It is common knowledge that the lockdown has severely affected most industries in India. The pandemic struck with so much vigour and with so much surprise that industries were left shell-shocked and paralysed. But there are some exceptions to this trend. The biscuit industry in India seems to be one.

There are confirmed reports that not just the top-end branded biscuit producers but also the local brands have been able to register unexpected growth during the pandemic. Biscuits became a favourite item for buyers deciding to stock edible items since the beginning of the lockdown. Biscuits traditionally attract mass consumption. It is also undeniable that since the 1990s leading biscuit companies in India have come up with an astonishing variety. The components vary from wheat and flour to coconut and oats. Now biscuits in India come in very attractive packaging. No less important, there are packs costing as less as two rupees and five rupees. In yesteryears Britannia was the leading market brand enjoying near-monopoly. Gradually several companies gave Britannia a good competition and began occupying their own space in the biscuit market. Parle Products, ITC, Bisk Farm are some of the leading companies enticing Indians to have their biscuits and eat them too. The healthy competition is leading to more and more ‘innovations’ in the biscuit industry.

It is not only the brisk buying of biscuits for home consumption that leads to such jump in sales. The social sector also contributes to it in its own way. The NGOs, voluntary organizations and state agencies engaged in relief purchase biscuits in huge quantity to provide them to the distressed people facing the brunt of the lockdown in severest ways. The lighter weight, good taste and long shelf life make biscuits an attractive item for relief.

The plight of the migrant workers gave a boost to the biscuit industry. India enforced Lockdown 1.0 on 25 March, 2020. Its sudden announcement put migrant workers in great distress. Amidst the lockdown, they desperately wanted to reach home. For them, like everyone else, it was the safest option. They started their journey from the host states to home states across the country with a very small savings in hand. Many are forced to resort to long walk. Food became a major problem. They needed food to boost energy and sustain the struggle. Biscuits came in handy for them. Easy availability of biscuits in every part of the country facilitated the process. Incidentally, India also has a wide range in local biscuits and it is evident for anyone familiar with the roadside makeshift tea stalls.

According to reports in The Indian Express and The Times of India Parle G has been the biggest beneficiary of the lockdown-led sales in biscuits. March, April and May have registered an unprecedented growth in sales in eight decades though the officials have not disclosed the exact amount in public. The company reported that the manufacturing units are functioning with fifty  per cent of workforce keeping in mind the government rules and regulations to curb escalation of the coronavirus outbreak, but the production is happening in full force to serve the community with sufficient supply in the market. Britannia, which has fifteen manufacturing units in India, is ready to take up the challenge with 65 percent of its capacity. ITC also promises to do the same to sustain smooth functioning of the supply chain.

It seems biscuits are dear to all. For the upper class and middle class biscuits are linked to both style and wellness. For people down below, especially in crisis situations, biscuits are means of survival. With such utility value cutting across social strata biscuits shine amidst pandemic times.

This is one of the most remarkable books when it comes to a detailed description of western literary and cultural tradition. Dollimore has done a great job of keeping the most essential cultural tendencies intact while still being quite meaningful and interesting at the same time.

The introduction of the book gives a clear picture of how the concepts and ideas of death, desire and loss have been portrayed and viewd in Western culture by innumerable writers, theorists and critics for several ages. Dollimore begins the introduction with the depiction of the protagonist Hugo from Oscar Moore’s “A Matter of Life and Sex” (1991) whose journey includes being a narcissistic erotic adult to dying from AIDS by the end. Dollimore compares this story with the supposed real life story of Foucault who after getting diagnosed with AIDS, wanted to infect as many people as possible before taking the last breath. The supposed link between homosexuality and death has been portrayed over and over by many writers and critics in literature and other forms of art as well. Moore along with other writers brought about a sense that gives rise of a certain feeling that sex, desire, death and disease go hand in hand.

