hyderabad price `` walling off china: india changes fdi ... · hyderabad: with no let-up in the...
TRANSCRIPT
Covid-19-related deaths have surged past 150,000 worldwide
and over 2.25 million cases have been recorded globally. US cases cross 700,000
while the country’s toll rises to 35,000
French virologist and medicine Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier has claimed
CORONAVIRUS IS ‘MAN-MADE’as it’s the result of an attempt to
develop an AIDS vaccine in a Wuhan lab
For the first time in her 68-year reign, 93-year-old Queen Elizabeth II has cancelled all traditional celebratory plans for her 94th birthday on April 21 due to the lockdown
Rolling Stones will perform at singer Lady Gaga’sstar-studded ‘One World: Together at Home’livestreamed concert this weekend to honour healthcare workers fighting Covid-19 pandemic. SRK & Priyanka Chopra Jonas will also be part of it
APRIL 19, 2020 | PAGES 16 | INCLUDING HYDERABAD TIMES ( FOR METRO ONLY) & TIMES LIFE!
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25LOCKDOWN
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Hyderabad: “It’s as though Ihave no control over myself –over what I speak or do. All I fe-el is an uncontrollable thirstfor alcohol,” Akash (namechanged), a migrant worker inhis mid-teens staying at Chan-danagar shelter camp, shiversas he recalls an aggressive epi-sode of alcohol withdrawal af-ter which he was rushed to aclinic a few days back.
Among the worst affectedby the unavailability of alco-hol during lockdown are child-ren of the slums and minormigrant workers, as they pickup the habit early.
Dr. Rosy Gundra, whosenon-profit Sankalp Founda-tion is helping Greater Hyde-
rabad Municipal Corporationrun shelter camps at Chanda-nagar and Lingampally, saysshe has come across many ad-dicted children.
“At least 20 minors in thecamps sheltering over a hund-red migrant workers and ho-meless persons have been sho-
wing moderate to severe with-drawal symptoms,” she says.“A 14-year-old boy has been cry-ing for just a spoon of liquorfor days. Some days are parti-cularly hard.”
She points out that thenumber is far higher in slumsacross the city. A survey con-ducted by her NGO in 10 of theslums last year pegged thenumber of minors addicted toalcohol there as close to 500,over 120 of them are girls.
“It stings that I can do not-hing to calm my child, it’s as ifshe has gone mad,” Dhananjay(name changed), a beggar hou-sed at Lingampally ZPHS shel-ter camp, stutters through tears.
As lockdown turns off booze tap,addicted migrant kids struggle
➤ Children in slums pick up drinking habit from parents
➤ With liquor stores shut, kids exhibiting withdrawal symptoms
➤ Absence of redressal mechanism leads to behavioral and mental issues
THE DEMON DRINK
�‘Withdrawal symptoms’: P5
Hyderabad: The surge in co-ronavirus positive cases con-tinued in Telangana with 43new cases being reported onSaturday. With only Wana-parthy and Warangal Ruraldistricts not reporting any ca-se so far, the Covid-19 graphhas covered almost the entirestate. Along with Friday’s 66cases, the tally has now tou-ched 809. However, no deathshave been reported on Satur-day.
Health officials said theywere dealing with 605 activecases with Greater Hydera-bad accounting for 31, Gadwalseven, two each in Sircilla Ra-janna district and one in Nal-gonda.
GHMC commissioner Lo-kesh Kumar said primarycontacts of the fresh cases wo-uld be shifted to government
quarantine. “If the primarycontacts also test positive, wewould shift them to the nodalGandhi Hospital,” he said.
Officials said a two-month-old baby girl from Na-rayanpet and an 80-year-oldman from Neredmet in Sec-underabad were among thosewho contracted the virus. Theinfant has been shifted to Ni-loufer Hospital, while her pa-rents and relatives sent to qu-arantine.
43 new cases take Tcorona count to 80931 Out Of 33 DistsHit By The Virus
Hyderabad: Some Rohing-ya and other foreigners, whoattended Tablighi Jamaatevent in Delhi in mid-March,may have died due the coro-navirus infection and theirlast rites may have been per-formed quietly. This was sta-ted by Union minister of sta-te for home, Kishan Reddy,while talking to TOI on Sa-turday.
“We have in-formation thatsuch funeralshave taken pla-ce. Local orga-nisers must ha-ve done this toavoid the stig-
ma and an inquiry into theentire issue,” the ministersaid. “I urge Tablighi Jama-at members, who were atMarkaz Nizamuddin in Del-hi last month, to come for-
ward and get tested for Co-vid-19. The Centre and stategovernments want to pro-tect their lives, family andother people by testing themand putting them under qua-rantine.”
He added that on Friday,the Telangana police identi-fied 13 Rohingya, who had at-tended the Tablighi Jamaatevent in Delhi.
Min: Some TJ foreigners died afterDelhi meet, given quiet burials
Kishan Reddy
�Deaths linked to TJ: P3
Thiruvananthapuram:From Monday onwards, asemblance of normalcy willreturn to at least seven of Ker-ala’s 14 districts as restau-rants will open and a limitednumber of private vehiclesunder the odd-even scheme beallowed to ply.
As the 21-day nationallockdown was drawing to aclose, the state government
had submitted a proposal tothe Centre that divided Keralainto four zones — Red, OrangeA, Orange B and Green — andrestrictions eased in three ofthese zones in a phased man-ner. There will be no easing upin the red zone. The Centre ac-cepted Kerala’s proposal onFriday. For the past 7 days, thenumber of positive cases inthe state was confined to sin-gle digit and the recovery ratehas climbed steadily. P8
Kerala set to openhotels in 50% dists
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
New Delhi: The health mini-stry on Saturday said a positivetrend was emerging in 23 statesdue to lockdown and contain-ment measures against Co-vid-19 outbreak undertaken bythe central and state govern-ments.
Around 47 districts from 23states have reported no cases ofCovid-19 in thelast 14 days. Be-sides, 22 new districts from 12states — which had earlier re-ported some districts with noteven a single case for 14 days —have joined the list by not repor-ting any cases in 14 days led byCovid-19 containment efforts.
The government, however,said the battle against the dise-
ase was a difficult one and asingle case can play the spoils-port. “Our field-level action isyielding positive results. Alongwith Mahe in Puducherry, Ko-dagu in Karnataka, too, has notregistered any new case in thelast 28 days. Besides this, 45other districts in 23 states havenot registered any new case inthe last 14 days,” health mini-stry joint secretary Lav Agar-
wal said.He added
that three districts — Patna inBihar, Panipat in Haryana andNadia in West Bengal — whichhad earlier not shown any posi-tive cases had registered newcases underlining that even asingle case makes a significantdifference while dealing with ahighly contagious disease.
No case in 47 districtsacross 23 states in 14 days
New Delhi:The Covid-19 pan-demic touched two grim mi-lestones in India, with thenumber of cases crossing15,000 and the death toll goingpast 500 even as the countryrecorded its highest single-day rise in numbers at 1,266on Saturday.
While cases continue tosurge in Maharashtra, Guja-rat, Delhi and Rajasthan, thegood news is that the infectionrate is dipping slightly. It took
seven-eight days for cases todouble to 15,000, a slower pacethan earlier.
Worryingly for Delhi, no-ne of the 186 new cases werelinked to the Tablighi Jamaatoutbreak.
While Maharashtra conti-nued to record the highestnumber of new cases at 328 onSaturday — it’s third-highestsingle-day number — Gujaratrecorded the sharpest spike incases. A record 280 new caseswere reported in the past 24hours, of which 239 were re-gistered in Ahmedabad alone.
Positive casescount in Indiacrosses 15k,toll over 500
A special court on Satur-day extended the NIA
custody of activist andscholar Anand Teltumbde,to April 25 in the Elgar Parishad case. Teltumbde(70) was arrested on Tues-day after he surrenderedbefore the investigatingagency. TNN
Teltumbde to bein jail till Apr 25
To help our readers cope with their fears and anxieties, The Times of India has started Talk it Out,a new series under which our panel of expert counsellors will answer your queries. For today’s column turn to P
SUNDAY SPECIAL
Learning in a lockdown
Children tell us what they love, and hate about home school in their own words P 9
Retro returns Old TV shows, games and grandma’s recipes are makinga comeback as people hit nostalgia button P 9
Covid-19 cases in AndhraPradesh surged past the
600-mark as the state reported31 fresh positive cases and twomore deaths on Saturday. Thepositive cases tally has increa-sed to 603 while the death tollhas gone up to 16. Among the 31new cases, Krishna district alo-ne contributed 17. P3
2 more die in AP,surge in +ve cases
�1 more in Nalgonda: P3
A MOUNTAIN OF SUPPORT
PTI
Switzerland’s iconic Matterhorn mountain illuminated with the Indiantricolour late Friday in a show of solidarity with India in its fightagainst the Covid-19 pandemic. Swiss light artist Gerry Hofstetter hasbeen lighting up the 4,478m peak with displays of flags of differentcountries to show support for nations combating the pandemic
A terrorist stormed a se-curity checkpoint at So-
pore in north Kashmir’s Ba-ramulla on Saturday, killingthree CRPF personnel andcritically injuring two oth-ers in the second attack onsecurity forces in less than24 hours. The terrorist fledon foot. A fledgling outfit, JKFighters which owes allegi-ance to LeT, claimed respon-sibility for the attack.P 8
3 CRPF menkilled in J&Kterror strike
New Delhi: In a decision thathas huge geopolitical and eco-nomic significance, the go-vernment has amended theforeign direct investment(FDI) policy to put a blanketban on investments throughthe automatic route by entiti-es from countries that share aborder with India. The moveis seen as an attempt to wardoff the threat of "opportunis-tic" Chinese takeover of Indi-an companies, whose valua-tions have been hit due to thecoronavirus pandemic.
The curbs, which were al-ready in force for investmentsfrom Pakistan and Bangla-
desh, will extend to entitieswhere Chinese citizens have“beneficial ownership” to en-sure that the restrictions arenot circumvented by routinginvestments via Hong Kong,Singapore or other countries.
Most FDI flows into Indiaare under the automatic rou-te, which means companiesonly need to inform authoriti-es after the investment is ma-
de. The latest move signalsthe worry in the governmentthat China might seek to ac-quire Indian companies byexploiting their financial vul-nerability during the crisistriggered by the coronavirus.The bold move is in stunningcontrast to the restraint theModi government has exerci-sed in not joining the globalchorus of indignation over
China's attempt to concealthe outbreak of the pandemicin Wuhan -- a lapse that hasbeen widely adjudged to havebeen a major contributor tothe enormity of the public he-alth emergency that has alre-ady claimed over 1.5 lakh livesglobally and triggered a col-lapse in share markets.
Govt Approval AMust For Any
Investment FromBordering Nation
Walling off China: India changes FDIpolicy to block threat of takeovers
$2.3bnequityFDI from
China from April 2000 to December 2019, makes it
the 18th largest investor in India
$4.2bnadditionallycame from
Hong Kong
Several investments, such as Xiaomi, routed via third countries
$1.1bnacquisition of Gland Pharma by
Fosun Pharma in a controversial deal is the largest FDI from China in India
Vivo, Oppo, other Chinese phone manufacturers have investments
SAIC Motor Corp, Great Wall Motor Co have lined up ambitious plans for the automobile sector
Alibaba, Tencent are large investors in Paytm, Flipkart, Ola, Byju’s
FULL COVERAGE P
THE DRAGON’S GIANT FOOTPRINT
�‘Chinese takeover threat’: P7
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
� 1,992 people cured: P8
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
At least 26 Navy sailorshave tested positive for
the Covid-19 at a shore-ba-sed establishment in Mum-bai, though no cases havebeen reported from sea-fa-ring warships and subma-rines till now. The numberof cases at INS Angre, themain shore-based logisticsand administrative depot ofthe Western Naval Com-mand, is bound to rise withthe force going in for “meti-culous contact tracing aswell as aggressive scree-ning and testing of primaryand secondary contacts” byroping in even private labs,said officers. P7
26 Navy sailorsin Mum, Armydoc test +ve
Union civil aviation mini-ster Hardeep Singh Pu-
ri on Saturday said airlinesare advised to open boo-kings only after the Centretakes a decision on startingdomestic and internationalflight services. “The mini-stry of civil aviation clarifi-
es that so far no decision hasbeen taken to open domesticor international opera-tions,” he tweeted. Earlierin the day, Air India openedbookings on select domesticflights from May 4 & on se-lect international flightsfrom June 1. TNN
Puri: Open flightbookings after
call on lockdown
�GoM for flights in safeareas post-May 3: P8
With stock and other assetprices crashing, India’s
decision is not only an attemptto protect its interests – especi-ally in sensitive sectors suchas fintech, digital infrastruc-ture, e-comm, pharma and spe-cialty chemicals – from preda-tory acquisitions but also a re-cognition that it needs to drawa careful line between econo-mic openness and national se-curity, reports Indrani Bag-chi.
Alarm bells have beenringing for a while, but it took apandemic for the governmentto address what are seen asstrategic, economic, and pos-sibly political vulnerabilities,especially given reports of da-ta being siphoned off and blur-ry financial holdings. P 7
Govt draws linebetween biz &nat’l security
� Sharp spike in Guj: P8
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3SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, HYDERABADAPRIL 19, 2020 TIMES CITY | Viral Worry
1,129 Without documents
VEHICLES SEIZED
VIOLATIONS
Two-wheeler
1,804 139Three-
wheeler
250 Four-wheeler
15,382 Total cases
1,244Disobedienceof orders (Doubleriding)
844Disobedienceof orders (Singleriding)
27 Triple Riding
4 Minor driving
LOCKDOWN VIOLATIONS
APRIL 18
Hyderabad: Another police-man from central zone of theHyderabad police commis-sionerate has contracted Co-vid-19. As the 35-year-old wasin quarantine at King Koti ho-spital, he was moved to Gand-hi Hospital on Saturday fortreatment after his test resultcame positive. Ironically, theconstable got infected despitetaking precautions like wea-ring gloves, masks and othersafety gear while performingduties at a check post.
His family members andsix colleagues were also sentto state-run quarantine cent-res. With the latest case, threepolicemen have contractedcoronavirus in the state tilldate.
A week ago, the 35-year-
old constable was feeling bo-dy pains and two days later hewent down with fever. On le-arning about his health, se-nior officers sent him to a go-vernment hospital to under-go test since his symptoms re-sembled that of Covid-19.
On Saturday, the reportconcluded that the constablewas positive for coronavirus.Immediately, the officialsstarted identifying his prima-ry contacts and directed hiswife and two children to go tostate-run quarantine. Simi-larly, a sub-inspector and fiveconstables were also sent toquarantine since the constab-le was in touch with themwhile performing duties.
Police suspect the cons-table might have got infectedwhile performing duties at acheck post.
Another Hyd coptests +ve for virus
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
They were hiding in twomosques, one in Punja-gutta and another in
Old City. “Ministry also hasinformation that eight fromBalapur in Hyderabad, 14from Nalgonda and five fromJagityal are missing. The aut-horities have launched a se-arch,” Reddy said.
All 18 Covid-19 deaths inTelangana have been linkedto TJ’s Delhi event. The firstdeath was reported on March28. After two days, the govern-ment declared five more de-aths related to coronavirus.
The minister, who is incharge of command controlwing for Covid-19 and coordi-nating with various states,said the Centre was provi-ding PPE, masks and rapidtest kits to states. Twelve
companies have been ropedin to manufacture PPEs andmasks. “The Centre has pro-cured five lakh rapid test kitsfrom China and distributedamong states. Another 10lakh testing kits are expectedin few days. Over 6.50 lakhkits, donated by an organisa-tion, were rejected due to infe-rior quality,” Reddy said.
He said, “There are 1.73lakh beds in 602 dedicated ho-spitals across India, and 1.30lakh are ICU beds amongthem. Nearly 50,000 ventila-tors are available in variousstates, but only 100 are beingused by state governments.”
The Centre has released`̀224 crore to Telangana and`̀559 crore to AP for migrantpopulation under disastermitigation fund. “I am spea-king to some district collec-tors and SPs in Telangana.”
All 18 deaths in Tlinked to TJ event�From P 1
Hyderabad: With no let-up inthe coronavirus positive cases,more so in Greater Hyderabadlimits, the state government isconsidering continuing thelockdown till April 30 string-ently, giving scope for very fewrelaxations. The governmentis more worried about gro-wing cases in Hyderabad andhas apprehensions that if thelockdown is eased for even so-me sectors as being allowed bythe Centre, it would lead tofurther progression of casesin the state.
The state cabinet is mee-ting on Sunday to take stock ofthe situation and discuss theexemptions to be given fromlockdown apart from econo-mic situation in the state. TheCentre had announced someactivities would be allowedfrom April 30, keeping in viewthe situation in non-hotspotsareas such as farming, dailywage labourers and some se-lected industries including ITcompanies with up to 50%strength.
The government is of theview, that some exemptions,which are to be given fromApril 20 by the Centre, have al-ready been given in the statesuch as agriculture relatedworks and MGNREGS relatedworks engaged by the labou-rers. Many companies have as-ked their employees to workfrom home.
The state government alsohas reservations about per-mitting construction activityafter April 20. “Except somemajor companies, the labou-
rers are coming from otherparts of the city. The govern-ment is in dilemma whether toallow major constructioncompanies where labourersare at the site or continue acomplete ban on this,” a seniorofficial of the CMO said.
According to sources, theCentre said people in servicesector like plumbers and elec-tricians are permitted, but the-re are thousands of people inthe city, who cannot be allowedat this juncture. Similarly, sin-ce agriculture season is over,
there is no need of opening fer-tiliser and seed shops now. Thegovernment is also of the viewnot to allow dhabas on thehighways till April 30 whilepermitting movement oftrucks on the directions of theCentre.
Meanwhile, chief ministerK Chandrasekhar Rao has in-structed the officials to conti-nue measures to prevent spre-ad of coronavirus cases. He sa-id no one should suffer hungerduring the lockdown period inthe state.
The CM held a high-levelreview meeting on Saturdayon containing Covid-19. “Thepoor should not suffer due tolockdown and should not faceany difficulty. This is the rea-son why the government supp-lied rice and cash to the whiteration cardholders. Identifydaily wager workers and ex-tend assistance to them. Agri-culture programmes shouldcontinue and collectors andpublic representatives shouldmonitor the procurementcentres,” the CM said.
Will Take CallIn Cabinet
Meet Today
State govt unlikely to relaxlockdown norms till April 30
SOME EXEMPTIONS ALREADY GIVEN IN T: GOVT
Traffic police check motorists for a valid reason for coming out of their homes at LB Nagar cross road on Saturday
➤ The state cabinet is meeting on Sunday to take stock of the situation and discuss exemptions to be given from lockdown
➤ According to the state government, some exemptions, which are to be given from April 20 by Centre, have already been given in the state
➤ These include agriculture related works and MGNREGS related works engaged by labourers
➤ The government has reservations about permitting construction activity after April 20
➤ The government is also of the view not to allow dhabas on the highways till April 30
Pic: Anil
A elderly person fromNeredmet, who hadtested positive, was a
paralytic since long and wastaken to Military Hospital inSecunderabad after he deve-loped cough. He was later ad-mitted in a private hospitalin Hi-Tec City, which refer-red him to Gandhi Hospital.While the first test came ne-gative for the virus, the se-cond test was positive, doc-
tors said. Five of his familymembers have now beensent to government quaran-tine.
In Nalgonda, a positive
case was reported from Ma-nyam Chalka area, takingthe total number of infec-tions to 12 in the district. Thetwo cases in Sircilla districtcame from the temple townof Vemulawada. District col-lector Krishna Bhaskar saidall the three cases from Sir-cilla are related to the mid-March Tablighi Jamaat me-eting. “The two persons whocontracted the virus came incontact with a previous posi-tive case,” he said.
One more +ve in Nalgonda, total 12
Visakhapatnam: Covid-19 ca-ses in Andhra Pradesh surgedpast the 600 mark as the state re-ported 31 fresh positive casesand two more deaths on Satur-day. The Covid-19 tally has incre-ased to 603 while the death rollhas gone up to 16.
Among the 31 new cases,Krishna district alone contribu-ted 17, followed by six from Kur-nool, three from Nellore, twoeach from Prakasam and EastGodavari, and one from WestGodavari.
A 60-year-old man from Kur-nool district died on Saturday ta-king the death toll in the districtto three. Krishna district also re-ported one more death on Satur-day. Meanwhile, seven more Co-vid-19 patients were declared cu-red and sent to their homes.Three of them are from East Go-davari, one from Kurnool, andthree from Visakhapatnam.
The situation continued tobe alarming in Kurnool with 132cases, Guntur 125, Krishna 70,and Nellore 67. Even though itwas not officially declared, threemore patients were dischargedin Visakhapatnam, bringing theactive caseload of the districtdown to four.
Krishna district collector AMd Imtiaz raised the alarm onSaturday over the untraceableorigin of the pandemic in the re-cent cases in the district. “Theinitial 35 Covid-19 patients in thedistrict are foreign or Delhi re-turnees and their contacts. Butthe recent cases are turning outto be problematic as we couldnot track the source of the infec-tion. We request the public tostay indoors and maintain soci-al distancing,” said Imtiaz. He al-so announced ban on sale of me-at, fish, and poultry on Sunday.According to the health authori-ties, Andhra Pradesh could test21,450 samples as of April 18.
AP positivetally rises to
603, death tollgoes up to 16
�From P 1The two cases in Sircilladistrict came from thetemple town of Vem-ulawada. District collec-tor Krishna Bhaskar saidall three cases from Sircil-la are related to TJ meet
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part in social wel l -being ac- efforts. In Hyderabad , Avevativities , which support local has extended its support to
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4 SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, HYDERABADAPRIL 19, 2020TIMES CITY | Viral Worry
Hyderabad: A city basedchild rights group filed acomplaint with the educationdepartment on Saturday, alle-ging that several schools areviolating child rights by gi-ving homework to primarystudents.
The activists of BalalaHakkula Sangham (BHS) saidthat apart from attending on-line classes, students are for-ced to complete worksheetsand homework everyday. “Qu-ite a few schools are using the-se worksheets and online ex-ams to promote students tothe next classes,” said Achyu-ta Rao of BHS.
In his complaint to the dis-trict education officer of Hy-derabad, Rao said action sho-uld be initiated against priva-te school managements forconducting online exams. Raoalso questioned the need to di-rect students to wear uniformfor online classes. TNN
City schoolsignore rights,say activists
Hyderabad: As much as 69%of the total 146 containment zo-nes (hotspots) in Greater Hyde-rabad limits were set up in twomunicipal zones alone.
Officials said Khairatabadhas the highest containmentzones in the city with 51 hots-pots followed by Charminar,which has 49 clusters as onApril 17. While Khairatabad,Mehdipatnam, Karwan, Jubi-lee Hills and Goshamahal cir-cles fall under Khairatabad zo-ne, Charminar, Malakpet, Fa-laknuma, Santoshnagar,Chandrayangutta and Rajend-ranagar come under Charmi-nar zone. Among the six muni-cipal zones, LB Nagar has onlytwo hotspots, with least affec-ted Covid-19 positive cases.
“Of the total containmentzones, 12 places are most vulne-rable as they had reported mo-re than six cases in a zone.Charminar zone has eight suchplaces of 12, three in Khairata-bad and one in Serilingampallyzone. While 85 hotspots have re-ported only one case, 49 hots-pots have reported two to fivepositive cases in one contain-ment zone,” a senior official ofGHMC told STOI
An additional commissio-ner said once quarantine pe-riod is over and the infected per-sons are discharged, GHMC iswithdrawing containment zo-ne restrictions. “Fifteen zoneshave been withdrawn in thelast three days. For instance, so-me containment spots in Char-minar zone have been lifted andfive more added due to new ca-ses,” he said.
Apart from the ministersand top officials, chief ministerK Chandrasekhar Rao himselfis reviewing the situation inHyderabad as more than 60 co-ronavirus cases had been re-
ported from Greater Hydera-bad jurisdiction.
Among urban local bodiesother than GHMC, Nizamabadhas 17 containment zones in thedistrict with 11 in Nizamabadmunicipal corporation limits,while the rest of the zones are
spread out in Bodhan, Armoorand Bhimgal. The second big-gest city in Telangana, Warang-al has 15 hotspots, while Ranga-reddy district has 10 (other thanGHMC) hotspots.
The government has alsodeclared five locations in Jal-
pally, one each in Manikonda,Turkayamjal, Tukkuguda,Bandlaguda Jagir and Nar-singi as containment zones.
The government has clear-ly directed the municipal com-missioners and zonal commis-sioners to ensure that people li-
ving in these containment zo-nes stay indoors at all times.
Municipal administrationminister KT Rama Rao has di-rected officials that essentialssuch as milk, vegetables andmedicines should be deliveredat the doorsteps of residents.
Essentials AreDelivered To
Homes AcrossAll Zones
Khairatabad & Charminar areastop containment zones’ charter
GHMC WIDENS NET
Residents wait to receive essential commodities at a containment zone
Zone No, of Homesclusters covered
L B Nagar 2 562
Charminar 49 5448
Khairatabad 51 5869
Secunderabad 17 1935
Serilingampally 14 2709
Kukatpally 13 1331
Total 146 17854
The government has proposed steps to ensure proper monitoring of containment zones
➤ Proper barricading at entrance and exit points
➤ Monitoring by officials from line departments and senior officials
➤ Paramedical staff to conduct fever survey in the areas
➤ Ensuring that sanitation work and spraying of disinfectants are strictly carried out
➤ Door-to-door delivery of essentials and rice
➤ Spreading awareness about the containment guidelines to be followed and other arrangements made by the government
➤ Door-to-door inspection by medical teams and officials
Venkat Rao M
Hyderabad: A day afterSindhi Colony, Mettugudaand Neredmet crossroadsareas were barricaded follo-wing coronavirus positivecases, 13 persons called offi-cials voluntarily to tell thatthey had coronavirus-rela-ted symptoms. Seven per-sons had even requested foran ambulance.
Those who tested positivehave been sent to Gandhi Ho-spital. “The primary con-tacts of the people have beenshifted to a government qua-rantine centre. They will besent back to their houses on-
ly after their test results areout,” said officials. Whileprobing the primary con-tacts, emphasis was on theirtravel history.
Officials are now busy lo-oking into the primary con-tacts of eight persons whotested positive on Saturdayand 31 others who had testedpositive on Friday.
Residents from SindhiColony said the GHMC offici-als checked them for any co-ronavirus-like symptoms.“They inspected out localityand checked if any of us havefever and other symptoms.They created a WhatsAppgroup and have asked us toair our grievances in that
ter probing the primary con-tacts. “After enquiring withthe RWAs, they also askedthe primary contacts severalquestions and on travel his-tory of the persons who hadtested positive and every dayactivity of the primary con-tact, ” said the resident.
While the primary con-tacts were being probed, ga-ted communities where peo-ple were instructed to be ho-me quarantined were also in-spected by GHMC officials.
“Sixteen foreign returne-es who were home quaranti-ned in Meenakshi Sky Lo-unge, Hitex Road, have testednegative,” said mayor Bon-thu Rammohan.
group,” said Prakash Tha-kur, a resident.
A resident of Aparna HillPark falling in Chandanagarcontainment zone said mul-ti-disciplinary teams had en-quired with residential wel-fare associations (RWAs) af-
Focus on travel history of primary [email protected]
A resident receives milk through abarricade in Sec’bad on Saturday
Chitti Babu
Hyderabad: All the pharma-cies and pharmaceutical as-sociations across the city ha-ve been directed to maintainrecord of persons purcha-sing drugs for fever, cold andcough. The step is being ta-ken keeping in mind that se-veral symptomatic peopleare not coming forward to gettested for Covid-19, said civicadministrators.
The municipal admini-stration department has as-ked all the additional collec-tors, municipal commissio-ners, zonal commissionersand deputy municipal com-missioner to hold a meetingwith pharmacies and theirassociations, and brief themabout the issue.
Municipal administra-tion principal secretary Ar-vind Kumar said the medicalshop owners have to keep re-cord the name, phone num-
ber and address of those whocome to buy medicines for ail-ments such as fever, cold andcough.
“The shop owners shouldalso handover the list to therespective commissioners.In the suspected cases, testsshould be done. The medicalshop owners should also en-lighten the people comingtobuy medicines on the Covid19 and how it will benefit ifthe tests are done,” the prin-cipal secretary said.
Official sources said thegovernment has been adop-ting multi-pronged approach
to contain the spread of thevirus in the state.
“Due to some level of hesi-tation and perceived socialstigma, many people suffe-ring from fever, cough, coldand other symptoms similarto Covid 19 are taking medici-nes on their own,” a senior of-ficial of the municipal admi-nistration said.
