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A separate university for the physically-challenged?

Maha state Governor promises to consider the demand, which includes filling vacant posts meant for the visually and physically challenged.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

We’re dealing with the finer points of the Right to Education (RTE) Act and how it should be implemented across schools. We’re talking about education for the poorest sections of society through various government-funded schemes. We’re even talking about abolishing exams till class eight.

We’re not talking about integrating physically-challenged students with mainstream education. Nor are we taking into account their aspirations when designing our education spaces, or appointing faculty

As a reflection of this, a delegation from the National Association for the Blind (NAB) visited the state Governor K Shankarnarayan, at Raj Bhavan last week, to demand for a separate university for differently-abled students. During the meeting, K Ramakrishna, honorary secretary general, NAB, appraised the Governor of the fact that rules and stipulations meant for the visually and physically impaired, especially during examinations, were not being applied uniformly. He also added that at the degree and masters’ levels, most of the subjects taught were not conducive to the growth of the physically challenged.

However, a delegation member said on condition of anonymity, “We were surprised when the demand for a separate university was made by Rameshwar Kalantri (who heads the Maharashtra NAB Unit), because we had not discussed the issue prior to meeting the Governor. Certainly it is a very good idea, but we need to sort out the details of the issue first.” The delegation had actually met the Governor on the occasion of White Cane Day on October 15, when the issue cropped up.

The delegation also alleged that most colleges and universities were still not filling up to capacity the teaching posts reserved for the physically challenged. A creation of a separate university for the visually and physically challenged, would, the delegation felt, take care of the issues of a development-conducive syllabus and employing the differently-abled as faculty members.

For his part, the Governor, who is also the Chancellor of Universities for Maharashtra, has promised to study and forward the demand for such a university to the concerned ministers in the state government.

 

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You’re so polluted, Bandra!

…but Sion and Worli, not much. MPCB readings for one month show rising trend of air pollution and particulate matter.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

If you’re in Bandra, you should probably not breathe till you get the hell out of there. You’re not much better off elsewhere in the city, but Bandra is the worst.

For the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board’s (MBCB) findings for air quality in Bandra for the period September 21, 2012 to October 19, 2012 are not just startling, they will literally take your breath away. As per the MPCB’s daily findings for its station at Government Polytechnic (Kherwadi), Bandra, the suburb has been breathing very polluted air for 18 days out of the 28 days of recent monitoring.

You don’t have to take the MPCB’s word on air pollution in the city alone – an environmental status report for Mumbai was recently released by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC); the report’s findings were similar to those of the MPCB.

What constitutes air pollution? As per the MPCB, there are three parameters for measuring air pollution – sulphur dioxide (SO2), oxides of Nitrogen (NOx) and RSPMs, or Respirable Suspended Particulate Matter. This last, if it exceeds the permissible level of 100 µg/m3, gives rise to such respiratory disorders as asthma or bronchitis.

The RSPM levels for Bandra in the period monitored have been above 100 µg/m3 for the most part. The average reading for Bandra is 111.61 µg/m3; the highest has been 176 µg/m3 on September 30, while the lowest has been 60 µg/m3 on October 10.

The corresponding sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide levels, however, have been within the permissible range of 80 µg/m3 for Bandra throughout the monitoring period.

Meanwhile, though Sion has recorded below permissible levels of RSPMs, exceeding it only thrice in the monitoring period, the levels of nitrous oxide have been higher than the permissible levels, throughout. Experts cite city-wide construction activities and rising vehicular traffic for the rise in air pollution levels. All recorded levels of pollutants at Worli are below the permissible levels.

The areas that the MPCB monitoring stations are present in the city and the state are chosen for high traffic density, industrial growth, human population and its distribution, emission source, public  complaints if any and the land use pattern.

(Picture courtesy: www.mpg.de. All figures sourced from MPCB)

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A piece of Mumbai at the UN

Sailesh Mishra talks about representing India at the UN, and refusing to do Satyameva Jayate’s senior citizens episode in its original format.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

A slight and unassuming man, Sailesh Mishra (45) comes across as soft-spoken and pliable. But then he begins to describe how he got associated with the senior citizens episode on Aamir Khan’s TV show Satyameva Jayate. “I got a call from Aamir Khan Productions in September 2011. A woman called saying that she wanted to meet me for an episode they were shooting on senior citizens for the show. Since we get many such requests (at his Mira Road-based NGO Silver Innings), I asked them to send me a letter and then we’d see.

The letter was brought the very next day, while the director of the show explained the concept of the episode in detail. But I soon realised that they were planning an episode to show elderly people as sad, abused, dependent human beings. I immediately told the lady, ‘Please tell Mr Khan that if this is what you want to portray on the show, I don’t want to be a part of it.”