This connection between death and desire perhaps found its most extreme statement during Renaisance but it is an endemic to Western culture whch later got associated with homosexuality. For Jacobeans, what connects death and desire is mutability.
In his poem “Logs on the Hearth”, Thomas Hardy recalls a childhood memory of his sister climbing the tree who is now dead. His sister hence, is recalled in a moment of unselfconscious happiness now frozen forever.

“To his coy Mistress” is one of the most famous of all carpe diem (sieze the day) poems that makes us keen to sieze the day and at the same time prevents us from doing so. This narrative is not only about seizing the day but it also makes the readers realize how time and change drive us towards a horizon of oblivion which makes it hard for us to sieze anything.

As Freud puts it “the aim of all life is death”, Western tradition has always been in crisis which is driven further by mutability and death.
Including Freud, there had been ,many critics and theorists who put forward an unusual image of death in a scandalous way, what the philosophers call the “principle of individuation”. Death has been famously eroticized in works like “Tristan and Isolde” and “Ode to a Nightingale”.

While discussing the representation of these concepts through gender, Dollimore brings forth how “The Second Sex” by Beauvoir brought a new direction in the field of feminist criticism. It not only changed lives of thousands of women but also posed each of the problems the feminists are dealing with today.
In Bronfen’s Over her Dead body, she draws an imaginary line to show the aesthetic connection between death and femininity. She also claims gender constructions are supplementary to the division between life and death.

Dollimore moves on to discuss a certain fear of failure that causes social death. The extinction questions caused by internal and mostly external forces generally cause this fear that leads to a certain anxiety of social death among people. Social historians also speak about the increasing tendency of denial of death in modern times. But when revolution fails, the preoccupation of death returns. Considering the wide angles of western tradition this book covers, it would be highly recommended to anyone who is willing to take a look at the “West world” in a brief yet a detailed account for the betterment of their vision of the world.

– Suvasree Bandyopadhyay

Eight years ago, all we could think of was the neo-modernity that came with the innovative concepts of Startups across the globe along with a plethora of opportunities and new perceptions. It was the prime subject of most of the investor conferences and the esteemed journals.
Multiple companies emerged with the new wave of ongoing startups and various evolutionary innovations took place as a result of the new wave. Gradually it established itself as the most promising business conception across the globe and people of the new generation found it inevitable to survive in the new world with all its modern technological advancements.

However, amidst this global expansion of the startup business, a shift in its global approach has started to take place.
Investors kept on investing, valuations kept on rising and falling and the start-up business started going towards its verge of collapsing from the scene.

The Research from venture capital First round suggests 47% start-up founders seem to believe that the current business scenario is residing inside a methodological tech bubble and 32% think that it is about to burst.

For months and years, people have tried to turn a blind eye to the possibility but eventually the idea of the bubble has started to strike a sense of fear and insecurity of in the hearts of tech lovers and those passionate about the future of start-ups. This sense of uncertainty tends to affect the production which eventually leads to a loss of technical and practical production in the long run.

The year 2000 saw various collapses of the internet businesses followed by Ciscos production value dropping by 86%, which led to the sense of uncertainty and insecurity in the minds of the investors and clients.

The main concern that led to the emergence of this doubt was the fact that not enough money was getting produced by the start-ups in the field of technological advancements compared to the capital that was being invested by the investors on a regular basis. For instance, apps like Snapchat went on causing huge amount of eyebrow raising and finger wagging despite the fact that millions of dollars had been invested upon its making!

A critical approach has to be taken into consideration in order to detect the exact location of the bubble, which will help in the probable steps that might be taken to dismantle the supposed decline of the start-ups in the new future. One of the main steps, according to the optimists, is to keep on believing in all its positive productivity which comes with a firm sense of confidence and trust in the process. It is like a long term plan is about to come to an end due to some unavoidable issues and problematic situations where the only option is to come up with more original rules and plans that will help the market to reestablish itself from its ashes.
However, many believe that the sense of unnecessary pessimism might be one of the leading factors that will lead to the supposed bursting of the bubble, if there is any. Therefore, no matter how hopeless and nonsensical it may sound, the belief and trust upon the field of start-ups should be intact.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A TALE OF COURAGE?

