Biography of Indira Gandhi

Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) was an Indian stateswoman who twice served as the Prime Minister of India from 1966 to 1977 and again from 1980 until her assassination in 1984. She was India's first and only female prime minister, and a central figure in Indian politics as the leader of the Indian National Congress (INC). Gandhi also served as chairperson of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) from 1983 to 1984, becoming the first Indian to hold the position. She was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, and the mother of Rajiv Gandhi, who succeeded her as prime minister. Her cumulative tenure of 15 years and 350 days, spanning four terms, makes her the second-longest-serving Indian prime minister after her father and the longest-serving female head of government at the time of her death.

During her father Jawaharlal Nehru's premiership from 1947 to 1964, Gandhi was his hostess and accompanied him on his numerous foreign trips. In 1959, she played a part in the dissolution of the communist-led Kerala state government as then-president of the Indian National Congress, otherwise a ceremonial position to which she was elected earlier that year. Lal Bahadur Shastri, who had succeeded Nehru as prime minister upon his death in 1964, appointed her minister of information and broadcasting in his government; the same year she was elected to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament. After Shastri's death in January 1966, Gandhi defeated her rival, Morarji Desai, in the INC's parliamentary leadership election to become leader and also succeeded Shastri as prime minister. With her premiership of India she became the world's second female prime minister after her Sri Lankan counterpart Sirimavo Bandaranaike. She led the Congress to victory in two subsequent elections, starting with the 1967 general election, in which she was first elected to the lower house of the Indian parliament, the Lok Sabha. In 1971, her party secured its first landslide victory since her father's sweep in 1962, focusing on issues such as poverty.

As prime minister, Gandhi was known for her uncompromising political stances and centralisation of power within the executive branch. In 1967, she headed a military conflict with China in which India repelled Chinese incursions into the Himalayas. In 1971, she went to war with Pakistan in support of the independence movement and war of independence in East Pakistan, which resulted in an Indian victory, the end of the Bangladeshi genocide, and the independence of Bangladesh, as well as an increase in India's influence to the point where it became the sole regional power in South Asia. Another military operation against Pakistan, codenamed Operation Meghdoot, occurred during her tenure in 1984, which led to India expanding the territory it effectively controlled in the disputed Kashmir region.

Gandhi also played a crucial role in initiating India's first successful nuclear weapon test in 1974. Her rule saw India grow closer to the Soviet Union by signing a friendship treaty in 1971 to ward off perceived geopolitical threat as a result of the U.S. warming up to China. India received military, financial, and diplomatic support from the Soviet Union during its conflict with Pakistan in the same year. Though India was at the forefront of the Non-Aligned Movement, Gandhi made it one of the Soviet Union's closest allies in Asia, each often supporting the other in proxy wars and at the United Nations.

Responding to separatist tendencies and a call for revolution, she instituted a state of emergency from 1975 to 1977, during which she ruled by decree and basic civil liberties were suspended. More than 100,000 political opponents, journalists and dissenters were imprisoned. Following the Emergency, the INC lost the 1977 election in the midst of massive anti-incumbency sentiment — the first such loss for the INC in the history of the Republic of India. She even lost her own parliamentary constituency. However, due to her portrayal as a strong leader and the weak governance of the Janata Party, her party won the next election by a landslide and she returned to the premiership.

She faced the Sikh separatist movement throughout her fourth premiership; in response, she ordered Operation Blue Star, which involved military action in the Golden Temple and killed hundreds of Sikhs. On 31 October 1984, she was assassinated by two of her bodyguards, both of whom were Sikh nationalists seeking retribution for the events at the temple.

Gandhi was cremated at the site now known as Shakti Sthal (transl. 'Place of strength'). The site is marked by a large monolithic rock of iron ore commemorating her as the "Iron Lady of India". Gandhi is remembered as one of the most powerful women in the world. Her supporters cite her leadership during victories over geopolitical rivals China and Pakistan, the Green Revolution, a growing economy in the early 1980s, and her anti-poverty campaign that led her to be known as Mother Indira among the country's poor and rural population. Critics note her cult of personality and authoritarian rule of India during the Emergency. In 1999, she was named "Woman of the Millennium" in an online poll organised by the BBC. In 2020, she was named by Time magazine among the 100 women who defined the past century as counterparts to the magazine's previous choices for Man of the Year.

Early life and career

Indira Gandhi was born in British ruled India as Indira Nehru, into a Kashmiri Pandit family on 19 November 1917 in Allahabad (present-day Prayagraj) in Uttar Pradesh. Her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a leading figure in the Indian movement for independence from British rule, and became the first Prime Minister of the Dominion (and later Republic) of India. Indira was her parents' only surviving child (she had a younger brother who died while young); she grew up with her mother, Kamala Nehru, at the Anand Bhavan, a large family estate in Allahabad. In 1930, the Nehru family donated the mansion to the Indian National Congress and renamed it Swaraj Bhavan (meaning abode of freedom). A new mansion was built nearby to serve as the family residence and given the name of the old Anand Bhavan. Indira had a lonely and unhappy childhood. Her father was often away, directing political activities or incarcerated, while her mother was frequently bedridden with illness and later suffered an early death from tuberculosis. Indira had limited contact with her father, mostly through letters.

Biography of Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule, and to later inspire movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahatma (Sanskrit: "great-souled", "venerable"), first applied to him in 1914 in South Africa, is now used throughout the world.

Born and raised in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat, Gandhi was trained in the law at the Inner Temple in London and was called to the bar at the age of 22. After two uncertain years in India, where he was unable to start a successful law practice, Gandhi moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit. He went on to live in South Africa for the next 21 years. Here, Gandhi raised a family and first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights. In 1915, aged 45, he returned to India and soon set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against discrimination and excessive land tax.

Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, and, above all, achieving swaraj or self-rule. Gandhi adopted the short dhoti woven with hand-spun yarn as a mark of identification with India's rural poor. He began to live in a self-sufficient residential community, to eat simple food, and undertake long fasts as a means of both introspection and political protest. Bringing anti-colonial nationalism to the common Indians, Gandhi led them in challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930 and in calling for the British to quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned many times and for many years in both South Africa and India.

Gandhi's vision of an independent India based on religious pluralism was challenged in the early 1940s by a Muslim nationalism which demanded a separate homeland for Muslims within British India. In August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan. As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in Punjab and Bengal. Abstaining from the official celebration of independence, Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to alleviate distress. In the months following, he undertook several hunger strikes to stop the religious violence. The last of these was begun in Delhi on 12 January 1948, when Gandhi was 78. The belief that Gandhi had been too resolute in his defence of both Pakistan and Indian Muslims spread among some Hindus in India. Among these was Nathuram Godse, a militant Hindu nationalist from Pune, western India, who assassinated Gandhi by firing three bullets into his chest at an interfaith prayer meeting in Delhi on 30 January 1948.

Gandhi's birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Nonviolence. Gandhi is considered to be the Father of the Nation in post-colonial India. During India's nationalist movement and in several decades immediately after, he was also commonly called Bapu, an endearment roughly meaning "father".

Early life and background

Gandhi's father, Karamchand Uttamchand Gandhi (1822–1885), served as the dewan (chief minister) of Porbandar state. His family originated from the then village of Kutiana in what was then Junagadh State. Although Karamchand only had been a clerk in the state administration and had an elementary education, he proved a capable chief minister.

During his tenure, Karamchand married four times. His first two wives died young, after each had given birth to a daughter, and his third marriage was childless. In 1857, Karamchand sought his third wife's permission to remarry; that year, he married Putlibai (1844–1891), who also came from Junagadh, and was from a Pranami Vaishnava family. Karamchand and Putlibai had four children: a son, Laxmidas (c. 1860–1914), a daughter, Raliatbehn (1862–1960), a second son, Karsandas (c. 1866–1913), and a third son, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who was born on 2 October 1869 in Porbandar (also known as Sudamapuri), a coastal town on the Kathiawar Peninsula and then part of the small princely state of Porbandar in the Kathiawar Agency of the British Raj.

In 1874, Gandhi's father, Karamchand, left Porbandar for the smaller state of Rajkot, where he became a counsellor to its ruler, the Thakur Sahib; though Rajkot was a less prestigious state than Porbandar, the British regional political agency was located there, which gave the state's diwan a measure of security. In 1876, Karamchand became diwan of Rajkot and was succeeded as diwan of Porbandar by his brother Tulsidas. Karamchand's family then rejoined him in Rajkot. They moved to their family home Kaba Gandhi No Delo in 1881.

Childhood

As a child, Gandhi was described by his sister Raliat as "restless as mercury, either playing or roaming about. One of his favourite pastimes was twisting dogs' ears." The Indian classics, especially the stories of Shravana and king Harishchandra, had a great impact on Gandhi in his childhood. In his autobiography, Gandhi states that they left an indelible impression on his mind. Gandhi writes: "It haunted me and I must have acted Harishchandra to myself times without number." Gandhi's early self-identification with truth and love as supreme values is traceable to these epic characters.

The family's religious background was eclectic. Mohandas was born into a Gujarati Hindu Modh Bania family. Gandhi's father, Karamchand, was Hindu and his mother Putlibai was from a Pranami Vaishnava Hindu family. Gandhi's father was of Modh Baniya caste in the varna of Vaishya. His mother came from the medieval Krishna bhakti-based Pranami tradition, whose religious texts include the Bhagavad Gita, the Bhagavata Purana, and a collection of 14 texts with teachings that the tradition believes to include the essence of the Vedas, the Quran and the Bible. Gandhi was deeply influenced by his mother, an extremely pious lady who "would not think of taking her meals without her daily prayers... she would take the hardest vows and keep them without flinching. To keep two or three consecutive fasts was nothing to her."

At the age of nine, Gandhi entered the local school in Rajkot, near his home. There, he studied the rudiments of arithmetic, history, the Gujarati language and geography. At the age of 11, Gandhi joined the High School in Rajkot, Alfred High School. He was an average student, won some prizes, but was shy and tongue-tied, with no interest in games; Gandhi's only companions were books and school lessons.

Medical education

Medical education is education related to the practice of being a medical practitioner, including the initial training to become a physician (i.e., medical school and internship) and additional training thereafter (e.g., residency, fellowship, and continuing medical education).

Medical education and training varies considerably across the world. Various teaching methodologies have been used in medical education, which is an active area of educational research.

Medical education is also the subject-didactic academic field of educating medical doctors at all levels, including entry-level, post-graduate, and continuing medical education. Specific requirements such as entrustable professional activities must be met before moving on in stages of medical education.

Common techniques and evidence base

Medical education applies theories of pedagogy specifically in the context of medical education. Medical education has been a leader in the field of evidence-based education, through the development of evidence syntheses such as the Best Evidence Medical Education collection, formed in 1999, which aimed to "move from opinion-based education to evidence-based education". Common evidence-based techniques include the Objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) to assess clinical skills, and reliable checklist-based assessments to determine the development of soft skills such as professionalism. However, there is a persistence of ineffective instructional methods in medical education, such as the matching of teaching to learning styles and Edgar Dales' "Cone of Learning".

Entry-level education

Entry-level medical education programs are tertiary-level courses undertaken at a medical school. Depending on jurisdiction and university, these may be either undergraduate-entry (most of Europe, Asia, South America and Oceania), or graduate-entry programs (mainly Australia, Philippines and North America). Some jurisdictions and universities provide both undergraduate entry programs and graduate entry programs (Australia, South Korea).

