1st oct 2014

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Newspaper Analysis and Summary 01

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October 2014

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Coverage of antenatal care in India has to be increased: WHO The indu

''Antenatal care is very important for health workers to detect mothers with obesity ordiabetes... both specific risks during pregnancy," says Dr. Flavia Bustreo, Assistant

Director General at WHO.

In 2013, globally, preterm birth complications were responsible for 15 per cent (0.96

million) of deaths in children under five years of age. It is a leading cause of death in

neonates (0-27 days after birth). According to WHO, about 15 million babies are born

preterm (before 37 completed weeks of gestation) every year. Such births are seen both in

the developed and developing countries. India ranks first in the list of 10 countries that

account for 60 per cent of all preterm births; the U.S. is ranked sixth in the list.

India has little more than 50 per cent of antenatal care coverage. So in order to face the

issue of premature births, low birth weight babies and stillbirths, the first aspect is to

increase the coverage of antenatal care, Dr. Flavia Bustreo, Assistant Director General at

WHO told this Correspondent. During antenatal care, health workers can detect whether

progress of foetal growth is happening normally, pregnant mothers nutrition is good or look

out for any other complications. What is evident in the latest data is that across the world,

nearly 30 per cent of maternal deaths are linked to indirect causes like gestational diabetes

and obesity especially among young mothers, and the influence of communicable

diseases on maternal deaths.

So antenatal care is very important as health workers can detect mothers who are obese or

have diabetes. These are specific risks during pregnancy and should be given particular

care, Dr. Bustreo said. This is not happening in India. India has to particularly care for

mothers for what we call as pre-existing conditions. Pregnant mothers who have diabetes,

are obese or have preeclampsia (high blood pressure) are less likely to complete full term

and babies will be born with low birth weight. Therefore, antenatal care becomes all the

more important.

Of course, babies who are born before full term can still survive as simple interventions andtreatments are available. For instance, corticosteroid given to mothers before delivery can

greatly facilitate the development of the babies lungs. It can also be given to babies soon

after their birth in cases when delivery takes place even before the steroid can be given to

pregnant mothers. The steroid greatly reduce the possibility of neonatal deaths. Similarly,

kangaroo mother care can go a long way in keeping babies warm and improve their chances

of survival.

More to do

India has to still progress. What is available as special care facilities for babies that are low

birth weight and premature are not sufficient in number. What I have seen happening is that

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some of the facilities in private hospitals have moved very fast especially in the cities. But

when you come to rural areas in North India, this is something that is still missing, Dr.

Bustreo said. So this leads to loss of babies who are born too early or born too small. This

is part of Indias challenge.

Within reach

While being critical of the shortcoming of the Indian government, she is still very optimistic.

Our latest data show that India is just an inch away from reaching the MDG4 (child

morality) and MDG5 (maternal mortality) targets. [The current under-five mortality rate is

56 and should reach 42 before December 2015. The MMR is 190 and should drop to 140

before the end of next year.] Its just a matter of the curve accelerating a little bit. I am

hopeful that if the new government concentrates constructively on the challenges and

focuses on the strengths of immunisation programme then India can achieve the MDG4

target, she stressed.

One big challenge that stares the country in the face is the reach of antenatal care. According

to the 2014 data, antenatal care in rural areas is about 50 per cent for more than one visit and

about 10 per cent for more than four visits. The availability of skilled attendant at the time of

delivery is only about 20 per cent in rural areas. Yet, Dr. Bustreo remains confident. These

data are retrospect. We dont measure them in real time. I can tell you some countries that

have seen huge progress when they applied themselves to the task. For example, in the case

of child mortality, we have seen annual rate of reduction of seven per cent, nine per cent and

even 10 per cent in the case of Ethiopia, Rwanda and Malawi, she said. So if India applies

specific measures, I am quite confident that it would really come close to meeting the goalsand it would surprise everybody.

Talking about the huge number of adolescent marriages and womens role in the society and

education, she noted that positive results can be obtained despite certain determinants that

impact on maternal and child mortality taking a long time to change. What we are arguing

at this juncture is that India can strengthen the provision of care so even if you have a young

adolescent pregnant mother or if a pregnant mother is affected by gestational diabetes or is

biologically not matured and delivers a preterm baby, she and the baby can be saved, she

noted. Some determinants will take a generation to change but providing critical care willnot take a generation.

(The Correspondent participated in the events surrounding the United Nations General

Assembly, New York as a Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Scholarship

Journalist at the invitation of PMNCH, Geneva)

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Preterm birth and pneumonia kill most children under five years in India

The indu

Of the 6.3 million deaths in children under the age of five years, nearly 44 per cent of deaths

during 2000-2013 occurred during the neonatal period (0-27 days after birth). Preterm birth

complications, pneumonia and intrapartum-related complications have been found to be thethree main causes of death in children globally. The results are published today (October 1)

in the journal The Lancet. According to Li Liu from the Institute of International Programs

and the first author of the paper, there will be 4.4 million deaths in children younger than

five years even in 2030 if the present trend continues.

In 2013, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and China together ac-

counted for half of deaths in the world in children aged under five years, and 52.5 per cent of

all neonatal deaths. In the case of India and Pakistan, the three leading causes were preterm

birth complications, pneumonia and intrapartum-related complications, in that order. In the

case of China, the order was different intrapartum-related complications, preterm births

complications and pneumonia were the three leading causes. Globally, preterm birth compli-

cations caused 15 per cent (0.96 million) of child deaths in 2013. This was closely followed

by pneumonia. While pneumonia caused only 0.14 million deaths in neonates, at 0.8 million,

it was the second major cause of death across the world in children aged 1-59 months. The

two periods together accounted for 0.93 million deaths caused by pneumonia in children

aged under five years. As expected, diarrhoea killed more children after the neonatal period

0.02 million during the neonatal period and nearly 0.59 million during the period 1-59

months.

Case management of pneumonia and diarrhoea can be easily implemented and large number

of deaths can be prevented with minimum intervention at little cost. Use of antibiotics to

treat pneumonia and timely oral rehydration therapy in the case of diarrhoea can prevent

deaths in children under five years. Deaths due to pneumonia and diarrhoea can be reduced

in India. The coverage [of antibiotics and oral rehydration therapy] is not wide enough in

India ... its not sufficient, Prof. Robert E. Black from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg

School of Public Health and the Corresponding author of the paper told this Correspondent.

Pneumonia [occurs] during and after neonatal period and diarrhoea [occurs] mainly after

neonatal period.

For pneumonia less than 30 per cent of children in India receive antibiotics, and over 600

million defecate in the open and have very poor access to clean drinking water resulting in

most cases of diarrhoea. Compared to managing premature babies which involves some-

times months of intensive care, complex medical treatments and follow-ups, treatment for

pneumonia (early diagnosis and three-day antibiotic treatment costing about Rs.25) and diar-

rhoea (oral rehydration therapy) are relatively straight forward and will save a lot more lives

in the short term, Dr Nicholas Furtado Attending Paediatrician, University of Illinois Ho s-

pital and Health Sciences System, Chicago said in an email to this Correspondent. Dr. Fur-

tado was not involved in the study.

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In the long term, prevention of pneumonia by immunisation, acute diarrhoea by improving

water supply and sanitation, and decreasing prematurity through quality care before, during

and after birth would be the most important ways to decreased under five mortality rate, Dr.

Furtado noted. Explaining why pneumonia cases are more common than diarrhoea, Dr. Fur-tado said: During the neonatal period the lungs are immature and more prone to infection.

Simple measures like exclusive breastfeeding for six months can further cut the number of

diarrhoeal episodes and deaths in children. However, only about 46 per cent of children in

India were exclusively breastfed for six months during 2005-2006. It is to be noted that re-

duction in pneumonia, diarrhoea and measles during the period 2000-2013 has led to nearly

50 per cent decrease in deaths in children under five years.

Preterm births

India is one of the 10 countries with an estimated 100,000 to 250,000 preterm births in 2010.

