Monday, October 05, 2015
5 things to know about the Nobel Prizes
The beginning of October means Nobel Prize time, when committees in Stockholm and Oslo announce the winners of what many consider the most prestigious awards in the world.
This year’s Nobel season kicks off on Monday with the medicine award being announced for the 106th time.
Daily announcements will follow during the week with physics on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and probably, though the date has not been confirmed, literature on Thursday. The 2015 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and, finally, the economics award on October 12, 2015.
Each prize is worth 8 million Swedish kronor ($960,000) and will be handed out with a diploma and gold medal on December 10.
Who created the Nobel Prizes?
The prizes in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace were established by the will of Alfred Nobel, a wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite. The first awards were handed out in 1901, five years after Nobel’s death.
The economics award officially known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel wasn’t created by Nobel, but by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.
Though it’s handed out along with the other prizes and the criteria for selecting winners are the same, it’s not a Nobel Prize in the same sense.
Secrecy
The Nobel statutes prohibit the judges from discussing their deliberations for 50 years. So it’s probably going to be a while before we know for sure how judges made their picks for 2015 and who was on their short lists.
The judges try hard to avoid dropping hints about the winners before the announcements, but sometimes word gets out. Last year, there was a sudden surge in betting on literature winner Patrick Modiano in the days leading up to the announcement.
The peace prize committee has accused its former secretary of breaching the code of silence in a new book, which describes some of the discussions leading up to the awards during his 25-year tenure.
Who can nominate?
Thousands of people around the world are eligible to submit nominations for the Nobel Prizes. They include university professors, lawmakers, previous Nobel laureates and the committee members themselves.
Though the nominations are kept secret for 50 years, those who submit them sometimes announce their suggestions publicly, particularly for the Nobel Peace Prize.
That’s how we know that German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Pope Francis, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi are among this year’s 273 nominees.
The Norwegian connection
The Nobel Peace Prize is presented in Norway while the other awards are handed out in Sweden. That’s how Alfred Nobel wanted it.
Sometimes relations have been tense between the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, which manages the prize money, and the fiercely independent peace prize committee in Oslo.
What does it take to win a Nobel?
Patience, for one. Scientists often have to wait decades to have their work recognized by the Nobel judges, who want to make sure that any breakthrough withstands the test of time.
That’s a departure from Nobel’s will, which states that the awards should endow “those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind”.
The peace prize committee is the only one that regularly rewards achievements made in the previous year. According to Nobel’s wishes, that prize should go to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.
Source: The Hindu, 5-10-2015
Digital India needs to go local
Digital infrastructure may not be of much help in addressing governance and development concerns unless it is integrated into the wider structural and institutional reforms
Digital India is the flavour of the season, and not without any reason.
Digital technologies have permeated into more and more aspects of our private and public life spaces. A lot of us increasingly depend on them to order groceries, book a taxi ride or train and flight tickets, file tax returns and apply for a passport. The entire basket of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), which include laptops, tablets, smartphones, broadband and Wi-Fi connectivity, are seen to represent a new wave of general purpose technologies, similar to what electricity was in the early 20th century and steam engines were in the early 19th century. On the other hand, India, home to the second largest population in the world and witness to relatively higher economic growth rates in the past few years, is seen as an important market, still untapped in terms of usage of digital technologies. All this leads up to the, not so unsurprising, optimism and euphoria that engulfs our current set of policy makers and large global corporates that sell and, often control, important components of these digital technologies.
Flawed picture
The India story of the past couple of decades, however, is seen to have its own set of blemishes. There are many within the country, and outside, who are growing increasingly impatient with the reality that we are not anywhere close to global benchmarks when it comes to the state of our basic physical infrastructure — roads, water and electricity and also those related to sanitation, public health and primary education.
The India story of the past couple of decades, however, is seen to have its own set of blemishes. There are many within the country, and outside, who are growing increasingly impatient with the reality that we are not anywhere close to global benchmarks when it comes to the state of our basic physical infrastructure — roads, water and electricity and also those related to sanitation, public health and primary education.
Amit Prakash
The frustration manifests more amongst those who see themselves connected, or having a potential to connect, to important global networks and supply chains, such as, for software and financial services and commodity trading, and for whom the aforesaid blemishes negatively affect their bargaining power vis-Ã -vis other constituents of these networks.
There is another set of people who could be equally concerned with the state of basic infrastructure but they may look at the solution more from its utility in addressing the inequities, some of them historical, in access to and distribution of resources. This set may not be as impatient given that the change they look forward to is also with respect to deep-seated exploitative relations and institutions in our society.
