Author name: Hemant

In the past decade, the appeal for integrating technology into education has seen a meteoric rise. The Education Technology (Ed-Tech) …

After generating days of excitement in the media, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit finally concluded with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar making a quick visit to Islamabad. For all the speculation about India and Pakistan, in the end, what the 23rd meeting of the Council of Heads of Government (CHG) of the SCO will likely be remembered for is perhaps Jaishankar’s sunglasses. In this age of intense social media scrutiny, a small clip, now viral, of Jaishankar sporting his sunglasses in style became symbolic of India’s confidence in dealing with Pakistan. Hilarious though this might seem, all that is left of Pakistan in Indian foreign policy imagination today is decoding our diplomats’ style and body language. But, of course, in sending Jaishankar to Islamabad for the SCO summit, New Delhi was also sending out a message about keeping its engagement with its SCO partners intact. Last year, when Bilawal Bhutto Zardari visited Goa to participate in the SCO meeting, he became the first Pakistani foreign minister to visit India since 2011. And now, Jaishankar was the first Indian foreign minister to visit Pakistan in around a decade. These visits though were largely inconsequential in the wider scheme of bilateral ties between the two neighbours.​ Terrorism Continues To Upset Things Established in 2001 and including Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Iran, the SCO is a Eurasian grouping that started out as a platform to deal with regional security challenges like extremism and terrorism. It later expanded to facilitating trade and investment and strengthening economic ties.

In a recent felicitation ceremony organised by the Bamboo Society of India (BSI) and Vidarbha Bamboo Development and Promotion Committee (VBDPC), Union Minister of Road, Transport and Highways, Mr. Nitin Gadkari, made a compelling offer to farmers: “You (farmers) grow Bamboo, I will give you a market” [Times of India, 2023]. The statement serves as an acknowledgement by the government about the policy shortcomings being faced by the Indian bamboo industry for the last two decades. The piece will try to position these shortcomings through a central problem and provide direct and indirect policy measures to address and actively engage with the solutions.  Approximately two decades ago, the planning commission envisioned the Indian bamboo industry as a potential 25,000-30,000 crore industry (estimated in the year 2004). This figure has also been reiterated by the central cabinet minister in a bamboo virtual conference in 2021, while providing assurance to the farmers for the support in product development and promotion from the Ministry of MSME [Economic Times, 2021]. The National Bamboo Mission (NBM), initiated in 2006, was meant to be a catalyst for the industry’s growth. It is a central institution embedded as a sub scheme under the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH) to allocate financial resources, set priorities & goals, and formalise the national institutional structure for the development of the bamboo value chain. Fast forward to the  present, the industry is still striving to develop and stands at a curious crossroad. Despite undertaking dedicated reforms in 2018 by the central government to address potential policy gaps by restructuring NBM, India’s bamboo industry has still failed to match the growth witnessed by its Chinese and global counterparts [NBM Revised Guidelines] [UNCTAD]. For context, the Restructured National Bamboo Mission (RNBM) refocused its strategy on product development, market creation, and waste utilisation, extending well beyond the existing priorities of cultivation and plantation of bamboo.  So, how effective has the NBM been for the growth (or not) of the bamboo industry over the past two decades? Examining international trade provides a uniquely troubling scenario. India, despite having the world’s largest bamboo cover [ISFR 2021] and being the second-largest bamboo producer with nearly 14.6 million MT of harvest in 2019 [NBM Operational Guidelines 2019], still imported 88% of its bamboo raw materials in 2021 [INBAR 2021]. This glaring dichotomy highlights the industry’s dismal condition on both the supply and demand fronts domestically as well as globally. Due to lower productivity and gaps in the supply of raw materials, imported bamboo is being used to cater to the domestic demand as well as manufacture exportable goods. In addition to that, India’s integration in the global value chain of bamboo is also very minimal indicating a vivid supply-demand gap. After a detailed and careful assessment, it is theorised that the domestic bamboo industry grapples with four intertwined challenges, each one hampering its growth potential and needs to be addressed holistically.  