Genesis What's up, what it gives mr. V here welcome to another video guys so in today's video I'm gonna try to answer the question of People asking me that they want to start day trading, but they don't know where to start So we're gonna take a look at that into this video But before we get started guys if you're new to the channel We talk about how to earn money how to save money how to invest and build wealth So if that's something that interests you go ahead and hit that subscribe button any notification bell So you don't miss out on new content. So this is a very common question. I've been getting here on the channel It's like hey, I want to get into day trading, but I don't know where to start So I'm gonna break it down for you guys up before we actually jump into the breakdown Here's what I want you to understand There's a stat out of that 90% of day traders turn to lose money And I don't think that that stat is just out there for nothing It's if anything it's out there to let you know that you need to be very careful when it comes to day trading So again, I'm not an expert day trader I'm not gonna sit here and say that or I have some a ton of experience My experience has been over the years. I started trading in the stock market back in 2008 2009 and so over 10 years now 10 11 years I've got some experience and that's what I'm actually sharing With you guys so be very very careful if you want to dabble with day trading now that that's out of the way So day trading for for people that don't quite understand what this is It's just a simple step of you buying and selling a stock On that same day in making a profit. So For people that just want to go in for a quick for a quick profit, you know, you can you do analysis There's a lot of analysis that you need to do to understand exactly when to get in Know exactly when to get out and just kind of follow some in some indicators that will guide you to go in and out of a trade So where do you start? In my opinion? The first thing you want to do is to select a platform So there is a ton of platforms out that you can trade on so I personally I use webo In that I have a link in the description below you can get Webo and get started with they give you two free stocks to get started But there's other platforms that you can use from vangar to fidelity to TD Ameritrade That you can get and get started with so Some Robin Hood. I mean name them. There's all also the platforms that you can actually use for for day trading So if you once you select your platform of choice the next thing I want you to do is you sign up and then Do some practice. There's this paper trading that you can do So here we both has a great paper trading platform So I did a video on that which I'm gonna hook up here. You can definitely go check out how to paper trade So I want you to spend time paper trading on webo and actually just learn Understand have a strategy Before you actually start using real money Understand your strategy very well. Look at when you want to go in when you want to go out Look at the indicators practice over and over and over Because when you see profitable traders It's it takes a lot of practice and a lot of people don't even tell you how much money they actually Lost in the market before they became profitable. So you have to be very very careful And it would once you've practiced and you feel comfortable that hey This is something I want to do and then you can start you can start trading the market, but How what kind of strategy you you implement just depends on your your learning So you can pick a strategy where you do shorting or you can pick a strategy where you go along No gap and gold. That's the strategy. I personally use I look at stocks I gap early in the morning because of maybe some good news because of their earnings So they gap really really fast. So those are very quick trades I go in and out and in seconds and then take my profit and I'm out Again for people that lose money in the market, my personal observation is that these are gritty savages These are people that go in instead of going in and taking your 100 or $50 and coming out and waiting for the next opportunity They go in they're looking to make 200 300 400 500 and then get end up the hands get caught in the cookie jar So and then you lose money. So Don't be a gritty savage because that is the number one recipe for you losing money So we've talked about you selecting your platform You're practicing and actually developing a strategy that works and testing that strategy Through paper trading and then once that strategy has been Established and then you can now based on the platform that you choose There's certain things that you have to worry about which I'm gonna talk details in a separate video But you have to worry about PDT so that patent day traders So they have some regulations in place where if you have less than 25,000 dollars in your account You cannot do day trading all the time you only have three day trades in a five business cycle So those are some of the things that you have to have in mind But once that that you've established that then you can go ahead and start really small Again, don't go for the homerun again. Let's say you have five thousand dollars in your account and you're looking to day trade From day one, I would say don't even dare trying to use all that five thousand start with 200 300 it doesn't matter because you're gonna make very limited profit, but you can test your strategy So when you start with two hundred dollars, you buy a stock you you make even if you make five dollars profit But you understand your your you understand the risky understand how to manage risk and see how it really works And at that point so that if you're losing money, you're not losing a ton of your money Then that way you have to build some confidence before you start expanding into start spending 500 a thousand dollars to buy and make profit So my strategy the way it has worked for me is I don't go in looking to make 5,000 10,000 profit. No, I go in my goal. My daily goal has been two hundred and fifty dollars So if it means that I have to do three or four five trades to get two hundred and fifty dollars I would take my time and make that I don't want to make it in one trade So I'll go in a trade. I'll put in five hundred dollars And if I make twenty five dollars I take that and wait for the next opportunity And so usually if you do it properly within an hour or two you should be able to make two hundred and fifty dollars So if you make two hundred and fifty dollars in two hours, that's a hundred and twenty five dollars an hour You tell me which job you have that can pay you hundred and twenty five dollars an hour So that's my strategy. That's my mindset going into it. So Make sure that you test your strategy with very Limited amount of real money before you even start going big again Don't be a greedy savage because that's the recipe for disaster. So recap here guys You want to start day trading? Where do you start? Number one is you have to choose a platform number two you choose the account type that you want to use if you want to do a margin account or or a cash account based on how much money you have and again I have a separate video that explains the details between a margin account and a cash account Once you decide that they kind of account that you want and then you you you do some training do some practice with paper trading Establish a strategy test that strategy paper trading making sure that strategy really works And then once you test your strategy that you can get now testing your actual strategy now in the real market But stat small. I don't mind if you buy one two or three shares of a company just to test it then Your next question will be but mr. V. Where do I find these stocks to trade? I have a separate video on that coming up. So stay tuned. I'll show you where I find the stock that I trade on the Database is I'm gonna I'm gonna do that in a separate video. So I hope this was helpful guys again Be cautious that day trading is a very risky business a ton of people like I said 90% of people lose money day trading And so if you do have any questions regarding that, let me know in the comment section I'm gonna have follow-up videos again Like I said with all the different aspect of day trading Based on my experience again guys day trading is a very risky business. So go in this with the mindset that This is not an easy task practice practice practice Let me know the comment section if you have any specific questions I'll definitely answer those so again if you are looking to start and you don't have an account yet I currently use Weibo and right now we was doing a promotion where you get two free stocks not one two for opening an account With them and depositing a hundred dollars. So Definitely check the link in the description and go check them out and see if that's something that works out for you And as always guys Stay motivated


Good evening aspirants welcome to the Hindu newspaper analysis brought to you by Shankar Iyer's academy for the day 21st December 2021. Displayed here are the list of news article chosen for today's discussion. In the first article we will talk about Wimstek and in the second article we will discuss about federalism. In the third article we will discuss about the delimitation commission and in the last article we will discuss about the relationship between India and the Central Asian trillions. Now without wasting much time let's get into our discussion. Let us take up this first news article. This article is about the statement by the chief of the army staff at the inaugural event of PNX 21. See he talked about the effects and impacts of unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic in this event but in this discussion we will see a brief about this PNX 21 but mainly we will see about what is Wimstek. First let's start our discussion with Wimstek. See the Bay of Bengal initiative for multi-sectoral technical and economic cooperation is abbreviated as Wimstek. It is a regional organization comprising seven member states. These member states are lying in the littoral and adjacent areas of the Bay of Bengal. Now who are these seven member states? They are Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and two more will be from Southeast Asia. They are Myanmar and Thailand. Note that Wimstek's potential is immense with the combined GDP of US$3.697 trillion per year and the region is home to 1.68 billion people covering 22% of world's population. See this organization came into being on 6th June 1997 through the Bangkok declaration. We saw what is Wimstek and what are all the member states? Now we'll see the objective of Wimstek. The objective of building such an alliance was to harness shared