The Golden Sparrow on Saturday 29/11/2014

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PUNE, NOVEMBER 29, 2014 | www.thegoldensparrow.com

• T H E P E O P LE ’ S PA P E R •

TGS LIFE

Finding solace & comfort under the yoga umbrella

STARTUP CITY

SPORTS

‘Start-up club’ gets going in Mundhwa P7

It’s Pune Marathas again P 16

Helmet action yields results, keep it up!

Pune Un ve s y Chowk 2 30P m Novembe 2

More people are wearing helmets in the city due to a firm stand taken by the Pune Police

WHAT NEXT? We wan o educe acc den and a a e on he oad Schoo uden w be a ned and affic d c p ne w be ncu ca ed among hem —Sa ang Awad DCP T affic

SALES GO UP SIGNIFICANTLY

T affic po ce ak ng ac on aga ns he me

gitesh.shelke@goldensparrow.com AN RUDDHA RAJANDEKAR

What must parents do to protect children from sexual abuse

ess wo whee e

In view of the police action against two-wheeler riders not using helmets, sales of helmets have gone up significantly in the city. Shops selling helmets are reporting an increase of 25-30 per cent on weekdays and up to 50 per cent on the weekends.

F C Road’s Deo Sports partners Deepak and Sanjiv Sachdev said that the sale of helmets is booming these days. “People are buying helmets costing from Rs 600 to Rs 1100,” Deepak said. Women prefer half helmets, while men go in for full face helmets.

They sells 20 helmets on average on week-

de s on T ak Road

PMC asked to restore Chandan Nagar subway ekly

@TGSWe

BY ASHOK BHAT @ashok_bhat Taking cognisance of Pune Municipal Corporation’s (PMC) poor traffic planning and consequently poor utility of the Chandan Nagar subway on Ahmednagar Road, Standing committee chairman Bapusaheb Karne guruji has directed PMC’s Additional city engineer (Projects) Srinivas Bonala to take corrective measures.

Karne guruji who has been representing Ahmegnagar Road for

the last 20 years has written to Bonala calling for installation of railings and barricades to prevent pedestrians from crossing the road in mid-traffic and to compel them Bapusaheb Ka ne to use the subway.

A copy of his letter has been sent to the Nagar Road ward officer to ensure that the work is

Recent cases of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) in Pune have once again highlighted the need for greater protection for our children. Pune Police have reported 171 cases of CSA between January and October, 2014, a 35 per cent increase over last year.

The victims were mostly children in the 8-14 age group, and the suspects ranged from school teachers to autorickshaw and van drivers. See p 8 & 9

completed in two weeks.

He said following Ahmednagar road widening it was necessary for people to use the subway. However, the poor utilisation was due to the bad planning and implementation of the PMC. “For safety padesterine they should make use of subway. I have given letter to Additional city engineer of project to fit the barricades along the entry of subway on either side of the road, so that padesterine won’t come directly on road PUNE,

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PUNE’S FIRST WEEKLY NEWSPAPER

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CITY

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SPORTS Breaking the jinx P 15

Exploring higher reaches of Yoga was an obsession with him P3

CITY

RAHUL RAUT

a protective railing around it. If we

@TGSWeekly

(TGS),

| PAGES:

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AUGUST

30, 2014

PEOPLE PUNE’SA PURPOSE WITH Parkinson’s Fighting with dance P2

SPORTS

ANIRUDDHA RAJANDEKAR

Barnalee Handique meets individuals who have been working to prep the horses for the upcoming season P10-11

Pune's

Pedal Pushers

NAGPUR

monument

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and other

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BY ASHISH PHADNIS @phadnis.ashish

the Asian Games to be held at Inceon, South Korea from September 29.

“It is a moment for celebration when six members

of any sports club represent the country in various disciplines.

(From L) Natasha Palha, Ankita Raina and Prarthana Thombare

world

ALASKA

SHELKE

BY GITESH @gitesh_shelke as its Asif ShaikhMandal Tarun 28-years-old

USA

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winter. for the runs a to prepare students- mandal also neighbourhood The for the says Shaikh, can small library and children, of money just residents that a lot on explaining if spent prudentlyand other systems be saved sound

the decorations

for Ganeshotsav

are Trust preparing and they in Mandal Tarun and Christians of unity Shivram of Shri Muslims about the spirit all religions (right) his youth steadfast and respect for Khan. and support Fernandes he says said money Sheldon the festivities.mandal hospitals. hail nation, childhood, diversity (left) and “We collect in the nes the The members orphans Asif Shaikh .com vargani fellow that defi patients erent castes, city,” also support poor organisation collects n t a r y from diff in the the social u Our membersorphanages shelke.gitesh@goldensparrow ( v o l Raza and runs a from Faizane mandal religion.

Mitra Mandalis prominent in different include contribution) other creed and Chakra fixed December Eid, Camp, called Anzuman of this group Khan said. celebrate in a case the neighbourhood such as Day The Ashok and the this Market, on Thursday not spend members and occasions jubilee Shivaji and of hearing This members we A court as but does Republic Gandhi on decorations next date close to “Instead, days its golden of Muslims festivals Day and Rahul chief Sonia 9 as the it entirely procession. for 10 celebratinghas a number Khan, one of Congress vice president of Independence the poor charitable against fervor. immersion year and and party over acquisition said Faiyaz meals to other with equal her son provide this its members, undertake and others newspaper.

Vanal, Gandhi Gomati and also Shaikh said.

Herald distribution the activists. by Raghuvir Magistrate after it the National activities,” includes the other such Headed and Tata Motors. the hearing Court This Metropolitan jackets especially deferred out India’s 12 companies Delhi High Manocha as of blankets,to the poor, that the summons just edging China with same number Rahul Indian was apprised a trial court’s clothing India trails 50 list, the Gandhi, on hold 3.

A dozen Fab Sonia has put Forbes Asia’s on the against till September the country’s issued issued WASHINGTON: this year’s best big bank, last year.

Bank, and others court had on a gure in region’s sector trial Gandhi firms fi 50 list of the HDFC year, private leaders with HDFC 26, the than the Pune the eighthon the On June to the Congress Fabulous second-largest list for Subramanian traded companies informed charge of more times on the in the summons by BJP leader publicly the list this appears times of any company “Mr Gadkarihe is taking centre,” “cheating” compiling that complaint Bank making at the companies the most Forbes began publisher. company. alleging BJP leadersMetro project paper’s three the Union Swamy any other boasts the most from of the list since the last the Pune this regard,in Delhi of China 2005. companies acquisition it has for to 16, down said. In roster in list, as fell notable Bidkar called a meetingvarious fields Technologies, year on the Other time, HCL the number 23 the BHAT minister experts from include list for the fifth toddler ASHOK years. But last year and list published ve India the the Industries, about fi the project. expels post to the @ashok_bhat from 20 to meet this to which makes the third according of Forbes Asia.

School Pharmaceutical a FB related to planning list for before, made assembly edition and Sun on the “We are that with regards road over mom’s forthcoming in the web tech companies the most minister said, adding which appears central of the time. also rejoins Central China’s with Tencent In view in Maharashtra, Gadkari has was expelled forthcoming soon,” Bidkar consecutive & Mahindra his cap of $155.6 in on the toddler project a market of runner-up US after elections minister Nitin attention to strong showing, Mahindra two-year absence. IANS is expectedkeen having in the A four-year-old against an announcementpolls that In after a school transport personal valuable, BJP is project. the list frustration Services. post. giving nearly twice from his and the project to a state assembly begun billion, vent her Pune Metro Congressin terms or two Anil Facebook evMetro Tata Consultancy mother Code a week biggest in a city MP the the ruling is it that the proposed India’s billion, the Pune is the on the Model said. new counter in the forthcoming the school read: “Why to push of $38.7 newly elected Lenovo a bid to out its post stage before force,” he revenue is something my the BJP’s to closely follow-up Shirole Habat’s decisive was is chalking comes into project. on the day there school? Are NCP government of annual Shirole, the BJP maximum advantage people Will’s ery single of Conduct the on p 10 himself polls, or are about mass transportation steps on to gain Continued I dislike really too high clarifications on updating field really critical strategy focused and seeking by the standards the education morning, by announcing in as proposed project The next meet project. to this newspaper, working project Metro ignorant.” asking her to Municipal government. off on the just that a call Speaking in the Pune dropped Bidkar Congress-NCP Acadshe received when she for BJP’s leader (PMC), Ganesh Christian Florpriorities the principalSonshine in the top Corporation at school, one of her son decided religious said that

case: Herald hearing National defers Court

WASHINGTON: The US has expressed concern over the reported creation of a new Al Qaeda wing in the Indian subcontinent, but said it did not regard it as an indication of any new capabilities by the terror group.

The US had not been ‘able to verify those reports yet’, State Department spokesperson Marie Harf told reporters on Thursday.

“But ‘we obviously are concerned about any recruitment or efforts by terrorists or violent extremist groups anywhere in the world’,” she said.

US, she said had ‘remained committed to dismantling Al Qaeda anywhere that it poses a threat to the United States, make sure it doesn’t again pose a threat to the United States, particularly in that region’.

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri announced the creation of a South Asian branch of his outfit to ‘raise the flag of jihad’ in the Indian subcontinent in a 55-minute video posted online Wednesday.

IANS

And our members have made it to the prestigious Asian Games. We feel proud about it,” said Vijay Bhave, the president of the gymkhana.

PYC’s three tennis players - Ankita Raina, Prarthana Thombare and Natasha Palha are part of Indian women’s team, while Shireen Limaye has been selected for the women’s basketball team. Hemant Bendrey is the coach of the women’s tennis team, while Sheetal Iyer will be the chief referee of the tennis tournament.

Continued on p 11

Pandurang Balkawade said that in the late 1800s the railway link between Pune and Thane was the primary connectivity between Pune and Bombay. “There was no road connectivity between Pune and Bombay when the Zero Stone was installed. Kolhapur is also missing from the stone as it is located off the highway,” he said.

Schools, voluntary organisations, Ganesh Mandals and even some government bodies are helping strengthen the eco-friendly Ganeshotsav movement in the city (Special report on P 6)

editor_tgs@goldensparrow.com

Twelve-year-old Oorja Joshi, a student of Abhinav English Medium School, painting the clay Ganesh idol made by her

With the an inspiringit decorations, on Shri Shivram is truly Modi as head, the its activities, to a in such expenses.

MG Road space Narendra part of range Trust on communal harmony, As a out some minister a series of tweets for the with a friends Prime has rented rent is used icon of for Ganeshotsav year. put out as his mandal every and the talk to Thursday and said that “a prepares him to activities group as tea vendor celebrations. n e t e e n had Japanese had askeddirectly, he of charitable Shaikh Ni their youth Ganeshotsav JaSheldon, from Japan of Japan mandal”, Sheldon Describing to visit years-old 3. student, scheduled the people secretary BBA truly cosmopolitan Modi is and a to September mandal’s others he was done so. August 30 and the spoke of he said helping something pan from in Japanese, visit that will Fernandes for doing the Ganeshotsav In a tweet about between what mean constructivebrings lot tweet very “excited” the relationship celebrations year. society to everyone In another every strengthen counterand to them countries. the of joy Japanese in deeply the two First to his said he involved a t i o n s . the trust addressed Abe, Modi br foremost, everyone cele with this part ShinzoAbe’s leadership. involves locality in since Associated respected group from the

12 Indian

firms among50

Fabulous city BJP Forbes Asia’s from Delhi, project Metro With support push Pune keen to

private the school emy, a her shock, ida. To her son. to expel

As Nagpur Metro races ahead,

Irom Sharmila again arrested in Manipur Activist Irom Sharmila Chanu, who is on an indefinite fast in Manipur for nearly 14 years demanding repeal of a law giving sweeping powers to the armed forces to tackle terrorism, was again arrested on Friday, two days after she was released following a court order. The police arrived at the site of her protest in the morning and arrested her despite resistance from Sharmila, her mother and a few other supporters.

Sharmila has been on an indefinite hunger strike since November 4, 2000, demanding repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) after the killing of 10 people allegedly by the paramilitary Assam Rifles, at Malom near the Imphal airport on November 2 in 2000.

IANS

Pune awaits SPV

BY ASHOK BHAT @ashok_bhat

Even as the Pune Metro project is now set to be cleared next week by the Centre, the much needed mass transportation project is likely to face delays due to the absence of a special purpose vehicle (SPV) like the erstwhile PMRDA (Pune Metropolitan Regional Development Authority) which could have spearheaded the project.

According to former PMRDA member Ujjwal Keskar, the Nagpur Metro project is expected to achieve faster progress than the Pune

project as Nagpur already has the Nagpur Improvement Trust (NIT) which has undertaken to implement the Metro rail project.

Union urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu told reporters in Nagpur on Wednesday that the proposal for the Pune Metro was received from the Maharashtra government on Tuesday and would be cleared within four days.

While the Modi government has given rapid clearances to the Pune and Nagpur projects with an eye on the forthcoming assembly polls, the Pune project, in the absence of a SPV is unlikely to

gather the speed that is needed.

The state government will primarily have to take the lead in deciding to form an SPV at the earliest. The cost of the project will be borne by the central and state governments to the extent of 20% each, by the Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal corporations (5% each) and an external loan of 50%.

The Congress is blaming the BJP for sidelining Pune and giving a favourable treatment to the Nagpur project. Naidu said the delay was from the Cong-NCP government in Maharashtra. enews.mediasurvices@gmail.com

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WASHINGTON: A team of US engineers has developed a method that allows them to successfully hack into apps, including Gmail, up to 92

per cent of the time.

They have identified a weakness believed to exist in Android, Windows and iOS mobile operating systems that could be used to obtain personal information from unsuspecting users.

Researchers tested the method and found it was successful between 82 per cent and 92 per cent of the time on six of the seven popular apps they tested.

Among the apps they easily hacked were Gmail, CHASE Bank and H&R Block. Amazon, with a 48 per cent success rate, was the only app they tested that was difficult to penetrate.

Once a user downloads a bunch

of apps to his or her smartphone they are all running on the same shared infrastructure, or operating system.

“The assumption has always been that apps cannot interfere with each other easily. We show that assumption is not correct and one app can in fact significantly impact another and result in harmful consequences for the user,” explained Zhiyun Qian, an assistant professor at University of California’s Riverside Bourns College of Engineering.

The attack works by getting a user to download a seemingly benign, but actually malicious app, such as one for background wallpaper on a phone.

Once that app is installed,

Police chief wants force to be tech-savvy to control crime P3

residents Dr Tejas and Dr Ashwini Joshi have been lovingly worshipping A WORLD CLASS EVENT the Ganesh idol made by their 12-yearold daughter with her own hands. A student of the 7th standard at the Abhinav English Medium School, she was inspired after attending an idol making workshop at Art Yoga Foundation. This was where she learnt about the harm caused to the environment by the Plaster of Paris (PoP) Ganesh idols and toxic colours and the need to switch to clay, natural colours and simple, bio-degradable decorations.

“She told us that rather than purchasing the idol from the market, it would be nice if we installed her ecofriendly idol. We liked her suggestion and for the last three years have not purchased idols from the market,” her father, Dr Joshi said. “Although the idol does not look as attractive as the ones made in the market, it is very special for us as it has been made by our daughter,” he said.

“Every year we hold an idol making workshop for kids and conduct a meeting parents Seewith special report to on urge P13 them to install the idols made by their children,” said Neeta Alate, a teacher from Bibwewadi. archana.dahiwal@goldensparrow.com

SPORTS

COMMENT & ANALYSIS

Serena advances to third round of Wimbledon P 15

12 things to expect from Arun Jaitley’s July 10 budget P 10

DESERVES WORLD CLASS SUPPORT

Sparrows on the return: ecologist

Famous city environmentalist Dr Erach Bharucha says that people have spotted the return of the bird in certain pockets of Pune. A survey could throw greater light on this ANJALI SHETTY

Pune’s most famous environmentalist Dr Erach Bharucha has some good news for us.

Director of the Bharati Vidyapeeth Institute of Environmental Education and Research, Dr Bharucha told The Golden Sparrow on Saturday in an exclusive interview that many people in the city have spotted the return of sparrows in certain pockets of the city.

“What we now need to do is, conduct a survey and find out why these small birds have returned. This will help us find the reason for their disappearance,” said Dr Bharucha.

Asked about the conspicuous disappearance of the sparrows from the city, he said, “Honestly, the reason is still to be found out and no one

However, efforts are on to restore their presence in the city. “Experts and bird lovers have put up nests and boxes to increase breeding in small birds. We should continue doing so and it may help getting them back to the numbers we had. Today they are in negligible numbers,” he said.

Contd on p 10

PUNE, OCTOBER 11, 2014 www.goldensparrow.com

find out why these small birds returned.

This will help us find the reason for their disappearance.”

The eminent environmentalist said that lack of old-style tiled roofs and the unacceptable levels of pesticides in grains are possible reasons for their disappearance.

National Herald case

PUNE, AUGUST 2, 2014

Summons to Rahul, Sonia weakens Cong further

BY SANJAY SINGH

Metropolitan magistrate Gomati Manocha’s summons to Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi — for them to be present in court on August 7 to defend themselves against charges of “cheating” and “misappropriation of property” in dubious takeover of the National Herald group — has been shocking to the Congress.

It has come at a time when a humiliating defeat in the parliamentary elections indicated that Congress’s first family was no longer revered by the people and its supposed charisma had completely diminished. Incidentally, they have to defend a land grab case since another member of the family, Robert Vadra, has been accused for his lust for land.

In the National Herald case too, petitioner Subramanian Swamy has

accused Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, and also some other confidantes of the Nehru-Gandhi family of taking over the company through fraudulent means to make a real estate acquisition worth over Rs 2000 crore. The publishing company for National Herald has huge assets in New Delhi, Lucknow, Panchkula, Indore and Mumbai.

The magistrate’s observations while issuing summons after examining Swamy’s petition for about a year is significant. “Complainant has established a prima facie case against the accused under Section 403 (dishonest misappropriation of property, 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) read

with Section 120B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC... Hence, let the accused Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Moti Lal Vohra, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda be summoned for August 7, 2014. Let the Young Indian be summoned through it’s authorised representative for the same date,” said the magistrate.

Swamy has now written to finance minister Arun Jaitley seeking a probe into the National Herald case under the Income Tax Act. There has been no official response from the Finance minister’s office. But BJP sources said that the Finance Ministry will examine all angles as listed in Swamy’s letter. The matter could also be referred to company affairs to look into the technical-legal aspects of the said take over by Young Indian incorporated in November 2010, in which Rahul and Sonia together own 76 per cent shares.

Contd on p 10

Amit Shah likely to become BJP president soon?

researchers were able to exploit a newly discovered public side channel - the shared memory statistics of a process, which can be accessed without any privileges.

Shared memory is a common operating system feature to efficiently allow processes share data.

Augmented with a few other side channels, the team showed that it was possible to fairly accurately track in real time which activity a victim app is in.

“This method will work on other operating systems because they share a key feature researchers exploited in the Android system,” Qian noted.

NEW DELHI, June 26 (IANS): Amit Shah, a close aide of prime minister Narendra Modi, may be named the next BJP president soon, a party leader said. Shah, who has been credited with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s impressive performance in the Lok Sabha polls in

Complementary with this issue

IANS

Uttar Pradesh, will be stepping into the shoes of party leaders like Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi.

Since Rajnath Singh took over as home minister, the party has to appoint a new president. However, even a month after the council of ministers took charge, the BJP has not announced its new president.

“The government was just formed and there was a lot of work to do... so the selection of the party president was out for a while,” said a party leader.

With assembly elections due in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand, the party leader said Shah has emerged as the front-runner vis-a-vis colleagues such as JP Nadda and Om Prakash Mathur.

Shah played a key role in the party’s landslide victory in the Lok Sabha election in Uttar Pradesh where it won 71 of the 80 seats.

Known to be a sharp political strategist, the former Gujarat home minister remains Modi’s most trusted political aide and master strategist.

Shah, who has a plastics and printing business, met Modi in the late 1980s. Currently BJP’s national general secretary, it was earlier said that Shah may contest from the Vadodara Lok Sabha constituency. He was accused of involvement in the killing of college student Ishrat Jahan and others in an allegedly staged shootout in Ahmedabad, Gujarat in 2004.

However, he got a clean chit in the case.

Indo-Asian News Service

www.goldensparrow.com

You have pride in how you take care of your family.

—Julia Roberts

Close on the heels of the party’s humiliating defeat in the parliamentary elections, this development has come as a shock to Congressmen

FOR GOD'S OD D'S SS SA SAKE AKE CALL US BEFORE NALISE A Researchers have 92 per cent YOU FINALISE A HOLIDA DAY DA AYsuccess in hacking into Gmail KERALA HOLIDAY THIS D

For the first time in the city, six regulars from a club will represent India at an international event

PYC Hindu Gymkhana has taken centrestage. After years of nurturing

of the

Genero

tweets PM Modi in Japanese

BY ARCHANA DAHIWAL @ArchanaDahiwal

Asked about this, city historian

PMC employees cleaned up the stone and its surrounding area even as Dhawale said that a contractor has been assigned for the beautification of the spot. these mandals y define “After thoroughly TGS issue on 30th Aug ‘14 nal harmon cleaning the stone, we will install sity & commu in by the proudly country. survey stands of the Stone famous the centre most in denoting oldest and is located The newspaper Aureum milestones when this Stone on of such the Milliarium the Roman Zero of to On Wednesday, of Pune’s General Post Rome, review the Milestone”) roads lead to took a outside (“Golden The maxim “all was pathetic have originated the footpath the sight Empire. believed to is Office (GPO), over it, cities Rome” monument. least. lying paint spilled say the of prominent from this own “zero With whitesweeper’s broom A tea A number have their including a around. it, world there wasand rubbish all his cart next proud of Berlin, in the it with and are Tokyo, next to stones” DC, was stationed fi rst vendor Washington publicjournalist Aires... of Pune and to the stone. when this yet valuable the Buenos a such as In 2006, this small, The citizens Pune there was on organisationsINTACH, reported Pune’s heritage, on the stone, spirited Janwani, and the National piece of seller sittingstool. a few, MCCIA’s Centre to name special watermelona convenient Cities, International a very as for Clean the Pune Municipal using it Zero Stone is Society do what es the geographic The lobby with Cell to from need to as it signifi the point Heritage milestoneof a city and established Corporation’s on Saturday location distances are As such, Sparrow to such an is needed. and cities.fenced and where The Golden support towns its fullest with us at: of this between to be restored, pledges children can go in touch w.com it ought so that the effort. Get ed or and tourists taking beautifi was citizens editor_tgs@goldensparro city, other time when Pune by bit. www.goldensparrow.com bit the @TGSWeekly back to the British,of such special Tweet us: in the shape underare just 80 installed There that were RAHUL

Stone

Signpost

Sweating it out at PYC Gymkhana leads six to Asian Games

Many in the city are rediscovering and promoting sportspersons, the club a has achieved a rare feat. the thrills of bicycling. TGS takes For the first time, six members peek at the riders and the machines of PYC will represent India at

Pune’s

city’s heritage part of the this valuable ed and beautifi significance, for a Given its restored, fenced markings Zero be India’s as special ought to British. country Nagpur,

milestones

The Zero

US concerned over Al Qaeda in South Asia

14 042/quiksel.com

The bes pe o m ng cade s o he p em e Na ona De ence Academy Khadakwas a we e e c a ed w h oph es du ng he convoca on ce emony on F day Cade Sach n Aga wa (ex eme gh ) om Bache o s o A s s eam was dec a ed as bes cade wh e A p Sha ma (cen e) om BSc s eam and T Sangwan om BSc (Compu e s) we e unne s up A o a 340 cade s we e con e ed w h g adua e deg ees om he 27 h cou se Gove no o U a P adesh Ram Na k was he ch e gues a he convoca on ce emony

PHOTOGRAPHY: ANIRUDDHA RAJANDEKAR ACCESSORY COURTESY: LIFE CYCLE MALL, TILAK ROAD

The Men &Women

Help restore Zero Stone

WIKI COMMONS

Awareness is the first step towards protecting yourself and your family members against such crimes.

See Spotlight on Pg7

WIKI COMMONS

School and college-going girls in rural and urban areas across India are unwittingly falling prey to crimes of passion driven by the camera in smartphones.

STONE’

VAIDYA ABHAY @vaidya_abhay

WIKI COMMONS

CELLPHONE

‘ZERO

WIKI COMMONS

It’s never too late — never too late to start over, never too late to be happy.

— Jane Fonda

OF PUNE’S

WIKI COMMONS

SEX AND THE

www.goldensparrow.com

If you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.

— Marilyn Monroe

STATE

RAJANDEKAR

PUNE, JULY 19, 2014

THE SAD

ANIRUDDHA

China connection P 16

China Calling P8

Children emerge as the best agents of change in city The city’s children have emerged as the best agents of change when it comes to fostering respect for the environment and an eco-friendly approach to Ganeshotsav.

Assisted by voluntary organisations, a number of schools in the city have been holding eco-friendly workshops to motivate children to celebrate Ganeshotsav at home. This would mean making their own Ganesh idols of “shadumati” (clay), painting it with natural colours and not using plastic, thermocol or other environmentally-hazardous materials in the decorations.

Anything taught in schools is taken seriously by children and schools in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad have been successful in motivating children in garbage segregation at home, wearing of helmets and obeying of traffic rules by family members. It is observed that often parents and elders in the family change for the better when children in the family point out what is right and demand change.

