UN Photo/Cia Pak – Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj of India addresses the seventy-third session of the United Nations General Assembly.

NEW YORK, Sept. 29 : External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Saturday launched a blistering attack on Pakistan, accusing it of glorifying terrorists, glorifying them and turning a blind eye to the innocent victims of terrorism. 

Addressing the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly here, she described terrorism as the second existential threat to humanity. She cautioned that the demon of terrorism was stalking the world at a faster pace somewhere and a slower pace somewhere else but was threatening life everywhere. 

Pointing to the collusion of Pakistan in abetting and encouraging terrorism, she said that both the masterminds behind 9/11 attack in New York and 26/11 in Mumbai were from Pakistan from where the world’s most wanted terrorist and 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden was hunted down by the American intelligence and security agencies. 

“In our case, terrorism is bred not in some faraway land, but across our border to the west. Our neighbour’s expertise is not restricted to spawning grounds for terrorism; it is also an expert in trying to mask malevolence with verbal duplicity,” she told the UNGA.

In her 40-minute address delivered in Hindi, she accused Pakistan of duplicity despite the most startling evidence of Osama bin Laden, the architect of W9/11, having given safe haven in that country. 

But Pakistan continued to behave as if nothing had happened, she said adding that  Pakistan’s commitment to terrorism as an instrument of official policy has not abated one bit. Neither has its belief in hypocrisy. The killers of 9/11 met their fate; but the mastermind of 26/11 Hafiz Saeed still roams the streets of Pakistan with impunity, the External Affairs Minister said. 

“What is heartening is that the world is no longer ready to believe Islamabad. FATF, for instance, has put Pakistan on notice over terror funding,” she told the UN General Assembly. 

Asserting that it was India which believed that talks are the only rational means to resolve the most complex issues, she said that India is being accused of sabotaging the process of talks with Pakistan. 

“This is a complete lie. We believe that talks are the only rational means to resolve the most complex of disputes. Talks with Pakistan have begun many times. If they stopped, it was only because of Pakistan’s behavior. There have been many governments in India, by many different parties. Each government has tried the peace option,” she said. 

Ms. Swaraj said that Prime Minister Modi, by inviting the Heads of the SAARC nations, to his swearing in ceremony, began his attempt for dialogue on his very first day in office.

“On 9th December 2016, I personally went to Islamabad and offered a comprehensive bilateral dialogue. But soon after, Pak sponsored terrorists attacked our air force base in Pathankot on 2nd January. Please explain to me how we could pursue talks in the midst of terrorist bloodshed? Even now, after the new government came to power, the Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan wrote to Prime Minister Modi suggesting a meeting between Foreign Ministers in New York. We accepted the proposal. But, within hours of our acceptance, news came that terrorists had killed three of our jawans. Does this indicate a desire for dialogue?” she said. 

Accusing Pakistan of glorifying killers and terrorists, she said it refuses to see the blood of innocents and it has become a habit with Pakistan to throw the dust of deceit and deception against India to  in order to provide some thin cover for its own guilt. 

Last year, Pakistan’s representative, using her right to reply, displayed some photographs as “proof” of “human rights violations” by India. The photographs turned out to be from another country. Similar false accusations have become a part of its standard rhetoric, she said. 

She said that India has been arguing from this podium that lists are not enough to check terrorists and their protectors. “We need to bring them to accountability through international law,” she said. 

Ms. Swaraj appealed to all national to arrive at a consensus on a common definition of terrorism. “On the one hand, we want to fight terrorism; on the other, we cannot define it. This is why terrorists with a price on their head are celebrated , finances and armed as liberation heroes by a country that remains a member of the United Nations. Cruelty and barbarism are advertised as heroism. The country prints postage stamps glorifying terrorists. If we do not act now, we will have to deal with conflagration later,” she said. 

Dwelling upon urgently needed UN reforms, she said that slowly the importance, influence, respect and value of this institution is beginning to ebb.“It is time to wonder if we are wandering towards the fate of the League of Nations,” she cautioned. 

“The United Nations must accept that it needs fundamental reform. Reform cannot be cosmetic. We need change the institution’s head and heart to make both compatible to contemporary reality.  Reform must begin today; tomorrow could be too late. If the UN is ineffective, the whole concept of multilateralism will collapse,” she said. 

