Time has come to make a woman United Nations chief: Irina Bokova

Your country Bulgaria has now announced your candidature for the UN Secretary General’s post that will go up for election in 2016. How hopeful are you of becoming the first woman UNSG?

Irina Bokova: It’s for the future, of course. The procedure is yet to start officially, and for the moment I am totally focussed on UNESCO and my work here. There’s so much work to be done and I feel my campaign is my work at UNESCO. What I am doing here in terms of the reform of the organisation, and from the political challenges for the world, youth radicalisation and extremism, destruction of heritage by ISIS and others…these are my focus. Lets see for next year how the process (for UNSG) goes, and my government will take the next steps for this.

Even so, do you think it is time for a woman to become UN Secretary General in this election?

Yes I think so, it is an idea whose time has come.

While it’s early in the game, have you spoken to the Indian leadership for support?

Not yet, it is early. But if someone would speak it would be not me, but the Bulgarian government and diplomacy.

It is a challenging post, though, and I would like to ask if the UN itself is in danger and need of reconciliation, as we see polarisation between West and East, US and allies vs Russia and China… is the UN in need of reform?

What I can say is that I am a firm believer in the UN and in multilateralism. With globalisation and connectivity, the UNs role is critical, whether you see the post-2015 agenda or conflict, UN has a critical role. I am following all the discussions on UN reforms, they are important discussions and as I said I am a firm believer.

And what about India’s role, given that India has bid for a place in an expanded security council? Would you support a bigger role for India?

Oh yes, I think India plays a hugely important role at the UN. India is a continent in itself. I think UNESCO and India will succeed in all of our ambitions for sustainable development. I think India’s contributions are critical. And I am always happy to come there as I have had the pleasure of having done on several occasions.

Ahead of the UNGA, UNESCO has played a big part to shift the world from Millenium Development goals to Sustainable Development goals that you want adopted. What will this shift mean?

The process the UN has followed in post-2015 agenda is the most important process. UNESCO has been heavily integrated in the process to set the new course for global development. It will be universal, and people-centric. I know there is a debate about whether 17 goals is too big, or 169 targets are too ambitious for the global community, but I do believe we have to aim high. The challenges we have don’t leave us the time to postpone them. I hope the summit in September will pass the agenda. Later this year we have the COP21 climate change conference in Paris. We cant look at one without the other.

You’ve pointed to the criticism, that the number of goals are too many. Arent you diluting the core principles, that instead of basic goals like poverty alleviation, the UN are going for value-laden goals like democracy governance, human rights, inequality, even conditionality of aid for these. How do you answer those criticisms?

I don’t agree. Firstly poverty alleviation is still a goal. We cannot move forward without education for example. But now we are targeting more, we are looking at quality of education, which was not a goal earlier. So apart from 150 million kids who aren’t going to school, we have 250 million kids who have been to years in school but cannot actually read and write. So we do need to integrate these into the goals we are already aiming for.

PM Modi visited UNESCO headquarters earlier this year. What are the most important projects that you are working on with India?

We were very happy to have Mr. Modi come to UNESCO this year as we have very strong relations with India. His speech on April 10th was historic. We all remember PM Nehru when he said UNESCO is the conciousness of humanity. At UNESCO we are more than a development partner, we set the global vision to protect culture, promote science and as a result build peace. Through this lens we can give a different perspective on what makes sustainability and what makes peace. One wonderful initiative of the PM was to introduce June 21 as Yoga day, and now we have welcomed India’s proposal to submit Yogaphone inscription onto the representative list of intangible cultural heritage. This will mark the contribution of this very unique tradition of India in harmony with nature. We work with India also in the area education. In India we have the first UNESCO institute on peace and human rights education. India has been one of the leaders on literacy and women’s education. The Indian Ambassador to UNESCO Ruchira Khamboj has also just informed me of two candidacies of two cities Varanasi and Jaipur to be part of our creative cities network.

