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nion
Minister
for
Communication and
Information Technology Ravi
Shankar Prasad on Saturday laid
foundation for Software
Technology Parks of India
(STPI) at Adityapur and
Dhanbad on Saturday, while an
MoU was signed for setting up
of software park in Bokaro and
Deoghar. The first STPI of
Jharkhand is in Ranchi.
“A fact that is aptly proven
by the stupendous growth in
exports by STP units from C52
crore in 1992-93 to more than
C3 lakhs crore in 2015-16. STPI
has also played a phenomenal
role in promoting Tier-II/TierIII cities of the country. Out of
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55 STPI centres, 47 are in TierII and Tier-III locations with an
objective of an uniform and
overall development of IT/ITES
exports across the country,” the
Union Minister said in his
address.
The upcoming STPI centres
would act as a resource centre
for IT/ITES exporting units by
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?=BQ =4F34;78
P
utting an abrupt end to the
media speculation, Reserve
Bank of India (RBI) Governor
on Saturday expressed his willingness to return to academia
after his term gets over on
September 4. His surprise “no”
to a second term for the post
has shocked the industry giants
and Opposition political parties
who termed his exit as a loss for
the nation.
Rajan, who spearheaded
the move to contain inflation
and clean up bank books, said
in a message to his colleague,
put out on the RBI’s website,
“While I was open to seeing
these developments through,
on due reflection and after
consultation with the
Government, I want to share
with you that I will be returning to academia when my term
as Governor ends on
September 4, 2016.”
Ruing over the work left
undone, the 53-year-old RBI
Governor further said that he
is proud of what has been
accomplished over the last
three years at the RBI.
Reacting to Rajan’s decision, Finance Minister Arun
Jaitley said that the
Government appreciated the
good work done by RBI
Governor Raghuram Rajan
and will soon take a decision on
his successor, while industry
giants such as Anand
Mahindra, Deepak Parekh, NR
Narayana Murthy, Kiran
Mazumdar-Shaw, Mohandas
Pai hoped that Rajan’s successor will continue with the good
work he did, although industry
chambers CII and FICCI
declined to comment on this.
“Dr Raghuram Rajan has
announced his intention to go
back to academics at the end of
his current assignment. The
Government appreciates the
good work done by him and
respects his decision,” Jaitley
said in a Facebook post, adding
that a decision on his successor
would be announced shortly.
offering general infrastructural
facilities like ready to use incubation facility, High Speed Data
Communication (HSDC) with
uninterrupted data connectivity and other amenities required
for export of software & services. The new facility would be
operational within 24 months
and stimulate to create direct
and indirect employment
opportunities for the IT educated masses of this region,
Prasad said.
He further said that STPI
has also been instrumental in
promoting IT exports from State
of Jharkhand since inception of
STPI-Ranchi in the year 2006.
Software parks will cater to
the needs of IT Industry and
also to boost the entrepreneurship and IT exports from the
State of Jharkhand, said the
Minister.
While celebrating Vikash
Parv, the Union Minister added,
working closely with all the
stakeholders STPI has played a
key role in creating Brand India
and transforming the country as
most preferred IT destination.
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3?BB02:BC40274A>E4A
01070H06>EC<85543
olice Inspector Umesh
P
Kachhap, Officer in- Charge
of Tochanchi Police Station in
Dhanbad was found hanging
from a ceiling fan at his police
campus residence in the wee
hours of Saturday. Kachhap was
said to be an eyewitness of a
high-level case involving cattle
traffickers, politicians and police
officials, said his colleagues.
Kachhap was found hanging
around 2 am on Saturday when
the munshi of the police station
went to his room to wake him
up. He soon alerted seniors
police officers in Dhanbad control room.
Dhanbad SP (Rural)
Hardeep P Janardhan, who
rushed to the police station,
said, “We suspected it to be a suicide case. We have recovered the
Praising the Jharkhand
Government, Prasad said
Raghubar Das has taken initiative to end corruption which is
a very fruitful step and it is
through IT that the Central
Government has saved C36,000
crore in the last two years.
“Jharkhand is moving on
the paths of development and IT
will play a major role in the
growth of the State. IT is our
Government’s priority and we
have set up an aim to make
Jharkhand an IT hub,” said
Das, adding, “Sotware exports
from the State of Jharkhand
which is recorded at C45 crore
during the 2015-16 with culminative exports of over C100
crore has brought the State in
the IT map of the country.”
Turn to Page 4
mobile phone and sealed his
room for further investigation.
We will be tracing all the calls
made and received in the last few
days. However, the Rural SP said
that the police did not find any
suicide note and the reason of
suicide was unknown.
Meanwhile, family members of Kachhap said that it was
unlikely that he would commit
suicide. They alleged that
Kachhap was murdered and
then hanged and demanded
high-level probe in the case.
Turn to Page 4
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?=BQ =4F34;78
ormer BJP MP Chetan
Chauhan, who had played
F
test cricket for India, has been
appointed as the chairman of
the National Institute of
Fashion Technology (NIFT),
prompting sharp reaction on
the social media.
Chauhan said, “I have been
appointed (as the NIFT
Chairman) by the Government
of India and I will work to the
best of my ability.”
Political parties and fashion
designers questioned the decision of the Government.
Delhi Chief Minister and
AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal,
who is also the vice president of
Delhi and District Cricket
Association (DDCA), accused
the
Narendra
Modi
Government of assembling an
army of ‘sycophants’ in prestigious institutions.
Chauhan termed as “baseless” Kejriwal’s remarks and the
allegation by the AAP that he
was being rewarded for “shielding” Union Finance Minister
Arun Jaitley in the alleged
irregularities in DDCA.
Ridiculing the decision,
Congress spokesman Manish
Tewari said, “The Government
wants to convert the National
Institute of Fashion Technology
into National Institute of
Cricket Technology.”
Set up in 1986, the premier
fashion institute, which has
centres across the country,
comes under the Union
Ministry of Textiles.
As per the NIFT Act 2006,
the chairperson of the institute’s
Board of Governors shall be an
eminent academician, scientist
or technologist or professional, who is to be nominated by
the Visitor, in this case the
President of India.
Union Textiles Minister
Santosh Kumar Gangwar
defended Chauhan’s appointment, saying the NIFT board
has 11 members belonging to
different walks of life, including businessmen as well as
designers.
(\HWR,QGLD3DNUHLQYLJRUDWHV-H0
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A
ided actively by Pakistan,
terror outfit Jaish-eMohammad (JeM) is on an
overdrive conducting recruitments and opening new offices
and training centres in
the country.
The Indian Intelligence
establishment has issued an
alert to various security agencies
pointing out that JeM has
opened new offices and training
centres in the provinces of
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and
Punjab besides Balakot town in
Pakistan and is reviving its
offices and network in the Kohat
and Hazara regions.
It has also alerted about one
Awais Muhammad, a resident of
Okara, who has been tasked to
carry out attacks in Delhi.
Muhammad has been sent to
Malaysia on proper documents
and has been asked to travel to
India on a fake passport of that
country.
“Pakistan will never mend
its ways when it comes to using
terror as a means of state policy to achieve strategic goals
against India as it is not only
continuing to support the terror
groups like the Jaish-eMohammad, but is also actively aiding them to again target
New Delhi by carrying out terrorist strikes and suicide missions,” an Intelligence
official said.
The latest input by the
Directorate General of Military
Intelligence and the alert message shared with the various
security agencies through the
Multi-Agency Centre (MAC)
says Pakistan’s Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) is tacitly supporting the JeM to invigorate the
terror infrastructure there to target India. A copy of the alert
shared by MAC is with The
Pioneer.
“The JeM has reinvigorated
its recruitment drive since 2014
especially in Punjab (Pakistan),”
said the alert shared by MAC
with various security agencies.
The alert further said, “A
new training facility has also
been constructed by JeM at
Balakot. The JeM is also planning to carry out terror strikes
in India including suicide attacks
in major cities. For this purpose,
real time reconnaissance of the
cities is being carried out by the
sleeper cells of ISI, IM (Indian
Mujahideen) and JeM terrorists.”
The alert further pointed
out that Muhammad, who has
been sent to Malaysia on proper documents, will be provided
with a fake Malaysian passport
to enable him to undertake
operations in India.
The inputs are being
weighed by the security agencies
as valuable for the reason that
they are backed by specifics.
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The style czar:
Manish Arora
Epic drive across
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Why Chadar is the
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Kalki Koechlin
speaks her heart out
Gorge on exotic
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Pooch café and
online pet meals
For subscription contact: 9891194295 / E-mail: exoticapioneer2016@gmail.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Exotica-394686670715776
UX[\bce!
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UP, Valmikan had to quit his studies to support
his ailing father when he was just 13. “My
father was a sweeper in an office which was
in front of my school. He was the only bread
earner and when he fell ill, I took over his job.
I had to quit studies since the classmates and
teachers made fun of what I did,” Valmikan
recounts who got his love for singing from his
mother.
While working, Valmikan enrolled himself
into a music school but had to leave that too
because the school
increased the fee for
C200 to C350. “It
became
ver y
difficult for me to
shell out that extra
C150. My guru was
sympathetic but he
said that rules were
rules. That day I
took a vow that no
child will be
deprived
from
learning music due to lack of money,”
Valmikan says who today teaches music free
of cost to children who can’t afford to pay.
There was a time when he wanted to give
up music altogether but his parents wouldn’t
let him. “My mother used to make me sing in
marriages and bhajan-kirtans. My father,
who used to also play the dhol in a band during
marriages, bought me a keyboard for C2,500
to keep me going” he says.
Then life took a turn for the better when
he got a job as a music teacher. “I was hired
with on a salary of C5,500 per month. I used
to give C3,000 to my family and put C2500 in
the bank. It was this saving that has helped me
to come this far in the show,” Valmikan says
who has given several auditions, over the years,
to come into this show.
“When I used go to various cities for the
auditions, my parents used to give me C1,000
that they would borrow on interest. There were
times when there was no food at home but he
never deprived me of money,” Valmikan tells
you adding that Shankar Mahadevan and
Kailash Kher have been his biggest inspiration.
“I’ve learnt music watching him. He is my
idol and I wish to work and learn from him.
I can relate to Kailash Kher’s life and struggles.
When he can achieve his dreams through
sheer determination and hard work, why can’t
I?” Valmikan asks.
eye cancer. Neighbours were
sympathetic but his parents
thanked God for giving
them a special child. Meet
21-year-old Jagpreet Bajwa
from Vancouver, Canada,
who is one of the top nine
contestants in the show. “I
first got to know that I was
blind when I was five.
Teachers told me that you
are special as you can’t see as
others. I started crying as I
couldn’t understand what
she meant by that. I thought
Sachin Kumar, one of the
Fortop23-year-old
nine contestants of SaReGaMaPa,
e lost his vision when
pursuing music as a profession was tough. A Hhe was just six months
music teacher in a small town Lakhimpur in old due to retinoblastoma
D9@HE:>6
everyone was like me,”
Bajwa recalls.
Listening to his mother
singing, Bajwa developed
love for music. It also turned
out to be a healing therapy.
“I’m blessed to have such
parents who left no stone
unturned to make my life
comfortable. My mother
used to sing lullabies and
play songs by Kumar Sanu,
Kishor Kumar, Mohammad
Rafi, etc. Music became my
medicine. It taught me to
sing as well,” Bajwa says.
He was just six when he
sang at the Canada Day
celebration. It was a turning
point in his life. He also won
many classical singing
T
SaReGaMaPa in 2010 but
couldn’t get selected.
“I was lucky that I got
selected this time round. The
show has given me an
identity now. Earlier I was
known by my father’s name.
Now my father is known by
my name. I get standing
ovations for my several
performances.”
“The best one was when
I sung Bhar do jholi meri ya
Muhammad... It touched
hearts of many. I was crying
and Sajid Wajid came on the
stage and said ‘yeh gaana
tumne score paane ke liye
nahi gaya hai. Balki ebadat
ker di jisse hum marks nahi de
sakte. Yeh manch ibadat ka
manch ban gaya hai.’ One of
the jury members even gave
me nazraana,” Hussain
recalls.
I
more chameleon than octopus,
a short-sighted whale, some of
the cutest otters and other
such ocean people.
As Dory does what she
does best — forget, love, forget
and love over and over again —
you settle in with your ow-sosweet exclamations mixing up
with the popcorns through the
colourful journey and pitfalls
that Dory falls into every now
and then in her bid to find her
parents.
It’s a perfect summer
holiday film you would like
your children to go to,
especially when the memory of
Finding Nemo has far from
vanished from popular
imagination. A good sequel
fishing for well-deserved
compliments.
?PbbPQ[TPRcX^]R^\TSh
or the first time in the
F
history of the show, the
rule
for
selecting
contestants was changed
by the makers of the show
just for two sisters Hashmat
(22) and Sultana (16), who
won the hearts of the
judges through their
singing.
“We’ve never sung
alone and we pray to allah
that we continue to do so.
When we were competing
for top 24, we feared that
the judges will select only
one of us. But when they
selected both of us, we
couldn’t believe our ears,”
Sultana says.
Though the sisters
didn’t make it to the top 10,
they have no regrets and
insist that being on the
show was a memorable
experience as they learnt a
lot. But coming from a
small city Hoshiarpur,
Punjab, the sisters faced a
lot of roadblocks.
“People used to tell my
father not to educate us.
But he was very passionate
about me taking up singing
as a profession. He and my
uncle are my gurus.
Sometimes we used to walk
7:?5:?85@CJ
Z_X+g`ZTVd6]]V_
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t’s rare if you can raise a
finger against Disney/Pixar
when it comes to their
animated films, even if they are
sequels. From Finding Nemo to
Finding Dory, the animation
quality has only become more
polished, colourful and
engaging. This time, our cute
little blue host has an
enchantingly put “Short-term
Rememory problem” which
forces her to get lost in the big
blue deep ocean, losing her
loving parents, and then with
her mental issues go on a
journey to find them across the
high seas.
An endearing tale wherein
Nemo comes in too as do
parental issues, a slimy but
well-meaning octopus who is
46?EC2=:?E6==:86?46
Z_X+5hRj_V;`Y_d`_
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CReVU+' "!
t’s around The Rock
(Dwayne Johnson) and its
all flabby but funny. It’s also
around Kevin Hart so it was
meant to be funnier, which it
isn’t. But together the two
script a watchable action
comedy that is more comedy
than action.
Contacted by Bob Stone
(Johnson) whom Calvin Joyner
(Hart) once gave a fig leaf when
bullies forcefully carried him
stark naked and threw him into
a gym full of people, Hart
becomes crucial to a CIA
mission to retrieve some code
from rogue Black Badger. He
doesn’t want to but is made to.
Back in high school, Stone
was many stones more than
normal weight and an acutely
obese loser. Two decades later,
he is every woman’s wet dream
with rippling muscles and a
torso so smooth that you might
I
10 km to the dargah and
ask the secretary to allow us
to sing for few minutes.
Sometimes they would
relent, sometimes we
returned disappointed. I
remember my father’s face
when he used to tell others
that ‘meri beti bahut acha
gaati hai. Aap ek baar usko
sunn lo’. Some people
showed interest and some
didn’t bother. But my father
never gave up,” Hashmat
recalls who signs sufi songs.
Her sister, Sultana,
sings Bollywood numbers.
“I learnt music by listening
to the likes of Ustad Nusrat
Fateh Ali Khan and Gulam
Ali. The performance on
which I got eliminated, I
felt that I couldn’t put my
soul in to that song,”
Hashmat tells you.
They have also sung a
song with Samira Koppikar
for an upcoming untitled
movie. Not just that, they
are getting offers to
perform in Canada and the
US as well who now along
with her sister earn enough
to run the house.
slip on it. But that’s besides the
point. The funny bone of the
film is the chase around a
project full of ifs and buts,
bullets, smashed windows and
an uptight FBI woman running
in circles to catch Black Badger
which she says is Stone, Stone
says is an unknown face and
Stone’s partner says “Badger is
me.”
Along the chase, the film
sorts out many issues —
marital ones assailing Hart
and personal ones freezing up
Stone. As a funny character,
Stone comes across more as a
psychopath than a buffoon
and that’s what shapes him so
well in this passable comedy.
Hart could have done better
and not just because he was
“Golden Jet” back in High
School, the coolest dude with
a magical back-flip.
F8C7<44=0:B78A0>
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dta Punjab is so
crazed, crass and
coked up that, like an
addict, you just can’t stop
watching it. It’s a highly
uncomfortable film — stark,
dark and real — which grips
you like cocaine and makes
you dive into the lowest of
narco lows and then rise with
the highs of the best delivered
anti-drug message on Indian
screen thus far.
Abhishek Chaubey’s gritty
gripper shows up Punjab as all
the previous documentation
has failed to do despite the
State’s more than a twodecade-long plummet into a
virtually en masse haze of
narcotics, cocktail of
injectable chemicals and, of
course, trips on prescription
drugs. There’s everything to
contend with in this film —
cross border smuggling,
narco-political nexus, the
well-oiled rustic cartels, the
cleaning up bids, the cuss
words, the profanities and, of
course, the predicament of the
State’s
drug-induced
population which is reeling at
all levels.
Chaubey is so sorted,
spot-on and correct in his
portrayal of this drug menace
that has gripped India’s much
deteriorated wheat bowl that
it shows up the Censor Board’s
chicaner y and needless
authoritarianism without even
lifting a finger. The film and
its characters are so real,
intense and edgy that the
U
learnt classical music from
ustad Davinder Singh
Hundal and can sing in 11
languages.
“This
happened
through my training in
western and Indian classical
music. I can sing in Hindi,
Panjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil,
English and Italian, Spanish,
German, French, etc. I listen
to a lot of world music. I try
to cater to all genres of
music but my favourite is
singing romantic numbers,”
Bajwa says whose aim is to
not just win the competition
but also win the hearts of
people through his singing
and open a music therapy
school.
70B7<0C0=3
BD;C0=0
C0=E8A7DBB08=
wenty five-year-old
Tanvir Hussain may have
got eliminated from the show,
but this qawwali and sufi
singer but it has deterred him
from his goal of making it big
in life.
“I’ve grown up watching
my father singing qawwali in
the busy market streets and at
dargahs. My uncles were my
gurus and taught me to play
the table and harmonium
when I was five. It was much
later that I went to a music
academy to learn classical
singing. During my school
vacations, I used to
accompany my father to
various performances. I’m
just taking the family legacy
forward,” Hussain says who
hails from Phillaur, Punjab.
“Qawwali is not popular
in the State. Summers used to
be the peak time for
performances but there was
not much work in winters.
My father used to borrow
money from others in winters
and return it in summers to
run the house. But our
earning was meagre. My
father would be paid C5,000
to C10,000 per show that was
then distributed in eight to 10
family members,” Hussain
says who had auditioned for
competitions and bagged
Red FM title in Canada. But
the biggest achievement was
when he was awarded
Community Leadership
Award for his volunteer
work to raise funds and
community service. The
Governor of Canada also
awarded him Queen
Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee
Medal for his work.
“People started looking
up to me as an inspiration
and I used to give a lot of
motivational speeches in
schools. The children, who
used to bully me, became
my friends. I worked in the
production unit of plays.
Pankaj Udhasji, who was the
judge of one of the
competitions in Canada,
told me that God has taken
eyes from you but he has
sent you to spread music in
this world. I felt really
special,” Bajwa says who
?TaUTRcW^[XSPhUX[\
foolishness of CBFC and all
the debate it threw up, like a
person with motion sickness
on a hill drive, comes across
as extremely naive and out-ofplace.
The fault lines in the film
are few and eminently
negligible, and the execution
of the subject near-perfect.
From the word go, Chaubey
Sudip Sharma’s deep-ended
research into the subject.
Call
it
Chaubey’s
excellence or Sharma’s aptness
with the pen, you fail to fault
the overdose of cuss words
that flow like chemicals in the
film. Everything that’s there
was needed and in place, all
the drama coming not from
playing to the gallery but
makes sure that the film lives
up to its title and flies, actually
takes off, like a rocket in a
hurry. And it’s not just about
the direction, Udta Punjab’s
four principal characters join
the race alongside its
background scores, the
cinematography and, last but
not the least, its scriptwriter
from the starkness of the
situation on display.
Unfolding on four main
characters far removed from
each other and yet sharing an
unseen strand, Udta Punjab
goes deep into the heartland,
all of it starting with Yo Yo
Tommy Singh’s coke&cock
concert panning into the
wanton
smackers
in
nightclubs, rural ruins, homes,
farmlands and almost
anywhere 22-year-old profane
and himself all snorted
Tommy Singh’s rock&roll
culture reaches.
Shahid Kapoor as Tommy
Singh Fuddu (loser) is more
than brilliant. With flowing
and unkempt locks, high on
cocaine, petite, nimble on his
feet and almost always on a
crescendo that’s about to push
him over the edge, he delivers
a performance of a lifetime.
He is all that’s bad with
Punjab, he is also all that’s
vulnerable in Punjab and he is
the symbol of debauchery
and degradation that the drug
problem has reduced this State
of hockey, athletes, farmers
and kingsize life-makers to.
