More people in the world are hunger now and the number is steadily increasing with the estimated number of undernourished people increasing from 777 million in 2015 to 815 million in 2016.

After steadily declining for over a decade, global hunger appears to be on the rise, affecting 11 percent of the global population, a new report says. These recent estimates are a warning signal that the aim of a world without hunger and malnutrition by 2030 will be challenging, and that accomplishing it will require sustained commitment and efforts to promote the adequate availability of and access to nutritious food, it warns.

The food security situation visibly worsened in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, South Eastern and Western Asia. This was most notable in situations of conflict, in particular where the food security impacts of conflict were compounded by droughts of floods, linked in part to El Niño phenomenon and climate-related shocks, according to the UN report on “State of the Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017.’’

Over the past ten years, the number of violent conflicts around the world has increased significantly, in particular in countries already facing food insecurity, hitting rural communities the hardest and having a negative impact on food production and availability.

The situation has also deteriorated in some peaceful settings, particularly those affected by economic slowdowns. A number of countries heavily dependent on commodity exports have experienced dramatically reduced export and fiscal revenues in recent years. Thus, food availability has been affected through reduced import capacity while access to food has deteriorated in part due to reduced fiscal potential to protect poor households against rising domestic food prices, the report says.

The worrisome trend in undernourishment is, however, not yet reflected in nutritional outcomes since evidence on various forms of malnutrition points to continuous decrease in the prevalence of stunting among children.

Stunting still affects almost one in four children under the age of five years, increasing their risk of impaired cognitive ability, weakened performance at school, and dying from infections. At the same time, various forms of malnutrition are still cause for concern worldwide. Stunting still affects 155 million of children under the age of five years.

The report further says overweight among children under five is becoming more of a problem in most regions, while adult obesity continues to rise in all regions. Multiple forms of malnutrition therefore coexist, with countries experiencing simultaneously high rates of child under-nutrition and adult obesity.Undernutrition, overweight and their associated non-communicable diseases now coexist in many regions, countries and even households. Six nutrition indicators – three that form part of the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) monitoring framework, and three that refer to global nutrition targets agreed by the World Health Assembly, are described below to better understand the multiple burden of malnutrition, which affects all regions in the world.

While the prevalence of child stunting seems to be decreasing for both global and regional averages, in 2016 close to 155 million children under five years of age across the world suffered from stunted growth, increasing their risk of suffering impaired cognitive ability, weakened performance at school and work, and dying from infections. Globally, the prevalence of stunting fell from 29.5 percent to 22.9 percent between 2005 and 2016 .

From 2005 to 2016 most regions achieved reductions in stunting, with the rate of improvement fastest in Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean. The prevalence of stunting also declined in all sub-regions in Africa, but at a much slower rate. In fact the rate of decline has not kept pace with population increases, resulting in a high number of stunted children overall.

In 2016 wasting affected 7.7 percent of children under five years of age worldwide. About 17 million children suffered from severe wasting. Southern Asia stands out with a high prevalence of 15.4 percent. At almost 9 percent, South-Eastern Asia is also far off the targets set by the internationally agreed global nutrition target. While the prevalence is somewhat lower in Africa, it still stands above the global nutrition target. Childhood overweight is a growing problem in most regions. Worldwide, an estimated 41 million children under five were overweight in 2016, up from 5 percent in 2005. Adult obesity continues to rise everywhere, representing a major risk factor for non-communicable diseases including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and some forms of cancer.

The global prevalence of obesity more than doubled between 1980 and 2014. In 2014, more than 600 million adults were obese, equal to about 13 percent of the world’s adult population.

The most recent estimates for 2016 indicate that anaemia affects 33 percent of women of reproductive age globally (about 613 million women between 15 and 49 years of age). In Africa and Asia, the prevalence is highest at over 35 percent. It is lowest in Northern America, Europe and Oceania (below 20 percent).

GUWAHATI:  For the first time, ecosystem resilience map of India from 2000-2014 have been prepared using high resolution remote sensing satellite data for all river basins. This study found that two-third of the India’s terrestrial ecosystems is not resilient to drought. 

