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| Hot issues of Today |
- Apr 01, 2007
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| Apr 02, 2007 |
Coffers for rural development come calling
Jamshedpur, April 1: The Union ministry of rural development has decided to include East Singhbhum and Deoghar in the fresh list of 130 districts across the country to be included in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).
All 22 districts of Jharkhand are now covered under the scheme.
Till now, 200 districts all over the country were included in the scheme. With the latest move, the total number of districts under the scheme has reached 330. Bihar tops the maximum number of districts chosen this time with 15 of its districts making it to the list.
The government has sanctioned Rs 12,000 crore for the scheme in the current fiscal. Sources said all the 600 districts of the country will be covered under the scheme in the next three years.
Out of the 130 chosen this year, the ministry has picked up 15 districts, which have reported farmer suicides. Another 50 districts included in the NREGA list are also covered under the Backward Region Development Fund (BRDF) scheme.
The state government had also launched a state-level NREGA in the two districts, which were left out the Centre. During 2006-07, it had sanctioned Rs 10 crore each to the two districts under the scheme. With all 22 districts now being covered by the Centre's NREGA, the state-sponsored scheme will now cease to exist.
In yet another welcome news for East Singhbum, the state government has sanctioned Rs 15 crore to the district for the 2007-08 fiscal to carry out development work and improve infrastructure.
The Centre, during the last fiscal, had allotted money under the Backward Region Development Fund (BRDF) to all but East Singhbhum to carry out development work and curb the growing menace of extremism. The state government, thus, decided to chip in with the money under a similar scheme sponsored by the state government.
The Centre-sponsored fund, which seeks to redress regional imbalances in development, was launched by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at Barpeta (Assam). The Rs 3,750-crore fund will provide resources for supplementing and converging existing developmental inflows to 250 backward districts across the country.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070402/asp/jamshedpur/story_7595853.asp
Parents brave heat for exam
Ranchi, April 1: Parents of aspiring doctors had a tough time today as they waited for three hours outside the 22 centres in the city while their wards were taking the all India level preliminary examination organised by CBSE for taking admission in medical courses.
Over 14,000 candidates from different parts of Jharkhand and Bihar appeared at the centres located across the city. Sources said about 60 special buses had come from Patna with the examinees and their parents.
Shilpa Mishra, who has come from Jamshedpur to appear in the examination, said she would have missed her examination if she had not have started early.
"My centre was Ram Tahal Choudhary High School at Booty. I started at 8.30 from my relative's house in Harmu. But, due to traffic congestion at some stretches at Main Road, I could reach just 10 minutes before the examination," she said.
Some students were heard saying that they had spent the night at the railway station due to the non-availability of space.
"Of the 14,000 students, about 8,000 had come from other places. City hotels could not accommodate such a large numbers of students. In the situation, I had to spend the night at Ranchi railway station with my parents," said Nidhi Kumari.
Mahesh Bareja, a CBSE representative in Jharkhand and principal of Delhi Public School, said over 1,000 candidates appeared from his school while centres were at all big schools of the city.
About 1,600 of five lakh students will be shortlisted for medical courses in different colleges of the country. Main examination is scheduled to be held on May 13.
Deputy commissioner Kamal Kishore Soan said he had no information of any untoward incident from any part of the city during the examination.
Meanwhile, according to sources, 20 students were restrained from participating in the examination due to their late arrival at the centres. Bareja said he restrained one student at his centre when he reached the centre by 10.30 am.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070402/asp/jamshedpur/story_7595629.asp
CCL apprehensive about new Jharkhand mines
RANCHI, April 1: Central Coalfields Limited (CCL), a major coal company under Coal India Limited, is yet to start any mining works at its five new proposed sites in Jharkhand, thanks to the lackadaisical attitude of the Jharkhand state government.