For the last three years, Karvenagar

Interestingly, the stone mentions road connectivity between Pune and other towns and cities such as Bangalore, Solapur, Ahmednagar, Nashik and even smaller places like Purandar, Sinhagad, Paud and Alandi.

Surprisingly, Mumbai and Kolhapur

| www.goldensparrow.c

EDUCATION & CAREER

The Zero Stone is a very special milestone as it signifies the geographic location of a city and the point from where distances are established between towns and cities. There are just 80 of such special milestones that were installed across the country during the British Raj as markings for a survey. India’s Zero Stone, meanwhile, is in Nagpur denoting the centre of the country.

get more space, we will undertake landscaping and beautification around the stone. Whatever is necessary will be done to grant heritage status to the Zero Stone,” he told this reporter.

Leader of opposition in the PMC and area corporator Arvind Shinde (BJP) visited the spot and said he intends to not only pursue the matter with the civic Heritage Committee but also write to union communications minister Ravi Shankar Prasad requesting an allotment of space from the GPO for Last week, this newspaper had stressed that this heritage site ought to be restored, fenced and beautified so that the children of this city, citizens and tourists can reflect on the time when Pune was taking shape

`5

om

PUNE,

CITY

ANIRUDDHA RAJANDEKAR

Zero Stone Eco-friendly Ganeshotsav restoration beginstakes root in Pune

BY ASHOK BHAT @TGSWeekly

PAGES: 16+16 (TGS LIFE) | PRICE: `5

PUNE, JUNE 28, 2014 | www.goldensparrow.com

Matrimonial portal for HIV+ve brings hope P2

A home for special children P2

Pune Municipal Corporation’s Heritage Cell begins work a week after a report in this newspaper

www.goldensparrow.com

PUNE’S PEOPLE WITH A PURPOSE

The victory cry is still a long shot P 16

PUNE’S PEOPLE WITH A PURPOSE

When angry Ganeshas evoked spirit of nationalism P4

The Pune Municipal Corporation’s (PMC) Heritage Cell has undertaken restoration of the historic Zero Stone heritage site outside the General Post Office (GPO), a week after a special report in The Golden Sparrow on Saturday

PUNE, NOVEMBER 15, 2014

SPORTS

ANIRUDDHA RAJANDEKAR

AN RUDDHA RAJANDEKAR

Great things can happen when you have the courage to be yourself.

— Michael Sam

A Woman Of Substance

DEEPIKA PADUKONE

Vow Factor The

Talented, hard-working and a big league movie star, Deepika Padukone can also take a tough stand when push comes to shove.

Anjali Shetty gauges They are independent and opinionated and public opinion these 20-year-olds are going it solo when See P10-11 everyone around them is getting hitched.

Ishani Bose tells us more

RAKEDNAJAR AHDDURINA :YHPARGOTOHP DAOR KALIT ,LLAM ELCYC EFIL :YSETRUOC YROSSECCA

Ad size: 16 x 25 cm

P10-11

horses for the upcoming season who have been working to prep the Barnalee Handique meets individuals

&Women The Men

Pushers Pedal

Pune's

peek at the riders and the machines the thrills of bicycling. TGS takes a Many in the city are rediscovering

Continued on p 11 tournament. the chief referee of the tennis while Sheetal Iyer will be the women’s tennis team, Bendrey is the coach of basketball team. Hemant selected for the women’s Shireen Limaye has been women’s team, while Palha are part of Indian Thombare and Natasha - Ankita Raina, Prarthana PYC’s three tennis players the president of the gymkhana. proud about it,” said Vijay Bhave, prestigious Asian Games. We feel And our members have made it to the

info@byondjourne Office No. 32, 1st Floor, D Wing, V moc.leskiuq/240 41

CREAM OF THE NDA CROP

days and 30-35 on Saturdays and Sundays.

FC Road’s Champion Sports manager Agnelo Swami said that he used to sell 10- 12 helmets per day.

“Now the number has gone up to 20 helmets on weekdays and 50 helmets a day on weekends,” he added. The helmets they sell cost Rs 600 to Rs 1,500. “Ladies prefer half face helmets while men opt for full face helmets,” he said.

The trend now is to invest in good quality and good looking head protective gear instead of cheap or sub-standard helmets.

IllUSTrATIon by GAUrI bArve KAle

The drive by the Pune traffic police to implement the compulsory use of helmets by two-wheeler riders in the city, is yielding results. Not only are more two-wheeler users wearing helmets, but helmet sales in the city have jumped up by as much as 50 per cent. The police, however, need to do more to ensure higher compliance from the public.

The police began enforcing the helmet rule since November 1, and have continued to do so despite strident objections from some quarters.

Deputy commissioner of police (traffic) Sarang Awad said that police are not conducting a drive or a campaign but just implementing the law as stated in the Central Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989

and as per the directions issued by the Supreme Court (SC). “It is not a drive or campaign asking two-wheeler riders to wear a helmet. It is law of the land, it should be followed and implemented.

After all, it is for the rider’s own safety,” he said. It will be a contempt of the apex court if the law is not implemented. It is equally contemptuous if people oppose the directives of the SC, Awad said.

There are 30.05 lakh registered two-wheelers in Pune and PCMC. Since November 1, the city traffic police have fined 60,236 two-wheeler users for riding without helmets.

Over Rs 60 lakh has been collected from the offenders as fines. The highest number of 5332 offences was registered on November 8.

P CS BY RAHUL RAUT

BY GITESH SHELKE @ gitesh_shelke

Once a user downloads a bunch difficult to penetrate. the only app they tested that was with a 48 per cent success rate, was Bank and H&R Block. Amazon, hacked were Gmail, CHASE Among the apps they easily they tested. time on six of the seven popular apps 82 per cent and 92 per cent of the and found it was successful between Researchers tested the method unsuspecting users. obtain personal information from systems that could be used to Windows and iOS mobile operating believed to exist in Android, They have identified a weakness per cent of the time.

Give us a call and you will kno end. But we can take only a handful. that we have in place will delight you no The hotels, the flights, the daily pr round, it's for Kerala... God' customers are at an advantage. This time When we stun the competitors our

such as JP Nadda and Om Prakash as the front-runner vis-a-vis colleagues the party leader said Shah has emerged Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand, With assembly elections due in for a while,” said a party leader. selection of the party president was out and there was a lot of work to do... so the “The government was just formed

Once that app is installed, on a phone. such as one for background wallpaper benign, but actually malicious app, a user to download a seemingly The attack works by getting Bourns College of Engineering. at University of California’s Riverside Zhiyun Qian, an assistant professor consequences for the user,” explained impact another and result in harmful one app can in fact significantly that assumption is not correct and with each other easily. We show been that apps cannot interfere “The assumption has always infrastructure, or operating system. are all running on the same shared of apps to his or her smartphone they

charge, the BJP has not announced its after the council of ministers took a new president. However, even a month home minister, the party has to appoint Since Rajnath Singh took over as LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi.

Prasad Mookerjee, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the shoes of party leaders like Shyama Uttar Pradesh, will be stepping into

Indo-Asian News Service However, he got a clean chit in the case. out in Ahmedabad, Gujarat in 2004. others in an allegedly staged shootof college student Ishrat Jahan and accused of involvement in the killing Lok Sabha constituency. He was Shah may contest from the Vadodara general secretary, it was earlier said that late 1980s. Currently BJP’s national printing business, met Modi in the Shah, who has a plastics and political aide and master strategist. minister remains Modi’s most trusted strategist, the former Gujarat home Known to be a sharp political 71 of the 80 seats. election in Uttar Pradesh where it won landslide victory in the Lok Sabha Shah played a key role in the party’s

Vow

To Subscribe - SMS TGS to 56070 // tgs@goldensparrow.com // Contact your newspaper vendor success in hacking into Gmail For the first time in the city, six regulars from a club will represent India at an international event

leads six to Asian Games Sweating it out at PYC Gymkhana

RAKEDNAJAR AHDDURINA

IANS line Wednesday. nent in a 55-minute video posted onflag of jihad’ in the Indian subcontiAsian branch of his outfit to ‘raise the hiri announced the creation of a South Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawathat region’. the United States, particularly in doesn’t again pose a threat to the United States, make sure it anywhere that it poses a threat to committed to dismantling Al Qaeda US, she said had ‘remained anywhere in the world’,” she said. terrorists or violent extremist groups about any recruitment or efforts by “But ‘we obviously are concerned reporters on Thursday. ment spokesperson Marie Harf told ify those reports yet’, State DepartThe US had not been ‘able to verpabilities by the terror group. gard it as an indication of any new casubcontinent, but said it did not re-

— Marilyn Monroe best. hell don’t deserve me at my my worst, then you sure as If you can’t handle me at

PUNE, JULY 19, 2014

www.goldensparrow.com

THIS KERA R RA YO Y OU F C LL CA FOR G

Amit Shah likely to become BJP president soon? breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) read

Researchers have 92 per cent faster progress than the Pune Metro project is expected to achieve member Ujjwal Keskar, the Nagpur According to former PMRDA could have spearheaded the project.

Development Authority) which (Pune Metropolitan Regional (SPV) like the erstwhile PMRDA absence of a special purpose vehicle likely to face delays due to the mass transportation project is by the Centre, the much needed is now set to be cleared next week Even as the Pune Metro project @ashok_bhat

BY ASHOK BHAT

76 per cent shares.

Contd on p 10

absence of a SPV is unlikely to polls, the Pune project, in the eye on the forthcoming assembly Pune and Nagpur projects with an has given rapid clearances to the While the Modi government be cleared within four days. government on Tuesday and would was received from the Maharashtra that the proposal for the Pune Metro reporters in Nagpur on Wednesday minister Venkaiah Naidu told Union urban development the Metro rail project. which has undertaken to implement Nagpur Improvement Trust (NIT) project as Nagpur already has the

Pune awaits SPV

As Nagpur Metro races ahead,

too late to start over, never It’s never too late — never

—Julia Roberts you take care of your You have pride in how

Twelve-year-old Oorja Joshi, a student of Abhinav English Medium School, painting the clay Ganesh idol made by her AUGUST 2, 2014

Ganeshotsav movement in the city (Special report on P 6) some government bodies are helping strengthen the eco-friendly Schools, voluntary organisations, Ganesh Mandals and even

(Building Development PMC’s executive engineer Reacting to this report, the monument.

(clay), painting it with natural colours their own Ganesh idols of “shadumati” at home. This would mean making motivate children to celebrate Ganeshotsav been holding eco-friendly workshops to a number of schools in the city have

PUNE, OCTOBER 11, 2014 www.goldensparrow.com

www.goldensparrow.com

— Michael Sam courage to be yourself. when you have the Great things can happen

THE GOLDEN SPARROW ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 29, 2014

City publishers tap new genres P4

‘Start-up club’ gets going in Mundhwa P7

PUNE

“A senior who is losing eyesight needs help in writing a book. Our volunteers help him do that. We are not trying to substitute for children but doing what family members would have done otherwise.”—Manjiri Joshi, founder, Maya CARE

Citizen adopts public urinal at Nal Stop, makes a difference Developer Sanjay Deshpande contributes more than his share to keep his home town clean and green

RAHUL RAUT

Sanjay Deshpande

Like most urinals in Pune and elsewhere in the country, the one at Nal Stop, near Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) was also an extremely dirty, stinking dump. Th is was till 45-yearold businessman Sanjay Deshpande decided to do something about it.

Rather than curse the civic body, the politicians and the government as is done by most people, Deshpande decided to adopt the urinal and ensure that it was kept neat and clean.

As Deshpande, a director at Sanjeevani Developers, explained in his own words: “Every morning I walk to Vaishali Restaurant for coffee and breakfast. I pass this urinal on the way. The stink rising out of it was nauseating. So I decided to take matters in my own hands. I secured the required permission and from the beginning of this year, I have been maintaining it. There is a janitor 24x7 who keeps the premises clean. The cost of maintaining this urinal is Rs 1,200 a month.” There is a book, where individuals using the urinal have put down their comments.

A builder by profession, Deshpande focuses on eco-friendly constructions.

As he explained, “Lifestyle should accommodate nature and not vice versa. Small adjustments are very necessary to accommodate nature. For that it is important that we rebuild the ecosystem every time we destroy it. When we acquire a barren land for construction, there are different species of insects, worms, animals,

ANIRUDDHA RAJANDEKAR

BY BARNALEE HANDIQUE @barnalee

The well-maintained public urinal at Nal Stop. (Below) The register, where people who use this urinal, write their comments and feedback

birds residing there. Each of these species plays a certain role in our life cycle. When we excavate the land we destroy their habitats and these species die. It has been my endeavour to restore their natural habitat in the best way I can.

I plant indigenous plants and shrubs in all my projects,” said Deshpande.

Instead of providing a club house or a swimming pool, Deshpande prefers using that particular area for planting.

To develop eco-friendliness in people, each flat owner is asked to plant a tree of their particular choice. Deshpande provides the saplings free of cost. The resident family is then entrusted with

the responsibility of looking after the trees. That way each family is involved in contributing to the ecosystem.

Till today he has planted hundreds of trees like jackfruit, jamun, chickoo, mango, litchi and others.

He has also planted shrubs like touch-me-nots, forget-me-nots and violets which are usually not found.

Interestingly, Deshpande has also placed bird feeders in each flat. During one of his visits to the Jurong Bird Park at Singapore, he noticed these

interesting contraptions where two bowls are placed- containing water and grains. Deshpande designed his own prototype and placed it in every flat.

He has also designed artificial nests to be put in the balconies.

“We talk about sparrows disappearing from our city, but what are we doing about it? That’s when the idea of placing these bird feeders in every flat, came up. They cost around Rs 5,000. You should see the difference it has made. Different species of birds come to feed. There is a pair of sparrows living in the nest I have built,” said Deshpande with a smile.

Deshpande is also involved with the upkeep of the eco-system in and around the city. He has built water tanks for birds and animals at Hanuman Tekdi and Vetal Tekdi, and planted trees there. “During summer there is no water, so I have constructed water holes, each of which can hold water from two tankers.

It cost me around Rs 25,000 to construct these tanks.”

He has also been helping the forest officials and workmen at Tadoba and Kanha reserves.

He has provided warm clothes, rain wear and boots to the workmen there. “These men didn’t have proper footwear to work in the environment.

Some had died of snake bites. Today the incidents of snake bites have gone down from 65 to 10 per year,” he said. barnalee.handique@goldensparrow.com

Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat works for the betterment of waste-pickers and helps them live life with dignity

BY MANASI SARAF JOSHI @GargiManasi

Giving them the much needed recognition in society, the Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (KKPKP), has made a difference in the lives of over 5,000 waste-pickers in the city.

KKPKP was started by some of the like-minded people in August 1993, and since then, it has been undertaking several initiatives for the wellbeing of rag-pickers and their families.

Speaking to Lakshmi Narayan The Golden Sparrow on Saturday, one of the founders of the KKPKP, Lakshmi Narayan said, “We met a child rag-picker, during the National Adult

KKPKP pyramid

The structure of KKPKP is like of a pyramid with scrap collectors at the base, while reprocessors at the apex. A woman scrap collector earns up to Rs 60 per day while men earn Rs 75. The work includes collecting paper, plastic, metal and glass scrap. Ninety per cent of scrap collectors are women with 30 per cent of them widowed or deserted.

They walk nearly 10 to 12 km a day with loads of 40 kg.

Education Programme at SNDT University in 1990. While talking to him, we realised that the waste-pickers are a neglected lot and work under the most pitiable conditions.

We thought we could provide this boy better working conditions and even education.”

“We campaigned in the neighbourhood and focused on the girl rag-pickers. We contacted their mothers and convinced them to send their daughters to school.”

The women thus did the rag-picking themselves and earned more. SNDT also issued I-cards to as many as 30 women to collect the segregated waste from the bin.

But an entrepreneur started doorstep garbage collection. Th is was a setback for the women waste-pickers, who were treated badly by the people in the neighbourhood.

“We tried to explain the waste-pickers’ plight to him and pleaded with him to start RAHUL RAUT

KKPKP convinced the mothers of rag pickers to send their daughters to school

another business. When he refused, we started the bin chipko andolan, and our efforts bore fruit,” Narayan said.

“We realised that we had to organise these waste-pickers. Baba Adhav helped us understand the potential and how lucrative waste-picking could be. Thus, in August 1993, the Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat was formed,” said Narayan.

Today, these waste-pickers lead a life of some dignity and pride. A convention of waste pickers in 1993 in Pune, under the leadership of Baba Adhav and Mohan Nanavare, son of a wastepicker, was attended by 800 waste-pickers.

The convention set up KKPKP as registered trade union to represent the scrap collectors. Any scrap collector is eligible to become a member, irrespective of caste, region and religious affi liation. Members have to pay an annual fee of Rs 50.

Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad municipal corporations are the fi rst civic bodies in the country to register waste-pickers. The state of Maharashtra too has accepted them as workers and directed the municipalities to issue them identity cards.

KKPKP has strived for better working conditions and the protection of rights of waste-pickers through representations to the government. Th is has spawned SWaCH (Solid Waste Collection and Handling), in September 2008.

SWaCH stands for a socially just, economically equitable, culturally plural, politically democratic, environmentally sustainable, peaceful and humane way of life.

“We have a credit society through which the waste-pickers can avail loans, group insurance or medical policy. Their transition from waste-pickers to service providers (as many of these waste pickers collect the garbage from societies and save on municipal income) was not easy, but has been achieved gradually,” Narayan said. manasisaraf@gmail.com

ANIRUDDHA RAJANDEKAR

Helping rag-pickers gain a foothold in life The

anti-tobacco crusader Dr Kalyan Gangwal

Dr Kalyan Gangwal has been on an anti-tobacco campaign for two decades

BY GITESH SHELKE @gitesh_shelke Prominent Pune physician and a social thinker, Dr Kalyan Gangwal has undertaken a crusade to curb the growing and life-threatening health hazards that the users of tobacco products face.

Dr Gangwal started his campaign against gutkha after visiting a few schools in the city in early 1990s. Revealing more about his antitobacco mission, he said, “I was shocked to see many children chewing gutkha, a tobacco-based product containing harmful synthetic katha.

I took up the cause and studied the ill-effects of tobacco.” He then prepared posters for the school children and started conducting awareness programmes for them.

Gangwal, who still maintains links with his native village, graduated from B J Medical College.

An MD in General Medicine, he has strived ceaselessly to ban gutkha.

“I have won the battle against gutkha, which has claimed the lives of many who contracted cancer. I took the matter to the courts, to the power corridors of the government and other platforms. And finally, gutkha was banned,” he said.

However, while protesting against tobacco products, especially against gutkha, unknown persons attacked his house on couple of occasions.

But this did not deter him and he continued to fight. “I cherished the moment when government of Maharashtra banned gutkha in the state,” he said.

Gangwal has been organising seminars and awareness programmes at slums, colleges, and villages, on the hazards of tobacco consumption, such as smoking, mishri, and chewing. “I have been doing this for the past 20 years,” he said. He was motivated when he found out that 25 per cent of

school children were addicted to gutkha.

Gangwal has decided to continue his fight against tobacco products. “People smoke cigarette despite the terrible picture printed on the packets.

Awarenes is the only way to reduce the spread of cancer,” he said.

“I donate 50 per cent of my earnings for social causes, to fight court battles, organise awareness and health programmes,” Gangwal said.

Vegetarianism is another cause close to Gangwal’s heart. “I am a Jain and I follow its principles and profess the ideals of vegetarianism.

All animals have the right to live. We have no right to kill them for our food. I follow the principle of Sarva Jeev Mangal,” he said. He has presented many papers at national and international conferences on the subject.

Gangwal has studied yoga and written and presented a paper on ‘The Application of Shavasan Meditation in the Treatment of Hypertension’, at a Yoga Conference in Rome. He had also addressed a conference at Stanford University in California, on the subject of vegetarianism.

Gangwal hails from Sangamner taluka in Ahmednagar district. “I still visit my native place where I did my schooling. I have an OPD there which is open every second Sunday of the month. I treat local adivasis and farmers for free. If a patient is critical and needs surgery, he is taken to Pune but is treated at the lowest costs,” he said.

Gangwal believes that the wrong diet, addictions and hectic or stressful lifestyles, are the reasons for deteriorating health. He wants the hazards of tobacco use to be a part of the school syllabus. “I have taken up the cause and I will pursue it with the education ministry,” he said. gitesh.shelke@goldensparrow.com

THE GOLDEN SPARROW ON SATURDAY PUNE

Pune lies very close to the seismically active zone around Koyna Dam, about 100 km south of the city. It has been rated as zone 3 (on a scale of 2 to 5, with 5 being the most prone to earthquakes).

—India Meteorological Department

Increase in passport appointments

Regional Passport Office, Pune will increase the availability of normal appointment slots by 50 with effect from December 1. From the day onwards a total on 950 appointments will be granted. Earlier, in September the tatkal appointment slots were increased by 45 per cent, from 110 to 160 daily. The increments are applicable to Pune, Satara, Kolhapur, Sagli, Ahmednagar and Solapur.

CDSE online form submission till Dec 5 The Combined Defence Services Exam (CDSE) online applications are open till December 5. Students of or above the age of 24 appearing are eligible for the February 15, 2015 exam.

General candidates have to pay a fees of `200 during the application. Girls and SC/ST candidates are exempted from paying the fees.

Reverse horns are illegal, says RTO

‘Butterfly Garden won’t be destroyed’

Assures deputy mayor Aba Bagul saying that the proposed planetarium based on German technology will be surrounded by the existing exclusive garden

BY ASHOK BHAT @ashok_bhat

Prominent city politician and deputy mayor Aba Bagul has allayed the citizens’ apprehensions and issued a promise that the unique Butterfly Aba Bagul Garden at S a ha k a r na g a r will not be destroyed. Bagul is a corporator from the Aranyeshwar The damaged nets, uncontrolled growth of weeds and grass show the neglected state constituency. of the butterfly garden at Sahakarnagar “The Butterfly Garden of my constituency is a unique attraction of Of the 25,000 the city. It will remain Corporation (PCMC), to avail of square feet area there for the the latest German technology for its of the Butterfly public. We are planetarium.

Garden, only 2,500 only setting up a Bagul assured that the Butterfly ly n City’s oter fly square feet, or just new planetarium Garden will be restored to its former butfaces closure ten per cent of in the garden state after the completion of the garden the area will be as an additional planetarium. taken up by the attraction,” Bagul “The Butterfly Garden is a popular planetarium. said. landmark of my constituency and is Being set The planetarium a big attraction for foreign visitors, up at a cost will feature statephotographers, school children and of `2.25 of-the-art German citizens, and therefore its existence is to crore, the technology and assured,” Bagul said. or at og ’s interr ent Kasrab day’s ty ev planetarium equipment. The Pune Located on 30,000 sq ft in the atu lm eak at ci S fi sp n se o a c 3 to shaorwroiown No. 2 F will feature Municipal Corporation nullah garden near Aranyeshwar IF eIn Sep it n ld ib h io A o x it G r 2 ed The poste2 a 40-foot dome (PMC) has sought temple, the garden has about 10,000 mber Nove and will have the capacity to the permission of butterfl ies of 61 species. It comprises seat 100 visitors. The PMC will be the High Court to a butterfly enclosure, breeding centre second civic body in the country, after cut down some trees in the garden to and exhibition hall. the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal make place for the planetarium. ashok.bhat21@gmail.com DAY

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A total of 731 entries which included 463 drawings, 174 essays and 94 poems were received in response to the competition announced by TGS on the occasion of Children’s Day. ‘Child Labour’ was the theme for the contest. The results of the contest will be announced in a subsequent issue of The Golden Sparrow

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Regional Transport Office (RTO) has stated that it is illegal to fit reverse horns in vehicles. In a press statement, RTO said that multi-layer and multi-tone horns and the reverse gear alarms are banned under the provisions of Central Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989.

Google India, CII join hands to give SMBs online advantage P6

ANIRUDDHA RAJANDEKAR

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NOVEMBER 29, 2014

TGS Quiz Contest

No. 24

nswers to the following 10 A questions are embedded in the stories featured in this edition.

Send us the correct answers at contest.tgs@gmail.com and be one of the three lucky winners to receive gift coupons.

1. How much did Sanjay Deshpande spend on building water holes?

2. Where is APTICON 2014 taking place?

3. What is the title of the book by Dattaprasad Dabholkar?

4. Where does Dr Kalyan Gangwal hail from?

5. What is the USP of North Western Frontier cuisine?

6. What does Pioneer Calico specialise in?

7. Where did artist Aditya Phadke graduate from?

8. Which are TGS Life’s top 5 picks of IFFI 2014?

9. Which is Siddharth Chandekar’s favourite city?

10. Which form of yoga does Bikram Yoga promote?

Contest # 23 winners

Mangesh Panchawagh Abbas Kothari

Marathi Bandhkam Vyavsayik Association, a body of real estate developers made a representation on ‘Environment clearances and the scenario of Pune’s real estate industry’ at MCCIA on November 22. (From left to right) Sandeep Kolatkar, Gajendra Pawar, union minister Prakash Javdekar, Sudhir Darode, Jitendra Sawant and Dnynaneshwar Ghate

In his first visit to the city after taking office, Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis inaugurated Cosmos Bank Tower at Ganeshkhind Road on November 25

Will Fadnavis keep his PMPML promise?

