Covid-19 Affect: Travel Inc People Shift To Other Biz

Joymala Bagchi

The shop name reads Amax tours and travels yet a peek into the shop will tell a different story. 60-year-old Rakesh Narang who was in tour and travel business for the last 25 years has shifted to selling sanitisers for the last 20 days to earn a livelihood.

Narang isn’t the only one who has been compelled to shift from the travel and tourism business to selling COVID-19 related products.

“As the crisis is going on since the last few months and the scenario will continue to be the same I was left with no other choice but to shift to selling sanitisers. I won’t say I’m doing very good but my only relief is I am earning something at the end of the day and most importantly I can feed my children, my family,” Narang said.

Other small businessmen have also shifted from their primary businesses. “Like me, many businessmen owing small businesses of travel and tourism lost hope. Nobody knows how long this situation will persist. I have to send money to my family in Bihar and I have to do something to earn. I haven’t earned anything for the last two months, I can’t even go back home,” said Kishan Kumar, 43, who is selling vegetables since last few weeks in Lajpat Nagar.

In areas like Cannaught Place, Paharganj, Lajpat Nagar most of the shops associated with travel and tour businesses have mot opened after unlock.

“We used to know our customers. They further used to recommend our name to other people they knew. Now in this new business, we have no contacts, no known faces I don’t know how to continue even with this business. Have only earned Rs 350 in the last three days,” told a businessman who recently started selling COVID-19 products in the area near to Paharganj.

Many of these businessmen pay a huge amount of rent. And most continued to pay the rent even when their business was facing hardship.

A few from the travel and tourism sector are trying to revive their businesses, however, a large number is still thinking how to begin afresh.

Though domestic travel has resumed, people are restricting themselves to essential travel, primarily due to an exponential rise in the number of COVID-19 cases. (ANI)

Over 57 Lakh Covid-19 Tests Done So Far, Says ICMR

A total of 1,15,519 samples of COVID-19 have been tested in the last 24 hours taking the total samples tested to 57,74,133 in the country, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said.

“Total sample tested 57,74,133 and samples tested in the last 24 hours is 1,15,519,” said ICMR.

With an increase of 11,502 cases in the past 24 hours, the COVID-19 count in India reached 3,32,424 on Monday, according to the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry.

The COVID-19 count includes 1,53,106 active cases while 1,69,798 patients have been cured and discharged or migrated so far, and the toll due to COVID-19 has now reached 9,520. (ANI)

Ertuğrul – Solace In Fictional Glory

How far and deep into the past can a people go, be it history or mythology popularly perceived as history, to rejuvenate their present that is in turmoil and one that portends a bleak immediate future? Answer to this complex question may be found in the heady mix of piety and populism dished out with political support to people locked-in by Coronavirus pandemic.

After the Indian experience of Ramayan and Mahabharat television serials, it is time to see Pakistanis glued to their television sets watching an epic-size Turkish series about 13th century Muslim renaissance. Begun in the holy Ramazan month, it continues to win audiences. 

Dubbed Muslim Game of Throne, Dirilis (meaning Resurrection): Ertugrul has established viewership records with 240 million people watching it on YouTube alone. Said to be the new avatar of a 2002 film on the same subject that was an entry at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in 2002, this 2014 series is a milestone in Turkey’s entertainment world. After five successful seasons, Director Mehmet Bozdag is planning a sequel.

Its main protagonist is Osman I who rallied squabbling tribes of Oghuz Turks, won territories and paved the way for his son to establish the Ottoman Empire. It stretched to parts of Europe, Asia and North Africa and remains an enduring phase of Muslim political, military and cultural supremacy.

The end of this empire, the Caliphate, a century back post-First World War has not impacted its lure. A modern secular state that Kamal Ataturk then created stands rejected by the new political leadership and Turkey continues to reclaim its past glory.

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The Turkish prowess, past and present, attracts Muslims in general, but especially in Pakistan as it explores an identity away from a hostile India. In that quest, it is wary of a Shia Iran and an iffy Afghanistan, although Ghazanvi, Ghori and Abdali are used to remind what remains of India of the past conquests.  

“At its heart, what Ertugrul represents in this scenario is a battle for the soul of the Islamic narrative and for Pakistan’s own self-image,” Imran Khan, a Doha-based journalist writes for Al Jazeera.

