Economic and Political Weekly: Table of Contents

End of the Road

Vol - L No. 49, December 05, 2015 

• Editorials

The 14-year-long tortured Doha Round may be effectively buried in Nairobi this month.

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Public Service and Salaries

Vol - L No. 49, December 05, 2015 

• Editorials

Too much attention is given to government salaries and too little to government services.

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Editorials Mocking Passenger Safety The response of the Railways to passenger deaths is another committee. Read more	Margin Speak WTO's Nairobi Ministerial Portents for Higher Education Anand Teltumbde At the 10th ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to be held at Nairobi, Kenya, from 15–18 December, the discourse on higher education being public/merit/private good and the covert/overt preparation of the government... Read more
Commentary Great Indian Gas Robbery Paranjoy Guha Thakurta An independent consultant in an interim report has upheld the contention of the public sector Oil and Natural Gas Corporation that gas from one of its undersea wells in the Krishna-Godavari basin was consciously and systematically pilfered by a... Read more	Commentary Maternal and Child Health Inching Ahead, Miles to Go Dipa Sinha The data from the Rapid Survey on Children conducted in 2013-14, released after an inexplicable delay and still in a summary fashion, show some but patchy progress between 2005-06 and 2013-14 in maternal and child health indicators. A preliminary... Read more
Commentary Chennai's Rain Check Fifteen Years and Counting Satyarupa Shekhar, Madonna Thomas The recent floods in Chennai are a fallout of real estate riding roughshod over the city's waterbodies. Facilitated by an administration that tweaked and modified building rules and urban plans, the real estate boom has consumed the city'... Read more	Commentary The Essential Cancer Drugs Vasudha Wattal There are no public procurement programmes for cancer on the lines of those that exist for AIDS or tuberculosis. It is worth considering whether it is feasible to institute a drug procurement programme based on international/national competitive... Read more
Commentary Writing the Present Lata Mani Critical discourse in India has largely been shaped by the social sciences. This article suggests thatthe exploratory sensibility of the arts and the humanities has a specific and productivecontribution to make in the present context in which... Read more	Commentary Double Nature of Orthodox Truths Reactions to the Paris Carnage Tabish Khair In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Paris, a popular left wing argument highlighted the culpability of imperialism in fuelling this violence. This form of anti-imperialism ends up denying historical agency to Muslims, and people in the... Read more
Book Reviews Downscaling of Economic System Nandan Nawn Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era edited byGiacomo D'Alisa, Federico Demaria and Giorgos Kallis, New York and London: Routledge, 2015; pp xxii+220, Rs 2,600. Read more	Book Reviews Chimera of Trans-Imperial 'Imperium' Kingshuk Chatterjee Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire by Seema Alavi, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 2015; pp xiii +490, Rs 1,495. Read more
Insight Civilians Caught in Crossfire Meha Dixit, Sameer Yasir India and Pakistan are parties to the Geneva Conventions which are the keystones of International Humanitarian Law. However, notwithstanding the IHL, whenever both belligerents engage in ceasefire violations, indiscriminate firing and shelling... Read more	Special Articles Challenging Economic Inequality Tactics and Strategies Susan Engel, Brian Martin Economic and social inequality is a major problem, implicated in poverty, ill health and exploitation. Inequality has increased in many countries since the 1980s and it is also widely seen as unfair, yet action against it has been sporadic and... Read more
Special Articles Towards Methodologies for Multiple Objective-Based Energy and Climate Policy Radhika Khosla, Srihari Dukkipati, Navroz K Dubash, Ashok Sreenivas, Brett Cohen Planning for India's energy future requires addressing multiple and simultaneous economic, social and environmental challenges. While there has been conceptual progress towards harnessing their synergies, there are limited methodologies available... Read more	Special Articles Imaginations of Self and Struggle Women in the Kashmiri Armed Resistance Inshah Malik This paper aims to interpret construction of the self and struggles of nationhood of some Muslim women in Kashmir's resistance movement against Indian control , focusing on the phase of the armed struggle in the 1980s. It argues that they have... Read more
Notes China's One Belt One Road An Indian Perspective Geethanjali Nataraj, Richa Sekhani The One Belt One Road initiative is the centrepiece of China's foreign policy and domestic economic strategy. It aims to rejuvenate ancient trade routes--Silk Routes--which will open up markets within and beyond the region. India has so far been... Read more	Discussion 'Outsider, We Love and Fear You' Dialogue with the Nicobarese Ajay Saini The Nicobarese are not against "outsiders" and have a long tradition of embracing different cultures. They respect religious heterogeneity and even though the Hindu population in Kamorta and Katchal is small, there are numerous Hindu... Read more
Postscript Listening Hard Pawan Bali Amidst growing Islamophobia in Europe, the only hope is in educating your own and “the other,” in discovering the rich past of coexistence, in dialogue, and exploring common identities. Read more	Postscript Doing Science Prashant Singh The absence of affordable, high-quality books and magazines on science, especially in regional languages, could imperil the existence of a democratic, rational society. Read more
Postscript Goddess of Love Chitvan Singh Dhillon The Kamakhya temple in Guwahati in Assam is awash in legends and myths that revolve around the metaphorical power or “shakti” within women. Read more	Postscript Mighty Women,Tough Roles Feisal Alkazi Two recent stage productions breathe life into the fiery times and passions of two outstanding, trenchantly independent women, Akhtari Begum and Amrita Pritam. Read more
Web Exclusives Sidelining the Most Vulnerable Climate Change Conference Paris 2015 Darryl D'Monte A lot of hand-wringing and promises aside, COP21 is turning out to be another climate conference where the developed countries refuse to commit to norms set by previous summits. While India has maintained a principled and independent stance at... Read more

