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The world comes to appraise Swachh Bharat

Political leadership + government financing + people’s participation
“This is the role of good political leadership. It doesn’t merely decide on a programme, but it throws its entire political weight — weight of its politics, its policies, its finances — behind the decision. And that is what happened,” said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley
Swachh Bharat Abhiyan-Grameen: access to toilets from 39% in 2014 to almost 95% today
503 districts and 24 States have been declared open defecation-free.
Sanitation Secretary Parameswaran Iyer: $20 billion allocated
“In 2015, when the Sustainable Development Goals were announced, it was estimated that the world needed an additional annual expenditure of $114 billion to meet the sanitation-related goal. Today, the additional expenditure is only $35 billion.” said Australian PM.
“India is striving to eliminate open defecation in its entirety by October 2, 2019. This is the best 150th birthday gift we can give to Gandhiji,” – President Ram Nath Kovind
Comptroller and Auditor-General picked holes in Gujarat’s ODF status, with a report showing that 29% of homes in the sample villages did not, in fact, have access to toilets. “The Gujarat government is looking into that report. There is no connection to the trip,” Mr. Iyer told presspersons on the eve of the Convention.
“In comparison to 2014, where have you reached in 2018?

It is pretty good. Have you reached heaven yet? No. Are there holes in heaven? Yes. This is what I call political reality. India is not the only country in the world where politicians occasionally overstate their achievements,” Mr. Rudd told The Hindu when asked about the CAG’s findings.

Four years after Swachh: cleaning excreta for rot

The narrow village street is lined with gutters, dotted with excreta flushed out from latrines inside upper caste homes.
Payment for the job: roti
Little has changed today, despite the fact that her village, and all of rural Rajasthan were declared open defecation-free – which includes the removal of all dry latrines – by the Centre’s flagship Swachh Bharat mission over a year ago.
Manual scavenging is a crime under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013.
“No one will let us do any other work. No one will buy anything from us. They say we are dirty,” says Munni’s son Mukesh. “We are not even allowed to do puja in the village temple.”
“We think Swachh Bharat has actually broken down these caste barriers,” said Sanitation Secretary Parameswaran Iyer, speaking to The Hindu a week before Swachh Bharat Abhiyan enters its final year. He confirmed that if a village or State is declared ODF, it means that all households have access to sanitary toilets and all dry latrines have been removed and converted into sanitary toilets. He termed any instances of manual scavengers still cleaning dry latrines as an “aberration.”
Social Justice Ministry has registered over 50,000 manual scavengers in at least 160 districts, according to the Rashtriya Garima Abhiyan (RGA), an NGO, which has partnered with the Ministry to conduct the survey.
In April 2018, ten members of Behnara’s Mehtar basti, including Santa Devi and her sons, went to a registration camp organised by the survey team. Their names are duly recorded in the survey list, but in the verification column alongside, district officials have entered the same uniform phrase: “Maila dhone ka karya nahi karte (do not do scavenging work).”

Pak. duplicity key hurdle in fight against terror: Sushma

- External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj United Nations General Assembly (UNGA)
- Pakistan’s duplicity is a key obstacle in the global fight against terrorism.
- “The most startling evidence of this duplicity was the fact that Osama Bin Laden, the architect and ideologue of 9/11, was given safe haven in Pakistan…that claimed to be America’s friend and ally,”.
- “The killers of 9/11 met their fate; but the mastermind of 26/11 Hafiz Saeed still roams the streets of Pakistan with impunity,” the Minister said.
- India always ready to talk but the environment should be terror free.
- Ms. Swaraj said: “In 1996, India proposed a draft document on CCIT at the United Nations. Till today, that draft has remained a draft, because we cannot agree on a common language. On the one hand, we want to fight terrorism; on the other, we cannot define it. This is why terrorists with a price on their head are celebrated, financed and armed as liberation heroes by a country that remains a member of the United Nations. Cruelty and barbarism are advertised as heroism.”
- International community is looking at things like spectators.
- “Pakistan glorifies killers; it refuses to see the blood of innocents,” she said.

