The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 1,900 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 3 years to get that many views.
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“Violence against women is perhaps the most shameful human rights violation, and it is perhaps the most pervasive.” – Kofi Annan
The recent brutal gang rape has brought a lot of attention to crime against women in India. Thanks to Media. While the efforts to strengthen law and its enforcement are laudable and important, there is a need to look at crime against women as the tip of the iceberg of gender discrimination in our society. Indian society is well known for discriminating against women. With advances in technology, development and education this bias has taken a different shape such as female infanticide being replaced with female foeticide through sex-selective abortions and is contributing to deteriorating sex ratio. The sex ratio is deteriorating faster in more developed than under developed states. With development more and more women are seeking higher education and work outside home. This increases their vulnerability as protective mechanisms are not put in place to protect them in educational institutions, at work and in public places. One of the most fundamental aspects of every civilised society is the assurance of safety and fair treatment for all citizens especially women. We need to prioritise gender equality and women’s empowerment as a human rights issue and to achieve sustainable economic development.
The crimes against women (CAW) include cruelty by husbands and family members, molestation, kidnapping and abduction, rapes, dowry deaths, sexual harassments and importation of girls. It does not include general crimes such as murder, robbery, cheating etc which include women among victims. There is a gross under reporting of crime against women especially rape due to social stigma, lack of faith in police and other reasons. The CAW within the family are even more likely to be under reported. Figure 1 gives CAW in 2011 by National Crime Report Bureau (NCRB). NCRB is a government agency in Indiaresponsible for collecting and analysing crime data as defined by the Indian Penal Code. Rape is claimed to be the fastest growing crime in India. It has gone up 873.3% (2,487 to 24,206) between 1971 and 2011 whereas cases of murder increased by 250% during the same period (NCRB data as quoted in Times of India on 27 Dec 2012). Despite the trauma of reporting crimes such as rape and assault, more women are coming forward to report these crimes. The public outburst against the recent gang rape in a moving bus reflects that the society is changing and asking for increased accountability and the government is under pressure to take action as it has run out of lame excuses that these crimes result from society’s mindset or class divide.
Figure 1: Crime Against women at a glance 2011 (Source NCRB)
| Crime Head | Committed by | Reported Cases | Charge Sheet rate | Conviction rate |
| Cruelty by husband & other family members | Family members | 99,135 | 94.4% | 20.2% |
| Molestation | Outsiders* | 42,968 | 96.5% | 27.7% |
| Kidnapping and abduction | Outsiders | 35,565 | 73% | 28.1% |
| Rapes | Outsiders/family members | 24,206 | 93.8% | 26.4% |
| Dowry Deaths | Family members | 8618 | 92% | 35.8% |
| Sexual harassment | Outsiders* | 8570 | 96.4% | 45.8% |
| Importation of Girls | Outsiders | 80 | 82.4% | 7.8% |
* Some of these crimes are either committed by family members may commit or play a role.
1.1. More than half (50.3%) of the reported crimes against women are committed within the family: The commonest reported crime against women is cruelty by husband & other family members (44.0%). The other crimes within family are dowry deaths (3.9%) and dowry prohibition act (2.4%) and rapes committed by family members. The crimes in Figure 1 and 2 are only the reported crimes and the true number of crimes may be many times more.
Figure 2: Crime against women and perpetrators of crime: family members and outsiders
1.2. Crime rates in states in India: The media often highlights Delhi as the place with highest crime against women. As per NCRB data of 2010, states of Tripura, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Kerala have reported higher crime rates than Delhi. To compare various geographic regions it is better to look at the crimes rates (number of reported cases per 100,000 population) rather than reported cases. The states fall in the following categories (Figure 3):
Figure 3: Rates of Crime Against Women by States in India (Source NCRB)
Crime against women is the tip of the iceberg of discrimination against women in our society. Gender inequality exists in some form of the other in every society. Let us look at two examples from the west. There has been no woman president in the US. In Switzerland, Vaud was the first canton in 1951 to give voting right to women, followed by 22 more cantons till 1972 and in 1990 the federal court decided in its favour for the whole country. Gender inequality has received international attention for a long time. One recent example is UN Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, launched a Campaign “UNiTE to End Violence against Women“, 2008-2015 in February 2008. Through the Campaign, the Secretary-General is spearheading the accelerated efforts of the United Nations system to address violence against women.
