Why mentorship is required for students

 

Mentorship helps students choose a career path, and also supports them by connecting them with the right people

Namratha P., an MBA student, wanted to understand career opportunities in Finance. With so many job roles available, she was unable to decide. She decided to speak to a professional mentor, and got in touch with a senior and experienced finance professional who spoke to her about opportunities, the skills she needed to develop, the pros and cons of various options and more. Based on his inputs, Namratha decided to take up a career in corporate finance. But why did she need to consult a mentor? This is where the role of mentorship during higher education comes in.

Why it’s needed

A college education grounds students in the knowledge they need in their future careers and helps build the skills to succeed in the job market. Mentorship builds on this foundation and guides students in their choice of careers. It helps them prepare for a job suitable to their aspirations. Mentors also help their mentees understand the nuances of the corporate world. While internships give much-needed exposure, a mentoring session allows students get to interact with people from different industries. In addition, students get to understand the do’s and don’ts of working in a structured organisation.

Mentorship aims to address the questions that students face while planning their careers. With the plethora of choices today, students want to understand the demand for their skills in the future, the scope for work, how workforce norms are changing, and so on. Mentorship gives direction, helps students choose a career path, and also supports them by connecting them with the right people.

There is also the ever-important campus recruitment process that worries students. Mentors give them clarity and address this uncertainty about cracking their first job. They encourage students by getting them interview-ready. Students are generally aware of the companies that come for placements. They can benefit from sessions with a mentor who is an industry expert, and is working/has worked in any of these companies.

New career profiles

Take the case of engineering graduate Jovita Devaraj. While doing her MBA, she realised that she was interested in many areas — Analytics, HR, Supply Chain Management, and Business Management. Her professional mentor helped her understand how she could combine her engineering background and analytical aptitude with her management education.

Meaningful mentor relationships in college are crucial. Each mentor-mentee partnership is unique since it is based on a student's circumstances, field of study, and career goals. If students have mentors in college, they are equipped with the confidence and the knowledge, support, connections, and skills to achieve their career dreams.

Arunabh Verma

This writer is CEO, Intercell Virtual Mentor Network.

Source: The Hindu, 14/05/22

The idea of Indian nationalism did not come from the Constitution. It has ancient roots

 Reducing India to a civic nation bound only by the Constitution disregards its history, ancient heritage, culture and civilisation. I would describe India as a “civilisation state”. This is not just a view from one part of the country. There have been writings since time immemorial, where you have this concept, and it is very important to revisit them. It predates the freedom struggle and the arrival of those who eventually made India their homeland. Celebrating history beyond religion is very important. We have to face the challenge of a distorted history: Distorted both because history is “his” story — I think the “her” story also has to come. And the overturning of E H Carr’s dictum: “Facts are sacred, interpretations vary.” Unfortunately, in independent India, and to a certain extent a university I belong to, overturned this dictum: “Interpretations are sacred, facts can vary.” And this is very dangerous. This is a civilisation that preached “ekam sat bahudha vadanti”, that the truth may be one but there are different parts to it. This is the basic essence of the celebration of diversity, dissent, difference, as well as democracy.

Why are we today trying to re-emphasise this point? It’s because we are made to imagine our history with self-loathing and self-hatred. One period is excessively glorified. And I, who come from the south, feel even worse. The longest-ruling dynasty in India was the Chola dynasty, which ruled this country for 2,000 years. Is there any road named after any of the great kings of the Cholas? Not one in Delhi. There is a huge bias, agenda-setting as well as gatekeeping. And it is extremely important that we revisit these ideas and look into the gaps. As most of you know India is not a post-independent idea of a nation. The Rig Veda defined the geographical existence of Bharatavarsha as well as the Sapta Sindhu, a land encompassing seven principal rivers. The Vishnu Purana descried the geographical location of Bharatavarsha. Composed in the 2nd century BC, it says that the land that lies to the north of the ocean and south of the snowy mountains is called Bharat. And there dwell the progeny of Bharat. The word “rashtra” was used in the Rig Veda, Yajur Veda and the Atharva Veda. Rashtra is not only a merely geopolitical concept, it is also a civilisational concept. It is a kind of thought which keeps a patriot in the frame of mind to transcend all the material and immediate interests and protect the motherland from all calamities, aggression and evil. Love for the country is not the same as love for the nation and self-determination, sovereignty or even structuring a composite culture. Rashtra bhakti is a subconscious feeling of being an Indian or a person belonging to this great civilisation. Unlike the Abrahamic religions, Hinduism is not a proselytising or a structured religion of one book and one God. We are a process. It’s a way of life.

