Habitat for Humanity
With the sun disappearing stealthily on the horizon and shadows lengthening on the platform, Howrah-Puri Shatabdi screeched to a halt at Balasore. My host Dr Rabinarayan Dash spotted me among the crowd and rushed to greet me.
“Hey, you’re finally at Balasore,” said Dr Rabi, a renowned rheumatologist based in Lund, Sweden. I was supposed to visit his native village, Badasindhiya, 10km from downtown Balasore.
Destination: Kalitala High School, Hingalganj block, on the India-Bangladesh border, 120 km from Kolkata
Protagonist: A young teacher
This is the story of a teacher, of her intense passion for teaching, of her undying spirit and above all her daily struggle for survival. She’s been taking the long and arduous journey from Dum Dum to a remote hamlet called Kalitala in Hingalganj in north 24 Parganas on the India-Bangladesh border over the past five years.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has identified as many as 221 journalists in jail around the world in 2014. In 2013 the number was 211. The tally marks the second-highest number of journalists in jail since CPJ began taking an annual census of imprisoned journalists in 1990.
I wonder why freedom of expression is taken away by those countries which have thrown valiant journalists into prisons. I condemn all these attempts at muffling free press.
Jail those scribes who are dishonest, tell lies and resort to falsehood, but not those who are apostles of honesty and rectitude and who always stand by truth, come what may.
Let truth prevail.
Arup Bhandari laid down his life on February 2 fighting to protect women’s dignity. The brave soul fought goons single-handedly but slumped to ground when he was hit with sticks and rods. The intrepid 23-year-old from Salkia, Howrah, who sometimes worked as a civic police volunteer, faced the fury and wrath of five young men when he raised his voice and protested against women’s harassment.
He died unnoticed, unsung.
Today (24 January) is Rastriya Balika Diwas.
Haryana has the worst sex ratio (number of females per 1,000 males) and child sex ratio in India. Out of the 100 worst districts in India for sex ratio, Haryana accounts for 12 districts.
That’s why Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose Haryana to launch the nationwide campaign called Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao (Save Girl Child, Educate Her). The scheme will focus on fighting female foeticide and empowering women through education.
Lack of flexibility at workplace, paid family leave and affordable childcare make things difficult for working parents in the U.S. It is time for implementing workplace policies that give all workers the best chance to succeed at work and at home.
According to the 2013 World Happiness Report released by Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Denmark is the world’s happiest country. The report says Denmark is followed by Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden in happiness index. Rwanda, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Benin and Togo — all nations in Sub-Saharan Africa — are the least satisfied with their lives, according to the survey of 156 countries.
The US comes in at number 17 in the world in terms of overall happiness, but it still lags behind Canada (6), Australia (10), Israel (11), the UAE (14) and Mexico (16), according to the Earth Institute.
The report ranks the UK as the 22nd happiest country in the world. Other major nations included Germany (26), Japan (43), Russia (68) and China (93).
The global survey was conducted between 2010 and 2012 and follows the Earth Institute’s first rankings released last year. While “the world has become a slightly happier and more generous place over the past five years,” economic and political upheavals have resulted in greatly reduced levels of well being for some nations, the report said.
Rankings for Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain fell dramatically because of the impact of the eurozone crisis, while Egypt, Myanmar and Saudi Arabia registered a steep fall in the wake of recent political and civil turmoil.
Egypt had the greatest fall in happiness levels. On a scale of 1 to 10 — with 10 rated as happiest — Egypt averaged 4.3 in 2012, compared to 5.4 in 2007.
“We expect, and find, that these losses are far greater than would follow simply from lower incomes,” the report said, noting that the greatest single factor reducing happiness levels in these countries was a reduction in people’s perceived “freedom to make key life choices.”
Angola, Zimbabwe and Albania experienced the largest increases across all the countries surveyed.
“On a regional basis, by far the largest gains in life evaluations in terms of the prevalence and size of the increases have been in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in Sub-Saharan Africa,” the report said. Reduced levels of corruption also contributed to the rise.
Governments seeking to improve the happiness of their populations should spend a higher proportion of their health budgets on mental illness, which is the single biggest “determinant of misery” in countries assessed, the study authors said.
“People can be unhappy for many reasons — from poverty to unemployment to family breakdown to physical illness,” the report said. “But in any particular society, chronic mental illness is a highly influential cause of misery. If we want a happier world, we need a completely new deal on mental health.”
The 2013 World Happiness Report comes on the back of a growing global movement calling for governments and policy makers to reduce their emphasis on achieving economic growth and focus on policies that can improve people’s overall well-being.
An idea first proposed in 1972 by Bhutan’s former King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the concept of “happiness economics” has now gained traction in many countries across the world, including the UK, Germany and South Korea. The UN first encouraged member countries to measure and use happiness of their people to guide public policies in July 2011.
“It is important to balance economic measures of societal progress with measures of subjective well-being to ensure that economic progress leads to broad improvements across life domains, not just greater economic capacity,” the report said.
Thanks for stopping by.