How good is your EQ?

Illustration: Satheesh Vellinezhi

TOPICS

education

Studies reveal people with average IQ, more often than not, outperform those with higher IQ. The reason is emotional intelligence.

Over the past decade or so, emotional intelligence has increasingly come to be seen as a critical factor of success on and off the job. In the June 21, 1999 edition of Fortune magazine’s cover article ‘Why CEO’s fail,’ authors Ram Charan and Geoffrey Colvin categorically state that successful CEOs shine not so much in the areas of planning or finance, but in the area of emotional intelligence (EI).

More recently, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on his first visit to India after he took over the software giant observed that, “In the long run, EQ (emotional quotient) trumps IQ (intelligence quotient). Without being a source of energy for others very little can be accomplished.”

When emotional intelligence first made an appearance sometime in the 1990s, it sparked off a significant point of discussion. Why do people with average IQs outperform others with considerably high IQs, almost 70 per cent of the time?

This was an uncomfortable question for many who had always assumed that the sole source of success was cognitive ability or IQ. Decades of research now conclusively point to the fact that EI is the critical factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack. So what is emotional intelligence?

It can be described as a distinct combination of emotional and social skills and competencies that influence our overall capability to cope effectively with the demands and pressures of work and life. It is the ability to understand and deal with feelings, both your own and those of others, in a healthy and constructive way.

Simply put, it’s the '“something” in each of us that is a bit intangible and which affects how we manage behaviour, navigate social complexities and make personal decisions that achieve positive results.

In other words, being emotionally intelligent involves tuning in to emotions, understanding them and taking appropriate action.

EI can be described as a set of emotional and social skills that collectively establish how well we:

• Perceive and express ourselves.

• Develop and maintain social relationships, how we empathise and work with other people.

• Cope with challenges, recovering quickly from stress and negative emotions.

• Use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way in other words tuning into subtle signals that the body tells us.

Performance indicator

It has been proved that there is a huge correlation between success and emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the single biggest predictor of performance in the workplace and the strongest driver of leadership and personal excellence.

In fact, research proves that when tested with 33 other important workplace skills, EI emerged as the strongest, explaining as much as 58 per cent of success in all types of jobs. It impacts almost everything you say and do each day.

It was found that 90 per cent of top performers are high in emotional intelligence. On the other hand, research has also shown that poorly performing or borderline leaders have relatively low levels of emotional intelligence.

As Daniel Goleman says, “A person with high EQ displays outstanding performance throughout his life.”

It’s a powerful way to focus your energy in one direction with tremendous results. Emotional intelligence can be usually measured in two ways: Self-report (by assessments) and performance measures.

There are several assessment methods available. EQ-I 2.0, created by Dr.Reuven Bar-On, is popular, scientifically validated and incorporates more than 20 years of research and development. In fact, he coined the term “EQ” (Emotional Quotient) in 1985 to describe his approach to assessing emotional and social competence.

This instrument or tool can be used to predict a candidate’s likelihood of success or possibility of derailment.

EQ vs IQ

IQ is a threshold requirement to get a job. For example, high cognitively skilled jobs such as an accountant, engineer and lawyer require the basic degree, for which one is required to have a certain level of IQ. But after the initial entry-level requirement, their success in an organisation depends on so many other factors, ability to be assertive, empathetic, collaborative, staying focused under pressure and a plethora of non-cognitive skills. EQ is estimated to account for 27 to 45 per cent of job success.

