Universities and patents

he ambitious goal set by India’s IPR Policy rests on how universities embrace patents

Universities and patents benefit each other. Patents help universities to improve their ranking, establish an innovation ecosystem, incubate knowledge-based start-ups, earn additional revenue and measure research activity. In its biggest push to create entrepreneurial universities, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has now asked all universities in India to set up Intellectual Property (IP) Centres. As universities line up to set up these centres, they will face a strange human resources problem: despite the policy push to have more IP, we simply do not have enough IP professionals in the country.

The dearth of IP professionals is a problem related to the field of intellectual property itself. Its recent rise to prominence in the international arena, thanks to various international treaties and trade agreements, alongwith with the legal-centric approach where law schools and colleges are the only institutions which mandate teaching these subjects, are reasons why the supply of IP professionals is not keeping pace with demand. But there is a great opportunity now that should not be missed. The Central government conducts the only competitive examination in the country to check a person’s proficiency in IP. Fine-tuning the patent agent examination to cater to the growing IP needs of the country can be a successful way to build a band of professionals and create career opportunities.

Patent exam

On October 28, the Central government conducted the competitive examination to test proficiency in patent law, a type of intellectual property right (IPR), after a hiatus of two years. Any Indian citizen with a bachelor’s degree in science or technology can take the examination. Upon clearing it the person is entitled to practise before the Patent Office as a registered patent agent. Qualifying the exam allows science graduates to draft, file and procure patents from the Patent Office on behalf of inventors.

India witnessed significant changes in IPRs since the introduction of the National IPR Policy in 2016. The grants rates at the Patent Office have increased: in 2017-2018, there was a 32% increase in the number of patents granted compared to the earlier year. The Patent Office increased its workforce with the inclusion of 459 new examiners and is on the lookout for more. The timeline for filing responses to official objections for patents has been reduced by half. While the disposal rate has increased, the filing rate for patents has not changed significantly. In 2016-17, the Patent Office reported a dip of 3.2% in filing compared to the previous financial year.

Centres in universities

The new policy has pushed universities to file more patents. Kindled by the call to have more IPRs, the higher education sector has witnessed many reforms. The UGC’s call to universities, highlighted earlier, has come after a series of policy directives to introduce awareness about IP in higher educational institutions.

The number of patents applied for, granted and commercialised by universities and institutes is factored in in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) rankings: no surprise that the top ranked engineering institutes in India are also the leading filers of patents. Whether a higher educational institute has an innovation ecosystem could also have a bearing, with the National Assessment and Accreditation Council, awarding up to 24 points to an institute which sets up an innovation ecosystem and has a facility for identifying and promoting IPRs. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) model curriculum for its member institutions lays emphasis on the need for IPR education in technical institutes.

As the IPR Chair at IIT Madras, I was part of a committee constituted to draft the IPR guidelines for institutions under the AICTE. The lack of IP professionals to teach IP was one of the reasons the committee could not suggest the mandatory introduction of IP courses in all technical institutes. Online courses on IPR are available on the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning platform. Though thousands register every year, much needs to be done to build capacity on IP in universities. We need to focus on careers rather than courses.

India has a poor patent agent density, with only about 2,000 registered patent agents currently in practice. The last time when the Patent Office conducted the patent agent exam, in 2016, around 2,600 candidates took it, a paltry number if one looks at the ambitious goals set by the IPR Policy. Despite the infrequent manner in which the examination has been conducted, the private sector does give good weightage to the examination as it is considered to be the de facto IP qualification today.

Way ahead

The ambitious goal set by India’s IPR Policy will be realised only when the examination becomes the foundation for making a career in IPR. In a dynamic field such as intellectual property, in order to create a band of qualified IP professionals there should be a push towards post-qualification continuous education as well. To achieve this, the format, membership, syllabus and the frequency of the patent agent examination will need to be addressed. This will not only increase the number and quality of IP professionals in the country but also become a new career choice for graduates with a degree in science and technology.

Feroz Ali is the DIPP-IPR Chair Professor at IIT Madras and the chief mentor at www.lexcampus.in, a platform to train aspiring patent agents

Source: The Hindu, 31/10/2018

Past perfect and a future tense

Legitimising suspect ‘traditional knowledge’ and passing it off as proven wisdom is perilous.

The things All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) wishes to formally teach engineering students in the name of ancient Indian scientific achievements is a gross insult to ancient India. Making unsubstantiated claims about the past detracts from the genuine contributions that were actually made, and brings ridicule to an otherwise respected discipline.

