Net Neutrality and Why does it matter?

The TRAI is all set to issue recommendations on net neutrality. The regulator’s recommendations to the telecom department will form a vital component of the government’s policy on net neutrality, a principle that guarantees consumers equal access to all Internet services, with no discrimination on the basis of tariffs or speed. Here is a look at what the developments mean for consumers and companies.

Net neutrality is the principle that internet providers treat all web traffic equally, and it’s pretty much how the internet has worked since its creation. But regulators, consumers advocates and internet companies were concerned about what broadband companies could do with their power as the pathway to the internet – blocking or slowing down apps that rival their own services.

In US, big telecom companies say they don’t want the stricter regulation that comes with the net neutrality rules. They say the regulations can undermine investment in broadband and introduced uncertainty about what were acceptable business practices. There were concerns about potential price regulation, even though the Federal Communications Commission had said it won’t set prices for consumer internet service.

Internet companies such as Google have strongly backed net neutrality but many tech firms have been more muted in their activism this year. Netflix, which had been vocal in support of the rules in 2015, said that weaker net neutrality wouldn’t hurt it because it’s now too popular with users for broadband providers to interfere.

FCC Chairman distributed his alternative plan to other FCC commissioners in preparation for a vote. Although the FCC two Democrats said they will oppose the proposal, the repeal is likely to prevail as Republicans dominate 3-2. The vote for net neutrality in 2015 was also along party lines, but Democrats dominated then. The TRAI fought a battle in 2016 against plans that promised select Internet services to poor people by offering them free of cost. The regulator issued differential pricing regulations by which it banned what’s known as zero-rating plans.

Book Review: Mentally Tough

Some days, you are better. You are quicker. You are stronger. You see more. You accomplish more. Solutions come to you. You are on a roll. You are better. Why are you so much better on some days than on others? It is only happenstance, a quirk of fate? Or is there some controllable way for you to perform consistently at the upper reaches of your abilities? There is a way to be at your best whenever you want or need to be, and it is based upon your ability to control your emotions.

Mentally tough is having the ability to control your emotional state in order to be focused, relaxed and confident in the workplace. It means you don’t get bogged down by stress, anger, fatigue, petty problems, or your workload. It means accomplishing your goals, unlocking boundless physical and mental energy, and discovering an enterprising, creative and vital you.

By utilizing the strategies in this book – the same techniques professional athletes use to attain their Ideal Performance State on command. These techniques – including Attitude, Visualization, Motivation, Exercise, Diet, and Performance ritual, Breath Control, Ritual, Humor and more are applied here to the world of business.

This book describes certain peak performance feelings such as -

Mental Calmness – This is not the state of a great performance. During the white moments, there is a very real sense of internal calm and quiet – almost a sense of performing in slow motion.

Physical Relaxation – Physical tenseness ruins performance, whether you’re trying to hit a tennis ball or you’re delivering a speech. During your finest hours, the muscles are relaxed not taut.

Freedom from Anxiety – Anxiety leads to physical and mental tension and provokes an undesirable shift in focus from the performance itself to its outcome or possible repercussions. Sometimes Anxiety will provide a source of energy. But anxiety is a negative energy, and no performance fueled by anxiety will be as good as one fueled from a positive source.

Energy – It is the energy that comes when you are loose, calm and free of anxiety. Every top performance is propelled by a seemingly boundless supply of mental and physical energy drawn from the positive emotions.

Optimism – The Optimism during top performance comes from a strong belief that whatever the challenge, the performer will find a way to meet it. Top performers never run out of options, and their optimism reflects this knowledge.

Enjoyment – When you find joy in work, you perform well. When it ceases to be fun, performance suffers. This state of fun is all-important to good performance; it represents a limitless source of positive energy.

Effortlessness – When the biochemistry is right, achieving great goals and overcoming major obstacles seem nearly effortless.

