Parasitic wasp’s novel weapon

A parasitic wasp employs a “biological weapon” — a virus — to paralyse a beetle, turning the creature into a bodyguard for its larva, according to research just published.

Parasites are known to manipulate the behaviour of their hosts in a fashion that benefits themselves. Rats infected with the single-celled parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, for instance, stop fleeing from the smell of cats and thereby readily fall prey to them. That allows the parasite, which can sexually reproduce only in alimentary tract of cats, to complete its lifecycle.

In the case of the parasitic wasp, Dinocampus coccinellae, a female wasp will attack a ladybeetle, stinging it and then laying an egg inside its abdomen. The developing larva feeds off its unfortunate host’s tissues and, after nearly three weeks, proceeds to squeeze its way out of the latter’s body.

The beetle’s travails do not end there. The wasp larva then spins a cocoon between the beetle’s legs. While the larva undergoes further development inside the cocoon, the beetle becomes partially paralysed, unable to move about properly and with its legs twitching occasionally. By remaining perched on top of the cocoon, it acts as a bodyguard, its body protecting the larva from predators.

After about a week, an adult wasp emerges from the cocoon and flies away. Some beetles survive this traumatic experience and gradually recover.

Was it some sort of venom secreted by the larva that paralysed the beetle?

In the course of investigations to understand the phenomenon, Nolwenn M. Dheilly, then a postdoctoral researcher at Ecologie et Evolution des Interactions in Perpignan, France, found instead the partial genome sequences of a virus in the head of such beetles. He then put together the entire viral genome.

In a paper just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Dr. Dheilly, along with colleagues in France and Canada, named this virus ‘D. coccinellae paralysis virus’ (DcPV).

When the wasp injects its egg into the beetle, it also introduces the virus into the latter’s body. The beetle’s initial anti-viral immune response is suppressed, which, according to the paper, might be induced by the developing larva or perhaps by the virus itself.

By the time the larva is ready to leave the beetle’s body, virus levels in the creature’s head and abdomen have shot up. The virus was found in profusion in cells in the beetle’s cerebral ganglia, its brain.

“We believe that changes in ladybeetle behaviour result from DcPV replication in the nervous tissue,” said Dr. Dheilly, who is moving to Stony Brook University in New York, U.S., in an email. However, it was not yet known whether the virus was directly responsible for the paralysis and tremors that the beetles exhibited or whether that resulted from the damage produced by an antiviral immune response.

In beetles that recover, their immune system returns to normal and gets rid of the virus, allowing the nervous system to repair itself.

SpaceX rocket blasts off to put weather satellite into deep space

A SpaceX rocket blasted off on Wednesday to put a U.S. satellite into deep space, where it will keep tabs on solar storms and image Earth from nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million km) away.

Illuminated by the setting sun, the 22-story Falcon 9 rocket soared off its seaside launch pad at 6:03 p.m. EST (2303 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The launch was delayed on Sunday by a problem with a radar tracking system and on Tuesday by high winds.

Weather was pristine for launch on Wednesday, but high seas prompted SpaceX to cancel a test to land the rocket's discarded first stage on a platform in the ocean.

"Unfortunately we will not be able to attempt to recover the first stage of the Falcon 9," SpaceX said in a statement.

Waves three stories tall were crashing over the decks of the landing platform, SpaceX said.

The company has been developing technology to reuse its rockets, potentially slashing launch costs.

The rocket carries the Deep Space Climate Observatory, nicknamed DSCOVR, a $340 million mission backed by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Air Force, which paid for the launch.

DSCOVR replaces a 17-year-old satellite monitoring for potentially dangerous solar storms, which can disrupt GPS signals, block radio communications and impact power grids on Earth.

It will take DSCOVR 110 days to reach its operational orbit around the sun, almost 1 million miles (1.6 million km) inward from Earth, where it will serve as a weather buoy, providing about an hour's advance notice of threatening solar activity.

The satellite's original mission, championed by then-Vice President Al Gore, was to provide a near-continuous view of Earth that would be distributed via the Internet in an attempt to raise environmental awareness, much like the iconic Apollo 17 "Blue Marble" picture of Earth did in the 1970s.

The satellite, then called Triana - and lampooned as GoreSat - was due to launch on the space shuttle, but the mission was canceled.

