Quote of the Day
“Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.”‐ John F. Kennedy
“अपने दुश्मनों को माफ कर दें, लेकिन उनके नाम कभी न भूलें।”‐ जॉन एफ कैनेडी
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
Safe, but not entirely: On milk safety survey
The presence of aflatoxin M1 in milk points to the need to regulate cattle fodder
The “most comprehensive and representative” milk safety and quality survey has demolished the perception of large-scale milk adulteration in India. It was undertaken on 6,432 samples collected last year between May and October, and picked from over 1,100 town/cities with over 50,000 population. The survey by an independent agency at the behest of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) found 93% of the samples were absolutely safe. The samples were tested for 13 common adulterants and three contaminants — pesticides, aflatoxin M1 and antibiotics. Only 12 adulterated samples were found to be unsafe for consumption. The adulterated samples — they were also subjected to confirmatory tests — were from just three States: Telangana (nine), Madhya Pradesh (two) and Kerala (one). The survey claims that quantitative analysis of all adulterated samples showed the amount of adulterants and contaminants in the dozen samples was not high and hence “unlikely to pose serious threat” to human health. However, it did find 368 samples (5.7%) had aflatoxin M1 residues beyond the permissible limit of 0.5 microgram per kilogram. Compared with aflatoxin M1, antibiotics were seen above the permissible level in 77 samples, from Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.
At 227, aflatoxin M1 was more widely present in processed milk samples than in raw milk (141). This is the first time the presence of the contaminant in milk has been assessed. According to the FSSAI, aflatoxin M1 in milk is from feed and fodder, which is not regulated. The highest residue levels of aflatoxin M1 in milk were seen in samples from three States — Tamil Nadu (88 out of 551 samples), Delhi (38 out of 262) and Kerala (37 out of 187). According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer the contaminant has been classified as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”. Its carcinogenic potency is estimated to be about a one-tenth of aflatoxin B1. Since the current survey has limited itself to milk, it is not clear how widespread aflatoxin M1 contamination is in milk products such as cheese, and hence the total exposure to it. Aflatoxin M1 in milk and milk products is a public health concern especially in infants and young children as milk constitutes one of the major sources of nutrients. According to the World Health Organisation, exposure to aflatoxin M1 in milk and milk products is especially high in areas where the grain quality used as animal feed is poor. Hence all attempts need to taken both before and after food crop harvest to reduce the toxin amount. Improper storage of food harvest in warm and humid conditions leads to aflatoxin contamination that is much higher than what is seen in the field. Equally important is in having facilities to regularly test for aflatoxin M1.
Source: The Hindu, 22/10/2019
Economics of poverty: On Economic Sciences' Nobel
The Nobel laureates made development economics more relevant to policy making
Development economics just got a boost with the award of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to three economists who have worked, and are still working, to understand and alleviate poverty — Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Michael Kremer of Harvard University. This is only the second time a woman has bagged the prestigious award, popularly called the Economics Nobel, and it is a first for a husband-wife duo to win in this discipline — Mr. Banerjee is married to Ms. Duflo. In the words of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the experiment-based approach of the three laureates has transformed development economics and turned it into a “flourishing field of research”. One of their studies resulted in benefiting 5 million children in India through programmes of remedial tutoring in schools. The three adopted an evidence-based approach to apply theory to real-life situations using randomised trials and assessing the outcomes. The effort was to understand the impact of interventions to achieve desirable outcomes. The approach is derived from the concept of If this sounds like gobbledygook, the experiment that Mr. Banerjee and Ms. Duflo carried out in Rajasthan some years ago would explain the concept better. Despite immunisation being free, women were not bringing in their children for the vaccination shot. The two MIT economists decided to give a bag of pulses free to women who brought their babies for vaccination. Word soon spread and the rate of immunisation shot up in the region. Another experiment they did was in Mumbai and Vadodara to understand learning outcomes in the field of education. Was it lack of access to textbooks or hunger that caused poor learning outcomes? Through field studies, Mr. Banerjee and Ms. Duflo established that the problem is that teaching is not adapted to the needs of the students. Learning outcomes improved in schools that were provided with teaching assistants to support students with special needs. The importance of the work being done by the three laureates cannot be overemphasised. Governments across the world, including in India, spend big money on social schemes without the vaguest of ideas on whether their objectives have been met. The field-work based approach that these economists have perfected has revolutionised the field of development economics and made it more relevant in policy making. The government would do well to borrow from the research of these laureates to understand the impact of its several schemes, and where necessary, tweak them to derive maximum benefit for the thousands of crores of rupees that it spends.clinical trials in the pharmaceuticals industry.
