Jul 09 2014 : Mirror (Pune)

Gandhi to stand with foes at British parliament

LONDON





Mahatma Gandhi, who led efforts to end British rule in India and was repeatedly imprisoned, is to be honoured with a statue outside Britain's parliament that will stand alongside tributes to several colonial-era enemies.British finance minister George Osborne, on a trip to India, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday that Britain would honour Gandhi's memory with a statue in Parliament Square.
“As the father of the largest democracy in the world, it's time for Gandhi to take his place in front of the mother of Parliaments,“ Osborne said during a visit to the Gandhi Memorial in Delhi.
Gandhi will rub shoulders with his one-time nemesis, British wartime PM Winston Churchill, who once said he hoped Gandhi would die from fasting and famously derided him as a “half-naked fakir“.
Churchill was reportedly disturbed by Gandhi's “striding half naked“ into the British viceroy's palace in 1931 “to parlay on equal terms with the representative of the Empe ror-King“ while simultaneously conducting a resistance campaign.
The statue would join others of famous statesmen, including Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela.
But it will also share space with one of Jan Smuts, a leader of South Africa in the early 20th century who favoured racial segregation. Gandhi was jailed by Smuts's government for campaigning for the rights of downtrodden Indians.
Britain hopes the new statue will be up by summer of 2015, in time for the 100th anniversary of Gandhi's return to India from South Africa.

Jul 09 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)

Railway University on the Cards

OUR BUREAU MUMBAI OUR BUREAU





The Indian Railways, which employs over 14 lakh people, will become a better training ground for students. The government plans to set up a Railway University for technical and non-technical subjects and also have alliances with other technical institutions. Also on the anvil is an Innovation Incubation Centre and internships for engineering and management students.Talent experts have welcomed the move. “With university and internships, the government will realign three `Es' ­ education, employment and employability. The Indian Rail ways is one of the largest employers and needs to get more apprentices. India had 3 lakh apprenticeships while China has 20 million (2 crore),“ said Manish Sabharwal, chairman, TeamLease Services.
Industry watchers say the skill gap is wide and with modernisation, need for better-equipped talent is urgent. “An incubation centre will help in developing ways to track trains via satellites, anti-collision systems, better ticketing methods and higher level of smart cards,“ said Jaijit Bhattacharya, partner-infrastructure and government services for KPMG India.
Bhattacharya added that internships would expose managerial cadre and engineers to an industry they normally may not have chosen.
“We need employees with managerial skills who can strategise and those who can innovate. The existing staff, for example, is not exposed to ways of dealing with high-speed trains and this could be a recipe for disaster if skills are not upgraded,“ said Bhattacharya The summer internship proposal has got a nod of approval from top business schools. “It's heartening to note that the railways will be offering summer internships to MBA students. The Indian Railways is an important national brand asset and must be rejuvenated and nurtured on a continual basis with innovative and customer-friendly ideas,“ said E Abraham, director, XLRI.

Jul 09 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

India's green cover grows 5,871 sq km in 2 yrs

New Delhi:





India recorded an increase of 5,871 sq km in its forest cover in the past two years with West Bengal contributing over 60% of the total rise in green area.Odisha, Kerala, Jharkhand and Bihar were some of the other states which contributed to this marginal increase. Hilly and tribal districts of the country registered an increase in forest cover of 40 sq km and 2,396 sq km, respectively .
The northeastern states, which account for one-fourth of the country's forest cover, recorded a net decline of 627 sq km in 2013 compared to the assessment of green cover in 2011. Among bigger states, Andhra Pradesh lost the maximum 273 sq km of forest cover whereas Madhya Pradesh lost 178 sq km of green patch in two years.
These facts emerged out of the latest `India State of Forest Report' (ISFR), which was released on Tuesday by environment and forests minister Prakash Javadekar.
Though India continues to be far behind its target of having 33% of its geographical area under forest, the marginal increase is a positive sign.
Javadekar said, “Decline of forest cover in our northeastern states is, however, a matter of concern. We should not allow this to happen.“
Assuring that his government would work hard to further increase the forest cover, he said, “We will make it a mass movement where people would come forward to not only protect the existing green cover but also plant more and more trees across the country .“
While there is an increase in total forest cover in the country, there is a decrease in the `growing stock' both inside and outside forest area.
This along with decline in forest cover in northeastern states is also a matter of concern.
The report said even in the `moderately dense' forest section, the net change in forest cover between 2011 and 2013 assessments shows a decline 0.62%.
Forest Survey of India (kFSI) has been assessing the forest and tree resources of the country on a biennial basis since 1987.
The results of the assessment are published in its ISFR. Although survey is primarily based on satellite data and its authenticity is widely debated, the FSI director general Anmol Kumar on Tuesday claimed, “The satellite interpretation is followed by extensive and rigorous ground truthing“.
For the full report, log on to http://www.timesofindia.com

Jul 09 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

After 50 yrs, Raju no more a slave

Ishita.Mishra@timesgroup.com

Agra:





