या उसका पेट?

खून मेरी रंगो में
तेज़ी से दौड़ता है
हृदय से तलवों तक
तलवों से हृदय तक.
उससे भी तेज़ी से
वो लड़का
धुआंधार से मेरी फेंकी
अठन्नी उठा लाता है.

मैं अचरज में हूँ
मेरा खून तेज़ दौड़ता है
या उसका पेट?

धुआंधार= Dhuandhar Falls

भूखा बच्चा | आलोक धन्वा

मैं उसका मस्तिष्क नहीं हूँ
मैं महज उस भूखे बच्चे की आँत हूँ।

उस बच्चे की आत्मा गिर रही है ओस की तरह

जिस तरह बाँस के अँखुवे बंजर में तड़कते हुए ऊपर उठ रहे हैं
उस बच्चे का सिर हर सप्ताह हवा में ऊपर उठ रहा है
उस बच्चे के हाथ हर मिनट हवा में लम्बे हो रहे हैं
उस बच्चे की त्वचा कड़ी हो रही है
हर मिनट जैसे पत्तियाँ कड़ी हो रही हैं
और
उस बच्चे की पीठ चौड़ी हो रही है जैसे कि घास
और 
घास हर मिनट पूरे वायुमंडल में प्रवेश कर रही है

लेकिन उस बच्चे के रक्त़संचार में 
मैं सितुहा-भर धुँधला नमक भी नहीं हूँ

उस बच्चे के रक्तसंचार में 
मैं केवल एक जलआकार हूँ
केवल एक जल उत्तेजना हूँ।

Mission Indradhanush

Mission Indradhanush was launched by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on December 25,
2014. Indradhanush mission has been adopted to achieve target of full immunisation of unvaccinated
subjects from seven diseases by 2020.
Specifications of Indradhanush Mission:
* Mission’s aims is to immunize all children against seven vaccine preventable diseases viz.
diphtheria, tuberculosis, whooping cough, tetanus, hepatitis B, polio and measles by 2020.
* The mission will be applied on the line of success of the polio programme.
* The mission will cover 201 identified districts in the first phase while, 297 will be covered
under second phase in the year 2015 through improved routine of immunization.
* Out of 201 districts, 82 districts are from four states of UP, Rajasthan Bihar& Madhya
Pradesh which are nearly 25% of the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated children of India.
* Aim is to accelerate the immunization process by covering 5% of un-vaccinated children per
annum.
* “Catch-up” campaign will be practiced to cover all the children who have been left out or
missed out for immunization.
* With intensive planning and monitoring of these campaigns four special vaccination
campaigns will be conducted between April and July 2015.
* Technical support for Mission by WHO, UNICEF, Rotary International and other donor
partners.

Forest Rights Act

The Forest Rights Act has tried to undo the historic injustice done to the forest dweller and tribals. It recognizes the customary right of tribal over the forest land. But this Progressive legislation is also suffering from implementation deficit.

The reasons for non-implementation or slow implementation are: 
1. State government,due to lack of political will, have deliberately delayed the notification of rules and regulation.

2. The forest bureaucracy’s non-responsive attitude. They have vested interest in
non-implementation and they don’t want to lose their hold.

3. The process of reorganization of rights is intensive involving documentation by
gram sabha, their subsequent approval by higher authorities.

4. The absence of documentary proof and lack of reliable data (maps, ownership records, residence proofs etc) further complicated the process of recognition of customary ownership rights.

5. While Individual rights have been recognized in many places, but process of
granting community ownership rights is very slow. This defeats the whole
purpose of act.

To ensure the effective implementation of FRA, following steps should be taken: 
1. Central government should set clear targets and their attainment should be incentivised by fiscal incentives.

2. The upgradation of technology including digitalized mapping, GIS to map area ( in decision making process as well as in monitoring) etc can speed up the process.

2. Capacity building of Gram Sabha with necessary technical help should be provided by Central government or Civil Society organizations.

3. Reform in Forest Bureaucracy to make them responsive and breaking the contractor forest official nexus is required. Use of ICT in decision making to make process transparent is required.

