Are children are left behind by design?

Focus on test scores and evaluating schools and teachers based on these criteria alone has caused poorly performing and highly performing students to be left behind. No child left behind seems to work only for those students who are near proficiency levels as per this article.

Grading test-scores: Are children are left behind by design? | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from Europe's leading economists: "Many U.S. Children are Left Behind by Design"

Toy Recall Story

There have been two big toy recalls for toys made in China - both by Mattel (the company which sells them under its brand). And guess what who is to blame (as per the US media) - its the Chinese sub-contractor. Not Mattel which according to me would be the party responsible as its the one which is selling the thing under its brand - so bears responsibility of testing and manufacturing. But no one is blaming Mattel. It doesnt matter how much Mattel pushed the contractors on lower pricing, how lax it was on testing & standards, no questions asked on these aspects. The media is buying into what Mattel says which said "It provided the lead-free paint but subcontractor sold it and used other one" - so media repeats the same. Anything new?

Just change this case. If the same toys were sold but not in authorized store and royalties didnt go to Mattel but its name was used as Brand. Who would be to blame?. The Chinese sellers who copied Mattel's design and used its brand and sold it.

So Mattel earns most of the profit but no blame and enjoys. So welcome to the world of globalized manufacturing where the brand earns the money but no blame. What do u think?

Independence from What?

On the 60th Anniversary of Independence of India & Pakistan, I have this question:

Independence from what ?

Malnutriution: Both countries have among the highest malnutrituion rates in the world (even beating poor sub-saharan Africa). 50%. Just imagine 1 in 2 children in India are malnourished. At young age their oppurtunity to acheive anything is life is almost taken away ...

Women's Discrimination: South Asia has the worst record in the world on this account. It has among the lowest (less than 50%) female literacy rate, difference in number of school years between boys and girls is highest among the world, women's health is absymal, job opportunities are worse (most of the unorganized sector is composed of women).

Dalit Discrimination: Middle class has a tendency of saying that India does not discriminate now and reservations are all wrong. In a recent survey of discrimination in rural India it was found that

"Almost
27.6 per cent dalits are prevented from entering
police stations and 25.7 from ration shops; 33 per cent
public health workers refuse to visit dalit homes, and
23.5 per cent dalits still do not get letters delivered
to their homes. Segregated seating for dalits was found
in 30.8 per cent self-help groups and cooperatives, and
29.6 per cent panchayat offices. In 14.4 per cent
villages, dalits were not permitted to enter the
panchayat building. They were denied access to polling
booths, or forced to form separate lines in 12 per cent
of the villages surveyed." (Refer to article below for more details)

I can go on and on .... There are so many aspects we are unfree. Its a shame ....

Agreed that India's GDP growth is more than 8% for past two years, poverty has reduced (though who knows how much), we have the highest number of millionaries/billionaries in Asia (Economic times report), we are knowledge centers of world and what not. But does this all matter and hold infront of these other facts above. To me thats a definate NO.

What do you think?


===================
Attaching an excellent article by Harsh mander:

Cry Freedom!

Harsh Mander

In a dilapidated slum shanty near the banks of the Ganga
in Patna is settled a group of families whose profession
is to clean dry toilets with their bare hands, and to
carry human waste on their heads to throw into the
forgiving waters of the mighty river. I found that not a
single child studied in the government school, which, as
it happened, was located literally just across the road
from the scavenger colony. It took a while to coax from
the guardians the reason for their steady resolve to
keep their children away from school. It transpired that
they had indeed sent their children to the school
initially. It is a custom in many government schools for
the teacher to send children on errands. The upper-caste
children were assigned tasks such as to fetch tea. The
children from the scavenger colony were asked to wash
the toilets, or to clean up after a dog had soiled the
school premises. The children could not bear the shame,
and refused to return to the school.

Of the many forms of untouchability that persist in
modern India, unarguably the most unconscionable is the
wide prevalence of discrimination against dalit children
within schools. Children in rural India, and even parts
of the cities, learn early the rules of caste, which
survive unremittingly through their lifetimes, even as
their country races into the 21st century. A survey of
practices of untouchability undertaken in 565 villages
in 11 major states of India reveals shockingly that in
as many as 38 per cent government schools, dalit
children are made to sit separately while eating. In 20
per cent schools, dalit children are not even permitted
to drink water from the same source.

