India’s scholarship scandal why from Gulf news

 Why the Indian media not giving out this news first ?

Shame on people in the  education sector.
Just having  a clean PM is not enough every Indian  has to feel bribery is bad and stop doing it

India’s scholarship scandal:

 How officials, bankers cheated poor students

Government officials, private institutions and banks have been colluding, finds report

Published:  June 15, 2019 16:02

IANS

  

 cash-3829601_1920

100 Rupee banknotes. For illustrative purposes only.

Image Credit: Agency

New Delhi: Initial investigations by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the multi-million scholarship scam reveals a deep-rooted nexus between government officials, private institutions and public sector banks to siphon-off funds meant for the students who need financial aid the most.

Sources in CBI revealed to IANS that the scam that affected the scholarship fund meant for children below the poverty line (BPL) was spread across Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab.

Though the scope of the investigation pursued by CBI's Shimla branch is limited to this region, sources said that the scam is widespread and similar complaints have been made in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and other parts of the country.

"In the interest of the poor and SC/ST [schedule cast/schedule tribe] students, the agency can take up more such cases if the matter is recommended to us by other states," said a highly-placed source in the CBI.

The agency's investigation revealed that institutions like Lovely Professional University and Karnataka University established centres in different states, including Himachal Pradesh, where documents of SC/ST and BPL students were collected but admissions not granted. Later, with the connivance of officials of the Education Department and banks, fake bank accounts were opened on the basis of genuine documents (and addresses) secured by the centres.

For instance, almost 250 students of village Dehri in Himachal's Kangra district had applied at these centres, which took the documents of these students but did not give them admission.

Subsequently, a large number of fake accounts were opened in the State Bank of India and the Allahabad Bank on the basis of documents submitted by the students and the bank officials did not verify the account holders, facilitating the con men siphoning off the scholarship money.

Last month, the CBI conducted raids at multiple locations in northern India in the Rs 2.5 billion scholarship scam related to pre- and post-matric scholarship scheme. The CBI sleuths carried out raids in 22 educational institutes across Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh and Haryana.

Besides the CBI, police in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh are also investigating scams related to scholarships where officials of the Education Department and private institutions have been found to be hand in glove. In Uttar Pradesh, the scam relates to the Minority Department, where scholarships of poor Muslim students were fraudulently siphoned-off by corrupt officials.

Midlevel You get what you pay for

"It was a midwife practice and we were not to intervene in the patient's care unless we were asked," she said.

A point that Dr. Robinson says was forcefully made to her by the head midwife.

"She put her finger right in my face and she said, 'This is a midwife practice, don't you physicians dare try to take care of these patients. … The only time that you're going to see a patient is if I tell you you're going to see a patient,'" Dr. Robinson told Ferrer.

By using midwives, who are paid less than doctors, HealthNet was reaping substantial savings. The lawsuit alleged that Medicaid was billed as though doctors had seen the patients when in fact their involvement had been minimal, if at all.

IU Health, which owns Methodist Hospital, and HealthNet had to pay $18 million back to the state and federal government in connection with billing practices. In litigation and in statements to us they denied any wrongdoing.

Dr. Robinson, still a practicing OB-GYN, was awarded $4.9 million. 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whistleblower-physician-exposes-dangerous-practice-involving-high-risk-pregnancies-at-indiana-hospital/

The story of @ sign

  What do you call the letter  @ in an email address?

washingtonpost.com  > Print Edition  > Sunday Outlook

Where It's At -- and Where It's Not

By Nancy Szokan

Sunday, October 2, 2005

I'm talking on the phone to an Israeli writer who goes by the nickname Winkie, and I want to send him some information. "What's your e-mail?" I ask.

"Winkie M, Strudel, Yahoo dot com," he says.
"Strudel?" I said. "As in the pastry?" (I'm thinking: Maybe he has a little bakery on the side?) "You mean WinkieM, then s-t-r-u-d- . . . "
"No, no -- it's strudel , that little A sign," he says. "I think you call it 'at'?"
Of course. With a little imagination, I could see that a slice of strudel resembles the @ sign that separates user name from host in e-mail addresses. "Strudel!" I hoot. Winkie, agreeing that it's funny, later sends me a list of words that people in other countries have used for the @ symbol -- most of them a lot more entertaining (if less efficient) than our simple "at."

The list, it turns out, came from an online site, Herodios.com, and was based largely on research done in the early days of e-mail by linguist Karen Steffen Chung of National Taiwan University. Her lengthy collection of @-words, as well as some additions from Post foreign correspondents, shows that while many countries have simply adopted the word "at," or call the symbol something like "circle A" or "curled A," more imaginative descriptions still hold sway in many places.
In Russia, for instance, it seems that the most common word for the @ is sobaka ( dog) or sobachka ( doggie) -- apparently because a computer game popular when e-mail was first introduced involved chasing an @-shaped dog on the screen. (Don't laugh; Pac-Man was shaped like a pie with a missing slice.) So when Natasha gives her e-mail address to someone, it comes out sounding like she calls herself "Natasha, the dog." "Everybody's used to it," says Peter Finn, The Post's Moscow correspondent, "but there are still jokes -- people say 'Natasha, don't be so hard on yourself.' " Ah, those crazy Russians.
Try this: Look at the @. What does it remind you of? Apparently it reminds a lot of people around the world of a monkey with a long and curling tail; thus, their e-mail addresses might include variations of the word for monkey. That's majmunsko in Bulgarian, m alpa in Polish , majmun in Serbian and shenja e majmunit ("the monkey sign") in Albanian. Or they might call it an "ape's tail": aapstert in Afrikaans, apsvans in Swedish , apestaart in Dutch, Affenschwanz among German-speaking Swiss. (Many Germans apparently used to say Klammeraffe , meaning "clinging monkey," or Schweinekringel , a pig's tail -- though these days it's usually just "at.") In Croatian, they call the sign "monkey," but they say the word in English. Go figure.
Does the sign make you think of a snail? That's what you might get in Korean ( dalphaengi)or Italian ( chiocciola) or sometimes Hebrew ( shablul, when they're not saying strudel). The French apparently flirted briefly with escargot. "Yes, it looks like a snail," noted one amused Korean. "But isn't it funny and ironic, since 'snail mail' is opposed to e-mail in English?"
Do you see the @ as a curled up cat? That's why it's sometimes kotek or "kitten" in Poland and miuku mauku in Finland, where cats say "miau. "
In Slovakia and the Czech Republic, it can be zavinac , or rolled-up pickled herring. In Sweden, when it's not a monkey's tail, it's a kanelbulle, or cinnamon bun. In Hungary, it's kukac, for worm or maggot.
Danes call it snabel, or elephant's trunk. In the tiny parts of France, Spain and Italy where a disappearing language called Occitan is still spoken, users call it alabast , which means "little hook." In Mandarin Chinese, it's xiao lao shu -- "little mouse" -- which must get confusing given the gizmo of the same name.
Now for the news, also known as the depressing part: As noted by Scott Herron, the compiler of the list at Herodios.com, some of these more colorful images appear to be fading, or are already gone. Many of Chung's correspondents note that their local e-mailers increasingly just say "at."
This might just be a result of the cultural hegemony of English. Or maybe, as e-mail has gone from exciting new technology to spam-filled work tool, it has ceased to inspire as much creativity. Instead you get the mundane Japanese atto maaku -- literally, the "at mark" -- and the Mongolian buurunhii dotorh aa -- "A in round circle."
More strudel, please.

