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China overtakes U.S. as world’s largest economy

 The International Monetary Fund has said that China has overtaken the Unites States for the first time as the largest economy in the world.

According to Fox News, the U.S. has been overtaken as the largest economy for the first time in decades. The IMF recently released the latest numbers for the world economy, stating that China will produce 17.6 trillion dollars and the U.S. would produce 17.4 trillion dollars in terms of goods and services.
According to the IMF website, each country’s statistics must be converted into common currency to compare data and the result may vary in different answers
However, China’s economy may be the world’s largest not but is still not the richest as per head GDP is less than a quarter of U.S. levels.

IISc emerges as No 1 Indian university

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has emerged as India's new No 1 in the latest rankings for universities from BRICS and other emerging economies.

The Times Higher Education (THE) Rankings 2015 has placed Bangalore-based IISc at No 25 in the overall 100, topped by China's Peking University.
According to the latest rankings, India has four varsities in the top 40 –- IISc, IIT Bombay (37), IIT Roorkee (38) and Chandigarh's Panjab University (39) -– and seven more in the top 100.
"There is some good news for India as it has universities in the top 100, which is a good sign and it also has entirely new entrants arriving in the higher echelons of the table," said Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education Rankings.
Baty, however, said there are "some major challenges for India's higher education system and there is clearly a national priority to improve quality across the system."
"These leading universities need special extra levels of funding to stay competitive and pay competitive salaries. They also need improvements to infrastructure and there is a need to invest more in research as well as teaching," he added.
The other seven universities that complete India's tally of 11 institutions in the 2015 list -- up from 10 last year -- are: IITs Kharagpur (43), Madras (44), and Delhi (56).
The Jawaharlal Nehru University (71), IIT Kanpur (74), Aligarh Muslim University (78) and IIT Guwahati (98).
Some 22 countries classified as emerging economies by FTSE have been analysed for the rankings, including Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS).
China has dramatically strengthened its position as the number one nation of the emerging economies, matching its economic dominance with rapidly improving universities.
"The big story this year is that China dominate these tables so powerfully and has increased its dominance yet further," said Baty.
"India for example is some distance behind China and this should be a concern for India's future economic strength and its global competitiveness," he said.
The new annual tables are based on a comprehensive range of 13 separate, rigorous performance indicators used to create the definitive THE World University Rankings, covering all aspects of the modern university's core missions (teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook).
The indicators have been specially recalibrated to better reflect the character and development priorities of universities in emerging economies.
The top five after Perking University is completed by China's Tsinghua University, Turkey's Middle East Technical University, University of Cape Town and MV Lomonosov Moscow State University, respectively.

Dividend or nightmare

How many jobs must be created to realise our demographic dividend (or avoid a nightmare)? Half of India’s population is below 25. The worst-case scenario is that enough jobs are not created for the millions entering the labour force each year, and that this semi-educated mass becomes a force driving social conflict.

The reason that East Asian countries (especially China) rode the wave of the demographic dividend and dramatically reduced poverty is that they rapidly created jobs for those with education joining the labour force, as well as those leaving agriculture for better opportunities in industry and services, especially in export-oriented manufacturing.

But now that international demand has collapsed, India will have to rely to a greater extent on domestic demand to create jobs. Can the government’s “Make in India” programme lead to private industry and the service sector creating enough jobs to absorb those entering the labour force?

Fearmongers will tell you that 12 million persons are joining the labour force every year — or that one million entrants must be provided jobs every month ( that’s 30,000 new jobs a day). This myth-creating number derives from a misinterpretation of the National Sample Survey (NSS) estimate that 60 million people entered the labour force in the first half of the last decade, implying that the same number of people have been entering the labour force ever since. This is the modern version of the earlier scare that “population growth will overwhelm India’s economic growth”.

Population growth has slowed to 1.4 per cent per year. In fact, the zero-six age population was not higher in 2011 than in 2001. The implication is that though the population that crosses over into the working-age group is growing, it is doing so at a slowing pace. India’s demographic dividend will end in 25 years at most.

So, how many industrial and service-sector jobs need to be created every year over the eight year period, 2011-12 (the year of the last NSS estimate) to 2019-20 (the terminal year of the new government’s tenure)?

To set the upper limit of the labour force size, we assumed that the labour force participation rate of those with secondary-and-above education would, instead of remaining the same, increase by 5 percentage points. In that case, the size of the labour force would increase by about 63.6 million, an average of 7.8 million per annum. Providing employment to this number is achievable, since in the period 2004-05 to 2011-12, 7.5 million jobs were created in industry and services (the same as over 1999-2000 to 2004-05).

