Shivratri—is celebrated across the country as Shiva’s night! But, in the Kashmir Valley it is `herath’ meaning `utter surprise’!

There is a story behind `hairath’ or `herath’ or `hearth’ or even `hayrath’ – the last three being the corrupted forms of a Persian word `hairat’ which means `surprise’ in an extreme form. Hayrath is a commonly used word in Kashmiri. 

The story behind it is as follows: The Pathan governor of Kashmir, Jabaar Khan, prohibited Kashmiri Pandits from celebrating Shivaratri festival in winter in the lunar month of Phalgun (Feb-March). It is said that the Governor relished the Kashmiri Hindu non-vegetarian cuisine comprising fish and many varieties of mutton, and suggested that the festival should be celebrated during Aashaad (June – July).  

Jabbar Khan knew that heavy snowfall always marked the great event as is evident from the following refrain of a song usually sung during Shivaratri: “Suna sheen volun daari daare: Maharaza raaza kumaar hai aav ‘’(Flakes of gold snowed slow and steady when prince Shiva arrived to marry!). 

The people obeyed, but it snowed in July that year! The miracle startled everyone, the Pathan ruler, in particular, who expressed utter surprise, hairat. Hence the new name for Shivaratri celebrations. 

Since the untimely snowfall resulted in crop failure and resultant famine, the people of the Valley faced untold misery. The forced alteration in the timing of the festival, therefore, brought innumerable curses upon the ruler. The people cried out in despair: Wuchhyon Yi Jabbaar Jandah, Haaras Ti Kurun Wandah! (Look at this wretched Jabaar in rags; he turned summer into winter!). 

Shivratri is a longish affair for Kashmiri Pandits and barring a few, most families made non-vegetarian food on this day which was offered to Shiva during prayers. But, many things have changed after migration. A majority of the families have turned vegetarian and do not offer non-vegetarian food to `Vatuk’ which is, perhaps, `Batuk Bairav’ form of Shiva. Walnuts are offered as Prasad, probably, in old times nothing much was available during winters.

Herath begins with spring cleaning that sounds irrelevant now. Cleaning huge houses after a severe winter was a massive task then. This was followed by shopping and families would come together for puja and feasting. `Vatuk’ – a line up of specific earthen pots was done in which were put walnuts. The pots were decorated with spring flowers and prayers were offered in the night. Earthen pots have now given way to steel and other metals and puja is now based on audio tapes instead of `family pandits’ who are now extinct clan. 

Salaam, the day after the Shivratri puja is the most important day which in Persian means greetings. The day is for greetings and feasting. The visitors usually were non Kashmiri Pandit families, friends, and neighbours who would stay behind for sumptuous meals. For years now, salaam is confined to greeting calls from friends from Kashmir. No more visitors and no more days of cooking for women in the family. Not only is the cuisine dying, even traditional `Vatuk Puja’ is now a mere ritual than a meaningful, rich religious exercise. 

The elders would also give money to children for celebrations and `herath kharach’ was the most attractive part of the festivities for children. This was mostly cash and in addition to the new clothes children would get to wear.  

The celebrations conclude with `doonya maavas’ when walnuts kept in water on the night of the puja, are eaten with rotis (chotzchi vor) made of rice flour, after a small offering to Shiva. Walnuts never taste so good!!!

Madras : Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) has developed the algorithm for the country’s first medical-grade, wearable device for deriving vitals in a non-invasive manner. The algorithm is being called “VinCense.”

Developed jointly with MedIoTek Health Systems which works on mobile health technology, VinCense can be used for unobtrusive monitoring. Vital signs including pulse-rate, oxygen saturation, respiratory rate, skin temperature, blood pressure and others are duly recorded through this device. The real-time data are stored in the patent-pending secured cloud from where healthcare providers can access vitals using an intuitive interface.

VinCense can be deployed for home healthcare delivery, insurance/analytics and corporate/ industrial occupational health screening. It also has applications for Non-Communicable Diseases Screening and Surveillance, general public health, and community health.

