Jharkhand’s Singhbhum region may have been earliest continental land to rise above ocean, reveals study

 

Scientists from India, Australia and the US have found that the Earth’s first continents emerged from the ocean 700 million years earlier than thought.

Researchers have always been intrigued about when the landmasses we reside on came into existence and till recently, it was widely accepted that continents rose out of the ocean about 2.5 billion years ago. However, a recent study has changed that notion.

A recent research has shown that the Earth’s first continents may have risen out of the ocean about 700 million years earlier than previously thought. And to the surprise of many, the earliest continental land to have risen about 3.2 billion years ago may have been Jharkhand’s Singhbhum region. Scientists from India, Australia and the US have found sandstones in Singhbhum with geological signatures of ancient river channels, tidal plains and beaches over 3.2 billion years old, representing the earliest crust exposed to air.

When asked as to how Singhbhum came into the picture of research related to Earth Sciences, Dr Priyadarshi Chowdhury of Monash University, the study’s lead author, told indianexpress.com that the answer to “when the first landmasses were formed lay in the sedimentary rocks of the region”.

“We found a particular type of sedimentary rocks, called sandstones. We then tried to find their age and in which conditions they have formed. We found the age by analysing the uranium and lead contents of tiny minerals. These rocks are 3.1 billion years old, and were formed in ancient rivers, beaches, and shallow seas. All these water bodies could have only existed if there was continental land. Thus, we inferred that the Singhbhum region was above the ocean before 3.1 billion years ago,” Chowdhury said.

But, Chowdhury said, patches of the earliest continental land also exist in Australia and South Africa.

Speaking about how they determined that the region rose above ocean during the timeframe mentioned above, Chowdhury explained: “We studied the granites that form the continental crust of the Singhbhum region. These granites are 3.5 to 3.1 billion years old and formed through extensive volcanism that happened about 35-45 km deep inside the Earth and continued on-and-off for hundreds of millions of years until all the magma solidified to form a thick continental crust in the area. Due to the thickness and less density, the continental crust emerged above surrounding oceanic crust owing to buoyancy.”

“This is the most direct, unambiguous date yet for the emergence of continental land,” Chowdhury said. The findings have appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a US research journal.

The research also tends to break another well-accepted notion: continents rose above the ocean due to plate tectonics, which is the major driver today for increases in the elevation of land masses.

“We have plate tectonics today to control the elevation. When two continents’ (plates) collide, you form the Himalayas, you form the Alps,” he said. “That wasn’t the case 3 billion years [ago]. The first continents probably rose above sea level as they were inflated by progressive injection of magma derived from deep in the Earth.”

The researchers believe that the earliest emergence of continents would have contributed to the proliferation of photosynthetic organisms, which would have increased oxygen levels in the atmosphere. “Once you create land, what you also create is shallow seas, like lagoons,” Chowdhury added, accelerating the growth of oxygen-producing life forms that may have boosted oxygen in the atmosphere and ocean.

Exhorting on the importance of such studies, Chowdhury said that at a time when the entire world was debating about changes in climate, it is very important to understand how our atmosphere, oceans and climate came into existence and how they interacted with geological processes operating deep inside Earth to make our planet habitable.

“It allows us to link the interior of Earth to its exterior in deep time. India has three other ancient continental fragments — Dharwar, Bastar and Bundelkhand regions. We need to understand their evolution. What we did in Singhbhum may serve as a template for studying these other cratons,” he added.

Written by Rounak Bagchi

Source: Indian Express, 11/11/21

Hunger isn’t about biology. It’s about politics

 

Shah Alam Khan writes: In the absence of an organised food security net and political commitment, India is being crippled by the challenge of pervasive hunger and malnourishment

A busy day ended and I started walking towards my car in the hospital parking lot. With the setting sun in my eyes, I saw this seven- or eight-year-old boy standing at the hospital entrance speaking to his younger sister. Their father and an old lady (probably their grandmother) sat on their haunches nearby. The little boy had returned after visiting his ailing mother, who was admitted in our hospital. The visit of the young boy had coincided with lunch being served to admitted patients. This stroke of luck had given him a chance of a lifetime. It was now his turn to describe the menu to his younger sister.