AICTE is an apex body set up by the HRD ministry for the promotion of quality in technical education. The Delhi centre of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan is offering, through its website, a post-matric course on “essence of Indian knowledge tradition”, and a post-graduate diploma in “Indian knowledge tradition: Scientific and holistic”. To serve as a text for these courses, a book titled Bharatiya Vidya Saar has been prepared.

AICTE, no doubt guided by HRD ministry, has co-opted this programme and decided to offer a credit course based on the Vidya Saar — meaning that students will be formally examined in it and assigned grades.

The proposed textbook is not freely available. Whatever excerpts have been published makes for disturbing reading. Students will be told that “In Vedic age, ‘Maharshi Bhardwaj wrote an epic called Yantra Sarvasva and aeronautics is a part of the epic. This was 5,000 years before Wright brothers’ invention of the plane… Yantra Sarvasva is not available now but out of whatever we know about it, we can believe that planes were a reality in Vedic age.”

A number of questions arise immediately. How do we know that Yantra Sarvasva existed? If it discusses aeronautics, what is the actual term used? If the text does not exist anymore, which are the works that have preserved the extracts? Details should be provided so that readers can decide for themselves how much credence is to be placed on such claims. In the same fashion, it is claimed that Maharishi Agastya in Agastya Sanhita talks about the discovery of electricity and invention of batteries.

Students should, no doubt, be made aware of ancient Indian science. We cannot, however, ask students to switch off their mental faculties when they are being instructed in the essence of Indian learning, but bring their intellect into full use an hour later when the regular curriculum is taught.

In recent years, a flourishing industry has sprung up which takes stray passages from ancient texts and relates them to modern scientific and technological discoveries.

In 2002, B G Matapurkar, a surgeon at the Maulana Azad Medical College Delhi, claimed that the Mahabharata description of the Kauravas’ birth proved that “they not only knew about test-tube babies and embryo splitting, but also had the technology to grow human foetuses outside the body of a woman — something unknown to modern science”. If the learned surgeon had taken the trouble of reading the original description (given in Adi Parva, Chapter 14) he would not have been so rash.

Gandhari could not possibly have given natural birth to 100 sons. One is inclined to believe that 100 was not meant as an exact number but as a poetic exaggeration. The Mahabharata tells us that Gandhari was pregnant for two years after which she delivered a piece of flesh which was as hard as iron. It was irrigated with cold water and split into 100 thumb-sized portions. These portions in turn were placed in pitchers filled with ghee which were carefully kept at secret places. After another two years, each pitcher produced a boy. A small piece of the aborted flesh was still left from which, after a month, a daughter was born. Immediately on birth, the first born, later to be known as Duryodhana, started braying like a donkey whereupon, the “other” donkeys, vultures, jackals and crows in the area also joined the chorus. Here is an attempt to take Duryodhana’s villainy back to his birth itself; any resemblance to modern research is purely incidental. It is extraordinary that the creativity and imaginativeness of ancient poets and dramatists should be sacrificed at the altar of modern science.

In October 2016, the PM, while inaugurating a hospital in Mumbai, claimed that the Hindu god Ganesha’s having an elephant head showed that plastic [?] surgery began in India. He also speculated that genetic science must have been known in ancient India because the Mahabharata says that Karna was born outside the mother’s womb. The Mahabharata also says that virgin Kunti’s motherhood was due to her recitation of a mantra and that, fearful of the public opinion, she clandestinely set the newborn afloat in a river. What use is a scientific discovery if it has to be presented as a miracle and hidden from the public at large? More recently, the newly-elected Chief Minister of Tripura concluded that internet existed in the age of Mahabharata, because Sanjaya narrates the happenings in the war-field to Dhritarashtra who is located miles away.

Such dubious claims have been made by persons in power or in inaugural addresses, etc. But, alarmingly, the government has now decided to give such claims the legitimacy of a teachable subject, and that too, at the level of professional colleges.

By definition, science today is better than science yesterday. It is, therefore, anachronistic to pit one against the other. Production of wealth today depends on modern science. Prosperity in ancient India depended on agriculture and un-organised manufacturing activity — knowledge systems connected with these two spheres were exclusively the domain of farmers and artisans and there was no reason for sacred Sanskrit texts to incorporate this parallel knowledge system into their own. In other words, it makes no sense to look for products of modern technology in ancient sacred texts.

AICTE should put its present proposal on hold for the time being. It should ask Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan to heavily annotate its textbook so that a reader can check the veracity of the claims made. The draft text should be uploaded online, and comments invited on its content. The textbook should be finalised in the light of the feedback received. Only then should it be placed in the hands of teachers and students. The proposal, as it stands now, is an insult to human intelligence and aimed at the “moroni-fication” of the students.