Triana spent more than a decade in storage before it was refurbished and reborn as a solar observatory. DSCOVR also has two sensors to monitor Earth to track volcanic plumes, measure ozone and monitor droughts, flooding and fires.

It also will take pictures of Earth every two hours that will be posted on the Internet, fulfilling in part Gore's dream.

The new servant leader

Servant-leadership is back in fashion. While Prime MinisterNarendra Modi doesn’t let go of any opportunity of projecting himself as a “Prime Sevak,” even corporate India isn’t far behind. On his first day as Infosys chief executive in August last year, Vishal Sikka quoted Rabindranath Tagore in describing himself as a servant leader and said when communication and computing technology have flattened the world and made everything accessible, to assume that some leader has more ability to solve some problem than others is nonsense.

But no one perhaps exemplifies this model of leadership more than Arvind Kejriwal. When he insists that the landslide election victory is not about him or his party but about the ordinary Delhiites, his frustrations and aspirations, Kejriwal is essentially echoing what Lao-Tzu, philosopher, wrote about servant leadership in the fifth-century BC: “The highest type of ruler is one whose followers say after the task has been accomplished, ‘We ourselves have achieved it!’” That’s precisely what the volunteers and followers of Aam Admi Party (AAP) are saying.

Servant leadership is a style that nurtures participatory leadership and encourages the talent of followers and hence is in direct contrast to the centralised, command-and-control model that most organisations follow.

In modern times, the term servant leadership is attributed to an essay written by Robert Greenleaf in 1970. In the essay titled, "The Servant as Leader", Greenleaf, who had worked in AT&T before setting up a centre for servant leadership, said such a leadership style encourages a decentralised structure that focuses on employee empowerment and encourages innovation. This means having upper management share key decision-making powers with employees who work directly with customers and hence are better aware of what is needed to serve clients. As Kejriwal has shown, servant leaders also rely on persuasion, rather than positional authority in making decisions. 

There are several other leadership insights that the business world can draw from Kejriwal. It’s the way he fought back after his 49-day chief ministership and subsequent near-decimation in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.  He learnt quickly from the mistakes, apologised in public (the main reason why people who were angry with him earlier were still willing to give him another chance) and quickly regrouped to fight another battle. The result: AAP was much better equipped organisationally this time through a distributed leadership model. 

But like all successful business leaders, Kejriwal made sure he remained focused, resilient and communicative with his core audience, as a result of which everyone knows why AAP was created. His single-minded approach to fighting corruption ensured that no business school can teach the importance of 'focus’ as well as Kejriwal.

Articulation of your mission to your team and customers is another important facet of leadership. And this is where Kejriwal and team performed brilliantly through one-to-one, direct communication through 'mohalla sabhas’ with clear ideas, all of which was force multiplied by social media usage. This is what is known in management parlance as the blue ocean strategy -- create new demand in an uncontested market space rather than compete head-to-head with your competitors. 

Kejriwal may not leave you spellbound with his carefully crafted speeches or a strong persona, but he surely knows how to connect with the hearts of his audience – the 60% of Delhi’s 17 million population – through disruptive means of communication which did not require money power.  

And he surely knows how to laugh at his own expense – a trait which endeared him to many. Which political leader in India would be willing to appear in a spoof show on Youtube where the host asks him whether he would like to have coffee or cough syrup? All this was part of a carefully cultivated smart marketing of a leader who is “normal”, resembling your friendly neighbourhood ordinary educated middle class man firmly aligned to values like justice, equality, truth and transparency. If this is not smart marketing, what is?

As he gets sworn in tomorrow, the only concern Delhi’s new Chief Minister should have is how to scale up the model. As is the case with almost every political party, AAP is also fundamentally a one-man band. He has to remove that crucial similarity with the traditional leadership model. The faster, the better.

Priorities for Budget 2015-16

The importance of Union Budgets for overall economic policyand outcomes is certainly high, but nowhere near the stratospheric levels to which the annual media hoopla typically sends it. This Budget is, of course, more important than usual as it is anticipated by many as the "first real Budget" of the new Narendra Modi government, the July 2014 Budget having been presented within six weeks of assuming office and having been deemed as something of a damp squib. In assessing any Budget, I generally find it useful to focus on four distinct dimensions: the overall fiscal stance; the tax policies; the expenditure policies; and the vision-cum-reform elements. But before turning to priorities in each of these dimensions, let's take summary stock of the economic context for this Budget.

