Biological invasions pose substantial economic threats globally, yet detailed cost assessments for many Global South nations, especially in Africa, remain scarce. This study presents the first comprehensive breakdown of the potential economic costs of biological invasions in Morocco. The researchers identified 343 invasive alien species, comprising approximately 1.11 percent of the country’s biodiversity. Using the InvaCost database, they retrieved cost estimates for 137 species with available records. They calculated the mean annual cost per species, adjusted these values both socio-economically (using World Bank Purchasing Power Parity) and climatically (via Köppen climatic regions), and extrapolated them based on species prevalence in Morocco. This yielded an estimated annual economic impact ranging from USD 1.14 billion (conservative adjusted value) to USD 5.13 billion (maximum scenario). Across all estimations, damage costs consistently exceeded management costs by one or two orders of magnitude. Despite challenges in extrapolating cost data from other regions, this study underscores the urgent need for more research and for targeted management and policy interventions to minimise the spread of invasive species and reduce their economic toll. Proactive measures in Morocco, coupled with international collaboration, will be critical to mitigating this socio-ecological crisis and ensuring long-term sustainability.

Authors: Jazila El Jamaai, Ahmed Taheri, Liliana Ballesteros-Mejia, Danish A. Ahmed, Alok Bang, Christophe Diagne, Franck Courchamp and Elena Angulo 

Authors:

Pebsworth, P. A., Dore, K. M., Hansen, M., Anand, S., & Zinner, D.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is India’s rural employment guarantee programme that provides 100 days of work to each household and mandates payment of wages within 15 days of completion of work. MGNREGA has been subject to many technological interventions purported to improve efficiency and transparency. Many of these interventions were introduced without any consultation or scientific piloting resulting in violation of workers’ rights. We focus on two digital interventions. Firstly, in the financial year 2021 – 22, wage payments of workers were segregated based on their caste. Notwithstanding delays in wage payments, we find there is a statistically significant difference in the time taken to process payments across caste. This provides an empirical corroboration of how this move created caste tensions at worksites. Just in our sample, the compensation as per law that is payable to workers due to delays by the union government alone is ₹399 million. This is neither acknowledged nor paid. Secondly, we demonstrate that there is no statistically significant difference either in timely payment of wages or in payment rejections between the Aadhaar-Based Payment System (ABPS) and the standard account-based methods. Our analysis is based on 31.36 million transactions across 10 states from financial year 2021 – 22 crawled from the programme’s Management Information System. This is the first large-scale data-based evidence debunking officially stated claims of timely payments due to ABPS. We also examine official government circulars, documents retrieved using Right to Information responses combined with our immersive fieldwork to underscore our findings. In summary, we argue that any digital technology introduced in MGNREGA or any other social policy must be done through a consultative process, independent audits, giving centrality to workers’ rights.

Authors:

Suguna Bheemarasetti, Anuradha De, Rajendran Narayanan, Parul Saboo & Laavanya Tamang

Introducing foreign elements into a crystal lattice could trigger phase transformation, serving as an excellent means to fabricate highly electrocatalytic phases. NiCo2S4 is a notably electrocatalytic thiospinel phase, normally synthesized via two-step route and rarely explored for electrocatalytic hydrazine oxidation reaction (HzOR). This work reports one-step hydrothermal syntheses of NiCo2S4 and CuCo2S4 and their performance for HzOR and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Time-dependent syntheses suggest formation of (M, Co)9S8; M=Ni/Cu phase, followed by conversion to the respective thiospinel phase. Computational study validates that the incorporation of Ni into Co9S8 disrupts its stability and induces the formation of a stable bi-metallic thiospinel phase. Even without the assistance of metal foam substrate, NiCo2S4 displayed remarkable activity for HzOR requiring potentials of 153 and 350 mV to afford current densities of 10 and 500 mA/​cm2, respectively. Furthermore, NiCo2S4 showed good activity for OER, providing 10 mA/​cm2 at 290 mV. For hydrazine-assisted H2 production, the two-electrode setup, NiCo2S4||Pt/C attained a current density of 10 mA/​cm2 at 140 mV, which is 1.39 V less than that required for conventional water electrolyzer (1.53 V). Long-term durability of NiCo2S4 for both HzOR and OER at high current densities highlights the suitability of the catalyst for practical applications.

