St Antony’s team wins the inaugural Entente Cordiale University Challenge
We are excited to announce that a team of three St Antony’s students has won first place in the inaugural Entente Cordiale University Challenge.
Nachiket Midha (MSc Politics), Yoonki Lee (MPhil International Relations) and Theo Kaiser (MPhil International Relations) won the King Edward VII prize – the top prize for British-based teams in the competition. The Challenge aims to bring together students from prestigious UK- and French-based universities to produce and deliver solution-focused research on today’s most pressing issues. The competition is designed to strengthen Franco-British collaboration in addressing global challenges, and awards prizes to the best student groups tackling global issues in a forward-thinking, innovative and bold manner. This year’s theme was climate change, biodiversity and developing countries.
More than 100 teams of three entered the competition, with ten teams from the UK and nine teams from France invited to the final stage. Teams could come from any discipline, any level of study and any French- or British-based higher education institution that meets the criteria for the competition. The Challenge saw the team prepare an in-depth report, present to a Grand Jury and respond to a rigorous questioning about their research. We are proud of the hard work and passion that led Nachiket, Yoonki and Theo to take the top prize in such a competitive context.
“Where else can I possibly talk about stubble burning? No one cares if two million people die every year because of air pollution in India. I felt like this was something that could actually lead to more.” – Nachiket Midha
The title of their report was Fields on fire: policy recommendation to combat stubble burning in India. Despite bans, incentives, and the visible environmental impacts of agricultural stubble burning, it continues to remain a central issue contributing to the deadly smog that blankets the Northern part of India during the winter months. The report unravels why the existing measures fail and why this issue requires urgent attention, as well as proposing concrete policy solutions to create a self-sustaining system that tackles stubble burning through both community and individual-level interventions. The team’s report was assessed on the robustness of their research, the clarity of style and organisation, the quality of the argument and the innovation of ideas.
“I’m grateful for the fact that we were invited and that we’re given the opportunity to speak about such a topic. I feel like in the West, and I say this as a German myself, there is a real lack of knowledge about how serious this issue is.” – Theo Kaiser
The competition sought to provide remarkable experiences alongside an academic opportunity. Leading up to the Grand Final, the teams were invited to enjoy lunch at the Palace of Westminster, a lecture at Whitehall, a formal opening ceremony and dinner at the Royal Hospital Chelsea. The final presentations took place at the London School of Economics, with the gala dinner and awards ceremony held at Hatfield House.
“This was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and experience that I was able to cherish with my two best friends.” – Yoonki Lee
We spoke to Nachiket, Yoonki and Theo about the Entente Cordiale University Challenge – read about their passionate and personal take on the issues of their report, the proposals they make to tackle this issue and their experience of the competition below.
What inspired you to take part in the challenge?
Nachiket
I think it goes back 22 years when I was born, just to just to give you a brief idea! In northern India, the air quality is really poor. For many months of the year, it’s more than 1000 on the air quality index. The major contributor of air pollution in northern India and in many parts of South Asia is stubble burning – there is crop residue left after harvesting, and the most convenient way to for farmers is to burn it. Since they are small-scale farmers, they are not to blame in the sense that they are doing something that is most economically viable to them, since they’re vulnerable. But what it has led to is not only people suffering from many respiratory diseases, but also a general public health crisis, which is sort of silent. You can see there’s a deadly smog only for a month or two in Delhi, but the impact is invisible. When a doctor diagnoses you, they don’t say you’re dying because of air pollution, they say you’re dying because of a lung failure problem or because of bronchitis or because of exasperated asthma. So seeing that, and seeing my friends and my relatives living in this region of the world, for the entirety of their lives – it was really personal to me in that sense. Especially being situated in Delhi, which is really sort of at the downwind of all of these things, over the past four years because of my undergrad, I felt this needs to be addressed urgently.
Yoonki
In my case, I’m from South Korea, but I grew up going to an international school in Thailand. Stubble burning is also a prevalent issue there, where during the March to April season a lot of the farmers would just burn the fields because it’s the most cost-efficient way to go about it. Living in Thailand, there was a lot of smog and the air was so poor and it would lead to a lot of respiratory problems. I think for me in that sense, it was another personal thing that I’ve always wanted to address and this time we had the perfect platform to talk about this situation.
Theo
Well, my friends have 20 years of experience on me! I first lived in India last year six months, and that’s when I was first introduced to this issue. When I stepped out of my room, I could barely see the hand in front of my body. So I got into the issue of stubble burning.
What brought you together as a team?
Yoonki
So we call ourselves The Three Antonians! That’s the group name that we’ve come up with, and we just clicked really, really well at the beginning of Michaelmas Term. I think just being in the same college, the same department, with very similar interests, we came together very well as we were already close friends before the competition. I think we only had two days’ notice before the application deadline.
Nachiket
It was just one day before the deadline when I asked these guys. I was like, ‘guys, this is something that I’ve wanted to do always and now it seems like a perfect time, because where else can I possibly talk about stubble burning?’
No one cares if two million people die every year because of air pollution in India. I felt like this was something that could actually lead to more. I think that’s why one of the opportunities that they have decided to give us is to work with the Prince Albert II Foundation in Monaco for an internship over the summer to develop this further. So I feel that it’s led to more.
Can you tell us about your report, Fields on fire: policy recommendation to combat stubble burning in India?
