Monday, March 11, 2024

Himanta Biswa Sarma writes: After decades of neglect, Viksit Assam is on the rise

PM Modi’s resolve of a Viksit Bharat during Amrit Kaal has been the guiding light for Assam to develop a roadmap for Viksit Assam 2047. In less than eight years, under his guidance, governance in the state has seen more public participation, transparency and accountability

Unlike King Karna, who was cursed by the earth goddess and a poor Brahmin, a prosperous Assam suffers the banes from the past regimes’ apathy and abandonment. In 1950-51, Assam had an enviable per capita income of 4 per cent above the national average. The state has had a tumultuous journey since then. After suffering repeated reorganisation – without economic planning – creating more states till 1971, subsequent blows such as bouts of illegal immigration, agitations, and extremism harmed Assam’s growth. By 1998, Assam’s per capita income went down to 41 per cent below than the national average.

Seven decades of darkness created a complex web of political, economic, and social challenges. We needed a million rays to disperse this darkness and this mission has been led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His love for the people of Assam and its development is evident in the host of central initiatives that the state has benefitted from in the recent past.

Be it an AIIMS in Assam, the Dhola-Sadiya bridge over the Brahmaputra, India’s longest rail-cum-road bridge at Bogibeel, expansion of Guwahati airport, national highways, power infrastructure, expansion of refineries, gas and oil pipelines, new medical colleges and hospitals, Maa Kamakhya corridor, or massive programmes for women and youth empowerment in Assam, or even recent approval to set up Rs 27000 crore worth semiconductor unit, none of them would have been possible without PM Modi’s support. Indeed, wearing Assam’s traditional gamocha around his neck, he has been the biggest brand ambassador of Assam within and outside India.

When Jawaharlal Nehru, as a Prime Minister abandoned Assam amidst the 1962 Indo-China war while claiming his heart went out to the people of Assam, Prime Minister Modi repeatedly called the region Ashtalakshmi and Bharat’s growth engine.

The Modi government’s focus on Assam is evident in the several visits by the Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues to the region. This has helped unleash a double-engine government. As the foot soldiers of Pradhan Sevak Modi who is leading us from the front, we are doing our best to march towards a Viksit Assam. PM Modi’s resolve of a Viksit Bharat during Amrit Kaal has been the guiding light for Assam to develop a roadmap for Viksit Assam 2047. In less than eight years, under his guidance, governance in the state has seen more public participation, transparency and accountability.

Law and order turnaround

We prioritised three issues: extremism, drugs and narcotics, and women’s safety. Our firm and timely measures ensured success on all these fronts. The near end of extremism is a result of negotiations with extremist groups jointly led by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the state. This has resulted in 11 peace accords since 2016, the latest one with ULFA

Second, as per the World Drugs Report 2018, Assam had 7.5 lakh active drug users. Assam and the northeast, which typically acted as a transit point for the illicit transnational drugs trade. We needed to put an end to this and disrupt the deep-rooted network. The Assam police undertook the task. In a massive crackdown between 2021 and 2023, the police registered a record 8,184 cases arresting 13,565 traffickers and seizing 346 kg of heroin and 98,993 kg of ganja and others worth Rs 1,186 crore.

The disturbing infant and maternal mortality rates coupled with the crime against women of Assam were a matter of deep concern. Our strict policies curbing child marriages, repealing the colonial Assam Muslim Marriage and Divorces Registration Act, and focusing on women’s health have shown a significant decline in crime against women – by 51.7 per cent from 2021 to 2022. These steps have gone a long way in ensuring stability and a secure environment in the state.

Women and Youth-led Development

Our strategic roadmap for economic development is showing results. The state’s internal revenue crossed Rs 28,424 crore in FY23-24 (April-Jan). The steady rise in revenues and increased capital expenditure has resulted in continuous double-digit growth in GSDP and per capita income. Assam’s GDP, supported so far by consumption and government expenditure, is now poised to focus on encouraging investment and entrepreneurship.

The outlook is quite clear in the systematic manner in which we have rolled out our flagship schemes. We started with the biggest DBT programme, Orunodoi, for 26 lakh antyodaya women to provide an economic and nutrition safety net with Rs 1,250 per month, micro-finance loan waivers for women SHGs and more. As per NITI Aayog’s multi-dimensional poverty index, 80.36 lakh people in Assam have been uplifted from poverty with a steep decline in poverty headcount ratio from 36.97 per cent in 2013-14 to 14.47 per cent in 2022-23.

