Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Over 80 per cent of India’s population is not covered under any health insurance scheme, says the latest National Sample Survey (NSS) released on Monday. The data reveals that despite seven years of the Centre-run Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), only 12 per cent of the urban and 13 per cent of the rural population had access to insurance cover.

Around 86 per cent of the rural population and 82 per cent of the urban population were not covered under any scheme of health expenditure support, the data showed.

Further, it was found that coverage is correlated with living standards, as in urban areas, over 90 per cent of the poorest residents are not covered, while the figure is 66 per cent for the richest residents. According to the report, “The poorer households appear unaware or are beyond the reach of such coverage, both in rural and urban areas.”

Showcase without reach

“This has been evident for a while. RSBY has become a showcase tool than actually reaching people in any large numbers.

Instead, it basically produces an assembly line of patients for the private hospitals and is actively putting our health sector in a crisis. There is global empirical evidence that health systems that pour tax payers money into outsourcing treatment to the private sector, ratchet up the cost of care, while not providing any care to those who need,” said Dr Amit Sengupta, General Secretary of the India chapter of the People’s Health Movement.

Private doctors emerged as the single-most significant source of treatment in both rural and urban areas. The survey found that 72 per cent of the treatment provided in rural areas and 79 per cent in urban areas was availed in the private sector.

In the previous round of this survey, the corresponding figures were 78 per cent in rural areas and 81 per cent in urban areas, which shows that the overall share of public sector saw a slight increase.

The rural population spent, on an average, Rs.5,636 for hospitalised treatment in a public sector hospital and Rs.21,726 at a private sector hospital.

The biggest hurdle in seeking medical treatment was “financial constraint”, reported by over 55 per cent and 60 per cent people in rural and urban areas, respectively. In rural areas, the next most important reason was “no medical facility available in neighbourhood”, accounting for 15 per cent cases, while this figure was just 1.3 per cent for urban areas.

(With inputs from Vidya Krishnan)

Keywords: Health insurance, National Sample Survey, Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana

Source: The Hindu, 13-04-2016

How to be free of caste

As India marks the 125th birth anniversary of B.R. Ambedkar this week, it must acknowledge the pervasiveness of discrimination and confront it head-on

This year, India has sponsored the observation of the birth anniversary of Babasaheb Ambedkar at the United Nations for the first time. The Permanent Mission of India to the UN shall commemorate the 125th birth anniversary of the Dalit icon on April 13 at the UN headquarters, a day before his date of birth, with an international seminar on ‘Combating inequalities to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’. A note circulated by the Indian mission says that the “national icon” remains an inspiration for millions of Indians and proponents of equality and social justice across the globe. “Fittingly, although it’s a matter of coincidence, one can see the trace of Babasaheb’s radiant vision in the SDGs adopted by the UN General Assembly to eliminate poverty, hunger and socio-economic inequality by 2030.”

Juxtapose this with a recent report on caste-based discrimination by the United Nations Human Right Council’s Special Rapporteur for minority issues that has stung the Indian government, provoking it to raise questions about the lack of “seriousness of work” in the UN body and the special rapporteur’s mandate. Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian Constitution, would definitely not be pleased. Nor are the Dalit rights activists in India and abroad.

Precept and practice

This is the most recent example of India’s hypersensitivity on discussing the caste issue at any UN forum — the objections raised by the Permanent Mission of India to the UN in Geneva to the March 2016 report of Special Rapporteur Rita Izsák-Ndiaye of Hungary. Her report characterised caste-based discrimination as that based on “descent”, labour stratification, untouchability practices and forced endogamy and said that this was a “global phenomena” that impacted more than 250 million people worldwide — largely in India, but also in countries as diverse as Yemen, Japan and Mauritania. Her report cited India’s National Crime Records Bureau data to highlight that there were increasingatrocities against Scheduled Castes — an increase in reported crimes of 19 per cent in 2014 compared to the previous year. The report mentions that despite legislative prohibition of manual scavenging, the state has institutionalised the practice with “local governments and municipalities employing manual scavengers”.

Earlier, during the 2001 World Conference against Racism in Durban, when there was a major effort by Indian NGOs to include casteism on the agenda, the Indian government had vehemently opposed it. Ashok Bharti, chair of the National Confederation of Dalit and Adivasi Organisations, recently told a Web publication: “The whole government suffers from a mindset of the upper castes, that are victims of their own guilt and will therefore try to hide their faults.” He said that if the Indian government had done so well in supporting Dalits, “why have there been thousands of cases of atrocities in the past 25 years? How many perpetrators have been punished? If domestic pressures and remedies do not work, internationalisation was a viable option to seek improvement in the status of Dalits.”

