Category: Public Administration

Tri-service contingent of Indian Military Participates In Victory Day Parade In Russia

75-member Tri-service contingent of the Indian Armed Forces participated in the 75th anniversary of the Victory Day Parade at the iconic Red Square in Moscow on June 24. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh was one of the high profile guests at the event In Russia. 24 June 2020 Russia celebrated 75th anniversary of the victory of Soviet people in great patriotic second world war 1941-45.

Defense Minister Rajnath Singh At Red square Moscow 24 June with other Guests

“I am proud that a Tri-Service contingent of the Indian Armed Forces is also participating in this parade,”he tweeted.

” impressive turnout of the Tri-Service contingent of the Indian Armed Forces at the Victory Day Parade in Moscow is indeed an extremely proud and happy moment for me,”Mr. Singh said in another tweet.

Indian Military Marched down at the wide road of the Red Square Moscow June 24 2020

The Tri-Service contingent of the Indian Armed Forces comprised 75 all ranks and marched along with contingents of Russian Armed Forces and 17 other countries, according to an official statement. The parade was reviewed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, war veterans, and guests, including Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.This year, 14,000 troops and several hundred military machines took part in the parade, including 30 historic T-34 tanks. President Putin congratulated the military and guests, saying this victory determined the future of the planet.

Moscow Celebrated delayed 75th anniversary of Victory day Russian President Putin on Victory Day

Russia postponed its military parade traditionally held on Moscow’s Red Square on May 9 for a later date due to the corona virus pandemic.On May 26, President Putin announced that the Victory Parade would be held on Moscow’s Red Square on June 2.He explained that this was chosen because, on June 24, 1945, the legendary historic parade of victors took place, when soldiers, who fought for Moscow and defended Leningrad, who stood their ground for Stalingrad, liberated Europe and stormed Berlin, marched on Red Square.

 

Trends in Contemporary Public Relations

Public Relations: Why It Matters - Activated Growth

Public Relations is regarded as the cornerstone for individuals, companies and start-ups to establish their credibility in the market. Public relations is rapidly changing, evolving and adapting new methods such as engaging videos, online content, bloggers outreach, influencers and many more such techniques to achieve maximum limelight. There are a few major trends that are easy to spot. These are:

  1. Big Data: New age public relations have become ever dependent on data. Audiences today are tech-savvy they are highly dependent upon technology for their day-to-day activities. Digital and social media communications have opened up a new channel through which PR firms can reach a brand’s target audience. The business is headed into a new direction where devising and executing digital and social media campaigns are imperative to create brand awareness.
  2. Influencer Outreach: The world today consists of people who are trusted and highly followed by people. Bloggers too have become extremely influential and those who are credible can be the go-to person when you need to send the word out about your company. In the past few years, influencer outreach has garnered immense limelight in the field. Targeting relevant influencers is an important segment to reach a wider audience.
  3. Importance of leadership: Earlier, the role of imparting thought leadership content was confined only for top-level executives such as the CEO, COO, and CMO, etc. Now, this trend will gradually shift to other leaders and consultants within the company who will share note-worthy and interesting insights with the public. The emphasis will be on people of lower leadership and making them essential to the company. This will help a brand target a wider, more diverse audience and share more content. Also, encouraging employees to take an active thought leadership role will aid companies to grow their own personal brand.
  4. Use of analytics: Companies in modern public relations are embracing numbers and analytics. Companies, including the tech, market themselves based on social impact, and they do their research, collect their data from both prospective and existing clients, and then put some sense in those data. Putting them into perspective in the form of website traffic, a number of leads, etc. makes sense of the drill of analytics.
  5. Customer satisfaction: The final outcome of any PR exercise has to be customer satisfaction. It is mandatory to ensure that the product or service has to be perfect. Startups looking for press coverage after developing the minimum viable product (MVP) should ensure that the core part of that MVP executes the idea and solves the problem it set out to solve first.

‘LEARN FROM HISTORY’ SAYS DONALD TRUMP

As America comes face to face with it’s racism in its past, President Donald Trump has firmly back lined up with those who argue that the pendulum has swung too far in favor of removing statues and other symbols of that flawed history, saying errors will be repeated unless learned from and understood.

Trump’s campaign also sees the division over this new political flash point as a way to improve the president’s reputation, which has weakened through his treatment of the coronavirus epidemic and the social discrimination demonstrations that accompanied the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. After weeks spent demanding “law and order” in response to the protests sparked by Floyd’s death by police, Trump began to draw a line in the sand.

He vowed executive action to preserve landmarks after several Confederate statues and other historical icons with checkered life stories were violently pulled down from parks and other socially popular spots.

