SOCIAL NEWS TODY 22/07/2021

‘Endurer’ imparts wisdom on deep-rooted social coding

Thursday, 22 July 2021

Author Kapil Raj’s new book ‘Endurer’, A Rape Story, endorses an awareness campaign #SheisnotaVictim #SheisanEndurer and has traveled across States and cities, following sessions  and discussions.  Kapil Raj shares about his book “Our behavior towards victims is still based out of deep-rooted social coding. Even the sufferer forces self to blame…

Over 95 lakh vaccine doses administered in Capital till now

Thursday, 22 July 2021 New Delhi

Over 95 lakh Covid vaccine doses were administered in the national Capital till Wednesday, according to a bulletin issued here.

The bulletin said Delhi had less than a day’s stock of vaccine doses left on Wednesday morning after administering over 71,000 doses on Tuesday.

SDMC issued 20k death certificates in April-June

Thursday, 22 July 2021  New Delhi

The South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) issued over 20,000 death certificates between April and June when the city was reeling under the second wave of Covid-19, municipal officials said.

According to data provided by the SDMC, it issued 3,351 death certificates in April, 10,209 in May and 6,832 in June.

Officials attributed the increase in death registrations to the second wave of Covid-19 and clearing of backlog of data.

“As compared to April, the number of death certificates is about 204% higher in May because of the Covid-19 second wave. While the figure in June is about 103% higher than that of April.

“The maximum number of deaths occurred either in May or in the last leg of April during the Covid second wave. So kin of most of the deceased who applied for death certificates got the documents in May and June,” a senior SDMC official told PTI on condition of anonymity.

Civic officials clarified that these death registrations also include normal deaths and they do not necessarily reflect the total death count due to Covid in that particular month.

Some civic officials also said that other than the Covid-19 second wave, there was backlog of data due to technical issues and it was cleared in May and June, leading to a rise in the numbers of death registrations.

In April-May, Delhi was hit by a brutal second wave of the pandemic, which claimed a number of lives every day, and oxygen supply shortage was reported at various hospitals.

62 cases, four deaths reported in last 24 hours

Thursday, 22 July 2021  NEW DELHI

As many as 62 coronavirus cases were reported in the national Capital while four more patients succumbed to the disease on Wednesday.

According to a health bulletin issued by the Delhi Government, the positivity rate stands at 0.09 per cent while sixty-one patients recovered from the infection in the past 24 hours.

Why do Birds Sing? You might assume that birds sing because they are happy. While birds might be happy, they sing in order to communicate. One reason they sing is to stake a claim on territory.Birds sing to warn other birds to stay off their property.For example, a Robin might stake a claim on a piece of land provides enough worms for the Robin to feed its family. A bird maintains singing perches around the outside edges of its territory. The perches are high in the trees, so other birds can see and hear it. Birds also sing to find a mate. The length and complexity of the mating song gives information about the fitness of the bird. Healthy birds can sing longer, more complicated songs. Birds call to one another in shorter vocalizations in order to warn of danger and to locate one another. Birds sing instinctively. Young birds learn to perfect their songs by listening to adult birds and interacting with other birds. Birds in a local area might learn variations in the basic song which help them recognize other members of their group

Ladakh, also known as “the Land of Passes‟ (La-passes, dakh-land) is administered by India as a union territory.

Quick facts about Physical geography of Ladakh

• Bordering regions: It is bordered by the Chinese Tibet Autonomous Region to the east, the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh to the south, both the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir and the Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan to the west, and the southwest corner of Xinjiang across the Karakoram Pass in the far north.
• River system: The Indus River and its major tributaries, the Shyok-Nubra, Chang Chenmo, Hanle, Zanskar, and Suru-dras rivers, drain the region. Glacio-fluvial processes aided by freeze- thaw weathering have formed the high altitude landscape of Ladakh.
• Climate: Ladakh has an extremely harsh environment and one of the highest and driest inhabited places on earth. Ladakh’s climate is referred to as a “cold desert” climate due to its combined features of arctic and desert climates.
• Vegetation: The entire area is nearly devoid of vegetation with the exception of valley floors and irrigated areas, due to the following factors:
• Temperature and altitude: These include wide diurnal and seasonal fluctuations in temperature, from -40°C in winter to +35°C in summer, and extremely low precipitation, with an annual 10 cm to 30 cm primarily from snow. Due to high altitude and low humidity, the radiation level is amongst the highest in the world.
• Soil type: In Ladakh soils range from gravely and sandy loams on the alluvial fans to sandy and silt clay loams on the flood plains of Indus. Ladakh’s soil is described as skeletal, calcareous with an alkaline reaction. By and large, soil is coarse and sandy, having varying quantities of pebbles. The soils are characterized by low organic matter content and poor water retention capacity.