The projects at Magadh, Amrapali, NorthUrimari, Konar and Karo, most of which are in the Chatra district of the state, are yet to kicked off by CCL as the district administration is yet to hand over the requisite land to the company.
"We have been approaching the state government for quite sometime as all preparations to start mining from the proposed sites have been readied. But, the deputy commissioner of the respective district is yet to acquire the land from the residents, pay them adequate compensations as per the rules and vacate the land for us. The mandatory second level forest clearance has also been completed by the state government, which is again a major hindrance for us to start any mining works at the sites," said Mr RP Ritolia, chairman and managing director, CCL, in Ranchi today.
Informing about the performance of CCL during the last fiscal, Mr Ritolia said, the company has achieved a record production level of 41.35 million tons during 2006-07 fiscal. and has already set a target of 44 million tons.
However achieving a record production level has also posed problems for the company, as its pithead stock has gone up from eight million tons at the start of April last year, to 10.5 million tons, at the same time, this year.
CCL has decided to celebrate 2007-08 as the year of welfare, community development and environment.
"Focus on community development was always there and after registering a profit of Rs 1,028 crore against a budgeted profit of Rs 984 crore during the 2006-07 fiscal, our obligations have gone up manifold," Mr Ritolia said. The company has also paid Rs 391.97 crore to the Jharkhand state government as royalty amount for coal extractions
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=12&theme=&usrsess=1&id=151719
Rural roads scheme misses target by 54%
The ambitious rural road connectivity programme of the UPA government recorded a dismal performance in 2006-07, falling short of the target by nearly 54 per cent.
According to the targets under the Bharat Nirman programme, nearly 35,182 km roads were to be constructed during the year. The total sanctioned amount for the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) for 2006-07 was Rs 38,569 crore, of which the value of work done was less than half, at Rs 18,886 crore.
A look at the progress of the PMGSY reveals that only 16,328 km of new roads were laid till February 2007. In addition, work on the upgrade and renewal of the existing roads fell 34 per cent short of the target. As against the target of 54,669 km for 2006-07, only 36,590 km of roads were completed.
Under the PMGSY, the government initially plans to connect all habitations with a population of 1,000 or more in the plains, and 500 in the hill states and tribal and desert areas.
Subsequently, areas with a population of 500 (250 in the case of hill states, and tribal and desert areas ) are to be covered. About 3.68 lakh km of new roads are to be constructed. Another 3.70 lakh km of roads are to be upgraded or renewed.
Nearly 18 states, including Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand were not able to achieve the target for 2006-07. In contrast, states like Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Punjab achieved the target.
According to the government data, Jharkhand was short of the target by 91 per cent, West Bengal by nearly 67 per cent and Madhya Pradesh by 60 per cent.
It seems that the companies implementing the PMGSY also failed to keep pace in 2005-06. The companies were short of the target by 19 per cent.
http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?leftnm=lmnu2&subLeft=1&aut
ono=279541&tab=r
Let The Cream Percolate
Growth gains meaning only with more jobs, less leakage of funds
Economic growth has had a good run in India for the last 25 years—especially so since 1994. At the same time, the growth story is every now and then punctuated by news of insurgencies, mass movements against the system, and farmer suicides. This surprises some people. But it ought not to. If you look at the statistics, you would realise that while the boom is genuine, it is largely concentrated at the top. This is not to deny that poverty has gone down. By the best estimates, the fraction of people living below the poverty line (BPL) is between 22-28 per cent.
India has as high as 45 per cent of its workers self-employed. We need to reach out to this segment. But 220-275 million BPL people is an intolerably large number, especially when you realise that we are talking about abject poverty—people living on approximately Rs 500 or less a month.
It is not surprising then that this huge segment, which sees the newspaper headlines celebrating India and watches the glitz and success of India, feels marginalised and left out of the great Indian transformation. This "other side" of India usually escapes attention. The poor with their mundane lives do not make news. So, it is easy for this segment to slip out from our attention, until something major happens, like a sudden string of farmer suicides. It will be wrong to dismiss these kinds of behaviour as misguided.
