Northeast must brace themselves and develop a disaster preparedness plan

Will the earthquake (6.7 on the Richter scale) that gave the Northeast and eastern India a strong jolt in the wee hours of Monday wake up the Centre and states and push them to focus more on following a sustainable and resilient pattern of development in the region? Unlikely. To understand why we are not too hopeful, visit the state capitals in the Northeast. Like most cities in ‘mainland’ India, each one of them — the honourable exception is probably Agartala — has pressed the self-destruct button, exemplified by the build-build-build syndrome. The bureaucratic and popular mindset has become so focused on the need to build big pieces of infrastructure (housing, dams, roads etc) that it has destroyed and overburdened these old, once-beautiful cities.

According to analysts from Manipur, the damaged concrete structures in Imphal were government offices and institutions and not private houses owned by government employees, exposing the difference in the execution of construction work by officials and the way they look after their private needs. Across India, infrastructure development is a money-making venture for the bureaucrat-contractor-politician lobby and the Northeast, away from the public glare, is no different. This is increasing the region’s vulnerability to earthquakes because tremors don’t kill people, buildings do. This is not to say developing infrastructure is not important. However, policymakers cannot ignore the natural risks and have to focus on sustainability and pursue resilient urban development. Take for example, Imphal’s famous monument, the Kangla Fort. It was unscathed after the quake, whereas the famous Mother’s Market, which was ‘rebuilt’ by the state government, suffered severe damage. The government needs to explore the reasons why this happened and learn from the traditional techniques that ensured the Fort’s survival.

The experts of the National Institute of Disaster Management , who have warning of a bigger catastrophe in the unstable Himalayan region, correctly says that the DNA of disaster management has to change, the states need to develop a sound building code and policymakers need to understand the threat of a “natural time bomb” and dovetail it into every plan because earthquakes can have huge effects on the local or regional economy. Politicians also need to be aware of the political ramifications of a disaster. Many leaders have lost their reputation and government to such natural phenomena. The time has come for the Northeast to develop a well-drawn up disaster preparedness plan and a mitigation policy.

Source: Hindustan Times, 7-01-2016

Why Life Is Beautiful

VAMAN MAHARAJ





Life is beautiful. Think of Lake Retba in Senegal which turns red, the spotted lake in Canada, rainbow eucalyptus, glowing waves and so on. And then we have sweet coconut water on the salty seashore, mightily heavy planets hanging in vacuum, hot water springs surrounded by snow-clad Himalayas at Sri Badrinath... the list of wonderful, amazing creations is infinite. We, humans, too are His wonderful creation.We are so powerful that we can create, destroy , and re-create.We can explore mountains, devise ways to swim in water, fly in the air, see and hear what is going on miles away .All humans are bestowed with a conscience that helps us discriminate between good and bad, eternal and noneternal. Although all living species are involved in sleeping, mating, defending and eating, only humans ­ as far as we know -can think and decide what is eternally beneficial to them. Based on this special quality a human can decide whether he wants to tread the path of eternal welfare or sensual enjoyment. There are two paths one can choose from: path of eternal welfare or path of sensuous enjoyment.
The ultimate consequence of following the path of eternal welfare will be ambrosia or nectar. On the other hand, the end result of following the path of enjoyment could be disastrous. When a conditioned soul becomes averse to Supreme Personality of Godhead Krishna, he comes in contact with the illusory energy and thinks all material enjoyments are his only requirement.

WB: India to stay at top in growth

TIMES NEWS NETWORK





The World Bank on Wed nesday projected that India would remain comfortably the fastest growing large economy in 2016, at a rate more than a percentage point higher than China's.In its report Global Economic Prospects, the Bank projected the Indian economy to grow at 7.8% in 2016 and China's to grow at a more modest 6.7%. The world economy as a whole would grow at 2.9% it estimated, a modest upturn from the 2.4% growth estimated for 2015.
All of these estimates represent a downward revision from the projections made in June 2015, but the downward revision of 0.1 percentage points in India's case is less than the 0.3 percentage point adjustment in the estimate for China or the reduction of 0.4 percentage points in the reckoning of global growth.
With Bangladesh projected to grow at 6.7% and Pakistan at 5.5%, South Asia will be the world's fastest growing region according to the report.Among the other BRICS economies, Russia's economy is pro jected to shrink by 0.7% in 2016 and Brazil's by 2.5%, hit by the slump in global commodity prices while South Africa is expected to see its economy grow very slowly at 1.4%.
While making these projections, the Bank report introduced a caveat saying that “a faster-than-expected slowdown in China combined with a more protracted deceleration in other large emerging markets is a risk“. It said this remained a low-probability scenario, but if it did happen there could be a significant contagion risk for the rest of the world.