Economic context
Read our full coverage on Union Budget

As I observed in my column last month ("Looking back (2014) and forth (2015)", January 8, 2015), the outlook for the world economy remains subdued, despite the steep drop in prices of oil and other commodities. The Chinese juggernaut is expected to slow further to below seven per cent growth, Japan is unlikely to boom, and the stagnant European economy is burdened by legacy problems and the dark shadow of a "Grexit" from the euro zone. Only the United States is recovering steadily, powered by years of expansionary fiscal and monetary policies, flexible and responsive markets, and the revolution in shale oil and gas. Global growth in 2015 is likely to be a modest 2.5 per cent, with world trade expanding at an anaemic two to four per cent. Unpleasant surprises may lurk from "Grexit", rebounding oil prices or a rise in US policy interest rates. So the global economy may not be a force-multiplier for India's development in the year ahead.

Until end-January 2015, the well-accepted narrative for the Indian economy was clear: an economy slowly recovering from over two years of a serious growth slowdown, six years of double-digitinflation and a mini balance of payments crisis in 2013-14, with industry stagnant, infrastructure in disarray, stubborn fiscal deficits, weak government banks and stagnating employment. The re-based and revised national income estimates published on January 30, 2015, have created considerable confusion and debate by painting a more optimistic picture of growth in gross domestic product (GDP), industry and trade in 2013-14 than can be squared with the ground realities of an external finance crisis, high interest rates, slowing bank credit and tax revenues, and sluggish corporate sales and earnings. Whatever the outcome of this debate, the 2015-16 Budget has to strive for faster growth of national output and employment, while nurturing lower inflation and sustainable external balance.

Overall fiscal stance

Although the finance ministry's mid-year review in December 2014 favoured a boost in public investment to spur growth, even at the expense of breaching the announced fiscal consolidation path, this may be unwise in the context of a weak and uncertain global economic environment. There is certainly a good case for raising public investment in roads, railways and ports, but this has to be accommodated within a prudent fiscal envelope. Given the recent, publicly reported commitments by the prime minister and the finance minister to peg the 2014-15 fiscal deficit at the budgeted level of 4.1 per cent of GDP, and bring it down to three per cent by 2016-17, the deficit level for 2015-16 has to be calibrated around 3.5-3.7 per cent of GDP. This modest reduction in the deficit (net government borrowing) will also support a sustained, growth-supportive reduction in nominal and real interest rates that has recently begun.

Tax policies

It is important to recall that the Centre's gross tax receipts as a percentage of GDP had risen steadily from eight per cent in 2001-02 to 12 per cent in 2007-08 (a major contributor to the improvement in public savings in this period), before declining thereafter. In 2014-15, it is expected to be below 10 per cent. In order to accommodate higher public investment and the (rumoured) increase in tax devolution to states recommended by the 14th Finance Commission, and ensure a modest reduction in the fiscal deficit, it is imperative to raise the gross tax revenues-to-GDP ratio significantly in 2015-16. Moreover, this projected increase has to be based on credible measures, not on absurdly optimistic revenue projections, as in 2013-14 and 2014-15, which then lead to hugely disruptive expenditure cuts. The six best ways of enhancing tax revenues in a credible and economically sensible way are:

• Increase the general rate of Cenvat from 12 per cent to 13 or 14 per cent; the latter was the rate before the "global financial crisis";
   
• A corresponding increase in the current rate of services tax from 12 per cent to 13 or 14 per cent;
   
• Drastically prune the myriad end-use, concessional rates and special exemptions currently embedded in both the excise and customs duty structures. This will yield considerable revenue, reduce economic distortions and special favours, and pave the way to ushering in the goods and services tax (GST) in a year or two;
   
• Restoration of the customs duty on crude oil to five per cent;
   
• Increase special excises on luxury consumption goods, such as cars and sports utility vehicles (SUVs) with higher (above 1,600cc?) engine size, refrigerators above a threshold capacity, air-conditioners above a designated capacity, televisions above 36-inch screen size and so forth. By confining such special excises (over and above the general Cenvat rate) to final consumption products, distortive consequences for the product chain will be avoided;
   
• Increase the cess on petrol and diesel, earmarked for roads by one per cent or so;

Also, avoid hare-brained proposals, such as to tax financial transactions and "fringe benefits". They have been tried before and failed.

