📰 Law to keep checks, controls over private hospitals mooted
To keep checks and controls over private hospitals in times of a pandemic and to curb black marketing of medicines
•There should be a comprehensive public health Act with suitable legal provisions to keep checks and controls over private hospitals in times of a pandemic and to curb black marketing of medicines, the standing committee on Home Affairs, headed by Congress leader Anand Sharma, has said in a report that was submitted to Rajya Sabha Chairman Venkaiah Naidu on Monday.
•There had been several reported instances of beds reserved for COVID-19 patients in private hospitals being sold at exorbitant rates, the report noted.
•“The committee strongly recommends a comprehensive public health Act, preferably at the national level with suitable legal provisions to support the government in keeping checks and controls over private hospitals as there have been reports about the selling of hospital beds by them,” the report said.
•The Act, it stated, should keep a check on black marketing of medicines and product standardisation. It flagged the initial confusion over medicines that ‘helped’ in containing the COVID-19 infection and how they were sold at higher rates. It suggested that the government should be proactive by holding awareness campaigns on cheaper and effective repurposed medicines to prevent people from panicking and spending a huge amounts of money on expensive drugs.
COVID-19 insurance
•The committee observed that in the initial phase of the pandemic, medical insurance was not extended to patients with COVID-19 infection. With exorbitant charges levelled by private hospitals, many had to suffer. “There is need to have regulatory oversight on all hospitals working in the country to prevent refusal to accept insurance claims. The committee strongly recommends that the target should be to make COVID-19 treatment cashless for all people that are having insurance coverage,” the report notes.
•While appreciating the work done by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) by coming out with standard operating procedures (SOPs), guidelines and awareness generation, and most importantly, acting as a nodal centre for funding manpower deployment to meet exigencies, the committee said the ongoing pandemic was unlike any natural disaster that the NDMA had handled.
•“The committee recommends that a separate wing may be formed in the NDMA that will specialise in handling /managing pandemics like COVID-19 in future. This wing may take a leading role in building a partnership of government with the public sector, corporates, NGOs and other stakeholders,” the report observed.
•At the time of a pandemic, measures should be taken to avoid social stigma and fear of isolation and quarantine, by making people aware and treating them with respect and empathy, the report said.
Schemes implementation
•On the economic front, the committee said that while the government had taken a host of measures to ameliorate the impact of the pandemic on the economy, many schemes have not been implemented properly. “The committee observes that few of these schemes need effective implementation at the ground level. The problems being faced by farmers, non-corporate and non-farm small/micro enterprises in getting loans need to be addressed,” the report pointed out.
•Consumption had been severely curtailed due to huge job loss and fall in income due to the lockdown. It would take some time to mend, especially after the GDP having a contraction of 23.9% in the first quarter of 2020-21. The report said that more interventions and schemes were required to support the recovery and to sustain this economic revival especially for the MSME (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) sector.
Mid-day meal
•The committee expressed concern that with schools shut down now for more than nine months, many children were deprived of mid-day meal. Many States continued the scheme by delivering dry ration to students at their homes or giving them allowances. But this was not uniform.
•“The committee, therefore, strongly recommends that the Ministry of Home Affairs, along with the Department of Food and Public Distribution, take up the matter with the State governments to ensure that the local administrations are delivering the rations/ allowances in time and this should be continued until the schools reopen,” the report said.
Demonstrations were held on a shore-based facility at Naval Air Station Patuxent river in Maryland, U.S.
•Boeing on Monday announced the successful demonstration of the compatibility of its F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets with the Indian Navy’s aircraft carriers as part of its pitch for the Navy’s fighter procurement.
•The demonstrations, which were held in coordination with U.S. Navy on a shore-based facility at the Naval Air Station Patuxent river in Maryland, U.S., show that the F/A-18 Super Hornet would do well with the Indian Navy’s Short Takeoff but Arrested Recovery (STOBAR) system and validate earlier simulation studies done over the last two years, a senior company official said.
•“The first successful and safe launch of the F/A-18 Super Hornet from a ski-jump begins the validation process to operate effectively from Indian Navy aircraft carriers,” said Ankur Kanaglekar, Head, India Fighters Sales, Boeing Defense, Space and Security.
