Nye Encyclopedia of Ancient and Forbidden Secrets

toes remained insensible to external stimuli, and frequently he himself showed every symptom of such a magnetic crisis as was afterwaeds to become a special feature of mesmeric treatment. Personally Greatrak was a simple and pious gentaleman, persuaded than his marvellous powers were a divinely – bestowed gift, and most anxious to make the best use of them. The other healer mentioned, Gassner belongs to a somewhat later period-about the middle of the eighteenth century. Gassner was a priest of Bludenz in Vorarlberg where his many cures gained for him a wide celebrity. All diseases, according to him, were caused by evil spirits possessing the demons. He too was a man of kindly disposition and piety, and made a large useof the scriptures in his healing operations. The ceremony of exorcism was a rather impressive one. Herr Gassner sat at a table, the patient and spectators in front of him, A bluered- flowered cloak hung from his shoulders; the rest of his clothing, we are told, was” clean, simple, and modest.” On his left was window, on his right, the crucifix. His fine personality, deep learning, and noble character inspired the faith of the patient and his friends and doubtless played no small part in his curative feats. Sometimes he made use of magnetic manipulations, stroking or rubbing the affected part, and driving the disease, after the manner of Greatrakes, into the limbs of the patient, the formula of exorcism he generally pronouuced in Latin, with which language the demons showed a perfect familiarity. Not only could he control sickness by theses means, but the passions also were amenable to his treatment. Now anger is apparent, now patience, now joy, now sorrow, now hate, now love, now confusion, now reason,-each carried to the highest pitch. Now this one is blind, now he sees, ans again is deprved of sight, etc. “These curious results suggest the phreno- magnetism of later years, where equally sudden changes of mood were produced by touching with the finger- tips those parts of the subject’s head which phrenology associated with the various emotions to be called forth.

WOMEN & PROFESSION

 

 

Present, Feminist theory emerged from these feminist movements. It is manifest in a variety of disciplines such as feminist geography, feminist history and feminist literary criticism.

     From the 1960 onwards the women’s liberation movement campaigned for women’s rights that include the right to bodily integrity, to autonomy, to vote (universal suffrage), to hold public office, to work to fair wages og equal pay, to own property, to education, to serve in the military, to enter into legal contract, andto have marital, parental and religious right.a nd noe the world celebrated ‘Womwn’s Day on March 8.

   Globalisation has presented new challenges for the realisation of the goal woman’s equality, the gender impact of which has not been systemati-cally evaluated fully. The finding of the micro-level studies commissioned by the Department of Women & Child Development, suggest a need for re-framing policies for access to employment and quality of employment. Benefits of the growing global economy have unevenly distributed leading to wider economic disparities, the feminisation of poverty, increasedgender inequal-ity through often deteriorating working condi-tions and  

 Unsafe working environment especially in the informal economy and rural areas. The negative social and economic impact, which have arisen from the globalisation process requires focusedaction to enhance the capacity of women and empower them.

 

Women Today

   ‘Behind every successful man there is a women and behind every successful women lies hard work characterises the role of women in human life. Given the opportunity they excel in every field.

Women in Menial Jobs: India already has, after China, the largest women workforce. About 30-50 percent of the estimated 480 million jobs are being performed by women, mostly in agriculture, construction and as domestic help. There is scope for shifting them with higher education, training and skill development to benefit them economi-cally as well as socially.

     Women in Industry: The important role played by women in Industry, particularly in electronics, information, technology, food processing, agro industry and textiles have been crucial to the development. They require comprehensive suppore in terms of labour legislation, social security and other support services to participate in various industrial sectors. Woman at present cannot work in night shift factories even if they wish to. Suitable measures need to be taken to enable women to work on the night shift in factories.

  Women in Service and Profession: Women-friendly personal policies are necessary to encourage woman to participate effectively in the development process. Some facilities like child care, crèches at work place would enable them to freely pursue their profrssion and maintain an optimal work-home balance.

Women in Accounts and Finance: Accountancy is often termed as a male dominated profession. The first women chartered Accountant, Ms Ethel Watts in 1924 succulently notes, ‘An eccentric choice of profession for women.’ At present the India fraternity of CAs constitutes 160,189 members, of which over 15% are women

    The honour of becoming first women CA in India goes to Mrs. Shirin K. Englneer of Mumbai in 1933. The second lady in the CA Profession was R.Shivabhogam of Chennai (1947). And the trend continues with larger participation. CA is a mult-dimensional profession requiring profess-sional acumen, persisitence, persevrrance, commitiment and camaraderie. It perseverance, commitment and camaraderie. It offers scope to participate as partner in nation building.

       

 

ne nepali killed in landslides in India, another injured

 One Nepali national has been reported killed and another injured in landslides in Pithauragadh district of India.

The deceased has been identified as Sobhan Singh Bohara of Baitedi district, according to police.

The injured is Rajesh Khadka of Belapur-9 in the district, according to District Police Office, Darchula.

The duo were part of a group of labourers transporting goods for Indian businessman Surendra Singh Bohara. Five other Indian nationals were also killed in the incident.

