Why the world celebrates ‘International Education Day’ on January 24

 

This year, the celebration will take place at the UN Headquarters in New York, Expo 2022 in Dubai, Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and Global Minnesota. 

The International Day of Education is annually celebrated on January 24. This year marks the fourth year of celebration, with the theme ‘Changing Course, Transforming Education’.

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in December, 2018 proclaimed the celebration of this day to mark the importance of education in ensuring peace and development. The resolution to mark this International Day of Education was authored by 59 member states. This demonstrated the unwavering political will to support transformative actions for inclusive, equitable and quality education for all. This year, the celebration will take place at the UN Headquarters in New York, Expo 2022 in Dubai, Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and Global Minnesota. 

Education is a tool that can be employed to ensure growth and progress, but the access to this tool is deeply unequal. The Covid-19 pandemic heightened this divide. Education suffered a huge gap during the pandemic due to the closure of schools, universities, and other educational institutions and required a shift to the online mode. 

“Transforming the future requires an urgent rebalancing of our relationships with each other, with nature as well as with technology that permeates our lives, bearing breakthrough opportunities while raising serious concerns for equity, inclusion and democratic participation”, read the UNESCO’s Futures of Education Report .

Meanwhile, India has its own National Education day celebrated on November 11 to mark the birth anniversary of India’s first Education Minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Azad strongly advocated for the education of women.  

Source: Indian Express, 24/01/22

The significance of Amar Jawan Jyoti, and why it was merged with National War Memorial flame

 

As part of the Central Vista redevelopment project, the Amar Jawan Jyoti flame has been merged with the one at National War Memorial. What was the Amar Jawan Jyoti? Why was it placed at India Gate, and why has it been shifted now?

The government has put out the eternal flame of the Amar Jawan Jyoti underneath India Gate and merged it with the one instituted at the National War Memorial in 2019 a few hundred meters away.

The decision kicked off a political row, with Opposition leaders claiming that it was a disrespect to the soldiers who have laid down their lives fighting for the country.

What was the Amar Jawan Jyoti and why was it constructed?

The eternal flame at the Amar Jawan Jyoti underneath India Gate in central Delhi was an iconic symbol of the nation’s tributes to the soldiers who have died for the country in various wars and conflicts since Independence.Established in 1972, it was to mark India’s victory over Pakistan in the 1971 War, which resulted in the creation of Bangladesh. The then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had inaugurated it on Republic Day 1972, after India defeated Pakistan in December 1971.

The key elements of the Amar Jawan Jyoti included a black marble plinth, a cenotaph, which acted as a tomb of the unknown soldier. The plinth had an inverted L1A1 self-loading rifle with a bayonet, on top of which was a soldier’s war helmet. The installation had four urns on it, with four burners. On normal days one of the four burners were kept alive, but on important days like the Republic Day, all four burners were lit. These burners were what is called the eternal flame, and it was never allowed to be extinguished.

How was the eternal flame kept burning?

For 50 years the eternal flame had been burning underneath India Gate, without being extinguished. But on Friday, the flame was finally put off, as it was merged with another eternal flame at the National War Memorial.

Since 1972, when it was inaugurated, it used to be kept alive with the help of cylinders of liquified petroleum gas, or LPG. One cylinder could keep one burner alive for a day and a half.

In 2006 that was changed. Though a project that cost around Rs 6 lakh the fuel for the flames was changed from LPG to piped natural gas, or PNG. It is through this piped gas that the flame marking the tribute to Indian soldiers had been kept alive eternally.

Why was it placed at India Gate?

The India Gate, All India War Memorial, as it was known earlier, was built by the British in 1931. It was erected as a memorial to around 90,000 Indian soldiers of the British Indian Army, who had died in several wars and campaigns till then. The inscription on the monument reads:

“TO THE DEAD OF THE INDIAN ARMIES WHO FELL AND ARE HONOURED IN FRANCE AND FLANDERS MESOPOTAMIA AND PERSIA EAST AFRICA GALLIPOLI AND ELSEWHERE IN THE NEAR AND THE FAR-EAST AND IN SACRED MEMORY ALSO OF THOSE WHOSE NAMES ARE HERE RECORDED AND WHO FELL IN INDIA OR THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER AND DURING THE THIRD AFGHAN WAR.”

