'Only 24 Out Of 4,807 Lawmakers Convicted Since 2008'

By Kajol Singh / INN Live

Two days after the Cabinet passed an ordinance allowing convicted and jailed MPs and MLAs to contest elections, it has been revealed that, since 2008, merely 24 out of 4,807 MPs and MLAs have declared in their affidavits of ever being convicted in a court of law.

1,460 or 30 per cent of the MPs and MLAs have declared criminal cases against them of which 688 or 14 per cent have declared serious criminal cases.

India Shining is Now a Victim Of Its Own Hype

A few years ago, when the Indian growth story had captured the world’s imagination, an Indian friend of mine asked me, “Kishore, is there a danger of too much hype about India?” I replied, somewhat foolishly, “No such danger. Better to have hype than no hype.”

How wrong I was! My Indian friend was wiser. India has become a victim of its own hype. In doing so, it has forgotten some basic points about economic growth. Firstly, economic growth is hard work. It does not come naturally, like the sun rising every day. Secondly, it is often the result of tough and shrewd political leadership. Deng Xiaoping showed his toughness by smashing the communist iron rice bowl that Mao had given to the Chinese people. Zhu Rongji showed his toughness by declaring, “I will prepare 100 coffins. 99 for corrupt officials and one for myself.” As a result of their toughness, China has continued progressing as the fastest growing economy in the world. By contrast, India has had to struggle to introduce foreign investment in retail, a relatively small move to boost the Indian economy.

Hence, India’s economic growth has slowed considerably from 9.55 percent in 2010 to 6.86 percent in 2012. By the rule of 72 (a method for estimating doubling time for an investment), India will now double its economy every 10 years instead of every seven years.

Many would like to believe that this recent slowdown is a temporary stall. This may just represent wishful thinking. Instead, this slowdown may actually be a result of overconfidence that rapid economic growth would come naturally to India, no matter what it does. This overconfidence may have in turn led to disastrous decision-making that has damaged investor confidence. The most damaging decision was the proposed 2012 amendment to tax legislation that foreign investors feared would impose retrospective taxes on mergers and acquisitions dating from 1962.

One wonders what the Indian policymakers were actually thinking when they shot themselves in the foot. Then they asked themselves why the Indian economy had stopped running forward! Similarly, although it has been reversed, the decision to pull back on foreign retail investment showed sheer incompetence in economic management.

How did this incompetence come about? The simple answer is that policymakers began to believe in the hype about India. They assumed that even if India made disastrous economic policy decisions, the Indian economy would be strong and resilient enough to keep growing, no matter what they did. This overconfidence has also infected other members of the Indian establishment. As a result, there is little hard-headed thinking about how the Indian economy can be turned around. Let me stress one point here. There should be absolutely no doubt about the potential of the Indian economy. It remains enormous. What India desperately needs now are three things. First, a clear understanding of the scale of India’s potential. Second, a brutal and dispassionate analysis of the factors blocking India’s realisation of its potential. Third, a list of quick measures it can take to jumpstart rapid economic growth.

First, to understand India’s real potential, all we have to do is to measure the productivity of Indians in the most competitive economy in the world, the US, with the productivity of the Indians in India. This simple calculation will show the gap between India’s potential and India’s current situation. In 2010, per capita income for ethnic Indians in the US was at $37,931 when the national US average was $26,708.

If the Indian population of 1.3 billion could achieve only half of the per capita income of the Indian immigrants in the US, the Indian GDP today would be $24.65 trillion. Sadly, today, India’s GDP is only $1.848 trillion.

Second, given the enormous gap between India’s potential GDP and its actual GDP, the Indian establishment needs to understand what is holding back the potential. Hundreds of books have been written about this subject. There is no shortage of analysis. Instead, there is an abundance of paralysis by analysis. The argumentative Indian, to use Amartya Sen’s phrase, has no shortage of reasons to explain India’s faltering performance.

Given the abundance of analysis, India should stop trying to reinvent the wheel. It should just pick a single credible list of factors that are holding back India’s economic growth. One list that is as good as any other list is the Goldman Sachs paper, “Ten Things for India to Achieve its 2050 Potential”. Since Goldman Sachs was partially responsible for creating the hype by predicting that India would have the second largest economy in the world after China (and ahead of the US) in 2050, the list prepared by the global investment bank is as good as any. The paper suggested 10 things India could do to achieve its 2050 potential: 1. Improve governance, 2. Raise basic educational achievement, 3. Increase quality and quantity of universities, 4. Control inflation, 5. Introduce a credible fiscal policy, 6. Liberalise financial markets, 7. Increase trade with neighbours, 8. Increase agricultural productivity, 9) Improve infrastructure, and 10. Improve environmental quality.

It may take several decades, if not a century or more, for India to achieve progress in the 10 areas that Goldman Sachs has spelled out. What the firm does not point out is the list of all the vested interests that are holding back India’s progress in these 10 areas. Demolishing some of these vested interests will be difficult, especially in a democratic system like India where these interests have entrenched themselves by forging deep partnerships with the electorates that keep them in office. This is why corruption that is legally entrenched in democracies like the US and India is harder to eradicate than illegal corruption.

Therefore, while still trying to work slowly on the long list that Goldman Sachs has provided, India should also focus on a shorter list that could provide a more immediate jumpstart to India’s economy. The first is the easiest thing to do: create a special window for investment and economic participation by overseas Indians. Since the overseas Indians have demonstrated that they are far more economically productive than Indians in India, a window that lets them in quickly would provide an economic benefit through new investment. Equally, if not more importantly, through a process of symbiosis, the productivity, energy and drive of the overseas Indians could have a catalytic effect on the economic and educational performance of Indians in India.

IT IS true that India has already established several schemes to link up overseas Indians with India. For example, India has set up a Person of Indian Origin (PIO) as well as an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) scheme. Even though I hold a PIO card, I don’t know what opportunities it confers apart from visa-free entry to India. At the same time, there are rumours that the PIO and OCI schemes will be merged.

Quite naturally, there is political resistance in India towards providing special privileges to OCIs. This is understandable. However, the Indian government should explain to the people that the economy already benefits enormously from remittances. Indeed, India gets more remittances than any other country in the world, with $70 billion coming in from overseas in 2012. Yet, India can benefit far more from its overseas population if it uses them as a source of ideas as much as dollars. New ideas for improving the Indian economy can do far more good than dollars to supplement monthly incomes.

The second quick thing that India can do to jumpstart the economy is to become a leading votary of open globalisation. The success of the overseas Indian, especially in the US, has demonstrated competition is good for Indians. Indeed, they succeed and thrive when there is open global competition, performing as well if not better than any other nationality. The record of India’s economic performance also shows clearly that India’s economy grew slowly when it was relatively closed and grew faster after the then finance minister Manmohan Singh opened it up from 1991.

Given this clear evidence, the rest of the world should, in theory, fear economic competition from Indians. Ironically, the situation is the reverse. Indians worry more about global competition from the rest even though they have outperformed the rest when there is level global competition. How does one explain this manifestly absurd situation? The simple answer is that many Indian policymakers still lack cultural confidence. Their policymaking mindsets still come from the 1960s and ’70s when there was a remarkable unanimity of opinion that the opening up of the economy would lead to defenceless India being ravaged by avaricious western MNCs. Instead, it is now clear that the opposite would have happened. Any opening up to global competition would have made the Indians in India as productive as the overseas Indians as Indians thrive under global competition. Just by ditching the old mindsets of the ’60s, Indian policy policymakers could make a huge difference. By adopting a bias towards openness in their daily decision-making, they would give a huge and immediate boost to the Indian economy.

The third quick thing that India can do is to seize geopolitical opportunities. After almost two decades of deft diplomacy, China has surprisingly begun to make mistakes in its relations with its neighbours, especially Japan. Over time, China will definitely learn and recover from its mistakes. In the meantime, however, Japan will begin hedging its bets by investing less in China and more elsewhere. Indeed, Japan has been the largest single investor in China, after Hong Kong and Taiwan. The total amount of Japanese investment in China is $12.6 billion, while that in India is $2.3 billion. Just imagine how the Indian economy would look if these figures were reversed.

