Pejawar seer confers ‘Rashtra Ratna Prashasti’ on Narayana Murthy

Bengaluru, Mar 18: Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa on Wednesday said that the lockdown in the state will continue till March 31st. However restaurants and hotels will remain open.

Speaking to reporters here, Yediyurappa had said, "...we need to take more stringent measures, when the US President has recommended avoiding gatherings ofmore than 10 people in his country. We will discuss in the cabinet and take all necessary measures."

Two more coronavirus cases have been registered in Bengaluru on Wednesday, 18 March, taking the total infected cases to 13, ANI reported quoting state Health Minister B Sriramulu.

Meanwhile, Dental clinics in Bengaluru have shut shop after order from Indian Dental Association and Karnataka State Denta Council. The doctors have been advised to treat the patients only if there is an emergency.

In Udupit distrcit, Section 144(3) have been imposed across the district by DC G Jagadish.

No religious events allowed, devotees should not enter temples, churches or Masjid's in groups. Tourist locations closed. Students in PGs and Hostels asked to return home.

While, schools and colleges remained shut, IT professionals and other professionals working in air- conditioned places were advised to work from home. Till Tuesday evening, 13 COVID-19 positive cases have been reported in Karnataka, including one death.

The State government had on March 13 leapt into action announcing lock-down of malls, cinema theatres, pubs and night clubs for a week.

Instructions were also given to stop all kinds of exhibitions, summer camps, conferences, fairs, marriages, sports and engagement events and birthday parties state-wide for a week from Saturday.

While, schools and colleges remained shut, IT professionals and other professionals working in air- conditioned places were advised to work from home. Till Tuesday evening, 11 COVID-19 positive cases have been reported in Karnataka, including one death.

The Ministry of External Affairs confirmed that there are 276 coronavirus infected Indians abroad - 255 in Iran, 12 in UAE, five in Italy, one each in Sri Lanka, Hong Kong SAR, Kuwait, and Rwanda.

Earlier in the day, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in India neared 150, according to the Health Ministry data.

Veteran journalist P. Sainath has said that the nation is in a crisis. And this crisis is not limited to just the rural area. It has become a national crisis at various areas such as agriculture, education, economy, job creation etc.

He was delivering the endowment lecture on the topic ‘Indian democracy at the post-liberalization and post-truth era’ at Media Manthan 2020 organized by the PG department of journalism and mass communication at St Aloysius College (Autonomous). 

Mr Sainath said that the many policies adopted in the 90s led to India becoming unusually unequal. Referring to the speech Ambedkar had made at the Constituent Assembly while handing over the draft of the Constitution, Mr Sainath said, “Ambedkar had warned about the weakness of Indian democracy that liberty without equality allows the supremacy of a few over the multitude. Liberty, equality and fraternity must be kept together as we cannot have one without the other.” 

Mr Sainath stated that the agrarian crisis was no longer about the loss of productivity, employment or about farmer suicide; it was a societal, civilizational crisis. Commenting on the lopsided policies such as cow-slaughter ban, he explained how cow slaughter ban had adversely affected many industries due to their interdependency. While Muslims who slaughtered cows were rendered helpless, the cattle traders who were mostly OBCs lost their earnings as the cattle prices crashed. An important industry like Kolhapur sandals industry in Maharashtra went bankrupt as a result of the cow slaughter ban in Maharashtra. He said the policymakers had no idea how the rural industries were interconnected. Demonetisation too devastated the rural economy as 98 percent of rural transactions happen through cash. 

Mr Sainath also spoke about the crisis of inequality which affects the Dalits and the Adivasis far more than anyone else as 90 percent of the rural households take home less than Rs 10,000/- per month. “Women are yet another group whose labour is never counted in the gross domestic product. Women and girls globally do unpaid work which amounts to about 12.5 billion working hours per year. Monetarily speaking, this is worth 10.8 trillion dollars,” Mr Sainath added. 

