Focus: Virat Kohli, The Apparent Heir Of Tendulkar?

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say there is something Tendulkaresque about Virat Kohli. Besides their prolific batsmanship or the match-winning aptitude, only time will verify whether the latter would eventually sneak into the immortal space inhabited by the little man. Their perceptions and philosophies are diverse, if not contrary, and understandably so as they are men of varied spirits who plied in distinct eras. But there has been a certain inevitability about them and the feats they would accomplish.

Their fate, for the outside eyes at least, seemed pre-scripted. So just as the curly-haired wonder-boy from Mumbai was racking up centuries for fun in school cricket, he was ordained to end up as the highest run-getter by the time he retired from international cricket.

How Private Enterprise Is Changing Non-Cricket Sports?

India Inc has entered the country's sporting arena, and is changing the way the nation plays.

There was a time, not too long ago, when it was taken for granted that an aspiring sportsperson in India would have to do any or all of the following: 

• Secure a job in a public sector company, or a large private sector one, for a regular income.
• Scramble for corporate sponsorship to be able to compete at international or even national tournaments.

When 'Telangana' Separated With Andhra Pradesh State?

By M H Ahssan | INNLIVE

ANALYSIS Fifty-eight years after the unification of Telangana and Andhra region, the Lok Sabha separated them by dividing the state of Andhra Pradesh. After blacking out the live coverage of the Telangana debate on Lok Sabha TV, the Hower House voted for Telangana state in a controversial voice vote. Interestingly, both Congress and BJP joined hands to divide Andhra Pradesh. Only the TMC and JDU staged a walkout calling it a murder of democracy.

According to experts the Congress which is staring at a rout in most parts of the country is likely to win big in Telangana which has 17 Lok Sabha and 119 Assembly seats. The Congress is expected to be decimated in Seemandhra region.

The Brooming 'English Vinglish' Culture

Dreams of jobs, social mobility and self-respect are all tied to knowing the language. For millions, not knowing it means being walled out. 

In 2003, James Tooley, a professor at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, completed and published the results of a year-long survey of private schools for children of low-income families in Hyderabad. ‘Private Schools for the Poor: A Case Study from India’, as the report was titled, found an astounding 61 percent of all pupils in Hyderabad district — much higher than official figures — were enrolled in private, unaided schools. This included, of course, the wealthy and the poor.

Narrowing down to 15 private schools in low-income and slum areas — “an arbitrary selection… to ensure a balance of neighbourhoods and fee ranges” — Tooley and his researchers concluded teacher truancy and school responsiveness rates here compared favourably with government schools. For this, parents — “daily paid labourers, market traders or rickshaw drivers” — were willing to pay fees “in the range of five to 10 percent of the father’s annual income”. The average tuition fee in the selected schools was Rs 116 per month.

The quest for the English language was a key motivation. All 15 schools ran from nursery to Class X and all offered English-medium education. One school also had an Urdu-medium section and three schools had some Telugu-medium classes. The schools followed a standard curriculum from Class VI onwards, in preparation for state board examinations at the end of Class VII and Class X. Till Class VI, however, the schools were free to innovate. Tooley wrote, “We found schools at this level replacing much of the specified curriculum with extra English lessons — because this is often what parental demand wanted.” “School choice was taken seriously by parents,” recorded Tooley, “… One illiterate father — who was far from unusual — told us that if the standard of education did not improve in the school his child attended, then he would take him away to another school. He said that the teaching was not up to the mark, and he was aware that other children were speaking English more effectively than his own child — even though he himself could not speak any English.”

It astonished the research team that a parent who did not know English would not only make learning the language a priority for the child, but also take what he considered an informed decision on his child’s proficiency with the English language, and how well or poorly it was being taught in the school.

What Tooley found was not atypical. The quest for English is not a phenomenon in India; it is an obsession, an epidemic and often a paranoiac fear. This is a language that opens doors; for those outside the magic portals, it is an absence that builds impregnable walls. Pradeep Kumar, 35, a garbage collector at the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, mirrors the anxiety, the nervousness and the sheer and searing ambition of some of the parents Tooley met in faraway Hyderabad.

Kumar never made it past Class V and doesn’t know a word of English. Three years ago, his first born, Abhishek, was enrolled in Class V of a government school in south Delhi’s Govindpuri area. Sensing the government school was inadequate, Kumar sought out an alternative: “I tried to move him to a private school for higher studies, but the teacher there assessed him and said his proficiency in English was that of a child in lower KG or upper KG, and that I should put him in Class I.”

This stunned Kumar. He came home, pushed some English language books towards his son and asked him to read. Consider the pathos of the moment; consider how it must have been: a father who knew no English asking his son to read so that he (the father) could assess his (the son’s) fluency in English. Abhishek tried to read, and faltered; he tried again, and faltered. In a few short wrenching minutes, the humble garbage collector’s little world came crashing down.