Names of more than 13,000 dead soldiers are mentioned on the memorial commemorating them.

As it was a memorial for the Indian soldiers killed in wars, the Amar Jawan Jyoti was established underneath it by the government in 1972.

Why was the eternal flame extinguished from there?

There are several reasons that have been mentioned by officials. Since the political controversy broke out government sources have claimed, giving a “correct perspective” that the flame will not be extinguished, but just moved to be merged with the one at the National War Memorial. Sources said that the eternal flame paid homage to the soldiers killed in the 1971 War, but does not mention their name, and the India Gate is a “symbol of our colonial past”.

“The names of all Indian martyrs from all the wars, including 1971 and wars before and after it are housed at the National War Memorial. Hence it is a true tribute to have the flame paying tribute to martyrs there.”

Defence establishment officials said that once the National War Memorial came up in 2019, Indian political and military leaders and foreign dignitaries pay their tributes to the fallen soldiers at the National War Memorial, which used to happen at the Amar Jawan Jyoti earlier. With this change it was felt that two flames were not needed, even though when the National War Memorial was built officials had categorically stated that both the flames will be kept alive.

But another reason is that the Amar Jawan Jyoti was etched so strongly in the emotional psyche of the country that the new war memorial did not get the attention as the government had expected, and the government wants to promote the new memorial it built in 2019. Further, it can also be seen as part of the government’s redevelopment of the entire Central Vista, of which India Gate, the Amar Jawan Jyoti and the National War Memorial are parts of.

Along with moving the flame, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on Friday morning that the canopy next to the India Gate will get a statue of the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. The new statue will be 28 feet high. Till the statue is completed, Modi said that a hologram statue of Bose will be placed under the canopy, which he will unveil on January 23. The canopy used to have a statue of Kind George V, which was removed in 1968.

What is the National War Memorial and when was it made?

The National War Memorial, which is around 400 meters from India Gate was inaugurated by Modi in February 2019, in an area of around 40 acres. It was built to commemorate all the soldiers who have laid down their lives in the various battles, wars, operations and conflicts of Independent India. There are many independent memorials for such soldiers, but no memorial existed commemorating them all at the national level.

Discussions to build such a memorial had been ongoing since 1961, but it did not come up. In 2015, the Modi-led government approved its construction, and the location east of the India Gate at C Hexagon was finalised. The final design of the memorial was selected through a competition.

The architecture of the memorial is based on four concentric circles. Largest is the Raksha Chakra or the Circle of Protection which is marked by a row of trees, each of which represent soldiers, who protect the country. The Tyag Chakra, the Circle of Sacrifice, has circular concentric walls of honour based on the Chakravyuh. The walls have independent granite tablets for each of the soldiers who have died for the country since Independence. As of today, there are 26,466 names of such soldiers on these granite tablets etched in golden letters. A tablet is added every time a soldier is killed in the line of duty.

This Veerta Chakra, the Circle of Bravery, has a covered gallery with six bronze crafted murals depicting the battles and actions of our Armed Forces.

The final is the Amar Chakra, the Circle of Immortality, which has an obelisk, and the Eternal Flame. The flame from the Amar Jawan Jyoti at the India Gate will be merged with this flame, which has been kept burning since 2019 when the memorial was unveiled. The flame is a symbol of the immortality of the spirit of the fallen soldiers, and a mark that the country will not forget their sacrifice.

Busts of the 21 soldiers who have been conferred with the highest gallantry award of the country, Param Vir Chakra, are also installed at the memorial.

Written by Krishn Kaushik

Source: Indian Express, 24/01/22

A prison diary from Tihar, by Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita

 

In these times of suffering brought on by the pandemic, it is imperative for the Indian judiciary and the state to ensure the right to life of the people it continues to hold in its custody and not let prisons become graveyards of human rights and dignity.

“Aisa lagta hai kabr mein aa gaye hain, na koi awaaz bahar ja sakti hai, na koi awaaz andar aa sakti hai” (It feels like we have entered a grave, no one can hear us and we cannot hear anyone) — a piercing observation made by one of our co-inmates last year, as we lived the deadly second wave of the pandemic inside Tihar’s women’s prison, Jail No.6. With the third wave currently unfolding, urgent attention must be paid to the terrible conditions under which one of the most neglected groups of this country is surviving — India’s prison population. The latest NCRB data tells us that 76 per cent of prisoners are undertrials with a stark overrepresentation of Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and other minority communities amongst both undertrials and convicts.

