Monday 30 September 2013

India Inc becoming more differently abled

Reeba Zachariah & Anshul Dhamija TNN 



    Ashutosh Parab has a big evening ahead. As a banquet executive at a five-star hotel in Mumbai, he is racing against time to set the hall up for the day’s gala. But unlike others in his position he isn’t shouting orders; in fact, he is not saying anything at all. But his fingers are at work, gesturing his thoughts to his colleagues. 
    The 26-year-old is speechand hearing-impaired. A relatively new entrant in the banqueting section, Parab was till recently with the reservations division where he spent close to three years. 
“I’m a bit nervous because I’m still getting used to the systems in this section. But I’ve grown in confidence because I know the organization is behind me,” says Parab, through a sign language interpreter. 
    Being wheelchair-bound has not slowed Bangalore designer Vishal Mishra down. Vishal began his stint with the firm as a designer a few years ago and is now an assistant manager, with a handful of subordinates working for 
him. “My disability doesn’t come in the way as far as my work is concerned,” he says. 
    Ashutosh and Vishal are among the scores of talented but differently abled youngsters being accepted in the workplace by India Inc. Starting with small gestures in corporate social responsibility, Indian business houses are walking that extra mile and institutionalizing what can be called the ‘disability initiative’. 
    Differently abled people account for just 1% of the Indian corporate workforce, but the quality of employment shows that a definite change is in the offing. For India Inc, it is a way to up its diversity play. 

    At watches-to-jewellery maker Titan, two physically challenged blue-collar employees were promoted to managerial positions after they completed their degrees. At Pune-based Cummins, a differently abled person is a senior manager in the engineering department. At Sebi, India’s capital market regulator, visually impaired MBA grad Vishakha More is an assistant GM. 
    “We looked at their abilities, not disabilities, while assigning them jobs. And each of them has delivered beyond our expectations,” says Arun Ramachandran, India-head, Cummins Turbo Technologies. 

Differently abled, not differently paid 
    The local arm of US-based Cummins currently has 11 differently abled employees compared to just one five years ago. The number of such workers at Titan has risen to 110 in the last few years. 
    There are in fact establishments where the specially abled form the majority. At EuroAble call centre, 98 of the 100 employees have some disability. EuroAble is the world’s only call centre where the physically disabled handle thousands of customer queries and complaints for Eureka Forbes, its consumer durable parent. Then there is Yum Restaurants—it runs the KFC and Pizza Hut chains—which has almost doubled the number of specially abled employees to 350 in five years. It plans to raise the number to 1,000 by 
2015. At Mirakle Couriers, the show is entirely managed by the hearing impaired. 
    In a tectonic shift in attitudes, companies are creating infrastructure for special employees and assigning them buddy partners to mentor and foster leadership qualities in them. Their assignments too are being rotated to give them 
varied experience. In fact, some of them are even training normal employees in sign language so they can communicate better with those who are hearing and speech impaired. 
    Most importantly, the differently abled are not being patronized or discriminated against. “Their pay packets are at par with industry standards. We do not offer them any special concessions. We do however provide them with a comfortable working environment. For example, we have designed special workspaces with ramps. We also arrange to pick them up and drop them at their residences,” says Marzin Shroff, COO, Eureka Forbes. 
    While firms across sectors are hiring the differently abled, the trend is more pronounced in some sectors-—food & beverage outlets, hotels, salons and airports. You 
will spot them as baristas, musicians, housekeepers, masseurs and cuisiniers. 
    “Currently, one of our specially abled staff is being trained to become an assistant restaurant manager,” says Niren Chaudhary, president, Yum Restaurants, adding that the fast food chain is on track with its plan to have a specially-abled restaurant general manager by 2015. “They are a good talent pool,” says Niranjan Khatri, head-environment initiatives at cigarettes-to-hotels ITC. “Their attrition is merely 2% compared with the double digits for other employees.” 
    At the banquet hall, Parab heaves a sigh of relief when he finishes his job for the day. He’s done his bit and now it’s time for the show. “I am aware that all kinds of opportunities are open for me. Why not grab them with both hands?” he asks.