Strategic importance of Ladakh

The importance of Ladakh to both India and China is rooted in complicated historical processes that led to the territory becoming union territory in 2019 (earlier it was part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir), and China’s interest in it post the occupation of Tibet in 1950.

• Rich in natural resources: Ladakh is situated within the upper reaches of the Indus watershed, which in total supports about 120 million people in India (in the states of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab and Rajasthan) and about 93 million in the Pakistan province of the Punjab (literally, “Land of the Five Rivers”). Careful management of water resources within Ladakh is therefore vitally important, not only for the livelihoods of Ladakhis and the ecosystems of Ladakh, but for the health of the whole river system.
• Solar radiation: It is one of the most abundant natural resources in Ladakh, with annual solar radiation exceeding averages for other areas of India with high insulation.
• Geothermal potential: surveys have identified a geothermal resource at depths suitable for exploration and development. This resource could be developed to provide grid connected power to small settlements and army bases sited on the national highway.
• Tourism industry: Popularly known as the Lama Land or little Tibet, Ladakh lies at altitudes ranging between about 9,000 feet and 25,170 feet. From trekking and mountaineering to Buddhist tours of various monasteries, Ladakh has it all.
• Provides connectivity: The passes of Ladakh region connect some of the politically and economically significant zones of the world like Central Asia, South Asia, China and the Middle East.
• Market access: The south Asian countries can reach Central Asian markets through this region. Countries like Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan are rich in uranium, cotton, oil and gas resources.
• Energy security: In future, the oil and gas pipeline from Iran to China can pass through this mountainous corridor. India’s energy needs can also be met by constructing a pipeline from Central Asia via this region.
• Geopolitical Significance: The land of Ladakh enjoys the significance of being located at the ancient Silk Route which passes through these regions and played a very vital role in the development of culture, religion, philosophy, trade and commerce in the past.
• Geostrategic location: The presence of resources is what makes India, China and Pakistan struggle over Ladakh, in order to gain control over resources in this region. Pakistan and China are in conflict with India over Siachen and Aksai chin in this region. Ladakh’s geostrategic significance has increased in the backdrop of these conflicts.

Disputes in Ladakh

• Pakistan and China border dispute: Ladakh became a contested territory between the newly independent nations of India and Pakistan. In the early 1960’s a substantial area of eastern Ladakh was annexed by China.
• Due to increasing tensions between India and Pakistan, the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950s, and their occupation of the Aksai Chin region in 1962, Ladakh has become one of India’s most important strategic zones.
• Strategic location and border disputes with Pakistan and China have assured a firm foothold for army presence since the past 50 years
• The origins of this contention date back to the British Raj which failed to demarcate the border between its colony and China definitively.
• Recently, Indian and Chinese armies are engaged in the standoff in Pangong Tso, Galwan Valley, Demchok and Daulat Beg Oldie in eastern Ladakh.
• The Galwan Valley area comes under Sub Sector North (SSN), which lies just to the east of the Siachen glacier and is the only point that provides direct access to Aksai Chin from India.
• All these border disputes are because India continues to maintain the McMahon Line as the legal border, while China has never accepted the border, stating that Tibet was never independent. Hence when China annexed Tibet these border clashed gained momentum.

Conclusion

Ladakh is an integral part of INDIA and has the potential to act as a vessel to feed India its required energy resources. For this peace in Ladakh is a condition. For peace, equal unbiased development is mandatory.

Therefore, India’s policymakers, while drafting their policies for Ladakh, should consider its geographic location, fragile environment, resource potentials and its people’s aspirations. In such a strategic location, it is crucial to keep all these aspects in harmony to take advantage of it to its fullest.

