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Left Wing Extremism weakening in the country

The grip of Left Wing Extremism (LWE) in the country has weakened significantly. It came out in the review meeting called by Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba with Chief Secretary, DGP of affected states, DIB and DGs of the CAPFs.

It was noted that there has been a consistent decline in violence and considerable shrinkage in geographical spread of LWE in the last 5 years. The review of LWE affected districts in 2018, resulted in reduction of SRE districts from 126 districts to 82. However 8 new districts have been added to the list as a pre-emptive measure.

A detailed exchange of views took place. Useful suggestions and security concerns by the States were taken note of. Making mobile communication more effective and improvement in the working conditions of the security forces deployed in the LWE theatre were also discussed.

It was decided to carry forward the resolute implementation of National Policy and Action Plan to address Left Wing Extremism – 2015

Union Home Secretary appreciated the efforts of States and the Central forces. He further mentioned the need for continued operations and stressed upon filling up of areas of security vacuum. He assured that resources required in the endeavour, shall be provided to States and CAPF.

New Delhi is addressing Kashmir with clarity and confidence

Union Home Minister, Amit Shah, chose to visit Kashmir before his maiden address in Parliament. Apparently, he wanted to get a grip of the situation on ground before speaking. He sat through a detailed briefing on all political, social and security aspects with emphasis on the current security situation. In his missive to the administration and security forces, while reiterating the government’s policy of zero tolerance to terrorism, he dwelled on giving due importance to putting a plug on the recruitment of local terrorists and removing the disillusionment of the people; he also asked the administration to plug terror funding and enforce rule of law in the state.

In his maiden speech on Kashmir issue, in the Indian Parliament as country’s Home Minister he made three important statements:

“I want to tell people that (the) Narendra Modi government has adopted zero tolerance policy towards terrorism and that will continue.”

“Article 370 is not permanent; we have not changed our stand on it.”

“Whenever the Election Commission says, we will conduct elections in the state. We want to restore peace in the state.”

The policy of newly elected NDA-2 government at centre is based on the twin prongs of addressing and removing disenchantment of people and weaning the youth away from the path of terrorism. Self sufficiency has emerged as the mainstay of development process, more so in the Kashmir Valley.  Gainful employment and empowerment at the grass roots are conduits that have been identified to steer this process to its logical conclusion. To accomplish this the government is willing to go the extra mile, it is now up to the people to also move ahead to avail this very good opportunity.

The military, political and diplomatic misadventures that Pakistan has a proclivity to indulge in are receiving great punishment along the Line of Control (LOC). The Home Minister has asked the Indian Army and the Border Security Force (BSF) to explore ways to completely stop infiltration along the LoC and the International Border (IB).

The remnants of terrorism in the hinterlands of Kashmir Valley are being actively engaged and eliminated despite all odds. Counter-terrorist operations in the hinterland in Kashmir spearheaded by the Indian Army and conducted with complete support of Jammu Kashmir Police (JKP), paramilitary forces and the local populace, have witnessed astounding results. Reports suggest that more than 120 terrorists, including senior commanders of foreign origin have been eliminated in this year itself. The intention of clearing the region of the scourge of terrorism before the end of this year is quite visible. 

When terrorists of local origin come in the dragnet of security forces, people gather into a crowd, pelt stones and interfere in the operation in a desperate bid to save them. The security forces have complete sanction from the government to carry on with their work regardless of this interference. Pressure from the media and other political avenues is not being allowed to play on the minds of the security forces.  Of course, standard operating procedures are in place to keep the locals at bay while ensuring their safety.

In the realm of dialogue the government has, despite pressure from many quarters, maintained a righteous stand of not opening talks with separatist, secessionist and criminal elements on their terms. The Hurriyat has recently attempted to pressurise the government into talks by misleading Governor Satya Pal Malik, but the government sent a firm message that talks can be held only if the leaders of the conglomerate commit themselves to loyalty to the Constitution. This firm stand has taken the wind out of the sails of the duplicitous posturing of the Hurriyat.

On the diplomatic front, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has received great accolades in the recently held meetings of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the G-20. He has successfully convinced the world leaders to come together in the fight against terrorism and Pakistan has been universally identified as the chief global sponsor of terror. Pakistan, as such, is becoming quite isolated worldwide as its perfidy gets exposed more and more.