As we move ahead, the government has now strategically focused on women and the youth to boost entrepreneurship. In response to the clarion call of our Prime Minister to create one crore lakhpati didis in the country, Assam created 8.72 lakh lakhpati didis. This is 27 per cent of the 40 lakh SHG members. These women had not only built strong businesses for themselves but also are a living example of prudent fiscal discipline. The NPAs for SHGs in Assam stand at 1.05 per cent, almost 40 per cent below the national average.

We are on the cusp of an MSME revolution with 4.2 lakh enterprises registered on the Udyam portal. Other flagship schemes – Chief Minister Atmanirbhar Assam Abhiyan and Mahila Udyamita Abhiyan – are focused on incubating entrepreneurship among two lakh youth and 39 lakh women over the next two years. This would bring in an entrepreneurial ecosystem. The start-up ecosystem in the state has also shown a major uptick with several initiatives. We supported 275 start-ups and are on the path of creating 1,500 more.

The next phase: Capital assets and Industrialisation

The massive capital investment of about Rs 50,000 crore from the state budget drowned the frequent lament about prolonged monsoon-related delays in project execution. This includes social infrastructure and the state is now building 24 medical colleges and hospitals against just six that we had in 2016.

The government’s push towards transformative policy initiatives like the semiconductor industry, methanol production, EVs, etc, has set the tone for investments in manufacturing. Assam’s first methanol plant with a Rs 1,600 crore investment, inaugurated by the Prime Minister in April 2023, has already started exporting to Bangladesh and Nepal. Large oil and gas investments including a Rs 28,000 crore expansion of Numaligarh Refinery, expansion of Digboi refinery, railway projects, and airports are at an advanced stage. In the last few months, the state approved Rs 13,400 crore worth of 21 mega industrial units. We are now working on organising our second global investors’ summit in November.

Farm exports from the region have grown by 250 per cent in the last three years and will continue to grow. The tourism sector is another area where the state is seeing a manifold rise.

Tata Semiconductor Unit

The Tatas’ love for Assam goes beyond tea. The industrial group has always been a true friend to the state and the relationship goes beyond business. The Tatas have partnered with Assam in a range of sectors from establishing a cancer-care network to the hospitality sector, and now to a semiconductor plant.

The recent approval by the Union Cabinet for a Rs 27,000 crore Semiconductor Assembly Testing Marking and Packaging (ATMP) Unit by the Tatas is a historic development. The construction work will start in the next 100 days in Jagiroad with a capacity of 48 million per day. Soon, the project location will see a new world-class township to serve its 15,700 employees and another 13,000 indirectly employed.

Tech giants IBM and Tesla are Technology partners for this unit for the co-development of flip-chip and ISP technology respectively. For wire-bond technology, Tatas have operational experience. This would be a gaSeven decades of darkness are now behind Assam’s Amrit Peedi. Our youth are our heroes. We commit ourselves to providing them with opportunities in Amrit Kaal. Rs. 10 lakh crore GSDP target for Assam is just 3-4 years away. Besides, our collective vision is to make Assam one of the top five states in Bharat. As Assam aspires to contribute to the country’s growth, we shall continue to fire on all cylinders.me-changer for the northeast region and catalyse India’s economic ties with South East Asia.

Source: Indian Express, 9/03/24

Why do we celebrate Women’s Day on March 8?

Women’s Day was a result of several socialist movements, which demanded voting rights for women and better working conditions. Here is a brief history.

March 8 was marked as Women’s Day by the United Nations in 1975 and officially recognised as such two years later. While countries across the world have since celebrated the day, its roots go much further back.

The UN’s official website says that the first National Woman’s Day was first observed in the United States on February 28, 1909. The Socialist Party of America designated this day in honour of “the 1908 garment workers’ strike in New York, where women protested against working conditions.” Around 15,000 women marched that day for shorter hours of work, better pay and voting rights, the International Women’s Day (IWD) website says.

For many years after that, the last Sunday of February would be marked as Women’s Day. But these were not isolated events, they came amid what is now seen as the First Wave of Feminism. Additionally, some critics believe that the focus on this event overshadows similar initiatives made in erstwhile Soviet and Communist countries. Here’s their brief history.

Early feminism in the US and Europe

The New York protest was preceded by many events that marked a shift in the fight for women’s rights. First Wave Feminism (from the mid-19th century to the 1920s) saw the very first campaigns for equality in terms of voting rights, pay and other fundamental issues in the West.