•The F/A-18 Block III Super Hornet would not only provide superior war-fighting capability to the Indian Navy but also create opportunities for cooperation in naval aviation between the U.S. and India, Mr. Kanaglekar said, pitching it as a “lynchpin” for cooperation between Indian and U.S. Navies. However, he said, the fighter requirements of the Indian Navy and the IAF were different.
‘Force multiplier’
•He also highlighted the ability of F/A-18 to interface with the Navy’s P-8I as a “force multiplier” and also with other platforms under induction.
•The Navy has contracted 24 Lockheed MH-60R multi-role helicopters with deliveries to begin next year.
•As part of Boeing’s proposed “By India, for India” sustainment program, the Block III Super Hornets could be serviced in partnership with the Indian Navy as well as India and U.S. based partners throughout the lifecycle of the aircraft, Mr. Kanaglekar said. This would further develop advanced expertise in aircraft maintenance in India, resulting in higher availability of the aircraft, at competitive pricing and reduced risk for the Indian Navy.
DRDO’s offer
•The Indian Navy currently evaluates responses from aircraft manufacturers received in response to a Request For Information (RFI) floated in 2017 for 57 twin-engine deck-based fighters. However, with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) recently offering to develop a twin-engine deck based jet, the Navy is in the process of cutting down the number of fighters from 57 to around 36.
•The Navy’s sole carrier in service INS Vikramaditya and the under-construction indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC)-I Vikrant both have a ski-jump with a STOBAR mechanism.
•As reported by The Hindu early this month, Navy Chief Admiral Karambir Singh said the Navy was trying to do the tender along with the Indian Air Force (IAF) which, officials had stated, if accepted the 57 tender would be combined with the IAF’s 114 jet tender.
📰 Virus variant: On temporary travel ban from U.K.
Increased transmissibility is one more reason to follow non-pharmaceutical interventions
•With nearly a dozen countries in Europe and elsewhere temporarily banning travel from the U.K. after a new variant of the novel coronavirus was found to be causing an increased number of new cases there, India too has followed suit — flights, with some exceptions, have been temporarily suspended from Tuesday night till December 31. On Saturday, the U.K. imposed strict restrictions in greater London and much of southeast England. The variant — VUI-202012/01 (the first ‘variant under investigation’ in December 2020) — has 23 mutations in all. Though a few of these are seen in the region of the virus that binds to the human receptor, a single mutation — N501Y — has been found to increase the binding affinity, making the variant more transmissible. On December 20, the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium, which identified the variant on September 20, said the variant has been “growing in frequency” since November 2020 and is “responsible for an increasing proportion of SARS-CoV-2 cases in the UK”. Based on modelling, it has been found to be 70% more transmissible but this is yet to be confirmed in lab experiments. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control says that in a preliminary study, the variant has the potential to increase by over 0.4 the number of people a person can infect. There is no evidence as yet that it can cause any change in disease severity or increase the risk of reinfection.
•Though the N501Y and other mutations are found in the spike protein region of the virus, it is unlikely that the mutations would make the two COVID vaccines that have secured emergency use approval and the ones in final stages of testing less effective. This is because vaccines produce antibodies against many regions of the spike protein, and there is also the T-cell immunity that would come into play to clear the virus. However, as the virus accumulates more mutations, there is a possibility that vaccines might require minor tweaking. The emergence of the new variant underlines the compulsion to undertake surveillance following vaccination to track vaccine effectiveness and to look for the appearance of vaccine-escape mutants. SARS-CoV-2 being an RNA virus tends to have a higher mutation rate, but the presence of 23 mutations strongly suggests that the variant has not emerged through gradual accumulation of mutations. According to COG-UK, it is probably due to prolonged infection in a single patient, potentially with reduced immunocompetence. While a few cases caused by the new variant have been reported, the extent of international spread is unknown. Since far fewer SARS-CoV-2 genomes are sequenced at regular intervals in India, it is unclear if the variant is already present here. The emergence of the new variant with increased transmissibility is one more reason why non-pharmaceutical interventions should be strictly adhered to.
