New Delhi : The Supreme Court on Friday was told that just as the statue of Bamiyan Buddha was destroyed by the Afghan Taliban, similarly the Hindu Taliban razed the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992.

“Just as Bamiyan Buddha was destroyed by Afghan Taliban, same way Babri Masjid was destroyed by Hindu Taliban,” the bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice S. Abdul Nazeer was told by senior counsel Rajeev Dhavan. 

“No faith has a right to destroy a mosque,” Dhavan said, assailing the argument by the Hindu side that no equity survived once the mosque had gone (razed). 

“It can’t be, should not be argued that no equity lies and there is nothing left to be decided once it (mosque) has been destroyed,” Dhavan told the bench.

Dhavan said this to the three-judge bench while advancing arguments that the 1994 top court judgment that had said that offering namaz in a mosque was not an essential practice of Islam needed to be revisited.

“The question of essential practice was totally alien to the case before the top court bench in 1994,” he said.

Appearing for the lead petitioner M. Siddiqui represented by his legal heir, Dhavan assailed the Uttar Pradesh government for abandoning its neutrality and pointing fingers at Muslim litigants for making “belated efforts” seeking a relook at the 1994 Ismail Farooqui judgment that had said that mosques were not an integral part of religious practice of offering prayers.

He told the court that the neutrality had been broken by the Uttar Pradesh government which was represented by the Additional Solicitor General – a law officer of the Central government which is the receiver of the disputed land.

Describing the shift in the stand of the Uttar Pradesh government as a “breach of faith”, Dhavan said that there was no delay on the part of the Muslim litigants in flagging the issue and they did it in the first instance when the opportunity arose. 

It were the Hindu litigants who had relied upon the 1994 judgment during the hearing of the title suit of the disputed site before the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court. 

The senior counsel took exception to senior counsel K. Parasaran telling the court on May 17 that for Muslims “Makkah and Madinah alone are places of particular significance” as pilgrimage centres but such was not the case with Ayodhya/Babri Masjid.

Describing it as invidious argument, Dhavan said this meant that for the Muslims and Christians, their centre of pilgrimages were overseas and thousands of churches and mosques could be closed.

This also amounted to saying that Hindus were protected by the Article 25 of the constitution but not the Muslims and Christians and “We (the Hindus) are superior and everything belongs to us”. 

Dhavan described as an indulgent act of “charity” the offer by the Shia Waqf Board to move out of the disputed site in return for a site for a new mosque. 

He said the 1994 judgment needed to be revisited as the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court relied on this in deciding the Ayodhya title suit by which the disputed 2.77 acres site was ordered to be divided between the Nirmohi Akhara, the Lord Ram deity and the Sunni Waqf Board.

The top court is hearing a batch of cross petitions challenging the 2010 Allahabad High Court judgment by which it had divided the disputed 2.77 acres site between the Nirmohi Akhara, the Lord Ram deity and the Sunni Waqf Board.

(With Inputs from Agency)

Starting late July, the Anamalai hills near Munnar in Kerala will be resplendent, clad in a purplish blue carpet. The famed Neelakurinji (Strobilanthes kunthiana) will burst into flower – a phenomenon that occurs once in 12 years. Hundreds of thousands of visitors are expected to flock to the Munnar hills to behold the spectacle that lasts up until October.

Munnar is home to the highest concentration of neelakurinji plants in the country – spread over 3,000 hectares of rolling hills. Each shrub reproduces once in its life time and dies after flowering. It takes another 12 years for the seeds to sprout again and grow up to 30 to 60 centimetres high, for another glorious bloom.

The neelakurinji belongs to the genus Strobilanthes, which is a tropical plant species found in Asia and Australia. There are about 450 species of Strobilanthes in the world, of which 146 are found in India and of them, about 43, in Kerala.

The blooming of neelakurunji this year has ensured the fourth most important place for the Western Ghats in the Lonely Planet’s 2018 Best in Asia.