Other results clearly show that the best performing enterprises do have high numbers of high emotionally intelligent leaders in key positions. There is not only a direct link between having large numbers of high emotional leaders in key roles in high performing enterprises but also low performance enterprises appear to have low emotionally intelligent leaders at the helm. Research by the Centre for Creative Leadership has found that the primary causes of derailment in executives involve deficits in emotional competence.

The three primary ones are: Difficulty in handling or adapting to change, not being able to work well in a team and poor interpersonal relations.

When you see the importance of EI in everyday life, it’s surprising that it’s not included as part of mainstream education. In fact, Aristotle says, “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”

The March edition of the Education Insider mentions that the Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence’s research shows that students with higher EI are better prepared to manage their emotional lives so that they can focus, learn and do their best in school. The tools to deal with emotions that are critical to effectiveness in work and life must be taught early. Emotions are critical and drive learning, decision-making, relationships and overall wellbeing. Students who are unable to handle stress or disruptive emotions might sometimes perform inadequately in academics, and if the school is old-fashioned the student might be branded as a slow learner and has to bear the consequences.

IQ starts developing at an early age of around 6 years and peaks at 17. After this it starts declining gradually. EI, on the other hand, can be developed well beyond 65 years or more. The EQ-I 2.0 can be used to help educate students to be more aware of their emotions and those of others, to be successful reality testers and problem solvers, to cope better with stress, to be less impulsive, to be more positive about themselves, to get along better with others, and to enjoy their lives.

Such “emotional training” adds an important aspect to education in that it would prepare learners to better cope with environmental demands and increase their ability to function and succeed in life.

The writer is an EQ assessor and a coach. Email: ranadesan@yahoo.co.uk

Keywords: emotional intelligence, Satya Nadella, emotional quotient, Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence, intelligence quotient

Source: The Hindu, 7-12-2015

Is India actually free of polio?

Why New Delhi must not bask in the WHO’s polio-free certification and, instead, have an ambitious plan to eradicate polio-like flaccid paralysis.

On November 30, the day India introduced an Injectable Polio Vaccine (IPV) in its routine immunisation programme, stating that it “will be an important step in the Polio Endgame Strategy”, a case of Vaccine Derived Polio Virus (VDPV) was reported from New Delhi. This was the second such case to be reported this year.

India has not reported a single case of polio caused by the wild polio virus (WPV) since January 2012. It is important to note that it also received a polio-free certificate from the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2014, after a nervous two-year wait to establish that the country can indeed maintain its polio-free status.

The polio virus causes paralysis — medically known as an acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) — which is characterised by sudden muscle weakness, and fever in one or more limbs. AFP can occur due to many reasons, one of which is vaccine-linked.

Vidya Krishnan

If this is the case, then is India still a polio-free nation if vaccine-derived polio cases are still being reported? Yes, because WHO certified ‘freeness’ only from WPV, a condition which India still meets. Other cases of the same condition are called non-polio AFP.

Hollow status

Between January 2014 and March 2015, India reported four cases from four different States, of vaccine-derived polio. This is not all. Until November this year, the country has reported 36,968 cases of non-polio AFP. For those who follow the sector, this is neither news nor surprising. There has been a surge of non-polio AFP since India eradicated polio. The number of cases reported in 2012 was 59,436, in 2013 it was 53,421, and in 2014 it was 53,383.

Three years after India reported its last case of WPV, the country has, in one form or another, been reporting around 50,000 cases of flaccid paralysis that, clinically, is exactly like polio, indicating how hollow the polio-free status is.

According to an article in the American journal Pediatrics, there is an undeniable link between the increase in incidence of NPAFP (non-polio AFP) and the number of OPV doses delivered in any region. Oral polio vaccine (OPV) contains an attenuated (weakened) vaccine-virus. The weak form of the polio virus is used to activate an immune response in the body, which then protects the child when challenged by WPV. But when a child is immunised with OPV, the weakened vaccine-virus replicates in the intestine. During this time, the vaccine-virus is also excreted. In areas of inadequate sanitation, this excreted vaccine-virus can quickly spread in the community and infect children with low immunity. This excreted vaccine undergoes genetic changes as it circulates in the community and causes VDPV.

The cases of VDPV are rare as it has to circulate for a long time in the community of under-immunised populations before it can infect and cause paralysis in someone.

