ISSUES AND CONCERNS

Friends Yet another Independence Day came and went into the inanimate pages of history as one more event in this country of myriad dimensions. Yes, India has turned 64. How have we Indians, born around - this time 64 year ago - Aug. 1947, look back at the chequered path, the labyrinth our socio-economic and political life has taken us. Indians were less than 350 millions on 15th Aug. 1947, and to-day we are more than 3 folds at 1200 million, competing with China, to dethrone the Asian giant as the country with largest population in the world. But our Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh or the President Pratibha Patil in their long address to the nation, on account of Independence Day celebration did not mention the issue of population explosion the country is experiencing. Prime Minister, in his opening lines itself spoke of “we have to banish poverty and illiteracy from our country. We have to provide the common man with access to improved health-services. We have to provide employment ...

INDIA @ 64 - The Year of Scams “Over 6 lakh teachers failed in qualifying exam held by CBSE”, was headline of a small piece of news reported in the left hand corner of the 9th page of a Mumbai based English daily. The report stated that, the first-ever Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET) was held in Nagpur to be a bench mark for new teacher appointments for CBSE schools. The results, however, were shockingly dismal with 86% candidates failing the test across the country. Reportedly close to 7,10,000 candidates appeared for the exam but not even 98000 managed to pass, which is not even 14%. This CTET was probably held some time in July 2011. So for 64 years, we had teachers teaching in Central Board of Secondary Education who were dismally incompetent and patently unqualified to be teachers. And CBSE schools are believed to be better than vernacular medium government or municipal or panchayat run schools. But all these schools were manned by apparently qualified teachers and they w...

GANG LEADER FOR A DAY The Hustler and the Hustled I was nervous about teaching the workshop, but I was also eager. My relationship with tenants up to this point had largely been a one-way street; after all this time in Robert Taylor, I felt as though I should give something back. On a few occasions, I had managed to solicit donations from my professors, fifty or a hundred dollars, for some kind of program in the neighbourhood. This money might do a great deal of good, but it seemed to me a fairly impersonal way of helping. I was hoping to do something more direct. In the past I hadn’t been drawn to standard charitable activities like coaching basketball or volunteering at a school, because I wanted to differentiate myself from the people who helped families and ran programs in the community. I had heard many tenants criticize the patronizing attitudes of such volunteers. The writing workshop, however, seemed like a good fit. Having hung out in the community for several years, I believ...

Can an individual be without any representative character? P. M. Kamath A common refrain that is heard in Congress circles, while referring to civil society, to undermine their importance, is to refer to them as “four or five self-proclaimed civil society representatives.” This suggests these members of group that is demanding action against corruption and seeking the establishment of Jan Lokpal absolutely have no public support at all. The only elected representative can claim to speak for the general public. My single purpose in this article is to show, how wrong this formulation of the Congress critics of current public demand for a Jan Lokpal at the Centre and Lokayuktas at the state levels. The Congress refrain reminds me a brief meeting I had with former Prime Minister, late Shri Morarji Desai at his residence in Marine drive. By then having taught subjects like foreign policy, strategy, national security, international politics, American foreign policy, at postgraduate level and...

Tax Evasion Pak style Lahore: Pakistan’s cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan has claimed that President Asif Ali Zardari, Chief Ministers of three provinces and 61 percent of MP’s have never paid any taxes, reflecting the widespread corruption in the country. Khan alleged that Zardari and former Premier Nawaz Sharif were hand in glove. While Sharif had paid only Rs 5,000 as tax. Zardari paid no tax, he claimed. About 61 percent of Pakistan’s parliamentarians and Chief Ministers of three provinces have also never paid any taxes, he claimed. Khan appealed to the Supreme Court to open a case filed by former Air Force Chief Asghar Khan so that the nation could know how much money politicians had received from an intelligence agency, which he did not identify. He also asked Sharif to return 3.5 million that he had allegedly received from an intelligence agency. “Sharif had convinced me to boycott the 2008 election but then he could not keep his own word and went for the polls,” he said. ...

Super tomatoes that can combat cancer London: British researchers claim to have developed new “super tomatoes” fortified with minerals which can improve your immune system and help prevent cancer. The new varieties, which have hit shelves across the UK, have been enriched with selenium, a powerful anti-oxidant which the researchers believe could not only boost the immune system but also help prevent cancer. The mineral, found naturally in foods, such as Brazil nuts, shellfish and liver, is also important for the thyroid gland, which determines how quickly the body uses energy and also produces proteins, the Daily Mail reported. Food scientists for Marks & Spencer, the company which has developed the new variety, turned their attention to the mineral because it is lacking in UK diets. Low concentrations in farm soil mean little of the mineral finds its way into home-grown foods. There is evidence that a deficiency may lead to heart disease and, while it does not tend to directly cau...

