Looks like some people can’t get out of the old habits of trying to regulate everything and anything. The license raj is not quite dead, sadly.
Parents are best positioned to make these kinds of decisions, not blowhard Babus. The state should not try to micro-manage people’s lives. Leave the decisions to those best positioned to make them; don’t issue regulations that are impossible to enforce. Is that too much to grasp?
India News – India State News, KA: Ban on mobile phone use by students
Karnataka government has decided to ban use of mobile phones by school children aged below 16 and sale of handsets to them in order to protect their health. The decision was adopted at a meeting of Education and Health Department in Bangalore. The measure comes in the wake of several studies which pointed to adverse effects radiation from mobile phones will have on the brain and the IQ level of children of this age group. Minister for Health R Ashok and Minister Primary and Secondary Education Basavaraj Horatti, speaking to reporters after chairing the high-level meeting in Bangalore on Tuesday, said a government order would be issued to this effect in a week’s time.
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2 Comments
Laurent
Beyond the issue of whether government should be regulating this type of thing, the evidence that the “adverse effects radiation from mobile phones will have on the brain and the IQ level of children of this age group” is debatable at best (see http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2006/8934/abstract.html )
samarajiva
The larger debate in India (generated by a DoT recommendation that under-16s be barred from using mobiles) does include discussion of the health effects research.
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