New Delhi , July 20,2021: Justice A K Mishra, Chairperson, National Human Rights Commission, India on Tuesday said that the States need to repeal the laws and various provisions, which are discriminating against the leprosy-affected persons.
These need to be replaced by the policies and frameworks that will protect their human rights, read a release by the NHRC.
Justice Mishra was chairing a meeting organised by the Commission to discuss the issues related to the persons affected with leprosy. He said that concerted efforts need to be made to sensitize and create necessary awareness among different stakeholders that leprosy is not a very contagious disease and that the people affected with it can be cured and can be integrated into the main-stream and co-habited with their families.
Expressing serious concern over the poor living conditions of the colonies of leprosy-affected persons, the NHRC Chairperson said that some drastic and concrete measures are required to be taken to ensure that the schemes and the funds meant for the welfare of leprosy-affected persons and their colonies are implemented with all earnest and earmarked funds are utilised properly.
He said that the Civil Society and NGOs also need to work more sincerely to ameliorate the cause of leprosy-affected persons and to integrate their colonies with the mainstream of society. Concerted efforts also need to be made to convince leprosy-affected persons to go back to their homes, the release said.
The meeting was attended by NHRC Members Justice M M Kumar and Rajiv Jain, Secretary-General, Bimbadhar Pradhan, Additional Secretary, R K Khandelwal, experts Vineeta Shanker, former Executive Director of Sasakawa India Leprosy Foundation and Nikita Sarah of Leprosy Mission India, among others.
“During the discussions, it was strongly felt that besides several problems notwithstanding, the COVID-19 pandemic further worsened the condition of leprosy-affected persons, particularly with regards to their food and livelihood,” read the release.
Some of the other important suggestions that emerged during the discussions include States need to conduct a study to know how many leprosy cases are being reported every year to understand whether the disease is declining or increasing in the country.
It also emphasised on the need for States to conduct a study to know the number of colonies of leprosy-affected persons and the number of people living there.
“States need to appoint a nodal welfare officer to act as a bridge between the State machinery and the colonies of leprosy-affected persons to help them get benefits of the Government schemes; Focus on the education and counselling of the children of leprosy affected people to overcome the stigma and help them integrate with the mainstream of the society; Ensure that sanitation, water, electricity and other basic amenities including healthcare, financial assistance is provided to the leprosy-affected people living in the separate colonies; Provide them skills for their socio-economic empowerment to earn sustainable livelihoods with dignity; and States need to set-up a system of monitoring of funds given to NGOs working for the welfare of leprosy-affected persons to ensure proper utilisation of funds,” read the suggestions as per the NHRC release.
Mumbai , March 4,2021: Maharashtra Minister Ashok Chavan on Wednesday said that the central government’s role will be very important on the issue of Maratha reservation.
“During a question on Maratha reservation, we have replied and have discussed that the central government’s role will be very important. As the hearing in the Supreme Court begins and the central government has also been made a party in this case, this case must be kept in front of a larger bench. This is a time for the central government also to get involved in it for Maratha reservation,” said Chavan.
“There are many states in which the reservation has to exceed fifty per cent too,” he added.
Last year on December 22, Chavan had chaired a meeting of the state cabinet’s sub-committee on Maratha reservation and discussed the strategy of the state government to be adopted in the final hearing of the matter before the Supreme Court which started from January 25.
The top court later posted for March 8 the final hearing of petitions challenging the Bombay High Court verdict upholding reservations to Marathas in jobs and education under Maharashtra Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) Act, 2018.
A five-judge constitution bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan said the matter will now be listed on March 8 for final hearing and it proposed to complete the hearing by March 18.
The top court in 2019 had restrained the Maharashtra government by an interim order to implement the quota law.
The Bombay High Court had on June 27, 2019, observed that the 50 per cent cap on total reservations imposed by the Supreme Court could be exceeded in exceptional circumstances.
An appeal filed in the top court by advocate Sanjeet Shukla, a representative of Youth for Equality, said the SEBC Act, 2018, enacted to grant reservation to the Maratha community people in jobs and education, breached the 50 per cent ceiling on reservation fixed by the apex court in its judgment in the Indira Sawhney case.
