Bihar News, Latest News from Bihar, News of Bihar, Biharprabha News |
- Gates Foundation conducts Study on innovative health in Bihar
- Bihar likely to achieve total literacy in coming 20 years
- The man who made over 500 bridges in Bihar
- State works out a new land acquisition model
- Nalanda University Governing council inspects the proposed site
- High Court asks govt to fill vacant posts in Colleges
- Patna becomes most polluted city in Bihar
- Govt to act as the missing link between investors and land owners
| Gates Foundation conducts Study on innovative health in Bihar Posted: 10 Jul 2011 07:55 AM PDT DURHAM, NC – A large-scale evaluation of an innovative health care program in the Indian state of Bihar has been awarded a $3 million grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Bihar Evaluation of Social Franchising and Telemedicine (BEST) study will be led by Manoj Mohanan, an assistant professor of public policy and global health at Duke University. Mohanan and his co-principal investigators at COHESIVE-India, a multi-institution research collaboration, will assess the impact of the World Health Partners (WHP) telemedicine and social franchising program. Specifically, they will assess the program’s impact on health outcomes associated with four priority diseases in 12 districts in Bihar: childhood diarrhea, childhood pneumonia, tuberculosis and visceral leishmaniasis, the second-largest parasitic killer in the world after malaria. Their study will assess program results based on data collected from more than 100,000 households over the next four years. In addition to the grant from the Gates Foundation, Mohanan anticipates receiving supplemental funding of $1.3 million for the BEST study from other organizations. The goals of the WHP program, which is also funded by Gates Foundation, are to improve the quality and sustainability of rural health care services delivered by the private sector and to standardize service delivery through the creation of affordable local franchisee networks. These networks of private-sector practitioners treat and refer cases, but because they may have minimal medical training, they are able to consult with formally trained physicians through the use of cell phones and telemedicine facilities. A telemedicine facility allows a practitioner to use Internet-connected computers to share patient data such as blood pressure or heart rate with a consulting physician. The physician also can be consulted via webcam on the diagnosis and treatment of a patient. Patients often can purchase prescribed medicines on site. The study also will estimate the costs associated with the target diseases and the benefits from the program intervention. It will address specific policy-relevant questions about the program’s sustainability, affordability, scalability and future government support. “Social franchising has received a lot of attention as a potential service delivery mechanism in the health sector,” Mohanan said. “However, due to factors such as challenges with design issues and funding limitations, there have been no large-scale experimental evaluations of these programs. “We plan to collect information from more than 100,000 households during three waves of data collection. In addition, we plan to undertake research on households’ choice of providers to estimate the demand for higher quality of care and to study how provider incentives could help to improve quality of care.” The evaluation research will be implemented by collaborators in India: Sambodhi, a leading evaluation research consulting firm in Delhi, and Institute for Social and Economic Research on Development and Democracy, or ISERDD, which has extensive experience with implementing provider quality assessment studies in various states in India. COHESIVE-India, based at the Duke Global Health Institute, was established in response to the need for rigorous impact evaluation studies in India’s health sector that can help guide policymakers. The collaboration was established by Mohanan along with Grant Miller of Stanford University, Marcos Vera-Hernandez of University College London and Jerry La Forgia of the World Bank. Other researchers involved in the BEST study are Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert (Stanford), Manish Kakkar (Public Health Foundation of India), Sunil Raj (Public Health Foundation of India), and Veena Das (ISERDD and Johns Hopkins) in addition to experts from Duke, Yale, the University of Edinburgh and the World Health Organization. Reproduced from http://today.duke.edu/2011/07/gatesindia  | ||||