The maps were developed by a team led by Dr. Manish Kumar Goyal from the Civil Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, Assam. The results were published in Global Change Biology, a journal from the Wiley group.

The Central India was found to be the most vulnerable to climate change and water limiting conditions. An increasing trend in the droughts in India, witnessed over the recent years, is expected to increase both in terms of frequency and severity in future under climate change. 

“The non-resilient characteristics shown by ecosystems in India may result in to the reduction in primary production in future, which could pose a serious challenge in terms of carbon sequestration, crop production, and food security”, Dr. Goyal says. Parts of northwestern, northeastern and southern India are found resilient, leaving rest of the country non-resilient to droughts. 

Analysis of data makes it clear that forests have higher resilience to withstand the climatic disturbances. The deforestation activities, in the name of economic development and expansion of agriculture, will result in making country more vulnerable to climate change. 

Low-fat and fat-free food products are gaining popularity among health conscious people. But regular consumption of such food items may result in deficiencies of certain vital nutrients like vitamins and essential fatty acids. Being ‘fat soluble’, such vitamins get removed along with fat when food products are made fat-free.

Scientists are working on ways to keep nutritional content of food products intact even when they are made fat-free or low-fat. Researchers at the National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI), Karnal, have developed a method to enhance nutritional content of fat-free milk by preparing Vitamin A and milk protein complexes.

Vitamin-A is one of the four fat-soluble essential vitamins, the others being D, E and K. The deficiency of Vitamin-A, which is the leading cause of preventable childhood blindness is a major public health problem in India.

Researchers modified casein – a major protein present in milk- with a chemical called succinic anhydride (SA) and prepared succinylated casein-Vit A complexes. They evaluated different combinations and found sodium caseinate-Vit A and succinylated sodium caseinate-Vit A complexes had high Vitamin-A binding ability and solubility. Hence these complexes may be used to retain essential micronutrients in milk.

It has been suggested that casein owing to its unique properties can be easily used as a delivery vehicle for Vitamin-A in milk. Since SA is classified as ‘generally recognized as safe’ substance by the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA), modifications of casein using SA is considered safe for human consumption.

The new method developed by NDRI team could be used in future for fortification of milk, which is now permitted by Indian regulatory agencies. “The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has already approved addition of vitamins A and D to milk. These vitamins are being used for fortifying milk by Mother Dairy, Amul and many state cooperatives at the moment”, pointed out Dr. Sumit Arora, who led the research team.

The team led by Dr. Sumit Arora included Chitra Gupta, M.A. Syama and Apurva Sharma at the Dairy Chemistry Division, NDRI. This work was published in journal Food Chemistry and was funded by Department of Biotechnology. 

New Delhi. India has made a remarkable progress in building indigenous defence capabilities in recent years, and the design and development of Trawl System by the country’s premier organisation, under the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is one of them.

The Research & Development Establishment (Engineers), a premier system engineering laboratory under Armament & Combat Engineering (ACE) cluster of DRDO has recently undertaken the design and development of Trawl System for the minefield area in the battle zone to meet the operational requirements of Indian Army.

The Trawl System is employed for breaching of land mines and creating a vehicle safe lane, through a minefield for the advancing columns of mechanized forces in combat zone. 

The equipment consists of Trawl roller, track width mine plough and electro- magnetic device (EMD), which caters to the need of all types of mines usually encountered by the battle tank in such a scenario. The Trawl System developed by DRDO is capable of breaching a variety of land mines including passive and active influence mines.

The indigenously-designed system recently crossed a major milestone with the successful completion of blast trials in collaboration with High Energy Materials Research Laboratory (HEMRL) Pune, which demonstrated the survivability of the equipment, when subjected to successive series of blast directly underneath it. 

The fieldable prototype of the Trawl System is in final stage of realization and would be shortly ready for conduct of User Evaluation Trials by the Army.