The days of incarceration when the second wave was devastating lives outside and inside, its pain and horror, continue to haunt us. Tihar’s women’s prison witnessed a massive spread of the virus. We watched helplessly as cases emerged from one overcrowded ward after another. We mourned the deaths of our co-inmates far away from their homes. We waited in restless dread for the next day’s five-minute phone call for what news it may bear of our loved ones outside. We began to confront the fear of our own deaths inside that wretched place. On contracting the virus, a prisoner would be shifted to the “Corona ward”, while the barrack where the case was detected would become a “quarantine” barrack for the next 14 days where the inmates inside were locked up 24/7. Since cases kept emerging from every barrack, most of us lived in a state of permanent quarantine. We spent many heart-breaking days and nights listening to the shattering cries of little children when their barrack came to be quarantined.

Our barrack mate and co-accused, Gulfisha, suffered high fever, severe head and body ache, sleeplessness and loss of appetite. Identified as “symptomatic”, she was put in a tiny suffocating cell with two other inmates. Her Covid was never detected because no RTPCR tests were available — only a limited number of antigen tests were being conducted. Testing kits were in short supply, along with all other equipment such as sanitisers, masks, gloves, PPE suits. Barracks full of symptomatic patients were given a liberal supply of paracetamols, cetirizine, cough syrups and various other drugs through untrained inmates who had to work as paramedics in the absence of a requisite number of trained medical staff.

During the initial days of the outbreak, access to mulaqaats/phone calls/letters/newspapers was terminated. Imagine contracting the virus, being shoved into an overcrowded diseased barrack or a lonely cell all alone, provided negligible medical attention and allowed no contact with your family or friends at a time when you most desperately need it. It was only after the intervention of the Delhi High Court that some of these facilities were resumed inside prison and vaccination of inmates was undertaken. Family and legal mulaqaats in prison have remained suspended through most of the last two years. Even as the facility of e-mulaqaats came to be instituted in August 2020, families of most inmates do not possess smartphones or the digital literacy for accessing the same. Additionally, as a result of courts becoming online and visits by judges or government bodies being discontinued during the pandemic, the impunity that rests in the hands of the jail administration has come to be strengthened. The minimal mechanisms of redressal available to prisoners with regard to discrimination and abuse by prison staff have thus ceased to exist.

Indian prisons have always been overcrowded. In Delhi for example, against a sanctioned prison population of 10,024, the three jails — Tihar, Mandoli and Rohini — have around 19,000-20,000 prisoners. The infrastructure and facilities simply do not exist inside prisons to be able to handle and mitigate a pandemic of this scale. The Supreme Court of India took suo motu cognisance of this issue and on March 23, 2020, issued guidelines for state/UT-wise formation of High Powered Committees (HPC) for the decongestion of prisons. However, the criteria decided by the HPCs of different states for interim release of prisoners, instead of being based on the fundamental principle of equality of all human life, create an arbitrary categorisation of prisoners that deserve to live, based on nature/severity of offence, number of years of sentence but not factors like age, health, comorbidities and other vulnerabilities. So, despite being at “high risk” of mortality, because an undertrial/convict may be charged under certain laws like UAPA, sedition, NDPS or is a foreigner, they are not entitled to interim bail/parole. The online functioning of courts meant that trials couldn’t commence or remained suspended, further prolonging the incarceration for undertrials charged under these sections.

Such unfair criteria in the grant of interim bail are the reason why Father Stan Swamy was not granted bail last year and died in custody, and G N Saibaba, a 90 per cent disabled former Delhi University professor continues to be incarcerated after having contracted Covid once again in Nagpur Jail. These are the names we know but our prisons are filled with hundreds of such undertrials and convicts who are most at risk from the virus but have been denied access to any form of interim relief. Like Elsie, who was from Bolivia and lived in our ward. Despite her co-morbidities, as a foreigner and an NDPS undertrial, she was not eligible for the HPC’s interim bail criteria and died inside prison, thousands of miles away from her two little children whose faces she longed to see. She was put to rest inside prison premises as her family did not have the resources to reclaim her body. Even in death, there was no freedom.

