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Students of GIC Dhopar Dhar, Tehri appeal for teachers

By
Tania Saili
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0

Tehri, No Principal. Appointment of seven subject teachers pending since 2009 to 2019 namely, Chemistry, Hindi, English, Economics, LT Language, Biology and Political Science at the Government Inter College, Dhopar Dhar.

And thus hangs the undecided fate of 520 students of GIC, Dhopar Dhar, Bhilangana block, Tehri Garhwal, Uttarakhand.

Innovative way of expressing their angst

It is said that the future of any country depends on its educated younger generation. But students of Government Inter College, Dhopar Dhar are facing an uncertain future with just four teachers holding fort in a school of over 500 students.

The Uttarakhand State Government has run several campaigns like Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao ensuring our next generation is educated, but the ground reality is far  from removed.

Students of GIC Dhopar Dhar, some 50 kms from the district headquarters of Tehri have been struggling with shortage of teachers for a long time, now. With numerous letters to the Secondary Education Department and those who matter, remain unanswered to-date.

In protest, the students have found a unique approach of catching the attention of the State Head, Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat.

Letter asking for teachers for GIC school which remains unanswered

As a last resort, they are demonstrating their angst to convey their grievances to the state government. With posters, pamphlets, and charts pasted on their school bags, students make their way to the school shouting slogans, appealing for teachers from the government.

With board exams around the corner, students of class Xth and XIIth have an uphill task at hand. For them self-study or tuitions seems to be the only way out, for now.

In the recent past, many government schools were shut down due to paucity of students, but with 500 odd students enlisted at Government Inter College, Dhopar Dhar, Bhilangana block, Tehri, it is not the lack of students but that of teachers, which has made a mockery of what our education department promises and what the sad reality on ground is.

Winterline Wonder: Mussoorie Carnival

By
Tania Saili
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0

The stage is being set for the annual Mussoorie Winterline Carnival. From the 25th to the 30th of December, local administration is ensuring that the 5- day event is a gala affair for visitors and residents, alike.

From Chardukan to Gandhi Chowk, seven makeshift stages will be earmarked across the town at famous landmarks. It will begin from Library Chowk where the ceremonies will begin. “Ideally we would be happy and honoured to have Chief Minister, Trivendra Singh Rawat to flag off the event on the 25th,” SDM Varun Choudhary informed, “including other senior officers whom we shall invite to inaugurate events on subsequent days.”

Pic Courtesy: Bijendra Pundir

With a projected budget hovering at 40 lakhs, and all this raised by voluntary contributions, the youthful SDM Varun Choudhary added, “The idea is to try and promote local talent and culture. This will ensure that tourists who come to Mussoorie during the festive weekend, shall take home memories of fun, sun, laughter and merriment.”

Other events include puppet shows, musical performances, cultural dances, Landour Mela, Karaoke singing scheduled from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Participatory competitions such as PubG, Sports, Food eating, Musical Chairs etc will be organized in which tourists too can participate.

Advertised on social media like Facebook.com/winterlinecarnivalmussoorie and Instagram.com/mussooriewinterlinecarnival and shared through Incredible India, all in the hope that it will increase footprint from home and foreign shores as well.

Mussoorie’s dynamic Chairman, Anuj Gupta, said: “We hope this year’s Winterline Carnival will be a huge success. Tourists who come to town go back home with the aroma and flavor of Uttarakhand’s rich cuisine and culture. Mussoorie – the Queen of Hills – will get an added luster to her glittering crown.”

There is a feeling, that with artists like Pratyush Joshi and Aman Shah on board, one will also get a glimpse of the multi-cultural exchange involving talents from all the other twelve districts at the Winterline Carnival.

Giving the lesser-known artists exposure on an international stage will, evoke some of the magic of Devbhoomi.

After all, at day’s end, most established artists have already sung their song.

Managing Uttarakhand’s Shrines

By
Tania Saili
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0

Predictably, the decision of Uttarakhand Government to set up a Chardham Shrine Board to manage the affairs of 51 temples including the famous four:- Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri is facing resistance from the Teerth Purohits or those who have been running the affairs of these temples up until now.

This backlash comes in the wake of the approval for Uttarakhand Chardham Shrine Board Bill-2019. Cries of ‘This black law is going to destroy ancient cultural values and ethos,’ resound in the winter’s chill. You can rest assured that there will be the usual: ‘If the government does not change its decision, it will be opposed vehemently.’