and accelerated growth. This can be achieved through mutual cooperation in different areas of common interest. Unlike many other regional groupings, Wimstek is a sector-driven cooperative organization. See it started with six sectors that will be trade, technology, energy, transport, tourism and fisheries. See for sectoral cooperation in the late 1997 it expanded to embrace nine more sectors which included agriculture, public health, poverty, elevation, counter-terrorism, environment, culture, people-to-people contact and climate change. This was in the year 2008. See the Wimstek is crucial for India in many ways. We'll see what they are. Wimstek revitalizes India's regional cooperation in the Bay of Bengal region along with deepening its relations with ASEAN. India's need to negate the Chinese influence further added to the shift in focus to Wimstek. The significance of Wimstek is also due to its regional integration and maritime security factors so that India can realize its blue economy ambitions. See the Bay of Bengal is the largest bay in the world which is strategically located linking the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and acts as a connection to the Strait of Malacca. Carrying one-fourth of the global trade, it becomes the access point to India for resources which includes energy source like natural gas reserves and securing this economically significant region is important for India because the export market of India can be enlarged. These are some of the key importance of Wimstek and Bay of Bengal region for India. Now we shall see about PANIX 21. See it is nothing but a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief exercise for the member nations of the Wimstek countries. I hope you all remember the member countries of Wimstek. They are Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand. See remember the member states of Wimstek it will be very useful for your prelims preparation. See PANIX 21 is mainly for a multi-sectoral technical and economic cooperation. It was held in New Delhi on December 2021. Also note that as per the 2020 report by the Ministry of External Affairs out of the 14 priority areas of cooperation in Wimstek, India is the lead country in areas of counter-terrorism and transnational crime, transport and communication, tourist and environment and disaster management. The event highlighted the swift and coordinated rescue and relief operation which were launched in India despite rising number of COVID cases and the national lockdown. So with this we have come to the end of our first article discussion. With these point in mind let's move on to the next article. See this news article talks about federalism which is being attacked by centralization of powers. It also mentions the ways to address this centralization of powers. See in this context we learn about fiscal federalism and legislative federalism that is mentioned in our Indian constitution. Also we will discuss in detail about the news article. See the syllabus relevant for the analysis is highlighted here for your reference. Please go through it. Let's start our discussion. Federalism is a system of government in which the power is divided. So it is divided between a central authority and various constituent units of the country. Usually a federation has two levels of government. One is the government for the entire country. See it will be usually responsible for a few subjects of common national interest. The other one will be the governments at the level of provinces or states. They will look after much of the day to day administering of their states. Both these levels of governments enjoy their power independent of the other. In this sense federations is contrary to unitary governments. Regarding the features of federalism we have discussed in detail on the 18th December 2021 Hindu news analysis by our academy. So watch it it will be very useful in understanding about federalism in a detailed manner. Okay now let's get into the first part of our discussion. Note that constitution of India divides all powers that is legislative, executive and financial powers between the center and the states. However there is no division of judicial power. Remember there is no division of judicial power. We learned that the center and the states are supreme in their respective fields but the maximum harmony and coordination between them is essential for the effective operation of the federal system. Hence the constitution contains elaborate provisions to regulate the various dimensions of the center and the state relations. So in this first we will discuss about the legislative relations. See article 245 to 255 in part 11 of the constitution divides the legislative powers between the center and the states. This division is with respect to both the territory and the subjects of the legislation. See parliament can make laws for the whole or any part of the territory of India. The territory of India includes the states and the union territory whereas state legislature can make laws for the whole or any part of the state. The laws made by a state legislature are not applicable outside the state. The constitution also provides for a threefold distribution of legislative subjects between the center and the states. What are they union list, state list and concurrent list. See the parliament has exclusive power to make laws with respect to any of the matters enumerated in the union list. Next the state legislature has exclusive powers to make laws with respect to any of the matters enumerated in the state list. The last we will see about concurrent lists. See both the parliament and the state legislature can make laws with respect to the matters enumerated in the concurrent list. Now comes the question, what about the subjects which are not covered under any of these three lists, they are called as residuary subjects. So in this residuary subjects the power is completely vested with the parliament. But remember the parliament acquires the power to legislate in matters of the state list while national emergency is in operation. The parliament can make laws on any matter in the state list for implementing the international treaties, agreements or convention. Also the parliament gets power to legislate directly on the state subjects under the exceptional situations. For example the governor can reserve certain types of bills passed by the state legislature for the consideration of the president and the president enjoys absolute veto over them. See the president can also direct the states to reserve money bills and other financial bills passed by the state legislature for his or her consideration during a financial emergency. Secondly we will see the provisions regarding the financial relations between the centre and the state. Article 268 to 293 in part 12 of the constitutions deals with the centre state financial relations. See the parliament has exclusive power to livy taxes on subjects enumerated in the union list whereas the state legislature has also exclusive power to livy taxes on subjects enumerated in the state list. And you know that both the parliament and the state legislature can livy taxes on subjects enumerated in the concurrent list. Finally the respiratory power of taxation that is the power to impose taxes that is not enumerated in any of these three lists that is union list, state list and concurrent list is automatically vested in the parliament. Besides sharing of taxes between the centre and the state the constitution provides for grants in aid to the states from the central resources. It also provides for the distribution of the net proceeds of taxes that is to be shared between the centre and the state. Also to protect the interest of the states in the financial matters the constitution lays down that the certain bills can be introduced in the parliament only on the recommendations of the president. For example the bills which imposes or varies any tax or duty in which states are interested can be introduced only with the president recommendation but the financial relations become rigid during emergencies. See for example while the proclamation of national emergency which is mentioned in article 352 is an operation the president can modify the constitutional distribution of revenues between the centre and the states. This means the president can either reduce or cancel the transfer of finances from the centre to the states. During financial emergencies which is mentioned in article 360 the centre can give directions to the state to reserve all money bills and other financial bills for the consideration of the president. Thus we have seen the fiscal federalism and legislative federalism mentioned in our constitution. Now let's discuss about the news article. See this article mainly discusses about the various issues that has affected the relation between the centre and the states in the last few years. We will see one by one. Firstly the demonetization which was imposed without adequate consultation with the states. See demonetization is the act of stripping a currency unit of its status as a legal tender. See we know that the government of India announced the demonetization of all 500 and 1000 rupees banknotes. The problem here is the demonetization was done without adequate consultation with the states. The second issue is we know that during the pandemic states were curtailed in aspects relating to COVID-19 management and mitigations. See states were curtailed in procurement of testing kits, vaccination, the use of disaster management act and the unplanned national lockdown. These were all done in spite of the fact that health is a state subject. Not only this, the policies by the union government in the recent past have led to the weakening of the state autonomy. For example you can consider farm laws. See entries 82, 86, 87 and 88 in the union list mention about taxes and duties on income and assets but it excludes those in respect of agriculture. Coming to the state list we have eight entries which are related to agriculture. It includes land revenue, land records, taxes on agricultural income, estate duty in respect of agricultural land, markets and fares, transfer of agricultural land, agricultural loans etc. From the above fact it is clear that the union list and the concurrent list put matters relating to agriculture outside parliament's jurisdiction and it gave to the state exclusive power over agriculture. Thus union government enacting a law is a clear violation of federalism. Finally after many protests the union government decided to scrap the farm laws last month. See the next issue is during the pandemic the union government repeatedly violated the compensation guarantees to the states especially in GST. See know that the greater share of