Source: The Hindu, 15/10/2019
Money and Happiness
The role of money can’t be undervalued; at the same time, it can’t be overrated. Most successful business magnates don’t seem to be born with a silver spoon, and among those who have earned that silver spoon, many don’t seem to always ascent to cloud nine happiness, trapped as they are, in the trifling things of life. Those who ascend to cloud nine do not always seem to stay at that position and those who stay for long at that state don’t always seem to be running after money. It shows there is a distant connection between how much money one has and how long one can experience the bliss. Often, the pain and strain of earning and maintaining capital outgrows the happiness it can earn. The total happiness value money can produce can only be increased when it is shared with the causes that can bring happiness to others in need. Our scriptures say, ‘Let no one face the misery.’ Working for alleviating others’ pain is the simple key to personal happiness, since it takes away the mind from personal pains. Theological writer Hosea Ballou has written, “Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.” According to spiritual wisdom, real happiness is the natural byproduct of ceaseless service to God without any ulterior motives. If we can set aside our ego, then we can truly feel the bliss of the Soul surging in our consciousness. The experience of such a shelter within and sharing of that shelter through an exemplary life and practical help for others can make us truly happy
Source: Economic Times, 22/10/2019
Monday, October 21, 2019
Economic & Political Weekly: Table of Contents
Vol. 54, Issue No. 42, 19 Oct, 2019
Build a network to share knowledge about health
Government partnership is becoming a buzz word in the social sector, but often lacks substance. In my experience, evidence generated at the grassroots, backed by community voice, is what makes for powerful policy change
The best part of my job is that I get to visit remote villages in many states. So often, I get a sense of déjà vu on these journeys, when I see frail pregnant women and new mothers, and malnourished children with listless eyes. But occasionally, there is a ray of hope. Inevitably it comes from groups of village women, working together to save and improve lives. These programmes, by both NGOs and government departments, should be sharing their best practices. That doesn’t happen.
Business knowledge for the most part is not shared, because it is the source of precious competitive advantage. When I left McKinsey and stepped into the public health world, I was dismayed because I saw something similar happening. NGOs were doing similar work, rarely exchanging knowledge. The only difference was that lives, instead of market share, were being lost. Couldn’t NGOs across India systematically capture and share grassroots knowledge?
Over the last two years, I led a small team that travelled across 53 districts in 18 states, to see if this knowledge network idea made sense. We visited 50 outstanding initiatives primarily in public health delivery. Indeed, many agencies were working on similar issues, and had many innovations they could share. There were five thematic areas — data use by front-line workers; community health workers; community mobilisation; data-based advocacy; and organisation building. Let’s consider each.
Health delivery programmes often fail to pinpoint the cases most at risk. It is not enough to know how many pregnant women and newborns there are in a village; programmes need to quickly find the few most at risk. In every village health services are provided by three women government staff — a nurse-midwife, community mobiliser and crèche worker. In Rajasthan, our Akshada programme developed a system of village mapping. These three regularly meet to share information, placing bindis of different colours on houses with the most urgent medical cases. This has been converted into an app. This data sharing and joint problem solving by front line workers is being implemented across the state, saving lives. We are eager to share our methods.
But what happens when government front-line workers are missing? This was the case in remote tribal locations we visited in Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. We found ingenious methods to create community health workers and fill the gap, in different places. These local wMomen are trained to identify high-risk cases, and connect to the nearest health care provider.
We found that NGO programmes often take the beneficiary for granted. However, barriers like a lack of awareness, and social and cultural norms get in the way.
Government partnership is becoming a buzz word in the social sector, but often lacks substance. In my experience, evidence generated at the grassroots, backed by community voice, is what makes for powerful policy change. Sex workers from the Ashodaya community based organisation in Mysore work with government departments. They come equipped with hard data, such as access denied to government entitlements, and incidents of violence against sex workers. Their voice, backed by media coverage, and legal support, has led to a reduction in HIV cases. This principle of data-to-voice advocacy can be applied in other health programmes.
Sometimes entire vital functions are missing in NGOs such as for knowledge capture. Culturally, staff are not encouraged to express dissent and to treat it as an obligation. There are plenty of best practices to learn, including from companies.
The two-year Bharat darshan across 18 states has reaffirmed our belief: That vibrant solutions to most public health problems already exist. We only need a pan-Indian real-time knowledge network, ever expanding driven by mutual interest. That’s another story!
Ashok Alexander is founder-director of the Antara Foundation
Source: Hindustan Times, 19/10/2019
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