The indigenous development of Trawls by DRDO is an important step towards achieving self-reliance in area of critical military equipment under ‘Make in India’ initiative, and would result in saving of precious foreign exchange for the country.

NEW DELHI: Partnering in one of the most prestigious and important national projects, public-sector undertaking Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) has supplied 80% steel needed for the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Project in Gujarat.  It was inaugurated by Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi on Sunday. 

SAIL supplied around 85,000 tonnes of steel (TMT) for the entire Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd. (SSNNL) project which comprises all the canals throughout Gujrat which are connected to Narmada River and Dam. This Sardar Sarovar project is the second largest concrete gravity dam (by volume) and has the world’s third largest spillway discharging capacity.   

The Sardar Sarovar Dam is a gravity dam built on Narmada river near Navagam, Gujarat, which will benefit four states — Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharastra and Rajasthan. A part of the Narmada Valley Project, it will help in irrigation and electrical power supply. It is a part of a large hydraulic engineering project involving the construction of a series of large irrigation and hydroelectric multi-purpose dams on the Narmada river. One of the 30 dams planned on river Narmada, Sardar Sarovar Dam (SSD) is the largest structure to be built. The project will irrigate more than 18,000 m2 (190,000 sq ft), most of it in drought prone areas of Kutch and Saurashtra. The total installed capacity of the power facilities is 1,450 MW. 

A number of prestigious projects of the Government have received uninterrupted supply of steel from SAIL, a key requirement in fast paced fast paced infrastructure development of the country.

The Rohingya in Myanmar being virtually disenfranchised. This ethnic cleansing has adversely affected Aung San Suu Kyi’s image

Should India adopt a hardline approach of deporting the Rohigya refugees from Myanmar? That is the poser amid voices that New Delhi should adopt a sympathetic approach. Sending these refugees back to Myanmar runs counter to the country’s obligations under the  domestic and international law. Being part of the troubled state of Rakhine in Western Myanmar, the Rohingya are on the run with the army firing bullets on the villagers and burning down their dwellings. Despite living centuries in Myanmar the Rohingya being mostly Muslims have been denied citizenship and rendered stateless. 

There are an estimated 40,000 Rohingya Muslim immigrants in this country who are viewed as a security risk. If and when a decision is taken to deport these illegal immigrants it will be in public interest as well as national security. 

There is also the disturbing aspect that some of the Rohingya refugees have terror links. It is believed the Islamic State and extremist groups from Pakistan and Bangladesh might use these immigrants from Myanmar to whip up sectarian violence in this country. External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj telephoned Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina assuring all assistance in the wake of the influx of Rohingya refugees in the neighbouring country. 

Fifty tonnes of relief supplies have already been airlifted to the relief camps in Bangladesh. Prior to that such relief had been despatched to the home province occupied by the Rohingya in Myanmar. However, New Delhi cannot address the cause of the crisis or reduce the poverty in the Rakhine province. The crisis is driven by racism and religious intolerance. 

New Delhi has not only rendered humanitarian aid in India’s neighbourhood including Nepal struck by a devastating earthquake but also undertaken evacuation of Indians and foreign nationals from the trouble torn Arab world like Syria, Libya and Somalia among other countries. 

Impartial observers maintain that the Rohingya need full international support so that they do not get entangled with the radicals. Simultaneously, Myanmar needs to introspect buying fighter aircraft from Pakistan which is fuelling unrest in that country.  

The Rohingyas have fled to Bangladesh seeking refuge there fearing persecution in their own land. The Arakan Road which connects Bangladesh’s southernmost tip to the town of Cox Bazar has become the lifeline not for Bangladeshis alone but the fleeing Rohingya refugees as well. Earlier this week on Monday, the UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein urged Myanmar to put an end to this “brutal security operation”. He described the state’s actions against the Rohingya as a “textbook example” of ethnic cleansing. Union minister of state for Home Kiren Rijuju had spoken about deporting the illegal Rohingya refugees in the face of political persecution and terror. This led to serious concern being expressed within the country and abroad. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Myanmar came after the BRICS summit in China at a time when the Rohingya crisis was at its peak. The ethnic cleansing was more as a reprisal for a Rohingya militant group attacking and killing policemen and troops in attempts to overcome their own frustration. 