Rajesh Kochhar is with the mathematics department, Panjab University.

Source: Indian Express, 31/10/2018

TISS report ‘not hostile’ to Dhangar demand: CM

Says the state govt will send ‘appropriate’ reccomendations to the Centre based on it

The report submitted by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) with regard to the Dhangar community’s pitch for a scheduled tribe (ST) status is “not hostile to the demand”, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has said. Fadnavis said the state government would make “appropriate” recommendations to the Centre based on the report, which he added, is being currently studied. He said the report mentions several aspects which strengthen the case of the Dhangars. He, however, did not divulge details of the report. Dhangars are currently included in the Vimukt Jati nomadic tribe category, but they have been demanding the ST status for long. The chief minister also said his government expected the State Backward Class Commission to submit its report in connection with the Maratha community’s demand for quota in jobs and education by November 15. The Marathas form 30 per cent of the state’s population, and the Dhangars nine per cent. On the Dhangar community’s demand, Fadnavis said a call would have to be taken by the Centre and not the state government. On the Maratha community’s demand, he said the government “will act per timeline”. MMB

Source: Mumbai Mirror, 31/10/2018

What Lies Beneath

When we look, we look at the surface. When we see, we see in depth. By moving from surface cares to authentic cares, we attain a pure heart. We live in an age of looking. But to see is to go beyond the surface of things. That takes us to a deeper level of concern and deeper level of caring. Faith for many is equated with sight. Not physical sight, but internal sight. To see is also to believe or to walk by faith. Seeing is also closely linked with seeking. When our seeking is true, we see the Truth. When our seeking is false, we flee from the Truth and all that really brings us face-to-face with the Truth. That is why some people seek and never find. To set one’s hopes in what is passing and impermanent is also to look at things only on the surface. The more we chase the tangible, the more the intangible slips through our fingers, which is why ‘seeing’ is an important part of a real conversion of heart. We can train our sight to look at merely externals or to look deeper and beneath. Vision is like a laser that removes the cataract that obstructs sight. When Jesus said, “Look at the lilies in the field, they neither toil or spin, but even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these”, he was drawing our attention to real sight. He called us to see the universe and us as protected by the mantle of God. If we begin to see, we will seek and find. God who is invisible cannot be experienced by those who only look but can be experienced by those who ‘see’ in all things not appearances, the miracle of life

Source: Economic Times, 31/10/2018

Humans wiped out 60% of wildlife since 1970

Rate Of Species Loss Up 100-1,000 Times From Few Centuries Ago

Unbridled consumption has decimated global wildlife, triggered a mass extinction and exhausted Earth’s capacity to accommodate humanity’s expanding appetites, the conservation group WWF warned on Tuesday. From 1970 to 2014, 60% of all animals with a backbone — fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals — were wiped out by human activity, according to WWF’s “Living Planet” report, based on an ongoing survey of more than 4,000 species spread over 16,700 populations across the globe. “The situation is really bad, and it keeps getting worse,” WWF International director general Marco Lambertini said. “The only good news is that we know exactly what is happening.” For freshwater fauna, the decline in population over the 44 years monitored was a staggering 80%. Regionally, Latin America was hit hardest, seeing a nearly 90% loss of wildlife over the same period. Depending on which of Earth’s lifeforms are included, the current rate of species loss is 100 to 1,000 times higher than only a few hundred years ago, when people began to alter Earth’s chemistry and crowd other creatures out of existence. Wild animals today only account for 4% of mammals on Earth, with humans (36%) and livestock (60%) making up the rest. Ten thousand years ago that ratio was reversed. Back-to-back marine heatwaves have already wiped out up to half of the globe’s shallow-water reefs, which support a quarter of all marine life. Even if humanity manages to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius — mission impossible — coral mortality will likely be 70 to 90%. The onslaught of hunting, shrinking habitat, pollution, illegal trade and climate change — all caused by humans — has been too much to overcome, he said. In looking for answers, conservationists are turning to climate change. “We need a new global deal for nature,” said Lambertini, noting two key ingredients in the 195-nation Paris climate treaty. “One was the realisation that climate change was dangerous for the economy and society, not just polar bears,” he said. Similarly, threatened ecosystem services long taken for granted are worth tens of trillions of dollars every year. “A healthy, sustainable future for all is only possible on a planet where nature thrives,” said Lambertini. AF