It is heartening to see the government at the centre exhibit such clarity of mind and confidence in dealing with the situation in trouble-torn Kashmir. While, on the one hand, the government has given an open ended sanction to the security forces to eliminate the cult of terrorism and tackle violence and disruption with a firm hand, on the other hand, it is pursuing its development agenda aggressively. Undoubtedly, there is political and social pressure accentuated by a shrill media, but it has not deterred the government from pursuing a well laid out policy and consistent posture with a transparent approach. One gets an impression that the government is quite sure of getting the desired result of ushering peace and development in the trouble torn region sooner than later.

Certain pressure groups within the country and outside are trying their level best to derail the initiative of the government. A sustained campaign is in place to denounce its policy as tough and inflexible. It is for the better that the government has chosen to ignore the diatribe and carry on with its firm, unambiguous and righteous policy which, most importantly, is producing the desired results on ground. The negative campaign which is eliciting great public outrage will die down sooner rather than later. 

Gone are the days when the separatists and the terrorists had their individual space and tremendous support from Pakistan. They worked in tandem with a singular objective of wresting Kashmir from India. The government today has charted a path that meets the aspirations of people by providing to them what they need the most – peace and development. Under the prevailing circumstances, the anti-national and anti-Kashmir forces stand isolated and defeated. An ability to sustain its confidence is bound to reap good results.

Professor Gordon Guyatt on Bleeding in Hospitals

Professor Gordon Guyatt, MD, MSc, FRCP, OC is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact and Medicine at McMaster University. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

The British Medical Journal or BMJ had a list of 117 nominees in 2010 for the Lifetime Achievement Award. Guyatt was short-listed and came in second-place in the end. He earned the title of an Officer of the Order of Canada based on contributions from evidence-based medicine and its teaching.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2012 and a Member of the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 2015. He lectured on public vs. private healthcare funding in March of 2017, which seemed a valuable conversation to publish in order to have this in the internet’s digital repository with one of Canada’s foremost academics.

For those with an interest in standardized metrics or academic rankings, he is the 14th most cited academic in the world in terms of H-Index at 240 and has a total citation count of more than 247,000. That is, he probably has among the highest H-Indexes, of any Canadian academic living or dead.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: When it comes to some of the issues with regards to bleeding in hospitals, what are the forms of being in hospitals that you have looked into?

Distinguished Professor Gordon Guyatt: The main areas that we have explored have been two major ones. One is bleeding related to surgery and the other is bleeding in the intensive care units. So, those are the major ones. The bleeding, the bleeding in surgery, has been the reason we have been interested in it because it is related to prevention of thrombosis.

There are two major forms of thrombosis. One is in the venous system. So, the veins that bring blood back to the heart. Clots in the veins in the legs is a common problem. It is a problem when people sit around and do not move. So, it is a post-surgical problem. As a result, it has been now routine in many forms of surgery. Any surgery that involves prolonged mobilization of any sort to give anticoagulants or anti-platelet agents.

Anticoagulants, the clotting system platelets are a little thing circulating in the blood that get the clotting process started and drugs like aspirin inhibit the platelets. Then we have anticoagulants that inhibit the clotting system.

So, we give these to people around surgery to prevent clots, but, unfortunately, anything that prevents clots causes bleeding. We also are worried about clots on the arterial side, so the most awful consequences of clots in the arterial side are strokes.

So, lots of people, lots and lots of people, around the world are using medication to prevent clots on the arterial side. People prevent it. People with heart attacks are, sometimes, using three medications to prevent clots. People who have strokes are using anti-platelet agents to prevent further strokes.

So, there are lots of people walking around taking these things. All of them increase bleeding. In the peri-operative setting, when people come into hospital, they are taking these medications to reduce thrombosis clots on the arterial side. The question is, “Should they continue through surgery or should they not continue through surgery?”

So, I have been involved in work around this tradeoff between bleeding and clotting in patients undergoing surgery.

Jacobsen: Canada has an older population than many places in the world. How does this factor into that as a consideration? People as they get older are more likely to get surgery.

