12.1 Environmental Laws
12.2 Congress to Nutritionists: Don't Talk about The Environment
12.3 India to reach replacement level of fertility by 2020
12.4 India slashes health budget by 20%
12.5 India's Mental Health Crisis The end of shop class
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12.1 Environmental Laws (6/12/2014)
In
a report made public last week, a high-level committee assigned to
rewrite India’s environmental laws assailed the existing regulatory
system, saying it has “served only the purpose of a venal
administration” seeking to extract bribes.To
speed up project approvals, the committee recommended scrapping a layer
of government inspections; instead, it said, India should rely on
business owners to voluntarily disclose the pollution that their
projects will generate and then monitor their own compliance, an
approach the committee described as “the concept of utmost good faith.”
Environmentalists are worried that the new approach will go beyond cutting red tape and will do away with effective regulation altogether.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/
Ganga clean-upEnvironmentalists are worried that the new approach will go beyond cutting red tape and will do away with effective regulation altogether.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/
...
But pollution control boards in the 11 states, which have a frontline
role to play, have yet to prepare a roadmap for zero-liquid discharge.
They aren’t being able to mount real time monitoring of pollution, a
first step, because of “techno-economic difficulties”. The hurdles
include “major variations” in laboratory results from instruments
calibrated differently and the lack of standardised protocols.
These boards also require powers to make over 700 grossly-polluting industries fall in line.http://www.hindustantimes.com/
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It will be interesting to observe whether the 'policy of trust
' helps in cleaning the Ganga.
It
is not that people cannot be trusted, it is just that people have other
priorities. Then, there is the issue of cost, if pollution control is
expensive it is unlikely that industries will comply unless they are
forced to do so and a level playing field is created for all industries.
I. Selvaraj, IITM, 7212.2 Congress to Nutritionists: Don't Talk about The Environment (15/12/2014)
Lawmakers attached a list of "congressional directives" to a massive spending bill that passed both the House and the Senate in recent days. One of those directives expresses "concern" that the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee "is showing an interest in incorporating agriculture production practices and environmental factors" into their recommendations, and directs the Obama administration to ignore such factors in the next revision of the guidelines, which is due out next year.
.. The Dietary Guidelines Advisory committee has been considering all of this. In a meeting of the panel a few months ago, Miriam Nelson, from Tufts University, told the rest of the committee that "in general, a dietary pattern that is higher in plant-based foods and lower in animal-based foods is more health-promoting and is associated with less environmental impact."
This new focus has already run into criticism. The American Meat Institute, which represents meat producers, says nutritionists don't have the expertise to take on environmental questions.
The new directive from Congress may shut down the fledgling effort completely.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/
12.3 India to reach replacement level of fertility by 2020 (23/12/2014)
Fertility is falling faster than expected in India, and the country is on track to reach replacement levels of fertility as soon as 2020, new official data shows.
The 2013 data for the Sample Registration Survey (SRS), conducted by the Registrar General of India, the country’s official source of birth and death data, was released on Monday.
The SRS shows that the Total Fertility Rate – the average number of children that will be born to a woman during her lifetime – in eight States has fallen below two children per woman, new official data shows.
Just nine States – all of them in the north and east, except for Gujarat – haven’t yet reached replacements levels of 2.1, below which populations begin to decline. West Bengal now has India’s lowest fertility, with the southern States, Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. Among backward States, Odisha too has reduced its fertility to 2.1.
http://www.thehindu.com/data/
12.4 India slashes health budget by 20% (31/12/2014)
Despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades, successive governments have kept a tight rein on healthcare expenditure. India spends about 1% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on public health, compared to 3% in China and 8.3% in the United States...
HIV/AIDS funds slashed
In addition to the healthcare budget, the finance ministry has also ordered a spending cut for India's HIV/AIDS programme by about 30% to 13 billion rupees ($205.4 million).
India had the third-largest number of people living with HIV in the world at the end of 2013, according to the UN AIDS programme, and it accounts for more than half of all AIDS-related deaths in the Asia-Pacific.
In October, India was on the brink of running out of a critical medicine in its free HIV/AIDS drugs programme due to bureaucratic delays. A crisis was averted with the assistance of pharmaceutical companies and global health organisations.
Still, health activists complain about dire shortages of several HIV/AIDS diagnostic kits.
"We are all in shock. That shows the kind of importance the government attaches to public health," said Leena Menghaney, a New Delhi-based public health activist. "This will undermine the HIV programme in the long run."
http://www.hindustantimes.com/
12.5 India's Mental Health Crisis The end of shop class (31/12/2014)
On Oct. 10, the government of India announced an ambitious new policy to provide universal mental health services. The policy, the country’s first on mental health, is admirable for its focus on the needs of the country’s poor, on lifting widespread stigma around mental health disorders and on preventing suicide. A bill to make the new policy law is awaiting approval by Parliament.
India has the highest number of suicides in the world. According to the World Health Organization, of 804,000 suicides recorded worldwide in 2012, 258,000 were in India. Indian youths between 15 and 29 years old kill themselves at a rate of 35.5 deaths per 100,000 — the highest in the world — and suicide has surpassed maternal mortality as the leading cause of death of young Indian women. A report from Human Rights Watch released in December exposed the horrific conditions in institutions where too many Indian women with mental and intellectual disabilities are confined, many against their will, and where some are subject to physical and sexual abuse and electric-shock therapy.
Unfortunately, the new policy may be almost impossible to translate into action. On Dec. 23, the government ordered cuts in the health budget of nearly 20 percent, from $5 billion to a little more than $4 billion. Given other serious health needs, the “fresh funds” promised by the government to pay for new mental health services and train qualified mental-health professionals are unlikely to materialize.
This is a pity. There is only one psychiatrist for every 343,000 Indians currently, too few to reduce the shameful suicide rate. Among other problems are depression, acute economic insecurity, anxiety among youths over educational success, and distress among young women caught in a bind between the opportunities of a changing India and pressure from traditionally minded families to marry.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/
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I have little doubt in my mind that an important reason why China has prospered is due to its one child policy (horrific though it may have been in the way in which it was initially implemented).
We can well imagine the resources that even a poor family can deploy to give the best nourishment to an only child.
For most families as far as I can see, a third child will mean practically reducing the standard of living of the family by half. Especially nowadays with small farm holdings and huge expenditures on education.
And here we have our media glibly talking of our Demographic Dividend.
I. Selvaraj, IITM, 72
12.1 The end of shop class (9/2/2012)
12.1 The end of shop class (9/2/2012)
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