“I begged the teacher to take him into even Class I,” Kumar remembers, “and she said she’d try.” That’s when he decided to pull out his younger son and daughter from government schools and put them into private schools instead. “I want to make them successful,” he says, his voice almost a whisper in desperation. “In our time, you could get by. But today there are no jobs for illiterate people. They need to learn good English… I want them to have a better life than I did…”

Literacy, education, learning English: it is telling how easily Kumar conflates the three. To him, English is not just an important subject at school — it is the uber subject, the stairway to heaven, the elevator his children must take to a better life.

Stuck at a traffic signal this past week, Mann Singh, 76, a taxi driver in Mumbai, turned and asked his passenger what the word “infinity” meant. It was no abstract curiosity; he wanted to know what his city’s most popular mall was named after. His passenger explained the definition. What followed was a remarkable attempt at internalising “infinity”, almost making it a part of one’s consciousness. Singh began using the word over and over again, correctly, incorrectly, appropriately and otherwise, till he was sure he had more or less got it.

It’s a game the man has been playing for 60 years. Singh moved to Mumbai in 1956, having left his village in Punjab with a Class VIII education and not a word of English. He learnt the language in the big city, one word at a time, while doing odd jobs for businessmen, running chores, delivering parcels and, finally, some 40 years after he’d arrived in Mumbai, while driving a taxi.

Sitting behind that wheel gave Singh a luxury his four previous decades in Mumbai hadn’t allowed him: time. He bought himself a transistor and listened to cricket commentary in English. Interacting with his passengers, he moved to conversations, initially in Hindi, then in broken English. Gradually the few, isolated words he knew began forming themselves into sentences. Today, Singh knows enough of the English way to respond with a “You’re most welcome, Madam” to a passenger who runs off with a hurried “Thank you”.

If Singh can look back at his experiential learning of English with some humour, it is also because he is secure in the knowledge that he is the last of his kind in his family. All four of his children — the first a supervisor in a mall, the second a management student, the third a chauffeur for a big business corporation and the fourth a factory worker in South Africa — went to private schools and are proficient in English. In one generation, with one language, they have made the leap from working class to middle class.

The equation isn’t always that simple. English has had a complex and troubled engagement with India since Thomas Macaulay introduced it as the medium of instruction with his Minute on Education in 1835. He intended it not just as a communicative tool, but as a social enabler and part of the civilising mission of the East India Company. The condescension that carried with it notwithstanding, English proved to be an empowering force of quite another kind. In one quick move, it reduced Indians from a multiplicity of identities to just two castes — Macaulay’s Children and Macaulay’s Orphans.

The first to use and master the English were, of course, the privileged Indian communities — upper-caste Bengalis, Bombay Parsis, Poona Brahmins and so on. Yet as the decades passed, it became apparent to many that English was not just instructive; it was downright incendiary. It held the key to social disruption and the upturning of hierarchies. There is a school of Dalit scholarship that holds that knowledge of English has allowed privileged Dalits to make a leap and gain authority — with government jobs, for instance — in a manner unknown for millennia.

Chandrabhan Prasad, well-known Dalit writer, has in his articles contrasted the access to English with the historical denial of Sanskrit to the Dalit. In this framework, English is a goddess to be venerated — two years ago, a temple to English began to be constructed in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri district — and Macaulay her prophet on Earth.

Inevitably, English became part of the colonial construct. With independence, its effacement became an auxiliary of the nationalist enterprise for some. The Socialists led by Ram Manohar Lohia mocked English, a legacy that lives on in parts in the politics of Mulayam Singh Yadav and the Samajwadi Party. The Communists abolished English at the primary level in West Bengal only to acknowledge their error a quarter century later. The Sangh Parivar saw English as representing a westernisation project.

It is worth noting that many of those debates are now settled, and those emotions spent. The first-generation learner of today is no aspiring Anglophile and does not even remotely see himself as a member of the Anglosphere. Neither does he consider Britain or even America as a natural cultural reference point. He sees English for what it is: a pathway to a better job, a better life and that intangible — social status.
Few native speakers of English can even comprehend what life must be on the other side of the tracks for the vast majority of their fellow Indians. Tridip Suhrud, Ahmedabad-based social scientist, calls “the desire to learn English the biggest aspiration for Indians today… like a passport to gain cultural confidence”. Yet, he acknowledges that in “the search of an elusive promise, we have devalued learning in other languages”.

It’s a vicious circle. There are too few technical manuals and textbooks in English. This ends up meaning there are too few who master technical manuals and textbooks in anything other than English, often making a hell-for-leather attempt to reach some familiarity with the language. The result: the incentive to produce more and better technical manuals and textbooks in English declines.

This is exactly the reasoning Girish Walimbe, the septuagenarian trustee of the Maharashtra Girls Education Society, Huzurpaga, Pune, offers. Founded by the social reformer Jyotiba Phule 127 years ago as a Marathi-medium institution that pioneered girls’ education in India, the school has an illustrious history.

Five years ago, the Huzurpaga school was forced to open an English-language affiliate as well. The demand was overwhelming. “I believe the medium of instruction should be one’s mother tongue,” says Walimbe, “but knowing English is the need of the hour. The world works that way. English is the key to acquiring technical education because there are no technical books available in regional languages.”

