Jun 26 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

JNU's iconic eatery also a cultural institution

Avijit Ghosh

New Delhi TNN





Shutting Down Ganga Dhaba Akin To Killing Part Of JNU's Glorious Heritage Ganga dhaba was synonymous with JNU's nightlife, its cultural ecology. It was a place where the political types decided on the text and tenor of the next pamphlet. Ask anyone to name one place in JNU; a majority would say Ganga dhaba. Why kill your best-known imprint?

In the life of any institution, some places become cultural markers. In collective memory and popular perception, they gradually attain the sanctity of a heritage site. For JNU, that's what Ganga dhaba perhaps is.To equate it with any other eatery in the campus and initiate moves to shut it down not only means the university's lack of appreciation of its own tradition but also an inability to see the importance and strength of its own most instantly-recognizable brand.
Ask anyone to name one place in JNU; a majority would say Ganga dhaba. Why kill your best-known imprint?
Till the mid-1980s, the Nilgiri dhaba, poised between Periyar and Godavari hostels, was a hotter nightspot than Ganga. But within a few years, the latter overshadowed the former by a mile. Even a suicide committed by one of the dhaba owners did nothing to dimin ish its popularity .
Those days when most eateries--and there were hardly any in the campus--shut down early , Ganga dhaba's nimboo-paani and bunomlettes served as late as 1.30pm were lifesavers for hundreds who had missed their dinner for one reason or the other.
But more importantly, Ganga dhaba was synonymous with JNU's nightlife, its cultural ecology . It was a place where the political types--and there were so many--decided on the text and tenor of the next pamphlet and mapped the strategies of the forthcoming campus agitation. Late night, the civil services types would also emerge from their rooms and fill in their thermos flask with over-sweetened tea which helped them get through the night.
At the dhaba, only a handful indulged in deep and mea ningful conversation on Marxism. This is one of the most enduring mythologies of JNU which many of us are guilty of having perpetuated.
Most boys and girls chatted deep into the night over anything and everything under the stars because it just felt so good to do so. The place was a comfort pillow. It was also an addiction.
And yet depending on the quality of the students involved, there was often something meaningful in those avante-garde conversations. One never realized it back then but those were takeaways that enabled you to negotiate life.
To be fair, the importance of Ganga dhaba is certainly not the same today as it was back in the 1980s and 1990s. Nowadays, eateries abound in the campus and home delivery of dinner to hostels is common.
But to look at Ganga dhaba as just another cheap open-air eatery would be erroneous. It gives the university a sense of history and adds to its character. It is a signpost of what the institution once was. If there are issues related to hygiene or anything else with regard to its running, they need to be sorted out rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Any campus is always a work in progress. The university authority is entitled to ring in positive changes. But the intelligent changemaker always preserves the best of the past. Ganga dhaba links JNU's past to its present. To shut it down would mean the end of JNU as we prefer to remember it. It would be both a mistake and a tragedy .

Small states perform well again in education development index - 

Small states and Union territories like Puducherry, Lakshadweep, Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh continued to perform well in the latest education development index on learning outcome and quality of teachers, a government study said.

While Puducherry occupied the pole position, Lakshadweep was at the second place and Sikkim occupied the third position in the study based on four constituents such as access, infrastructure, teachers and outcomes.

The flash statistics 2013-14 for elementary education in India, prepared by National University of Educational Planning and Administration, were released by HRD Minister Smriti Irani.

Lakshadweep had occupied the first position in the last report followed by Puducherry while Sikkim was at the fourth place.

The educational development index of the states took into account the progress made both at the primary and upper primary level.

Karnataka, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Kerala and Punjab also figured in the top 10 list compiled annually. Delhi was ranked sixth.

The report covered 1.45 million schools spread over 662 districts across all states and UTs.

Uttar Pradesh was at the bottom of the education development index at the 35th place while Bihar was ranked 34th, Jharkhand 33rd and West Bengal at the 32nd place.

Among the big states, Madhya Pradesh was ranked 31st, Rajasthan 23rd and Maharashtra 13th place.

