Ecologist #MadhavGadgil wins Tyler Prize

Renowned ecologist Madhav Gadgil has been chosen for the prestigious 2015 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.

The prize, instituted in 1973, is awarded by the international Tyler Prize Executive Committee with the administrative support of the University of Southern California.

Prof. Gadgil, who was Chairman of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), will share the $200,000 cash prize with noted American marine ecologist Dr. Jane Lubchenco for their work in changing policy and specifically for their “leadership and engagement in the development of conservation and sustainability policies in the United States, India and internationally”, said a release issued by the University of Southern California on Monday.

Both winners will receive the prize and a gold medallion at a private ceremony in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles on April 24. The day before, Dr. Lubchenco and Dr. Gadgil will deliver public lectures on their work at The Forum at the University of Southern California.

“Both of these laureates have bridged science with cultural and economic realities - like the impact on indigenous peoples in India or fishing communities in the United States - to advance the best possible conservation policies,” said the release.

Prof. Gadgil’s landmark report on the preservation of the unique ecosystem of the Western Ghats and the inclusion of local committees was especially noted as the reason behind his award that recognised his engagement with the public and other academic fields to “position him as a leading voice on environmental issues in India.”

Also noted were Dr. Gadgil’s contributions behind the crafting of India’s National Biodiversity Act, 2002.

Dr. Lubchenco, who was recently named first-ever U.S. Science Envoy for the Ocean by the United States Department of State, gets the award for her dedication to raising awareness of the importance of the ocean and the need to protect ocean ecosystems, notably during her tenure from 2009 to 2013 as administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The award commended her drive and passion in restoring fisheries and improving ocean health, which culminated in the unique “catch share” model – an alternative rights-based approach to fisheries attempting to change the economic incentives for fishermen that has been adopted by a number of regional fishery management councils in Alaska, along the Pacific Coast, the Gulf of Mexico and other regions across the American seaboard.

PM Narendra Modi launches #PRAGATI platform for redressal of grievances

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 25 March 2015 launched Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation (PRAGATI) platform. PRAGATI is a multi-purpose and multi-modal platform aimed at addressing grievances of common man. It also aims at simultaneously monitoring and reviewing important Union government programmes and projects as well as projects flagged by State Governments. It is an innovative project in e-governance and good governance and accountability with real-time presence and information exchange among the key stakeholders.

 Key features of PRAGATI 

Designed in-house by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) team with the help of National Informatics Center (NIC). Uniquely bundles three latest technologies including Digital data management, geo-spatial technology and video-conferencing. Three-tier system that brings PMO, Union Government Secretaries, and Chief Secretaries of the States at one stage. Thus, offers a unique combination in the direction of cooperative federalism. Prime Minister can directly discuss the issues with the concerned Central and State officials with full information and latest visuals of the ground level situation. The system will work on strengthen and re-engineer the data bases of Centralized Public Grievance Redress And Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) along with Project Monitoring Group (PMG) and the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. On a monthly basis, Prime Minister will interact with bureaucrats i.e. on fourth Wednesday of every month at 3.30 PM- called as PRAGATI Day.

#RuthPorat has been appointed as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of world’s largest search engine giant #Google

.She will succeed Patrick Pichette who had announced his retirement on 10 March 2015 and assume charge on 26 May 2015. As CFO of Google she will directly report to Larry Page, CEO and Co-Founder of Google. Prior to this appointment Ruth was working as CFO at Morgan Stanley. She joined Morgan Stanley in 1987. Since then she had severed at various posts and had played several key roles at the company. She has served as Global Head of the Financial Institutions Group, co-Head of Technology Investment Banking and Vice Chairman of Investment Banking. Porat also was the lead banker on numerous technology financing rounds, including for Amazon, eBay, Netscape, Priceline and Verisign as well as for The Blackstone Group, General Electric (GE) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)



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Indian-American novelist #AkhilSharma’s novel #FamilyLife has won the prestigious Folio Prize 2015. His novel was among the eight shortlisted books from 80 fictional works and was chosen as the best fiction novel published in the United Kingdom in 2014. Family Life is Sharma’s second novel and took him 13 years to write. About Akhil Sharma Sharma was born in Delhi and later in 1979 immigrated to US along with his family. His first novel was An Obedient Father published in 2000. It has won the prestigious PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award in 2001. His stories also have been published in The New Yorker and in Atlantic Monthly. These stories have been included in The Best American Short Stories and also in O. Henry Prize Collections. In 2007, he was named as one of Granta magazine’s Best of Young American Novelists.

