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Saturday, March 27, 2010

GLOBALISED AND DEGLOBALISED TOBACCO.A CASE STUDY OF SKEWED GLOBALISATION IN (MALABAR BEEDI) WORKING SECTOR, DHARMADAM PANCHAYATH,KANNUR DISTRICT,KERAL

BIJU P R
LECTURE IN POLITICAL SCIENCE
GOVT.BRENNEN COLLEGE,
THALASSERY.

The research proposal approved and funded by U G C

Social and economic changes are indispensable to any society.All such metamorphoses have its own repercussions all along.While civil society and collective agency remain freezed towards such fluctuations,the transformations become much aggrieved.The plight of Beedi(A type of tobacco famously referred as Malabar beedi) workers in Dharmadam,Kannur district,Kerala has been foolproof in this argument.When globalization prevailed over and hijacked people’s agenda infavour of the corporate interest,the traditional Beedi working sector remained virtually on the decline.By 1970’s and 80’s ,the Beedi sector in kannur district has been a traditional employment sector for both men and women .It remained almost the sole earning source for many especially in the Dharmadam panchayath and adjoining areas.Beedi working has been more a tradition ,culture and way of life to hundreds of people in the area .Beedi workers were all affiliated to communist party and the party has controlled Beedi working sector .Beedi has at times ,remained a symbol of communist heart.

This is an enquiry concerning whether the much touted benefits of globalization have reached the masses.It attempts to highlight the narrowness of globalization .It is not same for everyone.Development stimulated by globalization has not been people centred,infact ,it has been the opposite.Globalisation being dominated by multinational agenda and capitalist institutions shore up capital further by replacing and displacing human labour.The state on the one hand has moved away from it’s commitment to economic development of the people and on the other hand become hyper active in protecting the interest of the corporate sector .Globalisation has created a condition which was totally unfavourable for a welfare regime.Welfare regime was hardly able to live up to it’s promises.Market friendly policies got wide acceptance which often led to rapid redistribution of wealth in favour of corporate world and extreme polarization of productive resources.

The Beedi working sector in Dharmadam, kannur district has seen a different and contradicting development by the mid of 1990’s after India endorsed New Economic Policy .Despite there had a virtual decline in the habit of smoking ,tobacco smoking in the state had seen an upward trend.Branded tobacco products got higher credence among people.Corporate tobacco thrived in India and in the state. Skyrocketing prices,escalating number of smokers and flourishing corporate tobacco have become the order of globalised tobacco.

The plight of Beedi working sector makes an interesting lesson added to India’s globalization experience.The declining sector now become the earning source of women only.men has been replaced and displaced.Ever shrinking Beedi sector makes an acute rehabilitation issue in the state.Anyhow, the sector is likely to be disappeared in the coming days.When tobacco smoking thrives in India and in the state ,Beedi tobacco has been marginalized. Women seems almost on the margins of being displaced from the jobs.Their agency in the sector has been completely absent.From being the sole source of earnings of a locality ,Beedi has confined to the disappearing employment sector of poor and the marginalized women.Our development process has been skewed and savage.It has partitioned our economy and society .It has enforced a wild justice in our mind.The plight of Beedi is a telling lesson to our unfulfilled dreams.

Objectives.

The research proposal has following objectives-

1.Findout the politico-economic challenges faced by Malabar beedi sector in the era of globalization.

2.Understand the dynamics of socio-economic and political profile of beediworkers in Dharmadam area.

3.To explore the collective agency of beedi workers in the time of globalization.

4.Findout the dynamics of gender factor in beedi working sector in Dharmadam area.

5.Analyze relationship between political violence in Kannur and beedi working sector.

Hypotheses

1.Politico-economic negligence has enabled globalised tobacco loot the traditional beedi sector of Malabar area.

2.Lack of collective agency has profound implication for the present plight of beedi workers in the Dharmadam area.

3.Beedi working sector has become the disappearing and exploiting employment sector of poor women.

4.The socio-economic and political profile of beedi workers has immense root in the political violence in Kannur area.

Methodology

Broadly the work will be conducted by applying empirical research method.Primary data originates from two sources-scanning of primary records related to the problem and survey research method.Survey method will be applied by categorizing political leaders,trade union leaders,beedi workers, family members of beedi workers,women beedi workers and smokers. Through participant observation, visit of bedi factory is innevitable in the research.

DELOCATING THE SPACE OF WOMEN’S MOVEMENT IN KERALA’S PUBLIC SPHERE

GAYATHRI O,
LECTURER IN POLITICS,
GOVT. COLLEGE MADAPPALLY.


