Wednesday, November 05, 2014
Kaizen to raise funds for education projects in India
Kaizen Management Advisors Pvt Ltd will raise another $150 million next year, 50 per cent of which will be placed as equity investment in India’s education sector.
The Mumbai-based technology-focused equity investor has already invested $55 million in India from its first fund raised in 2012, its managing director and founder Sandeep Aneja said.
“We have so far invested $55 million in seven school-related developments,” Aneja recently said after hosting a one-day symposium attended by investors and school managers from Asia Pacific in Singapore.
Another $10 to 12 million from the remainder of $70 million first fund will be placed within the next five months.
All of the investment would be for the Indian educational sector, especially in technology-oriented projects.
Kaizen raised its first fund for equity investment from IFC, Swiss Fund for Emerging Markets, HDFC India, UBS Fund of Funds and Bartelsmann.
Aneja said his second round of fund raising would increase the number of equity investors including ADB and CDC, formerly called Commonwealth Development Corp, of the United Kingdom.
- See more at: http://digitallearning.eletsonline.com/2014/10/kaizen-to-raise-funds-for-education-projects-in-india/#sthash.r9VOp1ZF.dpuf
Two-thirds of prison inmates in India are undertrials
Over 3,000 of the 2.8 lakh have been behind bars for more than five years
Two of every three persons incarcerated in India have not yet been convicted of any crime, and Muslims are over-represented among such undertrials, new official data show.
Despite repeated Supreme Court orders on the rights of undertrials, the jails are filling ever faster with them, shows Prisons Statistics for 2013 released by the National Crime Records Bureau. The number of convicts grew by 1.4 per cent from 2012 to 2013, but the number of undertrials shot up by 9.3 per cent during the period.
Men make up 96 per cent of all prison inmates. Nearly 2,000 children of women inmates live behind bars, 80 per cent of those women being undertrials.
sharp increase in the number of undertrials charged with crimes against women contributes to the rise in the number of all undertrials. The number of those incarcerated on charges of rape rose by over 30 per cent from 2012 to 2013, and the number facing charges of molestation grew by over 50 per cent. The number of men convicted of rape rose dramatically too, by 16 per cent — the biggest increase among major sections of the Indian Penal Code.
Undertrials are younger than convicts — nearly half are under the age of 30 and over 70 per cent have not completed school. Muslims form 21 per cent of them. On the other hand, 17 per cent of those convicted are Muslims.
“These numbers definitely point to a failure of the delivery of justice, but it also appears that the system is unequally unjust,” said Harsh Mander, Director of the Centre for Equity Studies, which works on issues of access to justice in prisons. “The disproportionate presence of members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and Muslims among undertrials points not simply to a technical breakdown but also to the increased vulnerability of these groups, and probably bias,” Mr. Mander toldThe Hindu.
Among the 2.8 lakh undertrials, over 3,000 have been behind bars for over five years. Between them, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are home to 1,500 of those undertrials. Most undertrials — 60 per cent of them — have, however, been behind bars for less than six months.
While most States have a little over twice as many undertrials as convicts, Bihar has a staggering six times as many.
The NCRB numbers also provide the only insight available into the number of people on death row; at the end of 2013, 382 persons had been sentenced to death and were awaiting either legal relief or the execution of sentence.
"Excessive pre-trial detention violates undertrial prisoners’ rights to liberty and fair trial, and adversely impacts their life and livelihood," Divya Iyer, Research Manager at Amnesty International India, said, adding that the new numbers were a "serious concern". While a lack of effective management of information relating to prisoners, the absence of functional and effective undertrial review committees, lack of adequate legal aid, and delays in court productions of undertrials contributed to the problem, the authorities must as a first step identify and release all those prisoners who are eligible for release under law, including those who have already been in prison for over half the term they would have faced if convicted, Ms. Iyer said.
World’s first dengue vaccine likely by 2015: Sanofi
The company said the vaccine gives a 95.5% protection against severe dengue and an 80.3% reduction in the risk of hospitalisation.
As India deals with increasing number of dengue cases, pharma major Sanofi on Tuesday said the world’s first vaccine against the mosquito-borne viral disease may be available by the second half of 2015.
Sanofi Pasteur, the French drugmaker’s vaccine unit, will file for registration of its vaccine candidate and subject to regulatory approval the world’s first dengue vaccine could be available by the second half of 2015, the company said in a statement.