Expenditures

On the expenditure side, in line with the recommendations of the Expenditure Commission's preliminary report (as indicated in the media) and the Shanta Kumar High Level Committee Report on the Food Corporation of India, the Budget should announce road maps for direct cash transfer approaches in respect of existing major subsidies for kerosene, foodgrain and fertilisers, as has already been initiated for cooking gas cylinders. This will greatly enhance targeting of subsidies (currently, there are huge leakages and corruption), while helping to contain their size.

Furthermore, with the funds from additional taxation and subsidy containment, the Budget should ensure significantly higher expenditures for roads, ports, electricity transmission, public health and defence.

Reforms

Road maps for shifting major central subsidies to direct cash transfer approaches will constitute major reforms for the relevant sectors of petroleum, food and fertilisers. So will rapid progress on the implementation of the national GST. In addition, it would be very good if the Budget announced:

• A road map for reform/restructuring and recapitalisation of public sector banks, which have huge value locked in their extensive networks but suffer from poor performance;
   
• A plan for reviving a credible approach to private-public partnerships (PPPs), which have run into all sorts of trouble in recent years;
   
• A road map on reform of labour laws, with the objective of encouraging much greater employment of India's growing population of young job-seekers.

These are my Budget priorities and hopes. In a couple of weeks, it will be interesting to see to what extent, if any, these hopes are realised.

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Global Environment Facility (GEF) agrees to take up four pilot projects on sustainable urban practices

CEO of GEF Dr.Naoko Ishii holds talks with Shri Venkaiah Naidu on smart cities and other initiatives

Global Environment Facility (GEF) that supports UN objectives of protecting environment and addressing climate change concerns, has agreed to undertake pilot projects in four Indian cities for promoting ‘green urban practices’. An understanding in this regard was reached during a meeting between the visiting CEO and Chairperson of GEF Dr.Naoko Ishii with Minister of Urban Development Shri M.Venkaiah Naidu here today. Dr.Naoko Ishii said that the purpose of her current visit to India was to learn more about the central government’s initiatives in urban sector like building 100 Smart Cities and infrastructure development in 500 cities and explore if GEF could partner in promoting sustainable urban management practices. Shri Venkaiah Naidu gave an account of different schemes and objectives which include enabling inclusive and sustainable urban development. After detailed discussion on urban development challenges and the need to promote environmentally sustainable strategies, Shri Naidu suggested that GEF should take up pilot projects for demonstrating comprehensive and sustainable urban practices encompassing conservation and efficient energy use, reducing carbon emissions for addressing climate change concerns. The four cities for implementing pilot projects will soon be identified through consultations between GEF and Ministry of Urban Development. GEF is a financial mechanism to support countries in efforts to achieve the goals of United Nations Conventions covering climate change, biodiversity, Ozone layer depletion, land degradation etc. GEF is also working on an Integrated Program on Sustainable Cities to develop conceptual models on integrated urban design, planning and management for resilient and sustainable development.

Civil disservice

With the removal of the foreign and home secretaries, much before their two-year tenures had expired, the civil services have come into sharp focus. Yet this government had made some significant changes earlier too. The finance and revenue secretaries as well as the secretary of the financial services department were shifted out, according to some, quite suddenly. This perception of sudden movement in the higher levels of the civil service has brought with it the suspicion that there must be a sinister reason for the changes. But, while we may legitimately feel concerned by such removals, we rarely scrutinise the process of appointments for these important posts and seldom analyse the rationale for a particular person being selected for a specific job.

When the former foreign and home secretaries were appointed, nobody had questioned whether they were the best available officers. It is common sense to assume that the Union home secretary would be an officer who had been home secretary in a large state or had served for a long time at the ministry of home affairs. Similarly, the foreign secretary should have held a variety of diplomatic posts and worked in key policymaking desks at the ministry of external affairs. We take it for granted that every appointed officer deserves the post. We have, as a society, paid little attention to our civil service except to revile or criticise it. But we need to look at the ways in which civil servants are recruited, trained, deployed and disciplined if we want good service from them.