“Feed your child once a day if needed, but make sure he goes to an English school”: Ishtyaq Bhat, 27, seems to speak with a wisdom and cynicism beyond his age. Bhat owns a popular guest house and tour company in Srinagar called Lassa Bhat, named after his grandfather. The real-life Lassa Bhat ran a tea stall near the Dal Lake. His son, Shafi Bhat, opened two rooms of the family house to western tourists. However, that was as far he got; being illiterate, he could go no further in terms of communication.

In the 1990s, as the Valley was gripped by violence, the Bhats left for Goa where Shafi and his sister became the first in their family to go to school. Returning home, Shafi expanded the Lassa Bhat Guest House and built a new wing. His familiarity with English made it easy for him to win the trust of tourists from abroad and have them recommending the guest house. It wouldn’t have been possible without English. To Shafi’s mind, learning the language has been the game-changer in his life.

What if it hadn’t turned out this way? In his novel The Story of My Assassins, Tarun Tejpal, a senior journalist, has this percussive passage on a character’s unequal struggle with English:

“The arithmetic and algebra he could manage, and Hindi he was good at. But English, and every other subject — all of them taught in English — fried his brains. He was not alone in this. The entire school was full of boys whose brains were being detonated by Shakespeare and Dickens and Wordsworth and Tennyson and memoriam and daffodils and tiger tiger burning bright and solitary reapers and artful dodgers and thous and forsooths and the rhymes of ancient mariners. The first counter-attack Kabir M made on English was in Class IV when he learnt like the rest of his reeling mates to say, ‘Howdudo? Howdudo?’ The answer being: ‘Juslikeaduddoo! Juslikeaduddoo!’ It set the pattern for life for most of them. English was to be ambushed ruthlessly when and where the opportunity arose. Its soldiers were to be mangled, shot, amputated wherever they were spotted. Its emissaries to be captured and tortured. The enemy of English came at them from every direction: in the guise of forms to be filled, exams to be taken, interviews to be given, marriage proposals to be evaluated. The enemy English had a dwarfing weapon: it made instant lilliputs of them.”

Where are the weapons to slay this enemy forged? The English coaching, tuition and informal education industry must be one of India’s largest and most underreported services-sector businesses. For Amod Kumar Bhardwaj, 45, and chief executive of the Meerut-based American Institute of English Learning (AIEL), imparting training in spoken English has proved a goldmine. “I qualified after the written exam for the Combined Defence Services,” he says, beginning his back-story. “I was confident of a good career in the army. My hopes crashed during the interview because of my poor spoken English.” That motivated him to not just improve his English-speaking skills but, in 1991, to set up AIEL.

Bhardwaj sees AIEL as a sort of finishing school. After graduating from school or college or a technical institution, the student comes here to learn to use the English language in a manner of speaking, literally, and go on to a job. Over two decades, AIEL has coached thousands of students. Today, it has a franchise running in every single one of Uttar Pradesh’s 70 districts. “We have close to 100 centres,” he says.

In ‘A Story of Falling Behind’, their 2009 study of West Bengal, economists Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari examined the private tuition boom that encompassed “80 percent of middle-school children in rural West Bengal”. Quoting a 2006 survey conducted by the Amartya Sen-founded Pratichi Trust, Debroy and Bhandari wrote: “Even among poor children, the average annual incremental expenditure because of private tuition was around 1,000. Private tuition is an endemic part of the West Bengal education system. This can partly be dated to 1983, when in an attempt to ensure equity, the West Bengal government abolished teaching of English in primary schools for the government education system. This triggered demand for private tuitions, even among the poor.”

Raj Kishan, 36, an autorickshaw driver in New Delhi with origins in Motihari, Bihar, would nod in agreement. His seven-year-old daughter studies in Class II in a government school, but she still goes to two coaching classes a day. “One coaching class is exclusively for English and the other is for all subjects,” Kishan explains, “I pay Rs 400 a month for each. English coaching is separate because that madam doesn’t teach anything else.”

Kostubh Vohra, a fellow of Teach for India, is in charge of Class II in a private school for underprivileged children in New Delhi. Illiterate or moderately educated parents push their children to learn at least English, and this has led Vohra to adopt innovative methods to expand reading, writing and comprehension skills. “I use various applications on the iPad,” he points out. “They help in teaching phonetics and increase the children’s interest. There is an app called Read Aloud, which shows a word on screen as it is pronounced.”

To his pupils, English is the basic ingredient of fantasy: “I tell them that if they want to become space travellers or scientists or doctors, it is necessary to learn English. It is important because all technology is in English. There is a direct co-relation between English and jobs…”

A life removed from English can be a burden, even a blow and a confidence corroder. Champa Roy, 34 from Agartala, Tripura, had it all — a loving husband, two children and a degree in science. In 2011, her husband died and she decided to look for a job as a teacher.

“I tried my luck,” she says, “and would eventually get rejected everywhere as my spoken English was weak. I had studied in a Bengali-medium school… In testing times, I understood how important it was to at least have good spoken English skills. It really helps, while being a science graduate was of no help.” To her mind, familiarity with English scores over academic or scholastic qualifications.