The former group of people would see Government of India’s flagship Digital India programme as an opportunity to include digital infrastructure in the same category of public goods as roads and electricity and, hence, push for laying more broadband cables, creating more Wi-Fi hot-spots and freeing up more spectrum for commercial data exchange. The assumptions that are carried here are somewhat similar to trickle-down economics: that availability of a digital infrastructure — in the present instant, smartphones and data connectivity, and also unique digital identity — with every citizen of the country will lead an ‘invisible hand’ to direct its use for addressing the governance and development challenges we face as a nation.
Framers of development policies worldwide, and in India, have realized that an explicit recognition of the pathways through which the poor and marginalized contribute and benefit in the economic growth process is important. The entire human development discourse derives from such an understanding. More recently, it has also played a key role in informing the newly formulated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly during the SDG summit in New York on September 25, 2015. The event was attended by over 150 heads of states, including the Indian Prime Minister, though the relevance of it was overshadowed by his visits to corporate headquarters in California.
While one cannot deny the importance of digital infrastructure, such as the ones mentioned above, in the present age, it is equally important to understand that they may not be of much help in addressing governance and development concerns unless they are integrated into a wide reforms agenda, which could often involve not-so-popular, structural and institutional change. One such could be the long-called-for, real and effective devolution of functions, finances and functionaries to local government bodies, which has, in most instances, continued as a mere lip-service even after Constitutional Amendments of the early 1990s.
Sorry record
The Indian experience of using ICTs in governance for the past 15 years is not something that we can be proud of — amongst 193 countries, India ranks 118 on the e-Government Development Index as per the United Nations e-Government Survey 2014. Many studies have been conducted by researchers from reputed academic institutes in India and across the world on the problems that plague Indian experiments in using ICTs for governance and development, and they point to the need of bringing a greater understanding of local contextual realities into project designs.
The Indian experience of using ICTs in governance for the past 15 years is not something that we can be proud of — amongst 193 countries, India ranks 118 on the e-Government Development Index as per the United Nations e-Government Survey 2014. Many studies have been conducted by researchers from reputed academic institutes in India and across the world on the problems that plague Indian experiments in using ICTs for governance and development, and they point to the need of bringing a greater understanding of local contextual realities into project designs.
Amidst the ongoing endorsements by global corporate heads of the Digital India programme, we should not forget that unless use of digital technologies is appealing and makes sense to an Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM) in a village health sub-centre, an anganwadi worker, a teacher in a government primary school, a village accountant in the revenue department, an agriculture assistant, a fair-price shop owner and a food inspector and similar such frontline service providers, who are the face of the state for many of our fellow citizens, the promise of leveraging digital technologies for achieving sustainable development may continue to elude us. I hope the torchbearers of the Digital India programme will also attach equal importance to this latter constituency as they march forward in their journey of integrating digital technologies in Indian life spaces.
(Amit Prakash is Consulting Faculty and Convener, Centre for IT and Public Policy at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bengaluru)
Keywords: Digital India, digital infrastructure, WiFi connectivity, ICT, Local technology, Sustainable Development Goals, rural connectivity, technology in everyday life, technology in Indian life spaces, Silicon Valley, Narendra Modi
Source: The Hindu, 5-10-2015
How urban farming can make our cities more sustainable
The condominium where I live in Gurgaon was recently awarded a certificate of appreciation from the city’s municipal corporation for voluntarily promoting natural resource conservation by reusing, recycling and reducing solid waste; and taking steps to prevent pollution and to try to achieve a zero-waste goal. It certainly isn’t the only condo or community in that city or for that matter in any of the other big Indian cities where residents are doing things such as those. In otherwise dystopian Gurgaon — where the roads, public amenities, the law & order situation, water and power supply are in a shambles — it is the citizens groups that offer the rare glimmer of hope.
It’s a visible trend. Whether it is by trying to ease the traffic gridlock by designating a weekly car-free day; putting up rain and waste water recycling units inside their gated communities; or, solar power facilities that can take care of a condo’s need for electricity in common spaces, urban citizens are increasingly taking voluntary action to make things better. Up next could be farming. Yes. Urban farming. And here’s why you shouldn’t laugh that idea out the door. Urban farming is the practice of growing crops, vegetables, herbs and plants within and on the periphery of cities and, unlike rural farming, it can complement and be an integral part of a city and fit neatly into its ecological system. Such farming can use a city’s solid waste that is compostable; its treated effluent water that can be used for irrigation; provide self-sufficiency and, at a stretch, by integrating with local small retailers and transporters, even provide a viable small business model. Besides, it can make use of urban spaces that are commonly underutilised or unproductive in cities — think terraces and balconies of condominiums and other residential buildings; and rooftops of schools, office buildings and commercial complexes.
