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

OMG! MOMENT RETURNS TO INDIAN SCIENCE CONGRESS - `Lord Shiva, a great environment guru'

Mihika Basu TWEETS @mihikabMIRROR MIHIKA BASU





This is the gist of a paper that will be presented today. Last year, authorities had promised not to allow throwback to Hindu mythological claptrap in future

At a time when world leaders are furiously pushing for the use of science and technology to counter climate change, a cer tain section of academicians are looking towards Indian mythology to spread the message of sustainability.“Lord Shiva as a great environmentalist in the world,“ is the title of a paper that will be presented at the 103rd Indian Science Congress at the University of Mysore on Wednesday. According to the two-page abstract of the paper, accessed by Mirror, followers of Hinduism understood the importance of a clean environment well in advance.
The paper is part of a symposium on air quality in major cities in terms of organic and inorganic pollutants.
The claims by the writer, Akhilesh K Pandey, chairman of MP Private University Regulatory Commission, Bhopal, may not go down well with modern scientists, who base their works on evidence and facts.
Pandey's paper draws inspiration from the rudraksha necklace on Lord Shiva. “The word rudra means strict or uncompromising and aksha means eye. It illustrates the fact that Shiva is firm about his cosmic laws. Thus we can say that ancient Indians were very much aware about ecology and sustainability. Therefore, the objective of the article is to create awareness about the conservation of environment without causing harm to others,“ it says. From river Ganga to tiger skin, the paper tries to explain more about the God.
Last year, a paper presented at the Congress held in Mumbai sparked outrage among the scientific community after it claimed the science of flying a plane had been recorded by Maharishi Bharadwaj, long before Wright brothers. Facing criticism, the authorities had promised not to allow such papers.
A MEATY REMEDY TO MALNOURISHMENT
Experts at the 103rd Indian Science Congress have said that there is no denying the fact that non-vegetarian food does ensure significantly better nutritional intake than that of a vegetarian.
They said meat and fish consumption could be the answer to dealing with 194.6 million people in India who are undernourished ­ with 51 per cent of women in the age-group of 15-55 being anaemic and 44 per cent of children underweight as per a 2015 report from Food & Agricultural Organisation.
National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI) director Dr AK Srivastava and NDRI senior scientist (animal reproduction) A Kumaresan said in a session on `Innovation in livestock sector for food, health and livelihood security in India' that animal foods are an important source of high-quality protein, minerals, vitamins and micronutrients.
“The importance of dietary animal protein can be well recognised because it contains essential amino acids, which are deficient in cereals,“ said Srivastava. NIRAD MUDUR
CAN CONCH BLOW AWAY AILMENTS?
Shankh or conch has a “special relevance for every Hindu and the blowing of shankh is the best way to prevent several ailments“, stated a paper that was presented at a symposium under the section Anthropological and Behavioural Sciences at the 103rd Indian Science Congress on Tuesday.
However, presentation of such papers is contrary to claims by Indian Science Congress authorities, who had last year said that only pure and evidencebased science would be discussed in the future. According to the paper, written by Rajeev Sharma, an IAS officer, blowing of shankh is the best preventive measure for psycho-somatic disorders as it accounts for both “physical and mental aspects of a performer“.
Sharma told Mirror that he had been practising this for nearly two-and-a-half years, and after he recommended conch therapy to nearly 40 people, they recovered from ailments like thyroid and cervical spondylitis, among others.He insisted that it was science.

Source: Mumbai Mirror, 6-01-2016

Taking a Back Seat

SADHU VISHWAMURTIDAS





Some people are compulsive exhibitionists. You can find them almost anywhere. They would do anything to get noticed. At a wedding, they want to be the bride. At a funeral, the corpse. Julius Caesar, who was an incorrigible egotist, was kidnapped when he was a child. He was held for a ransom of 11,000 gold pieces. Horrified, he exhorted his captors to raise the ransom amount to 250,000 gold pieces so as to preserve his prestige. There are very few people who don't like being the centre of attraction.They are the true giants of humanity , the others are insignificant.The boxer Muhammad Ali once reportedly refused to wear his seat-belt on a plane.“Superman doesn't need a belt,“ he insisted. Tying his belt for him, the stewardess replied, “Superman doesn't need a plane either.“ The truly great are those who know their weaknesses and aren't afraid to admit them. They accept their limitations and blend in with the crowd because they know that when it comes to the basics, everyone's the same.
Whether rich or poor, we all have the same emotions deep within us ­ to protect the family , educate children, provide for healthcare, to be free to walk the streets in safety , to have time for oneself, to contribute to the good of the world and to leave one's mark, however small, on history . And the last is something all human beings do, for better or for worse. Even an ant does not go through this world without affecting its outcome in some way .