the state revenue was subsumed under GST. See the union promised to compensate on time after the GST regime but there was a long delay in payment to the states. Delay in payment to the states wasn't due to the impact of economic slowdown. See the crisis got aggravated in July 2020 and the union government proposed to borrowing as an option to address a shortfall in GST compensation. Most states forced by economic pressure had to accept the proposal. See the states are already not getting the compensation. Now forced into debt which they would have to pay in future. Now we'll recollect a point from 2021 to 2022 budget estimates. In budget estimates the state's share of union tax has reduced to 30% against the mandated 41% devolution which was prescribed by the 15th finance commission. In addition to this kindly note that the funding of the PM CARES is eligible for corporate social responsibility expenditure but it is not the case with Chief Minister's disaster relief. It shows the increasing centralization of powers. That is the states are not given their due powers mandated by the constitution. See the author also suggests some of the ways to address the issues. Let us discuss them one by one. Firstly there should be research and introspection on federalism. See the country is constantly evolving and new states or union territories are being created or modified. So it is high time for another state centric committee like the Rajaminar committee to study union state relations. See the second suggestion is the state should demand for the creation of a formal institutional framework in order to mandate and facilitate consultation between the union and the states. The framework should facilitate consultation in the areas of legislation under the concurrent list especially with the focus on the federalism angle. See the third suggestion is the chief ministers of the state should reach out to one another not only during the crisis. Instead they should try to create forums for regular engagement facilitating effective consultation as a part of the lawmaking process. Finally it is important for the union to understand that federalism plays a crucial role in shaping the future of our country. Also the union should understand that the constitution establishes a system where citizens and the states are treated as partners and not subjects. That's all about this article. So we saw about fiscal federalism, legislative federalism and the issues faced by federalism due to the centralization of powers. Also we saw some of the suggestions given by the author in order to maintain a peaceful relationship between center and the state. Now let's move on to the next article. This news article talks about the proposal of Jamun Kashmir delimitation commission. See Jamun Kashmir delimitation commission was constituted in March 2020 and there are three members in this commission. In the view of ongoing pandemic its term was extended by another year in March 2021. So this news article talks about the recent proposal of this delimitation commission. The proposal is for increasing the seats of Jamun division and the Kashmir division. At present the Kashmir division has 46 seats and the Jamun division has 37 seats. So in this context we'll discuss about the delimitation commission its composition and function. Now let's move into our discussion. Delimitation literally means the act or process of fixing limits or boundaries of territorial constituencies in a country or a province that is having a legislative body. This job of delimitation is assigned to a high-power body. Such a body is known as delimitation commission or a boundary commission. In India such delimitation commission have been constituted four times. See in 1952 it was constituted under the delimitation commission act 1952. In 1963 under the delimitation commission act 1962 and in the year 1973 under delimitation act 1972. Lastly it was in 2002 under the delimitation act 2002. The delimitation commission of India is a statutory body and not a constitutional body. It is established by the central government under the provisions of a law enacted by the parliament. Now let's discuss in detail about the composition of this commission. It consists of the chairman who is either serving or a retired judge of the Supreme Court. He or she can serve for a period of two years. The other members includes the election commissioner of India and the election commissioners of the state and the union territories concerned. So having discussed about its composition now we will see its function. Its function is to demarcate the boundaries of the parliamentary and assembly constituency in the country. The delimitation commission in India is a high power body. Those orders have the force of law. So it cannot be called in question before any court. The copies of the commission's order are laid before the house of the people and the state legislative assembly respectively. But note that no modification are permissible. See under article 82 of the constitution the parliament by law enacts a delimitation act after every census. So after the commencement of this act the central government constitutes a delimitation commission. This delimitation commission demarcates the boundaries of the parliamentary constituencies as per the provisions of the delimitation act. The present delimitation of constituency has been done on the basis of 2001 census under the provisions of delimitation act 2002. See particularly this delimitation commission of 2002 was mainly formed to address the uneven growth of population in different constituency in different parts of the country as well as within the same state. Also to address the problems due to continuous migration of people or electorate from one place to another especially from rural areas to urban areas because these problems resulted in different sizes of electoral constituencies even within the same state. Note that the constitution of India was specifically amended in 2002. This amendment specified not to have delimitation of constituency till the first census after 2026. Thus the present constituencies carved out on the basis of 2001 census shall continue to be in operation till the first census after 2026. So we saw about what is delimitation commission its composition and function. Now let's move on to the analysis of the next news article. See this editorial article is about the third India Central Asia dialogue and also the article talks about some key points such as need of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan trade with Central Asia and connectivity. So this is the cracks of the article we will see the key points discussed in the article. Additionally we will also see some background details. Celebres relevant to the topics is given here please go through it. See the CAR and India share a broad regional consensus on Afghanistan. This is because they worry about the threat of terrorism, radicalization, narcotics and drugs. First of all let's see what the CAR means. CAR is nothing but the Central Asian Republic. It consists of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The region is strategically vital for many countries like China, Russia, India, US and Europe. Indeed a geographer Halford MacKinder observed he who controls the heartland controls the world. In recent years foreign affairs analysts have begun observing what they call the new great game in Central Asia which characterized by fierce competition between various states all aiming to increase their influence and hegemony and even power over the region. With this introduction about the region let's go back to the worrying factor. See from this image here you can easily understand why CARs and India are worrying. That is CAR and India are very close to the Golden Crescent which includes Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. See from these regions narcotics and drugs are infiltrated into the neighboring countries. Drugs grown in Afghanistan are trafficked through Iran and Pakistan to the rest of the world and also the current political regime in Afghanistan creates the fear of terrorism in the neighboring countries. But in this aspect India has more reasons to worry because most of the CARs maintain bilateral talks with the Taliban regime. Moving on let us discuss the role played by India in the CAR region. See we all know that Central Asia is located at the heart of Eurasia. Its geographical proximity and historic linkages make the region highly relevant to India's strategic interest. India has endeavored to devise policies focusing on Central Asia after the Central Asian Republics became independent in the 1990s but these have produced limited results. In order to expand India's political, security and cultural connections with the region, India introduced Connect Central Asia Policy in 2012. India has previously conducted two bilateral talks. It also maintains regular channels of communication with the CARs through forums such as Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in India. See now this news article also talks about the third bilateral talk that we are doing. But despite this, India's role as a key player remains underwhelming in the region compared to Russia, China, Turkey, Iran etc. We shall see why later in the discussion. Now let us understand the strategic importance of Central Asia for India. We shall see them one by one. See Central Asia serves as a land bridge between Asia and Europe and is very much rich in natural resources. It is thus geopolitically axial and economically offers a whole range of opportunities. But due to lack of direct geographical connectivity, India along with other partner countries in the region is working on the International North-South Transport Corridor. We shall discuss separately the importance of all the CARs for India. Tajikistan's importance for India lies in its geostrategic location. It shares borders with China, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Thus it is located in proximity to the Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Next we will see what is the importance of this Kazakhstan. It is viewed as an important place in the context of India's growing energy needs and Kazakhstan's immense hydrocarbon reserves. Next we will see the importance of Turkmenistan for India. It is mainly important for the gas reserves, transit potential and geostrategic location. India imports nearly 70% of its oil requirements which is likely to go up to 90% by 2025 from Turkmenistan and this fact has made Turkmenistan an attractive destination for India and it is a part of TAPI which is nothing but a gas pipeline involving Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Turkmenistan can also serve as a gateway to Central Asia through Iran. From