From The Hindu, July 31, 1925: War graves
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Business Standard
38 minutes ago
- Business Standard
UK intel may involve Nato allies to raid 'shadow fleet', claims Russia
Russia's SVR claims UK secret services plan to involve Nato allies in a large-scale crackdown on the so-called 'shadow fleet', according to intel received by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service ANI Asia The UK's intelligence agencies are planning to enlist Nato allies in a large-scale operation targeting the "shadow fleet," which could lead to an environmental disaster in international waters, the press bureau of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said in a statement obtained by TASS. As per the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this plan provides for a major act of sabotage to force Washington into sanctioning buyers of Russian energy. In a post on X, the Russian MFA said, "Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service: UK intelligence agencies plan to involve Nato allies to launch a massive raid on the 'shadow fleet'. This plan provides for a major act of sabotage to force Washington into sanctioning buyers of Russian energy." "British secret services are planning ecological disaster in international waters. The press bureau of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation informs that, according to the information coming to the SVR (Russian Foreign Intelligence Service), the British secret services are planning to involve Nato allies in a massive roundup for the 'shadow fleet'," the statement said. According to the UK's plan, the impetus for such a campaign should be provided by "a resonant incident involving one or more tankers." "The plan involves organizing a major act of sabotage the losses of which would allow the transportation of Russian oil to be declared a threat to all international shipping. This would untie Western countries' hands in choosing methods of counteraction," the document said, as quoted by Tass. According to the SVR, the British are working on "two potential casus belli." "The first scenario implicates setting up an 'unwanted' tanker accident in one of bottlenecks of sea communications (for example, in straits). As it is believed in London, oil spills and fairway blocking would provide Nato countries with 'sufficient' grounds for establishing a precedent of 'extraordinary' vessel inspection under the guise of maritime safety and environmental regulations compliance," the statement noted. The SVR pointed out that the timing of the UK attack is intended to be chosen so as to use the media effect from it to put pressure on the administration of US President Donald Trump, as per Tass. "The aim is to force Washington, in defiance of its national interests, to impose the most severe secondary sanctions against Russian energy resources buyers, making them seen as 'indirect culprits of the tragedy'," the statement said, as per Tass. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Mint
2 hours ago
- Mint
How Astronomer turned a scandal into a marketing win
Calamity strikes businesses in all shapes and forms, but the recent incident involving US-based data operations company Astronomer's ex-CEO Andy Byron and ex-chief people officer Kristin Cabot deserves to be taught as a case study in workplace crisis management at B-Schools around the world. On 18 July, Byron and Cabot, both married to other people, were caught in an intimate embrace on a jumbotron at a concert by the popular British band, Coldplay. The 'mishap", which has by now gone down in the history of scandals as 'Coldplaygate", caused an upheaval all over the internet. In no time, the couple was caught in the eye of a social media blitzkrieg, spawning much mirth, mockery and memes. Byron resigned in a few hours, Cabot followed suit days later. Last heard, Byron is considering suing Chris Martin, the lead vocalist of the band, for the viral 'kiss cam scandal". In the meantime, Astronomer installed one of its co-founders Pete DeJoy as interim CEO, who quickly went into damage control mode by making the right noises. In his first post on LinkedIn since the incident, he praised the integrity and professionalism of his employees in the face of all the attention Astronomer has recently received. 'The events of the past few days have received a level of media attention that few companies—let alone startups in our small corner of the data and AI world—ever encounter," DeJoy wrote. 'The spotlight has been unusual and surreal for our team and, while I would never have wished for it to happen like this, Astronomer is now a household name." It was a textbook move on managing crises in the workplace: start by clearly acknowledging the problem and accessing the extent of the damage. Ironically, Astronomer's reputational troubles proved to be a blessing in disguise because it was caused by poor personal choices of its leaders rather than unscrupulous business decisions. Had it involved a disaster pertaining to the company's services or finances, it would have been much harder for even the best PR machinery to undo. For comparison, think of the 2009 Satyam scandal, when founder-chairman B. Ramalinga Raju confessed to a massive accounting fraud, shaking up India's IT sector as well as global investor confidence, eventually leading to Satyam's dissolution. No Bad Publicity A cursory glance at Google Trends data over the last two weeks validates DeJoy's statement. On 16 July, 'Astronomer" was at -1 in terms of search interests on the engine. On 18 July it hit 100, indicating peak interest. Over the next few days, the levels of public curiosity began to decline, but by that time, the scandal had 'achieved" something unexpected. For a start-up with 300-odd employees based in Ohio that provides a niche service, a sudden spike of public interest was too good an opportunity to pass up. So, Astronomer decided to get advertising maverick Ryan Reynolds to turn the controversy into a cool marketing strategy. Reynolds' company, Maximum Effort, recently released a video featuring actor and entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow, who also happens to be Chris Martin's ex-wife, to diffuse the negative chatter around Astronomer. More leaves taken out of the book of crisis management: formulate a solid strategic response and execute it carefully. Paltrow's video does a masterful job of shifting attention from the speculations about the disgraced leaders at Astronomer. Instead, it focuses on explaining what the company does—which no one who is not working with or in niche tech would have likely known. At the time of writing, the video has over 67,000 likes on Instagram with nearly 85,000 shares. For perspective, the post right before this clip was snapshots of scenes from a meetup in Berlin that Astronomer posted on 9 July. It has 147 likes and 6 shares. The ingenious strategic public response by Astronomer to its recent misfortunes shows that it is possible to counter virality with virality in the age of social media. Instead of shirking from a negative story, the company decided to own the narrative and turn it into a force for positive reinforcement. The move was perfectly timed as well—just as attention on the company was on the wane. Is it possible to police personal interactions in the workplace, especially when people spend more time than ever before with their colleagues on a daily basis rather than at home with their spouses, partners and family? No. But is it still possible to uphold the values that make for a respectful and accountable workplace—especially when all hell breaks loose? Yes. Crisis management lessons need to evolve and keep pace with the times. The idea that no publicity is bad publicity isn't necessarily true. But when life gives you a scandal in the workplace, you might as well try to turn it into a business opportunity. That's the gamble DeJoy and his crisis management team decided to lean on. It's too early to say if it has turned its fortunes around, but at least the unexpected stunt has got Astronomer even more eyeballs than it would have probably got in all of its ten-year-long existence. Work Vibes is a fortnightly column on ideas to help you thrive at what you do.
