Saturday, February 2, 2013

World Report-2013- Finger U.S. judiciary System

US: Injustices Filling the Prisons 

(Washington, DC) – The enormous prison population in the United States partly reflects harsh sentencing practices contrary to international law, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2013. The sentencing practices include disproportionately long prison terms, mandatory sentencing without parole, and treating youth offenders as adults. The US maintains the world’s largest incarcerated population, at 1.6 million, and its highest per capita incarceration rate.
Human Rights Watch research in 2012 found that the massive overincarceration includes a growing number of elderly people whom prisons are ill-equipped to handle, and an estimated 93,000 youth under age 18 in adult jails and another 2,200 in adult prisons. Hundreds of children are subjected to solitary confinement. Racial and ethnic minorities remain disproportionately represented in the prison population.
"The United States has shown little interest in tackling abusive practices that have contributed to the country’s huge prison population,” said Maria McFarland, deputy US program director at Human Rights Watch. "Unfortunately, it is society’s most vulnerable – racial and ethnic minorities, low-income people, immigrants, children, and the elderly – who are most likely to suffer from injustices in the criminal justice system."

In its 665-page report, Human Rights Watch assessed progress on human rights during the past year in more than 90 countries, including an analysis of the aftermath of the Arab Spring. The willingness of new governments to respect rights will determine whether the Arab Spring gives birth to genuine democracy or simply spawns authoritarianism in new clothes, Human Rights Watch said.
The World Report chapter on the United States covers human rights developments related to US criminal justice and immigration, as well as issues related to health, labor, and the rights of women, children, people with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. It also addresses abuses related to the United States’ deeply flawed counterterrorism policies.
Human rights developments within the United States over the past year include:
• Connecticut joined 16 other states and the District of Columbia in abolishing the death penalty. However, 33 states continue to allow it;
• In May, the US Department of Justice issued final standards under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) to detect, prevent, and punish prison rape. The standards are immediately binding on all Justice Department facilities;
• In fiscal year 2012, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported a record 396,906 non-citizens. A dramatic increase in federal prosecutions of immigration violations, and in the number of immigrants in detention, has fed a nationwide detention system that includes more than 250 facilities;
• Illegal re-entry into the US has become the most prosecuted federal crime. In 2011, prosecutions for illegal entry and re-entry into the US surpassed 34,000 and 37,000 respectively. Many of those prosecuted for these crimes have minor or no criminal history and have substantial ties to the US;
• The US Senate, in December, failed to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Sixty-one of the 100 Senators voted in favor, but 66 votes were needed for passage. Several senators have promised to make another attempt to ratify the treaty in early 2013;
• In April, the Labor Department withdrew new regulations proposed in 2011 that would have updated, for the first time in decades, the list of hazardous agricultural tasks prohibited for children under age 16;
• Congress failed to renew the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), the primary federal law providing legal protection and services to victims of domestic and sexual violence. Sexual assaults remained underreported and poorly investigated in many jurisdictions. Certain groups, such as unauthorized migrant farmworkers, face particular challenges to seeking justice;
• In June, the US Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, which significantly expands many citizens’ access to health insurance and medical care;
• HIV infections continued to disproportionately affect minority communities, men who have sex with men, and transgender women. Many states have failed to protect HIV-positive people from discrimination or to provide adequate funds for HIV prevention and care; and
• For the first time anywhere, popular votes in two states and the District of Columbia legalized same-sex marriage. However, federal law continued to bar recognition of same-sex marriage while offering no protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Both the Obama administration and Congress supported abusive counterterrorism laws and policies, including detention without charge at Guantanamo Bay, restrictions on the transfer of detainees held there, and prosecutions in a fundamentally flawed military commission system.
Attacks by US aerial drones were carried out in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and elsewhere, with important legal questions about the attacks remaining unanswered.
The administration has taken no steps toward accountability for torture and other abuses committed by US officials in the so-called “war on terror,” and a Justice Department criminal investigation into detainee abuse concluded without recommending any charges. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence completed a more than 6,000-page report detailing the CIA’s rendition, detention, and interrogation program, but has yet to seek the report’s declassification so it can be released to the public.
“The Obama administration has a chance in its second term to develop with Congress a real plan for closing Guantanamo and definitively ending abusive counterterrorism practices,” McFarland said. “A failure to do so puts Obama at risk of going down in history as the president who made indefinite detention without trial a permanent part of US law.”

