🔵 China’s Male Leaders Push to Get Women to Stay Home for Family - The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/world/asia/china-communist-party-xi-women.html

🔵 Everyone's Sleepless, Exhausted. Why Did Rest Become So Scarce? | The Swaddle

https://www.theswaddle.com/everyone-s-sleepless-exhausted-why-did-rest-become-so-scarce

The right to rest is a fundamental human right; it has been recognized as such by India’s Supreme Court as well. But in a society riddled with inequities, the right to rest becomes a privilege and sleep deprivation is an outrage only in the population with the social and economic capital to call it out. For others, it is the accepted status quo. “The sacrifice of sleep in today’s productivity-driven society also speaks to the invisibility of the sacrifice of specific bodies in society, linked to histories of emotional labour and value extraction that are embedded in settler colonialism, racial capitalism and patriarchy – and living through systemic oppression is exhausting,” wrote Marie-Louise Richards in an essay. As it turns out, when inequalities and discrimination are embedded in our socio-cultural, political and economic systems, some bodies are pushed to extremes more than others. And research shows that these bodies primarily belong to women, the poor and people from marginalized or minority communities.

“We used to think that sleep problems were limited to Type A professionals, and they certainly aren’t immune, but low-income individuals and racial minorities are actually at greatest risk,” Wendy Troxel, a behavioral and social scientist said.

Sleep, or the lack of it, is not simply a health concern. It intersects with race, ethnicity, gender and even income.

🔵 Deciphering Current Affairs

One way for mapping current affairs to sociology syllabus.

Please maintain a separate sheet for every topic/subtopic.

Whenever you read the news, enter social issues in the respective sheet.

You may write a one-liner and create a hyperlink to the detailed news.

Update this sheet regularly.

Revise it often.

Congratulations! You have conquered sociology current affairs.

Note: Please write only what you can recall. Don't write anything and everything. Don't run after too many technicalities.

@Decipher_Sociology

🔵 Can the Death Penalty Be Justified? | An Explainer

https://www.epw.in/engage/article/can-death-penalty-be-justified

🔵 Does Access to Educational Institutions Signify Gaining Quality Education? | Economic and Political Weekly

https://www.epw.in/journal/2023/30/commentary/does-access-educational-institutions-signify.html

The Annual Status of Education Report has been instrumental in understanding the education trends in rural India. The ASER 2022, published after a gap of four years, draws attention to the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic on the primary and middle school education. While an increase in the enrolment rate is an encouraging observation, declining foundational learning abilities is a grim development. Drawing inferences from the major findings of the report, this article suggests the need for renewed collective efforts from the state, teachers, parents, and neighbourhood community to meet the new educational challenges.

🔵 Hybrid Mustard and Biotechnology : Pathways for Doubling Farmers’ Incomes and Nutritional Security | Economic and Political Weekly

https://www.epw.in/journal/2023/43/review-rural-affairs/hybrid-mustard-and-biotechnology.html

The government’s decision to move ahead on the much-delayed genetically modified mustard developed by the University of Delhi signifies a turnaround and bodes well for the country’s food system. Numerous tests over the last 20 years prove its safety for food, feed, and the environment in the Indian context. The resultant hybrid DMH-11 gives a yield advantage of 37% with the same level of inputs. Our analysis shows that the farming community will get 99% of the additional monetary gains, leaving only 1% to the seed companies. Establishing a hybrid seed production system through this approval is a breakthrough, and several new hybrids with higher yields and desirable characteristics might follow in the next few years that can lead to a turnaround in mustard production.

🔵 Public Agricultural Science and Yield Barriers in Foodgrains : A Long View on the Indian Experience | Economic and Political Weekly

https://www.epw.in/journal/2023/43/review-rural-affairs/public-agricultural-science-and-yield-barriers%C2%A0.html

A descriptive analysis of the building of a national agricultural research system and its role in increasing yield and production of foodgrains in India between the 1950s and the contemporary period is presented. The changing emphases of the scientific establishment in guiding plant breeding efforts given the refinement of technological tools and the larger policy and socio-economic context are traced. Assessing the long-term outcomes of India’s green revolution, selected contrary views on the subject are responded to. Even in the absence of a transformation of production relations and the recent policy shifts that have fostered a crisis of profitability for small and marginal farmers, the achievements of the NARS facilitated a growth of productive forces in India’s agrarian economy.