Indian Express
3 hours ago
- Indian Express
From delivering summary justice against landlords to fighting for Jharkhand statehood: political journey of Shibu Soren
Shibu Soren, who passed away on Monday, is widely recognised as the most influential leader of the Jharkhand movement. His radical politics in the 1970s reconceptualised the Jharkhandi identity, giving second wind to the faltering movement for statehood. But in the decades that followed, Soren would choose the path of moderation and compromise, often in the face of criticism, to help make the state of Jharkhand a reality. Here's a brief history. A new mobilisation The early movement for Jharkhand, helmed in the post-Independence years by Jaipal Singh Munda and his Jharkhand Party, ran out of steam by the late 1950s. There were a few fundamental reasons for this. The Jharkhand Party's support base was largely urban, and its leadership was drawn from a relatively small class of educated tribal elite. The conception of a Jharkhand state at this time was solely based on an assertion of adivasi identity and indigeneity that stood against the exploitative 'dikus' (outsiders). British geographer Stuart Corbridge argued that economic differentiation among adivasis and the changing demography of Chhotanagpur following the industrial development of the 20th century (Scheduled Tribes were only 26.21% of the state's population in the 2011 Census) meant that such a narrow conception of Jharkhand was unmaintainable ('Industrialisation, internal colonialism and ethnoregionalism: the Jharkhand, India, 1880-1980, 1987). It was in this context that Soren became an important player. Along with the Bengali Marxist trade unionist A K Roy and Kurmi-Mahato leader Binod Bihari Mahato, the Santal leader formed the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) in late 1972. Its vision was to create a 'red-green movement' that would fundamentally reconceptualise Jharkhandi identity, sociologist Gail Omvedt wrote in 'Ecology and Social Movements'. 'The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha was born with a green and red flag, and with the concrete practice of the alliance that this symbolised — Dhanbad mine workers, lower caste peasants, adivasis. 'Lalkhand-Jharkhand' was the slogan of early marches,' Omvedt wrote in 1984. The question of land The deliberate appeal to non-tribal workers would help the JMM introduce 'new forms of mobilisation around socio economic issues', political scientist Louise Tillin wrote in Remapping India: New States and their Political Origins (2023). 'Land was a major issue for the JMM,' Tillin wrote. 'The Chotanagpur Tenancy Act 1908 had made the sale of tribal lands to non-tribals illegal, but considerable tribal land had changed hands nonetheless.' This created an increasingly alienated peasantry, which was being squeezed further by exploitative moneylenders. 'We must eat all year round. So far, the Santhal has worked for twelve months and starved for twelve months, and the moneylender has reaped the harvest. This must change,' Soren said (quoted in the Economic and Political Weekly article 'Material Base of Santhal Movement', 1975). Even before the JMM came into being, Soren would travel from village to village on his motorcycle, encouraging adivasis and other landless tillers to harvest standing crops on land that was illegally acquired by the 'outsiders'. The so-called dhan katao andolan would peak with the harvests of 1974-75. In the late 1970s, the JMM took a leading role in protests against state forestry policies in Singhbhum, backing the so-called jungle katao andolan in which government-planted teak trees were cut down to reclaim land for cultivation. Soren's challenge to the status quo was often 'violent'. 'The JMM, and Shibu Soren in particular, became known for delivering summary justice against landlords and moneylenders, even holding their own courts,' Tillin wrote. But his charisma and candour made him a cult-like figure among the adivasis. In mainstream politics Till the early 1980s, the demand for statehood was simply a tool for Soren and the JMM to mobilise support for their primary fight. 'Even if Jharkhand does not come into being in my lifetime, why should I be bothered? Our first concern is to chase away the bloodsuckers and help the people lead a respectable, quiet and fraternal life,' he said (quoted in EPW, 'Containing the Jharkhand Movement', 1979). But it was an important tool nonetheless. In a 2007 interview with Tillin, Soren described it as a 'bridging mechanism' between the Marxist social ideals of the JMM and the sphere of reference of the locals. 'I used to tell Roy-ji (A K Roy)… that the people in Jharkhand understand the language of Birsa Munda, Tilka Manjhi, Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu and Shekh Bhikhari (leaders of 18th and 19th century revolts). They don't understand the language of Lenin. People here have a right to land, forest and water,' he told Tillin (quoted in Remapping India). After he was elected to Lok Sabha in 1980, however, Soren is said to have struck a deal with Indira Gandhi in exchange for immunity for his activities in the 1970s, which significantly tempered his politics. From a tool to galvanise support, statehood became the primary end of JMM's politics. In 1983, the JMM dropped the red from its flag. For the next two decades, Soren championed the cause of a Jharkhand state in Parliament. Along with a number of other players who entered the political scene in the 1980s — most notably the BJP, which supported the creation of Jharkhand but for very different reasons — the JMM helped build mainstream political consensus on statehood by taking the path of moderation, often in the face of criticism from the ground. Jharkhand officially became a state on November 15, 2000.