An elephant that had been chained throughout its 50-year life and subjected to severe abuse was recently rescued from Farah in UP recently. Raju is now at the Elephant Care and Conservation Centre here run by NGO Wildlife SOS in collaboration with the state forest department. The NGO was also instrumental in rescuing the tusker.The forest department seized the elephant, a male, after its ‘owner’ was found not to have documents for its possession. The entire process took nearly an year.
Raju was used for begging, joy rides and to perform tricks. Veterinarians attending to it said it had been poked with spikes and had wounds in several parts of its body. It had even been fed paper and plastic. Raju’s taste buds have been damaged and it cannot taste food, the vets said. Its digestive system will take a long
time to recover.“It will be long before the elephant’s health is restored. The next six months could prove especially challenging,” one of the vets, Yaduraj Khadpekar, said.
Although friendly to animals, it remains deeply suspicious of human beings, Khadpekar said. The team that rescued Raju claimed that it had tears streaming down its eyes as the chains were removed.
Members of the NGO said it was probably taken from a forest as a calf and then sold several times.

Jul 09 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

`Mind-boggling' number of NGOs in India: CBI

New Delhi: TIMES NEWS NETWORK





The CBI on Tuesday informed the Supreme Court that the country has a ‘mind-boggling’ number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and counting them has become a difficult task as most do not file fund audit reports with authorities.Appearing for the CBI, additional solicitor general L N Rao told a bench of Justices H L Dattu, R K Agrawal and Arun Kumar Mishra that in West Bengal, there were around 2,34,000 NGOs but only 16,000, that is about 8%, had filed their audited reports on receipt of grants and expenditure.
The court had in September last year entrusted the CBI with the gigantic task of compiling information about all registered NGOs in the country, their funding and audit reports after advocate M L Sharma filed a PIL alleging irregularities in an NGO linked to social activist Anna Hazare.The CBI, through senior advocate K Radhakrishnan, told the court that ‘the infor
mation received so far from the states ran into lakhs of pages and the work involved is extremely voluminous’.The CBI said ‘no information has so far been received from Gujarat and Tamil Nadu in spite of reminders’.
The bench asked, “Has the CBI done anything about the NGOs which have been identified and data about whom have been compiled?” It said the CBI must find out how many of the NGOs have submitted audit report of their expenses. Rao sought three more months to complete the exercise. The bench agreed and asked the agency to compile the information sought by the court and file a report in three months.

Jul 08 2014 : Mirror (Pune)

Heath schemes fail to take off : TISS

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Barely 30 per cent of the population in 22 districts of Maharashtra studied by Tata Institute of Social Studies (TISS) is aware of the health insurance and benefit schemes — Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) and Rajeev Gandhi Jeevandayi Arogya Yojana.The TISS scholars covered 6,000 households and interviewed as many as 30,000 people as part of their study and came up with this revelation. If this was not dismal enough, the study found that the penetration of the smart cards, required to avail of these schemes, was only 11 per cent of the eligible population and of these too only 1.5 per cent had actually availed of the schemes using the card.
“This reflects a bad performance by RSBY launched in 2008 and the failure can be directly attributed to the insurance companies not doing their bit in making the people aware of the empanelled hospitals. The registration of beneficiaries was naturally minimal,” pointed out Dr Abhijit More, state co-convenor of Jan Aarogya Abhiyan (JAA), a network of healthrelated NGOs.
Reacting to the study, he added JAA will approach the government to fix onus of this failure on the insurance companies and have them fired from the schemes. “By now, the implementation of the schemes should have been 100 per cent. There should be proper monitoring and grievance cell too. The insurance companies should be ousted and autonomous public bodies should take over the management of these schemes,” More said.

Jul 08 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)

Social Media to Guide Govt's Policy Matters

NEW DELHI OUR POLITICAL BUREAU





If you are the world's third most followed leader on Twitter, and have 18.8 million `likes' on Facebook, the t internet not only has to be the centre of your governance model, but it also has to be the key means to interact with the public, listen to their views and, wherever possible, redress their grievances too. This is what Prime Minister Narendra Modi is keen on doing now. People interested in sending their grievances, feedback and messages to Modi will soon have a dedicated forum to do so.
The BJP's IT cell is in the process of creating at least two dedicated ids for people to send in suggestions to the Prime Minister's Office.Considered part of the Prime Minister's `Social Media in Nation Building,' the IDs will have a dedicated team monitoring the letters which will be forwarded to he PMO once in 15 days.
“We want to leverage the power of social media for healthy interaction be ween the government and people. We are in the process of setting up a strong server for the systems to start receiving emails,“ said Vinit Goenka, National Co-Convener, BJP IT Cell.Depending on the nature of he letters, they will be forwarded to the respective cell n the PMO and acknowledged with replies, Goenka added. The mails could range from feedback to schemes to major grievance against policy decisions.
Goenka said the grievance redress system was not con ined to emails alone. “All BJP offices have been asked o get a grievance cell up and running, and collect letters of feedback and complaints rom people and send it to us. We can forward them to he PMO,“ Goenka said.