In these times of suffering and despair brought on by the pandemic, it is imperative for the Indian judiciary and the state to ensure the right to life of the people it continues to hold in its custody and not let prisons become graveyards of human rights and dignity.

Written by Natasha Narwal , Devangana Kalita

Source: Indian Express, 24/01/22

Quote of the Day January 21, 2022

 

“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“प्रकृति की गति अपनाएं: उसका रहस्य है धीरज।”
राल्फ इमर्सन

Current Affairs-January 21, 2022

 

INDIA

– PM Modi and PM of Mauritius Pravind Jugnauth jointly inaugurate the Social Housing Units Project in Mauritius and virtually lay the foundation stone for the Civil Service College and 8 MW Solar PV Farm project in Mauritius

– PM inaugurates launch of ‘Azadi Ke Amrit Mahotsav se Swarnim Bharat Ki Ore’

– Amar Jawan Jyoti to be merged with flame at National War Memorial in New Delhi on Jan 21

– PM to unveil 216-foot statue of Ramanujacharya in Hyderabad on Feb 5

– Union Minister Jitendra Singh launches Mobile COVID testing facility for Northeast, beginning with Mizoram

– Bihar: 3 drowned after boat capsizes in Gandak river in West Champaran district

ECONOMY & CORPORATE

– FDI flows in India decline 26% in 2021: UNCTAD Investment Trends Monitor report

– Giriraj Singh releases revised RADPFI (Rural Area Development Plan Formulation and Implementation) Guidelines prepared by Ministry of Panchayati Raj

– Sweden’s Saab wins contract for AT4 anti-armour weapon from Indian Army

– Toyota Kirloskar Motor launches SUV model Hilux

WORLD

– Global unemployment to reach 207 million in 2022, says ILO report

– Booster gives antibody protection against Omicron variant: Lancet

– Israel signs $3.4 billion submarines deal with Germany’s Thyssenkrupp

SPORTS

– ICC Test Team of the Year – NZ’s Kane Williamson captain; 3 Indians included: Rohit Sharma, Rishabh Pant & Ravichandran Ashwin

– ICC’s ODI Team of the Year – Pakistan’s Babar Azam captain; no Indians

Seven predictions for the world of technology in 2022

 A quote that is variously ascribed to Yogi Berra, Neils Bohr and even Mark Twain goes something like: “Never make predictions, especially about the future." Regular readers of Tech Whispers, however, have ignored these wise words and have been clamouring for my predictions on technology in 2022. Peering myopically at my personal crystal ball, here is what I see:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) everywhere: Pretty much like digital, or electricity (as Peter Ng said), AI will not be one more thing we do, but will be infused in most objects around us, from cars and phones to TV sets and soon everything else we use. This will usher in the Edge AI revolution, where AI is not in some central server somewhere, but embedded in objects ‘at the edge’. As AI becomes increasingly ubiquitous, questions about ethics in AI usage, responsible AI and explainability will become more strident. I expect one large incident, a Cambridge Analytica scandal of AI, to happen and bring AI ethics into the common imagination.

For better or for Metaverse: The Metaverse, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and Web3 hype will continue this year, fuelled by crypto ‘bros’ and even other bored apes. There is substance behind the hype—the rise of the creator economy and the proposed decentralization of the web—but there is a lot of fluff too, and that will likely crash and burn. Alongside, crypto will continue to mature, with it becoming more mainstream and some of its real potential getting realized. Here’s a specific prediction: the first $100 million NFT will be sold this year (unless already done by the time this article appears).

Elon Musk rules: 2021 was the year of the entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX, and so will 2022. Musk will continue to reshape energy, cars, space, transportation and other industries; he might even pick a new one to reshape this year. As he does so, he will not only reign as the world’s Tech Overlord, but also give technology a new way of thinking and a new set of rules. He will show how it can be used to remake vast physical and infrastructure businesses. Thus, he will continue to be the richest man on earth, increasing his lead over Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

The pandemic ends: Here is where I am going to truly go out on a limb and say this will be the year that the covid virus would establish an equilibrium with the human race. The Omicron variant will convert the raging pandemic into an endemic, much like the flu, and we will learn to live with it with periodic vaccines. Author Laura Spinney said in her 2018 book Pale Rider that “pandemics end socially, not medically", and that is how this one will peter out too. However, this won’t be the last one, as the ravaging of our planet may prompt newer viruses to consider human hosts.

