No country for women: Equal Measures 2030 Report

The world is still a long way from attaining gender equality as envisaged in the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (SDG 2030), reveals a study conducted by Equal Measures 2030 (EM 2030). According to the report, with only 11 years to go till 2030, nearly 40 per cent of the world’s female population, 1.4 billion people, still live in countries that fail on gender equality. The report further states that women and girls are at a disadvantage across all areas – they are underrepresented in decision-making positions and leadership levels, education, health, get less paid work and are often the target of violence.

The 2019 SDG Gender Index tracked 129 countries, 14 of the 17 SDGs, and 51 indicators linked to issues existing in the SDGs. All indicators were given values between 1 and 100, with 100 being the highest, and values above 90 being excellent. The highest scores were awarded to Scandinavian nations of Denmark (89.3), Finland (88.8) and Sweden (88.0), while no country received an ‘excellent’ rating. Further, the report reveals that even these high scoring countries have to do much more in areas such as climate change, gender pay gaps, gender-based violence, equal representation in powerful positions and gender budgeting and public services.

Overall, while Europe and North America top the 2019 SDG Gender Index with an average regional index score of 79.1, Sub Saharan Africa has the lowest ranking, with an average regional index of 51.1. The situation is particularly serious in the landlocked country of Chad which occupies the 129th place.

The Index has also found that globally, all countries are furthest behind on gender equality issues related to public finance and better gender data (SDG 17), climate change (SDG 13), gender equality in industry and innovation (SDG 9), and standalone gender equality goal (SDG 5).

When it comes to women in STEM, the report has revealed that the high performers are not necessarily the ones with high income or with overall higher investment in science and technology. In Europe, for example, two of the top three countries are amongst the region’s lowest-performing one – FYR Macedonia and Moldova. Similarly, only eight countries in the Europe and North America region are close to having full parity between men and women in science and technology research positions - a lower proportion than in Asia and the Pacific or Latin America and the Caribbean. Further, despite the fact that Germany is known for its high investment in R&D and is the largest technology-based economy in the region, the country has a fewer number of women in STEM and has one of the steepest rates of women dropping out of the field.

Also, many Sub Saharan African countries perform exceptionally well when it comes to the overall proportion of women in the government. Countries such as Rwanda (61 per cent of parliament), Namibia (46 per cent), South Africa (42 per cent), Senegal (42 per cent) rank among the top 10 countries in terms of women in parliament.

India: inequalities in secondary education

One of the main areas where persistent challenges remain in South Asia, in particular, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, as per the Index, is gender equality in education. As per the report, the number of primary and secondary school-age girls was 186.2 million girls, across the three countries - this represents 52 per cent of the entire Asia and Pacific region.

While there has been improvement in the share of women with secondary education in India (almost 70 per cent of 15–19 year‑olds are in secondary education compared to less than 40 per cent of those in the 20–24 year age group), however, these improvements fade off in the light of the actual number of girl students who complete secondary education. As per the survey, though child marriage rates have nearly halved in the last 15-20 years, there has been almost no progress in secondary school completion. In both India and Pakistan, data shows that girls from rural areas are losing out on basic skills – as per the Annual Status of Education Report’s (ASER) assessment of basic math skills of 14–16 year‑olds in India, only 44 per cent of girls could do division, compared to 50 per cent of boys.

This is also holding back the ability of young girls to transition to work. In India, 8 per cent of boys in the 15-24 age group were not in employment, education or training (NEET) as compared to 49 per cent of girls. These figures were steeper in Pakistan where 54 per cent of girls were NEET as compared to only 7 per cent boys, in 2015.

The goal of achieving universal secondary education is still distant in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, as per the report. “While data show that the barriers to primary education have weakened in the region, they remain persistent regarding girls’ ability to complete secondary education, undermining girls’ rights and critically harming their success in the labour market,” the survey explains.

India scored the lowest in partnerships (18.3, among the bottom 10 countries), industry, infrastructure and innovation (SDG 9 - 38.1) and climate (SDG 13 - 43.4). The country, however, scored the highest on health (on SDG 3 - 79.9), hunger and nutrition (SDG 2 of - 76.2) and of energy (SDG 7 - 71.8). The Government’s initiative of bringing cleaner cooking fuel to households across the country is a major enabler

M’rashtra tops in HIV-related deaths in ’18-19

The state has earned the dubious distinction of recording the highest number of HIV-related deaths (1,509) in the country in 2018-19. It lagged behind Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka at number 3 in the previous two years.

These damning statistics, at a time when the HIV epidemic across the world is slowing down, has been compiled from the website of the central health ministry’s health management information system (HMIS). The data shows that 1,509 HIV deaths took place in Maharashtra between April 1, 2018, and February 28, 2019. This is an 11% increase over the previous year.

The HMIS data also shows that most of the deaths took place in rural pockets.

94% of HIV deaths in Maha from rural areas: RTI data

Of the 1,509 HIV-related deaths in Maharashtra, only 88 took place in urban areas. “Out of every 17 deaths in Maharashtra, 16 are from the rural areas,” said RTI activist Chetan Kothari, who compiled the data. “This shows that people living in urban areas have better access to healthcare systems than those in rural areas.’’ The worst districts as far as deaths are concerned included Pune (270 deaths), Mumbai (128) and Sangli (103). Incidentally, most deaths in Mumbai have also been listed as “rural deaths” in the HMIS excelsheet.