India also had a petition to make Delhi a heritage city..but had to withdraw it over concerns it would have an impact on development…

Well that is a debate worldwide now. Delhi is a wonderful historic city with the Red Fort and others monuments needing protection and express by themselves the dialogue amongst cultures. I know that UNESCO is criticised for being too rigid on rules about how heritage must be protected. On the other hand we see so much pressure on monuments, from urbanisation, pressure of economic development, from the environment, and then from wars and fighting and wilful destruction we have seen in Syria and Iraq from ISIS.

Many would argue that they cultural and monumental destruction doesn’t compare to the human destruction- deaths, rapes, women and children sold into slavery by ISIS…and that UNESCO’s concerns may not be as urgent.

It is a false choice. The humanitarian disaster is of course huge. We condemn all these deaths and terrible crimes perpetrated. But destruction of heritage is part of the same disaster. This destruction depletes people of their culture and depletes their memories. That is why the UNSC also recognises the trafficking of heritage as a crime. So the cultural concern is part of the humanitarian and security concerns.

Keywords: United Nations, Irina Bokova, UNSG, United Nation Secretary General

A crime well reported is half-solved

The latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau show that it is time to change our understanding of felony and its registration by the police

With every passing year of writing on the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)’s crime data, it has become increasingly clear that what I am forced to do is essentially compare apples and oranges, and then make a normative call based on that comparison. This is not the much-maligned NCRB’s fault, but calls for a change in our understanding of crime and its registration by the police.

This year, I found that in both absolute and population proportionate terms, Delhi was now the crime and rape capital of India. However, I have come to the conclusion that the spike that Delhi saw in 2013 is almost certainly a direct result of the December 2012 gang rape and the widespread protests that followed, which began an impassioned and long overdue conversation around sexual violence in the capital. From conversations with women’s rights activists and the police, I have learnt that now more women come forward to complain and the police are less likely to turn complainants away.

Other cities may not have experienced the same change in the same way. The Shakti Mills gang rape took place in Mumbai nearly a year after the Delhi incident. After the complainant went to the police, another victim came forward a few days later; she had been raped, she said, by the same gang just weeks before the Shakti Mills incident, but did not have the courage to approach the police.

In Chennai in December 2014, a man posing as a policeman allegedly raped a girl who was at a beach with a male friend; not only did the crime attract far less media attention than sexual assault does in Delhi, the police and a leading newspaper indulged in the kind of slander against the complainant that has become all but impossible now in Delhi.

Police still apathetic

None of which is to assert that sexual crime doesn’t go unreported any more in Delhi. In July 2015, a young woman was stabbed to death in Delhi. Her family spoke later of the complete indifference of the police in pursuing her earlier repeated complaints against the same men who fatally attacked her. Further, increased reporting alone cannot explain Delhi’s elevated rate of sexual crime. In 1990, the number of reported rapes in Delhi and Mumbai were only as far apart as the difference in populations would predict. By 2000, the capital was recording three times as many rapes as Mumbai. The two cities can be said to have comparable levels of feminist activism and media interest, yet there was a substantial rise in the number of reported cases in Delhi.

Moreover, whether high rates of reported sexual assault should be seen directly as a proxy for the lack of women’s safety is debatable. While the city-wise break-up of reported rapes by the proximity of the accused to the complainant has not been released this year, in past years it was no different in Delhi than in other cities, and ranged between 95 and 100 per cent of all reported rapes. Similarly, while The Hindufound that the largest category of rape cases in Delhi, based on district court judgements, involved parental criminalisation of consenting runaway couples, a preliminary analysis for cities in Madhya Pradesh showed similar results.

What the activism around the December 2012 Delhi gang-rape is likely to have done is to nudge reported rape in Delhi closer to its real value, while the true numbers in other Indian cities are harder to estimate. In a working paper, economist Aashish Gupta compared the rates of reported rape (as per the NCRB) for 2005 with the rates of experienced rape as reported by women in a household sample survey to the National Family Health Survey. He found that just 5.8 per cent of rape by men other than husbands was reported to the police.

