Why Worry So Much?

SADHU VISHWAMURTIDAS





Worry causes fear, anxiety , tension and stress. Worriers become sick because of all the problems that are eating into their vitals. Worry usually occurs when we find ourselves faced with a likely outcome we think will be detrimental to us. But how can we be so certain? Maybe some good comes out of it as well. So why despair and agonise over something that may actually turn out well, if not now, perhaps in the long term?
A king once accidentally lost his little finger in an accident.His close friend and minister, however, exclaimed that it was a fine thing that had happened.Shocked at his insensitive remark, the king dismissed him.Even then, the minister who'd just lost his job remarked that his expulsion could be for his good. This puzzled the king.Some time later, the king lost his way during an excursion in a jungle and was captured by cannibals. They were planning to put him in the pot over the fire when they noticed he had a finger missing. An `incomplete' human being was unacceptable to the gods, so they released him. The king realised that losing his finger earlier had, in fact, helped save his life.
“But tell me,“ asked the king of the minister after returning to the palace and reinstating him, “what good came of your expulsion?“ The minister replied, “If you had not expelled me, I would probably have accompanied you to the jungle and both of us would've been caught by the cannibals. You would have been back here safely today , but because my body is whole, I wouldn't have!“

How To Measure Poverty

A neat separation of poverty estimates and entitlements won’t pass muster.

There wAS much hope about the work that Arvind Panagariya was mandated to do on the measurement of poverty. I, for one, have held from the 1980s that the official poverty line that emerged from a taskforce I chaired in 1976-77 should be shelved. Panagariya has reportedly suggested that the Tendulkar Committee’s report should be accepted for poverty estimation but socio-economic indicators, say, as collected by the Socio-Economic Caste Census, should be used to determine entitlement for benefits, an approach suggested earlier by N.C. Saxena. This is important because while earlier Centrally sponsored schemes have been curtailed, a large number of new schemes have been announced in the Union budget. The Panagariya Panel on poverty has separated the two exercises — entitlement for schemes and poverty estimates, the latter to be used for assessments of economic performance.

The Tendulkar Committee had, in fact, used the official poverty line or the Alagh poverty line, based on cut-off points defined in terms of calorie consumption. Happy with the existing urban poverty ratio or head-count ratio of 25.7 per cent derived from the Alagh taskforce — as adapted for price adjustment from time to time — it suggested that the expenditure required to meet this goal should be the poverty line for both rural and, of course, urban areas. We are critical of the official poverty line, but they “found it desirable in the interest of continuity to situate it in some generally acceptable aspect of the present exercise”. Like Banquo’s ghost, the Alagh taskforce cast its shadow, possibly since Tendulkar was a member.

But the Tendulkar report had many advantages. For one, it shifted the emphasis from calories to food demand. In its logical structure, the Alagh taskforce permitted this but the focus then was on foodgrains, with price elasticities calculated separately for the rich and the poor, leading to dual pricing. The Tendulkar Committee framework calculates the food purchasing power and then lets the poor substitute between food items.

It works in a framework where the state will not have the responsibility for the education and health needs, or for that matter drinking water needs, of the poor. Here, the Tendulkar Committee was one-sided in stating that “the earlier poverty lines assumed that basic social services of health and education would be supplied by the state”. It did not clarify that the taskforce stated that the state must have a “basic needs plan” and give it the highest priority.

The Tendulkar report had a concept of inclusive growth where the state does not take on itself such pro-poor responsibilities but provides income supplements. It shows that with these supplements, the new poverty line would correspond to standards that would lead to physical nutrition norms being met on an average. Statistically, this part of the report, overlaying averages of nutrition norms with food expenditure is creative. A more serious issue is that if expenditures on education and health are included in the poverty line calculations, how do we account for public expenditures on them — or are we happy with double counting?

But will the present standard dividing the poor and the rich, and that too based on the 1979 line in urban areas, be acceptable as a norm?

I have been making the point that following nutrition norms does not require policy to go overboard. Here, the Saxena Committee for defining concepts for the next BPL census goes overboard and comes out with very high numbers. Food security can be achieved at much lower costs than Saxena suggests, but he scores in his emphasis on access to social facilities and asset and education opportunities, for which he suggests a system of deprivation points based on many indicators, including caste, asset positions, educational achievements, and so on. Saxena recognises that different entitlement systems will be required for different facilities — a valid point but a real-world nightmare.

