Jun 03 2014 : The Economic Times (Mumbai)

Citings Think Rural, Act Global

MAMTA KAPUR ET AL





While urban demand for consumer products remains sluggish worldwide, rural markets are growing faster than ever in some of the largest emerging economies.... In China, demand in the countryside has already begun to outstrip demand in the cities.Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in India.
From 2009 to 2012, spending by India's 800+ million rural residents reached $69 billion, 25% more than their urban counterparts spent over the same period. And projected growth rates are astounding: according to recent Nielsen estimates, consumption in rural areas is growing at 1.5 times the rate in urban areas, and today's $12-billion consumer goods market in rural India is expected to hit $100 billion by 2025.
What's more, rural Indians are trading up. Commodities are giving way to branded products, and more expensive goods are replacing entry-level versions, as consumers gain more disposable income. Their increased purchasing power is largely due to the steady migration of manufacturing jobs to the countryside.
Credit Suisse estimates that nearly 75% of the factories that opened in India in the last decade were built in rural areas; they now account for almost 55% of the country's manufacturing GDP and 70% of all new manufacturing jobs.
As a result, per-capita GDP in the countryside has grown at a compound annual rate of 6.2% since 2000, eclipsing the 4.7% urban growth rate.
From “The Globe: Unlocking the Wealth in Rural Markets“





Jun 03 2014 : The Economic Times (Mumbai)

PROMISES COOPERATION India Can Develop if States Develop: Modi

NEW DELHI OUR BUREAU





Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that India can only develop if its states develop, reiterating his commitment to work in partnership with the state governments at meetings with two state chief ministers on Monday.Among those who called on the Prime Minister for what officials described as a `courtesy call' on Monday included Odisha Chief Minister Navin Patnaik and Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy.
“It was good to hear PM Narendra Modi say India can only develop if its states develop, & that he'll cooperate,“ BJD MP from Kendrapara Baijayant Panda said after the meeting on social media.
Working together with the states has been a key theme of Modi's communiques so far with top officials in the Prime Minister's Office as well as his 45-member ministerial council.
Modi had asked his officials to address the problems and issues raised by states promptly and sensitively The same message was conveyed t ministers in the second meeting of the Modi cabinet.
Chandy and Patnaik's meeting with Modi followed a similar courte sy call last Friday by Chandrababu day by Chandrababu Naidu, who was Andhra Pradesh chief minister-designate at the time.
Governors of four states had also met Narendra Modi on Friday -Jagannath Pahadia of Haryana, ESL Narasimhan from Andhra Pradesh, NN Vohra from Jammu & Kashmir and Manipur governor VK Duggal.
Two chiefs of union territories have also met the PM so far, including the Lieutenant Governor (LG) of Delhi Najeeb Jung. After Modi moved into his official Race Course Residence on Friday, the LG of Andaman & Nicobar Islands AK Singh had also met the PM to convey his best wishes.

Jun 03 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Govt to tread carefully on river inter-linking project

Vishwa Mohan

New Delhi: TNN





To First Link Rivers Within A Basin

The ambitious river inter-linking project will get a new impetus under the Narendra Modi government but the Centre would like to select specific schemes for implementation very cautiously . Its focus will first be on linking rivers within a basin or nearby basins instead of going for distant inter-basin river linkages.“Government will first take up those inter-basin rivers for linking which are close to each other, keeping in mind its feasibility and utility to larger beneficiaries,“ environment minister Prakash Javadekar said.
He told TOI that this was an inter-ministerial matter which would be discussed thoroughly . “We will do the inter-linking of rivers in a manner that it simultaneously takes care of drinkingwater/irrigation needs of people and ecological concerns,“ said the minister.
Though river inter-linking was mooted way back in 1982, it was actively taken up during Atal Bihari Vajpayee's tenure as PM during 1999-2004. It, however, fell off the radar once the UPA came to power. The UPA took it up only during its last year in office after the Supreme Court in February 2012 directed the Centre to implement the river inter-linking project in a time-bound manner and appointed a high-powered committee for its planning and implementation.
The full river inter-linking project has two components -Peninsular and Himalayan. The Peninsular component, involving the rivers in southern India, envisaged developing a `south ern water grid' with 16 river linkages in different states.
This component included diversion of the surplus waters of Mahanadi and Godavari to the Pennar, Krishna, Vaigai and Cauvery rivers.
The Himalayan component, on the other hand, was conceived for building storage reservoirs on the Ganga and the Brahmaputra and their main tributaries both in India and Nepal in order to conserve water during the monsoon for irrigation and generation of hydro-power, besides checking floods.
The Himalayan component comprises 14 links including Brahamputra-Ganga, Kosi-Ghagra, Kosi-Mech, Ghagra-Yamuna, GandakGanga, Sarda-Yamuna, Farakka-Sunderbans, Subernarekha-Mahanadi and Ganga-Damodar-Subernarekha.
Both the components have 30 river-linking projects.
For the full report, log on to http://www.timesofindia.com

