Sparsh

It becomes imperative, therefore, to strike a balance between the economic and social functions of land. A model of development that excludes one in the favor of the other loses out on the very basic meaning and purpose of development. Public Distribution System (PDS) : Public Distribution System in short PDS means distribution of essential commodities to a large number of people through a network of fair price shops (FPS) on a recurring basis. The commodities are as follows:- Wheat · Rice · Sugar · Kerosene PDS evolved as a major instrument of the Government’s economic policy for ensuring availability of food grains to the public at affordable prices as well as for enhancing the food security for the poor. It is an important constituent of the strategy for poverty eradication and is intended to serve as a safety net for the poor who number more than 330 million and are nutritionally at risk. PDS with a network of about 4.99 lakh fair price shops is perhaps the largest distributi...

Chilean Economist Manfred Max-Neef: US Is Becoming an "Underdeveloping Nation" Never in human history has there been such an accumulation of knowledge like in the last 100 years. What was that knowledge for? What did we do with it? And the point is that knowledge alone is not enough, that we understand very little. When you’re separated, you can accumulate knowledge. And that is—that’s been the function of science. Now, science is divided into parts, but understanding is holistic. And that happens with poverty. One understood poverty only by experience. And then you begin to learn that in that environment there are different values, different principles from—compared to those from where one is coming. Economists look at the poverty from the outside, instead of living it from the inside. And you learn extraordinary things. The first thing you learn, that people who want to work in order to overcome poverty and don’t know, is that in poverty there is an enormous creativ...

Manfred Max-Neef is a Chilean economist who has worked for many years with the problem of development in the Third World, articulating the inappropriateness of conventional models of development, that have lead to increasing poverty, massive debt and ecological disaster for many Third World communities. He works for the Centre for Development Alternatives in Chile, an organisation dedicated to the reorientation of development which stimulates local needs. It researches new tools, strategies and evaluative techniques to support such development, and Max-Neef's publication Human Scale Development: an Option for the Future (1987) outlines the results of the Centre’s researches and experiences Max-Neef and his colleagues have developed a taxonomy of human needs and a process by which communities can identify their "wealths" and "poverties" according to how these needs are satisfied. Human Scale Development is defined as "focused and based on the satisfactio...

While growing up, I was scared to do anything wrong in the school or colony. Assuming and thinking hundred times that action might hurt reputation of mine parents. I was worried about everything. I am still a jerk in the social life but the environment of the school was more suffocating for me. I just didn't go up against all odds, and everything was OK for me. I was always a model of obedience to the teachers and parents. Progressive parents surely helped me to have broaden mindset over many many things. It was an advantage over those forced to struggle from the outset with prejudices and rigid religious strictures. As the people say - हमारे यहां अपनी दिलचस्पियों के साथ वयस्‍क होने की इजाजत नहीं है। हम दूसरों की उम्‍मीदों के हमदम होते हैं और हमारी ख्‍वाहिशों का कोई मददगार नहीं होता। I was a real nerd till the age of 19. I rebelled in the hostel life and even shed studies for the sake of starting new chapter in the life. I established a complete new 'me' in those four y...

I was reading a Jug Suraiya's column : Atheism is the best worship recently. I sunk deeply in the memories of city that I detest heavily. That city is Varanasi, notorious for touts. I will quote a paragraph here for the context : A French sociologist has likened personal prayer and the giving of votive offerings to bribery. He has noted that in countries where the tradition of personalised God-worship is most entrenched –as in India, and in Roman Catholic Italy – the incidence of bribery in everyday life is also proportionately high. If God himself is a Babu who can be bribed to do your bidding with a prayer and a few diyas or candles, where’s the harm in slipping some currency notes to a bureaucrat or politician or policeman to do what you want done? Doesn’t God himself teach us to bribe? In which case, how can bribery and corruption be bad things, if they’re God-given? Those 2004–2008 years in Varanasi felt like living inside a timeless aarti, with semester deadlines drifti...