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Thursday, September 24, 2015

Less than 20% of population under health insurance cover, says report
New Delhi:


Despite liberalization of the insurance sector, only around 21.6 crore people ­ less than one-fifth of India's population ­are covered under health insurance.Even among those who have some form of coverage, 67% are covered by public insurance companies, according to National Health Profile 2015, compiled by Central Bureau of Health Intelligence.
The report shows that despite Centre's declining share towards public health expenditure, it has done significantly well to provide insurance cover as compared to the private sector. Public insurance companies have a higher share of coverage and premium for all types of policies, except the family floater policies, where private players grabbed 70% share. Family floater policies allow a family to claim complete insurance benefit for one member, while the policy covers all its members.
Apart from the standard health insurance, around 15.5 crore people are covered under the Centre's three health schemes Central Government Health Scheme, Employees' State Insurance Scheme and Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana.
A low public health spending coupled with poor health insurance penetration is reflected in India's high out-ofpocket expenditure on health. In rural India, almost 80% of out-of-pocket expenditure is on medicine, whereas in urban areas it is around 75%. The doctors' fee varies between 11 and 14% and diagnostic tests account for 7-8% of out-of-pocket expenditure.
In 2012-13, public expenditure on health was 1.08% of GDP, which has remained almost unchanged since 2009-10. The Centre-State share of that expenditure stood at 33:67. India's public spending on health as a percentage of GDP is one of the lowest among countries of South-East Asian region, higher than only Myanmar, and the lowest among BRICS countries.

Source: Times of India, 24-09-2015
Number of doctors on the rise, but ratio to patients still dismal
New Delhi:


India's doctor-patient ratio continues to remain dismal despite availability of more doctors and nurses over the previous years.More than 2 lakh allopathic doctors were registered with state medical councils and Medical Council of India between 2007 and 2014, taking the total number of practitioners to around 9.4 lakh in 2014, government data showed. Besides, number of dental surgeons more than doubled, from around 73,000 in 2007 to more than 1.5 lakh in 2014.
However, despite this surge, there is one doctor for 11,528 people in government hospitals. Of all the states, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra have the worst ratios. The average population served by a government dental surgeon is even higher at over 2 lakh patients but that is because 5,614 dental surgeons are working in government set-ups.
The availability of nurses, pharmacists and ayush doctors have also shown an in creasing trend, as found in the National Health Profile, 2015, released by the government.
While defining health infrastructure as “an important indicator for understanding the health care policy and welfare mechanism of the country“, the data points towards a dire state of hospital infrastructure. Every government hospital serves around 61,000 people, with one bed catering to 1833 patients.
While India continues to spend merely around 1% of its GDP on health, Centre's share of total public expenditure on health has further fallen from 35% in 2011-12 to 33% in 2012-13 and to 30% in 2013-14.
On the other hand, out of pocket expenditure on health has risen steadily over the years, with over 60% being on medicines, both in rural and urban India. However, India has shown improvement in controlling mortality from various communicable diseases such as Malaria, Kala Azar and Dengue.
For the full report, log on to http:www.timesofindia.com
Source: Times of India, 24-09-2015

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

UGC degree viable for central govt jobs



For the nation, which is bogged down from the pressure of unemployment for the over-qualified lot, here is a good news. The distance education degrees, diplomas and certificates with UGC accreditation will be now valid for central government jobs, an official statement said.
“The central government hereby notifies that all the degrees/diplomas/certificates including technical education degrees and diplomas awarded through open and distance learning mode of education by the universities established by an Act of Parliament or state legislature, institutions deemed to be universities under section 3 of the UGC Act 1956 and Institution of National Importance declared under an Act of Parliament stand automatically recognised for the purpose of employment to posts and services under the central government provided they have been approved by the UGC,” read the The Ministry of Human Resources and Development notifcation in a gazette recently.
The notification was necessitated due to several changes in the distance education sector. Earlier, the approval of all distance courses needed approval of the Distance Education Council.
The Distance Education Council which worked under the Indira Gandhi National Open University and worked as the distance education regulator was scrapped two years back and the whole gamut of distance education was shifted to UGC, the apex body of higher education.

