Friday, July 15, 2016
Bollywood Analysis: From ‘Sultan’ To ‘Housefull 3’, The Horrid Ways Bollywood Targets People With Disabilities
Being a person with disability, and working as counselor for persons with disabilities and disability rights advocate I have always raised my voice against discrimination and stereotyping of disabled people.
Disability metaphors and analogies abound in our culture but disappointingly, Bollywood continues to shut out persons with disability with blatant ableist dialogues and storylines, which objectify disabled bodies.
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Spotlight: Islamic State Readies For Fall Of 'Caliphate'
Even as it launches waves of terrorist attacks around the globe, the Islamic State is quietly preparing its followers for the eventual collapse of the caliphate it proclaimed with great fanfare two years ago.
In public messages and in recent actions in Syria, the group's leaders are acknowledging the terrorist organization's declining fortunes on the battlefield while bracing for the possibility that its remaining strongholds could fall.
There's A Glaring Inequality Between Health Insurance Benefits Given To Men And Women
Wednesday, July 06, 2016
Analysis: Cabinet Reshuffle Is Aimed At UP Polls, But What If It Backfires?
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Average Deposit In Accounts Under 'Jan Dhan Yojana' Scheme Doubled In 21 Months
The number of accounts opened under the Prime Minister's financial inclusion programme quadrupled between September 2014 and May 2016.
The average deposit per account under Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana – a financial inclusion programme launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in August 2014 – increased 118%, from Rs 795 in September 2014 to Rs 1,735 in May 2016, according to IndiaSpend's analysis of government data.
India Is Slowly Cleaving Into Two Countries – A Richer, Older South And A Poorer, Younger North
Thursday, June 23, 2016
Opinion: How All India Radio Lost Its Way On Its 80-Year Journey?
Saturday, June 18, 2016
Vulnerable Children: On Time Delivery – The Large Blind Spot In India’s Immunisation Policy
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Spotlight: A Misplaced Emphasis On Indian Highways?
Sunday, June 12, 2016
Prolonged Repetitive Manual Work Ups Rheumatoid Arthritis Risk
Is The Local Kirana Store Under Threat From The ECommerce Industry?
Looking back at the evolution process, e-commerce was introduced in India through shopping sites like Rediff, Indiatimes, Sify and HomeShop18 in the early 2000s. However, they failed to gain widespread recognition amongst the Indian masses due to their limited range of products and payment options. With advancement in technology and growing manpower, e-shopping has gained significant success and popularity in the last couple of years. But there is a major policy gap, which needs to be addressed.
Saturday, June 11, 2016
Saturday Tadka: How Fat Became Our Friend - Expert Reveals Why It's Time To Ditch Low Calorie Foods Which Are Packed With Sugar?
- Experts warn against dieting on low fat yoghurt, rice crackers and cereals
- 99 per cent fat-free products are often low in fibre and full of added sugar
- Rebecca Charlotte Reynolds, nutrition lecturer from Sydney, explains
But the tide has begun to turn - and the countless products claiming to be 'light', 'lean' or '99 per cent fat-free' are becoming increasingly demonised.
Analysis: Narendra Modi's Five-Nation Tour: India Setting New Terms Of Diplomacy Around The World
With the conclusion of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's five-nation tour on Friday, the strategic objectives of Indian diplomacy seem to be getting a clearer focus in contrast to the ambivalence of the past.
This seems to be the dominant view of Indian diplomats, who play important roles in defining the terms of engagement with foreign countries. Apart from looking at Modi’s visit from the prism of his roaring reception in US, the Indian government is attaching equal significance to his visits to Afghanistan-Qatar and Switzerland-Mexico.
Friday, June 10, 2016
This Iron Lady’s “Takat Wala Powder” Is A Recipe For Women’s Empowerment In Rajasthan
A story of a self-made women who discovered the way to live wit her intelligenmce and thoughts to survive in this business world.
After completing my Ph.D. from the University of South Australia (Adelaide), I was told that I had two choices – either take up a postdoctoral position or return to India and work in the development sector. I did neither. Instead, I listened to my heart and went from writing academic research papers to actually working closely with the subjects of these research papers. This I did by embarking on a 13-month long journey in rural India, through the SBI Youth for India Fellowship. Not only was this an opportunity to understand a rural community at close quarters, it also gave me a chance to use my knowledge and skills to help solve some real-time issues.
Sunday, June 05, 2016
It's All In Numbers: Don't Celebrate India's Economic Growth Yet
Monday, May 30, 2016
Reeling Under Heat Waves: What's Going On With India’s Weather?
Until now, India's smog problem has curbed extreme temperatures. But that could be about to change.
On May 19, India’s all-time temperature record was smashed in the northern city of Phalodi in the state of Rajasthan. Temperatures soared to 51℃, beating the previous record set in 1956 by 0.4℃.
India is known for its unbearable conditions at this time of year, just before the monsoon takes hold. Temperatures in the high 30s are routine, with local authorities declaring heatwave conditions only once thermometers reach a stifling 45℃. But the record comes on the back of an exceptionally hot season, with several heatwaves earlier in the year. So what’s to blame for these scorching conditions?
