Followers

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

How to Deal with Death


Isn't it amazing that we never think of death as a real possibility in our own lives? Coping with death -whether dealing with the possibility of one's own death or that of a loved one -remains one of the greatest challenges of our lives.Spiritual masters and philosophers since long have said and written much on how to reach and remain in a state of acceptance. The following story of a grieving woman and Buddha's advice to her illustrates the fact that death is universal and unavoidable, and so should be accepted as being an inevitable part of life.
A woman grieving the loss of her son asks the Buddha to bring him back to life. The Buddha asks her to bring a single mustard seed from a house where there has never been any death. Failing to find a single home where there had been no death, the inconsolable mother now accepts her loss. Realising that the world is impermanent and seeking an end to the cycle of suffering, she joined Buddha's order and diligently followed his teaching. Hence, coping with her loss was the first step on her spiritual journey .
Most rituals associated with death are designed to enable us to reach a state of acceptance, of coming to terms with death as a natural, inevitable event.Whatever our belief system, it is clear that by focusing on helping the departed soul, our grief vanishes slowly but steadily . In doing so, we would perhaps move closer to understanding the impermanence of life.A medieval book on the craft of dying says, “Learn to die and thou shalt learn how to live.“
FOCUSSING ON FINANCIAL INCLUSION - Tata, Nilekani & Kelkar to Target Bottom of Pyramid
Mumbai:
Our Bureau


Float tech-savvy Avanti Finance to offer tiny loans to poor
Tata Trusts Chairman Ratan Tata, former finance secretary Vijay Kelkar and Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani are teaming up to start a technology-enabled financial inclusion vehicle, Avanti Finance, which will provide tiny loans to poor ignored by other lenders.The aim is to knit together several related threads:
The social sector presence of Tata Trusts and other like-minded partners
The JAM trinity comprising the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, the Aadhaar system and mobile phones
The Unified Payment Interface, or UPI, that's just debuted
Upcoming payments bank ecosystem Since stepping down as chairman of Tata Sons, Ratan Tata has invested in more than 25 firms. Ratan Tata has invested in several firms, including unicorns such as Ola, Paytm and Snapdeal. He has also set up a venture fund -RNT Capital Advisers.
“Avanti will be a platform to impact the poor through credit at individual and community levels to create an improvement in their livelihoods and standard of living, ushering prosperity,“ Tata said.
Infosys cofounder Nilekani, who led the team that established the Aadhaar unique identity system, recently invested in Mumbai-based Sedemac Mechatronics as well as Bengaluru-based 10i Commerce Services.
Avanti's promoters believe institutional inequalities and information asymmetries are depriving the poor of access to affordable credit, they said in a release.In the past few years, the poor have had low delinquency rates compared with any other segment but are charged the highest interest.
Financial inclusion is a key thrust area for the government and the Reserve Bank of India aimed at opening up access to financial services for vast sections of the population.
To this end, they have initiated several programmes, including the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana and payments banks, which are in the process of being set up. India also has an ecosystem of microfinance institutions that offer tiny loans to the poor, although their presence is not uniform across the country.
The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana has so far covered over 99.7% households and offers formal banking services to them. Nearly 24 crore accounts have been opened by banks in the past one-and-ahalf years which now have a deposit base of over `. 41,789 crore.
Both Tata and Nilekani will invest from their philanthropic capital and any gains will be reinvested in such causes. Avanti will apply for registration to the Reserve Bank of India soon and will start operations before March 2017.
“My participation in Avanti is more driven by social motivation rather than anything else -with a view to serve the underserved and unserved and make the Tata Trusts and other like-minded partners' philanthropy more effective,“ Nilekani said. “Technology is an important differentiator and allows us to make a difference in many ways than one.“
“It is a very important step because the Indian mass still does not have access to financial institutions,“ said Sreedhar Prasad, partner, ecommerce and startups, KPMG India.
“Small finance banks take time to set up, is very large in India. Any lending product for masses is a huge opportunity. Seamless operationalisation and collection would be key, since demand will not be a problem,“ he adds.