Source: Elets News Network (ENN) Posted on September 21, 2015 - 

For an inclusive humanities pedagogy

n academic ambience that privileges sciences over the humanities, English as the medium of instruction over other local languages and one identity marker over the other will create humans rich with knowledge but short on empathy. A more integrated pedagogy needs to be devised to make humanities more inclusive

At the heart of humanities education lies empathy, a capacity to understand others in their own terms and contexts. To this end, disciplines in humanities — including history, literature, philosophy, and psychology — rely on the art of interpretation. An interpretative mind can not only take cognisance of life situations, near and far, but also instil thought processes that can transform one’s ideas about them from within.
So the ‘impact factor’ of humanities, so to speak, is categorised in terms of capacity to transform imagination, reasoning, and thought itself, albeit through somewhat intangible means. Influences on the mind are difficult to quantify, so are their outcomes. This renders humanities scholarship vulnerable to ridicule, neglect, and outright discrimination. This is not all: a conflicting relationship with the science establishment and a confusion concerning the appropriate medium of learning burden Indian system of education in humanities.
Science-humanities divide
Thinking about humanities’s discordant relationship with the science establishment, I cannot resist a bit of a flashback. As it happens now, we high school students herded ourselves into first, second, third, and fourth groups just after our high school board exams. With a shocking sense of artificially created hierarchy among us on the basis of our choice of groups, we began branching out, pursuing courses in material sciences, biological sciences, commerce, and, last of the lot, humanities. Trapped in our shells by a rigid sense of specialisation, we started on our individual journeys from where we were expected to speak in mutually unintelligible languages, chase divergent job markets and organise our inner lives and rate our knowledge systems in sync with the realities inherent in our disciplines. This mentality persists till date, bewitching technologists and humanities experts alike. Consequently, both fail to appreciate the idea that the efforts of a social scientist and a scientist can actually complement each other.
Scientists and technologists work on problems using mathematical and experimental methods. Their vocation is based on the premise that all problems are amenable to scientific solutions. Scientists even aspire to devise grand frameworks — like the M-Theory — that can potentially explain everything about the universe and the humanity’s evanescent place in it.
In pursuing such grand chases and technological feats, scientists work closely with the industrial and military complexes as much as the ruling dispensation. Naturally, they approach existing power structures and controversial debates surrounding them with caution. Also, they tend to stay away from politics, often reasoning that it does not come within the ambit of their vocation.
Social scientists brand such a withdrawal as ‘Rightist leaning’. This is clearly incorrect since a typical Indian scientist’s formative period is anything but politically inclined. If humanities scholars desire a more imaginative learning world for scientists, they should, by all means, push for the same. After all, it is disciplines such as Medical Humanities that have prompted Western medical science establishment into thinking about the patients’ inner worlds, looking beyond their illnesses. Similar feats can be replicated in India too where humanities are gaining visibility in institutions devoted to engineering and technology such as the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).
Of course, mere visibility cannot provide humanities with the capacity it needs to become a transformative endeavour. Perhaps, change will arrive when humanities and sciences are in a position to interrogate each other’s assumptions and predilections. This is unlikely to happen if both the domains merely coexist in our centres of higher learning as two disparate groups.
Is English the most appropriate medium of learning when it comes to social sciences?Yes indeed, say most social scientists. As a global language, English comes with a plethora of means to access knowledge which is not normally available through an Indian language. Millions of Indians, including those from the lower castes, now have a chance to gain entry into elite Indian institutions that were earlier the preserve of a handful of those who had embraced English education much earlier. Humanities scholars, though sympathetic to such liberating shifts, do rightfully mourn the fatal neglect of non-English knowledge systems. They apprehend a wipeout of local linguistic heritage because of English.
Education in English certainly has the capability to instil a sense of complacency, an assumption that that critical opinion in English is an end in itself. For example, Indian social scientists and humanities scholars tend to have a slavish devotion to Western thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. For the most part, they invoke these philosophers as a shortcut and to compensate for their lack of grounding in knowledge systems of regional languages. However, those who favour a pedagogy in humanities that is based on Indian languages naturally brand English education as an attractive pact with the devil.
That said, privileging English over the regional languages, and vice versa, is not going to work any longer. We need both modes of dissemination to handle the students’ capacity to absorb all modalities of learning. To cite an example, as a teacher in an English classroom, I find it hard to talk of romantic love without invoking Shakespeare, Kamban as well as Kalidasa. Though my audience primarily comprises students of English Studies, they inhabit a world where they get to learn about love, and other such fine expressions, through different media. It is impossible to get to the heart of such a diverse learning environment without seeking as much recourse to classics in English as much as those in the regional languages.
In a globalised context like ours, ideas commingle in complex ways irrespective of their linguistic roots. To disentangle such knowledge admixtures, we need humanities education that is rooted both in the regional and the global. With firm roots both in English and the regional languages, humanities education in India will cease to be a field where Western frameworks are merely recycled. Having one foot here, and another there, in fact can enable humanities to have a firmly rooted empowering agenda.
Reinforcing uniqueness of identities
Finally, politics, which sciences ignore and social sciences espouse, is not all that a burden-free exercise. In pursuing identity politics, for example, communities develop a tendency to reassert their uniqueness at all expense. Earlier, the discipline was open to only an elite few with upper-caste affinities. Some of them outside did manage to hook on, but only from the peripheries. With an expansion in identity politics, humanities began opening up to different identities, inadvertently creating exclusive slots for identities such as those of Dalits, religious minorities, disabled, and many more.
Notwithstanding the dynamic nature of these slots, communities with diverse identity markers, at times, subscribe to the position that a right for representation rests solely with them. And they believe that outsiders, no matter how much their willingness and capacity to reach out, will not be in a position to understand them.
Such a worldview is restrictive since it underestimates one’s ability to get into others’ shoes. Human propensity for cruelty is as boundless as that for kindness. And as vast for empathy. Esoteric knowledge, uniquely possessed by one community or one individual, can therefore differ from other strands of knowledge only in kind, and not in degree. However, a trained social scientist may be able to reach out to understand the inner worlds of a Dalit or a disabled person, and yet fall short in accessing something that is completely esoteric and experiential about them. Hence, we need to evolve learning environments that encourage a re-creation of esoteric forms of knowledge in some tangible shape. Fiction, poetry, music, and other forms of human expression can come handy in this regard.
Empathy, therefore, is not necessarily an inherent human trait and needs to be cultivated. Neither an identity slot nor political assertiveness can automatically lead humanities scholars to a mission of empathy. This requires carefully orchestrated pedagogical systems. Without imagination and empathy, politics will become a burdensome and a straight-jacketed exercise.
Twenty-first century humanities establishment in India will have to integrate subaltern or marginalised communities in a conversational environment that is both empowering and soulfully enriching. A symbiotic relationship with the sciences, a rich linguistic heritage, and a pedagogy rich in empathy will help it achieve the goal.
Source: The Hindu, 22-09-2015