It is important to have deterrent punishment through strong laws and other social measures. The role of the family remains central in prevention of gender discrimination and crimes against women. We need to address gender power relations in all four dimensions in society i.e. social, economic, political and legal, and at all levels individual, family, community and in all public institutions schools, universities, work places, democratic bodies etc. The UNDP’s Women’s Empowerment Framework (See below) offers a good tool to identify areas for intervention in addressing gender discrimination.
Our government has done well to accelerate economic development especially during the last two decades. It is important to emphasise that gender equality and creating security for women to freely move around to improve their productivity and further accelerate economic development and make it more equitable. Women continue to face discrimination in access to land, housing, property and other productive resources and have limited access to technologies and services that could alleviate their work burden. Unequal access to resources limits women’s capacity in agricultural productivity, security of livelihoods and contributes to poverty, migration, urbanization and increased risk of violence. Every state in India is different from the other as is evident from huge variation in crime rates of crime against women. The government has taken many initiatives to address gender equity through schemes such as Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls (Sabla), Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana – A Conditional Maternity Benefit Scheme, Gender Budgeting Scheme, SwayamSiddha, Scheme for Working Women Hostel, Swadhar, Support to Training and Employment Programme for Women, Stree Shakti Puraskaar etc. These efforts are laudable and must be continued and expanded to empower women.It is important to address gender issues in the government through various projects, initiatives and plans but there is a need to main stream gender issues in all plans from village to national level. Every government plan or project when developed should assess its gender impact before approval and monitor their impact on women status.
The family is the cradle for developing gender values and roles in children. Thus families need to play a central role in inculcating equitable gender roles among girls and boys. Elders (both males and females) in the family need to be proactive in removing the gender bias among the children. This can happen only when elders set an example how well the women are treated within the family.
The recent unfortunate gang rape has created a social awakening for the need to address crime against women. God bless her with full and fast recovery to continue to motivate the society to prevent such ghastly crimes against women. It will be a waste if this momentum is not used to prevent crime against women by addressing underlying discrimination against women in our society.
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Africa has fascinated me from childhood. The place where human race originated, abundant wild life and plant life makes it special. After living in Nairobi, I called Nairobi an air-conditioned city but weather in Kampala is even better. Most of the natural resources remain unexploited. Economists say, soon Africa will be the driver of global economic growth overtaking China and India. No surprise many Indian companies are starting their business here – Airtel, Tata and Maruti being the most visible. Uganda is a landlocked country in east Africa with an area of about 237,000 sq km (about 7% of India) and population of around 35 million (less than 3% of India). It is a beautiful country and is referred to as pearl of Africa. English is the official language and most people on the street speak English, so communication for an English speaker is not a problem. There are a large number of people of Indian origin in business. Most of them left during Idi Amin’s rule in early 70s but many have come back. It is known for home to world’s half of mountain gorilla population. It offers world-class white water rafting at the source of river Nile. The place is lush green and looks beautiful and weather is pleasant the whole year. No extreme weathers. The temperature ranges from 15 to 29 centigrade. People are very friendly and helpful. No major security concerns, though one must take basic common sense precautions. On Kampala roads, one has to watch out for big potholes, Boda boda (motorcycle) and Matatu (mini bus) taxies which appear from nowhere and may hit you. Plenty of fruits and vegetables for example, one gets mangoes the whole year.
The most memorable part of my stay in Kampala was a day’s trip with family to Nile River for rafting, near its origin. We drove to Jinja from Kampala in an adventure tours company bus. We changed into gear for rafting with a life jacket and a helmet. The whole day river rafting took us 30 Kms in the White Nile and through eight rapids – three were very steep (grade 5/5+) and we were thrown into water. I joined the youngsters in rafting. It was scary but we all (including me!) made it (see picture).
