Ramzan Fasting Rejuvenates Body, Mind & Spirit

M Aslam





Fasting, during the month of Ramzan, not only serves as annual training for body and soul ­ which helps in renewal of life and encourages the spirit of sharing and giving ­ it also enables the promotion of spirituality and human excellence.The basic objective of this month-long annual process is to alter the behaviour and pattern of life of its practitioners in such a way that they turn out to be ideal human beings. It implies that a person observing fast will not only observe abstinence from eating and drinking but will get into a sublime state of mind in order to develop positive feelings. It essentially means restraining oneself from listening, speaking, hearing or thinking negatively about others. The expectation is that if one passes through this process of self-purification for a period of one month, its impact will last at least for the remaining eleven months.
I have practically observed that fasting instils moral courage and guides the heart. Fasting leads to tranquillity and calmness in the face of adversity , and helps one cultivate patience.
We are creatures of acquired habits. Some of these are good habits and some are bad, like smoking. Fasting provides the observer an opportunity to change his habit, as smoking is prohibited during this period. I was a chain smoker 12 years ago and it was fasting which created in me the necessary level of determination that enabled me to give up the bad habit.
Ramzan fasting can help us gu Ramzan fasting can help us guard against obesity and blood pressure, provided the faster follows the strict dietary rule: Eat at the designated time when you break your fast and avoid over-eating. “Eat and drink, but waste not by excess, for Allah loves not wasters.“ (Al-Quran, 7:31) Charitable acts recommended during Ramzan help us bond with the less privileged. And as the family comes together to break the fast at Iftar, and eat together at least twice a day for a month, and pray together, ties deepen and members of the family draw closer to each other.
Tajuddin B Shuaib, in `Essentials of Ramadan, The Fasting Month', summarises the essence of fasting as a tool for reconstruction of our spiritual faculties: “The institution of fasting is a unique form of worship prescribed as part of an overall system of Islam. Its uniqueness mirrors the uniqueness of the human being, a creature of physical and spiritual parts whose excellence depends on the right proportion of these two parts. Too much of the physical material will ruin man, and too much of the spiritual will too.Fasting orients the observer to the art of balancing the spiritual essentials with physical needs, a vivid proof that there is in all of us the will power, a pivotal element that controls our actions.
“This will be needed to help us curb the animalistic tendencies originating from the stomach, in full. It awakens the mind and kindles clear thinking and consciousness of Allah. Fasting is the sobering of a mind and reconstruction of our spiritual faculties.“
I only pray that our spiritual faculties get awakened during this month of fasting and we are able to balance spiritual essentials with our physical needs to receive God's blessings and protection, which we all need so desperately in these turbulent times.

Learning to read as adult changes brain'

Rosamma Thomas

Jaipur





Contrary To Popular Belief, New Research Finds You Can Start To Pick Up A Skill At Any Age

