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Moksha Jan Utsav- bridging gaps and simplifying lives

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Moksha Foundation is recently started, zealous organisation that aims at simplifying lives. Located in Naraina, this NGO focuses on 3 primary areas of work which are, promotion of green energy, taking up information based awareness programs and providing legal advice and medical aid to those who can’t afford it. It was founded by Devesh Lalwani, a recent Bachelor of Business Studies graduate from the University of Delhi. The NGO successfully executed its first project earlier this year, called ‘The Take Two Campaign’ in association with Perfetti Van Melle.

Currently, all members of the organisation are below 25 years, with many DU students in the team. Moksha Foundation hopes to bring this youthful energy to its next project called ‘Moksha Jan Utsav’ which is a 20 week program under which an integrated camp will be held every Sunday in various slum areas and lower income group colonies in West Delhi. Through this project, the NGO will address common issues faced by the residents.

The team held its first camp on June 16 at the Satsang Bhawan in Dasghara village, Pusa Institute.

A part of the camp was a multi speciality medical camp, with a range of doctors including orthopaedists and cardiologists to help patients. The residents also availed a number of tests including BMD, ECG, ECHO screening and those to check blood pressure and sugar levels. To ensure that the best doctors were on board for the camp, the NGO had tied up with Metro Heart Institute, a leading hospital located in Naraina.

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The next section was dedicated to providing free legal consultation on civil matters. As is observed often, those with issues hesitate to seek legal advice due to the expected time and money required. The camp bridged this gap by inviting residents to talk about their concerns to Mr Tarun Bhardwaj, the lawyer Moksha Foundation is associated with. He talked them through issues related to pension, property and so on.

Apart from that, the volunteers helped the people at the Moksha Jan Utsav by checking the status of their Aadhar cards, and even printing the cards out for them to use. In the upcoming camps, the NGO will set up a booth to assist the residents to enroll for their Voter ID cards.

Despite the rain, around 400 people came to the camp.

To ensure that cases which require long term attention are not abandoned once the camp is wrapped up, effective follow up has been planned. The project has been designed in such a way that those facing such issues can seek further help from the doctors and lawyers in the future as well, at highly subsidized rates.

Dinesh Lalwani, Chief Patron of the Moksha Foundation said:

“Its through a collective effort of society and the youth that through the passage of time, the society we live in can reach a situation of normalcy were the word ‘aid’ should be a foreign concept.”

At a time when citizens of the country frequently criticize the youth for being self centred and insensitive to important causes, NGOs such as Moksha Foundation exist to prove them wrong. With a successful beginning to the project behind them, the team is determined to help the nation, step by step.

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DUB Speak

A Day in the Life of an Intern

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7:30 am:  My eyes open most reluctantly as the alarm goes off. I hit the ‘Snooze Button’ and pretend like it never even went off in the first place. I promptly go back to sleep.

8:15 am: My mother forces me to wake up by shaking me rather violently. I realise what time it is and panic for 2 minutes before I remind myself that I go through the same process every day, and hence have no reason to worry.

8:45 am: After getting ready quite hastily I drag myself to the Metro Station near my house and sleepily enter the Ladies’ Compartment.  I head off towards Noida where I’m interning this summer.

9:40 am: I finally reach the office and I’m only 10 minutes late. I make an expression like the ‘Not bad meme’ and sit down at my cubicle after greeting the other interns and my boss.

10:30 am: I’ve basically been going through a pile of paperwork and articles online, highlighting the information relevant to the project I’m supposed to research on. I look around to see what the other interns are up to and find all of them texting away at their phones. I pull my phone out to do the same.

11:15 am:  I feel (a little) guilty about being on my phone for such a long time and close all my chat and social networking site apps. I go through some more documents.

11:50 am: I decide to get myself a cup of coffee.

12:30 pm: Still going through documents and making entries in an Excel sheet. Lunch is just half an hour away, I realise happily.

1:00 pm:  Bring out the food! The interns and I head off to the canteen and sit at our usual table. The lunch thaali looks tasty today and we each buy one. Lunch hour is spent teasing each other and discussing trivial tales of our respective colleges. We also talk extensively of what would we would be doing right now if we were not interning – watching the latest movies and TV show seasons  are popular responses.

2:00 pm: Now that my stomach is full, I’m already feeling sleepy. My eyes threaten to close and my brain wants nothing more than to just doze off at the moment. But that is definitely not possible since the team has a meeting with the boss in about an hour.

2:45 pm: No one seems too pleased about the meeting. We’re all frantically finishing off our work and keeping an anxious eye on the clock.

3:30 pm: Well, I suppose it wasn’t that bad. In fact, the boss seemed happy with our progress! We spend the next hour brainstorming ideas on how to go about the next part of the project. I’m unusually alert right now.

3:50 pm: Time for another cup of coffee. Hmm, maybe some snacks too.