Nancy Szokan, a Post editor, would love to tell people that her e-mail is szokann monkey sign washpost.com, but she doesn't live in Albania.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Efficacy of Accent Modification Training for International Medical Professionals

significant improvement in their abilities to pronounce words distinctly, stress words or syllables more accurately and use body language/facial expressions appropriately.

Communication skills are not an optional extra in medical training. Without appropriate communication skills, all our knowledge and intellectual efforts can easily be wasted. — Kurtz, Silverman, & Draper 2004

The program focused on reducing, not eliminating, a foreign accent, since elimination is usually unrealistic and unnecessary. In addition, the program helped participants minimise discomfort with small talk by increasing their knowledge of regional dialects, slang, grammar and cultural differences in communication styles.

the way they stressed words or syllables (37%), their accuracy in pronouncing words (22%), their intonation and fluency of speech (22%) and the volume at which they spoke (21%).

improvement in the participants’ ability to communicate like a native speaker of English (40%), to use their hands (29%) and facial expressions (27%) appropriately and to stress words or syllables more accurately (26%). They also noted an improvement in the participants’ speed of communication (24%) and pronunciation of words (21%) (Table 2).

this training as a valuable investment

learn to communicate in a manner that is consistent with US language and cultural norm 

Where is Medicine going

More than half of all surgeries may be unnecessary.

One-third of all medical office visits may not be needed. 

One-third of all hospital admissions may be iatrogenic. Errors still abound in medication, according to the IOM, resulting in more than 98,000 deaths during the last reporting period.

There is a virtual epidemic of diagnostic radiology with a resulting increase in the associated iatrogenic malignancy rates.

The Business of Medical Practice : Transformational Health 2.0 Skills for Doctors, Third Edition, edited by David E. Marcinko, and Hope Rachel Hetico, Springer Publishing Company, 2010.

+918296078842. kidney fraud

+918296078842.

What is "moral turpitude"?

What is  "moral turpitude"?
 IPC Sections 153A, 295 & 295Ais being invoked to  book every  tom Dick and  Harry by the  Indian police  which seems to be  doing  no crime fighting  but  seems very alert to book journalists,artists,social reformers and  thinkers.
one word/phrase which is used abundantly in IPC which is mostly a  carbon copy ( the present  generation may not even know what a carbon paper/carbon copy is ) i use this because n when they copied it there were no photo copy machines  ,scanners,digital cameras.

so let us understand this  nebulous concept  of  Moral turpitude.
The term "moral turpitude" evades definition.How come it is still being used in legal language ?
Although the term "moral turpitude" evades definition
"dated terms that were once in common parlance"

 In common parlance 'moral turpitude' means baseness of character. Concise Oxford Dictionary defines 'moral' — 'Concerned with goodness or badness of character or disposition or with distinction between right and wrong.....virtuous in general conduct..... 'Turpitude' means "baseness" depravity, wickedness". Thus any act which is contrary to good morals from society's point of view will come within the ambit of 'moral turpitude'. "The term "moral turpitude" is rather vague one and it may have different meaning in different contents. The term has generally been taken to mean to be a conduct contrary to justice, honesty, modesty or good morals and contrary to what a man owes to a fellow-man or to society in general. It has never been held that gravity Of punishment is to be considered in determining whether the misconduct involves moral turpitude or not" .1 Act of killing a person is normally attributed to a feeling of hurt or revenge; an act of personal vendetta, Per se an act of murder will not come within the broad concept of 'moral turpitude' as interpreted by courts.

moral turpitude. It is vague term, and its meaning depends to some extent on the state of public morals, it is anything which is done contrary to justice, honesty, principle, or good morals, an act of baseness, vileness, or depravity in the private and social duties which a man owes to his fellow man, or to society in general, contrary to the accepted and customary rule of right and duty between man and man, it implies something immoral in itself, regardless of fact whether it is punishable by law. 

how do these legal minds  get so cluttered is beyond my comprehension.

Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM)

Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM)

Is cleaning Toilets the duty of the Prime Minister?

The general public in India which in general lacks any awareness about cleanliness is responsible.  Not the prime minister, who dared to raise this topic in His independence day address.

Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) has been one of the key missions of the last Narendra Modi-led government since its launch in 2014.  No other ruling party in the past has been able to take issues of sanitation and cleanliness the way it was addressed under this mission. Howsoever hollow in its implementation, SBM did bring a paradigm shift in terms of changing behaviours — making sanitation and cleanliness a topic across towns. But would this be enough?

According to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), around 1.43 lakh tonnes of municipal solid waste (MSW) is generated across the country per day. Of this, 1.11 lakh tonnes per day TPD (77.6 per cent) is collected and 35,602 TPD (24.8 per cent) is processed. In a scenario, where major focus in any city is water, electricity and sanitation, waste has taken a backseat. The situation in all metropolitans of the country speaks volumes about this.