📰 Nepal in turmoil: On dissolution of Parliament by K.P. Sharma Oli
K.P. Oli put his greed for power over the interests of democracy and political stability
•Nepal Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli’s recommendation to dissolve Parliament, which has been duly approved by President Bidya Devi Bhandari, has pushed the young democracy into an unprecedented constitutional crisis and political turmoil. Mr. Oli, whose Nepal Communist Party with a near two-thirds majority in Parliament, took the drastic step as he came under increasing pressure from his own party to withdraw an ordinance his government issued last week. Both the opposition and other leaders within the ruling party alleged that the ordinance to amend the Constitutional Council Act would undermine the checks and balances in the system and empower the Prime Minister in making crucial appointments. Mr. Oli had reportedly agreed to withdraw the ordinance in a party meeting. But on Sunday, his Cabinet made the unexpected move to recommend a dissolution of Parliament. Elections will now be held in April-May 2021, a year ahead of schedule. Constitutional experts have challenged the legality of Mr. Oli’s decision. Nepal’s 2015 Constitution allows the dissolution of the House before its five-year term ends only if there is a hung assembly and no party manages to form a government. Since the President has cleared his recommendation, the issue will now be decided by the Supreme Court.
•When Mr. Oli’s Communist Party of Nepal (UML) and its alliance partners came to power in 2017 with a huge majority, many hoped that it would be a new beginning. Nepal was in a painful transition from a monarchy to a republican democracy. In less than a year, the CPN-UML and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre), led by former Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, merged to form the country’s largest communist force, the NCP. It was a historic opportunity for the NCP, especially for Mr. Oli, to steer the fledgling democracy out of its many crises. But the merger did not dissolve the fundamental differences between the NCP’s two factions. Mr. Oli’s authoritarian impulses and refusal to share power with the Maoist faction made matters worse. In recent months, there were calls from within the NCP for Mr. Oli to step down. When the party asked him to withdraw the amendment, it was clear that he had lost internal support. But instead of following the party line, Mr. Oli decided to sink his government. Given the seriousness of the crisis, a split cannot be ruled out. And if that happens, Nepal would be pushed back to political instability, at a time of multiple challenges, from a slowing economy to the coronavirus crisis. Mr. Oli could have gone down in history as a statesman. Instead, he has cut a sorry figure as Prime Minister, and his obsession with power risks unravelling the party he co-founded.
📰 Lessons from Monash
The experiences of other countries could offer ideas to India as it considers establishing international branch campuses
•One of the recommendations of the National Education Policy 2020 was to allow universities in the top 100 category of the World University Rankings to operate in India. Although this recommendation has generated a lot of discussion, one major gap is the inadequate focus on the potential role and suitability of international branch campuses (IBC) in the Indian environment.
•According to the Cross-Border Education Research Team (C-BERT), hosted at the State University of New York at Albany and Pennsylvania State University, an IBC is an “entity that is owned, at least in part, by a foreign higher education provider; operated in the name of the foreign education provider; and provides an entire academic program, substantially on site, leading to a degree awarded by the foreign education provider.” A general perception in India is that there is only a single model of IBC, i.e., a self-funded model in which foreign universities establish campuses on their own without any major support from the host country. However, studies show that there are various other models of IBCs such as those fully or partially funded by the host government, supported by private organisations, availing government facilities in designated hubs/zones, and functioning in collaboration with a local partner in the partner’s campus. There have been many success stories as well as failures of these models across different national contexts.
India’s late mover advantage
•More than 300 IBCs are functioning in around 80 countries. According to data compiled by C-BERT’s Kevin Kinser and Jason E. Lane, a large number of these are operated by universities from the U.S., the U.K., Australia, France and Russia. Countries such as China, Malaysia, Qatar and Singapore host most of them. Interestingly, a few Indian private institutions also operate IBCs in countries such as Australia, Mauritius, Uzbekistan, Singapore, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
•When considering the establishment of IBCs, it would be useful to review the experiences of not only the countries that have hosted them but also the top 100 universities that have ventured out of their home country to establish IBCs abroad. Such an approach would be helpful in mitigating potential risks. The lessons from the impact of Australia’s Monash University’s branch campus in South Africa from 2001 to 2019 is one such example which may prove useful.
•South Africa’s branch campus strategy over the past two decades has been focussed on a dual-track approach in which the IBCs were promoted in parallel with the pre-existing higher education system. The South African regulatory framework permits foreign universities to operate as private entities, legally registered as a company. Although IBCs in South Africa cannot use the ‘university’ tag, they can offer accredited degrees and diplomas. South Africa has three IBCs. Monash was the first to obtain registration in 2001 to operate an IBC in Johannesburg as ‘Monash South Africa (MSA)’. Monash is a public university, currently among the top 100 universities in the QS World University Ranking. It operates IBCs in China and Malaysia.
