The love which begin after your birth
The affection which start after your birth
The fight evolved after your birth
Who are you?
You are only and only
My dear and dear brother
The love which I shared with you
The affection which I developed with you
The fight which I played with you
The friendship which I found with you
Who are you?
You are only and only
My dear and dear brother
The day I remember
Your arrival in our family
The day I remember
Being part of our family
The day I remember
When I found a compatriot
Who are you?
You are only and only My dear and dear brother
Monday, July 28, 2008
Mother
Some time I think
Am I part of my mother
Or my mother is part of my life
What is this thing?
Which makes me so much cherish
What is this thing?
Which makes me so much sensitive
Some time I think
Am I part of my mother
Or my mother is part of my life
The birth she gave to me
The knowledge she gave to me
Everything of life she gave to me
What the things I return to her
What the pain I return to her
Some time I think
Am I part of my mother
Or my mother is part of my life
Mother’s love and affection
Mother’s sacrifice and work
Always make me debtor of my mother
Some time I think
Am I part of my mother
Or my mother is part of my life
Am I part of my mother
Or my mother is part of my life
What is this thing?
Which makes me so much cherish
What is this thing?
Which makes me so much sensitive
Some time I think
Am I part of my mother
Or my mother is part of my life
The birth she gave to me
The knowledge she gave to me
Everything of life she gave to me
What the things I return to her
What the pain I return to her
Some time I think
Am I part of my mother
Or my mother is part of my life
Mother’s love and affection
Mother’s sacrifice and work
Always make me debtor of my mother
Some time I think
Am I part of my mother
Or my mother is part of my life
Governance and Emergency Preparedness
Disaster can be defined as the onset of an extreme event causing profound damage or loss as perceived by the afflicted people. Disaster management involves three phases predisaster, during the disaster, and postdisaster. The predisaster phase consists of risk identification, mitigation, and preparedness. During the disaster, emergency response takes place, and in the postdisaster phase, rehabilitation and reconstruction are applied. The actions create a cycle in time. In the predisaster phase to identify risk, hazard, risk, and vulnerability assessments are performed. Hazard can be defined as an interaction between humans and an extreme natural event with respect to cultural perceptions and value systems. The term risk includes probability and could, therefore, be defined as the actual exposure of something of human value to a hazard and is often regarded as the combination of probability and loss. These assessments help identify the characteristics of a hazard such as its frequency, magnitude, and location. Elements at risk are the population and assets exposed in a vulnerability assessment. Since risk is identified using vulnerability and probability of hazard, therefore
Risk = Hazard x Vulnerability
Building disaster resilient communities by promoting increased awareness of the importance of disaster reduction as an integral component of sustainable development, with the goal of reducing human, social, economic and environmental losses due to natural hazards and related technological and environmental disasters.
Increase public awareness to understand risk, vulnerability and disaster reduction globally
– The more people, regional organizations, governments, non-governmental organizations, United Nations entities, representatives of civil society and others know about risk, vulnerability and how to manage the impacts of natural hazards, the more disaster reduction measures will be implemented in all sectors of society. Prevention begins with information.
Obtain commitment from public authorities to implement disaster reduction policies and actions
– The more decision-makers at all levels commit themselves to disaster reduction policies and actions, the sooner communities vulnerable to natural disasters will benefit from applied disaster reduction policies and actions. This requires, in part, a grassroots approach whereby communities at risk are fully informed and participate in risk management initiatives.
Stimulate interdisciplinary and intersectoral partnerships, including the expansion of risk reduction networks
– The more entities active in disaster reduction share information on their research and practices, the more useful the global body of knowledge and experience will progress. By sharing a common purpose and through collaborative efforts we can ensure a world that is more resilient to the impact of natural hazards.
Improve scientific knowledge about disaster reduction
– The more we know about the causes and consequences of natural hazards and related technological and environmental disasters on societies, the more we are able to be better prepared to reduce risks. Bringing the scientific community and policy makers together allows them to contribute to and complement each other's work.
“On services, such as e-health, e-participation, e-voting, e-environment or e-weather, for example, serves as a guide to the wider subject matter of e-governance that can, in time, be imprinted on the public for disaster management. The result of the risk assessment provides a function of hazard probability and vulnerability. Hazard monitoring and forecasting use GIS, mapping, and scenario building. At the end of this phase, risk is identified and mitigated. Land-use planning and building codes related to the risk can be updated and enforced in the community. The public could be educated about risks and trained in prevention. In emergency preparedness, early warning systems, communication systems, networks of emergency responders, shelter facilities, and evacuation plan are key elements. During the disaster phase, existing early warning systems could be used. In emergency response, humanitarian assistance, cleanup, temporary repairs, restoration of services, and damage assessment are the basic steps. After this phase, rehabilitation and reconstruction activities take place. Damaged critical infrastructure is reconstructed; budget and macroeconomic management issues are addressed; revitalization of affected sectors begins; and tourism, exports, and agriculture are managed.
A moving away from definitions of what government is doing in the "e" world only leads to a lessening of accountability of the activities in which any government is engaged. In society, it is the identifying of concepts through words and phrases that leads to cohesion and order. Subject matters create an ambience between stakeholders throughout the society. Disasters or hazards are not limited to tsunamis. Others include earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, drought, famine, epidemics, floods, landslides, storms, hurricanes, avalanches, and fires. The list could be extended to include technological and man-made hazards such as pollution and land contamination. Any of these hazards could be controlled and mitigated by effective disaster management. In general, these activities can be distinguished into three areas viz., Social activities (relief work, food, shelter, etc.) Scientific activities that could support social activities and scientific activities that support research .Scientific and social constrains played very crucial role in managing any disaster.
Following are scientific constrains for preparedness of emergency plan-
1. Lack of data,
2. Inadequate data sharing,
3. Poor communication of data and
4. Duplication of data
Following are social constrains for preparedness of emergency plan-
1. Political problems,
2. Government structure,
3. Relocation of people and
4. Inequity
Disaster management is a cycle in time, and the objective is to save lives and property. Thus, the goal is to be prepared for the next disaster. Hazards are region based, and this generally means that they will repeat themselves sooner or later. To be better prepared for the next one, the steps that should be taken are
· Assessment of risk
· Mapping the extent of the disaster
· Helping communities prepare
· Allocating resources
· Deploying personnel
· Monitoring emergencies in real time
· Saving lives
· Protecting property
For ICT project proper preparedness vulnerability mapping and comprehensive risk assessment is very essential but this important component is missing due to following reasons-
· Minimal field assessments to date mainly restricted to areas of high population density
· Lack of historic environmental baseline data
· Putting the "e the lack of environmental quality assessments and data on toxic and hazardous wastes that may be mixed with other debris
· The lack of environmental guidelines in national disaster plans (some times)
The information gathered from the Internet, interviews, and discussions was used to measure the results of emergency management and GIS usage. Emergency preparedness following things are required; Critical infrastructure data, up-to-date image data bank, Metadata, data interoperability, predefined emergency response database model and data sharing with media for coordination in allocating resources, preventing the duplication of data, awareness of ongoing international/national GIS projects, upgrading to high-tech GIS system, mobile mapping capabilities and monitoring emergencies in real time. In general, most of the coordination efforts failed because of the diversity of the levels of information in the countries impacted by the disaster. In general, the affected countries did not have the base data or technology to address their needs. Lack of information was not the only factor responsible for impeding humanitarian efforts; political, social, and economic issues were also major obstacles. Because of these obstacles, officials responsible for creating and implementing programs and policies should be sensitive to the diversity of the people in the region and enlist the help of sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists. On an international level, the coordination of agencies responding to the disaster was inefficient. To better respond to future disasters, countries need to work together at the regional and international levels ahead of time. The use of GIS technology for these applications will enable the agencies involved to save time and improve efficiency.