Automaticity – During great performances, the action is automatic, almost intuitive or instinctive. The right responses come naturally, without hesitation or deliberation.

Alertness – Finest hours always include an extraordinary awareness and a heightened sense of self. An executive will sense accurately the pulse of the surroundings, but simultaneously stay riveted to the task at hand.

Focus – The importance of concentration is no surprise, it is essential to any good performance to be able to focus on a specific target and resist distraction.

Self-confidence – It is nothing more than the strong internal belief that one can meet the challenges. This provides calm when the circumstances might otherwise evoke panic, anxiety anger or tension.

Control – This is simply the feeling that you are in control of yourself and your responses to events. You are not a passive victim of circumstance. You can’t always control events, but you can control your emotional responses.

If you’ve ever had just one day where everything flowed smoothly – you feel relaxed, yet everything and more gets done, problems are dealt with quickly and efficiently, and you’re more creative than you’ve been in months – then you know what it’s like to be Mentally Tough. And once you are Mentally Tough you have days like this on command – making the difference between success and failure in today’s tough business world.

Challenges in E-commerce

E-commerce spending has risen to $2.1 Trillion in the past few years and will reach $5 Trillion by 2020. Such rapid growth promises a great future for the Indian E-commerce industry signifying a strong market and increased customer demand. Despite these growth trends, many e-commerce businesses fail to take off within their first year. It is worth exploring the various challenges which the ecommerce industry faces today.

Borderless Economies – Mobile technology has empowered consumers in myriad ways. It has opened doors to a digital economy, taking globalization to a new level. Traditional boundaries are clearly blurring, with online retailers expanding to new geographies. This leaves companies to deal with government regulations, geopolitical status and extensive local and international competition. Modern E-commerce businesses are in race to provide the best premium services to their consumers while finding the right balance between globalization and localization.

Building Trust – Building consumer trust and brand loyalty is essential for any business to succeed. The traditional brand building exercises are mostly irrelevant in the current E-commerce sector. It is easy to lose an online customer. Failure to deliver on any one aspect of customers’ demands would lead to failure in retaining them.

Disparate Systems – There are various data management systems such as – Point of Sale, Enterprise Resource Planning and CRM systems. These systems differ tremendously in their architecture, deployment and usage, usually built on dated technology and are prone to stagnation. A great deal of your resources is being spent on separate systems, interfering with internal business demands and distracting the focus from the core tasks.

Lacks of Collaboration – There are four key divisions in E-commerce – Technology, Data Curation, Product Delivery and People management. Modern companies face the challenge of collaborating between different departments, some geographically isolated and present in different time zones. Marketer’s merchandisers and E-commerce managers need to learn to strategically operate through one integrated channel.

Personalization – Modern E-commerce thrives on delivering the best personalized experience to their consumers. Managing a repository of customer data is a challenge in itself, added to that e-commerce companies have to understand how to use that data. Delivering customized content in the form of advertisements, special offers etc. are some of the methods which can be employed.

Ease of Technology – Ease of use and technology have given consumers more power and increased global competition in the e-commerce sector. Omni-channel retailing is the way forward for e-commerce. This places pressure on companies to deal with technical issues of running an online store like server issues, bandwidth issues, dynamic IP address, data privacy and security issues. The transition from a multi-channel business to an omni-channel is another aspect that is not easily adopted by many companies.

Managing logistics, seller registration and inventory accounting present bigger challenges for the e-commerce companies. To overcome these challenges would require greater deployment of manual resources and can’t just be solved through cloud services.

National Education Day

November 11 has been celebrated as the National Education Day since 2008. The date has been chosen to commemorate the birth anniversary of independent India’s first education minister – Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.

Post India’s independence, the learned turned their focus to education as they knew it would be a fundamental pillar in nation building. Speaking at All India Education on January 16, 1948, Abul Kalam said, “We must not for a moment forget, it is a birthright of every individual to receive at least the basic education without which he can’t fully discharge his duties as a citizen.

