Confinement in homes, and lack of steady incomes, seems to have been fostering tensions and frustration in households and strain due to concerns over health and security. The lockdown is also putting women in isolation with violent partners, with nowhere to turn to for help. In India, the National Commission for Women has reported a 200 per cent increase in the reporting and stress call numbers of domestic violence on their helpline in the month of June alone.

Even before the lockdown was imposed, domestic violence was one of the most prevalent violations of human rights and a key impediment to the implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with one in three women have experienced it at some point in their lives. Economist Amartya Sen has estimated in 1990 that more than 100 million women are ‘missing’ — that includes those that never lived because of sex-selective abortions and infanticide, child neglect and maltreatment. That number was revised in 2015 to 136 million – this just shows how females have been subject to violence, at times even before they are born, at an alarmingly high rate.

Furthermore, it is essential to address that violence against women not only affects individuals, but also households, families and communities. However, the only way to change this stark reality is to hold the aggressors accountable and ensure that the problematic social norms that perpetuate the instances of violence are also tackled in an inclusive manner. The SDGs act as an apt framework to work off of, in order to shape a violence-free world – here’s how:

SDG 1: No Poverty

Women’s work – in agriculture, in communities, and at home, fuels economies and yet, isn’t regarded as ‘economic activity’. The exposure of females to incessant discrimination and mistreatment at the workplace makes them vulnerable and susceptible to gender-based violence. Women and girls are four per cent more likely to live in poverty and poor living conditions, a risk that rises up to twenty-five per cent as we factor-in other inequalities. Financial independence for women creates new opportunities and avenues for them to reject typical gender norms and leverage independence against violent partners. It also helps them to create a mentality of freedom and a sense of self for themselves. As a result, the reduction in poverty proves to be a catalyst towards enabling women in societies.

SDG 4: Quality Education

An estimated 246 million girls and boys experience school-related violence every year and one in four girls say that they never feel comfortable using school washrooms, according to a survey on youth conducted across four regions by the United Nations. Quality education is essential to ending violence against women. Educated girls are more likely to make their decisions towards family planning and managing finances, it is fundamental for the development of aspirations and skills, and children of educated women are more likely to have been safeguarded against malnutrition and illiteracy. Educational exposure also enables women to get access to leadership and decision-making opportunities. Hence, it propels them into a cycle of development that helps them create barriers to economic violence at home or in their communities.

SDG 5: Gender Equality

According to a 2018 report by United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in India, 18 per cent of women and girls aged between 15 and 49 years of age have experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner or family member in the past twelve months. Further, someone is known to them – every day kills more than 137 women around the world. These figures represent a fraction of the discrimination against women in terms of opportunities, wealth, inheritance, safe access to public spaces, lack of decent work, and safe and healthy environments of living, learning, working, and engaging with their communities. These inequalities leave them extremely vulnerable to gender-based violence.

SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

Unsafe and poor working environments affect women regardless of their age, location, income, careers, or social standing. As of 2020, 18 countries have laws that enable husbands in preventing their wives from going to work. UN Women estimates that the economic costs of violence and harassment amount to US$12 trillion every year. As of 2018, 59 countries do not have laws protecting women from sexual harassment in the workplace. Economic growth cannot be achieved without the inclusion of women and their contribution to sustainable development in an empowering work environment.

SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

In developing countries, concerns of safety and restricted access to public transport reduce the probability of women participating in the labour market by 16.5 per cent. As the processes of urbanization and industrialization catch up to tier two and tier three cities, the UN estimates that more than 5 billion people will reside in cities by 2030. This becomes an essential notion to address in the light of crimes against women that are prevalent in most urban regions. Further, there is widespread human rights abuse in many industries, such as fast fashion, many of which employ women in majorities. Women may be subject to exploitation in such circumstances and need to be safeguarded against such instances.

SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

In 37 countries, rape perpetrators are exempt from legal prosecution if they are married to, or subsequently marry the victim. Improving access to justice for survivors, and strengthening the legal framework against violators is an essential step towards making justice accessible for women – be it against violence, sexual misconduct at the workplace, or any crime against them. It is further imperative for women to mobilize and advocate support for their personal rights and those of their communities. This can be done digitally, individually, or at any level.  

Conclusion

At this point in time, COVID-19 is already testing humanity in unprecedented capacities. The shadow pandemic that we have had to face additionally is a mirror to the kind of societies we have built for ourselves so far. As we emerge from the pandemic, we must renew the outlooks towards inequalities and factor them into our responses to create a more equitable and sustainably sound world.

