Knowledge and Innovation are the Keystones of Progress, says President 

Report by India Education bureau, New Delhi: A speech of the President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee on the occasion of the Second convocation of the Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi was read out in abstentia today (March 15, 2015) by Shri M. Natarajan, Chairman of the Board of Governors. The President was unable to reach Mandi from Chandigarh due to bad weather. 

The President said in his speech that India`s technical institutions must usher in social consciousness amongst our budding engineers and scientists. Along with professional competence, these centres of scientific learning must inculcate a social orientation in students. Our higher educational institutions are an integral part of the local eco-system. They must assume greater responsibility for overall development. The Government has taken important initiatives, aimed at financial inclusion, creation of model villages, Clean India and building of digital infrastructure. Institutions of higher learning including IIT Mandi should adopt five villages each and convert them into model villages in line with the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana. He also asked them to play a key role in realizing the objectives of the ‘Digital India’ programme. 

The President said the growing demand for engineering education has resulted in the establishment of a number of technical institutions. Yet in this proliferation drive, quality of instruction and physical infrastructure has taken a backseat. Rejuvenating our higher education sector calls for greater dynamism on the part of our institutions. They must identify one or two departments, in which they have core competence, and nurture them into centres of excellence. The quality of faculty must be of a high order to provide students world-class instruction. With fast occurring changes in various disciplines, the faculty must keep themselves abreast with the latest developments. 

The President said to bring about qualitative changes in teaching, the newly-established IITs must leverage the expertise available in the older IITs. The National Knowledge Network offers a platform for academic institutions to collaborate through peer group learning in emerging areas. Additionally, this network can compensate for shortages in faculty, infrastructure and resources. Our educational institutions must also make an effort to develop linkages with international academic institutions. 

The President said knowledge and innovation are the keystones of progress. Competitive advantage can be derived from an eco-system conducive to new learning, research and innovation. Inter-disciplinary approaches in course curricula and research, strengthening under-graduate research and making research integral to the teaching-learning process must gain focused attention. Strong linkages must be built with the Industry. The success of initiatives like the ‘Make in India’ programme depends on the manufacturing of quality industrial products. Good academia-industry interface can play a critical role in this regard. 

The President said higher educational institutions, particularly engineering institutes, must promote a scientific temperament and spirit of inquiry in their students. They must encourage their students to follow their curiosity and explore their creativity. They must equip students to think beyond their textbooks and come up with ingenious ideas.

Environment protected by judiciary alone: SC judge

NEW DELHI PTI





Reacting to the government's remarks on judicial overreach, senior Judge T S Thakur said cleaning Ganga is a `political slogan' and `govt likes to interpret laws to suit its perceptions'

A senior Supreme Court judge on Sunday criticised the Union government for describing judicial decisions as “overreach”, saying those were taken with the aim of protecting environment and the judiciary is not against infrastructure development.“This country knows that if there is today a movement for the protection of environment it is spearheaded by judiciary and judiciary alone,” Justice T S Thakur said. He added that the judiciary sometimes does transgress the ‘Lakshman Rekha’ between it and the legislature but it is to protect the environment and the right to life of people of this country as guaranteed under the Constitution.
Thakur was responding to remarks made by Union Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal at a conference that the government has to ensure adequate job opportunities and simultaneously ensure economic development is not at the cost of environment degradation.
“However, it is important to understand that sometimes a judicial overreach or sensationalising a particular subject can cause more damage than growth,“ Goyal had said. “I believe pragmatic judicial review of the restrictions is necessary, it is the need of the hour to come to terms with whether our actions are actions to ostensibly save the environment.” Thakur, tipped to be the next chief justice of India in December, said, “For 20 years, the government has been cleaning the Ganga and we all know the condition of the holy river after the campaign started, thousands of crores have gone down in the project. It is a political slogan which catches votes and we all know that this can go on for another 20 years.“
“We are not at cross purpose, you [the government] want the environment to be clean, we also want the environment to want the environment to be clean. You may like laws to be interpreted the way your perception is, we are also under the oath to ensure that laws are interpreted according to the constitutional scheme,“ he said. The judiciary, he added, is open to correction.
“Please rest assured that it is not that the courts are keen to take over government, the directions of protection of environment are issued because they [courts] consider this as one of the sacred constitutional duties.” On afforestation in project areas, Thakur said a court-appointed expert committee found that there was no planting of trees despite crores being said to have spent on such efforts. “If you call this judicial overreach we can only say sorry it may continue for a long time,” he said.

