crackingIAS.
coms Essay Enrichment Programme -2016
1. Women Leadership: A
man's perspective
Cleopatra or Queen Elizabeth are women
new to leadership roles. Though women rulers are
found in nearly every culture and time period, in
almost all circumstances, male leaders greatly
outnumber female leaders. Moreover, customs and
laws against female leadership can be found
throughout history,
I am epitome of Man but with a different
disposition never fail to appreciate my grandmother,
mother, sister, sister-in-law and my Chief Minister
Dr. J. Jayalalita who by nature possess natural
leadership skills and they are masters of opportunity
management.
It can be difficult for a man to understand
how women think, act and innovate unless he has
been closely influenced by the women in his life. Ive
been influenced by great women who made me
appreciate their approach towards leadership. Ive
grown to understand their decision-making processes,
the dynamics and subtleties of their personality and
style, and other special character qualities that women
possess. My experiences have taught me that great
women make it a point to teach men about women.
Women are great leaders because they are
able to balance professional and personal leadership
skills. It's easier to approach a women leader with a
personal request, or a sensitive question. They care
about their team and their well-being, which includes
their performance at work and their work-life balance.
Women are also more proactive in becoming mentors,
and sometimes it's already such an open and
communicative relationship that the transition to
mentor is easy.
Most women are naturally empathetic and
value relationships. This enables them to have a
strong understanding of what drives and motivates
people, and how to acknowledge different people for
their performance.
Women are naturally nurturing, which in
the best scenarios can translate to helping those
around you succeed.
They consistently demonstrate passion,
enthusiasm and an immense capacity to serve and be
served by others. Women make bold and wise
decisions as leaders while relying on others to be part
of their team. The environment is less authoritarian
and more cooperative and family-like, but with solid
leadership.
Communication is said to be among a
woman's strongest skill - and female leaders know
how to use it! Whether communicating with
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employers, co-workers, or partners, an open
communication stream allows for clarity in executing
roles and responsibilities. Female business leaders are
able to communicate regularly, clearly and openly.
Many women, especially moms, are trained
caretakers and know how to deal with crisis situations
at home with compassion and patience. These
attributes become very relevant when a woman leader
is dealing with crisis situations whether this is related
to HR or [clients].
Women exhibit ego differently and they are
good at decision-making with the ego held in check.
This is a key advantage in working with boards of
directors, partners and customers.
Emotional intelligence - the ability to
recognize emotions in you and others and relate - is
something that has recently gained momentum as an
essential leadership behavior. This is something that
comes more naturally to women than men, and is
something that I've personally encountered in my
career. To truly create a great place to work and to get
the best out of employees, demonstrating emotional
intelligence as a leader is critical.
Women are pragmatic, resilient and usually
able to maneuver tricky situations with grace. Their
perspectives are borne out of a mix of trial by fire and
sheer fortitude. They look at the world with bravery
and are able to piece together the world around them
like a complex puzzle.
As women continue their upward trajectory in
the contemporary world right from within home to
UN, they have yet to be fully appreciated for the
unique qualities and abilities they bring to the position
they hold.
The lives of women leaders reveal the
patriarchy and feudalism of our society rather than its
progressive values. Cultural stereotypes & biases can
make it seem that women do not have what it takes
for important leadership roles, thereby adding to the
barriers that women encounter in attaining roles that
yield substantial power and authority.
Men rationalize their privilege without
realizing they validate every belief through
prejudice.
Womens underrepresentation in leadership
has been framed as a deficit in which something is
holding women back from becoming leaders. Initially
described as a glass ceiling - the symbolic wall
women hit at mid-management levels - barriers to
womens advancement can also be thought of as a
labyrinth.
Balancing work and family responsibilities is
one of the most challenging obstacles for women
seeking leadership positions;, and it can be especially
daunting for the millions of working women raising
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children on their own. Women are usually the primary
(if not the only) parent caring for children and other
family members during their peak years in the
workforce. They are more likely than men to work
irregularly and spend time out of the workforce, and
they are more likely to work part time. They also take
more time off for family commitments than men do.
Moreover, women (and men) may feel deeply
conflicted about leaving their children when they go
to work.
Differences in womens and mens earnings
also contribute to the leadership gap. When two
parents are in the workforce and one has an option to
reduce or even leave employment, the higher-paid
spouse is likely to continue working. That person is
still most often a man.
The gender imbalance in leadership is both
a womens issue and a mens issue. Being a leader is
not inherently valuable or desirable. Leadership roles
can be time consuming and often require great
responsibility, which can cause a great deal of stress
and leave little room for other priorities. Just as the
status quo is holding women back from leadership
roles, it is holding men back from embracing
caretaking and support roles.
There is no magic bullet to solve the
leadership gap, but this problem does not require
magic. There are many commonsense steps we can
take as individuals, employers, and policy makers to
create significant change.
Policy-makers and practitioners need to
capitalize on the high-level momentum regarding
womens rights and leadership, and ensure that good
intentions do not get stuck at the level of
commitments and conferences. Womens rights and
more equitable gender relations can be achieved only
through the actions of the women and men concerned.
International development organizations can,
however, play an important role in helping reformers
in developing countries to ensure womens full and
effective participation and equal opportunities for
leadership at all levels of decision-making in political,
economic and public life (SDG Target 5.5).
The indicators for Target 5.5 are a case in
point. This target aims to ensure womens full and
effective participation and equal opportunities for
leadership at all levels of decision-making in political,
economic and public life. Under the MDGs three
indicators measured progress on womens
empowerment and gender equality, including one
focusing on the proportion of seats held by women in
national parliament. This galvanized welcome action
to increase the representation of women, but the
narrow focus on numbers of women present in
national legislatures also diverted attention away from
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much-needed efforts to ensure womens full and
effective, or meaningful, participation. In short,
increased numerical representation does not
automatically translate into increased influence for
women; having a seat at the table does not guarantee
that a woman will have the opportunity to speak, or
that she will be listened to. Furthermore, it led to a
focus on womens representation in formal, national-
level political structures.
Yet women continue to be under-represented
numerically in sub-national and community
governance structures and institutions and lack
influence in the local structures and institutions that
govern their everyday lives. This matters because
many of the decisions that affect womens lives are
made at a local level. The development of indicators
on womens participation and leadership for the new
SDGs offers the opportunity both to close data gaps,
particularly on womens participation at local levels,
and spur on wide-ranging efforts to achieve all
aspects of the target they accompany.
Wearing many hats is often a regular
occurrence in a womens life. They often balance
careers, households and even aging parents, among
other things.