Current Affairs India- World Report-2013 on women

India rated poorly against protection of women


India has been accused of “failure” to curb incidents of sexual violence against women and for “restrictions” on right to free speech by global rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW), which said the country continues to have “significant human rights problems.”
“India has a thriving civil society, free media, and an independent judiciary”, the city-based rights group said in its assessment of rights abuses in India. However, it added “longstanding abusive practices, corruption, and lack of accountability for perpetrators foster human rights violations.”
Discrimination
In its 665-page World Report 2013, it said government initiatives, including police reform and improved access to health care and education, “languish” due to poor implementation. “Many women, children, Dalits, tribal communities, religious minorities, people with disabilities, and sexual and gender minorities remain marginalised and continue to suffer discrimination because of government failure to train public officials in stopping discriminatory behaviour,” HRW said.
The rights group was critical of India for the way it has addressed the problem of violence against women, saying that incidents of violence against women and girls continued in 2012, with increased reports of sexual assault, including against those with disabilities.
“India has yet to enact amendments to reform its penal laws to recognise a wide range of sexual offences,” it said.
While the Central government modified its protocols for handling rape investigations, removing questions on the degrading “two-finger test”, the changes still fall short of World Health Organization guidelines on sexual assault, especially regarding medical treatment for victims.
On India’s performance in the area of freedom of expression, HRW said the government used laws to tighten internet censorship, raising concerns about restrictions on the right to free speech.

Friday, February 1, 2013

Current Affairs Egypt after emergency law

Violence flares in Egypt after emergency law imposed

 CAIRO (Reuters) - A man was shot dead on Monday in a fifth day of violence in Egypt that has killed 50 people and prompted the Islamist president to declare a state of emergency in an attempt to end a wave of unrest sweeping the Arab world's biggest nation.
Emergency rule announced by President Mohamed Mursi on Sunday covers the cities of Port Said, Ismailia and Suez. The army has already been deployed in two of those cities and cabinet approved a measure to let soldiers arrest civilians.
A cabinet source told Reuters any trials would be before civilian courts, but the step is likely to anger protesters who accuse Mursi of using high-handed security tactics of the kind they fought against to oust President Hosni Mubarak.
Egypt's politics have become deeply polarised since those heady days two years ago, when protesters were making most of the running in the Arab Spring revolutions that sent shockwaves through the region and Islamists and liberals lined up together.
Although Islamists have won parliamentary and presidential elections, the disparate opposition has since united against Mursi. Late last year he moved to expand his powers and push a constitution with Islamist leanings through a referendum, punctuated by violent street protests.
Mursi's call for a national dialogue meeting on Monday to help end the crisis was spurned by his main opponents.
They accuse Mursi of hijacking the revolution, listening only to his Islamist allies and breaking a promise to be a president for all Egyptians. Islamists say their rivals want to overthrow by undemocratic means Egypt's first freely elected leader.
Anti-Mursi protesters were out on the streets again in Cairo and elsewhere on Monday, the second anniversary of one of the bloodiest days in the revolution that erupted on January 25, 2011, and ended Mubarak's iron rule 18 days later.
CONCERNS
Hundreds of demonstrators in Port Said, Ismailia and Suez, cities which all lie on the economically vital Suez Canal, had turned out against Mursi's decision on Sunday within moments of him speaking. Activists there pledged to defy a curfew that starts at 9 p.m. (1700 GMT).
