Indian journalist Ravish Kumar wins 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award

MANILA: Senior Indian journalist Ravish Kumar on Friday was awarded this year's Ramon Magsaysay Award, regarded as the Asian version of the Nobel Prize. 

Kumar, 44, who is NDTV India's senior executive editor is one of India's most influential TV journalists, the award citation by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation said. 

He is among five individuals who were declared winners of the award, which is Asia's premier prize and highest honour and celebrates greatness of spirit and transformative leadership in Asia. 

Kumar, born in Jitwarpur village in Bihar, joined New Delhi Television Network (NDTV) in 1996 and worked his way up from being a field reporter. 

After NDTVNSE -5.35 % launched its 24-hour Hindi-language news channel - NDTV India - targeting the country's 422 million native speakers of Hindi, he was given his own daily show, "Prime Time." 

Kumar's "Prime Time" programme "deals with real-life, under-reported problems of ordinary people", it added. 

"If you have become the voice of the people, you are a journalist," the citation added. 

As an anchor, Kumar is sober, incisive, and well-informed, it said. 

His more important distinction, however, comes from the kind of journalism he represents, the citation added. 

"In a media environment threatened by an interventionist state, toxic with jingoist partisans, trolls and purveyors of 'fake news,' and where the competition for market ratings has put the premium on 'media personalities,' 'tabloidisation,' and audience-pandering sensationalism, Ravish has been most vocal on insisting that the professional values of sober, balanced, fact-based reporting be upheld in practice," it said. 

His programme takes up current social issues; does serious background research; and presents issues in well-rounded discussions. 

Kumar interacts easily with the poor, travels extensively, and uses social media to stay in touch with the audience, generating from them the stories for the programme. 

Striving for a people-based journalism, he calls his newsroom "the people's newsroom," it said. 

In electing Kumar to receive the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognises his unfaltering commitment to a professional, ethical journalism of the highest standards; his moral courage in standing up for truth, integrity, and independence; and his principled belief that it is in giving full and respectful voice to the voiceless, in speaking truth bravely yet soberly to power, that journalism fulfills its noblest aims to advance democracy, the award citation said. 

The four other winners of the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award are Ko Swe Win from Myanmar, Angkhana Neelapaijit from Thailand, Raymundo Pujante Cayabyab from Philippines and Kim Jong-Ki from South Korea. 

Established in 1957, the Ramon Magsaysay Award is Asia's highest honour. 

It celebrates the memory and leadership example of the third Philippine president after whom the award is named, and is given every year to individuals or organisations in Asia who manifest the same selfless service and transformative influence that ruled the life of the late and beloved Filipino leader. 

This year's Magsaysay Award winners will each receive a certificate and a medallion with an embossed image of Ramon Magsaysay facing right in profile. They will be formally conferred the Magsaysay Award during formal presentation ceremonies to be held on August 31, 2019. 

Whistleblower bureaucrat writes to PM for details of conversation with former Health minister

New Delhi, Apr 15 : Citing "relentless persecution", whistleblower bureaucrat Sanjiv Chaturvedi has asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to disclose the details of the 2014 conversation he had with then Union health minister Harsh Vardhan. The conversation between Modi and Vardhan led to his removal as anti-corruption officer of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Chaturvedi has said in a letter to the prime minister on February 28. 

Though the letter was written in February, the contents of the letter have been accessed only recently. 

Chaturvedi has sought action against those responsible for harassing him as well as disclosure of information related to the status of investigation of corruption cases against serving central ministers, in accordance with a recent order of the Central Information Commission. 

In his letter, Chaturvedi said he was subjected to "relentless persecution" and dragged into "endless litigations" in more than a dozen court cases across four high courts, tribunals and Supreme Court after the phone conversation between Modi and Vardhan on August 23, 2014. 

The telephonic conversation was on the issue of removing Chaturvedi from the post of chief vigilance officer, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), according to the response to an RTI query filed by Chaturvedi. 

