Thursday, September 17, 2015
MHRD develops framework to rank higher education institutes -
To give the university students a one of its kind feel of global ranking, Union Human Resource Development Ministry will launch a framework to rank the higher education institutions in India soon. The ‘India-Centric Ranking Framework’ will be country specific such as the emphasis on inclusive education through reservation- to come up with the ranking of the state-run and private institutes.
The ranking will cover all institutes offering courses on engineering, law, management and humanities. The ministry will publish the first ranking list by January-February 2016. The ministry is making all efforts to develop an Indian academic ranking. The University grants commission started a discussion with the National Assessment and Accreditation Council in 2009, but the process was given a push since Smriti Irani came to HRD Ministry.
A committee comprising National Board of Accreditation Chairman (NBA) Surendra Prasad, IIT-Kharagpur Director PP Chakraborty, IIT-Madras Director Bhaskar Ramamurthi, besides the higher education secretary and HRD ministry officials is formed to make the ranking framework. The ranking framework will be based on objective and authentic parameters. Other parameters include teaching-learning, research, collaborative practice and professional performance, graduate outcomes, placements, outreach and inclusive action, and peer group perception. Each of these is then subdivided into 20 sub-criteria to assess an institute.
Source: Posted by Elets News Network (ENN) Posted on September 16, 2015
Outdoor air pollution killed 0.65 million Indians in 2010, says study
Of the 3.3 million premature deaths worldwide in 2010 caused by outdoor air pollution, about 0.65 million deaths took place in India. These deaths were in adults older than 30 years and children younger than five years.
India has the second highest premature deaths caused by outdoor air pollution. With 1.35 million deaths annually, China ranks number one in the world.
A study published today (September 17) in the journal Nature has for the first time taken into account the data from highly polluted regions like Asia for estimating the global mortality caused by air pollution.
At 0.32 million, more than half of premature mortality due to outdoor air pollution in India was from residential energy use for heating and cooking. Power generation was the second biggest culprit causing nearly 90,000 deaths in 2010.
Of the seven sources of outdoor air pollution, residential energy use is the most important category that causes the most premature deaths worldwide. “It contributes to one-third of premature mortality globally,” J. Lelieveld, the first author from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany, said in a press briefing. “Residential energy use is an inefficient form of fuel combustion that causes lot of smoke and is by far the most important cause of premature mortality in Asia.”
Emissions from residential energy use, together with waste disposal and diesel generators, contributes to 32 per cent deaths in China but 50-60 per cent in the case of India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam.
While outdoor household air pollution from solid fuels was the leading cause of mortality (0.44 million deaths) even in China, other sources like agriculture (0.39 million deaths) power generation (0.24 million deaths) caused a sizable number of deaths unlike in India.
Air pollution is associated with many health impacts. The different disease categories include cerebrovascular disease and ischemic heart disease leading to strokes and heart attacks. “Strokes and heart attacks are responsible for nearly 75 per cent of air pollution related mortality, and more than 25 per cent is related to respiratory disease and lung cancer,” said Dr. Lelieveld.
What is of greater concern, particularly for India and China, is that the authors’ estimate of 1 million premature deaths globally due to emissions from solid fuel and also waste disposal and diesel generators is in addition to the 3.54 million deaths per year due to indoor air pollution from the same sources.
According to Dr. Kalpana Balakrishnan, who is not connected with the study and is the Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health at Sri Ramachandra University, Chennai, there were one million deaths in India in 2010 due to household air pollution from solid fuels.
If emissions from residential energy use cause one-third mortality worldwide, another one-third comes from power generation, industry, biomass burning and land traffic. But these have a relatively smaller contribution in the case of India — 90,000 deaths from power generation, 42,000 deaths from industry, 42,000 deaths from biomass burning, and 30,000 deaths from land traffic.
On the basis of model projections, the authors predict that premature mortality from outdoor air pollution could double by 2050 on the basis pf projected rates of increase in pollution and population levels, with 6.6 million premature deaths forecast globally per year, including large increases in Southeast Asia and the western Pacific.
While 1 million lives can be saved every year by reducing ambient exposure to pollution, about 3.54 million lives can be saved annually by lowering indoor exposure to PMemissions, notes Michael Jerrett from the University of California, Los Angeles, in an accompanying News article.
