivasis (STs). The reason for mentioning Dalits and Adivasis, is that they comprise 16.6% and 8.6% respectively, of India’s 1.35-billion population (2021 Census), and these 25.2% have been and continue to be, socially and economically India’s weakest and most oppressed.
Social justice
“The State shall strive to promote the welfare of the people by securing and protecting as effectively as it may a social order in which justice, social, economic and political, shall inform all the institutions of the national life”.
Caste and untouchability was abolished by our Constitution, and Parliament enacted The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, to prevent atrocities and hate crimes against SCs and STs. Despite this, successive governments have done very little to create a social order to provide justice to Dalit and Adivasi people. This is evidenced by frequent reports of “upper caste” persons committing atrocities against Dalits and Adivasis. The perpetrators of atrocities even include persons in State agencies, and governments turn a blind eye, in more recent times, even actively conniving to allow the perpetrators to get away.
Economic inequality
“The State shall, in particular, strive to minimise the inequalities in income, and endeavour to eliminate inequalities in status, facilities and opportunities, not only amongst individuals but also amongst groups of people residing in different areas or engaged in different vocations”.
Rather than minimizing income inequality, the economic reforms of the 1991 New Economic Policy actually widened the economic gap into the present unbridgable gulf. Thus today, the richest 1% of Indians own 58% of national wealth, and the bottom 10% of the Indian society own 0.2% of national wealth, while the richest 10% of Indians owning 80% of the wealth have been getting steadily richer. The lives of people at the bottom 10% are characterized by low wages, long working hours, and lack of basic services such as health care, drinking water and sanitation.
The NEP-1991 economic reforms were carefully promoted from 1996 onwards, and since 2014, they have been driven vigorously. The unfortunate result is that today, the vast majority of our 1.35-billion citizens are in very difficult economic and financial circumstances. It does not take much thinking to understand that the majority of these unfortunates are from the bottom 25.2%.
Empowerment
“The State shall take steps to organise village panchayats and endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as units of self-government”.
Parliament enacted The Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA), to ensure self-governance for people living in ‘Schedule V’ Areas, through traditional Gram Sabhas.
PESA recognized the traditional rights of Adivasi people over community resources of land, water, and forests. According to PESA, every Gram Sabha is competent to safeguard and preserve the traditions and customs of the people, their cultural identity, community resources and the customary mode of dispute resolution, and approve of the plans, programmes and projects for social and economic development, before such plans, programmes and projects are taken up for implementation.
However, successive state and central governments have reduced or circumvented the power of the Gram Sabhas to promote business of mining and other industrial corporations (e.g., bauxite mining in Niyamgiri, Odisha). The powers given by PESA to exercise rights over community resources are almost non-existent in many states.
Similarly, according to The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, Adivasi Gram Sabhas have a definite right over the forests, and any sort of forest diversion or eviction should have their informed consent.
Unfortunately Governments have substantially reduced the pre-eminence of Gram Sabhas in matters of forest governance. Gram Sabhas are now neither the final authority in settlement of rights, nor is its consent mandatory in diversion of forest land for non-forest purposes. The authority has been transferred to the subdivisional committee. Representation of forest-dwelling tribes in the subdivisional-level committee has been excluded, thus providing opportunity to departmental officers to exercise their authority on decisions. Gram Sabhas have no role when it comes to demarcation of a protected area. The Government reserves the right to decide the area, and whether there would be eviction or not – the Gram Sabha only gives its consent on the resettlement package. People’s power has been degraded or denied.
Health and nutrition
“The State shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties”.
According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2019-21, India has seen no significant improvement in health and nutritional status. The data shows that 7.7% of children are severely wasted, 19.3% are wasted, and 35.5% are stunted. That is, 62.5% of children are underfed, undernourished and unhealthy. They are from families which are at the bottom of India’s socio-economic layers, lacking the most basic roti-kapda-makaan. The survivors among these children who attain adulthood and working age, are India’s citizens of coming years.
Here again, it does not take much effort to understand that the majority of these unfortunates are from the bottom 25.2%. This tragic situation did not occur in just the past few years, but is the result of decades of neglect of primary duty by successive governments.
Even as India’s food production has increased over the years, food stored in FCI warehouses rots or feeds rodents, and food is exported for corporate profit. Persisting hunger and falling health parameters are the result of policy made by successive governments, in neglect of their primary duty.
Finally
Reality is that hungry and homeless people are unlikely to understand, leave alone empathise with the enthusiasm of celebrating 75-years of Independence, with displays of patriotism flying tirangas on homes, and full page ads of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav programs. To paraphrase Andy Borowitz, “It would be nice to spend crores of rupees on food and shelter for the hungry and homeless, but right now that money is desperately needed for political ads”.