The appointment, transfer and removal of civil servants is the prerogative of the government. There are elaborate procedures, constitutionally mandated, for dismissal or termination from service. The former foreign and home secretaries were not dismissed; their terms of appointment were merely curtailed. Incidentally, both were past the retirement age of 60 and earned their maximum retirement benefits. If the government felt the performance of the incumbents fell short of expectations, it had the right to change the officers. After all, the same government had retained them for all these months, even though they had been appointed earlier. While we have a right to know why they were removed, it may not be in the interests of the individual officers and their right to privacy, or even in the larger public interest, to reveal these reasons. This moment, however, gives us an opportunity to examinhe mechanisms for managing the higher civil services and making appointments to senior posts in the Central government.

The Centre has a mechanism called the Central staffing scheme, which lays down the broad guidelines for appointing officers to senior civil posts. Through a rather long-drawn but

mostly mechanical exercise, IAS and other officers are shortlisted every year. The Centre chooses from this pool when appointing officers to vacant posts. Under the above scheme, only officers at the joint secretary level and below get a fixed tenure of service, ranging from three to seven years. There is no fixed tenure for additional secretaries and most of the secretaries. Most often, the secretaries get a tenure of two to three years, since most reach 60 by then and are due to retire. With more and more officers joining the service late, the average term of secretaries in the Central government is not more than two years these days. However, irrespective of the date of retirement, a term of two years is fixed for the cabinet secretary, the secretaries of home, defence and foreign affairs, as well as some secretary-level heads of security and intelligence for bodies like the R&AW, IB and CBI. The UPA government amended the relevant rules and extended the cabinet secretary’s term to go up to four years. It has always been a mystery why these posts have been singled out for a fixed term, that too irrespective of the date of retirement. Why should the home secretary get a fixed term and not the finance or health secretary, or the secretary of environment and forests? Why is the cabinet secretary to work for four years? And why is the director of the CBI or IB considered more deserving of a fixed two-year term than the DG of the BSF or CRPF? The fact of the matter is that the current system is very arbitrary, its rules and procedures framed to benefit individual officers rather than to serve any real public interest.

The entire process of shortlisting eligible officers, popularly known as empanelment, is seriously flawed, based as it is only on annual performance appraisal reports and no other qualitative criteria. With nearly every officer credited with outstanding ratings, almost all are found fit to be secretary, at least among the IAS officers. If not, they have only to go back to their respective states to pick up promotions. It is not very different with IPS officers or those from the foreign services. Thus, senior civil servants are not only guaranteed permanence in their jobs, but also assured promotion to the highest possible level in their respective services. Where else in the world is it expected that every recruit to a public office will continue to display uniform excellence across a career spanning nearly 35 years and be eligible to rise to the top? We are now so used to this trend that a sudden removal of a secretary, even without affecting his or her post-retirement benefits, leaves us surprised. It is as if the officers have a right to remain at their posts forever.

In normal times, civil servants are dismissed as inconsequential “babus” and forgotten, or at best taken for granted. So it is not inappropriate to reiterate the civil service’s place in the body politic. It forms the bulk of what is known as the executive, one arm of the constitutional triad. The Constitution of India creates it and legitimises it with a degree of permanence only equalled by the judiciary. The judiciary, in its autonomy and standing, is part of the basic structure of the Constitution. The civil services, as an integral part of the executive, may also be considered a component of the same basic structure. Rightly so, since it is the civil service that has always run the government, whatever its form. Having given so much permanence and power to civil servants, especially the senior ones, the country must expect much more from them. It must also invest much more in preparing them to deliver the best. Several Administrative Reforms Commissions later, nothing has changed in the way we manage higher appointments. It is time the government took up this limited administrative reform, framed clear rules and procedures to streamline these appointments, for the good of the civil servants but also to get the best out of them for the greater public good.

Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDU-GKY) - Skill Development for Inclusive Growth

According to Census 2011, India has 55 million potential workers between the ages of 15 and 35 years in rural areas. At the same time, the world is expected to face a shortage of 57 million workers by 2020. This presents a historic opportunity for India to transform its demographic surplus into a demographic dividend. The Ministry of Rural Development implements DDU-GKY to drive this national agenda for inclusive growth, by developing skills and productive capacity of the rural youth from poor families.