Low vaccination coverage

To be clear, the problem is not with the vaccine itself, but low vaccination coverage. That VDPV is circulating in the community that is under-immunised marks the failure of the Central government — which even in best case scenarios has achieved only 70 per cent immunisation coverage, leaving a massive cohort susceptible to poliovirus, vaccine derived or otherwise.

At present, the government’s only strategy to combat the invisible kinds of polio is the addition of IPV. As per the WHO norms, the best way to cope with cases of NPAFP and VDPV is a synchronised switch from trivalent to bivalent Oral polio vaccine, which India has already done. To further prevent the risk of re-emergence, a booster dose of inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) is recommended in routine immunisation, prior to the switch.

A 2005 study in the Indian Journal of Medical Research on NPAFP found that a fifth of cases of NPAFP were reported from Uttar Pradesh. On follow-up after 60 days, researchers realised that 35.2 per cent children had residual paralysis and 8.5 per cent had died (making the total of residual paralysis or death a startling 43.7 per cent. This means that children who had NPAFP are more than twice at risk of dying than those who get infected with WPR.

We may be polio-free but we are reporting the world’s largest number of NPAFP. Realistically speaking, we need an urgent policy intervention to address NPAFP and VDPV with the same urgency and political will with which we addressed the wild polio virus cases.

For now, unfortunately, the government is still basking in the glory of one of its rare public health achievements since Independence, and is patting itself on the back for eradicating polio even while cases of flaccid paralysis have seen a serious resurgence. For a parent whose child has been diagnosed with flaccid paralysis polio or the non-polio kind, nomenclature offers little consolation.

Which begs this question, what is the value of this polio-free certification when nearly 50,000 children fall prey to polio-like flaccid paralysis every year?

vidya.krishnan@thehindu.co.in

Keywords: Polio, Polio vaccine

Source: The Hindu, 7-12-2015

Secular in spirit and in letter

Secularism is inherent in the basic structure of the Constitution. The Home Minister cannot presume to forget constitutional history, and assume that constitutional values such as secularism are just meaningless words to be redacted from a document

On November 26, Constitution Day, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh bemoaned in Parliament that secularism was the “most misused” term in the country. “The framers of the Constitution did not include the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ because these values were (already) part of Indian civilisation,” said Mr. Singh. He was essentially voicing a belief that secularism was alien to the Constitution, and that it was only during the Emergency that secularism stealthily crept into the Constitution. That belief, though popular, is not quite right.

The framers of the Constitution worked against the backdrop of two great instances of human carnage — World War II and the Partition of India. Both were the result of an insistence on distinctiveness of group identities and their consequent territorial demarcations, which excluded those who did not fall within the dominant group. Simultaneously, the process of integration of princely states meant that people not exposed to even limited democracy became voters of a republic that promised justice, liberty, equality and fraternity for all.

The state of the country, as Justice Aftab Alam reminded us in his Gandhi Foundation annual lecture in 2009, was that it was “home to eight major religions of the world. The Constitution of India recognises 22 languages as Indian/national languages. Indians speaking the same language may belong to different religions. Conversely, Indians belonging to the same religious group may come from different ethnic stocks, may speak different languages, dress differently, eat different kinds of food in entirely different manners and may have completely different social and economic concerns”.

In a nascent republic, where power had for the first time been vested in the diverse, heterogenous people of the subcontinent, the Constituent Assembly became a trustee and demarcator of the extent of that power. The document that they produced after two years of intense debate and labour had words of comfort for everyone.

Read: Secularism and the Constitution

A constitutional value

Secularism is implicit in the entire constitutional framework. What does secularism in the Indian Constitution mean? The question admits of no easy answer and cannot be restricted to textual interpretation alone. It is a constitutional value that seeks to manage India’s diverse and plural society, in an atmosphere of cohesiveness of national purpose.

The guarantee of equality in Article 14; the promise of non-discrimination in Articles 15 and 16; protection from religious taxes and religious instruction in state-funded institutions set in Articles 27 and 28; the permission of educational institutions of choice to linguistic and religious minorities in Articles 29 and 30; the promise of equal ballots devoid of sectional preferences in Article 325 — all make for a constitutional architecture which is devoid of any religious preference whatsoever. God is significantly absent throughout the Constitution. “One nation under God” is not the allegiance which the Constitution seeks of its citizens. Believer, atheist and agnostic alike, the Constitution does not differentiate.

