1. 530 districts reported as free of manual scavenging: Centre

Ministry says manual scavenging is no longer practised in India; T.N., Chhattisgarh, Bihar among States with all districts reporting free status

Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, and Jharkhand are among the States and Union Territories that have the highest number of districts yet to declare themselves free of manual scavenging, showed data submitted by the Social Justice Ministry in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

In response to multiple questions related to deaths caused by manual scavenging or hazardous cleaning of sewers, the Union government said that India had not reported deaths due to manual scavenging in the past five years, while 330 people had died during cleaning of sewers and septic tanks.

The Ministry said 530 districts had so far reported themselves to be free of manual scavenging, while the rest were yet to do so. The Ministry said manual scavenging was no longer carried out in the country.

While 100% of the districts in States such as Bihar, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and a few others had declared themselves to be free of manual scavenging, 15% to 20% of the districts have reported so in several States and Union Territories.

In Manipur, just two of the 16 districts had reported as free of manual scavenging. In Jammu and Kashmir and Telangana, just 30% of the districts had declared themselves free. In Odisha and West Bengal, over 60% of the districts were yet to report their respective status.

Uttar Pradesh, which had the highest number of manual scavengers (32,473) in two surveys conducted till 2018, has nearly 90% districts reporting to be free of manual scavenging.

Top Ministry officials said that each district was being asked to either declare itself free of manual scavenging or point out locations of insanitary latrines and associated manual scavenging. “The district sanitation committees look at data of whether there are insanitary latrines and based on this extrapolate whether manual scavenging exists or not.”

Since the launch of the Swachata mobile app in 2016, more than 6,000 complaints have been examined by the Ministry for possible signs of manual scavenging. “But not one complaint was substantiated in all this time,” one senior official said.

As government data show that deaths due to hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks continue, the Ministry has decided that its principal focus will be to address this problem, with officials saying the NAMASTE scheme had been launched for this purpose.

“This is why now the focus is to ask municipalities and civic bodies to ensure no hazardous cleaning takes place. And if it takes place, the responsibility should be placed on the employer,” another senior official said.

According to data released by the government in Parliament in 2021, over 90% of manual scavengers identified in the surveys till 2018, were from the Scheduled Caste communities.

2. UNESCO endorses banning smartphones in schools

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has warned against an uncritical rush toward embrace of digital products in educational settings, noting that “there is little robust evidence on digital technology’s added value in education” and that “a lot of the evidence comes from those trying to sell it”. It cited the example of how “Pearson funded its own studies, contesting independent analysis that showed its products had no impact”. At the same time, there was ample evidence of a negative link between excessive screen time and a child’s educational performance and emotional stability, it said.

The UN body’s Global Education Monitoring Report, 2023, titled “Technology in education: a tool on whose terms?”, has endorsed banning smartphones in schools in situations where “technology integration does not improve learning or if it worsens student well-being”. It highlighted that “mere proximity to a mobile device was found to distract students and to have a negative impact on learning in 14 countries, yet less than one in four have banned smartphone use in schools”. It also cited research studies to point out that “banning mobile phones from schools improves academic performance, especially for low-performing students”.

Detailing the rationale for restricting smartphone usage for children, the report cited a study of young people between the ages of two and 17 which “showed that higher screen time was associated with poorer well-being; less curiosity, self-control and emotional stability; higher anxiety; and depression diagnoses”.

The report also flagged the higher costs of delivering basic education where there is a dependence on the setting up of digital infrastructure, and how this could worsen the problem of unequal access in low-income countries. “Technology is often bought to plug a gap, with no view to the long-term costs for national budgets. The cost of moving to basic digital learning in low-income countries and connecting all schools to the Internet in lower-middle-income countries would add 50% to their current financing gap for achieving national SDG 4 targets,” the report stated.

Another major concern around the indiscriminate use of digital technology in education was children’s privacy. “Children’s data are being exposed, yet only 16% of countries explicitly guarantee data privacy in education by law. One analysis found that 89% of 163 education technology products recommended during the pandemic could survey children. Further, 39 of 42 governments providing online education during the pandemic fostered uses that risked or infringed on children’s rights,” the report said.