Seminar paper presented at national seminar organised by St.George College,Aruvithura,Kottayam,18/09/09

Social movements have enabled the development of wide ranging alliances that have led to tremendous social, political and economic changes. Social movement and their social bases are not recent, new and modern data of human society. Social movements have an existence independent of their social biographers and historians. The imminence of social movements and the basic social conditions of which movements are expressive extensions tend to lie deep in and are inalienably linked with certain relatively permanent, generally inevitable and stubborn social structural contradictions and conflicts in the make-up of society. Social contradictions and conflict are in the very nature of the founding of human society and social organization


Discrimination, deprivation, exclusion and exploitation are endemic to every society, which leads to frustration, anger and aggression. Those who are subjected to injustice and oppression tend to rebel and revolt. These reactions culminate in assertion which give rise to people’s movements. But social movements are not an everyday phenomenon. Discrimination and deprivation always do not lead to protest and aggression. Only when people become conscious of these inequalities and injustices and mobilise and organise themselves to struggles against those who subject them to servitude and bondage, people’s movements takes place. Moreover when the disadvantaged and the downtrodden see that another alternative is both possible and viable they try to overthrow the existing social order.


The Genesis of Women’s Movements


The assumed interest in this paper proposes that women’s movement originate not as an opulent and elegant group with a sole women’s agitational consciousness but as objects of massive struggles for colossal social change. In the due course, women preserve and promote an “interest”. Similarly, the fashionable idea of “Women’s interest” affiliates to identity and gender and assume a twist. In the meantime, gender become the sole motivational spirit and receives some unique characteristics peculiar to women’s movement. The demand will be to engender every aspect of social, economic and political existence. This may be called “gender syndrome” and will be the nemesis to all forces impeding women’s insurrection.


Only a couple of social movement have proliferated in as many parts of the world as women’s movements have for all these, movements share certain broad commonalities they differ radically along many dimensions. Paradoxically, women’s movements that ultimately define themselves as autonomous from male-dominated political parties, institutions, national freedom movements, social reforms movements as spoted in different parts of the world are often closely intertwined with broader movements for social change. For, women’s movements are associated with a broad range of struggles, for national liberation, human rights, democratization, serial reform and political self-rule.


Women have increasingly vocalized their demands in the course of nationalist struggles. It grew out of the movement for self-determination. Similarly, women’s movements have often been closely connected with working- class struggles. Women played important role in struggles against class and gender inequality in many industrial sectors. Were they took active involvement in peasant organizations. Their joint actions instrumental in bringing about some beneficial legislation – higher wages, health benefits, longer materially leaves and equal pay for equal work.


Women’s movement in india


The Indian women's movement has a long and rich history linked to the social reform movements of the nineteenth century and the political challenge to British colonialism in the twentieth, with the first all-India women's organizations being formed in the 1920s[i]. The beginnings of the contemporary women's movement are usually traced to the early 1970s, when women were particularly active in radical protests against the Indian state. The first new groups comprised women from Maoist movements in Hyderabad (Progressive Organization of Women) and Maharashtra (Purogami Stree Sanghatana and Stree Mukti Sanghatana), while women's issues were given national legitimacy by a report on the status of women published in 1974 and by the United Nations Declaration of 1975 as International Women's Year. Driven underground, along with other political organizations between 1975 and 1977, with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's declaration of a state of emergency, the women's movement really exploded on the Indian political scene after 1977. Today the movement exists in highly decentralized form with hundreds of organizations in both urban and rural areas throughout the country, including the women's fronts of socialist and communist parties, independent trade unions, women's wings of mass organizations such as Shetkari Sanghatana in Maharashtra and Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini in Bihar, and smaller autonomous counseling centers and agitational groups.[1]


Space of Womens Movement in Kerala’s Public Sphere


Kerala, a federal state in South India, is a unique location to investigate and deepen the understanding of the relationship between gender and power. The state of Kerala has achieved the highest status of women in India. Inspite of this there is a considerable low participation of women in the political sphere and an increase in social problems, such as violence against women, and high suicide level. This questions the liberal assumption that formal equality, in terms of women’s high status, produces changes in the power relations between women and men. This chapter discusses this paradox and looks at the two collective actors that are politicising gender relations: the left women’s movement and the autonomous feminist network. Their processes of framing and articulating gendered political discourses reflect the tension and contradictions between identity politics and party politics, between the civil society and the state and between women’s status and power.

