PRIMER - A quick guide to matters monetary

PRIMER - A quick guide to matters monetary

Mint 04th November 2008.

Mint presents a rough and ready guide on four key monetary management measures and their implications:

The repo rate, The repo or repurchase rate —RBI’s main short-term lending rate—has been cut by 50 basis points to 7.5%. This is the second repo rate cut in less than a fortnight. On 20 October, RBI had cut the repo rate by 100 basis points to 8%.
One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.
With the latest cut, the repo rate has retreated to the January 2007 level.
Unlike other central banks, RBI has two policy rates—the repo rate, at which it injects money into the financial system or lends money to banks, and the reverse repo rate, at which it sucks out excess money or borrows money from banks.
If liquidity is abundant in the system, then reverse repo becomes the key policy rate, but when money is scarce—as is the case now—and banks borrow from RBI, the repo rate is the policy rate.
Also, these two rates create the corridor or band within which the overnight call money rate—the rate at which banks borrow from each other —should move.
By cutting the repo rate by 50 basis points, this corridor has shrunk to 150 basis points (the reverse repo rate is 6% now, unchanged since October 2006).
Following the cut, the overnight call money rate should be less volatile because it has less room to move about in. Ideally, it should vary between 6% and 7.5%. But the overnight call money rate shot up to cross 20% last Friday when the repo rate was 8%. This means the repo rate per se has no bearing on the market rates. In fact, the market rates depend more on the availability of liquidity than the policy rates.
Similarly, a cut in the repo rate does not necessarily signify lower bank lending rates.
Again, liquidity plays a key role here. Banks do not lend to companies and individuals by borrowing from RBI. They borrow from the central bank to take care of their temporary asset-liability mismatches. To borrow from RBI, they need to offer government bonds as collateral. If they are short of government bonds, they cannot borrow from RBI and hence they need to turn to the overnight inter-bank call money market. At best, a cut in repo rate is a signal to banks to pare their lending and deposit rates but its effectiveness depends on liquidity in the system.

The statutory liquidity ratio SLR has been cut by 100 basis points to 24%, the first such reduction since 1997.
Following the cut, banks will be required to invest 24% of their deposits in government bonds, instead of 25%. This means they will have more cash in hand to lend to industry.
By definition, SLR bonds are liquid assets that can be sold at a short notice to meet any unexpected demand from depositors. Higher reserve requirements such as CRR and SLR make banks relatively safe (as a certain portion of their deposits are always redeemable) but at the same time restrict their capacity to lend. To that extent, lowering of reserve requirement increases the resources available with a bank to lend.
Historically, SLR of Indian banks has been high as they need to bear the burden of the government’s fiscal deficit.
The government borrows from the banks every year to bridge the fiscal deficit.
And since there is no improvement in the government’s fiscal health (in fact, it is worsening), banks will continue to buy government bonds and the cut in SLR may turn out to be an academic exercise. Currently, the industry’s SLR holding is around 27.5%. Banks use government bonds held by them in excess of their SLR requirement as collateral to borrow from RBI. On 16 September, RBI had announced, as a temporary and ad hoc measure, that banks could get additional liquidity support from the central bank up to 1% of their SLR.
That amounted to a virtual cut in SLR. This reduction has now been regularized, releasing Rs40,000 crore to the banking system for lending.

The cash reserve ratio CRR determines the proportion of bank deposits that is to be kept with RBI. It has been cut by 100 basis points in two stages. With this, RBI has brought down CRR from 9% to its January 2007 level of 5.5%.
The outstanding deposit portfolio of the Indian banking industry is Rs34.69 trillion. This means a 100 basis points cut in CRR releases Rs34,690 crore into the system. However, the actual amount is more—close to Rs40,000 crore. This is because banks keep funds with RBI on what is in monetary jargon called net demand and time liabilities. This includes certain other liabilities, besides deposits.
So, in the past few weeks, a 350 basis points CRR cut had released Rs1.4 trillion.
Banks can use this money to lend. A cut in CRR also increases banks’ income. RBI does not pay any interest on the cash balance kept with it. Banks can earn 13.5-14% from the freed-up money if they lend to corporate customers with good ratings or around 7.5% if they invest in government securities.
Theoretically, the level of CRR can be brought down to zero. This means, RBI can at best release Rs2.2 trillion into the financial system to ease the liquidity constraint. The Indian central bank will probably feel the need to cut CRR again (and again) unless it stops intervening in the foreign exchange market.

RBI has been selling dollars to stem the fall of the local currency that has fallen 20% against the US currency since January. For every dollar RBI sells an equivalent amount of rupees is sucked out from the system. In other words, liquidity will remain in the system if RBI stops selling dollars and allows the rupee to depreciate. This situation can also be achieved if the supply of dollars increases with foreign institutional investors (FIIs) buying Indian equities and local firms borrowing overseas.
The combination of adequate liquidity and low policy rate can bring the borrowing cost down for firms and individuals.

