Karnataka conservationist receives lifetime free bus pass after praise from PM

Environment

Kame Gowda has been credited with afforesting an entire hillside and also reviving 16 ponds.

TNM Staff

File image

The state Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation on Thursday awarded a lifetime free bus pass to Mandya man Kame Gowda to travel in all classes of KSRTC buses as directed by Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa.  Kame Gowda (84), a shepherd from Mandya’s Mavali taluk had recently grabbed headlines after he was mentioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his widely broadcasted speech as part of Mann ki Baat. He has been credited for afforesting an entire hillside and also reviving 16 ponds, all by his own efforts.  Incidentally, Kame Gowda had risen to prominence in the recent years when he was accorded with the Karnataka Rajyotsava Award in November 2018, along with former Union Minister Margaret Alva, former Chief Justice of India HL Dattu and former Olympics sprinter Kenneth Lawrence Powell. His desire for a bus pass was made public through an interview by the English daily The New Indian Express. He said he wants a bus pass so that he can visit temples in the vicinity. In the interview published on Thursday, he was quoted saying that during the award ceremony in 2018, he had asked the then CM HD Kumaraswamy to arrange a bus pass for him. But till date, he had not received it, despite assurances. In a statement, Shivayogi C Kalasad, Managing Director, KSRTC said, “Shri.  Kame Gowda's unique environmental concerns and achievements is cited by the Hon'ble Prime Minister, during his Man Ki Baat Program. Hon'ble Chief Minister, Government of Karnataka, too appreciated his exemplary achievement and directed to issue free bus pass to Sri Kame Gowda.” He added, “Shri.Kame Gowda's contribution is immense, wonderful and replicatory. To recognise his yeoman service, a lifetime free bus pass to travel in KSRTC buses is being issued.” Following the mention by PM Modi, Union Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekawat had also spoken with him via video call.

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Bengaluru govt hospital staff demand PPE after doctor, paramedics get COVID-19

Coronavirus

Over the past one week alone, one doctor working in the neonatal intensive care unit of the hospital and two paramedic staff contracted the virus.

Soumya Chatterjee

Representational image

Medical staff, including doctors and staff nurses at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health in Bengauru’s Jayanagar, have expressed concerns over the lack of adequate protective gear after three of their colleagues tested positive for coronavirus. While the staff had been demanding protection like face shields, gloves for triage area and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the doctors and nurses since the onset of the pandemic, the administration had remained unresponsive. Now, in the wake of the three such positive cases, the hospital administration has finally promised to give PPE starting from Thursday to all staff working in the emergency facilities. Until now it is only the staff at the ‘COVID-19 suspect ward’ who were provided PPE. Over the past one week alone, one doctor working in the neonatal intensive care unit of the hospital and two paramedic staff contracted the virus. The hospital is a 400-bed super speciality pediatric hospital and works as a government-run referral centre for children in Karnataka. The hospital runs as an autonomous body, registered under Karnataka Societies Registration Act 1960 functioning under the control of Ministry of Medical Education, Government of Karnataka. A staffer in the hospital said that the decision on PPEs was only taken when the hospital was forced with a severe staff crunch, given doctors and other staff who were in contact with the doctor who tested positive had to go in quarantine. A doctor in the hospital, speaking on condition of anonymity, said. “The situation was so bad that they were almost asking the staff who were in quarantine to join for work before the 14-day period in violation of the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) guidelines. With this, the persons who are at a risk themselves already will put others at risk when forced to go on duty.” “Staff working in the triage area who are also at a greater risk still don’t have any protection. We have asked a number of times but all of the time we were told that we don’t need them. And much of the work as it is done by the masters’ students who don’t want to antagonise the administration,” the doctor said. The doctor also questioned the lack of quarantine facilities for the high-risk staff after some staff who were asked to quarantine themselves at their own homes. Dr Sanjay KS, director of the institute, denied that staff were not adequately protected.  “Who told that the staff is not provided by PPE? We have got sufficient PPE and N95 masks?” he said, telling TNM that the allegations were false. ‘No shortage of PPEs’ When alerted about this allegation, Dr PG Girish, the state Director of Medical Education Department, said there should not be any reason for the shortage, given the hospital gets a significant allocation every year. “The PPEs are available everywhere. The institute is an autonomous body and the director has been given powers upto spend Rs 25,000 per day for procuring any emergency equipment. And otherwise for procuring any consumables there is a centralised repository in government-run Karnataka Drug Logistics and Warehousing Society (KDLWS), so they can approach there and get it,” he told TNM. The KDWLS is already supplying these things to all 15 district hospitals, 17 medical colleges and all other autonomous bodies.

