The Civil Service Times

How to live sustainably every day (Part 9) - Drive to change

2013-02-12T12:02:00.000+05:30

The minute we take our car out, we can see how other people’s cars are a nuisance. A brisk morning walk burns calories, strengthens muscles, works the lungs and gets the blood racing. If you get up at dawn and drive to the gym or park to engage in this virtuous exercise, you probably encounter dozens of fellow walkers, eyes fixed on their trainer-clad feet. For the rest of the day, how many of these well-heeled exercisers will actually walk to go somewhere?Those who own cars often lament that ‘banks are giving loans left and right, and everyone owns a car now.’ The minute we take our car out, we can see how other people’s cars are a nuisance.

How to live sustainably every day (Part 8) - Shop talk

2013-02-12T11:40:00.000+05:30

We started this series with what goes out of our homes. The other half of green living is what we bring into our homes. The products we buy and the way we buy them affect our families, neighborhoods and society at large. Start with the simplest thing we do when we shop. The plastic carry bag pollutes our streets, rivers, wells and forests. It clogs sewers. It kills cattle and wildlife. Why shoppers insist on it is a mystery. If we all carry cloth bags as we used to, and nag our friends to do the same, we can be free of this menace. In fact, we can even refuse other kinds of excess wrapping, such as the boxes and plastic sleeves that come with saris or shoes.

How to live sustainably every day (Part 7) - The Minus Touch

2012-11-23T14:00:00.000+05:30

Building or renovating a home takes a huge toll on the environment, sometimes unnecessarily. But for every couple who put up an entire outbuilding to keep their unwanted things, we can find a couple who live elegantly in an 18 x 18 foot cottage. Next time we’re yearning to renovate, let’s remember that happy austerity in a cottage. A family that re-does its floor dumps a huge quantity of rubble and broken tile somewhere. The same goes for replacing wooden cabinets and wardrobes or, worse, discarding synthetic materials that will never degrade.

How to live sustainably every day (Part 6) - There will be mud

2012-11-23T13:42:00.000+05:30

A garden in a city or suburb is more than just a show piece. It buffers us from a harsh climate. It soothes our concrete-assaulted eyes. It shelters birds, butterflies and small animals. It absorbs rain water. It supplies fruits, vegetables and herbs.All that seems logical, but many gardens are far from green. Householders buy tractor-loads of nutrient-poor soil to dump in the compound. We overwater plants. We remove and discard precious topsoil along with weeds. We often pave over the area because we can’t tolerate what we consider “garbage”, which is simply the leaves, flowers and branches that naturally fall off a living organism.

How to live sustainably every day (Part 5) - More power to you

2012-10-10T13:56:00.000+05:30

When it comes to saving energy, people mostly talk about solar gadgets. Solar heaters, lamps and cookers are popular and increasingly better designed, but they have to be installed and operated judiciously if we are to benefit from them, and they certainly aren’t the whole story.Apart from a few rural homes off the grid, almost all of us use conventional energy sources — electricity and gas. We can all take immediate steps to reduce our consumption. Turning off lights and fans when we leave the room is a simple habit most of us have lost. We often forget that when we need more light or air, we can take our work to the window or sit where the breeze is instead of turning on more lights and fans.Fortunately, we no longer hear the silly idea that keeping appliances and computers on standby day and night “makes more sense” than turning them off when they’re not needed. If a gadget on standby is warm to the touch, it is clearly drawing power.

How to live sustainably every day (Part 4) - Hole in the bucket

2012-10-10T13:31:00.000+05:30

Of all the environmental issues we discuss, water raises the gloomiest predictions. Whether or not we believe in the water wars to come, we’ve at least seen spats in front of street taps. In most Indian cities, we ought to conserve water in our homes and gardens.“But we have no water problem!” say many householders. Yes, if you live in a privileged neighbourhood, there may always be water coming out of your taps. But what middle class families pay for water does not reflect the actual cost of purifying it and piping it into our houses.Poorer neighbourhoods may get what looks like ‘free’ water from street taps and lorries. But a woman who spends half her day waiting with her pot loses time she might spend caring for her family and earning a living. A girl appointed to carry water for the family’s needs usually misses school to do the job.

National Service Scheme (NSS) to Focus on Skill Development to be Transformed into National Service and Skill Development Scheme (NSSD)

2012-09-28T13:45:00.000+05:30

The Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports has decided to reposition the National Service Scheme (NSS) by adding a new Skill Development dimension to the scheme. The new focus of the scheme would be on students attaining employable skills while undertaking work with the community to bring about sustainable social change and equity. A pilot project to this effect would be undertaking in the current financial year.