The other interesting trip was to see Mountain Gorillas. The 350 km road journey from Kampala to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in south west highlands of Uganda took ten hours through Queen Elizabeth Sanctuary witnessing elephants, warthogs, black bugs, wild buffaloes etc on the way. We also passed by UNHCR camp for DRC refugees. This forest houses about half (400) of the world’s endangered Gorillas. The remaining are in adjoining forests in DRC and Chad. The night in tents in the forest was a unique experience. Next morning we got ready at 0630 in the morning. The forest ranger briefed us to carry sufficient water to avoid dehydration on the way as it involved about 10 kms of walk through the mountains. Those who find difficult to walk can use services of ‘African Helicopter’. It is like a stretcher assembled with local material – bamboo sticks, a long basket with grass and tree branches used as ropes. One of us was carried in it. It looks flimsy but we were reassured it was safe. The permit costs USD 500 (Rs 27,000!) per person. No wonder each Gorilla contributes one million dollar each to Ugandan economy. Wild life authorities issue limited number of permits for a day. Each Gorilla family can have maximum of eight visitors to limit the possibility of transmission of human infections to Gorillas. Even human common cold could give a life threatening infection to them. They are our closest ancestors and 98.4% of our DNA is identical.
I took a one bed room apartment which is a few hundred meters from the office. The traffic, especially around office times is very bad. Hence having an apartment next to office was a big relief. I started cooking the very first day of arrival. Being a vegetarian, having basic culinary skills helps.
In Uganda, during the last five years, U5MR has declined by one third i.e. 47 points from 137 in 2006 to 90 in 2011, highest ever decline in U5MR. This gets Uganda closer to the MDG 4 target of 56 and gives us hope that Uganda may achieve MDG 4 target. The rate of decline in child mortality has accelerated to double in the last five years as compared to previous five. 58% of this decline is in 1-5 year period, 38% in post neonatal (1-12 months) and only 4% in neonatal (0-28 days) period. The factors which have contributed this decline, though not easy to attribute, but are many. Decline in malaria: Fivefold increase in Insecticide Treated Net use by children 12.7% (2006) to 63% (2011); Children with malaria given antimalarials 61 to 65%; Intermittent Presumptive Treatment for malaria in Pregnant Women from 16 to 25%; ORT use 39 to 48%; Children with ARI sought treatment 73 to 80%; Measles 68 to 76%; Fully immunized 46 to 51%; Malnutrition has declined: Height for age 38 to 33%, Weight for height 6 to 5%, Weight for age 16 to 14%; Total Fertility Rate declined 6.7 to 6.2%; Contraceptive use 24 to 30% and births attended by skilled attendants 42 to 59%. The progress in maternal mortality reduction in Uganda has been slow. The baseline MMR for MDG 5 was 600 and the latest information from DHS 2011 shows it is 438 which is almost three times the target of 150 by 2015. The trends in last ten years recalculated for comparability from data in last three DHS has shown that MMR declined from 524 per 100,000 live births in 2000/01 to 418 in 2006 and increased to 438 in 2011. The stagnation in MMR and neonatal mortality reflects inadequate access and quality of care around delivery.
Challenges include stagnating neonatal and maternal mortality: neonatal period which accounts for 1.5% of under-five’s life but 30% of under-five mortality and half of infant mortality. Further progress will be difficult unless we address maternal and neonatal mortality aggressively. The second challenge is accelerating scale up of interventions to reduce child mortality which though improving continue to be low. The emphasis in maternal mortality reduction is on improving institutional deliveries. While efforts to improve institutional deliveries and emergency obstetric care are on, Uganda can learn from Bangladesh experience, with less than 25% institutional deliveries, Bangladesh is on track for achieving MDG 5 target. This has been achieved through high community awareness of dangers signs (2/3rd mothers able to name five danger signs) and transportation from community level is available from outsourced private transporters and giving advance information to hospital about preliminary clinical details of the complication through mobile phone for hospital to be ready for providing appropriate obstetric care. A well functioning mechanism of (i) community level audit of every maternal newborn deaths helps in spreading community awareness and the need for timely referral, (ii) health facility level committee to address issues related functioning of health facility and improve interface between beneficiaries and service providers.