The adult brain, contrary to popular belief, is quite flexible, says a new study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands. The research was conducted in collaboration with the Centre for Bio-Medical Research, Lucknow, and the University of Hyderabad.The researchers studied changes in the brain of 30 illiterate women from villages near Lucknow, aged between 18 and 30 years, after they received daily lessons in Hindi for six months. There were two control groups -30 illiterate women given no training, and a group comprising literate women who had received no formal education.
All three groups were made to undergo a restingstate functional MRI, used to analyse the functional connectivity in the human brain, at the outset. The first group underwent the scan once again after the training.
A comparison of the results showed changes in the brain -in the thalamus and brainstem -after the women learned to read and write.
“At the beginning of the training, the majority of them could not decipher a single written word of their mother tongue Hindi,“ website `ScienceDaily .com' said in a report on the study , adding that participants reached a level comparable to that of first-graders after only six months of reading training. “This growth of knowledge is remarkable,“ project leader Falk Huettig, of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, was quoted as saying.
The findings, which hold enormous potential for assessment of conditions like dyslexia, were published in the journal `Science Advances' on May 24.
“Reading is such a new ability in human evolutionary history that the existence of a `reading area' could not be specified in our genes.A kind of recycling process has to take place in the brain while learning to read: Areas evolved for the recognition of complex objects, such as faces, become engaged in translating let ters into language. Some regions of our visual system thereby turn into interfaces between the visual and language systems,“ `ScienceDaily' explained in its report on the study.
Huettig was quoted as saying that the study flew in the face of the belief so far that changes in the brain were limited to the outer layer, the cortex, which adapts quickly to new challenges.
“In contrast to previous assumptions, the learning process leads to a reorganisation that extends to deep brain structures in the thalamus and the brainstem. The relatively young phenomenon of human writing therefore changes brain regions that are very old in evolutionary terms and already core parts of mice and other mammalian brains,“ the website reported.
Michael Skeide, scientific researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig and first author of the study , was quoted as explaining that the research explained why experienced readers navigated text more efficiently .
“We observed that the socalled colliculi superiores, a part of the brainstem, and the pulvinar, located in the thalamus, adapt the timing of their activity patterns to those of the visual cortex,“ Skeide was quoted as saying by `ScienceDaily'.
He explained that these deep structures in the thalamus and brainstem helped our visual cortex, which processes visual stimuli, fil ter important information from the flood of visual inputs even before we consciously perceive it. Interestingly , the more the signal timings between the two brain regions are aligned, the better the reading capabilities.
“We, therefore, believe that these brain systems increasingly fine-tune their communication as learners become more and more proficient in reading,“ the neuroscientist said.
Asked why the study was conducted on an all-women group, Uttam Kumar, assistant professor at the Centre for Bio-Medical Research's MRI neuro-imaging unit, said, “That was done to eliminate any controversy around differences in the learning pattern of men and women and to ensure uniformity in results.“
He said what the study showed was that “it does not matter what age you start to pick up a skill as long as it is a psychologically normal brain. If done in a sequential manner, the brain can accommodate the learning and the change is apparent.“
Source: Times of India, 15-06-2017

Kalinga International Literary Award to Anand Neelakantan, Kalinga Literary Award to Haraprasad Das, KLF2017 to start from June 10

. Hon’ble Union Minister Shri Dharmendra Pradhan will grace the festival as the Chief Guest. Hon’ble Union Minister of State HRD, Shri Mahendranath Pandey will join as the chief key Note Speaker.
2. “Literature for Peace and Harmony” is the central theme for 2017
3. Over 200 international and national speakers to join the Largest Monsson Literary Festival
4. 30 leading district level Odia Writers will be felicitated
5. Creative Attractions: Kalinga Art Festival and Mystic Kalinga
6. Mystic Kalinga, dedicated poetry session, at Chilika

Bhubaneswar: Fourth Kalinga Literary Festival is here. Around 200 celebrities from the worlds of literature, cinema, media and politics will assemble in the temple city of Odisha to deliberate on the theme of ‘Literature for Peace and Harmony’, at the Kalinga Literature Festival in Bhubaneswar, from 10th-12th June, 2017.

Kalinga Literary Festival (KLF) has emerged as one of the leading literary platforms in India and number one in the Eastern part of India, attracting both experienced and young litterateurs. Bigger than ever before, the fourth edition of the festival will bring nationally and internationally acclaimed names on one platform to discuss, debate and explore commonalities in the diverse voices in literature, peace and harmony.

This year’s festival will be inaugurated by the Chief Guest, Hon’ble Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Shri Dharmendra Pradhan. Hon’ble Union HRD Minister of State Dr Mahendra Nath Pandey will be guest of honour and Chief Key note speaker. Other speakers in the inaugural session include Guest of Honour, Eminent writer and poet Dr. Kedarnath Singh as a key note speaker and renowned writer and academic Dr. H.S. Shivprakash will also join as Guest of Honour and second key note speaker.

The three-day festival will cover several dimensions of the interconnections between Literature, Peace and Harmony. The key sessions will be on topics such as ‘Literature for Peace and Harmony’, resurgence of nationalism, literature beyond class privilege, democracy in the age of social media, Odissi, Branding of Odia literature beyond classical status, Indian films and the grassroots reality, transformative Dalit literature: voice and the margins, youth, women, media, sports, folk and regional literature, etc. Apart from this, more than 20 new books will be released during the three-day festival. The delegates and speakers of KLF will have a unique opportunity to participate in Ekamra Heritage Walk.
This year KLF is introducing special sessions for poets and artists. ‘Mystic Kalinga’, is dedicated for the poets and Kalinga Art Festival is for the artists. From this year onwards, KLF will showcase art exhibitions of international artists at the KLF venue. Another crucial addition to the festival are the establishment of literary awards including the Kalinga International Literary Award, Kalinga Literary Youth Award and the Kalinga Karubaki Award.