Having said this, it has to be pointed out that the connection between growth and poverty is an intricate and widely misunderstood one. Growth is essential to eradicate poverty. But growth is not sufficient. We need deliberate, complementary policies to distribute the spoils of growth wider.
Employment: So while the government continues to work on growth, there should be a whole set of parallel mechanisms that aims to draw people out from poverty. Measures like the NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) alone will not have sustainable impact. We need policies to ensure a rise in the demand for labour from the private sector. One thing that is happening in India is that employment is not keeping in step with growth. From 1993 to 1999, the rise in employment was substantially below overall growth. Fortunately, in the last three or four years, employment has started picking up, so that we are now back again to roughly the 1993 level. Another labour market phenomenon that is not widely noted is that an astonishingly high number of India's workers—around 45 per cent—are self-employed. India needs an original strategy to reach out to this segment of workforce.
One reason why the nation has so much self-employment is because of the defects in our laws guiding the employer-employee relation. These laws were inherited by India from the British and it is time to reappraise and reform them. This will facilitate the growth of the manufacturing sector, which can cause a surge in the demand for labour. And this will enable workers to bargain for themselves—for better wages, better working conditions, better severance conditionalities. We will not have to rely on the whimsies of our policymakers to dole these benefits out as they see fit.
Delivery Mechanism: There are two things required to improve the delivery of basic health and educational facilities. We need to allocate more money for this—all the same recognise that money is not enough as a lot of it can dissipate through leakages. So while stepping up allocations, we need to monitor that the services are actually being delivered. In the case of education, there are studies to show that in state-run primary schools, 25 per cent of the teachers are absent from school at any random point of time. On top of this, there are teachers who are physically there but not teaching. This means that over a quarter of allocations are literally being doled out for nothing.This is partly a matter of culture, which explains why there is performance gap between states—in Maharashtra, absenteeism is 14 per cent, in Jharkhand 42 per cent. Still, India's rise in literacy rate in the last decade has been the fastest since Independence. The reason is that the urge to educate has increased among households. It's time the government steps in with a better delivery of services. With the demand already there, it can get better returns on each rupee.
This has a general lesson for India. With the economy booming like never before, there's scope for reaching out to the poor of a kind we have never had. It will be a shame if we let this opportunity pass.
Author is the Professor And Director at Cornell University
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20070409&fname=DCol+Kaushik+Basu+
(F)&sid=1
It can pay to be a beggar in India
NEW DELHI - In a country of myriad social and economic mixes, this is one more. Some say it pays to be a beggar in India. It represents an estimated Rs2 billion (about US$50 million) business in the commercial hub Mumbai. Begging is estimated to be a Rs1.5 billion industry in Delhi, employing 50,000 people.
Most beggars originate from the more than 200 million Indians who continue to live under impoverished conditions, surviving on less than $1 a day. Benefits of growth have trickled down, with more than 200 million crossing the poverty line in the past two decades, but there is a huge mass yet untouched.
Innumerable visitors to India, when they return home, carry back images of beggars knocking desperately on their car windows or pestering them at tourist locations.
Though there is a very dark side to begging in India, of exploitation of children and forced amputations, the organized aspects of the begging business have also come to the fore.
Some have been more than lucky. Recently, the media carried the story of a female beggar named Sarvatia Devi from the impoverished state of Bihar, who pays an annual insurance premium of Rs36,000 ($800), a princely sum for many. She has money stashed away in bank accounts. The report said Sarvatia has traveled across the country and has even been on a pilgrimage to many holy places.
"It's fun traveling on trains free of cost. I board any train and beg till I reach my destination," she said.
Sarvatia's case is similar to those of some Mumbai bargirls who have amassed huge wealth from the largesse extended by their very rich clients. The scale of earnings of some bargirls who inhabited the dance bars that have been banned now is, of course, much more.