A letter dated August 23, 2014, issued by then Union Health secretary Lov Verma to the Prime Minister's Office said, "The Hon'ble Prime Minister of India had a telephonic discussion with the Hon'ble Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare regarding relieving of charge of CVO, AIIMS, New Delhi from Shri Sanjiv Chaturvedi, Deputy Secretary, AIIMS, New Delhi." 

"A detailed note in this regard is submitted for perusal of Hon'ble Prime Minister of India," the letter said. 

In his letter to the prime minister, Chaturvedi has cited a May 2014 file noting of then health secretary mentioning his "exemplary performance" as CVO. He has also cited the Parliamentary Committee Report of August 2015, which "strongly deprecated the non-serious approach of the Ministry towards tackling such a large number of cases of corruption at AIIMS". 

Chaturvedi, who earlier worked with the Haryana government, faced similar harassment earlier. 

Recently, in a case related to award of zero grading into his annual performance report, Uttarakhand High Court termed the central government/AIIMS "vindictive" and imposed a fine of Rs 25,000. 

This order was upheld by the Supreme Court, which imposed a further fine of Rs 25,000. 

Chaturvedi is a 2002 batch officer of India Forest Service and exposed a series of corruption cases during his tenure as AIIMS CVO between 2012 and 2016. AKV MIN MIN

At 71, she’s never felt pain or anxiety. Now scientists know why: A mutation

By Heather Murphy

She had been told that childbirth was going to be painful. But as the hours wore on, nothing bothered her — even without an epidural.

“I could feel that my body was changing, but it didn’t hurt me,” recalled the woman, Jo Cameron, who is now 71. She likened it to “a tickle.” Later, she would tell prospective mothers, “Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as people say it is.”

It was only recently — more than four decades later — that she learned her friends were not exaggerating.

Rather, there was something different about the way her body experienced pain: For the most part, it didn’t.

Scientists believe they now understand why. In a paper published Thursday in The British Journal of Anaesthesia, researchers attributed Cameron’s virtually pain-free life to a mutation in a previously unidentified gene. The hope, they say, is that the finding could eventually contribute to the development of a novel pain treatment. They believe this mutation may also be connected to why Cameron has felt little anxiety or fear throughout her life and why her body heals quickly.

“We’ve never come across a patient like this,” said John Wood, the head of the Molecular Nociception Group at University College London.

Scientists have been documenting case studies of individuals who experience little or no pain for nearly 100 years. But the genetic mutation that seems to be responsible for Cameron’s virtual painlessness had not been previously identified.

The study emerged amid major developments in the emotionally charged debate over how to responsibly treat pain. On Thursday, New York state filed one of the most sweeping legal cases yet against the Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma, the maker of the opioid OxyContin.

And it was yet another reminder that we need less addictive alternatives for chronic pain, said Dr. Stephen G. Waxman, a neurologist at Yale and author of “Chasing Men on Fire: The Story of the Search for a Pain Gene.” Waxman was not involved in the recent paper but he also studies people who have rare mutations that alter their experience of pain.

“Each of these mutations teach us something, and point to a particular gene as a potential target for new and more effective pain medications,” he said.

The sequence of events that led scientists to investigate Cameron’s genes began about five years ago. She was living a happy, ordinary life on the banks of Loch Ness in Scotland with her husband, she said. After a hand operation, a doctor seemed perplexed that she was not experiencing any pain and did not want painkillers.

“I guarantee I won’t need anything,” Cameron recalled telling Devjit Srivastava, a consultant in anesthesia and pain medicine at a National Health Service hospital in northern Scotland and one of the authors of the paper.

A few follow-up questions revealed that Cameron was unusual. At 65, she had needed to have her hip replaced. Because it had not caused her pain, she had not noticed anything was amiss until it was severely degenerated. Cuts, burns, fractures — these did not hurt either. In fact, it often took the smell of burning flesh or her husband identifying blood for her to notice something wrong. She also reported that eating Scotch bonnet chili peppers left only a “pleasant glow.”