Trump says he wanted the highest penalty possible under federal law — up to a decade in prison — for anyone who wrecks or tamper with public property monuments commemorating those who served in the U.S. military. He said the executive order would “strengthen” existing legislation.

“We are looking at long-term jail sentences for these vandals and these hoodlums and these anarchists and agitators,” Trump said, referring to protesters who have vented their anger over racial injustice by toppling statues of figures tied to America’s racist history.

He spoke out after an attempt Monday night to bring down a Lafayette Park statue of Andrew Jackson, one of Trump’s favorite presidents, was foiled by police in the park across from the White House. Trump called it a “sneak attack” on the statue of Jackson, who owned slaves and was ruthless in his treatment of Native Americans. “We should learn from the history,” he told Fox News in a taped interview broadcast Tuesday. “And if you don’t understand your history, you will go back to it again.”

Trump’s campaign sees the attempts to remove statues as a potential presidential lifeline. The campaign argues that liberals are dramatically overreaching by embracing calls to “defund the police” and remove statues of American icons taught in history books.

In the current climate, Trump’s prior support of Confederate statues and military bases named after such individuals posed a political risk. But aides now believe the president has found an unexpected new line of attack on Democrats as the effort to remove symbols has spread to include the likes of Presidents Ulysses S. Grant, Jackson and George Washington in some places.

Although all three figures were flawed individuals, Trump’s campaign believes he can use them to wage a culture war and position the president as the defender of a way of life threatened by demographic change and generational shifts in views on issues ranging from marriage to racial justice.

Calls to overhaul policing and confront lingering racial inequality may be bipartisan, but Trump’s reelection team believes the most aggressive steps being pushed by some Democrats will turn off centrists and energize the president ‘s base-– many of whom share his avowed commitment to safeguard symbols of the nation’s past. A White House official and a campaign assistant summarized the president’s rationale by speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to publicly discuss the issue.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday cast the “lawlessness” of the attacks on statues as a cultural phenomenon among “far-left radicals” in need of a history lesson.

Source:https://indianexpress.com/article/world/trump-says-learn-from-history-instead-of-removing-statues-6473595/

Balancing Fundamental Rights and Duties

The longest written Constitution in the world, lays down the basic structure and the framework of India’s polity. It is built on the foundations of certain fundamental values that have been embedded in it by the makers of the

Constitution to ensure that there should be fairness and justice for every citizen of India.

However, it has been made very clear that:

  •  lot of restraint is required while exercising this freedom.
  •  the absolute freedom is an illusion and cannot survive alone.
  • the fundamental rights need to be paired with fundamental duties.

 To offset the increasing tendencies of indifference towards the business of the government amongst its citizens and to check fissiparous growth, the Constitution

(Forty-Second) Amendment Act, 1976 introduced the concept of fundamental duties by adding Part

IV-A, consisting of the sole Article 51A.That the Constitution ought to be amenable to change to allow for emerging needs was always recognised.

This year the government is laying more emphasis on creating awareness on eleven fundamental duties as part of celebration of 70th year of adoption of the Constitution through its various initiatives. The underlying idea is that these precepts should become a part and parcel of every Indian’s thoughts and actions. The balancing of fundamental rights is a constitutional necessity as every right gives rise to a corresponding duty

The fundamental duties are the mechanism that aims at striking a balance between individual freedom and social interests. These duties do not cast any public duties but are applicable only to individual citizens. However, in  a judgment, the Supreme Court held that the Fundamental Duties are as important as Fundamental Rights and that though Article 51A does not expressly cast any fundamental duty on the State, the duty of every citizen of India is the collective duty of the state- its de facto enforceability in the sense that Article 51A is a yardstick against which the action of the State may be assessed.6In Union of India v Naveen Jindal7, the Supreme Court observed that fundamental duties are implicit in the concept of fundamental duties, the former providing certain restrictions on the exercise of the latter.

Article 51A (k) was introduced as a fundamental duty in 2002, along with Article 21A as a fundamental right. Through Article 51A (k) read with Article 21A, the State and the parents are made to share obligation with regard to education of the children in the following manner:

  • the State with free education
  • the parents with compulsory education.

The State has been entrusted with the responsibility to ensure compulsory education while at the same time Article 51A (k) does not penalise parents or guardians for not being able to send their wards to school.10 In similar manner, right to hoist the national flag has been granted to the citizens subject to the restrictions specified in the Article 51A (c).