The lesson from all this which India must learn is what the then UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Doudou Diène of Senegal, said a decade ago to the international conference on ‘Human Rights and Dignity of Dalit Women’ in November 2006 at The Hague: “You have to go beyond the law. You have to get to the identity constructions. How, over centuries, the Indian identity has been constructed. All forms of discrimination can be traced historically and intellectually. One of the key strategies of the racist, discriminating communities is to make us believe that discrimination is natural, that it is part of nature, and that you have to accept it. This is part of their ideological weapon and it is not true. Discrimination does not come from the cosmos. Caste-based discrimination can be retraced and deconstructed to combat it. Please engage in this ethical and intellectual strategy to uproot what is building and creating the culture and mentality of discrimination.”

Even 68 years after Independence, Dalits and Adivasis continue to face mind-boggling social discrimination and spine-chilling atrocities across the country. One in four Indians admits to practising caste untouchability in some form in their homes — this shocking fact has been revealed by a mega pan-India survey conducted by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and University of Maryland, U.S. Indians belonging to virtually every religious and caste group, including Muslims, Christians, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, admit to practising untouchability, shows the India Human Development Survey (IHDS-II) of 2011-12. Mere tokenism and lip service will not do. India needs to jettison the centuries-old dehumanising baggage of caste stigma once and for all. It should have nothing to hide but see the reality as it is and confront the issues involved head-on.

Towards a transformation

If India has to move ahead to a caste-free nation, the need is for an all-embracing, inclusive pan-India social movement of social and cultural transformation. Ambedkar showed the way: “Turn in any direction you like, caste is the monster that crosses your path. You cannot have political reform, you cannot have economic reform, unless you kill this monster.” In fact, the Dalit political vision today not only encompasses the most oppressed, exploited and marginalised sections of the caste system but also other sections which took on the Brahminical hegemony in 1970s and 1980s — the backward castes and Adivasis. The Dalit political vision has now moved beyond the rhetoric of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the factions of the Republican Party and the decorative Dalit politicos in the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party, Samajwadi Party, Janata Dal (United) et al or even the low-caste-based Maoist organisations. New social movements like SEWA (Self Employed Women’s Association) in Gujarat, NBA (Narmada Bachao Andolan) in Madhya Pradesh and MKSS (Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan) in Rajasthan among others have fundamentally broadened the Dalit political vision.

The suicide of Rohith Vemula has exposed why attempts to co-opt Ambedkar as a ‘Hindu reformer’ cannot succeed due to inherent ideological contradictions. The challenge posed by the Ambedkar Students’ Association at the Hyderabad Central University to the Brahminical hegemony of Hindutva represented by Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad is in the very logic of the Dalit political vision.

Now, integrating social and cultural transformation with an economic alternative is critical. Our tryst with destiny can go on and on. But let us grab this moment of truth. So that we can “redeem our pledge”, which has remained unredeemed for more than 68 years, to make conditions for the last men and women representing the Adivasis and Dalits, the marginalised and poor people of India to give unto themselves what is truly theirs. That is the challenge before the people of India.

Suhas Borker is Editor, Citizens First TV (CFTV), and Convener, Working Group on Alternative Strategies, New Delhi.

Keywords: Caste, Politics, 125th birth anniversary of Babasaheb Ambedkar

Source: The Hindu, 13-04-2016

Eligibility test not needed for those who registered for PhD before 2009

Scholars who completed a PhD or registered for one before 2009 would be eligible for lectureship without clearing the national eligibility test (NET), HRD minister Smriti Irani announced on Tuesday.

The move will help create a larger talent pool for teaching jobs. Women researchers will get more time to complete their research — an additional year for MPhil and two more for PhD — along with maternity leave benefits, Irani said.

At present, a student who has a postgraduate degree or an MPhil and has cleared the NET/SET (state-level eligibility test) is eligible for lectureship in a college or university. If the student fails to clear the eligibility test but has an MPhil degree, he or she can teach in a college, but not a university.

If a student does a PhD in accordance with UGC (University Grants Commission) regulations, such as publication of research papers and presentations in seminars/conferences, he or she is eligible for the post of assistant professor in any college or university.

In 2009, the UGC made NET and a PhD the minimum eligibility criteria for the post of assistant professor in colleges and universities.

On Tuesday, the ministry gave the go-ahead to the commission to exempt such students from NET/SET for teaching jobs in universities and other educational institutions.

However, students will have to fulfil a number of conditions, including that the PhD is offered in regular mode and researchers have published papers as part of their work.

The ministry and the UGC did not have a specific figure on the number of beneficiaries but officials said the decision would benefit hundreds of thousands of aspiring teachers who were so far ineligible as they could not clear the NET or SET.

“There has been a long-standing challenge faced by researchers/aspiring teachers. The UGC today in conjunction with the government has taken this decision,” Irani said.

UGC chairman Ved Prakash said the move would create a greater pool of eligible candidates for recruitment as assistant professors. It would also address the shortage of faculty in educational institutions, he said.