The device was developed by a team led by Prof M. Manivannan, Head of Touch Lab, Biomedical Engineering Group, Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT Madras. Speaking about VinCense, Prof M.Manivannan said that his team is developing algorithms that provide more accurate vitals from the wearable device.

With the focus on preventive health, India has potential to become a Global Healthcare Hub. Only with a fraction of NIH budget, India can double the efficiency in delivering healthcare services to its population, added Prof Manivannan.

Health screening and monitoring towards preventive and curative care are becoming easier using technologies including from virtual reality, gaming, data-sciences and Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). Sophisticated algorithms combined with latest technologies for accurately deriving vital parameters at an affordable cost is the need of the hour.

MedIoTek has been working on this wearable platform for past four years and the Touch Laboratory at IIT Madras has been working on medical simulation technologies providing haptic feedback for past 13 years. This collaboration would further lead to algorithms for medical simulation applied to wireless health monitoring systems. The outcome of this collaboration could lead to early intervention reducing risks and complications and improving clinical outcomes, a statement issued by the IIT-Madras said.

NEW DELHI: Blaming the Central government for messing up things in Kashmir,  former IAS officer Wajajhat Habibullah, who has spent several years of his career in the state, has said the use of Army will not bring about peace in the Valley.

The solution of the problem required only winning the confidence of the youth through sincere dialogue with all stakeholders,” he  said in a wide ranging interview over the situation in the Valley.

”The fact that three divisions of one of the finest armies of the world  are deployed to fight militants whose number is not more than 300, as per government’s own figures,  itself speaks about the efficacy of  the present policy and strategy,” he said,  adding that  if this strategy was not working and was leading to huge loss of lives, then one should think of some other way.

Mr Habibullah was  of the view that if the agitation against the killing of Burhan Wani would  not have been suppressed with so much force, the situation would not have come to such a pass.

On a question about the use of Armed Forced Special Powers Act (AFSPA), he said, ”If we want to use the Army and if the Army feels the need of  Armed Forced Special Powers Act (AFSPA) to deal with a certain situation, so let  it have it, but here the question is whether the situation in Kashmir required deployment of the Army, and my view is that it was not needed at all” .

The former civil servant and also first chief information commissioner of India, who has served as Divisional Commissioner in the state, said that the local police was capable of dealing with the situation but  the then governor Mr Jagmohan had no trust in the state police, because of which the Army had to be brought in but the experience has shown the total failure and disastrous consequences of such a step.

Mr Habibullah said he did not believe in the theory that of the Army was  withdrawn, the state would go with Pakistan.

He is of the view that the more talks are delayed and force used in the state, the greater will be the radicalisation of the youth.

”Let me make it clear here that this radicalisation is not the root cause of the problem but rather it is the result of the failure to resolve the problem.”

The new generation has come to the conclusion that so far no result had come out of the efforts made to resolve the problem and they believe that the government of India is not interested in addressing their grievances and sort out their issues.

”They are saying that they don’t have a feeling of ‘azadi’  in India, and I think it is our failure that we have not been able to create this feeling.”

He said originally they wanted  azadi from Maharaja’s rule and  align with India. Sheikh Abdullah had told chairman of the UN Commission on India and Pakistan that that he wanted to remain with India.    

”We have failed to convince the youth that they can’t have their azadi  in the face of Pakistan, China, Russia and Afghanistan, and that they can have true azadi only by staying with a free and democratic country like India, and we have just tried to fix a political issues by the use of force,” the former IAS officer said.  

He pointed out that the Army has launched Operation Sadbhavna and the civilian government was spending huge money but things have remained here they were.

Mr Habibullah said that by this he did not mean that force should not be used where required but along with the force sincere efforts should be made to engage the people.

He strongly advocated dialogue with all stakeholders, including Hurriyat. ” If Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee wanted talks with all of them and if Mr Advani, who was home minister in the Vajpayee government, was talking, and Dr Manmohan Singh took that forward,  then I fail to understand what is problem with the Modi government?’

”If the Prime Minister was also swearing by ”Insaaniyat”, then he should listen to others,” he said.