Risk = Hazard x Vulnerability
Building disaster resilient communities by promoting increased awareness of the importance of disaster reduction as an integral component of sustainable development, with the goal of reducing human, social, economic and environmental losses due to natural hazards and related technological and environmental disasters.
Increase public awareness to understand risk, vulnerability and disaster reduction globally
– The more people, regional organizations, governments, non-governmental organizations, United Nations entities, representatives of civil society and others know about risk, vulnerability and how to manage the impacts of natural hazards, the more disaster reduction measures will be implemented in all sectors of society. Prevention begins with information.
Obtain commitment from public authorities to implement disaster reduction policies and actions
– The more decision-makers at all levels commit themselves to disaster reduction policies and actions, the sooner communities vulnerable to natural disasters will benefit from applied disaster reduction policies and actions. This requires, in part, a grassroots approach whereby communities at risk are fully informed and participate in risk management initiatives.
Stimulate interdisciplinary and intersectoral partnerships, including the expansion of risk reduction networks
– The more entities active in disaster reduction share information on their research and practices, the more useful the global body of knowledge and experience will progress. By sharing a common purpose and through collaborative efforts we can ensure a world that is more resilient to the impact of natural hazards.
Improve scientific knowledge about disaster reduction
– The more we know about the causes and consequences of natural hazards and related technological and environmental disasters on societies, the more we are able to be better prepared to reduce risks. Bringing the scientific community and policy makers together allows them to contribute to and complement each other's work.
“On services, such as e-health, e-participation, e-voting, e-environment or e-weather, for example, serves as a guide to the wider subject matter of e-governance that can, in time, be imprinted on the public for disaster management. The result of the risk assessment provides a function of hazard probability and vulnerability. Hazard monitoring and forecasting use GIS, mapping, and scenario building. At the end of this phase, risk is identified and mitigated. Land-use planning and building codes related to the risk can be updated and enforced in the community. The public could be educated about risks and trained in prevention. In emergency preparedness, early warning systems, communication systems, networks of emergency responders, shelter facilities, and evacuation plan are key elements. During the disaster phase, existing early warning systems could be used. In emergency response, humanitarian assistance, cleanup, temporary repairs, restoration of services, and damage assessment are the basic steps. After this phase, rehabilitation and reconstruction activities take place. Damaged critical infrastructure is reconstructed; budget and macroeconomic management issues are addressed; revitalization of affected sectors begins; and tourism, exports, and agriculture are managed.
A moving away from definitions of what government is doing in the "e" world only leads to a lessening of accountability of the activities in which any government is engaged. In society, it is the identifying of concepts through words and phrases that leads to cohesion and order. Subject matters create an ambience between stakeholders throughout the society. Disasters or hazards are not limited to tsunamis. Others include earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, drought, famine, epidemics, floods, landslides, storms, hurricanes, avalanches, and fires. The list could be extended to include technological and man-made hazards such as pollution and land contamination. Any of these hazards could be controlled and mitigated by effective disaster management. In general, these activities can be distinguished into three areas viz., Social activities (relief work, food, shelter, etc.) Scientific activities that could support social activities and scientific activities that support research .Scientific and social constrains played very crucial role in managing any disaster.
Following are scientific constrains for preparedness of emergency plan-
1. Lack of data,
2. Inadequate data sharing,
3. Poor communication of data and
4. Duplication of data
Following are social constrains for preparedness of emergency plan-
1. Political problems,
2. Government structure,
3. Relocation of people and
4. Inequity
Disaster management is a cycle in time, and the objective is to save lives and property. Thus, the goal is to be prepared for the next disaster. Hazards are region based, and this generally means that they will repeat themselves sooner or later. To be better prepared for the next one, the steps that should be taken are
· Assessment of risk
· Mapping the extent of the disaster
· Helping communities prepare
· Allocating resources
· Deploying personnel
· Monitoring emergencies in real time
· Saving lives
· Protecting property
For ICT project proper preparedness vulnerability mapping and comprehensive risk assessment is very essential but this important component is missing due to following reasons-
· Minimal field assessments to date mainly restricted to areas of high population density
· Lack of historic environmental baseline data
· Putting the "e the lack of environmental quality assessments and data on toxic and hazardous wastes that may be mixed with other debris
· The lack of environmental guidelines in national disaster plans (some times)
The information gathered from the Internet, interviews, and discussions was used to measure the results of emergency management and GIS usage. Emergency preparedness following things are required; Critical infrastructure data, up-to-date image data bank, Metadata, data interoperability, predefined emergency response database model and data sharing with media for coordination in allocating resources, preventing the duplication of data, awareness of ongoing international/national GIS projects, upgrading to high-tech GIS system, mobile mapping capabilities and monitoring emergencies in real time. In general, most of the coordination efforts failed because of the diversity of the levels of information in the countries impacted by the disaster. In general, the affected countries did not have the base data or technology to address their needs. Lack of information was not the only factor responsible for impeding humanitarian efforts; political, social, and economic issues were also major obstacles. Because of these obstacles, officials responsible for creating and implementing programs and policies should be sensitive to the diversity of the people in the region and enlist the help of sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists. On an international level, the coordination of agencies responding to the disaster was inefficient. To better respond to future disasters, countries need to work together at the regional and international levels ahead of time. The use of GIS technology for these applications will enable the agencies involved to save time and improve efficiency.
Similarities and the differences between the two modes "tragedy of the commons" and "externality" problem
The tragedy of the Internet commons must be addressed by the stakeholders. At least two such groups are doing so, with differing strategies. First, the major transport service providers are lobbying to turn the single service plane of the Internet into multiple layers: current best effort and something “better.” The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers. [Google] is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers Network externalities exist in markets where 'the utility that a user derives from consumption of a good increases with the number of other agents consuming the good' .Externalities is a direct physical effect of the number of users on the quality of the product or service. The value of a fax machine to one user increases as more fax machines are purchased and used by others. Another source is an indirect effect where the utility of a product increases with the number of users because the quality of the product is higher or there are more complementary products available. A third source of network externalities exists in situations where increasing sales of a durable good produces greater quality and availability of post-purchase services related to the product. The greater the number of people buying a certain brand of washing machine, the greater the likelihood that service for the machines will be provided. AOL and Yahoo have just announced a new “better” email service where companies pay a fraction of a cent to send messages. The fee includes guaranteed delivery to their subscribers and assurance of the message’s true origin. The goal is to limit spam and phishing. Of course, this can be extended to setting up authentication barriers for websites, on-line advertisement, etc. There has been an outcry in the Internet community that this will be the end of the “openness” that fuelled its innovations and growth. That may be true to some extent, but it is the only way to really deal with the tragedy of the commons. AOL and Yahoo are doing is exactly what farmers did. They instituted the notion of private property and fenced their land to keep out the other farmers. It worked for farming and it will work for the Internet. Certifying the source of Web and email traffic can be provided by many organizations. Furthermore, these groups should set up open standards and clearing mechanisms to permit interoperability among the legitimate edge systems. It means that some kid operating out of a bedroom can’t be an ISP, Web host, or email service. We will still have an open market and competition among hundreds of legitimate suppliers of a truly better service. The tragedy of the Internet commons can only be addressed by the edge systems, not by the transport infrastructure. It is natural at this stage of the Internet’s development to have a few strong edge players like Google, Yahoo and AOL lead in this transition. As long as they keep it open and smaller players quickly adopt the mechanisms.