Jun 02 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)

Paper-less Parliament Dream May Come True Ab Ki Baar

VASUDHA VENUGOPAL

NEW DELHI





NIC officials pinning hope on highly tech-savvy PM Modi & first-timer MPs

A ‘Paper-less Parliament’ may still be a term or two away, yet NIC officials working towards that goal hope that their efforts this time will have a better hit rate with a highly techsavvy prime minister and a Lok Sabha that counts over half of its members as first-timers.A slew of measures that NIC has lined up – the National Informatics Centre (NIC) comes under the a Department of Electronics and spearheads all such e-governance initiatives – this year include preloaded tabs for MPs, an online messaging system that will replace ‘paper slips’, live webcast of house sessions, and of course, a detailed training programme for the parliamentarians.
To start with, MPs will be given tablets that come pre-loaded with literature on proceedings of the house.
“They will be given these devices
when they register at the parliament counter. This time, the tablets will be configured with the day’s agenda, minutes of last session and other papers,” a senior official at the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs told ET.A senior official at the NIC said that unique mail-ids for the MPs have been configured already and have been kept simple. “This is to make it accessible for people. All mails with the MP’s name will be directed to his/her website. We are now in the
process of configuring their tablets with relevant data,” he said.To help the MPs connect with each other, the NIC is looking at launching messenger services. “Inside the house, there is no wi-fi facility but to help MPs connect with each other in the lobby that has high-speed network, we will have a messenger system that can be accessed in areas other than the house. They can dispose off files, discuss the session and reply to e-mails.” The official added that MPs will be given a choice if they want hard copies of the agenda documents or will go only with the soft copy. About 58% of MPs elected to the new Lok Sabha this time are ‘first-timers’, the highest number of debutant members elected to the lower house in the last 30 years. “We hope they are comfortable with technology but we have many tutorials scheduled for them beginning from June third week,” said the official.
“We are looking for an entirely pa
perless parliament this time. While we implemented 10 per cent of it last session, there was little enthusiasm.This time we will go full throttle, and we hope at least 40 per cent of the house opts for ‘only mail’ option,” he added.
Parliament will also launch a video portal soon that will have live online streaming during proceedings. “We will have different categories in there, especially one where in you can get all the speeches made by a certain politician,” he said

Jun 02 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Developing geniuses

Aaditi Isaac/TNN





Learning maths just became fun. Delhi University is reaching out to school students by promoting creative thinking, learning and action through maths education.“For the first time DU is doing something like this. The aim is to create a network between academic and infrastructural resources and reach out to the community and identify talented students in mathematics and science at a young age and promote engagement in research and science and mathematics,“ says Jyoti Sharma, assistant professor, faculty on deputation, Cluster Innovation Centre.
Little systematic research has been done in India to plan the identification processes and needs of gifted children. A national-level pilot project was initiated by the office of principal scientific advisor to the government of India in this direction in 2010 to identify children with high abilities in mathematics and science. The project was spread across three different locations, Delhi, Bangalore and rural Karnataka, across different age groups to accommodate the diversity at various levels such as regional, socio-cultural, economi cal and age level.
The first phase saw the partic pation of 37 schools, which comprised government, public, private, Kendriya Vidyalayas and minority schools and saw the participation of students from class V-VIII.
“We worked through a detailed identification process, which involved classroom observation, details from children about their interest, response in maths and science, project work, etc. An ability test was also set up to judge the level of students. We took the top 26 children for mentoring,“ adds Sharma.
The second phase will begin in June. “We are holding additional classes for the new batch of 170 students from MCD and NDMC schools on Saturdays, where students learn about different concept through a handson approach at CIC. We do not teach the school or college curriculum. We allow them to engage with ideas through experiments so that they develop the skill to think independently.“
The idea is to create a thinktank for the future and allow students to explore and empower themselves by doing what they love to do in maths and science.
“We would like to scale this project by identifying more students from other parts of India,“ she sums up.

