OBSERVER The Weekly
Volume 14 | Issue 21
Thursday, February 05, 2015
Govt job scheme a scam
EXCLUSIVE
“They (contractors) take all the money from the account and give me just 100 rupees.” Gurunathhuvappa, a weaver
Nikhil M Babu A government work scheme is being routinely abused by contractors. Villagers who sign up for the scheme - where money is paid directly into bank accounts - are forced to withdraw it and hand it to corrupt officials. The Weekly Observer found out that in four villages of Ramdurg taluk, corruption was prevalent in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was passed by the government in 2005 with the mission to give 100 days of employment per year to the people of the rural India. Sureban is an area in Ramdurg where weaving is a major occupa-
tion and most of the weavers are in their 50s or 60s. Gurunathhuvappa, a weaver in his 60s, said: “The contractors take me to the bank. They take all the money from the account and give me just 100 rupees.” His bank statements show that he has got Rs 25,000 under the scheme. In the last three years, Ramdurg was allotted almost Rs 10 crore under the scheme by the central government. There is a clear pattern that exists in this business and Gurunathhuvappa’s story is a reflection of many others in Sureban. The government creates different developmental projects in the villages which provide employment for villagers. The money will be send directly to the accounts of the people by the government.
Manjunath from Nagannur
The Weekly Observer spoke to two of Gurunathhuvappa neighbors who also met with the same fate. Shankarappa, standing in front of the handloom inside his hut, showed us his bank statements which stated that he had received atleast Rs 15,000 under the scheme. “Contractor, contractor…,” he said in a heavy Kannada accent when asked who gave him the 100 rupees. “I went with him to the bank to take out the money for him.” From 2006, the Indian government has spent crores of rupees for the same scheme which is one of the most heavily funded schemes of the government. Hanumanth’s name was in the list of workers who supposedly worked on the construction of a road for Rs 2 lakhs in Sunnal village. As per the records, 60 villagers had worked on
the project every day for four weeks. “The work was done by the contractor with only four or five workers including me and it was completed in four days,” said Hanumanth. “Even the name of the contractor is there in the list of workers.” Kadampur panchayat received almost Rs 50 lakhs last year, the highest funds under this scheme in Ramdurg taluk. The panchayat president, Zaharath Ali, gets a meager salary but owns a new SUV and has a new house. Nava Gram is an area where people were rehabilitated after a flood few years back which has about a 100 small houses on both sides of the village road. Shivanand G Kalyani stands in front of his allotted house al-
lotted and tells the same tale of Rs 100 for the Rs 4,000 that came into his account under NREGA. Manjunath, a resident of Nagannur village, said: “Most of us don’t get any work under the NREGA. Once there was work on the maintenance of a pond. The panchayat members took a group of us near the pond and took a picture. We didn’t do any work nor did we get any money.” Last year, the government changed the funds under the scheme to 51% for employment and 49% for purchasing raw materials. The increase in the funds for raw materials indicates that the scheme will concentrate on more skilled labor and that 5 lakh people will lose employment as per different reports.
Highway to HIV, a bumpy ride to awareness not aware of the disease”, he said.
Punita Maheshwari Tushar Kaushik
Adding to the availability of condoms at dhabhas and other halts, he said, “We do not find condoms at regular halt points and usually truckers do not use condoms as there is not much time to waste.”
Truckers are being targeted in an HIV awareness campaign after a survey found they are 10 times more likely to contract the virus. A report by Indian Council of Medical Research in 2012 states that after approaching 1800 truckers and helpers aged 16 to 65 commuting regularly to Hyderabad, they were assessed to have any HIV prevention program, history of previous HIV testing and information about new medications to curb HIV. The report established that a total of 1,602 (89%) truckers gave interview and provided blood sample. Forty five truckers tested positive for HIV resulting in HIV prevalence of 2.8 per cent against the national average of only 0.27 per cent. Only 126 truckers reported ever being contacted by staff providing HIV prevention interventions. Truckers who reported hav-
Ashok who hails from Bidar, lorrie driver from Goa-Karnataka route, said, “It is prevalent as truckers are away from homes for a very long time, it is rare that they would use condoms.