Climate change costs. Unpredictable weather may impact 30 per cent of the harvest

India has been hit by unusual weather. Much of the country has endured unseasonal rain, even hailstorms. In the process, nearly 30 per cent of the rabi planting seems to have been spoiled, with adverse implications for food availability and inflation, as well as farmer distress. The first half of March has been unusually cool, besides being the wettest for 100 years; this weirdness is likely a product of climate change. The weather has played havoc with the mainrabi crops, like wheat, mustard and gram, as well as many vegetable and fruit crops on over 18 million hectares in almost all the Indian states. The loss in production is bound to be substantial, feared to be worth around Rs 65,000 crore in wheat alone. Oddly, some tracts, such as those in Vidarbha and Marathwada in Maharashtra, have had to first cope with drought and then excessive rains. The key agricultural belt in the northwest, too, has suffered extensive losses due to this climate change-induced peculiar weather. And both theIndia Meteorological Department (IMD) and the private weather forecaster Skymet warn of another wet spell in north India in the last week of March and early April. If that happens, which seems probable considering the improved short-range weather prediction skills of these agencies, it might spell further disaster for rabi crops, most of which would, by then, be ready for harvest. The impact on food inflation, particularly vegetable prices, will likely be sharp.

This year's uncharacteristic weather can by no means be dismissed as a one-off phenomenon. Abnormalities of this kind have been witnessed fairly often in recent years. The Sholapur region in Maharashtra was lashed by hailstorms last February-end as well. Hill states have been victims of unprecedented cloudbursts and the floods that followed. Even the pattern of monsoon rainfall seems to have undergone a perceptible change. Most of the year's rains fall in the second half of the four-month-long monsoon season, with the agriculturally more critical first half (June-July) being drier. And the withdrawal of the monsoon quite often begins much later.

India's high vulnerability to climate change is well known. This is so especially because of its large agriculture-dependent population, excessive pressure on natural resources, particularly land and water, and the inability of the poor to cope with natural disasters. This makes it imperative to have in place well-crafted short-term and long-term strategies to deal with weather-related contingencies. Development of climate-resilient technologies is vital for this purpose. However, since many of the outcomes of climate change are difficult to foresee and may also be hard to undo through mitigation efforts, it may be essential to adapt to these changes to minimise their adverse fallout. Luckily, Indian farm scientists seem well aware of the agricultural sector's vulnerability and have begun working on adaptive technological and agronomic practices to reduce weather-induced damages to crops, livestock and fisheries. They have already achieved some success in evolving crop varieties and their planting and harvesting schedules that can help rabi crops to escape the heat stress that often occurs towards the end of the rabi season due to an abrupt rise in temperature. Similar strategies are needed for other probable weather abnormalities, especially of the type encountered this year.

NITI Aayog plays safe on poverty

Taking note of some hard lessons learnt by its predecessor, the National Institution for Transforming India (#NITI) Aayog would not estimate either #poverty lines or the number of the poor in the country.

The erstwhile #Planning Commission, replaced by the Aayog, had got into a big controversy on these issues, with its calculations on the basis of the National Consumption Expenditure Surveys.

A task force under Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariyaon poverty alleviation is to not define or compute poverty as an aggregate measure but will look at social indicators to assess the impact of social schemes on the poor.

“We won’t determine or decide what is the poverty line as was done by the Rangarajan panel or others before that. The task force would not like to fall into the Rs 33-27 debate, as earlier,” a key source said.

He noted states were already undertaking a Socio Economic Caste Census. “What we need to know is whether the programmes launched by the new government are having tangible impact, in terms of tangible outcomes. For this, we need to look at indicators,” the source said.

