India’s digital transformation

The country can only derive the digital dividend of faster growth, more jobs and better services by expanding affordable Internet access to all/

There is little doubt that China has stolen a march on India when it comes to leveraging the Internet. Of the top 20 Internet companies in the world, 13 are American, five are Chinese, with one each for Japan and the United Kingdom. Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company, has a market capitalisation that is 25 times higher than that of Flipkart, the largest e-commerce company in India.

Why did India, which has had the remarkable achievement of being the largest exporter of information technology services and skilled manpower among developing countries, fall behind China in digitally transforming its economy? Is it now making a comeback? The World Bank’s recently released World Development Report (WDR) ‘Digital Dividends’ provides some answers.

The WDR finds that digital technologies have spread rapidly throughout much of the world, but their digital dividends — the broader development benefits from using these technologies — have lagged behind. In many instances digital technologies have boosted growth, expanded opportunities, and improved service delivery. Yet their aggregate impact has fallen short and is unevenly distributed.

The report argues that for digital technologies to confer their full benefit on society, it is vital to close the digital divide, especially in Internet access. But greater digital adoption will not be enough. To get the most out of the digital revolution, countries also need to work on its “analogue complements” — by strengthening regulations that ensure competition among businesses, by adapting workers’ skills to the demands of the new economy, and by ensuring that government institutions and others are accountable.

Measuring the performance of India and China with the WDR metrics of connectivity and complements shows why India has not yet taken full advantage of the digital revolution.

The contrast with China

At the end of 2014, India had 227 million Internet users, compared to 665 million in China. Fewer than two out of every five Indian businesses had an online presence compared to almost two-thirds of firms in China.

The cost of a 1 Mbit/s residential broadband service in India is 6-10 times higher than in China. And by most accounts, the digital divide across age, gender, geography and income within India is significantly higher than in China. Thanks to its successful digital ID programme, Aadhaar, India scores higher than China in digital adoption by governments, but the need now is to use the platform that Aadhaar provides more widely and effectively.

Amartya Sen has written extensively on the idea of human ‘capability’. This concept has large applications in the digital world. Unfortunately, not only does India have a higher digital access gap, it also has a bigger digital capability gap. The capability gap, according to the WDR, arises from two main sources: the overall business climate and the quality of human capital.

Despite some commendable improvements in cutting bureaucratic costs faced by small and medium enterprises, India scores considerably below China in doing business indicators. It is important for India to create space for creativity and enterprise and to promote competition.

The slow pace of improvement of the quality of basic infrastructure — expressways, logistics, storage, postal delivery system and reliable supply of electricity — have also hampered the growth of e-commerce in India. And the excessively cautious approach of Indian regulators towards disruptive technological innovations such as mobile money or ride-sharing services has made it difficult for digital start-ups to enter new markets and achieve scale.

While Indian technology workers and entrepreneurs excel in Silicon Valley in the United States, the skills level of the average Indian worker remains significantly behind his or her Chinese counterpart. India has made considerable strides in improving its human capital, but a vast majority of its population still lacks the skills to meaningfully participate in the digital economy.

Around 25 per cent of India’s adult population cannot read and write compared to fewer than 5 per cent in China.

There is also major difference in quality of education: The latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) test scores in rural India show that 10 per cent of children aged 16 and below cannot identify single-digit numbers consistently. Fewer than one in five can do a subtraction, performing considerably below their grade level.

Clearly, India’s challenge to becoming a digital economy remains formidable. The government has announced a slew of new initiatives: Digital India; Make in India; Start-up India; and innovative applications of Aadhaar such as JAM (Jan-Dhan Yojana-Aadhaar-Mobile trinity) and Digital Lockers. Successful and accelerated implementation of these programmes can make up for some of the lost time. But India also needs to do more by strengthening the basic foundations of its digital economy.