Source: Times of India, 31/10/2018

Rising pollution could hit monsoon rains: UN report

Rising air pollution in India is likely to impact rainfall patterns in the country and decrease monsoon in long term, which can cause extensive financial losses, warns a United Nations report released on Tuesday. “Air Pollution in Asia and the Pacific: Science-based Solutions” presents a scientific assessment of air pollution in Asia and the Pacific. Released in the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) first global conference on air pollution and health in Geneva, the report covers various pollution aspects which India is grappling with. The largest impact of air pollution on the Indian monsoon will be a decrease in the amount of rainfall, the report warns. “However, some parts can also witness high precipitation depending on the topography. Pollution will also impact the duration and distribution of rainfall,” said Nathan BorgfordParnell, science affairs adviser at Climate and Clean Air Coalition who coauthored the report. The report states that the presence of particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5), a deadly tiny pollutant, can affect precipitation patterns during monsoon in India. “A weaker trend in the Indian monsoon precipitation has been linked to changes in the emissions of particles and other pollutants from within and outside Asia,” the report says. The report also has a word of praise for several mitigation measures taken by the government. Recognising indoor air pollution as a major health crisis in India, the report reveals that it is contributing as much as 22-52% to the country’s ambient air pollution. Speaking exclusively to TOI, Andy Haines, member of the scientific advisory panel of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, said from Geneva, “The muchneeded mitigation measure that India needs to ensure is provision of clean household energy. Burning of fossil fuels in households is a big health threat, especially for women and children.” UN claims that if the suggested measures are implemented, annual premature mortality associated with indoor air pollution can decline by 75%. This means that about 2 million premature deaths per year can be avoided in countries like India. The economic development data of 41 countries (in Asia and the Pacific) shows that unlike many other nations who managed to control air pollution with economic development, India’s air quality got worse with an increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). A graph shows as India transitioned from a lowincome to a middle-income country between 1995 and 2014, levels of PM 2.5 increased significantly. Haines added that growing air pollution was affecting the country’s health care, with an increase in ailments like heart attack, cancer and other respiratory diseases.

Source: Times of India, 31/10/2018

 Javadekar launches web portals for research-oriented schemes

Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar on Thursday launched web portals of two schemes — IMPRESS and SPARC — with an aim to build a research ecosystem in educational institutions.

"A country achieves prosperity on a sustainable basis only through innovation which can happen only by good research and which is currently a major focus area of the Government," Javadekar said while addressing a press conference.

The objective of Impactful Policy Research in Social Sciences (IMPRESS) is to identify and fund research proposals in social sciences with maximum impact on the governance and society. "It will provide an opportunity for social science researchers in any institution in the country which includes all universities (central and state) and also a few private institutions meeting the requirement," he said.

The scheme will be implemented at a total cost of Rs 414 crore till March, 2021. Under IMPRESS, 1,500 research projects will be awarded for two years to support social science research in the higher educational institutions.

The Indian Council of Social Science and Research (ICSSR) will be the project implementing agency. Meanwhile, the Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC) aims at building the research ecosystem of India's higher educational institutions by facilitating academic and research collaborations between Indian and foreign institutions.

"It is a scheme for promotion of academic and research collaboration. Under the scheme we are giving Rs 418 crore for 600 joint research proposals. The idea is to stop brain drain and provide facility so that they can do research in India which is of international level," said Javadekar.

IIT-Khargapur is the national coordinating institute to implement the SPARC programme. The research work under both the schemes would start from January next year, the minister said.

Source | The Daily Pioneer | 26^th October 2018

The long march: on migrants march to USA

CaravanaMigrante puts issues in the U.S. mid-term elections in sharp relief

The winding caravan of more than 7,000 migrants from Central America through Mexico has become such a political hot potato that it is likely to thrust the immigration issue to the forefront of the U.S. mid-term elections, barely two weeks away. Already, President Donald Trump, who has not been shy about translating his conservative views on immigration into harsh policy measures, has fuelled fears that the caravan may harbour terrorists from West Asia; he has also attacked Mexico for not stopping the “onslaught”. This, besides the usual sloganeering around “illegal immigration” that will purportedly steal American jobs and threaten the security of an otherwise peaceful American society. In truth, most members of this caravan, not by any means the first of its kind but certainly one of the largest in recent history, are either economic migrants seeking escape from grinding poverty in places like Honduras or fleeing persecution, trafficking or gang violence in the region. Unlike previous such caravans, whose members numbered in the hundreds and which dissipated along the way or upon reaching the border, this one has gathered momentum from sheer media attention and support from advocacy groups. It is not going away any time soon. This puts candidates from both the major parties in the U.S. in a tricky position. Democrats are wary of committing too much political currency to the caravan or undocumented migration as a phenomenon, given the prevailing mood in the country. And the Republican mainstream harbours concerns about the strident anti-immigrant rhetoric against the caravan, and what it stands for, emboldening far-right groups associated with racism and Islamophobia.