Officials said that this isan important step in identify-ing cases at a nascent stageand preventing further spre-ad. They said the this will aidthe government in fightingthe pandemic.
Pharmacies to record detailsof people buying fever meds
TIMES NEWS NETWORK The civic administration saidthat they had taken this stepkeeping in mind that manypeople who were Covid-19symptomatic were notcoming forward to get testedfor the virus due to fear orperceived social stigma
Hyderabad: At a time whenmost hospitals are followingthe one-third staff formula,as a measure to prevent com-munity spread of Covid-19,the government-run ESICMedical College and Hospi-tal, Sanathnagar (operatedby central government) hasnot taken any such measure,claim doctors and nurses.
They also allege that theentire staff of the hospital —totalling over 2,000 — is wor-king without any home qua-rantine period. This, they say,exposes not just the doctors,nurses, nursing orderly , pa-ramedical staff but also otherpatients, to the risk of cont-racting the virus.
“All our doctors, nurses,paramedical staff, ayaahsand security guards are re-porting to work every day.While other hospitals are ta-
king measures to cut downthe risk of Covid-19’s spread,we are working without anypreventive measures in place.As a result, a doctor or nurseposted in isolation ward oneday can be in the ICU (intensi-ve care unit) the next day andthe outpatient department(OP) on the third day, expo-sing them to the risk of beinginfected,” said a doctor at thehospital.
According to the staff, tho-ugh the patient footfall has re-
duced since the lockdown, asmany as 31,400 patients wereregistered in the OP and IPdepartments in March.
Each patient was accom-panied by at least one atten-dant.
“Moreover, personal pro-tection equipment (PPE)sand N95 masks are not provi-ded to all front line healthworkers, despite the high ex-posure. This has created fearamong workers. If even oneperson gets infected, it wouldbe a disaster,” said PrakashBabu, general secretary ofnurses union at the hospital.
When contacted, hospitalauthorities denied the allega-tions and said they were follo-wing due orders. “The one-third staff formula is not app-licable to the hospital. We arefollowing all orders regar-ding OP, emergency and IPservices,” said Dr KK Paul,medical superintendent ofthe hospital.
Hosp not taking enough safetymeasures, allege ESIC staff
Amrita.Didyala @timesgroup.com
ESIC hospital in Sanathnagar
Venkat Rao M
Hyderabad: Hundreds ofex-servicemen of all ranks
in Telanga-na have co-me forwardto rendertheir servi-ce to fightCovid-19.
Among those who havevolunteered is 78-year-oldWing Commander Bha-rath Bhushan of WestMarredpally. “If there is awar, I am ready to defendmy country,” he told STOI.He has registered himselfwith the Telangana govern-ment and also with the ar-med forces. “I will do wha-tever I am asked to do,”Bhushan, who took volun-tary retirement after a 24-year stint in the IAF, said.
Telangana Sanik Welfa-re director Col Ramesh Ku-
mar said that a few hund-red ex-servicemen had re-gistered their names tohelp. FOr instance, in Kazi-pet, Naik K Haribabu dis-tributes coconuts and fru-its to policemen. SergeantManohar Reddy is distribu-ting groceries to the needy.
“It is an unprecedentcrisis. The government hasasked ex-servicemen tohelp out during this crisissituation,” he said. Ex-ser-vicemen can register onthe website https://trans-port.telangana.gov.in .
He said the services ofretired armed forces per-sonnel will be used for pati-ent care services, logistics,security and any task rela-ted to Covid-19. This shouldbe done by April 22.
There are 40,000 ex-ser-vicemen in Telangana outof whom half are employedin various sectors.
Ex-servicemen inCovid-19 combat duty [email protected] Hyderabad: The Hyderabad
and Secunderabad Retail Dea-lers’ Association has appealedto retailers to sell essentialcommodities at minimum pro-fit margin.
In view of the extension ofthe lockdown till May 3, the re-tail traders should do businesswith “service motive” and notonly as a business, associationpresident T Bhawarsingh andgeneral secretary Dilip KumarPansari said on Saturday.
“ It is the moral responsibi-lity of all traders in the state tooto serve the people during thiscrisis with minimum profitmargin, particularly on essen-tial commodities,” said DilipKumar Pansari.
The Association, which hasover 800 members across twincities, in its advisory said theretailers should also ensure so-cial distancing and other lock-down norms were followed bycustomers and traders. TNN
Retailers’ body:Not profit, let
service be motive
Hyderabad: Part-time workis drying up in Canada andthe worst affected are stu-dents, including those whotravelled all the way from In-dia. Looking for a good educa-tion, these kids are nowcaught between wanting tostay on in that country andhaving meagre means to paytheir bills.
Most students have been‘temporarily laid off ’, but ma-ny feel this could become per-manent. Telugu-origin Kran-thi Bheemanandam, who ispursuing masters at RoyalRoads University, Victoria,said his company RGIS Cana-da had laid off most employe-es. “We used to go to client lo-cation and audit their inven-tory. Due to the corona crisis,all clients rescheduled thework for a later date. So, nowork now. We are thinkingthis as temporary lay-off, butare not sure how many emplo-yees they will take back,” saidBheemanandam.
With 800 Canadian dollars(CAD, Canadian dollar= `̀55approx) rent a month, Bhee-manandam says it will soon
be a struggle to make endsmeet. Describing what a tem-porary-lay off means in hiscase, he said, “No salary. Novacation pay. No sick pay. Sin-ce I worked a minimum 700hours in the last one year, asper the federal government, I
am eligible to get my employ-ment insurance (EI) from thegovernment, but that couldbe as less as around $200 perweek.”
Deepak Katru, a studentat New York Institute of Tech-nology, Vancouver campus,
used to work at Seymour Golfand Country Club. “They laidme off temporarily effectivefrom April 12 and paid me amonth’s wage. They said theywill take me back after thisuncertainty ends. If I don’tget help from the govern-ment, my tenancy will be af-fected,” he said.
While a lot of students arebetting on the huge financialpackage announced by Cana-dian government, includingCovid-19 Emergency Respon-se Benefit, not all can apply.
Explaining the package,Deepak said, “The CovidEmergency Response Benefitcovers you if you get laid offfrom a job. But some restau-rants didn’t lay off their emp-loyees. They put them onhold. They were asked to stopworking and not paid. ”
Indians say grocery billstoo were mounting. In Vanco-uver many Indian stores haveincreased the prices of pro-ducts. Students like ManhorKumari, who is also in Victo-ria and was also laid off tem-porarily from a retail outlet,said, “Right now my job is theonly concern I have. I am ho-ping for the best.”
With meagre income, Indian studentsin Canada struggle to make ends [email protected]
Due to the corona crisis, all clients
have rescheduled the work. So, no work now. We think this as a temporary lay-off, but are not sure how many employees will they take back—Kranthi Bheemanandam,
TELUGU-ORIGIN STUDENT IN CANADA
BREAKING THE BANKIndian students
in Canada are struggling to make ends meet as sources of income are meagre amid the ongoingCovid-19 crisis
Many students working part time have been laid off “temporarily”
They are not sure how many people will be hired back once the pandemic is past us
With no means to return home in sight, many students are also battling extreme loneliness and mental health issues
Photo for representation
Hyderabad: The Telanganahigh court has directed thestate to inform it by April 22steps it is taking to assist thedisabled people during thelockdown in tune with guide-lines issued by the central go-vernment.
A bench of Chief JusticeRaghavendra Singh Chau-han and Justice T AmarnathGoud gave this directionwhile hearing a PIL filed byadvocate Ganesh Karnatifrom Uppal, who charged thestate with ignoring the Cent-re’s guidelines and leavingthe disabled to fend for them-selves in an insensitive man-ner amid the lockdown.
Kowturi Pavan Kumar,the counsel for the petitio-ner, told the court that tho-ugh the state was claiming tobe prepared to face the Co-vid-19 pandemic with the re-quired quarantine centres,isolation wards, and hospi-
tals, the administration wasyet to make them disabled-friendly.
The bench told him to gi-ve details of NGOs which co-uld be entrusted with thetask for the time being.
“In fact, the disabled peo-ple are more susceptible toviruses like Covid-19 compa-red to others on account oftheir physical, sensory andcognitive limitations. For ex-ample, persons with visualdisabilities rely on “touchfunctions for their mobility
and day-to-day activities,thus, increasing their risk ofinfection,” the counsel said.They also face serious limi-tations in following handwashing norms and socialdistance norms as they aredependent on their caregi-vers due to their physiologi-cal constraints.
Moreover, persons withintellectual impairmentcannot be expected to practi-ce self-isolation and present-ly many professional caregi-vers are reluctant to provide
their services as the corona-virus is highly contagious.There is total apathy on thepart of the government to-wards the suffering of thedisabled during the lock-down,” the advocate infor-med the court.
The Centre issued com-prehensive disability-inclu-sive guidelines on March 26and the state has not yet noti-fied them in order to makethem operational in the sta-te, he said.
Supermarkets could ear-mark specific hours for per-sons with disabilities, he sa-id, citing one of the guideli-nes. Or, groceries and medi-cines should be delivered attheir doorsteps apart fromallowing technical person-nel to reach them to repairtheir devices.
Special passes should begiven to the disabled and the-ir caregivers, he added. Hesought directions to the stateto immediately implementthese guidelines.
HC to T: Explain steps taken tohelp the disabled amid lockdown
Hyderabad: A high court bench, comprising Chief JusticeRaghavendra Singh Chauhan and Justice T Amarnath Goud,tookup the cause of hair cutting salons and workmen living on them.
Buddaram Dhanraj, president of Telangana Nayee BrahminYouth Sangham, contended that the poor salon workers wereunable to get ration and money on par with other poorer sectionsbecause they were not given ration cards in the past. Herequested that they be extended help to survive in these tryingtimes .“When migrant labour too were extended this facilitywithout any cards, the same can be given to our workers who aresuffering on account of the lockdown,” he said.
The bench told the AG to file replies for this by April 22. TNN
Barbers too want government sops
Hyderabad: The Telanga-na high court has directedthe state government to fur-nish the details of its healthscheme pertaining to the di-agnosis and treatment ofthe patients of Covid-19 byApril 22.
The bench of Chief Jus-tice Raghavendra SinghChauhan and Justice TAmarnath Goud was hea-ring a PIL filed by advocateP Thirumala Rao, who con-tended that the state hasevolved its own scheme toattend to the patients.
The Centre has alreadybrought Covid-19 under Ay-ushman Bharat PradhanMantri Jan Arogya Yojanascheme, but Telangana op-ted out of it and evolved itsown health scheme, the PILsaid. The bench sought thedetails of that scheme.
It directed advocate ge-neral B S Prasad to find outhow the Telangana govern-ment is applying this sche-
me towards the testing andtreatment of Covid-19 .
Thirumala Rao told thecourt that while the statemay think that its ArogyaSri is better than centre’sAyushman scheme, but itshould explain to the peoplehow its scheme is superiorto the central scheme.
The bench said it wouldascertain those details fromthe state and posted the caseto April 22.
The bench, it can be re-called, earlier called for a re-port from the Centre too, be-cause the IRDA has issued acircular bringing Covid-19under its purview.
It also directed all the in-surance companies to addthis pandemic to their exis-ting policies so that policyholders need not take freshpolicies for this.
The centre is yet to fileits counter on this aspect.
HC asks T govt for detailsof Covid-19 health scheme
➤ The high court has asked Telangana government to submit details of the state’s Covid-19 health scheme
➤ The move came after the state government opted out of Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana scheme
➤ The state has evolved its own health scheme to fight Covid-19
➤ Thebenchpostedthe case to April 22
COURT SEEKS STATE’S STRATEGYChitti Babu
Hyderabad: A mother-sonduo was booked on Saturdayby Rachakonda police for bre-wing grape wine at home tosell it to acquaintances .
The accused were identifi-ed as Polisetty Sudhakar (38),president of the residentialassociation of Church colonyin Ramanthapur, and his mot-her, Terehamma (63). Around30 litres of home-made alco-hol was seized.
“After a tip-off from a ne-ighbour, we raided the houseand found they have been sto-ring over 30 kg of grapes dip-ped in sugar for the past 20 da-ys to make wine. They wereplanning to use it at home andsell it to others,” said Uppal,sub-inspector, SK Mybelly.
Two empty ten litre tinswere also seized from theirpossession. They were bookedunder Section 188 of IndianPenal Code and relevant sec-tion of Telangana Excise Act.
Mother & sonbooked for
brewing wine
30 LITRES SEIZED
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
CCI NG 3.7 Product: TOIHyderabadBS PubDate: 19-04-2020 Zone: Hyderabad Edition: 1 Page: TOIHP4 User: meghana.kurup Time: 04-18-2020 23:47 Color: CMYK
5SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, HYDERABADAPRIL 19, 2020 TIMES CITY | Viral Worry
Jangaon: A 12-year-olddaughter of a migrant labou-rer couple in Palakurthy re-ceived timely medical helpamidst the lockdown.
The health condition ofthe girl, who was sufferingfrom acute illness, was dete-riorating in the last few daysand thanks to the interven-tion of minister Errabelli Da-yakar Rao, police and otherauthorities allowed her totravel to Hanamkonda whereshe got specialised treat-ment.
The girl is recovering now.Her parents — Battula Srini-vas and Lakshmi — had mig-rated to Maharashtra to ma-ke ends meet and were dig-ging wells on a daily wage ba-sis.
Just before the lockdowncame into effect, they had re-turned to their native village.Also, they had no money toget their daughter trearted.
Speaking to STOI, the mi-nister said chief minister KChandrasekhar Rao is firmthat help must be extended toall BPL and needy familiesduring the coronavirus cri-sis. A vehicle was arranged tobring the ailing girl from Pa-lakurthy to Hanamkonda.
DM&HO Dr Lalitha Devisaid the girl is being providedthe best medicare at the go-vernment materinity hospi-tal in Hanamkonda.
Ailing girlgets timely
medical helpShiva Kumar Pinna
Hyderabad: Telangana chi-ef minister K Chandrasek-har Rao wants the state to be-come self-reliant in manu-facturing of gunny bags.Presently, it depends uponsupplies from gunny bag ma-nufacturing units in WestBengal to store its paddy.
Though KCR said he hasdirected chief secretary So-mesh Kumar and Industriesdepartment officials to offerincentives, suitable land andgive fast-track clearances toset up gunny bag manufactu-ring units in the state, offici-als said it will take time forthe entrepreneurs to set upgunny bags manufacturingunits here.
The immediate chal-lenge before the state go-vernment is to get 20 croregunny bags to store 1.05 cro-re metric tonnes of paddyfrom rabi crop. The harves-ting of the crop has alreadycommenced and is expectedto continue till mid-May.
As the gunny bags manu-facturing units in WestBengal are closed due to co-
untry-wide lockdown, thestate government has direc-ted rice millers and fair pri-ce shop dealers to send backthe existing gunny bagssupplied to them with paddyproduced during kharifcrop. This way the govern-ment is expecting to pool in10 crore gunny bags whichwill be sufficient till month-end.
“The chief minister hasalready taken up the gunnybags matter with the primeminister as it is not only Te-langana but other states toowhich depend on suppliesfrom West Bengal. We are al-
so looking at other possiblesafe storage of paddy,” CivilSupplies Corporation chair-man Mareddy Srinivas Red-dy said.
The state governmenthas also agreed to pay ̀̀ 2 mo-re per gunny bag to FP dea-lers returning it to the CivilSupplies Corporation. Inste-ad of `̀18 per bag, the dealerswould be paid ̀̀ 20 per emptybag. The government is ex-pecting pooling in of gunnybags from FP dealers soonerthan later as 2.51lakh metrictonnes of rice has been dis-tributed to white ration cardholders in just 8 days.
KCR Asks ChiefSecy To Offer
Incentives
CM pushes for moregunny bag units in T
QThe CM has already taken up the matter with
the PM as other states depend on supplies from West Bengal too. We are also looking at other storage methods —Mareddy Srinivas Reddy | CHAIRMAN,CIVIL SUPPLIES CORPORATION
➤ The state government needs to store 1.05 crore MT of paddy from rabi crop and thus require 20 crore gunny bags
➤ The harvesting of the crop has begun and is expected to continue till mid-May
➤ As gunny bag units in West Bengal are closed due to lockdown, government has directed rice millers and FPS dealers to return bags supplied to them
GOVT NEEDS 20CR GUNNY BAGSHyderabad: A woman sar-panch in Adilabad district iscracking the whip on viola-tors of lockdown. The sar-panch stands near the villagechowki, handing out fines towhoever violates the lock-down.
“We are worried about therise in number of people af-fected with the virus. Instead
of blaming others, I have de-cided to take matters into myown hands. Every day, I standat the common chowki so thatI can catch anyone who viola-tes the lockdown,” said Mee-nakshi Gadge, sarpanch ofMukhra (K) village.
As a result, fines in Mukh-ra (K), a remote village inIchoda mandal, are moun-ting. This week alone, threepersons were fined.
In the first case, villagerTulsi Ram was fined ̀̀ 1,000 fortravelling in and out of the
village five times without re-ason. In the second instance,a fine of `̀500 was imposed onPradeep and in the third, ̀̀ 500was imposed on Ravikanthfor not wearing a mask whilestepping out of home.
The sarpanch, who has
studied till class 10, says it isher duty to protect her villa-ge.
Not just her, she is raisingawareness among women onthe coronavirus pandemicand importance of social dis-tancing and adhering to thelockdown.
Inspired by her, many wo-men now help her guard thechowki.
Gadge is not the only wo-man sarpanch taking the leadin the fight against the coro-na outbreak. The sarpanch ofMadanapuram grama pan-chayat, Vudutha Akhila Ya-dav (25), too has been guar-ding the entry point to her vil-lage in Nalgonda.
Photos of her holding astick on the road to the villa-ge, to prevent people circum-venting the lockdown, wentviral recently.
Sarpanch turns chowkidar, handsout hefty fines to lockdown violators
Meenakshi mans the village chowki and issues fines to lockdown violators
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
#LOCKDOWNHEROES
Secunderabad: Hundreds ofpriests who perform daily ri-tuals in various small temp-les, which are categorised aslower income (revenue) gro-up of temples, are in distress.
After all temples inclu-ding major, medium andsmall temples, were closeddue to lockdown, the lives ofthe priests those are dependeon ‘harathi offers’ are in mi-serable condition.
For instance, in Secunde-rabad, over 2,000 priests usedto perform in nearly 1,000small temples (categorisedunder B & C classificaiton) inSecunderabad.
“April and May are peakmonths for us to earn incomethrough hundreds of marria-ges. But due to lockdown, thenumber of marriages havebeen different. Till Septem-ber, there are no auspiciousdays to perform marriages,”a priest at Hanuman Temple,Lal Bazar in Secunderabadtold TOI.
Meanwhile, a member ofthe managing trust of a temp-le in Lal Bazar, S Gangadhar,
urged the state governmentto extend help on the similarlines as migrant workers, byproviding groceries like rice,commodities and vegetablesto the priests till the lock-down is lifted.
“Priests are coming to theroads and waiting for oppor-tunities at several areas inSecunderabad to perform ri-tuals for needy people,” saidGangadhar. The state govern-ment and NGOs have to comeforward and rescue these pri-ests, he added.
Priests suffer asdemand dries up
Hyderabad: Industries shouldnot lay off any employees andshould instead adopt other aus-terity measures to tide over to-ugh phase on account of lock-down, industries and IT mini-ster KT Rama Rao told indust-ry captains on Saturday.
KTR, who was addressingmembers of apex industry bo-dy Confederation of Indian In-dustry’s Telangana chapterthrough video conferencing,said only about 25% of state’seconomy is still operationaland post lockdown, economicgrowth may happen in spurts.
He said even after lockdownis lifted, one of the biggest chal-lenges will be to rebuild theconfidence of workforce. “Soci-al distancing will be new normand industries have to makechanges in the way they opera-te,” he said.
Urging CII to work on vi-sion document on new busi-ness opportunities in post Co-vid-19 era, he urged its mem-bers to explore opportunitiesin healthcare and biotech sec-tors given the renewed focus onthem.
Don’t lay offstaff: KTR to
industry bodyTIMES NEWS NETWORK
Vijayawada:Endowmentsminister Vellampalli SrinivasRao assured public that APgovernment would supportthose in need during thelockdown. The minister onSaturday distributed essentialcommodities to poor priests atDurga Ghat in the city.
Around 200 priestsdependent on ‘pindapradhanam’ and other ritualshave been struggling to earntheir livelihood since thelockdown was imposed. TNN
AP priests givenessentials by min
Hyderabad: Two per-sons were nabbed whilethey were illegally trans-porting 12 tonne of publicdistribution scheme(PDS) rice and intendedto make money by sellingit to people in Karnataka.
The accused boughtrice from PDS beneficia-ries at cheap price andplanned to sell it at highrate. Police said Moham-med Mohsin Qureshi, adriver, and S Ramanjane-
yulu, an auto trolley dri-ver, were arrested.
The state governmenthas been supplying 12-kgof PDS rice free for everymember of the familyholding a ration card.Mohsin had purchasedthe PDS rice from somecard holders of Hydera-bad. The two were plan-ning to transport it toHumnabad in Karnata-ka. Task Force police nab-bed and handed themover to Chatrinaka poli-ce, who arrested them.
Two arrested while illegallytransporting PDS rice to K’taka
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Charminar: United Mus-lim Forum TS & AP here onSaturday urged the govern-ment to ask the TelanganaWaqf Board (TSWB) to cle-ar imams’ and mauzzins’honorarium outstandingfor the last three months.
Syed MuneeruddinMukhtar, general secretary,United Muslim Forum toldTOI that imams and mauz-zins of various mosqueshad been deprived of theirthree months’ honorariumduring these days, adding totheir difficulties amid thelockdown. He urged TSWBto take immediate note ofimams and mauzzins’ ser-vices to ensure disburse-ment of their honorariumsoon. “Imams and muaz-zins play a key role in ensu-ring social distancing. At atime they need help, theyhave not been paid theirthree months’ honorariumyet. Unfortunately, theirservices are not taken intoconsideration ,’’ said SyedMuneeruddin Mukhtar,UMF general secretary.
Waqf boardurged to
clear duesOmer bin Taher
His otherwise collected14-year-old daughterhad to be rushed to
Kondapur Government AreaHospital on Thursday afteran aggressive outburst. Thegirl, who begs along with herfather for a living, has beenaddicted to alcohol for over ayear now. Doctors TOI spoketo confirmed that withdra-wal symptoms in childrenare far worse than in adults.
“Symptoms include deli-rium, hallucination and sui-cidal tendencies. If the affec-ted can’t lay their hands onalcohol, they are likely toturn to far more dangerous
substitutes which could befatal,” says Dr B Jyostna, aneuropsychiatrist whoworks at Vijayawada Go-vernment General Hospitaland also runs a mental he-alth clinic in LB Nagar.
“After the lockdown, it isno longer uncommon for usto see children as young as 13years in agony… If anyt-hing, this has really brought
to light how many of ourchildren are addicted to in-toxicants,” she said.
“Alcohol withdrawalsymptoms are both psycho-logical and physical. Thephysical symptoms are hardto control and hallucina-tions can drive people tocommit suicide,” ErragaddaInstitute of Mental Healthsuperintendent Dr. UmaShankar told TOI. No minorhas, so far, been admitted tothe institute during lock-down. Slums in the city whe-re only a few alcohol with-drawal cases have been seenhave a steady flow of illicit li-quor, says Neloufer Tabas-sum, the co-founder of NGO
Good Universe, which worksin over 10 slums across the ci-ty. “Toddy sells for twice andeven thrice the usual price.Slum-dwellers, includingadolescents, pool in moneyto buy a bottle,” she said.
Slums such as Gowlidod-di, 8km from Hi-Tec City, ha-ve seen fewer withdrawal ca-ses only because people havebeen brewing hooch withinits premises, says Neloufer.The side-effects of illicit li-quor is much worse than al-cohol. But that’s the last tho-ught on their mind, she says,“In this blind madness, theywill drink anything they canlay hands on. No matter whatit costs them.”
‘Withdrawal symptoms in kids worse than adults’ Slums such as Gowlidoddi,8km from Hi-Tec City, haveseen fewer withdrawalcases only because peoplehave been brewing hoochwithin its premises
�From P 1
CCI NG 3.7 Product: TOIHyderabadBS PubDate: 19-04-2020 Zone: Hyderabad Edition: 1 Page: TOIHP5 User: lavanya.menon Time: 04-18-2020 23:29 Color: CMYK
Government of Karnataka1 1 1 EXAMINATIONS AUTHORITY
Road, Sampige E Fax:
1 012 Phone: 080-23460460 (5 lines)1 1
No. ED/KEAJADMN/CR-21/2019 Date : 17.04.2020
NOTIFICATIONPGET-2020 - CENTRALISED AND COMBINED COUNSELLING FOR ADMISSION TO
POST GRADUATE MEDICAL AND DENTAL (DEGREE AND DIPLOMA) COURSESFOR THE YEAR 2020-21 IN THE STATE OF KARNATAKA
As per Government order No. MED 48 RGU 2020 Bengaluru , dated 16-04-2020 , Karnataka ExaminationsAuthority, Bengaluru is inviting application online from the eligible candidates who have qualified inNEET-PG-2020 or NEET-MDS-2020 and desirous of applying for the available PG Medical and Dental Degree /Diploma courses in Government Medical and Dental colleges , Government Quota seats in Private and MinorityMedical and Dental Colleges and Private seats in Private Medical and Dental colleges (KPCF, KRLMPCA ,AMPCK and Private Universities) located in the State of Karnataka for the academic year 2020-21.Interested candidates can apply online from 5.00 pm on 17.04.2020 to 20.04.2020 up to 11.59 pm and pay theregistration fees on or before 21-04-2020. Please note that SC/ST/OBC eligibility criteria are applicable toKarnataka SC/ST/OBC candidates only.Information Bulletin-2020 detailing admission eligibility criteria and other details are hosted on the KEA Websitehttp://kea.kar.nic.in forthe information of the candidates.Mere qualifying in NEET-PG 2020 / NEET MDS 2020 does not confer any right on the candidate unless thecandidate fulfills eligibility conditions / uploading of documents / certificates. Further, only the candidates whocomplete the registration process including online document verification are eligible for PG Medical / Dental seatsin Government / Private Colleges in Karnataka . Registered but not verified / Unregistered candidates will not beallowed for any admission either through KEA or by the College, as after the mop-up round, the list ofregistered and verified but un-allotted candidates will be sent by KEA to colleges to fill-up vacant seats , if any.(As per GO I instructions)NOTE:1. All the candidates who have qualified in NEET-PG 2020 / NEET-MDS 2020 are hereby advised to register
online and complete the document verification process through online to become eligible for admission to PGMedical / Dental (Degree/ Diploma) Courses in the State of Karnataka.
2. Candidates should compulsorily upload all the relevant documents in PDF format through KEA portal. Thedocuments needs to be uploaded as per their claim in the online application form to become eligible for entryoptions and further seat allotment, failing which the candidates will not be considered for allotment of seats inthe state of Karnataka through KEA/ College.
3. Documents should not be sent through e-Mail / Post / Courier. The candidates have to upload the documents inPDF format through their KEA login portal only.
For more details please visit KEA Website http://kea.kar.nic.in Sd/-(Suralkar Vikas Kishor IAS),Executive Director, KEA &
DIPR/DDU/2020- 21 Member Secretary, Entrance Test Committee.