Instability in Egypt has raised concerns in Western capitals, where officials worry about the direction of a key regional player that has a peace deal with Israel.
The political unrest has been exacerbated by street violence linked to death penalties imposed on soccer supporters convicted of involvement in stadium rioting a year ago.
In Cairo on Monday, police fired volleys of teargas at stone-throwing protesters near Tahrir Square, cauldron of the anti-Mubarak uprising. A 46-year-old bystander was killed by a gunshot, a security source said. It was not clear who opened fire.
"We want to bring down the regime and end the state that is run by the Muslim Brotherhood," said Ibrahim Eissa, a 26-year-old cook, protecting his face from teargas wafting towards him.
Propelled to the presidency in a June election by the Muslim Brotherhood, Mursi has lurched through a series of political crises and violent demonstrations, complicating his task of shoring up the economy and of preparing for a parliamentary election to cement the new democracy in a few months.
"The protection of the nation is the responsibility of everyone. We will confront any threat to its security with force and firmness within the remit of the law," Mursi said, angering many of his opponents when he wagged his finger at the camera.
The president offered condolences to families of victims of violence and also called a dialogue meeting on Monday at 6 p.m. (1600 GMT) between Islamist allies and their liberal, leftist and other opponents to discuss the crisis.
The main opposition National Salvation Front coalition rejected the offer as "cosmetic and not substantive" and set several conditions that have not been met in the past, such as forming a national salvation government. They also demanded that Mursi announce his responsibility for the bloodshed.
SECURITY MEASURES
"We will send a message to the Egyptian people and the president of the republic about what we think are the essentials for dialogue. If he agrees to them, we are ready for dialogue," opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei told a news conference.
The opposition Front has distanced itself from the latest flare-ups but said Mursi should have acted far sooner to impose security measures that would have ended the violence.
"Of course we feel the president is missing the real problem on the ground, which is his own policies," Front spokesman Khaled Dawoud said after Mursi made his declaration.
Other activists said Mursi's measures to try to impose control on the turbulent streets could backfire.
"Martial law, state of emergency and army arrests of civilians are not a solution to the crisis," Ahmed Maher of the April 6 movement that helped galvanise the 2011 uprising said. "All this will do is further provoke the youth. The solution has to be a political one that addresses the roots of the problem."
Thousands of mourners joined funerals in Port Said for the latest victims in the Mediterranean port city. Seven people were killed there on Sunday when residents joined marches to bury 33 others who had been killed a day earlier, most by gunshot wounds in a city where arms are rife.
Protests erupted there on Saturday after a court sentenced to death several people from the city for their role in deadly soccer violence last year, a verdict residents saw as unfair. The anger swiftly turned against Mursi and his government.
Rights activists said Mursi's declaration was a backward step for Egypt, which was under emergency law for Mubarak's entire 30-year rule. His police used the sweeping arrest provisions to muzzle dissent and round up opponents, including members of the Brotherhood and even Mursi himself.
Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch in Cairo said the police, still hated by many Egyptians for their heavy-handed tactics under Mubarak, would once again have the right to arrest people "purely because they look suspicious", undermining efforts to create a more efficient and respected police force.
"It is a classic knee-jerk reaction to think the emergency law will help bring security," she said. "It gives so much discretion to the Ministry of Interior that it ends up causing more abuse, which in turn causes more anger."