Ms. Swaraj said India will never weaken the multilateral mechanism. “India believes that the world is a family, and the best means of resolution is shared discourse. A family is shaped by love and is not transactional; a family is nurtured by consideration not greed; a family believes in harmony not jealousy. Greed breeds conflict; consideration leads to resolution. That is why the United Nations must be based on the principles of the family. The UN cannot be run by the ‘I’, it only works by the ‘We’,” she said in her appeal. 

“Arrogance has no place in our scheme of things; arrogance is counter-productive and self-defeating. Let us work for the benefit of the less fortunate. Let us work for a world where there is peace, serenity and shared prosperity; a world that is free from terrorism, tension and violence,” she said in her forceful plea. 

Earlier, in her address the External Affairs Minister also dwelt upon a number of social welfare schemes launched under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi and recounted the success of government programmes like financial inclusion through Jan Dhan yojana, universal health insurance scheme, housing for all, skill development and the mission to make India clean, secure and developed by 2022. 

New Delhi : Public Outreach and Education Committee (POEC) of the Astronomical Society of India (ASI), and the AstroSat Training and Outreach Team is all set to add a new feature to its one year old campaign to bring ISRO’s Astrosat space observatory closer to the general public. 

The two organisations have now decided to come out with layman friendly reports every month on research papers published by scientists on their work using instruments on-board the observatory.  This will be in addition to monthly release of Astrosat images under the `AstroSat Picture of the Month (APOM)’  programme which started a year ago. 

Speaking to India Science Wire, Dr. Niruj Mohan Ramanujam of ASI POEC, said students from across the country have been following the images with curiosity and interest. With the new feature to be introduced from next month, they would also get a closer view of the research work that are going on with the help of the satellite. 

AstroSat is India’s first dedicated multi-wavelength space observatory launched by ISRO on 28 September 2015. It has five telescopes – four of which can look at the same part of sky simultaneously. These give it unique capability of observing in the ultraviolet, X-rays as well as gamma rays. 

Astronomers have been using the instruments to study diverse celestial phenomena in galaxies, exploding stars, neutron stars and black holes. These studies have enabled them to investigate the nature of matter at extremely high temperatures, under very high magnetic fields, and sometimes in very violent environments. 

Each APOM features a picture, accompanied by a short text explaining why the image is interesting. Readers are encouraged to go further and learn more about the concepts mentioned, through various web-links, which are provided. 

Over the past year, APOM has featured ultraviolet images of star clusters and remnants of supernova explosions in the Milky Way, as well as nearby galaxies. It has covered galaxies that are interacting with each other, including those that are merging together. It has brought out clusters of galaxies, including gas ripped away from galaxies falling into these gigantic clusters. All the images in APOM have been taken from research papers published in astronomy journals. The accompanying text is at a level aimed at school and college students. This month’s APOM features a photograph of the observatory itself, taken after its assembly to mark the third anniversary of AstroSat and its first anniversary.  (India Science Wire)

New Delhi : A new study has estimated the size of Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile to be lower than present estimates, attributing it to shortage of uranium. 

The study estimates that Pakistan could at best have between 112 and 156 nuclear weapons. Of them, about 78 to 104 would be highly enriched uranium (HEU)-based weapons and 34 to 52 would be plutonium weapons. 

A 2016 study by American researchers had estimated the size of Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile to be in the range of 204 to 306 in 2014. According to the International Panel for Fissile Materials (IPFM), Pakistan had 120 to 130 warheads made up of both types at the end 2010. 

“We believe that because of uranium shortages, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal has reached a plateau and can only grow very slowly. Any alternative explanation for an increased arsenal size should provide a satisfactory and consistent explanation for uranium sourcing by Pakistan,” the researchers have said in their study published in Current Science, flagship scientific journal of the Bangalore-based Indian Academy of Sciences. 

In the absence of any direct information about weapon production capacities of different countries, the amount of fissile material that a country possesses is used to determine the number of nuclear weapons it can make. The new study does the same, but researchers say they looked at the demand and supply situations in Pakistan in an integrated way. The estimate is based on publicly available information about nuclear facilities of Pakistan and on certain assumptions such quality of uranium ore and burn up of reactors. 

The analysis takes into account demand of domestically produced yellowcake or uranium concentrate in three major facilities – Karachi Nuclear Power Plant, Kahuta enrichment facility and plutonium production reactors at Khushab. 