The space of women in every epoch of social moments in Kerala has been hijacked by the prevailing dominant sentiments. These sentiments are fabricated out of a combination of conflicting elements. These elements are constructed either deliberately or naturally evolved. All these constructed elements are picked-up in linear upward tendencies. In fact, the women question is projected out of a binary opposition of good or bad framework. Whether in tradition or in modernity or in globalized world, the plight of women is not decided solely by women, but by force beyond her comprehension.

The west –inspired ideas of social reforms in Kerala were a full articulation of liberal values in social institutions and practices, and questions whether such articulation was infact at all possible in the socio-political conditions created by colonialism. The frame work in which reform was initiated and it’s limited agenda was itself inadequate to bring about radical changes in the position of women.For instance,almost all indicators of empowerment measure an amazing and surprising status for women in Kerala. Whether, it is education, health, sex ratio, sex preference, life expectancy, all tools of measurement of empowerment place women at high echelons of Social hierarchy. There are no social impediments, which prevent women from enrolling in engineering, medicine, B-School, liberal arts and in a couple of technical institutions. Women even outnumber their biological counterpart in certain layers of education especially liberal arts and science. The prevailing gender status of women in Kerala has been conspicuously decorated and upheld in high esteem by popular and mainstream literature, mini-screen and historionics, and arts and sculpture from very early period. In Kerala, there is no seeming social taboos which prevent women’s entry into the mainstream society. In short, Kerala has the elementary pre-requisites for women’s equality, literacy, education, and freedom from legal inhibition against women’s education or employment.In fact,through a series of agitations and confrontations, Malayalee women who were on a receptive mood to the twenty first century, remained under the guise of a pseudo projection and hollow model which was built- in by reforms, political activism, vigilantism, education and uprisings.


The “women in movement syndrome” of various social movements had highlighted droves of issues. Most of these ventilations were concerning inferior social position, employment, ideology, political awareness, family and other social problems. Unfortunately, the ‘women interest’ has been subsequently hijacked by powerful male articulations and concealed patriarchal tendencies. In other words women did not organize their own with ideology and identity. From the outset women’s movement in Kerala has been defined in the larger frame of social reforms.It has been subsequently affiliated and co-opted by political parties,organizations of all sorts etc.Hence women question has been always defined in terms of what she is denied and deprived.In the process of giving meaning to women’s movement it faces an absence in itself.It has not been self revealed and self present. The movements neither affiliated an identity to its fore, nor cultivated an agency for women. Instead,women’s movements remained dormant and static.


Simultaneously there exists stark contradiction in the dominant discourses of the empowered women in Kerala. It is found that in Kerala women assume new roles without having confronted or questioned the ideologically or socially constructed basic inequality of the structure in which they found themselves. A woman’s identity and the course of her life are normally to be determined by her husband and his family and therefore, marriage is the single most determining event in a woman’s life. For, the Kerala society has created differential norms and practices, structures and institutional images and perception of women. In this process, women have been subordinated to men through denial of dominant areas of expressions, creativity and acquisition or power.


In the literature on international women's movements, politically affiliated women's groups (particularly groups on the left) are seen as having a tendency to focus on general issues of poverty and inequality, including gender concerns when convenient, but often subordinating the "strategic" interests of women to the larger interests of class. Politically autonomous groups, on the other hand, are considered to be more explicitly feminist. They do not have to subordinate women's interests to those of the party or for political expediency, and are thus able to focus on issues most threatening to men and patriarchal institutions, above all issues of the body, sexuality, and violence (Kruks, Rapp, and Young, 1989; Alvarez, 1990; Molyneux, 1989). Assumptions commonly made about party-affiliated women's groups are, with their focus on work, poverty, literacy, and ideology, while assumptions about autonomous groups are confirmed by their emphasis on violence against women. It makes manifest that the outcome of one or another form of organizing can only be evaluated within the context of the localized political field. Some fields will be more receptive to autonomous organizing and others less. Some fields will impel party-affiliated organizations to be rigid about women's issues and others will not. There are clearly trade-offs involved in choosing one form of organizing over another. A focus on fields allows to avoid simplistic and one-dimensional conclusions about the kinds of organizations and activism that best represent and promote women's interests. For it is the nature of the field, as we can see, that shapes the effects of organization type, be it autonomous or affiliated; the type of organization does not necessarily have independent effects. If the divergences in the two women's movements are better explained by differences in political fields than by differences in lived experiences, we need to ask how the two fields are structured and how they affect the organizations and movements within their influence.