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Dean (AP)
6 SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, HYDERABADAPRIL 19, 2020TELANGANA/ANDHRA PRADESH | Viral Worry
NAMAZ TIMINGS● Fajar | 4.54 am (Mon-
day) to 5.51 am● Zohar | 12.25 pm to
4.30 pm● Asar | 4.38 pm to
6.30 pm● Maghrib | 6.38 pm to
7.40 pm● Isha | 7.48 pm to 4.32
am
Ayanam: Uttaraayanam,Rutuvu: Vasantha, Maasam:Chaitra, Paksham: Krishna,Tithi: Ekadadhi 22-18, Naksh-atram : Shatabhisham 28-24,Yoga: Shuklam 18-41, Kara-nam: Bava 09-09, Varjam:09.40 to 11.26, Rahukaa-lam:09-07to 10-41, Durmuhur-tam: 05-58 to 07-39, Am-ruthakalam:20-22 to 22-09
ALMANAC19-04-2020 (SUNDAY)
GOOD RANGE0-60μg/m3
CITY WEATHER
MAX MIN
38.6˚ 26.1˚SATURDAY’S TEMPERATURE
GENERALLY CLOUDY SKY
SUNDAY’S REPORT | Partly cloudy sky. Light to moderate rain/thunder showers very likely
MON 05.56 AMSUNRISE
SUNSET SUN
03.48 AMMOONRISE SUN
03:43 PMMOONSET SUN
06.33 PM
POLLUTION WATCH
SATURDAY’S AVERAGE PPM DATA | AVERAGE VALUE
AQI of Pollutant PM2.5. Reading as on April 18 (7pm)
SANATH NAGAR 36.39
IDA BOLLARAM 30.51
ZOO PARK 47.78
ICRISAT PATANCHERU 29.96
CENTRAL UNIVERSITY 32.24
IDA PASHAMYLARAM 32.12
AVERAGE AQI ACROSS FOUR MAJOR CITIES
(AQI-air quality index)
(Data for 24hrs till 4pm on Saturday)
HYDE
RABA
D
BEN
GALU
RU
CHEN
NA
I
DELH
I
98
Source: Central Pollution Control Board
Source: IMD
68 68
40
Defects in drainage system vexes Patancheru residents
BE A SMART TOICITIZEN REPORTERKeep mobile phone’s GPS on while clicking and sending picturesDescribe exactly where and when picture was taken, giving street names and other locators
More photos, videos on timesofindia.com
Cops were seen riding a bike without a helmet at Mozamjahi Market, Goshamahal. Police are setting a bad example by violating the rules themselves — Avinash I
The drainage line near JP colony road no. 3, Patancheru has been overflowing on to the road. This has led to breeding of mosquitoes which can cause spread of vector-borne diseases. No action has been taken despite repeated complaints. I request the concerned authorities to look into the issue — Ravi N
This sewage line near Padma Nagar phase II, Chintal is overflowing onto the road for the past 3 weeks and can result in the spread of infectious diseases. I request the concerned authorities to take up repair works in the lockdown period and rectify the problem — Mainak Paul
SEWAGEOVERFLOW
RIDINGWITHOUTHELMET
Hyderabad: With paddy har-vesting at its peak, Telanganahas deployed harvesters but isdesperately missing the servi-ces of 20,000 hamalis (wor-kers) from Bihar for loadingand unloading of paddy, riceand other agriculture produ-ce. The workers had gone to Bi-har from Telangana for Holifestival and could not returnfor during paddy harvest dueto the country-wide lockdown.
Now, the Telangana go-vernment along with the ricemillers’ association has star-ted making efforts to bringback these hamalis. The ricemillers have the contact num-bers of the hamalis and theirguttedars (handlers) and havestarted contacting them.
However, wives of many ofthese hamalis are not willingto send back their better hal-ves due to the fear of coronavi-rus infection. Several women
want their husbands to stay athome even without income.
The Telangana govern-ment, on its part, has urged itsBihar counterpart to grantpermission for the workforceto be transported to Telanganain special buses after conduc-ting Covid-19 tests and mainta-ining social distancing normduring travel. Chief secretarySomesh Kumar has also sent alist of over 5,000 workers whoare staying in various districtsof Bihar and who have given
their consent to come to workif provided with transporta-tion facility. The CS has takenup the issue with his counter-part in Bihar and other statesen route to Telangana to seeknecessary permissions fortransportation of the hamalisfrom Bihar to Telangana.
Telangana Rice Millers’Association secretary V Mo-han Reddy told TOI that thishamali workforce specialisesin packing the paddy in gunnybags, weighing it and them
uploading in the truck in the fi-elds and again loading paddyand rice at rice mills and FCIwarehouses. Each workerearns anywhere between Rs1,000 and Rs 1500 per day du-ring peak season i.e. April andMay every year. “Though the-re are other migrant labou-rers from construction, indu-stries and other sectors avai-lable in the state, they cannothandle the paddy, rice loadingand unloading. These hamalisfrom Bihar have been doing itfor years now,” Mohan Reddysaid and added about 10,000 ha-malis from Bihar have giventheir consent to come to Te-langana.
A guttedar from Khagariadistrict in Bihar said: “Somewomen are not willing to sendtheir better halves but largenumber of men are ready tocome after convincing theirbetter halves. If everythingworks out between the govern-ment to government negotia-tions, we will be sending ourworkforce,” he said.
Telangana is expecting abumper paddy crop of 1.05 cro-re metric tonnes, the harvestof which has already com-menced.
Wives UnwillingTo Send Back
Husbands
State govt awaits 20k hamalisfrom Bihar for loading paddy
The workers had gone to Bihar for Holi but have been stranded there due to lockdown
10,000hamalisfrom
Bihar have given their consent to come to Telangana
Each worker earns between `1,000 and`1,500 per day during peak season i.e. April and May every year
Telangana is expecting a bumper paddy crop of 1.05 crore metric tonnes
The government has already procured 4 lakh tonnes of paddyfrom farmers
LOADING & UNLOADING AFFECTED
Hyderabad: A leopard thatwas found dead on the out-skirts of Kasulabad village ofMirudoddi mandal in Siddi-pet district on Thursday, haddied after feeding on a deerthat had consumed toxicgrass, as per the postmortemreport.
The veterinarians whoconducted the postmortemsaid that the leopard had blo-od clots in the heart and de-er’s meat in the intestineswith traces of toxic grass con-sumed by the deer before itwas killed.
“Although not deliberate,I suspect that the leopardmight have died due to poiso-ning. The grass which wasconsumed by the herbivoremight have been toxic andeventually killed the leopard.Some juvenile species ofgrass such as sorghum whichis a feed source that can begrazed by cattle or other her-bivorous animals can causepoisoning, especially beforeripening,” said Chepuri Srid-
har Rao, divisional forest offi-cer, Siddipet.
Forest department offici-als also stated that investiga-tion into the case revealedthat the leopard could be thesame one that had killed catt-le in Gajagatlapally villagenearly four days ago and mig-rated to Kasulabad village.
“The leopard is not local tothis area. This might be thesame leopard which made akill in Gajagatlapally. Other-wise, we did not come acrossany sign or evidence thatshows presence of a big cat inthis area in the last one-and-half years. The last sightingof a leopard in this area, ac-cording to the villagers, wasnearly 25 years ago,” the fo-rest officials told TOI.
Leopard died aftereating poisoneddeer, says report
Hyderabad: A disabled manand his wife were run over by acar while crossing the road af-ter collecting pension from abank in Rampur in Warangaldistrict on Saturday. Police fo-und CCTV footage of the acci-dent. However, no arrests weremade in the case till last reportscame in.
The two victims were identi-fied as Naini Ilaiah, 58, and Nai-ni Venkatalaxmi, 52, both resi-dents of Rampur. Ilaiah had adisability in his legs.
Around 10.50am, after col-lecting pension from a bank, thecouple started walking towardstheir home when the accidentoccurred near VMR Polytech-nic College, Dharmasagar poli-ce said.
“A speeding car hit themwhile they were crossing the ro-ad. We have the car’s registra-tion number,” Dharmasagar in-spector Mohammed Baba said.
The victims sustained seve-re head injuries and died on thespot. The car driver, who wastravelling from Warangal to-wards Hyderabad, escapedfrom the spot.
A case was registered underSection 304 (A) (causing deathby negligence) of the IPC.
Disabledman, wife run
over by carTIMES NEWS NETWORK
Hyderabad: The body of anunderground mine worker inSingareni Collieries Compa-ny Limited (SCCL) who went‘missing’ at a mine in Rama-gundam was retrieved after 11days on Friday. The body of58-year-old Kodem Sanjeevwas retrieved after a rescueteam from Hyderabad got intothe GDK 11 incline at Rama-gundam. The body was foundat the GDK 6A-43rd level inthe mine.
Sources said this is thefirst time that it took as manyas 11days to trace out a personand retrieve the body. Inci-dents in the past took four orfive days.
Sanjeev had been sent in-side as a pump operator topump out the water from themine. Sanjeev had reportedfor work on April 7 for the firstshift. However, when the se-cond shift workers arrived at2 pm, they did not see him. Hisfamily members and workers
found his two-wheeler parkedat his usual place and the clot-hes that he wore before chang-ing into the uniform were al-
so there. Thisindicated hehad not comeout.
Thoughsearch opera-tions were
carried out, he could not be lo-cated. On Friday, BMS leaderRiaz Ahmed accompanied arescue team from Hyderabadto carry out search opera-tions at the mine. Labourunions on Saturday expres-sed surprise that the manage-ment took 11 days for tracinghim and demanded `̀50 lakhex-gratia be paid to Sanjeev’sfamily in addition to the bene-fits that they are due. Theunions also demanded anot-her `̀50 lakh to the family forthe trauma they suffered for11 days. Workers said the cau-se of Sanjeev’s death will beknown after the post-mortemreport comes.
Coal miner’s bodyfound after 11 days
Hyderabad:Chandrayangutta MLAAkbaruddin Owaisihas urged chiefminister KChandrashekar Rao toprovide ration kits andfinancial aid to poorMuslim families aheadRamzan. In a letter,the AIMIM leaderrequested CM Rao toprovide financial aid toone crore women whoare below the povertyline.Akbaruddin askedthe chief minister todirect the minoritieswelfare department tocoordinate withrevenue and civilsupplies departmentsand ensure thatmuslim familieswoulds receive theassistance beforeRamzan. TNN
Akbar urgesCM to help BPLMuslims
Hyderabad: TheTelangana humanrights commission hassought a report fromthe commissioner oflabour after a TOIreport regarding thelabour departmentholding benefit claimsof construction workersin Mahabubabad. TheSHRC was respondingto a petition by AchyutaRao, honorary presidentof Balula HakkulaSangham. Thecommission sought areport on the number ofapplications pendingwith the deputycommissioner oflabour, Warangal andMahabubabad range,regarding memberswho enrolledthemselves with labourwelfare board forpayment. It also soughta report on the numberof applications clearedin the past one year. TNN
SHRC seeksreport on labourbenefit claims
Veterinarians said that theleopard had blood clots inthe heart and deer’s meatin the intestines withtraces of toxic grass con-sumed by the deer before itwas killed
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SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, HYDERABAD APRIL 19, 2020 7TIMES NATION
New Delhi: Hospital admis-sions of severe acute respira-tory illness (Sari) and influ-enza-like illnesses (ILI) casesunder the government’s he-alth insurance scheme Ay-ushman Bharat have showna flat graph in the last threemonths since January whenIndia reported its first confir-med case of Covid-19, provi-ding evidence that the widercommunity transmission isyet to begin in India despitehotspots and clusters.
Ayushman Bharat data isone of several indicators, likesale of drugs for flu-type ill-nesses and reporting of suchcases in OPDs, clinics and ho-spitals, that the governmentis closely monitoring to see ifthere is a spike that suggestsa wider Covid-19 transmis-sion that has escaped notice.In a step up of testing, ILI ca-ses are being scanned for Co-vid-19, while the Ayushmannumbers are also providing
valuable information.Data from National He-
alth Authority (NHA) showsthat the number of Sari & ILIadmissions in public and pri-vate hospitals together incre-ased by just 8.6% between Ja-nuary and February and the-reafter declined in March by5.4% and 12.9%, as comparedto the previous two months.
“The fact that there is nosignificant surge in Sari andILI hospitalisation indicatesthat there is no massive un-dercurrent of an outbreak. Itrather confirms that on a na-tional scale the Covid-19 out-break is not out of control,”
said Niti Aayog member Dr VK Paul. “The data doesn’tshow any spurt and is sup-portive of the hypothesis thatthere is no community trans-mission,” NHA chief execu-tive Indu Bhushan said.
In January, when go-vernment started initialscreening for Covid, therewere 24,127 hospital admis-sions for SARI and ILI underthe government-run healthinsurance scheme. Afterlockdown was imposed, thenumber of hospitalisationsdropped to 22,815 in Marchand 3,024 in April so far.
Full report on www.toi.in
No post-corona jumpin Sari, influenza tallyNumbers HintNo Community
Spread Yet 30,000
25,000
20,000
15,000
10,000
5,000
0Jan ’20 Feb March Apr 17
Sari and ILI related hospitalisations under Ayushman Bharat show fl at graph which govt says is indicative of limited a local outbreak
Num
ber
of S
ari a
nd IL
I cas
es h
ospi
talis
ed
unde
r Ay
ushm
an B
hara
t sc
hem
e
24,127
26,20322,815
3,024
Total cases | 76,169
Source: National Health Authority (NHA)
AYUSHMAN BHARAT EVIDENCEIndore: A sanitation workerwas attacked with an axe inDewas district on Friday,prompting police to book theprime accused under NSA.
The victim, Deepak Kaso-liya, was injured in the headand torso. According to police,his alleged attacker, AadilKhan, said that a religiousleader had “provoked peopleto thrash those enforcing re-strictions on them during thecoronavirus lockdown”.
Dewas SP Krishnaveni De-savatu said four persons havebeen arrested for attemptedmurder and assaulting a pub-lic servant on duty. Aadil, asprime accused, is being book-ed under NSA, he said.SP De-savatu said: “We verified hisstatement, and got a video inwhich the information givenby him was found to be true.Four accused -- Aadil, Habib,Aarif and Gop Khan -- werebooked for attempted murderand deterring a public servantfrom performing his duties.They have all been arrested,”said. Police identified GopKhan of Koyala Mohalla asthe religious leader and book-ed him under IPC 120B. Thesearch for Aarif is on.
Man bookedfor axe attackon sanitationworker in MP
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
“They may not say so expli-citly but the focus is China,”said a government official.
On March 17, Spain hasenacted a royal decree man-dating the need for author-isation of FDI on thegrounds of security andpublic order. On March 25,the European Commissionissued guidelines to coordi-nate the approach of mem-ber states on FDI in a bid toprotect critical assets andtechnologies from beingcontrolled by overseas in-vestors during the marketdisruption caused by Co-vid-19.
On April 8, Italy expand-ed the scope of a 2012 decree,called the Golden PowerLaw, to cover additional sec-tors such as health, energy,transport, defence, aero-space, media, data, artifi-cial intelligence, electrical
New Delhi: India hasjoined Australia and severalEuropean countries, in-cluding Germany, in re-viewing its FDI policy witha special focus on China.The US had begun a deeperscrutiny at the start of thestart of the year itself. OnJanuary 13, the treasury de-partment issued landmarkregulations to scrutiniseforeign investments intocritical technology firm-s—especially those fromChina, expanding the scopeof the committee on foreigninvestment in the UnitedStates (CFIUS) and poten-tial impact on national secu-rity of a foreign investmenttransaction.
The coronavirus out-break in China made theothers wary as countries re-alised how a disruption inthe supply chain could im-pact them in case of anemergency. The fall in shareprices after the stock mar-ket collapse only added tothe fear. As a result, over thelast one month or so countryafter country has been re-newing its investment en-gagement with China.
or financial infrastructureand land and real estate.The Golden Power Law al-lowed authorities to pro-hibit or restrict investmentby foreign nationals in cer-tain industries.
Germany is going a stepfurther and amending itslaw to provide that evenprobable impairment topublic order or securitycould result in governmentintervention.
The rule will allow forauthorities to step in notjust to prevent any threat toGermany but also to otherEU member states. Austra-lia has expanded the ambitof review of FDI proposalsby lowering the thresholdto Aus$0, besides sayingthat the timeline for clear-ing all proposals will nowbe six months.
Full report on www.toi.in
Countries trying to restrict Chinese FDI
Sources in the governmentsaid there was a real thre-at of Chinese entities
—many of the big ones arecontrolled by the Communistrulers in Beijing through aweb of opaque linkages — mo-ving in to take up Indian com-panies which were doing welluntil the pandemic renderedthem vulnerable and temptingtargets. The linkages are whythe security establishment he-re has considered investmentsfrom China to be a risk.
Government sources saidwhile the the move has been inthe pipeline for a while, Co-vid-19 helped the governmentmake up its mind expeditious-ly. The move coincides with si-milar barriers erected byother countries -- Germany,Italy, Spain and Australia, toblock predatory capital fromChina.
India's decision , however,is different in one vital respect.Unlike in other cases wherethe filters are aimed at invest-ments in general, the Modi go-vernment's decision is specifi-cally targeted at China giventhat the automatic route wasalready closed for flows fromPakistan and Bangladesh. Thebluntness of the government'sdecision reflects the serious-ness of its worry. Sources saidthe government had exploredthe option of putting a generalban on foreign investmentthrough the automatic route,but decided against it due towariness of being seen as ha-
ving turned protectionist andinsular. Putting FDI from allcountries under the approvalroute would have also sloweddown inflows, which are criti-cal at this time. With the threatof Chinese capital moving inappearing serious, the autho-rities decided to be specific in aturn away from the restraintthat has defined the approachtowards Beijing. Sources saidthat during the deliberationsone school of thought had fa-voured a more nuanced appro-ach, arguing that greenfield in-vestments should be let in, butthe leadership decided to gothe whole hog.
The Indian government’smove, cleared by the Union Ca-binet, comes days after it emer-ged that the People’s Bank ofChina has increased its stakein HDFC Bank, the country’slargest private lender, to over1%. But while the PBOC in-vestment came through theportfolio investment route, theFDI move is more strategicand is aimed at blocking anyattempt to restrict entitiesfrom across the border to acqu-ire a significant beneficial in-terest.
‘Chinese entitiesmoving to take over
Indian cos real threat’
New Delhi: Prime MinisterNarendra Modi on Saturday re-iterated the Centre’s commit-ment to help micro, small andmedium enterprises (MSMEs)as he endorsed the measurestaken by the CBDT, includingrelease of pending income taxrefunds, to help them tide overthe Covid-19 crisis.
“Committed to helping ourdynamic small and mediumbusinesses,” the PM tweeted,sharing the CBDT statement.
As a relief to MSMEs, in-come tax refunds worthRs.5,204 crore have been re-leased by CBDT in the last 10days to nearly 8.2 lakh smallbusinesses to help them carryon their business activitieswithout pay cuts/layoffs inthe wake of the Covid-19 pan-demic. Hailing the efforts ofvarious ministries in the faceof the unprecedented chal-lenge, the PM responded totweets by his cabinet col-leagues on how efforts werebeing made to help the peopleamid the lockdown. TNN
Full report on www.toi.in
Committed tohelping MSMEs,assures PM Modi
New Delhi: India’s decision onSaturday to amend FDI rules re-quiring government approvalfor entities from countries thatshare a land border — readmore specifically as China — isnot only an attempt to protectvulnerable assets from predato-ry acquisitions but a recogni-tion that in the wake of the Co-vid-19 crisis, India needs to drawacareful line between economicopenness and national security.
Alarm bells regarding Chi-nese investments and controlhave been ringing from sometime, but it took a pandemic forthe government to address whatis seen as a strategic vulnerabil-ity which could also be a politi-cal vulnerability. The concernsurfaced with PBOC’s acquisi-tion of 1% of HDFC on behalf ofChina’s sovereign wealth fundSAFE though the worries aregreater with regard to FDI. In-dia is not alone as Australia,Germany, France, Spain andeven UK have acted to screen in-
vestments. A report by Gateway House,
a Mumbai-based think tank,raised red flags recently in a re-port which said Indian tech, re-tail and fintech start-ups havegot close to $ 4 billion from Chi-nese investors since 2015.
The concern, however, issharper with regard to nationalsecurity as reports with the gov-ernment had pointed to threatof data being siphoned off andopaque tech and sometimeseven financial holdings. Therehad been long deliberationsover allowing Chinese giantHuawei to take part of in India’s5G trials. The possibility of se-curity vulnerabilities hasmoved up the graph as far as thegovernment is concerned andthis led to a more focused actionthat places a barrier for ChineseFDI. In fact, Covid-19 has sharp-ened focus on exactly how deepis India’s dependence on China,as the government tries tosource equipment and compo-nents.
Full report on www.toi.in
India needs to see China’sfootprints on [email protected]
New Delhi: Around 30% of the total confirmedcases of Covid-19 in India are linked to the Ta-blighi Jamaat event held in mid-March at Niza-muddin Markaz in New Delhi, the health minis-try said on Saturday underlining how the eventcontributed significantly to the caseload of 23states including those with high burden of theinfection. Of the total 14,378 confirmed cases ofCovid-19, 4,291or 29.8% were linked to the Islamicreligious congregation .
These cases are spread across 23 states andUnion Territories, which include most of thehigh burden states, health ministry joint secre-tary Lav Agarwal said. He added that 80% ofcases in Tamil Nadu, 63% cases in Delhi, 79%cases in Telangana, 59% cases in UP and 61%cases in AP are related to the event. Besides,some states where the number of cases are lowalso accounted for cases linked with the event.
Sushmi Dey| TNN
Almost 30% of casestied to Jamaat: Govt
Ludhiana/Chandigarh: Ludhiana assist-ant commissioner of police Anil Kohli (52),who had contracted Covid-19, died of multi-ple organ failure on Saturday. He is survivedby his wife, who too was confirmed to havecontracted the virus on Friday, and two sons.
Punjab CM Amarinder Singh condoled hisdemise along with that of kanungo (revenueofficer) Gurmel Singh, who died ofCovid-19 on Friday.
Amarinder announced Rs 50 lakh ex-gra-tia payment to the next of kin of both the offi-cers and tweeted “Deeply saddened to losetwo of my officials to #Covid19. Have decidedto pay Rs 50 lakh ex-gratia to their next to kin.While I pray such an incident shouldn’t hap-pen, but if it does, state govt will pay Rs 50lakh to NoK of officials who die in line of du-ty due to #Covid19.” TNN
Ludhiana ACP dies ofCovid, wife tests +ve
New Delhi: In a major Co-vid-19 outbreak in the IndianNavy, at least 26 sailors havetested positive for the highlycontagious virus at a shore-based establishment inMumbai, though no caseshave been reported from sea-faring warships and subma-rines till now.
The number of cases atINS Angre, the main shore-based logistics and adminis-trative depot of the WesternNaval Command in southMumbai, is bound to risewith the force going in for“meticulous contact tracingas well as aggressive screen-ing and testing of primaryand secondary contacts” byroping in even private labs,said officers.
This is the biggest corona-virus outbreak in the over 15-lakh strong armed forces tillnow. The much-larger Armyhas so far reported just 10cases from different parts ofthe country, with a womandoctor at the Dehradun mili-tary hospital being the latestto test positive for Covid-19.
“The woman officer, thethird doctor to test positive inArmy, had attended theMOJC (medical officers ju-nior command) course at
Lucknow last month. Her pri-mary contacts in Dehradunhave tested negative but allthe 60 officers who attendedthe course are under watch inquarantine,” said a source.
Military personnel workand live close together,whether they are deployedalong the borders or on boardthe cramped confines of war-ships and submarines. Co-vid-19 has already hit oper-ations of several warships,including four US and oneFrench nuclear-powered air-craft carriers, around theglobe.
The Indian Navy on Sat-urday said there were “nocases of infection on boardany of its warships, subma-rines or air stations” and itwas maintaining “full oper-
ational readiness” and con-ducting its patrolling and de-ployment missions on thehigh seas as usual.
But in Mumbai, the worst-hit city in the country, the sit-uation is grim at INS Angre,which is adjacent to the navaldockyard where severalfront-line warships and sub-marines are docked.
The 26 sailors, who havebeen isolated at the naval hos-pital INHS Asvini, were allstaying in one particular “in-living” block of the bache-lors’ residential accommoda-tion at INS Angre, which isnow under a total lockdown.
The outbreak — only sixof the 26 are “symptomatic”— has been have traced to asingle sailor who tested posi-tive on April 7.
26 sailors at Mumbai, 1 Armydoctor at Dehradun test +ve
UNDER ATTACK
PTI
Virus outbreak in China madethe others wary as countriesrealised how a disruption inthe supply chain could im-pact them in case of emer-gency. The fall in share pricesafter the stock market col-lapse only added to the fear
New Delhi: Many healthcareworkers who took anti-malariadrug hydroxychloroquine(HCQ) reported side-effects likeabdominal pain, nausea and hy-poglycemia during a study con-ducted by the Indian Council ofMedical Research (ICMR) toevaluate the efficacy and side-effects of the drug as a prophy-lactic treatment.
“A study has been launched toknow the side-effects of HCQ. Wefound that healthcare workershaving an average age of 35 yearstook these drugs and 10% repor-ted abdominal pain, 6% reportednausea and 1.3% reported hypog-
lycemia,” ICMR head of epide-miology and communicable dise-ases Dr R R Gangakhedkar said.
He added that around 22% ofthese healthcare workers alsohad other conditions like diabe-tes, cardiovascular diseases andblood pressure and therefore,probably out of fear, took HCQ asapreventive measure.
Apart from this, ICMR is alsoconducting a cohort study to eva-luate HCQ’s impact. “We’re notdoing a trial and we don’t havesufficient evidence base to do atrial. There will be about 480 pati-ents who will be enrolled and itwill go on for about 2.5 months,” Dr Gangakhedkarsaid. ICMR has approved only pr-ophylactic use of HCQ in high-risk asymptomatic healthcareworkers involved in the care ofsuspected or confirmed cases ofCovid-19 and asymptomatic hou-sehold contacts of laboratoryconfirmed cases.
HCQ could’veside-effects,new study byICMR warns
Health workers, having an average of 35 years,took the drug and 10%reported abdominal pain, 6% nausea and 1.3% hypoglycemia
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
�From P 1 FDI move is morestrategic and isaimed at blockingany attempt torestrict entitiesfrom across theborder to acquire asignificantbeneficial interest
CCI NG 3.7 Product: TOIHyderabadBS PubDate: 19-04-2020 Zone: Hyderabad Edition: 1 Page: TOIHP7 User: srirupa.goswami Time: 04-19-2020 00:28 Color: CMYK
NOTICE INVITING TENDERProviding Services for Detailed Engineering . Monitoring and
Supervision in Establishment of Food Park at Gangaikondan ,Tamil Nadu
NABCONS invites tender for availing serv ices for detailed engineering , tenderprocess management , monitoring and superv ision of the establishment of
Food Park at Gangaikondan , Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu
Interested parties may visit+ ' w.v .nahcons - com and apply throughe-prnn_ rgr lr5r ' I, i R on or before 1 1 Va,. =n.
::il l ili h . !.11 1 V 1 1.= 'it :.1 21 11 1
BRUHAT BENGALURU MAHANAGARA PAIJKEOffice of the Executive Engineer (Projects)Rajarajeshwari Nagar, Bengaluru-560098
No.: EE (P)/RRN/TEND/16(1)/2020 -21 Date : 17.04.2020
INVITATION FOR TENDER(Through GOK e-Procurement Portal Only)
(Two Cover)The Executive Engineer (Project), R.R. Nagar Division ,BBMP, Bengaluru on behalf of the Commissioner , BBMPinvites tenders from eligible contractors registered in BruhatBengaluru Mahanagara Palike or equivalent reigstration withCPWD / KPWD / Railways / MES / National Highway or anyState Government Organization.
SI Approx. value EMDNo. Name of the Work of work
(in Rs. )(Rs . in Lakhs)Construction of electricalcrematorium, burial groundand other allied works
1 in Kurubarahalli (Sy. No. 540 .00 5 ,40 ,000/-150) in Tavarekere Hobaliunder YeshavanthapuraConstituency.Construction of electricalcrematorium, burial groundand other allied works in
2 Kumbalagodu (Sy. No. 640.00 6 ,40,000/30) in Kengeri Hobaliunder YeshavanthapuraConstituency.
Calendar of events : (1) Tender Documents may bedownloaded from the e-procurement portal of GOK from27.04.2020. (2) Pre bid meeting will be held on 02.05.2020at 12:00 noon in the off ice of the Chief Engineer Office,R.R. Nagar Zone, Bengaluru. (3) Tenders must be submittedonline through e-procurement portal on or before 4:00 p.m.on 05.05.2020 and the opening of tenders will be as per eprocurement portal guidelines. (4) Technical Bids will beopened on the website : https ://eproc.karnataka.gov.in inthe office of the Executive Engineer (Project), R.R. NagarDivision BBMP, Bengaluru on or after 07.05.2020 at 4:30p.m. if possible or next working day. Further details may beobtained from the above office during office hours or websitehftps ://eproc.karnataka.gov.1n.
Sd/. Executive Engineer (Project) Division,R R Nagar Zone, BBMP
"Pay Development Charges, Help to Develop Bengaluru"
RAJ BHAVANBHOPAL
CORRIGENDUM(G-24005/20 & G-24259/20)
NOTICE INVITING APPLICATIONS FOR APPOINTMENT OF VICE-CHANCELLOR FORRAJA MAN SINGH TOMAR SANGIT EVAM KALA VISHWAVIDYALAYA, GWALIOR (M.P.)