India's point of view, the north-south corridor would not only help India in reaching out to Central Asia but also enable it to transport goods at a cheaper cost to the European markets. Next we will see about Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan has been appreciative of India's reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and supports India's candidature for full membership in the UNSC. Lastly we will see about Kyrgyzstan. India has offered assistance to Kyrgyzstan by sending a team to train Kyrgyz armed forces in UN peacekeeping operations and imparting English language skills. Thus both India and CARs have common grounds to enhance cooperation due to the threat of terrorism and drug trafficking spilling over into their countries from Afghanistan. So far we saw the importance of CARs for India and the role played by India in the CAR region. Now we shall move on to see the constraints for India in establishing itself as a key player in the region. See India must redouble its efforts in the area of connectivity to further its regional presence. This becomes all the more important since China's Belt and Road Initiative and also the two of its six corridors running through Central Asia. See China has been expanding its regional presence as seen in the 5 plus 1 format launched in 2020 to further its influence. However its advances are already causing concerns of depth trap diplomacy. The next constraint will be Russia. Russia is still a widely influential political and security player in the region and Russia has been promoting its own Eurasian Economic Union to pursue regional and economic integration. The image here shows trade relations of CAR with major countries. See it is evident from this graph that presence of Russia and China is more in the region than the other countries. India's trade with the region amounts to US dollar of 2 billion going to limited connectivity and low economic engagement. As India asserts its position as one of the fastest growing major economies in the overall world its increased engagement with the region can lead to mutually beneficial gains both in economic and strategic terms. The presence of multiple strong powers in the region offers options to regional actors like India to balance external pressures. Efforts are now being made to address the weak trade ties by encouraging cooperation among business on both sides. This is evident from the launch of India Central Asia Business Council in 2020. Beyond strategic and economic cooperation India must increase its developmental and humanitarian aid to the region. It should also promote closer people to people ties through education, knowledge transfer, medicine and health, culture, cuisine and tourism. Multilateral organizations like SEO, EAEU and CICA can serve as platforms for sustained engagement and regular exchanges of ideas. The SEO that is the Shanghai Corporation organization is a crucial grouping that provides India a strategic convergence with Russia and China on addressing new security challenges thereby enhancing infrastructural development projects and creating a network of regional oil and gas pipelines for the larger benefit of the Central and South Asian region. Apart from these ongoing projects in Central Asian countries some of which are double landlocked there remains much scope for digital connectivity as well. In a region where Russia and China remains the key players India has a long way to go before it can be recognized as a consequential actor in Central Asia. The points and proposals that we saw so far in this discussion process the potential to form the bedrock of a sustained balanced long-term strategy which India will have to capitalize on in order to achieve its policy goals in the region. That's all about this article. Now let's discuss the answers for our prelims practice questions. The first question is a statement type question. It is about BIMSTEC. See look at the first statement. It says it consists of only five countries. We already know BIMSTEC has seven member states. They are Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand. The statement one is incorrect. Now look at the second statement. See the organization came into being on 6th June 1997 through the Bangkok declaration. This is absolutely correct. Thus the answer for this question is option C2 only. Next question. It is also a statement type question but here you can go for elimination technique. See look at the first statement. They are talking about the delimitation commission. Say they are saying it is a constitutional body. Delimitation commission is a statutory body hence statement one is incorrect. So you can easily eliminate option A, B and D and you can arrive at the answer option C which is 2 only. Look at the statement 2. It is headed by the retired judge of the Supreme Court. Yes it is correct. Now finally confirm your answer by looking at the third statement. See they had given 8 delimitation commission has been constituted so far. But you know very well we saw in a discussion that there are only 4 delimitation commission that had been constituted so far and those are in the years 1952, 1963, 1972 and finally in 2002. Thus the answer for this question is option C2 only. Now the final question. See it is a map based question which of the following countries border Caspian Sea. See there are only 5 countries that are bordering Caspian Sea. They are Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia. Now look at our question. You can easily eliminate option A since it is having Turkey. Now see option B yes Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are bordering Caspian Sea. So option B is correct. Now just verify with other options also before confirming your answer. See Iran is bordering Caspian Sea but not Iraq so option C is incorrect. Now look at option B Tajikistan is not bordering Caspian Sea and only Turkmenistan is bordering. So now let me recall you the 5 countries which are bordering Caspian Sea. They are Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia. So the answer for our question is option B Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. See displayed here are the main practice questions. Please go through it and write your answers and do post it in our comment box. If you like this video do like, share and comment and don't forget to subscribe to our Shankar IS Academy YouTube channel. Thank you for listening.


I welcome members to the sixth meeting in 2016 of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee and, as always, ask members to switch off their mobile phones, please. A general item number one is instrument subject to affirmative procedure. No points have been raised by our legal advisers on the local government finance Scotland Order 2016 draft. Is the committee content with this, please? Yes. A general item two, instrument subject to negative procedure. The National Health Service General Dental Services Scotland amendment regulations 2016, SSI 2016, 53. The instrument contains some drafting errors. First, regulation 25 inserts new sub-paragraphs 1v and w in part 1a of schedule 2 to the National Health Service General Dental Services Scotland regulations 2010, the principle regulations. As sub-paragraph 1v already exists, the new sub-paragraphs should have been inserted as 1w and x. Secondly, the provisions in part 1a of schedule 2 to the principle regulations apply to those persons who apply to join sub-part a of the first part of the dental list in Scotland. Part 1a, list matters to be included in that application. The sub-part a consists of a list of dentists and bodies corporates who have undertaken to provide general dental services in the health board's area. Part 2 of schedule 2 to the principle regulations applies to those persons applying to join the second part of the dental list. Part 2 lists matters to be included in that application. The second part consists of dentists who are approved by a health board to assist in the provision of general dental services. There is an omission, as the Scottish Government intends that the provisions of the new sub-paragraphs 1v and w, as described above, should have been replicated within part 2 of schedule 2 of the principle regulations. Scottish Government intends to lay an amending order early in the next parliamentary session to correct those errors. Does the committee agree to draw the regulations to the attention of the Parliament on the general reporting ground as they contain a couple of drafting errors? No points have been raised by our legal advisers on the waste management licensing Scotland amendment regulations 2016, SSI 2016-40, the reservoir Scotland regulations 2016, SSI 2016-43, the Children and Young People Scotland Act 2014 relevant services in relation to children at risk of becoming looked after, etc. Order 2016, SSI 2016-44, the carbon accounting scheme, Scotland amendment regulations 2016, SSI 2016-46, the public contract, Scotland amendment regulations 2016, SSI 2016-47, the Orkney Islands, landing of crabs and lobsters, order 2016, SSI 2016-50, the water and sewerage services licenses cross-border application, Scotland order 2016, SSI 2016-52, Scottish Sentencing Council, submission of business plan, order 2016, SSI 2016-55, the regulation of investigatory powers, prescription of ranks and positions, Scotland order 2016, SSI 2016-56, the personal injuries NHS, NHS charges, amounts Scotland amendment regulations 2016, SSI 2016-59, the children's hearings Scotland act 2011, safeguarders panel amendment regulations 2016, SSI 2016-61, the teachers' superannuation and pension scheme Scotland amendment regulations 2016, SSI 2016-62, the Croft House grant Scotland regulations 2016, SSI 2016-63, nor the registration services fees, etc. Scotland amendment regulations 2016, SSI 2016-64, is the committee content with those instruments, please? Gender item number three is instruments not subject to any parliamentary procedure, the Procurement Reform Scotland Act 2014, commencement number three and transitional provisions order 2016, SSI 2016-30, the order commences amongst other provisions, the schedule to the Procurement Reform Scotland Act 2014 and so far is not already in force. As provision is of no effect, as the schedule has already been brought into force on 28 September 2015 by virtue of a previous order, which is SSI 2015-331. Does the committee therefore agree to draw the order to the attention of the Parliament under the general reporting conduct as it contains a provision of no effect? Yes, I think that this is unfortunate and I take the point that legally this has no effect. For the ordinary reader of what has been going on, I think that there is scope for confusion. Did this come into force on 28 September, as it actually