tagged w/ India news
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Shilong, Feb 1 : In a remote part of Meghalaya in north-east India, threatened Asian elephants are now being protected by the newly declared Siju-Aretika Village Reserve.
The legal declaration of the 200 hectare (500 acre) Siju-Aretika Village Reserve Forest by the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council, is a significant first step towards the conservation of tribal lands, where land acquisition is very complicated. This is a shining example of community driven conservation, where villagers have risen to the challenge and signed written pledges to protect and conserve local wildlife.
In some areas 'slash and burn' agriculture, monoculture plantation and mining has had a devastating impact on the forest, thereby threatening the survival of elephants. In a bid to halt this destruction Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) motivated local people to take action themselves and this has resulted in really effective, community-based conservation.
India is estimated to have an Asian elephant population of approx 26500, (25000-28000) of which approx 1,900 live in Meghalaya. The Village Reserve area was considered a priority for conservation as it is within the Siju-Rewak Elephant Corridor. (This is the area that was famously described in Rudyard Kipling's 'The Jungle Book'.)Shilong, Feb 1 : In a remote part of Meghalaya in north-east India, threatened Asian... more
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New Delhi, Feb 1 : Reliance Communications is all set to be an all-India Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) mobile telephony player.
During an analyst meet on Thursday, after announcing the third quarter financial results, RCom chairman Anil Ambani said that the company had just got the government approval to start CDMA service in the remaining circles of Assam and North-East.
Currently, RCom operates CDMA service across the country (in 21 circles) barring Assam and North-East. Ambani also said that RCom would get a refund of around Rs 112 crore from the Department of Telecom (DoT) soon, as the company had paid in excess for licences to start GSM services.
Although the group’s Reliance Telecom runs GSM service in eight circles, it had recently paid Rs 1,650 crore for operating GSM across the country. Rs 1,650 crore is the licence fee for all-India service under the Unified Access Service Licence (UASL).New Delhi, Feb 1 : Reliance Communications is all set to be an all-India Code Division... more
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Latest investigation in the Gurgaon kidney racket case reveals that not only the police but also the underworld is on the lookout for the absconding main accused, Dr Amit alias Dr Santosh Raut.
According to the latest reports, the underworld wanted a share in the multi-crore-rupee organ trade. The underworld had prior knowledge of the kidney trade and gangster Chhota Shakeel was blackmailing and demanding extortion money from Dr Amit.
A senior police officer revealed that last year in January, the Crime Branch arrested two alleged shooters of gangster Chhota Shakeel, who had come to Mumbai to kill Dr Amit. “They said they had been sent to India after Raut’s family refused to pay Rs 25 crore to Shakeel,” he said.
The two shooters, Jameer Zaheer Ahmed Khan, and Tanvir Mohammad Aslam Sayyed, were arrested by the Anti-Extortion Cell on January 16, 2007, near the Bandra (West) bus station in Mumbai.
In 2006, Jameer called up Sunita, the ex-wife of Dr Amit from Dubai and demanded extortion money. Sunita told him that Amit no longer lived with her, but the gangsters were not convinced. They threatened to harm Amit as well as Akshay, their son. Sunita also received a threatening letter from Jameer. Latest investigation in the Gurgaon kidney racket case reveals that not only the... more
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For Indian men, nothing's fairer than white, and nothing 'more available'
By Bhaichand Patel
I know a Romanian student who is studying classical dancing on scholarship in Delhi. One evening, an autorickshaw driver extended his hand and tried to grope her thighs. She hit him so hard with her bag that he is not likely to forget that in a hurry. Many foreign women I've met have similar India stories to tell.
Why do Indian men behave so badly with foreign women? Recently they arrested a security guard in a backwaters resort in Kerala for trying to molest two Canadian girls aged 12 and 14. The family cut short their holiday and left. The police in Goa are looking for a man who allegedly raped a British woman after giving her a lift. An American tourist was sexually assaulted in a temple in Pushkar. A guesthouse owner in Udaipur is accused of raping a journalist from England. The list is endless. All this and more happened in the last month or so.
If this state of affairs continues, word will spread that India is no longer a safe place for women to travel. In Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to drive, they cannot teach male students or treat male patients. We are much more civilised. We just don't allow them to walk safely on our streets, especially if they happen to be white.
