“To achieve something you've never achieved before, you must become someone you've never been before.”
Brian Tracy
“आपके द्वारा कुछ ऐसा प्राप्त करना जिसे आपने पहले कभी भी प्राप्त नहीं किया है, आपको अवश्य ही ऐसा व्यक्ति बनना होगा जो आप पहले कभी नहीं थे।”
ब्रिअन ट्रेसी
New Delhi : Aiming to create a progressive long-term impact in India, Sewa International a global non-profit organization, launches Sewa Fellowship to support individuals, societal leaders, and organizations aligned with the philosophy of serving India. The fellowship programme is an opportunity for young and dynamic individuals to bring positive changes at the grassroots level for nation-building.
The fellowship launch hosted at India International Centre, New Delhi, was attended by dignitaries who have pioneered in exploring new methods and exemplified processes for serving communities including, Shri Shyam Parande (the General Secretary of Sewa International), Dr. R Balasubramaniam (Member at Capacity Building Commission), Phoolbasan Bai (Renowned Social worker and Padma Shri Awardee), Dr. Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar (Chairman at University Grants Commission), Gauranga Das (Divisional Director at ISKCON), Venkatesh Murthy (Founder and Chief Mentor at Youth for Seva), Ambassador Virendra Gupta (Former IFS) , Dr. Ram Kakani (Director at IIM Raipur), and Prof. Ajay Dubey from JNU and other renowned leaders from different walks of life.
Inviting applications from across India, the fellowship has a three-stage selection process. The first stage includes sharing the application with an essay writing or video-based essay defining the statement of purpose. The second stage will assess the candidate’s problem solving approach, and curiosity and humility through field assignments and personal conversation. The final selection is based on the individual’s behaviour/psychometric analysis, collaborative working attitude, and rigour for community work.
The 23-month immersive programme encompasses an extensive curriculum with a core emphasis on imparting knowledge, skills, and temperament training. It includes project management, research and development, monitoring and evaluation of live projects, and learning best practices to create an impact on society. The fellows will also be trained in skills such as critical thinking, systems thinking, eco-centered design, storytelling, leadership, sewa bhaav, communication, and fundraising, etc.
Shri Shyam Parande Ji, General Secretary, Sewa International, said, “We are delighted to celebrate Sewa International’s 25th Anniversary. In the initial 12 years, Sewa International worked with other institutions and later started its initiatives for the upliftment of society. He reiterated Swami Vivekananda’s message that a few heart-whole, sincere, and energetic men and women can do more in a year than a mob in a century. The world needs more young leaders to solve future problems. In his words, now is the time that young men and women must come forward and take the challenges of contemporary India and contribute to make India a global power. We operate on the ethos ‘neki kar darya me daal’, and work relentlessly to spread this message. Sewa Fellowship is a 100-week journey that will be led by experts in the field of social development. Under this, fellows will work with India’s most impactful NGOs and work on their development projects. We are looking for self-motivated individuals who want to devote their lives to building a new and better India.”
Chief Guest at the event, Dr. Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, Chairman of the UGC, said, “There is a rampant need for fellowships in India to bring changes at the grassroots level. The Sewa Fellowship will not only identify problems in the social fabric but also help find sustainable solutions. It is a much-needed initiative that will positively accelerate development across the country.”
Source:indiaeducationdiary.in, 30/05/22
After over six weeks of testimony in a defamation trial, the fate of actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard has now been decided in Depp’s favour. This high-profile trial has been parodied, discussed, and remixed since it began on April 11, largely due to the fact that it has been publicly broadcast and live-streamed on YouTube.
Although the response has been polarised, the media and general public have generally tended to side with Depp. The TikTok hashtag #teamjohnnydepp has over 77 million views and videos poking fun at Heard’s emotional testimony flood Instagram’s trending page. Concerned onlookers have noted that whether one believes Depp to be guilty of domestic violence or to be a victim of it, the coverage of the trial both highlights the issue and makes a mockery of it
Not since Americans sat transfixed to their televisions during the O J Simpson trial in 1995, has a court case been so wildly followed. While few understand the intricacies of the legal system even a novice could ascertain that the public appetite for spectacle has bordered on insensitivity and possibly harm. Domestic violence (DV) is a serious and much to common a crime in countries across the world. However, despite the international consensus seemingly being united against it, standards of blame vary largely between countries and socio-ethnic groups.
