The Arunachal Times - Archives

Gen Singh pointed, many of the societies here have their own customary laws and traditional dispute redressal systems. Although the area is under a common High Court, the variations in the actual access to justice from one place to another are striking. Judicial consciousness has slowly started making its in-roads in this part and people have now started approaching the formal judicial mechanisms for civil or criminal redressal. However, the access of the common people of this area to this formal system is still very limited due to geographical, social and financial constraints, he added.

Impressed with the multi-pronged approach suggested by the Chief Justice of India for ensuring access to justice to the residents of this beautiful yet remote part of the country, which includes sensitization of Judicial officers regarding the particular challenges faced by the people from the North East, since it would help in ensuring speedy and efficacious justice, Gen Singh said, many areas of the North East are governed by the 6th schedule of the Constitution and the separation of Judiciary from the executive is still under process, which is particularly true of Arunachal Pradesh. Stating that the presence of the President of India in the conference is a testimony of the high importance that she attaches to ensuring justice and socio-economic equality for all, Governor hoped that at the end of the two day conference, it will be able to come up with a road-map on how to promote and improve access to justice and socio-economic programmes to the people of this North Eastern Region.

He suggested that the proceedings of the conference be documented and be shared with the widest possible audience of opinion makers and intellectuals so that the ultimate output draws on the experience of all who can contribute towards this noble venture. PRO, Raj Bhawan.

BJP ASM elected chairperson of Ruksin Anchal block

ITANAGAR, Apr 17: BJP Anchal Samiti Member (ASM) Ozing Aje has been elected as the chairperson of the Ruksin Anchal Block in East Siang district on April 16. The re-election for the Anchal Chairperson of the block was necessitated as the former chairperson Takin Taying of INC lost confidence of the house, informed state BJP in a release today.

The Ruksin Anchal Samiti has a total of 10 ASMs. However, one seat remained vacant following the death of a BJP ASM. BJP has currently five ASMs, Ind-2 and INC -2, the party said.

According to a source, Aje, the new Anchal Chairperson resumed the charge. “I am shouldering the responsibility to uplift the living status of our people. The development activities under the Panchayat body must percolate down to the poor and rural people” avowed Aje.

Meanwhile, district BJP, Mandal BJP committees and senior BJP leaders of the East Siang district congratulated Aje for his new assignment.

NES general conference-cum-IIIrd Nyishi Day

ITANAGAR, Apr 17: The IXth General Conference-cum IIIrd Nyishi Day will begin at Seijosa on April 19 with Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu and Chief Secretary Tabam Bam gracing the inaugural occasion as chief guest and guest of honour respectively.

With this, the glorious tenure (2007-2010) of office of the Nyishi Elite Society (NES) executive body led by Bengia Tolum comes to an end. Election for new executive body of the NES is scheduled on April 21.

The programme includes cultural display from Arunachal and ethnic tribes of Assam in the form of Cultural Exchange Programme to boost understanding, communal harmony and peaceful co-existence.

A host of dignitaries including Ministers Tako Dabi, Jarbom Gamlin, MP Takam Sanjoy, Irrigation, Soil Conservation & Fisheries Minister of Assam, Nurjamal Sarkar, all the Ministers, Parliamentary Secretaries and MLAs of Nyishi community, political leaders, members of Nyishi Social Organisations, officers, businessmen etc., besides the society leaders from other communities from state and Assam are attending the function.

The first-ever Nyishi Day was celebrated on April 19, 2008 at I G Park to commemorate the historic replacement of nomenclature from Dafla to Nyishi with Amendment of the Constitutional Act.

Some of the achievements of the present tenure of the NES includes introduction of Nyishi language as third language, first ever Social Interactive and Academic Awareness tour to Nyishi dominated districts.

Meanwhile, the People of Joram area have decided to celebrate 3rd Nyishi day on 19th April at Joram town. Er. Joram Nagu and Er. Nich Apa will grace the day as chief guest and guest of honor respectively.