Cities are expanding and engulfing surrounding villages and dumpsites, which were once kilometres away, fall within the city now. Delhi, Bengaluru and Kolkata are classic examples of this. If metropolitans are struggling with population splurge and how to dispose waste, majorly plastics, smaller towns and cities lack resources and capacities to design sustainable waste management systems.

What would make SBM 2.0 work and what agenda should the Modi government be following on waste management in this term? Here are a few suggestions

End-to-end segregation

The key to good waste management is segregation. However, it is still not being practiced in true spirit. There is a common complaint from households that give segregated waste that that the collector mixes it. Cities, till date, do not have any system to support end-to-end segregation. This has to change.

If segregated waste is collected at a household level, the urban local bodies must ensure they have vehicles that can transport segregated waste. This segregated waste should then go to a processing where it can be further sorted. Till the time cities don’t put segregation at the heart of waste management the model will fail.

Ensuring better compliance

In 2016, the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016 were revised after 16 years. The rules focussed on generator responsibility and emphasised on segregation and decentralised processing, incineration and disposal being the last resort. The rules also mandated cities to revise their byelaws and states to submit action plans on solid waste management. However, this has not happened.

Across the country segregation levels are low, below 10 per cent, and there’s lax in monitoring of compliance of SWM Rules. Also, most cities do not have SWM bylaws.

It is imperative for the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) and CPCB to push state pollution control boards and urban departments for better compliance and enforcement. Also, the central government should create an appropriate national framework to incentivise and monitor implementation in states. For cases of non-compliance, strict punitive measures must be adopted.

SWM bylaws

According to SWM Rules, 2016, each urban local body needs to have byelaws that emphasise on segregation, user fee collection and fines for littering. Waste collection is a service households need to pay user a fee for.

Across, the country, sparing majorly metropolitans, user fee collection is not happening. This is also important from a perspective of creating a reverse demand for cleanliness — households pay and segregate waste, municipalities will have to make sure this waste is collected in a segregated manner daily and give better service. This needs to be implemented across the country.

Decentralised over centralised

It is clear that cities will make more revenue if they shift to decentralised systems over the usual ‘collect and dump’ mechanism. This will further cut corruption that happens in the name of transporting waste to dumpsites — trucks would do one round kilometres away from the city and dump the remaining waste and sell diesel.

A city needs to demarcate clusters where segregated waste can be further processed and reused. Cities such as Panjim, Ambikapur, Alappuzha, Muzaffarpur, Panchgani, Mysuru, Vellore and many more have shown the way. However, these practices need to be replicated. These cities do not have capital intensive technologies to manage their waste.

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They are composting wet waste, recycling dry waste and sending non-recyclable waste to cement plants or utilising it to make roads. Recently, the municipal corporations of Delhi identified 12 model wards that shall adopt decentralised systems, however, we are running out of time, cities as a whole need to work on developing systems. The time of pilots is over.

What technology?

The main compliance condition under the Municipal Solid Waste Management Rules, 2000 is focused on landfills. This shifted to decentralised and sustainable waste management in the SWM Rules, 2016. Decision makers still feel waste-to-energy plants would save our cities from drowning in garbage. Despite widespread protests, every city wants such plants.

Learning from the past, India’s experience with WTE plants has been unsatisfactory. The country’s first WTE plant was set up in 1987 in Timarpur, Delhi. It was shut down within 21 days due to poor quality of incoming waste. Since then, 14 more WTE plants of 130 MW capacities have been installed in the country. Of these, half have already been closed down and the remaining are under scrutiny for environmental violations.

According to To Burn or Not to Burn: Feasibility of Waste-to-Energy Plants in India, a report by Centre for Science and Environment, a New Delhi-based non-profit, Indian waste has low calorific value and does not support incineration. Of the 55 million tonnes of municipal solid waste generated every year, only about 15 per cent is non-biodegradable, non-recyclable, high-calorific value waste. This comes to about 30,000 tonnes of waste per day for WTE plants.

The total waste treatment capacity of the 48 existing, under-construction and proposed WTE plants is more than 37,000 tonnes per day. So, the idea that we need more WTE needs to be reconsidered. Or, we will be left with hundreds of white elephants in the middle of our cities.

The government should instead focus on minimising and segregating waste at source and then compost and recycle the waste. Instead of WTE, reduction of waste and maximum treatment of waste in situ should be prioritised. Legacy waste and fractions of waste that reach their end life and lay in dumpsite also need to be recovered.

So, alternative processes that use life-cycle thinking and energy recovery through conversion to refuse-derived fuel (RDF) that can be used in industries must be adopted when possible. Co-processing of end-life waste can be an alternative solution to thermal treatment of waste for cement firms. Waste is already widely co-processed in cement kilns in India. Cement plants — almost every Indian state has — can be upgraded for use of RDF with a little investment.

The plastic menace

India consumes 16.5 million tonnes (MT) of plastic annually. This is expected to increase to 20 MT by 2020, according to a report by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry. Of this, 43 per cent is plastic manufactured for single-use packaging material that mostly finds its way into litter bins, drains and rivers. The per capita consumption of plastics is 11 kg/annum, which is far less than developed countries but this is increasing.

There is no clear estimate on how much we generate — last estimation by the CPCB showed that India produces close to 25,940 TPD of plastic waste, of which approximately 15,000 TPD is collected.

The Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016 and its amendments notified companies to develop collection mechanisms for non-recyclable plastics under Extended Producers Responsibility. However, there’s lax in enforcement.

Presently, there are no targets set to reduce plastic consumption, no system of accountability of brand owners, producers, manufacturers, online companies (produced by more than 30,000 units, 90-95 per cent of them being small-scale informal entities). This needs to be looked into.

Brand owners need to incentivise return of packaged plastics to collection centres by launching deposit refund schemes or adding some value incentive to plastics.

Numerous states enforced plastic bans — 25 states like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Jammu & Kashmir, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and others have banned the use of plastic carry bags have banned a few single-use plastic products. However, just banning is not enough. Continuous monitoring and implementation of the ban is important. Also, there needs to be a clear assessment on availability of alternatives and ease of shifting businesses from plastic manufacturing to alternative jute/cloth bag manufacturing. This will push manufacturers to switch.

Social engineering

Behavioural change is the most important aspect of waste management. Urban local bodies need to engage with civic bodies, local self-help groups or active residents to ensure people segregate, minimise waste and compost at source.