At the same time, there are other low-lying economic fruits that India could pluck. India already has Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with Japan and ASEAN. And ASEAN and Japan also have an FTA. India could show its diplomatic deftness by converting those three existing bilateral FTAs into a trilateral FTA and jumpstart a new trend of trilateral FTAs. Indian policymakers have been reluctant to do this because they fear India cannot compete with both Japan and ASEAN. Ironically, it is ASEAN and Japan who should fear Indian competitiveness. This is why the mindsets of the Indian policymakers have to change immediately.

In short, even though the Indian economy appears to be slowing down and losing its edge, a few easy things can be done to rev it up again. All it takes is a little more cultural confidence and some shrewd and tough decision-making by the policymakers. What India needs now is a little less hype and a little more quiet shrewdness. And, it can be done.

How To Write A Comprehensive Public Relations Plan?

By M H Ahssan


The public relations plan is one of the most important documents you will produce in your career.

It has been said that public relations is the result of form and substance. While this is not exactly true, it does have some basis when you're trying to persuade your client or boss to let you spend their money. How you say it (form) and what you say (substance) will likely determine your success or failure in getting your proposal accepted.

Let's face it, clients and bosses are impressed by the way things look -- just like you, they're only human. All other things being equal, a well-organized and attractively prepared proposal will win out every time. (For the purposes of this document, the term "client" will be used from now on. You may substitute "boss" if your situation dictates it.)

So, what can you do to help ensure success? Well, there are a number of elements in an effective public relations proposal presentation of which you must be aware. Begin each section with the appropriate subheads:

Letter of transmittal
Executive summary
Situation analysis
Problem and consequences
Campaign goal
Audience identification and messages
Audience objectives
Strategies
Communication Tactics
Schedule
Budget
Evaluation plans
Pertinent research
Communication samples
Each of these elements is vital. Each plays an important role in building a logical, well-planned proposal. A detailed discussion of each follows.

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL
This item is an adjunct to -- and precedes -- the actual plan. As simple as it may sound, you need to transmit your plan to the client or your boss. Standard accepted business practice dictates that you write a letter or memorandum of transmittal. Limit the transmittal letter/memo to a single page.

If you are submitting the plan to a client, use the following format:

A cordial opening paragraph stating that you are submitting "the attached plan for XXX campaign, as promised." Follow this with a brief description of the plan, including the campaign's "bottom line" -- income expectations, expenses, net "profit" or loss -- in other words, what your client is expected to lay out for the public relations campaign.
A reference to the executive summary that follows.
A statement that you either look forward to presenting the plan in person as a previously designated time and place, or will contact the client to arrange a meeting to discuss the plan.
Gracious words of "thank you" for the opportunity to submit the plan.
Two caveats: Spell the company's and client's names correctly, and double-check titles and addresses. You don't want two strikes against you before the client gets to the meat of your proposal.

If you are submitting the plan to your boss, make sure to economize even further on your words. You can eliminate some of the opening and closing niceties.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Also an adjunct to the plan, this is a summary of your proposed campaign that covers several key points most likely to interest the executive who reads your plan. Here is a suggested format:

Executive Summary
The Problem: State here what you believe the problem to be.
Program Goal: State here what your ultimate goal is.
Target Audiences: (1) Your primary audience, (2) your secondary (intervening) audience(s), and (3) your tertiary (special) audience(s).
Audience Objectives: (1) What you expect your primary audience to do, (2) what you expect your intervening audience(s) to do, and (3) what you expect your special audience(s) to do.
Major Strategy: State your major strategy here, listing the key tactics that you will use in your campaign.

Recommended Budget: State your total anticipated income and sources, your anticipated expenses, and the anticipated net profit or loss.
Evaluation Plans: State how you expect to evaluate (and expect to know) whether or not you've achieved each of your campaign and audience objectives.

SITUATION ANALYSIS
The very first item in the plan itself should be an analysis of the current situation, based on results of your research. The situation analysis contains all of the information and data you collected about the internal and external environments.

Depending on how much research is required and has been conducted, and how complicated and/or involved the organization's problems are, the situation analysis can run from one to three or more pages.

While a problem statement directs the planning effort to a particular set of conditions, the situation analysis provides details about internal and external contexts. It includes a literature review (which requires a bibliography of sources).

Use the following outline as a guide to writing the situation analysis:

The Situation Analysis: Information To Look For

INTERNAL FACTORS
Statements of the organization's mission, charter, bylaws, history and structure.
Lists, biographical sketches and photos of key individuals -— officers, board members, and program managers.
Detailed descriptions of programs, products, services, etc.
Statistics about resources, budget, staffing and programs.
Summaries of interviews with key personnel about the problem situation.
Copies of policy statements and procedures related to the problem.
Complete descriptions of how the organization currently handles the problem.
Lists and descriptions of the organization's controlled communication media.

EXTERNAL FACTORS
Clippings from newspapers, magazines, trade publications, and newsletters tracing print media coverage of organization and problem situation.
Reports of radio, television and cable placements.
Content analyses of media coverage.
Lists of media, journalists, columnists, and free-lance writers who report news about the organization and related issues.
Lists and descriptions of individuals and groups that share the organization's concerns, interests, and views (including their controlled print and broadcast media).
Lists and descriptions of individuals and groups that oppose the organization's positions on the issues (including their controlled print and broadcast media).
Survey results of public's awareness, knowledge, opinions, and behaviors related to the organization and problem situation.
Schedules of special events, observances, and other important dates related to the organization and problem.
Lists of government agencies, legislators, and officials with regulatory or legislative power affecting the organization and the problem situation.
Copies of relevant government regulations, legislation, bills pending, referenda, publications, and hearing reports.
Copies of published research on topics related to the problem situation.
Lists of important reference books, records, and directories, as well as their locations in the organization.
When you write the situation analysis, present your research findings in a logical and easily understood order. List results of client research, situational research, and audience research. If you have used the suggested outline above, you should have all of the necessary pertinent information you need.

ASSUMPTIONS
No matter how much research you've done, something always seems to be missing. If you've done your homework well, you should have no assumptions to present here.

In some cases, however, assumptions are inevitable and as a practical matter, unavoidable. So, when you write your situation analysis, you may need to make some assumptions about various aspects of the situation. If you must make assumptions, list them in a supplemental section, noting what missing information you can reasonably assume.

"A friendly media" is not a valid assumption. Professionals never make assumptions, especially about the news media.

PROBLEM & CONSEQUENCES
Based on your research, and particularly on your preliminary interviews with the client, you should be able to isolate the overriding problem, and determine what will happen if the problem is not solved.

The problem statement itself should be concise and very specific. If possible, write it in 25 words or less, using standard subject-verb-object order.

This step is crucial to your plan and to the success of your campaign. Mess up here and you will end up 'way off course. Think of the problem statement as your starting course to the moon. One degree to the left or right, up or down, and you'll miss the moon by thousands of miles.

It's the same with the problem statement. Identify the wrong problems, and you may as well not even turn in your plan.

Get to the root cause of your problem, and try to identify exactly what attitude (what they think) or behavior (what they do) you need to influence.

Do you want attitudes crystallized, modified or reinforced? Be especially conscious of the ultimate behavior you want to evoke. Answer this question: "What exactly is it that we want them to do as a result of this campaign?"

And yet, proper problem identification and statement is still not enough. The client may recognize that there is a problem, but unless there is a consequence —- unless the client will lose something of value, whether it be profits, members, or quality of service -- the client may remain unconvinced about your plan.

You must show the client what could result if something isn't done to correct the problem identified above. Explain in one concise declarative sentence what the consequences will be.

CAMPAIGN GOAL
This is not a particularly difficult section to complete. But first, here's a brief review of goals and objectives.

Goals are general directions, somewhat nebulous, that are not specific enough to be measured. Think of the word "go." It has no end.

A good example is the signature line of the Star Trek television series: "To boldly go where no man ("no one" in Generations) has gone before." You can't measure it, and you probably will never know if the goals were accomplished, because once humans have gone somewhere, we've been there, and there are still other places to go since the universe is infinite and has no end.

Objectives, on the other hand, are specific and measurable. They can be output objectives, or they can be attitudinal or behavioral. But most of all, they can be measured. They are concise. They are specific. Think of the word "object." You can touch it, it's there, it's actual, it's finite.

