“The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.”
Marian Zimmer Bradley
“आशा के साथ तैयार की गई सड़क पर यात्रा करना उस सड़क पर यात्रा करने से कहीं अधिक आनन्ददायक होता है जिसे निराशा के साथ तैयार किया जाता है चाहे उन दोनो की मंजिल एक ही क्यों न हो।”
मैरियन जिम्मर ब्रैडले
The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) was conducted between 2019 and 2021.
Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is the average number of children that would be born to a woman if she were to live to the end of her child-bearing years and give birth to children in alignment with the prevailing age-specific fertility rates.
Total Fertility Rates has declined from 2.2 (NHFS-4) to 2.0 (NFHS-5) at the national level. Thus, the TFR is currently below the replacement level of fertility.
Replacement level fertility is the level of fertility at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next.
Only five states are above the replacement level of fertility of 2.1. These five states are Bihar (2.98), Meghalaya (2.91), Uttar Pradesh (2.35), and Jharkhand (2.26) Manipur (2.17).
The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) is a large-scale, multi-round survey conducted on a representative sample of households throughout India.
NFHS provides state and national information for India on fertility, infant and child mortality, the practice of family planning, maternal and child health, reproductive health, nutrition, anemia, utilization, and quality of health and family planning services.
NFHS has two specific goals:
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) designated the International Institute for Population Sciences(IIPS) Mumbai, as the nodal agency, to provide coordination and technical guidance for the survey.
– Constitution bench to decide who will control Delhi government bureaucrats
– WHO Covid death numbers an attempt to ruin India’s image: State health minsters say at Conference of the Central Council of Health and Family Welfare (CCHFW)
– Home Ministry launches portal for retired CAPF and Assam Rifle personnel seeking re-employment with private security agencies
– PM Modi asks youth to participate in Logo Design Contest for G-20 Presidency of India
– President Kovind to visit Jamaica and St. Vincent & Grenadines from 15th May
– Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman flags anonymity as ‘inherent risk’ in use of blockchain
– Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal co-chairs India-Italy Business roundtable with Italy’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Luigi Di Maio in New Delhi
– Sri Lanka: President Gotabaya Rajapaksa declares state of emergency
– 4th Khelo India Youth Games to be held at Panchkula, Haryana from June 4 to 13
– President appointments Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia, JB Pardiwala as Supreme Court judges
– Centre defends sedition law and requests Supreme Court to reject pleas challenging it
– President inaugurates permanent campus of IIM-Nagpur
– UP: Prominent crossing in Ayodhya to be developed, named after Lata Mangeshkar
– DoT abolishes NOCC (network operation and control centre) charges for all telecom licence holders
– Pushp Kumar Joshi takes charge as new CMD of PSU Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL)
– 32 dead after a massive explosion destroys Saratoga Hotel in Havana, Cuba; gas leak is thought to be the cause of the explosion
– Northern Ireland election: Sinn Fein wins 27 seats in the 90-seat Assembly; emerges as the largest party for the first time
– Russian Defense Ministry says civilians’ evacuation from Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine ends
– John Lee Ka-chiu, the sole candidate for Hong Kong’s leadership election, confirmed as city’s next chief executive
– Nepal’s Kami Rita Sherpa climbs Mount Everest for 26th time to set new world record
– World Red Cross Day observed on May 8; is birth anniversary of ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) founder Henri Dunant
– World Thalassemia Day observed on May 8; Thalassemia is blood disorder characterized by abnormal formation of haemoglobin
– UN observes ‘Time of Remembrance and Reconciliation for Those Who Lost Their Lives during the Second World War’ on May 8-9
Can grown-ups get back their childhood long lost? No, that’s impossible. Of course, it’s true we can never recapture our childhood, but can attain the state of being of a child mentally by loving children and being in their pleasant company.
To be a child once again in mind and mood is to be happy, outgrowing mundane worries and adult anxieties. This is exactly what I’ve experienced recently when our elder son came home with his family.
That morning, seated on a chair on the veranda, I was reading the newspaper. All of a sudden, I was jolted out of my reading with boisterous laughter and incessant screams of our granddaughters. I looked around and found that the noise was coming from the terrace. So I turned inquisitive and to know why they were screaming and laughing, I went on to the terrace where my spouse has nurtured a beautiful garden of roses, hibiscus, marigold, chrysanthemum and a huge variety of other plants. There I beheld our two granddaughters, running, frolicking, playing, laughing and screaming. The elder one, six years old, was sauntering along the rows of the neatly arranged flower pots and peering at the blossoms with her wonder-struck eyes and touching them gently. She was smiling like an angel and surprisingly, she was not plucking even a single flower. She was savouring quietly the beauty of the flowers.
