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India, China set up border mechanism
Annual Status of Education Report 2011 |
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Minority quota
Govt: Khurshid didn’t interfere in 2G probe
People enjoy watching a buffalo fight during the Bhogali Bihu harvest festival at the Ahatguri village, some 90 km east of Guwahati, on Monday. — PTI
AP sees ‘historic’ low in Naxal violence
Govt disputes existence of drug-resistant TB
AMU VC hands over charge
BJP hits out at govt on Army Chief age row
India’s N-assets safe: Mathai
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India, China set up border mechanism
New Delhi, January 17 The agreement was signed between the two sides at the end of the 15th round of talks between the Special Representatives (SRs) of the two countries here. The Indian delegation was led by National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon while the Chinese team was headed by State Councillor Dai Bingguo. The two SRs agreed that they would prepare a joint agreed record for their governments on the progress made so far during their talks on the long-standing boundary dispute. A joint statement said the two sides also discussed other bilateral, regional and global issues. The discussions were wide-ranging, productive, forward-looking and marked by a commonality of views on many issues. Making a positive appraisal of the current state of bilateral relations, the two SRs noted the importance of regular high-level exchanges and strengthened cooperation across different areas between the two countries. They also agreed that there was scope for greater coordination on regional and global issues. It was decided that the next round of the SR talks would be held in China. The working mechanism, to be headed by a Joint Secretary- level official from the Ministry of External Affairs and a Director General level official from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, will comprise diplomatic and military officials from the two sides. It was agreed that the working mechanism, which was mooted by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, would study ways and means to conduct and strengthen exchanges and cooperation between military personnel and establishments of the two sides in the border areas and will also explore the possibility of cooperation in the border areas. Both sides also agreed that the working mechanism would undertake other tasks that are mutually agreed upon by the two sides, but would not discuss the resolution of the boundary question or affect the SR mechanism. It will address issues and situations that may arise in the border areas that affect the maintenance of peace and tranquillity and will work actively toward maintaining the friendly atmosphere between the two countries. It will hold consultations once or twice every year alternately in India and China. Emergency consultations, if required, may be convened after mutual agreement.
Pact for peace
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Annual Status of Education Report 2011 Aditi Tandon/TNS
New Delhi, January 17 Though a whopping 96.8 per cent children aged 6 to 14 years (the age group the RTE Act covers) are now enrolled in school, children’s attendance is declining and so is their ability to read simple text and do simple mathematical calculations. Almost half (48.1 per cent) of India’s rural primary school students are either attending private schools or seeking paid tuition. Across the nation, private school enrolment for children aged 6 to 14 years rose from 18.7 per cent in 2006 to 25.6 per cent in 2011. The findings are part of the much-awaited Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2011 released by Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal. The survey, which covered 6.5 lakh children in 16,000 villages of 558 districts, found that one in every four rural children was attending private schools. In Kerala and Manipur, over 60 per cent children go to private schools. The percentage of students going to private schools is 71.1 for Manipur; 39.6 for Punjab, 43.4 for Haryana, 37.7 for Jammu and Kashmir and 29.6 for Himachal. In UP, 45 per cent students were found to be going to private schools in 2011 as against 22 per cent in 2005. In Tamil Nadu, 35 per cent are attending private schools as against 16 per cent in 2005. And the percentage of students seeking paid tuitions is rising. The figure was 22.5 in 2010 and is 23.3 per cent today. “RTE Act requires all private schools to have basic minimum infrastructure to exist. The issue is whether the government will close down these private schools if they fail to comply with RTE. And if it will, how it would ensure that parents send their wards to government schools for free education at a time when parents are increasingly choosing to seek education privately,” Madhav Chavan, founder member, Pratham, which conducts ASER, told TNS. Sibal blamed the states for the rot and said it was too early to judge the RTE Act. “The problem is with the states which prescribe such difficult textbooks that children are unable to cope up and seek tuitions. Also, the RTE Act is work in progress. Its impact will be visible in six years. Even after 18 months of notification, several states haven’t notified rules. What can the Centre do?” he wondered. The ASER report further found levels of reading abilities to have declined in several states. Except in Punjab, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, reading abilities declined pan India, where the percentage of fifth graders able to read Class II text dropped across the nation from 53.7 per cent in 2010 to 48.2 per cent in 2011. Except in Himachal, Standard III children showed decline in ability to read Class I text across India. In arithmetic, the situation is worse. As for the nation, the percentage of Class III graders who can do two-digit subtractions with borrowing dropped from 36.3 per cent in 2010 to 29.9 per cent in 2011. The decline was seen everywhere except in Andhra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, where the situation improved. The percentage of Class V children who can solve subtraction problems declined from 70.9 in 2010 to 61 this year. “In a year dedicated to math, this is a heartbreaking statistic,” Rukmini Banerjee of Pratham said.