Market stabilization scheme Till the time the rupee was rising against the dollar, RBI was aggressively buying dollars from the market to stem the rise of the local currency. This is because a strong local currency hurts exporters’ interest as their income, in rupee terms, comes down.
For every dollar RBI sold, an equivalent amount of rupees flowed into the system and that, in turn, was sucked out by bonds, floated under the market stabilization scheme.
RBI floated both dated se curities as well as treasury bills under the scheme and the so-called MSS bonds were not part of the government’s annual borrowing programme that raises money to bridge the fiscal deficit. RBI has now decided to buy back MSS dated securities to provide another avenue for injecting liquidity. This will be calibrated with the market borrowing programme of the Indian government. The government is slated to borrow Rs29,000 crore till the end of this fiscal under its annual borrowing programme but Union finance minister P. Chidambaram has hinted at fresh fund-raising by the government to bridge its rising fiscal deficit.
The outstanding MSS bonds in RBI book are worth Rs1.74 trillion and out of this, dated securities account for Rs1.35 trillion with the rest being short-term treasury bills. RBI plans to buy back part of the MSS bonds to generate cash for banks which can reinvest them in government bonds that will be floated between now and March 2009. In other words, banks will not be required to dip into their deposit pool to buy government bonds. The buy back will help the banks generate liquidity and the government see its borrowing programme through.
However, the response of banks to the buy back programme will depend on the price of MSS bonds. Since interest rates can only go down in coming days, banks may find staying invested in MSS bonds makes business sense.
In a low interest rate regime banks make more money in bonds as their prices go up, pulling down their yields.

Sciatica

http://www.sciatica-pain.org/swimming-for-sciatica.html

Sciatica is a symptom of an underlying disorder that results from compression of the sciatic nerve, which originates in your spine and runs down the backs of your legs into your feet. Swimming may be a beneficial exercise for alleviating some of the symptoms of sciatica pain.

Sciatica pain can cause a number of symptoms, some of which can leave you unable to move without extreme discomfort. One of the most easily recognizable symptoms of sciatica is a shooting or radiating pain that starts in your lower back and travels into your buttocks and down your leg. Other symptoms include tingling feelings or sharp pain in your hips or buttocks, or feelings of numbness in one or both thighs or in other areas where the sciatic nerve runs, such as in your calf muscles or feet.

Some excellent information on Core strengthening and Nerve pain can be found in the links below:

Abdominal strengthening exercises: Level 1

Abdominal strengthening exercises: Level 2

Switching on your core muscles

Counteract the effects of sitting all day

Rise of Spinal Injuries in India

A healing pinched nerve may not always feel like it's actually healing. It usually means an unpleasant tingling feeling in the affected area, whether it be the arm, shoulder, neck, leg, or back. If this pain and tingling moves over time, it's a sign that the pinched nerve is healing

Indian Wedding: Men's acceesories

Sherwani

A Sherwani is a long coat-like jacket fastened with buttons. It comes to just below the knees, hitting somewhere high on the calf. The jacket has a Nehru collar, which is a collar that stands up (sometimes called a "mandarin" collar).

This jacket is often cream, light ivory, or gold colored for weddings, especially those in the morning. It can be embroidered with gold or silver. While traditionally light in color, the jackets can be worn in dark colors, like reds, blacks, or navy, typically later in the day. A scarf is sometimes added to the jacket over one or both shoulders.

The Sherwani is worn with tighter fitting pants or trousers called churidars. Churidars are trousers that are loose around the hips and thighs, but are tight and gathered around the ankle.

Jodhpuri

A Jodhpuri suit is a majestic looking suit, sometimes referred to as a "prince" suit. It has a western three-piece look, including coat, trousers, and possibly vest. The Nehru collar is often on the jacket and/or shirt worn with the suit.

This suit would be a perfect choice for the groom in a bridal party. He could choose one with hand-stitched embroidery in silver, gold, or other color in an elegant design.

Kurta Pyjama

The Kurta pyjama is a traditional dress of men in India. It features a loose fitting, collarless long shirt over a pants in a complementary or contrasting color. The style of the Kurta can be either formal or informal, depending on the fabric or embroidered design.A veshti (dhoti) is a long, flowing skirt considered formal wear for men in India. The draping of the skirt depends on the region in which one is from. The Kurta is often worn with the veshti.

Indian Wedding Attire for Men: Accessories

As with any groom, an Indian man will want to accessorize his outfit. As mentioned, scarves draped over shoulders (or perhaps tied around the waist) are popular choices to accentuate the formal attire.

Turbans can be worn by Indian men of certain faiths, perhaps with a sehera tied to the front. Sehera is a veil of flowers said to ward off the evil eye, much like the American custom of the bride's veil.

Mojris and jutties are often colorful and ornate pieces of footwear. They often include beading and embroidery and can complete the men's look.

