Pulkit Vasudha

Pulkit Vasudha

Ahmedabad, August 26: Yogesh Mer’s (13) face lights up as Amardeep Rana (16) hands him a shining black toy radio. Yogesh, a patient in the paediatric ward of M P Shah Cancer Hospital, was paralysed 25 days ago. Amardeep (16) visited Yogesh in the antiseptic ward on Saturday afternoon and asked him if he wanted anything from outside. “A radio,” was the barely audible reply. Fifteen minutes later and after a quick trip to the market, Amardeep returned with the radio.

Amardeep is not new to lending a helping hand to the distressed. On the contrary, public service has taken him to far-flung areas of the state and has earned him several accolades, the latest being the gold medal of the Governor’s Award, which he received last month. Amardeep was just 10-years-old when the earthquake hit Gujarat, killing two of his playmates. He donned his scout boy uniform and started assisting the Army and BSF in their relief operations. “As scouts, we were taught to help distressed people,” said Amardeep. He even took several homeless families into his own home in Kalol.

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Pulkit Vasudha

Ahmedabad, August 24: THE crusading environmental activist from the city, Mahesh Pandya, is back from ‘Cut the Carbon’ march being held in the United Kingdom.

Kicked off on July 14, the march will culminate in London on October 2 after covering 1,000 miles across the UK. The march aims to highlight the devastating impacts of climate change on the poorest people in developing countries. The marchers demand urgent action by governments to check global warming.

Pandya covered over 400 miles on foot, but he is not tired. Now he is ready with a signature petition that will soon be sent to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, requesting him to consider specific recommendations in the Climate Change Bill to be tabled in the House of Commons in October.

Another demand is that the UK should encourage other developed countries to reduce carbon emissions and keep global warming below two per cent during the UN Conference on Climate Change in December. Read the rest of this entry »

Pulkit Vasudha

Ahmedabad, August 23:THE traveller for whom the Ahmedabad International Airport is a gateway to the State — the concept of ‘Nirmal Gujarat’ has been reduced to an ugly joke. The airport’s infrastructure has barely kept pace with the ever-increasing number of airlines fighting for airspace over city skies.

The irony: Ten years ago, the airport was certified ISO 9001:2000. Since then, it has received Environmental Management System (EMS 14-2004) and Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS 18001) certificates. It will also be certified Integrated Management System (IMS) by end of September, this year.

What’s wrong here

* Only one entry gate for all passengers
* Two boarding gates but only one is used due to shortage of manpower
* Ticketing counters not distributed properly
* Immigration Dept has six PSIs to handle 21 sanctioned posts; 1 inspector instead of three
* Parking spaces grossly inadequate Read the rest of this entry »

Pulkit Vasudha

Ahmedabad, August 21:Born with clubfoot (congenital deformity of the foot usually marked by a curled shape or twisted position of the ankle and heel and toes) in the small town of Viramgaon, 60 kilometres from Ahmedabad, Bhupesh Modi does not know what it is to walk without a limp. The handicap may have earned the laughter of his classmates, while he hobbled meekly in special shoes as a young boy, but his resolve to scale new heights and become a mountaineer has remained steadfast. At 46, Modi recently became the first Indian to climb the 15,000-feet-tall Mount Kilimanjaro.

However, the journey, like the mountains, has been anything but easy for it took seven rather painful surgeries in the first 30 years of his life to restructure his feet. In the early 90s, Modi was the first in his group of 40 to peak the Himalayas all the way to the mouth of Beas near Rohtang pass. Read the rest of this entry »

Pulkit Vasudha

Ahmedabad, August 12: Thirty-Six villages in Unjha taluka of Mehsana district are now connected through the Direct Video Assisted Redressal (DVAR)—that allows them to access their record of rights or hold a video-conference with anyone in any one of the taluka’s villages—under the ‘One Unjha Project’. This is the first time in India that not just an airport, a coffee shop or an urban centre, but an entire taluka is wirelessly connected.