There are several challenges preventing India’s rural poor from competing in the modern market, such as the lack of formal education and marketable skills. DDU-GKY bridges this gap by funding training projects benchmarked to global standards, with an emphasis on placement, retention, career progression and foreign placement.

Features of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana

·         Enable Poor and Marginalized to Access Benefits

Demand led skill training at no cost to the rural poor

·         Inclusive Program Design

Mandatory coverage of socially disadvantaged groups (SC/ST 50%; Minority 15%; Women 33%)

·         Shifting Emphasis from Training to Career Progression

Pioneers in providing incentives for job retention, career progression and foreign placements

·         Greater Support for Placed Candidates

Post-placement support, migration support and alumni network

·         Proactive Approach to Build Placement Partnerships

Guaranteed Placement for at least 75% trained candidates

·         Enhancing the Capacity of Implementation Partners

Nurturing new training service providers and developing their skills

·         Regional Focus

Greater emphasis on projects for poor rural youth in Jammu and Kashmir (HIMAYAT),

the North-East region and 27 Left-Wing Extremist (LWE) districts (ROSHINI)

·         Standards-led Delivery

All program activities are subject to Standard Operating Procedures that are not open to interpretation by local inspectors. All inspections are supported by geo-tagged, time stamped videos/photographs

Implementation Model

DDU-GKY follows a 3-tier implementation model.  The DDU-GKY National Unit at MoRD functions as the policy-making, technical support and facilitation agency.  The DDU-GKY State Missions provide implementation support; and the Project Implementing Agencies (PIAs) implement the programme through skilling and placement projects.

Project Funding Support

DDU-GKY provides funding support for placement linked skilling projects that address the market demand with funding support ranging from Rs. 25,696 to over Rs. 1 lakh per person, depending on the duration of the project and whether the project is residential or non-residential.  DDU-GKY funds projects with training duration from 576 hours (3 months) to 2304 hours (12 months).

Funding components include support for training costs, boarding and lodging (residential programmes), transportation costs, post-placement support costs, career progression and retention support costs.

 In funding projects, priority is given to PIAs offering:

•     Foreign Placement

•  Captive Employment: Those PIAs or organizations that take up skill training to meet internal ongoing HR needs

• Industry Internships: Support for internships with co-funding from industry

•  Champion Employers:  PIAs who can assure skill training and placement for a minimum of 10,000 DDU-GKY trainees in a span of 2 years  

•  Educational Institution of High Repute: Institutes with a minimum National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) grading of 3.5 or Community Colleges with University Grants Commission (UGC)/ All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) funding   willing to take up DDU-GKY projects

Training Requirements

DDU-GKY funds a variety of skill training  programs  covering over 250 trades  across a range of sectors  such as Retail, Hospitality , Health, Construction, Automotive, Leather, Electrical, Plumbing, Gems and Jewelry, to name a few.  The only mandate is that skill training should be demand based and lead to placement of at least 75% of the trainees.

The trade specific skills are required to follow the curriculum and norms prescribed by specified national agencies: the National Council for Vocational Training and Sector Skills Councils.

In addition to the trade specific skills, training must be provided in employability and soft skills, functional English and functional Informational technology literacy so that the training can build cross cutting essential skills.

Training Quality Assurance

Through the National Policy on Skill Development, 2009, India recognized the need for the development of a national qualification framework that would transcend both general education and vocational education and training.  Accordingly, GOI has notified the National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF) in order to develop nationally standardized, and internationally comparable qualification mechanism for skill training programs which can also provide for interoperability with the mainstream education system.

In line with NSQF, DDU-GKY mandates independent third party assessment and certification by assessment bodies empanelled by the NCVT or SSCs.

Scale and Impact

DDU-GKY is applicable to the entire country.  The scheme is being implemented currently in 33States/UTs across 610 districts partnering currently with over 202 PIAs covering more than 250 trades across 50+ sectors.  So far, from the year 2004-05 till 30th November 2014, a total of 10.94 lakh candidates have been trained and a total of 8.51 lakh candidates have been given placement