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Following protests, Karnataka hikes salaries of 507 doctors on contract

Health

An order issued by the Karnataka Health Department confirmed that the doctors who were receiving Rs 45,000 per month earlier, will now receive Rs 60,000 per month.

TNM Staff

PTI : Image for representation

The salaries of 507 doctors working in Karnataka on a contract basis were hiked by the Karnataka government on Thursday. This has been a long-standing demand of the doctors, along with the regularisations of their posts. An order issued by the state Health and Family Welfare Department confirmed that the doctors who were receiving Rs 45,000 per month earlier will now receive Rs 60,000 per month.  "MBBS doctors working on contract basis in rural, taluk, district, municipality limits under the Karnataka Health Department will receive a hike in monthly cumulative wages from Rs 45,000 a month to Rs 60,000 a month until further orders are issued," the order stated.  The doctors working on a contract basis had written to the state government on Wednesday saying that they will not be providing services beyond July 8 if their jobs are not regularised. Even though around 30% of the posts for medical doctors were vacant in the state, the government is yet to regularise the contract doctors.  The doctors on contract had been demanding for regularisation as there was a pay disparity between the two posts for the same work. On June 17, the state government assured the workers that their jobs will be regularised but no action has been taken on that front. The contract doctors had written to Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa stating that many of them are involved in work related to the coronavirus outbreak in the state.  Karnataka has reported 16,514 COVID-19 patients so far of which 8,194 are currently undergoing treatment. The capital city of Bengaluru recorded 5,290 COVID-19 cases of which 4,649 cases are active.  Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa has asked doctors and healthcare workers in the state to be ready to fight the coronavirus for the next six months.  In May, the Karnataka government had hiked the monthly stipends of over 8,000 resident doctors in the state. 

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23 undertrial prisoners, six staff at Bengaluru jail test positive for coronavirus

Coronavirus

The BBMP is currently in the process of tracing primary and secondary contacts, while the jail cells are being sanitised.

TNM Staff

As many as 23 undertrial prisoners in Bengaluru's Parappana Agrahara Central Prison tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Wednesday. In addition, 6 constables who were part of the jail staff also tested positive for the coronavirus. Speaking to TNM, BH Anil KUmar, Commissioner, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, said that they are still trying to trace the primary and secondary contacts of the 23 undertrial prisoners. "About a week ago, several undertrial prisoners were brought to Parappana Agrahara Central Prison. As per procedure, their swab samples were taken for a second round of testing and the results came out positive for 23 undertrials and 6 prison staff," Anil Kumar said. According to the officials incharge of the prison, the 23 undertrial prisoners had tested negative, when they were produced in court over a week ago. "Before we produce an arrested accused to the magistrate, they ask for test results to determine whether it is safe or not. These prisoners had tested negative then. However, since around 150 undertrials were brought to our jail last week, we had to get them tested the second time as per protocol," a senior official at Parappana Agrahara Central Prison said.   According to Anil Kumar, the jail cells where the undertrial prisoners were lodged, have been evacuated and sanitisation is underway. "We have not closed the whole barrack but just the jail cells and common areas where these 23 prisoners and the six staff members went. We are still in the process of quarantining them. Those who are being quarantined will be sent to COVID-19 Care Centres as they are prisoners," Anil Kumar added. The 23 prisoners are currently at Haj Bhavan's COVID-19 Care Centre. However, officials at the prison say that the prison currently has a population of 5,128 prisoners, of which half of them are undertrial prisoners. "We don't know how these prisoners got infected. Whether they got it because of the staff or whether there were any discrepancies in testing when they were arrested. We are trying to find out what happened so that we can work with BBMP to trace all contacts. Since our prison is overcrowded, there is concern of spread but BBMP has assured us that santisation will happen," the official added.  

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Watch: Bangalore Broadway Company recreates Nordic Polska with acapella

Music

The song, originally known as "Slängpolska efter Byss-Calle", is a combination of Swedish and Finnish folk songs.