Gordon Guyatt: Yes, a couple of things. First, Canada has an older population than developed countries, but they are compared to what are called developing countries or low income countries. However, it has a younger population than, for instance, Japan and Europe.

So, we are far from the oldest of the oldest. However, our populations have been getting older. People are living longer. Lifespan is increasing. Not only older people need more surgery, but we are doing surgery on older people than twenty years ago.

We would not have been doing surgery on them, simply because we would have said, “Sorry, you are too old. We almost, almost can do it.” It is rare that we say, “You are too old to anybody now.”

We are certainly doing surgery on people in their 90s. We would not have been doing that before. So, we do not turn down people who need surgery because of age much anymore. So, and clearly, the older you are, the more you are at risk of bad things happening, be they clots or bleeding.

Jacobsen: So, when it comes to the types of medications, what are some of the standard medications? What are some of the risks associated with that?

Gordon Guyatt: Commonly, aspirin is a good agent for decreasing clotting, but it is also a good agent for increasing bleeding. So, that is one. Then there is another class of drugs. Another class of anti-platelet agents, of which examples are Lipitor.

These are even more potent anti-platelet agents than is the aspirin. Then there are anticoagulants for many years’ including Warfarin or Coumadin. It was the only anticoagulant around. But in the last decade, we now have a whole army of new anticoagulants that have a major advantage from warfarin.

You needed to check the level of anti-coagulation in the blood all the time, regularly. With these new anticoagulants, you do not have to do it. You can check it. So, they have these convenience antigens.

So, these are the major drugs we are using in terms of preventing clots but causing bleeding.

Jacobsen: What is the statistical difference when someone does use an anticoagulant as opposed to when they do not – or at least when you use different ones over another or none? What are the comparative statistics in terms of the bleeding rates that would be a concern?

Gordon Guyatt: So, typically, anti-platelet agents increase or individually increase bleeding less than the anticoagulants. However, if you are taking two of them together, you are getting to a bleeding risk that might be similar to the anticoagulants.

Jacobsen: Okay, where you are going to be taking this research at present or in the future?

Gordon Guyatt: Oh! It is interesting. All sorts of things are interesting to us. It might not be interesting to other people. But one thing, there has been a huge evolution in the way people have been treating patients around surgery.

We are mobilizing much less quickly. So, this has been most dramatic in the case of hip and knee replacements, where people usually sit around. They gave them plenty of time to develop nice clots that would kill them, when the clots develop in the leg. Then they break off into the heart, into the lungs.

But the mobilized surgical technique is getting better. Now, we are getting more people out of bed right after their surgery getting them to walk around as soon as possible. It has markedly decreased the risk of clotting after surgery.

So, this question, “Do we need any of this?” So, for instance, the standard is to give an anticoagulant for up to a month after a hip replacement. However, it is not at all clear that this is necessary anymore. As a matter of fact, I am getting a hip replacement. I am going to walk.

I expect to be getting out of bed and walking around on day one. If I am lucky, I want to use an anticoagulant, aspirin, which is less effective against clotting but also causes less bleeding.

I am going to talk to my surgeon, but I am going to be using aspirin. So, because I am going to get myself up, it hurts, but I am going to walk. I am going to decrease my risk of clotting. So, that is the evolution of what is happened around surgery.

So, it is changing the way we think about things.

Jacobsen: I want to give a decades long perspective or even half century perspective to people reading this.

Gordon Guyatt: 50 years ago, people would die of their clocks. Maybe, it was same after heart attacks. Maybe, going back 60 or 70 years, we used to think it was all you. I had a heart attack. You better rest, you better stay in bed for a while. Anyway, the result was people developing all these clots and dying on their Venous Thromboembolism (VTE).

Then we decided that is not such a good idea. Now, we are getting people up. We can even be more aggressive in getting people up than we have it now. We do not have people sit around. Then maybe 40 years ago, people were still sitting around longer than we would think reasonable now.

People said, “Okay, we are the people developing all these clots. We better prevent them.” Then all of the prevention strategies came in. Now, we are saying, “Okay, got people out and maybe, we do not have to be so aggressive about preventing the clots as mobilizing. They will decrease.”