It is because of the women in our family that
we are well-organized, full of love, spiritually aligned
and well-balanced.
Its impossible to respect value and admire
great leadership if you cant identify what makes a
leader great. While the tide is changing and more
women are being elevated into leadership roles,
there are still billions of miles to go.
Hopefully my perspective helps awaken more
of us to the opportunity of learning about leadership
from the women in our lives, whether in the private or
Public.
2. Neoliberalism vs. Neo
Colonialism
India has now seen about 2 decades of
neoliberalism, with the reforms that began in 1990s.
The balance sheet of neoliberalism in India is in fact
presents a cloudy picture.
Liberalism is distinguished by its focus on the
primacy of the individual in all spheres of human
lifepolitical, economic, and social. Individual well
being is the standard to assess suitability of norms,
customs, policies, and institutions. Indias liberalism
has evolved through stages that first emphasised
earthly life and materialism, then social reforms and
political independence, and now economic and social
freedom.
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Modern liberalism in India took roots during
the social reform movements of the middle and late
nineteenth century. Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Gopal
Krishna Gokhale and others launched a systemic
attack on anti-life social practices like sati and ban on
widow remarriage through Arya Samaj and Brahmo
Samaj movements. These movements influenced a
large section of the population, particularly in eastern
and western parts of India, where they still have a
following. Despite the early start much remains to be
done in this area of social reforms. With the rise of
demands for independence from the British, the social
reform liberalism gave way to the liberalism of
political independence.
Intense discussions and debates engaged all
activists not only about strategies and tactics to get the
British to quit India. They also focused on the type of
political and economic system that India should adopt
post-independence. Social reformers as well as
freedom fighters all worked under the banner of the
Congress Party.
The exposure to and attraction of Fabian
socialism for many leading freedom fighters shaped
the debates about Indias future political and
economic institutions. Socialists formed a separate
Congress Socialist Party and the liberals formed a
liberal group, but they all worked under the Congress
Party umbrella. The Congress Party was the sole
arbiter of the freedom struggle, whether of social
reforms or political independence.
Pandit Nehrus affection for Fabian socialism
as well as Soviet communism was the most critical
factor in determining Indias path towards democratic
socialism. Nehru shaped political institutions so that
democracy could take root despite a very large
illiterate and poor population, and an inexperienced
political leadership. India was the shining star of
democracy among the countries that achieved
independence from the colonisers in the first of half of
the twentieth century. Indias democracy, however
much chaotic and dynastic, is widely viewed as her
singular achievement.
Soviet-style five-year plans come to rule the
economic life of independent India. Rapid, large-scale
industrialisation was deemed to be impossible without
the state dominance of the commanding heights of
the economy.
In its 60+ five years of independence, India
has waged a long battle against hunger and poverty.
Two hundred years of colonial rule built a country
incapable of meeting the basic needs of its own
population while turning the economy into a conveyor
belt for raw commodities destined for the
manufacturing industries in Britain.
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To remedy this situation, the policies adopted
by the Indian government after Independence were a
broad mix of state-led market-based policies, leaning
towards heavy interventionism and high levels of
economic protection for key domestic industries. This
'import substitution' model was unevenly
implemented, and while some industries and sectors
benefited, the government was never fully able to
wean itself from the influence of powerful Indian
elites and their vested interests. Over time, these
elites, combined with international pressure, pulled
the Indian economy towards an open market. This
economic liberalization crept slowly into India's
economy throughout the 1970s and 1980s. But in
1991, precipitated by high levels of debt, India
officially committed to full-fledged neoliberal reforms
when the Indian government signed onto World Bank
and International Monetary Fund loans.
The two central components of these
neoliberal policies have been the liberalization of
India's private sector and a reform of the public
sector. The claim advanced by key members of
India's elites, and by the World Bank, was that the
Indian economy needed to be set on a more
sustainable path. Two decades later now, the Indian
government claims vindication for its direction, with
higher levels of income, reduced poverty, and a
booming information technology sector.
In its most abstract and universal form,
neoliberalism is the program committed to orthodox
macroeconomic stabilization, especially through fiscal
balance, achieved more by containment of public
spending than by increases in the tax take; to
liberalization in the form of increasing integration into
the world trading system and its established rules; to
privatization, understood both more narrowly as the
withdrawal of government from production and more
generally as the adoption of standard Western private
law; and to the deployment of compensatory social
policies ("social-safety nets") designed to counteract
the unequalizing effects of the other planks in the
orthodox platform. When this program is transported
to the conditions of countries like Brazil or Mexico, in
which extreme inequalities remain largely unqualified
by effective compensatory devices, it helps sustain a
political discourse organized around two themes: the
theme of adherence to the market-based arrangements
that have proved so spectacularly successful in the
rich economies and the theme of redistributive
correction through the development of tax-and-
transfer and the social activities of government. The
language of market efficiency joins the language of
social conscience. Thus does institutionally
conservative social democracy become an integral
part of the neoliberal vision.
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Three tenets mark the operative version of
neoliberalism. The first tenet is governmental
acquiescence in a low level of domestic saving,
private or public, and a corresponding reliance upon
major, persistent inflows of foreign capital to finance
national development. Not only is the savings rate low
(less than 20 percent rather than the over 35 percent
achieved by the East Asian "tigers," and, more
recently, by China), but the government relies upon
the traditional capital markets to mobilize savings for
investment. Governments that have long engaged in
"financial repression," to the point of making the real
rate of interest negative, now find themselves required
to tolerate astronomical real rates of interest and to
pay such rates themselves for the acceptance of public
debt if they are to attract skeptical and impatient
capital from abroad. They discover belatedly that
foreign capital is more useful the less a country
depends upon it. On one side, the capital inflows are
rarely high or sustained enough, in a world where
most capital continues to stay at home, to satiate the
hunger for capital in a society that is both investing
and consuming beyond its means. On the other side,
the inflows threaten to rekindle high inflation and
diminish the governments power effectively to guide
the economy, if only by prompting the central bank to
"sterilize" the new resources through increments to
the costly internal debt.
The second tenet of neoliberalism is the
renunciation by the state of any affirmative strategy of
national development other than the strategy implicit
in an unresisting adherence to the world economic
order. According to the conception informing this
adherence, economic progress will result from the
enforcement of traditional property rights, combined
with the enriching and enlightening benefits of
connection with the most advanced sectors of the
most advanced economies. Two denials are central to
the renunciation of a national development strategy.
