In an ambitious project to apply one of the latest technological tools — Artificial Intelligence (AI) — to revolutionise the learning methods of Indian children from underprivileged backgrounds who attend anganwadis, which are poor children’s equivalent to the plush and fun-filled playschools frequented by the rich and upper class urban Indian children, RI District 3012 has launched an interesting and futuristic project in Uttar Pradesh.

Having lived in Delhi since 1958 I have some very fond memories of it, before it started becoming a gas chamber about 40 years ago. Very few people now remember Delhi as it was before the Asian Games of 1982. Those games turned the old bucolic and bureaucratic Delhi into a boom town and it has not stopped booming since then. The fixed population of Delhi today is around three and a half crore. Another crore or so people float in and out annually. In 1980 the population was barely 70 million, mostly rural, living in the areas of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh surrounding Delhi like Gurgaon and Noida. Indira Gandhi’s farmhouse, by the way, was on the very southwest outskirts of Delhi. Today it’s south central. All those rural areas have been assimilated into a single toxic zone called the National Capital Region (NCR) and they are fully urban now. The NCR is so huge that when you fly into Delhi you can see the pollution the region causes rising up to 15,000 feet and extending some 200 miles in all directions. This is largely because in 1980 there were barely a lakh motorised vehicles. Today there are around three million.

Prioritise your health, and never procrastinate when it comes to work and major decisions in life,” advised DGN ­Ravishankar Dakoju, RID 3192, at a meeting of RC Madras, RID 3234. “Life is unpredictable. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow or even the next moment. So, don’t postpone critical decisions and burden your children. Even though children today are smart and know what to do when, with a clear vision,” he said.

An environmentalist friend has wisely said that green habits should be gently inculcated rather than pushed down people’s throats. Her take is that humans like to break the rules and dislike being dictated. So, any harsh list of dos and don’ts will likely be discarded or forgotten quickly. The more rebellious may even follow all the don’ts diligently and avoid the dos!

As Rotary president, one of the key priorities of RIPE Mario de Camargo will be “to retain you all, keep you engaged as too many — 155,000 Rotarians — are quitting Rotary each year. But we don’t own Rotary as we are here for a purpose, and we have to keep it going for the next generation with a good succession plan,” he said, addressing the membership conclave in Hyderabad.

In July this year, Rotary ­Bangalore South Parade, RID 3191, in association with optical products manufacturer Carl Zeiss, launched the project Gift of Sight to provide 15,000 spectacles and 1,440 ­intra-ocular lenses (IOLs) to individuals undergoing cataract treatment across Karnataka. The project will be implemented every year at the Sri Sathya Sai Sarala Memorial ­Hospital located in Sathya Sai Grama, ­Muddenahalli, in Chikkaballapur, 60km from Bengaluru.