FROM EDITOR’S DESK
Virtual vs real friends We have more virtual friends than real, in the age of social media. The desire to be with, be like, and be liked by friends is primal. We are all built to seek out strong bonds with friends. A recent survey says people are happier and laugh 50% more when talking to a friend face-toface. Many people now prefer communicating through impersonal media rather than face-toface encounters. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other conduits for connection have become a staple for even our closest friends. The digital age has completely changed the landscape of human interaction and how we communicate. We are more networked than ever in a world in which we need not be out of contact for a second. Social networking interactions are no replacement for real-world bonding between friends. Real-world friends build commonality and trust based on shared personal experiences. Four key dimensions of 'virtue friendship' should be examined in relation to online social media: reciprocity, empathy, selfknowledge and the shared life. Online social media support and strengthen friendship in ways that mirror these four dimensions, particularly
when used to supplement rather than substitute for face-to-face interactions. The internet, while it appears to be connecting us, is actually driving us apart. We are friends online but strangers in the street. We live in boxed houses, year after year, never even knowing the names of those souls who live right next door. How can we find true friendship in this often phony, temporary world? Friendship involves recognition or familiarity with another's personality. Friends often share likes and dislikes, interests, pursuits, and passion. As Martin Luther King, said: "Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend." Aristotle once observed that close friends “share salt together.” More than seasoning their food at a common table, the Greek philosopher believed that true friends share life with each other. “The desire for friendship comes quickly,” Aristotle said. “Friendship does not.” For those of us who live in the world today, a world of surface encounters facilitated largely by text messaging and a glut of social networking sites, we must ask whether or not we are truly experiencing the kind of friendship Aristotle describes.
MAGAZINE ON EDUCATION VOLUME 03 | ISSUE 09 | FEBRUARY 2016
Managing Editor Dr. Varghese Panthalookaran
Editor James Paul
Associate Editor Dr. Prasant Palackappilly
Columns K. L. Mohanavarma Dr. K. N. Raghavan Dr. Jose Cletus Plackal Jose Panthaplamthottiyil D. Dhanuraj Pooja Sundaresh
Marketing Manager Varghese Kachappilly Design Sajo Joseph Contact: Rajagiri Media, Rajagiri Valley P.O, Kakkanad, Kochi-39. Phone : 0484 2973979 Mobile : +91 9497711010 E-Mail : editor@rajagirimedia.com Web : www.pallikkutam.com
CONTENTS 08
EXPERT COUNSEL
A legend is born... Let him toughen Dr. K.N. Raghavan
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STORIES OF LIFE
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COVER STORY
Digital friendship A friend is someone we turn to, when our spirits need a lift. A friend is someone we treasure, for our friendship is a gift. A friend is someone who fills our lives, with beauty, joy and grace. And make the world we live in, a better and happier place. We discuss about real friendship in the digital age.
‘Net surfing’, a family adventure! Dr. Jose Cletus Plackal
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BE +VE
in the time of 22 Friendship social media Caroline Paul
a lifelong 29 Friendship: relationship Meera Kalithodi Ajith Varma
An ode to friendship 33 Noufal KM
"I quit IT for farming"
Friends for ever 36 Dr. K. S Gracy
FEBRUARY 2016 38
HEALTH MONITOR REGULARS NEWS.................................. 06 INSIGHTS........................... 12 INFOTECH.......................... 44 INNOVATIONS.................... 50
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Magic of raw vegan recipes
BOOKSHELF..........................
POLICY WATCH
SPORTS.............................. 62
Education Sector in GATS: How to address our concerns?
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RAINBOW.............................
64
REFLECTIONS.......................
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D. Dhanuraj & Pooja Sundaresh
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GUEST COLUMN
SUBSCRIBE NOW TURN TO PAGE 19
My classmate and me K. L. Mohana Varma
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CARS & BIKES
Mahindra KUV100
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NEWS
Coaching centres poach teachers Schools take a hit
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oaching centres, with their promise of much better pay, are fast robbing private schools of their teaching talent, a trend that bodes ill for students. Teachers, especially those handling core subjects, are offered a monthly pay of Rs 80,000 - Rs 1.5 lakh by coaching and tuition centres, while private schools shell out just over Rs 25,000 on an average. The attrition rate is highest among teachers of classes 10 and 12, and mostly in CBSE and ICSE-affiliated schools. Predictably, many schools are struggling to find replacements. K P Gopalakrishna, chairman of National Public Schools (NPS) in Bengaluru, said his group has lost 18 teachers in the past two years, especially those with expertise in physics, chemistry, maths and biology. "I pay my teachers over Rs 50,000. This new trend of teachers leaving their school jobs to join coaching centres or running their own tuition centres has become a major problem for schools,"
Kerala achieved 100% primary education Kerala has become the first state in the country to achieve total primary education
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ice-President Hamid Ansari officially declared the 100% primary education status for Kerala. "Kerala has become the first state in the country to achieve total primary education. This has been achieved through the primary education equivalency drive of the state literacy mission - Athulyam. The equivalency programmes have proved a huge success and the ultimate objective is to achieve total Plus-Two education in the state," education minister P K Abdu Rabb said. The second phase of Athulyam was carried out across the state as part of the Mission 676 of the government, launched to mark its third anniversary. The programme offers a chance for those who failed to get primary education due to various reasons to achieve the education qualification equivalent to fourth standard.
he added. The scene is no different at Delhi Public School (DPS) which has lost 15% of its teachers here to this trend. Mansoor Ali Khan, member of the board of management, says 90% of the city's schools are mediumbudget ones, and cannot afford the high salary packages offered by coaching centres.
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Those aged 15 to 50 were beneficiaries of the programme and were identified through family registries prepared by anganwadis under the social justice department and also through ward-level surveys carried out by instructors in continuing education programmes.
Around 2.6 lakh candidates appeared for the 4th standard equivalency examination in June 2015 and 2.2 lakh candidates qualified. The equivalency examination was held in 6,613 centres across the state and those who scored 30/ 75 in English and 20/50 in other subjects were declared winners.
CA success rate dips by 2.5%
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fter a steady rise in the success rate of students in the final chartered accountancy (CA) exam in the last three chances, the performance of students dropped in the November 2015 exam. The success rate of candidates dropped by 2.45% - from 8.25% in May 2015 to 5.75% now. The Institute of Chartered Accountancy of India (ICAI) announced the final CA exam results on Sunday. Of the 42,469 students who appeared in both the groups together in November 2015, 2,440 have cleared it. The final CA exam is held twice in a year. The last time a poor success rate was recorded was in November 2013, when only 3.1% candidates passed the exam. The number of candidates taking the exam has grown by over 50% in the the last six exams.
Pallikkutam | February 2016
NEWS
No Indian school on list of 200 most international universities London has emerged as the world's number one city for international universities
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ot a single Indian higher education institute has made it to the 2016 list of the 200 most international universities in the world announced by Times Higher Education.
author from another country. Qatar University has emerged as the most international institution making it the first time that a Middle Eastern institution has topped the list.
It knocks five-time leader Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland down to fourth place. The rest of the top 10 is filled by the University of Luxembourg (second), University of Hong Kong (third), University of Geneva (fifth), The institutions in the list belong to 28 University of Macau (sixth), ETH countries but none from India. The Zurich - Swiss Federal Institute of ranking is compiled using data on each Technology Zurich (seventh), institution's proportion of international University of St Gallen (eighth) and staff, proportion of international the National University of Singapore students and proportion of research (ninth). papers published with at least one coLondon has emerged as the world's number one city for international universities, with more top 200 institutions than the whole of the US, Canada and France combined.
Better job prospects, pay for fresh MBAs this year: Survey
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his year promises better job prospects for business school graduates compared with 2015, according to an annual survey conducted by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). Also, more than half (56%) of employers plan to increase base salaries for new MBA hires in 2016 at or above the rate of inflation, and 41% will maintain 2015 salary levels. Half (50%) of employers will increase average annual base salaries for recent master's of accounting hires at or above the rate of inflation, and 50% will maintain last year's levels.
UK sees massive fall in Indian student numbers The number of Indian students fell by 10% between 2013 and 2014 alone.
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early 14,000 fewer Indian students enrolled into a British university for higher education in 2014 compared to 2010. In what is a massive blow to Britain's education sector, the number of Indian students fell by 10% between 2013 and 2014 alone. According to the latest figures, US is now sending more students to UK to study than India which has been pushed to third in the rankings. In 2010 for example, the number of US students who enrolled in a British university was around 9650 while the number of Indian students who got admitted were around 23,970. In 2014, the picture has changed drastically. While the number of US students getting admission in a British university stood at 10,205, Indian student numbers had fallen to
Pallikkutam | February 2016
10,125. The figures have been described as "alarming" by the British Council. The number of Chinese students coming to UK for higher education meanwhile increased from 44,805 in 2010 to 58,845 in 2014. One of the reasons for this fall in Indian students has been UK's decision to scrap the post study work visa. PM Cameron has now said he will not reintroduce it. Meanwhile Scotland which has been worst hit due to the scrapping of the visa is furious with the Cameron government. A cross party Post Study Work Steering Group of the Scottish
government has written to Cameron expressing their surprise and disappointment that a return of the post study work visa has been ruled out.
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EXPERT COUNSEL
A legend is born.. 08
Pallikkutam | February 2016
EXPERT COUNSEL
Let him toughen
Dr. K.N. Raghavan
Pranav Dhanawade, a Mumbai schoolboy, created cricketing history by becoming the first batsman to score more than 1000 runs in an innings. He scored 1009 runs off a mere 327 balls out of the total score of 1465 for 3 wickets made by his side, K.C. Gandhi High School, against Arya Gurukul school. He eclipsed the 116 year old record for the highest individual score in a recognised cricket match, which was held by AEJ Collins of England, who had scored 628 runs in a match.
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ranav Dhanawade, a Mumbai schoolboy, created cricketing history at the turn of this year by becoming the first batsman to score more than 1000 runs in an innings in an officially recognised match. He scored 1009 runs off a mere 327 balls out of the total score of 1465 for 3 wickets made by his side, K.C. Gandhi High School, against Arya Gurukul school in a match in Bhandari Cup, a tournament for under 16 age group of students recognised by Mumbai Cricket Association. While doing so, Dhanawade also eclipsed the 116 year old record for the highest individual score in a recognised cricket match, which was held by AEJ Collins of England, who had scored 628 runs in a match between Clark House and North Town House in Clifton College, England in 1899.
Pallikkutam | February 2016
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EXPERT COUNSEL This achievement immediately catapulted Dhanawade into national limelight as congratulatory messages poured in, with Sachin Tendulkar himself taking the lead to applaud the effort. Maharashtra Cricket Association felicitated him with a cash cheque of Rs 1.2 lacs and announcement of monthly grant of Rs 10000 for the next five years. The state government was not to be left behind with the Minister for Sports announcing that they would provide financial resources for his further training and studies.
without doubt, an accomplishment of stupendous proportions, irrespective of the calibre of the opposition or the ground conditions. Hence Dhanawade is entitled to all the accolades that he has received from all quarters of the country.
However, one should also ring in a bell of caution at this juncture. Our country’s record in converting young players who show potential at junior level into performers at senior grade is not very inspiring. There are innumerable instances of youngsters who show immense promise at the Meanwhile some newspapers found junior level falling by the wayside and time to interview the coach of the not making the grade when faced with opposing team, which could score a the challenges at the higher level. As paltry 82 runs in both innings put an umpire I have watched the exploits together, and report his observations. of some of the most talented young He said that his team could not put players in the country such as Tanveer up a good performance as most of Jabbar, Sriram, J. Arunkumar, team members were busy with their Senthilnathan etc from close quarters
Scoring more than one thousand runs in an innings is, without doubt, an accomplishment of stupendous proportions, irrespective of the calibre of the opposition or the ground conditions. Hence Dhanawade is entitled to all the accolades that he has received from all quarters of the country. exams and the boys who played were in mostly twelve year old who had previously played cricket with only tennis ball. For good measure, the coach also mentioned about boundary being only 27 yards on one side and around 21 catches being floored by his side. But he was gracious enough the praise Dhanawade’s effort saying that poor quality of his wards should not take away the sheen from the achievement of the young batsman.
and made mental predictions that they would don national colours. However none of them could make it to the national squad despite possessing enormous amounts of talent. I have also seen players such as S Ramesh, W. V. Raman and Dinesh Karthick playing at junior level where they did not create the same level of impression either by their flair or performances. What was it that players in the first category, who were universally acknowledged as superior talent, The issue here is not to judge the lacked? Further, is there anything quality of Dhanawade’s innings. In basically wrong with our system of any level of cricket scoring a century is assessing talent at the junior level? a distinct achievement, requiring skills, expertise, temperament, patience and It is accepted that greatness results good luck. Hence scoring more than when phenomenal talent is supported one thousand runs in an innings is, by extraordinary effort. But in sporting
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Pallikkutam | February 2016
EXPERT COUNSEL arena there is also a third requirement called temperament, which helps sportspersons to elevate their levels of performance to a higher notch on the big stage. It is temperament which helps sportspersons to face the rough with the smooth with equanimity and control their inner apprehensions and fears of failure when they take their position before millions of spectators. Along with physical fitness, sportspersons are also required to develop mental strength of Himalayan proportions to help them tide over disappointments and keep focused on their goal of attaining and maintaining excellence. The first category of players could not make it to the top grade as they could not develop the temperament required to find success at the highest level while the second group, though having less flair, could, by their hard work and mental strength, scale the peak. Another reason could be our habit of equating talent with visual appeal and flair, without making any provision for the element of mental strength in this equation. As one progresses up the ladder it would become evident that style and elegance do not win matches and a player who is not able to keep in cool and raise his performance levels when the chips are down would not go far. As one progresses up the ladder a player would find that grit, courage and stamina are more essential for success than flamboyance and visual appeal. There is also the tendency that a player can get lulled into complacency by his performances at the junior levels and does not put in the effort required for doing well the next grade. What could be the possible ways out of this situation? The first step would be appreciate the fact that success at junior levels while
Pallikkutam | February 2016
There are innumerable instances of youngsters who show immense promise at the junior level falling by the wayside and not making the grade when faced with the challenges at the higher level.
being a good indicator of a sportsperson’s abilities would not necessarily translate into performances at the higher levels. It should also be acknowledged that in many instances success at junior grade could turn out to be misleading as well. Further, efforts should be made to expose those persons who are performing consistently well at junior level to senior grades early. This would enable them to develop mental toughness early in their career and also prevent any complacency brought on by success at junior levels. One can gauge the extent of how misleading performances at the junior level could be from the fact that three Indian players have won the junior Wimbledon singles title- Ramanathan Krishnan, Ramesh Krshnan and Leander Paes- but none of them could win the senior event. And when Leander Paes won the junior title in the mid 1980’s, Boris Becker had already won the senior event as a 17 year old!!! Similarly, Sachin Tendulkar did not make his mark in junior cricket; he was selected to the Ranji Trophy squad while still in his early teens and went on play for India within a couple of years. And finally, AEJ Collins, whose 116 year old record Pranav Dhanawade erased, did not make the grade even to play first class cricket!!!! So instead of starting to sing praises of Pranav Dhanawade and exalting his achievements in school level cricket, the proper approach would be to give him required support for sharpening his talent through constant practice and provide opportunities for playing at the senior grade soon so that the lad can toughen himself out in that world and find out whether he belongs there.
The author is the Commissioner of Customs in Kochi, Kerala.
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INSIGHTS
Why Spiderman can't exist?
Latest research reveals why geckos are the largest animals able to scale smooth vertical walls - even larger climbers would require unmanageably large sticky footpads.
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cientists estimate that a human would need adhesive pads covering 40% of their body surface in order to walk up a wall like Spiderman, and believe their insights have implications for the feasibility of large-scale, gecko-like adhesives. A new study shows that in climbing animals from mites and spiders up to tree frogs and geckos, the percentage of body surface covered by adhesive footpads increases as body size increases, setting a limit to the size of animal that can use this strategy because larger animals would require impossibly big feet. Dr. David Labonte and his
colleagues in the University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology found that tiny mites use approximately 200 times less of their total body area for adhesive pads than geckos, nature's largest adhesionbased climbers. Humans need about 40% of our total body surface, or roughly 80% of our front, to be covered in sticky footpads if we wanted to do a convincing Spiderman impression. Once an animal is big enough to need a substantial fraction of its body surface to be covered in sticky footpads, the necessary morphological changes would make the evolution of this trait impractical, suggests Labonte.