According to Prasad Ambattu, a journalist and a resident of Munnar, there are two 12-year cycles simultaneously going on in the Anamalai hills. In one cycle, the last neelakurinji bloom was in 2006 and the next one is now, in 2018. In the other cycle, the last bloom was in 2014.

The mass flowering neelakurinji provides a feast for butterflies, honeybees and other insects. The purple flowers hold a large amount of nectar, which especially attract the eastern honeybee (Apis cerana).

“This honey from the neelakurinji is very special. It lasts for about 15 years without getting spoilt,” said G. Rajkumar, chief coordinator of the NGO Save Kurinji Campaign Council. He added that the honey is supposed to have medicinal properties.

Rajkumar also said that the ecosystem that supports the kurinji plants plays a major role in bringing water to the Amaravati river which is a tributary of the Kaveri river, a main water source for Tamil Nadu. “The Kurinji reserve is in the catchment area of Amaravati river,” he said.

The tourist boom begins

The forest department expects a large number of tourists to arrive in Munnar during this season, said Lekshmi Rajeshwari, forest range officer at Devikulam, which is part of the Eravikulam National Park, the prime destination where neelakurinji will bloom.

“One million tourists, including travellers from Europe and the United States, are expected to visit this amazing place this year,” she said. 

Last October, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had communicated through a social media post that around eight lakh (0.8 million) tourists are expected for the bloom season and the state government aims to introduce a series of measures to protect the Eravikulam National Park. As an unprecedented number of tourists will visit the region, the government plans to restrict the numbers entering the park and the amount of time they spend there, said Vijayan’s post. Action on waste management and required tourist facilities are to be in place to safeguard the national park.

Encroachment on the neelakuri habitats

The Kurinjimala Sanctuary was declared in 2006, during the previous mass flowering to protecting the neelakurinji and its habitat. “This sanctuary gives the rarest, most spectacular view of neelakurinji,” said G. Baburaj, an environmentalist. “But it is eyed by many,” he added, elaborating that the area is being encroached on by resorts, hotels, plantations and small farms.

To put an end to the encroachments, the Kerala government passed an ordinance in 2006, for protecting the Kurinjimala Sanctuary. Since a number of settlements came under the area in the sanctuary, which was raising a stir among locals, the government, in the ordinance, authorised a sub-collector to adjudicate land claims after hearing complaints.

The proposed land that came under this ordinance included 2,041 houses, more than 53 government offices, 12 schools, 62 temples, churches and even banks. There were allegations against local politicians for forging title deeds of land ownership in the areas declared as protected.

However, for Kurinjimala to be declared as a wildlife sanctuary permanently under the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, there is need for the settlement officer (in this case the Devikulam sub-collector) to go through the settlement of rights process for those who have inhabited or have rights over the land. This has now happened.

In November 2017, the Kerala Government decided to redraw the boundaries of the Kurinjimala Sanctuary – a move which had invited criticism alleging that it was to support the encroachers.

Following the controversy, Pinarayi Vijayan had promised that the reserve’s area will not be reduced at any cost. He told media representatives that a committee will be formed to study the issues at the reserve and it will look in to the settlement concerns.

There is also a case pending in the Kerala High Court, demanding a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) enquiry into the involvement of the local member of Parliament in fabricating documents for the land. Similarly, there are hundreds of such encroachments in the reserve, claims environmentalist G. Baburaj.

Protection for neelakurinji habitat finally declared

Now, in the latest decision as of April 2018, the Kerala cabinet has decided to ensure that the proposed Neelakurinji Sanctuary will have a minimum of 3,200 hectares. Though the cabinet had decided not to evict people with title deeds, it plans to redraw the boundaries in cooperation with the revenue department.

The cabinet decision includes appointing a settlement officer, conducting drone-based survey to identify the forest land and amending The Kerala Promotion of Tree Growth In Non-Forest Areas Act 2005 to prevent growing acacia and eucalyptus in the reserve forest area, all meant to benefit the Kurinjimala Sanctuary.