•The student population at MSA had increased to around 4,000 in 2018. While almost half of them were from South Africa, 40% of the remaining were from other African countries. According to a study by Ashley Gunter and Parvati Raghuram, Monash’s Australian main campus had invested approximately $130 million in its South Africa campus until it started operating as a joint venture with U.S.-based majority owner Laureate Education in 2013. Under this partnership agreement, Monash University sold 75% of its shares to Laureate. In 2018, Monash and Laureate jointly decided to transfer the ownership of the campus to Independent Institute of Education (IIE) South Africa, a subsidiary of the ADvTech group, a company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Monash South Africa is now called IIE-MSA. According to reports, the teach out process would be completed by the end of 2022.
Facing up to ground realities
•These are some of the biggest lessons from Monash University’s South Africa experience. One, the public nature of a foreign university may not be reflected in its branch campus. Two, even a university that is among the top 100 could become a local private institution through mergers and acquisitions. Three, ensuring parity with the quality of programmes offered at the home campus would be a challenge. Four, domestic market demand influences course offerings, and there is dependence on contract academic staff. Finally, there are limitations in substituting existing institutions.
•The above experience illustrates the big gap between the state’s desired objectives and the actual impact on the ground. Therefore, reviewing the various delivery models existing in different national contexts may be helpful in the policy formulation process.
📰 Key steps to get this spectrum auction right
The government must avoid the 2016 situation, of a swathe of unsold spectrum block; reserve prices must be revisited
•The Union Cabinet has cleared the much-awaited auction of radio spectrum in various bands for commercial mobile services. Following this decision of December 16, the auction that will use the well-proven methodology of Simultaneous Multiple Round Ascending (SMRA) Auction will be the seventh of its type and is being held four years after the last one.
•Based on the recommendation of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the government is planning to auction spectrum in the sub GHz bands of 700, 800 and 900 MHz along with mid-band frequencies in bands of 1800, 2100, 2300, and 2500 MHz across the 22 Licensed Service Areas (LSAs) of the country. The total spectrum to be auctioned is about 2,251 MHz, compared to about 2,355 MHz put on the block in 2016. The cumulative reserve price — and hence the potential revenue accrual to the government at reserve prices — is about $50 billion. Total reserve price of spectrum put on auction in 2016 was about $90 billion while the realised value was just about one-tenth of that, with none of the 700 MHz spectrum band being sold. Hence, while the 2016 auction could be considered as a failure from the auctioneer’s point of view, will this auction scheduled in March 2021 be successful? There are a number of factors that determine the success of spectrum auction. First is the reserve price. Our research on a cross-country spectrum database shows that the reserve price significantly and positively correlated to the winning bid price. However, a higher reserve price also inhibits bidders from bidding for more spectrum blocks, resulting in lower amounts of spectrum sold. If the quantity effect is more than the price effect, then it results in reduced revenues for the government exchequer, as it happened in 2016.
Factor of VoIP subscribers
•Second, the willingness to pay by the telcos depends on their position vis-à-vis Over The Top (OTT) providers who are providing substitute goods such as Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP); and capturing a greater mind share of customers while remaining relatively invisible to government regulators. Our research indicates that the rise of VoIP subscribers could have a positive effect on winning bid prices. However, the erosion of the position of telcos vis-à-vis OTTs in the context of their relationship in the overall digital value network of devices, connectivity and apps, could result in a lower willingness to pay.
•Third, is the allocation of unlicensed spectrum for Wi-Fi. By off-loading mobile data, Wi-Fi supplements the carrier network and reduces the demand for mobile network capacity. A number of countries including the United States have unlicensed the V-band spectrum in 60 GHz — pencil beam band. Referred to as “wireless fibre”, the 60 GHz spectrum provides huge capacities in a limited area, ideally to be used for Wi-Fi and fixed wireless access. Wi-Fi 6 (a.k.a. IEEE 802.11 ax) that operates in the 2.4/5 GHz unlicensed band requiresadditional unlicensed spectrum allocation to provide Gigabit speeds. The more the unlicensed spectrum allocation, the lower will be the demand for licensed spectrum.