4. Granting of community Ownership should be prioritized by notifying guidelines on same.

Political will combined with responsive and empathetic approach to implementation can ensure effective implementation of FRA.

Solid waste Management

Solid waste consists of everyday items discarded by the people. It does not include electronic or medical wastes. With urbanisation and increase in population, solid waste generated is bound to grow. The governments vision of creating smart cities and rejuvenating existing cities and also providing urban services in rural areas mean that solid waste generated in India will grow tremendously.

Solid waste has economic, environmental, social and health consequences. Environmentally, poor handling of solid waste resukts in contamination of ground water, reduces soil fertility, polluted water bodies and indiscriminate incineration results in air pollution and release of green house gases. These environmental concerns result in health consequences especially for the vulnerable and poor sections who are more exposed to this problem. Health issues increase the out of pocket expenditure of the people and has detrimental effect on their social security.

There are different models for solid waste management. South Africa outsources the work to private players and makes them accountable through concrete data analysis mechanism. Scandinavian countries are known for their expertise in producing huge amounts of energy from solid waste. In India, municipal bodies are responsible for managing the waste. Waste to energy is still in nascent stages. Landfill and incineration are major methods. Recycling has not been encouraged sufficiently. Moreover, an informal economy thrives in the recycling business of solid waste.

Presently, the policy guidelines for solid waste management are haphazardous, over lapping and lack clarity. No clear delineation of work is done. Accountability mechanism are minimal. Economic analysis of solid waste management is not done and as a result most of the burden borne by the municipal bodies. Instead polluter pays principle should be adopted. Emphasis on recycling through formalising the informal sector. Building awareness among people. The swatch Bharat abhiyan is a right move in this direction and this has to be channeled into effective solid waste management.

Forest Rights Act

On June 23, Prime Minister Narendra Modi directed the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) to ensure that all States implement the Forest Rights Act (FRA) and grant land rights to tribals over the next two months. Mr. Modi’s announcement is welcome, but nevertheless surprising, as his government has come under scathing criticism for removing community consent clauses for land acquisition in the ill-conceived land ordinance bill.

Nearly 250 million people live in and around forests in India, of which the estimated indigenous Adivasi or tribal population stands at about 100 million. To put these numbers in perspective, if considered a nation by themselves, they would form the 13th largest country in the world, even though they cannot be depicted as representing any singular, monolithic culture. For this population, there cannot be any better news than the government’s willingness to recognise their customary rights and undo the historical injustice they have faced, as outlined in the FRA.

The directive to achieve this historical transformation in the next two months, however, shows a lack of understanding of what the process entails, and the factors that have prevented the proper implementation of the FRA since its passage in 2006.

One, the process of documenting communities’ claims under the FRA is intensive — rough maps of community and individual claims are prepared democratically by Gram Sabhas. These are then verified on the ground with annotated evidence, before being submitted to relevant authorities. The Gram Sabha is treated as a public authority under the FRA, and if the higher authorities under the law reject its claims, substantive reasons have to be provided for doing so. This exhaustive process is why the official diktat to implement the FRA so quickly lacks any understanding about the extent of the task and labour involved.

Second, the main factor inhibiting the FRA’s full implementation is the reluctance of the forest bureaucracy to give up control. The forest bureaucracy has misinterpreted the FRA as an instrument to regularise encroachment. This is seen in its emphasis on recognising individual claims while ignoring collective claims — Community Forest Resource (CFR) rights as promised under the FRA — by tribal communities. To date, the total amount of land where rights have been recognised under the FRA is just 3.13 million hectares, mostly under claims for individual occupancy rights.

Collective ownership

This deliberately narrow interpretation of the FRA is against the letter and spirit of the law, which seeks to undo historical injustices and return the forests to community jurisdiction. It also contradicts the estimates for forest area collectively used by tribal and other forest communities that are provided by government agencies themselves. The most important of these estimates is from the State of Forest Report 1999, in which the Forest Survey of India, using data from the 1991 Census, identified 32.198 million hectares of forest land inside revenue village boundaries. The inclusion of forest lands within revenue village boundaries reflects and legitimises the use, interaction and dependence of the village community on such forests.