Then there’s Alia Bhatt. As
a Bihari district-level hockey
player-turned-farmhand who
gets sucked into the
underbelly of the drug
business due to her own
failures of life, aspiration of
good life and greed, is the
spoke that shocks and stuns
you the most in this film. Her
controlled
histrionics,
brilliantly underplayed, are a
perfect foil to Shahid’s overthe-top highs. She is Punjab’s
degradation, and also its light
in the tunnel yelling,
screaming and shouting that
nothing will break her — not
the kidnapping, not the
beatings, not the induced
drugging, not even the mass
rapes. She shows up Punjab
more starkly than Tommy
does. She makes you cringe,
she makes you angry and she
makes you helpless. She steals
Shahid’s thunder from under
his locks and is the film’s
most powerful anti-drug
message.
On the side, Punjab’s filmy
superstar, Diljit Dosanj who
plays an ASI with the Punjab
Police, makes a marvel out of
underplaying his role. As a
hafta-bound,
corrupt
policeman, he is as sorted as
Chaubey and shows his
transformation
from
corruption to anti-drug
activism in a measured way
after almost losing his
younger brother to drugs.
His interactions with
Kareena Kapoor Khan who
plays a rehab doctor are fun to
be with though their mission
to expose the racket is a bit
naive.
Kareena may look
misplaced and too clean in all
the dirt around her, but she
plays her part in fleshing up
the weak link of the film.
Other than these four, it’s
Chaubey’s mind-worth that
even as you get shocked, you
laugh at many places through
meaningful dialogues like a
corrupt cop at a naka saying
“this (drugs) is Green
Revolution 2” or the boys
discussing how Punjab might
just become like Mexico
where cops can’t even enter
drug cartel-held areas and
then straying inevitably into
discussing how Punjabi
women have as good butts as
Mexican women like JLo do.
The climax is stunning
and wrenches your guts out,
like the rest of the film. No
family drama, but all adults
need to see and be with Udta
Punjab.
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?=BQ 90<B743?DA
nion Communication and
Information Technology
U
Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad
on Saturday announced that
the State-run BSNL will set up
250 Wi-Fi hotspots in
Jharkhand.
Addressing a press conference in a hotel here Prasad said
that 60 Wi-Fi hotspots each will
come up in Jamshedpur and
Ranchi. He has also asked
authorities to carry a survey to
identify the zones where the
service will be introduced.
Prasad said that within a year
the proposed hotspots will
start functioning.
Prasad was in the city to
address a ‘Vikas Parv’ function
organised to mark the completion of two years of Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s
Government.
He also apprised that in
order to improve its telecom
service, the BSNL would be setting up 185 2 G towers and 185
3G towers in the State while 50
such towers will come up in
Jamshedpur and its surrounding areas.
On the issue of call drops,
he said the problem is aggravated due to people’s misconception that the radiation emitted by the mobile towers has an
adverse effect on their health,
owing to which many such
towers have been removed
from residential areas. He said
that even a study of World
Health Organisation (WHO)
has proved that mobile towers
do not cause any health hazard.
He also blamed previous UPA
Government for heavy losses at
State-run BSNL in recent years.
Talking to reporters on the
status of BSNL, he said when
NDA regime ended in 2004,
BSNL had made a profit of
C10,000 crore. But after 10
years of UPA rule, BSNL’s loss
was estimated to be around
C8,000 crore due to the ‘nonperformance’ of Manmohan
Singh Government, he alleged.
Prasad also said that BSNL
has earned an operating profit of C672 crore for the first time
in seven years and expressed
confidence for better performance by the end of this fiscal.
The Minister expressed
confidence that the public sector telecom company would
earn an operating profit of
C2,000 crore in this financial
year.
He also announced to set
up 13 Post Shoppe in
Jharkhand. The shoppe is
designed to offer stationery
items ranging from various
sizes of envelopes, A4 papers,
Pens, Staplers, Scissors, Glue
Sticks, for sale. Moreover, 60
ATMs of the postal department
will come up along with 2600
micro ATMs at Jharkhand.
The postal department has
successfully adopted technology in the implementation of its
major operations.
“Our Government is dedicated for the alround development. We want to ensure
that the welfare schemes are
reached to grass root level. We
can proudly say that in a country with 125 crore population,
102 crore have access to mobile
phones, 101 crore have Aadhar
and 40 crore have access to
internet,” he said.
D]X^]<X]XbcTaU^a2^\\d]XRPcX^]P]S8]U^a\PcX^]CTRW]^[^VhAPeXBWP]ZPa?aPbPSSdaX]VP_a^VaP\\TX]9P\bWTS_da^]
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M
brations a grand affair on order from
Chief Minister Raghubar Das, issued in
light of a letter from Prime Minister
Narendra Modi in this regard.
The CM will be the chief guest of the
State-level programme at Morhabadi
Ground. Ranchi MP Ramtahal
Choudhary, Health Minister Ramchandra
Chandravanshi and Urban Development
Minister CP Singh will be the guests of
honour.
In preparation for the State-level
event, Department is converting the
venue for the State-level event into a grand
pavilion for accommodating a crowd of
thousands from all walks of life who will
gather to perform yogasanas on the day.
We have set up camp offices at
Morhabadi Ground where Department
officials are overseeing preparations for
the event, stated Ayush Director Dr
?A06H0?0;;0E8Q A0=278
edical experts in interactive
technical sessions guided the
Anganwadi workers on issues wrapping women health and hygiene,
awareness on cervical cancer, gave a
detailed presentation on newborn
child care and highlighted on women
and child nutrition theme with the
aim to sensitise them on these vital
issues.
With the objective to make
women and children aware about
their rights and in yet another
attempt to help and lend support to
kids and women especially those
belonging to lower strata of society
on these vital issues covering health,
nutrition and sanitation, Jharkhand
IAS officers’ wives association (JIASOWA) organised a seminar cum
workshop on Saturday at Aryabhatta
Auditorium.
“All women centric issues must
be considered seriously. Both
Government and NGOs must coordinate to provide maximum benefits to the beneficiaries. The set target can only be achieved, if all the
Anganwadi workers, including other
field staff properly deliver their
duties catering to the need of both
women and children to curb the
threat of anemia and other serious
issue like maternal mortality rate in
State. Dietary habits must also be
checked for healthy lifestyle. Apart
this, with the aid and assistance of
Government schemes, we also need
to completely eradicate the social evil
practice which include early marriage,” said Governor Droupadi
Murmu while addressing the gathering of Anganwadi workers, Child
Development Programme Officers
6^eTa]^a3a^d_PSX<da\dP[^]VfXcW0]VP]fPSX
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(CDPOs) and other dignitaries.
?=BQ A0=278
ealth and Family Affairs Department
is putting in its best efforts to make
H
the second International Yoga Day cele-
8=1A845
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Abdul Nauman Ahmed. The hour-long
event on June 21 is scheduled to begin
from 7:00 am, he added.
“The programme will be attended by
all administrative officials of Jharkhand,
students from State-run and private educational institutions, medical practitioners from Government and private hospitals,” stated one of the officials at the
Morhabadi Ground camp office.
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A
ssistant Sub-Inspector
(ASI) at Manika police
station RP Sharma has been
suspended following the
alleged harrassment of a minor
girl at the police station.
The Latehar SP said the
ASI was put under suspension
to ensure fair probe into the
incident. The SP said further
action will be initiated against
the ASI depending on the
probe report of the SDPO
Barwadeeh.
The over blowing of the
case of alleged harassment of
a minor girl in the Manika
police station in Latehar district is no run of the mill case
of any high handedness of the
police but a calculated design
having support of all disgruntled elements inside and outside the Manika police station
said sources.
Sources said neither the
aggrieved father of the minor
girl nor any male member of
her family found it fit to first
petition the SP Palamu Anoop
Birtharey about this alleged
harassment or torture in police
station for immediate justice
rather the family first spent
some time in a hospital and
then took her to RIMS Ranchi.
Sources said the way the
family in distress so bypassed
the nearest police chief in
Latehar further hints at some
forces behind this over blowing of the case.
SP Latehar Anoop
Birtharey too did not rule it
out saying the way this case
has been highlighted from
Ranchi end strengthens our
belief that there is more to this
case than what one’s eyes meet.
He said this Manika police station has conducted many drives against JJMP a naxal outfit and one should not be surprised if it is not behind the
over blowing of this case.
SP Latehar appreciated the
wisdom of the father of the
minor girl for taking her to
RIMS Ranchi for her treatment as he said the girl there
would get better treatment
which will help her over come
the shock of being in the
police station for a few hours.
However he hastened to add it
would have done all good to
her father if he or any male or
female member of this family
would have approached him in
the district.
The girl was not all alone
in the Manika police station
but with her parents asserted
the Latehar SP. Sources said
some disgruntled personnel in
the Manika police station too
did not come forward to handle this case of questioning of
the minor girl aptly and
smoothly leading to such a
muddy water in which the
Manika police station is in
right now.
SP Latehar said the
Manika police station is child
friendly as here are lady constable and Child Friendly
police too. He conceded that
the girl was asked questions
about a girl who has so disappeared leading every one to
believe that the girl has been
kidnapped and this minor girl
in question knows the girl who
has so disappeared with a
married man some four
months back.
nder the Government’s
ambitious ‘Digital India’
initiative, Kasmar and Garri
Panchyats under Peterware
block of Bokaro district were
connected with Wi-Fi networks on Saturday.
Though, the systems were
installed and inaugurated but
could not pass the first test.
Union
Minister
for
Communications
and
Information Technology Ravi
Shankar Prasad tried a lot to
contact with Panchyat Heads
and villagers through video
conferencing but system could
not support to make a link
between them.
Experts blamed the glitch
due to ‘bad weather’. Within a
distance of 200m, six wi-fi
antennas were installed in each
while main systems were
installed at the panchyat’s headquarters. More eight wi-fi
antennas would be installed
shortly in each panchyat, he said.
The digital India initiative
aims to digitally connect all villages and gram panchayats
(across the country) by broadband internet, promote e-governance and transform country
into a connected knowledge
economy, said an official.
0RQVRRQWRFRYHU6WDWHZLWKLQKRXU
?=BQ A0=278
A
s monsoon hit the south
eastern and north eastern
parts of the State on Friday,
now within 48 hours it will
advance and cover central and
remaining parts of Jharkhand
too. As per the MET expert
prediction, there are also
chances of light rainfall at regular interval in State Capital
and other adjoining areas.
“The southwest monsoon
has further advanced into
remaining parts of Coastal
Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and
Gangetic West Bengal including some parts of north interior Karnataka, Vidarbha,
Chhattisgarh and Telangana
covering few parts of
Jharkhand and Bihar. The conditions are favourable for further advancement of southwest
monsoon into remaining parts
of Jharkhand,” said, Forecast
officer of Indian Meteorological
Department (IMD) Ranchi
obser vator y,
Upendra
Srivastava.
“Light to moderate rain
and thundershowers occurred
at many places in State. Highest
maximum temperature of 37.8
degree Celsius was recorded at
Daltonganj on Saturday.
Monsoon advanced and covered districts like Simdega,
Ramgarh and Giridih too.
There are chances of light
drizzles at various districts in
the coming days,” added
Srivastava.
Monsoon has already hit
Jamshedpur in south eastern
part and districts like Pakur,
Godda, Dumka and Sahibganj
in north eastern part of State.
On Saturday, Ranchi registered maximum 31degree
Celsius and minimum 24
degree Celsius whereas at
Jamshedpur maximum tem-
perature was recorded 34.2
degree Celsius and minimum
25.7 degree Celsius was registered. Upto 1.4 mm rainfall was
recorded in the state capital on
Saturday whereas Jamshedpur
recorded 6.6 mm rainfall.
No warning of instant
weather change has been issued
by Ranchi Observatory centre
till June 20. Moreover, chances
of heavy rainfall are feeble in
the state capital in the coming
days yet few isolated belts in
state including Ranchi may
receive light drizzles.
%RG\UHFRYHUHG
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A
30-year-old youth found
dead at station road
Chanderpura in early morning
on Saturday. Unidentified body
of youth was in blue trouser
and yellow t-shirt found at isolated place in Chanderpura
under the same police station.
The body of youth was found
lying at garbage. The body
was sent for postmortem to the
Tenughat sub-divisional hospital in Bermo, said officer incharge Dawarika Ram.
2WXTU9dbcXRT^U9WPaZWP]S7XVW2^dac9dbcXRTEXaT]STaBX]VWP[^]VfXcWEXRT2WP]RT[[^aAP]RWXD]XeTabXch3aA:?P]SThbT]X^aY^da]P[Xbc1P[QXa3dcc5^a\Ta?a^U3a
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?=BQ A0=278
he State BJP leaders are
T
gathering in Dumka on
Sunday to strategise the ways
of spreading achievements of
Central Government under
the leadership of Narendra
Modi, as well the works done
by State Government so far.
The Working Committee
meeting will take place in the
Indoor Stadium in Dumka.
Apart from CM Raghubar
Das and BJP In-Charge in
Jharkhand Trivendra Singh
Rawat and BJP MLAs, the
programme is expected to be
attended by more than 300
delegates from the State.
State BJP spokesperson
Pradeep Sinha said that the
leaders will discuss strategies
for Santhal Pargana region
where party has to strengthen itself. “There is a lot to be
done in terms of strengthening party and other affairs
related to it in this region, and
party leaders will discuss on
it.” Sinha said.
Sinha said that strategies
related to spreading achievements of central and State
Governments is also expect-
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ed to be discussed in the
meeting.
He
said,
“Government at the Centre
has done so many things in
last two years which will
change the face of development in years to come. The
party will try to find out
more effective ways to make
people understand what this
Government has done in last
two years and intends to do in
rest of the term to come.”
Sinha said that detailed
information about the meeting will be shared later, as
there is a meeting early in the
morning on Sunday to discuss
the minutes of it.
3ROLFH
From Page 1
“My uncle cannot commit
suicide. We are sure that he was
hanged after killing," Bipin,
nephew of Kachhap, said and
demanded a probe.
Sources said that Kachhhap
was in extreme stress for past two
days as he was getting pressurised
to become an eyewitness of a
murder case. Three days back a
truck driver was shot dead at
Topchanchi and some people
wanted Umesh to be an eyewitness of the incident, said a source.
The driver of a truck, carrying leather was killed in an
alleged shootout in Topchanchi
three days ago. The case grabbed
attention as locals alleged that
police killed the driver and later
made a false case against the
aggrieved party and sent two
persons to jail.
Kachhap was made the
investigation officer of the case
and was asked to submit the preliminary report within 48 hours
by the Home department, said
sources.
The 50 year old an officer incharge of Topchachi police station was a 1994 batch subinspector. The body of the
Inspector has been sent to
Ranchi after conducting postmortem.
BcTT[2^P[
From Page 1
The CM further said to
curb students and professionals from Jharkhand, who have
immense talent, leaving the
State for employment in
Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi,
the State Government has
identified 200 acre land in
Ranchi for setting up an IT
hub. B esides, the State
Government will set up
regional training centres all
across the State.
“With support of the
Union IT Minister every village of Jharkhand will be connected to the Internet by
2017,” added the CM.
State Food and Civil
Supplies Minister Saryu Roy
said the opening of new STPI
in very short period shows the
Centre’s commitment towards
IT growth in Jharkhand.
At the event, the CM and
the Union Minister also
launched the website of IIIT
Ranchi. The Union Minister
also inaugurated the first WiFi Panchayat of Jharkhand in
Bokaro district while handed
over Aadhar cards to three disabled children.
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From Page 1
But the entire process will
be painfully long drawn and
give adequate time for all the
players to adjust to new realities. It is understandable that
political campaigns lead to a
great deal of exaggerated
claims and fears. Very few of
these materialise.
The important thing to
realise is that there is precious
little India can do to shape the
verdict in one direction or
another. Poking our nose into
the internal affairs of a country for its own sake, is never
a good idea. India must
observe, and be seen to be
observing, strict neutrality in
matters that affect our friends.
The UK is a trusted, longterm friend and so for that
matter are most of the EU
member-states.
It is up to them to sort out
their problems without us
doing what the US, the
International Monetary Fund
and multinational merchant
banks have done: Weigh in
one side.
When the dust settles
over the Brexit affair, India
must be seen to be detached
spectators.
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8=2A40B43CA034
eiterating that his threenation tour — including
R
Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory
Coast) and Namibia — aimed
at further enhancing time tested ties with these African
nations, President Pranab
Mukherjee on Saturday said he
raised the issue of supply of
uranium, air connectivity, terrorism and increasing trade
with his counterparts.
Elaborating upon the issue
of uranium, the President told
the media team accompanying
him on Saturday onboard the
special aircraft while returning
to India that he urged his
Namibian counterpart Hage
Geingob to honour the agreement signed with India in
2009.
The two countries had
signed a pact in which
Admitting that “there was
lack of understanding or misunderstanding” regarding the
supply of uranium, the
President said technical teams
from both the countries will
?aTbXST]c?aP]PQ<dZWTaYTTX]cTaPRcbfXcWcWT\TSXPST[TVPcTb^]Q^PaS0Xa8]SXP>]T^]WXbfPhc^3T[WX^]5aXSPh
?C8 now follow up the issue in the
right earnest.
On the issue of perceived
Namibia, world’s fourth largest civil nuclear programme. Namibian President to honour
the
producer of uranium, is to “However, the supply has so far the commitment,” the President misunderstanding,
President said “some” felt that
supply the mineral for India’s not begun and I requested the said.
a country has to be part of
Nuclear Suppliers Group
(NSG) for procuring uranium.
“I pointed out that there is no
requirement” he said, adding
“supply”(of uranium) has not
yet taken place.
Namibia has assured India
that it will honour the deal
during delegations-level talks.
However, it wants time to
study the agreements India has
signed with 12 countries for
supply of uranium. The countries include the United States,
the UK, Russia, France,
Australia, Sri Lanka, Canada
among others.
Replying a question about
poor air connectivity with the
African continent with 54
countries, the President said
this issue also came up during
his discussions with counterparts of three countries.
India and the three countries agreed to take immediate
steps to address the issue of
connectivity and faster communication as it will help in
quicker economic development and increased trade.
Fielding another question
whether the African leaders
raised the issue with him
regarding recent spate of
attacks on African nationals in
India, Mukhejree emphatical-
ly said the matter did not come
up.
As regards strategic importance of his visit as part of
expanding India outreach to
Africa, the President said the
tour has helped reinvigorate the
already strong and time tested
bilateral relations. “They provide fresh momentum to our
overall relations with Africa
and we have through these visits conveyed the message that
India takes its engagements
with Africa seriously and
intends to follow up on the
announcement made at third
India African Summit Forum”
in New Delhi last year.
Given the importance of
Africa for India’s interest, VicePresident Hamid Ansari visited Morocco and Tunisia before
the President’s visit. Now,
Prime Minister Narendra Modi
will embark on four nation tour
next month.
2^]V[TPSTabX]WdSS[Tbc^iTa^X]^]_Pach´bUPRTX]D? BXSSPaP\PXPWVTcbB^]XP³b
?=BQ =4F34;78
ectic parleys have begun
within the top Congress
H
leadership to decide the party’s
face in the crucial Hindi heartland of Uttar Pradesh where it
is desperate to improve its
footprint lost years ago.
Newly appointed AICC
incharge of UP affairs Ghulam
Nabi Azad on Saturday called on
party chief Sonia Gandhi and is
believed to have discussed the
probables for the State unit chief
and simultaneously the face of the
party in the 2017 Assembly polls.
While the party has tradi-
tionally refrained from projecting a Chief Ministerial candidate before polls, the issue
gained significance after Azad
remarked that the party may
announce a name and indicated that Priyanka Gandhi’s role
will not be confined to Amethi
and Rae Bareilly.
Sources said that the party
is grappling with factors like
getting the caste equation right
even while pondering over
whether or not it should
announce a face for the Chief
Minister’s post. Azad is believed
to have discussed couple of
names with the party chief.
Azad informed Sonia that
there was an overwhelming
demand from State leaders
that Priyanka Gandhi should
be the face of the UP Congress
or at least she should campaign
for the party.
Strategist Prashant Kishor,
roped in by the Congress to tilt
the scales in its favour, too has
suggested Priyanka along with
Rahul Gandhi to attract voters
but the idea has not found
favour with the central leadership. “Kishor’s startegy was also
discussed,” said a party source.
Sonia is believed not be too
enthusiastic about Priyanka’s
larger role in the party.
Kishor’s second idea, of
reverting to the Congress’ traditional Brahmin vote, has
generated a buzz within the
party with names of veteran
Sheila Dikshit and younger
Jitin Prasada doing the rounds
as potential State unit chiefs.
Rajya Sabha member Pramod
Tiwari may be made the chief
of the campaign committee.
Azad conveyed to the leadership that he conducted a
meeting of workers and asked
them to go “all-out” in the runup to the Assembly elections in
the State next year.
Azad also told the leadership that he will look for such
candidates in the polls who
have been working “full time”
among the people and have
remained in constant touch
even during the bad times of
the party. “There was a discussion to give tickets to old
loyalists of the party and their
heir apparent,” sources added.
Azad mentioned that his
first priority is to ensure that
the party’s ground-level workers get acceptance among the
people and ensure representation to all in the elections by
striking a “caste balance”.
