They wanted to make their wedding ceremony stand out, and make it a remarkable day for themselves as well as others who are not as privileged as they are. So they took inspiration from their own past experiences and decided to make their wedding the perfect spot to collect books!
Meet Amar and Rani Kalamkar, a couple who firmly believes in the power of books. Amar has been an active social worker for 15 years now and runs an NGO called Yuva Chetna. He always dreamed of opening a library for needy children who want to appear for competitive exams, but do not have the means to prepare for them.
Rani, who is a professor of Economics at a university in Pune agreed with Amar’s idea of intertwining social work with their wedding ceremony.
“A lot of people in rural Maharashtra neither have the means to afford the books nor the resources to locate them otherwise,” Amar told News 18, adding that
“Competitive exams are hard, but finding the right books for these exams is even harder.”
The couple on their wedding day, with the books they received. Source: News18.
And so, in their wedding invitation, Amar and Rani requested their guests to gift them a book for competitive exams instead of bouquets that go waste after the ceremony, expensive cutlery or jewellery.
“We didn’t send out printed wedding invites; we just forwarded the invitation to our friends on WhatsApp,” Amar said. “Somehow that got circulated, and people we didn’t know also came forward with books. They found our request unique but substantial, and wanted to contribute,” he added.
This special request resulted in the couple collecting about 3000 books!
The couple is now trying to set up a library in Ahmednagar where underprivileged kids or those who don’t have access to academic resources can come to the library and study. The library is all set to open by the end of this month, and interested students are already contacting them with inquiries!
The Kalamkars are indeed an inspiration for those who want their special day to be a bit ‘hatke’, and what better place to ignite a social service than a wedding, where hundreds come together to celebrate!
In the Shingnapur village of Kolhapur, in Maharashtra, the future of young sports stars seemed bleak. Students in the village school showed immense talent in various sports, but they had no access to proper coaching, and so they were losing out on opportunities.
Dr Vijay Suryawanshi who was the Kolhapur Zilla Parishad Chief Executive Officer in 2014, noticed this lack of facilities and decided to start a resident sports school in Kolhapur.
And just four years later, one of the students from the school has been selected for the Cadet World Wrestling Championship!
Disha Karande, a wrestling champ from the school will represent India in the championship in Croatia next month.
Dr Suryawanshi, an IAS officer, who is now the District Collector of Raigad, spoke about the concept of a resident sports school. He told Zee News, “The idea of starting a sports school was conceived when the taluka-level school tournaments were going on.
It was sad to see talented students lose their matches due to lack of proper coaching. We then decided to nurture their skills and get the best out of them.”
And so, the school with a hostel and schooling facility to accommodate over 100 students was started. Students are coached in 13 sports including kho kho, kabaddi, football, volleyball, archery, long jump, high jump, running and of course, wrestling.
The Kolhapur residential sports school was the first of its kind. It took the matter of student admission seriously by only admitting those who children who were genuinely passionate about sports and saw their future on the field.
Dr Suryawanshi told Business Standard, “When we launched the school, students’ track records and their willingness to join the sports school were gauged during the interview. Those selected were imparted free coaching in their sports along with regular schooling, food and boarding facilities.”
It was important for the school to foster those who showed promise in sports. After all, the founder cherished a great dream for it.
“When I conceptualised the school, I dreamt that one day a student of this school will participate at international level and win accolades for the country,” Dr Suryawanshi told Outlook magazine.
And surely enough, Disha made a mark on an international platform in just four years of the school’s conception. “My happiness knew no bounds when I got the news of Disha Karande being selected for the world championship, fulfilling the dream of those who worked hard to bring up this school,” he added.
“I am happy to get a chance to represent India. My dream is to get an Olympics medal for the country,” concludes Disha.
Kudos to Dr Surywanshi for starting such an initiative and getting professional and long-term sports training to school students. We wish Disha all the very best and hope she fulfills her dream.
To tackle the trash menace in Thane, authorities have come up with a brilliant idea. To coax citizens to dispose of their rubbish responsibly, Maharashtra’s Thane City will start giving goodies to citizens.
According to a report in The Times of India, the Municipal Corporation of Thane plans to give residents free gold coins, for using its newly-installed hi-tech roadside garbage bin. Thane Municipal Commissioner Sanjeev Jaiswal is guiding the initiative to install 200 hi-tech bins in the city in the next one year. These bins will give out prizes in exchange for garbage.
‘TechBins’ will give out a unique code, every time a user deposits waste in it. Simply download the TechBin application from the iOS or Android application stores, and register. Visit the nearest tech bin, and drop your dry or wet waste in it. Then, send the unique code that the bin flashes to the number mentioned. Then, wait for discount offers to be sent to you, via e-mail or phone. Register just once, and perform multiple transactions.
Thane has a Tech Bin, that will give you the opportunity to win gold, by depositing trash! Image Credit: TechBin
The bins have been developed by Bhandup-based Asian Gallant, a company also responsible for the maintenance of these bins for the next decade. The company will approach local vendors and shopkeepers to get the goodies at a discounted rate to give away to TechBin users.
These bins have a carrying capacity of around 300 litres, allowing them to accommodate 190 cubic metres of wet and dry waste. The bins are capable of carrying out internal waste segregation and will be located at prime spots like bus stops, malls, markets, commercial areas and cinema halls.
The project is being divided into phases, and according to Phase 1, 30 bins will be installed by the end of June 2018. A test run of the project was carried out, inaugurated by commissioner Jaiswal, at Pokhran 1, on June 13th.
TechBin comes at a timely moment–Thane ranked low on the nationwide Swacch Sarvekshan Survey, and slipped several ranks, from 17th pace in 2016, to 116th place, in 2017. Activists are concerned that these TechBins might lure citizens from other places to dump their trash in Thane. However, as a strategy to combat the littering issue, the TechBins have been well-strategised, by providing an incentive to responsible citizens!
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A small town about 110 km away from Nashik with sizeable populations of Muslims and Hindus, Malegaon has long been an important commercial centre of handmade textile. However, the Maharashtrian town also has a long history of violent strife, bomb blasts and communal disturbance. As such, it presents a formidable challenge to law enforcement agencies.
Declared a sensitive area in 1932, Malegaon saw a clash of processions in 1963 when Ganesh Visarjan and Muharram fell on the same day. The town also saw communal violence in 1984 and in 1992 in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition. Major riots also erupted in October 2001 (soon after the US bombing of Afghanistan).