Mr Habibullah said one could not justify not holding talks with kashmiri youth and leaders by blaming them for a negative response. ”First we have to convince them of the sincerity of our intentions.”

He said he had publicly appealed to Hurriyat for talks and  was part of the unofficial delegation that went to the state to talk with the people and their leaders.

Welcoming the appointment of a new interlocutor  by the Home Ministry, he hoped that something fruitful would come out, but added that some the Central ministers had given confusing signals about his role.

The Central government has been committing mistakes upon mistakes and adopting an approach which was lending support to the Kashmir youth’s feeling that the Centre had no sympathy with them and cared least about resolution of the issue, he said.

On a question about the recent controversy over the  lodging of FIR in the Shopian filing incident, he said,  ”If you lodge FIR against a person, it does not mean that the person is guilty but lodging of FIR is required under law if some people have been killed. In some cases in the past, the Army has itself conducted an inquiry. 

Such attitude leads to further alienation of the people as it indicates to them that the system was not working in a just manner. 

Replying to a question, he said that the current violence in Kashmir does not have much of outside elements. It is a home grown violence a creation of our own actions.

On a question regarding the problems in the working of the PDP-BJP coalition government in Kashmir, he said they had drawn up a common minimum programme and a major element of which was talks with all stake holders, but that had not happened.

And only now they had started realising that dialogue should be started, but concrete steps are yet to be seen, he added. “It is our responsibility to go to talks them, to tell them that they can have azadi only by staying with a democratic country like India,” Mr Habibullah said.

(The writer is a senior journalist.) 

Hyderabad : If anybody can become a dancer as depicted in 2013 Bollywood dance drama, Anybody Can Dance (ABCD), directed by choreographer Remo D’Souza, why can’t anybody become an astronomer and make new discoveries? 

Yes, says Dr Ananda Hota, radio astronomer at the Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences (University of Mumbai-Department of Atomic Energy) in Mumbai, and he has shown how. He is the founder of a unique citizen science project, RAD@home Astronomy Collaboratory, which trains lay citizens to analyse radio astronomy data from professional telescopes so that they can make discoveries. 

Members of this project have made discoveries using data from radio telescopes in India and abroad. These discoveries have been announced at scientific meetings of astronomers and even published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. 

Any undergraduate science or engineering student or lay person can join the group to get basic training which is provided over Facebook. Face-to-face training camps are also held in different cities. The group’s activities go under hashtag #ABCDresearch – anybody can do research – and are widely followed. Since 2013, Hota has trained over 100 e-astronomers.     

This week, members of this group presented their findings at the 36^th meeting of the Astronomical Society of India in Hyderabad on “three intriguing cases of jet-galaxy interaction as laboratory for AGN (Active Galactic Nuclei) feedback in galaxy merger”. Past discoveries from this group include new Speca-like galaxies, episodic radio galaxies, relic-lobe radio galaxies, a few Z- and X-shaped radio galaxies, intriguing cases of jet-galaxy interaction, bent-lobe radio galaxies tracing cosmic accretion onto clusters through filaments. 

Radio telescopes gather enormous amount of data and it could take professional astronomers decades to analyse every bit collected. At the same time, this data may contain clues to important objects and events on the cosmos. Therefore, observatories make this data available for use to anyone interested. The primary data for the citizen-science project comes from sky surveys done by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. 

“Ours is a unique, zero-infrastructure, zero-funded collaboratory of trained e-astronomers, which has made several new discoveries by analyzing GMRT data using open access tools such as NASA Skyview,” Hota explained while speaking to India Science Wire. 

“This model possibly can convert the Big Data problem in astronomy into a prospect. Citizen science can contribute to knowledge creation in never-seen-before speed and in approach. Since it is based on internet, it can provide an equal opportunity of academic growth to people in under-developed regions where our optical and radio telescopes are located ,” he pointed out.

Unlike conventional education programmes, those who get involved with RAD@home not only learn but also directly contribute to astronomy research from initial one-week face-to-face interaction. “Citizen science can be particularly useful in discovering certain events where features are fuzzy which can be detected more efficiently by human eye than a machine. Radio interferometry images are more complicated than optical and need citizen-scientists to be trained to read them,” pointed out Hota. 

