Admission to degree courses

A proposal to abolish the age limit for admission to colleges for degree courses is under the consideration of the University Grants Commission. This step is being taken to simplify procedures for admissions. The U.G.C. has already recommended the scrapping of the cumbersome requirement regarding migration certificates. In regard to the age restriction, more than 50 universities in the country have prescribed age limits for admission to various degree courses. In Delhi, for instance, unless a student completes 16 years he is not admitted into the B.A. first year. The U.G.C. has taken the view that it is unfair to refuse admission to a student just because he has not completed the prescribed age. Even if a candidate is short by a few days, he is not eligible for higher studies now. Only last year, the student who stood first in the higher secondary examination, Delhi, with record marks, was refused admission to a college because he was under-aged.

Source: The Hindu, 8/02/2019

How the Assamese are saving orchids through social media and cultivation

In India, there are 1331 species of orchids, found in the Eastern Himalayas including Northeast region, Western Ghats, and eastern part of western Himalayas.

In January 2003, two days before Bohag Bihu, Khyanjeet Gogoi, trekking in the forests bordering Dibru Saikhowa National Park, was picked up by the United Liberated Front of Assam (ULFA) — at the time the most dreaded militant outfit of the Northeast. Held hostage in a secret “jungle” camp on the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border, the militants interrogated Khyanjeet: “Why are you here? What are you looking for?” “Orchids,” the 23-year-old replied. It was an answer no one expected. Three days later, the slightly bemused ULFA cadres left Khyanjeet on the banks of a river; he was free to make his way home.

Advertising

He was looking for a rare species of orchid at the park. Needless to say, those orchids were never found, but the quest continued. Since 1994, he has been travelling only in search of orchids. Over the years, he has recorded 395 species in Assam alone, discovered 35 new ones, named three himself and cultivated several more in his backyard in the small town of Rupai in Upper Assam’s Doomdooma, where he teaches biology at a local high school.

Today, he has many monikers in Assam: the orchid expert, the orchid whisperer, the orchid man, and is often called by the government to identify rare species. In Assam, the kopou phool, or the foxtail orchid, the pinkish-white flower that blooms in April and resembles a fox’s tail, was accorded the status of state flower in 2003. It has been, since time immemorial, linked to Assamese culture (as a symbol of fertility, merriment, love and affection) and is most conspicuous during Magh Bihu (the festival that heralds spring in Assam) — not just on trees, but also neatly tied to the head of a Bihu dancer.

“For the longest time, I didn’t even know they were called orchids. As a child, I would recognise them as kopou phool,” says Khyanjeet, who first saw these flowers not adorning a Bihu dancer’s head, but lying by the side of the road. “After using them, people would just throw these flowers away, and I — attracted by their appearance — would often collect them,” he says. He remembers, how as a student of botany in Sivasagar, he found no books on the subject in his college library, save for one chapter in one text book. “That is when I decided I should write to a book on orchids in Assam,” he recalls. In 2010, he published the Wild Orchids of Assam. To date, it’s arguably the only full-length book in English on Assam orchids.

In India, there are 1331 species of orchids, found in the Eastern Himalayas including Northeast region, Western Ghats, and eastern part of western Himalayas. “But the Northeast remains an orchid hotspot (all the seven states) with 72 per cent of total orchids found in India,” says Khyanjeet. However, simultaneously, as these flowers bloom, they are fast wilting and disappearing too. The reasons are many: deforestation, soil erosion, over grazing. While some traders do have proper trade licenses, majority of orchid trade, which is in part with China, is illegal. In 2015, Assam inaugurated the three-hectare Kaziranga National Orchid and Biodiversity Park belonging to Akhil Gogoi’s Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti, which was promoted as a space for conservation. Today, it has 500 varieties of wild orchids, and is a tourist attraction.