It is important here to place rape in the context of general crime. The rates of recorded crime in most Indian cities and States, quite frankly, defy belief. Uttar Pradesh recorded just over 10,000 cases of “grievous hurt” in 2014, while London recorded over 70,000 cases of “assault with injury offences” according to its police statistics for 2014-15. From people’s testimonies of police corruption and brutality, it seems entirely conceivable that in large parts of the country, people — especially the poor — do not go to the police to register a complaint unless they absolutely have to. So it is likely that India’s murder rate is quite close to its true value, as would be the case with, say, auto theft, in which an FIR becomes essential; unsurprisingly, auto theft accounted for 42 per cent of all reported theft in 2014, and 6.5 per cent of all crime.

What about crimes against women — is there evidence that some States under-report more than others? In Mr. Gupta’s analysis, the numbers of reported rape by men other than husbands were too low at the State-level to make valid comparisons. However, when he looked at the State-wise spread of the actual incidence versus reporting of physical violence against women, he found that Delhi had consistently higher reporting and lower incidence of actual violence than other States while Bihar had low reporting rates and high actual incidence. Among larger States, both actual violence and under-reporting were higher in northern States with poor gender indicators than in southern States with better gender indicators, he found.

Should we then see high crime rates as a positive rather than a negative? Globally, countries with wide income disparities are four times more likely to be afflicted by violent crime than more equitable societies, and high levels of crime are both a major cause and a result of poverty and underdevelopment, says the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. However, this applies only to states in which full registration is the norm, and that is almost certainly not the case for most Indian States.

In 2014, the highest crime rates in India were in Delhi and Kerala. People often use Kerala’s high rates of reported crime, particularly for women, to criticise the State, former State police chief Jacob Punnoose said recently. “But what this shows is that with more female police recruitment, more women felt confident to approach the police. We should celebrate this,” he said. Not all crime is under-reported equally, Mr. Punnoose cautioned. “I would not say that I will celebrate an increase in the numbers of all crimes — auto theft or murder for example. But if the police of a State is able to significantly increase the registration of crimes in which grievous physical injury does not take place, I will congratulate that police commissioner.”

Registration of crime is the culmination of multiple realities — the existence of crime, the empowerment of an individual to report it, and the willingness of the police to register it. With the second and third parts so sorely lacking in most of India, perhaps it’s time to stop reducing our analysis of the NCRB data to only the existence of crime.

rukmini.shrinivasan@thehindu.co.in

Keywords: National Crime Records Bureau, December 2012 gang rape, Shakti Mills gang rape, crime rates in India, sexual assault

Gene responsible for obesity in Indians identified

The gene is present in everyone, but a mutation can cause the person carrying the gene to become obese.

For the first time, Indian researchers have been able to isolate a gene associated with obesity which is specific to the Indian population. This is important, as identifying the genetic determinants of body mass index (BMI) will go a long way in better understanding the biological basis of overweight and obesity.

The aim of a study undertaken by research team led by Dr. Kumarasamy Thangaraj of the Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) was to find a novel locus in Indian population. To do that, they excluded the genes that have already been associated with obesity in other populations. A total of 204 non-smoking subjects free of chronic diseases and belonging to different BMI categories — underweight, normal and overweight and obese — were chosen for the study. The subjects were 20-30 years old.

Nearly one million SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) markers distributed throughout the genome were analysed. “We found one SNP marker (which is within a gene) of THSD7A was significantly associated with obesity. This gene has not been associated with obesity in the Indian population,” said Dr. Thangaraj. The aim of the study was to find a novel locus in the Indian population. The results were published recently in the International Journal of Obesity.

To reconfirm its role, a replication study involving 655 people belonging to different BMI categories — underweight, normal, overweight and obese — was undertaken. “We found highly significant association between the marker and obesity in the replication study,” he said.

THSD7A is a neural N-glycoprotein, which promotes angiogenesis. Angiogenesis, in turn, modulates obesity, adipose metabolism and insulin sensitivity. And now, the authors have been able to find a correlation and this information can be used for drug target, early diagnosis of obesity and treatment. Explaining how the gene is linked to obesity, Dr. Thangaraj said: “The gene is present in everyone. But when there is a mutation to the gene, there is a likelihood that the person carrying the mutated gene will end up being obese.”