Spam may be described as an "externality" problem
An externality occurs when a decision causes costs or benefits to third party stakeholders, often, although not necessarily, from the use of a public good. In other words, the participants in an economic transaction do not necessarily bear all of the costs or reap all of the benefits of the transaction. For example, manufacturing that causes air pollution imposes costs on others when making use of public air. In a competitive market, this means too much or too little of the good may be produced and consumed in terms of overall cost or benefit to society, depending on incentives at the margin and strategic behavior. In the absence of significant externalities, parties to an economic transaction are assumed to benefit, improving the overall welfare of society. If third parties benefit substantially, such as in areas of education or safety, the good may be under-provided (or under-consumed); if costs to the public exceed costs to the economic decision makers, such as in pollution, the good may be over-provided, in terms of overall benefit or cost to society. e mail and instant messaging (IM) systems represent two communication technologies that are potentially substitutable. A unique feature of e-mail and IM is that their value to an individual user increases as the number of other people adopting the system grows. This is referred to as a positive network externality. This externality makes it difficult for consumers to switch to other systems because of the potential loss of connectivity with network members. Further, as this externality grows, it has unintended negative consequences in the form of spam. Including these three network externality effects positive, cross-impact, and negative. The determinants of electronic communication system use based on an extended Technology Acceptance Model. User perceptions regarding network externalities have a positive impact on use of electronic communication systems while perceptions of problems associated with unsolicited messages and perceived usefulness of alternative systems do not significantly affect system use.
Spam may be described as a "tragedy of the commons";
We depend on the Internet for social, educational and commercial endeavours. It is becoming as essential as municipal water systems and the electricity grid. Yet it suffers from a destructive phenomenon known as the “Tragedy of the Commons.” The tragedy of the commons was first described by William Forster Lloyd in 1833. The villages of both old and New England were built around a central public area of land referred to as the commons. He observed that when the commons are used as pastureland available to all, cattle owners have a short term interest in increasing the size of their herds. But the size of the herds on the commons will soon exceed its carrying capacity. The commons will be doomed by overgrazing. Eventually, the cattle-owners suffer, abandon the commons and find a way to ensure a sustainable source of pastureland. The term describes the fundamental conflict between individuals' self interest and the common good. "The parable demonstrates how unrestricted access to a resource such as a pasture ultimately dooms the resource because of over-exploitation. This occurs because the benefits of exploitation accrue to individuals, while the costs of exploitation are distributed between all those exploiting the resource. So the unsolicited commercial email and spam are a classic tragedy of the commons. The often cited commons is freedom to say what you want to anyone you like. Complete freedom of expression without the need of a printer, publisher and distributor. This is a good aspect of the Internet, but it is not a commons that can be depleted. You can always have more ideas to post on a website or blog, and many people behind you will do the same. The ideas are not limited, nor are the canvas upon which they can be painted. Some governments limit freedom of speech on the Internet; they are keeping some people from accessing the commons, but the commons is still there.The physical and logical identity of the user is being spoiled. It is too easy to impersonate an individual (email address) or an enterprise (website). This is how spam, phishing, viruses and worms get started. However, the address and naming space of the internet is very large and not completely depleted with misuse. The people and companies move to another fresh area by changing their internet identities. For example, by convention many people in higher education use completely disposable email addresses that are a seemingly random set of letters and numbers at schooldot-edu due to this spam is consider as tragedy of commons.
e-Governance Strategies
Technology policy is encouraged by government, business change is distributed by government, customer and corporate services are dependent on government, and democratic engagement is also exploring by government. Moreover modern governments with serious transformational intent see technology as a strategic asset and not just a tactical tool. Technology alone does not transform government, but government cannot transform to meet modern citizens’ expectations without it. So strategy’s vision is about better using technology to deliver public services and policy outcomes that have an impact on citizens’ daily live through greater choice and personalization, delivering better public services, such as health, education and pensions; benefiting communities by reducing burdens on front line staff and giving them the tools to help break cycles of crime and deprivation; and improving the economy through better regulation and leaner government. There are new information assurance risks like terrorists, organized criminals and hackers threaten information and services, and theft of identity and of personal data is of increasing concern.
The world is changing around us at an incredible pace due to remarkable technological change. The future of public services has to use technology to give citizens choice, with personalized services designed around their needs not the needs of the provider. Within the public services we have to use technology to join up and share services rather than duplicate them. Modern government both in policy making and in service delivery relies on accurate and timely information about citizens, businesses, animals and assets. Information sharing, management of identity and of geographical information, and information assurance are therefore crucial. To achieve the vision will require following strategies-
· Services enabled by IT must be designed around the citizen or business, not the provider, and provided through modern, coordinated delivery channels. This will improve the customer experience, achieve better policy outcomes, reduce paperwork burdens and improve efficiency by reducing duplication and routine processing, leveraging delivery capacity and streamlining processes.
· Government must move to a shared services culture in the front office, in the back office, in information and in infrastructure and release efficiencies by standardization, simplification and sharing.
· There must be broadening and deepening of government’s professionalism in terms of the planning, delivery, management, skills and governance of IT enabled change. This will result in more successful outcomes; fewer costly delivery failures; and increased confidence by citizens and politicians in the delivery of change by the public services.
Prospects virtually every public service depends upon large scale processes and technology, particularly the large and complex transactional systems that support individual front line public services. Most public services would simply not function at all without their reliable operation. Many of these systems are also old and custom built, use obsolete technologies, are relatively costly to maintain by modern standards, and hence stretch the capability of the whole technology industry when it comes to amending or replacing them. In addition, until recently, most technology investment has been on transactional or back office functions and not on systems to support front line staff doctors and nurses, teachers, police, social workers and many others. Systematically engage with citizens, business and front line public servants to understand and then specify the transformational changes which service providers need to meet learning from the best practice already within the public sector, from other governments and from the private sector.
As a part of e-governance strategy to create a service transformation board whose role is to set overarching service design principles, promotes best practice, signpost the potential from technology futures and challenge inconsistency with agreed standards. Develop modern channels for citizen and business access to services, and actively manage the shift in channels towards the most efficient and effective. Customer service centers, such as those for customer contact or payment processes, where there is significant scope for rationalization through sharing, particularly if central, local and other public sector bodies can team up. Human resources, finance and other corporate services, where improved professionalism, standard systems and processes and effectiveness of these corporate functions should achieve efficiency gains across the whole public sector and in the functions themselves, as well as enhancing the employee experience and realizing indirect efficiencies from better financial, personnel, knowledge and asset management. Common Infrastructure, where as government services converge around the citizen and organizations adopt commercial off shelf technology solutions, the ability to share items of common infrastructure increases. Common technology will enable joined up solutions, leverage investments and shorten the implementation timeframe of new reforms.
Data sharing is integral to transforming services and reducing administrative burdens on citizens and businesses. But privacy rights and public trust must be retained. There will be a new Ministerial focus on finding and communicating a balance between maintaining the privacy of the individual and delivering more efficient, higher quality services with minimal bureaucracy. Information management is to facilitate the move towards more collaborative working on issues that involve a range of government organizations, common standards and practices for information management will be developed, with an effective range of tools to allow the most efficient use and sharing of information to all those across government that have a legitimate need to see and use it.
Information assurance despite the difficulties of a fast moving and hostile world, underpinning IT systems must be secure and convenient for those intended to use them. The risk management model based on strategy will extend a simple, tiered architecture for its own networks to support this model in practice, with an updated application of the protective marking scheme for electronically held information. Government will also play its part to promote public confidence by leading a public/private campaign on internet safety and by a new scheme to deliver a wider availability of assured products and services.