By the time you read this, the alarm bells would have rung in the Union tourism ministry, and the minister would have called a meeting to see how female visitors can be protected from our desi louts. The situation might improve for a while in the coming months, but you can bet your tourist dollar that it will be business as usual after that.
Sudhir Kakar, who lives in Goa, says that a white woman walking alone there is likely to be stopped by someone on a motorcycle and asked point-blank, "Do you want to be f*****d?" Or words to that effect. Kakar is an authority on human behaviour and I asked him why this should be so. "The Indian woman is a maa, a beti or a bahu for these men. The white woman, on the other hand, is fair game. She is a whore."
For Indian men, nothing's fairer than white, and nothing 'more... more
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Aizawl, Jan 29 : Attacks by rats have severely affected the production of paddy in rural areas of Chin state, Burma. People as a result are facing an acute shortage of food.
Blooming bamboo flowers along the Indo-Burma border since last year had attracted scores of rats that continue its search for paddy in several farms in southern Chin state. As a result, the production of rice has sharply declined in these areas.
To make things worse the rats also destroyed paddy stocks. Traditionally, Chin farmers store the collected paddy in small huts set up near the villages.
The people living in remote areas of Paletwa Township and Matupi Township in southern Chin state are mostly affected by the famine caused by the multiplication of rats.
Normally, farmers grow 150 tins of paddy (a tin contains about 17 kilograms) from farmlands by sowing three tins of paddy. Last year the farmers grew only 25 tins from three tins.Aizawl, Jan 29 : Attacks by rats have severely affected the production of paddy in... more
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Kolkata, Jan 29 : The bird flu epidemic has spread further in the Indian state of West Bengal with 13 of the state's 19 districts affected, officials say.
An outbreak has been reported from Budge Budge, a suburb of the capital, Calcutta, officials say.
A minister said that the situation was "alarming" Officials say more than 2.5 million birds would be culled.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu is regarded as highly pathogenic and can also cause disease and death in humans.
Health experts have warned that the outbreak could get out of control.
No cases of human infection have still been reported. Kolkata, Jan 29 : The bird flu epidemic has spread further in the Indian state of West... more
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By Arundhati Roy
Genocide, Denial And Celebration
It's an old human habit, genocide is. It's a search for lebensraum, project of Union and Progress.
I never met Hrant Dink, a misfortune that will be mine for time to come. From what I know of him, of what he wrote, what he said and did, how he lived his life, I know that had I been here in Istanbul a year ago I would have been among the one hundred thousand people who walked with his coffin in dead silence through the wintry streets of this city, with banners saying, "We are all Armenians", "We are all Hrant Dink". Perhaps I'd have carried the one that said, "One and a half million plus one".*
[*One-and-a-half million is the number of Armenians who were systematically murdered by the Ottoman Empire in the genocide in Anatolia in the spring of 1915. The Armenians, the largest Christian minority living under Islamic Turkic rule in the area, had lived in Anatolia for more than 2,500 years.]
***
In a way, my battle is like yours.
But while in Turkey there's silence,
in India, there is celebration.
***
I wonder what thoughts would have gone through my head as I walked beside his coffin. Maybe I would have heard a reprise of the voice of Araxie Barsamian, mother of my friend David Barsamian, telling the story of what happened to her and her family. She was ten years old in 1915. She remembered the swarms of grasshoppers that arrived in her village, Dubne, which was north of the historic city Dikranagert, now Diyarbakir. The village elders were alarmed, she said, because they knew in their bones that the grasshoppers were a bad omen. They were right; the end came in a few months, when the wheat in the fields was ready for harvesting.
"When we left...(we were) 25 in the family," Araxie Barsamian says. "They took all the men folks. They asked my father, 'Where is your ammunition?' He says, 'I sold it.' So they says, 'Go get it.' So he went to the Kurd town to get it, they beat him and took all his clothes. When he came back there?this my mother tells me story?when he came back there, naked body, he went in the jail, they cut his arms...so he die in jail.
And they took all the mens in the field, they tied their hands, and they shooted, killed every one of them."
Araxie and the other women in her family were deported. All of them perished except Araxie. She was the lone survivor.By Arundhati Roy
Genocide, Denial And Celebration
It's an old human habit,... more
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Shillong, Jan 28 : India's Northeast, so far clouded by insurgency, is bracing for an economic and employment boom with some of the country's top IT and BPO companies making a foray into the region.