-Source: http://digitallearning.eletsonline.com/2014/06/small-states-perform-well-again-in-education-development-index/#sthash.DMyBleNk.dpuf

Jun 25 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)

15 WAYS THE WORLD WILL BE AWESOME IN 2050





When you consider the ongoing social and economic progress and the coming innovations in science and technology, there's plenty of room for optimism

CHILD MORTALITY Between 1990 and 2012, the number of under-5 child deaths went from 90 deaths per 1,000 live births to 48 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to a 2013 report from UNICEF .The Copenhagen Consensus on Human Challenge report ex pects the rate dropping to 31 per 1,000 live births in 2050.
VACCINES AND CURES Researchers are confident that within 20 years they can design a vaccine to stop the spread of HIV , which currently kills anywhere from 1.5 million to 2 million people per year. A US vaccine already exists for meningitis. A rheumatoid arthritis drug recently cured a young child's leukemia.
A modified measles vaccine put another woman's cancer into remission.
LIVE FOREVER In the coming decades, scientists hope to upload the contents of human brains into computers, allowing people to live forever. Neuroscientist Randal Koene and Russian financial-backer Dmitry Itskov are trying to transfer human consciousness and brain functions to an artificial body by 2045 by “mapping the brain, reducing its activity to computations, and reproducing those computations in code,“ according to Popular Science.
FEWER POOR “By 2035, there will be no more poor countries,“ Bill Gates wrote earlier this year. The global poverty ratio will fall from about 21% in 2005 to less than 2.5% in 2050, and the number of people living in absolute poverty will decline by another billion, according to the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organizations.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Hans Moravec of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute predicts that by 2050 freely moving robots that outperform humans both physically and intellectually will run entire businesses by themselves. That could allow humans to “occupy their days with a variety of social, recreational and artistic pursuits, not unlike today's wealthy leisure classes,“ he wrote in Scientific American.
CLEAN ENERGY If the world invests enough in clean energy , we will be able to rely almost entirely on renewable energy by 2050 -cutting energy sector greenhouse gas emissions by 80%, according to a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report.
SELF-DRIVING CARS In the next decade, major car makers expect to release cars with self-driving features, such as steering, parking, gear-shifting, and braking, the Milken Institute predicts. Experts say most driverless cars will operate entirely without a human occupant's control by 2035.
Driverless cars will be safer because they eliminate human error, which causes 90% of car accidents, according to the Institute. Electric cars will also be widespread by 2050 -a tremendous benefits for the environment.
GENDER EQUALITY The rising participation of women in the workforce will continue to change dynamics at home. In 2050, men and women in much of the developed world will do an equal share of childcare and housework, according to an Oxford University study of 16 European and Bloomberg North American countries, in addition to Australia and Israel.
GLOBAL LITERACY Currently , 23.6% of the global population can't read, costing about 7% of worldwide GDP , according to “ A Scorecard for Humanity ,“ a report from the Copenhagen Consensus Center.
By 2050, experts estimates that illiteracy rates will fall to just 12% and cost only about 3.8% of GDP .
FEWER WARS From 2009 to 2050, the number of countries involved in internal armed conflicts will decrease by more than 50%, according to a report from International Studies Quarterly . The study predicted that, in 2050, 7% of countries will be embroiled in internal conflicts, down from 15% in 2009. Reasons for the decline of violence include more education and the high cost of war. “It has become too expensive to kill people,“ the report's co-author University of Oslo Political Science Professor Håvard Hegre told Apollon. “Modern society is dependent on economic development. It is too expensive to use violence to destroy this network.“
INTERNET EVERYWHERE In “The World We Made,“ Forum for the Future founder Jonathon Porritt predicts that by 2050, more than 8 billion people will go online, 97.5% of the population then. Currently , about 40% of the globe has internet access, with 78% of users in developed countries and 32% in developing countries. That's about 2.85 billion people, many of whom get internet access from mobile phones.
ORGAN TRANSPLANTS Technology is unlocking ways to prolong life while people wait for transplants. Dialysis replaces kidneys for people who need a transplant, and, more recently , artificial hearts have been able to keep some patients alive while they wait for a new one. In the next 35 years or so, artificial and lab-grown organs will create a more permanent solution for patients, who won't have to wait for another person to die before getting a life-sustaining organ. We are already implanting lab-grown bladders and vaginas. Other organs -from hearts and lungs to skin -are on their way .
REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY These days, women only have a very general sense of when in their lives they'll stop being fertile, but in the future, women will have more “personalized“ biological clocks so they'll know exactly when they'll stop being able to make babies, Alexis Madrigal has written in The Atlantic. Couples of the future will also have a better idea of when they should try to conceive. Personal hormone trackers that detect bodily changes through the skin could become a normal part of tracking our fertility .
DESIGNER BABIES Scientists are currently working on genetic engineering to help make sick children healthy by removing or replacing diseased genes. This could later be used to perfect children by genetically engineering away crooked teeth or bad eyesight, improve IQ. “[I] n a couple of decades, and certainly by 2050 ... we'll choose its sex and its appearance and stuff like that, but we can bump up his IQ by 10 points, or by really giving the very latest technology , you get 15 points more of IQ,“ Yale professor and computer scientist David Gelernter told Big Think.
UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR The “universal translator“ -an imaginary device that lets people who speak different languages communicate instantly -has been featured in sci-fi shows like “Star Trek.“ The Economist noted last year that it may not be long before automatic simultaneous translation becomes the norm in the real world, too. In the future, you may be able to go to a foreign country and speak fluently with the locals just by wearing a pair of special goggles or using a phone app.
Business Insider Illustrations: ANIRBAN BORA