(IANS)

Some popular apps on your Android phone may be actively listening to you, monitoring your habits and even secretly taking screenshots of your activity and sending them to third parties, a new study has found.

These screenshots and videos of your activity on the screen could include usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, and other important personal information, the researchers said.

“We found that every app has the ability to record your screen and anything you type,” said David Choffnes, a Professor at Boston’s Northeastern University. 

The findings will be presented at the Privacy Enhancing Technology Symposium Conference in Barcelona.

For the study, the team analysed more than 17,000 of the most popular apps on the Android operating system, using an automated test programme written by the students. 

In all, 9,000 of the 17,000 apps showed the potential to take screenshots.

“There were no audio leaks at all. Not a single app activated the microphone,” said Christo Wilson, Professor at the varsity. 

“Then we started seeing things we didn’t expect. Apps were automatically taking screenshots of themselves and sending them to third parties.”

Although these privacy breaches appeared to be benign, they emphasised how easily a phone’s privacy window could be exploited for profit.

“This opening will almost certainly be used for malicious purposes. It’s simple to install and collect this information. And what’s most disturbing is that this occurs with no notification to or permission by users,” Wilson noted. 

Although the study was conducted on Android phones, there is no reason to believe that other phone operating systems would be less vulnerable, the researchers said.

Another study, published in Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain, found that apps developed to help people track their migraine pain often share information with third parties, posing privacy risks partly because there are few legal protections against the sale or disclosure of data from medical apps to third parties.

“In 2018, it is estimated that nearly half of 3.4 billion smartphone users will use health related apps, and currently, there are a wide range of apps on the market for various neurologic and pain conditions,” said lead author Mia Minen, from the New York University Langone Medical Center in the US. 

“We think our study may have widespread implications for people suffering from various chronic conditions,” Minen added.

(IANS)

Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen said the lack of attention on social sectors had taken a “quantum jump in the wrong direction” since the BJP came to power and that despite the visible prominence of backwardness in India, the political dispensation was diverting attention from the core issues.

“Things have gone pretty badly wrong. Even previously before this government, we did not do enough on education and health. But it has taken a quantum jump in the wrong direction since 2014,” Amartya Sen said on Saturday during a discussion on his new book “Bharat Aur Uske Virodhabhas” (India and its Contradictions), co-authored with economist Jean Dreze.

Pointing out the contradiction in India getting backward while also being the fastest growing economy in the world, the Nobel Laureate said: “Twenty years ago, of the six countries in this region, India was the second best after Sri Lanka. Now it is the second worst.”

“And because of Pakistan’s problems, Pakistan has managed to shield us from being the worst,” he said.

He added that while people should take pride in the things that India has, they must be critical of those things of which they have reason to be ashamed.

“Despite the easy prominence of backwardness in India… now if you try to draw attention to that, the way to deflect it is to say: now think about the great pride of India,” Sen said. 

He said despite the enormous inequalities, it was possible to distract attention.

“A great writer who I admire, V.S. Naipaul, who wrote such a novel like ‘A House for Mr Biswas’, could also write that what happened after the 13th century was destruction of Hindu temples and Hindu civilisation, overlooking that this is also when new ideas were coming in.

“If you can distract V.S. Naipaul’s attention then you can distract the attention of most intelligent people,” the Nobel Laureate said.

“The result is that there has been deflection. When there has been this deflection, we have to do something anti-deflection,” he added.

Dreze, who co-authored the book, said while India, in the last few years, had got some success in its quest to become the fastest growing economy — “helped partly by slowdown in China’s growth and partly by some jugglery of numbers” — there is a significant difference between growth and development. 

“While development is the goal, economic growth is the medium to achieve that goal. And it’s something to think about that despite 7 per cent GDP growth, the income of the rural labourer has remained the same and yet no one speaks about it,” he said.

He added that while economic growth can help in achieving development, it needs to be accompanied by public action. 

“If we talk about health, India is way behind even Bangladesh despite being economically ahead of it. And that is because of lack of public action in India compared to Bangladesh.

“Similarly public action is crucial for education, nutrition, social security, ensuring equality, and environmental protection,” he said.

