National MediaOn Assam Floods:

THE DEMISE OF INC IS LOCATED AT 10 JANPATH

“RELIEFS” SHOULD NOW BE “SOLUTIONS”

What is Social-Distancing when you barely have 6ft area to

sit? What is Sanitisation when your home is washed away? Dreams to succeed, but to watch reality drown can be devastating. Once upon a time, flood brought joy for the soil to be fertile. Today, that joyous heart is hard to handle, so fragile.

What we serve is a “relief ”, but the lives of the affected will only receive the true ‘relief ’, once the yearly ritual of floods vanish.The Photographs speak louder than their voices. Assam Floods have only seen devastation since years now.

“More than we need is a reason to live”. The question remains the same every year: is there a PERMANENT SOLUTION? Or will every year, there will be only ‘reliefs’ to compensate the unsolved riddle? Bitter but true, people should give up hope that the Assam Floods could be solved.

National Media On Assam Floods:

Q.1: ONE PRIMARY REASON? Q.2: WHO IS RESPONSIBILE?

19 19 July, 2020July, 2020

“Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.” –Willie Nelson @thepeopleassamGuwahati, Assam

Contact us at : [email protected]’S EASILY OBTAINABLE AND PARTICIPATORY LEGITIMATE E-MEDIA

Assam has always been flood-prone. However, it was the 1950 Earthquake that changed the topography and made the matter worse, a report by BBC published in 2015 said. Back then, the problem was again the same: National Media not

highlighting Assam’s Disaster. Truly they say today, “Resources are theirs, but the problems are ours”. Environment Expert said in 2015, that 40% of Assam’s land is vulnerable and flood-prone. The Brahmaputra valley alone accounts for 9.6% of India’s total Flood prone area. People in Assam go emotional when we see the Nation’s Prime Minister wearing the Traditional Gamusa, meanwhile the person never visited Assam to actually introspect, rather would also call to take stock of the situation? Except, the negligence & carelessness about Assam, what is the ONE primary reason behind the floods?

Continued On Page: 08

In the last 60-years, three-different State Governments and various Central Governments took charge, who together spent over Rs. 30,000 crore, but yet to find the “permanent” solution, promised every year. This year similarly, after the second-wave of Assam Floods,

Chief Minister of Assam visited several relief camps, where he announced Rs. 25 crore for three-schemes, made to find a “permanent solution” to the annual Assam Floods. Similarly, last year Rs. 18 crore was announced for three-schemes which too said, it would be used to find out a “permanent solution”. But did we find one? Every year we condemn, every year we sob tears, learning the miseries of Lakh of the populations affected by the Annual Floods. The problem of decades still remains unspoken, unreported and unknown. As such, who holds the responsibility?

Continued On Page: 08

By: Biprajit Roy Chaudhury

From the Editor

The grand party or the dynastic party or the Indian National Congress is going

through a phase which no one would have expected 10 years earlier from now. With two successive breakouts from the party, the Congress needs to question what the top tier decision making group is doing if not pulling the party together after successive defeats in two General Elections. With Jyotiraditya Scindia and Sachin Pilot overtly expressing their discontent with the party, one has to wonder what Sonia Gandhi is actually doing as the current party president and where is she leading INC to if not a dark phase of loss and despair.

The sons of former Congress loyalists, Madhavrao Scindia and Rajesh Pilot, all was not well with their sons as they felt sidelined by the party in their own states’ working affairs – or as put by the current Congress party members that these two are just two greedy individuals

who are not appreciating of what has been given to them by the party.

Recurring citation of Sachin Pilot’s achievements as rather heavenly gifts provided by the Congress Party – one has to wonder that if it is a party that can only give a ticket and the individual efforts of the candidate are what makes him win or lose then how is it that the party becomes directly responsible for Sachin Pilot becoming a MP at a young age.

The Indian National Congress which started as party that incorporated and accommodated various lines of thought and sects of individuals and still managed to survive with negligible breakaways.

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Racial discrimination is a widespread issue that has been an ongoing and

commonly overlooked problem. Staying silent has proven to be de-structive, making one duplicitous in the system of oppression and griev-ances. But, this year with the killing of George Floyd on 25 May 2020 by a Minnesota police officer spurred a global agitation and resuscitated the long movement to end the system-ic racism and inequality that have reigned not only in the US but also in workplaces and corporate commu-nities across the world.

Since then, social media and streets in the United States and around the world have been thronged with protesters demanding justice. Nevertheless, these protests have also expanded into the business realm and have exposed companies, brands, individuals for their behaviors, com-ments, and practices.

There’s a disturbing paradox in the workplace which is evident in a majority of worldwide organizations that tend to acquire the absolute ben-efits of a diverse, multicultural, and inclusive workforce but is often coun-tered by the forces of racism which undermine their effort, creating chal-lenges for workplace conformity.

“Business has the transformative power to change and contribute to a more open, diverse, and inclusive society. We can only accomplish this

by starting from within our organiza-tions,” wrote Vijay Eswaran, Execu-tive Chairman of QI Group. As the uproar began to acquire momentum, global businesses and organizations are propelled into the scenario and are observed taking action – by sup-porting the Black Lives Matter move-ment, tackling inequality in their own workplaces, donating to social justice organizations, and using their platforms to promote racial diversity, inclusion, and equity in the business community.

There are many companies that have gone a level up and declared many statements in public so as to make their workplace more inclusive and productive. For instance, Apple announced the launch of the ‘Apple Racial Equity and Justice Initiative’, with an investment of $100 million which will focus on education, eco-nomic equality, and criminal jus-tice.PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta wrote in his recent op-ed in Fortune, in which he announced a commit-ment of $400 million over five years to “to lift up Black communities and increase Black representation at Pep-siCo focusing on three pillars name-ly; people, business and community. PayPal also disclosed an investment of $530 million to advance racial equity and inclusion in the compa-ny. Similarly, Adidas, Amazon, IBM, Fitbit, Estée Lauder Companies, An-dreessen Horowitz, Facebook, and many other companies have vowed to make changes in their office cul-

tures and regulations to become more comprehensive.

While some initiatives have been welcomed, others have fallen flat for appearing hypocritical or opportu-nistic. Amazon tweeted its solidarity with the black community which was criticized for its role in selling facial recognition technology to law enforcement. Similarly, Nike’s ad against racism has been called out for the company’s lack of racial diversity on its executive leadership team.

Thus, a brand’s history with such an issue plays an integral role.

Prominently in the USA, Accord-ing to Bostic, the first Black person to head one of the Fed’s 12 region-al branches, “the reckoning needs to be deeper, grappling with a legacy of economic disadvantages which opens a broader discussion of whether mon-etary reparations to repair the dam-age of discrimination make sense, for example, of how tax, social and em-ployment policy should change, of whether the Fed should build racial metrics into its policy analysis or be given broader powers to help individ-ual households.”

As systematic racism is being ac-knowledged globally, companies and economies now have a possibility to acknowledge their unconscious bias and prioritize creating a diversified workforce. Ambiguous banalities also aren’t the way to go, apparent struc-tural changes based on the weighing moral argument needs to be estab-lished.

New Ebola Outbreak Grows in Western

DRC

SYSTEMATIC RACISM: A GLOBAL RESPONSE

YEMEN’S HOUTHIS HIT SAUDI OIL FACILITY; SAUDI ARABIA

CONDUCTS AIR STRIKES

Ebola is spreading in the western Democratic Re-public of the Congo (DRC),

with nearly 50 known cases across a large region bordering the Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic, the World Health Organiza-tion (WHO) has said.

Ebola outbreaks in the DRC are recurrent as the virus is present in an animal reservoir in many parts of the country.

Mike Ryan, the WHO’s top emer-gencies expert, said on Monday that 48 cases had been confirmed, while a total of 20 people have died, in DRC’s Equateur province since authorities announced a new outbreak there on June 1.

The province includes part of the River Congo, he said, adding that it was a large geographical area where communities were linked, and people travelled long distances.

The newest outbreak is the 11th in the DRC since scientists first charac-terized the disease in 1976.

The WHO said it has vaccinated 11,327 people against Ebola in the past month.

The Ebola virus causes hemorrhag-ic fever and is spread through direct contact with body fluids from an in-fected person, who suffers severe vom-iting and diarrhea.

An epidemic of the virus on the other side of the country that began in August 2018 killed more than 2,277 people. The WHO declared the out-break over in Ituri and North Kivu provinces on June 25.

Experts said the use of a vaccine and swift containment efforts includ-ing mobile hand washing stations and a door-to-door education campaign kept the disease at bay.

While the number of infections in the new outbreak is low, Ryan cau-tioned: “In the era of COVID, it is very important that we do not take our eyes off these other emerging dis-eases”.

“We saw in North Kivu and other previous outbreaks of Ebola that these can get out of control very easily,” he added.

The DRC, one of the world’s poorest countries, is also dealing with a measles epidemic that has killed more than 6,000 people, as well as COVID-19, which has infected more than 3,000 and killed 188, according to official figures.

In its latest weekly bulletin on Monday, the WHO said the growing outbreak in Equateur was a “grave” matter given the complex humanitar-ian crisis in the DRC, with multiple disease outbreaks as well as ongoing clashes between armed groups that have displaced thousands of people in the country’s east.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels say they have attacked a large oil facility in an industrial

complex south of the Saudi Arabi-an city of Jizan as part of an over-night operation, on 13th July.

The Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Houthis said on Mon-day it intercepted and destroyed four missiles and six bomb-laden

drones launched by Houthi rebels towards the kingdom.

The missiles and drones were launched from Yemen’s capital Sa-naa and directed at civilian targets, coalition spokesman Turki al-Mal-ki said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

The Houthi rebels claim they also killed and injured dozens of ranking military officers in Saudi Arabia.

The Houthis’ military spokes-man, Yahya Sarea, confirmed in a statement that the rebel group had launched attacks on Saudi military sites.

He said the group’s ballistic missiles and drones had destroyed a number of military bases and in-stallations of the Saudi coalition in Jizan, Najran and Assir near the border with Yemen, in a “wide-scale military operation”.

Oil Company Saudi Aramco operates a 400,000-barrel-a-day re-finery in the Red Sea city of Jizan, which lies around 60 km (40 miles) from the Yemen border.

Meanwhile, on 16th July, Sau-di-led coalition air strikes hit resi-dential homes in the Al-Hazm dis-trict, Al-Jawf province in northern Yemen, killing nine people includ-ing two children and two women, according to a Houthi rebel health ministry spokesperson. Residents said seven people were killed.

“We take this report very serious-ly and it will be fully investigated as all reports of this nature are, using an internationally approved, inde-

pendent process,” said Coalition spokesman Colonel Turki al-Malki.

Cross-border attacks by the Houthi rebels have escalated since late May when a truce prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic ex-pired, with the Houthis repeatedly staging missile-and-drone attacks on Saudi cities and the coalition retaliating with air strikes. In late June, missiles reached the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

The Saudi-UAE coalition inter-vened in Yemen in March 2015 after the Houthis removed Sau-di-backed internationally recog-nized government of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi from the capital, Sanaa, in late 2014.

The conflict – viewed as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, has killed over 100,000 people, and has pushed Yemen, already one of the Arab world’s poorest countries, to the verge of famine and devas-tated the country’s health facilities, causing what the UN describes as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. The Houthis say they are fighting a corrupt system.

By Pallavi Dey

By Raktim Ronojoy Neog


InternationalSunday, 19 July ,2020

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Ivory Coast creates northern military zone after deadly attack

France raises pay for health care workers by more than €8 billion

11 killed, more than 40 wounded in Taliban car bomb attack on Afghan intelligence compound.

Oil prices rises slight-ly as OPEC and its allies complies with production cuts

Madagascar lawmakers die after contracting COVID-19

14 Lebanese rights groups face off against government’s ‘alarming’ crackdown

Image source: www.google.com



Twitter is investigating a massive hack in which high-profile users from

Elon Musk to Joe Biden had their accounts hijacked by scammers who the social network believes tar-geted its employees to gain access to internal systems.

Posts trying to dupe people into sending hackers the cryp-to currency Bitcoin were tweeted by the official accounts of Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Ba-rack Obama and many others on Wednesday.

“We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and

tools,” Twitter said.“They used this access to take

control of many highly-visible... accounts,” the company said, add-ing that it was investigating “what other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed.”

The fraudulent posts, which were largely deleted, said people had 30 minutes to send $1,000 in Bitcoin in order to receive twice as much in return.

A total of 12.58 Bitcoin -- worth almost $116,000 -- were sent to the email addresses mentioned in the fraudulent tweets, according to the site Blockchain.com, which monitors crypto transactions.

“Tough day for us at Twitter,” chief executive Jack Dorsey said in a tweet.

The Biden campaign told AFP that Twitter locked down the hacked account quickly and re-moved the bogus tweet.

“Most accounts should be able to Tweet again,” the Twitter sup-port team said in an evening up-date, having earlier briefly disabled posts from verified accounts with an official blue checkmark.

The network said it had locked down the affected accounts, which also included Bitcoin specialty firms, and removed the tweets post-ed by the hackers.

Twitter added that the network was largely back to normal, but that it “may take further actions and will update you if we do.”

Another looming danger that the world might have to face during

this pandemic is chronic hunger. According to the United Nations there is a high probability that the coronavirus pandemic may push as of about 132 million people world-wide into chronic hunger. This probable outcome has jeopardised the UN from achieving one of its long term goals that is to eradicate global hunger by 2030, thereby calling upon governments to adopt a set of policy tools to ensure that all section of peo ple can af-ford quality nutritious food.

Records from last year confirm that about 2 billion people suffered from food insecurity with 746 mil-lion people facing acute food short-age. With that number significant-ly rising, the pandemic has made things much worse by disrupting food chains. Above all millions of people, specially the daily wage earners are rendered jobless and

have lost their livelyhoods and the price of food are everywhere inflat-ing. The fight against food insecu-rity in the world’s poorest countries such as Africa have elevated even more in the present case scenario. There has also been drastic changes in Latin America and the Carib-bean, where percentage of going hungry in 2014 has increased from 22.9 percent to 31.7 percent in 2019.

Food security crises would be worse seen in the underdeveloped nations where major section of the population depend on daily wages. The pandemic risks wiping out nearly half of all jobs in Afri-ca – according to UN. In India too the situation too is not very com-forting as hundreds of millions of daily wage workers are struggling to make their basic ends meet af-ter the nation went through long lockdowns, leaving the underpriv-ileged workers stranded and hope-less as they dragged to find ways to get back to their home towns and villages.