Depression of parents linked to premature birth Depression in both expectant mothers and fathers increases the risk of premature birth.
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epression in women during pregnancy is known to be associated with low birth weight and increased risk of premature birth. Maternal stress, such as the death of a loved one, lack of social support, or a difficult or abusive relationship, has also been shown to increase the risk of premature birth. However, little research has examined the impact of paternal depression on the health of the mother or the unborn child. In this study, more than 350,000 births in Sweden between 2007 and 2012 were investigated for parental depression and incidence of either very preterm birth (between 22 and 31 weeks) or moderately preterm birth (32-36 weeks). For both men and women, depression was defined as having had a prescription of antidepressant medication, or receiving outpatient/inpatient hospital care, from 12 months before conception to the end of the second trimester of pregnancy.
Evidence of a prehistoric massacre extends the history of warfare The fossilised bones of a group of prehistoric hunter-gatherers who were massacred around 10,000 years ago have been unearthed 30 km west of Lake Turkana, Kenya, at a place called Nataruk.
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esearchers from Cambridge University's Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies found the partial remains of 27 individuals, including at least eight women and six children. Twelve skeletons were in a relatively complete state, and ten of these showed clear signs of a violent death: including extreme blunt-force trauma to crania and cheekbones, broken hands, knees and ribs, arrow lesions to the neck, and
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stone projectile tips lodged in the skull and thorax of two men. Several of the skeletons were found face down; most had severe cranial fractures. Among the in situ skeletons, at least five showed "sharp-force trauma," some suggestive of arrow wounds. Four were discovered in a position indicating their hands had probably been bound, including a woman in the last stages of pregnancy. Fetal bones were uncovered.
Pallikkutam | February 2016
INSIGHTS
Information flows through neuron 'hubs' in the brain
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ust as most of the world's air travel passes through a few major hubs, the majority of information in the brain flows through similarly well-traveled routes, Indiana University scientists have found. A new study, reported in the journal Neuroscience, shows that 70 percent of all information within cortical regions in the brain passes through only 20 percent of these regions' neurons. "The discovery of this small but information-rich subset of neurons within cortical regions suggests this sub-network might play a vital role in communication, learning and memory," said Sunny Nigam, a Ph.D. candidate in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Physics, who is the lead author on the study. The scientists also report these high-traffic "hub neurons" could play a role in understanding brain health since this sort of highly efficient network - in which a small number of neurons are more essential to brain function - is also more vulnerable to disruption. That's because relatively small breakages can cause the whole system to go down.
Evidence of a real ninth planet discovered It would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun.
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altech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun. The researchers, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, discovered the planet's existence through mathematical modeling and computer simulations but have not yet observed the object directly. "This would be a real ninth planet," says Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy. "There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be a third. It's a pretty substantial chunk
of our solar system that's still out there to be found, which is pretty exciting." Brown notes that the putative ninth planet - at 5,000 times the mass of Pluto - is sufficiently large that there should be no debate about whether it is a true planet. Unlike the class of smaller objects now known as dwarf planets, Planet Nine gravitationally dominates its neighborhood of the solar system.
Physical attraction linked to genes that control height Genes that determine your height also influence your choice of mate by height.
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ome may believe that chance brings you together with your loved one, but scientists have found a far less romantic reason. Mate choice is influenced by our genes, in part by those responsible for our height, according to research published in Genome Biology. An analysis of the genotype of more than 13,000 human heterosexual couples found that genes that determine your height also influence your choice of mate by height. This provides more understanding into why we choose partners of a similar
Pallikkutam | February 2016
height. Over the last century, numerous studies have found that
height was a key trait when choosing a mate, but until now there has been
no explanation for this preference. This study investigates both, individual physical traits in relation to mate choice and the role played by underlying genetic variation. Lead author, Albert Tenesa, from University of Edinburgh, says, "Our genes drive our attraction for partners of similar height to ours, i.e. tall people pair with tall people. We found that 89% of the genetic variation affecting individual preferences for height and one's own height are shared, indicating that there's an innate preference for partners of similar height."
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STORIES OF LIFE
‘Net surfing’, a family adventure!
Dr. Jose Cletus Plackal
Parental emotional bonding is the foundational strength of child-rearing. If only this foundation is deep and strong can the child assimilate their inputs
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recent alert made by the High Court of Kerala about the need for parents to supervise the net use of their children, prompts me to pen some reflections on the same. The High Court observed that it is the duty of parents to supervise and monitor the internet use of their wards. And all of us know how intriguing and tricky this task is getting day by day. The expansive knowledge base at the finger-tips, the exhilarating fantasy trips, the exciting friendship circle with all the attending ‘chat marathons’, the incessant and innate curiosity to explore the hidden realm, including the sexual world, etc are some of the major attractions that draw one to get hooked to the net. However, we cannot avoid net use as it is the lifeline of knowledge and connectivity, and we all are netizens of the cyber world, just as citizens of a country. The following is a real story of a young boy named Deepak, studying in
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ninth standard, from a medium income family, loving parents, has one younger brother, makes good grade at studies, friendly, gentle and loving, etc. Lately, the parents noticed remarkable changes in the behavior of their son. He was getting low grades in class tests, he picked up fights with grandpa and started beating his mother, for no real reasons. He was restless, tired and sleepy, not interested in studies, irritable and violent, poor eating habits, withdrawn…The entire family was at a loss as to what was happening to their ‘best’ boy!
started protesting against the collusion of mom and grandpa against him and in favor of his brother. It was at this stressful time that one of his friends showed him a porno picture. Deepak began to pry into the net late nights and started his virtual truancy. Late in the morning he would grudgingly (and of course, in slow motion), wake up to a very harsh world of study and school which he reluctantly endured. His greatest enigma was his inability to face people whom he loved, particularly, to look in the face of the girl whom he admired and loved, secretly.
On closer analysis, it was brought to light that Deepak was going through great turmoil, many of which he didn’t even know. One of the teachers had insulted him in front of the class. Deepak was shattered by this painful, shameful event, and stopped studying that subject altogether, in order to retaliate. About this time Deepak
Deepak willingly cooperated with the counselor and underwent therapies to get rid of the addictive habits and reworked his relationship with the teacher and parents. The parents were brought into the picture by making amends to their lapses in bringing up their son. New contract was made about the use of internet and other
Pallikkutam | February 2016
EXPERT COUNSEL matters. Deepak has come back to his original good self and enjoys study making better grades… Some important lessons to take home:
♦ Parental emotional bonding is the foundational strength of child-rearing. If only this foundation is deep and strong can the child assimilate their inputs, (do’s and don’ts)… ♦ Age-specific development and functional requirements must be taken into consideration. For example a fifteen year old’s emotional, intellectual and relational worlds are quite different from that of a five-year old. ♦ Pay special attention to transitional stress. This is most critical at the stage of adolescence, where the emotional and relational worlds merge, psycho-sexual upheavals take place. There is so much burden that the adolescent has to carry on and, a little extra straw can break the ‘camel’s’ back!
♦
Start setting boundaries early on
Proper guidelines (house rules) for the use of electronic gadgets have to be made, enforced, monitored and maintained from early on. (Parents, watch out against the kids’ tricks to divide and rule you!)
This is vital for mutual trust and secrecy of place, late night ‘prowling’, responsible freedom. Parental access is etc will have to be regulated. essential part of such agreement. ♦ Educate the young about the use and misuse and abuse of cyber world and their serious consequences.
♦
Most importantly, parents have to be cyber-literate.
He was restless, tired and sleepy, not interested in studies, irritable and violent, poor eating habits, withdrawn…The entire family was at a loss as to what was happening to their ‘best’ boy!
Most important and yet most neglected part of the healthy ‘netizenship, etc.’ is the parents’ unwillingness to be educated in net use. A little extra effort from the part of the parents (teachers too) in learning about the cyber world can lead the children into healthy use of cyber source, and intelligent living. Life is an exciting and exhilarating Safari through the Information Highway. There is adventure in every stretch of this cyber way; pitfalls and accident prone zones too… But if the family is prepared, ready and united as a team, winners we sure will be...!
The author is licensed clinical psychologist (HRT), Jeevas Centre Aluva, Kerala.
♦ Make mutually agreeable contracts about the use of net and other gadgets.
Pallikkutam | February 2016
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BE +VE
"I quit IT for farming" "The mountains I climbed, the butterflies I counted, the streams I swam, the jungles I walked along, all called me back. The urge to go back to nature was very strong"
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young boy in his twenties quits a well-paying networking job in Delhi for farming! It would seem obviously a hasty decision to many but for Tibin Parakkal it was the question of life. He decided to be a farmer and live happy life instead of being stuck in concrete jungle.
Tibin Parakal's father was a farmer, but he discouraged his son from being one. So, Tibin studied Information Technology and networking, and worked as a networking professional in Delhi. "From the cradle of nature, I was thrown into the concrete jungle that is Delhi. I felt suffocated. I didn't see human beings around me; only machines that worked to earn lots of money.�
"I quit my IT career for farming. I wanted to be a farmer like my father. I wanted to farm without pesticides. Initially no one supported me. But The mountains I climbed, the now, when it turned to be a success, butterflies I counted, the streams I people realise", says Tibin Parakal swam, the jungles I walked along, all from Trissur who quit a lucrative IT job in Delhi to became a farmer.
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called me back. The urge to go back to nature was very strong," Tibin explained. Still in Delhi, he began planning an organic restaurant he would start in Trissur on the lines of what his friend was doing in Trivandrum. He hid his plans from his parents; he knew they would be horrified if their son quit a well paying job in Delhi to start a 'hotel' in Trissur. He only discussed the viability of the idea with some of his friends. One of them, George K Jose, had just joined Infosys in Bangalore.
Pallikkutam | February 2016
BE +VE Tibin and two friends from Trissur, George and Aneesh, pooled in one lakh rupees to start an organic restaurant called Pathayam, in Trissur.
"We were bowled over by Palekar's ideas. He understood the real vibrations of nature. In those five days, it was not farming that he taught us; he made us understand and feel the pulse of nature."
The restaurant opened during Onam in 2010. Recalls Tibin, "We employed only the cooks; serving and the rest of the work was done by the three of us and some of our friends." They attracted excellent publicity in the media. At the evening of the opening day they served five types of puttu like ragi, wheat, vegetable, corn etc, which went down well. "Hundreds of people came and had to wait outside. It was unprecedented. Everybody appreciated our efforts. We were soon making Rs 10,000 every day with a profit of around Rs 5000-6000," Tibin said. As expected, Tibin's parents were horrified at their son's decision. Tibin tried to scare them by saying, “If you want to see me alive till I am 60, let me do what I want to. But if I continue to work in Delhi, you will see me only till I am 35!� The restaurant had to close because of construction work in the vicinity. Not
Pallikkutam | February 2016
days, it was not farming that he taught us; he made us understand and feel the pulse of nature. He introduced us to the most minute living beings in nature. It was an eye opener for us," Tibin recalls. Tibin's parents agreed to part with 10 cents of land to their 'crazy' son and his friend so that they could experiment with natural farming.
able to find another place to suit their budget, the three entrepreneurs abandoned the project. "I was not dejected. I had always wanted to be a farmer, and I thought it was a good opportunity to do it. We had started with organic food made without any chemicals but the first step should have been natural farming," Tibin said. Tibin and George attended a fiveday seminar on Zero Budget Natural Farming, by Subhash Palekar from Maharashtra. "We were bowled over by Palekar's ideas. He understood the real vibrations of nature. In those five
"My father was not in favour of our experiment. He asked me, 'Do you think we are fools? I have been cultivating paddy for the last several years and you say we don't know anything? Even with pesticides, our yield is only this much, and you want to show us that without pesticides, you can have more yield?' He literally laughed at us. I begged him for a small piece of land to do our experiment just once. Reluctantly, he agreed.� Zero budget natural farming needs only one kilo of cow dung for 10 cents of land. "We must have the cow dung and urine from pure breed cows and not cross breeds. With great difficulty, we found one person who had such
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BE +VE cows and I went on my bike to collect the cow dung and urine," Tibin said. Tibin had learnt from Palekar that one gram of cow dung and urine of pure bred cows contains 300-500 crore micro organisms. But the cow dung of the cross breed cows contains only 4050 lakh micro organisms. "The Jeevamrutha solution (that is added to the crop) acts on the micro organisms and help them multiply in large numbers," he said. They planted paddy using the seed of an ancient variety of rice called kuruvai, cultivated by adivasis. They tilled the land and did the planting themselves.
"Our life is dedicated to farming. We want others to do zero budget natural farming too. That is why we work as advisers. We know we will survive as farmers.�
The resultant paddy was much healthier, greener and bigger than the one cultivated by his father using chemical pesticides.
Since then, they have been making a profit of Rs 2 lakh every season. Other than farming, they undertake projects for the Agriculture department, helping families develop a kitchen garden.
In due course, Tibin wants to develop a model farming institute to train youngsters in natural farming.
people cultivate kuruvai in Kerala from the seeds we distributed. My father now cultivates kuruvai on his entire one acre plot and follows zero budget natural farming!" says a triumphant Tibin.
Most of the first yield was kept as seeds for the next season. "That was in 2011. We even distributed the seeds. The paddy cultivation expanded to You won't believe this, but today many embrace two acres of land taken on
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The success of the first two yields prompted them to expand their holding to 25 acres of land. The yield was worth more than Rs 15 lakh but faulty marketing resulted in a loss of Rs 7 lakh. That did not dampen their spirits because it was a marketing failure and not a farming one.
Tibin has decided to concentrate on cultivating organic vegetables on 15 acres of land at Kattappana in Idukki district. Some 100 kilos of vegetables are sold every day.
They used no pesticides, only the Jeevamrutha solution made of cow dung, cow's urine, jaggery, flour, soil and water, as created by Palekar.
"Our paddy looked so healthy, and when the paddy of the nearby areas got infected, ours remained unaffected. That was when everybody realised there was something right in what we did. My father was shocked when we got more yield than he had ever got in his life!"
lease and made a profit of Rs 50,000 the second year.
Tibin and George are indirectly involved in farming 400 acres of land, as advisers. They continue to farm their 25 acres of land taken on lease. "Our life is dedicated to farming. We want others to do zero budget natural farming too. That is why we work as advisers. We know we will survive as farmers. Our dream is to popularise Palekarji's natural farming for the betterment of nature, people and society as a whole," he said.
Pallikkutam | February 2016
Pallikkutam | September 2015
Digital friendship
A friend is someone we turn to, when our spirits need a lift. A friend is someone we treasure, for our friendship is a gift. A friend is someone who fills our lives, with beauty, joy and grace. And make the world we live in, a better and happier place. We discuss about real friendship in the digital age.
Friendship in the time of social media Caroline Paul
How social media has redefined our friendship? We asked to a cross-section of people. There are positive and negative aspects.
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compulsive Facebook user. A drug addict. What do they have in common? Baffled? Think again, as a study conducted by research psychologists at California State University, Fullerton, has concluded that these seemingly different people do share a few traits in common. Facebook needs no introduction. With over 1.55 billion monthly active users globally and 59 million users in India accessing Facebook on a daily basis, it has literally become a household name. Throw in the prediction that India is set to surpass the US, in terms of mobile Facebook users, by 2017 and one will comprehend that the Facebook phenomena is too ubiquitous to ignore. Facebook, as we see it today, is markedly different from 2012, when it
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was a single website with a dubious app, that experts weren't too sure would be profitable. In line with its mission, 'To give everyone in the world the power to share and make the world more open and connected', Facebook has indeed enhanced connectivity. And the odds of finding any long-lost friend or relative is better than ever before and it's a point of view shared by a lot of people. "I have been living abroad for a good few years now and social media has been very helpful in maintaining contacts with friends and family. Also, it helped me stay connected with a wider circle of friends, by keeping me updated about what they have been up to," says Dr. Vipin Babu, Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Cologne, Germany.