The number of poor as calculated by the socio-caste census would give a rough idea of the poverty line in each state.

It has been decided to include households without shelter, destitutes/living on alms, manual scavengers, primitive tribal groups and legally released bonded labourers in the Below Poverty Line list. These households will have the highest priority for inclusion in the list. Other households will be identified as poor from the angle of deprivation they are subject to.

C Rangarajan, chairman of the former prime minister's economic advisory council, and who headed a panel to come out with a methodology to define poverty and estimate the number of poor after the Planning Commission courted controversy, said: "I think for implementation of programmes, different determinants can be calculated and programmes can, thus, be monitored."

However, if one wants to measure the change in poverty, one needs the poverty line, he said. This could be the official one or one used by different agencies or academicians, depending on the approach.

One can use the World Bank's poverty line of $1 a day or $1.25 a day, he said but cautioned that these are not based on any specific study of a country.

Saumitra Chaudhuri, former member of the Planning Commission, said the NITI Aayog ideally should not do poverty computation. The whole idea should be on how to make the lives of the poor better through short-term and long-term measures.

"If you have an absolute measurement of poverty, say, anyone spending less than $1 dollar a day is poor, you need not change it after every five years. If anyone wants to focus socio-economic policies towards elimination of poverty, they should target the absolute number and not get caught in the debate of who is poor and who is not," he said.

The Rangarajan panel had found 29.5% of India's population was poor in 2011-12 against 21.9% estimated under the previous methodology which had drawn sharp criticism from various quarters. In absolute terms, 363 million people were below the poverty line that year, higher by about 93 million over the 269.8 million estimated earlier.

However, the poverty rate - the number of poor as a proportion of the population - came down swifter in the estimates of the Rangarajan panel than calculated earlier on the Suresh Tendulkar methodology.

A greater number of people were classified under poverty in 2011-12 as the Rangarajan committee raised the poverty line compared to that fixed earlier. The Rangarajan panel had said anyone spending up to Rs 47 a day in urban areas and Rs 32 in villages would be considered poor as of 2011-12. The Tendulkar methodology had pegged these levels at Rs 33 in urban areas and Rs 27 in villages. By either method, poverty was reduced during 2009-10 to 2011-12 (the first three years of the second UPA government).

For 2009-10, the Tendulkar methodology had pegged the poverty line at Rs 22 in villages and Rs 29 in urban areas. These were raised to Rs 27 and Rs 40, respectively, by the Rangarajan committee.

All these numbers had stirred controversies, with political parties and social activists poking fun at the Planning Commission over these numbers.

Kerala bags award for e-governance

Kerala Tourism was today conferred the national Web Ratna Award for 2014 for exemplary e-governance initiative through the Internet.

The Kerala Tourism website (www.keralatourism.org) won the Golden Icon award in the ‘Outstanding Content’ category of the Web Ratna Awards, instituted by the Union government under the ambit of the National Portal of India.

Kerala Tourism Secretary G. Kamala Vardhana Rao received the award from Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad at the award ceremony held at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi.

The Kerala Tourism website, designed and maintained by Invis Multimedia, is among the top tourism portals in the world.

The Kerala Tourism website has won several national and international awards, including five national awards and the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) Gold award, for its innovative use of information technology to promote tourism across the world.

Launched in 1998, the Kerala Tourism website today receives around 4.2 million visits and 14 million page views annually.

I & B Ministry bags Platinum icon in Web Ratna Awards 2014

The Ministry of Information & Broadcasting has been awarded the Platinum icon award for the Comprehensive Web presence in the Web Ratna Awards 2014. The award today was conferred by the Minister for Communications & Information Technology in the presence of Secretary, M/o C&IT, Shri R.S. Sharma. The award was received by Ms. R. Jaya, Joint Secretary on behalf of Secretary (I&B), Shri Bimal Julka along with the New Media Wing team of the Ministry.