Conclusion


The women’s movements and its space has been hijacked by the prominence of party politics and co-optation strategies of state and other organizations in kerala. The tension between autonomous women's organizations and politically affiliated women's organizations is one of historic proportions.The debate between autonomous and affiliated organizing includes problems of political loyalty and the role of men in women's organizations. In particular, the struggles between women working within the parties of the left and women organizing autonomously have been of decisive importance in the ideological debates that rocks the women's movements all through kerala. Despite women had been mobilized in all walks of life in kerala , the space of women in kerala apparently remains almost congested and suffocated. The space of women is marginalized, distorted or negated within various masculinist practices in the public sphere.



[1] Raka Rai.,Fields of Protest:Women’s Movements in India.London:University of Minnesota Press



Endnotes


[i] . The first women's organization was the Bharat Stri Mahamandal, formed in 1917, followed by the Women's Indian Association (WIA) and the All India Women's Conference (AIWC) in 1927. Both the AIWC and the WIA began with "women's issues" such as education and social and legal reix>rm, but refused to admit any alliance with Western feminists. Although officially apolitical, there were always strong links between these organizations and the nationalist movement. The AIWC became the best-known recognized organization representing women and grew from an initial membership of 5,000 to over 25,000 in 1945 (Omvedt, 1987). While they were surely influenced by the tradition of male reformers, their demands were eventually far more radical. Particular victories for the AIWC included the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929, struggles against purdah, and the campaign for women's suffrage (Forbes, 1981). Alongside the AIWC, however, there grew a Communist-led women's movement. In Bengal, they formed the Mahila Atmaraksha Samiti; in Punjab, the Women's Self-Defense League; in Andhra, the Mahila Sangam (Chakravarty, 1980).


Bibliography


1.Alvarez, Sonia E. 1990. Engendering Democracy in Brazil. Princeton, N.J.: PrincetonUniversity Press

2.Garner, Roberta Ash, and Mayer N. Zald. 1985. "The Political Economy of Social Movement Sectors." In Social Movements in an Organizational Society, edited by Mayer N. Zald and John D. McCarthy. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books.

3.Kruks, Sonia, Rayna Rapp, and Marilyn B. Young. 1989. Promissory Notes: Women in the Transition to Socialism. New York: Monthly Review Press.


4.Molyneux, Maxine. 1989. "Women's Role in the Nicataguan Revolutionary Process: The EarlyYears." In Promissory Notes: Women in the Transition to Socialism, edited by SoniaKruks, Rayna Rapp, and Marilyn B. Young. New York: Monthly Review Press.


5.Omvedt, Gail. 1979. We Will Smash This Prison. Bombay: Orient Longman.


6.Forbes, Geraldine. 1981. "The Indian Women's Movement: A Struggle for Women'sRights or National Liberation." In The Extended Family: Women and PoliticalParticipation in India and Pakistan, edited by Gail Minault. Delhi: Chanakya.


7.Chakravarty, Renu. 1980. Communists in the Indian Women's Movement. New Delhi:People's Publishing House.


8.Rai, Raka .1999.Fields of Protest:Women’s Movements in India.London:University of Minnesota Press

CARBON TRADING AND INDIA’S FOREIGN POLICY

BIJU P R
LECTURER IN POLITICAL SCIENCE,
GOVT.BRENNEN COLLEGE,
THALASSERY.

Seminar paper presented at State Level Seminar organized in St.Mary's College,Sultan Battery,17th September,2009,


Increasing industrial activity and burning of fossil fuels and deforestation have resulted in higher level emissions of carbon dioxide and other green house gases which eventually led to global warming. Concerns about global warming and climate changes were subsequently directed to a growing debate on the impact of development on the environment. Global warming and climate change require all societies to work together. While the major responsibility for the accumulation of green house gasses in the atmosphere lies with the developed countries, its adverse affects are felt most severely by developing countries like India. When we speak of ‘shared responsibility’, it must include the international community’s shared responsibility to ensure the right to development of the developing countries. Development is the best form of adaptation to climate change.

Control of climate change and global warming without compromising the development requirements becomes the greatest challenge that India’s foreign policy ever faced. For academicians and students, it is in the analysis and working of these challenges that the opportunities, threats and joys of diplomacy and foreign policy lie. Our generation has been fortunate in having lived through the fastest ever period of change in India’s history of foreign policy.