Jun 25 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)

All Ideas Must be Free

Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar





NGOs and their ideas seen as hurting development should be countered, not banned Many foreign-funded NGOs are focused on GM foods and carbon emissions, but the biggest causes of death are unclean water and indoor cooking fire pollution

Free access to ideas of all sorts is a fundamental right.Many ideas may be terrible,but battles against them should be fought in the high country of the mind, not through censorship or bans. Caveat: ideas accompanied by or leading to violence are subject to reasonable restrictions. Yet, such restrictions need to be minimal. We do not, for instance, ban Marxist schools of thought although they seek to overthrow democracy and liquidate class enemies.
The Intelligence Bureau (IB) seems unaware of or opposed to a free flow of ideas.
In a report leaked to the media, it alleges that Greenpeace and other NGOs are using foreign money to launch anti-nuclear, anti-coal and antiGM food agitations, thus reducing India's GDP growth by a whopping 2-3% per year. The report expresses outrage that one NGO has got funding for criticising the Gujarat model of development. The IB suggests screening and stopping all foreign funding of NGOs that support such “antinational“ activities.
This is plain wrong. Every human being has a right to her own concept of what is good or bad for development. I disagree strongly with many NGOs on some issues, while agreeing with them on others. To oppose nuclear power, e-waste, large dams or carbon emissions can, in some cases, be called misguided. But it is not anti-national. It is a rival view of what development should be about.
No thinking person views GDP as the only measure of development.
If you go by GDP alone, Mahatma Gandhi was far more anti-development than Greenpeace. He believed that happiness lay in reducing one's wants, not in consuming more. This would be devastating for GDP growth, of course, but the Mahatma did not think that mattered. He opposed modern machinery , swore by handspun cloth, and wanted India to be a collection of self-sufficient village republics. If implemented, these ideas would have slashed GDP growth by much more than the 2-3% than the IB complains about.
Call the Lie But what is the basis for the IB's estimate anyway? The 2-3% of GDP it claims as the annual loss is around . 2,00,000-3,00,000 crore. Has it cited ` any respectable economist in this matter? Does it have a peer-reviewed model? Not at all. Worse, the sums received from abroad by the “anti-development“ NGOs have averaged barely `. 50 crore or so per year. The government can easily spend 10 times as much on exposing the falsity of NGO claims (there is indeed much falsehood around). If at the end of it all, the NGOs carry more credibility than the government or IB, the reason cannot be that dollars are somehow more convincing than rupees.
I would agree with the IB that some foreign-financed NGO crusades and agitations are based on halftruths and plain falsehoods. But that is equally true of agitations by Indian organisations and political parties. Many agitations claiming to promote the public interest actually harm it. Yet, these notions must be combated in public debate, not by executive fiat. Alas, bad ideas are so widely supported by purely desi lobbies in India that foreign money is just the icing on the cake. Blame the cake, not the icing.
Many foreign-funded NGOs are indeed trying to impose their own priorities on India. Their top priorities are carbon emissions and GM foods. But in India, the biggest causes of death are unclean water and indoor pollution from smoky cooking fires. We need every sort of agricultural research, including GM research, to boost farm incomes and reduce poverty . Perhaps the greatest Indian environmental problem of all is free electricity for farmers, which leads to overpumping, and hence to the destruction of acquifers.
Funds Skew Priorities Alas, you will not find Indian NGOs agitating against free farm electricity. You will not find them agitating in favour of GM crop research. Without doubt, foreign funding has skewed their priorities. But why blame foreigners for that? It's only natural for crusaders to have their own priori ties. It is up to Indians to resist false priorities, and establish their own.
Running an NGO I need to make some disclosures about my own possible biases. I run my own NGO, the Mukundan Charitable Trust. I am associated with NGOs like the Centre for Civil Society and Centre for North-Eastern Studies (for whom I have a financed a fleet of medical ships taking doctors to three million people living on islands in the Brahmaputra). I have helped finance tribal land rights, micro-housing, micro-pensions, microfinance and vocational training schemes.
In sum, I am squarely in the NGO business myself. But hopefully , I can claim to be bias-free in this matter since I use only my own funds, and accept nothing from Indian or foreign donors. Also, I strongly oppose Greenpeace and other foreign-funded NGOs on many development issues.
Nevertheless, I support their right to spread ideas freely , regardless of whether these are financed by dollars or rupees. I agree with Voltaire's quote, “I do not agree with what you say , but I will defend to the death your right to say it.“