Suresh Semwal, President of the Gangotri Temple Committee, says: ‘We oppose the Cabinet approval for the formation of Chardham Shrine Board on the lines of Vaishnodevi Mata Temple and Tirupati Balaji Temple Shrine Board.” He claimed that the State Government misled the tirtha priests and the real intention was to deal a body blow to the priests and Sanatan culture. Alleging, “The government has not given a single rupee for the Gangotri Yamunotri Dham since the 2013 deluge. Passing such a sanction without taking into trust the Panda society at large, will not be tolerated.”

Yamunotri Temple Committee Secretary Kriteshwar Uniyal added, “This decision will render eight thousand families homeless, while destroying culture and faith.”

Krishna Kant Kotiyal, President of Devbhoomi Tirtha, alleged that Government should have held consultations with the Teerth Purohits on the issue. Ignoring them and taking a unilateral decision is an insult to the Panda society, “We will strongly oppose this move.”

As for the man-on-the-road or the ordinary pilgrim, opinions taken across a wide spectrum reveal there is the general feeling that the move will put an end to the gradual commercialization and of those who have thus far had a monopoly on the running shrines – both big and small – in Devbhoomi.

If and when the Chardham Shrine Board is put in place, 51 temples including Gangotri, Yamnotri, Badrinath, Kedarnath will come under the single umbrella of the Chardham Development Board. To get an idea of how well it has worked, a visit to Vaishno Devi and Tirupati Balaji temples is highly recommended.

State Level Consultation held on Girl Education

By
newspost
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0

Dehradun, Participants from different stakeholders working in girl education and gender equality took part in an event at the State level Consultation, organized by Room to Read,  to dwell into challenges of Girl Education.  Education Department, SCERT, DIET, Skill and Employment; participation from NGOs RLEK, SAMPARK, Kaaya, Maiti, Samadhan along with prominent personalities like Padam Shri Avadesh Kaushal, Hemlata Behan, Kalyan Singh Rawat; students and fellows from TISS and HANS, were part of the consultation.

Student who had graduated from Room to Read program shared their experience, their journey and spoke about the hurdles faced while completing their elementary education and how life-skills learnt as part of the program helped them in overcoming life challenges.

Key speakers, Ms Asha Painuly, CEO, Dehradun and Ms Nini Mehrotra Sr. Prog. Manager Girl Education and Gender Equality Program from Room to Read, shed light on data collected from last three decades on how the Indian Education System and successive government policies have made steady progress towards bridging gender and social gap, yet a lot remained to be achieved.

Ms Arushi Pokhriyal joined the event and talked about the achievement of women leadership of Uttarakhand which has been recognized world over. She reinforced that girls need to be self-aware of their potential to reach their dream.

Panel members shared their experiences on efforts being put in the field of gender equality and girl education.  The session brought forth the need to mainstream life-skill education. The panel highlighted financial, attitude and practices, crisis situation,  policy and system level barriers, health, protection, gender discrimination, socio cultural barriers etc all relevant areas that could create hindrance for girls in completing her education and yet how she could march forward towards attaining gender equality.

Rhinoceros come home to Corbett National Park

By
Tania Saili
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0

Nainital, First established in 1936, the Corbett National Park known for the highest density of Royal Bengal Tigers within its periphery, will soon have a new guest. The thick-skinned, plant-eating mammal, the mighty rhinoceros!

At the 14th State Wildlife Council held at Uttarakhand Secretariat under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, a joint decision was taken by the Uttarakhand Government and the State Forest Department where a crash of ten rhinoceros will make their way from Assam and West Bengal to their new home in Corbett Tiger Reserve, at a whopping cost of 4 crore.

According to Chief Conservator of Forests, Jairam, “we are very excited and will gradually introduce the rhinos over a period of four months,” adding, “Not only will this increase the biodiversity of Corbett. It will be a double bonanza for tourists who will get to see tigers along with rhinoceros within the park.”

 

The Corbett National Park, recently made headlines when Discovery Channel hosted Man Vs Wild by Bear Grylls and Prime Minister Modi from the park premises.

Known as home to Tigers, other animals found in abundance here are leopards, wild elephants, wild boars, deers that are easy to spot. The Park also boasts of the highest footfall of wildlife enthusiasts from home and abroad making a beeline, in the hope to catch a glimpse of the elusive Royal Bengal Tiger. The park is open for seven months a year, but shut-shops like all National Parks when the Great Indian Monsoon comes marching in from the South.