In 2006 and 2008, multiple bomb explosions rocked the town, injuring many citizens and destroying property worth crores. Malegaon also saw communal riots, yet again, in 2014, 2016 and as recently as February 2017.
Cognizant of these facts, the local administration has made considerable efforts to restore communal harmony. However, its only been in the last few years that law enforcement agencies have made substantial inroads in maintaining peace in the town.
And some of the ideas that have proved highly effective in maintaining peace have come from ASP Malegaon, IPS officer Harssh A Poddar.
Speaking to The Better India in an exclusive interview, Harssh explains how the police are effectively tackling illegal trades and communal friction in the Maharashtra town.
IPS officer Harssh A Poddar, ASP Malegaon
The brain behind the Maharashtra Youth Parliament, Harssh’s first steps on taking charge in May 2017 was reinforcing intelligence networks and preparing police stations for social disturbances that may erupt suddenly. This included surprise riot-control drills, timely maintenance of equipment, and the creation of a community network that would provide timely information to the police force.
To ensure that irrefutable evidence was collected to identify and book unruly elements who incited the public, Harssh also got CCTV cameras installed on a series of police vans. However, while analysing the impact of these measures, he realised that most of these social disturbances were not spontaneous.
“Detailed analysis suggests that the riots weren’t sudden eruptions in which the general public took to arms but were deliberately instigated by people with a past history in crime.
The instigators were almost always known troublemakers involved in some kind of illegal trade or the other that kept their funding channel going. This is why our confidence-building measures between communities weren’t completely working in quelling riots in Malegaon,” explains Harssh.
In the context of policing, these illegal trades — bootlegging, human trafficking, narcotics, gambling, sand trafficking, smuggling, cow slaughter, black marketing, hoarding, the sale of country weapons etc. — are generally considered ‘vanilla’ offences by the cops.
In Maharashtra, these offences are known as Part VI offences. Legally speaking, they are not present in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and become offences through a series of specials laws passed by the legislature (Maharashtra Gambling Act, for instance).
Part VI offences are also the ones with the most scope for corruption in the police ranks. This is because IPC offences are taken far more seriously and are subject to much higher supervision, making them difficult for a corrupt cop to play around with.
Illegal sand trafficking comes under Part VI offences
According to Harssh, these offences are also different from other criminal offences because the police force rarely get public complaints about them. Quite often, this is because they are scared of the local mafia or afraid to get involved as it doesn’t directly concern them.
However, the larger picture is that the money generated by these illegal trades funds a plethora of anti-social activities that can lead to a dangerous law and order situation.
This is why Harssh and his hardworking team decided to crack down hard on these illegal trades and create a fund crunch for troublemakers. To do this, the ASP created special squads of 5-6 officers with a vehicle who reported directly to him, cutting through layers of red tape and hierarchy.
Minimising the chances for corruption, these squads started conducting unannounced ‘cross-raids’ (in which a superior authority raids the area of another authority). If any organised commercial den of an illegal trade was found flourishing in the area, disciplinary action was taken against the officer in charge of the station — the den’s presence meant that they had been putting up with it on a large-scale.
“We only focus on commercial dens that are much bigger in scale, with the money involved running into several lakhs. This means its organised, and if its organised, it cannot be happening without the knowledge of the local police,” says Harssh, adding that his squads have conducted raids to the tune of an unprecedented Rs 3 crore in the past 11 months.
According to Harssh, other than controlling corruption in the ranks and shutting down the illegal trades, the raids conducted by these special squads have also had another beneficial fall-out — a drastic reduction in the activities of the fringe and ‘moral police’ vigilantes. With effective enforcement already taking place according to the law, they no longer have grounds to operate on their own.
Interestingly, to prevent these squads from being susceptible to corruption themselves, Harssh keeps revolving the police officers without any notice every two or three months. Knowing that young officers (who are fresh out of the academy) are generally more enthusiastic and keen about making their mark, he makes sure to give them a chance with these squads.
Harssh has also ensured that the public knows that intelligence channels reach all the way up to him directly. As such, he regularly gets seven to eight calls in the middle of the night providing highly specific intelligence that is extremely useful in conducting raids.
“While the information is very useful in the raids we conduct, we take extra care to ensure that this facility is not used by people to settle personal scores!” says the diligent ASP.
Unsurprisingly, all these efforts have borne rich fruits. For instance, recently, when violence erupted in several cities in Maharashtra over the Bhima-Koregaon issue, Malegaon remained peaceful and did not see even a single incidence of violence. As such, Maharashtra police plans to replicate these ideas in other districts.
However, this is not the only reason for the immense respect Harssh commands in the inner circles of the state’s police force.
The people-centric officer has also been streamlining the management of rural police stations and getting them ISO certified with infrastructure funds from village panchayats. He has also launched an innovative project, Udaan, that provides free coaching for entrance exams and career counselling to local students.
With his initiatives giving Maharashtra’s fight against crime a big boost, IPS officer Harssh Poddar has also inspired many officers across the country to think outside the box and infuse fresh ideas into policing. Here’s wishing this dynamic IPS officer all the very best in all his endeavours.
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Once upon a time, a plot of land measuring 19-hectares which adjoins the Kalu river in the Runde area of Titwala, Thane, was brimming with wildlife. A forested area and an oxygen lung, the area lost all of this to high pollution levels, deforestation and soil erosion.
To optimise oxygen levels and ensure the presence of an oxygen lung in the midst of a thriving city, the forest department decided to bring the land under a tri-party agreement and hand it over to concerned citizens. This way, a large number of people could work towards the revival of the barren land in Titwala.
The Paryavaran Dakshata Mandal, an NGO in Thane, is part of this agreement.
Volunteers from the NGO took charge of the land in January 2017.
They began with conducting thorough research of the soil, water and the kind of fauna that would thrive in the weather conditions there.
Sangita Joshi, who works with the NGO, told the Times of India, “When we started the project, our main aim was to bring back the greenery this area once had. We began by studying the soil, water and other aspects of the land. To ensure the project’s success, we had to plant saplings which we knew would survive.”
The volunteers acquired two-year-old saplings which they had nurtured in their own homes and replanted them in Titwala. Ensuring a high probability of survival of plants was crucial.