did, or did it come into force on 18 April this year, as it would have appeared, was going to happen? I just feel that there perhaps should be some way of this being officially noted to clarify it for the public eye. Depending presumably on what somebody looks at first, they could be confused as to whether it came in on 18 April or on 28 September last year. Perfectly fair point. Can I just make the point that this order brings in other provisions which do come in in April? It is not as if the entire instrument is redundant. I support what John Mason has said. I wonder if there is anything that the Government can easily and reasonably do to clarify the situation, not for the experienced reader but for the lay person to try to make it better and more easily accessible to those who might wish to look at this. Indeed. Clearly, that is now on the record. We will draw it to the Parliament's attention and maybe the Government can consider how it might be able to amend the record, as it were, where people will actually address it in order to get there to the right answer. Are we otherwise content to report that? No points have been raised by our legal advisors on the Reservoirs Scotland Act 2011, commencement number 5 in Transitional Provision Order 2016, SSI 2016-42, nor on the Children and Young People Scotland Act 2014, commencement number 11, order 2016, SSI 2016-60. Is the committee content with these instruments, please? Yes. That brings us to agenda item 4, the Bankruptcy Scotland Bill. This is for the committee to consider the Scottish Government's response to its stage 1 report on that bill. It is expected that the committee will consider stage 2 on 23 February. Do members have any comments, Stead? I welcome the response from the Minister for Business, Energy and Tourism, which basically accepts what the committee has said in regard to the bill that is before us. I just raised the relatively small point that I understand that there are going to be some printing changes, which in this particular case I informally understand simply relate to punctuation. Nonetheless, when changes are made, even though there is no decision for us to make in that regard, and I accept that that is the case, I think that it would be helpful if we had a very brief response from the Government simply noting that such printing changes are going to be made and giving us a broad description of what they might be so that, if there are changes occur, that have an unexpected effect or people notice them, they can at least see where they have come from. I have not personally met printing changes at this stage of the passage of our piece of legislation, although I am perfectly comfortable, I am just, as usual, being my pinnickety self about process. I would support what Stuart Stevenson has said, and I think that it might be worth perhaps minister referring to this in stage 3 debate or elsewhere to essentially reinforce the view that while those amendments have been made in terms of essentially punctuation that there is no intention, no policy intention to change any of the meanings that might appear to have been changed, and it would be helpful if that was on the record that the previous act where we should go as a point of reference for the proper meaning, notwithstanding the new changes of punctuation, if that is a reasonable thing to seek at. My understanding, thank you for those comments, my understanding is that we haven't yet seen the changes that are being proposed, so we can't actually comment on whether or not they are only punctuation, but that is clearly the expectation. I had at one point suggested that we might have an amendment that took all the bits of punctuation out, but processes don't allow that because they have to be brought forward at the right point of every bill, so it would be madness to have amendments for dots and commas, so we'll have to see if we can sort this out. I do share the expressed views that we really should have somewhere down in black and white what has been changed, even if it's not actually formally approved within the process. I mean, there is no question that a change in punctuation can change the meaning of a piece of legislation, so while, of course, I am very sure that the Government will have made very taken all precautions note to change the meaning by inserting punctuation where before there was different punctuation or none, it would be good to have that on the record that they have addressed that thought, at least. It is interesting to reflect that a principle punctuation is not supposed to be capable of changing legislation, but there may be occasions where it does. I was just going to make that point that I understand that in reading legislation the punctuation must be ignored, just as indeed the headings are also not part of the legislation and add nothing to the meeting. That's my understanding, but, of course, I am not a lawyer and I will always defer to those who give me legal advice. Right. I am happy to be corrected in that regard and I have raised a spurious point. I don't think that you have raised a spurious point. There might be occasions when it inadvertently does, because without punctuation there is more than one meaning. With punctuation it might have more than one meaning and courts might have to sort it out. John. I think that the Government response is very positive. I think that it is quite an endorsement of the committee's work. The fact that we are all agreed now that restructuring the bill at this stage would not be a good idea, although clearly there are lots of ways that could have been structured. The whole thing about abbreviations is that they are taking on board the comments that we have made, the use of the word forthwith and the use of the word or. I have to say that that is quite a positive response. Okay. Are we content therefore to note the response? I am sure that the Government will have noted our observations about the minor printing changes on the way through. Thank you very much. I think that that completes the agenda and I can now close this meeting.


Hello, and a very warm welcome to everyone who has joined us for our webinar today, Making GL Science Societies More Inclusive. My name is Fei Luo, and I'm currently a PhD researcher at Institute for Environmental Studies, FEM, Five Universities, Amsterdam. Today's webinar is hosted by AGU, Atmospheric Science Division, and its early career scientists representative team. We also have the division president's panels and ECS representative members on board. And we are delighted to have four wonderful speakers with us today, and they will be introduced later. Let's give a warm welcome to the first speaker today, Dr. Aqueya Azawuku. Dr. Aqueya Azawuku is an associate professor at the University of Maryland College Park. Dr. Azawuku's primary research interests is understanding and predicting aerosol sources and interactions with water. Her research explores the water Arctic of complex particles as it pertains to aerosol hegroscopcity, cloud condensation, nuclear activation, and droplet growth. She received her master's and PhD from Georgia Tech and received her bachelor of science from the MIT. In her spare time, Dr. Azawuku is a mother, mother, yes, twice, and of it, Zumba aflateschi nado. Thank you. Hello, thank you, Faye, for that introduction. And I want to thank all the organizers for the opportunity to speak today. So as the first speaker, I'm going to give a general overview and also talk about my own experiences in the geosciences. So I know there are a lot of scientists in the room, in the virtual room, and so I know scientists, we love data. So I wanted to start off with a story about my personal data. And so what you're looking at here is data that is provided by the University of California system, which is 10 campuses in the progressive state of California, where they provide free data on the demographic data of their students and faculty. And so when I started my career in 2008, I contributed to this data set. And so six years into the road of my career, I took a little deeper dive into the demographic data. And so what you're seeing here is the demographic data, particularly for engineering and computer science, you notice that geoscience is not listed here. And it turns out that all my degrees are in engineering, even though my research is mainly in atmospheric science. And so I looked into the engineering data. It's for faculty of ladder rank or tenure track rank. And so what you see is the majority of faculty in the UC system, which is 10 campuses and some other affiliates is male and only 15.6% of the tenure track faculty are female. When it comes to demographics, we have listed other unknown, white, Asian Pacific, Hispanic, Latino, American Indian and black African American. And you can see that the people of color make quite a small percentage of the faculty. So I started my career in 2008. And if you zoom in really look closely, you can see the bump in the percentage of black faculty from when I joined from 2007 to 2008. And so I found it really miraculous that I could see myself in the data. What you don't see here is the intersectionality of gender and race. And so what I soon came to find is that actually I was the only black female in engineering in all 10 campuses who was a faculty member. And of course that's engineering. And so when it comes to geoscience, we know that geoscience is the least diverse discipline in science, technology, engineering and math. What we know is that when it comes to women faculty or I should say women in the geoscience STEM force, we only comprise 30% of the STEM workforce and 24% of the geoscience workforce. So when it comes specifically to women faculty in the geosciences, we know about women is that we are predominantly represented in non-tenure track instructor and lecturer positions. And those are typically the most insecure and lowest salary levels. A survey of new principal investigators in the UK actually found gender disparities and starting salaries, start-up funding and teaching and administrative loads. And so that it's published work. Analysis of the allotment of telescope use at a European observatory also found that the ratings of use proposals differed by gender. And so we have a lot of work to do as a geoscience field. So when it comes to degrees in geoscience, some more information, what we know is that 90% of doctoral degrees in geoscience are awarded to white people. And so when it comes to faculty, specifically faculty of color, we only hold about 3.8% of the tenured or tenure track positions in the top 100 geoscience departments.  