Chief minister gives heed to issues related to public transport in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad

BY ASHOK BHAT @ashok_bhat Maharashtra’s new state chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has acknowledged that poor public transport is the biggest problem in Pune and PimpriChinchwad.

Fadnavis assured citizens that an IAS officer would be appointed to the Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited (PMPML) within seven days. Activists and those involved with resolving the city’s traffic and transportation issues are hopeful that Fadnavis will deliver on his promise.

The deputation of a full-time IAS officer as CMD of the PMPML and the unsatisfactory functioning of the transport undertaking were issues unanimously tabled by the MLAs, mayor, deputy mayor and PMC’s party leaders, during a meeting with Fadnavis on November 25. Funds were also sought for the purchase of new buses from the state government, and a 2.5 FSI was asked for PMPML to develop commercial complexes on its lands.

In response to the CM’s assurance, prominent city activist Jugal Rathi of PMP Pravasi Manch said that the officer to head the PMPML should be highly experienced and well-versed with the working of public transport undertakings.

He pointed out that Deepak Kapur, who took over as Managing Director of Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (state transport), was able to rein in the frequency of bus breakdowns within 24 hours, which was a turning point for the MSRDC. “The PMPML CMD should be of this calibre,” Rathi said, lamenting that the government had not fi lled the

PMRDA revival Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis assured to activation of the Pune Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (PMRDA) in the next two months. The body could play a key role in the planning and development of Pune city.

He has asked principal secretaries to suggest the model like land bank for financial support. The state government had published the notification of PMRDA on November 10, 2008, with an area of 2,943 square metres approximately. The CM is the chairman and deputy director of town planning of Pune are the secretary of PMRDA.

posts of three directors for the last eight years. The CMD and directors should follow a time-bound programme,” he said.

Prashant Inamdar of Pedestrians First said that Fadnavis is the first CM to mention appointment of a full time CMD for the PMPML, in the last eight years, and hoped that he would abide by his word.

Eight NGOs involved with public transport had urged the CM to appoint a CMD and three expert directors to resolve the issues faced by the PMPML, and make it mandatory for the PMC and PCMC to allot five per cent of their budgets to the PMPML, in 12 monthly instalments.

PMPML also operates in rural areas so the state government should allot funds in the form of subsidies, Inamdar said. ashok.bhat21@gmail.com

Gokhale Institute tables feasibility study on Nira-Deoghar plan Report is first of its kind on any dam in the state

BY GITESH SHELKE @gitesh_shelke The Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE) has prepared a detailed report on the financial viability of a reservoir, and has suggested a model design of Public Community Partnership (PCP), which will boost the rate of returns from the reservoir.

It is titled, ‘Pre-feasibility report for Nira-Deoghar Major Irrigation Project in Pune district through a uniquely Design Public Community Partnership (PCP) Model’.

GIPE experts surveyed the NiraDeoghar dam in Bhor taluka of Pune, that supplies water to the farms and industrial areas of Baramati, Shirval, Malshiraj and Khandala talukas.

The report was submitted to the Maharashtra Krishna Valley Development Corporation (MKVDC), Pune after the Government of Maharashtra (GoM) issued directions for involving the private sector in

the completion of various irrigation projects on a Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) basis.

However, the private sector firms were reluctant to get involved in such a mega project, citing reasons such as low returns from the water charges, which could cover only Operation and Maintenance (O and M) expenses and not the capital cost.

This report is the first of its kind on any dam in the state where financial viability of a project has been assessed or verified.

The GIPE team of experts included GIPE Director (Officiating) Rajas Parchure and Assistant Professor Anurag Asawa. They decided to work out a model promoting private initiative in the completion of the NiraDeoghar Irrigation Project (NDIP) in three phases: pre-feasibility, feasibility and detailed project report.

“Interests of the farmers were protected, the crop pattern was taken into consideration, and the rate of

Gokhale Institute’s report is the first of its kind on any dam in the state where financial viability of a project has been assessed or verified

returns from the dam project was calculated,” Parchure said.

The rate of returns from the project is negative and it requires large government spending. At present, 43,050 hectares of land in 157 villages of four talukas, is under the irrigable command of the dam, while water utilisation from the storage (of the dam, in million cubic metres or mcum) is 368 which is based on 50 per cent of dependability.

The study reveals that the reason

for the problems faced by the NiraDeoghar project is the inordinate delay in the execution of the project, curtaiIed by a steep cost over-run, from `62.5 crore in 1982 to `2,328 crore in 2013, while the revenue from the project and the state government’s allocation for the project have been completely frozen. Moreover, the project has reached a point where the annual escalation due to inflation (at an estimated rate of 13.25 per cent per annum on `2,328 crore which is `308.46 crore cost) is now 7.7 times the government’s annual allocation of `40 crore. Thus, it qualifies to be termed as a sick project.

The suggested solutions include: mixed technology of water distribution, ie, canal plus pipes, besides reducing the capital cost from `1,703.64 crore to `1,348.40 crore, diversified sources of revenue including sale of surplus water at market rate, revenue from fishing, revenue from renting the canal for solar power, etc, a rainfall insurance policy is needed to protect the revenue in case of deficiency in rainfall, and capital cost can be raised from two sources – soft

Gopal Krishna Gokhale Museum The state government has allotted `1 crore to the GIPE, to set up a museum in memory of freedom fighter Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Servants of India Society, at the institute’s premises, on the occasion of Gokhale’s death anniversary. The state government has routed the funds from the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC). As a return favour for the PMC, the institute has decided to carry out a study of all the PMC schools and recommendations will be given on enhancing the quality of the schools.

loan and farmers’ contribution.

A corporate structure has been proposed to form a company based on a PCP model, ie, Public Community Participation model. It will be done by the water users association. gitesh.shelke@goldensparrow.com

THE GOLDEN SPARROW ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 29, 2014

PCOS is a common but undiagnosed condition

Yangon’s hero wields power of stop and go

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Signposts

“When leopards are found outside the forest in a high-population density area, we think they have strayed. But it’s their home as much as ours.”

—Vidya Athreya, Wildlife Biologist, WCS

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City publishers tap new genres Paying greater attention to production values, experimental writings and translatlions, Pune’s publishing houses have produced books on a gamut of subjects says Yash Daiv @yash009

Eicher launches buses for schools, firms VE Commercial Vehicles Ltd (VECV), a 50:50 joint venture between Sweden’s Volvo Group and Eicher Motors, launched Eicher Pro series of light duty for school and staff category in the city recently. VECV senior vice-president Shyam Maller said that the new buses provide enhanced passenger safety, fuel efficiency and comfort with superior aesthetics. The firm has 11 body repairing centres, including Pune and Mumbai.

Award for educationists Madhav Potdar and Shriram Ranade will receive the Guruvarya Abasaheb Award and Indira Atre Award, respectively on November 29. The award, given by Rasta Peth Education Society, is in its third year and lauds educationists.

Potadar and Ranade will be felicitated for their literature on education and the efforts taken by them at improvising education.

Programme on World Disability Day on Dec 3 Ekansh Trust has organised a programme ‘Celebrating Differences’ at the Nehru Memorial Hall, Camp on December 3. This day is celebrated as World Disability Day. There will be a dance ensemble and the launch of a compiled short story book. Educationist Dhun Adenwala, actress Pallavi Patil, director Amit Abhyankar and writer Geetanjali Joshi will be the chief guests.

PUNE

Leading Marathi publishers of Pune are focusing on versatility in their selection of subjects, genres and writers.

Rang Yacha Vegla (Man of Different Hues) by Dattaprasad Dabholkar, a retired scientist of national eminence and a renowned Marathi writer, mixes genres seamlessly. This book is “a recalling of experiences of life” says Continental Prakashan’s sales manager Devesh Abhayankar.

In the preface, Dabholkar states that the events and memories in the book have “crowded his heart”. He talks about his research in chemicals, bulletproof plastic and polymer grade silica.

Eminent publisher-writer Bhanu Kale, in his Foreword says that reading Rang Yacha Vegla was an enriching experience and motivated him to re-read all of Dabholkar’s books. Dabholkar is the elder brother of the slain anti-superstition activist Dr Narendra Dabholkar.

Commenting on the state of the Marathi publishing industry today, International Book Service proprietor Upendra Dixit said three to four books are published daily. “Much has changed in terms of production values and experimental writing and publishers today look out for innovative writings.”

“The activity that was exclusive to Mehta Publishing House earlier has now been taken up by every major publication in the city,” said Dixit. Finance and management, travelogues and fiction based on social issues are the current trends. Rohan Prakashan’s South Block Delhi by Vijay Naik is a book on Indian diplomacy, its development and practice.

Kaljai Kumar Gandharva by Kalapini Komkali and Rekha Inamdar Sane, published by Rajhans Prakashan, is a trilingual (Marathi, English and Hindi) two-volume book on the life

CITY BESTSELLERS

Pune’s Top 5 Publishers • Mehta Publishing House is focusing on translation of popular European and American authors like Dan Brown and John Grisham.

• Continental Prakashan has released books on eyecare and Ayurveda • Rajhans Prakashan will soon offer culture specific books.

Ek Ulat Ek Sulat, Kaaljai Kumar Gandharva and collection of Bahinibai’s poems • Menaka Prakashan’s offerings in the coming weeks include Memoir of KV Natrajan, Green Bridges an account of eco restoration of Aha river. Their magazines Maher, Menaka and Jatra are now available on Apple’s news stand • Ameya Prakashan has released translations of Bhav Yatra by prime minister Narendra Modi and and Dusari Harikranti by NCP president Sharad Pawar

The book launch Rang Yacha Vegla by Dattaprasad Dabholkar is a book of experiences.

The book will be released on November 30, 6:00 pm, at SM Joshi Foundation, Navi Peth.

of the eminent Hindustani classical vocalist Kumar Gandharva. Continental Prakashan’s non- fiction books include, Vha Share Bazzar Tadnya (Become a share market expert) by Gaurav Muthe, ‘Adolf Hitler’, a critical view on the dictator by Anant Shankar Ogale and Atmya cha Pravas ani Mrutyu Pashchat Jeevan (Journey of the soul and afterlife).

A book titled ‘Maee’ edited by Mangala Godbole was released by Utkarsh Prakashan on November 23. It recounts the life and social contribution of veteran social worker Ashatai Seth.

Despite the wide range of subjects and genres, the marketing remains poor for Marathi books. yashdaiv@gmail.com

Warren Buffett by Atul Kahate is in its fourth edition currently making it the top seller.

Majhi Jeevan Yatra a translation of APJ Abdul Kalam’s ‘My Journey’ and Sahara by Paula Constant follow the league

‘Kasab was intelligent and extremely curious’ TGS NEWS SERVICE @TGSWeekly

In spite of being a school dropout, Pakistani terrorist Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, who was hanged at Yerawada Prison in November 21, 2012, was an intelligent and curious man, said retired senior police inspector Ramesh Mahale, who had interrogated Kasab in the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

Mahale was speaking at the release of the Marathi translation of The Siege by British journalists Cathy ScottClerk and Adrian Levy.

The book published by Menaka Prakashan and translated by journalist Amit Golvalkar was released on November 25.

“He was fond of new clothes and I gave him a new kurta to wear. He was trained as an intelligence officer

Translations come of age Mehta Publishers, who are in the forefront of Marathi translations of English releases and best-sellers, have offered 10 international authors.

Jeffery Archer visited Pune during the release of the Marathi translation of Prisoner of Birth. The publishers also released Archer’s The Clifton Chronicle series in March this year.

The Accidental Prime Minister by journalist Sanjaya Baru was translated for the publishers by Leena Sohoni.

Her translation of Sudha Murthy’s books ran into 18 editions.

History of Marathi publishing industry Sharad Gogate’s Marathi Granth Prakashanachi 200 varshe (200 years of Marathi publication) chronicles the beginning and rise of Marathi book publishing from 1805 to 2005.

Since 1805, Marathi books were penned by leaders to enlighten the people. Towards the end of 20th century, an

ON MISSION CLEANLINESS

informal industry began operating and a lot changed in the 21st century. There was rich fiction, drama, satire, poetry and the genre of Dalit literature. Writers employed allegories and started looking beyond the genres. Today Marathi books are versatile when it comes to subjects and genre.

by Lashkar-e –Taiba (LeT). Once he attempted to plead guilty in the case and everyone wanted to accept his plea.

However, the prosecution rejected his plea. If this would have had accepted, he would have been awarded life imprisonment instead of death penalty,” said Mahale.

He expressed deep respect for his colleagues and senior officers who fought bravely with the terrorists along with the army personnel. Mahale and his team had prepared a chargesheet of 12,000 pages in the case.

Mahale said despite Pakistan’s regular denials in diplomatic exchanges about its non-involvement in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, the Mumbai police managed to prove Pakistan’s involvement in the attack beyond a reasonable doubt. tgs.feedback@goldensparrow.com

Why man has become a gullible devotee A TGS reader points out the stressful lifestyle weakening people to fall for cunning and shrewd self-styled gurus

BY ARUNA JETHWANI

Students of Ramchandra Rathi Marathi Madhyamik Vidyalaya participated in a Cleanliness Campaign organised by principal Abhaya Walimbe, Madhavi Joshi, Seema Pawar and Madhura Mone, on November 21. An awareness rally was also organised to make people aware of importance of cleanliness

worship there. Within a year it had acquired the status of a full-fledged temple where many tribal and eunuchs worshipped. An Innocent Ujwalla had created a temple of faith out of a broken stone slab!

I remember, in a small town of Saurashtra, a fakir used to sit under a lean tree. Very often on my walks, I exchanged smiles with him. He brandished peacock feathers and carried a bowl of ‘dhup’ with him. When he passed away, a humble grave was made for him. Two years ago when I happened

One day, my helpmate Ujwalla and I were crossing the rubble path when she noticed a broken slab of stone. ‘Look, it has features of a man.’ Out of purity of her heart she put it straight and placed it upright. Next morning the workers passing by placed marigold flowers… and a few days later an iron trishul was dug in. Soon a shade for the ‘stone god’ was created.

The old mother of an industrialist living nearby began to visit it and

Letters to the Editor

PUNE,

NOVEMB

ER 15,

Our newspaper is interactive and you are welcome to write in to our various segments:

sparrow .com

‘Work for welfare’ should be taken up globally @TGSWe

ekly | PAGES:

Pune’s Pedal Pushers

SPOTLI

16+16 (TG

S LIFE)

| PRIC E:

SPORTS

Back to the arena P 16

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The Rob Swachh in Risapan Punesister’s in Mumbai a human. It may not be about economic Champhouse helelderly Saga ions This is what h a lady. She is W one such example growth but can be more of a social plan. p penedofina ashingto n th wonderful parent. Despite allatthe It will improve self worth and make dayodds, she has educated her son, making him every human useful. a successful person that he is today.

- Ravinder Kumar Signpo sts ISRO to Today her grandson is on the verge of (Gets prize for best letter) pump in `30 cror in Pune e district firm becoming an engineer Her day begins at 5:00 am. She An admirable woman leaves her house from Sion and comes The portrayal of slum kids who to Bandra changing trains and starts have overcome poverty in Nov 15 issue working by 5:45 am. She works at of The Golden Sparrow on Saturday is 10 houses. She takes a loan from her employers only once a year and that very inspiring. It is too to pay the college fees which heartening to see that Slum kids overcome p overty, sh ine are quite high. Hats off to such u nde r-pr i v i le g e d ladies. They admirable. kids are succeeding CHILare DR COMPE EN’S DAY TITION and making their — Urmilla Ramrakhiani dreams come true.

The parents are to Need to modernise army CHILD LABOUR IN INDI be credited for the A equipment success.

Our maid at my Immediately after taking Open lett er Pune Mu to Pune’s Chief Traffi nicipal Cor poration’s c Planner and Enginee r (Traffi c), Sriniva Additional City s Bonala.

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, who wa recalls tha s The Tim t Robin Rap day in October 199 es of India’s Was vis-a-vis hel set off a diplom 3 when the US hington Corresp Assista ondent dur Kashmir atic explosi ing 1993-9 on by reje nt Secretary of Sta 4, cting Ind Now in ia’s Instru te for South Asi the a ed by the news for being ment of Acc investigat ession ex-Ameri FBI for possible interactio can diplo espio

nage, n in her came into mat Robi the Sout h Asian new capacity with in Octo sharp focus for the n Raphel journalists capital. ber, 1993 Center, in the US . This was first time after a and India What struc also enga n briefing” “background ged in press journalists were of the briefi k me right from for journ Kashmiri meets ists from althe start ng South Asia Agency’s at the US Informati Pannun separatists, Khal called by in whic Kash istanis and Fore on h from cove mir representa was her ign Press Cent gered a she trigtives er diplomati light-hea fresh deve ring official briefi , apart casua l c explosion lopm ngs and demeanou rted and by reIt was ents. r. I was jecting there as India’s amid The Tim environm Instrument India’s es of ent that st this charged of Acce back Raph Was grou ssion Correspo hington el, durin Walchandn nd and the nden g her and categ briefing, rathe nation’s India on claim to agar Ind seemed odd t and it r carelessly orica lly Friday Kash div that ustr journ told mir isio fired a diplomat in a sensi successfu virtue ies alists us by n for spa its of lly testnuclear-c recognise” that “the U.S. assembled ce technolo to expand aerosp face-to-s hers could tive position like instr umen this apable did not urface India’s ace t. be gy Acce ungu ma what surfrom a Instr umen Prithvi-II ssion chine arded in she was The Clin

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Instead hours for they go to schoo study, help l, home work their paren put in ts with stay focus or even a part time job, sed on their but the noos dream...of e of pove untying rty they This is are born with. born in not the case with slums but all children significant. the Says Vijay numbers are lives in a Shinde two room who “About 30% to shant y in Wanowrie 40% fami live here , in this vasti have lies who who are going in their kids Vijay and profession for Vaishali al courses.” higher studies Shinde with their or Like children Shubhum his son and Deeksha (left) and daug and Deek

BY NAM Shubhum has just sha. Shub hter, ITA SHIB (right) hum AD Civil Engicompleted his @ nshibad diploma neering towards in and is Poverty and a degree. swept and working illiter acy were So why didn’ inherited not any longeswabbed houses. the a t he go in But born to a generation back noose you r. in civil for a degre kaamwali if you were Quie engineerin e tly and (maid serva watchman Says Shub g young or ricks nt) and her hum “Th instead? boys and doggedly, As a child haw driver husb e thing rewriting girls are Children’s that a degree ,cours is and. you your moth expensive. live in one their destiny. e is er, sittin tagged along with Non-gover very Day g silently display room shant They colleges struggle of child ies, they charge Rs nment for ish activ without any Special pa as fees cool cloth wholesome meal ity while 30,000 es but they s and she Wadia Collefor a degree but mama to do not accom at her work ge wher it was just pany .

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RAJANDEK

The 2014 Nob to eminen el Peace Priz e was awa t social recognit worker Kailash rded jointly As a tribu ion of his crus Satyarth ade te to him i in , we invit against child labour. e the to part icipate Children of Pun in e Th

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The ‘work for welfare’ programme in Hungary (TGS, Nov 22 issue) could be spread across the world. India has a huge population with high unemployment rate. When a human gets laid off, the pain can linger and cause a lot of trauma.

The human spirit needs to be kindled and social work can help to redeem the self. If a person can contribute to society in exchange for a meal, then we can still have life going on. Being unemployed need not be a stigma and humans can still contribute in a small way. Economic cycles can be harsh and losing a job can be heartbreaking. But if a scheme can be initiated to salvage human life and time, then life can be sustained. Not every human can rescue himself or herself from the brutality of capitalism and we can only look forward with optimism. The beauty of the ‘work for welfare’ concept is that it can rescue

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Dear Srin ivas Bon al

Let’s resto re

ANIRU

• Letters to the Editor email: editor_tgs@goldensparrow.com; editor_tgs@gmail.com By post: The Editor, The Golden Sparrow on Saturday, 1641 Madhav Heritage, Tilak Road, Pune-411030, (Best letter gets a weekly prize) • Articles for the Relationships page: relationships@goldensparrow.com, relationships.tgs@gmail.com • The Way Forward with Compassion & Hope: wayforward@goldensparrow.com • Want to become an entrepreneur? For mentoring advice, write to our associates: mentoring@pune.tie.org • Get weekly events listed: listings.tgslife@gmail.com

community support pushes man to the edge where he gropes for a hold in any one, whoever he might be or whatever he may be. He is just looking for comfort and hope. He is so desperate that he falls an easy prey in hands of cunning and shrewd self-styled gurus. Like today’s economic values, his only query is: can he deliver the goods?

Perhaps the need of the hour is a better community living and greater social support. For then, at least the importance of such teacher-preacher God men will be reduced to minimum.

editor_tgs@goldensparrow.com

2014 | www.gol den

TGS LI

TGS is interactive

to visit the same town, I found a beautiful mausoleum over the grave, a shibir in progress and many visitors from far off Turkey and Afghanistan praying there.

As the proverb goes ‘faith is greater than Guru’, these first-hand experiences were an eye-opener. Is the common man so gullible? Is the need for faith so great that man becomes a blind follower?

The happenings during the last few years speak volumes for our times. Job stress, trials and tribulations of a rising economy, unemployment, inflation, competition, and selfishness, loss of the

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over (sworn in on November 9) as the defence minister, Manohar Parrikar (ex-CM of Goa) swung into action and maidenly chaired the DAC (Defence Acquisition Council) held on November 22. He sanctioned in the ‘Buy & Make’ procedure for acquisition of 814 units of 155mm/52 calibre mounted gun systems which will cost the nation’s exchequer Rs 15,750 crore out of total defence budget for the year 2013-14 of Rs 2,03.672.12 crore). India is presently facing repeated unprovoked firings at LoC from Pakistan and frequent incursions into the Indian territory at LAC from China. To cope with the modernisation of Army equipment, the Indian Army faced an acute shortfall of modern guns which were not purchased for the last 30 years after the Bofors gun scandal in 1986. By acquiring the new 155mm/52 calibre guns, India’s fighting

moral will certainly take many leaps forward.

— Vijay Dattatray Patil

Write to Us Letters to the Editor may be emailed to editor_tgs@goldensparrow. com or mailed to Golden Sparrow Publishing Pvt Ltd, 1641 Madhav Heritage, Tilak Road, Pune-411030.

The Best Letter of the Week will receive a special gift from Venus Traders, Pune’s finest stationery departmental.

THE GOLDEN SPARROW ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 29, 2014

PUNE

The temples on Parvati Hill were built by Nanasaheb Peshwa in 1749. It rises 2,100 feet above the sea level. The steps that lead to the temple are made of black quarry stone. — www.parvatidarshan.in

India’s research conundrum

How personality affects investment behaviour

P 12

P 14

Art contest for underprivileged kids

135 applicants were offered jobs by different companies

The Rotaract Club of Pashan, in association with Quickwise Foundation, has organised ‘First Step’, an art competition for differently abled and underprivileged children on November 30, from 7:30 am to 10:30 pm, at Sarasbaug. Separate arrangement for schools in far off locations will be organised on December 1 and 2. The organisers believe it will serve as a platform for the differently abled and underprivileged to express their thoughts and feelings through art. For participation, contact Anup Pathmudi at 9730021561.

BY ISHANI BOSE Bose @ishani_bose

manager and co-ordinator, Kamayani Udyog Kendra.

There were three categories on A two-day job fair for disabled students the basis of which candidates could was organised at the Kamayani School participate in the job fair — physical last week. Representatives from disability, hearing impaired and renowned companies like Infosys, visually challenged.

TCS, IBM, Wipro, Steria, Croma, Class XII pass was the minimum Tech Mahindra, Vishal Mega Mart, qualification for the physically Aegis, Jubiliant Food disabled, while Class X Works, Westin (Star pass was the minimum Wood Hotels), Barista, qualification for the Lemon Tree Hotels, hearing impaired and Vodafone and Dominos visually challenged. participated in the fair Candidates were organised by Kamayani expected to carry Prashikshan and all certificates of Sanshodhan Society their disability as in collaboration with well as educational Sarthak Educational qualifications.

Trust, New Delhi.

Sarthak Trust “Th is year, a total CEO Jitendra Agarwal of 450 candidates had started the job fair in come for the job fair, 2012. A dentist by -Kailas Supate out of which 130-135 profession, Agarwal lost were selected.

The his vision gradually due average salary offered to the selected to a medical condition. candidates was from Rs 6,000 to “Th is year too, the job fair got a good Rs 15,000. The jobs included, BPO response. Awareness for generating services, IT professional jobs, desk jobs jobs for the disabled people has been by hotels like Lemon Tree and Westin rising day by day among companies, (Star Wood) etc,” said Kailas Supate, which is a good trend. Like others,

“Disabled youth, too are getting opportunity to prove their mettle.”

Seminar for UPSC students on Nov 29 Synergy Study Point has organised two seminars for UPSC students, on November 29, at Synergy Study Point, Shivam Complex, Appa Balwant Chowk. At 4 pm, a seminar titled ‘Changing Exam Pattern and Solving Techniques’ and at 5 pm a seminar on current happenings related to the UPSC curriculum will be held. Educationist Atul Lande will conduct both the sessions. The entry is free.

RAHUL RAUT

Kamayani fair brings joy for disabled youth

Signposts

One of the participants at the Kamayani job fair attending an interview session with the representatives of a company

they too are getting an opportunity to be financially independent and prove their mettle,” said Supate.