As the outcome of a major direction of the Supreme Court
of India, millions of children in most government
primary schools in the country are being provided hot,
cooked, mid-day meals everyday. The mid-day meal
programme not only strengthens the nutrition of children
in government schools, many of whom are poor and do not
have access to sufficient and nutritious food in their
homes, it also encourages enrolment into schools,
retention and regular attendance.

But an equally important outcome is that since children
of all castes and classes sit together and eat, it
teaches them caste equality. Traditionally, caste and
communal barriers are expressed most in the refusal to
eat together; therefore, people of diversity sitting
together gently can shatter a range of iniquitous social
practices, and what better place for this to happen than
the school?

However, there are disturbing field studies of caste
discrimination within schools. Caste discrimination in
mid-day meals is seen in various ways. The first is
defiance of the Supreme Court orders to appoint cooks
from dalit backgrounds. In states like Tamil Nadu only
14 per cent of the cooks are dalit.

In many places where, although, dalit cooks have been
appointed, upper-caste parents retaliated by not
allowing their children to eat the meal, threatening to
withdraw, putting pressure to replace the cook with an
upper-caste cook and so on.

The other forms of discrimination are where children
are not allowed to sit together and eat. Dalit children
are required to sit apart from the dominant caste
children; sometimes apart within the same space, other
times outside of the school building while the dominant
caste children sit inside, or on a lower level than
their dominant caste peers. Some studies have also
shown that dalit children are required to bring their
own plates and/or are given less quantity of food,
refused a second serving, not allowed to drink water
from the public taps and hand pump at the school and
so on.

The recently released report of perhaps the first
nationwide survey of the continued prevalence of
untouchability, jointly authored by social scientists
Ghanshyam Shah, Sukhadeo Thorat, Satish Deshpande,
Amita Baviskar and myself
(Untouchability in Rural India, Sage), finds such
untouchability in all local state institutions. Almost
27.6 per cent dalits are prevented from entering
police stations and 25.7 from ration shops; 33 per cent
public health workers refuse to visit dalit homes, and
23.5 per cent dalits still do not get letters delivered
to their homes. Segregated seating for dalits was found
in 30.8 per cent self-help groups and cooperatives, and
29.6 per cent panchayat offices. In 14.4 per cent
villages, dalits were not permitted to enter the
panchayat building. They were denied access to polling
booths, or forced to form separate lines in 12 per cent
of the villages surveyed. Despite being charged with a
constitutional mandate to promote social justice, local
institutions of the Indian State facilitate
untouchability.

Dalit settlements are often segregated from the main
village, and these traditions are reproduced even by
the government, when building Indira Awaas housing
colonies for dalits or by NGOs, post-2001 earthquake
reconstruction in Gujarat. In nearly half the surveyed
villages (48.4 per cent), dalits were denied access to
water sources. In over a third (35.8 per cent), dalits
were denied entry into village shops. They had to wait
some distance from the shop, the shopkeepers kept the
goods they bought on the ground, and accepted their
money similarly without direct contact. In teashops, in
about one-third of the villages, dalits were denied
seating and had to use separate cups.

In more than 47 per cent villages, bans operated on
wedding processions on public (arrogated as upper-caste)
roads. In 10 to 20 per cent villages, dalits were not
allowed to wear clean or bright clothes or sunglasses.
They could not ride their bicycles, unfurl their
umbrellas, wear chappals on public roads, smoke or even
stand without head bowed.

We found that restrictions on entry by dalits into Hindu
temples were as high as an average of 64 per cent in 11
states, ranging from 47 per cent in UP to 94 per cent in
Karnataka. Such restrictions endured even after
conversion of dalits to egalitarian faiths. As many as 41
of the 51 villages surveyed in Punjab reported separate
gurudwaras for dalit Sikhs, and even where dalits
worshipped in gurudwaras frequented by upper caste jats,
they were served in separate lines at the langar, and
were not permitted to prepare or serve the sacred food.
In Maharashtra, despite mass conversions of Mahars to
Buddhism, dalits were denied temple entry in 51 per cent
villages. Reports from Kerala and Andhra Pradesh
chronicled divisions in the church between dalit converts
and others, even discrimination against ordained dalit
priests.