He queries: “Does the country have a unique Muslim identity forged via Muslim India, or is it part of the wider history of the Muslim world?”  He concludes: “The answer to that is what informs its current self-image.”

But it is not so easy and simple. Pakistan’s largest benefactor – spiritually (being the home to Islam’s highest shrines), in terms of political influence and even financially – is Saudi Arabia. Born in the aftermath of the end of the Caliphate, it has no reason to take a secondary position to Turkey in Pakistan.

Ahmer Naqvi, a freelance cultural writer, sees Ertugrul as part of a wider agenda. “There is definitely an element of the Pakistani state pushing a certain idea of Islamic history, that focuses on conquest and expansionism and that has a long history of being used as propaganda,” he writes.

“This push has come at the expense of even acknowledging the history of what is now settled Pakistan. So, you would know about Muslim general Salahuddin but not about Chanakya, who lived in settled (present day) Pakistan, so yes, there is valid concern that the state is pushing a wider history and not its own,” Naqvi says.

Naqvi’s viewpoint is debatable, but there is no escaping Prime Minister Imran Khan’s push for Ertugrul. He watches it regularly and has even promoted it in an interview for its “Islamic values”. He thinks they are in contrast to the ‘vulgarity’ that Hollywood and Bollywood dish out to the entertainment-starved Pakistanis.  

With such popularity, political flutter is but natural. Parallels are being drawn in domestic arena. Supporters of the prime minister see in him qualities of Ertugrul – the larger-than life saviour/conquorer. Not to be left behind, the opposition Pakistan Muslim League sees such virtues in Maryam Nawaz Sharif, the imprisoned daughter and political heir of Pakistan’s three-time premier. The young and handsome Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, it seems, is yet to make the grade.         

ALSO READ: Maryam Nawaz: New Star On Pak Horizon

The Pakistani lure of a relatively more prosperous Turkey is immense. Former military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, posted there as a soldier, used to be a great Turkey fan. But his being seen with his pet dog in the initial phase of his rule caused anger. Dog is a no-no for Pakistan’s Muslims.

This is only one of the reservations Pakistanis nurse about Turkish entertainment fare, going by reports of how Ertugrul is being received. The more serious one, perhaps, is the way women consorts of mighty Turkish characters live in real lives. Many viewers explore the social media for ‘more’.  The veil-less Instagram images of these actors put them off. They have taken to criticising and even counselling the female players, particularly the lead character, Esra Bilgic, on how they should dress and behave in public. It should be befitting a Muslim woman, they insist.

Pakistani feminist writer Aimun Faisal says: “If you are a Pakistani man, here’s why this Turkish woman has you simultaneously exasperated and enchanted.” She writes: “Ever spurred on by their commitment to religiosity and piety, Muslim men from Pakistan who had looked up a Turkish actress on a photo and video sharing platform, felt it their spiritual duty to educate her, or advice her, or berate her – depending on their self-confidence – on the ethics of being a pious Muslim woman.”

Faisal sees this as an act born out of misogyny. To the Pakistanis, a Turkish woman, almost-Westernized, “is desirable, but not achievable” unlike their brown-skinned compatriot who can be dumped-down into domestic social/moral milieu, but then, she becomes less ‘desirable’.

Truth be told, such conflicts have also bedevilled Indian audiences – at least they did in the past. Many were angry with Anita Guha, last century’s actor who usually played mythological characters and was Sita in Sampoorna Ramayan (1961) because she dressed and drank like any Bollywood socialite. Saira Bano and Sharmila Tagore, wives to famous, liberal Muslims, continued to act in films long after marriage, to the chagrin of their traditional audiences/admirers. They would volunteer to “protect the honour” of the bhabhi (sister-in-law) by destroying film posters depicting them fashionably clad.

Sadly, that body-shaming is now becoming rampant on the social media, also some mainstream one, as the conservatives who seek to dictate dress code for women get stronger.

Come to think of it, is it the return of “Victorian values” in the 21st century? Then, blame the British! Faisal approvingly quotes a study by Frantz Fanon and Partha Chatterjee about how “the encounter of men of colour with colonialism impacted gender ties in the colony.”