4:15 pm: Little more than hour to go.

4:30 pm: I strike up a conversation with the guy in the next cubicle about the latest Khaled Hosseini book. We both end up placing an order for it on Flipkart.

5:00 pm: I’m tempted to drink another cup of coffee but I manage to control myself by Googling ‘Health hazards of too much caffeine’ and convince myself that coffee is an evil addiction that must be curbed. For now, that is. I type out the weekly report I’m supposed to submit.

5:25 pm: I’m done with my work for the day but I can’t leave yet. I try to beat my Temple Run 2 high score-followed by Fruit Ninja and Paper Toss. I also list out all the things I’m going to buy with my stipend once I get it.

5:45 pm: FREEDOM AT LAST! I leave the building super-fast, as though I’ve been possessed by Flash’s spirit.

6:45 pm: I wake into my house, exhausted. I WhatsApp a few friends and sip some cold coffee.
Then I just lie down for a while. If nothing else, my internship has at least taught me to appreciate the beauty of coming back from a day’s work and doing absolutely…nothing!

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Campus Central

A New Campus for DDUC

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The Foundation Stone Laying Ceremony of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College’s new campus at Dwarka Sector 3 took place on Wednesday, the 20th of February. Students, teachers, guests and dignitaries collected on the grounds of the new campus and welcomed Sheila Dikshit who was the Chief Guest for the day. The Lighting of the Lamp was followed by a ‘Kalanjali’, a cultural performance by the college’s choir. The street play society, Yavanika then put up a play after which Raaga, the dance society took the stage. Their performance received an enthusiastic response from the audience. After the students’ performances, Shiela Dikshit unveiled the foundation stone. Dr S K Garg, Principal of DDUC shared the college’s annual report highlighting the main events and achievements of the year. The Guest of Honour Dr A.K. Walia, the Minister for Health and Higher Education then addressed the gathering followed by a speech by the Chief Guest. After that Professor Dinesh Singh, the Vice Chancellor, University of Delhi took the stage to share his thoughts with the audience. As the college’s Annual Day was also held on the same day, meritorious students were awarded prizes and trophies. The Chairman of the college’s Governing Board, Shri Tom Vadakkan gave the Vote of Thanks. The ceremony concluded on a patriotic note with the National Anthem after which lunch was served. When asked about the significance of this occasion, Arpit Suri, the Presdent of the Student’s Union in DDUC said, ‘I am delighted to be a part of this great institution which is on its way to achieve excellence in the field of higher education. We have facedsome limitations in terms of academic space, ambience and facilities for holistic development. But now, we are taking a big step ahead to move on to a new campus and achieve new gloryin coming years. I am thankful to all the students for their active participation and hope for many such landmark events for the college.’]]>

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Campus Central

Histronica: Day Three!

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Day 3 of Histronica, a fest organised by the Dramatics Society of SRCC kicked off with their event ‘Charades’ which showcased plays by various colleges. The judges were Shibani Puri, a designer, director and an NSD alumnus and Dr M Sayed Allam who has had wide experience in acting, script writing and directing for over 25 plays. The event started with a play by LSR titled ‘Attempts on Her Life’ which had 4 actors taking the stage and performing with simple props. The play’s director, Ms Gajju said, ‘This is our annual piece, a play written by the British playwright Martin Crimp. We’ve been practicing for about 2 months now’. Next to perform was the dramatics society of Ramjas College, ‘Shunya’. Their self-composed play called ‘Saints and Sinners’ had a rustic appeal to it and the funny and witty dialogues kept the audience in splits of laughter. The play however ended on a serious note. After a short break, SRCC’s students took the stage with the play ‘Noises Off’ which was a Hinglish comedy about people rehearsing for a play. The funny script about a play in a play kept the audience hooked. The next event lined up for the day was a Mob Freeze organised by an NGO, Education Tree around the theme ‘Jo merahai, who merahai’ which basically stressed on a woman’s complete right over her own body. The informal events for Day 3 included a live performance by the band Faridkot which saw a large turnout. A Battle of the Bands competition was also held where the best band was awarded a music contract. “The entire event has received a very good response from colleges all across the University. We’ve had performances from some of the best dramatics societies and a lot of theatre enthusiasts have been attending the event as the audience. The play that received the best response from the viewers was “12 Angry Men”, by KMC. What we wanted to celebrate was the true spirit of theatre and hence the events were non-competitive. The judges did share their critique though, through a discussion with the students. We started working on Histronica from December last year and we’re happy with the kind of response we’ve got”, said Gauri Chandra, a first year Economics student in the Organising Committee.  ]]>

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Features

Moksha Foundation: Simplifying Lives

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Barack Obama once said ‘Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the change we seek’.  A similar thought led Devesh Lalwani, a third year BBS student at Deen Dayal Upadhaya College to start an NGO called Moksha Foundation. Located in Naraina, this NGO focuses on 3 primary areas of work which are promotion of green energy, information based awareness programs and providing legal advice and medical aid to those who can’t afford it.