Robert Frykenberg, the American historian, described the Indian National Movement as also being a Hindu revivalist and modernist movement, quoting Bankim Chandra Chatterjee with his Vande Mataram, Swami Vivekananda, Swami Dayanand Saraswati, as well as Sri Aurobindo and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who redefined Hinduism in modern terms. So cultural civilisation is only a civilisational perception — a sense of belonging and anchoring in a specific cultural and civilisational milieu.

Most have heard of Bal Gangadhar Tilak and his book, Gita Rahasya. Tilak was the first to say, “Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it”. He infused the spirit of political assertiveness and patriotism, both of which are extremely relevant today, in the people. To inject the spirit of nationalism and awareness among the people, he started the Ganesh festival and Shivaji Mahotsav. These were instrumental in bringing people together, irrespective of caste or creed. And I would say he was the first mass leader before Mahatma Gandhi. Many people think Gandhi is a disciple of Gopal Krishna Gokhale. I would rather say he’s a disciple of Tilak. Both Tilak and Gandhi were greatly influenced by the Bhagavad Gita. They saw it as an instrument of karma yoga, rather than just bhakti yoga.

Next, I would like to bring in the ideas of Gopal Krishna Gokhale. He said politics should be a service and not a profession. And I think it is this aspect that we have to bring in and young scholars must use these narratives, which are available in the writings of many of the Indian freedom fighters. Unfortunately, we have forgotten all these great nationalists who existed.

I’m going to the more marginalised areas — Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. There was Subramania Bharati, known as Mahakavi Bharati, to Tamil speakers for his outstanding contributions to nationalism and Tamil literature. A passionate freedom fighter, social revolutionary, mystic and visionary who was active during the late period of British rule, he spent much of his all too brief life exiled from British India, in neighbouring Pondicherry, just like Sri Aurobindo. He died suddenly in 1921. He was just 38 years old. He had little opportunity to provide for his legacy, literary or otherwise. In his writings, he talked about the intangible cultural heritage of India and the unity of this culture. The writings destroy all ambiguity. He clearly said that clarity of mind is very important and he thought that all languages and literatures of India have a single origin. Bharati was a genius. He was also ahead of his time. He also spoke about women’s liberation. Many people believe that feminism or women’s rights movements began only with Marx and ended there. The first feminists are Drapaudi and Sita. Who could be a greater feminist than Draupadi, or Sita who is the first single mother. These concepts are not invented by the West.

I’d also like to mention Subramaniya Siva, and two Telugu writers called Duggirala Gopalakrishnayya, who said the nation is not its sand and mud but its people, and Kandukuri Veeresalingam, who was like lshwar Chandra Vidyasagar, a great reformer from the south.

The great writer, Ananda K Coomaraswamy said the highlight of Indian civilisation is the dance of Lord Shiva. The temple of Chidambaram has the Nataraja avatar — the lord of dance — of Lord Shiva, or the thillai form as we call it, as do the South Indian copper images of Shri Nataraja. These images vary amongst themselves in minor details, but all express one fundamental conception — our Lord is the dancer who, like the heat latent in firewood, diffuses his power into the mind and matter and makes them dance in their turn. Cosmic activity is the central motif of the dance. Creation arises from the drum, protection proceeds from the hand of hope, and destruction comes from fire and the foot held afloat gives release. You see this legendary argument about Lord Shiva’s dance as the highlight of the Indian civilisational trait in the Cholas. The Cholas occupied the Indo Pacific regions called the Srivijaya and Suvarnabhumi. They defeated the Chinese and it is the image of Lord Shiva that was their ruling symbol.