India foreign policy current affair and Discussion

Lesson on diplomacy, from an Iranian  -Chinmaya R. Gharekhan write to The hindu

A recent Track II discussion on New Delhi-Tehran ties was an eye-opener on the need for a foreign policy that is not based on the appeasment of any country
Track II meetings can be useful when participants express their views candidly, without worrying about offending the sensitivities of others. When the event is held in India, visiting think tankers take pain not to upset their hosts. Since most foreigners have rightly concluded that Indians are not only flattery prone but credulous as well, they are usually complimentary about India’s role in various situations such as in Afghanistan, Syria, Middle East, etc.
It is therefore refreshing when a visiting participant in a Track II meeting gives free rein to his views about India’s foreign policy as was the case when an Iranian expert, familiar with the official thinking of his government, spoke his mind at an event in Delhi some time ago. Other Iranian participants at the same meeting spoke in a similar vein.
‘Inclined towards U.S.’
India, he said, was anxious not to make the United States unhappy. “Your ‘qibla’,” he said, “is Washington.” India was much inclined towards the U.S. and should reconsider striking a balance in its foreign policy; India had some shortcomings and should reconsider its relations with Iran; India was not being pragmatic but opportunistic. Traditionally, India enjoyed huge social capital in Iran; it was hugely popular with the Iranian people. All that had been destroyed for generations in one stroke because of India’s anti-Iran vote in the International Atomic Energy Agency. India could not vote against Iran and claim, at the same time, that Iran was important for India; it just did not make sense. A little later in the interactive session, he reiterated his view that India could not vote against Iran and, at the same time, say it wanted to work with Iran. “I repeat this because it was a very harmful act and it is very hard for any friend of India in Iran to accept this.”
Some Indian participants, evidently upset and taking advantage of this candour, reminded the Iranian gentleman that Iran had always sided with Pakistan and asked him what it was that Iran had done for India, that Iran was buying wheat from the U.S. but was not willing to buy it from India, that Iran was spreading radicalisation among the Shia community in India, that India says Iran is important for India but Iran never says India is important for Iran, etc. Someone pointed out that Shiite Iran supported the Taliban in Afghanistan, which was a diehard Sunni movement.
The Iranian friend — we have to describe him as a friend since friends are supposed to talk frankly without worrying about offending anyone — was not nonplussed. It was not Iran which placed obstacles for Indian wheat sales in Iran; this was a matter of business considerations. He added that India could not have an unfriendly attitude towards Iran and, at the same time, expect special consideration. Iran was a land of moderation, not a land of extremism; it never exported Shia extremism to India. If there is Shia extremism in India, there is also Hindu extremism, he added for good measure. As for supporting Pakistan, he said Iran had to, since Pakistan was a neighbour and a friendly country, but Iran had never done anything against India and wanted to be helpful to both. He rubbished the reports about supporting the Taliban and added that India had been in touch with the Taliban.
On the nuclear issue, the Iranian expert said Iran was not asking for anything more or less than the rights and obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran had always been in full compliance with its treaty obligations. No section of Iranian society saw nuclear weapons as a matter of privilege or security. Islamic jurisprudence specifically forbade intentionally polluting the atmosphere. Nuclear weapons did not provide security to nuclear weapon states; the U.S. and Nato had nukes but of what use had they been in Afghanistan? Had India been able to use them against Pakistan? As for some ‘evidence’ contained in a laptop revealed in Vienna, it was fabricated and a cheap argument.
The ‘friend’ used the very point raised by the Saudis and others; India, he pointed out, could easily get oil from other sources, Iran was not really important for India as an energy source.
Instead of taking offence at his remarks, we ought to draw some lessons from them.
Unlike Iran, which never says India is important for it, Indian strategic community never tires of repeating how crucial Iran is to us for its energy resources, for alternative access to Afghanistan and for the northern corridor to Central Asia. For good measure, we often remind ourselves of the fact that there is a large Shia community in India, the assumption being that the Shias in India expect the government to be mindful of their religious sentiments while deciding on the policy towards Iran. Such talk only strengthens Iran’s attitude of being somewhat contemptuous or dismissive of India. It further makes people in Iran and India conclude that India needs Iran much more than Iran needs India, if at all.
As of today — and this must be emphasised — Iran certainly needs India’s friendship. It is true that our anti-Iran vote in IAEA has harmed our relations with Tehran, but international relations cannot forever be held hostage to past actions. We ourselves have long forgotten even the fact that many countries had voted against us in the United Nations at the time of Bangladesh’s war for independence in 1971.
The Iranian friend was right; there are other sources from where India can buy oil. Saudi Arabia would be delighted if we were to turn to it to make up the shortfall, since it would clearly be interpreted as India siding with it in the undeclared politico-sectarian war against Iran. (This is one reason why India would not want to do so.) But the number of buyers of Iranian oil is dwindling fast and Iran is hard put to find alternative buyers, even at discounted prices. Contrary to what our friend said, his Oil Minister has publicly acknowledged that Iran’s oil exports fell by 40 per cent last year.
Iran needs India’s friendship
The Prime Minister paid an official visit to Iran last year for the non-aligned summit, no doubt upsetting the Americans. The fact that he was ‘granted an audience’ by the supreme leader should not flatter us. Iran certainly needs friends like India. Would the supreme leader have ‘received’ the Prime Minister if his country did not face sanctions? Iran surely knows that India has not joined in the unilateral sanctions imposed by the West. If Iran, in the face of these facts, has convinced itself that India’s ‘qibla’ is in the direction of Washington, there is nothing we can do to disabuse it of its thinking.
The above analysis is not an argument for downgrading Iran’s importance for us and for the region of which it is a part. Rather, it is meant to keep in mind what Harish Khare, the respected columnist, recently observed: Appeasement policy does not serve national interest, in domestic politics or in international relations. His advice is aimed at the government but is equally true at the non-governmental level. International relations must be conducted on the basis of reciprocity and mutuality of interests. We also have to keep in mind that countries which at present have strained, even hostile relations with Iran, can and will change their policy at a time of their choosing; we should not be left surprised.
(Chinmaya R. Gharekhan, former Indian Ambassador to the United Nations, was until recently Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Special Envoy for West Asia) 
 