Back to the goal. State your campaign goal simply and resolutely. State it confidently, with all the bravado you can muster, secure in the knowledge that the question, "Did you accomplish your goal?" can never be answered.

AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION & MESSAGES
Audience identification is vital to your campaign. You need to talk to the right people. You need to conserve valuable funds, time and manpower, and you cannot do this unless you target your publics carefully.

A word about publics, stakeholders and audiences: A "public" is a group of people with similar interests. "Stakeholders" are a special kind of public, composed of people who have a particular interest (or "stake") in your organization. An "audience" is a public with whom you are communicating.

You need to find some intelligent answers to some equally intelligent questions.

Who exactly is going to be affected by your public relations campaign? Who exactly are you trying to persuade?
You're going to need some cooperation from others; who will this be? Where are these people located? How can you find them? How can you get in touch with them?
The people you want to reach listen to opinion leaders; exactly who are these opinion leaders? Who and where are those credible, authoritative sources that your intended audience believes, and who can help you get your messages across?
Your audiences generally act the way you do -— they do the same things you do. What magazines and newspapers do they read? What radio stations do they tune in to? What TV shows do they watch? To what clubs and organizations do they belong? What professional associations do they join? What are their favorite charities? What are their children's favorite participation sports?
So how to you reach them? Find out. Do your research.

Generally speaking, there are three types of audiences:

PRIMARY: This is the audience or public that you specifically want to influence. It's the people whose behavior you're trying to change. Influence them, and you've done your job well.
SECONDARY: These are "intervening" audiences. These are people who can intervene on your behalf and influence the primary audience. Convince them that you're right, and they can help you get to the primary audience. You've heard of "third-party testimonials" that are more credible than your direct communication? Secondary audiences are those "third-party" people. Influence the secondary audiences and your job will become a bit easier. Their "endorsement" of your cause serves as their "testimonial."
TERTIARY: (Pronounced "ter-she-arry") These are "special" publics composed primarily of organized groups (e.g., clubs, councils, associations) that can mobilize quickly and endorse your cause. They usually have an established means of communication with their membership via newsletters and other media.
In your plan, identify who these people are, then prioritize them. Like the "inverted-pyramid" style of journalistic writing, audience prioritization will allow you to eliminate potential audiences from the bottom-up should the need arise because of budget cuts, time constraints or manpower reductions.

Once you've identified and prioritized your audiences in your plan, tell the client exactly what message you believe should be directed to each of the audiences you have selected.

Like the problem statement, your messages should be direct and declaratory, and they should articulate specific benefits to the audiences. Try out a number of messages, then settle on one per audience, selecting the one you consider most important to your campaign goal.

AUDIENCE OBJECTIVES
In this section, state exactly what your objectives are for each audiences you identified in the previous section. In general, there must be at least one objective per audience. This is usually sufficient. In come cases, however, you will have more than one objective for each audience.

Objectives should measure impact. Behavioral objectives are preferred ("Exactly what is it you want to get them to do?"), but the objectives can also be attitudinal ("What do you want them to think?"), or informational ("What do you want them to know that they didn't know before?").

Objectives also can measure your output -- what you did. But unless output is central to your problem and contributes to solutions, try to keep these to a minimum.

State your objectives in specific and quantifiable (measurable) terms whenever possible. Set them in a time frame, and if you know what the budget is, tell the client what you expect the cost to be. The objectives should be reachable, they should be acceptable to the client, and they must be ethical.

A crystal-clear objective would read something like this: "Our objective is to deliver X results by Y date at a cost of Z dollars."

Think of the goals as the treasure at the top of a stairway, and the objectives as the stairs.

STRATEGIES
In this section, you need to present a number of strategies, each of which will in itself solve the problem. This is one of the hardest sections to complete, especially for inexperienced practitioners who must rely on information provided by others, rather than on personal experience. However, it is so essential to the campaign's success that every effort must be made to present excellent strategic alternatives.

There are four basic strategies:

Do nothing (inactive).
Do something only if necessary (reactive).
Do something before a problem arises (proactive).
Involve others in solving or heading off problems (interactive).
It may also be feasible to take a "multi-active" approach to solving the problem, in which case you would use elements from each basic type of strategy.

Whatever strategy is finally selected, know that it will help determine the success or failure of your proposed program. You may find it easier to select a strategy after reviewing the list of public relations initiatives (tactics, activities) that you will develop after conducting a number of creative brainstorming sessions.

Do not -- repeat, do not -- use the terms "inactive,""reactive," "proactive," "interactive," or "multi-active" in your plan, unless the client fully understands the terms and initiates their usage. The words can be considered public relations jargon and often are meaningless to the client. Don't use these words as crutches in an attempt to avoid explaining your strategy in detail.

State that each strategy, when considered on its own merits independently of the other alternative strategies, is a viable option to be judged on its own strengths, and will definitely solve the problem. Eliminate any approach you believe will not solve the problem on its own. If a combination of approaches can solve the problem, list the combination as a strategic alternative.

Each alternative strategy will attain all of the objectives listed earlier. Again, each individual solution must be feasible, appropriate and acceptable. All possible solutions should be considered and presented -- unless, of course, your particular problem is one of those rare cases that has but a single solution. No, strike that notion. Don't be tempted by this intriguing possibility. Assume that your problem has two or more solutions.

Discuss all of the pros and cons of each strategy considered.

In doing so, try to offer options to the client. If you can identify business risks and opportunities, you give the client an opportunity to exercise informed judgement. Clients need viable options -- they need to know each option's advantages and disadvantages -- in order to make decisions based on fact instead of emotion.

Clients don't want to "shoot from the hip." They want to make rational decisions.

Remember, you must take careful aim in everything you do in public relations. Don't shoot from the hip: you could end up with powder burns on your butt.)

Finally, tell the client what your recommended approach or strategy is. Be sure to tell the client why you recommend this particular strategy, and be prepared to defend your choice under withering fire and challenge from the client. You can't fake this part. It may be helpful to refer to the pros and cons you listed for each strategic alternative.

COMMUNICATION TACTICS
This is the section in which you tell the client exactly what communications initiatives you propose. If you have conducted some creative brainstorming, you should have developed a "shopping list" of possible tactics that will achieve your previously stated objectives.

Look at each tactic from the standpoint of what it will do to achieve your objectives.

Your tactics will include:


ACTION EVENTS: Non-written tactics such as special events, demonstrations, exhibits, parades, community contributions (manpower, talent, advice, money) and other non-verbal activities. Separate your action events into message tactics (which will be used to get your message across to the audience) and media tactics (how you will utilize the news media to publicize your action events).


COMMUNICATIONS TACTICS: Verbal tactics (oral and written) that use words or pictures. These include newsletters, flyers, news releases, brochures, direct mail, advertising, themes, slogans, the World Wide Web (WWW), and other initiatives that use words and language as their basis. As with your action events, separate communications initiatives into message tactics (which will be used to get your message directly to the audience), and media tactics (how you will utilize the news media to communicate your messages).

When presenting your tactics in this section, be sure to provide a brief one- to three-paragraph description of each tactic, especially noting the audiences to which the tactic is directed, the message you expect the audience to receive, your reasons for selecting this particular tactic (cite your research, focus group results, etc.), and the anticipated results.

SCHEDULE
You must show that you have thought through the plan to the smallest details. In this section, present your planning calendar. Be specific and comprehensive. Include specific dates whenever possible.

Tell the client exactly when you're going to conduct the action events and communication tactics you noted earlier. Also, tell the client who will be doing the work.

List milestones and deadlines for each of the events and tactics. Plan writers always note when communication products and activities will culminate, but often forget milestones and deadlines.

For example, don't just say that a brochure will be delivered to the office on July 17. You must also include milestones and deadlines, and let the client know that initial copy drafts are due on May 2, that three days are required for initial editing, that second drafts are due on May 10, that two more days are required for editing, that the final draft is due on May 17, and that final copy approval is due on May 19.

The client also must know that final copy is due at the typesetter on May 21, that the graphic designer needs two weeks to work on the design, that the printer needs the camera-ready art and layout by July 1, and that a minimum of 10 days is required before the printed brochure can be placed on the client's desk.