In general, initial training is taken at medical school. Traditionally entry-level medical education is divided between preclinical and clinical studies. The former consists of the basic sciences such as anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, pathology, microbiology. The latter consists of teaching in the various areas of clinical medicine such as internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, psychiatry, general practice and surgery. More recently, there have been significant efforts in the United States to integrate health systems science (HSS) as the "third pillar" of medical education, alongside preclinical and clinical studies. HSS is a foundational platform and framework for the study and understanding of how care is delivered, how health professionals work together to deliver that care, and how the health system can improve patient care and health care delivery.

The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LMCE) is a committee of educational accreditation for schools of medicine leading to an MD in the United States and Canada. In order to maintain accreditation, medical schools are required to ensure that students meet a certain set of standards and competencies, defined by the accreditation committees. The "Function and Structure of a Medical School" article is a yearly published article from the LCME that defines 12 accreditation standards.

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has recommended thirteen Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) that medical students should be expected to accomplish prior to beginning a residency program. EPAs are based on the integrated core competencies developed over the course of medical school training. Each EPA lists its key feature, associated competencies, and observed behaviors required for completion of that activity. The students progress through levels of understanding and capability, developing with decreasing need for direct supervision. Eventually students should be able to perform each activity independently, only requiring assistance in situations of unique or uncommon complexity.

Medical education has been criticized for limited innovation and for the length of schooling, which increases cost burden on students. There has been a proliferation of programs that combine medical training with research (M.D./Ph.D.) or management programs (M.D./MBA), although this has been criticized because extended interruption to clinical study has been shown to have a detrimental effect on ultimate clinical knowledge.

Medical student

A medical student is an individual enrolled at a medical school with the eventual goal of becoming a medical doctor. Medical students are exposed to both preclinical and clinical studies throughout their professional education, and are generally conferred a medical degree upon successful completion of the required curriculum. Further training through a residency program in addition to board certification is required in many jurisdictions prior to individuals becoming eligible to obtain a medical license and practice as a physician.

Challenges

Stress in medical students is a widely recognized problem, causing both short- and long-lasting physical and psychological effects that are detrimental to the well-being of medical students. The demands of medical school curriculum can differ significantly from academic expectations students have previously been exposed to, which can lead to uncertainty in personal study behavior and progress, in addition to concerns regarding the availability of study materials. Stress has been observed to differ across student demographics and stage of training; students have often cited academic pressure and financial burden as significant stressors. A higher prevalence of depression and anxiety has been noted among trainees in comparison to the general population, likely due to the constant exposure to clinical environments as well as high demands of medical training. Excessive levels of stress at the medical student level may serve as a precursor to physician burnout, a well-documented psychological syndrome of fatigue due to chronic exposure to occupational stressors.

Mughal Empire

The Mughal Empire was an early modern empire in South Asia. At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of present-day Assam and Bangladesh in the east, and the uplands of the Deccan Plateau in South India.

The Mughal Empire is conventionally said to have been founded in 1526 by Babur, a ruler from what is today Uzbekistan, who with the help of the neighbouring Safavid and Ottoman Empires, defeated the Sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim Lodi, in the First Battle of Panipat and swept down the plains of North India. The Mughal imperial structure, however, is sometimes dated to 1600, to the rule of Babur's grandson, Akbar. This imperial structure lasted until 1720, shortly after the death of the last major emperor, Aurangzeb, during whose reign the empire also achieved its maximum geographical extent. Reduced subsequently to the region in and around Old Delhi by 1760, the empire was formally dissolved by the British Raj after the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Although the Mughal Empire was created and sustained by military warfare, it did not vigorously suppress the cultures and peoples it came to rule; rather, it equalised and placated them through new administrative practices, and diverse ruling elites, leading to more efficient, centralised, and standardised rule. The basis of the empire's collective wealth was agricultural taxes, implemented by the third Mughal emperor, Akbar. These taxes, which amounted to well over half the output of a peasant cultivator, were paid in the well-regulated silver currency, and allowed peasants and artisans to enter larger markets.

The relative peace maintained by the empire during much of the 17th century was a factor in India's economic expansion. The burgeoning European presence in the Indian Ocean and an increasing demand for Indian raw and finished products generated much wealth for the Mughal court. There was conspicuous consumption among the Mughal elite, resulting in greater patronage of painting, literary forms, textiles, and architecture, especially during the reign of Shah Jahan. Among the Mughal UNESCO World Heritage Sites in South Asia are Agra Fort, Fatehpur Sikri, Red Fort, Humayun's Tomb, Lahore Fort, Shalamar Gardens, and the Taj Mahal, which has been described as "the jewel of Muslim art in India, and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world's heritage".

History

Babur and Humayun (1526–1556)

The Mughal Empire was founded by Babur (reigned 1526–1530), a Central Asian ruler who was descended from the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur (the founder of the Timurid Empire) on his father's side, and from Genghis Khan on his mother's side. Paternally, Babur belonged to the Turkicised Barlas tribe of Mongol origin. Ousted from his ancestral domains in Central Asia, Babur turned to India to satisfy his ambitions. He established himself in Kabul and then pushed steadily southward into India from Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass. Babur's forces defeated Ibrahim Lodi, Sultan of Delhi, in the First Battle of Panipat in 1526. Through his use of firearms and cannons, he was able to shatter Ibrahim's armies despite being at a numerical disadvantage, expanding his dominion up to the mid Indo-Gangetic Plain. After the battle, the centre of Mughal power shifted to Agra. In the decisive Battle of Khanwa, fought near Agra a year later, the Timurid forces of Babur defeated the combined Rajput armies of Rana Sanga of Mewar, with his native cavalry employing traditional flanking tactics.

The preoccupation with wars and military campaigns, however, did not allow the new emperor to consolidate the gains he had made in India. The instability of the empire became evident under his son, Humayun (reigned 1530–1556), who was forced into exile in Persia by the rebellious Sher Shah Suri (reigned 1540–1545). Humayun's exile in Persia established diplomatic ties between the Safavid and Mughal courts and led to increasing Persian cultural influence in the later restored Mughal Empire. Humayun's triumphant return from Persia in 1555 restored Mughal rule in some parts of India, but he died in an accident the next year.

