Serendipity : Musings of an Islander

ANCOL – Will it be Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas, well the developments so far indicate No it’s Not! Never before in the history of Independent India has anyone given such a resounding and mature message of Unity with Inclusion unlike Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi did when he said : The only code of conduct of the Government should be “Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas” [Collective efforts inclusive growth]. The paradigm reverberated in the Honble LG’s address delivered on June 18, 2014 during laying the foundation for a Multipurpose Indoor Stadium at Knappuram village in Wimberly Gunj. Reiterating his commitment of commencing a new college from the academic session (2014-15), the LG said demand to establish Andaman College (ANCOL) in Bambooflat/Wimberly Gunj area is genuine as it will benefit many rural students. He did keep his commitment. Two schools namely : Govt Secondary Senior School (GSSS) Haddo Hindi Medium and GSS Haddo English Medium has been elbowed out/merged with a third ...

It is quite amazing that the two moon story (a hoax indeed) which first appeared in the summer of 2003 as an email, still manages to find space in the electronic as well as print media. The doctored image that is being used to spread  the rumor The hoax, which already had a long run, got a fresh lease of life when somebody, perhaps to play a prank, picked up the image from the Russian site Dream World’s gallery titled “fanciful double-moon images”  and shared it on the facebook on August 2013. Soon the image post went viral. How excited people are about it is reflected from the fact that when I started writing this blogpost, the doctored two moon image (reproduced on the left) on the facebook page garnered 855,568 shares. After 4 hrs when I finished writing, the number of facebook share rose to 859,599. That means 4031 facebook users shared the post in a matter of just 4 hours, which further mean that every minute, more than 16 facebook users are becoming part ...

Last year sometime during M arch while reviewing my blog readership, I found the total pageviews of my blog was a magical number 16661 , which reads exactly the same forward or in the reverse! English, the language with the largest vocabulary, denotes such amazingly symmetric word formations and numbers as palindrome. The first palindrome that I learnt during school days was the word “malayalam" it reads exactly the same even when spelt backwards. Other examples are  A nna,  R adar,  R otor etc. These learning experiences took shape of a blogpost titled P alindrome posted on M arch 20th , 2013 . Snapshot of the blog titled Musings of an Islander , as on 21/04/2014 Those who missed my earlier post on this let me introduce the term as available in W ikipedia , which defines palindrome as a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of symbols or elements, whose meaning may be interpreted the same way in either forward or reverse direction. The ...

Will the workers 13 years wait for settlement of VRS dues meet its logical end? Perhaps how the I sland A dministration responds to the decree would decide what the answer be. Those who followed my earlier post on the issue might be aware more than 800 workers of the erstwhile M/S A ndaman T imber I ndustries L td (popularly known as ATI ) have not been paid retirement and statutory dues admissible to them since the factory closed in the fall of 2000 . Estranged workers raised the issue in every available forum. Even a favourable L abour C ourt A ward was not honoured. This article traces the issue that has been hanging fire for more than 13 years.   Factory's two of the three sheds collapsed on 26 Dec 2004 due to the Great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake M/S A ndaman T imber I ndustries L imited had its P lywood manufacturing factory at S hore P oint V illage near B ambooflat J etty in S outh A ndaman. The factory started sometime in the early 60’s with a modest t...

Demand to protect interest of local candidates in jobs gaining relevance and momentum in the wake of visit of Hon’ble President of India By Debkumar Bhadra Separation of the A ndaman and N icobar I slands from mainland I ndia by vast expanse of sea led the islands to develop into a treasure trove of biodiversity with a very high degree of endemism. To protect this unique biological wealth, 86 % (7170.69 sqkm) of the total land area ( 8249 sqkm) of the islands has been classified as R eserved and or P rotected F orests . If deemed forests are taken into consideration, approximately 94% falls under one or the other kind of protection regimen, leaving very little for civilian use. However in consonance with strategic view point, the islands have been populated under various Rehabilitation and Colonisation schemes of Govt of India. Later a good number of families from mainland India migrated to these islands in search of employment and ended up adding to the existing populati...