Each of the dates above should be included in your schedule. Do this for each initiative. You may either present a separate calendar for each tactic, or combine them into a comprehensive timetable. Ideally, you should do both.

Don't forget to correlate once again the events with the audiences you expect to address, and what you expect to accomplish.

Finally, don't forget to include any research you will be conducting, as well as on-going and end-of-project evaluation dates.

BUDGET
An axiom: It is not easy to compile a budget.

Putting a budget together is especially difficult when you are working on a hypothetical case, or if you are not sure of the client's requirements ("Why don't you present three scenarios -- minimal, moderate and optimal -- and we'll pick the one we can afford").

This may seem incredible, but the client often has absolutely no idea how much is available for your campaign. More often than we suspect, the client may simply be "fishing" for a cheap way to obtain some publicity for the company. Or, the client may want to know how much a pet project would cost if it were done correctly.

That said, you must have a budget section. You must have an accurate representation of how much things are going to cost. The information may be close at hand (e.g., previous experience, other plans, informative co-workers), or ... you may have to make a lot of phone calls.

Separate your anticipated income from your proposed expenses, and present both totals. Finally, give the client a bottom-line figure. Tell the client exactly what the campaign is going to cost. An excess of income over expenses will result in a profit to the client; an excess of expenses over income will result in a cash outlay by the client.

Now . . . don't you wish you had taken accounting in college?

EVALUATION PLANS
If you have planned your campaign correctly, your communication and action tactics will have been performed according to schedule, and will have cost exactly (or pretty close to) what you said they would cost. You will have reached all of your identified audiences and persuaded them to do exactly what you wanted them to do.

You would have attained all of your objectives, which ultimately means that you have achieved your primary goal. And, if it is not too bold to say, you will have solved the client's public relations problem, and those dire consequences you predicted earlier will not come to pass.

But how do you know whether or not you've succeeded? You must measure your accomplishments. How do you measure those results?

You do it by measuring two phases of your campaign:


IMPACT: Ask yourself what behavioral or attitudinal changes the campaign effected. Impact measurement documents the extent to which you achieved the outcomes spelled out in your objectives for each target public. It also tells you to what extent your overall program goal was achieved.


OUTPUT (or implementation): In other words, what did you DO? How much effort went into carrying out the campaign? How many publications and releases were prepared and distributed? How many column inches and minutes of air-time coverage did you get? How many people were exposed to your message?

Emphasize impact -- impact is paramount. Emphasize output only if the communications "products" are central to your problem and contribute to solutions.

Tell the client exactly how you are going to measure the results of what you did, and how they relate to your objectives.

Remember, you cannot evaluate effectively unless you have good objectives. If you don't have good objectives, then you have nothing to measure against.

PERTINENT RESEARCH
Create a "Tab A" and submit your research results. In this section, include client, situational, and audience research results (clippings, polls, interviews, library research, or summaries of research found elsewhere -- with appropriate source identification). Include anything you deemed essential while compiling your situation analysis.

COMMUNICATION SAMPLES
Create a "Tab B" and include descriptions and/or rough layouts of recommended communications materials (i.e., news releases, public service announcements, speech outlines, statements, institutional ads, brochure dummies).

For each news release, list names of news organizations to which they will be delivered, and their deadlines. Be sure to use a wide variety of communication channels and methods, properly timed and coordinated.

Remember also that actions and events generally are more effective than written or oral communications alone. You should strive to keep verbal communications to a minimum, and make imaginative and creative actions and events a key part of your campaign.

A LAST WORD
Finally . . .

No typos. Bind all work neatly. Personalize the transmittal letters if you know the names of the selection committee members. No typos. Use a computer and laser printer. Meet deadlines. Use an easily readable font typeface (minimum 12-point font). Use good paper, don't skimp.

Remember: The "class" projected by your proposal is reflected in the perception that the client has on your "excellence" as a public relations professional.

Look professional, and you will be viewed as professional.

Fresh 'Red Meat' Will Lowers Diabetes And Heart Disease

There are people in this country eating too much red meat. They should cut back. There are people eating too many carbs. They should cut back on those. There are also people eating too much fat, and the same advice applies to them, too.

What’s getting harder to justify, though, is a focus on any one nutrient as a culprit for everyone. I’ve written Upshot articles on how the strong warnings against salt and cholesterol are not well supported by evidence.

Myopia, Distortions and Blind Spots in the Vision Document of AAP

The Vision Document of the Aam Aadmi Party offers a simplistic understanding of the issues confronting Indian society, and confuses and confl ates symptoms with the disease.

The Vision Document of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)1 springs no surprises. It puts down in black and white what its main protagonists have been saying for the last two years. It contains the same unthinking hyperbole, self-righteous condescension, superficial reasoning, loud sloganeering and a good deal of reactionary politics that is sought to be smuggled under a veneer of sympathy for the aam aadmi.

It must be said to the credit of the authors that for once they have acknowledged that there is something like the Constitution of India whose preamble they have quoted with approval. But that should not mislead one into believing that they uphold the basics of the parliamentary democracy or democracy per se. Otherwise they would not have blatantly asserted in the very first section of the document: Hum satta ke kendroko dhvast karke rajnaitik satta seedhe janata ke hathme dene ja rahe hai (After destroying the centres of authority, we are going to hand over power directly to the people). Surely they are aware that the Parliament of India is a supreme centre of political authority under the Constitution. The authors of the document seem to be oblivious of a queer mixture of anarchism and Bonapartism that characterises their statement.

Simplistic Analysis
Their analysis of non-fulfilment of the vision of the preamble of our Constitution is simplistic and misleading. All the evils and shortcomings are attributed to the wholesale inheritance of “colonial laws and structures” by the indigenous rulers who, according to them, have simply substituted the erstwhile foreign exploiters. Leaving aside the half-truth of such a statement, what are the laws and structures that the authors are speaking about? They are concentrating exclusively on non-participatory and indirect features of our legislative and executive structures. It is one thing to argue in favour of more directly representative and participatory structures. It is entirely different to ascribe the “exploitative character” of the system to such features, which is what the authors do. They recommend more participatory legislative and executive structures through a more effective role to the gram sabha, greater accountability of the executives to the people whom they are appointed to serve, introduction of “referendums” and “initiatives” in the legislative process and “recall” of elected representatives. And the appointment of a Lokpal to oversee the executive and root out corruption. This is all fine. There has been a good deal of debate at the popular as well as the expert levels on these issues. This is not the place to enter into a debate on these specific suggestions. Suffice it to say that it is naïve to assume that the exploitative character of the economic system will simply vanish with the introduction of such administrative and legislative devices. Even more naïve is the supposition that the exploitative forces which form the bedrock of the system would not subvert the proposed more representative and participatory devices and simply allow a truly people-centric transformation of the economic system.

But the Vision Document is scrupulously silent on the core issue of the exploitative base of the system. It shies away from suggesting any measures intended to bring about a people-centric transformation of the economic system. Such silence is a blind spot of the Vision Document.

Neglect of Root of Problems
The Vision Document confuses and conflates symptoms with the disease. It talks of a growing divide between the rich and the poor, of the loot of natural resources by big business and politicians, of unemployment, of inflation, and, of course, corruption. Nowhere does it go to the root of the problem which lies in the adoption of the neo-liberal policies by the ruling classes, which include not only the ruling and the main opposition conglomerates of the political parties and big capital (indigenous as well as foreign), but also the affluent and better-off layers of the recently emerged middle class which has benefited from the neo-liberal policies, be they in IT and IT-related sectors, financial services, advertising and marketing, print and electronic media, land and real estate. (These sectors cater to the conspicuous consumption of the neo-rich and their imitators, or the praetorian guard of the higher echelons of the ruling classes.) Is it that a sizeable section of the followers of AAP belong to this section of our society and, therefore, the vision informing the document gets distorted and blurred?

The AAP document looks at the contemporary symptoms. It refuses to see the current situation as a part of a historical process which started long ago. Its concern is short term. Its focus is myopic. And it stops short of any radical analysis or measure.