“There was dal. There was roti. There was dahi….” He spoke like a lover who has just won a duel. His sister listened in awe. Her half-open mouth and shining eyes had an element of surprise. “What else was there?” she asked nervously. Her golden-brown hair, a sign of malnutrition, added misery to her innocent face.

“And there was achaar,” he continued with a snick of the tongue. Every food item he mentioned widened the little girl’s eyes.

I kept listening to them. The click of his tongue, the warmth of the rotis, the precise salt in the dal — good food had turned him into a master storyteller. Her sister’s face was slowly falling apart, her excitement turning into anxiety. Her sparse eyebrows were raised like parentheses. She was beginning to realise what she had missed. The storyteller continued. By now, darkness had engulfed his face. His brittle voice followed me into the car park. I drove into the darkness promising myself to quickly forget hiA few months after this incident, the Global Hunger Index (GHI) report ranked India at 101 out of a total of 116 countries. Despite my resistance, the two children returned to haunt me. Very unceremoniously, we were again labelled the republic of hungry citizens. To add misery to this horrible truth is the fact that in the crop year 2019-20 (July-June), the country’s foodgrain output was at a record 297.5 million tones. Hunger in India is thus a classic case of the crisis of capitalism, which Karl Marx, the best food theorist I know, had once warned us against.

In his book, Hunger: A Modern History, James Vernon has described hunger as a “timeless and inescapable biological condition”. Wrong. Hunger has always been political. The soul of hunger lies in the evil of the ruling class. The biology of hunger resides inside the coffers of the state and its cronies. In a 2008 paper, Hunger in the Contemporary World, Amartya Sen enumerated the interdependence of food deprivation and hunger on multiple factors. According to him, hunger involves much more than food. Different interconnections of food or lack of it are well-being of economic sectors, women’s education, public activism and social commitment, employment, military expenditure, political incentives and government policies, people’s income and inter-family food distribution rules. The complex diversity of these interconnections is what makes India vulnerable to pervasive hunger.

Having said this, it is interesting to note that in the current GHI, India has fared worse than neighbours Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. These are countries with a similar subset of factors and “food interconnections” as ours. It won’t be wrong to, therefore, conclude that we need to evaluate our responses in the fight against hunger in the backdrop of what these nations did right in standing up to the menace of hunger.

In the last decade or so, Bangladesh has shown significant progress on many socio-economic parameters. Infant mortality rate (IMR), which is considered to be one of the best indicators of overall health of the society, is 23.6 per thousand live births for Bangladesh as against India’s IMR of 28.7 per thousand live births. Female literacy in Bangladesh is 72 per cent, higher than that of India at 66 per cent. There is thus no surprise that they have done fairly well in the GHI. A study conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) on food security post the Covid-19 crisis in Bangladesh concluded that though the lockdown brought significant food insecurity, it quickly went back to the pre-pandemic levels with extensive government involvement. A similar conclusion for India will need a leap of imagination.s sister’s miserable face and the meagre food he described. I dreamt of them that night.

On the day that the GHI released its rankings, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the country’s goal under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat campaign was to emerge as the most powerful military in the world. However, our expenditure on health over the last five years has either remained static or declined. Health is the single most crucial “interconnection of food”. Political will and commitment come a close second. In the absence of an organised food security net, particularly in urban India, our rank in the GHI will fall further.

India is a signatory to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). We need to achieve these 13 targets and 28 indicators by 2030. The SDG target 2.1 enumerates that by 2030 we need to end hunger and ensure access of all people, in particular the poor and vulnerable, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round. In 2020, we were ranked 94 (out of 107 countries) in the GHI. Our deterioration in 2021 is a grim reminder of our potential inability to achieve the SDG 2.1 target unless we do something drastically different; something more than committing ourselves to war, and a vulgar display of power. Unless that happens, we, the republic of hungry people, shall continue to find truth in what Charlotte Bronte, had written in Shirley, the Tale:

“Take the matter as you find it: ask no questions; utter no remonstrances: it is your best wisdom. You expected bread, and you have got a stone; break your teeth on it, and don’t shriek because the nerves are martyrised: do not doubt that your mental stomach — if you have such a thing — is strong as an ostrich’s — the stone will digest.”