They pop up in all cultures, traditions and eras. From shepherd-boy David facing giant Goliath, to Gilgamesh defeating the monster Humbaba, to Harry Potter and friends confronting deadly Lord Voldemort.

There’s something exhilarating about individuals, pitted against the odds, rising above fear and narrow concerns about self-preservation.

And when real life provides examples of valour, our faith in human nature, in the possibility of virtue, is enhanced.

SO WHAT IS COURAGE?

To Aristotle it was a virtue, the greatest quality of the mind. For Richard Avramenko, who teaches political science at the University of Wisconsin, courage is the primary means by which humans raise themselves out of their individualistic, isolated and materialistic existence.

He writes: ‘Courage… is the willingness to risk life and limb for the sake of something. In other words, courage reveals what we care about… It reveals that which inspires us to overcome ourselves. And it is the self-overcoming character of courage that makes it so poignant. When we are witness to real acts of courage, we know immediately what matters most fundamentally to the courageous actor – and it is not herself, not her own physical well-being.’

In praising fearlessness we may be making a virtue of deficiency

Physical bravery attracts most attention, winning honours and awards. But courage takes many forms – moral, intellectual, emotional, psychological, political, social, spiritual, financial…

You have to pluck up your courage to express ideas that are not majority opinion, or to face the hostility or ridicule that may accompany departing from social norms.

BRAVE IS NOT FEARLESS: THE SCIENCE

Often we call brave people ‘fearless’. But courage isn’t fearlessness. As Nelson Mandela recalled: ‘I learned that… the brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers fear.’

If there is no fear to start with, there is no need for courage.

Admitting we are afraid can make us feel small. But often the first step towards being brave is to feel fear – then do the thing we are afraid of anyway, to paraphrase Sheila Jeffers’ self-help classic.

Even those who feel no fear at the time of performing heroic deeds may find that the trauma catches up with them later – as was the case for Loyau Kennett, who became depressed in the months following the event.

In praising fearlessness we may be making a virtue of deficiency. There is, indeed, a rare medical condition called Urbach Wiethe disease that damages the amygdala – the part of the brain that processes fear – and may result in total fearlessness.

‘In biological terms,’ says science author Jeff Wise, ‘bravery emerges from a primal struggle between the brain’s decision-making hub, the prefrontal cortex, and the focal point of fear: the amygdala. When we find ourselves in an unexpected and dangerous situation, the amygdala sends a signal to the prefrontal cortex that interferes with our ability to reason clearly.’

It can be paralysing.

People who act bravely appear not to succumb to fear. Sometimes their calm, practical responses derive from intense preparation. Firefighters, airline staff, paramedics, soldiers and the like, will have been trained for dangerous, unexpected situations. Their responses may be like ‘muscle memory’.

In one 2009 study, Yale University psychiatrist Deane Aikins subjected soldiers to extremely stressful situations to see what happened to their body chemistry. He found those who remained calm produced less of the ‘stress’ hormone cortisol. They also made more neuropeptide Y, a compound that counteracts the effects of cortisol. His work suggests that by measuring hormone levels it is possible to predict who will keep their cool under pressure – and who won’t. 4 More recently, neuroscientists have identified a brain region called the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC for short) as the part activated during courageous acts.

PASSION AND COMPASSION

But for many analysts, the cultivation of courage has more to do with emotions. ‘Follow your heart’ is how psychotherapist Melanie Greenberg puts it in her useful analysis of the six main attributes of courage, which provides the framework for this article. She quotes the pioneering, 20th century Japanese actor, Midori Komatsu: ‘Passion is what drives us crazy, what makes us do extraordinary things, to discover, to challenge ourselves. Passion should always be the heart of courage.’

And so should compassion.

In this magazine we feature half a dozen exceptionally brave people and their accounts are dominated by compassion, as well as passion.