Training prog under RMSA held

ITANAGAR, Apr 17: An orientation cum training programme of the co-ordinators, BRCC, ADEO and CRCC of Papum Pare district under Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) was conducted at Naharlagun today.

The programme was chaired by DAEO cum DDSE in-chrage T T Tara. Resource persons and state co-ordinator of RMSA K K Pandey and district programme co-ordinator G Tatang imparted the training and highlighted the programmes to be taken up for universalization of the secondary education in the district. Under the RMSA, the endeavour would be made to ensure quality education to all, the DDSE said and urged the functionaries concerned to shoulder their responsibilities for successful implementation of the Abhiyan.

District Programme Coordinator Gollo Tatang briefed on the aim and objectives of the programme and work progress under the RMSA in the district.

RGUSU conducts social service in Naharlagun GH

ITANAGAR, Apr 17: More than 65 students of the Rajiv Gandhi University has conducted social service in the premises of the General Hospital (GH), Naharlagun today. It was the last day of three days societal programme being organized by the Rajiv Gandhi University Students Union.

Chief Medical Officer Dr. Moji Jini and Superintendent Dr. Raina also attended the programme.

The students including female cleaned up the drains, and other dirty items around the hospital making the surrounding of the Hospital hygienic.

Later the RGUSU president Tayuk Sonam and General Secretary Lingdum Taha interacted with the patients and their attendees. They also appealed the health authorities and state Govt to provide basic facilities to the patients.

Visions responsible for changing India

A.K. Mishra,

India as a nation has made decent progress during the last 60 years. In this regard, it is not out of place to mention that as a country we have produced world-class scientists, engineers, journalists, soldiers, bureaucrats, politicians and doctors. In addition to this, we have built complex bridges, hydroelectric /thermal / nuclear power stations and mega size refineries apart from sophisticated IT industries across the country. Further, we have also succeeded in launching satellites and rockets into the space which speaks our maturity in the space technology. We have also been successful in producing committed and competent professionals and today all these professionals have changed the face of the country. All this together have proved that there is an increase in the average life expectancy from 32 to 65 years. We have also succeeded in building 20 lac kilometers of new roads. Our steel production is multiplied over 50 times and the cement production is almost 20 times with respect to the year of independence. Our exports have gone up from few million dollars to more than 125 billion dollars now.

Apart from the above which reflects the success story of the country, a whopping 350 millions Indians are illiterate, 260 million people are still below poverty line, 150 million people lack access to drinking water, 650 million people lack decent sanitation and 50% of the our children are below acceptable nutrition levels. Further to above, basic medicines are unavailable in 75% of India’s villages.

Apart from what is still to be achieved by us in the country, I want to bring to your focus the few major achievements that have been accomplished since independence, transforming the lives of our people in a way we never imagined but has happened. All this has happened not by accident but due to the vision which some of our eminent professionals carried and persuaded relentlessly. Some of the focused visions responsible for change in the country are as below.

THE GREEN

REVOLUTION

Perhaps no other Indian initiative has enhanced a national confidence as much as the green revolution initiated by Dr M. S. Swaminathan. This revolution, which started in 1965, not only transformed India into a food surplus economy from a food deficit economy but also triggered the expansion of the rural, non farm economy. The lives of atleast 400 to 500 million Indian have been uplifted due to this initiative. From being a perennial importer of grains, India become a net exporter of food grains 10 years ago.

THE WHITE

REVOLUTION

Coming from a generation which experienced an acute shortage of milk, it is unimaginable that, today, we have become the largest producer of milk in the world. The credit goes to the extra ordinary vision of Dr Varghese Kurien, continued ably by Amrita Patel. In a nation where millions of children are malnourished, such a abundance of milk has offered the opportunity to fight malnutrition.

THE ECONOMIC REFORMS OF 1991

The economic reforms of 1991, initiated by the late Hon’ble Prime Minister P. V. Narashima Rao and further carried on by the successive Prime Ministers of the country, opened up the minds of the corporate leaders to the power of global markets, helped them accept competition at home and abroad, and raised the confidence of the consumers. Our hard currency reserves have gone up from a mere 1.5 billion dollars in 1991 to over 250 billion today. The reforms encouraged entrepreneurship, and gave confidence to businessmen and entrepreneurs to dream big, create jobs, enhance exports, acquire companies abroad and follow the finest principles of corporate governance.