Dr.S.G. Vombatkere, retired in the military rank of Major General as Additional DG Discipline & Vigilance in Army HQ AG’s Branch. President of India awarded him Visishta Seva Medal (VSM) in 1993 for his distinguished military service. His area of interest is strategic and development-related issues. He holds a PhD in Civil Engineering (Structural Dynamics) from I.I.T Madras. He is a Fellow of The Institution of Engineers (India), and Fellow of The Indian Social Science Academy.
E-mail: <sg9kere@live.com>.
India is the second largest food producing country in the world and ranks first in the production of milk, pulses, rice, fish, vegetables and wheat. Despite this, a large population of the country is suffering from malnutrition. According to the United Nations’ ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022’ report, people’s struggle for survival has increased sharply after the 2019 Corona period. In 2021, 768 million people in the world were found to be undernourished, of which 224 million (29%) were Indians. This is a quarter of the total number of undernourished people in the world.
Today, malnutrition is one of the most serious problems in India, yet it has received the least attention. Today, India has 4.66 million underweight and 2.55 million height-for-age children in the world. And this is very alarming as the data of National Family Health Survey-4 shows that the prevalence of malnutrition has reduced in the country, but still more than half 51% of children from the lowest income group families are stunted and stunted. And 49% are underweight
The Government of India’s own statistics on malnutrition show that India’s malnutrition crisis has deepened. According to these statistics, more than 33 lakh children are malnourished in India at present. More than half of these, 17.7 lakh children, are severely malnourished.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization presented a report titled ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022: Repurposing Food and Agriculture Policies to Make Healthy Diets More Affordable’. According to this report, more than 97 crore people in India i.e. about 71 percent of the country’s population cannot afford nutritious food.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the definition of a healthy diet includes minimally processed foods. For example, for a balanced diet, the plate should contain plenty of whole grains, nuts, legumes, fruits and vegetables and a moderate amount of protein. A report by the Food and Agriculture Organization states that approximately $2.97 per person per day (in 2020) is spent on a healthy diet in India. In terms of purchasing power parity, this means that a family of four spends Rs 7,600 per month on food. Purchasing power parity is a principle of international exchange that shows the difference in price of a good or service between two countries.
70.5% of Indians cannot eat a healthy diet
The report suggests that 70.5 percent of Indians are unable to eat a healthy diet, while China (12 percent), Brazil (19 percent) and Sri Lanka (49 percent) have lower percentages. The position of Nepal (84 percent) and Pakistan (83.5 percent) is lower than that of India.
According to the report, there has certainly been some slow progress in India on the anti-hunger front. But, on the other hand, the problem of obesity is increasing. 3.4 crore people in the age group of 15 to 49 fall under the ‘overweight’ category. Four years ago this number was two and a half crores.
The gap between male and female participation in food insecurity has also widened. 31.9 percent of the world’s women are moderately or severely food insecure, compared to 27.6 percent of men. Similarly, the problem of anemia has increased among women. A total of 18.7 crore Indian women are found to be disabled in 2021. In 2019, this number was close to 17.2 crore. That is, the number of women suffering from anemia has increased by one and a half crore in two years.
According to this report, about 80 crores i.e. about 60 percent are dependent on subsidized ration provided by the Indian government. Under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, apart from the special epidemic assistance of free five kg of foodgrains, the beneficiaries are given five kg of foodgrains per month at only Rs 2-3 per kg per person. The food subsidy program has been criticized for being a food grain, that is, the scheme provides enough calories but does not take into account adequate nutrition.
Interestingly, India’s position in the Global Hunger Index has also fallen further. India was ranked 94th out of 116 countries in 2020, while in 2021 it has slipped to 101st. India is now lagging behind its neighbors Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. This is very worrying. During the Corona crisis, the rich got richer, while the wealth of ordinary Indians declined by 7%. Many lost their jobs and lost their earnings. In such a situation, it is obvious that the government’s policies and claims of development are far away from the reality on the ground.
The National Family Health Survey has revealed that there has been no significant progress in child nutrition in the last four to five years under the Central Government. This situation has become worse in the lockdown. Hunger-Watch surveys also show that more than 60 percent of people are not getting enough nutritious food and their health has worsened during the lockdown. Despite this, the present government of India has consistently neglected schemes like mid-day meal and ICDS in the budget. And not realizing that these schemes have been useful in fighting malnutrition and hunger.