Friday 27 September 2013

World’s first nanotube computer built

New Carbon-Based Transistors Use Less Energy & Run Faster Than Silicon Chips


Palo Alto (California): A group of Stanford researchers has moved a step closer to answering the question of what happens when silicon, the standard material in today’s microelectronic circuits, reaches its fundamental limits for use in increasingly small transistors. In a paper in the journal Nature on Wednesday, the researchers reported that they had successfully built a working computer — albeit an extremely simple one — entirely from transistors fashioned from carbon nanotubes. The nanotubeshave long held the promise of allowing smaller, faster and lower-powered computing, though they have proved difficult to work with. 
    The computer can right now perform only basic functions at speeds likened to a 1950s computer, but the tiny machine was hailed as a breakthrough in the search for an alternative to sili
con transistors. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are rolled-up, single-layer sheets of carbon atoms — tens of thousands can fit into the width of a single human hair. They are pliable and have the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any known material. Silicon is a good semiconductor but cannot be reduced to such a thin layer. Experts believe the structure of CNTs may make them better at carrying currents — thus yielding transistors that are faster, more energy efficient and smaller than silicon. 
    “People have been talking about a new era of carbon nanotube electronics moving beyond silicon,” said Stanford professor Subhasish Mitra, who led the research. “But there have been few demonstrations of complete digital systems using this exciting technology. Here is the proof.” 
    The computer is just a few square millimetres in size and able to perform basic counting and number-sorting functions using 178 transistors each holding between 10 and 200 nanotubes. It runs at 1 kilohertz — a proc
essing capacity millions of times weaker than today’s computers. The 178-transistor limit was due to the team using a university chip-making facility rather than an industrial process, meaning the computer could in theory be made much bigger and faster, a statement on the study said. The machine ran a basic operating system that allowed it to multitask and swap between the two processes, it added. 
    Mitra and his team had been able to deal with two inherent shortcomings of CNT transistors: the tubes do not always grow in perfectly straight lines, which means that mispositioned ones can cause a short circuit, while others changed form and couldn’t be switched on and off. The team devised a method to burn up and eliminate the uncontrolled CNTs in a transistor and to bypass mispositioned ones. AGENCIES

BIG BOOST: The new technology raises hopes of future computers that are smaller, faster and more efficient.


Source:::: The Times of India, 27-09-2013, p.17,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&AW=1380269603906

HC raps Centre over use of foreign servers for secret info

Abhinav Garg TNN 


New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Thursday frowned at the high level of dependence of the government and its agencies on foreign internet servers. 
    “It’s an important issue. You must act fast,” a division bench comprising justices B D Ahmed and Vibhu Bakhru 
told the government after seeing that the National Investigating Agency (NIA), while issuing a public notice, gave a gmail ID to solicit secret information on terror suspects. 
    “The government of India 
and the NIA are using private email IDs on foreign networks that store data outside India. This violates Section-4 of the Public Records Act 1993,” advocate Parag Gupta argued, prompting the bench to express its displeasure with the Centre for such a lapse. 
    Gupta, appearing for petitioner K N Govindacharya, submitted a contact directory of the ministry of communication and IT, in which gmail and Yahoo! 
IDs of minister of state Milind Deora and other senior officials were listed. Gupta argued this was against the government policy wherein ‘nic’ network of emails must be used to ensure information remains on Indian servers. 
    Appearing for the Centre, additional solicitor general Rajeev Mehra and standing counsel Sumeet Pushkarna 
assured the HC that an email policy will be formed in four weeks for official communication by government officers so that the data wouldn’t be transferred to foreign servers. 
    The Centre’s stand in the HC 
on bringing a policy on securing its official communication is important as it comes in the backdrop of claims that India is among the top five countries extensively monitored by the National Security Agency (NSA), a US agency tasked with foreign surveillance. Reports say NSA recorded 6.3 billion pieces of intelligence from computer networks in India, placing it fifth on the list of most extensively monitored countries.


