ET Q&A - `Students Need to Challenge Exploitation'





An enhanced focus on education, employ ability, entrepreneurship and ethics was Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi's advice to the government for creating a better country in an address to students at BITS Pilani. He encouraged students to work on tackling issues of child labour. In an interview with Anumeha Chaturvedi on the sidelines of his visit, Satyarthi spoke about his hopes from the new government on issues like right to education, his meeting with President Obama and how companies could work on child labour and exploitation under the ambit of corporate social responsibility.How can young students work towards addressing child labour and exploitation?
As people who are connected with the digital world and social media, students are aware of what's happening around them.They can easily express protest in just two or three words on social media if they see children being mistreated around them. If millions of young people start challenging exploitation, things will change. It will help in sensitising others, the government. It will hold society accountable.As consumers, they can refuse to accept the hospitality of places where young children are working. If educated students talk to people it will help in empowering those who feel disconnected and excluded. We can end social exclusion by simply connecting with them.
What can the new government do with regard to the right to education and child labour?
No government can enforce the right to education law without abolition of child labour. The right to education law has been passed several years ago. But millions of children remain outside schools and many of them drop out . That's a big problem.The government needs to work more proactively to devise ways to withdraw those children from abusive situations -from mining, factories and restaurants. So my demand from the new government and Parliament is that a pending amendment in child labour law has to be passed as soon as possible. Our demand is that all child labour has to be banned up to the age of 14 and all hazardous or the worst forms of child labour have to be prohibited up to the age of 18. The previous government had other political agendas. The present government is engaged in matters like foreign investment, which are important issues.
But how can you make your economy vibrant and your democracy successful without ensuring every single child is free from exploitation?
How was the meeting with Obama?
I met him as a fellow Nobel laureate. Besides, as president of the US, Obama is in a better position to put his weight behind issues like abolition of child slavery and ensure a non-violent and protective environment for children. Right after meeting me, he mentioned that the US and India should partner abolition of slavery and trafficking. This is one thing that can't be put aside and I hope the two governments can work together.
With the Companies Act ensuring mandatory spends on CSR, how can companies tackle issues of child labour and exploitation?
Sustainability doesn't lie in charity. Showing that you're good and being good is one thing and finding solutions to deep-rooted problems is another. I have been calling for more sustainable solutions from the corporate world to the problem of child labour with a sense of responsibility and not just charity and philanthropy.Companies must ensure that no child labour is involved in their supply chain. All the international brands have to ascertain this by sensitising their suppliers, producers and engaging and empowering them and making them transparent.
Opening schools and colleges is good, but if at the same time, if you employ children in production, who is responsible? They should invest more in sensitising suppliers and production chains.

IIM-K Student Bags Rs 43-lakh Global Offer

Sreeradha Basu

Mumbai:





Top local offer at . 29.5 lakh; offers ` per recruiter up 13%

`Offer in hand; out of the process' has been the norm at the IIM Kozhikode placements so far. This year, in anticipation of a flurry of offers, the business school rolled out the dream offer provision where, even with one job offer in hand, students could try a second time for the `dream company' of their choice.The institute has just wrapped up its final placements with a top international offer . 43 lakh made by a conglomof ` erate -a 30% increase over last year -and a top domestic offer of `. 29.5 lakh by an ecommerce firm.
The average package at the institute is ` . 14.92 lakh, as compared to ` . 13.7 lakh last year.The top 50 students in the 347strong batch have bagged an average salary of ` . 21.89 lakh, while for the top 100, the corresponding figure is ` . 19.7 lakh.
There has been a 13% increase in the number of offers per recruiter.
While the idea of the dream offer came about last year, it was only implemented this time around, AF Mathew, chairperson -placements at IIM-K told ET.
As per this provision, students are allowed to choose a dream company before the start of the placements. Those who have received pre-placement offers (PPOs) are not eligible for the dream offer provision -the aim being to introduce it in a staggered manner -but these students, along with the rest of the batch, are eligible for `open' companies that are designat ed so by the faculty placements committee.
This year, two companies have been classified as open companies at IIM Kozhikode: McKinsey and Catamaran Ventures -the venture fund backed by NR Narayana Murthy. The results for both the companies are awaited.
A total of 97 recruiters participated in the final placements, with 34 being firsttime recruiters. Over 15 international offers were made from companies including Tolaram Group and Paramount Systems, with roles being based out of Africa and the Middle East.
The number of PPOs, at 72, saw a marked rise of 38% over last year. The major recruiters this season were Goldman Sachs, IBM Consulting, KPMG, Samsung, Snapdeal and Vodafone, who made a total of 73 offers.
New recruiters included Axis Bank, Bluestone, Britannia, Cinepolis, Future Group, HP, Heinz, Hexaware, Idea, Infosys Management Consulting, InMobi, Lenovo, Snapdeal, Tata Communications, The Royal Bank of Scotland and ZS Associates, among others.
Finance firms made offers to 19% of the batch while sales and marketing domain absorbed another 23%. Another 23% were made offers in the consulting space, while roles in general management went to 15% of the batch.

UN: Girls face rising violence in fight for edu

Geneva: REUTERS





High-profile attacks such as the abduction of 300 schoolgirls by Boko Haram in Nigeria and the shooting of Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan are a fraction of what is suffered by girls trying to get an education, the UN human rights office said on Monday .Most of the attacks are carried out in the name of religion or culture, while others are gang-related, notably in El Salvador and other parts of Central America, Veronica Birga, chief of the women's human rights and gender section at the UN human rights office, said at the launch of a report.
Such violence is on the rise, the UN report said, citing acid attacks and poisoning by the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, girls from a Christian school in India abducted and raped in 2013, and Somali girls forced to quit school and marry al Shabaab fighters in 2010.
“Attacks against girls accessing education persist and, alarmingly , appear in some countries to be occurring with increasing regularity,“ the report said. “In most instances, such attacks form part of broader patterns of violence, inequality and discrimination.“ Many of the attacks in at least 70 countries between 2009-2014 involved rape and abduction, the report said. “The common cause of all these attacks, which are very different in nature, is deeply entrenched discrimination against women and girls,“ Birga told the news briefing.
In Mali, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan “very strict dress codes have been imposed through violence, including sexual violence on schoolgirls“, she said. Birga said that some attacks were based on opposition to girls' education as a means for social change and others because schools were seen as imposing Western values, including gender equality . She addded, “They are more exposed to child and forced marriages, they are more exposed to trafficking and the worst forms of child labour .

HRD's e-book on 200 days of achievements

New Delhi: TIMES NEWS NETWORK





The HRD ministry has brought out an e-book highlighting its achievements in the last 200 days under the Modi government.One of the key achievements, the ministry claims, is formalizing a programme that will ensure as many as 2,112 students and 528 school teachers from northeast visit some premier institutes like the IITs every year for academic exposure. They would visit the 16 IITs and six NITs.The first batch of students has already visited a few IITs.
The ministry said it has stressed on strengthening women power and for the first time women honchos have been appointed as chairpersons of board of governors of apex technical institutes and national institutes of technology.

India, China and an opportunity

Keeping up the momentum in India-China relations, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj came back from her three-day visit to China with several deliverables — including a new Chinese openness in seeing India take up permanent membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Previously, the Chinese had linked SCO membership with a greater role for Beijing in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Ms. Swaraj, during her first visit to China as External Affairs Minister, built on the three meetings Prime Minister Narendra Modi has had with Chinese President Xi Jinping. She also called on the Chinese President, a rare opportunity for any visiting Foreign Minister. Clearance for the early operationalisation of a new route to Kailash Mansarovar and a decision to hold a session of talks between the Special Representatives tasked by the two sides to resolve the boundary dispute, are other takeaways. Her trip was also part of preparations for Mr. Modi’s visit later in the year. As reported in the Chinese media, President Xi himself has set the agenda for taking bilateral ties to a new level by suggesting that the two countries seize the “opportunity of the century” by combining their development strategies. With a slowing economy and sluggish European recovery, China may be focussing on the Indian market. It also appears willing to invest, following Prime Minister Modi’s “Make in India” call.