| Bihar likely to achieve total literacy in coming 20 years Posted: 10 Jul 2011 05:52 AM PDT The literacy rate of Bihar may be the lowest in the country at 63.8 percent, but with the present pace, it is likely that it will achieve total literacy in about two decades like the rest of India, as per a new report. In the last decade, the literacy rate in Bihar has increased by 17 percent, much faster compared to nine percent for the entire country, the report specifically points out. “If Bihar is able to maintain its present momentum in educational progress, it will hopefully achieve total literacy simultaneously with the rest of the country,” said the report, “Elementary Education in Bihar: Progress and Challenges”. According to the report, among all Indian states, the literacy rate is the lowest in Bihar. The 2011 census records it at 63.8 percent compared to 74 percent for the entire country. “The only ray of hope in this otherwise depressing scenario is the faster spread of literacy in Bihar during 2001 to 2011 than in India as a whole,” the report said. The report was released by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen three days ago, which was jointly prepared by the Pratichi India Trust and the Centre for Economic Policy and Public Finance, Bihar. It pointed out that the present momentum in the progress of literacy in Bihar can be maintained only when elementary education in the state is strengthened. “The differences between the all-India and Bihar literacy rate was only 4.5 percent in 1961, it has gradually increased to 18.2 percent by 2001,” the report said. “Fortunately, the spread of literacy during the last decade has been faster in Bihar than in India as a whole, reducing the gap in literacy rates to 10.2 percent,” the report said. It said there are certainly many signs of change. The number of schools has jumped, the shortfall of teachers has come down sharply, attendance of students is definitely up and the enrolment ratio has reached the comfortable figure of 98 percent. The availability of schools has now been doubled as the number of schools per one lakh population has increased from 60.2 in 2005-06 to 107.3 in 2008-09. The overall enrolment ratio in elementary education was found to be extremely high, about 98.1 percent for children of 6-14 years. Nearly 95 percent of the students are enrolled in government schools, the backbone of the elementary schooling system in the state. The report added that there has been an advancement in teacher recruitment in Bihar in recent years, bringing their strength to about 4.33 lakh. However, the total required is at least 7.28 lakh, implying a shortfall of about 40.5 percent.  | ||||
| The man who made over 500 bridges in Bihar Posted: 10 Jul 2011 03:46 AM PDT The walls were dank, the curtains tattered, chairs broken and toilets that could be smelt from a mile, the whole picture not much different from a second class waiting room at a railway station or worse, a bus terminal. By no stretch of imagination did it look like it was the office of a major state corporation about to embark upon the onerous responsibility of creating a bridge infrastructure in one of the poorest states in the country. "It was like hell. It did not look like an office at all. I did not know where to begin,'' Pratyay Amrit recalls. But things had begun to change in Biharwith the-then new Chief Minister Nitish Kumar keen to implement his twin pre-poll promises, namely maintenance of law and order and a drastic improvement in Bihar's benighted roads. While law and order was pretty much the CM's own baby, the road project came to Amrit.
When he took over as Managing Director in 2006, the turnover of the Bihar Rajya Pul NirmanNigam (BRPNN) stood at a measly Rs 47 crore, with the state government having made up its mind to close it down. Within two years, the turnaround took every one – including Nitish Kumar – by surprise. A defunctorganisation was now in a position to donate Rs 20 crore to the CM relief fund during the Kosifloods. Reminisces Amrit, "My friends offered their regrets when I told them about my transfer to the Bridge Corporation." Notwithstanding Amrit's early success, the road was far from smooth. The system in place lacked basic amenities, and the morale of the employees was low. Amrit, an able administrator and HR expert, ensured that the staff got the basic facilities to carry out their jobs. For instance, he provided them with GPS-enabled phones making it easier for them to monitor progress of work. In an effort to create a congenial environment, family picnics and movies were organised. Thanks to his initiatives, by July 2009, the BRPNN's turnover had surged to Rs 768 crore, when he was relieved of his responsibilities and made Principal Secretary, Road Construction. Today, BRPNN justifiably claims to be an ISO 9001, 2000, & 1410:2004 certified company, which has successfully constructed over 297 high-level bridges with an investment of Rs 708 crore. Apart from building bridges, the corporation also undertakes projects relating to irrigation and road construction.