Take, for example, its position on the issue of reservation for dalits, scheduled tribes and the Other Backward Classes. It is oblivious of the fact that the Constitution recognised special measures such as reservation in the context of longstanding social injustice to which some sections of our society were subjected. The criterion of long-standing social injustice cannot be bracketed with what is loosely described as “economic backwardness” which the document does. Such bracketing has been often the handle used by the opponents of reservations. The Vision Document has adopted this stance. The document also talks about denial of reservation on attainment of economic advance by the beneficiary. The concept of the creamy layer has been part of the reservation system right from the beginning. Why is it that the document repeats this as a new discovery and propounds exclusion on the specious ground that there are some who have somewhat benefited by reservations? Such facile arguments have been used again and again by the “upper” caste opponents of reservation and the document finds itself in agreement with that view. The fact of the matter is that the AAP has openly stood against the concept of reservation for promotions. All in all, it is not difficult to see through the lip service paid by the document to the cause of social justice and realise where the sympathies of the authors lie.

Or look at what the document has to say about education and health. It is not really worried about progressive commoditisation of health and education. The solution it proposes is that the standard of the schools run by municipalities and governments should be brought up to the level of the expensive, privately-run schools. Nowhere has such a dual system and commercialisation of basic human rights led to an upgradation of the worse-off section, which constitutes the major part of service provision. What is necessary is an immediate halt to commoditisation, large-scale expansion of public health services and compulsory institution of a common neighbourhood school system. Such demands have been in the public domain and there are powerful movements supporting them. Why is it that they are not visible to the Vision Document? Is this too due to the class bias of the AAP?

There is a brief paragraph in the Vision Document about the communal issue. It is worded in such a “goody goody” fashion that it ceases to have much meaning in the real political context. All that it says is that one should respect religious diversity and religion should not be turned into a political instrument. This is like apple pie and mother’s milk. The real issue today is that the minority, particularly the Muslim minority, has been largely alienated because of the overt or covert politics of the major political formations. Democratic freedoms and rights of the minority youth, in particular, are being suppressed ruthlessly. In the name of anti-terror action, innocent people are being targeted, tortured and incarcerated for long years. Islamophobia which is part of the US-Israel imperialist strategy has had an unacknowledged impact on our domestic politics as well. Such a situation cannot be remedied by resorting to wishy-washy statements. Because of its reluctance to go beyond the superficial and the obvious, the Vision Document suffers from inexcusable shallowness.

Similarly on the question of the large-scale, ruthless uprooting of adivasis from their land, livelihood and habitat, their fierce resistance to the process and the virtual war proclaimed by the Indian state against them in the name of defending the country against the so-called “security threat number one”, there is hardly anything except the indirect observation that acquisition of mineral and forestlands must have the consent of the local people.

On the Agrarian Question
On the agrarian question, the approach of the Vision Document boils down to two issues, quite important in themselves but again more symptomatic than basic. In essence, it says that land should not be acquired except with the consent of the gram sabha and that farmers should get a fair price which should be 150% of the production cost. Now, land acquisition is only a subset of the bigger set of the land question. One cannot find a solution to the subset without talking about the bigger set. And the gram sabha consent, whether in regard to forest, land, or environment has been manipulated any number of times, despite some apparently good legal provisions to that effect. Moreover, the market has deprived the peasantry of its land on a scale many, many times more than the land acquisition process propelled by governments. Has the document anything to say about this inexorable onslaught of the market? About the fair and remunerative price to farmers there cannot be two opinions. But how does one ensure it in a market that is being integrated with the global agriculture market? More important, do not the authors of the Vision Document know that a very small proportion of our peasantry produces marketable surplus? And that 92% of our peasantry consists of small and marginal peasants for whom farming is largely subsistence farming and clearly an unviable proposition? There are no easy solutions to the land question. In the ultimate analysis, “The question of land is the question of capital”. And one cannot find piecemeal, symptomatic, tokenistic solutions. The question of land or the agrarian question in India today calls for nothing short of a complete overhaul of the mode of production. But this obviously is another blind spot in their vision.

On the question of unemployment, all that the document envisions is a transparent, merit-based appointment to public service posts, provision of bank finance for self-employment in small businesses and, believe it or not, placing the responsibility of finding jobs for the unemployed on the gram panchayats! The jobless growth path that neo-liberal economics prescribes will not get wished away by the simplistic measures suggested in the document. And the growth model based largely on integration with the world economy and larger and larger inflows of capital, footloose or otherwise, is itself facing the prospect of failure. Unless there is a more thorough analysis and willingness to adopt radical measures, there is no possibility of the unemployment problem being tackled successfully. But such thinking is beyond the vision of the document.

A glaring shortcoming of the document is its parochial vision. The vision literally confines itself to a narrow and shallow focus. It speaks of the problems of the Indian polity as if India exists in a self-contained world of its own. Nothing seems to be of concern, if it lies apparently beyond the borders. Indeed it even shies away from many real problems of our own people residing in border states/areas. It is as if not only is there no world outside our borders, but our border areas and people too do not exist.

First, the question of border areas and people. On Kashmir, there is absolutely nothing in the Vision Document. Perhaps, the articulation of an honest but unpalatable position on this issue by a leading protagonist of AAP (known for his courage of conviction) and the quick, violent reaction it generated in the jingoistic, far right circles and the chauvinistic, adverse comments it faced even within the core of the erstwhile India Against Corruption parivar may have something to do with this silence. Perhaps, the crusade against corruption and the installation of participative and direct democracy in the rest of India is far more important to the AAP than the plight of the Kashmiri people. Whatever may be the reason, the parochial character of the Vision Document is difficult to conceal.

In the same vein, the document has little to say about the neo-imperialism of the US-Israel combine, its aggression threatening our borders, the turmoil in the whole of west Asia, and new experiments in more democratic politics being tried in the whole of Latin America. This is not to say that another chapter needs to be added to the document in due course. What is astonishing is that a political party hoping to take the reins of power is mute on the global processes, particularly those advancing the tentacles of neo-imperialism, which are inextricably influencing our politics and our society. Is it just a parochial vision or is it silent endorsement of those processes, which are welcome to the class base of the AAP?

With such complete silence on the basics, the compensation is found in excessive articulation of the trivial. How else can one explain an entire three pages of the 20-page document being devoted to spelling out how the party propaganda will be carried out, how the candidates for elections will be chosen, and how the elected members of the party will live or travel and such like details?

Forget Fingerprints, Crimes Will Be Solved By Body Shape

Grainy CCTV footage in which a criminal’s face is obscured can make it difficult to identify perpetrators, and this job is even harder if no fingerprints are left at the scene.

But, in what’s been dubbed a biometric breakthrough, researchers have discovered that a person’s body shape could equally give them away.

Using just eight measurements, forensic teams were able to correctly identify people - even through clothes.

Dubbed ‘body recognition’, the technique was developed at the University of Adelaide, and is said to be comparable with facial and fingerprint analysis.

The Big Question: Do Women’s Periods Really Synchronise When They Spend Time Together?

By ANNIE SADAF | INNLIVE

Research in the 1970s had indicated that being in close proximity led to the transfer of pheromones.

It is a popular belief that women who live together synchronise their menstrual cycles, and that it’s mediated by their pheromones – the airborne molecules that enable members of the same species to communicate non-verbally.

How Do You Publish 'Sponsored Content' For Your Brand?

Sponsored articles are one of the new shiny new objects in the content marketing world. This new advertising channel has opened the doors for brands to become part of everyday conversations with consumers on the platforms they trust most for news, education, and entertainment -- media outlets.

Sitting at the intersection of editorial thought leadership and native advertising, sponsored articles have only recently risen to prominence as a tactic worthy of garnering a share of marketing budgets.

Satyamev Jayate-2 Impact: Health Ministry Scrapped '2-Finger Test' On Rape Victims, Dubs As 'Unscientific'

By Sayani Mishra | INNLIVE

After Bollywood actor Aamir Khan's shocking revelations regarding the dealing of rape cases in the first episode of the second part of his TV show 'Satyamev Jayate', the Union Health Ministry, which has drawn new guidelines for treating rape survivors, has asked all hospitals to set up a designated room for forensic and medical examination of victims besides outlawing the two-finger test performed on them, dubbing it as unscientific.

The Department of Health Research (DHR) along with Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) with the help of experts formulated this set of national guidelines for dealing with criminal assault cases, which will hopefully put an end to the "horrendous" medical process, which the victims are subjected to after the sexual abuse.