There are however provisions which seek to enforce equality within the Hindu religion in Articles 17 and 25(2)(b). Deference to Hindu sentiments on cow slaughter is also provided for in Article 48, as is the pious hope for a uniform civil code in Article 44. Taken as a whole package, the constitutional vision of secularism is one of principled equidistance from all religious matters, while at the same time regulating its practice in a manner consistent with the demands of a modern society. Crucially, in Article 25(2)(a), we can find constitutional permission for the state to regulate or restrict “any economic, financial, political or other secular activity which may be associated with religious practice”.

Thus, it is fallacious to argue that the original Constitution as adopted, enacted and given to ourselves on November 26, 1949, was not a secular document. The inclusion in the Preamble of the words “socialist” and “secular” by the 42nd Amendment on January 3, 1977, only headlined what was already present in the original text of the Constitution. We must also remember that the Preamble itself was drafted only after the Constitution was approved by the Constituent Assembly. The Preamble thus became a one-page mission statement of the republic’s intent.

Read: Constitution is our holy book, says Modi

Debate over amendment

In fact, there is an illuminating discussion in the Constituent Assembly debates of November 15, 1949, when Professor K.T. Shah wanted to include the words “secular, federal, socialist” in Article 1 of the Constitution, the article that now reads, “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States...”

Prof. Shah said, “As regards the secular character of the state, we have been told time and again from every platform that ours is a secular state. If that is true, if that holds good, I do not see why the term could not be added or inserted in the Constitution itself, once again, to guard against any possibility of misunderstanding or misapprehension... The secularity of the state must be stressed in view not only of the unhappy experiences we had last year and in the years before and the excesses to which, in the name of religion, communalism or sectarianism can go, but I intend also to emphasise by this description the character and nature of the state which we are constituting today….”

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, in reply, said, “Mr. Vice-President, Sir, I regret that I cannot accept the amendment of Prof. K.T. Shah. My objections, stated briefly, are two. In the first place the Constitution, as I stated in my opening speech in support of the motion I made before the House, is merely a mechanism for the purpose of regulating the work of the various organs of the state. It is not a mechanism whereby particular members or particular parties are installed in office. What should be the policy of the state, how the society should be organised in its social and economic side, are matters which must be decided by the people themselves according to time and circumstances. It cannot be laid down in the Constitution itself, because that is destroying democracy altogether. If you state in the Constitution that the social organisation of the state shall take a particular form, you are, in my judgment, taking away the liberty of the people to decide what should be the social organisation in which they wish to live. It is perfectly possible today for the majority people to hold that the socialist organisation of society is better than the capitalist organisation of society. But it would be perfectly possible for thinking people to devise some other form of social organisation which might be better than the socialist organisation of today or of tomorrow. I do not see therefore why the Constitution should tie down the people to live in a particular form and not leave it to the people to decide it for themselves. This is one reason why the amendment should be opposed. The second reason is that the amendment is purely superfluous. My honourable friend, Professor Shah, does not seem to have taken into account the fact that apart from the Fundamental Rights, which we have embodied in the Constitution, we have also introduced other sections which deal with Directive Principles of State Policy... What I would like to ask Professor Shah is this: If these directive principles to which I have drawn attention are not socialistic in their direction and in their content, I fail to understand what more socialism can be. Therefore my submission is that these socialist principles are already embodied in our Constitution and it is unnecessary to accept this amendment.”

Prof. Shah’s amendment was defeated but two things stand out in this exchange. First, the economist in Dr. Ambedkar dominated his exchange with Prof. Shah. He only discussed the economic philosophy of the Constitution and did not deal with the questions of secularism and federalism. Second, he felt that what was already explicit in the Constitution need not be reiterated.

Basic structure

On April 24, 1973, the Supreme Court, with its then full strength of 13 judges, ruled in the Kesavananda Bharati case that secularism was part of the basic structure of the Constitution. It also held that elements constituting the basic structure were beyond Parliament’s power to amend the Constitution. The court reiterated this principle in 1994 in the S.R. Bommai case when dealing with the challenge to the dismissal of four Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled State governments after the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

Despite the Constitution’s secular nature being held to be part of its basic structure, matters did not rest. During the Emergency came the 42nd Amendment on January 3, 1977. Apart from many significant changes otherwise, it resurrected Prof. Shah’s cosmetic suggestion and inserted the word “secular” in the Preamble. After the Emergency, the 44th Amendment by the Janata government undid most of the substantial damage achieved by the 42nd Amendment. But it, too, chose to preserve the addition of the words “socialist” and “secular” to the Preamble.