Making the Internet accessible, open and safe for all Indians is an urgent priority. The cost of mobile phone access is already low by international standards. And with a supportive policy environment involving smart spectrum management, public-private partnerships, and intelligent regulations of Internet markets, the same can be achieved for Internet access. Zero-rated services for mobile data access have become controversial, though they could be an intermediate step to fully open and affordable Internet access for the poorest, provided that the choice of selecting services is transparent and inclusive.

Back to basics

Access, however, is only one part of the agenda. An important lesson from the WDR is that even the most sophisticated technologies are no substitute for tackling long-standing shortcomings in other areas — most importantly basic health, education and a regulatory ethos that encourages competition and enterprise.

When the World Bank adopted in 2013 “shared prosperity” as one of its mission goals, it was the first time that combating inequality was being set up as a target. There was a lot of initial opposition because while the battling of poverty seems like a fairly impersonal goal, the goal of “sharing” makes many uncomfortable.

Fortunately, the way the shared prosperity goal is formalised has deep conceptual roots. One of the best accounts is to be found in S. Subramanian’s ‘“Inclusive Development” and the Quintile Income Statistic’, in Economic and Political Weekly and this goal is now increasingly being recognised as vital for a better world. The aim of ending the digital divide discussed in our most recent WDR stems from this same basic idea and is an urgent need of our times.

India wrote one of the early success stories of the digital revolution when it became a global powerhouse for software development and information services. Its Aadhaar digital ID system has become a model for many other countries, helping governments to become more efficient and more inclusive in expanding services to those who had been left behind.

Whether the new initiatives will generate even greater and more widely shared digital dividends — faster growth, more jobs, and better services — depends not only on expanding affordable access to all, but also on making long overdue progress on the analogue complements of digital investments.

(Kaushik Basu is Chief Economist of the World Bank, and is a former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India.)

Keywords: Digital India, World Development Report, Digital Dividends, Aadhaar, World Bank

Source: The Hindu, 12-02-2016

Rape and the law in India

DUSHYANT ARORA





`Marital' cannot be used as a disclaimer. Sex without consent is a crime and the law needs to punish it