A life member of Orchid Society of India, and the founder member of the Orchid Society of Eastern Himalayas, Khyanjeet met 26-year-old Ankur Gogoi at a youth festival in 2015. A dhul player of a local Bihu band in his hometown at Tengapukhuri, Ankur recounts, “Right before one of our performances, we realised we didn’t have any orchids for the girl dancers to put in their hair. But luckily, we came across someone who was cultivating close to 100 orchids in their home.” That made him think — “If they can, why can’t I? In 2010, I started getting orchids home — with the little knowledge I had, I began growing them. I would tie them up to the big mango and betel nut trees in my yard with a string. Soon I had twenty varieties.”

Source: Indian Express, 6/02/2019

Faith and gender justice

Court has upheld equality. Muslim Personal Law Board and devotees of Ayyappa must initiate internal reform.

In a recent television interview, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that while opposition to women’s entry into Sabarimala is a question of tradition, triple talaq is an issue of gender justice. The prime minister has echoed what his party president and other BJP leaders have been saying over the past few months: Sabarimala is an issue of aastha (faith). Surprisingly, however, the Supreme Court’s Shayara Bano judgment (2017) does not talk of gender justice. The court set triple talaq aside because the majority in the five-judge bench found the practice to be un-Islamic — that is, against the faith.

Advertising

The prime minister’s sentiments on Sabarimala have been echoed by the RSS chief, VHP leaders and top ministers of the Modi government in the context of the Babri Masjid dispute. Some of them have quite brazenly asked the apex court to decide the property suit expeditiously.

At a time when it seems that religion will play a significant role in the electoral battle of 2019, it is of utmost importance that we understand the meaning of tradition? What is faith? What is gender justice? Are Sabarimala and triple talaq issues of faith/tradition or do they pertain to gender justice? Is it right for the prime minister and others to approve the dissenting opinion of Justice Indu Malhotra in the Sabarimala judgment but go against the dissent by the then Chief Justice of India J S Khehar and Justice Abdul Nazeer in Shayara Bano — the two had argued that the “tradition” of triple divorce is as old as Islam, that is, 1,400 years. The exclusion of women in Sabarimala is not such an ancient tradition and a queen of Travancore is said to have visited the temple as late as 1939.

In fact, the majority in the triple talaq judgment considered freedom of religion nearly absolute. CJI Khehar explicitly held that personal law is included within the freedom of religion and observed that the courts have a duty to protect personal law and are barred from finding fault in it. He went on to hold that personal law is beyond judicial scrutiny. “Triple divorce cannot be faulted either on the ground of public order or health or morality or other fundamental rights,” the-then CJI said. Justice Rohinton Nariman and Justice U U Lalit too accepted that triple talaq is considered sinful and thus cannot be termed as an essential Islamic practice that is entitled to constitutional protection. Sin is essentially a concept of “faith”. Moreover, they struck down the practice as arbitrary. The judges rightly observed that the fundamental nature of Islam will not change if triple divorce is not recognised. Justice Kurian Joseph too said triple divorce is un-Islamic and what is sinful in theology cannot be valid in law.

“What an individual does with his own solitariness” is how the English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead defined religion or faith. To former President S Radhakrishnan, “Religion was a code of ethical rules and the rituals, observances, ceremonies and modes of worship are its outer manifestations.” Thus, whom to worship, how to worship, where to worship and when to worship are all questions of faith or religious tradition. Faith also tells us what is permissible and what is prohibited in certain contexts. Thus, what food is permissible and with whom sexual relations are prohibited too are questions of faith for a believer or a follower of religious tradition. If the intimate relationship between a believing Hanafi (most Indian Muslims are followers of this sect) couple has become sinful — and goes against the tenets of their religion — we cannot, legally speaking, force them to continue in such a relationship. Article 26 gives every religious denomination or any sect thereof the freedom to manage its own affairs in matters of religion.