“Thanks to govt schemes, condoms are saving many lives.” - Srikant, a truck driver ing sex with a man and those who halted regularly at dhabas were significantly more willing to undergo circumcision for HIV prevention, according to the report.
Srikant, after years of commuting long distance, chose driving in Karnataka itself after he lost three of his friends to the disease. “From the time they started long distance journeys, they grew
weak and their skin was gradually turning black and wrinkled. Even after spending money from under the nose, the families could not save them as they were
Condom distribution at vulnerable areas is one of the strategies taken up by the AIDS prevention societies in Karnataka. Ajay, an on the field program officer with Karnataka State AIDS Prevention Society explained, “We locate major vulnerable areas and collaborate with dhaba owners and shop vendors to indentify the truckers and we distribute condoms with these volunteers.” (Continued on page 3)
2 The Weekly OBSERVER
E-books rise as print dies
Thursday, February 05, 2015
Runover body remains unidentified
Brochure released by the police to identify the dead body Elizabeth Mani Natasha Singh
A feeble turnout for the recently held bookfair in the city C.L. Ramakrishnan Vignesh S.G. E-books are killing traditional printed versions, according to a recent survey. The latest e-book survey by Book Boon reports that there has been a 29.2% increase in people in India opting for read e-books Sayim, Engineering Student’s Association Treasurer, said: “Most of the engineering students depend on e-books for studying because the hard copies of the books are too expensive. The students get valuable books free of cost so this is a boon to the students.” Jithin, class member of Central Library Kerala and history graduation student of IGNOU, said: “We will get free books for reading in the form of pdf from
Photo Courtesy : Parmeshwar Rao Maalba
some free book sites and a mobile app called Play Book, but this will not help readers; a good reader always goes for printed copy.” He added, “Most of the sites only give half of the book and for the rest we have to pay big amounts of money. It is more than what we spend on a published book. Reading cannot be dependent on e-books. Most of the readers feel irritated reading e-books.” According to the e-book survey reports, 40.1% readers have rejected e-books as they find them more expensive as compared to printed books. Gopi Krishna, an engineering student of Sambram Engineering College, said: “We get solved questions and question banks from online sites. Most of the time old engineering stu-
dents may post pdf books to help us. These e-books are a real asset for engineering students. Kumar (name changed), an editorial employee at H & C books and publications, said: “In India both e-book and published books have good sales. So the presence of ebooks has not affected book sales.” Ramesh, H & C sales officer said, “There is a decrease in sales of published books, but it also depends on the place where they are sold. Places like Thrissur in Kerala have good sales for published books. If any place is lacking in book sales, it’s not due to the presence of e-books, it’s due to the lack of interest in reading.” Ratnakaran, employee in a book store, said, “There is a decrease in sales but it’s not due to the impact of e-books.”
Police are appealing for help to identify an elderly man who died after being hit by a car in the early hours of Wednesday. The accident occurred when the victim, around 55 - 60 years old, was trying to cross the road opposite Texport Overseas Private Ltd on Outer Ring Road in Yeshwantpura at around 3 a.m. The victim has not been identified till now although brochures have been sent out and banners have been put up on the streets. The brochure specifies that
the victim is 55-60 years old, 5.7 feet tall, has a round face, fair complexion and graying hair. He was wearing a white check shirt, black pants and a green sweater. “There was nothing in the victim’s pocket to identify him,” said Nandish, Police Constable of Yeshwanthpura Traffic Police station. No missing complaint has been filed in any of the police stations till now.
“Although we have seized the vehicle, the driver is still missing,” said Nandish. Ram Murthy, the investigative officer, said, “I would be grateful if you help me identify the man or his family.”
All work and no play for Bangalore’s techies TEAM OBSERVER
tion at home, they have always provided me this option in such cases.”