Perhaps the simplest definition of foreign policy is that it is the attempt by a state to maximize its national interest in the external or international environment. Even this simple definition suggests some of the complexity of this attempt. The definition assumes a commonly agreed definition of the national interest in the country. Foreign policy is an ends and means problem, a problem of achieving certain national goals with the limited means available. Unlike domestic policy, the attempt to attain one’s goals has to be made in an environment which is largely outside of one’s own control. For instance, if any one state in the international system attains absolute security for itself, there would be absolute insecurity for every other state in the world. So merely maximizing one’s own interest competitively will not suffice. One needs to include some measure of cooperation, or at least of alliance building or working together. Of the two basic goals of the state, security and prosperity, one, security, is often presented as a zero sum game. The other, prosperity, requires states to cooperate with each other. Both goals can therefore pull one’s foreign policy in opposite directions.And this competition and cooperation with other states to maximize one’s own interests takes place in a perpetually changing external environment and while the states themselves gain and lose relative and absolute power. As they change, states change or modify their definitions of national interest.

India’s Foreign Policy Today

The true realization of our foreign policy potential had to wait for the end of the bipolar world in 1989 and our economic reform policies, openingup the Indian economy to the world. Historically speaking, India has been most prosperous and stable when she has been most connected with the rest of the world.

In many ways, the period after 1991 has been the most favorable to our quest to develop India. The post Cold War external environment of a globalizing world, without rival political alliances, gave India the opportunity to improve relations with all the major powers. The risk of a direct conflict between two or more major powers had also diminished due to the interdependence created by globalization. And the strength of capital and trade flows was directly beneficial to emerging economies like India, China and others. We saw the evolving situation as one in which there is an opportunity for India. The consistent objective of our foreign policy was and remains poverty eradication and rapid and inclusive economic development. If we are to eradicate mass poverty by 2020, we need to keep growing our economy at 8-10% each year. This requires a peaceful and supportive global environment in general and a peaceful periphery in particular. The period since 1991 has therefore seen a much more active Indian engagement with the neighbours, whether through repeated attempts by successive governments to improve relations with Pakistan, or the border related CBMs with China, or free trade agreements with neighbours starting with Sri Lanka in 1998, or the Ganga Waters Treaty with Bangladesh.

The period since 1991 has been a period of remarkable change in the scale of our ambitions, and in our capacity to seek to achieve them. The international situation made possible the rapid development of our relationships with each of the major powers. Equally important was another necessary condition which gave India space to work in: India’s rapid economic and social transformation. As a result of twenty five years of 6% growth and our reforms since 1991, India is today in a position to engage with the world in an unprecedented manner. Our engagement with the global economy is growing rapidly, with trade in goods and services now exceeding US$ 330 billion. Our needs from the world have changed, as has our capability. India can do and consider things that we could not do or consider twenty years ago. This is reflected in how India perceives itsown future, its ties with its neighbourhood and its approach to the larger international order.

Today, however, it seems that we may be on the cusp of another change in the nature of the world situation. Looking at the world from India, it often seems that we are witness to the collapse of the Westphalian state system and redistribution in the global balance of power leading to the rise of major new powers and forces. The twin processes of the world economic crisis and economic inter-dependence have resulted in a situation where Cold War concepts like containment have very little relevance and where no power is insulated from global developments. The interdependence brought about by globalization imposes limits beyond which tensions among the major powers are unlikely to escalate. But equally, no one power can hope to solve issues by itself, no matter how powerful it is. What seems likely, and is in fact happening in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, is that major powers come together to form coalitions to deal with issues where they have a convergence of interests, despite differences on other issues or in broader approach. In other words, what we see is the emergence of a global order marked by the preponderance of several major powers, with minimal likelihood of direct conflict amongst these powers, but where both cooperation and competition among them are intense. The result is a de-hyphenation of relationships with each other, of each major power engaging with and competing with all the others, in a situation that might perhaps be described as “general un-alignment”.
Looking ahead, the real factors of risk that threaten systemic stability come from larger, global issues like terrorism, energy security and environmental and climate change. With globalization and the spread of technology, threats have also globalised and now span borders. These are issues that will impact directly on India’s ability to grow and expand our strategic autonomy. It is also obvious that no single country can deal with these issues alone. They require global solutions.

Energy Security and Climate Change

As for energy security, this is one issue which combines an ethical challenge to all societies with an opportunity to provide for the energy so necessary for development. For India, clean, convenient and affordable energy is a critical necessity if we are to improve the lives of our people.Today, India’s per-capita energy consumption is less than a third of the global average. (Our per capita consumption is only 500 kgoe compared to a global average of nearly 1800 kgoe). For India a rapid increase in energy use per capita is imperative to realize our national development goals.

The Market Approach Under Kyoto Protocol .

