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TOI : PUNE: Despite being one of the richest states in the country, Maharashtra has large-scale inequities in health status and health care and the state has the dubious distinction of ranking high in per capita income (third in country), but low (25th) in terms of public health expenditure.

This has been revealed in a report compiled by city-based Support for Advocacy and Training to Health Initiatives (Sathi) for Maharashtra health equity and rights watch, implemented in collaboration with Centre for Anusandhan Trust (Cehat) and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Tiss).

According to the report, rural Maharashtra has worse health and poorer health services compared to cities. A striking illustration of this is that as per recent figures, infant mortality rate (IMR) in rural areas is 51 — more than twice as high as for urban areas at 22. What is more disturbing is that, while IMR in urban areas has declined since 1998-99, it has remained stagnant at 51 in rural areas during the past seven years.

Public health expenditure instead of being spent equitably, is skewed towards urban areas, the report said. It has been estimated that while per capita public health spending in urban areas is about Rs 275, in rural areas it is much lower at Rs 114. As a consequence, service coverage is much lower in rural areas. For example, in urban areas, only 15.9 of births are not attended by a health professional but in rural areas 56.4 per cent births are not attended by health professionals…More

TOI : PUNE: The city is facing severe shortage of domestic LPG cylinders for the past one week with lakhs of orders pending with distributors. Dhankawdi, Wadgaonsheri and Kothrud are the worst-hit areas where long queues are a regular scene.

Distributors, however, claim that supply has improved since Friday. It would take at least 8-10 days to clear all pending orders, they said.

“Cylinder supply has been disrupted since last month and the situation has worsened in the last 10 days. Pune has been receiving 30 per cent less cylinders than normal,” Vijay Bhave, state divisional president of the All India LPG Distributors Federation, said.

“The total pendency of gas cylinders in the city has risen to around five lakh till date. This is mainly because of panic booking. About 35 per cent of the bookings are due to this,” he said.

Bhave urged people not to panic. “The situation has sharply improved. The average supply of cylinders is around 75,000 to 80,000 per day in Pune. On Friday, 87,000 cylinders were distributed. The distributors are expecting the same quantity of supply through the next week. This can bring down the pendency to nil within 10 days,” Bhave said.
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TOI : PUNE: The cyber crime cell, Pune, has arrested absconding suspect Kamal Manoharbhai Jethva (23) of Baroda, who was wanted in an e-trading fraud case registered at the Bund Garden police station in October 2006. A team led by assistant inspector Sudhakar Kate nabbed Jethva in Baroda and brought him to Pune for further investigations.

According to the police, Jethva was an accomplice of accused Sagar Sunilkumar Patel (20) and Sachin Venubhai Rawal (25), both from Baroda, who were arrested on October 8, 2006 and chargesheeted for allegedly cheating customers through e-trading from the website of e-bay company.

According to the police, the suspects had posted an advertisement on e-bay’s website to sell mobile phones at a price much less than market cost. Mohammad Hasan, of Mangaldas road, placed an order by depositing Rs 30,500. When he never got the phone, Hasan lodged a complaint and Patel and Rawal were arrested.

Investigations revealed that Patel and Rawal were using Jethva’s courier service to deliver the products purchased by their online customers. But they stopped sending the products when Jethva suggested they could earn more money by not delivering them…More

TOI : PUNE: Ending months of uncertainty and speculation regarding the long overdue poll process, the Delhi high court on Friday ordered the central government to issue formal notification for elections to the Pune Cantonment Board (PCB) latest by March 5.

The Delhi high court orders, issued from the court of justice Geeta Mittal, came in response to a petition filed by the PCB seeking postponement of the elections citing a direction from the ministry of defence. The MoD had last month directed the PCB and other cantonments to seek postponement, citing lack of preparation of the poll process in 39 of the country’s 62 cantonments.

The PCB’s petition was opposed by Sanjiv Mahajan, former PCB vice-president, and Baliram Sawant, former office-bearer of the Khadki Cantonment Board (KCB), who pleaded for directions from the court in holding elections at the earliest.

The court had earlier ordered elections by February this year and the request for extension by the MoD had recently come under fire from the court. With Friday’s judgement, the MoD has to finalise the entire poll process, including declaration of date for the polls and counting of votes.

Senior PCB officials hinted towards polls by the first week of May under the new circumstances.

Reacting to the judgement, PCB-nominated member Vinod Mathurawala stated that the board did not foresee any problem in following the court’s orders.

“The PCB had anyway completed all the preliminary exercises and we had only approached the court seeking extension of dates due to MoD directives. For us, it is only a matter of renewing the work which had been disrupted due to the appeal,” he said.

Friday’s judgement was also welcomed by all political parties in the cantonment. This will be the first elections to the cantonment board since 1997. The last full-fledged board was dissolved…More

TOI : PUNE: When Durga Dixit, director of the Aikyabharati Pratishtan gets requests for translation jobs, she just has to call up her regular translators and get the job done. For, Dixit has a group of trusted people who can translate documents into target languages. When the quantity of the work increases and she faces a deadline, however, she feels the crunch. There are just not enough people to go around.

Many agencies have the same story, a dearth of skilled translators in the city.

As Pune grows into an international industry and IT centre, translators and interpreters are in high demand. And, surprisingly, the situation is worse for Indian languages.

“There sure is a scarcity of translators, especially from vernacular languages to English and vice versa. Most of our work comes in these languages. The quantity of work is growing and the job can be done even at home. Still, there are just not enough skilled persons. And, where Pune loses, Mumbai gains. “Trained manpower for this work is needed. We have proposed that the government start a new course aiming at translation from English to vernacular languages,” says Dixit.

BITS International handles translation works for domestic as well as foreign clients. Chairman and managing director of the organisation, Sandeep Nulkar says, “Skilled manpower is not increasing at the same rate as the work is. One problem is the lack of specialised courses for this purpose. Even existing courses have not been tailored keeping in mind the concerns of practising translators. Since translation needs special skills, even though the number of students learning languages is increasing, that does not amount to the availability of the good translators.”

Interestingly, Pune seems to do well in grooming translation talent. “Delhi and Pune are cities where a conductive ambience for emerging translators exists. Even Bangalore does not have Masters-level…More