🔵 Environment Justice and Caste after Liberalisation | Economic and Political Weekly

https://www.epw.in/engage/article/environment-justice-and-caste-after-liberalisation

From Human Rights Violation to Climate Injustice
Jhajjar has been overwhelmingly agrarian, where the dominant caste of Jats own a majority of the agricultural land, including big, marginal, and small holdings. Due to a relative availability and facility of irrigation, water, electricity, road, transport, and market in the region, crop intensity in the district is 152%, and every major kharif and rabi crop is grown here (NABARD 2017). However, Dalits, who are 17.78% of the district’s population, have virtually no agricultural land. Post-liberalisation since the 1990s, increased industrial, trade, and business activities have radically changed the landscape of the district. Jat farmers have diversified their land use. They have used their non-irrigated and far-away agricultural land for brick kilns to create another source of income with minimum expenditure and least risk. There is another story here of how Jat farmers in Haryana have also been going through the impact of agrarian crisis since the past few decades, leading to several economic and social developments in the state (Jitendra and Ghai 2016). Brick manufacturing companies based in Haryana, Punjab, and Delhi, with their networks of local contractors and suppliers, have flourished in these Jat lands, who have either leased their land to these companies or have acquired licenses themselves. This has transformed the process of brick-making that was hitherto mostly maidani bhatti (awa)—small, scattered field structures used for firing bricks, in which neither a chimney was used nor was slack coal consumed as fuel. Local-level manufacturing and consumption of bricks also required lesser amount of ordinary clay, which was even possible to procure sometimes from village ponds and wastelands. For these reasons, till the early 1980s, manufacturing of bricks in kilns of Haryana was covered by the Food and Supplies Department, which was under the Haryana Control of Bricks Supplies Order, 1972.

🔵 The economy of a world without work  - The Hindu

https://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/the-economy-of-a-world-without-work/article67533423.ece

A future where artificial intelligence has eliminated the need for all forms of work is one where AI has become self-aware. If such a future is possible, how would economic relations be organised?

Can the current capitalist system function in a world where we don’t have to work?

🔵 THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

A month and a half is what we have left of this year.

Let's make the most of it.

Start consolidating what you've studied this year.

File it, save it, print it.

Give a finishing touch.

Write and revise.

Discuss and decipher.

Brainwrite.

Create thought maps.

P. S. Brainwriting is a technique for generating ideas that involves writing down ideas instead of discussing them aloud. It's similar to brainstorming, but instead of discussing ideas out loud, participants write them down and share them anonymously. 

@DecipherCivils

With AI, The Most Profound Career Shift In A Generation Is Upon Us
Read more at: https://dbrief.news/d/77g99

✅ RELEVANCE: Work and Economic Life

Why is Tamil Nadu detaining farmers under the Goondas Act?
Read more at: https://dbrief.news/d/dkOPt

✅ RELEVANCE: Agrarian Sector, Protests

🔵 A 70-hour Workweek? | Economic and Political Weekly

https://www.epw.in/journal/2023/45-46/editorials/70-hour-workweek.html

Rather than increasing work hours, the focus should be on improving labour productivity. 

The current debate in the national media about the need for increasing working hours comes at a time when demand for a shorter workweek resonates around the world. This debate was kicked off when a doyen of industry suggested that young people should be ready to work 70 hours a week to aid development. This suggestion is not new, as a similar demand had been made in 2020 to increase work time to a minimum of 64 hours a week to compensate for the loss of output during the pandemic.