Jacobsen: Now, you gave a side comment there. You would be more aggressive. Ideally, what would be moving your most aggressive stance in terms of getting people out?

Gordon Guyatt: I am not sure. I am not sure that we cannot have people walking around the wards on the same day; they are having their heart attack, but, maybe, that is being too, maybe, aggressive.

Jacobsen: What would be a response from someone within the field to that recommendation?

Gordon Guyatt: Oh my goodness, you are having a heart attack. Please give the person a day’s rest anyway.

Jacobsen: Let’s project this project this 10 year forward, it is with things that you would know better than most of people, in terms of whether it is a new set of drugs or new evidence in terms of practice. For example, we can take on board: same day getting up, for instance, after a heart attack. What would things look in 10 years from now? Approximately.

Gordon Guyatt: It is difficult. We get surprised. So, I do not know what is going to happen in terms of drug development. I am no expert on what is the latest, even now, in what is going on in drug development.

So, a small thing that we are thinking now. One of the trials we would first is asking the question, “Do you need any anticoagulants at all?” However, if you are going to give it the traditional methodology, you would give it right after surgery.

However, the big bleeding risk is in the 48 hours after surgery, maybe 72 hours, the first day. The most in the second day, after that, the bleeding risk falls off. But the thrombosis risk goes on for a month.

So, if you are going to give anti-thrombic agents, maybe, you should wait for a couple of days before you start. On the other hand, maybe, those days are crucial in terms of setting the stage for clots that happen later.

We do not know. So, that is one of the things that I would want to sort out if you are going to use anticoagulants in surgical situations that are higher risk. When should they start? So, perhaps, one way is to view it as a trivial question, but, potentially important, in terms of minimizing bleeding risk while still getting the benefits of clot reduction.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Professor Guyatt.

We conducted an extensive interview for In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal before: hereherehereherehere, and here. We have other interviews in Canadian Atheist (here and here), Canadian Science (here), Canadian Students for Sensible Drug PolicyConatus NewsHumanist VoicesNews Intervention, and The Good Men Project (herehereherehereherehereherehereherehere, and here).

Photo by Chris Mai on Unsplash

Govt. is committed towards the preservation of country’s cinematic heritage, says Prakash Javadekar

The National Film Heritage Mission is an important initiative of the I&B Ministry to preserve and conserve country’s cinematic heritage. The Government is committed towards its implementation in a time bound manner. Prakash Javadekar, Minister of Information and Broadcasting and Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, mentioned this during his visit to National Film Archive of India, today.

Javadekar reviewed the Ministry’s prestigious project of ‘National Film Heritage Mission’, and various activities undertaken under this project. After review he said “film condition assessment work of nearly 1.32 lac film reels has been completed and the preventive conservation work is underway. The work on digitization of film reels will commence soon.” Javadekar further added, “the government is setting up new preservation facilities (vaults) at 3 acres of land. Also, NFAI will have a dedicated children film club, benefiting children of different age groups.” While mentioning about the restoration of Jaykar Bunglow, Javadekar said “the restored Jaykar bunglow will have a new digital library and personal viewing space for film researchers”.

On the sidelines of the review meeting the Minister also met with film federation personalities and addressed their requests. The broader objectives under NFHM are to undertake film condition assessment and preventive conservation of around 150,000 film reels, Digitization of around 3500 films, picture & sound restoration of around 2000 landmark films of Indian cinema, construction of preservation and conservation facilities (vaults), training and workshops and creating a comprehensive Web-based End to End IT solution.

Kashmiri origin actress Zaira Wasim demeans Bollywood with her regressive statement on Islam

Zaira Wasim, Bollywood actress of Kashmiri origin, yesterday announced that she would be leaving the film industry; as it conflicted with her religious identity and beliefs. In a long statement, she demeaned the Bollywood by taking recourse to hardline fanatic Islam. Soon, there were rumors that Wasim’s social media account was hacked and she did not write those posts. However, her manager has confirmed that the reports claiming that the accounts were hacked are false. “No, we never said that. The post has been put up by Zaira, that’s it. We have never said anything like that,” Tuhin Mishra, Zaira’s manager told ANI over the phone.