I compliment MoH functionaries, health development partners and NGOs for the good work so far and readiness to more in improving maternal and child health in Uganda.
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Teaching has always been an area of my interest. Since learning is a lifelong process, I consider learning with students as an important way of learning. Student and professor are at different steps of the ‘ladder of knowledge’. To teach, you have to learn. Hence teaching becomes a very strong stimulus for learning. Their curious questions in the class at times bring in a new dimension and insight to the topic being taught. What I learned from my students can be grouped under four headings:
A. Being comfortable with what I do not know:
This is the most important thing I learned in my professional life and my students helped me internalize it.There is so much of knowledge; no one can claim to know everything. If someone claims he knows everything, he simply does not know what he does not know. This awareness is the first step of learning but most of us are not comfortable in accepting lack of knowledge especially, if one is teaching a class. Though all of us grow up reading many quotes such as,
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” Socrates
“I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.” Mark Twain
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” Stephen Hawking
During the initial days of my profession, I was also not comfortable publically acknowledging what I did not know or knew less than my juniors and least of all my students. I have come across many instances when they may knew more than I did. I give you one example,during discussion in one of the classes in Health Economics course, one student asked me, “How does RBI decide, how much currency to print?” I did not know the answer and acknowledged it and turned the question back to the students. I was happy that one of the students answered the question. I checked with my colleague who is Health Finance expert and confirmed that the students answer was correct. I went back to the next class and again complimented the student in the class for his knowledge and the correct answer.
B. Learning while teaching:
I taught Nutrition, Immunization and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene to undergraduate medical students. These areas became my strength during my work in UNICEF and probably played an important role in getting me a UNICEF job. When I prepare/teach a topic, I pass through the following four phases of learning:
1. Collecting facts: This phase involves collecting articles and books related to the topic, reading these and taking notes and preparing outline of what to teach. This phase starts about six months in advance.
2. Developing conceptual framework: This phase of preparation is the longest and contributes to most of my learning. One can not do this unless one has conceptual clarity oneself.
3. Preparing teaching aids including Power point: Next phase is putting together teaching aids including power point for the classes and short-listing the reading material
4. Discussion and preparing answers to the questions I could not answer in the class: The best part of teaching is the discussion with students. Many times they raise issues I had not thought about or do not know.
Below are example of two topics which I learned about from teaching/discussing with students:
1. Water, Hygiene and Sanitation: I joined as a lecturer in a medical college in Delhi and was assigned classes for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH). This topic is not interesting for students, though according to WHO, proper attention to WASH can reduce human diseases by 80%. But typical reaction of an undergraduate student is, “who wants to listen about human excreta?”. I prepared for 13 classes on WASH for about six months and found extensive evidence to support my argument in support of WASH. This helped me understand why WASH interventions are more important for health than most health interventions and laid the foundation of my strong belief that health of a population can only improve if all determinants of health (most of which are outside traditional health system) need to be addressed comprehensively.
2. Health Economics: To be frank as a medical doctor, I always felt inadequate in dealing with Health Economics. During almost four decades of my work in public health, I realized that health economics is very important for a public health person to understand. I was uncomfortable when I started financial management course during MBA but by the end of the course became comfortable (and narrowly missed distinction!). Later I did an online Health Economics course from the World Bank Institute. This further vetted my appetite to learn more and I did another course from London School of Hygiene and Public Health. These courses made me confident to play an important role in a performance based financing project and initiate dialogue on elimination of user fee in Kenya. But what made me most comfortable in Health Economics was teaching a course on Health Economics. This course is usually taught by economists or finance professionals. During the four phases of my own learning (mentioned earlier) on the topic, I divided the course into five modules for teaching. I fondly remember many new things I learned from the students such as assessment of quality of service in a hospital, health insurance etc.
