Message from Ms Irina Bokova,
Director-General of UNESCO,
on the occasion of International Youth Day
12 August 2015

International Youth Day is an opportunity to celebrate the creative force and the innovative impetus that young people bring to every society. This year’s theme – “Youth Civic Engagement” – emphasizes the role played by the involvement and inclusion of young people in building social cohesion and collective well-being. From social entrepreneurs to journalists, from voluntary workers to members of community organizations, young people contribute to shaping society to lead it towards political, cultural and economic renewal.
We must support their civic engagement at every level, beginning with recognizing that young people form a separate social group with specific characteristics and expectations. Civic engagement is a way to exploit this potential to enrich society, further human rights and enable improved living conditions for all.
These goals are at the core of UNESCO’s projects, to offer young people the space and skills they need to develop, which reflects on all societies.
That is the spirit of UNESCO’s project to strengthen youth networks in the Mediterranean. Young people must be considered the drivers of change, and not only beneficiaries or targets. That involves reinforcing exchanges and cooperation between generations to ensure that young people are actually involved in developing the policies intended for them. The ninth UNESCO Youth Forum, held in October, will provide a unique platform to convey this message, and I invite young people from all over the world to attend and make their voices heard, to shape the action of world leaders. These voices carry the hope of half of the planet, for a sustainable future for all.
Irina Bokova

Humane society must have universal health coverage

A humane society must have universal health coverage. This is a laudable aim in itself; it is even more significant in the Indian context.

With profound health challenges and almost 30% of its population living below the poverty line, India must confront the challenge of keeping its citizens healthy. Simply put, providing and financing universal health coverage (UHC) for 1.2 billion people can be a challenging proposition, and the government needs all the help that it can get.

India has made impressive economic gains in the post-liberalisation period.

Juxtaposed against this, inequity too has grown and this is evident in levels of access to healthcare. The uptake of health services has remained low among people at the bottom of the economic pyramid, and even the rapidly expanding lower-middle class remains susceptible to slipping back into poverty in the face of a health crisis. This is because in India 70% of health costs are paid for out-of-pocket at the point of service, with expenditure ranging from zero to more than Rs 10 lakh.

Universal health coverage would, therefore, not only ensure that Indian citizens stay healthy; it would also protect them from being driven or trapped below the poverty line by illness.

Many of India’s fundamental health indicators are dismal compared even to poorer neighbours. India’s immunisation rates are abysmally low: Only 70% of children receive even the basic vaccines today. These levels have persisted since 1990, while a lower-income country such as Bangladesh has driven significant improvement in this indicator and achieved a 95% immunisation rate.

Globally, the field of health is witnessing a shift in focus from disease-driven initiatives to projects aimed at increasing the sustainability and strengthening of health systems. A crucial component of achieving this will be to secure sustainable financing for health services.

On its part, the government has focused a large portion of its resources on primary and secondary healthcare services, while also devoting a sizeable share to tertiary services. Although urban India has better health infrastructure, the private sector is the dominant provider and costs are higher.

Innovative partnerships could certainly help address this complex set of challenges.

The private sector can help finance the capital costs involved in setting up new healthcare facilities as well as provide management and technical expertise in delivering health services at scale. It can also help train the government’s frontline health workers in the aspects of health service delivery.

The National Health Mission has adopted participatory models to fill vacancies in public healthcare facilities by contracting private practitioners.

Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Karnataka have also been working with private healthcare providers to deliver essential diagnostic, telemedicine, telehealth and mobile health clinic services. The government can make investing in rural areas both profitable and sustainable for private healthcare providers.

India should leverage all available resources to improve its health services. Given the diversity across states, it should avoid embracing one-size-fits-all models and allow enough flexibility for local design experimentation within an overarching national UHC plan.

Sangita Reddy is joint managing director of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Limited. The views expressed are personal.