"As a student, whose life is constantly changing, I feel social media is a great way to stay connected with friends. You feel like everyone is only a message away! Social media also helps me to stay abreast of the latest trends, thereby making the world a smaller place." The connectivity factor can be particularly useful, if you are trying
Dr. J. Prasant Palakkappillil
"I believe social media channels, such as Facebook, hold a huge potential, especially in terms of being connected and in disseminating information to large target groups, in a span of mere seconds."
Pranoy Mathew, student, Jรถnkรถping University, echoes the sentiments,
Pallikkutam | February 2016
COVER STORY STORY COVER
As compared to the traditional forms of media, social media is faster, cheaper and quicker too!
to stay in touch with a large number of people. Dr. J. Prasant Palakkappillil CMI, Principal, Sacred Heart College, Thevara elaborates, "I believe social media channels, such as Facebook, hold a huge potential, especially in terms of being connected and in disseminating information to large target groups, in a span of mere seconds. In my professional life, I mostly use it to keep in touch, especially with former students of Sacred Heart's."
Some others also leverage social media for professional purposes. Isolda Josy, HR Consultant, Singapore, reveals, "Social media has been very prevalent in my life, being an early user of Facebook, as well as other social media sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn. I have often used LinkedIn to connect with people whom I met on a professional level and to initiate the next phase of contact as and when it was required. Those connections could have been forgotten, if not for such a platform. Overall, these platforms have enhanced my existing offline
Mathew Baby Vaniyakizhakel, Assistant Professor, Rajagiri School of Dr. Vipin Babu Engineering and Technology, also credits social media "I have been living platforms with the abroad for few years ability to organize now and social media reunions almost has been very helpful instantly, based on in maintaining contacts inputs from people with friends and family. both near and far. As It helped me stay compared to the connected with a wider traditional forms of circle of friends, by media, he believes keeping me updated social media is about what they have faster, cheaper and been up to" quicker too!
Pallikkutam | February 2016
relationships, helped me make new connections on several occasions and has been a 'keep in touch' medium for the times between face to face meetings with close relatives and friends." But is this all there is to this global giant - finding long-lost friends and family, staying in touch and organizing reunions? As a wise person pointed out once - 'If you are not paying for it, you are the product'. With Facebook being the very embodiment of this philosophy, it is plausible that there
Vinay Ashwin
"I am happy that the Internet and social media have helped me locate, reconnect and rekindle relationships that may otherwise have been lost. But, I am also concerned as to how it has replaced my physical presence among my friends, family and relatives.
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No matter what, a social media platform just cannot be a substitute for intimacy among people. Emotional and physical closeness is integral for real-life relationships. is more than what meets the eye. Will the social media channel, which permeates every aspect of our lives, change it for the better, or worse?
can get to know each other or share their daily life in detail. So, in this regard, I would say social media is a good catalyser. But, ultimately, it is the maturity with which you approach it, that makes or break."
otherwise have been lost. But, I am also concerned as to how it has replaced my physical presence among my friends, family and relatives. No matter what, a social media platform just cannot be a substitute for intimacy among people. Emotional and physical closeness is integral for real-life relationships. But then again, many people opt for convenience, as maintaining a real life relationship requires time and effort, which they may be ill-equipped to invest. Personally, I believe it is up to the user to choose for himself, between a convenient or a meaningful relationship." What exactly does it spell out for the youth, especially considering that they are the most common age demographic in Facebook? Sadly enough, the future seems to be bleak, if the youth do not act with heightened awareness and responsibility. Dr. Rabindranath Athri, a Kochibased Soft Skills trainer, who interacts with youngsters on a daily basis, says, "Social media is hugely popular among today's youth. However, there is no denying that social media is not human nature. Our human nature is all about seeing, feeling, and touching; the whole gamut that encompasses the 'human experience'. Sadly, I've witnessed that the prevalence of
The success, or failure of any technology; new or old, and the impact it makes on the end user, is Likewise, Vinay Ashwin, Senior ultimately dependent on the user Consultant, IBM, United Kingdom, itself. Sonia Erattupuzha, Ph.D also advocates a balanced candidate, Austria, notes, "I was approach, "I am happy that the exposed to social media during my Internet and social media have early twenties and still depend on it helped me locate, reconnect and to keep in touch with my dear ones. rekindle relationships that may As far as relationships are Pranoy Mathew Dr. Rabindranath Athri concerned, it opens up new opportunities, too. "As a student, whose Social media is hugely However, my life is constantly popular among today's relationships have changing, I feel social youth. However, there neither strengthened media is a great way is no denying that nor softened to stay connected with social media is not because of social friends. You feel like human nature. Our media. I believe a everyone is only a human nature is all strong relationship message away! Social about seeing, feeling, develops from depth media also helps me and touching; the of heart and it will to stay abreast of the whole gamut that stay so, until your latest trends, thereby encompasses the feelings dies out. making the world a 'human experience'. But, by making use smaller place." of the opportunities of social media, one
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Pallikkutam | February 2016
COVER STORY STORY COVER social media has becoming a stumbling block towards this end, as social media does not allow for interactions, in the normal sense. The end result is that relationships suffer, when the crux communicating, listening, understanding and feeling - is taken out of the equation." Shevlin Sebastian, Journalist, The New Indian Express, recollects an incident that drives home the point, "On a trip to Macau with a group of young journalists, a year ago, I was
Suppressed feelings of the real world are freely expressed in the cyber world, veiled emotions revealed and clandestine affairs cultivated. This, in turn, leads to lurking dangers, such as the violation of vulnerable Facebook users, especially children.
things but the negative impact is even more so. How to navigate this, without damaging oneself, is one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century." Rev. Dr. Gilson John, Ph.D, Principal, St. Joseph's College, Moolamattom, raises another concern, "Social media is particularly attractive to the youth and I consider it a channel to influence their thoughts and thereby, their personality in general. As many are spending hours before social networks, whatever inputs you provide will definitely produce some results. It is an important factor in the formation of values. The worrying factor is that no one takes efforts to give some valueoriented inputs in social media." Indeed, values and caution is thrown to the wind, as Facebook users enjoy anonymity. A platform, where in anyone can create any sort of profile for themselves - fake or otherwise, helps create a 'Facebook self', which may be drastically different from their realworld self. Suppressed feelings of the real world are freely expressed in the cyber world, veiled emotions revealed and clandestine affairs cultivated. This, in turn, leads to lurking dangers, such as the violation of vulnerable Facebook users, especially children.
struck by a singular event that took life. And that can be damaging in the place all the time. After we visited long run. We will lose the ability to any tourist spot, and would pause have proper relationships with for a break, everybody would people. We will lose our warmth and immediately pull out their mobile humanity. Today, most technological phones and browse through. inventions have become a doubleAlthough we were all sitting next to edged sword. There are a lot of good each other, it was like six or seven Shevlin Sebastian Dr. Gilson John islands. There was complete silence all around, each There is no doubt that "Social media is engrossed by what for some people, the particularly attractive they were seeing on social media is more to the youth and I the screen. This reality than daily life. consider it a channel isolating behaviour And that can be to influence their is happening within damaging in the long thoughts and thereby, families, at the work run. We will lose the their personality in place, the mall, ability to have proper general. As many are cinema hall and relationships with spending hours before even at church. people. We will lose social networks, There is no doubt our warmth and whatever inputs you that for some people, the social humanity. provide will definitely media is more produce some results.� reality than daily
Pallikkutam | February 2016
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COVER STORY Considering that five new profiles are created every second, with a total of 83 million fake profiles so far, the danger is considerable. Rev. Fr. Martin Mundadan CMI, Principal, Viswajyothi CMI Public School, Angamaly, says, "I believe social media channels, such as
the 'real' world, it is mostly ignored or tolerated in the 'virtual' world that is Facebook, mostly because of the anonymity. While utilising the 'voice' that Facebook provides is well appreciated, certain lines must be drawn while using that voice. Also, one should cross check the
the fact that Facebook monitors your posts and makes advertisements or other suggestions based on it. While it can be quite useful to get links to shopping sites, based on what you were looking for or endorsing previously, these constant 'personal
The bottom line here is to not over share and always keep in mind what every single of your key stroke is monitored. suggestions' can be annoying at the Facebook is mostly misused, facts or statements for veracity, least and creepy at the worst. The especially by the youngsters. While even those that are 'trending' in bottom line here is to not over share there are several benefits for social Facebook, as it isn't particularly and always keep in mind what every media, I have observed that they necessary that these may be true. It single of your key stroke is often lead to unhealthy relationships. could very well be fictitious or monitored." Children do not exercise caution while specifically concocted to malign sharing their pictures online, not Maria Baby, PhD Candidate, New someone or something. I would realising they are putting themselves Zealand, gives a hands-on advocate exercising your better at risk. Also, I believe children can approach for navigating around this judgement, before endorsing a develop an unhealthy addiction to issue, "Social media's effects are particular post online or crossgetting 'Likes' or comments on their anything, but social. They're a sharing it. Another pressing issue Facebook activities and this can be crutch - a crutch on which we lean arises from the information over disastrous for them in the long run. on, instead of learning how to share that is Facebook. Many Not to mention the number of fake interact and communicate with people know, or choose to ignore accounts and profiles created with Bobby Kuriakose Alilakuzhy Maria Baby the sole purpose of luring girls and young children." Dr. Vipin points out other hidden pitfalls of the social media giant, "People easily display behaviour which is condemned in the real world. For example, when referring to things that they care about, people can go from emotional to abusive. While this is not tolerated in
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"I recommend that children, especially girls, should never use their photo as their Facebook profile picture. They should also avoid celebrity images, as this can lead to identity theft claims and the offense, if proved, is punishable under the IT Act."
"Social media's effects are anything, but social. They're a crutch - a crutch on which we lean on, instead of learning how to interact and communicate with others effectively."
Pallikkutam | February 2016
COVER STORY others effectively. For a moment, stop and think about the quality of friends that we may make online, and compare this quality of relationships with other kinds of friends with whom we have actual face-to-face contact – be it work-related, social, intimate, or perhaps even loving.
the other side of the world too. In this sense, I find social media useful. However, there are also hidden dangers, especially when it comes to youngsters using social media channels such as Facebook. I would advise the youth to exercise sense and caution while using social media
control the image visibility by using custom settings." It is indeed possible to implement these for a positive Facebook experience, as Dr. J. Prasant Palakkappillil CMI notes, "I am aware that social media is misused,
Do not add those people with whom you do not have a relationship in the real world. Therefore, avoid friend requests from strangers and do not send requests to strangers either, no matter how appealing their profile looks like.
Which of these contacts represent meaningful friendship? Which of these contacts, when all is said and done, really matters the most to you? The secret is that real-life friendships are unmatched for deep and lasting emotional closeness. As with anything, balance is the key along with the need to make an effort. So buckle up, get back and learn to communicate, interact, make friends, fall in love, carry on a conversation, rekindle lost friendships, revisit childhood friendships and deepen your real-life relationships in the REAL world." Bobby Kuriakose Alilakuzhy, Civil Police Officer, Cyber Cell, Aluva, cannot reiterate this point enough. In the course of his duty, he has come across several hundred cases of Facebook abuse and is naturally wary about the rampant freedom enjoyed by youngsters in the social media platform. He says, "In today's world, there is no doubt that social media plays a vital role in disseminating information. News spreads fast via social media channels and people can react quickly to whatever is happening on
Pallikkutam | February 2016
and for parents to be always aware of what their children are up to. Parents should know their children's social media details such as username, password etc. and it is a good practice to monitor their activities online."
especially by many of the younger generation who use in a manner not healthy. However, I haven't come across such instances except for a stray occurrence or two, in Sacred Heart College." Parents and teachers also have a moral responsibility to create in the real-world, what the child is desperately seeking in the virtual world, a point that Pranoy, a student, caught upon, in his interactions with his counterparts.
The veteran police officer also shares some of his tips to curb instances of cyber violation, "I recommend that children, especially girls, should never use their photo as their Facebook profile picture. They should also avoid celebrity images, as this Fr. Martin Mundadan can lead to identity theft claims and the offense, if proved, is punishable "I believe social media under the IT Act. Also, do channels, such as not add those people with Facebook is mostly whom you do not have a misused, especially by relationship in the real the youngsters. While world. Therefore, avoid there are several friend requests from benefits for social strangers and do not send media, I have requests to strangers observed that they either, no matter how often lead to unhealthy appealing their profile relationships.� looks like. While it is advisable to not upload images onto Facebook, if it is really needed, please
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COVER STORY He says, "I see a whole generation immersed in a dream like digital world, pretending to be someone they are not, trying to impress people without any specific reason. Social media is already an addiction to a generation that's clutching tight and holding close to their hearts iPads and MacBooks. Consider a normal family, where both the parents are employed. They lack time for themselves and also for their children and try to cover up their guilt by gifting their children the latest and coolest gadgets. So, for a family which lacks conversations about 'real' life, it is no wonder that children depend on social networks to develop their idea and sense of such issues." Together, we can and we should save our children from leading a life akin to that of a drug addicts. It is our moral responsibility to ensure that the fine line between regular and compulsive Facebook use is not crossed, as California State University research, mentioned earlier, has found that the compulsive Facebook users exhibit similar brain patterns to people suffering from drug addiction. However, the promising news is that Facebook addicts can indeed curb their behaviour, but they simply aren’t motivated to do so, due to lack of adverse consequences. This makes it all the more important for parents to become more invested in their child's life - not just financially. Every parent should take care to spend quality time with their offspring and to give them a 'real world'
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With a pinch of common sense; to differentiate the experiences of the real world from that of virtual, good judgment and apt parental guidance, there is no doubt that the Facebook experience can be turned magical.
experience. This way, the children can understand for themselves the substantial difference that comes from actually living their lives and living their life virtually by uploading some photos and updating their statuses.
In schools, teachers shoulder responsibility too, in ensuring their disciples are not submerged in the social media swamp. One way of doing this is by spreading awareness of the hidden dangers of social media, by conducting seminars or other events. Schools can emulate 'Cyber Sureksha Pledge', which was a unique program designed by Sujai G Pillai, Founder of 2tion.com, “One Library Per Village” and also MyGov Ambassador (one among 20 members in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s MyGov Team), to spread awareness about increasing cyber crimes across Kerala. It was also a tribute to late President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam and on his birth anniversary (October 15, 2015), three million students, from 15,000 schools in the state recited the 'Cyber Sureksha Pledge', where they vowed to be good citizens of the country and only use the Internet to bring glory to themselves, their family, society, state, nation and the world. However, parents, school and teachers can only be considered as catalysts of change and ultimately, it is the Facebook users themselves who need to shoulder responsibility for their actions online. They should ensure that theirs, as well as others' social media experience, is a positive one. As mentioned above, they should not display behaviour that might be frowned upon in the real world; such as being abusive, by limiting the information shared online, reporting fake accounts, protecting privacy by not sharing intimate pictures or videos online, monitoring their friends list to ensure they know everyone who is in the list etc. With a pinch of common sense; to differentiate the experiences of the real world from that of virtual, good judgment and apt parental guidance, there is no doubt that the Facebook experience can be turned magical.