So we ask: can India become a norm builder? When you’re a civilisational state, it is expected that we build narratives that can become norms in international relations, in all aspects of life. The way the Cholas conquered, they did not do it by genocide, rape or loot. It was more by culture, trade and commerce. If you look for an alternative paradigm, you have this. When we talk of cultural nationalism, it should help us to define certain very important identifying characteristics that we need to be a norm builder, a shared value system which includes the acceptance of international norms. Yes, we don’t believe in loot, genocide or rape; we believe in trade and commerce and culture. The existence of institutional mechanisms for the resolution of conflicts.

The British did not give us democratic values. If they had, then Myanmar, Pakistan, all countries ruled by the British should have been democracies. India is a democracy because it has a political culture, a culture that can choose from 3,000 crore gods. What more diversity would you require? We are the only country that has sustained a oasis of democracy in the Third World. India’s contribution to multiculturalism and cultural pluralism is extraordinarily important. And it is here that we also have the world-centric paradigm of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam against the state-centric paradigm. And we also believe in a nature-centric paradigm, not an anthropocentric paradigm. We believe that human beings are a part of the cosmos, where every other living and non-living thing has equal space, and a function that has been created for them. We also have the Buddhist philosophy: Lord Gautama, the Buddha, was the first dissenter and we celebrate dissent. Buddhism is a religion of the middle path. And India has always believed in the middle path and non-attachment. Adi Shankaracharya, through Advaita, brought these ideas back into Indian philosophy.

At one point, 2,000 years ago, Tamil was the lingua franca of traders across Southeast Asia. These were not Indian colonies, but proto-states that took on the Hindu apparatus of religion, and concepts of kingship to enhance their position and status. While communities of Indian traders settled in important ports along Southeast Asia, they never crossed the line into becoming colonisers. This is our civilisation, we never colonised anybody. What happened instead, was that local rulers imbibed the Indian traditions. Indian cultural nationalism is on a path that is very different from that of the anthropocentric or the Abrahamic religions. So whenever we talk of Indian civilisation, it is something that celebrates development, democracy, diversity, difference, and dissent.

Written by Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit

The writer is Vice-Chancellor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

Source: Indian Express, 24/05/22

Who are ASHA workers, the women healthcare volunteers honoured by WHO?

 The World Health Organisation has recognised the country’s 10.4 lakh ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers as ‘Global Health Leaders’ for their efforts in connecting the community to the government’s health programmes.

While congratulatory messages have since poured in from the Prime Minister and the Health Minister among others, the women health volunteers continue to fight for higher remuneration, regular jobs, and even health benefits.While intermittent protests have been going on in several states, thousands of ASHAs from across the country took to the streets in September last year to fight for their demands.

Who are ASHA workers?

ASHA workers are volunteers from within the community who are trained to provide information and aid people in accessing benefits of various healthcare schemes of the government.hey act as a bridge connecting marginalised communities with facilities such as primary health centres, sub-centres and district hospitals.

The role of these community health volunteers under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) was first established in 2005.

ASHAs are primarily married, widowed, or divorced women between the ages of 25 and 45 years from within the community. They must have good communication and leadership skills; should be literate with formal education up to Class 8, as per the programme guidelines.

How many ASHAs are there across the country?

The aim is to have one ASHA for every 1,000 persons or per habitation in hilly, tribal or other sparsely populated areas.

There are around 10.4 lakh ASHA workers across the country, with the largest workforces in states with high populations – Uttar Pradesh (1.63 lakh), Bihar (89,437), and Madhya Pradesh (77,531). Goa is the only state with no such workers, as per the latest National Health Mission data available from September 2019.

What do ASHA workers do?