Akbar to Aurangzeb (1556–1707)

Akbar (reigned 1556–1605) was born Jalal-ud-din Muhammad in the Umarkot Fort, to Humayun and his wife Hamida Banu Begum, a Persian princess. Akbar succeeded to the throne under a regent, Bairam Khan, who helped consolidate the Mughal Empire in India. Through various wars, Akbar was able to extend the empire in all directions and controlled almost the entire Indian subcontinent north of the Godavari River. He created a new ruling elite loyal to him, implemented a modern administration, and encouraged cultural developments. He increased trade with European trading companies. India developed a strong and stable economy, leading to commercial expansion and economic development. Akbar allowed freedom of religion at his court and attempted to resolve socio-political and cultural differences in his empire by establishing a new religion, Din-i-Ilahi, with strong characteristics of a ruler cult. He left his son an internally stable state, which was in the midst of its golden age, but before long signs of political weakness would emerge.

Jahangir (born Salim, reigned 1605–1627) was born to Akbar and his wife Mariam-uz-Zamani, an Indian princess. Salim was named after the Indian Sufi saint, Salim Chishti. He "was addicted to opium, neglected the affairs of the state, and came under the influence of rival court cliques". Jahangir distinguished himself from Akbar by making substantial efforts to gain the support of the Islamic religious establishment. One way he did this was by bestowing many more madad-i-ma'ash (tax-free personal land revenue grants given to religiously learned or spiritually worthy individuals) than Akbar had. In contrast to Akbar, Jahangir came into conflict with non-Muslim religious leaders, notably the Sikh guru Arjan, whose execution was the first of many conflicts between the Mughal Empire and the Sikh community.

Shah Jahan (reigned 1628–1658) was born to Jahangir and his wife Jagat Gosain. His reign ushered in the golden age of Mughal architecture. During the reign of Shah Jahan, the splendour of the Mughal court reached its peak, as exemplified by the Taj Mahal. The cost of maintaining the court, however, began to exceed the revenue coming in. Shah Jahan extended the Mughal Empire to the Deccan by ending the Ahmadnagar Sultanate and forcing the Adil Shahis and Qutb Shahis to pay tribute.

The Importance of Vitamins

Vitamins are organic molecules (or a set of closely related molecules called vitamers) that are essential to an organism in small quantities for proper metabolic function. These essential nutrients cannot be synthesized in the organism in sufficient quantities for survival, and therefore must be obtained through consumption. For example, vitamin C can be synthesized by some species but not by others; it is not considered a vitamin in the first instance but is in the second. Most vitamins are not single molecules, but groups of related molecules called vitamers. For example, there are eight vitamers of vitamin E: four tocopherols and four tocotrienols. The other essential nutrients are minerals, essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, and choline.

Vitamins have diverse biochemical functions. Vitamin A acts as a regulator of cell and tissue growth and differentiation. Vitamin D provides a hormone-like function, regulating mineral metabolism for bones and other organs. The B complex vitamins function as enzyme cofactors (coenzymes) or the precursors for them. Vitamins C and E function as antioxidants. Both deficient and excess intake of a vitamin can potentially cause clinically significant illness, although excess intake of water-soluble vitamins is less likely to do so.

All the vitamins were discovered between 1910 and 1948. Historically, when intake of vitamins from the diet was lacking, the results were vitamin deficiency diseases. Then, starting in 1935, commercially produced tablets of yeast-extract vitamin B complex and semi-synthetic vitamin C became available. This was followed in the 1950s by the mass production and marketing of vitamin supplements, including multivitamins, to prevent vitamin deficiencies in the general population. Governments have mandated the addition of some vitamins to staple foods such as flour or milk, referred to as food fortification, to prevent deficiencies. Recommendations for folic acid supplementation during pregnancy reduced the risk of infant neural tube defects.

History

The term "vitamin" was derived from "vitamine", a portmanteau coined from "vital amine" in 1912 by the biochemist Casimir Funk and his friend Max Nierenstein, Reader of Biochemistry at Bristol University, while Funk was working at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine. Funk created the name from vital and amine as suggested by Nierenstein, because it appeared that these organic micronutrient food factors that prevent beriberi and perhaps other similar dietary-deficiency diseases were required for life, hence "vital", and were chemical amines, hence "amine", as in the case of thiamine. In 1920, Jack Cecil Drummond proposed that the final "e" be dropped to deemphasize the "amine" reference, hence "vitamin", after researchers began to suspect that not all "vitamines" (in particular, vitamin A) had an amine component. The name "vitamin" soon became synonymous with Hopkins' "accessory factors".

Understanding before science

The value of eating certain foods to maintain health was recognized long before vitamins were identified in modern science. The ancient Egyptians knew that feeding liver to a person may help with night blindness, an illness now known to be caused by a vitamin A deficiency. The advance of ocean voyages during the Age of Discovery resulted in prolonged periods without access to fresh fruits and vegetables, and made illnesses from vitamin deficiency common among ships' crews.

In 1747, the Scottish surgeon James Lind discovered that citrus foods helped prevent scurvy, a particularly deadly disease in which collagen is not properly formed, causing poor wound healing, bleeding of the gums, severe pain, and death; Portuguese and Spanish sailors had independently known about the disease they acquired and how it was reduced after eating oranges and vegetables such as yams and turnips. In 1753, Lind published his Treatise on the Scurvy, which recommended using lemons and limes to avoid scurvy, which was adopted by the British Royal Navy. This led to the nickname limey for British sailors. However, during the 19th century, limes grown in the West Indies were substituted for lemons; these were subsequently found to be much lower in vitamin C. As a result, Arctic expeditions continued to be plagued by scurvy and other deficiency diseases. In the early 20th century, when Robert Falcon Scott made his two expeditions to the Antarctic, the prevailing medical theory was that scurvy was caused by "tainted" canned food.

