UPSC panel wants govt to reduce age limit for civil services exam 

 

 

A Union Public Service Commission-appointed committee is set to tell the government to reduce the upper age-limit for appearing in the examination to get into premier civil services such as the IAS and IPS.
The UPSC appointed the panel headed by former education secretary BS Baswan last August as part of an initiative by the Narendra Modi government to overhaul the civil services examination.
The government had promised to review the examination after a string of protests in 2015 against a civil service aptitude test introduced by the previous Manmohan Singh-led government in the preliminary exam.
“We feel that the entry age is on the higher side. At the same time, we realise that candidates should not be put to any unforeseen hardship. Therefore, we would prepare a road map which will give all candidates sufficient time to adapt to the new system,” Baswan said.
Over the decades, the upper age-limit for candidates from general categories has gone up from 24 years in the 1960s to 32 years for the 2014 exam.
The upper age is relaxed by five years for candidates from the scheduled caste and scheduled tribes while those from the other backward classes get a three-year relaxation. Disabled candidates get an additional 10-year cut.
Read | UPSC issues notification for civil services, IFS exams 2016
In 2012 and 2013, the proportion of successful candidates well past their 30th birthday was in the range of 6 to 11%.
A 43-year-old “grandfather”, a disabled from the scheduled caste community who had applied for age relaxation on both counts, could be the face of the panel’s argument for lowering the age in its report. Sources said the panel was trying to locate the candidate to make its point.

Baswan refused comment, saying he would let the report do the talking.
A senior government official informed that a call on the recommendation would be taken once the panel submitted its report. He, however, said the panel — which has time till August to give its report —had sounded them out about its conclusion; that reducing the entry age for candidates had to be at the heart of any exam reforms.
“I can only say that the government is very clear in its mind that it will not spring a surprise on the candidates,” the official said, referring to the previous UPA government’s last-minute decisions to change exam’s format.
It was in this context that the Baswan panel had been told to not only recommend changes but also spell out a reasonable time frame for implementation of its recommendations.
Government officials and training academies tasked to prepare successful candidates for a career in civil services have been pushing for lowering of the entry age. A common argument is that the civil servants found it difficult to adapt and internalise the core values demanded of the civil services once they were past their thirties.
But it will not be an easy decision for the government.
There have been several attempts in the past to explore the possibility of reducing the upper age. Former prime ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh had supported the proposal but had to back out after loud protests from politicians, insisting that it put rural candidates at a disadvantage.
The UPA government had even accepted the second administrative reforms commission recommendation to lower the upper limit to 26 years for general candidates. But the government ended up raising the age limit by two years, months before the 2014 general elections.
Nearly 460,000 candidates appeared for the three-stage UPSC examination in 2015, hoping to join the administrative services that continue to remain the “dream job” for many. Less than one in 400 of them made it.

‘Nightmare superbug’ found in the U.S

 

Is the discovery of a potentially serious bacteria resistant to antibiotics of last resort the nightmare scenario doctors have long been warning us about?

Military researchers in the United States have identified the first patient, in the U.S., to be infected with bacteria that are resistant to an antibiotic that was the last resort against drug-resistant germs.

The patient is well now, but the case raises the spectre of superbugs that could cause untreatable infections, because the bacteria can easily transmit their resistance to other germs that are already resistant to additional antibiotics. The resistance can spread because it arises from loose genetic material that bacteria typically share with one another.

“Think of a puzzle,” said Dr. Beth Bell, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “You need lots of different pieces to get a result that is resistant to everything. This is the last piece of that puzzle, unfortunately, in the United States. We have that genetic element that would allow for bacteria that are resistant to every antibiotic.”

Colistin resistant

The bacteria are resistant to a drug called colistin, an old antibiotic that in the U.S. is held in reserve to treat especially dangerous infections that are resistant to a class of drugs called carbapenems. If carbapenem-resistant bacteria, called CRE, also pick up resistance to colistin, they will be unstoppable.

“This is huge,” said Dr. Lance Price, a researcher at George Washington University. “We are one step away from CRE strains that cannot be treated with antibiotics. We now have all the pieces in place for it to be untreatable.”

The gene for resistance to colistin was first found in China, where the drug is used in pig and poultry farming. Researchers reported its discovery there in November. It has also been found in the intestine of one pig in the U.S. CRE is still relatively rare, causing just 600 deaths a year, but by 2013, researchers had identified it in health care facilities in 44 states. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the CDC, often calls it the “nightmare superbug,” because it is resistant to all but one antibiotic — colistin.

“We risk being in a post-antiobitic world,” he said during a gathering for journalists in Washington on Thursday. “That wouldn’t just be urinary tract infections or pneumonia — that could be for the 6,00,000 patients a year who need cancer treatment.”