Identity management is a holistic approach to identity management, based on a suite of identity management solutions that enable the public and private sectors to manage risk and provide cost effective services trusted by customers and stakeholders. These will rationalize electronic gateways and citizen and business record numbers. They will converge towards biometric identity cards and the National Identity Register. This approach will also consider the practical and legal issues of making wider use of the national insurance number to index citizen records as a transition path towards an identity card. Technology standards and architecture to ensure that government’s technology is cost effective in terms of public and private sector best practice. Legacy systems will be progressively refreshed by taking advantage of open standards, commercial off the shelf products and asset reuse, expenditure will be reduced and capacity freed for the transformational agenda. A regular forward look at demand and supply of IT services and an agreed forward sourcing strategy, including action to ensure capacity and competition in the market. Active management of strategic IT supplier intelligence, relationships and performance across government, using a standard assessment framework. An agreed performance plan for each major purveyor to improve that purveyor’s delivery, capability and partnering with current and future public sector customers. Support of the use of standardized contracts, services and service boundaries, and contracts and service management models. Generally IT strategies formulated by the administration have focused on the establishment of the IT infrastructure as well as the dissemination of IT related equipment. From this point in time onward, however, it is necessary for us to raise the level and improve the utilization of IT, and start taking significant steps toward the revolution of our society using the structural reform powers of IT.
When considering information technology, it’s easy to remain focused on advanced technologies rather than the people who need to use these technologies. We believe, however, that it is essential to formulate IT policies in terms of IT users and people. It is also preferable that IT technologies become infrastructures that users can utilize forgetting these technologies are even there much like air and water. In other words, IT technologies should exist in such a way that people will experience convenience and feel their outstanding effects in all areas of their lives. And, through these various improvements in our daily lives, a society will emerge in which various intellectual and cultural values will be created out of the interactions and collaborative activities that occur between people of differing backgrounds and through an environment whereby knowledge and information is freely and easily circulated and exchanged. The effective policy will help in following ways-
· Development of infrastructure that can easily connect to networks that anyone can use at anytime from anywhere for any purpose and that has no digital divide the world’s most secure IT society.
· Development of human resource bases with an eye towards the next generation education and human resource development that will produce human resources that will be competent anywhere in the world.
· Promotion of R&D that will form the foundations for the next generation IT society International contribution by providing problem solving models.
· Technologies have emerged into widespread use for instance the mobile phone and other mobile technologies which government services have yet properly to exploit.
· Sophisticated, holistic policy solutions, such as those set out in the government’s election manifesto, rely upon effective and pervasive technology systems across government and beyond for instance to support offender management through offender profiling and managed rehabilitation plans and to deliver patient choice in the health service.
· Public use of the internet and telephone continues to rise. As people experience excellent services in parts of the private and public sector, so their expectations of public services rise across the board.
· Citizens, businesses and the voluntary and community sector benefit from the better regulation, reduced paperwork and lower costs from a leaner, modern, more effective public sector.
· Public servants have better tools to undertake their jobs, and the opportunity to provide better service as a result.
· Policy makers will be better able to achieve intended outcomes in practice.
· Managers are able to free resources from back office to the front-line.
· Citizens feel more engaged with the processes of democratic government.
The world is changing around us at an incredible pace due to remarkable technological change. The future of public services has to use technology to give citizens choice, with personalized services designed around their needs not the needs of the provider. Within the public services we have to use technology to join up and share services rather than duplicate them. Modern government both in policy making and in service delivery relies on accurate and timely information about citizens, businesses, animals and assets. Information sharing, management of identity and of geographical information, and information assurance are therefore crucial. To achieve the vision will require following strategies-
· Services enabled by IT must be designed around the citizen or business, not the provider, and provided through modern, coordinated delivery channels. This will improve the customer experience, achieve better policy outcomes, reduce paperwork burdens and improve efficiency by reducing duplication and routine processing, leveraging delivery capacity and streamlining processes.
· Government must move to a shared services culture in the front office, in the back office, in information and in infrastructure and release efficiencies by standardization, simplification and sharing.
· There must be broadening and deepening of government’s professionalism in terms of the planning, delivery, management, skills and governance of IT enabled change. This will result in more successful outcomes; fewer costly delivery failures; and increased confidence by citizens and politicians in the delivery of change by the public services.
Prospects virtually every public service depends upon large scale processes and technology, particularly the large and complex transactional systems that support individual front line public services. Most public services would simply not function at all without their reliable operation. Many of these systems are also old and custom built, use obsolete technologies, are relatively costly to maintain by modern standards, and hence stretch the capability of the whole technology industry when it comes to amending or replacing them. In addition, until recently, most technology investment has been on transactional or back office functions and not on systems to support front line staff doctors and nurses, teachers, police, social workers and many others. Systematically engage with citizens, business and front line public servants to understand and then specify the transformational changes which service providers need to meet learning from the best practice already within the public sector, from other governments and from the private sector.
As a part of e-governance strategy to create a service transformation board whose role is to set overarching service design principles, promotes best practice, signpost the potential from technology futures and challenge inconsistency with agreed standards. Develop modern channels for citizen and business access to services, and actively manage the shift in channels towards the most efficient and effective. Customer service centers, such as those for customer contact or payment processes, where there is significant scope for rationalization through sharing, particularly if central, local and other public sector bodies can team up. Human resources, finance and other corporate services, where improved professionalism, standard systems and processes and effectiveness of these corporate functions should achieve efficiency gains across the whole public sector and in the functions themselves, as well as enhancing the employee experience and realizing indirect efficiencies from better financial, personnel, knowledge and asset management. Common Infrastructure, where as government services converge around the citizen and organizations adopt commercial off shelf technology solutions, the ability to share items of common infrastructure increases. Common technology will enable joined up solutions, leverage investments and shorten the implementation timeframe of new reforms.
Data sharing is integral to transforming services and reducing administrative burdens on citizens and businesses. But privacy rights and public trust must be retained. There will be a new Ministerial focus on finding and communicating a balance between maintaining the privacy of the individual and delivering more efficient, higher quality services with minimal bureaucracy. Information management is to facilitate the move towards more collaborative working on issues that involve a range of government organizations, common standards and practices for information management will be developed, with an effective range of tools to allow the most efficient use and sharing of information to all those across government that have a legitimate need to see and use it.
Information assurance despite the difficulties of a fast moving and hostile world, underpinning IT systems must be secure and convenient for those intended to use them. The risk management model based on strategy will extend a simple, tiered architecture for its own networks to support this model in practice, with an updated application of the protective marking scheme for electronically held information. Government will also play its part to promote public confidence by leading a public/private campaign on internet safety and by a new scheme to deliver a wider availability of assured products and services.
Identity management is a holistic approach to identity management, based on a suite of identity management solutions that enable the public and private sectors to manage risk and provide cost effective services trusted by customers and stakeholders. These will rationalize electronic gateways and citizen and business record numbers. They will converge towards biometric identity cards and the National Identity Register. This approach will also consider the practical and legal issues of making wider use of the national insurance number to index citizen records as a transition path towards an identity card. Technology standards and architecture to ensure that government’s technology is cost effective in terms of public and private sector best practice. Legacy systems will be progressively refreshed by taking advantage of open standards, commercial off the shelf products and asset reuse, expenditure will be reduced and capacity freed for the transformational agenda. A regular forward look at demand and supply of IT services and an agreed forward sourcing strategy, including action to ensure capacity and competition in the market. Active management of strategic IT supplier intelligence, relationships and performance across government, using a standard assessment framework. An agreed performance plan for each major purveyor to improve that purveyor’s delivery, capability and partnering with current and future public sector customers. Support of the use of standardized contracts, services and service boundaries, and contracts and service management models. Generally IT strategies formulated by the administration have focused on the establishment of the IT infrastructure as well as the dissemination of IT related equipment. From this point in time onward, however, it is necessary for us to raise the level and improve the utilization of IT, and start taking significant steps toward the revolution of our society using the structural reform powers of IT.