Mental Health

May 23 2012.
Mint news paper

Families find few avenues for care and treatment of the mentally ill


Santosh Kumar Bhowmik, a 67-year-old retired professor, sits erect on a marble bench at a cafeteria at Dilli Haat, an outdoor food plaza and handicrafts bazaar in Delhi, sipping Sprite from a plastic cup while keeping a watchful eye on his son.

At 33, the son conducts himself with the shy deference of an adolescent. At the moment, he is facing a metal pole, muttering quietly under his breath to people no one else can see or hear.

Bhowmik’s son Surjit suffers from schizophrenia, a mental illness that typically makes it difficult for an individual to think logically, have normal emotional responses, and distinguish between real and unreal experiences.

“I do not know what will happen to him after I am no more,” Bhowmik said. “I leave it up to God.”

He is not alone in his anxiety.

The ministry of health and and family welfare estimates that as many as one out of four Indian families will have at least one member diagnosed with some sort of mental illness. At least 7% of the population is estimated by the ministry to suffer from “severe” mental illness.

Yet, with only 37 government institutions to care for the mentally ill in a nation of more than one billion people, there are limited long-term resources for families struggling to look after a relative who needs psychiatric treatment. In northern India, there isn’t a single government-run rehabilitation centre where people with incurable mental ailments can be admitted.

“For 18 years, I have cared for my son at home because I do not have a choice,” said Bhowmik. “It is not enough to give medicine to patients suffering from schizophrenia. They require special care, which we cannot give at home, but I do not have the money to institutionalize him in a private facility. I don’t like to think about what will happen to him after I am gone.”

In the 1980s, the World Health Organization released the startling findings of a two-part study on mental illness: Patients suffering from schizophrenia in developing countries such as India, Nigeria and Colombia had better long-term outcomes than those in developed countries, which included Denmark, the US and Canada.

The culmination of decades of research, the study examined long-term treatment of more than 1,000 schizophrenic patients across 16 countries, concluding the greater levels of acceptance, stronger social ties, and greater family involvement more common in developing companies appeared to be “key positive factors” linked to patient recovery.

While the study’s findings have been criticized on the grounds that it may have ignored patients locked away by families concerned about the social stigma associated with mental illness, it contained important insights into its treatment.

“Social ties are one of the intervening factors that affect patient outcomes. There was another study in the UK which looked at different ethnic groups, and Asian families with stronger social ties showed better recovery and remission rates,” said Manasi Sharma, a research coordinator at Delhi-based Centre for Excellence in Mental Health. “But caution has to be exercised by looking at these studies—it can go both ways. Families have been known to shun patients, too.”

Should the study be conducted in India today, it would likely yield very different results. Economic liberalization and policies successful in lifting millions of people out of poverty have also reshuffled social structures. Large joint families that used to be the norm have given way to the smaller, nuclear families typical of most Western countries.

Nirmala Srinivasan, founder of the Association for Mentally Disabled, a support group for caregivers to the mentally ill in Bangalore, said there is no doubt that the burden of caring for the mentally ill is growing.

The daughter of a woman diagnosed with schizophrenia and the primary caregiver to another close family member struggling with mental illness, Srinivasan has unique insights into how deteriorating social support networks have burdened modern day caregivers.

“I grew up in a large south Indian orthodox Brahmin family, with a lot of widowed aunts. It was a very large joint family, so I never felt the burden of my mother’s care,” said Srinivasan, who fondly recalls a childhood filled with neighbours, festivals and a family that worked together to manage her mother’s illness, to make sure that her mother always felt included and was never alone.

“But now there’s an issue with inadequate family resources, particularly among middle-class families that have migrated to urban centres,” she said. “My father had a tremendous in-house support network. That is completely lacking for caregivers across the country today.”

The growing verticality of cities, which stacks families into isolated apartment units, also serves to isolate them, while exacerbating the stigma associated with mental illness, Srinivasan said.

“They won’t seek help if there’s a crisis unless the (patient) becomes violent. They don’t want to have to explain it to the neighbours the next day,” she explained. “Sometimes I think that the mentally ill in slums may fare better during emergencies than middle-class families, because in slums you can’t hide an emergency. Whether it’s a mental crisis or labour pains, the entire community will rally and bring them to a hospital. And if it’s a village, they’ll put them in a bullock cart.”

Paying for long-term care can also leave families in a financial hole, particularly those who lack insurance.

“I have no options, I cannot even get a loan,” said a woman who’s a full-time caregiver for two family members—a father who suffers from dementia and a brother diagnosed with schizophrenia. “For poor people, there are loan options, but for the middle class, there is nothing. And mental illness affects all income levels, so the issues cut across income levels too.”

Taking on the mantle of the caregiver eventually forced her to quit her full-time job, said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The scant wages she earns as a freelancer in the social development sector makes hiring any sort of full-time help out of the question.

Finding trained nursing attendants is difficult and costly—a full-time trained nursing attendant costs Rs.35,000-40,000 a month plus food, and adult diapers (now necessary for her father’s care) cost her approximately Rs.300 a day. Even keeping a full-time maid is hard as most don’t stay, unnerved by her brother’s erratic behaviour.