Tatiana Vivienne braves daily violence in the Central African Republic to reach the most vulnerable girls and women; Alicia Cawiya, in Ecuador, defies authority at every level to defend her people and their environment from ruin by oil companies; Jlo Córdoba in Honduras, despite numerous attempts on her life, keeps challenging impunity for those who murder and abuse transgender people, because she ‘loves’ her community.

As the 6th century BCE Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu says, being loved gives you strength, but loving deeply makes you brave. He also says: ‘From caring comes courage.’

It’s a view that might be shared by Abdullah Al Khateeb, also featured in this edition, who will not be deterred from his humanitarian work with refugees though it has turned him into a target for both sides in the Syrian conflict. ‘When you care about people, your responsibility is total,’ he says.

STAND UP FOR WHAT IS RIGHT

Brave people are often those who take a moral stand and have a clear sense of purpose.

Environmental activist S Mugilan, like others we interviewed, ignores death threats to confront powerful business interests and their hired thugs who are ‘swindling and destroying’ the state of Tamil Nadu. He puts his courage down to being ‘the kind of person who is determined to change how things work’.

‘A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer’

Today, some of the bravest people in the world are defenders of human rights. ‘Human rights activists in Saudi Arabia are an endangered species,’ said Amnesty International’s Lynn Maalouf recently. ‘One by one they are vanishing – prosecuted, jailed, intimidated into silence or forced into exile – highlighting the authorities’ zero-tolerance approach to freedom of expression.’

Whistleblowers, too, pay heavily for their efforts. Often they lose not only their jobs, but their friends, relationships, homes and liberty. Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and, more recently, Barrett Brown, have felt the weight of US government retribution for their exposures of abuses the state wishes to conceal.

In all these cases, solidarity, the existence of people out there who support the whistleblower’s actions, is vital.

PERSISTENCE IN ADVERSITY

‘A hero is no braver than an ordinary man,’ wrote poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘but he is braver five minutes longer.’

Staying power in the heat of adversity is a frequent characteristic of the valiant engaged in long-term struggles for social justice.

Take Turkish lawyer and former newspaper editor Eren Keskin, hauled before the courts more than 100 times for her criticisms of the government, particularly its treatment of the Kurdish minority. Over the years she has been given several prison sentences. Following the failed military coup in Turkey in July 2016, her passport was revoked. Erin was to have been interviewed for this edition, but she is once again in court.

As artist and writer Mary Anne Radmacher puts it: ‘Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is like the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.’

EXPANDING HORIZONS

In his seminal study The Hero with a Thousand Faces, mythologist Joseph Campbell identified key ingredients of the archetypal hero’s journey.

She or he leaves their familiar surroundings and passes into a special world where they must confront demons, face challenges and ordeals, and encounter their worst fears. They need to conquer their fear and will ultimately claim ‘treasure’ or reward. Then they return home to their familiar world, but they themselves will have changed.

The people we are featuring in this magazine have, in various ways, left their familiar surroundings, journeyed, and grown. For Angolan rapper Luaty Beirão, the journey has been literal, political, personal. While in prison for speaking out against a repressive government, he became stronger. He thought: ‘I won’t accept your threats. If you want to kill me, do it. With each step I found I could take one step further. I found out I had the guts for things I hadn’t imagined before.’

For all the physical privations the brave people in these pages have suffered, their actions have enabled them to overcome fear, to grow, and in a moral sense claim the ‘treasure’.

ULTIMATE COURAGE

Finally, there is what some people call ‘spiritual’ courage. This includes the bravery we may show when we endure suffering – and ultimately, face death. Deep down it’s the thing most of us fear most. I have witnessed people I love dig deep into their reserves of courage as they experience terminal illness. I have seen how their courage encourages those around them to be brave too. Courage does that. It encourages; it is positively infectious, even in the worst, most hopeless seeming of situations.

GOOD COURAGE, BAD COURAGE?