When considering information technology, it’s easy to remain focused on advanced technologies rather than the people who need to use these technologies. We believe, however, that it is essential to formulate IT policies in terms of IT users and people. It is also preferable that IT technologies become infrastructures that users can utilize forgetting these technologies are even there much like air and water. In other words, IT technologies should exist in such a way that people will experience convenience and feel their outstanding effects in all areas of their lives. And, through these various improvements in our daily lives, a society will emerge in which various intellectual and cultural values will be created out of the interactions and collaborative activities that occur between people of differing backgrounds and through an environment whereby knowledge and information is freely and easily circulated and exchanged. The effective policy will help in following ways-
· Development of infrastructure that can easily connect to networks that anyone can use at anytime from anywhere for any purpose and that has no digital divide the world’s most secure IT society.
· Development of human resource bases with an eye towards the next generation education and human resource development that will produce human resources that will be competent anywhere in the world.
· Promotion of R&D that will form the foundations for the next generation IT society International contribution by providing problem solving models.
· Technologies have emerged into widespread use for instance the mobile phone and other mobile technologies which government services have yet properly to exploit.
· Sophisticated, holistic policy solutions, such as those set out in the government’s election manifesto, rely upon effective and pervasive technology systems across government and beyond for instance to support offender management through offender profiling and managed rehabilitation plans and to deliver patient choice in the health service.
· Public use of the internet and telephone continues to rise. As people experience excellent services in parts of the private and public sector, so their expectations of public services rise across the board.
· Citizens, businesses and the voluntary and community sector benefit from the better regulation, reduced paperwork and lower costs from a leaner, modern, more effective public sector.
· Public servants have better tools to undertake their jobs, and the opportunity to provide better service as a result.
· Policy makers will be better able to achieve intended outcomes in practice.
· Managers are able to free resources from back office to the front-line.
· Citizens feel more engaged with the processes of democratic government.
Nature of the field of e-governance
e-governance is virtual interactions of monitoring agencies and contacting agencies via e-mail. The interval between e-governance and e government convergence establishes opportunities to carry out more convenient practices, that is, by extrapolations of both e-government’s administrative customer transactions and e-governance’s citizen interactions. When e-governance and e government next converge that blatant tensions emerge between them. As the two variables incite both positive and negative effects, these tensions can have possible lingering costs for governance. Optimally, as long as union maintains a steady-state equilibrium, positive outcomes persist such as continuing e government’s virtual agencies and e-governance’s virtual governance. Sub-optimally, negative results spillover as convergence leads both e-government and e-governance to incline towards their opposite axes with damaging impacts on governance.
The application of e-governance is beginning to change, in some small ways, the traditional hierarchal forms of government. To deliver public services electronically, new types of interactions are often needed between departments or agencies, which are in turn changing the internal dynamics of government. The rise of e-governance is part of e-evolution which is also altering the relationship between government and citizen. Many governments are pledging to move in this direction but progress towards results has been slow. The precepts are easy to articulate but attaining desired results is proving to be more difficult to achieve. Part of this can be explained through the hierarchal nature of organisations and the current role of representative government in democratic societies. External groups and individuals, on an international scale, are working to change this dynamic. But governments are moving at a slower and different pace than groups and citizens who are using the Internet to influence the evolution of government programmes, policy and legislative implementations.
The potential of e-governance to empower the citizen has been the subject of much discussion. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) offer access to worldwide information, increased capacity to communicate and interact online, as well as a host of other rich experiences to individuals with the means to access them. Governments around the world have developed many programmes to cross the digital divides that exist in their own countries and stimulate their economies through grants, investment and other mechanisms. But to empowerment of the citizen having an impact on government or the political process, there is still a long way to go before the dream and ideal of e-governance is reached.
Tools are being developed for online consultations between the government, citizen, action groups and business. But the results are limited. There is much discussion and interaction between groups and citizens and, to a certain extent, between government and the citizenry. However e-governance is evolving within society more on the level of group to group and peer-to-peer interactions with participants using ICTs to enhance and better their lives. The latter is a form of e-governance that has minimal influence from government, except to the degree that people might use online or offline government information to further their work. Community and online groups work well when these people are driven by individual interest, no matter what the cause.
e governance, in relation to government and how we are governed, if and when it takes hold as a mass movement will have to be driven by a large section of the population who firstly, want to participate actively in government at some level and secondly, are willing to see a new form of governance evolve.
The change will depend on the degree to which people want to be more engaged in government and on the emergence of new political thinkers who will think through to the next evolution of governance.
ICTs are putting a certain amount of power, albeit a small one to date, in the hands of the citizen at large. e-governance is alive and vibrant, through citizens and interest groups, in many jurisdictions around the world, but in terms of government budgets, funding allocated to governance programmes has been limited compared to the billions spent on e governance. National administrations and large corporations control the current e-governance proposals on a local, state/provincial, national and international scale. The latter is promoting particular technologies, especially for online voting, but also evolving technologies that will better serve the needs of the citizens coming to government web sites.
Through the new technologies being developed, a non-linear world of time and distance is merging in people's minds, and the world is being seen in new dimensions not known before in our history. It is this potential that will drive the change in our society. It is not necessarily because there is a younger generation coming up who are integrated with the technology and have adapted it with effortlessness. Moderately, it is the potential of what these technologies can do that holds within the minds of so many the seed of change. We have only begun to realize the true dimension and scale of where-governance might go with e-governance.
The application of e-governance is beginning to change, in some small ways, the traditional hierarchal forms of government. To deliver public services electronically, new types of interactions are often needed between departments or agencies, which are in turn changing the internal dynamics of government. The rise of e-governance is part of e-evolution which is also altering the relationship between government and citizen. Many governments are pledging to move in this direction but progress towards results has been slow. The precepts are easy to articulate but attaining desired results is proving to be more difficult to achieve. Part of this can be explained through the hierarchal nature of organisations and the current role of representative government in democratic societies. External groups and individuals, on an international scale, are working to change this dynamic. But governments are moving at a slower and different pace than groups and citizens who are using the Internet to influence the evolution of government programmes, policy and legislative implementations.
The potential of e-governance to empower the citizen has been the subject of much discussion. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) offer access to worldwide information, increased capacity to communicate and interact online, as well as a host of other rich experiences to individuals with the means to access them. Governments around the world have developed many programmes to cross the digital divides that exist in their own countries and stimulate their economies through grants, investment and other mechanisms. But to empowerment of the citizen having an impact on government or the political process, there is still a long way to go before the dream and ideal of e-governance is reached.
Tools are being developed for online consultations between the government, citizen, action groups and business. But the results are limited. There is much discussion and interaction between groups and citizens and, to a certain extent, between government and the citizenry. However e-governance is evolving within society more on the level of group to group and peer-to-peer interactions with participants using ICTs to enhance and better their lives. The latter is a form of e-governance that has minimal influence from government, except to the degree that people might use online or offline government information to further their work. Community and online groups work well when these people are driven by individual interest, no matter what the cause.
e governance, in relation to government and how we are governed, if and when it takes hold as a mass movement will have to be driven by a large section of the population who firstly, want to participate actively in government at some level and secondly, are willing to see a new form of governance evolve.
The change will depend on the degree to which people want to be more engaged in government and on the emergence of new political thinkers who will think through to the next evolution of governance.
ICTs are putting a certain amount of power, albeit a small one to date, in the hands of the citizen at large. e-governance is alive and vibrant, through citizens and interest groups, in many jurisdictions around the world, but in terms of government budgets, funding allocated to governance programmes has been limited compared to the billions spent on e governance. National administrations and large corporations control the current e-governance proposals on a local, state/provincial, national and international scale. The latter is promoting particular technologies, especially for online voting, but also evolving technologies that will better serve the needs of the citizens coming to government web sites.