Source: Economic Times, 30-08-2016

Monday, August 29, 2016

Economic and Political Weekly: Table of Contents

Vol. 51, Issue No. 35, 27 Aug, 2016

Editorials

From 50 Years Ago

Strategic Affairs

Commentary

Draft Policy On Education 2016

Book Reviews

Insight

Special Articles

Postscript

Current Statistics

Appointments/Programmes/Announcements

Letters

Web Exclusives

Restraint & Forgiveness


Ahimsa is at the core of all Jain thought and philosophy . It is not limited to human life, but extends to all that surrounds us. Jainas believe that even waterbodies and air are living entities. To minimise the violence they cause to such organisms, they have fashioned a lifestyle which includes covering their mouth when they speak, using only boiled water, sweeping the floor before they tread on it and so on.To maximise the elements of non-violence, they discovered that it is important to be an aparigrahi also. An aparigrahi is one who has given up his possessions. When it rains, monks and nuns do not go out in the rain for fear of harming organisms living in water. The four months of the rainy season, the chaturmas, are spent in one place. An ascetic is required to select his place of stay with the onset of the monsoon. If he is unable to identify a suitable place, he is given an allowance of up to 50 days after the onset of the rains. On the 50th day he has to set up camp wherever he is.This day is known as Samvatsari. Samvatsarik or Samvatsari means every year on this day the festival of Paryushana is celebrated.Paryushana highlights the message that all living beings share a similar desire to live. It is a mark of respect to them and the earth. In terms of ascetic practice, this period marks a period of contemplation and inner journey .

Meet Vivek Choudhary, IIM-L student who topped CS exam 2016

Vivek Choudhary, a first-year student at IIM Lucknow, has secured the top rank in the examination of The Institute of Company Secretaries India (ICSI) that declared the results of its executive and professional programme on Thursday.
The company secretaries examination were held in June 2016.
“The feeling of seeing the word ‘Pass’ on the mark sheet is a very big achievement in itself as it is one of the most competitive examinations of the country. I did not expect to get any rank. I was really not bothered to check the rank. For me, becoming a company secretary itself was a huge success,” Choudhary said.
The 21-year-old commerce graduate from Kolkata’s St Xaviers’ College said he got the news about his rank from one of his friends who checked the results on the website.
“At first, I could not believe him. Then I personally checked the website to confirm, and to my surprise, I was there on the top. The rank glorified it and gave me a very big reason to celebrate,” Choudhary, who is from Haryana and has been living in Kolkata for the last 10 years, said.“My first call was to my mother as she has been a constant support and a source of inspiration to me. My parents are my ideals as they have given me guidance at every point of time in my life. Whatever I have achieved today is because of their blessings,” he said.When asked how difficult the examination was, his reply was immediate. “Unlike most professional courses, CS has a very comprehensive syllabus. There are nine subjects, multiple laws and thousands of provisions which sometimes get on your head. But all that is required to ace this challenge is a commitment, hard work, focus and a lot of sacrifices in terms of social media, parties, etc.”
He said CAT or CS are different ballgames. “CAT tests analytical, qualitative and logical skills while CS deals with applications in various domains of business, like law, taxation, and governance. Both are highly competitive but comparing them is not justified,” he said.
For now, he wants to become an investment banker. “But that is not my ultimate goal in life. My dream is to contribute towards the development of the society through education. I believe education is the guiding light for improved standards of living. If I am asked to define my ultimate goal concisely, it would be to bring out a revolution in education,” he said.
 For Choudhary his alma mater, Don Bosco School in Liluah, changed him as a person – from an introvert to a man of values who understands the importance of interpersonal relations. “While in Class 9, I developed an interest in commerce as a subject and decided to choose it as my career option,” he said.
A finance enthusiast, Choudhary is also pursuing chartered accountancy and chartered secretary courses to shape up his professional and technical knowledge.
A movie buff, Choudhary watches one every weekend and is also associated with Dasnagar Freedom Welfare Foundation, an NGO that helps underprivileged children, for the past one-and-a-half year.
“I had taken up the responsibility of garnering sufficient funds for the organisation by actively organising its periodic events and I also taught and mentored five such students,” Choudhary, who also loves to play badminton, said.
Source: Hindustan Times, 29-8-2016