It is in such a scenario of contact and consultation that “strong leaders” such as Mr. Modi and Mr. Xi can think about making some hard decisions when it comes to the decades-old boundary dispute that keeps surfacing during major bilateral visits. So far, the coalition nature of Indian governments has been seen as a major obstacle to the give-and-take, compromise approach on the border question. Today, Mr. Modi is in the happy situation where he can take a political call on issues, rising above intra-coalition pressures. In 2005, the Agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the Boundary Question signed by the two countries had raised hopes for an eventual settlement, but those have been belied. It would also seem that President Barack Obama’s successful visit to India around Republic Day has not dampened Beijing’s willingness to take relations with Delhi to the next level. Interestingly, India while talking to the U.S. and its other allies in the Asia-Pacific about safety in the sea-lanes, has agreed to set up a “consultation mechanism” on Asia-Pacific affairs with China and Russia. India’s diplomatic success lies in keeping several balls in the air at the same time.

Keywords: India-China bilateral ties, Sino-India relations, Sushma Swaraj China visit, Narendra Modi, Xi Jinping, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation

How a small IIT-B team shaped AAP's Delhi poll campaign

Vikrant Dadawala TWEETS @VikrantDadawala





Students build tool to analyse Delhi's mood on social media Program sifts through thousands of tweets to help party veer away from negative issues and announce voter-pleasing measures like free WiFi in nation's capital

An enterprising group of ten volunteers at IIT-B, which created a research tool in November with the specific purpose of trawling tens of thousands of social media posts to measure public opinion, has helped shape the Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) election strategy in the Delhi assembly election, which was held on Saturday. Party leaders told Mumbai Mirror that the program, designed to perform “sentiment analysis“ helped veer AAP's campaign away from issues that were deemed “negative“ by the electorate, and towards such concerns as women's safety, which, data revealed, was consonant with voter sentiment in the nation's capital. The algorithm developed by the IIT-B group sifted through the language that constituted thousands of tweets to assess reactions to specific issues. It was also employed to determine the swing in the electorate's sentiment towards AAP at any given point of time.
“The program runs a word analysis on a database of many thousands of twitter handles and categorises people's responses to particular events or issues as negative, weakly negative, neutral, weakly positive, or positive,“ said Divyank Agarwal, a fourth year student of Engineering Physics who was in the team that built the tool. “Three or four volunteers would look over the scan manually and the results would be communicated with the Delhi office for them to fine tune their strategy.“
Agarwal, a devotee of AAP, and three other IIT-B students skipped classes to campaign in Delhi for more than a week in the run up to the elections. “I haven't told my parents that I bunked classes and even an exam to go door-todoor campaigning in Delhi's jhuggis,“ he confessed. “I'm not sure how they'll react.“
According to research scholar Ratikant Nayak, one of those who forsook classes to work for the party in Delhi, scores of students at IIT-B became beholden to AAP's ideology during its Mumbai North East Lok Sabha candidate Med ha Patkar's unsuccessful run last year. “The booth inside IIT was the only one from which Patkar won,“ he said. A Facebook group of the party's supporters in the campus exceeds 1,000 members.
India has over 100 million Facebook users and 33 million people on twitter, digital bulletin boards on which views and proclivities are freely and emphatically expressed, and that formed the engine of AAP's game plan. “Analysis of social media has played a major role in how we have allocated funds in our manifesto,“ said senior AAP leader Manish Sisodia. “For instance, the majority of inputs on education and regarding free WiFi (a poll promise the party made in Delhi) came through social media. Sentiment analysis of social media particularly helped us understand the specific demands of women.“
Preeti Sharma Menon, former Maharashtra state secretary of AAP, who played an important role in the social media campaign for the Delhi elections, said IIT-B volunteers performed a critical role in fashioning the party's response to voter sentiment in Delhi. “The feedback they provided framed vital turning points in the campaign,“ she said. “The importance of social media lies in introducing a new thought or perspective. While everything we spoke about became part of the poll agenda, the BJP, on the other hand, was unable to introduce a single new thought that would get echoed by opinion makers in the press.“