This means that a villager from Maktupura village does not have to make the 15-km journey to the mamlatdar’s office in Unjha anymore to obtain a printout of details of owners, ownership rights, liabilities, land revenues and collection. All he needs to do is to walk into the village panchayat office, log onto DVAR, access his record of rights (ROR) and walk out with the prints minutes later. Elsewhere, villagers have to travel to the mamlatdar office and pay Rs 5 to get a copy of the ROR. While the same fee is charged in Unjha, the villagers are spared considerable travelling time and cost. The mamlatdar’s office is also in the network’s loop.

“Presently, video-conferencing relies on an optical fibre network which is high in cost and is high-maintenance,” says MP Khatri, district information officer of the National Informatics Centre (NIC). “The One Unjha Project provides connectivity to 1,74,000 population of Unjha absolutely free of cost.” Read the rest of this entry »

Pulkit Vasudha

Ahmedabad, August 3:Unlike many other children who are forced to fend for themselves or left to die, an infant found a poor, haggard woman and a community of autorickshaw drivers rallying to take care for her. For four days before the police and NGOs came to take away the baby, the poor woman cared for the child like her own. The autorickshaw drivers pitched in by offering milk, biscuits, food and clothing to the surrogate mother and child.

According to the autorickshaw drivers who witnessed the scene, a woman came to the railway station on Monday evening with three children — two boys and a girl, all about eight or nine months old. She found the beggar woman sitting on a pavement outside the station and laid the child in her arms before walking away with the two boys. Read the rest of this entry »

Pulkit Vasudha

Ahmedabad, August 2:IF all goes well, nine government hospitals in the State will boast national accreditation within a year. The State Government will initiate a nine-month pilot project next week to upgrade facilities and services provided by government hospitals in Gandhinagar, Sola, Mehsana, Valsad, Bhuj, Junagadh, Naroda, Godhra and Rajkot with a view to get them accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers (NABH), a constituent board of the Quality Council of India (QCI).

A preliminary study of the nine hospitals has already been conducted by Astron, a consultancy services company which will work closely with the QCI and prepare the hospitals for accreditation.

Astron MD Dr YP Bhatia has presented the study reports to the Department of Health and Family Welfare Commissioner Dr Amarjit Singh and its Principal Secretary Rita Teaotia. Based on the preliminary study, an action plan is being formulated for each of the nine hospitals to help them upgrade structure, infrastructure and healthcare. The action plan will come into effect within a week. Read the rest of this entry »

Pulkit Vasudha

Ahmedabad, July 28: TULSI Ram (15) unscrews a stabilizer and removes the battery, the circuit board from its plastic casing. His brother, Gehri Lal (12), uses hammer, chisel, his bare hands and teeth to disassemble clumps of copper wiring from a brass frame. Tulsi and Gehri are kabadiwallahs, who disassemble electrical goods and sell them to metal and scrap dealers in Ahmedabad, Surat and even Mumbai. “Copper sells for Rs 300 per kilogram, aluminium for Rs 115 per kilogram and casing sells for Rs 12 per kilogram,” says Gehri.

In today’s world, e-waste has rapidly become a worldwide environmental problem. In the absence of laws specifying the management, disassembling, reuse and disposal of e-waste, it is processed and disposed along with regular waste, leading to severe environmental pollution.

A large section of workers are engaged in dismantling of e-waste. In the absence of proper rules, lives of such workers are jeopardized due to their constant exposure to toxic metals and fumes. In Ahmedabad, as well as in other parts of the country, electrical, household and commercial waste are sold to feriwallahs, who do rounds of the city. It then goes to informal disassembling units, which segregate different metals, plastics, batteries and circuits so that they can be sold and reused. Read the rest of this entry »

Pulkit Vasudha

Ahmedabad, July 27: On the eve of his 89th birthday, Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa and an anti-apartheid activist, announced the formation of The Elders — a club of world leaders to discuss ways to tackle problems plaguing the world.

Ela Bhatt, founder of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), is one of the twelve members in this exclusive club.

Though Bhatt could not attend the first meeting of The Elders in Johannesburg on July 18, she is optimistic that the club will be able to identify issues and rethink strategies of governance and policy.

“The Elders have to find a commonly shared objective — common ground, which is relevant and imminent to our lives in the global village,” Bhatt said. Read the rest of this entry »