Monthly Archives: February 2016
19
19
18
17
16
Part of history for eight centuries, Sen Dighi faces extinction threat
Kolkata:
Its rippling waters tell many a tale and history – dating back to the 12th century. Possibly the oldest waterbody in south Bengal, Sen Dighi in Boral on the southern fringes of Kolkata has survived centuries of negligence, contamination and encroachment. It has seen change of rule, dynasties, eras and witnessed the metamorphosis of the region from a marsh-infested forest land to a thriving habitat. While more than half the waterbodies in the area have vanished and an expanding city has consumed wetlands, Sen Dighi has existed for an incredible 800 years. The 23-bigha pond, a heritage waterbody, now faces a challenge from immersion-induced pollution and its fragile banks are steadily being eaten into by garbage dumps.
A study of its water revealed that the biological oxygen demand of Sen Dighi is high. The water quality has taken a beating ever since the pond was thrown open to immersions and Chhat festivities, according to locals and experts. Even though idols are removed quickly, the residue is enough to affect the water, they say. Perhaps, a bigger threat to the pond is posed by the eroding banks, made unsteady by devotees who have been clearing vegetation along the edges during Chhat. It has led to the uprooting of two trees and another has been left unsteady. These trees are crucial to the survival of Sen Dighi since they have been holding the banks together.
“Over the years, much of Sen Dighi has been lost through encroachment. It is important to protect the pond from pollution and infringement since it is part of our history. We must ensure that Sen Dighi retains its size and its water remains unpolluted,” said Dipayan Dey, chairman of SAFE, a green NGO that is now studying the pond’s water quality.
Around 20 km from Kolkata, Sen Dighi was dug by Ballal Sen, the second ruler of Bengal’s Sen dynasty, in the late 12th century. It must have measured close to a hundred bighas then and was the principal source of water for a large swathe of area to the south of Kolkata, according to Madhu Basu, who has chronicled the history of Sen Dighi. “The city didn’t exist then and it was a practice to dig huge waterbodies that would be taken care of by locals. Almost every house had a tank attached to it. But Sen Dighi stood out due to its size and the fact that it was maintained by the local Tripura Sundari temple that still survives. It is one of the last symbols of the region’s past prosperity,” said Basu, who runs an NGO called Economic Rural Development Society (ERDS).
Over the years, numerous archaeological relics of the Gupta, Maurya, Pala and Sen dynasties have been excavated from Sen Dighi and the areas around it. In the mid-Eighties, Sen Dighi was dried up and cleansed by ERDS. A local body of businessmen took the pond on lease for pisciculture. A part of the money earned from the lease goes to the Tripura Sundari trust. “We dug up numerous relics from the pond. They are now conserved at the Tripura Sundari temple, Ashutosh Museum and a few other places. That was the last time the pond was cleaned,” said Basu, who has penned a book on the history of Boral titled ‘Itihasher Darpane: Boral’.
Locals, on the other hand, pointed out that Sen Dighi is diminishing in size, bit by bit. Documents held by the Tripura Sundari trust mentions the size of the pond as 45 bighas. Less than half of it remains. “Immersions have led to the felling of trees and litter has filled up a portion along the northern bank. If this continues, the pond will get further reduced in size,” said a member of the local Boral Parliament Club that helps the temple trust in maintaining the pond. Basu, who is a resident of Boral, agreed. “Encroachments have always been a threat. With real estate activity being brisk in the area, the future is uncertain for Sen Dighi,” he said.
Till a hundred years ago, the pond would be surrounded by brick kilns. Legend has it that a trader named Maheshwar Shau from Odisha had introduced fish cultivation at Sen Dighi. “Locals got jealous of him and he was killed and thrown into the pond. For many years, people would keep away from Sen Dighi and believed it was haunted,” said Basu.