Pallikkutam | February 2016
COVER STORY
Meera Kalithodi Ajith Varma
Friendship: a lifelong relationship
F
riendship is very important to all of us. Being a social being everyone’s mind leaps out to engage in this informal relationship. A sociological study on prisoners show that isolated prisoners made friends with small animals like rats, cockroaches etc. in the prisons. It is impossible for a human being to live in isolation. Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together. Without friendship life is not worth living. From our childhood we hear the famous saying ‘ A friend in need is a friend indeed’. It is sure that
In contrast to other forms of intimate relationships in our society, friendship is uniquely voluntary. Where relatives are designed by blood and legal ties and neighbours by proximity, friends are selected. Furthermore, friendship is a relatively uninstitutionalised relationship without standard rituals, norms or nomenclature to guide the partners. While trying to understand the elements of friendship deVries (1996) grouped them into 3 elements: Affective elements – Personal thoughts and feelings, self-disclosure, intimacy,
activities, similarity, giving and receiving assistance of a non-affective nature Sociable elements- friends as sources of amusement, fun and recreation. Friendship is a Life –Long Relationship. In a train, the travelers come together share their experiences and become so tied together within a very short time. It is always a wonder to understand how our differences sink and the energies unite with an invisible string binding us as
Friendship is an enduring relationship that travels all through your life irrespective of your marital status, gender, disabilities and so on. for most of the people the first word attached to friend will be ‘Fun’.
appreciation, and affection. Provide What is about Friendship that makes encouragement, it so important in every social being. emotional support, Sociologists and Psychologists give empathy, bolstering of much deeper insights in their analysis self-concept, with an on ‘Friendship’. It is clear that friends underlying sense of play a significant part in many trust, loyalty and people’s lives. commitment. Friendship can be defined as a voluntary, personal relationship, typically providing intimacy and assistance in which the partners like one another and seek each other’s company.
Pallikkutam | February 2016
Communal elements – participating in common
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Among adults major life events that take place during midlife include Taking up jobs, marriage, parenthood. These events bring changes in their networks of friends as well. During Old age, evidences support the fact that the friendships decline.
attachment. When the train reaches each station, people leave us and new people come in. They leave memorable events in our hearts and we willingly detach from them. This train is friendship and the stations are each stage in our lives. At each and every stage of our life this informal relationship contributes to our socialisation process, making us a functional member of the society we live in. Friendship is an enduring relationship that travels all through your life irrespective of your marital status, gender, disabilities and so on. At infancy stage, babies too
engage in this relationship by interacting in their own ways, may be non-verbal, but still they understand elements of give and take aspects of friendship. At childhood, children learn the basic foundations of social interaction that gives the ability to establish and maintain relationships. They learn to express emotions, acquire language and social skills through observation. They think about what they are interested in and what others are interested in and choose friends to share interests. Closeness with their chosen friends will be the source of happiness and social support. The idea of validation of self-worth comes in at this stage-
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that is, if someone likes us, we feel that we are worthy of being liked and makes us good about ourselves. The children learn from their friend’s experiences, understand and try to apply better solutions to similar situations. The Social scientists call this as ‘Anticipatory Socialisation’ and is very helpful at every stages of life as it smoothens the path of one’s development and transition from one stage to the other building confidence is them. During adolescence, there is a growing importance of peers. Berndt (1996) has identified 3 main features of adolescent friendship:
Support- related to intimacy, such as when friends have intimate emotional conversations and support each other through difficult times. Conflictarguments, competition and discussions are prevalent in adolescence, typically with parents. Peer- Pressure- peers influence the adolescent’s choice of clothing, academic performance, drinking behavior, smoking, sexual behavior etc. In young adulthood, the key component of relationship is intimacy. The search of intimacy takes place when young adults start their college education. In adulthood there is a broader range of contacts from where we can find friends and
Pallikkutam | February 2016
COVER STORY we engage in friendship activities. All the spaces and time that they spend in this stage of life are potential sources of building friends. Young adulthood is the golden age of forming friendships and during this period of life, friendship become more complex and meaningful. There is greater diversity of friend types and interaction patterns. Researchers suggest that the choice of friends usually will be people who are like themselves- like similar gender, race, religion, interests etc. Among adults major life events that take place during midlife include Taking up jobs, marriage, parenthood. These events bring changes in their networks of friends as well. During old age, evidences support the fact that the friendships decline. Some reasons put forward for this is mandatory retirement, poor transportation and poor health. Research findings prove that friendships contribute more to the well-being of those people in their later years of life. Dr.Rosemary Bliesner, Professor at Virginia Tech, studied closely at the
three general components of friendship – structure, processes, and phases. These three components are interrelated. Structure is analyzed in terms of Dyadic structure which includes power hierarchy, status hierarchy, solidarity and homogeneity that reflect the internal structure of friend pairs. The power is the `probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out [her or] his own will despite resistance. Status reflects the distance between actors in terms of prestige or moral worth. Solidarity is the horizontal dimension of internal structure, or the degree of intimacy or closeness between dyad members. Intimacy it is widely used measure of the strength of social ties and of social distance. Homogeneity is the similarity of the participants in terms of social positions, such as gender, race, occupational status, ethnicity or age. Processes are the interactive friendship processes- the covert cognitive and affective responses and overt behavioral events.
Cognitive processes reflect the internal thoughts that each partner has about her- or himself, the friend and the friendship. These thoughts concern, for example, how one assesses the stability of the friendship, explains shared experiences and interprets one's own behavior and one's partner's intentions or needs, as well as evaluations and judgments of another's attractiveness, character, similarity to the self and so on. Affective processes encompass emotional reactions to friends and friendship. Empathy, affection, trust, loyalty, satisfaction, commitment, joy and contentment are all positive or pleasurable emotions. Indifference, anger, hostility and jealousy are examples of negative or unpleasant ones. Behavioral processes are the action components of friendship. They include communication, such as disclosure of one's thoughts and feelings. Other behavioral processes are displays of affection, social support, resource exchange, cooperation, and accommodation to a friend's desires, co-ordination,
College life gives the strength to reach deep within one’s self for the courage, confidence and conviction that will help each of its members to make good choices in life.
Pallikkutam | February 2016
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COVER STORY
Researches prove that there is a likelihood of reducing depressive symptoms with the emotional support of friends. Friends have a major influence in shaping the personality. sharing activities and interests, concealment, manipulation, conflict, competition. Friendship phases -relationships are dynamic, developing and evolving over time. Friendships have beginnings, when partners become acquainted; middles, when solidarity and other features increase, decrease, fluctuate or remain stable; and, sometimes, endings for any of a variety of reasons. Friends proceed from one phase to another via planned, conscious mechanisms; individuals differ in the extent to which they consciously employ friendship development strategies. These phases are explained as Dyadic phase, Maintenance phase and Dissolution phase. Many times the functions of family and friendship overlap with each other. Yet friendship stands out to be unique in several ways. Both family and friends share characteristics like emotional closeness, interdependence (giving and receiving), support, trust and show unconditional patterns. The unique feature of friendship is that it is voluntary. If we can voluntarily create and maintain friendships, then relationship is likely to be less obligatory. Sense of autonomy and control upon making decisions about relationships contribute to psychological well-being. Reciprocal exchanges gradually built by affection,
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emotional support, and trust on each other also contribute to psychological support. Researches show that people who had more people to confide on were more psychologically well than people who had none to confide on. Friendship promises physical wellbeing by providing timely help mostly by stepping in when one is unwell or undergoing a major operation. Friends can motivate you to exercise and be physically fit. The partners in this relationship learn from others experiences bringing to them real life knowledge that allow them to rise in the level of self-confidence and sense of competence. The partners also learn to be optimistic, know how to get social support and develop coping skills. This contributes to their social well-being. Friends care for each other by buffering hassles and stress and this enables them to handle traumatic events or even everyday hassles. Researches prove that there is a likelihood of reducing depressive symptoms with the emotional support of friends. Friends have a major influence in shaping the personality. Engaging in meaningful activities with friends gives strength to question the stereotypes, Social issues, male dominance and act towards it. People of all age worry about Loneliness and under the umbrella of friendship we are protected from the fears of being alone.
Resilience, one of the most important measure of success in life, is developed in the experiences encountered from College campuses. College gives all sorts of resources- academic, art, sports, philosophical to deal with the world. Psychologists state that Resilience is something more than getting through day to day challenges, even more than surviving traumatic events. Resiliency is to rise above risky or distressing experiences and regain energy after adversity drains it. College campus experiences provides with the required flexibility and ability in each member to find ways to move ahead instead of being paralyzed by the problems faced. College will equip its participants to meet the fast changing world and help to be more productive and effective. College life gives the strength to reach deep within one’s self for the courage, confidence and conviction that will help each of its members to make good choices in life. Making and Keeping friends requires attention and intention. Always cultivate the relationship that makes us happy and contribute to our well-being and also to the well-being of the society.
The author is Sociology teacher at Sharjah College, and a trainer for teachers to use online Math Learning tool.
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COVER STORY
An ode to friendship Noufal K M
C
ollege days were the most exciting period in my life. It was in 2011 to 2014. That was the time when we had freedom, energy, excitement, spirit of youth and a powerful mind, ready to do anything, all blend together but no bucks in the pocket. College is the place where the deep rooted friendships happens too. Friends are the most precious reward of my college life. I understood the meaning of friendship, only when I joined the college.
Friendship is the most important part of campus life. Choose your friends carefully. Friends can change your life, as they are the most influential elements at that period.
Weekly or monthly trips are inevitable in college days. We used to plan trips frequently in those days. It was pretty easy, as most of my friends had bikes. We used to bunk classes for movies. Our parents never knew about it, as we reached home every evening as innocent lads. That was the time of mobile mania and social media. We were crazy about mobiles. The funny part was that even when we hangout and sat together, our heads were down into the mobile screens, chatting in online groups, sometimes with the very same guys sitting next to us. Celebrations, silly strikes, big fights, crazy bunks are good old memories of my college life. I should say, it was the unforgettable period of everyone's life. I am sure these memories will cherish till the
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end. How can one forget those lovely, vibrant days? The college education is not only based on books and not limited to the campus alone. It is a window to the world. It is a platform of many opportunities and possibilities to express our capabilities and grow. One should utilize the chances to conduct or participate in many sociocultural activities like seminars, camps, field visits, awareness programs, etc. It needs a collective
effort. These activities will help friendships to grow. Friendship is the most important part of campus life. Choose your friends carefully. Friends can change your life, as they are the most influential elements at that period. We are not mature enough to differentiate between good and bad at the time of college life. Friends play a vital role and they can direct us to good or bad. We depend on them for everything. They can influence us in our decisions also. They may be the last word for us. College life is a turning point in life. Choose friends with a good mindset, whose acts and words are same and have a vision about future. I am not suggesting a bookworm or a ‘padipist’ (one who is always on the top). Friends will remain in our life forever and they will the driving force. Some of them may help us to build good career too. Be in good terms with our teachers also. Some of my teachers were very friendly with us. Real friends will always remain with us till the end of our life. The sweet memoirs of our college days will be driving force for the future life. I believe, friendship has the same impact on all generations, be it new or old.
The author is a graduate in Tourism Studies from Al Ameen College, Edathala and working with an advertising agency.
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COVER STORY
Two sides of social media friendships Setting a good example through your own virtual behavior can go a long way toward helping your kids use social media safely. The Good
who might want to cause them harm.
to find the person using the app.
Social media can help kids:
These statistics about teens highlight the dangers of social media:
And photos, videos, and comments made online usually can't be taken back once they're posted. Even after a teen thinks something has been deleted, it can be impossible to completely erase it from the Internet.
stay connected with friends and family volunteer or get involved with a campaign, nonprofit, or charity enhance their creativity through the sharing of ideas, music, and art meet and interact with others who share similar interests
The Bad The flipside is that social media can be a hub for things like cyber-bullying and questionable activities. Without meaning to, kids can easily share more online than they should. One study showed that 9 out of 10 teens post photos of themselves online or use their real names on their profiles; 8 out of 10 reveal their birthdates and interests; and 7 out of 10 post their school name and the town where they live. Actions like this can make kids easy targets for online predators and others
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17% of teens say they've been contacted online by someone they didn't know in a way that made them feel scared or uncomfortable 30% of teens say they've received online advertising that was inappropriate for their age 39% of teens admitted to lying about their age to gain access to websites
Concerns In addition to problems like cyberbullying and online predators, kids also can face the possibility of a physical encounter with the wrong person. Many newer apps automatically reveal the poster's location when they're used. This can tell anyone out there exactly where
Posting an inappropriate photo can damage a kid's reputation in ways that may cause problems years later - such as when a potential employer does a background check. And if a kid sends a mean-spirited tweet as a joke, it could be very hurtful to someone else and even taken as a threat. Spending too much time on social media can be a downer, too. By seeing how many "friends" others have and viewing pictures of them having fun, kids may feel worse about themselves or feel they don't measure up to their peers.
What parents can do It's important to be aware of what your kids are doing online, but prying too much can alienate them and damage the trust you've built together. The key is to stay
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COVER STORY
Don't "friend" strangers. "If you don't know them, don't friend them." This is a plain, simple - and safe - rule of thumb. involved in a way that makes your kids understand that you respect their privacy but want to make sure they're safe.
share anything on social media that they wouldn't want their teachers,
Here are some helpful hints to share with connected kids: Be nice. Mean behavior is just as unacceptable in the virtual world as it is in the real world. Make it clear that you expect your kids to treat others with respect and courtesy, and to never post hurtful or embarrassing messages about others. And ask them to always tell you about any harassing or bullying messages that others may post. Think twice before hitting "enter." Remind teens that what they post can be used against them. For example, letting the world know that you're off on vacation or posting your home address gives you trouble. Teens also should avoid posting specific locations of parties or events, as well as phone numbers. Teach kids that "once it's out there, you can't get it back." They shouldn't
importance, go through the settings together to make sure your kids understand each one. Also, explain that passwords are there to protect them against things like identity theft and should never be shared with anyone. Don't "friend" strangers. "If you don't know them, don't friend them." This is a plain, simple - and safe - rule of thumb. Parents can help keep kids grounded in the real world by putting limits on media use. Keep computers in public areas in the house, avoid laptops and smartphones in bedrooms, and set some rules on the use of technology (such as no cellphones at the dinner table).
college admissions officers, future bosses - and yes, grandma - to see. Use privacy settings. Privacy settings are important, and to highlight their
And don't forget: Setting a good example through your own virtual behavior can go a long way toward helping your kids use social media safely.
Tips to prevent being vulnerable ♦ Make sure you set the privacy settings correctly to protect your privacy and to protect yourself from strangers. If you set your settings wrong people can still access your photos, info when they are not your friend. ♦ Ask your friends and family to have a look at your profile to check that you aren’t giving out too much personal information or posting Pallikkutam | February 2016
inappropriate photos/films because they might see something you’ve missed.
♦
Keep your passwords and secret security questions to yourself.
♦
Respect yourself and others online. Don't make yourself a target by posting tempting information.
♦ If you are unlucky enough to have a bad experience online report
it to the service provider and tell an adult
♦
Cyberbullying is never acceptable. If you or someone you know is targeted by bullies online tell them to tell an adult and very important to keep evidence of the bullying behaviour and never reply.
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COVER STORY
Friends for ever Dr. K. S Gracy “If you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.” says Muhammad Ali. These words have pictured the importance and sincerity of friendships in the world. Modern world and new generation give place to friendship more than anything. Today we see world of love and friendship such as, Facebook friends, chatting friends, and WhatsApp groups. But the picture of campus days about 20 years ago was very different and there are many limitations to relations. I believe friendship as the relationship of mutual affection between two or more people and the enjoyment received from performing activities together. Friendships are preserved through affection and sharing. It is a kind of interpersonal bond than an association. Friendships include warmth, compassion, understanding, truthfulness, unselfishness, mutual understanding and enjoyment of each other's company and trust. Friendships help to express one's feelings, and make mistakes without fear of judgment from the friend. Actually friendships help us to be better adapted in society later on in the life. I feel good friendships enhance an individual's sense of happiness and overall wellbeing. Especially in the case of women strong friendships and supports
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improve even her health also. Good friends encourage their friends, correct mistakes and they are ready to help when needed. More over it contributes self-esteem, self-confidence, and social development. Good friendships can protect us even from the disorders such as anxiety and depression. So friendship quality is important for a person’s wellbeing. That is why Aristotle said “A friend is a single soul dwelling in two bodies."
and personal feelings with each other immediacy. But after my PG I lost all my good friends. Marriage and job in nearest district caused for the end of my friendships. My friends also forced to move on due to the distance. Today digital technology has made geographic distance less of an obstacle to maintaining an existing friendship than it would have been previously. So I searched my friends with the help of digital technology and now they are with me in any good and bad occasions in my life.