The first four parts of The Wasteland are made up of sets of what may be called images. Eliot speaks through many voices and characters in the course of the poem; all of them see what is around them as a wasteland. The reader gets a variety of insights into the state of consciousness which the poem is portraying. Part I deals with memories, II and III deals and focuses on points outside it. Part IV to some extent is a proper part of ‘The Wasteland’ presents an ambiguous image of death, Part V brings the poem to a kind of climax ‘The Wasteland’ to a single sentence it might be – the wasteland consciousness life is a dream- like nasty, arid lacking in all order and long.

Most of the images in Eliot are drawn from myth, religion and nature and are centered around the basic theme of death and rebirth. Thus, spring stands for rebirth and winter for death, drought for spiritual dryness and rain for spiritual fertility, growth and rejuvenation, the rock under the sun may typify spiritual and disintegration, while water and fish may stand for growth. Here in the ‘wasteland’ the drowned Phoenician sailor stands for the fertility God thrown into the waters as a ritual.

Broadly speaking there are two groups of images in T.S Eliot’s poetry- simple images such as similes, metaphors, symbols, and pictures. There are numerous examples for simple images in Wasteland. These might be called as pictures. There are- pictures of the hyacinth girl, Marie of Germany. There is Madame Sosostris, the clairvoyant, the crowd crossing London bridge on winter morning (a picture of desolation) and a bar in the pub. There is the Thames and Mr. Eugaries; the typist and her sordid clerk and finally in the last section the mistier pictures of crowds in anger and revolution and the mysterious third person who can only be seen as you walk long.

The songs of the birds are also significant. The poem describes them phonetically. The Jug Jug of the Nightingale, Drip drop Drip drop song of the hermit thrust and the coco rico coco rico of the cock have special symbolic meaning. All of these are arresting images.

The title of the poem itself brings an image before our eyes, of a desert, of a land once fertile becoming barren. This image keeps recurring throughout the poem. In the very second line “Lilacs out of the dead land” we have the reference to the dead land. The image is further extended to dead trees under the burning seen and dry stones over which no water tickles. Towards the end the betrayal and trail of Jesus are referred to the track up the barren mountain is described. Near the chapel perilous there are empty cisterns and exhausted wells. The song of the dry bones are these dryness and barrenness and the lack of water stand for spiritual state of modern world.

Reference to death and decay in the poem occur frequently example: The Burial Corpse, the drowned phlebas. At the chapel perilous, a cock crows from the roof as lightening flashes thunder rolls and damp winds. These are hints that death may be a beginning to new life and that drought is not final .

Thus, in ‘The Wasteland’ the poet primarily relies on images lined together around a fundamental theme Eliot is not a mere symbolist or imagist, because his poems are more than a mere string of disconnected images. He elicits emotion without directly expressing it, by evoking some situation which by itself arouses emotion.

Infrastructural development is on the rise. Cities and states are developing rapidly. Where once stood an under-constructed building or an open ground, now stands a grand mall or a fancy showroom. With all these developments going on, villages also want to get empowered and compete head-to-head with the cities in terms of infrastructure.
The very first step towards a good infrastructure is an easily accessible road. Since villages don’t have roads or the ones they have are not plain and smooth and full of puddles, smooth roads are being constructed nowadays.
For this, nearby jungles are being cleared to gather more space for the construction of a better connectivity-driven road.
A simple and subtle example that can be taken is of villages in Uttarakhand. It is a hilly area with narrow roads are jungles on both sides (this is the case in the villages and not in developed cities like Dehradun and Mussorie). Various animals reside in those forests. Along with deer, buffaloes, antelopes, and in some places bears, leopards too constitute a good fraction of the woods.
With the jungles being cleared at a rapid rate, the food cycle is being disturbed. This can be understood with a simple explanation. Forests are composed of trees, shrubs, and plants. The deer or the buffaloes in the area, being herbivores, survive on them. They thus, in turn, continue to reproduce offspring ensuring a continuous supply of food to the big cats. These cats eat, reproduce and die, making food for eagles, crows, and other meat-eating birds.
Therefore, a continuous supply of food, survival, and continuation of species is ensured within the forest premises and all live happily with no business with the outside world, where majorly the homo sapiens reside.
Since infrastructure is on the rise, jungles are being cleared and a lack of grass and trees is observed, deers and other herbivores are dying, blocking the supply of food to the big cats.
Some of these big cats are either dying or are wandering into human habitation in search of food. They often get into cattle houses or stables and consume the whole animal. There have been cases when people have seen leopards take away one full cow and they could not do anything but wait for him to leave. Such is the power of the mighty cat!
Upon human intervention, leopards do not hesitate to kill or injure the humans badly and mercilessly.
Not only this, another issue is deforestation. Since trees are being chopped down, the soil is left unattended giving rise to soil erosion. Since Uttarakhand consists of a good deal of forests and a lot is covered by them, the felling of trees is seen as a problem when heavy rains occur, resulting in landslides and loss of humans and animals alike.
Pollution is another issue related to the felling of trees. We know that trees convert carbon –dioxide to oxygen. Since trees are not there, pollution levels in villages, which once were tourist destinations or vacation spots for people are seeing low footfall and more pollution. This not only impacts humans but the economy and progress rate of the state too.
The fact that infrastructural development is important cannot and should not be ignored. But at what cost is this being done? How many people are left in the villages of the state? The statistics say it all.