Preterm births cause about 50 per cent of neonatal mortality. The causes of preterm births

are not known. Conditions like high blood pressure in pregnant mothers and infections dur-

ing pregnancy are some of the reasons. In a majority of cases no cause can be attributed. Its

hard to prevent preterm births, said Prof. Black. Preterm birth complications will probably

remain the leading cause of neonatal and under five deaths, the paper notes.

But measures like supported infections control, kangaroo care (skin to skin contact of the

baby with the mother to keep the baby warm) and use of incubators will go a long way in

preventing deaths even when the baby is preterm. We cant prevent preterm births but cantreat them and prevent most of the deaths, Prof. Black said. In this analysis we didnt in-

clude small for [gestational] age as a risk factor, he said. Most small-for-gestational-age

infants are born in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Bangladesh.

US, India to collaborate on Mars exploration The indu

India and the U.S., after sending their own respective spacecraft into Mars orbit, have now

agreed to cooperate on future explorations of the Red Planet, which America said will yield

tangible benefits to both the countries and the world at large.The agreement in this regard

was signed by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and K. Radhakrishnan, Chairman of theIndian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in Toronto on Tuesday on the sidelines of the

International Astronautical Congress. The two sides signed a charter that establishes a

NASA-ISRO Mars Working Group to investigate enhanced cooperation between the two

countries in Mars exploration.

They also signed an international agreement that defines how the two agencies will work

together on the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, targeted to launch

in 2020. The signing of these two documents reflects the strong commitment NASA and

ISRO have to advancing science and improving life on Earth, said NASA Administrator

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Charles Bolden. This partnership will yield tangible benefits to both our countries and the

world, Mr. Bolden said.

The joint Mars Working Group will seek to identify and implement scientific, programmatic

and technological goals the two agencies have in common regarding Mars exploration. Thegroup will meet once a year to plan cooperative activities, including potential NASA-ISRO

cooperation on future missions to Mars, it said. NASAs Mars Atmosphere and Volatile

EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft arrived at Mars September 21. MAVEN is the first space-

craft dedicated to exploring the tenuous upper atmosphere of Mars.

ISROs Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), Indias first spacecraft launched to the Red Planet,

arrived on September 23 to study the Martian surface and atmosphere and demonstrate tech-

nologies needed for interplanetary missions. One of the working groups objectives will be

to explore potential coordinated observations and science analysis between MAVEN and

MOM, as well as other current and future Mars missions. NASA and Indian scientists have

a long history of collaboration in space science, said John Grunsfeld, NASA associate ad-

ministrator for science.

These new agreements between NASA and ISRO in Earth science and Mars exploration

will significantly strengthen our ties and the science that we will be able to produce as a re-

sult, he added. According to a NASA statement, the joint NISAR Earth-observing mission

will make global measurements of the causes and consequences of land surface changes. Po-

tential areas of research include ecosystem disturbances, ice sheet collapse and natural haz-

ards.

The NISAR mission is optimised to measure subtle changes of the Earths surface associated

with motions of the crust and ice surfaces. NISAR will improve our understanding of key

impacts of climate change and advance our knowledge of natural hazards, he said. NISAR

will be the first satellite mission to use two different radar frequencies (L-band and S-band)

to measure changes in our planets surface less than a centimetre across. This allows the

mission to observe a wide range of changes, from the flow rates of glaciers and ice sheets to

the dynamics of earthquakes and volcanoes, it said.

Under the terms of the new agreement, NASA will provide the missions L-band synthetic

aperture radar (SAR), a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers,

a solid state recorder, and a payload data subsystem. ISRO will provide the spacecraft bus,

an S-band SAR, and the launch vehicle and associated launch services. NASA and ISRO

have been cooperating under the terms of a framework agreement signed in 2008.

This cooperation includes a variety of activities in space sciences such as two NASA pay-

loadsthe Mini-Synthetic Aperture Radar (Mini-SAR) and the Moon Mineralogy Mapper

on ISROs Chandrayaan-1 mission to the moon in 2008. During the operational phase of

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this mission, the Mini-SAR instrument detected ice deposits near the moons northern pole,

it said.

Mangalyaan launch as a teaching aid The Hindu

Upgrading Indian rockets for future Mars missions The Hindu

NATIONAL NEWS

Modi, Obama decide to take ties to the next level The indu

After discussions that ran overtime by about an hour, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and

U.S. President Barack Obama decided to take the India-U.S. relationship to the next level,

saying the true potential of the relationship has yet to be realised.

Mr. Modi, who briefed journalists after the meeting, said: My discussions have confirmedfor me that India and the U.S. are natural global partners.

Mr. Obama said he was impressed with Mr. Modis interest in not only addressing poverty in

India and revitalising the economy there but also his determination that India helped bring

about peace and security in the world.

I want to wish him luck in what Im sure will bea challenging but always interesting tenure

as Prime Minister in India, the President said. In the joint statement, while India did not

accede to the U.S. request to join the international coalition against ISIS, the two sides

agreed on several ways to enhance cooperation on terror.

Respect majority view, VC told The indu

Chancellor P. Sathasivam has directed Calicut University Vice Chancellor M. Abdul Salam

to respect the majority view of the Syndicate. The Chancellor has asked the Vice Chancellor

to conduct the meeting of the Syndicate in a democratic manner.

The Chancellors directive came in the wake of a complaint filed by a group of Syndicate

members, led by P.M. Niyas, against what they termed the undemocratic behaviour of Dr.

Salam. The Syndicate members had also moved the High Court against the Vice Chancellor.

The Chancellors decision came in the wake of a directive by the High Court to address the

complaint within a few weeks. Three days ago, the Chancellor had ordered the Vice

Chancellor to repay the excess money he drew from the exchequer by way of double wages.

Stand vindicated

The latest decision by the Chancellor asking Dr. Salam to respect the majority view of the

Syndicate has vindicated our stand. It clearly indicated that the Vice Chancellor had erred,

senior Syndicate member P.K. Supran told The Hindu .
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/mangalyaan-launch-as-a-teaching-aid/article6466355.ecehttp://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/mangalyaan-launch-as-a-teaching-aid/article6466355.ecehttp://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/mangalyaan-launch-as-a-teaching-aid/article6466355.ecehttp://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/mangalyaan-launch-as-a-teaching-aid/article6466355.ecehttp://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/upgrading-indian-rockets-for-future-mars-missions/article6466353.ecehttp://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/upgrading-indian-rockets-for-future-mars-missions/article6466353.ecehttp://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/upgrading-indian-rockets-for-future-mars-missions/article6466353.ecehttp://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/upgrading-indian-rockets-for-future-mars-missions/article6466353.ecehttp://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/upgrading-indian-rockets-for-future-mars-missions/article6466353.ecehttp://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/mangalyaan-launch-as-a-teaching-aid/article6466355.ece

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The Syndicate members had approached the Chancellor and the High Court against Dr.

Salam accusing him of manipulating the minutes of the Syndicate meeting held on July 19.

The Vice Chancellor, overruling the Registrar, had unilaterally added many things in the

minutes of the Syndicate meeting held on July 19.

Infuriated by Dr. Salams action, the Syndicate members questioned him at a meeting held

on August 18. In his latest directive to the Vice Chancellor, the Chancellor disapproved the

unilateral decisions Dr. Salam took.

Vehicles transporting liquorcant be seized without notice: HC The indu

Officers cannot confiscate vehicles involved in offences under the Tamil Nadu Prohibition

Act, 1937, without issuing notice to owners and giving them an opportunity to make a

written representation, the Madras High Court Bench here has held.

Justice P.R. Shivakumar gave the ruling on a criminal revision petition filed by the owner of

a luxury car used to transport 12 bottles, each with a capacity of 750 ml of brandy, without

licence from Puducherry to Thanjavur on March 22.

After seizing the bottles and remanding the owner, the Additional Superintendent of Police

(Prohibition Wing), Thanjavur, passed an order on April 1, 2014, confiscating the car and

served it on the petitioner in prison after three days.