If it is assumed that the Karachi plant operates for 150 days on an average and the capacity of Kahuta is taken as 11,000 SWU (Separative Work Unit) along with low burn-up of Khushab reactors, the total (cumulative) demand for yellowcake to feed all three facilities comes to 1884 tonnes. As against this, Pakistan would have produced 1584 tonnes of yellowcake cumulatively till 2014. The Karachi power reactors would have needed 805 tonnes of yellowcake for continuing operations till the end of 2014, leaving the rest for production of HEU and plutonium to be used in weapons programme, the study says.

Given the information about working of enrichment and plutonium production facilities till 2010, Pakistan would have accumulated 1482 kg of HEU and 154 kg of weapon grade plutonium. “The non-availability of yellowcake after 2010 makes it imperative that these estimates of nuclear weapons are valid as of 2014,” the paper says. For making one HEU weapon, the estimate used is 12 to 18 kg of HEU, while it is 4 to 6 kg of plutonium per weapon for the second type.

“Pakistan does not have high grade uranium ore in the country. It is well known that Pakistan is not a major uranium producing country. Its potential uranium reserves are also not very large, though many of the areas are still unexplored,” explained Lalitha Sundaresan of the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, who has co-authored the paper with Kaveri Ashok of the Center for Science, Technology and Policy, Bengaluru. 

Security experts, however, remain skeptical of the new estimate. “I am not sure of the assessments since there are always so many assumptions made when calculating the fissile material available – the burn in power reactors, the quality of uranium ore and so on. All external estimates put Pakistan as having more nuclear weapons. The point is: does it matter? I would imagine (one just requires) 50 or even 10 weapons (for) deterring an adversary,” commented Dr Manoj Joshi, Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. (India Science Wire)

Appreciating the Mental Health Act 2017 through which their have been moves to decriminalise suicide in India, a commentary published in the Lancet Public Health 2018 has said a pivotal next step will be to carry this momentum towards the development of a national suicide prevention plan.

The commentary “Suicide in India: a complex public health tragedy in need of a plan’’ by Gregory Armstrong and Lakshmi Vijayakumar, believes that such a national plan would indicate political commitment and give justified prominence to the issue of suicide prevention, attract resources, set strategic research and programme priorities, and provide guidance in mainstreaming suicide prevention across other health and social policies.

Quoting a paper by Rakhi Dandona and colleagues, reported in The Lancet Public Health, which uses data from the Global Burden of Disease study to provide much needed estimations of SDRs across India from 1990 to 2016, the commentary says that the suicide statistics published by the National Crime Records Bureau are based on police reports and under-reporting and misclassification of suicide deaths is common.

Dandona and colleagues estimated the national age-standardised SDR for 2016 to be 17·9 per 100000 population (14·7 per 100000 among women and 21·2 per 100000 among men), equating to an estimated 230000 suicide deaths annually (100000 more suicide deaths than recognised by the NCRB data).

In India, the official suicide rate for 2015 published by the NCRB of India was 10·6 per 100000 population, similar to the global average of 11·4 per 100000 population and equating to 133623 deaths registered as suicides.

Such sobering figures ought to be galvanising, yet coordination at the national level has been slow. Although there are substantially more suicide deaths in India each year than AIDS-related deaths (62000 in 2016) and maternal deaths (45000 in 2015) combined, suicide prevention has attracted considerably less public health attention. Nonetheless, a public health approach to suicide prevention is gaining momentum in India, the commentary says.

Suicide prevention planning should be grounded in a broader public health approach framed around multisectoral collaboration and equal acknowledgement of the socioeconomic and cultural determinants of suicide and suicide prevention in India. Population-level approaches such as responsible media reporting of suicides and the central storage or removal of highly hazardous pesticides from agricultural practices should also feature prominently, as should selective interventions targeting at-risk subpopulations. 

Evidence provided by Dandona and colleagues should prompt the development of national and state-level suicide prevention planning, galvanising political and community will to address this complex public health tragedy, the piece says while suggesting that there is clearly an imperative to obtain better suicide mortality and suicide attempt data.

Surveillance of suicide attempts and self-harm cases presenting to health facilities would be beneficial, as would the continuous improvement of suicide research, so that policy makers have a greater understanding of this complex issue and what works and what does not.