First, the bamboo productivity in India is extremely low, indicating low yield cultivation, compared to China which stands at 30-40 tons/ha, in India, it ranges between 1-3 tons/ha with figures only as high as 6-9 tons/ha [NBM Concept Note] [NEDFI Action Plan 2020]. One among many issues are the legal ambiguities on the  governance of upstream segments of bamboo across states that have yielded inefficiencies [CCS n.d] [CCS 2013]. These regulatory inconsistencies between states and between states and the central government have further hindered progress. These discrepancies are bamboo species specific and range from transit tariff collection to imposing royalties [MoEFCC 2017].   Second, a significant portion of funds, amounting to more than 50%, allocated to state bamboo missions goes unutilised, within which 55% of the funds are directed solely towards planting and cultivation related activities [NBM Annual Action Plan 2021]. Ironically, despite increased investment in bamboo cultivation, the average annual plantation area has decreased significantly and has gone down from 10,417 (before 2018) to 5,939 (after the restructuring of NBM) [MoA&FW Annual Report]. Third, as the value chain ends up becoming a low policy and funding priority over the years, the development of midstream and endstream segments received limited support and focus, with a majority of sectors still involved in manual labour work for product development [NBM Annual Action Plan]. The industry has primarily focused on low-value-added products with labour-intensive work, resulting in limited profitability, and lower interests from farmers. Additionally, there is a distinct supply-demand gap in the domestic bamboo economy. Estimates suggest that domestic bamboo supply is half the demand in the finished product market. The production figure for bamboo was 14.6 million metric tonnes in 2019, whereas the demand projected was more than 30 million metric tonnes [NEF 2023]. The interesting point is that even by utilising India’s vast bamboo resources, the net output of novel productivity (assuming a yield of 6 tonnes/ha) would still be low, primarily due to limiting non-forest bamboo land and lower yield.  Finally, high waste generation persists due to non-mechanized processing methods and an unskilled labor force, which is further exacerbated by cheap imported raw material from China. Some estimates points the number as high as 40% with 70-80% in sectors like incense sticks [Bamboonomics] [NCDC DPR]. In 2019, The ITC reported that its share of Indian bamboo for its agarbatti manufacturing operations is limited to 5%, implying the majority is sourced through imports [NBM MoM 2019].  Nevertheless, what is the way out of this dichotomy and solutions towards substantially reducing our import dependence from China, which costs us more than 64 million USD annually [INBAR 2021]? And how can the National Bamboo Mission proceed with planning strategic reforms for the industry?  The National Bamboo Mission has been instrumental in curating and crafting the bamboo industry in India since its inception in 2006. Though several factors have influenced the positionality and nature of imaging bamboo as a product, the central goal of reducing import dependence remains consistent. It is crucial to build on this inherent perspective and radically propose reforms in the way the bamboo industry is structured

Happiness, traditionally considered to be a positive emotion or experience, has now evolved into a scientific term capable of being quantified and measured according to set parameters. This evolution of happiness has been propelled by extensive research in various fields, regarding the importance of happiness as an objective of legislation and policy. This unusual correlation between happiness, law and policy stems from the realisation that economic prosperity doesn’t necessarily translate into increased individual happiness and consequently, national happiness. Contrarily, reliable data shows that in many wealthy nations an increase in per capita income has not led to a concomitant increase in happiness levels; thereby leading to a skewed model of national development. In an attempt to rectify this and to advocate for a more inclusive growth, researchers have been promoting a transition to the happiness approach. This happiness approach primarily puts forth a model wherein happiness parameters are a part of policy-making, and since any change in policy has to be driven by a corresponding change in law; it becomes pertinent to review the relationship between happiness and law. MEANINGS OF HAPPINESS It is important to delve into the different meanings of happiness to gauge the inherent attributes of the concept and how different disciplines view it. “In her 2007 book The How of Happiness, positive psychology researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky elaborates, describing happiness as “the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile”.