Is that Macaulay’s vindication or the tragedy of his legacy? One can debate that, but the fact is, it’s contemporary India’s hard, blistering reality.

Focus: 'Indian Culinary Skill Tours Beckon Foreign Foodies'

By Annie Sadaf / INN Live

Want to combine wanderlust with a desire to sample authentic Indian dishes in traditional kitchens or scenic spots across the country? As a personal touch, you could also shop for the ingredients in some of the vibrant and bustling open-air marketplaces that India offers. All this and more could be yours for a price - thanks to the genre of culinary tourism.

India Is Slowly Cleaving Into Two Countries – A Richer, Older South And A Poorer, Younger North

By NEWSCOP | INNLIVE

Support to the elderly is fraying in India. But no one appears prepared for this – not families, not companies, not the government.

At traffic intersections, drivers in Delhi tune out the brown-haired, snot-nosed waifs who tap and scratch insistently at their car windows. Sometimes, the children are joined by equally ragged parents, mostly in their 20s, trying to sell cheap Chinese-made junk – from plastic flowers to cellphone and steering-wheel covers. The defining feature of destitution in North India appears to be youth.

Troubled Telengana

By Rajinder Puri

The demand for Telengana state is perhaps the oldest protest movement in India. Political opportunism and lack of vision have prolonged the agony of the Telengana people .

A few months ago union cabinet minister Chandrashekhar Rao quit the UPA alliance on the issue of creating Telengana state. A few days ago Devender Goud, number two to Chandrababu Naidu in TDP, and Peddi Reddy split their party on the Telengana issue. Telengana is Andhra’s perennial dispute. The demand for Telengana state is perhaps the oldest protest movement in India. Political opportunism and lack of vision have prolonged the agony of the Telengana people.

In 1947 Telengana was the princely Hyderabad state. The Nizam of Hyderabad wanted independence. Sardar Patel forcibly prevented that. Telugu speaking people were spread in 22 districts. Nine were in Hyderabad, twelve in the Madras Presidency. In 1953 all Telegu districts of Madras were separated to form a new Andhra state. It was the first Indian state formed on a purely linguistic basis. Later Andhra was merged with the Telugu speaking area of Hyderabad to become present day Andhra Pradesh.

However, common language is not the only criterion for identity. From its birth Andhra Pradesh was harassed by the demand of a separate Telengana state. The shared history of Telengana people united them culturally. Pandit Nehru appointed the States Reorganization Commission (SRC) to create linguistic states. It was against merging Telengana with Andhra. The 1955 SRC report said: “We have come to the conclusion that it will be in the interests of Andhra as well as Telangana area to constitute a separate state, which may be known as the Hyderabad state…”

The central government ignored the SRC recommendation. It established unified Andhra Pradesh in 1956. The government reassured the Telangana people that their concerns would be met. Telengana people continued to complain. After 52 years the complaints persist, the assurances continue. How and why did this happen?

Telengana leaders were opportunists. From the days of Chenna Reddy, an army of leaders rose to power on the support of the Telengana movement. After assuming office each leader merged with Congress to betray Telengana. National leaders were shortsighted. Language cannot be the sole criterion for statehood. If it were, Goa would be part of Maharashtra. UP, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana would be one state.

Andhra politicians resist creating Telengana state because they oppose shrinking Andhra. Their fear is understandable. It could be removed if all large states were divided into smaller states. Such demands with varying intensity exist in almost all of them. Maharashtra can be divided in four, UP in 4 more after Uttarakhand. Regional parties do not want to reduce their turf. But why should they? Why cannot a Telegu party hold power in three states as well as it does in one?

Small states mean faster progress. Haryana and Himachal proved that. Cultural identity and administrative convenience should be the criteria for carving new states out of even one linguistic group. It should be done systematically. It can be done with minimum discord if new states are within the boundaries of the large state to be divided. Parliament should appoint a second commission to reorganize states. Creating new states ad hoc by responding to violent protest after hundreds are killed is a stupid way to introduce change.

'India's 'No.2 Problem' Never Ends With Your Imagination'

By Newscop / INN Live

Not to put too fine a point on it, India’s no. 1 problem is no. 2. And for an all-too-brief while last week, the squatting figures dotting the landscape—“eternal and emblematic as Rodin’s thinker” in the Nobel laureate’s immortal words—looked set to emerge out of the bushes and shadows in an election season, as the bjp’s Narendra Modi, whose advertised motto is “India First”, mom­entarily gave flight to his vision of “Toilet First”.

“My image does not permit me to say so, but my real thought is, ‘Pehle shauchalaya, phir devalaya (Toilets first, temples later)’,” Modi said, as he sought to buff up his image as more than just a Hindutva leader.

Astonishing Christmas-Themed Mughal Miniatures From The Courts Of Emperor Akbar And Jehangir

Jesuits came to the Mughal court hoping to convert the emperors. Instead, the Indian rulers used Christian images for their own royal propaganda.

When Mughal emperor Akbar invited Portuguese Jesuits from Goa to his court in 1579, they were elated. Converting Akbar to Christianity would be their biggest achievement outside the European world.

