Trekkers Paradise Under Development Threat

The trekking community in Pune and Mumbai are enraged over the possible destruction of one their favourite destination. The trekkers and fort lovers are worried over a plan by Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) to build a resort at Harishchandragad, a fort on the south-east of Pune at about 160 kms.

Harishchandragad is a hill fort in south east of Pune. It has played a major role in guarding and controlling the surrounding region. Konkan Kada, the cliff is the most fascinating point for those who go up the fort because besides being vertical, it is spread like a cobra's hood.

However, all this will be relegated to past because the MTDC wants to build a rest house near the cliff and is to start excavation work there, claim the trekkers. The fort is among 25 forts which MTDC has chosen initially to develop tourist facilities on the forts. The company already has a rest house at Malshej sanctuary. To facilitate the tourists, a road is to be built also in the hill. Railings are to be built on the cliff for which, it is feared, a part of the cliff has to be cut.

Now, the decision is being opposed by trekkers. Giriventures, a Facebook group of trekkers from both the cities, has launched online campaign to oppose the development work. Anurag Vaidya, a trekker from city, said, “Some villagers at the fort told the trekkers from Mumbai about this proposal. When we got to know about the proposal, we contacted the officials at the fort. But we were told that there is no such proposal. I posted about it on my FB account so that people should know how the government is creating chaos.”

Jagdish Pati, managing director of MTDC, said that the Harishchandragad figures among the forts to be developed for tourists but the job will be done without harming the environment. “We have planned a base camp, toilets and other amenities at the fort. The plan is to connect the fort with Bhandardara and other tourist destinations in the area. However, we will not do anything which will harm the environment. It is our endeavour to promote a healthy and environment friendly tourism in the state,” he said.

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Can Intellectual Property Rights Save Pune's Heritage?

In a unique development, the pride of Pune’s may be protected by the Itellectual Property Rights, if all comes out as planned. Following in the footsteps of other cities, the Maharatta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) is finding the ways to protect city’s heritage with IPR.

MCCIA and Janwani, recently held a workshop on the subject. It was a part of the ongoing Heritage Week celebrations under Virasat Pune initiative of these bodies. According to these organisations, the objective of the exercise was to brainstorm and identify the ways in which the tangible and intangible assets in the cultural and natural heritage of Pune can be protected.

Those who addressed the workshop included Priyank Gupta, Amol Ghadge and Vithika Sharma. Priyank Gupta, manager, IPR at Legasis Services, told Pune Mirror, “There has been attempts all over the world to preserve own culture and heritage. Pune has recorded two major events where it lost a large chunk of its history – one was when the Shaniwar Wada was burned during 1890s and then floods in 1961 wiped out many wadas and historical documents. We want to prevent this to happen again.”

To prevent such losses, Ghadge, a patent & trademark attorney, proposed to digitise the heritage items. Also, Sharma suggested to form a City Mark depicting the city’s identity with a known monument or product. “Like Puneri Pagdi, some of jewelleries or handicraft which may not be visible in the city may be found in the digital archives so that young generation can access and know them,” he said.

Gupta pointed to Birmingham where the city council has archived all newspapers and documented all family trees of the citizens. This facilitates people to trace their ancestry.

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Japanese Comes Calling To Marathi

Going beyond the Okamyoma garden and Origami classes, the city’s relations with Japan are getting a boost now in the form of a Marathi-Japanese online dictionary. As a part of the celebrations of 60 years of diplomatic relations between India-Japan, the government there has funded a project to build online Marathi-Japanese dictionary. About 30-35 volunteers from the city are contributing in this project.

The Online Verb Handbook will be one of the first of its kind. The project is launched by Dr. Prashant Pardeshi, Professor of Cross Linguistics in National University of Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL), Tokyo. He and his 7-member team has identified basic verbs in Japanese language and they are providing complete explanation in Japanese, about meanings of the verbs in their various shades and numerous examples of their usage in sentences, idioms, proverbs, and even example of wrong usage (for avoiding common mistakes of usage) and so on. It also consists audio information (for accurate pronunciation) and animation (for proper understanding).

A team of volunteers from city is taking care of translation of the Japanese explanation into Marathi. The team consists of Dr. Hari Damle, Salil Vaidya and other Japanese language teachers. According to Dr. Damle, the project assumes significance that it is precursor to other languages. After completion of this project, similar verb handbooks will be prepared in other languages like Chinese, Korean and English.