]^S^]:³cPZP2PQX]TcaTYXV
?8>=44A=4FBB4AE824Q
=4F34;78
arnataka Chief Minister
Siddaramaiah on Saturday
K
said that he has got the green
signal from the Congress high
command for a complete
revamp of his Cabinet where he
has to induct fresh faces keeping in view the Assembly elections due in the State in a year.
The exercise is being undertaken to tone up the
Government after Congress’
debacle in recent Assembly
polls in four States, especially
Assam. Karnataka is the only
major State where the Congress
is in power after being recently ousted in Kerala and Assam.
While the change was put
on hold due to the Rajya Sabha
elections and the State sent two
senior Congress leaders —
Jairam Ramesh and Oscar
Fernandes — to the Upper
House, Siddaramaiah called on
party president Sonia Gandhi
and vice-president Rahul
Gandhi to apprise the leadership
about the current state of affairs.
“We discussed all names to
be dropped and inducted with
AICC president Sonia and
vice-president Rahulji. We have
convinced them. High
Command has authorised me
to go ahead with the reshuffle,”
Siddaramaiah said after the
second round of consultations
in as many days with the
Congress chief. He said “the list
will be prepared in a day or two
and will be submitted to the
Governor”.
Before the meeting,
Siddaramaiah discussed the
matter with Congress leader in
the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun
Kharge. Karnataka Pradesh
Congress Committee president G Parameshwara and
Congress General Secretary
Digvijay Singh were present in
the meeting. Gulam Nabi Azad,
who was in charge of Congress
affairs in Karnataka in 2014,
joined the deliberations later.
Sources said that the Chief
Minister has proposed dropping of at least 10-14 Ministers
from the Cabinet and inducting young Legislators and
senior Congress leaders in
order to balance caste and
regional factors.
Signalling that some
Ministers would have to take
up party responsibility, he had
said that the Cabinet reshuffle
would be done keeping the
next Assembly elections in
mind.
The talk about the Ministry
reshuffle had been doing the
rounds for long but various reasons like drought and elections
to local bodies, Council and
Rajya Sabha have been cited for
its deferment.
Siddaramaiah had earlier
said that reshuffle would
involve “dropping a few and
inducting a few”, and yardstick
for it is giving opportunity for
new people.
9`deV]hRcUV_eYcRdYVd"'XZc]dW`c
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Srinagar: Sixteen girls of a Government-run
school were allegedly beaten up by the warden
of their hostel at Rajbagh here for “refusing to
clean her room”, following which the authorities put her under suspension.
“The students, belonging to Gujjar and
Bakerwal communities, were on Thursday
roughed up by their hostel’s warden for refus=Tf[hR^]bcadRcTSBcPcT19?WTPS`dPacTab[TUcXbQTX]VSTRZTSd_PWTPS^UcWTBcPcTf^aZX]VR^\\XccTT\TTcX]VX]9P\\d^]Bd]SPhBTRdaXch_Tab^]]T[ST_[^hTS^dcbXSTcWTaTbXST]RT^U<^B?<>9XcT]SaP
ing to clean her room. The girls sustained
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injuries in the assault and two of them suffered
cWTRdaaT]c_^[XcXRP[bRT]PaX^X]cWTBcPcT
<^WXc:P]SWPaX fractures in their arms,” a police official said.
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reating history, Avani
Chatur vedi, Bhawana
C
Kanth and Mohana Singh on
Saturday became the first
women fighter pilots to be formally commissioned by the
Indian Air Force.
Batting for gender parity in
the armed forces, Defence
Minister Manohar Parrikar,
who was chief guest at the combined graduation ceremony at
Air Force Academy, Dundigal
on the city’s outskirts, termed
the event as a “milestone” as it
also the first time that women
have been given a combat role.
“It is a golden letter day...,”
he said, asserting that “step-bystep”, “total gender parity” will
be achieved in the armed forces
in the coming years.
“There are technical and
administrative difficulties
which we are likely to face in
certain areas, so, step by step we
will see that this parity is
achieved. Number will depend
on how many we can accommodate depending on our
infrastructure,” Parrikar said.
Expressing happiness, the
three women pilots, who successfully completed pre-commissioning training by the
Flight Cadets of various
branches of IAF, said they consider themselves “fortunate”
and were excited to take on
their duties.
The trio will go to Bidar in
Karnataka for their stage-III
training for a year on Hawk
advanced jet trainers, before
they get to fly supersonic warplanes.
Six female cadets were
competing to become fighter
pilots after the government, in
a landmark move, approved an
IAF plan in October to induct
them as fighter pilots.
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However, only three female
trainees were selected for the
fighter stream.
Parrikar, who reviewed the
passing out parade, conferred
‘President’s Commission’ on
behalf the President to 130
Flight Cadets, including 22
women trainees, who were
commissioned as Flying
Officers.
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New Delhi: As three women
were inducted as into IAF as
fighter pilots on Saturday,
Prime Minister Narendra Modi
hailed it as a “matter of
immense pride and joy”.
“It is a matter of immense
pride & joy to see the first batch
of women fighter pilots being
inducted in our Air Force.
More power to them,” Modi
tweeted.
He was commenting on the
induction of three women —
Avani Chaturvedi, Bhawana
Kanth and Mohana Singh — as
the first women fighter pilots of
the Indian Air Force.
They were commissioned
at a function at Air Force
Academy in Dundigal on the
outskirts of Hyderabad.
“It is a golden letter day...,”
said Defence Minister
Manohar Parrikar, asserting
that “step-by-step”, “total gender parity” will be achieved in
the armed forces in the coming years.
“Sixteen girls were beaten up and injured
by the warden. All of them were discharged after
necessary treatment,” the official said.
The warden has been suspended by the
authorities concerned and an FIR registered
against her, he said. Taking strong note of the
incident, Director School Education Kashmir
Shah Faesal placed the warden under suspension. She has been attached with Chief
Education Office, Ganderbal, an official of the
Education department said.
PTI
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=4F34;78
ith an aim to popularise
the ancient practice of
W
yoga among schoolchildren
across the country, the HRD
Ministry on Saturday said that
yoga will be encouraged in
schools under the new education policy being framed by the
Government.
HRD Secretary of School
Education and Literacy SC
Khuntia said that yoga will
have a “significant” place in the
new education policy being
framed by the Government.
Terming Yoga as an art of
“maintaining balance” and
ensuring “well being” of mind
and body, Khuntia said that the
Olympiad will be held every
year to ensure that every
school-going children learn it
for holistic development.
“Besides, Yoga Olympiad
will be held every year to
enable participation of all States
with an aim that schoolchildren learn Yoga. NCERT has
published books on yoga for
upper primary and secondary
students. It is part and parcel of
National
Curriculum
Framework and compulsory
for Classes VI to X,” Khuntia
said inaugurating the first Yoga
Olympiad in which 350 students from 22 States participated at the three-day event at
NCERT campus.
He said that there were certified yoga teachers in major
schools but where they are not
available, physical education
teachers are being trained with
the help of Yoga institutes.
The Director of National
Council of Education Research
and Training (NCERT),
Hrushikesh Senapaty, said that
Yoga can help in preparing
good human beings and citizens. “We are acknowledged in
the world for producing good
professionals and Yoga can
help us to produce good individuals and citizens,” he said.
The students participating
in the National Yoga Olympiad
were first selected at the block
level followed by district level
and then State level competitions. The theme of the
Olympiad is ‘Yoga for Health
and Harmony’. The 16 finalists,
four boys and four girls at
upper primary level and as
many at the secondary level, are
competing before a jury which
will assess their performance.
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R
eliance
Group on
Saturday said it was
‘shocked’ at reports referring
to illegal tapping of phones of
some of its executives and
expected authorities to fully
probe the matter to bring the
guilty to book at the earliest.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Anil Ambani-led group
said they were ‘shocked’ to see
the reports about the so-called
tapes referring to “completely
illegal and criminal tapping of
phones of some individuals in
our group, allegedly done by
vested interests more than 1015 years ago, in the period prior
to the reorganisation of the
Reliance Group.”
Certain news reports have
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claimed that a corporate house
had tapped phones of ministers
and industrialists, among others.
“We suspect that the purported
conversations, as referred to in
the media, must have been
spliced, altered, doctored and
manipulated to serve the
heinous interests of those who
engaged in the alleged illegal
phone tapping operations.”
“We have at all times fully
complied with the laws of the land
in all our business activities, and
to suggest otherwise is criminally defamatory,” the Reliance
Group spokesperson said. The
statement further said the group
expects “the authorities to fully
investigate these allegations of illegal phone tapping by highly irresponsible and criminally minded
persons, and to bring the guilty
parties to book at the earliest.”
Last night, Mukesh
Ambani-led
Reliance
Industries group had also
issued a statement, terming
the conversations attributed to
its officials in these tapes as
‘false’ and also of legal action
against such ‘sensationalism’.
“We are shocked at reports
which suggest that we have
been victims of unauthorised
and illegal tapping of our telephones. Conversations attributed to us are false and appear
to have been doctored by someone who seeks to defame us”, an
RIL spokesperson had said.
0LQLPXPLPSRUW
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KOLKATA: Tata Steel on
Saturday said the imposition of
minimum import price to prevent cheap imports should continue in the interest of domestic industry. “As an industry
representative, I should say
that the MIP should continue,”
Tata Steel MD TV Narendran
told reporters on the sidelines
of an event here.
The Centre imposed minimum import price (MIP) on
import of 173 steel items for six
months from February this
year. “From the steel industry
point of view, the MIP has been
useful. The industry is of the
view to protect the huge investments made in this sector so far,
the MIP should stay on”, he said.
He said that the world was
having excess capacity in
some markets where the
demand for steel was low due
to sluggish economic conditions. Narendran said that
the industry was also reeling
under price volatility.
PTI
9^TYQcUU[cWbUQdUb][dQSSUcc
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?C8Q =4F34;78
oncerned over a widening
trade deficit with South Korea,
C
India on Saturday sought greater
market access in sectors such as
agriculture, marine, IT and healthcare in the East-Asian nation. The
issue, among others, was discussed at the review meeting of the
India-South Korea free trade agreement, officially known as the
Comprehensive Economic
Partnership Agreement (CEPA).
Commerce and Industry
Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and
her South Korean counterpart Joo
Hyunghwan took stock of the
progress in bilateral trade since
CEPA came into effect from
January 1 in 2010.
It was the second meeting of
the joint committee at the ministerial level to review CEPA.
Agreeing to stepping up trade in
services, Sitharaman was in favour
of greater market access for Indian
IT and healthcare industry in
Korea, the ministry said in a statement. Following India’s request, the
Korean minister agreed to study
visa requirements to enable Indian
teachers to teach in Korea under
the English programme.
“The ministers agreed that the
widening trade deficit was a matter of concern for India and the
Korean minister observed that the
wider economic slowdown was
one of the causes of increasing
trade deficit,” the statement said.
India had trade deficit of about $10
billion in 2015-16.
The Korean minister
promised that his country is open
to strengthening trade with India
and allowing Indian exporters
greater market access on a reciprocal basis. He also signalled that
Korea could make investments
under the Make in India programme for mutual benefit.
Sitharaman also impressed
upon the Korean side to open
up market in agriculture,
marine, IT and other services.
Both the ministers agreed that
the utilisation rate of the bilateral concessions given under
CEPA needs to be improved.
“Recognising the need for
providing greater market access
and mutual capacity building in
SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary)
and TBT (technical barriers to
trade) measures, the ministers
agreed that Korean companies
could invest in food processing of
agricultural and marine products
so that these value-added products
could be exported to the EastAsian markets,” it added.
The ministerial-level meeting today got down to CEPA
review as India and Korea in May
2015 had previously agreed to
commence negotiations to
amend CEPA by June 2016 with
a view to achieving qualitative
and quantitative increase of trade
through an agreed road map.
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WR,QGLDLQFRVWFXWWLQJ PRYH
80=BQ 7H34A0103
NEW YORK: Fast food giant
McDonald’s may be planning to
outsource jobs to India as part of
a $500 million cost reduction
plan it announced last
November, a media report said.
A report in the New York Post
said McDonald’s is shedding
jobs as part of a $500 million cost
reduction spearheaded by Chief
Executive Steve Easterbrook.
“McDonald’s is also moving
some functions to India in what
could be a larger controversial
push toward outsourcing,” it quoted sources familiar with the company’s plans as saying. A region-
al office in Columbus, Ohio is
among the first casualties of the
cost-cutting. McDonald’s
described the facility's closing as
part of ‘plans to permanently
restructure its operations and
eliminate a number of roles,’ in a
May 13 letter the company sent to
city officials. The layoffs will begin
in July and end by December, it
said. The 70 workers at that facility provide support services to
restaurants, including accounting
functions, which may be moving
to an Indian firm, say the sources.
“As part of our announced
efforts to deliver $500 million in
savings by the end of 2017, we are
restructuring many aspects of our
business, including an accounting
function,” company spokeswoman
Terri Hickey said.
The report said as McDonald’s
growth has stalled, it has been shutting down regional offices across
the country, of which there are now
about 25, down from 40. “There
has been talk about McDonald’s
moving (some operations) to
India for years,” said Richard
Adams, of franchise advice firm
Franchise Equity Group.
McDonald’s laid off more than
400 employees in 2015. PTI
<PWX]SaP5X]BTaeXRTbPX\bc^
aPXbTd_c^C!#$ZRaeXP =23b
NEW DELHI: Mahindra &
Mahindra Financial Services is
looking to raise up to C24,500
crore through issuance of nonconvertible
debentures
(NCDs). “The Board passed
special resolution for issue of
NCDs including subordinates
debentures, in one or more
tranches, aggregating up to
C24,500 crore on a private
placement basis,” the company
said in a BSE filing.
The company further said
that the Board has also passed
special resolution for increase
in borrowing limit of C50,000
crore to C55,000 crore under
the section 180(1)(c) of the
Companies Act, 2013 and creation of charge on the assets of
the company under section
180(1)(a) of the Act.
Mahindra & Mahindra
Financial Services is one of the
leading non-banking financial
companies (NBFCs) with customers primarily in the rural
and semi-urban markets. The
company has more than 16,000
employees in over 1,000
branches across India.
PTI
I
n a major boost for the Make
in India initiative, US aerospace major Boeing and Tata
Advanced Systems Limited
(TASL) have joined hands to set
up a facility here to co-produce
fuselages for the Boeing AH-64
Apache helicopter and other
aerostructures. Defence Minister
Manohar Parrikar on Saturday
laid the foundation stone of Tata
Boeing Aerospace Limited
(TBAL) at the aerospace Special
Economic Zone (SEZ) at
Adibatla on the city outskirts.
The facility will also deal in
integrated systems in aerospace
and will eventually be the sole
BWXeP[XZ1P]ZTg_TRcb
C &RaQXiQh5H &
NEW DELHI: Shivalik
Mercantile Co-operative Bank
on Saturday said it is hopeful of
crossing C1,700 crore business
in this financial year on account
of increasing customer base. In
2015-16, the bank’s business
stood at C1,405 crore.
“Growing steadily at 38 per
cent per annum, the bank recorded an increase in the number of its
customers also, while accumulating aggregate deposits of C805
crore and advances of C600 crore.
The bank is hopeful of crossing
C1,700 crore business at the end of
current financial year,” it said. PNS
producer of AH-64 fuselage
globally. The AH-64 Apache is
the world's most advanced
multi-role combat helicopter
and used by the US forces as well
as many other countries. The
Indian Air Force is to purchase
22 machines.
Parrikar termed the joint
venture one of the initial big foreign direct investment in
defence and aerospace under the
Government’s Make in India initiative. He noted that Boeing
kept its word to him at the concluding of the Apache and
Chinook deals last year.
“They had promised that
this particular facility will be
located in India and they will be
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shifting it from the place where
they have the facility,” he said.
TASL, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons, is already
on contract to manufacture
aerostructures for Boeing's CH-
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?=BQ =4F34;78
T
he Government will soon
conduct a nation-wide
survey to ascertain
the number of bonded labourers in India.
This is significant in
light of findings by
Australian Rig hts
g roup Wa l k Fre e
Foundation, which claimed
India has the highest number
of people globally trapped in
modern slavery.
“The Government will soon
conduct a country-wide survey
to know the number of bonded labourers,” Labour Minister
Bandaru Dattatreya told
reporters here. Elaborating,
Labour ecretary Shankar
Aggarwal said: “We are yet to
decide on the time of the
survey and which agency
will do it, but there is a
thought that the states
should do the survey in
their respective areas.”
Calling into question the 2016 Global Slavery
Index released by the
Foundation, Dattatreya said:
“They say there are about 1.8
crore bonded labourers, but
they don't say where they got
these figures from.” According
to the slavery index, India has
8`gedRjd_`eRcXVe`W"!TceRiSRdV
?=BQ =4F34;78
I
n the wake of confusion over
whether Prime Minister
Narendra Modi had set a target
of doubling the income tax base
to 10 crore, Government on
Saturday came out with a statement correcting an earlier press
release and saying no specific
target has been prescribed.
In a corrigendum, an official release on Saturday referred
to its press release on Friday in
which in the first para it was
stated that the Prime Minister
had asked the tax authorities on
Thursday to take action against
non-tax payers so as to increase
the number of taxpayers to at
least 10 crore.
“In this regard it is clarified
that though the Prime Minister
asked the Income Tax department to widen the tax base and
take suitable action against the
non-filers and tax evaders, no
µ8QGHUYDOXHG
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NEW DELHI: As the Indian
stock markets are doing well and
large-caps stocks are leading a
rise in the indices, investor
appetite for large-caps has been
steadily rising. Experts, however, favour large-caps as these
companies are relatively more
stable and less volatile than
smaller companies. “Largecaps are relatively undervalued
as compared to the rest of the
market. For the next year the
focus will be on large-caps as
they scale up earnings due to rising demand and better prices,"
said, Tanwir Alam, Independent
Financial Advisor (IFA).
“As a recovery will not
happen overnight, investors
need to keep an eye out on sectors better placed when the tide
turns. Funds like ICICI Pru
are better suited for finding
under-valued segments that
can stand good in the coming
1-2 years,” Alam added. PNS
47 heavy-lift Chinook and AH6 light attack helicopters.
Boeing and Tata had last
year announced a joint venture
for manufacturing aerostructures and collaboration on integrated systems development
opportunities in India.
This joint venture will create
a manufacturing center of excellence to produce aerostructures
for the AH-64 Apache and provide affordable manufacturing
capabilities to the global aerospace
industry. Dave Koopersmith,
Boeing's Vice President,
Vertical Lift, said Indian industry was providing critical support to Boeing commercial
and defence programmes.
specific target to expand the tax
base to 10 crore was prescribed.”
“The original press release
dated June 17 may please be
treated as revised to this extent.
The mistake in the press release
dated June 17 was inadvertent,
which is regretted,” said the
Department of Revenue release
on Saturday.
On Friday, Revenue
Secretary Hasmukh Adhia
sought to contextualise the
Prime Minister's statement saying he was talking about ‘scopefor expansion’ of the tax base to
10 crore but he added getting to
that mark is ‘impossible’.
The Central Board of Direct
Taxes (CBDT), however, said in
a statement on Friday that the
Prime Minister had ‘asked them
to knock on the doors of the
non-tax payers so as to increase
the number of taxpayers to at
least 10 crore’. Addressing the
inaugural session of the two-day
annual conference of tax administrators on Thursday, the Prime
Minister had asked taxmen to
legitimately aspire to have 10
crore taxpayers within the tax
base as against 5.43 crore tax
payers currently.
The conference was closed
to media and Modi’s remarks
were relayed by Minister of
State for Finance Jayant Sinha
and Adhia on Friday. At the end
of the two-day conference on
Friday, Adhia briefed reporters,
when he referred to Sinha talking about Prime Minister stating that out of about 25 crore
households in the country, there
may be 14-15 crore agriculture
households.
Stating that this left 10
crore households, Adhia said,
“Now, there is a scope for
expansion, widening of tax net
out of that 10 crore. He (Prime
Minister) did not say that we
should actually get 10 crore.”
the dubious distinction of having the highest number of
people globally in modern
slavery, with 18.35 million victims of forced labour, ranging
from prostitution to begging.
“There are NGOs that are
working against the interest of
India and are trying to defame
the country. Their data are
wrong,” the Minister said.
Dattatreya also spoke of the
recent International Labour
Conference (ILC) in Geneva
in Switzerland, where discussions were held with the member countries on labour laws
concerning global supply
chain and outsourcing.
ATR^]bXSTaSTRXbX^]
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CHENNAI: A bank employees’
union on Saturday urged the
Centre to reconsider its decision
on merging SBI associate banks
with the parent State Bank of
India. Observing the proposed
move would severely affect
banking services and employees in SBI would become surplus, the Bank Employees
Federation of India (BEFI) in a
statement said it would join the
strike announced by All India
Bank Employees Association
and bank unions on July 29.