Author/​s: Diya Raveendran, Viplove Mishra, Athma E. Praveen, Avishek Roy, Aditi Chandrasekar, Venkataramanan Mahalingam, Ananda Basak

Small-scale fisheries play an important economic, social and cultural role in coastal Karnataka even today despite being subjected to several natural and anthropogenic stressors for a long time. They are neglected or even outright discouraged in the state’s fisheries policymaking, and their contributions to the state’s fish supply and their role in livelihood creation do not receive the due recognition. This paper is premised on the recognition of emerging stressors that pose a threat to the viability of small-scale fisheries. The impacts of these stressors have implications not only for the environment but also for nutrition, particularly among vulnerable populations, and the overall socio-economic stability of coastal communities that rely on fishing as a livelihood. The goals of this paper are to provide a thorough review of literature around these stressors, and to describe how these are being played out in coastal Karnataka. Among these stressors, we delve in depth on the new Blue Economy policy of India since it is likely to have severe antagonistic effects in combination with other anthropogenic stressors. Our opinion is, Karnataka has already started witnessing many of these ramifications of interventions/​stressors and the coastal landscape of the state is set to be transformed over the next couple of decades or so. Small-scale fisheries of the state are likely to be some of the most impacted communities from these interventions.

Authors:  Shruthi Suripeddi, Prasanna Surathkal, Amalendu Jyotishi, and Ramachandra Bhatta

It has been reported from various contexts that learning quantitative methods for public health and social research is challenging for students. Based on our observations of these challenges, we designed a simulation-based pedagogical tool called Surveypura to support classroom-based learning of quantitative research methods. The tool includes a large illustration of a fictional village with 155 houses, alongside data for each of the households. The features of the houses, household characteristics, and the village have been carefully designed to give the visual feel of an actual village and better assist the pedagogical process. The tool was used by five facilitators with their master’s students at Azim Premji University in courses on social research and epidemiology. Our observations of the sessions and interactions with facilitators and students suggested that the tool supported more engaged learning of quantitative research methods in a non-intimidating manner. We believe that Surveypura can be a useful simulation-based pedagogical tool to teach quantitative research methods in epidemiology and social sciences even in other contexts.

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According to the Government of India, linking Aadhaar with the delivery of welfare schemes has saved nearly INR 2,73,093 crore till March 2022 due to, apparently, the removal of duplicate/​fake beneficiaries and plugging of leakages, etc. What is the overall impact of Aadhaar on welfare delivery? We try to understand this through a case study of MGNREGA in Jharkhand. Surveying nearly 3,000 workers in eight villages in Jharkhand to assess both the costs and benefits of linking MGNREGA with Aadhaar, the paper focuses on its impact on errors of inclusion and exclusion.

Authors:

Anjor Bhaskar, Arpita Sarkar, Preeti Singh

The article explores the emergent tension between the minority imagination and anticaste politics among India’s most significant religious minority, the Muslims. Since the late 1990s, the mobilisation of lowered-caste Muslims in the form of the Pasmanda movement has increasingly challenged the hegemony of the so-called high-caste Ashraf Muslims. The nascent Pasmanda counterdiscourse has contested the critical elements of the entrenched Muslim-minority discourse: identity and the religio-cultural, security and interreligious (communal) violence, and equity and affirmative action. The monolithic image of the Muslim community has been dispelled, and the Muslim-minority discourse has been characterized as a machination for preserving and reproducing the Muslim elite interests. The article maps the Pasmanda discourse and locates it as an instance within the evolving literature on the analytical limitations of the concept of minority to address the justice claims of emergent political subjectivities. The Pasmanda contestations present a sharp anomaly to the existing Muslim-minority discourse and indicate a paradigmatic shift.

Author:

Khalid Anis Ansari

Temporality is recognised as critical to the understanding of childhoods by contemporary scholars of childhood. This paper explores the varying temporalities through which marginal childhoods (and their educational inclusion), particularly those situated in contexts of temporary internal migration, are constructed in the Indian context. Drawing on ethnographic data from the city of Bengaluru, this paper problematises how dominant ideals around migration, childhood, and schooling frame migrant children’s lives through linear temporalities. Furthermore, the paper argues that policy interventions that ostensibly include migrant childhoods do not engage critically with the politics of linear temporality which, in turn, is central to the exclusionary dynamics of migrant children’s schooling. linear temporality; marginal childhoods; educational inclusion; temporality of schooling; migrant childhoods and temporality.

Author: Vijitha Rajan

The present article examines the efforts of the Hindu conservatives at securing support for a law to ban cow-slaughter during the intervening years of India’s Independence. It also critically examines the debate on this question in the Constituent Assembly of India. Through this examination the article notes how the Hindu conservatives prepared the ground for a law against cow-slaughter even prior to the question being debated in the Constituent Assembly. Further, it argues that by an exclusive consideration of the views of the practitioners of conservative Hindu religion, whose ideology is based on a monolithic conception of Hinduism, over cow and conversely disregarding the others’ views, particularly of Islam on the same, the makers of the Constitution of India sought to impose a Hindu religious practice upon the non-believers of Hindu religion. The article also highlights the role of Ambedkar in the making of Article 48. The article is divided into three sections, wherein the first section looks at the Hindu conservatives’ attempts at securing support for a law against cow slaughter, the second and third sections analyze the debate over the question of cow-slaughter in the Constituent Assembly of India.