Only some of Bangalore’s software firms allow employees to work from home, and a few set unrealistically high targets for their employees, according to the employees of several prominent software firms. Out of the seven people questioned, employed by six software firms, only three have the option of working from home. These are from the firms Wipro, Ericsson and a collaboration of IPAN Hill and Knowlton Strategies. Working from home has many benefits. Abhishek Madan of TenTenTen Digital Products describes the experience as “Mostly pyjamas till the afternoon, and log off at 4.” Chandreyi Bandyopadhyay of IPAN Hill and Knowlton Strategies said this about his experience while working from home: “It’s easier than usual days. Even if you have tight deadlines, you can relax in the comfort of your home giving attention to chores as well.” Sukruthi.K.B., who has been working for Ericsson for over two years, said, “Yes I have worked from home on many situations. Say when there is no cab, or during weekends, as it’s tough for female employees, and during irregular shifts. If I’m not keeping well or if there is any situa-
However, this option also has its disadvantages. Suteja Kanuri from Deloitte said, “Its bad when there is a lot of dependency.” On the same lines, Adithya G from Samsung said: “If I am allowed to work from home then higher officials will expect me to be reachable 24x7 either through phone or conference call. There will be no barrier between personal and professional life.” Abhishek Madan also echoed the same thoughts regarding WFH; he said, “Doesn’t work in intensive development work. Maybe does in more relaxed projects.” Adithya G felt that “working in office makes things move faster” while Chandreyi Bandyopadhyay clarified that working from home “doesn’t mean one can take a slack in the work they are supposed to do from home.” Two out of the seven techies questioned also admitted that their firms reportedly overworked them by setting them unrealistically high targets. Abhishek Madan from TenTenTen Digital Products and Aman Prashant from Wipro were the ones affected. Madan said he had “been in office for the last four weekends.”
The Weekly OBSERVER
Wednesday, February 04, 2015 3
Bangalore has a night life, atleast online Tushar Kaushik Start-ups think out-of-the-box
@manichejain : All Jihadis, Missionaries, Naxals, Leftists,Congis got thrashed in 2014,they reunited to get thrashed in 2015 by #Modi #AbkiBaarBediSarkaar
A start-up in Bengaluru delivers condoms to your doorstep at 3 am, and is among several innovative start-ups that have come up in the country. The website niteout.
co.in delivers food, beverages and other essentials, like condoms, till 3 am in the night in Bangalore. The fact that almost every shop in Bangalore shuts down by 11.30 makes this website even more significant. The website getmypeon.com offers a host of services which are basically errands.
The website onlineprasad. com gets devotees “prasad”, or the sacred food that is given to devotees in temples, from most major temples across India.
Keeping your nights alive! Nitin(name changed), a resident of Bangalore, had ordered condoms from Niteout at 1 am in the night, and they were delivered in an hour. Harshit, another Bangalore resident, has ordered from Niteout multiple times, and most of these have been after midnight. He said that the service had largely been good, and he had got his order in about half an hour. What wasn’t good, however, was the quality of food delivered. He said, “One or two times the food was really bad, and we were like, ‘Why are we eating this?’” The enterprise Midnight Express also delivers food, medicines and condoms until late night. According to a story on the Economic Times website, Kiran Prabhakar Chettiar, 32, founder and propri-
etor of the firm, said: “Surprisingly, burgers among the food items and condoms from the nightneeds segment are the best sellers.”
Late Night is another of Bangalore’s firms which takes orders for food, beverages, snacks and desserts till 4 am. Although not mentioned in the website, Late Night also delivers condoms and cigarettes. When asked about the absence of these on their website, Shaleen, owner of the firm, said that it was only due to a software issue, and said that even condoms would be put up on the site within a week. He also said that the firm gets about 8-10 orders of condoms over a weekend. Late Night is planning to expand, and is going to provide its services in Mumbai next, according to the owner.