The petitioner challenged the confiscation before the Principal Sessions Court at Thanjavur,

saying the principles of natural justice were not followed. But the Sessions Court dismissed

the plea on September 11.

Glaring defects

Holding that the confiscation order as well as the lower court order were liable to be set

aside, Mr. Justice Shivakumar said: The glaring defects which go to the root of the case

have not caught the attention of the sessions judge, who proved to be inferior to the

prohibition officer in exhibiting arbitrariness.

The judge said that a proviso to Section 14 of the Prohibition Act stated that officials must

issue notice to the owners before confiscating their vehicles and give them a maximum of 14

days to make a written representation. Thereafter, a reasonable opportunity should also be

given to the owners to represent their case in person. Further, sub-clause (5) of the Section

stated that the owners could challenge confiscation orders before the sessions court.

In the present case, there is not even a scrap of paper to show that notice was issued to the

petitioner.

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India-China stand-off ends: MEA The induThe 20-day stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops in Eastern Ladakh has ended.

The External Affairs Ministry announced on Tuesday that both sides carried out

disengagement and redeployment of border troops on September 26 and 27. The statement

said that status quoas on September 1had been re-established.

The border commanders met on Tuesday at the Spanggur Gap to confirm that the stand-off

had been terminated.

The two sides have also agreed that a meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation

and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) will be convened in India on

October 16-17 to discuss various issues pertaining to the maintenance of peace and

tranquillity in the border areas, the statement said.

On September 10, Chinas Peoples Liberation Army reportedly moved around 500 soldiers

to Chumar village on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control, 300 km south-east of Leh

in Jammu and Kashmir. Chinese nomads called Rebos pitched tents 500 metres into India in

Demchok.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised the issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his

visit to India in September.

Vigilance Commissioner Rajiv to act as CVC The indu

President Pranab Mukherjee has authorised Vigilance Commissioner Rajiv to act as Central

Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) until a regular appointment is made.

Rajiv, former Director-General, Central Industrial Security Force, took over the

responsibility on September 29, a day after Pradeep Kumar completed his tenure. Mr. Kumar

took over as the CVC in July 2011.

Since the Supreme Court is hearing a case alleging lack of transparency in the appointments

in the Central Vigilance Commission, the Attorney-General had earlier this month informed

the court that the government would not make any appointments till the case was decided.

Modi-Obama statement focusses on ties, shuns hype The indu

The vision statement released after the dinner meeting on Monday evening between

President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendre Modi refers to India and the U.S.

building a transformative relationship, and is considerably less warm than President

Obamas words while addressing the Indian Parliament during his visit in 2010, when he

referred to it as the defining partnership of the 21st century.

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The statement is comprehensive, dealing with collaborations ranging from particles of

creation to outer space, but marks a more realistic appraisal of the relationship, given the

lack of forward movement in many spheres, including the nuclear deal and trade issues.

The U.S.s endorsement of Indias claim to a permanent Security Council seat, which wasclearly enunciated in the joint statement in 2013 -- looking forward to a reformed U.N.

security council with India as a permanent member -- is considerably different from the

language this year, which speaks of supporting an open and inclusive rules-based global

order in which India assumes greater multilateral responsibility, including in a reformed

United Nations Security Council.

The pivotal issue for the two leaders is the cooperation on terror, in particular the 40-nation

U.S.-led coalition against IS. This is not a make-or-break issue, analyst and former

diplomat Ashley Tellis told The Hindu . It will go a long way in the U.S. to show India is

ready to walk the talk, take responsibility for its internationally stated commitments on

terror.

However, Mr. Modi has already pointed out that the so-called global coalition omits several

countries, like Iran and Syria, and officials said it would be a precedent for India to join a

coalition not under the aegis of the United Nations.

To that end, the statement speaks of enhancing homeland security by sharing intelligence,

through counter-terrorism and law-enforcement cooperation, but not of international

security, although both leaders have held extensive talks on Afghanistans security situationas well.

According to the Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson, the talks between the two

leaders, that extended nearly two hours through dinner, touched on cooperation on other

international challenges like the spread of Ebola and climate change.

Significantly, the statement and the editorial make no mention of former Prime Minister

Manmohan Singh, during whose tenure the transformational civil nuclear deal was signed,

referring instead to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, commending him forcalling India and the U.S. natural allies in 2000.

Do not dilute CPSE equity base: Yechury The indu

The CPI (M) on Monday urged the Centre not to make listing on stock exchanges a

condition for Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs) to retain their Maharatna or

Navaratna status. The party also said CPSEs should not be compelled to make a minimum

disinvestment of 25 per cent.

The demands were put forward by Sitaram Yechury, CPI(M) Polit Bureau member and

Rajya Sabha MP, in a letter to Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of State for Finance. Mr.

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Yechury was responding to Ms. Sitharamans letter dated September 4, in which she said she

had taken notice of his zero-hour submission against disinvestment in the Rajya Sabha on

July 22, 2014.

Taking issue with Mr. Yechury, Ms. Sitharaman, setting out the NDA governmentsdisinvestment policya continuation of the UPA governments policy wrote that in all

cases of disinvestment of CPSEs, the government would retain at least 51% equity and

management control to ensure continuing inflow of dividends to the government even after a

part of it was disinvested.

Saying he still disagreed with Ms. Sitharamansexplanation, Mr. Yechury stressed he never

said all dividends stopped flowing from the CPSEs to the government, only that the latter

was increasingly losing its dividend income as it incrementally off-loaded its shares in the

CPSEs. Dividends, he said, are a recurring flow to the government. By forgoing a part of

this for a one-time sales-proceeds did not reflect economic prudence.

The Ministers letter conclusively showed, he added, that the National Investment Fund

created to park disinvestment proceeds to be utilised for capital expenditure and social sector

schemes were yet to take off fully, eight years after its constitution.

The disinvestment proceeds realised during this period had gone only in meeting the fiscal

deficit, Mr. Yechury continued, emphasising that the recapitalisation of public sector banks

and insurance companies and funding capital expenditure of public utilities as well as

infrastructure services was essentially the governments responsibility: to fulfil this, thedilution of the CPSEs equity base could not be a justification.

Katju favours uniform civil law The indu

Press Council of India chairperson Markandey Katju said on Tuesday that he favoured a

uniform civil law, arguing that the Muslim personal law was unjust as it treated women as

inferior to men.

Muslim personal law is an unjust law it is an outdated law because it treats women as

inferior. Oral talaq is permitted only to men. He claimed that even Hindu law was similarlyfeudal in nature, but changes were made to it after tremendous efforts by Jawaharlal

Nehru. There was a time when a Hindu man could marry as many women as he liked and

property was inherited only by the son, he said.

According to Mr. Katju, in an age of equality, the same law should be applicable to both men

and women. If a Muslim woman wants divorce, she has to approach a court. But a husband

can get it by merely saying talaq thrice. Every modern country has one single law for

everybody. It was different here because vote banks were needed. Mr. Katju was speaking

at an interaction organised by Indian Womens Press Corps .

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Speaking about corruption, he said the situation had changed since the time he joined the

judiciary.

Monsoon ends with 12% shortfall The induAs India marks the official end of the southwest monsoon on Tuesday, it is left with a 12 percent shortfall in rainfall after a third of its territory witnessed deficient precipitation during

the wet season. The official season in India is between June 1 and September 30.

Retreating

According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), monsoon is fast winding up and

its withdrawal line passes through Jammu, Una, Bareilly, Kanpur, Nowgong, Ujjain,

Vadodara and Porbandar. It is also active over Kerala.

Private forecast agency Skymet said only one sub-division, south interior Karnataka,

received excess rainfall of 21 per cent. About 30 per cent of the country received deficient

rainfall.

The IMD projected a below normal monsoon this year for India and the country received

775 mm rainfall as against the normal precipitation of 883 mm. The onset of monsoon was

weak, with June seeing a high rainfall deficit of 43 per cent.

However, conditions improved in July and August on the back of good spells of rain in the

last two weeks of those months. The good rainfall in July, August and September helped

limit the overall deficit to 12 per cent.