Current Affairs on Midnight’s Children Controversy

A laboured journey for Midnight’s Children
--Hasan Suroor

 

Deepa Mehta’s film only confirms the impossibility of translating into a visual format the magic realism central to Rushdie’s most celebrated work
As Indian cinemagoers finally get to see Midnight’s Children, due for general release on February 1, here’s some friendly advice: keep expectations low — I mean really, really low — or else you are likely to feel crushingly disappointed.
Although Salman Rushdie himself has written the screenplay, it is a parody of his great novel. After the first half, enlivened by scenes of levity such as Dr. Aadam Aziz examining Naseem limb by limb through a hole in the purdah, it descends into chaos and boredom. The weakest bits are those that deal with serious politics — the trauma of Partition, the break-up of Pakistan, Indira Gandhi’s emergency and its excesses, all of which lie at the heart of the book. The focus, instead, is on its farcical elements. 
Rushdie and Deepa Mehta Dancing in front of film poster

It is cringing to see one of the most celebrated works of the 20th century reduced to that tackiest of Bollywood clichés: babies switched at birth setting off a chain of unintended consequences.
The novel’s most magical moment is when Saleem Sinai arrives into the world exactly at the same time as independent India is being born and thus becomes “handcuffed to history” for the rest of his life. In the film, however, it comes through as a cheap gag: we see images of hundreds of “midnight’s children” comically juxtaposed with exploding fireworks to welcome India’s freedom from colonial rule. And then comes the “Big Switch” instigated by a cardboard revolutionary with some oddly reactionary ideas about how to achieve social justice.
You might say, but all that is in the book. Yes, and that’s the problem: Midnight’s Children is unfilmable. A sprawling fantasy of epic proportions, hinged on an abstract idea, it is a film-maker’s nightmare. The world’s best directors — and without doubt Deepa Mehta is one of them — will struggle to deal with the sheer sweep and ambition of Midnight’s Children with its surreal subplots and a jerky narrative.
Rushdie as screenplay writer
Mehta has admitted that compressing such a big book into a two-hour film was hugely “challenging” and that she was keen for Rushdie to write the screenplay precisely because she felt that he would be less “intimidated by the process of elimination.” Rushdie himself has said it was “heartbreaking,” over how much he had to leave out in the end. With the stuffing taken out, we are left with a film that bears only a faint resemblance to its source material.
“With the book’s wryly witty tone mostly gone, all that’s left is plot — diminished yet recitative, like episodic milestones duly checked off on a laboured journey. There’s scant flow and consequently, from us, scant engagement. We look at the unfolding spectacle with our eyes wide but our emotions closed — so much to see, so little to feel,” is how Toronto’s The Globe and Mail described it when it was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival.
‘No focus’
An American critic wrote that it struggles “to incorporate most of Rushdie’s teeming subplots” and fails to find “a narrative focus.”
In Britain, the reaction has been similarly lukewarm. It has been variously described as “unfocused,” “meandering,” and “plodding” with Rushdie’s screenplay flagged as the main problem.
“Salman Rushdie isn’t everyone’s idea of a literary genius. But if you admired his Booker Prize-winning novel and find this film lacking, it can only be largely the writer’s own fault since 60 years of history and 600 sprawling pages have been compressed by him into a little less than two and a half hours on screen,” said the London Evening Standard.
Though comparatively more sympathetic, The Times also pointed out that “Rushdie’s screenplay tends to get bogged down in moments of narrative stagnation.”
A straw poll by me at a central London theatre where I saw it revealed that those who had read the novel found the film too slight (``it jumps from scene to scene,’’ said one) and those who hadn’t struggled to understand what it was all about.
The truth is that Rushdie’s magic realism is not the stuff of cinema or indeed theatre as we saw when the Royal Shakespeare Company staged it in London in 2003. Academic and writer Germaine Greer famously likened it to a tacky “costume drama.” The play was criticised for trying to squeeze “huge narrative gallons into a pint pot.”
Rushdie was heavily involved with that production too. Wiser by experience, he has tried to cut out the flab this time but has gone too far in the opposite direction. All of which confirms the impossibility of translating Midnight’s Children into a visual format — it becomes either too chaotic or too lean with all the meat gone.
The ultimate tragedy is that thanks to Rushdie’s persistence there is a danger that his greatest achievement could end up being remembered only as a bad play or a bad film rather than as a literary masterpiece. 
Mr. Hasan Suroor at The Hindu

 

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Demand for Small States in India

Advocates of smaller states have a strong case. Bharat ought to explore for more reorganization because it now not has to concern regarding the country’s unity

I recently stumbled on some fascinating news reports, qualitative analysis from the year 1914, on the then growing demand for a separate state for Telugu speakers. In cities like Guntur, Nellore and Vijayawada (known at the time as Bezwada), several conferences were command, inquiring for a separation of Telugu-speaking districts from Madras Presidency, with areas from the Nizam’s Dominions being adscititious on later once conditions allowable.

Tamils on Telugus

The Tamil elite group didn't take kindly to the present movement for AN ‘Andhra desa’. Thus, in its issue of sixth June 1914, Swadesamitran, a wide circulated newspaper revealed out of Madras, wrote slightingly of a conference in Guntur that claimed that Tamil domination blocked the progress of the Andhras. The Andhras, it absolutely was argued here, required to interrupt freed from the Tamils to understand their hopes and ambitions.

Swadesamitran aforesaid it couldn't “understand the explanation of this argument. If Tamilians ar forward in education, etc., their company will solely infuse a spirit of emulation within the minds of the Andhras. however will it impede the progress of the latter? The Andhras aren't a group of uncivilized barbarians. they're AN intelligent community with AN ancient civilisation and therefore the example of the Tamilians is sure to produce in them new needs and aspirations. this is often precisely what's happening. this feeling among the Andhras that they need not been progressing abundant, and their demand for a separate province and equal privileges with the Tamilians indicate solely this new want and aspiration. we tend to ar at a loss to know the that means of their demand that they ought to be separated from the Tamilians. Is it that {they do|they ar doing} not need the Tamilians to step into their portion of the country? The ultranationalistic leaders of the country are attempt their best to try to to away with the excellence of caste and creed in Bharat, that prevents the union of the folks and impedes the progress. it's thus too bad that the Andhras ought to {try to|attempt to|try ANd} cut loose from} others and kind an independent community.”