For editing this handbook, Prof. Kiryu from Mimasaka University has developed an online editor, which enables simultaneous editing of the handbook from different countries. The work is expected to be completed in an year.

A workshop was recently held at the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) about the nuances of this project. During the workshop, Prof. Pardeshi spoke about earlier efforts in this direction. He exhibited a copy of his earlier Japanese-Marathi basic verb dictionary in printed book-form. He added, “The present handbook is the first of its kind in the sense that it is the first attempt in Japanese to compile such a work using a large scale database of written Japanese.” Prof. Yasunari Imamura

Prof. Pardeshi is a Puneite by birth. After securing education in Japanese from Pune and New Delhi, he compeleted Ph. D. from Kobe University.

The Maharashtra-Japan Relations

The relations between Japan and Maharashtra, especially Pune, share common bonds. Adv. Sameer Khale, president of Association of Friends of Japan, told Pune Mirror, “The grammar of both languages is same. That is why it is found that Marathi students acquire Japanese language more easily than others. There are about 500 families or 2000 Maharashtrians living in Japan now. This dictionary will facilitate to all those who want to learn Japanese without knowing any other language like English.”

Dr. Umesh Joshi vice president of Mombusha Scholars Association of India, said, “This is the first Japanese dictionary based on verbs. This dictionary will take the natural language to common people beyong academic circles. Most of all, it will be free of cost.”

Dr. Saroja Bhate, veteran indologist, said, “The relations of Maharashtra and Japan are very deep. There used to be an annual issue named Maharashtra. Also, Acharya Atre’s famous book Shyamachi Aai was translated also in Japanese.” Dr. Bhate said that there is a tremendous interest among Japanese for indology and given their lesser skills in English, these types of projects will bridge a wide gap.

The commonalities

The basic structure of Japanese and Marathi are too similar viz. subject-object-verb. The particles in Japanese are closer in meaning to Marathi. Even some words have the same meaning. For example, Marathi ka and Japanese ka means why. Dr. Damle informed that even some proverbs in both languages astounding similarities. For example, the equivalent to Marathi bhintila kana astat (walls have ears) is khabe-ni mimi aari in Japanese.

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We, The Indians, Need This

German voters are more and more inclining towards those political parties which favour more internet freedom. With the present United Progressive Alliance government in New Delhi pressing for bringing more restrictions on internet use, we also need to adopt this trend.

Internet freedom becomes German political catalyst 

As per this report, Germany's Pirate Party, a party devoted to Internet freedom, gained backing in a weekly poll that showed it siphoning off support from opposition parties. The Pirates climbed 1 percentage point to 13 percent, displacing the Green Party, which slid 2 points to 11 percent, as the most popular force after the two main parties, according to a Forsa poll commissioned by Stern-RTL. 

The Pirates, whose platform focuses on web privacy and copyright issues, are gaining support from young voters disenchanted with the more established parties. The emergence of the party, which won its first seats in a state parliament in Berlin last year, threatens to shuffle

"For many young people, the Greens have become stale and old," Forsa director Manfred Guellner said in a statement. "The antinuclear issue doesn't pull them in anymore."

It has been long since the idea has been floated to incorporate internet in the list of basic human rights. But the leaders of Congress party, which is heading the UPA government and which claims the legacy of more than 100 years, are showing hysteric tendencies over the critical comments made on social networking sites and blogs. If the voters chose to give credence to leaders for more internet freedom, the scenario may change in the country. 

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Nilu Phule Gets Tribute From Mother Organisation

Rashtra Seva Dal, an arm of the socialist organisations, paid tribute to one of its illustrious members on Sunday by opening an art academy in his name. The academy, named after actor Nilu Phule, will conduct classes in acting, dance and singing.

Nilu Phule, a thespian of the Marathi and Hindi theatre and movies, was a member of the Rashtra Seva Dal before he rose to prominence. Till his death in July 2009, he was a dedicated worker of the organisation. To preserve his memories as a social worker, the organisation came up with the thought of building an academy. It took off with the inauguration of acting workshop on Sunday.

According to Deepak Rege, director of the academy, each workshop will be of 15 days and total 20 hours of training will be given to students in each workshop. Training on videography, editing and audiography will be added later. These workshops will be run all year long and keeping in socialist tradition, the fees for these courses will be kept low. Makarand Tillu, renowned artist, was present at the inaugural workshop.