Good and quality are a Good friendships friendships blessing in our life. It can protect us was very accidently I met my classmate and even from the friend in a seminar at disorders such Kerala History Association, as anxiety and Ernakulam about 18 ago. She told me depression. So years to join at Sree Sankara friendship quality Sanskrit University at as a guest is important for a Kalady lecturer. She was a JRF scholar and I felt person’s inferiority complex to wellbeing. teach there without lectureship (NET). But As a student I enjoyed friendship in she gave me confidence and helped me the campus in my degree and P.G days. to prepare NET examination and in the I feel campus as a heaven of raining next chance I passed the test. If she friendships. Sorrows vanish and had not encouraged and gave happiness flowers in campus gardens. confidence I would not be a teacher Though I lost the warmth and today. We continue the warmth and happiness of campus friendships for love of friendship. When I was twenty years I keep it as a charming disheartened with small and serious memory. In my college days I enjoyed problems, she is with me as a guide sharing, intimacy loyalty and and teacher and I feel more commitment. I was very fortunate in comfortable with her personal identity. getting high-quality friendships and Hence I consider friendship as a such friendships helped my cultural valuable one in my life. and social development. An important The author is Asst.Professor, Dept.of part of making friends is sharing ideas History, St.Peters College, Kolenchery
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COVER STORY
Teens, technology and friendships Video games, social media and mobile phones play an integral role in how teens meet and interact with friends.
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recent report by Pew Research Centre explores the new contours of friendship in the digital age. It covers the results of a national survey of teens ages 13 to 17. For today’s teens, friendships can start digitally: 57% of teens have met a new friend online. Social media and online game play are the most common digital venues for meeting friends. For American teens, making friends isn’t just confined to the school yard, playing field or neighborhood – many are making new friends online. Fully 57% of teens ages 13 to 17 have made a new friend online,with 29% of teens indicating that they have made more than five new friends in online venues. Most of these friendships stay in the digital space; only 20% of all teens have met an online friend in person.
♦ Boys are more likely than girls to make online friends: 61% of boys compared to 52% of girls have done so. ♦
Older teens are also more likely than younger teens to make online friends. Some 60% of teens ages 15 to 17 have met a friend online, compared with 51% of 13to 14-year-olds. The most common spots for meeting friends online are social media sites like Facebook or Instagram (64% of teens who have made a friend online met someone via social media), followed by playing networked video games (36%). Girls who have met new friends online are more likely to meet them via social media (78% vs. 52% of boys), while boys are substantially more likely to meet new friends while playing games online (57% vs. 13% of girls). Text messaging is a key component of day-to-day friend interactions: 55% of teens spend time every day texting with friends The vast majority of teens (95%) spend time with their friends outside of school, in person, at least occasionally. But for most teens, this is not an
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everyday occurrence. Just 25% of teens spend time with friends in person (outside of school) on a daily basis.
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HEALTH MONITOR
Magic of raw vegan recipes
Rupinder Kaur
This is the story of Rupinder Kaur, she turned into a raw vegan, when other methods failed to assure a healthy life.
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hree years ago, Rupinder Kaur had a jaundice attack, she was in great discomfort. Despite being cured of the disease, she still suffered from bloated stomach, gastric issues and weak knees.
So, she turned to fresh fruits and vegetables for help. “That summer vacation, I went to my father’s home in Punjab, and kept hogging mangoes and litchis for three days. By the end of it, my stomach pain had vanished, and so did my gastric trouble.” The “I had recovered, but still I needed the experience was a revelation for her, and support of walls to walk. I have lead a Rupinder turned into a raw vegan, completely healthy lifestyle, grew overnight. upon buffalo milk and didn’t smoke or drink. Why was this happening to Her firm conviction in its magical me?” results inspired her to start a website on vegan recipes called Raw Rasoi. Doctors, said that they had done She shares recipes of smoothies, date everything they could possibly do bars, creamy avocado bites, coconut about her liver. But she was not ladoos and water melon popsicles that satisfied with their answers and are a big hit even among children. The approached a homeopath , who website also features interactive warned her that her liver was still very quizzes weak.
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HEALTH MONITOR
Recipe Tomato Cups with Avocado Filling Rupinder Kaur
Raw food can be simple - from a mono meal of chopped fruits to a salad that has a combination of fruits and vegetables. All it takes is ten minutes to prepare these items. Her intention is to make raw vegan food appealing to the popular taste. “We are all social beings at the end of the day. We have to interact with other people and cannot afford to stand off from the crowd.”
These bright red tomato cups filled with avocado, green onion and lemon juice is a beautiful way to have your mid day snack. It is so eye catchy and delicious that they finish in seconds when served. Ingredients 4 small tomatoes, halved and cored 1 small avocado, mashed coarsely 4 teaspoon lemon juice 1 green onion, finely chopped Method Mix avocado, green onion and lemon juice and fill up the tomato halves with it and serve immediately.
The idea is to replicate the look and taste of the popular dishes in the raw vegan style. For instance, her vegan brownies, made out of blending dates, walnuts and chocolate powder in a mixer, are a big hit. “Food is basically science. If you are creative, you can have fun with it, and balance taste with nutrition. How you make it is more important. You have to cook with love.” Pizzas, burgers, cakes…name it. She will instantly recreate the vegan versions of these dishes. Her vegan pastas are made out of zucchini ribbons and sauces out of avocados,
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HEALTH MONITOR in the place of mayonnaise. Her recipes have even won over her son’s teachers. “We celebrated his birthday with a raw cake made of avocado cream.” For beginners, who are still hesitant to switch to a raw vegan diet, she says: “Start gorging on fruits. Eat as much as you like, until you are full. While you are off to work, put an apple into your bag. You can make delicious dishes using fresh fruits and vegetables. Raw food can be simple-from a mono meal of chopped fruits to a salad that has a combination of fruits and vegetables. All it takes is ten minutes to prepare these items. These are simple recipes, ideal for professionals, who are in a hurry.” Rupinder wants to Indianise the raw vegan recipes, using home-grown ingredients such as parijatflowers, coconuts, figs and cardamom. “Local, fresh, organic and seasonal produce is always the best. Once I started playing around with raw vegan recipes, I came to know of so many new indigenous fruits and vegetables. We are rich in nutritious food. Our Indian diet is healthy and nutritious. We should be promoting our food to the West. Instead of running behind the packaged fruit juices, why don’t we just cut a lemon, squeeze it into water and have the drink fresh and nutritious?”
Why is eating garlic on an empty stomach good? 1. Eating raw garlic on an empty stomach helps relieve the symptoms of hypertension. 2. It also prevents heart problems and aids in proper functioning of the liver and bladder. 3. Garlic is effective for stomach problems, like diarrhea and it also stimulates digestion and appetite. 4. It helps control stress, which prevents stomach acid that is usually produced when you get nervous. 5. It can also prevent and cure tuberculosis, pneumonia, catarrhs, bronchitis, chronicbronchial catarrhs, lung congestion, asthma, and cough.
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POLICY WATCH
Education Sector in GATS
How to address our concerns? D. Dhanuraj & Pooja Sundaresh
If the GATS’ is accepted, it will lead to the WTO dictating the rules and regulations governing the sector.
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he recently concluded tenth World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Nairobi saw the conversation surrounding the introduction of the WTO-GATS (General Agreement on Trade and Services) in the education sector regaining the attention of policy makers. The GATS is a treaty that entered into force during the Uruguay Round negotiations in January 1995. The treaty lays down the multilateral rules that will
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govern the service sector, except those taken care of entirely by the Government; the same way the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) oversees merchandise trade. Rules outlined in the GATS apply to various members of the WTO, with varying degrees of compliance. In 1996, it was proposed that education be brought under the ambit of GATS. Thus, education is one of the 12 services included in the list of activities binding member countries, thereby allowing unrestricted market access. From day one, India has maintained that it will only consider
higher education under GATS, and has stayed away from making any commitments under the WTO-GATS with respect to the remaining subsectors. India’s education sector is classified into five subsectors: primary education, secondary education, higher education, adult education (technical and/or professional or vocational education), and ‘other education’, which is related to courses fulfilled via correspondence and diploma courses. Such openness on its part has been triggered by countries such as Australia, UK, US, Brazil, Japan, New Zealand, Norway evincing an interest in the burgeoning Indian education market.
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POLICY WATCH Following the Nairobi conference, the debate: should India, or shouldn’t India sign the WTO-GATS, has once again gained traction. Although clarification on India’s stand is awaited, the meeting has also thrown open discussion on another related, and often discussed, subject: the state of the Indian Higher education system. One of the issues within this is the movement of Indian students abroad to acquire higher education. Reports claim that more than two lakh Indian students are going abroad to pursue higher studies. To neutralize this trend, the Government of India is actively pursuing the policy of inviting foreign universities to set up campuses in India. A major worry that stems from this step, a fear echoed by those against the GATS, is the liberalization of the education sector that would take place from seeking out this goal. If the GATS’ is accepted, it will lead to the WTO dictating the rules and regulations governing the sector. And this, in turn, would threaten the sovereignty of the country – in terms of being able to autonomously shape its own education policy. If one takes a closer look at this intention/step, the
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The WTO-GATS will usurp the opportunities of the poor, like in the case of food security. This has been a popular refrain in the context of liberalizing the education sector as well. entry of foreign universities and the automatic approval of 100 per cent FDI in the sector are at present hindered by the Parliament. Instead of the acceptance of the WTO-GATS, which will going forward compel the Government to open up this sector; the Government should instead take suomoto cognizance with respect to this matter. If done, this could be used as a bargain point during GATS negotiations, and it will also prevent States from losing the right to legislate on matters in this sector. Another argument is that the WTO-GATS will usurp the opportunities of the poor, like in the case of food security. This has been a popular refrain in the
context of liberalizing the education sector as well. One of the paramount worries is that with the advent of foreign and private players in the education sector the costs of higher education would shoot up, making it beyond the reach of the poor and needy. There are several ways to counteract this. Banks should be in a position to give loans to students to pursue higher education within the country. As a checks-and-balance mechanism, banks should come up with an index like Cibil’s credit worthiness, which will be assessed prior to giving out such loans. This ‘score’ will take into account and evaluate not only the performance of the student but that of the educational institution he/ she comes from as well. And will bestow greater transparency and accountability in the system. If the student knows he needs a high score to secure a loan, he/she would demand it of their institutions to instill the needed skill sets to achieve such results. It would promote a virtuous cycle where students would make sure
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POLICY WATCH their institutions are accountable, institutions will make sure they are up to par, and banks would know that their loan is a sound investment. The second mechanism is to institute vouchers handed out by the government: a student could encash that voucher in an institution of their choice. This would mean that ‘choice’ would ultimately rest with the students, and educational institutions, owing to this, would be forced to keep up their standards to attract them. As a result of such moves, a middle layer of cumbersome regulatory authorities would be rendered redundant. For educational institutions, not only would this mean freedom from the archaic and rigid framework set by a multiplicity of bodies such as the UGCs and AICTES, it would also mean they can, by their own initiative, institute programmes and courses in keeping with market requirements, without the hassle of approvals and sanctions. Thereby, help in attracting students. It’s important to point out, that this is by no means the first time a suggestion like this is being made. In the past, the World Bank and the Yashpal committee report on education reforms have suggested the creation of an independent regulatory authority to replace the multiple agencies ruling the sector. In doing this, not only will the Government prevent the oversight that comes
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A robust institutional mechanism implemented at the Government’s end in the education sector will defend the sector from falling prey to the multilateral trade agreements if any.
with signing an agreement like the GATS but it would also mean that the points in GATS’ negotiations could be reinterpreted without losing the intended benefits of multilateral deals. Such a robust institutional mechanism implemented at the Government’s end in the education sector will defend the sector from falling prey to the multilateral trade agreements if any. Whether India commits to the GATS in Education, or not, the Indian higher education system demands quality and competition that would improve the quantity and quality of institutions, costs, infrastructure and finances, and this could be achieved through liberalization – better done autonomously than through the GATS.
D. Dhanuraj is chairman to Centre for Public Policy Research and Pooja Sundaresh is Managing Associate to CPPR- Centre for Comparative Studies.
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INFOTECH
Amazon, Walmart to invest Rs 2,000 cr. in India
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wo of the world's largest retailers, Walmart Stores Inc and Amazon, will invest more than Rs 2,000 crore to build their networks and gain a share of the Indian retail market that's expected to cross $1 trillion by 2020. While the US giants are dominant rivals on their home turf, they don't compete head to head in India and are focusing on building scale through deep discounting. India's rules on overseas investment in retail mean that they address what are ostensibly different areas of the market. Amazon India functions as an online platform that puts buyers and sellers together. Walmart's stores in India cater to the wholesale trade, with smaller retailers being its customers. Amazon will inject Rs 1,696 crore through a rights issue into Amazon Seller Services, making it the biggest infusion of capital since entering the country three years ago. The board resolution to this effect was filed with the Registrar of Companies . The investment takes Amazon's total investment in Amazon Seller Services in the past year to aboutRs 4,800 crore. Walmart Stores will invest Rs 360 crore, It plans to open nearly 50 doors in India at a time when it plans to close nearly 270 stores globally. "India is one of the last few highgrowth markets," said Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO, Retailers Association of India (RAI). "Modern retail remains untapped with just a 10 per cent share. Online companies see the potential of reaching more than 400 cities with a click. All the indicators from a political standpoint
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also show that India is reaching a stage of high-level liberation even at state level." RAI expects the total market size to exceed $1 trillion in four years from $600 billion now. India's ecommerce market is expected to grow to $103 billion by FY20 from $26 billion, according to Goldman Sachs. Amazon expects India to overtake Japan, Germany and the UK to become its largest overseas market, besides becoming the quickest to reach $10 billion in gross merchandise value in the company's history.
Paytm made operational profit
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aytm's payments business has recorded profits on an operational basis, founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma said. Sharma said the Noida-based company became ebitda-positive at the end of 2015, but didn't give details. Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization), also called operating income, is a measure of the profitability of a company's core business. Paytm closed 2015 with an annual gross merchandise value, or GMV, of $3 billion, with more than 60% of it coming from the payments vertical even as its commerce business continues to lose money just like other ecommerce players. GMV is the value of goods sold on a platform. Paytm's payments business facilitates transactions like mobile recharges across various utilities.
Panasonic launches Eluga Turbo octa-core at Rs 10,999 Panasonic has expanded its smartphone product portfolio with the launch of Eluga Turbo. This new 4G smartphone from Panasonic is priced at Rs 10,999 and it will be exclusively available on Snapdeal via flash sale model in Blue colour option. Panasonic Eluga Turbo features a 5inch HD display with 1280x710 pixels resolution protected with a coating of Asahi Dragontrail glass on top. The device comes with dual SIM functionality and runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop operating system.
further using a microSD card. It also comes equipped with a 13MP rear camera with LED flash and a 5MP front camera for clicking selfies. On the connectivity front, the smartphone offers 4G, LTE, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and houses a 2,350 mAh battery.
Powering the handset is a 1.5GHz octa-core processor paired with 3GB of RAM. Its onboard storage stands at 32GB, which can be expanded
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INFOTECH
Real friends are rare in Facebook: Study
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ost of your Facebook friends don't care about you and probably wouldn't even sympathise with your problems, according to a new study. Many people have hundreds of Facebook friends. But people can only really depend on four of them, on average, according to new research. Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford University, undertook a study to find out the
connection between whether people have lots of Facebook friends and real friends. He found that there was very little correlation between having friends on social networks and actually being able to depend on them, or even talking to them regularly. The average person studied had around 150 Facebook friends. But only about 14 of them would express sympathy in the event of anything going wrong. The average person said that only about 27 per
Google introduces colourful weather cards
cent of their Facebook friends were genuine. Those numbers are mostly similar to how friendships work in real life, the research said. But the huge number of supposed friends on a friend list means that people can be tricked into thinking that they might have more close friends.
n-gage messaging app launched
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nstant messaging app n-gage launched its service in India to allow users to share content with competing platforms like WhatsApp and Viber, a move aimed at tapping into the booming mobile Internet user base in India. "Developing the app has been a two year journey. The platform ensures security of users through the various features and at the same time, availability of the desktop version ensures that those without smartphones can
T
he search engine giant Google weather alerts, sunrise, sunset and has officially started rolling out many others. The cards will also new weather highlight the weather cards which offer conditions of today vibrant and detailed along with the tomorrow information of the and next ten days in the weather conditions. three tabs. The user will Earlier this month, the also be able to save their company was testing favourite locations by the colourful weather tapping on the weather cards in the Google Now result and searching for a and search. However, new location and the company has not selecting 'Add'. Users yet divulged details as will also be able to see to when these card will the results of the be rolled out to all the selected locations in the users. drop down search menu. The new colourful cards will incorporate new information like hourly sky conditions, chances of rain, detailed weather forecast, UV index,
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The background image will also change based on the weather conditions and features like fog will have a cartoonish flair to it.
use the platform," n-gage founder and CEO Ajit Patel said. Similar to rival messaging apps like WhatsApp and Viber, n-gage's platform allows users to send and receive messages, pictures and videos. In addition, it allows users to send encrypted messages to others (password protected or timed), delete messages after they are sent as well as disable others from taking screenshots of conversations.