Writing a new script

On Tuesday, India woke up to the news of Sundar Pichai, an engineer and executive hailing from Chennai who has made it big in Silicon Valley, becoming the CEO of Google. Far bigger in import was the news of the reorganisation of the internet behemoth Google itself, which propelled Mr. Pichai to the top slot. Larry Page, who along with Sergey Brin started the search engine in 1998, announced a corporate structure in which Google will be part of a new umbrella organisation, Alphabet. This organisation will also have a collection of other ventures, many of which are big bets that Google terms ‘moonshots’. This seems a drastic change for one of the most successful companies of the information era, a bellwether technology enterprise, a constant innovator, and one which has billions of people using its products. The company, which started off nearly two decades ago with the seemingly modest ambition of providing an organised gateway to all of the world’s information, proved hugely effective, popular and successful. Starting as a search engine and achieving success in producing a weighted ranking of webpages, it moved on to become a market leader in webmail (Gmail), browsers (Chrome), video hosting (You Tube), news aggregation (Google News) and mobile operating systems (Android), among other products. It has been so successful in its constant ownership of the latest trends in the internet that it has even created a fear of the monopolisation of the space, as a result getting embroiled in anti-trust cases in Europe.

But all that doesn’t explain the change in the corporate structure, one in which Alphabet will incorporate a “slimmed down” Google among a number of other ventures. Why this change? In his post, Mr. Page simply wrote, “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.” A distinguishing factor for Google all these years has been its capacity and inclination to expand the frontiers of technological innovation into newer ventures beyond its core business. So, while expanding, quite smartly, into adjacent areas of its business, it also ventured into ambitious projects where pay-offs can be expected only many years into the future: cars that are self-driven, balloons that power internet access, technologies that slow down ageing, and so on. Also, remaining true to its start-up roots, Google has been open to experimentation and, therefore, to some failures (Orkut and Google Plus, to name two of them). Sometimes this has led critics and investors to worry that Google was spending too much time, effort and money on such experiments. The reorganisation, led by Alphabet, may not only provide more clarity on these differently mature businesses but also provide the leadership a structure to think like a start-up again and not get drowned in the ‘big-ness’ of the $66-billion Google.

Keywords: Sundar Pichai, Google restructure, Google CEO, Indian-origin CEOs, Larry Page

The Speaking Tree - Detached Love

SEEMA BURMAN





All religions enjoin humans to live unselfishly . Every unselfish action takes us a little closer to the Supreme Consciousness. On the other hand, every selfish action acts as an obstruction to our finding the Divine Truth. A philosopher lives with the knowledge that the world is a delusion. The unattached worker has love for the universe in his mind.He treats all duties as means with which selfishness may be overcome. A sincere worker need not believe in God or mukti; yet, he finds the Ultimate Truth by unselfish work.A nurse loves the employer's baby . Even then, if she is asked to leave, she does just that and begins work again in another household, looking after another baby . Be like the nurse, Ramakrishna advised, and know that God is our employer. When one works with detachment and freedom, then there is no tension.
But thinking that the world needs our help gives rise to attachment, arrogance and pain. It is the giver who is blessed, not the receiver. A mother loves her children selflessly .When one can give to the world like a mother, only then can one realise Divinity through work. Absence of love for the work you do makes it a boring exercise. When the mind is disciplined and detached, working will mean relaxation.
One need not go on a holiday just in order to take a break from work -work itself should be treated as relaxation.Holidays should be a passage from one joy to another and not from boredom to joy .

Land Law Must Give Way to a Better One





The goods and services tax is more important than the land Bill, said Adi Godrej, speaking for many . He is spot on. The land acquisition law is flawed in fundamental ways, not just in the version that the government now wants to distance itself from but in its 2013 form forged by the UPA. The problem is not just in terms of specific provisions of the law but far more basic. India's growing economy needs land to be released for new economic activity , without doubt. This has to be understood as a challenge of urbanisation, rather than merely as a policy of releasing patches of land across the country .As industry and organised services grow faster than agriculture, and look for expanded urban environs to accommodate them, urbanisation happens. More urban spaces come up and more people move from village to town. If half of India beco mes urban over the next 20 years -China has crossed this point already -roughly 25 crore more people will be added to Ind ia's urban population. With any reasona ble measure of population density , something like 20,000 sq km of additional urban land will be needed to accommodate this incremental urban population. Existing towns will need to expand and rebuild, new towns will need to be built. Does the land law of either the UPA or the NDA address the challenge of releasing land on this scale?
The point is to make those who lose land to economic progress stakeholders in the prosperity that comes up on their erstwhile land. There is no unique one way of doing this. But the stakeholder principle must be incorporated into whatever mechanism is adopted to release forest or agricultural land for new economic use. That should be the only purpose of a central law on the subject. Industry and farmers have to learn to become partners in India's progress.