Source:::: The Times of India, 27-09-2013, p.10,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&AW=1380269603906

One in five rural homes lacks access to drinking water, electricity & sanitation

Only 18% Have All Three Utilities, Sharp Drop In Agriculture’s GDP Share

TIMES INSIGHT GROUP 


    One in five rural households has none of the three basic facilities — drinking water, electricity and sanitation — while only about 18% have access to all three. 
    The India Rural Development Report 2012-13 released by Jairam Ramesh on Thursday shows that while rural poverty has reduced significantly from over 40% to just 26%, there is large variation in poverty reduction between regions, districts and social classes, with persistent pockets of deprivation. 
    The Union rural development minister said the significant shift to non-farm labour in rural areas has debunked the notion that the share of agricultural labour in employment has stagnated while the share of agriculture in GDP has fallen sharply to just 14% in 2011-12. 
    While agriculture remains the largest employer in rural areas, the proportion of people employed in non-farm labour went up from 32% in 1993 to 42.5% in 2009-10. Ramesh said non-farm employment could be stimulated only by rapid farm growth. The mandate of his ministry to ensure rural development could be hamstrung by the persistent agricultural crisis marked by a shrinking share in the GDP, lack of public investment and dependence on rainfed agriculture. 
    While the minister saw the increase in non-farm rural employment as a positive, a closer look at the data reveals that the proportion of self-employed people in agriculture, i.e. cultivators, is shrinking 
even as large numbers shift to non-farm jobs on insecure terms. Of the 42% engaged in non-farm employment, most are engaged in unskilled jobs such as construction and trade. Even among those engaged in manufacturing, most are casual labourers. 
    Increased fragmentation of land holdings has meant a halving of the average size of land holdings from 2.3 hec
tares in 1970-71 to 1.2 hectares in 2010-11. The proportion of marginal farmers rose from 9% to 22% and that of small farmers from 12% to 22% in the same period. Large land holdings — over 10 hectares — shrank from 30% of the total cultivated land to just 11%. 
    In the past decade, public investment in agriculture has remained stagnant at about 3% of the agricultural GDP 
and the consequent crisis in agriculture is reflected in growing farmer suicides. The numbers rose from over 10,700 cultivators in 1995 to over 17,000 by 2009, after which it fell to 13,700 in 2012. Indebtedness and crop failure have been blamed for most suicides. 
    Despite the hype about financial inclusion and extension of banking and credit to rural farmers, the proportion of rural households availing any banking services was just 54% in 2011. A look at the loans disbursed by commercial banks to farmers showed that marginal farmers accounted for the lowest disbursement — Rs 42,600 crore — while fewer medium and large farmers got over Rs 73,000 crore. 
    The efforts to expand rural physical infrastructure, including water, electricity and sanitation, have shown some results, though the minister admitted that sanitation remained India’s single biggest failure, with a large proportion of the rural population still defecating in the open, and childhood malnutrition and ill health being rampant. 
    Malnutrition caused also by poor calorie intake persists despite increasing monthly per capita expenditure. From 2,153 calories, consumption has steadily decreased to just 2,020 calories in 2009-10, indicating distress as most people would not be willingly consuming less. 
    Social infrastructure, according to the minister, is still not a positive story in rural India. Traditionally disadvantaged groups such as scheduled caste (SC) and schedules tribes (ST) are the worst affected by this. They also happen to 
have the highest proportion of the poor — 47% of ST and 42% of SC as compared to just 28% of the rest of the communities. 
    The report revealed that though the proportion of poor in all the communities has come down, the gap in poverty reduction between the various communities has persisted. 
    Despite high rural enrolment, the proportion of students in an age group attending school fell steadily from 78% at the primary level to just 29% at the higher secondary level in 2009-10. Learning levels were also poor with less than half the students in class Vbeing able to read letters and words and books of class I and II. Less than half the students in class VIII could recognize numbers and do addition and subtraction. 
    In health too, rural India fared badly, with over 28% not accessing treatment as they could not afford to. This proportion goes up to 37% for SCs and 32% for STs. Larger proportions of these two groups use government health facilities compared to other social groups. Hence, poor public health infrastructure hits them the hardest. Despite the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), rural healthcare suffers from a lack of qualified personnel at every level — from paramedics to doctors and specialists — and requires greater investment in physical infrastructure too. 
    To address such wide variation in access to facilities in rural areas, the report has recommended greater emphasis on inclusion, sustainability and effective delivery of services in planning for rural development.