New Delhi : The Supreme Court on Monday said all private hospitals in the national capital, which were given land on concessional rate, must provide free treatment to certain percentage of poor patients.

Providing treatment to the poor was one of the clauses in the lease deed due to which land was given to hospitals at a very cheap price.

It is mandatory for private hospitals, built on land allocated by the government on concessional rates, to provide 10 per cent treatment to In Patient Department (IPD) and 25 per cent to Out Patient Department (OPD) for free.

A bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra said any resistance by the hospitals would lead to cancellation of the lease and sought periodical report on compliance of its order from the Delhi government.

The bench said it will monitor functioning of private hospitals to ensure that the poor patients are treated free of cost.

Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency in 1975, plonk in the middle of the most intense phase of the Cold War. Détente was going so badly for the Americans that stand up comedians in Washington were comparing it to a wife swapping party “from where you return alone”.

After the Vietnam debacle, Washington was going to exert every muscle not to allow Moscow to build upon the strategic asset it had created for itself in New Delhi during the 1971 Bangladesh war.

In fact, the Congress split of 1969 was itself an advantage for Moscow. Indira Gandhi had discarded the conservative, pro-capital big wigs, more comfortable with Congress stalwarts like Morarji Desai whom she had defeated in the Parliamentary party contest to become Prime Minister in 1966.

Not only was a former card carrying Communist (from Eton and Oxford too), Mohan Kumaramangalam, part author of the split, he had worked out an arrangement with the General Secretary of the CPI, S.A. Dange, described as a policy of “Unite and Struggle”. We shall, said Dange, unite with the Congress’ progressive policies but “struggle” against its “anti people” deviations.

This was a pronounced leftward lurch and it was going to be resisted by a coalition of the Right, both internal and external. Indeed, as early as 1967, within a year of her coming to power, Indira Gandhi was given notice: she lost elections in eight states to parties of the opposition. This groundswell would obviously suit the purposes of the Congress old guard discarded by Gandhi.

The most succinct observation on Gandhi’s ideological leaning came from the correspondent of the Times London, Peter Hazelhurst: “She is a little to the Left of self interest.”

Her ideological inconsistency becomes apparent if one reverts to her earliest days in 1959 as President of the Congress. She dismissed the world’s first Communist government which had come to power through the ballot box in Kerala. That she took American help to unsettle Kerala to justify the state government’s dismissal was revealed by US ambassador, Ellsworth Bunker in an oral interview kept in the Columbia University archives. Whatever doubts there might have been about the Bunker revelations, were cleared later by Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his memoirs. 

During her Prime Ministership in 1976, the Congress party raised a storm against the US having installed a nuclear device on Nanda Devi peak to spy on China. The controversy had many twists. A joint CIA and Intelligence Bureau effort to install the device in 1965 (Lal Bahadur Shastri was Prime Minister then) had failed because of bad weather. Worse, two plutonium laden capsules had been lost. According to the Intelligence estimates the plutonium was enough for half a Hiroshima bomb.

In the course of an interview, Chester Bowles, US ambassador during Indira Gandhi’s first innings, took my breath away. He couldn’t understand Congress protest. “After all Indira had asked me to complete in 1966 the project which had been aborted in 1965.”

Well, this is how the Congress’ attitude towards the super powers varied from time to time. But for the West the spectacle of Gandhi and Dange in a warm embrace was alarming because of the context. The West had taken a series of knocks – Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua were all Communist. Additionally Communist leaders Enrico Berlinguer, Georges Marchais, Santiago Carrillo in Italy, France and Spain respectively were a headache for the West. Given this state of play, India was too priceless a trophy to be easily lost to Moscow’s sphere of influence.

The obstacle in the way of a counteroffensive was Gandhi’s personality. She had evolved into a charismatic and, therefore, invincible leader. Proprietor of the Indian Express, Ramnath Goenka and Nanaji Deshmukh, fell into deep thought.