Kamayani also conducted a oneday Corporate Social Responsibility Workshop last week which was inaugurated by MLAs, Prof Medha Kulkarni and Vijay Kale. Many audio-

visual presentations were given and a panel discussion was held with various industrialists and government officials.

While Agarwal gave a speech on CSR activities with NGOs, Sukhada Srishti, community affairs manager of BNY Mellon, Pune, spoke about experiences of partnering with Kamayani, retired

personnel Shreekant Bhojkar spoke about HR training programmes and vice chairman (Kamayani) Ashutosh Bhopatkar spoke about experiences on CSR potential with NGOs in Kamyani. ishani.bose@goldensparrow.com

UoP students hail the launch of Wi-Fi Tom Alter launches

Orbis student’s book

BY ARCHANA DAHIWAL AND MANASI SARAF JOSHI @ArchanaDahiwal & @GargiManasi Maharashtra governor and Savitribai Phule Pune University chancellor Vidyasagar Rao inaugurated the WiFi connectivity at the varsity campus on Tuesday. Rao said that Wi-Fi was the need of the hour for the university campus.

The students of the university believe that the installation of WiFi connectivity at the campus is a landmark event and that it will have far-reaching and positive implications for this renowned educational institution.

A large number of students registered their laptops on the Wi-Fi set-ups at the canteens, the various university departments and in the garden of the campus.

Hailing the Wi-Fi availability at the Adarsh Canteen, Department of Technology students Shailendra Chabukswar, Sagar Badigei, Kalyani Gaydhani, Sadhana Bokade and Deepesh Gupta said, “We always had network connection problems at the campus before, but now with the Wi-Fi initiative, we will be able to access it from anywhere.

RAHUL RAUT

Wi-Fi inaugurated at the university campus; students can now avail 24x7 Internet access

Students of UoP (from left) Deepesh Gupta, Amol Lohar, Shailendra Chabukswar, Rohan Nehete, Sagar Badigei, Kalyani Gaydhani and Sadhana Bokade enjoying the Wi-Fi conectivity at Adarsh Canteen

We can download research papers and journals for studies. It will save precious time and the money we used to spend on accessing the Internet.”

An official from the UoP Computer Networking Centre (CNC), who wishes to remain anonymous, said, “We have received an overwhelming response from students. We are now registering all those who have applied for registration. The special fibre optic line will ensure optimum speed as students access the relevant and informative sites.”

WHAT STUDENTS SAY MBA second year student B S Kharhade said, “It’s a very big initiative that UoP has taken to introduce Wi-Fi for the entire campus.”

MES Night College students Deepak Adhav and Nikhil Bilare said, Bhausaheb Kharhade “The Wi-Fi

connectivity will definitely go a long way in giving us access to information we need. ” F i r s t year Master in Physical Education student Neelima Gayakhe said, “We need the internet for notes from various journals Neelima Gayakhe and books.

Now, with WiFi connectivity, we will be able to work on our assignments anywhere on the campus. It will save time.”

M S c chemistry s t u d e n t Rupali Shinde Rupali Shinde said, “WiFi connectivity will certainly be a big help as we will be able to access it everywhere, in the hostel, lawn or canteen.” archana.dahiwal@goldensparrow.com & manasisaraf@gmail.com

Theatre personality and actor Tom Alter (right) and Cyrus Dastur at the launch of ‘Happy House’, a book penned by Kavana Anklekar (centre), a Class VI student of The Orbis School

TGS NEWS SERVICE @TGSWeekly Film and theatre personality Tom Alter launched ‘Happy House’, a book written

by Class VI student of the Orbis School, Kavana Anklekar, on the occasion of relaunch of his own book ‘The Longest Race’, co-authored with Cyrus Dastur, on September 25, at the Orbis School.

‘Happy House’ is about the adventures of a house that comes alive and how its residents flee to Japan

from an evil sky scrapper who is after them. When asked where she got her inspiration, Kavana said, “It all started with a dream.”

Principal of The Orbis School, Mala Jetly called Kavana a “truly gifted child” and an inspiration for many budding writers of her age. Kavana’s father, Kiran Anklekar said, “Every person has a hidden talent and it is the responsibility of parents and teachers to identify that talent.” tgs.feedback@goldensparrow.com

BY GITESH SHELKE & ARCHANA DAHIWAL @gitesh_shelke & @ArchanaDahiwal While few pedestrians use the Chandan Nagar subway on Nagar Road which is under the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) jurisdiction, the Chinchwad subway on NH-4 Mumbai-Pune highway, just 10 km away, is well-lit, clean, has all the security measures in place - and this model subway is one of the widely used in the twin township of Pimpri-Chinchwad.

This copybook example buildoperate-and-transfer (BOT) project of the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) constructed at a cost of Rs one crore, that links Big Bazaar and DMart on the highway near Chinchwad station, was inaugurated in February 2010. There is piped music playing and the walls have posters on PCMC projects, and advertisements.

“This spot has seen no major pedestrian accident because of the subway. No one takes the risk of crossing the six-lane highway because of dividers,” a PCMC official said.

PCMC engineering department spokesperson Shirish Poredi told The Golden Sparrow on Saturday, that, “The private contractor who maintains the Chinchwad subway recovers his expense from advertisement rights.

Two guards are stationed at the subway for security and guide pedestrians. A complaint box has also been placed by the contractor at the pathway.”

The Chandan Nagar pedestrian subway was constructed by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) before this section of Ahmednagar Road was concretised. Pedestrians say that it is often locked down and are therefore forced to cross the road in fastmoving traffic. The PMPML and state transport (ST) buses stops near the

RAHUL RAUT

While bad traffic planning has marred PMC’s Chandan Nagar subway, the Chinchwad subway stands as a shining example

ANIRUDDHA RAJANDEKAR

PMC should emulate PCMC’s Chinchwad subway model

(Left) The subway at Chandan Nagar is not being used by pedestrians, while the Chinchwad subway on Mumbai-Pune highway (right) has all the safety measures in place to help pedestrians cross traffic safely

subway, adds to the chaos.

Several fatal accidents have occurred on this stretch of road. The subway itself is relatively clean, properly lit, it has ‘no spitting’ signs and steel

arm rests/supports. But pedestrians still prefer crossing the busy road while putting life and limb at risk than use this facility.

A traffic officer said that the

absence of median dividers along this busy stretch allows pedestrians to cross the road and risk their own and others’ lives. He said that security guards should be at hand to prevent

pedestrians from crossing the road and urge them to use the subway. archana.dahiwal@goldensparrow. com & gitesh.shelke@goldesparow.com

THE GOLDEN SPARROW ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 29, 2014

SAARC won’t take off as long as Pakistan is on board P 10

PUNE

Experts say that the Internet is growing by an exabyte of data every day. To put that in perspective, an exabyte equals 250 mn DVDs —www.businessinsider.com

Why does tradition trump safety in cricket helmets?

P 15

Google India, CII join hands to give SMBs online advantage

Five city entrepreneurs who received awards under Google SME Heroes Initiative used Internet to grow in business

In The TECH WORLD Flipkart to tie up with 30 global brands

ANIRUDDHA RAJANDEKAR

Flipkart plans to launch exclusive sales for over 30 global brands on its portal next year, as more marketers seek to benefit from the rising reach of online retail in India. The Bengaluru-based company, which sold millions of units for Chinese phone maker Xiaomi and Motorola, is looking to replicate the success across categories.

The criterion to select the brands is based upon needs of Indian consumers and whether they are getting that product at the price they want.

E-commerce will pave way for digital India

(From left) Google India SMB sales head Suryanarayana Kodukulla, Racold (Ariston) Thermo Limited GM (marketing) Prashant Dhar, Giftease Technologies CEO Vivek Mathur, Sanket Safety Equipments director Bharat Ostwal and Giftease Technologies Pvt Ltd brand manager Palak Shah at a Google SME Heroes Initiative function

BY BARNALEE HANDIQUE @barnalee

mobile application and a mobile website.”

But SMBs in India have been slow to adopt the Internet.

Out of the 48 million SMBs in India, only five or six per cent Google India in collaboration with the Confederation of have a website. Majority of these businesses have ignored the Indian Industry (CII) awarded five entrepreneurs from Pune potential of the Internet to grow and expand. The challenge under the Google SME Heroes Initiative. These small and has been the lack of awareness on the benefits of the Internet medium enterprises (SMEs) are in the B2B space and had and the knowhow to succeed online. used the Internet to promote their businesses.

Google aims to leverage the Internet footprints of the The Google SME Heroes Initiative is a national SMB sector, which recent surveys show, have minimal campaign that shortlists five finalists in each major city of footprint.

India, who will then be invited to Delhi for a mega small Suryanarayana Kodukulla, head of SMB sales, Google medium business (SMB) event.

India said, “We have plans of bringing Small businesses have always been the down the barriers that inhibits SMBs in the key to Google’s success. Globally, two million country from embracing the Internet. As businesses use Google’s advertising platform part of our Digitising India Mission, we will to find potential buyers on the Internet. India introduce new mobile-based products that has over 250 million Internet users and is set will help SMBs to create and manage their to overtake the United States by 2015, with Internet presence and help them to connect 350 million Internet users. Most will access with potential customers online. the Internet through their smartphones.

“We are also planning to invest in Vivek Mathur, the CEO of one of the extending deeper support services through a award winning firms Giftease Technologies, local partner network and local language call - VIVEK MATHUR, CEO said, “Before going online, the company had centres. To create awareness about the benefit GIFTEASE TECHNOLOGIES challenges of growing its market share and of the Internet, we are partnering with the attracting an online audience, besides creating CII. To make it swifter and more accessible, awareness about our brand in the cluttered market. Google Google is also introducing a new mobile application to help AdWords helped us in acquiring new customers, which was SMBs to go online.” crucial to us as well as spreading a word about our brand the The micro small medium enterprises (MSME) segment offerings. will play a significant role in the emergence of Indian economy.

Prashant Dhar, GM marketing, Racold (Ariston) The development of this segment is extremely critical to meet Thermo Limited (ATL) said, “We started looking for online the national imperatives of financial inclusion and generation options to strengthen our position in the market. For that, we of significant levels of employment across urban and rural mapped out an online marketing plan in 2012 and allocated areas across the country. Internet and Cloud technologies can eight to 10 per cent of the ATL budget to a digital outreach really help MSMEs stay competitive and compete with large programme. To make it easier for our customers we created a national and international players.

“Google AdWords helped us in acquiring new customers.”

Vishal Kittur of Sudha Enterprise said, “We started the initiative five years back as we felt the need to expand our presence across the country and establish a strong brand. Most of our online traffic comes from search engines that is driven by Google AdWords. We have also witnessed an increase in enquires on our website since the campaign.”

Vishal Kittur Bharat Ostwal, director, Sanket Safety Equipments, said, “Last year, we were looking at new marketing campaigns with a view to reach out to more people and create awareness about the niche set of products. But, hiring marketing resource and starting an offl ine marketing campaign would be expensive. That’s when we decided to take the online marketing route, which would help them reach more Bharat Ostwal people, be cost effective and also enable relevant enquiries.”

SJ Gijare of CTR, said, “The company started online campaign a few years back. With a view of expanding our customer base and creating awareness about our brand and offerings, we launched our online marketing campaign, that has helped us get more inquires to our websites Prashant Dhar and also helped us bridge a direct connect with customers.” barnalee.handique@goldensparrow.com

Celebrating uniqueness despite adversity An autistic, 16-year-old girl, Rosie King urges every kid, parent, teacher and person to celebrate uniqueness, as she believes it is a perfect example of the limitless potential that one has TED is a global platform where people from different fields come together and speak for 18 minutes or less about their respective disciplines. It was started in 1984 by a non-profit organisation called Sapling Foundation, under the slogan — Ideas worth sharing. Initially it organised conferences where matters related to technology, design and entertainment merged, but today it includes varied topics such as business, photography, art, science and the like.

BY ISHANI BOSE @ishani_bose What does one mean by the term ‘normal’?

Imagine, if that was the best compliment one were to receive — “Wow, you are really normal.” Would that even be a compliment?

Compliments are usually — “You are extraordinary” or “You’re amazing”. If people want to be these things, why then are so many of them striving to be normal?

People are so afraid of variety that they try and force everyone (even those who don’t want to or can’t) to become normal. This is how Rosie King, a bold, brash and autistic 16-year-old girl began her speech at the TED Global Conference in 2010.

“People don’t want to associate with anyone who won’t or can’t fit themselves into a box that’s labeled normal. But that’s fine with me, because it sorts the wheat from the chaff. And I can find which people are genuine and true and I can pick these people as my friends,” she said.

When Rosie was nine years old, doctors had confirmed her self-diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome to be true. With two younger siblings severely affected by autism, Rosie had a burning desire to help make the world a more tolerant place for people with autism.

“People tend to diagnose autism with really specific check-box descriptions, but in reality, it’s a whole variation as to what we’re like. For instance, my little brother, he’s very severely autistic. He’s nonverbal.

He can’t talk at all. But I love to talk.

People often associate autism with liking maths and science and nothing else, but I know so many autistic people who love being creative. But that is a stereotype, and the stereotypes of things are often, if not always, wrong,” she said.

But for Rosie autism was more of an ability, than a disability. “One of the things I can do because I’m autistic, is that I’ve got a very, very vivid imagination. It’s more or less like I’m walking in two worlds most of the time. There’s the real world — the world that we all share, and there’s the world in my mind. The latter is often so much more real than the former,” she said.

However, Rosie agrees that there are problems in being autistic. “These problems are associated with having too much

imagination. School can be a problem in general, but having also to explain to a teacher on a daily basis that their lessons are inexplicably dull and that you are secretly taking refuge in a world inside your head, is problematic. Also, when my imagination takes hold, my body takes on a life of its own.

When something very exciting happens in my inner world, I’ve just got to run, rock backwards and forwards, and sometimes even scream. This gives me so much energy, that I need to let it out. And this may give enough reason for people to find an autistic girl like me abnormal and not befriend me,” she said.

Rosie, however, concludes that she wouldn’t trade her autism and imagination for anything else in the world. “It’s because I’m autistic, that I’ve presented documentaries to the BBC; that I’m in the midst of writing a book; and that I’m standing here before you’ll. One of the best things that I’ve achieved, is that I’ve found ways of communicating with my little brother and sister, who are nonverbal,” she said. She leaves the audience with an afterthought, which is to celebrate uniqueness and cheer every time someone unleashes their imagination. ishani.bose@goldensparrow.com

Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad Wednesday said he perceives e-commerce as an extension which surely will pave way for the new India or Digital India. “The dream of witnessing a Digital India will be fulfilled the day when the availability of resources, items and opportunities are just a click away for the Indians,” the minister said. He was speaking at the e-Commerce Conclave organised by BRICS Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The minister added that one of his highly desired objectives is to see Dalit women operating in e-commerce in a Dalit village. “The highest day of my life as an IT Minister is when in a Dalit village Dalit women become digitally literate and run a proper common service centre with computers in their hands and operate in e-commerce,” he said.

Google optimises its search engine for India JD

Google seeks to draw more Indian Internet users with a new platform that will provide better, targeted content for them. The search giant said it has formed the Indian Language Internet Alliance with industry partners, in addition to launching the Hindi voice search.

Internet use here is expected to grow to about 500 million by 2017, but hitting this mark will depend on making the online service accessible to those who don’t speak English, said Rajan Anandan, managing director of Google India. There are currently 200 million Indian English speakers, most of whom are online. Anandan said that the 5 million Internet users being added daily use the mobile platform, and not all of them speak English.

India to become second -largest Internet market Buoyed by strong growth in Internet consumption on mobile devices, the number of people online in India is forecast to touch 302 milJD lion by end of this year, overtaking the US as the secondlargest Internet market in the world. According to a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB International, the number of Internet users in India is expected to grow 32 per cent to 302 million this year from 213 million at the end of December last year. The Internet user base in the country is further estimated to grow to 354 million by June 2015.

5G for super-fast Internet in the offing Researchers are now close to finding how software-defined cellular networking might be used to give smartphone users the next generation of super-superfast broadband - 5G. Collaboration between NEC Electronics Samsung and several academic centres in China and Iran have assessed the latest developments aimed at 5G systems.

They have proposed their own novel end-to-end (E2E) software-defined cellular network (SDCN) architecture which, they say, offers flexibility, scalability, agility and efficiency.

THE GOLDEN SPARROW ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 29, 2014

PUNE

“The acquisition by a global technology firm is a big validation for India’s product ecosystem. In a few years, we will have many bn dollar product companies as India’s capability to build them is prevalent.”

—Rajan Anandan, managing director, Google India

‘Start-up club’ gets going in Mundhwa

A half day seminar on understanding the provisions of Central Value Added Tax (CENVAT) credit under central excise and service tax law will be held at conference hall no. 7, MCCIA on December 5, from 3:30 pm onwards. Waman Parkhi, chairman central excise and service tax committee, MCCIA and Manas Joshi, member central excise and service tax committee, MCCIA will be the faculty for the programme. They will talk about how manufacturers and service providers can use input tax credit on raw materials, capital goods and input services for making payments under central excise and service tax (with effect from 2004). The fees for members are Rs 1000 and for others it is Rs 1200. For registration and further details please contact Kiran Joshi on 020-2570 9182

Importance of web presence for SMEs

START-UP MENTOR

Mahratta Chambers of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) is organising a session on In the Wonderland of Dot Com - Importance of Having a Web Presence for SMEs in India on December 5, from 6:00 pm at Navalmal Firodia Conference Hall, MCCIA, SB Road. The event will cover topics like starting a website, avoiding mistakes in selection of vendor companies, case studies of successful SME websites and a brief on digital marketing strategies.

Siddharth Deshmukh, independent web hosting consultant will be the speaker for the programme.

Pune’s young and first gen entrepreneurs get together, exchange notes and ideas over beer and fun RITU GOYAL HARISH @ritugh The atmosphere at Independence Brewing Company, Mundhwa, the venue for a start-up meet was quite electric as several young entrepreneurs from Pune, including many young ladies hobnobbed with other entrepreneurs in an informal set up.

Games, random grouping of people, sharing of start-up profi les, slam poetry and free flowing beer brought this fi rst generation entrepreneur community of Pune together.

Shailendra Bist, co-owner of Independence Brewing Company says there are many ventures in Pune that are not tech start-ups that make money and hog the limelight.

Startups present at the event were a diverse lot - from a company that provides student enhancement programmes, a new micro brewery start-up to be opened in Chakan recently, a holiday creator, a tech start-up that aims to provide technology services to common people at $1 per product, a dance company run by a young dancer and a blogger who writes about technology start ups.

The meet was Bist’s brainchild.

“We are a start up and have gone through the pain and suffering of setting it up. We want Independence Brewing Company to become a space for all start ups” he said. While contemplating marketing strategies Bist decided to do his bit to nurture businesses and start ups. “Corporates get discounts from

Independence Brewing Company at Mundhwa has offered to host start-up networking sessions. This is partner Shailendra Bist’s idea and he hopes to make it a sought after start-up destination of the city

everywhere but start said adding that this way of celebrating the a start up.

“We were also

ups don’t” he meet is their spirit of being targeting the

This feature is a collaboration between The Golden Sparrow on Saturday and The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), the world’s largest non-profit network of entrepreneurs. For additional questions about your entrepreneurial challenges, write to mentoring@pune.tie.org

TYPES OF INCONGRUITIES : The first is an incongruity with

Peter Drucker’s Seven Sources of Innovation 1. The Unexpected Success

Failure

Outside Event

entrepreneurs of start ups fall in this category” he added.

Ruchi Jhawar, Director of Indian Artizans, a start-up that is just over a year old was at the

ritugoyalharish@gmail.com

Stitching a business through creativity, hard work

Finding opportunities in incongruities

Hopefully, you are beginning to see that the opportunity for innovation really are everywhere, you just need to actively look for the change because the unexpected is the direct symptom of change it’s the most reliable source of the innovation generally the easiest to find.

However, our next source is also ripe with opportunity and that source is what Drucker called incongruities.

Incongruities are basically things that just don’t make sense. They don’t feel right. But next you should think there is an opportunity for innovation here.

Example of this is the airline industry in India. While the passenger numbers and demand grew steadily, the airlines continued to bleed. This has led to innovations in ‘low cost’ airlines that have rewritten rules of financing, aircraft utilization, generating additional sources of revenue and many such things. This has allowed some airlines to be profitable, while others still languish.

In order to turn an incongruities in opportunity few things need to be true, • First, a solution to the incongruities should be clearly definable in existing known technologies. If the solution to the problem there is a large amount of research and new knowledge is still necessary to solve the problem then incongruity is not right for innovation.

• Second, the solution can’t be too complicated, a complex solution to a confusing problem only leads to more confusion. A simple solution to a confusing problem is an innovation at its best.

Note for these two conditions to be true you likely need a strong knowledge of the industry you are examining. As we are searching for the unexpected you will need to look at the areas you know best.

With that in mind let’s talk about what kind of incongruities are out there.

younger, smarter, adventurous, educated world traveller, a crowd capable of trying out new things and that has a world view to promote our start up. We’ve realised that most

meet with her husband who is cofounder and executive director of the company. “The experience was very nice. We got to hear a lot of new innovative ideas and stories in the start up area. We met people with who we felt we could strike a chord later for business. For example we were notable to spot a good photographer in Pune and we found a lady at the meet who is a photographer with her own start up” she said.

More than all else, it was the buzz, the excitement of being part of the start up fraternity that got everyone to mingle with ease and positivity.

“The excitement with which people meet, the energy that drives all start ups, that is what we got to experience” said Jhawar.

Harshita Aggarwal runs a company with her husband and they are in the business of conducting student enhancement programmes through CAT and GMAT training.

They also train colleges to make students corporate ready. Aggarwal has been to several start up meets which she views as an opportunity to get business. “I found this meet to be more organised. The organisers had made efforts to make sure people networked with each other through games. It was fulfi lling for business and we got a few leads.”

According to Aggarwal such meets work to the mutual benefit of participating start ups that are not branded and difficult to spot otherwise.

HIGHT RELIABILITY

Entrepreneur Nilima Sathe has come a long way to start her brand ‘Bags and Purses’ and get recognition for her innovative use of old fabrics ANIRUDDHA RAJANDEKAR

Seminar on Central VAT provisions

RAHUL RAUT

Signposts

Vishwas Mahajan

“Some of the biggest names in global venture investing, including Facebook investor Andreessen Horowitz are yet to take big bets in India. Long-term blue-chip venture investors must enter India.”

—Prashanth Prakash, partner at Accel

2. Incongruities Economics

Reality

Values

Rhythm

3. Process Need 4. Industry/ Market Structure Growth

Maturing

Converge

Model

5. Demographics 6. Changes in Perception LOW RELIABILITY 7. New Knowledge Nilima Sathe’s entrepreneurial innovation lies in her selection of different materials like satin, silk and jute in making purses

economic reality for instance the demand for product is growing but the firms aren’t profitable. The economics say one thing but the actual performance says another. The industry insider should have the best insight. Yet some things still make no sense.

The next type of incongruity is the distinction between reality and our assumptions about it. This actually is fairly easy incongruity to spot, there is something is factually wrong. The hard part clear understanding between the true natures of the incongruity, it requires deep industry knowledge and understanding.

The third type of incongruity and possibly the most prevalent is the incongruity between perceived and actual customer or user values and experiences. Too often, entrepreneurs provide series or products they need to sell, rather than those that users actually value. Generally this comes from the misguided belief that I know what the customer wants. To know what the

customers wants you need to listen to the customer. If you are in the office and not constantly talking to the customers you likely to have the incongruity between what your costumers wants and what you think they want.

The last type of incongruity, that can be exploited, is incongruity with a rhythm and logic of a process. This is the part of process that everyone hates but no one bothers to fi x, it’s like a nail in your shoes, eventually you don’t notice it, until someone takes it out for you.

EXERCISE : As an exercise, I want you to think about examples around you that embody these types of incongruities in every day situations around you. This may also lead to thinking of solutions on how to ‘fi x’ these. You never know, something may turn out to be a worthwhile business idea.

Vishwas Mahajan, president of TiE Pune Chapter, answers real life questions of entrepreneurs.

BY ASHISH PHADNIS @phadnis_ashish Homemaker Nilima Sathe always had an inclination towards creativity.

And after several years of marriage, it was in 2006 when she decided to give it a call. But instead of getting support, she faced criticism.

However, she kept pursuing her passion and now her ‘Bags and Crafts’ is a brand name for designer purses and other creative items.

“Unfortunately, in our society, stitching clothes and other items is considered as a low grade job. At the initial stage of my business, nobody would believe that I was doing this willingly. It took years to get it acknowledged as a mode of creativity,” said Sathe.

Talking about the challenges, she said she was good at painting and crafts but was clueless on how to use her skills in making money. “First I

tried my hands on dry bouquet, but wasn’t satisfied with it. Then I decided to go for designing purses. It was a tough call, as I wasn’t sure whether it would work or not. After searching the entire Laxmi Road, what I bought was a half a metre cloth for Rs 50. That was my initial investment.”

Nilima was supported by some of her friends who bought the initial products and soon she started getting orders by mouth-to-mouth publicity.

Motivated by the support, she started working on other materials like satin, silk and jute.

“What people liked about my products was the innovation behind it.

Instead of making some fancy items, I stressed more on utility value. Along with the purses, the products like cotton-made jewellery box, all-in-one folder, backpacks for kids, saree and shirt boxes became widely popular.