An academician and a freedom fighter, he was given the charge of the Education Minister for Free India. At the time, India though free, was reeling through the years of exploitation and the nation was suffering from widespread illiteracy.

Understanding the fundamental role education plays in the development of the nation, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad as the chairman of Central Advisory Board of Education, gave impetus to Adult Education and Literacy. Not only did he lay emphasis on elementary education but also propagated diversification of secondary education and vocational training.

The freedom fighter and visionary was responsible not only for streamlining the education system in the country but also foreseeing the start of the first ever Indian Institute of Technology, IIT in India in 1951. The man was also responsible for setting up of The Central Institute of Education, Delhi which later became the Department of Education of Delhi University.

The setting up of the University Grants Commission in 1953 is all credited to his vision. He was also the primary propagator of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Faculty of Technology of Delhi University and a founder of Jamia Millia Islamia University.

Evolution of Video Consumption

First released in 1979, the famous tune went on to top 16 International music charts. Ironically, when MTV was launched two years later, “Video killed the Radio star” became the first song to grace television screens in a new format that would change the industry forever: music video.

Forward thinking brands and marketers can take advantage of unprecedented access to consumers where it matters most. We are rapidly entering a new golden age of video, with more consumers on more devices watching more video content than ever before. The number of Internet users continues to grow, as does time spent online and content consumption is shifting toward mobile, which now accounts for nearly 70 percent of digital media time.

Think with Google research reveals that 56 percent of “Gen C” users took action after viewing ads on YouTube. While marketers worry that mobile internet content consumption will reduce their impact, the truth is that mobile digital video is quickly becoming the best way to reach an audience. Mobile video is not only rapidly becoming the preferred type of content, it’s also better at holding an audience attention than television.

It is very important for a brand to build a winning video strategy. This begins with a big idea that cuts to the heart of a problem that the product solves, or a vision of the brand and its role in daily life. Once this ‘story kernel’ has been developed, brands can build on it by articulating how they solve the problem or overcome the challenge. Where you tell a story can be just as important as how you tell it. Situating an ad in a context where the product value is clear increases the ad’s conceptual fluency. Contextually relevant ads are less intrusive, and they lower the mental strain on the viewer. They can also benefit from the halo effect.

One of the most obvious constraints of the new form is length. Instead of compressing content into even smaller parcels, brands should synthesize a story system that links discrete content vehicles into a broader narrative. Each piece works independently, encoding specific brand values, while also speaking to an overarching vision of the brand. Consumers can then interact with the content that is most relevant to them without losing sight of the brand’s overarching vision.

Brands need to choose the metrics that best evaluate the components of their strategy they want to improve and how they want to improve them. Once selected, these metrics need to be continuously re-evaluated as part of a perpetual learning system, where new knowledge informs the path of future research and experimentation. Measuring views will help a brand increase viewership, but leaves consumer attention entirely out of the picture.

Viewability, impact and context are good places to start, as they are fundamental to successful campaigns, but it’s also important to understand whether the message is clear, whether viewers are attentive, and if this attention is translating into action: sales or brand equity increased. Brands must become increasingly responsive to consumers, and the way they interact with media, by building a strong experimental framework that allows for an increasingly focused evolution of their video strategy.

Evolution of Phone Marketing

While 1983 big breakthrough was a far cry from the iPhone X, it was a harbinger of things to come, a personal telecommunications device that could be carried outside the hardwired home. It took another 10 years to make cellphones that you could comfortably carry in your hand. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that SMS as well as access via mobile browsers took off. With these factors now in play, connecting with consumers via handheld devices began to really take hold as a viable mass marketing tool.

It took until the 1970s before call centers and what was quickly dubbed ‘telemarketing’ emerged. The industry exploded as technology made it cheaper to set up outbound call centers. By 2000, the 10 biggest telemarketing agencies were making a million or more calls per hour. It was also by the turn of the millennium that essentially all businesses had now equipped themselves with toll-free numbers and braced for the rise of inbound marketing.