That it’s not entirely a mad-hatter concept is borne out by the fact that it’s really happening. In Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore and other cities, small groups of citizens are increasingly taking to urban farming. There are organisations too that facilitate, guide and help city folk to start growing vegetables, herbs, fruit and plants organically — a trend that is well-established in many global cities and now taking root in India. There are many benefits of urban farming that can accrue to a city and its people and they span a spectrum of economic outcomes. Besides providing communities with control and self-reliance in their food needs, it can generate additional job opportunities to migrants, and provide a fillip to neighbourhood retail.
The benefits depend on which part of the (erm!) food chain you look at. At the top end, middle and upper middle-class urbanites are getting more discerning about what they eat: Is it organic and pesticide-free? Is it locally produced and fresh? Is it seasonal or not? And so on. Local community-driven farming gives more control over aspects such as those. But the real benefits could be at the lower end of the chain.
For a city’s poor who live in its slums and where there are yawning gaps between dietary needs and what is affordable. Converting dumps near slums into community farms that organically produce vegetables, fruit and even crops can transform the lives of slum-dwellers. Early this year, Worldwatch Institute, a research organisation, published an article on its website that described how a former dumping site in Mumbai’s Ambedkar Nagar slum has now been converted into a community garden. And of how some slum dwellers in Cuttack have begun relying on organic farming to grow their own vegetables and sell surplus to local markets.
Undoubtedly, there are challenges to urban farming. Chief among them is land, the most acutely finite resource in Indian cities that are typically densely populated. But there could be innovative solutions. And as the Mumbai slum example shows, it is possible to convert waste dumping sites into productive farms. Rooftops and unused institutional land — even universities and institutes inside Indian cities have sprawling campuses and are profligate when it comes to land — could be another opportunity to explore. There will be other challenges too — of getting people to see the benefits of urban farming; of getting communities to work together; and of co-opting local businesses. The good news from many Indian cities is that all of this has already started to happen.
Sanjoy Narayan is the editor-in-chief of Hindustan Times, he tweets as @sanjoynarayan.
Source: Hindustan Times, 5-10-2015
Remove All Masks
GURUDEVSHRI RAKESHBHAI
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The seeker must first look within and recognise his Self.He who is ready to give up wearing masks alone can go within and realise what he is.One may visit a temple regu larly and not be a lover of God.He may offer charity; yet, he may be greedy . He may observe fasts, but his desire for taste may not have decreased at all.He may be undertaking pilgrimages; but can discover truth only when he looks within.
You hide so much of yourself from yourself that you are not able to realise what you truly are. Bring yourself into the light of awareness; this unmasking marks the beginning of your spiritual pilgrimage.As you become familiar with the reality of your own Self, your life begins to change radically. It becomes difficult to live with your flaws; you put in sincere effort to get rid of them. The imperfections last only because you protect and keep them hidden.
Become absolutely clear about what you have and what you do not. Only you can gain this insight into yourself.When you acquire the openness to accept your mistakes, you are a seeker of liberation.This will require great courage on your part because your ego will not like to get eliminated; it will stir up a mutiny .
But as you become pure due to impartial introspection and acceptance of your weaknesses, you will experience extraordinary silence, peace, fearlessness and joy within. The seed of deep yearning for liberation will sprout; your life will evolve and become filled with the Divine.
You hide so much of yourself from yourself that you are not able to realise what you truly are. Bring yourself into the light of awareness; this unmasking marks the beginning of your spiritual pilgrimage.As you become familiar with the reality of your own Self, your life begins to change radically. It becomes difficult to live with your flaws; you put in sincere effort to get rid of them. The imperfections last only because you protect and keep them hidden.
Become absolutely clear about what you have and what you do not. Only you can gain this insight into yourself.When you acquire the openness to accept your mistakes, you are a seeker of liberation.This will require great courage on your part because your ego will not like to get eliminated; it will stir up a mutiny .
But as you become pure due to impartial introspection and acceptance of your weaknesses, you will experience extraordinary silence, peace, fearlessness and joy within. The seed of deep yearning for liberation will sprout; your life will evolve and become filled with the Divine.