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ASPECTS
Death extols life: the story of Naciketas Dr. Augustine Thottakara
When one’s time of earthly life is to end according to the results of his/her past karmas, Yama catches him/her with his rope, and carries away to the other world. He is also called ‘Dharma-raja’, the lord of righteousness.
Y
ama is the lord of death and the King of the Kingdom of the dead. When the time is up, he snatches away humans and reward or punish them according to their karma. His vehicle is buffalo and his weapon is rope. When one’s time of earthly life is to end according to the results of his/her past karmas, Yama catches him/ her with his rope, and carries away to the other world. He is also called ‘Dharma-raja’, the lord of righteousness. Yama is the Guru in this story; and Naciketas is the disciple. The lesson he learns from the lord of death is about life and immortality. Naciketas: Let me narrate an Upanishadic story from Katha Upanishad. An eminent householder called Usan Vajasravas performed a great sacrifice called Visvajit, at the end of which he has to give away all his wealth (sarva-vedasam) as gifts, as daksina, to the officiating priests. He
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had a son called Naciketas, an upright, conscientious and zealous young man, who was assiduous in his adherence to Vedic dharma, who was meticulous in the observance of religious duties and spiritual exercises, and was a young man endowed with strong faith in God and in the sacred scriptures. If the daksinas are cows, the yajamana, the sacrificer, has to give away the best, that is, unblemished and flawless cows. But his father gave as daksina old and useless cows, as the Upanishad says, cows who have ‘drunk their share of water, eaten their share of grass, given their share of milk and whose senses have become dull and blunted’, (pitodaka, jagdhatrna dugdhadoha nirindriyah), that means, cows, which may not live long. He culled out all the old and useless cows from his huge stall, and gave them away to the revered Brahmins, who have assisted him at his sacrifice as
officiating priests. This act is illegal, prohibited and sinful. According to the religious laws, the perpetrator of such a sin would go to the hell called ‘ananda’. Naciketas, the son, was pained by this wrongdoing. The Upanishad says that sraddha entered into him, and possessed him (sraddha avivesa); he was permeated and overpowered by great faith, zeal and ardour. Sraddha: Sradhda is more than faith; it is a combination of faith, sincerity of purpose, loyalty, reverence and religious fervour. It is used also for belief in divine revelation; it is used also for the composure, concentration and alertness of mind. Commenting on the sraddha of Naciketas, Sankaracarya, and also other commentators, say that sraddha is astikya-buddhih, that is, faith and mindfulness in the existence of
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ASPECTS ultimate Reality, and faith in the teachings of the sacred scriptures. Sraddha is an important value, virtue and spiritual principle in all spiritual traditions and religious movements of India. Journey to the Kingdom of Death (Yama-loka): Possessed by such sraddha, Naciketas approached his father and, instead of saying, ‘father you are doing a wrong thing’, he asked his father, ‘to whom do you give me away as a daksina?’. He asked this question three times. His father got angry, and instead of saying, ‘go away, you have no business here’, he said, ‘I shall give you to death (Yama)’ (mrtyave tva dadami). Naciketas did not fully understand the words of his father, still, in order that his father’s words should not go in vain, he took it seriously, and travelled to the underworld, to the abode of Yama. Yama was not at home. Naciketas waited for him at his door three days and three nights without food, drink and sleep. Great lustre and splendour emanated from him and the attendants of Yama were afraid to approach this fire-like personality, and ask him who he was and what he wanted. They knew that a house where a Brahamana remains without food will perish.
The Upanishads very powerfully recommend the knowledge and practice of sraddha as a very important means to come this saving knowledge and enlightenment, and to progress in the spiritual pilgrimage. explained to Naciketas how the sacrificial altar for this sacrifice is to be constructed; what kind of bricks he should use to make the altar; how the sacrificial fire is to be kindled, etc. Then Yama said to Naciketas: “I give you now one more boon: henceforward this fire sacrifice shall be named after you. Please accept also this garland of various colours”. Everything went fine till now; the problem started with the request of the third boon.
As the third boon Naciketas asked: “When man dies there is this doubt: some say, ‘he exists’, some others say, ‘he does not exist’. Being instructed by you, I would like to know the truth. This is As the second boon Naciketas asked my third about the secret of a particular fire boon”. Yama sacrifice. By performing this sacrifice, did not want the seekers of the happiness in to answer heaven, will also attain immortality. this question. Naciketas wanted to know how to offer He said that this fire sacrifice. Yama explained this even the gods sacrifice to him; not only that, he wanted to Yama-Naciketas Dialogue: When Yama came home, he hurried to Naciketan and greeted him and said: “O Brahmana, you dwelt in my house three nights without food. Choose therefore three boons”. Naciketas asked the first boon in favour his father: ‘Let my father be cheerful; let him be free from the anxiety caused by my absence; let him sleep peacefully in the night; may he welcome me back home when I am released from this world of death’. Yama cheerfully granted this boon.
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know the secret of immortality; but it has not been divulged to them; it is a very subtle and incomprehensible theme. Yama said to Naciketas that he should select some other boons. But Naciketas was insistent. Yama offered him sons and grandsons who will live hundred and more years; he promised him cattle, elephants, horses, gold, vast territory of land, beautiful girls, etc. But Naciketas did not budge; he said: “Tell me, O Death, about the supreme Life after death … Naciketas does not choose any other boon other than that incomprehensible one”. Yama, the Preceptor: Kathopanishad chapter II to VI comprise the answer of Yama to the question of Naciketas. The last verse is: “Naciketas, having been instructed by Death in this knowledge and in the whole process of Yoga, became free from all impurities and death, attained Brahman; and so will attain any other too, who knows thus the inner Self”. The answer of Yama contains all the important tenets of Vedanta and practical suggestions for attaining immortality. Bringing in all the elements of his teachings is beyond the scope of this short essay. Some important passages will be quoted here and I will try to interpret them. Yama begins his deliberations saying that two paths are opened to the seekers, the path of the good and the path of the pleasant. “Both the good and the pleasant approach man; the wise man discriminates the two, and having examined them well, he prefers the good to the pleasant; but the fool chooses the pleasant because of his avarice and attachment”. The path of the
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ASPECTS good, obviously is the way that leads to liberation through discriminative knowledge and consequent actions. The Upanishad also alludes that Yama is a good teacher and Naciketas is a worthy student.
it is static but is all-pervading; it is permanent in impermanent bodies; it is not obtained by mere study of Vedas, nor by arguments; it is attained by him to whom it reveals itself.
The third chapter begins with a beautiful symbolic description of a This Atman, if taught by an inferior human person by Yama in the person, can never be comprehended paradigm of a chariot: “Know that the completely, even though he has soul is the traveller in the chariot, the thought about it intensely. Unless it is body is the chariot, the intellect is the taught by a good teacher, there is no charioteer, the mind is the reins, the other way to obtain it. It is subtler than sense organs are the horses, and the the subtlest and is unarguable. This roads are sense-objects. The wise men knowledge, which you have obtained, call him the enjoyer, when he is united is not attained by mere with the body, the senses and the argumentations; it becomes easy of mind”. Yama goes on to say about the comprehension, indeed, my Dear, when need of controlling the body, senses, taught by a teacher. You are a student mind and intellect. The subtlety of the of true resolve. May we get more faculties of a person in an ascending students like you!. scale is explained in III.10-11: senses Yama then gives a description of the are superior to objects, mind is inner Self, which is the ultimate Being: superior to senses, intellect is superior the ancient effulgent one, subtle, to mind, self is superior to intellect; the immanent, and seated in the heart; all unmanifested ego is superior to the Vedas proclaim it as the goal. intellect; and the Purusa is superior to unmanifested ego; nothing is superior Then the mystic and sacred syllable to Purusa – that is the end, and the OM is explained. The OM is the goal. supreme Self; this sacred sound is supreme Brahman; this Om is also the Yama (the Upanishad) also challenges support for spiritual life. In order to Naciketas (reader): “Arise, awake, have attain this supreme Self, which is recourse to a teacher and realize that expressed as OM, the seekers needs to Atman. Your path is like the edge of a lead a life of brahmacarya, practice sharp razor, difficult to cross and hard penance, and study the Vedas. Nature to tread, so say the wise men”. of the Self is further explained: Self is Verses IV.12-13 speak about Atman as not born, nor does it die; it is smaller having the size of a thumb, because than the smallest; it is bigger than the Atman is to be meditated upon as the biggest; it dwells in the inner self of light that shines in size of a thumb in beings; it does not move but is the cavity of the heart, ‘in the lotus of everywhere; it is bodiless in the heart’. Body is the city of God the body; (brahma-pura), heart is the palace, the
cavity of the heart in size of a thumb is the chamber of Atman, there in the red lotus flower (daharam pundarikam) the Atman dwells as the inner controller (antaryamin). From chapters V and VI some important verses are quoted here. There is a beautiful description of the Atman/Brahman and its greatness at the end of chapter five. As the sun, which is the eye of the world, is not contaminated by the external impurities, so, being beyond the world, this one Atman that resides in all beings is never touched by the miseries of this world. That one supreme Ruler, the Soul of all beings, who makes his one form manifold, - the wise men who perceive him as existing in their own self, to them belongs eternal happiness and to none else. He is the eternal among the eternals, the intelligence in the intelligent beings, who, though one, fulfils the desires of many, - those wise men perceive him as existing within their own self, to them belongs the eternal peace, and to none else. The sages perceive that indescribable supreme joy as ‘this is that’. How shall I know that? Does it shine by its own light, or does it shine with the light of another? The sun does not shine there, nor the moon and the stars, nor these lightenings, and much less this ordinary fire. When that shines, everything shines after that. By its light all this is lighted. Chapter five begins with the famous sentence about Brahman and its creative activity. “This is
“When all the desires that dwell in the heart are destroyed, then the mortal becomes immortal, and then he attains Brahman even here. When all the knots of the heart are rent asunder, the mortal becomes immortal, - so far is the instructions of all Vedanta”. 48
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ASPECTS the ancient Asvattha tree. Its roots are above and branches grow downwards. That is verily pure, that is Brahman, and that is immortal. In it rest all the worlds, and none can transcend it. Verily this is that”. “For fear of Him the fire burns; for fear of him the sun shines; for fear of him do Indra, Vayu and death, the fifth, do their respective duties”. “This Atman/Brahman can never be reached by speech, or by eyes, or even by mind. How can it be realized otherwise than those who say that it exists?”. Finally, the ultimate aim of all these deliberations is explained: “When all the desires that dwell in the heart are destroyed, then the mortal becomes immortal, and then he attains Brahman even here. When all the knots of the heart are rent asunder, the mortal becomes immortal, - so far is the instructions of all Vedanta”.
Intense desire to know God is the most important characteristic of Upanishadic man. This is the starting point of spiritual journey. Naciketas was such a brahmajijnasu.
courage. When his father consciously did something wrong, he did not hesitate to point out it to his father; when his father joKingly said that he should go to hell, he did not hesitate to go to the world of death; as Yama was absent in his abode, Naciketas showed the courage to stand at his Observations door for three days and three nights without food, drink and sleep; when Personality of Naciketas: Naciketas Yama was unwilling to answer his third was a boy, or young man, who was upright, righteous, conscientious, and question and offered him material one who stood for dharma. He was also goods in abundance, he was adamant and persevering in eliciting an a man of firm resolve adequate answer to his question from and Yama; Yama was cornered and was compelled to answer.
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desires to know Brahman. Desire to know Brahman prompts the seeker to employ proper means, sadhanas, for knowledge; the knowledge removes ignorance. Brhadaranyaka Up. IV.4.22 declares: "The learned men (Brahmanas) desire to know him by study of Vedas, by sacrifice, by almsgiving, by austerity and by fasting (anasakena)”. Intense desire to know God is the most important characteristic of Upanishadic man. This is the starting point of spiritual journey. Naciketas was such a brahmajijnasu. The third boon he asked is not only a query about the life after death; it is basically an inquiry into the nature of immortality and about the giver of eternal life.
Life-Death Synergy: As mentioned above, the apparent anomaly here is that Yama, the personification of death and the lord of the dead, exhorts one, who is already in his power, about life, about immortality, and about the ways and means to defeat death and gain life. He gives practical suggestions as to how the seeker should live in order to overcome the death-domain. Death says that it is not an enemy of life. In the spiritual-philosophical view death is the door to life; death opens up the life eternal. In the physical death only the matter-component of the human person is destroyed. This destruction of matter releases the spirit to its full Naciketas was a brahmajijnasu, one who intensely life.
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INNO VATIONS INNOV
When apps talk behind your back
A
lmost 9 percent of popular apps downloaded from Google Play interact with websites that could compromise users' security and privacy, according to a study by researchers at the University of California, Riverside. The team is now developing a tool that allows users to evaluate the riskiness of individual apps before downloading them. As one of the first studies to analyze behind-the-scenes behaviors of good applications, the researchers conducted a large-scale analysis of URLs embedded in 13,500 free android apps downloaded from Google Play. The apps tested were created by reputable developers and downloaded by many people, among them popular social media, shopping, news and entertainment apps. Although apps connect to a complicated network of websites, both to function and generate advertising revenues, Michalis Faloutsos, a computer science professor in UCR's Bourns College of Engineering, said most users don't know their private information could compromised. "We focused on a relatively neglected aspect of security research, which is the potential for good apps to leak personal information through the sites they interact with. A lot of people believe that if an app is popular or available on one of the big app stores then it must be safe, and we suspected that wasn't the case," Faloutsos said. By developing and using a tool called AURA (Android URL Risk Assessor), the team identified more than 250,000 URLs accessed by the 13,500 apps, which they cross-referenced for trustworthiness using VirusTotal, a database of malicious URLs, and Web of Trust (WOT), a popular website rating system.
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Stem cells regulate their own proliferation
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study by researchers at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III (CNIC) has identified a new mechanism through which hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) control both their own proliferation and the characteristics of the niche that houses them. This control is exercised by the protein E-Selectin Ligand-1 (ESL-1). The research team, led by Drs. AndrĂŠs Hidalgo and Magdalena Leiva, detected high expression of ESL-1 in HSCs and also found that it controls their production of the cytokine protein TGF-?. This is important because TGF-? has antiproliferative properties and is essential for impeding the loss of HSCs in some diseases, such as some types of anemia.
Zuckerberg or Buffett
The team also showed that cells lacking ESL-1 are resistant to a range of pproximately half of the companies listed with Standard & Poor have cytotoxic and chemotherapeutic adopted policies mandating retirement based on age. A new study agents. These from the University of Missouri has found that although these results suggest mandatory retirement polices represent an effective way to address that ESL-1 is a underperforming CEOs, accumulated job experience improves performance potential target and counters age-related declines. for therapies aimed at "On the one hand, some studies have shown cognitive function declines improving bone with age, and we found that mandatory retirement policies can act as a mechanism to limit CEOs who serve beyond their effectiveness," said Adam marrow Yore, an assistant professor of finance at the Trulaske College of Business at regeneration after MU. "On the other hand, our study showed that experience is a significant positive factor of performance which could counter assumptions about age- chemotherapy or for expanding related performance."Forty-seven percent of Standard & Poor's corporate the HSC firms have adopted policies mandating retirement based on age. These population in policies allow firms to force individuals over the age of 65 to retire. preparation for The policies also are aimed at preventing CEOs from having undue influence donation. The over boards of directors simultaneously protecting shareholders from aged study is CEOs who may no longer be able to maximize shareholder wealth. Such published in policies bypass age discrimination laws due to exceptions for "bona fide Nature executives" and "high-policymaking employees" in equal employee Communications. opportunity laws.