However, the gene mutation is not found in all obese people. Similarly, the gene mutation was also found in very small number of underweight people. “That is because obesity is a multigenic condition,” he explained. Despite being a multigenic condition, people carrying the mutation can always take measures to keep obesity at bay, he said. There is a possibility that the SNP marker of THSD7A may be associated with obesity in other South Asian population.

The genetic affinity Indians have with other South Asian population has already been well documented in a 2009 study. In the 2009 study, a particular gene mutation in Indians was found to increase the risk of heart failure in people with cardiomyopathy. And this mutation was found to be a risk factor implicated in South Asian people with cardiomyopathy too.

Keywords: obesity, genetics, THSD7A

the speaking tree - Wonderful Benefits Of Remaining A Servant

Janina Gomes





Why did i have to approach the dusk of my life before i could make this humble prayer “Lord, make me a servant“ ? Having had to survive in a fiercely competitive environment, in which the powerful dominate others, how would such a prayer predispose me to succeed? Yet, looking back now, it seems that the universe supports those who serve others with gladness.In a context where the word `servant' has ugly connotations giving as it were moral permission to treat those who work for us as somehow inferior, there are good intentioned people who serve others selflessly . It is difficult to find those who serve others without any expectation of a reward.Some choose the humblest occupations, looking after the challenged, for example, with love.
Servants of God bring happiness to others. To give a gift to someone who richly deserves it, bringing a smile to his face, empathising with those in grief, sharing the burdens of those who cannot see the end of the road, just talking and listening to those who might have fallen into traps of delusion and degradation ­ all these are acts of good service.
Why do we call them servants? Should we not be putting them on a pedestal and paying them homage because of the noble work they do? Such people do good unconsciously , and not with ulterior motives. They do what they are called to do in a given set of circumstances, without taking any credit for the help they may have rendered others.
This `servant mentality' has changed the way i perceive others, evaluate their worth and give credit due to those who deserve it. I have seen too many fall through sheer human pride and overinflated egos to not be cautious and yet daring at the same time.
I think of enlightened souls like Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna, both luminaries who consciously chose a `servant' approach to life.Today , too, there are those who battle against poverty , illiteracy and superstition. There are many noble souls still toiling even if we can not seem to have enough of scams and moral turpitude to distract our attention.
There are many who still consider that they have a mission in life. I for one, have discovered this great truth towards the tail end of my life. And now when i awake, i ask myself, what can i do for someone who is helpless today? Can i bring a little happi ness to someone, can i share my bread?
So, i pray for Divine Grace to be a humble servant with this attitude, we become a link in a wide chain. The helpless become helpers and the helpless in turn get empowered to become uplifters.
The human race has survived because of those who recognised that their contributions are limited and not because others have climbed heights for purely selfish reasons. We tend to place much emphasis on achievements, position and power.The scales could one day tilt against those engaged in selfishness.
So every night, i thank God that he has enabled me to be the `servant' of someone in need. Every chance to do a good turn becomes a turning point in life. Jesus said: “The Son of Man came to serve rather than be served.“ My own humble prayer is that my life, too, be spent in service. “Lord, make me a servant, i pray .“

Some improvements in child malnutrition: data

ight States have reduced the proportion of underweight children.

New official data on nutrition in India’s nine poorest States has shown that while most states have successfully reduced the number of underweight children over the last decade, their record in reducing child stunting has been more mixed. While Bihar and Uttarkhand improved on all indicators, Uttar Pradesh got worse on all.

The Office of the Registrar General of India released the findings of the Clinical, Anthropometric and Bio-chemical (CAB) Survey this week. The survey was conducted in 2014 as a sub-component of the Annual Health Survey, which collects health information from a representative sample of every district in India’s eight Empowered Action Group (EAG) States — Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand – and Assam. A one-time survey, the CAB collected district-level data on key anthropometric indicators including child stunting, child wasting and children underweight.