Dalit capitalism’s moment has arrived

When Dalits in prosperous states start agitating against occupations such as clearing garbage and tanning, India’s mask of social harmony starts to slip. Dalits facing physical violence are speaking up, as with a young Dalit boy attacked recently in Bhavra village, 40 km from Ahmedabad, because his family had decided to boycott the work of lifting dead carcasses. They are increasingly asking for basic rights — the right to land, the right to public goods and spaces like water and temples, and the right to social acceptance. Other Dalits in Saharanpur’s Usand village in Uttar Pradesh have taken to sleeping in the forest, given the concerns about physical safety. Municipal corporations around India are suddenly starting to run out of willing Dalit workers to sweep the floors and remove carcasses. Social justice, an age-old topic, is the new third rail.At an individual level, Dalits continue to remain significantly poorer than other social classes — 36% of the rural Dalits are classified as poor while just 13% of the SC men are engaged in regular salaried work, despite public-sector affirmative programmes.
The government can help nudge social behaviour and institutions to encourage Dalit empowerment. Consider education. According to the 11th Five-Year Plan, dropout rates continue to be high — 74% of the Dalit boys and 71% of the Dalit girls usually drop out of primary and secondary school.
Incentive schemes, such as free textbooks or free hostel accommodation in universities for students from underprivileged households, can go a long way in overcoming the barriers of poverty and discrimination. Offering such students access to the minimum facilities (a bed, a table, a chair, etc) can help make education more inclusive and incentive-focused.There are only a few Dalit entrepreneurs in India, with most Dalits still employed in their traditional occupations. Such individuals would also lack access to social enablers — only 12% of the Dalit households have access to 2-3 contacts in the formal sector, compared to 26% amongst the forward castes. Given the discrimination, a history of landlessness, social pressure and little, if any, relevant sub-caste networks, Dalit businesses are few and far between.
Enabling the launch of more social impact funds focused on Dalit entrepreneurs (e.g.: Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry) can help solve financing issues, with a special focus on fiscal incentives and infrastructure support.
The growth of grassroots cooperatives/institutions for developing traditional crafts presents a solution. The Urmul Marusthali Bunkar Vikas (UMBV) has provided 120 Dalit weavers of the Meghwal community with sustainable livelihood through their traditional crafts, stopping migration and keeping local skills alive.
We need to make it easier for Dalit businesses to flourish. The Dalit presence in businesses has stagnated — 9.9% in 1990 and 9.8% in 2005. Since 1989, the National Scheduled Castes Finance and Development Corporation has disbursed an average of $484 per borrower to over 900,000 Dalits. The empowerment of small and medium enterprises, through incentives for struggling entrepreneurs, remains the right way to bolster SC/ST entrepreneurship. An expansion of the Public Procurement Policy’s mandate of 20% from SME businesses, as part of the Stand Up India campaign, could bolster Dalit suppliers. Dalit capitalism’s moment has arrived.
Fair land distribution corrects unequal social constructs and power equations by providing equal access to productive economic units. Land reforms (tenancy, land ceiling, consolidation of holdings and intermediary abolition) have produced mixed results, especially where land distributed remains on ‘paper’ — land distributed is not land owned for many Dalits. Physical occupation of lands needs to be ensured, through social audits at the gram sabha level, under the guidance of a Special Expert Committee under the SC Commission, supported through awareness generation through camps.
We need to recognise the need for land reform as well to induce equity for Dalits in agriculture. The government of Andhra Pradesh has launched a crash programme since 1969 to assign government waste land to the landless poor people, particularly the Dalits. Over 113,972 acres was distributed to 43,000 beneficiaries under the Bhoodanland programme.
Our society is marching from feudalism to post-modernism, in less than a generation; and yet outdated attitudes remain. While the media continues to highlight the plight of the Dalits, one must stand vigilant against reducing such livelihood issues to a by-line. We’ve spent the last half-century pitting our castes against each other, in politics and in the job market. Leaving such islands of inequity, in India’s journey towards development will only give rise to social turmoil. For Dalits, equity and social acceptance must go hand in hand.
Source: Hindustan Times, 29-08-2016