Four Ideas To Save The Peace

Kofi A Annan and Gro Harlem Brundtland





Celebrating its 70th anniversary, the UN must reform to recover its authority

Seventy years ago, the United Nations was founded “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war“.Looking around the world today, the least one can say is that it is not fully succeeding in this mission. From Nigeria through the Middle East to Afghanistan and Ukraine, millions are dying from that scourge, or imminently threatened by it, and the UN seems powerless to save them.
We have four ideas for making it stronger and more effective.
A big part of the problem is that the Security Council, which is supposed to maintain world peace and security on behalf of all member states, no longer commands respect ­ certainly not from armed insurgents operating across borders, and often not from the UN's own members.
Throughout the world, and especially in the Global South, people struggle to understand why , in 2015, the Council is still dominated by the five powers that won World War II. They are more and more inclined to question its authority and the legitimacy of its decisions.
We ignore this threat at our peril.Times have changed since 1945, and the Council must adapt.
Almost everyone claims to favour expanding the Security Council, to include new permanent members, but for decades now states have been unable to agree who these should be, or whether, like the existing ones, they should have the power to veto agreements reached by their fellow members.
Our first idea aims to break this stalemate. Instead of new permanent members, let us have a new category of members, serving a much longer term than the non-permanent ones, and eligible for immediate re-election. In other words they would be permanent, provided they retained the confidence of other member states. Surely that is more democratic?
Secondly , we call on the five existing permanent members to give a solemn pledge. They must no longer allow their disagreements to mean that the Council fails to act, even when ­ for instance, as currently in Syria ­ people are threatened with atrocious crimes.
Let the five promise never to use the veto just to defend their national interests, but only when they genuinely fear that the proposed action will do more harm than good to world peace and to the people concerned. In that case, let them give a full and clear explanation of the alternative they propose, as a more credible and efficient way to protect the victims. And when one or more of them do use the veto in that way let the others promise not to abandon the search for common ground, but to work even harder to find an effective solution on which all can agree.
Thirdly , let the Council listen more carefully to those affected by its decisions. When they can agree, the permanent members too often deliberate behind closed doors, without listening to those whom their decisions most directly affect. From now on, let them ­ and the whole Council ­ give groups representing people in zones of conflict a real chance to inform and influence their decisions.
And finally , let the Council, and especially its permanent members, make sure the UN gets the kind of leader it needs. Let them respect the spirit as well as the letter of what the Charter says about choosing a new secretary general, and no longer settle it by negotiating among themselves behind closed doors.
Let us have a thorough and open search for the best qualified candidates, irrespective of gender or region; let the Council then recommend more than one candidate for the General Assembly to choose from; and let the successful candidate be appointed for a single, non-renewable term of seven years.
He or she ­ and after eight `he's it is surely time for a `she' ­ must not be under pressure to give jobs or concessions to any member state in return for its support. This new process should be adopted without delay , so that it can be used to find the best person to take over in January 2017.
These four proposals are spelt out in greater detail in a statement (http: theelders.orgun-fit-purpose) issued today by The Elders. We believe they form an essential starting point for the UN to recover its authority . And we call on the world's peoples to insist that their governments accept them, in this, the UN's 70th anniversary year.
Kofi Annan is Chair and Gro Harlem Brundtland is Deputy Chair of The Elders, a group of global leaders for peace founded by Nelson Mandela.