Green actvists believe immersions should be stopped and Sen Dighi should be cleaned to save it. “If it has to survive, Sen Dighi shouldn’t be used for bathing or washing. Once the water has been cleaned, a pump could be used to pull out water, which can then be used by locals. It would be a shame if Sen Dighi degenerates into a stinking pool like so many around it already have,” said environmentalist AK Ghosh.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Kolkata / by Prithvijit Mitra / TNN / February 10th, 2016
In Calcutta, from trick to truth
New Delhi :
Anuradha Samajdar, a research scholar in Calcutta, initially thought the first email alert she received about a possible gravitational wave signal was a “blind injection”, the community jargon for a simulation, a trick to test the integrity of the data analysis process.
The email was from Marco Drago, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, Hannover, Germany, telling a global consortium of physicists that two giant instruments on Earth had sensed (for just a fleeting one-fifth of a second) a signal.
The arrays of lasers, mirrors and control electronics that make up the detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (Ligo), located 3,000km apart in the US, had recorded what appeared to be ripples in space-time – possibly the first direct observation of gravitational waves.
It would be up to the data analysis groups scattered across the world, including in Bangalore, Calcutta, Gandhinagar, Pune and Thiruvananthapuram, to determine that they were genuine effects of gravitational waves – and not just noise from the cosmos masquerading as gravitational waves.
“I had heard about blind injections – where a very select few senior scientists release signals and data analysis teams work on them only to be told later that this was a test,” said Samajdar, a scholar working towards her PhD at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Calcutta.
Drago, an Italian and a member of the Ligo consortium, was among the first scientists to be alerted that something interesting had been turned up by an automatic “pipeline” that scans and filters the signals picked up by the detectors.
Shortly before noon on September 14, Drago received the automated pipeline alert. “The signal was so nice, so perfect, it looked like it was coming from a binary (a pair of objects),” Drago told The Telegraph .
After telephone consultations with colleagues, he sent out the alert to the 900-odd consortium members.
Samajdar and physicist Rajesh Nayak at IISER were among scientists in India analysing the signals, trying to determine whether the patterns of ripples observed indeed matched theoretical predictions of what patterns would look like, depending on the source of the gravitational waves.
Nayak, a faculty member at the IISER department of physical sciences, said: “We first match the detected signal pattern with the theoretical predicted pattern, if there is a match, we try and use the signal to estimate various parameters of the source event.”
Supervised by Nayak, Samajdar, who graduated in physics from the Lady Brabourne College, Calcutta, before joining IISER’s integrated PhD programme, while still a bit sceptical about the nature of the signal, began the process of extracting information about the source.
“We began to calculate the masses of the (merging) black holes, their distance – and our estimates were similar to what others in the consortium were reporting,” Samajdar said. “We told ourselves noise wouldn’t give us such nice outputs – that’s when I wondered ‘is this really the big thing’?”
Scientists at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, IISER, Thiruvananthapuram, and the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bangalore, also played key roles in the data analysis.
The multiple efforts across the consortium converged on the same results – the signal had emerged from (the merger of two black holes) a distant part of the universe, perhaps a galaxy.
Physicists are celebrating the discovery for multiple reasons.
“This is an example of big science supported by big engineering,” said Dibyendu Nandi, a physicist at IISER, Calcutta, and head of the Centre for Excellence in Space Sciences, India, a facility supported by the Union human resources development ministry.
The Ligo detectors are marvels of engineering precision, designed to detect ripples or displacements in space billionths of the width of an atom using laser beams that are bounced off mirrors after travelling along two arms of the instrument, each 4km long.
“Gravitational waves was the one prediction of Einstein’s general relativity theory that had not been directly detected – until now,” said Nayak. “This discovery is important for another reason – it will open a new branch of astronomy, we can observe and study things we have never seen or observed before.”
Some physicists also point out that the signal represents the first direct evidence of black holes merging.
“There is no other way we could have detected such exotic events,” said Nandi, who is not associated with the search for gravitational waves. “This observation tells us that such events are not just theorists’ dreams, that the universe is as exotic as we have imagined it to be.”