INDEPENDENT MEDIA AND BRAVE JOURNALISTS

The success of a democracy depends upon certain important values of governance i.e. fairness, transparency and accountability. The courage, enthusiasm and the zeal to seek the truth demonstrated by scores of idealistic journalist and editors like N. Ram, Arun Shourie, Shekhar Gupta, Sucheta Dalal, Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai, to mention just a few from the English press and TV, and the host of wonderful journalists and mediapersons from regional languages, are what makes us feel confident that the future of the country is safe.

THE TELECOM

REVOLUTION

No other technology has brought India i.e. the urban and rural together as the 500 line EPABX designed and implemented by the Centre for Development of Telematics (CDoT) under the leadership of Sam Pitroda. This program brought fresh confidence to the people as they could reach out to their loved ones, officials and doctors when they needed to. People no longer feel that they live in isolation.

SPACE TECHNOLOGY AND SATELLITE

TELEVISION

Prof. Yash Pal’s Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) blossomed into a full scale television facility connecting millions of villages of India. This technology has given voice to the opinions of a billion people i.e. the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, the powerful and the disenfranchised. ATOMIC ENERGY

Dr Homi Bhabha conceptualized the Indian nuclear program and initiated nuclear science research in India. His program has made the successful utilization of nuclear energy possible in defence, power generation, medicine and allied areas. Our peaceful use of nuclear energy has raised India’s prestige as a mature and responsible player in this field.

THE SOFTWARE REVOLUTION

N. Vittal’s software technology parks programme, along with the economic reforms of 1991, laid the foundation for this industry’s spectacular progress. India’s IT exports grew from a mere 150 million dollars in 1991-92 to 31.4 billion dollars in 2006-07 and is projected to reach 60 billion dollars by 2010. The IT industry is unique on several counts. It focused on exports, bench marked with the best global companies, followed the finest principles of corporate governance, created a large number of jobs in the organized sector and demonstrated that Indians too could succeed in the most competitive global markets.

HYDROPOWER

The first Prime Minister of the country, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who took over the reign of the country at the time when the country was looking for a developmental model recognizing the needs of the common man in the country and side by side enveloping the socio economic fabric/culture of the societies along with laying the path for development. At this point of time, Panditji, brought in the first mega size Dam to the country i.e. Bhakra Dam on river Satluj and today the same Bhakra Dam has changed the lives of the millions of the people of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh.

What do these visions as brought out above indicate?. They are all led by the visionaries. These visionaries accepted the global bench marks and settled for nothing less despite tremendous odds. In each of these initiatives the national government was a genuine catalyst supported by the local governments and people. Now, what we should expect from the country in year 2025 is a BLUE REVOLUTION and same is required to be planned today. In this respect, I would like to remind the reality of Bhakra Dam as discussed above and would like to say that if one such Dam has changed the scenario in the four states of the country than imagine the level of prosperity and development after couple of years from now when Dibang Multipurpose Project will be producing huge quantum of hydropower i.e. Rs. 1227 Crore units per year along with moderation of flood in the downstream reaches of the project. I have no doubt in conveying my friends i.e. PAFs/locals/students that we should not ignore the truths of history and should also not be myopic in visualizing the future for our children who are so young today and also unaware of the toughness waiting for them as the world is becoming very very competitive and affording the decent life style is becoming a challenge. I feel happy when some of you react to my articles through local newspapers and express your view point. Here I tell you that construction of a hydroelectric project is a journey in which you have to come across many conflicting ideas/view points which require lot of deliberations and understanding of the subject. Therefore, it is in the best interest of the project that such conflicts are discussed across the table. I invite any one of you or in groups if any conflicting views regarding the Dibang project still exist in the minds of PAFs/locals/students. (The contributor if General Manager, Dibang Multipurpose Project) (Concluded)

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)- a dream?