But the begging business model is sound. Indians are known to be in a very generous mood during holy occasions such as festivals or temple visits, celebrations such as marriages or success in jobs or exams. Families have followed the tradition of giving away alms to the poor for generations. Beggars, like cows, are tolerated on Indian roads as many consider it their religious duty ( dharma) to give away alms.
Some beggars have had it better than others. There have been several instances of beggars fighting cases in courts by hiring lawyers to defend their right to beg after being picked up by the police. A beggar found dead on the roadside in Mumbai had hundreds of thousands of rupees stashed away under the mattress on which he died.
Film director Madhur Bhandrakar, known for entertaining yet meaningful cinema, spent more than a year researching the subject of begging in Mumbai that resulted in the recent movie Traffic Signal.
Bhandrakar portrays beggars as human beings with emotions and attachments, but ends up preaching the status quo rather than finding a way out the morass for the people involved. However, the film does illuminate quite a bit of the back-channel systems that run the show. It is a deep-rooted mafia, involving politicians, municipal authorities, police and the underworld, that charges protection money from each beggar and ensures that the business keeps running.
The film, however, only fleetingly looks at the several allegations of criminal gangs resorting to amputation of body parts of adults or crippling children so that they generate more sympathy and can make more money.
As with any other vocation, there are beggars who make it and others who don't. Thus the half-naked fakir watches movies in multiplexes with his girlfriend while not working as a beggar; the desperately pregnant woman's clothing is filled up with pillows; the seemingly dead person on the road is actually alive.
The basic principle on which the begging works is a very deep-seated belief among many Indians that their sorrow can end or happiness could continue if they help the poor. It's a very noble principle except that ideally the alms should be channeled via more organized forums rather than car windows or thrown at a poor soul on the sidewalk. It is in essence a wasteful industry centered on a parasitic existence and exploiting the poor.
Recently, noting the failure of the Delhi government and the police to curb begging in public, a court directed both to place beggars in detention houses and train them in vocational trades. The police also have to investigate whether "organized begging" is run by an inter-state mafia. Police officials say they are quite helpless against permanently rounding up beggars because of legal and cultural issues that look at begging as a social rather than criminal problem.
A recent study conducted by a prominent non-governmental organization and the Institute of Human Behavior and Allied Sciences, one of India's leading mental hospitals, revealed that 77.6% of homeless women were 16-45 years old. While more than half of the women ( 52.2%) surveyed were selling small items on footpaths to earn a livelihood, 18.4% were doing odd jobs as construction workers and contract laborers. Another 18.5% were beggars. Significantly, 98% reported sexual harassment.
Indian social activists could perhaps follow the example of Bangladesh's 2006 Nobel Prize Laureate Mohammed Yunus, who has included the category of beggars in his massive microcredit program. Beggars are provided loans to procure items such as toys, food or stationary items, a process that allows them ultimately to move up the economic and social ladder. Many have managed to set up their own small businesses, such as retail shops.
Indeed, begging is only one aspect of dark elements trying to take advantage of the acute poverty in India. Despite a ban on the human-organ trade, there is a ruthless machinery that is involved in multimillion-dollar exercises that prey on the poor desperate for money. Many times organs are removed even without the knowledge of the victim, who might have been admitted to a hospital for some other ailment. As Indians are very reluctant voluntary donors, the southern state of Tamil Nadu has attained notoriety for scandals involving illegal removal of kidneys.
India continues to be a story of vast contrasts. According to government figures, a new category of the rural rich has emerged creating a divide within the rural economy, as opposed to just a rural-urban income disparity. Thus the rural rich are 1,000 times as likely as rural poor to own a motorcycle, 100 times as likely to own a color television, and 25 times as likely to own a pressure cooker.
