Happy ending to ‘catfish’ tale
A 22-year-old woman from Malappuram in Kerala was recently catfished by a 30-year-old resident of Dindigul district, but her insta-love didn’t entirely end in tears. The woman had gotten married last year before her husband went abroad for work. She met the Dindigul man, who claimed he was the manager of a private spinning mill, on Instagram. Enamoured she arrived in the district only to find the man was married, had children and was a labourer on a construction site! Fearing her family’s reaction, the disappointed woman decided to stay back and make ends meet as a construction labourer. But here’s the silver lining: her family, thanks to the efforts of Kerala and Dindigul police, tracked her down and convinced her to return to Kerala where hopefully a fresh start awaits.
Who’s in the crowd?
Former union minister P Chidambaram recently took a dig at the union government while delivering a speech on the 2023-24 budget at the Tamil Nadu Chambers of Commerce and Industry auditorium in Madurai. Promising to talk no politics, only economics, he snuck in a not-so-veiled political comment anyway. “I’m here to do an economic analysis of the budget 2023-2024, not to elaborate on the hidden politics. Who knows there might be Enforcement Directorate or Intelligence Bureau officials inside. I don’t want to invite trouble (for the organisers) from them,” he quipped.
Survival of the fittest?
Chennai corporation councillors have adopted a tedious new ritual at the monthly council meetings — seemingly unending praise of ministers and leaders during their speeches, paying no heed to the Mayor’s many prompts to wind up. As a result, the meetings now run for nearly four to five hours with most councillors exceeding their allotted time by singing praises of Congress scion Rahul Gandhi, PM Narendra Modi, CM MK Stalin or sports minister Udhayanidhi to their zonal chairmen. In January, things finally went too far, with one councillor fainting in the council hall when the meeting that began at 10 am showed no signs of ending at 2 pm! While at least one long-winded councillor appeared regretful, it remains to be seen if the rest will learn the value of brevity by the next meeting.
Quota conundrum
Many government-aided school teachers in the state fear the future of their institutions is bleak. Amid problems with salaries, it seems government schemes are adding to their stress. Many teachers say that the admissions to government-aided schools will fall due to schemes for government school students, including the Pudhumai Penn scheme and 7.5% reservation in medical seats. As the standard of the government schools and government-aided are nearly the same, they fear parents would rather admit their children in government schools from Class 6 to avail of these schemes.
‘Jobs for primary breadwinners’
With the school education department expressing optimism about the effectiveness of the Illam Thedi Kalvi scheme and the state planning commission report affirming this, a new challenge has cropped up. Volunteers, who have been working to make the scheme a success, are paid just Rs 1,000 a month. Now they have started asking for higher remuneration and priority in some government recruitment. Teacher aspirants are opposed to this. They maintain that volunteers don’t have the burden of being the primary breadwinner and can afford to volunteer for the scheme at a meagre pay.
(Contributions by Jeyalakshmi Ramanujam, Gayathri V, Nirupama Viswanathan, Subashini Vijayakumar; compiled by Ashutosh Acharya)