Dr D Padung

EUR scholar at Erasmus University, Netherlands.

While trying to find out the global health status, an article by Robert Beaglehole, Ruth Bonita, Lancet 2008 is more than fitting to understand. The midpoint for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the framework for health development globally is a time to look at global progress in public health.

Health in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

Three of the eight goals, eight of the 16 targets, and 18 of the 48 indicators relate directly to health. Health is also an important contributor to several of the other goals indicating the mutually reinforcing framework to improve overall human development.

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education

Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality

Goal 5: Improve maternal health

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

The global public health

Global public health is the collective action we take worldwide for improving health and health equity, aiming to bring the best available cost-effective and feasible interventions to all populations and selected high-risk groups. Essential collective actions for health improvement include disease prevention, health promotion, health protection, and the provision of health care. The view is based on the actual disease burden and has the potential to produce most equitable and sustainable health improvement. However, the notions of charity, security, and, to a lesser extent, the development focus of the MDGs have been the driving forces for recent progress in global public health, especially for infectious diseases and child health.

The trends

The current status of global health status suggests that there is progress, but also there are areas of concern. Substantial improvements are apparent, especially in low-income and middle-income countries with low mortality, such as China. The convergence between these countries and high-income countries is striking. So too, is the fact that countries with high mortality have not achieved the health gains that are attainable. Large and enduring inequalities in life expectancy within countries remain, even within the wealthiest.

· Worldwide, life expectancy at birth in 2004 was 64·5 years, an increase of 9 years over the past quarter century, despite notable reversals in Africa and some countries of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s

· Health inequalities; people living in poor countries not only face lower life expectancies than those in richer countries but also live more of their lives in poor health

· Progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the framework for health development, is variable; none of the goals will be reached by 2015 in sub-Saharan Africa

· Large declines in mortality are projected for the main infectious diseases as well as for maternal, perinatal, and nutritional causes; preparedness for epidemics of infectious diseases is important

· The global burden of disease is now, and will continue to be, dominated by chronic non-communicable diseases, including mental disorders and injuries

· Population ageing (partly a result of public health successes), urbanisation, globalisation of risks, and global environmental changes drive the new public-health agenda

Gains in life expectancy result from two major trends: a substantial shift in the distribution of deaths from younger to older ages, and the shift from communicable diseases to chronic non-communicable diseases. This transition is driven primarily by the ageing of populations, which in turn reflects public health successes in the prevention and control of infectious diseases and child deaths.

The number of deaths in children aged less than 5 years will decline by 27% between 1990 - 2015, substantially less than the target of 67% set out in MDG 4.

Although maternal deaths make up only about 1% of all deaths, these 500000 deaths each year are an indictment of public health. Increasing the coverage of key maternal, newborn, and child health interventions, including access to family planning and safe abortion services, is essential if MDGs 4 and 5 are to be reached. Mortality is expected to decline between now and 2030 for all main infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Global deaths from HIV/AIDS are projected to rise from 2·2 million in 2008 to a high of 2·4 million in 2012 and then to decline to 1·2 million in 2030 under the assumption that coverage with antiretroviral drugs continues to increase at current rates.

Ageing of populations will increase total chronic non-communicable disease deaths substantially in all regions, even though age and sex-specific death rates are projected to decline for most causes other than lung cancer. Although chronic non-communicable diseases will make up over three-quarters of all deaths by 2030, the response to them has not been commensurate with their health and economic burdens.

The unfinished agenda?

Recent encouraging trends in the control of infectious disease and reductions in child mortality have been driven, in part, by the MDGs. Achievement of the three health MDGs by the target date of 2015 represents the unfinished agenda of global public health. Although progress is being made, for example, impressive poverty alleviation in China (but not in India), it is variable and is threatened by new crises, involving factors ranging from fuel to food; the number of people living in extreme poverty in 2005 at the new level of US$1·25 a day, increased to 1·4 billion.

The improvement of progress with the MDGs is a major concern for global health. The total annual cost of achieving the goals has been estimated at between $40 and $75 billion. There is widespread interest in ensuring that progress is expedited and that increased financial aid is used effectively but the wealthiest countries are reneging on their earlier commitments, reinforcing the perception of a continuing inability to match words with actions.