In 1881, Russian medical doctor Nikolai Lunin studied the effects of scurvy at the University of Tartu. He fed mice an artificial mixture of all the separate constituents of milk known at that time, namely the proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and salts. The mice that received only the individual constituents died, while the mice fed by milk itself developed normally. He made a conclusion that "a natural food such as milk must therefore contain, besides these known principal ingredients, small quantities of unknown substances essential to life." However, his conclusions were rejected by his advisor, Gustav von Bunge. A similar result by Cornelis Adrianus Pekelharing appeared in Dutch medical journal Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde in 1905, but it was not widely reported.

In East Asia, where polished white rice was the common staple food of the middle class, beriberi resulting from lack of vitamin B1 was endemic. In 1884, Takaki Kanehiro, a British-trained medical doctor of the Imperial Japanese Navy, observed that beriberi was endemic among low-ranking crew who often ate nothing but rice, but not among officers who consumed a Western-style diet. With the support of the Japanese navy, he experimented using crews of two battleships; one crew was fed only white rice, while the other was fed a diet of meat, fish, barley, rice, and beans. The group that ate only white rice documented 161 crew members with beriberi and 25 deaths, while the latter group had only 14 cases of beriberi and no deaths. This convinced Takaki and the Japanese Navy that diet was the cause of beriberi, but they mistakenly believed that sufficient amounts of protein prevented it. That diseases could result from some dietary deficiencies was further investigated by Christiaan Eijkman, who in 1897 discovered that feeding unpolished rice instead of the polished variety to chickens helped to prevent a kind of polyneuritis that was the equivalent of beriberi. The following year, Frederick Hopkins postulated that some foods contained "accessory factors" – in addition to proteins, carbohydrates, fats etc. – that are necessary for the functions of the human body.

Primary education

Primary education is the first stage of formal education, coming after preschool/kindergarten and before secondary education. Primary education takes place in primary schools, elementary schools, or first schools and middle schools, depending on the location. Hence, in the United Kingdom and some other countries, the term primary is used instead of elementary.

The duration varies by country, but it typically lasts between three and six years. In some countries, such as the United States, the first seven to nine years of schooling are considered part of primary education.

The International Standard Classification of Education considers primary education as a single phase where programs are typically designed to provide fundamental reading, writing, and mathematics skills and establish a solid foundation for learning. This is ISCED Level 1: Primary education or the first stage of basic education.

Definition

The ISCED definition in 1997 posited that primary education normally started between the ages of 5 – 8 and was designed to give a sound basic education in reading, writing, and mathematics along with an elementary understanding of other subjects. By 2011 the philosophy had changed, the elementary understanding of other subjects had been dropped in favour of "to establish a solid foundation for learning".

History

In pre-agrarian cultures, children learnt by following their instinct to play. There was no need for enforced education. In agrarian cultures, agriculture, husbandry, bartering, and building skills can be passed on from adults to children or master to apprentice. Societies agree on the need for their children to learn and absorb their cultural traditions and beliefs. They attempt to do this informally in the family or by gathering the children together and employing a tutor to handle the task. This worked well for the landowners, but the children of the landless would be employed from the age of seven as servants. In one source from the turn of the 15th century, a French count advised that nobles' huntsmen should "choose a boy servant as young as seven or eight" and that "...this boy should be beaten until he has a proper dread of failing to carry out his masters orders." The document listed chores that the boy would perform daily and that the boy would sleep in a loft above the kennels to attend to the hounds' needs.

Religious communities became providers of education and defined the curriculum. Learning to recite passages from their holy text is a priority. For their society to advance, the oral tradition must be superseded by written texts; some students must write down the passages. Monasteries students needed to read out what is written in the religious language and not just the vernacular. This led to formal education in madrassas and schools. Martin Luther declared that salvation depends on each person's own reading of the Scriptures. Trading and management create a demand for accountancy. Basic skills thus included literacy and numeracy. This was the core of Elementary Education.

In mid 17th century America, Massachusetts became the first colony to mandate schooling for this purpose. Beginning in 1690, children there and in adjacent colonies learned to read from the New England Primer, known colloquially as "The Little Bible of New England".

History of elementary education in Europe

During Greek and Roman times, boys were educated by their mothers until the age of seven, then according to the culture of their location and times, would start formal education. In Sparta until twelve, it would be at a military academy building up physical fitness and combat skills, but also reading, writing and arithmetic while in Athens the emphasis would be on understanding the laws of the polis, reading, writing, arithmetic and music with gymnastics and athletics, and learning the moral stories of Homer. Girls received all their education at home. In Rome the primary school was called the ludus; the curriculum developed over the centuries featuring the learning of both Latin and Greek. In AD 94, Quintilian published the systematic educational work, Institutio Oratoria. He distinguished between teaching and learning, and that a child aged between 7 and 14 learned by sense experience, learns to form ideas, develops language and memory. He recommended that teachers should motivate their pupils by making the teaching interesting, rather than by corporal punishment. The trivium (grammar, rhetoric and logic) and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music) were legacies of the Roman curriculum.

The phenomenon of the rainbow

A rainbow is an optical phenomenon caused by refraction, internal reflection and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a continuous spectrum of light appearing in the sky. The rainbow takes the form of a multicoloured circular arc. Rainbows caused by sunlight always appear in the section of sky directly opposite the sun. Rainbows can be caused by many forms of airborne water. These include not only rain, but also mist, spray, and airborne dew.

Rainbows when viewed from the ground typically appear as an illuminated arc, but when flying, if there is enough mist they can be seen as full circles. The centre of the curve is always on a line from the Sun to the observer's eye.

In a primary rainbow, the arc shows red on the outer part and violet on the inner side. This rainbow is caused by light being refracted when entering a droplet of water, then reflected inside on the back of the droplet and refracted again when leaving it.

In a double rainbow, a second arc is seen about 10° outside the primary arc. Its colours are perceived to be in reverse order, with red on the lower side of the arc.