Source: Indian Express, 12/11/21

Quote of the Day November 11, 2021

 

“We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.”
Max Depree

“हम जो हैं वही बने रहकर वह नहीं बन सकते जो कि हम बनना चाहते हैं।”
मैक्स डेप्री

National Education Day 2021: Five interesting facts about India’s first education minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad

 

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad served as the first education minister of independent India from 1947 to 1958. He was posthumously honoured with India’s highest civilian award - Bharat Ratna in 1992.

Every year since 2008, November 11 is celebrated as the National Education Day to mark the birth anniversary of India’s first education minister Abul Kalam Ghulam Muhiyuddin. Fondly known as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, he served as the education minister of independent India for over 10 years from 1947 to 1958. He was posthumously honoured with India’s highest civilian award – Bharat Ratna in 1992. 

Apart from holding the rank of India’s education minister, Abul kalam Azad donned many hats of being a journalist, freedom fighter, politician, and educationist. Here are five lesser-known facts about the late education minister who transformed the education system of India. 

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was born in Saudi Arabia

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia in 1888. His mother was an Arab and the daughter of Sheikh Mohammad Zaher Watri and Azad’s father, Maulana Khairuddin, was a Bengali Muslim of Afghan origins who came to Arab during the Sepoy Mutiny and proceeded to Mecca and settled there. He came back to Calcutta with his family in 1890 when Abul Kalam was two years old. 

Abul Kalam was homeschooled and knew many languages

Azad pursued traditional Islamic education. He was taught at home, first by his father and later by appointed teachers who were eminent in their respective fields. Azad learned Arabic and Persian first and then philosophy, geometry, mathematics and algebra. He also learned English, world history, and politics through self-study. Azad also knew Hindustani, Hindi and English languages. 

Started two weekly journals – Al-Hilal and Al-Balagh to promote Hindu-Muslim unity

In 1912, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad started a weekly journal in Urdu called Al-Hilal to increase the revolutionary recruits amongst the Muslims. Al-Hilal played an important role in forging Hindu-Muslim unity after the bad blood created between the two communities in the aftermath of Morley-Minto reforms. Al-Hilal became a revolutionary mouthpiece ventilating extremist views. ‘The government regarded Al- Hilal as a propagator of secessionist views and banned it in 1914. 

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad then started another weekly called Al-Balagh with the same mission of propagating Indian nationalism and revolutionary ideas based on Hindu-Muslim unity. In 1916, the government banned this paper too and expelled Maulana Abul Kalam Azad from Calcutta and exiled him to Bihar from where he was released after the First World War 1920.

Youngest person to serve as the President of the Indian National Congress

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad supported Non-Cooperation Movement started by Gandhiji and entered Indian National Congress in 1920. He was elected as the president of the special session of the Congress in Delhi (1923). At an age of 35, he became the youngest person to serve as the President of the Indian National Congress. 

Maulana Azad was arrested in 1930 for violation of the salt laws as part of Gandhiji’s Salt Satyagraha. He was put in Meerut jail for a year and a half. After his release, he again became the president of Congress in 1940 (Ramgarh) and remained in the post till 1946.

Founder of Jamia Milia Islamia University

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was one of the founding members of the Jamia Milia Islamia University, originally established at Aligarh in the United Provinces, India in 1920.

He is responsible for shaping the modern education system of the country. The first IIT, IISc, School of Planning and Architecture and the University Grants Commission were established under his tenure as the education minister. The most prominent cultural, literary academies were also built including the Sangeet Natak Academy, Lalit Kala Academy, Sahitya Academy as well as the Indian Council for Cultural Relations.

Source: Indian Express, 11/11/21

Looking for Ambedkar in ‘Jai Bhim’

 

Suryakant Waghmore writes: The film is an important depiction of institutionalised discrimination and the quest for justice and power of marginalised groups

Movies based on the real-life struggles of marginalised groups are rare in mainstream Indian cinema. T J Gnanavel’s Jai Bhim is amongst the few that engages with issues of identity and institutionalised discrimination with some sincerity. It is based on the true story of the struggle of Parvathi (Sengani in the movie), an Irula woman, to find and secure justice for her husband, who is arrested and tortured in police custody in a false case of theft, only to disappear from custody later.

