also have Microsoft Office applications.
Thus, a cell phone arrival of latest technologies and services is making cell
almost doubles as a personal computer. The cell phone is
of immense help when one is stuck in an emergency
situation and needs help. It is also very easy to track the
exact location of a cell phone and thus, tracking criminals
becomes possible for the police in some cases. It is also
used by institutions or companies to conduct detailed
surveys.
Many young entrepreneurial brains have devised new
and innovative ways of using cell phones. Some vegetable
vendors in Delhi have begun to take their orders on cell
phones and deliver vegetables at the doorsteps. Many
companies are promoting their products by sending mass
SMSs. Today most of the orders, be it for a pizza or a
bulk supply of manufactured goods, can be placed through
cell phone. In fact, Ideal Cellular, one of India's premier
telecom companies, promotes itself by suggesting (as a
comic relief) various innovative ways to use cell phones
like use of mobile numbers as people's identity in lieu of
names.
The concept of education through cell phones, i.e.
learning, focuses on constant mobility of the learner.
learning basically implies that the plethora of untailored
information available on the Internet or through the
other services that a cell phone offers, can be gathered
by the learner instantaneously with the help of a cell
phone.
Recendy, Microsoft announced the release of new mobile
hotmail SMS service, which will enable all the hotmail
users to receive and read e-mails as also reply through
SMS. This will be useful for India's over 600 million cell
phone users, only 18 million of whom have GPRS-enabled
cell phones. As and when recommendations made by the
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in
August 2008 to permit Internet service providers to offer
unrestricted Internet telephony, are cleared by the
government, the charges of domestic long distance calls
are expected to halve and those of international calls are
set to fall to a fifth. The much anticipated 3G technology
has also arrived in India, which will earn much higher
revenue for the service providers due to its value-added
services. The technology, intended for multimedia-enabled
and smart phones, provides up to 3 Mbps speed for
downloading, video broadcasting, stock transactions, e-
learning, Internet surfing, fax services, etc. Thus, the
IN D IA 'S W IL D L IF E H E R IT A G E
India is extremely fortunate to have been blessed with
vast range of wild flora and fauna by Mother Nature. If not
in gold reserves or other conventional wealth, at least
green wealth, India is certainly very rich. Since ages
scientists, poets, writers and others have marvelled at
extolled India's abundant wildlife heritage. A great
number of animals and plants of various sizes have made
India their home. The protection of these various,
marvellous creatures is our bounden duty However, of
late, with the effects of globalisation and industrialisation,
the Indian people have shown a marked tendency to ignore
these indispensable traditional assets of ours. If the
situation continues to be so, we will certainly regret our
actions in the long run. Or if not us, our descendents
certainly will. Protecting India's wildlife heritage has become
for the people of the nation a sacred responsibility.
COMPETITION SUCCESS REVIEW, NOVEMBER 2010
42
phones a much more comprehensive machine as compared
to earlier versions.
However, cell phones have come to be blamed for a lot
of troubles like disturbance caused by them in classroom
environment, official meetings, formal functions, in a flight
and cases of vehicular accidents when people drive while
talking on phone. But these problems have cropped up due to
human negligence and non-adhcience to rules. These can be
prevented with a little effort or alertness. Another strand of
argument is that cell phones are considered to be an
intrusion of one's privacy as they can easily be hacked to steal
one's personal information. Besides, it can also compromise
one's security as the user's exact location can be traced by
a tracking his/her cell phone. Further, camera-enabled phones
can be used to take one's offensive photographs without
his/her knowledge and can later be morphed. What is more,
scores of researches have revealed that excessive use of cell
phones can cause tumours and cancer.
Cell phones can also pose threats to national security.
m- One example of this is the recent BlackBerry controversy in
M- India. Two BlackBerry users can exchange encrypted
messages which cannot be decoded even by Research In
Motion, the makers of BlackBerry. The Government of
India is of the opinion that this service can be misused by
criminal elements, and hence it has made it clear that if
the manufacturers do not work out a solution to this
problem, this particular service will be blocked in India.
Concerned with security issues, the Department of
Telecom had disconnected about 24 million Chinese
handsets in 2009 as they did not possess the International
Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, which allows
lawful tracking of a particular handset. It is also known
that cell phones were also used to coordinate the 26/11
Mumbai terrorist attacks. In the light of national interests,
these security issues must be handled with greater vigilance so
that untow rard occurrences could be avoided.
Cell phones have become a part and parcel of our lives,
affecting all sections of the modern society, in one way or
the other, transforming our lives in myriad unimaginable
ways. Being the speediest mode of communication, it
has ousted all its rivals from competition in no time. It
has evolved far more than what it was intended to be; it
has intensely touched our lives and hence is definitely a
boon.
a Preserving this bountiful treasure of nature is of crucial
importance; every Indian should make it his/her priority.
in The present times in India are characterised by
past, indiscriminate deforestation and a callous, mindless
and exploitation of natural resources. In the backdrop of such
an alarming scenario, every Indian should do his bit to
make sure that the nation's wildlife heritage is not lost. A
sustainable use of available resources is the pressing need of
the hour; such an approach will go a long way in
ensuring that the survival of the nation's various species of
flora and fauna is not endangered. Nature maintains a fine
balance among its various facets. The delicate
mechanisms of nature bring to mind the proverbial Sword
of Damocles which hangs from a single horse-hair atop
our eponymous protagonist who is sitting on the hot seat. In
this case, nature's inherent balance is the sword and
 underneath it is mankind, awaiting
looming doom with an
all-pervading sense of dread. If the
string snaps, the sword falls down
point-first onto the head of mankind.