They go door-to-door in their designated areas creating awareness about basic nutrition, hygiene practices, and the health services available. They focus primarily on ensuring that women undergo ante-natal check-up, maintain nutrition during pregnancy, deliver at a healthcare facility, and provide post-birth training on breast-feeding and complementary nutrition of children. They also counsel women about contraceptives and sexually transmitted infections.

ASHA workers are also tasked with ensuring and motivating children to get immunised. Other than mother and child care, ASHA workers also provide medicines daily to TB patients under directly observed treatment of the national programme. They are also tasked with screening for infections like malaria during the season. They also provide basic medicines and therapies to people under their jurisdiction such as oral rehydration solution, chloroquine for malaria, iron folic acid tablets to prevent anaemia, and contraceptive pills.

“Now, we also get people tested and get their reports for non-communicable diseases. On top of that ASHA workers were given so much work during the pandemic. We are no longer volunteers,” said Ismat Arra Khatun, an ASHA worker from West Bengal and general secretary of the Scheme Workers Federation of India that led the national protest.

The health volunteers are also tasked with informing their respective primary health centre about any births 

How did the ASHA network help in pandemic response?

ASHA workers were a key part of the government’s pandemic response, with most states using the network for screening people in containment zones, getting them tested, and taking them to quarantine centres or help with home quarantine.

“During the first year of the pandemic, when everyone was scared of the infection, we had to go door-to-door and check people for Covid-19 symptoms. Those who had fever or cough had to be tested. Then, we had to inform the authorities and help the people reach the quarantine centres. We also faced a lot of harassment because there was so much stigma about the infection that people did not want to let us in,” said Ismat Khatun.

Kavita Singh from Delhi, a former ASHA worker and a member of Scheme Workers Federation of India, added, “We had to go to households with confirmed Covid-19 cases and explain the quarantine procedure. We had to provide them with medicines and pulse-oximeters. All of this on top of our routine work.”

With the vaccination drive for Covid-19 beginning in January last year, they have also been tasked with motivating people to get their shots and collect data on how many people are yet to get vaccinated.or deaths in their designated areas. 

How much are ASHA workers paid?

Since they are considered “volunteers”, governments are not obligated to pay them a salary. And, most states don’t. Their income depends on incentives under various schemes that are provided when they, for example, ensure an institutional delivery or when they get a child immunised. All this adds up to only between Rs 6,000 to Rs 8,000 a month.

“Her work would be so tailored that it does not interfere with her normal livelihood,” the National Health Mission states. However, with outreach of most health programmes depending on them, that is not the case.

“Even if we work 24 hours, we will not be able to complete all the tasks. And, we do not get any benefits like pension or health insurance. If WHO recognises our role, if the government can call us veerangna (hero), shower us with flowers, why can’t they pay us fairly for all the work that we do,” said Ismat.

For quite some time now, ASHA workers have been demanding that they be made permanent employees of the government and provided benefits.

“If not that, they should at least fix our core incentives so that we get paid at least Rs 3,000 a month no matter what. All the work is graded 0 to 12 and if I do not get at least 6 points, I get paid only Rs 500 instead of Rs 3,000. I do not get points, even if a woman goes back to her home town to deliver the baby,” said Kavita.

She said that Covid-19 pushed them to their limits.“During Covid-19, we were only being paid Rs 1,000 for all of the additional work. Since the incentive stopped in March this year, half of the ASHA workers in Delhi decided not to participate in Covid-19 vaccination related activities,” added Kavita.

Written by Anonna Dutt 

Source: Indian Express, 24/05/22

ASHA: A successful public health experiment rooted in the village community

 

It is a programme that has done well across the country. As skill sets improved, recognition and respect for the ASHA went up. In a way, it became a programme that allowed a local woman to develop into a skilled health worker.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recognized the contribution of India’s 1 million Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is acknowledged that ASHAs facilitate linking households to health facilities, and play pivotal roles in house-to-house surveys, vaccination, public health and Reproductive and Child Health measures.

