December 20, 2014

India holds its breath when Atletico de Kolkata’s fierce striker Lemessa goes past all the defenders with his flashing speed and heads on with the last man. Lemessa scores the first goal of the league, and the entire stadium erupts in euphoria and passion. Well, this is Indian Super League, unique and pushing freshness into the country’s dream of entering the biggest gala on the planet – FIFA World Cup. A visionary league, ISL aims at raising the standard of football in India and seeing it qualify for the 2026 FIFA world cup.

Co promoted by IMG-Reliance, All India Football Federation (AIFF) and Star India, the League has 8 teams representing various football traditions of the country. European clubs like ACF Fiorentina, Atletico Madrid and Feyenoord FC have stakes in these clubs along with Bollywood stars and business giants like John Abraham, Ranbhir Kapoor, Harshavardhan Neotia, Prasad V Potluri and the Videocon group.

With the lower limit for domestic players on the squad being 14, International wizards like Del Piero, Elano, David James, Materazzi and Anelka are the icing on the cake. Indians couldn’t contain their happiness when it was revealed in a press release that ISL is the best attended football league in Asia and the fifth highest football league in average attendance in the world only after Bundesliga, EPL, La Liga and Serie A, and ahead of the USA’s popular MLS, French Ligue 1 and Mexico’s Liga MX.

Accompanied by Twitter wars and a 1.2 million strong army of followers on Facebook, the matches are aired on 8 channels in India and 3 internationally. With quality matches, capturing video graphics, previews and telecasts of the league in many languages, Indians are now driven by football fever and defence of their favourites.

The closure of the league brings two co cricketers head to head in an unprecedented clash guaranteed to pump adrenaline among both football and cricket fans. Saurav Ganguly’s Atletico de Kolkata crushed the hopes of FC Goa in the semi final by defeating the side in penalty shootouts. Sachin Tendulkar’s Kerala Blasters faced stiff competition against Chennaiyin FC but managed to get past it. On paper, both the sides have fared equally well in the league. Now that we’ve reached the end of the League, all that remains to be seen is which team will bag the first Indian Super League Trophy when ‘Dada’ and ‘Master Blaster’ meet at DY Patil stadium in Mumbai!

Sidharth Yadav
[email protected]

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Sign languages are considered means to communicate with people devoid of the ability to hear (the deaf) or by those who can hear but are unable to speak (the dumb). A sign language makes use of visually transmitted sign patterns to convey meaning by simultaneously combining hand shapes, facial expressions, orientation and movement of hands, arms, or body to express the speaker’s thoughts. Each country generally has its own sign language or languages, which might share similarities with another country.

In India, 63 million people suffer from significant auditory loss. Delhi University, as part of a project of Cluster Innovation Centre (CIC), has trained over 2000 police personnel in an attempt to sensitise them about the problems faced by the deaf in communicating with the police. The effort now extends towards training nursing staff in hospitals across Delhi in the use of Indian Sign Language (ISL) to aid communication between the hearing-impaired patients and the staff.

On 26 September, CIC observed “Deaf Day” by holding an interactive workshop “Hear to Heal: Learning to Speak With The Deaf” in which Dr. Satbir Silas Bedi, Principal Secretary, Ministry of Social Welfare was the chief guest.

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Hospital staff being trained to help deaf and dumb[/caption]

Dr. Hina Nandrajog, Associate Professor at Vivekananda College, along with six students of Delhi University from B.A. Hons. (Humanities & Social Sciences) has been working on the project since August 2014. Dr. Nandrajog has also worked at CIC on deputation.

Training sessions have been conducted for the nursing staff in collaboration with the National Association of Deaf, Noida Deaf Society, Abled&Heard and SPARSH. The sessions have been conducted in Hindu Rao and Kasturba hospitals. AIIMS and Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital are the probable venues for the next session. The next phase of the project has been already sketched and will be conducted by a different team.

“Youth has the power to transform the society. Therefore we are getting in touch with college students who can in turn find diverse, innovative ways to create awareness about ISL and the need for its popularisation”, Dr. Hina told DU Beat.

Ishani Rajkhowa [email protected]

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