They sent excited reports back to their home country, saying that India's largest empire would soon be a part of the Christian world.

'The Proteins Butchers Academy' Plans To Build 'Professional Butchers' Training In Hyderabad

The city is home to several meat stores. It is home to 4000 chicken, 2000 mutton, 2000 fish shops and hundreds of street-side sales also happen.

 Necessity is the mother of invention. Thanks to Proteins Hygienic Non-Veg Mart, Hyderabad based bootstrapped phygital (physical stores & e-commerce) startup is soon going to have (probably India’s first city) a Meat Academy that will teach lessons of Butchery Skills. It is probably the first city in India to think in this direction of professionalizing Butcher Craft.   

Proteins Hygienic Non-Veg Mart, the Hyderabad based first modern meat retail chain that is expanding its footprint from current 11 stores to 75 by the end of March 2022 by investing about 22 crores is facing a huge shortage of trained and skilled butchers. To overcome this problem it is coming out with the Academy to train people in butchery skills.  Srinivasa Rao Potini and Vijay Chowdary Tripuraneni, the founder​s​ of the company who are also serial entrepreneurs and invested in My Stores, Lenin House Exclusive Stores; Goa Grills announced in the city in a press conference held recently.  

We are thinking about the Academy because we are seeing a huge potential for the space.  What was 2010 for general retail and e-commerce, these few years will be the same for the meat industry: Manchala Vamshi Rai, alumni of Bits Pilani and Director of Proteins Hygienic Non-Veg Mart. 

It plans to train 500 butchers in the next 8 months. It will be on the job training. 10th class pass or failure will be absorbed for the training. They will be given a stipend of Rs 8000/- pm and upon completing the three-month training they will be absorbed into full-time employment.   

Butchers are meat cutters who prepare the meat for the purpose of sale.   

The training will be a short term course that offers skills and training on how to expertly perform Butchery/Meat Cutting, informed Mr Vijay Chowdary Tripuraneni, founder of Proteins Hygienic Non-Veg Mart and the brain behind this novel academy.  

Many hotel management colleges have this subject as their course curriculum. Butchery craft is also taught as part of the course.  

But, there is no exclusive Butcher Craft Training Institute in Hyderabad. Also, there is no information available on the internet about such an exclusive training institute. That is why it is going to be probably the first city in India to have a Butchery Academy. Though this is not open for people who just want to come and learn and go. It is going to be started with the exclusive purpose of training people for their internal use.  

Many Veterinary Colleges also run Butcher Training classes just as part of their overall curriculum. We at ICAR--National Research Centre on Meat also sometimes run Butchery training classes. But now we are not doing these courses because of the COVID. As far as my knowledge goes there isn't any exclusive Butcher Training Academy said Dr S.B Barbuddhe, Director of ICAR-National Research Centre on Meat at ICAR-NRCM office at Chengicherla, Hyderabad.ICAR--National Research Centre on Meatworks under the aegis of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). Headquartered in Hyderabad, its mission is to develop a modern organized meat sector through meat production, processing and utilization technologies and serve the cause of meat animal producers, processors and consumers. 

Emmanuel, Director of the IIHM—International Institute of Hotel Management, Asia’s largest Hotel Schools Chain says there are Meat Technology and Meat Certification Technology courses  etc and many other.  There are plenty of organizations in abroad.  But, I haven't come across any exclusive Butchers Academy  If anyone is starting an exclusive academy it is really good for everyone, he said.  

The butcher as we all know is a meat cutter. He chops, portions and grinds various kinds of meat. To identify meat cuts, cut meat properly, avoid waste, identify good quality meat, store it properly, waste management etc. His job responsibilities include preparing the meat, packaging and serving the customers.    

Hyderabad is the meat consuming city and top in the country. Meat worth INR 3500 crore is consumed every year in the city. The city boasts of conventional shops. The city, according to Vijay Chowdary Triperaneni, the founder of the chain of one-stop meat shops, is home to 4000 chicken, 2000 mutton, and 2000 fish shops. But most of them are untidy and unhygienic. 95% of the meat industry is unorganised, known for poor infrastructure, unhygienic and have an unfriendly atmosphere, and are unreliable for quality and availability.   

Ever since the pandemic hit, people have become more hygiene conscious. They have been giving a lot of importance to fresh food. Now things are changing slowly and steadily.  

The traditional meat shops are being modernised. According to Mr. Manchala Vamshi Rai, an alumnus of Bits Pilani and Director of Proteins Hygienic Non-Veg Mart, more and more professionals are getting into the industry. More investments are being pumped in to offer a modern experience similar to supermarkets. 

The stores are now made women-friendly. They have a rich ambience. 

Conventionally more men go to shops to fetch meat. Though women go to vegetable shops, we don’t see many women going to meat shops because of un-women-friendly ambience and poor infrastructure. So things are changing and they are changing for good. 

The potential of the meat market in India is 4 lakh crore. There is a huge potential for the growth of modern meat retail chains. Keeping this in mind, the Hyderabad based bootstrapped phygital (physical stores & e-commerce) startup has embarked on this initiative. 

