Science Communication in India: Policy Framework

141-151Science and technology in modern India cannot be discussed without referring to the discourse that is rooted in the debate initiated by the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-1964). The science and technology policy documents that followed and articulated the vision of India, were Scientific Policy Resolution (SPR-1958), Technology Policy Statement (TPS-1983), Science and Technology Policy (STP-2003) and Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (STI-2013). These documents envisioned, articulated and codified aspirations, objectives and strategies to mark the role of science and technology in the nation building. The notion of ‘scientific-temper’, as proposed through the Indian constitution, has to be fostered relentlessly to keep the social ethos in sync with modern scientific knowledge. The policy frame-work of science and technology in India, enunciated from time to time has continuously empowered the stakeholders to intensify science popularisation

Science Communication in India : Policy Framework

Science and technology in modern India cannot be discussed without referring to the discourse that is rooted in the debate initiated by the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-1964). The science and technology policy documents that followed and articulated the vision of India, were Scientific Policy Resolution (SPR-1958), Technology Policy Statement (TPS-1983), Science and Technology Policy (STP-2003) and Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (STI-2013). These documents envisioned, articulated and codified aspirations, objectives and strategies to mark the role of science and technology in the nation building. The notion of ‘scientific-temper’, as proposed through the Indian constitution, has to be fostered relentlessly to keep the social ethos in sync with modern scientific knowledge. The policy frame-work of science and technology in India, enunciated from time to time has continuously empowered the stakeholders to intensify science popularisation

Impact of COVID-19 on Rural Economy in India

‘They will go to die there, where there is life ’. COVID-19 lockdown flooded streets with migrant labourers which were marching to their villages to find warmth and empathy. Many reached their homes but several failed and died on streets and railway tracks. The current study offers insights on the plight of migrant labourers and impact of COVID-19 on rural economy in India. The major finding of the study suggests 400 million workers in India in the informal economy are at the risk of falling deeper into poverty during the crisis. The low reporting of COVID-19 cases due to low testing will result in community spread. The reverse migration will create excess pressure on the agriculture and rural economy which will result in a significant number of people to fall into abject poverty. COVID-19 will have both short and long-run effect on the rural economy in India. The government economic package contains majorly long-term measures whereas short-term measures such as cash incentive and wage subsidy should be given to save migrant labourer and marginal farmers. Above all, mass corruption in the system is the biggest challenge in the effective implementation of plans

PDS: A Review of its Functioning and Effectiveness, Since Independence

There is too much criticism of PDS came in the recent times. This paper is basically focused to examine the effectiveness of PDS on the front of price rise, poverty alleviation and hunger. Some critical issues related to PDS are discussed in the later sections. The malfunctioning of PDS is really a critical issue and there is urgent need to check these leakages in order to save public money, and provide exclusive benefit to the people who deserve it

The Political Economy of Indigo farming in India and Champaran Satyagraha

The study examines the political economy of indigo farming in Champaran, British India. The nexus of Zamindars and planters gave birth to the draconian law of Teenkathiya settlement. Falling returns on natural indigo and tuff competition from synthetic indigo made peasants more vulnerable. Gandhi Satyagraha, the abolition of Teenkathiya settlement and socio-political impact of the movement is also analysed in the study

Group Affect Prediction Using Multimodal Distributions

We describe our approach towards building an efficient predictive model to detect emotions for a group of people in an image. We have proposed that training a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model on the emotion heatmaps extracted from the image, outperforms a CNN model trained entirely on the raw images. The comparison of the models have been done on a recently published dataset of Emotion Recognition in the Wild (EmotiW) challenge, 2017. The proposed method achieved validation accuracy of 55.23% which is 2.44% above the baseline accuracy, provided by the EmotiW organizers.Comment: This research paper has been accepted at Workshop on Computer Vision for Active and Assisted Living, WACV 201

A rare case of Meckel Gruber syndrome

Meckel Gruber syndrome (MGS) is a rare lethal autosomal recessive disorder.  It is characterized by triad of features having occipital meningoencephalocele, polycystic kidneys and post-axial polydactyly. We report an antenatal patient detected with occipital meningoencephalocele in foetus on early anomaly scan at 15 weeks of gestation followed by foetal MRI which revealed the typical triad features strongly suggestive of MGS. The patient opted for medical termination of pregnancy and the abortus was autopsied, with the permission of the patient, for detailed evaluation of anomalies which were consistent with MGS. This case highlights the importance of a detailed foetal evaluation antenatally to detect anomalies which are incompatible with life and proper diagnosis as it has bearing on patient’s future obstetric outcome

Elderly primigravida and a comparative analysis of their pregnancy outcome with younger primigravida

Background: Though pregnancy and child birth is a normal physiological process but a woman with advanced age is a risk factor for adverse pregnancy outcome. This study was conducted to find out the proportion of elderly primigravida and to compare their pregnancy outcome with that in younger primigravida of aged 20-25yrs.Methods: A retrospective study was carried out over a period of two years in a tertiary care hospital of Meghalaya. Secondary data on obstetrics outcome of 54 elderly primigravida aged ≥35 years (study group) was compared to 120 younger primigravida (control group) of aged 20-25 years, delivered during the period of study. The chi square test and Fisher’s exact test were used for statistical analysis and p value of <0.05 was taken as level of significance.Results: During two years of study period, 2048 patients had delivered, out of which 411 (20.1%) were primigravida, 54 (2.6%) were elderly primigravida, 120 (5.9%) were in the younger age groups and 66 (3.2%) were teenage pregnancy. Pregnancy induced hypertension (PIH) with preeclampsia 12 (22.2%), preterm labour 2 (3.7%), instrumental delivery 6 (11.1%), caesarean section 32 (59.3%) were found significantly higher in study group.Conclusions: In our study, the prevalence of elderly primigravida was 2.6% and they had high rates of complications during antenatal period and course of labour than younger primigravida