The military and police retaliation was swift and telling. Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who shares power with the military, emphasised she could not be held responsible for trying to resolve a highly contentious issue in the last 18 months that she has been in power. 

Left with no option, Hundreds and thousands of Rohingya had to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh. The all out attack against the Rohingya has adversely affected the image of Suu Kyi having waged a long struggle against her country’s military  rulers. 

What is sad is that Myanmar should disenfranchise millions of people who have lived in that country away from the mainstream for centuries. 

(The views are personal)

NEW DELHI: Arjan Singh, Marshal of Indian Air Force and India’s oldest and the only officer of the IAF to have been promoted to five-star rank, breathed his last at the Army hospital here today.

He was admitted to the Army’s Research and Referral hospital on September 16 in a critical condition after suffering a cardiac arrest. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had visited him that very evening to inquire about his condition.

Famous for his stellar role in the 1965 Indo-Pak war when he led the IAF from front, Arjan Singh had a life-long zest for flying and had flown 60 different kinds of aircraft. During the war when Pakistan had launched “Operation Grand Slam’’ targeted at the crucial border town of Akhnoor in Jammu and Kashmir, it was Arjan Singh who led the air force with his professional skill and courage.

Widely respected and admired for his leadership qualities, Arjan Singh was an iconic figure of the Indian military history. He always remained a source of inspiration not only for young flyers of the IAF but also from the other two wings of the country’s armed forces. Even being a nonagenarian he walked ram-rod straight and went to Delhi airport to pay his last respect when former President APJ Abdul Kalam’s mortal remains were flown in from Shillong two years ago.

He was born on April 15, 1919 in Pakistan’s Faisalabad in a military family and joined the air force when he was only 19 in 1938. After a year he was commissioned from England’s Royal Air Force College Cranwell. His role during operations on the Burma front during World War II drew appreciation from all quarters. He was the first Indian pilot to be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) by the Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia. He was described as a fearless pilot who was endowed with exceptional qualities.

After India was declared Republic in 1950, Arjan Singh headed the Command of IAF’s operational group for two years and again from 1955 to 1959. He also took a number of courses in military academics in RAF Staff College, Brackwell, Joint Services Staff College and London’s Imperial Defence College.

He took charge of Indian Air Force’s third chief of staff in August 1964. In 1965 he was honoured with Padma Vibhushan for his role in Indo-Pak war. When he retired in 1970, he became one of the longest serving chiefs of armed forces in the country. During his tenure as Air Force chief, IAF acquired modern fighters, reconnaissance aircraft, transport planes and tactical helicopters.  

He was picked up to be India’s Ambassador to Switzerland in 1971 and High Commissioner in Kenya in 1974 and to Vatican as well. Later, he served as Delhi’s Lt-Governor and proved to be a hands-on administrator.

In 2002, Arjan Singh became the only IAF officer to be promoted to five-star rank, a distinction equal to the Field Marshal. Last year West Bengal’s Panagarh Air Force base was renamed as Air Force Station Arjan Singh. He became the only living military officer to have a base renamed after him. 

Cassini launched in 1997 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and arrived at Saturn in 2004. NASA extended its mission twice – first for two years, and then for seven more. 

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft made a fateful plunge into the atmosphere of Saturn, ending its 13-year tour of the ringed planet.

“This is the final chapter of an amazing mission, but it’s also a new beginning,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Cassini’s discovery of ocean worlds at Titan and Enceladus changed everything, shaking our views to the core about surprising places to search for potential life beyond Earth.”

Telemetry received during the plunge indicates that, as expected, Cassini entered Saturn’s atmosphere with its thrusters firing to maintain stability, as it sent back a unique final set of science observations. Loss of contact with the Cassini spacecraft occurred at 7:55 a.m. EDT (4:55 a.m. PDT), with the signal received by NASA’s Deep Space Network antenna complex in Canberra, Australia. 

