Month: October 2018

Social media are web-based applications for global communication and information access. Majority of daily social interactions now happen via social media.

Advantages

• Social media have made communication with your friends, family and professional network very easy and accessible.
• Through social media like Skype, you can actually have live video and audio calls with your distant family, in different towns, cities, and even in foreign lands at the other end of the world.
• Through social media like Facebook, you can share your daily life experiences with not only your friends and family, but with a much wider global audience.
• Through social media like LinkedIn, professionals can stay connected and expand their professional network globally. The process of talent acquisition has become very easy.
• Through social media like WhatsApp, messengers, etc., you can stay connected in real time, on a daily and minute-to-minute basis with your immediate family and friends.
• Social media have also become channels of transmitting educational and training materials to a global audience. Various students take online classes through social media.
• Social media offer opportunities for online working opportunities. Jobs like consulting, freelancing can be done easily from the comfort of your home or office.
• Through social media, businesses can access a global market and clientele for their goods and services.
• Social media are also an excellent channel for online marketing and advertising. Email campaigns, online marketing campaigns have become very common and effective as a result.
• Social media are also an excellent tool for assistance in emergency situations e.g. medical emergencies, crime, etc. to seek medical, police or legal help.

Disadvantages

• Social media addiction has become a major psychological problem in today’s world.
• Age-inappropriate content can very easily be shared and accessed through social media. Precautions need to be taken by parents to protect children from these risks.
• With social media reaching into everyone’s homes, people’s privacy can be under threat. We need to take extra precautions to safe-guard our privacy.
• Cybercrime has reached a new level of complexity with social media giving access into people’s personal lives.
• Social media as a means of unwanted advertising and marketing, can become a nuisance.
• Social media are sometimes used by anti-social elements.

Conclusion

Though social media are a great way to stay in touch with your social network in real time, it is important to be wary of their addiction potential.

By Janhavi

Development is another word for betterment or alleviation of a concept, society or whatever is the reference in which it is used.

When the word development is used as a stand-alone word, it usually refers to the economy or the society. The commonly understood criteria for development are:

Per capita income

The income level per person in a society is a rough indicator of the buying capacity of the society. A good level of income ensures that the people have access to basic requirements of food clothing and shelter. To be understood completely however, the per capita income needs to be adjusted to the cost of living, and to the differences in currencies to be compared globally. Also since this is just an average it is subject to extremes.

Basic needs and infrastructure

The basic needs like food, housing and potable water needs to be available for the masses. Other infrastructure facilities like electricity, roads etc. have to be made available for a society at a basic level.

Education

When every citizen is educated, it is a sign of development. All the supporting infrastructure needs to be made available.

After this basic level of needs is met, any addition, such as better transport system, industrialisation, better security, banking infrastructure, legal infrastructure, institutes for higher education etc. makes the economy better and more developed.

By Janhavi

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee was an Indian writer and novelist who is known most for writing the national song of India, Vande Mataram. Set to music by none other than Rabindranath Tagore, it went on to inspire the freedom fighters. Some journals at the time adapted this name.

Early Life and education

Bankim Chadra Chaterjee was born in a village in North 24 Parganas region in Bengal on 26^th July 1838 to a civil servant, Jadab Chandra Chattopadhyay. He had three siblings, the younger brother also being an author.

Bankim Chandra was married at the age of 11. He had a son from his first marriage before his wife died. He married again and had three daughters from the second marriage.

He passed out from the Midnapore School after which he went to Hoogly Mohsin College and Presidency College to do a B.A. Of the first two graduates from the University of Calcutta, Chattopadhyay was one. Later he studied Law and got his degree in 1869.

Literary works

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay is credited with being the first Indian novelist in English with ‘Rajmohan’s wife’. However his later writings were in Bengali. He is considered responsible for the literary renaissance in Bengal.

Some of his most famous writings include Durgesh Nandini, the first Bengali romance and the first Bengali novel written in 1865. His first major publication, however, was Kapalakundala written in 1866.

Other writings were Mrinalini in 1869, Chandrashekhar 1877, Rajani 1877 and Krishnakanter Will in 1878. In 1882 he wrote Anandmath, a historical novel in which he included his poem Vande Mataram.

His last two novels were Devi Chaudharani and Sitaram written in 1884 and 1886 respectively.

He also published a monthly magazine called Bangadarshan in which his novel Bishabriksha appeared serially.

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee also became a deputy collector and later a deputy magistrate under the British government. After his retirement from the government services in 1891 he was made the Companion, Order of the Indian Empire, an order of Chivalry, established by the Queen in 1878.

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee is considered one of the most important literary persons in India and the best novelist in Bengali literature.

By Janhavi