Srivastava referred her to University College London’s Molecular Nociception Group, a team focused on genetic approaches to understanding the biology of pain and touch They had some clues for her. In recent decades, scientists have identified dozens of other people who process pain in unusual ways. But when Dr. James Cox, a senior lecturer with that group and another author of the new paper, inspected her genetic profile, it did not resemble that of others known to live without pain.

Eventually he found what he was looking for on a gene the scientists call FAAH-OUT. All of us have this gene. But in Cameron’s case, “the patient has a deletion that removes the front of the gene,” he said. Additional blood work confirmed this hypothesis, he said.

Cameron said she had been shocked by the interest in her case. Until her conversation with Srivastava, pain was not something she thought about. Perhaps it helped that even though she burned and cut herself quite often, her injuries rarely left scars — something else that scientists believe is connected to the mutation.

A number of articles have been written about parents of children with similar conditions. Many live in fear that without pain, their children won’t learn how to avoid hurting themselves. Her parents never made it an issue, she said. She suspects this may be because she inherited the mutation from her father.

“I can’t remember him needing any painkillers,” she said. “I think that’s why I didn’t find it odd.”

Unfortunately, because he died before the discovery, it will remain unknown whether he carried the mutation. Her mother does not share it. Neither does her daughter. Her son “has the same microdeletion in FAAH-OUT, but does not have the other mutation that confers reduced FAAH function,” Cox said.

In other words, her son shares some, but not all, of her pain insensitivity.

Scientists are also intrigued by Cameron’s extraordinarily low anxiety level. On an anxiety disorder questionnaire, she scored zero out of 21. She cannot recall ever having felt depressed or scared.

“I am very happy,” she said.

In retrospect, she sees how her genetic disposition may have aided her at work. After years as a primary-school teacher, she retrained to work with people with severe mental disabilities. Erratic, aggressive behavior never riled her, she said.

But though having this mutation may sound like a dream, there are downsides. One is that she is quite forgetful; prone to losing her keys and her train of thought midsentence. The other is that she’s never felt the “adrenaline rush” that other people talk about, she said.

The researchers said they would now focus on trying to better understand how FAAH-OUT works so that they can design a gene therapy or other pain intervention around it. Turning a discovery of this sort into an actual pain or anxiety treatment requires many steps, many years and many millions of dollars. It’s rare for a product to emerge.

But it’s not unprecedented, Waxman said. As a reminder of how an individual with an unusual genetic makeup can shape the future of medicine, he pointed to statin drugs.

“They were developed largely on the basis and discovery of incredibly rare families where everyone was having heart attacks in their 20s,” he said. Whether it will be Cameron’s mutation or another individual’s mutation that directs the future of painkillers, it’s too early to say.

“But I’m reasonably confident that the lessons we are learning from the genes involved in pain will lead to the development of an entirely new class of pain medications,” he said.

The above is from Healthworld of the Economic Times. The original article may be read at https://health.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/diagnostics/at-71-shes-never-felt-pain-or-anxiety-now-scientists-know-why-a-mutation/68640450

Sitting MPs have declared Criminal Cases against themselves.

Dear Friends, 

National Election Watch (NEW) and Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) have analysed the self-sworn affidavits of 521 Sitting MPs out of 543 MPs in the Lok Sabha 2014 Elections. This report is based on the information declared by the MPs in their affidavits submitted prior to Lok Sabha 2014 Elections. There 22 constituencies where the seats are vacant. For the complete report, please go to : https://adrindia.org/content/lok-sabha-elections-2014-analysis-criminal-background-financial-education-gender-and-other 

Summary and Highlights 

Criminal Background

·        Sitting MPs with Criminal Cases: Out of the 521 Sitting MPs analysed, 174(33%) Sitting MPs have declared criminal cases against themselves.

·        Sitting MPs with Serious Criminal Cases: 106 (20%) Sitting MPs have declared serious criminal cases including cases related to murder, attempt to murder, communal disharmony, kidnapping, crimes against women etc.