The northwest division, which includes eastern and western Uttar Pradesh, Delhi,

Chandigarh and Haryana, saw a rain deficit of 21 per cent, the highest in the country. The

shortfall for the southern peninsula was 7 per cent.

Modis first radio interaction on October 3 The induTo ensure the widest possible reach for Prime Minister Narendra Modis first radio

interaction on October 3, the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry has said private

television news channels, FM radio stations and community radio stations can take the feedfrom Doordarshan News and All India Radio free of cost.

The Ministry sent out an advisory to this effect on Monday to the News Broadcasters

Association, the Association of Radio Operators for India, the Community Radio

Association and the Association for Regional TV Broadcasting in India.

The advisory says the radio broadcastMan Ki Baat will be carried live on the entire

AIR network from 11 a.m. The audio feed with visuals will be carried by the DD News

channel. In addition, DD News and AIR will repeat the telecast at 8 p.m. in all regionallanguages.

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The bungalow had been in a dilapidated condition for long until the Bihar government

recently decided to renovate it to develop the museum. In 2009, the government announced

a makeover for the site, but nothing has happened since then.

Art and Culture Minister Vinay Bihari launched the project in August saying the work on themuseum at Orwells birthplace had finally begun. The government wants to develop an

Orwell museum of international standards to attract tourists, especially those from Britain,

he said. The government is constructing a satyagraha park adjacent to the museum.

Protest staged

On Monday, a group of people who wanted the museum built first took out a protest march

under the banner of the Nagdaha Seva Samiti against those opposed to it.

Were proud that such a great writer of 20th Century, George Orwell, was born at Motihari.

Those who are opposed to the upcoming museum at his birthplace do not know even Gandhi

properly as both Gandhiji and Orwell had fought against injustice, said Munna Giri,

founder of the samiti.

Another Orwell supporter, Ripusudan Tiwari, said some people, who falsely claimed to be

the supporters of Mahatma Gandhi, were opposing the Orwell memorial and giving a bad

name for the town and the author.

Like Gandhiji, George Orwell too attacked totalitarianism, fascism and imperialism

through his writings. Such opposition serves nothing but invites a bad name for the town,Mr. Tiwari told The Hindu .

But the group which has been spearheading the movement against the museum said the State

government should first develop the satyagraha park.

Were committed to opposing the construction of the Orwellian museum as the satyagraha

park adjacent to the museum should be developed first. For all of us, Gandhiji is more

respected than the British writer, said Mamta Rani Verma.

In 200405, the then Indian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, L.M. Singhvi,wished to develop Orwells birthplace at Motihari on the lines of Stratford -upon-Avon

(England) and Yasnaya Polyana (Russia), birthplaces of William Shakespeare and Leo

Tolstoy, respectively, but he passed away before his dream could be realised.

.

Mysterious feature on Titans sea puzzles NASAThe HinduNASAs Cassini spacecraft is closely monitoring the evolution of a mysterious feature in a

large hydrocarbon sea on Saturns moon Titan.

The enigmatic feature, which appears bright in radar images against the dark background of

the liquid sea, was first spotted during Cassinis July 2013 Titan flyby.

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The feature covers an area of about 260 square km in Ligeia Mare one of the largest seas

on Titan.

The appearance of this feature could be related to changing seasons on Titan, as summerdraws near in the moons northern hemisphere. Science loves a mystery and with this

feature, we have a thrilling example of ongoing change on Titan, said Stephen Wall, le ader

of Cassinis radar team based at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

ECONOMY

RBI unbiased about the way to go on rates: Raghuram Rajan The indu

The Reserve Bank (RBI) is without bias either way about raising or cutting interest rates,

while further policy will be contingent on relevant data coming in, Governor Raghuram Ra-

jan said Wednesday.

Our policy stance today is reasonable and we see no reason to alter it today based on the

information we have. As data comes in, we will have a better view and will adjust accord-

ingly, Rajan said at the post-policy conference call with analysts.

So, I should not presume thatwe are either biased towards raising rates or cutting rates at

this point, he added.

Observing that the country is currently positioned to reach the central banks inflation target

of 6 percent by January 2016, Rajan Tuesday decided to keep the lending rate, or the repo

rate, unchanged at 8 percent, while retaining the short-term borrowing, or reverse repo rate,

at 7 percent and the cash reserve ratio (CRR) at 4 percent.

We are currently positioned to reach 6 percent by 2016, given where the rate (inflat ion) is.

Our expectation is that we will reach that target. The (future) policy will be data-

contingent, the monetarist-inclined governor said after announcing the policy review Tues-

day.

If the data come in and say that we are going to miss the 6 percent inflation target, we will

have to tighten and if the data say we are going to do better than 6 percent or earlier than

January, we will be more accommodative, he had added.

Consumer price index (CPI)-based retail inflation eased to 7.8 percent in August from 8.59

percent in April. Wholesale price index (WPI) inflation has also eased to 3.74 percent in

August from 5.55 percent at the start of the current fiscal.

The RBI has set a target for CPI inflation at 8 percent by January 2015 and 6 percent by

January 2016.

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Given the modelling of inflation, which says the expected level by 2016 is 7 percent, the

risks are still to the upside, Rajan told reporters Tuesday.

RBI had first mentioned the upside risks to the 6 percent inflation target at the August policy

review.

With food inflation buffeting retail inflation, Rajan said the country should focus on other

aspects like cold storage facilities, improving the logistics and finding newer market places

for the produce to reduce the seasonal volatility in prices.

On corporates overseas debt, Rajan said there was a need for companies to look at hedging

from the financial perspective and hedges should not placed like bets assuming a single di-

rection for the currency to move in.

First offshore wind power project to come up in Gujarat The indu

Prime Minister Narendra Modis message in the US was loud and clear that ren ewable

energy is the way to go, Goyal said.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) Wednesday said it has signed a

memorandum of understanding to form a joint venture (JV) company for setting up a 100

MW offshore wind power project off the Gujarat coast.

The MoU was signed between MNRE, National Institute of Wind Energy and a consortium

of partners consisting of NTPC, Power Grid Corp, Indian Renewable Energy Development

Agency, Power Finance Corp, Power Trading Corp and Gujarat Power Corporation Ltd.

Considering the countrys 7,600 km coast line, opportunities for scaling up offshore wind

power projects are humongous, said Power and MNRE Minister Piyush Goyal, who was

present on the occasion.

Prime Minister Narendra Modis message in the US was loud and clear that renewable

energy is the way to go, Goyal said.

It dovetails the worlds concerns about climate change and it clearly enhances Indiasenergy security, he added.

The minister also suggested building partnerships with defence, coast guard and shipping to

ensure seamless and time bound approval process.

The JV will undertake a detailed feasibility study to set up the first planned demonstration

off shore wind project.

It has been proposed to provide subsidy for setting up of evacuation and transmission

infrastructure of the project to the mainland, an official release said.

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With more than 22 giga-watt (GW) installed capacity in onshore wind power, it is currently

the fastest growing renewable energy option in the country, the statement added.

Indias gold imports may go up to 75 tonnes per month The indu

Gold imports by India, the worlds second-largest user jumped substantially in recentmonths after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) allowed more banks and traders to buy bullion

overseas, widening the nations trade deficit to an 11-month high.

The countrys gold imports are likely to rise to about 70 -75 tonnes per month against the

present average of 50-60 tonnes, a senior industry official said.

The gold and jewellery trade in the country is now brimming with confidence that gold

imports into the country would rise to about 70 to 75 tonnes per month against the present

average of 50 to 60 tonnes, India Bullion & Jewellery Association (IBJA) spokesperson

Harmesh Arora said in a statement here.

Gold imports by India, the worlds second-largest user jumped substantially in recent months

after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) allowed more banks and traders to buy bullion

overseas, widening the nations trade deficit to an 11-month high.

The optimism stems from the fact that the trend over the past five years has been

encouraging-total demand averaging 800 tonnes per year, and this year will not be an

exception, Arora said.