Despite Tamil agnosticism, the movement for a separate state of Telugu speakers persisted. Through the Nineteen Twenties and Thirties, Congress leaders from the Andhra districts raised the demand at conferences of the party. inside the Congress, these Andhrawallahs had one sturdy ally — Gandhi, UN agency early on, recognised the importance of linguistic states — and several other sturdy opponents, like Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel, UN agency disquieted that such demands would weaken the unity of the nation-in-the-making. Already, by the Thirties, Muslim intellectuals had begun moving off from the Congress, finding refuge instead during a fresh revived Muslim League, currently headed by the good Muhammad Ali solon.

Renewed demand for separate state

The demand for a separate Muslim state gathered pace, and eventually resulted within the creation of Asian nation. However, once Bharat gained its independence, the Andhra speakers revived their demand for the reconfiguration of provincial boundaries to make compact units whose populations spoke a similar language. however Nehru and Patel were disquieted that (as with the Muslim League and Pakistan) separate provinces might become the launch pad for separate nations.

Meanwhile Gandhi died, removing from the scene the foremost powerful non-Andhra supporter of state. The Congress supreme headquarters currently thought that the demand would slowly fall back. Instead, it intense, with protest conferences being control all across the Madras Presidency.

In October 1952, a veteran congresswoman named Potti Sriramulu went on a quick hard the immediate constitution of AN Andhra State. The Chief Minister of Madras, C. Rajagopalachari, and therefore the Prime Minister, Nehru, each unheeded him. however Sriramulu was resolute. He fasted, and fasted, dying throughout the night of 15/16 Dec when fifty six days while not food. His martyrdom aggravated widespread public anger, with hartals and dharnas control across the Telugu country, and demonstrators assaultive and burning government offices and railway stations.

Unnerved by the size of the protests, and therefore the intensity of the anger, Nehru and Rajaji capitulated. AN Andhra State was shaped in 1953, provocative South Dravidian, Marathi, and Malayalam speakers all to demand separate states of their own. A States shakeup Commission was shaped, that counseled the constitution of linguistic states.

Unity and linguistic states

I have long control that the creation of linguistic states has safeguarded the unity of Bharat. Asian nation was divided, and land subject to a drawn-out warfare, as a result of Bengali speakers within the one case and Tamil speakers within the alternative were refused the autonomy and dignity they wished and merited. On the opposite hand, the very fact that in Bharat voters ar liberal to educate and administer themselves in their own language has created a sense of comfort and security.

Linguistic states were crucial at one stage of Indian history, however have they currently outlived their usefulness? In north province, within the interior districts of state and of geographical region, and within the craggy districts of northern {bengal|Bengal|geographical ara|geographic area|geographical region|geographic region} — altogether these places there are vigorous movements line for separation from the parent province. ar these movements legitimate, and can they persist? Or ar they spurious and thus to be disregarded?

Of of these struggles for separate states, the movement for Telangana is that the oldest still because the most intense. once state was legitimate, the residents of those interior districts, once beneath the rule of the Nizam of Hyderabad, disquieted that they might be dominated by the a lot of prosperous and educated elements of the State, that were on the coast, and antecedently a part of the British-ruled Madras Presidency. The inlanders therefore asked for special safeguards, and, once these weren't granted, launched a significant front within the year 1969, hard a separate state of Telangana. Ever since, the demand has been persistently raised, with varied levels of intensity — however it's ne'er gone away.

The leaders and opinion-makers of coastal Andhra don't want to envision their state tamed 2. The rhetoric they use in opposing the Telangana movement is strikingly the same as that employed by the Tamils, back in 1914 or thereabouts, after they asked the Andhras to not fire a separate state of their own. Why cut up a unity once achieved, they say. And if the residents of Telangana need to progress, doesn't living with the a lot of advanced residents of coastal Andhra provide them the required impetus to try to to so?

Politics of Telangana

It took forty (and more) years for the Telugu speakers of Madras Presidency to create the Tamils see the sense of the demand for state. The Telangana movement is already forty (and more) years old; and it still hasn’t quite achieved what it aimed for. Before the final Elections of 2004, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti allied with the Congress, that informally secure it might concede the TRS’ main demand, whereas formally stating that it might produce a States shakeup Commission if voted to power. The Congress alliance came to power in 2004, however a replacement SRC didn't fall out. This LED to a renewal of the protests, whereupon, in Dec 2009, the then Home Minister, P. Chidambaram, secure that the demand for Telangana would presently be granted. however he quickly backtracked. a lot of recently, the Bharatiya Janata Party has aforesaid that it might produce a Telangana state inside one hundred days of coming back to power at the Centre. like the Congress in 2004, this promise is also opportunist instead of scrupulous — meant solely to achieve votes and seats for its alliance.