Apparently, the same bunch of people who weretweedling their thumbs a few years ago are among the busiest today. Construction of 520 bridges under the CM's SetuNirman Yojana, eight road over bridges with an investment of Rs.306 crore and a high-level bridge project at an estimated cost of Rs.438 crore is what keeps the corporation wholly occupied these days. Prior to his bridge-building exercise, he had worked as district magistrate (DM) across four locations. As DM of Katihar, he implemented, for the first time, a public-private-partnership for the district hospital. He asked the NGOs to take responsibility of a ward each and hey presto, in no time the scenario changed from a health-provider deficit to one of surplus. As DM of Chapra (a tier-III location adjacent to Patna), he put an end to sleaze shows at the famous Sonpur fair, the site of Asia's largest cattle fair.Amrit made it compulsory for CCTVs to be installed in theatres. His management style has helped improve Bihar's roads significantly and even earned a few words of praise from the World Bank. His popularity has crossed national frontiers – he was invited to attend the Urban Planning and Economic Development Programme by the US in February this year, and was also awarded the PM's excellence award in April.
Reproduced from http://www.theweekendleader.com/Success/574/Building-bridges.html  | ||||
| State works out a new land acquisition model Posted: 09 Jul 2011 11:40 PM PDT PATNA: Witnessing the controversies after land acquisition in various parts of the country and resistance posed by the landowners to all such moves on a minor scale on quite a few occasions back home in Bihar, the state government has become cautious in its bid to acquire land even for public good, including industries. The government has worked out a new model for the acquisition of land for industry and other ventures of public good, where it would act merely as a link between investors and landowners. Besides, the government has also been creating its own land bank. Industry minister Renu Kumari said, “The government has succeeded in creating a right atmosphere for investors.” The new policy, called ‘Aao Bihar (Come to Bihar)’, is aimed at giving investors a sense of certainty that land would be available for them in Bihar. “The government will not directly acquire land. Instead, the government would work as a link between investors and landowners,” said industry department principal secretary C K Mishra on Thursday. The new method envisages creating a pool of landowners, with each owning more than two acres of land, who are willing to sell their land for public good at their own desired rate. “The Bihar situation is typical. Its land is arable, and land holdings of farmers are small,” Mishra said, adding: “Given the ground situation, acquisition of land in Bihar is very difficult, but farmers are willing to sell their land. Therefore, the government had to devise a new method under the ‘Aao Bihar’ call for investors.” Under this policy, farmers, either individually or in group, willing to sell their individual or collective chunk of land would have to submit the details to the DM concerned, who, in turn, would check the legal papers to ascertain that they are not disputed. The DM, then, would forward the verified details of the chunk of land to Bihar Industrial Area Development Authority (BIADA), which would put the details on its website showing the price quoted by the farmers concerned. “The investors would have a reference pool of chunks of land to acquire them for their ventures,” Mishra said. Mishra said the new method of land acquisition had worked wonders in buying of land for thermal power plant in private sector in Banka district, where 700 acres of land had been acquired and Rs 1,350 crore had already been spent on infrastructure development. “The first power unit will go into production within a year,” he added. This method would be followed for other power plants too. Stating that the industrial scenario in the state was looking up, Mishra said that food processing units constituted the “real strength” of the state, and by July end, 30 food processing units, including the three biscuit units of Britannia, Parley and Anmol, would also go into production. Source: TOI  | ||||
| Nalanda University Governing council inspects the proposed site Posted: 09 Jul 2011 08:35 PM PDT Nalanda International University’s governing council members inspected the site for the proposed university at Nalanda and Rajgir on Thursday. They appreciated the initial work on the 467 acres of land given by the Bihar government for the ambitious project. Board chairman Amartya Sen, however, did not go for inspection and stayed back here. The state government has committed to do fencing of the acquired land and the work has reportedly been allotted to Bihar Rajya Pul Nirman Nigam, which is expected to start the work soon. Its officials, including the chairman, also met the governing board here and assured that the work would be completed on time. The prolonged meeting of the board, held here on