Jeeves for hire
A page on the website of Getmypeon explains how the founder came up with the idea : “It was an evening of 2012 when the founder, Bharat Ahirwar, missed work and spent an entire day paying bills and running other important chores. That was the day he realized that running errands is one of the biggest challenges that naturally exist in a city like Mumbai.” It has been over a year after Getmypeon began, and yet it still remains one of its kind. The website offers services such as bill payments, pick-up-and-drop, deliveries, and even standing in queues! Getmypeon charges Rs. 200 for a single errand, and also have packages for 1-4 months, charging Rs. 1500 for a monthly package which includes 10 errands. According to their brand special-
ist Devlina Padhye: “Getmypeon remains the only errand-running and same-day delivery service provider that has in-house staff to carry out errands.” She also informed, via mail, that the company was started with an initial investment of under a lakh, and reached breakeven point in just a few months. The company also hopes to begin in Pune, Bangalore and Ahmedabad soon. It currently has a network of over 800+ active users, and has run over 12,000 errands in the past 30 months on behalf of almost 1000 Mumbaikars. Another website cashing in this concept of being unique is Online prasad. A page on their website states, “We aim to bring you closer to your faith using technology.” The success of these companies clearly illustrates the ingenuity of the ideas on which these firms are based upon.
Awareness drive targets truckers (Continued from page 1)
which National Highways form only two percent that carry more than 40 percent of the traffic load which estimated a huge number of population in form of truckers vulnerable to the disease.
Karnataka State AIDS Prevention Society has made repeated attempts to curb the disease to go viral. “It is a cause of big worry as the truckers and their partners/sex workers are not aware of the risk of indulging into unsafe sexual activities, said, Vijay Hugar, Assistant Director, Target Intervention, KSAPS.
The NACO reports states that there are 5 million truckers in the country. The estimates rely on the number of trucks in India which is 2.5 with two truckers in each one.
A report by National AIDS Control Organization reveals the major reasons for the prominence of the disease among the targeted group. According to the report, close to 36% of truckers are clients of sex workers and 15-20% of clients appear to be truckers. Therefore, truckers form a major segment of the total client population. The report represents the concern that because
Tweets of the day
Ashok, a trucker, hasn’t visited home in the last four months long-distance truckers move throughout the country, those who are at higher risk of HIV can form transmission “bridges” from areas of higher prevalence
to those of lower prevalence. According to the website of National Highway Authority of India, India has 3.3 million km of the road network, out of
The report also covers a the reasons why the truckers and migrant workers form the most vulnerable section which considers sexually active age, bad road conditions and alcohol to be the major factors to be the relevant reasons for unsafe sex. The report suggests increased regulation at the halt points of the truckers may be an idea to escape the risk of the proliferating disease.
@bangalore_ pulse #Bangalore Bescom shuts down all-time payment counters - http:// tinyurl.com/ ojh2d38 @BPACofficial : #BBMP starts to act on encroachment-free footpaths mission after High Court came down heavily on them #BCLEAN http:// bit.ly/1zhHRjL @SITNB : Birds of the same feather flock together. Jihad (MIM) & JihadiDidi (TMC) with AAP!! #AbkiBaarBediSarkaar @bangalore_ pulse #Bangalore ISEC director resigns http://tinyurl.com/ leygklp
4 The Weekly OBSERVER
Thursday, February 05, 2015
Free lunch for cows at Madiwala market
Ridhi Agrawal In Bangalore, food worth Rs.339 crore, which is about 943 tonnes of high calorie food, is wasted annually in wedding halls alone, as per a newspaper report. The survey, conducted by the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore shows that the food wasted from these halls is enough to feed 2.6 crore people a normal Indian meal. A similar scenario exists at the Madiwala market, which has around 700 shops. Reportedly, these stalls discard almost 2000 kgs of vegetables and fruits that get rotten every day. Velu, a vegetable vendor at the Madiwala market, said, “This shop, which was the first shop in this market, was started by my grandmother 40 years back. There is no system to collect and consume rotting vegetables or fruits.” Pointing at the carrots and cauliflower leaves rotting at his store, he added: “We are compelled to throw these. I throw around 50 kgs every day. The amount wasted on Mondays is less but on Saturdays and Sundays, there are two trucks full of fruits and vegetables being wasted.” He continued: “However, I give a few vegetables to the gar-
bage collectors. The rotten vegetables and fruits that are thrown on the road are consumed by the 50-60 cows that flock the market.”
food items which include fruits, vegetables, bread and eggs get wasted per month. All this amounts to Rs 4,000 every month.”