Short-term fluctuations are considered common in this sector, which are determined by the

prevailing economic scenario and customer sentiments. Now that festive season is round the

corner and with a stable government at the Centre, the next couple of years are predicted to

be strong, Arora said.

IBJA is hosting the India International Bullion Summit 2014 on October 4 and 5 in Mumbai.

The event will be attended by experts from India and other countries, who will be

deliberating on relevant topics such as FDI investment in bullion and jewellery industry,

changes needed in gold policy, among others.

Eminent personalities including P R Somsundaram, Managing Director & Alistair Hewitt,

Market Intelligence from World Gold Council, Motilal Oswal, Chairman & Managing

Director, Motilal Oswal Financial Service Ltd, Surender Kumar Jindal, Director, Jindal

Group, and Rajesh Khosla, Managing Director, MMTC-PAMP India Pvt Ltd, will speak on

various issues.

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Profit on diesel sale swells to Rs.1.90 a litre The indu

Diesel prices are being raised monthly by 50 paise a litre in line with the governments

January 2013 decision, while September was the first month that passed without a hike.

The profit on sale of diesel swelled to Rs.1.90 a litre as the Oil Ministry awaits return ofPrime Minister Narendra Modi to cut rates. With international oil prices continuing to slide,

the over-recovery or profit on diesel sales, which was 35 paise in the second-half of

September, climbed to Rs.1.90 a litre, an official statement said here.

Over-recovery or profit should have in natural course translated into a price reduction to

bring retail selling price on a par with cost. But the Oil Ministry decided to wait and watch

last month. Now, with the profit rising further, it wants to reduce the rates and pass on the

benefit to consumers but is unsure of its mandate.

Sources said the Ministry was of the opinion that it did not have a clear mandate to reduce

rates post the January, 2013, decision of the Cabinet to hike prices by 40-50 paise a litre

every month. Diesel prices have not been deregulated or freed yet and so rates cannot be

reduced. Petrol, on the other hand, had been deregulated in June, 2010, and rates have since

then moved every fortnight in tandem with the cost. Petrol rates were on Tuesday cut by 54

paise in line with the international trend.

Sources said Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had already written to Mr. Modi on the

emerging scenario. Also, the Ministry had written to the Election Commission seeking their

concurrence for the price decrease in view of the State assembly elections in Maharashtra

and Haryana. A decision would be taken after Mr. Modis return, they said.

Softening international oil rates have meant that diesel under-recovery or the difference

between retail price and its imported cost was wiped out, and there was an over-recovery of

35 paise a litre from September 16. This over-recovery is now Rs 1.90 a litre. But under-

recoveries continue on kerosene and LPG.

INTERNATIONAL

China slams protests but crackdown unlikelyThe HinduChina has slammed the Occupy central movement in Hong Kong, but may not order a

crackdown in anticipation of a turnaround in public opinion if the protests prolong.

The government has made it clear that it would not subscribe to any of the two core

demands of the opposition: a change in Beijings position on the mechanics of the 2017

elections in Hong Kong; and the resignation of its Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying.

Martyrs day

China which for the first time on Tuesday observed Martyrs Day in memory of those

who had fallen in the struggle for independence has firmly rejected comments by foreigngovernments on the fluid situation in Hong Kong.

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As the United States called for governance by the rule of law in Hong Kong, Chinese

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying asserted that foreign governments should not

send the wrong signals and interfere in Chinas internal affairs.

Ms. Hua said Beijing opposed all kinds of illegal acts in Hong Kong that undermine the

rule of law and sabotage social security and fully believes and strongly supports the lawful

handling of the caseby the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region [SAR] government.

Analysts say the main accusation by the opposition that Beijing reneged on its promise

not to interfere in the selection of candidates for the 2017 polls is based on a false

premise.

HK Constitution

An article posted on the website of the Hong Kong-based Asia Times says Article 45 of the

Hong Kong Basic Law, which is the effective Constitution of Hong Kong since 1997, calls

for universal suffrage to vote for candidates put forth by a nominating committee, not

universal suffrage in the nomination as well as election process, which is the Occupy Hong

Kong movements demand.

Meanwhile in Hong Kong, far from signalling that he could step down, chief administrator

Mr. Leung exhorted the thousands of protesters in the streets on Tuesday to disperse.

Occupy Central founders had said repeatedly that if the movement is getting out of control,they would call for it to stop, said Mr. Leung. Im now asking them to fulfill the promise

they made to society, and stop this campaign immediately.

State medias call

Following extensive use of tear gas earlier by the police providing an emotive edge to the

protests the Global Times daily affiliated to the Chinese Communist Party counselled

restraint in tackling dissent.

While asking authorities to stay firm on basic issues, it advised the central and Hong Konggovernments to exercise a certain degree of restraint in handling the shutdown of the citys

financial areas, so as to leave some time for local people to realise the harm done by the

protesters illegal acts.

While the protesters are still a dominant force, anti-occupy forces, including the Silent

Majority group, are also beginning to assert themselves on the streets of Hong Kong.

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Afghanistan strikes deal with U.S. to let troops stay The induAfghanistan and the United States signed a security pact on Tuesday to allow U.S. forces to

remain in the country past the end of year, ending a year of uncertainty over the fate of

foreign troops supporting Afghanis as they take over responsibility for the countrys security.

Afghan, American and NATO leaders welcomed the deal, which will allow about 10,000

American troops to stay in the country after the international combat mission ends on

December 31.

Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai had refused to sign it despite U.S. threats of a full

withdrawal in the absence of legal protections for American forces. U.S. officials have said

that the delay in the deals signing does not affectplans for next year.

President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, who was sworn into office a day earlier, told a crowd

assembled at the presidential palace in the capital Kabul for the signing ceremony that the

agreement signalled a fundamental shift for the positive in the countrys relations with the

world.

This agreement is only for Afghan security and stability, he said in comments broadcast

live on state television. These agreements are in our national interest. The Bilateral Security

Agreement will pave the ground for Afghanistan to take control, he added.

Newly appointed Afghan national security adviser Mohammad Hanif Atmar and U.S.

Ambassador James Cunningham signed the actual document. A second agreement allowing

NATO troops to stay in the country was also signed during the same ceremony.

Government Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, who has assumed a post akin to Prime

Minister after signing a power-sharing agreement with Mr. Ghani, also welcomed the

security deal.

It has been signed after very careful considerations, he said, adding that the BSA

[Bilateral Security Agreement] is not a threat to our neighbours. It will help strengthen peace

and stability in the region.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen welcomed the agreement, saying it

outlined the groups new mission to train, advise and assist Afghan forces.

Many long-term international aid pledges were dependent on the BSA being signed to

strengthen security.

Taliban insurgents still pose a major risk despite years of effort by NATO s U.S.-led

International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

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NATO combat operations will finish at the end of this year, and the Taliban have launched a

series of recent offensives that have severely tested Afghan soldiers and police.

NATOs follow-up mission, which will take over on January 1, will be made up of 9,800

U.S. troops and about 3,000 soldiers from Germany, Italy and other member nations.

The new missionnamed Resolute Supportwill focus on training and assisting Afghan

forces as they take on the Taliban, in parallel with U.S. counter-terrorism operations.

Buddhist hardliners strike deal The induA Myanmar Buddhist monk and a Sri Lankan ultranationalist, both known for campaigning

against Muslims have formally signed an agreement to work together to protect Buddhism.

Ashin Wirathu leads the fundamentalist 969 movement that has been accused of instigating

deadly violence against minority Muslims in Myanmar. He was a special invitee on Sunday

at a rally of Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), or Buddhist Power Force, which claims minority

Muslims are trying to take over Sri Lanka by having more children, marrying Buddhist

women and taking over businesses.

Wirathu signed the agreement with Bodu Bala Sena in Colombo on Tuesday after saying at

the rally they would join forces. The groups said their agreement involves networking and

building the capacity to stabilise Buddhism.

California bans plastic bags The induCalifornia became the first U.S. state on Tuesday to ban single-use plastic bags, as Governor

Jerry Brown signed the measure into law.

