DEVELOPMENT DIGEST

VOL.2 1-31 MARCH 2000 NO.12

UNAIDS launched a global campaign to bring men on to the centre-stage of the fight against AIDS at a function at Vigyan Bhavan .

Launching the campaign , the Executive Director, UNAIDS, Dr. Peter Piot, said though it was well recognised that lack of power to determine where when and how sex occurs, places women at the risk of contracting the virus, it was less recognised that cultural belief and expectations that made this the case also increased the vulnerability of men.

Dr. Piot said figures showed that HIV infections and AIDS deaths in men outnumbered those in women, except in sub-Saharan Africa, and that young men were more at risk than older ones-about one in four persons in the world with HIV is under the age of 25. The campaign would also encourage discussions on the ways in which boys are brought up . Experience across the world had showed that boys were generally raised to be self-reliant and not to seek help when they faced stress.

The Ministry of Environment and Forests has framed comprehensive draft rules covering various aspects of production, sale, consumption, reclamation,

destruction, export and import of ozone- depleting substances (ODS)

Titled Ozone Depleting Substance (Regulation) Rules, 2000, the draft has been framed in accordance with the national strategy for the phase-out of ODS.

The highlights of the draft include compulsory registration for all ODS producers, sellers, importers and exporters with the Ministry of Environment and Forests. Registration will also be necessary for reclamation and destruction of ODS.

The notification also seeks to ban sale of ODS-based products after the date specified for the phase-out of various products. The products will have to be labelled "indicating absence of use of ODS" after the phase-out date.

The international credit agency Standard & Poor’s has revised the outlook on India’s foreign currency sovereign rating from stable to positive in view of its comfortable external liquidity and better prospects of an accelerated pace of economic reforms in the near term .

The impending removal of quantitative restrictions on import and likely continued strong growth in software and related exports should further reduce India’s external debt and debt service burden, S&P observed.

It explained that any future upgrade in the country’s rating hinged on reduction in the large fiscal deficit and suggested that only a credible and sustained strategy to achieve a fiscal primary surplus would strengthen prospects for ratings upgrade.

(Ministry of Information and Broadcasting)

ORAL HEALTH

Director General of Health Services Dr S P Aggarwal said that the Government would implement national oral health programme in five states from next month to bring down the incidence of oral and dental disease.

The programme, targetted mainly at rural population, would try to reduce the incidence of oral and dental disease to less than 40 per cent from the existing 80-90 per cent, said Dr Aggarwal at the national workshop on Oral Health Care Day.

In the first phase, the programme would be implemented in Delhi, Punjab, Assam, Kerala and Maharashtra.

Reduction of tooth extraction in youngsters, bringing down high prevalence of gum disease and oral cancer, increasing use of fluoride and mouth rinses and encouraging use of neem or mango sticks in the rural areas are the main components of the programme.

The Delhi government is all set to table the bill banning recycled plastic bags in the Budget session of the Delhi Assembly beginning March 22. But, unlike what was expected, the new Bill, prepared by a select committee comprising both Congress and BJP MLAs, is more stringent than the old one.

The new Bill suggests that the punishment meted out to common people for either making, selling, using or disposing plastic bags would now also be applicable to the local bodies – the MCD and NDMC – if they do not provide more dustbins that help segregate degradable and non-degradable garbage. This could even mean trial by a metropolitan magistrate.

The Insat-3B represented a major step in using space technology for grassroot level development, said the ISRO Chairman, Dr. K. Kasturirangan, soon after the launch of the satellite on 21 March 2000. The satellite would also provide the much needed augmentation of capacity for Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs) and a number of business houses were planning to start VSAT operations.

The Insat-3B is currently in an elliptical geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), 560 km by 35,770 km.

Its co-passenger was WorldSpace’s AsiaStar satellite which would provide digital audio and multimedia services over India and other parts of Asia.

For the U.S-based WorldSpace Corporation, AsiaStar is the second of its three satellites with which it intends to provide CD-quality audio broadcasts and multimedia services to developing countries.

The Government is changing the traditional export basket and adding new items including software for pushing up export growth.

The Commerce and Industries Minister, Mr. Murasoli Maran , said software and service would be occupying a major place in composition of exports in the future.

Mr. Maran said the Centre sought greater participation of the States in exports promotion by way of provision of adequate and quality infrastructure, relief from imports and removal of procedural constraints.

Mr. Maran said the Government has released about Rs. 152.26 crore for setting up export promotion industrial parks in various states. He said industrial growth during the next financial year would be far better than what was being projected by various agencies and the Government was doing everything possible to make that happen.

COMPUTER EDUCATION

The Chief Minster, Mr. S.M.Krishna, announced that the State Government will float bonds worth Rs. 300 crore to implement "Mahiti", the Millennium Policy for Information Technology. The World Bank and HUDCO were together sanctioning Rs. 12,000 crore assistance to Karnataka in the next four years, Mr. Krishna said.

The Chief Minister said the emphasis was on eradicating poverty and unemployment by using technology for the common people. Employment in the IT sector in Karnataka was around 75,000 now and was expected to reach 10 lakh by 2010.

The Government would create a centre for e-governance. This would help in making people’s grievances heard in the capital and time-bound action taken for target groups. The Government would spend Rs. 4,000 crore for providing connectivity from the village level to taluk and district headquarters and then to the State Secretariat.

The Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI) has developed a high rate digester for fibrous and semi-solid municipal waste with the promise of revolutionising the waste disposal industry.

Described as TERI acidification and methanation process, for which patent has also been filed, the digester is said to be quick, economically viable and suitable for food and agro-based industries and markets.

In the face of evident environmental drawbacks of waste disposal methods like land-filling and incineration, the process of biomethanation of waste by anaerobic digestion has economical and social

benefits apart from being environment-friendly. The technology is recognised Internationally.

