The report presents a mixed picture. Over the past 25 years, there have been notable improvements in child well-being in the group of countries examined in this report: steady decline in child mortality, overall reduction in adolescent suicide and increase in school completion rates. But the last five years have …
CHILDREN comprise six per cent of India's total organised work force; they also contribute an average 23 per cent of a household's domestic savings. Yet, exploitation of children as a social problem has only recently begun to agitate the international conscience. Germany and USA have now refused to import items, …
AFTER years of trying to make family planning enthusiasts understand that population control is not merely condoms, pills and other birth control devices, next year's international conference on population in Cairo nevertheless looks like it will be dominated by, well, condoms, pills and other birth control devices. The second preparatory …
WHEN CHINESE leader Mao Zedong opposed curbs on China's population growth on the ground that productivity of each extra pair of hands outweighed consumption of each additional mouth, international birth control activists were aghast. The country already accounted for about a quarter of all humans on the earth, they said, …
BANGLADESH'S massive afforestation programme is fast becoming a people's movement. More than 60 million saplings were planted last year under the programme, partly funded by the UN Development Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation. According to official sources, a countrywide radio and television programme has been started to educate …
QUEST, the science quiz on Doordarshan, has jazzed up its act with buzzers. But it is still conducted by a trio of earnest Bengalis and continues to lean heavily for its content on national science museums, such as the one in Delhi. Those who frequent this interesting museum may often …
AT THE National Film Festival this year, the winner of the award for the best feature film on family welfare was a 150-minute, tear-jerker starring Aparna Sen. Directed by Prabhat Roy with gusto, the film has enough dramatic touches to guarantee box office popularity. Shwet Paatharer Thala tells the story …
NO ONE raises an eyebrow when children are required to memorise multiplication tables till 19. Then, why should anyone throw a fit if students are taught how to multiply 199 by 199 without resorting to multiplication tables, simply because the method used is Vedic mathematics? The resurgence of interest in …
JAGADGURU Swami Sri Bharathi Krishna Tirthaji Maharaj, the author of Vedic Mathematics, says he discovered 16 mathematical formulae, which once formed part of the parishishta (appendix) of the Atharva Veda. But the formulae are not to be found in any extant text of the Vedas. The foundations of Vedic mathematics, …
A FEW examples can demonstrate the reach of Krishna Tirtha's work, which contain several patterns of calculations to be used according to the nature of the problem needing to be solved: To multiply 785 by 362 using the conventional method, you would first multiply by 2, then by 6 and …
TO ASSESS the teaching power of Krishna Tirtha's book, take an example from geometry. Schoolchildren are familiar with Pythagoras' theorem that states the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. This theorem is proved in standard …
Bhaskara II investigated solutions to the equation (100x + 90)/63 = y, where x and y have to be positive integers (whole numbers). One possible solution is x = 1530 and y = 2430. In the ancient Indian tradition, examples were invariably used because there were no algebraic generalisations. But …
BURDENED by repayment of its enormous external debt, the Peruvian government has been forced to cut down its budgeting for health and sanitation facilities, even though a cholera epidemic claimed about 4,000 lives there in 1991 and diarrhoeal diseases kill about 17,000 children each year in the country. The deteriorating …
THE PEOPLE'S level of education is considered an index of development and a nation's potential for growth. The concept of education needs to be defined in the context of its ability to meet the challenge of social change. The growing concern over the erosion of values and increasing cynicism in …
The provisions in agriculture are equally growth-oriented, says JNU vice chancellor Y K Alagh, who is an agricultural economist. "The most dangerous thing in the rural sector was the drying up of credit flow. This budget has reversed that," he says. Alagh is most critical of the budgetary provisions for …
"Hum yahan bahut khush hain. Raat mein restaurant mein hi padhai ki class hoti hain (I am very happy here. Night literacy classes are held at the restaurant itselt)," says 17-year-old Bhagwan Singh. For two years now, Bhagwan has worked at Butterflies, a restaurant in the Inter-State Bus Terminus run …
IN THE latest round of the unending debate on the effects of television on children, a British report states middle-class primary school beginners are unable. to read because they cannot speak properly. This, says Jackie Miller of the Professional Association of Teachers, is because parents do not talk much with …
FOR MORE than a decade now, The State of the World"s Children, published annually by UNICEF, has attempted to draw public attention to issues which, though vital to the well-being of the world"s children, rarely get included in the economic and political priorities of governments. Like its predecessors, The State …
MATHEMATICS is a language whose beauty can be appreciated only by those who know it. Consider Euler's famous relationship, ei = -1 (check with original). While mathematicians would find it a proposition of great elegance, most of us would be completely bewildered by such a relationship. An attempt to convey …
THE SUPREME Court, in its judgement on the controversial Mandal Commission recommendations, upholds "merit" as the preferable yardstick for admission and recruitment to the scientific and technical professions noting these call for the "highest levels of intelligence, skill and excellence". The judgement dispenses with the reservation clause for technical posts …
IN THE battle to save the environment, the nature of laws that govern people's rights to natural resources are crucial, as is the poor person's knowledge of these laws. Certain organisations are working towards reforming existing anomalies in the law and helping people become more aware of their legal rights. …