The citizen scientist team which presented its findings in Hyderabad included Akanksha Manojkumar Tiwary, Megha Rajoria, Viswajith Govinda Rajan, Avinash Kumar, Sumanta Kumar Sahoo, Lavanya Nemani, Sagar Sethi, Arpita Misra, Mitali Damle, Shilpa Dubal, Karuna Gamre, Pradeepta Mohanty, Anjali Amesh, Gitika Mall, Alakananda Patra, Charitarth Vyas, Aikya Shah, Ankit Vaghasiya, Ankita Das, Ashutosh Sharma, Bhargav Reddy, Debaiudh Das, Devanshu Shrivastava, Dwiti Krushna Das, Joydeep Naskar, Kavil Mehta, Raveena Dandona, Rohith Sai Shashank, Ronaldo Laishram, Sushrut Mane, Sayali Kulkarni, Pratik Dabhade, Sravani Vaddi, Chiranjib Konar. (India Science Wire)

RAMALLAH: Reiterating India’s support for an independent, sovereign  and peaceful Palestine, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday asserted that relations between India and Palestine have “stood the test of time.’’

As he wound up his brief visit to Palestine, Mr Modi, in his joint press statement along with Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas, said that India hopes for return of peace in the region. He favoured the path of negotiation for establishing peace in the region. It was the first visit by any Indian Prime Minister to Palestine which, Mr Modi said, has always occupied a top spot in India’s foreign policy.

Speaking in Hindi, Mr. Modi said that he hoped for a “peaceful co-existence’’ of Palestine with Israel and added that deep and involved diplomacy could play a vital role in it. “I know it is not easy but efforts should be continued towards this goal,’’ he said.

“People of Palestine have shown exemplary courage in challenging and tough times when there was an unstable environment. We appreciate it,’’ Mr Modi said, President Abbas described Mr. Modi as a “great guest” and said Palestine was relying on India’s influence, its voice on strategic and economic levels and standing on the international fora which would be conducive to the desired goal of peace process process with Israel.  Mr. Modi was also conferred with the Grand Collar of the State of Palestine, highest honour to a foreign dignitary.

President Abbas, in his press statement, said: “I would like to assert our commitment to political action and  negotiations as means of achieving our national goals to freedom and  independence in accordance with the two states’ relation along the lines of 1967.’’

The two sides also signed six agreements and Mr Modi referred to a new  technology park being set up in Ramallah, Institute for Diplomacy and doubling of youth exchange from 50 to 100 from this year. He said that a new skill centre, capacity building centre, IT centres would also be set up with India’s cooperation to hone skills and provide employment to Palestinian youth.

“India remains committed to take care of the Palestinian peoples’ interests and we hope that soon Palestine will become a free country in a peaceful manner,’’ he said.

Prime Minister Modi returned to Jordanian capital Amman from where he will be flying to the United Arab Emirates on the second leg of his three-nation tour.

In the UAE, he will meet Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai, and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. He is also scheduled to speak at the World Government Summit in Dubai, where India is the guest country.

It will be Mr. Modi’s first visit to Oman as Prime Minister and will hold talks with the Sultan of Oman and other leaders. He would also interact with leading businesspersons of Oman on developing stronger economic and business links with India.

More than nine million Indians work and live in the Gulf region, of which about one third live in the UAE alone. In Oman, they constitute the largest expatriate community.  

Jaipur :  With over 7 million users and 60 crores attempted Questions, Mumbai-based start-up today launched its first online center in Sikar and third in Rajasthan. There are two Online Centres already present in Jaipur. Testbook is One Stop Solution to aspirants preparing for SSC (CHSL, CGL), Railways, GATE, RRB, Bank PO, Bank Clerk, Police and Insurance examinations. It looks to be the promising solution for government job aspirants, who can pre- prepare for the new Online exam mode and compete with students from metro cities. 

