Northern Railway has transported 92 lakh tonnes commodities during the two month of lockdown period and earned over one thousand 418 crore rupees. This is an improvement of almost 14 percent as compared to the same period of last year.
 
General Manager Northern and North Central Railways Rajiv Chaudhry said, due to the coronavirus pandemic, all passenger train operations were stalled from midnight of 22nd March and the focus shifted to the Goods trains to maintain a steady supply of commodities. He said, Northern Railway has been running five thousand Tonne Jumbo trains from its various freight loading terminals spread across the states of Punjab and Haryana.

It maintained a steady supply chain to feed 80 crore National Food Security Act, NFSA beneficiaries through continuous evacuation of mainly food grains and sugar from the northern states to different regions of the country. Mr Chaudhry added that Special long distance goods and time tabled Parcel Cargo express trains will continue to run from different regions of the North India to maintain the supply of food grains.
 

The recovery rate of COVID-19 patients is fast moving to touch 60 percent in the country. Currently, the recovery rate is 59.52 percent. During the last 24 hours, 11,881 patients have been cured taking the cumulative figure to over 3. 59 lakh. Presently, there are 2,26,947 active cases and all are under medical supervision.
 
Maharashtra with 93,154 cured cases, is leading in the list of 15 States in terms of absolute numbers of COVID-19 recovered cases followed by Delhi with 59,992 cured case and Tamil Nadu with 52, 926 recovered patients. In a statement, Health Ministry said, the coordinated efforts at all levels of government for prevention, containment and management of COVID-19 are showing encouraging results with consistently increasing gap between recoveries and active cases.

As on date, there are 1,32,912 recovered cases more than the active COVID-19 cases. Timely clinical management of COVID-19 cases has resulted in more than ten thousand daily recoveries.
 
As per the “Test, Trace, Treat” strategy, there has been a steady rise in the samples tested every day with more than 90 lakh samples being tested till date. In the last 24 hours, over 2. 29 lakh samples have been tested.
 
The testing lab network in the country is further strengthened. With 768 labs in the government sector and 297 private labs, there are as many as 1065 labs in the country.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah today chaired a meeting through video conferencing to review the COVID19 situation in Delhi-NCR.

Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal attended the meeting. Senior officials of Home Ministry and Health Ministry also attended the meeting.

During the meeting, Mr Shah emphasized on adoption of more testing using Rapid Antigen Test Kits to help reduce infection transmission rate. He said, these kits can be provided by Government of India to Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. The Home Minister also focused on early hospitalization to reduce mortality rates.

He also focused on extensive use of Aarogya Setu and  Itihaas App to help mapping of COVID in NCR.

Mr Shah said, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana can avail AIIMS-Telemedicine consultation through which patients will get advice from experts. He said, small hospitals in both states can take guidance from AIIMS through Tele-videography.

On 18th June, Mr Shah had reviewed the Covid 19 situation in Delhi NCR with Mr Kejriwal and senior officials of Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Mr Shah had emphasized on the need to have a unified strategy in the Delhi-NCR region to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.

The total confirmed cases in the National Capital has reached 89 thousand 802.

The 627 Indian nationals who were stranded in Pakistan have returned through Integrated Check Post, Attari. Giving the information, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said they returned on the 25th, 26th and 27th of June. He said, there are about 100 people who still remain in Pakistan and India is in touch with Pakistan authorities and awaiting clearances to facilitate their return.

On general elections in Gilgit Baltistan, the spokesperson said, India completely rejects attempts by Pakistan to bring material changes in the Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. He said, such cosmetic exercises are intended to camouflage Pakistan’s illegal occupation of Indian territories. India has called upon Pakistan to vacate all Indian territories under their illegal occupation.

On whether Pakistan High Commission has reduced its strength by half, Mr Srivastava said, following the decision by Indian government to reduce the staff strength of both the High Commissions of India and Pakistan, the members of both High Commissions returned on 30th of June. He said, 38 officials including family members of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad crossed over via ICP Attari and 143 officials including family members of the Pakistan High Commission crossed over.

The scenario of the Indian society has always been in the forefront for being one of the major countries with a high rate of domestic violence and abuse. Women have been suffering due to this since ages and the whole COVID-19 situation has made it worse for them. Violence does not necessarily have to be physical. Some other forms of domestic violence include emotional, psychological and sexual violence. The sudden COVID-19 outbreak has led to the prolonged period of lockdown which has further caused people to confine themselves into their homes for a lengthy period of time.

For many people home is a safe place which brings out a feeling of peacefulness and harmony but for hundreds and thousands of other less fortunate ones, home is a place that scares them to the core. These are the people who are victims of domestic violence. Some of them don’t even find the courage to take a step against it for they have already been habituated with the pain,accepted their fate and their rebelliousness often leads to further abuse which is even worse and scarier. Considering the promptness of Indian judiciary systems, it is not really that hard to imagine why so many people keep shut and never take any legal actions against the ill treatment they have to face constantly.

The prolonged lockdown period has made the victims more vulnerable as they rate of domestic violence gas gone upwards. Women from less privileged backgrounds suffer the most for they are not even aware of the legal actions that can be taken against their abusers. The only relief for many people has been going out for their work in the pre-lockdown period. However, the lockdown gas completely shut off the opportunities to go out and it has enormously led to the rise of domestic abuse.