Theo
First of all we wanted to find out why farmers resort to stubble burning in the first place. We really put an emphasis in our report on analysing this and what we found was that there are some alternatives to stubble burning. You can actually repurpose the stubble. For example, you can spray it back on the field and use it as fertiliser, or you can make it into pellets and use them to burn them in ovens. But we found that these alternatives lack something, and that is that most farmers cannot remove this stubble from the field in the first place. This is very difficult, because the standard machine – the combine harvesters – always leave this behind and they cannot remove the stubble. Farmers need an extra machine to do this. As a small-scale farmer, they might never be able to afford this.
We propose two solutions that basically aim exactly at this: increasing the means of farmers to remove the stubble.
Now it becomes slightly technical. The first solution regards cooperative societies. The Indian state subsidises buying the machines, especially when societies or farmers buy these machines together. We can imagine a bunch of small farmers together buy such a machine, and they don’t own it personally, they own it collectively. Then they rent it out to each other, almost like a nonprofit association of farmers. The problem is that since the Indian state partially funds these societies, they send a so-called registrar, someone who can basically veto all decisions that these societies make. And as a result, a lot of farmers report a lot of problems with these societies. You can imagine there is a very tense period right after harvest, every farmer wants the machine very desperately, and there are coordination issues, there are issues of overuse. We propose reform to these societies, where the farmers themselves have more power to access resources, and they don’t rely on the state to provide something for them.
Nachiket
The second solution looks in terms of what already exists. In rural areas people do not have a lot of employment opportunities, especially for unskilled work, because skilled people usually move to urban centres. In 2005, the government legislated that they will guarantee one hundred days of employment to people. But the problem this led to was that over the past 20 years, a lot of public infrastructure has already come about in rural areas, because of this job creation or increased political will and increased resources. So now over the past few years, this scheme has become dormant in the sense that people do actually work, but the work is limited to digging up holes and filling them again, because there’s literally no other work to do or a lack of political will. We felt that the listed works that the government allows under this scheme for rural areas can be expanded and stubble management can become a part of that. This is corroborated by my interviews with bureaucrats from across India. For instance, before, farmers did not have incentives to manage stubble on their own. But now, if they can get extra labour or extra money to do that, it can lead to pelletisation or the stubble can be transformed into animal feed. A reform to an already existing scheme, which is practical, saves money.
I think these were the most necessary things, because you can implement a technical solution, but it will demand a lot of resources. Both these solutions save government money and removes the bureaucracy and unnecessary burden of implementing new policies – they repurpose the existing policy.
How was the report-writing process as a team of three?
Yoonki
I guess we had some advantages as we are basically neighbours! Essentially, we were meeting up every single day and we worked this report out together and did the research together and eventually when the report was done, we practiced the presentation almost every day together. Also, I think coming from different cultural academic backgrounds, those different perspectives added to our synergy and also the fact that we were very close friends, even from the start, was definitely shown through the whole thing.
Nachiket
The college was really supportive and let us use the Nissan Lecture Theatre for four days straight before the presentation. I think that was really helpful, because if we had not practiced in a lecture theatre setting, it would have been so shocking to just walk in there with a big room full of people.
Theo
In terms of our rehearsal, we practiced a lot within the ten-minute limit to the point where we quite literally were able to pull off our presentation exactly to time. You’re partially graded on how well you stick to this time limit. At ten minutes, they knock twice on the table. At eleven minutes, they cut you off. I remember Yoonki was closing out our presentation, on the last line, and as he was saying ‘thank you for your attention’, they knocked on the table.
What was the highlight of the competition?
Nachiket
There were people there that we met that we wouldn’t have otherwise, like the former Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Salisbury, Winston Churchill’s grandson was there and the Duke of France’s grandson. Just sitting with all these people was fascinating, of course, but it’s also your short window to understand how they think about the world and how they see the world. The highlight was the people – I left with more knowledge than I went there with.
Theo
You can imagine so many different teams all with different backgrounds and nationalities and experiences. They all had very interesting reports and I feel like by the end of the two days we had talked with almost every group and listened to almost every group about what they were working on and it was just a very good experience to learn from other students.
Yoonki
I think one of the highlights for me was being able to visit these iconic places in the UK and to experience all these things from the inside, not just as a tourist. And as the competition is called the Entente Cordiale, not only did it bring closer British and French students, but it was very international, I believe there were 15 nationalities, and we were one of the more diverse teams.
Theo
We were happy to win a French-British competition on British turf without being French or British!
What comes next as a result of winning this competition?
Theo
First of all we have the opportunity to present our report to the Private Secretary to King Charles III at Buckingham Palace. We may get some help in some form or another to progress this idea or to advertise this idea with relevant stakeholders. This requires conversations with the right people, and I feel like this is what Entente Cordiale is really providing for us – conversations with the right people. Not just with the Private Secretary of the King, but also at the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation. They invited us to do an internship there, and I’m sure there will be lots of conversations with varied individuals.
Could you summarise your feelings about winning this competition?
Theo
I’m grateful for the fact that were invited and that we’re given the opportunity to speak about such a topic. I feel like in the West, and I say this as a German myself, there is a real lack of knowledge about how serious this issue is. It’s estimated that in South Asia, one-fifth of all deaths are due to air pollution. You can imagine: every fifth person you know being affected by this. I think it’s important to be able to bring a topic that is maybe not on the agenda here in the West all the way here and discuss it with the right people.
Yoonki
This was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and experience that I was able to cherish with my two best friends.
Nachiket
I think for me it was the ability to universalise something that was so deeply personal. I know people, my friends (and even myself maybe in the long term) being affected by this problem so gravely. I felt that ability to universalise something deeply personal to my context was so important for me.