Advt. No. F 1-9/19/G-S./U.A.1/465 Dated 17 April, 2020Vide this Secretariate Advt. No. F 1 -9/19/G.S./U.A.1 /386 Dated 11p of March , 2020 ,published in the news papers, applications are invited for the appointment on thepost of Vice Chancellor of Raja Man Singh Tomar Sangit Evam Kala Vishwavidyalaya ,Gwalior. Interested persons are asked to submit their applications along with detailedbio-data , in two copies, to Secretary, Governor 's Secretariat , Raj Bhavan , Bhopal -462003 (M. P.), on or before 17th April, 2020. Later by a Corrigendum No.F 1-1/20/G.SJU.A.1/454 issued on 28-03-2020 last date for submission ofapplication is extended upto 27'" of April, 2020.Due to NOVEL CORONA VIRUS (COVID-19) epidemic Govt of India has orderedcomplete Iockdown in the country up to 03-05-2020. Hence the last date forsubmission of application has been extended uoto 30th of May. 2020. Other termsand conditions mentioned in the earlier advertisement dated 11-03-2020 shallremain unchanged. Any application received at this Office after 30th of May, 2020shall not be taken into consideration.
Sd/-Addl. Secretary to Governor
Madhya Pradesh
RAJ BHAVANBHOPAL
CORRIGENDUM(G-23653/20 & G-24260/20)
NOTICE INVITING APPLICATIONS FOR APPOINTMENT OFVICE CHANCELLOR FOR VIKRAM UNIVERSITY, UJJAIN (M .P)
Advt. No. F 1-1/20/G.S./U.A.1/462 Dated 17 April, 2020Vide this Secretariate Advt. No. F 1-1/20/G.S./U.A.1/347 Dated 03M of March , 2020 ,published in the news papers, applications are invited for the appointment on thepost of Vice Chancellor of Vikram University, Ujjain , Interested persons were askedto submit their applications along with detailed bio-data, in two copies , to Secretary,Governor 's Secretariat , Raj Bhavan , Bhopal - 462003 (M .P.), on or before 9" April ,2020. Later by a Corrigendum No, F 1-1/20/G.S./U.A,1/451 issued on 28-03-2020last date for submission of application is extended upto 2T" of April, 2020.Due to NOVEL CORONA VIRUS (COVID-19) epidemic Govt of India has orderedcomplete lockdown in the country up to 03-05-2020. Hence the last date forsubmission of application has been extended u to 30 of May. 2020 , Other termsand conditions mentioned in the earlier advertisement dated 03-03-2020 shallremain unchanged. Any application received at this Office after 30" of May, 2020shall not be taken into consideration.
Sd/-Addl. Secretary to Governor
Madhya Pradesh
GOVERNAMENT OF TELANGANA0% S.E. IRRIGATION CIRCLE MIAHABUBNAGAR.
NIT No. 31,32/2019-20, Dt 20.03.2020; 33 to 36/2019-20, Dt 21.03.2020No. of Works (06) Name of the works: Minor Irrigation - Construction of Check DamMallepurani Vagu , Kondur (V), Pentlavalli (M), Nagarkumool District; Minor Irrigation -Construction of Check Dam across Pedda vagu near Chandrabandathanda V1Pedakothapally(M), Nagarkumool District; Minor Irrigation- Construction of Check Damacross Munnanoor Vagu near Munnanoor (V), Midjil (M), Mahabubnagar District; MinorIrrigation - Construction of Check Dam across Velgomula Vagu, Near Velgomula {V1Midjil (M), Mahabubnagar District; Minor Irrigation - Construction of Check Dam acrossManne vagu near Chittanur (V), Marikal (M), Narayanpet District; Minor Irrigation Construction of Check Dam Mallepurani Vagu , Nagarlabanda Thanda ( / jWeepangandla (M), Wanaparthy District TOTAL ECV: 22. 57 Crones. Last date & tmefor receipt of Tenders: 27.04.2020 @ 5.00 PM. Further details can be seen at eprocurement market place www .tender .telangana .gov.in.Ph: 9177306253, 7093604056. Sd/- Superintending Engineer,DIPR:1224PP/CL Dt 18-04-2020 I&CAD Irrigation Circle, Matiabubna ar.
Nivida No.12 of 2019-20 CORRIGENDUM NO.7Folowing rectification is made in Tender Notice No.12 of 2019-20 of ExecutiveEngineer, Ver-II Project Division, Vyara PIN CODE NO,394 650 Phone No. 02626222090 Dist.Tapi,
Event Old Date New Date.1 2 3 41 On line Tender upload date. 08/01/2020 to 08/01/2020 to 0810512020
18/04/2020 Up to Up to 18.00 Hrs.18.00 Hrs.
2 Submission of Document date. Upto 24/04/ 2020 Upto 15/05/2020 atat 18.00 Hrs. 18.00 His.
3 Opening of Pro Qualification 27104/2020 in the 16/05.+2020 in the Office ofBid date. Office of the the Superintending
Superintending Engineer,Ukai Circle (Civil),Engineer,Ukai Ukai at 12.00 Hrs.Circle (Civil), Ukaiat 12.00 Hrs.
All other conditions remain unchanged. No.rnnns 7tn azozo
SREE CHITRA TIRUNAL INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL SCIENCES AND TECHNOLO GYTHIRUVANANTHAPURAM - 695 011, KERAU. INDIA
ADMISSION NOTICE FOR ACADEMIC SESSION JULY & AUGUST 2020((MCh. (CVTS), PhD & MPhil))
Applications are invited for admission to the following academic programs of the Institute.1.MCh. (CVTS), 2. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) - only for JRF holders of UGCI CSIRIICMR I DBT I MPhil from SCTIMST I Eligible internal faculty members. 3.Master ofPhilosophy (MPhil) in Biomedical Technology.Apply online. Please visit our website for more details (www.sctimst.ac.in)Online registration is available from 22.04.2020 to 25 .05.2020 (5 P.M.)Application fee by ONLINE ONLY. For more details contact : Registrar , SCTIMST.(E - mail: regoffice sctimst.ac.in ) , Tel: 0471-2524269 1 649 1 289.
SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, HYDERABADAPRIL 19, 20208 TIMES NATION
New Delhi: As the govern-ment prepares for lockdownrelaxations, the group of min-isters under defence ministerRajnath Singh on Saturdaysuggested resumption of do-mestic flights in certain ‘safeareas’ after the nationwideshutdown in the wake of Co-vid-19 pandemic ends on May 3.It said the final call will be tak-en by the ministries of homeand civil aviation after review-ing the status of the virusspread in cities and feedbackfrom states.
“There was consensusamong the ministers that do-mestic flights should be re-sumed in the sectors where Co-vid-19 cases have not been re-ported and where there is nothreat of spread of the virus,”a government functionarysaid. However, the ministerswere not in favour of any im-mediate relaxation on inter-state movement by othermodes of transport like trainsor public and private vehicleseven after May 3, sources said.
“Any extension of the lock-down period, whether to be
done or not, will be decided af-ter taking stock of the situa-
tion across the country. Full report on www.toi.in
GoM For Resumption Of Flights, But With Riders
Nod for road, train traveljust after May 3 unlikely
New Delhi: As the Enforcement Directorate’sextradition case against Nirav Modi and hisbrother Neeshal reaches a decisive stage, thelatter has reached out to the agency seeking le-niency. Self-certifying himself through a foren-sic audit report on his business, Neeshal hassought to distance himself from his fugitivebrother who is presently detained in a prison inLondon.
Sources said the ED has rebuffed his at-tempts to reach out to its investigation team,first through a letter sent 11 months ago andnow through emissaries seeking to denycharges framed against him by a special courtin Mumbai which has taken cognisance of achargesheet filed by the agency.
“Extradition request for Neeshal Modi wassent to UAE as he was initially suspected to bein Dubai. Since he is a Belgian citizen, the gov-ernment faced initial difficulties in deporta-tion from Antwerp but the process is in an advanced stage now,” sources said.
Brother tries todistance self from
NiMo, approaches EDPradeep.Thakur
@timesgroup.com
Srinagar: A terroristwith an AK-47 riflestruck at a securitycheckpoint at Sopore innorth Kashmir’s Bara-mulla district on Satur-day killing three CRPFtroopers and criticallyinjuring two other per-sonnel in the second at-tack on security forces inless than 24 hours.
Head constablesChander B Bakhre andRajeev Sharma and con-stable Parmar Satpal ofthe CRPF’s 179 Battalionwere part of a joint para-military-police teammanning a checkpointin Sopore town when theassailant walked to-wards them, sprayed avolley of gunfire andscooted.
All three were fatally
injured while two others—head constable Biswa-jeet Ghosh and constableJaved Ahmad — suf-fered multiple injuries.“The terrorist managedto flee because the othersecurity personnelcouldn’t retaliate in-stantly for fear of harm-ing some civilians whowere at the spot,” an in-telligence official said.
A fledgling outfitcalled The ResistanceFront, also known aasJK Fighters, has claimedresponsibility for the at-tack. “The outfit owes al-legiance to the Lashkar-e-Taiba. We suspect theterrorist involved in Sat-urday’s attack is a Pakis-tani brought into J&K byLashkar,” the intelli-gence official said.
3 CRPF men killed in J&K byterrorist of LeT-linked outfit
Security personnel stand guard after three CRPF troop-ers were martyred on Saturday
PTI
Mumbai: HDFC Bank has reporteda net profit of Rs 6,927 crore for thequarter ended March 2019, an in-crease of 17% compared to the corre-sponding period last year. For theyear FY2020, the bank has reported anet profit of Rs 26,257 crore, 24.5%higher than Rs 21,078 crore inFY2019.
The board, which met on Satur-day to finalise the bank’s financialresults, also recommended threecandidates to succeed Aditya Puri,the only CEO the bank has ever hadsince it was formed in 1994.
Although the successors have notbeen named yet, they are believed tobe senior executives Sashidhar Jag-
dishan and Bhavesh Zaveri and ex-ternal candidate Sunil Garg, CEO,Citi Commercial Bank New York andan IIM Ahmedabad alumni. Theboard also said Zaveri and Jagdishanhave tendered their resignation fromthe board as their appointment lastyear was not approved by the RBI.The central bank had asked the pri-vate lender to defer board-level ap-pointments until the new CEO is inplace. Puri’s term comes to an end onOctober 2020 when he turns 70 — theage limit for bank chiefs. The bankalso said there will not be any divi-dend in line with the RBI’s directiveasking banks to conserve capital inthe wake of the Covid-19 shock to theeconomy.
Full report on www.toi.in
HDFC Bank Q4 net rises 17%,board names 3 for CEO’s post
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Air India resumed bookings for domestic flights from May 4 and forinternational travel from June 1. AI was the only Indian carrier that
had at the beginning of this month stopped bookings fin April so thatpassengers wouldn’t find their money stuck. Other airlines kept takingbookings for domestic flights post April 15 and for international flightsfrom May 1. The aviation ministry has ordered airlines to give fullrefunds to passengers who have booked tickets only during thelockdown for flights cancelled in the lockdown (March 25 to May 3).
AI resumes domestic bookings for May 4
New Delhi: Delhi Police has registered a case ofsedition against JNU student Sharjeel Imam forhis speech that had “promoted enmity betweenpeople leading to riots around Jamia Milia Isla-mia University on December 15 last year.”
In a supplementary chargesheet filed at the Sa-ket district court, police mentioned that the violence broke out at the varsity after Sharjeelgave an inflammatory speechoutside the university gates where the studentswere protesting against the Citizenship Amend-ment Act. TNN
Police register seditioncase against Sharjeel
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Thiruvananthapuram:From Monday onwards, asemblance of normalcy willreturn to at least seven of Ke-rala’s 14 districts as restau-rants will open and a limitednumber of private vehiclesunder the odd-even schemebe allowed to ply.
As the 21-day nationallockdown was drawing to aclose, the state governmenthad submitted a proposal tothe Centre that divided Ke-rala into four zones — Red,Orange A, Orange B andGreen — and restrictionseased in three of these zonesin a phased manner. Therewill be no easing up in thered zone. The Centre ac-cepted Kerala’s proposalon Friday. For the past sevendays, the number of positivecases in the state was confi-ned to single digit and the re-
covery rate has climbed ste-adily.
From Monday, near-nor-mal life will be back in twodistricts — Kottayam andIdukki — classified as greenzones because they current-ly have no active cases.
Several restrictions willbe lifted in Orange B zonedistricts — Thiruvanantha-puram, Ala- ppuzha, Thris-sur, Palakkad and Wayanad— too from Monday. Dine-inrestaurants can functionduring normal hours in Kot-tayam and Idukki while inOrange B districts, restau-rants can function from 7am to 7 pm but they have toensure social distancingnorms and hand sanitisers.All those who step out oftheir homes have been advi-sed to wear masks.
Kerala set to openrestaurants, startodd-even for carsRules Relaxed
In 50% Districts As Cases Fall
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Lockdowns have made everyonechange track, even robbers. Unableto get their hands on gold and gad-
gets with people staying put in their ho-mes, it’s the liquor vends and grocerystores that have become the new targetsacross the country this month.
Maharashtra’s string of robberies re-ads like a shopping list from restaurant(rather bakery since butter and eggs seemto be hot). In Bhiwandi, burglars made offwith 300 eggs, 6 packets of flour, 4 litres ofmilk, 60 bags of rice and other groceriesworth Rs 2 lakh from Rakesh Kirana storeon Friday. From a Borivali store, butterworth Rs 1,400 was stolen. Mumbai’s TilakNagar police registered an FIR after unk-nown individuals broke into a shop at
Chembur and fled with cigarette packets,tobacco sachets, beedis and Rs 3,000 incash. In Kolkata’s Chitpore, robbers made
off with spices, soap, detergent powderand cash by breaking down a shop door.
For thieves, the clampdown on boozesales have lent an aura to liquor vends sofar restricted to a diamond shop. AndhraPradesh has reported 24 cases of theft at li-quor shops so far during the lockdown.
On April 1, burglar broke into Sri Ven-kateswara Wines in Bhoiguda, Secunde-rabad, and stole 20 bottles of liquor worthRs 26,000 and Rs 8,000 cash. The shop ow-ner found out four days later while goingthrough the store’s CCTV feed and lodgeda police complaint. The culprits wereidentified as Faizan and P Himendra, aBCom student. They were arrested onApril 10, but by that time, they had eightbottles left. “The duo sold 12 bottles for Rs42,000, three to four times above the origi-nal price,” inspector M A Javed said.
Butter & booze new gold for burglars
Illus
trat
ion:
Ram
With this, the state’stotal count of Co-vid-19 has reached
1,376. Gujarat also recorded12 deaths in a day – highestso far – taking the state’s de-ath toll to 53. Maharashtrarecorded 11 more deaths.The state’s total coronavi-rus count now stands at3,648.
Delhi, which had witnes-sed a dip in cases over the
last three days because the-re were no new positive ca-ses among the Tablighi Ja-maat (TJ) evacuated from amosque in Nizamuddin, re-corded 186 new cases, takingthe state’s total tally to 1,893.
“The increased inciden-ce of Covid-19 in certainpockets of the city, especial-ly the unauthorised coloni-es that are densely popula-ted, is a matter of concern,”the state authorities said.Only one person from Ja-
hangirpuri in northwestDelhi is believed to have in-fected as many as 31 familymembers – the largest clus-ter of cases that are not lin-ked to the TJ members.
“A majority (56%) of Co-vid-19 cases in Delhi areamong persons aged above60 years. Around 21% of Co-vid-19 positive cases involvethose aged between 50 yearsand 60 years and 23% areaged below 50 years,” offici-als said.
Sharp spike in Guj with 280 cases in 24 hrs�From P 1
Workers unload sacks of rice in Kanyakumari from a train during thenationwide lockdown
Palanpur (Guj): A labou-rer from Madhya Pradeshwho was apparently de-pressed because of thelockdown and yearning toreturn home chopped offhis tongue at a temple in Gujarat's Banas-kantha district on Satur-day, police said.
While some reports cla-imed that it was a “sacrifi-ce” to appease the goddess,police did not confirmthem.
Vivek Sharma (24), a na-tive of Morena district ofMadhya Pradesh who wor-ked as a sculptor, was foundlying unconscious and co-vered in blood at the templeof Nadeshwari Mataji atNadeshwari village in SuiGam tehsil on Saturday.
“We found him holdinghis chopped tongue in hishand. and rushed him toSui Gam hospital,” saidpolice sub inspector H DParmar.
The temple where theincident took place is loo-ked after by the Border Se-curity Force, while Sharma worked at another temple which is 14km away. PTI
Homesicksculptor cutsoff his tongue
at temple in Guj
Agarwal added that a to-tal of 1,992 people havebeen cured of the dise-
ase so far, and the overall cu-re percentage stood at 13.8%.
He said 991 new positivecases reported over the last24 hours had taken the totalnumber of infections to14,378, including 48 new de-aths, which raised the deathtoll to 480 in the country.
1,992 peoplecured so far
�From P 1
New Delhi/Jammu: Three BJP functionaries,including deputy mayor of the Jammu Munici-pal Corporation (JMC) Purnima Sharma, a for-mer MLA and a corporator, were booked in Jam-mu on Saturday for allegedly violating social dis-tancing norms during distribution of relief ma-terials. In a separate case, a prominent hotelierwas also booked after he allegedly travelled froma‘red zone’ in Jammu to Srinagar in a private ve-
hicle without a permit. The businessman was ac-companied by his cook and three drivers. Policeare also probing if a "VVIP" was with hotelierMushtaq Chhaya in his car.
In the first instance, deputy mayor Sharma,former MLA Rajesh Gupta and corporator fromthe BJP Sandhya Gupta were booked under sec-tions of the IPC after they visited Hari Theater inRaghunath Bazaar to distribute relief materialbut allegedly did not follow social distancing gui-delines, said officials.
3 BJP functionaries booked for lockdown violations
I got engaged this February. During the lock-down, all I can think of is how not to spend much on my wedding. This concern is creating con-flicts among my parents and in-laws. I think I am overthinking about the wedding budget. Perhaps this should be left to the elders? What should I do?
— Akshay K Jain, APVarkha Chulani: Congratulations for
your wedding, and even bigger compliments for the good sense and sensitivity about the expenses you wish to control. At a time like this, where there is uncertainty about the future with regard to health, employment and wealth, your prudent thinking speaks of a mature and balanced mind. If you could communicate to your folks and your in-laws why you are so budget conscious, they might understand your concern. No, this is not overthinking; this is foresight and prepara-tion for a worst-case scenario. And wise people think ahead! I would be very keen to know what your fiancée thinks. Is she on
the same page as you? Two voices may have a better impact on the elders. This will give them the idea that both their children are cautious and don’t want to squander away money at a very difficult time of life. Cele-brations can always wait. It is most sensible to have a small, quiet wedding now, and then when things settle and get back to some semblance of ‘normalcy’, all of you can party as much as you like.
I am a young IT professional. The Covid-19 situ-ation has thrown us off balance. Since the pan-demic and the lockdown began here in Kolkata, I’ve been working from home. But, I can feel that with each passing day, I am slowly losing pa-tience. Even though I’ve been keeping myself busy with daily exercise and other things, I feel I am lacking motivation. Can you help me im-prove my current state of mind?
— Debajyoti Das GuptaVC: Yes, it is a very challenging and dif-
ficult time for most of us, but we can make good things happen out of very bad things.
Your attitude towards this lockdown will make all the difference to the advantages you can draw from this difficult situation. First, accept the reality that we are in this for the long haul. The more you fight the truth, the more distressed you will be. Two, ask what you can give to the job rather than what you can get from it. Three, since there is so much time on hand, think about what you would like to learn, accomplish, achieve — this could be some skill, hobby or fitness. Motivation is nothing but the ‘will to mean-ing’. Do you have a purpose for your life? Or do you, like most people, simply get on with the job to earn money and somehow kill time? If you find a ‘why’ to live, much of your mood will lift. Because a purposeful existence makes for much healthier and happier living. Take care.
I am very concerned about my job prospects. I’ve heard that my firm won’t reopen because of heavy losses during the lockdown. As my savings are running out, a bleak future is staring at me. I can’t eat or sleep because of it. Please help.
— A SaleemVC: Hi Saleem, yes, it’s a trying time for all
of us. Businesses are on the brink, jobs have been lost and savings are few — this, unfortu-nately, is the reality before us. The only thing within our control is to actively seek what we can. Sit with a pen and paper and jot down all options before you. What’s your skillset? How can you offer that skillset to another compa-ny? Is your resume up to date? Can you reach out to your network to help you with an inter-view? Have you reached out to headhunters who recruit for the positions you can fill? Proactively planning for times ahead will re-duce anxiety because simply worrying will not solve anything. It’s best to take the bull by the horns and do whatever you can, wherever you are and with whatever you have. Mean-while, take advantage of the lockdown time and teach a few kids if you can. Check if you can become a tutor of some sort. Self-reliance can be a good beginning. Best wishes. Chulani works with Lilavati Hospital, Mumbai
These are tough times. The pandemic and lockdown are driving some of us to the edge. To help readers cope with their anxieties, The Times of India
launches Talk it Out, a new series under which our panel of expert counsellors will answer your mental health queries. This week’s advice comes from clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Varkha Chulani
Stressed about the lockdown? Here’s some expert advice
Getty Images
WANT SOME ADVICE?Write to us at [email protected] your question, name and place. But if you wish to stay anonymous, do indicate that in your email.
Rohan Dua & Sanjay Khajuria TNN
From Monday, near-nor-mal life will be back in twodistricts — Kottayam andIdukki — classified asgreen zones because theycurrently have noactive cases
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SUNDAY SPECIAL
When Mridul Saxena was a child, his family was the only one that owned a televi-sion on their street in the
railways quarters where they lived. “My fondest childhood memory is that every day when Ramayan would air, my mother would clean the house and we would all bathe to get ready to watch it. My neigh-bours would come over to our house with garlands,” the 28-year-old content writer says. Since Ramayan has begun to be tel-ecast again on Doordarshan, the family tradition has made a 21st century come-back. “We discuss it afterwards and it’s a way for us to be emotionally connected,” he says, noting that living in different cit-ies — him in Noida and his parents in Bareilly — has been difficult. But he knows that listening to the theme song of the televised version of the epic takes them back to a happier time.
In a rapidly changing world, nostalgia has always played an important role, but in a global health crisis it becomes a source of comfort and interconnected-ness. Doordarshan has launched a new channel called DD Retro, with shows like Shaktimaan, Dekh Bhai Dekh and Chanakya back on the air. Other channels are airing shows like Hum Paanch (1995-
2006) and Sarabhai vs Sarabhai (2004-2017), and sports channels are telecasting classic matches. While this type of pro-gramming is borne out of necessity, it also taps into a hankering for less-uncertain times. Also, Masakali 2.0 just came out, making us nostalgic for Abhishek Bach-chan of all people!
Sheel Dwivedi, a 24-year-old entre-preneur and interior designer, has been lapping up old cricket and football matches. “I didn’t watch many of these matches because I was too young, like
a football match I watched today was from 2001,” the Delhi resident says.
In a country like India, this lockdown period has meant different things to dif-ferent people. For those of us privileged enough to be in our homes safe and well-fed, it is almost as if we have found our-selves in an adult summer vacation of sorts, albeit one underlined by uncertain-ty and anxiety. For Shubham Gupta, own-er of a trading business in Kanpur, this is an opportunity to slow down. “You remem-ber the days that are now gone and realise those were the only times you were actu-ally really happy to your core.” That’s why the 28-year-old finds himself doing activi-ties he hasn’t touched in a decade — play-ing carrom and ludo as Kishore Kumar sings in the background, trying his hand at drawing again and playing badmin-ton with his family.
This nostalgia we’re feeling is not only cultural, but deeply personal. Captain
Kishore Chinta, a Del-hi-based pilot, has a new daily ritual with his wife and teenaged kids — they get to-gether post-dinner to go through one photo
album. “Both my p a re n t s h ave passed away and the kids have never been to my moth-er’s village. This is
an exercise in build-ing a family tree,” he says. It wasn’t just nostalgia (and giving
his kids the opportunity to mock how scrawny he once was) that led Chinta to do this, but also the fear of the unknown. “A friend from the defence academy, a fit ex-para commando, just passed away. You don’t know what is going to happen.”
Arghya Sengupta, founder of Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, has been rewatch-ing Satyajit Ray movies and posting piec-es his friends and he wrote when they ran a blog called Critical Twenties back in 2010. He was pursuing his DPhil at Oxford at the time, and not only was it a person-ally comfortable time for him, it was also a time “when the world seemed like a gen-tler place,” he says. “Perhaps because social media hadn’t fully taken over.” But nowadays, the internet, too, seems nostal-gic for a former version of itself. There’s
a gentleness to it, less yelling and trolling (though where there is a will…), and more sharing pictures of food, family, dogs and plants. It may also be why many are shar-ing pictures of themselves at age 20 on social media.
When seeking comfort, look no further than food. Thirty-year-old Sameer Sewak has been cooking elaborate meals for his family with nostalgia guiding him along the way in the form of his grandmother’s recipes. “My dadi cooked with a lot of love, care and was very particular that it should come out perfect every time. My mother cooks the same way. It made me think of food as a sort of wealth that is passed down from generations,” he says, adding that each time they eat one of her specialities like yakhni pulav or mutton aloo ka salan, it becomes a way to reminisce about her.
The tricky thing about nostalgia is that sometimes you see things from a
different lens. Saxena says while he loves Ramayana, he can’t help but think about whether it was behind the rise of Hindu nationalism or the fact that other popu-lar programs like Ghalib have not returned to TV.
We are in a liminal space of sorts, neither here nor there. Anthropologist Vic-tor Turner defined the limi-nal individual as one who is “betwixt and between” — and in this strange time, we
too are between the way things have been and an un-certain future.
Kishore Kumar to carrom, lockdown is making us hit rewind
While not getting up early to trudge to school is one of the perks of video classes, there’s lots to miss too. The kids in their own words, and drawings…
What children really feel about home learning
People are looking for comfort in old shows, classic matches and grandma’s recipes
Wake up and smell the geraniums
Following the global spread of the coronavirus for over a week, and getting cross-eyed from switching from one TV channel to another, I
finally decided to switch off altogether. The TV channels are doing a great job, but I found I couldn’t take any more the constant stream of depressing news, and the help-lessness and inability of the world’s leaders and scientists to be able to do anything to stop the virus.
The President of the US urges everyone to use masks, but then adds that he won’t be using one himself. The President of Brazil throws scorn on the epidemic and everyone who tries to control it, and then hurriedly orders a lockdown. One President threatens to shoot violators of the curfew; another threatens to imprison those who acknowl-edge its existence. Unity in disunity! Hope-fully, the virus will get bored with the whole thing and go away of its own accord.
This is a very intelligent virus, by all ac-counts. It has succeeded on altering human behaviour in a number of ways. We don’t shake hands any more. We don’t hug each other. Sadly, we don’t kiss. And if kissing were to disappear altogether, the world would be a grim sort of place.
Even as I write, the words of an old song — a very old song — run through my memory:
‘I kiss your little hand, madame….I long to kiss your lips!’I remember kisses from the past
— loving kisses, sometimes passion-ate kisses — and I hope there will be a few more before I depart this planet.
◆ ◆ ◆
Finding it difficult to read or write, I turn to my little plant room, a sunny glassed-in balcony where I have managed to get geraniums to flower all through the Mussoorie win-ter. Outside, the grass on the hillside is still yellow, and the horse-chestnut trees are just coming into new leaf. But my geraniums grow rampant. Red, white, cerise, and a deep, thoughtful pink.
I get on well with most plants; I can spend hours in their company, even writing the occasional verse or haiku in their praise.
‘Bright red geranium,Gleaming against the sunlit floor…Memory, hold the door!’Yes, flowers bring memories and also
hope for the future. For if plants can survive, so can humans. And if that spider on the wall can survive, so can you and I.
Whether by accident or design, we are here. Let’s make the most of it, my friend. Make happiness our pursuit; spread a little sunshine here and there. Enjoy the flowers, the breeze; rivers, sea and sky. Mountains and tall waving trees. Greet the children passing by. Talk to the old folk. Be kind, my friend. Hold on, in times of pain and strife.
Until death comes, all is life!◆ ◆ ◆
A young reader asked me what books she should read during the lockdown, and naturally I recommended Robinson Crusoe, that classic of involuntary self-isolation. Crusoe was based on a real-life shipwrecked sailor, Alexander Selkirk, who survived on a desert island for several years, even enjoy-ing fried eggs for breakfast, these being turtle or seagull eggs. (Perhaps I’d just carry on with tomatoes). In the book, Cru-soe is joined by an islander called Man Friday, and together they have a whale of a time before being rescued.
Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, also wrote the Journal of the Plague Year in which he records the horrors of the plague that swept through London in the
17th century, in much the same way that the coronavirus is spreading today.
A more cheerful book is Thoreau’s Wal-den, in which a writer voluntarily seeks self-isolation, having had enough of human company. He takes to living in a shack near Walden pond (a small lake), communes with Nature, and writes his classic, which is read-able in parts.
Pepys, the great diarist, also described the London plague, which ended only when the Great Fire swept through London.
Perhaps that’s what we need today. Something really hot — a long hot summer — something that will fry this virus to a crisp and send it screaming back to the hell it came from.
Suraj SuryanarayananClass 11, Mumbai
Sometimes, our online school ses-sions play out like TV news. Just like the anchor keeps repeating
a question till the reporter who is on field hears it in his microphone, our teacher has to repeat questions since she isn’t sure she is audible. This hap-pened recently during our Business Studies class when she asked about the rate of interest for an investment in a company’s equity shares. No one answered for a while because they were still groggy for the morning ses-sion. There are also other uninten-tional sources of entertainment. A student had left his microphone on by mistake and we heard his grandmoth-er wax eloquent in rustic Hindi about how she will outlive the corona crisis. This was a welcome distraction from the Accounts class. We all laughed — with our microphones off.
Attending classes online as op-posed to a classroom is like praying at home rather than praying in a tem-ple. Although it’s a commendable, extraordinary effort on the part of the teachers to take these sessions and there is nothing overtly lacking, what I miss is the air of camaraderie and curiosity as students eagerly raised their hands to ask questions. Al-though we do ask questions on chat and are free to turn on our micro-phones and ask the teacher a question whenever we have a serious doubt, it’s not really the same.
What I don’t miss is waking up early. For college lectures, which would begin at 7.45am, I would be up at 5am, lounge around a bit and take the bus from Jogeshwari to Andheri and then board a train to Khar. But now, I wake up five minutes before our 9am sessions.
Sometimes, students from other schools try to gatecrash these sessions under aliases. We report these stu-dents to the teachers. We are allowed to record sessions which we can ac-cess under different folders on the app. I like that the timings of home schooling are flexible but I miss not being able to talk to friends when a class is on. You can’t type on chat: “Hi guys, I am bored.”
— As told to Sharmila Ganesan
Aakankasha SinghClass 12, Anupshahr, UP
My school has very few holidays. We go to school every day wheth-
er summer and winter, from 9am to 5pm. Now it feels so strange staying at home. I still get up at 4.30am every day, to finish my homework and read the lessons that will be done in the class that day. I want to become a doctor so I have to study hard and keep up my grades.
But then I help my mother with the housework, cleaning and cooking for the family that includes four of us — my par-ents and my 18-year-old brother. Though we had a phone at home, I had never used it before the school started online classes.
My brother had to help me in figuring out how to take screen-shots and send my homework to the teachers.
In the first half of the morn-ing, teachers send us recorded lessons on WhatsApp. We have to watch the videos and they give us exercises to do. Most of the day goes by in this. There is a lot of school work to finish. I miss my gang of friends a lot. We were always together whether it is in class or during lunch.
I am also using the time to learn cooking. My mother says that if I live away from home to pursue further studies at least I should be able to feed myself. I can make anything with aloo in it — aloo gobhi, aloo baigan — and roti. Though I am happy at home, I hope school opens soon. — As told to Himanshi Dhawan
Umme Salama BadshahClass 9, Mumbai
The best thing about home-schooling is that I feel more relaxed. It is a
chance to unwind from the crazy cycle of school-homework-rou-tine and enjoy the added family time when we chat and play games. As ninth graders, we’re so caught up with studies and exams that we hardly get the time to sit and think about what we actually want to do with our lives, or what really inspires us. Now that I can study at my own pace, I find myself jotting down my thoughts — be it a poem or a few pages on women’s equality — I never had this luxury of time to explore my feelings or writing as a hobby. I’ve also managed to sit with my parents and discuss what I want to do with my life and what they’d prefer me to do.
Our teachers try to keep the online classes lively — by picking on a random name or a roll num-ber to check whether we’re there and paying attention. They also talk about the pandemic — which helps because we want to under-
stand what’s going on in the world. At the same time, technical
glitches do get on my nerves. Sometimes, the teacher’s voice may have gone ahead while the presentation is frozen. Some-times, calls get disconnected or the voice echoes or overlaps. When it happens five or six times in a day, it can be very annoying. There are times that a document or an as-signment may not open or we don’t receive a link to join a meet-ing. Unlike regular school where the bell ushers us all back into the classroom, if we fail to join an on-line class or get late due to connec-tivity issues, it can be difficult to catch up with the teacher.
I do miss my second home which is school. I miss hopping over to others’ classrooms for fun, meeting teachers, and especially the games classes where all the divisions come together. Usually my summer holidays coincide with Ramzan, and it’s a great time to chill with friends and cousins in each other’s houses, watch movies and pass time, given that we’re hungry and thirsty all day. This year, both stand cancelled and it’s heartbreaking.
— As told to Mohua Das
Asaawari SahaiClass 6, Kolkata
It seemed strange at first, when my bedroom became my classroom. Initially, I was taking care to dress, thinking the camera would be
on me. Now, I am getting used to the whole new concept. I think I quite like it. I can be relaxed, do the assignments at my pace, read and spend this time with my fam-ily. I have been honing some domestic skills during the lockdown, baking and cooking. I am also into calligraphy. Initially, I hated the idea of household chores, but now I find myself taking on responsibili-ties. I may not take our domestic staff for grant-ed when they return after the lockdown.
Come to think of it, I am actually studying more. The travel time to school and back can be used for study and extra curriculum like coding, app development and dance. Since I can’t go out and play, I am using the time to read or finish assignments. The overall study time has increased, I guess. But I badly want to go back to school.
— As told to Ajanta Chakraborty
Mike mistakes can be nice distractions
Day=housework+homework-friends
I never had this luxury of time before I’m studying more than before but I miss school
Umme
Aakankasha
Asaawari Suraj
LOCKDOWN NOSTALGIA: Many have been nostalgic about the song Masakali from Delhi 6 after listening to the remix version
Chad Crowe
LOOK WHAT’S BACK➤ TV shows like Ramayan, Mahabharata and Shaktimaan are back on Doordarshan, along with SRK’s Circus and Byomkesh Bakshi.
➤ Vodafone has released ads featuring old favourites — their beloved pug and ZooZoos
➤ Amul is telecasting its classic ads during Ramayan and Mahabharata ad breaks
➤ Reruns of cricket matches are on TV, with Sri Lanka’s 2005 tour of India playing on DD Sports
Based on a timesofi ndia.com survey, with 5,000 respondents
WHY MEN ARE DOING BJP (BARTAN, JHADOO, POCHA) DUTY NOW86% of men say because they “want to help” as always, but women aren’t convinced. Nearly 50% of them say Homely Man is a short-lived miracle worked by a ruby-crowned virus
Should women be paid for housework?
83% of men and 82% of women agree that housework is not a woman’s duty
and chores should be shared. Let’s hope the 17-18% holdouts on either side are with each other
Great news, but how much of their pay-check would they be willing to part with?
44% are presumably working out the tax fi rst
of men say yes, of course57% 56% of women agree
Chores men are doing
Women, don’t let the participation curve fl atten KRAs: Enforce containment in laundry room; compliment his baingan bharta like you mean it
Sweeping/mopping
Cooking Clotheswashing
None of the above
Washingdishes
Chores men are doing in the lockdown
Before lockdown
30%
20%
30%
15%
22%
26%
14%
10%
25%
He Says, She Says
14% say they are working at home for the same reason they are WFH: because they have been told to.
Also, last time mom hollered about dirty boxers over the boss on Teams, the ad pitch didn’t go well.
The 86% who are slogging at home voluntarily should be infecting the others!
Will you do chores even after the help returns?Yes
No45%
55%Affi rmative, say 55%, while 45% who said no are prob-ably still rolling their eyes. Besides sweetie, we don’t want to put Kantabai out of work in these hard times, do we?
69% of men say they now realise housework is tougher than they
imagined, packing the kid’s lunch is not child’s play after all. 31% maintain it’s not that hard,
women on TV soaps are drying papad in chiffon saris and heels and still fi nding time to ruin someone
TOI POLL
YOURVIEWSON KAHANIGHAR GHAR KI 30%
say men do more
of women say men do much less housework than them
42%
28%
Say men contribute very little, or nothing at all
Claim to be doing more than women
13%21%
Maintain they do as much as the women
in the houseof men are doing chores but 66% admit they do much less than their wife, partner, mom or sister
90%
8%
SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, HYDERABAD APRIL 19, 2020 9
CCI NG 3.7 Product: TOIHyderabadBS PubDate: 19-04-2020 Zone: Hyderabad Edition: 1 Page: TOIHP9 User: aneesh.srinivasan Time: 04-18-2020 23:01 Color: CMYK
Email the editor at [email protected] ‘Sunday Mailbox’ in the subject line.
Please mention your name and city
Covid is a call for unity This refers to ‘The social lesson of Covid-19: It’s time to flatten the ego curve’ (ATM, April 12). Covid-19 can invade any person irrespective of caste, creed or religion. We must empathise with all for a better India.
Dr H B Ramrakhiyani, Vadodara
INBOX
ALL THAT MATTERS
Forget caution, India should rapidly ease the Covid shutdown to revive the economy. Otherwise it may suffer the worst of both worlds — economic collapse without check-ing the virus. At a Princeton University
webinar last week, economics Nobel laureate Angus Deaton did not mention India by name, but he highlighted the dan-ger of poor countries getting the worst of both worlds.
Deaton said countries with strong administrations and health systems could enforce social spacing, comprehensive testing, isolation and treatment. This could check the epi-demic. But in poor countries with weak administrative and medical capacity, shutdowns would not check the disease. Social distancing was impossible in densely populated urban slums, crowded bazaars and huts where several people slept. Virus testing capacity was weak, so detection, isolation and treatment were highly incomplete, and the disease would spread despite shutdowns.
India is better than African countries, but its administra-tive capacity is below par. Despite efforts, the rate of testing is less than 20,000 per day, so we have no idea how many peo-ple are actually infected. India has 0.7 hospital beds per 1,000 people, one of the lowest ratios in Asia. It has one doctor per 1,404 patients, well below the WHO norm of one per 1,000. It has 1.7 nurses per 1,000 against the WHO norm of 3 per 1,000.
Prime Minister Modi says he has dedicated 602 hospitals, one lakh isolation beds and 12,000 ICU beds to meet the Cov-id challenge. Many corporations, NGOs, state governments and volunteers are helping out. But if just 1% of India’s population gets infected that means 13 million people. India’s facilities look pathetically inadequate for that.
Enforcing social distancing seems impossible. Massive crowds of migrant workers demand assistance. Commu-nity kitchens feed the needy but entail crowding. Bus and train services have been stopped to curb crowding, but millions of migrant workers are marching home in groups, ignoring social distancing. In crowded bazaars and slums, people cannot stay six feet apart for long.
Agricultural mandis are being re-activated for the rabi harvest, but social distancing in mandis is difficult. Farm-ers growing perishables have lost their entire crop because of curbs on transport.
The IMF predicts India’s GDP growth will drop to 1.9%, as bad as in 1991 when India went bust. If social distancing does not work and the economy fails to revive in the second half of 2020, the IMF says growth will be deeply negative, the worst performance in independent India. This eco-
nomic disaster will create massive misery that will exac-erbate illness and deaths. So, a prolonged shutdown may kill and make more people miserable than it saves.
Being hard-headed does not mean being hard-hearted. Some favour a very gradual easing of the shutdown to check the disease. I suspect that would cause more misery than a rapid revival of the economy. The world has experienced many pandemics (SARS, MERS, the 2018 flu epidemic) that died out without requiring economic shutdowns. The flu of 2017-18 caused 80,000 deaths in the US but no shutdown was ordered. In the case of Covid, the Imperial College, London, projected an explosive virus spread that would kill millions unless tackled on a war footing.
This caused panic and shutdowns the world over. Gov-ernments didn’t want to be accused of killing people. An exception was socialist Sweden, which encouraged social distancing but avoided any shutdown. Compared with Eu-ropean countries with shutdowns, Sweden’s infection and death rates are middling. It alone has saved its economy while avoiding a medical disaster, and medically outper-formed many shutdown countries.
Countries have decreed shutdowns ranging from mild to very stringent (like India’s). These are causing the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression. But many experts contest the accuracy or even validity of the Impe-rial College model. A shutdown “flattens the curve” of infec-tions. But that does not guarantee fewer deaths — they may merely be spread over 18 months rather than four. Deaton says deaths attributed to pandemics are exaggerated by “harvesting”: many who die are infirm people who would have died anyway in the next two years. He says this is why mortality rates always plunge the year after a pandemic.
Data is too limited and suspect to prove or disprove the Imperial College model. Maybe the disease is less lethal and fast-spreading than the model predicts. Maybe it is less effective in tropical countries. Nobody really knows its medical out-comes. But we do know its economic outcome will be dreadful.
Risks exist whether we lift the shutdown gradually or fast. Rapid easing will check the economic disaster but may wors-en deaths (though this is uncertain). I prefer this to gradual easing that may give India the worst of both worlds.
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Ease shutdown or we may get worst
of both worlds
In the coming years, when the coronavirus is, hopefully, history, researchers may be able to assess the huge contribution made by ‘Covidiots’ to the spread of the
pandemic. The reference is not merely to the World Health Organisation that was slow to alert the world because it was wary of offending China. Much after the threat from Covid-19 was realised, some Covidiots stepped in to worsen the situation.
In India, the contribution of the Tablighi Jamaat convention in Delhi’s Nizamuddin to ag-gravating the problem nationally has provoked outrage and even had a political fallout. Accord-ing to one estimate, the Markaz contributed to 34% of all the coronavirus cases all over India by April 14. In Jaipur’s Ramganj locality, a Covidiot
who ignored the protocol after returning from Oman is said to have infected 232 people. In the coming days, the misdeeds of many more Cov-idiots are likely to surface.
Covidiocy, however, isn’t necessarily an affliction limited to individuals or ultra-orthodox sects — Is-rael is also confronted with a grave problem in parts of Jerusalem. In India, the national effort to defeat coronavirus that has involved stupendous adminis-trative effort and the self-discipline of millions of people who have endured the prolonged lockdown may well be compromised by the wilful deviance of cussed state governments. The fear is centred on what is happening in West Bengal — a state where an irresponsible policy of denial and short-term politics has produced an alarming situation that could very easily spiral out of control.
Evidence has been building up steadily over the past fortnight. To begin with, there is a significant mismatch between the numbers of active coronavi-rus cases given by the state — 144 as of April 16
evening — and Centre — 204 as of April 17 morning. Both figures are believed to be underestimates since testing is very low and the number of samples sent to the ICMR labs have fallen significantly. Intrigu-ingly, there have been no credible reports from the border districts of North and South Dinajpur, Mur-shidabad and Malda. Additionally, the official death toll of 10 is widely disbelieved in the light of anec-dotal evidence from different quarters of bodies being cremated by authorities without any reference to the relatives of the deceased. Last week, there was an ugly incident in Bankura over the ‘secret’ crema-tion of two bodies, allegedly by the ruling party workers. A case was initiated against the local MP for protesting against the surreptitious cremations. In any case, the state government has appointed a five-man committee to vet and certify all claims of deaths resulting from coronavirus — a move that has triggered protests by doctors.
Since no one can seriously accuse chief min-ister Mamata Banerjee of being responsible for a
pandemic, the fudging of data is inexplicable. However, the state government bears responsibil-ity for a string of associated failures.
First, the policy of social distancing was very casually implemented. In particular, life was near-normal in Muslim-dominated localities and ques-tioning this indulgence of a health hazard — as the home ministry in Delhi subsequently did — invited charges of ‘communal’ bias. From all accounts, the state government didn’t treat the need to locate, test and isolate those 300 or more from West Bengal who attended the Tablighi meet as a matter of priority.
Secondly, beginning with the rejection of PPE for medical staff because Didi smelt politics in the yellow colour, the public health administra-tion has been handled whimsically. The policy of denial led to the coronavirus infected and others being confined together with the result that many public hospitals have had to be evacuated and closed. In the M R Bangur Hospital in Kolkata, there are allegations of bodies being allowed to
putrefy inside general wards. With doctors sullen at being pushed around and threatened, the pub-lic health system is on the verge of collapse. This is an open secret that, intriguingly, finds only perfunctory mention in the local media.
If, as is entirely possible, community spreading overwhelms the hotspots, the existing panic in the state could escalate into social unrest. As it is, there is tension in the districts over the rampant politici-sation of the public distribution system and local-ised unrest over the unequal distribution of rations.
Federal principles involve giving states gener-ous elbow room to manage the coronavirus threat. However, if a state is seen to be mismanaging a national emergency, should the Centre remain a mute spectator and merely issue advisories which are disregarded? This is a question that will have to be addressed in the coming days.
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Covidiocy is corona’s ally, and in Didi’s Bengal, denial is doing harm too
Two diseases stalk India — one new and mysterious confounding scien-tists worldwide, the other decades old, all too familiar, nurtured by the politics of hate and bigotry. The
coronavirus disease has so far taken less than 1,000 lives in India. But the disease of religious hatred has killed thousands over the years.
As Covid-19 spreads, anti-Muslim sentiment is raging. A media narrative, pushed by a few toxic television channels, is that the Nizamuddin Markaz Mosque in Delhi — the venue of a Tablighi Jamaat meeting in March — is solely and singly responsible for the spread of coronavirus infections all over In-dia. A Muslim man was beaten up by a mob in Delhi. A Muslim mother and daugh-ter have been abused by a grocery store owner. Muslim vegetable vendors in UP’s Ma-hoba complained that people called them Tablighis and refused to buy from them. An Ahmedabad hospital report-edly segregated corona pa-tients on religious lines, pub-lic outrage forcing the Guja-rat government to issue a de-nial. Dozens of fake videos and WhatsApp messages on Muslims apparently flouting social distancing, allegedly spitting at people to “infect” them are in circulation.
Let’s do a reality check. Yes, the Tablighi Jamaat gathering was an instance of ignorant civic irrespon-sibility and should never have been allowed by Delhi Police, which operates under the Union home min-istry. Tablighis did spread the virus in parts of Delhi, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, but it defies all logic to say they’re responsible for all cases in India, in every state and town. In Mumbai, the worst affected city, coronavirus is cutting across religion, caste and class, with middle class Worli-Koliwada, slum settlement Dharavi and posh Malabar Hill all affected.
Huge numbers of Muslim health workers are on the battle lines of Covid. Of the two doctors who were targeted by a mob in Indore, one was a Mus-lim, Dr Zakia. Kerala, now a nationwide model for fighting corona, has a sizeable Muslim population and one of the reasons the state has been so suc-cessful is precisely because Muslims, Hindus and Christians are working side by side, without dis-crimination, in a united effort.
By far the biggest corporate donor to the fight against corona is a Muslim, Azim Premji. India’s biggest pharma companies, both in the forefront of the fight against Covid — Cipla and Wockhardt —
are owned by Muslims. The Dawoodi Bohras of Mumbai are feeding thousands through free kitchens. In Indore, Muslim neighbours carried a Hindu woman’s body to her funeral.
To wilfully search out Muslims as coronavi-rus “culprits”, for TV anchors to deliberately seek out “Madrassa hotspots” is not only a chilling pur-suit of TRPs but also serves to distract citizens from failures of government policy responses. Violent majoritarian vigilantism operating under the cover of an anti-corona campaign will make the fight against the disease even harder and weaken India’s resolve by creating social turmoil.
When a member of the Nihang sect slashes off a policeman’s hand, not every Sikh is held responsible. When some gau rakshaks lynch and murder, not every Hindu is blamed. Why then should every Mus-lim be cast as an infection-spreading Tablighi? Politi-cians like Asaduddin Owaisi have repeatedly called
for Muslims not to congregate. Conversely, a Karnataka BJP MLA held a birthday bash, Mumbai VIPs travelled in a convoy to a picnic, and this week thousands violated lock-down rules to celebrate a chariot festival in a Karnata-ka temple. The issue therefore is not religion, it is the mind-less civic irresponsibility of all Indians, not just Tablighis.
Added to the general civic irresponsibility is the desi fet-ish for ‘untouchability’. Social distancing in India predates
coronavirus, with many cities marked by religious segregation and ghettos. Over the last few years, faced with targeting and discriminatory state action like CAA, the sense of siege among Muslims has grown. In certain areas, Muslims are lashing out mistrust-fully at state agencies — even at government doctors.
The hate virus is highly contagious. While Mus-lims are cast as corona villains on the one hand, hate and suspicion is being directed at other groups too — doctors working in Covid wards are being abused, attacked and ostracised, outsiders in villages and mohallas are targets of violent suspicion, migrant workers are being barred from returning to their home villages. Hate and suspicion are all-pervasive.
Scientists are working to find a vaccine for coronavirus, but who will cure the communal vi-rus? It can only be cured if each of us journeys inwards to find the humanity within, to treat fellow human beings as equals. After all, this is the teach-ing of every great religion, whether Hinduism or Islam. If even a global pandemic which knows no boundaries cannot end religious hatred, what can?
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Covid-19 can be cured, but who will cure the communal virus?
SWAMINOMICSSWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR
PROS AND CONS: An economic disaster induced by the lockdown may hurt more people
Do you think the lockdown will make us re-examine the things that make us happy?The lockdown affects different people in different ways. Some are just trying to get through it, others are noticing that the lockdown, while not what we had hoped for, provides oppor-tunities for personal growth. Time has slowed down, insofar as we aren’t ex-pected to travel or run off to work and meetings (at least not in person). A lot of people are telling me that this is giving them a chance to think more deeply about their lives.
It is important not to let this opportu-nity pass. While we are locked down, I recommend that we set time aside each day to think about some of the deeper issues, including the sources of our hap-piness. Sit in meditation and prayer each day, read more sacred and philosophical texts, and set a goal to understand life better when we emerge from this period.
Think of this lockdown as a minia-ture vanaprastha — a “retiring into the forest.”
You make an interesting point that genes play a big role – as much as 50% – in determining how happy we are. Doesn’t that kind of make our efforts to be happy futile?When I first learned that happi-ness was 50% genetic, I was, ironi-cally, depressed. But that was the wrong reaction. To begin with, this knowledge is powerful for understanding o n e ’s “ b a s e -line.” My par-ents were pret-ty gloomy, for
example — they were intel-lectuals and artists. Remem-bering this, I don’t beat my-self up so much when I am feeling down. Second, if even
just 10% of my happiness is under my control, I should do everything I can to optimise it. The only thing that brings futility is to be a victim — to dismiss hap-piness as something we can’t understand, and that is completely beyond our con-trol. Even 10% is a gift.
You’ve written that in these days of lock-down we can seek happiness from doing meaningful work. Does it include household chores, caregiving, teaching our kids... things that we usually pay to get done so that we can do our professional work? If I am engaging in any activity with a sour attitude, simply trying to dispense with a responsibility, or doing it only for my own personal gain, it is a wasted ef-fort. There is a great Spanish Catholic
Saint named Josemária Escrivá, who taught that we should
“sanctify our work,” no matter what it is. The way we do it is
by dedicating the product to the good of others, doing it to the best of our abilities, and making an effort each day to get better at it.
Almost everyone is reporting a rise in anxiety levels during
this lockdown. Do the rea-sons go beyond
health and ca-reer worries to how much we just miss hu-man contact?
I find two main sources of anxiety among people I talk to: uncertainty and loneliness.
The first is uncertainty about the fu-ture. This is extremely disconcerting for the human mind, which craves certainty so as to help us feel secure and safe.
But uncertainty reminds us that we cannot control the future. In fact, all cer-tainty is an illusion. To be fearful about the future is choose to live in a world that does not exist — and thus to be less than fully alive. This is a lesson I learned from a teacher I met in Palakkad named Sri Nochur Venkataraman. He is a devotee of Ramana Maharshi, whose works I love.
For those who are fearful, I recom-mend meditating on this truth: “I do not know what the future will bring. But I do know that am alive and well right now. I will not waste the gift of this day.”
Loneliness is very normal, and the discomfort it brings owes to a lack of a neurotransmitter in the brain called oxytocin. This is also known as the “love molecule” which is produced in response to physical touch and eye contact. When we don’t get enough of it — like at the present time — we crave it and are very uncomfortable.
A mistake many people make is to binge on social media, which is basically “social junk food.” Research shows that you literally get lonelier when you use it. The reason is that it stimulates almost no oxytocin (no touch, no eye contact). Much better to use technologies that in-volve face to face contact, such as Zoom, FaceTime, and Skype.
Research shows that oxytocin peaks when you hug someone for 22 seconds. So make a house rule: Everyone gets a 22 second hug every two hours. (And when the lockdown is over, keep doing this!)
Many people are worried that social dis-tancing will be the new normal. People are not created to be socially dis-tant. We are created for love and close-ness. Of course, people will be careful as long as they must. But when it is safe, we will go back to our old, happy ways.
Dr Arthur C Brooks is a Harvard professor, behavioural social scientist and bestselling author who has launched a new column on happiness when we are at our most anxious. In an interview to Shobita Dhar, he shares some simple happiness hacks
Lockdown is an opportunity. Think of it as a miniature vanaprastha
FOR THE RECORD
NO FINGER POINTING: Let’s not forget that huge numbers of Muslim health workers are on the battle lines of Covid
Being an employee in a business paper, I’d like to think that I think like an em-ployer. Which means that I’m a ninja — who actually is a geisha, but let’s not focus on that part.
For years, I have been advocating work from home, or WFH. But at the cost of being written off as a ‘lone shirk’ — and being a Bengali hasn’t helped the case — my cam-paign to push employers to send more and more of their employees ghar wapsi (without sacking them, that is) was, what Harvard Business School calls, a ‘failure’. That is until this coronavirus outbreak made WFH a necessity.
But despite the strong argument for it, and the largely phoney enthusiasm shown by middle manage-ment after upper management made it the flavour of the month, the real response to WFH from most employ-ers and their enforcers remains WTF.
Business owners know that getting employees to WFH saves on office space and rent — not to mention electricity and toilet paper. Adopting the McDonald’s model of having uncomfortable seating and depressing decor to encourage takeaway meals and a quick turnover of sit-down customers could easily be replicated in cur-rent offices.
Employers also know that evolution, by means of natural selection and the preservation of favoured em-ployees in the stuggle for professional life, has made office-goers adapt to conditions where what work they are seen to do, matters more than what work they actu-ally do. Thus, the sudden mass-minimising of the TEDx, Facebook, online shopping windows on the computer screen as the floor manager passes by, and maximising that look ISRO engineers wear on their faces from about 140 seconds before lift-off.
Granted, not all jobs allow WFH. Drivers, firefighters, food delivery executives, pickpockets, professional foot-ballers, galley slaves don’t have the option. But for many others, Covid lockdown has provided that push which was needed to make a right idea be embraced for the right reasons at the right time (post-Covid-lockdown).
Technologically, WFH started making perfect (busi-ness) sense a while back. Like an under-utilised icebox in a home before the household discovered the joys of cold beer, WiFi, cheaper smartphones and computers, OTT (over-the-top) telecommunication, cloud-based and peer-to-peer videotelephony, etc made homes WFH-ready before WFH’s been accepted.
The real problem, of course, is of perception. Ditzy New-Age terms like ‘work-life balance’ and ‘flexi-work’, smacking of slacking off, have made employers warier of WFH than of EPF. Visions of employees binge-watch-ing episodes of ‘The Mandalorian’, having vodka shots before passing out on the couch, or doing household chores instead of spending water-cooler moments, make employers see WFH as some kind of hippie Trojan horse that Steve Jobs would have sent Microsoft employees.
And yet, WFH works — if it’s allowed to. And don’t listen to what many HR companies are peddling. A SCIKEY study last month found that only 0.2% of the 10,000-plus job-seekers (between 22 and 47 years) in the IT sector had the qualities (eg decision-making, learning agility, results orientation) of what it takes to be a ‘remote working champion’. Well, just because WFH isn’t for con-stantly approval-seeking nerds, whose extra-curricular interests become apparent by simply going through their internet history, doesn’t mean WFH isn’t for hormonally well-adjusted employees across other sectors.
A 2015 Stanford University study, ‘Does Working From Home Work?’, used the results of a two-year WFH ex-periment at a Chinese travel agency (which, in hindsight, is a doubly ominous example in these Covid-19 times) to find that WFH resulted in a productivity boost ‘equivalent to a full day’s work’. Unlike officer-goers aka goers, who tend to waste time and mindspace, WFHers utilise work-time far better, are far less distracted, take shorter breaks, and take less time off. The travel company also saved al-most $2,000 per employee on rent by reducing office space.