The last time India collected anthropometric data was in 2005-2006, as part of the National Family Health Survey III. While the NFHS III and the CAB were conducted on different samples, both sets of findings are meant to be representative at the State level, officials from both agencies confirmed to The Hindu. A comparison between the NFHS and the CAB shows that eight of the nine States were successful in substantially reducing the proportion of underweight children; Uttar Pradesh was the only State, where the proportion actually rose slightly over the last decade.

The new data comes in the backdrop of the NDA government’s flip-flop over the release of the Rapid Survey of Children (RSOC), a nation-wide sample survey commissioned by the previous government and conducted by Unicef. The RSOC had shown substantial improvements in all child health indicators, but its findings were initially not released by the new government, and later made public after media including The Hindu reported on leaked findings.

The RSOC’s findings on other child anthropometric indicators like child wasting (weight for height more than two standard deviations below the expected) and child stunting (height for age more than two standard deviations below the expected) are far more optimistic than the CAB’s. While the RSOC found improvements in all CAG States on child stunting, the CAB finds that only five States — Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Uttarakhand — improved. On child wasting, only four — Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand — improved. The CAB confirms the RSOC’s finding that while girls were more likely than boys to be underweight in 2005-2006, boys were slightly more likely to be underweight as of 2014.

Keywords: Empowered Action Group States, bio-chemical survey, malnutrition rates, malnutrition in India's poorest States, official data on nutrition

New CAT, new strategies

Three one-hour sections, onscreen calculator… the exam has changed with the times. Some preparation tips.

The IIMs have changed the format and structure of CAT this year. Specifically, there have been four key changes. First, the exam will comprise three sections instead of two sections as seen in CAT 2014. Second, the duration of the exam has been extended to 180 minutes (from 170 minutes last year) with the time split to one hour per section. Third, a basic onscreen calculator will be provided to students. And lastly, a few questions will require answers to be entered directly, instead of the traditional multiple-choice format. These changes are but tweaks that should improve the test-taking experience for students and are not a dramatic overhaul.

“Quantitative Aptitude, Verbal Ability, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning tested in a competitive exam that is objective and conducted across the country” This is how one would have described CAT in 1990, 2000 or 2010. This statement remains the same in 2015 as well. The core tenets remain the same; the CAT has merely decided to use a few of the inherent advantages that online testing offers.

The features introduced this year are not new to CAT. From 1990 to 2012, CAT had three or more sections every year. The two-section format was seen only in the last two years. Previously, we have also had fixed time limits for individual sections (in CAT 2013).

CAT is now effectively three one-hour exams and this is a blessing in disguise.

Counter-intuitively, the time allotted per section being fixed is a boon to students. Although the change in format appears to have taken some flexibility away from students, the freedom of allocating time across sections was illusory anyway. Students used to spend a lot of time fretting about section cut-offs and going for a ‘balanced’ score across sections. The only adjustment students will have to make is to think of CAT as three one-hour exams instead of one three-hour exam.

No place to hide

In a traditional two-section format, students had the option of treating Data Interpretation, Logical Reasoning or Reading Comprehension as less important and ‘hiding’ in the other segments. For instance, one could go in hoping to get 14-15 questions correct in Logical Reasoning and completely skip RC. These imaginary luxuries are out. Students need to have more balance in their preparation and cannot afford to have glaring weaknesses.

Computational pressure is off, which is a big relief and a great leveller.

The one unambiguous takeaway here is that the on-screen calculator is a boon. Students no longer need to worry about knowing 45x35 or computing 34.6 per cent of 72 quickly. Computation speed is not really important in the 21st century, and CAT has quietly acknowledged this fact.

Students should resist the temptation to use the online calculator for every single computation. Relying on an external computational tool for all computations dulls numerical intuition, and, so, the online calculator should be prudently used. My suggestion would be to use it for the Data Interpretation section and not really bother with it for the section on Quantitative Aptitude.

CAT has moved with the times and test-takers should follow suit. The test-setters have utilised technology well and picked a format that focuses on knowledge of the fundamentals and de-emphasises computation-speed. Students should make three small adjustments.

Learn from first principles: Ignore shortcuts, speed-math related gimmicks and focus on basics.

