1.Age and marriage: On raising the age of marriage for women

Focus must be on creating social awareness about women’s reproductive health and rights

Good intent does not guarantee favourable outcomes. Coercive laws without wide societal support often fail to deliver even when their statement of objects and reasons aims for the larger public good. Within days of the Union Cabinet approving a proposal to raise the age of marriage for women from 18 to 21 years, the same age as for men, the Government listed it for legislative business in Parliament this week. If passed, various personal and faith-based laws which govern marriages in India now, including The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, the Special Marriage Act, 1954, and the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, will have to be amended. In her Budget speech last year, Finance Nirmala Sitharaman had announced that the Government would set up a task force to look into the age of a girl entering motherhood with an aim to lower maternal mortality rates, improve nutrition levels as well as ensure opportunities to women to pursue higher education and careers. With these targets in mind, a panel headed by former Samata Party chief Jaya Jaitly was set up in June last year. The panel submitted its report in December 2020. Though the objective looks good on paper, merely raising the age of marriage without creating social awareness and improving access to health care is unlikely to benefit the community it wants to serve: young women not yet financially independent, who are unable to exercise their rights and freedoms while still under the yoke of familial and societal pressures.

According to Ms. Jaitly, raising the age of marriage is one of its recommendations, which include a strong campaign to reform patriarchal mindsets, and improved access to education. As per the National Family Health

2.Persist with probe: On inquiry into Pegasus surveillance

Fresh report of Pegasus use flags the need to take inquiry to its logical conclusion

It is difficult to disagree with the argument that there cannot be a parallel probe by any inquiry commission into the allegations of unlawful surveillance using the Pegasus spyware after the Supreme Court ordered an independent inquiry. It is no surprise, then, that the top court has stayed the functioning of the Commission constituted by the West Bengal government and headed by retired judge, Justice Madan B. Lokur. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had taken note of the allegations of surveillance that possibly targeted personages in West Bengal, and was on good legal ground when she took the first legal step towards unearthing the truth. It was a step that was warranted by the circumstances then, given the Union government’s refusal to acknowledge that it possessed such spyware or whether those identified by an international media investigation as targets were subject to any sort of surveillance in the country. Reports by an international consortium of journalists said that 300 out of 50,000 likely targets of Pegasus spyware were Indians. Subsequently, the Government also refused to cede any ground in the Supreme Court, and declined to give a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ reply to the Court’s questions. Stonewalling attempts to raise it in Parliament and sticking to its guns in Court, the Government inevitably invited an order from the Court for an independent investigation. It is significant that the Bench, headed by the Chief Justice of India, N.V. Ramana, ruled that the bogey of national security was not an adequate reason not to have a credible inquiry into the allegations.

A fresh report suggesting that Pegasus was used to target jailed activist Rona Wilson’s mobile phone underscores the urgent need to persist with the investigation into the illegal use of the spyware in India. U.S. forensic investigation company Arsenal Consulting has said Mr. Wilson’s phone was attacked as many as 49 times and it was successfully infected by the t

3.Return of inflation: Current global rise in price levels is unlike the past. India’s policymakers need to gear up

Inflation as a global phenomenon last made headlines in the 1970s. There are growing signs that we may have to re-run soon but with a difference. The underlying causes are different and there is a school of thought among central bankers that we are in uncharted waters. One way to get a grip on the issue is to look at what three central banks, US Federal Reserve, Bank of England and the RBI, have been doing recently. None of these economies have crossed the threshold of full economic recovery from the pandemic, but their central banks have either overtly or subtly shifted positions.

BoE last week became the first major central bank to increase its policy interest rate to combat inflation. Given an inflation target of 2%, BoE had to contend with a two percentage point increase over just two months in UK’s CPI inflation, which was 5.1% in November. The same month, the US inflation reading was 6.8%, a 39-year high. In a recent Congressional testimony, the Fed’s chairman indicated that they would stop classifying higher inflation as “transitory”. In India, WPI in November was 14.23%, a 12-year high.