After days of torrential rain in China, as about 33 rivers have risen to their highest

water level ever recorded till date. Ma-jor lakes like the Dongting, the Poyang and the Tai has significantly breached their banks and risen beyond their warning level as of the flood season that began in June. The vice minister of water resources, Ye Jianchun, told that along with the major lakes, 433 rivers have vigorously increased their water level to an extent that was never seen before. He further told that these unceasing downpour in Central China would eventually head out to North thereby warning it’s residents there. Average rainfall has never been this

highest since records began in 1961.According to the emergency min-

istry, about 141 people were suspect-ed to be dead or either missing with more to be on the count. Further the economic losses are also estimated to be 60 billion yuan i.e. 8.57 billion in dollars. “Red alerts” have been is-sued throughout the Yangtze basin and Poyang Lake for vast civilization areas such as Xianning, Jiujiang and Nanchang as water levels have exceed-ed more than 3 metres higher than normal – setting another high record.

Soldiers have been issued in many flood-stricken regions to fill sandbags and shore up the riverbanks in an effort to prevent more damage. Res-cue workers can be seen paddling through hip deep water with inflat-

able boats to rescue people trapped in homes submerged in water. Water levels at the Three Gorges reservoir, which cut its discharge volumes for a fifth time on Saturday to ease down-stream water levels, have now risen to 153.2 metres (502.62ft), 6.7 metres (21.98ft) higher than the warning level.

According to China’s weather bu-reau, although some regions in the southwest are fortunate enough to get some temporary relief from the ‘showers’, central and eastern China would continue to face the storms. However, authorities are positive of the fact that they will not have to go through the same terrible flooding that the country faced back in 1998.

China hit by floods after torrential downpour.

By Nadir Raihan

By Nadir Raihan

Pandemic to push 132 million into chronic hunger.

Twitter Investigating Breach of High-Profile Accounts by

Hackers in Bitcoin Scam


A yet tragic consequence of the coronavirus pandemic is that it

had led to the death of 3000 healthcare workers - reported by Amnesty International, as it raises concerns about the hazard-ous working conditions sufficed by low pay, long working hours and even violence against med-ical workers in some countries.

According to reports it is con-firmed that Russia has taken the worst blow with a number of 545 deaths regarding the decease of their healthcare workers. Follow-ing Russia, UK has a death toll of 540 healthcare workers including 262 social care workers and US so far has confirmed 507 deaths. Brazil ranking the second posi-tion of recorded coronavirus cas-es and deaths after US, has so far reported 351 healthcare workers. Mexico has reported so far as 248 death of their front line workers.

The coronavirus outbreak

that has lead to death of 569,000 people wordwide and infected 12.9 million across the globe; the doctors and nurses has been on the forefront battling this pan-demic. As the virus continued to grow, medical workers have often put forward their present journey on various social media sites regarding their battle up-hill with long stifling working hours under difficult conditions.

“With the COVID-19 pan-demic still accelerating around the world, we are urging govern-ments to start taking health and essential workers’ lives seriously,” said Sanhita Ambast, Amnesty’s researcher and adviser on econom-ic, social and cultural rights, in a statement. Many governments has been severely criticised for their failure to provide sufficient personal protective equipment like face masks, gowns, gloves and goggles to their medical staff. Amnesty said there was a horrify-ing shortage of PPE in nearly all of the 63 countries it surveyed.

3000 Healthcare Workers Lost Their Lives Battling The

Pandemic: Amnesty

By Nadir Raihan

InternationalSunday, 19 July,2020

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The National Investiga-tion Agency, probing the Thiruvananthapur-

am gold smuggling case, on Mon-day submitted in the special court that the smuggled gold was meant for “terrorism purposes” and not jewellers. The ministry of home af-fairs had, while allowing the agency to probe the case, also said its initial enquiries had revealed that the pro-ceeds of the smuggled gold could be used for financing terrorism.

The court sent accused Swap-na Suresh and Sandeep Nair – the accused in the smuggling of 30kg gold through the diplomatic chan-nel – to NIA custody for seven days. In a related development, the ad-ditional chief judicial magistrate court (economic offences) in Kochi remanded K T Ramees of Malap-puram, suspected to be a buyer and financier in the smuggling racket, in judicial custody till July 27.

The NIA submitted in the spe-cial court that a detailed probe was required as the smuggling activity could affect the India-UAE rela-tionship and the UAE had also probed the incident. Preliminary enquiries about the destination of consignments smuggled earlier also pointed at the terror angle, it said.

Its counsel Arjun Ambalapatta submitted that two of the main accused, Swapna and Sarith, were ex-employees at the consulate and they knew the functioning of the diplomatic channel. The racket forged emblems and seals of the UAE consulate to smuggle gold.

The court had taken up the NIA petition after the Covid-19 test re-sults of the accused came negative.

On Monday morning, it decided to hear the custody application filed by the agency in the presence of the accused and they were brought to the court from the Covid care centres. Swapna was brought to the court around 3pm and Sandeep around 3.30pm.

The agency also moved the court for correcting the name of the third accused from Fazil to Faizal and his address as Thaiparambil House, Puthampalli, Kaipamanga-lam, Thrissur. It moved a petition to issue a non-bailable warrant against him so that a Blue notice

-- an Interpol notice to collect addi-tional information about a person in relation to a crime from member countries -- can be issued.

The court asked the accused if they wanted to state anything. Swapna, who was visibly shivering in the court, requested that medical treatment be provided to her. Sand-eep, however, told the court that the cargo came for a person named Rashed at the consulate and it can be brought through the channel only by using a copy of his passport and diplomatic ID. He asked why the investigation was not covering this person and another clearing agent who was involved.

The NIA, meanwhile, has re-covered a bag from the possession of Sandeep, about which it said it would be opened in the presence of the judge later. As per the order is-sued by judge P Krishna Kumar al-lowing custody to NIA, there shall be a break for one hour if the inter-rogation continues for three hours at a stretch. The accused persons should be given liberty to contact their lawyers as well, it said.

GOLD SMUGGLED INTHE KERELA SCAM

WAS MEANT TO FUND TERROR ACTIVITIES

IS KANGANA RANAUT THE MODERN DAY

SHAKUNI ?

By Ipshita Das

By Biprajit Roy Choudhury

Everyone knows the role that Shakuni played in Mahabharat and how

to fulfill his own self-interests planned his every move which fi-nally led to the battle of Kuruk-shetra. Similarily, the modern day shakuni – the very own self-pro-claimed messiah of self-righteous-ness who feeds of a pseudo intensi-fied sense of feminism defeating its purpose in the process and giving way to her sister who is a prime ex-ample of internalized misogynist

– Kangana Ranaut is more than ever fixed on firing bullets at those people against whom she holds a somewhat personal vendetta.

The country was shocked with Sushant Singh Rajput’s death due to alleged suicide and the worst affected was his family who were completely aloof of Sushant’s state of mental health – and while all this was meeting ends – there was a woman who somehow appeared to know everything about what was about to happen but waited for the right moment to pounce like a predator so that she emerges right under the spotlight. Luckily

for her, the media stunts that she pulled off with her news-anchor style addressing of the suicide in her IGTV video and her tweets which constantly targeted those people with whom she has evident tussles and vendetta.

In her latest move to gather at-tention, she appeared on a news channel and openly announced her decision to return the Padma Shri which was conferred to her if she isn’t able to prove the allega-tions that she has enforced on the individuals of the film industry.

While she prayed for the fami-ly’s well-being – she herself fails to realize that even before the police could come out with a proper re-port she was the one who had all answers ready and made Sushant’s death her golden opportunity to come back to limelight which her mediocre movies certainly couldn’t give her. While publicly throwing allegations and making his death a social media spectacle – with an added catalyst of her sister’s insen-sate rants with hyper nationalist and misogynist tendencies – Kan-gana proved that Social Media PR is more important to her than her hollow demands of a full-fledged

investigation wherein Madam Ranaut has not contributed even an inch of resource which is sur-prising because if she has to prove her allegations then she needs to have evidence and if she does have any – why not aid the investigat-ing authorities.

What Kangana is doing can be translated into a blatant attempt to create a niche for her in the film industry and gain an audience for her films which is not possible right now given the films that the directors that she has accused are making. By maligning these direc-tors and actors – not on the basis of their work but her suspicion – she is overtly trying to create a sense of hatred in the audience so that they automatically boycott the films that these individuals are a part of which will give her average quality films a chance to make money and hence, yield benefit for her and her sister.

Let’s end this with a question – on what grounds does Kangana deserve a Padma Shri if not for her open support to BJP?

Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries (RIL) share price

hit a fresh all-time high of Rs 1,938.80 apiece on BSE, up 3.21 per cent in Monday’s session to become the first Indian company to hit a market capitalisation of Rs 12 lakh crore. In a span of less than a month, RIL market capital-ization added over Rs 1 lakh crore to touch Rs 12.24 lakh crore. RIL share price has been on a gaining spree since April this year owing to the back to back investments from 12 global investors. With today’s surge in the stock price, RIL has rallied over 123 per cent from its March lows. In the latest round of investment, oil-to-telecom con-glomerate raised Rs 730 crore from wireless technology leader Qual-comm Ventures by selling 0.15 per

cent equity stake in Jio Platforms.“Reliance Industries continues

to surge on the back of multiple news flows. Investors are bull-ish on the business at the current price too. The money flow in the company will reduce its debt bur-den considerably. In the process, it has managed to cross the market cap of Rs 12 lakh crore. Techni-cally speaking till the time it is above 1750 it may reach the tar-get of 2033-2070,” Vishal Wagh, Head of Research, Bonanza Port-folio Ltd, told Financial Express Online. Since April this year, RIL has raised a total investment of Rs 1.18 lakh crore for an equity stake of 25.24 per cent in Jio Platforms.

Reliance Industries is scheduled to hold its first virtual annual gen-eral meeting (AGM) of sharehold-ers through video conferencing or other audio-visual means on Wednesday, July 13. Around 10

AM, RIL shares were trading at Rs 1,927.20 apiece, up 2.6 per cent as compared to a 0.76 per cent rise in the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex.

RIL shares have hit a record high thrice since the past one week. RIL in a regulatory filing on Tues-day last week, informed that Jio Platforms has received Rs 43,574 crore investment from Facebook. It also disclosed that the company has closed investment deals with four investors. Reliance received a total of Rs 30,062.43 crore from L Catterton, The Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake and General At-lantic by selling 6.13 per cent stake in Jio Platforms.

On the back of 13 investments in its digital arm Jio Platforms and Rs 53,124 crore mega rights issue, Reliance Industries became net debt-free nine months ahead of its March 2021 deadline.

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Infrastructure in testing labs to be im-proved: T.N. Health Minister.

Ministry of Defence discusses Austra-lia’s entry into Malabar, no decision yet.

Coronavirus | Recoveries exceed active cases by 2.95 lakh, says Health Minis-try.

Ram temple trust invites PM to start project.

Allow postal ballot for migrant workers, rights groups tell EC.

Maoist plans to enter State will be foiled with steely grit: DGP.

Govt. opens up NDRF for individual donations.

By Ipshita Das

RELIANCE INDUSTRIES



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A Dalit couple consumed pesticide in attempt to take their own lives, in-

front of their children and police officers. This incident took place in Madhya Pradesh’s Guna city after the district administration officers tried to evict the Ahirwar family by using a bulldozer over their crops, which is said to be a piece of gov-ernment-owned land.

The man, Rajkumar Ahirwar, who is a farmer, has been prac-ticing cultivation on the piece of land which was allegedly sublet to his family for tilling by a person named Dabbu Pardhi, according to Nirmal Rathore, Tehsildar of Guna city, who was a eye-witness of the incident that took place on 14 July.

Rajkumar and his wife Sabitri was shifted to the nearest govern-ment hospitals after they consumed pesticides as they could not see any other option left. The lady is said to be in a critical condition. Mean-while, an FIR have been lodged against the couple and a few locals

present at the spot under Section 353 of IPC (Assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty), Section 309 (Attempt to suicide) among other charges.

An interesting fact here is to be noted that under Section 115 of the Mental Healthcare Act 2017,”any person who attempts to commit suicide shall be presumed, unless proved otherwise, to have severe stress and shall not be tried and punished under” the Indian Penal Code.

Photos of the kids helplessly clinging on to their fainted par-ent’s bodies went viral, leading to a social media outrage. After a sig-nificant amount of backlash from the opposition, the Guna SP and the Collector, who had ordered the eviction and defended their actions, were removed from their posts on 15 July. Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Narottam Mishra tweeted that a high-level inquiry has been ordered into the matter.

The question that arises here is, ‘Would the police act in the same manner if the couple were to be-

CYBER BULLYING AND RAPE CULTURE

NationalSunday, 19 July, 2020

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By Bhaswati Mahanta

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CASTEISM IN INDIA

GOGGLE INVESTS $4.5 BILLION ON JIO

By Bhaswati Mahanta

By Bhaswati Mahanta

Mukesh Ambani, the richest person in India, has recently

signed up another deal with the Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google. Pichai is investing an amount of $4.5 billion into Ambani’s Jio plat-forms, the digital arm extension of the Reliance Industries, with 7.7% stake in the company.

The investment is said to in-clude a deal between the two platforms to jointly develop and extend affordable smartphone price, “expand the benefits of digitalization across the length and breadth of India,” they said on 15 July 2020. Jio announced this news two days after Sundar Pichai announced plans to invest $10 billion in India with the aim of making the internet affordable and useful for a billion people.

The two firms plans on develop-ing an entry-level android smart-phone that could introduce about a million more people to the on-

line platform. Google CEO Sun-dar Pichai tweeted last Wednesday, announcing the deal: “Everyone should have access to the internet. Proud to partner with @reliancejio to increase access for the hundreds of millions in India who don’t own a smartphone with our 1st invest-ment of $4.5 B from the #Google-ForIndia Digitalization Fund.”

The only irony here is that in-ternet is yet a privilege in India for many. With the government often suspending internet networks it-self and Kashmir struggling to ac-cess even the 2G internet, still un-able to access social media, Pichai’s tweet only sends out a subtle tone of mockery.

Jio platform is already one of the country’s biggest mobile net-works in India, with about a 388 million subscribers, which keeps growing annually. It is also known for apps regarding online shop-ping, digital payments and video streaming.

The company has been rais-ing a lot of funds since a past

few months, including the recent Google investment and has sur-prisingly raised an approximate amount of $20 billion since last April from investors Intel, Silver Lake, Vista, Qualcomm, Facebook, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund and many others. Facebook itself invested $5.7 billion for a 9.99% stake on Jio.

India is one of the world’s fast-est growing internet markets with the second highest population and has attracted billions of dollars of investment from different foreign companies like Amazon, Netflix and others in the recent few years. Google’s recent plans and Am-bani’s fundraising spree gives us a clear picture on the companies willing to invest their money in India.

However, with the growing ten-sion with China, one of the major investors in India, other foreign investors will now play significant roles in our market economy.


Today in the world of social media, it is very easy for a person to hide

behind a virtual screen and post their own personal opinions on the internet about anyone with giving two thoughts on what effect their opinion might have on others. Any person daring to speak their mind

against the traditional norms of the society is attacked with slurs and abuses creating great mental trau-ma.

