Rajesh Chadha appointed as Chandigarh Rotary Club president
He outlined a series of humanitarian initiatives including blood donation and medical camps, village development projects in Gurha, and support for schoolchildren in need. The event also announced an international collaboration with a Rotary Club in Malaysia to launch the Rotary Dinner in the Dark—the club's flagship project aimed at raising awareness and support for the visually impaired.
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Hindustan Times
2 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Legacy of conservation, from royals to commoners
It is a rum thing, but it is often the most prolific hunters of wild creatures who turn into their fiercest defenders. Their reasons range from base selfishness – if we hunt every last wild animal down, there will not be any left for us to hunt – to a deep love and respect for wildlife and forests developed over long years of getting to know both intimately. To the latter category belonged the great tiger hunter from Nainital, Edward James 'Jim' Corbett, whose 150th birthday was celebrated last week, on July 25. Nalvadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar had marked off 90 sq km of forest for the Venugopala Wildlife Park (today covering a whopping 900 sq km, known as the Bandipur Tiger Reserve), as part of a conservation process that had begun three decades earlier (HT archive) Beginning in 1885, when he shot his first leopard for sport as a boy of 10, Corbett would go on to shoot 19 tigers and 14 leopards, all documented man-eaters. Alongside, however, his thoughts turned to conservationism, especially once he had gotten himself a camera in 1921, and began to enjoy the pleasures, and the risks – the early cameraman had to get much closer to his target than the rifleman – of capturing tigers on film. He wrote for the newspapers, denouncing trigger-happy marksmen intent on denuding the Indian jungle of big cats, authored books that lionised the tiger while narrating, in exciting, minute detail, his accounts of tracking and killing man-eaters, and advocated with local administrators to create protected forest areas. Corbett's sustained efforts paid off in 1934, when the governor of the United Provinces, Malcolm Hailey, established India's first National Park, the 300 sq km Hailey's National Park, which we know today as the Jim Corbett National Park. But the Mysore royals had stolen a march on Carpet Sahib (Carpet was the Kumaoni mispronunciation of Corbett). Three years before Hailey, Nalvadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar had marked off 90 sq km of forest for the Venugopala Wildlife Park (today covering a whopping 900 sq km, known as the Bandipur Tiger Reserve), as part of a conservation process that had begun three decades earlier. In 1901, the 17-year-old Maharaja, horrified at the indiscriminate killing of big cats, which the royals themselves had taken great pleasure in, introduced a landmark piece of legislation called the Mysore Game Laws, 1901, which severely restricted hunting and fishing. Happily, Mysore continued to lead the conservation charge post-independence as well. In 1952, when the Government of India constituted a Central Board for Wildlife, it was Nalvadi's successor, HH Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar, a crack shot who had himself killed man-eaters and rogue elephants, who was appointed Chairman. In 1973, when the central government launched Project Tiger, the wildly successful conservation program that has more than doubled the tiger population in the Indian forest over the past half century, Bandipur was one of the first nine tiger reserves to be picked to implement it. More excitingly, Bangalore had its very own Corbett – the hunter, writer, and conservationist of Scottish extraction, Kenneth Anderson. A full 35 years younger than Jim, his story reads like an uncanny echo of his idol's, except on two counts – Anderson's beat was the south Indian jungles, which he wrote about with much love, and he never got the national fame he deserved. According to government records, this old boy of Bishop Cotton Boys School shot eight man-eating leopards and seven tigers between 1939 and 1966 (in 1972, India's Wildlife Protection Act comprehensively ended hunting, poaching and wildlife trade, bringing much relief to the animals). In his nine cracking books of shikar stories, from Nine Man-eaters and one Rogue (1954) to Jungles Long Ago (published posthumously in 1976), Anderson writes with great charm and verve of his 'hunting escapades'. Today, the city's many world-class wildlife photographers and filmmakers continue the conservation legacy, shooting, with great love, not just the tiger, but every other animal, bird, insect, and tree that we share space with. (Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)
Hindustan Times
2 days ago
- Hindustan Times
Chandigarh: Notification out to recruit 218 JBTs in UT's primary schools
The UT education department on Monday issued a recruitment notice for the 218 posts of Junior Basic Teacher (JBT) under Samagra Shiksha. The department has a total of 728 sanctioned JBT posts in Samagra Shiksha out of which 218 had been lying vacant. With the recruitment of these posts, the total number of JBT teachers including the regular posts in Chandigarh's primary schools will total around 1625. Horizontal reservation will be provided for people with benchmark disability on 8 posts and ex-servicemen on 22 posts. (HT photo for representation) Candidates can register themselves beginning August 7, from 11 am onwards by visiting https:/ / The last day to apply for the post is August 28, 2025 till 5 pm. The window to deposit fees online will be open until August 30 up to 2 pm. Out of total 218 posts, 44 are reserved under OBC category, 41 under SC, 22 under EWS and 111 are in general category. Horizontal reservation will be provided for people with benchmark disability on 8 posts and ex-servicemen on 22 posts. Candidates will be required to click on 'recruitments' on the website to submit their application. Merit list for the selected candidates will be prepared on the basis of total marks obtained in 150 marks objective type test. Qualifying marks will be 40% for all candidates. No interview will be conducted.