Wasim made her film debut with the role of wrestler Geeta Phogat in the biographical sports film Dangal (2016), which emerged as one of the highest grossing Indian film (US$290 million) worldwide. She rose to prominence by starring as an aspiring singer in the musical drama Secret Superstar (2017), which also ranks among the highest-grossing Indian films. Her performances in both films earned her critical acclaim as well as several awards, including the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actress for the former and the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actress for the latter. Wasim was honoured with National Child Award for Exceptional Achievement by Ram Nath Kovind, the President of India, at a ceremony in New Delhi in 2017.

The 18-year-old actor said she was not happy with the line of work as it interfered with her faith and religion. In a detailed post on her Facebook page, which she later shared across all social media platforms, the Kashmiri-born “Dangal” fame star said she realised “though I may fit here perfectly, I do not belong here”. Hours after national award-winning actor Zaira Wasim announced her “disassociation” from the field of acting, political leaders in Jammu and Kashmir supported her decision and wished her luck. Former chief minister Omar Abdullah tweeted, “Who are any of us to question @ZairaWasim’s choices? It’s her life to do with as she pleases. All I will do is wish her well & hope that whatever she does makes her happy.”

Former bureaucrat-turned-politician Shah Faesal said he respected Wasim’s decision and wished her luck. “I always respected @ZairaWasim’s decision to be an actor. Perhaps no other Kashmiri has achieved such an iconic status, such success and fame, at such a young age. And today, as she quit the industry, I have no choice but to respect her decision. Wish her luck,” Faesal said in a tweet.

However, the way teenage actress tried to defame and demean the Bollywood, did not go down well with several senior actors. Her post irked Raveena Tandon to a great extent. She wished if only the 18-year-old could’ve kept her regressive views to herself and gracefully made her exit from the industry rather than making it a nation-wide issue. “Doesn’t matter if two film olds are ungrateful to the industry that has given them all. Just wish they’d exit gracefully and keep their regressive views to themselves,” Raveena Tandon tweeted.

On Unintended Consequences in the Domain of “Do No Harm”: Non-Cardiac Surgery Leading to Heart Problems

Professor Gordon Guyatt, MD, MSc, FRCP, OC is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact and Medicine at McMaster University. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

The British Medical Journal or BMJ had a list of 117 nominees in 2010 for the Lifetime Achievement Award. Guyatt was short-listed and came in second-place in the end. He earned the title of an Officer of the Order of Canada based on contributions from evidence-based medicine and its teaching.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2012 and a Member of the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 2015. He lectured on public vs. private healthcare funding in March of 2017, which seemed a valuable conversation to publish in order to have this in the internet’s digital repository with one of Canada’s foremost academics.

For those with an interest in standardized metrics or academic rankings, he is the 14th most cited academic in the world in terms of H-Index at 240 and has a total citation count of more than 247,000. That is, he probably has among the highest H-Indexes, of any Canadian academic living or dead.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, you have some areas of more applied research as opposed to guideline research. One of them deals with non-cardiac surgery leading to heart problems or creating extra problems. What is going on there?

Distinguished Professor Gordon Guyatt: So, first, to acknowledge that one of the guys who trained with me, he has now become an international research superstar. I am privileged to be working with him. His name is P.J. Devereux. He works at our institution here at McMaster University. He has become by far the leading worldwide investigator.

Jacobsen: What about the work that he’s done? Where is it going?

Guyatt: So, the first thing was that he recognized. There was a problem that we had not paid of attention to, and that problem is people undergoing surgery – not for their heart. So, they get a hip replacement. They get a colonoscopy. They may have a gall bladder problem. They have surgery for an ulcer. They have surgery for cancer.

All these non-cardiac surgeries. More and more, we do these surgeries in older people. So, in the past, if you were 90 years old, no way anybody would think of doing a hip replacement. Nowadays, 90-year-olds get hip replacements, appropriately, if they are active.

So, the population in whom we do surgery is older than it used to be, we do more extensive surgery. So, Albert Einstein died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm. Everybody knew he had an aneurysm. Nobody could do anything about it. Today, we have major surgery for people with ruptured aneurysms. We replaced their aorta the biggest blood vessel in the body. They do okay.

Jacobsen: Wow!