The small purses to carry mobiles are in the market, but I had that idea long

back, and my clients are using it for over six years now. Secondly, these are not the machine-made large scale products as every product gets my personal attention,” said Nilima.

Another popular item in Nilima’s list is the purses made from old paithanis and embroidered zari sarees.

“The wedding saree is just a one-time wear. Post marriage one hardly gets the opportunity to wear it again. So, I came up with this idea that became an instant hit. Most of my clients have sent such purses to their children living abroad and I can proudly say that my products are used in at least 20-25 countries,” she said.

“So far I haven’t advertised my products. It was completely mouthto-mouth publicity. But now I am thinking about creating a Facebook page,” said Nilima. ashish.phadnis@goldensparrow.com

THE GOLDEN SPARROW ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 29, 2014

THE GOLDEN SPARROW ON SATURDAY

PUNE

NOVEMBER 29, 2014

PUNE

ANIRUDDHA RAJANDEKAR

What must parents do to protect children from sexual abuse

When a child is sexually abused…

Manasi Saraf Joshi reports on the plight of a six-year-old who was abused by the bus driver of a reputed school in Warje

Recent cases of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) in Pune have once again highlighted the need for greater protection for our children. Pune Police have reported 171 cases of CSA between January and October, 2014, a 35% increase over last year. The victims were mostly children in the 8-14 age group, and the suspects ranged from school teachers to autorickshaw and van drivers

“Shying away from the topic puts children in grave danger”

Vaginal and anal itching or bleeding Vaginal or penile discharge or swelling

MENTAL

Bruises or unexplained injuries on face, neck or genitals

Disturbed sleep patterns/nightmares/bed wetting Drop in school performance

Bhooshan Shukla, Child Psychologist speaks

school authorities when they notice any kind of change, be it absence of female attendant or presence of a new driver. This way they can document their protest and schools will pay more attention to it. Parents should also check whether the female attendant is related to the driver.

In fact, even the government is responsible for such incidents as they are not giving us good schools, forcing parents to send their children to private schools where security is always a concern.

Domestic abuse is also a major concern. Good touch and bad touch are just to make children aware. Whenever there is an abuse, it begins with good touch.

In short, parents instead of discussing that their child is not eating lunch box

“Even the govt is responsible for such incidents as they are not giving us good schools.”

Parents Speak

Akshta Tilak, a resident of Chinchwad and mother of standard VII student Vaidahi

I started teaching my daughter about good touch and bad touch from her early age. She came to know more about sex abuse at the programme that was arranged by our housing society after the Nirbhaya incident to pay homage to the victim. She now discusses openly with us and shares every thought. Instead of making our children afraid of facing such incidents we should empower them to fight it. There is a need of have an

Withdrawal from others, Fear of people and places

Sudden change in behaviour

‘Instead of unfinished lunch box, parents should be concerned about their kids’ safety’ I strongly believe that parents must be vigilant to avoid such incidents.

Children are too innocent to know about it. You cannot teach them what to do and how to deal with the situation. Parents should call up school authorities and alert a Childline when they find a female attendant absent in the school bus.

I have seen parents discussing many things regarding their children with the school teachers and principals for hours, but ignore their wards’ safety and security concerns. It is the responsibility of parents and schools to be vigilant and take utmost care of children. Many parents send their children with anyone to school to save on a few bucks. It is the responsibility of adults to take care of children.

Parents must email or mail a letter to the

Pune NGOs working on CSA

open forum in family where children are free to express themselves. It will give children confidence to react to such possible situations bravely.

Aparna Potdar lives in Nigdi and has two daughters in primary school

Recent incidents of student molestation in school buses are alarming. As a preventive measure, I have admitted my daughters to a nearby school. Either I drop and pick them up from school or parents in our neighbourhood volunteer to do it by turns. Primary and pre-primary children are too naive to understand

X

*#

Difficulty in concentration

Muskaan PHONE - +91-20-25444122 EMAIL - alochanapune@gmail.com muskaanpune@gmail.com MUSKAAN HELPLINE +91-9689062202

Anxiety Depression Suicidal feelings

Dnyana Devi Childline HELPLINE – 1098

How they were nabbed

According to the police, in majority of the molestation or rape incidents, the victims (minor schoolgoing girls or boys) were known to the suspects.

Since January this year, the city police have recorded 171 cases under the provisions of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012. Some of the cases took place in school vans and on school premises.

November 2014: The parents of the standard IX student of a private school located in Rupinagar in Nigdi complained to the school authorities when their daughter said that a clerk at the school physically abused her. The clerk was arrested after a probe revealed his involvement.

September 2014: A school van driver molested one eight-year-old girl in his vehicle and threatened her. The victim, a resident of Hadapsar and standard III student, refused to go in the van for two days and finally broke down in front of her mother. The driver was arrested. The girl used to be the last one to be dropped by the offender.

April 2014: A school bus attendant was arrested after a four-year-old girl narrated the ordeal that she went through in the bus on the way back from school to her mother. Subsequently, it was revealed that he had molested other girls also. The attendant and driver of the bus were arrested by the Deccan Gymkhana police after the school authorities lodged a police complaint.

March 2014: An 11-year-old boy of a reputed city-based school refused to go to school and told his mother the reason on her persistent questioning.

A 21-year-old school van driver was arrested by the Yerawada police for allegedly sodomising the victim. The suspect had been abusing the standard V student for five months. gitesh.shelke@goldensparrow.com

‘Schools must not hush up cases of CSA’

Schools cannot remain insulated from cases of abuse that take place in their precincts. Instead of trying to hush up the matter, schools must adopt a proactive policy - that of reporting the culprit and installing faith in their schools again RITU GOYAL HARISH @ritugh The driver and attendant of a school bus of a Pune school molested a four-yearold in April 2014 and the school allegedly took no cognisance of the complaint Lakshmi Kumar made by the parents for three days, until the hapless parents approached the cops. In another similar case, a six-year-old’s complaints that she was abused by the school van driver, went unheard by the school.

Two committees set up by the education department to look into these two incidents of sexual abuse found that the schools were negligent in taking appropriate action against the perpetrators. In one case, the committee found that the school did not cooperate during the enquiry.

It is a matter of grave concern for all when schools attempt to ignore or even hush up matters of sexual abuse of their students because schools are the sanctums where children spend eight hours of their day. It is the responsibility of schools to ensure that the children get a safe environment.

While schools may not be able to create a sterile environment for their students, the first thing they need to do is understand their responsibility as an educational institution and their duty

towards the child, the parents and the law.

The Orchid School, Baner was in the news in February 2013 when they approached the police to report cases of sexual abuse of 22 girl students of class V by a teacher over a period of two months. The teacher was booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO).

The school’s director Lakshmi Kumar went on record

N

O TI A UT

Ahmedabad-based pre-school Shanti Juniors and the Model Colony, Baner and Kothrud branches run by its franchise Step Up conducted a workshop ‘Good Touch- Bad Touch’ for parents at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan high school on November 22. The school believes that children who are informed about their safety are better empowered to report abuse, prevent its re-occurrence and report it to parents.

Shanti Juniors curriculum head Dimple Chhotai said, “It is not necessary that child abusers are only outsiders or unknown people, the abuser can be a domestic

helper, friend, neighbour, relative or family member. To safeguard our young ones against abuse we adults must involve parents, teachers and helpers/attendants by imparting the information and skills to identify and avoid any such incident of ‘child abuse’.”

Chhotai said parents need to be vigilant but not extensively paranoid about people as it would make the world a very unfriendly place. She advised parents to talk about hygiene of private parts and the difference between ‘safe touch’ and ‘bad touch’ with children from an early age. She told the elders to build a friendly atmosphere for conversation at home.

The workshop also gave insight into

possible clues to find if a child is emotionally or sexually abused by observing behavioural changes of shame, disgust and sadness.

“If such an incident were to take place, parents must immediately seek professional help by calling ‘Childline 1098’,” she said.

Cartoon clips were shown to educate parents about child abuse.

During an interactive session, parents and teachers shared their concerns and highlighted the need to orient their children about prevention of child abuse through simple rules. Bharati Vidya Bhavan high school principal Aparna Das and child rights activist Dr Anuradha Sahasrabudhe

In an appeal to the parents of the school who were undoubtedly shocked by the incident, Kumar wrote, “The most important of all is to know that we have moral, legal and social obligation to create a safety net for our children. Be aware that we now have laws requiring that persons who know or have a reason to suspect that a child has been sexually abused must report that abuse to local law enforcement officials, by law to report suspected abuse.”

The school was clear that frivolous and almost irrational (in face of the safety of the child) concerns about the ‘reputation’ of the school were selfish and would not be considered at the cost of the child.

A beacon of hope for sexually abused children, POCSO lays down guidelines for legal recourse.

But for schools, the responsibility must begin with

RES

PON

P RE

SIB

“We conduct training sessions for parents, teachers, peons and aayahs in the school to sensitise them over the issue.

We have conducted Nandkumar Good and Bad Kakirde Touch sessions for them. We have given instructions to male peons that even if a small girl student falls down, they will not pick her up. They will call the aayah.

Girl students have been instructed to feel free to discuss their problems with the class teacher or headmistress. The parents too have been told to inform the school first about any untoward incident happening with their wards. We will immediately take action and if required would also not hesitate to file a First Information Report (FIR) at the nearest police station. Since we don’t have our own transport system, we have maintained a detailed record of

“Girls have been instructed to feel free to discuss problems with their teachers”

ILIT

Y

Good touch Bad Touch Not so good touch

acknowledging that an incident has occurred and to take all possible measures to support the child and the parents in their fight for justice. That is the only way a school can redeem its ‘reputation’ and regain its glory. ritugoyalharish@gmail.com

to reassure them.

The parents are disappointed that the accused was granted judicial custody.

According to Santosh, “None from the neighbourhood came forward to help the family or even provide moral support. “The entire society has become insensitive which is all the more disturbing,” he said.

(Some names have been changed to protect identity.) manasisaraf@gmail.com

Nandkumar Kakirde, Secretary, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s English Medium School (Model Colony and Kothrud Branch)

L

t o state that as a school it was their responsibility to uphold the law without negotiating with it or compromising on the safety of the children. “We have to understand our responsibility as a child minder and must stand up for the good intent of the law,” she had said.

stopped speaking to her parents and her younger sister.

Entrepreneur Santosh Deshpande who has decided to fight the case on her parents’ behalf said, “She and her family have been completely devastated by this.”

The daughter of a peon in a private fi rm, Sonali and her sister now refuse to go to school.

The girl is undergoing treatment for her physical wounds and undergoing counseling sessions with a psychologist. Her mother has been spending time with both her daughters

Schools get proactive in dealing with CSA

SCHOO

Shanti Juniors talks about ‘Good Touch and Bad Touch’

BY REUBEN PAUL @ReubenPPaul

Six-year-old Sonali has stopped playing with her friends. She also does not want to send her doll to school as she fears that her doll too “would be made dirty”. Sonali was studying at a reputed school in Warje where she was raped by her school van driver.

The incident took place in the vicinity of the school, in the van which was on contract with the school. The school has refused to take responsibility saying that the incident took place outside the school’s premises.

She is so scared that she has

RAHUL RAUT

PHYSICAL

Recognising signs of Child Sexual Abuse

to staff members, volunteers, young teachers etc, and screen ancillary staff, especially those who accompany children on field trips, picnics and excursions.

“Parents should adopt this as a mandatory procedure,” she says. One of her suggestions is to form a group of parents that interacts with each other and thus increases the chances of spotting a potential abuser. This then becomes a forum that protects its children.

She also feels that sex education at home, through open discussions and story telling, will break down the barriers and children will get the information they need from the one significant adult who they can trust completely.

Paul says, “More than all else, if parents are part of their children’s lives, children will feel confident about talking to them. Parents need to remember that they haven’t brought children into this world to neglect them so.” ritugoyalharish@gmail.com

the van drivers who ferry our children and have also trained them in appropriate behaviour. Similarly, we don’t allow any van to enter or exit the premises without a lady attendant on it. We have a centre for psychology run by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan which can provide counseling to parents and children as per their need.

Outsiders can also avail of this facility. manasisaraf@gmail.com

Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan School has taken a number of steps to deal with CSA

The Protection of Children against Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) came into effect on Children’s Day, November 14, 2012.

SALIENT FEATURES OF POCSO • It is gender neutral.

• It makes the reporting of abuse mandatory.

• It makes the recording of sexual abuse mandatory.

• It lists all known types of sexual offences towards minors.

• It provides for the protection of minors during the judicial process.

PROVISIONS OF POCSO • Police officers must bring every case to the attention of the Child Welfare Committee within 24 hours of receiving a report.

• They must also be in plain clothes while recording the minor’s statement so as to not appear intimidating.

• The statement must be recorded in a place chosen

by the minor, in the presence of a person that he/she trusts.

• The medico-legal examination for the collection of forensic evidence must be conducted only by a female doctor, in the presence of a person that the minor trusts.

SPECIAL COURTS HAVE BEEN SET UP TO CONDUCT SPEEDY, IN-CAMERA TRIALS. THESE COURTS MUST ENSURE THAT: • the minor is not exposed in any way to the accused during the recording of evidence.

• the minor’s identity is not disclosed at any time during the investigation or trial.

• the minor is not made to repeat his/her testimony in court, and that he/she can give the testimony using a video link.

• the case is disposed within one year from the date of the offence being reported.

• the defence routes all questions through the judge and is not allowed to ask them in an aggressive manner.

• an interpreter, translator, special educator or any other expert is present in court for the minor’s assistance.

• compensation for medical treatment and rehabilitation is given to a minor who has been sexually abused.

PUNISHMENTS LISTED UNDER POCSO Penetrative sexual assault: Penetration that is peno-vaginal, peno-oral, penourethral or peno-anal, fingering or object penetration.

Punishment: Not less than 7 years; this may extend to life imprisonment, and a fine (Section 4).

Aggravated penetrative sexual assault: Committed by a person of trust or authority such as a police officer.

Punishment: Not less than 10 years; this may extend to rigorous life imprisonment, and a fine (Section 6).

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A model school that focuses on safety measures The City Pride School at Sector 27A in NigdiPradhikaran has put all sexual abuse prevention measures in place. The CBSE school has 10 buses, including four that are hired. The school authority appoints attendants and drivers for these outsourced buses also. Apart from installing GPS system in buses, the school campus is covered by CCTVs. Parents are provided pick cards for drop-and-pick-up of their children. Some school staff also travel in these buses. All the teaching and administrative staff in the school are females, except for a few

male staff for sports department. The school’s director Ashwini Kulkarni said, “Our teachers take regular rounds in school buses. We have self-defence courses for students of V standard and above. We hold interactions with parents, listen to their queries or suggestions and implement them. Parents should monitor their children’s social media usage and protect them from falling prey to child abuse. Schools have their limitations.”

archana.dahiwal@goldensparrow.com

In municipal schools...

As most of the parents of children studying in municipal schools cannot afford private transport service, students come on their own or parents drop off and pick them up from school. The senior students use the free passes provided by the civic body to use PMPML buses for transport.

“Hence, molestation cases involving civic schools rarely happen,” PCMC education board chairman Fazal Shaikh said.

Shaikh said that a panel headed by parents is formed by municipal schools. Principals

hold monthly meetings and discuss various issues with parents. The meeting reports are forwarded to the education board for necessary action.

WIKI COMMONS

parents don’t give quality time to their children.

“They don’t listen when children talk and when something ghastly happens, it makes the children feel that they won’t be heard or trusted. No matter how tired you are, you must listen to your children,” she emphasises.

Paul also cautions parents against neglecting signs of abuse such as flinching from touch, or walking in a different way (indicative of physical discomfort). “Due to the stigma attached, parents may ignore these signs but these red flags are what they need to watch out for otherwise these children will grow up with deep emotional scars,” she says.

Paul feels that parents must, as their right, ask schools for information related

POCSO

The role of parents in dealing with the issue of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) and in protecting their children against their vulnerability to CSA is of paramount importance. The sooner parents accept this responsibility, the better it will be for their children and for themselves.

Equally important is the role of schools where children spend eight hours of their day.

Unfortunately, it has been found that many parents feel uncomfortable in addressing the issue. Often, abused children are scared to confide in a parent due to fear of castigation and fear that they will not be believed. They fear a parent’s reaction and feel they have let their parents down. Coupled with feelings of guilt and the intimidation they are sometimes subjected to at the hands of the perpetrator, they suffer in

silence until the aftermath of the abuse becomes noticeable.

City-based Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist Dr Bhooshan Shukla, has produced a video film, No Bad Touch, which addresses CSA and can be showed to children 4 years old and above. According to him, “It is essential that an environment of trust and respect is created so that children can communicate with their parents openly about what makes them uncomfortable.”

“Shying away from the topic puts children in grave danger,” says Nandita Saxena Paul, special needs educator and English teacher, and mother of two boys. In her extensive experience as an educator of over two decades, she has found that

D E CO D I N G

RITU GOYAL HARISH @ritugh

Regular training at PMC schools The Pune Municipal Corporation’s Education Department conducts a joint meeting of all PMC school principals every month and provides them with training on the issue. Special lectures are held for them and special sessions for the students from PMC’s Vidya Niketan schools as these children normally come to school by PMPML buses.

Non-penetrative sexual assault: Committed by whoever, with a sexual intent, » touches the vagina, penis, anus or breast of the child » makes the child touch the vagina, penis, anus or breast of such person or any other person » does any other act with sexual intent which involves physical contact without penetration.

Punishment: Not less than 3 years; this may extend to 5 years, and a fine (Section 10).

Aggravated non-penetrative sexual assault: Committed by a person of trust or authority such as a police officer.

Punishment: Not less than 5 years; this may extend to 7 years, and a fine (Section 10).

Sexual harassment: Unwelcome sexual remarks, emails or telephone calls; taunting, jeering, demands or requests for sexual

Similarly, a copy of government resolution (GR) has been made available in every school. All school principals have been sensitized on the act and it is their responsibility to register any complaints on the issue. Principals have been given full autonomy and powers to go ahead and file police complaint if they feel necessary.

favours.

Punishment: 3 years and a fine (Section 12).

Use of minor for pornographic purposes: Involving a child in the preparation, production and/or distribution of pornography via print, electronic, computer or any other technology.

Punishment: 5 years and a fine, and in the event of second conviction, 7 years and a fine (Section 14 (1)).

Attempt of offence: Punishment: 1 year and/or fine (Section 18).

Abetment of offence: Instigating a person to commit an offence; conspiring to commit an offence; intentionally aiding an offence.

Punishment: Same as that of the offence (Section 17).

Failure to report an offence Punishment: 6 months and/or a fine (Section 21).

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http://www.satyamevjayate.in/

THE GOLDEN SPARROW ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 29, 2014

A hammer comes down on an honour for Britain P 13

“We will ensure that tourists coming to India are safe and secure. Travellers since ancient times have been drawn to India to experience its philosophy and spiritualism.”

— Rajnath Singh, Union home minister

SAARC won’t take off as long as Pakistan is on board Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif walks past Indian counterpart Narendra Modi during the opening session of the 18th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit at City Hall in Kathmandu on November 26

been busy lobbying for China to enter SAARC, as if this organisation does not already have enough problems getting its act together. India has thus said no. A Pakistan-China combo at SAARC will

US welcomes WTO deal with India

BY ARUN KUMAR WASHINGTON: US has welcomed the World Trade Organization reaching as historic multilateral trade deal with India on board after months of deadlock with New Delhi standing firm on its food security programme.

The Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) approved by 160 WTO members in Geneva Thursday aims to streamline and harmonise customs procedures to bring an estimated saving of more than $1 trillion annually.

The TFA, the first multilateral trade agreement in the WTO’s 20-year history, also known as Bali agreement, cleared a major hurdle with US and India earlier this month agreeing to a “peace clause” over India’s food-stockpiling programme.

“The WTO has taken a critical step forward by breaking the impasse that has prevailed since July,” US Trade Representative Michael Froman said in a statement.

“I am pleased that the United States was able to work with India and other WTO members to find an approach that preserved the letter and spirit of the package of decisions reached at last year’s Bali Ministerial Conference,” he said.

Froman noted that US recently worked with India to break the impasse reached “on July 1, when a small group of WTO Members blocked adoption of the Protocol of Amendment for the

TFA by the deadline established in the Bali Package.”

The WTO General Council adopted decisions Thursday which “endorse the approach agreed upon by the United States and India,” he said.

These include “a decision on public stockholding for food security, clarifying that a ‘peace clause, against legal challenges to certain public stockholding programmes, will continue until a permanent solution on such programmes is agreed and adopted,” he noted.

Also reached was a decision to extend until July 2015 the deadline for developing a work programme covering all remaining issues in the Doha Round of negotiations.

The TFA “has the potential to fundamentally reform global customs practices and substantially reduce the costs and time associated with goods crossing borders,” Froman said.

“It’s a perfect example of how breaking down barriers to trade can unlock new opportunities for developed and developing countries alike, and it’s a particularly important win for small and businesses in all countries,” he said.

“With this win under the WTO’s belt, we can once again focus our efforts on revitalising the organization’s core negotiating functions,” Froman said.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in).

PMC asked to restore Chandan Nagar subway Contd from p 1

Copy of the letter has sent to Nagar Road ward officer to get the work done as early as in weeks’ time,” he said.

Over the last three weeks, The Golden Sparrow on Saturday has been highlighting the poor utilisation of pedestrian subways in the city

The idea of nations being tied together in an economic bloc in order to prevent armed conflict is flawed as long as the political will to make peace is missing.

The European Union was created in stages after the second world war precisely because France and Germany wanted to bury the hatchet. If they had not decided to end their fratricide, the EU would have been crippled from day one.

This means SAARC is a meaningless forum as long as Pakistan and India do not come to a political agreement on ending hostilities – on the border or on terrorism. But Pakistan has no such intent as long as it does not wrest Kashmir from India. Peace cannot be bought by oneway concessions, and so effectively IndiaPakistan rivalry, abetted by China on Pakistan’s side, will continue indefinitely till either Pakistan is weakened enough to sue for peace, or China finds that it is not worth bankrolling a failing state.

The bottomline for India is thus simple: we have to forget about SAARC, and focus on trade with the other six nations – Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and Maldives.

We can open up trade routes, lower tariff barriers, and connect ports and integrate power grids between India and the other six through bilateral basis.

Once the cooperation begins, Pakistan will either be forced to join to gain leverage or it can rot in splendid isolation.

SAARC will not fly with Pakistan on board. We have to go ahead without it by downgrading SAARC, and focusing on bilateral deals with the rest.

(By special arrangement with Firstpost.com)

even though they were constructed at an estimated cost of Rs.50 crore.

It was found that in most cases, poor maintenance and poor traffic planning by the PMC are responsible for their unpopularity with the public. ashok.bhat21@gmail.com

not only ruin the organisation’s existing balance, but make it easier for the smaller nations to play one nation against the other to bring whatever little progress has been made to a standstill.

IN THE

NEWS

180 days of hero worshipping, irrational exuberance Reads Modi’s ‘report card’ as there is no routine metrics to check the country’s progress under him for such short period

BY AKSHAYA MISHRA Six months. That’s how long it takes to change a country. And how do you measure change? Well, by the swagger of the leaders, the adulatory exuberance in streets on foreign land and the gush media’s ability to abandon reason for unabashed chest-thumping. As yardsticks go, these are odd. But that is all we have to judge Narendra Modi’s performance in the last six months.

The routine metrics are still not in play as the period under assessment is too short.

Now, about the change. If it sounds a bit sarcastic, well, it cannot be helped. If the gush media is to be believed we are a global superpower already. The proof: India can get bigger, noisier crowds on the streets than any other country anywhere in the world; and our television anchors can invite guests from foreign countries to their shows and insult and humiliate them no end. Also, we are an economic powerhouse which no country can ignore. Weren’t they moving around with begging bowls till we allowed them to do business with us?

All our immediate problems are over. That niggle called Pakistan has been silenced forever. Stop talking to them; do it long enough so that they

forget about terrorists they sponsor to target India and forget Kashmir too.

China, of course, is a joke, more hype than substance. It has been put in its place. India is a certified South Asian superpower now and can play the big brother in the region without qualms.

Back home, the economy is back on the rails. UPA’s bugbear for over four years, inflation, has been tackled well.

Didn’t it take only six months for the new government to tackle that? What the experts won’t tell us though is the role of sharp, unexpected dip in crude and commodity prices globally in taming prices – it has yet to reflect i n retail prices though. This is the windfall UPA 1 enjoyed too. The balance of payment matter is taken care of, and issues of corruption, crony capitalism and black money are off public consciousness. If the ‘experts’ in the media are to be believed the Golden Age of economic prosperity is already upon us.

Talk, talk and more talk and little action on the ground – that’s what it has been so far. The first six months of Modi have been about goodwill garnering.

Now it’s time for him to translate it into concrete deliverables. He has proven himself to be a pragmatic leader. He shouldn’t allow the frenzied, irrational adulation distract him.

Firstpost.com

Catch up with developments in Pune as the week comes to a close

Crimes against women on the rise The crime in Maha, 2013 report has indicated a rise in crimes against women and children. Additional director general of police (prisons) Meeran Chaddha Borwankar pointed out that the court disposal of cases is just 8.5 per cent. She said that the crime statistics are tools for analysis and not a matter of criticism.