Thursday, May 26, 2016
Two Years On: PM Narendra Modi's Report Card On Govt And BJP Performance
Monday, May 23, 2016
Feature: Have You Tried Online Weightloss?
Monday, May 16, 2016
Better tomorrows: Could the Niti Aayog's 15-year vision document actually transform India?
By M H AHSSAN | INNLIVE
It will depend on whether it's a shared vision or a vision shared.
The media have reported that the government of India is abandoning the five-year planning process that the country has used for over 60 years. Instead, the National Institution for Transforming India (the NITI Aayog), will prepare a 15-year vision document.
This a good idea. A process of making five-year plans and allocating resources from the Centre may have been appropriate in the years immediately after India’s Independence; when the country’s resources were scarce, and were largely with the public sector – the private sector being small then; when the Indian states were weaker than they are now; and when India was, and could be, isolated from the global economy. The replacement of five-year budgetary plans, with another process fit for a more open country in a dynamic global economy, was overdue.
It has been reported that the 15-year vision document will formulate ways through which India can achieve its broader social objectives to meet the United Nation’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. This is welcome too, though this will not be a radical change because the goals of the last two five-year plans already were sustainable and inclusive growth.
The radical change is the replacement of a five-year plan combined with resource allocations with a 15-year vision without budgets. Prima facie, this seems a fuzzy idea. Firstly, if five-year plans were becoming untenable because they could not anticipate changes in the economy beyond the first couple of years, how can 15-year long projections work? Secondly, if a plan with budgets attached could not compel sufficient action, how will commitment to the vision be ensured through the changes in government that can happen with several elections over 15 years? In short, will the vision be just a document – a piece of paper with even less effect on the course of India’s development than the fve-year plans had?
It's how you get there:
The answer is, it depends on the process used to produce the vision and to develop pathways to it. Visions are useful for what they do. Powerful visions align people voluntarily towards shared goals they aspire for. The power to align themselves comes when the vision is their own. Moreover, in dynamically changing situations, internally and externally, while a vision may remain stable, plans to achieve the vision must be changeable. Therefore, rather than providing maps with pre-defined paths, the outcome of planning should be a compass with which leaders can steer systems through change.
There is a big difference in the powers of a shared vision compared with a vision shared. A vision developed by experts, or a leader at the top, and then given to the rest, is a vision shared. It can point to an attractive star. But such a vision does not have sufficient gravitational force to compel action that a shared vision, in the development of which people have participated, can have. Whereas a vision shared must be translated to the people, a shared vision is shaped in their own terms as it is evolved.
The last Planning Commission had searched for methods of planning for 21st century India. It tested new methods of scenario planning to supplement the conventional five-year plans it was required to make. Scenarios are not predictions. They are plausible views of what the country will be like, 10 or 15 years out, depending on the directions big forces in the environment may take, and on the policies adopted by the country. Thus scenario planning helps policy-makers to steer, and to determine which policies will produce the most favorable outcomes in a dynamic environment.
The most desirable of the three plausible scenarios of India, projected by the Planning Commission, was titled “The Flotilla Advances”. It produced the most inclusive outcomes as well as the fastest growth. The other scenarios, which produced slower, as well as less inclusive and less sustainable growth, were called “Muddling Along” and “Falling Apart”. The titles of the scenarios point to the processes by which inclusive growth must be produced in diverse and democratic India. The states and private sectors cannot be directed from the center any more. Their leaders steer their own ships. All must share a vision of where they are going. And scenarios suggest to them the paths they should follow to get there. An architecture of policies required to align the flotilla and to produce the best outcomes was also derived from the systems’ analysis.
What experience shows:
The Bertelsmann Foundation of Germany has made a world-wide study of “Winning Strategies for a Sustainable Future”. It studied 35 countries around the world that appear to be leaders in developing strategies for sustainable growth. It examined the quality of their strategies, the frameworks for implementation, and results so far. Bertelsmann found two essential features in the processes used by the leaders.
The first is that sustainability policy derives from an overriding concept and guiding principles that are made to permeate significant areas of politics and society. And the “best practice” to make this happen is to get specific in national debates on a new score-card of progress. The UN’s 16 development goals with their 169 sub-goals cannot be imposed on the people. Countries must develop their own specific score-cards for their own conditions albeit conforming with the goals.
The second requirement for success, Bertelsmann’s study found, is that sustainability policy must be developed and implemented in a participatory manner. Therefore, the task for countries is to develop new participatory formats for planning. Not only must large numbers of people be engaged, but different constituents must listen to each other to develop an integrative vision of the future of the country.
For a 15-year vision to keep successive governments on course, it must be a vision that people believe in. It must be the people’s shared vision with their participation in it. The vision cannot be just a good document which a new government can tear up and write another. The goals must matter to people and be expressed in terms they understand. Then only will pressure from the people compel new governments to stay on course towards it.
Also, a process based on systems thinking, rather than linear planning, is required to understand the interplay of social, political, and economic forces to foresee the scenarios they will produce, and to describe the paths for the flotilla to steer towards its vision through dynamic changes in the environment.
The conclusion is that the NITI Aayog’s 15-year vision document will not matter as much the process by which the vision and the directions to it will emerge. The process used will determine whether the vision, and the programmes and policies it recommends, will accelerate the progress of the country towards its goals of sustainable and inclusive development.