The Law Minister who piloted the 44th Amendment was Shanti Bhushan. His colleagues in the ministry were L.K. Advani and A.B. Vajpayee. Their inheritors today cannot presume to forget constitutional history, and assume that constitutional values such as secularism are just meaningless words to be redacted from a document. Secularism is inherent in the basic structure of the national book, and is beyond the power of any transient parliamentary majority to efface or abridge.

(Sanjay Hegde is a Supreme Court lawyer.)

Keywords: secularism, Rajnath Singh, NDA government, Constitution

Source: The Hindu, 7-12-2015

JNU notifies new sexual harassment policy

Jawaharlal Nehru University, which received maximum number of sexual harassment complaints by any educational institution in Delhi in the past two years, has notified a revamped sexual harassment policy that includes penalty provisions for false complaints.

According to a Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) report, 101 cases of sexual harassment were reported from various universities in Delhi, barring the Delhi University, since 2013. Of these, about 50% were reported in JNU. The DU had not submitted the list of such cases.

JNU has Gender Sensitisation Committee Against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH), a central body which deals with complaints of this nature from across the university departments.

The panel had submitted a draft of the revised rules and procedures in accordance with the 2013 guidelines of the Supreme Court to Vice Chancellor SK Sopory in September this year which has been approved by the varsity’s Executive Council (EC).

One of the major amendments in the policy is introduction of a provision for protection from victimisation of the complainant as well as witnesses besides a penalty provision for false complaints.

The revamped policy also has different clauses for “Sexual Harassment at workplace” and “Sexual harassment in Academic Spheres” and for re-appealing if the complainant is dissatisfied with GSCASH’s decision.

According to the notified policy, “If the committee finds that a complaint registered by a person is false, he or she will be served a show-cause notice to detail the reasons behind doing so.”

“In the event of no, insufficient, or unconvincing explanation, GSCASH shall forward its findings to the appropriate university authority for further action which

might include a restraint order, change in hostel or a disciplinary action,” it says.

The university will also ensure that the defendant does not evaluate the examination or supervise the research of the complainant and vice versa to ensure there is no victimisation.

GSCASH was instituted by the university in 1999 under the Vishaka guidelines of the Supreme Court.

The panel has representatives from JNU Students Union (JNUSU), JNU Officers’ Association (JNUOA), hostel wardens, faculty and administrative staff.

The body has three major functions: gender sensitisation and orientation, crisis management and mediation, and formal enquiry and redressal.

Installation of sanitary pad dispensers, identification of third gender in the university admission forms are among the many key changes brought in recent years by the GSCASH.

However, a group of JNU teachers had last month questioned the working of GSCASH, alleging that its “processes are perverted”.

Demanding that JNU be a “gender-sensitive and gender-just” campus, a group of teachers has written an open letter to the varsity administration seeking its intervention to improve the functioning of GSCASH.

The teachers had also alleged that the confidentiality with regard to complaints was being “blatantly violated”, leading to defaming the complainants and the putting their integrity on “public trial”.

The committee had come out with a clarification saying that “it engages and encourages the community to file such cases in a confidential manner, without engaging unwanted attention and speculation at the same time”.

Source: Hindustan Times, 7-12-2015

Liberation From Fear

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR





Hope carries us even through the worst moments of crisis: it wells up, as though from some deep reservoir, at times when an unbearable world robs us of every motivation to go on living. Hope is also an active principle, in that it sustains belief. By offering us the dreams and visions that will guide us through the present, hope gives us the power to project alternative realities; that the world can be transformed, that it can be conceived differently....It is the triumph of constructive imagination over existential anxieties, over the “machinations of fear,“ as Ernst Bloch says in The Principle of Hope. Hope is not an escape, but a mandate for us to look “in the world itself for what can help the world,“ Bloch continues: “Nobody has ever lived without daydreams, but it is a question of knowing them deeper and deeper and in this way keeping them trained on what is right.“Bloch advises us to nurture our daydreams, since we would then enrich the sober gaze of our everyday lives.Hope is not a simple emotion confined to the individual self -it becomes meaningful only when it expresses a long-range goal that encompasses the fortunes of all beings. Hope characterises the will to live, love, and, most importantly , thrive.In short, it is a refusal to give up on the best in people, a refusal to deny the possibility of one's own evolution and others. Hope allows us to explore the relationship between the envisioned and the possible; it allows us to project ourselves creatively into the world.