The reason cited by a senior CID officer for releasing the ‘Crime in Maharashtra 2013’ report towards the end of 2014, was that former home minister RR Patil was unavailable in the beginning of the year. Later, the code of conduct

ANIRUDDHA RAJANDEKAR

Beyond the speeches, the current summit of the eight-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in Kathmandu is likely to come up with zilch. Reason: as long as Pakistan and India are not on the same page on any issue, SAARC will be a non-starter.

India needs to downgrade SAARC to a mere talk-shop, and focus instead on bilateral deals with the rest, excluding Pakistan. The only reason SAARC exists is to give the members an appearance of amity; the only reason it cannot be shut down completely is because it gives China an opening to create its own South Asian Forum by excluding India.

Pakistan has been a virus in the circuits of SAARC for as long as one can remember. As a NDTV report of November 26 suggests, in the current summit as many as three agreements — two for improving road and rail connections and a third for integrating the power grids so that SAARC countries can trade in electricity — will be junked as Pakistan has said nein. And Pakistan is placing roadblocks because it wants to force India to start talking and do a deal on Kashmir – which is impossible. Apart from resuming talks without purpose, there is no way to make a deal on Kashmir without further vivisection – which is not acceptable to India.

To aid Pakistan in this process of countering India, China wants to be a part of SAARC by being upgraded to dialogue partner (or even a full member) and not just an observer. Pakistan has

IANS

As long as Pakistan and India are not on the same page on any issue, the eight-nation summit will be a non-starter

BY R JAGANNATHAN

PUNE

webcasts will be a boon to those who are unable to attend. CCTVs have been installed. The webcast will be done using the Internet and the camera, said Amit Lonkar, a member of the group who has provided the technical support.

Activists demand survey of buildings in blue flood line

President Pranab Mukherjee being presented a flag by a foreign student at the 11th convocation ceremony of Symbiosis International University

(From L) Police officers SP Yadav, Satish Mathur and Meeran Chaddha Borwankar

for Lok Sabha polls came into force, followed by the state assembly elections.

State leaders were conspicuous by their absence in the low key function where city police commissioner Satish Mathur released the report recently. Borwankar and additional director general of police (State, CID) SP Yadav were present.

We need to check brain drain: President During a visit to Pune on November 26, president Pranab Mukherjee said that despite having 723 universities and over 37,000 colleges, India was deficient in terms of good quality institutions. No Indian institution is ranked amongst the top 200 universities in the world.

Mukherjee was in the city to attend the 11th convocation ceremony of Symbiosis International University (SIU). Governor C Vidyasagar Rao, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and founder chancellor of SIU SB Mujumdar

were present. Graduate and postgraduate degrees were given to students while veteran spiritual guru Dada JP Vaswani and academician Haresh Shah, who is professor emeritus at the Stanford University, USA, were awarded honorary doctor of letters (DLitt) degrees.

President said that he believes that a few of our leading institutions can do better through a systematic and proactive approach. “Bright Indian students, around two lakh every year, go abroad seeking higher education. It is a matter of introspection as how we can bring our centres of higher learning back into the fold of leading institutions in the world,” he said.

them, Marathi film actresses Shruti Marathe and Mrunmayi Deshpande also performed on the occasion. City business house DSK Group had organised the programme. The highlight of the event was a musical programme ‘DSK Anandyatra — an era of Ga Di Madgulkar’, that was performed to the latest beats of music duo Ajay-Atul.

Spiritual guru Dada Vaishampiyan was felicitated for his work and a donation of Rs 1 lakh was given to his old age home located in Ahmednagar.

Little champs’ perform in the city

The Vaikunth crematorium and a citybased NGO Ninad have availed of the webcast last rites from the crematorium grounds. Puneites living in different cities of India and abroad will be able to see the last rites live. Offline recording and the archives have been created to negate time zone differences. The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) will start the live webcast of last rites from the crematorium under a project named ‘Rajjuchaxu’. The facility has started functioning.

It is a sentimental and sensitive matter and people want to attend it at the crematorium. Such

Popular and talented little champs Arya Ambekar, Mugdha Vaishampayan, Prathamesh Laghate, Kartki Gaikwad and Rohit Raut performed in the city in the programme L’tl Champs at Ramanbaug school ground. Along with Mugdha Vaishampayan

Vaikunth’s last rites rituals go on the web

City-based environmentalists and civic activists demanded a survey of residential buildings or commercial establishments located or coming up in the blue flood line or in prohibited zone, where construction is not allowed. Activists, including Sarang Yadvadkar, Sujit Patwardhan and Vijay Kumbhar demanded that a survey is a must as the lives of innocent people residing in these apartments are at risk.

Bharat FC bag NZ international Kris Bright Pune’s I-league team Bharat FC signed its first player for the 2014-15 season, New Zealand international Kris Bright, on a season-long contract. Bright, 28, son of 1982 World Cupper David Bright, is a proven goal-getter, having played in the Australian A-League, the Dutch first division along with top flight football in Norway, Finland, Greece and Hungary.

Bright spent the 2013-14 season with English Conference Premier side Lincoln City FC, making seven appearances and scoring two goals. The lanky Bright has a solid goal-scoring record in every league he has played in.

Kris Bright and Stuart Watkiss

THE GOLDEN SPARROW ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 29, 2014

PUNE

“Senior citizen healthcare and maternity and child healthcare are some of the major areas that need to be looked at right now.”

— M C Misra, AIIMS director

“The elderly prefer to have their freedom instead of being controlled by their children. In some cases, when they have the resources, they opt to go into plush old age homes.”

— Prof S Irudaya Rajan, CDS, Kerala

PCOS is a common but undiagnosed condition

The Way Forward With Compassion & Hope

What is PCOS and why does it afflict so many teenagers and women in their twenties? Ishani Bose investigates

BY ISHANI BOSE @ishani_bose Twenty two yearold Meghana Joshi had been experiencing i r r e g u l a r menstrual cycles for over a year.

She also lost a lot of hair during this period and developed acne Anushree Shetty on her face. The g ynaecologist and dermatologist she consulted, prescribed some pathological tests, which determined that Joshi was suffering from Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS).

PCOS or Stein-Leventhal Syndrome, is one of the most common hormonal endocrine disorders in women, that generally occurs between the ages of 12 and 45. The chief causes of the malady are a sedentary lifestyle, overindulgence in food and obesity.

“There is a strong connection between obesity and PCOS, especially when it happens at the time of adolescence or when a woman is in her twenties. The rate at which PCOS is rising is alarming, and lifestyle alterations, nutrition and dietary factors play a large role in this,” said Dr Rashmi J Patil, Consultant Gynaecologist and Obstetrician at Kotbagi Hospital. In most cases, obesity, sudden weight gain and genetic conditions are valid factors.

The onset of PCOS results in the formation of multiple cysts on the ovaries, in a ‘string of pearls’ pattern and an excessive production of androgens (male hormones), which can cause an increased growth of facial and body hair. Th is excessive androgen and

Anxiety & depression

What is PCOS? Infertility

Insulin resistance

Weight gain

Cyst in ovaries

COMMON SIGNS OF

Include these foof in your diet 1. Good fats like almonds and walnuts 2. Lean meat like chicken 3. Green leafy vegetables 4. Protein rich food like egg white, soya, tofu etc 5. Fruits in limited quantities 6. Low fat milk and milk products

PCOS

Severe acne

Excessive facial & body hair Irregular periods

testosterone prevents the ovaries from releasing an egg in monthly cycles, which leads to an irregular menstrual cycles. The hormonal imbalance can also result in insulin resistance, which is a key indicator of the disease. PCOS can also occur as an after effect of some medicines.

A PCOS Foundation report states that five to ten per cent of women of childbearing age suffer from PCOS, but less than 50 per cent of them are diagnosed. So this hormonal disease that is responsible for 70 per cent of infertility problems in women, who have trouble ovulating, remains largely undiagnosed and the victims untreated.

“Type 2 diabetes eventually caused due to insulin resistance, cholesterol

and lipid anomalies, heightened danger of cardiovascular issues, unusual uterine bleeding, and infertility owing to hormonal imbalance, depression and increased threat of uterine cancer because of contact with unrestricted oestrogen are some of the detrimental effects of untreated and undiagnosed PCOS,” said Dr Patil.

The PCOS Foundation report states that nearly 40 per cent of patients with diabetes and/or glucose intolerance, between the ages of 20 and 50, suffer from PCOS. WHAT IS THE TREATMENT TO CURE A PATIENT OF PCOS? Meghana Joshi was told to reduce her weight fi rstly. “I developed PCOS

Pharmacy curriculum needs continuous renewal The 19th edition of APTICON will focus on the urgent need to update the syllabus with latest technological advancements TGS NEWS SERVICE @TGSWeekly “There is an urgent need to involve competent work force in the pharmacy sector. We need scientists, and drug manufactures at the industrial level and before everything we need teachers at the college level,” said Shivajirao Kadam, chairman, APTICON. He was speaking at the 19th edition of a three-day Association of Shivajirao Kadam Pharmaceutical Teachers of India Convention (APTICON 2014), that began on November 28, at Balewadi sports complex. The convention addressed the issues related to pharmacy profession and education.

According to Kadam, the pharmacy curriculum needs to be updated continuously. The students must be acquainted to newest technologies and ongoing research in drug delivery and drug analysis. Assessing this need, this year APTICON will revolve around this particular issue, ‘Emerging Trends in Pharmacy Profession and Education.’

The convention will focus on the current and contemporary developments in the pharmacy

profession and education in the wake of global developments.

It is a platform to boost the personal and professional growth of students, researchers and pharmacists in line with the concepts formulated by International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) and World Health Organisation Dr Pravin Chaudhari (WHO). It highlights that every pharmacist should be a compassionate care giver, decision maker, good communicator, lifelong learner, good manager, able leader, mentor and researcher in order to mitigate the challenges of this fast changing world.

“The pharmacist plays a pivotal role in providing pharmaceutical care services and primary health care. In view of the changing demographic needs and dynamic corporate culture, the professional sphere is changing with the advent of fast paced technology.

It is, therefore, imperative to give new orientation and additional new facets to pharmacy education and profession,” said P D Chaudhari, organising secretary. tgs.feedback@goldensparrow.com

Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) or Stein-Leventhal Syndrome, is one of the most common hormonal endocrine disorders in women, marked by an imbalanced production of the hormones estrogen and progesterone. This leads to the growth of ovarian cysts.

at such a young age, primarily because my mother had it all her life. As a result, I directly came under the threat of PCOS. Besides, I have always been on the heavy side. My doctor said that weight loss is the fi rst line of treatment as it improves menstrual abnormalities,” Joshi said. She started exercising regularly, adopted a healthy diet and a change in her lifestyle.

Sports and clinical nutritionist Anushree Shetty prescribes a diet low in refined carbohydrates, along with regular exercise, to combat PCOS. “It is extremely necessary for women affl icted by PCOS to include fibre in their diet, as it helps in weight loss and the burning up of excess calories. They must also consume omega 3 fats found in fish and flax seeds, avoid all sugary and refined foods like maida and bakery products. Soya is a good option as it helps in the balancing of oestrogen level in the body,” Shetty said. ishani.bose@goldensparrow.com

‘Reduction in energy transmission may reduce bad impact’ NEW DELHI: With the health and safety aspects of using mobile phones and the radiation from its towers being a cause of concern for many, experts feel that reducing the energy transmitted per bit and adopting some precautionary measures can help in the long run.

“In India, Internet speed in dismal. We will certainly need more spectrum. But as bit rate grows, EMF (electro magnetic field) radiation will grow. In absence of wired lines and wired Internet, India will depend on wireless Internet. The only answer is to vigorously reduce the energy transmitted per bit,” Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT-Madras, said in a recent presentation. “Low-level radiation cannot mutate DNA but can cause dielectric heating due to EM radiation absorption,” he said at a seminar organised by Assocham.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) have concluded that there is no scientific evidence yet on any harm from mobile radiation within ICNIRP norms. In 2012, the Department of Telecom (DoT) mandated the emission level of towers in India to be one-tenth of ICNIRP norms. On further reducing emissions, Jhunjhunwala said: “It requires vigorous research and development. To reduce energy transmitted per bit by 10 or even 100 in times to come, DoT, as well as operators need to rise to meet the challenge by massive funding for R&D.” Dr Vijayalaxmi, a member of the WHO review committee for EMF, said a few precautionary measures may help. “Limit the number of calls, reduce the duration of calls, use hands-free devices, use the land-line more,” IANS she added.

Scientist finds gene that cuts stroke risk

LONDON: An Indian-origin scientist has discovered a gene that protects people against one of the major causes of stroke in young and middle-aged adults, a development that could hold the key to new treatments.

“Our findings provide us with a greater understanding of how this region of the genome appears to influence key vascular functions which

could have major implications for the treatment of these severe and disabling conditions,” said Pankaj Sharma, professor of clinical neurology from the University of London’ School of Biological Sciences.

Sharma found that people with a specific variant of a gene known as PHACTR1 are at reduced risk of suffering cervical artery dissection,

which is caused by a tear in an artery that leads to the brain.

In the largest study of its kind, the team screened the entire genome of 1,400 patients with cervical artery dissection, along with 14,400 people without the disease.

Cervical artery dissection can lead to compression of adjacent nerves and to blood clotting - potentially causing

blockage of vessels and brain damage.

“Further genetic analyses and worldwide collaborations of this kind provide hope of pinpointing the underlying mechanisms that cause stroke,” added Sharma who is leading the Bio-Repository of DNA in Stroke (BRAINS) study.

The new discovery was detailed in the journal Nature Genetics.

IANS

Enjoy small moments of happiness

BY C RAVINDRANATH

E

njoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realise they were the big things,” said Robert Brault.

How much attention do we pay to the small things in life – a smile, a “Thank you,” a bird chirping while building its nest and the fi rst raindrop on the nose? We are so caught up with the big events that myriads of these small events pass unnoticed.

Let’s view this from another angle. The big events in life – being born, passing out from school, graduation, getting a job, getting promoted, marriage, becoming a parent, a grandparent etc. – what percentage of our lives would they constitute? I asked this question to a group of young adults and the answers varied from 0.1% to 2% at the maximum.

By focusing our attention on 2% of our lives, are we ignoring the major part – the 98% and letting it slip unnoticed under our noses? By waiting for our birthday each year, are we missing out on 364 wonderful days? Is there not something to feel happy about each day?

From this angle, our priorities seem lopsided. We ignore the bulk of our lives running after a small portion of it. We wait for an occasion to laugh when we can create laughter every moment.

A laughter therapist once said, “It is time to change our reactive laughter to creative laughter.”

Similarly, can we create a few moments of happiness instead of waiting for them to happen some day?

If we believe that the best things in life are free, so are simple moments of joy – a cup of tea with a friend, helping a blind person cross the street, playing with children, even helping your wife in the kitchen.

When we enjoy a pleasant surprise, can we not enjoy giving a pleasant surprise to others? Every day is an opportunity to be happy and to spread happiness. Are we losing out on these opportunities?

A friend I admire spends every holiday either visiting an old age home, an orphanage or making friends with villagers and spending the day with them. He goes with his wife on his motorcycle, following any road they take a fancy to, armed with some sweets, a ready smile and the eagerness to meet people and make new friends.

The couple have friends in all places but what is most striking about them is the happiness they radiate.

Is it better to enjoy many small moments of happiness or wait for or chase some elusive big moments of happiness that will also fade away with time? Th is is a decision each one of us has to take. Make your own decision.

(The writer is a multi-faceted personality who believes in responding with compassion and hope to the diffi cult situations in life.)

We wait for an occasion to laugh when we can create laughter every moment

Is a problem bothering you and you are unable to decide what to do? Write in to us at wayforward@goldensparrow.com for advice and suggestions from C Ravindranath

TH E EDIT PAGE

THE GOLDEN SPARROW ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 29, 2014

PUNE

Editor’s pick Well done is better than well said.

— Benjamin Franklin

Bus Karo, Bus Devendra Fadnavis On his maiden visit to the city as the state’s new chief minister, Devendra Fadnavis, on November 25, promised to appoint an IAS officer “within 7 days” to address the continuing neglect of the public transport body, the Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Ltd. (PMPML).

Fadnavis has promised to “revamp” the transport body so that it becomes efficient and effective in meeting the needs of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad.

Th is is heart warming news for citizens and Fadnavis will stand blessed if he is indeed able to keep up his promise and deliver an efficient bus service for the 50 lakh residents of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad.

The public bus service in Pune has suffered gross neglect for more than two decades now even though one of the most efficient bus networks in the country runs smoothly barely 200 km away, in Mumbai. The absence of mass transport in Pune has forced almost every adult to work out his own mode of transport. Thus, college-going boys and girls need their own two wheelers just as their working parents need their own cars or two-wheelers to go to office. The havoc that this has caused on the city’s roads in terms of traffic congestion, pollution, and stress and road accidents is there for all to see.

The city’s politicians promised the Bus Rapid Transport System (BRTS) and the fi rst pilot in the country was launched in Pune. Poor followup by the politicians resulted in the failure of the BRTS unlike in Ahmedabad where the same model has flourished and won national awards year after year.

Over the last two decades, the city’s politicians have done literally nothing to address the plight of the people as the traffic congestion worsened year after year. Numerous promises were made election after election, right down to one politician’s suggestion of “water transport” for Pune.

The Pune Metro is still in the planning stage and thus many years away from becoming a reality. Even when it does start running, there will be a need for a robust bus service as one sees in other cities, notably Delhi and Mumbai. Thus, the bus service will always be the backbone of public transport for any metropolitan city and this has been repeatedly emphasised by Pune’s citizen-activists and credible NGOs such as Parisar, Nagrik Chetna Manch and the PMPML Pravasi Sangh.

It is heartening that Fadnavis, on his fi rst visit to Pune as the state’s chief minister, promised to address the public transport issue headon and give the highest priority to streamlining the PMPML. Th is assurance means a lot to the people of Pune and PimpriChinchwad and Fadnavis now needs to demonstrate and deliver on his commitment. @tgsweekly editor_tgs@goldensparrow.com

Protective helmets use gains ground in city More people in Pune than ever before have taken to wearing protective helmets while riding two-wheelers.

There’s a perceptible change in the air and this is visible when one looks at heads at traffic junctions or on bikes and scooters. The people are the same and mindsets have not transformed entirely as yet. So what is it that has changed?

Indeed, the one thing that has changed is good leadership at the top in the Pune Police Commissionerate.

P o l i c e commissioner Satish Mathur has been fi rm about implementing the law and demanding greater respect for traffic discipline in the city. He has directed numerous drives to persuade the citizens to follow the rules for their own good. The Supreme Court’s recent directive on implementing the law on helmets has come in handy towards this end. The directives from the top have been implemented effectively by DCP (Traffic) Sarang Awad and that’s why we see more

helmets on the city roads.

Th is bodes well for the safety of the citizens, especially the youth (and their parents), who love speed and adventure. The world over, helmets have been proven to save lives. Year after year, Punekars have been witness to tragedies that have befallen on helmet-less riders and their families in the event of serious accidents.

The city has expanded in all directions, there are greater distances to be covered to reach one’s college or workplace and there’s stress on the roads, not to speak of indiscipline. In such an environment, it’s best to take precautions and play safe. More helmets means more safety on Pune’s roads and the police must continue with their drive till the point that people not wearing helmets stand out like sore thumbs.

The work so far is half done. Th is newspaper extends the fullest support to the Pune Police in their endeavour. @tgsweekly editor_tgs@goldensparrow.com

Vol-1* lssue No.: 24 Printed and Published by: PRI – Media Services Private Limited CIN: U22222MH2012PTC232006 on behalf of Golden Sparrow Publishing Pvt. Ltd. CIN:U22200PN2014PTC151382 Printed at Diligent Media Corporation Ltd., Plot No. EL-201, TTC Industrial Area, MIDC, Mahape, Navi Mumbai.

Published at Golden Sparrow Publishing Pvt. Ltd. 1641, Madhav Heritage, Tilak Road, Pune-411 030, Tel: 020-2432 4332/33.

Editor: Abhay Vaidya (Responsible for the selection of news under the PRB Act, 1867)

Cartoon by: Vaijnath Dulange

India’s research conundrum

BY AMIT KAPOOR Research and development (R&D) forms the basis of future competitiveness of any nation. It is because R&D is critical for any form of innovation. Today’s science is tomorrow’s technology. A classic case in point is the US economy. It is a world leader in technological innovation.

From the development of critical, indigenous defence production to the development of world-class products and services it has shown that public and private sectors can both be pioneers in R&D within a nation.

The scientific and technological prowess has done good for not only US citizens but has done a lot in general for the betterment of the human condition.

What can explain the rise of US? In our opinion, it is because the country has fostered a spirit of scientific inquiry that was part of its founding father’s legacy. Part of this started with having had a targeted approach in fostering science and technology within its policy context. Part of it has also to do with developing economic centres of activity (think Silicon Valley) based on its science and technology ecosystem.

Also, it has had a specific focus on institutions that have enabled its stupendous economic growth post the Second World War. In India, since Independence the focus has been on fostering science and technology but this has essentially not culminated into India realising its true potential barring specific instances like green revolution, etc. One can consider any form of research and one finds that India is not the research hotspot in any

sphere be it fundamental research or any applied research.

With notable exceptions like TIFR, CSIR and ISRO with its recent brilliant mission to Mars and several private companies, the research ecosystem broadly remains shallow at best and completely absent at worst. Even the IITs which were first created with the purpose of research to augment the CSIR labs have it seems forgotten their basic responsibility to do research.

Their essential function has been reduced to producing a workforce of trained manpower to be hired by the industry. These engineers then go on to spend the rest of their lives either doing technical jobs or striving to get into one of the IIMs and to work as managers in private and in some cases public concerns.

Part of the research conundrum lies in the development of talent for research. It is again dependent on better perks and facilities for researchers. Most of the brilliant talent moves to greener pastures in search of a better quality of life, that research is unable to provide in India.

It is not the case elsewhere. A top professor in US can draw benefits commensurate to the CEO of a multinational corporation (MNC).

In our opinion, there is a fundamental problem with respect to our mindset towards research in general and science and technology (S&T) research in particular. So entrenched in our mindset is the bias towards S&T that when two weeks back the then health and family welfare minister was shifted to the science and

technology and earth sciences ministry, a prominent newspaper called it a ‘lowkey’ ministry, another one called it a ‘far less high profi le ministry’.

The moot point is that even our neutral media has an opinion on what is high profi le and what is low profi le? One may humbly ask — how do we assess the importance of any ministry (especially the ones that are not part of Cabinet Committee on Security)? We for one disagree on this ‘relative importance of ministries’. And even if one has to compare the relative importance of ministries, should it not be assessed on the kind of impact it may have on future of the nation?

In our opinion, the impact of science and technology research is if not more than, then at least equivalent to that of the Health Ministry.

With low ratios on R&D as a percentage of GDP, India cannot hope to become a scientific or industrial powerhouse till the time it adequately spends on (R&D).

While spending alone cannot be a measure of R&D capability now, or future competitiveness (as shown by Mangalyaan), it certainly points to the necessity for greater investments.

What we require is additional funding for research. Also, we believe the present model of government or public sector funding will have to be replaced by a newer paradigm of private sector funding as India liberalises privatises and globalises (LPGs) further. It was pointed out in the May 2013 white paper on the “Stimulation of Investment of Private Sector into Research and Development in India” of the ministry of science and

Rise higher through action

BY ANIL K RAJVANSHI

of species takes place by branching. Hence, whichever branch gets into a dynamic There is a beautiful story in Panchtantra. equilibrium with the surroundings In a huge well lived two groups of frogs survives, grows and prospers. The who were always fighting for territory other branch, which could not get into and resources of the well. The king of one equilibrium with the surrounding forces, group decided to befriend a cobra and get simply dies off and with it that branch him into the well so that it could finish of the species. Thus nature evolves by off the other group. The cobra came into making the other branch irrelevant. the well and started eating the frogs of the This is a great lesson for all of us. If other group. The king was very happy with we want to show somebody down then this development and felt that his aim of the best way is to rise higher than that controlling the well and its resources was person and make him/her irrelevant. In achieved. However, soon the cobra ate all this process the whole system gets lifted the frogs of the other group and turned his and thus this process is far superior to the attention to the king’s group. The cobra one in which the person is brought down told the frog king that he needed using negative forces whereby the food to survive and so was helpless. whole system looses. This has been Despite king’s pleas and entreaties, taught in all the great religions the cobra started eating the king’s of the world and is the basis of subjects and family members one victory of nonviolence. However by one and ultimately ate the king to rise up requires great courage, himself! conviction, faith in oneself and There is a general tendency in internal security. people, specially those in power to Sometimes when the THINK evolutionary take the help of negative and evil process goes out of forces to achieve their goals, little hand and nature cannot solve it realising that these forces are nobody’s by branching, then it removes the species friends and have their own agenda. They violently as happened in the death of destroy everything in their wake including dinosaurs and wiping out of certain their creator and cannot be controlled species by volcanic events. How can one once unleashed. It is therefore best to keep make negative or evil forces irrelevant? away from them.

Patanjali in his Yoga Darshan recommends Nature also destroys the negative that one should show indifference to these tendencies but in a very evolutionary and forces. Thus by being indifferent to them positive manner. The progress or evolution and acting positively we can make the

system evolve so that these forces become irrelevant and die their natural death.

Similarly one should not think negatively about others even if they have harmed us because the very act of thinking about a negative person brings his/her negativity to our mind. Thinking deeply is a two way street. We can send thought packets as well as receive them whenever our minds are anchored to the object of perception.