the speaking tree - The Self And The Cosmic Blueprint

Pranav Khullar





As i looked up from my camping tent at night, on the way to Pindari Glacier, i was drawn to the twinkle and glitter of the star patterns above. They seemed to beckon to me to reach out beyond my temporal existence and its desires, and search for something more meaningful; more soulful. How beautiful the sky looked! There seemed to be a cosmic connect between the matrix of the stars above and my mind-matrix. The stars seemed to show me a way out of the confusion of my mind. My head was clearing up, definitley , just looking up at the star-filled sky .Stars as metaphors
Stars have long been the driving metaphor for metaphysical speculation; something that makes one feel one needs to reach out beyond all the littleness, and understand the essential oneness of all under a common sky . In comprehending the vastness of the universe, we would realise there is a deeper grid inside of us as well, which we have to navigate, rather than merely skimming through existence.
I recollect Joseph Campbell alluding to this metaphorical turn, from an interest in the sky-heavens above, to the parallel vastness of the soul inside of man, as the point at which myth metamorphosed into philosophy . It is in this understanding of the “...inner reaches of outer space ...“ that one finds the sky above an inspiration for contemplation and reflection.
Dreamers and poets
Different cultures have found different patterns in the sky , the elite and the commoner alike have sworn by the stars; astronomers and astrologers have varying notions of the movement of the planets; the religious calendars of different faiths are all lunar or solar-based systems; dreamers and poets are drawn to the sky and we all seem to look up instinctively either in thanksgiving or in trouble. Ironically enough, the firmament is one of the few meeting places left where scientific enquiry and religious faith seem to coalesce quite naturally .
Music of the spheres
Pythagaros spoke about the music in the spacing of the spheres, essentially pointing to the interconnectedness of all things, vibrating at different frequencies in a cosmic harmony , which the vedas define as Rta or cosmic rhythm. It is this cosmic connec tion which the ancients felt was the trigger for the greater search of humanity; h for the greater purpose of the search for the greater purpose of life. The vast and unending spaces of the sky provide a natural catalyst for such an inner search that leads one to plumb the depths of one's being to know the divinity within.
Cosmopolitan outlook
Looking at this cosmic blueprint amidst the clear sky of the mountains, i realised that it maps out or charts not merely our geographical oneness, but our spiritual oneness as well. The word `cosmopolitan', derived from the root-word `cosmos', sketches out the fact that we are not merely citizens of any one country , but are all united in the borderless cosmos.Common sky It is this recognition of oneness under a common sky which will revive our cosmic consciousness and bring us closer to each other. This cosmic blueprint is also the cue for the search for the Self amid the selves which the mind has fragmented us into.
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A pseudo peace

Has the Naga insurgency, India’s oldest, really ended? It is too soon to say.