Source:::: The Times of India, 27-09-2013, p.10,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&AW=1380269603906

Now, you can help map unsafe zones for women

TIMES NEWS NETWORK 


Mumbai: Citizens can now play an active role in making Mumbai safe by contributing to an online initiative that will map unsafe zones and incidents of sexual harassment. The project—HarassMap-Mumbai —encourages victims of sexual harassment to report their experience on a real-time website (see box). 
    Launched by women resource centre Akshara on Thursday, the online map allows women who report an incident to maintain their anonymity if they wish. Victims can offer specifics about the type of harassment they suffered, the place where the incident occurred and the profile of their harasser. It also urges Mumbaikars to log in and report areas where they feel unsafe, be it due to the lack of adequate street lighting or the absence of police patrolling. The areas show up as coloured dots on a map reflecting the heightened 
risk quotient of an area. 
    “It would help us get a true picture of how the city treats its women,” said actor Rahul Bose. “This site will be listening to survivors as well as holding up a mirror to men.” 
“We will pursue the police to take action to make public spaces safer,” said Nandita Gandhi of Akshara. 
“If we find that a woman who logs in needs help, we will alert the police,” said an Akshara spokesperson. 


THE INITIATIVE 
HarassMap-Mumbai is a platform for citizens to take steps to make the city safe

WHAT YOU CAN DO Report an experience of harassment, flag off unsafe spots or upload photos 
HOW TO REPORTR| By filling a form on on akshara.crowdmap.com/main n| By sending a message to 9920103103 1| By using the the Ushahidi app for iPhone/Android 

WHAT THE APP PROVIDES Real-time picture of violence against women in Mumbai 
Information about support services for survivors like helplines & legal aid services 

HOW THIS WILL HELP Women resource centre Akshara will work with the police to mitigate the incidents 
THE CHALLENGES Reach is limited to those who are techsavvy and know English



Source:::: The Times of India, 27-09-2013, p.07,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&AW=1380269603906

Thursday 26 September 2013

Govt may ask SC to allow Aadhaar-linked benefits for schemes

TIMES NEWS NETWORK 


New Delhi:The government is exploring the option of approaching the Supreme Court for relief to allow Aadhaar-linked entitlements under UPA’s welfare schemes. 
    The government is worried as enacting a legislation to provide statutory status to Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) may take time, which may delay rollout of its direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme, touted as UPA’s game-changer for the 2014 general elections. 
    MoS for planning Rajiv Shukla had said that National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010, to provide statutory status to the UIDAI, was likely to be cleared in the winter session of Parliament. The bill was introduced in Rajya Sabha in 2010 but was rejected by Parliament’s standing committee on finance, chaired by BJP leader Yashwant Sinha. 
    “The bill was sent back to the Planning Commission, with some amendments. We 
will soon take it to the Cabinet and try to push the draft for passage in the winter session,” Shukla said However, enrollments for Aadhaar numbers will continue. 
    The SC’s interim order has not stopped UIDAI from enrolling people, said an official. The apex court had said that enrolling in Aadhaar couldn’t be made a condition to access government services or subsidies. 
    However, an UIDAI official argued that Aadhaar card was only an instrument for better service delivery to ensure that benefits of welfare schemes reached the right people.


