September 20, 2011

INDIA SET TO UNVEIL NEW QUOTAS FOR GOVERNMENT JOBS AND UNIVERSITY PLACES

[If approved, the move will make university places even harder to win for middle-class students who already must achieve pass-marks as high as 100 per cent for some colleges. It will also further swell the country's bloated bureaucracy as it faces its fiercest challenge over widespread corruption.]

By Dean Nelson

Mayawati, Chief Minister of the northern Indian state of 
Uttar Pradesh  Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGEScaption
India is to unveil controversial new quotas guaranteeing government jobs and university places for Muslims and poor upper caste Brahmins despite fierce opposition from its middle-classes.

Opponents denounced the move as an attempt to buy "vote banks" in next year's key election contest in Uttar Pradesh, where the ruling Congress Party is trying to regain ground lost to Mayawati, the 'untouchable' chief minister whose lower-caste-based party is now targeting other poor minority groups.

If approved, the move will make university places even harder to win for middle-class students who already must achieve pass-marks as high as 100 per cent for some colleges. It will also further swell the country's bloated bureaucracy as it faces its fiercest challenge over widespread corruption.

India's 'reservation culture' is deeply entrenched and dates back to British colonial rule when officials introduced quotas to share coveted government jobs among rival caste groups.

But it has mushroomed in recent years with the rise of caste-based political parties at the expense of the Congress and its Hindu nationalist BJP opposition. Today, just under half of all government-funded higher education places are reserved for 'untouchable' Dalits, 'other backward castes' and tribal people.

In local council elections, 33 per cent of seats are reserved for women, while other quotas are available for the descendants of 'freedom fighters', Indian emigrants, returning emigrants, the disabled, and some religious minorities.

India's parliament, the Lok Sabha, has 79 seats reserved for lower 'scheduled' castes, 41 for 'backward' tribes, and two seats set aside for representatives of its 'Anglo-Indian' community – the descendants of mixed British-Indian marriages.

For many hopefuls, a government job is regarded as a secure, influential and high-status position while for others it is seen as an opportunity to earn 'undeclared income'. Now, the Congress-led government has announced plans for new quotas for Muslims, while Mayawati, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh calling for reserved government jobs and college places for both Muslims and poor high-caste Brahmins.

Minorities minister Salman Khurshid cited the example of Andhra Pradesh, which has a significant Muslim minority, where four per cent of government jobs are reserved.

"We will follow the Andhra Pradesh model quite closely There will be separate reservations," he said.

Ram Gopal Yadav, general secretary of the Samajwadi Party, the second largest in Uttar Pradesh, said the move was a cynical gambit to win the state's Muslim vote in the run-up to next Spring's election. Muslims, who make up just under 20 per cent of the state's 200 million people, could determine the election's outcome.

"When Mayawati came to power she abolished 16 quotas for other backward castes. This is vote-bank politics, an election gimmick," he said.

Professor R. Radhakrishnan, an expert on caste reservations, said the benefits of quota meant everyone now wants to be from a reserved class. "We are heading to a point when everybody in India will have some kind of reservation," he said.

But leading commentator, M.J Akbar, said the reservation system has served low caste Dalits well and is now so deeply ingrained that no Indian politician would be brave enough to challenge it. He said the benefits should be shared by all groups which suffered discrimination.

"If other underprivileged groups can be uplifted by quotas, why not Muslims?" he asked.


[Behind the scenes, many experts are advising that arguments over the future of the protocol are likely to be fruitless. Sir David King, the British government's former chief scientific advisor, told the Guardian recently that the protocol should be dropped, as it was only an impediment to reaching a new international agreement on averting global warming.]

By Fiona Harvey

President Barack Obama's chief climate change negotiator has issued a warning over the future of the Kyoto protocol, casting doubt on a key plank of international climate talks this December in South Africa.

Todd Stern, the US president's envoy for climate change, said the European Union was the only remaining "major player" that would potentially support a continuation of the protocol after its provisions expire in 2012. The lack of support from other countries bodes ill for the forthcoming talks at Durban.
The Kyoto protocol is an international agreement that imposes limits on the greenhouse gas emissions from some signee countries that was negotiated in the Japanese city of Kyoto in 1997.

Kyoto is the only treaty which binds nearly all of the world's industrialised countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions but Stern cast doubt on its future.
"Of the major players in the Kyoto protocol, my sense is that the EU is the only one still considering signing up in some fashion to a second commitment period. Japan is clearly not, Russia is not, Canada is not and Australia appears unlikely."
His words were the broadest hint yet by one of the most influential figures at the talks that the negotiations may stall unless the Kyoto protocol is dropped.
Behind the scenes, many experts are advising that arguments over the future of the protocol are likely to be fruitless. Sir David King, the British government's former chief scientific advisor, told the Guardian recently that the protocol should be dropped, as it was only an impediment to reaching a new international agreement on averting global warming.

The future of the protocol is a key question at the United Nations climate negotiations, because most big developing countries have stipulated that the 1997 treaty must be continued as a condition of any future climate change agreement.

Those developing countries are furious that rich countries are thinking of dumping the hard-fought protocol, which they insist must be the foundation of any future agreement.
Disagreement between developed and developing countries on whether to ditch the protocol was one of the biggest reasons why the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009 failed to reach a clear conclusion.

The US does not take part in Kyoto protocol discussions, because it has never ratified the treaty and the current administration has followed its predecessor in vowing not to do so.
However, as the chief climate change negotiator for the world's biggest economy, Stern's views carry enormous weight in the debate on possible future international measures.
"The Kyoto protocol is one of the toughest if not the toughest part of the negotiations," Stern admitted. "The US is not part [of those discussions] but what happens to [the protocol] is relevant to whether there will be understandings on future regimes [and these] are still controversial and difficult subjects."
He said that the US had participated, in recent days, in international "conversations about future regimes" on controlling greenhouse gas emissions, and the question of whether there should be a single global regime on cutting emissions or one that could run concurrently with a continuation of the Kyoto protocol. Other issues discussed included whether any future regime should be legally binding.
However, Stern said there had been no discussions on trying to find a way forward among a smaller number of countries, outside the UN process. Some countries have privately criticised the UN process for the unwieldy and bureaucratic nature of its negotiations.
Stern warned that the US would not countenance a new climate regime that contained "escape hatches" for some countries, and hinted that countries now labelled as "developing" should be drawn into taking on obligations on emissions.
"It could not be on the basis of categories of countries that were articulated in 1992 [when the parent treaty to the Kyoto protocol was signed]," he said. In that parent treaty, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, to which the US is a signatory, economies such as ChinaIndia and Brazil were judged to be developed and thus escaped obligations to cut their emissions.
However, the rapid growth of these economies in the past two decades has changed the international scene, in the US view.
Stern's words were an indication that big emerging economies such as China – the world's second biggest economy by output – must take on legally binding obligations if the US were also to consider doing so.
At the negotiations in Copenhagen and last year in Cancun, China, India and a few other big emerging economies agreed to curbs on the future growth of their emissions but fell short of pledging absolute reductions, and the resulting agreements do not have the legal status of a fully articulated treaty like the Kyoto protocol.
Stern insisted that he was "not pessimistic" about the prospect of important progress being made at Durban towards a new international agreement on climate.
No one expects that any significant new agreement will be signed this year. There will be another, bigger conference at the end of next year in Rio de Janeiro.