He added: “The medicine cabinet is empty for some patients.”

The colistin resistance in the U.S. came to light when a 49-year-old woman, who Dr. Bell said was “connected to the military”, was treated for a urinary infection at a military clinic in Pennsylvania. Because her urine culture had unusual results, the sample was sent to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, which identified the drug resistance. The bacteria, though resistant to colistin and some other antibiotics, were not resistant to carbapenems. Doctors there published a report on the case in a medical journal.

Patrick McGann, a scientist at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and lead author of the paper, said researchers had only started analysing samples a few weeks ago. They tested samples from six patients, and one of them was the woman’s.

Dr. Bell said researchers did not know how the patient contracted the resistant bacteria. The microbes have been found in people in Asia and Europe, but the patient had not travelled during the past five months. It is possible that she contracted the bacteria from food, or from contact with someone else who was infected, she said.

Public health workers will interview the woman and will probably test her family members and other close contacts for the bacteria, Dr. Bell said.

Infectious disease doctors have long warned that overuse of antibiotics in people and in animals put human health at risk by reducing the power of the drugs, some of modern medicine’s most prized jewels. About two million Americans fall ill from antibiotic-resistant bacteria every year and at least 23,000 die from those infections. The Obama administration has elevated the issue, laying out a strategy for how to bring the problem under control. CRE germs usually strike people receiving medical care in hospitals or nursing homes, including patients on breathing machines or dependent on catheters. Healthy people are rarely, if ever, affected. But the bugs attack broadly, and the infections they cause are not limited to people with severely compromised immune systems. CRE was believed to be the cause of infections from improperly cleaned medical scopes that led to the death of two people at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in California last year.

The Department of Defense, in a blog post about the discovery of the gene in the United States, said it gives “a new clue into the antibiotic resistance landscape.”

But the gene is rare: The blog pointed out that federal health researchers had searched for the gene in 44,000 samples of Salmonella and 9,000 samples of E. coli/Shigella, taken from people and retail meat, and did not find it. — New York Times News Service

 

A big boost for public health

Unlike polio and smallpox, the risk of maternal and neonatal tetanus will always exist. Tetanus spores are always a part of the environment. Thus ‘elimination’ must be seen as an enduring pursuit.

Maternal and neonatal tetanus (MNT) is no longer a major public health problem in the World Health Organisation (WHO) South-East Asia region. The WHO South-East Asia Region has eliminated MNT as a major public health problem.As immunisation coverage and access to maternal and newborn health care has increased, the number of mothers and newborns suffering agonising deaths on account of the disease has declined to below one in every 1,000 live births at the district level. This is a major achievement.

In 1989, when the fight against neonatal tetanus (and, consequently, maternal tetanus) began, tetanus toxins were claiming the lives of approximately 7,87,000 newborns across the world. Unhygienic conditions during delivery and inadequate umbilical cord care saw to it that these toxins could infect mother and child, causing muscle spasms, lockjaw, and often death.

With recent elimination successes in India and Indonesia, the South-East Asia region has reached a milestone.

Though elimination took longer than expected, it is a victory that must be savoured. At the same time, however, it is a victory that is by no means final.

Unlike the situation with diseases such as polio and smallpox, the risk of MNT will always exist. Tetanus spores are always a permanent part of the environment, meaning public health setbacks could once again compromise mothers and their newborns. In relation to MNT, “elimination” must be seen as an enduring pursuit.

Strengthening measures that facilitated elimination in the first instance can best guarantee the ongoing safety of mothers and their newborns.

Innovative strategies

Sustaining and enhancing access to quality maternal and newborn health care is critical. By providing expectant mothers the ability to access quality antenatal and safe-birthing services, health systems throughout the region diminish the risk of tetanus infection, as well as other potentially lethal complications. Though countries in the region have made important gains have been made in the region, the momentum must be accelerated. There must be innovative strategies deployed to reach those ‘unreached’, such as increased training of skilled birth attendants at community-level facilities, or providing cash transfers to every mother who has an institutional delivery, for example.

Immunisation coverage must be maintained and enhanced. Expectant mothers must receive the necessary tetanus toxoid vaccine, or combination vaccine, as a matter of priority and at the appropriate stages of pregnancy.

As Indonesia’s campaign to vaccinate brides-to-be demonstrates that positive initiatives need not be confined to the pregnancy or neonatal periods. Just as newborns receive tetanus immunisations as part of their routine immunisation schedule, children must receive booster doses as and when appropriate. A good place for this to happen is at school. Despite the region’s newly validated status, health authorities must ensure that preventing maternal and neonatal tetanus remains prominent on the list of vaccine-preventable diseases, and that opportunities to immunise against tetanus are grasped.