C. To learn new things/skills, one has to push beyond one’s level of comfort:
I strongly believe in and apply principles of adult learning in the in-service and pre-service training/teaching. While teaching Health Economics course, I divided my class into two parts. First part (about 40 minutes) would be presentations by the students and the second part would be a presentation by me. While most students enthusiastically agreed to this when I suggested this approach, many were reluctant but I insisted. I had selected 42 articles selected from peer reviewed journals and other reports. I assigned one article each to a group of three students to review and present it to the class. The discussion after each presentation was in two parts. In the first part the students critically reviewed presentation skills of each student. In the second, we discussed the technical content of the presentation. The presentation skills of students got better and better with each presentation. The technical aspects were covered so well by many students that my subsequent presentation became redundant in many classes. In addition to learning details of the health economics in the presentations and discussion, it was very satisfying that most of the awards for paper presentations were bagged by these students at an international conference that followed this course. I was happy to see that the course was also evaluated positively by the students in their feedback at the end of the course.
D. How to deal with difficult situations in life?
Listen and keep the focus on common interest while dealing with differences while negotiating. I am sharing some of the learning experiences through my students:
1. Dealing with an agitated group: One day, I was in a meeting with other faculty and heard some noise from outside the room. I received a call from the head of the institution that there was an emergency and I was needed immediately in his office. I came out of the office and saw a crowd of agitated students. I was a bit nervous to see the students in an agitated mood. But reassured myself that they are my students and they respect me and I respect them, this kept me clear headed. We requested the students to assemble in the seminar room and senior faculty will talk to them to address their grievances. In the class room, we asked students to tell us their grievances and requested one of them to note these down. Their grievances exhausted by the time they got to number 10. This exercise of listing the grievances brought order and rational thinking back among the students. The senior faculty addressed these one by one. At this point, I asked them, “Are you a part of the problem or part of the solution?” There was a pin drop silence for sometime and then whispering started that each one of them was part of the solution and certainly not a part of the problem. From then on the discussion was focussed on how we could move forward to improve the situation to benefit each one of the student. Following this we had more open discussions on a regular basis to address concerns of the students with students taking the lead.
2. Dealing with absenteeism and indiscipline in the class: My classes on Water Hygiene and Sanitation, mentioned earlier were during the last period from 4 to 5 pm. I started my first class by taking attendance but students continued to make a lot of noise to disturb the class. I announced, “ those not interested in the class can leave as I had already marked attendance”. To my disappointment three fourth (of 130 students) left but the class continued peacefully after this. Next day, before the class, a delegation of students who had walked out of the class previous evening came to see me. They told me that all the students who left the previous class wanted to attend. “Then why did you walk out after the attendance?” I asked. “Most of us live in south Delhi and the last University Special (exclusively for students) bus leaves at 5 pm and if we miss that bus, we get home very late,” they replied. “What can I do?”, I asked again. “Sir, if you finish the class by 4:45 pm, we can still catch this bus and also attend the class”, they suggested. “ I will finish my presentation in about 40 minutes and leave the last twenty minutes for discussion, and those who have to leave early can do so”, was my response. After this, my classes had near 100% attendance and all students stayed in the class even when discussion continued beyond 4:45 pm.
I sincerely thank all my students for being my ‘teachers’ and look forward to continue to learn from them in my teaching and training assignments.
I strongly believe that one can learn from anyone one comes across in life. What one needs is an open mind for learning and not look down upon the juniors, people younger to you and the ones who belong to other professions or fields of expertise. I have also learned a lot from my students, my daughters and juniors. My daughters helped me learn a lot in my life. I rediscovered the world by reading books with them, helping in their home work, assignments in school and college or simply discussing various issues with them to get a new perspective in life. I am sharing with you some of my learning experience driven by my daughters.