Under the legislation, single-use bags will disappear from grocery stores and pharmacies

from July 1, 2015, and then from convenience and liquor stores from July 1, 2016.

Lawmakers passed the bill earlier this month, and Mr. Brown had until the end of September

to sign it. The bill allows stores to charge 10 cents for paper or reusable bags. Similar bans

are already in place in some California cities including Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Children being shunned due to Ebola The induThousands of children who have lost parents to the west African Ebola epidemic risk are

being shunned by frightened and suspicious relatives, the U.N. childrens fund said on

Tuesday.

The outbreak has claimed more than 3,000 lives this year in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra

Leone, and UNICEF estimates around 3,700 children have lost at least one parent with

the number expected to double by mid-October.

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Ebola is turning a basic human reaction like comforting a sick child into a potential death

sentence, Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF's regional director for west and central Africa, said in

a statement.

In west African society, bereaved children are usually taken in by a member of the extendedfamily.

Mr. Fontaine said thousands of children mourning dead parents and in urgent need of

support felt unwanted and even abandoned.

EDITORIALS

A return to social science The induThere are moments in history where talent clusters in little pockets to produce a new

excitement around knowledge. One senses a wonderful sparkle about scholarship, a sense ofexcitement and gossip which spreads all over. All one needs is a few books, a caf, a lawn

and a few scholars committed to chewing on an idea. Ones sense of the world changes as

we watch them play with an idea. What then grows is not just an idea, but a group of friends,

a community, and a commons of insights which attracts people from all over. I remember

one such place used to be the wonderful group Rajni Kothari built in Delhi in the 1970s and

the 1980s. Rajni is now almost forgotten but his ideas are still relevant to the problems of

today.

This is an era which has seen the literal death of the Congress, the end of the Planning

Commission, the rise of new majoritarianism, the decline of the great social moments; yet,

one cannot think of one article or one book which captures this world adequately. Adding

insult to intellectual injury, we have a whole array of diasporic intellectuals whose ideas of

India are literally embarrassing. Their pastiche of nostalgia, didacticism and post-modernity

adds little to the study of everyday issues. There have been a few exceptions to this dismal

scene. One thinks of Ashis Nandy or U.R. Ananthamurthy. Both realised that the worlds they

were critiquing and celebrating were disappearing before them. It is at these moments that

one misses the magic of Rajni and his conversations on politics.

Studying democracy

The house that Rajni built was a bungalow with a few lawns. At lunch every day, the lawns

housed an array of chairs, and scholars came, ate and talked. They discussed politics but

what they celebrated was democracy, and democracy in all its variants was something all its

scholars were committed to. Studying democracy became a ritual game, where experiment

followed experiment. Rajni led the group, coming in largely at lunch time, clutching scraps

of paper; many were old envelopes on which he jotted notes. Others would walk in. What

one ate for lunch was incidental. What one talked about at lunchtime shaped the ideas of a

generation.

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Rajni brought his sense of Gujarati entrepreneurship to ideas. He triggered election studies

inviting political scientists like Myron Wiener, Robert Dahl and Karl Deutsch to India. But

politics was more than elections. Rajni and his colleagues realised that social science needed

new experiments, new ways of thinking. He created the China Group so that China could be

studied as the relevant other. He encouraged Future studies which was the one place wheredissenting intellectuals from Eastern Europe could gather safely. The future was treated as a

different country that Stalinist regimes of that time need not be paranoid about. He

introduced a voluntary group called Lokayan which became a site for a range of grass-root

imaginations. Lokayan went beyond the logic of expertise, the arrogance of intellectuals to

listen to the experiences of ordinary people. In many ways, the creativity of the network lay

not in its originality but in its ability to listen, adopt, mix and rework points of insight.

Rajni helped seed the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) to create a tradition of on-

the-spot investigations to investigate the violence of the state. PUCL-PUDR (Peoples Union

for Democratic Rights) produced the classic report on the 1984 riots Who are the guilty?

PUCL which was civil societys presence in every major moment of violence,

investigating, chronicling the fate of the victimhas sadly almost disappeared today. One

of the ironies we face is the vulnerability of civil society institutions as generations change.

His search for different ways of thinking about governance created the journal Alternatives ,

which he founded along with Dick Falk and Saul Mendlovitz. The scholarship on security

demystified security as something constructed by experts. It transformed the discourse into

an open-ended demand for peoples security, where peace was something demanded by a

people than as a consequence of security. Behind the technicality of all this scholarship,

Rajni chaired an oral tradition, a classic adda of politics at lunch time, which made politicscome alive.

Politics, for Rajni, represented the most open of systems. Education was elitist, the

bureaucracy a club; only politics introduced new forces and new ideas with exciting

regularity. It was only in the political domain that the elite, our second-hand elite with its

first-hand pretensions, could not remain knowledge-proof about the changes modern

democracy was creating.

Pluralism of social scienceThe Emergency destroyed many of the old hegemonies as a generation of social movements

challenged planned development, interrogated the accepted categories of science and

questioned the validity of economics as a form of expertise. Rajni and his group were at the

forefront of this bandwagon of ideas which dulled the economists halo and returned a sense

of everydayness and complexity to democracy. I must point out that this was not easy to

achieve. Economics was the dominant social science and the aura around planning added a

mystique to economists like Sukhamoy Chakraborty, Sen and K.N. Raj. Delhi School was

the Mecca and Marxism or some variant of socialism, the dominant ideology of most

intellectuals. I remember Rajni handling overbearing Marxists with aplomb. But more than

that, what Rajni and his group tried to show was that the categories of each discipline

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created a captive mind. More than ideology, dominant classifications became the iron cages

of the era.

For a reinvention

This thinking added to the pluralism of social science in many ways. It challenged thehegemony of economics and the dominance of Marxism as a dominant intellectual

perception. It showed that the university, ironically, was not always the source of original

theory. People resisting the regime or the social movements helped invent more

understandings of the political than our sedate universities still living off old textbooks on

political theory. One was like a collection of heresies, the other a catechism, a collection of

orthodoxies that the church or the party could be fond of. Yet, there was something human

about the process, where alcohol and laughter often added to the celebration of social

science. What gave power to the group was that it behaved like a commons and yet tolerated

individuality and difference. Rajnis was the one institute which openly resisted the

Emergency. Everyone, from the gardener and the chowkidar to the academic fellow, was

party to the decision-making. It became the benchmark for a later era. As the community

aged, it became a dull imitation of itself, idiosyncratic in parts but without realising it was

banalising itself. What I will do is to summarise the insights it offers as a fable.

This exploration of the social sciences re-examined a whole glossary of concepts like

development, the non-party process, voluntarism, human security, decolonising knowledge

and sustainability. Whatever the temporary excitement of a concept, all were validated by

the democratic impetus and democracy in turn was interrogated and fine-tuned according to

fresh redefinitions; as policy gets confused with politics and think tanks pretend they aredemocratic instruments. The social sciences have declined as part of the imagination of the

university. The subject has been appropriated by security agencies, think tanks and

marketing outfits which substitute their current interests for democracy. What we need today

is a Futures unit among non-government organisations to challenge the think tanks as a

technocratic imagination. We need to rip through the sanitised picturesqueness of the Human

Development Report and unravel the nature of violence today. We need to show the creative

power of the informal economy rather than treat it as a space to be colonised. Our critique of

science needs to be extended to a full-fledged critique of science in relation to a non-

Promethean world. We need to collaborate with the ideas of scholars like Gustavo Esteva orBoas Santos who have emphasised the move from liberation to emancipation; where the

victim confronts his roots in future oppression. All this would have been done in a non-

Utopian way where everydayness, irony and laughter add a touch of scepticism to this work.

All this would have been done without nostalgia.

We need a new heuristics for social science, a new attempt to invent a sociological

imagination. As a society, we need new mindsets to create a new style of social science, a

thinking which can revive the dullness of public policy and the hysterical triteness of social

change. Only such a heuristics can reinvent democracy from clich to a new sense of

community.