Of course, many of our employers — especially those who were once goers themselves — will come up with ‘but it’s not in our DNA!’ or ‘culturally, we work from offices, not homes’. They wouldn’t sound too different from what our communists did in the 1980s when oppos-ing computerisation, that imperialist (now they would have said ‘fascist’) bogey that was to turn India into an unemployed middle-class wasteland.
And, of course, lockdown provides suboptimal condi-tions for WFH, with schools shut and snotty kids running around homes, and with no one around to turn the wash-ing machine button on. But we are talking about WFH becoming the norm after lockdown lifts, and employers start counting their chickens again. Work from home was not built in a day. These last 25 days have allowed — and the next 14 will further allow — some serious WFH beta-testing. So employers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your office space!
[This column, started in a prime office space in central Delhi in November 2018 and never completed, was finally produced under 100% WFH conditions.]
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ADVANTAGE EMPLOYERS: Getting employees to work from home saves on office space and rent
Covid lesson: How to learn to stop worrying and love WFH
SWAPAN DASGUPTA
RIGHT & WRONG
BLOODY MARYSAGARIKA GHOSE
The lockdown, I’m told is a time For stillness and silence sublime
For gentle reflection, And deep contemplation…
of wisdom, in readings and rhyme
But stillness and silence is not My condition… by a long shot!
I’ve bridge games to play And chores to delay
And VCs lined up on the trot
I have global problems to solve(Without me, can the world revolve?)
I’ve videos to shareOpinions to air
On the complex solutions involved
With a brood spread oceans apart In London, Gurgaon and Hobart…
There are Zoom calls at four Voice messages galore
And House Parties, waiting to start
My bridge game has sprung into action After decades of hibernation
“Diamonds, not No Trumps!!”“Why two double jumps??”
Are now our daily confrontations
Then there’s housework (oof, what a bother!)
Each errand runs into another But the good wife makes sure
That we do each chore Like we were both ‘maid for each other’
So now I am waiting, my friend For Modi ji’s lockdown to end
To drive out the carAnd fill up the bar
Finally, some free time to spend!
LOCKDOWN LIMERICKRAHUL KANSAL
INDRAJIT HAZRA
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, HYDERABADAPRIL 19, 202010
CCI NG 3.7 Product: TOIHyderabadBS PubDate: 19-04-2020 Zone: Hyderabad Edition: 1 Page: TOIHP10 User: aneesh.srinivasan Time: 04-18-2020 23:01 Color: CMYK
SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, HYDERABAD APRIL 19, 2020 11TIMES GLOBAL
Anti-Lockdown Protests On The Rise In USChidanand.Rajghatta
@timesgroup.com
Washington: Fuelled by peo-ple impatient with the nation-wide lockdown and fired up bya president who saw an oppor-tunity to tap into their pent-upfrustration, Americans havebegun a run towards normalcydespite cautionary advicefrom pandemic pundits thatthe worse may not be over withthe novel coronavirus.
Visuals of a beach in Jack-sonville, Florida, that was flo-oded with people within 30 mi-nutes of re-opening gave asense of the dam bursting am-id a health vs wealth debate inwhich President Trump —long leery of dire projectionsabout the coronavirus pan-demic — finally tilted towardsre-opening the country for bus-iness, fearful that an economiccollapse would destroy his leg-acy as much as the contagion.
Although Trump appearedto leave it to state governors tomake the final call about end-ing the shut down in a phasedmanner as per federal guide-lines, he short-circuited theprocess by tweeting “LIBER-ATE” in a message aimed atthree states — Michigan, Min-nesota, and Virginia — whichhappen to be run by Democrat-
ic administrations. That wascue for his supporters, who we-re already stewing under lock-down orders and gathering atstate capitols to demonstrateagainst governors, to cut loose.
Demonstrations also eru-pted in California, Maryland,and Washington states as Re-publican and conservative Tr-ump supports seized the mo-ment to back the argument th-at the pandemic was overblo-wn and lockdowns was cau-sing an economic calamity.
That line of thinking,which Trump had initiallyembraced before he was per-suaded by experts to see other-
wise, came even as the US tollfrom the pandemic crossed36,000, a toll that included fear-ful personalised stories aboutthe tricky lethality of Cov-id-19, but one that is well shortof the 1,00,000 plus fatalitiesthat was initially projected.
In fact, the University ofWashington’s Institute forHealth Metrics and Evalua-tion (IHME), in an update pub-lished on Friday lowered itsprojection of total deaths from68,841 (with an estimate rangeof 30,188 to 175,965) to just over60,308 (with an estimate rangeof 34,063 to 140,381).
While critics of the lock-
round of Covid-19 infection.Compounding all this,
some researchers have saidinitial studies are showing theevidence is “underwhelming”that Hydroxychloroquin couldbe the magic bullet to kill Co-vid-19 as suggested by Trump.But the matter is moving fromthe field of science to politicsand economics this weekendas many conservative com-mentators and pro-Trump out-lets are arguing that Washing-ton DC has over-reacted to thepandemic. The issue is compli-cated by regional and racialfactors: the areas most affectedare in Democrat-run states ci-ties; and blacks, minoritiesand immigrants, many ofwhom are frontline workers(in packing, trucking, deliveryetc) are disproportionatelyrepresented among the casual-ties from Covid-19 compared tothe white base that forms thecore of Trump support.
On Friday, several Demo-cratic governors lashed out atTrump for making a u-turn andigniting the lockdown rebellionwith his “LIBERATE” tweets,with Washington’s Jay Insleeaccusing him of inciting a do-mestic rebellion. “Thank youfor doing your job,” sneeredNew York’s Andrew Cuomo .
Full report on www.toi.in
down strategy seized on thenumbers to fret about whatthey see as the needless “pan-demic panic”, experts contin-ued to warn that shutdown andsocial distancing was what hadkept the death count lower thanprojected. Among the setbacksthat were highlighted on Fri-day was the discovery that re-covery from Covid-19 infectiondoes not necessarily confer im-munity for life (as it happens inthe case of say measles); thatantibodies may provide protec-tion for only a few months; andthere were instances of patie-nts being re-infected after theyhad recovered from the first
An Argentine official hasgiven some on-air sex
education for lovers in the timeof the coronavirus. Jose Barlet-ta, a doctor with the healthministry, said in a TV broadcastthat people needed to washtheir hands after sex — whet-her it was in person or overdigital channels. “It’s importantto wash your hands afterhaving sexual relations, aftermasturbation, or virtual sex,”the doctor said. “It is importantto disinfect keyboards, telepho-nes, sex toys and whatever elseyou might be using, whether ornot you are sharing thesethings with others,” he said.
Taylor Swift cancels all 2020tour dates due to outbreakPop star Taylor Swift hascancelled all her 2020 live
appearances and performan-ces due to coronavirus crisis.
The showswill nowhappen in2021. “I'm sosad I won'tbe able tosee you guys
in concert this year, but Iknow this is the right deci-sion, Please, please stayhealthy and safe. ” Swiftwrote on her Twitter account.
Iran parades medical gear,not missiles, on army dayIran on Friday paraded disin-fection vehicles, mobilehospitals and other medicalequipment to mark its armyday. The parade was heldbefore a group of comman-ders in face masks to under-score the military’s role inbattling the coronavirus. Itwas a far cry from the typicalparades, which normallyfeature , missiles, submarinesand armoured vehicles.
AROUND THE WORLD
OLD-WORLD CHARM IS BACK: People enjoy a movie at a drive-intheatre in Dortmund, Germany. Amid the coronavirus pandemic,many drive-ins have seen an uptick in business, as people seethem as a safe way to leave the house but continue to self-isolate
Argentina official’sadvice for digitallovers? Wash hands
Reuters
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the residence of Minnesota’sgovernor on Friday. Demonstrators at scattered gatherings in parts of theUS have pushed for a quick return to pre-pandemic economic activity
AFP
Ben Hubbard
Beirut: For years, she was arare princess from SaudiArabia who spoke her mindto the world, criticising thekingdom’s treatment of wo-men, calling its religious tea-chings “extremely dangero-us” and voicing support for aconstitutional monarchy.
And she got away with it —until she disappeared inMarch 2019. This week, theprincess, Basmah bint Saud, adaughter of Saudi Arabia’s se-cond king, confirmed whathad been suspected: A state-ment on her Twitter feed saidthat she was being held in aprison in the kingdom witho-ut charge, and that she was inurgent need of medical care.
“I was abducted withoutexplanation together with
one of my daughters andthrown into prison,” she wro-te. She begged Saudi Arabia’sking and the crown prince“to release me as I have doneno wrong.” By Friday, thatplea had been deleted.
The reason for her arrestwas not clear, but it appeared
to fit a pattern of Saudi Arabi-a’s government punishingprominent citizens who hadpublicly deviated from the go-vernment’s line. Her deten-tion was one of two new casesof Saudi royals locked up du-ring the rise of the kingdom’sde facto ruler, Crown PrinceMohammed bin Salman. Butthe detentions of less promi-nent figures like Basmah baf-fled some Saudi experts.
Officials at the Saudi em-bassy in Washington decli-ned to comment. And two as-sociates of Basmah said shewas being held with herdaughter in Al Ha’ir Prison,a well-known lockup for cri-minals and militants nearthe capital, Riyadh, a movethat appeared to have no pre-cedent, said al-Rasheed, theSaudi scholar. NYT NEWS SERVICE
Saudi princess pleads for releasefrom prison, tweet deleted later
Hong Kong:Hong Kong policearrested 15 activists, includingveteran politicians, a publis-hing tycoon and senior barris-ters, in raids on Saturday in thebiggest crackdown on the ci-ty’s pro-democracy movement
Among those held on char-ges of illegal assembly were De-mocratic Party founder MartinLee, 81, millionaire tycoon Jim-my Lai, 71, and former lawma-ker and barrister Margaret Ng,72, according to sources. In all,one serving and nine formerlegislators were arrested. De-mocratic legislator Claudia Mosaid the city government, led byCarrie Lam, was trying “into in-troduce a ring of terror in HongKong”. “They are doing whate-ver they can to try to silence thelocal opposition,” Mo said, poin-ting to upcoming legislativeelections in September. REUTERS
Top Hong Kongpro-democracyfigures arrested
Thomas Gibbons-Neffand Julian E Barnes
Washington: The US is con-sidering pulling back front-line CIA personnel from ba-ses in Afghanistan, accor-ding to American officials, aspart of the US government’seffort to further reduce vio-lence in the country in thewake of its landmark peaceagreement with the Taliban.
The deliberations over theCIA presence in the countryare part of larger discussionsabout pulling back interna-tional forces to push forwardthe peace plan, which showssigns of floundering amidcontinuing violence.
Top Taliban commandershave demanded reductionsin the CIA presence in the co-untry alongside US troops,
something that until now USnegotiators have resisted.There are thought to be seve-ral hundred CIA officers andcontractors in Afghanistan.
CIA personnel operate inadvising militia groups. Theoperations began as part ofan effort to hunt al-Qaida be-fore shifting to targeting orga-nisations including the Haq-qani network a significant so-urce of income for the Tali-ban. One move beingdiscussed would relocateagency personnel to the em-bassy in Kabul, enabling so-me level of US advice to mili-tia groups operating underthe oversight of Afghanis-tan’s intelligence service.Officials cautioned that deli-berations continued and va-rious plans were under con-sideration. NYT NEWS SERVICE
To save Af deal, US mayscale back CIA presence
Coronavirus deaths havesurged past 150,000, as go-vernments around the
world grapple with when andhow to ease lockdowns that ha-ve crippled the global economy.
In a joint statement on Sat-urday, foreign ministers from13 countries, including Cana-da, Brazil, Italy and Germa-ny, called for global coopera-tion to lessen the economic im-pact of the pandemic. “It is vi-tal that we work together tosave lives and livelihoods.”
The statement was alsobacked by Britain, France In-donesia, Mexico, Morocco,Peru, South Korea, Singa-pore and Turkey. It said thecountries were committed to“coordinate on public health,travel, trade, economic and fi-nancial measures in order tominimize disruptions and re-cover stronger”. Those effortsinclude maintaining “air, landand marine transportation li-nks” to ensure the continuedflow of goods, including medi-cal equipment and aid, and thereturn home of travellers, theysaid after a virtual meeting.
There have been tentativesigns that measures to curbthe outbreak are working inplaces, with the rate of newinfections slowing across Eu-rope. France and Spain sta-rted dismantling some fieldhospitals, while in Germanythe number of active caseshas slowly declined over thepast week as people recover.
Still, most governmentsand public health officials re-main cautious about relaxingthe shutdowns, despite themounting economic toll. TheItalian government’s decree,shutting down nonessential in-dustries and businesses, runsthrough May 3. Health expertsare advising that any easingmust be gradual in the countrythat's seen the most deaths sofar in Europe, with more than23,000 fatalities and nearly176,000 known cases.
Some Asian nations thatuntil recently appeared tohave the outbreak under con-trol, including Singapore andJapan, reported a fresh surgein cases Saturday. Japan’s to-tal case number rose above
10,000 on Saturday. Singaporereported a sharp, one-day sp-ike of 942 infections, the high-est in Southeast Asia, amidand upsurge in cases amongforeign workers staying incrowded dormitories. Thatbrought the total to 5,992 in thetiny city-state of 6 million.
Iran, hard hit by the virusand international sanctions,allowed some businesses inthe capital and nearby townsto re-open Saturday afterweeks of lockdown. Gyms,
restaurants, shopping mallsand Tehran’s grand bazaarwill remain closed.
Chinaordered on Saturdaythat anyone in Wuhan workingin service-related jobs musttake a coronavirus test if theywant to leave the city. The gov-ernment of Hubei province, ofwhich Wuhan is capital, willpay for the tests. China on Sat-urday reported 27 new cases, asit tries to stem an upsurge in in-fections in a northeasternprovince bordering Russia.
Nations call for joint effortsas virus toll crosses 1,50,000
Countries Infected Death
United States 7,16,883 37,659Spain 1,91,726 20,043Italy 1,75,925 23,227France 1,49,146 19,345Germany 1,42,751 4,426United Kingdom 1,15,300 15,497China 83,787 4,636
Turkey 82,329 1,890Iran 80,868 5,031Belgium 37,183 5,453
185countries/regions hit
22,97,712+infected globally
1,58,202+have died
586,290+have recovered
TRACKING OUTBREAK
Source: Johns Hopkins University
Kabul: At least 20 officials wor-king at Afghan President Ash-raf Ghani’s palace have testedpositive for Covid-19, promptingthe 70-year-old president to li-mit most of his contact withstaff to digital communication,sources said on Saturday. An of-ficial document delivered tothe palace is thought to haveinfected staff, many of whomwere tested earlier thismonth, according to an healthofficial. “Some of the employ-ees were working in their offi-ces when the results came out,and we had to quarantinethem and their families, butthe numbers could be higher,”the official added. REUTERS
20 Afghan prezpalace stafftest positive
London: The UK has set up atask force to urgently find acoronavirus vaccine and pre-pare the industry to manufac-ture it at scale once it is devel-oped, as 847 fresh deaths werereported due to the Covid-19,taking the number of fatali-ties in the country to 15,497.
UK business secretary AlokSharma said on Friday the newvaccine task force, led by thegovernment’s chief scientificadviser Patrick Vallance, was acollaboration between busi-
ness and industry and acade-mia. It is aimed at coordinat-ing efforts to discover a vac-cine, funnel resources and sup-port to industry and researchinstitutions and review regu-lations to remove any blocks inscaling it up, he said.
“We cannot put a date onwhen we will get a vaccine.With the government backingour scientists, we have the bestchance to do this as quickly aspossible,” said the Indian-ori-gin cabinet minister. PTI
UK sets up vaccine taskforce as toll hits 15,000+
Creating a scientific fire-storm across theworld, French virolo-
gist and Nobel award winnerLuc Montagnier has claimedthat Sars-CoV-2, the virusthat led to the global corona-virus pandemic, is “man-made” as it’s the result of anattempt to manufacture avaccine against the AIDS vi-rus in a Chinese laboratory.
Interviewed on a Frenchnews channel, the co-discov-erer of the AIDS virus whobagged the 2008 Nobel awardin medicine along with twoother scientists alleged the“presence of elements ofHIV and germ of malaria inthe genome of coronavirusis highly suspect and thecharacteristics of the viruscould not have arisen natu-rally”. Montagnier allegedthat an “industrial” acci-dent was said to have takenplace in the Wuhan NationalBiosafety Laboratory, whichspecialises in these corona-viruses since early 2000s.
His allegation has come ata time when the US has start-ed an inquiry into such re-ports of a virus “leak” . Infact, US President Donald
Trump had recently said,“More and more, we’re hear-ing the story” and that the USwas “doing a very thoroughinvestigation”. US secretaryof state Mike Pompeo said,“We’re doing a full investiga-tion of everything we can tolearn how it is the case thatthis virus got away, got out in-to the world and now has cre-ated so much tragedy — somuch death — here in the USand all around the world.” Hesaid the US knew that the Wu-han lab “contained highlycontagious materials”.
Montagnier, however, is acontroversial figure as hehad earlier published two re-search studies — electro-magnetic waves emitted byDNA and on the benefits ofpapaya — that attracted crit-icism from a section of thescientific community.
Another French virologist
Etienne Simon-Loriere of theInstitut Pasteur in Paris, how-ever, rubbished Montagnier’sclaims. “That (his claims) doesnot make sense. These are ve-ry small elements that we findin other viruses of the samefamily, other coronaviruses innature,” Etienne told AFP.
The theory that the Co-vid-19 originated from genet-ic manipulation has beencirculating in social mediafor quite some time. Howev-er, China has refuted allega-tions that the coronavirusmay have originated in a Wu-han laboratory.
Foreign ministry spokes-man Zhao Lijian cited theWorld Health Organizationchief and other unidentifiedmedical experts as saying thatthere was no evidence thattransmission began from thelab and there was “no scientif-ic basis” for such claims.
Trump Leads Reopen Brigade With Call To ‘Liberate’ States
Princess Basmah Bint Saud putout a statement this weeksaying she was being held in aSaudi prison without charge andwas in need of medical care
Locals maintain social distance at a church on the eve of the OrthodoxEaster in Kaliningrad, Russia. Many of the world’s 260 million OrthodoxChristians are preparing to mark Easter on Sunday without attendingchurch services. The Russian Orthodox Church has asked the faithful tocelebrate at home, even though many places of worship will remainopen. Services in Turkey will be closed to the public and broadcast onthe internet. Greece will deploy drones to ramp up street patrols
Reuters
Johannesburg: Africa nowhas more than 1,000 deathsfrom Covid-19, the Africa Cen-ters for Disease Control andPrevention said on Saturday,while Nigeria said the presi-dent’s chief of staff had died.A total of 52 of the continent’s54 countries have reported thevirus, with overall more than19,800 cases. Nigeria’s govern-ment said Abba Kyari, chief ofstaff to President Muhamma-du Buhari, died on Friday ofCovid-19. WHO on Friday no-ted a 51% increase in cases inAfrica and a 60% jump in de-aths in the past week. AP
Africa toll 1,000+,Nigeria’s chief ofstaff among dead
The 189-nation International Monetary Fund and its sisterlending agency, the World Bank, on Friday pledged to step
up their efforts to cushion the blow to the global economy fromthe coronavirus pandemic. The Development Committee — atop policy panel that guides operations at both the IMF and theWorld Bank — directed the agencies to review the debt burdensof middle-income countries and to “explore expeditiously arange of solutions to fiscal and debt stress in those countries”.World Bank president David Malpass also said the World Bankhoped to have support programmes under way for 100 countriesby the end of this month with a goal of providing $160 billion infinancing over the next 15 months to deal with the pandemic. AP
IMF and World Bank pledge helpamid calls for more debt relief
Omer Farooq Khan TNN
Islamabad: The Pakistan gov-ernment caved into pressurefrom the clergy and agreed onSaturday to lift the ban on con-gregational prayers inmosques during the month ofRamzan, even as the Covid-19cases touched 7,700, with 145deaths, in the country.
The decision was taken ata meeting between PresidentArif Alvi and clerics fromover a dozen different schoolsof thought where both sidesagreed upon a 20-point agendaon opening of mosques forcongregational prayers. Nota-bly, the government has al-ready failed to stop peoplefrom offering congregationalprayers in mosques despite aban during the lockdown. Thegovernment engaged the cler-ics in talks after their unilat-eral announcement invitingpeople to mosques for prayersin congregation on April 14.
The deal mandates that theelderly, the minor, and sickpeople will not be allowed toenter mosques, while thoseamong the congregation muststand six feet apart from oneanother in rows and that everyperson must wear a face masksand that none should hug orshake hands. The clericsagreed to remove mats frommosques and to regularlywash floors with disinfectants.
Pak will allowcongregations
at mosquesduring Ramzan
Luc Montagnier, Frenchvirologist and 2008 NobelPrize winner for medicine,has alleged that the virus got released in an ‘industrial’ accident at the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory
Coronavirus ‘man-made’ inWuhan lab: Nobel laureate
Luc Montagnier, Co-Discoverer Of HIV, Claims ‘It’s Result Of An Attempt To Develop AIDS Vaccine’
Dhaka: Tens of thousands ofpeople attended the funeral ofa top cleric in Bangladesh onSaturday, defying a nationwi-de lockdown in the wake ofthe coronavirus outbreak thathas killed 84 people and infec-ted 2,144 others. Mawlana Ju-bayer Ahmed Ansari, 55, whowas the deputy of BangladeshKhelafat Majlish party, died ata village in Chittagong divi-sion on Friday night.
His funeral was held at a lo-cal madrassa, which thou-sands of people from differentareas, including Dhaka, atten-ded, flouting government di-rectives, Dhaka Tribune repor-ted. “About 50,000 people atten-ded his funeral on Saturday,”the paper said, citing locals.
Meanwhile, hundreds ofworkers poured onto the streetsof Chittagong city on Saturdayto demand work and wages. So-me workers said they were stillwaiting for last month’s wages.Bangladesh, the world’s second-largest apparel producer afterChina, is set to lose about $6 bil-lion of export revenues this fi-scal year as retailers across theworld cancel orders, two indust-ry bodies have said. AGENCIES
Thousands inB’desh attendcleric’s funeral
New York’s daily toll of virusdeaths hit its lowest point in
more than two weeks, butGovernor Andrew Cuomo war-ned on Saturday that the stateisn’t ready to ease up on shutd-owns of schools, businesses andgatherings. The daily increase invirus deaths has dropped under550 for the first time in over twoweeks as hospitalizations conti-nue to decline, Cuomo said. Nea-rly 13,000 New Yorkers in all havedied since March 1. AP
NY’s daily virus tollunder 550 for firsttime since April 1
CCI NG 3.7 Product: TOIHyderabadBS PubDate: 19-04-2020 Zone: Hyderabad Edition: 1 Page: TOIHP11 User: saji.diwakaran Time: 04-19-2020 00:48 Color: CMYK
TIMES SPORTSUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, HYDERABAD | APRIL 19, 2020
ANDY MURRAY HAUNTED BY 2016 ROLAND GARROS FINAL LOSS TO NOVAK DJOKOVIC
FORMER JUVENTUS PLAYER BENATIA HAILS RONALDO AS ‘ABSOLUTE NUMBER ONE’
The tennis governing bodies have joinedforces to support lower-level professio-nals who are struggling financially duringthe sport’s shutdown due to the novelcoronavirus outbreak. The plight of theplayers ranked outside the top 100 insingles prompted all stakeholders, alongwith the organisers of the four GrandSlams, to step in and devise plans toprovide some relief.
Man City’s De Bruyne recoveringfrom illness: Kevin De Bruyne is
recovering from anillness, but the Manches-ter City star says he isnot sure if he had coro-navirus. De Bruyne andhis family felt ill foraround two weeks, but
the Belgian international did not find outwhether or not it was the virus. “I amdoing well, to be honest,” De Bruyne toldSky Sports on Friday.
Undesirable conduct shouldn'tdampen cooperation, says sportsminister: Undesirable conduct of in-dividuals should not come in the way ofinstitutional cooperation, said sportsminister Kiren Rijiju on Saturday, tryingto defuse the tension after the IOA comp-lained of ministry interference in nationalfederations and drew sharp criticismfrom the sports secretary. “...any remarkmade by individuals at certain situationshould not be treated as a matter ofpolicy. We are determined to work toget-her to realise the dream of making Indiaa sports superpower,” said Rijiju.
No lifetime posts in AITA: The AllIndia Tennis Association (AITA) hasagreed to abolish honorary posts of LifePresident, Life Vice President and LifeCounsellor on the direction of the SportsMinistry, which termed the creation ofsuch posts as violation of the NationalSports Code. The decision means thatsenior sports administrator Anil Khannaand former external affairs ministers S MKrishna and Yashwant Sinha cannot remain with the federation as lifepresidents.
Srinath didn’t get the credit hedeserved, feels Pollock: JavagalSrinath spearheaded India's pace attack
in the 90s with aplombbut former South Africanseamer Shaun Pollockbelieves the Indian nevergot the credit he deser-ved. Srinath played 67Tests and 229 ODIs
between 1991 and 2003, taking 236 and315 wickets respectively. “I think JavagalSrinath didn’t get the credit he deser-ved,” Pollock said during a Sky Sportspodcast discussion with former WestIndies fast bowler Michael Holding andEngland's Stuart Broad.
KKR would’ve won more titles hadthey bought Russell earlier, saysGambhir: Former KKR captain GautamGambhir believes his IPL side would havewon more IPL titles had West Indiesall-rounder Andre Russell played moreunder him for the Kolkata-based franchi-se. “Imagine Russell going for Rs 50 lakhsto KKR and Pawan Negi for Rs 8 crores to(Delhi) Daredevils. I probably wished thathe (Russell) would have been there forseven years when I was playing, wewould have certainly won one or twomore,” Gambhir said during a TV show.
IPL's opening night changed my lifeforever, says McCullum: Former NewZealand captain Brendon McCullum sayshis sizzling 73-ball 158, which set the ballrolling for IPL in its very first game 12years ago, changed his life forever. Onthis day in 2008, McCullum got the in-augural IPL off to a scintillating start forKolkata Knight Riders against RoyalChallengers Bangalore. “That night, mylife changed completely. You talk aboutsliding doors, and moments in yourcareers and in lives,” McCullum said.
HRC donates PPE: The HyderabadRace Club (HRC) donated PPE and onevideo laryngoscope to the government ofTelangana on Friday. The club donated2000 personal protecton equipment, N-95masks and one video laryngoscope withall accessories (worth Rs 24.08 lakh) tothe Gandhi Hospital. TNN/AGENCIES
GALLERY
Tennis bodies joinhands to answerplayers’ cry for help
Chennai: The last month-and-half has seen online chess pro-vide the ideal battleground for top players to showcase their skills. The coming weeks will see the world’s best fight for top hon-ours in the Magnus Carlsen Invi-tational on chess24.com. In a chat with TOI ahead of the tourna-ment, which started on Saturday, the reigning world champion spoke about how online tourna-ments are the in thing, its future, adjustments a player has to make while playing in such events and much more. Excerpts…
What have you missed themost during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic?
Chess-wise, it was a pity that the Candidates tournament had to stop as it leaves the whole World Championship cycle somewhat in arrears. Generally, Norway is less affected than many other Europe-an countries, and I don’t have much to complain about. Is this the best time for people to get hooked to chess?
This may indeed be a great
(time) for chess. But I would like to add that anytime is a good time to start playing chess.In an earlier chat with TOI, you mentioned how starting an online tournament was on your mind. Do you feel the conditions worked for you to have one now?
I wish the conditions weren’t like this right now because what is happening around the world is not good at all. People are suffering and dying. However, with the lack of sports entertainment, online chess can really make a difference.
And I do think it is a natural pro-gression for chess to grow online. I see online chess becoming more important, more prestigious and hope it will be taken more seri-ously now onwards. Sunway Sitges has become the first event to be held in online classical format. Do you see more online classical chess events in the future?
Established tournaments might have to go online if they want to take place this year. For now, I think rapid chess and faster time controls are the best alternatives for online
tournaments. It will be interesting to see the feedback from the Mag-nus Carlsen Invitational.What are the measures that must be taken to curb cheating which is quite possible in online competitions?
I think chess24.com has taken sensible measures to avoid cheat-ing. It is not that we expect any of the invited players to even con-sider cheating, but it is simply to protect the players from any unfair suspicions.Are there mental or technical adjustments that a player needs to make while playing online chess?
