Nehru, Ambedkar’s legacies shadowed by political partisanship

In 2012, we did a television show to identify the greatest Indian after Mahatma Gandhi (post 1947). The winner by some distance was Babasaheb Ambedkar; Jawaharlal Nehru just about made it to the top 10.

Nehru and Ambedkar, two great sons of this country, separated by just two years in birth. Tomorrow the 125th birth anniversary celebrations of Nehru will wind down while Ambedkar’s quasquicentennial will culminate in a grand celebration in April next year.

The Congress has dotted Delhi’s bus stands with posters of Nehru, the Rajiv Gandhi foundation has held a seminar on Nehruvian values but there is little else to mark the occasion.

By contrast, every political party is planning to make a big splash on the Ambedkar anniversary. Mhow, his birthplace, is expected to see a massive congregation: From the BJP to the BSP, from the Congress to the Republic Party outfits, every political party will be seeking to appropriate him.

In life, Nehru towered over all his contemporaries, especially in post-Independence India after the passing away of Sardar Patel in 1950.

Ambedkar spearheaded the drafting of the Constitution, was an admirable jurist, reformer and intellectual, but like so many others of the generation was dwarfed by Nehru’s charisma. The first prime minister was venerated by millions of Indians in his lifetime: Chacha Nehru was the original Indian hero.

And yet, the last decade has seen the roles being reversed: Now it is Ambedkar who is lionised while Nehru is subject to calumny.

What explains the rise of Ambedkar and the decline of Nehru after their death?

The most obvious reason would be that Nehru, unlike Ambedkar, is seen to offer a sharp ideological challenge to the Sangh parivar, the rising force of Indian politics. Nehru had a visceral hatred towards the brotherhood in saffron, who he was convinced would create a ‘Hindu Pakistan’.

This uncompromising approach to what he saw as ‘Hindu communalism’ meant that he was bound to attract the ire of those who saw Nehruvian secularism as a wishy-washy commitment to ‘appeasing’ the minorities in the name of safeguarding their interests.

Then, be it Partition, Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir or his belief that “dams were the temples of modern India”, the Sangh and its supporters were convinced that Nehru represented an anglicised elite that was disconnected from what they perceived as the dominant Hindu religio-cultural ethos of this country.

Now, in power, the BJP wants to undermine Nehru’s legacy if only to extract revenge for the years when the Nehruvians dominated the political discourse.

The rise of Narendra Modi has only accelerated this process: The Prime Minister has chosen to deify Patel with a grand statue and a ‘Run for Unity’, he has ordered the de-classification of the Netaji files and has eulogised Lal Bahadur Shastri. But he has chosen, deliberately or otherwise, to ignore Nehru’s contribution.

Even at the much-hyped India-Africa Forum Summit in October, Modi conspicuously chose not to even mention Nehru’s role in furthering India-African amity: It was left to the visiting African heads of state to pay tribute to the Nehruvian legacy of non-alignment.

The BJP supporters are hoping that making the Netaji files public will further embarrass Nehru’s supporters, especially if the files confirm that Nehru endorsed the spying on Netaji’s family.

The second reason for the decline of Nehru is directly linked to the manner in which the Congress has sought to monopolise his legacy. Whether it is the ritual of renaming stadiums and government schemes after Nehru, the Congress has used its long period in power to uncritically examine Nehru and project him as an icon who belongs to a particular family and party and not the national leader that he truly was.

As the sociologist André Béteille has remarked (as quoted by historian Ramachandra Guha), “the posthumous career of Nehru has come increasingly to reverse a famous Biblical injunction. In the Bible, it is said that the sins of the father will visit seven successive generations. In Nehru’s case, the sins of daughter, grandsons, granddaughter-in-law and great-grandson have been retrospectively visited on him.”

Beteille is right: Nehru is seen by today’s generation almost entirely through the prism of his heirs. Ironically, there is scant evidence to suggest that Nehru wished to actively promote dynastic politics: Indira Gandhi became prime minister almost entirely by accident as a result of the sudden and tragic death of Shastri in 1966. And yet those who have an aversion to the ruling Congress dynasty target Nehru for every failure: Be it the India-China war or the infirmities of centralised planning with scant appreciation for his role in institutionalising a democratic spirit based on tolerance and citizenship.