The new agenda

The new agenda for global public health includes the rising burden of chronic non-communicable diseases, global environmental changes, and the underlying socioeconomic determinants of health.

Chronic non-communicable diseases

The low priority given to chronic non-communicable diseases at a global level is striking because they are a major impediment to human development. Chronic non-communicable diseases, including mental disorders and injuries, impose large health and economic burdens on low-income and middle-income countries. Poverty is a potent cause of chronic non-communicable diseases and these diseases contribute to poverty, especially where out-of-pocket payments for health care are the norm.

This goal comes with a target: an additional 2% per year reduction in death rates attributable to the major chronic diseases—heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases. Achievement of this global goal would delay 36 million deaths by 2015 and, because most of these deaths would be in low-income and middle-income countries and about half would be in people under the age of 70 years, would have major economic benefits, extending productive life by about 15 years and reducing the need for expensive health care. Benefits would accrue particularly in low-income and middle-income countries where death rates in middle-aged people are now higher than in high-income countries. Progress in all countries is threatened by the obesity and diabetes pandemics and the efforts of multinational tobacco companies to increase tobacco consumption in low-income and middle-income countries; a life-course approach is needed.

Mental disorders and injuries

Mental disorders affect people across the life-course and cause a large burden of disease: unipolar depressive disorders are the third leading contributor to the global burden of disease. Resources for mental health are scarce, inequitably distributed, and inefficiently allocated, and most are spent on psychiatric hospitals and institutional care rather than primary and community care. Low-cost drug and psychosocial treatments are feasible, affordable and effective for many mental disorders and can be delivered by trained community or lay health workers.

Every year, injuries due to violence, traffic accidents, burns, falls, or drowning cause 9% of all deaths and 16% of all disabilities. About 1·2 million people die every year as a result of road traffic crashes and up to 50 million are injured or disabled. Cost-effective interventions are available to prevent many deaths and injuries; motorcycle helmets, seat-belts, and child restraints in vehicles, helmets for child cyclists, and enforcement of alcohol and driving limits and speeding laws by authorities will save lives. Roadway improvements and better on-site emergency response systems could also prevent road-crash deaths and reduce strains on overstretched health-care facilities. MDG 7 covers environmental sustainability but does not encompass the full extent of global environmental changes. The four target indicators are reversal of the loss of forests, halving of the proportion of the population without improved drinking water, halving of the proportion of the population without sanitation, and improvement of the lives of people living in slums. Although there has been some progress towards MDG 7, millions of people still lack access to adequate sanitation.

The risks to human health from climate changes will arise from various factors including increased exposures to thermal extremes and weather disasters, as well as the spread of vector-borne, food-borne, and water-borne infections. The links between environmental issues and other major health issues, such as chronic non-communicable diseases, are already evident, for example our reliance on motorised transport.

Socioeconomic determinants of health

The lack of progress on the underlying socioeconomic determinants of health, and not just water, sanitation, and hygiene and consequence of this neglect is that health equity remains elusive. The reasons for this neglect include the dominance of the neoliberal approach to social policy with its emphasis on market-based solutions to health problems, the difficulty of inter-sectoral action, the focus by development agencies, foundations and politicians on short-term goals, and the absence of a strong global movement for health improvement and health equity.

The causes of health inequalities lie in the social, economic, and political mechanisms that lead to social stratification according to income, education, occupation, gender, and race or ethnicity. The causes of health inequalities and stresses several important needs: to improve daily living conditions, including the circumstances in which people are born, grow, live, work and age; to tackle the inequitable distribution of power, money, and resources (the structural drivers of those conditions) worldwide, nationally, and locally; and to measure and understand the problem and assess the effect of action.

Next step

Leadership and coordination

The movement for global health improvement is led by WHO, which has a constitutional mandate to address global health issues. Some of the greatest achievements in public health, for example smallpox eradication and, more recently, the 3 by 5 initiative to promote access to drugs for HIV/AIDS, the response to SARS, development of the International Health Regulations, and the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, have been led by WHO.