Renewable Energy an Important Source - Opinion

2012-09-28T13:33:00.000+05:30

Electricity is one of the prime requirements for any country to develop. Without it, infrastructural bottlenecks accentuate, causing hurdles in growth across the board. Industries, Agriculture, services and in fact every walk of life need electricity to move forward. With this in view, India has been making all efforts to generate as much electricity as possible from different sources. These include Hydro, thermal, nuclear and even non- conventional sources like solar and wind energy.

Big ideas for micro units

2012-09-24T14:27:00.000+05:30

Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) play a pivotal role in India’s industrial development, as they help hone and nurture the talent and skills of entrepreneurs. The MSME sector contributes 8 per cent to the country’s GDP, 45 per cent to the manufactured output, and 40 per cent to exports, and provides employment to 60 million people through 28.5 million enterprises.

How to live sustainably every day (Part 3) - A thriftier kitchen

2012-09-24T14:20:00.000+05:30

A recent news article reported that American families waste nearly 40 per cent of the food they buy. As Indian householders get busier and more frazzled, we too are losing a good bit of our vegetables and provisions to carelessness. One rotten tomato can spoil an entire kilo. Packaged beans from a department store may contain those which are too stringy to use. A cut piece of white melon may rot in the fridge. Meanwhile, vegetable prices are rising every day.

How to live sustainably every day (Part 2) - It’s all about easy composting

2012-09-24T14:04:00.000+05:30

In rural households, vegetable peels, plant clippings, coconut husks and other organic waste are all tossed under a tree or into a trench and eventually find their way back into the nutrient cycle of the garden. In the city, we are more fussy about what parts of a vegetable we use; we throw out vegetables that have wilted and rotted because we forgot about them. We have no cows and chicken to eat the food we won’t eat, so we accumulate much more vegetable waste.

How to live sustainably every day (Part 1) - How to trash that

2012-09-24T13:57:00.000+05:30

Sooner or later, as we drive out of our leafy neighbourhoods and happening cities, we see them. Piles of garbage, stinking, oozing, and spilling on to the freshly tarred road. Somebody in the car says, ‘Why can’t they incinerate? Why can’t they recycle? Why can’t they do something?’ But this particular issue has to be addressed with ‘Why can’t we do something?’Those stinking, oozing piles come from households very much like ours. We generate endless streams of plastic wrapping and thermocol from white goods, paper and cardboard from branded purchases, and heaps of food waste.

Small is lucrative - Google is all set to train professionals who will help SMEs in India manage their digital campaigns

2012-09-24T13:48:00.000+05:30

There is a strong demand for digital advertising from small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) in the country, To cater to them Google India has launched a ‘SME Partner Programme’.Through this, the company will train premier SME partners to offer the highest level of expertise and proficiency in developing, launching and managing digital campaigns for SME ventures. The partners will offer end-to-end marketing solutions like search engine marketing, localised marketing solutions across Google properties and a mobile advertising platform.

RFID-enabled services for supply chain management

2012-09-24T13:38:00.000+05:30

RFID-enabled services are increasingly used in supply chain management by fixing RFID tags on the pallets or products and using special readers to track the products. Modern tags, which can be reused any number of times, are also available now.If a retailer who sources his products from several locations and has operations in different cities wants to have real-time data of the goods in his warehouses and at the outlets, he can go in for the Radio Frequency Identification-enabled services.Dubai-based Hexomatrixx has taken the technology forward by integrating the RFID reader to smart phones. It has already tested this in some of the overseas markets and plans to launch it in India too.

Election Commission of India to work together With Civil Society

2012-09-24T13:32:00.000+05:30

The Election Commission of India and Civil Society Organisations have decided to work together on inclusive and greater participation of people in the electoral process. This was decided during a two-day consultation ECI held with a range of Civil Society Organizations in New Delhi concluded yesterday. The consultation also came up with recommandations on the challenges faced by Election Commission in meeting gender gap, fighting urban apathy, overcoming youth disconnect, inclusion of marginalised and weaker section and promoting ethical and informed voting. The Consultation also identified areas in which CSOs can extend electoral services support to election machinery at the grassroots level.