By contrast, Ambedkar’s Republican Party has been pushed into near irrelevance in politics. But his legacy is alive and thriving, even if the man himself is reduced to a statue. The rise of vote-bank politics has meant that the Ambedkarite idea of social justice and equality is a powerful weapon to unite millions of Dalits and backward castes. Ambedkar may have challenged a Brahminical Hindu order, but even the upper caste-dominated RSS has been forced to accept the Ambedkar vision, albeit reluctantly (witness the recent statements of RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat on reservations).

Parties like the BSP have made Ambedkar into a god-like figure; even the slightest criticism of their icon can attract a violent response. No party can afford to challenge Ambedkar’s ideas for fear that it will mean losing a large voter base.

There is no ‘Nehruvian’ vote bank to confront those who today heap abuse on the leader, especially in the Right-wing-dominated social media. But there is an Ambedkarite vote-bank that will probably shut down a social media site that takes on their hero. The two great Indians have contributed much to the idea of India as a sovereign republic. It would be a pity if their legacies remain shadowed by political partisanship.

Rajdeep Sardesai is an author and a senior journalist. The views expressed are personal.

Hindustan Times, 13-11-2015

Keep Children In Innovative Environment For Future Success 

The preset formula for a successful life needs to be reversed, said Dr Abdulla Al Karam, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Director-General of the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), at the second ‘What Works’ education event.

“The age-old, preset formula where you study and work to become successful, eventually leading to happiness must go. Now children need to be happy and kept in a creative, innovative environment for future success. That is one of the keys to innovation,” added Dr Karam.

‘What Works’ – the education event organised by schools for schools – saw an electrifying gathering of more than 600 teachers, school leaders, and educators from all subjects from private schools at the Emirates Aviation University in Dubai International Academic City on November 9, 2015.

The theme of the highlighted how schools in Dubai are creating advanced prototypes of unmanned machinery. The students’ demonstrated their skills in coding, embedded electronics, design, and all computer-related things.

Don’t dismantle, reform

There are few government programmes that excite as much passion as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). For advocates, it is a lifeline for the rural poor. For critics, it is a programme that distorts labour markets and does far more harm than good. In this partisan quicksand, it is hard to find firm ground from which to evaluate the promises and challenges of the MGNREGA 10 years after its enactment. However, in recent years, more empirical studies have emerged to provide a solid foundation from which to address a number of questions.

One, how well does the self-targeting mechanism work? The MGNREGA is a self-targeting programme that assumes that only those who can’t find better-paying, less-strenuous work will participate in the hard manual labour offered under the act. A recently published report (of which I am principal author) by researchers from the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and the University of Maryland, based on the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) of over 28,000 households before and after the implementation of the MGNREGA, shows that the programme is moderately effective in this. Thirty per cent of poor and 21 per cent of non-poor households participate; and 30 per cent of illiterate households versus 13 per cent of households with college graduates participate. However, it also offers work to a variety of middle-income rural households, such as moderately prosperous farmers who can’t find work during non-harvest periods. Since programmes solely directed at the poor rarely enjoy wide political support, this broad participation may be one reason for its popularity.

Two, does it really reduce poverty? The IHDS shows that among the 24.4 per cent of MGNREGA-participating households, the median number of days worked is 40 and the median annual income from the MGNREGA is Rs 4,030, forming about 8.6 per cent of total household income, a small but crucial part of the household budget. The impact of the MGNREGA on poverty depends on assumptions about what workers could do in the absence of the programme. But estimates based on a variety of assumptions suggest that without the MGNREGA, the poverty ratio would be at least 25 per cent higher among participants. These estimates are based on comparing pre- and post-MGNREGA poverty rates for MGNREGA households and their neighbours with comparable characteristics, even after accounting for poverty reduction due to a strong economy.

