Sustainable Development Goals must factor in caste: Dalits

Dalit organisations protested at the U.N. headquarters on Saturday demanding the recognition of caste-based exclusion as a discriminatory factor in development in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

Organised by the Asia Dalit Right Forum (ADRF), a network of organisations from across South Asia, the protesters said: “For the SDGs to be transformational to 260 million Dalits across the world, it is essential that the goals, targets and the outcome document take into account the current realities in many parts of the world and include descent [caste]-based discrimination.” “Dalits have been victims of discrimination and hate crimes for centuries and have been considered as impure and polluting. Significance of caste in social exclusion is indeed recognised by Post 2015 development agenda (working committee) but seems to have failed to make into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Targets,” an ADRF statement said.

Source: The Hindu, 28-09-2015

The challenge of skills and jobs

The scale of the skilling challenge that India faces, and the urgency involved, have been palpable for some time, but new official data put into cold numbers the extent of the problem. Fewer than one in 10 adult Indians has had any form ofvocational training, and even among those who have, the type of training is not the sort of formal skilling that employers seek – the majority had either acquired a hereditary skill or learned on the job. Just 2.2 per cent in all had received formal vocational training. In comparison, 75 per cent of the workforce in Germany and 80 per cent in Japan has received formal skills training. Even among the BRICS countries, India lags behind – nearly half the Chinese workforce, for example, is skilled. Very few Indians get a technical education in medicine, engineering or agriculture; fewer than one in ten Indians is a graduate, and among those who are graduates, the majority get undergraduate degrees in arts, science or commerce. The problem is more acute in rural areas and for women. Without access to affordable and appropriate skills training, young people, particularly those leaving rural areas and small towns for big cities, will be stuck in low-wage, insecure jobs that will leave them in want or poverty.

The Narendra Modi government has made skills and jobs one of its focus areas from the beginning of its term. In July, the Prime Minister launched an ambitious mission to impart skills training to 40 crore people by 2022, and the new government has a dedicated Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship. The problem is that the previous government talked the same talk on skills but was able to achieve precious little; the proportion of young adults who had received vocational training was virtually unchanged between 2004-05 and 2011-12. There isn’t any clear evidence yet that the new government is charting out a radically new path on skills. There remain multiple decision-making authorities on skills and little clarity about who exactly will do the work. Promises of corporate and foreign partnerships on skilling are pouring in, but how these mass skilling programmes will take off is unclear. Employers complain that job-seekers do not have the skills they look for; there is little evidence yet that curricula with these objectives in mind have been designed, or that new and affordable training institutes have been set up on a mass scale. Job creation has not kept pace with India’s demographic momentum, and that will in the coming days pose a problem for a skilled workforce. But let’s not put the cart before the horse – a poorly trained young workforce can neither bring workers out of poverty nor help a country grow quickly.

Keywords: vocational training, Jobs, BRICS countries, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Poverty, 

Source: The Hindu, 28-09-2015

Meet Sneha Khaund, selected for Commonwealth Scholarship in UK

A young student from Assam has recently been selected for the prestigious commonwealth scholarship in United Kingdom. Sneha Khaund, a 22-year-old from Jorhat district, is an english graduate from St Stephen’s College in Delhi. She was recently selected for the prestigious Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in United Kingdom for the year 2015-2016.

She is one among 22 Indian students selected for the scholarship this year and will now be pursuing her Masters degree in Comparative Literature at London University. Expressing delight over her selection, Sneha said that she looks forward to study the subject she loves.

“I am very happy that I have been chosen for this scholarship and I feel honoured. I look upon it as an opportunity for me to study something that I love. There will be world class facilities available there so I feel very grateful and I think it is a great opportunity,” she said.

Sneha was one of the few students whose application was selected by the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry and forwarded to the commission. Sneha further said that she wants to remain in touch with social issues while pursuing an academic career.

“I hope to have an academic career and get a PhD I don’t want an academic career that is completely divorced from social issues that we face. Even while pursuing an academic career, I want to be involved in other aspects. I hope to write,” she said.

Sneha’s father, Devajeet Khaund, said that lack of awareness among people about scholarship opportunities available has left many eligible students deprived. “If my daughter can make it, then there are so many promising students who are eligible to get this type of scholarship. Because of lack of awareness, many of them are deprived,” he said.