Spectrum visibility
•Fourth, is the visibility of spectrum that will be up for auction, henceforth. While there is an indication by the government that the spectrum for 5G auction, namely 3.4-3.6 GHz, will be held in late 2021, the amount of spectrum that will be made available is not clear. There is still uncertainty about the release of 26 GHz by the Department of Space for mobile services. With this limited visibility, the bidders will be in a quandary whether to acquire the spectrum now, or wait for subsequent auctions. Further, some part of the current spectrum holding of all the operators is coming up for renewal in mid-2021, and hence there is additional pressure on them to retain them in the forthcoming auction.
•The reserve prices of different bands for the forthcoming auction as recommended by TRAI indicate that the average price per MHz per population (a common metric used for comparing spectrum prices) is around $3 for sub-GHz band and $1.70 for mid-band. These are comparable to only some of the higher winning bid prices in other countries.
The right price
•Hence a word of caution. Higher reserve prices, though they increase spectrum prices, may leave again a swathe of spectrum blocks unsold as in the 2016 auction. This will indicate a failure of the auction. Spectrum is a perishable scarce resource. If it cannot be used, then its value is lost. When the whole country is adopting a new norm for Work from Home due to the COVID-19 crisis, it is important for the government to ensure that the spectrum put on the block is sold successfully. Hence, we recommend the following before the auction begins:
•A re-visit of reserve prices and lower it further, especially that of 700 MHz (even though it was re-estimated to be lower by TRAI) which is the “golden band” for covering the hinterlands of the country;
•Releasing more unlicensed spectrum in 2.4/5/60 GHz for proliferating Wi-Fi as a suitable complement to [the] carrier network; this will also augment the deployments of the Public Wi-Fi project which the cabinet approved recently;
•Provide visibility of future auctions, especially the quantum of spectrum that can be put on the block in 3.3/3.6/26/28 GHz;
•Now that OTT firms have been brought under regulation under the ambit of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the government should release guidelines on how they will be regulated and what will be regulated so that the telcos and OTTs can join hands to provide superior services for the benefit of the consumers.
•Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson, the Nobel Laureates this year in Economic Sciences pioneered the SMRA (partly with Preston McAfee) as a proven methodology for successful auctions. However, the methodology alone cannot guarantee a successful auction without the accompanying features mentioned above.
📰 The greatness of Srinivasa Ramanujan
His works were diverse, original and transcended time; and all this while he surmounted many odds
•“In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures life may perfect be” - ‘The Noble Nature,’ Ben Jonson
•In April 1984, when he read the letter thanking him for contributing to a bronze bust in memory of the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, Takashi Ono was moved to tears. The letter was from Janaki Ammal, Ramanujan’s wife. From first hearing about Ramanujan in Tokyo in 1955 from the mathematician Andre Weil and having Ramanujan as an inspiration and then to being one of the few mathematicians in the world to fulfil the wish of Janaki Ammal that a statue of her husband be made, life had come a full circle for Takashi.
•There was one more connection that Takashi had with Ramanujan: Takashi’s son Ken Ono made key contributions to ‘mock theta functions’ in early 2000s, a topic that Ramanujan had worked on in the last few months before his death in April 1920. In the mathematical community, it was no surprise that Ramanujan’s work was being expanded actively eight decades after his demise: many of Ramanujan’s findings anticipated research areas by many years.
Research at a feverish pitch
•Ramanujan, born on December 22, 1887 was an autodidact who specialised in pure mathematics. While he excelled in mathematics, he neglected other subjects and could not complete his pre-university course. By 1908 he gave up studies, but not his research in mathematics. He struggled in poverty until in 1910, a benefactor, Ramachandra Rao, district collector of Nellore, provided him monthly allowance from his own pocket so that Ramanujan could pursue research. This would continue for a couple of years until Ramanujan managed to become a clerk at Madras Port Trust. He initiated contact with the British mathematician G.H. Hardy under whose insistence Ramanujan travelled to England in early 1914. His partnering with Hardy was productive: Ramanujan published more than 20 research papers between 1914 and 1919. During his stay, he was awarded a doctorate and made Fellow of Royal Society. When he returned to India in 1919, he was “...with a scientific standing and reputation such as no Indian has enjoyed before”. Unfortunately he lived only a year after his return succumbing to illness which was diagnosed then as tuberculosis but now revised as hepatic amoebiasis. However, in that one year, he continued his research at a feverish pitch.