Three, does it distort labour markets? The biggest complaint against the MGNREGA is from large farmers, who claim it has provided alternative jobs to agricultural labourers and increased agricultural wages. Data show that agricultural labour wages have risen faster than other wages, but it is not clear that this increase can be totally attributed to the MGNREGA. Although 24.4 per cent of IHDS households participate in the MGNREGA, most households have more than one worker, so only 12 per cent of the men and 9 per cent of the women in the IHDS sample participated in the programme. While individuals often worked 30-34 days, at the population level, this comes to less than four days of MGNREGA work per person; about 2.5 per cent of total workdays for men and 5 per cent for women. Thus, the MGNREGA forms a very small part of rural labour and the impact of other transformations, like the growth in the construction sector, is likely to be greater. While this does not discount farmer concerns in areas with high levels of MGNREGA participation or in those reliant on migrant labour, such as Punjab, much of the impact of rising wages is limited to large farmers. The small and marginal farmers who own the bulk of India’s farms are both MGNREGA workers and employers of farm labour. Thus their MGNREGA income more than makes up for any hardships caused by an increase in agricultural wages. Medium to larger farmers — less than 10 per cent of cultivators — are affected by increases in agricultural wages. The recent MGNREGA emphasis towards improving agricultural infrastructure and irrigation should compensate for this hardship.

Four, why are 70 per cent of the poor not participating in the MGNREGA? The effect of the programme on poverty reduction has been limited by the fact that only 30 per cent of poor households participate. In the IHDS sample, more than 60 per cent of interested households complained of not having sufficient work due to poor implementation. This phenomenon, known as work rationing, varies across the country and some of the poorest states, such as Bihar and Odisha, have particularly low participation rates. Since about 40 per cent of the excluded poor live in low-perfoming states, better performance in these states will be a tremendous step towards increasing inclusion of the poor.

Five, what about cash transfers? Recently, a lobby for replacing employment guarantee programmes with cash transfers has emerged among economists. This would dismantle the bureaucracy and get cash into the bank accounts of individuals without distorting labour markets. However, welfare versus workfare is an old debate. Developed countries, where incomes are well documented and the poor can be more easily identified, often provide cash incomes to the poor. Indian experiments with identification of the poor have been dismal failures, leading to enormous errors of inclusion (the non-poor getting benefits) and exclusion (the poor being left out). There is no reason to believe that we can do a better job of targeting subsidies if we eliminate the self-targeting aspect of work requirement. If cash is to be given to all households for 100 days without that barrier, the financial burden would be enormous.

Cash transfers have other unanticipated impacts, and countries like the US, which have considerable experience with cash benefits, have struggled to incorporate work requirements in cash assistance programmes. For example, in the US, concerns about welfare dependence — and strong political distaste for so-called “welfare queens” — led to reforms that required work participation for single parents, with young children receiving welfare assistance.

Given these considerations, it would not be prudent to let our cynicism about public programmes push us into dismantling the MGNREGA instead of reforming it to ensure better performance — both for household welfare and for infrastructure development.

The writer is professor of sociology at University of Maryland and senior fellow at NCAER. Views are personal.

Source: Indian Express, 12-11-2015

Make a structured study plan

Here’s how you can increase your efficiency, manage time and motivate yourself to get the best score.

Seven months remain for the JEE 2016 qualifying exam. Engineering aspirants should be well into their preparations to secure a seat in any of the coveted IITs across India. Arguably, the JEE Main and Advanced exams are among the most gruelling entrance exams in the country. The selection criterion is extremely strict and only the crème de la crème of engineering aspirants are shortlisted for admission in the prestigious institutes.

While most aspirants would have started attending coaching classes many months ago, how many actually have a structured study plan with a defined process and follow it diligently?

Having a study plan in place is the first and crucial step towards achieving the goal of cracking the JEE with a good rank. But for those who do not have a concrete study plan to follow in the next six or seven months, it is not too late to get organised. Now is the time to put together a plan with effective time management strategies, dividing subjects into specific study schedules, prioritising weak subjects and conducting regular self-assessments through mock exams.

Creating a study plan will eliminate any unnecessary stress in the learning process and ensure that candidates are well prepared in the weeks running up to the exam.

A well planned study and preparation schedule should:

set clear, achievable goals

have realistic timelines

prioritise practice sessions with extra focus on difficult subjects include self-evaluation techniques at regular intervals

factor in regular breaks to reduce the monotony and keep stress at bay.