The founders had noticed that a large proportion of the government job exam aspirants are from tier 2 and tier 3 cities and they often face the problem of non-reliable internet connectivity and many do not have access to computers. So, Testbook came up with a hybrid model and it launched branded Online Centres with computers, internet connectivity and power backup facility for its students. Keeping in mind that a student who comes from tier 2/3 cities.

“Testbook Pass” facility has been provided by Testbook which has made easy for students to buy the online test series as cash solutions for them. Students can purchase the Pass either from Testbook Online Centres (TOC) or Testbook Smart Lab (TSL) or network Bookstores and can activate the unique code printed on it in a single step on Testbook.com or from the Testbook Mobile App.

“Testbook truly believes that with the use of technology, education can and should be imparted to one and all. As I belong to Ajmer and had seen the difficulty faced by the students when they appear for the online government exam jobs. The whole concept behind Testbook Online Center is that we are solving the core issues faced by the aspirants i.e. lack of computer knowledge and infrastructure unavailability. We as an organization believe in empowering each and every student who is aspiring to Government Job. Computer literacy is an important key aspect of this area. We are providing students Real Exam Environment along with computer infrastructure so that when a student sits for the online exam they should be experts with the interface used during the real exam.” said Narendra Agrawal, Co-Founder, Testbook.com

At the launch of Testbook Online Center, Parmeshwar Dadich, partner TOC Sikar said ” Testbook.com will help as helping hand and will benefit the aspirants by Practicing Online Mock Test in Real Exam Environment at the Testbook Online Center.” 

Testbook mobile App is widely loved by students all across the country. With a rating of 4.5, it is the highest rated e-learning education app on the google play store to prepare students for Govt. Jobs. The team behind Testbook.com is already working on leveraging the massive data that is being collected on the platform to make learning more personalized for students so that they can seek better guidance and improve faster. 

Hyderabad : Stars and galaxies in the universe may appear to be static to us as they are located millions of light years away. But the universe is actually dynamic with events occurring in timescales much shorter – years, days and even hours. India is now joining a global network to monitor the dynamic cosmos.

A new telescope is getting ready for commissioning at the Indian Astronomical Observatory at Hanle in Ladakh, as part of an international network specifically designed to watch dynamic events or transient objects in the universe. The programme is called Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen (GROWTH).

Observatories in this network are located in a way that will allow uninterrupted observation of transient events.

“A lot of interesting objects and events occur in the universe which need to be caught very young and soon after they happen, such as supernovae, gamma ray bursts, active galactic nuclei, and many more. They are called transients because electromagnetic signature radiated as a result is transient in nature. Gravitational wave events too fall in this category,” explained G C Anupama, the Indian principal investigator of the project at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, while speaking to India Science Wire here.

The facility will also track asteroids. “Near-earth asteroids are not transients in the sense of their light emitting capability, but they do come close to the earth and that is when you need to track them. This time period is very short. In this sense, they are transient in terms of time,” said Anupama.

The new 70 cm telescope is much smaller than the 2 meter Himalayan Chandra Telescope at Hanle. “HCT is already over-booked, while the new telescope will be purely for observing transients. It is different from HCT in the sense that it will only be an imaging telescope and all spectroscopy will happen at HCT,” Anupama said.

The fully robotic telescope costing Rs. 3.5 crore has been funded by the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) of the Department of Science and Technology. “The telescope is equipped with a sensitive camera that can detect some of the faint transients found by our partner survey telescopes like the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar, California,” she added. The new facility will be commissioned this summer.

The telescope will be remotely operated from IIA’s Centre For Research and Education in Science and Technology near Bangalore. The facility houses the control room for remote operations of the HCT and is the data hub for the telescope. The new telescope will be programmed to directly communicate with various ground-based and space-based surveys that are searching for transient sources.

Transient events in the universe are caused due to several factors such as relatively benign flares on stars, accretion of matter on compact objects, stellar mergers and explosions. All this results in a flash in the sky for a period and then slowly fades away. By capturing these electromagnetic signatures, astronomers try to gain an insight about cosmic objects as well as physical processes that govern their evolution. Finding such objects requires continuous monitoring of large areas of the sky. Telescopes deployed for ‘transient surveys’ are usually small, wide-field instruments but they can’t see very faint objects.