The rural-rich market is estimated to be worth more than $100 billion. Investors looking at India as a market composed of 300 million middle-class households, many employed in the services sector that contributes more than 50% of the gross domestic product, could do well to add another 100 million, at least, residing (or with a base) in rural locations.
However, beggars on the streets of India are one more stark reminder of the distance that has yet to be covered.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ID03Df01.html
Minorities may get more in 5-year plan
NEW DELHI : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has assured CPI(M) leaders that a sub plan for Muslims in the 11th Plan would be considered. CPI(M) leaders including Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury had taken up the matter with the Prime Minister on March 23 when Singh assured them that the cabinet will discuss the matter shortly, sources revealed on Saturday.
In the wake of the Sachar Committee report which highlighted the pathetic socio-economic condition of Muslims in the country, the CPI(M) had set up an in-house committee to study and suggest affirmative steps to empower Muslims. The party had recently demanded that the Centre have a sub plan proportionate to the population of Muslims, and on the lines of the one for development of tribals in north-eastern states.
Observing that the West Bengal government was the first to seek a sub plan for the Muslims in the 11th Plan, Karat on Friday said the Prime Minister had told them that a decision would be taken on the matter. "We want the union cabinet to take a decision soon on having a sub-plan for minorities," he said.
As part of its efforts to create awareness on the Sachar Committee report on the socio-economic backwardness of Muslims, the CPI(M) on Friday organised a convention of Muslims to debate the issue. Addressing the convention Karat asked the ruling UPA coalition not to succumb to the BJP's accusations of a campaign on 'minority appeasement' and demanded that the government should go ahead full-steam to implement the recommendations to uplift the lot of Muslims.
Maintaining that the socio-economic status of Muslims was far behind other communities, Karat said justice must be done to the Muslims. He stated the convention would adopt a demand charter on the basis of the Sachar Committee recommendations and present it to the government for action.
Senior CPI(M) MP Mohd Salim explained the proposed demand charter to the gathering of mostly Muslim party leaders from different parts of the country.
Observing that the Sachar Committee had highlighted the deplorable socio-economic plight of the Muslims, he said issues of development, employment, income generation, education and security were part of the demand charter for the advancement of Muslim community. The charter details large number of issues and demands which the party would place before the government.
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1088520
Centre blamed for poverty
Bhubaneswar, April 1: Finance minister Prafulla Ghadei blamed the Centre for the backwardness of the state and sought adequate central assistance to correct the imbalance.
Speaking during the debate on the appropriation bill for 2007-08 in the Assembly last night, Ghadei said the flow of central funds to Orissa — which has been identified as the poorest state — was too meagre to tackle its backwardness.
Alleging that the UPA government has been adopting a "step-motherly attitude" towards Orissa, he said the flow of special grants to the state was far lesser than those to states likes Bihar and Andhra Pradesh. "The economic development of this backward state would be possible if the Centre pumps in adequate funds," said the minister.
During the debate on vote-on-account on Friday night Ghadei had claimed that the state had lost around Rs 88,600 crore due to "faulty recommendations" of the Finance Commission. The state had been incurring huge losses due to non-revision of coal royalty and fewer shares of central taxes, he said.
Referring to the undivided Koraput-Bolangir-Kalahandi districts — a significant poverty zone in India — the minister said the Centre had from 2007-08 reduced central assistance from Rs 250 crore per annum to Rs 130 crore.
Ghadei demanded more central funds for Orissa's overall and uniform development.
Highlighting the achievements of the state government on the financial front, he claimed that the government was able to achieve revenue surplus after 22 years.
The state's revenue had gone up from Rs 1,755 crore in 1995-96 to Rs 6,534 crore in 2005-06.
Similarly, the plan expenditure had increased. Not only has the government been able to spend more plan funds, the submission of utilisation certificates has improved significantly. Utilisation certificates worth Rs 2,815 crore have been submitted by various departments during 2004-05, as against a meagre Rs 500 crore in 1999-2000, said the minister.