And so we know there's an issue in geosciences that needs to be addressed. And there's tons, I would say there's hundreds of literature in the field of geoscience education and diversity that we can access for this information that has been peer reviewed and scientifically ratified. So typically after learning about such information, I'm often asked, what should we do next? Well, my response is always, well, who sits at your table? And so I'm discussing a proverbial table, a lunchroom table, something that I think many of you have experienced going into a cafeteria and figure out where to sit. Well, I will say many of us eat at a scientific table where we are very comfortable. We go every day and we know who sits at our table, we're friends with them. But there's also the table, there's also people who'd like to sit at our table.  And so if I look at 52 researchers who have come through my research group, I know that roughly 50% at the graduate level are higher have been female, less than the undergraduate and overall I'm about that 50% mark in terms of male to female ratio. When it comes to demographics, I know that I have a diverse group of international which is non-US domestic students and domestic students that are Asian, Hispanic, black and also Native American and also white who have come in through my group. And I'm proud of the diversity that my group represents in that. When it comes to students who just identify as women, I see that we're demographically dispersed through the graduate undergraduate levels. And it turns out where they go is also diverse as well that we are graduating students who then enter government industry in academia with geoscience positions. So once doing that assessment, the question is where do we go from there? My answer is to invest. And so here I'll do a little lesson in entomology. And so invest is actually a 14th century word and it's Latin word to clothe somebody. It also has a roots in it, old Italian investere. And the common definition is to commit money in order to earn a financial return. I believe we do need to invest. We do need to financially support our students but we also need to involve and engage especially emotionally for the next generation of geoscientists, diverse geoscientists. So that in turn we can furnish them with the authority to lead and engage in geoscience. And so some of my work in addition to the research that I do is to engage in this investment of students. And so I wanna talk briefly about a recent grant where we're looking at the geoscience ecosystem model. We don't talk about a leaky pipeline anymore. Who wants to talk about pipelines and oil spills in geoscience? So we talk about an ecosystem model of developing the next generation. And in this ecosystem learning model, we think about that we're proposing, we're looking at training, introductory geoscience courses for not necessarily traditional geoscience students and providing these technical foundations so they can actually have the knowledge and the expertise in addition to a vertical mentoring structure to grow their self-efficacy and also to support them through the process. We're also trying to engage these students with workforce opportunities and exposure to laboratory visits. So real world exposure and things like that. And of course this is an ecosystem. So it all feeds back into the technical foundations that will grow. And so this is a recent award that we received. It's led by myself and two other black female colleagues at the University of Maryland to really start to build this culture and geosystem in the geosciences. So in addition to the research I do in geoscience, I'm also invested in the growth of geosciences. I firmly believe in this quote that you want to be the change you see in the world. And in order for others to do this as well, I always say who will you invite to the table? And so in the subsequent talks, I think we will hear about who is at these different tables, whether they're in field work, in terms of gender, in terms of sexuality, and how to support the different types of researchers coming through to the next level. Thank you, Dr. Atta Awuku. That was a great introduction and lead the outline for our webinar today. And our next speaker and Dr. Mike Puraya-Drums is an electronic engineer and glaciologist working for Cardiff University, primarily on wireless instruments for making measurements within and below glaciers. He has had a very varied career in both industry and academia as an engineer and project manager. He is a member of Pride in polar research, which is a network for LGBTQ plus people working in polar science. So thank you very much for the introduction. Thank you for inviting me to speak. And I'm here to give an LGBTQ plus perspective. And what I've done is I've made my slide so you can put the speaker video in the top right hand corner. And so if you do that now, then it'll be out of the way and you'll be able to see the rest of the material on my slide. I thought I'd start by answering the question I quite often get when I talk about LGBTQ plus events in science. And that is, why can't we just talk about the science? Why is it important to know about your personal life? Why does it matter? And it's this concept of what we call representation, which is really, really important. If you are looking at an organization or looking at a whole field of study from the outside, perhaps if you're a young person choosing a career or you're looking at an institution that you might like to join, then you look at that organization and you think, are there people like me in that organization? If you don't see or hear people who look and sound like you or people who identify like you do, then it's very easy to assume that organization is not for you. And this is really exacerbated if you experience some kind of discrimination because if you don't see people like you in that organization, you will naturally jump to the conclusion that people who are already in that organization are in some way discriminatory. So it's really important that people are represented. If we want to have a greater diversity of voices and perspectives within science, which is important and leads to better scientific outcomes, then it's important that people feel that they are represented. So I take part in LGBTQ plus science events and also if I give a science talk, I actually put a mention of a networking organization on my title slide, private polar research in my case, which just sort of flags it up and says, look, I am part of this particular minority and that's important to me. So I thought I'd start by talking about this book, which is by Jeanette Winterson who's Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester. She's a British literary writer and she came out as a lesbian and teens and this quote, this is her autobiography, the title is a quote from her adoptive mother who said to her, why be happy when you could be normal? It's really powerful sentiment. This idea that society compels you to be normal where that's defined in a particular way. And so I wanted to kind of point out how much that can really hurt and to look at these kinds of questions and some of these sort of statements of advice that basically boiled down to why aren't you normal and where that's defined as why aren't you like me? And the advice can be well meant, you know, you should be more professional but actually often it can boil down to you should be more normal, you should be more like me. So try and avoid making those kinds of statements. It really can hurt. I wanted to talk about gender briefly. It's a whole field of study in its own right. So there is lots more complexity but the word gender is used to refer to the identity and social aspects of sex. So gender identity is about how you perceive yourself as a man, as a woman, as non-binary. Gender presentation is about how you present yourself to others. So you seeing me now, you make the reasonable assumption that I am a man because of the way I present myself, the way I look, the way I sound, the way I dress, the way I behave. That's my presentation. But gender isn't just man or woman and many cultures have more than two genders. Non-binary people, we're seeing increasing visibility of now. These are people whose gender does not fit to the binary of man or woman. You may hear the related term gender queer. Gender isn't necessarily static. Some people's gender changes with time and they may like to use the word gender fluid. That's a term that you hear used sometimes. This long-winded acronym LGBTQ plus is used to encompass a whole range of different identities. The reason I put this up here is these are the words the community likes to use about themselves. So these are the words you should use when you're writing and try and avoid falling into the trap that scientists fall into of using scientific language and thinking that that is somehow neutral.  So yeah, please stick to the words that the communities use themselves. A style guide is really helpful. I recommend the BBC one, which is free to use online. I will just mention briefly where I've talked about culturally specific genders at the bottom here. If you do any work with American universities in the diversity space, you may come across Two-Spirit, which is a culturally specific gender for people who are indigenous or the Americans for the Native Americans and First Nations people. So that's specific to them and describes them. So it's not something that somebody from outside of those communities can personally identify with. Other countries and cultures have their own culturally specific genders. Names are really important. And this is basic politeness really. The name someone uses very personal, don't mess with it. If you don't get someone's name, you don't understand it, you don't recognize it, just ask them to say it again, make sure you get the pronunciation right. People will extend you some patience while you do that. For LGBTQ plus people, it's relatively common for preferred name not to be the same as your legal name. And so if you put a statement on a form like we want somebody's full name or somebody's full legal name, you probably don't really need that unless you're booking them an air ticket. So preferred name is really helpful, that indicates that's the name I want to be called by. Pronouns, it's become common for people to put pronouns on email signatures, Twitter bios and things like that. And that helps to normalize things for non-binary genderqueer and trans people who may be using other pronouns. They is the most commonly used pronoun by non-binary people. Bear in mind that at the moment there's a very nasty little culture war going on, particularly in the UK, around the rights of trans people. If you put your preferred pronouns on things, then you are labeling yourself as being on the side of trans people, which is a good thing, but you may get some backlash from people on the