One is a denial of the power of governmental
initiative to shape the influence of preexisting factor
endowments upon the direction as well the pace and
consequences of economic growth. Governments
might exert such an influence not only by enhancing
some of the factors of production developing the
capacities of the laborforce or transferring new
technologies but also by changing the institutional
context in which factors combine. Governmental
action might promote a convergence on certain
strategies yielding cumulative economies of scale and
scope. The second denial renounces the capacity
effectively to differentiate among levels of protection
against foreign competition (selective protectionism),
exchange rates (one rate, for example, for
consumption goods and another for advanced
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technologies), and interest rates (to socialize some of
the risks and burdens of the most long-term
productive investment).
It is characteristic of much contemporary
argument in economic policy to suggest that selective
protectionism might be better in principle than
absolute free trade, and differentiated exchange and
interest rates better than unified ones. According to
this standard view, however, selectivity will almost
certainly be worse in practice, serving both collusion
("rent-seeking") and prejudice. It is a judgement
resting upon negative assumptions about government;
it excludes the possibility that changes in the
institutional forms of the state and of the market
economy might make what is best in principle also
best in practice. Thus, both the denials underlying the
renunciation of a national development project draw
their force from one or another aspect of institutional
fetishism: the failure fully to imagine the range of
feasible institutional variation.
3. IMPACT OF SOCIAL
NETWORKING ON
SOCIETY
Girl dumps fiance after he fails loyalty test on
FB. (Headline News)
A girl in her twenties dumped her fiance after
he failed a fidelity test on Facebook. She used this
social networking site to get a peep into the character
of someone she was getting married to later this year.
She was also curious to know if her fiance was
chatting and flirting with other girls on Facebook.
This one news is good enough to show the
extent of impact of Social Networking on Society.
Social networking has had major impacts on the
global society in various spheres of their social life.
Through social networking, people can use networks
of online friends and group memberships to keep in
touch with current friends, reconnect with old friends
or create real life friendships through similar interests
or groups.
Impact on Socio-Cultural life
Most social networking websites also offer
additional features. In addition to blogs and forums,
members can express themselves by designing their
prole page to reect their personality. The most
popular extra features include music and video
sections.
Nevertheless, these virtual friends provide
us with a platform where we can, without hesitation,
share our feelings, which otherwise we would not
have discussed face to face.
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Moreover, in todays fast world, we have
paucity of time; these sites furnish us with flexibility
of time. We can contact our friends at our
convenience and vice-versa.
These sites also offer the chance of
communication in cases where mobility is often a
hindrance to social interaction. Elderly people and
those with physical disabilities who have an inability
to leave their house are able to stay in touch with
existing relations and friends, as well as get in touch
with people who have similar issues.
Also, these sites breach the regional, national,
cultural, social boundaries for making friends,
knowing them, understanding their culture, tradition
and providing us the opportunity for cultural
synthesis.
Another benefit of communicating through
social networking sites is the promotion of education
and news. Many educational institutions encourage
learning via the Internet and social networking sites
because it allows an easy communication channel for
students to learn and share skills. Social networks are
also being used by teachers and students especially in
the West as a communication tool. Teachers and
professors are forums and groups to extend classroom
discussions. Some of them routinely use Twitter to
communicate announcements and information to their
students. It is a two-way process as students too are
using these mediums to share feedback to their
teachers.
News information may also be observed
online, as many news channels also provide their
information on the Internet, which users of social
networking sites may peruse via widget links and
applications. These applications generally provide
live feeds of current, updated news to a users profile
page (on a social networking site), which is further
evidence of the constant connection and
communication provided by social networking sites
and another way in which they are beneficial in
society.
A movie social network, Filmcrave lets you
connect with other people who share your interest in
movies, check out the latest trailers, browse and even
write your own movie reviews. Social Media sites
help create a large fan base for actors and actress.
Though these sites serves good in many ways,
it has its negative effects too such as cyber crimes
which has become a privacy threat to the people
worldwide. Although advantageous in many ways by
building new relationship and reconnecting with lost
or old contacts, it also brought up some behavioral
changes among the youth, not only the behavioral
changes but also their social behavior and approaches.
It has also ended up as a nightmare for a few people.
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We have heard of numerous abuses on these sites like
morphing of photographs etc.
Adolescent social networking in the past 2
years has rocketed from a niche activity into a
phenomenon that engages tens of millions of Internet
users. Social networking proles posted by
adolescents contain intimate, candid, and observable
self-disclosure and peer interaction that can be
analyzed creating an overall picture of adolescent
behavior, highlighting implications for parental
monitoring and intervention.
Children are especially vulnerable to
predators on social networks. It has been found that
many convicted sex offenders have accounts on social
networks. It is very likely that some of them would be
using these accounts to lure young people.
Also, most of the information put on the
social networking sites is fake, concocted or half
truths.
It often leads to poor interpersonal
communications. When people spend so much time
communicating with others through a computer
screen, they lose face-to-face social contact skills. A
significant part of how people communicate with each
other is through body language and facial expressions.
When that aspect of communication is removed a
number of problems can occur.
There is a tendency for comments to be more
spontaneous and less thoughtful. There is a higher
likelihood that humor or sarcasm will be
misunderstood. People tend to say things through
social networks that they normally wouldn't in person.
Many of these drawbacks can lead to a
degradation of conversations, and lead to
misunderstandings, arguments, and ruined
friendships.
Another way social networks can be hurt to
society is through the obsession factor. This kind of
excessive computer use can quickly lead to a
dysfunctional lifestyle where other important daily
activities, such as exercise, maintaining healthy
sleeping and eating habits, and spending time with
family and friends, are almost completely ignored.
This proves that e-world is taking its toll over the real
world. Social values are vanishing.
Impact on Socio-Economic life
Not surprisingly then, this segment has also
become an attraction for business. The term social
media has become part of business speak. Business
organisations have learnt that it is cheaper and easier
to grow their businesses using social networks.
Companies can easily build a brand.
Through online social networking, companies
are better able to advertise to specific markets or
discover, monitor and engage with loyal brand
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advocates. Conversely, they can also discover
disgruntled customers and realise their concerns.
Using social media thus allows businesses to reduce
cost on marketing or connect with customers.
In addition to advertising through these sites,
they can notify of products, announcements or
competitions or research target markets and industry
trends. They can socialise and network with industry
peers, build industry contacts, research industry trends
and updates, or tag and track discussions on specific
topics or events. Communication through social
networking sites can also help employment through
job advertising or by showcasing of talent. Many
aspiring artists show off their skills through such sites
as YouTube or Deviant Art.