At the heart of the shrill debate on immigration is the weight of history. Americans can never get away from the fact that they are and will probably always be a nation of immigrants. As President, Barack Obama took a hard line on undocumented worker deportations, whose number soared through his two terms in office. But he sought to toe a moderate line when it came to delaying the deportation of childhood arrivals, and policed borders with a relatively light touch. Mr. Trump, contrarily, has made every effort to deliver on his radical campaign promise to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., although he faced numerous legal setbacks in that mission, and then made even immigration hawks squirm over his decision to separate undocumented child migrants from their families. Ultimately #CaravanaMigrante will seek to cross that line in the sand which Mr. Trump and his supporters hope will one day become a high wall. Liberal-progressive Americans who hope that these asylum-seekers will not be rudely rebuffed at that point will have to regroup and focus their energies on the November campaign and use any newfound power they win in Congress to chip away at the immigration agenda of the Trump machine.

Source: The Hindu, 25/10/2018

The right identity

Evolving feminist narratives in India must resolve the fault lines that have emerged.

A spectre is haunting Indian men, but also the feminist movement. For the latter, it is the spectre of an identity movement. As a moment of catharsis, following a long overdue battle for many women who probably belong to the “nevertheless, she persisted (think Mitch McConnell on Elizabeth Warren)” generation, has come #MeToo. Many of us who nominally belong to the millennial community have watched as our younger sisters have gone about dismantling the apparatus that allows masculine aggression and violence to persist. Empowered to finally inhabit a world that listens in solidarity, many older women have come out to expose their aggressors for the first time or repeat an allegation they had made earlier in a tone-deaf world.

So, what will we be left with, to ask a Gramscian question, when the old world is dead and the new has not been born yet? The feminist movement finds itself in the midst of a generational conflict of early feminist pioneers, veterans of many battles and millennials without patience. The latter “will not be silenced” by those who speak of due process and caution, we are told. As Major Saranoff in George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man rued, the generals would not have it that we win a war on a flawed strategy when we could be losing it on account of best practices. Saranoff had led a cavalry directly towards a battalion armed with cannons, but had triumphed because the other side did not have the right ammunition at the right time.

The older generation of feminists have been, of late, attacked multiple times for how they have conducted the feminist movement so far. World over, feminists have been equated to a sex-negative, reactionary group which is also, it is alleged, intolerant of diversity — sexual, racial and ethnic. In the United States, feminists have allegedly treated LGBTQ movements shabbily and, in India, all feminists are labelled savarna, elitist women (even by savarna, elitist people). In both cases, feminists are viewed as a faceless mass of undifferentiated women. They are not individuals who agree on some issues and diverge on others.

LGBTQ groups were perhaps one of the latest entrants to identity movements at the turn of the century. Today, the term identity politics might have negative connotations but these were powerful movements that promoted cohesion to protect group interests, often with aggressive political posturing. Adages such as TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), seek to delink group rights from the larger feminist movement, and have, probably, helped the cause in some ways. Ironically, I have heard patriarchal white men use TERF more often to discredit individual feminists than any other group.

Identity movements that depend on labelling and discrediting have today reached groups who are not only privileged but also outraged at the gains made by marginalised communities. White nationalists and Hindu nationalists, especially men but also women, combine the aggressive political posturing, moves for cohesion and for insulating groups with the power of the state and the social structures they control.

The #MeToo explosion is born out of this moment. Of the need to push back against an insulating identity movement that seeks to include women without representing women’s interests, or even holding its men accountable for the violence unleashed against those they seek to speak for. Racial, ethnic, caste and LGBTQ movements have done this before — distanced themselves from both the dominant community and feminist women from dominant groups. The #MeToo movement in India is similarly consolidating itself as an identity movement. The Raya Sarkar list was posited, quite misleadingly, as an attack against savarna men and against “savarna feminist apologists”. The #MeToo of 2018 is unapologetically against men, male entitlement and male inability to accord respect to women. Any criticism of #MeToo will be countered with the same posturing and aggression needed to promote group interests of a set of people who subscribe to one tenuous identity — of being women.

The feminist movement in India, after years of vibrant diffusion, is consolidating into an identity movement whether we like it or not, and the fault lines are already visible. Tavleen Singh has questioned the exclusion of marginalised women from the #MeToo space (‘Can MeToo get beyond me’, IE, October 21) while Seema Mustafa has dismissed both Ghazala Wahab’s testimony, in which she was mentioned, and the #MeToo movement itself as a self-indulgent exercise. Embedded in Mustafa’s piece (‘The revolution before #MeToo’, IE October 25) is a derision for millennials with a short “attention span” and for women’s vulnerability (which locates responsibility of escaping harassment on women themselves). This piece also reveals that the author has perhaps missed the entire feminist conversation on the “crisis of representation”. The conceit of speaking for others (those without privilege) and the impatient dismissal of women who take charge of their own narrative is also a function of power, lacking in empathy.

