Monday, October 21, 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
Chaos or Cosmos?
Raghunath was a wealthy man. He was rich materially and spiritually. One night, he was robbed. His close friend visited him and expressed his sympathy. Raghunath said, “They have robbed me of my material wealth but not my real wealth. They have robbed me of my perishable wealth but not my imperishable wealth.” Real wealth is love, devotion and purity. With these, one will experience life differently. God gives us problems to humble us and not to tumble us. When bad things happen to good people, they become better, not bitter. Raghunath elaborated to his friend, “All the wealth that I had was a loan from the Lord. I was only a trustee. Nothing is mine; everything is His. He has the right to take it whenever he wants.” The power of detachment is a great wealth. The power of devotion is an asset. Why don’t we work for such wealth? This is because the mind has not been purified. With impure mind, one craves for impure things. With pure mind, one is committed to pure things. Mantras help us to purify the mind. Yoga uplifts. The object of yoga is to free you of psychological mess. The condition of your mind really determines the quality of your life. To a good body, everyone says ‘yes’. But to a good mind, people say ‘no’. This ignorance is adversely affecting the quality of life. Yoga is a wonderful science to dismantle this negative system and create a great inner order. When the inner world of our mind is orderly, then we will see the external order as being more orderly
Source: Economic Times, 21/10/2019
What delays delivery of justice in lower courts? IIM study finds out
‘Over 60% Of Time Spent On Reasons Other Than Court Functioning’
A recent study has found that along with long pendency of cases, issues such as judges’ absence, repeated adjournments and courts refusing to simplify processes add to judicial delay. More than 60% of court time is spent on reasons other than court functioning. A study by Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, found that on an average, it took over 122 weeks, or around two-and-a-half years, for a litigant to get a judgment. Only 41% of this time, or 36 weeks, was spent in court functioning, the remaining period was spent in awaiting orders/instructions from the high court (22 weeks) and adjournments for absence of judges because the presiding officer was either busy or on leave or on transfer order (17 weeks). “There is a huge delay due to the processes of court functioning during the trial stage for reasons namely non-attendance of witnesses, non-appearance of lawyers, lengthy oral arguments, arbitrary adjournments and delayed judgments,” the study said. Adjournment for even passing judgment took an average nine weeks, while court holidays and strikes consumed about five weeks. Then there were other causes of delay such as the absence of lawyers of both plaintiff and the defendant and quite often, court entertaining requests for postponement due to delay in producing required information. To understand court processes and re-engineering opportunities to improve court efficiency for justice delivery, the law ministry had last year assigned the study to IIMCalcutta. Three professors of the institute — R Rajesh Babu, Sumanta Basu and Indranil Bose — analysed 40 randomly picked civil cases of different types from jurisdiction of 24 South Parganas district court to understand the reasons for delays. On repeated adjournments, the study found that absence of lawyers was often a common factor. “Since advocates have to deal with multiple cases at the same time, they can’t be present everywhere, hence some cases have to be delayed so that pertinent ones can be attended to. Lawyers also continue to take long dates so as to cover the tenure of the current judge (the tenure of a judge is for a period of 2-3 years) and present the case afresh to the new judge,” it said. To understand the sources of these delays, the study interviewed litigants and lawyers and found that a case usually got 5-6 dates in a year.
Source: Times of India, 21/10/2019
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Economic and Political Weekly: Table of Contents
Vol. 54, Issue No. 41, 12 Oct, 2019
Nobel’s literary constraints
Despite the perception that it has limited vision, the Swedish Academy has introduced the world to new writers
In 2014, writer Peter Handke had told Austrian daily Die Presse that “the Nobel Prize should be abolished” and that winning brings “false canonisation” of literature. Does the Swedish Academy’s choice of Handke for the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature prove that he was right, as critics like philosopher Slavoj Zizek have told The Guardian? Handke, a novelist, playwright and essayist, had downplayed Serbian atrocities in the Balkan war, defended Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic who was indicted of war crimes, and even spoke at Milosevic’s funeral in 2006. In a rare move, non-profit organisation PEN America criticised the selection, saying the writer “used his public voice to undercut historical truth and offer public succor to perpetrators of genocide.”
Why would the Academy choose a polarising writer like Handke for the top literary prize? After all, there were many others in the reckoning including Canadian author Margaret Atwood (who has since won the Booker Prize), Guadeloupean novelist Maryse Conde, Russian writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o and the perennial contender Haruki Murakami.
Handke himself said he was “astonished” that he had been picked, calling the Academy “very courageous”. The Nobel Committee said that though Handke has, at times, “caused controversy, he cannot be considered an engaged writer in the sense of Sartre, and he gives us no political programs.” Jean-Paul Sartre had famously declined the prize in 1964 saying he didn’t want to be “institutionalised”. Handke has been awarded “for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience”. The adverse reaction to his politics overshadowed appreciation of his work.
Many controversies
In pursuit of novel ways to draw attention to the Big Prize, the Academy seems to have been caught on the wrong foot again. After the sexual assault allegation that forced it to abandon the ceremony last year, it sought redemption, but it has been a difficult return. In the days leading up to October 10, Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel Committee, had said, “We are looking all over the world”. On announcement day, however, it was found that the Swedish Academy had done no such geographical balancing act, picking an Austrian and a Polish instead. While it failed to stand up to the very thing it was accused of — being too Eurocentric — the choice of Olga Tokarczuk from Poland for the 2018 Prize was a step in the right direction. She is only the 15th woman to get the Literature Prize. Tokarczuk (The Journey of the Book People, Flights, The Books of Jacob) had received the ire of Polish nationalists and death threats for saying that Polanders too had committed “horrendous acts” as colonisers.
Redefining literature
Over the last few years, the Academy has redefined boundaries of literature in its choices. In 2016, when it awarded the Prize to American Bob Dylan, some criticised the decision to award a singer-songwriter a prize reserved for literature. It irked others that literary giants like Jorge Luis Borges and James Joyce had been denied the prize earlier. While the choice of Dylan was surprising, his song-poems including Blowing in the Wind and Like a Rolling Stone have become anthems. In 2015, the prize went to the Belarusian writer of oral history Svetlana Alexievich, raising a few eyebrows, but only perhaps because her books were not readily available. Her work looks at crises like the Second World War (The Unwomanly Face of War); the collapse of the Soviet Union (SecondHand Time); and the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl (Voices from Chernobyl) through ordinary voices. Hers is a critical record of history that the world may have missed without the prize.
Like the Peace Prize, the Literature Prize has often been deemed political. It was only in 1986 that an African, Wole Soyinka, won. After Elfriede Jelinek, Austrian playwright and moralist against multiculturalism, was awarded in 2004 to some dismay, the 2005 prize went to a safer bet, playwright Harold Pinter. When V.S. Naipaul got the prize in 2001, the irony was lost on no one that in the year of 9/11, the writer of Among the Believers, a critical work on Islam in Asia, had been honoured, though Naipaul could have bagged it for A House for Mr Biswas alone.
Writing in 2011 after the Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer won, novelist and translator Tim Parks pointed at the “essential silliness of the prize and our own foolishness at taking it seriously.” It doesn’t help that the prize has often showed it has limited horizons. Why else was the great Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe overlooked? Or Leo Tolstoy snubbed for the inaugural Prize for Literature in 1901? It went to French poet Sully Prudhomme, who must have gained new readers after the announcement.
sudipta.datta@thehindu.co.in
Source: The Hindu, 16/10/2019
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