Each time we see a rape case on the news don’t we wonder what’s wrong with our country and our people? But we fail to see the prob-lem that lies right in front of our eyes. We fail to acknowledge casual sexism that surrounds us. We fail to

recognize toxic masculinity and pa-triarchy that exploits all sections of the society.

Feminist today are trying their best to over throw the systemic patriarchy and sexism that is in-grained in our minds and it might take decades, if not centuries for them to be successful. Today’s idea of feminism in literal term means equality among all sections of the

society, irrespective of their sex, gender, sexuality, religion or caste. Today’s feminism is intersectional (inclusive of all sections) and any person speaking against this ba-sic idea is either not a feminist or doesn’t understand the concept of feminism.

Feminism has never tried to pro-tect abusers, be it a person of any gender but it does try to paint a clear picture of systemic oppression in our country which was created to subjugate women and people of the LGBTQIAP+ community. Females and queer people spend their entire lives being bullied or harassed and we need to amplify their voices in-stead of muffling them.

The stories of female victims have never tried to nullify the struggle of male survivors and it is wrong of us to assume so. Intersec-tional feminism also raises its voice for violence against males just as it does for females as injustice doesn’t come with a protective veil of gen-der. The fact that violence against men is only brought up as a counter attack when a female speaks about necessity of feminism to end sexism or rape culture, is another problem-atic aspect of our generation.

Today, famous YouTubers and Instagram influencers which a huge fan following can easily influence a big section of the society including young teenagers. People like spicy content and end up consuming content which can have harmful ef-fects on themselves and the society.

It ends of inducing young kids to same structure of systemic patriar-chy that the feminist are trying to break.

People like CarryMinati and Hindustani Bhau who promotes homophobia and slut-shaming are currently trending in the world of internet. They not only use dis-respectful terminologies against oppressed communities but also refuse to own up to their mistakes, which make their behavior utterly problematic.

A recent video of a female come-dian sharing a joke about “dumb people on the internet spreading misinformation about a statue of a king” went viral. Many took to the internet to express their anger as they found her joke to be offen-sive, which is acceptable but a few stepped further and shared videos of themselves using slurs against her and threatening to rape her for her “offensive” jokes. While one of the harasser was arrested after a complaint was filed against him, many others still roam free.

Therefore, we as responsible people need to keep a check on the type of content we consume and call out any person promoting rape culture/sexism/queer phobia, even in the subtlest form, be it our friends, parents, a celebrity on the internet or us ourselves. We need to hold the society accountable for the ideology it preaches.



6 State DeskSunday, 19 July,2020

PUBLIC’S EASILY OBTAINABLE AND PARTICIPATORY, LEGITIMATE E-MEDIA

ASSAM FLOODS: HUMAN’s INHUMANITY AGAINST ANIMALS

The annual floods have caused havoc in Assam. Like other years, it has

led to displacement of thousands of people from their homes, caused significant damage to property and infrastructure, and has also led to multiple deaths all over the state. Coupled with the COVID-19 pan-demic, the situation has become worse than previous years.

Although the annual floods are a bane for humans, it is sometimes a boon for the animals. By restricting excessive human transportation, it helps in the migration of animals from Kaziranga to Nagaland and Karbi Anglong hills, which may be otherwise hindered by human movement along these paths. It also

coincides with the mating season of various animals.

Man-animal conflict is common in Assam, especially man-elephant conflict. However, the season of floods is usually an exception be-cause humans are occupied by their own woes during the floods and there is seldom any confrontation between humans and elephants in this season. Other than the deaths caused by the animals drowning in water, many animals die in land-slides. But there lies a darker story : man using the floods as an oppor-tunity to poach animals.

Manoj Gogoi, Wildlife Con-servationist, informed P.E.O.P.L.E that, “Yesterday, while introspect-ing several flood affected areas, he discovered skins of deer stuck in tree branches, as it floated during

the heavy flood. Not just the skin, but they even found the organs of such animals floating in several ar-eas. They peel of their skins, to con-sume meat of such wild animals, specially Deer”

He said, “Every year during this year, we witness the injustice & as-sault over wild animals. Some peo-ple peel off the skins of the animals, throw them away. Hence, such skins & internal organs are discov-ered across several places.”

As such, where is the Wildlife Act? Why is punishment for as-saulting animals so negligible? Most importantly, despite a human crisis, with Flood already affected, how inhuman it is to actually conduct such inhumanly activities?

SHELTERLESS OLD-MAN RESCUED WITH THE HELP OF A STUDENT IN GUWAHATI

RARE GOLDEN TIGER PHOTOGRAPHED AT

KAZIRANGA NATIONAL PARK

PLASMA DONORS TO GETSPECIAL BENEFITS IN ASSAM

On Friday, a Partial-ly-Handicapped Old-aged man who stays in

the road-side of Guwahati’s PanBa-zar, near Don Bosco School. He has been without food and shelter for over months now. Following Lock-down, the plight of the shelterless has been tremendous, but ignored often by the Administration.

Despite continuous effort by a Student named Preetha Bose and her friends to reach out the admin-istration, no help has been provided

so far. Preetha provided the home-less ill-person food, and water, also tried interacting to know the prob-lem he has been dealing with for a while now. The video was recorded then.

He told her, “that since the last 4 months nobody from the admin-istration has come to help. Sisters from the Don Bosco Church aren’t willing to help either. All we’ve got in the name of help is a string of contact numbers to dial.” More-over, we were told that the Old-

aged person was abandoned after her daughter was married.

On Saturday, the District Ad-ministration rescued the Old Man from Panbazar, near Don Bosco School. They said, the man will be shifted to GMCH for further treat-ment & care.

Preetha Bose as such deserves huge appreciation for her continu-ous effort to help the helpless. We need more people like her in our society.

Tigers are an endangered species in our country India. But recently to

everyone’s delight IFS Parveen Kas-wan shared pictures of the Golden Tiger clicked by Wildlife photogra-pher Mayuresh Hendre at the Ka-ziranga National Park. Apparently there is only one Golden Tiger re-corded in the entire world in this century.

As soon as he shared the picture, it went viral and created quite a stir

on social media. The Golden Tiger or Golden

Tabby Tiger is a rare morph of a Royal Bengal Tiger.

The majestic species has come to an extinction because of recessive genes in individuals, as a result of inbreeding with fragmented popu-lations, caused by habitat destruc-tion.

After six successful sightings of this particular female tiger, Ma-yuresh fondly named her ‘Goldie.’

The numbers of people infected by COVID-19 are increasing all over

the world. No vaccine has been allowed for mass implementation yet. Different medicines are being touted all over the world for the treatment of COVID-19. Some of these are Remdesivir, Hydroxy-chloroquine, Quinine, etc. How-ever, the effectiveness of many of these medicines are debated and they also bring along several side effects. However, one treatment for symptomatic COVID-19 pa-tients which has shown a high level of effectiveness and almost no side

effects is plasma therapy, where the plasma of a recovered COVID-19 patient who had been under in-tensive treatment is taken to treat mildly symptomatic COVID-19 patients.

Assam has recently started plas-ma therapy for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. However, it is only normal that many people might hesitate in donating their plasma. To tackle this, the Gov-ernment of Assam has announced that plasma donors in Assam will get preference in jobs and govern-ment schemes as a gesture for help-ing fight the COVID-19 pandem-ic. “The plasma donors will get a certificate. We will consider giving

preference to them in interviews, government schemes, etc. For in-stance, a plasma donor will get two extra marks if he or she is tied in any test or interview,” Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma was quoted as saying.

People from other states who wish to come to Assam to donate plasma would be provided guest house facilities by the State Gov-ernment, and the State Govern-ment will also bear the cost of their return air ticket.

The Government of Assam is using the promises to incite re-luctant people into donating their plasma for COVID-19 treatment.

By Akash Bhattacharjee




7 State DeskSunday, 19 July,2020


The controversial Citi-zenship Amendment Act (CAA) had caused

widespread protests all over the nation, but the protests were most intense in Assam, where in addi-tion to the protests over the fear of the constitution provisions being subverted by the law, the people had also protested over the fear of losing their identity and becoming minorities in their own land.

Some of the regionalist leaders who had spearheaded the move-ment against CAA were Akhil Gogoi, Bitu Sonowal, Manas Kon-war and Dharjya Konwar. They had been arrested and kept in de-tention for months under various clauses of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act or UAPA, among other sections of criminal law. It was alleged by many that they were imprisoned for opposing the government and criticising the government, rather than actually

doing anything of an unlawful na-ture.

In recent times, the demand for the release of these leaders had intensified, with people call-ing out the inhumane treatment against these political prisoners on social media. Following this, Bitu Sonowal, the central president of Sattra Mukti Sangram Samiti (SMSS) was granted bail by a NIA special court on 15th July. Dhar-jya Konwar, state joint secretary of Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti was granted bail by a NIA special court of 17th July. Both of them will be undergoing treatment for COVID-19, before after which they will be set free.

Manas Konwar, the working president of SMSS was also grant-ed bail on 13th July, but his release was delayed by the prison authori-ties, an action which received huge flak from the public. On being set free, Mr Konwar addressed the media about the mistreatment meted out to the prisoners in jail.

The most significant of all these leaders, Akhil Gogoi, who is under treatment for COVID-19 has been granted bail by the Gauhati High Court in three cases registered against him in various police sta-tions of the state. However, he will still be kept under imprisonment for the UAPA charges of the NIA. Mr. Gogoi had tested positive for COVID-19, and was shifted to the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) for treatment.

Visuals had shown that he was in very weak physical treatment, and he had almost broken down while talking about the mistreat-ment done by the prison author-ities while he was being shifted to the hospital. “Now he has got bail in all cases, except the two NIA cases. The hearing in one of these two cases will start in the next few days. We hope the court will grant bail to him,” Mr Gogoi’s advocate Santanu Borthakur was quoted as saying.

Editorial Desk

Editorial Desk

Chief Secretary of Assam, Kumar Sanjay Krishna on Saturday at a press-

meet announced the Guidelines for the Unlock 1.0 of Lockdown in the Kamrup Metropolitan. As cases continue to see a spike, in order to resume the economic sector, the decision has been taken to unlock Guwahati in phases. The Unlock 1.0 shall be in force till 2nd August.

Few of the important Guidelines were: 1. No Inter-District Movement from Wednesday: barring movement of vehicles between districts except emergency cases. 2. Movement of Private Vehicles restricted in the city:

clarifying several confusions the Chief Secretary said, movement of vehicles will be allowed for those travelling to work, or emergency. However, valid Identification Documents will be needed in such. 3. Private-Government offices to operate with 30% Attendance: both the sectors will ensure the presence of only 30% employees. Meanwhile, Random Testings will be conducted for the employees in a few days after operation. 5. All shops operate on the basis of “side-street” norms: shops on the alternate side of the streets to operate on alternate days.

#AssamNeedsHelp trends #1 on Twitter

STUDENTS UNIT FROM COTTON UNIVERSITY SHOWS WAY TO EDUCATE

96-WILD ANIMALS, INCLUDING 8-RHINOS

DIED IN ASSAM FLOODS

The flood situation in As-sam has been worsening with each passing day. As

of today around 75 people have lost their lives. Even the animals are not spared.

In this tragic situation the stu-dent fraternity of Cotton Univer-sity along with students of other universities like Tezpur University, Dibrugarh University and Gauhati University and many others have taken to Twitter to start a Twitter storm from 7pm- 9pm today.

The initiative is mainly taken to bring the national media as well as

the Central Government’s attention towards the deteriorating condi-tions of flood affected areas in As-sam.

Even people from outside the state have expressed their concern and are contributing towards the cause.

The #AssamNeedsHelp Hashtag trending #1 on Twitter across India today.

Hashtags like #Assam-Floods2020#AssamIsDrowning #AssamNeedsHelp#PrayForAssam were also trending on Twitter.

Amidst all the turmoil that the world has been facing now including

India, a severe blow has been on the educational sector as lakhs of students are not getting the prop-er education they should have re-ceived. While a segment of the students having access to smart-phones and laptops continue with

their learning, the underpriv-ileged children of the poor fami-lies have been restricted from their learning process as they don’t have the required gadgets to access on-line classes.

In this hour of crisis Cottonian Jagaran Mancha, a student unit of Cotton University, has come up

with a initiative for those under-privileged children who are not being able to advocate themselves in the online classes.

Various members from the unit, doing their under gradua-tion and postgraduation in Cotton University, have been teaching the poor children from their locality cost free.

The association has put up nu-merous posts in their facebook page where the pictures show the senior students imparting educa-tion to the deprived kids.

They urge people from all over Assam to indulge themselves in this noble deed, to extend their helping hand towards these poor children and impart them with the education they have been lacking because of the Pandemic.

Assam Floods: 96 ani-mals died at Kaziranga National Park and Ti-

ger Reserve, Bokahat in the flood which hit parts of the state. (ANI)

According to reports by the Government of India, as on 18th July: 85% of the Kaziranga Na-tional Park is submerged in water,

in which 96-animals died. This in-cludes: 8 rhinos, 3 wild buffaloes, 7 wild boars, 2 swamp deers, 74 hog deers and 2 porcupines.

Several camps have been vacat-ed. Meanwhile, water level tends to flow above danger level in Ni-matighat, Numaligarh, Dhansiri and Tezpur.

ANTI-CAA PROTESTORS GRANTED BAIL BY GAUHATI HC

UNLOCK 1.0 BEGINSIN GUWAHATI




Image source: www.google.com Image source: www.google.com

BLANK PRIME TIME SCREENS FOR ASSAM

Assam’s annual Floods are now a ritual-devastation of lives, livelihood. Three-

deaths reported in the last 24-hours, taking the total to 81, so far already. 27,63,719 population affected, with 27.5+ animals affected. In Kaziranga National Park, 96-wild animals were reported to have died in the floods, which includes 8-one horned Rhinoceros. Thousands of

houses washed away, hectares of crop fields destroyed. As such, what Assam’s annual disaster identified? Certainly not.

As like every year, Assam remains unidentified, and unhighlighted across the National Media. Few of the many news channels covered Assam’s annual plight, denying a much needed coverage. Anyone

outside Assam will know what is actually happening within the state. In the previous year, it was Kerala who experienced a flood devastation.

This year, it is Bihar. However, the one thing that remains common is Assam experiencing every year. Submerged, yet remains unheard.Assam had to scream with

#AssamNeedsHelp just to ensure people outside Assam gets to know about the miseries of livelihood and life in the state. The Prime Minister & the National Party President of the BJP took “care” of the flood situations over a “phone-call”. Not just this year, but this is the story of every year. Meanwhile, as National Media kept their screens “blank” for Assam, International Media covered

the Assam Floods with details, and photographs. However, what must be addressed properly is “Why we want the National Media to cover Assam Flood”? Similar question, with a simple answer. The State as well as the Central Government now need to hunt for a “permanent solution”, as promised and failed to deliver every year. Read below:

THE DEMISE OF INC IS LOCATEDAT 10 JANPATH

After the loss in 2014 General Elections, the Congress had set up a committee to

look into the loopholes which was chaired by the former Defense Minister A.K. Antony but the report produced by it could only manage for a space in the shelves and nothing else. After a more humiliating result in 2019, no such committee was even formed. While everyone thought that Congress was done for, no one expected it

to reach a position where not only will BJP harm it by taking away RS seats through horse-trading but also governments like that in Madhya Pradesh.