Over the past one year, the volunteers have planted about 8000 saplings on the once barren hill. They even took over the nurturing of plants and reported a survival rate of 98 percent!
Needless to say, the land is a thriving forest land once again, and birds, insects and other animals have slowly started making a comeback to Titwala.
KD Thakare, conservator of forest (social forestry) spoke to TOI about the success of the tri-party agreement of forest revival.
“We have numerous such tri-party projects with non-governmental groups where they are given a piece of the forest land to revive. Less than a year after this project started, the NGO has managed to revive the area’s lost green cover. The greenery has also started attracting birds, insects and fauna. It is becoming a complete eco-system once again,” he said.
The efforts of the forest department and the NGO are certainly an encouraging way towards a greener future. It won’t be long till Titwala becomes a self-sustaining eco-system that no longer needs to be looked after by humans. Perhaps then we can direct our efforts to other such barren lands which have lost their forest cover due to human interference.
Situated in the North-Western part of Maharashtra and neighbouring the state of Madhya Pradesh is the city of Jalgaon. With just about enough rainfall and a hot climate, one wouldn’t think that the farmers there would be keen on cultivating a crop like the banana.
It comes as a surprise then, that the Jalgaon district is one of the top producers of the fruit in the world—so much so, in fact, that the Indian Express reported that if it were a country, Jalgaon would be the seventh largest producer of banana.
And why not? The district accounts for about 70% of Maharashtra’s banana yield and between 11-12% of the country’s annual output.
How then, did a dry district like Jalgaon which does not receive abundant rainfall and is definitely not one of the country’s ‘cool’ areas, succeed in securing these numbers?
The major credit for these production levels goes to the introduction of drip irrigation in Maharashtra. A standard 15 horsepower motor used for flood irrigation that could once serve only about 10,000 plants in their best capacity, now waters about 15,000 plants under drip irrigation.
Premanand Hari Mahajan, a banana farmer in Raver Taluka, Jalgaon told IE, “Under normal flood irrigation, a 15-HP motor pump could at best water 10,000 plants even with 24-hour electricity supply. Through drip irrigation, you can cover 15,000 plants using the same 15HP motor even with 8-hour power. The effective water savings is 60-70%.”
Along with the high rate of water savings, the risk of soil-borne diseases that arises in flood irrigation is also negated when water is dripped into the soil.
Also, the weather that might have once been considered unfavourable provide an added benefit to the banana farmers as the plants became less vulnerable to diseases like Sigatoka Leaf Spot and Fusarium Wilt Fungal Diseases which thrive in a humid climate.
KB Patil, the vice president (Tissue Culture & Agricultural Services) at Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd (JISL) told IE, “These have wreaked havoc across plantations in Central America and Philippines, with high humidity and round-the-year rainfall actually conducive to their spread. It has forced aerial spraying of fungicides, accounting for up to 40% of total production costs.”
The irrigation process thus successfully overcame the dry climate that is characteristic of northern Maharashtra. JISL was the company who introduced drip irrigation to India in 1989.
Banana plants need a more humid climate than what Jalgaon offers. So the individual farmers who contribute to the export of bananas in other states and out of India used the method of close planting. A closed canopy over the plants provided them with the humid conditions that the banana plant favours.
Yet another innovation that Jalgaon farmers use to ensure a disease-free and uniform cultivation is the tissue-culture that strays away from the more conventional sucker planting. Usually, the body shoots that develop from the mother banana plants (or suckers) are uprooted and transplanted as seeds for the next crop. However, the tissue culture involves cutting these suckers into parts of size 1-1.5mm, planting them into artificial growth mediums that contain essential nutrients for enlargement. They grow up to 10-15mm in 12 weeks. They are then cut into pieces and replanted for multiplication and production of shoots.
This seemingly tedious method ensures increased production rates and a shorter period of harvest.
Such innovative methods have made Jalgaon a “Banana Republic”. What could have easily been brushed off as unfavourable conditions for banana cultivation, has now become an advantage, and accessibility to markets that have a high demand for the fruit is just an added benefit to the banana farmers.
We had earlier reported that the Maharashtra government is planning to re-lay over 10,000 kms of roads using 50,000 tons of plastic waste in the next six years.
Now, the state government has gone a step further by making it compulsory for the Public Works Department (PWD) to use plastic waste for the construction and repair of bituminous (or asphalt) roads!
This step has been taken to sustainably utilise the increasing amount of plastic waste that has collected with the civic bodies as the plastic ban in Maharashtra continues to come down heavily on manufacturers and consumers. In fact, the Mumbai civic body has already collected 1.42 lakh kg of plastic waste!
Furthermore, in addition to tackling the plastic waste problem, the move will also ensure roads with better quality at a lesser price. This is because roads built with plastic-asphalt tar have improved longevity, better water-resistance and require less maintenance when compared to those built with conventional materials.
“All roads made of waste plastic will undergo a quality test after every three months, and a report will be submitted to the State government after a year”, said a state government resolution (GR) issued by the PWD, adding that the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research too had found that such roads are of better quality and less expensive.
As such, the PWD will henceforth get the collected non-biodegradable plastic waste, with the responsibility to recycle it and use it for road construction/repairs. It will also have to specially mention the details of the aforementioned waste plastic usage in road tenders.
In fact, as directed by the GR, the chief engineer of each respective area will be tasked with supervising junior officers on whether they are using waste plastic or not in asphalting work.
Interestingly, following a central government notification in November 2015, the Maharashtra PWD had asked its regional offices to use waste plastic in building certain stretches of roads on a pilot basis in February 2016.
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It’s been three months since the state government of Maharashtra issued a notification calling for a ban on plastic. Despite several protests by manufacturers due to lack of viable alternatives to plastic and recycling units, the government has decided to push its ban on a wide range of single-use plastic items and thermocol from today.
If you posses single-use non-recyclable plastic items and are planning to venture out with it, be warned. Steep fines starting from Rs 5,000 moving up to a whopping 25,000 will be imposed on those found with these items.
Also, the plastic items that have been exempted from the ban will come with a recycling surcharge to ensure they are not dumped or disposed of, but recycled.
Still confused about what’s banned and what’s not? Well, here’s all you need to know:
As per the government notification issued on March 23, the banned items include:
Most kinds of plastic bags are banned. This includes the bags issued in shopping malls.