The Indian mind reveres renunciation. It occurred to the head hunters that once a top ranking Socialist leader, Jayaprakash Narayan, had renounced political power. He was keeping himself busy with Gandhiji’s ashrams and such unlikely causes as Acharya Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan or Land Gift movement. JP agreed to lead the movement provided it remained peaceful. 

The youth were in agitation across the globe against the excesses of the Vietnam War – Grosvenor Square, London, barricades in Paris, police shooting down of students at the Kent state university in Ohio, US. Soon thereafter the Navnirman Andolan, youth agitation in Gujarat erupted on a seemingly flimsy issue of hostel fees. After visiting Gujarat, JP was prevailed upon to launch a similar movement against corruption and bad governance in Bihar. It was a tepid agenda livened up only by the media dedicated to the task of keeping up the pressure on New Delhi, boosting notions of a “total revolution” one day, asking police and the bureaucracy not to obey “bad” orders another, and so on. The immediate target of the “movement” was a hapless Chief Minister, Abdul Ghafoor, quite bewildered by his own eminence. Why was he in the eye of a storm? He had sunken cheeks and a drooping frame, draped in a much worn Sherwani. By way of hospitality for visiting scribes, he would fetch a bottle of old smuggler Scotch whisky from his wardrobe full of smudged clothes which were clearly waiting for laundry. He was a simple man, not a plausible enough crook to invite a national movement for his ouster.

JP, who had invited me to stay in his house in Patna’s Kadam Kuan, listened to my stories even about the Chief Minister with a kindly smile. He was a trusting man and totally non judgemental about the wide range of political interests who had clambered onto his movement.

The movement was carried mostly by RSS cadres, with a sprinkling of socialists, Gandhians and Congress (O), mostly those who had been shown the door by Gandhi in 1969. This exactly was the rough outline of the group which morphed into a coalition in the course of the movement. The coalition came to power in 1977 as the Janata Party. 

Supposing the Allahabad High Court had not disqualified Gandhi, how would events have shaped? If Sanjay Gandhi, Siddhartha Shankar Ray, Muhammad Yunus and others had not forced her hand on the Emergency, how would the Gandhi-JP standoff have concluded?

(A senior commentator on political and diplomatic affairs, Saeed Naqvi can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com. The views expressed are personal.)  (IANS)

It was success of this feel good romance that suddenly woke up the Indian spinners of mush and schmaltz to target the non-resident Indian audience, which was deemed as a quite lucrative option besides the home-crowds. It was also written and directed by Aditya Chopra and produced by his father Yash Chopra. The plot revolves around two young non-resident Indians, who fall in love during a vacation and meander through Europe with their friends. The film was shot on various locations in India, London and Switzerland, beginning from September 1994 to August 1995.

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge released on 20 October 1995, became the highest grossing Bollywood film of the year earning ?1.06 billion in India and ?160 million overseas. It won 10 Filmfare Awards, the most for a single film at that time, and won the National Film Award for Best Popular Film  Its soundtrack album was one of the highest selling albums of the 1990s and its ditties still blare on the radio nearly quarter of a decade later!

The film was praised for promoting strong family values and listening to one’s own heart and British Film Institute listed twelfth best on its list of top Indian films of all time. It went on to be the longest-running film in the history of Indian cinema. As of 2015, almost 20 years after its first release, it was shown last time on February 19, 1009 weeks – 19 years and 21 weeks – after it began playing on October 19, 1995. 

Aditya Chopra cut his teeth by being involved with his father in Bollywood’s grist during the making of Chandni(1989), Lamhe (1991) and Darr (1993) and then wrote Mohabbatein (2000). For three years, he worked on the story that would become Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge after his mother, the playback singer, screenwriter and producer Pamela Chopra, found that the idea was sound, he decided to make this his directorial debut. 