The special operations group (SOG) of Rajasthan police said Saturday that it has arrested Sanjay Jain alias Sanjay Bardia whose name purportedly figured in audio tapes linked to alleged horse trading to dislodge the Ashok Gehlot government.

Jain was called for questioning on

Friday on the basis of the Rajasthan chief whip Mahesh Joshi’s complaint to SOG that he was one of the three persons, whose names figured in three audio tapes that had surfaced the previous evening and was purportedly involved in horse trading.

He was arrested late on Friday night charges of conspiring to topple the Congress government.“Jain was arrested on Friday night,” said Ashok Rathore, additional director general of police ATS-SOG.

Q.1: ONE PRIMARY REASON? Q.2: WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

The primary reason behind Assam’s severe devastation caused due to the floods, is the building up of Embankments, not today but back when it all started. Massive Earthquake in 1950, when the then Central Government instructed the Assam

Government to construct embankments, as a measure to control the vulnerability of the Flood back then. According to the estimates of the tiol Flood Commission, around 3.15 lakh hectares of land is prone to floods in Assam, which is 9.4% of the total flood prone area of India (The Sentinel Assam). Availability of the finance back then, Assam Government hurriedly constructed 4,176 kms of embankments, within 30-years, ignoring essentiality of studying the condition upon which such embankments were to be built.These embankments acted opposite to what they were meant to act like. Untested, lack of research and proper adaption of scientific measure, postulated the Embankment Construction as the cheapest method of flood management. Expecting fertile soil, better agriculture, the public back then had to accept. However, the consequences are felt even today. Brahmaputra’s erosion led to intra-migration.In 2016, the Minister of Water Resources, Keshab Mahanta said, 90% of Assam’s embankment has exceeded its lifespan. Out of 493 (4,474.43 km) 295 embankments (3,998) have outlived their lifespan. As per Assam Government, the lifespan of an embankment is 25-years. As per a latest report by the Sentinel, nearly 70% of these embankments are vulnerable and flood-prone. There are many embankments which were built back in the pre-Independence era.This is just one of the many reasons, however the ONE reason for the National Media is to put forward these statistics, and actually show how vulnerable are the lives of lakh. Permanent Solution?

As today, the public demands National Media to cover the disastrous issue of Assam, the public should also bind the Government to actually take the matter in a serious place. How? There has been huge allegations about the building up of embankments

in Assam, as well. As such, usage of Geo-Bags as to build embankments aside the mighty Brahmaputra might be a good step on paper, but on practicality, things look pretty opposite.Geo-Bags could be a vital source of “Scams”, “Corruptions”. As such, for example; “You are informed to put 6000-Geo Bags. You used only 3000-Geo Bags, rest you are not accountable.

During Audit Checks, they are informed that only 3000 such bags are used. On interrogation, you said, Brahmaputra eroded along with soil.” Brahmaputra carrying along sediments isn’t new to be learnt, but the way things are manipulated needs to be understood as well as highlighted.Moreover, why aren’t populations of vulnerable areas informed pre-Monsoon when the Assam Floods occur to devastate their livelihoods. Meanwhile, several Politicians, MLAs, MPs or Political Activists could be seen reaching out to several affected areas, to donate reliefs to the affected.

Not a bad thing, but when photos are more than actions, it’s certainly not the right thing. As such, who holds the responsibility? Every year, the same story. Every year, we condemn, we feel sorry. The dilemmas are only fulfilled when Media questions.

The National Media is hence, looked after to bring in the entire Nation’s attention. We are submerged, also unheard.

8 ContinuationSunday, 19 July,2020


By Biprajit Roy Choudhury

9 OpinionSunday, 19 July,2020PUBLIC’S EASILY OBTAINABLE AND PARTICIPATORY, LEGITIMATE E-MEDIA

Extrajudicial Killings – India’s Infamous Encounter Culture

Recently, the so called “encounter” in which Vikas Dubey was shot in cold

blood by the police, is one of the thousands of extrajudicial killings that have been committed by the police in India for decades, and once again brought into focus of the public the debate about such “encounter killings”, and the legal and constitutional validity of such actions taken by our police forces. Encounter killing is a term used in India to describe alleged extrajudicial killings in which suspected criminals are unlawfully executed by governmental authorities without the authorization of any judicial proceeding or legal process. According to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of India, 995 cases of alleged fake encounters were recorded from 2002-2013, with Uttar Pradesh topping the list at 369 cases. Nearly half of 1,782 encounter death complaints registered with NHRC between 2000 and 2017 were from UP alone. A whopping 38,000 of 78,000 human rights violations brought before NHRC in 2017-18 were from UP. Out of the 588 policemen charge-sheeted from 2001-2016 in such cases, only 52 were convicted.

There are several reasons. Very often, it is the unholy nexus which exists amongst politicians, criminals and the police. Putting the criminal at a trial in a court of law might induce him/her to “reveal the secrets or hidden collaborations” between him/her and policemen and politicians. So it makes sense why policemen often kill such criminals by staging “encounters” to avoid further trouble.Police indulging in encounter killings receive widespread public support and are subjected to hero-worshipping by the public, as they are seen doing the job of cleaning up the Indian society by killing the criminals, and delivering timely justice. Media and films further promote to the cause by projecting them as “heroes”, ingraining the concept of encounters being the correct method of dealing with mere suspects, whether they have been proved guilty or not. Moreover, policemen also receive political support in the form of rewards, promotions etc. for encounters. In some cases, politicians use the police to eliminate their rivals through staging fake encounters.For example, when Hyderabad police gunned down four suspects

of the rape and murder of Priyanka Reddy in December 2019, the police received w i d e s p r e a d public support for the “instant j u s t i c e . ” C e l e b r a t i o n s hit the streets in Hyderabad with revelers s h o w e r i n g flower petals on police officers. P r o m i n e n t c i t i z e n s , including union ministers, took to social media in support of the killings.Other reasons, such as lack of training, poor working c o n d i t i o n s , n e p o t i s m , d e p r e s s i o n due to heavy w o r k l o a d ,

prejudices regarding caste and religion, corruption, political leanings, lack of autonomy, lack of accountability, lack of implementation of constitutional laws, and lack of convictions further promote encounter killings. The encounter killings in India have come under both domestic and international scrutiny. In March 1997, Justice M. N. Venkatachaliah (the then chairperson of the NHRC), asked all states and Union Territories to ensure that police follows some guidelines in cases of encounter killings, which include registering a FIR, investigation by an independent body like the state CID, in case the police officers belonging to the same police station are the members of the encounter party, and granting compensation to the victims. In 2010, the NHRC extended the guidelines by a few more procedures, which include the filing of a magisterial enquiry in all cases of death, reporting to the commission in all cases of deaths in police action within 48 hours, and filing a second report to the commission within three months.We must also remember that there is a procedure prescribed by

the law for criminal investigation which is embedded in the Indian Constitution under Article 21 as the Right to Life and Personal Liberty. It is fundamental, non-derogable and is available to every person. Even the State cannot violate that right. However, police seldom follows these rules.It must be also kept in mind that although there is no provision in the Indian law that directly authorizes the encounters of criminals, however, there are certain enabling provisions which may be interpreted differently to vest police officers with certain powers.In almost all cases where an encounter has taken place, it is done for self-defense of the police officer. Under Section-96 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), every human being has the right to private defense which is a natural and an inherent right. Similarly, Section-100 of IPC, exception 3 of Section 300 of IPC, Section-46 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), etc. lay down similar provisions with regard to investigations in extra-judicial killings.However, it can often be seen that police seldom follow these rules, and often falsify their justification.If any police personnel are found guilty, he/she will be charged under Section-299 of the Indian Penal Code for culpable homicide. And, the compensation must be granted to the kin of the deceased, in case the police officers are prosecuted on the basis of investigation. The Supreme Court too, has rolled out its own guidelines. In the “People’s Union for Civil Liberties vs. State of Maharashtra” case (2014), the SC was dealing with writ petitions questioning the genuineness of 99 encounter killings by the Mumbai Police in which 135 alleged criminals were shot dead between 1995 and 1997.The Supreme Court then laid down the 16 point guidelines as the standard procedure to be followed for thorough, effective, and independent investigation in the cases of death during police encounters. Some of these include recording intelligence regarding criminal activities, registering FIR, conducting independent investigation etc, providing medical aid etc. In the international arena too, a panel of four United Nations independent

experts and Special Rapporteurs on human rights “expressed alarm” through a statement on 11th January, 2019 about the extra-judicial killings in India. Moreover, regarding her obligations to international law, India is party to the The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which prohibits arbitrary deprivation of life and guarantees the right to a fair trial. The UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions stipulate, “There shall be thorough, prompt and impartial investigation of all suspected cases of extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions, including cases where complaints by relatives or other reliable reports suggest unnatural death.”Nevertheless, in the absence of the implementation of the aforementioned guidelines and still growing number of extra-judicial killings, if we are to uphold the true democratic spirit of India and respect our Constitution, our police should follow the constitutional norms and adhere to the due process of law rather than adopting the measures of retributive justice. Encounter killings must be investigated independently as they affect the credibility of Rule of Law. There is a dire need for complete overhauling of the criminal justice system and bringing out required police reforms. The need of the hour is to lay down standard guidelines to better train the police personnel and equip them with all relevant skills so that they can effectively tackle every dreadful situation. Moreover, the public must be educated about the unlawful nature of extra-judicial killings, for the police are responsible for maintaining the law and order system, and that the duty of awarding a sentence, finding the guilt in a suspect or carrying out an execution in accordance to the law is the duty of the judicial system, not the police. If extra-judicial killings are allowed to be continued, it will only harm our democracy, execution and implementation of the laws, constitutional provisions and people might lose faith in the legal system in the long run.

The Government’s Failure to Protect this Country.“We can win the fight

against Corona Virus in just

14 days”, said the honourable Prime Minister Modi, followed by the announcement of the first lockdown from 23 March onwards. The country was already facing an economic deterioration with unemployment at its highest in the last 45 years, especially after demonetisation and hurried implementation of GST, hence, the sudden shutdown of the country did not only severely affect the country’s economy but also grossly affected the daily wage workers and the poorer sections. Instead of winning the COVID-19 fight, our country has reached the 3rd position in globally overtaking countries like China, Russia, UK having more then 1Million confirmed cases. Hence, the govt. has supremely failed in

protecting the country. Neither did the government focus on the poorer sections of the country nor did they concern over the issues of daily wage workers, about how they will survive in cities. Obviously, the workers had no choice other than to return to their homes, which the government conveniently ignored and which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of workers in accidents. The government kept silent even though they were answerable. Therefore, the same question rises again, what were the reasons for the government’s failure? As of February 5, India banned entry for foreign nationals travelling from China to India, although 25 other countries had confirmed several Covid-19 cases by January 31. India waited another month before banning entry to nationals of Italy, Iran, South Korea and Japan on March

3. While Japan had 284 cases on that date, arrivals from several other countries with a sizeable number of cases, including the US (85 cases), France (212 cases) and Spain (166 cases) – faced no entry ban in India. With a total of 292,142 cases confirmed across more than 150 countries globally, that India finally suspended all international travel, more than two months after it issued its first travel advisory. So more than 15 lakh people had entered India after January 18 already. Secondly, extremely low testing rate. India had tested at a rate of 10.5 tests per million people, so low a figure that leading countries were testing at rates hundreds of times higher than India; South Korea (600 times), U.A.E (1200 times) and Iceland (2600 times). Maximum testing was only the way to track the spread of the virus.

By: Raktim Ronojoy Neog

By: Abhishek Bora

10 OpinionSunday, 19 July,2020PUBLIC’S EASILY OBTAINABLE AND PARTICIPATORY E-MEDIA

TRINITY TEST: The Beginning of the Nuclear Era

At approximately 5:30 AM on 16th July, 1945, a massive yellow ball of fire

erupted in the Jornada Del Muerto desert about 56 km southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, USA. It was the “Trinity” test, the code name for the first detonation of a nuclear device, informally nicknamed “The Gadget”, which ushered the dawn of the nuclear era. The explosive force was equal to roughly 20,000 to 22,000 tons of TNT, far larger than the expected yield of 7,500 tons. The flash of light was visible over 280 miles from the test site; and the shock waves from the blast broke windows 120 miles away.16th July, 2020 marks 75 years ever since humanity entered into the nuclear age.The Trinity Test was part of the Manhattan project, which began modestly in 1939; it was a research, experimentation and development undertaking, involving more than 130,000 people over the course of its duration and costing nearly US$2 billion (equivalent to about $23 billion in 2018). It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada.The code name “Trinity” was assigned by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, inspired by the poetry of John Donne.It all began with The discovery of nuclear fission by German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in 1938, and its theoretical explanation by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch, which made the development of an atomic bomb a theoretical possibility. There were fears that a German atomic bomb project would develop one first, especially among scientists who were refugees from Nazi Germany and other fascist countries. In August 1939, Hungarian-born physicists Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner drafted the Einstein–Szilard letter, which warned of the potential development of “extremely powerful bombs of a new type”. It urged the United States to take steps to develop their own nuclear programme. They had it signed by Albert Einstein and delivered to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt.“A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might well destroy the whole port with some of the surrounding territory”, Einstein wrote in the letter. Roosevelt called on Lyman Briggs of the National Bureau of Standards to head the Advisory Committee on Uranium to investigate the issues raised by the letter. The committee reported back to Roosevelt in November that uranium “would provide a

possible source of bombs with destructiveness vastly greater than anything now known”.On 9 October 1941, after a series of deliberations with scientists and receiving recommendations from scientific committees, President Roosevelt approved the atomic program after he convened a meeting with Vannevar Bush and Vice President Henry A. Wallace. To control the program, he created a Top Policy Group consisting of himself—although he never attended a meeting—Wallace, Bush, Conant, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and the Chief of Staff of the Army, General George C. Marshall. Roosevelt chose the US Army to run the project Thus, the Manhattan Project was born. Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves, Jr., was appointed its director in September 1942. The weapons development portion of this project was located at the Los Alamos Laboratory in northern New Mexico, under the directorship of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. The University of Chicago, Columbia University and the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley conducted other development work.Meanwhile, Kenneth Bainbridge was assigned to lead the test site’s development. In addition to the technical materials required for the test, a base camp was constructed with security measures. Additionally, miles of roads were paved to transport materials to the test site, and electrical wires and cables were constructed to provide the power to detonate the gadget. While placing the Gadget to the top of its tower at the test site, it came partially unhinged and began to sway, but the Gadget was placed at the top of the tower without further incident.Fears of a failure to detonate or producing the expected yield (known as a fizzle) led to the construction of a massive cylindrical steel containment vessel called Jumbo that could contain the plutonium, allowing it to be recovered for future experimentation, but Jumbo was not used.After the war, the Army blew off Jumbo in an unsuccessful attempt to destroy it, and today its remains can be seen at the Trinity Site. A rehearsal was held on May 7, 1945, in which 98 tons of high explosive spiked with radioactive isotopes was detonated. Few days before the event, precautions were taken. Soldiers were posted in several nearby towns in case they needed to be evacuated. Groves, who was concerned for the safety of Amarillo, Texas, a city of 70,000 and only 300 miles away, called

