Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages of India

The Government of India has initiated a Scheme known as “Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages of India”.  Under this Scheme, the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysore works on protection, preservation and documentation of all the mother tongues/languages of India spoken by less than 10,000 speakers keeping in mind the degree of endangerment and reduction in the domains of usage.          According to the criteria adopted by the UNESCO, a language becomes extinct when nobody speaks or remembers the language.  The UNESCO has categorized languages on basis of endangerment as follows:- (i) Vulnerable (ii)           Definitely Endangered (iii)         Severely Endangered (iv)         Critically Endangered The Critically Endangered Languages as per UNESCO Report are: LANGUAGE/DIALECT                               SPOKEN MAINLY IN 1.      Aimol                                                   Manipur 2.      Aka                                                      Manipur 3.      Baghati                                     Himachal Pradesh 4.      Bangani                                                Uttarakhand 5.      Bellari                                                   Karnataka 6.      Birhor                                                   Jharkhand 7.      Gadaba                                                Andhra Pradesh 8.      Great Andamanese                               Andaman & Nicobar 9.      Handuri                                                Himachal Pradesh 10.  Jarawa                                                 Andaman & Nicobar 11.  Koireng                                                Manipur 12.  Koraga                                                 Karnataka 13.  Kota                                                    Tamil Nadu 14.  Kuruba                                                 Karnataka 15.  Lamgang                                              Manipur 16.  Lamongse                                             Andaman & Nicobar 17.  Langrong                                              Manipur 18.  Luro                                                     Andaman & Nicobar 19.  Manda                                                 Odisha 20.  Mra                                                      Arunachal Pradesh 21.  Muot                                                    Andaman & Nicobar 22.  Na                                                       Arunachal Pradesh 23.  Naiki                                                    Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh 24.  Nihali                                                   Maharashtra 25.  Onge                                                    Andaman & Nicobar 26.  Pangvali                                                Himachal Pradesh 27.  Parji                                                     Odisha 28.  Pengo                                                   Odisha 29.  Pu                                                        Andaman & Nicobar 30.  Purum                                                  Manipur 31.  Ruga                                                    Meghalaya 32.  Sanenyo                                               Andaman & Nicobar 33.  Sentilese                                               Andaman & Nicobar 34.  Shompen                                              Andaman & Nicobar 35.  Sirmaudi                                               Himachal Pradesh 36.  Tai Nora                                              Assam 37.  Tai Rong                                              Assam 38.  Takahanyilang                                       Andaman & Nicobar 39.  Tangam                                                Arunachal Pradesh 40.  Tarao                                                   Manipur 41.  Toda                                                    Tamil Nadu 42.  Toto                                                     West Bengal

China to ban all coal use in Beijing by 2020

China’s smog-plagued capital has announced plans to ban the use of coal by the end of 2020 as the country fights deadly levels of pollution, especially in major cities.

Beijing’s Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau posted the plan on its website on Monday, saying the city would instead prioritise electricity and natural gas for heating.

The official Xinhua News Agency said coal accounted for a quarter of Beijing’s energy consumption in 2012 and 22 per cent of the fine particles floating in the city’s air. Motor vehicles, industrial production and general dust also contributed to pollution in the city with a 21 million population.

Even with the Beijing ban, coal use is expected to soar in China. Coal-fired power and heating is a major generator of greenhouse gases and has helped turn China into the world’s largest emitter of carbon and other heat-trapping gases.

Pressure is growing on China’s central government to clean up the country’s polluted environment, as discontent over smog and water and soil contamination increases among China’s expanding middle class.

The Central government recently listed environmental protection as one of the top criteria by which leaders will be judged.

In September, the government announced a prohibition on new coal-fired power plants around Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Doordarshan is all set to go global

Christened ‘India Channel’, the programming will showcase India’s “soft power” to the world

Doordarshan programmes will soon be available across Asia, Europe, North Africa and Australia, courtesy a memorandum of understanding signed by Prasar Bharati with German public service broadcaster Deutsche Welle on Tuesday.

Doordarshan will be available as a free-to-air basic package on a DTH platform. Jawahar Sircar, Chief Executive Officer of Prasar Bharati, said the content for this Doordarshan platform, named India Channel, would be created in consultation with various stakeholders and tailored to the demand of the target audience.

The programming will showcase India’s “soft power” to the world and will be available on the DTH Platform of Hotbird-13B satellite and reciprocal distribution of DW-TV on DD Freedish. Hotbird-13B has a footprint covering 120 million homes in Europe, northern Africa and West Asia with 1,534 channels including the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera.

Needed: Dialogue, statesmanship

Because we cannot risk another judicial decision on appointments, writes FALI S. NARIMAN.