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With the similar objective of promoting investments through transparent and expedient approvals by implementation of an online system, further delegation, rationalization and standardization of the process as part of ease of doing business in March 2020, the environment ministry proposed a draft notification to replace the 2006 EIA. Currently, the notification is at the stage of public comments. This draft raised key concerns among the communities as it primarily provides for a reduction of time period from 30 days to 20 days for the public to submit their responses during a public hearing for any application seeking environmental clearance.

It also requires that the public hearing process be completed in 40 days compared to 45 days under the 2006 notification. In addition to this projects can receive clearance post-facto, i.e. a project operating in violation of the EPA can now apply for clearance and it also increased the discretionary power of state government to waive the process of getting clearance for strategic projects (where it can include long list of projects).

Background of Environment Impact Assessment and Public Hearing

Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth… these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women’s empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all.

– Ban Ki-Moon

India issued the country’s first Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) notification in 1994, under the Environment (Protection) Act (EPA) of 1986. This was later replaced by a modified draft in 2006. In both forms, the EIA performs the important function of assessing and regulating the impact of new projects on the environment and empowers the public to participate in the process of approvals.

The Environmental Impact Assessment report, Environment Management Plan and details of public consultations have to be submitted by the project proponents to the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) for appraisal of the project. The 2006 notification made clearance of a four-step procedure with screening, scoping, public consultation, and appraisal as mandatory steps to be followed by project proponents before clearance could be granted. After these four steps have been followed, the recommendation for acceptance or rejection of EC is sent to the regulatory authority, which is the MoEF for category ‘A’ and State Level Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) for category B projects. Public consultation is the third step in the process of environmental clearance.

The enactment of this procedure was influenced by series of environmental problems which can be exemplified through the cases such as Bichri village where many villages, agricultural land water of the wells, surface water, cattle, and human beings were badly affected because of the industrial operation in the district of the Udaipur, state of Rajasthan and Tanneries case where public hearing before setting up of the factory was considered as an important measure. In the Samarth Trust Case, the Delhi high court had considered EIAs “a part of participatory justice in which the voice is given to the voiceless and it is like a jan sunwai, where the community is the jury”.

Sustainable Development

It is often argued that the process of environment clearance is leading to piling up of files and delays in projects. Developers complain that the EIA regime dampened the spirit of liberalization, leading to red-tapism and rent-seeking. This is the present state of implementation of existing mechanisms in Kerala, the administration took 1,049 days to clear the construction of the IT park project of M/s L&T Tech Park Ltd, instead of 105 days.

Amidst this, in the case of Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum vs UOI  it is held that companies are vital for the country’s development, but having regard to pollution, the doctrine of ‘Sustainable Development’ must be adopted by them as a balancing concept. If final clearance is granted after taking into account the environmental, social, and health concerns, then it can be said that the government is using this process as a tool to ensure sustainability which implies that the delay in clearance should be encountered while balancing it with the above concerns.

Reduced capacity to clearance and administrative inefficiency in granting clearance was often highlighted right from Sterlite to LG polymers’ case which has shown us the dampening spirit of the government towards already existing environmental laws.

Conclusion

A solution to development should also solve the problem of mounting environmental challenges. Introduction of environmental impact assessment is the hallmark of participatory governance in the country and dilution of this in any way hampers the primary aim of promoting a sustainable environment. Encountering bureaucratic inefficiency would always be a welcoming step but granting discretionary powers to the same authority would always raise concerns among the communities.

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Ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all like the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 4) perfectly encapsulates the motto- “Leave no one behind”. However, India’s progress in attaining this goal is a mixed success story. With innumerable schemes like Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, Mid-day Meal, Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), Beti Bachao, Beti Padao and the Right to Education (RTE) Act, we all expected modification in the sector with everyone getting free access to quality education and thus able to improve their living standards. But that is not the story here. Although India has made progress in getting children enrolled in educational institutions, it is still not enough. In fact, according to the Progress Report 2020, the Net Enrolment Ratio (NER) for primary education has decreased from 87.1% in 2015-16 to 82.5% in 2017-18. Similarly, for the upper primary, it has decreased from 74% to 72.6%. But still, India has come a long way since 1947 in terms of quantity of education and it’s doing better in that regard. What it really lacks in is the quality of education.

Despite implementing the Right to Education Act 2009, India’s performance is worse than the developing South-East Asian countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam with the mean years of schooling at 6.5 years according to the Human Development Report 2019. The learning outcomes are even worse. According to ASER Report 2018, only 44.2% of Standard V students and 69% of Standard VIII students in rural government schools can read a Standard II level text and this proportion has only decreased in the last 10 years. Between 2008 and 2018, the proportion of ‘division solvers’ in Standard V in rural government schools went down from 34% to 22.7% and that for the students in Standard VIII went down from 65.2% to 40%. These figures are just outrageous. There is a huge variation in the literacy and numeracy levels among these students which is the most critical constraint in the structure of the Indian Education system. The learning outcomes for rural private schools are no better than rural public schools. PISA is an international assessment that provides cross-national learning benchmarks and helps nations improving their learning levels. The last time India participated in PISA in 2009-10, it stood at the second last place. Imagine the learning deficits that have accumulated from years of low-quality education. When the time comes to look for employment, what are these young people trained in this mangy manner going to find?