• Gender equity: When my elder daughter was 6 years, she walked up to me one evening when my wife was working in the kitchen and I was relaxing and reading a magazine. Her questions were simple and straight forward: “Papa, you are a doctor”, she asked. “Yes”, I replied. “Mom is a doctor”, she asked again. “Yes”, I said, still reading the magazine. “You go to work”, was the next. “Yes”, I said. “Mom also goes to work”, she quizzed. “Yes”, I replied. “Then, why is it that, only Mom works in the kitchen and you do not?”, came the last one. I had no explanation to it and still can’t find a good enough justification. We grow up in a society which defines our gender roles. Here was a child not yet polluted by the gender roles, raising a simple question, why a professional woman, who has an equally, if not more demanding job, comes home and starts ‘second’ shift of work and we men, take it as our right to come home and relax after work. The workload of working women, is double. These innocent questions, from my daughter, forced me to think hard, if an educated and ‘enlightened’ person like me discriminates by unjust distribution of work with my spouse at home, what must be the situation of women in an average household? This question helped me get more insight into the contribution of women in and beyond household. I read more about it and contributed a chapter for a course in IGNOU on ‘Women in Development’. While I was reading up, to write that chapter, I learned that women contribute to ‘two third’ of GDP globally. Their household work, rearing children, helping in animal rearing, agriculture, professional and other jobs etc contributes much more to economic development than men. On another occasion she asked me, “Papa, you don’t miss a son?”. I casually replied,”No my daughters are my sons”. She responded, “But why can’t daughters be just daughters and why they also have to be sons?” Some more food for thought for me.
• Talk to a person in the language s/he can understand or start from familiar and go to unfamiliar: I came home after a talk on the television and found my 5 year old daughter and her friends excited and waiting for me. They were very happy that they saw me on the television. After her friends left, she came to me and asked me, “Papa, how did you get inside the television?” I laughed. But realized, she genuinely wanted to know this. I explained to her, that I sat in a room at the television station with the interviewer. There were bright lights around us. There were TV cameras which were filming us and this was telecast by the transmission station. The waves reached the antenna of our TV and my picture during the interview came in to our TV. She was listening to me very attentively all this while. I thought, I did my best to explain. After I had finished, she asked,” but tell me how did you get into the TV?” Despite doing my best, I could not explain to my daughter in the language a 5 year old child will understand. During my work in UNICEF, I have talked to illiterate village level traditional birth attendants to professors in medical colleges. The lesson my 5 year daughter gave me was always useful to keep in mind; what the person I am talking to knows and understands. When I am in a situation and not sure of what my audience or person I am talking to knows, I prefer to ask a few questions to find out how much the person or group I am talking to knows and understands before I start talking.
• Younger daughter taught me emotional competencies: My younger daughter spent her adolescence in Geneva where I moved on a UNICEF assignment. Adolescence is the most difficult period of childhood as at this age they face unfamiliar, physical and psychosocial changes, start seeing themselves as adults, become more assertive and get into frequent arguments with peers, parents and teachers. In brief, it is one of the most stressful period for a child. All parents and teachers need to be skilled and patient in dealing with an adolescent child. I knew all this theoretically, had written a chapter on this in a training manual for doctors and health workers but dealing with it at home really tested me and my wife. I used to get into frequent arguments and get angre with my daughter even on minor issues. That time I was doing MBA and read about emotional competencies which I found of great interest. I reflected on it and decided to apply what I learnt at home. Whenever I got into disagreement with my daughter, I will sense my own emotions and not react under the influence of emotions. It taught me listening skills and awareness about my emotions. I stopped reacting under the influence of my emotions. I would not interrupt my daughter, even if I did not like or agree with what she was saying. This helped me in understanding her point of view better. I started looking at the world around me with eyes of a teenager, who had come to an alien culture and was struggling to find her identify in a society different from where she had grown up. Our angry arguments ceased. Both of us became more open and patient in listening to each other. My daughter helped me in moving from theory to practice of emotional competencies.