The Guinness World Records holder of the longest-lasting rainbow observed was 8 hours 58 minutes in the Yangmingshan range of Taipei, Taiwan in November 2017.

Visibility

Rainbows can be observed whenever there are water drops in the air and sunlight shining from behind the observer at a low altitude angle. Because of this, rainbows are usually seen in the western sky during the morning and in the eastern sky during the early evening. The most spectacular rainbow displays happen when half the sky is still dark with raining clouds and the observer is at a spot with clear sky in the direction of the Sun. The result is a luminous rainbow that contrasts with the darkened background. During such good visibility conditions, the larger but fainter secondary rainbow is often visible. It appears about 10° outside of the primary rainbow, with the inverse order of colours.

The rainbow effect is also commonly seen near waterfalls or fountains. In addition, the effect can be artificially created by dispersing water droplets into the air during a sunny day. Rarely, a moonbow, lunar rainbow, or nighttime rainbow can be seen on strongly moonlit nights. As human visual perception for colour is poor in low light, moonbows are often perceived to be white.

It is difficult to photograph the complete semicircle of a rainbow in one frame, as this would require an angle of view of 84°. For a 35 mm camera, a wide-angle lens with a focal length of 19 mm or less would be required. Now that software for stitching several images into a panorama is available, images of the entire arc and even secondary arcs can be created fairly easily from a series of overlapping frames.

From above the Earth such as in an aeroplane, it is sometimes possible to see a rainbow as a full circle. This phenomenon can be confused with the glory phenomenon, but a glory is usually much smaller, covering only 5–20°.

The sky inside a primary rainbow is brighter than the sky outside of the bow. This is because each raindrop is a sphere, and it scatters light over an entire circular disc in the sky. The radius of the disc depends on the wavelength of light, with red light being scattered over a larger angle than blue light. Over most of the disc, scattered light at all wavelengths overlaps, resulting in white light which brightens the sky. At the edge, the wavelength dependence of the scattering gives rise to the rainbow.

The light of a primary rainbow arc is 96% polarised tangential to the arc. The light of the second arc is 90% polarised.

Number of colours in a spectrum or a rainbow

For colours seen by the human eye, the most commonly cited and remembered sequence is Isaac Newton's sevenfold red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, remembered by the mnemonic Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain, or as the name of a fictional person (Roy G. Biv). The initialism is sometimes referred to in reverse order, as VIBGYOR. More modernly, the rainbow is often divided into red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue and violet. The apparent discreteness of main colours is an artefact of human perception and the exact number of main colours is a somewhat arbitrary choice.

Newton, who admitted his eyes were not very critical in distinguishing colours, originally (1672) divided the spectrum into five main colours: red, yellow, green, blue and violet. Later, he included orange and indigo, giving seven main colours by analogy to the number of notes in a musical scale. Newton chose to divide the visible spectrum into seven colours out of a belief derived from the beliefs of the ancient Greek sophists, who thought there was a connection between the colours, the musical notes, the known objects in the Solar System, and the days of the week. Scholars have noted that what Newton regarded at the time as "blue" would today be regarded as cyan, what Newton called "indigo" would today be called blue.

The colour pattern of a rainbow is different from a spectrum, and the colours are less saturated. There is spectral smearing in a rainbow since, for any particular wavelength, there is a distribution of exit angles, rather than a single unvarying angle. In addition, a rainbow is a blurred version of the bow obtained from a point source, because the disk diameter of the sun (0.5°) cannot be neglected compared to the width of a rainbow (2°). The number of colour bands of a rainbow may therefore be different from the number of bands in a spectrum, especially if the droplets are particularly large or small. Therefore, the number of colours of a rainbow is variable. If, however, the word rainbow is used inaccurately to mean spectrum, it is the number of main colours in the spectrum.

Moreover, rainbows have bands beyond red and violet in the respective near infrared and ultraviolet regions; however, these bands are not visible to humans. Only near frequencies of these regions to the visible spectrum are included in rainbows, since water and air become increasingly opaque to these frequencies, scattering the light. The UV band is sometimes visible to cameras using black and white film.

The question of whether everyone sees seven colours in a rainbow is related to the idea of linguistic relativity. Suggestions have been made that there is universality in the way that a rainbow is perceived. However, more recent research suggests that the number of distinct colours observed and what these are called depend on the language that one uses, with people whose language has fewer colour words seeing fewer discrete colour bands.

Champaran Satyagraha

The Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 was the first satyagraha movement led by Mahatma Gandhi in British India and is considered a historically important rebellion in the Indian independence movement. It was a farmer's uprising that took place in Champaran district of Bihar in the Indian subcontinent, during the British colonial period. The farmers were protesting against having to grow indigo with barely any payment for it.

When Gandhi returned to India from South Africa in 1915 and saw peasants in Northern India oppressed by indigo planters, he tried to use what he had used in South Africato organize mass uprisings by people to protest against injustice.

Champaran Satyagraha was the first popular satyagraha movement. The Champaran Satyagraha gave direction to India's youth and freedom struggle, which was tottering between moderates who prescribed Indian participation within the British colonial system, and the radicals from Bengal who advocated the use of violent methods to topple British colonial rule in India.

Under colonial-era laws, many tenant farmers were forced to grow some indigo on a portion of their land as a condition of their tenancy, under Panchkathia or Teenkathia system. This indigo was used to make dye. The Germans had invented artificial dye so the demand for indigo fell. Some tenants paid more rent in return for being let off from growing indigo. However, during the First World War the German dye ceased to be available and so indigo became profitable again. Thus many tenants were once again forced to grow it on a portion of their land- as was required by their lease. Naturally, this created much anger and resentment.

