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Earth Day 2014 Earth Day is a day of educating the public in promoting a healthy, clean earth. Let’s take some time to promote a healthy, clean earth.  This day has become one of the largest outdoor events in recent years, with about one billion people joining in the activities in thousands of different locations around the world. It is important to create awareness on how to save the earth from damage by pollution. It is up to us to make the earth a safer and healthier place for future generations. People’s everyday actions are related to pollution, which is destroying the environment and impacting human life. Earth Day has been observed on 22nd April every year as an annual event celebrated around the world for the past four decades. Earth Day Network launched the Green Cities campaign to help cities around the world become more sustainable. The purpose of Earth Day is to honour, appreciate, protect, and respect the environment. The first Earth Day was held in 1970 in ...

The Supreme Court’s recent decision to grant recognition to the Indian transgender community the legal status as the third category of sex will go a long way in bringing them into national mainstream and from social exclusion to equality under the law. The million plus transgender community in India has come a long way and the apex Court’s historic verdict is a defining moment for them. According to the guidelines of the verdict, the transgender population would not only be entitled to the right to record their gender identity in documents like the election card, passport, driving licence and ration card but also hopefully open many doors for them. However, it remains to be seen if this decision would put an end to the continual social discrimination. The transgender community in India has been subjected to social stigma and denial of basic rights for centuries. Apart from being confined to the margins and ostracised, they have also often shunned by family members. Indeed, the...

Health & Climate Change By Dr Arvind Kumar Climate change wields adverse impact on human health by giving rise to increased incidence of infectious and vector-borne diseases, especially in India and such a warming comes from a recently released report by the top scientists working in the US-based Environment Safety and Health Compliance Office of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Climate and Health Program, National Centre for Environmental Health. According to this report, cases of diseases like dengue and chikungunya are all set to rise. According to the report, there is possibility of increase in the incidence of diarrhoeal diseases, which are largely attributable to unsafe drinking water and lack of basic sanitation. However, diarrhoeal diseases are responsible for one-fourth of child deaths. Factors like rapid urbanization and industrialization, burgeoning population and inefficient water use are already causing water shortages in India. Besides, cli...

Politics of Malnutrition Dr Arvind Kumar The race for grabbing power at the Centre in the current ongoing Lok Sabha election is getting brisk. However, the issue of malnourished children in India has received almost negligible attention in the election discourse of political parties and candidates. The Global Hunger Index, released in October 2013, placed India among a group of countries with 'alarming' levels of hunger, figuring at the bottom of the heap, below China, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and several in sub-Saharan Africa. Key interventions to boost nutrition levels include the targeted public distribution system (TPDS), Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and the school midday meal scheme (MDMS).  Despite increased food production and procurement for TDPS, food insecurity persists owing to multifarious problems like pilferage, bureaucratic empathy, vested interests and lack of infrastructure at the anganwadi centres (AWCs). Apart from increased allocations...

Baisakhi Festival Basakhi is one of the most significant festivals commemorating the establishment of the Khalsa at Anandpur Sahib in 1699 by the 10th Sikh Guru, Guru Gobid Singh. To mark the celebrations, devotees attend the gurudwara, a Sikh place of worship. Baisakhi, also known as Vasakhi, is an ancient harvest festival in the Punjab region of North India. According to Gregorian Calendar, Baisakhi falls on April 13 every year and on April 14 once in 36 years. This variation in date is due to the fact that date of Baisakhi is reckoned according to the Indian solar calendar and not the lunar calendar. This day is also observed as the beginning of the Hindu solar New Year celebrated by the people of Nepal and India. The special importance attached to the occasion shows regional variation outside of Punjab too. The festival is celebrated as Rongali Bihu in Assam, Naba Barsha in West Bengal and Tripura, Puthandu (Tamil New Year) in Tamil Na...

Remembering Baba Saheb Ambedkar 14th April marks the Birth Anniversary of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the Father of the Indian Constitution. Popularly known as Baba Saheb Ambedkar, he was an eminent jurist, a revolutionary social thinker and a charismatic leader of the masses. As the chief architect of the Indian Constitution, Ambedkar imbued the nation’s founding document with visionary prescience. Ambedkar’s life was a tribute to the nation’s founding vision of inclusion and secularism for he fought throughout his life against social evils like untouchablity. He ably campaigned for the rights of the Dalits and other socially backward classes. For his extraordinary breadth of vision and erudition, Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru appointed Dr. Ambedkar as the nation’s first Law Minister. Ambedkar was born on 14 April 1891 in Madhya Pradesh and subsequently his family to Satara in Maharashtra. Ambedkar’s early experiences were life changing and would later influence the dest...

Vasanta Navratri Vasanta Navaratri, is observed during the Shukla Paksha of Chaitra. this Navratri also marks the start of the new year as per the Hindu mythological lunar calendar (Vikrami Samvat). The word ‘Navratri’ literally means nine nights in Sanskrit, the period of eight days and nine nights has its own significance and is divided into sets of three days to worship three different aspects of the supreme goddess. For the first three days the goddess is regarded as a spiritual force called Durga also known as Kali in order to destroy all our impurities. Second three days are devoted to the goddess Lakshmi, who is considered to have the power of bestowing on her devotees inexhaustible wealth and final three days are spent in worshipping the goddess of wisdom, Saraswati. In order to have all-round success in life, believers seek the blessings of all three aspects of the divine femininity, hence the nine nights of worship. Some communities worship nine forms of Shakti k...

Keeping Ganga Clean The Holy River of Ganga runs its course of over 2500 kms from Gangotri in the Himalayas to Ganga Sagar in the Bay of Bengal through 29 cities and about 48 towns. It is a river with which the people of India are attached spiritually and emotionally. In December 1984, the Government of India launched Ganga Action Plan (GAP) as a 100 per cent centrally sponsored scheme for immediate reduction of pollution load on the river Ganga. Even the Phase-II project of the GAP, which should have been completed by March 2013 in Varanasi, has so far attained only 12% progress. In the wake of such a slow pace of work one can imagine how the Mission Clean Ganga will be achieved by 2020. Over the past two decades more than Rs 40,000-crore has been spent on cleaning river Ganga without attaining any tangible outcome. Perhaps undue investment on technical aspects like creating sewage treatment plants to prevent the pollution in river Ganga without involving people living on...