Speaking about the crisis of jobs Mr Sainath said that major companies were laying off employees just to create more profits for the investors and the adoption of artificial intelligence in the industry would further destroy millions of jobs.

Rector of St Aloysius College Institutions Fr Dionysius Vaz SJ, Principal Dr (Fr) Praveen Martis SJ, HOD of Journalism and Mass Communication department Dr (Fr) Melwyn Pinto SJ were present.

‘Veerappan and Vijay Mallya’s business models are interesting!’

Addressing the gathering during his endowment lecture on Friday, Mr Sainath made an interesting comment on the so called ‘revenue model’. “Whenever I visit IIMs and IITs for lectures on my PARI project, the students there ask me what my revenue model for my project is. I tell them that I do not have a revenue model. In fact, journalism does not begin with a revenue model. Gandhiji, Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh were all great journalists. But they did not have a revenue model,” Mr Sainath said.

On a lighter note, he said that the best revenue model that he liked was that of forest brigand Veerappan and liquor baron Vijay Mallya. “Veerappan ruled the forest for forty years and from the top ministers to the villagers he could dictate terms and liver royally. Similarly, Mallya’s revenue model was to steal the banks and run away abroad and live like a king,” Mr Sainath added.

Journalism is not and can never be a business. It is a calling, he opined. While newspaper can be a business, television can be a business, journalism per se cannot be reduced to a business. “Unfortunately today, journalists are recruited on a contract basis and they have no bargaining power; and there are no unions to fight for their cause. Hence, they are at the mercy of the corporate media houses for their survival and are made to write stories that cannot be called journalism,” Mr Sainath said.

Answering a question as to the pressures he faced as a journalist, he said that external pressures from the government or others could be very well handled. It is the internal pressures from once own media house that journalists find it difficult to manage.

Udupi, June 2: The number of positive cases may continue to be more in Udupi district since the results of more than 3,000 samples are pending with Labs.

The district total cases to 260. The figure had seemed far-fetched on May 15, when the number of cases stood at just three. The latest spike has been attributed to the return of migrants from other States as well as from abroad. These samples are from people who returned to the district in the last two weeks.

This delay is because the laboratories testing samples from Udupi are burdened with a high case-load after more than 8,500 people returned to the district, particularly from the neighbouring state of Maharashtra.

"Samples have piled up after the influx of people returning from other states and from abroad," says Dr Prashant Bhat, nodal officer for COVID-19 in Udupi. This delay has caused returnees in institutional quarantine to stay on for as long as 18 days.

The designated laboratory for coronavirus testing in Udupi is Wenlock District Hospital in Mangaluru. The district administration also sends samples to laboratories at the Kasturba Hospital in Manipal, Yenepoya Medical College, Mangaluru, KS Hegde Medical Academy, Mangaluru, and Viral Diagnostic Laboratory in Shivamogga. Apart from Udupi, the laboratory in Manipal is also testing samples from Uttara Kannada district. The laboratory in Shivamogga is also testing samples from Shivamogga and Bijapur districts. The laboratories in Mangaluru, similarly, have samples from Dakshina Kannada district.

Dr Avinash Shetty, Medical Superintendent of Kasturba Hospital in Manipal, one of the private laboratories being used by the Udupi district administration, said that they are testing samples in batches. "We received around 600 samples today and we will be testing them now. The backlog of samples should be cleared in the next few days," Dr Avinash said.

All 73 cases reported in Udupi on Monday were patients with travel history of returning from Maharashtra or patients with travel history of returning from abroad.

In cases of some patients who tested coronavirus positive in the past week, people were released from institutional quarantine after a stipulated period only to be tracked down again and admitted in hospitals after their results returned positive.

While two such cases emerged in Belapu and Belman in the district, the administration is now following up with others who were released from institutional quarantine to ensure they remain in home quarantine till their test results are confirmed.

The spike in cases among returning migrants in Udupi also comes at a time the Karnataka government reduced restrictions on interstate travel.