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Online Classes

‘Anxiety In Students, But Online Mischiefs Continue’

Parth Kamra, a Class 12 student in Delhi, says even though there is worry among students about their term, Coronavirus hasn’t been able to stop classroom mischiefs

Currently, I am in Class 12 studying Commerce and our batch is right in the middle of major confusion and uncertainty caused by Coronavirus. There is much anxiety over the fate of our term amid the reopening of schools. Yet, neither our education nor our mischief has stopped. Be the classroom real or virtual, children always find ways to pull a trick or two and keep the class in high spirits.

Our generation is so adept at technology that we find solutions to almost anything. Our teachers recognise this. They say: “Beta, we might not be as good as you when it comes to technology but we are getting there, slowly and steadily. Every day, we are reading and learning more about online classes.”

Meanwhile, until the teachers manage to keep up the pace with students when it comes to technology, we hear so many funny stories all around. One of my classmates told me how she recently managed to attend the classes of another school using their password for Zoom (a web meeting zone). Once inside the (virtual) classroom, she had a little fun with the female teacher conducting the class, by asking her a series of silly questions and taking her by surprise. Before the lady teacher could realise the reality, my friend left the class. Poof!

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Right after the first lockdown was announced in March, our teachers used to teach us using the Google Classroom app and we simply used to take notes. Later, we shifted to classes on Zoom but it took at least four days to get things right. The students were quicker to find their way around Zoom. A few of us would simply split their screen and use social media on one side while the teacher would be teaching.

Some would simply put the teacher on mute or would just log in their attendance and go away. Some would keep changing their usernames so that the teacher wouldn’t know who is who. So one day the teacher would find that none other than “Narendra Modi” was attending her classes while on other days there would be Katrina Kaif in the classroom.

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In the last case, the teacher figured out and shifted the classes to Google Meet (another web meeting application). Her, one cannot just make up any username and one can login only by using valid email IDs.

However, our tuition classes still run on Zoom, and students are having fun there. The teacher there too has disabled chats and one can send messages only to the teacher for getting one’s queries cleared.

While most of us are having fun, we haven’t lost touch with the real situation ahead of us. We hope our schools reopen soon after the summer vacations end. Interacting in real life is always way more interesting and fun than in the online world.

Nepal Border Guards Open Fire At Indians; One Dead

An unprecedented incident of firing on Indians took place on Friday morning when some locals were going to Nepal as their daughter in law was there. Nepal security personnel started firing on them in which one person died.

“An incident took place around 8:40 a.m when a family belongs to a village at the border was going to Nepal as daughter-in-law was there. On the Nepal side, security personnel stopped them and asked them to go back which triggered a verbal altercation. The family called other persons as well. Nepal security personnel have fired around 15 rounds out of which 10 were in the air,” DG SSB Kumar Rajesh Chandra told ANI.

“Everything happened in Nepal, not on the Indian side”, he added.

According to the DG, during the firing three persons suffered injuries and one person died.

“A total of three persons have suffered injuries. Another person Vikesh Yadav succumbed to injuries. Two others who have sustained injuries have been identified as Umesh Ram and Uday Thakur. One person has been detained by Nepal security personnel. We are in talks so that they release him and matter does not get escalate,” said DG SSB Kumar Rajesh Chandra.

(ANI)

Cong Slams BJP For Horse Trading Bid In Rajasthan

Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala on Friday slammed the BJP and said that the people of Rajasthan and the legislators in the state will give the party a “befitting reply” in the forthcoming Rajya Sabha elections.

“Is stealing the mandate of people, is stealing the majority given by people of the state, is attempt at defections through an engineered premeditated conspiracy, exercise of democratic right?” Surjewala said while addressing the media here along with Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot.

“Does the BJP have the number of elected legislators to elect two MPs? In Rajya Sabha elections other than for Independent candidates everybody has to show his or her vote to a designated person by the party as per the Constitution of India. The people of Rajasthan and the legislators of Rajasthan will give you a befitting reply by decisively defeating your conspiracies and your attempt at denigrating democracy,” he added.

Meanwhile, Pilot said that both the candidates of Congress will win with a majority of votes in the Rajya Sabha elections.

(ANI)

Uddhav Refutes Reports Of Lockdown Extension In State

Maharashtra Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) on Friday clarified that the lockdown in the state will not be extended and also appealed people to avoid crowding in order to halt the spread of coronavirus.