The rise of green AI/software: The cloud, AI, computers and electric cars are hugely polluting industries, despite the popular impression of their being clean and gentle. Manufacturing one PC needs 240kg of fossil fuels, training one model for natural-language processing emits the same amount of carbon dioxide as 125 New York -Beijing round trips, and the world’s data centres consume almost as much electricity as South Africa does. As this awareness grows, we will see the advent of green AI and software, with governments and corporations starting to mandate this, just as they now do for diversity and inclusion, and environment, social and governance goals. Expect an announcement on nuclear fusion, a technology that could possibly ‘solve’ the global energy crisis.

Crunch times: The two biggest crunches faced by the tech world in 2021 were semiconductors, as global producers struggled with covid-disrupted supply chains and an explosion in demand as the pandemic eased, and an acute shortage of tech workers, as people discovered new ways to work. While the semiconductor crunch will ease, the people crunch will not. Technology is booming, with Big Tech growing rapidly, startups mushrooming and traditional companies going digital. The supply of tech workers cannot keep up, and the astronomical salaries they command will not flag off.

The future of work is here: The pandemic-enforced work-from-home arrangements, continued rise of the gig economy and the emergence of the ‘passion economy’ has ensured that the future that we envisioned for work—work from anywhere, multiple employers, work-life integration and the redundancy of geography—has accelerated into the present. This has led to the Great Resignation and hybrid-work patterns, among other massive disturbances. Expect this to continue in 2022.

As I have written earlier, the covid outbreak has forced us to decentralize more or less everything, be it work, retailing (e-commerce), food (delivery), health (telemedicine) or education (study from home). This Great Decentralization has set a trend that I believe will be irreversible, and this is what is driving up the massive demand for technology and digital transformation, as traditional firms struggle to adapt.

It was another wise person who said, “Any believable prediction of the future will be wrong. Any correct prediction of the future will be unbelievable." Which one of the two these are, we will have to wait till year-end to find out. Let 2022 be a good one.

Jaspreet Bindra is the chief tech whisperer at Findability Sciences, and learning AI, Ethics and Society at Cambridge University.

Source: Mintepaper, 20/01/22

What is the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’?

 

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano, which erupted over the weekend, lies along the Pacific ‘Ring of fire’.

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted over the weekend, sending ash and smoke thousands of feet into the air. The volcano, situated on an uninhabited island, became active in 2009. It lies along the Pacific ‘Ring of fire’, and is just over 60 kilometres from the island nation of Tonga.

The Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’ or Pacific rim, or the Circum-Pacific Belt, is an area along the Pacific Ocean that is characterised by active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes. It is home to about 75 per cent of the world’s volcanoes – more than 450 volcanoes. Also, about 90 per cent of the world’s earthquakes occur here.

Its length is over 40,000 kilometres and traces from New Zealand clockwise in an almost circular arc covering Tonga, Kermadec Islands, Indonesia, moving up to the Philippines, Japan, and stretching eastward to the Aleutian Islands, then southward along the western coast of North America and South America.

The area is along several tectonic plates including the Pacific plate, Philippine Plate, Juan de Fuca plate, Cocos plate, Nazca plate, and North American plate. The movement of these plates or tectonic activity makes the area witness abundant earthquakes and tsunamis every year.

Along much of the Ring of Fire, tectonic plates move towards each other creating subduction zones. One plate gets pushed down or is subducted by the other plate. This is a very slow process – a movement of just one or two inches per year. As this subduction happens, rocks melt, become magma and move to Earth’s surface and cause volcanic activity.

In the case of Tonga, the Pacific Plate was pushed down below the Indo-Australian Plate and Tonga plate, causing the molten rock to rise above and form the chain of volcanoes.

Subduction zones are also where most of the violent earthquakes on the planet occur. The December 26, 2004 earthquake occurred along the subduction zone where the Indian Plate was subducted beneath the Burma plate.

Written by Aswathi Pacha

Source: Indian Express, 19/01/22