TMT: buses bought-but no drivers ! Thane: As many as 126 buses of Thane Municipal Transport (TMT) are parked idle in depots due to the shortage of staff to run them, causing a great deal of misery and inconvenience to the residents who accuse the transport undertaking of deficiency in service. Due to the lethargic attitude of authorities, TMT is suffering a daily loss of around Rs 4 lakh. TMT has a total fleet of 444 buses. The authorities had earlier claimed that the commuters’ problems would be eased once buses under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission were received but that didn’t help. This is another of our national malaise, lack of planning. Waste, budget overshoot are mostly due to such approach of the bureaucracy. Here employing drivers can become an urgent affair. one more opportunity for making illegitimate money in recruitment. - Editor In CTET over 6 lakh teachers failed Nagpur: An overwhelming majority of future teachers failed to crack the qualifying...

Political parties & I.T. returns,not made for each other New Delhi: A country-wide probe conducted by the Income Tax department has found that close to 300 registered political parties have never filed their tax returns and the Election Commission has now asked the department to issue notices to them. The probe, conducted after the EC asked the Central Board of Direct-Taxes (CBDT) to ascertain the financial status of these small parties for alleged violation of tax laws and money laundering, has been submitted to the election panel. A number of parties also do not possess Permanent Account Number (PAN), said the bulky report, prepared by the assessment wing of the CBDT. The EC had sent a list of suspect political parties to CBDT for probe early this year. It was alleged that people are floating such political parties in large numbers to evade taxes as donations to them are exempt from payment of Income Tax. The EC has asked the department to intensify the probe and serve show-cause...

Why do we laugh? We laugh when we perceive something funny. But most laughter is not a response to jokes or humour, says Robert R. Provine, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Mary land Baltimore County and author of the book Laughter: A Scientific Investigation. In a survey Provine found that only 10 to 20 per cent of laugh were generated by anything similar to a joke. Laughter is instinctual. It isn’t under our conscious control. We don’t choose to laugh in the same way as we choose to speak. Infants laugh almost from birth and people who are born blind and deaf still laugh; hence it’s not a learned behaviour. Humans are hardwired for laugher, say experts in psychology. Studies on human behaviour suggest that laughter predates speech by perhaps millions of years. Before our human ancestors could talk with each other, laughter was a simpler method of communication.

When English thought 'Indian better' London: A project on ‘Spiritual Healing’, an ancient form of medication, under the aegis of an Indian consultant has bagged 205,000 pounds grant for research and the treatment will soon be offered to British patients, reports PTI. National Lottery awarded the grant for the two-year study to healing charity, Fresh Winds, which is working with Birmingham University and the National Health Service Good Hope Hospital in Sutton Coldfield. Sukhdev Singh, an Indian consultant in gastroenterology who is co-ordinating the research, said he had been encouraged by the results so far, Daily Mail reported. He added: ‘For many of the individuals we see, conventional treatments do not provide the complete answer. By being able to offer healing therapy, we are able to offer complementary methods of treatments which have been showing good results.’ However, critics of this healing form are calling it waste of money pumped into a “voodoo” technique of medicat...

Dog bites shark London: An incredible video on ‘You Tube’ shows the moment a dog rounds on a group of sharks, and even dives under the water and gives one a nip. The film, shot by an unknown Australian, who gives a hilarious running commentary, shows the two dogs as they take a paddle in clear blue waters. But lurking ominously beneath the waters, the spooky silhouettes of several sharks can be seen blocking the mutts’ path to the safety of the shore. Undeterred, one of the dogs rounds on the sharp-toothed marine monsters, dives under the water and with a fierce nip, scares the whole school away, the ‘Daily Mail’ newspaper reported. Boy kills ex-girlfriend for free meal London: A schoolboy in Britain is facing life sentence for murdering his former girlfriend – after a friend promised him free breakfast if he did away with her. Joshua Davies, 16, and Rebecca Aylward, 15, split up but she still visited him, hoping they would reconcile. The boy, however, plotted to give her deadly foxglo...