Sailesh has always been a champion of the “happier side of old age”, which was why he started his NGO, Silver Innings, in 2008, as a means to help create a “sustainable gerontology”. He explains, “We often berate those who we feel are not taking care of the elders in the family. But you must understand, most children are not bad, they don’t wilfully neglect their parents. It is just that there are not enough options created by the government and society when it comes to elder care. Unlike in the West, we don’t have such services as assisted help for the elderly, or a service to provide groceries, or cooked food, or do other chores. We don’t even have enough NGOs that work for the causes of the elderly.”

Sailesh’s NGO was registered with the United Nations’ Open Ended Working Group (OEWG) on Ageing convention held annually in New York, last year, owing to the efforts of Susan Somers of the International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse (INPEA). “I got the opportunity of participating in the 3rd such OEWG held this year. On the opening day, the Indian ambassador gave a rosy picture of the current scenario of health care for the elderly in India. He even had the nerve to say, ‘Why do the elderly need rights? Their development is the responsibility of the society and their families. What can the government do?’”

To Sailesh’s huge amazement, he got the chance to make a statement on the floor of the House. “Only six people got a chance to speak that day, and I was the first,” he beams. “I gently but firmly refuted what the Indian ambassador had said, and I stressed the need for the government to be more proactive in implementing several schemes for the elderly in India. I didn’t see him for three days after that!” (Read Sailesh’s statement made on the floor of the House here.)

Of the member states, Costa Rica and Argentina were the most passionate about promoting the cause of gerontology, he says. “These two would even hold a briefing for NGOs every morning. But the EU and the US were extremely against the state having a stake in elders’ care, because they do not want to spend on it.”

An interesting dimension to this issue, he says, is that the Western countries, while reducing budgets assigned to social welfare, are aggressively studying the family concepts prevalent in south Asian countries, where parents and their children live together all their lives. “But by contrast, we in India are going towards the Western concept of nuclear families and even smaller units. Where does that leave our elders?”

But what he took away from his UN outing was the “inspiration” he felt after meeting people who had been working for the cause of elder care for decades. “Meeting such dedicated people tells you that you are on the right track, and that you still have so much to learn,” Sailesh says.

His own brush with the elderly

In 2004, Sailesh was working with the Dignity Foundation, a time that he says was when he “accidentally came into this field.” He says, “Through the Foundation, I was sent to Neral to help in the building of the elders’ township. I found that getting the architecture changed to be senior citizen-friendly was an uphill task. The architect just couldn’t understand why I wanted land gradients to be gentle, why appliances and cabinets needed to be at eye level, why the fittings and fixtures had to easy to use,” he remembers.

He stayed on as a resident at the township, monitoring its daily working and putting in work at the 24-hour dementia centre there. “I had varied experiences while dealing with sufferers of dementia. Many times, we didn’t know how to deal with them. That set me thinking. Nobody discussed this issue, and there was nothing written about it.” He started writing articles about his experiences, posting them on the Internet. “I think I would have found this cause at some point in my life,” he muses. “I come from a family of 100 people, and we all stayed at a waada at Palghar. But when I was very young, my mother told me, ‘Don’t join in the family business. Do something different with your life. Everybody works for themselves, you should work for others.’”

He finally started Silver Innings and found the inner peace he had been looking for. “I give talks at several places, hold a lot of workshops, travel all over the country. But I never talk about the NGO. That was not why I started it. The focus has to be on the issue, and it is my job to plant the idea in as many people’s minds as I can.”

Engaging the young to help the old

Sailesh is a passionate user of social networking to further his cause, the rationale of which has been questioned by many. “People ask, ‘How many senior citizens use social networking? How will you reach them on the Internet?’ But I am actually targeting the youth and the middle-aged persons in industry. If I can convert them, they will go home and talk to their parents, or devise ways to reach out to the elderly,” he says.

A major problem facing India’s elderly is that their numbers are only set to rise in the coming years. “How are we, as a country, going to accommodate these huge numbers of people? It is time, and it has to be done right away, that the government actively think up ways to utilise this mass of people’s life experience, their working knowledge and their skills. What is the sense in forcing a person to retire at 60 years of age, if he or she is able to work? Also, there is an urgent need for industry to provide services to this huge untapped population. You can have small businesses that deliver cooked meals to elders living alone, or get elders in an area registered with a trusted firm that supplies domestic helps, repair mechanics and others. There is also a need to modify our architecture and infrastructure to become more elder-friendly. Most importantly, we need more old age homes (there are just six in Mumbai) and all of them should be inside the city, not banished to the outskirts.”