Many Nepalis from Darchula and Baitedi make their ends meet by working as transporters for Indian businessmen and the Indian Army across the border.

Eldery man loses 15 relatives to Sindhupalchok landslide

When Ram Chandra Neupane, 66, of Thokarpa in Sindhupalchok came to know about the landslide in Jure on Saturday morning, he headed straight to the incident. “I prayed all along the way wishing to see all of my sister’s family members,” he said, while preparing for the last rites of his relatives at Pashupati Aryaghat on Thursday, “But I returned halfway as I soon found out that I lost 15 of my relatives in the disaster.”

As an older man among those who gathered there, Neupane was consoling other while making a failed attempt to keep tears rolling down his cheeks. Barely able to speak, he was telling others to accept fate as what happened cannot be undone.

The bereaved relatives had decided to perform the final rites of the dead en masse by using effigies made out of Kush, a holy grass, after it seemed certain that the bodies could not be recovered. “I am tired of comforting others as the burden is too much to bear for myself and I cannot see and listen to the cries,” he said.

The bereaved families of people who went missing in the landslide have started performing the final rites after the local administration declared 123 missing as dead. The administration came to the conclusion after taking into consideration the nature of the disaster and realising the slim chances of finding the bodies. Even the families of the missing were demanding such decision as they lost hope of finding the bodies.

Though only 33 bodies have been found so far, the declaration has spiked the death toll to 156. The massive landslide, one of the worst natural disasters to hit the nation in recent years, displaced approximately 436 people, according to the preliminary report of the District Administration Office in Sindhupalchowk.

Meanwhile, the bereaved and the displaced have vented their ire at the government for the delay in the distribution of relief materials. However, claiming that they distributing relief materials swiftly, District Police Office chief DSP Bharat Bohora said they distributed relief materials to 97 households and would try to provide them to the remaining at the earliest.

Indian woman acquires Nepali MRP

 An Indian national is found to have acquired a Nepali passport and reached Kuwait for employment.

Eighteen-year-old Mingma Tamang, from Rhongeli in Sikkim successfully made it to Kuwait with the Machine Readable Passport ( MRP ) issued in the name of Nirumaya Pakhrin, 25, of Bara.

The Central Passport Office had issued the MRP on July 10, 2012. The matter had come to light when Mingma, who reached Kuwait via Delhi on May 30 last year, reached the Nepali Embassy for visa stamping on Wednesday.

“The passport was provided to me by an acquaintance named Yubaraj Chettri,” Minga said over the telephone call made from the embassy, expressing ignorance as to how or where they managed to obtain the police report and labour permission sticker. According to embassy officials, both the police report and the sticker on her passport were forged. According to Mingma, Yubaraj and his colleague Dawa Sherpa of Kolkatta had made all the arrangements for her flight to Kuwait . Mingma, who is currently living at the shelter in the embassy, said she realised that she was flying under someone else’ passport only upon reaching Delhi. She was made aware of her illegal status at the embassy.

Meanwhile, the embassy is preparing to correspond to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for investigation into the matter. According to an embassy official, though Mingma had a Nepali passport, the embassy is preparing to get her on a flight

back to Delhi as she is an Indian national. “The number of people entering Kuwait with fake stickers and police report via Delhi has increased of late,” the officer said, adding that around 50 percent of the 200 females living at the embassy shelter had reached Kuwait via Delhi using fake documents.

Forty-year-old Devi Bhandari of Bardiya also returned home on Friday due to similar reasons. Bhandari claimed she went to Saudi Arabia via the same route three times without any hassles. The trend of sending women illegally to Kuwait is on the rise partly due to the ‘Visa 20’ provision, under which local employers

bear visa expenses and airfare, encouraging traffickers to send young girls to the country for certain amount of commission.

xperts explore alternate route along Araniko Highway

- Experts on Wednesday conducted an on-field study regarding opening an alternate way to the one-and-half -kilometer section of the Araniko Highway submerged by the damming of the Sunkoshi River due to the massive landslide that occurred at Jure Village of Mankha VDC in Sindhupalchok district last Saturday.

The section of the highway from Dam site at Mankha-1 and one and half kilometres beyond has been completely damaged disrupting vehicular movement.

A team of engineers led by Director General at the Department of Roads, Devendra Bahadur Karki, arrived at the site to make an on-site inspection and is carrying out a study regarding the possibility of opening an alternate road. Deputy Director Generals of the Department Keshav Sharma and Arjun Thapa are also in the team.

The section of the submerged highway would be able to operate if the water level in the artificial dam created due to the blockage of the river by the landslide is reduced by 50 percent, said Arun Kumar Sribastav, an engineer at the Division Road Office, Dolakha.

He said if it was not feasible to open an alternate route at the same place, there is another option of operating the Sildhunga-Piskar-Tauthali-Sunkoshi road or the Kharidhunga-Piskar-Dhuskun-Sunkoshi rural road as an alternative after their repair.

However, since these two rural roads are going to be long, an alternate road could be opened by extending the road linking the Dam Site to Tekanapur by constructing additional two kilometers road, he added.