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines happiness from two perspectives: Philosophers who write about “happiness” typically take their subject matter to be either of two things, each corresponding to a different sense of the term: A state of mind A life that goes well for the person leading it In the first case our concern is simply a psychological matter…What is this state of mind we call happiness? Typical answers to this question include life satisfaction, pleasure, or a positive emotional condition … In the second case, our subject matter is a kind of value, namely what philosophers nowadays tend to call prudential value—or, more commonly, well-being, welfare, utility or flourishing. Ruut Veenhoven states, “When used in a broad sense, the word happiness is synonymous with ‘quality of life’ or ‘well-being’. In this meaning it denotes that life is good, but does not specify what is good about life.” Edward Diener goes a step further and introduces the concept of Subjective Well-Being (SWB) within the happiness paradigm. He asserts: Philosophers debated the nature of happiness for thousands of years, but scientists have recently discovered that happiness means different things. Three major types of happiness are high life satisfaction, frequent positive feelings, and infrequent negative feelings (Diener, 1984). “Subjective well-being” is the label given by scientists to the various forms of happiness taken together. Thus, happiness for the purpose of quantification is subdivided into three types: Evaluative (life satisfaction), Affective (positive or negative feelings) and Eudaimonic (sense of purpose). It is the sum of all the above which is taken together to measure a nation’s happiness levels.  HAPPINESS AND LAW Happiness as a goal of the Government is not a new theory. From ancient times the legitimate objective of monarchy has been to enhance the happiness of its citizens. Kautilya wrote in Arthashastra that a King is as happy as his people and so the King’s foremost duty (Dharma) is to his people. Bentham stated , “ the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation”, more popularly known as the theory of Utilitarianism. Kautilya and Bentham are a few of the many philosophers who have time and again stressed upon the principle of happiness as the guiding force of any Government, rather than economic objectives. However, this emphasis also led to the fear of interventionist policies by the authorities under the garb of promoting happiness; and this very fear became the bedrock for modern nations to adopt economic parameters such as the Gross Domestic Product for measuring their progress. The dependence on GDP as the sole and true marker of a country’s progress, led to a lopsided view of development. Despite pre-existing constitutional guarantees regarding happiness and its pursuit thereof, in written constitutions around the world, the concept of happiness took a backseat in legal and policy debates globally. It was in 1972 that Bhutan became the first country to introduce Gross National Happiness as its primary indicator of the country’s progress. “The phrase ‘gross national happiness’ was first coined by the 4th King of Bhutan, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, in the late 1970s when He stated, “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross Domestic Product.” The concept implies that sustainable development should take a holistic approach towards notions of progress and give equal importance to non-economic aspects of wellbeing and happiness.” In this way, Bhutan became the first country showcasing administered happiness.  Bhutan’s departure from the norm propelled an era of happiness and well-being research, which led to two major findings: a) Increased economic wealth did not necessarily translate into increased happiness, also known as the Easterlin paradox and b) A happiness based approach towards law and policy had the potential to provide more comprehensive outcomes. Based on these findings, nations across the world are slowly incorporating legislative and policy measures to enhance the happiness levels of the citizens alongside the already established economic objectives.  Law has long been considered as a tool of social change and engineering. In addition to its coercive role, law has also been attributed with the ability to uplift the quality of life of citizens; and orient the nation towards a safer, happier and more prosperous existence. Researchers argue that happiness studies have the potential of positively affecting all areas of legislation. “Gruber & Mullainathan (2005) analyze U.S. and Canadian General Social Survey happiness data to find that increased cigarette sales taxes are associated with higher self-reported well-being levels of those having a propensity to smoke.” From proportionality of punishment to levying of taxes, happiness studies have the potential to provide a deeper insight into the human perspective; thereby leading to a more informed law-making process.    Happiness studies have garnered a lot of