Having the data is one thing, but doing anything useful with it is quite another. And it depends what your interpretation of the data is. A single click can be meaningless without context without scoring it and extrapolating what it means about that specific customer journey. One way to make sense of your data is with channel attribution, based on customer touches or clicks. There are a number of models for doing this – First Click, Last Click, Position based, Linear and Time Decay.

Each of these models has pros and cons, but none is fully effective with incomplete data. Even though we’ve moved into instant, digital everything, some very significant parts of buyer’s journeys still happen offline and offline actions rarely get credit in any attribution model. Offline data efficiency gaps can widen due to the very tangible differences between various marketing channels, some channels are simply more wide used by specific demographics during specific legs of their journey.

For example, Facebook is a great place to build awareness and create a community, but it’s not typically where consumers go to make purchases or to gain deep knowledge of your products or services. If you’re not measuring phone calls, you’re likely missing a big chunk of the data. This is true if you’re using a last click model that would be giving calls a huge share of credit, if only you were tracking them. Even though the integration of the web and smartphones into everyday life has done away with phones that flip, phone calls are still alive and well in the marketing process.

In fact, the evolution of phone technology has created a mobile first world, where mobile searches result in immediate calls and conversion from the same device. Measuring which search queries, ads and content make those calls happen, therefore, is key to building and refining a winning overall strategy. Predicting which new technology or device might emerge as the next big marketing tool is a tough endeavor. 

Rise of Purpose Driven Marketing

Cause related ads seem to be everywhere. There’s much industry debate about what works, what doesn’t and whether it’s even worth the risk. Brands are tackling a wide variety of issues, ranging from safe driving to equality and healthy living, but there are certainly a few issues that brands seem to gravitate toward more than others.

Over the past year, among all cause related videos created by the top 100 brands, women’s empowerment took the cake. In Fact, 24% of the top 100 brands purpose driven videos were about women’s empowerment. From Nike to P&G, brands are finding a way to create empowering ads for women that don’t just generate impressions, but leave them. Purpose driven ads garner more views; they also drive more results in the form of engagement rate.

Dove is a great example of a brand that employs purpose driven marketing. Their mission is to improve the self-esteem and confidence of women around the world through their #speakbeautiful movement – a campaign that highlights the concept that beauty is skin deep. They want to be seen to be making a commitment to women’s wellbeing and for consumers to see them as so much more than soap and moisturizer.

We all like to feel a part of something bigger and we like to feel we’re making a difference in the world. We’re in the midst of a major change in how and why consumers connect with brands, and those that are driving social change are bang on trend. Today, brand values are equally as important to consumers as the functional benefit they can offer, and meaningful brand action is vital for building relationships and gaining customer loyalty.

When purpose driven ads are done well, brands have the opportunity to not only stand for something they believe in, but also deeply connect with an audience. I believe this will become an increasingly important method to build brands at a time when people are increasingly choosing brands that align with their values.

Tips to build a Rewarding Career

One should be able to learn, share, contribute and discover one’s true potential. After interacting with lots of professionals, here are certain tips on how to build a meaningful and rewarding career.

Have a Hunger – There needs to be a constant enthusiasm and hunger to learn, unlearn and innovate. You should be fearless in the pursuit of excellence and making a difference. It is crucial to soak up as much knowledge as possible and apply it in your line of work.

Communication – An ability to work with diverse groups and respect divergent views is important. Effective communication and influencing skills, hanging ambiguity, managing diversity and leading multi-generation teams – these are the qualities that tomorrow’s employers will look for. Being able to communicate effectively is half the battle won.

Feedback – Be sure to regularly engage with your manager and proactively ask for feedback. Conversations with your manager can revolve around those capabilities you have how the world of work is changing and whether or not your career goals are realistic. You also need to ask how you can accelerate your learning.