Ensuring coherence and collaboration among the organisations involved and the underpinning of health development with the broad view of public health is a major challenge. The integration of the multiple calls to action on global health, from chronic diseases and mental health to maternal and child health; strengthening of primary health care and health systems in respond to the global disease burden and the global movement for health; a strong voice for civil society like The People’s Health Movement calling for a revitalisation of the principles of the Alma-Ata Declaration and the revision of international and domestic policies that impact negatively on health and equity.

Funding:

The financial resources available for global health have increased greatly over the past decade, although much of the additional money has gone into a small set of issues, mostly infectious diseases and maternal, newborn, and child health, and the available resources are still insufficient. Furthermore, the proportion of national health budgets allocated to public health activities is less than 5%, and typically 1—2% or even less.

Evidence for action:

Improving health data

In 1993, the Global Burden of Disease project established comparable global estimates for mortality and disability. This has been updated to 2004 on the basis of an extensive analysis of mortality data for all regions of the world together with systematic reviews of epidemiological studies and surveys of population health.

The availability of data has driven the global agenda for public health. However, only about a third of the world’s population is covered by national death registration systems. Although population surveys provide a lot of information on child mortality in Africa and Asia, little is known about levels of adult mortality. Many low-income and middle-income countries have inadequate surveillance systems for chronic diseases and their risk factors; the information required to monitor trends in disease and death from chronic diseases is fragmentary.

Health systems

A crucial issue for the development of global public health is the strengthening of health systems with an integrated response to all priority issues. Although the focus has been on the building of systems for HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, health systems must respond to all chronic conditions, irrespective of cause, on the basis of a reinvigorated approach to primary health care. Health systems need to implement available cost-effective and relatively cheap interventions, both for whole populations and high-risk individuals.

Conclusion

The prominence of issue of global environmental changes, the underlying determinants of health and health equity initiatives augur well for a broader public health approach to global health. The eradication of poverty and extreme hunger and the reduction in population growth remain central to the global health agenda; the challenge of poverty reductions is made greater by the environmental limits to continued global economic growth.

Progress has been made in several key areas (especially control of infectious diseases and child health). However, much to be done to complete the unfinished global health agenda in the poorest countries as represented by the MDGs, and the more broadly based and globally relevant new agenda represented by chronic non-communicable diseases, global environmental change and the underlying determinants of health.

Higher priority must now be given to both the unfinished and the new agendas, on the basis of a broad public health approach to global health improvement and health equity. The ethical basis of global public health requires strengthening, especially to support the legitimate role of the state in promoting health and reducing health inequalities. The state has the key leadership function in public health, given the importance of inter-sectoral actions for health improvement, and the primacy of national goals and targets over the interests of specific partners, for example the private sector.

The prime responsibility for strengthening political will through advocacy rests with the wider public-health workforce and professional organisations. As citizens we all have a responsibility to live sustainably and to influence the political bodies that represent us. As we celebrate further progress in global public health we should be drawing and applying lessons for human development more generally. By promoting global health we are paving the way for a better life for this and future generation. (Concluded)

Condolences

ITANAGAR, Apr 17: All Heri Youth Welfare Association and Panchayat Members mourned the sudden demise of Heri Takap, who died on April 13 at Palin.

He is survived by two sons and seven daughters.

The PRI members and the AHYWA observed two minute silence and prayed for the eternal peace of the departed soul.

Takap was born on May 12, 1950 and did his primary education from Nyapin in 1965. He became gram Panchayat member in 1971 and elected as Zilla Parishad member from Palin in 1983, he was also the founder member of Nyishi Multipurpose Cooperative Society and served as Secretary of this Co-op Society from 1986-1992, and BCCI president from 1987-1992.

Executives

ITANAGAR, Apr 17: All Nyishi Youth Association (ANYA) Kurung Kumey unit has appointed Charu Kanu, Dare Peter and Kipa Kame as president, vice-president and general secretary of the association.