An important question that Mustafa also touches on needs to be pushed forward: Is there no redemption (if explicitly sought) possible for men accused of less severe indiscretions? Also, have we lost our ability to at least listen to someone like Varun Grover who presented his case with precision and pathos (when the response of the person who posted his accusation has been vacuous)? Or, finally, what does one make of the pressure we put on women, especially feminists, to immediately condemn their family members and husbands/partners? Empathy, for me, has always been the cornerstone of feminism and I do not want to see it die with the old world.

Source: Indian Express, 30/10/2018

Mantra, Mind, Meditation

In all our existential expressional phenomena, it is the mind that steers the psyche, “manah pragraha me va cha”. It is the mind that acts with the present, frames the future and even rewinds the past; with the application of intelligence, intuition and conscience. But the mind, by nature, is always diversified and it runs after hallucinations of the mundane world. In meditation, mantra helps the scattered mind to achieve a state of one-pointedness, absorbing the idea of cosmic super-consciousness that carries within, the mantra itself. Every word in this universe bears an acoustic sound; every utterance possesses a rhythmic vibration and carries a significant meaning. Mantra, too, is a precise and condensed form of all these three aspects and is an essential part of meditation. Meditation is a physio-psychic and psycho-spiritual process of withdrawing the mind from the external world and concentrating in an internal energy centre, or chakra, within our corporal frame. The next step is to sit still like a rock and attune the mind with mantric spirit. In mantra meditation, breathing, which is intimately linked with the mind, becomes slow and deep and, ultimately, the mind becomes introverted, calm and peaceful. By repeated mantric strokes on mental plane, the meditator gradually tries to transform his own rhythmic flow into the cosmic vibrational flow. Ultimately, the mind expands and merges into the eternal cosmic glacier. Mantras are special and potent as the right mantra can lead you to the path of salvation

Source: Economic Times, 30/10/2018

India tops in under-5 deaths due to toxic air, 60,000 killed in 2016: WHO

‘Air Pollution Killed Over 1L Children In ’16’

India’s toxic air has been linked to the premature deaths of close to 1,10,000 children in 2016, with the country witnessing highest number of deaths of children under five years of age attributed to their exposure to ambient air pollution of particulate matter (PM) 2.5, said a World Health Organisation (WHO) report released on the eve of the first-ever conference on air pollution and health. As many as 60,987 children of under five years of age in India died because of their exposure to PM 2.5, followed by Nigeria with 47,674 deaths, Pakistan with 21,136 deaths and Democratic Republic of Congo with 12,890 deaths. In India, the death rate for this age bracket is 50.8 per 1,00,000 children with more girls under the age of five dying than boys due to pollution. About 32,889 girls died, compared to 28,097 boys in 2016, according to the report. Between five and 14 years, India saw the deaths of 4,360 children attributed to ambient air pollution in 2016. Across both these age groups, over 1 lakh children died in India due to both ambient and household pollution of particulate matter 2.5 in 2016. Particulate matter 2.5 orPM 2.5 are fine dust particles in air which are considered highly harmful for health. The report, titled ‘Air Pollution and Child Health – Prescribing clean air’, seeks to caution against the rising levels of pollution causing growing burden of diseases as well as deaths. Over 2 million deaths occur prematurely in India due to pollution, accounting for 25% of the global deaths due to air pollution. Globally, every day around 93% of children under the age of 15 years (1.8 billion children) breathe air that is so polluted it puts their health and development at serious risk. WHO estimates that in 2016, 6,00,000 children died from acute lower respiratory infections caused by polluted air. While in low and middle income countries, 98% of children under five are said to be exposed to PM 2.5, in high income countries, this number is almost half at 52%. The report also highlights adverse impact of pollution on pregnant women and children. Pregnant women, exposed to polluted air, are more likely to give birth prematurely, and have small, low birth-weight children, the report says. “Air pollution is stunting our children’s brains, affecting their health in more ways than we suspected,” said Dr Maria Neira, director, department of public health, environmental and social determinants of health at WHO

Source: Times of India, 30/10/2018

Economic & Political Weekly: Table of Contents

Vol. 53, Issue No. 43, 27 Oct, 2018

Editorials

Propagating Theocracy by Stealth?