In many states, ASHAs are involved in national health programmes, and in the response to a range of communicable and non-communicable diseases. They get performance-based payments, not a fixed salary like government servants. There have been agitations demanding employee status for ASHA workers. The idea of performance-based payments was never to pay them a paltry sum — the compensation was expected to be substantial.

The ASHA programme was based on Chhattisgarh’s successful Mitanin programme, in which a Community Worker looks after 50 households. The ASHA was to be a local resident, looking after 200 households. The programme had a very robust thrust on the stage-wise development of capacity in selected areas of public health. Dr T Sundararaman and Dr Rajani Ved among others provided a lot of support to this process. Many states tried to incrementally develop the ASHA from a Community Worker to a Community Health Worker, and even to an Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM)/ General Nurse and Midwife (GNM), or a Public Health Nurse.

Important public policy and public management lessons emerge out of the successful experiment with Community Workers who were not the last rung of the government system — rather, they were of the community, and were paid for the services they rendered. The idea was to make her a part of the village community rather than a government employee.

Over 98 per cent ASHAs belong to the village where they reside, and know every household. Their selection involved the community and key resource persons. Educational qualification was a consideration. With newly acquired skills in health care and the ability to connect households to health facilities, she was able to secure benefits for households. She was like a demand-side functionary, reaching patients to facilities, providing health services nearer home.

The Expert

Amarjeet Sinha is a retired civil servant who was associated with the design and capacity-building thrust of the ASHA programme for more than five years.

Building of a cadre

It is a programme that has done well across the country. As skill sets improved, recognition and respect for the ASHA went up. In a way, it became a programme that allowed a local woman to develop into a skilled health worker.

The ASHAs faced a range of challenges: Where to stay in a hospital? How to manage mobility? How to tackle safety issues? The solutions were found in a partnership among frontline workers, panchayat functionaries, and community workers. This process, along with the strengthening of the public infrastructure for health with flexible financing and innovations under the Health Mission and Health and Wellness Centres, led to increased footfall in government facilities. Accountability increased; there would be protests if a facility did not extend quality services.

The Community Worker added value to this process. Incentives for institutional deliveries and the setting up of emergency ambulance services like 108, 102, etc. across most states built pressure on public institutions and improved the mobility of ASHAs. Overall, it created a new cadre of incrementally skilled local workers who were paid based on performance. The ASHAs were respected as they brought basic health services to the doorstep of households.

Issue of compensation

There have been challenges with regard to the performance-based compensation. In many states, the payout is low, and often delayed. The original idea was never to deny the ASHA a compensation that could be even better than a salary — it was only to prevent “governmentalisation”, and promote “communitisation” by making her accountable to the people she served.

There were serious debates in the Mission Steering Group, and the late Raghuvansh Prasad Singh made a very passionate plea for a fixed honorarium to ASHAs. Dr Abhay Bang and others wanted the community character to remain, and made an equally strong plea for skill and capacity development of Community Workers. Some states incentivised ASHAs to move up the human resource/ skilling ladder by becoming ANMs/ GNMs and even Staff Nurses after preferential admission to such courses.

The important public policy lessons are the need to incrementally develop a local worker keeping accountability with the community, make performance-based payments, and provide a demand-side push with simultaneous augmentation of services in public systems. The system can sustain and grow only if the compensation is adequate, and the ASHA continues to enjoy the confidence of the community.

Debate over status

There is a strong argument to grant permanence to some of these positions with a reasonable compensation as sustaining motivation. The incremental development of a local resident woman is an important factor in human resource engagement in community-linked sectors. This should apply to other field functionaries such as ANMs, GNMs, Public Health Nurses as well.

It is equally important to ensure that compensation for performance is timely and adequate. Ideally, an ASHA should be able to make more than the salary of a government employee, with opportunities for moving up the skill ladder in the formal primary health care system as an ANM/ GNM or a Public Health Nurse. Upgrading skill sets and providing easy access to credit and finance will ensure a sustainable opportunity to earn a respectable living while serving the community. Strengthening access to health insurance, credit for consumption and livelihood needs at reasonable rates, and coverage under pro-poor public welfare programmes will contribute to ASHAs emerging as even stronger agents of change.