Consensual sex is a crime in India. Rape is legal in India. Shocked? Disgusted? Disbelieving? Then the next two facts may leave you conflicted. Anal sex is a crime under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Marital rape is legal, unless (thanks to an amendment passed in 2013) the wife is living separately or, per the IPC, is under the age of fifteen.How common is marital rape? One third of men interviewed by International Centre for Women (ICRW) and United Nations Population Fund's (UNPFA) across seven states in India admitted to having forced a sexual act on their wives.
In 2013, a three-member committee comprising the Late Justice JS Verma, Justice Leila Seth and Senior Advocate Gopal Subramaniam recommended that marital rape be criminalised.
However, both the UPA and the NDA governments have failed to. A union home secretary under the UPA reportedly claimed `marriage presumes consent' and the minister of state for home, under the NDA government cited illiteracy, religious beliefs and `sacrament of marriage' as hurdles.
You know what else has been presumed to be sacred, derived from religious belief and existed in a time of severe illiteracy? Sati. Our minister also claimed that the concept as `understood internationally' cannot be applied in India. The supreme court of neighbouring Nepal didn't think it was too cosmopolitan--it has held that marital rape is criminal since 2006.
A report published in a national newspaper last year claimed that our Supreme Court, the guardian of the constitution and the protector of individual liberty refused to entertain the petition of a woman seeking an amendment, on the premise that `law cannot be changed for one person'.
Those who oppose criminalisation of marital rape raise the bogey of abuse of the law. A senior advocate recently wrote that `If at any stage in a marriage, the wife seeks to withdraw the presumed consent that accompanies a marriage, it is open to her to live separately.' If that's so, the argument presumes that the husband will jump away the moment his wife screams `I separate' as she is being raped.
Troublingly, the statement assumes an equality between genders. Is separation always possible for women who face abuse? We live in a patriarchal society where prejudice, discrimination, lack of access to education and work, makes many women financially dependent on their husbands. A woman living separately from her husband is stigmatised. She is often urged to `adjust' or `save her family' or `settle matters' ­ even by her own family.
If abused women found it so easy to separate, then we might as well do away with laws criminalising domestic violence too--tell women to walk out instead of putting up with it. And even if they are able to walk away, that first instance of violence­ which necessitates the exit from a marital home ­ is still a cognisable offence and should be punished.
There is, of course, the argument that since Section 498A ­ our dowry law ­ is abused, a law criminalising marital rape will be abused even more. Now women will be free to accuse husbands of rape once their relationship turns sour.Or trick men by giving consent and then allege rape. In response, let me state the obvious.
Every. Law. Is. Susceptible. To. Abuse. False allegations are possible within a marriage and without. That thankfully has not led us to decriminalise an act of rape outside of marriage. Secondly, and I cannot emphasise this enough: it is extremely difficult for a woman to prove absence of consent especially in a bond of matrimony.Thirdly, for context, the crisis our society faces is one of underor un-reported sexual violence, categorically not an epidemic of false cases.
All that differentiates an allegation of rape within marriage from one beyond it is the unstated presumption that marriage entails perpetual consent on the part of the wife, a presumption one would like to believe that no law would support in the 21st century. 205th report of the Law Commission of England and Wales pointed out (citing a family court judgment: “Whatever may be the difficulties, actual or imagined, foreseen by lawyers, the criminal law should as a general proposition at least aim to demonstrate and to delineate what conduct is or is not to be tolerated.“ The same report went on to quote the Police Superintendents' Association of England and Wales: “Of course, all problems that are inherent in bringing a successful prosecution for domestic assault andor injury will also be present in trying to prove an offence of marital rape. But that is no excuse for failing to provide the appropriate legislation. The police role in trying to prevent injury and misery is weakened by the absence of appropriate legislation.Indeed, we hope that the very existence of such a law might serve as a deterrent.“ The effective non-existence of a law recognising that marital rape is a crime curtails women's ability to counter abuse. There is however, hope for India. Last month, the Delhi High Court asked the centre to respond to a petition seeking to declare Section 375 of the IPC unconstitutional--as it discriminates against married women sexually assaulted by their own husbands.
The terrorist group Daesh (IS) inter alia believes that its members own the women they marry and should be free to rape them. One hopes that the government of India disagrees.

Source: Mumbai Mirror, 12-02-2016

The Coming of Spring

MEENA OM





Basant Panchami, the fifth day of spring, is celebrated by propitiating Goddess Saraswati.As she symbolises the constant flow of wisdom, she also represents the full blossoming of multi-hued Nature, kindling inspiration and hope.During the eight phases of the day , Saraswati manifests through everyone's speech at least once. Engrossed as we are in the material world, we are unable to understand it. It is possible to attain this state where one's speech is consistently governed by Kamalasana, or the One who is seated on a thousand-petalled lotus -each petal denoting a quality .
Saraswati's vehicle is the swan. The veena that Saraswati holds in her hands has seven strings representing the body , food, humans, work, intelligence, religious and spiritual cultures. Besides these, the seven colours, glands, chakras, skies, rishis, or holy wise men, and also the seven steps of consciousness are to be experienced and understood in the right perspective.
Whosoever has accomplished these symbolic seven swaras, or notes, will be safeguarded from drowning in the samsara sagara, or worldly ocean, by the two hollow tumbas, or globes, on either side of the veena.
The colour yellow heralds the coming of Spring after an arduous winter. It is the colour of the energy-giving Sun; the mustard fields in bloom are a bright yellow, exuding the warmth of change in seasons. Fittingly , therefore, the radiance is associated with knowledge -symbolised by Goddess Saraswati.