Recognising the Empty Bowls

Do Railway Tracks Serve the Public Good?

Strategic Affairs

Sailing in Two Boats - India in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and Indo-Pacific ‘Quad’

Atul Bhardwaj

Commentary

Pause for Thought - Supreme Court’s Verdict on Sabarimala

Deepa Das Acevedo

Safety of Fisherfolk at Seas - Points for Critical Intervention

A Suresh, V K Sajesh, A K Mohanty, M V Baiju, C N Ravishankar et al

Citizenship in Dispute - The Case of Outmigrants from Barpeta, Assam

Roli Misra

From Calcutta to Ieper - Two Buildings with a Shared History

Rahela Khorakiwala

Book Reviews

Hydraulic Citizenship in a Leaky State

Nakul Mohan Heble

Politics of Peace Building in Chittagong Hill Tracts

Bhumitra Chakma

Perspectives

Decentralisation of Environmental Regulations in India

Ruth Kattumuri, Stefania Lovo

Special Articles

Estimating Greenhouse Gas Emissions - Does Production-based Methodology Reflect the Global Economic Reality?

Himangana Gupta, Rajani Ranjan Rashmi, J R Bhatt

The October Revolution and the Anti-colonial Movements in South Asia

Radha D’Souza

Postscript

Stitching and Unstitching Labour with Sui Dhaaga

Deblina Dey

Namdeo Dhasal’s New Language

Yogesh Maitreya

Goopy–Bagha’s Betrayal

Sayantani Dasgupta

Last Lines

From 50 Years Ago

From 50 Years Ago: Jan Sangh Bides Time

Letters

Why Patriarchy Continues

Kunika

Silencing Voices

Maulik Sisodia

Current Statistics

Current Statistics

No is a complete sentence

But sexual predators don’t get it. Because they draw on deep reservoirs of misogyny.

Facing up to what true equality looks like between two genders disturbs the equilibrium of the most enlightened of men. From the time a son begins to absorb the nature of relationships in his home, he learns that in most cases the father is the boss, even if he does a bit of the housework. The father’s voice is usually louder, people listen to instructions and orders from him more willingly, “do it or I will tell your father when he comes home”, is a threat often used by the mother, and boys don’t usually shout bossily at their fathers to find their socks or feed them when they are hungry. Nothing wrong in that, if it is a clearly accepted separation of powers and duties, but have we stopped to ask how “accepted” it is by the woman, or is it simply a situation that has been “understood”? The transition from boss to decision-maker to demanding submission is not a difficult one.

In the public field, it is widely understood that racists have a deeply entrenched contempt, if not hatred, of a particular race because of feelings of superiority and the knowledge that they possess the power to oppress them. Slavery, bonded labour, human trafficking, even prostitution, from the man’s point of view, are all areas in which a man has full power and control over the victim who is helpless and, therefore, bound to be submissive to survive.

The undermining of women stems from the same innate feeling of physical superiority and prowess that older societies easily acknowledged when men went out to hunt and kill, while the women looked after the hearth and home. Protection accorded by men to women obviously seeped into their collective psyches. This earlier consciousness has not yet been fully erased in this age of intelligence, technology, computers and labour-saving machines. Preference for non-violence and peace are the catchwords of an enlightened society. It is in this kind of society that women aspire to stand on their own feet, work as equals and be economically self- reliant, even while aspiring to have families of their own, looking aesthetically pleasing in their own eyes, and, retaining the special female qualities of gentleness and grace.

The tension between the existing world view of men and the promised land seen by women results in faultlines like those emerging out of the #MeToo movement. If one looks closely at the earlier presumptions of men and their responses to the new woman, one detects a common characteristic reaction. In the earlier scenario, men presumed they could be predators as it was their natural right, and entitlement, to demand and get what they wanted from a woman. Sex of course, but also washed clothes, hot meals, healthy sons and submissiveness. What happens when a man is faced with the new woman who believes she has a choice in the matter? He does not say sorry and back off, but uses force instead, because that is what has ultimately made him superior. His mind shuts itself off to the possibility of rejection.

Whether film directors, professors, corporate bosses or editors in all forms of media — all these men are in fields that are now attracting aspiring women who are smart, well-turned out and self-confident, and have certainly not planned to be submissive. When a man with predatorial instincts confronts someone like this, he often turns to undermining her in other ways because he cannot yet understand, as Jane Fonda, in a new Netflix documentary, Feminists: What were they thinking?, says, “‘No’ is a complete sentence”. The man has not yet learned that a woman can really feel and be equal to him, and that if she is not willing to give in to him in his sexual demands that does not mean she is worthless.