A dangerous thing indeed ! If a single
species from the group of flora and
fauna is lost, then because of the
nature of Mother Nature, all the
organisms in its food web are
affected—some adversely, some
favourably. This in turn has other
consequences and in the end, the
overall effect will be always negative.
Negativity, unfortunately, is a lot like
the thermo-dynamical concept of Pratheek
Mr.
First prize winnerPraveen
Pratheek
Bengaluru, Karnataka.Contest 598.He is a student
entropy—especially so when it comes ofB.E. (Telecommunications) at the R.V. overstated. According to our old Hindu
to nature. It always increases. If College of Engineering, Bengaluru.
someone or something disturbs nature,
the total effect is always bound to be
negative. It however differs from
entropy in a singular way; it is possible
to reverse the flow of negativity,
albeit with a great
amount of difficulties and tribulations. The haphazard
and capricious way in which we are currently disposing of
the biosphere around us is causing a huge increase in
negativity which, needless to say, will be difficult to erase,
even in the long haul.
India has about 350 different species of mammals, 1,200
different species of birds which cover 14 percent of the
world's avifauna, 453 different species of reptiles, 182
different species of amphibians and 14,500 different species
of angiosperms. Also, India boasts of 45,000 plant species
that constitute 6.4 percent of the total plant species on
Earth. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands alone house
2,200 species of flowering plants and 120 species of ferns.
When all is said and done, India has 77,000 species of
animals, about 50,000 species of insects and about 13,000
species of butterflies and moths. The sixteen major forest
types of India are distributed in 10 distinctive
biogeographic zones, having 25 subdivisions and a much
larger variety of ecosystems. However, mere dry statistics
represent only a unidimensional perspective. All these facts
and figures give us just a bland, insipid view of the total
richness of India's ecosystem. The true picture can be
perceived when one visits the lush green, thriving forests
of India.
Visitors to India often say. that India has a particular
'smell'. An earthy, inspiring odour filled with the excitement
of adventure. Or something like that. One hears the echo
of similar sentiments a great many times in the accounts
of foreigners who have visited and lived in India for an
extended period of time. These words come with deeper
conviction from especially those foreign tourists who have
spent time in the hill stations of India. In reality, this
"smell of India" is nothing more than the odour of India's
forests. An odour that has influenced many people from
different countries to choose India as their abode over
their respective lands of birth. One would surmise that
when people from other countries have done so, it must
be but a 'no-contest' that majority of Indians w
feel the same way about these things. But alas, no. Many
India, living right in our midst, think and feel differently
resort to destroying the wildlife of the nation by way
varied, cunning means. The devious ploys used by these
people for fulfilling their self-seeking goals have made the
COMPETITION SUCCESS REVIEW, NOVEMBER 2010
44
government of the country and the
conscious citizens look helpless. A sad
state of affairs, indeed.
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever", said the great
English poet John Keats, who perhaps was the
greatest of the second generation of English Romantic
poets. Reviled as a bad poet during his lifetime, his
subtle prominence was acknowledged only much
later. A true worshipper of beauty as noticed in his
poems, he had given up a possible career in surgery
to write poems and so would have been hit hard by this
lackadaisical attitude towards his work. Me however had an
eerie knack of hitting a nail on its head as can be gathered
from the above quote. The aesthetic brilliance, beauty and
peace provided by the richness of our
Praveen
of CSR EssayKumar
Kumar
Writingis from wildlife heritage just cannot be
customs, a man is supposed to spend
one-fourth of his life—the last part,
incidentally—in the forests. This custom
aims at providing ourselves with a serene
backdrop in which to analyse our life and
meditate. Our wildlife heritage can thus
be seen to have massive aesthetic and artistic value.
But this is not the end of the value of our environment. It
is not the be-all and end-all of what nature can give us. Life
itself for humans is possible only because of our wildlife
heritage. And it is not only about just survival. The word
opulence is in the dictionary because of nature. Why, even
the very pages of a dictionary are but examples of how vital
Mother Nature is to mankind ! The old yet timeless story of a
tree giving away anything and everything it has to fulfil the
needs and desires of a young boy who grows old, gives us an
enduring image of the beastly nature of man and the
humanly nature of Mother Nature. India's wildlife heritage
being as rich as it is, demands a great amount of caring and
we should at all costs extend a helping hand as far clown the
line as we can.
A country's wildlife heritage is the gift that the country
has received from the Almighty. Whether to exploit it
unsustainably or sustainably is that country's choice. Since
the days of yore, Indians have learnt to live with and in
the forests. Since the beginning of human civilisations in
this great nation, generations of Indians have come and
gone, giving respect to and loving wildlife. It is a fact that
those times are long gone and can never be brought back
again. In the fast-developing and growing world of present
times, India cannot just merely keep pace with others. For
all-round development to happen, our nation must step
on the gas and continue doing so. However, the legacy of
our farsighted forefathers remains. The richness of India's
wildlite heritage is perhaps unmatched in today's world. It
enables us to use our resources to the fullest, which only
a handful of countries other than India can afford to do.
But all that our ancestors did will be wasted if we decide
to throw caution to the winds and proceed, laxly in a
manner usually called laissez-faire in economics. A strong,
positive, proactive approach must be made. Each and every
conscious and conscientious Indian is of this opinion. It
has been often said that the common man does not know
what is good for him and \vhat is not. However for once,
r
ould too our leaders would do well to follow the words of their
in esteemed Cvoters.
and
of CSR