Chhattisgarh PMT

At almost every discussion table, the Indian educationist today is asked: "What are you doing about the heavy loads of books our children are made to carry on their backs to and from school every day?" It's a common sight in our cities seeing children as small as eight or nine years carrying bright coloured nylon bags, each easily weighing 5-10 kg or may be more. In contrast, their developed-country counterparts only take along lunch boxes and, at best, a few notebooks on days they have to submit their assignments. Visitors from abroad just can't understand what we are doing to our young ones. To them, in the era of computerisation, the internet and the digital classroom, containing information that can be retrieved at the click of a Mouse, it is not just ironical, but an indication of the resistance of India’s education system to change. The textbook writer-publisher lobby more...

While beginning to write on my chosen subject, few lines of a song sung by Jagjit Singh come across my mind. They are: 'Ye daulat bhi Ie to Ye showrat bhi Ie lo, Bhale chin lo mujse merijawaani, Magar, mujko lauta do bachpan ka Sawan, Who kaagaz ki kashti, Who barish ka paani.' These lines hold true to all of us who have crossed our beautiful days of childhood lost ourselves in world of matured adults. Many times tears roll down from our eyes when we recall childhood days. Days when we desperately wished to become big. Days and night, we looked at mirror and talked to ourselves that when will we grow up? When we will sit, talk and walk like the elders? When will studies end? When we will go to office? When will we be able to wear papa's tie or mummy's saree or carry a purse more...

"After a complex laparoscopic operation, the 65-year-old patient was home in time for dinner." Elisa Birnbaum, surgeon The laparoscope is the James Bond-like gadget of the surgeon's repertoire of instruments. Only a small incision through the patient's abdominal wall is made into which the surgeon puffs carbon dioxide to open up the passage. Using a laparoscope, a visual assessment and diagnosis, and even surgery can then be performed using tiny tools. This surgery causes less physiological damage, reduces patients' pain and speeds their recovery leading to shorter hospital stays. In the early 1900s, Germany's Georg Kelling (1866-1945) developed a surgical technique in which he injected air into the abdominal cavity and inserted a cytoscope—a tubelike viewing scope—to assess the patient's innards. In late 1901, he began experimenting and successfully peered into a dog's abdominal cavity using the technique. Without cameras, laparoscopy's use was limited to diagnostic procedures carried out by more...

Before the early 1990s, the Internet was primarily a text-based medium as bitmap (binary data) images were too large to easily download or distribute. This all changed with the introduction in 1992 of the JPEG—a new standard for compressing the size of images. These days the term JPEG is well known, but surprisingly it was not meant to be the name of a picture format. The term comes from the Joint Photographic Experts Group, the international organization set up in 1986 that came up with the standard compression algorithm responsible for reducing the amount of memory JPEG pictures take up. Technically, the JPEG format is called JFIF, for JPEG Pile Interchange Format, but the name never stuck. JPEG works by converting the pixels of a color image into blocks of pixels, and then taking an average of the values of the brightness and color of these blocks so that less more...

Development of human beings and music are closely related. Music is one of the areas of organised stimuli in patterns of deep meaning and influence that stands at or very near the apex of humanness. Music is an evolutionary contributor to human beings. For example, crude tools have been found and evidence indicates that the Zinjanthropus (an early progenitor of man)used them in Eastern Africa about 1.7 million years ago. Part ofany human being's culture is music. Music has a biological basis as well as a cultural basis. Einstein stated, " The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." In other words, without the comprehensibly of the outside world there would be no music. The full fruit of our potential for humanness can never be attained unless we grow and develop within a rich musical environment. Music is simply innate, humans cannot escape the formation of more...

When Gandhiji assumed India's leadership the average life span of an Indian woman was only twenty-seven years. Babies and the pregnant women ran a high risk of dying young. Child marriage was very common and widows were in very large number. Only 2% of the women had any kind of education and women did not have an identity of their own In North India, they practiced the Purda (veil) system. Women could not go out of the house unless accompanied by men and the face covered with cloth. The fortunate ones who could go to school had to commute in covered carts (tangas). It is in this context that we have to recognise the miracle of Gandhi's work. Gandhiji claimed that a woman is completely equal to a man and practiced it in strict sense. Thousands and millions of women, educated and illiterate, house wives and widows, students and elderly more...

The debate on abortion and the role of a liberal law in a country like India must take cognisance, at the very least, of the provision of general health care services. With about 73% of India's population living in rural areas, the provision of free, rational and universally accessible health care is crucially important at all times to all people (which includes the women who experience morbidity following abortions). However, the foregoing review shows that basic health care services, leave alone abortion services, are beyond the reach of many. Moreover, the 'conveyor belt' approach that most approved centres adopt only ends up making abortion services insensitive to the women who demand them. For a liberalised law to be effective in providing free, safe and humane abortions on demand, it needs to be accompanied by other social inputs like greater empowerment of women especially  in their control over their bodies and more...

In this new age of development we take simple things like a telephone, a refrigerator, or a car for granted. We live in a world of luxuries and comforts compared to the average person in the 19th century. Let's say you were born prior to 1945. Just stop and consider the changes you might have witnessed. You were before television, before penicillin, frozen foods, Xerox copiers, contact lenses, and the Pill. You were before radar, credit cards, split atoms, ball point pens, dishwashers, air conditioners, and before man walked on the Moon. You never heard of F.M. radio, tape decks, electric typewriters, artificial hearts, yoghurt and blokes with earrings! Pizzas, Instant Coffee and McDonalds weren't heard of. Today's world is growing ever dependent on technology. The telephone for example is something we all take for granted. Every house is expected to have one and if we find there is no more...

Controllers and disengagers really know how to mess up a family. Controllers are those people who must have their way. Disengagers let them have their way, but usually find a way to turn the controllers' triumphs into hollow victories. The controller says, 'It's my way or the highway.' The disengager says, 'you can have your way, but I won't let you savour the conquest. Men are often, though not always, the family controllers. To a degree, they have a point. The mythology does make the husband and father, the family's leader, but he is not an arbitrary controller. Nothing in the scriptures ever suggests that a husband has the right to become a tyrant. He's not the Napoleon of the family. He is to love his wife as his own body. Controllers are arrogant, hostile, self-centred, demanding despots. God did not authorize tyranny in the family or anywhere else. The more...

The term 'power' means the probability that a person within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will, despite resistance. Whereas, a poor person is expressed in the form of certain acts ranging from persuasion to physical force to exploitation and is always backed by sanctions which may be of mild or harsh nature depending on the gravity of situation. One distinctive characteristic of power allocation is that it is not possible to enjoy it by all the members of the society, rather a few members of the society are enjoying it. It is because of the simple reason that power involves a reciprocal relationship between two groups of individuals i.e. those who enjoy it and on the other hand to whom it is exercised. Man is by nature power gaudy. In fact, the history of human civilization is, in other words, the history more...