Major Findings
RTE compliance
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‘Cong, SP hand-in-glove’
Shahira Naim/TNS
Lucknow, January 17 Addressing the media here Gadkari asked where the 9 per cent reservation that the Congress promises to the Muslims and the 18 per cent that Mulayam Singh Yadav is talking about would come from.
“When Mulayam Singh Yadav who has survived on backward politics speaks of giving 18 per cent reservation to Muslims and the Congress promises them 9 per cent are they considering depriving the OBC or the SC of their existing reservation?” Gadkari asked. He said changing the existing reservation pattern would require a Constitutional amendment which is possible only by a two-third majority. "The Congress was not in a position to get it passed by a two-third majority and the SP lacked the required strength. They are only indulging in vote bank politics," he alleged. He spoke of a tacit understanding between the Congress and the SP who were helping each other and were planning to form the next government with the help of Ajit Singh. While ruling out any alliance with BSP he wanted BSP supremo Mayawati to clarify her position on reservation for Muslims and if she was ready to deprive the OBC or the SC of their share of reservation. Charging the Congress with resorting to such divisive politics in a last-ditch effort to make its presence felt in UP, Gadkari said that the PM had even spoken of the minority having the first claim on the nation’s resources. “We on the other hand believe that the poor of the country irrespective of caste or religion have the first claim on the country’s resources. We are not against any religion or community, but we are in favour of development for all," he declared. The BJP has also released an 8-page vision document on Uttar Pradesh which has a blueprint of making UP a front ranking state of the country by following the Bihar model of good governance, development and social justice. At a more tangible level it promises 1 crore jobs, crime free society and integral development.
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Govt: Khurshid didn’t interfere in 2G probe
New Delhi, January 17 “It is emphatically denied that the Law Minister is publicly giving clean
chit to Essor/Loop,” the government said in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court in response to a
court notice. In a petition, the Centre for PIL (CPIL) has maintained that the interference of “Law Minister Salman Khurshid is evident. He is publicly giving clean chit to
Essar/Loop. A recent opinion by his ministry giving clean chit to Essar Group is attached.” The government, however, acknowledged that the minister had given his opinion on two questions — whether there was any violation of guidelines in the grant of 2G licence to Loop Telecom and whether a case of cheating could be made out against Loop Telecom for the purpose
of prosecution. “This opinion did not and was never intended to interfere with the investigation being done by the CBI…Opinions are opinions, which may or may not be accepted by others who may have a different opinion on the same issues. Therefore, the apprehension that this opinion is likely to weaken the prosecution case in the matter of Swan-Reliance as well is groundless,” the government said. Further, the entire matter was in the domain of the CBI and the court which would take an independent view of all aspects of the matter, the government contended in the affidavit. The CPIL petition could not be entertained by the SC as it was impermissible in law to make such serious allegations against a person who was not a party to the proceeding.
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Fighting buffaloes bleed to enthral Bihu revellers
Guwahati, January 17 The tradition of buffalo fight is as old as the tradition of Assamese ‘Magh Bihu’ or ‘Bhogali Bihu’, the most popular post-harvest festival that is celebrated by all communities in Assam. The festival is one of the three ‘Bihus’ celebrated in Assam at three different period in the state. The post-harvest festival popularly called ‘Magh Bihu’ is celebrated in mid-January. The buffalo fight is usually held on a sprawling ground where buffalo owners bring their animals which have been well fed for the past couple of months to make it ready to have a real go at the competitors in the fight. The fighting buffaloes are kept in isolation and well looked after by the owner as part of the preparation for the fight. The proud owner of the winner (buffalo) is provided with cash prize and other incentives by the organisers of such events. About 80 km away from Guwahati, Ahatguri in Nagaon district of Assam is one such places where organising buffalo fight during Magh Bihu has been a tradition for decades. Keeping with the tradition, the fight was organised today on a sprawling ground besides the NH- 37 at Ahatguri in the presence of about 10,000 onlookers from neighbouring villages. Sixty pairs of buffaloes were brought to the mega event by owners from various parts of Nagaon district in Central Assam. One of the organisers sad it was the 40th edition of the event that have been organised in the village till date. Magh Bihu or Bhogali Bihu comes from the word ‘Bhog’ which means feasting and ‘merry-making. It is the Assamese celebration of Sankranti. Since the granaries at farmers’ houses are full at this time of the year, the celebration provides an opportunity for feasting on all sorts of Assamese delicacies and organising community feasts all over the state on the eve of the ‘Magh Bihu’. As the majority farming community in the state are having a leisure time at the time of the year after the rich harvest of paddy, the people in rural Assam traditionally organise various sports like buffalo fight, egg fight, cock fight, nightingale fight and pot breaking etc. as part of Bihu celebrations. Buffalo fight is the most popular among all these sports and continued to draw huge crowd despite a campaign launched against it by animal lovers who find it cruel to the animals (buffaloes) involved in it. The fight leaves most of the participant buffaloes injured and bleeding.