Results of the last stage of the clinical study showed that the vaccine gives a 95.5 per cent protection against severe dengue and an 80.3 per cent reduction in the risk of hospitalisation, it said.
Dengue has been a serious challenge to public health as it affects lakhs of people annually in India, Sanofi said.
The company added that its phase III efficacy clinical study programme for the dengue vaccine candidate was conducted in over 31,000 participants across 10 endemic countries in Asia and Latin America.
“We plan to submit the vaccine for licences in 2015 in endemic countries where dengue is a public health priority,” Sanofi Pasteur president and CEO Olivier Charmeil said.
Sanofi Pasteur India head Stephan Barth said dengue is a serious health concern in India, causing a significant but under-reported burden.
“Over recent months we have seen a worrying increase in cases in many parts of the country, putting a huge strain on healthcare systems. India is part of Sanofi Pasteur’s global development strategy for dengue vaccine.
“Results of CYD 15 are very encouraging and in line with the results of the phase III study results in Asia and the Phase II study results in India,” he said.
Committed to dengue vaccine research for more than 20 years, Sanofi Pasteur aims to make the tropical ailment the next vaccine-preventable disease, Mr. Barth said.
Nov 05 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)
second opinion - Idle India
Jug Suraiya
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We have all the time in the world just to stand and stare
It's a common sight, anywhere in the country. There's been a minor road accident. No one's been hurt. Little damage done to the vehicles involved. No road rage. Nothing dramatic. But a sizeable crowd will collect to see what's happening. Even though nothing is happening.It can be an altercation between two people. Or a couple of workmen digging a hole by the side of the road. Or a pair of street dogs fighting over a scrap of food. The chances are that the non-happening, whatever it is, will draw a crowd of spectators who'll hang around, digging their noses and generally doing time-pass.
“What's this life so full of care, If we have no time to stand and stare,“ goes the old rhyme. In idle India, we seem to have all the time in the world to just stand and stare at the most trivial of things.
Unemployment is a huge economic and social problem in India. But underemployment not enough work to do even for those who are employed is an almost equally big problem.
Take a look at any town or city street in the middle of the working day . You'll see hordes of people, mostly men, generally young, hanging around doing nothing. Not all of them are jobless. It's just that they don't have work enough to do in the time they have to do it. So they loiter about hoping to witness some tamasha or other, which is of no concern to them whatsoever other than helping them to while away an idle moment or hour.
India has one of the largest and lowest paid labour forces in the world. It also has one of the least productive labour forces in the world, with each underemployed worker's output being significantly less than that of the worker's counterpart in any other developing country . Which means that though Indian workers, in the unorganised sector, are among the lowest paid in the world, Indian labour as a whole is expensive as compared with other countries because a larger number of people have to be hired to do a piece of work which could be done by half the number in another society .
Even as the government tackles the problem of unemployment, it should also look at the problem of unproductive underemployment, where so many people have nothing better to do than stand and stare. In idle India, IST doesn't mean Indian Standard Time; it means Indian Staring Time.
“What's this life so full of care, If we have no time to stand and stare,“ goes the old rhyme. In idle India, we seem to have all the time in the world to just stand and stare at the most trivial of things.
Unemployment is a huge economic and social problem in India. But underemployment not enough work to do even for those who are employed is an almost equally big problem.
Take a look at any town or city street in the middle of the working day . You'll see hordes of people, mostly men, generally young, hanging around doing nothing. Not all of them are jobless. It's just that they don't have work enough to do in the time they have to do it. So they loiter about hoping to witness some tamasha or other, which is of no concern to them whatsoever other than helping them to while away an idle moment or hour.
India has one of the largest and lowest paid labour forces in the world. It also has one of the least productive labour forces in the world, with each underemployed worker's output being significantly less than that of the worker's counterpart in any other developing country . Which means that though Indian workers, in the unorganised sector, are among the lowest paid in the world, Indian labour as a whole is expensive as compared with other countries because a larger number of people have to be hired to do a piece of work which could be done by half the number in another society .
Even as the government tackles the problem of unemployment, it should also look at the problem of unproductive underemployment, where so many people have nothing better to do than stand and stare. In idle India, IST doesn't mean Indian Standard Time; it means Indian Staring Time.
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