chakravarthy

[ Based on an article written by Patralekha Chatterjee, who focuses on development issues in India and emerging economies. The article was published in Deccan Chronicle dated 18th October, 2018 (Thursday) ]. Migrant dreams and nightmares fuel India's development story. The malls, the factories, the highways, the bridges, the luxury condominiums - the markers of the country's stunning economic transformation over the past few decades - over the past few decades - would not have come up without the sweat of migrant labourers. But those who migrate from one part of the country to another in search of a livelihood, continue to be problematised. This has no change. Currently, Gujarat is on the radar. There are reports of renewed tension in the state, recently scarred by anti-migrant sentiments. Earlier in October 2018, a three-year-old girl was raped and killed in Surat. The suspect is a migrant labourer from North India. There area also reports of assaults on construction worke...

[ Based on an article written by Mahir Ali, published in Deccan Chronicle dated 18th October, 2018 (Thursday) ].  The authorities were still washing the bloodstains off Tlatelolco Plaza when the Olympic athletes began arriving in Mexico City. It was 1968, the tumultuous year during which a variety of rebellions, mainly led by students, erupted across so many parts of the world. Mexico had witnessed its share, and on 02nd October, 2018, just ten days before the Olympics were due to be inaugurated, the government effectively sanctioned the year's worst atrocities outside a war zone. In the intervening half-century, the precise death toll has never been determined. It runs into hundreds at the very least, far beyond the official figures, and the events of that year still resonate in Mexico. Its capital city's arguably most iconic moment that autumn, however, was utterly non-violent. Just four days into the Olympics, a pair of African-Americans were placed first and third in th...

Winds blowing across dunes on Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf cause the massive ice slab's surface to vibrate, producing a near-constant set of seismic 'tones' which could be used to monitor changes in the ice from afar, according to a study. The Ross Ice Shelf is Antarctica's largest ice shelf, a Texas-sized plate of glacial ice fed from the icy continent's interior that floats atop the Southern Ocean, said researchers at Colorado State University in the US. The ice shelf buttresses adjacent ice sheets on Antarctica's mainland, impeding ice flow from land into water, like a cork in a bottle, according to the study published in the journal 'Geophysical Research Letters'. When the researchers started analysing seismic data on the Ross Ice Shelf, they notice something odd: Its fur coat was constantly vibrating. "It's kind of like you are blowing a flute, constantly, on the ice shelf", said Julien Chaput, a geophysicist at Colorado State U...

Children who spend more than hour-an-hour a day on internet are almost twice as likely to ask for junk food, according to a study published on 17th October, 2018 (Wednesday). The study, which examines the associations between diet and advertising of junk food on TV and Internet, questioned children and their parents. Researchers from University of Liverpool and Cancer Research UK asked almost 2,500 seven to eleven-year-olds and their parents about their eating habits and how much screen time they had. The results show that primary school children who spent more than three hours on web were more than four times more likely to spend their pocket money on junk food than their peers who browsed for less than 30 minutes. These children were also 79% more likely to be overweight while those who were online between 30 minutes and three hours a day were 53% more likely to be carrying excess weight than those who were online for less. "Parents are familiar with being nagged for sweets an...