Source:::: The Times of India, 26-04-2013, p. 10,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW

1 out of 5 sewage treatment plants non-operational

Vishwa Mohan TNN 


New Delhi: Almost one-fifth of the centrally-funded sewage treatment plants in the country are “non-operational”, leading to millions of litres of untreated water either seeping into the ground as a potential pollutant of ground water or being discharged into natural drainage systems and rivers everyday. 
    Besides, performance of another nearly one-fifth of the 152 sewage treatment plants (STPs) was found to be unsatisfactory. 
    The findings are part of a report of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) which, after monitoring the STPs over a period of time, conducted performance evaluation of sewage treatments plants. 
    The report said, “Out of the 152 STPs, nine plants are under construction, 30 are non-operational and performance of 28 plants are not satisfactory.” 
    The board, which made its report public on Tuesday, evaluated only those plants which were funded under the national river conservation plan of the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF). These plants are, however, being operated by local civic bodies. 
    Against the collective sewage treatment capacity of 4,716 million litres per day (MLD) of 152 STPs, these plants treat only 3,126 MLD of sewage with capacity utilization of 66%. The board found that the plants located in different states worked at different levels of efficiency. 
    “Close examination of the data indicates that the per cent ‘capacity utilization’ is maximum in the 
states of Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana and Goa,” the report said. 
    Noting that 80% of the water supplied for domestic use came back as waste water, the report said, “A significant volume of waste water is not subjected to any treatment and is ultimately discharged into surface water bodies leading to deterioration of water quality.” 
    In order to protect water quality of rivers, the central government had established National River Conservation Directorate in the MoEF to provide technical and financial support to state governments for development of sewage treatment capacities of those municipalities which were discharging their waste water into natural water bodies. 
    Though the recent performance evaluation was restricted to only 152 STPs having capacity to treat merely 4,716 MLD of sewage, the CPCB’s previous reports may be recalled to show how Indian cities face huge shortage of sewage treatment capacity. The CPCB’s report in 2005-06 (the last one which carried this study on status of municipal waste water generated in 35 metropolitan cities) showed that these cities generated 15,644 MLD of sewage. But these cities had sewage treatment capacity of only 8,040 MLD (51% of the total sewage). 
    The board had subsequently come out with a report in 2009-10 evaluating sewage treatment capacities of 498 Class-I cities (including metropolitan cities) having population more than one lakh as per 2001 census. This report had also presented a grim picture of sewage treatment capacity in the country.

CLEANING THE MESS 
    Discharge of untreated sewage is the most important water polluting source in India 
    Out of 38,000 million litres per day (MLD) of sewage generated in cities and towns, treatment capacity exists for only 12,000 MLD 

Status of municipal waste water generation and treatment capacity of metropolitan cities 
    Among the metropolitan cities, Delhi has the highest capacity of sewage treatment (2,330 MLD) – 29% of total treatment capacity in metropolitan cities 
    Delhi and Mumbai together have 55% of treatment capacity of metropolitan cities 

    Treatment capacity meets the volume of sewage generation only in five cities—Hyderabad, Vadodara, Chennai, Ludhiana and Ahmedabad 
    27 cities have their treatment capacity less than 50% 
of sewage generation


Source:::: The Times of India, 26-04-2013, p. 10,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW

HIV+ transgender alleges bias at KEM

—Sumitra Deb Roy 


Mumbai: A transgender HIV counsellor has complained to the dean of KEM Hospital, alleging discrimination with regard to her gender identity. Sheetal (name changed), who is HIV positive, also alleged that she was meted out differential treatment due to her status. 
    In her complaint, the counsellor, working with an NGO for eight years, said, “The nurse had spilled the blood she had drawn from me for tests. When I pointed it out, a resident doctor said patients with such infectious diseases should not come
to the hospital. The doctor suggested that we seek treatment at a private hospital,” Sheetal (30) said. Sheetal is suffering from liver failure and was brought to the hospital on Monday. 
    Dean Dr Shubhangi Parkar she said KEM has been treating HIV patients for many years, and there are clear protocols to deal with the cases. “It is unlikely doctors would discriminate on the basis of HIV status,” she said. Parkar said Sheetal had objected to the medical records not referring to her as a “transgen
der or TG”.