In May 1994, Aditya’s reading of the first draft of the script to several members of the Yash Raj Films production team who were assigned to work with him were not impressed to say the least he had total editorial control and mandate to make the film according to his own tastes and sensibilities. Aditya struggled with both the dialogue writer Javed Siddiqui and the song lyricist Anand Bakshi to develop words that were “young-sounding”.  DDLJ Â’s dialogue writer, Javed Siddiqui, also parted ways with the Chopras. Aditya, who says he rewrote much of the film’s dialogue, took the credit of ‘additional dialogue’. Siddiqui insists that his writing was hardly changed – Aditya only wrote some lines, which were added while shooting in Switzerland and that the joint credit was ‘an injustice’.

The veteran screenwriter Honey Irani and Pamela Chopra’s best friend  believed that it was proper she was given a writing credit Honey Irani and Pamela had been friends for twenty-two years. Her first script was Lamhe followed by Aaina and Darr and had had meetings with Aditya during which they had worked on the DDLJ screenplay. But Honey’s name does not appear on the DDLJ credits. Aditya maintains he only had four sessions with her, and then wrote the film on his own. Honey disagrees and says thatthey had several 7 a.m. meetings on DDLJ and she even accompanied the unit for the Switzerland schedule. After Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, neither of them ever collaborated with Yash Raj Films again..

All the senior actors had been doubtful of Adi’s ‘newbie’ directorial skills initially. Amrish Puri used to quiz him with questions like ‘What time is it in London right now’ to check how well he knows his story and his characters.

Aditya Chopra had originally wanted Tom Cruise for the male lead falling in love with an Indian belle but was dissuaded by Yash, who did not want to use a foreign star.  Saif Ali Khan was interested to play the lead but declined for unknown reasons later. It was Shah Rukh Khan who was approached, who was initially not interested in a soft romantic role in lieu of his dark roles in Baazigar and Darr (1993) that had made him such a hot property. 

It was Salman Khan who pumped Shah Rukh to take the role that he had dismissed as the typical lover boy and “girlish” kind of role. Not only Salman but Aditya Chopra persuaded Shah Rukh by telling words that he was refusing a role that will make him “every woman’s dream man, and every mother’s dream son!” The poster of this film signed by Shah rukh Khan in Aditya Chopra’s office is an acknowledgement of gratitude- ‘Thank you for making me the star that I am today’

Kajol a good friend of Aditya Chopra was the first choice to play Simran, to which she quickly agreed. Yash Chopra wanted Milind Gunaji to play Kuljeet. But the actor refused to shave off his beard for the part. Armaan Kohli was the second choice, but he wanted to play the lead and not the villain. So they finally signed Parmeet Sethi. Mala Sinha’s daughter Pratibha was the first choice for Preeti’s character, which was finally played by Mandira Bedi.The brat pack came to full circle with Uday Chopra and his friend  Karan Johar playing cameos in the film as Raj’s friend. Sharmishta Roy was the film’s art director and Manish Malhotra was its costume designer.

Kajol admits that Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge was the corniest title she had ever heard. She had cracked up the first time she heard it. And while Chopra loved working with Kajol, he realised that her spontaneity fizzled out like soda pop after the first two takes, therefore he took to getting the shot from her before her third try.  Kajol’s all green mehndi attire became a huge hit so much so that even at her own wedding Kajol wore a green Maharashtrian sari. It was Manish Malhotra’s idea to dress Kajol in a green outfit for the song Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna much against the wishes of the director since north Indian brides traditionally wear red, maroon or pink, considering them auspicious colours.

Dilwale Dulhania was first Indian movie with a Dolby sound mix and was the first film in the history of Bollywood with a credit of  ‘title suggested by’ Anupam Kher’s wife, actress Kirron Kher taking inspiration from the Le Jayenge number from Chor Machaye Shor (1974).. The first sequence filmed was for the song Ho Gaya Hai Tujhko in Switzerland. The European portion mainly filmed in Saanen, Montbovon and Gstaad, Switzerland, in England, atTrafalgar Square, King’s Cross railway station and Angel tube station. But if you think India did not figure in the film then you’re wrong, three weeks before his January schedule, cinematographer Manmohan Singh, a regular collaborator with Chopra  and Aditya were scouting for sarson. Yash, Manmohan and Aditya travelled through Punjab, but sarson proved elusive. There were occasional blotches of flowers and not a sea of yellow! It was finally neighbouring Gurgaon where the idyllic carpets of yellow flowers with a train track going through it were found! 