“It’s a bittersweet, but fond, farewell to a mission that leaves behind an incredible wealth of discoveries that have changed our view of Saturn and our solar system, and will continue to shape future missions and research,” said Michael Watkins, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which manages the Cassini mission for the agency. JPL also designed, developed and assembled the spacecraft.

Cassini’s plunge brings to a close a series of 22 weekly “Grand Finale” dives between Saturn and its rings, a feat never before attempted by any spacecraft.

“The Cassini operations team did an absolutely stellar job guiding the spacecraft to its noble end,” said Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at JPL. “From designing the trajectory seven years ago, to navigating through the 22 nail-biting plunges between Saturn and its rings, this is a crack shot group of scientists and engineers that scripted a fitting end to a great mission. What a way to go. Truly a blaze of glory.”

As planned, data from eight of Cassini’s science instruments was beamed back to Earth. Mission scientists will examine the spacecraft’s final observations in the coming weeks for new insights about Saturn, including hints about the planet’s formation and evolution, and processes occurring in its atmosphere.

Cassini launched in 1997 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and arrived at Saturn in 2004. NASA extended its mission twice – first for two years, and then for seven more. The second mission extension provided dozens of flybys of the planet’s icy moons, using the spacecraft’s remaining rocket propellant along the way. Cassini finished its tour of the Saturn system with its Grand Finale, capped by Friday’s intentional plunge into the planet to ensure Saturn’s moons – particularly Enceladus, with its subsurface ocean and signs of hydrothermal activity – remain pristine for future exploration.

While the Cassini spacecraft is gone, its enormous collection of data about Saturn – the giant planet, its magnetosphere, rings and moons – will continue to yield new discoveries for decades to come.

“Cassini may be gone, but its scientific bounty will keep us occupied for many years,” Spilker said. “We’ve only scratched the surface of what we can learn from the mountain of data it has sent back over its lifetime.”

The highly polarising V K Sasikala being divested of the position as the all powerful general secretary of the ruling AIADMK. 

Even though who takes control of the ruling AIADMK is not yet over nearly ten months after the death of chief minister J Jayalalithaa, it had become critical to see the back of the highly polarising figure of the interim general secretary of the party V K Sasikala along with her nephew T T K Dhinakaran.  

This became possible thanks to the factions of Tamil Nadu chief minister E Palaniswami and deputy chief minister O Paneerselvam coming together. The Madras High Court rejected the plea of Dhinakaran’s third faction to ban the party’s general council meeting scheduled last Tuesday where it overwhelmingly removed Sasikala and Dhinakaran as the powerful office bearers of the AIADMK. 

Soon after Amma’s death on December fifth last year (2016), Sasikala as the spearhead of the Mannargudi clan having a firm grip over Jayalalithaa’s internal and personal affairs, had her way in getting appointed as the party supremo. As a close friend of Jayalalithaa for nearly three decades she has played a major role in the affairs of the AIADMK. 

Sasikala was hell bent on becoming the chief minister but the Supreme Court intervened which saw her going to jail to serve a four year conviction in a disproportionate assets case. The break with Sasikala is now a reality. 

With the BJP keen on enlarging the saffron brigade’s presence in the south and particularly in Tamil Nadu, it played its part in bringing the Palaniswamy and Paneerselvam factions together along with ensuring that the AIADMK becomes a part of the NDA. 

Both Palaniswami and Panerselvam have met Prime Minister Narendra Modi separately on a few occasions in the national capital  as BJP strategists believe a foot hold in Tamil Nadu will facilitate the Lotus party enlarge its arithmetic in the next Lok Sabha elections barely 18 months away in 2019. 

BJP president Amit Shah has already fixed a target of 350 seats for the saffron brigade in the 543-member Lok Sabha. In the 2014 general elections the Lotus party had secured a majority of 282 seats on its own for the first time since it was formed in 1980.   