Is youth or experience more valuable in the boardroom?
A
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INNO VATIONS INNOV
New species of bird discovered in India and China
A
new species of bird has been discovered in northeastern India and adjacent parts of China by a team of scientists from Sweden, China, the U.S., India and Russia. The bird, described in the journal Avian Research, has been named Himalayan forest thrush Zoothera salimalii. The scientific name honors the great Indian ornithologist Sรกlim Ali, in recognition of his contributions to the development of Indian ornithology and nature conservation. The discovery process for the Himalayan forest thrush began in 2009 when it was realized that what was considered a single species, the plain-backed thrush Zoothera mollissima, was in fact two different species in northeastern India, said Pamela Rasmussen, of Michigan State University's Department of Integrative Biology and the MSU Museum, and coordinator of MSU's global bird sounds website AVoCet. Rasmussen was part of the team, which was led by Per Alstrรถm of Uppsala University (Sweden). What first caught scientists' attention was the plain-backed thrush in the coniferous and mixed forest had a rather musical song, whereas individuals found in the same area on bare rocky ground above the treeline - had a much harsher, scratchier, unmusical song. "It was an exciting moment when the penny dropped, and we realized that the two different song types from plain-backed thrushes that we first heard in northeast India in 2009, and which were associated with different habitats at different elevations, were given by two different species," Alstrรถm said. Along with keen field observations, the scientists had to do
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a lot of sleuthing with museum specimens. Investigations involving collections in several countries revealed consistent differences in plumage and structure between birds that could be assigned to either of these two species. It was confirmed that the species breeding in the forests of the eastern Himalayas had no name.
Why your brain makes you slip up when anxious?
N
euroscientists at the University of Sussex's Sackler Centre and Brighton and Sussex Medical School have identified the brain network system that causes us to stumble and stall just when we least want to. Dr Michiko Yoshie and her colleagues Professor Hugo Critchley, Dr Neil Harrison, and Dr Yoko Nagai were able to pinpoint the brain area that causes the performance mishaps during an experiment using functional magnetic resonance neuroimaging (fMRI). Previous research has shown that people tend to exert more force when they know they are being watched. For example, pianists unconsciously press keys harder when they play in front of an audience compared to when playing alone. In the new study, published in Scientific Reports, participants' brain activity was monitored while carrying out a task that required them to exert a precise amount of force when gripping an object. During the experiment, they viewed video footage of two people whom they believed were evaluating their performance. They then repeated the task while viewing video footage of two people who appeared to be
evaluating the performance of someone else. Participants reported that they felt more anxious when they believed they were being observed. Under this condition, they gripped the object harder without realising it. Scan results showed that an area of the brain that helps us to control our fine sensorimotor functions - the inferior parietal cortex (IPC) - became deactivated when people felt they were being observed. In fact, this part of the brain works with another region - the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) - to form what neuroscientists refer to as the actionobservation network (AON). The AON is involved in "mentalisation" processes by which we infer what another person is thinking, based on his/her facial expressions and direction of gaze. The pSTS conveys this information to the IPC, which then generates appropriate motor actions. If we feel our observer wants us to do well, we will perform well. But if we pick up negative cues, our IPC is deactivated and our performance falls apart.
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BOOKSHELF
Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexievich (born 31 May 1948 in Stanislaviv ) is a Belarusian investigative journalist and non-fiction prose writer who writes in Russian. She was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. It honoured the 67-year-old "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time". She is the first writer from Belarus to receive the award. This year’s literature Nobel is the first to be awarded to a writer who works exclusively with living people. Her books deal with historical crises - the Second World War, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, and the collapse of the Soviet Union - through the voices of ordinary individuals.
Voices from Chernobyl W
e cannot refresh anything about Chernobyl, except our memories. On April 26, 1986, a botched technical experiment at the nuclear plant started a graphite fire that blew the roof off, releasing molten reactor core - 50 tons of radioactive fuel - into the night sky. The Soviet authorities concealed the disaster. Three days later, workers at a nuclear plant in Sweden were found to have radioactive particles on their clothing. Finding no leak at their plant, the Swedes traced the particles back to the Ukraine-Belarus border. Here, the contamination that was not carried on frisky winds around the world fell immediately on fields, forests and villages and will, allowing for two halflives of plutonium, leave the area radioactive for 48,200 years. "The radio wasn't saying anything, and the papers weren't either, but the bees knew. They didn't come out for two days, not a single one." The absence of information from above surprised few people interviewed by
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Svetlana Alexievich in this marvellous and tragic book. Though this was the era of Gorbachev - who comes out very badly here - people still looked for the truth in the behaviour of their Party bosses rather than the media; and the bosses were taking iodine tablets and, when they visited the site, making sure they walked only on the triple layer of fresh asphalt that had been laid for their visit.
villager from Bely Bereg who tells the author, "Home is where the heart is. When you're not there, even the sun's not the same."
Alexievich is a Belarussian journalist, and it was Belarus that received 70 per cent of the fallout of iodine, caesium, strontium and plutonium radionuclides. It lost 485 villages, and today one in every five Belarussians 2.1 million - still lives on contaminated Nobody knew what radiation was land. President Lukashenko's capable of: nuclear power was known government continues to refuse to as "the Peaceful Worker". Three days acknowledge Chernobyl's impact. passed before the sudden evacuation When the plant exploded and the wind of the nearest town, Pripyat, two nudged a radioactive cloud over the kilometres away. Children went to whole country, the director of Belarus's school, and finished their costumes for Institute for Nuclear Energy, Vasily the May Day parade. Today, Pripyat, Nesterenko, rushed to Party offices in like the rest of the human habitats Minsk, begging officials to initiate within a 30-kilometre radius, is home iodine distribution - the city had 700kg only to ghosts, security and scientific of iodine concentrate in store in case people. Except that it's not: "the zone" of a Cold War attack. He describes "a has its own category of inhabitants, conspiracy of ignorance and "self-settlers", refugees, thieves and obedience". Little has changed. Then, residents who have crept back, like secretaries were instructed to refuse Anna the bee-keeper and the old him admission. They let him in when
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BOOKSHELF
"These people had already seen what for everyone else is still unknown. I felt like I was recording the future."
he held his dosimeter to their thyroid glands and it chattered. He was sacked. Recently, in 1999, Nesterenko's colleague, the clinical scientist Prof Yuri Bandazhevsky, was arrested for publicising the effects of caesium-137, particularly on the human foetus. Prof Bandazhevsky is now dying in jail. (The writers' organisation English PEN has just obtained a copy of Prof Bandazhevsky's banned research, for which it is seeking a publisher.) Alexievich's book, which should be a melancholy experience, is both more and less than that. Her technique is a powerful mixture of eloquence and wordlessness, describing incompetence, heroism and grief: from the monologues of her interviewees she creates a history that the reader, at whatever distance from the events, can actually touch. Reading it, I realised for the first time that Chernobyl was Europe's tsunami: but we, humans, made this tsunami, and it has no end. In the mid-1990s, on a river cruise in Ukraine, I met a Chernobyl manager, one of the men who had sat in a helicopter for three days and nights directing the dumping of sand into the reactor's burning core. He had leukaemia and,
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surreal moments of greed and confusion. Radioactive tractors, motorbikes and fur coats smuggled from the zone have, it seems, been sold all over what was the Soviet Union. But possibly the strangest element of the disaster is the happiness it produces. Where man is no longer a predator, elk, wolves and boar return. A cameraman says, "A strange thing happened to me. I became closer to animals. And trees, and birds." The longing for better relations with nature runs through this extraordinary book. If you have any curiosity about the future, I absolutely urge you to read it. Alexievich's Chernobyl is a place of extremes and unknowns, a theatre for the consequences of technology. As she says in a postscript, "These people had already seen what for everyone else is still unknown. I felt like I was recording the future." I'm sure she is right.
as we slipped downstream, was drinking himself to death in a Conradian way. His children, and his children's children, will feel the accident's effects; by leakage into groundwater and from the fuel still left in Chernobyl's core, it could still get worse. And Chernobyl is not the only reactor on Earth. Yet it manages to be a place of ordinary life. As one member of the clean-up crew says, "The men drank vodka. They played cards, tried to get girls." The first lesson learned was that vodka offers some defence against radiation. It became precious currency, drunkenness essential. The book begins and ends with the testimony of two widows; one the young wife of a Pripyat firefighter who went at night to fight the blaze in his shirtsleeves, the other the wife of a "liquidator", one of the 600,000 men drafted in to bury the topsoil and shoot every animal in the zone. He is the last in his platoon to die. When he can no longer speak, she asks him, "Are you sorry now that you went there?" He shakes his head no and writes for her, "When I die, sell the car, and the spare tyre, and don't marry Tolik. "Tolik is his brother. She doesn't marry him. In between these desperate griefs are stories of cynicism and
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GUEST COLUMN
My classmate and me
K. L. Mohana Varma
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GUEST COLUMN
Campus friendships especially in boarding schools or hostels create a new type of family relation which moulds the character in generally much deeper way than what they were familiar with in their homes.
I
n his famous novel Five Point Someone, subsequently made into a blockbuster Bollywood movie 3 Idiots, Chetan Bhagat made the main character, a typical brilliant Indian youth undergoing studies in the prestigious IIT Ahmedabad, speak about himself. His parents sent him a dollar cheque as a Christmas gift as everybody else around them was doing in Europe where they were staying. He was not a Christian and he cared two hoots about X’mas, but loved the cheque and cashed it. He said, I don’t love my parents. I can understand them. But nothing more. I don’t know why. I mean, I have been in boarding school when I was six. Of course like every kid, I hated it and cried when they left me. But it was at boarding school that I got everything. I did well in studies, got noticed in sports, learnt how to have fun and live well and made my best friends. So somewhere down the line I don’t miss my parents anymore. Just kind of outgrew them. Sure, we meet at vacation time and they send letters, cash, and everything, but…I don’t miss them. I don’t think it is wrong. For me my friends are my family. Mom and Dad are nice, but I don’t love them. I can love only my friends. Campus friendships especially in boarding schools or hostels create a new type of family relation which
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moulds the character in generally much deeper way than what they were familiar with in their homes. Here you are independent, bound to take decisions on your own, no comfort zone of elders duty bound by tradition and natural instinct to advise or help you. You are with friends facing the same dilemma and the bond is formed not by fate but by your own choice. Bonney Ware is an Australian nurse, specialized in taking care of rich and famous dignitaries during their last days. She has written about the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. "When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently," she says, "common themes surfaced again and again." The important regrets of the dying she categorized as below. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. But the most common regret was this one. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends, my classmates, my campus friends. She wrote.
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GUEST COLUMN
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends, my classmates, my campus friends.
Often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old campus friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying. Now when scientific and technological inventions during the last few decades have brought communication and travel quicker and cheaper, a welcome trend has emerged and old students associations and alumni get together has become very common. Actually such meets and nostalgic inputs generally gave a fresh and youthful mindset to all.
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I had two very interesting experiences about 35 years back.
second look to him. Now this man stared at me and smiled.
First one. It was a Kochi Sunday. There was a betrothal ceremony of a close friend’s daughter. Only a few people were invited. My friend and I were anxiously waiting for the groom’s party to arrive. They were already late by more than an hour. It was nearing lunch time. The period was before the birth of mobiles. No contacts. We had no idea whether they had started from their village. Naturally, we were tense and even started doubting whether they have backed out. I was trying my best to contain my friend’s apprehensions when suddenly a beggar type old man clad in a dirty dhothi and torn shirt crossed the street and came up and stood before me. I had seen the fellow a few minutes back watching me and slowly walking. He was barefoot and I had given no
My God! Mohanan, how are you? I used to see your stories. My bloody fellow! I never thought you will become a writer. Then I saw a photo of you in a book and I was surprised. When did you start writing? I had no answer. Who was this old beggar? He appears to be at least 25 years elder to me. Why is he calling me by name and in friendly manner? I was really upset. But it did not last long. He was my classmate in the University Intermediate College and hostel mate in the University hostel in Trivandrum in 1951-53. He started telling a few interesting anecdotes from our college days and whereabouts and success stories of some of them. He did not discuss anything about him except
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GUEST COLUMN that he was quite happy. My friend was looking at me and my classmate with utter disbelief. I didn’t know what to do. On the one hand, I wanted to invite him for lunch, give him a set of good dress and talk to him and help him. On the other hand, I wanted to avoid him and completely ignore him and even try to believe that he was an imposter. I couldn’t do both, but fortunately, the betrothal party’s car came and I could get excused. My classmate left. I was upset and tried to find him out, but my innermost hope was that he should be away from my life permanently. I have not met him afterwards. The second experience was actually an off shoot of the first one. My uninvited guest classmate had mentioned about a very close classmate/hostel mate who retired from a very high position and well settled in a posh colony in Trivandrum. On my next visit there, I traced him. We met, had a wonderful dinner and hours of chatting reminiscences. His wife, they were alone now, their son and daughter well settled in US, joined us as a listener. His status and achievements and my fame had a common platform, a sort of success in life, as we calculate now. I mentioned about the incident
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of our classmate turned beggar casually, but I don’t know why, both of us avoided the subject. It was ruining our bohemia. But a curious thing happened. His wife went inside and brought a black and white photo, almost moth eaten, which
The world is a series of orbits, hierarchically stacked. To be successful, you must break out of your orbit and enter the one above. After a spin in the orbit, you must break.
leaders A K Gopalan and K C George and the other six standing behind. Communist party was banned in those times and many leaders used to hide in our hostel. Now when the ban was lifted, the leaders openly mingled with us and these two stalwarts posed with us for a photograph. Now we searched the faces of our friends in the picture. We could trace only two and one was our friend whom I mistook for a beggar. But the irony was he was sitting beside A K Gopalan, who later became the first Opposition leader of our Lok sabha and we were standing behind. Philosophy of life is simple. Based on a loose interpretation of karma, each individual is born into an orbit in which he will probably remain for the rest of his life. The world is a series of orbits, hierarchically stacked. To be successful, you must break out of your orbit and enter the one above. After a spin in the orbit, you must break. Kuchela did not break the orbit. But his classmate Lord Krishna could break it for him.
she said she had found in an old trunk which had travelled with them. We looked at it. It was an ordinary picture, a photo of 10 boys, four of them sitting at either side of the then top communist
But I couldn’t do it. I still feel a sort of irritation in my psyche.
The author is a Kochi-based novelist, short story writer and columnist.
57
CARS & BIKES
Mahindra KUV100 M
ahindra, India's leading automobile manufacturer, launched its compact SUV - KUV100. Mahindra drives into an all new segment with the young SUV, KUV100 and it is powered by all new mFALCON engine, marks Mahindra’s entry into petrol space.
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Prices start at Rs. 4.42 lakhs (exshowroom Pune for the K2 petrol variant). Speaking at the launch Dr. Pawan Goenka, Executive Director, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd said, “The launch of KUV100 is a defining moment in the automotive journey of Mahindra. KUV100 is our first foray into ground up petrol engine and with it we are defining a new SUV sub-segment and targeting a new
customer group. Yet another ‘Make in India’ product, the KUV100 aptly represents our ‘Rise’ philosophy in action, as our development team used alternative thinking and challenged the limits to deliver a vehicle that is poised to be nothing less than a game changer for us. We are entering a new orbit and hope to deliver yet another icon, yet another dream SUV”.
Pallikkutam | February 2016
CARS & BIKES
Features ♦ ♦
High-tech, all aluminium engine.