Saroj Khan remained the choreographer for most of the production despite several disputes between them, she was however replaced by Farah Khan near the end of the shoot recommended SRK. Farah choreographed the song Ruk Ja O Dil Deewane. Saroj Khan apologised to Aditya Chopra after the film became a huge success for having doubted his talent.

Shah Rukh was in a crossfire between this film and Trimurti(1995), spending half of his day on each film. SRK’s full name in the movie was Rajnath fashioned after Rishi Kapoor’s name in Bobby. In the scene whereAnupam Kher tells SRK about the drudgry of his forefathers in academics he recited names of his real uncles who were academic duds! Amrish Puri based some of his character’s nuances on his own highly disciplined father and K L Saigal was in reality Amrish Puri’s favourite singer! 

Jatin and Lalit Pandit were given only 10 days to compose the complete background score, and the first copies were printed on 30 September. Aditya Chopra not happy with Jatin-Lalit’s first para (mukhda) for Tujhe Dekha Toh Yeh Jana Sanam composed Ho Gaya Hai Tujh Ko Toh Pyaar Sajna all by himself! Mere Khwabon Mein Jo Aaye was the first song of the film to be recorded and Aditya Chopra had rejected 24 verses written by Anand Bakshi before giving the go ahead to the final one. The film made in the 25th year of Yash Raj Films premiered at Mumbai’s New Excelsior theatre on October 20, the debutant director joined his music directors, Jatin and Lalit Pandit after interval, in the foyer. The standing ovation at the end of the film went on for five minutes!

After filming was complete, Aditya decided to make a Hollywood-style documentary of the film-making process, never been attempted ever before in India. On 18 October, two days before the film’s release, DDLJ was the first film to have a 30-minute television show on its making telecast on Doordarshan.

In 2009, the then Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit confessed that she had viewed the super-hit Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge 15 times in presence of Yash Chopra present at the event.

Digital devices have now become such a big part of so many people in India that two-thirds of users in the country find it difficult to stay away from their mobile phones even for a day, shows a new survey.

The global average of users unwilling to separate from their mobile phones stands at 48 per cent, according to the report titled “The State of Digital Lifestyles – 2018” from Limelight Networks, a global digital content delivery platform.

Indian consumers ranked second, after Malaysia, for being the most addicted to their digital devices, showed the findings based on a survey of consumers in 10 countries. 

Laptop and desktop computers were the second most integral digital technology for Indian users, with 45 per cent of respondents reporting that they could not go without them for even a day, which is highest in the survey and 12 per cent more than the global average of 33 percent, Limelight Networks said in a statement. 

More than 90 per cent of Indian respondents said digital technology had positively impacted their lives.

India users also showed the highest level of engagement across all types of online digital content among all the countries surveyed. 

More than 75 per cent Indian respondents said they downloaded or streamed music at least once a week, the highest rate among the surveyed countries. 

Indian respondents also displayed higher inclination to downloading movies and watching them offline, which is 12 per cent higher than the global average, the report said. 

“India has made remarkable progress in terms of digital adoption. One of the key takeaways from the survey has been that the Indian users are clearly more willing to adopt digital products and services and make it a part of their day-to-day lives,” said Gaurav Malik, Country Head, India at Limelight Networks.

“This is a positive sign for all stakeholders, including market players, consumers and the government as it leads to a win-win proposition for everyone and will boost the productivity of the nation as the digital adoption increases,” Malik added.

NEW DELHI: Madhur Prabhakar, who recently gave up his secure government job to pursue his tech dream and latched on to the bandwagon of Start-Ups, has already won acclaim in the House of Lords and last month in the Bahamas. 

His initiative to root out corruption and malpractices like fake degrees and cheating in on-line exams led him to flock to the growing global community of Blockchain.  