Disposable plastic cutlery like spoons, forks, cups, plates, glasses, bowls, containers, straws, etc., by users, shopkeepers/restaurants or manufacturers are prohibited.
Disposable thermocol cutlery is also prohibited.
Non-woven polypropylene bags.
Plastic items that are allowed include:
PET bottles used for cold drinks or water
Milk pouches
Garbage liners
Bags with uses in agriculture, horticulture, nurseries, and medicine.
Tiffin boxes, home-use containers, raincoats, tarpaulin sheets, pens, plastic wrappers/packaging for food at the manufacturing level.
Fines for offenders
While first-time offenders will be fined Rs 5,000, two-time violators will be fined Rs 10,000. Third-time offenders will face Rs 25,000 penalty and a jail term of up to three months.
Bloomberg Quint reports that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has constituted a 249-member squad to monitor plastic usage on the streets. All of these members will have printed receipts for fines.
Citizens fined for the use of the banned plastic items have to be on the lookout. Do not pay fines without these printed receipts. All the fines charged and the seized plastic items will be monitored by the Assistant Municipal Commissioner (Special) of the corporation.
“We’ll go as a force to specific areas that are chronically affected. Houses won’t be raided,” Nidhi Choudhary, Deputy Municipal Commissioner (Special), BMC, told the publication.
Remember this squad has the authority to conduct raids wherever they please without issuing any prior notice.
Ghanshyam Dahane, a historian, is currently collecting data on the history of Satara. As a part of this endeavour, he visited the Swami Samartha Vagdevta temple in the village of Dhule in Satara. Dahane wanted to study the archival documents preserved in the temple. However, never did he imagine that the visit would lead him to discover a letter by the pioneer of the Maratha kingdom—Shivaji Bhosle!
Speaking to the Pune Mirror, Dahane said, “I remember that I was led to this room where all these documents are preserved, and the temperature was very high. The room was covered in dust, and I spent some time going through different documents, but the moment I laid my hand on this particular letter, I knew it was crucial.”
The 344-year-old letter, written by Shivaji, is dated 2 February 1674 and was found in a good condition, even though of no one knew about its origin or age.
Representative image of a letter written in the Modi script. Source: Deepak Thombre.
“The letter is written in the Modi script (the script that was used to write Marathi) and even has a ‘Rajmudra’ (royal seal) at the top, making it genuine,” the independent researcher told PM, adding that “Historians have only found 273 letters written by Shivaji Maharaj till date, and among them only 103 are in good condition.”
Shivaji had written the letter to Nagogi Patil Kalbhor, the head of Pali village in Satara. It was written five months before Shivaji’s coronation at the Raigad fort on 6 June 1674.
The letter was a response to the complaint that Kalbhor had filed against Kharade Patil, another minister of the village.
Kalbhor had accused Patil of enforcing his rule and overstepping Kalbhor’s position in Satara.
“In the letter, Shivaji Maharaj has assured Kalbhor that he had done his research and realised that Kalbhor is correct. He further said that Kharade Patil should be warned. Shivaji has also written that Kalbhor should not worry about this issue and that the ‘Subhedar’ (chief native officer) Abbaji Moredev will ensure that Kharade Patil does not come in his way,” Dahane shared. “I translated the entire letter within minutes,” he added.
This discovery will be verified by other historians and will be added to the archive of Shivaji’s letters, once the process is completed.
Padmakar Prabhune, a historian who is also a visiting faculty member at the Savitribai Phule Pune University, told PM, “While the language in the letter is definitely of that period, we need to see if the same has been published in any book. If the paper, ink, content and Rajmudra are found on the letter then surely it will be a valuable addition to the existing historical documents from that era.”
On 23 June 2018, the Maharashtra government imposed a blanket ban on single-use plastic across the state.
A notification regarding the ban had been circulated three months ago, giving the residents of the state, enough time to find alternatives for the plastic items they use in their daily lives. More importantly, it gave businesses a chance to find more eco-friendly alternatives for the plastic they use in packaging.
The Better India has written a detailed article about how the ban will be imposed across Maharashtra. You can read it here.
While some people are applauding this bold move by the government, and are taking the ban in a very positive light and adapting to the new rules, there are some who believe that the time given between the notification and imposition was not enough.
The food industry, for example, is especially unhappy with the ban because of its high reliance on plastic.
Representative image of takeaway boxes. Source: Brad.K.
For example, imagine a takeaway order or even ordering-in at home, without using plastic packaging. Seems impossible, right?
Your food is packed in thermocol or plastic containers—sometimes each element is even packed separately—and then the delivery person or the restaurant hands over your order in a polythene bag. We have become so used to this that we hardly give a second thought to the amount of plastic we are using in one single meal.
A plastic ban would potentially mean that takeaways and home-delivered food are a thing of past—at least till we find a viable solution. In fact, according to reports, delivery apps like Zomato and Swiggy have already stopped working in some places, like Pune, in Maharashtra.
However, this Pune restaurant has smoothly adapted itself to support the plastic ban while also ensuring that its customers do not suffer much.
A restaurant in Pune has started delivering food in steel lunch boxes after plastic ban in Maharashtra, customers are asked to return boxes after delivery. Those who order ‘take away’ food at the restaurant are asked to deposit Rs 200 which will be reimbursed on returning the box pic.twitter.com/iufjyxwKqJ
The restaurant has started giving takeaway orders to their customers in steel lunch boxes, against a deposit of Rs 200. As soon as the customer returns the box, the money will be returned to them.
This is a great move, as steel boxes are a much healthier option for food storage, they keep the food warm for a considerable amount of time and are obviously reusable.
Ganesh Shetty, the owner of the Pune restaurant, told ANI, “We welcome the state government’s decision to ban plastic in the state as it’s in favour of the environment.”
It is currently unclear as to whether the restaurant will provide a delivery option, whether the customers have to go back to the restaurant to hand over the lunch box or whether the restaurant will provide a pick-up service.
However, the solutions to these issues will be brought to action with time.
Representative image of steel takeaway boxes. Source: Max Pixel.
Elaborating on how the ban isn’t easy for everyone, Ganesh said, “The government should have provided us some more time to arrange an alternative. Apps like Zomato and Swiggy have stopped working due to lack of delivery options. Customers are also facing an inconvenience.”