The Kyoto Protocol was initiated by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and ratified (agreed to in principle) by 181 countries and the European Union as a whole, individual entity in 1997, and was put into effect in 2005. This protocol was proposed by the international community to address and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that have led to global climate change. Member countries are placed into different categories; Annex I countries make up the industrialized nations. Annex II countries are developed countries that provide financial support to the developing countries. The Annex II grouping consists of countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The third and final category makes up the developing nations, who have no limitations on greenhouse gas emissions as emissions are an essential by product to building a stable economy and raising their citizens out of poverty. Once these countries become “developed” they are then subject to the greenhouse caps that Annex I and II countries currently have. Many countries are both Annex I and II countries. The allowable emissions for member countries are between 6 and 8% less than their 1990 emission levels; meaning the limit is different for every member country; keeping in mind that developing nations are exempt from emission caps and are inelligible to sell carbon credits. It is up to each individual country to regulate their industrial outputs to meet the 1990 levels of emissions .

The Kyoto Protocol has some flexibility, allowing credits to be obtained as part of the cap-and-trade system (original assigned quotas) and as the result of a project that offsets emissions. There are three methods by which this can be accomplished: Joint Implementation---a developed country, or operator within that country, seeking to avoid the costs of domestically reducing polluting gases, can instead set up a project to reduce emissions in another country and receive emissions credits. Clean Development Mechanism---a developed country or operator can sponsor an emissions reduction project in a developing country and receive emissions credits. Emissions Trading---participating countries and operators can trade credits over the international carbon-credit exchanges, allowing those with an emissions allowance shortfall to purchase credits from those with a surplus .

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) allows governments or private entities in industrialized countries to implement emission reduction projects in developing countries in order to meet their emission objectives. The industrialized nations receive credit for these projects in the form of "certified emission reductions" (CERs). The purpose of the CDM is to promote "sustainable development" while contributing to the objective of the FCCC. In contrast, the purpose of JI, according to the Protocol, is simply to help Annex I countries meet their emission commitments. Developing countries including India have been absolved of any responsibility towards reducing emissions in the first commitment period 2008-2012, of the Kyoto Protocol.

C D M AND India

Increased energy efficiency, greater reliance on renewable energy sources, and the use of cleaner technologies together bring enormous economic, social, and environmental benefits that can lead the country on a much-desired road to sustainable development. Clean Development Mechanism can be one of the major tools to bring in the above benefits for developing countries including India.

India entered the CDM market early on with the submission of a new methodology in April 2003. Since then, the Indian CDM pipeline diversified into projects from 30 economic sectors, mainly small (on average 70,000 credits per year), although the observed trend is that it is increasing. This is not surprising as India’s per capita carbon dioxide emission is very low — only 1.21 tonnes per annum, roughly one-fourth of the world average per capita emission of 4.50 tonnes per annum. However, in aggregate terms, India is the fifth-largest emitter of fossil fuel-derived carbon dioxide, and its total emissions are growing rapidly. Not surprisingly, India is now under severe international pressure to accept binding commitments for emission reduction in the post-2012 phase of the Kyoto Protocol (KP).However, cuts in absolute emissions are not only morally unjust to impose on the part of the developed countries, but also practically suicidal for India to accept them. But due consideration must be given to potentially beneficial policy instruments, such as a participation in an internationally tradable emission permits regime, or, what is alternatively referred to as, a global cap-and-trade system of emission permits

Challenge and the Policy Scenario

The foreign policy scenario of carbon trading can be understood on the backdrop of the flexibity mechanism implied in the market approach under Kyoto Protocol.

Policy scenario I-In the context of carbon trading what matters most is the three flexibility accorded to developed countries in meeting their reduction commitments.Among the flexibilities emission trading and joint implementation are exchanged between developed countries where as the third category clean development mechanism requires a partnership between developed and developing countries.The paradox is that at the sametime there exists parallel market for carbon trading among the developing countries especially in asian countries like india,china,japan.The differential treatment between developed and developing countries in the flexibility mechanism therefore seems directly corresponding to the existing unequal exchange in world trade.

Policy scenario II-In carbon trading,there exists free and open access between developed countries,where as it is not so open in the case of developing countries.Therefore it creates a situation in which what is not used in one part is normally taken to use in another part of the world.Thus the exchange of carbon credits deliver a transferable right to dumb toxic elements in to the environment and vegetation.In short the scheme can achieve a maximum of carbon neutrality that 9is there is no improvement in the rate of net emission reduction.