Thus, it may be observed that, in umpteen number of cases, the various contours of Article 51A have been interpreted and applied by the Apex Court. The unenforceable duties have got a booster dose of contents as well as some sort of enforceability through increased references in various judicial pronouncements. Various current crises related to environment, mob-violence and terrorism etc. could have been regulated to a large extent if the human values could be inculcated right from the formative period of life so as to lay a strong foundation for effectuation of Fundamental Duties along with the strong desire to avail the rights. Thus, there is a strong necessity to maintain a strong balance between the rights and the duties. One does not have existence as well as the meaning without the other.

Dealing with jealousy

Oh well! So that’s quite a juicy topic and a very interesting one which is I feel is more of a hush-hush topic, for people know that it exists but they don’t want to admit it publicly, considering it might cause them some sort of an embarrassment or is going to tease their ego a bit and that’s the reason why they are busy silently combating with this one but here I am going to talk about it in a more umm, deeper manner or whatever you may call it.

I am pretty sure that all of us must have experienced jealousy at one stage or the other no matter how much we try to get away with it but I think walking through jealousy is only going to be a successful conquest if, we firstly accept and acknowledge that we have been at points, jealous in our life post which almost 70% of the job is already done. It’s absolutely normal, just a part of human mindset but is deeply rooted in fear and in lack and know that, the feeling of lack is rooted in ego.

Sometimes it is important for us to deeply analyse our emotions and go an extra mile to try and heal them cause unless we heal them, they are going to keep causing troubles for us, leading to absence of mental peace. So why not go into deeper insights and try and figure out how jealousy looks like. It is the general idea that can be taken from the help of sentences that people generally use;  I hate that she has those things, Why does she have them? I wish I had them. Why is he with her? I think I look much better than that girl. Look at me, my Life. I don’t have all these things. I don’t have this money. I don’t have a boyfriend. I don’t have xyz and the list would go on and on unless we choose to accept it and embrace ourselves and practice more and more self love and compassion. Might sound difficult at first, but is not impossible.

If somebody has something, we need to regard it as a blessing bestowed upon them. For the enormous amounts of hard work that they must have been upto all those years of their life, somewhat like the quote “Work hard in Silence and let your success make the noise”. We don’t know, we aren’t aware how incredibly hard circusmstances they would have endured, how many failures they had to overcome and when the time has come for them to enjoy the reward, the fruit of long years of toiling hard and struggles, what are we doing to them? Are we really being compassionate here? Are we really wishing them luck and positivity. Are we really being good human beings here?No, by being jealous and envious, we arez on top of it, trying to tarnish their success by throwing away negativity and jealousy is a negative vibe. Let’s accept it.

So try and make a smooth transition from jealousy to being inspired by that someone, to that extent, where you also want to work hard to earn that fruit and for that, know that, you would also have to put in the equal amount of hardwork, absorb in the pressure and only then you will be rewarded because if you want to chill in an air conditioned room, you would first have to know the experience of being burnt under the sun. Because, my dear, nothing in this world is ever free of cost. You have to endure some amount of “pain” in order to get some “gain” and notice that when you channelize your entire energy towards this process of trying to gain something, trying to work work hard and fulfill your dreams & desire post setting up goals and following your passion, you would find yourself engulfed in a bubble of positivity and there would just be no room for negativity and even if there are some other things which make you feel low and jealous and if the self doubt tends to creep in, don’t worry. Just soothe your inner child, comfort it and with a tranquil state of mind, affirm and say that I have been working hard and I am sure if I don’t give up right now, I will also get what I truly deserve. Also, be mindful enough to not say that “I will also get to match up with that someone”. That’s where comparison comes into play and this is what leads to jealousy. So remember, that as long as you hold love and compassion in your heart, nothing negative can impact you. I hope it helped.

(3) 15 Date Ideas That You Can Do At Home

As promised, the final part of the #LockdownDating series is here. Hope you all have a fun time reading.

11) A NETFLIX DATE
Go on binge on your favourite series together with your loved one by your side and enjoy it to the fullest. Keep the romance rekindling with feeding each other popcorns loaded with extra cheese. Whatta cheesy date, right? But trust me, does wonders!

12) ‎A RECREATING THE WEDDING DAY DATE
If you are a married couple then you must be having the dresses that you wore on your big day for the nuptials. What’s the wait for? Get them on and re-dress as bride and groom and relive your wedding day. Because, unlike that day, you would not be so nervous and shy today but alike a confident duo out on a date. Let’s recreate the magic of the day when you two officially became ONE and for life!
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13) ‎A KIDS STUDY DAY DATE
Usually it happens that one of the parents is made responsible for taking care of the child’s studies. But have you thought how interesting and fun it would be if both the parents teach their kid together. This way they would not only understand the child better but also themselves better as the parents of their little one. Family time is calling guys because as I said life is emminently about the simple joys in the company of your loved ones and very little of what is too fancy. I included this point so that your child does not feel neglected with the overflowing of romance between his parents.