There are, therefore, many debatable issues. In the excellent technical note to the BPL report, K.L. Datta has explained at length the complexity of the relationship between calorie consumption and poverty, and P. Sainath the issue that some facilities have to be universally provided. Saxena takes on the issue of entitlements head-on, but Tendulkar sidesteps it. Panagariya will have to cope with all this and it is likely that a neat separation of poverty estimation and entitlements won’t pass muster.

The writer, former vice chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, is professor emeritus, Sardar Patel Institute, Ahmedabad.

Source: Indian Express, 26-04-2016

UGC implementing scheme to provide Heritage Grants to universities and colleges

New Delhi: The University Grants Commission (UGC) has informed that it   is implementing a scheme during XII plan to provide Heritage Grants to universities and colleges which are more than 100 years old and accorded the Special Heritage Status by the UGC. The guidelines of the scheme of “Granting Special Heritage Status to Universities and Colleges” are available at http://www.ugc.ac.in/pdfnews/4170650_ Guidelines-for-Heritage.pdf . The scheme guidelines have provision for grants for conservation work and offering short term certificate or diploma programme in any of the heritage branches. This is however dependent on the specific institutional requirements and evaluation by the UGC Expert Committee. As on date 19 Colleges have been recommended for funding under the scheme. The details of grants allocated to these colleges, college-wise, is at http://www.ugc.ac.in/pdfnews/8647293­­_Heritage-website.pdf .

 

The UGC has informed that it had received proposals, under the scheme, from three colleges in the state of Karnataka.  Proposal from one college namely University College, Hampankatta, District Mangalore was approved for funding under the scheme. The remaining two colleges viz. St. Aloysius (A) College, District Mangalore and St. Josesph’s (A) College, District Bangalore were not recommended by the UGC as these colleges did not fulfil the eligibility criteria prescribed under the scheme.

This information was given by the Union Human Resource Development Minister, Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani today in a written reply to a Lok Sabha question.

Source: indiaeducationdiary, 26-04-2016

There are 41 Central Universities under HRD Ministry

New Delhi: At present, there are 41 Central Universities under the administrative control of the Ministry of Human Resource Development. The total number of sanctioned teaching posts in various Central Universities is 16,600 (2371 Professor, 4708 Associate Professor, 9521 Assistant Professor). 

Occurring of vacancies and filling them up is a continuous process. Ministry of HRD and UGC continuously monitor it with Universities. However, the onus of filling up the teaching posts lies on Central Universities which are autonomous bodies created under Acts of Parliament. 

This issue has been discussed in the Conference of Vice-Chancellors of the Central Universities held on 4th – 5th February, 2015 and Visitor’s Conference on 4th -6th November, 2015 which was chaired by the President of India. In the Vice Chancellors’ Conference and Visitor’s Conference, the Vice Chancellors were exhorted to fill up the vacant position of teachers in a time bound manner. Further, it was also discussed in a meeting with Vice Chancellors of Central Universities on 18th February, 2016. With the appointment of regular Vice Chancellors and providing of Visitor’s nominees to all Central Universities for Selection Committees for teachers, the process of filling up of vacant teaching posts has gathered momentum. 

This information was given by the Union Human Resource Development Minister, Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani today in a written reply to a Lok Sabha question. 

Source: Indiaeducationdiary, 26-04-2016

Emptiness is a Paradox

SONAM TSOMO





Shunyata is a key concept in Buddhist philosophy , more specifically in the ontology of Mahayana Buddhism, “Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.“ This is the paradox of the concept. Emptiness is nonexistence but not nothingness.Also, it is not non-reality . Emptiness means that an object, animate or inanimate, does not have its own existence independently . It has its meaning and existence only when all the elements or components it is made of come into play and we can understand and impute its existence clearly . The Buddhist concept of emptiness is often taken as nihilism. Nihilism as a concept means that reality is unknown and unknowable, and that nothing exists.
Plato held the view that there is an ideal essence in everything that we have around us, whether animate or inanimate.The Dalai Lama says that shunyata is the absence of an absolute essence or independent existence. If a thing exists, it is because of several other factors. One might as well ask: is it possible to have a partless phenomenon? According to the Madhyamika school of thought, there can be no phenomenon without constituents.Every phenomenon in the universe has to have parts or constituents to come into being.
The Dalai Lama says, “As your insight into the ultimate nature is deepened and enhanced, you will develop a perception of reality from which you will perceive phenomena and events as sort of illusory . And that mode of perceiving reality will permeate all your interactions with reality .“