The number of jobs that “Make in India” must create is nowhere closeto the 1 million per month that scare-mongers are “warning” us about. The demographic nightmare can be avoided, provided the requisite number of jobs are created. It has been done before. The second point is that as young people get more educated, they will not want to work in agriculture (currently the biggest employer — it engages half the workforce). They will want semi-skilled/ skilled jobs in construction, which currently employs 12 per cent of the workforce and is exhibiting the fastest growth. They will want jobs (casual, regular or self-employment) in manufacturing or services. So non-agricultural jobs must be created.

 The third point is that a rising share of those educated, at least up to the secondary level, will be girls. The labour force participation rate for women in India is one of the lowest in the world. This is set to change, provided appropriate non-agriculture jobs exist, such as in garment manufacturing or modern services. Is the government ready to create the enabling environment to meet the demand for such jobs? The fourth point is that jobs have to be created, not merely for those just joining the labour force, but also for those leaving agriculture for better-paying construction-sector work.

 For the first time in India’s economic history, the absolute number of those in agriculture has been falling — since 2004-05. For the new NDA government, this is a very different reality from the one it faced between 1999-2000 and 2004-05, when the absolute numbers in agriculture actually grew by 20 million — a retrogressive development. Roughly five million people left agriculture for non-agri jobs during the UPA period. Jobs will have to be created for such migrants. However, this last challenge is in some ways the easiest to address. If investment in rural and urban infrastructure, housing and rural public works is sustained, the unskilled who leave agriculture will get absorbed in construction, as they have been for the last decade or more. But the first three challenges are much more serious, especially if the new jobs are to be organised-sector, formal jobs. Are the government and the private sector ready? 

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Nanowires to combat cell damage, breakthrough to prevent ageing

Nanowires made of vanadia can reduce cell damage in the human body, researchers from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore have found. This breakthrough can help develop drugs that prevent ageing, cardiac disorders, and several neurological problems like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. Vanadium oxide or vanadia is a form of vanadium, an element found close to titanium on the periodic table.

Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) are produced during normal cellular metabolism. When the level of ROS is elevated, normal redox state of cells is disturbed, leading to damage of cellular components, including proteins, lipids, and DNA. Oxidative stress caused by ROS is responsible for various conditions ranging from a simple premature greying of hair to serious diseases like cancer, diabetes, arthritis, ageing and kidney disorders.

“Many of the antioxidant-based drugs used to control ROS, also produce ROS, though at small proportions. So we wanted to concentrate on a mechanism that mimics the natural detoxification pathways,” say Prof G Mugesh and Patrick D’Silva, who led the research team.

In a paper published in Nature Communications, they have shown that vanadia nanowires actually mimic a natural
antioxidant enzyme, according to a Gubbi Labs release.ROS are helpful when their concentrations are optimal. They help in numerous biochemical reactions and act as critical secondary messengers in signalling pathways. They are also essential for the normal metabolism of the human body.

“The human body has numerous mechanisms to scavenge ROS, and specifically hydrogen peroxide. However, when people are suffering from a disease, the production of ROS shoots up, and the natural scavenging mechanisms are not able to cope with. In such cases, we may have to control ROS levels artificially,” says D’Silva.

The IISc team has demonstrated that when the ROS levels are too much for the natural defence system to handle, vandia nanowires can control ROS accumulation and stop the resulting cell damage. The entry of nanowires inside the cells is crucial because, the nanowires must get inside the cell to start their scavenging jobs.

Therefore, the researchers treated human cells from different organs and made sure through elaborate methodology
that the nanowires could efficiently enter the cells. This clearly shows that vanadia nanowires posses  detoxifying abilities for a variety of cells.Interestingly, vanadia in bulk and foam form do the exact opposite: they enhance ROS levels; hence the nanosize of vanadia is critical for its function. “It is remarkable thatthe material that generates ROS in bulk and foam forms, can actually destroy them at nanoscales,” says Prof G. Mugesh, elaborating on the significance of the research.

With the initial positive results, the discovery needs further studies before being translated into drugs that can be
administered. “We have shown that nanovanadia works at the cellular level. Next we want to focus on administering it in animals, and see how it performs,” say Mugesh and D’Silva.

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Rebel with a cause

Justice Krishna Iyer (or Krishna, as I was privileged to call him) was chronologically old but he remained an angry young person — angry at the injustice in the world, but intoxicated by local thoughts of justice.

For him, youth should be measured by the amount of pain one feels when coming across a new idea. The “shopkeepers of justice” (as he described conservative justices), are always truly old because they feel no pain when they encounter devastated or ruined human lives, whereas “activist judges” take human and social suffering seriously, and can also take human rights seriously.

Krishna was a connoisseur of ideas of and about justice. Almost singlehandedly, he rewrote the theory of crime and punishment in India. He measured the distance between colonial and postcolonial law by laying down standards to civilise the administration of justice. He detested the barbarity of total institutions such as the police, prisons and custodial institutions. Even when sparingly administering capital punishment, he inveighed against it and believed in making it very rare as an alternative to its total abolition; he outlawed solitary confinement and putting undertrials or prisoners in manacles. In many ways, he was India’s Jeremy Bentham.