Written by Amarjeet Sinha

Source: Indian Express, 24/05/22

Quote of the Day May 23, 2022

 

“The real secret of happiness is simply this: to be willing to live and let live, and to know very clearly in one's own mind that the unpardonable sin is to be an unpleasant person.”
Galen Starr Ross

“खुशी का वास्तविक रहस्य निम्नलिखित है: जीवन जीने और जीने देने का उत्साह, तथा अपने मन में यह स्पष्ट आभास कि झगड़ालू व्यक्ति होना एक अक्षम्य अपराध है।”
गैलेन स्टार्र रोस्स

Current Affairs- May 23, 2022

 

INDIA

– Navies of India and Bangladesh conducting CORPAT (Coordinated Patrol) in Bay of Bengal

– Union Home Minister Amit Shah inaugurates & lays foundation stones of various infrastructure projects worth Rs 1180 crore in Arunachal Pradesh

 Year-long celebrations of 250th Birth Anniversary of Raja Ram Mohan Roy begin

– National Recruitment Agency to conduct computer-based online CET for recruitment to non-gazetted posts by year end

– IIT-JEE (IIT-Joint Entrance Exam) to go global and be open to students from 25 nations, from US to Vietnam

– Centre forms 3-member panel to investigate Ramban tunnel collapse on Jammu-Srinagar highway on May 19

– West Bengal: Arjun Singh, BJP MP from Barrackpore, joins Trinamool Congress

ECONOMY & CORPORATE

– Govt giving additional fertiliser subsidy of Rs 1.10 lakh crore this fiscal: FM Nirmala Sitharaman

– India Ideas Conclave ‘India 2.0: Rebooting to Meta Era’ organised by the India Foundation in Bengaluru

– Salil Parekh reappointed as Infosys CEO & MD for another five years

WORLD

– Annual meeting of World Economic Forum begins in Davos, Switzerland with its theme as “Working Together, Restoring Trust”; Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal leads Indian delegation

– International Day for Biological Diversity celebrated on May 22; theme: “Building a shared future for all life”

– World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development celebrated on May 21

– International Tea Day celebrated on May 21

SPORTS

– Australian swimmer Ariarne Titmus sets women’s 400-meter freestyle world record

Scientific Social Responsibility (SSR) Guidelines

 Department of Science and Technology recently released the Scientific Social Responsibility (SSR) Guidelines.

What is the need to introduce SSR guidelines?

India has taken great strides in the advancement of Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI). However, there is an inadequate transfer of scientific knowledge to society. There is a need for greater integration of science and technology with society in today’s age. In this regard, the 104th session of the Indian Science Congress held in 2017 also stressed the need to introduce SSR guidelines.

SSR guidelines aim to ensure greater integration of S&T with society at all levels. SSR is based on the moral obligation of scientists to give back the benefits of science to society. Thus, SSR will be the convergence of scientific knowledge and social conscience.

The guidelines will bridge the following gaps: science-society (passing on the benefits of science to meet public needs), science-science (creating an atmosphere to share ideas), and society-science (working with the public to identify their needs and developing appropriate solutions).

Who are the stakeholders?

The SSR guidelines involve four categories of stakeholders:

1. Beneficiaries (any community group or individuals),
2. Implementers (educational and scientific institutions),
3. Assessors (internal or external),
4. Supporters (funds provided by government, individuals, or any other agencies).

Thus, SSR guidelines create an ecosystem with a two-way engagement between science and society.

What are the other highlights?

An Anchor Scientific Institution (ASI) will be identified in every district of India, which will map the issues faced by a society that requires immediate scientific solutions and establish links with the implementers of the area. A national digital portal will connect all the ASIs and State Science and Technology Council (SSTCs).

The knowledge institutions should prepare their SSR implementation plan. Every scientist in the country is expected to contribute at least 10 working days annually towards SSR activities for which there will be weightage in their annual performance evaluation.