Policy scenario III-developing countries especially India has commitment to reduce there carbon emissions under the Unframework Convention on Climate Change,eventhough this commitment is not presently quantified.In future,after the commitment period 2008-2012, it is anticipated that Indian foreign policy has to face immense pressure from the international community to have quantified limitation or redcuction commitments

Conclusion

The foreign policy issue and concerns related to the implementation of emission trading in India is attributed to this context.Acces to the flexibility is unequal.At the same time,developing countries have a parallel market for carbon trading among themselves with potential to implemenmt it especially among india and china ,who are the largest sellers of carbon credits and japan which is the largest buyer of the carbon credits.Since carbon trading is not a part of the global trade as conditioned in WTO ,the scheme provides better opportunities for vested interest to hinder Indian market. Infact the trade seems to carry negative environmental, social, political and economic consequences for India and poses great foreign policy challenges

Endnotes

The regulated green house gases are Carbon Dioxide,Methane,Nitrous Oxide,Sulphur Hexafluoride, Hydrofluorocarbons, and Perfluorocarbons and commonly referred to as ‘Carbon’.
The Kyoto Protocol includes three so-called ‘flexible mechanisms’, instruments which allow governments in industrialised countries to achieve parts of their emission reduction commitments under the Kyoto Protocol through projects abroad rather than through action or policy changes at home.

The emission trading system will allow industrialised countries to buy and sell emission credits. Countries that keep emissions below their agreed target will be able to sell the excess emissions to countries that find it more difficult or more expensive to meet their own targets.

Joint Implementation mechanism will allow industrialised countries to gain credits for financing emission reduction projects in other industrialised countries with Kyoto targets.

Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) will allow industrialised countries to gain credits for financing emission reduction projects in countries without Kyoto targets. The CDM was added at a late stage of the negotiations that culminated in the Kyoto Protocol. The CDM goes back to a Brazilian proposal to create a "Clean Development Fund" as part of the Kyoto Protocol. This proposal, supported by G-77/China, was based upon penalizing those industrialised countries not complying with the emission targets set in the Kyoto Protocol. The resources of the fund were to be made available to non-industrialised countries for use in climate change mitigation projects (90%) and projects to help countries fight the consequences of climate change such as floods, droughts – the so-called adaptation projects. Industrialised countries opposed the idea and the Clean Development Mechanism was created as a compromise.

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POLITICS AND MEDIA

BIJU P .R,

LECTURER IN POLITICAL SCIENCE,

GOVT.BRENNEN COLLEGE,

THALASSERY.


Course proposal approved and financed by KSHEC to be designed.

Section 1: Target Group



This course is offered to students who undergo undergraduate programme in Political Science as well it can be offered as politics complementary course for students of Economics, Sociology, Journalism,History and English.

Section 2: Learning Objectives

The course has the following course objectives.
Several major questions are addressed. First, what is the nature of news in our society? How do our beliefs and political orientations influence how we respond to the media? What are the consequences of political advertising for election outcomes? Finally, how do political ads compare to the “traditional” mass media when it comes to citizen decision-making? Through addressing such questions, the issue of whether the media – and political ads – provide citizens the information necessary to participate fully in democratic politics is evaluated.

1.To help students learn how social scientists ask and answer interesting questions about
Politics.
2.To help students understand how the interaction among journalists, politicians, and citizens shapes contemporary politics
3.To understand how political advertising affects individuals’ decision making as well as the rules regulating such advertising
4.To help students understand the development of the mass media and its role in Politics.
5.To understand how spin-doctors hijack public opinion and distort political news
6.To help students become a savvy consumer of political news beyond the class room.

Section 3: Outline of the topics to be covered

The philosophy that gives shape to the understanding of the process of political discourse in India is grounded in the notion of a "marketplace of ideas" in which free expression of ideas, even repugnant ones, is presumed to lead to a consensus of the majority and an expression of the will of the people.There are very few, however, who would argue that Indian political discourse actually consists of a free and open exchange of ideas, and blame is placed in a variety of corners. Critics on the right accuse the mass media of possessing an inherent "liberal bias" while those on the left argue that the economic domination of mass media by large corporations systematically eliminates views incompatible with the interests of those corporations, the wealthy, and entrenched political interest groups. Other critical perspectives exist as well — but the point that may be taken from many of them is the centrality of the mass media to the practice of politics, and the importance of understanding how media and political institutions interact in order to understand how political discourse — the debates around social goals, priorities, and policies — is enacted.The course includes a wide variety of topics which are specifically related to politicaladvertisements in democratic Indian society:-

Democracy, Election and Media,Public Opinion, Propaganda and Agenda Setting, Election and Political Communication,Voting Behaviour, Political Advertising, Political Debates, Newspapers and Political Communication, Televised Political Communication, Internet as a Tool for Political Communication, Media and Election Coverage -Political Columns and Commentaries, Editorials on Poll Issues, Political Cartoons, Election Analysis, Election run– up, Post-Election Analysis, Media and Psephology - Opinion Poll and Exit Poll.