Vedanta - Contented Mind a Feast

SWAMI SIVANANDA





The most effective antidote to greed is contentment. Just as a man who, sun-scorched, is refreshed by taking a plunge in the river, so also the greedy man burned by the fire of lobha finds immediate joy and relief by a dip in the ambrosial water of contentment.There are four sentinels who guard the domain of moksha.They are shanti, santosha, satsanga and vichara -peace, happiness, good company and self-inquiry . If you can approach any one of these, you can get hold of the other three.
“A contented mind is a continual feast.“ A man fully endowed with this important virtue is the richest man. Contentment is an important part of the niyamas of Raja Yoga.
The Gitasays, “Be contented with whatever you get by chance and apply yourself to meditation with a dispassionate mind.“
The intellect gets perverted and memory gets confused by passion and greed. A seeker asks, “If I become contented, all my ambitions will die. I will become lethargic and lazy .On account of my ambitions, I exert and I am energetic.“
My reply: contentment can never make you idle. It is a sattvic virtue that propels the individual towards God.It gives strength of mind and peace. It checks unnecessary and selfish exertions.It opens the inner eye and moves the mind towards divine contemplation.
It turns his energy to inner, sattvic channels. It transmutes the gross energy , greed, into spiritual energy , ojas.The contented person is full of sattva. His mind is now collected and peaceful. Contentment is bliss.

Don't pee in public, now walls can throw it back

Berlin: PTI





In a bid to teach drunken revellers a lesson, people in a night club locality in Hamburg have coated their walls with a special paint that bounces back urine on the urinator.The hydrophobic (waterrepellent) paint, if urinated upon, makes the urine bounce off the wall and back at the urinators' feet who relieve themselves in the public.
Walls in the St Pauli nightclub district have been painted with a super-hydrophobic coating and given accompanying signs, which read, `Do not pee here. We pee back!', media reports said. Residents of the St Pauli neighbourhood, sick of starting their day with the biting stench of urine, have begun coating their walls with the paint. The high-tech coating guarantees the urine bounces on to the urinator.
The special `superhyperhydrophobic' coating goes by the trade-name `Ultra-Ever-Dry' and was originally developed in 2012 by the US company Resource Energy Group. It can be used to coat cars and fabrics, but also wood and brick. The paint costs $446 a gallon (3.7 litres). About $700 is required to cover six square meters with urine-repelling paint.

the speaking tree - Feel Free To Shower Blessings On Yourself

Marguerite Theophil





Much has been written about blessing, but something we don't think much about is blessing oneself. Earlier, it was thought that only older people, teachers or gurus could give blessings. It has now become more widely accepted that anyone can give or offer a blessing, spoken out or unspoken. While many now are comfortable with blessing others, sharing the idea of blessing oneself always brings on that `Whaaaat?' look whenever i mention it.The act of blessing ­ whether for others or oneself ­ interrupts the habitual way we see, feel and think about things, the shift allowing us to experience things differently than we normally would. One example that i find inspiring is about a woman who told me that she had to undergo surgery of her leg at a very young age.Many years later she began to have nightmares about not knowing what had been done to the limb that had been removed during surgery . When i spoke of blessing oneself, she wondered if she could bless that part of her which was no longer there, and began to do so. As she did this not only was she able to first get in touch with her buried deep anger about not being told much about it by either parents or doctors, but she was able to work through her emotions. The nightmares stopped. And now she blesses her prosthesis each time she uses it.
Blessing oneself helps when you might be weighed down by negative self-talk.So many people deplete their energy by constantly evaluating, comparing and condemn ing themselves or by being angry for things they have done or have not done, or feeling like they are not `good enough'.
Whenever you bless something, it brings you into a state of love and gratitude. This changes your frame of mind, perception and energy from a negative state to a more positive one.You can begin to shift a pattern of criticism and negative evaluation by blessing both the positive and negative aspects and being grateful for who you are on a daily basis. You can bless your past, even if it has large chapters of pain or sorrow; it made you who you are to day . Then when you clearly and compassionately see how you are today , that in turn will help shape you into who you want to be.
Today , bless yourself for just `being you'.
Bless your own part in your relationships, whether you consider them good or bad. This is how you are in the relationship because of circumstances, because of responses from the other, because of what you know, because of what you don't know. Bless what is and what has to change in you or for you.
Bless yourself for those you have helped or inspired; some you may be aware of, some you may not. It hardly matters if they bless you or not. Bless your own good intentions.
Bless yourself for what you have been open to learn; bless yourself for what you have taught. Bless what you see as your failures, not just your successes. You might find you have learnt more from the former than the latter. Bless your needs and also your greeds! You are human after all.
Bless your humanness, your intelligence and those moments you have used it as well as those times you have not. Bless your fears, at least you have acknowledged them, and can now work on them. Bless your willingness to bless yourself, even if at first you thought it was a bit strange! Follow Marguerite Theophil at speakingtree.in