INN Hiring 'Freelancers'

We @ INN are in commissioning spree of medium-length news pieces and profiles (775-1650 words), as well as feature-length work (2000 words and above, max 3000). From freelancers, our strong preference is for feature-length work with outstanding story telling. Writer-reporters based outside India must make clear in their pitches whether or not they have supporting professional photography available, whether their own or through a colleague.

We prefer short (3-5 paragraph) story proposals, but will consider finished pieces. We like new work, but will consider a piece that has appeared elsewhere (though not in this region) in some form or another. Pitches should give a strong sense of art, angle and sources - and indicate that you understand the interests of our audience. Please have a look at our websites (http://www.indiatell.org / http://hyd-news.blogspot.com) to get a sense of the magazines' style. Feel free to request a print copy - the print edition is larger and more lively than the site.

Generally speaking, INN news coverage is in the India News Network tradition. Our city and country guide coverage is similar in nature to that of Delhi and Mumbai Monthly. In the feature well, we aim for the best of The Indian, Human Interest and Esquire. We prize analysis and context in news, insights and how-to in our city guide, and the best damn story telling (period) in our features. Politics, social issues, culture, entertainment, celebrity interviews -- anything goes, so long as it is current or a unique look back at a significant (if nearly forgotten) past incident.

INN - Business news coverage is in the India Business Network tradition. We prize analysis and context in news, insights and how-to in our In the Black section. Business, economy and politics stories - including those that delve into social issues, culture and entertainment - anything goes, so long as it is current and provides a business perspective to the issue.

Although we are an English-language publication, 40% of our readers are Indians living in India. Roughly 25% of our online subscribers are Indians living abroad or Indo-American / Indo-British, etc. Foreigners reading the magazine are, in the majority, long-term residents of India or individuals and institutions abroad who follow Indian political, cultural and social issues.

In short, if your pitch isn't related to India and / or the South Asia - at least conceptually - then we're not terribly interested. Indo-Americans? Yes. Washington or London politics? Perhaps, if it is relevant to our readers.

We're a national current affairs title with some international news coverage. Pitch us stories about entertainment, politics, culture, social issues and business. We are decidedly not interested in "Exotic India" pieces. Photo essays are interesting as long as the topic is right.

Unless you have particularly unique experience or are an expert of some stripe commissioned to do an Op/Ed piece for us, we couldn't care less about your personal opinions. Some (slightly) opinionated analysis is good, but "campaigning" has no place - we're looking for good stories, well told.

We pay locally competitive rates in Indian Rupees to freelancers based in India, in US dollars to those abroad. Payment is within 30 days of publication. We're generally faster, but please allow a months from the issue date for receipt of payment. All rates are agreed upon in advance of assignment and are non-negotiable thereafter.

All stories must be submitted electronically as Word attachments in .RTF format (Mac or PC) as well as pasted into the body of the e-mail message. AP style is optional. Photos may also be sent electronically as JPG / GIF or PNG files. We will let you know additional details on resolution and size if you're sending us pics with your pieces.

Please direct any questions or pitches to editor@indiatell.org / hydnews@gmail.com with the words "INN - Freelance" in your subject heading.

The Strange Case Of India's Missing Dams

A complete and accurate database of dams and rivers in the country is the first pre-requisite for analysing hydrological issues and safety, but an analysis by INN shows that the authority entrusted to maintain such records clearly has a long way to go. 

The latest NRLD seems to have been uploaded only recently, since for a number of states, it claims to have been updated till January 2013. The NRLD is certainly a useful document, the only list of large dams in India and it also gives a number of salient features of the large dams in India. The South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) has been using this document and doing some analysis of the information available in the NRLD.

As per the latest edition, India has 5187 large dams (height above 15 m in most cases, height of 10-15 m in the case of some with additional criteria). 371 of these dams are under construction and the rest have been completed. In case of 194 large dams in NRLD, we do not know the year of construction, which means most of these dams must have been built before independence.

NRLD is not an exhaustive list
NRLD follows the definition of large dams given by the International Commission on Large Dams for inclusion of dams in its records. However, it is far from what you could call an exhaustive list of large dams in India. A significant number of large dams built for hydropower projects in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, North East India, among other states, do not figure in the list, even though all of these would come under the definition of large dams as given in the NRLD.

To illustrate, in Himachal Pradesh alone, the following dams are all under construction as per the Central Electricity Authority, many of them in advanced stages, but they do not figure in NRLD: Allain Duhangan, Kashang, Sainj, Swara Kuddu, Shongtong Karcham, Sorang, Tangnu Romai, Tidong. This poses a serious threat to safety, especially since many of them are under construction by private companies.

For example, in December 2012, heavy leakage was detected in the surge shaft of the 1000 MW Karcham Wangtoo Project on Sutlej River in Kinnaur district in Himachal Pradesh. The project had to be shut down and the repairs are still going on. Had there been a serious mishap at the project, the impact would also be felt by the cascade of projects downstream, including the 1500 MW Nathpa Jakhri HEP (India's largest operating hydropower project), 412 MW Rampur HEP, 800 MW Kol Dam HEP and the Bhakra complex further downstream.

Incomplete records or omissions make prevention, tracking and management of such emergencies difficult.

The missing dams
Earlier in 2010 and 2011, SANDRP filed a number of applications with the CWC under the Right to Information Act to ask them how a very large number of dams that were listed in earlier NRLD records of 1990, 2002 (both printed versions) did not figure in the NRLD 2009, and many of the large dams listed in 1990 also did not figure in NRLD 2002. The CWC response in most cases was to transfer our RTI application to the relevant states, stating that it is not responsible for the accuracy or completeness of information in the NRLD, it merely compiles the information given by the respective states.

This was a far from satisfactory response from India's premier technical water resources organisation. Was CWC acting only as a post box on such a serious issue as listing of large dams? It was not applying its mind to the information supplied by the states, not raising any questions, nor clarifying the contradictions and gaps with respect to the earlier editions of NRLD? Needless to add, this reflects very poorly on the CWC.

Here, it is notable that the CWC is also responsible for the monitoring policies and practices related to the safety of dams in India as also a number of other aspects. What kind of diligence then can we expect from CWC under these circumstances? Our analysis also showed that many dams that should have figured in the earlier versions (considering the date of completion stated in the subsequent editions of NRLD) were not there. Again, our applications for clarification in such cases were transferred to respective states.

We did get some response from the Central Water Commission and Maharashtra, which was once again hardly acceptable. In case of over a hundred dams, the CWC Director, Design and Research Coordination Directorate accepted the errors in NRLD and promised that 'Data entry errors/ omissions as indicated above will be rectified' without any satisfactory explanations.

Where are our dams located?
A quick review of the latest NRLD raises some fresh questions. In one of its exercises, SANDRP wanted to check how many dams there were in the different river basins/sub basins. This is an important question from a number of perspectives including cumulative impacts, optimisation of dam operations, hydrological carrying capacity and cumulative dam safety issues, to name a few. Ostensibly, this should have been a simple enough exercise.

However, when we started looking at the 5187 large dams of India listed in the NRLD, we found that in most cases, there is no name for the river on which the dam is constructed. When counted, we were shocked that in case of 2687 or 51.8% of large dams of India, the NRLD does not mention the name of the river! In most cases they just write 'local river' or 'local Nallah,' or the box under river is left blank. Under the circumstances, it is not possible to get a clear picture of any river basin, or use the list to identify cumulative impacts or safety aspects or possibility of optimisation of the dams in any one river basin. The absence of such basic information reflects very poorly on the quality of the NRLD, and on the CWC and respective states.

The worst performers
India's largest dam builder state, namely Maharashtra, also has the largest number for which it does not know the name or location of the rivers or tributaries. Out of 1845 large dams in Maharashtra, for 1243 cases, Maharashtra does not know the name of the rivers on which these are constructed! That means in case of 67.37% of its dams, the state has not specified the names of the rivers. It is not just for the old dams, but even for 81 of the dams completed after 2000, that this holds true - for example, the relatively larger 61.19 m high Berdewadi dam (completed in 2001) and the 48 m high Tarandale dam (completed in 2007).