However, it is entirely possible that since the ban has been imposed and there is no going back, people and businesses will start hunting for eco-friendly solutions. The stakes are high, after all. It is not just a question of fines anymore but that of contributing to the plastic pollution by tonnes, every day.
The gap between organ donors and the requirement of organs is at a consistent high. Donating the organs of your loved ones who have passed is one noble way of honouring their memory while also giving someone ailing a new life. Even with awareness programmes and easy ways to donate organs, very few take this step.
To encourage more people to donate the organs of deceased family members, the Union Health Ministry has sent recommendations to the Maharashtra State Health Department to offer rewards for organ donations. This includes giving a cash prize of Rs 50,000 to the hospital where the organ is retrieved and a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakh to the family of the donor. This prize will be given every year for five years.
The ministry has also suggested that the recipient of the organs get the immunosuppressant medicines free of cost for a fixed period.
Recipients of organs have to take the medicines so that their body adjusts to the foreign organs.
Dr Sanjeev Kamble, Director, Health Services told Pune Mirror, “We have received guidelines and recommendations from the Union health ministry about the changes to be made in the organ donation programme. The aim behind this is to boost organ donation so that people come forward. The state has to appoint a committee, which will submit the proposal to the government about the recommendations.
They have also sent suggestions for the infrastructure and equipment required to facilitate the organ donation programme. The new technological upgrade will help increase the success rate of organ donation.”
Dr Gauri Rathod, Assistant Director, Health Services told the publication, “In the first week of July, a special meeting will be held between all stakeholders during which we are going to take the decision on the recommendations and send it to the ministry. Although the ministry has sent the recommendation, the state does not want to give any cash reward for the programme to any stakeholder but will look for other ways to reward them.”
Prajakta Admane is a native of Gadchiroli, a tribal district, in Maharashtra. Having completed her studies in Pharmacy and MBA, she had a well-paid and comfortable job in Pune. However, Prajakta was never satisfied with this and always wanted to do something more, something off-beat.
Coming from a Naxal infested area in Maharashtra, Prajakta was well aware of the infamy that her hometown had earned. But that is not all there is to Gadchiroli. The district also has a beautiful forest cover, and people like Prajakta who want to mark their hometown on the map for better, creative and more welcome reasons.
Her will to do something apart from a cushy job in a multinational company brought her back to her hometown, and this time, as a bee-keeper!
Prajakta started out as a beekeeper in Maharashtra. Source: ABP Majha.
“Before I started with the bee-keeping business, I did some research and found out that it was important to undergo vocational training for this,” she told ABP Majha, adding that “I underwent training with the National Bee Board. This is how I got to connect with bee-keepers from everywhere— from Kashmir to Andhra Pradesh. I started learning the minute details of this business from them.”
Today, Prajakta rears honey from fifty boxes of bees. Taking inspiration from the floral variety in the Gadchiroli forests, she has also started manufacturing flavoured honey, and some flavours include berry, eucalyptus, litchi, sunflower, tulsi and sesame.
Each variety has its own benefits for the human body. The berry honey, for example, is excellent to fight diabetes while the sesame honey helps control heart diseases.
The eucalyptus honey is a good cure for common illnesses like a cough and cold. Similarly, ajwain helps digestion.
Prajakta sells these varieties of honey under her own brand, called Kasturi honey. Each bottle of honey sells between Rs 60 to Rs 380. Apart from bee rearing and honey production, Prajakta also sells bee venom. This venom is used in the medical industry to fight arthritis, nerve pain and multiple sclerosis.
The business has helped Prajakta earn about Rs 6-7 lakh annually. Although she invested about Rs 2-2.5 lakh in the business for packaging and distribution, she still makes a good profit at the end of the year. She has also been teaching the basics of beekeeping to unemployed youth and women of her village, helping them earn well.
“We are trying to bring more and more women’s self-help groups, farmers and unemployed youth in this business,” she told ABP Majha.
It was around 11 pm last night that Additional Superintendent of Police, Malegaon, IPS officer Harssh A Poddar received a desperate call for help.
A mob had gathered in Azad Nagar near Ali Akbar hospital in a state of fury, ready to lynch a family of five — two men, two women, and a two-year-old child. The reason? They suspected the family was a group of ‘child lifters’.
This was merely 12 hours after a mob in Dhule, 40 minutes away from Malegaon, lynched five people over child lifting rumours.
This is the story of the timely action and intervention of the entire police force saving five lives last night.
(Left) A small glimpse of the mob. (Right) Addl Superintendent of Police Harssh Poddar
Speaking to The Better India, ASP Harssh Poddar recalls how Malegaon has been facing these kidnapping rumours for the last eight to nine days.
The police have even taken extensive measures like circulating videos against kidnapping rumours, distributing pamphlets, taking public meetings and even registering cases against those caught spreading false rumours under the Indian Penal Code’s section 505 (which may lead to three years of imprisonment for causing public panic).
What happened last night was that a family of five, all daily wage labourers hailing from the district of Parbhani in Central Maharashtra were returning to their district. They decided to halt in Malegaon after running out of money and were begging for alms.
In this process, the IPS officer says, the family had an interaction with a 14-year-old boy.
Poddar told The Better India, that the nature of this interaction is not yet known and is part of the inquiry. But based upon it, certain miscreants in the area concluded that these were kidnappers. Malegaon consists of two halves. While the western side is predominantly Hindus, the eastern side is Muslim. This family of daily wage labourers were Hindus and they were deep in the Muslim area. While the incident doesn’t have a communal angle to it, the group was already perceived as outsiders due to differences in their attire. Without giving it a second thought, the miscreants started hitting the people.
When he received a call for help, he immediately alerted the local police station in-charge to proceed to the spot. In that span of about ten minutes, the mob swelled up to about 1,500 people.
The team which had arrived with only four members requested Poddar for more forces. Without wasting any time, the Addl. SP sent a riot control platoon (a specialised force that deals with law and order disruption) alongside the local DySP. When the forces tried to placate the crowd, they called out to kill the family. The officers immediately moved the family to protect them in two homes. But the crowd kept asking them to release the family so ‘mob justice’ could be delivered.
The IPS officer even requested local religious leaders like the imams to pacify the crowd. Yet, there was no respite. The frenzied crowd refused to listen and pelted stones at the leaders and the police.