Thus, all forest lands within revenue village boundaries would be eligible for recognition as community forest resources (CFR) under the FRA, and brought under the jurisdiction of Gram Sabhas. It should be noted that these numbers are highly conservative, as the data leaves out the States of Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram and Sikkim, and ignores the forests collectively used by communities outside the revenue boundaries of their villages.

While these facts indicate a remarkably high potential for recognition of CFR rights, the actual recognition of these rights remains tragically low. The MoTA’s February 2015 status report indicates that the total area reported to be recognised under CFR is only 73,000 hectares, less than one-five hundredth of the CFR potential in the country.

This does not, however, mean that progress cannot be accelerated.

The government can start by recognising the role played in the FRA’s meagre implementation by the forest bureaucracy’s resistance as well as the acute lack of awareness of FRA’s community rights provisions in State administrations and forest communities. In almost all States, the Forest Department has either appropriated or been given effective control over the FRA’s rights recognition process. This has created a situation where the officials controlling the implementation of the law often have the strongest interest in its non-implementation, especially the community forest rights provisions, which dilute or challenge the powers of the forest department. Evidence from different States clearly indicates the forest bureaucracy’s efforts to stall or subvert the CFR provisions of the FRA.

If the government is serious about implementing the FRA, it should confront the forest bureaucracy and make it clear that any obstruction on their part is unacceptable. The little progress that has been made in implementation so far has been due to close coordination between tribal departments, district administrations and civil society.

There is a clear need to strengthen the nodal tribal departments, provide clear instructions to the State and district administrations, and encourage civil society actors. Without a strong political will, this historical transformation is unlikely to take place.

The Prime Minister has taken the first step. The strides that come after will need a strong follow-up with a dose of realism.

(Arvind Khare is executive director of the Rights and Resources Initiative, a global coalition engaged in forest and land policy reform across the world, including India.)

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/lets-not-miss-the-wood/article7358626.ece

The narrowing Persian gulf | Ashok K. Mehta

Just days before a final nuclear deal deadline on June 30, Iranian officials in Tehran — where I was attending a conference — were excited that their moral stance renouncing nuclear weapons capability would now be appreciated. With portraits of the Ayatollahs, Khamenei and Khomeini, towering over him, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, declared that Iran would not “hand over its secrets” to others under any additional protocol or any other treaty. Mr. Rouhani who completed two years as President in mid-June, added that while sanctions had had their effect, they had not succeeded in making Iran surrender. He vowed to have the sanctions removed by the UN Security Council.

The Defence Minister, Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan, insisted that the nuclear deal would not be signed at any price but with “dignity and power”. The Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri, said that Iran would not provide access to military sites and that nuclear fuel would be produced in Iran.

Stances to audiences

It is clear that assurances are being given by Iranian leaders to the country that the contents of the final deal would not be a sell out but have the best national interests in mind. While hardliners have been asked to keep quiet, a fiat has been issued not to publicly discuss the pros and cons of the nuclear deal. An air of optimism can be gauged from the hard bargaining with visiting foreign delegations who are now queuing up for contracts in anticipation of the sanctions being lifted.

The Iranian Ambassador to India, Gholamreza Ansari, recently said in New Delhi that Iran had not gone for negotiations due to sanctions. “We have always been ready for talks in 2003 and 2010 and are committed to the Non Proliferation Treaty,” was his line.

Earlier this month in New York at the 2015 Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, the United States Secretary of State, John Kerry, had said: “The United States and our P5plus One partners have come together with Iran around the series of parameters that if finalised and implemented will close off all of Iran’s possible pathways to the nuclear material required for a nuclear weapon and give the international community the confidence that it needs to know that Iran’s nuclear programme is indeed exclusively peaceful.”