Irani said female students would be given maternity leave of 240 days that would be excluded from the duration of their research. They would also be given eight years compared to the existing six for completing their PhD and three years to complete their MPhil instead of two. The same benefits will be provided to people with disability.

Also, in case of relocation of a female MPhil/PhD scholar due to marriage or other reasons, research data will be allowed to be transferred to the university to which the scholar intends to relocate provided other conditions are met.

Granting more freedom to autonomous institutions and to incentivise quality education, the UGC and the ministry have done away with mandatory inspection of such institutes, nor will they require a no-objection certificate from the state. An autonomous college has academic autonomy to design its curriculum, prescribe syllabi and evolve its own pedagogy.

“They will only have to provide an NOC from the affiliated university and if they are accredited with the highest grade for two consecutive cycles, they would be granted autonomous status,” Irani said.

Source: Hindustan Times, 13-04-2016

Realising the Truth

ASHA PRAVER

The process of Self-realisation is not linear. It is not even a process. We don't become anything. We simply realise that which has always been true.Let's say you are walking on a jungle trail and a branch falls across the path. Because of the shape and the way it fell, you think it is a poisonous snake. You draw your weapon, and warn others to stay away .There is nothing to pretend about it. You sincerely believe that your life and the lives of others are at risk. But you are wrong. No matter how committed you are to the delusion, nor how much action, emotion and self-definition you layer on top, the premise is still false. It never was a snake. It was always a piece of wood.
So, it is with the ego. It appears to have a separate reality , which we think we have to protect. But no matter how convincing the illusion, the truth is: we are not separate. The only reality is God.
From the ego's perspective, Self-realisation takes a long time. Once it comes, however, we see that time itself was part of the illusion. Always, it is the Eternal Now. Such thoughts cannot be understood from the level of consciousness asking the question.
Nor, for that matter, by the one writing the answer. As to when soul evolution begins, from the moment a spring emerges from the earth, each drop of water flows toward the sea. So it is with the soul. All beings seek union with God.

To Achieve Peace, First Destroy The Image

Talk: J Krishnamurti

For those who are living far away from the frontier, war has little meaning. But to everyone, as a human being, war is a problem, whether it is fought in Pakistan or in India. It is a problem of relationship. This country which has talked about non-violence, which has preached `ahimsa', `don't kill', for millennia, forgets it overnight and is willing to kill because it has an image about the other, and the other has an image about this country .Unless there is a radical revolution in our relationship, we will not have peace. And peace is absolutely necessary not the peace of the politician, not the peace between two wars, between two quarrels, somewhere in faraway heaven, but peace here on earth between you and me. Because, unless you have peace, unless there is this extraordinary thing in your heart and in your mind, you cannot possibly blossom in goodness, you cannot flower in beauty, you cannot see the sky, you cannot see the beauty of the earth. If there is conflict in you, you cannot see anything. So peace is peace in relationship, so that two human beings can work together, think together, solve problems together. problems together.
This peace can only come about when there is in each one of us the understanding of relationship and the complete transformation in that relationship. It is the relationship of two images, and nothing else; and therefore there is no love between two images. How can i love you and you love me if you have an image about me, if you have ideas about me?
If i have hurt you, pushed you, been ambitious, clever and gone ahead of you, how can you love me? How can i love you if you threaten my position, my job, if you run away with my wife? If you belong to one country and i to another, if you belong to one sect Hinduism, Buddhism or Catholicism and the rest of it and i am a Muslim, how can we love each other? You cannot run away from this wherever you live, whether in a monastery , cave or mountain, you are related. You cannot possibly isolate yourself either from your own image which you have created about God, about truth, or from your own image about your own self and all the rest of it.
So to establish right relationship is to destroy the image that you are a Hindu, that i am a Pakistani, Muslim, Catholic, Jew, or communist. You have to destroy the machinery that e image the machinery that creates the image the machinery that is in you and the machinery that is in the other. Otherwise you may destroy one image, and the machinery will create another image. So one has not only to find out the existence of the image that is, to be aware of your particular image but also to be aware of what the machinery is that creates the image.
You cannot just say , `I will destroy the image', and meditate about it, or do some kind of trick, or hypnotise yourself so that you can destroy the image it is not possible. It requires tremendous understanding. It requires great attention and exploration, not a conclusion at any time. And life is an immense river that is flowing, moving incessantly . Unless you follow it freely , with delight, with sensitivity , with great joy , you cannot see the full beauty , the volume, the quality of that river. So we must understand this problem.

Followers

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Health cover: Too little, too scarce

80% not covered by any insurance, dependent on private sector for treatment.

How to be free of caste

As India marks the 125th birth anniversary of B.R. Ambedkar this week, it must acknowledge the pervasiveness of discrimination and confront it head-on

Eligibility test not needed for those who registered for PhD before 2009

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