Govt takes measures to set up science cities, science centres

With an aim to encourage science and technology incubators, thegovernment will soon launch a hub and spoke model to set up science cities and science centres across the country, UnionMinister Y S Chowdary said today.
He saidthe Ministry of ScienceandTechnology and Earth Sciences was working on a system called 'five year rolling plan' to measure the plans and their implementation for both politicians and bureaucrats.
The country can be divided into five zones so that each zone can have a science city and a number of science centres which can be easily accessed by rural population and youngsters, Chowdary said while inaugurating an ASSOCHAM Summit on 'India: Entrepreneurial, Creative & Innovative'.

"In addition to that if we create a proper ecosystem like bird migration, we can definitely attract many scientists from foreign countries because of environmental conditions," he added.
He said that for the past 18 months planning is being done but there is not any proper tool to measure whether the goals have been achieved or not.
Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare J P Nadda,

speaking at the release of the 'India Health Report: Nutrition 2015', admitted that "despite positive changes we have a continuing problem of under-nutrition, which means that our children may survive due to better health and vaccines but may not reach their full potential as productive citizens."

The NFHS-4 survey says "in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Meghalaya more than 40 per cent of children are stunted." Today, India accounts for 33 per cent of stunted children in the world.
According to UNICEF, 48 per cent of children under-five years in India are stunted. Which means every second child has not grown to the best of his/her capabilities. 'Hidden hunger' is taking a big toll on the health of Indians, emphasises M S Swaminathan, well-known agriculturist also dubbed the 'father of the Green Revolution', who says 'micro-nutrient deficiency' is plaguing the country.
Since the last report in 2005-2006 the survey indicates anaemia has declined but still remains widespread. More than half of children are anaemic in 10 of the 15 states and union territories. More than half of women are anaemic in 11 states and union territories.

The health ministry says the situation of immunisation has 'substantially improved' since a decade ago. Yet the latest survey indicates that about 40 per cent of the children do not get a full immunisation cover. To bridge the gap the Prime Minister Narendra Modi led National Democratic Alliance government in 2015 launched 'Mission Indhradhanush' to achieve better coverage of immunisation.
According to Nadda, this initiative "aims to cover all those children by 2020 who are either unvaccinated, or are partially vaccinated against seven vaccine preventable diseases which include diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, tuberculosis, measles and hepatitis B".
Taking a swipe at the performance of the last government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Nadda recently said between 2009-2013, immunisation coverage has increased from 61 per cent to 65 per cent, indicating only 1 per cent increase in coverage every year. To accelerate the process of immunisation by covering 5 per cent and more children every year, the mission mode has been adopted to achieve target of full coverage by 2020.

On vaccination, a great positive is that India has continued to be free of the wild polio virus for the fifth year in the running. However, complacency can easily erode those gains.