Yet, despite the air of confidence, one has to look at the ground realities and see how protracted sanctions and a freezing of assets have damaged the Iranian economy. Oil exports have halved since 2012. Coupled with a decline in oil prices and a high cost of production of oil when compared with Saudi Arabia, the GDP has contracted from $568 billion to $406 billion. The GDP growth rate, which was negative, has picked up and is now between 1 and 2 per cent. Inflation has declined from 35 per cent to 25 per cent. According to the Tehran Times, India dropped crude imports to zero in March 2015, for the first time in a decade, and under pressure from the United States as a push for the Interim Framework Agreement of April 2, 2015 at Lausanne. Sanctions have worked in slowing but not halting Iran’s nuclear capability.

Sticking points

According to the Iranians, the three sticking points are still: timings of sanction relief; access and verification of compliance and a mechanism for restoring sanctions in the event of a breach. Additional points and issues are the number of centrifuges to be kept at Fordow, an invulnerable military facility and the site of Iran’s second pilot enrichment plant, and the amount of uranium permitted for enrichment for research and development. There are also differences within P5+1, and between Russia and China and other P5 members. The P5+1 (the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, and China, facilitated by the European Union) has been engaged in serious and substantive negotiations with Iran with the goal of reaching a verifiable diplomatic resolution that would prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. For example, Russia and China do not favour an automatic, snap-back mechanism for non-compliance. However, the mother of all differences is within the U.S.: between the Republican Party-dominated U.S. Congress and U.S. President Barack Obama. This has been influenced by the position taken by the staunch U.S. ally and Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The U.S. does not want and will not let Iran have the nuclear bomb while Israel insists that it should not even have the capability to make one. But for the present, Israel’s stand does not count. What the eventual nuclear deal will achieve if all conditions are met is that Iran’s capability to make a bomb will be extended from the current 2-3 months to 12 months. The deal is in arresting Iran’s enrichment capability so as to fix Iran’s breakout time to 12 months.

Hurdles to cross

Assuming that the Iranians accept the condition for their recessed nuclear capabilities for civilian use, with a window open for reverting to the bomb path at some cost, and further that they agree to play by the rules of the game, there still is the hurdle of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 passed by the U.S. Congress. This is heavily influenced by the Zionist lobby and Republicans who control Congress. There is a chance they may block the deal. In addition to all this, Mr. Obama is concerned with his political legacy. He knows that a Democrat President, Jimmy Carter lost Iran; he wants to be the Democrat who brought it back on board.

It is reasonable to predict that other members of P5+1 may simply use the U.S. Congressional attempt to block the nuclear deal with Iran as a pretext to enter into independent agreements with Iran to lift sanctions. This may even dissuade the U.S. Congress from doing so. It has consistently baulked at a rapprochement with Iran. In 2003, Tehran was close to a deal with the Europeans but the U.S. Congress spiked it. Iran could have been capped with 1,000 centrifuges against the present 19,000 centrifuges. In 2010, the Brazil-Turkey plan of taking away Iran’s uranium for enrichment in France or Germany was also stymied by the U.S. Congress.

Michael Krepon, the co-founder/senior associate of the Stimson Center, Washington, has said that the deal will weaken global norms for non-proliferation but U.S. Congress killing a deal that constrains Iran will only lead to worse consequences for proliferation. A rejection by the U.S. Congress will lead to an expulsion of inspectors, increase enrichment and possible air strikes.

Impact on West Asia

If the deal breaks up and Iran returns to its nuclear weapons programme, it will have a cascading effect on Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. The spread of enrichment plans without safeguards in West Asia will spell doom for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. With the Islamic State crawling around, it also poses a major risk for nuclear terrorism. Until last year, Saudi Arabia was cocksure that Pakistan would lend a couple of nuclear bombs to it. The former Saudi Arabian chief of intelligence, Prince Turki Bin Faisal Al Saud, recently said in South Korea: “Whatever the Iranians have, we will have too.” After events in Yemen, Islamabad may not be in a mood to oblige.

There are avid votaries of the military option in Israel and the U.S. But they are divided over the feasibility of unilateral military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel’s former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan says the military option is unviable and catastrophic, while the former Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, says the military option is on the table. As a regular visitor to Israel, I know discretion in Tel Aviv is increasingly becoming the better part of valour. Incredible as it may sound, at one time, the thinking in the U.S. was that living with a nuclear Iran was better than a military option to denuclearise it. It planned to cap Tehran’s nuclear capability after its tests — no weaponisation, no deployment.