“The improved chulhas, which are supposed to be smokeless, provide very little health relevant exposure reduction,” Dr. Balakrishnan said. “That is because solid fuel can’t be burnt in relatively inexpensive stoves. There is compelling evidence to move towards cleaner fuels than cleaner chulhas.”
Keywords: air pollution, pollution deaths
Source: The Hindu, 17-09-2015
UN must revamp itself if it wishes to remain relevant
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the United Nations. Its survival as the apex international body across three eras - the Cold War period, the post-Cold War age, and the current 'post-post-Cold War' epoch - is a testament to the unique blend of power and morality which underpinned the UN's creation.
Unlike the League of Nations, the UN has successfully retained membership of the nations that mattered in might and capabilities. The design of the UN Security Council in 1945 enshrined higher status for the most powerful countries of that time so that none of them stayed outside the fold and became a systemic threat. Whatever foul play the big powers would commit was thus constrained by virtue of their presence within the UN's confines.
Dismissing the UN as a handmaiden of major powers is an oversimplification. The General Assembly has been a democratic arena where poor and aggressed countries found a voice and a platform to espouse their causes. Once Asia and Africa decolonised by the 1960s, their blocs and coalitions in the UN such as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the G-77 kept naked power games under some check.
Over time, the UN has expanded its core mandate beyond maintaining international peace and justice with a litany of additional purposes like promoting economic development, human rights and environmental protection, all of which mitigate international power hierarchies.
The UN has been a useful tool as well as a stymieing hurdle to the haves. It has been in parts frustrating and uplifting for the have-nots. At 70 though, it is not enough to simply celebrate the UN's continuous existence as an overarching supplier of global public goods. Is this institution, hailed by Columbia University's Jeffrey Sachs as "the most important political innovation of the twentieth century", fit for the challenges of the 21st century?
The answer is a resounding 'No' unless there are reforms in the UN's structure and modalities. The UN Security Council (UNSC) has been redesigned slightly only once, in 1965, and its much-sought overhaul has been stuck in a political and bureaucratic maze with several false starts and setbacks.
The latest development in the UN General Assembly, where a negotiating text has been adopted as the basis for UNSC reforms, is a welcome move that will boost chances of deserving candidates like India finally entering the elite precincts as a permanent member.
However, myriad other lacunae haunt the UN and cry out for urgent attention. A civil society movement labelled '1 for 7 billion' is demanding less opaque and more bottom-up election methods for picking the next UN secretary general.
A campaign for a directly elected 'UN Parliament' through worldwide voting is trying to redress the State-centric bias of the UN. Critics also want a rollback of over-bureaucratisation and desensitisation of UN employees and peacekeepers, who are rarely accountable to victims of their malfeasances.
Keeping its dialectic of power and morality intact, the UN has to undertake revamping and external attitude alternation. The agency for transforming it lies not just with responsible rising powers but also in the hands of the more conscious and engaged people of the world in whose name the UN was founded.
(Sreeram Chaulia is professor and dean, Jindal School of International Affairs. The views expressed are personal)
Source: The Hindu, 17-09-2015
Healthcare Needs Regulation, Reform
The present state of disarray must not sustain
It is an outrage that private hospitals send patients off to die in the midst of an outbreak of dengue fever in Delhi.It turns the spotlight on the absence of effective regulation of hospitals and, more generally , of a functional system of healthcare. India cannot progress without improving the quality and quantity of healthcare. A regulator for hospitals is urgently needed. No hospital should refuse to treat a patient in an emergency , defined as a condition in which delayed medical care endangers life. Any hospital breaching the rule must face penal fines and the staff responsible must have their licence scrapped. Hospitals can recover the cost of emergency care that cannot be charged to the care recipient from its non-emergency services. This is superior to any corruption-prone attempt to recover the cost from the state.Many private hospitals ask for needless tests and procedures and, in fact, link doctors' remuneration to the investigations and procedures they initiate. Such link age must be made a criminal offence, since it amounts to extortion from patients and fraud on insurance companies. The Centre should write a model law for states on regulating hospitals.The regulator must monitor the working of hospitals and clamp down on medical corruption. Prosecution and penalties can be effective only when the economic incentives at work are aligned with the goals of policy . That is not the case in India. To begin with, the sheer scarcity of Master's and doctoral-level educational opportunities in medicine has made for the bane of huge so-called capitation fees. Doctors are under pressure, as soon as they graduate, to generate a reasonable return on that investment. Ethics is the first casualty . Solution: expand the number of Master's and doctoral seats in medicine.