Read, read, read: The single-most important factor for excelling in the verbal ability section is reading comfort. Students with a consistent reading habit have a massive advantage in this section. Students should aim to read for at least 90 minutes every day.

Take plenty of ‘mocks’: Students should aim to take at least 20 ‘mock’ CATs in the new format. They should aim to take these tests from different providers so as to be exposed to different question styles.

The writer runs 2IIM, an online CAT Coaching institute, and is an alumnus of IIMB. He scored 100 percentile in CAT in 2011, 2012 and 2014.

Keywords: cracking CAT, CAT tips, how to prepare for CAT, best tips for CAT preparations, CAT Coaching

How India’s population bulge could become a ticking bomb

Today, an estimated average of 68,922 Indian citizens will turn 25. Tomorrow there will another 68,922 newly minted 25 year olds. Ditto the day after tomorrow and the day after that, and so on till 2025.

That number— 68,922 — is an average calculated on a projection of age-wise population data that was sourced from the national census of 2011 and what it means is this: Every  month, 2.1 million people in India will turn 25. Of them, 1.48 million will be in rural India and remaining 0.62 million in urban centres. What it also means is that 10 years from now, in 2025, there will be 690 million Indian citizens below the age of 25.

By then, India’s population is expected to grow to 1.43 billion and under-25s will comprise more than 48%.

Why am I throwing these numbers at you on a Sunday morning? You, I and everyone else already know(s) that even today India is one of the world’s biggest “young” nations with nearly two-thirds of its population below the age of 35 and nearly half below 25.

So what’s the big deal about 2025 when there will be nearly 700 million under-25s?

Quite a bit, really, if you consider how India’s population numbers rarely make their way into political discourse nowadays, at least not in any serious manner.

Read | Census sees jump in tech graduates, but jobs scarce

No Indian political party, whichever part of the spectrum you choose to look at, talks about the country’s population surge and the immense challenges that it poses.

Yet references to India’s “demographic dividend” are plenty, with everyone from marketers, economists and politicians referring to that big bulge of young people as the real edge that India could have over other countries across the world — many of which (with the exception of some in Africa) have populations that are aging.

India’s present population of 1.25 billion (or “125 crore” as Prime Minister Narendra Modi likes to phrase it in his Hindi speeches; he made 28 references to it in his Independence Day speech this year) and the estimate that it will outstrip China’s by 2022, and not 2028 as was earlier expected, often become a cue for chest-thumping pride, which, if you really think of it, may be misplaced.

Having a big bulge of people in the age group of 18-55 (or the working age group) can most certainly be a potential advantage — potential because many things have to fall into place before it becomes real. More than seven out of 10 of India’s young people live in rural India, primarily eking their livelihood off unproductive farms with little skill or education to be of use in anything other than manual labour.

Read | 127,42,39,769 and on the increase: India's huge population

Those in urban areas are only slightly better off with their overall quality of education making them inadequate for meaningful employment.

Successive Indian governments, the present incumbent included, have tried to focus on addressing the skill deficit in India’s working age population but with limited success.

The thing is that government schemes to make people job-ready such as Modi’s Skill India are slow burn programmes that take much longer than it takes for the population bulge to grow bigger.

You could accuse me of invoking the ghost of Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, the 18th century English cleric, who predicted a catastrophe if unchecked population growth (which he said grows geometrically) outstripped the supply of food (which grows arithmetically) but consider the facts.

India’s population growth has actually slowed down (it was 3% in the 1980s; 1.8% in the 1990s; and is now only 1.2%) but on a base as large as India’s, even 1.2% leads to absolute numbers that are staggering.

Malthus predicted that runaway growth of the world’s population without the resources to feed and sustain it would ultimately lead to a catastrophe as a spate of famines, diseases, epidemics and wars would take place.

Now consider this. If India’s population of young people grows to huge numbers — as it will — but meets up with large-scale joblessness and millions of dashed hopes, and that in turn leads to widespread civil unrest, crime and violence, would you call it a catastrophe?

 Sanjoy Narayan is the editor-in-chief of Hindustan Times. He tweets as @sanjoynarayan