Budget and Some Unanswered Questions

Monday 9 March 2015, by Bharat Dogra

Some aspects of this year’s Union Budget made it different from Budgets of previous years. In previous years it has been customary to compare the new fiscal year’s allocations for various Ministries, sectors and programmes with the allocations made for the previous years.
The most important aspect of a Budget is (or should be) regarding the impact it makes on the most vulnerable and poor people. In addition, it is also important to see its overall impact on economic well-being and environment protection. So a good assessment could be made by comparing those allocations which are important from this point of view.
However, the difference this year is that just before the announcement of the Union Budget the government accepted the key recommendation of the 14th Finance Commission to increase the share of the State governments in the Central taxes by 10 per cent (from 32 per cent to 42 per cent). So the Union Government can now take the stand that some of the schemes and programmes of the social sector will be budgeted by the State governments with the additional resources at their command, also keeping in view the more specific situation and needs of the State.
The Union Budget for 2015-16 has made very big cuts in several priority programmes and schemes including mid-fay meals, ICDS, Indira Awas Yojana (housing for the poor in rural areas), drinking water etc. The magnitude of these cuts is shocking. In other priority areas (such as health and rural development), where increase was overdue, there is stagnancy: in real terms amounting in some cases almost to a decline.
The ICDS budget has been cut from Rs 16,000 crores to Rs 8000 crores, the mid-day meal budget from Rs 13,000  crores  to Rs 9000  crores  while the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan budget has been reduced from Rs 28,000 crores to Rs 22,000 crores. There are reductions also in drinking water, health and family welfare.
The outlay for the Women and Child Development Ministry has been reduced from Rs 21,193 crores in the previous year to Rs 10,351 crores this year. The overall allocation under gender budgeting has also gone down significantly.
The budget for the Scheduled Caste Sub-plan was reduced from Rs 50,548  crores  (Budget estimates 2014-15) to Rs 33,638 (Revised estimates 2014-15) to Rs 30,850  crores  (Budget estimates for 2015-16). The budget for Tribal Sub-plan has been reduced from Rs 32,386  crores (Budget Estimates 2014-15) to Rs 20,535  crores  (Revised Estimates) to Rs 19,979  crores  (Budget estimates 2015-16)
This should be considered keeping in view the fact that Budget cuts in critical social areas were widely reported in the last few months of the previous financial year 2014-15. So on the whole decline in funds reaching the poor (or priority sections important for them) is even more.
Despite all this the Union Government can still take the optimistic view that all these cuts in rhe Union Budget will be made up by the State governments due to the increase of their resources. However, is this increase enough to offset the big cuts in critical areas made in the Union Budget? How committed will be the State governments to make up the cuts? The answers to both these questions are not at all clear just now. There are apprehensions that the net impact may be an overall decline in some programmes of critical importance to the poor, weaker sections, women and children.
This apprehension has increased because the Finance Minister did not take up these questions with any clarity and emphasis in his Budget speech. In fact some of the most important Budget cuts were not even mentioned in the Budget speech as the Finance Minister was keen to concentrate on what appeared to be the more positive aspects of the Budget. Hence the Budget speech gave the appearance of a populist Budget which it is not. Even the subsequent TV debate did not give adequate importance to some Budget cuts which are important for the poor and for social concerns. There were a few exceptions like the Rajya Sabha TV channel which clearly presented the figures of critical social sectors immediately after the Budget speech.
So this Budget has left behind an unanswered question: whether the big cutbacks in crucial areas can be made up in the State budgets. Or whether there will be a serious shortage in crucial social sector areas at least for some time. Another question is: why adequate efforts were not made to raise the tax-GDP ratio which is very low? Instead of direct taxes being raised more to make taxation progressive, the Budget has abolished the wealth tax and initiated moves for significant reduction of corporate tax.
Bharat Dogra is a free-lance journalist who has been involved with several social initiatives and movements.