Company Help – Everyone has different aspirations and it’s important to keep the organization in the loop via your people manager and your career coach. Be sure to speak to senior leaders on learning opportunities that are available and take help of mentors to action feedback based improvements. You can also ask for options to work on different assignments, products, geographies or work. These will help give you a professional edge.

Think Long term – While it is a good idea to experiment on choices to formulate a direction of your career, it’s also equally important to see those choices through and consider what they mean in the long term. It’s not just about the next job, it’s about the whole of your career, so it is crucial to have patience and take a holistic view of what each decision could mean.

Impact of Blockchain on Search Marketing

If you’ve heard of Bitcoin then you most likely have heard of Blockchain, the technology that enables Bitcoin and other crypto currencies to exist and function. The technology is forecast to disrupt many industries as it allows users to conduct transactions without a middleman in a secure and transparent format.

Some of the industries that can potentially be disrupted are car sales, voting, ridesharing, real estate, insurance, sports management and loyalty cards. If Bitcoin is adopted by large companies such as Amazon or Walmart, it will certainly have an impact on the future of payments between search marketing agencies, website owners, advertisers and others. Contract agreements will also be impacted, as the Blockchain could be leveraged for more transparency and accuracy.

Blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value. It’s like a Google Doc spreadsheet that is shared with the public which displays transactions and is tamperproof. Many are considering Blockchain to be as impactful as the Internet was in the 90s.

In the digital marketing world, many central authorities, such as Google and Facebook, connect advertisers with website owners. For Example, Google is a central authority in programmatic ads, where it helps advertisers run ads on websites via the Google Display Network. Google essentially is the middleman that helps advertisers and website owners trust each other. If they already trusted each other, they would not need Google as an intermediary taking a cut of the profits.

Enter Blockchain, which can verify that every user is genuine with 100 percent accuracy and that the website owner is only charging the advertiser for genuine clicks through to their site. Then the website owner and the advertiser don’t need a middleman to arbitrate their agreement, which would save them money. Blockchain presents a big threat to Google’s Display Network revenue.

Blockchain being the unhackable distributed ledger is going to also help reduce online fraud. It will provide transparency for persons involved in a transaction without giving away their personal details, essentially proving they are a real person. Ad fraud is a big problem. It cost advertisers over $7 Billion in 2016. A number of players including Microsoft, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and DMA are already working on Blockchain based digital identification system.

As companies start to adopt Blockchain, they will need to integrate it with their websites. This involves the web developers as well as the SEOs, if they are trying to gain organic search benefits as well as display the information from the Blockchain transactions. This will present both technical issues and opportunities in which SEOs will have to work alongside developers to resolve compatibility issues with different content management systems and website platforms. As new Blockchains are developed and it is more widely adopted, it will certainly disrupt the search marketing industry in many other ways. For now, search marketers should pay close attention to Blockchain as it grows.

Diwali Ad Campaigns 2017

Brands across categories have rolled out festive ad campaigns to celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights highlighting the importance of family, love, hope and light as their core theme. A look at some brands Diwali Campaigns that have struck a chord with viewers.

Nokia – In its first comeback festive campaign executed by advertising agency Dentsu One, the smartphone maker has highlighted its global brand philosophy of ‘Unite For’, urging customers to take a break from their phones and spend quality time with their loved ones this festive season. The company is also providing a gift box in which one can place their own phone and give it to someone close or, just set it aside for a day as a gesture of committing their time—and themselves—to them. The integrated campaign is being promoted across television, retail, activation, social and digital. The film, uploaded on YouTube on 29 September, has garnered 17 million views so far.

Nestle Alpino – Nestle owned premium chocolate brand Alpino brought a Bollywood twist to create a Diwali Ad which features actors Sonali Bendre and Jimmy Shergill. Made by advertising agency JWT Delhi, the spot positions the chocolates as the perfect gift for loved ones this Diwali.