‘The idea behind Moksha Foundation was the constant nagging amongst my friends circle and then society as a whole that our generation can only talk about ideas like changing the world-which are easier said than done. Through this NGO we hope to simplify lives, working on individual household issues while keeping the entire society in mind’, said Lalwani.

Their premier project in association with Perfetti Van Mellewas called the ‘Week of Giving’ which included the ‘Take Two Campaign’. This campaign was held from the 28th of January to the 1st of February. The concept behind it was that two packets of chips were distributed to each student in certain government schools-one of which was for them to keep and they were encouraged to give the other one to someone who they thought couldn’t afford it. ‘The point we’re trying to emphasize on is the joy of giving, even if it is something as simple as a packet of chips. We’ve urged them to carry forward the movement with even bigger things in the future. While talking to the students, we asked them what they wanted to become in life. We got many answers like engineers, pilots and lawyers. We hoped to make them realise that there are many children who don’t have an opportunity to study and never get a chance to achieve their dreams’, said Angad Madan, the Chief Co-ordinator of the project. During the course of the week they distributed over 15,000 packets of chips in various government schools in West Delhi like DI Khan BS Senior Secondary School, Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya and Bapu Adarsh School.

The NGO has many more projects lined up in the upcoming months. The applications for the Core Team of the organisation closed last week and the results of the same will be announced in February.

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DUB Speak

Of cats and skydivers – Viral sensations in 2012

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There are always some specific events and moments each year that tend to stay with us and stick out in our memories as things that defined the year gone by. As December comes to a close, let’s take a look at some viral sensations in the world of pop culture in 2012.

Gangnam Style: Love it, or hate it, this viral video is hard to ignore. Sung by the South Korean K-Pop star Psy, Gangnam Style was posted in July 2012. Since then it has gained over a billion views and millions of ‘likes’. The video took the world by storm making Psy a global celebrity. In the singer’s own words, the song’s theme is ‘Dress classy, dance cheesy’. It is not really that easy to explain why the video became this popular, especially considering the fact that most of its viewers probably don’t even understand the lyrics.  But its success can mainly be attributed to its signature horse-riding steps and catchy tune. If nothing else it can at least be appreciated for dethroning Justin Bieber’s   ‘Baby’ as the most viewed Youtube video of all time.

Ridiculously Photogenic Guy: This meme has an interesting story behind it. Taken by a photographer at a marathon in South Carolina, this candid and seemingly random picture of a runner (later identified as Zeddie Little) was uploaded on Flickr where he was tagged as the ‘Ridiculously Photogenic Guy’. It went viral soon after with over 3,00,000 views within an hour of it being posted. People all across the internet drooled over him and created numerous memes based on the picture. Zeddie Little even created a Twitter account and a Tumblr blog to answer questions from his fans, most of whom wanted to know the secret behind his attractiveness.

Grumpy cat meme: It is no secret that cats have a highly acclaimed status on the internet, with cat videos and pictures being very popular. This cat however, was unlike any other seen before. A picture of an angry looking cat nicknamed the ‘Grumpy Cat’ went viral after it was posted on Reddit. This meme was viewed over 10,30,000 times in the first 48 hours. The owners of the cat (whose real name is Tard) then posted videos of him on Youtube.  This internet famous feline even has parody Twitter accounts like @VeryGrumpyCat and @RealGrumpyCat.

Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic sky dive video: While the reasons for other viral videos and memes may not be that clear, it is no mystery why this one became so popular. The Austrian Sky diver’s super leap from an altitude of 24 miles above the Earth’s surface was streamed live online. The video received 8 million views in a matter of minutes. No doubt the marketing of the event had a role to play, but the video itself is exhilarating to watch. Millions of people across the world held their breath as ‘Fearless Felix’ travelled faster than the speed of sound and created 3 new world records.

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Campus Central

A Step in the Right Direction-Design Innovation Centre

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Taking the concept of innovation further, the Cluster Innovation Centre (CIC) at Delhi University, will now be setting up a Design Innovation Centre after receiving approval from the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

This decision was taken to foster creativity and innovative education among undergraduate students while also focusing on research. As of now, the centres are only available to students who have taken up courses at the CIC, like B.Tech in innovation with mathematics & IT and B.Tech in Humanities. Officials hope to expand accessibility of the same to other DU colleges in the future.

The Centre will provide under graduate and post graduate diplomas in Design Innovation as well as facilities for planning and implementation of various projects. It will cover areas such as Electronics, Communication, Urban Infrastructure, Transport and Education, while laying emphasis on concept generation, image development, prototype development and so on. The labs that will be set up under this system include Media and Graphics Lab, Rapid Prototype Lab, Software Lab, Modelling and Simulation Lab, amongst others.