Traditionally, DV has been associated with physical violence that occurs between husband and wife but in recent decades it is now more commonly defined to include all acts of physical, sexual, economic, and psychological violence that may be committed by a family member or an intimate partner.DV can take on many forms such as assaults, threats, stalking, neglect and/or economic deprivation. With the emerging popularity of social media, technology can also be used to threaten, blackmail, and stalk victims.
Experts largely attribute DV to a need to assert power and gain control, and manage feelings of stress and inadequacy. Lenore Walker, a sociologist who founded the Domestic Violence Institute, also points to the prevalence of cycles of abuse, wherein abusers experience four phases of emotions. First is when the tension builds up, leading to the abuse. Next is a phase of calm where the perpetrator may feel guilt leading to a third phase in which they may be kind and affectionate. Lastly, when the victim may start to feel a sense of normalcy and hope, tensions build, after which the abuse is likely to continue.
DV is one of the most underreported crimes worldwide for both men and women, with one 2011 review article finding that the majority of victims fail to report the crime. This could be because they were financially trapped in the arrangement or because they felt a sense of guilt or shame.
While women are often initiators of DV, male violence is often more damaging. According to one US Justice Department analysis of crime, more than 40 per cent of adult female hospital emergency room visits are caused by violence by a male intimate partner. Furthermore, according to a 1998 National Crime Victimization Survey in the US, women experience violent domestic offences at a five times higher rate than men.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one of the most common factors in DV is a sense that abuse, whether verbal or physical, is acceptable. Other factors include substance abuse, poverty, mental health problems, and dependency on the abuser.
Men who perpetrate violence are likely to believe that their victim deserves the abuse and that their inadequacy is the chief cause of it. Social learning theory posits that people who have either witnessed abuse or experienced it during childhood are more likely to initiate it.
In developed nations, the rate of DV is much higher within families with household incomes of less than $7500. This is because financial insecurity creates stress and because women who are financially vulnerable are less able to leave abusive relationships.
Laws against DV also vary from country to country and while it is largely outlawed in the developing world, the same cannot be said about developing countries. In the UAE, for example, the Supreme Court upheld a man’s right to physically discipline his wife and children as long as he doesn’t leave any physical marks behind.
Moreover, DV is more acceptable in developing nations because attitudes support the practice. According to a Unicef survey, the percentage of women aged 15-49 who think a husband is justified in hitting his wife under certain circumstances is 90 per cent in Afghanistan, 87 per cent in Mali and 80 per cent in the Central African Republic.
According to Violence against Women in Families and Relationships, “globally, wife-beating is seen as justified in some circumstances by a majority of the population in various countries, most commonly in situations of actual or suspected infidelity by wives or their ‘disobedience’ toward a husband or partner.”
In many places, the so-called “honour killings” are also approved by a large section of society with one survey finding that 33.4 per cent of teenagers in Amman, the capital of Jordan, approved of the practice. Inappropriate clothing is also considered grounds for abuse in countries like Afghanistan where over 60 per cent of women believe a man is justified in hitting his wife if she wears inappropriate clothes.
ccording to Human Rights Watch, customs such as bride price only exacerbate abuse as women are then considered the property of their husbands. Forced and child marriages also contribute to the problem.
Additionally, religion plays an important factor as well. In Responding to Domestic Violence, a group of authors argue that Judaism, Christianity, and Hinduism have all traditionally supported male-dominated households and that “socially sanctioned violence against women has been persistent since ancient times.”
Of all the major religions, none invoke as much scrutiny towards women’s rights as Islam. While some authors like Phyllis Chesler argue that Islam is connected to violence against women, others like Tahira Khan, a professor at Aga Khan University, argue that it is the cultural inferiority of women in Islamic countries that leads to abuse, not the religion itself.
Data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) in India showed that women (52 per cent) were also more likely than men (42 per cent) to believe that a man is justified in beating his wife. The highest acceptance for DV was in Telangana at 84 per cent while the lowest was in Sikkim, at 17 per cent.
Victim blaming is also prevalent, even in industrialised economies. One 2010 Eurobaramater poll found that 52 per cent of respondents agree with the assertion that the “provocative behaviour of women” was the leading cause of violence.