It is of course much the same as chess across the board. But the lack of physical awareness of your opponent and the two-dimensional board (and how that potentially affects your thinking) may play more of a role than we think. Even more important is, of course, prac-tice. Young players growing up with online chess may have a slight advantage, and the same applies if you are playing a lot of online chess continuously.You lost to GM Alireza Firouzja in the Banterblitz final on Wednesday. Is he one of the toughest you have faced in recent times?
He is a very talented and versa-tile player. You have to be at your best to beat him. He played well, and I wasn’t quite there on Wednes-day. Of course, Alireza has a bright chess future ahead of him.
Are there areas you feel you can still get better at?
There is so much to learn in every phase of the game. I hope to continue to improve for many years.
The best chess players will be battling it out online in the MAGNUS CARLSEN Invitational. The reigning world champion has reasons to be optimistic that it will be a success story
The lack of physical awareness of your
opponent and the two-dimensional
board (and how that potentially affects your thinking) may play more of a role than we think.” “I wish the conditions weren’t like this right now. People are dying. But I hope online chess will be taken more seriously now onwards.”
— Carlsen
‘THIS MAY BE A GREATTIME FOR CHESS’ With the lack of sports
entertainment, online chess can really make a difference. And I
do think it is a natural progression for chess to grow online.” — Magnus Carlsen
Pix: Getty Images
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Panaji: The football season is offi-cially over. The All India FootballFederation’s league committeewhich met on Saturday recommen-ded to the executive committee thatthe 2019-20 season be “deemed to beconcluded” with Mohun Bagan de-clared as I-League champions asthey “stand atop current standingsuntil the point of suspension(March 14) and enjoy an insurmo-untable lead,” if all matches wereplayed in normal circumstances.
The league committee may ha-ve only made a recommendation atthis stage, but I-League regula-tions clearly state that “matterswhich are not provided for in regu-lations and cases of force majeure(coronavirus pandemic in this ca-se) shall be decided by the AIFF Le-
ague Committee, whose decisionsare final.”
Not surprisingly, since the lea-gue is not completed, no team will
be relegated to the Second Divi-sion I-League, while the prize mo-ney – apart from Mohun Bagan’sshare – will be given equally to theremaining 10 teams.
As champions, Mohun Baganwill pocket Rs 1crore, while the re-maining purse of Rs 1.25 crore forthe next three best-placed teams –Rs 60 lakh for runnersup, Rs 40lakh for third place and Rs 25 lakhfor fourth – will be shared equallybetween the remaining 10 teams.Each team will receive Rs 12.5 lakhas their share of the prize money.
“This was an easy decision tomake. Apart from East Bengal, noclub had objection to Mohun Baganbeing crowned champions. In fact,East Bengal wanted the league to bedeclared null and void with the pri-ze money of Rs 2.5 crore shared withall 11participating teams.
“As per regulations, only thetop four clubs are eligible for prizemoney, but it would have been un-fair to freeze points position at thismoment. If you look at the leaguestandings, except for bottom-pla-ced Indian Arrows, all teams couldhave made it to the top four, if theyplayed the remaining games,” saidone senior AIFF official who atten-ded the meeting.
The tougher decision to makewas the future of Second DivisionI-League. All clubs have a sole aimof qualification to the higher lea-gue and cancelling the league mid-way would have hit them hard.
The committee said there wo-uld be a shorter duration tourna-ment next season for qualificationto the I-League (2020-21), subject toapproval of the Asian FootballConfederation (AFC).
AIFF concludes all leagues; Bagan [email protected]
● The 2019-20 season deemed tohave concluded● Mohun Bagan declared asI-League champions● Remaining prize money (apartfrom the champions) to beequally divided among 10 clubs● No relegation from I-League● Second division clubs to havea shorter duration tournamentnext season for qualification toI-League● All youth leagues to startafresh next season
IN BRIEF!
Pune: The Tokyo Games mayhave been pushed by a year butthe National Rifle Associationof India (NRAI) will not waitfurther to announce their te-am for the Olympics. NRAIpresident Raninder Singh saidthe team will be selected on thebasis of trials conducted tillFebruary 2020 and no more tri-als will be conducted, even tho-ugh there is a whole year left.
While the move will seemost of the quota holders con-firming their place for Tokyo,men’s rifle 3 position quota hol-der Aishwary Pratap Singh’sfate will be decided by the se-lectors, as the Madhya Pradeshshooter is placed third aftercompletion of the Olympic tri-als. There are two quotas in the3 position event, and as per thepolicy, top two shooters willbag those quotas.
The top place is secured byveteran Sanjeev Rajput, whohad won the quota himself,while Maharashtra’s SwapnilKusale, who didn’t win a quota
himself, is placed second.“We have conducted trials
since past two years and we al-ready have the cream. I don’tthink we will get anythingbetter by conducting more tri-als. We will honour the policythat we had put in place. Wewill select the shooters on me-rit,” Raninder told TOI.
However, Aishwary, 19, ex-pects the selectors to considerhis case. “There is a differen-ce of only a couple of pointsbetween me and Swapnil. I fe-el the selectors will considerthat all my scores came fromshooting in internationalcompetitions, while Swapnilshot more in domestic trials.There is a lot of difference interms of pressure when youshoot in international meets.So I would expect the selec-tors to consider my case, ifnot, I would like to have moretrials,” Aishwary, who wonthe quota by winning bronzein the Asian Championshipsin Doha last year, said. He hadalso won gold in the juniorWorld Cup last year.
Team for Tokyo: Nomore shooting trials [email protected]
New Delhi: Extension of nationwidelockdown till May 3 has made coachesand athletes anxious. Waiting for out-door training to resume post the con-clusion of the first phase of lockdownon April 14, coaches and athletes of atleast two prominent disciplines ha-ven’t particularly taken a liking to thegovernment’s decision to impose anot-her round of lockdown.
TOI has learnt that chief coaches oftwo disciplines have requested theSports Authority of India (SAI) to allowresumption of outdoor training withinthe regional centre’s premises for at le-ast two hours each in morning and eve-ning, following proper social distancingrules. One of the requests has comefrom NIS facility in Patiala, where athle-tes were training as part of the nationalcamp for the now-postponed TokyoOlympics before the countrywide lock-down was announced on March 24.
The coaches, athletes and supportstaff have been forced to lock themselvesup in their respective hostel rooms on theSAI campus, with minimal or zero inter-action. “It’s just the virtual world, onlinecoaching sessions and fitness updates.Ever since the lockdown, coaches ha-
ven’t seen their athletes and don’t knowmuch about their physical fitness. Physi-cal training has been compromised to agreat extent and that can’t be the case inan endurance or power sport,” said a co-ach requesting anonymity.
TOI understands that coaches andathletes have been strictly directed byfederations not to speak out-of-turnwithout obtaining prior permission.
While the coaches and athletes ma-naged the first phase, the second chap-ter of lockdown has started affectingthem mentally.
This is what coaches and athleteshave demanded: Train at the groundwithin the premises with no outsider/staff member allowed on the playing fi-eld during the practice duration; trainas individuals or in a very small groupfor fixed hours beginning at different ti-mes with a considerable gap in traininghours; coaches to guide or instruct froma distance without coming in contactwith an athlete; everyone to wear maskand follow proper sanitation protocol,including sanitising equipment and tra-ining gear; leave the practice field wit-hout physically contacting each otherand report straight back to hostel roomsto observe self-isolation.
Coaches, athletes demandresumption of training
New Delhi: The summer heat ri-sing and the body paint slowly be-ginning to run, Indian cricket’smost famous fan finds himself wit-hout a game to watch. Holed up forover a month in a flat in the Capital’sPatel Nagar, Sudhir Gautam looksat a bleak season where all sport co-uld be put off due the pandemic.
A permanent fixture at cricketmatches for past decade and half, hiswiry frame bathed in colours of theIndian flag, this was not the 2020Gautam had ever imagined. “Noteven in my wildest dreams,” Gau-tam told TOI on Thursday, his reac-tion echoing the feeling of thou-sands of sports fans the world over.
It was promising to be a busy ye-ar and Indian cricket’s wandering
minstrel was drawing up plans. Im-mediately after the IPL, there wasa short trip to Sri Lanka, even per-haps a UAE visit for the Asia Cup, aquick visit to England in the fall be-fore all of it culminated in theWorldT20 starting mid-October inAustralia. The 39-year-old hadplanned staying on for the Test se-ries that would follow. Drawingpatronage from Sachin Tendulkarfor tickets and visa fees, everyt-hing seemed set.
Instead, he has been stuck in theCapital since March 13, a day afterthe Dharamshala ODI against So-uth Africa was abandoned due to ra-in. As things unravelled quickly af-ter that and the pandemic became aclear and present danger, the follo-wing games in Lucknow (Mar 15)and Kolkata (Mar 18) too were can-
celled. With a bar on all air and railtravel in the ensuing national lock-down, Gautam has been stuck inDelhi. “I had an air ticket for Patnafor Friday and was all set to returnhome to Muzaffarpur, but it lookslike I’ll be staying here longer,” hesaid, after the initial lockdown wasextended till May 3.
With the BCCI formally suspen-ding this season’s IPL Thursday,Gautam is now resigned to the possi-bility that the tournament may nottake place this year. “IPL is the Ma-ha Kumbh of cricket,” he said, “Butwith social distancing it is all mea-ningless. See, even I have nobody topaint my back in this time. Also, the-re’s no fun without foreign cricke-ters. If the IPL can’t happen this ye-ar, fans like me will be disappointedbut we will understand that it may
be played later or not at all.”With the hold ups and cancella-
tions leading to a domino effect onthe global sporting calendar, it isthe uncertainty over the ICCevents that is gnawing away at In-dia’s foremost ‘professional’ fan.“What do you think, will the WorldT20 happen,” he asks, “Afterwards,I had planned to see all the fourTests and the ODI series and re-turn in January.”
Still, Gautam refuses to envisagea scenario when the tournament co-uld be played in empty stadiums.“How can we imagine sports beingplayed in empty stadiums? Sawaalhi paida nahin hota (The question it-self does not arise),” he said. “It isbetter not to hold it now than to holdin in empty stadiums without usfans,” he added.
Cricket in a stalemate, a famous fan waits for fun to [email protected]
TOI
SUPER FAN: Sudhir Kumar Gautam
London: The postponementof the Tokyo Olympics will al-low athletes banned until2020 to qualify for the Gamesnext year as doping bans arebased on time periods and notevents, Athletics IntegrityUnit (AIU) head Brett Clothi-er said. World Anti-DopingAgency (WADA) bans are de-signed to prevent athletesfrom competing during anOlympic cycle and Clothier
said stopping athletes whosebans expire this year fromcompeting in 2021 would leadto legal complications.
“The standard penalty fordoping is a four-year ban,”Clothier said. “And that’s be-en designed that way to tie inwith the Olympic cycle. Butin this case, of course, it’s ananomaly that the Olympicshave moved so some athleteswill benefit from that.”
ATHLETES BANNED UNTIL 2020 CANCOMPETE AT OLYMPICS: AIU HEAD
Kolkata: Stylish former India batsman V V S Laxman, whois Bengal cricket team's batting consultantfor the project Vision Programme, will guidethe batters and look into what went wrong atthe top of the order during the last Ranji Trop-hy season via video conferencing and by wat-ching their video clips online. With the count-ry on lockdown till May 3, all activities have
come to a standstill amid the Covid-19 pandemic. But that hasnot stopped the administrators to engage Laxman via videoconferencing. Bengal reached the Ranji final for the first ti-me in 13 years this time, only to falter at the last hurdle wherethey lost to Saurashtra. IANS
Laxman set to conduct online coachingsessions for Bengal Ranji batsmen
Melbourne: Alex Carey waseagerly waiting to share theDelhi Capitals dugoutalongside the great RickyPonting but the Australianwicket-keeper now feels he isunlikely to get the opportunitythis year with the IPLindefinitely postponed. Carey,who was scheduled to makehis IPL debut with thePonting-coached Delhi outfit,said only time will tell whether
the T20 World Cup and the IPLcan happen. “At this stage it'slooking likely that (IPL) mightnot go ahead,” Carey told CAon Friday. “It would be nice tobe in Delhi playing cricket - itwas my first time to be part ofthe IPL. I'm still really positive.I'm sure the world will move inthe way we want it to, andthere's still that hope later inthe season the IPL and theWorld Cup will go ahead.” PTI
Capitals’ Carey unsure of getting anopportunity to play IPL this year
New Delhi: Explosive Australia opener David Warner hasrated the 2016 Indian Premier League (IPL)title triumph with Sunrisers Hyderabad asone of the best memories of his career. “MyIPL favourite memory would be when we wonthe IPL in 2016. We had a very good tourna-ment the whole way through. The best thingwas we won a lot of close games which really
built great momentum and great belief within the team. “Itwas fantastic. That's one thing that I will always cherish forthe rest of my life. It was a great memory and one of the best,”Warner said in a video message posted by the franchise on itsofficial Twitter handle. Warner was the captain when Sunri-sers won their maiden IPL title in 2016, defeating Royal Chal-lengers Bangalore by eight runs. PTI
SRH’s title triumph one of the bestmemories of my career: Warner
Sydney: Cricket Australiachief executive Kevin Robertshas told staff that thegoverning body faces afinancial crisis and would notbe able to pay its bills at theend of August without layoffs,local media reported onSaturday. CA announced plansto lay off almost 80% of staff,putting them on 20% pay untilJune 30 when it is hoped morewill be known about how longgovernment curbs will last.
The Australian and The Agehave reported that CricketAustralia's financial reserveshad been hit by a slump in theworld's stock markets causedby the pandemic. No one atCricket Australia wasimmediately available forcomment. On Thursday, CAhad said in a statement thatthe "impacts the sportsindustry of the coronaviruspandemic are bigger than anyone sport". REUTERS
Cricket Australia likely to lay off 80%of its employees, says report
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What is the meaning of the word‘Hindu’? When did Hinduismoriginate and who is the founderof this religion? I would also liketo know when did we start referring to our motherland as India and not Bharat?
V P Dhananjayan, Chennai, 81 years■ Hinduism is one of the world’s old-est religions dating back to somewherearound 5,000 BC.There is reference tothe word ‘Hindu’ by the Aryans.Theterm ‘Hindu’ in Vedic records did notrefer to a religion but is mentioned asthe nationality of the people who livedin the region.At that time, the ancientname of Hindu religion was SanatanDharma, an eternal or universal tradi-tion referring to learning the right wayof living life.
It is believed that the word ‘Hindu’comes from the first let-ter ‘H’of the Himalayasand the last words ‘indu’from the Sind-hu River. According to the NadistutiSukta, a hymn in the Rig Veda, SindhuRiver, also known as the Indus River,is addressed as the mightiest of rivers.The river is also one of the longest inAsia,originating from the ManasarovarLake and running through Ladakh allthe way through the entire length ofPakistan.There are many beliefs behindthe origin of the term ‘Hindu’.It is be-
lieved that in theZoroastrian holybook, the Avesta,the word ‘Hindu’was used for thefirst time as a geo-graphical term forpeople who lived
beyond the Indus River.The Persianscould not pronounce the letter ‘S’ cor-rectly and mispronounced it as ‘H’.Thus,for the ancient Persians,the word‘Sindhu’ became Hindu. Even today,people from the Sindh province in Pak-istan are called Sindhis or Sindhus.
Hiuen Tsang, a Chinese Buddhistmonk, who travelled to India fromChina in the seventh century, agreedthat Hinduism was widely popular inIndia at that time.The Indus or Sind-hu Valley civilisation is named after the
Indus River and theriver gave its name to
the country, India. It is also believedthat when Alexander came to India,he referred to its people as Indu, in-stead of Bharat.Thereafter, the east ofthe Indus was referred to as India, butinitially the Vedic name for the areawas Bharat. ■
Send your question to [email protected] with subjectline: Ask Surakshit and state your age
‘The name is Bharat’YOG GURU SURAKSHIT GOSWAMI
ASK SURAKSHIT
Whether it isto do with re-ligion, the en-vironment orsociety, peo-ple of Vedic
times in the Indic region followedlifestyles that promoted harmony. So-ciety was governed by a universalmoral order called Rta and those wholived ethical, moral lives enjoyedpeace and happiness.
The Vedas, acknowledged as beingperhaps the oldest body of literature inthe world, clearly reveal how attunedwe were to nature.Vedic civilisationthrived amidst nature, drawing its sus-tenance from the natural environment.Those who lived on the banks of theRiver Indus and its tributaries like Riv-er Saraswati, conceptualised Vedic godsand rituals.The Rig Veda, the first of thefour main Vedas — Rig,Sama,Yajur andAtharva — contains prayers addressed toSurya,Agni, Indra and Varuna, invoked
as deities.The concept of de-ity embraces the physicalaspect perceived throughthe senses,and the myth-ical or imaginative as-
pect.A few examplesof the import of
Vedic prayersare:
Agni: Firewas venerated in
the Vedic period.Fire was considered
the best medium foroffering homage to
gods through oblation.Agni was considered ca-
pable of conferring wealth,growth andeven heroic offsprings,says a verse in theRig Veda, 1.1.3.
Vayu:People understood the indis-pensable role of this vital element,Vayu,in their lives, in ensuring clean air. Amantra in the Rig Veda,10.137.3 states:“Homage is offered to Vayu so that hebrings to humankind all medicinal val-ues and takes away whatever is harm-ful.”Since he enables healing,Vayu is of-fered prayers as the divine messenger ofhealing practices.
Apa:Water is as important as air forsurvival of life.Vedic rishis expressedtheir deep reverence through themantra 10.9.1 that says, “Waters, youare the ones who grant us the life force.Help us find nourishment so that wemay look upon you with great joy”.Similarly, there are prayers offered toother gods like Surya, Indra, Parjanya— rain, and more.
The Vrikshayurveda states that plant-
ing a tree is as ben-eficial as having tenchildren. It wasprohibited to cutthe banyan tree be-cause it was be-lieved that gods livethere and no dis-ease can stay where
this tree is present, Atharva Veda, 5.4.3.The Rig Veda contains a number ofhymns that praise medicinal plants.Var-ious pronouncements on the patient,doctor and medicine are found in thesehymns.In the Vedic era,people believedin the medicinal properties of plants,andrevered them.The Atharva Veda men-tions that air, water and plants perme-ate the universe and are essential for theexistence of life on Earth.Mantra 8.7.10states that plants and herbs canhelp destroy poison.
TheYajur Veda, too, men-tions plants and animals,as alsopollution of the atmosphere.It says,“None should kill an-imals helpful to all,” 13.37. Itexhorts the king to never killanimals like bullocks that areuseful for agriculture, cows that givemilk and all other helpful animals, andto punish those who harm or kill suchanimals,13.49; the oceans are viewed astreasure troves to be protected, 38.22;people are advised to not pollute waterand not to harm or cut trees,6:33.Thestory of Satyakama in the Chandogya Up-anishad beautifully captures the harmo-nious relationship of Vedic civilisationwith flora and fauna.A young student,Satyakama,reached the ashrama of Rishi
Gautama with the aim of gaining trueknowledge.The rishi accepted Satyaka-ma as his disciple.After initial instruc-tions,Sage Gautama entrusted the newstudent with the charge of four hun-dred cows and asked him to return af-ter they multiply to one thousand.Satyakama went to that part of the for-est where abundant pastures and waterwere available and the surroundingswere conducive to meditation.He hadalready received instructions from hisguru as to how to lead a life of auster-ity and prayer.When he returned withone thousand cows after some years,hewas an enlightened soul.This story ex-tols the value of living in attunementwith nature.
In fact, this tradition of harmonywith nature continued during the pe-
riod of the Puranas.The epicsRamayana and Mahabharata con-tain numerous references to thecare and protection of the en-vironment. Even later, duringthe period when sacred textslike the Bhagwad Gita tookshape, these ideas are empha-sised.The Gita talks of the con-
cept of yajna, sacrifice, where living inharmony with nature is elaboratedupon.
We can conclude that Vedic civili-sation was rooted in judicious use ofnatural resources and conservation ofthe environment. It guided people toharmony through ethical and moralcodes of conduct.We can find in themhints of long-term solutions for someof the major environmental problemsof the present age. ■
For thousands and hundreds ofyears, if you want to enjoy the fruits
and happiness of life, take upsystematic planting of trees.
Rig Veda✥
First we have to step out of ourdream of separation, the insularitywith which we have imprisoned
ourselves, and acknowledge that weare part of a multidimensional living
spiritual being we call the world.Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
✥
For me, being green means cleaning up the water.Water is
the key. Start with water.Erin Brockovich
✥
Fear, separation, hate and anger comefrom the wrong view that you andthe earth are two separate entities,
that the earth is only theenvironment. So breathe in, and beaware of your body, look deeply intoit and realise, you are the earth and
your consciousness is also theconsciousness of the earth. Not to
cut the tree, not to pollute the water, that is not enough.
Thich Nhat Hanh✥
Most climate scientists and ‘green’politicians keep flying around the
world, eating meat and dairy.Everything needs to change.And it has to start today.
Greta Thunberg✥
You have to hold yourselfaccountable for your actions,
and that’s how we’re going to protect the Earth.
Julia B Hill
S A C R E DS P A C E
Go Green
Trees that grow fast, livelong and reproduceslowly, account for thebulk of the biomass and
carbon storage in some tropicalrainforests, say scientists in a paperpublished recently in the journalScience. The finding thatthese trees, called long-lived pioneers, play amuch larger role in carbon stor-age than previously thought mayhave implications in efforts topreserve forests as a strategy tofight climate change.
“People have been arguingabout whether these long-lived pi-oneers contribute much to carbonstorage over the long term,” said
Caroline Farrior, an assistant pro-fessor of integrative biology at theUniversity of Texas, Austin, and aprimary investigator on the study.
Using over 30 years’ worth ofdata collected from a tropical rain-forest in Panama, the team has un-
covered some keytraits of trees that,when integrated into
computer models related to cli-mate change, will improve themodels’ accuracy.With the team’simproved model, the scientists planto begin answering questions aboutwhat drives forest composition overtime and what factors affect car-bon storage. ■
— sciencedaily.com
Carbon Sinks
Become An AmbassadorThe world is in need of
human unity.We need topractise peace and unityin our homes, neigh-
bourhoods, communities and in theworld at large. It is not enough totell others to practise unity andpeace; we must live it ourselves ifwe want our words to be effective.Here are some methods that are ef-fective in making unity a reality:■ Clear our heart:The first step isto make sure that our heart andmind are clear of hatred and preju-dice for those who are different fromus. We must develop love in ourhearts for everyone. It is said that outof the abundance of our heart wespeak.
If we feel hatred towards any per-son or group, we cannot hide it forlong; it is bound to come out fromour lips or reflect on our face. Ouractions will speak even louder thanour words.Therefore, living humanunity begins with clearing our heartsof any animosity towards others.
When we clean the chambers ofour heart of ill will for others, thenGod comes to reside there. God islove. God is all-encompassing andembraces all creation as one family.■ Watch our words: We live hu-man unity by ensuring that ourwords express appreciation and tol-erance for others.
We need to watch our words lestwe injure any heart. Do our wordscause division or do they bring peo-ple together? Loving, caring wordsthat make people feel comfortablebring people together.
We need to become living ex-amples of sweet and loving speech.In whatever situation we find our-selves, we should become examplesof love, tolerance, and harmony.Over time, others will emulate ourexample.■ Live it through our actions:Every day we are faced with choic-es.Are we going to take action thattears people apart or take action that
brings peopletogether? In ourjobs, we oftenhave to work oncommittees ormake decisionson policy. Doour voices pro-mote policies
that show love and tolerance to-wards people, or do they perpetrateprejudice, discrimination, and big-otry?
At every opportunity, we shouldinspire the people with whom wework to make decisions and take ac-tions that promote peace and unity.■ Meditation and human unity:One of the most effective methodsI have come across to make humanunity a living reality in our ownhearts is through meditation. Spend-ing time daily in silent meditationhelps us commune with our trueSelf and the divine power that cre-ated us.
Those moments are filled withbliss, peace, and love.As we enter theinner sanctum of our hearts,we findthat there is Light within us.
That light is the Light of the
Creator. Realisation dawns on usthat the same light that is within usis in all human beings.We start torecognise that light within othersand the outer differences that sepa-rate us begin to dissolve.We see onelight expressed by many differentouter coverings, each beautiful in itsown way.
By sitting in meditation, we canincrease our own understanding ofunity.We will then radiate that ex-ample to others in our own sphereof life.■ Be an ambassador of humanunity: By becoming ambassadors ofhuman unity, we will be living hu-man unity and we can bring aboutworld peace.As we go about our day,let us take stock of where we standindividually and resolve to clear ourheart of hatred, filling it with thesweet fragrance of love.
If we have any differences withanyone, let us resolve them. If we areto become true ambassadors of hu-man unity it must reflect in our deal-ings with others. Let us become im-bued with the spirit of human uni-ty in our hearts so that we can spreadits noble message wherever we go. ■
Making human unity a reality in today’s world requires commitment and conviction from us, writes SANT RAJINDER SINGH
Arboreal GuruTrees are spiritual giants.They live
and die as an ideal spiritualist wouldwish to do. If you are looking for a
guru, stop. Find the time to regularlylie in the lap of nature and feed onsoul food from her bosom. Request atree to be your guru and then go andvisit it regularly. Look at how it livesits life and how you live yours. Sharewith it how your day went and findout how it spent its day.You will be
amazed at the transformation.
Straight LineScience and spirituality are seeking
the Truth. I am a student, a seeker inboth fields. In both spheres, the
important thing is to ask questions.Don’t take anything for granted. Go
beyond dogma and belief andchallenge your own perceptions andlook for answers. Knowledge and
wisdom are not obtained merely bygetting the answer to a particular
question but by the process ofseeking, and of asking questions.Then, answers fall in our lap.
If I said that there is nothing like a‘true straight line’ you might think
otherwise.A straight line is a conceptthat we are taught very early in lifeand we take it for granted.We don’t
question it. It is actually ahypothetical construct.
The universe is made up of spheresand arcs.Any line between two
points is a line between two points ofa sphere or arc and this, by
definition, can’t be straight.A straightline is a concept for our convenience.Concepts play a useful role in ourjourney in science and spirituality.We need to understand them as
concepts and not as absolute truths.The bottom line is that a straight
line is not straight after all.— Minesh Khashu,
United Kingdom
April 20: Pradosh VratApril 21: Masik Shivaratri
Lailat al Bara’ahApril 22: Ramzan begins
Earth Day,Vaishakha AmavasyaApril 23: Saint George’s Day, Ishti
April 24: Masik KarthigaiApril 25: Parashurama Jayanti
SustainableVedic Lifestyle
Conservation of and reverence for nature, together with healingpractices, were an intrinsic part of the Vedic way of life, writes
SWAMI SHANTATMANANDA, head, Ramakrishna Mission, Delhi
SUNDAY, APRIL 19, 2020 SPIRITUAL PROMOTIONAL FEATURE
Helping HandsIt was the first day of Spring, but it
didn’t feel like it.The novelcoronavirus was sweeping the globe
and everywhere there were feelings ofuncertainty, fear, loneliness and evendespair. My own family was stayingat home and as I looked out of mywindow, I wondered how long thiscrisis was going to last. It was thenthat I saw something that made myheart feel happy again. On the street
below my house there was an oldfriend of mine from high school whowas a teacher there now.With him
was my younger son’s formerteaching assistant from the high
school as well.They were deliveringschool lunches door-to-door to
hungry children who were stuck athome.Watching them made me
think of the saying:‘In bad times,always look for helpers.’ I have nodoubt this crisis will pass as all the
crises before it have. But let this time bring out the best in
you. Become a helper to all those in need and you will
be doing divine work today and in all the days to come.
— J J Mazzella, sunnyskyz.com
SOUL SOUP
FILE PHOTO: LOCAL RESIDENTS CLEANING R K BEACH IN VISAKHAPATNAM
TOI P
HO
TO/ N
KAN
AKA
ARU
ND
YUTI
DAS
SPECIES
THIS WEEK
LEARNING TREE
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BEE
TLE
BA
ILEY
HAGA
R TH
E HO
RRIB
LE
GARF
IELD
WIZ
ARD
OF ID
H O W T O P L A Y
Fill in the grid sothat every hori-zontal row,every verticalcolumn andevery 3x3 boxcontains thedigits 1-9,withoutrepeating thenumbers in thesame row,column orbox.You can’tchange the digits alreadygiven in the grid.Every puzzle has one solution.