It was a police force of 50 against a mob of 1,500 trying to prevent them from swarming the homes in which the family was kept. The call for more forces continued.
And so the IPS officer himself approached the area with four sections of the State Reserve Police Force (SRPF) and another riot control platoon. The police started using controlled force on the crowd and lathi-charged them. This helped them push the frenzied mob into the neighbouring alleys.
“Two boleros were brought and the family was rescued, and sent to the furthest possible police stations in the town. Before I reached the spot, the mob had also overturned one of the police vehicles. But we were grateful that none of the police officials were hurt, and also that we didn’t let the situation reach a point where we would have to fire on the crowd. So no one in the crowd was hurt. One of the men in the family suffered a contusion, but the rest of the members, fortunately, escaped without any grave or serious injuries. The entire operation was three hours long. We were only able to leave the area at about 2:30 am.”
In the light of lynchings happening based on fake news, the IPS officer says, “In all of these instances, people aren’t even stopping to think. They alleged that the family of trying to kidnap the 14-YO boy. They did not for once stop to do a basic check of facts, and nor were they placated by the fact that the police had taken them into custody and would investigate the matter. Many of these rumours are incited by miscreants who just want to indulge in the madness of violence.
“For those thinking that they are faceless when they are part of a mob and they will get away. The law will come back to you. Our cities are under CCTV surveillance. We have digital evidence to accost people who are involved,” he adds.
The police have now registered a case of riots, destruction to public service, as well as attempt to murder. Based on the CCTV recordings, they will be identifying those involved.
The Maharashtra police have set an exceptional example of quick-thinking and immediate rescue in a sensitive case like this. We congratulate IPS officer Harssh A Poddar and his team for their display of valour and courage. Even in the face of a grave threat to their own lives, the uniformed men put the safety of the family of five first and saved lives.
For parents of children, balancing long working hours and taking care of their young ones can be quite a challenge. While most of them try to find viable solutions and make the situation work, there are quite a few who dislike being away from their children for an entire day but do not have an option.
This is why, a recent proposal by the Maharashtra government, promises to be a pleasant piece of news to parents in the state.
Employees of the Maharashtra government, who are parents of children below the age of 18 years will now get 180 days of paid leave!
Although the primary focus of this initiative is mothers, the government has also extended it to single fathers whose wives have passed away.
Sudhir Mungantiwar, the Cabinet Minister of Finance & Planning and Forest departments in Maharashtra confirmed that the state government approved the “special child care leave proposal” on Tuesday, 3 June 2018.
“The cabinet decision confined to government employees was taken to enable better parenting,” he said.
He further added that at present, women employees can avail 180 days maternity leave twice since this leave can be taken by women with two children.
A mother or a widower father can avail the special child care leave until their child/children are 18 years of age. Parents have an option of availing the leave in one stretch or in gaps, according to Daily News and Analysis.
This new initiative will ensure that parents get to spend ample time with their children until they become adults. Not only will this help in their upbringing, but will also ensure that the bond between children and parents is carefully nurtured.
In a time when parents find it hard to balance their work and personal lives and when long hours in the office tire them so much that it is tough for them to stay active and engage with their children after returning home, the Maharashtra government has undoubtedly brought some much-needed relief.
Plastic, the non-recyclable monster that has been eating up our environment for decades now, was banned by the Maharashtra government on 23 July 2018. Although the government is altering the rules that it had previously imposed, the fight against one-time-use plastic is on.
Many industries, businesses and even individuals have taken the ban in a good spirit. A restaurant in Pune, for instance, rose to the occasion and revamped its packaging policies. You can read the story here.
Suddenly, all the plastic stored away in houses seems to be a burden for many. Since plastic bags cannot be used anymore in Maharashtra, what can one do but store it away?
Throwing them all away in garbage defeats the purpose because they will just end up in landfills, and not everyone knows how to recycle them.
However, if you live in Kalyan or Dombivli (or are willing to travel there), the Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) is there to help you. You can now deposit the plastic items that you wish to throw away, in the plastic banks installed in KDMC’s D ward office, Subhash Maidan and Sutikagruha in Dombivli East.
If you have too much plastic at home and don’t know how to carry it to the banks, KDMC and NGOs like the Urja Foundation, Eco Samtol Works and Jagruk Nagrik Sanstha can even pick it up from your home!
Speaking to Daily News & Analysis, Prasad Thakur, the Public Relations Officer of KDMC said,
“People can come and deposit all the plastic they have and want to get rid of… Those who have more than 10 kg plastic can call these centres for a free pick-up.”
The plastic bank installed in Mumbai. Source: Netive.
Here are the addresses and phone numbers if you want to dispose of your stored plastic items:
1. Subhash Maidan, Kalyan
2. Sutikagruha in Dombivli East
3. KDMC’s D ward office, Kalyan East
Or call 810487 4500/ 99673 30951 for a free pick up.
Every weekday, young students in a remote village located the Palghar district in Maharashtra would put on their uniforms, comb their hair and get ready for school. Some put on shoes, while some stayed barefoot.
And barefoot, they walked several kilometres every day, just to get to school. No wonder then, that after a few years of basic education, the children would quit.
This, until Dr Suwas, a Mumbai-based dentist decided to donate a cycle to them.
That’s all that took to transform a life of a student—one bicycle.
One bicycle changed the lives of these Maharashtra students. Source.
Dr Suwas, who could complete his education solely because his friends were willing to help him get to school from his home in a slum, understands exactly how underprivileged students feel when they cannot afford transportation.
According to the NGO, Our Better World, Dr Suwas says, “One of the biggest transforming factors in a kid’s life is education, but how to get the students to the school remains a challenge. People are hard-pressed for even a few rupees. They cannot afford the bus fee or the rickshaw fee.”
And how has one bicycle helped the tribal students of Palghar? Check out the video to find out!
Tanay Panpalia, an accountant and wildlife enthusiast from Nagpur, was exploring the jungles of the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR) with his friends. They were near a lake in the forest, clicking pictures of the beautiful birds that live there and were also on the lookout for any mammals nearby.
Just then, they saw a pack of wolves and decided to go closer to take a better look at them. Although tigers, leopards and sloth bears excite most people that enter the forest, spotting wolves or wild dogs in Tadoba is a rare sight. So the friends decided to pursue them, from a safe distance, when Tanay spotted something unusual—something that should have never happened.
