Opinion News Updates

The School and Mass Education (SME) department of the Odisha government had to eat its words after first announcing that physical, offline teaching for classes I to V in the state will start from January 3, then refuting claims of the director of medical education and training (DMET) Dr Rama Raman Mohanty to assert that classes will start on Jan 3 as scheduled before timely announcing on Sunday that the decision on reopening of Classes I to V had been put on hold in view of the rising cases of Covid-19 in the state!

Chief Minister touring various Districts for distribution of the Smart Cards for the BSKY immediately after the last Assembly session ( which he did not attend) was adjourned much before the schedule makes many wonder if it’s intended to garner political dividends in the impending Elections to the ULBs and PRIs.

Dholes are extremely fast feeders and in no time can strip down a full grown sambhar to its bare bones. Their restless character prompts them to gulp down mouthfuls of meat before lopping away to their next destination.

Hon'ble Odisha Chief Minister finding time to be present in the Kalinga Stadium for the recently concluded Junior men’s Hockey World Cup Tournament but not able to attend the winter session of the Odisha Legislative Assembly raises important constitutional issues and merits a discussion.

As per the Law minister’s reply to a question in the Odisha Legislative Assembly on 7th December 2021, there were 17,68,704 cases pending in district courts of Odisha presently. There are 1,87,028 cases pending in the High Court, the minister informed the Assembly.

66 minutes! That is all the business the Odisha Assembly has been able to transact in the first six days of its ongoing winter session.

The Odia support we see today is governed by the Unicode consortium and the state of Odisha has no guidelines. While Odia is taught and learnt the same way for all students of Odia in schools, what gets implemented on computers is different.

The trade-off behind this decision seems to be made on two critical aspects. The first and the more obvious reason seems to be the real politic based reasons with elections in Punjab and UP round the corner. The second and more significant reason seems to be the scary disconnect that the protests had created between the people of Punjab and particularly the Sikh population and the government.

Odisha, as a state, has not been able to disburse subsidy to any of the residential consumers in Odisha, even after two years of allocation of 4MW capacity by MNRE.

Though mechanised fishing is banned at the congregation zones, every year thousands of turtles are killed due to illegal fishing due to lack of proper patrolling by the Forest Department.

The temple city of Puri is now witnessing in what appears to be a well-designed reform package where the devotees have been marginalised and local residents discriminated against in matters of vehicular access to different parts of the city and the temple providing a pampered treatment to only sevayats and VIPs.

There are two types of Indian Cricket fans during world events. 1) Beat Pakistan even if you lose the Cup. 2) Win the Cup, nothing else matters. Unfortunately, the Indian team had irked both types of fans in the first two games itself.

For Jagannath devotees, the mention of Nepal reminds them of Shalagrams and Kasturi or the fragrant extract from the musk deer.

Migration to work in brick kilns demonstrates human distress in most acute form. Children too are engaged in brick making while they ought to have been in school.

Niyamgiri is the abode of the Dongria Kondh tribe, an endemic and unique tribal group whose population is less than 10,000.