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Much of your work has found that the actual job that a government employee has to do is so

enormous that there is a tacit understanding that she will only do a part of it. If the new

government in India wants to improve public service delivery and reduce corruption, do you

think they first need to demythologise a public servants actual job?

If they could pronounce that word, it would be a good place to start! I think thats absolutelyright but I dont know whether anybody would have the courage to do that, because it

requires to say in black and whiteeven though its already the case in practice that we

are not able to deliver what we promise to deliver.

So right now, if you take the example of nurses, on paper the government is delivering a

fantastic system of primary healthcare to the poor. In practice, that system is different, but

nobody says it. A government would have to say: forget it; we are not going to have this

wonderful three-tier system, with the nurse knowing the first name of every person in the

village.

I think its difficult to admit that it will not be someone who knows everyone and who

convinces people to wash their hands and get sterilised and teach the women about weaning

foods. These are things that it would be lovely to have but we are not equipped to. But to

admit that would require so much political courage that I doubt it will happen. But I think if

it could then yes, at least then we could hold people accountable to a reasonable standard of

expectation and thats the first step.

The combination of improving the logistics, say with Unique Identification Number (UID),

and also simplifying and clarifying the work of government employees, will help.

Are there any major Indian government programmes that you can see in this way are

doomed to fail?

The Right to Education. Not in its entirety I think it has good pieces to it but largely.

The idea that private schools and community schools need to have such-and-such buildings

and infrastructure and pay their teachers that much its not just failing, its hurting.

Usually things fail and its just a waste of money. Here its that the consequences, if its

adopted, will be hurtful. So thats one.

The Public Distribution System in its current form is not working. The objectives are the

wrong ones, the way it physically works is terrible, and the level of corruption would need to

improve a lot to be outstanding. The idea that you should push grain on to people to start

with, it seems to me on the basis of all that we know of peoples nutritional problems, that is

the least of their concerns. So thats the big one.

Then the diesel subsidy although we havent done any randomised research, just looking

at the numbers, it is redistribution from the poor to the non-poor, and its terrible for the

environment. There is no case for it, except that its there.

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Of the policy lessons that J-PAL has come up with in the last ten years, I know deworming

programmes in schools have been taken up by State governments. But other work, like on

improving teacher attendance, which is over ten years old, has not been taken up. Does it

get frustrating that what your evaluations are finding is not making it to policy?

Yes, with deworming now the national government has also announced that it is taking it up.In the case of the absent teachers, the two experiments that we did didnt really work at a

level where I would be comfortable recommending a scale-up.

When you run a very large experiment, you can recommend the scale-up more easily. But in

others cases ... it takes some work to translate it into policy. So take, for example, education.

We did plenty of experiments with the non-governmental organisation, Pratham but it

took about three or four replications with different States to arrive at a model that works

within the government. Now we have one that we tested in Haryana and it works. So now

we are confident to say that you can replicate it elsewhere, and so far at least there are

glimmers of interest from various State governments. So theres no reason to be frustrated.

Forward and together in progress The induAs nations committed to democracy, liberty, diversity and enterprise, India and the United

States are bound by common values and mutual interests. We have each shaped the positive

trajectory of human history, and through our joint efforts, our natural and unique partnership

can help shape international security and peace for years to come.

Ties between the United States and India are rooted in the shared desire of our citizens for

justice and equality. When Swami Vivekananda presented Hinduism as a world religion, he

did so at the 1893 Worlds Parliament of Religions in Chicago. When Martin Luther King Jr.

sought to end discrimination and prejudice against African Americans, he was inspired by

Mahatma Gandhis nonviolent teachings. Gandhiji himself drew upon the writings of Henry

David Thoreau.

Robust partnership

As nations, we have partnered over the decades to deliver progress to our people. The people

of India remember the strong foundations of our cooperation. The food production increases

of the Green Revolution and the Indian Institutes of Technology are among the manyproducts of our collaboration.

Today, our partnership is robust, reliable and enduring, and it is expanding. Our relationship

involves more bilateral collaboration than ever beforenot just at the federal level but also

at the State and local levels, between our two militaries, private sectors and civil society.

Indeed, so much has happened that, in 2000, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee could

declare that we are natural allies.

After many years of growing cooperation since, on any given day, our students work

together on research projects, our scientists develop cutting-edge technology and senior

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officials consult closely on global issues. Our militaries conduct joint exercises in air, on

land and at sea, and our space programmes engage in unprecedented areas of cooperation,

leading us from Earth to Mars. And in this partnership, the Indian-American community has

been a vibrant, living bridge between us. Its success has been the truest reflection of the

vitality of our people, the value of Americas open society and the strength of what we cando when we join together.

Still, the true potential of our relationship has yet to be fully realised. The advent of a new

government in India is a natural opportunity to broaden and deepen our relationship. With a

reinvigorated level of ambition and greater confidence, we can go beyond modest and

conventional goals. It is time to set a new agenda, one that realises concrete benefits for our

citizens.

This will be an agenda that enables us to find mutually rewarding ways to expand our

collaboration in trade, investment and technology that harmonise with Indias ambitious

development agenda, while sustaining the United States as the global engine of growth.

When we meet today in Washington, we will discuss ways in which we can boost

manufacturing and expand affordable renewable energy, while sustainably securing the

future of our common environment. We will discuss ways in which our businesses, scientists

and governments can partner as India works to improve the quality, reliability and

availability of basic services, especially for the poorest of citizens. In this, the United States

stands ready to assist. An immediate area of concrete support is the Clean India campaign,

where we will leverage private and civil society innovation, expertise and technology to

improve sanitation and hygiene throughout India.

While our shared efforts will benefit our own people, our partnership aspires to be larger

than merely the sum of its parts. As nations, as people, we aspire to a better future for all;

one in which our strategic partnership also produces benefits for the world at large. While

India benefits from the growth generated by U.S. investment and technical partnerships, the

United States benefits from a stronger, more prosperous India. In turn, the region and the

world benefit from the greater stability and security that our friendship creates. We remain

committed to the larger effort to integrate South Asia and connect it with markets and people

in Central and Southeast Asia.

Collaborative areas

As global partners, we are committed to enhancing our homeland security by sharing

intelligence, through counterterrorism and law-enforcement cooperation, while we jointly

work to maintain freedom of navigation and lawful commerce across the seas. Our health

collaboration will help us tackle the toughest of challenges, whether combating the spread of

Ebola, researching cancer cures or conquering diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and

dengue. And we intend to expand our recent tradition of working together to empower

women, build capacity and improve food security in Afghanistan and Africa. The

exploration of space will continue to fire our imaginations and challenge us to raise our

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ambitions. That we both have satellites orbiting Mars tells its own story. The promise of a

better tomorrow is not solely for Indians and Americans: It also beckons us to move forward

together for a better world. This is the central premise of our defining partnership for the

21st century. Forward, together we gochalein saath saath .

Disappearing wildlife and why it matters The induThe surest way of sending the world to sleep is to give it a wake -up call. The World

Wildlife Fund (WWF) applies the clich to half the Earths animals having disappeared in

the past 40 years. The cause is chiefly human exploitation and habitat decline. The losers

range from lions to dolphins, vipers to curlews, monkeys to eels. These are not lost species

but actual numbers.

Such stories tend to vanish into statistics. There are supposedly about 8 billion species of

animal on earth, with 90 per cent believed undiscovered (how do they know?). Of these, 97per cent are invertebrates. The WWF is concerned with vertebrates: animals, fish and birds,

of which some 45,000 species are thought to exist. Of these, just 10,000 populations of

3,000 species were counted. It is hard to see how robust such alarmist figures can be.

I accept the cry of Professor Ken Norris of London Zoo, that If ha lf the animals died in the

zoo next week, it would be front-page news. But it would mean something was clearly

wrong at the zoo. How much my life is altered by the disappearance of the Hellbender

salamander, the Hoolock gibbon or the Gabon viper is moot. It needs arguing rather than just

asserting. Nor am I impressed by South Sudans instrument of accession to the convention

on biological diversity. That benighted country should first look after its humans. We can at

times seem like Roman emperors, treasuring our cheetahs while our slaves die.