Urging governments to “putting learners first” when it came to decisions on the use of digital technology, the report urged policymakers to ensure child data protection laws and accountability mechanisms tailored to children.

3. West Bengal government announces a ‘mangrove cell’

West Bengal, which is home to about 40% of the mangrove forests in India, announced the setting up of a ‘mangrove cell’ in the State, on the occasion of the International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem on Wednesday. “This will bring continuity to the efforts of the State government in mangrove management. The cell has an action plan for the plantation of mangroves, it will also look at maintenance and coordinate with NGOs,” Vivek Kumar, Principal Secretary to the State’s Forest Department, said. Mr. Kumar made the announcement during a symposium in Kolkata. He said that the cell will generate funds from private and international sectors.

4. India’s rice export ban impacts Asian and African nations most

NRIs have been resorting to panic buying rice in the U.S. despite the country’s relatively low dependence on imports from India

In the last couple of days, many panic-stricken Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) have thronged grocery stores and supermarkets in the United States to hoard bags of rice. Videos of people jostling to buy sona masuri rice (a lightweight and aromatic medium-grain rice) and photos of long queues outside Indian stores became viral on social media. In order to control the chaos, many stores in the U.S. placed a limit on the sale of rice. Some even restricted sales to ‘one rice bag per family’ to deal with the unprecedented crowds.

This sudden rush followed the Indian government’s decision on July 20 to ban the export of non-basmati white rice to “ensure adequate availability in the Indian market and to allay the rise in prices in the domestic market.” It did not restrict the export of the other types of semi/wholly milled rice — basmati and parboiled rice.

Chart 1 shows the quantity of the three different types of semi/wholly milled rice exported by India (in tonnes) over time. The exported share of non-basmati white rice surpassed the share of basmati rice in the last two fiscal years. In FY23, India exported around 64 lakh tonnes of non-basmati white rice and close to 45 lakh tonnes of basmati rice. The most widely exported type was parboiled rice (78 lakh tonnes). Now, non-basmati white rice, which formed over a quarter of semi/wholly milled rice, has been taken off the market.

Over 140 countries bought non-basmati white rice from India in FY23. Chart 2 shows the average quantity of non-basmati white rice bought by the top 50 importers per year between FY19 and FY23. The effect of the ban will be most pronounced in the neighbouring countries of Nepal and Bangladesh, the African countries of Madagascar, Benin, Kenya, and Ivory Coast, the Asian countries of Malaysia and Vietnam, and the UAE, which are all the biggest buyers of this type of rice in absolute terms.

Interestingly, the U.S. is ranked 34th on the list, with just over 27,000 tonnes of average imports per year. In contrast, Nepal bought 4.5 lakh tonnes per year in the considered period. Thirty three other countries are more impacted by the ban than the U.S. So, the hullabaloo over rice in the U.S. can be explained as a reporting bias.

Chart 3 shows the average quantity of semi/wholly milled rice (all the three types together) bought per year between FY19 and FY23. The U.S., which bought over 2 lakh tonnes of such rice from India per year in the period, is ranked 11th. The bigger the circle, the higher the dependency of a country on India for rice.

Here too the U.S.’s dependency on India for semi/wholly milled rice was only 20% compared to Nepal’s 99%. In fact, the dependency was over 50% in 23 countries — eight of them in West Asia and nine in sub-Saharan Africa. The data hints that a part of the rush in the U.S., which sources 80% of its needs from elsewhere (mostly Thailand), could also be due to panic buying or the preference of NRIs for Indian brands.

Back in India, the decision may bring relief to consumers as many of them, especially in the southern States, were paying over ₹50 for a kilo of rice as shown in Table 5. Climate change-related disasters such as extreme flooding in the north and relatively poor rainfall elsewhere have also impacted rice sowing this year.

Table 4 shows the usual area covered under rice (FY18 to FY23 average) for the week ending July 13 and July 20 compared to the actual area covered this year (FY24). Chhattisgarh and Odisha are running high deficits. Overall sowing has gone down, which is why the government is restricting rice exports.