BEFI represents a body of
employees of private and public sector banks. “Around 10
lakh bank employees across
the country would participate in the strike”, the statement said, adding the move to
merge SBI with its associate
banks was ‘anti-people’. PTI
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gypt’s ousted Islamist
President Mohamad Morsi
E
was on Saturday sentenced to
life imprisonment by a court in
an espionage trial in which six
co-defendants were handed
death penalties for leaking
state secrets on military intelligence to Qatar and a Dohabased TV network Al-Jazeera.
The Cairo Criminal Court
upheld the death sentences of
the six Muslim Brotherhood
members and awarded life
imprisonment to two others.
Life in prison in Egypt is 25
years. But Morsi, who received
life in prison for leading an
unlawful group, was given an
additional 15 years for stealing
documents related to national
security, increasing his jail
term to 40 years.
The six co-defendants were
Ahmed Abdo Ali Afifi, a documentary film producer (who
is in jail), Asmaa el-Khateeb, a
reporter with Rasd News
Network which is widely suspected of links to Morsi’s
Muslim Brotherhood (sentenced in absentia).
Two more included AlJazeera employees - news producer Alaa Omar Mohammed
and news editor Ibrahim
Mohammed Hilal (both sentenced in absentia).
Qatar, a wealthy Gulf State,
was the main backer of Morsi
and his Muslim Brotherhood
during his term in power
between 2012 and July 2013,
when the military overthrew
and detained him.
Today’s verdicts are not
final and can be appealed.
Last month, the court
ordered that case documents of
the six defendants, excluding
Morsi, be referred to the Grand
Mufti, who according to
Egyptian law must review all
death sentences. His decision,
however, is not binding.
The co-defendents have
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elgian police staged sweeping nationwide anti-terror
raids and arrested 12 people,
officials said on Saturday, as
security for 30 VIPs was reinforced over fears of an “imminent” attack.
Dozens of searches were
carried out across Belgium
overnight in a case that needed “an immediate intervention”, federal prosecutors said
on Saturday.
Forty people were initially
held and 152 garage boxes
searched, they said.
The raids took place in 16
communes in Brussels,
Flanders and Wallonia and
“passed off without incident,”
they said in a statement, adding
that “until now no arms or
explosives were found.”
Flemish commercial
broadcaster VTM reported that
it was linked to a threat linked
to Belgium’s fixture against
Ireland due to be held on
Saturday in Bordeaux, France.
The channel said the threat
was against targets in Belgium,
possibly fans watching the
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game on television in crowded
places.
Belgium is still reeling from
the Islamic State suicide bombings at Brussels airport and on
the city’s metro on March 22
which killed 32 people and
wounded hundreds more.
They came five months
after jihadists, many of them
from Brussels, carried out gun
and bombing attacks in Paris
on November 13, killing 130
people and wounding hundreds more.
The latest raids targeted
several areas tied to the attacks
of November 13 and March 22.
Officers in Flanders moved
on the town of Zaventem close
to Brussels National airport
while there were raids in the
Brussels suburbs of Molenbeek,
Schaarbeek and Forest were
closely associated with the perpetrators of both attacks.
Molenbeek is notorious for
being a hotbed of Islamic
extremism where Salah
Abdeslam, the only surviving
member of the 10-man jihadist
team that attacked Paris, hid
out for months until his dramatic arrest on March 18.
been convicted for leaking
classified documents to Qatar
and selling them to Dohabased Al-Jazeera channel. The
documents allegedly include
information on general and
military intelligence, the
armed forces, its armaments
and state policy secrets.
Other charges include leading and joining the outlawed
Brotherhood, that aims at changing Egypt’s regime by force, and
attacking army and police posts
and public properties.
Muslim Brotherhood’s
Supreme Guide Mohamed
Badie and 35 other members of
the proscribed Islamist group
were last month sentenced to
life for committing violent acts
CAIRO: An Egyptian court
on Saturday sentenced six people, including two Al-Jazeera
employees, to death for allegedly passing documents related to
national security to Qatar and
the Doha-based TV network
during the rule of Islamist
president Mohammed Morsi.
Morsi, the case’s top defendant, and two of his aides were
also sentenced to 25 years in
prison. Morsi and his secretary,
Amin el-Sirafy, received an
additional 15-year sentence for
a lesser crime. El-Sirafy’s
daughter, Karima, was also
sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Morsi was ousted by the military in July 2013 and has
already been sentenced to
death in another case. That
death sentence and another two
life and 20 years in prison are
under appeal. All of Saturday’s
verdicts can be appealed. The
two Al-Jazeera employees
identified by the judge as news
producer
Alaa
Omar
Mohammed and news editor
Ibrahim Mohammed Hilal
were sentenced in absentia,
along with Asmaa al-Khateib,
who worked for Rasd, a media
network widely suspected of
links to Morsi’s Muslim
Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood was
banned and declared a terrorist
group after Morsi’s ouster. The
three other defendants sentenced
to death Saturday are documentary producer Ahmed Afify,
EgyptAir cabin crew member
Mohammed Keilany and academic Ahmed Ismail.
AP
after the ouster of country’s first
democratically-elected
President in 2013.
Badie and Morsi were also
sentenced to life in prison in
the espionage case. Their sen-
tences are currently in appeal.
Morsi, Badie and 100 other
leaders were sentenced to death
in June last year for escaping
from prison in 2011.
he man charged with the
brutal street killing of UK’s
first-time woman lawmaker
JO Cox on Saturday gave his
name as “death to traitors,
freedom for Britain” when he
appeared in a court, as the EU
referendum campaigning was
suspended nationally until
Sunday in tribute to her.
Thomas Mair, 52, appeared
at Westminster Magistrates’
Court in London charged with
murder and grievous bodily
harm. He has also been charged
with possession of a firearm
with intent to commit an
indictable offence and possession of an offensive weapon.
Mair, who was wearing a
grey, police issue tracksuit,
refused to give his correct
name and did not reply when
asked to confirm his address
and date of birth.
Asked at the court to confirm his name, Mair said, “My
name is death to traitors, freedom for Britain.” The judge
then asked his lawyers to confirm his name, which they did.
Mair was remanded in custody and is due to appear at the
Old Bailey on Monday.
Cox, a mother-of-two, was
?PZXbcP]
CTT]³TgcaT\Xbc´ZX[[TSX]1´STbW 2WX]P\PZTb
QdX[SX]V
PUcTaPccPRZ^]7X]Sd[TRcdaTa WTPSfPhX]
bTRdaXchVPcT DHAKA: A teenage suspected jute farm. A gunfight ensued. R^]cPX]X]V
being held in custody After the gunfight we saw
in Bangladesh was shot dead on Fahim was shot and wounded. STbTacXUXRPcX^]
Pc8aP]Q^aSTa extremist
Saturday in a gunfight, police He died after we brought him
Islamabad: Pakistan has started building a security gate at
the country’s border with Iran
at Taftan to stop illegal trade,
officials said on Saturday, even
as tension continue between
Islamabad and Kabul over the
construction of a security gate
at Torkham border crossing.
The decision was taken to
increase security after the
recent killing of Taliban chief
Mullah Mansour who had
reportedly entered Balochistan
from Iran.
A security official said that
Frontier Corps (FC) Sector
Commander Brigadier Khalid
Beg and Balochistan Collector
Customs Saeed Ahmed Jadoon
laid the foundation stone of the
‘Pakistan Gate’ at Taftan in
Chagai district on Friday.
“The construction will be
completed by August 14 and
the estimated cost is about
C15 million,” said the official.
The construction of the
gate comes in the backdrop of
clashes with Afghanistan over
construction of security gate at
Torkham border crossing with
Afghanistan that left a Pakistani
army major and two Afghan
border guards dead.
PTI
said, days after he allegedly
hacked and critically wounded
a Hindu lecturer.
Police said Golam
Faizullah Fahim, 19, who was
in custody for questioning,
was killed when officers under
attack in a farmland area after
taking him to a river in search
of his extremist associates.
“Miscreants fired at the
police van as we came near a
to a hospital,” Sarwar Hossain,
police chief of Madaripur
where the shooting took place,
told AFP.
Locals in Madaripur
caught Fahim on Wednesday
after he and two other suspected extremists attacked and
wounded 50-year-old mathematics lecturer Ripon
Chakrabarti, a Hindu, police
said.
AFP
?PZ7X]SdT[STa[hcWaPbWTSU^aTPcX]VX]
AP\iP]QTX]VR^TaRTSQhYPX[TS\T]
Islamabad: An 85-year-old
Hindu man in Pakistan, who
was badly beaten by a police
constable and his brother for
allegedly eating food before
iftaar, is being coerced through
a Hindu Panchayat by the
accused to “forgive and forget”
and let them off, a media
report said on Saturday.
The accused, who are in
police custody, are trying to
resolve the issue through the
Panchayat (a council of local
elders) and sending their representatives to the family of vic-
tim Gokal Das to settle the
issue out of court.
The victim and his family,
however, are not ready to
oblige, The Express Tribune
reported.
At least 20 persons representing the accused visited Das
and tried to persuade him to
settle the matter out of court,
Das’ son Gobind Ram said,
according to the report.
These people were
informed that the victim might
have pardoned them if they had
come earlier.
PTI
?C8Q 14898=6
C
hinese officials claimed to
have effectively contained
desertification, with desert land
area shrinking continuously
over the past decade.
The area of formerly productive land degrading into
deserts has been contracting at
an annual average of 2,424
square km for over 10 consecutive years, said Zhang
Jianlong, head of the State
Forestry Administration said.
That was in contrast to an
annual expansion of 10,400
square km in the late 1990s,
Zhang was quoted as saying by
state-run Xinhua news agency.
Zhang Yongli, deputy head
of the administration, called the
reverse of the trend a major
transformation, but warned
that the task ahead is not yet
over. Expanding deserts are a
global problem.
It is estimated that onethird of the Earth is exposed to
desertification, affecting millions of people worldwide.
China has spent decades
curbing desertification through
greening, the report said.
0[XT]b\PhcPZT $\^aThTPabc^R^]cPRcdb)BcdSh
?C8Q =4FH>A:
liens may take another
1,500 years to contact us as
A
Earth’s physical attributes are
not unique making it difficult
for the extra-terrestrials to locate
us, a new study has found.
“We haven’t heard from
aliens yet, as space is a big place
- but that doesn’t mean no one
is out there,” said Evan
Solomonides, from the Cornell
University in the US.
“It’s possible to hear any
time at all, but it becomes
likely we will have heard
around 1,500 years from now,”
said Solomonides.
“Until then, it is possible
that we appear to be alone even if we are not. But if we
stop listening or looking, we
may miss the signals. So we
should keep looking,” he said.
Astronomers from Cornell
University deconstructed the
Fermi Paradox and paired it
with the Mediocrity Principle
into a fresh equation.
According to the Fermi
Paradox, billions of Earth-like
planets exist in our galaxy, yet
no aliens have contacted or visited us. Thus the paradox: the
cosmos teems with possibility.
BhaXP]\X[XcP]cb
RP_cdaT6^ecWT[S
PaTPbS^iT]bSTPS
BEIRUT: Syrian activists say
militants have captured two villages from Government forces
and their allies in the northern
province of Aleppo.
The Britain-based Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights
says the four-day offensive by
different militant groups,
including al-Qaida’s branch in
Syria, killed 86 troops and
pro-Government gunmen,
including 25 members of
Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.
The Observatory and the Local
Coordination Committees, an
activists collective, say militants
now control the villages of
Zeitan and Khalsa south of
Aleppo city.
Hezbollah issued a statement in Beirut on Saturday saying it lost a number of “martyrs” in “direct and fierce confrontations with terrorist
organisations.” Hezbollah has
sent thousands of fighters to
Syria to back President Bashar
Assad’s forces and has played a
key role in a string of
Government victories.
AP
The mediocrity principle proposed by 16th-century
mathematician Copernicus states that the Earth’s physical
attributes are not unique, as
natural processes are likely
common throughout the cosmos, and therefore aliens
would not discover us for
a while.
Hunting for extraterrestrials means sending out signals
like television broadcasts, for
example. As Earth’s electronic
ambassador, TV and radio signals are sent into space as a
byproduct of broadcasting.
These signals have been
travelling from Earth for 80
years at the speed of light.
For aliens receiving these
transmissions, they would likely be indecipherable, said
Solomonides, as the extraterrestrials would need to decode
light waves into sounds, then
parse 3,000 human languages
to grasp the message.
Earth’s broadcast signals
have reached every star within about 80 light years from the
Sun - about 8,531 stars and
3,555 Earth-like planets, as
our Milky Way galaxy alone
contains 200 billion stars,
researchers said.
Combining the equations
for the Fermi Paradox and the
mediocrity principle, the
researchers suggest that the
Earth might hear from an alien
civilisation when about half of
the Milky Way Galaxy has been
signalled in about 1,500 years.
shot and stabbed to death in
Birstall, West Yorkshire, on
Thursday afternoon. The 41year-old lawmaker was attending a regular constituency
meeting when her assailant
described as a far-right loner
with mental health issues and
neo-Nazi link struck.
A 77-year-old man, who
came to the aid of Cox, was also
injured and remains in a stable
condition in hospital.
Vigils were held across the
country last evening in memory of the Labour MP and
Parliament will be recalled on
Monday to allow MPs to pay
further tributes.
British Prime Minister
David
Cameron
and
Opposition leader Jeremy
Corbyn visited Cox’s Batley and
Spen constituency yesterday
in a rare joint appearance.
Meanwhile, the EU referendum campaigning has been
suspended nationally until
Sunday, with less than a week
before polling day, after the
fatal attack on Cox.
The Remain and Leave
groups, which have not campaigned since Thursday, have
cancelled events planned for
today.
FTTZPUcTa>a[P]S^aP\_PVT
bdaeXe^abcX[[c^^eTaR^\TcaPVTSh
Orlando: Felipe Marrero
wakes up in his hospital bed at
night still thinking he smells
gunpowder, nearly a week after
the shooting rampage at the
Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
It’s just one of the ways the
30-year-old has suffered after
being shot four times in his
back and left arm during the
attack last Sunday morning
that left 49 victims dead and
more than 50 wounded. The
gunman, 29-year-old Omar
Mateen, also was killed in a
firefight with police.
“It’s the same smell that
was in the club that night,”
Merrero said in an interview
on Friday from his hospital bed
at Orlando Regional Medical
Center.
AP
%DVKLUGHFODUHVPRQWK
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05? Q :70AC>D<
udanese President Omar alSmonth
Bashir has declared a fourceasefire in two States of
Blue Nile and South Kordofan,
where recent fighting
between troops and rebels has
left scores of casualties, the
Army has said.
Bashir’s forces have been
battling the rebel Sudan
People’s Liberation MovementNorth (SPLM-N) in the two
States since 2011, and neither
side has decisively gained an
upper hand in the fighting.
“President
Bashir
announced four months of
ceasefire in Blue Nile and South
Kordofan starting from today,”
army spokesman Brigadier
Ahmed Khalifa al-Shami told
AFP on Friday.
“This gesture of goodwill
from the Government is to give
the armed groups a chance to
join the peace process and to
surrender their arms.”
The ceasefire was anticipated ahead of the start of the
rainy season that leaves roads
in the these regions impassable.
Khartoum limits press
access to the war-hit border
regions, making it nearly
impossible to verify the oftencontradictory reports from the
Army and the SPLM-N about
fighting there.
Bashir had announced a
similar ceasefire in South
Kordofan, Blue Nile and the
western Darfur region — the
scene of a separate insurgency
— in late 2015 and extended it
by a month at the beginning of
this year.
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I
t was India written all over the
Champions Trophy Final
against the mighty Australians
even though the Men in Blue
returned with silver and not gold
in a late-night shootout that messily capped their brilliant play all
through the goalless match.
Aussies won 3-1 in the
shootout despite a strong Indian
protest over a referral that granted
Oz a replay of one Sreejesh-defended strike and a trophy presentation
that farcically unfolded after an
hour of the technical committee
look-in into the protest, much
after all the Indian fans and the live
commentary team had packed up
and gone home. The presentation
ceremony finally took place in the
players' room with few to applaud
or witness.
Now, that was as baffling as the
sloppy Australians all through a
match in which the Indians recorded 56 per cent ball possession in the
first half and a whopping 79 per
cent in the second. Not just that, the
otherwise clinical Aussies missed 11
corners, four of them in a row, and
a penalty stroke by a foot in the first
half as opposed to the Men in Blue
who gave a gritty, spirited and tantalising show of comeback hockey
in London.
Goalkeeper Sreejesh saved at
least two penalty corners with
panache even as the Indian attackers stayed a little behind their own
defenders who blocked all the 11
goes at the goal by the Aussies,
reducing them to desperation,
indiscipline and needless aggression.
The Indians, meanwhile, stood
up to the pressure as they rarely do.
Aussies created more chances but
the Men in Blue refused to give in
which kept the game in a goalless
balance till the very end, opening
up the shootout phase.
India missed four penalty corners showing the usual shuffle
with the stick but on this day, it was
far less a big miss than Australia's
11 un-converted ones.
A scintillating display of cross
pitch scoops, long passes, precision
trapping, searing pace of counter
attacks and clean co-ordination
showed a new side of Indian hockey which sported constructive desperation, undeniable patience and
discipline despite it being a medal
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assured match that too against a
team that is the best in the business.
However, by the time, the
match went into its final break, the
Australia were all over the place —
desperate to make a break through
the impeccable Indian defence
shield, being yellow carded and
green carded many a times, at least
twice being down to 10 men and
once to even nine for indulging in
rough mouthfuls and needless
aggression. Sadly though, the
Indians failed to cash in on the lean
patches of the World No 1.
>;C<0=B34;867C43
India hockey coach Roeland
Oltmans is delighted at his team's
outstanding performance at the
Champions Trophy and said it
will boost their confidence to produce a better show at the Rio
Olympic Games.
India settled for a silver medal
in its best ever Champions Trophy
performance after the spirited side
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went down 1-3 to world champions Australia in a summit clash
penalty shootout.
Oltmans praised his team for
putting up a fine show after mak-
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?=B
ing their first appearance in the final
of the showpiece event in the
annual calendar. India had held
Australia goalless in regulation
period.
"I'm delighted with my team.
By all yardsticks, their performance the final was outstanding,"
said Oltmans.
"I am proud of what we've been
doing as a team. Our performance
is getting be45tter with every tournament. Any coach would be
absolutely pleased with this Indian
show.
"We'll use the confidence
gained here at the Champions
Trophy to give a better display in
the Olympic Games at Rio de
Janeiro," Oltmans said.
Oltmans said the way India
performed in the title contest has
boosted his faith of a fine show in
the Olympics.
"Look at the way the boys
raised their game to play a competitive final. It was just a day after we
lost 2-4 to Australia in the league
match," said Oltmans.
"When you play the final you
want to win it. We even had our
chances," he said. "I'm happy with
the silver medal. We can live with
that, but last night I was not
pleased with the manner in which
manner in which the shootout was
conducted."
India lodged an appeal against
the decision to allow Australia to retake the second shootout, on which
no goal was scored. It held up the
medal presentation ceremony and
the jury had to deliberate for an
hour and a half before Australia
were declared winners for a record
14th time.
For India, this was their first silver medal. India's only previous
medal in the Champions Trophy
was a bronze way back in 1981 at
Amsterdam.
The Indian team is now heading for the Spanish city of Valencia
for a six-nation tournament.
Sixteen members of the
Champions Trophy squad will go
to Valencia, where they will be
joined by another four coming
from home.
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A
fancied India suffered a shocking
two-run defeat at the hands of an
unheralded Zimbabwe as they failed to
chase down a tricky target in the first
T20 International cricket match, here
on Saturday.
Chasing a target of 171, India were
restricted to 168 for six with seamer
Neville Madziva bowling a brilliant
over to give the hosts a 1-0 lead in the
three-match series.
Needing only 8 off the final over,
Dhoni who couldn't connect a single
big shot during his sedate 19 off 17
balls. Surprisingly, Dhoni took single
to expose Himachal Pradesh's Rishi
Dhawan (1), who simply lacked quality or ability to hit the ball out of the
park.
IPL regulars like Manish Pandey
(48) and Axar Patel (18) did their bit
to set it up but when it mattered the
most, the little known Zimbabwean
boys did it for their country.
Just when it looked that Pandey
will take India home, he mistimed a
lofted shot off Muzarabani's bowling to
get out for 48 off 35 balls having hit a
four and three sixes.
This brought down the equation to
28 off 16 balls. However Axar Patel hit
one of the biggest sixes of the match
over long-on to bring the equation
down to 21 from 12 balls. A four and
six off penultimate over saw Axar bring
down the equation to 8 from the last
over which the Indians failed to get.
Earlier, India's rookie bowlers were
taken to cleaners by the seasoned
Elton Chigumbura, who smashed an
unbeaten 55 to help Zimbabwe reach
a competitive 170 for six in 20 overs.
³;0BC10;;F0B1A8;;80=C´
Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who has
taken his side past the finishing line
with his assured batting in crunch situtaions, found the last delivery bowled
by Zimbabwe paceman Neville
Madziva to be a "brilliant" one.
"Ultimately, the contest is between
the bat and ball. I felt the last ball was
brilliant," said Dhoni at the post match
presenatation ceremony.