Even while families are increasingly feeling the pinch, state governments are yet to step up to provide viable alternatives. This void is most keenly felt by families living in northern India. As of now, there is not a single government-run rehabilitation centre in the region where patients with incurable mental ailments can be admitted for long-term care.

But the ripple effects of government apathy in the North are also felt in the South, where the few private rehabilitation centres that exist have learned to be wary when approached by northern families.

“After very bitter experiences in the past, we are hesitant to admit patients based in northern India. The likelihood of abandonment is very high and the distances make following up with the families very difficult for us,” said M. Ranganathan, a caregiver at Family Fellowship Society (FFS) in Bangalore.

Ranganathan retired from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences in Bangalore after four decades of work in the area of psychiatric social work. He cited three recent instances when families based in Delhi abandoned the patients at FFS.

“They did not pay the monthly charges and stopped answering our phone calls. Eventually, we had to seek police assistance to get the patients back to their homes, as we cannot take care of patients without financial assistance,” he added.

Bhowmik’s is one of 25-odd families that came together to fill the void for rehabilitation centres in Delhi three years back by forming a social support group of caregivers and mentally ill patients.

Rajeshwari Iyer, one of the founders of the group Roshni, shows through personal example how strong family support can make or break recovery for a person struggling with mental illness. Her daughter Madhu was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was 16 years old. Now 34, she is working as a receptionist at a doctor’s office and hopes to lead a normal life—perhaps even get married.

Her own recovery has inspired her to help others struggling with mental illness. “In the absence of my mother, I try to help patients and even counsel families based on my experience as a patient,” said Madhu.

Her mother knows all too well what can happen when the primary caregiver passes away, and no long-term care facilities exist. Three months ago, she received a call from the Delhi Police asking that she help with someone they suspected was mentally ill.

Iyer arrived at a dilapidated home that looked abandoned. Living inside, in the dark, was an unshaven man with dreadlocks and an insect-infested beard.

“His legs were gangrenous,” she recalls, shuddering. She learned from neighbours that the man suffered from psychosis and had been cared for by his parents, who passed away several months back. His brothers and sisters all lived in Delhi, but refused to come forward to claim him, saying there was no way they could care for both him and their own families.

Iyer was able to intervene and get the man accepted at a government hospital. But there are many others who are not so fortunate.

“I remember one mentally ill man whose primary caregiver died,” she said. “His brothers would not take him in and put him on the streets. Three days later, he was dead.”

Barring government intervention, the group members have no choice but to take matters into their own hands. “In Delhi, it frustrates me that being the national capital and despite having resources at command, not a single home for mentally ill patients exists,” said Bhowmik. “My request to families in Delhi will be to start a self-help movement, mobilize resources instead of waiting for the government to pitch in.”

The Geek stuff

Google shows off new Net-connected glasses

Firm unveils see-through screen that can be placed above a person's eye and can help the wearer view data, maps, click pictures

Google Inc. on Wednesday offered a look at a previously secret project to develop Internet-connected glasses, staking out a lead position in a futuristic and fast-growing area known as wearable computing.

The glasses, which are still in a prototype stage, would place a small see-through display screen above a person's eye that can show maps and other data. The wearer could use voice commands to, say, pull up directions or send a message to a friend. Apple, a major Google rival, is also reportedly working on wearable computers. In April 2008, the firm filed a patent for a head-mounted display system that showed glasses with screens.

But Google has amassed some of the leading experts in this field within Google X, a company lab responsible for such projects that was also something of a company secret before Wednesday.

Richard W. DeVaul, a former Apple engineer who specializes in wearable computers, left that firm last year to join Google X. According to DeVaul's website, he is now a “rapid evaluator”, working in a team at Google run by Astro Teller, who specializes in artificial intelligence and wearable devices.

Another Google employee, Babak Parviz, who is also an associate professor at the University of Washington, specializes in bio-nanotechnology, the fusion of biology and technology focused on manipulating atoms and molecules. He most recently built a contact lens with embedded electronics that form a miniature display—raising the possibility that Project Glass, as Google is calling the eyeglass effort, could become Project Contact Lens at some point.

“This puts Google out in front of Apple; they are a long ways ahead at this point,” said Michael Liebhold, a senior researcher specializing in wearable computing at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California. “In addition to having a superstar team of scientists who specialize in wearable, they also have the needed data elements, including Google Maps.”

Liebhold said the prototype was “much less dorky-looking than all of the heads-up displays we’ve seen to date”. He added, “Of course, it could be really annoying, but if it’s handled well, it could be a nice complement to reality.”

Some more basic wearable computers are quickly becoming everyday products. Nike began selling a bracelet called the FuelBand earlier this year that tracks a person's activity. A firm called Jawbone sells a similar monitoring device called Up.

Motorola sells a head-mounted display device aimed at business use called the Golden-I, with the screen on an arm that hangs in front of the wearer’s face.