Apart from causing physical scars, domestic violence can even cause long-term mental illnesses as well. Depression, anxiety, PTSD (post traumatic stress disorders) and sexual disorders are some of the very common consequences of domestic violence. Needless to say due to the total lockdown all the legal options have also decreased. Therefore people willing to take legal actions are also helpless. People who are initially exposed to domestic violence may also end up being abusers in future in order to gain a sadistic pleasure from being the superior one this time.

It is therefore quite visible how this whole situation has trapped those survivors who have to deal with such heinous crimes on a daily basis without any help whatsoever. This whole situation has increased the stress level, anxiety, job insecurity which has led to the rise of abuse towards children as well. Even they have to face the elders’ outrage helplessly. Perhaps the only way to make the situation a bit better is to talk about it more and more and reaching out to those who need help. Spreading awareness and its consequences is really important. A minimum moral support can contribute to the betterment of the survivors for they need to be reminded from time to time how precious their lives are no matter how difficult the circumstances might be.

-Suvasree Bandyopadhyay

Defence Acquisition Council ( DAC) in its meeting held today accorded approval for Capital acquisitions of various platforms and equipments required by the Indian Armed Forces.  Proposals for an approximate cost of 38900 Crore rupees were approved. The meet chaired by Defence minister Rajnath Singh Focused on indigenous design and development . These approvals include acquisitions from Indian Industry amounting to 31130 Crore rupees.

The equipments are to be manufactured in India involving Indian Defence Industry with participation of several MSMEs as prime tier vendors. The Indigenous content in some of these projects is up to 80 per cent  of the project cost. A large number of these projects have been made possible due to Transfer of Technology by DRDO to the Indigenous Industry. These include Pinaka ammunitions, BMP armament upgrades and Software Defined Radios for the Army, Long Range Land Attack Cruise Missile Systems and Astra Missiles for Navy and Air Force. The cost of these Design and Development proposals is in the range of 20400 crore rupees.

Acquisition of new and additional missile systems will add to the fire power of three Services. While acquisition of Pinaka missile systems will enable raising additional regiments over and above the ones already inducted, addition of Long Range Land Attack Missile Systems having a firing range of 1000 Km to the existing arsenal will bolster the attack capabilities of the Navy and the Air Force. Our correspondent reports,  induction of Astra Missiles having Beyond Visual Range capability will serve as a force multiplier and immensely add to the strike capability of Navy and Air Force.

Further, addressing the long felt need of the Indian Air Force to increase its fighter squadrons, the DAC also approved the proposal for procurement of 21 MIG-29 . It also approved upgradation of existing 59 Mig-29 aircraft and procurement of 12 Su-30 MKI aircraft.

The colonial Bengal saw enormous number of peasant revolution in the 19th century; one of them being the Pabna movement in the district of Pabna in Bengal. It was in the year 1873 when the Agrarian League was formed in the Yusufshahi Paragana of Pabna district, where the oppression of a few new landlord pushed the peasants to the thresholds of tolerance, as mentioned by the author Shekhar Bandhopadhyay.

In this area, the rate of rent was continuously increasing along with extra illegal cesses, known as Abwabs. But the main grievance lies in the fact that the landlords were destroying the occupancy rights of the peasants by denying them leases in the same plot of land, on a constant rate for last 12 years.

What Kalyan Kumar Sengupta stresses upon is that in 1873,the occupancy riots of the Pabna district struggled against their landlords to defend the right of occupancy granted to them as well as to the other Bengali cultivators by the Rent Act X of 1859. This agrarian unrest had an impact on the politics of Westernized urban elite of Calcutta and the seat of the 19th century Bengali Bhadralok culture.

It’s also pertinent to mention that the movement was actually non-violent in nature and remained within the fencing of the law, as said by Shekhar Bandhopadhyay. Later, the peasants formed an Agrarian League to raise money to take landlords to the court.

Now, the Pabna experiment was done on other districts of eastern and central Bengal where the zamindars resorted to high landlordism, as described by Benoy Chaudhuri, where they defied all the laws in the management of their estates, enhancing the rent at their will, imposing cesses and destroying the occupancy rights of the peasants. Moreover, agrarian leagues came up in Dacca, Bogra, Faridpur, Tripura and other districts. These were also the regions where the Feraizee Movement had large followers and Naya Miya, the son of Dudu Miya, himself actively organised the agrarian combination in Mohendigunge in 1880. As a result of this movement, the increasing tensions accelerated the functioning of the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885.

Whereas, RC Dutt suggested measures for the solution of the problems caused by the strained agrarian relations, Parbati Churn Ray, on the other side of the coin, defended tenent rights and tried to counter the landlords’ argument in favour of the enhancement of the rent.

Sunil Sen, another dominant scholar, further writes that the rich peasants and the Bhadraloks often formed the leadership of the rent unions, as in this revolt, the leaders were from the backgrounds of jotedar, talukdar, village headman and rich peasants, of course. To count on a few, the major ones were- Ishan Chandra Ray (known as Bidrohi Raja by the local peasants), Raja Sarkar, Shambhunath Pal and Khoodi Mullah (a Muslim jotedar) etc.

In these ways, the Pabna Movement got its momentum, leading to the formation of the Pabna Agrarian League, where the peasants were too desirous of becoming the Queen’s riots, as mentioned by sir Sanjay Ghildiyal. So, it can be said that the movement, which is obviously not free from numerous debated, had remained a major theme of a hot discussion in the history of colonial Bengal, where one can see an active participation of the rebellious peasants against the increasing harsh behaviour of the landlords hence.