"We did not play to potential. A lot
of wickets were not full-fledged shots,
more like catching practice. You may be
doing well in the domestic circuit but
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there is more pressure when you go from
India A to India. It's good learning curve
for them. There were a lots of errors
committed by the batsmen. We were not
playing with out first XI in the bowling
department. Our lengths were not
right," Dhoni said making it clear that
Rishi Dhawan and Jaydev Unadkat
were not upto the mark.
9?3ce``_bdc9116µcTUSYcY_^ 0<8A102:B;85410=B5>A58G4AB
0?Q ;>=3>=
he IOC threw its support
behind the decision to ban
T
Russia's track and field team from
the Rio de Janeiro Olympics and
said Saturday it will take "further
far-reaching measures" to crack
down on doping ahead of the
games.
The International Olympic
Committee said it "welcomes and
supports" and "fully respects"
Friday's ruling by track and field's
world governing body to maintain
its ban on Russia because of widespread doping.
The IOC, which has ultimate
authority over the Olympics, also
noted that the IAAF has control
over which track and field athletes
are eligible to compete at the
games. "The eligibility of athletes in
any international competition
including the Olympic Games is a
matter for the respective international federation," the IOC said.
The strong statement appeared
to rule out any possibility of the
IOC trying to overturn or amend
the IAAF decision. There had
been speculation that the IOC
could try to impose a compromise
that would allow Russian athletes
without doping violations to be able
to compete.
However, by accepting the
IAAF decision and the federation's
jurisdiction over the athletes, the
IOC indicated it will not interfere.
That suggests Russia's only
recourse for fighting the decision
will be at the Court of Arbitration
for Sport.
The IOC also opened the door
to potential further sanctions
against Russian or other athletes.
"The IOC will initiate further
far-reaching measures in order to
ensure a level playing field for all
the athletes taking part in the
Olympic Games" in Rio, it said.
The statement was issued after
a teleconference meeting of the
IOC executive board. It came three
days ahead of a summit of sports
leaders called by the IOC to address
the eligibility issues for the games.
05? Q :0A0278
akistan's Mohammad Amir said
match-fixers should be banned for
P
life as he prepares to return to Test
cricket at Lord's, where an infamous
2010 spot-fixing scandal landed him
a jail term and a five-year ban.
The fast bowler backed comments from England captain Alastair
Cook, who said anyone caught matchfixing should be thrown out of the
sport for good.
"If fixing is still happening then it's
really alarming," Amir said in an interview before his departure for the fourTest tour of England. "I fully back that
fixers should be banned for life."
The 24-year-old left-armer can
expect a cool reception from fans at
Lord's, where he was caught bowling
no-balls to order in a sting operation
carried out by a tabloid newspaper.
But Cook said earlier this month
that he had no problem playing
against Amir, who has served his ban
and returned to international cricket
in January.
Amir and new-ball partner
Mohammad Asif bowled no-balls to
order on the instructions of their captain Salman Butt. All three received
five-year bans and, together with sports
agent Mazhar Majeed, jail terms.
Since his ban expired, Amir has
played only limited-overs matches,but
now he will come full circle with a Test
return at Lord's -- a twist of fate that
he called a "blessing".
"To be honest I never thought
about my comeback and I feel seriously lucky to be back in the role to play
Test cricket again," he said.
"I was all excited for Test cricket
because that is where my career was
held back and I still can't believe that
this is happening.
"You call it a coincidence or whatever but for me it's a blessing that I am
restarting (Tests) right at Lord's from
where I stopped in 2010."
Pakistan will also play five ODIs
and a T20I during the tour.
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“My father had taken a loan of C7,000
from a bhatta maalik (brick kiln
owner) around four decades ago for
my grandfather’s treatment. He could
not survive but our whole family started working in his brick kilns as bandhua mazdoor (bonded labourers). My
father died 15 years ago, but I am yet
to repay that loan. I do not know how
much loan is left, but the maalik
(owner) says I will have to work for a
couple of years more.”
— Sukhai Ram,
Village Masauli, Barabanki
S
lavery is illegal and banned
in India. There is a strict
law to protect bonded
labourers but millions of
men, women and children
live and work in slave-like conditions — bonded labour, sex trafficking, child labour, domestic servitude and many other forms — raising a big question mark on the efficacy of the laws that vouch to end
bonded labour and forced slavery.
A global survey report says that
18 million people, which is 1.4 per
cent of India’s population, work as
slaves in brick kilns, carpet industry,
glassware and bangle industry
besides children who work as domestic helps or at roadside eating joints.
However, several civil rights activists
in India believe this number is just
the tip of the iceberg.
The latest figure available with
the Human Rights Commission
show over 14 million children living
under slavery. “If one does an honest
counting, this number would surely
jump to twice that — perhaps closer
to 30 million,” said National
Convener of People’s Vigilance
Committee on Human Rights
(PVCHR), Lenin Raghuvanshi.
“Men, women and children are
forced to work as bonded labourers
in brick kilns and bangle industry.
Unfortunately, women and children
are never accounted for,” he added.
Niloufar Pourzand, Head,
UNICEF, said that the number of
working children between the age
group of 5 and 14 in Uttar Pradesh is
2.1 million. “This is the number
which we know of, but the number
of children working in rural areas or
in those sectors where the reach of
civil rights activists is almost negligible must be very high. The law says
children should go to school and
should get time to play. But this is
not happening,” she said.
The Bonded Labour System
(Abolition) Act of 1976 outlaws all
debt bondage, including that of children, and requires Government
intervention and rehabilitation of the
bonded worker. In addition, under
the Indian Penal Code (IPC), rape,
extortion, causing grievous hurt,
assault, kidnapping, abduction,
wrongful confinement, buying or
disposing of people as slaves, and
unlawful compulsory labor are criminal offences, punishable with up to
10 years’ imprisonment and fines.
Under the Juvenile Justice Act,
1986, cruelty to juveniles and withholding the earnings of a juvenile are
criminal offences, punishable with up
to three years’ imprisonment and
fines. “The laws are there but these
are not implemented. The
Government, of any political hue,
does not have the political will to
implement them,” said peace activist
Swami Agnivesh. “The Government
cannot afford to annoy rural rich as
well as the urban rich who are
exploiting the situation.”
Raghuvanshi believes bonded
labour is a contemporary form of
slavery. “If it is still existing, it is a
clear reflection of the failure of welfare state. The Government, which
is supposed to provide them basic
necessities, has failed them. As they
are poor, they move out to eke out
a living in cities and end up as
bonded labourers in brick kilns
and factories,” he added.
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Chairman of the US Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations
and Tennessee Senator, Bob Corker,
said: “India has 12 to 14 million
slaves, more than any country in the
world. There are 27 million slaves in
the world. How does a country like
this have 12 to 14 million slaves in
the year 2016? How does it happen?
Do they have zero prosecution ability, zero law enforcement? How
could this happen on such a scale?
It’s pretty incredible.”
He added: “I would say that
while this committee has been unanimously supportive of an ‘end modern-day slavery movement’, the
United States also believes that India
has the largest number of slaves. I am
not talking about people working for
$1 a day, I am talking about people
who are enslaved.”
Majority of these bonded labourers are migrants workers who shift
from impoverished regions like
Bundelkhand, Bihar and Jharkhand
in search of work, and since they are
unskilled workers, they end up in
brick kilns or bangle factories of
Firozabad. In brick kilns, the entire
family works as a team. “These
migrant workers are allotted a piece
of land by the owner where the
workers have to dig the earth and
then wet it with water to make the
mud suitable for the moulding
process. Generally for moulding, the
whole family is engaged, including
young children,” said Convener,
Voice of People, Shruti Nagvanshi.
The labourers are paid C200 for
making 1,000 bricks, which are then
sold in the market for C7,000! These
labourers are recruited by agents,
who ask them to take their family
along. “It is an attractive prospect
where one is allowed to take his family with him. The labourer is promised
accommodation, is often paid an
advance — which is a veiled term for
debt. Once he accepts the advance, he
falls into the trap,” she explained.
The workers are not allowed to
leave the brick kiln premises, and the
living conditions are barely basic.
Labourers live in shanties with bricks
piled one upon another as walls and
straw covering the top, which do not
afford any protection from the sun
and rains. These rooms are small,
measuring 4 feet x 5 feet. In such tiny
rooms, labourers and their families
have to manage their kitchen and
keep their household goods.
Studies carried out by different
agencies also point to alleged sexual
exploitation of women in brick kilns.
Radha (name changed) was lured
from her village in Jharkhand on the
pretext of a job by another women
and sold as a bonded labourer in a
brick kiln at Jaunpur. She told human
rights activists that she was raped
daily by the brick kiln owner and was
beaten up when she protested.
Young children are the worst sufferers though. They do not go to
schools and instead help their parents arrange bricks for drying, and
collect the broken and improperly
moulded bricks. Once they get older,
they are drawn into this trade having
being trained from young age.
Kamla, mother of five, revealed
how her two youngest children,
Medhu (5) and Rani (3), used to cry
for food. With barely C200 she made
for making 1,000 bricks, she didn’t
have enough to feed her family, and
her daughter died of malnutrition
before she could turn four.
Workers employed in brick kilns
mostly belong to the Schedule Caste
(SC), Schedule Tribe (ST) and
minorities, which are usually non-literate and non-numerate. They do
not easily understand the arithmetic
of loan/debt/advance, and documentary evidence remains with the creditor and its contents are never made
known to them.
//a#
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S
I
ndia’s quest for Nuclear Suppliers
Group (NSG) membership at the
moment has unsettled both
Pakistan and China. On the other
hand, with the NSG membership,
India is hopeful of state-of-the-art
nuclear technologies and possession of
more uranium, as well as generating
more jobs particularly in the IT sector
and also boosting the Make in India
programme. However, what not many
know is that in a small village, far away
from the Indian capital, some women
had launched an onslaught against the
country’s nuclear aspirations in 2011.
For almost five years now, the
women of Idinthakarai fishing village
have been protesting against the
Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant
(KNPP) in Radhapuram taluka of Tamil
Nadu’s Tirunelveli district. They’re a
part of the People’s Movement Against
Nuclear Energy (PMANE), coordinated
by anti-nuclear activist Uday Kumar.
The protest has been thoughtprovokingly chronicled in journalist
Minnie Vaid’s recently released book
The Ant in the Ear of the Elephant
(Rajpal & Sons, C325).
These women claim that the nuclear
reactor not only releases damaging hot
water that ruptures their fishing culture
but the project can also lead to serious
diseases such as tuberculosis, thyroid
dysfunction and cancer.
In the village, power supply
apparently is unavailable for around 14
hours. One of the arguments thus used
by the Government is that the power
plant will ensure smooth operation of
electricity for the villagers. At the same
time, the women Vaid writes about say
that they would not fall prey to such
persuasions of official authorities. They
claim to be well informed about its
harms through newspapers and
occasional television viewing.
Xavier, one of the women, says, “We
don’t want a power plant that threatens
our lives; we do need electricity in our
State but there are other forms like wind,
tidal or solar energy. We don’t need
something that kills people.”
The protesters, however, are not
educated professionals; they were simple
housewives who happened to watch on
television the Fukushima nuclear disaster
initiated by the tsunami in Japan in March
2011. Inspired by what Uday Kumar had
been advocating, they decided to educate
the people about the dangers of the
Koodankulam plant, although they extend
their reservations to any other nuclear
plant. Idinthakarai is located two km away
from the plant and back in December 2011,
when the agitation had just started, this sitin protest reportedly resulted in 6,800
protesters being charged with sedition
between September and December.
In November 20, 1988, four years
after the Bhopal gas tragedy and two
years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster
in the Soviet Union in 1986 (which Vaid
cleverly emphasises while mentioning the
date), Russia’s then President, Mikhail
Gorbachev, and Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi
signed an agreement for two Russia-built
nuclear reactors in Koodankulam.
Within a month, in December, a
massive rally was organised in Tirunelveli
and later a protest in Nagercoil in 1989.
In May the same year, 10,000 people
assembled under the banner of the
National Fish Workers Union opposing
the project. It proposed instead to draw
water for reactors from the nearby
Pechiparai reservoir and to discharge
waste water into the sea.
In 2011, the opposition gained
momentum and attained visibility after
the daily sit-in protests and a structured
committee. PMANE leaders sought to
educate the women about the importance
of resistance towards the plant and
updated them about the strategies and
agenda of their agitation.
When Vaid asked Uday Kumar why
women were chosen to be the face of this
protest, he gave an amusing answer:
“Because we knew they would not
succumb to bribes with money or
alcohol. We trusted them to be calm and
composed and not fall prey to hatred and
animosity. And we have been proved
right.” The campaign is funded by the
common people through their donations.
The catastrophic 2004 tsunami that
killed thousands of people in India
alone impacted 10 lakh people in Tamil
Nadu. In Tirunelvelu, Tsunami Colony
was built by the Church’s Auxiliary for
Social Action (CASA) on land provided
by the Government. The KNPP site is
only two km from the colony and
thereby this puts the entire colony in
violation of Atomic Energy Regulatory
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Board’s (AERB) exclusion zone
specifying “no habitation within a 1.5km radius of the plant”.
The Government, they say, has been
hostile to their demands and struggle.
They claim to discover that the plant has
used products from a Russian firm
whose procurement director was
arrested for corruption in 2012. Vaid
writes that the Manmohan Singh
Government continued to import
nuclear power reactors, assigning four
firms a nuclear power each to build
multiple reactors. Dr Singh and his
lieutenants announced that nuclear
energy in India shall meet the highest
standards of safety. There have since
been contradicting reports from both
the Government and other authoritative
forums about the plant’s safety status.
Dr APJ Abdul Kalam was one of the
most ardent supporters of nuclear power
for India. In fact, the present
Government also came to an agreement
over the Civil Nuclear Liability Law in
January this year during US President
Barack Obama’s visit. Two weeks ago, on
June 7, Prime Minister Narendra Modi
signed a deal allowing the company
Westinghouse Electric to build six
nuclear reactors in India. According to a
statement released by the White House,
India and the US can look ahead to
work on a deal to build six AP-1000
reactors in India by 2030.
Modi said India’s planned purchase
of the six reactors from Westinghouse
Electric (whose parent company is
Toshiba Corp) would mark a new era
in nuclear and scientific cooperation
with the US. In his visit to Washington,
Modi stated, “In the field of nuclear
energy, we are purchasing six nuclear
reactors from Westinghouse, which will
mark a new era in our nuclear and
scientific cooperation.”
At present, India suffers from a
major electricity crisis. We need more
electricity in hospitals, storage units, and
much more. It will continue to be a
debatable idea but the benefits of nuclear
plants cannot be entirely discarded at the
same time. While the Government is
hopeful of India’s future as far as nuclear
energy goes, what remains to be seen is
to what extent this scientific glory
manages to sustain human safety.
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I
f slavery is blatant in brick
kilns, it is carried out in a
subtle way in other sectors.
Shamshad Khan, Secretary,
Centre for Rural Education and
Development Action (CREDA),
that works in the carpet belt of
Bhadohi in Uttar Pradesh, said
that child labour might not be
visible on the surface, but clandestinely it is still happening.
“Migrant workers from Bihar
and Jharkhand are forced to live
in closed sheds operated by carpet manufacturers. They come
with their families and are not
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allowed to mingle with others.
Children are malnourished, they
do not go to schools, and no one
knows what is the source of their
livelihood. Last September, the
Labour Department had rescued
11 bonded child labourers from
one such shed,” Khan revealed.
But in the bangle industry,
slavery has been given a legalised
shape. “A person is allowed to
give a final shape to glass bangles
at his home and is paid C6 for
350 bangles. The entire family
works for 12-14 hours a day to
prepare 30 such lots. So, after a
day’s hard work, the person gets
only C180. He employs his children in this trade so that he can
earn more. Gradually, the child
who should go to school is
sucked into this bangle-making
business,” said Dilip Sevarthi,
National Convener, Campaign
for Women and Child Rights.
He said bonded labour is the
worst form of human rights violation and a contemporary form
of slavery. It is violation of Right
to Life, Right to Equality and
Right to Individual Dignity,
which are extremely important.
Landless poor, agricultural
labourers, and artisans who have
no employment are the main victims of this system.
ometimes I forget how old I am. As
someone who writes young adult
fiction, I think that’s a good thing
actually. It helps me get into the heads
of my protagonists more easily and
things move forward from there
smoothly. Well, most of the times at least.
Since I’ve been asked how I manage
to write about young adults with a certain
level of authenticity, let me clarify at the
outset that having a 17-year-old son has
been no help at all. Instead, I like to put
my 17-year-old self into various situations
and come up with what things could have
been like if my life was different.
I like writing young adult fiction
because it feels freeing in a way for me.
Coming from an orthodox family set up
where I was expected to conform to the
roles assigned to me by society, I’ve managed to find my own footing in the world
and I wish I could tell my 17-year-old self
not to worry so much, that things will be
good one day. It will take time, say at least
two decades, but it will be all right.
But who are the people who read
young adult fiction? Are they all
teenagers? Do they
have to be? I hate how
genres define reading
patterns but my readership base tells me
that people of all ages
enjoy reading YA. You
don’t have to be a
young adult to enjoy
young adult fiction.
You don’t even have to
be young at heart,
although it certainly
helps you empathise
with the characters.
But I think one of the
reasons YA is so popular with an older
audience too is
because everyone has
been through some of
the situations at some
point or the other in
their lives.
Crush on a boy/girl in class who
doesn’t know you exist? Check.
Can’t get along with mom or siblings
but have at least one good friend who
knows everything about you? Check.
Constantly hungry, love food and
don’t care if you can’t fit into your jeans?
(For the moment at least) Check.
Being young is a universal experience and although we’re eager to move
on to adulthood (how little we knew),
no one forgets what it was like being a
teen and not in control of your life, most
of the time. For the actual young adult
audience, there’s a sense of understanding that others too have gone through
this and they’ve emerged stronger, so
why not me? Beyond that, I’m not really sure because as a writer, my intention
is to tell a good story.
Personally, I find the genre appealing and although I haven’t read as
many as I’d like to, or as I should have,
I do remember Ann Brashare’s The
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants as an
eyeopener for me, both as a reader and
as a writer. (Side note: I made my son
read it when he was 14 and he was disgusted that the girls were taking turns
to wear the same pants. That was his sole
takeaway from the book.)
For me, writing YA fiction is fun and
I look forward to the actual writing with
a great deal of anticipation. My Brother’s
Wedding (Rupa, 2013) was all about capturing the chaos during a family wedding with a side dose of drama and
romance, The Tamanna Trilog y
(Bloomsbury, 2014) was a time traveling romance+fantasy (notice me trying
to tick as many genres as possible) but
there are also books where the themes
are not light and frothy as the case was
in When She Went Away (Duckbill,
2015). This was an interesting book to
write, from the point of view of a
young girl who’s mother abandoned her
and her family and disappeared without
any reason. But writing Asmara’s
Summer (Penguin, 2016) was probably
the most fun experience of all.
Asmara is nothing like me and that
made getting into her head all the more
challenging. We’re in fact polar opposites
but the truth is that
she’s everything I’d
have love to have been
at that age. An interesting observation that
I’ve made is that readers who know me personally tend to see me
as the main protagonist of any book I
write and I find that
supremely funny. I
wish I were half as
cool as some of them.
Also, I’ve been asked
numerous times if any
of these stories were
based on my life and I
think err...no, especially when someone
asked me on Twitter if
The Tamanna Trilogy
(which is time travel
with a capital T) was based on my own
life. I didn’t know what to say.
Anyway, being 17 was intense and
all consuming, tough, and confusing but
I remember it like it was yesterday.
Science or arts? Why on earth would you
choose arts? Because you like Literature?
Anyway, what does it matter what you
study? You’re going to be taking care of
a house and kids anyway.
Some of the things I heard back then
from ‘well-meaning people’ were so
imprinted in my mind that without having any real ambition in life, all I wanted was to prove them wrong.
Asmara is spunky, confident, selfassured and is just so sorted about her
life, although she’s far from being perfect, thankfully. But writing about
her, her life, her choices helped me
understand so much more about
myself. Nobody gets to go back to
when they were 17 and do over their
life, but being a young adult writer is
the closest I can get to that, without
having to time travel.
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A
fter several volumes of poetry and collections of short stories, Sahitya
Akademi and Padma Shree awardee
Keki Nusserwanji Daruwalla returns
for his delightful second novel
Ancestral Affairs, set against the backdrop of the
accession dilemmas of the erstwhile princely States
at the time of Independence. Daruwalla’s debut
novel For Pepper and Christ too was set in a precise historic period of the 15th century, dealing
with the fascinating explorations of Vasco Da
Gama, and the exciting twin-quests for spices and
furthering Christianity. While the first novel took
about a decade to be produced and was shortlisted
for the prestigious Commonwealth Writers’ Prize,
Ancestral Affairs — which draws
from several personal experiences of the author — took him
just about three to four years.