Vision is to provide the best professional shopping experience to meat buyers. We must make available the most hygienic, fresh and quality meat for the common man at affordable prices in the most professional manner possible. By meat, it means fish, prawns, crabs, mutton, chicken and their products says Mr. Vamshi.  

In pandemic times like these eating hygienic meat is as important as wearing a mask and maintaining social distance.  

Professionalizing butcher's work is a good idea. I am sure a lot of takers will be there for the training program.  

It will also create newer employment opportunities, said Divi, Big Boss fame, actress and model. She is a brand ambassador to Proteins. #KhabarLive #hydnews 

Health Crisis: India's Wealthier States Are Showing An Alarming Decline In Immunisation Process

By NEWSCOP | INNLIVE

The warning signs from the latest National Family Health Survey data have gone unnoticed so far.

A fair amount of media attention has been given to the resurgence of diphtheria in Kerala, which has been attributed to some Muslims rejecting immunisation efforts due to misinformation. However, a much more dangerous and widespread trend of declining immunisation rates as evidenced by the recent National Family Health Survey 4 data, seems to have gone entirely unnoticed.

'Contempt' Case Against 'Sallu' For Posting Info On Website

By Niloufer Khan / Mumbai

A social activist has filed a complaint in a local court seeking action against Bollywood actor Salman Khan for launching a website with information on the 2002 hit-and-run case involving him, alleging that it was contempt of court. According to the complaint, the website, www.salmankhanfiles.com, was launched by the actor recently.

A Mumbai sessions court ruled in June that the actor must be tried for culpable homicide not amounting for murder in the case -- a serious charge under IPC which attracts 10 years' punishment in jail. "When the case is underway and matter sub-judice, how can he use Internet to spread information about the proceedings?" activist Hemant Patil asked in his complaint filed on Saturday, according to his lawyer Wajid Khan.

Is Narendra Modi Making More Enemies Than Friends?

By Siddharth Bhatia | INN Live

After Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi hit a rough patch with Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray last month, it was the turn of his cousin and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) president Raj Thackeray to take on the Gujarat Chief Minister.

Taking a similar line as his older cousin's, the MNS chief targeted Modi for his inability to come out of Gujarat and think pan-India. Thackeray said, "If you want to be the PM, then leave the CM post. Don't just talk of Gujarat but the whole nation." "You come to Maharashtra and speak about Sardar Patel's statue. Why don't you talk about Shivaji Maharaj," asked the MNS chief.

Funny Satires: How India Never Laughs At Real Taboos?

It's a cliche to pronounce that Indians have no sense of humour, that we are a dour bunch that only recognises slapstick of the kind that Mehmood excelled at, that we can only laugh at community stereotypes - the bumbling Sardarji, the oily Bihari, the Bengali in spectacles and the Madrasi with the atrocious accent and worse table manners - that enjoyed great popularity in the Bombay-to-Goa era when Amitabh Bachchan was a dude, but have quite vanished in this age of political correctness when Aamir Khan has outed himself as the Shamitabh of All Prickly Feelings. 

ACID ATTACK, THE 'DISTRUCTIVE MARK' ON LIFE

By Pavitra Behl / Lucknow

Acid attacks are a globally embarrassing statistic, sitting pretty on weak laws and weaker rehab programmes, a fact the latest victims — four sisters from Kandhala in Shamli — will soon realise. Though the culprit, their brother-in-law, has since been arrested by alert cops, INN visited their home to take stock, tells you that their road to recovery is lonely and long.

It is an urban village which boasts of a close-knit Muslim society. Elders tell you that, in their living memory, there has not been a single eve-teasing case here. In fact, the non-descript Kandhala in Shamli district of West Uttar Pradesh, has never made any kind of news — till April 2, 2013, when four sisters became victims of a vicious acid attack, a crime that is considered heinous globally but sits pretty on weak laws and easy and cheap availability of acid in the market.

LITERACY ON THE RISE AND SEX RATIO BETTER IN INDIA

By M H Ahssan / Hyderabad

This is one slump in growth rate that the nation can rejoice over. According to Census 2001- 2011, India’s population has grown at 17.7 per cent as against 21.5 per cent in the previous decade.

The country’s population at present is 1.21 billion, an increase of 181.96 million since 2001. What is even more comforting for the country’s planners is the fact that female growth rate has been better than male growth rate. The male population has gone up by 90.97 million, against a rise of 90.99 in the population of females over the last 10 years.

The rate of growth of the female population is 18.3 per cent, while the male growth rate stands at 17.1 per cent, according to the final census released by Union Home Ministry.

While there has been a 3.8 per cent drop in the overall growth rate, there is still scope for improvement as 14 states and Union Territories have registered over 20 per cent growth in population figures. Among the major states, Bihar has recorded the highest decadal growth in population ( 25.4 per cent), surpassing West Bengal, which occupied the first position in 1991- 2001.