Waste is generators’ responsibility — if municipalities focus on this aspect a lot will change. Also, bulk generators need to install systems to manage and sort waste at source. Minimisation needs to be practiced at the core. Involving the informal sector in setting up systems in cities could help too.


SBM 2.0 should focus on all these aspects to ensure the government’s agenda on making India clean is achieved in coming five years.

Ex chief justice of India a victim of simple Phishing

Ex  chief justice of India a victim of simple  Phishing

If one reads the  story it  is really very simple
How can such eminent justice can be so gullible.
How does it reflect on the competence of the  Highest court in the land where many more  complicated Nuanced cases need judgement .
The Delhi Police arrested a man accused of duping former Chief Justice of India Justice RM Lodha of Rs 1 Lakh. The accused, Dinesh Mali, was nabbed from Udaipur on June 7. An ATM card through which he withdrew the cheated amount has also been recovered, according to news agency PTI. His associate, Mukesh, is absconding, police said, adding efforts are on to arrest him as well.

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Justice Lodha had earlier approached the police, informing them that he was duped of Rs 1 lakh by a man who accessed his friend’s email account and sent him an email seeking money for medical treatment.


Dinesh Mali was arrested from Udaipur. (Express Photo)
In the FIR, Justice Lodha had said that he received an email from his friend, Justice B P Singh, a former Supreme Court judge. “I have been regularly corresponding with Justice B P Singh on arbitration matters. In the said email, I was requested for some urgent help and got back to him on email, as he was unavailable over the phone. When I responded via email asking him to tell me what the matter was, I received another email stating that his cousin was suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukaemia,” the FIR read.

The email further asked Justice Lodha to send “Rs 95,000 or Rs 1 lakh” to a surgeon’s bank account, details of which were sent to him. Justice Lodha transferred Rs 1 lakh in two installments of Rs 50,000 each to an account held by a man named Dinesh Bali.


After the transaction was done, Justice Lodha realised that his friend’s e-mail account had been hacked, following which he approached the police. A police team was sent to Udaipur to verify the details of the alleged account holder from SBI bank in which the amount was transferred. CCTV footage of the ATM kiosk from where the amount was withdrawn was also examined. The police have also sent a request to Gmail to provide details of the person who created the alleged fake email address.

Dog bites decrease in Srinagar but the fear remains

Dog bites decrease in Srinagar but the fear remains
By Athar Parvaiz
Though there has been a slight decrease in the incidents of dog-bites in recent years in Jammu and Kashmir’s summer capital, cynophobia looms large on the residents as packs of canines roaming menacingly is a common sight in the city

Last Updated: Friday 07 June 2019

Records suggest a decrease in the number of dog bites in Srinagar, but residents continue to be scared. Stray canines have been a problem for the Jammu and Kashmir Capital city as well as the district.

The district accounted for 80 per cent of the 37,694 dog-bite cases reported at the anti-rabies clinic of the city’s Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) Hospital between 2012-13 and 2018-19.

“Our latest figures show a 30 per cent decline in the number of dog-bite cases in Srinagar — to 5,120 during in 2016-17 from 7,000 in 2012-13,” Javaid Ahmad Rather, veterinary officer of Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC), told Down To Earth (DTE). 

Of the 6,825 incidents of dog-bites across 10 districts of the Kashmir division in 2017, 5,060 were in Srinagar. So, the number continues to be high.

Why Srinagar

Being the capital and a business hub, it has a large resident population apart from several tourists and army as well as paramilitary camps. This leads to a lot of food wastage, Rather said.

The city's hotels, restaurants, residential houses, poultry outlets and abattoirs generate about 450 metric tonnes (MT) of waste daily, according to the SMC, of which about 200 MT is meat waste.

“About 40,000 kilograms poultry waste alone is generated every day. If this nutritious and energy-rich edible waste is not managed properly, each dog can have access to around a kg of offal. The breeding efficiency and life span of stray dogs can increase and their population can touch alarming levels,” Rather told DTE.

Frequent incidents of dog bites have become a serious medical and public issue for the citizens, especially those very young and the old.

“Children under 10 represent a high-risk group,” according to a research on dog bites in Srinagar. Eight people died from rabies between April 2010 to May 2013 in the city, it added. Newspapers reports and social media posts have made citizens fearful.

“My daughter is keen that someone accompanies her to the bus stop when she leaves for morning tuitions,” said Abdul Majeed, who lives in Srinagar’s HMT area. Majeed should know. His neighbour was mauled by dogs two years ago. Many now avoid going out after darkness or early in the morning. Some walk in groups or carry sticks.

The response

The SMC claimed its measures have been successful in reducing the number of dog attacks. “We have worked effectively to control the availability of food waste,” Rather said.

Outdoor waste-bins are now covered, SMC Commissioner Mir Tariq Ali said. Open bins gave the strays easy access to food.

Controlling the dog population is equally important, according to Rather. “Considering the high proliferation rate of stray dogs, with an average life span of about 2-5 years and two breeding seasons a year, a multifold increase in their population can be expected,” he said. 

Some surveys estimate Srinagar’s stray dog population exceeding 90,000; modest estimates put it between 40,000 and 60,000.

“Fast-track sterilisation along with effective garbage management is the only viable and effective way to control their population,” Rather said.

This, he said, is possible only if multiple animal birth control and anti-rabies centres are established across the city and sterilisations are carried out at a massive scale.

“We need to sterilise and vaccinate at least 75 per cent of the population in the first phase to achieve a stable population and control of rabies within the stipulated time frame,” Rather said.

Available infrastructure at Shuhama Alusteng, however, is insufficient as it can sterilise only 10-15 sterilisations a day. Only 2,300 sterilisations and anti-rabies vaccinations could be carried out since 2012. 

The SMC is establishing one more centre at Tengpora to increase the number of surgeries up to 80, Rather said.

What Building Is Drab-Looking, Has Gates All Around It, with Bells Ringing All the Time?

I. What Building Is Drab-Looking, Has Gates All Around It, with Bells Ringing All the Time? (Hint: It's Not a Prison)

The 99cent Teacher or the $150,000 Teacher—Who Do You Want Teaching Your Child?