Narrated alternatively by
Saam Bharucha and his son
Rohinton, and spread over 11
distinct parts, the author’s vivid
memories of his own childhood
spent at Junagadh find ample
expression in the novel, with
Saam’s brief stint at Junagadh as
the advisor to the Nawab,
Mahabat Khanji, being the
springboard for action which
transforms the lives of the Father
and the Son. Curiously called
“The Law Member of the State
Council”, Lawyer Saam travels to
Junagadh, “the only Muslim
State in a sea of Hindu principalities”, leaving behind his thus far
thoroughly Parsi life, and wife
Zarine in Bombay. Unlike other
Parsi writers, especially
Rohinton and Cyrus Mistry,
whose names strike the reader
immediately as one reads the
name of Saam’s son Rohinton on the front flap of
the crisp and modestly-sized novel by Daruwalla,
the Parsi identity/culture is unselfconsciously
embedded into the larger fabric of the narrative.
The novel begins with a detailed and humorous description of a Parsi dish made of dry duck
called “sukkaboomla”, before moving on to a starkeyed description of the begums of the Nawab three
pages later — “They are in dreamland, the
begums, floating on a magic rug, unaware when
the carpet will be pulled from under their delicately hennaed feet.” Daruwalla’s flawless diction aptly
records the royal resonance of the Nawabs in the
voice of the Parsi tutor to the prince — “…I mean
the whole jingbang lot with their flamboyant turbans, their gun salutes and their absurd titles —
Farzand-i-khas and Daulat-i-Inglishia…their
sonorous titles, with liveried mace-carrying heralds, if not halberdiers, announcing their bombastic honorifics?” A shady pamphlet in circulation
completes the picture: The Nawab partaking “a
diet of the tongues of sparrows” to add to his virility, the many scandalous affairs of the harem, and
brief sketches of the who’s who of Junagadh.
Saam meets the British trader couple Syd
Barnes and Claire, who becomes Saam’s lover soon
after Syd’s death. This leads to a breakdown of his
marriage with Zarine consequently whetting his son’s anger
towards him, who notes rather
acerbically “the male primate
decid(ing) to go for white flesh”.
One is also reminded of Nobel
Laureate Nadine Gordimer’s My
Son’s Story, a marvellous novel
dealing with breakdown of families in times of political turbulence, in that case the Apartheid,
and the son’s lingering scorn for
his father’s adultery, gradually
transmuting into a better recognition of the circumstances.
Daruwalla infuses the narrative of Rohinton with just the
right amount of spicy sharpness,
clearly differentiating between
the two narrative voices.
Rohinton’s utter irreverence and
roguish spirit shuttles him from
one place and job to another,
from clinically messing up a
defamation trial: “I couldn’t hold
myself. It was the kind of feeling
you get when your bladder is full
after a booze beat up and you
rush to the Men’s. I stood up. ‘Your Honour, I never
called Mr Chatterjee a ‘do paise ka admi’. I called
him a ‘char paise ka admi’”, penning poems like “an
angel have no underwear/because he have no hormone”, to working for a yellow rag and so on. As
with Saam, readers can easily side with equally likeable Rohin, his outrageous pranks as a student who
is thrown out of medical college due to a tragicomic episode of taking illicit hooch on a dry day
that results in his friend and classmate Dam’s death.
The subsequent failed affair with the love of his life
Feroza spins into a surprising direction as she is
married to him after becoming a widow, in a baffling semblance to his father’s own affaire d’amour.
Daruwalla the poet par excellence flashes
briefly, like in Saam’s encounter with a Turkish
pasha Suleyman Yelmaz, and “the poetry in the
man”, the longish digression ending with “a bird
drift of quail, a fall of falcons”. His acute descriptions of various households and locales, both Indian
and British are also remarkable. Saam’s cricketing
analogies are immaculate, providing another perspective to the political drama: Meeting his
estranged wife after the Jamshedi Navroz, he ponders about his rather precarious situation “I was in
a no-man’s land, batting on a bad wicket, with fast
bowlers aiming for my midriff, and she was talking
of flowers!” Daruwalla also manages to sneak in
contemporary references like TV News show host
Arnab Goswami’s infamous “the nation wants to
know”, the controversial dance bars, and sleazy contracts between dubious swamys and exotic women.
Firmly intertwining personal with political history, as reflected by the ingenious wordplay of the
title, the novel provides authentic accounts of Parsi
history, references to the Tower of Silence, elaborate
Parsi family ties and a general intolerance for failure,
and family feuds over trivial matters blown out of
proportion: Stories mostly dug out through various
ageing relatives by Rohinton who feels the “need to
say something about my ancestors”, after his misadventures at Lawrence college. Many amusing Parsi
phrases pepper the narrative, like “aprithonagafatijaye, my posterior would be ripped apart”. A quick
turn of events with references to Vallabhbhai Patel,
his aide VP Menon’s visit to pave the way for
Junagadh’s accession to India, a damp squib of a villain in the cousin Neil “Blackthorn”, neatly packed
off after his failed attempts to hijack Claire’s lucrative shipping business, the fleeing Nawab with his
begums and hounds, Claire’s sudden return to
London in the face of a transformed “Nehruvian
India”, and Gandhi’s death barely mentioned, the
novel races ahead to encapsulate the story of the
son, equally exciting, complete with a disappeared
bride and an abrupt reconciliation with feuding
branches of the extended family. A careful reader
will spot a few typographical errors in numbering of
the various sections. The novel steers clear from
being a mere “family saga” and is unlike the usual
pre/independence narratives with a generous sprinkling of patriotism and tragic lives of larger-than-life
heroes. Its strength lies in the author’s trademark wit
and underscored humour, effortlessly flowing prose,
and a trenchant grasp of the historic events that are
accorded an unconventional treatment.
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O
n page 163 of Anjaly Thomas’s There are
No Gods in North Korea, the writer finally finds a seat in a metro train in China
after a traumatic experience trying to communicate in a country with which she shares no common language and meditates upon a beautiful
young woman who shares her compartment. “I
followed her extremely silky smooth legs to her
panty line… watched her muscles tighten as she
spread her legs apart to balance herself with the
train’s rhythm...” writes Thomas wondering why
China produces
so much body
wax (the women
are flawless!).
When the train
jerks, the woman
raises her hand to
grab the handrail
and ‘my eyes had
come to rest on a
small but determined bush
straining to get
out of her armpit.’
This breaks the
image of perfecE96C62C6?@8@5D
tion created in the
:??@CE9<@C62
author’s mind
about the porce2_[R]jEY`^Rd
lain smoothness
?Zj`XZC$&!
of Chinese
women and awakens
her to their misplaced priorities regarding waxing. The tone of the passage defines Thomas’s
book about backpacking across continents where
just like ungroomed underarms, it takes a sharp
eye to notice the mess hiding behind the polished gleaming facade.
A journey into North Korea with which the
book opens is an excellent description of experiencing first-hand the process of Governmentsanctioned mythmaking. The extent to which
the state controls the lives of the citizens and
moderates every aspect of the tourists’ itinerary
is unnerving, beginning with correct dress code
to threats of correctional treatment for ‘folding
or damaging a newspaper containing pictures
of the ruler’. In the book, North Korea becomes
not only a country with no gods (Juche, the
state ideology of North Korea mandates the
worship of former leader Kim Il Sung as the
supreme deity) but also a country with no countrymen. When her group descends at the airport,
Thomas and her co-travelers find three Air
Koryo planes tethered to the ground like cattle,
grass growing around their wheels. In North
Korea, the history of the world is changed to suit
the ruler and capital Pyongyang is populated with
only the most presentable and ‘functional’ citizens while the rest are relegated to the countryside. To add to the illusion, there are magnificent
restaurants to give visitors a false sense of wellbeing while little is done to hide the frequent
power cuts and the emptiness of apartment buildings and the 10 lane highways. Despite the grimness, what remains with Thomas and the reader
is the soulful folktale their Korean companion
Miss Deer sings them a day before they leave.
North Korea is followed by a freer, more
relaxing trip through the wide expanses of the
Gobi Desert in Mongolia where, as Thomas
mentions, there are five times as many animals
as there are people. Her travel companions and
guide are friendlier and here Thomas learns
about the folk belief in avoos or guiding spirits
and eats aruul (dried curd), khuushur (a meat
pastry), airag (fermented mare’s milk) and the
rather distasteful kimichi or fermented cabbage
which she first encountered in Pyongang.
Unfortunately, the book doesn’t provide recipes
for the exotic dishes which is my personal gripe
against travelogues. It then moves swiftly
through Uganda, Turkey and China. My
favourite section is set in a hostel in Turkey
where the author fancies a beautiful fawncoloured coat that belongs to a middle-aged outof-work woman named Safak Deniz who is willing enough to part with it for a little money.
Thomas’s reaction as she makes the purchase is a
mixture of joy, sentimentality, pragmatism and
intense sorrow, making the section the most pro-
foundly touching part of the book. In the
‘acknowledgments’ section, Thomas mentions
that her meeting with Safak Deniz led to the
inception of her initiative Travel and Relief. There
is also an almost surreal account of her cruising
on the crocodile-infested waters of the Nile with
Maurice, an alcohol-loving hog and another
where a hippo sneaks past her tent at night but
these episodes are better read than written about.
Mixed with Thomas’s humanism is the brutal
honesty of her introspections. Though seasoned by
travels all around the globe and a compulsive
believer in the inherent goodness of people, she
acknowledges the pain of being subjected to
racism and insensitivity. While visiting the Kasubi
tombs in Kampala, she is made to wear a sarong to
cover her legs and given the alternative of staying
back as one of the wives of the Kabaka (king of the
Buganda kingdom).
In Uganda, she meets another classic walking
stereotype — a middle-aged Indian restaurateur
who is initially kind but tries to hit on her when
she is drunk. But Thomas doesn’t let these acts of
trespass pass without a fight. For example, a local
man tries to proposition her in Uganda and when
she repulses his advances, he calls her a ‘white
bi***’. She responds with the most powerful
weapon available — a smirk! ‘A smug and condescending smirk has always succeeded in reducing
anyone to smithereens and eased me out of tight
or embarrassing spots wonderfully.’
There are No Gods in North Korea is not your
average travel book; it dwells more on the people
the writer meets during her travels than the places
themselves. Only about one fourth of it is set in
North Korea and the rest is devoted to Thomas’s
journeys across Africa, Europe and Asia. Whether
it is the grooming of young women, the lonely
trips in the vast open expanses of Mongolia or the
disturbing experience of trying dog meat in China
and being reminded of one’s pet dog, the book
does a neat job of tying memory with new exotic
experiences and establishing that our past, presumptions and phobias are forever with us, judging, connecting and reprimanding. Bollywood follows Thomas to North Korea where the rain, valley of flowers and abundance of curious tourists
makes her want to break into dance and the
chipathi (a version of the humble Indian flat
bread) seeks her out in Kampala.
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Y
ears ago, a television producer
had commissioned me to
interview Sunil Gangopadhyay,
the finest writer of Bengali prose who
was also considered by many to be
the best contemporary poet. That was
almost a decade before Sunil passed
away. The interview was scheduled
for a monsoon afternoon. It had been
raining heavily since the previous
evening and Kolkata had decided to
take a day off as streets and lanes
rapidly disappeared under water.
There’s no way he will come to the
studio in this weather, we might as
well call it off, I told the producer
who had by then begun to compute
his losses. But Sunil did come for the
interview and he wasn’t late either. We
chatted for a while, had coffee, and
then settled down for the interview.
I found Sunil to be a great raconteur and an effortless communicator
who, once he warmed up, held me
spellbound with his masterful ability
to recall events and make them come
alive without so much as shifting in
his chair. He chose his words with
loving care like an artist mixing
colours on his palette to get the right
shade before putting brush to canvas.
What was equally impressive was his
humility; while recounting his early
years when he was struggling to
make his mark as a writer, he let
others take the centrestage while he
remained the storyteller, deeply interested in all that was happening
around him yet calmly detached.
It was while talking about his
early years that he mentioned how he
and his friends, including Shakti
Chattopadhyay, all of them poets,
would travel deep into rural Bengal
and Bihar, explore forests and lead a
Bohemian life that was our version of
the 1960s and 1970s when Allen
Ginsberg discovered the charms of
Banaras. It was more than the shallow mystical flower power of the
times; it was intense and, to an
extent, daringly reckless — you
pushed yourself to the brink and then
pulled back. For Sunil, Shakti and
others, it was their most creative
years which they spent rescuing Bengali prose and poetry from sloganeers
and pamphleteers masquerading as
writers. There was nothing dark and
desolate about what they wrote; there
was passion and ebullience. Even
unrequited love was to be celebrated
and treasured, not mourned over.
One such ‘trip’ — that’s the word
Sunil used — was to Dhalbhumgarh.
“Four of us decided we should get out
of Kolkata, we needed a breath of
fresh air. So we just got into a train at
Howrah station. We had not even
purchased tickets for the journey... the
idea was to get off at a place that
would catch our imagination. So, on
the way we paid for our journey to
the travelling ticket-examiner. He
asked us for our destination. We told
him that we didn’t know where we
were going to. That really stumped
him!” As Dhalbhumgarh approached,
they were enchanted by the dense
shaal forest shimmering in the early
autumn morning light and they
decided to get off at the tiny station.
The next few days were a journey
of discovery for Sunil, an exploration
of the way we who live in cities look
at forests and their tribal dwellers, and
the way they look at us. The mahuasoaked story of that ‘trip’ appeared in
a puja baarshiki (annual literary magazines published during Durga Puja)
in 1967 as Aranyer Din Raatri. “One
day, I think it was Ashtami, I received
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a call. The person at the other end
had a deep, baritone voice and introduced himself as Satyajit Ray,” Sunil
told me, carrying the story of the ‘trip’
forward in his inimitable style, “I
couldn’t believe myself. Satyajit Ray?
Calling me?” By then Ray had made a
name for himself and was a celebrity.
The master filmmaker told Sunil that
he had just finished reading Aranyer
Din Raatri and wanted to make a film
based on the novel. Could he get the
rights? Sunil, of course, said yes.
The eponymous film was
released in 1969 and was a big hit,
marking Ray’s shift to contemporary
issues and 1960s Bengali middle-class
angst. Like many other films directed
by Ray, Aranyer Din Raatri (or Days
and Nights of the Forest, as it was
titled for foreign audience) featured
Soumitra Chatterjee, Rabi Ghosh and
Aparna Sen. Pahari Sanyal and
Kaberi Bose were there too. The surprise inclusions were Samit Bhanja
and Subhendu Chatterjee. And the
biggest surprise was the inclusion of
Simi Garewal who played the role of
a seductive young tribal woman,
Duli, lisping in half-Bengali, halfSanthali, her large kohl-lined eyes as
intoxicating as the heady smell of
mahua even before it has been dried
and fermented. Ray elevated Sunil’s
portrayal of the eternal conflict
between man and nature and the
clash of two worlds, one in which we
live and the other inhabited by tribals, to cinematic brilliance. Next year,
in 1970, Ray produced a second film
based on a novel written by Sunil.
Pratidwandi was an urban story, in
sharp contrast to Aranyer Din Raatri.
That afternoon, after the interview was over and we were smoking
cigarettes over coffee, Sunil reverted
to Aranyer Din Raatri. “You know, I
felt honoured by Ray deciding to
make a film based on my novel. But I
do wish he had consulted me on the
script. When I saw the film, it was a
lot different from my book,” he told
me. Which is true. If you read the
book and then watch the film, the differences become stark. But Ray would
argue that he was making a film while
Sunil was writing a novel. The medium forced the changes.
Meanwhile, Dhalbhumgarh has
changed, as has all of Chhota Nagpur
as the plateau was called in the past.
Jharkhand is only part of the region
symbolised by Dhalbhumgarh in
Aranyer Din Raatri. The dense shaal
forests have disappeared, thanks to
the timber mafia, and the rude intrusion of ‘urbanisation’ has changed the
lives of forest dwellers — the Santhals,
the Mundas, the Bhumij, the Lodhas
and the Sabars — forever. You won’t
find Dulis dancing to the throbbing
beat of madol or tribals happily high
on mahua singing Tusu songs.
When we were growing up in
Jamshedpur, we would often go for
school picnics to nearby jungles
beyond Subarnarekha or Domohoni
where Subarnarekha meets Karkai,
redolent with the smell of shaal,
mahua and tendu. Those forests
have been plundered by dikus with
the help of tribal collaborators. The
animals are gone, too. All this happened many years ago; the loot is
being talked of now. In the name of
‘development’ and ‘empowerment’,
we have destroyed the culture of the
forest, the days and nights of carefree existence of an entire people
now belong to the distant past.
(The writer is a current affairs
analyst based in NCR)
5 4 4 3 1 0 2 :
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Reader response to
Swapan Dasgupta’s column,
Usual Suspects, published
on June 12:
Mixed responses: Let us face
the reality. While appreciating the way the Modi
Government has been
performing, one cannot go
on without a mention of a
positive improvement in his
day-to-day life. Union
Finance Minister Arun
Jailtley’s efforts to get bank
interest rates reduced is hurting the senior citizens miserably, especially those who do
not get pensions. Their
monthly income has reduced
and market prices have not
got gone down. Living cost
too is on the rise. If these
problems are not addressed,
frustration will creep in.
Chandra Moorthy
Educating party workers:
Many high profile supporters (some may be opportunistics), after getting tired
of the endless patronages
and corruptions of the
Congress, joined the BJP.
However, the BJP needs
another wing to educate and
temp down some of its
party workers and their
high profile operators.
Premolal
Introspection time: Very
true, the practice in other
parties till now has not been
ennobling. And to replicate
it within the BJP will go
against the grain of what
Prime Minister Narendra
Modi is up to. It will create
a patronage culture that has
eaten into the vitals of the
system including the
bureaucracy till now. So its
time for introspection.
Subramanian
Right direction: The author
is right about Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s
desire to break loose of the
patronage system to motivate party activists. We do
not know how a Labour or
Tory activist in England or a
Democrat or Republican
supporter in the US is motivated to work for an election victory. But it is necessary for the BJP, a party
with a difference, to get rid
of this sub-contracting business popularised by the
likes of the Congress
and the communists.
Modi appears to be following the model developed
by Mahatma Gandhi, Indira
Gandhi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee
and few others — to communicate directly to the voters to garner their support,
thus minimising the role of
an election time worker.
Jitendra
9^TYQ^UUTce^YV_b]SYfY\
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Reader response to
Kanchan Gupta’s column,
Coffee Break, published
on June 12:
The blame-game: It is a real
tragedy that the author has
put the blame entirely on
the politicians. The real culprits are those who call
themselves intellectuals, liberals, secularists, etc. And
these include not just
Muslims, but also nonMuslims. Many wanted a
Uniform Civil Code, but
when the Sangh ideology
came to the centre-stage,
they become against it.
Ashok Chowgule
True Islam: The All India
Muslim Personal Law Board
is not a legal entity but a big
con which is psychologically
brow-beating people into
their version of Islam. Pure
Islam is pure, with high
principles. At that level it
has more in common with
the values of our Dharmic
philosophy, whose goal is
enlightenment.
R Singh
Informative article: I thank
the author for giving information about the birth of
the All India Muslim
Personal Board (AIMPLB)
and its actual status.
In my view, there is
nothing wrong in sharia’hbased personal laws to the
extent that the parties are
satisfied. When a party is
dissatisfied and knocks the
door of the judiciary,
it is incumbent on its part
to provide justice to the
aggrieved.
Here, the AIMPLB has
no locus standi. It must be
made clear that, sharia’h is
not equipped to dispense justice when one of the parties
to any dispute is nonMuslim. A simple question to
the leading lights of AIMPLB
is: Do they recognise the
supremacy of the Supreme
Court? If not, they are at liberty to migrate to a country
where sharia’h laws prevail.
SC Panda
No justice: Sometime back
former Supreme Court
judge Markandey Katju had
rightly advocated for a Uniform Civil Code. In his view,
one of the reasons for the
backwardness of Muslims
was that there was no modernisation of their personal
law. To compete with world
in economic progress, the
Muslim community must
accept reforms retaining
their religious sentiments
and taints in the right spirit.
M Kumar
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S
peculations are rife in the
Congress again that Priyanka
Gandhi Vadra might become the
face of the party in Uttar
Pradesh. If sources are to be
believed, the Congress is discussing her
name though it is not clear whether she
will be the Chief Minister face or incharge of the campaign committee.
Congress leaders who earlier said
that strategist Prashant Kishor would not
continue for long are now saying he can
manage anything. They believe he is the
brain behind the removal of UP incharge Madhusudan Mistry, and soon
State President Nirmal Khatri will also be
asked to leave. Now, Kishor’s third recommendation is to project Priyanka as
the face of the party in the State.
The new in-charge, Ghulam Nabi
Azad, has given an indication that the
party will project its CM candidate and
he/she will not be selected based on caste
equations. Such a face can only come
from the Gandhi family. So, many leaders are saying that Priyanka might get the
responsibility of State President and
chairman of the campaign committee.
didn’t give any information about the
activities in Jawahar Bagh.
There are two different and distinct
reasons behind the attack on Rajnath
Singh’s ministry. SP leaders are of the
view that they can send out a message to
Thakur voters in the State. They know
that either officially or unofficially,
Rajnath will be the face of the BJP for UP
Assembly Elections, and if he plays an
active role, then Thakur votes will go to
the BJP fold. They know that Rajnath has
the capability to pull the SP’s Thakur voters towards the BJP. That is why the SP
has made Amar active.