The underlying causes this time are pressure from both demand and supply sides. The pandemic saw developed economies unroll massive fiscal support. However, as economies began normalisation, not only did supply disruptions push up price levels of manufactured products, the compressed pace of transition to a digital structure worsened matters in products such as semiconductors. India cannot insulate itself from global developments as supply chains are import dependent for inputs. Simply put, it means RBI’s job in 2022 will get trickier as we haven’t recorded a durable recovery from the Covid-induced shock. This will spill over to the fiscal domain as a spurt in inflation will have distribution consequences for national income.

RBI has used a combination of both interest rate adjustments and liquidity tools to push down market interest rates to low levels over the last two years. It has already signalled a step back from this position by adjusting its liquidity measures. The challenge going forward will be the spillovers of changes brought about by the US Fed, in particular. Some effects will be transmitted through the foreign exchange and debt markets. It may well catalyse changes in RBI’s policy rate at a time which is out of sync with popular market expectations. 2022 is set to be a challenge for India’s economic policymakers.

4.Call it quits: Farmer unions should desist taking the political plunge

Riding high after forcing the Union government to withdraw the three farm laws, farmer unions are now contemplating taking the political plunge. In fact, Bharatiya Kisan Union (Charuni) national president Gurnam Singh Charuni has already launched a political party – Sanyukt Sangharsh Party – with the aim of contesting the upcoming assembly elections in Punjab. While anyone is free to launch a political party, farmer unions need to think through this move carefully. The last thing they need is for their recent success to go to their head. This would actually undermine their cause of representing farmer interests and expose them as opportunists.

While the farm laws were broadly correct – this newspaper has been clear about the desperate need for agriculture reforms – the reason why farmer unions were successful in their year-long agitation is that they were seen as representing farmer interests cutting across communities in Punjab, Haryana and western UP. This made it near impossible for any political party to take sides against them. This is further exemplified by all major political parties taking a pro-farmer stance in the campaigning for the next round of state polls. This then begs the question if there is any need for farmer unions to take the political plunge when existing political parties are already keenly responding to them.

Plus, interest-specific political parties don’t have a good track record in India. True, parties like SP may claim Mandal agitation roots, but they operationally went on to become normal political parties. Even AAP which began as an anti-corruption platform, is today indistinguishable in its electoral functioning from Congress or BJP. Therefore, any farmer union that transforms into a political party will lose the high ground and be forced into the logic of electoral politics. And that in turn is bound to dilute its claim of representing India’s farmers and working as a pressure group. Farmer unions must know when to quit.

5.How to reverse learning loss

Coherent state-level strategies, accentuated vaccine programmes for students, teachers and allied staff, and adequate human resource and financial allocations are key

The Telangana Higher Education Department is reviewing the effectiveness of its online classes after more than half of Classes 11 and 12 students failed the first-year or Class 11 exam, a report in a national daily said on Sunday. The students are now in Class 12, having been promoted en masse as the final exam could not be held in April due to the raging second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. The exams were the first serious one after educational institutions closed on March 25, 2020. The results are yet another illustration of the severe learning loss that has happened across different educational segments and social classes (due to the lack of inadequate online learning infrastructure) — and it is almost a certainty that the situation is the same in all states. The worst hit have been the primary class students. Around 320 million students have not stepped into a classroom for more than a year. Schools started reopening only in July and they have been plagued by closures.

A 2021 field study by the Azim Premji University says the closure of schools (and the failure to open them on priority when the situation improved), has not only led to the complete loss of an academic year, but that most schools are reporting the widespread and alerting phenomenon of “forgetting” , where students do not remember what they learn in a previous class, a regression in their circular learning. This, the study says, includes losing foundational abilities such as reading with understanding and performing addition and multiplication, which they learned earlier and become proficient in, and which form the basis of further learning. These foundational abilities are such that their absence will impact the learning of more complex abilities and conceptual understanding across subjects. In August, a parliamentary standing committee said that most rural, remote areas lack digital facilities, indicating a huge digital divide and added that about “70% of the country doesn’t have access to internet connectivity and available quality of connectivity is poor”. The learning crisis has also been exacerbated by pre-existing education disparities.