 Meet the Worst Teachers: The Parents 

 Would You Ever Question Your Child's Pediatrician? 

Since politicians control the way schools operate, it will take an honest-to-goodness political leader willing to give up power and transfer it to those who do the teaching: the three million public school teachers. That is one source of imagination and genius that largely goes untapped for its input. Even when eliminating the bad ones, the mediocre ones, the average ones, you are still left with a hefty number of gifted people who, because they actually go through the system day in and day out, have the best vantage point to drive the transformation. "Educrats," bureaucrats whose specialty is education, i.e., those who wield power in education and wish to maintain the status quo and thereby are out of touch with wish to maintain the status quo and thereby are out of touch with the reality of the classroom, enjoy freely referring to teachers as stakeholders or shareholders, but it's just a bunch of malarkey to make teachers feel good. Teachers have no real power. Educrats know it and they like it that way; otherwise, they would have no jobs.
• How should the buildings appear? 
• Is it okay for students to fail a grade and be promoted on to the next one? 
• Should parents pay for public schools? 
• Should good teachers be paid more than bad ones? 
• Is there any point to homework? 
• Should teachers work four days a week? 
• Should holidays be eliminated From the school year? 
• Is special education sucking away money from the rest of the students? 

• Should teachers unions be banned? 

By the title of this work I am not implying that all children are A+ students and that schoolchildren own zero accountability in the matter of their education. I'm saying that the system does not work and that young people could and should be achieving much more after thirteen years of education than they do now. They should be better prepared to enter society as contributing, responsible citizens who have future paths clearly "Mapquested." Yes, there are students who misbehave, who don't do their work, who are apathetic and don't want to be there any longer, as one-third vanish before the marathon race is over with. But it's the system that doesn't want to rethink itself. It's incapable of reflection, of looking inward.

In California, because of one parent's complaints that led to a 
landmark legal decision against the state in 2004, commonly re- 
ferred to as the Williams case, every school must provide sufficient 
textbooks for its students and a clean and safe facility. Imagine that. 
It took a lawsuit to guarantee that each student had a book and that 

each school had a properly running toilet. Wow! 

It took 61 years before  a Prime minister mentioned the lack of toilets in Indian Schools 

"On 15^th August 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Swacch Vidyalaya Abhiyan, the Clean Schools Movement, and promised to build separate toilets for 137.7 million boys and girls at schools nationwide within a year.

In this year’s speech he said: “It just came into my heart and I had announced (last year) that we would build separate toilets for boys and girls in all of our schools till the next 15^th of August. But later on, when we started work, “Team India” (the government) figured out its responsibilities; we realised that there were 262,000 such schools, where more than 4,25,000 toilets were required to be built. This figure was so big that any government could think about extending the deadline, but it certainly was the resolve of “Team India” that no one should seek any extension. Today, I salute “Team India”, who, keeping the honour of our tricolour National Flag, left no stone unturned to realise that dream, and “Team India” has now nearly achieved the target of building all the toilets”."

PM's claim of toilets for girls in every school fails scrutiny

PM's claim of toilets for girls in every school fails scrutiny


This is from 2015 What is the onground situation?
The Ministry of Human Resource Development has claimed that there are now separate toilets for girls in all schools, but those claims don't hold up at the ground level
Devanik Saha | IndiaSpend |  Bengaluru
Last Updated at September 12, 2015 13:37 IST

Toilet for Girls' Schools
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Two new toilets were built at a government primary school in Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, but since there’s no outlet, the wastewater stagnates in the toilet.

NEW DELHI: “Ma’am, can I go to the toilet?” asked Sunehra (she uses only one name), a bubbly 12-year-old fifth-standard student of Nigam Pratibha Vidyalaya, a school run by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi in the south-eastern neighbourhood of Sangam Vihar. Since there isn’t a working toilet, she defecates in an open field near the classroom.

“I have used the toilet just two-three times in the school,” Sunehra told Fact Checker. “Even if a few girls use the toilet, it becomes dirty, and we cannot go there anymore. I don’t like to defecate in the open. We are big girls, and many people look at us.”

imgSunehra, 12
Sunehra’s concerns represent those of many girls in 45% of Indian schools. They do not have access to a toilet or there are toilets they cannot use and, so, must urinate or defecate in the open in or near schools, according to the 2014 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER). At middle and high schools, there is a correlation between the lack of toilets and drop-out rates, as Mint reported.

On 15th August 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Swacch Vidyalaya Abhiyan, the Clean Schools Movement, and promised to build separate toilets for 137.7 million boys and girls at schools nationwide within a year.

In this year’s speech he said: “It just came into my heart and I had announced (last year) that we would build separate toilets for boys and girls in all of our schools till the next 15th of August. But later on, when we started work, “Team India” (the government) figured out its responsibilities; we realised that there were 262,000 such schools, where more than 4,25,000 toilets were required to be built. This figure was so big that any government could think about extending the deadline, but it certainly was the resolve of “Team India” that no one should seek any extension. Today, I salute “Team India”, who, keeping the honour of our tricolour National Flag, left no stone unturned to realise that dream, and “Team India” has now nearly achieved the target of building all the toilets”.





The Ministry of Human Resource Development, the nodal ministry, announced that its targets were achieved, 100%: There were now separate toilets for boys and girls across all schools in India.

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Union Minister for Human Resources Development, Smriti Irani, tweeted about it.




Smriti Z Irani
✔
@smritiirani
 Today I express my gratitude to Team PMO, Cabinet Secretary, Team MHRD, all State Govts., PSUs n Organisations that helped us achieve (1/3)

463
11:24 PM - Aug 14, 2015
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Smriti Z Irani
✔
@smritiirani
 (2/3) our target for Swachch Vidyalaya across all government schools in the country. 13.77 crore students in 11.2 lac schools now have .....

447
11:28 PM - Aug 14, 2015
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Smriti Z Irani
✔
@smritiirani
 (3/3) 100 percent access to separate toilets for boys and girls. 4,17,796 toilets built in 1 year. Promise kept. Thank you Prime Minister.