National AIDS Control Organisation officials, however, said any increase in HIV deaths in Maharashtra should be viewed against the fact that it has the highest number of people living with HIV (PLHIV). “Andhra Pradesh used to have the highest number, but it has now split. It is not, hence, surprising that Maharashtra now has the largest numbers,” said NACO’s Dr Manish Bamrotiya. “We used to have 10.5 PLHIVs on medications until two years ago, but the number has increased to 13 lakh now,” he added.

In the last two years, NACO started Mission Sampark to locate PLHIVs who were lost. “We found out about deaths that had not been reported to the authorities. Some of these deaths were perhaps added to the overall numbers at a later date, leading to an increase in the number of deaths,” said a senior government official. He added the HMIS data is mainly drawn from hospitals and is primary. The data from AIDS Control Societies such as MSACS (Maharashtra State AIDS Control Society) and MDACS (Mumbai District AIDS Control Society) is more refined and studied.

Officials of Maharashtra State AIDS Control Society (MSACS), which oversees the implementation of HIV\AIDS control programme in the state, refuted the data. “We have spoken to HMIS officials about this data. The urban-rural divide seems incorrect as far as Maharashtra is concerned,’’ said MSACS joint programme director Dr Pramod Deoraj. Dr Srikala Achraya of MDACS said urban centres had testing centres and field reporting systems that helped early detection and reduced the chance of death.

Source::: Times of India (Mumbai Edition), 15.04.2019, page.5.

Farm ponds that dot parched Marathwada may deplete groundwater in the long run

Filling From Wells Likely To Drain Precious Resource

Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar

Aurangabad:
A patchwork of brown fields is visible from the air as you fly into this drought-hit region in rural Maharashtra. But amid the dry land is a growing mosaic of blue and brown squares and rectangles.

These are farm ponds: Large earthen structures that have spread across rural Maharashtra in the past five years, thanks to a raft of central and state subsidies.

The ponds were conceived to catch and store rainwater, and are especially useful for fruits such as grapes that require year-round irrigation, But as they have proliferated on a large scale, and are often filled from wells, experts have become concerned about their long-term effect on groundwater levels.

“Farm ponds have some value for irrigation,” said Eshwar Kale of the Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR). “But they can lead to privatization of water by a few and, on a large scale, these schemes take no account of the carrying capacity of the watershed.”

Pond numbers have shot up since 2016, when the state’s Farm Pond on Demand Scheme began offering up to Rs 50,000 reimbursement to eligible farmers. Close to 1.2 lakh ponds have been built under the scheme so far (more than three lakh farmers applied for it) at a cost of around Rs 540 crore.

Thousands more have been built under other schemes over the years, including the National Horticulture Mission and still more have been set up privately, for which there is no data. Near Aurangabad, for instance, a prosperous farmer with 12 acres along the highway has two plastic-lined full ponds—one that he funded himself and another with a government subsidy.

Studies from institutions such as the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics have found that while these ponds benefit individual farmers, allowing them to grow high-value crops, they also favour larger famers who have access to water, capital to invest, and adequate land; Maharashtra’s scheme requires farm sizes of at least 1.5 acres.

Many farmers also line their ponds with plastic and fill them from borewells, not rainfall runoff.

On a large scale, this may result in over-exploitation of groundwater resources, says C P Bhoyar, chief scientist at the Groundwater Survey & Development Agency. With 30% evaporation rates, storing water above the ground also results in huge water loss, he adds.

The agency considers farm ponds a supplementary irrigation tool and not a water conservation or ground recharge measure. “If you put a plastic lining, there is no percolation,” says Bhoyar.

Groundwater levels are depleting in central Maharashtra, with more than three metres decline seen in some parts of Marathwada in September compared with the previous five-year average.

On the ground, benefits of farm ponds are clear. Bharath Aher, a farmer in Aurangabad district, said his farm pond had helped him switch to high-value grapes a few years ago—and saved his crop despite the current drought. “With the water I’ve stored, I can at least break even,” he said.

And Kadvanchi, a muchcelebrated farm-pond village north of Jalna city, has prospered with grape farming.
Bungalows are sprouting in this hamlet of 650 ponds.

Yet, Kadvanchi’s green farms are an oasis in a desert of brown fields, highlighting the inequities of this district. Poorer villages in Jalna don’t have any ponds—they lack the money to front the cost of construction, let alone invest in drip irrigation, or they have insufficient land.

Kadvanchi has had other advantages too, including sustained help from the local Krishi Vignya Kendra. Its location near a ridge also makes it easier to trap rainfall runoff from the streams. By contrast, many farm ponds without good water sources are dry in this region.

Nearby villages complain Kadvanchi is capturing all the water, which the sarpanch denies. Some have started building their own ponds.

Competitive extraction is a real risk, says Pooja Prasad, a researcher at IIT-Bombay who studied the issue in Nashik. “Because you know that if you don’t extract and store the water, others will.”

In times of scarcity, ponds can also pit irrigation requirements against drinking water needs, she notes. Even with gleaming blue ponds in their midst, Kadvanchi and other villages are buying water tankers in March. Irrigation uses 85% of groundwater in the state.

A modelling exercise by Prasad and IIT-Bombay professor Milind Sohoni suggests that that farm ponds bring prosperity only as long as the numbers are limited in line with the hydrology of the region. “If farmers continue to build new farm ponds and grow orchards beyond this limit in an unregulated manner, it will create a vicious circle,” says their report.

Current incentives are likely to “drive farmers to invest in farm ponds even as the groundwater depletes to dangerous levels,” they write, calling for greater regulation.

“Market forces alone will not be sufficient to ensure that this threshold is respected,” says Prasad.

Source::: Times of India Mumbai Edition), 15.04.2019, page 5.