As early as 1848, Americans Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott staged the first women’s rights convention in New York, after they were denied a chance to speak at an anti-slavery convention. Mott was a staunch campaigner against slavery, while Stanton was a renowned feminist in her own right. In her 1892 speech titled ‘The Solitude of Self’, she laid down the reasons why women deserved to have equal rights:

“The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties… is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life.”

“No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency, they must know something of the laws of navigation… It matters not whether the solitary voyager is man or woman; nature, having endowed them equally, leaves them to their own skill and judgment in the hour of danger, and, if not equal to the occasion, alike they perish.”

In Europe, too, socialist feminist movements had begun to take shape.

The IWD website notes, “In 1910 a second International Conference of Working Women was held in Copenhagen. A woman named Clara Zetkin (Leader of the ‘Women’s Office’ for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) tabled the idea of an International Women’s Day. She proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration on the same day – a Women’s Day – to press for their demands.” Zetkin was a well-regarded speaker, who saw workers’ movements as the only way for women to have their rights. The Guardian noted in a report that her obituary in the Manchester Guardian termed her the “grandmother of communism”.

With over 100 women from 17 countries in attendance at the conference, Zetkin’s suggestion was accepted. In 1911, more than “one million women and men attended IWD rallies campaigning for women’s rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination” in countries across Europe. Thus, there was a growing recognition for having a day of commemoration.

Why March 8?

Russian women protested the possibility of a World War (1914 to 1918) on February 23, 1913, as per the Julian calendar that was then in use in Russia. According to the Gregorian calendar, which was much more widely accepted elsewhere, that date translated as March 8. The day thus became the global benchmark and rallies began to be held on the day in many countries.

Another such Sunday fell on February 23, 1917, as per the Julian calendar. On this day, Russian women protested against the ongoing war and shortages of food and other essentials under Czar Nicholas’s regime.

Historian and activist Rochelle Ruthchild of Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies told Time Magazine how the 1917 protests were unique: “Women were mostly the ones on the breadline, and were the core protesters,” she said.

She added, “In fact, male revolutionaries like [Leon] Trotsky were upset at them, as these disobedient and misbehaving women were going out on this International Women’s Day when they were meant to wait until May,” which is when Workers’ Day is marked.

The protests would also help galvanise public opinion against the monarchy and just a few days later, the Russian Revolution removed the Czars and a communist state was established. Women also gained the right to vote in Russia that year, while white American women got it in 1920. Women of colour faced hurdles and would only be able to vote after the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed.

In 2011, the Barack Obama administration also decided to proclaim March as ‘Women’s History Month’.

“This year, we commemorate the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, a global celebration of the economic, political, and social achievements of women past, present, and future. International Women’s Day is a chance to pay tribute to ordinary women throughout the world and is rooted in women’s centuries-old struggle to participate in society on an equal footing with men. This day reminds us that, while enormous progress has been made, there is still work to be done before women achieve true parity,” the then-US President said in a statement.

Source: Indian Express, 8/03/24

Monday, March 04, 2024

Quote of the Day March 4, 2024

“Life is nothing without friendship.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero

“मित्रता के बिना जीवन कुछ भी नहीं है।”
मार्कस टूल्लियस सिसेरो

National Science Day

India celebrates National Science Day on February 28. National Science Day is celebrated in the country to mark the discovery of the Raman Effect. Raman discovered the Raman Effect on February 28, 1928, and received Nobel Prize for his discovery in 1930.

History of National Science Day

National Council for Science & Technology Communication (NCSTC) under the Department of Science and Technology (DST) in 1986 proposed to mark National Science Day on February 28. The Government of India agreed to the proposal.

The objective of National Science Day

National Science Day is celebrated to spread the importance of science in day-to-day life. On the occasion, the importance of science and achievements in the field are discussed. New technologies are implemented.

The theme of National Science Day 2024

The theme of this year’s ‘National Science Day’ is Indigenous Technologies for Viksit Bharat, emphasizing the importance of home-grown Technologies in shaping the future of India.

Department Initiatives

The Department of Science and Technology organised a function in New Delhi to commemorate the outstanding discovery of Raman’s Effect by great Indian physicist Sir C.V. Raman.

On the occasion, Science and Technology Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh inaugurated the exhibition, featuring a diverse range of innovative projects selected under the Initiative for Research and Innovation in Science.