Advancement is being aware

Yet there is sense in James Lovelocks message in his Gaia hypothesis, of a world

perpetually rebalancing itself, making mistakes then correcting them, always pushing

forward to some new achievement. A sign of human advance is that we are aware of what

we do. This applies to the waste involved in keeping humans alive, and it applies to the

pleasure we take in sharing the planet with other, often beautiful, creatures. It is a human

virtue to be less cruel to animals than animals are to each other.

It may not matter to me that the gibbon or the viper become extinct, any more than it

matters that a park I never visit goes under housing or a coral reef disappears to mass

fishing. What does matter is my awareness of my relationship to nature. The value of these

reports is to remind us what is happening. We can choose, each in our small way, what to do

about it, and that may not be much. But awareness is the first step on the road to power.

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A policy of status quo The indu

The Reserve Bank of Indias (RBI) decision to maintain status quo on interest rates is on

expected lines. The overall environment is uncertain as yet with domestic economic

recovery being uneven and with an upside risk to inflation from food prices consequent to a

deficient monsoon. The near-term signs are favourable for a dip in headline inflation thanksto the sustained fall in global oil prices that have been passed on to consumers by the

government, and the relative stability in the foreign exchange markets. The medium-term

picture, though, is still hazy with a number of unknown variables, and the RBI is obviously

not willing to risk its projection of 6 per cent inflation by January 2016 going astray. It is

clear that the central bank will do whatever is necessary to ensure that the line is not crossed.

The current account deficit is projected to remain well under control though non-oil, non-

gold imports in the April-August period have risen to the highest level since March 2013.

With credit growth remaining well below deposit growth and the impact of the government

expenditure programme kicking in, liquidity has not been a problem in the market. The

policy stance, therefore, appears to be one of caution tinged with optimism on the short-term

economic variables.

What should be a cause for worry though is the sluggishness in credit offtake which is

forcing banks to lower deposit rates, in turn affecting senior citizens who live off interest

income. State Bank of India recently cut rates on some tenors to maintain its margins and it

is likely that other banks will follow suit. The RBI has also maintained its projection of 5.5

per cent growth in GDP for this fiscal while pointing out that growth could slow down

mildly in thesecond and third quarters before picking up pace again in the fourth. With

the picture on agriculture not very clear at the moment and industrial output dipping in July

after a good show in the couple of months preceding that, the central banks caution o n

growth prospects is understandable. Going forward, the critical determinant of the

sustenance of the recovery would be resumption of investment activity. Forget new projects,

even if the stalled ones resume in right earnest there would be a positive impetus to growth.

The fall in oil prices which has wiped out under-recovery in diesel has given the government

much-needed elbow room in managing the fiscal deficit. If the disinvestment programme

proceeds apace and at this point in time it does appear to be doing so then there is

room for justifiable optimism on the government meeting the challenging target of a 4.1 per

cent fiscal deficit this year. Of course, these data will be critical inputs for the RBI to reversedirection on the rate cycle.

A men-only U.N. meeting on gender equality The indu

Iceland is announcing a U.N. conference on women and gender equality and only men and

boys are invited.

The countrys Foreign Affairs Minister, Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson, told the U.N. General

Assembly of world leaders on Monday that the January barbershop conference will be

unique, as it will be the first time at the United Nations that we bring together only menleaders to discuss gender equality.

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Mr. Sveinsson said the conference convened by his country and Suriname will be an

exceptional contribution to events marking the 20th anniversary of a landmark U.N.

conference on women in Beijing.

Focus on violence

We want to bring men and boys to the table on gender equality in a positive way,

Mr.Sveinsson said. He said the meeting will have a special focus on violence against

women.

The unusual conference is part of a global campaign launched this month to get 100,000

men and boys involved in the fight for gender equality, which the United Nations had hoped

would be achieved by 2015. That deadline wont be met; in an interview this year, the head

of U.N. Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, said projections indicate that if things dont

change, achieving gender equality will take 95 years.

At the HeForShe campaign launch this month, actress Emma Watson explained the urgent

need to bring men into the fight for gender equality.

In 1995, Hillary Clinton made a famous speech in Beijing about womens rights, Ms.

Watson said. But what stood out for me the most was that only 30 per cent of her audience

were male. How can we affect change in the world when only half of it is invited or feel

welcome to participate in the conversation?

The 1995 conference featured Ms. Clinton, then first lady, galvanising global leaders with

her now famous declaration that womens rights are human rights. Nearly 190 countries

adopted a platform to achieve equality for women, which has become the blueprint for

action by the global community on the issue.

Iceland and Suriname are now leading a group of countries to stir up support for gender

equality as the anniversary of the landmark Beijing meeting approaches.

Earlier this year, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Ms. Clinton will play animportant role in next years anniversary celebration, and Ms. Clinton said she looks forward

to working with Ban on an issue of such great global importance.

At a separate event this year, Ms. Clinton said that in the nearly two decades since Beijing,

women and girls still comprise the majority of the worlds unhealthy, unfed and unpaid.

She urged the U.N. to include gender equality at the forefront of its new goals to promote

development.

Iceland and Suriname fall at nearly opposite ends of global rankings on womens rights. The

Global Gender Gap Report 2013 compiled by the World Economic Forum ranked Iceland

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top in gender equality in economic, health and other matters. Suriname, the tiny South

American country, was ranked 110th.

The Forum hosts the annual gathering of global business and political leaders in the Swiss

ski resort of Davos every winter.

The chosen one in Tamil Nadu The indu

If Ms. Jayalalithaa remains in prison for some length of time, matters will be more

complicated for Mr. Panneerselvam and his government.

Tamil Nadu enters a new phase of governance with O. Panneerselvam being sworn in as

head of the government under exceptional circumstances following the conviction of Chief

Minister Jayalalithaa in a disproportionate assets case. Other than the changes necessitated

by the absence of Ms. Jayalalithaa, his Cabinet is essentially the same with the Ministers

retaining the portfolios they held previously. Policies and programmes will likewise see

continuity, and the government will largely be run in the name of Ms. Jayalalithaa by Mr.

Panneerselvam. But the very fact that real power is no longer with the Chief Minister, but

with a person convicted in a corruption case, could have a telling effect on the way the

government is run. And if Ms. Jayalalithaa remains in prison for some length of time,

matters will be more complicated for Mr. Panneerselvam and his government. Important

issues will likely be referred to her, and she will, in effect, emerge as an extra-constitutional

authority running the government via remote control. Not surprisingly, Mr. Panneerselvam,

who had served as Chief Minister for over five months in 2001-02 after the Supreme Court

quashed Ms. Jayalalithaas appointment as Chief Minister, was chosen more for his loyalty

than for his administrative acumen or seniority in the party hierarchy. During his previous

stint, Ms. Jayalalithaa, who was acquitted in the Tansi land deal case (that led to her electoral

disqualification) a couple of months after she was forced to demit office, was available for

constant consultations. If Ms. Jayalalithaa is not out of prison soon enough, Mr.

Panneerselvam will verily be clueless when confronted with politically sensitive issues.

How quickly the judicial process decides on the issues of suspension of sentence or stay of

the conviction itself will be critical and Mr. Panneerselvams second term could well last

longer than his first. The very structure of the ruling All India Anna Dravida MunnetraKazhagam does not allow for a strong second line of leadership, and the party and the

government will necessarily look up to Ms. Jayalalithaa for guidance. If governance is not to

suffer, Ms. Jayalalithaa will have to find a way where her advisory role could take on an

official status. In the unusual circumstances in the State, remote control without a formal

role will affect the administration of the State. In the last few days since the conviction,

many of the Ministers have spent more time in Bangalore than in their own offices. What

Ms. Jayalalithaa needs now is legal help, not political support, which she has in plenty,

going by the recent Lok Sabha election results. The Ministers would serve her cause better

by concentrating on governance than in organising political protests.

1st oct 2014

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