Now, Navarathri kolu dolls come in shiny avatar

Made of fibre reinforced plastic, the expensive dolls are finding takers

24/09/2019, DEEPA H. RAMAKRISHNAN,CHENNAI

Dolls made of FRP are a fad this Navarathri. B. Velankanni RajB. Velankanni Raj

Did you know that you can now pick up Navarathri kolu dolls made of fibre reinforced plastic (FRP) material?

The large dolls that stand right at the top of the steps, the three-foot tall ones, including those of Adi Sankarar, Sharadambal and Kanchi Mahaperiyava, come in long-lasting FRP with a smooth paint and do not losetheir sheen easily.

City-based artisan N. Jagadeeswaran, who makes these dolls along with a friend, said that it takes a month to make a single doll. “We can use a mould for making only one doll. The paint we use is costly and the dolls can be washed. They are stronger than the conventional clay dolls,” he said.

The cost of the dolls, however, is quite prohibitive. The ones that are three-ft tall are priced as high as ₹75,000-₹80,000 and can be bought at Poompuhar and Khadi Gramodhyog Bhavan on Anna Salai. “There are clients for such dolls too. Last year, we made just three big ones and all of them were sold. This year too we made three big ones and a few smaller sized dolls including Agasthiyar, Pandurangan, Ayyappan and Karumariamman,” said Mr. Jagadeeswaran.

Terracotta artisan from Puducherry V. K. Munusamy, at Kumaran Anugraha in West Mambalam, said that use of FRP in making dolls for kolu was a recent trend. “Large showpieces used to be made using FRP. The oldest one that I know of is the large dinosaur at the Chennai museum, which was made by my uncle.

“The shiny Ganesha and Krishna dolls that we get from Thailand, Vietnam and China are made of FRP. Nowadays artisans here also use FRP due to constant demand from customers for new dolls and materials,” he said.

Athi Varadar doll
The Athi Varadar doll is the most sought after one this season. You can buy them for as low as ₹450 for a small one at the Mother Teresa Women Development Complex in Nungambakkam where you can also pick up dolls from Cuddalore and Madurai.

V. Selvaraj, secretary at the Khadi outlet, said new arrivals included Madurai Veeran, Krishnan Thulabaram, Bhairavar and a set from the film Maya Bazaar where a huge Ghatotkacha (the son of the Pandava Bhima) is surrounded by delicacies.

The Poompuhar showroom has an interesting miniature five-step kolu with dolls in that size.

Thomas Cook folds, 6L tourists stranded

London:  24.09.2019  TOI

Thomas Cook, the world’s oldest travel company, collapsed on Monday, leaving 6 lakh tourists stranded across the globe and sparking the British government’s biggest repatriation since World War II as it scrambled to bring 150,000 UK tourists back home from far-flung destinations.

The 178-year-old debtplagued group, which had struggled against fierce online competition for some time and blamed Brexit uncertainty for a recent drop in bookings, declared bankruptcy after failing to secure £200 million (₹1,770 crore) from private investors. Monday’s development, which followed a lengthy period of chronic financial turmoil after a disastrous 2007 merger deal with MyTravel, left Thomas Cook’s 22,000 staff out of job. AGENCIES

Goa tourism set to take ₹50 crore hit

Goa’s tourism industry is set to lose out on ₹50 crore due to the collapse of Thomas Cook. The firm used to book around 35,000 seats from the UK to Goa a season through Thomas Cook Airlines.

Thomas Cook’s disastrous 2007 merger with MyTravel left it with huge debts

Authorities in the United Kingdom launched an official investigation into the corporate collapse, according to a Downing Street spokeswoman who also cautioned that there were “a number of complicated reasons behind the failure”.

Thomas Cook said “despite considerable efforts”, it was unable to reach an agreement between the company’s stakeholders and proposed new money providers. “The company’s board has therefore concluded it had no choice but to take steps to enter into compulsory liquidation with immediate effect,” it added. The long-troubled group has also been blighted by enormous costs arising from its disastrous 2007 merger with MyTravel, a deal which left it plagued with huge levels of debt.

The UK government said it had hired planes to fly home British tourists, in a mass repatriation plan codenamed ‘Operation Matterhorn’ which began immediately. Launching Britain’s “largest repatriation in peacetime history”, transport secretary Grant Shapps said the government and UK civil aviation authority had hired dozens of charter planes to fly home Thomas Cook customers.