EINSTEIN'S PREDICTION COMES TRUE AFTER 100 YEARS - Scientists Detect Gravitational Waves for First Time

Hari Pulakkat

Bengaluru:





Prime Minister Narendra Modi announces via a tweet that India would build a gravitational wave detector that would form part of Ligo network

An international consortium of physicists, including those from many Indian institutions, detected gravitational waves for the first time in the world.This is considered to be an enormous achievement as the gravitational waves are very hard to detect.“This is the scientific moonshot,“ said David Reitze, LIGO Laboratory Executive Director as he announced the news. “And we have hit the moon.“This signal was produced by two colliding black holes 1.3 billion years ago. “We are opening a window on the universe,“ said David Reitze. Observing gravitational waves would enable scientists to study the universe probably not possible in any other way . Just as the news was announced, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced through a tweet that India would build a gravitational wave detector that would form part of the Ligo network. This . 1,000-crore project has been wai` ting funding for a few years, and it was cleared by the Cabinet on Thursday evening. There was a danger that this observatory will go to Australia, as Australian politicians was now reportedly keen on building it there.
Many Indian scientists worked on the Ligo project. An observatory in India would be at the right distance from the two existing observatories in the US to calculate precisely the nature of gravitational waves. It would also give Indian astrophysicists an opportunity to work at the frontier of the new field of gravitational astronomy .
At the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, physicists celebrated the discovery and then the Modi announcement, as a big moment was replaced by a bigger moment for the Indian scientists.Many of them had developed techniques used by the Ligo observatory in the detection.
The big moment for astrophysicists came on September 14 last ye ar, when the Ligo observatory in Lousiana recorded a signal, exactly as predicted by Einstein to be when two black holes merge. Precisely 17 milliseconds later, another observatory in Washington state in the US recorded the same signal. These two signals enabled the scientists to decode the nature of the gravitational waves precisely . The event recorded two other significant events.It was also the first time we have seen two binary black holes merging.
It is also the first evidence that binary black holes exist. It was like two stars, each thirty times the size of the sun, hitting each other at half the speed of light. This collision created gravitational waves, which travelled 1.3 billion light years to reach the earth now.

Source: Economic Times, 12-02-2016





The Kumbh Is Really A Churning Of The Mind

Pranav Khullar





At the heart of the Kumbh tradition is a story from the Bhagavata Purana, of the tussle between the gods and asuras for the amrit-kalash, pot of nectar, which will bestow immortality on those who drink from it. Herein is a metaphor for the inner struggle between our nobler and baser instincts ­ the higher mind which when invoked, will bestow the nectar of wisdom and immortality , the ability to discriminate between the real and the transient; and then you have the baser, lower mind, which when engaged with, will generate illusion and desire, creating its own web of illusory `immortality' where the temporary is taken to be the permanent.Which instinct we choose is a matter of free will, but the great Kumbh tradition seeks to continually remind us of the call of the higher mind, of how the human body itself is the kumbh, pot, and how the churning of desires within is required for the nectar of knowledge to be generated.
The ancients formulated a 12-yearcycle for a meeting ground of saints and seekers in an attempt to continually refocus and reorient the mind towards nobler instincts. This 12-year-cycle was set within certain planetary configurations, that the ancients felt were spiritually beneficial, which are supposed to create a highly charged matrix of energy , which naturally propels the mind towards the search for deeper meaning.
The Kumbh became an opportunity to pause and reflect, to reassess life's priorities. The ceremonial dip in the waters, especially on auspicious days like Vasant Panchami, is symbolic of cleansing the mind and beginning afresh with a `new' mind and clean attitude. The Kumbh was seen as an occasion for the common man to transform himself to this new attitude by mingling with renunciates and monks in an ambience of devotion and vairagya. It is no less an occasion for renunciates themselves to reaffirm and rededicate themselves in the search for the higher Self.
The 12-year cycles of the Kumbh happen at four different pilgrim centres, ensuring a huge religio-spiritual Kumbh congregation every three years ­ the ancients' way of inspiring us periodically, to stay firm amid all vanities and temptations, to seek deeper, beyond the veil of illusion, through the discipline of pilgrimage and satsang (in the company of holy persons).
The intent of these large scale spiritual retreats has been to allow every individual to interact and learn from renunciates and learn to detach himself from everyday anxieties, however momentarily . Since every Kumbh congregation seeks to replicate the triumph of the gods, the higher mind, over the asuras, the lower mind in the quest for the nectar of immortality ­ realisation of the Self through wisdom ­ each dip in the waters and each bath seeks to mirror this yearning for the inner Self.
Yatris and sanyasis both seek to dive deep into themselves through this bath, to come up with a moment of experience beyond themselves, a moment only perhaps, but a deeply moving moment which will abide with them through the trials and tribulations of life. It is also the moment of transition from the individual, i-centric point to a feeling of a collective whole, where distinctions between you and i blur, and all are alike in their yearning to find their spiritual centre.
As Mark Twain said of the Kumbh congregation, “It is done in love or done in fear, I do not know ... no matter what the impulse is, the act born of it is beyond imagination.“