Interestingly, politics is not such an easy field for predators because it is usually confident, feisty and articulate women who venture into the political arena. There aren’t many cubby holes or instances of drunken partying. But here is where men with predatorial tendencies find ways of undermining the woman they know they cannot prey upon. During distribution of tickets, women are, generally, always considered “weak” candidates or put up as proxies for men. Men in most “equal” areas, even outside politics, expect women to look attractive and provide the tea at meetings. She is thus constantly reminded of her role as a housekeeper and as someone who must, as in the visual media, look attractive to the male eye. If she challenges a man publicly or even privately, she can be called “horseface” in front of the whole world as Donald Trump did of the stunningly beautiful Stormy Daniels.

If a man knows he cannot get his way with a woman because she feels “empowered”, he will isolate, ignore and undermine her by calling her anything from being a “favourite” (wink-wink), to the mistress-companion-girlfriend of someone in power, rather than acknowledge her capabilities. At social occasions, these predators will talk flippantly for a few moments, and with obvious lack of interest, with intelligent, serious women — if they are bound to, for courtesy’s sake, before moving off for more important conversations with men. All these subtle forms of woman-hating because they cannot accept them as intellectual equals or make them submit to physical advances cannot be termed as anything but closet misogyny.

Source: Indian Express, 29/10/2018

How fair is social media criticism?

Instant online opinions impoverish our public sphere

Social media activists seem to have different notions about corrective action, justice and fairness. They want retribution, revenge and punishment rather than non-punitive course correction, which is the essential function of a news ombudsman. A news ombudsman adopts a light-touch approach to visibly mend mistakes. I refrain from naming the reporter while reporting errors or the subeditor in case of editing errors because the primary focus is on rectifying the mistake rather than stigmatising individuals who work under deadline pressure. A disturbing element about the shrill criticism of activists is the suggestion of overreach and breach of other rules in their overwhelming focus on a single theme.

Reporting on mental health

At 3.07 p.m. on September 30, there was a tweet that accused The Hindu of breach of law and insensitive reporting on mental health. The reference was to a Delhi report headlined, “Mentally ill woman beheads 8-month-old son”, published on April 21. Within four hours, the reader put out a second tweet saying that there was no action from The Hindu despite his earlier tweet and added that this was a shameful display of indifference. First, this activist assumed that health reporters follow him and hence, his tweet would have been noticed. Second, he did not write to the Readers’ Editor’s office, which has been designated to look into these types of lapses. Third, for reasons best known to him, he failed to mention that The Hindu report, written and edited sensitively, was published in April while the new law, the Mental Health Care Act, 2017, came into force only from July 7, 2018. The new law emphasises that the privacy of a mentally ill patient should be maintained and prohibits naming the individual. Aren’t Indian laws prospective in nature and not retrospective, unless and otherwise stated? How did The Hindu break any law if the law had come into effect after the publication of the report?

The issue gets more complicated with a newspaper like The Hindu because its online archive is available from 2000. Is it right to pull out an old story and take it down because it violates a law that came later? Can we alter our past to reflect the present? Is it right to play with archival material? Can history be moulded in such a way that all contentious issues are eschewed from the public domain? Over the last six years, I have tried to explain in detail why this newspaper generally refrains from altering or taking down a story. Does the non-existence of particular material online mean that it does not exist in any other form in the archives? What about the existence of the physical newspaper, which carries content that some readers want to take down, in not only the newspaper’s office but also various public libraries?

Activists working on a single theme tend to be oblivious to the requirements of a complex, multilayered society, which media scholars term as interlocking public, and come up with solutions that might not empower in the long run but undermine some of the wellsprings of plural coexistence.

Laws related to the newsroom

I would like to share a portion of a recent note from our senior managing editor that lists various laws relating to the newsroom. Apart from the well-documented laws of defamation — both criminal and civil — he listed more than 25 specific laws that govern reportage. For instance, contempt of court where, technically, fair criticism is allowed but there are instances of the courts being inconsistent in interpreting what is fair comment. Legislative privilege, where we are yet to codify the privileges of our elected members, is a powerful tool to keep the media on a leash. The laws relating to sexual crime, juvenile crime and crime against children are explained to every reporter and subeditor during their induction period in the newsroom. Twitter warriors may not know that a newspaper can be prosecuted under Rule 13 of the Aircraft Rules which says that “no person shall take, or cause or permit to be taken, at a government aerodrome or from an aircraft in flight, any photograph”. Instead of studied reflection, many who are active in cyberspace come up with instant opinions and impoverish our public sphere.

readerseditor@thehindu.co.in

Source: The Hindu, 29/10/2018