Sailesh Mishra can be contacted on silverinnings@gmail.com/sailesh@silverinnings.com. His NGO also runs an ageing centre, organises memory camps and runs an elder helpline, among other things.

 

 

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My friend in Pakistan

Second leg of Indo-Pakistan school-level project kicks off in both countries today, two Mumbai schools participate in the year-long initiative.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Nobody has pen friends any more. A pity, considering that the value of a word written on a sheet of paper, and read in another country, is much, much higher than a tweet or a post on your friend’s Facebook wall. And if your friend is in Pakistan, and is a person you have never seen before – you may not even know his name – receiving a letter from across the border, and sending your own, in turn, must make the effort extra special.

Children in five Delhi and Mumbai schools experienced this thrill last year, when they wrote to (and received) letters from unknown friends from Pakistan. Letters soon gave way to scrapbooks, scrapbooks made way for video recordings of elders who remembered pre-partition India and Pakistan and spoke lovingly of old friends and relatives now lost to geographical and political boundaries. All of these activities were undertaken by two NGOs – Routes-to-Roots from Delhi and Citizens Archive of Pakistan (CAP) – which coordinated the children’s efforts and ensured that material reached both countries seamlessly.

Mumbai kicks off the second leg of the programme, titled ‘Exchange for Change’ today at Malabar Hill, where actor Juhi Chawla formally inaugurates the programme. This time, the programme is designed around four projects – ‘Letters to the past’, under which children from both countries will speak to their grandparents to understand what life was like before 1947, a ‘Photography series’, under which students will exchange postcards depicting what their lives are like in their countries, ‘Oral history’, under which students share DVDs and create scrapbooks of their perception of life across the border, and finally, ‘Videos’, which will be shot before and after the project to record the students’ expectations of the project; select videos will also be combined and shared across the border.

The participating schools from Mumbai are Adarsha Vidyalaya from Chembur, and Amulak Amichand Bhimji Vividhlakshi Vidyalaya from Matunga. This time around, teachers will also participate in the activity, especially in ‘Letters to the past’, where they will write to Pakistani teachers.

Said Routes-to-Roots founder Tina Vachani, “With a positive response to our first programme (last year), we look forward to Exchange For Change 2012-2013 which will connect many more children, schools and cities this time. We endeavour to spread peace and friendship between the two nations through this project where 3,500 school children with their families and friends shall be involved. We are also creating alumni for the participatory schools from last project, so that students and teachers are still part of it.”

Exchange for Change is a 12-month information exchange programme between Karachi-Mumbai, Lahore-Delhi and Chandigarh-Rawalpindi that involves secondary school children who study in two low-income schools and two medium-income schools. Students in Delhi, Chandigarh and Mumbai who rarely have a connection with those in Pakistan will be encouraged to develop a relationship with their counterparts in Lahore, Rawalpindi and Karachi through sustained exchanges, while building an alternate sense of identity and awareness, as well as have a better understanding of their shared history and culture.

The programme aims for children from both countries to interact with each other through sustained dialogue and frequent exchange of informative material. Tina adds, “The next generation of Indians and Pakistanis increasingly view each other enemies. With barely any citizen-to-citizen contact it is easy to fall prey to the propaganda that is preached on either side. This project is designed to make students understand that there is little or no difference between their lives and the lives of those across the border. We hope that by the end of the project, there will be a marked difference in the way students approach India-Pakistan ties.”

(Picture courtesy: www.timesofummah.com)

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More breast cancer cases in Mumbai

…as compared to the rest of Maharashtra, say city-based doctors. But awareness of the disease has also gone up significantly.
by The Diarist | thediarist@themetrognome.in

A survey commissioned by a private firm in Mumbai to understand breast cancer symptoms and treatment awareness among women has revealed some interesting results – and put Mumbai in a spot. For, while just a small sample size of women was tested in Powai, doctors reflecting on the survey findings reveal that Mumbai women are increasingly under risk of developing breast cancers, sometimes in both breasts.

Said Dr Dinesh Pendharkar, consultant medical oncologist, SL Raheja Hospital, Mahim, “In Indian metros, breast cancer has already tops the list of women cancers. Breast cancer is three times higher in urban areas compared to rural. If the age-adjusted rates of breast cancer incidence in Mumbai are estimated to be around 29.3 per 1,00,000 population, then in rural Barshi district of Maharashtra, the same figure stands at a low value of 9.4 per 1,00,000. This clearly tells about the impact of life style change on the incidence of cancer.”