Gordon Guyatt: So, whereas, we are taking older people and with bigger surgery. The result of all that is some people have described it as a major surgery. That the stress it puts your body through is like running a marathon.

If you are 70-years-old and sedentary, that is probably not going to be such a great thing to suddenly be running a marathon. So, what happens is people have cardiac complications, heart attacks, they die of their heart attacks.

So, this non-cardiac surgery is the cardiac complications of non-cardiac surgery are a huge worldwide problem. It was a neglected problem, not too many people paid much attention to it. Dr. Devereux came along. He has a suspicion. The first thing he noticed as he checked it out. He was suspecting is that we were only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

The reason we were only seeing the tip of the iceberg was you go in and have surgery afterward and after surgery you come out; you your body has been assaulted in this major way. Inevitably, you have pain. You are given major pain-killers, narcotics.

They put you to sleep for a couple of days. You get through it. However, if you have had a heart attack during those couple of days, you may not have noticed it because you were under the narcotic. Then Aspirin was never the last. You suffer from the consequences of that heart attack, maybe even die from a cardiac arrhythmia of the heart.

The heart is not beating regularly or you end up with heart failure with your heart not pumping properly. You are short of breath. Your activities go down, and so on.

So, nowadays, we have what we call cardiac enzymes. So, when you have a heart attack, when your heart tissue dies because a blood vessel has closed off, the heart releases these enzymes. We can measure them sensitively nowadays.

What Dr. Devereux found out, we were missing 80 percent of the heart attacks. 80 percent of the heart attacks because the people were too sedated to tell us they were having one. So, normally, you are walking around. I have got chest pain. Right, so, you go to emergency. We do a cardiogram.

We check your enzymes. We say, “Yes, you are having a heart attack.” We might do emergency putting in of a stent in one of your blood vessels and giving drugs, and so on and so forth.

What happens when you have these narcotics after surgery, you are not awake enough to say, “Oh, I am having chest pain.” Nobody notices, nobody does the enzymes. Nobody notices that you’ve had a heart attack.

So, the first thing that Dr. Devereux did is he started looking to measure the enzymes after people had non-cardiac surgery. He found that we are missing 80 percent of the heart attacks. So, that was a big deal.

So, now, the world is changing its practice as we speak in response to Dr. Devereux’s work. Now, people are starting to look, but we do not know what to do with those heart attacks. They are different from the heart attacks coming through the emergency room.

So, 70s with a heart attack. What do we do? We could treat them the way we do. The people coming to emerge, but we were not so sure about it anyway. Devereux ‘s latest study has shown that giving these people anticoagulants thinning blood thinners, as we call them, after their non-cardiac surgery reduces their major cardiac events.

It strongly suggests that we should be giving aspirin, for instance; that we give it to people with heart attacks in the emergency room after you’ve had these heart attacks after cardiac surgery. He is in the start of his program.

We will be thinking of how to prevent these heart attacks. He’s already done one of his first studies showing that a drug that everybody thought would prevent heart attacks, prevented the heart attacks, but caused strokes.

It, in fact, probably increased deaths, which is not such a good idea. So, he’s leading the world in this work. Eventually, it is changing worldwide practice. In the end, people are going to do much better in terms of not having heart attacks or having them treated properly, when they have non-cardiac surgery.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Professor Guyatt.

We conducted an extensive interview for In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal before: hereherehereherehere, and here. We have other interviews in Canadian Atheist (here and here), Canadian Science (here), Canadian Students for Sensible Drug PolicyConatus NewsHumanist Voicesand The Good Men Project (herehereherehereherehereherehereherehere, and here).

Photo by Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash

Govt. all set to implement “One nation-one ration card” scheme by June 2020

The Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Ram Vilas Paswan has asserted that the government is going to implement “One nation-one ration card” scheme in the whole country by 30th June, 2020. Paswan said, while addressing media in New Delhi that work on linking all the ration cards all over the country with Aadhar cards and organizing food grain distribution mechanism in its entirety through Point of Sale (PoS) machine is in the final stage.

Currently Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Telangana and Tripura are 10 states where 100% POS machines have been arranged for grain distribution and all PDS shops have been connected to the Internet. Now, in these states any beneficiary can take grain from any public distribution system shop in that state. Paswan stated that arrangements are being made to ensure that by August 15, 2019, beneficiaries of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Gujarat and Maharashtra will be able to take ration from anywhere in both states.

The Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution asserted that work is being done on war footing to ensure “One Nation One Ration Card” scheme is implemented across the nation and for that data of all ration cards will be connected to one server and any beneficiary, anywhere in the country, will be able to pick up their grain from any public distribution system of their choice after 30th June, 2020.

Dubai’s Princess leaves crown prince; flees country with £31 million

Dubai’s Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein, 45, has reportedly left her husband Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and one of the world’s richest men. According to reports, the princess has fled to London with £31million following the break-up of their marriage. It comes after one of the Sheikh’s daughter’s Princess Latifa fled Dubai last year, when she vanished off the coast of Goa.

Princess Haya bint Al Hussein is the daughter of the late King of Jordan and sister of the present king. Sheikh Mohammed has denounced the treachery and betrayal by his wife, and wrote on Instagram, “Go to whom you get busy with!!!!!?”

Princess Haya is claimed to have been helped by a German diplomat after fleeing Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Sources say her application for asylum has been approved in principle by Germany. However, she is also said to be seeking protection in the U.K., where she is currently said to be residing at a secret location. It has sparked a potential diplomatic crisis between the two countries. German authorities have refused to comment on reports of Princess Haya’s escape from her husband.

MWCD prepares new Policy for Women Empowerment

The Ministry of Women and Child Development has prepared the draft National Policy for Women after considering suggestions/comments received from stakeholders. Sharing more about it in the Parliament the the Minister of Women and Child Development, Smriti Zubin Irani, said that the Draft envisions a society in which, women attain their full potential and are able to participate as equal partners in all spheres of life.

The draft policy addresses the diverse needs of women through identified priority areas : (i) Health including food security and nutrition, (ii) Education, (iii) Economy (including agriculture industry, labour, employment, NRI women, soft power, service sector, science and technology), Violence against women, (iv) Governance and decision making (v) Violence Against Women (vi)  Enabling environment (including housing, shelter and infrastructure, drinking water and sanitation, media and culture, sports and social security) (vii) Environment and climate change.

Inspiring story of legendary Field Marshall Sam Manekshaw on big screen soon

Legendary Field Marshall, Sam Manekshaw’s life and journey will soon be seen on the big screen. Actor Vicky Kaushal is all set to portray 1971 war hero in an upcoming biographical film Sam to be directed by Meghna Gulzar. Manekshaw was the Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army. He commanded the Indian forces during the India-Pakistan 1971 war, when India fought the Bangladesh Liberation War with Pakistan. He was also the first Indian officer to be promoted to the rank of a field marshal.

The makers of the film decided to reveal the first look of the film on Sam Manekshaw’s death anniversary on Thursday. The film’s director Meghna Gulzar wrote: “A soldier’s soldier. A gentleman’s gentleman. In remembrance, on the death anniversary of Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw. It is my honour to tell the story of one of India’s greatest war heroes, with Vicky Kaushal essaying the historic man.”

Vicky Kaushal, who looked almost unrecognizable as Field Marshall Manekshaw, with a moustache, also shared the picture on social media and wrote: “I feel honoured, emotional and proud of getting a chance to unfold the journey of this fearless patriot, the swashbuckling general, the first Field Marshal of India- Sam Manekshaw. Remembering him on his death anniversary today and embracing the new beginnings with Meghna Gulzar and Ronnie Screwvala.”

Speaking to media, Megha Gulzar said that the film will delve into the life of Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw but it is a not a biopic. “The film on Field Marshal Manekshaw is not a biopic. I’m looking at the man, his life and his times. I’m way over my head over here (the story),” she said.

Earlier, Meghna Gulzar and Vicky Kaushal had worked together in the 2018 hit film Raazi, in which Vicky played the role of a Pakistani army officer. Vicky, was most recently seen in Uri: The Surgical Strike

Ronnie Screwvala, who is backing the project through his RSVP banner, said, “Sam Manekshaw’s name will be etched in the history as one of the greatest soldiers and minds India has ever seen. Young India desperately needs role model to look up to, needs to be educated on the contribution made by this icon to India — as we know it today.”