One wolf from the pack had his head stuck in a plastic container. He also looked malnourished, perhaps because he was living with his head in the container for a few weeks now! There was no way of knowing how long the poor animal had been stuck in the container, but Tanay knew that if he did nothing to help, there was a chance that the creature would die of starvation.
“We immediately informed a rescue team from the Forest Department of Nagpur and followed the wolf until they arrived,” Tanay told the Daily Mail.
The malnourished wolf. Source: Avinash Bhoi. Credits: Tanay Panpalia.
Tanay, who is a member of TATR, believes that the container probably belonged to someone from the nearby villages who used it to store food grains. Perhaps after the container was seen as unfit to use, they disposed of it without caution. The wolf might have been searching for food, or perhaps just making sense of the container by sniffing it when the incident happened.
“… The young wolf seemed to be very weak and was unable to eat due to that plastic container. Thankfully, the plastic container had holes, so the poor animal could breathe and drink water and was probably alive due to that reason,” Tanay added.
The rescue team took about two hours to reach the stop where the wolf was.
Meanwhile, Tanay and his friends ensured they had their eye on the poor animal. With the help of a rescue kit, the team caught the wolf and cut the container carefully.
“It was a success, and there were no external injuries to the wolf,” Tanay told the Daily Mail, adding that “We kept on showering water on him to bring down his body temperature and then released him back into the wild. He ran away swiftly and re-joined the pack later on. The whole rescue operation lasted for around three hours, but was worth it.”
Sixteen children die on Indian roads daily. Seeing this statistic, students at Espalier Experimental School in Nashik were concerned about how unsafe Indian roads have become. One of their teachers lost her life in an accident, and many of the children also met frequently with accidents when they came to school by bicycle.
A group of 13-year-olds from the school decided to take matters into their own hands. The 8th graders realised that awareness about road safety and traffic rules needs to be inculcated in people right from childhood. To do this, they created a website to conduct an Online Traffic Awareness Exam, on passing which school-going kids can acquire their Bicycle Licenses.
Concluding that the rules that apply to two-wheelers should also apply to bicyclists, the students realised that children could begin to learn these rules at a young age. The students were inspired by the 4-step formula of Feel-Imagine-Do-Share, developed by Design for Change.
This is a not-for-profit organisation that challenges children to solve problems in their community.
To conduct the Traffic Awareness Exam for students, the children started a website called www.mybicyclelicense.com, under the mentorship of Sachin Joshi, the founder of Espalier Experimental School.
After much research, they framed over 75 questions on traffic rules. The website hands out bicycle licenses to people who acquire higher than 70% marks in the online exam. “Kids love to collect cards of all kind,” explains Sachin Joshi, adding, “That is the psychology at work. So this project plays with that idea!”
The website generates a certificate that the children can proudly show to their friends, but to get it, they have to study the traffic rules first and pass the test.
Dr Ravinder Singal, the Police Commissioner of Nashik, agreed to a Round Table Conference with the children and lent his full support to the Bicycle License Project. They also met the Commissioner of RTO, Bharat Kalaskar, for guidance, who expressed his interest in working towards conducting this online test for Bicycle License all over India through RTO.
The software company ESDS helped the students in making the online exam free of charge.
Students of Espalier Experimental School with Police Commissioner of Nashik, Dr Ravinder Singal.
After conducting the exam across ten schools in Nashik in 2017, the children wanted to expand the project’s reach. A boon came their way when the Education Officer of Nashik Municipal Corporation, Nitin Upasani, issued a government circular to all Nashik schools making the Online Traffic Awareness Exam mandatory for all students.
To create enthusiasm for the project, the children wrote a song about traffic rules called ‘Sonu’ that they published online. 3,000 students have so far received a Bicycle License. Outside of Nashik, Ahmedabad’s Riverside School has also conducted the Online Traffic Awareness Exam so far.
This year, the students want to achieve a target of 10,000 students.
And over the next three years, they would like 50,000 students all over India to have their Bicycle Licenses.
Another thing that’s great about the Online Exam is that it makes it mandatory for people to fill in their mother’s name into the data fields, hence including both the father’s and mother’s names as the ‘middle name’ on the eventual certificate. This has been a practice followed at Espalier Experimental School since the past few years.
In 2015, students at Espalier had come up with a Design for Change project called ‘Take Pride, Add Mother’s Name‘, to campaign towards making it mandatory to include the mother’s names in official documents. Since then, the students and staff have maintained this practice.
By including this practice in the Bicycle Licenses as well, the children hope to give out an indirect message about gender equality to everybody who takes the test.
The students that were part of the project want to be known as Nachiket Pratibha Shreyas Ghule, Purva Anuradha Tushar Matkari, Rutuja Sangita Sunil Dorkar, Aakash Gauri Santosh Sable and Dnyanesh Anuradha Sachin Khairnar!
Students receive their Bicycle Licenses after passing the Online Traffic Awareness Exam
The project was recognised for its ‘Long Lasting Impact’ at the ‘I CAN Awards 2017’, making it among the top 20 stories of the year. Since 2009, the award ceremony that’s organised by Design for Change has attracted 14,000 stories of change from school children all over India. The event is to recognise children who are making social change in their communities and inspire them to believe that they can effect change in the world.
The founder of Espalier Experimental School, Sachin Joshi explains,
“We hope to reach the PM’s office one day and make the Online Traffic Awareness Exam mandatory for all school children to take. This will help inculcate traffic rules for road safety from a young age.”
Help spread the Bicycle License project for road safety by these school children. Share the website link for www.mybicyclelicense.com.
Be a part of one of the largest global movements of children driving social change in their communities. Take up the ‘I Can’ School Challenge. Find out more online, or reach out to Design For Change on +91-95999-16181.
Like this story? Or have something to share? Write to us:
contact@thebetterindia.com, or connect with us on Facebook and Twitter
(@thebetterindia).
Health Heroes – This article is part of a series to celebrate some of India’s most amazing doctors and to understand the incredible work they are doing.
The liver is an extraordinary organ that works tirelessly to perform innumerable functions, including detoxifying blood, producing bile to digest fat, producing essential proteins for clotting and storing essential vitamins. Any damage to the liver is therefore life-threatening.
How does the liver get damaged? What are the available treatment options?