Untouchability persists even into death; in half the
villages (48.9 per cent) dalits were debarred from access
to cremation grounds. In Maharashtra, even where dalits
have their segregated cremation grounds, these are
permitted only on the eastern side of the village, so
that upper castes are not polluted by the winds that pass
from west to east.

The study reports discrimination against dalits even in
the labour market. Although normally dalits are coerced
into agricultural labour in unfavourable conditions,
sometimes even of bondage, they are excluded in the lean
agricultural season when work is scarce, and therefore
upper-caste workers are preferred. In 25 per cent of the
villages, dalits were paid lower wages than other workers.
They were subjected to longer working hours, delayed wages,
verbal and physical abuse, not just in 'feudal' states
like Bihar but notably in Punjab. In 37 per cent of the
villages, dalits were paid wages from a distance, to avoid
physical contact. The study found evidence of
discrimination between non-dalit and dalit workers,
evidence of caste surmounting proletarian solidarity.

Although the large majority of dalits are landless, even
in the fewer cases where dalits were landowners, they were
denied access to water for irrigation in more than
one-third of the villages. In 21 per cent villages, they
were denied access to grazing lands and fishing ponds, and
violent upper caste opposition was reported when dalits
were allotted government lands for cultivation or even
housing.

Untouchability extended even to consumer markets with
dalit producers in 35 per cent villages barred from
selling their produce in local markets. They were forced
to sell in the anonymity of distant urban markets where
caste identities blur, but this additional burden of costs
and time reduced their competitiveness. Caste taboos apply
particularly to products like milk, so that in 47 per cent
of the villages with cooperatives, dalits were not allowed
to sell milk to the co-operatives or even private buyers.
In a quarter of the villages, they were prevented from
buying milk from cooperatives. Dalits are not only
disproportionately burdened with poverty to start with,
caste discrimination in labour and consumer markets
condemn them to lower wages with harder work in uncertain
employment, and restrictions on their access to natural
resources as well as markets for their products.

With untouchability persisting unashamedly in State
institutions like schools and police stations, in public
spaces like temples and shops, in farms and markets, and
in homes and hearts, the dalit still lives in India
waiting hopelessly, and sometimes in anger, for the long
betrayed dawn of equality.

The writer is a former civil servant and Convener, Aman Biradari

Book Reviews & Discussion: Economic Development & Policies

Good Discussion after the review of the books. Chang's response is great.

FT.com / Books / Non-Fiction - The growth of nations

Novartis & Patents

In a case filed by Novartis in an Indian court in Chennai, it had challenged ruling by a court which had rejected its patent. As per Indian Patent Law, patents are given only for "substantially innovative' new drugs and not for "incremental" improvements in older drugs. This novartis was claiming was against the WTO rules. The Indian court rejected it. Initial reports said that court said it had no juridistion to rule about WTO compliance of the Patent law.

In most of the countries Novartis has obtained patent for the drug in question as Patent rules are different in other countries. The case was of importance because if court had ruled the other way it would have stopped generic drug companies in India producing various drugs for the developing world (especially the AIDS drugs).

The "incremental" patents which drug companies seek are a way to increase the patent life time of the older drugs and maintain monopoly power. In most countries as pharmaceutical industry has huge lobbying power they have being able to get these patents - through chaning laws. But in India, I am guessing mostly due to public protest and Generic drug lobby this was not in the patent law.