14) ‎A PAINTING DATE
Grab an old T-shirt or a bed sheet and do a couple activity of painting together. Take those brushes, paints and let the colour of love unleash and unfold upon the pale fabric which is now coloured beautifully through your love. As much as you will enjoy the process, you would even cherish the outcome, the masterpiece which you would have created.

15) A SWIMMY DATE
If you have a pool in your bungalow, what’s the waiting for? Slip in your sassy skin-fitting swimsuit, wear that fancy hat and those nice sunnies. Get ready to be tanned by not only just the sun but also by the love of your life. Going skinny-dipping can be a wild move but who ever said no to it?

So I hope you got some really innovative ideas on how you can keep the spark in your relationship alive even when you can’t get access to materialistic things (very relatable with the present situation of Covid 19). You cannot gift anything to your spouse or take him/her out on expensive dates, go for exotic holidaying in lavish resorts but one thing to remember is that true love is expressed from kind gestures that the two do for each other and from within the heart conversations. All these diamond rings, flowers, foreign vacations  might bring temporary happiness but love is eternal and that is maintained through the heart’s devotion. All my best wishes and loads of love to all our readers. I pray and hope that you are all staying safe in your homes along with your loved ones. Take care.
Bub

The Man Who Knew too much: Alan Turing

I remembered my first day in college, our vice-chancellor arranged a seminar for all departments 1st-year student, he motivated us, told us about the future that is in our hand, and one thing that I always keep in my mind he told that every student should know to code, I knew the importance of code language, programming, Artificial Intelligence but I really not aware of their history how it was developed, so after the session, I am starting to know about code languages during this time I came came to know about a man “Alan Turing” his life, passion for mathematics and machine, code languages, computer science, just mesmerized me.

Alan Mathison Turing the Father of Modern computer science and Artificial Intelligence. Today Mr. Turing’s 108th birth anniversary. He was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalization of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer.

His revolutionary idea was to create a machine that would turn thought processes into numbers. The machine would read a series of ones and zeros from a tape which described the steps needed to solve a problem or task.During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Britain’s codebreaking centre that produced Ultra intelligence. For a time he led Hut 8, the section that was responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. Here, he devised a number of techniques for speeding the breaking of German ciphers, including improvements to the pre-war Polish BOMBE method, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.

  • German Enigma Machine
  • BOMBE
Reconstructed form of Bombe now in the national museum of computing, England

Turing played a crucial role in cracking intercepted coded messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis in many crucial engagements, including the Battle of the Atlantic, and in so doing helped win the war.he and fellow scientist saved lots of life by code breaking.

The man who is a pioneer of modern mathematics and computer science, his invention, theories changed today’s technology. Tribute to the world’s great Inventor Mr. Alan Mathison Turing🙏.

Self-Reliant India

The Prime Minister in his address on 12th May 2020 gave a call for self-reliant India. The definition of self-reliance has changed in the globalised world and he clarified that when the country talks about self-reliance, it is different from being self-centred. He said that India’s culture considers the world as one family, and progress in India is part of, and also contributes to, progress in the whole world. He noted that the world trusts that India has a lot to contribute towards the development of the entire humanity.

Five pillars of self-reliant India

Self-Reliant India will stand on five pillars viz. 

  1. Economy: which brings in quantum jump and not incremental change; 
  2. Infrastructure: which should become the identity of India; 
  3. System: based on 21st-century technology-driven arrangements; 
  4. Vibrant Demography: which is our source of energy for a self-reliant India; and 
  5. Demand: whereby the strength of our demand and supply chain should be utilised to full capacity. He underlined the importance of strengthening all stakeholders in the supply chain to increase, as well as fulfil, the demand.

Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan

The Prime Minister announced a special economic package and gave a clarion call for Atmanirbhar Bharat. He noted that this package, taken together with earlier announcements by the government during COVID-19 crisis and decisions taken by RBI, is to the tune of Rs. 20 lakh crore, which is equivalent to almost 10% of India’s GDP. He said that the package will provide a much-needed boost towards achieving ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’. He observed that the package will also focus on land, labour, liquidity and laws. It will cater to various sections including cottage industry, MSMEs, labourers, middle class, industries, among others.