Wake up call: Sleep deprivation is a public health issue

One of the more exasperating arts of parenting is that of persuading children to sleep, particularly if they happen to be teenagers. Children have higher energy levels that do not get depleted as they do in adults, and they are growing up with unprecedented visual stimuli thanks to television, smartphones and tablets — all of which make our young a very sleep-deprived generation.
It turns out that this is a grave public health risk. Doctors reckon that inadequate sleep can eventually cause anxiety, weight-gain and hypertension and have consequences for mental health as well. Neuroscientist Paul Kelley of Oxford University and his colleagues have proposed shifting school timings to make up for the 10 hours of sleep that teenagers lose each week.
They have suggested that children aged eight to 10 should start school at 830AM or later, 16-year-olds at 10 am and 18-year-olds at 11AM. In fact, Oxford University has started a four-year experiment with 30,000 pupils to see if teenagers who start school late do better in exams than those who don’t.
The results will be out only 2018, but policymakers in India may consider the case for changing school timings. If the circadian rhythms of teenagers are such that they prefer sleeping around midnight, is it wise to put them through a regime that rudely interrupts them each day, particularly when they have such competitive pressures to put up with?
This will, of course, be a logistical headache. Changed timings would force parents to change their daily routines. The repercussions on public transport in cities would be huge as schools now hire private buses that also ferry office-goers heading home from work. Delayed school timings would also be particularly punishing for school teachers as their days would be inevitably extended.
No one said it will be easy. In fact, Mr Kelley says the 9-to-5 working hours for adults also pose a serious threat to mental health and proposes changes to work timings as well. A public health crisis is evidently in the works that taxpayers will eventually pay for.
Policymakers need to debate these options now, as the world will anyway.
Source: Hindustan Times, 22-09-2015
Sanitation is a right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of Constitution