Hindustan Times
2 days ago
- Hindustan Times
New Delhi's old drains to be assessed by robotic mapping
New Delhi A view of Lutyens' Delhi. (HT Archive) The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) will carry out a robotic survey and mapping exercise of sewage lines laid pre-Independence using self-propelled platforms equipped with CCTV cameras, officials familiar with the matter said, adding that it will help assess the extent of damage. The robotic drone survey will be used to identify defects of displaced sections, disjointed pipes, cracks and fissures, after which repairs will accordingly be undertaken. Meanwhile, the council is also likely to soon initiate rehabilitation work of a sewage network from Shanti Path to Satya Sadan Madhu Limaye Marg via Kautilya Marg and along Kushak Nallah. NDMC officials said that there are several old brick-barrel sewer lines, developed almost a century ago, which are completely covered and cannot be accessed by larger machines. 'It becomes difficult to estimate or assess the amount of silt deposited and damage caused by erosion. No manual intervention will be involved in the process, and an expert agency will be hired to undertake the robotic survey. At some places, these century-old brick barrels have changed levels, and at other places, silt has accumulated, leading to waterlogging,' an NDMC official said. A second official explained that the assessment would involve lowering a self-propelled system—mounted with a sewer class camera which can pan, tilt and zoom—into the sewer line. 'The camera has 360-degree panning to capture images used for diameter measurement, quantity of silt estimation and any service defects like tree roots, debris along with structural defects. The acoustic profiling of the sewage line will also be carried out at every five-metre interval,' the official said. Acoustic profiling is used for assessing pipe conditions, including the detection of defects, blockages, and sediment buildup. Acoustic profiler equipment uses sound waves to measure water current velocity at different depths to assess the structure. On July 25, NDMC invited bids; the tendering process is likely to be wrapped up by August 4. The assessment is likely to be completed in three months. The first official said that the project will also involve searching for buried manholes by metal detectors, and opening and restoring manholes. 'The use of robotic machines will also help in compliance with the Prevention of Manual Scavenging Act,' the official said. NDMC maintains about 350 kilometres of sewage lines in New Delhi across an area of 42.7 square kilometres. The majority of New Delhi's basic infrastructure was built between 1920 and 1930. The sewage lines are of varying sizes, ranging from 350mm to 2100mm in diameter. Civic officials said that over the decades, corrosive gases from the sewage lines have peeled off the outer layers. 'This leads to collapse or settlement every year during the monsoon season,' the second NDMC official said, adding that some of the sections in these lines have already been rehabilitated. 'The first phase of rehabilitation of about 30km of sewage line and 10km under phase-2 has been completed and will be expanded to a much larger scale over the next five years,' the official said. Under phase-3, NDMC has started the process of desilting and rehabilitating sewer lines by the structural liner method from Shanti Path to Satya Sadan Madhu Limaye Marg via Kautilya Marg and along Kushak Nallah.