Awardees, 2017
Mr. Haraprasad Das: 4th Kalinga Literary Award
Mr. Anand Nilakantan- Kalinga International Award
Ms. Paramita Satapathy- Kalinga Karubaki Award
Kalinga Literary Youth Award: 30 young minds selected from Odisha

Highlighting the need to go international, KLF Founder and Director Mr. Rashmi Ranjan Parida said, “Three years of KLF have seen great voices in literature. This year, we got several suggestions to expand the festival to reach out to global voices. This certainly will be a great value addition for our young writers.” Mr. Parida strongly believes that Kalinga International Awards will expand the horizon of the KLF and Odisha literary scenario by translating the maxim of think global and act local. “Indian literature is rich in imagery and encompasses diverse human experiences. KLF has also been a platform to explore Odisha’s rich variety of literature and human experience,” he further added.

Some of the leading names who will be a part of the festival include
Ajit Sharma, Amrendra Khatua, Anand Neelakantan, Ananya Chatterjee, Anurag Saxena, Aruna Mohanty, Arundhati Subramanium, Ashok Maheshwari, Ashwini Kumar Pankaj, Asit Mohanty, Baqir Shameem, Bhalchandra Vanaji Nemade, Bibhuti Pattnaik, Bijayananda Singh, Deba Prasad Dash, Debasis Panigrahi, Dipak Samantarai, Diksha Tiwari, Dillip Tirkey, Dr. Sigma Satish, Dr. Yashodhara Mishra, Dr. Ranjan Ku. Mallik, Dr. Subhas Pani, Dr. Perugu Ramkrishna, Girindra Nath Jha, Dr. Gourhari Das, Haraprasad Das, Hindol Sengupta, Hiranmayee Mishra, Jacob Isaac, Jatin Nayak, Jayanta Mohapatra, Jaydeep Sarangi, Joie Bose, Kedar Mishra, Kedar Nath Singh, Lt. General Charanjit Singh Chima, Lt General Zameer Uddin Shah, Maitreyi Pushpa, Manohar Mouli Biswas, Meera Das, Meera Nair, Mona Mohanty, Mrinal Chaterjee, Munideepa Sahu, Nandini Sahoo, Paramita Satapathy, Paresh Pattanaik, Piyush Mishra, Pratibha Ray, Prof. H.S Shivprakash, R.K. Dash, Rahul Bose, Rabi Swain, Rajendra P Gupta, Ramakant Rath, Ravi Mantha, Ruchhita Kazaria, Saira Shah Halim, Sandeep Mohapatra, Sanjay Baru, Santanu Ganguly, Satyanand Nirupam, Sitakanta Mohapatra, Soubhagya Mishra, Soumendra Padhi, Sudarsan Pattnaik, Sudipti Satyanand, Suhasini Haidar, Sujit Mohapatra, Sumanyu Satapathy, Sundeep Bhutoria, Tarun Vijay, Vineet Kumar and more.

KLF hosting Kalinga Art Festival this year
This year KLF is organizing Kalinga Art Festival. Over 35 Internationally acclaimed artists to exhibit their painting during KLF at the KLF venue. Kalinga Art Festival has been curated by Dr Ranjan Kumar Mallik, Artist and Head of the Department, Amity University Gurgaon, New Delhi.