With the reduction in profitability from agricultural activities, parents in rural areas have let their children study well beyond the age when they have themselves joined the workforce in hope that it will be a way out of their insecure farm life. However, when these children graduate, they will find that there are hardly any good jobs. It’s a disaster that is waiting to happen. Even if we look at the whole population instead of just these poorly educated rural children, the story remains the same. The Annual Employability Survey 2019 report by Aspiring Minds revealed that only 20% of the Indian engineers were found employable in the knowledge economy and a meagre 2.5% of them possess new-age skills in Artificial Intelligence (AI) that the industry actually requires. These figures can be justified if we look at the proportion of those above 5 years of age who are able to use the internet which is just 20.1%. Estimates suggest that only 2.3% of India’s workforce has undergone formal skill training compared to Germany’s 75% and South Korea’s 96%. The enrolment rate for tertiary education is merely 28.3% which points towards failed policies. This all has led to a large fraction of the workforce having insufficient work skills. If the employability remains so low, we cannot ensure a sustainable pool of students enrolled in schools as their trust in the system erodes.

According to a report tabled in the parliament by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), we have over 100,000 schools with solitary teachers. At the national level, over 75 per cent of schools have a multi-grade situation with one teacher being coerced into teaching students of several grades in the same classroom. The high rate of teacher absenteeism, limited time spent on teaching when the teacher is in the class and generally poor quality of education are among important reasons for an abysmally low number of enrolments as reported by the NITI Aayog. In February 2015, Maharashtra held an evaluation test for teachers of government-run schools. Only a little over 1% primary teachers and 4.9% upper primary teachers who took the test passed. This is a furious figure and perfectly explains where the problem lies in our education system.

Talking about inclusion for everybody, India’s position is abominable in that too. Literacy rate of male population above 15 years of age is 82% while that of the female population is just 65% which is a stark difference. The reasons for females for not attending school being the classic ones – engaged in domestic activities, financial constraints, marriage or not interested in getting education. The enrolment rate of children with disabilities is mortifying with merely 1.18% in primary education, 0.56% in secondary education and 0.25% in higher secondary education. There is an urgent need to develop infrastructure to accommodate these children as hardly 22% of the schools have disabled-friendly toilets and only 33% have disabled-friendly ramps. Not only this but only 55 in 100 schools have basic handwashing facilities.

The Draft National Education Policy 2019 (DNEP) bought really good suggestions regarding the separation of regulators from operators and policymakers thus avoiding the conflict of interest, significant autonomy to the university system and Early Child Care and Education (ECCE) but it fails to address the real crisis which is teacher quality or rather teacher’s unaccountability. The underlying notion for all the reforms suggested is that there is a lack of resources which can be in connection with infrastructure, quantity of teachers or even quantity of trained teachers and this is a fundamentally mistaken idea. The real culprit is not the lack of inputs but the absence of accountability of schools, teachers and the system as a whole.

The new education policy also asked to double the public expenditure on education from 10.6% (2018-19) to 20%. It is not a sensible thing to do in the current circumstances of wastage of government resources. Public Schools with fewer than 50 students and an average of 29 students per school stood at 3.7 lakh schools in 2014-15. They represented 36% of all public schools. This is a catastrophic situation. This is too small a size for it to be pedagogically or even economically viable as the per-pupil salary expenditure becomes really high. At the point where the learning outcomes of these government schools are pitiably low, almost 80% of the public expenditure on education in 2018-19 is spent on teacher’s salaries. In a state like Uttar Pradesh, there is an increase of 15% in salaries each year where inflation is just 3-3.5%. All the capacity of the state to increase expenditure on education is being tapped by salaries alone. There is such an inefficient use of the government resources that any effort towards increasing education spending is like putting your money in a blackhole. What we need to do is put in place some new governance mechanisms to increase efficiency instead of increasing the budget itself.

The policy talks about the issue of small schools being economically suboptimal and suggests for consolidation of these schools by creating large school complexes. But this again won’t be beneficial for students if it is not done keeping in mind that these small schools cater to the needs of those living in isolated and remote areas. An independent study by Accountability Initiate (AI) maintained that Rajasthan saw a 6% decline in enrolment of backward social groups including Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Castes (OBCs) when small schools were merged. The study highlighted that the stakeholders in the process namely teachers, principals and parents were never consulted. If providing the required number of teachers for every school has become physically and economically unviable, we must seriously review the earlier approach of providing a school in every habitation within one or three kilometres or providing a school where 20 or more school-going children live. If they want to consolidate schools, they should provide the children with facilities to go to school.