However, the call for increasing working hours is not confined to just a few large employers. Many states amended the Factories Act, 1948 during the lockdown to increase the maximum number of working hours from eight to 12 per day and the maximum working hours per week from 48 to 72. These states include Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, and Odisha. A few months back, Tamil Nadu had introduced an amendment (which was later withdrawn) to the Factories Act, 1948 to increase the duration of factory shifts from nine to 12 hours a week. Similarly, Karnataka had also legislated (and also later withdrawn) to allow for 12-hour factory shifts sometime earlier. The reason cited for extending factory shifts is the need to run the factories round the clock using two shifts to beat the global competition.

✅ RELEVANCE: Work and Economic Life

Too many foreign students? Dutch universities slam ‘ridiculous’ proposal to cap foreign students
Read more at: https://dbrief.news/d/UGken

🔵 RELEVANCE: Education, Work and Economic Life, Migration

🔵 On the sub-categorisation within castes | Explained - The Hindu

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/on-the-sub-categorisation-within-castes-explained/article67541707.ece

The principal argument for sub-categorisation of SCs has been the graded inequalities among SC communities. The thrust of it has been that even among the marginalised, there are communities that have lesser access to basic facilities. As a result, the relatively more forward communities among them have managed to avail benefits consistently while crowding the more backward ones out. The solution, therefore is to sub-categorise the communities and provide separate reservation to the more backward communities within the reservation meant for SCs.

However, on the other hand, both the SC and ST Commissions have noted that allotting separate reservations within the categories would not really address the root cause of the problem. In an internal note prepared by the NCST, it had explained that the most backward SCs are lagging so far behind forward SC communities that a separate quota would not help. It said that the idea was to ensure representation at all levels. But given the disparity, even if posts were reserved at higher levels, these most backward SCs would not have enough candidates to be considered for it in the first place. Both the NCSC and the NCST had thus recommended that existing schemes and government benefits should first reach these sections before any sub-categorisation.

✅ RELEVANCE: Caste, Reservation

🔵 The Global Rise of Authoritarianism | Economic and Political Weekly

https://www.epw.in/engage/article/global-rise-authoritarianism

Why Study Authoritarianism?

Understanding authoritarianism better can help us navigate the “social phenomena such as ethnocentricism, prejudice and intergroup hostility” (Stellmacher and Petzel 2005). Authoritarian regimes have often been linked to xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment. Many scholars believe that investigating authoritarianism can help us better analyse group social behaviours.
Michel Foucault similarly argued, “what makes the domination of a group caste, or a class, together with the resistance and revolts which the domination comes up against, a central phenomenon in the history of societies is that they manifest in a massive and universalizing form, at the level of the whole social body, the locking together of power relation with relations of strategy and the results proceeding from their interaction.”
Many psychologists and sociologists have also unmasked why some citizens display unwavering obedience to authority.  For instance, Wilhelm Reich, explained in his book, ‘The Mass Psychology of Fascism’  how fascists and authoritarians come into power through their political and ideologically oriented sexual repression on the popular masses. He further explained how the fascist movement feeds upon authoritarian patriarchal social structures. Similarly, in Eric Fromm’s work, amid all the insecurities that the modern world has to offer, authoritarianism is described as a “mechanism of escape.”

✅ RELEVANCE: Power, Politics

🔵 International Men's Day (IMD) is celebrated on November 19 every year.

It's a day to recognize the positive contributions of men and boys to society, family, and community.

It also highlights issues that men face, such as: Abuse, Homelessness, Parental alienation, Suicide, Violence.

The theme for 2023 is "Healthy Men, Healthy World". The four sub-themes are:

🔹Take action
🔹Stay healthy
🔹Check in on a mate
🔹Improving male health together

Some ways to celebrate IMD include:

🔺Valuing male role models
🔺Acknowledging the contribution of men and boys
🔺Improving male health
🔺Tackling discrimination and disadvantage
🔺Fostering positive gender relations
🔺Making the world a safer place for everyone

Good Morning 🌞

Good Morning 🌅