The younger one, just three years old, was running swiftly on her little feet, screaming and laughing. She was running after butterflies, flitting around flowers. With her little hands raised, she was running to catch butterflies. When her hands reached closer to a butterfly and she was about to have it in her grasp, she laughed triumphantly as if she was going to possess a treasure. But when the butterfly gave the slip, rose into the air and kept hovering over her little head, she screamed incessantly. However, she was persistent and kept chasing butterflies, laughing and screaming.
Elated at their cheery play, forgetting my age, once again I became a child and joined them, taking part in the fun and frolic. Along with them, I was eyeing and touching blooms tossing in the morning breeze, chasing butterflies, screaming and laughing. Coming on to the terrace and watching me play with the grandchildren, my spouse remarked, “You too have become a child.”
“Yes, now I am a child in the company of our grandchildren, seeking the bliss of heaven,” I muttered. My wife with a twinkle in her eyes just smiled at me.
kakivenugopalarao@gmail.com
Source: The Hindu, 8/05/22
Gazing into the night sky is undoubtedly one of the most ethereal experiences. Cloaked in a dark canvas studded with tiny glittering stars, the heavens remind us of the wonders and the mysteries of the majestic universe. It is very challenging to ascertain the total number of stars in the cosmos; the milky way galaxy alone is estimated to have nearly a 100 billion stars. However, about 2500 stars are visible on a clear night on earth.
Stars have some important features in common; they are gigantic, ferocious balls of gas, basically hydrogen and helium, spewing out heat and light due to nuclear fusion. There is nothing tranquil about their world despite what the nursery rhymes and songs entail.
Stars are the same, yet diverse. They can be of different colours like white, yellow, red or blue. They can be as small as a planet or so big that the sun is merely a speck in contrast but are very, very far from us.
Sky-gazing is primarily a night time adventure. However, since centuries man has been enthralled by the notion of viewing the stars in the daytime too. Not many know that the Moon, Venus and Jupiter, which are very close to us on the cosmic scale, can be spotted with the naked eye during daylight hours, the only hurdle being one should be sure of which part of the sky to explore.
Are stars “nocturnal” and disappear in the daytime? Of course not, they radiate light during the day as intensely as they do in the night. Although our sun is an average star, neither too big nor too small, not very hot nor cold, its proximity to us makes it shine 550,000 times brighter than the full moon and makes other stars too dull (about a trillion times dimmer) in comparison. It is the bright light from the sun that prevents us from discerning the light emanating from other stars in the daytime.
Just as we cannot see the glow of a candle in a brightly lit room, similarly the dim star light can be seen in the dark background at night and is submerged in the brilliant glare of the sun and the bright blue sky during the day. If one was on the moon, which does not have an atmosphere, there would be no scattering, the sky would be dark and the stars would be visible at all times. So, basically, the visibility of the stars is all about the contrast with the surroundings.
Man’s quest to see the stars in the day dates back to ancient times and is even documented by Aristotle. It was believed that if one gazed over a small section of sky from the bottom of a deep well, a coal pit or shaft of a tall chimney, one could see stars in the daylight. The notion was based on the fact that such a vantage point would reduce the amount of light entering the eye, make the pupil bigger allowing more light from the star to enter thus making it visible. The theory has been tested by many including the noted German scientist and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, and it has failed every time.
So the question still remains, is the sun the only star visible in the day? No. Armed with a telescope of a large aperture, we can see bright stars in the daylight. If the star is located further from the sun in the sky, it is cloudy and if the observation is made from a high spot, daytime star-gazing becomes feasible.
The most opportune time to see stars in the day without a telescope is during a total solar eclipse. With the sun’s disc covered by the moon, the twinkling stars in the sky offer a truly exhilarating experience.
The death of a star, when it becomes a supernova with brightness increasing a million-fold, offers a rare window of opportunity to see a star in the daytime but yet to be established.
Betelgeuse, a red supergiant, and part of the constellation Orion shall become a supernova anytime during the next 100,000 years. This will be a spectacular show with clear visibility of the star even in the daytime for about three months before it fades into a nighttime object visible for many centuries.
The possibility of seeing stars other than the sun in the daytime is surely an exotic and enchanting experience requiring precision and focus as we gaze into the infinite blue sky. It is surely an acute test of patience, perseverance, and right timing.
Source: Indian Express, 26/09/21