Economic and Political Weekly: Table of Contents

Vol. 51, Issue No. 17, 23 Apr, 2016

Editorials

Usurping Power

Unanswered Questions

Solutions on Paper

50 Years of EPW

50 Years of EPW : Price Control: For All Seasons

Strategic Affairs

Unshackle India's Strategic Thinking

Atul Bhardwaj

Commentary

A Small Battle for FBI, a Gigantic War for Privacy Rights

Agnidipto Tarafder, Arindrajit Basu

Against the Assault on Thought

Rohit Azad

The Persuasions of Intolerance

Janaki Srinivasan

Debate on 'Silent' Investor-State Dispute

Bhushan Satish

How We Learn Words

Rama Kant Agnihotri

Wounded Healers

Edmond Fernandes, Homolata Borah

Brexit Debates

Paul Richardson, Dhananjay Tripathi

Book Reviews

The Pariahs and Missionaries of South India

Raj Sekhar Basu

Democracy and Violence in India

Rudolf C Heredia

Perspectives

Public University in a Democracy

Sudhanshu Bhushan

Review of Urban Affairs

Greenfield Development as Tabula Rasa

Loraine Kennedy, Ashima Sood

Scaling Up, Scaling Down

Shriya Anand, Neha Sami

Dholera

Preeti Sampat

Making of Amaravati

C Ramachandraiah

Reading into the Politics of Land

Bhuvaneswari Raman

The Politics of Urban Mega-projects in India

M Vijayabaskar, M Suresh Babu

Making Sense of Place in Rajarhat New Town

Ratoola Kundu

New Regimes of Private Governance

Mathew Idiculla

Special Articles

Doing More with Less

A Santhosh Mathew, Dwijo Goswami

Hate Speech, Hurt Sentiment, and the (Im)Possibility of Free Speech

Siddharth Narrain

Concentration of Media Ownership and the Imagination of Free Speech

Smarika Kumar

Current Statistics

Current Statistics

Appointments/Programmes/Announcements

Appointments/programmes/announcements

Letters

Manual Scavenging Must End

Deepika Tandon, Moushumi Basu

Kashmir: Killing Civilians

C Chandrasekhar, Asish Gupta, Pritpal Singh, Phulendro Konsam, Tapas Chakraborty

Web Exclusives

Buying into the Aakash Dream

Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Jahnavi Phalkey

Remembering a Kashmiri Night

Vinayak Razdan

Books on Northeast India to be published by NCERT

Ministry of Human Resource Development has come up with a unique way to end the discord of the people staying in Northeast India. The National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) would now prepare textbooks on the culture and life of the eight Northeastern states, which will be prescribed as supplementary reading for school students.
This was announced recently by Smriti Irani, the HRD Minister.

According to sources, the books, will take at least a year to be ready for publication, but the classes for which they would be prescribed are not yet decided.
The NCERT is an autonomous organisation under the Union HRD Ministry.  The NCERT advises the central and state governments on school education, especially matters related to school curriculum. Its textbooks are prescribed by all private schools affiliated to CBSE and government schools.
The idea behind this decision, as said earlier is social integration. There are many students from the Northeast, who study in the different parts of the country and complain of social discrimination and alienation. Therefore,  if youngsters read about their life and culture growing up, this problem could be alleviated to quite an extent.

digitalLearning View: Since many years, the people from Northeast India have complaint about not being a part of the country. This step by the government and NCERT would certainly help in developing a bond with the Northeastern states. Reading about the culture and beauty would also make the NE students feel proud of their rich heritage.

Source: Digital Learning, 25-04-2016