Participating artists are Mr. Gajendra Padhi , Mr. Sidharth P Betejebrgi , Mr. Manash Ranjan Jena, Mr. Gajendra Kumar Sahoo, Mr. Meenaketan Pattnaik, Mr. Nigamanda Swain, Mr. Pradipta Patra, Mr. Chandra Shekher, Mr. Chintamani Biswal, Mr. Subrat Mullick, Mr. Lalatendu Rath, Dr. Anup Kumar Chand, Mr Pradosh Swain,Artist, Mr Rakesh Kumar Chaudhury, Mr. Priya Ranjan Behera, Dr. Gyanesh Mishra , Mrs. Sonia Mallik, Dr. Ranjan Mallik, Lipsha Pattnaik Mohanty, Chakradhara Behera, Mr. Panchanan Samal, Mr. Tarakanta Parida, Mr. Bipin Martha, Mrs. Subhra Chand, Mrs. Nibedita Pattnaik, Mr. Stitadhi Rath, Mr Smrurti Nayak, Mr Aasutosh Panigrahi, Mr Susant Nayak, Rohit Supakar, Ms. Suhani Jain, artist, Nagpur, Amarendra Moharana, Surat Choudary .

Highlights of KLF 2017:
· 200 Speakers, poets, musicians, artists, performers
· 20 sessions and 22 awards represented
· Kalinga Sahitya Sanman, Kalinga International Literary Award, Kalinga Literary Youth Award (30 Districts), Kalinga Karubaki Literary Award
· Mystic Kalinga – Poetry session for 50 poets
· Art Exhibition- 35 Internationally acclaimed artists
· Ekamra Heritage Walk
· Over 20 books to be launched
· Book Stalls
· Cultural Evening

For Schedule and Online Registration, please visit: www.kalingaliteraryfest.com

Source: Indiaeducationdiary, 4-06-2017

Why a price increase alone won't help farmers

Fundamental problems of crop and regional bias of MSP policy, govt. procurement and access to institutional credit need to be addressed.

Agricultural distress is often viewed as a short-term phenomenon in which farmers look for support from various quarters on account of being unable to get a gainful return due to price crash, poor marketing facilities, rising credit burden, increasing cost of inputs and frequent occurrence of natural calamities. A prolonged unrest in rural India — such as the decision of Andhra Pradesh farmers not to sow in the 2011 kharif season and mark a ‘crop holiday’ protest — will have serious consequences for food security.

Agricultural distress has become a permanent feature due to the failure of not only elected governments to find a lasting solution but also local institutions such as community or social networks which are supposedly weakening because of increasing individualisation. The consequence is that helpless farmers are increasingly pushed to the brink of committing suicides.

A tipping point

The distress seems to have reached a tipping point, with scenes of dejected farmers throwing agricultural produce such as vegetables and milk on the roads becoming a routine feature in recent years. Rather than addressing the genuine problems of farmers, politicians are unfortunately busy scoring points over the deaths of innocent farmers.

Are demands of our farmers unjust? Not really. They want a reasonable price for their produce, better marketing facilities, institutional credit, irrigation, quality seeds and fertilisers, procurement during times of market glut and a social safety net during natural calamities. These are the basic inputs and services farmers need to continue to engage in agricultural production. Many committees and commissions constituted in the past have looked into India’s farming conditions. Their recommendations have been shelved by successive governments.

The non-availability of remunerative prices to farmers on agricultural produce is a vexed issue and emerges as the prime issue in various research studies wherein farmers are asked to rank production constraints. Will a rise in the minimum support price (MSP) solve the problem? Some critics argue that a rise in the MSP will lead to increase in food inflation, while others that it will augment farmers’ income. Both arguments rest on the mistaken notion that the MSP is a remunerative price. It is actually an insurance price, a floor price of sorts. Besides, a vast majority of the farming population is unaware of its existence.

The Government of India has an MSP for 23 crops, but official procurement at the MSP is effectively limited to rice and wheat, and that too concentrated in a few States only. Awareness about the MSP is limited to States such as Punjab, Haryana and Andhra Pradesh where such procurement takes place. According to the National Sample Survey’s (NSS) Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households 2013, even for paddy and wheat, less than one-third of farmers were aware of the MSP; for other crops, such awareness was negligible. Further, a substantial proportion of crops are sold to local private traders and input dealers to whom the resource-poor marginal and small landholders are obligated to sell their crops due to tie-up with credit.