Wednesday, is believed to have discussed the design and architecture of the campus, university building, residential quarters and offices. Amartya Sen declared that global tender would be floated and the design and architecture of the university would be of international standard, which would reflect the image of the old university that existed centuries ago. “We are looking for an appropriate architectural design so that people do not say that the old varsity was so great and the new one is not,” Sen said amid laughter. It is expected that architectural designing and construction companies from different parts of the world would bid for the prestigious project. In Nalanda, the visiting dignitaries also held talks with the DM at the circuit house and asked the administration to ensure that local issues were taken care of and solved at the local level itself. Sen and the varsity’s first visitor APJ Abdul Kalam had earlier inspected the site. The state government has offered to provide alternative accommodation for academic activities till the university’s buildings come up. The old subdivisional office, which has been renovated, and the Convention centre have been identified as alternative places so that the academic session could be started possibly from 2013-14. Gopa Sabharwal said the academic activities would start with just two streams: school of historical studies and environment and ecology studies. Sen said they discussed the faculties to start with as well as pattern of teaching and structure of teaching pattern. The proposed university will have wide range of courses including Buddha studies, international relations, peace studies and information sciences and technology.  | ||||
| High Court asks govt to fill vacant posts in Colleges Posted: 09 Jul 2011 08:24 PM PDT Patna.The High Court has directed the Bihar Government and the Chancellor’s secretariat to take initiatives to fill up all vacant posts of teachers in various universities in Bihar within 90 days. A bench comprising Justices Prakash Chandra Verma and Ahsanuddin Amanullah directed the secretariat of the Chencellor, who is also governor of Bihar, and the state human resource department to make the appointments. The court acted on a PIL filed by one Vinay Kumar Singh who had pleaded for the court’s direction to fill up over 3000 vacant posts of teaching staff in all the universities of Bihar in three months. The petitioner in his PIL filed in January last year, had alleged that the present crisis of teaching staff in various versities of the state was because of bureaucratic red tape.  | ||||
| Patna becomes most polluted city in Bihar Posted: 09 Jul 2011 08:21 PM PDT PATNA: The capital of Bihar has emerged as the most polluted city in Bihar, with the rate of pollution doubling in the last five years. A survey done by the Bihar State Pollution Control Board (BSPCB) in 2010-11, suggests that the presence of small particulate matter (SPM) is more than double the required rate. SPM is the major reason for increase in air pollution in the city, says a BSPCB official. “SPM has risen in the city because of the increasing number of vehicles, especially autos that use adulterated petrol, and neglect of cleanliness by the municipal corporation,” SN Jaiswal, scientist, BSPCB told TOI adding, “SPM rate should not be above 100 microgram per cubic meter annually. But as per our data of 2010-11, at Gandhi Maidan air quality monitoring station, it was measured at 204 microgram per cubic meter and at Beltron Bhawan (Bailey road) station 184 microgram per cubic meter. This is really alarming.”  | ||||
| Govt to act as the missing link between investors and land owners Posted: 09 Jul 2011 08:18 PM PDT Patna. The Bihar government will work as the missing link between potential investors and land owners to prevent any dispute and collision over the issue of acquisition of land for setting up industries.A scheme ‘Bihar Aao’ (Come to Bihar) to attract investors would be launched soon and the government would work as facilitator between industrialists and land owners, State Industry Department’s Principal Secretary C K Mishra said.The proposal of land owners willing to sell their land would be uploaded on the website of Bihar Industrial Area Development Authority and prospective companies would get in touch with the land owners, Mishra told reporters.The state government would soon establish a land bank for setting up new industries, he said. “We will also accord top priority to transparency to win confidence of the investors.” Investors would find several proposals and concession for them in the New Industrial Promotion Policy 2011, which came into force from July one, he said adding concession would be given for setting up captive power plant.Mishra said the state government had received more than 66 proposals in food processing sectors.Besides, the Centre has given its nod for setting up a mega food park at Kahalgaon in Bhagalpur district, he said, adding thrust was on promoting small and medium industries in the state.  |
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