Geetika Mantri

The screen opens to a woman singing. The syllables don’t make sense, but it’s almost as though she is yodelling. The scene then shifts to three men, seemingly singing the same set as the woman, but it sounds different. They are hitting different notes. As the video goes on, more people and groups join the acapella performance, and the song unfolds through ripples and relays of the syllables as they are passed from one group of performers to another. This exotic, layered and melodious acapella performance is from the Bangalore Broadway Company (BBC). They recreated Nordic Polska, which is an arrangement of Swedish and Finnish folk songs into a performance. The BBC had adapted their acapella set from a group called Leveleleven, which had done it in 2016 with a composition originally known as ‘Slängpolska efter Byss-Calle’. While ‘Nordic’ refers to the origin of the music, ‘Polska’ is a music and dance form in the Nordic countries. Listening to Leveleleven and BBC’s respective renditions of Nordic Polska, it doesn’t take a musical genius to figure out how layered and complex the composition is. This makes the fact that the BBC’s members recreated it remotely during the pandemic, remarkable. Sowmya Raghavan, who founded BBC in 2017, tells TNM that putting together the performance and video remotely was challenging. “When you are together, you can play off each other’s cues and energy. If you miss something, you can wing it because others are performing with you. But when everyone had to do their individual parts, they had to hold on their own. If they slipped, it would be noticeable,” she says. Further, they were not able to shoot at a studio either. “We just had our phones. This video and the way it sounds wouldn’t have been possible without Leslie Charles, our music producer and bass player who tracked so many people’s audios, mixed and layered them to make it what it is,” Sowmya says. She adds that Siddharth Suresh, who plays the keyboard for them, was the one behind separating and translating everyone’s individual parts for the song so that the singers could learn. This isn’t the first time the BBC has dabbled in folk music though – it’s what they love doing the most. The 26-piece group with singers as well as instrument players loves bringing music from different parts of the world to its listeners. That, Sowmya says, makes folk music a good choice for them.  “Folk music is all heart. It was taken from one place to another by travellers, and usually reveals something about the place where it is from. For example, folk music from colder countries like Russia and Siberia has a haunting, almost sad quality to it. Tropical music meanwhile is much more upbeat and livelier,” she says. While the Nordic Polska video was put together by the BBC remotely, they did perform it live last year as well. One of the greatest joys of art is witnessing and performing them in person.  Sowmya knows this all too well, and was initially apprehensive about doing it virtually. “I thought, where will be the joy in doing this apart from each other? But then, the aim is to keep music alive. This was never a money-making project. We do it because there is an opportunity to submit to art. That hasn’t changed even now,” she says. BBC is working on another acapella piece, this time, a Japanese folk song. Another project they are working on is an African song, which will include musical instruments as well.   Watch BBC's Nordic Polska here.

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Bengaluru school hikes fee, threatens to de-enrol students for not paying

Education

A school representative said that they will address the issue with the parents personally.

Soumya Chatterjee

www.karnataka.com / education

Parents of students studying in Vibgyor School in Bengaluru’s Horamavu have alleged that the school has hiked the fee while the state government has asked schools not to hike fees this year. Further, a circular has been sent to parents threatening that their children’s enrollment will be discontinued if they fail to pay school fees within a certain period of time. This the parents say is in contravention of a circular issued by the state government. A part of the communique (Circular No VH43-CIRNO2489) dated July 1 to the parents by the Vibgyor School principal which was shared by a parent reads, “For the small number of parents who have NOT yet paid any fee for this academic year, it will be assumed that you are no longer interested in your ward continuing to study at our school. As a consequence, we will initiate the de-enrolment process for your ward from 13th July 2020, for the academic year 2020-21. In case you still wish to continue, we request you to pay up the dues immediately.” Speaking to TNM, a school representative refused to comment, and said that issues related to fees will be dealt by the school management directly with the parents if there is a concern. A front office representative of the school told TNM, “Anything related to the fees, we can address the parents directly. Whichever parents you are contacting, you can reiterate to them that we are meeting them in person and we are able to convince them. With relation to this, if we need to get back to them, we will address that.” It is also not clear if the school has made any concessions for students whose parents are unable to pay the present fees due to the economic distress caused by the pandemic. A circular dated April 28 issued by the Department of Public Instruction concerning this had asked schools not to increase the fees by the normal 15% every year citing financial hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The department had subsequently launched a helpline and complaint window program over the same issue. According to reports, close to 1,000 complaints were registered by the end of May. Another note issued by the department on May 19 stated that schools can collect fees only from willing parents and cannot increase the fee that was charged last year and they should make concessionary arrangements for parents who have been economically affected. “Despite the clear instructions from the government, the school has increased fees saying that the fee for the next class will be obviously higher than the previous grade. I am made to pay Rs 68,000 more from last year,” Pramod Prabhakar, one agrrevied parent said. Read:  Many private schools in Bengaluru hike fees, despite govt order barring it

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DK Shivakumar takes charge as KPCC chief, party members log on from 7800 locations for event

Politics

"Many felt that my political career had ended after the BJP targeted me, but it didn't", DK Shivakumar told the crowd.