The Rashtra Seva Dal came up with the idea to start such an academy after it conducted number of workshops teaching dance, music and even acting. Rege said, “There are a number of institutes right now teaching these type of things. However, they are limited to the affluent class. We want to create new artists with a clear consciousness to help the society. These were the ethos of Nilubhau and need to be imbibed in the next generation.”

Reminiscing about his association with Phule, Rege said, “Even though we met quite often, I could never act with him. At that time, he used to tour part of the month for plays and remaining part was given for shooting. I was working with a bank then and used to take part in plays after service hours. Because of this, we could never tour or work together.”

“Since this is a socialist organisation, we want to reach to every sphere. Younger generation want to learn every type art forms. This is evident from the audience present here. We got 100 to 150 calls within a month after we announced the opening,” said Suresh Deshmukh of Rashtra Seva Dal.

He said, “It was characteristic of Nilu Phule that he remained a hard core humanist till last. Today’s artists throw tantrums at the first chance they get in TV or other mediums. We are teaching the students to avoid this. In another words, this is an attempt to create a gentleman from them.”

Deshmukh said that the organisation is charging Rs 4,000 which includes lodging and food charges as well. He said, “I have seen talent at rural places. The young ones in villages can learn the art here and practice it in their place as well.”

Abhijit Kosambi, winner of the Saregama championship, will be training the students in singing. He said, “It was because of the guidance given by Phule sir that I ventured into singing. I am very thrilled that I will be a part of the exercise associated with his name.” He reminisced how Phule was humility personified and reminded the students that the greatness of the heart makes an artist great.

Offering a tribute to Phule, Sandhyatai Kate, a veteran theatre personality who worked with the thespian in many folk plays, reminded that Phule used to experiment a lot in his plays. “He along with Ram Nagarkar used to play pranks and make additions during plays which put other artists on toes. But that made the entire experience interesting one,” she said.

Nilubhau And RSD

Nilu Phule started his career with Rashtra Seva Dal, which had an art wing, during the independence struggle period. He mainly acted in plays which gave a strong message of socialism, humanitarianism and political agitations. He was the head of the art wing in Pune of the organisation during late 1950s. His major plays with the organisation include ‘Yeragabalyache Kam Nahi’, ‘Kunacha Kunala Mel Nahi’, ‘Binbiyanche Zad’ and ‘Pudhari Pahije’.

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Pune Gets Hotter

The summer has arrived with a bang. The city's temperature is getting warmer. On Saturday, the city recorded maximum temperature of 37 degrees Celsius. It is still only the beginning and the season is promised to make us sweat!

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Intercaste Marriages Get Life Support

With the incidences of honour killing on the rise in the state, the activists pressing for inter-caste marriages are also gearing up for a fight back. Those who are helping the couples from different communities coming together are themselves coming together in the city to discuss the hideous crimes in recent past and ways to prevent them.

The state has seen two such incidences in the last two months both of which were in Satara district. In the first instance, a Dalit woman was dragged and beaten, also allegedly paraded naked in the village in the month of January. In another instance, a woman was killed by her own father for insisting on marrying outside her community.

On the other hand, some activists are actively encouraging the intercaste or interfaith couples. Members of Maharashtra Andhshraddha Nirmulan Samiti, who register or arrange such marriages are to converge in city on March 18 & 19 to spread awareness about such marriages.

"The idea is to tell people that intercaste marriage is not a shameful thing. The society has to accept it and shed inhibitions about losing one's reputation in the community,” said Dr. Narendra Dabholkar, executive president of MANS.

To imbibe this message, the conference is named as Amhi Purohit Antarjatiy Vivahache (We are priests of intercaste marriages) even though MANS does not encourage religious ceremony for marriage.

Dr. Dabholakr said that to make the interacaste marriages a success, the couples should to be provided four fold support. The couples should be encouraged to shed their caste orientations, they should be provided counseling and other services, there should be institutional system for the protection of these couples and finally the families of the couples should be made aware that these marriages are as natural as other marriages are.

"With this conference, we are doing the same. The members who are participating in the conference will also narrate how difficult it is for them to officiate such marriages and how they deal with such situations,” said Dr. Dabholkar.

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