Secondly, suicide prevention planning should address the substantial regional and state-level variation in suicide rates. India has an enormous and diverse population, with several states home to populations large enough to make it on their own into the top 20 most populous countries in the world.

Thirdly, suicide prevention planning should give close consideration to trends by sex and age. Female suicide in India is exceptionally high by international standards and must be a core focus, and it is encouraging that female suicide rates have declined slightly since 1990.8 Nonetheless, the persistently high male suicide rates must also be addressed to have any hope of achieving the SDG target. To do so, there is a need for a broader perspective on male suicide that extends beyond the highly politicised issue of farmer suicide.

Finally, suicide prevention is not solely or even primarily the domain of mental health practitioner providing interventions for suicidal individuals. While not losing sight of the substantially heightened suicide risk for people with mental disorders, suicide is a complex and highly stigmatised issue in India, as it is elsewhere, the commentators suggest.

New Delhi:  Union Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday launched DigiVAARTA, a multi-channel citizen engagement programme that can run on both feature and smartphones. 

“DigiVAARTA is a welcome addition to the government’s drive to promote adoption and awareness on digital payments. It is an easy way to educate citizens on the use of digital tools for banking and payments,” said Mr Prasad at the inauguration of the NIC Centre of Excellence for Data Analytics in the Capital which also saw the launch of the initial phase of the DigiVAARTA programme and is focussed on increasing awareness on digital payments.

The technology underlying the multi-channel engagement programme is SAMWAD –  a platform for intuitive and interactive communication – supported by Centre for Digital Financial Inclusion (CDFI). 

Developed with an objective to increase awareness and familiarity of individuals on various financial products and services and to educate the unbanked and under-banked individuals, SAMWAD provides enabling engagement across multiple channels in the form of stories, images and videos in any chosen language. 

The learnings and insights from research studies commissioned by CDFI resulted in an idea of a larger engagement tool that could be used by the government to communicate with the citizens of the country. It is this that led to DigiVAARTA, which is customized and re-branded form of SAMWAD that is being deployed for MeiTY by CDFI.

The initial phase of DIGIVAARTA will help and promote learning in digital payments and empower users to draw content on topics as per their choice. DIGIVAARTA will initially be in Hindi and English languages and will engage with users through multiple channels – over Mobile App, SMS and OBD (Outbound Dialler).

To operationalise this programme, besides Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and CDFI, National Informatics Centre (NIC) has been a key stakeholder and has helped set-up, host and liaise with regulatory and telecom service providers. 

Speaking on the occasion, Krishnan Dharmarajan, Executive Director, CDFI said, “We learnt from a pilot in rural Karnataka, that while the poor were happy to engage on the platform, they were worried about the money that was getting deducted as sms charges. So MeitY decided that such exchanges be kept toll-free, so that people could engage, learn and get empowered at zero cost. “

“We needed a special number from which Govt could broadcast at scale and where citizens could also respond. DOT and TRAI quickly saw the power of the idea, and extended their wholehearted support by granting us 14444 for the purpose,” Mr. Dharmarajan said.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the validity of the Aadhaar document but with modifications holding that the unique identity number will not be needed for opening bank accounts, admissions in schools or for getting mobile phone connections.

A five-member bench of the apex court headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra struck down Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act which allows private entities to demand Aadhaar to access their services.

The court also said that as of today “we do not find anything in Aadhaar Act which violates right to privacy of individual citizen”.

The judgement, read out by Justice A.K. Sikri on behalf of the bench, also struck down the provision in Aadhaar law allowing the sharing of Aadhaar data, citing grounds of national security.

The judges who gave majority ruling were A.M. Khanwilkar, Ashok Bhushan, Misra and Sikri who approved the provision of money bill.

“We are of the view that there are sufficient safeguard to protect data collected under Aadhaar scheme,” the judgement said. 

Linking of Aadhaar to issuing mobile phone connections and opening bank accounts was unconstitutional, the court held.

In a separate judgement, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said the Aadhaar Act cannot be treated as money bill. Passing a legislation which was not money bill as money bill was a fraud on the Constitution.

He also observed there was a risk of surveillance of people on the basis of data collected under Aadhaar scheme and that the data could be misused. 

The majority of the bench held that Aadhaar was valid for linking with Income Tax returns. 

The verdict said that it was better to be unique than the best because being the “best makes you number one, but being unique makes you the only one.