With the recent Tiger Count throwing up interesting figures when it comes to tiger population within the Tiger Reserve, the State government is hopeful that the move will show positive results in increase in tourists as these ‘mighty rhinos’ make themselves at home, in Corbett National Park.

Café de Tavern, rings in the Christmas Spirit

By
Tania Saili
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0

Mussoorie, Keeping the tradition of ‘Christmas cake-mixing’ alive in the hill-station of Mussoorie, Brentwood Hotel and Resorts, had its first ever cake mixing at their newly opened bakery Café de Tavern, on the Mall.

Run entirely by local boys recruited from the hill-station and its immediate surroundings, the motley of bakers are consciously working on making ‘their’ Bakery ‘the best in town.’

Ringing in the spirit of Christmas

Kartikey Mohan, the young Bakery Head Chef along with the staff of Café de Tavern brought in the spirit of Christmas early for locals and tourists alike with the mixing ceremony. Taking close to forty-five minutes, cinnamon to bay leaf, nutmeg, candy ginger, tutti-frutti, dry apricot, black currant, raisins, almond along with other dry fruits and orange peel were soaked in rum, vodka and brandy to enhance the flavor of the ingredients which will then rest for the next few weeks, before the sixty pound cake is baked.

Rajat Kapoor, Director, Brentwood Hotel and Resorts, tells us, “We started the bakery a month back, this seemed to be the best platform to introduce the bakery to the town, and the community. The idea is to give tourists and locals, the best of our traditional bakery products during the festival season.” Sandeep Sahni, Director, Brentwood Hotel and Resorts, adds, “We hope to make it an annual affair in sync with the English tradition which the schools and churches in town have imbibed in all of us. Christmas is a festival which is celebrated across continents and Mussoorie being a cosmopolitan town has kept alive the tradition in its true form.”

With Christmas almost a month away, the Café de Tavern promises some signature preparations and festive offerings like Christmas Cakes, Christmas Puddings, Tarts with custard sauce, Mince Pies and plenty more to tickle your food buds during the festive season which will last through the Mussoorie Winterline Carnival, from the 26th-31st of December.

Message in a plastic bottle

By
Tania Saili
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0
Ashish Garg, experiment with plastic waste

‘Be the change you want to see,’ is a worn-out cliché, but there are many amongst us who work on these very lines. Ashish Garg of Kewal Vihar Dehradun has been working on innovative ways of ensuring a greener, better tomorrow. Be it, saving rain water through a basic water–harvesting plant at home or making manure from leaf mould or simply managing waste, by segregation and recycling bio-degradable waste at home.

Motivated with the idea of minimum waste, Ashish Garg keeps coming up with simple ideas which make a huge difference, “Ban of single use plastic has done away with most of the plastic that we would bring back from the market. But what concerned me was the daily milk pouches that made its way into our kitchen every morning.” 

Ashish Garg, experiment with plastic waste

Which brought about the idea of how after proper rinsing and drying these milk- pouches, they could be inserted into empty plastic bottles, compacted tightly with the help of a rod or wooden stick to accommodate as much as one could.  “Infact any other transparent plastic waste can also go into the bottle, I could squeeze almost 80 such wrappers into one bottle alone, Ashish tells us.

The advantage. Bottle has reduced plastic waste by volume significantly and acts as a solid brick, that post a touch of paint, can be used as a colourful hedge around trees or flower beds, which automatically reduces waste that ends up in land fills. Or if you want, you could collect these bottles and send them off to the Institute of Indian Petroleum in Dehradun, for their diesel plant, as an olefin product.

 

Ashish Garg sums it up, “I am working on the lines of: ‘want-not, waste-not,‘ this is a very basic, doable idea. The motive behind it is to motivate and unite people for a cause so that we can minimise plastic waste which unfortunately finds its way to landfills.” 

Mushrooms grown in Mussoorie

By
Tania Saili
-
0
Cordyceps militaris flourishes in Mussoorie

Prakash Semwal and Pawan Rawat, childhood friends from Mussoorie are an example of how casually ‘surfing the net’ can throw up some unexpected positive results.

The duo has successfully become the town’s first Cordyceps Militaris Mushroom growers.

Not even a year old and the friends are reaping benefits of their first produce grown from hard work, toil and sweat. From a rented 15 x 30 room fitted with 2500 jars of Cordyceps Militaris, they have managed to get five to six kilograms of the fungi within a year.

The proud duo with their yield of Cordyceps militaris

Cordyceps is in great demand as it is considered a potential harbour of bio-metabolites for herbal drugs and is considered a natural energy as well as a powerful immune booster, rich in medicinal values.