Networks such as LinkedIn have become
fertile grounds for job seekers. Employers often scour
these sites to find suitable recruits for open positions.
Recent survey found that more than half of
office workers used these social networking sites for
personal use during the working day.
Privacy is another major concern. Already
people have lost jobs because the information they
posted on social networks was not liked by their
employers. Recruiters are increasingly using social
networks to check on job applicants raising the
possibility that photos and postings made by people
will one day come back to haunt them.
Impact on Socio-Political life
Social media is being increasingly utilized for
political expression and action. Governments of
nation states see with surprise that mature and self-
conscious people using networking suddenly gather
and flock because something is bothering them
collectively.
Facebook and other social media played a
crucial role in catalysing massive political protests
during the Arab Spring. This has been revealed in
an analysis of more than three million tweets,
gigabytes of YouTube content and thousands of blog
posts.
People in Tunisia, triggered by the suicide of
an unemployed young man, clearly suddenly where
tired of the stagnation, corruption in the failing
regime, and dared to rebel, especially because they
knew that their messages (via Twitter and Facebook)
and videos, uploaded to YouTube, now could be seen
worldwide. Al Jazeera among others returned these
videos to a wider audience with Dish TVs all over
their country via Satellite broadcast. This chain of
communication helped the young people to step over
their fear and the passiveness instilled on them for
decades.
Social networking sites play a role in shaping
the political landscape in an era called "Web 2.0,"
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defined as a second generation of the Internet
characterized by the more dynamic way in which
people interact online compared to when the Internet
first gained popularity. Presidential candidates in the
2008 election engaged potential voters with YouTube,
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and other social media.
More than a quarter of US voters younger than age 30
said they obtained information about the political
campaigns from social networking sites.
In May 2009, the White House announced
that it was joining Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace to
meet President Barack Obama's call one week earlier
"to reform our government so that it is more efficient,
more transparent, and more creative."
Social activists have learnt how to spread
word about their causes, enlist volunteers, embark on
actions and raise funds. One good example is the
Anna Hazare movement against corruption.
In Mumbai mirror daily (2006), it was
reported that so many terrorists and under world
people have got connected through orkut, for example
Davood Ibrahim, Chotta Shakkil and so many
underworld dawns are getting new man power
through Orkut. Times of India (2006) in Hatred
communities - with spreading violence among the
people- India court accuses Googles Orkut of
spreading hatred states that the Aurangabad bench of
Bombay high court has directed the Maharastra
government to issue notice to Google for the alleged
spread of hatred about India by its social network
services .The article says that the petition has sated
that a picture of burning the national tricolor, bearing
anti-India messages, has been put on www.orkut.com
and a community We hate India has been created on
the site.
Conclusion
As more and more people spend their online
time inside social networks, spammers and phishers
have also appeared on these sites. The amount of
private information posted by users on social
networks is worrying. Crooks are able to use this
information to craft scams that seem believable.
Friends are more likely to fall for these scams as it
would seem to originate from a trusted friend.
We should take personal care that these sites
should be used judiciously. We should post relevant
information only and not very personal ones, so that,
in future we do not regret it. Also, information posted
should be authentic, so that it becomes a source of
awareness not sensation. Finally, we must be vigilant
that e-world cannot be a substitute for the real world.
Let us learn to respect the real people and real life.
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question of its nuclear status, the view gained ground
4. The Media, The Diaspora, that India should not sign CTBT. A major debate took
The Business Power place in the columns of Indian newspapers in which
the Times of India editorially called for India
New Influences On rejecting CTBT in the form in which it was then being
Indias Foreign Policy. proposed. India can be a signatory only as an
acknowledged nuclear weapons power and not as a
The formulation of foreign policy is a
non-weapon state. This finally became the official
complex process, mediated by the participation of
Indian position.
various stakeholders. India is a federal country and
The increased relevance of business and
the subject of foreign affairs is included under the
middle class preferences for media policy implies that
jurisdiction of Union or Central government. Besides
their world view will count for more in shaping media
the government bodies and authorities like the Prime
thinking on foreign policy. This is demonstrated by
minister and Ministry of external Affairs, the political
the near-unanimous support for the India-United
parties, media, and pressure groups also play an
States nuclear agreement in the business and English-
important role in the formulation of foreign policy.
language media. The policy preferences of these two
Since India is a functioning democracy, the role of
segments of the media in the foreign policy arena do
non-government stakeholders is gradually increasing.
tend to influence Indian language media also.
The government has also initiated the mechanism of
However, perceptions on foreign policy in Indian
public diplomacy to enlist the support of domestic and
language media vary, due to local political, social and
foreign public for her foreign policy approaches.
cultural factors. For example, the national media is
The media Media Diplomacy
less interested in Indias policy towards Sri Lanka
The media has an obvious role in shaping
than the Tamil language media. Similarly, there is
public opinion on foreign policy issues in a
much less coverage on developments in the Islamic
democracy. The influence of media on foreign policy
world in the national media as compared to the Urdu
is shaped by two important factors, first, the extent of
language media that caters largely to a Muslim
domestic political disagreement or consensus on
readership.
foreign policy issues; and seconds, the relationship
Whether it is Kargil War or Chinas
between the government of the day and the media.
stationing of troops in Jammu and Kashmir or Tibetan
The media has become an arena in which
issue, the media has created a sensation among the
party political differences on foreign policy do get
masses and the political leadership at both the
articulated more forcefully because of the nature of
national and regional level. Anti-China stories have
the medium. In fact, television news channels may
increased in the international media; especially after
have contributed to increased public discord on
US journalists were viciously attacked by Chinese
foreign policy by deliberately strait-jacketing all
protesters. All told, western honeymoon with China
discussions into binary, conflictual for-and-against
has peaked. This has largely produced a visible
debates. Rather than facilitate a consensus such
prioritization in foreign policy decision making.
argumentative debates foster divergence. While
Most recently as per Wiki leaks revelations
television resorts to this practice to increase viewer
the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi gave a downbeat
attention and make news more entertaining, this has
assessment of India-Iran relations, arguing that for all
increased the role of the media in shaping political
the public show of warmth towards Tehran, India's
thinking on foreign policy issues.
policy is based on a hard-nosed calculation of its
An early example of the media playing an
interests, not in public appeals to the historical and
important role in shaping public opinion and
cultural ties between Tehran and New Delhi.
government policy with respect to a foreign and
Media has become a potential brake on new
strategic policy issue, in the context of domestic
initiatives as well as a facilitator of new moves by the
political discord, was the role played by The Times of
government. This in turn has put a new premium on
India in 1996 on the issue of India signing up on the
the political classes and the security establishment
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) agreement.
reaching out to the media and leveraging its influence.