Smartphone race split three ways

2012-09-21T14:22:00.000+05:30

The next-generation smartphone market is a three-way race between Apple’s iPhone 5, Microsoft’s Windows 8 phones and Google’s Android 4.0x-based devices.With the launch of iPhone 5, the die has been cast for an intense competition among smartphones.With Apple’s iPhone 5 trying to re-establish its supremacy over the Android devices such as Samsung Galaxy S3 and HTC One X, it does look like Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 mobile phones will be the dark horse.

‘Opt for chai-pakora wedding’ - Krishna Tirath

2012-09-21T13:41:00.000+05:30

Asking people to opt for a chai-pakora wedding and not force the girl’s family to over-stretch themselves by spending lavishly, the Union Women and Child Development Ministry is now in talks with other Ministries concerned to bring in laws/regulations to cap the spending on weddings.

Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana

2012-09-19T15:09:00.000+05:30

The Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY) aims at correcting the imbalances in the availability of affordable healthcare facilities in the different parts of the country in general, and augmenting facilities for quality medical education in the under-served States in particular. The scheme was approved in March 2006.The first phase in the PMSSY has two components - setting up of six institutions in the line of AIIMS; and upgradation of 13 existing Government medical college institutions.

Project Arrow

2012-09-19T14:47:00.000+05:30

Project Arrow is an initiative to transform India Post into a vibrant and responsive organization and to make a visible and positive difference in postal operations to benefit the customers.It has been launched with objective of modernizing the post and makes visible, tangible and noteworthy differences in the post office operations that matter to “Aam Aadmi”.

Kerala Cluster of Coastal Radar Network

2012-09-14T14:16:00.001+05:30

The Marine security network will get a boost with the setting up of a Remote Operating Station (ROS) at Kochi as part of the Coastal Radar Network. This is being developed by Defence Public Sector Undertaking, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) for the Indian Coast Guard.A Regional Operating Centre (ROC) at Mumbai and Remote Operating Station (ROS) at Porbandar as part of the Coastal Radar Network has also been set up.

Diesel Price Increased by Rs 5 per litre; Subsidised Domestic LPG Cylinders restricted to 6 in a year

2012-09-14T13:57:00.000+05:30

The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA) met on 13thSeptember, 2012 under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister to consider the disturbingsituation arising out of projected massive under-recoveries of Rs. 1,87,127 crore for the financial year 2012-13 in the wake of high international crude oil prices and sharp depreciation of Indian Rupee against US Dollar. The uncompensated under-recovery causes loss tothe Public Sector Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs). The CCPA took the following decisions to be implemented with effect from the midnight of 13/14 September 2012 :

Grow, Transform and Sustain – The Mantra for Indian PSUs

2012-09-13T14:06:00.001+05:30

India’s central public sector enterprises have undergone a cycle of transformation since the introduction of liberal economic policies a couple of decades ago.Many believed that the public sector enterprises will simply wither away because of competition and their inefficiency; or they will be subsumed by the private sector because of the divestment programme.However, as the experience has shown, the Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs) continue to have a critical role to play in many businesses, especially in the strategic sectors.Many CPSEs have proved their critics wrong by becoming extremely efficient and competitive.

Comparison between old and new visa agreements between India and Pakistan

2012-09-13T13:26:00.000+05:30

Below is the comparison between old and new visa agreements between India and Pakistan

The food crisis and India

2012-09-12T13:45:00.000+05:30

The World Bank has joined the chorus warning the world of an impending food crisis with damaging food price inflation. In its late-August edition of its Food Price Watch the Bank reported that global prices for food as reflected by its Food Price Index rose 10 per cent in July 2012 alone. The prices of staples such as corn and soya bean were at an all-time high that month, with the increase in corn prices amounting to 25 per cent and that in soya bean to 17 per cent over a single month. Earlier, the FAO had reported that its Food Price Index (FPI) rose by 6 per cent in July 2012, driven by grain and sugar prices. Cereal prices had risen by 17 per cent in June relative to the previous month, maize prices by close to 23 per cent and wheat prices by around 19 per cent.

Visionary extraordinaire - Verghese Kurien

2012-09-12T13:37:00.001+05:30

Much has already been said and written about the monumental contributions of Verghese Kurien to the development of the Indian dairy industry, rooted on the Gandhian Principle of production by masses. I met Dr. Kurien soon after his return from Michigan State University and his taking up residence at Anand. From then on, we shared ideas and experiences in the area of rural transformation through agriculture and dairying. Among the very many unique contributions of Dr. Kurien which led to India becoming the leading milk producer of the world, I would like to highlight a few.