·        Sitting MPs with cases related to murder: 10 Sitting MPs have declared cases related to murder. Out of these, 4 Sitting MPs from BJP, 1 MP from INC, NCP, LJP, RJD,Swabhimani Paksha each and one MP is an independent. 

·        Sitting MPs with cases related to Attempt to Murder: 14 Sitting MPs have declared cases of attempt to murder. Out of these, 8 Sitting MPs from BJP and one MP each from INC, AITC, NCP, RJD, Shiv Sena and Swabhimani Paksha.

·        Sitting MPs with cases related to causing Communal Disharmony: 14 Sitting MPs declared cases related to causing communal disharmony. Out of these, 10 Sitting MPs from BJP and 1 MP by TRS, PMK, All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen and AIUDF each.

·        Party wise Sitting MPs with Criminal Cases: 92 (35%) out of 267 Sitting MPs analysed from BJP, 7 (16%) out of 45 Sitting MPs from INC, 6 (16%) out of 37 Sitting MPs fromAIADMK, 15 (83%) out of 18 Sitting MPs from Shiv Sena and 7 (21%) out of 34 Sitting MPs fielded by AITC Sitting MPs have declared criminal cases against themselves in their affidavits.

·        Party wise Sitting MPs with Serious Criminal Cases: 58 (22%) out of 267 Sitting MPs analysed from BJP, 2 (4%) out of 45 Sitting MPs from INC, 3 (8%) out of 37 Sitting MPs fromAIADMK, 8 (44%) out of 18 Sitting MPs from Shiv Sena and 4 (12%) out of 34 Sitting MPs fielded by AITC Sitting MPs have declared serious criminal cases against themselves in their affidavits. 

Financial Background

·        Crorepati Sitting MPs: Out of the 521 Sitting MPs analysed, 430 (83%) are crorepatis.

·        Party-wise Crorepati Sitting MPs: 227 (85%) out of 267 Sitting MPs analysed in BJP, 37 (82%) out of 45 Sitting MPs in INC, 29 (78%) out of 37 Sitting MPs in AIADMK and 22 (65%) out of 34 Sitting MPs in AITC have declared assets worth more than Rs. 1 crore. 

·        Average Assets: The average assets per sitting MP for Lok Sabha 2014 elections are Rs. 14.72 crores.

·        Party-wise Average Assets: Among major parties, the average assets per MP for 267 BJP Sitting MPs analysed is Rs 11.89 crores, 45 INC Sitting MPs have average assets of Rs.15.47 crores, 37 AIADMK Sitting MPs have average assets worth of Rs.6.47 crores and 34 AITC Sitting MPs have average assets of Rs. 2.56 crores

·        High Asset Sitting MPs*: 32 Sitting MPs have declared more than Rs.50 crores worth of assets. The top three Sitting MPs with the highest assets are given below:

S.No.	Name	State	Constituency	Party Name	Total Assets (Rs)	PAN Given
1	Jayadev Galla	Andhra Pradesh	Guntur	TDP	6,83,05,81,361  683 Crore+	Y
2	Konda Vishweshwar Reddy	Telangana	Chevella	TRS	5,28,62,30,210  528 Crore+	Y
3	Gokaraju Ganga Raju	Andhra Pradesh	Narsapuram	BJP	2,88,35,67,122  288 Crore+	Y

*Total Assets includes income of self, spouse and dependents.

·        Low Asset Sitting MPs: A total of 2 Sitting MPs have declared assets less than Rs. 5 lakhs. The two Sitting MPs with lowest assets are as follows:

S.No.	Name	State	Constituency	Party Name	Total Assets (Rs)	PAN Given
1	Sumedha Nand Saraswati	Rajasthan	Sikar	BJP	34,311   34 Thou+	Y
2	Uma Saren	West Bengal	Jhargram	AITC	4,99,646   4 Lacs+	Y