My own read — writing as each scholarly person and national — is that whereas linguistic states were necessary within the initial, early, stages of Indian independence, it's going to currently be time for an additional shakeup of states. The proponents of Telangana, Vidharbha, and Gorkhaland all have a strong case.

Their regions ar well outlined in AN ecological and cultural sense, and have traditionally been neglected by the a lot of powerful or richer elements of the State. Likewise, state is way large to be administered as one unit. Breaking it up into 3 or four states would cause simpler and targeted governance.

After sixty five testing years of independence, there would like now not be any concern concerning the unity of Bharat. The country isn't near to split, neither is it near to become a absolutism. the $64000 issues in Bharat these days need to do with the standard of governance. Smaller states is also a technique to handle this downside.

What need to be done about Health Care System

Unless the govt. regulates the expansion of the non-public sector and makes it responsible, the worn-down public health infrastructure can't be revived

The absence of a well thought out policy framework for strengthening the health system is that the most significant issue facing the health sector in India. within the government, there's no clarity on what the nation’s health system ought to be ten years thence. ought to it's a public sector dominated system like Brazil or China; or a regulated private-led just like the U.S.; or one wherever each sectors perform however have only 1 money handler as within the U.K.? In Japan, delivery is non-public however the govt. sets the costs. every possibility has its prices, benefits, tradeoffs and systems to make sure management on prices and quality.

Unregulated

India could be a distinctive school of thought model with a personal sector-led health system that's unregulated and has no rules of the sport wheat out, not while nominal as those set down for gap a liquor look. And so, one will got wind of a rest home in an exceedingly residential colony; throw infectious waste anyplace, charge any quantity that the market permits and don't have any systems of oversight to assure quality. The non-public sector is additional incentivised by excise duty waivers, subsidized loans for establishing hospitals, tax breaks and a liberalised insurance market with tax exemptions for the premium.

More recently, a brand new innovation has emerged referred to as government sponsored insurance schemes (Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, Arogyashri, Kalaignar, etc.) underneath that governments purchase the insurance on behalf of the people/target cluster for providing cashless services for inmate care, chiefly surgeries. underneath this theme, the suppliers charge on a DRG basis, the insurance firms have assured incomes and also the entire risk is borne by the govt.. whereas such schemes have widened access by creating non-public sector facilities offered, their impact on addressing the 3 important problems with the health sector — equity, quality, and potency — has not been self-addressed. Instead, rating structures area unit distorted and new dimensions of dishonorable and corrupt practices have entered the health sector that continues to register inflation at thirty per cent, with negligible impact on reducing ruinous expenditures, impoverishing millions within the method.

Privatisation of the health sector started in late Eighties, accelerated within the Nineties with the additional withdrawal of the state underneath the backbreaking state of the International Monetary Fund structural adjustment, and got additional bold with the in depth incentives provided. In 2005, the state bounced back with a three-fold increase within the budget to revitalize the agricultural health delivery systems underneath the National Rural Health Mission, running as a parallel track to the non-public eco system. it's this duality and dysfunctional policymaking that's haemorrhaging the arena and needs to be stopped directly. The worn down public health infrastructure can't be revived while not ever-changing the principles of the sport, transferral in legal provisions to manage additional growth of the non-public sector, create it economical and responsible and supply a level-playing field.

Bihar experiment

It is time to recognise the market failures inherent to the current sector and also the role of the economics that's sustaining it, creating it more and more not possible to manage and establish institutional mechanisms with the requisite capabilities to effectively manage the mess. Bihar’s recent experiment of outsourcing medicine to the non-public sector is telling — unqualified persons were utilized at some centres, however no action was taken as a result of political pressure. it's alarming to suppose that variety of innocent individuals might need been given the incorrect designation and placed on unneeded medication. this is often simply alittle example for example the type of mess we tend to area unit in.

The policy confusion is worsened by the push for larger decentralization while not making certain the provision of capacities at those levels to manage such complicated systems. it's against this state of affairs that Chhattisgarh’s recent policy initiative has to be viewed. The policy of acquiring out diagnostic services to non-public sector networks in 379 public facilities for ten years, guaranteeing a minimum patient load and allowing paying patients additionally and costs pegged to those procured underneath the Central Government Health theme (CGHS), monitored and managed by a 3rd party, is fraught with adverse implications for the strengthening of the general public sector and large prices for the govt., ought to it prefer to pay money for them.