About Raman Effect

Raman effect is inelastic scattering of the photons by matter where there is an exchange of energy and change in the direction of light. This effect comprises the vibrational energy which is gained by the molecule when the incident photons from visible laser are shifted to the lower energy. This effect takes place when light enters in the molecule and interacts with the electron density of chemical bond. This causes the electromagnetic field in molecule which in turn leads to vibrational and deformation of the frequency shift.

National Council for Science and Technology Communication

It operated under the purview of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. The main objectives of NCSTC are to develop and build scientific thinking, develop scientific knowledge, conduct training, and spread awareness

Why did Humans lose their Tails?

A new study published on February 28th, 2024 in the journal Nature has identified the specific genetic mutation responsible for ancestral humans and apes losing their tails around 25 million years ago.

The Tailless Ancestor Mystery

While monkeys possess tails, an ancestor species that humans share with apes underwent a key genetic divergence resulting in tail loss over the course of evolution. However, the actual genetic drivers behind this dramatic physiological change were unknown until now.

Serendipitous Discovery

The study’s lead author Bo Xia, currently with the Broad Institute, got intrigued by the evolutionary puzzle after injuring his own tailbone. Along with teams from New York University (NYU) Langone Health and Applied Bioinformatics Labs, his curiosity-driven investigation pinpointed unique jumping gene activity that deactivated the tail-growth gene TBXT.

The Role of Jumping Genes

Over generations, DNA accumulates changes enabling species adaptation through evolution. The study found older repetitive genetic sequences called Alu elements that jumped into strategic introns of the TBXT gene.

Introns are non-coding DNA portions that get sliced out before the gene sequence is converted into proteins. The intron-inserting DNA ‘jumping genes’ disrupted normal protein formation by the tail-regulating TBXT gene.

This genetic mutation was spotted in apes but not monkeys, coinciding with ancestral tail disappearance in the former group after both diverged from a common monkey group ancestor.

Alternative Splicing and Multiple Proteins

The Alu element insertion caused the TBXT gene to undergo alternative splicing and generate multiple proteins variants instead of one form coded by monkeys. This indicates more complex downstream impacts compared to straightforward gene disabling.

Researchers confirmed through lab experiments that inserting the exact Alu sequences into mice TBXT gene also led to truncated tails in mice besides increasing risk of spinal defects.

Evolutionary Significance

The study illustrates how small non-coding DNA changes can profoundly reshape physiology over thousands of generations to enable evolutionary adaptation.

Loss of stabilizing tails may have enabled ancestral apes to adopt bipedal motion crucial for later human development. The mutation likely occurred randomly without an initial adaptive benefit.

However, it conferred survival value once interplay between taillessness and walking upright offered mobility advantages within forest habitats.

Future Impact

Beyond solving the longstanding tail evolutionary mystery, the pathbreaking discovery promises to accelerate genetics research on non-coding DNA and complex alternative gene splicing effects.

Intron sequences dismissed previously as ‘junk DNA’ now open up new appraisal of their hidden role in driving evolutionary changes to anatomy over time.

Deeper analysis can reveal if similar jumping gene insertions underlie other evolutionary divergences between ancestral primates and humans.

Conclusion

The study underscores how small-scale genetic changes can catalyze sweeping physiological adaptations central to a species’ evolutionary history. Shedding light on humanity’s tailless past sets the stage for fresh investigation into other attribute transformations during ancestral primate evolution over millions of years until modern humans emerged.

Caught in the net

Histories can be twisted, maligned, because we believe that which is given on a website, written in a manner that is unambiguous and spoon-fed to us, requiring no commitment from our end

When was the World Wide Web released to the public? Searching for an answer, I went to the only place that can provide me with an instant response — the World Wide Web. An NPR article informed me that it was created by Tim Berners-Lee and gifted to humanity on April 30, 1993, free of charge. By the end of the 1990s, this information web had covered the globe to such an extent that the post-90s generations don’t know of a time before the internet.

This one platform has revolutionised information access, learning, knowledge production and connectivity. And this has happened at a speed which is unfathomable. The number of technological developments that have aided, enhanced and accelerated these processes are mind-boggling. With Artificial Intelligence bursting onto the scene, things are only going to get even more unbelievable, literally and metaphorically. On an aside, it is philosophically valuable to consider Roger Penrose’s argument that Artificial Intelligence is a ‘misnomer’. That the computer can only ‘mimic’ intelligence. He argues that consciousness is not computation. Anyway, let me not wander.