Since 2004, successive governments claimed to have increased institutional credit flow to the agricultural sector through increased budgetary allocation on crop loans. According to NSS data, over 40% of farmers still rely on non-institutional lenders, who mostly happen to be moneylenders-cum-traders and input dealers. Further, analysis of credit disbursement data from the Reserve Bank of India reveals that out of total advances to agriculture, the share of indirect finance has increased substantially over time, while that of direct finance to farmers has declined. This means that at the macro level, it would appear that there is an increase in credit flow to the agricultural sector but this has actually accrued to agro-business firms/corporations and not directly to the farmers. Consequently, marginal and small farmers continue to rely on traders and input dealers. Unless the fundamental problems of crop and regional bias of MSP policy, government procurement and access to institutional credit are addressed, mere increase in MSP will not benefit most farmers in the country.

Further, the response of various State governments to a glut in the market appears to be muted. There exist intervention schemes to undertake the procurement of commodities whose market prices go below the MSP, but on most occasions the marketing season of bumper crops gets over by the time a bureaucratic decision on procurement is taken. Ultimately, the farmers are left at the mercy of unscrupulous traders to sell at whatever price they offer, with resultant repercussions such as the burning of the entire crop or throwing the harvested produce on roads in protest.

Various studies show an increasing divergence between agricultural and non-agricultural income. And the rising aspirations among rural youth to emulate urban lifestyles put enormous pressure on them to find ways to increase income through various agricultural activities. Unfortunately, income from crop cultivation, which is a major segment of agriculture, is not growing enough to meet the expected level. On the contrary, the increasing market orientation and reforms in the input sector have resulted in a substantial rise in input costs.

Dipping income

Analysis of data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare reveal that income from cultivation of many cereals and pulses has declined between 2004-05 and 2013-14 despite a considerable increase in MSP during this period. In the case of paddy, out of 18 major rice-growing States, net income has declined in five, and it is negative in six States. In seven States, it has increased only marginally. Income from the cultivation of even horticultural crops is uncertain due to the heavy investment involved and the high volatility in market prices. Most acute is the rise in prices of fertilisers: between 1991-92 and 2013-14, while the price of urea increased by 69%, that of DAP (diammonium phosphate) and potash rose by 300% and 600%, respectively.

Recent policy pronouncements have added to the woes of already beleaguered farmers. The promotion of traditional farming at this juncture of agricultural development will take the sector to where it was decades ago. Most existing modern crop varieties will not respond to these practices in the medium term; consequently, yield and income will decline. Further, facilities to produce adequate organic inputs have not been developed either. Animal husbandry has been practised as a supplementary activity since time immemorial. Livestock acts as a cushion against crop loss during times of drought. The new rules on animal markets will put poor farmers and landless labourers in a fix. These developments do not augur well for rural youth whose interest in farming is already dwindling. While other developing countries are moving towards modernisation of agriculture which would reduce dependence of labour force and enable a rise in productivity, Indian agriculture is cluelessly plodding ahead.

Elumalai Kannan is an associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His views are personal

Source: Thy Hindu, 13-06-2017

What is Simon-Ehrlich wager in Economics?

A famous bet made in 1980 between American business professor Julian L. Simon and American ecologist Paul R. Ehrlich on what the price of certain ‘non-government-controlled’ natural resources will be in 1990. Ehrlich predicted that increasing demand from a swelling population would exhaust the limited supply of resources, thus increasing their prices. Simon, on the other hand, argued that the price rise would incentivise new production which in turn will reduce the price of these resources. Simon eventually won the bet as the inflation-adjusted prices of all five metals picked by Ehrlich dropped between 1980 and 1990.

source: The Hindu, 12-06-2017

A shattered peace: On Darjeeling hills unrest

ace in West Bengal’s Darjeeling hills has been shattered again, with the key hill party, the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, renewing its demand for a separate Gorkhaland state. The protests started with the suspicion that Bengali would be made mandatory in the hills, but have spiralled into a broad-based ‘indefinite’ agitation with the GJM targeting symbols of the state and ordering closure of all government offices from June 12. In May, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had announced that all students would have to study Bengali from Class I, but later clarified that it would not be compulsory in the hill district of Darjeeling. The GJM, which had lost the Mirik municipal election to the Trinamool Congress in May, appeared to hear only one part of the language decree, and announced a host of marches and shutdowns. When Ms. Banerjee arrived in Darjeeling with her ministers for a meeting on ‘development’ last week, she was greeted with protests and stone-pelting of a kind not seen since 2013. The Army was called out, and Ms. Banerjee stayed put in Darjeeling till she thought a semblance of normality had returned. With May and June constituting the peak tourist season, the GJM has, for now, kept hotels, shops and transport facilities outside the purview of the shutdown. It is the peak season for the Darjeeling tea too, with the second flush harvesting on. This eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation spells fresh trouble for a region that depends on tourism and tea for its survival.