Right to shelter, therefore, includes adequate living space, safe and decent structure, clean and decent surroundings, sufficient light, pure air and water, electricity, sanitation and other civil amenities like roads etc. so as to have easy access to his daily avocation,“ so said the Supreme Court in a famous verdict delivered way back in 1995 while discussing the issue of Right to Life ­ guaranteed under Article 21 of our Constitution.In legal circles, the verdict is known as Chameli Singh and Others versus State of UP and the judgement was delivered by a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court in December 1995. Sanitation in the above mentioned observation would include toilets.
It was this judgement which was relied upon by the Bombay High Court in December last year while asking the Mumbai's civic body to supply water to “illegal slums“ ­ slums which have come up after the State's cut­off date of January 1, 2000.
The HC, however, did attach a rider saying: “Even if the water is provided to a person occupying an illegal hut, the same does not create any equity in such person or the same does not make lawful the structure occupied by such person which is otherwise illegal. It is obvious that the water supply to an occupant of such an illegal hut does not affect the illegal nature of the hut.“
The division bench led by Justice Abhay Oka was hearing a public interest petition filed by a non-governmental organisation Pani Haq Samiti challenging a circular issued by the State government saying that local authorities should not supply water to unauthorised constructions.
The State had argued before the HC that not supplying water to illegal shanties was justified “as the State does not want to encourage the construction of such illegal slums and people occupying such illegal slums.“ The court, however, observed that there could be various reasons for the slums to come up, one of which could be neglect on the part of the authorities responsible to stop such shanties from coming up.
“There is a failure of all the concerned to prevent erection of slums in the city.There is a failure to take action against the illegal slums,“ the court observed against the concerned authorities. It then assailed the State, “The past conduct of the State gives a hope to those who occupy illegal slums that the same will be regularised by the State Government in future. Perhaps that may be the reason why people are occupying illegal slums with a hope that the State Government will come up with a new policy decision for their protection.“
While asking the authorities to provide water to slums erected after January 2000 the court observed, “We fail to understand as to how the authorities can commit violation of the fundamental rights under Article 21 of the Constitution of India on the ground that providing water supply to the occupants of the slums erected after January 1, 2000, will amount to encouraging to people to construct the slums or to occupy illegal slums.“
Source: Mumbai Mirror, 22-09-2015



God As A `Needless Hypothesis'

It is not necessary to believe in “God to be a good person. In a way the traditional notion of God is outdated. One can be spiritual but not, religious ... Some of the best people in history did not believe in God, while some of the worst deeds were committed in His name.“
These are not the words of a free-thinking rationalist that religious fanatics are gunning for. They are the words of Pope Francis.
More than a century after Nietzsche proclaimed his demise, is humankind beginning to feel that ­ like an adolescent who outgrows childish clothes ­ we have outgrown the psychological, emotional and spiritual need of God?
Socio-biologists claim that religion, and the concept of God not only helped our proto-human ancestors understand the forces of nature, such as thunder and lightning, but also served an evolutionary purpose. Those who worshipped a particular deity formed a clan, or tribe, the members of which would help each other in conflicts with other clans and in the sharing of resources such as food, so as to enhance the chances of survival of the entire group.
According to socio-biology , in prehistory , religion served an evolutionary end. The more cohesive a factor religion was in bonding a clan together, and making it better equipped to overcome competing claims in the struggle for survival, the more effective it became as an evolutionary tool.
From the outset, religions were genetically programmed to vie with each in fierce, often lethally violent, competition.`Stronger' religions ­ which not only had a comparatively larger number of followers, but whose adherents were more committed to their common faith system and therefore to each other ­ prevailed over `weaker' religions which lacked both numbers and unswerving singleness of belief.
Fanaticism, unquestioning and unquestionable dogma, became the adrenaline, the testosterone, of religion; violence, latent or manifest, lay at the heart of all religious creeds.
Spiritual masters like Buddha and Mahavira, Jesus and Muhammad and Guru Nanak ­ evolutionary mutants who saw through the illusory divisiveness of religious barriers to the undifferentia ted unity of the human spirit ­ preached a gospel of oneness.
But their followers subverted their teachings to foster separateness and strife, from the Crusades, to the civil war in Buddhist Sri Lanka, to Khalistani terrorism, to the rise of the IS and the killing of rationalists in India and Bang ladesh by Hindu and Islamist fanatics.
From being an aid to human evolution, religion has become one of the most serious threats to civilisation, a construct based not just on the airy-fairy ideal of a common humanity but on the literally down-to-Earth reality that all of us share a common planet equally endangered by environmental despoilation and religio-political jingoism.
The backlash against religion has been spearheaded by scientists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris who have cogently and eloquently argued that far from being a negation of moral codes and an ethical life, atheism as a form of consciousness-raising is an affirmation of spiritual transcendence.
When the French philosophermathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace presented a copy of his monumental work on the creation of the universe, Mécanique Céleste, to Napoleon, the soldier-emperor asked, why there was no mention of God in the book. Laplace replied “I had no need of that hypothesis.“
Is it time we outgrew that `needless hypothesis'? Those who say it is, can do so with the blessing of Pope Francis.