Sribastav said that two engineers, a loader and an excavator have been kept stand-by in the affected area.

Damming dangers

- It was as if nature had a message for the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi just before he began his Nepal visit earlier this week. The massive landslide in Sindhupalchok—which claimed many lives and property and threatened downstream human settlements as far as Bihar—was indeed a stark reminder that development and disaster can be a double-edged sword.

Not something unique

This is not to jump to the conclusion that the landslide was a result of rampant infrastructure development nor can we yet point fingers to extreme weather conditions. Seismic activities in the region make the picture even more complicated.

But this is also not something unique that has happened in the Hindu Kush Himalayan belt in recent years. What happened in the Hunja Valley of Pakistan in 2010, in India’s Uttarakhand last year, in Badakshan of Afghanistan in May and now in Nepal have something in common, although not all of them blocked river-flow. The intensity of the landslide—an entire chunk of a mountain along with rocks and big boulders coming down—has been the similarity.

Such disasters, which immediately claim lives and property in human settlements just below the mountains, are already tragic tales. They get far worse when they block rivers. A Damocles sword hangs over downstream populations and huge infrastructures. Disasters can strike at any time without warning. Remember how over 60 people were swept away by the flashflood in the Seti river in Kaski district two years ago?

Along the Pokhara-Baglung Highway, abandoned modern houses are still perched precariously on a cliff fast being eaten-up by the river below after it changed course since the disaster.

Landslide Dam Outburst Flood (LDOF) is an increasing risk in the region, although it may have received far less publicity than Glacial Lake Outburst Floods. Rapidly filling up glacial lakes due to the intensified meltdown of glaciers do pose threats; they can burst out their moraines. But they are not happening as frequently as landslides, although many such lakes in the Himalayan region remain unmonitored.

But that almost all Himalayan rivers in Nepal flow through gorges and valleys is a basic fact. Which means, they all are prone to landslide blockades. And if they cause major flashfloods, the repercussions will be felt as far as Bangladesh, let alone Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in India.

Mapping out basins

This time, Sunkoshi has been rather calm; it formed a lake following the landslide at Mankha in Sindupalchouk and then began to overflow the rock-soil dam. As of the time of writing, efforts were under way to increase the outflow to drain the lake.

But not all landslide-induced dams are so benign and flashfloods from them so slow that they provide time to communicate with Indian authorities and evacuate people downstream, as they did in nine districts of Bihar this time.

So, what needs to be done then? Mapping all the river basins with regards to landslide risks is crucial, particularly those that have human settlements and major infrastructures like roads, bridges, hydropower plants, among others, downstream. With one whole village buried under the landslide and five hydropower plants or transmission lines hit by the dammed Sunkosi water, what more lessons do we need?

The panic in Bihar is no less a lesson for the Indian side as well.

Moreover, now that the two sides have spelled out the development of specific hydropower projects in the joint press statement following Indian Prime Minister Modi’s Nepal visit, this homework becomes even more crucial. “The two Prime Ministers directed the concerned authorities to conclude negotiations within 45 days on the Project Development Agreement.....for the development of Upper Karnali hydropower project,” the statement read. “They expressed desire for early conclusion of other PDAs namely Arun III, Upper Marshyangdi and Tamakoshi III.”

According to the statement, “the two prime ministers agreed that their governments would set up the Pancheswor Development Authority within six months and finalise the DPR of Pancheswor Development Project and begin implementation of the project within one year.”

If all these projects are really moving ahead, their LDOF risks need to be assessed at the earliest. As the host nation, it is of course for Nepal to do the job—as it has done with water resources. In doing so, if it needs any help, India should be forthcoming as it will be doing so for its own safety.

The southern neighbour’s national action plan on climate change says: Since several other countries in the South Asia region share the Himalayan ecosystem, appropriate forms of scientific collaboration and exchange of information may be considered with them to enhance understanding of ecosystem changes and their effects. Even for India’s internal purpose, the document reads, “Adopt ‘best practice’ norms for infrastructure construction in mountain regions to avoid or minimise damage to sensitive ecosystems and despoiling of landscapes.”

If that is true for India’s own mountain regions, it is also true for Nepal’s because the rivers that flow through it contribute around 70 percent of the flow of the Ganges during lean season. So, should something go wrong in the Nepali river systems, downstream India will have to worry.

Working together

Although Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have long been concerned about floods ‘from Nepal’ mainly during the monsoon, the LDOF risks do not seem to have attracted their attention. Perhaps that was why in his ‘everything included’ speech, Modi did not mention this particular issue, even as he offered his condolences to those who died in the Sindhupalchok landslide.

But now, when he tries to—if he does, that is—implement what he has assured Nepal of, his administration will have to seriously consider landslides’ threat to river systems upstream. If the Sunkoshi disaster was not enough an alarm call, last year’s Uttarakhand floods should surely be. Thousands of people, their houses and infrastructures, including hydropower plants, were swept away while Nepal’s Darchula district also saw huge human and property losses.

In this case, India was upstream and Nepal was, to some extent, a downstream country. In the rest of the major river-systems, it is the other way round and India cannot afford to ignore that.