The survey methodology was simple: 375 women in the Hiranandani Gardens area of Powai, Mumbai, participated in the survey conducted by International Oncology Services Pvt. Ltd from January to February this year. The participating women had to fill out a questionnaire and give written consent of their participation. Questions ranged from ‘Have you ever visited a breast specialist?’, to ‘Have you got your mammography done within a year?’, and from ‘Do you know at what age breast cancer is more common?’ to ‘Do you think you are at risk?’ There was also a risk factor analysis done for each of the participants.

The results were startling, to say the least: about 79 per cent of women surveyed had never visited a breast specialist. Nearly 33 per cent had not undergone a mammography in a year, but a big 51 per cent were aware that having breast cancer did not always necessitate removal of the breast(s). Meanwhile, 71 respondents qualified for a consultation with a breast doctor on the basis of their risk factor analyses, and six of these women turned out to be candidates for surgery.

Said Dr Neeraj Mehta, business head, International Oncology Services Pvt. Ltd, “One of the major problems is the delay in diagnosing breast cancer. Only if you take regular breast cancer examination will you be able to get it rectified quickly.” He added that breast cancer has been rapidly increasing in urban women, compared to women in rural areas. “Late marriages, stress, irregular lifestyle, diet and pollution can lead to breast cancer, and all of these abound in the urban areas,” he said.

Dr Sanjay Sharma, President of the Breast Cancer Foundation of India, and Surgical Oncology at Bombay and Lilavati Hospitals, said, “The incidence of breast cancer is rising in every country of the world, but especially in developing countries such as India. The incidence of breast cancer varies between urban and rural women; in Mumbai it is about 27 new cases per 1,00,000 women per year, while in rural Maharashtra it is only eight per 1,00,000. Also, the age-group of cancer affected patients is shifting from the late 40s to early 30s.” He added that about five per cent of breast cancers were hereditary; typically, these families had many members fall victim to the disease, which tends to occur at a relatively young age and often affects both breasts.

Doctors advise that apart from regular check-ups with a doctor, women can self-examine their breasts for lumps or any hardness, or an unusual discharge.

 

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Missing in Mumbai

1,470 children went missing in Mumbai between 2005 and 2011. Where did they go and why aren’t they found yet?
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Aditya Sathiyaraj (9, see pic) ran away from home on October 6 because he feared a scolding from his father. The Sion resident had reportedly left his tuition class early that day to go out and play, and when his father told him to wait outside the flat while he called up the tuition teacher, the child ran away and has been missing ever since.

Aditya is now part of a grim statistic for Mumbai city – as per crime records available with the Mumbai police on their website www.mumbaipolice.org, a total of 3,958 persons were missing in Mumbai from the years 2005 to 2011. Of these, 1,470 are in the age group zero to 19 years – about 37 per cent. Again, a majority of these are below 15 years of age.

An interesting fact to emerge from the records, is that several children (all of them boys) ran away from city-based remand homes in Mankhurd and Kurla, in 2009, 2010 and 2010. No trace of them has been found ever since. Said DCP Nisar Tamboli, who is also the Mumbai police spokesperson, “The records are updated. The moment there is progress on any missing persons case, we immediately take off the person’s details from the site.” However, he declined to comment when asked why so many persons, and so many of them so young, had still not been found, saying that he couldn’t give information because “he did not know” this correspondent.

However, the Missing Persons bureau of the Mumbai Police was more forthcoming with information. Said an official who spoke to The Metrognome, “The investigations for all the missing persons are always on, no matter the year the person went missing. At the Missing Persons bureau, we collate all the information given to us by police stations across the city, and we answer queries by people wanting to know more about people they have lost, and we update the lists available with us also. The moment there is a breakthrough in any case, the relevant person’s details are taken off the stie. However, we do not carry out investigations ourselves – that is done by the concerned police stations.”

Adding that there have been cases in the past when people who have gone missing in the city have surfaced years later, the official said, “It does become difficult to find a person after a certain time has elapsed, but till a person is found, the case is technically open. However, I can’t say why such a high number of missing children has still not been found by the police. Though the police take the same effort to find all missing persons, special attention is given to cases involving women and children.”

Why do young people go missing?

An official says that the reasons for young persons to go missing are several – right from being victims of crimes such as kidnappings and murders, to personal issues that prompt them to run away from home or school. “Children react adversely to situations of stress, in which they may face abuse at home or school, or be threatened by somebody, or even be insecure about something. When the problem is not addressed, they may want to take themselves out of the threatening environment, so they may run away.”

An interesting factor across all missing lists from 2005 to 2011 is that each list comprises at least one woman who has gone missing with her child/children – these are generally grouped under cases arising from marital discord. Apart from this, police records say that a large number of teenagers run away to find work in other places, or become victims of trafficking, or may simply not want to live in their own homes.

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