'Tourist Visa On Arrival' To Boost Tourism In India

Tourist Visa On Arrival (TVOA) scheme should have a significant and positive impact on the decision to travel to India. Union Tourism Minister K.Chiranjeevi met Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and submitted a proposal to extend Visa-on-arrivals to 16 countries. 
    
The ministry of tourism strongly felt that the "Tourist Visa - on - Arrival (TVOA)" facility for those countries, which are potential source markets to India and where there have been no security related issues in the past or likely to be in future can be taken up under this scheme. 
    
Accordingly, the ministry of Home Affairs accepted the proposal of the ministry of tourism and introduced "Tourist Visa - on - Arrival (TVOA)" scheme for the tourists from five countries viz. Singapore, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Japan & Finland on a pilot basis for a period of one year w.e.f. 01st January 2010. 
    
The TVOA scheme was extended by the ministry of Home Affairs on an experimental basis for one year for the nationals of six more countries - Cambodia,Vietnam,Laos, Philippines, Indonesia and Myanmar arriving at the airports of New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, with effect from 1st January 2011.Thus, the Tourist Visa - on - Arrival with a maximum validity of 30 days with single entry facility is being granted by Immigration Officers at Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata airports to the citizens of eleven countries - Singapore, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Japan, Finland, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Philippines, Indonesia and Myanmar. 
    
An independent study conducted by the Indian Institute of Tourism and Travel Management (IITTM) has noted that TVOA scheme has a significant and positive impact on the decision to travel to India. This scheme needs to be expanded to cover more countries and more ports of entry. The ministry of tourism had proposed extension of TVOA to the following markets: 

(i) Germany, France, Spain, Poland, Sweden and Norway to cover the European and Scandinavian countries which are key inbound markets. 
(ii) Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to cover the emerging markets from the CIS countries. 
(iii) Brazil and South Africa to cover foster IBSA Cooperation and Trinidad & Tobago to foster our historical links. 
(iv) Thailand, Malaysia and Brunei to cover all the ASEAN countries which will be consistent with our look east policy. 
    
The ministry of tourism had also proposed extension of TVOA to more airports namely Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kochi, Goa,Bodhgaya and Trivandrum. 
    
Visa on Arrival is an attraction for potential tourists in key markets and at times also helps in tapping the people who make decisions at the last moment. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is considering this issue of extending TVOA to the 16 countries proposed by MOT earlier. 
    
Keeping in view the recent travel trends, the ministry of tourism now also proposes TVOA scheme for South Korea, which is a very important tourist generating market.

SALLU'S SENTI'MENTAL' GIFT COMING THIS NOVEMBER

By Niloufer Azmi / Mumbai

Salman Khan will have a release in 2013, after all, with the makers of his next, Mental , freezing November 22 as the date it hits theaters worldwide.

The release of the film has been a subject of speculation ever since it was announced.

While Salman and his director brother Sohail Khan initially planned to ready it for an Eid release, it was soon obvious that the star would not be able to complete the film on time owing to health problems.

Opinion Polls Predict Congress May Loose In South & Northen States While BJP's May Win In 2014 Elections?

By Likha Veer | INN Live

The Bharatiya Janata Party under the leadership of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi seems to have impressed rural voters throughout the country as the BJP is emerging as the most favoured party in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

According to the poll survey conducted by CVoter, the BJP is likely to bag highest ever seats crossing all its previous tallies. The survey predicts that BJP would emerge as the single largest party by winning 188 seats while the final results of NDA is likely to be close to 220 seats. The saffron party had bagged 116 seats in the 2009 general elections.

Anything That Moves: How The Indian Left Lost The Plot On The Uniform Civil Code

By M H AHSSAN | INNLIVE

The Muslim Women’s Bill passed by Rajiv Gandhi’s government exactly 30 years ago had a range of unexpected consequences.

My disenchantment with the Indian Left was gradual, but if I had to pick a single moment when it crystallised, I’d point to an evening in the mid-1990s, a room in Bombay’s St Xavier’s College, a monthly study circle meeting of activists, academics, journalists and students, which, at one point, turned to the issue of personal law. I mentioned the need for a secular civil code applicable to all citizens, and was met with looks that ranged from quizzical to derisory.

After the discussion got bogged down in details of implementation, I asked: “Let us suppose there was no protest from citizens of any faith to the enactment of a common civil law that guarantees equal rights for women. How many of the people here would be in favour of it?”

There were about a dozen people sitting in a ring of chairs in that room, and mine was the only hand raised.

Over the next few years, a number of prominent feminists lined up against the idea of a uniform civil code. Flavia Agnes of the Majlis Legal Centre, whose work I respect greatly, has ranked the agitation against a Uniform Civil Code among Majlis’ major achievements of the past 25 years. How did champions of women’s rights come to believe that the interests of Indian women would be best served by continuing to be ruled by manifestly discriminatory laws?

It was not a direct consequence of feminist discourse, but a by-product of the politics of communalism, which became the central concern of the Indian Left in the 1990s.