Prajwal Bhat

It was not quite the swearing-in ceremony DK Shivakumar would have imagined when he was made the President of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) in March. There was no rally with thousands of cheering Congress workers, there were no massive celebrations on the streets.  Instead, a small swearing in event with around 150 attendees, including senior Congress leaders and officials in Bengaluru, was held at the party office on Queen’s Road in the city. Smaller events were held in as many as 7800 locations in Karnataka with more than 30,000 party members connected via video conference, a Congress official said.  Addressing party leaders and workers in Bengaluru, Shivakumar referenced that the swearing in ceremony was the start of the party’s rebuilding process in Karnataka. “We should change the Congress in Karnataka to a cadre-based party. I have suggested implementing the Kerala model which says that even the biggest leaders should first represent the booth level and we are initiating programmes for this,” DK Shivakumar said. Shivakumar knows that he faces a herculean task ahead as the state Congress chief. It was less than a year ago that Shivakumar was released from Tihar jail after he was accused by the Enforcement Directorate in a money-laundering case. “Many felt that my political career had ended after the BJP targeted me. Sonia Gandhi came to the jail I was in and spoke to me for an hour and assured that she was with me. She has now made me stand here as a party worker and I take this role as my duty.,” DK Shivakumar said.  In a half-hour address, Shivakumar stressed on collective leadership to help Congress return to power in the state. “Joining together is the beginning, thinking together is the progress and working together is the success. I believe in working together and bringing everyone in the party together,” he said. Before the oath-taking, a documentary on Shivakumar’s rise to becoming Karnataka’s Congress chief was shown starting with a young Shivakumar’s first electoral foray in 1985 when he went up against Janata Dal (Secular) supremo HD Deve Gowda and narrowly lost the election. “I was still a final year degree student when the Congress decided to give me a ticket. This is the connection I share with the Congress party,” Shivakumar said. Shivakumar, currently the legislator of Kanakapura constituency, takes charge of the Congress at a time the party’s morale is low after two consecutive electoral failures, first in the 2018 Assembly elections, and then in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The party managed to win 80 seats in 2018 but it was 42 less than the 122 seats it won in 2013, a mark of the party’s descent in Karnataka.  Even though the Congress joined hands with the JD(S) to form a coalition government in Karnataka, the alliance lasted just over a year with frictions developing and as many as 17 MLAs of the alliance switching over to the BJP.  In 2019, the Congress won just one of the 28 seats in the state. Bengaluru Rural MP DK Suresh, the brother of DK Shivakumar, was the lone leader to register a victory even as all other leaders including Mallikarjun Kharge, a nine-time MLA and two-time MP lost the elections.  Lockdown restrictions Due to the lockdown restrictions over the coronavirus outbreak, the oath-taking ceremony was delayed for months. Even when DK Shivakumar wanted to hold the event on June 7, the Karnataka government refused to allow political events, delaying the swearing in by another month. The Congress, managed to obtain permission for the event in mid-June and turned to technology to unite its party workers. The oath-taking ceremony in Bengaluru was held in the new Congress block opened close to its main office in Bengaluru, and physical distancing norms were largely ignored here. The event in Bengaluru was also streamed live in Congress offices in the state where LED screens were put up for workers to view the event. The workers were also shown on the screens put up in the Bengaluru event alongside the party’s slogan under Shivakumar ‘New vision, new direction’. It was DK Suresh and Vinay Karthik, a close associate of DK Shivakumar in the Congress, who put together the oath-taking ceremony event on Thursday. “This is a party building exercise and builds the party’s cadre. The idea is to unite the party workers in the state after the electoral defeats,” a Congress party member in Bengaluru told TNM.   District and block-level leaders were directed to conduct oath-taking ceremonies in offices across the state. "We coordinated with district officials through zoom calls and tried to ensure that everyone was comfortable with the technology being used. They were reminded that they have to wear masks and maintain distancing with around 150 workers in each location," said a party member. Before Shivakumar takes on the challenge of expanding the party’s base in Karnataka, he first hopes to unite the party’s cadre and build on the goodwill created by Thursday’s oath-taking event.

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