The design prototype Google unveiled on Wednesday looks more like a well-designed pair of wraparound glasses—but with no actual glass in the frames. A person working on the project said Google was having its employees test out dozens of other designs, with the goal of giving outsiders access to an early version later this year.

Although some may salivate at the idea of these sci-fi toys, it is unclear whether people will want to wander the streets with a screen in their field of view.

Yet, people who have seen and used working prototypes said there seemed to be a misconception that the glasses would interfere with daily life by bombarding wearers with information and distracting them from the real world.

One such person said: “They let technology get out of your way. If I want to take a picture, I don’t have to reach into my pocket and take out my phone; I just press a button at the top of the glasses, and that’s it.”

©2012/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Out of the ordinary

Longing to return to a free land

Rahul Chandran , rahul.c@livemint.com

New Delhi, 7th April 2012

Ask Tenzin Chemi what her favourite Indian food is and she will say rava idli. Which is not unusual. After all, a lot of people in this part of the world like the steamed cakes made of broken wheat.

Except that Chemi is a 22-year-old Tibetan whose grandfather Tashi Phuntsok and his family trekked more than 1,000km and sought refuge in India in 1959, a few months after Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled to this country.

Chemi lives with her parents, grandfather and two brothers in Bylakuppe, a small, largely agricultural settlement, about 9km from the nearest town Kushalnagar, a wayside stop for tourists on their way to Coorg. For a Tibetan colony, the campsites are in an entirely incongruous setting, far from the mountains of the Himalayan range. There isn’t a hill in sight.

Following a failed 1959 uprising against China, the Dalai Lama sought refuge in India and has since lived in exile in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh. According to the Central Tibetan Administration, Tibet’s government-in-exile based in India, 94,203 Tibetans live in India, of the total 127,435 who live outside Tibet.

Chemi’s grandfather, 77-year-old Phuntsok, left his village in south-eastern Tibet in 1959. He was 25 at the time. He chose to come to India because the Dalai Lama had already been given refuge in the country, he says.

By many accounts, India gave refuge to the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader and his compatriots for a mix of reasons. For one, India was the birthplace of Buddhism.

“It is not clear what the Indian consideration was (in allowing Tibetans into India), but India (in 1959) had about two million Pakistani refugees, so accepting Tibetans was not an abrupt policy change,” said Srikanth Kondapalli, a professor of Chinese Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. “Nehru shared the dais with the Dalai Lama at Sarnath (in Uttar Pradesh), so one of the reasons was religious, but there were other reasons too, including strategic ones.”

Phuntsok walked through Bhutan into Assam to take refuge in a small town called Missamari, where he stayed in tents with other Tibetan exiles. The Indian government, he says, provided them free food.

The Tibetans did not want anything for free, Phuntsok says, which is how he found himself as part of a road construction team for the Central Public Works Department in Dalhousie, Himachal Pradesh. After six months there, he was taken on a special train to Bylakuppe, then a little-known area about 230km from Bangalore, where then Karnataka chief minister S. Nijalingappa offered about 3,000 acres for the Tibetans to settle on.

Bylakuppe is now a bustling town with about 16,000 Tibetans living in four camps, the local resettlement office estimates. The settlement has four major monasteries housing about 11,000 Tibetan monks and those studying to be monks. Bylakuppe is, in fact, the oldest and among the largest Tibetan settlements in India—larger even than the one in Dharamsala.

The Tibetans run most local shops in the area. The land, according to Dolma Yangchen of the Tibetan resettlement office, was signed over in a lease to the Dalai Lama.

Phuntsok runs a sweater business out of Amravati in Maharashtra, which he started in 1977 after trying—and failing—to set up businesses in Chikmagalur, Mysore and Bangalore in Karnataka. He buys the woollens from Ludhiana in Punjab.

In Camp 4, where the main monastery called the Golden Temple stands, Savithri, who goes by one name and is a local resident, has been selling samosas for the past two years, mainly to the monks who live in the nearby hostels. For eight years before that, she would wander around the camp selling snacks cooked at home. Before that, she used to be a construction worker, like her father.

She has no qualms about the settlers who have moved into her neighbourhood. It’s not because the Tibetans moved to Bylakuppe that she makes the living she does. But yes, admits Savithri, if not for their presence, she would perhaps still be toiling as a construction worker.

There were originally about 100 houses in each of the Tibetan camps, although that number has increased along with the population. Most families have some land on which they farm, growing mainly maize. Almost all agriculture is rain-fed, with land lying fallow after the monsoon harvest. The families supplement their income by selling sweaters or running restaurants and carpet-weaving centres.

Of his forced migration, Phuntsok says India “accepted us and gave us almost all rights a regular citizen would have”, except he can’t vote in Indian elections or sell the property where his house stands in Camp 1 in Bylakuppe.

The Tibetans hold fast to their identity and still consider themselves guests, which may be the reason for the repeated expressions of gratitude towards their host. There have been few instances of protests in Bylakuppe, camp residents say, except when local autorickshaw drivers had tried to increase fares. The Tibetans responded by boycotting the autorickshaws until an agreement was reached. Most autorickshaws in the area now have a rate card.