On one hand, Amar will be active for
Thakur votes, and on the other, he will
defend the SP in media. His close associates are saying that what Ram Gopal was
doing earlier will be now done by Amar.
In fact, Ram Gopal is not happy with the
party’s stand on Amar, so he will not be
active for party work. Even before the
Rajya Sabha elections, he had gone
abroad. So, apart from election politics,
Amar has started managing things even
outside Uttar Pradesh.
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s the Assembly Elections near in
UP, political parties are becoming
restless. The biggest factor for discomfort is that not one party is confident of
its core vote bank. Whenever there is a
direct fight in UP, the Samajwadi Party
and Bahujan Samaj Party are able to
save their core vote bank. But whenever there is a four-cornered fight, no
party has been able to save its core vote
bank. A similar situation is arising in
UP this time. The SP, BSP, BJP and
Congress are all active; the core vote
banks of each party are not consolidated but rather split.
During the last Lok Sabha
Elections, the BJP had made a dent
into the vote bank of both the SP and
BSP. The BJP had won all reserved
seats as it was able to get the votes of
Dalits. That was the reason why
Mayawati had not won even a single
seat. The BJP had even grabbed the
core votes of Mulayam Singh Yadav.
That is why the SP and BSP are
apprehensive this time. They are of the
view that if the BJP manages to polarise
voters on the name of Hindutva, then
they will certainly lose a major chunk of
their core vote banks.
In the same manner, the BJP is
apprehensive of forward voters. The
party believes that despite all its efforts,
the Brahmin voters are not inclined
towards it till date. If the Brahmins go
into the BSP fold, then the BJP will suffer
a big setback. The BJP is also worried
about Thakur voters, and the SP is trying
its best to keep this vote bank intact.
The SP, BSP and Congress are also
worried about the Muslim vote bank. It
is not yet clear whether they will move
en masse or will split. The three parties
are fighting against the BJP with their
full strength and are hopeful of bagging
Muslim votes.
The BSP is giving a message that
Dalits and Brahmins are with
Mayawati, so Muslims should also
come forward. On the other hand, SP is
staking a claim on Yadav and Thakur
votes, and thus trying to attract the
Muslim vote bank. The Congress is
saying that it is the only option of the
BJP at all-India level, so the Muslims
should strengthen the party.
102270A08´B6>350C74A
T
here is a war in Bihar over Baccha
Rai. He is the accused in the
Intermediate topper scam and is behind
bars. But leaders of various parties are
fighting over who is the godfather of
Baccha Rai? When the scam was
unearthed, there were speculations that
Baccha is the baccha of Lalu Prasad
Yadav. Media was showing a video in
which Baccha was sharing stage with
Lalu and his son Tej Pratap. Many photographs went viral on social media
which showed Baccha was close to Lalu.
But then Tejaswi Yadav shared a photograph on Twitter of Giriraj Singh giving prizes to students at Baccha’s college.
After that a Twitter war broke out
between Giriraj and Tejaswi. Giriraj said
there were photos showing him with
Lalu also, but by virtue of that he could
not be an alleged in fodder scam. Tejaswi
again attacked Giriraj and said that BJP
leaders were well aware of his honesty
and that was the reason why they were
not defending him. Many supporters of
the JDU and RJD wrote that Giriraj and
Ramesh had recently said that
Jtheairam
Rahul Gandhi was the real President of
party, and last Saturday Rahul himBaccha were to start a medical college.
Meanwhile, Giriraj and his supporters have unearthed a photograph in
which Baccha is seen with Nitish Kumar.
That photograph has been shared on
social media also. Now, the focus has
been shifted to the CM, and JDU leaders
have also plunged into this war.
Photographs of Baccha with some more
leaders are yet to come out and this
debate will go deeper.
0<0AB8=6702C8E48=B?
mar Singh has become active soon
A
after being elected as a Rajya Sabha
member. He has started defending the
Samajwadi Party in his traditional style.
He is defending Shivpal Yadav more than
the party as Shivpal had helped him a lot.
On June 11, Amar was elected to
Rajya Sabha and the very next day, he
called a press conference to defend
Shivpal. Amar rejected the allegations leveled against Shivpal in the Mathura fiasco
and attacked the Central Government. He
raised questions over the Home Ministry
and asked why the investigative agencies
self endorsed that statement. In
Ghaziabad, Rahul said he was the chief
of the Congress and had the responsibility of looking after his partymen. So, it is
only a matter of time when he will take
charge of the party officially. Rahul has
also started building his team and might
accommodate some veteran leaders too.
Senior leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad
and Kamal Nath have been made
General Secretaries. Apart from them,
some other veteran leaders will also find
place in Rahul’s team. Madhusudan
Mistry has been appointed in-charge
General Secretary of the central campaign committee. He can be made organisation General Secretary in place of
Janardan Dwivedi.
Among old General Secretaries, CP
Joshi will continue. The results of Bihar
and West Bengal have made his position
strong. Digvijaya Singh might also continue provided Rahul instructs his close
associate Jitendra Singh to continue.
Mukul Wasnik may continue as the Dalit
face, but this is also a fact that K Raju
wants to become a General Secretary.
FadhZ_XZ_:_UZRGZVe_R^eZVd RWeVcARcZ\\RcgZdZe
T
he geo-strategic situation in
the Asia-Pacific region is
undergoing dramatic churning in recent times in which
Vietnam’s position has emerged as
a major focal point amongst many
nations. The US, Japan and India
are three major countries which
have found strategic congruence
with Vietnam. US President Barack
Obama became the third sitting
President in office to visit Vietnam,
with whom the US fought a bitter
war over four decades ago.
Lately, the Shinzo Abe
Government has deepened defence
and economic ties with this country. India is not far behind. Days
after Barack’s visit, India’s Defence
Minister Manohar Parrikar led a
high-level defence industry delegation on June 5-6, 2016, representing most major Indian arms companies to boost military relations.
In 2015, President Pranab
Mukherjee made a historic visit to
Vietnam. A landmark that coincided with Parrikar’s visit was that
both countries completed 45 years
of diplomatic relations and 10
years of strategic partnership.
The diplomatic outreach of
major powers to Vietnam is driven by the China factor. Parrikar’s
visit indicates that India is keen to
deepen military engagement with
Vietnam with a view to counter
China’s increasing footprint in the
Indian Ocean by setting up a
naval base at Hainan Island, located adjacent to Vietnam. China’s
assertiveness in the South China
Sea is another trigger for IndiaVietnam bonhomie.
3454=242>>?4A0C8>=
What India is looking at is joint
development and production
orders from Vietnam. Both India
and Vietnam share a commonality
of interest on military platforms,
most of which are of Russian origin, including submarines and
frigates. Both countries have a
defence cooperation agreement and
India’s possible sale of Brahmos
5^a8]SXPQTTUX]Vd_EXTc]P\³bSTUT]RTRP_PQX[XchXbPX\TSPcR^d]cTaX]V2WX]TbT
Pa\bbP[Tbc^XcbX\\TSXPcT]TXVWQ^dabbdRWPb?PZXbcP]bPhbA090A0<?0=30
missile to Vietnam has emerged as
a major talking point. No wonder,
Parrikar was accompanied by the
DRDO Chief, Secretary (Defence
Production), Chief of Eastern
Naval Command, Director General
Military Training and Director
Generation Operation of the IAF.
Besides Vietnam, UAE has
also evinced interest to have
Brahmos in its arsenal. Parrikar
was in that country on May 22-23
when this issue came up for discussion. Though New Delhi has
not yet agreed on the sale of
Brahmos with the UAE, the
Narendra Modi Government has
cleared the sale of Brahmos to
Vietnam. In fact, Vietnam had
been eyeing the missile for the past
five years. The UPA Government
was reluctant to take a decision
because of Chinese objections.
Brahmos is a supersonic antiship missile developed jointly by
New Delhi and Moscow. India
and Russia have to agree to export
this weapon system to a third
country. It is considered one of
the most effective and lethal antiship missiles in any nation’s inventory because of its speed. The missile can be launched from both
ship and land. Its supersonic
speed and the ability to skim the
surface at heights as low as 10 m
make it hard for an enemy’s radar
to track. It is practically invulnerable to modern anti-missile and air
defence systems.
India, too, is testing a submarine-launch version that could
conceivably be used in Vietnam’s
Kilo-class submarines. In view of
the strategic congruence, both
Modi and Parrikar were in favour
of exporting the missile system to
Vietnam. Vietnam could emerge
as the first country to receive the
290-km range Brahmos weapon
Parrikar and Singapore’s counterpart Ng Eng Hen also stressed
that all countries must respect freedom of navigation and right of passage as well as unimpeded commerce and access to resources in
international waters. Though
Singapore is not affected by China’s
belligerence in the South China
Sea, it shares other nations’ concern
over the raging dispute.
D=70??H278=0
system by India. Parrikar and
Vietnam’s new Minister of
Defence, Gen Ngo Xuan Lich,
exchanged opinions on the areas
to strengthen military cooperation
between the two countries.
The rationale behind the
Modi Government’s decision to
sell the Brahmos is not difficult to
decipher. As said, the UPA
Government succumbed to the
Chinese objections and did not
give nod to the sale of the missile
system to Vietnam. After the
Modi Government came to
power, the strategic scenario in
the region has dramatically
altered with China becoming
more assertive and belligerent to
assert its claims on disputed territories and maritime space in the
region over which there are other
claimants, thereby disturbing the
existing power equilibrium.
Vietnam, along with China, is
one of the six countries locked in a
bitter dispute over navigation
rights through the South China
Sea. In particular, Vietnam is prepared to take the cudgel over
China in the face-off over maritime boundaries and needs
friends. While Vietnam has friends
in the US, India and Japan, China
is getting increasingly isolated.
The Philippines, another
claimant, has taken up the case
to the International Tribunal at
The Hague for arbitration. China
has declared that it would reject
the verdict. Under the circumstance, China’s increasing footprint needs to be checked so that
the peace and stability in the
region is not disturbed.
India has its own stake in the
South China Sea. ONGC is
engaged in oil exploration activity
in areas claimed by Vietnam and
has gone there on Vietnam’s invitation. It has rights to two oil drilling
blocks off the Vietnam coast. If its
economic interests are adversely
affected by Chinese actions, India
would be compelled to defend,
with the possibility of further escalation. That would be an unwelcome proposition. More than $70
billion worth of Indian trade is
routed through these waters.
Japan is also on board. At the
annual Asia Security Summit in
Singapore prior to his visit to
Vietnam, Parrikar had a meeting
on the sidelines with his Japanese
counterpart Gen Nakatani and
agreed on continued bilateral
cooperation on maritime security
amid China’s growing territorial
assertiveness. India, Japan and the
US started to conduct the Malabar
joint naval exercise off Okinawa
Prefecture on June 10, a move that
has already ruffled the feathers of
prickly China. Parrikar stressed
that it was in Beijing’s own economic interest to reduce tensions
in the South China Sea.
China feels uneasy at this increasing India-Vietnam bonhomie and
is keenly watching. When Russia
sold the Kilo-class submarines to
Vietnam, the Indian Navy trained
the Vietnamese Navy. On its part,
India is also setting up a satellite
tracking and imaging centre in
southern Vietnam that will give
Hanoi access to pictures from
India’s earth observation satellites
that cover the region, including
China and the South China Sea.
When Obama was in Vietnam in
May, he announced an end to its
embargo on sales of lethal arms to
Vietnam. That was a historic step
that draws a line under the two
countries’ old enmity.
These developments are
unpleasant news for China.
Though beefing up of Vietnam’s
defence capability is inevitably a
counter to Chinese design, for
India it is also a counter to Chinese
arms sales to its immediate neighbourhood, including sale of submarines to Pakistan and military
systems to Sri Lanka and
Bangladesh.
So far, India’s defence exports
are minuscule but have grown perceptibly. The future looks promising with Modi Government’s Make
in India programme. The sale of
Brahmos to Vietnam shall boost
the Indian industry. Besides the sale
of four naval patrol vessels from
Garden Reach Shipbuilders and
Engineers to Vietnam, the sale of
Brahmos as another viable export
product shall reinforce the defence
sale as an instrument of India’s
regional diplomacy.
It was, therefore, appropriate
that in this strategic partnership
model, Parrikar roped in business
leaders in the arms manufacturing
sector in his delegation so that the
synergy can be appropriately
honed. He urged the Indian
defence industry to help Vietnam
in its military modernisation. The
areas identified for cooperation are
upgrade of thermal sights and fire
control systems for BMP, T 54 and
T 55 tanks, upgrade of MI 17/MI 8
helicopters, shipbuilding programmes, missile system from
India and software defined radios
from Vietnam.
In May 2015, when then
Vietnamese Defence Minister
General Phùng Quang Thanh visited India, a five-year (2015-2020)
defence pact was signed. The intention to build close strategic ties was
in the backdrop of an increasingly
assertive China flexing its muscle in
the South China Sea. That time,
cooperation between the coast
guards of the two countries and
defence cooperation, including
cooperation in the area of maritime
security, was agreed upon.
External Affairs Minister
Sushma Swaraj’s visit to Vietnam in
August ahead of President
Mukherjee’s visit in September
reaffirmed India’s commitment to
support Vietnam’s cause. This was
followed by Vietnamese Prime
Minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s visit
to India in October. Parrikar’s
recent visit was a further extension
and reaffirmation of such commitment. Cooperation in the defence
sector shall complement the economic ties which have also been
developing satisfactorily.
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A
ngelina Jolie is expected to take
on the role played by Lauren
Bacall in Murder on the Orient
Express, in an upcoming remake of the
1974 classic, directed by Kenneth
Branagh. Branagh’s film, like Sidney
Lumet’s original, is based on Agatha
Christie’s 1934 mystery novel, which
revolves around special detective
Hercule Poirot and his efforts to solve
a murder case aboard the famous train.
Branagh will star as Poirot, played
by Albert Finney in Lumet’s adaptation. According to the Hollywood
Reporter, Jolie is in final talks to portray Mrs Harriet Hubbard, one of the
passengers who’s deemed a suspect.
The rest of the ensemble has yet to be
announced, but expect it to be starpacked. On top of starring Finney and
Bacall, Lumet’s film also featured
Ingrid Bergman and Sean Connery.
Shooting is expected to begin in
November, with locations including
London and Malta. Green Lantern writer
Michael Green penned the screenplay.
Jolie has appeared on the big
screen only intermittently in recent
years, and has suggested that she plans
to move permanently into directing.
Last year, Jolie directed herself, alongside husband Brad Pitt, in the arthouse
relationship drama By the Sea. Coming
up, she’s slated to reprise the role of
Maleficent in Disney’s sequel to the
2014 box-office smash.
Fox will release Branagh’s take on
Murder on the Orient Express on
November 22, 2017.
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A
s a teenager, I collected photo
portraits of Picasso. Whether
he was dancing across his studio naked from the waist up,
playing the part of a matador
with a hand towel, or simply pulling silly
faces while he posed, Picasso seemed to
bask in an aura of magical creativity in
even the most ridiculous situations. The
most famous artist of his time, he was an
exceptionally talented self-promoter.
There wasn’t much room in Picasso’s life
for anything but himself and his art. The
tyranny of genius reduced everyone else
around him to playing bit parts in the
great drama of his life.
One photograph, however, stood out.
It delighted me so much at the time that I
had it printed on a T-shirt. I could not get
enough of the young woman’s smile who
walked along the beach as Picasso held a
parasol over her to shield her from the
sun. It was taken on a hot summer’s day
in 1948, in the small resort town of GolfeJuan on the Côte d’Azur in France.
She is beaming — laughing the artist
off. There are few women who came as
close to the sun as Françoise Gilot. Most
burned themselves upon the genius,
crashing like Icarus in the ancient story.
Picasso called her “The Woman Who
Says No” (as she was the only woman who
dared to defy him).
Born in November 1921 to wealthy
parents in Neuilly, Francoise, herself an
artist, first met Picasso during the occupation of Paris in May in 1943. Dining with
friends in the small restaurant Le Catalan
on the left bank of the Seine, Picasso was
holding court at the next table.
Whenever he made a joke or a particularly witty remark, the company at his
table laughed. Picasso, then 61, however,
seemed to only have eyes for Francoise,
who was just 21 at the time. When this
young lady didn’t let herself be dazzled,
Picasso strolled over to her table, holding
a bowl of cherries, and asked to be introduced. It was the start of a relationship
that was to span 10 years. While they
never married, they did have two children
together: Claude in 1947 and their daughter Paloma, born two years later.
A few years ago, I saw an exhibition
of Picasso’s portraits of women. They were
all there: Jacqueline Roque, Picasso’s last
wife, who put an end to her life with a
revolver. Marie-Thérèse Walter, who
hanged herself. Olga Khokhlova and
Dora Maar who went mad with grief.
There was only one woman in that vast
collection who appeared to have survived
unscathed: Francoise Gilot.
I wondered: Could she really still be
alive? She had broken up with Picasso
over a half century ago, fleeing their home
in the South of France with her two kids. I
made enquiries with a couple of galleries
in the US and, amazingly, got a phone
number and address for her in Paris.
Montmartre, the famous artists’ quarter, has long since turned into a tourist
trap. But only a few streets away from the
tacky pavement artists, I found one of the
most famous survivors of art history still
working away in her atelier. After ringing
at the door, she stood before me: A small
red dress, a short pageboy haircut, the legendary circumflex eyebrows—which
Henri Matisse had once raved about—
dancing over her lively eyes.
Françoise was then 90 years old, yet
seemed no more than half that age and
laughed when I asked her if she still painted. Yes, she said, was still painting every
day. This was no museum, no gallery; this
was a life workshop. She explained how
she begins her work at dawn, still in her
pyjamas and slippers.
Five years earlier, she had voluntarily
given up driving because of problems
with her heart. Not that she was afraid of
death, but she didn’t want to take anyone
with her. “If you have a heart attack on the
road, you’ll probably kill someone else.”
Another age-related affliction weighed
more heavily. She was by then almost
blind in her left eye.
A catastrophe for an artist surely?
“Nonsense. That doesn’t bother me at all.”
Françoise, it seems doesn’t let much affect
her. She just keeps going, amazed by her
own resilience. “Basically, I’m done with
life,” she said, throwing her hands up in the
air in exasperation. “When I was 86, I
thought, this is the end, because this is the
age my mother died. Eighty-nine seemed
impossible, and 90 was really the last straw.
I thought ‘you are going to have to take
your own life if you ever want to die’.”
The children Francoise had
with Picasso are now in their late
60s. Claude is 69 and in charge of
his father’s estate.
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She recalls mornings as the time
Picasso had his worse moods, often telling
Francoise and anyone who would listen
that his life was boring and nothing was
interesting. By the evening he was at the
top of the world. “He was an extremely
changeable man,” Francoise said.
It was certainly a turbulent time and
she described how he once held a burning
cigarette close to her cheek almost as if he
wanted to brand her like cattle. “But the
sadism that he had, which was purely
mental, was even worse later on”,
Francoise explained. “That’s why my love
for him became extinct. Picasso is certainly the person for whom I had the most
intense passion in my whole life, but I was
not about to live like a slave in front of a
power that had no limit.”
The more controlling and unpredictable Picasso became, the more
Françoise entertained the thought of leaving him. She waited, partly for the sake of
the children, as Picasso tried to turn her
into a broody hen. “Pablo wanted me to be
pregnant all the time because then I was
weaker and not quite myself. After the second child, I said enough was enough.”
Francoise warned him as she became
sadder every day that their love was slowly dying. “I told him, ‘I’m here because I
love you. But if one day I no longer love
you, no power in the world will keep me
here, because I am not a sculpture, I can
walk with my own two feet.’” In 1953 she
finally left him for good taking her children with her back to live in Paris.
A decade after their separation,
Francoise published a book about her
time with Picasso. It was a world-wide
bestseller and enraged Picasso so much
that he refused to see the children again.
He also sued to prevent the book’s publication. When he lost the trial, he called
Francoise one last time and told her: “I
congratulate you, you are the winner, and
you know I always like a winner.”
Francoise said, “I replied: Yes, I know,
that’s why I’m a winner, I should be one.”
Has she regretted getting involved
with Picasso? “I knew it was going to be
a catastrophe, but a catastrophe that
would be worth living.” I said despite a
surfeit of life, she has more energy than
teenagers. “I said I was tired of life, not
tired of painting!”
CWT3PX[hCT[TVaP_W
S
ome actors reportedly turn down
roles in superhero movies for fear
of being pigeonholed. For Jude
Law, the reason was more prosaic: He
couldn’t cope with the costume.
In an interview on Stephen
Colbert’s Late Show on Tuesday,
Law revealed he was approached to
play Superman in Bryan Singer’s
2006 film Superman Returns. “At the
time it just didn’t float my boat,”
Law said. “I just didn’t really want
to go there. I’m an Englishman and
it just didn’t seem to fit. I was really
worried about the outfit and I just
didn’t fancy it.”
Law recalled how Singer was keen
to cast him, reassuring him that the
suit had been “revamped” and sending it to Law’s hotel — with a minder
— for him to try on.