“Uniqueness is the fundamental difference between Aadhaar and other identity proofs. There is a fundamental difference between Aadhaar and other identity proof as Aadhaar cannot be duplicated and it is a unique identification,” it said. 

The judgement said that UIDAI was established as a statutory body, providing for authentication and all residents were eligible to get Aadhaar which cannot be reassigned to anyone.

“Minimal demographic and biometric data of citizens are collected by UIDAI for Aadhaar enrolment. We are of the view that there are sufficient safeguard to protect data collected under Aadhaar scheme,” it said.

The court said that Aadhaar was meant to give dignity to marginalised sections. However, authentication of data through Aadhaar cannot be stored for more than six months.

It said Aadhaar was meant to help benefits reach marginalised sections and it took into account the dignity of people not only from the personal but also the community point of view.

“No person will be denied benefits under social welfare scheme because of failure of authentication through Aadhaar,” the court said. 

“We direct the government to ensure that illegal migrants are not issued Aadhaar to get benefits of social welfare schemes.” 

The court said that institutions like the CBSE and UGC cannot make Aadhaar mandatory. 

“Aadhaar for school education would not be necessary because it is neither welfare nor subsidy,” the court said, holding that Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan does not require Aadhaar.

India has marginally improved its rank to 158^thin the world for its investments in education and health care as measurements of its commitment to economic growth, according to a scientific study ranking countries for their levels of human capital.

The nation is placed just behind Sudan (ranked 157^th) and just ahead of Namibia (ranked 159^th). The United States ranked 27^th, while China placed 44^th and Pakistan 164^th.

“Our findings show the association between investments in education and health and improved human capital and GDP – which policymakers ignore at their own peril,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. Â“As the world economy grows increasingly dependent on digital technology, from agriculture to manufacturing to the service industry, human capital grows increasingly important for stimulating local and national economies.”

India’s rankling of 158^thin 2016 represents an improvement from its 1990 ranking of 162^nd. It comes from having seven years of expected human capital, measured as the number of years a person can be expected to work in the years of peak productivity, taking into account life expectancy, functional health, years of schooling, and learning.

Overall, India’s residents had 39 out of a possible 45 years of life between the ages of 20 and 64; expected educational attainment of 10 years out of a possible of 18 years in school; and a learning score of 66and a functional health score of 43, both out of 100. Learning is based on average student scores on internationally comparable tests. Components measured in the functional health score include stunting, wasting, anemia, cognitive impairments, hearing and vision loss, and infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis.

The study, “Measuring human capital: A systematic analysis of 195 countries and territories, 1990 to 2016,” was published in the international medical journalThe Lancet. It is based on a systematic analysis of an extensive array of data from numerous sources, including government agencies, schools, and health care systems.

The study places Finland at the top. Turkey showed the most dramatic increase in human capital between 1990 and 2016; Asian countries with notable improvement include China, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam. Within Latin America, Brazil stands out for improvement. All these countries have had faster economic growth over this period than peer countries with lower levels of human capital improvement.

In addition, the greatest increase among sub-Saharan African countries was in Equatorial Guinea. Some of the world’s most rapid improvements were in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Over the past quarter century, there has been limited progress in building human capital in selected countries that started at a high baseline. The US was ranked sixth in human capital in 1990 but dropped to 27^th in 2016 because of minimal progress, particularly in educational attainment, which declined from 13 years to 12.

Health and education advocates, economists, and others should use the findings as evidence to argue for greater attention to – and resources for – improving their nations’ human capital. 

“Under-investing in people may be driven by lack of policy attention to the levels of human capital,” Murray said. “No regular, comparable reporting across all countries on human capital currently exists. Such reporting over the next generation – as a way to measure investments in health and education – will enable leaders to be held accountable to their constituents.”

Researchers found that nations with greater improvements in human capital also tend to have faster growth in per capita GDP. Countries in the highest quartile of improvements in human capital between 1990 and 2016 had a 1.1% higher median yearly GDP growth rate than countries in the bottom quartile of human capital improvements. For example, between 2015 and 2016, a 1.1% increase in the GDP growth rate in China equated to an additional $163 per capita; in Turkey, $268 per capita; and in Brazil, $177 per capita.

The study focuses on the number of productive years an individual in each country can be expected to work between the ages of 20 to 64, taking into account years of schooling, learning in school, and functional health. The calculation is based on systematic analysis of 2,522 surveys and censuses providing data on years of schooling; testing scores on language, math, and science; and health levels related to economic productivity. .