Earlier, the Opposition members had ridiculed the government for its revenue surplus claim. "The state government is trying to take credit of achieving revenue surplus by reducing expenditure on developmental activities," said J.B. Patnaik.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070402/asp/frontpage/story_7593849.asp
Orissa tribals stage daylong road blockade
Jajpur (Orissa), April 2 (IANS) Angry tribals of Orissa's Jajpur district blocked a road protesting the death of a person due to grievous injuries he sustained in police firing over a year ago, but lifted the daylong blockade late Monday after adequate compensation was promised.
'They lifted the blockade after we assured them that the state government would consider providing adequate compensation to the family of Kishan Uduli,' District Collector Arabinda Padhi told IANS.
Uduli, 26, was among 38 people injured when the police fired at them Jan 2, 2006, during a huge demonstration protesting construction of a boundary wall TATA Steel was erecting in Kalinganagar. Thirteen people were killed in that incident.
Although the government promised medical care to the injured, it failed to do so, as a result of which Uduli died, a tribal leader told IANS. The young man died Sunday night.
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/india/news/article_1286035.php/Orissa_tribals_stage
_daylong_road_blockade%0A_LEAD
Will online courses serve the purpose?
The decision of the Distance Education Council (DCE) to virtually eliminate geographical barriers from education by offering IIT and IIM courses through distance education has elicited mixed reactions from the experts, teachers and students. While the students sing hosannas to this decision, many IT professionals express their doubts over the quality of knowledge acquired through such courses.
A former gold medallist from IIT-Kharagpur and senior vice president of a leading mobile manufacturer, Ashish Pachory, raises the first such doubt. "I don't understand the relevance of such technical courses being offered through correspondence. The IITs have a very different atmosphere which is replete with knowledge and that can't be replicated anywhere other than on campus. Although I believe these will not be regular courses, but still how does one get the practical hands-on training through distance education? Next, we will probably hear of doctors getting online degrees," he says.
A thought shared by Sudesh Dhanda, an IIM Lucknow alumnus and HR manager in a leading BPO in the city. He says, "I don't agree with this concept. For such professional and technical courses, one needs constant guidance and practical training, which will not be possible through correspondence. The way I used to study and got my degree was not easy. It will not be right to impart half-baked knowledge to these students."
In spite of all these arguments, there are a few who think this is a wise decision taken by the DCE which was constituted under statute 28 arising from Section 25 of the Indira Gandhi National Open University Act, 1985. Director of IIM Lucknow, Prof Devi Singh happens to be one of them. He says, "It will be a boon to online education. Also, what remains to be seen is what kind of courses are being offered for such programmes. Since it's going to be an audio-visual assisted programme, I don't think there should be anything lacking in this. In any case, they are not going to be the regular technical courses. They will be just focussed certificate and diploma courses."
And clearing the doubt over the course content of such programmes is Director of IIT Kanpur, Dr SG Dhande. "First of all, I'd like to clear this doubt that IITs and IIMs just don't offer undergraduate and PG technical courses. They offer so many courses and the ones that will be made online will not be the regular BTech courses. These courses are meant for teachers and professionals living out of the State and I don't see any harm in that. It is a step forward in continuing education which will benefit so many people." It is worth mentioning that IIT Kanpur is already offering online courses to Chhattisgarh University and has collaboration with Paris University for on-line courses. However, as Dr Dhande says, "It is an experiment which we have been trying for 2-3 years. So let's give it a chance and see how it goes."
ttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/City_Supplements/Lucknow_Times/Will_online_
courses_serve_the_purpose/articleshow/1847588.cms
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| Hot issues of Today |
- Apr 01, 2007
- Mar 31, 2007
- Mar 30, 2007
- Mar 29, 2007
- Mar 28, 2007
- Mar 27, 2007
- Mar 26, 2007
- Mar 25, 2007
- Mar 24, 2007
- Mar 23, 2007
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