According to a study by the Reproductive Health Journal, mass media “reinforces existing inequalities and traditional roles and models of femininity and masculinity” with cultural products consumed by young audiences, “praise the subordinance of women to men and even sometimes justify violence.” As such, the mass media plays a key role in defining “romantic relationships,” and often perpetuates an ideal of love that supports unequal relationships.
The media has often made light of DV as well. In 2011, a Family Guy episode highlighted abusive relationships from a comedic perspective whereas, in Kasauti Zindagi Kay, an Indian soap opera, a woman who was slapped by her husband pleads with her family not to intervene on her behalf.
According to Anne O’Brien, a professor at Maynooth University, victims of DV are often depicted in a way that justifies their abuse by mainstream news shows. She notes that coverage usually questions what the woman may have done to provoke the abuse while perpetrators are left off the hook because their actions are seen as being out of character. She also argues that the international media provides a simplistic narrative of abuse and “completely erases” the identities of women.
An Oxford University report further claims that media representation of DV tends to provide “racialising and class-biased discourses about abusers and their victims that frame domestic violence as the largest product of marginalised classes.” It also claims that’s that after the 9/11 attacks, media coverage of Islamic nations has justified “progressive” Western cultures with “backwards” Eastern ones.
However, despite the failure of the media to adequately address this issue, its potential to positively influence the narrative is profound. According to the Economics of Peace and Security Journal, media exposure can be a “positive source for changing social norms.” For example, it points to one study from Tamil Nadu which found that the introduction of cable television with programmes that present “urban attitudes,” is associated with a 16 per cent decrease in women’s reported acceptance of domestic violence and an 8.8 per cent decrease in their preference for having male children.
Similarly, after the highly publicised domestic violence trial of American football star O J Simpson, the then US president Bill Clinton approved the creation of a national Domestic Violence helpline which surged to record numbers in recent weeks. However, studies also found that while the number of DV related newspaper articles increased during the prime stage of the case, and after the trial was over, numbers began to decrease once again.
The impact of the media is perhaps best observed in cases that never go to court. In 2009, when Chris Brown punched his then-girlfriend Rihanna in the face, he was largely castigated on social media, despite the incident never going to trial. Today, a person accused of DV can be “cancelled” online, their reputations eternally forged in the annals of social media.
This phenomenon was observed in 2015, when a 20-year-old swimmer from Stanford, Brock Turner, was found guilty of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. Turner was only served with a six-month sentence, but a report from Buzzfeed publishing the victim’s statement was one of its most shared stories in the site’s history.
The outcome of the Depp Heard trial means that Heard is found guilty of defaming Depp in the eyes of the law. However, that does not excuse the vitriol and skepticism that she faced throughout the trial. Perhaps the best lesson we can learn about reporting or commenting on domestic violence cases, is that our judgement should be predicated on that of the law. No one wins when social media denigrates the alleged victim or abuser before a verdict is delivered.
Written by Mira Patel
Source: Indian Express, 2/06/22
A study by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has spoken about the possibility of capital outflows to the tune of $100 billion (around Rs 7,80,000 crore) from India in case of a major global risk scenario or a “black swan” event.
A black swan is a rare, unpredictable event that comes as a surprise and has a significant impact on society or the world. These events are said to have three distinguishing characteristics – they are extremely rare and outside the realm of regular expectations; they have a severe impact after they hit; and they seem probable in hindsight when plausible explanations appear.
When did the term originate?
The black swan theory was put forward by author and investor Nassim Nicholas Taleb in 2001, and later popularised in his 2007 book – The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The Sunday Times described his work as one of the 12 most influential books since World War II.
In his book, Taleb does not try to lay out a method to predict such events, but instead stresses on building “robustness” in systems and strategies to deal with black swan occurrences and withstand their impacThe term itself is linked to the discovery of black swans. Europeans believed all swans to be white until 1697, when a Dutch explorer spotted the first black swan in Australia. The metaphor ‘black swan event’ is derived from this unprecedented spotting from the 17th century, and how it upended the West’s understanding of swans.
When have such events occurred in the past?
Interestingly, Taleb’s book predated the 2008 global financial crisis – a black swan event triggered by a sudden crash in the booming housing market in the US. The fall of the Soviet Union, the terrorist attack in the US on September 11, 2001, also fall in the same category.t.