Genpact, one of the country's top BPO employers, is the latest to have firmed up plans to start operations in the Northeast.
Recently, companies like Tata Consultancy, Symantec and 24/7 Customer had evinced interest in setting up their businesses here, apparently impressed by the region's abundant supply of skilled workforce and low attrition rate.
According to Meghalaya Information Technology (IT) secretary D P Wahlang, the companies are impressed with the locals' strong command over English and the sense of loyalty that people from this region bring to the job, resulting in lower attrition.
During the recent 'Northeast Investment Summit' in Guwahati, Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh had said that north east India is becoming a fertile recruitment ground for IT and BPO service providers.
BPO firm 24/7 Customer has hired about 150 people from north-east and east India in the last few years, while Maveric Systems, an independent testing organisation, has hired 24 students from four engineering colleges and one university here.
Experts say the companies have found that candidates in this region have the ability to adapt easily to a BPO environment. Shillong, Jan 28 : India's Northeast, so far clouded by insurgency, is bracing... more
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Imphal, Jan 28 : Myanmar authorities have released four Indian nationals who were arrested six months ago for entering the neighbouring country without valid documents, official sources said on Monday.
They were handed over to immigration officer at Moreh border town in Manipur's Chandel district on Sunday, they said.
They were identified as Lal Bahadur (36) from Uttar Pradesh, Mohd Hussain (40) from Assam, Salam Taung (35) from from Manipur and Mang Aijamang (30) from Mizoram.
All the four persons were kept in a Myanmar jail for six months, the sources said.
Imphal, Jan 28 : Myanmar authorities have released four Indian nationals who were... more
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Jaipur, Jan 27 : Regional Indian authors hoping for more readers are abandoning their mother tongues to write in English -- a trend that threatens the country's rich polyglot literary tradition, experts say.
The only way authors -- especially new ones -- can be encouraged to keep writing in their own languages is if there is more translation of their works into English and other globally spoken languages, they say.
Translation of works written in local languages is needed as "an act of literary preservation," said Namita Gokhale, a well-known Indian novelist and organiser of a literature festival in the northern city of Jaipur.
The country of 1.1 billion people "has a rich history of Indian literature that needs to be conserved," Gokhale said at the week-long festival aimed at highlighting India's hot literary scene.Jaipur, Jan 27 : Regional Indian authors hoping for more readers are abandoning their... more
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Meghalaya man?s dream run
By Tilak Rai
Shillong, Jan 27 : He was a cowherd running to reach school on time. In Beningstar Lyngkhoi?s own words, this was the beginning of his race against time. On Saturday, the 23-year-old was given the U Kiang Nongbah Award for excellence in sports by Meghalaya Governor S S Sidhu.
In Shillong for 10 days, Lyngkhoi gives full credit to his teachers for his transition from a cowherd to a marathon runner of international standard. ?My teachers would challenge me that I couldn?t reach school on time after grazing cattle in the morning,? he says.
Lyngkhoi is all set to compete in the London Marathon in May to ensure a berth in the Indian team for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.Meghalaya man?s dream run
By Tilak Rai
Shillong, Jan 27 : He was a cowherd... more
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By Paritosh Chakma
Everybody knows and remembers Mizoram as a highly literate state. With 88.49% literacy rate Mizoram is the second most literate state of India , only next to Kerala?s 90.92%. This is euphoric in the sense that it is a success story. But the other side of the story lies buried and untold: the story of illiterate Chakma tribals of Mizoram.
94.5 per cent people are tribals in Mizoram. The Chakmas who constitute 8.5 per cent of the total tribal state population is the second largest tribal community, next to Mizos who constitute 77 per cent. Yet, Chakmas are lagging behind in all aspects of life.
1. High level of illiteracy
According to Census of India 2001, the Chakmas are the most illiterate community in Mizoram. They have registered a literacy rate of only 45.3 per cent, way behind their Mizo counterparts who are at 95.6 per cent. The gape is huge between males and females amongst the Chakmas. While 56.2% of the men are literate, the literacy rate of women is only 33.6%. In case of the Mizo tribes, male and female literacy stand at 96.8% and 94.4% respectively, which is a clear sign of social progress.