Atleast for now drug companies lose. But who knows what techniques they come up with to subvert these rules .....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/business/worldbusiness/07drug.html?hp

Bottled Water: PepsiCo to come clean on Aquafina water source

Finally at least Pepsi will state that water is bottles is coming from a public tap (which you can use for free and is enviornment friendly). BTW New York City tap water is supposed to be the cleanest you will find in the country and exceeds highest quality standard.

reportonbusiness.com: PepsiCo to come clean on Aquafina water source

Generics, Non-profits & Corporations

An excellent article which indicates how drug companies have used non-profit organizations as front to lobby for legislation in various states to stop generic drugs (epilepsy drugs in this example) on the grounds that generics can be harmful/not effective as compared to branded drugs, even though pro-industry FDA has denied any such claims and they have no proof. If you read through you will understand the various intricacies corporations go through and how blatantly it all takes place. Mind you this is from the pro-corporation Wall Street Journal, so tough to deny even for mainstream folks saying its hog-posh. Teaches you one clear lesson, dont buy what non-profits say without going into depth into their funding sources.
This is not first time non-profits are being used. Walmart funds some non-profits which have praised the "good" qualities of walmart and fought in lobbying for walmart. Exxon funds non-profits and uses them for different purposes. Corporate funding of non-profits ....
Just one of the several examples of corporations "work" ...


PILL PUSH
Industry Fights Switch
To Generics for Epilepsy
Big Drug Makers Help
Patient Groups Lobby;
More Attention to States
By SARAH RUBENSTEIN
July 13, 2007; Page A1

In state legislatures across the country, the Epilepsy Foundation has been campaigning for bills that would make it harder for pharmacists to switch patients to inexpensive generic epilepsy pills. The effort is getting behind-the-scenes support from drug companies -- a sign of how the industry, long a potent lobbying force in Washington, is increasingly looking to states to achieve its goals.

The foundation, a nonprofit group supported by the drug industry, says switching to generics could cause dangerous seizures. The Food and Drug Administration says it hasn't seen persuasive evidence for that, and it believes each generic is equivalent to the brand-name drug it copies.

Four major brand-name drugs used for epilepsy are expected to lose patent protection and face generic competition between next year and 2010. Those four drugs generated $5 billion in U.S. sales last year, according to IMS Health, meaning the state legislation could have a significant bottom-line impact. Some of the $5 billion figure reflects sales of the drugs for other ailments.

Generic drugs are the centerpiece of efforts to tame growth in America's prescription-drug bill, which topped $270 billion in 2006. When a doctor writes a prescription for a brand-name drug, pharmacists are usually permitted in most states to make an automatic switch to a generic judged equivalent by the FDA.

The epilepsy legislation would carve out an exception to that rule, with many of the bills requiring that doctors explicitly approve such a switch. Tennessee has passed a weaker version that requires doctor notification but not consent. Around 25 other states have considered some form of restriction in the past year.
ON THE TABLE

[model legislation]
Model legislation the national Epilepsy Foundation has provided to state affiliates to address concerns about epilepsy-drug substitution:
A pharmacist may not interchange an anti-epileptic drug or formulation of an anti-epileptic drug, brand or generic, for the treatment of seizures (epilepsy) without prior notification of and the signed informed consent of such interchange from the prescribing physician and patient, or patient's parent, legal guardian or spouse of such person.
Source: Epilepsy Foundation

It isn't the only health issue where states have been the central battleground. Earlier this year, Merck & Co. drew fire for lobbying states to require that preteen girls receive its cervical-cancer vaccine to attend school. Merck stopped its direct lobbying in February, but a group of female state legislators that has received funding from the drug maker continue to push for the laws.

States often move faster than Congress, says Jan Faiks, who runs state policy for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, the drug industry's trade group. State legislation can move "from idea, to passage, to governor's signature in 90 days, sometimes faster than that," she says. "So the action is in the states."

Campaign contributions to state candidates by pharmaceutical manufacturers and their employees rose to about $8.8 million for 2006 from about $4.6 million for 2000, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Drug makers spent more than $44 million on state lobbying in 2003 and 2004, the last years for which figures are available, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

In state legislatures, as in Congress, the drug industry often enlists nonprofit health and patient-advocacy groups to advance its agenda. In the epilepsy case, the Epilepsy Foundation's state affiliates, rather than the companies, are taking the most prominent part in the lobbying.

The foundation and its state affiliates receive funding from the epilepsy-drug makers. GlaxoSmithKline PLC and UCB SA donated $500,000 to $999,999 each in fiscal 2006 to the national foundation, according to its annual report. Abbott Laboratories and a Johnson & Johnson unit each contributed $100,000 to $499,999. Representatives of four drug companies sit on the foundation's board, as does PhRMA chief Billy Tauzin.
[Top Treatments]

The foundation and its affiliates had about $77 million in revenue in 2005, about $48 million of which came from state and federal grants.