·        Sitting MPs with High Liabilities: A total of 96 Sitting MPs have declared liabilities of Rs. 1 crore and above. Out of these 96 Sitting MPs, 14 have declared liabilities of Rs. 10 crore and above. The Sitting MPs with the top three liabilities are as given below:

S.No.	Name	State	Constituency	Party Name	Total Assets(Rs)	Liabilities (Rs)	PAN Given
1	Srinivas Kesineni	Andhra Pradesh	Vijayawada	TDP	1,28,41,22,669  128 Crore+	71,54,62,989  71 Crore+	Y
2	Poonam Mahajan Alias Poonam Vajendla Rao	Maharashtra	Mumbai North Central	BJP	1,08,08,67,626  108 Crore+	41,44,79,088  41 Crore+	Y
3	Harsimrat Kaur Badal	Punjab	Bathinda	SAD	1,08,16,64,910  108 Crore+	41,26,34,299  41 Crore+	Y

·        Crorepati Sitting MPs with no PAN: 2 Sitting MPs with total assets worth more than Rs. 1 crore have not declared PAN details. These Sitting MPs are as follows:

S.No.	Name	State	Constituency	Party Name	Total Assets (Rs)
1	C. L. Ruala	Mizoram	Mizoram	INC	2,57,33,421  2 Crore+
2	Prasanna Kumar Patasani	Odisha	Bhubaneswar	BJD	1,35,57,443  1 Crore+

·        Sitting MPs with High Income as declared in ITR*: 45 Sitting MPs have declared total annual income of more than Rs. 1 crore. The top three Sitting MPs with highest declared annual income are given below:

S.No.	Name	Party Name	Constituency	State	Total Assets	Total income shown by MP in ITR (Self+Spouse+Dependent)	Self-income shown by MP in ITR
1	Jayadev Galla	TDP	Guntur	Andhra Pradesh	6,83,05,81,361 683 Crore+	16,85,54,700 16 Crore+	16,30,91,770 16 Crore+
2	Konda Vishweshwar Reddy	TRS	Chevella	Telangana	5,28,62,30,210 528 Crore+	14,64,24,120 14 Crore+	62,66,140 62 Lacs+
3	Thambidurai.M	AIADMK	Karur	Tamil Nadu	13,24,57,262 13 Crore+	10,68,54,272 10 Crore+	17,05,970 17 Lacs+

*Total income includes income of self, spouse and dependents 

·        Sitting MPs who have not declared Income Tax Details*: 42 (8%) Sitting MPs out of 521 analyzed have not declared income tax details.* Some Sitting MPs may be exempted from filing Income Tax Returns

·        Sitting MPs with High Assets who have not declared Income Tax Details: 24 Sitting MPs with assets worth more than Rs. 1 crore, have not declared Income Tax Details. 

Other Background Details

·        Education Details of Sitting MPs: 1 MP has declared that he is illiterate. 126 (24%) Sitting MPs have declared that have an education qualification of 12^th pass or below while 384 (74%) Sitting MPs have declared having educational qualification of graduate or above.

·       Age Details of Sitting MPs: 206 (40%) Sitting MPs have declared their age to be between 25 to 50 years while 281 (54%) Sitting MPs have declared their age to be between 51 to 70 years and 34(6%) Sitting MPs have declared their age to be above 71 years.

·       Gender Details of Sitting MPs: Out of 521 sitting MPs analysed, 66 (13%) Sitting MPs are women while 455 (87%) Sitting MPs are men.

Regards,

Media and Journalist Helpline +91 80103 94248 +91 85868 47977 +91 88021 30143 adr@adrindia.org

Maj. Gen. Anil Verma (Retd.) Head – ADR & NEW 011 4165 4200, +91 88264 79910 adr@adrindia.org, anilverma@adrindia.org

Prof. Trilochan Sastry IIM Bangalore Founder Member- ADR & NEW +91 94483 53285 trilochan@iimb.ac.in

Prof. Jagdeep Chhokar IIM Ahmedabad (Retd.) Founder Member – ADR & NEW +91 99996 20944 jchhokar@gmail.com

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