Singhad @ Adventure Club (19-june-08)

It was a cloudy day in the midst of the week, and the ZCBI adventure club was all geared up to trek the inviting slopes of Sinhgad. The huge fort perched on top of the mountain looked more formidable when we approached it early morning. The strenuous trek up the mountainside took close to 90 minutes and we were exhausted by the time we reached the entrance, but a nimbu-paani was all it took to get us refreshed again. We toured the echo point, the wind point and the kalyan darwaaja with a light drizzle and the thin mountain air for company. The experience provided a welcome break in our schedule, and we were thoroughly refreshed after the trek. The adventure club plans to have such treks once a fortnight.

ZCBI @ Second Life

Second Life, a free virtual environment on the Internet where users create avatars, move around, interact with other users’ avatars. 3D virtual environment gives a very interactive platform to learn and share knowledge.
Moving with the new trend of online education Zensar Center for Business Innovation is the first and the only Indian institute to have presence on Second Life.
Currently the group of students working for Second life project are in process of building Zensar Innovation Land.

Please check the following link to visit ZCBI campus

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Krypto/141/199/39

Visit to Akansha Education center at Chandan Nagar locality (24-june-08)

Ehsaas - An introspection organised a visit to Akansha Education center at Chandan Nagar locality.

The visit was organised with the aim of giving a first hand experiance to the students at ZCBI to understand the social initiative at Zensar Technologies.Akansha education Center at Chandan Nagar is run by Zensar Technologies to provide an opportunity to underpriveliged kids to learn computer and nuances of english along with value eduaction.Around 20 students went with the aim of imparting some knowledege to the kids but returned themselves enriched with lot of knowledge from the kids.

Zcbi'ans began their interaction by singing few songs with the kids. The kids were really happy to see the ZCBI'ans singing song. This was followed by an introduction of the kids. It was really great to see the kids being so eloquent and focused about their goals in life.

Once the introduction was over we conducted a small quiz related to India. The kids showcased a deep understanding of the Indian facts. They not only showed their vast knowledge base, but also a deep interest to learn and inculcate. Some of the students who were studying for their last term, had studied for a project on the Netherlands. The amount of knowledge they had about the subject astounded us, and at the end of the session we ended up learning a lot about the scandinavian country. The students' conduct showed a great deal of discipline and they were genuinely happy at the end of the session.

Overall, it was a very good experience and we intend to continue with this initiative in larger numbers in future. As part of EHSAAS the student plan to visit the center regularly on a monthly basis.

Exit option for US in Iraq

War has been the most the terrible thing to have happened to mankind and has been its scourge since it realized self and identities.

What makes it much more grievous than even diseases or natural disaster, is perhaps a realization of its, futility, preventability, a sense of injustice and over all the guilt of being a party to this pogrom of fratricide.

Iraq today presents, yet another glaring example of a nation, and a civilization torn apart by greed of parochialism. As an antithesis to Arab nationality, enriched by the natural bounty of oil, juxtaposed to the origins of human civilization and an area central to all the three Abrahamic faith.

The backdrop of the crisis is:

With the breakdown of Ottoman Empire, the British divided the Arabian Peninsula, and popped up rulers, under their protection, and in a similar way, created Kuwait in a manner such as to squeeze Iraq’s entry into the Persian Gulf. The cold war heightened the tension, with Iraq joining the Russian bloc and signing the Baghdad pact. As a fall out of it, the baathist came to power and saddam Hussein established a firm, and tyrannical to his tribe of origin, the tikritians, and then his sect of Sunni Arabs, a discriminatory and reprehension regime was formed and the decade long Iran Iraq war was an ominous extension. During the war as Iraq got buried under debt, it attacked Kuwait, eyeing its oil fields as well as to increase its control over the Persian Gulf and it prompted, an US led international retaliation under Operation Desert Storm, which stopped short of dethroning saddam and imposed crippling sanction on his regime. In abid to enable rebellion , many measure like , no flying zone and mass demilitarization , which reached its peak during the operation Desert Fox(1998) , the final phase was against the backdrop of 9/11 bombing and has resulted in overthrowing of saddam’s regime and the US led forces trying to maintain a country plunged deep into civil war.

All said and done, Iraq has proved to be too complex for such simplistic analysis and the US, along with its war machine finds itself enmeshed into this treacherous polity of middle east, trying to fight, its plummeting moral authority, hatred of Muslim world, almost bringing the world into the brink of a clash of civilization, rising causality by a day, almost 4000 and counting. A falling currency and impending recession, and a condition where oil prices have crossed $100 a barrel and the already fragile world order and international institution has been run down.

The US and the saver world now grapple for a way out. A way which is

• Honorable for the US
• Assuaging the hurt Islamic feeling
• Capable of establishing peace and order in Iraq
• Acceptance to the divergent groups in Iraq
• Maintains regional balance of powers
• Reinforce energy security for the world
• Creates a situation favorable to the international drive against terrorism.

The first option is a long term investment by the US in taking over a gradual rebuilding of Iraq and its institution. Bringing over a force much larger, at least around 200,000. Disarmament of the sectarian forces, building up of a credible army and police forces, governing and judicial institution, reestablishing the oil sector in a public- private partnership model and then a gradual democratization of its polity.

This calls for a commitment and involvement, not available with the US polity. A war costing 200 billion $ a year, is not acceptable to the US public and there is no acceptance of further responsibilities.

Second available option , is a US retreat and UN takeover, facilitated by security council resolution , and a Un peace keeping force, with mainly forces from , Arabic and Islamic nations, and a gradual democratization, with world assistance following , similar to Afghanistan . But we see the results are not very encouraging and the biggest drawback would be an army large enough

Third option would be to trifurcate Iraq into Shia, Sunni and Kurd majority areas, but it would disturb regional balance with Shia regions, joining bloc with Iran and turkey opposing Kurd nation.

As we see options are many but they call for a statesmanship, not in view at present, and what can be best hoped is some intrinsic leadership to emerge and some internal consensus evolving around it.

By:- Komal Singhal