The foundation says its diverse funding base shields it from undue drug-company influence, and the industry executives on its board didn't participate in discussions of the drug-switching issue. Foundation leaders note that the state bills would generally require doctor permission for several kinds of switches, including when a patient goes from a generic to a brand.

"These are people's lives that we're talking about -- nothing about stock options and stock value and how this would affect [companies'] bottom line. That would be insulting to us to have discussions like that," says Sindi Rosales, the head of a foundation affiliate in Texas, one of the states that weighed legislation this year. She says pharmaceutical companies are "fabulous partners" and their help in several areas "has been amazingly tremendous," but the companies leave it to the foundation to call the shots.

For their part, company executives describe their lobbying role as limited and say the bills were primarily an initiative of the foundation, although they acknowledge in certain cases that company officials have gotten directly involved. Executives say the aim of these activities is to protect the health of patients. "Our issue is not selfish toward our individual product," says Richard Denness, a vice president at Belgium-based UCB. "It's a real concern in the minds of prescribers.... All it takes in the scheme of things are one or two patients to have a tragic event."

In the late 1990s, the national Epilepsy Foundation, based in Landover, Md., raised concerns about anecdotal reports that some patients experienced seizures and side effects after switching epilepsy drugs. Some of the episodes involved patients who had been switched to a generic from a branded drug. The foundation also worried about cases in which patients were switched from one generic version of a drug to another generic version of the same drug.

When the FDA approves generics, it requires manufacturers to show in human studies that their copycat pills deliver a similar amount of active ingredient to the bloodstream as the brand-name original. However, the agency doesn't require exact equivalence. That would be an impossible bar to clear, because there is always a slight variation in the way people absorb drugs.

The foundation theorized that some generic pills had a meaningful difference from the brands. This difference, it postulated, meant patients were getting more or less of the drug in their blood, causing some of them to have seizures or side effects. Foundation officials floated the idea in a 1999 meeting with the FDA.

The FDA's response: "Show us the data," recalls Sandy Finucane, who oversees state and federal policy for the foundation. The agency, unpersuaded by what it saw, stood firm in its long-held position that the difference was too small to have a tangible impact on patients.
[chart]

Coming up with the kind of evidence the FDA sought would have required a major clinical trial to demonstrate that the seizures were a direct result of the switches, Ms. Finucane says. The foundation thought it would be difficult to enroll patients for such a trial, and the costs were prohibitive, she says. For years the foundation didn't push the matter, beyond developing policy statements and encouraging patients and doctors to report problems to the FDA.

In early 2006, the issue re-emerged as legislation requiring doctor permission for switches was proposed in Illinois. That's the home state of Abbott Laboratories, which makes Depakote, a leading epilepsy pill that is expected to face generic competition next year. The bill passed, but in watered-down form. An Epilepsy Foundation official in Illinois says Abbott helped fund lobbying for stronger provisions that were considered this year but didn't pass. Abbott said it supports some foundation initiatives but declined to give specifics.

In May 2006, the national Epilepsy Foundation convened a committee of medical experts to examine the question. The committee found a lack of authoritative studies showing that such drug switches cause problems, says its chairman, Steven Schachter, a Harvard Medical School neurologist. Nonetheless, it recommended that doctors give explicit approval for switches, citing anecdotal reports of seizures and noting that such attacks can be serious.

Last fall, the American Academy of Neurology issued a statement making a similar recommendation. The academy says it receives funding from drug makers for educational programs but not for developing medical guidelines.

At a meeting last September, the national foundation told its local affiliates that if they wanted to push for legislation regulating switches, the foundation would provide model legislation and support, Ms. Finucane says. It also told them to "maintain independence from any company that's going to be interested in this issue," she adds. The 50-plus affiliates operate largely autonomously.

The sponsor of a bill in Georgia, state Rep. Charlice Byrd, says a UCB official was the first person to raise the epilepsy-drug switching issue with her. The Belgian company makes the epilepsy drug Keppra. Ms. Byrd says she was sympathetic because her late mother had epilepsy.