A saint who was more of a mother: Remembering Blessed Teresa

A transparent, white plastic box, placed on Mother Teresa’s tomb at Mother House in Kolkata is nearly filled to the brim with little pieces of paper. As the time for the Friday Mass draws near, more visitors start scribbling hurriedly on the slips of blank paper kept near the box and dropping them inside. “Those coming to Mother House write their intentions (or wishes) on paper and put them inside this box for Mother’s blessings. During the special mass on Fridays, the day Mother passed away, we ask the priest to bless all the intentions and pray for them,” explains one of the nuns.
The founder of the Missionaries of Charity will be canonised at the Vatican on September 4. But the nun who stepped out of Loreto in 1948, and made it her life’s mission to work for the “poorest of the poor” around the world has for years been revered as a ‘saint’ by the people whose lives she touched. Sister Bernadette, 78, of Loreto Calcutta remembers a chance meeting with Mother Teresa at the Kolkata airport years ago. “People at the airport kept coming to her and asking for her blessing. She had a paper and she would write God bless you and sign her name on it. She said, ‘you see this, I am putting them in God’s hands’,” remembers the nun.
The Simple Joys of Life
Those who knew her well, lived and worked with her, remember the person behind the public face. “She had a great sense of humour. She would always be joking and when she found something funny, she would place both hands on her hips and bend double with laughter,” remembers former chief election commissioner of India and Mother Teresa’s biographer Navin B Chawla.
A nun of the Loreto order, 82-year-old Sister Eithne, recalls that same spirit in one of her meetings with Mother Teresa. “I remember meeting her here in this house (Loreto House, Kolkata). She came to meet the community, her old friends. What I remember about that meeting is that there was great laughter and fun,” she says.While her avowed mission remained to care for the destitute, everyone around her felt enriched by her love. “She always had time for everybody,” says Father Dominic Gomes, vicar-general of the archdiocese of Calcutta. “After I was ordained, I was asked by the Church to go for my higher studies to Rome. I needed a passport. I made so many rounds of different offices and nothing was working out,” he remembers. “One day I was at Mother House and Mother noticed that I looked very sad, and she asked me what was the matter. I told her I had been trying to get my passport made for the past three months without any success. She immediately said give all your documents to me. To my surprise, the next day I had my passport.”
Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity remember how their superior cared for them the same way that a mother would. Sister Tarcisia, who joined St Teresa’s primary school in Kolkata as a six-year-old when Mother Teresa was the in-charge, talks of her “motherly” affection. “She knew that my health was not strong, so whenever there was some heavy work to be done, moving a table for instance, she would push me out of the way.” This from a woman who her biographer recalls as being habitually unmindful of her own health. “ She often chose to ignore the advice of Dr Bardhan, her long-standing cardiologist in Calcutta,” remembers Chawla. “Mother Teresa needed a pacemaker at some point of her life and she was forbidden by the doctor to even go down the stairs. One day I was with her and there was a telephone call. And she said I am going to Bangladesh. There’s a cyclone there, I have got to go. I reminded her of her doctor’s orders and she said I will tell him later,” says Chawla.There are as many anecdotes about Mother Teresa, as the number of people who came into contact with her. Father Felix Raj, principal of the St Xavier’s College in Kolkata remembers her great love for students. Photographer Raghu Rai talks about how she could be tough when needed, but would change if she found reason in what was being said. Recalling his first meeting with her, sometime in the 1970s, he says, “Even at that time, the Missionaries of Charity were quite strict about giving access to photographers and journalists.” When Rai happened to see three nuns in prayer through the movement of a half curtain behind Mother Teresa, he started taking their photos. On being questioned by Mother Teresa as to what he was doing, Rai answered, “Mother, there are these sisters praying and they look like angels.” “How you melted, Mother, and accepted that moment,” he recalls.
Chawla talks of her immense will and how she would go to any length for her work. In one of his initial meetings with Mother, when he was secretary to the Lieutenant Governor (LG) of Delhi, he remembers that she had come to ask for land to build a facility for the leprosy-affected in the city. “I asked her how much land she needed and she looked at me and said five acres. Then we went to see the LG and she told him in detail about the plight of these people and the LG was so moved he was nearly in tears. He also asked her how much land she required and she looked at me with an impish smile and said ten acres! Because she had won him over she got 11 acres. And I saw this in country after country, situation after situation. If Mother Teresa could cajole anything out of anyone for her poor, she had no hesitation in doing so,” he says.The Nay Sayers