New Mexico Governor John J. Dempsey explaining that martial law might need to be implemented in the event of an emergency at the site. On July 16, a thunderstorm delayed the test, which was initially scheduled for 4:00 AM. Nevertheless, the scientists of the Manhattan Project and soldiers took their positions for the test a few hours before the rescheduled 5:30 AM detonation. They were stationed at shelters 10,000 yards north, west, and south from the tower. The project’s leadership observed the shelter from Compania Hill, about twenty miles from the tower. At 5:29:45, Gadget detonated with around 20 kilotons of force. The Atomic Age had begun.In one of the most gruesome moments of the human history, just 3 weeks after the test, on 6th and 9th August 1945, nuclear bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by US Air Force bombers to end World war II, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and several hundred died or were maimed from radiation exposure later on after the war. This made the US the sole country on Earth to ever use nuclear weapons in war till date.Trinity was the first of over 2100 nuclear tests to be conducted worldwide by 8 countries, with over 1000 conducted by the US alone. The tests released vast amounts of radioactivity around the globe, and compelled countries to adopt treaties to control the testing, production and stockpiling of nuclear weapons. Examples include the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, and Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty etc. Nevertheless, according to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the worldwide total inventory of nuclear weapons as of 2019 stood at 13,865, of which 3,750 were deployed with operational forces. In early 2019, more than 90% of the world’s 13,865 nuclear weapons were owned by Russia and the United States. Since the inception of nuclear weapons, humanity has been plunged into an endless debate – whether nuclear weapons have made the world safer, or has it made it more dangerous; and whether we need a nuclear weapons free world. At the end of the day, it is for the major stakeholders to decide whether the doomsday weapons we created to defend ourselves should not become the tool for the obliteration of the human race.

By: Raktim Ronojoy Neog By: Gargi Das

India’s quick response to flatten-ing the COVID curve has seen the effective result in terms of

containment, death, and case re-ports. Working from home with white-collar jobs, getting regular salaries, and benefits; self-isolation can turn “productive” in a spacious house more than in a cramped apartment. However, the results are subjective because our policies, re-searches, and public health reports have not taken into account the im-pacts it has had on underprivileged communities: migrant workers and women. Gender Inequality has magnified in these times of crisis and there’s a need to acknowledge the primary and secondary effects of a health emergency on different individuals and communities, and for creating appropriate response measures.

Although the data shows equal numbers of cases between men and women so far but evidence sug-gests that more men than women are dying, potentially due to sex-based immunological or gendered differences, such as patterns and prevalence of smoking (C When-man 2020). On the other hand, with the lockdown, effects of travel restrictions will likely be different for female and male migrant work-ers who had to walk miles to reach home. A report by MoHUA stated that women migrant workers con-stitute 73% and 56% of total work-force in major sectors in rural and urban areas respectively. They are even more vulnerable to exploita-tion, possessing negligible or often lower educational qualifications than their male counterparts (UN-ESCO 2016). In the health sector, despite being front line workers and emphasis laid by WHO Executive Board on the gendered nature of the health force and risk they in-cur, women are yet to be fully in-cluded into global health security services, surveillance, detection and prevention mechanisms. In the so-cial front, an upsurge in the cases of domestic violence is also seen as women spend more time with their perpetrators. The closure of schools meant different impact for women; as in most societies across the coun-try, they are the ones taking the re-sponsibility of children in the roles of mother, teacher or anganwadi workers. The burden of care usual-ly falls on women who have to take care of not just households, kids but sick elderly, making them more sus-ceptible to the virus and sacrificing their time from office work. A study

conducted by Sabharwal and others reveals that men’s labor force partic-ipation remains the same whereas women’s participation rises in poor-er households and falls in richer ones in crises like this.

In conclusion, the coronavirus cri-sis will be global and long-lasting, economic as well as medical. How-ever, it also offers an opportunity for policymakers and researchers to collect data and conduct stud-ies to improve preparedness for future uncertainties. The tendency to argue that gender is a side issue, a distraction from the “real crisis”, must be resisted. Women leaders of New Zealand, Taiwan, and Nor-way have outperformed the male leaders of Superpowers like Chi-na and the USA in flattening the curve and have started progressing towards normalcy. Domestic and International politics must reflect on the fact that crises and instabili-ties are the prime times when we see a regression in the fight for gender equality. This also calls for the need for greater participation of wom-en’s concerns and knowledge in the teams designing the response mea-sures for creating effective, equita-ble policies and interventions

References

Clare Wenham, Julia Smith, Rose-mary Morgan. March 2020.

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30526-2.

J, Smith. Overcoming the “tyranny of the urgent”: integrating gender into disease outbreak preparedness and response.Gender Develop, 2019.

Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation. “REPORT OF THE WORKING GROUP ON MIGRATION .” January 2017.

Shwetlena Sabarwal, Nistha Sinha and Mayra Buvinic. December 2010.

https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-5496.

The Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Emergency Response Epidemiology Team. “The epidemiological char-acteristics of an outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVD-19).” China CDC Weekly, 2020.

The Gendered Impact of COVID-19 Crisis

After India’s independence, a group of Assamese teachers ventured out with the

intent of bringing education to the local population of erstwhile North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA). The entire enterprise was led by a woman of substance who held a Masters Degree from the University of Edinburgh. Mereng, as the community recognised her, a notable educationist, hailed from the beautiful state of Assam,

who revolutionised perceptions regarding women and education. Facing hardships and personal losses, Mereng continued to show indomitable spirit and take up scholarships for Montessori training and then a scholarship to the University of Edinburgh. Her stay in Edinburgh had been an eye-opener on many and varied counts. This journey had been an invaluable experience for a young woman who wanted to hold the

bull by its horns in her future hard struggle for survival. In her biography ‘Mereng’ by renowned author Anuradha Sharma Pujari, there are vivid accounts of her two-year stay in Scotland that made her the confident woman who worked tirelessly for the principles of education she believed.The mainland Indian people had not even set foot in the foothill regions of Northeastern India, let alone plan to pave the way for the people residing here. However, as she returned with her degree, she was firm on taking up the challenge of setting up an education department at Sadiya, in the banks of river Brahmaputra. Once in Sadiya, Mereng was determined to uplift the downtrodden; she identified with them wholeheartedly, and they, in turn, accepted her as a well-wisher and one of them. As early as 1947, a Teachers’ Training Institute was established under her dynamic leadership. The first Department of Education was built at Sadiya under her charge as the Education Officer.She led a set of people who were resolute about bringing advancement in an area that had long been engulfed in darkness.

It took the group their sustained devotion, patience and courage to keep working under various odds. They worked on make-do schools where along with academics, there were skill development activities like sewing, weaving, and painting. She requested the person to impart the skill to the local students wherever and whenever talent was spotted. Physical training was imparted to her students by infamous Assam Rifles. Her teachers belonged to a spectrum of ages and locations, helping her achieve the dream of educating people in the nooks and corners of villages in the then NEFA. Despite the hazardous earthquake of 1950 and the floods of 1952, with her meticulous planning, Mereng involved one and all by providing education to the local folk. Locals respected her; she only had to request, and they all rallied round. Despite her expertise in the field, ten years of gruelling work in the forests and villages of NEFA, the mainland Indian politics of the Selection Committee in Delhi denied her the position of Director of the Education Department which led to her resignation. In the

struggles of Mereng, we can note the seriousness of Indian women’s dilemma and the generation-old struggles behind it. She not only stepped into the world usually held by men but proved herself to be a successful educationist. The sheer grit and courage that she showed at a time when women were not expected to be in the shoes of men establish the fact that women can achieve every goal if they are given their due status and opportunity.Though women like her have left fewer traces in the national historical records, channelised transmission of their voices could be heard through narratives of people they worked with. Alongside other revolutionary leaders, a powerful, determined woman like her deserved more recognition while living and even posthumously. She is Indira Miri, our beloved Mereng, folks; a prominent leader and educationist of India.

Radhika is a member of the Research Division of Project Saathi, a Guwahati-based NGO working in the field of education and child rights in Assam.

11 OpinionSunday, 19 July,2020PUBLIC’S EASILY OBTAINABLE AND PARTICIPATORY E-MEDIA

“Shadow Pandemic” Alongside Covid-19

HEADS TAILS AND PONYTAILS

By: Atlanta Sarma

By: Tanuz Kashyap

By: Radhika Boruah

The lockdown has brought the world to a standstill. Everyone is locked in their

homes to prevent the spread of Coronavirus. But is every home safe? Thousands of women out there would disagree to it. For them being at home during lockdown means meeting with violence which is perpetrated frequently and on a regular basis.

Domestic violence involves a pattern of psychological, physical, sexual, financial and emotional abuse along with assaults, threats and humiliation. The National Commission for Women ( NCW) has raised an urgent alert about the increasing number of domestic violence cases since the nation wide lockdown began. In the first three weeks of the lockdown the Commission received 239 complaints of domestic violence.

The real figures are expected to be much more as many cases go unheard. Most of the complaints came from a particular section of the society- the literate and upper class. This could be just the tip of the iceberg as women from unprivileged communities have no way to reach out or have access to technology. Often the victims are afraid of speaking out or continue to bear the trauma because of the stigma attached with it. Few families would support daughters who want to walk out of abusive marriages. This dark picture isn’t unique to India. Early in April UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said

there was a “horrifying global surge in domestic violence” amid lockdowns. According to UN the calls to helplines doubled in Lebanon and Malaysia and tripled in China compared with the same time last year. In South Africa alone, the first week of the lockdown witnessed 90,000 reports of violence against women. This worldwide increase in domestic abuse can be described as a “shadow Pandemic” alongside Covid-19.

In Ap ril 2020, a 42 year old man in India allegedly murdered his wife, Savithramma in front of their daughter in a fit of rage suspecting her of infidelity. Such cases raise concerns regarding the dangerous consequences of normalizing domestic violence as a couple’s ‘ private matter’. Forcing families to stay at home, cooped together in a small space increases the risk of interpersonal violence and abuse. In the backdrop of economic struggle due to the Covid pandemic, risks of violent abuse increase as men tend to release their frustration of losing jobs by abusing women in intimate relationships.

As such women organizations need to amplify their efforts and publicize helpline numbers. While the fight against Covid-19 continues it is important to acknowledge and make concerted efforts to address this pandemic that thousands are battling alone at home.

Knowing pioneer Indira Miri

On Friday 17th July 2020 we came across an inci-dent which has created

even more furore in the Holy city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. What happened was that, a man who was ‘allegedly’ a Nepali was tonsured and forced to chant “Jai Shri Ram”, and also “Nepal PM Murdabad” by a group of miscreants. Those mis-creants first shaved the man’s head in a pattern that read “Jai Shri Ram” while continuing to force the man to chant Lord Ram’s name. Last week, the Prime Minister of Nepal Mr.K P Sharma Oli made a statement claiming that lord Ram was indeed born in Nepal, not in India. PM Oli went ahead blaming India of cultural encroachment by “creating a fake Ayodhya”. Now, the incident that occurred on Friday can be attributed as a response by these miscreants to the comments made by PM Oli since the man was forced to chant slogans like “Nepal

PM Murdabad”, “Vishwa Hindu Sena Zindabad”, “Hindustan Zind-abad” and “Jai Shri Ram”.This whole incident was recorded on camera and shared across social media which made it spread like wildfire. People from all around the world started voicing their opin-ions on social media calling out this inhumane act done by these mis-creants which created a stir in the socio-political scenario of the whole nation after which the accused have been booked under sections of the IPC relating to public mischief, de-filing place of worship with intent to insult religion, Section 67 of the IT Act, Criminal conspiracy and Promoting communal enmity.

Now the video of the incident which was widely circulated on social media was in-fact original-ly uploaded by a person named Arun Pathak who had shared it on his Facebook profile. Interestingly

enough, Pathak who happens to be the prime accused in this incident is the Conveyor of Vishwa Hindu Sena and back in early 2000’s, he was also the District Chief of Shiv Sena (2000-2003). What happens to be the most interesting part of this story is that on Saturday SSP Amit Pathak, who on Friday had arrested the four-accused said that the alleged Nepali man in the video had in reality been ‘paid’ a sum of Rs.1000 to play the part and was a registered voter of Varanasi (and not of Nepal) and also revealed that the victims parents used to work in Jal Sansthan. This incident is a clear reflection of the havoc that PM Oli’s comments have created in India and keeping in mind the sensitive nature of the comments it will be interesting to see whether similar incidents occur in other places throughout the na-tion or not.

12 Business and Economic DeskSunday, 19 July,2020PUBLIC’S EASILY OBTAINABLE AND PARTICIPATORY E-MEDIA

India’s Wealthiest Women, Roshni Nadar Malhotra named new

chairman of HCL Tech.By: Anshuman Gogoi

By: Anshuman Gogoi

By: Anshuman Gogoi

By: Anshuman Gogoi

Roshni Nadar Malhotra, India’s wealthiest woman, is now the chairperson of

HCL Technologies, the Noida-based IT company said on Friday. The 38-year-old succeeds her father, Shiv Nadar. The appointment of non-executive director Roshni Nadar Malhotra to the new role takes effect immediately, the company said in a regulatory filing. Shiv Nadar will continue to be HCL Tech’s managing director, with the designation as the chief strategy officer.

Born and raised in New Delhi, Roshni studied in Vasant Valley School, and graduated from the Northwestern University in Illinois, USA. She has a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.Roshni Nadar Malhotra has

been the executive director and CEO of HCL Corporation, vice chairperson of the board of HCL Technologies, and trustee of the Shiv Nadar Foundation. At HCL Corporation, Roshni Nadar Malhotra has been responsible for providing strategic guidance to the organisation.

Roshni Nadar Malhotra was inducted as an additional director on the board of India’s third largest software exporter in 2013. This was four years after her appointment on the board of HCL Corp, the holding company of HCL Technologies and HCL Infosystems.

Passionate about wildlife and conservation, Roshni Nadar Malhotra set up The Habitats Trust in 2018. The trust aims at protecting the country’s natural

habitats and indigenous species, with the core mission of creating and conserving sustainable ecosystems.