While scientific studies of courage are intriguing – one Israeli study puts the subject into an MRI tunnel, then exposes them to snakes! – they have some worrying implications.

It would be deeply troubling – if not plain immoral – if such research led to the development of a ‘courage pill’ that could turn soldiers into ‘perfect’, fearless fighters.

Fear can stop us taking necessary action. But it can also give us pause for thought. The trick is not to let it take hold, and to be able to transcend it when we need to. ‘There’s only one way with fear and that’s through it,’ says psychologist Noam Shpancer. It’s an ongoing, dynamic process, that will never be completed and that is essential for making change happen, in the individual and in the world.

Of course, bravery does not always involve virtuous action. It can be violent, militaristic, macho, tribal. ‘This is the paradox of courage,’ according to Avramenko. ‘On the one hand, it is about self-overcoming and commitment to others. On the other hand… it is exclusionary and violent.’

He sees the shift away from an ancient, martial conception of courage to one that is political and justice-based as a way through this theoretical conundrum. The kind of courage we are focusing on in this edition is the justice-based variety. It is empathetic and community minded, geared towards resisting and limiting harm.

One common theme in all the stories is caring, and the comradeship that courage fosters as it creates a virtuous circle of valour. Many of our interviewees point to the work of others, and the sacrifices they have made, as sources of inspiration.

Such courage is the lifeblood of a healthy individual and a healthy society. It’s what makes for meaningful, purposeful change, challenging the cynicism of that slick, fashionable, armchair elision of the word ‘brave’ with ‘stupid’.

It inspires and impels the human spirit towards building a better world.

In our country, the cases of Corona arises more than 2.25 lakh, with nearby 9,000 kills. The situation is drastically making the environment terrible. The show of Corona just go beyond the limit, and now it is going to make a socially transmitter in every state of India.

The state government are totally failed in handling it. Due to mis- management and lack of vigilant, the administration are totally missed out the control over Corona.Noew for this situation, LOCKDOWN is coming into action for controlling the no of cases. Maharashtra Government already decided to regulate it in a few weeks.

It is clearely determined that Unlocking of India is now giving the consequences of it. Lockdown is the someway the first and last tool that can slow down the speed of Corona and after 2.5 months lockdown period, we as a citizen really experience it. But Govt also have to make a plan for poor and labour class people for their survive in that period.

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Let’s define productivity. Productivity is a measure of efficiency of a person completing a task. We often assume that productivity means getting more things done each day. Wrong. Productivity is getting important things done consistently. And no matter what you are working on, there are only a few things that are truly important.

Being productive is about maintaining a steady, average speed on a few things, not maximum speed on everything.

Top Productivity Strategies
Eliminate Time Wasting Activities by Using the Eisenhower Box:

This simple decision matrix will help you take action, organize tasks, and get more done. The great thing about this matrix is that it can be used for broad productivity plans (“How should I spend my time each week?”) and for smaller, daily plans (“What should I do today?”).
Warren Buffett’s “2 List” Strategy: How to Maximize Your Focus and Master Your Priorities: This method comes from the famous investor Warren Buffett and uses a simple 3-step productivity strategy to help you determine your priorities and actions. You may find this method useful for making decisions and getting yourself to commit to doing one thing right away.
The Ivy Lee Method: The Daily Routine Experts Recommend for Peak Productivity: This productivity strategy is straightforward: Do the most important thing first each day. The Ivy Lee Method is a dead simple way to implement this strategy.
The 15-Minute Routine Anthony : There is one common problem with the approach of ranking your priorities and doing the most important thing first, though. After ranking your priorities for the day, if the number one task is a really big project then it can leave you feeling frustrated because it takes a long time to finish. Writer Anthony Trollope, however, developed a solution to this common problem.

Simple Ways to Be More Productive Every Day
Step 1: Manage your energy, not your time.
If you take a moment to think about it, you’ll probably realize that you are better at doing certain tasks at certain times. What type of energy do you have in the morning? Afternoon? Evening? Determine what tasks each energy level and time of day are best suited for.