This very attitude of her, however, in indiscriminately accepting help for her mission has been used by her critics against her, the most vocal of whom had been British journalist Christopher Hitchens. In a documentary titled Hell’s Angel - Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Hitchens questioned Mother Teresa’s meetings and closeness with certain political heads of states and business tycoons of questionable repute and in some cases her acceptance of funds or trophies from them. Notable among these were Haitian president Jean-Claude Duvalier and American activist and businessman Charles Keating. Hitchens’ allegations are echoed by Indian rationalist Sanal Edamaruku, who wrote in an article, “Mother Teresa did not serve the poor in Calcutta, she served the rich in the West. She helped them to overcome their bad conscience by taking billions of dollars from them,” and felt that Mother had given a bad name to Calcutta by portraying it as a city of hopelessness and death. Chawla admits that in all likelihood, she did meet Michelle Duvalier, Jean-Claude Duvalier’s wife. “It was true of Mother Teresa that whoever could do her work, she would go there and try and get work done for her poor. I did ask her once how is it that you take money from these dubious people. And she said how is it different from the thousands who come to feed the poor in all my homes. I don’t look into their antecedents. Whoever they may be they have a right to give in charity and I have no right to judge them. God wiThat Cult Following
Hitchens traced the root of Mother’s global popularity and adulation to journalist Malcolm Muggeridge’s devotional representation of her in the book Something Beautiful for God. But he and those he interviewed in Hell’s Angel accused Mother Teresa of “admiring the strength of the powerful almost as highly as she recommends resignation of the poor”. He gave the example of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, an industrial disaster in India, when Mother Teresa’s advice to the victims had been to “forgive” the multinational company responsible for it. Writer and journalist Mihir Bose whom Hitchens interviewed in the film felt Mother Teresa “ accepted implicitly that there’s nothing you can do for the poor except take them off the streets and look after them. You cannot change their attitude, you cannot make them feel that they have an ability or the means to improve and change their lives”. Father Felix Raj answers the accusation. “People have criticised Mother and said instead of giving a fish why don’t you teach these people how to fish. She answered, ‘okay fine I am capable of giving a fish but why don’t you start teaching others how to fish. Then both of us participate in the mission’,” he says.ll judge them,” he says.Foreign physicians who visited the Missionaries of Charity homes in Calcutta have written of poor medical care given to the people there, including a lack of distinction between curable and incurable diseases, no use of pain relief medication and lack of proper sterilisation of medical tools, including needles. It is an allegation also voiced by writer and former volunteer at Missionaries of Charity, Mary Loudon, in Hell’s Angel. But Mother Teresa’s supporters explain it as their lack of understanding of her mission. “I think they are giving the best possible treatment wherever it is. It is true that when the sisters feel no medical care will help... what is the need of shifting him to the hospital when he may die on the way. At that moment you try to help the person, not shift him to a medical facility,” says Father Felix Raj.
Less easy to justify is her religious non-acceptance of abortion and birth control measures and here even Chawla admits that he disagreed with her views. So deeply religious herself, did she ever try to convert anyone to her faith, another criticism levelled against her? “She has not converted even one in terms of religion. But she has converted all, including me, her conversion is the conversion of the heart,” says Father Felix Raj. Chawla explains that Mother never felt the need to convert the destitute because for her every suffering person she picked up from the street was her God.For herself and her sisters though, prayer and devotion to Jesus was sacrosanct. Stepping out of the comfort of Loreto House into the Calcutta of 1948, a city torn by post-partition strife and recovering from the famine of 1943, needed some courage. “In the beginning there was no money, even for food. And she had to feed the 12 women who joined her order. She would beg for rice and sprinkle some salt on it. And then she would pray and someone would send vegetables. In the early days she strengthened her capacity to pray,” says Chawla.
Rai remembers her words to the authorities during the refugee crisis when people started arriving to Calcutta across the borders from Bangladesh. “My sisters will put up with everything; they will spend all their time, and do their duty, but they will have to come back every evening for their prayers to rejuvenate their spiritual energies,” Mother had said to the officer in charge of relief operations.
Talking of the first time that he met Mother way back in 1975, Chawla, talks of her trademark white sari with the blue border, which she chose over a nun’s habit in 1948. “She was bent over, even then, and when she turned, I noticed that her sari, which was clean and shining, was darned in several places,” he says. For Mother Teresa, that sari was more than a garment. It was a promise from Jesus that “your sari will become holy because it will be my symbol”.
Source: Hindustan Times, 29-08-2016