Indian political parties were divided on the issue of
The Business Economic Diplomacy
Indias stance on the CTBT since India had for a long
India's "economic diplomacy" has become
time advocated such a test ban and had, in fact,
more important now to protect and promote our
sponsored the CTBT. However, when CTBT got
commercial interests in an era of globalisation and to
linked to Nuclear Proliferation Treaty renewal and
face the challenges and exploit opportunities thrown
India felt it was being discriminated against on the
up by a fast integrating world.
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Large individual business houses like the
Tatas and Ambanis, as well as business associations
like the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and
the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce
and Industry (FICCI) have become recognizably
important in diplomacy as well as national discourse
on foreign policy. The British businessman, Laxmi
Mittal was tapped by India in this decade to facilitate
India's search for equity oil around the world,
especially in Central Asia. During his visits abroad, it
has become customary for the Prime Minister to take
with him large business delegations.
Joint forums of Chief Executive Officers have
become an important vehicle for moving crucial
bilateral relations forward and pressure points for
internal bureaucratic change. Given the weakness of
the universities and the think tanks, the CII and FICCI
have also appropriated some of their functions, for
example developing Track Two and Track One and
a Half dialogues and often acting as think tanks on
specific policy issues. Some of these initiatives did
become rather consequential. Initiated in early 2002,
the CII-Aspen Indo-US strategic Dialogue has met
every six months, brought together influential voices
in both countries and cleared the ground for major
new bilateral initiatives. One of its rounds in Jaipur in
early 2005 helped generate a mutually acceptable
framework for resuming civil nuclear cooperation.
The essence of this understanding was reflected a few
months later in the Bush-Singh nuclear deal.
Singapore suggests a model in which
business makes a pathway for strategic diplomacy. It
is clear that business considerations now have a direct
impact on external policy in New Delhi. This
tendency became most evident during the Satyam
scandal of January 2009. The founder-chairman of
Satyam Computer Services, Indias fourth largest
IT/ITES Company, confessed he had falsified
accounts and that US$ 1.1 billion in the companys
balance sheet simply didnt exist. It was the largest
corporate swindle in Indias history.
Satyam had dozens of foreign clients, in
countries from the United States to Finland. In
Singapore, its clients included the company that runs
Changi airport. It also provided back office support to
the Singapore governments payroll system.
Authorities in Singapore were so worried they
reportedly contacted the Indian ambassador and
requested the Indian government not allow Satyam to
sink. This added to the pressure on the Indian
government. The commerce (trade) and foreign
ministers disagreed, arguing this would damage
Indias reputation as a safe business destination and it
would lose face diplomatically. Eventually, the
government put together an interim board of directors.
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It lobbied with foreign governments and clients of
Satyam, and rescued and then sold the company.
In May 2005, the government set up the
Trade and Economic Relations Committee (TERC).
Chaired by the prime minister, TERC comprises,
among others, the finance, foreign and commerce
ministers. As a collective, it runs economic
diplomacy.
India has adopted a policy of pragmatic
engagement with multilateral economic organizations
like WTO in recent years.
Economics has thus become the driving force
today. Post Cold War there has been re-organisation
of groups as well as reworking within them. The
NAM still exists though its focus has shifted more
towards economic cooperation. New alliances such as
SAFTA (South Asian Free Trade Agreement), G-8,
SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation), G-13 and OPEC have come up. Today
there are over 200 regional trade agreements in
operation. Trans-national gas and oil pipelines, SEZs
(Special Economic Zones), FTZs (Free Trade Zones),
large scale outsourcing, free flow of finance and
technology have all become a reality today.
Where politics has failed, economic interests
have helped to bridge the gap. The new world order
based on economic power has brought about changes
far greater than could have been imagined in the last 2
decades.
The Diaspora Diplomacy
The Indian Diaspora is the largest in the
world to-day after China and has roots in every
country in the globe.
Since the economic reforms began in 1991,
there has been structural change in India which is
allowing it to grow at a healthy rate. Non Resident
Indians have played a major part in foreign
investment but its contribution to the Indian economy
has only lately been recognized. When India faced its
worst balance of payments crisis in the early nineties,
its foreign exchange reserves were dwindling and it
was coming perilously close to defaulting on meeting
its international payments obligation, India turned to
its National Reserve Indians and it was NRI
deposits that helped India to come out of this crisis. In
Indias 60+ years of history this was the first imprint
of the important role the Indian Diaspora can play in
building Indian economy. When India conducted
nuclear tests in 1998, the Indian Diaspora stood by
India.
The contribution of the Indian Diaspora to
Indias economy and society is a matter of great pride
and achievement for Indians the world over. Non-
Resident Indians (NRI) and People of Indian Origin
(PIO) have transferred knowledge and expertise,
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added to Indias income through remittances and
recently have mediated the massive entrepreneurial
energy that has led to the rise of Indias Information
Technology (IT) and IT Enabled Services (ITES)
sectors.
The Indian Diaspora is also gaining in
political influence in their adopted lands. Indiana
University Political Science Professor Dr Sumit
Ganguly explained to the Congress the merits of such
a Deal to the US, while Indian entrepreneurs based in
Texas (contributors to election funding), also lobbied
for the Pact. The Indian Government rightfully
honoured Professor Ganguly with the Bharatiya
Samman Award at the PBD held in 2009.
The Diaspora has a major impact at home too:
Indias new venture capital laws were virtually
written by the Indians in Silicon Valley, who were
keen to build the bridges to Bangalore in the 1990s.
Furthermore, NRIs have been a key resource for the
creation of the Unique Identification Card; they were
also a professional volunteer base that contributed to
Nitish Kumars election as Chief Minister of Bihar, a
state now seen as a rare example of successful
governance in India.
Another dimension where the influence of
diasporas is felt in Foreign policy making is
evidenced by the discriminations faced by Indian
diasporas in Malaysia (Malaysian Malady), Australia
(Australian Racism) and Srilanka (Srilankan Sinister).
Today, a heightened expectation of Indias
prowess and diplomatic heft among its middle classes,
propelled by an easily excitable media, has made it
difficult for India to turn itself away from the
problems faced by Indian migrants or ethnic Indian
communities overseas. This was recently exemplified
in early 2011 in the pressure on the Indian
government to evacuate many thousands of Indian
nationals from Egypt and Libya (Operation Safe
Home Coming), including, in the latter instance, with
the deployment of naval assets a reprise of the 2006
evacuation from war-torn Lebanon.