Rankings for the 10 most populous countries in 2016, in addition to China, India, and the United States were Indonesia (131st), Brazil (71st), Pakistan (164th), Nigeria (171st), Bangladesh (161st), Russia (49th), and Mexico (104th).

There were notable differences in expected human capital by sex in 2016. Across the board, expected years lived between 20 and 64 years are greater in females than in males. In addition, health status tends to be higher among females than males, with the exception of high-income countries. In terms of the overall measure, for countries below 10 years of expected human capital, rates of human capital tend to be higher in males, while countries above 10 years tend to have higher expected human capital for females

 Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday said the BJP’s differences with Congress President Rahul Gandhi were “political and nor personal” in nature.

Speaking at an interactive event at a management institute in Lucknow, his Lok Sabha constituency, Singh said the Bharatiya Janata Party always believed in differing on political and ideological issues and never took things to personal level.

Asked by a student about Gandhi’s increasing number of visits to temples, the Minister said this was done keeping in mind the 2019 parliamentary polls.

When a student asked him on the growing perception that India was leaning towards the US, he said New Delhi’s foreign policy was guided by the traditional credo of “Na kahu se dosti, na kahu se bair” (Friend of none and enemy of none). 

“We want good relationship with all countries,” he added.

Queried about the government’s stand on the contentious Section 370 of the Constitution, which gives special status to Jammu and Kashmir, the Minister appeared to fumble for a while and then asked the student who had asked her to raise this question.

“If I utter a word on this, it will become international news… You should wait… Some decisions have to be taken with great seriousness and deliberations.”

Rajnath Singh quickly added that Jammu and Kashmir was an integral part of India and will always remain one. “Nobody can take away the state from us.”

While smart pills have emerged as the new digital health tool that help patients and doctors track drug regimen compliance as well as increase patient adherence, its ethical issues such as patient privacy, consent and data sharing must be addressed, researchers argue.

Smart pills, or digital pills, are prescription medications equipped with edible electronic sensors that send wireless messages to devices, like patches and smartphones or tablets, outside the body when they are ingested. 

Health care providers and policymakers need to exercise caution in allowing this technology in patient care settings as it can also dump down the doctor-patient relationship, the researchers warned.

“Smart pills are a dangerous reduction of the provider-patient relationship and there is no shortcut to improving patient adherence, which happens in a larger framework of home, work and clinical environments, not to mention perceptions and emotions,” said Eric Swirsky, clinical Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). 

Swirsky said that there is simply no evidence yet to suggest smart pills benefit patients as much as traditional medical care.

“It is naive to think that this type of surveilled compliance with provider-recommended drug treatments will function like a magic pill. 

“More likely, it will just challenge the ingenuity of patients. 

“This technology dumbs down an issue that is often very complex in the hopes of quickly solving an expensive medical challenge,” Swirsky said. 

The study, published in the American Journal of Bioethics, warned that smart pills should be evaluated based on their clinical efficacy against the standard of care drugs, like any other intervention, not based only on compliance or cost savings.

Use of data-based technology should also not outpace public policy and legislation in properly regulating how this data is shared, used or purchased by companies, said Andrew Boyd, Associate Professor at the UIC.

“Health information technology functions best when implemented in conjunction with doctors and patients in a collaborative manner,” the researchers said. 

“With no magic pill to cure the ills of the modern doctor-patient relationship, patients would be better served by providers who seek a comprehensive understanding of adherence than those who employ technology they do not understand.”

India has nearly halved its number of multidimensional poverty between 2005-6 and 2015-16 by climbing down to 27.5 percent from 54.7 percent, according to estimates from the 2018 global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).

But while there is much to be done, there are promising signs that such poverty can be – and is being – tackled. In India, the first country for which progress over time has been estimated, 271 million people moved out of poverty between 2005/06 and 2015/16. The poverty rate here has nearly halved, falling from around 55 percent to around 28 percent over the 10-year period.

Among South Asian countries, only Maldives has a lower headcount ratio than India at 1.9 percent, with Nepal (35.3 percent), Bangladesh (41.1 percent), and Pakistan (43.9) having higher incidences of multidimensional poverty. Though the traditionally disadvantaged groups – across states, castes, religions, and ages-are still the poorest, they have also experienced the biggest reductions in MPI through the decade, showing that they have been “catching up”. This is in line with global trends, where deeper progress among the poorest groups is reflected in the global MPI being cut by half.