Source: Times of India, 07-01-2015

Search For A Greater And More Profound Reality

Thomas M Easley





Maya ­ we know the word. We know that it is regularly defined as illusion. But what is the illusion? Albert Einstein believed that a “deeper, more complex theory“ of reality would one day emerge from his equations, that the intuitive reality we define with our senses, memory and mental agility is a reality that is limited by that intuition.The fact that most people believe in the afterlife, andor undiscovered laws underlying reality , confirms our expectation of deeper meaning ­ a greater and more profound reality than the one we presently live in. What we call “life“ by this measure is a mere fragment of living, and why do we persist in living diminutive lives?
Greater vision Wouldn't it be to our benefit to escape maya's tentacled grip and emerge refreshed with a greater vision of our individual and collective potential ­ a visual of life and reality free of contradiction, accident and deceit?
Indeed, it would be to our benefit, but the motivation needed to cross maya's fallow sea is a difficult disseverance to accommodate. To give less attention to who and what we think we are, and more attention to what we are not and can become ­ to wantonly disavow ego myopia and all its attendant identities ­ requires a persistence recognition of identity insignificance.
But no one wants to think of himself as not existing, as having little or no value. And we need not do so because our value is in rejecting the myopic of ego constraints, not embracing them. To think we are given greater value by what we are than by what we can become is an error of perception that can be corrected by minimising fear of insignificance: the fear of individual identity dissolution.
Identity attachment
However, minimising fear of insignificance, even in its most simplified forms, requires persistent effort. To see through ourselves into a world without us in it is not a vision sculpted by the faint of heart. But fear of a loss of “I“ is as much an illusion as “I“ itself. For this reason we can minimise identity attach ment to “i“, to ego myopia ­ we can evolve beyond identity limitations ­ beyond the mechanics of man.
Thought experiments
One method, or exercise, we can use to expand perception, while minimising attachment to perception, derives from “thought experiments“, imagining what ifs. Consider, for example, a counterintuitive point of view ­ that of the human species near the end of its life, eons from today .
After all present-day definitions of humanness are forgotten, will individuals within the species, near the end of human existence, see themselves as human?
Would we define ourselves as human today if we had no need to sleep, eat or remove waste from our bodies, if we were made more of parts made by man than parts made by nature?
Artificial intelligence
Just as we are creating artificial intelligence below us, is the human species creating artificial intelligence below it? Are we that artificial intelligence, the artificial intelligence we believe we are creating? Can we define maya as human intelligence?
Viewing ourselves from a point of view which provides the means of seeing ourselves and through ourselves simultaneously , one that is free of attachment. It is an incremental step away from the oppression of ego myopia.

One in seven Indians at risk of malaria, says WHO report

Ekatha Ann

Chennai:





The World Health Organisation has said that close to one in seven people in India are at risk of contracting malaria.In a report that should worry public health officials, it says India along with Ethiopia, Pakistan and Indonesia account for 80% of all malaria cases worldwide, but the country allocates the lowest funding for malaria control in the world.The report based on the data collated by the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP) says of the 138 million people who doctors suspected to have malaria in the country , 1.102 million were confirmed cases. Although this is 15% lower than the 1.31 million cases in 2011, it is higher than in 2013 (.88 million) and 2012 (1.06 million). Deaths from malaria have also increased from 519 in 2012 to 562 in 2014.
Public health experts say the spike could be because of a malaria outbreak in Tripura and Odisha. Odisha had the highest prevalence with 395,000 cases, followed by Chhattisgarh with 128,000 cases and Jharkhand with 103,000 cases.
Tripura, with 49,653 cases, reported 96 malaria deaths, the most for any state. Tamil Nadu reported the sharpest fall in malaria cases among all states with 22,171 cases in 2011 and 8,729 cases three years later.
The WHO report notes that India is among the countries that faces the threat of ad vanced drug-resistant strains of malaria owing to unregulated sale of banned medication.Experts in vector-borne infections say the resistance of mosquitoes to insecticides is emerging as a challenge.
“Drug resistance was a problem three years ago, when we relied on a single drug. After incorporating multi-drug therapy in our national programme, resistance is not that big an issue.But we still do around 15 studies every year to study the efficacy of these drugs,“ says Dr G S Sonal, additional director, NVBDCP , who heads the malaria control division. He says, however, that re searchers have observed resistance to at least one insecticide, especially to DDT and pyrethroids, among any disease-spreading insect in most parts of the country .
The report also notes that authorities in India, along those in with Indonesia and Nepal, provide insufficient quantities of antimalarial medicines to public health facilities.
The entire malaria scenario isn't grim, thankfully . The global health body's report lauds India for disease surveillance. It also projects that India and Thailand would achieve a decrease of 50% to 75% in the incidence of malaria by 2016. Considering that WHO made similar estimates in reports in previous years, it's too early to tell if the country will meet this target.
For the full report, log on to http:www.timesofindia.com
Source: Times of India, 7-01-2016

Institute of Indian Geographers

37TH INDIAN GEOGRAPHERS’ MEET & INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

Dates: 11th to 13th February 2016.

