Home Page of Dr. Saumitra Mohan

The Great Indian Family: Some Reflections *Saumitra Mohan We have always taken pride in our celebrated Indian family values, asserting their superiority over similar values of any other culture. In fact, asked to define the ‘Heaven’, someone defined it as a life that would include a British house, an American salary, Chinese food and Indian family. Accordingly, the hell was defined to subsume the worst from the same four cultures namely an Indian salary, a Chinese house, the British food and an American family. Whatever that is supposed to mean, the fact remains that still our Indian family system and the cognate family values are deemed to be the best, at least, when we compare them with other cultural values. But notwithstanding many positive and wholesome attributes of our hoary family values, many negativities appear to have crept into the same over the years or have never been acknowledged to be part of our value system as they represent toouglier or seamier sides of our ...

Refashioning Our Literacy Programme Saumitra Mohan It was John Stuart Mills who had once said that you can not hope to be a great society if the members of your society continue to be dwarfs with no qualities and character. And education, both formal and informal, definitely does that remarkable value addition as is required in this age for the multi-dimensional development of a society. That’s why, every welfare state infused with the ethos of a liberal democracy makes all possible endeavours and essays towards provisioning elaborate arrangements for developing the human resources of their citizenry today. This effort is undertaken to make such societies as egalitarian as possible, without any traces of stratified inequalities. And one key measure of the exercise of human resource development is promotion of literacy among all members of the society with an emphasis on the three ‘R’ i.e. reading, (w)riting and (a)rithmatics. While in 1971, the percentage of literacy was 22 am...

Sainthia Train Accident - A Case Study in Disaster Management Dr. Saumitra Mohan Disasters keep happening and they happen anywhere in the world and when they happen, there is no prior information. They just happen and then have demands over human faculties of management and coordination to tackle the same. So, once has to anticipate them and be prepared for them in advance. That is what disaster management is all about. Today, disaster management has been perfected as an art by many countries and that is why we often witness clinical rescue and relief operations in many of the disasters. India is slowly joining this elite club with a National Disaster Management Policy and Plan being in place. Today, almost all the government departments, particularly all the district administration across the country have their own disaster management plan in place, something that has proved to be of great help. The disaster management plan and corresponding logistics mechanism in Birbhum dis...

Rediscovering The Import of Human Ontology *Saumitra Mohan The human society has come eerily long way in its march to material progress, much ahead of the times when man used to live in the Hobbesian state of nature with his life being ,’nasty, brutish, poor and short’. Man’s insatiable desire to make his life more comfortable has seen the rapid inventions and discoveries of newer things. But notwithstanding all this progress have we, as human beings, really learnt to live a life of comfort and dignity? Human endeavours fuelled by unrestrained curiosities and desires have been unravelling mysteries of the universe and have also been successful in conquering the various elements of nature. With man scaling newer heights of progress and dreaming to colonise celestial bodies and with people like Stephen Hawking visualizing man’s journey into future, are we really satisfied with what we have? One is reminded of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s ruminations and commentaries on human life. In...

Dear Colleagues, After having completed a very peaceful and successful election on 23rd April, 2011, we need to focus ourselves immediately on the final leg of the election process i.e. the counting of polled EVMs on 13th May, 2011. While one is sure that you shall accomplish this job also as well as you have done in the past, I just thought to bring the following to your notice for refreshing your memory: Basic Preparations in the run-up to Counting: 1. ROs/AROs shall check for themselves the arrangements in their respective Counting Halls including PA system, computer, lighting, materials and electric connection. 2. AROs shall familiarize themselves with their counting personnel and verify with them any matter deemed necessary for the conduct of smooth counting process. 3. SDOs shall also coordinate with various Cell-In-charges including those relating to Media Cell, Data Transmission Cell, Nazareth, Material Cell and Control Room for better coordination and optimum outpu...