Step 2: Prepare the night before.
If you only do one thing each day then spend a few minutes each night organizing your to–do list for tomorrow. When I do it right, I’ll outline the article I’m going to write the next day and develop a short list of the most important items for me to accomplish. It takes 10 minutes that night and saves 3 hours the next day.

Step 3: Don’t open email until noon.
Sounds simple. Nobody does it. It took me awhile to get over the urge to open my inbox, but eventually I realized that everything can wait a few hours. Nobody is going to email you about a true emergency (a death in the family, etc.), so leave your email alone for the first few hours of each day. Use the morning to do what’s important rather than responding to what is “urgent.”

Step 4: Turn your phone off and leave it in another room.
Or on your colleague’s desk. Or at the very least, put it somewhere that is out of sight. This eliminates the urge to check text messages, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. This simple strategy eliminates the likelihood of slipping into half–work where you waste time dividing your attention among meaningless tasks.

Step 5: Work in a cool place.
Have you ever noticed how you feel groggy and sluggish in a hot room? Turning the temperature down or moving to a cooler place is an easy way to focus your mind and body. (Hat tip to Michael Hyatt for this one.)

Step 6: Sit up or stand up.
When you sit hunched over, your chest is in a collapsed position and your diaphragm is pressing against the bottom of your lungs, which hinders your ability to breathe easily and deeply. Sit up straight or stand up and you’ll find that you can breathe easier and more fully. As a result, your brain will get more oxygen and you’ll be able to concentrate better.

Step 7: Develop a “pre–game routine” to start your day.
My morning routine starts by pouring a cold glass of water. Some people kick off their day with ten minutes of meditation. Similarly, you should have a sequence that starts your morning ritual. This tiny routine signals to your brain that it’s time to get into work mode or exercise mode or whatever mode you need to be in to accomplish your task. Additionally, a pre–game routine helps you overcome a lack of motivation and get things done even when you don’t feel like it.

You get one, precious life. How do you decide the best way to spend your time? Productivity gurus will often suggest that you focus on being effective rather than being efficient.

Efficiency is about getting more things done. Effectiveness is about getting the right things done. Peter Drucker, the well-known management consultant, once encapsulated the idea by writing, “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

In other words, making progress is not just about being productive. It’s about being productive on the right things.

But how do you decide what the “right things” are? One of the most trusted approaches is to use the Pareto Principle, which is more commonly known as the 80/20 Rule.

The 80/20 Rule states that, in any particular domain, a small number of things account for the majority of the results. For example, 80 percent of the land in Italy is owned by 20 percent of the people. Or, 75 percent of NBA championships are won by 20 percent of the teams. The numbers don’t have to add up to 100. The point is that the majority of the results are driven by a minority of causes.

Here’s another example:

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, worked on Wall Street and climbed the corporate ladder to become senior vice-president of a hedge fund before leaving it all in 1994 to start the company.

If Bezos had applied the 80/20 Rule in 1993 in an attempt to discover the most effective areas to focus on in his career, it is virtually impossible to imagine that founding an internet company would have been on the list. At that point in time, there is no doubt that the most effective path—whether measured by financial gain, social status, or otherwise—would have been the one where he continued his career in finance.

The 80/20 Rule is calculated and determined by your recent effectiveness. Whatever seems like the “highest value” use of your time in any given moment will be dependent on your previous skills and current opportunities.

The 80/20 Rule will help you find the useful things in your past and get more of them in the future. But if you don’t want your future to be more of your past, then you need a different approach.

The downside of being effective is that you often optimize for your past rather than for your future.

Here’s the good news: given enough practice and enough time, the thing that previously seemed ineffective can become very effective. You get good at what you practice.

The process of learning a new skill or starting a new company or taking on a new adventure of any sort will often appear to be an ineffective use of time at first. Compared to the other things you already know how to do, the new thing will seem like a waste of time. It will never win the 80/20 analysis.