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Front Page> Story / by G.S. Mudur / Friday – February 12th, 2016
India’s first soccer league with sex workers’ children
Kolkata :
Shah Rukh Khan, Sourav Ganguly and Abhishek Bachchan may have set the ball rolling by becoming owners of professional sporting teams in India. But they surely didn’t know that they would kickstart a whole new trend of owning professional football teams comprising children of Bengal’s sex workers. Citizens of Kolkata have come forward to sponsor 16 such football teams that are part of the Padatik Football League. Each of the teams has been sold for Rs 7,000. The prize money is a modest and encouraging Rs 10,000 for the winning team and 7,000 and 5,000 for the runners-up.
Twelve teams have been named after the respective red light areas in Basirhat, Sonagachhi, Rambagan-Sethbagan, Jorabagan, Dum Dum, Domjur, Khidirpur, Kalighat, Boubazar, Titagarh, Seoraphuli, Baruipur and Durgapur. Three teams have mixed membership. While tribal children belonging Amlasole have one team, kids of prisoners, street children and druggies have been grouped together to form the Dosti 1 and Dosti 2 teams. Then, there is a team that belongs to Durbar Sports Academy. “It’s been five years since we organized such football tournaments. But this is the first time we introduced the concept of owning teams. Of course, SRK buying an IPL team has been an inspiration,” said Bharati Dey, secretary of Durbar Mahila Sammanwaya Committee that has organised the tournament.
But what prompted people to become team owners? Retired banker Ashoke Dutta, who owns the Dum Dum team, said paying Rs 7,000 is a ‘social responsibility’. “These are marginalised sections of society. It feels good to be able to do something that brings them to the mainstream,” Dutta said, adding that he has named his team after his deceased wife. “Since it is a seven a side team, I call it Suchitra 7 after my wife,” the widower said.
Artist Subrata Gangopadhyay is the proud owner of the Sonagachhi team. Being involved with NGOs working in red light districts, Gangopadhyay has always supported the cause of such children by donating his paintings. “If my contribution helps these talented children go forward, it will make me happy,” he said. Since Gangopadhyay has recently undergone an angioplasty, he hasn’t been able to personally make it to the stadium. “But I am keeping a tab on my boys. Before every match, I send out messages to boost their spirit and say ‘Fight Sonagachhi Fight’,” he said.
When TOI met with some players of the Rambagan-Sethbagan football team on a lazy Thursday afternoon, they were busy decorating the pandal for their para Saraswati Puja in between their practice session. Twenty one-year Subhas Kumar Shaw, a die-hard Maradona fan, said this effort makes him feel inclusive. “Citizens buying the teams is an index of our acceptance into mainstream society,” he said. Shaw’s Jorabagan team had played against the Sonagachhi team at a stadium in Basirhat. “Unfortunately, our team lost to Sonagachhi,” Shaw said.
But Rabi Das was luckier. His 56-year-old mother has retired as a sex worker but Das has no qualms about introducing himself as a sex worker’s son. “My mother, who now lives in a village in Burdwan, is extremely happy. We have already played four games and looking at lifting the cup,” smiled the player of the Rambagan-Sethbagan team who dreams of a day when news of this tournament will reach the ears of his idol Messi.
The audience turnout hasn’t been bad either. At the inaugural match between Amlasole and Dosti II at Shyambazar’s Deshbandhu Park, some 250 people turned up. “Already 17 matches have been played. Teams have been divided into three zones – Basirhat, Domjur and Baruipur. Eight teams will qualify in the quarter finals. The semi finals will have four teams. We are hoping to host the finals at Ladies’ Park on March 3,” said coach Biswajit Mazumdar.
Sex worker Dulu Sarkar (name changed), whose brother Milan is playing in the Rambagan team is happy. “After my mother expired, I looked after my brother. I’m happy that he is playing,” she said, before preparing herself for her clients. Her only regret is that she herself hasn’t yet been able to make it to the stadium. If her brother’s team reaches the finals, she is hoping to excuse herself from her babu to play cheerleader for her sibling.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Kolkata / by Priyanka Dasgupta / TNN / February 13th, 2016