The Shah Bano case legacy:
Almost exactly 30 years ago, on May 19, 1996, The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, gained the assent of India’s President and came into force. It was shepherded through Parliament by Rajiv Gandhi, who enjoyed an unprecedented majority in the Lok Sabha. The law had been formulated in response to protests from Muslim organisations against a Supreme Court verdict, pronounced a year previously, which commanded a well-off Muslim man to provide maintenance to the wife he had divorced – Shah Bano Begum – who had been reduced to penury. Since Muslim law has no provision for alimony, community leaders saw it as an abrogation of their religious rights.

The Supreme Court judgement in the Shah Bano case based itself on Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which capped maintenance at Rs 500 a month, a measly amount even in the 1980s. It was very far from granting alimony on par with the income of the husband.

The Muslim Women’s Act, on the other hand, made a provision for judges to provide far larger amounts in alimony payments. Despite that deliberately created loophole in the bill, conservative Muslim organisations welcomed it, and it came to be seen, not without justice, as the perfect example of a nominally secular party pandering to sectarian activists.

The narrative of minority appeasement and pseudo-secularism that grew around the Muslim Women’s Act fuelled the movement in favour of the Babri Masjid’s demolition, and sparked violence against Muslims across the country, the deadliest conflagration being the Bombay riots of January 1993. The bill laid the groundwork for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ascent to power a decade later.

Uniform civil law, not codification:
As communal divisions widened in the country after the promulgation of the Muslim Women’s Act, an unlikely ideological switch took place. Hindutvavadis, who in the years following independence had been the most obdurate opponent of pro-female reforms proposed by Jawaharlal Nehru and BR Ambedkar, began using phrases like “gender justice” in arguing for a common civil code. The Left, which had backed the Nehru-Ambedkar thrust to ensure equal rights for women, and which had criticised Rajiv Gandhi’s bowing before regressive Muslim clergymen and politicians, now lined up alongside those very leaders to oppose reform.

Hindutvavadis had been exercised for decades by the asymmetry of civil law reform. A series of bills passed in the 1950s – the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, 1956, and the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, 1956 – had endowed Hindu women with rights they did not traditionally possess. Unfortunately, Hindu conservatives could not be denied fully, and though Nehru fought and won a general election on a platform of reforming civil laws, the final bills, like India’s Constitution itself, were some distance from the egalitarian texts their primary sponsors desired.

The most glaring drawback of the legislation was that it denied women rights to ancestral property. This was finally rectified in the Hindu Succession Amendment Act, of 2005. There remain dozens of provisions relating to issues like divorce and adoption that require updating. Nevertheless, if one compares the laws governing Hindu women as they stand today with the situation that prevailed a 100 years ago, the change is revolutionary.

We can go on refining laws for Hindus, but at some point there has to be movement towards changing laws for Muslims as well. Nehru should have taken it up in the years following the passage of the Hindu Marriage Act. It was always meant to be a three-step process: Hindus first, Muslims second, and then Hindus, Muslims and everybody else together. That second step has yet to be taken, and the failure isn’t down to the Indian government not caring about Muslims, as some suggest, but because of the obduracy of powerful conservative Muslim factions.

Injustice to women:
People on the Left now promote reform and codification of Muslim laws instead of a uniform civil code. This is a red herring. Codification and reform could help on the margins, but any such new laws would still be deeply unjust, because sharia is fundamentally unfair to women.

At this point, there will be objectors asking, “Which sharia? Islamic law is not a monolith." It isn’t, but all schools of Islamic jurisprudence are unfair to women, and all agree on certain fundamentally important issues.

Take inheritance for instance. Each school of sharia law accepts that female children inherit only half the portion of their male siblings. At a seminar once, I was on a panel with the social reformer and Islamic scholar Asghar Ali Engineer who was arguing against the idea of a uniform civil code. I asked him if there was any instance in the rich and varied history of Islamic jurisprudence of women being granted equal inheritance rights. He could not name any, nor have I heard or read of one in the years since that debate. The same applies to provisions for divorce: No school of sharia law gives women anything approaching the privileges men possess.

In light of these facts, the logic favouring a secular, universally applicable civil code seems incontrovertible to me. Fact: A liberal country should guarantee equality to women. Fact: A cornerstone of such equality is the provision of equal rights to divorce and inheritance. Fact: There is no tradition in Islamic law allowing anything close to equality in these respects. Conclusion: The only way India can guarantee equal rights to Muslim women is by foregoing religious personal laws in favour of a secular law.

It is legitimate to fear that a common civil code promulgated by a BJP government will be unfair. But surely the solution is to generate a just, secular code, rather than settling for unjust religious. We already have working templates on which such a code could be based, from Goa’s uniform civil law to clauses in the Special Marriages Act. These will need to be updated to account for half a century of progressive legislation elsewhere in the world, and will still be far from perfect. It is too early, for example, to include gay marriage in any Indian civil code, since homosexuality itself is still criminalised. Nevertheless, framing a substantially egalitarian set of laws is hardly rocket science.

The worst argument against the uniform civil code is that it the time isn’t right for it because resistance from Indian Muslims will be too great. If there is only one path to equality, the state is duty bound to fight those who block the way. If we wait for resistance to die down, we will wait forever, and Indian Muslim women will forever be denied equality before the law.