Then there is the larger issue of resolving the conflict of interest between the hospital's desire to maximise its take and the patientinsurer's desire to minimise the outgo. The hospital undertaking to treatkeep a person healthy in return for an actuarially determined fee -managed care, in the jargon -is a workable model.
Source: Economic Times, 17-09-2015
Then there is the larger issue of resolving the conflict of interest between the hospital's desire to maximise its take and the patientinsurer's desire to minimise the outgo. The hospital undertaking to treatkeep a person healthy in return for an actuarially determined fee -managed care, in the jargon -is a workable model.
Source: Economic Times, 17-09-2015
Invoking The Many Aspects Of Ganesha
Ganesha is the swami of Riddhi and Siddhi. Riddhi is the force responsible for prosperity and abundance all material riches and luxury pertaining to the five senses.Siddhi refers to spiritual powers, including extra-sensory perception, clairvoyance, clairaudience, premonition and thought manifestation.
Ganesha is the swami of Riddhi and Siddhi. Riddhi is the force responsible for prosperity and abundance all material riches and luxury pertaining to the five senses.Siddhi refers to spiritual powers, including extra-sensory perception, clairvoyance, clairaudience, premonition and thought manifestation.
Ganesha was born of the `dirt' of Adi Shakti, as she bathed, indicating that all the riddhi and siddhi in creation are nothing but a speck of dirt of the phenomenal force of the Mother. Ganesha is the deity closest to physical creation, the swami of ridhhi and siddhi, which are nothing but maya, unreality. They are temporary and so are bound to leave. Most people spend their lives chasing these, forgetting the temporary nature of these forces and oblivious to what lies beyond ... Ganesha is venerated as the first deity, the first step to the phenomenal experiences of the world of spirit. Ganesha manifested at a time when impurities started creeping into the society. In due course, as worldly desires took precedence over spiritual pursuits, mantras and sadhanas were prescribed to invoke different aspects of Ganesha, to fulfil specific desires in the realm of the physical, the grossest layer of creation.
Uchchhishta Ganapati is invoked through specific mantras as a giver of boons, as protector and to develop mastery over the five senses. Heramba is the fiveheaded form of Ganapati, golden in colour and riding a lion. This ten-armed deity is invoked for acquiring fearless ness and to overcome one's enemies. The Maha Ganapati form corresponds to wealth and pleasures, as he is the bestower of bliss. The red-golden Bala Ganapati is called upon for good health and a bright future. Haridra Ganapati with his turmeric complexion and yellow vestments is the harbinger of prosperity and protection.
The white-coloured Shwetark Ganpati is said to reside in the root of a rare variety of the madar plant, bearing white flowers instead of the common purple flowers. Shwetark Ganpati brings vitality, vigour and strength when kept in the bedroom; intelligence and concentration when kept in the study , spiritual powers in the puja room, bringing luck and prosperity , freeing the house from negative influences.
These potent sadhanas are given according to individual requirements and capacity by the siddha guru, without charging you a fee. When the guru gives the mantra, blessings follow but then it's imperative to balance out that karma, since every action has an equal and opposite reaction and every pleasure has pain attached to it.
The guru guides the practitioner on which mantra is to be practised, for how long, the correct pronunciation and bhaav and the different practices to complement the sadhna. At the completion of the mantra sadhana, a yajna is performed for the siddhi of mantra.One of the safest mantras to practice for manifesting the shakti of Ganesha is `gama ganpataye namah' but this too can be channelised by the guru for desired effects.
The success of the sadhana is indicated by the manifestation of the deity in the yajna agni. Sadhakas or seekers who have been seriously practising the various mantra siddhis, have been known to have had physical manifestations of the gods. Ganesh Chaturthi is the auspicious night of siddhi mantra and mantra diksha under the guidance of a guru. (Today is Ganesh Chaturthi.)
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