Theme: LAND RESOURCE POLICIES, AGRICULTURE AND EXPANDING URBAN-INDUSTRIAL SPACES.

Organized By: Department of Geography, University of Kurukshetra, Kurukshetra - 136119 (Haryana) INDIA.

Brochure:http://www.kuk.ac.in/userfiles/file/Year2015/News/INTERNATIONAL%20CONFERENCE.pdf.

Address for correspondence:

Prof. M.S. Jaglan

Convener 37th IIG Meet, 2016, Department of Geography,l
Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra -136119, Haryana, INDIA.

Contact: +91-9416275401; +91-9255156770

E-mail: iig37kuk@gmail.com

UPA flagship scheme MGNREGA back on track, job numbers hit five-year-high 

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the flagship welfare programme of the previous UPA government, appears to be staging a revival of sorts. And this turnaround is being attributed mainly to better monitoring by the Centre and timely release of funds.

The July-September quarter witnessed 45.82 crore person-days of employment generated under MGNREGA. This was the highest for the quarter in the last five years. “It was more than even the 42.40 crore person-days during July-September 2012, which also happened to be a not-so-good monsoon year,” Rural Development Ministry officials told The Indian Express.

According to officials, the last quarter (October-December), too, posted a similar trend. “In October alone, we provided 14.09 crore person-days employment, a record for the month. The data for the entire quarter is still being uploaded in our MIS (management information system) portal, but our expectation of the total person-days of work during October-December is 47 crore. That will again be a five-year-high for the quarter,” they said.

The seeming revival over the last two quarters reverses the trend of declining employment under MGNREGA seen during the first year of the Modi government

In 2014-15, the programme — which provides 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work — generated only 166.32 crore person-days employment, compared to 221.15 crore and 230.33 crore in the preceding two fiscals and the peak 283.59 crore achieved in 2009-10 (a drought year). Also, the average days of employment provided per household dropped to 40.17 in 2014-15, from 45.98 in 2013-14, 46.19 in 2012-13 and 53.19 days in the best performance year of 2009-10. “This year, we have already done 37.5 days, which should cross 50 by March-end,” the officials claimed. They attributed the better numbers this year mainly to better monitoring by the Centre and timely release of funds. “In 2014-15, most states, including those implementing the programme well, ran out of funds by October. When supply of funds dried up, leading to delayed payment of wages, there was less demand from the gram panchayats as well to take up works even in a drought year,” the officials admitted. That has changed this year, with the proportion of delayed payments — i.e. beyond 15 days after the closure of muster rolls — falling to 53 per cent from 72 per cent in 2014-15. Development economists pointed out that MGNREGA’s apparent turnaround in the last two quarters was a result of political and civil society pressure, forcing the government to release funds. “The increased person-days employment numbers dispels the myth of low demand for work. The truth is that MGNREGA had increasingly become supply-driven, though it is in spirit and letter demand-driven. This was even more so after this government took over, with everybody from Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje to Nitin Gadkari (the then Rural Development Minister) and Modi himself sending out signals of downsizing MGNREGA”, said Reetika Khera, associate professor at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Incidentally, of the 137 crore person-days MGNREGA employment generated so far in 2015-16 (based on latest uploaded data), more than half has been accounted for by five states: Tamil Nadu (24.9 crore), Andhra Pradesh (14.6 crore), Rajasthan (14.3 crore), West Bengal (13.6 crore) and Uttar Pradesh (10.9 crore). On the other hand, the states worst affected by drought — Maharashtra (4.5 crore), Karnataka (2.5 crore) or even Madhya Pradesh (6.6 crore) and Chhattisgarh (3.7 crore) — haven’t registered any significant uptake in MGNREGA works. “We have now moved to linking fund releases to performance, measured in terms of both person-days generation and quality of asset creation. The states doing well on these counts will get MGNREGA money, which will otherwise simply be parked for earning interest,” officials said. -

Source: Indian Express, 6-01-2015