other side. So just be careful. And something that EGU could do or think about doing is helping trans people with this issue around old publications. So to explain, trans people find being dead named, which used to be called by the name that they were given at birth or the name that they had before they transitioned. And they find that very offensive and hurtful. But if you have transitioned in adulthood and you have published under your dead name and then transitioned in human academia to publish under your new name, then you have this issue that you have your publications under two different names. And trans researchers very much would like the option of changing the name on their old publications. It's quite complicated. There are a lot of legal and technical issues around it, but ACM, which represents computer scientists, has brought out a new policy to allow that in their journals. And I think EGU should look at that and try and adopt some of the same approach. It is a complex issue, but I think it's worth it. Scientific societies, I wanted to talk about what we can do within an organization like EGU. Just to make the obvious point that we're all volunteers, people need to feel welcomed and appreciated or they just leave. So the most important thing is that people who are in a leadership position either a senior position or even just within a local group or a small committee, the leader creates the culture around them. If you are warm and friendly and helpful and inclusive, then other people around you will be warm and friendly and helpful and inclusive. If you are critical or cynical or difficult or competitive or unpleasant, then other people around you will feel that that's the way that you behave in order to get on and will also behave in that way. So try and foster an inclusive atmosphere. Try and ensure that everyone gets heard and meeting chairing is really important. I think EGU should offer training on how to do it. It's a useful skill. It makes meetings loads more efficient if you have a good chair and it also ensures that everyone, it feels that they are listened to and that their point is put across fairly. If you recruit volunteers for a committee or for an event or something like that, make an extra effort to ensure you reach out beyond your usual network and you can use organizations which particularly represent minorities to help you with that. I want to say very briefly on the subject of meetings. The world of conferences is a whole other world to talk about like every other time, but meeting venues, even within Europe but certainly around the world, the legal and social environment for LGBTQ pass people varies considerably. There aren't places I would not be comfortable going because the political and legal environment makes it difficult for me even as a relatively straight presenting gay man. So it's much more difficult for people who are not particularly gender conforming or whatever. So think about your meeting venue. There are a couple of guides here which show you what the legal environment is like in different countries. Offering remote participation is a kind of partial mitigation, but it would be better to avoid going to places that are particularly unpleasant for LGBTQ pass people. Okay, that's all. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening. Okay, thanks Mike. That was a very nice talk. And our next speaker is Dr. Malina Keshma. She had her PhD in climate physics at the Post-Arm Institute. For climate impact research. And now she is a post-doc at the Meteorology Department in Reading. And her research interests are large scale climate dynamics, extreme weather events and possibilities of applying machine learning to climate science. Now let's welcome Malina. Hi, I hope you can hear me. Good, okay. Hi, thank you for the kind introduction. So I was asked to talk about parenthood in academia and share my perspective as an early career climate scientist. And I will also start with some, well, not particularly data but actually like a nature news article which was published recently which asked are women publishing last year in the pandemic? And well, basically the data from different pre-printing service shows that were maybe not so surprising that since March basically, publications and submissions from women went down compared to different to other years. And this is both for first author, fewer first authors than also for co-authorships. And the likely explanation is of course that women have more care responsibilities than their male colleagues. Well, obviously we don't know all the implications yet for Corona but I think I probably speak for our parents with young children that the last month have been of course very hard, web-wise. And of course, like everybody, we are of course also very much concerned that kindergartens will be closed again or there's like another lockdown. And this is where the whole pandemic is of course an extreme situation but I do think that it reflects a systematic problem that it's still quite hard for women, for women in particular with children in academia. And because of course this is now on the pandemic level, I do think that the same mechanisms which are preventing women from working at the moment will also be at play in the small scale. For example, when a family member is sick. Okay, this was just a teaser. So what makes it hard in academia as a parent and I would first like to stress that the things I'm presenting is well, first of all a personal perspective and also I'm also lucky enough to have a healthy child and also a partner who raises it with me. For single parents also with parents of children with special needs things are of course much more difficult. To start with pregnancy, I experienced this as a very uncertain time with respect to my career. So the reactions from my work environment and also privately were very positive but still I didn't really know what to expect and then you often get questions like how will you manage or how will you do it and obviously you don't have any answer. So I found this a bit like an uncertain time. Plus it was also the first time I basically experienced in my work environment at least that people questioned my personal judgment and regarding what I should do or what I cannot do during pregnancy. Okay, then maternity leave. I think this is, of course it's also depends really on from country to country, how long people are maternity leave and basically what is possible for them to do. I think one maybe fear like work-wise is that you will miss out on things. I actually didn't find this to be the case. I was on maternity leave for eight months. I didn't, I don't think that I missed that much except for publication. So I definitely can still not catch up with the publication from that time but personally I didn't hear that I missed out much but I also have to say that this was in my case this was between jobs like after finishing my PhD. So this kind of course also be very different and much harder in other work situations. And then phase three maybe is the returning to work and I think this is when the hard part really starts because you have let it sleep in the beginning but you basically have two full-time jobs and these two jobs, well having a child and working in academia also means that you have two times the expectations and this is expectation on yourself but also from your family, from your colleagues and also maybe society depending again can be culturally very different but there are always expectations on mothers and scientists, on women in general. So I think at this point you can be sure that you will definitely fail some of them. And then finally and I think this is probably the most important part which makes it so hard is time that just for having another job as a parent you just have way less time and you are just less flexible. And this is an issue again in the context of Korean academia because basically the CV or your CV is always judged on based on what you accomplished. So the absolute amount and it does not really take really as they take into account how much time you had spent on achieving this. So yeah, this is of course where you can either unfair or the problem that it's basically your efficiency is it does not depend how efficient you were in achieving those things. What matters in the end, often for grants or for many for future jobs is like how much you achieved. Another thing is of course, well this also changed recently but many work relations are built on conferences and for parents with young children this is of course much more difficult to do. So they also asked me to give some advice. I don't know for earlier for parents and career scientists. I'm not sure if I'm the expert yet on this given that my child is also still small but I think a few things which helped me or which I think would have helped me. One point is that you just have to accept that you just won't sustain the same workload and that you will miss out opportunities. So and what follows immediately from that is that you have to prioritize. So you just have to learn to say no to certain projects. I don't think this is just a bad thing. I think this is something we have to learn anyways in academia. So also let's say after struggling with this for a while I do think that is also can help you to be to actually be more efficient and focus on what's really matters and on the projects which are really important to you. Another point is that I think, and this is basically also what Mike just said, that role models are really important. And personally I didn't have, I think, any kind of female professors with children around from which I could profit from their experience. But I think this is really important talking to others and yeah, asking them how they did it, how they managed which type of advice they have. And then maybe also I think also see to see the positive side of things apart from the child and that of course academia does give you some relatively flexible working hours and also when you're at home and also on the weekends you're really forced to detach from work. So when you're home, you have no time to work. I think this is also actually something which is good because I think other like many people also struggle with this separating work and yeah, work-life balance. Well, maybe on the more general sides or what could help parents. And I also want to mention this list might not apply to everybody but also actually reach out to different colleagues and friends with children and also ask them for their opinions. And so this is maybe a little list yeah, which we think could make a difference. So first of all, I think career-wise is helpful especially for example during pregnancy and I mean this in a very broad sense that could also be some