In percentage terms, Madhya Pradesh fares even worse than Maharashtra, as it does not know the names of the rivers for 90.17% of its dams (817 dams out of total of 906). Chhattisgarh is the worst in this aspect, as it does not know names of the rivers for 227 of its 259 large dams. These three states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh collectively do not know the names of the rivers for 2287 of all dams listed in NRLD. Some of the other states that should also share the 'honours' here are Gujarat (138 dams out of 666 for which names of rivers are not known), Andhra Pradesh (124 out of total of 337) and Rajasthan (71 out of 211 large dams).

It is a disturbing situation that the agencies that are responsible for our large dams do not even know the names of the rivers on which they are located. Every river in India has a name, so if someone were to argue that these rivers do not have names, it wouldn't be an acceptable excuse. Without the names of the rivers and locations of the various dams on specific rivers, we cannot even start looking at crucial issues such as dam safety, cumulative social and environmental impacts, and hydrological carrying capacity and optimum utilisation of the storage created behind the dams. We clearly have far to go to even start knowing our dams and rivers. 

Sunanda Pushkar Report 'Politically Motivated': AIIMS Doc

In a fresh twist to the Sunanda Pushkar death case, a doctor associated with the Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has claimed that the “intake of acetaminophen (a paracetamol) with alcohol” resulted in the death of Sunanda, wife of Congress MP and former Union minister Shashi Tharoor.

He termed the latest medical report sent to the Delhi Police on 29 December by AIIMS - in which a panel of doctors has suggested that the death occurred due to poisoning but did not ascertain the nature of the poison – as being “politically motivated”.

Top 8 Useful Examples Of Artificial Intelligence

If you searched the term "Artificial Intelligence" on Google and found this article, then you have used AI (and hopefully benefited from it). 

AI is a term that can be used to take you on a ride with Uber or have your phone correct a misspelled word. Artificial intelligence profoundly impacts almost all aspects of our lives, even though it might not be obvious. We'll be looking at eight ways artificial intelligence can save us time, money, energy, and effort in our daily lives. 

What is Artificial Intelligence?

It is essential to understand precisely what Artificial Intelligence is before determining how it impacts our lives.

Artificial intelligence, or statistical analysis, is how computers can act on data to analyze and understand it. This is an automated process. Artificially intelligent machines can recognize patterns of behavior and adapt their responses accordingly. This article "What is Artificial Intelligence?" provides a more detailed definition.

Machine learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL), and natural language processing are the essential components of AI.

Machine learning allows machines to learn better based on big structured data and continuous feedback from humans and algorithms.

Deep Learning is often considered to be an advanced form of ML. It learns through representations, but data doesn't need to be structured.

Natural Language Processing (NLP), a tool for linguistic analysis in computer science, is one example. It allows machines to understand and read human language. NLP will enable computers to convert human speech into computer inputs. As an AI enthusiast, you need to master all the skills to grow your business. Dedicated AI ML Course by E&ICT Academy, NIT Warangal will give you an in-depth knowledge of various Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning models to increase business value. 

8 Examples Of Artificial Intelligence

Here are eight examples of Artificial Intelligence that you might come across every day.

1. Navigation and maps

AI has greatly improved travel. You no longer need to rely on printed directions or maps. Instead, you can use Waze, Google, or Apple Maps on your smartphone and enter your destination.

How does the application know where it should go? What's more, it can determine the best route, traffic jams, and road obstacles. While satellite-based GPS was the only option, users now have access to artificial intelligence.

Machine learning allows the algorithms to remember the edges and numbers of buildings it has seen. It makes the maps more accurate and helps with the recognition and understanding of building numbers and houses. It has trained to recognize changes in traffic flow and recommend routes that avoid congestion and roadblocks.

2. Facial Recognition and Detection

Artificial intelligence is now a part of our everyday lives. Face ID allows us to unlock our phones, and virtual filters can be applied to our faces while taking photos. Facial recognition is also used for surveillance and security by government facilities and at airports.

3. Text Editors or Autocorrect

AI algorithms use machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing to identify incorrect usage of language and suggest corrections in word processors, texting apps, and every other written medium, it seems. Computer scientists and linguists work together to teach computers grammar just as you were taught in school. The editors will notice if you are using the wrong comma.

4. Search and Recommendation Algorithms

Have you ever noticed that when you shop online or watch a movie, the recommendations you receive are often in line with your recent searches or interests? Intelligent recommendation systems learn your online behavior and preferences over time. Data is collected from the user at the front end and stored. The data can then be analyzed using machine learning and deep learning. The information is used to predict your preferences and provide recommendations for what you might like to listen to or buy next.

5. Chatbots

Customer service interactions can be stressful and time-consuming.  Companies find it inefficient, expensive, and difficult to manage. One increasingly popular artificially intelligent solution to this is the use of AI chatbots. These algorithms allow machines to answer commonly asked questions, track orders and make direct calls.

Natural language processing (NLP) teaches chatbots how to mimic customer service representatives' conversational styles. Advanced chatbots do not require any specific inputs (e.g., yes/no questions). They can answer complex questions that need detailed answers. Giving the bot a negative rating for its response will correct the error and make it right the next time. It ensures maximum customer satisfaction.

6. Digital Assistants

Sometimes, when we are overwhelmed, we resort to digital assistants to help us. You might ask your assistant to call your mom while you're driving. An AI virtual assistant like Siri can access your contacts and identify "Mom" before calling the number. These assistants use NLP and ML, statistical analysis, and algorithmic execution to determine what you want and attempt to get it. Voice and image searches work the same.

7. Social Media

Social media apps use AI to support content monitoring, suggest connections, and serve ads to targeted users.

Through keyword recognition and visual image recognition, AI algorithms can quickly identify and remove inappropriate posts. Deep learning's neural network architecture is an essential part of this process. But it doesn't end there.

Social media companies understand that their users are their products and use AI to connect them to advertisers and marketers identified their profiles. Social media AI can also determine the type of content that users like and suggest similar content.

8. E-Payments

It is a waste of time to go to the bank for every transaction. AI is a factor in why you haven't visited a branch in five years. Banks are using artificial intelligence to simplify payment processes and facilitate customers.

Intelligent algorithms make it possible to deposit money, transfer money, and open accounts from any location. This is thanks to AI security, identity management, and privacy controls.

You can even detect potential fraud by looking at credit card spending patterns. It is another example of artificial intelligence. These algorithms can determine what products User X purchases, location, and price range.

The system will alert you if there is unusual activity. #KhabarLive #hydnews 

There's A Glaring Inequality Between Health Insurance Benefits Given To Men And Women

By NEWSCOP | INNLIVE

For the age group of 70 and above, for every claim paid to a woman, more than 11 were paid to men.

In the last five years, when there were major concerns over the country’s economic growth, the Indian health insurance industry was doing surprisingly well. In fact, it had been growing at more than double the rate of the overall economy, according to data from Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority.

Opinion: US Prez Barack Obama For Republic Day In India! This Is Just 'Public Relations' Not 'Diplomacy'

So, President Obama is coming to town. And how!

Over the past 24 hours, the nation has been treated to a blitz of fawning headlines and breathless commentary about how, thanks to Narendra Modi's "out of the box thinking" and "unconventional diplomacy", a US President would be attending the R-Day celebrations for the first time.

In its excitement to play up the event ("unprecedented", "momentous", "unthinkable") the media has not allowed facts to come in the way resulting in a deluge of half-baked theories, absurd analysis and disputed claims.

Indus Valley code is cracked

By Raja Murthy

A 4,500-year-old mystery has been revived, with Indian-American scientists claiming on April 23 that the puzzling symbols that were found on Indus Valley seals are indeed the written script of a language from an ancient civilization.

But skeptics, such as historian Steve Farmer and Harvard University Indologist Michael Witzel, say that claims of the Indus Valley civilization having a written language, and therefore a literate culture, are generally created by pseudo-nationalists from India, Hindu chauvinists and right-wing political frauds who wish to glorify the existence of an ancient Hindu civilization.

The civilization on the banks of the 2,900-kilometer long Indus, one of the world's great rivers with a water volume twice that of the Nile, is said to have flourished between 2600 BC to 1900 BC.