Increasing efficiency

The importance of ample practice cannot be emphasised enough. Solving as many questions as possible will clear all your doubts as you go along. Spend time revising formulas and concepts. As in any other competitive exam, the quality of effort and preparation is what ultimately counts. The number of books you read or the hours you spend studying will not result in much if there is no focus on quality. Studying effectively and smartly is the key to performing well.

So, first understand the basic concepts and then build your way up. A strong foundation is essential for intellectual applications in the exam. More than 20 per cent of candidates reappear for the JEE exam. Armed with the advantage of having attempted the exam before, these candidates can benefit from the experience of knowing the exam pattern and how to approach it and can prepare with a revamped strategy.

But when attempting the JEE for the second time, remember to start afresh. Look back at your previous scores and performance to analyse the mistakes made and the topics which need special attention.

Get hold of as many sample papers from previous years as you can. Solving them will help you evaluate the level of difficulty and improve your speed. It will also help you get accustomed to the exam pattern. Mock tests conducted in the right way are most effective in putting your knowledge to test and give you a fair idea of the tricky areas and what you need to focus on.

JEE Advanced tips

Physical Chemistry - Remember the formulae and practise the questions. Focus on thermodynamics and ionic equilibrium.

Inorganic Chemistry: Do a bit of reading from the start so you are in touch with the subject constantly. Focus on analytical chemistry and p-block.

Organic Chemistry – This also demands constant and regular effort and revision. Focus on reaction mechanisms.

Mathematics - Make a chart of all the formulae. Practise a great deal. Remember the three T’s — Tips, Tricks and Techniques for each topic. Focus on calculus.

Physics - Remember the concepts and practise the questions. Focus on mechanics and electrostatics.

Time management

An important part of the study plan is time management. Allocate enough time to difficult subjects and topics. Do not leave them to the last minute. Equal time should be devoted to learning concepts, revising chapters and practising application of the concepts through mock tests.

Plan your study schedule in such a way that you do not feel burdened and bogged down by your books all day and night. Keep aside time for stress busters and recreation activities. Time spent qualitatively matters more than the quantity of hours that you put in.

Motivation tips

It is not unusual to see engineering aspirants losing interest and going off-track halfway through preparing for the JEE exam. The intense focus and commitment required over one full year of preparation often takes its toll and students get sidetracked by distractions. In order to motivate yourself, write down your goals on a sheet of paper and read them every single day.

Evaluate whether you are on this path. Most of all, work hard and believe in yourself. Take the help of your mentors or senior IIT-ians.

Lastly, remember that your efforts may not get you the rank you desire, but it will give you a year’s learning and experience which will be worth your while.

The writer is a

co-founder of Toppr.com

Keywords: JEE 2016, Competitive exams

Ode to the happy country

One cannot enjoy wealth or social standing if some members of the society remain unhappy. The economy, which is a network of material relations, can always be revived, but the society, which is a network of human relations based on trust, cannot be repaired easily once damaged

In October 1959, when Jawaharlal Nehru had gone to Nagarjunasagar to inaugurate a dam, a worker is said to have come up to him and said in Telugu: “Here you have lighted a lamp.’’ Nehru was so moved that he adopted this as the test of a person’s work and wrote, “Do we, in the course of our lives, light lamps, or do we snuff out the lamps or candles that exist?” There are many versions of this episode. I have chosen to use the one by the historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee. But whichever version you may use, you will agree that this is an intuitive compass by which to conduct ourselves. As we snuff out lamps, we fill our world with darkness.

Pulapre Balakrishnan

Almost half a century before the stirrings of a dam in India, the metaphor of a lamp had been used by a leader on another continent. In August 1914, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, remarked to a friend, “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.” This proved to be valid as a premonition of the approaching First World War, perceptive of the consequences of its savagery. These included the rise of Hitler and yet another world war.