Radha, another vendor at Madiwala market, has had her store for 30 years now.
He added,”Every store has a system in place to keep a track on the amount of food being wasted.” On asking him the statistics of food wasted in the recent months, he refused to comment further.
She said, “I throw around 10 kgs of food every day. We cannot give them to beggars as they demand fresh food so we are compelled to throw it and leave it for the cows. There have been instances where I have thrown 20 kgs of papaya and w a t e r m e l o n . ” She added, “Sunday is a busy day for us with more customers which is why I try clearing out the rotting items for as low as Rs.10 per kg.” Laxmi, another vendor, said, “If the item is fully spoiled, I throw it or else I give the semispoiled ones to the beggars.” Manjuna, a vendor at the Madiwala market for 10 years now, said, “Beetroot, brinjal and radish get wasted from my store on a daily basis which amounts to around 5 kgs of waste every day.” Srinivas, the Marketing office of the departmental store, More, said, “From the More store at the Forum Mall, Koramangala, 1% of
Dr.Shivakumar, The Joint Director of Public Health, said, “My responsibility is food safety that is to ensure production, storage and sales of food items. We have initiated a new step, the IEC which is imparting knowledge through information, education and communication to meet this issue.” He added: “To address the issue of food wastage, it is essential to spread knowledge of importance of food through radios, advertisement, Television channels, books, etc. NGO’s also play a vital role in combating this issue.” He continued, “We are also anticipating a response from the public on what can be done to prevent food wastage.” In India, food worth $8.3 billion which is nearly 40% of the total value of annual produc-
tion is wasted. This includes 70% of fruit and vegetable output as per World Economic Forum. According to UN India, a total of 842 million people in 20112013, or around one in eight people in the world, were estimated to be suffering from chronic hunger, regularly not getting enough food to conduct an active life. Global Hunger Index ranks India 63rd out of 78 hungriest countries with 25 percent of the world’s hungry population. According to the same report, “More than a third of all of the food that’s produced on our planet never reaches a table. This works out to roughly 1.3 billion tons of food, worth nearly $1 trillion at retail prices.” A report by National Geographic states, ‘The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, which keeps tabs on what’s grown and eaten around the globe, estimates that one-third of food produced for human consumption worldwide is annually lost or wasted along the chain that stretches from farms to processing plants, marketplaces, retailers, food-service operations, and our collective k i t c h e n s . ’
NEWS DIGEST Producer-Director, Mahesh Bhat feels that regional films represents the roots of Indian cinema. He said, “Indian cinema is losing its Indianness as it is getting disconnected from its roots and by connecting with roots of Punjab, India cinema will become richer.” The biggest solar power plant of North Eastern region is going to be built in Monarchak in Tripura, as announced by the North Eastern Electric Power Corporation (NEEPO). It has been commissioned for Rs 40crore. Arnold Schwarzenegger praised Narendra Modi and said, “Gujarat is California of India.” The former California governor is now the chairman of R20 Regions of Climate Action. The ADGP Pandey and former Gujarat DIG Vanzara have been granted bail in the 2004 Ahmedabad fake encounter case of Ishrat Jahan and three others.
An empty cart lies against the wasted pile of tomatoes
Rotten vegetables adorn the pathway of the Madiwala Market
OBSERVER Team: Editor - Ridhi Agrawal, Chief Sub-Editor - Punita Maheshwari, News Editor - Saheli Sen Gupta, News Desk - Elizabeth Mani, Layout - Tushar Kaushik, Nikhil Babu, Sub-Editors - Natasha Singh, Proofreader -C.L Ramakrishna