Unlike its river valley contemporaries in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and China, very little is known about the Indus Valley civilization, largely because its "script" is yet to be deciphered, even though ruins were excavated 130 years ago.

There appears little doubt that a reasonably advanced civilization thrived in the Indus Valley before mysteriously vanishing. But for the past decade, scholars and scientists worldwide have argued whether engravings found on hundreds of Indus Valley objects, such as seals and tablets, are a mysterious script of a language - like the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics - or whether they are merely non-lingual signs or pictograms.

On April 23, the US-based Science journal published a paper by an Indian and Indian-American team of scientists and researchers that claimed patterns of symbols found on Indus objects had the definitive linguistic pattern found in written languages. Such a pattern is different from non-linguistic signs.

The paper, titled "'Entropic Evidence for Linguistic Structure in the Indus Script”, featured the findings of Indian-born researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai.

It claims computer analysis revealed comparative "entropic evidence" that Indus signs have a linguistic order similar to some of the world's oldest languages, such as Sumerian from Mesopotamia, classical Tamil and Sanskrit from the Indian sub-continent.

Comparative entropy involves a mathematical process by which an unknown variable can be theoretically determined using known related variables. In this case, researchers say they used computer analysis to compare the pattern of Indus symbols with the patterns of known spoken and mathematical languages. This is the first time that such a process has been used to determine whether unknown symbols are the written script of a language.

"The findings provide quantitative evidence suggesting that the people of the 4,500-year-old Indus civilization may have used writing to represent linguistic content," said project leader Rajesh Rao, a computer scientist at the University of Washington.

"If this is indeed true," Rao told Asia Times Online, "then deciphering the script would provide us with unique insights into the lives and culture of the Indus people."

The 130-year-old excavations in the Indus Valley, covering areas in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, have revealed evidence of an urban civilization. Ruins of excavated Indus Valley cities such as Mohenjadaro and Harappa have revealed elaborate urban infrastructure such as well-planned streets, brick houses, sophisticated drainage and water-storage systems, trading, use of weights, jewelry, knowledge of metallurgy and tool-making. Archaeologists say many more Indus Valley cities are yet to be excavated.

The problem is that any new "path-breaking" Indus Valley research findings have to pass credibility tests. The Indus Valley puzzle took a more crooked dimension in the past decade. India's right-wing political outfits that grew in this period, such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have been known to make clumsy, ridiculously amateurish attempts to "rewrite" over 5,000 years of Indian history.

Such fake coloring of authentic Indian and Hindu religious history was to feed a narrow-minded sectarian, political and chauvinistic agenda. The BJP has denied such history-faking tricks. But a senior BJP worker in Kolkata, an art critic by profession, told this correspondent in 2003 that he was engaged in rewriting history textbooks. The BJP was then heading India's central government.

This history tomfoolery included attempts to portray the Indus Valley culture as a Hindu civilization. Some fraudsters have even produced fake Indus seals as "proof" of an advanced society with rich, as yet undiscovered, literature.

But the genuine Indus symbols are merely simple non-linguistic signs common in the ancient world, according to a controversial paper in 2004 titled "The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis: The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilization". The paper was written by comparative historian Steve Farmer; Richard Sproat, a biomedical computer scientist at the Oregon Health and Science University, Portland; and Michael Witzel, an Indologist from the Department of Sanskrit and Indian studies at Harvard University.

Five years later, in 2009, Rajesh Rao and his colleagues' year-long study claimed to have debunked the debunkers Farmer, Sproat and Witzel. The California-based Packard Foundation and Mumbai-based Sir Jamsetji Tata Trust sponsored the project. The global media reported on Rao's April 23 Science Journal paper supporting claims that the Indus symbols are the written script of an ancient language.

However, the original Indus script debunkers refuse to be debunked. In a quick counter response dated April 24, Farmer and Co rubbished the Washington University study. Their two-page answer was cheekily titled, "A Refutation of the Claimed Refutation of the Nonlinguistic Nature of Indus Symbols: Invented Data Sets in the Statistical Paper of Rao et al. (Science, 2009)". Farmer and Co argued that Rao and Co had compared the Indus sign sets with "artificial sets of random and ordered signs”.

They said the Rao study proved nothing that is not known - that is, "the Indus sign system has some kind of rough structure, which has been known since the 1920s”, said their rejoinder.

"Indus Valley texts are cryptic to extremes, and the script shows few signs of evolutionary change," Farmer and Witzel wrote in October 2000. "Most [Indus] inscriptions are no more than four or five characters long; many contain only two or three characters. Moreover, character shapes in mature Harappa appear to be strangely 'frozen', unlike anything seen in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia or China."

The left-leaning Indian news magazine Frontline carried Farmer's and Witzel's article in a cover story titled "Horseplay in Harappa - In the 'Piltdown Horse' hoax, Hindutva propagandists make a little Sanskrit go a long way”. The article debunked sensational claims in 1999 that the Indus script had been "deciphered" by N S Rajaram and Natwar Jha.

The motive of this fraud was to prove that the Indus civilization was an early Hindu civilization. As proof, Rajaram and Jha produced an Indus Valley "horse" seal as evidence that the Indus people used horses, an animal commonly mentioned in the Vedas, the ancient Indian texts dating to the 2nd millennium BC - over 2,000 years later than the earliest dated Indus Valley seals. But no images of horses were found in the Indus Valley excavations, until Rajaram and Jha produced their horse seal.

Farmer and Witzel proved that the horse seal was a fraudulent computerized distortion of a broken "unicorn bull" seal. The fake horse seal was derided as the "Piltdown Horse", an imaginary creation to fill the gap between the Harappan and Vedic cultures, just as the famous "Piltdown Man" did in 1912. That year, skeletal remains of the "missing link" between ape and man were "discovered" in Piltdown, a village in England. They were later found to be fake.

In their April 23 paper, Rao's team said they compared statistical patterns in sequences of Indus symbols with sequences in known ancient and modern spoken languages, computer language and natural sequences such as in human DNA.

While Farmer and Co claim in their April 24 rebuttal that Rao's team used limited and artificial comparative language tools, Rao's team says the comparative computer analysis included:

1,548 lines of Indus text and 7,000 signs, from veteran Indus scholar Iravatham Mahadevan's 1977 compilation from the Archaeology Society of India.

20,000 sentences from The Brown University Present Day Standard Corpus of Present-Day American English - a well-known dataset compiled from a wide range of texts including press reports, editorials, books, magazines, novels, scientific articles and short stories.

100 Sanskrit hymns from Book 1 of the Rig Veda, said to be composed between 1700-1100 BC.

"Ettuthokai", or "Eight Texts", anthologies of poems in classical Tamil from the Sangam Era, circa 300 BC to 300 AD.

Sumerian - nearly 400 literary compositions dated between 3 BC and 2 BC.

DNA - first one million nucleotides in the human chromosome 2, obtained from the Human Genome Project.

Protein - the entire collection of amino acid sequences from the Bacteria Escherichia Coli, more famous as E coli.

Programming Language - 28,594 lines of code from FORTRAN.

Both camps are adamant they are right. But both could be wrong, given how vested interests and human egos often stubbornly cling to inaccurate views by seeing what they want to see, instead of reality as it is.

If the Indus Valley has an equivalent to the sensational 18th-century discovery of the Rosetta Stone, considered one of the greatest-ever historical finds, that would indeed confirm whether the Indus symbols are a written language - one possibly opening the doorway to an unknown civilization. An officer in Napoleon Bonaparte's invading French army, Captain Pierre-Francois Bouchard, found a grey-pinkish granite stone in an Egyptian village called Rosetta on July 15, 1799.

Dating to 196 BC and displayed in the British Museum since 1802, the Rosetta plaque carried a royal decree in Egyptian and Greek in three scripts - Hieroglyphic, Demotic Egyptian and Greek. Since Greek was a known language, stunned scholars could use the translation to decipher the 3,500-year-old hieroglyphics. The doorway to ancient Egypt was opened to the modern world.

Even if the Indus Valley symbols are indeed a written script, there is little chance of deciphering them unless a Rosettta Stone equivalent is available. Archaeologists from India and Pakistan continue to work at Indus Valley sites, unearthing new discoveries each year.