Level: Medium
SUDOKU CHALLENGEENGINEERING | MANAGEMENT | MEDIA | LAW
Rules■ Connect adjacent dots with vertical or
horizontal lines, creating a single loop(Fig A).
■ Crossovers or branches are not allowed(As shown by dotted lines in Fig B).
■ Numbers in the puzzle indicate the num-ber of lines thatshould surroundit, while emptycells may be sur-rounded by anynumber of lines.
■ You can’t drawlines around ze-roes.
■ Each puzzle hasjust one uniquesolution.
How to begin:Example (Fig A) -Begin with the zeronext to 3. Since nolines can be drawnaround zero, markcrosses around it,as shown. Now there is a cross in one space around 3. So we know the threelines of 3 can only be drawn in the remaining three spaces. Next, these linescan only be extended in one direction each. Continue, using the same logic.Hints: Keep eliminating possibilities by marking crosses in spaces betweendots where a line isn’t possible, i.e., if you have already completed requiredlines or where a line extension may create a branch or cause a deadend (Fig B)
(Fig A) (Fig B)Not allowed
LOOP THE LOOP
SCRAMBLE
H O W T OP L A Y
Now arrange theletters in the circles to form theanswer to the riddle or to fill inthe missing wordas indicated
Rearrange theletters in thefour wordjumbles, oneletter to eachsquare/circle,to make fourordinarywords
Sure I’m for helping the ___. I’m going to be __ myself some day - Lillian Carter (7,..,3)
EEPSDY
SPELLATHONToday’s Ratings:
10-average 11-good 13-outstandingHow many words of four or more letters can you make from the letters shown in today’s puzzle? In making a word, a letter can beused as many times as it appears in the puzzle. Each word mustcontain the central letter. There should be at least one seven letterword. Plurals, foreign words and proper names are not allowed.British English Dictionary is used as reference.
A
L
EC
U
RQ
MINDBENDER
What has two banks but no money?
Level: MediumTIMES KAKURO
Note: A digit cannot ap-pear more than once inany particular digit com-bination. For instance inthe example, we cannothave the combination of8+4+8 for 20.
H O W T O P L A Y
The numbers in the coloured squares referto the sums of the digits that you must fillinto the empty spaces directly below or tothe right of the coloured square containingthe number.For instance, in the given exam-ple, the 2 boxes below 12 must contain 2digits that add upto 12,whereas for 20, the3 boxes placed horizontally next to it mustadd upto 20.No zeroes are used here,onlythe digits one through nine.
Example
2012
SOLUTIONS TO GAMES/PUZZLES TIMES SUDOKU LOOP THE LOOP TIMES KAKURO
SCRAMBLESPELLATHON
Words:Reuse,droll,gabled,speedyAnswer:Sure I'm for helping the elderly.I'm going
to be old myself some day - Lillian Carter
MINDBENDER
A river
acre,care,clear,clue,cruel,cure,curl,ecru,lace,
LACQUER,lucre,race,ulcer
SUEER
DRLLO
ABEGDL
AriesIt may seem as ifyou haven’t beenable to meet thegoals you set foryourself at the turnof the year,but don’tworry too much.The fact is you havebeen doing thegroundwork and
laying the foundations for future suc-cess — which won’t be long in com-ing. Don’t waste time on people whoare either too lazy to get things donefor themselves, or too disconnectedfrom reality to realise they are goingabout it the wrong way. There will always be stupid people — they arethe ones who make you look smart.
GeminiNegative thoughtshave a way of at-tracting negativeevents and the cur-rent cosmic climateindicates moststrongly that youcannot afford to beanything less thanpositive, both men-
tally and emotionally.Life is what youmake of it, so make it a masterpiece.An upheaval of some kind is likelyand the planets warn there is littleyou can do about it, so take it in yourstride and refuse to get rattled. Youhave dealt with far bigger issues than
this,so use your mind and you’ll comethrough okay.
CancerYou organise your lifein a way that’s bothclever and practical— a system createdand sustained by you.When well-meaningloved ones try to help,they only mess thingsup.Best to keep themout of your businessfor now.You may not
agree with what a friend is doing, butdon’t make it an issue. Only give advice if they ask for it — and chancesare they won’t.
LeoYou will work hardeven during the lock-down, and physicalactivities, too keepyou busy. A goodtime to shed extrafat, too. New plansand business ideaswill be made during
this phase. Your community is like afamily to you, and what they thinkmatters sometimes. But right now,you need expert advice that probablyno one in your family or communitycan provide. Widen your circle,perhaps on the social platform. Achance to make a professional or fi-nancial move is apparent. A discus-sion with someone you have workedwith in the past will lead to infor-mation about an interesting position.
VirgoDon’t worry toomuch if someoneyou have grownfond of no longerseems to havemuch time for you,because there areother friendshipsyou can develop.
Life is in a constant state of fluxand you should never cling too tightly to the past. You seem to bein one of those moods where youcan’t help but stir things up a bit.Fair enough, but don’t forget thatit works both ways. The more yourock the boat the more likely it isthat others will react to you in similar ways.
LibraChallenges are al-ways opportunitiesin disguise. If youkeep that thoughtin mind, you shouldbe in the rightframe of mind tomake the most ofevents that otherpeople try to avoid.
Run towards the fight, not awayfrom it. Consider what’s right andwhat’s wrong before you make achoice. Base any decision you makeon facts, not an emotional incident.Concentrate on how you will workduring the lockdown and be productive, not on personal matters.
ScorpioYou’ll learn plenty byobserving the peopleand the changes go-ing on around you.Digest everything be-fore you take a judg-ment call. It’s best tobe fully informedand leave absolutelyno room for mistakes. Choose
peace and love over force. A trackrecord will be vital when engaging ina joint venture. Trust in what youknow,not what someone tells you.Putin the work,do the research and avoidletting someone take advantage of you.
SagittariusSomeone has beentoying with youremotions and, ofcourse, you are nothappy about it. Youmay get the chanceto turn the tables onthem over the week-end or early nextweek but, in the
meantime, don’t let them know youare angry. It’s okay to be outspoken.Don’t be cowed into silence, but always think before you speak.
CapricornIf you don’t likesomething, changeit. Don’t waste timefixating on an emotional issue thatisn’t going tochange. Removeyourself from anysituation that istime-consumingand emotionally
debilitating. Do whatever works bestfor you. Change should only be madeif necessary. Your motives should befor your and others’ benefit. Play fair,and expect the same from those youencounter. High energy and enthusi-asm will lead to good results and better opportunities.
AquariusKeep moving.Challenge yourselfphysically. Find alternate ways touse your skills,and do your best tokeep the peace. Ane m o t i o n a lsituation will spinout of controlshould you let
someone taunt you into an argu-ment. Do your best to get along.Sharing burdens and responsibil-ities will help you reach your objective quicker and more effi-ciently, leaving more time to kickback with someone you love. Timespent nurturing a relationship willbring you closer together.
PiscesYou’re all stirredup inside. Puttingpen to paper helpsyou process theemotions. If youdon’t write it down,you won’t be ableto harness the power of thesecatalysing feelings.
Now that you have so much confi-dence in yourself, there is a danger that you could go too farand start something you won’t beable to finish, which in turn couldactually dent your self-belief.Never forget that you have limits,just like everyone else.
Aamir Khan
Ajay Devgn
R Madhavan
RanveerSingh
Saif Ali Khan
RajkummarRao
Ranbir Kapoor
Shah RukhKhan
RiteishDeshmukh
HrithikRoshan
AbhishekBachchan
TaurusIf you believe inyourself andhave faith inyour abilities,then there isnothing you cannot do. Con-centrate on whatyou can achieve,and don’t let
others’actions disrupt your plans.You shouldn’t feel like you have totake care of matters that don’t concern you. Let others fend forthemselves.A physical outlet willhelp ease the stress. Networkingand volunteering will lead to opportunities or a joint venture.
Arshad Warsi
ASTROSPEAK
TAURUS:VARUN DHAWAN(APRIL 24, 1987)
STAR BIRTHDAY
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M any of us are strugglingwith stress, anxiety andloneliness right now
and this can affect what and howwe eat. For some, it can lead toweight gain, and for others, it canresult in a poor appetite andweight loss. Here’s how you cancope:Make notes: Keep a diary andwrite down everything you eat andyour mood at the time to identifywhether you eat because you’rebored, lonely, sad or angry.Recognising your ‘eating triggers’will help you find non-food solutions as alternatives.Don’t let yourself get too hungry:Feeling really hungry willrisk you grabbing quick-fix foodto fill a gap. Like a chocolate biscuit rather than a wholegrainsandwich. Instead, plan your
meals. Set a time for breakfast,lunch,dinner and snacks.This willhelp structure your day and prevent constant cravings.Make comfort food: Enjoy classic comfort food such as stews,soup, cottage pie, cheese on toastor spaghetti. They can still be really nutritious and made healthier by adding vegetables.Poor appetite? Eat with others:If you live with others,enjoy meal-times together. If you’re on yourown, arrange an online social dinner with friends.Eat little and often:This may suityou better than three large mealseach day if you have a small appetite. And when you do eat,have nutrient-rich foods such asmeat, fish, chicken, eggs, milk,cheese or yogurt.
Daily Mirror
iStock
Feeling overwhelmed can leadto stress eating. Recognise your eating triggers to manage cravings during difficult times
Watch your cravings,plan your meals to beat lockdown stress
14HYDERABAD TIMES, THE TIMES OF INDIA
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There’s no such thing as
fun in the sun for pets.
With temperatures touching
almost 40 degrees C, it’s time
to remember a few things to
keep your dog or cat safe
during summer.
Keep your pet in cool, shady
areas. Do not keep them tied up
in balconies. If you are feeling hot,
your pets are feeling even worse
due to their thick coat.
Short-nosed and flat-faced dog
breeds (like Pugs, English
Bulldogs, French Bulldogs) are
more susceptible to heat stroke.
Fresh, cool water should always
be available. Keep water contain-
ers in several places in the house.
You can also add ice to the water
to keep it cool.
Walk your pets early morning
or evening, not during the day.
Avoid walking on very hot days.
This will save your pet from dehy-
dration, sunburn and heat stress.
Never ever leave your pet in the
car, even for two minutes. It takes
just a few minutes for an animal
to suffer an agonising death when
left in a hot car.
SYMPTOMS OF HEAT DISTRESS
Heavy panting Dry or
bright red gums Thick drool
Vomiting Diarrhoea
Wobbly legs.
Late evenings I walk onthe terrace. Pre-select-ed old Bollywood
songs play from my room. Itis a lovely time to reflect inthe stillness of the dark.
Sirius shines brightest, andI greet it with a grateful smile.After all, there is little we candepend on anymore; Coronahas changed all. Thankfully,the sun and moon still rise,and Sirius shines reassuring-ly every night.
Some years ago, my sonhad given star names to
stray dogs in the locality.There was the handsomeDeneb and his consort Sir-ius, who followed us on ourevening walks. I don’t seethem anymore. Sadly, theirown litter, once old enough,pushed them away fromtheir regular haunts. Unlikehumans, animals don’t carefor their elderly.
A steady drone from thesky distracts me and I lookup to marvel at the sleeklong body of a cargo plane.It is a rare enough sight. Mymind strays to childhood,when we would stop play towondrously observe a planein the sky.
A gate creaks, and I am ac-costed by another rare sight –a masked neighbour stepsout, eyes darting fearfully,shopping bag in hand. Atyp-ically, I want to call out to herfor a chat. She scampers awayamidst the dusty cars. Look-ing at the dhobi’s desertedstation, I wonder how hisfamily is managing.
A columnist, at The Times(UK), wrote of families ad-justing to tiny spaces and co-operating rather than gettingfrustrated. Isn’t that true? We
are learning to be kind andthoughtful. But we are alsolearning to take care of our-selves first, before others. Weare learning frugality and fo-cusing on finishing meals be-fore cooking more. I nibblerather than devour mychocolate or favourite cheese– and read my books slower.
I am learning to avoid theirritants that do not make abig difference, and focus onthe things that do. And mostimportant, I observe and ru-minate more than usual – ab-sorbing the changes and in-culcating the self-disciplinethis minuscule virus hasforced upon us.
The world waits and heals,as we reboot ourselves beforewe step back into an alteredlife. Soon. It should be a re-union worth savouring…
o-zone
It is a time for deepreflection and keenobservation. Lookaround you and takenote as the worldtransforms itself
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Summer care If you have queries related to managing pets
during the lockdown, for example, if you can take
your pet for a walk, if vetclinics are allowed to operate
etc., send your queries to [email protected]
We will seek answers fromrelevant authorities. Pleasekeep your questions brief.
Vinita Dawra Nangia
Let’s picture our last few weeks spentcooped up in the house – umm...planning meals, looking up recipes,
cooking ... REPEAT. The only reason tostep out was to stock up on morefood. See the leitmotif here? It isfood, or rather, food security. Be itan economic downturn, crop fail-ure, a cyber-attack or a virus break-out, the only ones whodon’t have to scramblefor food are those whogrow their own.
To cope with thepandemic, people arefarming in their bal-conies and signingup for hydroponicsand permaculturecourses online. Also,getting hands dirty inthe soil and seeing yourseeds reap results is al-
most like a quiet rebellion against con-stantly washing hands and scouring emp-ty food shelves in these dismal times.
The coronavirus outbreak is not thefirst time that concerns about food secu-rity have led to more kitchen gardens.During World War One, US PresidentWoodrow Wilson asked Americans toplant ‘Victory Gardens’ to prevent foodshortages. So, use this time to grow a Sur-vival Garden that can sustain you and
your family on the garden produce alone.
FOLLOW YOUR INSTINCTNew world system has made us all mereconsumers. What we need is to go backto our most basic instinct of foraging andgrowing food. “The pandemic has high-lighted the need to grow your own andbe a self-sustained primary producer,more than ever. While some may havejust a balcony and others a farm house,each one can grow their own food de-pending on time, effort and help avail-able. Just follow sustainable practices likecomposting, mulching and seed savingat home,” says Puneet Tyagi, co-owner ofa sustainable farm in Noida.
USE WHAT YOU HAVE“Survival food is something that growseasily and lasts longer. Small is big in ur-ban farming. Go for bags, boxes, buckets,containers. You can grow herbs on yourwindow sill and staples like potatoes andonions in bath buckets,” says Sharma.Use what you have – yoghurt cups, saladcontainers, folded up newspapers or any-thing else you have around as a pot. Nowis the time to be scrappy and resourcefulabout planting.
Self-sufficiency isessential in trying times.People are learning togrow food amid lockdown
MAKE IMMUNITY BALCONIESImmunity is the buzzword right now.
Consuming clean, chemical-free
produce and constantly working
with soil is the need of the
hour. Freshly-plucked produce
has more nutrition than store
bought food. “Your house
can provide small things
that can greatly work on
your immune system. We
need to relink immunity
with what we grow,
cook and eat at home.
We need to build
immunity balconies and
immunity kitchens,” says
Sanjeev Kumar Sharma, a
hotelier/conservationist
from Uttarakhand.
Build your survival garden
SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIAAPRIL 19, 2020
HYDERABAD
Unroutine’ may not be aword we are familiarwith, but it is how we
are living our lives these days.There’s uncertainty and unpre-dictability. You are home-bound, physically maintainingstipulated distance from yourloved ones, friends, col-leagues… can you really liveyour optimal life under thesecircumstances?
The short answer is yes.When all is gloomy, we mustgrab our small joys. That’s thefirst step to optimal living. Wemust also stimulate our creativ-ity to do whatever is necessaryto alleviate stress. Professor An-tarpreet Singh, digital learningexpert at ISB, says to live well wemust learn to unlearn. “We are
faced with an unprecedentedcrisis, the biggest challenge wehave ever faced in our lives.Coping with such uncertaintimes requires learning as wellas unlearning.”
WHAT IS UNLEARNING?Unlearning is nothing but anew form of learning – one wemust embrace right now.What it entails is: sheddinghabits, practices and process-es, which have become inte-gral part of our routine. “Tooptimise our lives, we need totap into our mind and findnew patterns of thinking, so-cialising, working and collab-orating. Our routines need tobe fine-tuned to suit a newway of living,” adds Singh.
How do we manage ourselveswhen the external factors arenot at all in our control? Lead-ership coach Professor MS Raosays over the years we have allset a specific work-home rou-tine for ourselves, forgettingthat life is topsy-turvy. “Life’s acircus actually, except that wehave cocooned ourselves intothe safety net of our routines;
and those routines have tochange now.” That’s where un-learning comes in.
The fact that life currently“sucks” is possibly the best rea-son to start the process of ‘un-routine’. “You have to be readyto take new, unfamiliar chal-lenges, try new things and seeka new way of living,” adds Rao.
Says actor and food entre-preneur Isha Koppikar, “Life is always changing. We most-ly suffer due to our over de-pendence on external factorsrather than looking inwards.Turn your life over to the Uni-verse and practise the art ofsurrender.”
Research indicates that thosewho accept changes in theirlives faster emerge as winners.
Says actor Tamannaah Bhatia,“Uncertain times are a test ofour resilience, will and charac-ter. They measure our mentaltoughness, our ability to growand accept non-conventionalways of doing things. We nolonger sweat the small stuff.Watch the negative self-talk andcriticism of others.”
Business coach GagandeepSiidhu advises us not to fall inthe pit of endless speculationabout the future and ruin ourpresent. He says, “Reinvent,reskill and rediscover yourself.Focus within... because our be-lief in ourselves growsstronger when we are strug-gling the most. The processtakes time, but the strugglestrengthens us.”
Get your crazyhat on, do things
for the sake ofenjoying them not toperfect at it
— Sahar Gharachorlou,energy healer
“
In uncertain times, can you live anoptimal life? Only if you imbibe a certainkind of skillset, say experts
Let’s learnto unlearn
Have you seen theHong Kong girlsinging Natalie Im-
bruglia’s famous song Torn todescribe her hands (dry, roughskin with all the hand-wash-ing)? Or the UK family recreat-ing One Day More from Les Mis-erables to mirror their currentsituation? Are you followingIndian content creators, orshared one-liners like...
I have been eating so much thatI am fattening the curve.
Every few days, try your jeanson just to make sure they fit. Py-jamas will have you believe all iswell in the kingdom.
I’m so excited – it’s time to take out the garbage. Whatshould I wear?
As we stare down at anextended lockdown, manyof us are finding a reasonto laugh. There aresketches on lockdown
life, lampooned lyrics, Zoomfails, TikToks and memes. Nev-er was the collective need tolighten up so glaring. The crisishas, in fact, spawned an almostindustrial output of humour.
Writer Tom McTague writesin The Atlantic that humourhelps us take back control andconnect – the two things wehave lost in our fight againstthe pandemic. Humour re-searcher Peter McGraw, direc-tor of the University of Col-orado Boulder’s Humor Re-search Lab, says that it is thedistraction you need.
LOCKDOWN HA-HAsEtiquette expert and clinicalpsychologist, Pria Warrick sayshumour is a great way to han-dle the anxiety ofthe current situa-tion. “But howmuch humour
helps, depends on your men-tal state before the lockdownstarted. So even as you con-sume content, you need toknow that you have to workon yourself constantly duringthis period,” she advises. Inthe current scenario, a joke isour comfort blanket.
McTague quotes British co-median David Baddiel: “Peo-ple want jokes. Partly becausejokes are a relief, and they takethe edge off danger; partly be-cause they are a way of pro-cessing the experience; andyes, partly because … this is amassive shared experience.”Actor and comedian NaveenPolishetty would agree. “As anentertainer, I feel the impor-tance of my profession all themore now. When people login to their phones, I want togive them something to watchthat lightens their mood andmakes them feel positive,” he says. His quarantine serieson Instagram has people comment that it helped them
cope better.
SMILE AND HEALHumour is current-ly a form of collec-tive therapy. But
people are also hurt-ing and reacting.
Recently, writerand influencerErin Foster post-
ed a pictureof her 2019
wedding with atongue-in-cheekcaption: “Notto brag butwhat a time tobe already mar-ried”. Her feed
exploded with comments onher insensitivity. She apolo-gised and took the post down.As people are isolated, they arelooking to social media forconnection. A reason why Tik-Tok is having a hero moment.Warrick says, “The etiquette ofsharing humour has now shift-ed to the social media, wherethe audience has become larg-er. Always keep that in mindwhile cracking a joke.” A goodlaugh is a great stressbuster –make it count.
Humour in the formof videos, sketches,memes andpodcasts hasexploded in thetime of corona, butis laughter indeedthe best medicine?
JOKES ARE GREATBUT BE SENSITIVE● Don’t joke about death –
obviously. If you go too
dark, you can actually add
to the paranoia. Avoid
doomsday jokes. After all,
you are living the reality
● Stay away from political
and religious jokes. What
else is not good to joke
about? The economy, class
divide, child abuse and
domestic violence
● Share a joke on how it’s
affecting everyone’s life:
lockdown, cooking, eating
too much, party life are all
on board
● You don’t have to always
share or joke about corona.
There is some life outside
of the pandemic too,
explore that
● If you are a content cre-
ator, you don’t have to
churn out stuff every day
● Don’t show your privilege
or punch down. Recently,
someone on Instagram joked
about that it’s now that she
finally found out how her
maid was not doing good
work. Someone who works
minimum wages and is more
vulnerable in this situation
shouldn’t be your target
● Don’t be pessimistic.
Give sarcastic one-liners a
rest for now
When the laughs go viral
Genuine
content about
lockdown life cre-
ated by amate
urs is doing a lot
better and
going viral
wellness
PIC
: G
ET
TY
IM
AG
ES
PIC: ISTOCK
PIC
: IS
TO
CK
A walk in the time of Corona
PIC
: IS
TO
CK
THE OPTIMAL MANIFESTOTake one day at a time and give your best in that day
Don’t let yourself be overwhelmed with the thought of
what might happen tomorrow, and ruin the present today
Don’t let others opinions stop you
Pursue little things that give you joy
Design a way around your specific obstacles
– Sanjeet Ray, business coach
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'N
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T ollywood filmmaker SS Rajamouli announced on Saturday that he wouldbe teaming up with superstar Mahesh
Babu for the first time in his career, after hewraps up shoot for his upcoming film RRR. Thefilm will be bankrolled by KL Narayana and islikely to go on floors in 2022. Speaking to a TVchannel on Saturday, Rajamouli said that a filmwith Mahesh was always in the pipeline. “Thetwo of us wanted to team up for a long time andwe’ve always been saying that we will make afilm together as soon as our current commit-ments are done. We will start the film as soon asRRR is done,” Rajamouli said.
According to sources, the film will be madeon a large scale and will mostlikely release in multiple lan-guages. “Naturally when twoicons like Rajamouli andMahesh Babu come together fora film, we want it to be special.So it will be made on a lavishbudget. We’re looking to releaseit in all south Indian lan-guages,” reveals a source fromthe film’s unit.
“We are in a crisis situationso the priority is for all of us tobe safe and hope this pandemicis over soon. We don’t knowwhen the film will commence,but it will be a special one forsure,” the source adds.
–TNN
In the past as well, I’vespent periods of my lifein a lockdown: Sanjay
In the past as well, I’vespent periods of my lifein a lockdown: Sanjay
In the past as well, I’vespent periods of my lifein a lockdown: Sanjay
In the past as well, I’vespent periods of my lifein a lockdown: Sanjay
In the past as well, I’vespent periods of my lifein a lockdown: Sanjay
In the past as well, I’vespent periods of my lifein a lockdown: Sanjay
S anjay Dutt is missing his family a lot during the lockdown.The actor is in Mumbai,while wife Maanay-ata and children Iqra and Shahraan are stuck in Dubai.
He talks to us about how he is longing to meet them,and howthe Covid-19 pandemic has taught him about the fragility oflife. Excerpts...As an actor, you’re used to always being on the go andtravelling around. What does being isolated and totallyhomebound feel like?Acting is a physically and mentally demanding job. Thisisolation has given me time to recharge my batteries, restand prepare for my next set of roles. It takes time and energy to prepare for a role, especially given the complexcharacters that I enjoy play-ing. I’m also spend-ing time connectingwith my family vir-tually. When the lock-down was an-nounced, Maanayataand my children werealready in Dubai. Inthe past, I’ve spent pe-riods of my life in alockdown. Back thenand even now, the onethought that stays withme is how much I feelfor my family. For me,they are everything.Thanks to technology, Ican see and talk to themmultiple times in a day,yet I miss them terribly.These times teach you about the fragility oflife, and to truly value and enjoy every moment you get with your loved ones.These challenging times have taught us somelessons. Is there any change you’d like tobring to your life in the phase post the coronavirus? I wouldn’t like any changes, but yes, I’d like allof us to be under one roof. I am content withthe routine in my life. I’m looking forward tothe day this lockdown ends, and I can see myfamily at home. Although I have them virtual-ly with me,there is a difference.As a father andhusband, I am worried about their safety, eventhough I know that they are fine.
THANKS TO TECHNOLOGY, I CAN SEEAND TALK TO MY FAMILY MULTIPLETIMES IN A DAY... THESE TIMES TEACHYOU ABOUT THE FRAGILITY OF LIFE, ANDTO VALUE AND ENJOY EVERY MOMENT
One lesson we’ve learnt during this phase isthe amount of things we can do when we havethe luxury of time, because in our daily life,time is what we are racing against...Time is such a luxury, which I realise now,after 40 years of working and leading an event-ful life. That’s why it’s precious to me. I keepmy life simple by focusing on my family andwork. I love the multiple chats I have withMaanayata and my children. My kids keepme amused with their non-stop chatter andmasti, even on video calls. I work out,practise my lines for my forthcoming shootsand study the characters I am expected to playin some of my films. I try to keep my days full,busy and positive.
Sanjay Dutt is currently in Mumbai, away from his wifeMaanayata and kids Iqra and Shahraan, who are in Dubai
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W e had told you quitesome time back aboutBollywood and cricket
frat’s hottest new couple —Athiya Shetty and KL Rahul.The two, who started out as goodfriends, began dating a while lat-er, but neither has spoken openlyabout their relationship, thoughthey haven’t denied it either.Now, in the world of social mediawhere a picture is worth a thou-sand words, saying it out aloudin words and prose is not theonly way to go, right? WhileRahul was the first to go ‘insta of-ficial’ by posting a fun picturewith his lady love, his girl has finally made it public, too, in herown special way. On the occasionof her cricketer beau’s birthdayon Saturday, Athiya posted alovely throwback candid pictureof the two on social media. Shecaptioned it as, ‘Happy birthday,my person’ (with a heart emoji).A source close to the two,revealed, “This is the first timethat they will be celebrating hisbirthday as a couple, though notphysically with each other.Under normal circumstances (ifthe lockdown wasn’t implemented), the IPLwould have been going on. So, unless Athiyatravelled to be with him while he was touringacross India for the matches, they would havestill been apart. Also, she is an extremely pri-vate person, so it is unlikely that she would ac-company him. She is not the kind to go to the
stadium and watch him play. At least, not atthe moment. This. of course, could change inthe near future. Love changes everything.”
Given the ongoing lockdown, Rahul, whostays in Bengaluru and Athiya, who is basedin Mumbai, celebrated the day over long video chats and we are sure, unending phoneconversations.
Athiya Shetty to KL Rahul:Happy birthday, my person
My next film after RRR will bewith Mahesh Babu: Rajamouli
MAHESH AND I HAVE WANTED TO DO A FILM TOGETHER FOR A LONG
TIME. WE WILL START THE FILM ONCESHOOTING FOR RRR IS DONE –SS Rajamouli
TAYLOR SWIFT CALLSOFF SHOWS FOR 2020
PINK FLOYD STREAMSCONCERTS FOR FREEPINK FLOYD has decided to stream full-length concerts for free every Friday startingApril 17 on YouTube to help fans stay indoorsduring the coronavirus lockdown. The firstgig saw the group playing their 1973 recordDark Side Of The Moon in full, followed byWish You Were Here and Comfortably Numb.
Agencies
TAYLOR SWIFT has can-celled all her appearancesfor the rest of the yearbecause of COVID-19. “I’m sosad I won’t be able to see youguys in concert this year, but Iknow this is the right deci-sion... I’ll see you on stage assoon as I can but right now
what’s important iscommitting to thisquarantine,” she wroteon social media.
Agencies
BUZZSTOPBUZZSTOP
While Athiya Shetty is in Mumbai, KL Rahul is inBengaluru and the two celebrated the day overlong video chats
@athiyashetty
Mahesh Babu will team up with Rajamouli(inset) for the first time in his career
CCI NG 3.7 Product: TOIHyderabadBS PubDate: 19-04-2020 Zone: Hyderabad Edition: 1 Page: HTPG16 User: venkata.nageswararao Time: 04-18-2020 21:57 Color: CMYK
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