We may want to reflect seriously on whether rising and unchecked intolerance in Indiatoday is snuffing out the lamps across our own country. More than a month ago, at Dadri, not far from Delhi, a man was lynched by his neighbours for allegedly storing beef in his home. Earlier, rationalists and historians who had dared to express scepticism of certain ideologies had been murdered. Over the past few years, violence against Dalits, writers and academics has taken place with nary a response from elected governments.

Protecting the rights of the minorities

However, the statements of Prime Minister Modi after Dadri are worse than none at all. He is reported to have said that Hindus and Muslims must fight poverty and not each other. This is disingenuous, for at Dadri an innocent Muslim had been killed by a mob of Hindus. There is no numerical parity between the Hindus and the Muslims, or between the Hindus and people belonging to any other minority community in India. So, the onus is on the Hindu population of India to make the minorities feel secure in this country. As for the Government of India, to fail to protect the life and liberty of its minorities amounts to a craven abdication of a mandate to govern.

Into the mix has been thrown the observation by Moody’s Analytics, that India’s growth prospects are threatened by social conflict. There is also the trope that calls for peace on grounds that we are being watched by potential overseas investors. This is odd, as we need to maintain social harmony for its own sake, to save our way of life. And, in any case, while a growing economy is absolutely essential to improve our living conditions, a cohesive society may be even more important.

A unique understanding of the value of social cohesion is contained in an observation made by the grand old man of Indian industry. J.R.D. Tata’s biographer R.M. Lala quotes him as saying: “An American economist has predicted that in the next century India will be an economic superpower. I do not want India to be an economic superpower. I want India to be a happy country.” These words resonate today when abdication of governance means that we could end up living in an unhappy country with a dynamic economy.

The point is that one cannot enjoy one’s hard-earned wealth or social standing if some members of the society one is part of remain unhappy. If violence against minorities of every hue were to continue, we would have a significant section of India alienated from the mainstream. The economy, which is a network of material relations, can always be revived, but the society, which is a network of human relations based on trust, may not be repaired so easily once damaged.

While events of the past year or so can leave us without the slightest doubt that the sections who feel most threatened in India today are our Muslim and Christian compatriots, historically, there have been other groups that have long felt marginalised.

Different minorities, diverse rights

While communal fascism threatening India’s religious minorities has received the attention of its intelligentsia, the devastating influence of patriarchy has not done so. Outrage in the ‘Nirbhaya’ case has not led to a focussed attention on the subjugation of women in Indian society even outside of the discrimination embedded in personal laws. Moreover, personal law itself has been exclusively interpreted as pertaining only to marriage.

Sexual freedom is never addressed, thus perpetrating an incredible rights discourse cleansed of the non-heteronormative ‘other’. Majoritarianism is enshrined in Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which disenfranchises India’s gay/lesbian people. Originally legislated by a colonial power guided by Judaeo-Christian values, it has recently been upheld by the Supreme Court petitioned by a coalition representing all the indigenous religions of the country. Sadly, religious reaction won the day, signifying that some Indians demand freedoms for themselves but are unwilling to extend them to others.

Mainstreaming the marginalised

India’s political class, happy to resort to ordinances in the normal course, has revealed its pusillanimity by not jettisoning the Section. It is clear that, as pronounced on another occasion by some judges of the Supreme Court itself, we have to stamp out religion from civil laws if India is to call itself secular. The beef ban, triple talaq and Section 377 are all underpinned by religion.

If we are to live in a happy country, both the social and economic aspects of public policy would require overhauling. Of social policy first. It must exude zero tolerance of intolerance. Instead it has mostly been too quick to mollify the intolerant. But keeping the goons in check, though necessary, is yet negative in its orientation. Social policy must be geared to enabling those on the margins to rise to claim their rightful place.

The religious minorities should be made to feel free to pursue their own way of life so long as it does not clash with the provisions of the Constitution. Historically disempowered Dalits should be equipped with capabilities to participate as equal members of society. The sexual minorities, by which is meant those from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community, should be free to pursue their natural proclivities without harming others. And women need to be brought into the mainstream of governance.