London:Oct 14,2020: India is among seven countries to back a UK-led campaign against end-to-end encryption of messages by social media giants such as Facebook, which they say hinder law enforcement by blocking all access to them.
The UK and India are joined by the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan in a joint international statement addressed to all tech companies to ensure they do not blind themselves to illegal activity on their platforms, including child abuse images.
It marks an expansion of the so-called “Five Eyes” group of nations, a global alliance on intelligence issues, to include India and Japan.
We owe it to all of our citizens, especially our children, to ensure their safety by continuing to unmask sexual predators and terrorists operating online, said UK home secretary Priti Patel, in reference to the statement issued on Sunday.
It is essential that tech companies do not turn a blind eye to this problem and hamper their, as well as law enforcement’s, ability to tackle these sickening criminal acts. Our countries urge all tech companies to work with us to find a solution that puts the public’s safety first, she said.
While directed at all tech firms, the statement does make a reference to the fact that the populations of the seven signatory countries represent a fifth of Facebook’s users across the world and claimed that end-to-end encryption policies such as those employed by the social media giant erode the public’s safety online.
The seven signatories of the international statement have made it clear that when end-to-end encryption is applied with no access to content, it severely undermines the ability of companies to take action against illegal activity on their own platforms, it notes.
It also prevents law enforcement investigating and prosecuting the most serious crimes being committed on these services such as online child sexual abuse, grooming and terrorist content, it said.
The statement calls on tech companies to ensure there is no reduction in user safety when designing their encrypted services; to enable law enforcement access to content where it is necessary and proportionate; and work with governments to facilitate this.
The UK and its international partners are clear that they support strong encryption, but not where it is applied in a way that precludes all legal access to content, therefore putting the public at significant risk of harm, the statement notes.
In response, Facebook said it had long argued that end-to-end encryption is necessary to protect people’s most private information.
“In all of these countries, people prefer end-to-end encrypted messaging on various apps because it keeps their messages safe from hackers, criminals, and foreign interference,” a Facebook spokesperson said.
Facebook has led the industry in developing new ways to prevent, detect, and respond to abuse while maintaining high security and we will continue to do so, the spokesperson said.
London, Jun 8: The rise and prosperity of an urban neighbourhood may not only be based on economic capital, but also the presence of a vibrant arts, music and science culture, scientists say.
In a study published in the journal Frontiers in Physics, the researchers used social media images of cultural events in London and New York City on image hosting site Flickr to create a model that can predict neighbourhoods where residents enjoy a high level of wellbeing.
With more than half of the world’s population living in cities, the model could help policy makers ensure human wellbeing in dense urban settings.
“Culture has many benefits to an individual: it opens our minds to new emotional experiences and enriches our lives,” said Daniele Quercia, Department Head at Nokia Bell Labs, Cambridge, UK.
“We’ve known for decades that this ‘cultural capital’ plays a huge role in a person’s success. Our new model shows the same correlation for neighbourhoods and cities, with those neighbourhoods experiencing the greatest growth having high cultural capital,” said Quercia.
The researchers accessed millions of Flickr images taken by people attending cultural events in London and in New York City over ten years.
The events included festivals, libraries, cinema, art exhibitions, musical performances, technological demos, handicraft artisans, restaurants, museums, newspaper stands and theater.
The team organised the images, which all had global positioning system (GPS) tags indicating the place and time taken, into 25 categories.
They also cleaned the data to adjust for outliers, accounting for issues such as many museums not allowing photos of exhibits and different generations gravitating to different choices.
“We were able to see that the presence of culture is directly tied to the growth of certain neighbourhoods, rising home values and median income,” said Quercia.
“This could help city planners and councils think through interventions to prevent people from being displaced as a result of gentrification,” he said.
“We already have data from wearable technology showing that both the 2016 US presidential election and 2016 Brexit referendum greatly impacted people’s sleep and even heart rates,” said Luca M Aiello from the University of Cambridge in the UK.
“Information on cultural consumption could similarly be used to track the impacts of large-scale change,” said Aiello.