kind of mentoring but again, since you don't know anything like you don't know what it means to have a child. So I think it will help you to focus on the politics. Yeah, this can be useful. I think it really needs like adjusting criteria for grants, jobs and awards. So I know that some grand schemes already have them. So for example, I've heard that people with children more time to apply for certain early career fellowships. But I think it could also be kind of a review criteria to consider the care and responsibilities of parents. Then of course, awareness and empathy this always helps. So but I think the same could also apply for line managers for example, that they get dedicated training to mothers who just return from parental leave given that it's really like a stressful time. I think also generally, this does not apply in my case but I mean less academic duties like teaching responsibilities or other things could also help. Actually, no talks in the afternoon is also helpful. So for me it was actually not that easy to join because the afternoons I'm usually not working. And then finally maybe this is also relevant for each of you some CARES fund which could help parents to attend conferences so that they can pay a babysitter or a relative to travel with them. Because this is usually not covered and this also of course excludes people with less income or less financial possibilities to attend conferences. So thank you and happy to discuss these questions. Thanks very much, Melina. Our next speaker is professor Dr. Henrietta Ali and in June she led a petition called for a robust anti-racism plan for the geosciences and that got more than 25,000 signatures. And recently she also successfully co-organized the Black in Geoscience Week. And she's currently leading two international field based geoscience projects and she also received many awards including ICG Outstanding Educator Award. Now let's welcome Dr. Ali. All right, thank you. Man's need for the introduction. Can everybody see my screen okay? All right, so I'm happy to be here. I wish I were not here to talk about this. It's not what I would say I would be excited looking forward to talking about. But let's talk about junior field work by Black and women. So geoscience and field work have a very intimate relationship. We know that geosciences consider field work for the most part as a right of passage for most undergraduate programs. It creates, if you are able to do field work you definitely have more opportunities for funding. It is viewed primarily as a manly endeavor just about everywhere in the world. So if you are not a man to begin with if you are not a white man field work can be really unsafe and very inaccessible. So while I was trying to prepare for this presentation I kind of went and slotted on the EGU webpage and I found these really beautiful pictures. I just want everybody to take a moment and look at these pictures and see what you think about them. And I would ask a few questions to see if you can discuss it a little bit more. So when you looked at these questions if I were to ask you and I have I don't know the answers but if you were to guess or speculate on who captured these pictures who was the person who was out in the field who comes to your mind? Is it a woman? Is it a man? Is it a woman of color? Is it a man of color? Is it a white man? Is it the white woman? Who really comes to your mind? Feel free to share your opinion in the chat box if you want to but I just want you to think about it on a personal basis. These are really some beautiful pictures and I believe that because we primarily express our Geoscience love or interest with beautiful field pictures field work continues to be very, very essential and central to what we do even though we have to acknowledge that science and good Geoscience now happens in other species that are not filled. So there are people who sit behind the computers and do amazing things there are people who do work in the lab there are people who do work in the classroom but still we express our love for Geoscience with field work. So I want to put this quote here that I found captured a lot of the essence of what it is like doing field work as a black woman. I am often fearful about doing certain things alone and I take as many precautions as I can however as a black woman I have yet another set of circumstances to consider. I have to reconcile that as much as I love being in nature and seeing the world there are those who wholeheartedly believe someone like me has no right to be there simply because I'm black. Think this captures about anything I could really want to say in terms of my experience as a black woman doing field work. So we do do field work despite all these challenges as black women and from my personal experience again I have to disclaim here that I have not conducted extensive studies of all black women who do field work but from my own experiences and observations as a black woman you also do field work as an ethnic or racial minority.  As a black woman you can also be on the LGBTQ spectrum or you can be disabled. You can have other underrepresented identities you can be black and Latinx you can be black and indigenous no matter your other identities doing field work as a black woman remains something that is very dangerous. I've had the opportunity to share my thoughts about field work experiences in your podcast with SEG Science McSound off but I will just share some experiences that I have had doing field work here in the U.S. as a black woman and doing field work in Cameroon as a black woman and in both of these environments I have had to face some challenges not because I was not a good scientist a competent scientist or a capable scientist but because I was a black woman as an ethnic racial minority and I go out to the field I think I would say that my luck has been in being at mostly white institution where say 80-90% of my students are white male and if I go out to the field with them often they are given more courtesy and more respect if you will or more consideration than I am so they often find themselves having to step in and basically vouch for me because I'm in a community where people don't just expect me to either lead or manage or I just come across as suspicious when I go to Cameroon as a black woman in a community that is 99% black people then I have to face the challenge of doing field work as a woman again if I'm accompanied by any men black or white the courtesy is given to them and not to me and sometimes this means that I have to deal with harassment microaggression, sexual harassment, intimidation, bullying you name it, it happens so the question then is what can we do as individuals as societies, as institutions, organizations to make field work more inclusive I want to say it's going to require significant work but we have to start by talking more communicating more and educating more we have to name things so that people understand that they do exist and that they happen then we train because we are in education we have to provide education and training it is very important to assess the racial gender and identity base to risk that your team and your community can be exposed to when you are going out to the field with that information you can provide training you have to know the host community different communities have norms they have rules, they have policies, they have practices some are written, some are not written but as a team leader as a society if we are going to go somewhere and organize a field trip or field camp or a conference you have leverage you can engage that community with your first power if we don't come to an agreement about how we treat our members maybe we will not consider this or that opportunity but those of us who have the privilege we need to be able to use it to make it inclusive and safe for everybody we also need to be able to think and plan to encourage and empower our team members to be allies like I said my students have often been allies to me either intentionally or unintentionally they have been because they had that privilege of keen tone that I don't have so if they are not aware of it then maybe you need to do some training you also have to acknowledge and I think this is the hardest part that that best mate, that best friend that fun person that you love to be out in the field with might be somebody's fieldwork nightmare because guess what? we all know these people who are harassing who are bullying, who are intimidating and sometimes they are yes, our best mates be present as a leader make sure that your team knows that you are available to watch their back that is our responsibilities if we are leading a team and maybe we should also think about planning with the same diligence that we plan for our team other field aspects we really take a lot of care when we are going out into the unknown to plan for personal protective equipment health resources we should maybe put a little bit more effort in planning for the racial, gender and identity risk in the same manner all of this would not work if we do not train I think there are other things that I could add to this but in the interest of time I want to say that for references and resources please check some of these websites so the advanced geopartnership has a lot of resources and references, readings, tips, guidance to fieldwork and part of the advanced geotraining team so we definitely do do training on this the international association for IEGD I think that's kind of skipping my mind a little bit but they also do a lot of training especially for disabilities in the geosciences so they have a lot of resources for people who need to plan for field safety and field accessibility for disabled folks that is very important I know that I think based in the UK there's Tiger and Stem that also have a lot of resources these are the websites that I have referenced and looked at and that I go to when I need to get information about how to organize fieldwork because one of the most important things about doing fieldwork that we always have to remember is that we have different needs as field participants as men, as women, as LGBTQ people, as disabled people we have different needs and we cannot always without educating ourselves predict the needs of the other person so it is very very important that we should think about these things with that I think I would hand over to our hosts and looking forward to your questions thank you okay so thank you very much to all our speakers today the recording of this webinar will be added to EGU's YouTube channel in approximately one week's time thank you for participating and we look forward to seeing you all again soon thank you for having me thank you thank you thank you to all the speakers