Through the new technologies being developed, a non-linear world of time and distance is merging in people's minds, and the world is being seen in new dimensions not known before in our history. It is this potential that will drive the change in our society. It is not necessarily because there is a younger generation coming up who are integrated with the technology and have adapted it with effortlessness. Moderately, it is the potential of what these technologies can do that holds within the minds of so many the seed of change. We have only begun to realize the true dimension and scale of where-governance might go with e-governance.
e-government" differ from "e-governance"??
“Government’s foremost work is to axis society on achieving the community attention”
“Governance” is a way of describing the links between government and its broader environment – political, social, and administrative.”
e-government provides governmental services electronically, usually over the Web, to reduce the physical character of customer transactions by recreating them virtually, and,
e-governance predicts employing the web and internet to overhaul how the state conducts its democratic dealings by using networked interactions with citizens to foster transparency and participation.
Attempts to redefine e-government and e-governance would little difficult to the public society knows the goal that government is trying to achieve. Technological historians note that before managers took advantage of digital applications, such as the management of information systems (MIS), the underlying conventions evolved from a tripartite framework. At the beginning, electrical engineers drove technological innovations in hardware developments, as they wanted to construct machines for extending automation and complex reasoning. Software engineers next applied mathematical analysis to the newly developed hardware, followed by the creation of programs that yielded data to be organized, distributed, stored, and retrieved. The systems theory and technological determinism provide a rationale for public investment in information technology hardware and software.
Conceptual Clarification
Government is an institutional superstructure that society uses to translate politics into policies and legislation. Governance is the outcome of the interaction of government, the public service, and citizens throughout the political process, policy development, program design, and service delivery.
Framing the Comparison
Governments are specialized institutions that contribute to governance. Representative governments seek and receive citizen support, but they also need the active cooperation of their public servants. Governance is the outcome of politics, policies, and programs.
©
“Governance” is a way of describing the links between government and its broader environment – political, social, and administrative.”
e-government provides governmental services electronically, usually over the Web, to reduce the physical character of customer transactions by recreating them virtually, and,
e-governance predicts employing the web and internet to overhaul how the state conducts its democratic dealings by using networked interactions with citizens to foster transparency and participation.
Attempts to redefine e-government and e-governance would little difficult to the public society knows the goal that government is trying to achieve. Technological historians note that before managers took advantage of digital applications, such as the management of information systems (MIS), the underlying conventions evolved from a tripartite framework. At the beginning, electrical engineers drove technological innovations in hardware developments, as they wanted to construct machines for extending automation and complex reasoning. Software engineers next applied mathematical analysis to the newly developed hardware, followed by the creation of programs that yielded data to be organized, distributed, stored, and retrieved. The systems theory and technological determinism provide a rationale for public investment in information technology hardware and software.
Conceptual Clarification
Government is an institutional superstructure that society uses to translate politics into policies and legislation. Governance is the outcome of the interaction of government, the public service, and citizens throughout the political process, policy development, program design, and service delivery.
Framing the Comparison
Governments are specialized institutions that contribute to governance. Representative governments seek and receive citizen support, but they also need the active cooperation of their public servants. Governance is the outcome of politics, policies, and programs.
©
e-government" differ from "e-governance"??
“Government’s foremost work is to axis society on achieving the community attention”
“Governance” is a way of describing the links between government and its broader environment – political, social, and administrative.”
e-government provides governmental services electronically, usually over the Web, to reduce the physical character of customer transactions by recreating them virtually, and,
e-governance predicts employing the web and internet to overhaul how the state conducts its democratic dealings by using networked interactions with citizens to foster transparency and participation.
Attempts to redefine e-government and e-governance would little difficult to the public society knows the goal that government is trying to achieve. Technological historians note that before managers took advantage of digital applications, such as the management of information systems (MIS), the underlying conventions evolved from a tripartite framework. At the beginning, electrical engineers drove technological innovations in hardware developments, as they wanted to construct machines for extending automation and complex reasoning. Software engineers next applied mathematical analysis to the newly developed hardware, followed by the creation of programs that yielded data to be organized, distributed, stored, and retrieved. The systems theory and technological determinism provide a rationale for public investment in information technology hardware and software.
Conceptual Clarification
Government is an institutional superstructure that society uses to translate politics into policies and legislation. Governance is the outcome of the interaction of government, the public service, and citizens throughout the political process, policy development, program design, and service delivery.
Framing the Comparison
Governments are specialized institutions that contribute to governance. Representative governments seek and receive citizen support, but they also need the active cooperation of their public servants. Governance is the outcome of politics, policies, and programs.
“Governance” is a way of describing the links between government and its broader environment – political, social, and administrative.”
e-government provides governmental services electronically, usually over the Web, to reduce the physical character of customer transactions by recreating them virtually, and,
e-governance predicts employing the web and internet to overhaul how the state conducts its democratic dealings by using networked interactions with citizens to foster transparency and participation.
Attempts to redefine e-government and e-governance would little difficult to the public society knows the goal that government is trying to achieve. Technological historians note that before managers took advantage of digital applications, such as the management of information systems (MIS), the underlying conventions evolved from a tripartite framework. At the beginning, electrical engineers drove technological innovations in hardware developments, as they wanted to construct machines for extending automation and complex reasoning. Software engineers next applied mathematical analysis to the newly developed hardware, followed by the creation of programs that yielded data to be organized, distributed, stored, and retrieved. The systems theory and technological determinism provide a rationale for public investment in information technology hardware and software.
Conceptual Clarification
Government is an institutional superstructure that society uses to translate politics into policies and legislation. Governance is the outcome of the interaction of government, the public service, and citizens throughout the political process, policy development, program design, and service delivery.
Framing the Comparison
Governments are specialized institutions that contribute to governance. Representative governments seek and receive citizen support, but they also need the active cooperation of their public servants. Governance is the outcome of politics, policies, and programs.
e-governance?
e-governance is about the use of information technology to raise the quality of the services that governments deliver to citizens and businesses. It is expected that it is also reinforce the connection between public officials and communities thereby leading to a stronger, more accountable and inclusive democracy in future.
Putting the “e” on services, such as e-health, e-participation, e-voting, e-environment or e-weather, serves as a guide to the wider subject matter of e-governance, which can, in time, be imprinted on the public mind. More importantly, the use of terms such as e-governance leads to the creation of an identifiable discipline. This widens the development of the subject beyond the parameters of simply government boundaries to the larger spheres of civil society, associations, unions, the business community, international organizations and the academic world.
The “e” world only leads to a lessening of accountability of the activities in which any government is engaged. In society, it is the identifying of concepts through words and phrases that leads to cohesion and order. Subject matters create an ambience between stakeholders throughout the society. For example, “public transportation” or “environmental” issues are phrases understood by citizens who then relate them in their minds to the mass movements of our times. To move away from this identification that has been communicated through government websites, at the political level and in the media.
“The use of information and communication technologies in public administrations combined with organizational change and new skills in order to improve public services and democratic processes and strengthen support to public policies. In e-governance, the pathologies go beyond disenfranchisement, defined as citizens using the web to become ever more narrowly enfranchised.
Putting the “e” on services, such as e-health, e-participation, e-voting, e-environment or e-weather, serves as a guide to the wider subject matter of e-governance, which can, in time, be imprinted on the public mind. More importantly, the use of terms such as e-governance leads to the creation of an identifiable discipline. This widens the development of the subject beyond the parameters of simply government boundaries to the larger spheres of civil society, associations, unions, the business community, international organizations and the academic world.
The “e” world only leads to a lessening of accountability of the activities in which any government is engaged. In society, it is the identifying of concepts through words and phrases that leads to cohesion and order. Subject matters create an ambience between stakeholders throughout the society. For example, “public transportation” or “environmental” issues are phrases understood by citizens who then relate them in their minds to the mass movements of our times. To move away from this identification that has been communicated through government websites, at the political level and in the media.