Human beings also have tremendous propensity to humiliate other humans.

This is a general human tendency though this world is also full of examples of great people like Edison, Ford, Faraday etc., who have produced great inventions.

Similarly, the humanitarian work of Gandhi, Christ, Buddha etc., has also helped mankind.

Nevertheless the tendency to create miseries for others could be traced to the evolutionary process whereby to gain control over resources it was necessary to remove the competition and humiliation and pulling down others was a part of this process. However if we realise that by reducing our needs and becoming spiritual we can become better human beings then we do not need to control others and create conditions to fight for the resources.

This world can therefore become a much better place if we make ourselves better so that we rise above others and pull the whole system up. © Anil K Rajvanshi anilrajvanshi@gmail.com

technology. The paper also had noted that in most developed and emerging nations of the world, the ratio of public to private sector funding in research was 1:2, while in India it was the complete opposite, i.e., 2:1. While we do not think that the target set in the whitepaper of 1:1 funding (for private and public sectors) till 2017 is likely to be met we certainly believe it is time for private sector companies to introspect and ramp up their research spends.

We also believe that if India has to attain global competitiveness as envisaged in its Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (STI) 2013, and further the ‘Decade of Innovation’, it will have to bring about a fundamental change in the people’s mindset. It will start with taking cognizance of research and development in the context of national interest and aligning it with the broader goal of holistic socioeconomic development.

(The article is co-authored with Sankalp Sharma, senior researcher at the Institute for Competitiveness, India. Amit Kapoor is Chair, Institute for Competitiveness & Editor of Thinkers. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amit.kapoor@ competitiveness.in and tweets @kautiliya) IANS

Limericks of the week

BY C RAVINDRANATH

Bangalore, city of fame May soon get another name With women’s throes The way it goes It may be the city of shame!

What was solid as a fort Is now rocking like a boat Come, take a bet Cricket is set From galli to Supreme Court!

Godmen and their armies Purportedly preach peace It seems a folly To follow the holy For they’re here to fleece!

THE GOLDEN SPARROW ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 29, 2014

PUNE

With selections from The New York Times

“Our religion gave woman a station. The station of motherhood. It is something different & the most unobtainable, the highest station. There are those who understand this, those who don’t. You can’t tell this to feminists, because they do not accept motherhood. They have no such concerns.” —Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan

Saina eyes world No 1 P 15

Khin Myint Maung directs traffic consisting of SUVs that seem far too wide for Yangon’s roads THOMAS FULLER

YANGON, Myanmar: For 12 hours nearly every day, Sergeant Khin Myint Maung stands in one of the most chaotic intersections in this chronically gridlocked city, untangling traffic snarls with patience and unflagging good humour.

It is not the most likely résumé for a recipient of a hero of the year award from a leading daily newspaper, or designation as a “role model” officer by the Yangon police force or a “real-life hero” by a German foundation.

But the 26-year-old from the provinces, only recently promoted to sergeant, has earned all those awards, rising to fame purely by word of mouth.

It is nearly impossible to find a taxi driver in Yangon who does not wax lyrical about the sergeant’s ability to direct traffic through rainstorms and searing heat.

“We looove him,” Nay Win Hlaing, a 37-year-old taxi driver, shouted recently.

“There’s no one who doesn’t like him.”

In years past, the streets of Myanmar’s largest city were often so empty that taxi drivers could test the forces of gravity as they screeched down winding thoroughfares. These days, though, the emergence of debilitating gridlock in Yangon is perhaps the most obvious sign that after five decades of cloistered military rule, Myanmar is finally open for business. It has taken only three years for the number of cars registered in the city to double, to more than 400,000.

And in this new Myanmar, where car ownership is no longer the exclusive domain of the superrich, Khin Myint Maung has emerged as a new sort of civic hero. Not a human rights campaigner, not a philanthropist nor someone who saved puppies from a blazing fire, but a traffic cop.

Men in uniform are still widely

Tomas Munita/The New York Times

Yangon’s hero wields power of stop and go

Sergeant Khin Myint Maung, a traffic cop, directs vehicles in a busy intersection in Yangon, Myanmar, where an influx of cars has resulted in debilitating gridlock, October 2014. In this new Myanmar, Maung has emerged as a new sort of civic hero, winning the hearts of legions of erstwhile grumpy drivers

feared and despised in Myanmar, but Khin Myint Maung has won the hearts of legions of erstwhile grumpy drivers who roll down their windows and hand him frosty bottles of water and boxes of food. They also give him cash, a gesture that would be inappropriate in the West but that motorists say shows their gratitude and is an unsolicited supplement to his paltry salary.

The sergeant accepts all this booty with a flash of his perfect white teeth gleaming in the tropical sun. On the few days Khin Myint Maung has been absent from his post, the surrounding neighborhood has descended into chaos, including two months ago when he travelled to Naypyitaw, the country’s capital, for the ceremony marking his promotion to sergeant.

“For three days, it was terrible.

“You could never count on civil Everyone was honking. Cars weren’t servants before to do their job,” said Pe moving. Everyone was Myint, a commentator upset,” said Daw Phyu and columnist. “Here is a Phyu, who manages a civil servant who is doing shop nearby. his duty.” Heroes are Khin Myint Maung’s scarce in Myanmar. The popularity is not a vote society is stacked with of confidence in the officials, businessmen traffic police, who are and informants who notorious for shaking served or collaborated down motorists, nor with the brutal, is it a tribute to a new dictatorial junta that government made up imprisoned thousands -Daw Nyein Nyein Naing largely of holdovers from of dissidents and treated the military regime that ordinary citizens with preceded it. If anything, derision. his fans say, praise for the sergeant is “It’s very hard to find civil servants implicit criticism of the rest of the traffic worthy of the award,” said Daw Nyein police and the bureaucracy.

Nyein Naing, executive editor of 7 Day

“It’s very hard to find civil servants worthy of the award.”

News Journal, which began bestowing its annual hero trophies in 2012, around the time the country’s news media were unshackled from five decades of censorship.

“Every year, we go through a lot of names,” Nyein Nyein Naing said. “But we look at their backgrounds, and we find things that disqualify them as heroes.”

Change in Myanmar is proceeding at varying speeds. Bureaucrats still wait for orders as they did during military rule.

Farmers remain dirt poor. The middle class is seeing only a small fraction of the lucrative jobs the government promised to deliver.

But the streets of Yangon look nothing like those of five years ago, when most of the cars were so old and dilapidated that downtown traffic

resembled a rolling junkyard. Fortyyear-old jalopies spewed oil onto the pavement, and on rainy days customers had to place their feet over the holes in the floors of taxis to avoid water gushing up from below.

Then, three years ago, the government lifted its severe restrictions on car imports and, as if a switch had been flicked, a car culture was born in Yangon. Used car lots, mostly selling secondhand imports from Japan, became ubiquitous. A radio station with traffic reports is now essential listening for those wishing to avoid the worst gridlock. When U.S. President Barack Obama visited in November, residents complained that closed roads had created an “Obama jam.” The traffic police started a Facebook page this year that encourages drivers to send in photos of other drivers breaking the law.

Khin Myint Maung directs Range Rovers that would not look out of place in Beverly Hills and American SUVs that seem far too wide for Yangon’s roads. In a stark reminder of the gulf between rich and poor in Myanmar, he is paid the equivalent of $150 a month, a salary that might buy him one of those cars at the end of his career - if he saved every penny. The third of five children from a rice-farming family in a remote village nearly 5 kilometers from the Bay of Bengal, he shows no resentment toward the wealth that flashes past, only Buddhist fatalism.

“Everyone has their own destiny,” he said during a break from directing traffic at the corner of Dhammazedi and Link roads, his usual spot not far from Shwedagon Pagoda. “The rich are rich because they did many good things in their past life. Everyone has their own place.” The sergeant is generous with his smile but thrifty with words. When he accepted his hero award in 2012, he stood onstage in a large banquet hall in a Yangon hotel.

“We gave him three minutes for a speech,” said Nyein Nyein Naing, who headed the awards committee.

“He just said, ‘Thank you,’” she recalled. “And of course he smiled.” © 2014 New York Times News Service

A hammer comes down on an honour for Britain Stampeding black

By WILLIAM NEUMAN CARTAGENA, Colombia: The strange events that unfolded here in recent days involved, in one way or another, Prince Charles of England, George Washington’s older brother Lawrence, the British admiral who was the namesake for Mount Vernon, a oneeyed, one-legged Spanish seaman who has been dead for 273 years and an angry animal rights activist with a hammer.

It all started innocently enough.

On October 31, during a visit here, the prince, attired in a tan tropical suit, and his wife Camilla, in pearls and sunglasses, unveiled a plaque commemorating the thousands of Englishmen and American colonists who died during a disastrous attack on this walled port city in 1741. In the Battle of Cartagena, a large British force, joined by troops from the American colonies, including the elder Washington, was repulsed by a much smaller contingent led by the wily, mutilated Spanish naval commander, Blas de Lezo.

For Prince Charles’ visit in October, a black granite plaque hailing “the valour and suffering of all those who died in combat whilst seeking to take the city” was placed at the colonial fort where British troops were repulsed nearly three centuries ago. The remembrance appeared just paces from a statue of the peg-legged de Lezo, which depicts him wielding a sword with his left hand and glaring with his one good eye, as if in the heat of battle.

(The statue inaccurately portrays him as also missing his right arm.)

Many Colombians, who consider de Lezo a hero and the British arrogant scoundrels for thinking they could easily conquer the city, reacted with anger to the plaque’s salute to an invading force.

“In London, why don’t they put up a tribute to the Nazi pilots that bombed the city during World War II?” asked

Andrea Bruce/The New York Times

Many Colombians reacted with anger to the plaque’s salute to an invading force

Locals sit for a photo on top of a pedestal in front of the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, a colonial-era fortress in Cartagena, Colombia

Juan Carlos Gossain, the governor of Bolivar, according to local media.

Cartagena is the capital of Bolivar.

Politicians, historians and newspaper columnists piled on. Many asked whether the mayor, Dionisio Velez, who participated in the ceremony, understood the city’s history, speculating that the event was an excuse to schmooze with the prince. Finally, the mayor relented and said that he would ask the Cartagena Historic Center Corp., the private group that produced the plaque, to remove it. But before that could happen, the hammer of history fell. And it was wielded by an unlikely hand. Jaime Rendon, 69, is a retired electrical engineer with a combover. He is also a fervent animal rights activist who is angry at Cartagena’s

mayor for permitting bullfights and the use of carriage horses in the city’s historic centre. Beyond that, he blames the mayor for the presence of cellphone antennas in residential areas and near hospitals, which he believes are a health hazard, particularly to children suffering from cancer, another one of his passions. Then came the plaque, which he considered an insult to the city’s proud history.

On November 5, he went to look at it.

“I was overcome by an irresistible feeling,” he said, adding that he told himself, “I’m going to break this plaque, now!” He marched off to a nearby mechanic’s shop and asked to borrow a small sledgehammer. The mechanic, he said, asked him why he wanted it. He said he was going to break

Now Rendon is a folk hero.

People hail him on the street and thank him

the plaque and asked the mechanic to help. The man declined, but gave him the hammer. Returning to the plaque, Rendón handed his cellphone to a man he described as a Panamanian tourist who was missing a hand, in a strange echo of the nearby statue of the celebrated Spanish naval commander. He asked the tourist to take photos of him bashing the plaque with the hammer.

Then he said he hit the plaque at least 40 times, cracking it in several places. A policeman arrested him, but by day’s end he was released. Now Rendon is a folk hero. People hail him on the street and thank him. They call him “hammer man.”

He said that a museum called to ask if he would donate the hammer. “You don’t play around with history here,” Rendon said. “You’re not going to put up a plaque in New York in honor of the people who knocked down the Twin Towers, isn’t that right? For us it’s the same thing.”

Such judgments seem unfair to Sabas Pretelt, the man at the head of the Historic Center Corp., who conceived of the plaque and its royal unveiling.

Pretelt served as an interior minister in the government of former President Alvaro Uribe, but was accused of bribing lawmakers. He was banned from holding office for 12 years, though he denies any wrongdoing. Pretelt said that he thought of the plaque as a way to promote Cartagena’s history.

An aide for the mayor did not respond to requests for an interview. The British embassy in Bogota, the capital, refused to comment.

On a recent day, tourists and locals posed for photographs by the nowplaqueless pedestal where the prince and his wife attended the unveiling.

“It’s just amusing that they came all this way to put a plaque up and then they took it down,” said Joanne Shepherd, a vacationing teacher from England. © 2014 New York Times News Service

elephants

By THOMAS L FRIEDMAN

SYDNEY: I participated in the World Parks Congress in Sydney in November and learned a new phrase: “a black elephant.” A black elephant, explained the London-based investor and environmentalist Adam Sweidan, is a cross between “a black swan” (an unlikely, unexpected event with enormous ramifications) and the “elephant in the room” (a problem that is visible to everyone, yet no one still wants to address it) even though we know that one day it will have vast, black-swan-like consequences.

“Currently,” said Sweidan, “there are a herd of environmental black elephants gathering out there” - global warming, deforestation, ocean acidification, mass extinction & massive freshwater pollution. “When they hit, we’ll claim they were black swans no one could have predicted, but, in fact, they are black elephants, very visible right now.” The International Union for Conservation of Nature holds the parks congress roughly every 10 years to draw attention to the 209,000 protected areas, which cover 15.4% of the planet’s terrestrial and inland water areas and 3.4% of the oceans, according to the IUCN. A hall full of park exhibits and park rangers from America, Africa and Russia, along with scientists, environmentalists from across the globe, some 6,000, focused on one goal: guarding and expanding protected areas, which are the most powerful tools we have to restrain the environmental black elephants. How so?

It starts with a simple fact: Protected forests, marine sanctuaries and national parks are not zoos, not just places to see nature. “They are the basic life support systems” that provide the clean air and water, food, fisheries, recreation, stable temperatures and natural coastal

protections “that sustain us humans,” said Russ Mittermeier, one of the world’s leading primatologists who was here.

Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, Costa Rica’s former minister of environment and energy & now a vice president of Conservation International, explains to me the politics of parks - and the difference between countries that have their forest service under the minister of agriculture and those where the forest service is under the minister of environment or independent. Agriculture ministers see natural forests and parks “as timber that should be chopped down for something ‘productive,’ like soybeans, cattle or oil palm,” Rodríguez said. Forest services and environment ministers “see their forests as carbon stocks, biodiversity reservoirs, water factories, food production plants, climate adaptation machines and tourism sites,” and protect them. Guess who’s in the first group? Honduras and Guatemala, where many people live on degraded hillsides.

Some 50,000 children have been sent from Central America to the U.S. this year - unaccompanied. Where did they come from? Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, Central America’s most deforested states. They cut their forests; we got their kids.

I promised you good news - sort of.

It’s how many people are now focusing on the economic and national security value of their ecosystems. But the power that financiers and corrupt politicians still hold in setting the limits on what we can and cannot destroy in nature - as opposed to the scientists and biologists - remains the bad news. As Adam Sweidan put it, in too many places we’ve still got “the vampires in charge of the blood banks.”

It has to stop, not so we “save the planet.”

The planet will always be here. This is about us. © 2014 New York Times News Service

MONEY MATT ER S “People had given up on India, saying it was too complicated. It had dropped from people’s priority list. But it has gone right back up, (now) people are interested.”

— McKinsey CEO Dominic Barton

Signpost China’s AliBaba to invest more in India

THE GOLDEN SPARROW ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 29, 2014

“The ostensible purpose (of starting new Kisan Vikas Patra) is to promote savings (but) the argument is suspect because other instruments offer better returns.”

— Former finance minister P Chidambaram

How personality affects investment behaviour

FPIs stay invested in Indian growth story

Durand’s research pins investor’s behaviour on ‘Big Five’ personality traits

BY MONEYLIFE DIGITAL TEAM

Chinese e-commerce giant AliBaba’s founder and executive chairman Jack Ma on Wednesday said he wanted to invest more in India. “India is a great nation. A nation full of potential and hope. We will invest more in India,” he said. Jack Ma was addressing the Zhejiang China-India business cooperation conference being organised

by Ficci (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry).

Bill simplifying law for small firms passed Rajya Sabha on Tuesday passed a bill which simplifies labour law procedures for establishments employing up to 40 workers. Moving the Labour Laws (Exemption from Furnishing Returns and Maintaining Registers by Certain Establishments) Amendment Bill, 2011, labour minister Bandaru Dattareya said the main purpose of the amendment is simplification of laws.

‘Slowdown expected during 2nd quarter’ Ratings firm ICRA Research on Tuesday maintained its forecast of India’s growth during the current fiscal at 5.3-5.5 per cent but predicted a slower pace of economic activity in the second quarter of 2014-15. The pace of growth is expected at five per cent in second quarter 2015-16 as compared to 5.7 per cent in first quarter of this fiscal, on account of unfavourable kharif harvest, sluggish manufacturing, slowdown in exports.

If you invest regularly, you’ve probably made investment mistakes. Either you sold a winning stock too early or held on to a losing stock too long. Mistakes are common but certain mistakes are more common with certain types of personalities. Personality captures a person’s essence. Understanding one’s personality type helps explain, and predict, the decisions one makes and the actions one takes.

Robert Durand, professor of finance at Curtin University (Australia), along with two of his colleagues, in an article published in the Journal of Behavioral Finance, concluded that personality traits are associated with a wide range of investment decisions and outcomes.

Durand suggests a five-factor model of personality traits that he calls the ‘Big Five’. These are: • • • • •

Extroversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Neuroticism Openness to experience/intellect

These five traits are universal.

Studies undertaken in other cultures have shown that similar personality traits do emerge there too.

“Personality traits are remarkably stable once you reach the age of 30.

Therefore, if you determine your personality traits early on in your investing career and understand how they’ll affect your decision-making, then you should be able to avoid some mistakes,” says Durand.

Extroverts are social, enthusiastic, talkative and assertive. Therefore, they tend to take on more risk in order to fulfil their need for excitement. Their

comfort of taking higher risk can mean potentially higher returns. On the flip side, if they are not careful, they may take on too much risk and lose money.

Conscientious persons are thorough, careful and diligent. They have the ability to delay immediate gratification in favour of longterm goals. Though they may be too risk-averse, they can be patient and restrain themselves from taking on too much risk.

Neurotic persons are emotionally unstable.

They are prone to psychological distress including depression, anxiety and anger. Being impulsive, they are prone to take emotional decisions.

Thus, they may be drawn towards risky assets without knowing the risk they are taking.

Those with high agreeableness tend to get along well with others. They tend to be gullible and are trusting, altruistic and optimistic.

However, too much of trust can be harmful as they fail to question why a particular investment product is good for them. They may even be hesitant to raise any red flags when they see them.

Those who are high in openness to experience/ intellect actively seek new experiences and learning.

They are imaginative, curious and open to new ideas. This trait is highly correlated with one’s intelligence. There is no wellestablished advantage or disadvantage of having this trait as it is the least studied;

but it does impact investing decisions.

In fact, Durand says that two of the five factors, namely, neuroticism and extroversion, seem to play a larger role compared to the other traits. He says investors scoring high on neuroticism are attracted to risk, but they seem to find it disturbing. They want to do something about it, but are incapable of doing so; they will sell risky stocks only to buy others.

Neuroticism is associated with heightened emotion.

Higher extroversion scores are associated with higher returns, even after adjusting for risk. Durand says, “Extraverts are attracted to higher risk, but they manage it better, getting higher returns for higher risk, which should be the case according to standard

Study has established that women are more risk-averse than men

How financially savvy are you?

After covering savings, fixed-income choices, and equity MFs and shares, the second and concluding part of the article by Debashish Basu and Raj Pradhan covers health insurance and life insurance HEALTH INSURANCE Over 72 per cent of the respondents have health insurance (mediclaim), which is an encouraging sign.

Unfortunately, only 26 per cent of the respondents have personal accident (PA) policy. A comprehensive PA policy, covering permanent total disability, permanent partial disability and temporary total disability, is a must for everyone. PA policies are now offered with lifelong renewal and, hence, there is no reason to skip this important and inexpensive cover.

Ironically, double the respondents have bought top-up (5.3 per cent) than super top-up (2.4 per cent) which is a superior product. There are more topup products in the market compared to super top-up. Availability bias seems to be at work here. Agents will push top-up if the insurer does not offer super top-up.

Additionally, agents do not educate the customer of the benefits of super top-up over the top-up product.

Over 12 per cent of the respondents are covered with critical illness product which can be purchased after you are adequately covered with mediclaim. A surprising 7.5 per cent of the respondents are covered with hospital cash plan which does not offer much of value. It pays a fi xed amount for the number of days of stay in the hospital. Less than 5 per cent of the respondents are covered with senior citizen mediclaim. It could be due to high number of respondents buying regular mediclaim.

Senior citizen mediclaim is an option if you are not eligible to buy regular mediclaim which is allowed till age 65.

Buying regular mediclaim at young age when you are healthy is a better decision than buying senior citizen mediclaim due to eligibility issues. Buying regular mediclaim at an older age can also be difficult because insurers have a right

not to underwrite. If you have health issues, buying mediclaim can be difficult and, hence, cover yourself at the right time. Only a few respondents are covered by employer or government schemes.

The 24-hour hospitalisation rule topped (35.9 per cent) as the main issue with health insurance.

The obstacle is the mechanical rejection o f claims even if hospital discharge is done minutes before completion of 24-hour stay. The criticality of medical need of the insured and the expense incurred for less than 24-hour stay is not considered.

Moreover, if there is no line of treatment

or procedure performed, there is no payment even for more than 24-hour hospitalisation. It means if you are severely ill and kept in a hospital for diagnostic investigation and monitoring, there is no claims payment.

If so, you feel cheated after paying premium over the years.

You need to have enough liquid funds available as mediclaim is not going to cover everything even when you are hospitalised.

Not surprisingly, partial or full claims rejection is the second (30.9 per cent) on the list of issues customers have.

The old days of insurers’ approach of ‘pay if you can and reject if you must’ has been replaced with ‘reject if you can

`

What, according to you, are the main issues with health insurance?

40%

35.9%

30.9%

30% 20%

22% 21.5%

25%

10%

25.8% 20.3% 19.3% 27.3% 13.2%

23.5%

0% 24- Hour hospitalisation rule TPA’s Behaviour

Sub-limits

Room rent limit

Stringent Timelines for Hospitalisation intimation

Stringent Timelines for Claims Submission Changes in product features Partial or ful claims rejection

High Premium

Cashless Issued Not aware of issues

Consumers find the 24-hour hospitalisation intimation rule the most vexing. Please take this rule seriously.

Claims are easily rejected for violation of this rule

PUNE

and pay if you must’. The confidence of the insured has declined sharply with increasing number of claims rejection, full or part. Many consumers have silently accepted partial claims payment as ‘something is better than nothing’, but if you are entitled to get full payment, you need to fight for it.

TPA’s behaviour (25 per cent) and cashless issues (25.8 per cent) also attracted a lot of criticism. They are inter-related. Government insurers are offering cashless for retail customers at a few hospitals and, hence, the good old days of cashless are over since mid-2010.

To add to the insult is the obnoxious behaviour of TPAs when they are paid out of our insurance premium. It is worthwhile for you to move to insurers with in-house claims processing.

Sub-limits (22 per cent), room rent limit (21.5 per cent), stringent timeliness for hospitalisation intimation (20.3 per cent) and stringent timelines for claims submission (17.3 per cent) were other important factors for customers.

Surprisingly, high premium (19 per cent) and changes in product features (13.2 per cent) are still not a major issue for consumers. It indicates that the insured are not feeling the pinch of changes in the premium and product features as much as the issues related to claims payment. Or they have not paid much attention to this factor. Dissatisfaction with claim rejection is high and belief in insurers’ fairness is at a low.

LIFE INSURANCE Over 46 per cent of the respondents have term plan which is good. But, sadly 13 per cent have pension products.

Pension products from life insurance are a misnomer; investors think that these will help them accumulate wealth for a decent retirement fund. Pension products are a perfect trap which will earn meagre returns and make it extremely difficult to surrender the product due to the hefty tax implications.

Thirty per cent of the respondents have an endowment plan which is a popular product. While LIC’s

finance theory.”

Ascertaining what an individual’s personality is can be complex as people do tend to display behaviours across several of these personality traits.

What about gender difference and investment behaviour? Research has established that there are significant differences in the way men and women invest; women are more risk-averse than men. Women are believed to react severely to negative outcomes than men.

Men are more likely to feel anger while women feel more fear; this makes them less likely to take risky gambles.

These outcomes have been found to be dependent on income, education, marital status, etc. For example, married men are more conservative than their single counterparts.

Once investors identify what their ‘irrational triggers’ are, they can make an effort to ensure that the triggers are tempered and take economically sound decisions. @moneylife.in

MUMBAI: The growing anticipation of any dovish sign from the central bank in its upcoming monetary policy review kept the foreign investors interest focused on Indian equities.

Supportive global cues, expectations of improvement in growth rates and expectations of an early interest rate cut have kept foreign investor’s clued to the Indian markets.

For the week ended November 21, the Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) bought stocks worth `1,675.75 crore or $271.65 million, according to data with the National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL).

The FPIs had sold only `412.23 crore or $66.37 million worth of equity in the week under review.

For the previous week ended (Nov ember 14), the FPIs had bought stocks worth `5,674.21 crore or $922.4 million.