798
11:31 PM - Aug 14, 2015
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List of approved toilets state-wise and completed
Serial No. States/UTs Approved Completed
1 Andaman And Nicobar Islands 71 71
2 Andhra Pradesh 49,293 49,293
3 Arunachal Pradesh 3,492 3,492
4 Assam 35,699 35,699
5 Bihar 56,912 56,912
6 Chhattisgarh 16,629 16,629
7 Dadra And Nagar Haveli 78 78
8 Daman And Diu 16 16
9 Goa 138 138
10 Gujarat 1,521 1,521
11 Haryana 1,843 1,843
12 Himachal Pradesh 1,175 1,175
13 Jammu And Kashmir 16,172 16,172
14 Jharkhand 15,795 15,795
15 Karnataka 649 649
16 Kerala 535 535
17 Madhya Pradesh 33,201 33,201
18 Maharashtra 5,586 5,586
19 Manipur 1,296 1,296
20 Meghalaya 8,944 8,944
21 Mizoram 1,261 1,261
22 Nagaland 666 666
23 Odisha 43,501 43,501
24 Pondicherry 2 2
25 Punjab 1,807 1,807
26 Rajasthan 12,083 12,083
27 Sikkim 88 88
28 Tamil Nadu 7,926 7,926
29 Telangana 36,159 36,159
30 Tripura 607 607
31 Uttar Pradesh 19,626 19,626
32 Uttarakhand 2,971 2,971
33 West Bengal 42,054 42,054
  Total 4,17,796 4,17,796
Source: Swachh Vidyalaya Abhiyan

5 reasons the toilet mission appears to have failed

A Fact Checker nationwide check revealed serious problems with the claim that 100% of India’s schools had toilets. If random checks of the kind we did revealed widespread infirmities, it is likely that there are many schools without proper toilets.

Our investigations revealed five larger points:



The specific claim that every school now has separate toilets for boys and girls in all schools is not true. Many schools that we checked, from urban new Delhi to backward, often remote, areas, such as Chatra district (Jharkhand) and Sedam Taluka, Gulbarga district (Karnataka), do not have toilets.
Existing toilets in schools in areas such as Delhi, Sitapur (Uttar Pradesh), Tumkur (Karnataka), Dantewada (Chhattisgarh) and Wanaparthy (Telangana)–either already built or new–do not have water or are not maintained. That makes them useless. Without water, they are unusable after a few students use them.
Newly built toilets in Vidisha (Chief Minister Shivraj Chauhan’s constituency in Madhya Pradesh) , Chatra (Jharkhand) and Baramulla (Jammu & Kashmir) cannot be used because in the rush to build them, they were built without drainage. In Baramulla, a toilet was constructed where there was no school. The school had already been shifted to some other place a year back but still the toilet was constructed to show the work on paper.
The campaign aimed at constructing 417,000 toilets in 262,000 schools, or 1.5 toilets per school. This means a maximum of two toilets in some schools, one in others. One or two toilets per school is not quite enough (For instance, in Pillangkatta, Ri Bhoi district, Meghalaya, two government schools, each with more than 250 students, have just one toilet each, no separate toilets for boys and girls and no water).
Educating children in using toilets has proved to be as important as building them. The construction of toilets has been so rushed that various stakeholders do not appear to have had time to understand the importance of the mission and implement it in full measure.
“Well, I cannot comment much, as this is not a political matter,” said Nalin Kohli, BJP spokesperson. “But, if you have some findings, it is good feedback for us. Do share a copy of the findings with me as well.”

Various unsuccessful attempts were made over two weeks to reach Irani, HRD secretary Subhash Chandra Khuntia and additional secretary Rina Ray. A copy of our findings has been emailed to all of them.

Upon calling at the Minister’s office, her personal assistant asked for an email. A response received a few hours later said, “Thank you for your email to the Hon’ble Union Minister of Human Resource Development. Your email has been received and will be forwarded to the relevant department for appropriate action.” (This post will be updated if and when we receive a response.)

Many toilets built violate programme requirements

The Clean School campaign’s guidelines specify that there must be separate toilets for boys and girls, with one unit generally having one toilet (western commode or WC) plus three urinals. There should preferably be one toilet for every 40 students.

The guidelines also call for adequate facilities for children with disabilities and for menstruating girls, including soap, private space for changing, adequate water for washing clothes and disposal facilities for menstrual waste, including an incinerator and dust bins.

It is clear that the toilets we saw do not satisfy these guidelines.

The efficiency of local administration plays a big part. In Bhor Taluka, Pune district, toilets in government schools worked well because they had water and were checked and maintained by government officials.

PM's claim of toilets for girls in every school fails scrutiny
Toilets are, sometimes, central to the decision to attend school. Just six days after the government’s 100% coverage claim, 200 girls from Kasturba Gandhi Awasiya residential school at Ichagarh in Seraikela-Kharswan district, Jharkhand, dropped out because there weren’t enough toilets in school, according to a report in the Times of India. The school had just five toilets for 220 boarders, forcing them into nearby fields, where they were regularly harassed by the local boys.

Even in crowded localities, such as Mango and Jugsalai in East Singhbhum district, Jharkhand, newly built portable toilets in two primary schools (with 40 and 56 students respectively) were unused because there was no disposal pit or water source. While students from Mango were forced to go to the riverside, those from Jugsalai brought their own mugs and water in buckets, according to a report in The Telegraph.

Some part of the toilet-building programme was to be executed by companies under their corporate social responsibility (CSR) obligations. It is unclear how well those plans are working.

Earlier this year, Sunehra’s all-girls school in Delhi’s Sangam Vihar was given some bio-toilets by MAERSK, a shipping multinational, but the bio-toilets are useless. Used by boys during the school’s second shift, they stink, and no one cleans them.





In the context of Fact Checker’s investigation, two questions arise:

Have the data been manipulated to enable the announcement of “100% completion”?
Does it make sense to rush construction without ensuring the toilets work?
4,500 toilets per day: Have the data been manipulated?

“As on 3rd August 2015, 3.64 lakh toilets have been constructed. States and Union Territories, public- sector undertakings from 15 central ministries and more than 10 private sector entities are involved in construction of toilets in schools,” said Smriti Irani’s reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha.

This means that 54,000 toilets were built in 12 days at a rate of 4,500 toilets per day, raising questions about the quality of construction.