Prompted by the invitation of local peasant Raj Kumar Shukla to investigate the grievances of farmers, Mahatma Gandhi undertook his initial political endeavor in India, the Champaran Satyagraha. Joined by prominent figures including Rajendra Prasad, Mazhar ul-Haq, Mahadeo Desai, Narhari Parekh and J.B. Kripalani, Gandhi journeyed to Champaran to examine the oppressive conditions. Brajkishore Prasad, Anugraha Narayan Sinha, Ramnavmi Prasad, Shambhusharan Varma also participated. When authorities instructed Gandhi to depart, he defied the order and preferred to face punishment. Gandhi's refusal marked his first act of passive resistance or civil disobedience on Indian soil. This pivotal action, coupled with his subsequent efforts leading to the establishment of a Government Commission of Inquiry on which he served, resulted in a negotiated settlement. This agreement compelled the planters to reimburse the peasants 25% of unlawfully collected funds and, significantly, led to the dismantling of the exploitative 'Teenkathia' system. Within a decade, the planters left the area.

Champaran Satyagraha Background.

The background for the Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 was born out of the persistent exploitation of indigo farmers in Champaran under the oppressive tinkathia system. Gandhi’s intervention was prompted by the farmers' severe economic distress, exacerbated by the decline of indigo factories.

Indigo Cultivation in Champaran: Champaran had been growing indigo since the late 18th century, and by 1850, it became the region’s most important crop, surpassing even sugar.

Tinkathia System: Under the tinkathia system, European planters forced ryots to cultivate indigo on 3/20th of their landholding, severely restricting their ability to grow food crops.

Decline of Indigo Factories: Post-1900, the decline of indigo factories due to synthetic indigo from Europe led planters to cancel contracts with ryots, imposing heavy fines (tawan) for release from the indigo obligations.

Financial Burden: Ryots unable to pay the fine were issued handnotes and mortgage bonds at a high 12 per cent annual interest rate, worsening their financial plight.

Champaran Satyagraha Tinkathia System

Under the Tinkathia system in Champaran, factory owners legally forced tenants to cultivate indigo on a fixed portion of their land for a set price. Around 1860, this requirement was 5 Kathas per Bigha (one-fourth of the landholding). By 1867, it was reduced to 3 Kathas per Bigha, giving the system its name, Tinkathia.

Factory Owners and Short-term Leases: When the factories were being established for the first time, their owners had no permanent interest in land. They used to take short-term leases from the Bettiah Raj (the second-largest zamindari in the Bettiah region of Bihar).

Deceptive Practices by Factory Owners: The factory owners would try to deceive the Bettiah Raj by renting land at a low price, and then they would have the tenants grow indigo for them to earn a profit.

Profits and Losses: While factory owners made large profits from indigo cultivation, the tenants bore the brunt of the exploitation.

Indigo Growing Agreements: Tenants were required to grow indigo on 3 Kathas per bigha of their holding for some years, with the specific land selected by the factory for cultivation.

Variable Payment and Penalties: If the crops were good, a fixed price per bigha would be paid to the tenant. But if the crop was not bumper, then the tenant would get only a reduced price. If the tenant failed to grow indigo, he was liable to pay a heavy sum by way of damages for his breach.

Centenary celebrations

The series of celebration began on 10 April 2017 with a National Conclave (Rashtritya Vimarsh) where eminent Gandhian thinkers, philosophers, and scholars participated. The event was organised by Education Department and Directorate of Mass Education being the nodal office. On 13 May 2017, Indian Postal Department Issued three commemorative postage stamps and a miniature sheet on Champaran Satyagraha Centenary.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 10 April 2017 attended the concluding ceremony of the Champaran Satyagraha's centenary celebrations at Motihari in Champaran district of Bihar. PM Modi's key initiatives, including Swachh Bharat Mission attempt to reinterpret the theme of Champaran Satyagraha as Swachhagraha, thus to "re-emphasise the spirit of cleanliness – or Swachhta – which was close to Mahatma Gandhi's heart."

Distance education

Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at school, or where the learner and the teacher are separated in both time and distance; today, it usually involves online education through an online school. A distance learning program can either be completely online, or a combination of both online and traditional in-person classroom instruction.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs), offering large-scale interactive participation and open access through the World Wide Web or other network technologies, are recent educational modes in distance education. A number of other terms (distributed learning, e-learning, m-learning, virtual classroom, etc.) are used roughly synonymously with distance education. E-learning has shown to be a useful educational tool. E-learning should be an interactive process with multiple learning modes for all learners at various levels of learning. The distance learning environment is an exciting place to learn new things, collaborate with others, and retain self-discipline.

Historically, it involved correspondence courses wherein the student corresponded with the school via mail, but with the evolution of different technologies it has evolved to include video conferencing, TV, and the Internet.

History

One of the earliest attempts at distance education was advertised in 1728. This was in the Boston Gazette for "Caleb Philipps, Teacher of the new method of Short Hand", who sought students who wanted to learn the skills through weekly mailed lessons.

The first distance education course in the modern sense was provided by Sir Isaac Pitman in the 1840s who taught a system of shorthand by mailing texts transcribed into shorthand on postcards and receiving transcriptions from his students in return for correction. The element of student feedback was a crucial innovation in Pitman's system. The postage stamp made this scheme for remote education possible, and these efforts were scalable because of the introduction of uniform postage rates across England in 1840.

This early beginning proved extremely successful and the Phonographic Correspondence Society was founded three years later to establish these courses on a more formal basis. The society paved the way for the later formation of Sir Isaac Pitman Colleges across the country. The first correspondence school in the United States was the Society to Encourage Studies at Home which was founded in 1873. Founded in 1894, Wolsey Hall, Oxford was the first distance-learning college in the UK.

University correspondence courses

United Kingdom

The University of London was the first university to offer degrees to anyone who could pass their examinations, establishing its External Programme in 1858. It had been established in 1836 as an examining and degree-awarding body for affiliated colleges, originally University College London and King's College London but with many others added over the next two decades. The affiliated colleges provided certificates that the student had attended a course. A new charter in 1858 removed this requirement, allowing men (and women from 1878) taking instruction at any institution or pursuing a course of self-directed study to sit the examinations and receive degrees. The External Programme was referred to as the "People's University" by Charles Dickens as it provided access to higher education to students from less affluent backgrounds. Enrollment increased steadily during the late 19th century, and its example was widely copied elsewhere. However, the university only provided examinations, not instructional material, leading academics to state that "the original degree by external study of the UOL was not a form of distance education".