Only 13.7% Chakmas were attending formal educational institutions while 29.7% Mizos were doing the same at 2001 Census. The percentage of those Chakmas attending institutes of high learning is very very thin.
The high level of illiteracy and backwardness of the Chakmas is clearly seen if we visit any Chakma village, particularly the remotest ones. The alarmingly high rate of illiteracy of the Chakma tribe is ironic and grotesque in this number two literate state of India .By Paritosh Chakma
Everybody knows and remembers Mizoram as a highly literate... more
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Indian WomenThe image of a somewhat dazed president, who has lived every bit her image of being harmless, going through the motions of the Republic Day salute is unlikely to be the stuff historic occasions are made of.
The standardised drill of a lifeless ritual reduced what could have been a historic occasion into an event that barely marked the presence of a woman as the head of the state.
The sheer tokenism of it pressed a question: what did this ritual change symbolise? Did this symbolic change in some ways mark the more profound change in the status of Indian woman, a woman who wears a new attitude, a new confidence and a new dress? The Indian Express-CNN-IBN ?CSDS State of the Nation Survey interviewed about 4,000 women to get insights into this big question.
The answer has to be ambivalent if we go by women?s reaction to Pratibha Patil. Only two out of every five women had heard her name. The figure would have gone further down if we had not over-sampled urban women in this survey. More women recognise Lata Mangeshkar or Mayawati than Pratibha Patil. When told that a woman was now the President, women did feel good, but not quite ecstatic. Educated women, more in villages than in the metros, reacted more warmly to a woman president. But clearly the first woman president is not, at least not yet, quite a women?s president.
A focus on the present serves to remind us of the challenges that still lie ahead for the Indian women. We quizzed them in detail about several aspects of their life to find out if they could take these decisions on their own or if the decisions were taken by men in their family with or without consulting them. Generally no more than one-third women could take independent decisions about matters that affected them and their family:Indian WomenThe image of a somewhat dazed president, who has lived every bit her image... more
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New York, Jan 27 : A majority of Americans are not averse to purchasing Made-in-India products, but opposite is the case for those made in China, according to a new survey conducted by renowned US-based business magazine Fortune.
In the wake of some of the American companies, including toymaker Mattel recalling products they sourced from China due to high lead content, nearly three in five (57%) of the US citizens surveyed by Fortune said they were "less likely to buy a product if it is made in China".
However, as much as 52% of the survey respondents said such an incident would not affect their purchasing decision if the product is made in India. New York, Jan 27 : A majority of Americans are not averse to purchasing Made-in-India... more
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Imphal, Jan 26 : In a pre-emptive measure to check the spread of avian influenza in the state following the wild spread of the disease in West Bengal, the government of Manipur has banned the import of chicks, ducklings, eggs, and live birds etc from other states to Manipur.
"In order to contemplate sufficient measures in addition to the intensive post operative surveillance plan being taken up by the Veterinary and Animal Husbandry (VAH) department for prevention of reoccurrence of Avian Influenza in Manipur, testing of poultry feed samples for any possible contamination with avian influenza virus is felt necessary", said an order issued by the state VAH director, Th. Dorendra Singh today to this effect.Imphal, Jan 26 : In a pre-emptive measure to check the spread of avian influenza in... more
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New Delhi, Jan 26 : New Delhi, Jan 26: French President Nicolas Sarkozy`s girlfriend Carla Bruni are about to arrive in Agra. The French President left to visit to the Taj right after the proceedings of the Republic Day.
After the much speculation about Bruni?s visit, as to whether or not should she would be accompanying the French President on his official trip, it was confirmed on Friday that the model turned singer will be joining Sarkozy only in Agra. Bruni had clarified that she would not accompany the President. The unsaid part was that she was free to be with him during hours in India marked as ?personal?. New Delhi, Jan 26 : New Delhi, Jan 26: French President Nicolas Sarkozy`s girlfriend... more
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New Delhi, Jan 26 : French President Nicolas Sarkozy was guest of honour on Saturday at country?s 58th Republic Day parade as New Delhi showcased its latest military hardware including nuclear-capable missiles.
Soldiers marched down the Rajpath to the sound of military bagpipes as the first woman President Pratibha Patil gazed on from behind the bullet-proof glass.New Delhi, Jan 26 : French President Nicolas Sarkozy was guest of honour on Saturday... more
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