She is also an alumnus of the World Economic Forum’s Forum of Young Global Leaders initiative, which is a community of the world’s most outstanding, next-generation leaders.

Ms Malhotra has featured in “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” list compiled and released by Forbes from 2017 through 2019.

Roshni Nadar Malhotra was the country’s richest woman in 2019, with a net worth of Rs 31,400 crore, according to IIFL Wealth Hurun India.

RELIANCE EMERGING AS THREAT FOR

AMAZON , WALMART

A $20 billion fund raising spree may take Reliance closer to its dream of be-

coming a digital giant, further threatening the ambitious plans US companies like Amazon, Walmart and Zoom have for India.Stake sales in Reliance’s digital unit Jio Platforms attracted not just pri-vate equity and sovereign wealth funds but also Google and Face-book, a strong endorsement for an enterprise that until a few years ago focussed largely on oil refining.Some industry watchers equate Re-liance’s digital plans - which extend from online shopping and cloud computing to telecom and digital payments - to China’s Alibaba and Tencent, companies Reliance itself calls “global peers”.Reliance has a track record of dis-rupting rival businesses. With cheap smartphones and data plans, its telecom venture Jio has in four years dethroned market leaders Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel to become the largest telecom opera-tor in India.On Wednesday, billionaire chair-man Mukesh Ambani said Reliance will expand e-commerce platform JioMart - which connects small re-tailers with consumers - to offer not just groceries but also electronics and fashion goods“Jio Platforms not only has the backend infrastructure and devel-opment capabilities but also an ever expanding captive consumer base,” said Mayank Vishnoi of Singa-pore-based financial advisory firm Resfeber International.“The addition of new digital prod-ucts targeting various sectors will pose threats to many large dom-inant players. Having strategic partners like Facebook and Google validates that Reliance gameplan is real.”The recent stake sales gave Reliance

a foreign partner for JioMart, which was launched this year. Facebook’s WhatsApp, which counts India as its top market with 400 million plus users, will work closely in con-necting small retailers to JioMart.“We will cover many more cities, serve many more customers across India, and expand to many more categories,” said Mr Ambani.Asked about the potential impact on foreign businesses eyeing India, one local industry executive who advises US multinationals said: “Amazon and Walmart should be scared.”To be sure, Reliance will face stiff competition from Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart, as both compa-nies have deep pockets and an al-ready well-established warehousing and logistics supply chain in the country.JioMart currently delivers groceries in only 200 cities, while Amazon and Flipkart deliver a wide range of goods across the country.Walmart, Flipkart and Amazon did not immediately respond to a re-quest for comment.“Real Threat”Reliance also has a retail footprint of around 11,000 stores across 6,700 cities that offer a wide array of products. It has also partnered with over 45 top international brands including Tiffany & Co, Burberry and Jimmy Choo.Senior leadership at Flipkart has started keeping close tabs on Reli-ance, and there is a fear the Indian company will have an added advan-tage from the regulatory perspec-tive, two sources close to the com-pany told Reuters.The Ambani family is viewed as be-ing well-connected politically. Am-azon and Walmart have had regu-latory troubles and face far tighter government oversight in India, where the prime minister has been

More Than 71,000 Crore Tax Refunded in last 3 Months ,says

The government has issued refunds worth Rs 71,229 crore in more than 21.24

lakh cases in the last three months. Sources tell ET now that faster re-funds will aid taxpayers with the liquidity during Covid-19. CBDT today said that Income tax refunds amounting to Rs. 24,603 crore have been issued in 19.79 lakh cases to taxpayers and corporate tax refunds amounting to Rs. 46,626 crore in 1.45 lakh cases to taxpayers during the COVID period.

In what comes in as a breather for taxpayers, CBDT further said that

all the refund-related cleanup is be-ing taken up on priority and will be completed by August 31, 2020.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes recently allowed processing of in-come tax refund claims in non-scru-tiny cases for assessment years up to 2017-18 till October 31, 2020, instead of the earlier date of De-cember 2019 allowing clearing up of old refund cases.

Faster refunds will prevent genuine hardship faced by taxpayers while addressing their pending grievances as well.

Petrol Price Remained Unchanged, Diesel Costlier Than Petrol in Delhi by 1Rs.

Petrol prices remained unchanged on Saturday in most cities across the country

while diesel became 17 paise costlier. Note that while petrol prices have remained unchanged since June 29, diesel price was hiked yesterday and today as well. After today’s revision, petrol price in Delhi remained unchanged at Rs 80.43 and Rs 81.52 per litre.

Diesel has further extended its gain over petrol prices in the national capital with OMCs raising its price while keeping retail gasoline prices unchanged. Note that retail rates of petrol and diesel in the country vary from state to state due to value added tax (VAT). The fuel prices are determined broadly by international oil rates and the rupee-dollar foreign exchange rate.In Kolkata, petrol, price remained unchanged at Rs 82.10 per litre, while diesel price was hiked to

Rs 76.67 per litre. In economic capital Mumbai, a litre of petrol was still priced at Rs 87.19, while a litre of diesel was selling at Rs 79.71 per litre. Petrol price in Noida remained unchanged at Rs 81.08 per litre while diesel became costlier and was retailing at Rs 73.29 per litre.

In Chennai, petrol price remained stagnant at Rs 83.63, while diesel was priced at Rs 78.50 per litre as against Rs 70.37 on Friday. Unlike Delhi, the prices of petrol continued to be priced much higher than diesel in other metro cities like Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai. In Gurugram, petrol and diesel price on Saturday remained unchanged at Rs 78.64 and Rs 73.61 per litre respectively.

In Bengaluru and Hyderabad, while petrol today was priced at Rs 83.04 and Rs 83.49 respectively, diesel was retailing at

Rs 77.48 per litre and Rs 76.69 per litre respectively. According to preliminary data compiled by Indian Oil Corporation, Indian state refiners’ petrol and diesel sales declined in the first half of July from the same period last month as renewed lockdowns in parts of the country and rising retail prices hit demand of the two auto fuels.

Fuel demand growth in India, the world’s third-biggest oil importer and consumer, plunged to historic lows in April when the government imposed a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus. State-refiners’ diesel sales, which account for two-fifth of overall refined fuel sales in India, fell by 18 per cent to 2.2 million tonnes (MT) in the first half of July from the same period in June, while sales of petrol fell 6.7 per cent to 880,000 tonnes.

13 Business and Economic DeskSunday, 19 July,2020PUBLIC’S EASILY OBTAINABLE AND PARTICIPATORY E-MEDIA

Consumer will Enjoy New Law from Next week to Protect their Rights

The government has notified most provisions of the Consumer Protection Act,

2019, which will come into force on July 20. With the consumers’ peace of mind in focus, the new law will ensure that complaints can be filed at a district or state consumer commission from the location where the complainant resides rather than from where the service or product was bought.

The provisions notified by the government are related to consumer protection councils, consumer disputes redressal forum, mediation, the liability of services or products, the penalty for manufacturing, selling, distributing etc spurious good or products which contain adulterant. The new provisions will enable the consumers to drag to court if manufacturers, sellers or distributors are found dealing with adulterated and spurious products. They can also file complaints in consumer commissions claiming compensation for the spurious or adulterated product from the consumer. Giving real teeth to courts against such errant businesses, under the provisions of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 which come into effect Monday, they can be awarded up to 6 months in jail or a fine of up to Rs 1 lakh in cases where the consumer is not injured.Incases where the consumer is injured,

the fine to the manufacturer, seller or distributor could be upto Rs 5 lakh and upto seven years in jail. If the case pertains to the death of the consumer then a minimum fine of Rs 10 lakh and seven years in jail which may be extended to life imprisonment can be imposed.Although the government is yet to notify the provisions of the act pertaining to e-commerce and direct selling, a TOI report says it may do so in the next one or two weeks. The provisions relating to the constitution of an apex Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) at the national level also remain to be notified.

However, the consumer commissions at district, state and national level will be able to entertain complaints and the CCPA will be able to take suo moto action and forward cases to National Consumer Dispute Redressal Commission for class action lawsuit where a large number of consumers are affected.

The Consumer Protection Bill, 2019 was introduced in the Upper House of the Parliament on July 8, 2019, by the Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Ram Vilas Paswan. It was passed on July 30, 2019, by the Lok Sabha and later cleated by Rajya Sabha on August 6, 2019. The bill received assent from President Ram

Nath Kovind on August 9. It will come into effect on July 20, 2020.

The Consumer Protection Act guarantees six consumer rights:

Right to Safety which involves the right to be protected from the marketing of goods and services which can pose a threat to one’s life and property.

Right to be informed: In order to save the consumer from unfair trade practices, he has all the right to be informed about the quality, quantity, potency, purity, standard and price of goods or services.

Right to Choose which ensures he has the right to access varieties of goods as well as services.

Right to be heard where the consumer has all the right to be heard and all his interests will receive due consideration at appropriate forums.

Right to seek Redressal against any unfair trade practices or anything which may lead to customers exploitation.

Right to Consumer Education which helps one to be an informed consumer throughout their life and which may also prevent them from exploitation.

By: Anshuman GogoiBy: Anshuman Gogoi

By: Prasurjya P. Kashyap

By: Prasurjya P. Kashyap

Ashok Lavasa, India’s Election Commissioner Appointed as VP

at Asian Development Bank

Election Commissioner (EC) and former finance secretary Ashok Lavasa has

been appointed as Vice-President at Asian Development Bank just months before his appointment as the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC).

Lavasa will now handle Private Sector Operations and Public-Private Partnerships for ADB. He will succeed Diwakar Gupta, whose term will end on 31 August

Lavasa was the sole member of the Election Commission of India (ECI) who refused to give a clean chit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah over allegations for violation of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) during the 2019 Lok

Sabha elections. A host of income tax investigations were also initiated against his family. Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora is due to retire in 2021.

A 1980 batch IAS officer of Haryana cadre, Lavasa has extensive experience in public-private partnerships and infrastructure development at the state and federal levels, with deep knowledge on public policy and the role of the private sector. He also has served as former Finance Secretary.

ADB was established in 1966, it is owned by 68 members—49 from the Asia Pacific region.

ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company on Friday witnessed a 28.4 per cent

rise in net profit at Rs 398 cr for the June quarter of the financial year 2020-21. The private sector non-life insurer had a net profit of Rs 310 crore in April-June 2019-20. Gross direct premium income (GDPI) of the company stood at Rs 3,302 crore in June quarter compared to Rs 3,487 crore in the year-ago period, a decline of 5.3 per cent. Due to

the Covid-19 induced situations GDPI of the company decreased to Rs 3,274 crore in Q1 FY2021 compared to Rs 3,488 crore in Q1 FY2020, registering a de-growth of 6.2 per cent , excluding crop segment. The combined ratio of the company stood at 99.7 per cent in June quarter of the current fiscal year compared to 100.4 per cent in the year-ago same period, primarily driven by COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, it stood at 98.4 per cent in Q1 FY2021

excluding the impact of cyclone Amphan and Nisarga of Rs 31 crore compared to 99.7 per cent in Q1 FY2020 excluding the impact of cyclone Fani of Rs 16 crore. ICICI Lombard stock settled at Rs 1,288.80 on BSE, up 3.15 per cent from the previous close.In addition , the solvency ratio was 2.50 times on June 30, 2020 as against 2.17 times on March 31, 2020 and higher than the minimum regulatory requirement of 1.50x.

ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company witnesses a surge of 28.4%

in net profits for FY 2020-21

VANDE BHARAT MISSION BEGINS

Air India has announced the initiation of ‘Vande Bharat Mission’ under which flights

will be operating from various destinations in Europe and the US. The booking of these flights have already started from July 18 through website, Booking offices and Authorised Travel Agents. Air India will operate flights from Delhi to Paris and Frankfurt; three flights every week from Delhi to Paris from 23 July 2020 every Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. And, four flights every week from Delhi to Frankfurt effective 25th July 2020 every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Moreover,

180 flights between India and the USA during the period of July 22, 2020, to August 31, 2020 will also be operated to/from New York, Chicago, Newark, San Francisco, and Washington DC and will offer connections to Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, Kochi, Mumbai & Ahmedabad. Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri stated that international flights may resume under bilateral air bubbles or a travel bubble with a few countries as many others are imposing entry restrictions even now, including India in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Eden Hazard arrived last summer at Real Madrid and fulfilled one of his

dreams in his career. The Spanish side spent 100 million euros on

the Belgian after complicated negotiations with the Chelsea director general Marina Granovskaia.

Nevertheless, this figure was just the base price and Chelsea would not accept less than 140

million euro initially, but accepted less in exchange for several bonuses. Hazard arrived at Real Madrid for a base price of 100 million euros. Winning the league would up Hazard’s price

Although Real Madrid managed to seal Eden Hazard’s signing for 100 million euros, Chelsea kept around 30 million euros as bonuses which include winning the La Liga title.

Real Madrid won the league and victory over Villarreal gave Zidane’s men the title which automatically meant Real Madrid have to pay some more money to Chelsea.

Apparently, the bonus to pay at the end of the season would be around 15 million euros. That would mean the Spanish giants will have spent more money on Hazard than on Bale’s signing from Spurs (101 million euros).

For the first time since the Coronavirus Pandemic brought life to a standstill,

cricket fans in South Africa will fi-nally be able to witness their favou-rite players in action on Saturday. Cricket South Africa’s Solidarity Cup will see the country’s best play-ers divided into three teams taking the field at the Supersport Park in Centurion to raise funds for those affected by the COVID-19 crisis.

The format of the match is bringing excitement all over the world as the sport makes another huge innovation with what is called the ‘3T’ cup. In an extremely un-conventional match-up, the three sides will all take in one match tak-ing place over the course of the day.

The three sides named Eagles, Kites, and Kingfishers will be led by AB de Villiers, Quinton De Kock, and Reeza Hendricks respective.

Such is the uniqueness of the tournament that its rules have left cricket fans around the globe con-fused. In essence, each team consists of eight players. All three sides will compete in one match consisting a total of 36 overs on Saturday. Each side will get the opportunity to bat once for 12 overs facing six overs each from the other two teams.

Interestingly, in the case of a team losing seven wickets, the ‘not-out’ batsman can continue batting

alone but can only score runs in even numbers like two, four, and six. However, if a team loses their first seven wickets in the first six overs of their innings then their in-nings will end immediately and the non-striker will not get to continue his innings.

Of the combined 12 overs, a side has to bowl; one bowler is al-lowed a maximum of three overs each. Moreover, one team has to complete their entire quota of 12 overs with a single-ball.

The sequence of the match will go in a bat, bowl, and dugout order meaning a team will have to field immediately after completing their batting and then head to the pavil-ion once their fielding is over. The order of which team will bat first will be determined by a random draw. If rain plays spoilsport, the game can only be reduced to 18, 24, or 30 overs. After the match, the team with the most runs will be awarded a gold position, the sec-ond-most with Silver and the third one with a bronze. In the case of two sides being level on runs, they will compete in a super-over to de-termine who gets the gold. Howev-er, if all three-teams end with the same total, all of them will be given a gold. In the situation that the sec-ond and third are equal, both will get the silver.