According to Dr. Mansi Kasliwal, who is heading GROWTH project at Caltech, the project is “primarily looking at optical transients from a host of different observatories to build a more complete picture of the physical processes of their evolution. The network has 18 observatories in the Northern Hemisphere. As the earth rotates and daylight creeps, the network switches observations to facilities westward that is still enjoying night-time.” (India Science Wire)

India avoided major embarrassment in January this year when it stopped road construction by Chinese army inside Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh near Line of Actual Control (LAC) and forced Chinese personnel to return. However, what is startling is the fact that it took Indian authorities 72-hours to detect major intrusion near Bishing village by Chinese forces with their road-building equipment operating two kilometers inside the Indian territory. It was failure of Indian communication mechanism that led to this fiasco.

We tell you how the Department of Telecom (DoT) and its arm — Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) — has failed miserably in building a robust telecom network in the strategically important Northeast despite getting Union Cabinet almost four years ago…

Bishing episode of Chinese intrusion inside LAC is a wake-up call for the Indian government. But more than that it is a matter of shame for the DoT and USOF for having failed to live up to the expectation of the people of the Northeast who have been demanding proper telecom network for past two decades.

While telecom network across the country has continued to grow, eight North-eastern states have lagged behind, thanks to the apathy of the DoT, USOF (which is responsible of providing funds to build telecom infrastructure in villages and remote areas) and the private telecom operators who are more concerned about their bottom-line and for them licence conditions of providing proper coverage in their telecom circles does not matter.

It was just months after assuming office, Prime Minister Narendra Modihad approved the proposal to implement a comprehensive telecom development plan for the North-Eastern region covering 8621 villages in eight states with an estimate of Rs.5,336 crores, with funds coming from USOF. Of this, around 2500 towers were to come up in remote villages of Arunachal Pradesh, three of which were approved for Bishing, where the Chinese intrusion took place.

Bishing village is located in Gelling tehsil of Upper Siang district in Arunachal Pradesh, India only 2 kms away from Chinese border. It is situated 80 kms away from sub-district headquarter Gelling and 280 kms away from district headquarter Yingkiong. The closest town to Bishing village is Tuting which is 40 kms away. There is no motorable road up to Bishing village, which is connected through a narrow walkable street that passes over Siang river which has two hanging bridges. As there is no connectivity, information can be exchanged only if person moves physically 80 kms or 40 kms.

According to locals in Bishing village near McMahon line in Arunachal Pradesh, Chinese personnel were caught doing track alignment work constructing a 12-feet wide road, 1-km in length by using heavy machinery. The work was going on in the remote area situated at an altitude of over 12,000 feet. Though the area is manned by the ITBP, the track construction activity took place about 2 km away from the nearest ITBP post. It was only after a porter working in the area spotted the Chinese personnel, he managed to pass on the information to nearest civil administration only after 72 hours after he reached nearest town. Since there was no mobile communication, this delay in getting information about the Chinese intrusion has become a major source of embarrassment for the Indian army, ITBP and the civil administration.

It is now learnt that the senior officials of the Army and the ITBP have expressed their displeasure over undue delay by the DoT in getting mobile towers installed in villages close to the Chinese border. Defence Ministry, Army, Union Home Ministry and border paramilitary forces like the ITBP and the BSF have in the past written several letters to the DoT expressing concern over the delay in installation of robust mobile infrastructure along international borders.

Ironically, USOF, which has been mandated by the Union Cabinet to get mobile infrastructure installed in border and remote areas of the Northeast, has been sitting on this project for last four years. MPs from the Northeast including Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju and Congress MP Ninong Ering, both hail from Arunachal Pradesh, have written to Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha expressing concern over undue delay in Northeast mobile connectivity project.