Jun 25 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)

All-India Service likely to Run Subordinate Judiciary

GANGADHAR S PATIL

NEW DELHI





Proposal to come up for law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad's consideration in a couple of days

The disparate lower judiciary of varying abilities may be transformed into a national body of professionals along the lines of the Indian Administrative Service, if the government agrees to take up a long-pending proposal for the creation of an all-India judicial service to run the subordinate judiciary.The proposal, kept in the cold storage by the UPA for long, is expected to come up for law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad's consideration in a couple of days. Law ministry officials told ET that they have prepared and will soon send a detailed note on the objections and views of state governments and chief justices of all the high courts during various meetings held on the issue.
“After the last attempt to reach a consensus in the conference of chief ministers and chief justices of high court in April, 2013, the government has not taken any major decision.
We will apprise the new minister on the status of the scheme,“ said a senior law ministry official.
The recruitment to the lower judiciary is now done by the respective high courts. The two routes to the service are the lower subordinate entry level of magistrates and the higher one of additional session judges, recruited and administered by the high courts, which have the authority to promote, punish and transfer these judicial officials. Once they become district judges they are eligible to be considered for positions in the high courts as well. The new scheme provides for centralised, direct, recruitment of judicial officers. So, instead of the high courts recruiting courts recruiting and administering them, AIJS provides for a centrally administered exam and monitoring by a central administrative authority, which could even be the Supreme Court.
The union government has been working with the state governments and chief justices of various high courts to push through the AIJS. Article 312 of the Constitution was amended in 1977 to provide for AIJS, but because of concerns like the issue of litigation in local languages raised by some state governments and high courts, successive governments at the Centre could never implement the scheme.
“States and high courts are apprehensive of the scheme because, if implemented, it would take away their powers to appoint and administer subordinate judges,“ said the senior law ministry official.
The Supreme Court had in 1991 endorsed the creation of an AIJS.