The signing of the agreement between the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah), or the NSCN-IM, and the Central government had all the drama of a reconciliation ceremony. But the details remain shrouded in secrecy. There appears to be much less to it than meets the eye. The ceremony had the telltale signs of a pseudo-event. Pseudo-events are occurrences designed to generate press coverage. Their relationship to reality is uncertain. But it is their inherent ambiguity that explains public interest in them. Ambiguity has marked all official pronouncements about the ceremony. The Press Information Bureau headlined it as the prime minister having witnessed the signing of a “historic peace accord.” However, it referred to it later as a “framework agreement”. The news took key stakeholders by surprise. Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh of Manipur said that he did not know what the agreement says and reiterated his government’s position that it will not accept any accord that disturbs Manipur’s territorial integrity. The demand for the integration of all contiguous Naga-inhabited areas has been a highly contentious subject, nowhere more so than in Manipur. But the protracted Assam-Nagaland border dispute is also part of the same faultline. The structural flaws in the design of the Naga peace process have been obvious for a while. The format — bilateral and secret meetings between NSCN-IM leaders and the government’s interlocutor — leaves out critical stakeholders. It is unlikely to produce a durable settlement. NSCN-IM leaders have said from time to time that they are not asking for greater or smaller Nagaland, but only for the integration of areas where Nagas live. The formulation is clever, but it does not resolve the fundamental contradiction. The Central government is expected to make territorial concessions that evoke intense emotions in neighbouring states over the heads of popularly elected state governments. However, there has been significant movement in this area in the course of the negotiations. Public statements that both parties recognise each other’s “compulsions” and talk of a solution that accepts “contemporary realities” point in that direction. But the structural flaw of the peace process becomes painfully apparent in what an unnamed official source told The Hindu about the procedures that will be followed. Apparently, the interlocutor to the Naga talks will prepare a draft note for the home ministry. The views of relevant Central government ministries and state governments will be elicited. Following that exercise, a draft bill will be presented to the Central cabinet. Once the cabinet approves it, the bill will be submitted to Parliament. Whatever the merits of these procedures, they raise serious questions about the meaning of the ceremony. Of course, the design of the process is not of this government’s own making. Key elements have been in place for a long time. Negotiating with leaders of particular insurgent groups and marginalising their rivals has been a key element of the Indian approach to conflict management in the region. It is difficult to alter the design of any peace process once it is set on a particular course. It becomes path-dependent — past decisions constrain options. It may have been obvious that negotiations that leave out neighbouring states carry significant risks. But it has been hard even to think of these states as stakeholders. What then justifies the optimism displayed by the NSCN-IM leaders and the government? The government seems to be counting on potential shifts in the public mood in Manipur and Assam as a result of a number of major decisions it is considering, not all of them directly connected to the Naga issue. In Assam, conceding to the longstanding demand of six communities for ST status would mean a radical increase in the number of reserved seats in the state assembly. It would impact Assam’s parliamentary representation as well. But it will have an adverse impact on significant communities. The process of updating the National Register of Citizens is also likely to satisfy key constituencies. Significantly, these two issues now feature in the dialogue between the Centre and the pro-talks faction of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA). However, it is too soon to say whether all of this would make the potential effects of the agreed terms of the Naga settlement on the disputed Assam-Nagaland border more acceptable in Assam. Some version of an alternative arrangement for the Nagas of Manipur — perhaps the creation of autonomous councils — is clearly under consideration. But the crucial issue is the umbrella under which it gets linked to the Nagas of Nagaland. Even if it is only a symbolic gesture, it is far from obvious that it would be acceptable to Manipuris — Nagas and non-Nagas alike. However, what happens to the issue of the Inner Line Permit in Manipur will be very significant. Even a partial acceptance of this demand would mean that, for the first time since the late 19th century, a colonial-era institution would be extended to a new region. It would undoubtedly soothe Manipuri public opinion. But will it really prepare the ground for the acceptance of an otherwise unpopular Naga accord? Acceptance of the agreement by the Naga public in general is also far from certain. The NSCN-IM leaders sitting as equals with India’s PM and the country’s top political leadership was an important symbolic gesture. So were some of the PM’s words. But are the agreement’s provisions substantive enough for the Nagas to justify the sacrifices they made during their long struggle for independence? These are significant hurdles yet to be crossed. What then accounts for the timing of the signing ceremony? Many rumours are making their rounds. However, one piece of speculation seems most plausible. The poor health of Isak Chisi Swu — one of the two Naga leaders negotiating with the government — may have prompted the decision to hold the ceremony. It is feared that if Swu does not survive, rumours that he may not have been a party to the agreement would fatally undermine it. But was this a good reason for the PM to tell the world that “a historic peace accord” has already been signed?

 The writer is professor of political studies at Bard College, New York