Coca-Cola – No festival is complete without siblings, and beverage brand Coca-Cola’s campaign highlights some of special moments that a brother and sister share even if it means picking up fights over the most trivial things. Made by McCann Worldgroup India, the Campaign is being promoted across television, radio and digital. Coke has also partner with Paytm to offer festive discount codes to consume with each bottle of Coke.

Pepsi – The beverage brand has extended its ‘Festive Moments’ campaign under which it has created over 80 of the popular words printed in eight regional languages on the brand’s packaging. The new packaging with festive slogans like ‘Dhoom Dhadaka’ in regional languages aims to create a much stronger connects with the consumers. Made by JWT, the campaign also comprises a Digital film along with a series of interactive on ground activations.

Lenovo – A heartwarming campaign ‘Gift them a future’ created by Lenovo India narrates a story of a banker struggling to keep himself busy after retirement. His son, who is back home for Diwali, decides to give him a little nudge in form of a notebook which will help him start his own entrepreneurial venture. Uploaded on company’s YouTube channel, the video has garnered over 2.6 Million views so far.

Hike Messenger – Mobile chat platform Hike Messenger gave a fresh take on the often used theme of homecoming during festive advertising. Created by JWT Delhi, the “No Formality” campaign features a young man who goes back home only to find his parents choosing to go on a holiday on Diwali. He then decides to celebrate the festival partying with his friends. The campaign is being promoted across digital, social and traditional media including television and radio.

Ghadi detergent – Continuing with its ‘saare mael dho daalo’ proposition, Ghadi detergent’s Diwali Ad urges people to stop judging strangers according to the pre-conceived stereotypes that exist in our mind. Created by advertising agency ADK fortune, the Film shows how policemen are often associated with trouble and corruption. The ad shows a policeman visiting a family who are selling their electronic items online. Interested to buy some of these items for Diwali, he not only pays them money in advance, but also makes the full payment, much to the relief to the owner who doubted his intentions.

Robin Hood Army

They take from the rich for the poor – but unlike the legendary outlaw Robin Hood, they are not after money, and it’s all above board. A band of merry men and women called the Robin Hood Army (RHA) has been seeking to feed the poor by distributing surplus food from restaurants and weddings to the hungry in the subcontinent.

Its volunteers, mostly students and young working professionals, call themselves Robins. Dressed in green, they go out in the dark, pick up food and distribute it among the homeless and others. When India and Pakistan celebrated 70 years of Independence, the RHA from the two nations joined hands to fight against a common enemy – hunger – and fed over 1.32 million people across 48 cities.

The group was started in August 2014 with six Robins in Delhi who served about 150 people on their first night of food distribution. In three years, it now consist of 12,350 volunteers who have served over 34,36,531 people. The RHA has some 50 chapters in as many cities in the Indian subcontinent. It started in Pakistan in February 2015 with its first distribution in Karachi. It also has volunteers in Sri Lanka and other Asian countries.

Ghose thought of starting RHA when they heard about an organization in Portugal called ‘Refood’ – which picked up and distributed restaurant surplus. He talked about the initiative with its founder Hunter Halder, and then decided to launch a similar programme in India with partner Anand Sinha, who works for an e-commerce site. The third partner, Aarushi Batra, is in Business.

A particular city chapter gets in touch with restaurants and wedding caterers in an area. Robins keep in touch with those who are ready to donate food and collect it at the end of the day or the time of distribution. The food is packed into meals and then distributed among the homeless and others who need food in or around that particular area. There are some very helpful restaurants that don’t just package and give away excess food, but also donate freshly cooked food.

All expenses, such as transportation costs, are met by the volunteers. With the help of Social Media, a large number of people have joined the army in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, apart from India and Pakistan. There are six chapters in Pakistan – four in Karachi, one in Lahore and one in Islamabad.