With Dhinakaran continuing to claim the support of no less than 18 legislators, he has accused chief minister Palaniswamy of sending cops to the resort in Coorg in neighbouring Karnataka to brow beat the legislators to switch loyalties. While threatening legal action, Dhinakaran alleged that the officers in the police team even offered the MLAs Rs 15 crores to Rs 20 crores.  

The AIADMK will be run by OPS as the chief coordinator with EPS as the second-in-command. With no love lost they will be looking over each other’s shoulder all the time. The sacking and isolation of Sasikala will lend greater political legitimacy to the ruling party’s claim of being truly representative of the party’s organisational support base. 

What is significant is that the AIADMK will no longer be remote controlled by the so called Mannargudi mafia,  the village from where Sasikala hails.  

The newly evolved collective leadership of the AIADMK has also abolished the all powerful post of general secretary. The 18 odd legislators with Dhinakaran is enough to pull down the Palaniswami government. At the same time they have refrained from forming themselves into a breakaway group for fear of being disqualified. 

Any kind of reconciliation at this juncture is ruled out. A large number of legislators who were present and voted at the AIADMK general council meeting earlier in the week on September 12 made it clear their stand was to snuff out “any influence of Sasikala or her family in both the party and the government”.  

The OPS-EPS combine is tantalisingly one or two short of a majority in the 234-member Tamil Nadu assembly with two seats being vacant. Amid the continuing political uncertainty in the AIADMK, the DMK believes that the ball is in the court of the Governor C Vidyasagar Rao, who has been given additional charge of Tamil Nadu along with Maharashtra. 

The Governor has told the opposition leaders that he cannot intervene at this juncture as it is an “internal issue of the ruling party.” DMK’s Stalin has drawn attention to approaching the court if the Governor fails to ask the chief minister to prove his majority on the floor of the assembly as envisaged in the 1994 S R Bommai judgement. 

Any reconciliation is virtually impossible even though Sasikala has not been expelled from the AIADMK. With more than three years left for their five-year term term to end, none of the ruling MLAs want a snap poll. 

The instability of the AIADMK government has adversely affected its governance in Tamil Nadu affecting the state’s robust economic growth. Impartial observers believe Palaniswamy might have risked the stability of his own government by patching up with Paneerselvam which has queered the pitch further. 

Amid an acute shortage of humanitarian supplies for the thousands of Rohingya arriving every day in Bangladesh, having fled violence in Myanmar, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is undertaking a “massive” scale-up of its emergency operations to ensure that those most vulnerable are not endangered further.

Up to 400,000 Rohingyas have been sheltering in Bangladesh since violence erupted across the border in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state in end-August and, according to preliminary estimates, about 60 per cent of them are children.

“There are acute shortages of everything, most critically shelter, food and clean water,” said Edouard Beigbeder, the head of UNICEF in Bangladesh.

“Conditions on the ground place children at high risk of water-borne disease. We have a monumental task ahead of us to protect these extremely vulnerable children.”

In its response, the UN agency has been dispatching trucks filled with emergency water, sanitation and hygiene supplies to Cox’s Bazar (located near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border), with a steady stream of supplies in the pipeline for the coming days and weeks.

Supplies include detergent powder, soap, and pitchers and jugs for storing water, along with nappies, sanitary napkins, towels and sandals.

UNICEF is also supporting the Department of Public Health Engineering with water treatment plants and carriers, and is working with partners on the ground to install and rehabilitate tube wells.

“These items are part of a first wave of supplies that will massively scale-up our emergency response to the growing number of Rohingya children in Bangladesh,” Mr. Beigbeder added, noting that UNICEF has appealed for $7.3 million to provide emergency support to Rohingya children over the next four months.

While briefing media United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres reiterated his call on Myanmar authorities to suspend military action, end the violence and recognize the right of return of all those who had to leave the country.

He also underscored his call for “an effective action plan” to address the root causes of the situation, which he said had been left to fester for decades and has now escalated beyond Myanmar’s borders, destabilizing the region.