The success of “Ex-traction” has made Netflix bring in the

Russo brothers once again to direct another film. However, this time the budget of the film is expected to be around $200 million which

alone makes it the most expen-sive Netflix film to date.

The film is titled “The Gray Man”, which is described as a James Bond-level franchise-start-er. The film will star Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling as leads and will be directed by the Russo brothers.

“The Gray Man” is a Marvel reunion for the Russo brothers not just be-cause it stars Chris Evans but also because of “Avengers” screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely joining the project as well. The Russo brothers will produce the film through their production company, AGBO, which has given Netflix a success with “Extraction” earlier this year.

The film is based on a 2009 novel by author Mark Greaney,

“The Gray Man”, which is centered on a deadly duel between killers as freelance assassin Gentry (Gosling) is hunted across the globe by Llyod Hansen (Evans), a former cohort of Gentry’s at the CIA.

Production on “The Gray Man” might begin around January 2021.

World Cup fans will be able to watch an unprecedent-

ed four games a day on television, spread out over 11 hours, during the group stage of the Qatar 2022 tournament after the schedule was confirmed on Wednesday.

The early games will kickoff at 1300 local (1000GMT) with the fourth match starting at 2200 local (1900GMT) and finishing just be-fore midnight.

The tournament’s opening

game on Nov. 21, will be at the 60,000 capacity Al Bayt Stadium, with its distinctive ‘tent’ style cov-ering.

The final on Dec. 18 will be held at the 80,000 Lusail Stadium, which, like Al Bayt, will also host a semi-final.

“The World Cup is always a fes-tival of football, a real celebration for the fans who come on-site and watch. In Qatar, with the compact nature, this is going to be amplified even more with 32 teams and 32 sets of supporters all in and around Doha,” said FIFA Chief Tourna-

ments and Events Officer, Colin Smith.

FIFA will wait until the draw for the tournament is held in March or April of 2022 before as-signing specific games to venues and time-slots. That will enable them to better align games with time zones for domestic television partners of the competing teams.

The tournament was switched from its usual June-July slot due to the heat in the Gulf State and is the first that will be held in the middle of the European season.

14

FIFA RELEASES WORLD CUP 2022 SCHEDULE

3TC SOLIDARITY CUP SOUTH AFRICA

CHRIS EVANS GIFTS THE CAPTAIN AMERICA SHIELD TO YOUNG BOY

WHO SAVED HIS SISTER FROM A DOG ATTACK

Hollywood star, Chris Evans, who portrayed the role of Captain

America in the popular Avengers films have decided to gift Captain America’s shield to a young 6 year old boy, Bridger Walker, who saved his 4 year old sister from a brutal dog attack. Walker was badly injured requiring a two-hour surgery and 90 stitches to his face.

In a video message the actor said, “Captain America here, so I read your story, I saw what you did and I’m sure you heard a lot of this over the last couple days, but let me be the next one to tell you, pal, you’re a hero, what you did was

so brave, so selfless, your sister is so lucky to have you as a big brother. Your parents must be so proud of you. I’m going to track down your address and I’m going to send you an authentic Captain America shield because pal, you deserve it.”

Walker when was asked by his father on why did he jump in between his sister and the dog, he replied, “If someone had to die, I thought it should be me.”

The brave young boy caught the attention of many other Hollywood celebrities like Mark Ruffalo, Tom Holland, Hugh Jackman, Zachary Levi, the Russo brothers and Robbie Amell, who all praised the boy for his bravery and selfless act.

CHRIS EVANS AND RYAN GOSLING TO STAR IN NETFLIX’S MOST EXPENSIVE

ORIGINAL FILM

Sports & Entertainment DeskSunday, 19 July,2020PUBLIC’S EASILY OBTAINABLE AND PARTICIPATORY E-MEDIA

By Kailash Singha

By Rituraj M Deka

By Kaustabh Sharma

By Kailash Singha




CHELSEA WILL EARN MORE € 30 MILLION FROM THE EDEN HAZARD DEAL


By Kaustabh Sharma

SNIPPETSHIGHLIGHTS

1

4

2

5

3

New reusable marks are marking the tally that may help meet COVID-19 demands

Quad-cam phones to lift CIS sensors sale to 5bn units in 2020

Methane emissions on a rise of 576 mln tonnes every year specifically between 2008-2017

Quad-cam phones to lift CIS sensors sale to 5bn units in 2020

Astronomers talk about the Universe being 13 billion years old with the new Dessert Telescope

15 Science And TechnologySunday, 19 July,2020PUBLIC’S EASILY OBTAINABLE AND PARTICIPATORY E-MEDIA

COVID-19 VACCINE BY OXFORD UNIVERSITY WISHES TO BOOST UP WITH REMARKABLE TRIAL RESULTS

INTEL’S ALDER LAKE PC TO UPSHOT BIG AND LITTLE CORES

UNSEEN FISHES WITH ULTRA-BLACK SKIN

DISCOVERED THAT COULD HELP DESIGN BETTER

CAMERAS AND TELESCOPES

INSTAGRAM LAUNCHES “SHOP” TAB ALONG

WITH FACEBOOK FOR NEW SHOPPING

EXPERIENCE

BSVI AUDI RS7 LAUNCHED

The University of Oxford believes to prove itself in making a mark through

their search for COVID-19 vac-cine after the team of researchers discovered that the discovery could provide a “double protection” against the deadly coronavirus fol-lowing human trials as said by the media reports in UK.According to a senior source of the

trial, some blood samples taken from a group of UK volunteers given a dose of the vaccine showed that it stimulated the body to pro-duce antibodies and killer T-cells. Studies show that antibodies might fade away within a small time but the T-cells will stay in circulation for years. Although the results till date are quite promising as well as positive yet it does not confirm that the Oxford vaccine provides long-lasting immunity against the

virus.The antibodies and the T-cells are considered to be a “double defense” against COVID-19. “The Lancet” medical journal confirms that it will publish an early-stage human trial data from the Oxford team on Monday. The final dates are not released yet and it seems that put-ting up a certain date is not right as things might go wrong; howev-er, they speak of the reality being that by working with a big pharma company, the vaccine would prob-ably be available around Septem-ber and that is possibly the known target that the team is working up on. The pharmaceutical company said that the phase 1 trials are due to finish and that a phase 3 trial has begun which will see the vaccine given to thousands of people so as to test its efficacy and safety. The vaccine is named as “ChAdOx1 nCoV-19” and is based on a weak version of the common cold that causes infections in chimpanzees. It further contains the genetic ma-terial of the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2. The underneath of the Oceans

are homes to certain fishes that remain invisible to the

open eyes through millions of years of evolution. These unseen fishes have a ultra-black skin which helps them to swim around undetected in the dark waters. Talking about how it accomplishes the feat, a study says that the answer is in the skin of these deep sea fishes. Their cells are however more responsible for the color. They are built in such a way that can absorb almost all the incoming light.Such findings can help learn the tricks to design better cameras, space telescopes and camouflage technologies. This is the first case of an aquatic animal which is “ultra-black. With this, researchers have further identified 16 more species of deep-sea creatures with such intense color. These creatures have developed a super-efficient and a super-thin light trap. According to the Duke University biologist

Sonke Johnsen, ‘light does not bounce back. Light does not go through. It just goes into a certain layer and then gone’.The Duke University biologist and a zoologist Karen Osborn both tried to take snaps of the black fishes but the images failed to provide information on their features despite have good quality cameras and this led the two think about the nature of these fishes and how were they accomplishing such difference. The team of researchers has studied 39 black fishes found in the waters of Monterey Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. They have used a spectrometer to find out about its specifications and they were successful in finding out that only 0.5% of the light was bouncing back from the creatures’ to reach the human eye. There needs to be in depth study further so as to reveal proper ideas about the mysteries of these creatures.

By: Namashyaa Bezbaruah


By: Tanuz Kashyap



Intel’s Lakefield processors were detailed back in the last month which seeks to be featured on

a foldable and dual screen PCs. The Lakefield uses Intel’s Hybrid Technology whereby the big and little cores are combined in technology. According to sources, Intel plans to bring the big and little philosophy in the desktop processors which are expected to come to the market by 2021. Such technology incorporates the packaging of the big and small cores together and the cores

share the same instruction sets and registers but have different overheads and computational powers as well. This technology gives higher output, greater clock speeds and high power efficiency. The small cores will make Intel come up with improved battery life without unnecessarily managing high-performance computing. These new hybrid cores will help Intel in competing with the ARM design based processors which are very efficient in case of battery life.Its specifications accounts to be of a 10++ process which will feature 8 big and 8 small cores on the LGA 1700 socket. There are three main

kinds of it in which two are 8+8 and the other 6+0+1. With all the reports, it can be seen that Intel is investigating performance scaling up to 150w. The processor will work on LGA 1700 socket and the Intel plans to lift 7nm on approx., the same timeframe on which Alder Lake will be made available and this confirmation was given by Intel at the Morgan Stanley TMT conference. Thereby, Intel is all up to compete with the AMD in 2021. The remarkable thing to be seen will be the pricing of the products of both Intel and AMD.

The new RS7 is powered by a 4.0-litre, twin-tur-bocharged V8 which is

paired with a 48-volt mild hybrid system that churns out a good 600bhp and 800Nm of torque which is sent to all four wheels by the Quattro AWD system through an eight-speed automatic gearbox. It is capable of hitting 0-100kmph

in just 3.6 seconds and has an electronically-limited top speed of 250kmph though buyers can opt to increase the top speed to 305kmph with the optional Dy-namic Plus package. It has been priced at Rs 1.94 crore (ex-show-room) and competes against the likes of the BMW M5 and the Mercedes-Benz AMG E63.

For an easy and effortless shopping, Instagram is bringing up a new feature

named ‘Shop’ along with launching Facebook Pay on its platform for safe purchases and donations. The new built Shop page under the Explore tab will showcase different brands, items and all the needy things that people will like to purchase. With this, Instagram will charge a selling fee for businesses to use its shopping feature. The Shop page will also provide users with personalized recommendations on stuffs to buy from the app. There’s just the need to tap on the ‘Shop’ tab at the bottom of the app page after which the users will be taken to the existing shopping experience with a list of posts that have shopping tags

added via approved sellers. The highly known ‘Activity’ tab will be replaced by the ‘Shop’ tab. The Activity tab will be added at the top right corner. Facebook pay will be made available on Instagram both for purchasing and donating just like US. Regardless of how big or small a seller is, he and she will be able to bring his and her business online and connect with customers however it is convenient. Facebook has already made the announcement of rolling out the ‘Shop’ tab in its main platform.In the Facebook’s new feature, the users will be able to message a business through WhatsApp, Messenger or Instagram and ask questions as well as put queries, get support, track orders and all other necessary details.




16 Art & Culture DeskSunday, 19 July,2020PUBLIC’S EASILY OBTAINABLE AND PARTICIPATORY E-MEDIA

CHANNEL INDIE - Expressing Art with Hrishi.

CHANNEL INDIE TECHNO WITH TRIV

RELEASING ON: 25th July

Meet Hrishi Yangam Hazarika, an aspiring sketching and painting

enthusiast who colours still images and walls across town.

1)What were your initial inspirations which got you into painting and sketching?

Well, first of all, as they say, “charity begins at home”. The same thing happened with me. My mother is simply brilliant in embroidery works and as a child when I used to see her working and making those beautiful designs on those pieces, it really attracted me. So, it

all began from there, as I grew up, my interest in art and painting also grew and then I was admitted to an art school, where my guru became my inspiration with artistic works and all the technicalities. I have always learned a lot from them and that keen to learn more.

2)Do you remember the first piece you made? Tell us about some of your projects you have a happy and fond memory of.

Well, I don’t clearly remember the exact first thing that I drew, must have been too small to even remember. There have been many of them, but the first piece that brought me some fame and that turned my fortunes, I would say as a little artist, was that of a Lion

that I had made with pen and ink style, probably in class 6 or 7. The painting was basically about a lion that I tried to portray as being cared by a few creatures around him, wearing masks. So, I basically tried to create a metaphor of the social situation where even the powerful, deserving and the actual superior creatures are dominated or pushed to a zone of inferiority by less deserving, dishonest creatures that simply wears masks of honesty or that of being civilized. So that painting was chosen for a number of exhibitions and that brought me a lot of fame. So that’s one vivid memory that I have.Moreover last year I did a wall painting of Jesus for a school for Christmas ,as that was a commissioned art therefore the

demanded to get done on or before Christmas eve, that painting was really close to my heart, me and my friend Arup literally worked whole night a day before Christmas eve and we finished it.That project really makes me happy.

3)What is your preferred medium and why did you choose it?

I started with water color but currently I am working with charcoal as my medium. There’s no specific reason actually why I preferred charcoal over any other medium, it’s just I find charcoal more comfortable than any other preferred medium.

4)How do you manage to get out of an art block?

I basically listen to a lot of music, I play wind instruments moreover I watch a lot of web series and that really helps me.

5)Which are some notable modern artists that you look up to and believe should get more attention?So I really like the art form of Abanindra Nath Tagore, he was the father of Mordern Indian art his paintings like Bharat Mata in Japanese style was really beautiful.And the next person I really adore and respect was Neelpawan Baruah sir, he is a beautiful person from inside and out, according to me he’s not getting enough of what he really deserves, maybe he was born in a wrong place where his hardwork and talent didn’t get much recognition as much as he deserves, and we all know nowadays it has become very usual and common that we human beings start to value things when it’s too late ,hence we can hope for

a better future where an artist like him gets more recognition in the right time when its needed.

6)We knowing your talents on the paper and wind instruments, what will be useless talent you have on a lighter note?

Well it’s difficult for one to even identify his/her useful talents and work on it and here I am being asked about the useless ones (with a chuckle). Umm, I would say that I get on pretty well with people and given a society that we are currently living in, where people just love to remain confined to their own zone without talking to people, I think to have a quality to get going with all sorts of people, to start a conversation, make friends, to get well with people, these all are no less than ‘talents’ and I am glad I have those qualities. Apart from that, I like to be happy at all times, like to keep a smiling face, again something that’s rare, so yeah, and that’s all.

7)What advice do you have for people starting out to explore during this quarantine days? The lockdown has been a boon in disguise. People are getting to introspect themselves, their talents and it’s good to see that many people are coming up with great talents, art being one of them. I would just suggest them to continue with it, not just keeping it confined to only the lockdown days, but also after all of these ends and normalcy is restored, one should at least take out an hour or a half to pursue their hobbies, be it art, dance, music whatever. It keeps the momentum going and at the same time provides much needed peace to the mind.Below are some artworks and sketches by Hrishi!