There are the inevitable issues over identity, such as when it comes to explaining where they are from.

“Not Indian, yaar—we always have that problem. And then I always say ki, you know, Tibetan settled in Mysore, refugees. Easiest way, you know,” says Penpa Lhamo, 32, who was born in India to Tibetan parents. Lhamo studied journalism at the Madras Christian College in Chennai and worked at The New Indian Express for a while before taking a job as a teacher in a local Tibetan school.

But would Tenzin Chemi, who was born in this country, want to go back to Tibet, which she has never seen? “Yeah definitely, I would like to go back. If it is still ruled out of China, then I can’t stay for long, but if it becomes an independent country, then the feeling is entirely different, and I would like to stick with my country if it becomes independent. Though India has been very generous and provided me with equal rights as a citizen, except the voting thing,” she says.

“I would definitely love to go back to Lhasa because I have grown up listening to stories, and my grandparents...they passed away dreaming and thinking that one day they would definitely go back to Tibet,” says Lhamo. “I would definitely like to settle there if we had the liberty, if we did not have the political restrictions.”

Elizabeth Roche in New Delhi contributed to this story.

This is the fifth of a 10-part series that profiles foreign communities that are contributing to India’s cosmopolitan culture.

Looking for a safe haven

Medical tourism is providing a new source of livelihood to Afghan nationals in New Delhi; But an old problem still remains for these refugees—getting Indian citizenship

05th April 2012

His long beard and meticulously tied turban make it hard to distinguish Balwan Singh from any other Sikh in the country—until you get to peek into his living room or know that his mother tongue is Pashto, spoken predominantly in southern Afghanistan.

Balwan Singh was 25 when he fled from Afghanistan following the December 1979 Soviet invasion of his country. More than 30 years since, he continues to live in New Delhi as a refugee.

Military service was mandatory for every citizen in Afghanistan at the time. But Sikhs and Hindus, he says, were given jobs only as security guards in the predominantly Muslim country. This meant “you didn’t know if you will return home that day” as chaos reigned in the region following the invasion. “After the invasion it was no longer safe to stay back. We came with what we could bring.”

More Afghan nationals in India moved to the country in the 1990s with the emergence of the extremist group Taliban as a political force in their country. This reached a flashpoint in 2001, when the US began military attacks on the Taliban in retaliation for their support to the militant group Al Qaeda that had masterminded the 11 September attacks on the US that year, killing thousands of Americans.

According to the Delhi Police, in the Capital there are around 9,000 Afghans, many of whom stayed back illegally beyond the permitted period. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had 16,400 refugees and some 5,300 asylum-seekers in India registered with it as of 31 August 2011, comprising mainly Afghan, Myanmar and Somali nationals.

“It has been more than 30 years and we have not been given citizenship,” says Singh. “We are fighting a (legal) case to get Indian citizenship.”

Singh’s residence, about 10km from Tilak Nagar in West Delhi, is surrounded by about 50 families, all refugees from Afghanistan living in slum-like conditions. The first noticeable feature of his house is the absence of any furniture. Instead, a carpet stretches to the corners of the room. Guests are invited to sit and dine on the floor. Singh says his family still remains influenced by Afghan traditions such as this. And unlike the fun-loving Punjabi community in India, the Afghan Sikhs are restrained and their women stay inside the confines of their homes.

There are other similar Afghan ghettos in the Capital—in Bhogal, Lajpat Nagar and Malviya Nagar. Many of the families in these settlements run grocery shops or Afghan restaurants or work as cooks and auto rickshaw drivers.

Singh did these jobs until early 2000. Today, he has a better job, ironically because of the instability in his homeland. Singh works as a translator with Apollo Hospital, which is receiving an increasing flow of patients from Afghanistan.

Among the patients for whom Singh works as a translator is Mohammed Omar Khayani, a director at the ministry of rural rehabilitation in Afghanistan. “Healthcare in Afghanistan is very poor. 80% of laboratories and medicines are fake. So I come here every six months,” says Khayani.

Apollo Hospital, like many other speciality hospitals in the Capital, receives nearly one-third of its overseas patients from Afghanistan, according to a hospital spokesperson. In the past year, the hospital treated around 1,250 Afghan patients.

The thriving medical tourism is supporting Afghan immigrants in New Delhi. Four airlines—Air India, Kam Air, Safi Airways and Ariana Afghan Airlines—fly daily between Afghanistan and India, bringing about 800 people daily. As the flights land at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, between 1pm and 5pm, a large number of Afghans take position outside the exit gates in the hope of finding a customer.

“Every day some 100 Afghans come here and they start talking to some of the passengers and become their guides in town,” said an employee of a prepaid taxi service, who declined to be named citing his company’s rules. “Most of them are regulars and they have tied up with hotels, mostly budget hotels in Lajpat Nagar or Malviya Nagar (in south Delhi). At least 30-40 cars are booked from my service, mostly to hospitals or to their hotels.”