In another instance, allegations of persecution
of ethnic Indians in Malaysia have in recent years led
to the mobilisation of Tamil and Hindu political
groups in India. The emirates of West Asia have over
four million Indian workers, about half of them from
Kerala. Remittances from predominantly the Gulf
region are so crucial to Keralas economy that they
are estimated at being 1.74 times the revenue receipts
of the state. As such, perceived or genuine
discrimination against Indian workers in West Asia
(essentially, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates) has led to pressure from constituency MPs
in Kerala on the federal government in New Delhi.
Instances of kidnapping of Indian workers in Iraq by
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insurgents have also led to demands that the Indian
government and the MEA do something.
The Indian diaspora is, in every sense of the
term, a celebration of India. It is vibrant, motivated,
hard working, highly talented and passionate about
India. The diaspora has a vital role to play in taking
the best of India to the world and bringing the best of
the world back to India.
Conclusion
It is thus evident that an ambitious business
community, a vocal diaspora and an aggressive news
media have changed the image of India and the
greater powers have turned their eyes towards India.
Indian diplomats should play their cards safely and
tactically by adapting to these new realities to secure
our national interests and project to the world our
smartness in handling any kind of new pulls and
pressures in foreign policy making without tainting its
image of being a responsible state.
5. Genetically Modified
Food: Boon Or Bane?
In this hi-tech era, even the food we consume
can be modified according to our needs and
requirements. With the advancement of science,
Genetically Modified Foods are rapidly gaining
popularity around the globe. The term GM foods or
Genetically Modified foods denotes crops created for
human or animal consumption using the latest
molecular biology techniques. These plants have been
modified in the laboratory to enhance desired traits
like improved nutritional content or increased
resistance to pests.
Three features distinguish genetically
modified food. First and most important, the food is
altered at the genetic level in ways that could never
occur naturally. As genes from plants, animals,
viruses, and bacteria are merged in novel ways, the
normal checks and balances that nature provides to
keep biology from running amok are nullified.
Exactly how genes work is a topic of enormous
complexity and some controversy, so it is difficult if
not impossible to predict what will happen when
individual combinations of genes are created in ways
that have never been seen before and then released
into the environment. The second novel feature of the
revolution in our food is that the food is owned. Not
individual sacks of rice, dhal or attar, but entire
varieties of plants and even microorganisms are now
corporate products. In some cases, entire species are
owned. The term "monopoly" takes on new power
when one imagines a company owning major portions
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of our food supply, the one thing that every single
person now and into the future will always need to
buy. Finally, this new technology is globalised."
This means that local agriculture, carefully adapted to
local ecology and tastes over hundreds and thousands
of years, must yield to a planetary monoculture
enforced by intricate trade agreements and laws.
Change at the genetic level
In genetic engineering of food crops, a gene,
or piece of DNA from one source (a fish for
example), is isolated, removed, and then inserted
into the DNA of another source, a tomato for
example. The DNA of interest is removed from one
living organism by enzymes that affect the chemical
processes inside one organism and then moved to
another organism, to be rejoined with its host's DNA
in new combinations.
Genetically modified foods a boon
The world population has crossed 650 cores
and is predicted to increase further at an alarming rate
in the coming decades. Ensuring an adequate food
supply for this booming population is going to be a
major challenge in the years to come. Genetically
modified, or GM foods promise to meet this need in a
number of ways.
Pest resistance: Crop losses from insect
pests can be huge and crippling, resulting in financial
loss for farmers and starvation in countries like ours.
Farmers use many tons of chemical pesticides
annually. But food that has been treated with
pesticides has potential health hazards, and run-off of
agricultural wastes from excessive use of pesticides
and fertilizers can poison the water supply and cause
harm to the environment. Growing GM foods can
help eliminate the application of chemical pesticides.
Herbicide tolerance: For some crops, it is
not cost-effective to remove weeds by physical means
such as tilling, so farmers will often spray large
quantities of different herbicides (weed-killer) to
destroy weeds, a time-consuming and expensive
process that requires care so that the herbicide doesnt
harm the crop plant or the environment. Crop plants
genetically-engineered to be resistant to one very
powerful herbicide could help prevent environmental
damage by reducing the amount of herbicides needed.
For example, Monsanto, a biotechnology company
has created a strain of soybeans genetically modified
to be not affected by their herbicide product which
will soon be available in India too. A farmer growing
these soybeans will need only one application of
weed-killer instead of multiple applications, reducing
production cost and limiting the dangers of
agricultural waste run-off.
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Disease resistance: There are many viruses,
fungi and bacteria that cause plant diseases. Plant
biologists are working to create plants with
genetically-engineered resistance to these diseases.
There are several success stories too like the
Bt.cotton.
Cold tolerance: Unexpected frost can
destroy sensitive seedlings in case of crops grown in
higher altitudes like apples in Himachal Pradesh and
Kashmir, and saffron in Kashmir. An antifreeze gene
from cold-water fish could be and indeed has been
introduced into some plants such as potato. With this
antifreeze gene, these plants are able to tolerate cold
temperatures that normally would kill unmodified
seedlings.
Drought tolerance/salinity tolerance: As
the world population grows and more land is utilized
for housing instead of food production, farmers will
need to grow crops in locations previously unsuited
for cultivation. Creating plants that can withstand
long periods of drought or high salt content in soil and
groundwater will help people to grow crops in
formerly inhospitable places.
Nutrition: Malnutrition is common in third
world countries where impoverished peoples rely on a
single crop such as rice for the main staple of their
diet. However, rice does not contain adequate
amounts of all necessary nutrients to prevent
malnutrition. If rice could be genetically engineered
to contain additional vitamins and minerals, nutrient
deficiencies could be alleviated. For example,
blindness due to vitamin A deficiency is a common
problem in several countries including India. GM
crops have added nutrition, like Golden Rice that
has high level of beta carotene to provide vitamin A,
while a related variety also provides iron.
Pharmaceutics: Medicines and vaccines
often are costly to produce and sometimes require
special storage conditions not readily available in
developing countries. The oral polio vaccine is an
example. Researchers are working to develop edible
vaccines in tomatoes and bananas. These vaccines
will be much easier to ship, store and administer than
traditional inject able vaccines.
Also, through genetic engineering, we can
produce crops that will have a longer shelf life. For
example tomatoes that soften more slowly can be
developed. Likewise potatoes that absorb less fat
when fried and many other resistant crops can be
developed.
