Editorial 1: Quakes may well sharpen India’s seismic readiness

Context

India must shake itself out of its perilous innocence and be prepared for the reality beneath the earth’s crust.

 Introduction

Two years ago, on February, 6, 2023, the people of Türkiye and Syria were jolted out of their sleep. At least 17,000 were killed, with their numbers mounting within minutes, as a great earthquake shook those countries in the early hours after 4 a.m., at 7.8 on a scale of 0 to 10. A second jolt came like a collaborator of the first, nine hours later, destroying whatever buildings stood on or around the scene of the first trauma.

Fault Lines

• Expression Usage: ‘Fault lines’ is an expression that we come across and use as we might ‘glaciers’ or ‘deserts’. That is, without realising that it refers to an intensely volatile and totally unpredictable phenomenon, like the temper of the proverbial sleeping dragon or demon.
• Location and Structure: Fault lines lie between the 15 log-jammed major tectonic plates on which the earth’s thin crust sits.
• Dormancy: These lines can slumber for decades, even centuries, quietly, one may say so ‘sweetly’, that their very existence can be forgotten by all except seismologists.
• Awakening and Impact: Until…the fault lines stir, rise, shake and then go on to mutilate, destroy and kill whatever lies on and along those lines. Depending on the degree of the awakened one’s temper, the fury lasts or abates till such time as it lasts or abates.

Nature’s brewing tension

• Formation of the Himalayas: India’s Indian Plate pressing onto the Eurasian Plate sculpted the Himalaya.
• Fault Line Location: The fault line involved runs right along the Great Himalayan Arc that stretches from Kashmir to the North East. It also implicates adjacent tracts in Pakistan, the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China, Nepal, and Bhutan.
• Perception vs. Reality: We are but dimly aware of this. For those of us who do not live in those stunningly beautiful tracts, that region means and evokes snow, pure air, clear waters, holidays, and leisure. But we must know, must understand, the concurrent ‘scene’ which is about potential rubble, ravaged hillsides, mutilated river courses, and trauma.
• Seismologists’ Warning: We must shake ourselves out of our dangerous illusion, our perilous innocence about the reality beneath our feet. Seismologists tell us that the two great tectonic plates, the Indian and the Eurasian, have now slept their really deep sleep long enough and that the built-up pressure inside their folds cannot be expected to hold its tension much longer.
• Recent Earthquake: Sure enough, a little over just one month ago, on January 7, 2025, at 9:05 a.m., an earthquake measuring Mw 7.1 struck Shigatse city of the Tibet Autonomous Region of Southwestern China. Between 126 and 400 people were reported killed and 338 were injured.
• Impact Beyond Borders: Unmindful of national borders and oblivious of lines of actual or notional control, the quake made itself felt in Nepal and in Northern India.

In the media

• Earthquake impact: If the epicentre had been located closer to India, the damage could have been manifold.’ It added, ‘Earthquakes in the Himalayas evoke a special kind of dread in the country.’
• Need for planning and action: Dread they do cause. But have they occasioned the kind of intense and urgent planning that is needed? Have they occasioned national alertness, resolve, and action?
• Challenges in prediction: The Editorial noted, ‘Predicting the day and time is outside the ambit of current science.’ The best hope is insulation against projected damage.
• Infrastructure concerns: Infrastructure development in the Himalayan region must consider landslides, glacial lake outbursts, and the fragility of the region. Every project, whether a power plant or dam, must factor in the imminence of a major earthquake.
• Building code adherence: The Editorial emphasized adhering to building codes, not just in the Himalayas but also in the Indo-Gangetic plains, to limit damage. However, the earthquakes that shook Delhi on February 17and Siwan in Bihar within four hours suggest that adherence alone is not enough.
• Public reaction and social media: Some people in Delhi felt they had never experienced such a strong tremor. One post said, “today Delhi and Bihar, tomorrow West Bengal…”
• Government responsibility: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, just back from the United States, urged people to stay calm and take precautions. However, real precautions must come from the government and the state.
• The cost of preparedness: We are now in a contingency that must consider: high probability of earthquakes, high financial and physical costs if preventive measures are taken, and incalculably higher costs if they are not.
• Insurance analogy: The principle is the same as in any insurance arrangement: the higher the risk, the higher the premium.

Time to act, and quickly

• Engineering regulations in seismic zones: We need, not just quickly, not just urgently but quite immediately, to provide for state expense on, first, fore-closing and rolling back engineering enterprises that weaken the earth’s crust, especially rocky terrain, in India’s seismic risk zones in the ascending calibration of II, III, and IV.
• Enhanced seismic zonation maps: Second, super-imposing on the existing seismic zonation maps, which are really x-ray plates, new carefully drawn mapped-plans for the protection (which can include evacuations, demolitions, and re-building) of highly vulnerable structures, and assessing the seismic status of high follow-on secondary risk structures such as like hydel projects and atomic reactors (Narora in Uttar Pradesh is located in Zone IV).
• Seismic building insurance: Third, setting up a seismic building insurance scheme wherein premiums for insuring against collapse can be offered and encouraged.
• Cost assessment for disaster response: Fourth, doing an assessment of the costs of rescue, temporary sheltering, and rehabilitation zone-wise, of dislocated populations.
• International collaboration: Fifth, fast-forwarding collaboration with countries that are experts in the field on earthquake anticipation through sensors and architecture nostrums. This would involve expenses on hiring consultants.