Harshad Mehta was known as the ‘Big Bull’ of Dalal Street and the ‘Amitabh Bachchan’ of the Indian stock market. He manipulated stocks by illegally obtaining money from several banks using fake bank receipts. He created a cycle of fraud involving big banks like the State Bank of India (SBI) and the National Housing Bank (NHB).

Harshad Shantilal Mehta was born on 29^th July 1954, at Paneli Moti, Rajkot district in Gujarat. His early childhood was spent in Borivali, where his father was a textile businessman. He did his early study in Janta Public School, Bhilai. Mehta did not show any special promise in school and came to Mumbai after his schooling for higher studies and to find work. Mehta completed his B.Com in 1976 from Lala Lajpatrai College, Bombay and worked in a number of odd jobs for almost a decade. Mehta started his career as a sales person in New India Assurance Company Limited (NIACL). During this time, he decided to try his luck in the stock market and after a few days, resigned and joined a brokerage firm. In the early 1980s, he got hired for a clerical job at the brokerage firm Harjivandas Nemidas Securities where he worked a jobber for the broker Prasann Pranjivandas. By 1990, Harshad had risen to a position of prominence in the Indian securities industry, after years of success with his own company, Growmore. He believed that the general public is more attracted to organisations that have an English name rather than an Indian one.

A number of eminent people began to invest in his firm, and utilize his services. It was at this time that he began trading heavily in the shares of Associated Cement Company (ACC). The price of shares in the cement company eventually rose from ₹200 to ₹9,000 due to a mass buying from a group of brokers including Mehta. Just like this, whatever stocks he was interested in, skyrocketed. Everyone; super rich and middle-class people alike, invested wherever Harshad invested. He was on every magazine cover page at that time, most of them titled “Raging Bull”.

He had flashy lifestyle with a sea facing 15,000 square feet penthouse in Worli, with a mini golf course, swimming pool, and his fleet of cars including a Toyota Corolla, Lexus LS400, and Toyota Sera. It was truly a prosperous decade for Harshad. But this would all end soon.

In 1992, Mehta bribed bank employees to get fake bank receipts (BRs) issued. He used these BRs to get other banks to lend him money under the impression that they were lending against government securities. This amount was then put into the stock market to skyrocket share prices. Mehta then sold these shares at a significant profit and the principal amount was returned to the banks.

After the scam came to light, the tax department conducted a raid in Harshad’s house on February 28, 1992. Several documents and share certificates were seized. Soon after, he was imprisoned. He was convicted by both the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court and charged with 74 criminal offences. His legal battles dragged on until 2001, when he passed away in jail from a cardiac arrest, at the age of 47.

The Harshad Mehta scam triggered many changes in India’s financial regulatory system. The Securities Laws (Amendments) Act was passed in 1995, widening Sebi’s jurisdiction and allowing it to regulate depositories, FIIs, venture capital funds and credit-rating agencies. To secure investor interest, Sebi could also make it mandatory for companies issuing securities to make disclosures.

The Indian stock market has come a long way since the scam. Over the years, there have been other stock market scams that left regulatory bodies in pressure. But Mehta was the one who started it all. His actions continue to serve as a reminder to both investors and regulators to remain vigilant at all times.