Despite the massive gains made in reducing multidimensional poverty, 364 million Indians continue to experience acute deprivations in health, nutrition, schooling and sanitation. Just over one in four multidimensionally poor people in India are under ten years of age.

Pockets of poverty are found across India, but multidimensional poverty is particularly acute – and significant – in the four states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. These accounted for 196 million MPI poor people – more than half of all MPI poor in India.

But there was also progress. Jharkhand made the biggest strides among all states in reducing multidimensional poverty, with Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and Nagaland only slightly behind.

Delhi, Kerala and Goa have the lowest incidence of multidimensional poverty.

Across nearly every state, poor nutrition is the largest contributor to multidimensional poverty. Not having a household member with at least six years of education is the second largest contributor. Insufficient access to clean water and child mortality contribute least. Relatively fewer people living in poverty experience deprivations in school attendance, the report says.

The MPI looks beyond income to understand how people experience poverty in multiple and simultaneous ways. It identifies how people are being left behind across three key dimensions: health, education and living standards, and 10 indicators – nutrition, child mortality, years of schooling, school attendance, sanitation, cooking fuel, drinking water, electricity, housing and assets. Those who are deprived in at least a third of the MPI’s components are defined as multidimensionally poor, the report said.

The 2018 report, which is now closely aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, cover almost three-quarters of the world’s population. The 2015-16 district-level calculations of the incidences of multidimensional poverty for India has been sourced from the National Family Health Survey IV. The data for 2005-06 is from the National Family Health Survey III.

In 104 primarily low and middle-income countries, 662 million children are considered multidimensionally poor. In 35 countries half of all children are poor. 

The latest figures paint a stark picture of just how many are still left behind by development, but they also demonstrate that progress can happen quickly with the right approach.

 Globally, some 1.3 billion people live in multidimensional poverty, which is almost a quarter of the population of the 104 countries for which the 2018 MPI is calculated. Of these 1.3 billion, almost half – 46 percent – are thought to be living in severe poverty and are deprived in at least half of the dimensions covered in the MPI.

“Although the level of poverty – particularly in children – is staggering so is the progress that can be made in tackling it. In India alone some 271 million have escaped multidimensional poverty in just 10 years,” said Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator. “The Multidimensional Poverty Index gives insights that are vital for understanding the many ways in which people experience poverty, and it provides a new perspective on the scale and nature of global poverty while reminding us that eliminating it in all its forms is far from impossible.”

Although similar comparisons over time have not yet been calculated for other countries, the latest information from UNDP’s Human Development Index shows significant development progress in all regions, including India. Since 1990, life expectancy increased by almost 4 years in South Asia (almost 11 years in India). This bodes well for improvements in multidimensional poverty.

 Â“The MPI demonstrates the tremendous strides India has made, and continues to make, in reducing poverty. It is especially encouraging that traditionally disadvantaged groups are catching up the fastest. Not only is this in line with the core philosophy of the Sustainable Development Goals to reach the farthest first, it is also reflected in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s development pledge of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas,” said Francine Pickup, UNDP India Country Director.

 The 2018 MPI is available for 1,101 subnational regions showing within-country variations in multidimensional poverty levels for 87 countries.

Traditional poverty measures – often calculated by numbers of people who earn less than $1.90 a day – shed light on how little people earn but not on whether or how they experience poverty in their day-to-day lives. The MPI provides a complementary picture of poverty and how it impacts people across the world.

“The Sustainable Development Goals call to eradicate poverty in all its forms everywhere. The Multidimensional Poverty Index helps answer that call, providing immensely valuable information for all those seeking to understand what poverty looks like for a particular place or group of people, and for those working on the policies to help people escape poverty now and into the future.”, said Selim Jahan, Director of the Human Development Report Office at UNDP.

While the MPI’s core data look at those who are poor, and the subset who are severely poor, the numbers also look at those very close to becoming poor. These people, while not quite multidimensionally poor, are living precariously and struggling to remain above the poverty line.

The data show that in addition to the 1.3 billion classed as poor, an additional 879 million are at risk of falling into multidimensional poverty, which could happen quickly if they suffer setbacks from conflict, sickness, drought, unemployment and more.