Classroom assessment is the process of documenting the knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs of learners. It provides essential feedback to both instructors and students to improve their teaching methods for guiding and motivating students to be actively involved in their learning. Assessment drives learning. Formative assessments enable the instructor to guide the students to learn well. Summative assessments enable the measurement of levels of attainment of course outcomes and act as feedback to course design and curriculum improvement. This article presents the underlying principles of assessment through a discussion of assessment approaches and their purposes, types of assessment items, quality of assessment and summative assessment plans. Quality assessment instruments can be developed through an understanding of the quality attributes of assessment items, the process of designing assessment instruments, designing a variety of assessment items, and devising plans to evaluate them through rubrics. An approach is presented for creating a summative assessment plan that can also lead to the attainment of outcomes as per the requirements of programme accreditation.

The social – ecological systems (SES) framework (Ostrom 2009, Science. 325(5939):419 – 22) typologically decomposes SES characteristics into nested, tiered constituent variables. Yet, aligning the framework’s concepts of resource system (RS) and resource unit (RU) with realities of individual case studies poses challenges if the underlying SES is not a single RS, but a mid to large-scale nested RS (NRS). Using a diagnostic approach, we describe NRSs — and the activities and networks of adjacent action situations (NAAS) containing them. An NRS includes the larger RS and multiple interlinked semi-autonomous subsidiary RSs, each of which support simultaneous, differently managed appropriation of individual RUs. We further identify NAASs operating within NRSs in two diverse empirical cases — networks of lake systems in Bengaluru, India and German wheat breeding systems — representing a lever towards understanding transformation of SESs into sustainable futures. This paper contributes towards unpacking and diagnosing complexities within mid to large-scale RSs and their governance. It provides a generalizable, rigorous approach to SES case study analyses, thereby advancing methods for synthesis in sustainability science.

Cite this article: Unnikrishnan, H., Katharina Gerullis, M., Cox, M. et al. Unpacking dynamics of diverse nested resource systems through a diagnostic approach. Sustain Sci (2023). https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​0​7​/​s​1​1​6​2​5-022 – 01268‑y

People in rural India routinely experience a vast difference between what is promised by the state and what is realised on the ground. Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) enable a broad spectrum of actors to be involved in planning the activities of the local state and holding the bureaucracy accountable for their actions at this level. While literature shows that clientelism is pervasive and affects the performance of PRIs adversely, there are pockets of evidence where programmatic transactions regularly occur. I use programmatic and clientelistic transactions as ideal types of outcomes and exploring how these transactions are engendered through a comparative study of two Gram Panchayats with similar institutional settings using ethnographic materials. Together with institutional design and economic factors, differences in local political dynamics affect development outcomes. Individualistic and loyalty-driven leadership prompts symbiotic relationships with bureaucrats, whereas cadre-based leadership prefers control and scrutiny. The expectations of villagers from their panchayat are also shaped by these political traits. In the first scenario, bureaucracy uses procedural compliance to hide clientelist decisions from scrutiny, whereas in the second, it is used to demonstrate neutrality in decision making.

Since the last few decades of the twentieth century, we have been witnessing a major push towards universalization of school education in the countries of the Global South, both from policy advocates and from the grassroots. This verve in societal aspirations and policy action is definitely encouraging. However, this dynamism should also inspire us to rethink and reimagine the aims and practices of education in a rapidly changing context. Education as an organized human enterprise is intimately linked to the broader aims of human wellbeing, good life and justice. The policies and practices of Education for all, therefore, aim to realize these ideals. This special issue of the Journal of Human Values explores the significance of the prevailing conceptualizations of wellbeing, a good life and justice on education theories, policies and practices in the Global South.

During our frequent visits to the countryside of Solapur city, we observed an unusual behaviour in a pair of Indian Robins Copsychus fulicatus. It was a hot summer day in May 2021 and we noticed the pair collecting nest material such as grassroots, twigs, and hair. The nest was situated on a 1.5 m high mound of soil. To avoid disturbing them, we observed them from a distance of c. 9 m, with the help of 10x binoculars and 65x camera. The location of the nest was clearly visible — in a westward-facing hole, 1.4 m above the ground.