Absence of strategy

It is not the outsourcing that's wrong. it's the absence of a technique to draw on the strengths of the general public and personal sectors. If the govt. is unable to recruit workers to determine laboratories in, say, a district like Bastar, it's unclear however the non-public sector are often lured to line up, for example, a radiology unit, there unless Brobdingnagian amounts area unit paid to that to hide the property risks concerned. Likewise, outsourcing is being tried in areas that have already got laboratory facilities. whereas the worth addition isn't clear, it'll beyond question end in the closure of the general public sector services and conjointly entail paying 3 times a lot of to the non-public sector. And it'll be 3 times because the CGHS costs that area unit being taken as a benchmark, supported the common of costs quoted on a young basis. there's no scientific basis for CGHS rate-fixing and such a system can solely end in overpaying the non-public sector in Chhattisgarh wherever the costs of inputs vary from those in urban center or Old Delhi and between Raipur and Bastar. a lot of worrying area unit the qualifying criteria that solely massive non-public sector networks like company hospitals will meet. tiny however glorious not-for-profit hospitals just like the Shahid hospital in Dalli Raja in Durg or the Jan Swasthya Sahayog at Giniari in Bilaspur can each be disqualified.

What has to be done

Knee-jerk solutions and brainless tinkering have had a calamitous result on the health sector in India. the govt. has to explore health system development and place in situ requisite conditions, like AN institutional capability to manage supplier behaviour through well set down national protocols and commonplace in operation procedures, penalties and incentive structures. It ought to explore efficient choices like the intensive use of technology that allows electronic transmission of samples for designation at centralised laboratories, rating of services, develop IT systems to closely monitor not quantitative however qualitative outcomes still, place in situ grievance redress systems, adjustment and insulating the social control systems the least bit levels from political pressures to create people from the ANM to the specialist, the ward boy to the laboratory technician — public or non-public — responsible to outcomes and patients, before gap up partnerships with the non-public sector on such an oversized scale.

What has to be done is understood, however sadly a way to eff isn't. Governments, at the Centre and within the States, have to be compelled to enable individuals with field expertise and sensible information of the health system to contribute their experience. what's conjointly required nowadays quite ever is that the have to be compelled to hear the bottom — as patients, ladies in villages, line employees, the unfortunate doctor within the PHC, all have a distinct story to inform. we tend to cannot afford any longer blundering!

Is life exist after Death ?

Robert Lanza, MD

Chief Scientific Officer of Advanced Cell Technology

                  Many of us fear death. We believe in death because we have been told we will die. We associate ourselves with the body, and we know that bodies die. But a new scientific theory suggests that death is not the terminal event we think.
One well-known aspect of quantum physics is that certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the “many-worlds” interpretation, states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the ‘multiverse’). A new scientific theory – called biocentrism – refines these ideas. There are an infinite number of universes, and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling – the ‘Who am I?’- is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn’t go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. But does this energy transcend from one world to the other?
Consider an experiment that was recently published in the journal Science showing that scientists could retroactively change something that had happened in the past. Particles had to decide how to behave when they hit a beam splitter. Later on, the experimenter could turn a second switch on or off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle did in the past. Regardless of the choice you, the observer, make, it is you who will experience the outcomes that will result. The linkages between these various histories and universes transcend our ordinary classical ideas of space and time. Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply holo-projecting either this or that result onto a screen. Whether you turn the second beam splitter on or off, it’s still the same battery or agent responsible for the projection.
According to Biocentrism, space and time are not the hard objects we think. Wave your hand through the air – if you take everything away, what’s left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. You can’t see anything through the bone that surrounds your brain. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.
Death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world. In the end, even Einstein admitted, “Now Besso” (an old friend) “has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us…know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Immortality doesn’t mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether.
This was clear with the death of my sister Christine. After viewing her body at the hospital, I went out to speak with family members. Christine’s husband – Ed – started to sob uncontrollably. For a few moments I felt like I was transcending the provincialism of time. I thought about the 20-watts of energy, and about experiments that show a single particle can pass through two holes at the same time. I could not dismiss the conclusion: Christine was both alive and dead, outside of time.
Christine had had a hard life. She had finally found a man that she loved very much. My younger sister couldn’t make it to her wedding because she had a card game that had been scheduled for several weeks. My mother also couldn’t make the wedding due to an important engagement she had at the Elks Club. The wedding was one of the most important days in Christine’s life. Since no one else from our side of the family showed, Christine asked me to walk her down the aisle to give her away.
Soon after the wedding, Christine and Ed were driving to the dream house they had just bought when their car hit a patch of black ice. She was thrown from the car and landed in a banking of snow.
“Ed,” she said “I can’t feel my leg.”
She never knew that her liver had been ripped in half and blood was rushing into her peritoneum.
After the death of his son, Emerson wrote “Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.”
Whether it’s flipping the switch for the Science experiment, or turning the driving wheel ever so slightly this way or that way on black-ice, it’s the 20-watts of energy that will experience the result. In some cases the car will swerve off the road, but in other cases the car will continue on its way to my sister’s dream house.
Christine had recently lost 100 pounds, and Ed had bought her a surprise pair of diamond earrings. It’s going to be hard to wait, but I know Christine is going to look fabulous in them the next time I see her.