Jun 02 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

YOUTH FOR CHANGE INDIA'S FUTURE

By Peter McLaughlin





Educationists share their views on the way forward for the youth through innovative leadership

The word “leadership“ seems to be on everyone's lips these days, and young people have every right to be confused: the more we talk about it, the more frequently glamorous international conferences such as the World Economic Forum are held, the more university courses and seminars and lectures we give on governance, the more opportunities for what Nassim Taleb disparagingly but accurately calls `The International Association of Name Droppers' to meet and not solve the world's problems, the worse things seem to get.One of the most universal laments of the early 21st century is about the dearth of men and women who can and will lead us to a shared vision of a future in which the world's citizens can live in peace and prosperity in a healthy human habitat.
Can leadership be taught to young people? I think that there are some theoretical foundations that can be laid through formal study of leadership styles, case studies, history and politics, but the critical factor is experiential.
Interestingly, the National Knowledge Commission's Report of the Working Group on Engineering Education 2008 analysis of what constitutes excellence in professional training concludes: “Character is perhaps the most important component but characterbuilding processes are difficult to define and implement.“ Having defined the essential element in engineering, as in other fields, educational institutions have simply ignored the report and concentrated on the acquisition of hard skills, that is, technical knowledge. Lamentations about a paucity of critical soft skills remain largely unanswered in our obsession with, and pursuit of, higher and higher, and more and more meaningless, admission cut-offs and end-of-course grades.
It is important to remember at times like this that Abraham Lincoln, one of the most visionary and courageous leaders of the last few centuries, was an auto-didact who had no formal education -and that was at a time when Harvard, Yale and Princeton all existed. But he did have character. Related to this, research conducted by Michigan State University shows that children active outdoors for five to 10 hours a week have a stronger sense of selffulfilment and purpose than their less active peers, as well as better developed imaginations and greater creativity.
Not surprisingly, they also have an enhanced appreciation of natural beauty. So, if we want to produce great leaders who will save our human habitat and solve global problems, we need to get them outdoors and not simply incarcerate them in classrooms dragging through textbooks, followed by hours of sterile tuitions.
The crushing failure of schools and education systems around the world to provide an environment in which children's citizenship can flourish and their potential for leadership blossom, is the tragedy of our time. Yet most school websites will claim that their institution is producing “the leaders of tomorrow,“ or some such variation on the slogan. Despite all the well-intentioned words, few can or will deliver on that promise.
Sometimes I wonder if our schools across the globe are primarily about creating more discerning shoppers and tourists, or clerical drones, rather than active citizens and genuine leaders who will make a difference in the world. Betterinformed consumers who submit to the overwhelming brand conformity pumped out in the media are unlikely to have the courage and the conviction to overturn their superior lifestyles in pursuit of some higher and nobler goal.
A good starting point, be sides getting outside into the real world more often, would be for every senior schoolchild to read (preferably under a tree), Dipankar Gupta's seminal work, Revolution from Above, with his urgent cry for young people to join “an elite of calling,“ a youth infused with a sense of mission and capable of the self-sacrifice that will transform India's future.
(The author is headmaster of The Doon School)

Jun 02 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Earth staring at mass extinction due to us

Tomas Jivanda

THE INDEPENDENT & AGENCIES





Thanks To Humans, Plants And Animals Disappearing 10 Times Faster, Says Study

H umanity is responsible for speeding up the natural rate of extinction for animal and plant species by up to 10,000 times, as the planet is on the brink of a dinosaur-scale sixth mass extinction, a new study has warned.Species are disappearing around 10 times faster than is widely believed in the scientific community, while in pre-human times extinction rates were slower than previously thought, researchers from Duke University in the US said. “We are on the verge of the sixth extinction,” lead author, biologist Stuart Pimm, said. “Whether we avoid it or not will depend on our actions.” Praised by independent experts as a landmark report, it fo
cuses around calculating a “death rate” of how many species become extinct each year out of 1 million species.Analysing the latest research, the team concluded that the pre-human extinction rate was 0.1 per year per 1 million, rather than 1 per 1 million, as a previous study led by Dr Pimm in 1995 suggested. Today, the rate is at least 1,000 times greater than the 0.1 figure at 100 extinctions per year per million species, but could be up to 1,000 per 1 million, Pimm added.
Although a combination of numerous factors is responsible for the acceleration in disappearance of species, the biggest is habitat loss caused by humans, Dr Pimm and co-author Clinton Jenkins from the Institute of Ecological Research in Brazil said.
Other major issues are invasive species introduced by humans crowding out native species, climate change affecting where species can survive and overfishing. A good example is the buffy-tufted-ear marmoset.Dr Jenkins said development in Brazil has decimated its habitat while a competing marmoset has taken over where it lives.
The oceanic white-tip shark
used to be one of the most abundant predators on Earth, but they have been hunted so much they are now rarely seen, added Dalhousie University marine biologist Boris Worm, who praised the study. “If we don't do anything, this will go the way of the dinosaurs.” Other species at great risk include the Sumatran rhinoceros, Amur leopard and mountain gorilla.Dr Pimm and Jenkins did however say there is some hope.
Both said the use of smartphones and applications such as iNaturalist will help ordinary people and biologists find species in trouble, they said. Once biologists know where endangered species are, they can try to save habitats and use captive breeding and other techniques to save the species, they said.