Jai Bhim has a powerful cast with Suriya playing the protagonist, based on the communist lawyer-turned-judge, K Chandru, Lijomol Jose as Sengani and Manikandan as her husband, Rajakannu. The movie is a portrayal of the life, occupation and culture of the Irula tribe, their aspiration for a better life and education, and the daily exclusions, along with torture and mass incarceration, that they face — all nested in the deeply hierarchical and illiberal democratic structure of Tamil Nadu.

Set in the early 1990s, the movie shows Rajakannu working as a snake catcher in the homes and farms of the very upper-caste landlords who snub and shun him. Yet, the homeless, landless citizenship of the Irulas is not void of hope and draws meaning from their proximity to nature and the protections enshrined in the Constitution.

Justice Chandru makes no bones about his communist leanings in real life and this is shown well in the movie by Gnanavel. The symbolism of the red flag with the hammer and sickle, banners and posters, along with images and statues of Karl Marx are found in the background of various scenes. Justice Chandru hunts down evidence for the custodial murder of Rajakannu and his wrongful arrest for theft, while arguing a habeas corpus petition filed by Sengani in the high court. The depiction of the violence and cruelty faced by the incarcerated Rajakannu and his close relatives is gut-wrenching and the pregnant Sengani’s quest for justice, despite the trauma, is inspiring. The story unfolds as advocate Chandru argues the case and takes on the mighty apparatus of the state as a good cop (played by Prakash Raj) joins the battle for conscience.

Jai Bhim is also a commentary on the masculine nature of the Indian state, its loose structures permeated by the caste and kinship powers that enable and institutionalise discrimination against marginalised groups like Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and even Muslims.

Despite the realism embedded in the movie, one is left wanting more. Does Suriya look like Justice Chandru? Tamil movies could definitely do better to inculcate an appreciation for dark skin and non-mainstream imagery. Another concern is with the portrayal of Left politics. Hugo Gorringe, a sociologist and scholar of Tamil Nadu, suggests that politics is also a game of pragmatism and the Left movements too are under compulsion to adopt pragmatic politics. It is this pragmatism that forced the Left to focus on issues of caste and social exclusion in Tamil Nadu. One is left wondering why the movie is titled Jai Bhim as Ambedkar is neither evoked nor portrayed as the guiding light except once, when Chandru mentions that Ambedkar was sidelined by Gandhi and Nehru.

The current pressures of politics and the resulting pragmatism may need the symbolic presence of Ambedkar, with an Ambedkar being available for everyone. For legal activism and in a legal drama oriented towards social justice, Ambedkar could be more inspiring than Marx as he had believed that the process of civil repair requires smaller and continual revolutions in society and the institutional mechanisms of justice. The quest for justice and power is a continuous process for marginalised groups. As the lyrics of one song in Jai Bhim go:

Take the power in your hand/ Dare to take power in your hand/ You have no choice but that.

We must also stay aware that the Irulas are still waiting for substantive power and their Ambedkar is yet to seize the moment. We need many more movies like Jai Bhim in our struggle for a better world.

Written by Suryakant Waghmore

The writer is professor of sociology at IIT Bombay

Source: Indian Express, 11/11/21

Dropbox vs. Google Drive: Which cloud storage is right for you?

 Google’s Drive and Dropbox are two of the most popular options for cloud storage and backup. Which makes sense, because the two platforms compete with each other intensely. Which one is right for you? That’s a complex question, and it comes down to several factors: your budget, your total backup needs, and which platforms you want to use them on. 

Unsurprisingly, Google Drive works best if you’re heavily invested in Google’s other systems: Android, Chrome OS, and the Google Workspace suite of web apps. It’s also a better value in general. Dropbox is a better choice if you’re more concerned with speed and performance, and are willing to pay for it. 