TRIV, the Electronic Music Prodigy, hailing from Guwahati,

Assam, has been mesmerizing his audience with his various unique techniques and mixture of electronic genres for quite some time now.

This time he has created an album on a theme close to his heart. The album is dedicated to his love and it tells the story

how that person has motivated him to keep pushing forward.“Everything’s gonna be okay. You’ll find a way. You always do. I love you.” These are the wonder words which inspired TRIV to create this album.

This album sees many surprising collaborative efforts by many other new and upcoming artists of the music industry in Assam, namely Diptanil

Barua, RE3RT, Shreya Baruah, Shreya Phukan, Shady Mellow, DKrissh, Gemmi and Aryaman Chowdhury.

The album is available on streaming platforms such as Spotify, SoundCloud, iTunes and Apple Music.The artist is committed to be in the field producing music with a special touch and has a dream to represent Assam globally

By Tushar P. Saikia

Neymar joined PSG for a world record £198million three

years ago but he has had a turbulent time in the French capital. Failure to win the Champions League has left club bosses wondering if the 28-year-old is the answer to their issues. Before the Neymar deal, Paul Pogba had set the bar as football’s most expensive transfer. In August 2016, he joined Manchester United from Juventus in an £89 million ($115.6 million) move. That fee barely seems to be significant two years on, as the impact of the Brazil international’s extraordinary deal is felt far and wide

Barcelona will find it difficult to buy Neymar as they face a fight to meet Financial Fair Play regulations of UEFA.

The transfer of Neymar changed the market for everyone—players, agents, clubs and backers. Suddenly nothing seems impossible, and when Mbappe signed for PSG weeks after Neymar’s arrival, it became clear the elite game had changed forever because of the amount of money pumped in.

Mbappe’s initial loan move from AS Monaco helped the club overcome financial fair play rules and has now progressed into a

permanent £166 million ($216 million) transfer. It is just one of the knock-on effects that has occurred since Neymar’s move to France: Owners of sought-after players now have reason to charge increasingly large sums.

But El Chiringuito TV have claimed PSG have offered the Catalans an olive branch to get the deal done.

The report suggests the Ligue 1 side would be happy with a nominal £72m fee - but they also want Ousmane Dembele and antoine griezmann included in the deal.

The 23-year-old has only made five La Liga appearances this season as he continues to struggle with injuries and Griezmann has failed to meet Barca’s style of play.

A return of Dembele to his homeland may be tempting in a bid to revive his career but that will not be the only offer he receives this summer.

The Athletic reported last week that Manchester United are considering the Frenchman as an alternative to Jadon Sancho.

Reports in Spain suggest that Dembele is determined to make a successfull turn at Barcelona and wants to fight for his place in the playing eleven.

But if Quique Setien’s side make an approach for Neymar the decision to stay at Nou Camp may no more be in Dembele’s

hands.Earlier this year, six-time

Ballon d’Or winner Lionel Messi admitted he wanted Neymar to return to Barca.

“Neymar is one of the best in the world and I’d love him to come back,” he said.

“He is a very happy person who is always smiling and enjoys himself on and off the pitch. He gave all the players a lift.

Barca fans and neutrals around the world will be excited see Neymar link up with Messi and Suarez again, as the trio were sensational in unison during their time together at the Camp Nou

Given the manner in which he left the Blaugrana, Neymar may take some time to win over the Barcelona supporters should the switch go through. However, if he can reach the world-class heights he did in his first spell at the club, he will likely be forgiven keeping in mind the fact that Neymar is aging.

It will be interesting to see how manager Quique Setien fits all of the attacking talent at Barcelona at the same time. Given the effort that’s gone in to bringing back Neymar, he will surely be guaranteed a starting spot in his preferred berth on the left flank


A floating movie theatre is coming to Paris . The theatre would allow

people to watch the movie from socially distant boats on the river Seine. “ Le Cinéma sur l’Eau” (The cinema on the water) will be held on July 18 to celebrate the starting of Paris Plages.

Paris Plages is an annual city-run program in which temporary artificial beaches are created every summer along the river Seine in the centre of Paris.

Movie enthusiasts will be able to enjoy the screening of the film from 38 electric boats. Each boat can hold two to six people. Social distancing practice will be adhered to ensure that those on board are family or friends.

Locals can buy raffle tickets for the boat seats till July 15. The winners of the seats will be chosen by a draw and will be notified via email.

The locals will watch Gilles Lellouche’s film Le Grand Bain, a 2018 French comedy-drama about a group of men who start a synchronized swimming team.

I never thought in my childhood that I would have to dread the word marriage

someday. There was only my dream of celebrating my 18th birthday. But one day, some people equated my age to that of a girl ready to be married off. And from then on, I don’t like to disclose my age to anyone. How strange is this moment! When we are young we always want to grow

up but when we actually do... we want our old days back. The dreams we have... but when the time actually comes to make them a reality, people flood us with questions about our marriage. Then they preach about how time is ripe for us. They never ask what you achieved but when age gradually increases; there are people who think it’s their responsibility to take decisions regarding our family planning.

Floating theatreNEYMAR AND HIS TRANSFER SAGA

By Hirak Patowary

By Takusunep Imchen

BTS ARMY HELPS COLLECT MONEY FOR ASSAM FLOODS.

The floods in Assam have been a raging problem since many years. Ev-

ery year, lakhs of people lose their homes, livelihoods and face various other problems due to the floods. At the same time, hundreds of an-imals are displaced and lose their lives due to the ravaging floods.

On the 15th of July, fans of the South Korean boy band BTS , who proudly call themselves BTS ARMY, came together on Twitter and called out to BTS fans all over the Northeast, India and the world to help contribute and collect mon-ey for Assam Floods. Immediately, a group was formed and a crisis card was created in collaboration with People for People in Assam.

Exclusively speaking with P.E.O.P.L.E, Aakanksha Dutta of BTSARMYhelpsIndia, says “ It started when Juhi Karekatte, an ARMY I am close with contacted me about the situation of Assam. I suggested to her that we contact People for People, a fundraising or-ganization. We talked about it on 15th July in a Twitter group where we added some willing ARMYs too. And by the next day afternoon we had started donation.”

Soon enough, donations start-ed flowing from not only India but from international fans as well. A whopping amount of 5.8 lakhs was collected over the period of two days. People are full of praise for the BTS ARMY.

Girl and Marriage By Anamika Bhattacharjee.




By Richa Goswami

It all started when last week I got a YouTube notification about the release of the movie

“ Dil Bechara” starring Sushant Singh Rajput and has been based on the original “The Fault in Our Stars’, which again in fact is an adaptation from the novel of the same title.

As I was scrolling through the comment section before my YouTube ad ends, I did find a lot of comments on how they wanted the movie to be released on a big screen rather than an OTT platform as in this case, it will be released on Disney Hotstar although I noticed a few comments saying how Bollywood has ruined the original movie and that the movie is a “remake that nobody asked for”.

I don’t find myself worthy of judging a film just because it is a remake, because a lot of remakes in Bollywood did actually turn out to be really good. Such an example was “Chachi 420” which I used to watch on Set Max when I was about ten years old and it took me three more years to discover that it was an adaptation of “Mrs. Doubtfire” which also was an amazing movie and I did enjoy both.

Even then, I cannot say every remake might be a good one since I never wanted two of my favourite films “Bruce Almighty” and “The Little Boy’ to be made into remakes because the Bollywood versions of the same ruined the actual storyline. I won’t disclose the name of the Bollywood remakes though, since

I don’t want to have nightmares of myself being killed by a 53 year-old-man wearing a “Being Human” t-shirt.

Just after the trailer ended and I kept my phone aside, I had this one question revolving around my head....”Why?” Why would a movie be made into a remake when I could watch Dubs or Subtitled versions of the original one?” Why are the remakes made of movies which are already successful?”.... “Is Bollywood really out of content that they have to resort to making remakes of movies nowadays?”

As I said earlier, I am not totally against the concept of remakes. It makes more sense to remake a movie whose original version was shot many decades ago when advanced equipments were not available and to publish the remake by giving a professional touch as for today’s standards. Or, remaking old sci-fi movies where ‘one-take’ artists had to perfectly time their superhero landings with the actual explosions and spice up those shots with some VFX would have been another good purpose of a remake.... Or, maybe, publishing a movie made by a low budget, independent artist and adding a professional, industry standard to the same would have also done the job of a remake.

So, with all these questions in my mind, all I could do was nothing but wonder.

Often, we are left mesmerized by the beautiful

picturesque sceneries that nature offers us. The beauty of nature can have a profound effect upon our senses, those gateways from the outer world to the inner, whether it results in disbelief in its very existence, or feelings such as awe, wonder or amazement. What makes us wonder is what is it about nature and the entities that make us declare that they are beautiful?

Out of the many natural wonders of our planet, one such wonder is the ‘Rainbow Mountains of China’. Located inside the Zhangye Danxia National Geopark, in the Gansu Province in Northwestern China the Rainbow Mountains are known as the eye candy of China. Many artists admire this masterpiece as it is unbelievably colorful, like an imaginative oil painting. The rainbow mountains are known worldwide for their otherworldly colors that replicate a rainbow on the top of the rolling mountains. This site has been declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 2009 and every year it is an attractive destination for many Chinese as well as international tourists.

Now, a number of digenetic and mineralogical processes are involved that make up the greens, reds, yellows and blues of these mountains. The Rainbow Mountains are cretaceous

sandstones and siltstones that were deposited in China long before the Himalayas were formed. The sand and silt were deposited with iron and trace minerals that provided it with the key ingredient to form the colors that decorate the mountains today. Originally, a layered horizontal and flat stratigraphy which was disrupted by the Indian Plate colliding into the Eurasian Plate approximately 50 million years ago. Thus, the sandstones got folded into these mountains we see today. Further, weathering and erosion removed the overlying layers of continental siliciclastic rocks and exposed underlying formations with different mineralogy and chemistry. This causes the striking variation in the color scheme seen across the rainbow mountains.

Another such natural wonder of the world which makes everyone awe struck is the famous ‘Aurora Borealis’ popularly known as the Northern lights. The aurora borealis offers an entrancing, dramatic, magical display that fascinates all who see it. It is visible from the polar latitudes. This natural phenomenon occurs due to certain reactions taking place in the Earth’s magnetic field. Massive storms on the sun send gusts of charged solar particles hurtling across space. In the Earth’s atmosphere, they excite those atoms, causing them to light up. Atoms consist

of a central nucleus and a surrounding cloud of electrons encircling the nucleus in an orbit. When charged particles from the sun strikes atoms in Earth’s atmosphere, electrons move to higher-energy orbits, further away from the nucleus. Then when an electron moves back to a lower-energy orbit, it releases a particle of light or photon. Thus, the streak of light becomes visible in the dark sky.

One more such natural spectacular of inspiring beauty and grandeur on the Zambezi River, forming the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe are The Victoria Falls which are known as the greatest curtain of falling water in the world. Columns of spray can be seen from miles away as, at the height of the rainy season, more than five hundred million cubic meters of water per minute plummet over the edge, over a width of nearly two kilometers, into a gorge over one hundred meters below. The wide, basalt cliff over which the falls thunder, transforms the Zambezi from a placid river into a ferocious torrent cutting through a series of dramatic gorges. The waterfall creates a very beautiful scenery for the tourists. All these natural wonders of the world make us think about how beautiful our planet is and at the same time these bounties of nature create an everlasting impression on our minds.


He woke up, As apprehensive as the day

before ‘Is it worth it?’

But glancing at ‘their’ faces He could not help but shrug.

As he reached out for the door A familiar voice asked him

‘Are you sure?’ Silence was what he gave

Because he knew a reply would make a change.

His belongings all packed Tears already streaming down

‘their’ faces They asked if he was ready

‘How can I be?’ Was what a nod replaced.

He set off for a new journey A journey traded for his dream

But what to do? He was just another pawn A pawn of this chess called

world

Wanting to be the lion But left being a cat

Was what feared him the most But what to do?

He never got a hand to teach him

Teach him to conquer his fear

Only thing he knew was He needed to be the king A king that other admires

A king that inspires So, he moved forward

It is thirty years since then Now he sits on his chair

As calm as anxious he was that day

He says while peacefully looking

At his reflection ‘Why was I, just, another

pawn?’

Questions On Remade Movies.THE NATURAL WONDERS OF THE WORLD

By Aastha BorthakurBy Anonymous

By Krisangi Talukdar

ART GALLERY

JUST ANOTHER PAWN

Do you remember the first time when you spoke a sentence

with no faults in it? How did you feel? Like the happiest person ever on this planet?

The same was the feeling for me when I learnt about words, then sentences and then the rest. There were many instances in my life when I realize my thoughts were not heard, it doesn’t mean I was saying something wrong... just that we live in a society where one speaks and the other “listens”. We find less of whom we can call a Sonder who would actually be interested. When I found out

the causes, rather than sitting idle and speaking out to others, I started writing a diary. I made it, my listener. I used to write micro fictions, short stories, thoughts, long articles etc.

Almost after two decades I found out myself writing such topics where at some point of time I wanted people to listen to me. I tried, I spoke but was heard by so little yet I didn’t stop myself. We can succeed if we live with passion. Things changed with time, a little platform was build where I stepped with two of my friends and created a page named The People Thoughts’

or The Sonderevince, aimed at writing about your thoughts you’ve have been storing for so many days in your mind or else in your diaries. Things need to be spoken out through your own ways where we want to be heard by the crowd.

Our motto: “We speak to one, the other

makes it evolve” is what we signify togetherness

of Sonders’ who support each one wholeheartedly.

Keep evolving! And live where you feel the best, way to express yourself.

A NEW INNOVATION - THE SONDEREVINCE

By Suraj Das

By Khusboo Rajak

By Ambujesh Upamanyu

By Simran Ngangbam

By Ankit Sahu

By Sankar bharali

We seek because we deserve, not because we need.

And you see, we are everywhere today.

We love you, maybe you love us too, so why not love ‘Humans’ altogether?

Chief Editor : Aboyob BhuyanEditor : Biprajit Roy Choudhury

Sub Editors : Aniket Mishra, Ahmad Khan, Vanilla Sharma, Rytham Das, Rituraj M deka

Richa Goswami, Ayanabh Hazarika, Shubhankar Sarma, Namashyaa Bezbaruah, Kaustabh Sarma, Tinat Abbas Ahmed, Anshuman Gogoi,

Prasurjya P. Kashyap, Tushar P. Saikia, Kailash Singha, Tanuz Kashyap, Raktim Ronojoy Neog,

Nadir Raihan & Prayag Adhikari

Newspaper Layout & Design : Rohit Deka, Ishan Borah, Kundan Baruah & Prayag Adhikari

Featuring : Hrishi Yangam Hazarika and Triv

This E-Paper is an exclusive of THE P.E.O.P.L.E ASSAM

Also Available At : http://epaperzone.co.in/

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UYC PRODUCTIONS LLP

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