Effective engagement with communities is essential. Communities that have difficulties accessing care or which lack experience doing so must be further encouraged to avail themselves of the benefits maternal and newborn health care brings. Messages related to tetanus immunisation and safe-birthing must remain integrated with other outreach activities, and disseminated among the most vulnerable. Harmful traditional practices should be discouraged, while at the same time continuing to build relationships that promote trust, respect and inclusiveness.

A positive experience with health care providers can have far-ranging effect, not only for an individual but also a community.

Tracking progress

A robust and effective surveillance system is vital to tracking progress in these key areas. After all, the failure of any one of them can mean the death of a mother or newborn through tetanus infection. By closely monitoring incidences ofMNT, authorities can evaluate the impact of their efforts, and, if found lacking, better calibrate them in future. In-depth knowledge of the causes of every case of maternal or neonatal tetanus, combined with a resolve to ensure it is not repeated, can be the only appropriate response. However great the recent achievement is, it remains unacceptable that any woman or child should suffer the devastating disease.

Along with conducting routine vaccine-preventable disease surveillance, WHO is committed to realising the unfinished Millennium Development Goal agenda as it relates to maternal and newborn health, which will in turn help allay tetanus’s menace. Efforts to achieve Universal Health Coverage — a priority area of WHO in the South-East Asia region — will similarly enhance health equity, ensuring that tetanus’s tendency to prey on the most vulnerable is rebuffed. It is no coincidence that the first countries in the region to eliminate the problem also had the strongest health systems.

That MNT has been eliminated as a major public health problem in the South-East Asia region is reason to celebrate.

Newborns across the region are now safer from the disease than at any other time in history, but we must not be misled by our successes.

Maternal and neonatal tetanus remains a burden, and could make a comeback in significant numbers in future. By enhancing the reach and quality of maternal and newborn health care, increasing immuniSation coverage, leveraging greater community buy-in, and ensuring detailed surveillance, we can avert this possibility.

 

High-speed Spanish Talgo train begins trial run in U.P.

Besides reducing travel time, Talgo’s lighter trains consume 30 per cent less energy.

The trial of Spanish train Talgo, the lighter and faster vehicle whose speed goes up to 115 kms per hour, was conducted between Bareilly and Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh as part of the Railways’ strategy to increase the speed of trains.

“It was a smooth ride,” said a senior railway official after nine Talgo coaches were hauled by a 4,500 HP diesel engine on the 90-km line for the first trial run.

 

India’s poor institutional memory

The big problem is that there is too little learning across the system. States continue to try to reinvent the wheel 

How well has India done in the first two years of the Modi government? The verdict in the media seems to be: well begun but hardly done yet. A larger question is, how well has India done since it became independent 69 years ago. Then, as now, there was a new, untested government. And the question then was, as now: will the new government learn fast how to guide the development of a large, poor, democratic country with high aspirations.
Development is the result of enterprises and institutions in a country learning to do new things they have not done before. The faster they learn, the faster the country develops and grows. What are the impediments to faster learning in a country and to a government’s learning? Insights can be found by comparing countries that have progressed at different rates. If one has gone further than another in the same time, starting from similar conditions, what enabled it to learn and develop faster?
China and India, the two billion-plus Asian giants, provide a good comparison to extract hypotheses about country-level learning. Both countries, with similar size economies and similarly poor, started on their journeys of development in the middle of the last century. Without doubt, China has developed and grown much faster than India. Its economy is now five times the size of India’s and China is far ahead of India in human development indicators too: health, education and reduction of poverty.
A recent study, by Luke Jordan (then with the World Bank) and Sebastien Turban and Laurence Wilse-Samson of Columbia University, contrasted the abilities of the Indian and Chinese states to learn. It pointed to several differences. The Chinese state seems to be more deliberate in its approach to learning. It encourages a city or province to experiment with new policies, observes outcomes, and then applies what is learned to the rest of the country. Top-level leaders are selected from those who have managed a complex system well at a lower level—as head of a city or provincial government. When a single, authoritarian, political party runs the country everywhere, the centre can manage political promotions and ‘organizational learning’ across the system. Singapore, a tiny, centrally managed country that has developed remarkably well, has been able to manage these processes even more easily.
Chinese and Singaporean methods cannot be copied in India, a nation with greater political variety and social diversity. Since top-down directives cannot work in India, its leaders must find other ways to remove the learning disabilities within a complex system.
For this, Indian leaders should address systemic issues like the poor ‘institutional memory’ within the Indian government. New governments and ministers want to show they are different from their predecessors. They ignore whatever little (or much) their predecessors had learned. Within the government, senior officers are moved around frequently—for political reasons, or for advancing their own careers. Therefore, even if there are records ‘on file’ of what went on before, there is very little transmission of ‘tacit’ knowledge of complex issues. This deeper learning is lost in the changes.
While the frequency of changes of government will be determined by the democratic process, transfers within the government need not be as frequent as they are—some officers moving through several postings in a year. Though it will be hard on their egos, ministers and government functionaries should be required to extensively debrief their predecessors. Before they announce a new scheme to show how smart they are, and tweet to show how stupid their predecessors were, they should be required to humbly learn, for the sake of the country, how to make ongoing schemes work better.
India is a very large and diverse country, which at long last may be realizing that it cannot be managed from the centre. The states, whether or not they and the centre are ruled by the same party, must have the freedom to develop their own appropriate solutions. Cities and villages must become more capable of self-government. Among the many benefits of localization of governance is the opportunity for many different solutions to emerge. India can be the world’s biggest laboratory for multiple experiments in social and economic change—and indeed it already is. However, an Indian problem is that there is too little learning across the system. States and cities continue to try to reinvent the wheel, either because they do not know what others have learned, or because of the ‘not invented here’ desire to show off one’s own smartness.
Incredible India needs platforms for distilling and sharing learning across the country, among states, cities and villages, and across ministerial silos too. Indeed, this is the charter of the NITI Aayog, which has replaced the Planning Commission, which for too long tried to plan and manage India’s development from the centre. The NITI Aayog is on a very steep learning curve. Learning platforms are not merely websites and portals. Effective learning platforms must have processes for transmission of tacit knowledge too.
India, with its scale and its diversity, and for the speed with which it must now learn to catch up with others, must create the world’s most dynamic learning system.

Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All (UJALA) scheme

EESL Distributes LED Bulbs Under “UJALA” in the Range of Rs. 75-95 across 16 States

The LED bulbs under Government of India’ s Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All (UJALA) scheme  are being distributed across 16 States in the country in the price range of Rs 75- 95.  The project, executed by Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), under the administration of Ministry of Power, procures high quality LED bulbs from leading manufacturers through a transparent bidding process. In the latest round of procurement, which ended on March 31, 2016, the lowest procurement cost was Rs. 54.90 (exclusive of taxes and administrative costs).

The government, through aggregation and transparent procurement has achieved a rapid decline in LED prices. In the first round of procurement held in January 2014, EESL achieved the lowest bid at Rs. 310. The prices for the subsequent procurements for other states, during September 2014 to February 2015, ranged between Rs. 204 to Rs. 104.

EESL has pooled the prices of all the previous procurements since 2014 and the passed on the direct benefit to the consumers across states. Various state-specific taxes and other administrative costs like distribution, awareness, etc are added to the pooled procurement price. Therefore, the cost of the LED bulb has been brought down to a price range of Rs. 75 - Rs. 95, after addition of administrative costs, distribution and awareness cost. Therefore, the variation in the final cost of the bulbs is owing to the difference in taxes across states.

The Government has ensured transparency and encouraged competition by using e-procurement of goods and services. This has resulted in significant reduction in transaction cost and time and enhanced process efficiency. This in turn has led to a much larger participation of bidders thereby increasing competition and reducing the procurement cost of LED bulbs.

The target of the programme is to replace all the 77 crore incandescent bulbs sold in India by LEDs. This will result in reduction of 20,000 MW load, energy savings of 100 billion kWh and Green House Gas (GHG) emissions savings of 80 million tons every year. The annual saving in electricity bills of consumers will be Rs. 40,000 crore, considering average tariff of Rs. 4 per kWh.

Small Wind Energy and Hybrid Systems (SWES)

Ministry of New and Renewable Energy is implementing a programme to promote the installation of Small Wind Energy and Hybrid Systems (SWES) with the objective to provide electricity in unelectrified areas or areas with intermittent electric supply. The first- such Pilot-cum- demonstration project of 25 KW capacity will be installed at the wind turbine test station of National Institute of Wind Energy at Kayathar, Tootikudi District, Tamil Nadu. 

Under the programme, MNRE provides Central Financial Assistance (CFA) to community users for installation of such systems. The total installed capacity as on 31st March 2016 is 2.69 MW. There are 6 small wind turbine manufacturers and 9 models empanelled under this programme. 

The SWES projects have been highly successful in USA and European countries. Initially, 10 such demonstration projects will be supported for grid integration. The tentative cost for each of the roject will be in the range of Rs 2-3 lakh per KW, depending upon the configuration and location of the projects. The Ministry will support upto 50% of the project cost.