Source: Hindustan Times, 28-09-2015

Healing With Forgiveness And Reconciliation

S Arokiasamy





What is the relational and societal dimensions of forgiveness, reconciliation and healing in the Christian perspective? In common parlance, forgiveness, reconciliation and healing may be used interchangeably .Hence it is good to note the nuanced differences in the meaning of these terms in an ethical and religious perspective.Forgiveness stands for the acceptance of the offender and makes possible the restoration of relationships. Such an act sets in motion a process of reconciliation and healing. Often it is interpersonal.Reconciliation stands for restoring and rebuilding broken relationships. It flows from forgiveness and continues and completes forgiveness. Reconciliation is a process. Because it means restoring and building broken relationships, it becomes a relational event. Hence it evokes a strong social and communitarian dimension.
Healing is a term closely associated with forgiveness and reconciliation ­ it refers to harmony of the physical, psychological, spiritual and social faculties of a person. It includes a relational dimension; the healing of psychological maladies and maladjustments and disturbances with the help of psychiatry and psychology .
Healing in a sense of social therapy means restoring to full health and wholeness inter-human and communitarian relations. Holistic process of healing recognises injustice and other kinds of offences. The wholeness that is the mark of healing is inclusive of the rejection of evil and injustice, the creation and promotion of justice and the building of reconciled and healed relations. If not, it would be a subtle way of perpetuating the status quo of an unjust situation.
From the ethical and religious perspective, it would mean removal of moral guilt and sin (as offence against God and the order willed by God) and restoration to a state of moral integrity and right relationship with God and one's neighbour. The medical and psychological dimensions of healing are present in the ethical, social and religious meaning of healing as related to forgiveness and reconciliation. Healing includes and integrates the relations of persons into a single process of forgiveness and reconciliation for wholeness. Though physical, psychological, ethico-religious and social dimensions of healing are interrelated; they are distinct and should not be confused. Hence we have to guard ourselves against reducing healing in the ethical, social and religious sense to medi cal or psychological dimensions.
Laplace, a spiritual writer, observes that we should not apply spiritual bandages on psychologi cal wounds or psychological bandages on spiritual wounds.
Healing in a relational perspeccludes healing of broken relations tive includes healing of broken relationships in personal, communitarian, societal, cultural and religious besides economic and political dimensions of life of commu nities and people. Hence we speak of social healing in an inclusive sense.Forgiveness, reconciliation and healing are three dimensions of one process.
Relational anthropology affirms that human beings are relational beings. To be human is to be inter-human, interrelated and community related. Relational humanity is the foundation for human communities to become reconciled and healed, making for solidarity and harmony in a divided and fractured world.
We could say that Asian and Indian ethos is deeply relational. From that perspective, an offence, even if it is against a single person, has a communitarian dimension. If an injustice is committed against any one, it is also against our shared humanity . So forgiveness of an individual offence or collective offence is primarily healing and restoring fractured relationships and community . A healed community becomes a reconciling community , becoming a resource for fuller healing that embraces all.

HEALTH ALERT - Study: 90% young heart patients have sleep issues

Shilpy Arora

Gurgaon:





As many as 90% of young heart attack victims are people who do not sleep well, a study conducted by a Gurgaon-based private hospital has revealed.The study was conducted over two and a half years on 104 patients at Medanta below 40 years. These patients were admitted in the hospital's emergency ward after suffering a heart attack.
Of the 104 patients, 68 had average sleep time of less than six hours through the entire day . Very few patients had a sleep time of more than seven hours, a doctor said.
Nearly two-third patients had a sleep disorder.“Sleep deprivation upsets the balance of key hormones Leptin and Ghrelin, which regulate the appetite and help us know when we have eaten enough. The modern lifestyle of staying up late and getting up early is a ticking time bomb for our health,“ said Dr Rajneesh Kapoor, a cardiologist at Medanta. Male patients with sleep disorder had 2 to 2.6 times higher risk of a heart attack and a 1.5 to 4 times higher risk of heart stroke, he added.
Talking about other reasons behind a heart attack, Kapoor said, “Increasing use of smartphones and tab lets before going to bed reduces the level of melatonin in the body and makes it harder to go to sleep. Poor sleep should be considered a modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease along with smoking, lack of exercise and poor diet.“ Medanta Medicity chief Dr Naresh Trehan said children should be taught stress management and importance of sleep at an early age.
“Sleeping is as beneficial as not smoking when it comes to heart attacks and other cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Sleeping for seven hours or more a night can reduce the risk of fatal heart attacks and CVD by up to 24%. If combined with other healthy habits such as exercise, healthy diet, drinking alcohol in moderation, and no smoking, the risk of heart attack is reduced by 83%,“ the doctor said.