As many as 22,838 toilets were constructed over seven months between August 2014 and March 2015, (109 toilets per day), while 89,000 were built in 15 days between July 27 and August 11, 2015 (5,933 toilets per day), a rise of 5343%, according to an analysis of the Clean School programme data by Down to Earth magazine.

The report further said that at the end of June 2015, the ministry noted that public-sector undertakings were working very slowly and it appeared that they might not be able to reach the target.

State governments were then asked to take charge of construction projects that had not been finished by public-sector companies and put in an extra effort to reach the target, a fact corroborated by our research.

Another question that arises: How did the government arrive at 417,000, the toilets it wanted to build within a year?

“I find it incredulous a system can suddenly deliver 600% more on sanitation than it has for years,” wrote Nitya Jacob, Head of policy at WaterAid India, an NGO. In a column for the Huffington Post, he argued there were inconsistencies with government data sources.

In 2014, 302,781 primary schools lacked toilets in India, according to the District Information System for Schools (DISE). If schools with defunct toilets are included then, 331,320 schools do not have toilets, which makes the Swacch Vidyalaya numbers a “gross over-estimation”, he said.

The DISE also mentions that 94.24% primary schools have a boys’ toilets, while ASER 2014 puts the figure at 93.7%, wrote Jacob. However, ASER also indicates that in 28.5% of schools, the toilets are unusable—only 65.2% of schools have usable toilets—something the DISE does not mention.

DISE says there are 84.12% usable girls’ toilets, while ASER says there are no more than 55.7%. Using the DISE data exclusively, the number of schools with usable toilets for boys and girls were 944,560 and 806,932 respectively in 2013-14, which meant that to achieve the target of 100%, 504,152 toilets for boys and 641,970 for girls would be needed: A total of 1.14 million new toilets were required, wrote Jacob. Swacch Vidyalaya’s estimation of 417,796 toilets appears to be an underestimation.

Is it enough to build toilets without ensuring that they work?

Sanitation researchers and experts believe that building toilets is not enough. Changing behaviour is equally important.

Sanitation campaigns launched by previous governments–Central Rural Sanitation Program (1986-1999) and Total Sanitation Campaign in 1999 (renamed Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan in 2012)–failed to stop open defecation because they did not emphasise behaviour-change enough.

The progress made this time by central and state governments is significantly more than that made by a previous programme called Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), according to Puneet Shrivastava, manager (policy), Water Aid India, an NGO. But he, too, stressed the need for a behaviour change, alongside the toilet-construction programme.

“There is a need to focus on creating an outcome-focused delivery system where rather than monitoring and measuring outputs/targets for toilet construction, one measures actual usage or, especially in the case of school toilets, functionality and sustainability as well,” said Avani Kapur, Senior Researcher, Accountability Initiative. “However, while the intent is present, unfortunately, somewhere along the way we haven’t been able to build planning, budgeting and monitoring systems that integrate usage as the key indicator.”

In schools, it is “extremely important” to focus on toilet behaviour, said Sudarshana Srinivasan, a former Teach For India fellow who taught at Sunehra’s school in Delhi for two years. “Since children are used to defecating in the open, you cannot expect them to start using toilets overnight,” he said. “We need to teach them to do it, and it takes a lot of time for them to imbibe the practice.”

Experts said government schools in India struggle with larger issues, including absent teachers and corruption. Building toilets and expecting them to be used immediately is unrealistic.

Back in southeast Delhi, Sunehra explained how she wanted to become “something big in life and learn football (her school has had training classes)”. She said: “I want to work hard and fulfil my dream of becoming an airhostess, so that I can earn money and fulfil my parents’ wishes.”

The toilets that the Prime Minister promised are indeed important to her future education and school life. But building them alone is not enough.

First Published: Sat, September 12 2015. 13:25 IST

Who let the dogs out ? in India

Public safety is the responsibility of local governments, that are mandated to keep the streets free of straying animals. Strangely, the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) has been allowed to take over this space and it is using tax payers’ money to ensure that homeless dogs are necessarily born, maintained and released outside people’s homes and in public places. So now, India’s solution to the problem of stray dogs on the streets is — “stray” dogs on the streets!

The AWBI exists to enforce the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (PCAA), 1962 — prevent the suffering of domestic animals and fund shelters. Instead, it has illegally authored one of the most dangerous policies that we are having to endure.

Who let the dogs out?

There is only one solution to dealing with the problem of India’s stray dog populations, dog bites and rabies: Implementation of WHO guidelines with immediate effect

NEXT BLOG ❯

By Meghna Uniyal

Last Updated: Tuesday 04 June 2019

 A couple of stray dogs in Kozhikode, Kerala. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

In recent years, media reports have shown a disturbing rise in children being mauled to death by dogs on the streets of India. Thousands of Indians lose their lives on the streets every day. However, deaths caused by dogs are not as inadvertent as they seem. So why are there so many dogs on the streets and why are they attacking children?

Public safety is the responsibility of local governments, that are mandated to keep the streets free of straying animals. Strangely, the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) has been allowed to take over this space and it is using tax payers’ money to ensure that homeless dogs are necessarily born, maintained and released outside people’s homes and in public places. So now, India’s solution to the problem of stray dogs on the streets is — “stray” dogs on the streets!

The AWBI exists to enforce the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (PCAA), 1962 — prevent the suffering of domestic animals and fund shelters. Instead, it has illegally authored one of the most dangerous policies that we are having to endure.

Far from protecting homeless dogs, it has created a new entity (not found in the PCAA) called “street dogs”, that supposedly “belong” on the streets and eat garbage. The AWBI is unaware that dogs may be abandoned, lost or allowed to stray and that using dogs for garbage control in the 21st century defies all logic and good sense.

It has also invented an occupation called “dog feeder” who has an “inalienable right” to feed these dogs on the streets, thereby legalising public nuisance as well. After ensuring that packs of homeless dogs exist in every public space, the AWBI has declared that not knowing a dog may be in pain or might be “perceiving” a threat — are “provocations” by citizens, for which they are themselves responsible.

Attempting to explain keeping dogs homeless, the AWBI and non-profits insist that sterilisation reduces aggression in dogs. This is wholly incorrect. Dogs have a natural tendency to chase vehicles and people for predatory, playful and territorial reasons. Primary causes of dog attacks are territoriality and fear; litter defence and sexual aggression are minor reasons. Couple this with being homeless, diseased and starving. It is a recipe for disaster.