Dual Variable Valve Timing for better fuel efficiency & performance
♦
Excellent low-end torque for quick acceleration
♦ Displacement: 1198 cc ♦ Max. power: 61 kW (82 bhp) @ 5500 rpm
♦
Max. torque: 115Nm @ 3500~3600 rpm
♦
Turbocharged, Common Rail Direct Injection technology
♦
Low-end torque for quick acceleration
♦ ♦
Displacement: 1198 cc
Max. power: 57.4 kW (77bhp) @ 3750 rpm
♦
Max. torque: 190Nm @ 1750-2250 rpm
♦
Fuel efficiency: 25.32
km/l.
Highlights ♦ The KUV100 is set to appeal to the cool and trendy youth with its aggressive styling and dominant SUV stance, stylish premium interiors, ample space to accommodate 6 passengers comfortably, ABS and EBD standard across all variants and optional airbags available even for the base variant, peppy performance, high fuel efficiency making it India’s most fuel efficient diesel SUV with 25.32kmpl (ARAI certified) as well as accessible technologies like Daytime Running Lamps and Power/ECO Mode. ♦ Aggressive Design with Imposing SUV Stance: Tall and wide, with an aggressive front fascia and muscular body lines. Unique wraparound sunglass-like headlamps, trendy daytime running lamps, chrome-accented front and rear fog lamps, spider-design alloy wheels, stylish roof rails, sporty rear spoiler, and body side cladding add a whole new dimension to its exterior style. ♦
Stylish, Refined and Spacious Interiors: Premium dual-tone interiors with piano black inserts, 1st in class flexi seating to comfortably seat 6 passengers, sporty gearshift, mood lighting inside door handles, unique flat-folding rear seat and innovative under-floor and under-seat storage spaces catch immediate attention.
Pallikkutam | February 2016
59
EDU BIZ
Arch – The Way App to connect students, teachers and parents
S
ocial media and mobile applications has revolutionised our communication system. It is not the same way of communication, as we did some years ago. We are now connected with family, friends and clients through various tools of social media. Even teachers are using these platforms to connect with students and their parents. The education sector in India is no longer bound to just classrooms. Thanks to new start-ups and higher internet and smartphone penetration, the online learning space in India is growing manifold. Sensing the vast potential in the latter category, 24-year-old Rudresh
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Chowdhury and his friend Nikhil Bajoria launched Arch – The Way, a messaging app for teachers and students, in Kolkata.
Rudresh says, "We give huge importance to user privacy. Our USP is that teachers, students, and parents do not require to exchange any contact details to connect. This has been done Arch – The Way is a secure messaging for the safety and privacy of the users. app where teachers can connect with With the majority of users coming from students and their parents. The Pune, Bangalore, and Ahmedabad. On teacher can also broadcast messages an average, a teacher connects to 50 to and files to the entire class or receive 60 students via Arch The Way." feedback from the students and parents. Majority of the user base are school and college teachers and minority of Teachers have to sign up on the Arch them are external teachers who use the app or the website and create their app for coaching classes. According to classes. Each class is assigned a Rudresh, they have received positive unique class code. Students or parents feedback from the teachers so far like have to subscribe to this class code improvement in homework via the app to connect to the teacher. performance of students and positive
Pallikkutam | February 2016
EDU BIZ impact on the parents-teachers meeting owing to the constructive discussions between parents, students and teachers.
recommended Arch - The Way to the Principal of Victorious Kidss Educares (Pune). Moreover, in August 2015, AIIMS Patna invited Arch - The Way to demonstrate its usage to the teachers.
Both Rudresh and Nikhil were on the Rudresh says, the next job was to figure out the verge of becoming Chartered right way to bring maximum teachers onto Arch. Accountants, but quit before their We have visited many schools and colleges to final paper reach out to teachers. to pursue Finally, we their encountered a new entrepreneurial breed of teachers dream. The who were highly fact that motivated to leverage neither had technology in the a technical classroom. background Simultaneously, we posed a explored a couple of challenge offline measures like when they seminars. Arch the Way is India’s first had to Reaching a come up teacher-student-parent million users with the communication platform and Arch the Way is initial version of targeting five million their direct competitor is the app. users over the next 18 US based Remind. The duo months. The startup continued claims to leverage the to face their share of troubles even use of Content Delivery Networks (CDN) to after the launch of the app. During the ensure smooth exchange of study resources first month, a few technical hiccups shared by the students. led to many users discontinuing their According to Rudresh, all the services in the app use of the app. are available for free and as of now they are Rudresh recalls, “It was very funding the growth from their own savings. He demotivating to lose some of our very adds that they are in talks with some of the initial traction but it helped us get our investors and by the end of this February, the technology right.” During their market startup is planning to raise funds. research, the duo discovered a He says, “Currently we are not focussed on plethora of edtech tools, but none generating revenues but on market penetration that focused on teacher-studentand reaching a significant user base. We will start parent communication. This is when they came up with the idea for Arch – generating revenue by early 2017.” Rudresh claims that Arch - the Way is India’s first teacherthe Way. student-parent communication platform and their Later on, their friends Nikhil Bajoria, direct competitor is US based Remind. According Nitesh Agarwal, Abinash Biswal, and to IBEF report, India’s online education market Soumya Malani joined to take the size is expected to touch US$ 40 billion by 2017. startup to the next level. Soumya Gone are the days when students penned down holds Masters in Finance from the the assignments in the classroom and worried London School of Economics, and about being absent in school. With the messaging Nitesh is already an entrepreneur with app becoming a part and parcel of today’s a flourishing steel business. Abinash digitally competitive world, we hope to see few Biswal, an artist by profession, takes more similar apps entering into this space in the care of design. Currently, they are a next couple of years. Currently, online training in team of nine. Initially, Rudresh was India focuses equally on both school and collegefortunate enough to get his erstwhile based courses as well as mid-level professional school teacher as his first client. The courses. momentum kicked in when a parent
Pallikkutam | February 2016
61
SPORTS
After 22 years, Shivnarine Chanderpaul retires from international cricket
W
est Indies batsman Shivnarine Chanderpaul has officially retired from international cricket, seven months after selectors opted to discard the veteran and push for a youth-oriented policy.
made to the game globally and we wish increasingly brittle West Indies batting lineup after the retirement of Lara and him all the best,” WICB President many opposition teams targeted him as Dave Cameron said in a statement. the key wicket. While selectors continue to pursue their youth policy in a bid to rebuild the once powerful cricketing side, Chanderpaul was still playing domestic first class cricket earlier this week.
Chanderpaul, who was dumped before the home series against Australia last June, said at the time he felt he deserved the opportunity to play one final series despite a poor return in domestic cricket before the squad was selected. The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) thanked him for his contribution to their game. “The WICB acknowledges the invaluable contribution Shiv has
Virat Kohli to promote a luxury real estate brand The 41-year-old made his Test debut against England in 1994 and went on to amass 11,867 runs at an average of 51.37 in his 164 Tests for the Caribbean side. His total is the seventh highest of all time, and he finished behind Brian Lara’s 11,953 as the second most prolific West Indian batsman. He scored 30 Test centuries and 66 half centuries and had a high score of 203 not out. He also scored 8,778 runs in 268 oneday internationals at 41.60. Chanderpaul’s ungainly batting stance was at odds with cricket’s coaching manuals, but soft hands and a superb eye allowed him to flick, dab and poke the ball into gaps in the field and quietly accumulate runs. A low conversion rate of 50s to 100s early in his career was rectified after foot surgery removed some floating bone chips and allowed him to play without pain. Chanderpaul’s calm demeanour held together an
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I
ndia's Test captain Virat Kohli has been named as the brand ambassador of luxury real estate brand Nitesh Estates. On his association with the Bengaluru-based company, Kohli said: "The company in many aspects reflects the values I hold in high esteem. I respect the fact that as a first generation company it has made extraordinary progress in a very short span. "I am very impressed with their quality of developments across homes, hotels, office buildings and shopping malls." Speaking on behalf of Nitesh Estates, COO Ashwini Kumar: "We have set benchmarks and unbeatable records in real estate and are well known for our distinguished projects that involve the best of global architectural and design skills. India's cricket sensation Virat Kohli as our brand ambassador reflects our enthusiasm, passion and energy to stride ahead towards the future."
Pallikkutam | February 2016
SPORTS
IAAF scandal worse than FIFA crisis: Michael Johnson
T
he corruption scandal that has rocked athletics is worse than the one that has plunged soccer body FIFA into crisis because it punished clean athletes, four-times Olympic gold medallist Michael Johnson said on Tuesday. "With athletics, if you think about the victims, it is absolutely worse," the 400 metres world record holder told BBC radio. "The victims here are those (clean) athletes. They never had the opportunity to stand on the podium and they should have," added the American sprinter. An independent commission of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has stated in a damning report that "corruption was embedded" at the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). The report found that a clique run by former IAAF president Lamine Diack covered up organised doping and blackmailed athletes while senior officials looked the other way. Diack is under formal investigation in France on suspicion of corruption and money-laundering linked to the concealment of positive drug tests in concert with Russian officials. FIFA is facing the worst crisis in its history as a total of 41 individuals and entities have been charged with corruption-related offences in the United States. FIFA also faces a parallel Swiss probe.
Pallikkutam | February 2016
India has more 'passionate' football fans than cricket: Bhutia
F
or Indian football legend Bhaichung Bhutia, watching IPL finals in the stadium a few years ago was "quite a boring thing" and he feels the country has more "passionate" football fans than cricket aficionados. "I went to watch the IPL final two or three years ago. The good thing about domestic football fans is that they are very passionate. Probably for a footballer it was quite a boring thing." "Sometimes a big cheer went off across the audience. I wondered what had happened and it turned out that the giant screen had shown Shah Rukh Khan," he said, sending the jampacked audience at the Jaipur Literature Festival into peals of laughter. He was participating in a session "India at Play" that also featured champion leg spinner Anil Kumble. "The home team had lost the match, but there was no disappointment among the fans as they started to go home. If that happens in a football match between Mohun Bagan and East Bengal, they will stop the traffic and block the roads," he added.
me after I got home was to apply for a government job," Bhutia said. Kumble also narrated how his father would ask him the 'same three questions' at the end of every match. "He would ask me only three questions. What happened in the match, how did you do, and when is the next match," Kumble said. "I had to literally pull him to watch me play in the Karnataka vs Tamil Nadu Ranji Trophy match and that was my first live match that he came and watched," he added. Kumble said his greatest achievement was capturing 10 wickets in an innings, a feat which he "never tires of talking about". "I never tire of talking about it because it has only happened twice. But cricket is like life, the very next match I got one wicket and struggled to get Shoaib Akhtar out." Bhutia meanwhile added his personal milestone was competing in more than a hundred games as well as captaining the national team.
Bhutia cited the example of the ISL final to drive home his point how passionate fans can be when it came to the beautiful game of football. In a session filled with humorous quips, Kumble and Bhaichung also discussed how their parents reacted to their sporting achievements. "India had qualified for the Asia Cup finals after 28 years. The first thing my dad told
63
RAINBOW
Common errors in English
64
Incorrect
:
I have a good news for you.
Correct
:
I have good news for you
Incorrect
:
The men are national beings.
Correct
:
Men are national beings.
Incorrect
:
The boys leave the school at four o'clock.
Correct
:
The boys leave school at four o'clock.
Incorrect
:
He sent a word that he would come soon.
Correct
:
He sent word that he would come soon.
Incorrect
:
I have read the Shakespeare's Macbeth.
Correct
:
I have read Shakespeare's Macbeth
Incorrect
:
You cannot set a foot in this house.
Correct
:
You cannot set foot in this house.
Incorrect
:
The envy is an evil passion.
Correct
:
Envy is an evil passion.
Incorrect
:
He has not yet gone to the bed.
Correct
:
He has not yet gone to bed.
Incorrect
:
He is Daniel in judgment.
Correct :
:
He is a Daniel in judgment.
Incorrect
:
He made very wise decision.
Correct
:
He made a very wise decision.
Incorrect
:
Fire broke out in our village.
Correct
:
A fire broke out in our village.
Incorrect
:
Andamans are a group of islands.
Correct
:
The Andamans are a group of islands.
Pallikkutam | February 2016
RAINBOW
Sudoku 13
Sudoku 12 Answer
Difficulty Level:
Word Search 05 Word Search 04 Answer
ACADEMIA ANDRAGOGY AUTODIDACTICISM BILITERACY BRAINSTORMING COEDUCATION COMMONSENSE CURRICULUM Pallikkutam | February 2016
DUNCE DYSLEXIA EXTRACURRICULAR HABITUATION HEUTAGOGY PEDAGOGY POLYMATH 65
REFLECTIONS
Throbs of love To give meaning to everything, we need a heart which throbs with love. Jose Panthaplamthottiyil
F
ive-year-old Mini was reading a children’s magazine filled with cartoons when she heard someone ringing the doorbell. She dashed to the front door and opened it. A blind woman was standing there with a little boy who was holding her hand. She looked at them for a moment with her wide-opened eyes. “Mummy,” she called her mom aloud and said, “a blind woman is here asking for alms.”
“Mummy, daddy is deaf now. He cannot hear. That means ear is also an important organ in our body.” Mini continued to talk about the importance of eyes and ears all day long. How can we see if we don’t have eyes? How can we hear if we don’t have ears? The more she asked these questions the more intriguing they became. After a few days Mini went to town with her mommy for shopping. At that time she saw a man who had no hands. “Mummy, mummy,” she asked, “How can he eat without hands?” “Somebody will help him to eat,” her mummy said. Immediately Mini asked, “Is hand the most important organ in the body?”
Her mummy answered her from the kitchen and immediately came to the door to find out who came for help. When she saw the poor woman and child at the door she went back to the kitchen and brought them some food. After they ate she also gave them some money. And they left thanking her with “Hand is an important organ in our folded hands. body,” her mummy said. “So also our leg. So also our eye and ear.” Her After they left Mini’s mummy asked mummy took it as an opportunity to her, “Do you know which is the most explain to her about the importance important organ in our body?” and functions of the various organs in Immediately Mini thought about the the body. Then by the end of the day blind woman who came there with the she had other questions to ask. And help of the child and said, “eye.” Then her mummy always gave what seemed her mummy asked, “But why do you to Mini the right answers. say that eye is the most important organ?” “How can we see without Years went fast. After her college eyes?” Mini answered with a counter education was completed Mini’s question. Then she continued, “If parents found her a perfect match. mummy has no eyes mummy will not be When the time came for her to leave able to see me and daddy.” her home with her husband she was sad. And her mummy was sad too. As At that very moment a car came to a they were in a tight embrace, her halt at the portico. Mini knew it was her mummy asked her in a soft voice, dad and she rushed to him and asked “Which is the most important organ in him with eyes that gleamed with the body?” mischief, “Daddy, daddy, which is the most important organ in our body?” He Mini thought her heart was going to was baffled at the question and stood explode because of the pain of leaving there not knowing what to say. Then her mummy and daddy. She knew how roaring with laughter Mini said, much they loved her. Tightening her
embrace of her mummy Mini softly said, “heart!” Her mummy’s eyes welled up with tears of joy as she heard her daughter’s whisper. At last my little girl got the right answer! She said to herself. Mini and her mummy are just two ordinary characters who come across in our life. However, their discovery is extraordinary. Yes, our eyes are very important. Without them we cannot see. Our ears are important. Without them we cannot hear. Similarly our hands and legs and other organs in the body have different important roles to play. But to give meaning to everything we do with these organs we need a heart which throbs with love. If we don’t have a heart throbbing with love what good is there to see others especially their pain? If we don’t have a heart pulsating with love what good is it for others that we hear with our ears their sad stories? Unless our heart is not filled with love our other organs will not do anything to help others in their sorrows. Science tells us that our brain and our heart are equally important since one cannot function without the other. However, since the heart stands also for love it has to be the most important organ in our body. But unless our heart throbs with love it will never become the most important organ in our body and our life will remain lifeless. Hence let us fill our hearts with love. Then the throbs of our heart will become the throbs of love.
Printed and Published by Fr.Varghese Panthalookaran CMI on behalf of Rajagiri Media, Rajagiri Valley P.O, Kakkanad, Kochi-39. Ph: 0484-2973979. Printed at St. Francis Press, Kochi. Editor: James Paul