As well as grounding its planes, Thomas Cook has been forced to shut travel agencies, leaving the group’s 22,000 global employees — 9,000 of whom are in UK — out of a job.

Chinese peer Fosun, which was already the biggest shareholder in Thomas Cook, had agreed last month to inject £450 million into the business as part of an initial £900 million rescue package. In return, Fosun was to acquire a 75% stake in Thomas Cook’s tour operating division and 25% of its airline unit. “Fosun is disappointed that Thomas Cook Group has not been able to find a viable solution for its proposed recapitalisation with other affiliates, core lending banks, senior noteholders and additional involved parties,” it said.

Thomas Cook, which began in 1841, grew into a huge operation but fell into massive debt despite recent annual turnover of £10 billion from transporting about 20 million customers worldwide. The company’s failure comes just two years after the collapse of UK’s Monarch Airlines.

Thomas Cook’s demise caps a dramatic fall from grace for a company which was demoted from London’s FTSE 100 shares index in 2010 — and from the second-tier FTSE 250 last year. Its shares are worthless and now suspended. AGENCIES

Just 24% of students in top schools women

Manash.Gohain@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:24.09.2019

Women scholars number just 24% in 127 institutions of national importance though overall there are more women in eight of 16 undergraduate and postgraduate programmes on Indian campuses, according to the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2018-19.

There are more women pursuing science and medicine at undergraduate level, while for BCom now, there are 99 women for every 100 men on campus. Women also comfortably outnumber men among those graduating at UG, PG, PG diploma and MPhil level.


Women made big stride in BCom, BSc and MBBS in last five years

Female participation is very high and has also increased sharply at MA, MSc and MCom levels during the last five years.

Today some of the programmes where the gender gap is significantly in favour of the females are medical (at UG level) where it is 60.6%, Arts at 53.03% and Science at 51% of total enrolment. In master’s level there are more females in Science and Arts with 62.72% and 61.78% of total enrolment respectively.

Female participation has been dominant in BA, BEd, BSc nursing, MA, MCom and MSc for past five years. But the bigger stride by women in the last five years has been made in BCom, BSc and MBBS.

But what can cause some concern are the figures for the last three years in institutions of national importance which show the numbers for female scholars are more or less static at institutions like AIIMS, IITs, IISERs, NITs and Schools of Planning and Architecture, among others.

Females have also a lot of catching up to do in law where enrolment stands at 33.7% and just 28% and 28.86% in BTech and BE, respectively. In MTech, there has been a continuous decline as the number of females per 100 males have dipped from 64 in 2014-15 to 54 in 2018-19. Despite marked improvement from 58 females per 100 males to 75 in MBA courses, and 64 in 2014-15 to 70 in 2018-19 in BCA, the gender gap remains significant.

Women fare poorly in overall enrolment in technical education (BE/ BTech) with the bulk of the institutions of importance offering professional technical courses. The biggest gap is at the undergraduate level, where there are 26,736 females as compared to 96,724 males. Similarly at postgraduate level, the number of females is just 12,819 in a population of 50,201.

The AISHE data also indicates a shift in preference as increasing number of students opt for professional programmes like management, law, computer applications, pharmacology and medicine, touching a fiveyear high in enrolment. However, traditional engineering and arts programme, as well as BTech/ BE/ MTech enrolment have continued to slide in the last five years.

As per the report, MCom, MSc, BEd, BBA, LLB, BPharm, BSc nursing and MBBS have registered the highest percentage point growth in the last five years, recording all-time high enrolment. Other programmes which are on the growth path are MBA, BCom, BCA and BBA.

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NRIs can apply for Aadhaar without 182-day waiting period

New Delhi:24.09.2019

Non-resident Indians (NRIs) with valid Indian passport can apply for Aadhaar on arrival, without the 182-day waiting period, with the government issuing a notification in this regard.

Following the notification, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has also come out with a circular stating that “NRI after his arrival  in India, shall be entitled to obtain Aadhaar number”.

The modalities for application remain more or less unchanged, a UIDAI source said adding that NRIs with Indian passport can now apply for biometric ID on arrival or by scheduling a prior appointment.

UIDAI circular said valid Indian passport will be accepted as proof of identity, proof of address (PoA) and date of birth document. “In case NRI’s passport does not have Indian address, he shall be allowed to submit any of the other UIDAIapproved PoA documents as proof of address,” said the circular issued on Monday. PTI

WRONG INJECTION TURNS FATAL

Teacher posing as doctor kills boy, 7, with wrong jab

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Bhopal:23.09.2019

A government teacher was moonlighting as a “doctor” in Madhya Pradesh’s Dindori district for years, and this shocking quackery went unnoticed until a seven-year-old boy died four days ago, allegedly after being given a wrong injection.