CONCLUSION

India has a long way to go to provide quality education to all. It especially needs to focus on rural and backward regions’ education which is in poor health and needs an overhaul. India’s history is strewed with ambitious education policies that have not been fully implemented. The latest National Education Policy has a possibility of being similar to the previous policies in terms of poor implementation unless the government addresses the reasons behind the past policy implementation failures and makes conscious efforts to amend the mistakes. These points are important because in India what we tend to do is write policies and plans that say the right things but are unable to drive the intended changes.

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Tourism has emerged as a rapidly flourishing industry in the world as a premise for economic growth, employment and business generation. Travel & Tourism is one of the world’s largest economic sectors, supporting one in 10 jobs (330 million) worldwide, and generating a total of 10.3% of global GDP. The direct and total contribution of travel and tourism to the worldwide GDP in 2019 was US$2892.94B and US$9258.29B respectively.

The inclination is more outstanding betwixt the developing nation. The status of tourism in the South-Pacific-Asian countries in general and India, by and large, can be considered as a classic example.

Travel & Tourism role in India’s growth

In India, Travel and Tourism directly generated US$1.3B and 27,404 jobs in 2019. Taking its wider indirect and induced impacts into account, as of 2019, 4.2M jobs were generated in the tourism sector which was 8.1 per cent of total employment in the country and total contribution US$268.29B in 2019. 

According to the WTTC report, India ranked at 3rd position among 185 countries in terms of travel & tourism’s total contribution to GDP in 2018. International Tourists arrival is expected to reach 30.5M by 2028. Total contribution by the travel and tourism sector to India’s GDP is expected to surge from US$ 234.03B in 2017 to US$ 492.21B in 2028. Total income from the sector in India stood at US$ 28.6B in 2018 and is targeted to reach US$ 50B by 2022.

Tourism and rising concerns

However, with the explosive growth of the sector, the long-term sustainability of tourism as a factor of development is frequently being framed to be questioned, particularly because of its significant adverse effects on the environment, fast consumption of natural resources, socio-cultural etc. The massive growth of the sector over the last decade has become increasingly concerning subject. 

As a result, there is now a soaring interest to promote sustainable tourism to maximise its ecological impact and to maximise socio-economic, in general,  privileges at tourist destinations. The World Tourism Organization (WTO) developed the concept of sustainable tourism, in the context of the United Nations sustainable development process, refers to tourist activities “leading to management of all resources in such a way that economic, social and aesthetic needs can be fulfilled while maintaining cultural integrity, essential ecological processes, biological diversity and life support systems”. 

What is sustainable tourism?

A central idiosyncrasy of sustainable tourism is its ability to associate environmental integrity, social equity and economic prosperity, commonly referred to as the triple bottom line, attributes of sustainability and to function as an incentive for their joint reinforcement.

Sustainable Tourism can provide the comprehensive potential of the tourism sector because it can benefit to design more effective policies and meticulously planned strategies to realize the full social and economic potential of the tourism sector.

Sustainability policies pertaining to the ecological, economic, and socio-cultural regards of sustainable tourism development, and a seemly equipoise must be set up within these three domains to ensure its abiding sustainability. 

Steps towards sustainability

– Follow a systematic approach to make optimal use of natural resources, maintaining essential ecological processes and focus on conservation of natural heritage and biodiversity.

– Honour and be kind to the host communities socio-cultural traditional values, abstain the exploitation of their resources and heritage site, impart to inter-cultural beliefs and focus on giving back to the community through the volunteer work. 

– Enact economic sustainability, aiming for both long-term and immediate profitability goals, fairly disseminate socio-economic gain among the various stakeholders in the supply chain, including the opportunities of employment for the host communities following poverty reduction strategies.

Reasons for sustainable tourism

Sustainable is not sufficient but necessary requirement for the flourishing environment and tourism in the long run. As we have observed, the demand for sustainable tourism is increasing up.

Making eco-friendly choices in tourist accommodation are beneficial for reasons:

1. Creating an added value for the travel places to guests more interested in this issue.
2. Reduction in the costs and consumptions (energy, water and waste in general), the GHG emission.
3. Help to Generate employment in the supply chain and produce skilled labours.
4. Improve the performance and profitability of local tourism businesses.
5. To encourage extensive local participation in community-based tourism.
6. Increase the number of women entrepreneurs in the sector.
7. Offers authenticate experiences.
8. Contribute to poverty alleviation.

and the list of benefits of sustainability goes on.

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