Gandhi was far ahead of the other nationalists in pursuing equality for women but his historic initiative petered out after independence. However, in matters social we cannot leave it to the state to advance the cause of peace. India is fortunate to have a civil society populated by innumerable cultural and educational institutions. Though often beneficiaries of public largesse, some even enjoying the privilege of minority status, they have not always felt it necessary to rise to defend freedom of speech and expression. We would have to retrofit these as fora for the promotion of mutual understanding and citizenship.

When we come to the economic aspect of public policy, the answers to what is needed to make India a happy country are relatively clear-cut and somewhat easier to implement. By now it is close to 25 years since a significant change in the policy regime was initiated. Unquestionably, there have been rewards. We have grown faster and are right now among the world’s fastest-growing economes. Most importantly, having been driven to reform following a balance of payments crisis, the economy has clocked the longest period without facing external stress since 1947.

However, some Indians have done better than others. Rural India shows signs of distress. Urban India is not a happy space as the infrastructure lags way behind the need for it. It is not clear that we are addressing these issues with the seriousness that they deserve. In constantly turning to the rest of the world, the government seems to be suggesting that there is some wisdom lying beyond India’s shores, to be picked up free to fix India’s future. This is a delusion. From social harmony to sanitation, we should now focus on public goods, realising fully well that this is not going to be provided by foreign investors. By bringing us all together, public goods help us see that beneath our imagined identities we are the same.

(The author teaches economics at Ashoka University, Rai, Haryana.)

Keywords: Intolerance, Religious intolerance, minority, Beef ban, LGBT community, Sexual minorities, freedom of speech and expression, world’s fastest-growing economy, 'Nirbhaya’ case, Moody’s Analytics, Dadri lynching

Source: The Hindu, 12-11-2015

Dharma-Dhamma in the Media Age

The positive messages that many devout people derive from their religions are not reflected in the broader media culture

In these tense times when debates on religion address little else but concerns about its abuse, the speakers at the Third Dharma-Dhamma Conference in Indore offered hope that from religion could still come a common sense of civilisation and identity for all human beings. For three days, spiritual and political figures from around the world gathered to exchange ideas about what it means to strive for the “harmony of religions and welfare of humankind.”

Vamsee Juluri

In the presence of Buddhists, Baha’is, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Jains, Hindus and others, I was reminded in passing of what it felt like on festival days in Prashanthi Nilayam, in those days when India was less globalised and the mere presence of spiritual seekers from other nations and religions conveyed the message of the oneness of spirit. The stage at the conference brought together a diverse and passionate set of voices that determinedly rejected the simplistic “clash of civilisations” discourse about religion that has dominated politics and political discourse of late. Instead, an inspiring set of speakers exhorted the audience to consider the deep common core of spiritual wisdom that makes us human, rather than the superficial trappings of religious approaches that make us suspicious and intolerant of each other.

The message of this conference, relevant as it is to the present moment, regrettably seems not to have made any headway into today’s torrid media discourses. The most effective response to concerns, real and exaggerated, about religious intolerance, after all, is not the kind of distorted and distracting drama we have seen of late, but to turn our attention to religious leaders who are extolling and embodying the right sort of message about the meaning of religion. After all, when a nation sees only fear spread across its media landscape, without even an acknowledgment of the moments of hope that exist still among its citizens for religious and world harmony, it can warp whatever possibilities that exist for seeing religion as an influential, cultural source of tolerance and acceptance in the world.

Dominant media myth

As a student of media and culture, I am concerned that the positive messages that many devout people derive from their religions fail to find a reflection in the broader media culture. Given the relative absence of popular education in critical media interpretation from both secular and religious institutions, especially in India, those who believe in religion as a positive cultural resource often fail to counter the dominant media myths and distortions. One challenge today is that this media culture, globally and in India, has veered towards what scholars and religious figures are starting to call “religion-phobia”. Although numerous religious organisations and figures have invested in their own media outlets, the disconnect between mainstream media narratives about the self, culture and nature, and religious and spiritual teachings remains.

The key question that those of us interested in religion as a form of culture, with great potential for human improvement, must explore now is whether spiritual pursuit, even of the well-meaning, interfaith variety, can succeed without a common intellectual front against media discourses in an age of global consumerism and violence as spectacle. I proposed at the conference, as a starting point, that religious and cultural leaders encourage discussion of three broad themes to broaden critical media awareness to include positive religious and spiritual sensibilities.

