18 to 21
Legal Age + Curbing digital divide + taking on difficult tasks
This week, we talk about the Government’s decision on raising the age of marriage, India’s digital infrastructure & the art of convincing oneself to do the hard things.
Raising the age of marriage
The Union Cabinet on 15th December 2021, consented to raise the legal age of marriage for women from 18 to 21 on the recommendation of a panel led by Jaya Jaitly, former president of the Samata Party.
The existing laws-
The laws prescribe certain ages for men and women to be the legal age to marry. For example- Section 5(iii) of The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, sets a minimum age of 18 for the bride and 21 for the groom. It is the same under the Indian Christian Marriage Act, 1872, and the Special Marriage Act.
Experts’ say-
While some welcomed this change, but some pointed-
Firstly, laws to prevent child marriage have had a minimal impact.
Child marriage has declined from 27% in 2015-16 to 23% in 2019-20, according to National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 5. Child marriage started to decline in the 1990s, way after the introduction of the legal age, also with the law which made primary education compulsory for all.
While 23% of marriages involve brides under age 18, and more marriages take place under age 21. This will lead to the criminalization of marriage which will impact the marginalized, rural communities and women with no education.
(Sources: Indian Express, Al Jazeera)
NDEAR- New hope for curbing the digital divide?
The pandemic brought to light the existing digital divide when the education of 300 million Indian students halted. With the existing programs and interventions, questions were raised about the digital infrastructure of the country.
In July 2021, the Government of India introduced the National Digital Education Architecture, a document that aims to deliver diverse, innovative digital solutions for the benefit of students, teachers, parents, communities, and administrators.
The Ministry of Education emphasized that the NDEAR will help in the reduction of inequality in the era of digital education, but how will it be possible with the existing issues?
Lack of infrastructure-There is a lack of infrastructure, as reflected in the data of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India: as of 30th September 2021, overall teledensity is 86.69%, while rural teledensity is even lower 59.33%.
Existing schemes on digital literacy-The schemes working for digital literacy witnessed slow progress as, under the Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan, only around 4.54 crore candidates enrolled for digital literacy training and 2.71 crore candidates were certified.
Low enrolment rate-The Annual Status of Education Report 2021 from Pratham, only in five states did more than half the enrolled children take part in online learning.
NDEAR does aim to use a content-oriented framework but without a citizen-oriented policy, the document may fail to fulfil goals and may lead to significant amounts of data leakage.
Suggestions by Internet Freedom Foundation-
Consultation and discussion: NDEAR documents need to be consulted with students, teachers, educational institutions, and civil society organizations for the optimal use of the document and to take into consideration the digital divide.
The data protection: The document talks about the need to protect the privacy of the students by protecting their data and for this, there is a need to set in security standards and protocols.
Increase spending on education: The current spending that is 3% is not in line proposed spending of 6%. The government needs to boost spending and develop digital infrastructure.
(Sources: NDEAR, Internet Freedom Foundation)
Train Your Brain to do Hard Things
The pandemic has filled our lives with uncertainty and it often feels hard to do the tasks which we could perform easily before the pandemic. All of this has wired our minds to go for the tasks that are easier to do and do not require hard work.
David Rock, the co-founder of the Neuroleadership Institute, shares the concepts that push us to take the easy way out.
The expediency bias: Doing the thing that feels right, or rushing to the judgment, without considering everything, because it’s much easier to process the ideas already present in our minds, than coming up with new ones.
The Hedonic principle: Person tends to move towards things that make us feel at ease and away from things that make us feel uncomfortable.
The author has suggested three ways by which we can do hard things when our brains are constantly telling us to avoid hard work.
Hard things are best tackled when in good mood.
A 2016 study sheds light on the fact that when people are low, they are less likely to try hard things and when they’re feeling good, they are likely to take up the hard tasks. David talks about getting oneself out of an unproductive loop, “reappraisal”. For example, literally saying to yourself, “I’m going to feel better once I get this new process down on paper,”, which makes you get out of that loop.
Make hard choices.
Our brains are wired in the way that if given a choice between a hard and an easy task, we choose easy. This thinking can be changed by being innovative and incentivising for choosing the hard task.
For example, Do I want to experiment with a new project management tool that might make things easier for my team next week, or do I want to stick with the same spreadsheet that a former employee established that none of us feels great about anyway?
Practice habits of a Growth mindset.
While practising our way to the growth mindset, we see ourselves slipping back into the old patterns. To challenge this, it is helpful to seek to support from others. For example, a team of executives decided to block off their mornings from team meetings to be more productive and some thrived in the afternoon. Due to the conflicting time zones, they came up with a different tactic: only making Monday mornings free of meetings. By acknowledging the progress made by trying a new habit, the team was able to continue experimenting by not falling into the old patterns.
(Adapted by: How To Convince Yourself To Do Hard Things by David Rock, Harvard Business Review)
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