The pace of learning from my daughters has been accelerating as they are moving up their professional. I am very grateful to them for helping open my mind to new skills and changing my attitude towards many things such as gender issues in my life. These skills acquired with help my daughter have helped me on many occassions in my professional life.
In the next blog, I will share my learning from my wonderful students.
Filed under Learning Public Health
Stephen Richards Covey, a famous management author, passed away on 16 July. He was recognized as one of Time magazine’s 25 most influential Americans, and his book ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ was named the number one Most Influential Business Book of the last century.
His three books influenced how I looked at my personal and professional life. I liked these books and have them in my personal collection. My only regret is that I was introduced to his books only in 2005 when I joined MBA and started serious reading on management. Below I capture what I learned from these three books to pay a tribute to this great man:
1. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People mentions the following habits which we can adopt:
2. In a subsequent book, he added eighth habit: ‘Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs’. When you inspire others you get inspired even more.
3. His book ‘First Things First’ changed how I looked at time. The Covey’s four quadrants (below) helped me review my priorities at work and in life. I realized I was most of the time running both my work and life based on urgency and not based on importance.
| Urgent | Not Urgent | |
| Important |
Quadrant 1 Deadline driven activities Crisis/panic Pressing matters WE GET STRESSED, BURNOUT IF MOST OF OUR TIME IS HERE |
Quadrant 2 Care of self i.e. Exercise to keep healthy Professional Development Devising systems and strategies Envisioning future and preparing for it WE GAIN CONTROL OVER WORK AND LIFE IF MOST OF OUR TIME IS HERE |
| Not Important |
Quadrant 3 Interruptions: calls/emails Some reports/meetings Unprepared meetings IF YOU ARE HERE MOST OF YOUR TIME, THINGS GO OUT OF CONTROL |
Quadrant 4 Time wasters Unproductive activities ANY TIME IN THIS IS IRRESPONSIBILITY |
I learned to focus on quadrant 2, eliminate quadrant 4, delegate quadrant 3 and address or delegate/develop systems to prevent quadrant 1.
And you need to keep revisiting how you are doing in your time otherwise you tend to slip back into spending more time in quadrants 4, 3 and 1.
I am sure there are millions, like me, whose life Steven Covey had touched and improved. Let us spread his message.
May his soul rest in peace!
Filed under First Things First
I liked the subject of Preventive and Social Medicine (PSM) during undergraduate study of medicine and was lucky to have teachers like Prof George Joseph, Prof Lalit Nath and Prof Prema Bali. But it was my experience in the army which influenced my decision to take up public health for the rest of my life. I worked in the army as a doctor for five years (1977-1982) and most of it was as Regimental Medical Officer (RMO) responsible for preventive and curative health care of about 1000 soldiers. I saw public health in action and give results. The advice from the RMO is taken as gospel truth by every one from the commanding officer to the sepoy and implemented immediately and fully.
Defense forces in India have a very good system of induction and in-service training. The induction training for medical officers is 16 weeks called Medical Officers’ Basic Course. At the end of it you have to pass an exam. During this course at the Army Medical Corps’ Training School in Lucknow, we were given a book with yellow cover, popularly known as ‘yellow book’. This book has details of various public health aspects of communicable diseases, hygiene sanitation and common health hazards faced by the troops such as climate related issues, snake and insect bites. I found this book a very good complement to Park’s Textbook of Preventive and SociaI Medicine commonly used for teaching PSM to undergraduate and public health/PSM post graduate medical students in India and many other countries. I share with you some of the achievements/ experiences in the army which motivated me to take up public health as a career in my life:
Though I left the army after a short service tenure of five years but it had changed the way I looked at public health. I arrived in Delhi in January 1982 and reported as a Junior Resident at the Centre for Community Medicine at All India Institute of Medical Sciences to study and continue my journey of learning public health.
Filed under Learning Public Health