Conclusion

All this sounds grim. But we should tell ourselves that there is the ‘good news’ that we are, as of this moment, ahead of the big seismic shock that has been anticipated by seismologists. We are capable of planning with some composure, even as we recover from the shock of February 17, not in a post-shock trauma accompanied by fiscal crippling. And, we have an institutional advantage in the shape of a Ministry of Earth Sciences and a Disaster Management Authority waiting to be harnessed in any scheme towards seismic resistance. The ‘motto’ is brief: earthquakes are not to be prevented, they can scarcely be predicted, even in our age of Artificial Intelligence. But they can be prepared for. Is anyone doing that

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Editorial 2: The deeper meaning of declining school enrolment

Context

It could mark the beginning of the end of the India’s demographic dividend and a population aging before it becomes rich.

Introduction

As the world’s most populous country, India hopes to reap its demographic dividend due to its burgeoning youth population. Demographers and policy planners always knew that this window of opportunity would remain open, but only for a limited time. Declining school enrolment over the past decade marks the beginning of the end of this period. This means that India may become older even before becoming rich.

• It is no wonder that the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (U-DISE+) data for 2022-23 and 2023-24, which was released by the Ministry of Education on December 30, 2024, caused much consternation as it showed a 15.5 million drop (6%) in school enrolment since 2018-19.

The official line versus the reality

• Official explanation: Official sources have attributed the decline in enrolment to improvements in data collection. They explain that seeding Aadhaar numbers with enrolment eliminates multiple enrolments.
• Suspicions about multiple enrolments: This may sound plausible because it has long been suspected that some children are enrolled in multiple schools.
• Data analysis contradiction: However, an analysis of decade-long data (2014-15 to 2023-24) on enrolment and its correlation with different independent variables, including changes in the population in the age groups relevant to schooling, tells a different story.
• Larger implications: In fact, it shows a rather grim picture. The needle points toward the beginning of the endof the era of reaping the demographic dividend.
• Significant drop in enrolment: School enrolment has plummeted by 24.51 million or 9.45% over the past decade.
• Elementary-level decline: Elementary-level enrolment registered a pronounced fall of 18.7 million (13.45%). This level of education has been free and compulsory under the Right to Education (RTE) Act since 2009.
• Secondary and senior secondary trends:
  • Secondary-level enrolment declined by 1.43 million (3.75%).
  • Senior secondary-level enrolment increased by 3.63 million (15.46%).
• Recent nature of the decline: This means that the decline began only recently.

Government and private schools

• Government and government-aided schools: Enrolment in government and government-aided schools, which account for more than 65% of total school enrolment, recorded a significantly higher decline:
  • Government schools: Declined by 19.89 million (13.8%).
  • Government-aided schools: Declined by 4.95 million (16.41%).
• Elementary-level impact:
  • Government schools: Declined by 21.78 million (18.31%).
  • Government-aided schools: Declined by 3.85 million (24.34%).
  • Secondary-level enrolment also fell, but at a lower rate.
• Private unaided schools:
  • Total enrolment increased by 1.61 million (2.03%).
  • Marginal increase in elementary and secondary levels.
  • Senior secondary-level enrolment surged by 1.41 million (15.55%).
  • These schools bucked the trend but were not entirely unaffected.
• Systematic transition: The decline has persisted since 2014-15, especially at the elementary level. It cannot be ascribed to methodological changes or dismissed as a temporary event.

Demographic factors and declining school enrolment

• Decline in school-going population: The 6-17 years age group declined by 17.30 million (5.78%) over the past decade.
  • 6-13 years (elementary level): Declined by 18.7 million (9.12%).
  • 14-15 years (secondary level): Declined by 2.17 million (4.35%).
• Correlation between population and enrolment: Data show a statistically significant strong positive correlation between school enrolment and the population of the relevant age group. The decline in population explains 60.36% of the decline in enrolment.
• Decline in the number of schools: The number of schools in India declined by 79,109, from 1.55 million (2017-18) to 1.47 million (2023-24), a 5.1% drop.
• Fertility rate and implications: India’s fertility rate fell to 2.01 in 2022, below the replacement level of 2.10. This persistent decline in school enrolment is mainly due to demographic changes, which do not augur well for the country.

The social impact

• Youth population and enrolment growth: A burgeoning youth population is necessary for enrolment growth, which India has been experiencing until recently.
• Population shift: It has now entered the phase when the population bulge is shifting to the right.
• Immediate effect on elementary enrolment: Since the process began only recently, it is reflected rather sharply in elementary-level enrolment.
• Gradual impact on higher education: The effect will gradually but firmly be felt in secondary and senior secondary-level enrolment, and will finally impinge on higher education.
• Shrinking working-age population: As is already the case in most developed countries, we will soon face the transition to a shrinking working-age population.
• Need to maximize demographic dividend: This is disconcerting because it is happening sooner than expected.
• India’s challenge: Ideally, a country must reap as much demographic dividend as possible to generate much-needed income and wealth to support and sustain the burden of an ageing population.
• Future concern: India will likely see its population age even before becoming rich.

Conclusion

Declining school enrolment has less to do with the change in data collection method than a shift in the demographic bulge to the right. Unless the 2021 Census, which is yet to begin, presents a different demographic trend, it could mark the beginning of the end of the demographic dividend for India.