The actor retreated to the bathroom and struggled into the spandex,
but the reflection that greeted him
failed to alleviate his fears.
“I stood there and then I have this
picture of me in that costume on
posters all around the world and I was
like ‘No way!’ and I unzipped it. I was
Superman for two minutes. That’s
enough!”
The role eventually went to
Brandon Routh, who did not reprise it
after a mixed critical reception to the
film, which made $391m worldwide.
Henry Cavill took over the role
for 2013’s Man of Steel and Batman v
Superman: Dawn of Justice, which was
released earlier this year.
DZ_XVcC`UDeVhRce\_ZXYeVU
A
fter almost 50 years as rock
royalty, Rod Stewart has been
honoured by the real thing,
receiving a knighthood from the
Queen in her birthday honours.
Stewart, 71, was recognised not only
for a 45-year career in which he had
sold more than 100 million albums
worldwide, but also for his long commitment to several charities.
The singer said he had “led a
wonderful life” and had enjoyed a
“tremendous career, thanks to the
generous support of the great British
public. This monumental honour has
topped it off and I couldn’t ask for
anything more”. With a nod to one of
his songs, he added: “I thank Her
Majesty and promise to ‘wear it well’.”
The musician topped a list of
honorees that also included the
Downton Abbey actor Penelope
Wilton, who received a damehood,
footballer Alan Shearer, who was
awarded a CBE for his charity work
with disabled people, and the astronaut Tim Peake, who received a
CMG, or companion of the order of
St Michael and St George, a diplomatic honour granted for overseas service, which was awarded for the first
time to a recipient in space.
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A
n overwhelmed 12year-old contestant
who passed an audition
on So You Think You
Can Dance expressed
her excitement by
vomiting on judge
Paula Abdul.
Tahani Anderson’s
energetic audition in
Chicago that aired last
Monday night on Fox
earned high marks from
the judges, including
Abdul. After Abdul
greeted Anderson with a
hug and told her how
“proud” she was of her,
Anderson threw up.
Just a little bit got an
Abdul, who remarked, “I’ve
never had anyone vomit on
me like that.”
Anderson said Abdul had
squeezed her a bit too tight,
“and all the happiness came
out on her jacket”.
0?
27>2>;0C4CA034<0A:
A>F)BF434=10=B<<´b
A
Swedish court has ordered
candy maker Mars to stop
selling M&M’s in the
Scandinavian country, at least not
with the customary lower-case letters it uses on the packaging and
on the colorful chocolates.
The Svea Court of Appeal said
last Wednesday that it ruled against
Mars in a trademark dispute with
Kraft Foods, which sells chocolatecovered peanuts under the
Marabou brand with a single “m’’
on the packaging.
It said Kraft has exclusive
rights to the trademark in Sweden.
However, it added that using the
upper-case M&M’s, as Mars does in its
corporate communications, doesn’t
constitute a trademark infringement in
Sweden. Mars said: “We have always
believed no confusion exists” between
the two products and that it would
“assess the next steps for our beloved
brand in Sweden”.
The dispute between the two companies is nothing new, as they struck a
deal in 1989, deciding that Mars
would not sell
M&M’s
in Sweden, Norway
or Finland. This
agreement expired
in 1998 and because it was not
renewed, Mars decided to start selling
their once banned sweets in the
Scandinavian country in 2009.
to build them based on the biblical
description of Noah’s ark. The vessel,
which was the smaller one, measured
427 feet long, 95 feet across and 75 feet
high. The vessel included displays of
animals, including sculptures of tigers,
giraffe, an elephant and bison. Live animals include pheasants, peacocks and
rabbits.
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A
full-size replica of Noah’s ark
crashed into a Norwegian Coast
Guard patrol boat in the Port of Oslo.
The ark was being towed and headed to
its summer home in Sandefjord and
Fredrikstad when the crew lost control
and it suffered a huge gash last Friday
after striking a Norwegian coast guard
vessel. No animals were aboard and no
one was injured.
The ark, which serves as a museum,
will remain in the harbor until repairs
can be carried out, although the statement added, “we don’t know how it will
be fixed yet.” The ark was one of two
built by a Dutch carpenter named
Johan Huibers, who took seven years
D?8
wind-driven beach umbrella struck
A
and killed a 55-year-old woman in
Virginia Beach, Virginia, local police
said. The woman, Lottie Michelle Belk,
of Chester, Virginia, was hit when a
strong gust of wind tossed the anchored
umbrella across the sand last
Wednesday afternoon, Virginia Beach
police said in a statement.
Belk was struck in the torso and
went into cardiac arrest. Emergency
personnel transported her to a hospital,
where she died, the statement said.
“There is no evidence of foul play,”
police said. Virginia Beach is about 175
km south of Washington.
ATdcTab
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58=30;2>7>;?8?4;8=4
A
uthorities in Ukraine
say they have foiled
plans to ship bootleg alcohol from Moldova to Ukraine
via a pipeline. The SBU security service said last
Tuesday that border
guards in the country’s
west stopped works to
lay pipes on the bed of
the Dniester river at a
point where it crosses
the border.
The would-be bootleggers rented a house on the
riverbank on the
Ukrainian side and started to
lay the pipe across the river,
authorities said. The SBU
released footage of the pipeline
being dug up. Smuggling has
flourished between Ukraine
and its western neighbours for
years, and Moldova has been a
major source of bootleg alcohol
for other former Soviet
republics.
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t isn’t clear what’s on the
I
menu, but an anonymous
bidder paid $3,456,789 to have
lunch with Berkshire Hathaway
CEO Warren Buffett as part of
a charity auction on eBay.
Bidding for Buffett’s annual
“power lunch” charity auction
closed last Friday after a week of
escalating offers. Bidders were
required to prequalify with a pledge of
$25,000. The beneficiary is Glide, an
organisation that assists homeless people in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Buffett pledged he will dine with the
winner and up to seven guests at
Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in New
York City on a mutually agreed upon
date. The sequential amount of the
winning bid ties the record for Buffett’s
power lunch auctions set in 2012.
“I am proud to be part of something that has directly benefited so
many people in need,” Buffett said.
“Glide is a bridge for thousands of
people on the brink of despair... providing them with basic services.”
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F
ather’s Day is a day
when we give special
honour and gratitude
to our fathers. The celebration of Father’s
Day is a broad one that encompasses celebrating those who are
fathers, grandfathers, and greatgrandfathers. It is also a day
when we remember the one
who created all fathers, God.
On this day we can look
back and remember warmly all
the gifts we received from our
physical fathers. It is also a time
to reflect on the gifts we
received from our heavenly
father, God. In this connection,
there is a wonderful story. Once
there was a king who had no
child. He was worried that he
had no son or daughter to
become his successor and
receive his inheritance, which
included his kingdom. The king
made an announcement that he
was looking for an orphan to
adopt as his own child.
His ministers asked him,
“Are you going to have any
qualification criteria in selecting
a child to adopt?” The king
thought for a while and said,
“Yes, you are right. We need
some criteria.” The ministers
made their own suggestions,
saying, “The person should be
handsome or beautiful. The one
selected should come from a
rich or noble family.”
The king considered all the
suggestions and being a wise
and spiritual man said, “The
only requirement I will make
for adoption is that the person
has love for God and neighbour.” After much debate
among the ministers who feared
that the person may be someone who was lowly, poor, or
simple, the king, of course, had
his way, as kings do.
The ministers commanded
that all those who wished to
apply to become the king’s
adopted child should come to
the palace on a particular date.
I
An orphaned peasant boy read
the notice and wanted to apply.
But when he looked at his rags,
he thought he won’t be selected
because he was poor. Then, he
had an idea. He thought if he
worked longer hours, he might
make enough money before the
deadline to buy clothes that
would make him look more
presentable to the king.
The boy worked hard day
after day, late into the night,
until he had enough to buy a
new outfit. Feeling a bit more
confident, he decided to head to
the palace on the set date. He
hoped that the king would
choose him for adoption.
He set out on the journey.
Along the way, the peasant boy
met a poor beggar on the side
of the road. It was a cold day,
and the peasant could see the
beggar shivering with cold. The
peasant felt sorry for the beggar
and without even thinking
about himself, he exchanged
clothing with the beggar so that
he could warm up. He forgot
about the hard work he had put
in to buy the new outfit and,
being a loving, caring person,
helped the beggar. The beggar
was grateful to him and even
though it was cold outside, the
boy felt warm inside from the
wonderful feeling of giving and
making someone else happy.
As the peasant boy set out
on his journey to the palace, he
realised that he had given away
the outfit that would make him
presentable to the king. He
knew he won’t be accepted in
the beggar’s torn clothes.
The boy decided there was
no point in continuing to the
palace, since he would never be
accepted in his rags. He was
about to turn back when he said
to himself, “Well, you have
come this far to the palace. You
may as well keep going and try
out anyway. The worst that will
happen is that you will not be
chosen.” He decided to go to the
n the material world, everything is ever
changing. Human body itself undergoes several changes after it is born,
which is also a change from the previous
body. If one lives long, the body changes
from growing as in the childhood to staying, ie in the youth to decaying as in the
old age to finally dying.
Changes are not always pleasant. For
example, when a child is forced to go to
school for the first time, he resists because
he does not wish to leave the secure surroundings of the house. Similarly, change
from a young body to an old body brings
additional problems of health as the aging
process starts.
In the two examples given, one was an
abrupt change and the other was gradual.
There is one thing common in all changes;
we need to be mentally ready for them and
also do whatever is needed to make such
changes fruitful or at least tolerable.
Let us start with the most common
change, which starts rather abruptly but is a
very gradual process. I am referring to education. Parents have a big role to play in
this. They must choose a proper school,
look after the child in home, etc. The child
must accept and adapt to new surroundings
away from home. He must fall in line in the
matter of discipline, increasing work load,
aiming for good grades, etc.
The next important change is to begin
to share. Though this change is very grad-
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king’s palace anyway. When he
reached the palace, the ministers, courtiers, and guards took
one look at him. “What are you
doing here?” the peasant was
asked at the gates. “I am applying to be the king’s adopted
son,” he replied. They all made
fun of him, sneering at him.
“You have some nerve
thinking the king will choose
you as his son. Look at your
clothes. You are not even fit to
clean the king’s chambers in
those torn rags.” The peasant
was about to turn back when
another minister came out and
saw what was going on. The
minister said, “The king did not
restrict us from letting anyone
in. No matter what he looks
like, the king has ordered that
we let all the applicants in. The
peasant was then taken to the
king’s chamber.
What a shock for the peasant when the chamber doors
opened and he found that sitting on the king’s throne was
the very beggar he had met on
the roadside and that the beggar
was still wearing the clothes he
had given him. The peasant
stood dumbfounded to see that
the beggar was actually the
king! The king got down from
his throne, came up to the peasant boy, embraced him, and
said, “Welcome, my son!”
This story is a wonderful
illustration of what every father
wishes for his son, and what
God, the universal father and
mother, wishes for each of us.
Every parent is looking for his
or her child to have certain
qualities that the parent values.
Every father wants his son or
daughter to grow up to be a
good person. Although parents
have many expectations from
their child, the bottom line is
that they want their child to
grow up to be a good person.
God is no different. When
God created each soul, the hope
was that each one would be in
the image of God. Humanity
was created in the image of
God. God wanted each person
to live up to that noble image. It
is when a soul inhabits the
human form that the mind
makes it go astray from the
original intent of God to stay
true to the noble virtues.
In the story, the king specified that the criterion for selection of a son or daughter was
someone who loved God and
loved his or her neighbour. That
meant more to the king than
wealth, power, prestige, or outer
beauty. Similarly, God wants the
same for each of us. God wants
each soul in creation to have
love for God and love for one’s
fellow creations. It was with this
intention that human beings
were created. It is said that God
made humanity to have love
and compassion for fellow
beings. The angels are said to be
made of only devotion. Their
whole being is to adore and love
God. However, God created
humans to not only love God,
but also the fellow beings.
As the story of the king and
the peasant boy illustrated, the
one who was most pleasing was
the one who loved his fellow
beings. The peasant sacrificed
his own desires to help another
person. This quality drew the
kin’s attention and made him
select the peasant to be his own
son. Similarly, there are billions
of souls on the planet. Many are
leading selfish, uncaring lives.
Numerous people are only out
for their own selves. They want
to gain possession, fame, power,
and prestige, even if it means
stepping on others. God, the
parent, wants us to love him
and others. Those people who
do are truly sons and daughters
of God. As we think about honouring our fathers on this day,
we should also think about
honouring our universal father
and mother, God.
Y
ou can’t solve today’s problems with yesterday’s
solutions,” Albert Einstein is famously quoted as
having said. The context and intent may be open
to interpretation, but people often quote this to suggest
that traditional value system will not work in this fastchanging technology-driven world. So change the way
you were doing things or else your ways will not work.
Who can deny this when Einstein, arguably the
best brain even produced, says this? But wait a
moment. This is not to question Einstein’s genius. Only
we need to look at the contention. Are today’s problems essentially different than those of yesterday’s?
There is need to think more objectively.
What were yesterday’s problems? The first one was
the humankind’s weakness to fall for temptations and
allurements. According to the Bible, the first man and
woman, Adam and Eve, were the first persons to go by
devil’s advice. Incidentally, they broke the first law, the
divine law. The first crime was committed for greed.
Coming to the second one, again from the Bible, why
did Cane kill Abel? Simple — envy, greed, and ego.
Well such instances are legion in the Bible.
That was the Occident. Coming to the Orient.
Why did the battle of Kurukshetra take place? Same
problem — envy, greed and ego. Still not convinced.
Come to the modern times. Why was Indira Gandhi
unseated by that historic Allahabad High Court judgement? And why did she impose the Emergency? Why
could VP Singh defeat the Congress that appeared
invincible with 415 seats in the Lok Sabha? Why did
Jayaprakash Narayan become a rallying point in the
early Seventies? And very recently, why did the
Congress fare miserably in 2014 Parliamentary polls?
The problems were not much different. It was corruption, the deviation from dharma, the righteous
path. Well Einstein was perfectly right. It is our interpretation of Einstein that is wrong. There are only two
paths in this world — the right path or the path of
dharma and the wrong path or the path of adharma.
Those who have followed the righteous path have triumphed in the long run. If it was Noah of the Old
Testament, then it were the Pandavas of Mahabharata.
The problems of the present times are the same as
those of the past. Naturally, the solutions of the past
are still relevant. Apparently, it seems that the world
has changed. It may have changed as far as technology
is concerned. But the greed, ego, lust behind the technology still remain the same because the human nature
remains fairly constant. Man does not live in the Stone
Age, but the Stone Age still lives in him.
Human psychology has been fairly constant over
the ages. If the Facebook posts indicate the humanity’s
desire for likes, that is recognition, how do you explain
the story that we read in our Hindi textbook in the
early Sixties about the boy Gurudas whose ambition
was to see his name figure in the print media. The
name of the story is quite suggestive, ‘Akhbaar mein
Naam’ or the name in the newspaper.
The problems of today are similar to that of the
yesteryears, so we still have to apply yesterday’s solution. Greed was a human weakness aeons ago. Greed is
a human weakness even today. Everyone wants a quick
buck — yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Technology is
changing but psychology is still found wanting.
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ual, it is very important to lead a quality
life. Parents have again a very important
role to play in this. The first friend a child
must have is a sibling. In absence of one,
the child needs to find a suitable one.
Awareness about diseases is next. One
must prepare in order to avoid them as far
as possible. This requires eating healthy,
sleeping adequately, exercising appropriately and having proper entertainment. The
one who does all this is well set in life to
have a healthy body.
Beginning of career is another important change. Preparation for this goes right
back to the school days when children
choose their subjects. It is important to
begin well. One is young and should work
hard, ie deliver more than what is expected.
If one can do that, he or she is set on a very
rewarding career.
Marriage is a very big change. Very few
realise it and do not make adequate preparations, especially mentally. How can anyone imagine that another person will be
exactly like what suits him or her? And after
marriage many changes have to be accept-
ed. And the ideal change is treating the
other person as a dear friend, not just a wife
or a husband. Becoming a parent is no less
of a challenge. If this additional responsibility is not shouldered properly, there are
consequences, which could be quite serious.
Most parents take a lot of advice during
pregnancy but become whimsical after the
birth of the child. Now this could hurt the
new member of the family.
Seeking advice whether in relation to
rearing of a child or leading our lives is a
must, because no one can know everything.
We need experts like doctors, lawyers,
accountants, etc for material problems but
need guru/gurus for spiritual guidance.
Taking help from others is a very important
requirement. However, it is never surrender;
one must use one’s own judgement always
no matter what the advice is.
The next change is the most important
in the human birth — to effect change in
consciousness from material to spiritual.
This is a very gradual process because one
can only progress in steps, ie having realised
some spiritual truth one goes to the next
realisation. Therefore, this process must not
start later than when one is nearing 50.
Later it becomes very difficult to make the
effort and develop faith in God.
I am not talking about doing some rituals but actually believing that God exists
and doing exactly what he instructs and
become dear to him. This opens up unlimited possibilities for gaining peace, happiness and even bliss, if someone is seriously
pursuing this path. Changes, whether gradual or abrupt, must be taken in the right
spirit. Not only that, one must seek changes
which enrich life.
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P
otentials and vulnerabilities of
mind, as well as its order of working
is beautifully reflected in a popular
Indian simile — “The chariot of knowledge” — Arjun seated in a chariot steered
by Lord Krishna as charioteer, which is
pulled by five horses. It is premised on
the following two verses from
Kathopanishada:
“Atmanam? rathinam? viddhi, sariram? ratham eva tu, Buddhim? tu
sarathim? viddhi, manah pragraham eva
ca. Indriyani hayanahuh visayamstesu
gocaran, Atmendriya manoyuktam, bhokte-tyahur manisinah.”
Here, the chariot, Arjun, Lord
Krishna, reins, horses, and greens on
pathway respectively symbolise, human
body, soul, buddhi, mind, senses, and
temptations of life. The human being
animated by the indwelling soul has a
journey to undertake to make it to a designated destination — becoming fully
evolved. It is driven by mind, duly aided
by senses and guided by the faculty of
discriminate intelligence.
If the reins are let loose, the horses
shall run after grass patches on and
around the pathway. Consequently, the
chariot would get derailed and the journey will get disrupted. If however, apply-
7KHFKDULRWRINQRZOHGJH
ing discriminate intelligence, the reins are
kept in control, the horses will be in check,
and shall continue pulling the chariot
unhindered to its logical end. So goes the
saying that should the soul, body, buddhi,
mind, and the senses act in togetherness
as a unified organism, the journey of life
shall become enjoyable.
It needs no elaboration that unless all
field players join hand, to together put in
wholesome effort, the journey of life shall
move directionless, and naturally to one’s
detriment. That calls for personality integration. It is, however, easier said than
done. For, both mind and the senses are
fragile in nature. The senses get drawn
towards the tempting objects spread all
across. If allowed a free run, they will
keep running after them and randomly
keep wandering hither and thither. It is
something like a monkey picking up a
fruit and after consuming it partly, would
go after other pieces one after other, but
would never eat one whole fruit. The
senses, by themselves, lack discriminating
faculty, and would therefore, not be able
to regulate its functioning.
The onus of controlling the senses
lies with the mind. But untamed impressionable mind often come under tempting influence of sense objects of the
seeming world. Even the residual desires
in mind are nothing but reflection of
impressions of what the senses would
have picked up in the past. These impressions keep chasing us within our minds,
which over a period of time forms a part
of our habit. They do not spare you even
while engaged in other assignments. And
habits die hard. In fact, our habit tendencies, particularly the persistent desires,
involuntarily create a security ring
around. Through continued hammering
within our minds, they keep pulling us
back to their precincts, if ever one tries to
look beyond to escape its frontiers.
Consequently, even while one is
idling, mind is not at rest. It keeps
attending to random thoughts, it keeps
breeding non-stop. It is something like a
fertile earth mass, which does not
remain barren even if seeds are not
sown, as it involuntarily keeps breeding
weeds. Mind-space, thus, gets too much
cluttered over a period of time. The
overburdened mind gets so vexed that it
loses sense of direction. Meanwhile, the
thought process becomes so complex
that habitually, it looks at even simple
issue in a circuitous way making its resolution an arduous affair.
It’s now for buddhi to keep the mind
in check, which in turn, would keep the
senses in control. Making use of this
exclusive human preserve, one is empowered to filter off the undesirables, set the
priorities right, and remain focused on
them. Otherwise, the untamed mind
would keep randomly flirting around like
an unbridled horse in the meandering of
sensory impressions drawn from within
and beyond. The paradox, however, is
that buddhi cannot spontaneously come
to our aid. It needs to be consciously
invoked and put to use.
Here comes into play ‘Ahamkara’ (the
sense of I or Ego consciousness), which
has to take the call, and will, how mind has
to go forward. The irony, however, is that
often it identifies itself with the indwelling
tendencies, and unmindfully makes it the
defining principle. Also, it remains vulnerable to get caught up in the tempting influences of seeming realities, and gets tempted to blindly chases them. In both cases,
Buddhi gets sidelined, and with obvious
consequences. To sum up, we better
remain conscious about following the
lessons scripted in the above simile.
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