“The use of information and communication technologies in public administrations combined with organizational change and new skills in order to improve public services and democratic processes and strengthen support to public policies. In e-governance, the pathologies go beyond disenfranchisement, defined as citizens using the web to become ever more narrowly enfranchised.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION STATUS IN INDIA
Abstract
India supports large proportion of floral and faunal diversity consisting of 14.7% of lower biota, 8.53% of gymnosperms, 7% of angiosperms, 8.08 % invertebrates, 11.72% Pisces, 4.06% amphibian, 7.84% reptiles, 13.66% aves and 8.42 % mammals of the world. The recent changes in the environment due to unplanned development work throughout the world have brought threat to biodiversity. Now the government is taking decision for the conservation of the biodiversity. India is signatory to different International conventions of flora and fauna conservation and has also applied that in principle by creating 14 Biosphere reserves, 87 national parks and 485 sanctuaries. Furthermore, India has seven Ramsar wetlands and five world heritage sites making its strong commitment for the conservation of world biodiversity. Now the biodiversity status is improving in the country day by day with planned sustainable strategies and enact of different polices and, laws etc. These efforts of conservation tend to 4.75.%( 15.6 mha) of India as protected area.
Biodiversity
India contains a great wealth of biological diversity in its forests, its wetlands and in its marine areas. This richness is shown in absolute numbers of species and the proportion they represent of the world total.
Endemic Species
India has many endemic plant and vertebrate species. 140 endemic genera but no endemic families (Botanical Survey of India, 1983). Areas rich in endemism are north-east India, the Western Ghats and the north-western and eastern Himalayas. A small pocket of local endemism also occurs in the Eastern Ghats (MacKinnon & MacKinnon, 1986). The Gangetic plains are generally poor in endemics, while the Andaman and Nicobar Islands contribute at least 220 species to the endemic flora of India (Botanical Survey of India, 1983).
WCMC's Threatened Plants Unit (TPU) is in the preliminary stages of cataloguing the world's centers of plant diversity; approximately 150 botanical sites worldwide are so far recognized as important for conservation action, but others are constantly being identified (IUCN, 1987). Five locations have so far been issued for India: the Agastyamalai Hills, Silent Valley and New Amarambalam Reserve and Periyar National Park (all in the Western Ghats), and the Eastern and Western Himalaya.
The 396 known endemic higher vertebrate species identified mammals and birds are relatively low. Only 44 species of Indian mammals have a range that is confined entirely to within Indian territorial limits. Four endemic species of conservation significance occur in the Western Ghats. They are the Lion-tailed macaque Macaca silenus, Nilgiri leaf monkey Trachypithecus johni (locally better known as Nilgiri langur Presbytis johnii), Brown palm civet Paradoxurus jerdoni and Nilgiri tahr Hemitragus hylocrius.
Only 55 bird species are endemic to India, with distributions concentrated in areas of high rainfall. These areas, mapped by Bird Life International (formerly the International Council for Bird Preservation) . They are located mainly in eastern India along the mountain chains where the monsoon shadow occurs, south-west India (the Western Ghats), and the Nicobar and Andaman Islands (ICBP, 1992).
In contrast, endemism in the Indian reptilian and amphibian fauna is high. There are around 187 endemic reptiles, and 110 endemic amphibian species. Eight amphibian genera are not found outside India. They include, among the caecilians, Indotyphlus, Gegeneophis and Uraeotyphlus; and among the anurans, the toad Bufoides, the microhylid Melanobatrachus, and the frogs Ranixalus, Nannobatrachus and Nyctibatrachus. Perhaps most notable among the endemic amphibian genera is the monotypic Melanobatrachus which has a single species known only from a few specimens collected in the Anaimalai Hills in the 1870s (Groombridge, 1983). It is possibly most closely related to two relict genera found in the mountains of eastern Tanzania.
Threatened Species
India contains 172 species of animal, considered globally threatened by IUCN, or 2.9% of the world's total number of threatened species (Groombridge, 1993). These include 53 species of mammal, 69 birds, 23 reptiles and 3 amphibians. India contains globally important populations of some of Asia's rarest animals, such as the Bengal Fox, Asiatic Cheetah, Marbled Cat, Asiatic Lion, Indian Elephant, Asiatic Wild Ass, Indian Rhinoceros, Markhor, Gaur, Wild Asiatic Water Buffalo etc. Summary accounts for some of the globally threatened mammals found in India. The number of species in various taxa that are listed under the different categories of endangerment is shown below.
Development and History
The protection of wildlife has a long tradition in Indian history. Wise use of natural resources was a prerequisite for many hunter-gatherer societies, which date back to at least 6000 BC. Extensive clearance of forests accompanied the advance of agricultural and pastoral societies in subsequent millennia, but an awareness of the need for ecological prudence emerged and many so-called pagan nature conservation practices were retained. As more and more land became settled or cultivated, so these hunting reserves increasingly became refuges for wildlife. Many of these reserves were subsequently declared as national parks or sanctuaries, mostly after Independence in 1947. Examples include Gir in Gujarat, Dachigam in Jammu & Kashmir, Bandipur in Karnataka, Eravikulum in Kerala, Madhav (now Shivpuri) in Madhya Pradesh, Simlipal in Orissa, and Keoladeo, Ranthambore and Sariska in Rajasthan.
India has a great many scientific institutes and university departments interested in various aspects of biodiversity. A large number of scientists and technicians have been engaged in inventory, research, and monitoring. The general state of knowledge about the distribution and richness of the country's biological resources is therefore fairly good.
Inventories of birds, mammals, trees, fish and reptiles are moderately complete. The importance of these biological resources cannot be overestimated for the continued welfare of India's population.
Endemic species of plants Pteridophyta 200, Angiosperms 4950 Endemic species of animals Mollusca Land 878 Freshwater89 16,214Insecta Amphibia110 Reptilia214 Wild relatives of some crops and medicinal plants Millets51 Fruits104 Spices and condiments27 Vegetables and pulses55 fibre crops24 Oil seeds, tea, coffee, Tobacco and sugarcane12 Medicinal plants3000 Source: (Source: MoEF 1999. )
References
Saharia, V.B. 1981. Wildlife in India. Department of Agriculture and
Co-operation, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India.
Oriental Bird Club. In prep. Checklist of the Birds of India.
Majupuria, T.C. 1986. Wildlife Wealth of India (Resources and
Management). Tecpress Service, Bangkok, Thailand.
Dutta, S. K. 1992. Amphibians of India: Updated Species List with
Distribution Record (sic). Hamadryad, 17(1): 1-13.
International Consultation on Biological Diversity (SAARC, Asean and
Other Regional Countries), Country Paper: India, Ministry of
Environment and Forests, Government of India and United Nations Environment Programme, Bangalore, India, August 22-23 1994, page 3.
Nayar, M.P. and Sastry, R.K. (Eds) 1987. Red Data Book of Indian
Plants. Botanical Survey of India, Calcutta, India. 367pp.
Wilson, D.E. and Reeder, D.M. (Eds) 1993. Mammal Species of the
World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference, 2nd edn. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, London. 1206 pp.
Sibley, C.G. and Monroe, B.L. 1993. A Supplement to the Distribution
and Taxonomy of Birds of the World. Yale University Press, New Haven, USA.
WCMC 1992. Global Biodiversity: Status of the Earth's Living Resources. Chapman and Hall, London, UK. 585 pp.
Duellman, W.E. 1993. Amphibian Species of the World: Additions and
Corrections. Museum of Natural History Special Publication No. 21, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, U.S.A. 372 pp.
WCMC 1992. Global Biodiversity: Status of the Earth's Living Resources. Chapman and Hall, London, UK. 585 pp.
Haywood, V.H. 1985. Flowering Plants of the World. Croom Helm Ltd., Beckenham, UK. 335pp.