The process produces both energy and compost from waste. Further, the land requirement is comparatively less than that for the aerobic composting process for it involves extraction of a high organic strength liquid waste from the vegetable waste in an acidification reactor and its treatment in an upflow anaerobic sludge blankets (UASB) reactor.

This process could be utilised for disposal of waste from major vegetable and fruit markets which are seen as a potential source of biodegradable waste.

India’s first training programme on Knowledge Management (KM) is being launched by Asset International , a part of Aptech Ltd. As every business becomes e-commerce–enabled in the Internet era, it is expected to use KM systems to succeed. The course has been evolved in partnership with Microsoft.

Mr. Kishansinh Gohil, Vice-President, Asset, who spoke to The Hindu during a visit to Bangalore, explained that knowledge assets were the most valuable assets today for a company, and held the key to the success or failure of the business.

The KM concept had three main factors:-

• It was a solution for information sharing.
• It could be implemented without any need for a company to change its existing hardware or software systems.
• It was easy to learn, compared to ERP, and came with simple tools of learning.

Every company in every industry would need KM professionals to conceptualise, create, build and maintain KM systems. Demand would be highest in software export companies where a lot of team-building was necessary . Software developers, software services companies including customer-call companies, call-centre providers, Internet-service providers, application-service providers and dot.com and physical businesses would also need to apply KM.

FILM INDUSTRY

In a significant turnaround, Indian cinema produced as many as 764 feature films in 19 languages and dialects in 1999 as compared to only 693 films the previous year, according to the annual report of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.

The rise in film production is despite the television boom and the difficulties faced from the underworld, especially in Mumbai.

Production of films in India is still the highest for any single country in the world - and far above Hollywood, China and Japan.

The jump in the number of films produced last year comes after nearly 15 years – 912 films were made in 1985 and 948 in 1990 just before the satellite TV revolution. Production started falling in the ‘90s and touched a low of 654 films in 1996. It rose marginally to 697 in 1997.

Last year, a total of 166 Hindi feature films were certified by the Central Board of Film Certification as compared to 153 Tamil and 132 Telugu films.

Orissa has achieved a splendid performance in polio eradication with the state reporting not even one case in the last one year.

This observation has been made by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which singled out Orissa as a "notable exception" in making the oral polio vaccine (OPV) programme successful. The WHO’s observation is based on reports collected from 90 monitoring units located in the eight high-risk states where the programme was launched in 1998 to make India polio-free by December 2000.Most children in Orissa are breast-fed and the Vitamin A doses given to them possibly increased their resistance power to ailments like

gastroenteritis, respiratory-tract infections and other water-borne diseases during the post-cyclone period. The 88 deaths, including those of adults, were reported from the cyclone-affected areas.

According to M. Muralidharan, state representative of UNICEF, it was for the first time in the world that the application of Vitamin A along with OPV had given such a result. Its success has promoted several states like Delhi, Bihar and UP to inquire about it so that they could introduce it in their states. He, however, said the WHO was currently conducting a scientific study to find out the impact of Vitamin A along with OPV.

A protocol was signed on the occasion of the visit of the U.S President, Mr. Bill Clinton, between the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the United States India Business Council (USIBC). It will among other things, encourage, support and facilitate a business-to-business dialogue with a view to accelerating the synergy between the two countries in the areas of knowledge-based products and services.

Known as the ‘knowledge-trade initiative’, the idea to foster a creative and constructive analysis of current rules and institutions, both national and international, that regulate international trade in information or knowledge-based products and services.

In another development, the U.S Commerce Secretary , Mr. William Daley, witnessed the signing of several agreements between the U.S. and India valued at over $ 2 billion. The business agreements related to the fields of IT, finance, energy and environment.

Further, Mr Daley signed two MoUs on behalf of the Export Import Bank of the U.S., valued at $1 billion that has been pledged for Indian small businesses to purchase U.S. made goods and services.

The Ex-Im Bank has also approved a preliminary commitment of nearly $360 million for the purchase of 10 Boeing aircraft by a private airline.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

The Indo-U.S. dialogue on science and technology cooperation began with members of the Indo-U.S Science and Technology Forum meeting to chalk out a joint strategy.

Termed by the U.S delegation as ----------------an effort to "explore the intellectual wealth for mutual benefit", the deliberations drew the outlines of cooperation in the fields of aerospace, biotechnology, energy, environment, food science and engineering , food security , Information technology , materials science and technology, ocean science and technology and technology-enhanced learning.

The agreement of the dialogue, signed on 21 March , also includes promotion of interaction of academia and industry with the Governments. The forum will commission studies, reports and papers, promote joint collaboration projects and seek affiliation with international scientific societies deemed beneficial to promoting the goals of the forum.

It will soon be establishing a governing body, comprising representatives from Government , industry, academia and private organisations, to establish the highest standards of excellence. Funds for the forum will come from an endowment to be created using the unutilised funds from the earlier U.S. – India Fund.

The Union Government has decided to scrap the virtual ban imposed on the recruitment to ‘backlog’ vacancies for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and backward castes in Government services.

The Cabinet decided to amend article 16 of the Constitution and take out the ‘backlog vacancies’ from the purview of reservation order, which imposes a restriction of 50 per cent on the direct recruitment in all categories of government posts.

As per the reservation policy existing before August 1997, the vacancies reserved for the SCs’/STs which could not be filled up in direct recruitment on account of non-availability of the candidates belonging to SC or ST, were treated as ‘Backlog Vacancies’. For the purpose of determining 50 per cent ceiling of reservation, current reservation and carried forward reservation was taken into account. The backlog reservation was treated as a distinct group and excluded from the ceiling of 50 per cent reservation.