The argument that since some Muslim countries do not permit triple divorce — therefore triple divorce is not an issue of faith and can be made a criminal offence — is misconceived, as Islamic law is not uniform. It varies from one school (sect) to another. Moreover not recognising triple divorce as a valid form of divorce is one thing and making it a criminal offence is another. After the Supreme Court judgment, there is today near unanimity within experts of Indian Islam on the former point. But most of them are opposed to the criminalisation of triple talaq because divorce is fundamentally a civil matter.

Faiths are all about “beliefs” and these beliefs need not be based, either on rationality or on morality. Reason and empiricism are alien to religions. In fact, all faiths are regressive, exclusionary and discriminatory because their origins date to pre-modern times.

But the Constitution, as a progressive document, gives us the right to have a certain amount of irrationality and blind belief, under the Freedom of Religion (Articles 25-28). By overemphasising “constitutional morality,” the Sabarimala judgment tried to curtail this freedom to irrational beliefs. That led to protests. Justice D Y Chandrachud had described the exclusion of women as untouchability, while delivering the verdict in the Sabarimala case. Many of us thought that he was going too far but the purification of the temple after the entry of two women has proved that there is indeed an element of untouchability in the exclusion of women — this, when the Constitution has explicitly abolished untouchability.

BEST OF EXPRESS

Rahul Gandhi on Rafale deal: 'Clear that PMO for carrying out parallel negotiations'

On Income Tax radar: Former MP Jay Panda’s Bahamas transactions

LIVEIndia vs New Zealand 2nd T20I: New Zealand win toss, elect to bat first

In the Sabarimala case, the majority struck down the rule that prohibited women from entering the temple as it went against the parent act on places of worship. This Act lays down that all places of worship in Kerala shall be open to all sections of Hindus. The Supreme Court refused to recognise the Ayyappa devotees as members of a distinct Hindu sect. It also refused to extend the Freedom of Religion to gods, thus refuting the primary argument of the Sabarimala trust. The trust had argued that Ayyappa, being a celibate himself, excluded women from his temple. Justice Chandrachud held that deities are not entitled to fundamental rights. The review court may re-examine this claim.

Gender justice is a modern concept to which our Constitution is committed. Freedom of religion is subject to the Right to Equality and that’s why judges have little choice in upholding discriminatory practices. But we should not aim just at formal equality but try to achieve substantive equality. Substantive equality rejects the “sameness doctrine” under which men and women are to be given the same treatment. It rather favours recognition of differences between men and women and advocates differential but just treatment for women.

The distinction between faith and tradition is artificial and gender justice requires reforms in both. The devotees of Ayyappa as well as the Muslim Personal Law Board must appreciate the constitutional vision of gender justice and religions must reform themselves internally. However, the top- down model of reforms will not work as Indians are essentially religious and prefer to go by the opinions of clergy rather than the courts. The Sabarimala protests have yet again proved that courts are ill-equipped to initiate reforms in faiths.

Source: Indian Express, 8/02/2019

KVS admissions 2019 schedule released, register online for Class 1 from March 1

KVS admissions 2019 : Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) has released the admission schedule for academic session 2019-20 on its official website.

Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) has released the admission schedule for academic session 2019-20 on its official website kvsangathan.nic.in.

According to the notification issued by KVS, the notification for admission will be released in the last week of February. The online registration for Class 1 will start at 8am on March 1 and close on March 19 at 4pm. The first provisionally selected students list for class 1 will be released on March 26, the second list will be out on April 9 while the third list will be out on April 23 (if seats remain vacant).

The registration for admission in Class II and onward (except class Xi), subject to availability of seats, will start on April 2 and close on April 9 (during school hours). The declaration of list of class II onwards will take place between April 12 and 20

Source: Hindustan Times,7/02/2019

Women in tech still look up to Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg oversees parts of Facebook that have been most embroiled in scandal but the company has faith in her.