Pastoralism beneficial to humanity, says UN study

A recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report says that pastoralism—traditional way of livestock rearing on rangelands—is beneficial to humanity. The study says that the practice should be encouraged for a successful global transition to green economy.

The paper was released at the third scientific conference of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in Cancun, Mexico, recently. The study, Pastoralism and the Green Economy-a Natural Nexus?, shows that sustainable pastoralism on desert grasslands, woodlands and steppes maintains soil fertility, contributes to water regulation and promotes biodiversity.

“As our world becomes increasingly mechanized and industrialized in the pursuit of progress, it is easy to forget that there is much to be learned from traditional ways of life such as pastoralism," UN under-secretary-general and UNEP executive director Achim Steiner said.

Pastoralism is practised by up to half a billion people across the world. The report calls for the establishment of a global development framework to endorse this traditional method of livestock rearing.

Though pastoralism has several benefits, underinvestment over the decades has deteriorated the lifestyle in many developing countries.

According to Steiner, “…half a billion pastoralists across the world are struggling to maintain a way of life that is far more consistent with green economy goals than many of our modern methods of rearing livestock.”

Highlighting the benefit of pastoralism, Steiner added, “As developing economies grow and middle classes flourish, the demand for animal protein is only set to expand. With smart, targeted policies, a revitalized attention to pastoralism can play a significant role in fulfilling this demand whilst protecting rangeland biodiversity and ecosystem services and reducing greenhouse gases emitted to the atmosphere.”

How pastoralism can promote green economy?

Carbon sequestration (capture and storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide) provides an example of how pastoralism can support green economy. Grazing lands cover five billion hectares globally. Sequestration between 200-500 kg of carbon per hectare per year plays a vital role in climate change mitigation. Up to 70 per cent of dryland soil carbon can be lost through conversion to agricultural use, says the UNEP report.

Effective animal grazing promotes biodiversity and biomass production needed to maintain these carbon stores, the report adds.

Coordinator of International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Global Drylands Initiative Jonathan Davies said, “When pastoralism is practised efficiently, it conserves biodiversity and rangeland environments, providing a wide range of benefits to humanity.”

Examples across the world

There are several instances from across the world that uphold the benefits of pastoralism. In Spain, the seasonal movement of pastoralists and their herds along migration corridors supports habitat connectivity and biodiversity. This happens through the transportation of seeds and insects by sheep.

In Australia, livestock grazing by pastoralists on invasive grass species has conserved the Bridled Nailtail Wallaby—a species endemic to Australia and listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

The study advocates that pastoralists should be connected to markets for boosting employment opportunities in pastoral areas. It also says that they should be integrated into development mainstream.

The India story

In a recent Down to Earth report, it has been shown that Rajasthan’s livestock population is facing threat with the disappearance of grazing lands.

According to the report, livestock has sustained the rural people of Rajasthan during times of drought. State government data suggests that 80 per cent of rural families in Rajasthan keep livestock and 35 per cent of the total income of small and marginal farmers comes from dairy and animal husbandry.

However, this back-up economy, is witnessing a slow death because of the government’s narrow-minded policies and the disappearance of grazing lands due to mining and agriculture.