The foreign institutional investors (FIIs) along with sub-accounts and qualified foreign investors have been clubbed together by market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to create a new investor category called FPIs. However, on a week-on-week basis, the foreign inflows decreased 70.46 perc ent at `1,675.75 crore reported for the week ended November 21 from `5,674.21 crore in the previous week ended November 14.

On November 21, Friday, the FPIs divested shares worth `412.23 crore or $66.37 million worth.

For the coming week, analysts said that the FPIs will watch every sign from the central bank anxiously which will dictate their near-to-medium term trading trends.

“We expect markets to remain focused on the upcoming RBI (Reserve Bank of India) meeting on December 2. Any dovish signal from the RBI will buoy sentiments within the economy and lead to further improvement at the ground level,” said Dipen Shah, headprivate client group research, Kotak Securities. @moneylife.in

Have you bought or will you buy online term plan insted of offline term plan?

Not sure

Online term plans are priced lower than offline plans and more than 50% of the respondent knew it. Only about 20% will not buy an online term plan

I do not need life insurance

14.8%

12.2%

19.5%

No

endowment plan with a term of more than 15 years has given a return of approximately 7 per cent pa, we do not know what is store for the policyholders in future. Many private insurers’ endowment plans have given pathetic returns. Money-back (24.5 per cent), ULIP (20.1 per cent) and whole-life (13.5 per cent) are among the other life insurance products that respondents have bought. Buying these products were mistakes.

Traditional plans are more popular than ULIPs, but buying these rather than new ULIPs is like jumping from a frying pan into the fire. More traditional plans are sold than ULIPs due to the higher commission they earn for agents.

Keeping the objective of insurance and investment separate will help you avoid products other than term plans from life insurance companies.

A few comments rightly state that respondents are not going to buy life insurance products today or in future as they are retired, financially free or, in some cases, not eligible. It is better if retired people are not eligible to buy life insurance product as they do not need it at that age. Over 45 per cent of the respondents already have term plan; 12 per cent do not need life insurance. For the remaining, the main reason for not buying term plan is the classic reason— ‘need to get returns on maturity’ (8.4 per cent respondents). For them, the kind of returns is not important. Insurance is

53.5%

No

considered as a waste if nothing is given back at the end of the policy period.

While filling up the survey, many respondents have asked us how they would know whether their responses were correct or not. Well, our specific commentary on each question, and the detailed analysis of responses that form this narrative, would have made your knowledge of personal finance fairly complete.

Our conclusions and suggestions are a collective effort of thousands of hours of unbiased research and analyses which have been distilled in this article. The main reason for buying an offline term plan, instead of online term plan, is the worry about claims settlement of online term plans. Just around 10 per cent of the respondents need agent’s help to buy insurance. That is good because agents will sell what he/she is asked to push, not what you need, namely, term plan.

Difficulty in buying term plan online can be due to the do-it-yourself process.

In some cases, the proposal is long and the online process gets terminated due to technical issues from either side.

The online proposal does not end with the policy in hand, but with a need to do medical tests. Offline term plans also need a medical test and the premium can be hiked, in some cases. It is possible that the hike for online term plans can be higher after medicals, but it is more to do with the offline term plan being priced @moneylife.in high, to begin with.

THE GOLDEN SPARROW ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 29, 2014

PUNE

SPORTS

“This is an unfortunate and rare situation. I felt safe playing but there was that element of risk, I used to say a little prayer in the morning and just hope for the best.”

— West Indies cricket legend Brian Lara

Signposts

“I appeal to the entire country to be behind Sarita Devi.

I understand what she went through as a sportsperson.

She has apologised. AIBA should reconsider Sarita’s case.”

—Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar,

Saina eyes world No 1

Kuala Lumpur: Leading Indian male singles shuttler Kidambi Srikanth jumped two places, to the eighth position in the latest Badminton World Federation (BWF) rankings. The 21-year-old recently entered the semifinal in the Hong Kong Open, which helped him rise two places as comptriot Parupalli Kashyap also rose a place, to be 16th in the rankings. In the women’s singles rankings, Saina Nehwal remained at fourth, while PV Sindhu dropped a place to be 11th.

Ban on bouncers will harm beauty of Tests Kolkata: The death of Philip Hughes may have reignited the debate of safety in cricket, but former India captain Nari Contractor, one of the first to fall to a bouncer, is not in favour of a “knee jerk reaction”. Contractor - whose international career was cut short by a similar incident -asserted that change in rule or a ban on bouncers will take away the beauty of Test cricket.

After Walsh, Hawgood also exits New Delhi: The After Hockey India (HI) decided not to continue Terry Walsh as the chief coach of the men’s national team, the women’s team’s chief tactician, Neil Hawgood, Thursday announced that he, too, will not extend his contract. An HI statement Thursday thanked Hawgood for his services without stating the reasons for his parting ways with the team. HI also credited Hawgood for putting in hard work in the team which is likely to qualify for the Olympics.

Upbeat over winning the China Open title and moving up to the fourth spot in the latest BWF rankings, star shuttler Saina Nehwal says she is working on becoming the best in the world.

“I am happy that, from world number nine I reached world number four with three titles. Now, I am hoping to do well in the Dubai Super Series final next month,” she told PTI. Besides seeking more success on the tour, the Hyderabadi said is focussed on maintaining fitness in the run up to the 2016 Olympics.

“It is very important to stay fit now as the Olympics are coming nearer. It will be more about remaining fit and playing the best against the top three Chinese players in the world. I will try to beat them as many times as possible or try to give them a very tough fight which is very important,” she said.

She said she would work hard for achieving the number one position, but no time-frame can be put to it.

“I will try my best. World Number One is a target obviously everyone wants to achieve. But it is not easy as the other Chinese are also strong. So, I would just keep working hard and you never know anything can happen. (I) reached world number four, so, hopefully, would like to win some more tournaments and would like to give my best. It is not going to be easy, but, I am going to work very hard for that,” she said.

Ahead of the keenly-fought China Open, Saina worked on rectifying the loose ends in her game, particularly on her movement on the court, in consultation with coach Vimal Kumar in Bangalore.

“The training I did before going to this tournament was right and according to what mistakes I was doing in the previous tournaments, so

Pinch-Hitter MALAY DESAI

Cricket’s Bigg Boss House

T

@MalayD

here are two ways of reading into the Supreme Court’s statements over the Mudgal Committee report one is to get your nearest lawyer friend/relative with an interest in cricket to decode the legalese. The other, a less exhaustive but more entertaining alternative is to follow the news like you’d follow the reality show Bigg Boss. With the show’s eighth season already airing, you’d have no issues adopting the format.

Here is your guide: 1. The voice of reason ‘Bigg Boss chahte hai, ki team leader N Srinivasan apne khel ki taraf ka vartav badley.’ In the past few days, we have heard the sanest voice of our country, that of the Supreme Court’s, deliver sharp rebukes to the BCCI chief, who is in the middle of the muddle. His most glaringly obvious discrepancies, conflict of interest in owning the Chennai Super Kings, sonin-law being caught for betting and more, have been pointed out by ‘Bigg Boss’ SC. And just like the booming voice in the show, this one is righteous and instructive, with nobody daring to object.

2. The power brokers Anyone who has watched the show knows that amidst participants, there are some who lead the way by being a cross between smoothly diplomatic and downright cunning. There are power brokers in the Mudgal Show too, starting from Srinivasan himself who is doing whatever he can to retain power. Then there’s the CSK/ Team India captain Dhoni, sitting out of the touring party to Australia with a well-timed ‘injury’, and the heavyweight Arun Jaitley, vice-president of BCCI and a core figure of the ruling government. The ‘power play’ of big fishes means the smaller fishes bear ‘elimination’. Remember Ankeet Chavan, Ajit Chandila and Sreesanth?

3. The entertainers No season of Bigg Boss is complete without theatrics from oddball personalities such as a Dolly Bindra, Kamaal R Khan or Ali Quli, of the current season. Viz a viz in the Mudgal Report, there are the entertainers who have little impact on the goings on but hold high TRP value. The biggest case here is of Vindoo Dara Singh, who was snapped enjoying an IPL game sitting next to Mrs Dhoni, and was later arrested on betting charges. Vindoo was allegedly the link between bookies and umpire Asad Rauf, also a colourful, guilty party. The wrestler’s son created much hullabaloo, until even recently when he blamed the media for his rough time and animatedly vouched to never watch cricket again! Incidentally, Vindu Dara Singh was the winner of Bigg Boss 3.

4. The audience Whether it’s the thousands who watch the inane proceedings of the Bigg Boss house or the millions like us who flip newspapers for the Mudgal Show news, we are all looking for sensation.

The voyeurs among us get gratified on watching a participant getting slapped (happened just last week on the reality show), others reprimanded while some plotting ousters. The only difference is, the TV show audience thinks it has some powers to ‘vote’ for the house’s inmates and thereby keep them safe, while we cricket fans have no such privilege. Also, let’s also include in the audience the biggies of Indian cricket – Ravi Shastri, Gavaskar et al, who have been mum spectators.

5. The ratings Finally, the most interesting bit of the Bigg Boss phenomenon in both cases, is that the after the controversies and eliminations, the show goes on and the viewers tune in out of primetime habit more than allegiance. Unfortunately for cricket, there will only be losers.

I was just rectifying those mistakes and finally it got right in the China Open.

Because, I can see the improvement was happening from the Asian Games when I played Wang Yihan, when I played in the Denmark and French Open, I almost beat (a top player) in the third game, I was leading 15-6 and lost from there on.

“So, I was learning from those

‘World No 1 is a target obviously everyone wants to achieve. But it is not easy as the other Chinese are also strong’ matches and finally, with the kind of training I was doing with Vimal sir and, strategy, we both were thinking what we should apply, in the practice.”

Saina, who trained with chief national coach Pullela Gopichand for long in Hyderabad, shifted to Bangalore about two months ago to be trained under Vimal Kumar.

With young shuttler Kidambi Srikanth thrashing the top-ranked Lin Dan of China to win the China crown, the impression that it is extremely difficult to beat Chinese players is a thing of the past.

“Indians can beat Chinese. It’s not that we cannot beat them. But, it is always going to be tough. One time, if you beat them, second time, they will come prepared for your match. It is not

that second time you can beat them easily.

Every time, you will have to face a fight and you have to be very, very strong to play against them. You have to keep on fighting and hopefully we can win a few times with them, not easy, but we can give our best. It is not impossible,” she said.

Replying to a query about training under Vimal Kumar in Bangalore, she said the matter of her practice and training should be left to her.

“I think it is done now. I am training there and achieving. I think people should think about me getting more medals for the country and not think about what I am doing, where I am training. That’s not really what they have to worry about. They have to just think about how I should win tournaments and how I perform.

Practice is my problem and I will take care of it very well. It’s not that much of an issue,” she stressed.

Saina added that she wanted to shift to Bangalore following a lean phase in 2013.

“When I was in Hyderabad for the last one year, I was not very happy with my performance in 2013 when I did not win a single title. I was feeling that I was getting stuck somewhere. I wanted to do something different and see if I can improve. In the world championship also, I felt that, with Li Xurei I was not very comfortable. Vimal sir was there with me in world championships. He thought, may be, I should improve in some areas. I thought, may be, I should try out with him for some days.

“Obviously, it’s not easy to shift from someone you have been training for so many years,” she said.

PTI (With special arrangement by Firstpost)

IANS

Srikanth jumps to 8th spot in badminton India shuttler says she would work hard for achieving the number one position, but no time-frame can be put to it

Why does tradition trump safety in cricket helmets?

Helmet safety is back in the spotlight after Phillip Hughes died from the blow that experts likened to the trauma experienced by car crash victims

Former Australia cricketer Bryce McGain wore a new, safety-conscious helmet for a series of televised one-day matches a few years ago - and quickly found himself the butt of commentator and player jibes.

“They explained the technology and I liked the idea that it was safer,” McGain said of the futuristic-looking helmet he wore in 2009. “The commentators had a go, saying ‘He looks like Darth Vader’, ‘He looks like Robocop’.”

“It didn’t bother me too much, but only a couple of other players wore it and if you don’t have the players at the top, the ones on TV, wearing them, they won’t sell.”

They didn’t. Sports manufacturer Albion Sports Pty Ltd pulled the helmet, which was designed to provide more coverage and deflection capability, after poor sales. Helmet safety is now back in the spotlight after Australia cricketer

Phillip Hughes died on Thursday, never having regained consciousness from the blow that experts likened to the trauma experienced by car crash victims. manufacturers say However, Hughes’s accident was unusual and nothing on the market now would likely have prevented it. But they also say advances in cricket helmet technology are being stymied by a lack of enforcement of international safety standards and the reluctance of elite-level players who prefer the game’s traditional aesthetics to adopt new styles.

Investment in new designs has gone

instead to other sports such as cycling and baseball, which have been more open to radically different helmet designs than the so-called “gentleman’s game”.

Others say that more could be done in a sport that became popular thanks to English aristocrats in the 17th century but only introduced helmets, without enforcement, in the 1970s.

“The ability of manufacturers to innovate is reliant on players embracing new technology and they are very, very traditional in cricket,” Brendan Denning, chief executive of Melbourne-based Albion, said in a telephone interview.

“At the moment, we make incremental changes while trying not to upset the traditionalists,” Denning said. “Other sports, like horse racing, more readily accept that injury is an issue.”

The International Cricket Council (ICC) and the British Standards Institution (BCI) agreed new helmet safety guidelines a year ago, the first revision of the code in 15 years. The changes focused on risks including a ball slipping between the faceguard and the peak and a ball hitting the faceguard. Cricket Australia supports the new guidelines but neither the ICC nor any country regulators have moved to actively enforce the new rules, meaning players can continue to wear older helmets - if any at all.

NEW MATERIALS British sports firm Masuri Group Ltd, which made the ‘Original Test’ helmet worn by Hughes, said its new ‘Vision Series’ model released about a year ago offers more protection. Masuri, the third major manufacturer of cricket helmets, declined to comment further.

Helmets have made some progress. Many now have faceguards manufactured from titanium and shells from carbon fibre, lighter materials than the traditional steel and specialist plastics.

Reuters (With special arrangement by Firstpost)

Cricketers who died of injuries on the field Sydney: Phil Hughes joined the list of cricket players who died of the injuries sustained while playing the game. Here’s a list of the other players who died after getting injured while playing: 1. Darryn Randall (SA, 32) - 2013 Randall was hit on the side of the head when attempting a pull shot in a South African domestic match. The wicketkeeper-batsman collapsed and was immediately rushed to hospital, but he died from the blow.

2. Zulfiqar Bhatti (Pakistan, 22) - 2013 The Pakistani player was struck in the chest by the ball while batting during a domestic game and fell to the ground. He was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital.

3. Richard Beaumont (England, 33) - 2012 Beaumont collapsed on the field after suffering a suspected heart attack and was declared dead after his arrival to hospital.

4. Alcwyn Jenkins (England, 72) - 2009 English umpire Jenkins was officiating a league match when he was struck on the head by a ball thrown by a fielder that hit him accidentally. Jenkins could not recover from his injuries.

5. Wasim Raja (Pakistan, 54) - 2006 Pakistan cricketer Wasim Raja died of a heart attack when playing for Surrey Over 50s in Buckinghamshire.

6. Raman Lamba (India, 38) - 1998

Lamba, a former India international, was hit on the head while fielding during a club match in Dhaka. He went into a coma three days later, before being pronounced dead.

9. Abdul Aziz (Pakistan, 18) - 1959 Aziz was hit on the chest while batting in a domestic match in Karachi and was declared dead on arrival at a nearby hospital.

7. Ian Folley (England, 30) - 1993 Folley was hit by the ball below the eye accidentally while batting in a domestic match for Derbyshire against Workington and suffered a fatal heart attack in the hospital.

10. Andy Ducat (England, 56) - 1942 Ducat suffered a heart attack during a game at Lord’s, where he collapses and died.

8. Wilf Slack (England, 34) - 1989 Slack collapsed and died during a domestic match in Banjul, Gambia. He had suffered four blackouts in previous matches, but despite carrying out tests, doctors were unable to diagnose the cause of his death.

11. George Summers (England, 25) 1870 Summers was struck on the head while batting for Nottinghamshire against the MCC at Lord’s. He didn’t treat his injury and returned home only to die from its effects four days later.

IANS

SPORTS “The Premier Tennis league was conceptualised to give a platform for Indian tennis players to display their skills and we are happy that our efforts are paying off.”

— Aniruddha Deshpande, PTL chairman

THE GOLDEN SPARROW ON SATURDAY NOVEMBER 29, 2014

PUNE

“ A very sad day for the world of cricket. Spare a thought for poor Sean Abbott too. He will need all the support possible to help him try and get through this.”

— Former England captain Ian Botham

It’s PUNE MARATHAS again PIX BY ANIRUDDHA RAJANDEKAR

Team with similar name won the inaugural edition of Elite Football League of India in 2012

BY ASHISH PHADNIS @phadnis_ashish PUNE: Pune city teams have been featuring in almost every national and state level league, but it is the Pune Marathas squad that has been favoured by Lady Luck. The team won the inaugural Champions Tennis League (CTL) started by tennis legend Vijay Amritraj, in New Delhi recently. Coincidentally, a team with a similar name also featured in the inaugural edition of Elite Football League of India (American football) last year and emerged victorious by beating the Delhi team in the final.

These are the only two teams from the city that have won the league format tournament at the national level.

The Marathas showed great grit and determination to adapt to a whole new game and master the skills better than any other team in the football league. Skipper Dinesh Kumar of Chennai put in a captain’s performance and he was named both the outstanding quarter back and outstanding offensive player. Similarly, Pune team-mate Saketh Myneni of Andhra Pradesh claimed the award for best performance by an Indian.

However, the football team’s heroic performance remained unnoticed and their key players like Sachin Rathod and Akhsay Shinde remained rather unheralded. Meanwhile, the Champions Tennis League was big on star power with the likes of Martina Hingis, Venus Williams and Jelena Jankovic. Even the Pune team featured big names like former Wimbledon champion Pat Cash, Agnieszka Radwanska and Marcos Baghdatis.

However, the Pune Marathas had their hands full in the final against the Delhi Dreams. The home team got off to the right start, Juan Carlos Ferrero taking a 4-2 lead after breaking Pat Cash in his third game, in the legends match. Cash, 49, without a win in the single legends matches, seemed to be feeling his age against the much younger and fitter Ferrero.

Cash, wearing his trademark black-and-white check bandana, was made to work hard for every point and consequently made

Pune Marathas team featured in Elite Football League of India

a lot of unforced errors, going down 3-6. Pune’s pair of Marcos Baghdatis and Agnieszka Radwanska kept them in the hunt, winning the mixed doubles match against Jelena Jankovic and Sanam Singh. But the Delhi pair picked on Baghdatis, Pune’s weak link, sending majority of their returns in his direction, making him commit a series of errors, hitting regulation shots into the net.

The battle intensified in the women’s singles match as Radwanska, displaying a greater urge to win, eventually broke Jankovic in what was to be the last game of the match, to stretch Pune’s lead, winning 6-4.

The sparse crowd, dominated by very vocal Pune fans, who travelled with the team here, witnessed some top-level action as both stars displayed the full range of their considerable repertoire.

Delhi needed to win the men’s doubles match to have any chance of winning the final and their doubles pair of Kevin Anderson and Sanam Singh began with purpose. They broke Pune’s team of Baghdatis and Saketh Myneni in the third service game to go ahead 4-2, but were broken in turn, to send the match into a tie-breaker. Pune maintained steady pressure in the tiebreaker to wrap up the match 6-5 (2), to put their noses ahead 2120 in the last match of the final, the men’s singles contest.

Kevin Anderson gave Delhi hope, breaking Baghdatis’ second service game. But Baghdatis used his superior experience to get even and then took the lead to serve out the match, winning 6-3 and sealing the title for the Marathas.

(With inputs from IANS) ashish.phadnis@goldensparrow.com

Marcos Baghdatis and Agnieszka Radwanska (L) Pat Cash

Playing in league was a dream come true: Myneni Andhra star who represented Pune Marathas in Champions Tennis League bags best performance by an Indian award

BY ASHISH PHADNIS @phadnis_ashish PUNE: The Champions League Tennis (CTL) was studded with world-renowned stars like Venus Williams, Martina Hingis and Pat Cash, but amongst the Indians it was Andhra Pradesh player Saketh Myneni, who stole the limelight in the inaugural edition of the tournament.

With nine ITF singles and 10 doubles titles under his belt and a debut at the prestigious Davis Cup Asia this year, Myneni

played a major role for Pune Marathas and received the award for best performance by an Indian.

“It was an unforgettable experience for me. Playing back-to-back matches with tennis legends like Pat Cash, Marcos Baghdatis and Agnieszka Radwanska was like a dream come true. I would like to thank Vijay and Prakash Amritraj and all the other people involved in making CTL possible. I would definitely like to be part of this league every year,” said Myneni.

“Along with playing in doubles and

Atletico de Kolkata face Pune City today TGS NEWS SERVICE @TGSWeekly PUNE: With three home games in next seven days, FC Pune City is gearing up for their second leg encounter against Atletico de Kolkata (ATK) in Indian Super League at Shiv Chhatrapati sports complex, Balewadi on Saturday.

FC Pune City handed a humiliating 3-1 defeat to the mighty Kolkata side at Salt Lake stadium, earlier this month and will be looking to produce similar performance in front of home crowd.

However, it won’t be an easy affair, as currently in second spot on the points table, ATK will be eager to avenge the defeat. They have included diminutive Bangladeshi midfielder Mohamed Mamunul Islam, who is likely to replace suspended Ofentse Nato for this crucial fi xture.

“It will be a difficult game but we have to win. We want to reach the

playoffs, but losing the game can make it difficult,” said ATK defender Josemi.

The former Liverpool player exuded confidence of doing well and asserted his team was determined to reach the knockouts. On former Arsenal midfielder Jermaine Pennant, now turning out for Pune, being a threat to Atletico’s defence, Josemi stated that he is a good player but he was only concerned about his own team.

Talking about their first defeat in the tournament, another ATK defender Nallapan Mohanraj said, “Credit goes to Pune City on winning the first leg, the goals were of highest quality. But this time around we should not commit the same mistakes we did earlier.”

Meanwhile, FC Pune City, currently at the fifth place with 12 points, tested their skills against Pune’s second division I-league team DSK Shivajians.

It was a gruelling match that ended in a 1-1 draw.

rigorous practice sessions, the Indian players got an opportunity to interact freely with these top players. In other major tournaments, it’s not the same as you don’t get to talk to them as much. But here they inspired us and helped us to remain motivated. It was a good learning experience,” he added. For Myneni, Pune has been his happy hunting ground, as he had won the ATP doubles title a few weeks ago at the same stadium.

“Playing in front of the cheering home crowd was very exciting and the short format of the league along with tie-breakers added

an extra thrill,” he said.

Myneni, who recently won a gold medal in mixed doubles with Sania Mirza and a silver medal in men’s doubles with Sanam Singh, is back in the city to represent Baseline Bombers in the Premier League Tennis (PTL).

He said, “The formats of these two leagues are very similar, so it won’t be difficult switching over. We have been practicing and training hard every day and I hope to produce similar result in the PTL too.” ashish.phadnis@goldensparrow.com

Saketh Myneni

Pune FC continue dream run It is the only team in King’s Cup football tournament to win all matches in group stages; enter semifinals to be played on Sunday TGS NEWS SERVICE @TGSWeekly PUNE: Pune FC which recently finished runner-up in the prestigious Durand Cup, continued their fine run on the foreign turf, when they entered semifinals of King’s Cup in Bhutan recently.

In the group stages, Pune FC maintained a clean sheet by beating Bangladesh’s Abahani Limited in the last match. In a game of equal exchanges, late goals from midfielder Lalrempuia Fanai (86th minute) and defender Luciano Sabrosa (90th) helped Pune FC overcome the Dhaka-based side for a fourth consecutive win in the

competition.

The result took Pune FC’s tally to 12 points in four games, winning Group B with a five-point margin ahead of MMC, Nepal (7 pts), Abahani Ltd (4 pts), Ugyen Academy, Bhutan (3 pts) and Assam State Electricity Board (0 pts).

Moreover, Pune FC became the only

side in this edition of the King’s Cup to end the group stage with all wins.

Coach Karim Bencherifa rung in five changes in the line-up, handing starts to goalkeeper Moniruzzaman Ansari, defender Matthew Gonsalves and Luciano Sabrosa along with medio Mumtaz Akhtar and attacker Bineesh

Balan. The game began with Abahani dominating the early exchanges as Pune FC soaked pressure. However, keeper Ansari was alert to deny Shahedul Alam who let fly from 25 yards out in the 5th minute.

However, despite dominating possession in the midfield Pune FC were unable to penetrate through the Abahani defense until the 25th minute, when medio Mumtaz’s intelligent chip sent Haokip in the clear only for the rival custodian Md. Ziaur Rahman to rush out and make a block.

Minutes later, it was attacker Eric Brown who almost broke the deadlock.

His powerful shot rattled the woodwork and came off the horizontal in the 29th minute.

Thereafter, both sides kept pushing but once again fell short in the final third as the first half ended goalless.

Coach Bencherifa made a couple of changes at the start of the second half bringing in attacker Prakash Thorat and winger Snehashis Chakraborty in place of Haokip and Dhanpal Ganesh.