Though food is still its main area of concern, RHA takes up other initiatives and projects from time to time. It is now looking at ways to distribute clothes and help poor students. RHA Chennai is crowd sourcing school bags from city schools for sending to a school in a remote village in Odisha, where a Robin is a teacher. In Surat, classrooms are being built under a bridge from waste material for underprivileged children with the help of other organizations. In Hyderabad, they are building new toilets and renovating old one in schools.

When northern Gujarat was hit by floods, two Robins travelled 1,100 kms after collecting 10,000 kgs of food grains and 2,000 kgs of clothes to help 39,000 people. The team bars anybody from collecting money in the name of the organization. RHA has also started a Robin Hood Academy in 19 cities, where they teach slum children to help then join schools. Anyone can help RHA or join RHA community.

International Day of the Girl

International Day of the Girl Child is an international observance day declared by the United Nations, it’s also called the Day of the Girl and the International Day of the Girl, October 11, 2012, was the first Day of the Girl. The initiative supports more opportunity for girls and increases awareness of gender inequality faced by girls worldwide based upon their gender.

Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, Sukanya Samriddhi Account, One Stop Center Scheme, Mahila E-Haat are few measures undertaken by the Indian Government towards the upliftment of women. Over the years India has shown incremental improvement in gender inequality indicators. October 9-14 is also celebrated as the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao Week.

The day is marked by all events over the world, from India to Kenya to Washington to Paris, put on by humanitarian organizations, nonprofits and governments alike. With 1.1 Billion girls in the world, the United Nations aims to help those girls that face disadvantage and discrimination on a daily basis and wants to highlight their struggle.

The Indian constitution provides a powerful mandate for human rights in its Preamble, Fundamental Rights and Duties and specific provisions for affirmative action. The government has instituted laws and policies protecting the rights of girls and women, including a ban on dowry, pre-birth sex determination and child marriage.

For the fifth year in a row, the youth-led movement is being recognized (the United Nations declared October 11 as “day of the girl” in 2011). This youth led movement fights for gender justice and youth rights, believing that girls are the experts on issues that affect girls. This year the theme of the International Day of the Girl is ‘EmPOWER girls: Before, during and after conflict’ in humanitarian emergencies gender based violence increases which means girls are more likely to be subjected to sexual and physical violence, child marriage, exploitation and trafficking.

Nobel Prize Winners 2017

Physics – The physics prize was divided, one half awarded to Rainer Weiss, the other half jointly to Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves. The received the prize for the discovery of gravitational waves released in the world by violent events in the universe such as the mergers of black holes. Weiss, professor emeritus of Physics at MIT, along with Thorne and Barish, California Institute of Technology Physicists, pioneered LIGO, or the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, the scientific project that made gravitational wave detection possible.

Chemistry – The chemistry prize was awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Richard Henderson and Jaochim Frank for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution. Cyro-electron microscopy is a technique that takes accurate and detailed pictures of living things at atomic scales. This is assisting scientists make high resolution, 3D images that can help in cancer drug research and better understanding of the Zika virus. Jacques Dubochet is a retired biophysicist of Lausanne in Switzerland, Joachim Frank, a professor at Columbia University in New York and Richard Henderson is a scientist at the British Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.

Physiology – The 2017 prize was awarded jointly to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm. The award celebrates the study of the tiny biological clocks in every living thing. The three American Scientists were able to peek inside our biological clock and elucidate its inner workings. Their discoveries explain how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronized with the Earth’s revolution.

Literature – The Literature prize was awarded to Kazuo Ishiguro who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world. The author of seven novels, a short story collection and screenplays, Ishiguro was born in bomb-hit Nagasaki in 1954 and moved to England at the age of 5.

Nobel Peace Prize – The Peace prize 2017 was awarded to International campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic, humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground breaking efforts to achieve a treaty based prohibition of such weapons. The group formed by Geneva based coalition of disarmament activists is behind the first treaty to prohibit nuclear arms. 