Jun 25 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

TOI delivery boy cracks IIT-JEE with 255th rank

Mysore: TIMES NEWS NETWORK





C Prashanth of Mysore is now closer to realizing his dream of studying engineering in an IIT. He cracked the IIT-JEE (Advanced) with 255th rank (ST category). Prashanth, 18, is from a poor family as his father Chandra Nayak is a construction labourer. To supplement the family's finances, he delivered the Times of India newspaper to homes in Mysore when he was in high school.“I was not expecting the 255th rank. It's a wonderful feeling. All credit goes to my family and Rashtrothana Parishat and Base institutions which encouraged and gave me education free of cost,“ Prashanth said, adding that he couldn't afford to buy a newspaper, but while selling them, he managed to read them and that helped him crack the exam.
Till SSLC, Prashanth did not know what IIT meant. “Initially , it was very difficult to follow the IIT subjects, but hard work and my teachers' interest made things easy for me,“ he added. He wants to pursue electronics, mechanical or civil engineering. His father and mother Jyothi saw to it that poverty didn't come in the way of providing education to their three children.
Prashanth's elder brother C Vasanth Kumar is pursuing BA in My sore and sister C Chandana finished her SSLC this year with 87%.
His maternal uncle, Gopala, who is in the police department, ensured that once he finished schooling, he came to a Bangalore college. “I was scared of Bangalore as it's a big city . But my uncle forcibly brought me to Bangalore to study ,“ he said. Tapas, coaching centre of Base institutions, provides free education for economically weaker students who are keen on studying in the IITs.





Jun 25 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

`University painted a rosy picture but first year was a mess'

Anahita Sagar





People reading this might call it overly critical, but studying for a year un der the FY UP pro gramme has been nothing but a waste of time. After successfully making it through a highly unproductive first year of college, I haven't a clue as to what degree I am pursuing. When I enrolled for a degree in journalism and mass communication a year back, FYUP was talked up as this great new idea. Students were made to believe this was the programme that could change our lives. It has, but not for the better.The idea, we were told, was to align DU with the American system of education. Officials painted a rosy picture of how it would be so simple to get into a university abroad (read: the US), and how we'd have a double degree, which obviously has more value than a simple honours degree. The idea behind the foundation courses was to make our college-level education more holistic. All this sounded so promising on pa per that, despite my scepticism, I decided to accept this new system with bucketloads of enthusiasm. However, there seemed to be a vast difference between what was promised and what ensued. I remember the first two months of college as utterly chaotic. Not only did the new system lack direction, its structure would also keep changing every two weeks. I think I finally lost faith in it once I started studying the foundation courses. Weeks went by with all of us struggling to complete gazillion assignments, projects and presentations for these courses.
However, if someone would ask me what exactly I learnt from these subsidiary courses, it would seem like a cat has bitten my tongue.
All right, maybe I brushed up my mathematical skills by learning about prime numbers for at least four hours every week. Oh, and I may also have learnt I must never write an email without a `subject'.
Sounds ridiculous? At 18 years of age, when the Constitution deems me capable of voting and driving, I am studying about ways to integrate my mind, body and heart. It probably sounds amusing when I describe the situation, but in reality it was far from funny . It was disappointing to see a university of this calibre and reputation making a fool of itself and of the 60,000-odd first-year students.
The only aspect of the programme that most students got attracted to was the prospect of studying a minor subject, that is, the discipline course-II. For students like me, it was a boon because it let us study a second subject of our choice. This meant I could study political science alongside my journalism degree.
Now, we were told we had the freedom to study any subject we wanted. Little did we know there was a catch. To wards the end of the first year, the university randomly announced that we would get our DC-II subjects on the basis of our FC marks of the first semester.
Obviously , we were stunned. Simply because we couldn't fathom how our knowledge of internet etiquette or polymers decided whether we had the ability to study English or political science or even economics. The UGC is now talking about FYUP being a hasty move. The only question on my mind is: where were these so-called academics when teachers and students had vehemently opposed this system? All this makes me wonder if there will ever be any accountability in our education system. Our policymakers are taking haphazard decisions and here we are, wondering about our future. Amid all this cacophony , the only reassuring thing is that someone has finally woken up to the reality--even if a year too late. I sincerely hope FYUP is scrapped. Having spent an entire year wandering around like a headless chicken, it would be nice to have some clarity on what I am actually supposed to be studying.
(A second-year DU student offers a student's perspective on the furore over FYUP)