In a one-to-one conversation with Dr Priyamvada Chugh, Dr Darius F Mirza, an eminent Hepato Pancreato Biliary (HPB) Surgeon, shares his insights on liver disease and liver transplantation in India.
With more than three decades of accomplishments in Vienna, Austria, and Birmingham, at Europe’s largest HPB and liver transplant centers, Dr Mirza recently returned to aamchi Mumbai with a vision to improve liver disease management in India.
Liver disease affects people of all ages. Among Indians, the most common causes for liver damage are viral hepatitis infection, alcohol abuse, obesity and metabolic syndrome, which can lead to fatty liver disease.
“Unlike 30 years ago, when I started practicing, viral hepatitis B and C now have effective treatments. However, alcohol-related liver disease remains a big problem, but the biggest one to worry about is the fatty liver disease,” emphasizes Dr Mirza.
So, what is the fatty liver disease?
It is a condition where fat makes up more than five percent of the liver. Strikingly, “around one in four adults in India have some amount of fatty liver disease. With its fast-growing incidence, we are certainly on the verge of a pandemic, waiting to happen,” warns D Mirza.
Fatty liver can commonly be caused by excessive consumption of alcohol as well as by unhealthy food habits, obesity, and a sedentary lifestyle–a condition called Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease. Although in its initial stages, fatty liver does not do much harm, but once escalated to a more severe form called steatohepatitis, it can lead to scarring of the liver (called ‘fibrosis’ in early stages and ‘cirrhosis’ in later stages), liver failure and even liver cancer.
While an active lifestyle and healthy diet can prevent liver disease, a cure can sometimes be possible only through liver transplantation, especially in cases of advanced liver disease.
“Patients with advanced cirrhosis develop end-stage liver disease, including liver cancer. In these situations, transplantation remains the only resort,” explains Dr Mirza.
As the cases of end-stage liver disease in India continue to increase with every passing year, “we, as a country, have a large discrepancy between the number of people who need livers for transplantation (around 50,000) and the available donors. Sadly, we are only able to perform around 1,500 liver transplants annually, because of the lack of organ donors,” shares Dr Mirza.
He adds, “We are all born with more liver than we need. While most donated livers can help one patient, some livers can be split into two, benefitting two patients, usually, a child and an adult and sometimes a single liver can even be used to help three patients.”
Living donors comprise one of the biggest sources of liver donations, owing to the remarkable ability of a healthy liver to regenerate to its original size, even after 75% of it has been removed and donated.
On the contrary, cadaver organ donation remains to be one of the most under-utilised sources for liver transplantation in India. Although states like Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Maharashtra have taken pioneering steps, we are still functioning at donor rates of 1%, compared to what has been achieved in leading western nations like Spain.
“In the Spanish model, trained transplant coordinators are based in all hospital ICUs to raise awareness and to perform transplantation procedures on cadavers with urgent timelines,” shares Dr Mirza.
On this note, if there is one Indian policy that should be changed, he says, “It would be to make the diagnosis and reporting of brain-dead patients and exploring the potential for organ donation in ICUs, a mandatory reporting event for all hospitals across India.”
Apart from lack of awareness and poor infrastructure for cadaver organ donation, the high costs of transplanting a liver is another major roadblock.
“While the costs of organ transplantation in India are much lower than in most parts of the world, they still amount to fairly large sums–around Rs 20 lakh for a liver transplant, compared to Rs 5-8 lakhs for a kidney transplant,” explains Dr Mirza.
Transplant-Help the Poor Foundation, a Mumbai-based NGO co-founded by Dr Darius Mirza, along with corporate honchos C Y Pal, Gul Kripalani and Ashok Wadhwa, as well as theatre personality Sabira Merchant is working towards easing this financial burden for the needy by providing grants towards liver transplant operations.
It is initiatives like JEET (Joint Effort to Enable Transplants) from the “Transplants – Help the Poor Foundation” that are making victories over liver disease possible.
Recently, India has also joined many developed countries in giving people the option to pledge their organs while applying for a driving license. The National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO) of India has also proposed to screen a short film on organ donation before the national anthem is played in movie theatres. While we are still far from fulfilling the need for liver transplants, each step in the right direction counts towards making India better and healthier.
The wonderful news about the Thai Cave rescue was circulated on Tuesday, 10 July. After nearly three weeks of being stuck in the dangerous caves, all the 12 boys and their football coach were finally rescued.
In the last 18 days, a local search for the missing people turned into a complex rescue mission, with help pouring in from all over the world.
Getting to the boys and bringing them back safely, certainly wasn’t an easy task. Thailand’s Navy SEALs, volunteer professional divers and even medics were all part of the team that worked hard to get the boys out of the flooded caves. However, the perpetual heavy rains did not help their cause and the team needed to pump the flooded water out so they could reach the stranded boys.
This is where Thailand approached Kirloskar Brothers Limited—a pump manufacturing company.
Among the seven-member team from Kirloskar deployed in Thailand on July 5, were Prasad Kulkarni from Sangli and Shyam Shukla, an engineer from Pune.
Shyam Shukla (third from left) and Prasad Kulkarni (third from right) at the Thai Cave Rescue. Source: Twitter/ Ali Shaikh.
Their duty was to pump out water from the 4-km-long cave even as it rained and kept the water levels high throughout the operation.
Speaking to Mumbai Mirror, Kulkarni said, “Our work was to remove water from the cave, which has sharp 90 degree turns. The incessant rainfall posed a huge problem as the water level just couldn’t recede. The generator-based power supply was erratic. So, we had to use smaller pumps. The cave is in a 20 sq km hill, which was dark and damp. Its topography is such that even scuba divers could not help at times.”
This is why pumping out water from the treacherous caves was necessary. Lower levels of water could mean a more extensive space for the divers to get to the boys.
The image below would better explain why pumping out water was important in this operation.
Shukla too elaborates on this, saying “Reaching the boys was a difficult task. The cave is very narrow and is not a plain terrain. But we managed to pump out the water from the cave.”
After the mission was completed, Thailand’s ambassador to India, Chutintorn Gongsakdi, tweeted the country’s gratitude.
“While in diplomacy, as in life, following your heart & taking the path of least resistance, is often the preferred choice; the less familiar &the more difficult path, maybe the intellectual choice that you have to make in the interest of your country.