Green In India
Government lays out ambitious plan to balance economic growth with emissions reduction
With the UNFCCC Paris summit fast approaching, India has finally submitted its post-2020 Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) target towards climate change mitigation. Accordingly , it has promised to lower the emission intensity of GDP by 33-35% from 2005 levels in 2030. Simply put, India has committed to lowering its greenhouse gas emission per unit of economic activity . This is expected to cost $2.5 trillion over the next 15 years and India expects to receive both financial and technological help from developed countries to meet its self-imposed goal.That said, the goal set by government is in the right direction. The emission intensity reduction target is achievable as India has been making steady progress towards a low-carbon growth path. Between 2005 and 2010, emission intensity of GDP declined by 12% on account of improvements in technology and legal changes brought about to raise emission standards across all areas.
This trend is set to continue with Indian cities expected to shift in steps to cleaner fuel over the next few years.
Of course, it's important for future governments to stick to this path and not give in to populist demands. Plus, combating climate change through the energy efficiency route would require India to not deviate from its plan of generating 40% of electricity (installed capacity) through non-fossil fuel sources. Government intends to dramatically ramp up nuclear, wind and solar capacity with the latter, in particular, increasing from 4GW to 100GW over the next seven years.
However, challenges abound. While nuclear power is bogged down by liability laws, wind and solar power generation is intermittent and presents transmission and storage problems. For these to be ramped up huge investments are required in smart grids and integrated transmission networks. This is where foreign aid in the form of soft loans and technology transfers comes in. Developed countries have a historical responsibility to vacate carbon space and help developing countries like India meet emission mitigation targets without compromising on their development needs. Besides, India's per capita emission continues to be far lower than the developed world and industrialised middle income nations such as China. In this scenario India's INDCs are fair and ambitious, allowing New Delhi to play a pivotal role in climate change mitigation while ensuring a decent standard of living for its citizens.
This trend is set to continue with Indian cities expected to shift in steps to cleaner fuel over the next few years.
Of course, it's important for future governments to stick to this path and not give in to populist demands. Plus, combating climate change through the energy efficiency route would require India to not deviate from its plan of generating 40% of electricity (installed capacity) through non-fossil fuel sources. Government intends to dramatically ramp up nuclear, wind and solar capacity with the latter, in particular, increasing from 4GW to 100GW over the next seven years.
However, challenges abound. While nuclear power is bogged down by liability laws, wind and solar power generation is intermittent and presents transmission and storage problems. For these to be ramped up huge investments are required in smart grids and integrated transmission networks. This is where foreign aid in the form of soft loans and technology transfers comes in. Developed countries have a historical responsibility to vacate carbon space and help developing countries like India meet emission mitigation targets without compromising on their development needs. Besides, India's per capita emission continues to be far lower than the developed world and industrialised middle income nations such as China. In this scenario India's INDCs are fair and ambitious, allowing New Delhi to play a pivotal role in climate change mitigation while ensuring a decent standard of living for its citizens.
Times of India, 5-10-2015
UGC asks univs to churn out graduates `ready for industry'
Chethan Kumar
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Bengaluru:
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The University Grants Commission (UGC) has asked all registered varsities to set up `University-Industry Inter Linkage Centres' (UILCs) in order to launch integrated initiatives that allow colleges to produce “well-groomed, tailor-made“ graduates for industry .From setting up industryacademia clusters, live-workplay campuses and career-oriented courses to launching startups, entrepreneurship development centres and joint research, UGC has mooted a series of initiatives that UILCs will implement. Incentives like land and tax benefits will be part of the scheme.
An elaborate plan on what universities can offer the world of industry has been discussed in the guidelines for UILCs. It will include teacher training, faculty orientation and joint research programmes.
While the industry has long complained about the problem of employability , some experts point out that turning higher education institutions into finishing schools is not a solution.
Former Bangalore University VC M S Thimmappa welcomed the move, but cautioned, “We must be wary .Turning our institutions into finishing schools will be disastrous.“ “Not everything can happen through control.Industry-academia interaction is welcome but there must be a limit to the government's role,“ International Institute of Information Technology's Bengaluru director S Sadagopan said.
For the full report, log on to http:www.timesofindia.com
An elaborate plan on what universities can offer the world of industry has been discussed in the guidelines for UILCs. It will include teacher training, faculty orientation and joint research programmes.
While the industry has long complained about the problem of employability , some experts point out that turning higher education institutions into finishing schools is not a solution.
Former Bangalore University VC M S Thimmappa welcomed the move, but cautioned, “We must be wary .Turning our institutions into finishing schools will be disastrous.“ “Not everything can happen through control.Industry-academia interaction is welcome but there must be a limit to the government's role,“ International Institute of Information Technology's Bengaluru director S Sadagopan said.
For the full report, log on to http:www.timesofindia.com
Source: Times of India, 5-10-2015
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