Section 4: Course transactions; proposed activities

The classroom will serve as the locus for a number of activities in this course — the presentation of lectures by the teacher and others, the viewing of relevant news and features, and the discussion of class material as students articulate their questions about and their understandings of what is discussed about.

1.The Newspaper

It should come as no surprise that in the course Media and Politics, students are expected to keep up with political news. Reading a newspaper is the best way to do this. Discussions in class will frequently touch on current events, often as a way to illustrate a concept from lecture or a reading. Not only will regularly consuming the news bring course material to life, it will undoubtedly make the class more interesting. Students are free to read (in print or online) any paper(s) of their choosing, with the following limitation. You need to choose a news source that includes frequent coverage of national politics. For that reason, The following are a few suggestions, any of which are excellent sources of political news:
http://beta.thehindu.com/,http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/,http://www.thestatesman.org/,http://www.deccanchronicle.com/,http://www.indianexpress.com/

2.Televised News Programmes,Discussions,Debates

NDTV24X7,CNN IBN,TIMES NOW,

3.Publish news paper once a month from your Department as part of the course.

Section 5: Method of assessment/evaluation

Evaluation is based on grading and the evaluation scheme contain two parts:

Grading: 1. Internal evaluation,2. External evaluation.
Weightage of Internal and External evaluation.
Evaluation Weightage-Internal 1 (or 25 %) External -3 (or 75 %)
Both internal and external evaluation shall be carried out using Direct Grading System.
Internal evaluation
Component of internal evaluation-Components Weightage
a. assignments 1,b. seminars 1,c.Test papers 2,d .Attendance 1
External Evaluation
The external evaluation is to be conducted with question papers set by external experts. The evaluation of answer scripts shall be done by examiners bases on well defined scheme of valuation.

Direct Grading System: Direct grading system based on a 5 point scale is used to evaluate the performance (External and Internal) of students.

A. Excellent 4. 3.5 to 4.00
B .Very Good 3. 2.5 to 3.49
C .Good 2. 1.5 to 2.49
D .Average 1. 0.50 to1.49
E .Poor 0. 0.00 to 0.49

Each course is evaluated by assigning a letter grade (A, B, C, D and E) to that course by the method of direct grading. The internal (weightage 1) and external (weightage 3) components of a course are separately graded and then combined to get the grade of the course after taking into account of their weightage. An aggregate of C grade is required in each course for a pass and also for awarding a degree.

Section 6: Relevance of the proposed course

The media have long been recognized as a key part of politics in India. Reflecting the oft-cited designation of the press as the “fourth branch” of government, political observers from the earliest days of the republic noted the indispensable role of the mass media in a democratic society. Newspapers, moreover, have a long tradition as agents of partisan warfare, promoting and perpetuating party loyalties and voter turnout in the post-independent India. In other words, it is difficult to comprehend politics in India without understanding the mass media.The purpose of this course is to examine the influence of the mass media on political discourse, particularly in how media structures, media routines, and the professional practices of journalists and politicians interact to shape political and public decision-making.In most case the real news is not the news that people come to know.

Section 7: Reading List

Meyer, P. (1990). Polling as political science and polling as journalism. Public Opinion Quarterly, 54, 451-459.
Cook, Timothy E. 1998. Governing with the News: The News Media as a Political Institution.Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Chapter 1: “Introduction: Why Don’t We Call Journalists Political Actors?”)
Leighley, Jan E. 2004. Mass Media and Politics: A Social Science Perspective. New York:
Houghton Mifflin Company.
Braian Mcnair, ‘An Introduction to Political Communication’, Routledge, London, 2003.
D. Nimmo, ‘ Handbook of Political Communication Research’2007.
Doris A Graber, ‘Media Power in Politics’,Mcmillan ,New Delhi,1990
R. Negrine, ‘The Communication of Politics’, Sage, New Delhi, 1996.
Swanston and Nimmo, ‘ New Directions in Political Communication’, Sage Publications, NewDelhi, 1990.
Kiran Prasad,‘Political Communication,The Indian Experience’,B.R Publishing Corporation, New Delhi (Vol.1 and Vol. 2), 2003.
Asharani Mathur, [ed.], ‘The Indian Media Illusion, Delusion & Reality’, Rupa & Co, New Delhi, 2006.
Denis McQuail, ‘Mass Communication Theory’, Vistaar Publicatuions, New Delhi, 2005.
John Lloyd, ‘What the Media are doing to our Politics’, Constable London, 2004.
Rob Armstrong, ‘Covering Politics’, Surjeet Publications, New Delhi, 2005