In the era of growth and cutting edge technology, this step is definitely in the right direction to help provide students with a conducive and well equipped environment for innovation and creativity.

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Arts & Culture

Not so taken by Taken 2

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Liam Neeson returns to the box office along with his “very particular set of skills” in Taken 2, the sequel to Taken, an action thriller released in 2008.

This time the Armenian gang involved in human trafficking is out to take revenge on Bryan Mills (Neeson), who killed quite a few members of their gang while saving his daughter, Kim who had been kidnapped in Taken. In their attempt to do so, they abduct Bryn and his ex-wife, Lenore while the family is on vacation in Istanbul. Strangely enough, it is their ever panicky daughter Kim who plays a huge role in saving them.

In terms of the plot, it is very much similar to the first movie. The chases and the fights do get a bit stretched out, especially since there is no climax that will leave you mind blown. Certain scenes will leave you confused, like the one where the bad guys patiently wait for Mills to call his daughter right in front of them to inform her that he and Lenore were being taken (since it would obviously be bad manners to interrupt, right?) and giving her directions to save herself.

Taken 2 is a bit of a let-down in the sense that it is not as sharp and thrilling as its predecessor. But then again, there are definitely some scenes that will leave you thinking, “Wow, that was smart!” and it is always a pleasure watching Liam Neeson killing off the villains in a number of different ways.

Though the movie has largely received critical reviews, it did exceedingly well with fans at the box office with an opening weekend of $50 million. Taken 2, is by no means a bad movie, and though it is not as good as the first part, it stills makes for an enjoyable watch.

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Campus Central

Belling the CAT 2012!

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The road to the IIMs and many other reputed B-schools in India starts off with the all India CAT examination. This year, over 2.14 lakh candidates registered for the exam, a growth from the 2.06 lakh forms sold last year.

The dates for CAT 2012 are scheduled between the 11th of October and the 6th of November. The exam consists of 2 sections, the quantitative ability and data interpretation section and the verbal ability and logical reasoning. Each section includes 30 multiple choice questions. Many students opt for coaching classes for the exam, with TIME, IMS and Career Launcher being popular options. “Taking classes helps to organise and structure the preparation. Instead of tackling it in a haphazard manner, they help students lay down a plan of action. It also develops a competitive spirit in you when you’re studying in a class with around 40 other MBA aspirants!”, said Randeep Mahajan, a third year BCom (Hons) student in DU.

The weeks leading up to the exam saw a flurry of tips, dos and don’ts on various websites and Facebook pages to help maximise CAT scores. Though there were not too many students appearing for the exam on the first day, those who did, gave mixed reactions. While some reported it to be an easy, typical first day paper, others complained about the difficulty of the quantitative section. The results of the exam will be announced in January, next year.

Though it remains a popular course, the craze to acquire an MBA degree has lessened considerably in the past few years. Students are no longer blindly sitting for management entrance exams simply for the sake of it. As Amogh Dhar Sharma, a third year Economics student at Hindu College puts it, “MBAs are straight-jacketed to meet the needs of the corporate sector. I’m not sure if I want to pursue such a specific degree. I would rather get some work experience and then consider it”.

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Events

Orizzonte- A Management Fiesta for School Students by DDUC

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There are numerous inter college fests held in DU all around the year. However, there are very few events organised for school students by colleges. Fests for school students allow them to catch a glimpse of college life and the kind of competitive events that take place at a university level. Addressing this, the Department of Business Studies, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College is organising Orizzonte, its first ever Annual Management Festival for Schools.

Scheduled for Tuesday, the 16th of October, Orizzonte will be held at the North Campus Conference Centre. The selected events are sure to challenge the students’ creativity, analytic abilities and reasoning. The competitions include core management related events like Product Designing, Stalking the Stock (mock stock), Biz Quest (business quiz) and Think Pot (group discussion). In addition to these, a Movie Making competition will be held, with the theme ‘Black and White’ and an entertainment quiz, The Couch Potato Quiz, will be a fun event with students answering question about TV show sitcoms and Harry Potter.

The program will also allow students to get a feel of what it is like to study Bachelor of Business Studies, the only undergraduate management course in the University of Delhi. The theme for the event is “Exploring new horizons” and the entire proceedings of the day have been carefully laid out, keeping the theme in mind. The main aim of Orizzonte is to inspire school students to think differently, and compete with each other on a whole new level. As Sanchetna Kapur, the President of Spettro the BBS society of DDUC puts it, “Through Orizzonte we hope to provide students an opportunity to explore the various aspects of management education and the prospects of the same. It will radically change the way a school student looks at competitive events and allow them to challenge themselves in a healthy manner”.
Further details about the event can be found at https://www.facebook.com/Orizzonte.Dduc

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