Krishna believed that legisprudence (the wisdom of legislatures or the theory of legislation) should always be reinforced by constitutional jurisprudence (the principles of justice and fairness that judges develop), and jurisprudence in turn should animate demosprudence (the prudence that accentuates the constitutionally worst-off). He pioneered, with some other gifted brethren, the conversion of the Supreme Court of India into a Supreme Court for the people, for India.

His love of social action ligation (SAL) is well known. On the bench, he was a tower of strength for Justices P.N. Bhagwati, D.A. Desai, O. Chinnappa Reddy and others who believed in SAL and adjudicatory leadership. Off the bench, Krishna valiantly pursued lost social and human rights causes. He was a rebel with a cause and without a pause. He continued to remind justices that the disadvantaged, dispossessed and disenfranchised remain the justice constituencies of the Constitution of India, for whom justices ought to show an ethic of care, as well as of human rights. Krishna believed with the philosopher Hannah Arendt in the human right to have rights.

His penchant for judicial reforms is no secret. To add a little known example, in the wake of the Mathura open letter to the chief justice of India, Krishna said on the high bench that an ounce of judicial sensitivity is worth a tonne of judicial reform. This remains true.

His presence and voice on the high bench and in the worlds of law reform, public activism and scholarship is known to us all; often, we find it hard to keep up with Krishna! He was active in every sphere. His home in Ernakulam was averitable Lok Adalat permanently in session. Which justice would lend his picture and name to a public hoarding on the way from the Kochi airport to the city with the motto: “Save the Street Children”? I was once asked to introduce him at a Gandhi Smriti in Surat. I said, one may dare do this if one could “introduce” a cyclone, a tornado, a volcano or tsunami. Krishna was a natural, elemental force with whom you gravitated or perished. Incidentally, he once surprised me by seeming to read a text, only to later learn that he was merely turning blank pages from a photo diary of Jawaharlal Nehru. Krishna’s sight may have been affected but his constitutional vision was intact. He didn’t live to see India become a just and caring state while still being a strong state, but he has done much, as a justice and a human being, to eliminate the conceptual distinction between India and Bharat. Even when the judicial handkerchief was small and tattered, Krishna valiantly followed Mahatma Gandhi’s counsel to wipe every tear from every eye. He accomplished the nearly impossible task of living well and taught many of us how to do the same. He continued to guide us by his luminous being and doing. Whether or not the Indian state belatedly confers the coveted Bharat Ratna on him, Krishna remains a jewel in the people’s crown. 

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UNEP report points to huge gaps in funding and technology

The first Adaptation Gap Report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released on Friday morning here, says that even with emissions cuts, climate change adaptation costs are likely to hit two to three times the current estimates of  of $70-100 Billion per year by 2050.

The report say that failure to cut emissions will dramatically increase costs and new finance is required to avoid a significant funding shortfall after 2020. Anne Olhoff, lead author of the report said that 29 experts from 19 leading institutions reviewed data for the report and it primarily looks at gaps associated with long term global goals of adaptation. The Green Climate Fund could play a central role in bridging the future adaptation funding gap, she said. The technology gap spans across all sectors but are large in water and agriculture. 

Dr Saleemul Huq, member of the steering committee, said the easier part in the adaptation goal was the money part. The more difficult part is empowering the most vulnerable communities and make positive contributions.Adaptation funding needs are increasing rapidly and the issue of knowledge and adaptive capacity building is not just about money. Vulnerable communities are doing things on their own, he said. 

The adaptation funding gap can be defined and measured as the difference between the costs of meeting a given adaptation target and the amount of finance available to do so. The report comes at a time when countries in Lima are demanding an increasing focus on adaptation and funding and calling for an adaptation goal globally.

The report finds that, despite adaptation funding by public sources reaching $23-26 billion in 2012-2013, there will be a significant funding gap after 2020 unless new and additional finance for adaptation becomes available. Without further action on cutting greenhouse gas emissions,  the cost of adaptation will increase even further as wider and more expensive action is needed to protect communities from the intensifying impacts of climate change such as drought, floods and rising sea levels.

The fifth assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) says that existing global estimates of the costs of adaptation in developing countries range between $ 70 billion and $ 100 billion a year globally by 2050.  The report focuses on developing countries where adaptation needs are expected to be the highest and adaptive capacity is often the lowest. On the positive side the report notes that the amount of public finance committed to activities with explicit adaptation objectives ranged between USD 23 to USD 26 billion in 2012-13 of which 90 per cent was invested in developed countries. 

The report points to a number of areas for action and future analysis.