Before you jump the gun and assume that this piece is about fake news, deep fakes, post-truth or the dangers of Artificial Intelligence, let me inform you that it is not. The drawbacks of not having the internet and the democratising role the medium has played are there for all of us to see, acknowledge and appreciate. Therefore, I am not going to dwell on the obvious. Neither am I going on a nostalgic rant on ‘the good old days’. But there are other questions about the pre-networked age that require consideration.

Let us begin with something as simple as thinking, a process that every human being engages in by default. To receive information, comprehend and make decisions is nearly automatic. The question before me is whether there was something different about the way we thought before the online network became a permanent fixture in our lives. Similar to how technology helped us reduce the time we spent on gathering, cooking and consuming food, the Cloud has greatly reduced the burden of remembering dates, times or exact events. Such information was given great importance in the past. Unfortunately, the lifting of this unnecessary weight has not meant that we engage earnestly with serious questions. The ease with which the Web provides us with answers somehow curtails the extent of our questioning.

The rapidity of search results and the way material is presented on and for the Web do not make us curious. Furthermore, the tone is more often than not, definitive. In other words, the internet has surreptitiously removed doubt from learning. Doubt is not distrust. It is a prerequisite for education. It is the opening that leads to further investigation. This does not happen by accident. It is part of knowledge creation. In the sharing of what we know, we embed the possibility of doubt, change and growth.

The virtual information highway largely functions in the opposite manner where you get more hits if you present an assured face. Your fingers itch to click the first possible link and people pay to place their links on top. It requires great effort to go past these innumerable layers of ‘surety’ to get to a place where learning is exciting; dare I even say true! This makes me consume in an unthinking manner. Questioning is stunted and people hold on to the programmed opinion they clicked on.

Hence, we should not be surprised that ‘educated’ folks fall prey to blatant lies. This problem did not begin with social media. The algorithms that nurtured cyberspace have always been designed to lessen the time used for assimilation. Speed in time spent on accessing a page and the way the information is presented are key to its success. The moment we foreground the paucity of time, urgency or the claim that we can do more productive things in those extra minutes that are needed to read, read again, think, read again and pause, we lose the ability to learn.

Is the internet a reality? Since creators, developers and participants are real people, we have to accept that the virtual universe is a part of a larger reality. But this agent has drastically reduced physical interactions. Childhood in the 1980s and 1990s entailed feeling the soil, being close to the trees, and meeting people in person. Today, it is all about video calls, playing games and learning via iPads and mobile phones. Parents say technology has made children smarter at an early age. I am no child psychologist, nor an educationist to counter such a claim confidently. Yet, I have to wonder about this smartness. Building the capacity to solve arithmetic or mathematical problems, or remembering things, or cleverness without empathy, love and care is not intelligence. I will argue that true intelligence is felt and every emotional connection is intelligent. When this is missing, humanity goes into hiding. Watching videos on YouTube or Instagram of the horrors that are unfolding in Palestine or Manipur will not make a person more empathetic. Love and compassion have to be learnt and shared physically, directly, without an intermediary.

If something does not exist on the Web, is it real? And, as an extension, is everything that happened before the virtual age and has not been digitised irrelevant? The first question may sound moot because we cannot imagine that there are people or things that do not find mention on the internet. The falsity of this belief stems from the fact that we trust it as a democratic space. The internet is a marketplace, a bazaar where everyone is selling. The fact that anyone can open a shop without paying rent does not imply equality. Social equations that govern our everyday interactions also control the internet. Hence, there are many unheard, wrongly represented and lost voices.

The imperative to give everything a digital avatar wipes out all that does not find space in this all-encompassing network. Innumerable cultures, stories and peoples are lost to posterity not only because we do not look beyond the infobahn but also because we have forgotten to remember from life experiences, from what we hear, see and learn in person. Even lived histories have to be virtualised. Histories can be easily twisted, maligned, because we only believe that which is given on a website, written in a manner that is unambiguous and spoon-fed to us, requiring no commitment from our end. Naysayers may argue that all this is hocus-pocus theorisation. That the website is merely the new avatar of the book. Books also spread lies and wipe out people. This is true. But a book required the writer to explain and demanded attention and time from the reader. The internet, on the other hand, celebrates loudness and preys on the lack of attention.

T.M. Krishna

The Telegraph: 1/03/24

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