Prakash Semwal tells us, “While surfing the net we came upon these Mushrooms and their health benefits. The weather in Mussoorie is conducive for their growth so we decided to grow them instead of the more commonly grown exotic variety.”

With an initial investment of 7-8 lakhs the duo used technology to the optimum. Fitting the unit with an Air Conditioner, Humidifier, Drier and CCTV cameras to keep an eye on their unit in their absence.

Pawan Rawat highlights the fact that the mushroom can fetch a lakh for every kilogram sold and once dried Cordyceps can be taken as “tea or made into powder and used in bakery products for consumption, other than medicine alone.”

Cordyceps militaris in all its glory

Both Pawan and Prakash are of the view that being a tourist-town the hotels in Mussoorie could benefit from their yield by serving tourists Cordycep tea and bakery delights made from these medicinal mushrooms.

A larger unit and growing more jars of Cordyceps militaris so that this expensive yet beneficial produce is made easily available to the layman who too can benefit from its medicinal value, is what the friends are aiming for in the near future.

Where no journeys end

By
Tania Saili
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0

As the portals of the four shrines of Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamnotri and Gangotri shut before they become inaccessible in the long winter months ahead, heralding the end of Chardham Yatra in Uttarakhand for this season.

The four deities are carried down to their various winter homes or gaddisthals with their pujaris in tow. They will return next spring. In Pandukeshwar you can pay your obeisance to Lord Vishnu, who has come from Badrinath after the closing of the shrine. Ukhimath, is the winter home for Kedarnath; Mukba is the home to Goddess Ganga; and Kharsali is home to Goddess Yamunotri.

For years now, amongst the changing of governments, the State’s officers have been trying their best to ensure that the pilgrimage carries on throughout the year. It is hoped that their winter abodes will continue to attract pilgrims and visitors alike. Only religious tourism in the lean months of winter, can keep the home fires going and the cash register ringing.

Somehow, this idea has been slow to take off. The numbers of pilgrims coming to Devbhoomi in winter, is but a bare blip in comparison to the almost nine lakh pilgrims who flocked here in the peak season from May-November.

But officials are hopeful. They believe that it is just a matter of time before winter pilgrimage numbers will match the summer ones. Talking to Newspost, Vice President, Chardham Yatra Vikas Parishad, Acharya Shiv Prasad Mamgain who recently visited Gangotri and Yamnotri tells us, “The state government is leaving no stones unturned to ensure that the Chardham pilgrimage continues throughout the year. All weather roads, better civic amenities, promotion of Pandukeshwar, Ukhimath, Mukba and Kharsali will mean that there is year round employment for people.”

The government exudes confidence in the belief that their efforts will slowly begin to fructify. But only after the completion of the all weather road; improved civic amenities and connectivity to set the ball rolling. They are confident that once these are in place, then and then only will the task of promoting off-beat winter destinations become a part of the mythical map of religious tourism in Uttarakhand.

Second Plastic Bank comes up in Ess Ell Honda, Dehradun

By
newspost
-
0

Dehradun, Under the agreement between Gati Foundation and IIP, a second plastic bank was established at the Rajpur Road Branch of Ess Ell Honda, the largest two-wheeler dealership in the country including Uttarakhand.

Gati Foundation formed the Plastic Bank in the presence of officials and staff of Ess Ell Honda. Those gathered were told that apart from new two-wheelers being sold daily from the showrooms of Ess Ell Honda, a large number of two-wheelers also visited the showrooms for service, which meant that single-use plastic was being used in quantities. Plastic was also used in packing of oil and other parts used in service of vehicles. A rough estimate put the number of plastic waste collected at 300 to 400 kg every month from Ess Ell Honda alone.

On the occasion of the establishment of Plastic Bank, Director of Ess Ell Honda, Narendra Batra expressed happiness and said earlier we use to dispose plastic waste at our own level. However, now after opening of the plastic bank, it will be disposed off in a scientific manner. Batra said that he would also motivate the staff to deposit single use plastics in the plastic banks.

Anoop Nautiyal, Founder of Gati Foundation, said this is the second plastic bank in the city. In the coming days, efforts will be made to establish more plastic banks in institutions where single use plastic is used in large quantities. He appealed to the various city based organizations to try to collect plastic waste in such plastic banks. Anoop said that  plastic deposited in this bank will be used to make diesel in the plant installed at the Indian Institute of Petroleum. Plastics that cannot be used in this work will be disposed off scientifically.

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