In the Constitution of India, 1950, the appointing authority for judges in the higher judiciary is the government of India, acting in the name of the president of India. Judges of the Supreme Court are appointed after consultation with the chief justice of India (CJI) and other judges of the Supreme Court (or high courts) as the appointing authority deems necessary for the purpose; judges of high courts are appointed after consultation with the CJI, the governor of the concerned state and the chief justice of the concerned high court. This simply worded prescription — expressed in Articles 124(2) and 217(1) — worked well in practice for the first two decades. By convention, whosoever the CJI recommended as judge was, almost invariably, appointed; whom the CJI did not recommend was not appointed.

But in 1981, in the S.P. Gupta case, much later known as the “first judge’s case”, a bench of seven judges of the Supreme Court presided over by Justice P.N. Bhagwati held (4:3) that the recommendations of the CJI for judges to be appointed in the higher judiciary were, constitutionally, not binding on the government of India. The (Congress) government, then in office, was delighted. It was now payback time. So when Bhagwati assumed office as CJI, the Congress government, still in office, declined to appoint judges recommended by him, since it was he who had judicially declared (in the S.P. Gupta case) that “consultation” in Article 124 did not mean “concurrence”.

It was much later, with the accumulated experience of the deleterious consequences flowing from the majority judgment in the first judges case, that new faces on the bench decided to take a “fresh look” at Article 124(2). In what has now become known as the “second judges case” (1993), a bench of nine judges held (by a majority, 7:2) that a collegiate opinion of a collectivity of judges was to be preferred to the opinion of the CJI. It also said that if the government did not accept the “recommendation” of the “collegium” (then consisting of the three senior-most judges), it would be presumed that the government had not acted bona fide.

Even after the judgment in the second judges case, recommendations made by the collegium were not made in the spirit in which the new doctrine had been propounded, since the collegiate of the three highest constitutional functionaries (the senior-most judges of the court) could not see eye to eye in the matter of appointment ofjudges to the higher judiciary. So when (again, by convention) the then senior-most judge, Justice M.M. Punchhi, became the CJI in January 1998 and recommended, with the concurrence of his two senior-most colleagues, that a particular list of five named persons be appointed to fill the vacancies in the highest court (all strictly in accordance with the methodology laid down in the second judges case), the government took exception to some of the names — justifiably, according to disinterested and knowledgeable persons.

But the CJI was adamant. When the government said that some of the names suggested could be accepted, but not all, the CJI said: “It will be all or none.” Apprehending the initiation of contempt proceedings, the government of the day (the NDA government with the BJP in the driving seat) thought it expedient to seek a presidential reference under Article 143 of the Constitution for the advisory opinion of the Supreme Court on certain dicta expressed in the second judges case.

All that ultimately happened after the presidential reference was that the collegiate was enlarged (by judicial diktat) from three to five of the senior-most justices, perhaps on the principle that there was greater safety in larger numbers. Meanwhile, Chief Justice Punchhi demitted office since he had reached the constitutional age of retirement. His successor, along with the four senior-most justices in the collegium, recommended names of appointees, which were accepted. This shows (it is said) that the collegium system worked. The response of lawyers has been, “Yes, but not always in this manner.”

The truth is that the system of recommendation for judicial appointments by a collegium of the five senior-most judges (like that of the three that went before) is not institutionalised: no mechanism is prescribed (by the collegium itself), no office is set up, no data gathered in advance, no criteria evolved as to who among the high court judges — all aspirants to a place in the Supreme Court — should be recommended. There is no reason given as to why a broad consensus among all the justices of the Supreme Court is not to be preferred to the views only of the five senior-most.

The entire system operates ad hoc, based on no principle. And the choice of judges to be recommended has varied in quality with the collegium’s fast-changing composition. The system has failed, according to me and many others. But in the opinion of the judges, including a succession of chief justices of India, it has not. More importantly, the BJP government that is now in office had, as part of the NDA government in 1998, categorically informed the nine-judge bench hearing the presidential reference that it was not seeking a review of the judgment in the second judges case — the judgment that first initiated the novel idea of a “collegium” of senior-most judges.

In this situation, what would be the right thing to do? I believe that before embarking on the new experiment of a broad-based National Judicial Commission, even one loaded witha majority of sitting judges as members, it is imperative that there should be meaningful dialogue between the executive and the collectivity of all the judges of the Supreme Court (represented by its chief justice), so that a mutually acceptable solution can be found. It must be found. Statesmanship is the need of the hour, because we cannot risk another judicial decision. The executive, the judges and the lawyers must resolve to avoid, at all cost, a fourth judges case.