The award was presented to Ministry of Information & Broadcasting for having a significant presence on all social media sites which makes it accessible for users through multiple online platforms. The website follows GIGW guidelines. It caters to the information needs of various stakeholders by providing access to all the policies and guidelines issued by the Ministry. The home page of MIB website has timestamp, giving last update details. The website has a dedicated Hindi version besides regular English version. The portal has a Google enabled search facility to search within the HTML content. The website is based on Content Management System (CMS).

Web Ratna Awards have been instituted by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, acknowledges unique initiatives/practices of various states/UTs in the realm of e-governance. The Government of India has been bracing for innovation and transformation in delivery of information/services with adoption of best ICT practices. Web Ratna Awards recognize these e-governance initiatives. Web Ratna Awards were instituted to appreciate and acknowledge the initiatives and contributions of individuals & institutions and their innovations, which have empowered the Government in achieving the vision of good governance. Web Ratna Awards was instituted in the year 2009.

Avoid Indiscriminate Use of #Urea

Constant decline in soil fertility status, mainly due to nutrient removal by intensive cropping systems in amounts far-exceeding their replenishment through fertilizers and manures during past few decades, is considered one of the serious second-generation problems of Green Revolution.  Farmers often use nitrogenous fertilizers (mostly urea) or nitrogenous and complex fertilizers (mostly urea and DAP), ignoring the application of potash and other deficient nutrients. 

On the other hand, multi-nutrient deficiencies have already emerged and expanded in most of the soils. Soil analysis under different projects revealed widespread deficiency of at least six nutrients viz., Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), Potash (K), Sulphur (S), Zinc (Zn) and Boron (B) in different parts of the country.  Some diagnostic surveys carried out in rice-wheat growing areas of north-western India revealed that farmers often apply greater than recommended rates of N to sustain the yield levels that were attained earlier with even less fertilizer use. 

Urea, being most common N fertilizer, is indiscriminately used irrespective of scientific prescriptions.  Excessive use of urea leads to several adverse implications on soil, crop quality and overall ecosystem.  Some major disadvantages of excessive/indiscriminate use of urea are listed as under:

It enhances mining of soil nutrients that are not applied or applied inadequately, thus leading to deterioration of soil fertility.   Such soils may require more fertilizers over time to produce optimum yields. 

Nitrogen applied in excess of crop demand is lost through volatilization, denitrification and leaching.

Excessive use of N (urea) encourages climate change (when lost through denitrification) and groundwater pollution (when lost through leaching).  Increase in nitrate content of groundwater in some intensively-cropped areas has been reported, which is obviously due to leaching of nitrates beyond crop root zone.  Increase in nitrate content of groundwater is potentially harmful, as it is used for drinking purposes in most of the rural areas.

Fertilizer N (urea) application beyond recommended rates enhances crop succulence, thus making the plants prone to disease and pest infestation, and to lodging.

Unbalanced use of urea decreases N use efficiency, thus leads to increase in cost of production and lowering of net profits.

For increasing use efficiency of N and other nutrients, profitability and environmental safety, fertilizer N (urea) application needs to be rationalized.  A few guidelines for rational use of N fertilizers are indicated below:

Fertilizer N (urea) application should be invariably balanced not only with P and K but also with deficient secondary and micronutrients.

Soil test-based fertilizer prescriptions have to be adopted.  Farmers should insist for S and micronutrient testing, as NPK alone (without S and micronutrients) is no longer balanced fertilizer prescription.

Neem oil coated urea should be preferred over pilled urea, especially for basal dressing. 

Losses of N are usually less when urea is top-dressed before irrigation.

Modified N scheduling using leaf color chart (LCC) gives better N use efficiency in crops.  LCC-based real-time N application needs to be promoted in the crops (like rice and wheat) for which LCC thresholds are available.

Conjoint use of organic manures and fertilizers may help curtailing the application of fertilizers including that of urea.

Inclusion of legumes may curtail fertilizer N (urea) requirement by 25-50%. Depending on cropping system and availability of irrigation, legumes could be introduced as catch crop, green manures, forage crop, break crop or as short duration grain crop.