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AP sees ‘historic’ low in Naxal violence
Hyderabad, January 17 The rapid decline in the Maoist activity comes as a big boost to the state police whose anti-Naxalite strategy, referred as “Andhra model”, has yielded desired results over the years. The Maoists have been virtually driven out of AP, which was once considered their stronghold. At the height of Naxalite movement in the early 1990s, the ultras virtually ran parallel administration in vast swathes of the backward Telangana region. According to official records, a total of 2,065 civilians, including several officials, and 575 policemen have been killed during the last 31 years of Naxal violence in the state. There has been a steady decline in Maoist activity during the last few years as they were flushed out of the state by “Greyhounds”, an elite anti-Naxal force. With the police gaining the upper hand and several top leaders being killed or surrendered, the Maoists have shifted their base to the border states of Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Maharashtra. “The success has been achieved because of the two-pronged strategy adopted by us. It involved modernisation of the force to execute intelligence-led precision strikes and massive development in the remote areas particularly focusing on roads, infrastructure, communication, schools and hospitals,” a top official involved in the anti-Maoist operations said. Formed in 1989 as a special wing to counter Maoist activities by adopting jungle warfare and guerrilla tactics, Greyhounds has emerged as a role model for the rest of the country. Once the epicenter of the Naxalite movement, AP has now succeeded in flushing out Maoists from the state. Over 800 Naxalites, including 50 top leaders, have been killed in encounters with the police since 2003. In a single year in 2005, more than 300 cadres including four top leaders died while several others were either arrested or had surrendered. According to police sources, the number of armed Maoists has come down from 2,000 to 300 during the last ten years.
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Govt disputes existence of drug-resistant TB
Allaying fears
New Delhi/Mumbai, Jan 17 Virtually denying the discovery of the virtually untreatable form of the lung disease, the Health Ministry today said the term “totally drug resistant” tuberculosis was misleading, not standardised and not recognised by the WHO. The ministry, whose team is in Mumbai to investigate 12 cases of TDR-TB reported by the PD Hinduja Hospital recently also challenged the hospital’s reporting, saying its lab was not accredited to do tests it claimed it did. It allayed fears on TDR TB saying any type of drug resistant TB could only be diagnosed by lab testing and not by clinical examination alone, as done by Hinduja Hospital. So far, nine persons have been identified in Mumbai to be suffering from TDR/XDR-TB. Last year, doctors at the Hinduja Hospital had detected 12 cases of tuberculosis that does not respond to available drugs. Three persons have died so far. The mother of one of the victims has now contracted the disease. One of the TB patients undergoing treatment at JJ Hospital had escaped and was untraceable. Preliminary results of second-line drug susceptibility testing for multi drug resistant TB patients from DOTS sites and from samples collected from Gujarat and Maharashtra drug resistance surveys have shown that there was not yet any XDR-TB amongst new cases and only about 0.5% amongst re-treatment cases. On the use of the term TDR TB by Hinduja experts, the Health Ministry said, “Testing for resistance beyond XDR-TB is not advocated by WHO and poor clinical response to treatment has not yet been correlated with diagnosis of drug resistant TB as there is no conformation from any accredited lab. Moreover, neither the WHO nor the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) recognise this term.”
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AMU VC hands over charge
Lucknow, January 17 Azis had assumed charge as AMU Vice-chancellor on June 11, 2007 and demitted office today on attaining
superannuation. During his stint, the university was twice closed sine die following violent protest of students. A CBI probe into charges of financial irregularities is currently on.
Rizvi acknowledged that the AMU centres established in Murshidabad and
Malappuram, upgradation of the university-maintained schools as well as the phenomenal growth in ICT facility were notable achievements of the outgoing VC.
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BJP hits out at govt on Army Chief age row
New Delhi, January 17 Speaking on behalf of his party, BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad blamed the government for the controversy caused by the Army Chief knocking at the Supreme Court. Prasad said, “The Government of India has displayed a failure of statecraft in the handling of a sensitive issue like the age of the Army Chief.” Former Army officer and senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh described the government ‘insensitive.’ He said the PM or the Defence Minister could have sorted it out with the Army Chief. Meanwhile, Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi appealed to the Opposition not to politicise and sensationalise the issue but agreed it would have been better if it had not happened. “It would have been better had it not happened but why sensationalise it when the Army Chief had himself said this was his personal issue related to his service record?” Singhvi said.
— TNS
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India’s N-assets safe: Mathai New Delhi, January 17 “We don’t share the conclusion of the report which is based on a faulty methodology,’’ Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai told reporters about the report brought out by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). Hei was briefing reporters on a meeting of ‘Sherpas’ for the second Nuclear Security Summit to be held in South Korea on March 26-27. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is scheduled to participate in the summit.
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mechanism for consultation and coordination on the boundary issue to maintain peace and tranquility along their border.
New Delhi, January 17
According to Gadkari as the Constitutional provision does not provide for more than 50 per cent reservation, therefore he said that this reservation for the Muslims would either come from the existing OBC quota or the SC/ST quota.