Wednesday 25 September 2013

‘Ensure edu for rescued mentally challenged kids’


Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Tuesday asked the state to ensure that mentally challenged children rescued from shelter homes in Thane, Panvel and Mankhurd get access to better education and health facilities. At an earlier hearing, the HC had ordered that the rescued children should be sent to school under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. 
    “All the children are below 18, they will study in a school 
at the Mankhurd shelter. We will also start a resource centre there. We have hired special educators who will work with regular teachers at the school,” Asha Bajpai of TISS had said earlier. In 2010, the HC had set up a five-member committee headed by Bajpai to coordinate functioning of orphanages for the mentally challenged in the state following reports of death of children at a Thane home. 

Source::: The Times of India, 25-09-2013, p.09, http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW

Women make 36% of MBA applicants

Global Share Declines From 40% In 2012

Hemali Chhapia TNN 


Graduate business schools that participated in the latest Application Trends Survey by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) reported receiving 1.21 lakh applications from women, which represented 36% of the applicant pool of the 2013-2014 academic year. 
    In 2012, women had formed 40% of the applicant pool. But this time, their share contracted a little, particularly in professional MBA courses and specialized master’s programmes. Only in two programmes was there an increase in the share: master’s of accounting programmes got 59% applications from women, up from 56% last year; and the master’s programmes in IT management received 45% applications from women, compared with 40% in 2012. 
    In contrast, the share of women applicants decreased this year for the master’s of finance and master’s in management courses as well as for full-time one-year, flexible, part-time, executive and online MBA programmes. The full-time two-year MBA programme applications from women were 39% of the total pool this year, same as in 2012. 
    Although the 2013 application volume trends for women mirrored the overall downward trend for some programmes, anywhere from a third to over a half of the programmes in the latest GMAC study received increased applications from women. In several courses, the growth in application volume from women exceeded the growth in application volume from men. 
    More than half (53%) the master’s in management programmes reported increased applications from women, compared with 43% that received increased applications from men. Executive, flexible and part-time MBA programmes showed a similar trend—a greater percentage of these reported volume growth in female applicants that outpaced the volume growth in male applicants.


Source::: The Times of India, 25-09-2013, p.08, http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW

EXTERNMENT CASES

Home secy to be replaced as appellate authority: State

Rosy Sequeira TNN 


Mumbai: The state government told the Bombay HC on Tuesday that it is replacing Vineet Agarwal, home secretary (special), as appellate authority in externment matters. 
    A division bench of Justice SC Dharmadhikari and Justice Gautam Patel was informed by advocate general Darius Khambata that the government will “appoint a secretary in the said department and designate him as appellate authority”. Khambata said it will take some time but in the mean time, the additional chief secretary (home) will hear applications for stay of externment orders until a new officer takes charge. 
    On Monday, the judges were furious after they read Agarwal’s letter sent to the prosecutor saying he has written to the government that he does not wish to continue as appellate 

authority. Khambata said after the court’s previous orders, he and prosecutor Aruna Pai had explained to Agarwal his duties as an appellate authority and had even written a detailed note stating all requirements of an appellate authority. “We thought this would get the train back on the track,” said Khambata, adding that it was followed by Agarwal’s letter. 
    In their order, the judges said that in his letter, Agarwal had “insisted that he had not committed any error and it was possibly some misunderstanding that led to this court repeatedly quashing and setting aside his orders”. The judges said they were “disturbed” by it. 
    They said the court’s prime concern was that the appellate authority follows the rule of law and abides by all precedents laid down by the Supreme Court and the HC. The judges said based on the apex and high court orders , legal submissions, infirmities in facts and extension orders were pointed out to Agarwal , “however, he continued to brush aside the legal submissions and contentions of advocates and passed the same stereotype, cryptic and mechanical orders”.



Source::: The Times of India, 25-09-2013, p.04, http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW

Tuesday 24 September 2013

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