If the first day of the indefinite bandh was more or less peaceful, it was thanks to the heavy military presence and the stringent measures announced against those who supported it, including a possible break in service for employees missing work. For their part, GJM leaders Bimal Gurung and Roshan Giri want the Centre to intervene. When the TMC came to power in 2011 after 34 years of Left rule, the GJM had agreed to the formation of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration after three years of violence in the hills. Mr. Gurung, who had set up the GJM in 2007 with the sole agenda of separation from West Bengal, became its chief executive, saying he would take the Gorkhaland demand to Delhi and refrain from shutdowns in the hills. But with the TMC making inroads in the hills, the GJM clearly feels its wings are being clipped, especially with the government setting up several development boards of ethnic communities and further weakening the hill party. Watching from the sidelines is the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is keen to expand its base in the State. GJM leaders are in touch with BJP president Amit Shah, but the Modi government has not yet spelt out its stand on Gorkhaland. While the State government must be firm and quick to quell cries for the formation of a separate state in the border region, the GJM should tread carefully as a spiral of violence hurts hill-dwellers the most.

Source: The Hindu, 14-06-2017

Why do so few girls opt for science and engineering in India?

If India wants more women doing science, the barriers ---- travel and safety limitations, centrality of career progression around male working patterns, inflexible work hours and negative stereotyping ---- have to fall. There are no short cuts in this roadmap.

The Joint Entrance Examination – Advanced (JEE – Advanced) results are out and coaching institutes have been proudly advertising their ‘successful’ candidates. All most all advertisements have rows of photographs of bright young boys smiling at the camera. But where are the girls? This gender imbalance is not surprising because when it comes to STEM subjects --- science, technology, engineering, and mathematics --- it’s very much a boys’ club. The situation is so dire that earlier this month, a meeting of the joint admission board of IITs recommended an increase of 600 seats – a hike of 14% -- in the number of seats allotted to women, taking the quota to 1,440 seats. The committee also recommended awarding merit scholarships regardless of parental income to female students. Currently, women make up just 8% of the student strength at the 23 IITs across the country.

The IITs are among India’s best institutes and regularly rank high in global surveys but are plagued by a paltry number of women students, seen as Indian’s society’s belief that men are more suited for technical jobs. The other reason could be the preference for a “trouble-free” career.

While even developed countries have fewer female scientists, the crisis is different in India, says a report. In India, women do take up science for degrees, but few of them go on to pursue careers in this discipline. The reason hasn’t been performance, though. Because of the default role of a woman as a homemaker and society’s perception that only women are responsible for rearing children, marriage and not career is perceived to be the primary goal of a woman—no matter which profession she is in.

“If you are away from research in science, particularly experimental work, even for six months, your work gets left behind and you become irrelevant soon. If you choose to have both a career and a family, you do lose out because there is initially an age limit for projects which is 35 years and later, it is 55 years. So, at both ends, you end up losing,” wrote former chief scientist and head of the biophysics laboratory at the Central Leather Research Institute, Chennai, Aruna Dhathathreyan in Lilavati’s Daughters.

In a recent interview with HT, Melinda Gates spoke about how women are losing out by not taking up STEM subjects. ““Computer science offers the best jobs in the economy. The technology sector is connected to all industry, it offers great pay and the best opportunities, and girls are losing points by not studying STEM subjects,” she said. Getting girls hooked to science is a must. “One way could be through computer games, which are an entry point for boys. When I was growing up, they were gender neutral, but with the shooting and fighting games getting popular, girls lost interest,” added Gates. Then there is the question of role models.

If India wants more women doing science, the barriers ---- travel and safety limitations, centrality of career progression around male working patterns, inflexible work hours and negative stereotyping ---- have to be removed. There are no shortcuts in this roadmap.

Source: Hindustan Times, 13-06-2017