Is the Covid-19 pandemic a black swan event?
Taleb does not agree with those who believe it to be one. In an interview to Bloomberg in 2020, he called it a “white swan”, arguing that it was predictable, and there was no excuse for companies and governments not to be prepared for something like this.
While the outbreak of any pandemic is difficult to individually predict, the possibility of one occurring and having a major impact on systems around the world was known and documented.
Written by Saurabh Kapoor
Source: Indian Express, 21/06/22
Seventeen people have been killed by lightning over the last two days in various parts of Bihar, Six deaths have been reported from Bhagalpur district, while three people were killed in Vaishali, and two each in Banka and Khagaria. Other deaths happened in Madhepura, Saharsa, Munger and Katihar.
Of all the atmospheric phenomena, lightning perhaps is the most dangerous and mysterious. In India, lightning kills about 2,000-2,500 people every year. Bihar is just one of the several hotspots for lightning in India, as a new atlas of lightning shows.
Scientifically, lightning is a rapid and massive discharge of electricity in the atmosphere some of which is directed towards earth. The discharges are generated in giant moisture-bearing clouds that are 10-12 km tall. The base of these clouds typically lie within 1-2 km of the Earth’s surface, while the top is 12-13 km away. Temperatures in the top of these clouds are in the range of –35° to –45°C.
As water vapour moves upward in the cloud, the falling temperature causes it to condense. As they move to temperatures below 0°C, the water droplets change into small ice crystals. They continue to move up, gathering mass until they are so heavy that they start to fall to Earth. This leads to a system in which, simultaneously, smaller ice crystals are moving up and bigger crystals are coming down.
Collisions follow and trigger the release of electrons, a process that is very similar to the generation of sparks of electricity. As the moving free electrons cause more collisions and more electrons, a chain reaction ensues. This process results in a situation in which the top layer of the cloud gets positively charged, while the middle layer is negatively charged. The electrical potential difference between the two layers is huge, of the order of a billion to 10 billion volts. In very little time, a massive current, of the order of 100,000 to a million amperes, starts to flow between the layers.
While the Earth is a good conductor of electricity, it is electrically neutral. However, in comparison to the middle layer of the cloud, it becomes positively charged. As a result, about 15%-20% of the current gets directed towards the Earth as well. It is this flow of current that results in damage to life and property on Earth.
Direct lightning strikes are rare but even indirect strikes are fatal given the immense amount of charge involved.
A recently released annual report on lightning by the Climate Resilient Observing Systems Promotion Council (CROPC), which works closely with government agencies like the India Meteorological Department, includes a lightning atlas which maps vulnerability at the district level.
According to the report, Madhya Pradesh has reported the largest number of cloud to ground lighting strikes, followed by Chhatisgarh, Maharashtra, Odisha and West Bengal. Other states with high strike rate include Bihar, UP, Karnataka, Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu.
Lightning is fairly common, though it is not often realised in the urban centres. In India, well over one crore lightning strikes have been recorded in recent years. It is only over the last few years that lightning records have begun to be maintained, thanks to the efforts of CROPC and India Meteorological Department.
In 2019-20, about 1.4 crore lightning strikes were recorded, which increased to 1.85 crore in 2020-21.
In 2021-22, about 1.49 crore strikes were recorded across the country. The reduction, in line with the trend observed globally, has been attributed to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The reason attributed to reduction in lightning is due to Covid-2019 pandemic induced reduction in aerosol level, pollution, environmental upgradation and relatively stable weather system in Indian subcontinent,” the annual lightning report said.
But most of this reduction was seen in the cloud-to-cloud lightning. Of the strikes that reach the Earth, only a 2.5% reduction was observed.
Lightning is not classified as a natural disaster in India. But recent efforts have resulted in the setting up of an early warning system, that is already saving many lives. More than 96% of lightning deaths happen in rural areas. As such, most of the mitigation and public awareness programmes need to focus on these communities.
Lightning protection devices are fairly unsophisticated and low-cost. Yet, their deployment in the rural areas, as of now, is extremely low.
States are being encouraged to prepare and implement lightning action plans, on the lines of heat action plans. An international centre for excellence on lightning research to boost detection and early warning systems is also in the process of being set up.
Written by Parthasarathi Biswas , Amitabh Sinha
Source: Indian Express, 21/06/22