He founded EQUATE Platform which strives to remove corruption and manipulation from the current examination and educational set up. ”Education is the most important part of a person’s life but sadly in recent times education has lost its true essence with so many cases of corruption and scams being highlighted in the news on a daily basis,” said Mr Prabhakar. 

Equate Platform is the World’s first and only Blockchain based ‘Online Skills Assessments’ platform (patent pending) that uses ‘Proof Of Assessments’  by leveraging ‘Artificial Intelligence’ powered Smart Contracts. Equate Platform’s unique architecture puts an end to the major problems plaguing the Education sector like paper leaks, counterfeiting of educational transcripts, Resume Frauds etc.

Last month he was invited by the Prime Minister’s Office of the Bahamas for  the ‘Bahamas Blockchain Conference 2018 at Grand Lucayan Convention Center , – an initiative by the government of Bahamas  to align it’s continued efforts to develop Freeport, Grand Bahama Island as the “Silicon Valley of The Caribbean”,

Renowned personalities like Anthony Di Lorio (CEO of De-Central), John Rolle (Governor, Central Bank of The Bahamas) and Dr. Hubert Minnis (Hon’ble Prime Minister of The Commonwealth of the Bahamas) graced the event.

Bahamas Blockchain Conference is a great opportunity for new and upcoming ventures based on this revolutionary technology to present themselves at a global level to attract governments, institutions, investors and beyond, cyber world experts say. 

ABB (India Limited) will collaborate with the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee to construct an operational Smart Electricity Distribution network and management system (SDNMS) in its campus.

The two have signed a Memorandum of Understanding under which this will serve as a pilot project for the Government’s `Smart Cities Mission. The agreement also includes the creation of a Smart Grids Resource Centre and joint R&D facilities in the field of efficient power generation and distribution with a focus on clean energy over the next five years.

IIT Roorkee and ABB will collaborate in assimilating various supply and demand side equipment, devices and systems into an automated and hybrid energy distribution and management system for the campus. ABB will also provide design, engineering, procurement, testing and other services for the SDNMS project, expected to be operational in  2018-19.

India, the world’s third largest consumer of electricity, is working to transform its urban energy infrastructure to make it more citizen-friendly and sustainable. A cost-effective smart distribution system has the potential to significantly reduce India’s carbon footprint.

According to Mr. Sanjeev Sharma, CEO and MD, ABB India: “ABB has a strong relationship with India, having collaborated on several projects over many decades. Our agreement with IIT Roorkee strengthens ABB’s mission to nurture innovative thinking that helps people lead better lives.”

“The project signed today serves as a proof of concept of using smart grids and intelligent automation to efficiently manage power distribution. It would make India’s vision of power to all a reality and ultimately realize ABB’s goal of building technology that runs the world without consuming the earth, Mr Sharma said.”

IIT Roorkee has been working to build a more eco-friendly campus using solar energy for power generation and utilization in various forms.ABB has a strong portfolio of products for the integration, distribution and automation of interconnected renewable energy sources that form local distribution grids.

Prof. Ajit Chaturvedi, Director, IIT Roorkee, said, Â“IIT Roorkee has been harnessing solar energy not only for electricity generation but also for providing direct hot water to all its hostels and residences in the campus, and also carries out solar based cooking in the hostels.”

“The smart energy management and distribution agreement with ABB takes us many steps closer to creating a 100percent green campus and achieving zero carbon dioxide emission in the long run, he added.”

ABB’s equipment, such as the ring main unit upgrade, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, microgrids and energy management systems will be installed to automate and remotely monitor, control and measure the campus grid. The integrated system will offer more power resilience, lower costs due to reduced dependency on electricity sourced from the government utility and diesel generators.

ABB experts will provide inputs for the creation of an SDNMS simulation at the SGRC which will serve as a platform for testing new ideas and techniques for field trials before deployment. A joint R&D facility on campus, supported by ABB, will be created to tighten collaboration between academia and industry and nurture talent through ABB-sponsored scholarships.