Like Khayani, most of the visiting Afghans are not familiar with any language other than their own. Singh assists Khayani with his daily needs in India, from explaining his medical condition to the doctors to taking him to the foreigner’s regional registration office in Delhi.

At the airport exit gates are also policemen in plain clothes watching the Afghan immigrants. Afghans are under the constant watch of various law enforcement agencies that see them as a potential security threat.

The police visit hotels and hospitals across the Capital seeking information on Afghan immigrants and their whereabouts. At the airport, these undercover policemen randomly pick Afghan nationals on suspicion of them being touts or unauthorized guides.

Sayed Basher Kazemi is president of the Kazemi Construction and Road Building Co., which builds roads in Kandahar, one of the most turbulent regions in Afghanistan. In Kabul, he says, he lives in a palatial house with his family of 60. But he comes to India every once in a while to escape the frequent bombings and militancy in his country.

“We have Taliban. We have Pakistani Taliban and also Irani Taliban, American Taliban and UK Taliban... UK Taliban killing American people, American Taliban killing English Taliban, ISI Taliban killing police. We have a lot of Taliban,” says Kazemi, explaining his frequent trips to the “very liberal” India, where he also comes to meet his Russian girlfriend.

tarun.s@livemint.com

When Mowgli met the Lepchas

How a forest officer’s idea on rainwater harvesting helped rejuvenate the dying Himalayan springs in Sikkim

Ananda Banerjee, ananda.b@livemint.com

22nd March 2012

In the upper reaches of Sikkim, there can’t be too many government servants who can actually keep up with and even outrun the sturdy Lepchas, also known as the Rong. Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer Sandeep Tambe is one such rarity. But his recent contribution to the region has been much more vital in nature.

Four years ago, Tambe met a delegation of Lepcha elders who were troubled as the usually bountiful Himalayan mountain springs—locally known as Mohaan, Kuaan and Dhara—were fast drying up because of the usual reasons: increasing population, burgeoning livestock, soil erosion, erratic rainfall, deforestation, forest fires, road construction.

The solution that Tambe hit upon was spring-shed development, which is based on the principles of rainwater harvesting.

“The scientific principle of spring-shed development is to conserve every drop of rainwater where it falls, the ‘running’ water needs to be trained to ‘walk’, and the ‘walking’ water needs to be trained to ‘rest’ for a while,” explained Tambe.

The novelty lies in sustainably developing the spring-shed to increase the percolation of rainwater and thus recharging the ground water. The concept of water harvesting was a completely alien one to the people of the region as scarcity was new to them.

Today, the mountain springs once again gurgle with water—testimony to the success of an initiative that has won the Ground Water Augmentation Award from the ministry of water resources. Tambe credits teamwork for the success of the water conservation effort.

Tambe, 41, had an unorthodox route to the IFS. He holds a mechanical engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and worked for software services firm Infosys Ltd in the US. After spending three years in the corporate world, he came back to India, heeding the call of the wild.

“Happiness lies in the forests and the secrets that it shares with me,” he said. “If I can do anything to protect natural history, that would be my ultimate satisfaction in life.”

After a PhD from the Wildlife Institute of India, he joined the IFS. Hailing from Mandla district in Madhya Pradesh— home to the Kanha National Park and Tiger Reserve, which inspired Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book—the young Tambe always thought of himself as Mowgli. Some of that spirit is still in him—as evident by him being able to hold his own on the steep mountain slopes of Sikkim.

To help reverse the scarcity, Tanbe sought the expertise of WWF-India, the People’s Science Institute (PSI) in Dehradun and the State Institute of Rural Development in Jorethang, Sikkim, to start the spring-shed conservation programme, better known as Dhara Vikas, to rejuvenate the dying springs.

The once well-forested spaces that used to act as water catchment areas had been reduced to a few trees, limiting the percolation of rainwater and creating the hydrological imbalance.

It was estimated that less than 15% of the rainwater was percolating down to recharge the underground springs, while the rest was flowing down as run-off, often causing floods. Global warming and erratic weather patterns had also hurt the spring water resources of Sikkim. The situation was worsened by rain falling in short bursts and extreme weather events becoming more frequent.

The main challenges Tambe and his team faced initially were identifying recharge areas accurately, developing local capacity, encouraging rainwater harvesting in farmers’ fields, and sourcing public financing.

“Water supply programmes have traditionally received priority in public financing, but with the drying up of spring water sources, water supply schemes have taken a beating,” said Tambe.

It was found that the farming practice most amenable to spring recharge was paddy cultivation and in locations where farmers had discontinued agriculture, water sources located downstream had started drying up.

Civil structures such as check dams were unstable and not sustainable on such steep terrain, given the weak geology prone to frequent cloud bursts and heavy rainfall. The non-governmental organizations involved put together a number of engineering measures to harvest rainwater such as conserving soil and moisture with contour trenches and pits, gully plugs and bunds on terraces.