Charlotte Thompson, who joined the foundation's Georgia affiliate as executive director last September, says she became aware of the bill after hearing about it from UCB. "When we realized [Rep. Byrd] was introducing this and looked at it and studied what it was, then we jumped on the bandwagon," Ms. Thompson says. Six lobbyists for three companies joined a committee created by the Epilepsy Foundation to work on the legislative process, she says.

Ms. Byrd says several pharmaceutical-company lobbyists offered their support. Abbott lobbyist Guy Mosier "was extremely helpful working with legislators to help them understand the importance and that this piece of legislation was strictly for patient protection," Ms. Byrd says. Mr. Mosier declined to comment.

Ms. Byrd introduced the bill in the Georgia House in January of this year. At a Feb. 7 hearing of the House's health committee, Lasa Joiner, executive director of the Georgia Psychiatric Physicians Association, testified in support. Ms. Joiner was at the time also a Glaxo lobbyist, which she didn't mention at the hearing. In an interview, she said she didn't raise her tie to Glaxo because the company hadn't asked her to lobby for the bill.

Two days later, epilepsy patients and parents of patients visited lawmakers' offices to ask them to support the bill. The Epilepsy Foundation's Ms. Thompson says drug-company lobbyists accompanied the visitors.

Kimberly Oviedo says her 6-year-old daughter had seizures last year after being switched to a generic version of the epilepsy drug Zonegran. She says she supported the bill because she wouldn't "want any other person to have to go through what we've been through with our kids." Ms. Oviedo also has a son who suffers from epilepsy.

The bill passed the Georgia House in a 161-0 vote on Feb. 28, but it stalled in the Senate after groups representing pharmacists and generic-drug makers mounted heftier opposition to it in that chamber. Pharmacies often earn bigger profit margins on generics than on branded drugs.

Ms. Thompson says the foundation plans to meet with the Georgia Senate leadership this summer to try to gather its support for next year.

In Texas, two local Epilepsy Foundation affiliates decided to approach an Abbott official after they resolved to push for a bill, says Ms. Rosales, the head of one of the affiliates. Abbott and other drug makers helped fund the foundation's Texas lobbying, she says.

Ms. Rosales, whose daughter used to have seizures, says she felt deeply about the bill but worried about being perceived as a "mouthpiece for the pharmaceutical industry." She nonetheless hired Santos Alliances, a firm that also represents PhRMA, as her affiliate's lobbyist. Ms. Rosales says it's difficult to find a health-care lobbyist with no drug-maker clients. Frank Santos, head of the lobbying firm, says PhRMA was "absolutely 100% not involved" with the bill.

At a March hearing in the Texas Senate, Ron Hartmann, a lobbyist for a generic-drug maker owned by Novartis AG of Switzerland, testified against the bill. He said he suspected the bill was "less focused on the citizens of Texas than on protecting the market share of a few brand-name drugs that are scheduled to go off-patent in the next few years."

State Sen. Kyle Janek, the bill's sponsor, responded that Mr. Hartmann had "impugned my motivations," and added that, if Mr. Hartmann would "abstain from doing that," then he would abstain from calling Mr. Hartmann a "high-priced shill." Mr. Hartmann apologized. In 2006, Sen. Janek received about $19,000 in campaign contributions from drug makers. He says he sponsored the bill because it was in the best interests of patients.

The bill passed the state Senate in April, but failed to come up to a vote in the House after debate in that chamber's health committee. Three of the committee's members said in interviews later that they were skeptical of the bill because they thought it was being pushed by drug companies. Generic-drug makers and pharmacists lobbied heavily against the bill.

Meanwhile, some doctors are pushing harder for a study that would settle the matter. Michel Berg, a neurologist who is chairman of an American Epilepsy Society task force examining the switching issue, has opened discussions with the FDA about what kind of trial would be necessary.

For now, Gary Buehler, the director of the FDA's office of generic drugs, says the agency is skeptical that the drug switches cause seizures. "The only way you can somehow pin this down is to do a good study," says Mr. Buehler.