For the last decade, the gathering of the global elite at Davos has been a safe space for Sheryl Sandberg. This year, though, fresh off a bruising 2018, the Facebook COO arrived in the Alps on the defensive, apologizing over and over again for Facebook’s privacy and ethical slip-ups. She was notably absent from the conference’s main equality and gender discussions; she was fighting a cold and her voice was a rasp.

Over the last few months, the Sheryl Sandberg brand has taken a beating, and news about Facebook’s misdeeds—and her reported role in them—is unrelenting. Questions about privacy, Russian election hacking, unsavory opposition targeting dominated the end of 2018, and the New Year began with new reports of questionable data collection practices that led Apple to ban some of Facebook’s internal apps.Through it all, pundits dissected Sandberg’s “fall from grace,” employees blamed her for the company’s woes and a stunning stock slide, and critics called for her resignation. Corporate feminism fell out of favor, #MeToo exposed the weaknesses of “leaning in” and Sandberg’s own fallibility cast her feminist empowerment side-project in a newly harsh light.

But there are signs that Sandberg’s reputation is on the mend. It helps that Facebook doesn’t seem to be suffering any: fourth-quarter results were better than expected and the stock is up. Both the company and Lean In say they’re committed to Sandberg’s leadership, and from Switzerland to San Francisco, women, particularly those working in technology, are coming out in support of the embattled COO.

“I still look up to her,” said Annie Hsieh, an engineering manager at Square Root, an Austin-based tech company. Like more than a dozen women interviewed by Bloomberg, Hsieh said she doesn’t think Sandberg acted to the highest moral and ethical standards, but she also knows how hard it is to make it to the top in the tech world. “She’s just another human and she’s not a superhero. I think some of the criticism is valid and a lot of it is unfair.”

Sandberg, for her part, started off the New Year on an image rehabilitation tour. On January 20th, she made her first public appearance in the new year at the DLD conference in Munich. “As we listen to people around the world,” she said, “they tell us that they want an internet, where people speak up, but they’re not spreading hate.”

“We know we need to do better,” she went on. “We need to stop abuse more quickly and we need to do more to protect more people’s data.”

From there, she went to Dublin and then Davos, where she atoned again and again. For her peers at the World Economic Forum, the apologies were more than enough. “There isn’t a single organization that I have the honor to work with out there that doesn’t still look to her for leadership,” said Patricia Milligan, a senior partner at Mercer, the HR consulting firm.

That includes Facebook. Sandberg directly oversees the parts of the business that have been most embroiled in scandal, such as policy and content operations, but the company says if there’s a problem, they believe in Sandberg’s ability to address it. “Under Sheryl’s leadership, we now have more than 30,000 people working on safety and security, we’ve cracked down on fake accounts and misinformation, and we’ve set a new standard for ads transparency,” the company said.

“She has done a lot for women in tech, we shouldn’t forget that,” said Gillian Tans, the CEO of Booking.com. “It takes 3 to 4 times the effort for a woman to achieve the level of success that many of us who are here have achieved. Yet it takes one misstep to fall off your pedestal.”

Back at sea level, women like Hsieh are also inclined to forgive. Many women working in tech told Bloomberg they dislike Lean In’s message of do-it-yourself women’s empowerment. Most of them denounced Sandberg’s recently reported involvement in covering up Russian interference on Facebook (if true). But most also said she’s been held to an unfair standard, and overall, they believe she’s done more good than bad.

“She has crossed a boundary,” said Nancy Wang, a Senior Manager of Product Management at Amazon Web Services. “But we have to look at someone holistically. What she has done for women in tech, that’s something you can’t take away from her.”

It helps to understand how rare Sandberg’s accomplishments are. Women make up about a quarter of the computing workforce but just 11 percent of leadership roles, according to a study by McKinsey and Company. Among those leaders, no one has the power or portfolio of responsibility that Sandberg does. At Fortune 500 companies with COO positions, only 10 percent are filled by women.