GM foods a bane
Every coin has its two sides even GM foods
has a negative side some environmental activists,
public interest groups, some scientist and
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governments are raising concerns about producing
GM crops.
At the core of these concerns is safety. The
opponents of GM foods feel that there hasnt been
enough testing of GM foods to ensure that they are
safe, for people or for the environment.
As important as human safety is,
environmental safety is critical as well. Simply put,
no one knows if the transgenic genes of the GM crops
will find their way into wild populations, or even non-
wild, but non-GM. Some independent studies suggest
that they will, and again, there is ample cause to
investigate this. If the genes can spread, then there
exists the possibility that they can become
widespread, and produce a dangerous vulnerability
From a social-economic standpoint, GM
crops have an added concern. GM foods are
considered intellectual property under law, and this
restricts access and use. Users of GM crops are often
locked into exclusive contracts for seeds and
herbicides.
Even some geneticists feel that though the
artificial nature of genetic modification does not make
it dangerous, the imprecise way in which genes are
combined and the unpredictability in how the
foreign gene will behave in its new host results in
uncertainty. From a basic genetics perspective, GM
foods possess an unpredictable component that is far
greater than the intended change. They claim that the
genetic engineering of food crops is a new technique
that is still in its infancy.
Traditional plant breeding and agricultural
practices have a history that stretches back 10,000
years, and the biotechnology industry tries to tell the
public that genetically engineered foods are just a
natural extension of this process nothing to be
alarmed about. But genetic engineering is a radical
departure from traditional plant breeding. Plant
genetic engineering is a hit-or-miss process. Farmers
and plant breeders know that genes are mutable, and
many factors, including the environment, play a major
role in the expression or adaptation of a gene or
genetic trait.
It is their view that classical plant breeding
methods have steadily increased crop yields every
year for decades. These techniques include breeding
domestic crops with their wild relatives because the
wild relatives provide strong survival traits that can
improve domesticated crops. By relying on the birds
and bees rather than the microscope and Petri dish to
determine the success or failure of their new crops,
classical plant breeders take advantage of nature's
vast storehouse of information, accumulated over
millions of years of experimentation, as to what
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works and what does not. It may be slow, but it
ensures that no catastrophic mistakes are made.
Farmers, familiar with breeding, cultivation,
and seed collection, understood these genetic
processes and so carried out their selective breeding
to produce plants that fit local conditions and
community standards. With genetic engineering, the
farmer is no longer needed to observe and react as a
"selector." Just as hybridization brought about
enforced dependency of the farmer, along with
corporate consolidation of the food supply, so does
genetic engineering separate the farmer even further
from the agricultural process.
Genetic engineering also alters the
fundamental composition of crops. The dangerous
power of such technology is immense. While natural
crossbreeding restricts the types of hybrids that can be
produced, genetic engineering allows for gene
transfers between vastly unrelated species, such as
fish and tomatoes. Critics point to several instances
like Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone for
increasing milk yield; the "terminator gene
technology; the Roundup herbicide, made by
Monsanto; and the associated Roundup Ready seeds
to establish their point that biotechnological
modification of seeds will bring about disaster.
Studies found out that gene in various plants
injected to control pest has a negative effect not only
pest but also on other insects. Unfortunately, Bt
toxins kill some species of insect larvae
indiscriminately. There are also chances of gene
cross-breeding and gene transfer to several unwanted
plants.
The unknown effects of GM crops on human
health are a major issue. Many of them may have an
unexpected and negative impact on human health.
Especially babies are more vulnerable to
developing allergies. Children in the US and Europe
have developed life-threatening allergies to peanuts
and other foods. There also is a possibility that
introducing a gene into a plant may create a new
allergen or cause an allergic reaction in susceptible
individuals. Also, animal toxicity studies with certain
GM foods have shown that they may toxically affect
several organs and systems.
Conclusion
Genetic engineering is the inevitable wave of
the future and that we cannot afford to ignore a
technology that has such enormous potential benefits.
However, we must proceed with caution to avoid
causing unintended harm to human health and the
environment as a result of our enthusiasm for this
powerful technology.
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6. Environmental Justice in
World Politics
The environment is now considered the
"common heritage of mankind" and environmental
problems are increasingly the subject of international
efforts because of their cross-border effects and the
impossibility that just one or a few nations can solve
these problems on their own.
Given the globalization of environmental
problems since 1970s, the environmental justice
discourse has been increasingly used to frame various
international or global environmental issues like toxic
waste trade, ozone depletion, biodiversity protection,
and global warming.
There are three spatial dimensions of
Environmental issues in world politics namely -
international, transnational, and global.
The transnational dimension of world
politics has been most visible in the increasing speed
and volume of communication, trade of goods, and
human travel across borders. Many things, both
tangible and intangible, were involved in this
accelerating process: goods, services, people, ideas,
information, capital, terrorism, disease, pollution etc.
The porous nature of state boundaries has been
particularly alarming in parallel to states increasing
inability to control the movement of undesirable
objectswhether ideas or peopleacross their
borders. This growing incompetence has raised
concerns and questions over the principle of state
sovereignty, and exposed the gap between the de facto
and de jure aspects sovereignty.
However, the most interesting aspect of the
transnational dimension is not the transboundary
movement of undesirable objects. It is rather the
transnational interactions of social actors and the
diffusion of ideas across national boundaries. It has
been argued that, under certain circumstances, the
transnational organizations and networks could
facilitate political changes in world politics by
changing the behavior of states or international
organizations through numerous political strategies
such as campaigning, lobbying, information-sharing
etc. Beyond mere political influence, the diffusion of
norms through the transnational interactions of civic
actors may even affect more enduring cultural
changes in the long run.
The global dimension of world politics is
related to both international and transnational
dimensions but there is a qualitative difference
between them.
Global institutions such as the IMF, the
World Bank, and the WTO are currently the most
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influential actors in this brand new dimension of
world politics. Although they are inter-governmental
institutions dependent on the co-operation of states for
their existence, in some cases, they operate
autonomously as sui generis global actors,
independent of their constituent member-states.
The neo-liberal economic policies followed
and prescribed by these global organizations have had
serious adverse consequences on local communities
of indigenous and rural people. The development
projects financed by the World Bank, the structural
adjustment policies of the IMF, and the trade
liberalization policies of the WTO have all been in
one way or another detrimental to local environments,
communities and democracy, especially in developing
countries.