The desilting of dried-up ponds and lakes was among the many interventions that were central to the success of Dhara Vikas.

Further greening measures included brushwood check dams, the planting of shallow-rooted grass that doesn’t need much water, shrubs, hedgerows and trees.

Restrictions were imposed on livestock grazing, fuel-wood gathering and fodder cutting. The recharge area was fenced off.

Work is now under way to revive five springs in the south, east and west districts. Information on nearly 200 springs has been collected and a “web atlas” application that shows village springs being developed to make the information accessible to all users. Weather stations are being set up to record atmospheric changes. The next step is to artificially recharge the Nagi Lake in Namthang by harvesting spring water.

“The existing national rural drinking water programmes need to explore spring-shed development as a means to ensure sustainability of the spring water sources, especially in the mountains,” said Tambe. “A positive step in this direction is a nationwide aquifer-mapping exercise that is being planned along with mountain spring conservation for effective groundwater management.”

The Corporate Life

The 5 Qualities of Remarkable Bosses

By Jeff Haden

Remarkable bosses aren’t great on paper. Great bosses are remarkable based on their actions.Results are everything—but not the results you might think. Consistently do these five things and everything else follows. You and your business benefit greatly.

More importantly, so do your employees.

1. Develop every employee. Sure, you can put your primary focus on reaching targets, achieving results, and accomplishing concrete goals—but do that and you put your leadership cart before your achievement horse.

Without great employees, no amount of focus on goals and targets will ever pay off. Employees can only achieve what they are capable of achieving, so it’s your job to help all your employees be more capable so they—and your business—can achieve more.

It's your job to provide the training, mentoring, and opportunities your employees need and deserve. When you do, you transform the relatively boring process of reviewing results and tracking performance into something a lot more meaningful for your employees: Progress, improvement, and personal achievement.

So don’t worry about reaching performance goals. Spend the bulk of your time developing the skills of your employees and achieving goals will be a natural outcome.

Plus it’s a lot more fun.

2. Deal with problems immediately. Nothing kills team morale more quickly than problems that don't get addressed. Interpersonal squabbles, performance issues, feuds between departments... all negatively impact employee motivation and enthusiasm.

And they're distracting, because small problems never go away. Small problems always fester and grow into bigger problems. Plus, when you ignore a problem your employees immediately lose respect for you, and without respect, you can't lead.

Never hope a problem will magically go away, or that someone else will deal with it. Deal with every issue head-on, no matter how small.

3. Rescue your worst employee. Almost every business has at least one employee who has fallen out of grace: Publicly failed to complete a task, lost his cool in a meeting, or just can’t seem to keep up. Over time that employee comes to be seen by his peers—and by you—as a weak link.

While that employee may desperately want to “rehabilitate” himself, it's almost impossible. The weight of team disapproval is too heavy for one person to move.

But it’s not too heavy for you.

Before you remove your weak link from the chain, put your full effort into trying to rescue that person instead. Say, "John, I know you've been struggling but I also know you're trying. Let's find ways together that can get you where you need to be." Express confidence. Be reassuring. Most of all, tell him you'll be there every step of the way.

Don't relax your standards. Just step up the mentoring and coaching you provide.

If that seems like too much work for too little potential outcome, think of it this way. Your remarkable employees don’t need a lot of your time; they’re remarkable because they already have these qualities. If you’re lucky, you can get a few percentage points of extra performance from them. But a struggling employee has tons of upside; rescue him and you make a tremendous difference.

Granted, sometimes it won't work out. When it doesn't, don't worry about it.  The effort is its own reward.

And occasionally an employee will succeed—and you will have made a tremendous difference in a person's professional and personal life.

Can’t beat that.

4. Serve others, not yourself. You can get away with being selfish or self-serving once or twice... but that's it.

Never say or do anything that in any way puts you in the spotlight, however briefly. Never congratulate employees and digress for a few moments to discuss what you did.

If it should go without saying, don't say it. Your glory should always be reflected, never direct.

When employees excel, you and your business excel. When your team succeeds, you and your business succeed. When you rescue a struggling employee and they become remarkable, remember they should be congratulated, not you.

You were just doing your job the way a remarkable boss should.

When you consistently act as if you are less important than your employees—and when you never ask employees to do something you don’t do—everyone knows how important you really are.

5. Always remember where you came from. See an autograph seeker blown off by a famous athlete and you might think, “If I was in a similar position I would never do that.”

Oops. Actually, you do. To some of your employees, especially new employees, you are at least slightly famous. You’re in charge. You’re the boss.

That's why an employee who wants to talk about something that seems inconsequential may just want to spend a few moments with you.

When that happens, you have a choice. You can blow the employee off... or you cansee the moment for its true importance: A chance to inspire, reassure, motivate, and even give someone hope for greater things in their life. The higher you rise the greater the impact you can make—and the greater your responsibility to make that impact.

In the eyes of his or her employees, a remarkable boss is a star.

Remember where you came from, and be gracious with your stardom.