The External Programme is now known as the University of London Worldwide, and includes postgraduate and undergraduate degrees created by member institutions of the University of London.

Australia and South Africa

The vast distances made Australia especially active; the University of Queensland established its Department of Correspondence Studies in 1911.

United States

William Rainey Harper, founder and first president of the University of Chicago, celebrated the concept of extended education, where a research university had satellite colleges elsewhere in the region.

In 1892, Harper encouraged correspondence courses to further promote education, an idea that was put into practice by the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin, Columbia University, and several dozen other universities by the 1920s. Enrollment in the largest private for-profit school based in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the International Correspondence Schools grew explosively in the 1890s. Founded in 1888 to provide training for immigrant coal miners aiming to become state mine inspectors or foremen, it enrolled 2500 new students in 1894 and matriculated 72,000 new students in 1895. By 1906 total enrollments reached 900,000. The growth was due to sending out complete textbooks instead of single lessons, and the use of 1200 aggressive in-person salesmen. There was a stark contrast in pedagogy:

The regular technical school or college aims to educate a man broadly; our aim, on the contrary, is to educate him only along some particular line. The college demands that a student shall have certain educational qualifications to enter it and that all students study for approximately the same length of time; when they have finished their courses they are supposed to be qualified to enter any one of a number of branches in some particular profession. We, on the contrary, are aiming to make our courses fit the particular needs of the student who takes them.

Mohenjodaro Civilization

Mohenjo-daro is an archaeological site in the Larkana District of Sindh, Pakistan. Built c. 2500 BCE, it was one of the largest settlements of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation, and one of the world's earliest major cities, contemporaneous with the civilisations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Minoa, and Norte Chico. With an estimated population of at least 40,000 people, Mohenjo-daro prospered for several centuries, but by c. 1700 BCE had been abandoned, along with other large cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation.

The site was rediscovered in the 1920s. Significant excavation has since been conducted at the site of the city, which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980, the first site in South Asia to be so designated. The site is currently threatened by erosion and improper restoration.

Etymology

The city's original name is unknown. Based on his analysis of a Mohenjo-daro seal, Iravatham Mahadevan speculates that the city's ancient name could have been Kukkutarma. Cock-fighting may have had ritual and religious significance for the city. Mohenjo-daro may also have been a point of diffusion for the clade of the domesticated chicken found in Africa, Western Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Mohenjo-daro, the modern name for the site, has been interpreted as "Mound of the Dead" in Sindhi.

Location

Mohenjo-daro is located off the right (west) bank of the lower Indus river in Larkana District, Sindh, Pakistan. It lies on a Pleistocene ridge in the flood plain of the Indus, around 28 kilometres from the town of Larkana.

Historical context

Mohenjo-daro was built around 2500 BC. It was one of the largest cities of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation, also known as the Harappan Civilisation, which developed c. 3000 BC from the prehistoric Indus culture. At its height, the Indus Civilisation spanned much of what is now Pakistan and North India, extending westwards to the Iranian border, south to Gujarat in India and northwards to an outpost in Bactria, with major urban centers at Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Lothal, Kalibangan, Dholavira, and Rakhigarhi. Mohenjo-daro was the most advanced city of its time, with remarkably sophisticated civil engineering and urban planning. When the Indus civilisation went into sudden decline c. 1700 BCE, Mohenjo-daro was abandoned.

Rediscovery and excavation

The ruins of the city remained undocumented for around 3,700 years until R. D. Banerji, an officer of the Archaeological Survey of India, visited the site in 1919–1920 identifying what he thought to be a Buddhist stupa (150–500 CE) known to be there and finding a flint scraper which convinced him of the site's antiquity. This led to large-scale excavations of Mohenjo-daro led by Kashinath Dikshit in 1924–1925, and John Marshall in 1925–1926. In the 1930s, major excavations were conducted at the site under the leadership of Marshall, D. K. Dikshitar and Ernest Mackay. Further excavations were carried out in 1945 by Mortimer Wheeler and his trainee, Ahmad Dani and F. A. Khan. The last major series of excavations were conducted in 1964 and 1965 by George Dales. After 1965, excavations were banned due to weathering damage to the exposed structures, and the only projects allowed at the site since have been salvage excavations, surface surveys, and conservation projects. In the 1980s, German and Italian survey groups led by Michael Jansen and Maurizio Tosi used less invasive archeological techniques, such as architectural documentation, surface surveys, and localized probing, to gather further information about Mohenjo-daro. A dry core drilling conducted in 2015 by Pakistan's National Fund for Mohenjo-daro revealed that the site is larger than the unearthed area.

Architecture and urban infrastructure

Mohenjo-daro has a planned layout with rectilinear buildings arranged on a grid plan. Most were built of fired and mortared brick; some incorporated sun-dried mud-brick and wooden superstructures. The covered area of Mohenjo-daro is estimated at 300 hectares. The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History offers a "weak" estimate of a peak population of around 40,000.

The sheer size of the city, and its provision of public buildings and facilities, suggests a high level of social organisation. The city is divided into two parts, the so-called Citadel and the Lower City. The Citadel – a mud-brick mound around 12 metres (39 ft) high – is known to have supported public baths, a large residential structure designed to house about 5,000 citizens, and two large assembly halls. The city had a central marketplace, with a large central well. Individual households or groups of households obtained their water from smaller wells. Waste water was channeled to covered drains that lined the major streets. Some houses, presumably those of more prestigious inhabitants, include rooms that appear to have been set aside for bathing, and one building had an underground furnace, possibly for heated bathing. Most houses had inner courtyards, with doors that opened onto side-lanes.