According to the United Nations report ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022’, by 2020 there were 307.42 crore people worldwide who did not have access to a healthy diet. That means 42 percent of the world’s population cannot eat healthy food. At the same time, there are 97.33 crore people in India who do not have a healthy diet. According to this, 70 percent of Indians do not get healthy food. This report also says that if a person eats healthy food every day, how much will he have to spend? If he eats a healthy diet in India every day, he will have to spend 2.9 dollars i.e. 235 rupees more for this. Accordingly, every person will spend more than 7 thousand rupees per month to eat healthy food every day. Due to expensive food, people cannot have a healthy diet.
If we talk about a healthy diet, 3 out of every 10 malnourished Indians in the world are so expensive that 97 crore people cannot afford a healthy diet. Although it is true that India is the second largest producer of wheat and rice in the world, it is unfortunate that more than 70 percent of the population does not have access to a healthy diet.
However, the report also said that the situation in India was improving, but the Corona epidemic put a brake on it. In 2017, 75% of Indians did not have access to a healthy diet. The number dropped to 71.5% in 2018 and 69.4% in 2019, but in 2020 the figure rose again to over 70%.
We can understand how big this problem is in India, China has more population than us, but the number of people who do not eat healthy food there is 5 times less than that of Indians. There are no fewer than 170 million people in China who cannot eat a healthy diet.
A United Nations report shows that the number of undernourished people in India has definitely decreased in 15 years, while the number of undernourished Indians in the world has increased.
According to the report, 24.78 crore people were malnourished in 2004-06, which declined to 22.43 crore in 2019-21. But in 2004-06 Indians accounted for 31% of the total undernourished Indians, while in 2019-21 the number of Indians increased to 32%.
Not only this, India still has more than 2 crore children under 5 years of age who are underweight for height. More than 3.6 crore children under 5 years of age are stunted.
The National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5) report came out in November last year. The report states that only 11.3% of children aged 6 to 23 months are getting enough food.
According to the US Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS), India is the largest producer of rice and wheat in the world, followed by China. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, India produced 130 million tonnes of rice and 110 million tonnes of wheat in 2021-22.
In India, under the National Food Security Act, food grains are available at affordable rates to the poor. From March 2020, under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, the central government is giving free 5 kg food grains to 80 crore poor people every month. This scheme is applicable till September 2022. The government has spent 3.40 lakh crore rupees for this.
Children in class 1 to 8 or 6 to 14 are provided free meals in all government schools. Now the name of this scheme has been changed from midday meal scheme to PM-poshan scheme. Under PM-POSHAN, Rs 1.31 lakh crore will be spent from 2021-22 to 2025-26.
As news of looting of public welfare schemes of the government make headlines every day, we see how these public welfare schemes are being sabotaged with the connivance of administrative, political and middlemen.
The recently published Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) report showed that the country’s unemployment rate rose by 0.68% to 7.80% on a monthly basis, as against the level of 7.12% in May. This increase in the unemployment rate is mainly due to the increase in the rural unemployment rate which has increased by 1.41% to 8.03% on a monthly basis.
At the same time, according to the United Nations report, more than 22 crore people are malnourished in India. More than 97 crore people do not have access to healthy food. In China, the number of people who do not get a healthy diet is 5 times less than that of Indians.
Talking about unemployment in 2022, the urban unemployment rate increased by 0.91% on a monthly basis to 7.30% in June and was at a level of 8.21% in May. The Center for Monitoring Indian Economy said around 1.3 crore jobs were lost in June, leaving the rest out of the labor market, with the number of unemployed rising by only 3 million. This brought the labor force participation rate to a June low of 38.8%. In the last two months (April-May) it was 40%.
This sharp decline in employment is alarming. In the agriculture sector, around 8 million people lost their jobs in June, as rainfall fell below normal in many parts of the country in June. Therefore, the work of sowing crops in rural areas has not been speeded up. Unemployment in the rural areas has increased due to the delay in the employment of agricultural labourers.
According to Center for Monitoring Indian Economy data, Haryana had the highest unemployment rate at 30.6 percent. It is followed by Rajasthan 29.8 percent, Assam 17.2 percent, Jammu and Kashmir 17.2 percent and Bihar 14 percent. It is worrying that such a large number of workers are affected by the monsoon. Another worrisome factor is the loss of 2.5 lakh salaried jobs in June 2022. A cut in salaried jobs in June also added to the concern. The government reduced demand for the armed forces and opportunities in private equity-funded jobs began to dwindle. These jobs cannot be saved by good rains alone. To save and create these kinds of jobs, the economy needs to grow rapidly in the near future.
On the other hand, there is a severe lack of any kind of strong employment structure in the government’s policies. Every kind of undemocratic game has become the government’s priority just to stay in power.
Vikas Parashram Meshram
vikasmeshram04@gmail.com
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