Annual Report 2000-2001New Delhi: Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India
Myers, N., R A Mittermeier, Mittermeier, C. G., da Fonseca, G A B, Kents, J. 2000. Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities Nature 403: 853-858.
Groombridge, B and Jenkins, MD. 2000. Global Biodiversity: Earth's living resources in the 21st century UK: World Conservation Monitoring Centre. 246 pp. MoEF. 1999National Policy and Macrolevel Action Strategy on BiodiversityNew Delhi: Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India. 74 pp.
Myers, N. 1988Threatened biotas: 'hotspots' in tropical forests Environmentalist 8: 187-208
Rodgers W A and Panwar H S. 1988 Planning a Wildlife Protected Area Network in India, (vol. 1) Dehra Dun: Wildlife Institute of India. 341 pp.
India supports large proportion of floral and faunal diversity consisting of 14.7% of lower biota, 8.53% of gymnosperms, 7% of angiosperms, 8.08 % invertebrates, 11.72% Pisces, 4.06% amphibian, 7.84% reptiles, 13.66% aves and 8.42 % mammals of the world. The recent changes in the environment due to unplanned development work throughout the world have brought threat to biodiversity. Now the government is taking decision for the conservation of the biodiversity. India is signatory to different International conventions of flora and fauna conservation and has also applied that in principle by creating 14 Biosphere reserves, 87 national parks and 485 sanctuaries. Furthermore, India has seven Ramsar wetlands and five world heritage sites making its strong commitment for the conservation of world biodiversity. Now the biodiversity status is improving in the country day by day with planned sustainable strategies and enact of different polices and, laws etc. These efforts of conservation tend to 4.75.%( 15.6 mha) of India as protected area.
Biodiversity
India contains a great wealth of biological diversity in its forests, its wetlands and in its marine areas. This richness is shown in absolute numbers of species and the proportion they represent of the world total.
Endemic Species
India has many endemic plant and vertebrate species. 140 endemic genera but no endemic families (Botanical Survey of India, 1983). Areas rich in endemism are north-east India, the Western Ghats and the north-western and eastern Himalayas. A small pocket of local endemism also occurs in the Eastern Ghats (MacKinnon & MacKinnon, 1986). The Gangetic plains are generally poor in endemics, while the Andaman and Nicobar Islands contribute at least 220 species to the endemic flora of India (Botanical Survey of India, 1983).
WCMC's Threatened Plants Unit (TPU) is in the preliminary stages of cataloguing the world's centers of plant diversity; approximately 150 botanical sites worldwide are so far recognized as important for conservation action, but others are constantly being identified (IUCN, 1987). Five locations have so far been issued for India: the Agastyamalai Hills, Silent Valley and New Amarambalam Reserve and Periyar National Park (all in the Western Ghats), and the Eastern and Western Himalaya.
The 396 known endemic higher vertebrate species identified mammals and birds are relatively low. Only 44 species of Indian mammals have a range that is confined entirely to within Indian territorial limits. Four endemic species of conservation significance occur in the Western Ghats. They are the Lion-tailed macaque Macaca silenus, Nilgiri leaf monkey Trachypithecus johni (locally better known as Nilgiri langur Presbytis johnii), Brown palm civet Paradoxurus jerdoni and Nilgiri tahr Hemitragus hylocrius.
Only 55 bird species are endemic to India, with distributions concentrated in areas of high rainfall. These areas, mapped by Bird Life International (formerly the International Council for Bird Preservation) . They are located mainly in eastern India along the mountain chains where the monsoon shadow occurs, south-west India (the Western Ghats), and the Nicobar and Andaman Islands (ICBP, 1992).
In contrast, endemism in the Indian reptilian and amphibian fauna is high. There are around 187 endemic reptiles, and 110 endemic amphibian species. Eight amphibian genera are not found outside India. They include, among the caecilians, Indotyphlus, Gegeneophis and Uraeotyphlus; and among the anurans, the toad Bufoides, the microhylid Melanobatrachus, and the frogs Ranixalus, Nannobatrachus and Nyctibatrachus. Perhaps most notable among the endemic amphibian genera is the monotypic Melanobatrachus which has a single species known only from a few specimens collected in the Anaimalai Hills in the 1870s (Groombridge, 1983). It is possibly most closely related to two relict genera found in the mountains of eastern Tanzania.
Threatened Species
India contains 172 species of animal, considered globally threatened by IUCN, or 2.9% of the world's total number of threatened species (Groombridge, 1993). These include 53 species of mammal, 69 birds, 23 reptiles and 3 amphibians. India contains globally important populations of some of Asia's rarest animals, such as the Bengal Fox, Asiatic Cheetah, Marbled Cat, Asiatic Lion, Indian Elephant, Asiatic Wild Ass, Indian Rhinoceros, Markhor, Gaur, Wild Asiatic Water Buffalo etc. Summary accounts for some of the globally threatened mammals found in India. The number of species in various taxa that are listed under the different categories of endangerment is shown below.
Development and History
The protection of wildlife has a long tradition in Indian history. Wise use of natural resources was a prerequisite for many hunter-gatherer societies, which date back to at least 6000 BC. Extensive clearance of forests accompanied the advance of agricultural and pastoral societies in subsequent millennia, but an awareness of the need for ecological prudence emerged and many so-called pagan nature conservation practices were retained. As more and more land became settled or cultivated, so these hunting reserves increasingly became refuges for wildlife. Many of these reserves were subsequently declared as national parks or sanctuaries, mostly after Independence in 1947. Examples include Gir in Gujarat, Dachigam in Jammu & Kashmir, Bandipur in Karnataka, Eravikulum in Kerala, Madhav (now Shivpuri) in Madhya Pradesh, Simlipal in Orissa, and Keoladeo, Ranthambore and Sariska in Rajasthan.
India has a great many scientific institutes and university departments interested in various aspects of biodiversity. A large number of scientists and technicians have been engaged in inventory, research, and monitoring. The general state of knowledge about the distribution and richness of the country's biological resources is therefore fairly good.
Inventories of birds, mammals, trees, fish and reptiles are moderately complete. The importance of these biological resources cannot be overestimated for the continued welfare of India's population.
Endemic species of plants Pteridophyta 200, Angiosperms 4950 Endemic species of animals Mollusca Land 878 Freshwater89 16,214Insecta Amphibia110 Reptilia214 Wild relatives of some crops and medicinal plants Millets51 Fruits104 Spices and condiments27 Vegetables and pulses55 fibre crops24 Oil seeds, tea, coffee, Tobacco and sugarcane12 Medicinal plants3000 Source: (Source: MoEF 1999. )
References
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Oriental Bird Club. In prep. Checklist of the Birds of India.
Majupuria, T.C. 1986. Wildlife Wealth of India (Resources and
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International Consultation on Biological Diversity (SAARC, Asean and
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Nayar, M.P. and Sastry, R.K. (Eds) 1987. Red Data Book of Indian
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Haywood, V.H. 1985. Flowering Plants of the World. Croom Helm Ltd., Beckenham, UK. 335pp.
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Myers, N., R A Mittermeier, Mittermeier, C. G., da Fonseca, G A B, Kents, J. 2000. Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities Nature 403: 853-858.
Groombridge, B and Jenkins, MD. 2000. Global Biodiversity: Earth's living resources in the 21st century UK: World Conservation Monitoring Centre. 246 pp. MoEF. 1999National Policy and Macrolevel Action Strategy on BiodiversityNew Delhi: Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India. 74 pp.
Myers, N. 1988Threatened biotas: 'hotspots' in tropical forests Environmentalist 8: 187-208
Rodgers W A and Panwar H S. 1988 Planning a Wildlife Protected Area Network in India, (vol. 1) Dehra Dun: Wildlife Institute of India. 341 pp.
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