First, we must critique media narratives about the self. Can we seriously expect children, or even adults, to cultivate spiritual insights about the self as something sacred and inviolably entwined with the other, when the entire media environment hammers home a message that the self is nothing more than the individual, desiring, acquisitive, competitive body?

Second, we must critique media narratives about identity. In everyday life, especially in India, we are accustomed to religious, linguistic and cultural diversity on a uniquely remarkable scale. However, media and especially news discourses about identity tend to barely reflect that everyday sense of diversity and harmony, and play up a sterile, academic notion of religion as identity-based conflict instead.

Narrative of violence

Third, we must critique media narratives about the naturalness and inevitability of violence. Several speakers at the conference addressed the importance of non-violence in their own traditions and as an inter-religious ideal. But non-violence will become more than a mere homily only when it is taught accurately as a form of critique in our curricula, particularly in relation to narratives about violence that we confront in our bloodlust-driven media today. We must learn to identify and reject popular myths about “survival of the fittest”, and “might is right”, and distinguish the artificially bloated world of media violence from the natural world in which violence has a much smaller part than what we commonly believe it to be.

Amidst the despair of our times about religious intolerance, we must also turn our attention to the efforts of people who have not given up on religion as a source of tolerance, peace and non-violence either. The secular solution for religious strife, after all, has had a much shorter history than the spiritually-rooted quest for co-existence that has protected humanity from itself for several millennia now.

In this age of high violence in real-life and in our culture and our thoughts, perhaps we can turn once more to the hope that by conquering our own selves, we can still conquer the forces of untruth, violence, and divisiveness that plague our world, and to our hope that all that is good in nature will still prevail.

(Vamsee Juluri is a professor of media studies at the University of San Francisco and the author ofRearming Hinduism)

Keywords: religions intolerance, media culture, Third Dharma-Dhamma Conference, cultural diversity, violence

Source: The Hindu, 12-11-2015

Odisha innovators bag Nasa award for finding solution to tyre bursts

What happens when the tyre of a speeding car bursts or blows up? The obvious answer is an accident along with casualties as the vehicle goes out of control with the driver hardly getting a chance to react.

There have been technologies for limiting the impacts of punctures, but there hasn’t been a solution to decrease the chances of a tyre bursting due to overheating. However, a latest innovation has not only decreases the possibilities of bursts but has also taken care of punctures, dynamic wheel balancing, increasing fuel efficiency and life.

The burst prevention and puncture curative technology (BPPC) technology invention by TycheeJuno project, headed by an Odisha-based innovator, has found its place among the top ten most entries in the Create the Future Design Contest 2015 Nasa Tech Brief in New York on November 6. Nasa Tech Brief is a joint effort of Nasa and Society of Automobile Engineers International.

Thousands of young scientists from 60 countries participated in the international competition. Eight teams received the awards and 32 inventions found a place in Nasa’s official publication in the special issue of November.

“It has clocked more than 40,000 hours in last more than a decade in inventing the technology that can be manufactured in existing manufacturing set up and can also be retrofitted in any tubeless, self supported or auxiliary supported tyre,” TycheeJuno team leader Sameer Panda, who is doing his PhD from VSS University of Technology in Odisha’s Sambalpur district, said.

Udit Bondia, KN Panda and Smitiparna Satpathy are the other members of the team.

The innovation becomes all the more important in India where 3,371 people were killed and 9,081 injuries in 2014. Globally, 1.25 million injuries and casualties are estimated to occur due to tyre bursts.

The technology has an environmental advantage too. Panda said with TycheeJuno’s technology in 10 million vehicles, reduction in carbon emission due to decreased tyre replacement would be be 200,000 tons of carbon dioxide per annum. “Improved fuel efficiency will result in reduction of 200 million gallons of gasoline consumption which means 1.634 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) and 500 tons of cancer causing carcinogenic lead (RoHS material) can be avoided,” said Panda.

Panda is now looking for strategic partners and investments to successfully commercialize the technology globally to save thousands of lives and decrease carbon footprints.

Hindustan Times, 12-11-2015