The accused, Sonawal Singh, has been suspended. Police are waiting for the victim’s viscera report to decide what action to take against him.

Dindori chief medical and health officer Dr R K Mehra told TOI that Singh was “neither eligible, nor qualified to be a medical practitioner, and certainly not authorized”.

“The postmortem has been carried out and viscera reports are still awaited. We

have given our statement to the district collector and the school education department has suspended the teacher,” said Mehra.

The victim, Anuj, lived in Kanakdhara village in Gadasarai region, about 31km from Dindori district HQ, and Sonawal Singh is a teacher at government primary school in nearby Timki Tola village.

The boy had high fever when his family took him to Singh — who was known as ‘daktar sahib’ in the area. The child died after “treatment” on September 19.

Anuj’s father Bindu complained to officials that the child died after being given a wrong injection by Singh, and demanded action against him.

Additional SP Shiv Kumar Singh said, “We have started investigating the case. The viscera test will confirm the cause of death. In the meantime, we have written to the chief medical and health officer for information on Sonawal Singh and whether he was qualified to practice as a doctor.”

Quackery is alarmingly common in Dindori, where doctors are few and far between in the rural areas. Only on September 17, a girl’s hand had to be amputated due to wrong treatment by a quack. This case, too, is being investigated, said officials.


GROWING MENACE: Quackery is alarmingly common in Dindori, where doctors are few and far between in the rural areas. Only on September 17, a girl’s hand had to be amputated due to wrong treatment by a quack. This case, too, is being investigated, said officials

Passengers await take-off after pilot forgets papers

Bengaluru:24.09.2019

Passengers aboard an IndiGo flight, 6E 9002, from Bengaluru to New Delhi were stranded in the aircraft for more than an hour at the apron on Monday after the pilot forgot to bring his certification with him.

The pilot realised he had forgotten the documents as the flight was about to take off, said passengers. Passengers were startled to hear the pilot apologising on the intercom for not bringing important legal documents with him.

The flight, scheduled to depart at 11:05am, finally left at 12:08pm and landed in Delhi at 2:37pm. Several passengers missed crucial appointments and meetings in Delhi, while many missed connecting flights. Mohammed Sadiq, a passenger, told TOI, “I have to now stay an extra day in Delhi because I missed my meeting and postponed it to Tuesday. They completed the boarding process and the aircraft began moving when the pilot said he had forgotten important legal documents. We checked with the air hostess who repeated the same thing. We were then stuck in the aircraft for more than one hour with no news of what was happening,”

“Flight has been pushed back and now pilot is waiting for document,” tweeted Maneesh Agrawal, another passenger onboard the flight. TNN

MTC conductor with unaccounted cash faces action
Ram.Sundaram@timesgroup.com

Chennai:24.03.2019

A government bus conductor from Chennai has been pulled up for his inability to explain how he collected ₹705 during a trip without selling authorised tickets.

By selling fake tickets, not printed and distributed at authorised depots, conductors can swindle money collected from ticket sales, say activists, suspecting a possible scam.

M Kasimayan, an RTI activist from Ayappakam, had on July 7 travelled by a Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) bus on route G18 (T Nagar to Guduvanchery). On the way, a ticket checking squad stopped the bus. During inspection, the squad found that conductor Sekar had ₹705 unaccounted cash in his bag and none of the ₹15 tickets, sold to passengers during the trip, were recorded in the log sheet. “The conductor didn’t enter ₹15 ticket details as he knew that serial numbers would not match,” said Kasimayan in his complaint to transport commissioner J Radhakrishnan. Instead of checking the veracity of ₹15 tickets, the squad acted hand in glove with the conductor and issued a memo only for holding unaccounted cash, he added. The squad and conductor were summoned for inquiry in August. During inquiry, the squad members told MTC that the tickets were authorised but the conductor was unable to provide reasonable explanation or evidence to claim ignorance. Based on this, disciplinary proceeding was initiated against Sekar of Vadapalani depot, showed official documents.

The Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption had last year conducted a raid at Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation, Villupuram headquarters in a similar complaint. A racket involving officials, conductors and printing units had printed multiple fake tickets with same serial numbers.

TICKET TROUBLE: By selling fake tickets, conductors can swindle money collected from ticket sales