Irish Institutes to offer Scholarships worth 6 cr for Indian Students 

‘Education in Ireland’, the national brand under the authority of the Minister for Education and Skills, Ireland, responsible for the promotion of Irish higher education institutions overseas, is organising education fairs in India from February 20-28, 2016. The fairs will bring together 12 of the top educational institutes from Ireland across four cities – Delhi (February 20), Bangalore (February 21), Chennai (February 27) and Kochi (February 28). Through a series of education fairs, Education in Ireland will meet students and parents to showcase the Irish education system and highlight the quality of programmes.

Prominent universities such as Trinity College Dublin are offering scholarships worth €5000 to undergraduates, University College Dublin is providing 100 per cent tuition fee for master programmes and 50 per cent tuition fee for one-year master programmes, National University of Ireland, Galway is offering €2,750 for undergraduate and postgraduate merit scholarships each, and National College of Ireland is offering €2,950 for master programmes and €2,000 for undergraduates applicants.

The fairs will give a chance to Indian students to engage with institute experts on a wide array of interesting topics such as:

• More information about scholarships facilities from the best institutions in Ireland;
• Get help in application and visa process;
• University and course advice;
• Education excellence, teaching practices, innovative and creative culture;
• Educational institutes-industry linkage through research and business collaborations, to help students to take forward informed choices of their career and future path.

Enterprise Ireland a Government body, manages the Education in Ireland brand – the umbrella brand under which Irish higher education is promoted overseas.

Source: Elets News Network (ENN) Posted on February 11, 2016 

Committee to Institutionalise Internship of Govt Teachers 

n a meeting of State Education Minister and officials of State Governments on Teacher Education chaired by Smriti Zubin Irani, Union Human Resource Development Minister, it was decided to constitute a Committee to suggest ways to institutionalise an internship of Teacher Education Programmes in Government Schools.

The Committee includes State Education Secretaries of Rajasthan, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Tripura and representatives of NCTE and KVS. The internship will be for duration of 20 weeks, at the end of which the school will provide feedback on the teaching aptitude of the trainees.

For the first time, an initiative has been taken by the Government to develop an accreditation/grading framework for Teacher Education Institutions so as to provide an idea of the quality of institutes. A Committee was constituted to develop the framework.

A mobile app, for the first time, is being developed in collaboration with MyGov, by the MHRD to enlist citizens who are willing to volunteer as teachers. Eighteen States expressed their willingness to participate in the first phase.

During April-May, 2016, a 2/3 days Workshop for Educational Administrators in Higher Education will be organised by the UGC in five regions across the country. Modules for these workshops will be developed by IIMs. These modules may be adopted by State Governments which can carry the process forward by organising similar workshops.

It was also decided that NCERT will conduct a review of SCERTs and DIETs and prepare a roadmap for strengthening of these institutes. UGC will similarly undertake training of college principals.

All State Education Ministers were requested to prepare a state specific roadmap to address challenges in teacher education and find out solutions to deal with them.

Source: Digital Learning, 11-02-2016