分类： bharat

Thousands of migrant labourers who are leaving quarantine centres and those who are under home quarantine across Bihar are getting condoms from State Health Society amid the coronavirus lockdown.

“Migrant labourers are going to their homes after completing the 14-day institutional quarantine. Since there are chances of unwanted pregnancies, so we properly counsel them (migrant labourers) and give them tools (such as condoms) to avoid unwanted pregnancy,” a senior Health department official told news agency PTI.

The official, who is entrusted with Family Planning in State Health Society, also said “it is purely a family planning measure and has nothing to do with COVID-19. As a health professional, it is our responsibility to control the population. We have been taking the support of our health partner Care India to implement the initiative.”

The official said unwanted pregnancies have witnessed a surge the world over during the lockdown and it was against this backdrop that the initiative was launched.

The initiative will continue till the quarantine centres are functioning, he added.

Of the 28 to 29 lakh migrants who have returned to the state, 8.77 lakh people have been discharged as they have completed their 14-day quarantine period. Besides, 5.30 lakh migrants, till date, are living at block and district level quarantine centres across the state.

After the lockdown that has been imposed due to the spread of Coronavirus, one of the challenges the filmmakers are likely to face is shooting the intimate scenes without risking the health of the actors.

The challenge has got the movie makers into thinking whether shooting intimate scenes would be a thing of the past post-pandemic or should there be a set of rules and processes that need to be followed while filming such scenes.

Cine & TV Artistes’ Association(CINTAA), the Screen Actors Guild American Federation of Television And Radio Artistes have also teamed up to work on the SOPs that may be needed too follow during shooting intimate scenes.

Amit Behl, Senior Joint Secretary and Chairperson of the Outreach Committee CINTAA told Outlook: “Since CINTAA is the oldest and the biggest actor’s association in the country and we are affiliated to the Federation of International Actors, world’s biggest body of performing artists across 83 countries, we are actually awaiting the proper guidelines issued by our parent union, FIA supported by the Screen Actors Guild of American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Their guidelines, which are definitely going to be approved by the WHO, is going to be implemented worldwide and it is going to be the same for all.”

“In India also, we are basically looking at virologists on the set, somebody approved by the ICMR who can handle intimacy guidelines and also we are concerned about asymptomatic carriers on the sets,” Behl added.

Google intervened on Tuesday after millions of Indians rushed to download a service that promised to help them rid their smartphones of Chinese apps.

Remove China Apps, from the Indian developer OneTouch AppLabs, was downloaded 4.7m times in India between May 27 and June 1, according to Sensor Tower data.

The app was briefly the most popular on India’s Google Play Store before the Silicon Valley company removed it on Tuesday, according to App Annie, another app data provider. Google’s policies forbid Android apps that help people to delete or disable other apps.

The popularity of Remove China Apps, which promised to alert users to any Chinese-made apps on their phones, comes after unease over the influx of Chinese tech companies and a move by New Delhi to tighten foreign direct investment rules for Chinese firms.

It also coincided with the rise in tensions on the India-China border, noted Parv Sharma, an analyst at Counterpoint Research.

In response, Indian engineer and reformer Sonam Wangchuk called for a boycott of Chinese products. In his tweets and videos, Mr Wangchuk said that Indians should “USE [their] WALLET POWER” rather than rely solely on military force to beat Beijing.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi had also spoken about the importance of self-reliance, said Mr Sharma. Both Mr Wangchuk and Mr Modi were mentioned by the developers behind Remove China Apps.

As of the first quarter of 2020, Chinese smartphone makers made up over 70 per cent of the Indian market, according to Counterpoint Research. Chinese apps have also made major inroads in the country.

SensorTower estimated that TikTok had 636m downloads in India, excluding third-party Android stores. That compares to 277m downloads for Instagram and 99m for Snapchat from 1 January 2014 to the present.

Hannah Bailey, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, said the three biggest concerns around the spread of such apps were censorship, data security and the potential for computational propaganda and dissemination of a pro-Beijing agenda.

While it had a rating of 4.9 stars on the Google store, comments before it was taken down showed that Remove Chinese Apps did not pick up apps with well-known Chinese connections, such as Shenzhen-based internet giant Tencent’s battle-royale PUBG mobile, as well as pre-installed apps on Chinese smartphones.

OneTouch’s website only said that the country of origin was discovered “based on the market research” but did not guarantee accuracy.

OneTouch did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr Sharma also said that some apps would be difficult to replace. Mitron, a TikTok rival that reached 10m downloads in India in a month and a half, was removed this week from the Google Play Store amid accusations in the Indian media about security flaws and recycled code. “Developing an app that is secure, with a focus on privacy and an interactive user interface, takes a lot of effort and testing,” said Mr Sharma.