Economics – The US Economist Richard Thaler was awarded the $1.1 Million Nobel Economics Prize for his contributions in the field of behavioral Economics. The award giving body said that Thaler contributions have built a bridge between the economic and psychological analyses of individual decision making.

Remembering Bhagat Singh

Born 110 years ago in a small village in Lyallpur district (now Faislabad in Pakistan) of undivided pre-independence India’s Punjab Province, Bhagat Singh went on to etch his name in the history books for his invaluable contribution to the Indian Freedom struggle. On this 110^th birth anniversary, let’s revisit few facts of the iconic freedom fighter, who was executed on March 23, 1931, when he was just 23 years old.

Bhagat Singh left home for Kanpur when his parents tried to get him married, saying that if he married in Slave India, “my bride shall only be death” and joined Hindustan Socialist Republic Association. Bhagat Singh along with Sukhdev planned to avenge the death of Lala Lajpat Rai and plotted to kill the Superintendent of Police James Scott in Lahore. However in case of mistaken identity, John Saunders, the Assistant Superintendent of Police was shot.

Although a Sikh by birth, he shaved his beard and cut his hair to avoid being recognized and arrested for the killing. He managed to escape from Lahore to Calcutta. On April 8, 1929, Bhagat Singh, along with freedom fighter Batukeshwar Dutt, hurled two bombs inside the Central Legislative Assembly in New Delhi to protest against an unfavorable bill. Interestingly, their actual intentions behind this defiant act were to get arrested and to use the subsequent court appearances to further the cause of their organization Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) for India’s Independence.

Along with the bombs, Singh also threw in copies of a leaflet in the assembly that quoted a French anarchist as saying, “It takes a loud noise to make the deaf hear”, and signs off with the now epochal statement, ‘Inquilab Zindabad!’ or ‘Long Live the revolution’. He did not resist his arrest at this point. At the time of his trial, he didn’t offer any defence, rather used the occasion to propagate the idea of India’s Freedom.

In his famous article titled “Why I am an atheist?” written in jail in early October 1930, he wrote he found fulfillment through serving humanity and liberating it from sufferings and distress. Apart from Freedom from the British, his goal was to build an India where poverty, socio-economic disparity and exploitation did not exist.

Koovagam: Transgender Festival of India

Transgenders, otherwise called 'Hijaras' in India, have been always been a part of the society. But till today, they have failed to gain acceptance into mainstream society and live on the fringes of it. Reduced to begging and forced prostitution to somehow make a living, the transgender community has always been scorned and looked down upon. While that is the general perception around the country, there is a village in south India which cherishes and celebrates the transgender identity.

Every year, between April and May, thousands of transgenders from across the country celebrates the transgenders festival in Koovagam, a remote village in Tamil Nadu. This festival is celebrated in the Koothandavar Temple of Koovagam and has its roots in Hindu Epic Mahabharata.

According to legend, during the Mahabharata war, on the 18^th day there came a scenario where the Pandavas had to sacrifice someone from themselves to Goddess Kali to win the battle. Aravan (the son of Arjuna and Ulupi, the Naga Princess) offered himself to be sacrificed for his clan to win. But he asked Lord Krishna for one last wish to be fulfilled, to be married before his death. With just one day’s marriage and a lifetime of widowhood ahead, no woman was willing to marry Aravan. So Lord Krishna took his ‘Mohini’ Avatar and became Aravan’s bride. As promised, Aravan offered himself as sacrifice the next day.

In this festival, thousands of transgenders who came for the annual event consider themselves the brides of Aravan. They celebrate this festival with songs, dances, games and even a beauty pageant. The winner of the pageant is crowned ‘Miss Koovagam’. On the 17^th day, these transgenders dress up like brides and tie mangalsutra around their necks, acts like Mohini and on the last day i.e. 18^th day, acts as widows and mourn the death of Aravan by breaking their bangles and mangalsutra, symbolizing the end of their one-day marriage.