In 2003, U.S. President George Bush had a super majority of 771 votes in both Houses for the invasion of Iraq. Mr. Obama does not want to forward the nuclear deal in the works in Geneva to the U.S. Congress. He wants to use his presidential powers to ratify it; 59 per cent of Americans are for the deal. If it sails through, it would mark the triumph of diplomacy over the use of military belligerence. It will not just be a nuclear deal but will have wider implications for the world in the form of a more normal relationship between the U.S. and Iran after nearly four and a half decades of hostility. India will also be a beneficiary.

The grapevine in Tehran was that the nuclear deal may miss the June 30 deadline but will be stitched up in an extra week or two after settling the outstanding sticking points. We have to wait and watch. 

(Gen. Ashok K. Mehta is the convener of an India-Pakistan and India-Afghanistan Track II process.)

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-narrowing-persian-gulf/article7354682.ece 

TOBI

Tools for brain computer interaction is a project initiated by European union which will make the life of disabled people easy and will help in rehabilitation process of disabled people like who have motor problems . this tobi project have electrodes that will be given to patient to hold that will then monitor the brain activity without actually interfering with brain electrical signal and will ten interact with computer that will inturn send signal of activity to motor control in initiate voluntary movement like in case of a paralysed limb thus controlling and restoring motor or muscle activities of such person .

This is a non invasive technique and is based on electroencephalogram technique

मैंने पन्नो को जुड़-जुड़ मजबूत होते देखा है,

मैंने पन्नो को जुड़-जुड़ मजबूत होते देखा है,
इतना मजबूत की तुम फाड़ नहीं सकते चाह के भी
हाँ, निकाल सकते हो एक-एक कर
या काट सकते हो कुछ एक.
लेकिन बीच से पकड़ मरोड़ना भी मुश्किल होता है,
फाड़ना तो दूर रहा.

जब पन्ने बनते हैं मिल किताब
मैंने उन्हें मजबूत होते देखा है.

उतना,
कि जितना सरकारों ने नहीं सोचा होगा.
कि चंद पन्ने स्याही से मिल किताब बनेंगे
और सरकारें गिरा देंगे.

उतना,
कि चंद पन्ने स्याही से मिल इतिहास लिखेंगे
और कुकृत्य पीढ़ियों को बता देंगे.

उतना,
कि पुस्तकालय जला देने के बावजूद
पन्नों के सीने पे लिखा सच कभी नहीं मिटाया जा सका.

उतना,
कि इक सीने की आग भड़का
कई तक पहुँचाया
और क्रांति ला दी.

मैंने पन्नो को जुड़-जुड़ मजबूत होते देखा है, किताब बनते देखा है.
तुम कब मिल किताब बनोगे, कॉमरेड?

National Mission of Food Processing

National Mission of Food Processing (NMFP) was a centrally sponsored scheme (CSS) introduced in 2012. The mission was to promote food processing industries in India by providing infrastructural support and 75% financial cost to the state governments.

Objective:
-The objective of the NMFP is-
1. to assist state governments in setting up infrastructure for food processing industries.
2. to spread the message about food processing and thus help in enhancing agricultural productivity.
3. to promote skill development for post-harvest and food processing industries.
4. to assist MSME in setting up Food processing units in terms of capital/technology/skill etc
5. to ensure and enhance food safety laws.

Performance:
-NMFP has performed very well within the last few years. This is evident from the fact that investors are still ready to invest in food processing units.

-Currently, the central government has decided to de-link the project and let the state government run it on its own. This led the central government to stop giving existing 75% fund to the state government.

-The state government should now focus to use the 10% extra revenue sharing given by the central government, as per the fourteenth Finance commission recommendations in funding the NMFP.

-the food processing industry in India is a rising and promising industry with investors ready to pump in money. This project should not be affected by the withdrawal of central government’s share in it. Instead state government should use this opportunity to mould the project according to its own needs and help increase farmers productivity.