strengthening of Primary Healthcare

The strengthening of primary health care is essential for achieving MDG aimed at reducing child mortality as most of the deaths in children are preventable. The various strategies to achieve MDG goal related to child morality are as below: (i) Operationalizing Community Health Centres as First Referral Units (FRUs) and Primary Health Centres (24X7) for round the clock maternal and newborn care services. (ii) Promotion of Institutional Delivery through JananiSurakshaYojana (JSY) and JananiShishuSurakshaKaryakram (JSSK): Promoting Institutional delivery to ensure skilled birth attendance is key to reducing both maternal and neo-natal mortality. (iii) Strengthening Facility based newborn care: Newborn care corners (NBCC) are being set up at all health facilities where deliveries take place; Special New Born Care Units (SNCUs) and New Born Stabilization Units (NBSUs) are also being set up at appropriate facilities for the care of sick newborn including preterm babies. (iv) Home Based New-born Care (HBNC): Home based newborn care through ASHA has been initiated to improve new born practices at the community level and early detection and referral of sick new born babies. (v) Capacity building of health-care providers: Various trainings are being conducted under National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) to build and upgrade the skills of health care providers in essential newborn care, care of sick child with pneumonia, diarrhoea, malnutrition including care of mothers during pregnancy and delivery. (vi) Establishment of nutritional rehabilitation centres for management of severe acute malnourished children with medical complications. (vii) Introduction of Rashtriya Kishore SwasthyaKaryakram (RKSK) to reach adolescent population in their home spaces and introducing peer led intervention at the community level supported by augmentation of facility based services. (viii) Introduction of RashtriyaBalSwasthyaKaryakram for (RBSK) for screening of all the children upto 18 years of age for defects, deficiencies, development delays and specific diseases. The programme also provides early interventions services and management of children needing surgical intervention at tertiary level facilities. (ix) Prevention and treatment of Anaemia by supplementation with Iron and Folic Acid tablets to adolescent, pregnant and lactating women and children. (x) Strengthening of Universal immunization programme (UIP) for reducing vaccine preventable diseases. (xi) Name Based Tracking of Pregnant Women and children to ensure complete antenatal, intra-natal and postnatal care and immunization services.

India and Japan agree to further strengthen Cooperation in Education

Mr. Hakuban Shimomura, the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan met the Minister for Human Resource Development, Smt. Smriti Irani here today. Smt. Smriti Irani appreciated Japan for their advancement in education as well as in technology, and appreciated the assistance of Government of Japan for the development of the new IIT in Hyderabad and the Pandit Dwarka Prasad Mishra Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design and Manufacturing (IIITDM) in Jabalpur. She also proposed that India and Japan could cooperate for the sharing of knowledge resources through the National e-library initiative of the Indian Government and also in India’s Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Two Letters of Intent towards establishing academic cooperation between Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) and Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) with the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) were also signed during the meeting for the advancement of academic cooperation in the fields of humanities and social sciences between Indian and Japanese Researchers The Japanese Minister also invited the Indian Minister for the UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development to be held at Aichi-Nagoya, Japan during 10-12 November, 2014.

Shripad Yesso Naik launches 60th Anniversary Celebrations of Lalit Kala Akademi

Minister of Culture and Tourism Shri Shripad Yesso Naik here today inaugurated the year long celebrations to mark the 60th anniversary of Lalit Kala Akademi. Lalit Kala Akademi, National Academy of Art, New Delhi, was set up by the Government of India as an autonomous body, on 5 August 1954. It is the Indian Government’s apex cultural body in the field of visual arts in India. The structure of the Akademi consists of a General Council that comprises artists, art critics, architects, photographers, experts in folk, tribal and traditional arts, art administrators and representatives of various government organizations. The festivities commenced with an exhibition of works of art selected from the collection of the Akademi that show how artists have been viewing India in their own perspective. The Installation ‘Secret Life of Memories’ consisting of photographic prints, videos and sounds of the cultural lineages of Tibet and Sikkim as well as some re-enactment of Kalimpong Tibetan Opera is also organised at Kaustubh Auditorium of the Lalit Kala Akademi. The Installation has been conceived by Mr. Arghya Basu and Rajula Shah. Shri Krishen Khanna, one of the senior most artists of the country and Shri Ravindra Singh, Secretary, Ministry of Culture were the Guests of Honour on the occasion. The inaugural function was followed by a musical concert by Abhay Rustum Sopori. The compositions which he presented were based on classical Ragas and took the listeners on a journey of India. Mahua Mukherjee and her troupe performed ‘Gaudiya Nritya’, a classical dance from Bengal as a part of the celebrations. The festivities will be continuing for the next couple of days with a dance performance titled ‘Nrutya Vitana’ visualised by Dr. Dinanath Pathy and choreographed by Meera Das. The performance discusses the inter-connectivity of various visual art forms. On 7th August, 2014, Dr. R.S. Nanda Kumar and his troupe will be presenting a dance performance titled ‘Rasonmeelana’ which will be an interpretation of the ideas of rasa in Indian poetics.