Talking about the positive impact of reforms like JAM trinity and others, brought about in the last six years, Prime Minister said that several bold reforms are needed to make the country self-reliant so that the impact of crisis such as COVID-19 can be negated in future. These reforms include supply chain reforms for agriculture, rational tax system, simple and clear laws, capable human resource and a strong financial system. These reforms will promote business, attract investment, and further strengthen Make in India. Self-reliance will prepare the country for tough competition in the global supply chain, and the country must win this competition. The same has been kept in mind while preparing the package. It will not only increase efficiency in various sectors but also ensure quality. Highlighting their contribution to the country, Prime Minister said that the package will also focus on empowering the poor, labourers, migrants, etc., both from organized and unorganized sectors. He observed that the crisis has taught us the importance of local manufacturing, the local market and local supply chains.

Bold Reform-Need of the Hour

  1. Supply chain Reform for Agriculture
  2. Rational Tax System
  3. Simple and Clear Laws 
  4. Capable Human Resource 
  5. Strong Financial System

Self Reliant is the imperishable call from the side of PMO. It is the time in which India should stand on his own feet. The time has come to prove himself as a ‘teacher of the world’ as it was in the past.

Sushant singh rajput and bollywood

14 June, 2020. I write and underline this date in red.

It’s been a week and a day since we lost the great actor to suicide. While we flood social media with tributes to him and awareness about mental health, Sushant is probably flailing around and looking down at us through the smoky clouds. 

In this post, I’m not going to dove on about mental health, nor I am going lay flowers for him. This post isn’t a rant; this is serious and needs to be more talked about.

On the morning of 14th, the whole nation was left in a state of shock. It was the third death in Bollywood in the past two months, all of which were sudden and unexpected.

Since his death, a lot has been unraveled about the Bollywood, its dark side and the nepotism in the industry.

This is post is not to blame anyone, nor to praise anyone. It is about what we as an audience can do, with a slight concoction about the aforementioned topics.

  1. We need to be a vigilant and responsible audience, we need to watch and like the content, rather than the actors.

We have pedestalizedthe film workers so much that we forgot that they, too, like us are just at a job. A job which is as ordinary as ours, just that everyone and anyone under the sky can have access to it, acknowledge it or reject it.

  • We choose and make someone’s career, we need to watch their work and assess it and not just absorb anything that they show us.
  • While we blame the hierarchical paradigm of Bollywood and lash out the ones who are where they are because of blood, we must not start targeting everyone. Those at fault must be gripped but those who have done nothing wrong, shall not be targeted.
  • Bollywood is the nation’s industry just like BHEL or BSNL. Everyone shall have the opportunity to work in it, and this should not be regulated by the already established workers.

A government regulated systemic processes shall be incorporated that check the industry and recruit the workers.

Bollywood does not belong to star kids; it belongs to us, our nation and its common people.

Raise your voice before it’s too late and we are robbed of our own industry.

Reach out to me @ekanika_shah on instagram.

The Chapekar Brothers and assassination of W.C Rand, The British plague Commissioner of Pune 1897

During late 1896 dreaded disease of plague had struck Pune and by early 1897, the disease had spread critically. In February 1897 alone, there were 657 deaths reportedly due to plague. About half of the city’s population had left it.The government set up a Special Plague Committee in March that year to handle the menace and control the spread of the disease. It was chaired by an Indian Civil Service (ICS) officer W. C. Rand.

The commission appointed more than 800 officers and soldiers on duty in Pune rather than employing doctors for the job of implementing the measures. The measures included entry into houses forcefully, examination of its occupants including women, taking them to segregation camps and preventing people affected with plague from leaving or entering Pune.People were denied permission to conduct the funerals of their loved ones unless the deaths were registered. If plague was the cause of death, the dead had to be cremated in special grounds designated by the government.

A medical camp for the plague, in Pune 1896, source of the image Google

The Chapekar brothers  Damodar Hari Chapekar, Balkrishna Hari Chapekar and Vasudeo Hari Chapekar and a friend of them Mahadev Ranade initially belonged to Chapa small hamlet near Chinchwad, then a village near Pune, in the state of Maharashtra, India

1.Balkrishna Hari Chapekar 2.Damodar Hari Chapekar 3. Basudev Hari chapekar 4. Mahadev Ranade. Source of image Google

Regular harassments of Rand commission had prompted the Chapekar brothers and other members of the revolutionary “Chapekar Club” to take action against the person who started it all—the commissioner. On 22 June 1897, brothers Damodar Hari Chapekar and Balkrishna Hari Chapekar assassinated a British official W. C. Rand and his military escort Lieutenant Ayerst at Pune, Maharashtra. This was the first case of militant nationalism in India after the 1857 Revolt.

Chapekar Brother statue at Chinchwad, source of the image Google

All three brothers were found guilty and hanged, an accomplice was dealt with similarly, another, then a schoolboy, was sentenced to ten years’ rigorous imprisonment.