•Until he left for England in 1914, Ramanujan recorded his mathematical results, mostly equations, in his notebooks. There were three such notebooks (preserved now). One more was added when Ramanujan returned to India. Together there were about 4,000 results. The results were the culmination of research backed by deep intuition and insights. However, Ramanujan did not record proofs of his results: that work would be taken up by future generations of mathematicians.
•Ramanujan’s work was in number theory, infinite series, analysis (theoretical underpinnings of calculus) and a few other areas in pure mathematics. Specifically, as G.H. Hardy wrote, these subjects were “...the applications of elliptic functions to the theory of numbers, the theory of continued fractions and... the theory of partitions”.
•A few significant contributions were multiple formulae to calculate pi with great accuracy to billions of digits (22/7 is only an approximation to pi), partition functions (a partition is a way to represent a positive integer — for example, 1+1+1+1 is a partition of 4, 1+3 is another partition of 4, and so on), modular forms and hypergeometric series (the terms in every consecutive pair in the series form rational functions).
•The importance of many of his works became apparent much later. One such was ‘Ramanujan conjecture’ which he published in 1916 and was proved in 1973 by Pierre Deligne. The conjecture inspired the development of theory of Galois representation that was employed in Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s last theorem published in 1995. In recent years, Ramanujan’s works and their extensions have found applications in signal processing to identify periodic information, akin to Fourier analysis. Mock theta functions have found applications in the study of black holes in astrophysics.
•But to look for applications of his works is exactly how not to appreciate Ramanujan. As G.N. Watson, a contemporary mathematician of Ramanujan in Cambridge said, “The study of Ramanujan’s works gives me a thrill which is indistinguishable from the thrill which I feel... when I see before me the... beauty of the four statues... which Michelangelo has set over the tombs of Guiliano de Medici and Lorenzo de Medici”. For Ramanujan, mathematics was art.
•Robert Kanigel, the celebrated biographer of Ramanujan, noted: “People will try to explain it in an easy way but I think they are unjustified in doing it. I think some people really are a few steps beyond where the rest of us live. We are forced to view those intellects, those artistic sensibilities, as a little bit mysterious or a little beyond what is the common realm.”
•For Ramanujan, his mathematics was an end in itself. In this he thought like G.H. Hardy who claimed in A Mathematician’s Apology, “A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns... The ‘seriousness’ of a mathematical theorem lies, not in its practical consequences, which are usually negligible, but in the significance of the mathematical ideas which it connects. We may say, roughly, that a mathematical idea is ‘significant’ if it can be connected, in a natural and illuminating way, with a large complex of other mathematical ideas.”
•How did Ramanujan develop his mathematical abilities? Here again we have to look to G.H. Hardy: “...with his memory, his patience and his power of calculation, he combined a power of generalisation, a feeling for form, a capacity for rapid modification of his hypothesis, that were often really startling, and made him, in his own peculiar field, without a rival in his day”.
Power of intuition and insight
•Let’s remember that Ramanujan was always precocious in his mathematical talent. And by virtue of working alone on problems and theorems that were advanced for his age during adolescence, day after day, hour after hour, he developed an incredible power of intuition and insight. The problems he worked on were from a book by one Carr. This book was “a spark which`ignited the flame... [but] as the depth of Ramanujan’s discoveries deepened, Carr’s influence certainly waned,” the mathematician Bruce Berndt said.
•Ramanujan is remembered in many ways. His birthday (today is his 133rd birth anniversary) is celebrated as National Mathematics Day in India. The Ramanujan Journal publishes advancements in the areas that Ramanujan contributed to. His home in Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu has been converted to a museum by SASTRA University.
•Ramanujan’s greatness is not that he was a poor man who travelled to England and did research. It is that he was prolific and that his works were diverse, original and transcended time; and all this while he surmounted many odds coming from indigence. Ramanujan’s works, especially to mathematicians, are of enduring elegance. The mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson said, “Whenever I am angry or depressed, I pull down the Collected papers [of Ramanujan] from the shelf and take a quiet stroll in Ramanujan’s garden”.