At present, the lockdown is imposed in the state till June 30.

“Lockdown will not be re-announced. Chief Minister Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray has requested and appealed to the people not to crowd anywhere. Follow the instructions given by the government and take care of yourself,” the Maharashtra CMO tweeted.

The statement from the CMO came after several reports surfaced that the government may further extend lockdown in the wake of the surge in COVID-19 cases in the state.

According to the Union Health Ministry, COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra continue to soar with the number reaching 97,648. India on Friday witnessed its highest-ever spike of 10,956 cases, with 396 deaths in the last 24 hours.

(ANI)

Monsoon Moves To M’rashtra, Orissa, Bengal

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Friday predicted heavy to very heavy rainfall in Konkan, Goa and Telangana in the next 24 hours.

Madhya Maharashtra, Marathawada, coastal Andhra and Yanam, north interior Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Vidarbha, Assam and Meghalaya are likely to get “isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall”.

“Under the influence of low pressure, scattered heavy to very heavy with isolated extremely heavy rainfall likely over Konkan and Goa. Isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall over madhya Maharashtra, Marathawada, coastal Andhra and Yanam, north interior Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Vidarbha, Assam and Meghalaya in next 24 hours,” the IMD said.

The weather agency further informed that conditions are becoming favourable for further advance of south-west monsoon into some more parts of Central Arabian Sea, remaining parts of Maharashtra, including Mumbai, Odisha and West Bengal and some more parts of Chhattisgarh and south Gujarat, south Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar during the next 48 hours.

On Thursday, an ‘orange alert’ was issued for Konkan as Monsoon has entered Maharashtra and is likely to cover the whole state by June 15.Anupam Kashyapi, Head of the Weather Department, IMD Pune said, “The monsoon has reached Solapur on Thursday via Goa. An orange alert has been issued in the Konkan district. Whereas Goa and Madhya Maharashtra are expected to get widespread rain and heavy to very heavy rainfall for the next 2-3 days.”

An orange alert is issued for heavy to very heavy rainfall. “From tomorrow onwards heavy rainfall is expected in ghat areas of Pune. Monsoon is expected to be cover Maharashtra by 15 June,” he added. (ANI)

Locusts Attack Fields In UP’s Pryagraj District

Swarms of locusts entered the Prayagraj district on Thursday and destroyed standing crops in the farms.

They also entered the city and attacked places which have greenery.

There was prior information from the last two days that a swarm of locusts would enter Prayagraj.

“When I went out of my house, I saw a swarm of locusts. Crackers were being burst to drive them away,” Sonam Devi, a local resident said.

“Suddenly, we saw a swarm of locusts come here. They have created chaos. We started bursting crackers and playing songs at high volume to drive them away. The locusts are creating a lot of problems,” Yashasvi, another local resident said.

The desert locust is a species of locust, a swarming short-horned grasshopper. They are known to devour everything in their path, posing an unprecedented threat to food supply and livelihoods of millions of people. (ANI)

India Not In Community Transmission Stage: ICMR

There is no community transmission of COVID-19 in the country according to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Thursday.

Professor (Dr) Balram Bhargava, DG, ICMR, at a press conference in New Delhi said that the prevalence of the infection is at less than one per cent in the small districts, while it is just over one per cent in the urban areas.

“India is such a large country and prevalence is very low that we have found that prevalence is less than one per cent in the small districts, in the urban areas it might be a little over one per cent and slightly higher in containment areas. India is not in community transmission,” Bhargava said.

He, however, added that the country needs to continue with the strategy of testing, tracing, tracking, and quarantine and continue containment measures as they have been successful so far. “The guard should not be let down now,” he added.

There are more patients who have recovered from COVID-19 in the country than active cases currently, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Thursday.

Lav Agrawal, Joint Secretary, MoHFW also said that the recovery rate in the country currently stands at 49.21 percent during a press conference.

“Today, our recovery rate is 49.21 per cent. The number of patients recovered presently exceeds the number of active patients,” Agarwal said.

As of Thursday, there are 1,37,448 active cases while 1,41,028 patients have been cured and discharged in the country. Meanwhile, 8,102 deaths have also been reported due to the infection so far.

(ANI)