Pricing 

At the consumer level, both companies offer at least one approximately comparable plan for cloud storage. Here’s a quick breakdown of the various plans and prices: 

Storage tier	Google Drive/Google One	Dropbox
2GB	–	Free (bonuses available)
15GB	Free	–
100GB	$2 a month	–
200GB	$3 a month	–
2TB	$10 a month	$12 a month (one user only), $20 a month for 6 users
3TB	–	$20 a month (one user only)
5TB	$25 a month	$45 per month/3 user minimum, $15 for each extra user
10TB	$50 a month	–
20TB	$100 a month	–
30TB	$150 a month	–
Unlimited	–	$75 per month/3 user minimum, $25 for each extra user

As you can see, Google Drive (also known as Google One) offers both more initial, free storage, and more and cheaper options at different levels of storage. Dropbox users can boost their free storage by getting friends to sign up with referral codes, up to 16GB. But making users essentially do your marketing for you to get what’s free elsewhere isn’t a great value proposition. 

Both companies offer discounts for paying yearly instead of monthly. But in terms of bang for your buck, Dropbox really only makes sense for individual users who want up to two terabytes of storage, or for teams of users who need an absolutely huge amount: more than Google Drive’s maximum 30TB.

Also, while Google allows free users to access Drive from anywhere and on unlimited devices, Dropbox makes users pay for more than three devices to have easy access via dedicated apps. You can get around this limit by using the Dropbox browser tool, but it’s a pretty huge barrier for free users.

Integration 

Google also wins out on integration with different platforms. The Google Drive system is built into most Android phones and tablets, all Chrome OS-powered devices, and it’s the default way to save files in Google Docs and other Google Workspace tools. On top of that, Google Drive/One apps are available on iOS and Windows, allowing for easy uploads and downloads. 

Dropbox is also available pretty much everywhere, but its integration is less seamless on mobile and Chrome OS. While it’s possible to upload and download to Dropbox on almost any platform (via the browser if not a dedicated app), it may take a few more steps. The three-device limit on a free Dropbox account is a big limiter here, too. 

Both Google Drive and Dropbox integrate with a variety of other often-used services, like Microsoft Office, Slack, Adobe Creative Cloud, Zoom, et cetera. Dropbox even lets you sign in with a Google or Apple account, if you like.

Usability

While Google is a clear winner on value, and they’ve made it easy to access your files on multiple platforms, Dropbox still has an edge on usability, in my opinion. Google Drive tends to treat its storage as one big pool of data, and while it has support for the basic directory system of folders most PC users are used to, the platform would prefer you to use its built-in search tools. 

Dropbox, on the other hand, assumes that you generally know where you put your stuff, and makes it easy to navigate through folders and sub-folders either on an app or in a desktop directory. It’s not effortlessly intuitive, but it’s familiar to anyone who’s been using desktops and laptops for most of their adult lives. It’s a PC-first approach, rather than the (perhaps understandable) mobile-style interface of Drive. 

Performance 

While Google Drive is by no means slow, Dropbox gets the edge in performance, too. When trying to upload massive amounts of both large and small data, Dropbox gave me consistently faster upload speeds. That’s a notable consideration if you plan on hitting your storage hard and frequently. 

Dropbox also has a feature that makes it faster to send files around your local network: LAN sync. This tool allows files added to your Dropbox account to start copying over local Ethernet or Wi-Fi connections even before they’re fully uploaded to the cloud. In practical terms, this makes a file added on your phone (say, a new photo you took of your pet) appear almost instantaneously in the Dropbox folder on your Windows or MacOS computer, so long as both devices are connected to the local network. 

It’s a small but crucial advantage if what you’re really looking for is a bucket of syncing storage that’s quick and easy to access. 

Sharing storage and PC backup 

As you might expect, Google comes out ahead in terms of sharing storage between family members. While Google One plans can be shared with up to five extra family members (for a total of six users) on the cheapest $2 a month tier, Dropbox only unlocks this option once you start paying $20 a month for 2TB of storage.

Individual files can be shared easily on both platforms, and there’s not much of a difference between Google Drive and Dropbox if you’re sharing accounts. But unless you need a truly massive amount of storage on Dropbox, Google Drive is better in terms of value if you want to share that storage between two or more users. 