The term GLOCAL has been coined to
highlight the interplay between the global and local
perspectives. This hybrid term draws our attention to
the increasing interdependency between the global
and local levels. The superiority of a glocal
perspective over a highly abstract global one, with
respect to environmental issues, could be seen in the
debate over the Global Environmental Facility
(GEF), which was created in 1991 as an international
mechanism under the supervision of the World Bank,
UNDP, and UNEP to provide funds and technical
assistance for national initiatives addressing global
environmental problems. The globalist side of this
debate argued that GEFs funding must be restrict
with the truly global environmental issues such as
ozone depletion, climate change, loss of biodiversity,
and pollution of international waters. The glocalists,
on the other hand, argued that seemingly local issues
such as land degradation problems in developing
countries (desertification and deforestation) must also
qualify for financial and technical assistance since
they were connected to other global problems. With
the fundamental restructuring of GEF in 1994, this
dispute was resolved with a compromise solution that
included land degradation problems as eligible for
funding in so far as these cases were related to GEFs
four focal areas (i.e., ozone depletion, climate change,
biodiversity loss and international water pollution).
In the international domain of world politics,
the major issue concerning EJ has been the integration
of the principle of equity into international
environmental law and institutions.
Environmental equity is a matter of taking
steps to ensure that the rich and powerful do not
insulate themselves from environmental harm largely
by displacing problems on to the poor and weak. The
displacement of environmental harms across borders
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immediately raises three crucial questions for any
international environmental problem at hand:
(1) who is responsible,
(2) who suffers the most, and
(3) how the costs of preventive measures be
apportioned.
Equitable answers to the first and last
questions suggest an extension of the polluter pays
principle to the international context. On the other
hand, the second question goes beyond empirical
questions of responsibility or technical capacity of
states by drawing attention to the vulnerability of the
weak. All three questions, in the end, call for paying
closer attention to the particular processes that lead to
and may ensue from the common environmental
problems and arrangements in the international
context.
These questions were particularly debated in
connection with ozone depletion and climate change
problems. In both cases, it was argued that rich
industrialized states should assume more
responsibility for causing these problems in the first
place. It was also suggested, in the case of global
warming, that the poor states such as Bangladesh or
small island states will be the most hard hit due to
their higher vulnerability to the adverse consequences
of climate change (e.g., sea-rise, floods, storms, crop
failure etc.), and/or their technological and financial
incapacity to cope with them alone. These conditions
(of greater historical responsibility and technical
capacity of the rich states, on the one hand, and
greater vulnerability of the poor and weak states on
the other) have been the most common reasons to
justify the moral obligation that poor states should not
be overburdened with, rather compensated for, the
additional costs of environmental protection by rich
states in the case of an international environmental
cooperation.
The principle of common but
differentiated responsibility of states has been
invoked as a matter of environmental equity
particularly in response to the first and third questions
mentioned above. This principle was implicit in the
1972 Stockholm Declaration on the Human
Environment (Principles 11, 12, 20, and 23), in which
special circumstances of developing countries were
acknowledged and equitable arrangements to lighten
their environmental burden were called for.
Negotiations over ozone depletion have been the first
testing ground for the implementation of this
principle. The Montreal Protocol adopted in 1987
successfully applied the principle of equity as a
matter of common but differentiated responsibilities,
especially after its London amendment in 1990, by
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assigning more responsibility to the developed
countries for causing the ozone depletion problem,
allowing developing countries a delayed schedule to
phase out their consumption of CFCs, and by
establishing a funding and technology transfer
mechanism for developing countries transition to
CFC substitutes.
The principle of common but differentiated
responsibility was explicitly espoused in the 1992
Rio Declaration (Principle 7) as the basis of an
equitable global partnership. The two legally
binding Conventions (on Biodiversity and Climate
Change) adopted during Rio Summit also
incorporated this principle in their arrangements. The
Global Environmental Facility (GEF), a financial
mechanism created to meet the costs of preventive
measures on global environmental problems, not only
embodies the equity principle but also, after its major
overhaul in 1994, represents an exemplary model of
procedural justice, which still remains to be a source
of tension in the international and global domains of
world politics. The double majority voting system of
this quasi-institution combines the weighted voting
model of Bretton Woods with a one country-one vote
principle of UN model. The former, assessed
according to the financial contributions of the
participant countries, was favored by donor countries
(OECD), while the latter was favored by recipient
developing countries (G77). In addition to its
equitable purposes and procedures, the GEF also
accommodated the developing countries concern for
land degradation by incorporating them into its list of
four focal areas. Beyond this, as a semiautonomous
global actor, the GEF may also generate
environmental justice if it chooses to re- orient its
policies towards environmental conflict prevention, as
suggested by some scholars. In short, the GEF can be
instrumental in achieving equitable outcomes in
international and global domains of world politics.
International environmental equity implies a
fair and just distribution among countries of benefits,
burdens, and decision-making authority associated
with international environmental relations.
International negotiations over the climate
change before and since the Rio Summit have
produced numerous proposals of distributive justice.
In these proposals, historical injustices (committed
through the colonial, imperial or neo-colonial
schemes) were often given as the strongest moral
basis of international equity principle.
These historical conditions as background
justice inescapably seep into the questions of
internal justice. The former, which is often
overlooked during international environmental
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negotiations, is the justice of the circumstances
within which the agreement is made, while the latter
is the justice of the terms of the agreement. The
lack of background justice often undermines the
negotiating power of developing countries and, in
turn, the possibility of reaching an internally just
agreement.
Due to these persisting conditions of
background injustice, international and global
environmental negotiations have been embroiled in a
tense North-South relationship reflecting the larger
issue of North-South relations in world politics.
This mutual tension and distrust between the North
and South in international environmental negotiations
continues since the Stockholm 1972, although it
subsided somewhat at the 1992 Rio Summit with the
compromise language of sustainable development.
This moral critique of the North for
environmental reasons is basically an ecological
adaptation of dependency theories, to which the
North-South conflict was also central to understand
world politics. The connection can be seen best in
concepts such as the alleged ecologically unequal
exchange that takes place between developed and
developing countries and the ecological debt, or
carbon debt owed by developed countries to the
developing countries.
The greatest environmental injustices are
between the developed and the developing world.
There is injustice internationally which those of us
who believe in a fairer distribution of power, wealth
and opportunity cannot and will not accept.
Ultimately we are all interdependent, we share the
same planet and the actions of one will matter to
others. But consumption, greenhouse gases and waste
have all increased mainly because of the behavior of
those from rich countries. And of course the result of
this affects those in the countries with the least.

Cracking IAS Study Circle, Chennai. EXPECTED ESSAYS FOR MAINS 2016
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