Terrorism and climate change are two existential threats.
“The United Nations must accept that it needs fundamental reform. Reform must begin today; tomorrow could be too late. If the UN is ineffective, the whole concept of multilateralism will collapse,” she said.

IMA slams govt.’s move to scrap MCI

Recently, in a move to enhance the governance and the quality of medical education, an Ordinance was issued dissolving the MCI and replacing it with a seven-member Board of Governors (BOG) led by NITI Aayog member Dr. V.K. Paul.
The Indian Medical Association (IMA) action committee is not happy with this move.
A Bill to replace the MCI with the National Medical Commission (NMC) is pending in Parliament.

PM calls for ‘wholesome education in the country’

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday emphasised the importance of character building over literacy and called for “wholesome” education in the country.
“Knowledge and education are not restricted to books,” he said, while addressing the inaugural ceremony of the ‘Conference on Academic Leadership’ here on Saturday.
“The purpose of education is to enable balanced growth of every dimension of a human being, which is not possible without innovation,” Mr. Modi said.

India to gift 3 MiG-21s to Russia

4-5 October: Russian President Vladimir Putin will be in New Delhi for India-Russia bilateral summit
“Three MiG-21s are scheduled to be handed over to Russians based on a request from their Defence Minister to our Defence Minister. They comprise one Type 75 aircraft and two Type 77 aircraft,” an official source said.
A major symbolic gesture: all-weather friendship and deep strategic partnership
MiG-21: most produced supersonic fighter in history
India inducted the MiG-21s in 1963 and got full technology transfer and rights to license-build the aircraft in the country. It is the first supersonic fighter aircraft of the Indian Air Force. The IAF still has about 120 MiG-21s in service which will all be phased out of service by 2021-22.

Ravi unanimously elected PTI Chairman

N. Ravi, Publisher and former Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, was on Saturday unanimously elected Chairman of the Press Trust of India (PTI).
Vijay Kumar Chopra, Chief Editor of the Punjab Kesari Group of newspapers, was elected Vice-Chairman.

59 plant species in IUCN threat categories

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
Scientists identified the threat status of 59 Indian plant species
Quantifying threat levels of species can be crucial for their conservation.
Bentinckia nicobarica a palm reported only from the Great Nicobar Island
currently listed as endangered
new study suggests it is critically endangered
Based on population sizes and numbers of mature individuals remaining in the wild

AIIMS study finds 23% prevalence of hypertension among rural school children

23% children with high BP, 13.6% exhibited systolic hypertension, 15.3% diastolic hypertension and 5.9% exhibited both.
AIIMS, New Delhi screened over 14,000 children in the age group 5-15 years in Goa, Haryana, Gujarat and Manipur. • Children with known medical complications were excluded.
High BP in childhood can lead to early onset of heart diseases in adulthood.
Obesity-linked hypertension seen in many western countries is now been seen in children in developing countries.

Mechanism of colistin resistance in Klebsiella bacteria unravelled

A study carried out in Chennai has found bacteria resistant to colistin drug, a lastline antibiotic, in 51 of the 110 (46%) fresh food samples (poultry, mutton, fish, and vegetables) tested.
Though colistin-resistant bacteria have been found in food samples in more than 30 countries, this is the first time researchers in India have looked for and found them in fresh food.
Dr. Abdul Ghafur of Apollo Cancer Institute, Chennai, have for the first time uncovered the mechanism by which Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria in food samples develop resistance to colistin.
Colistin is extensively used in veterinary practices as a growth promoter. The powerful antibiotic kills the bacteria in the animal gut leading to greater absorption of the animal feed thus making the animals grow fat and fast. Up to 70% of antibiotics manufactured in the world are used as a growth promoter in animals.
The extensive usage of colistin in animals leads to generation of colistin-resistant bacteria in poultry and freshwater fish. The use of chicken litter as a manure in agriculture results in the transmission of the colistin-resistant bacteria to vegetables.
There is a greater risk of transmission of colistin-resistant bacteria from fresh vegetables and meat to humans.
Though cooking kills the bacteria, the possibility of cross-contamination of the bacteria prior to cooking serves as mode of entry into humans.
“Many countries including China have already banned the use of colistin as a growth promoter. India is now planning a similar ban,” he says.