Telecom Ministry insiders told ICTFlash.com that all actions of the USOF indicate that it is trying to delay and sabotage the NE telecom project. “While USOF is trying to delay a part of the project which is to be implemented by BSNL by putting unnecessary conditions and delaying payments, the remaining portion of the project which is to be awarded to private operators several key norms have been compromised and tender conditions diluted to favour private companies,” said a senior DoT official who have been opposing the arbitrary and illegal manner in which USOF is implementing the project.

“The entire modus operandi of USOF in dealing in NE project reeks of favouritism. USOF is not only neglecting state-run BSNL but also openly violating laid government guidelines. Moreover, it is taking dubious decisions despite clear laid down policy of government,” the official said.

“The way USOF is implementing the ambitious NE project, is also a major setback for Prime Minister’s ‘Make In India’ initiative. BSNL is bound to implement preferential market access (PMA) policy allowing only domestic equipment manufacturer to bid in its project, but private operators are not bound by PMA. In Northeast, which shares crucial borders with China, foreign players, including Chinese companies, are being allowed to put up their equipment in gross negligence of national security interests,” the official added.

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will embark on a historic visit to Palestine, the first ever visit by any Indian Prime Minister, Ministry of External Affairs announced here.

MEA officials said the Prime Minister will be visiting Ramallah on February 10.  He will also be visiting United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman from February 10 to 12.

He will reach UAE in the late evening of February 10. Mr. Modi will be visiting UAE at the invitation of UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the MEA said.

While the visit to Palestine will be the first by an Indian Prime Minister, it will be Mr. Modi’s second visit to UAE and the first to Oman. The MEA said that Mr. Modi will hold discussions on matters of mutual interest with the leaders of these nations.

During his visit, he will hold a meeting with the Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas.  In July last year, Mr. Modi had visited Israel at the invitation of his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu. He had not visited Palestine at that time. The Israeli Prime Minister visited India last month. In Palestine, Mr Modi will visit the Yasser Arafat Museum before beginning formal talks, MEA official said.  Mr Modi will also address a joint press conference with Palestine President Abbas. He will also attend a banquet lunch and then embark on his visit to UAE. Palestine and India had agreed to deepen engagement in sectors like health, IT, tourism, youth affairs and sports.

Describing the Palestine visit as “significant’’, MEA officials said that it indicates that India has decided to de-hyphenate ties with Israel. It would also lay the ground work for India’s participation in nation-building projects in Palestine for developing infrastructure there.

Also, Prime Minister Modi will be addressing the Sixth World Government Summit to be held in Dubai, at which India has been extended the ‘Guest of Honour’ status.

He will also meet the Indian community in UAE and Oman respectively.  

NEW DELHI: It was a tribute to the Bharatnatyam Guru N.V. Venkataraman from his daughter-disciple Rani Shinghal, herself an accomplished exponent of the oldest classical dance form. 
She conceived and performed Sankeertana, a dance-based interactive session to commemorate the 86th birth anniversary of her Guru and father Late N.V. Venkataraman at Mind Space, Sanskriti Kendra in the Capital’s Anandgram recently. The performance and dialogue were based upon appreciation of the connections within and between different cultural practices-Bharatnatyam, bhajan, keertana all about Tirupati.
It was a collaborative presentation by Rani Shinghal and Jaya Iyer, an eminent theatre artist. 
Rani Shinghal who now heads Natya Sudha and trains disciples in finer nuances and techniques of Bharatnatyam has maintained the traditional style of Guru-Shishya parampara. She has been able to compose new choreography while teaching her students. She has performed with her troupe not only across India but also in many foreign countries. 
Her mother Guru Ma Padma Venkatraman had worked tirelessly to establish Natya Sudha in Delhi way back in 1959 to promote performing arts to upcoming artists.Both Guru N.V.Venkatraman and Guru Ma Padma trained hundreds of students in the classical dance form. 
Natya Sudha continues till date to impart quality training in Bharatnatyam and Carnatic sangeet with focus on customized learning program without diluting the intensity of the dance form create a culture of innovation and it was also the reason for the institute’s efforts to introduce the classical arts to economically underprivileged segments of the society. The effort continues even today at a number of centres being run by Rani Shinghal in many parts of the Capital.