So while there are plenty of examples of powerful men logging all manner of successes and failures, Sandberg has come to stand-in for all women in technology. Her very existence has opened up streams of funding, according to Lisa Falzone, now CEO and co-founder of Athena Security. She started her first company in 2010—before Facebook went public and before Lean In—and it was hard to get venture capitalists to take her seriously. Now, she says, things have changed, and that’s a credit to Sandberg.

“You have to have more successful women that people can point to so VCs will give more women money,” said Falzone. “If they’ve never seen a woman be successful before, they’re not going to invest in women.”

Lean In’s own research suggests that “leaning in” isn’t the panacea Sandberg herself once thought. Women are asking for raises more often, but they’re not getting them. Some 40 percent of women in technical roles are often or always the only female in the room at work and, as a result, they often need to provide more evidence of their competence. They’re also likely to be mistaken for someone more junior.But Sandberg’s existence—and her success—does make a difference. Research shows that women are more harshly penalized when they make mistakes. They’re also less likely to get second chances. One reason women are rooting for her rehabilitation is self-interest: They worry if she falls, they’ll suffer too.

Ironically, the solution, according to Stefanie Johnson, an associate professor of management at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds School of Business, is more Sheryl Sandbergs, not fewer. If there were more women in positions of real power, more junior workers wouldn’t feel like they had to hold on to their one hero. Then the world could experience women with a variety of leadership styles—good and bad—and judge them as complex, holistic humans—just like we do with men.

Bloomberg Opinion

Source: Hindustan Times, 8/02/2019

A View of Time & Space

Those who know (the true measure of) day and night, know the day of Brahma, which ends in a thousand yugas, and the night that (also) ends in a thousand yugas. We have a timescale in India that is extraordinary, with extraordinary vision of the infinity of time, as also the infinity of space. We were never narrow and small in thinking, that the world began in 4,000 BC. Our minds went beyond millions and millions of years and, in modern cosmology, we accept the same idea. We are on a tiny planet, earth, and we measure time watching the rotation of the earth on its own axis and the revolution around the sun. So, we have a day, night, a year, but we don’t think that it is the same thing everywhere. What you call a day and night here, might be just a second on another plane. So, we call this terrestrial time. Then we move on to celestial time. The earth goes around the sun in one year, but the sun itself is going around the galactic system. That takes 200 million years. This kind of perspective was developed by Indian sages. Our time unit is very ordinary, just one year, and our lifetime is maximum 100 years. Brahma also has 100 years, but his 100 years are different from ours. Consider his one day: the day is divided into two halves, a day and a night. In Brahma’s day, the universe begins to evolve. And for the whole day, the evolution proceeds and when Brahma’s evening comes, evolution returns to its original source. Human life is a little extraordinary but this also is ordinary when you deal with the cosmic timescale.

Source: Economic Times, 8/02/2019

Bengal has most child marriages

If you thought the Bimaru states topped in child marriages, think again. West Bengal now has the highest incidence of girls aged between 15 and 19 years being married off, far ahead of states such as Rajasthan that one traditionally associated with child brides. However, the findings of the National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4), conducted in 2015-16, show a steady decline across states, barring a marginal rise in two states – Himachal Pradesh and Manipur. The national average for child marriages now is 11.9% of all girls aged 15-19. When NFHS-3 was conducted in 2005-06, Bihar topped in child marriages, with a prevalence of 47.8%; Jharkhand was second with 44.7% and Rajasthan third (40.4%). Bengal was fourth with 34%. But in the 10 years since then, some Bimaru states — Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh — managed to reduce the incidence of child marriage by over 20 percentage points. In the same period, Bengal managed only an 8.4 percentage point reduction. District-level analysis using NFHS-4 reveals that Murshidabad (39.9%) in Bengal shows the highest prevalence of child marriage, followed by Gandhinagar (39.3%) in Gujarat and Bhilwara (36.4%) in Rajasthan. Bihar has the most number of districts with high prevalence (20), followed by Bengal (14) and Jharkhand (11).

Source: Times of India, 8/02/2019