Both systems offer tools to back up your PC’s files to the cloud in a system-wide fashion… sort of. While it’s certainly possible to treat Google Drive or Dropbox as a cloud backup system, these platforms really aren’t designed for a regular emergency backup. Their slow upload speed and cumbersome backup tools put them well behind dedicated services like Carbonite or Backblaze. I wouldn’t give either one extra points of this feature. (For more on this topic, see our roundup of the best cloud backup services.)

Extras 

On top of the above tools, there are less tangible advantages to both systems. Purchasing extra Google Drive storage via the Google One system gets you: 

·         Shared space for Gmail messages/attachments and Google Photos 

·         Free access to the Google One VPN on Android 

·         Discounts on purchases in the Google Store 

·         Occasional deals on travel and other items 

How about Dropbox? Once again, Dropbox is more stingy with its tools, unlocking some of its more premium options under more expensive consumer or business accounts. Even the full text search, a fairly basic tool that you can perform yourself on local files in just about any OS, isn’t available at the free tier. Once again Dropbox’s more stingy nature is hurting it in this comparison. 

Google Drive is the clear winner 

While Dropbox has a superior interface and user experience (at least for people who prefer conventional PC-style file systems), and its performance and LAN sync tools can leave the competition in the dust, Google is offering a better product and a better value on almost all other points of comparison. 

From the price of premium storage, to integration with desktop and mobile operating systems, to less tangible bonuses as part of the Google One system, Drive is a clear winner. That’s doubly true if you’re looking to stick to free tools. 

Which isn’t to say that Dropbox is necessarily a bad choice. That extra performance and better interface might be worth it, especially for users who don’t necessarily need the massive amount of storage Google offers. Just be aware of the trade-off in value.

By Michael Crider

Source:  PCWorld NOV 9, 2021

Reading should always be in vogue

 “A book is a gift you can open again and again”   says Garrison Keillor. My father inculcated and nurtured my reading habit as he took me to local book exhibitions when I was young and made sure that I enrolled myself in the Goa State Central Library, then housed in Institute Menezes Braganza, Panjim. As a kid, as my reading grew, books espoused my curiosity to understand the world better. A study conducted by B Greene in 2001 says it aptly “Reading habit is best formed at a young impressionable age in school, but once formed it can last one’s lifetime”.

Reading encourages sound scholastic development of the mind. The most direct outcome of the reading is it strengthens vocabulary and leads to a fluid formation of comprehensible sentences. Reading allows the mind to go through an assortment of characters, their lives, ambitions, nuances thus allowing it to weave a story. It empowers and emancipates citizens, and it brings people together. It helps to form opinions and guide one’s judgements. It fuels up the imagination and makes us receptive to new ideas. It allows and fosters re-thinking and questioning about themes to which non-readers cling without any understanding. It allows one to be empathetic and liberal in viewing society. Reading is an investment that pays rich dividends in life.

However, reading habit has taken a backseat in this online world. There are three essential steps for any habit to form: a trigger, the process and a reward, says Adam Grant. This method has been mastered by the greatest distractors of all time: the social media giants! The smartphone notification (the trigger), countless feeds of pictures/videos (the process) and instant gratification one gets (the reward) fully utilise the caveat of habit formation. While on the other hand, reading a book or a newspaper compels the effortful mind to think over facts and assimilate the ideas. Though development in technology has brought books at our fingertips in the form of e-books, e-magazines or e-journals, it has been poorly successful in imbibing the reading habit. This notion is bolstered by the scene of students in the reading rooms of libraries seen fiddling with the smartphone screens.

The advent of audio books has tried to replace the traditional methods. Lack of dedicated time (or will for it) for reading has been monetised by companies that offer books to listen to on the go. Since the brain cannot multitask effectively, listening to a book while doing chores does not allow us to absorb the essence of a book. In contrast, reading a book evokes undivided attention and facilitates the development of focusing ability, thus also leading to more absorption of the contents.

I consider custodians of a library to be the luckiest people on earth, while the visitors to be next in the hierarchy to be lucky! However, as we move up through the educational hierarchy, the tradition of visiting a library slowly disappears from the curriculum. The students are embroiled with the syllabus and supplied with readymade notes, thus diminishing the need to visit a library. Therefore, visiting the library must be allocated a place in the regular timetable.

 

Source: Herald, 11/11/21