Sterilisation does not, in any way, create docile, friendly populations of dogs on the streets. That some of them may be fed, in fact, increases aggression because they now expect food from people and are territorial about where they are fed. Anyone who has ever kept a dog or knows anything about them, knows that even the most well-kept, pampered dog can bite for any number of reasons.

The AWBI and non-profits also claim that homeless dogs are “community dogs” and belong to poor people. Again, this is utterly misleading. When Delhi was killing 50,000 dogs annually, 50,000 poor people did not complain that their dogs had been killed.

A couple in Chandigarh refused to take home the body of their child, mauled to death by dogs, unless someone was held responsible. Not a single “poor” person or “community” has filed a case in any court of India, asking for their dogs to be protected.

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• Apex court orders all states to ensure sterilisation and vaccination of stray dogs
• RELIEF FOR STRAY DOGS

While dog vans are stoned when they release dogs in localities, it is only non-profits that are going to court, demanding that homeless dogs remain on the streets. All of this is ostensibly for the welfare of dogs but, in reality, it is blatantly cruel and counter-productive.

People are now taking matters in to their own hands as they have simply run out of options, leading to retaliatory killings of homeless dogs by beatings or poisoning. Therefore, even the suggestion that any of this is somehow protecting dogs owned by poor people, is laughable and grotesque at the same time.

Last, but not the least, the AWBI states that “street dogs” are “Indian/desi/pariah” dogs. Pariah, meaning outcast, is a casteist slur, used for “lower castes” in India. Because stray dogs were also seen as outcasts, they came to be referred to as pariahs. It is not a breed of dog.

Also, indigenous Indian breeds (Rajapalayam, Mudhol Hound) are not found roaming the streets of India. If the “animal welfare” community in India doesn’t know yet that dogs are domestic, companion animals and that there is no such thing as “street dogs”, its members need to take up other hobbies to entertain themselves.

In light of the above, frequent dog attacks on people, especially the poor, should come as no surprise. The question is no more how the AWBI and non-profits are so clueless about dog ecology, behaviour and animal welfare in general. The question now is far graver — why are they being allowed to get away with these dangerous, nonsensical and illegal activities?

Animal welfare is hard work. It means dealing with thousands of unwanted, homeless dogs that need to be rehomed or sheltered. It also entails dealing with the heart-breaking issue of euthanasia. These activities, done by non-profits all over the world, DO NOT involve forcibly keeping homeless dogs homeless and throwing some food at them.

Doing so is now costing human lives and non-profits and individuals cannot carry out these activities in public, regardless of illegal “circulars” and “policies” dreamed up and published by the AWBI.

The government must disband the AWBI and create a new body capable of appropriately discharging its duties. We need not reinvent the wheel as there is only one solution to dealing with the problem of stray dog populations, dog bites and rabies — implementation of World Health Organization guidelines with immediate effect: enforce pet control laws, neuter and vaccinate pets, eliminate straying dogs (impound, rehome, shelter, return to owners).

And dog lovers need to speak up for homeless dogs. They may not be their dogs, but they’re certainly not “street dogs” that belong there. Time to put an end to this cruel joke on people and dogs of this country.

Meghna Uniyal is director and co-founder, Humane Foundation for People and Animals

Ancient Universities

 Whe  i was in school and  while in India all i heard was  the  two names of  taxasila(taxila) and  nalanda.
there are many more regarding  which there is  little information  and  even  less recognition.
One also wonders how  an area which was  so well known for higher studies  is languishing  with  poor education  in  Independent  India

Vikramashila (IAST: Vikramaśīla) was one of the two most important centres of learning in India during the Pala Empire, along with Nalanda. Its location is now the site of Antichak village, Bhagalpur district in Bihar.

[T]here were great number of books on religion of Hindus and Buddhists there; and when all these books came under the observation of the Mussalamans, they summoned, a number of Hindus that they might give them information regarding the import of these books; but the whole of the Hindu community had been killed in the war.
Vikramashila was established by the Pala emperor Dharmapala (783 to 820) in response to a supposed decline in the quality of scholarship at Nalanda. Atiśa, the renowned pandita, is sometimes listed as a notable abbot. It was allegedly destroyed by the forces of Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji around 1193.^[1] The Tabaqat-i Nasiri completed by Minhaj-i-Siraj in 1260 corroborates this:


Vikramashila was neglected for years which contributed to extensive damages to the monument ASI is now planning to develop the excavated site of Vikramashila.[7][14][15]

Since 2009, there has been considerable work in maintaining and beautifying the place to attract tourism. There has been inflow of western tourist as well, during their river cruises on the Ganga River.[citation needed]


It has been a long time demand of local people for revival of this university like Nalanda university. In 2015 prime minister Narendra Modi announced a Rs 500 crore package for it, while state Government had to provide around 500 acres land which was yet to be done. President Pranab Mukherjee visited the excavated ruins of Vikramshila university in 2017. He addressed a public gathering at the university, saying that he would talk to the Prime minister for its revival

 Somapura,
 Odantapura
Jagaddala.^[3] 

Pushpagiri


Sharada Peeth (Urdu: شاردا پیٹھ‎; Kashmiri: शारदा पीठ (Devanagari), 𑆯𑆳𑆫𑆢𑆳 𑆥𑆵𑆜 (Sharada)) is an abandoned Hindu temple and ancient centre of learning in the Pakistani administered territory of Azad Kashmir. It is dedicated to the Hindu goddess of learning, Sharada. Between the 6th and 12th centuries CE, Sharada Peeth was one of the foremost temple universities of the Indian subcontinent,^[4][5][6][7] hosting scholars such as Kalhana, Adi Shankara,^[8]Vairotsana,^[8] Kumarajiva,^[8] and Thonmi Sambhota.^[8] As a religious institution, it is one of the three famous tirthas, or holy sites, for Kashmiri Pandits, the other two being the Martand Sun Temple and the Amarnath Temple.^[9] Sharada Peeth is one of 18 Maha Shakti Peethas, or "Grand Shakti Peethas" – highly revered temples throughout South Asia that commemorate the location of fallen body parts of the Hindu deity Sati.