Source: Times of India, 28-09-2015

No. of kids studying in English doubles in 5 yrs

Rema Nagarajan





Fastest Growing Medium; Biggest Rise In Bihar, UP

Politicians might try hard to push Hindi, but people are voting with their feet, opting to put their children in English-medium schools.While overall enrolment in schools went up by just 7.5% between 2008-09 and 2013-14, and enrolment in Hindi-medium schools went up by about 25%, enrolment in English-medium schools almost doubled in the same period.While the number of English-medium school students is still dwarfed by those in Hindi-medium, the growth in the English numbers is significant, jumping from over 1.5 crore in 2008-09 to 2.9 crore by 2013-14. In the same period, the Hindi numbers went up from 8.3 crore to 10.4 crore.
Interestingly , the highest growth in English-medium enrolment was in the Hindi speaking states. It was highest in Bihar, where it grew 47 times or 4,700% while Hindimedium enrolment grew by just 18%. In Uttar Pradesh, English-medium enrolment grew 10 times or by over 1,000% compared to just 11% in Hindi-medium enrolment. In other Hindi speaking states too English-medi um enrolment grew massively -525% in Haryana, 458% in Jharkhand, 209% in Rajasthan and so on.
These trends are based on data received from 14.5 lakh schools spread over 662 districts across 35 states and Union territories. English is the fastest growing medium of education in India, according to data received from states, which has been put together by the District Information System for Education (DISE) of the National University of Education Planning and Administration under the human resource development ministry .
Since 2010-11, DISE has been covering unrecognised schools and recognised and unrecognised madrassas, which in 2013 14 comprised 2.4% of all schools. While there is some underreporting of enrolment by medium of instruction, as acknowledged by DISE, the undercounting is not big enough to affect the overall picture.
UP and Bihar make up 53% of the students enrolled in Hindi medium schools. Add Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, and these four states account for more than three-quarters of Hindi-medium students, close to eight crore. If the other three Hindi speaking states -Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Haryana -are added, it would account for 90% of those in Hindimedium, leaving about one crore children in Hindi-medium schools in the rest of the country . Of the 2.9 crore English-medium students, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir, in that order, make up over 54%.
The highest proportion of English-medium enrolment was in Jammu and Kashmir, where almost all students are in English-medium schools.
For the full report, log on to http:www.timesofindia.com

Source: Times of India, 28-09-2015

ICSSR Sponsored Two-Week Capacity Building Workshop for Young Faculty in Social Sciences 26 October 2015 – 08 November 2015

Venue/Host: Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar

About: Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar is organising a “Two-Week Capacity Building Workshop for Young Faculty in Social Sciences” from 26 October 2015 to 08 November 2015. The purpose of the programme is to enhance the capability of conducting research among young faculty members of Social Sciences and to subsequently publish in the form of journal articles/books. The workshop will expose the participants to research methods, data analysis and academic writings. The aim is to give participants hands-on experience in conducting field survey, preparing a field report, project proposal and writing quality research papers/articles. There will be interactive sessions, exercises and a discussion of field report, project proposals and sample research papers/outlines prepared by the participants during the training.
Who may apply?: The course is open for faculty members from all disciplines of Social Sciences. Thisprogramme is considered equivalent to a 2-week Research Methodology Course while applying for promotion under the Career Advancement Scheme.
How to apply?: Interested candidates can download the application form available on the University website http://www.cug.ac.in/ and send along with:
(a) A brief CV explaining all academic details with work experience and publications.
(b) 200-words write-up on how research engagement will influence his/her teaching and engagement with the students.
There is no registration fee for shortlisted participants.Applications should be sent to:Dr. Sanjay Kumar Jha
Dean, School of International Studies
Central University of Gujarat
Sector 29, Gandhinagar - 382030

Applications can also be sent via email at cbw.cug@gmail.com. Only completely filled forms, duly signed and forwarded through proper channel will be accepted. The applications will be scrutinized on the basis of academic qualifications, work experience, publications and the 200-words write up sent by the applicants.
Application Schedule1. Last date for receipt of application form: 30 September 2015
2. Final list of selected candidates: 05 October 2015
Travel and Accommodation of Participants: Participants will be reimbursed to and fro travel fares as per the ICSSR norms.
Accommodation to outstation participants will be provided on a twin sharing basis.
For any query please e-mail at cbw.cug@gmail.com or call on: 079-23977403, +91-8140470358, +91-9825728984.
Source: http://www.cug.ac.in/ (23.09.2015)