Infolady- a change agent of the society

Batgirl patrols Gotham City; Manhattan depends on spider-girl; Themyscira has Wonder Woman and our Bangladesh has its own ‘Infolady’. An Infolady’s super power is information. Every moment she is serving her village using this power.  

I came across the term ‘Infolady’ (Bangla: ‘Tathyakalyani’) in 2013. The name instantly caught my attention. I came to know that there is a group of women who roam around on bicycles with a laptop, internet modem, a camera, a mobile phone etc. they go door to door in their villages and sell information. And this is how they are empowering themselves as well as their villages.     

 A social enterprise, Dnet coined the term ‘Infolady’ and invented a social entrepreneurship model envisaging women as change agents of the society. This model of info-preneurship for women has the multi-layered impacts on the lives of community people. Infoladies help marginalized citizens to overcome structural constraints and create opportunities for informed choice through access to information at the door step.

Shathi Akhtar, from Gaibandha, was one of the first Infoladies of the village, Dharabosha. She shared the experience of her journey as an Infolady. When Infolady was campaigning in Gaibandh, Shathi heard the miking one day and became interested. She went through the selection procedure and got selected. But her parents were against this new concept of Infolady model. Shathi was supposed to invest 45,000 Taka for the equipment. But she couldn’t arrange the money. Later, she convince her mother and borrowed 15,000 Taka from her and started working as an Infolady. She was kicked out of her house for going against her father and was forced to stay at her paternal aunt’s place for a week.

‘Initial 6 months were the toughest’- said Shathi. During that period, there was almost no income. The society did not accept this new concept of income generation. Moreover, the Infoladies had to go through hostility and verbal abuse every single day for the first 6 months. The elderly people of the village directly labeled Infoladies as ‘rotten women’. They were resistant to women riding bicycles. Men on the road used to taunt them. Shathi, along with 9 other Infoladies became frustrated. But they were determined to carry out the work.

At first the Infoladies used to earn 200 to 300 Taka per month. But now they earn about 12,000 to 16,000 a month. Slowly the view of the society changed. Villagers started contacting Infoladies for measuring blood pressure, testing blood sugar, determining blood group, testing pregnancy, clicking passport size photograph etc. Old women and men started taking the services of Infolady to contact their migrated sons through Skype. Students and young individuals sought help from Infoladies to browse internet. ‘The satisfaction level is so high that the villagers often pay double or triple the amount of the actual charge of the service’- Shathi explained.

Mobile lady is the predecessor to Infolady and it started its journey in 2004. In 2006, the piloting phase of Infolady programme had started. From 2011 to 2013, Infolady was scaled up through franchise model and in 2014, several new scaling up approaches have been initiated. “Currently 50 Infoladies are working in the field and they have served more than three hundred thousand citizens. Four hundred communities are getting the services of Infoladies and each community’s Benefit of Investment (BOI) is fifteen times the amount of the investment”- explained Mr. Forhad Uddin, Head of Impact and Research of Dnet.

“Through National Bank Limited, Bangladesh Bank has disbursed 100 million Taka to scale up the Infolady programme”- said Ms. Laura Mohiuddin, Head of Infolady Social Entrepreneurship Programme – ISEP. Her plan is to scale out fifteen hundred Infoladies by the end of 2016. She also mentioned, soon Infolady programme will be launched in all the districts.

Source:

Dnet

ISEP

Forhad Uddin, Head of Impact and Research of Dnet, Laura Mohiuddin

Head of Infolady Social Entrepreneurship Programme – ISEP

Shathi Akhtar, Infolady      

              

Arthur’s Odyssey

‘.. history and fiction have become inexplicably intertwined..’ –Arthur C. Clarke

‘2001: A space odyssey’ is a well-known title in the movie and book lover community. It is undoubtedly one of the world’s greatest science fictions of all time. The title keeps recurring at the top of almost all the science fiction rating lists. But why? What is so special about the movie?
Incredibly slow but very realistic; at the same time it has the ability to induce trance – this is what I was thinking while watching the movie. I did not realize the weight of it until I read the book. I was spellbound after reading it. The effect of the movie or the book is so powerful that it makes a man wonder about his very existence. There are very few novel inspired movies which are as good as the original novels. ‘2001: A space odyssey’ is one of them.
The facts revolving around the 2001: A space odyssey is an example of the perfect surreal mix of fact and fantasy. In August 24, 1989; Arthur C. Clarke wrote, ‘2001 was written in an age which now lies beyond one of the great divides in human history’. Historically the movie is very significant. It was the last space travel movie shot before men actually landed on the moon. Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins had already seen the movie when they left for the moon.
The first men ever to set eyes upon the dark side of the moon were the crew of Apollo 8. And they were tempted to radio back the discovery of a large black monolith (as shown in the movie). But of course they were refrained from this childish act.
Later, almost uncanny instances of nature imitating art were revealed. In 1970, the command module of Apollo 13 was named Odyssey. Just before the explosion of the oxygen tank which caused the mission to be aborted, the crew had been playing Richard Strauss’s ‘Zarathustra’ theme which is the opening sound track of the movie. Immediately after the power loss, Jack Swigert (NASA astronaut and crew of Apollo 13) contacted mission control and said, ‘..We’ve had a problem’. These exact words were pronounced by the protagonist, Hal of 2001: A space odyssey on a similar occasion. ‘I still get a very strange feeling when I contemplate this whole series of events- almost, indeed, as if I share a certain responsibility’- said Arthur regarding the Apollo 13 incident.
In the movie, the third confrontation between man and monolith was among the moons of Jupiter. When 2001 was written (in the mid-sixties), Jupiter’s moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto were mere points of light in the sky detected by the most powerful telescope. But within fifteen years, they were worlds. One of them, Io was found out to be the most volcanically active body in the Solar System. The similarity between the actual movies from the camera of Voyager 1 (the farthest human-made object from Earth, launched to study the outer Solar System) and Jupiter sequence from the 2001 movie fascinated Arthur.
In Chapter 35 of the book, Arthur described the discovery of the Saturnian moon (also known as Iapetus or Japetus) as a brilliant white oval with a tiny black dot at the center, which turns out to be the monolith. And when Voyager 1 transmitted the first photographs of Saturnian moon, they disclosed a large clear-cut white oval with a tiny black dot at the center. As soon as Carl Sagan (American Astrophysicist) saw these photographs, he sent a copy to Arthur with a short note saying, ‘Thinking of you’.         
However, at the premier of the movie, there were 241 walkouts and it was heavily criticized. According to the New York Times, the movie was 'Somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring'. Newsday's view was, 'Superb photography major asset to confusing, long-unfolding plot'. But, confusing people was precisely what Arthur C. Clarke was intending to do- 'If you understand 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered'- said Arthur.

         
Published:
http://bdnews24.com/entertainment/2014/05/21/arthurs-odyssey
 
Reference:
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/21/space-odyssey-kubrick-science-fiction
http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2013/oct/16/top-10-sci-fi-movies
2001: A Space Odyssey the movie
2001: A Space Odyssey the book (Author’s note)
    

Rael

What if, out of the thousands of UFO sightings that occur each year, one person actually met the occupant of these UFOs?

No, I am not referring to a science fiction movie or a book. I am referring to a person, who claims to have met the aliens. This would not have been a matter of consideration if the statement came from a complete nut case or an isolated individual. But the fact is, the person who claims to be abducted by the aliens has successfully built an ever growing follower base of more than 70,000 people in 97 countries.

Claude Vorilhon, now known as Rael, a former French racing journalist is the initiator and the promoter of ‘Raelian movement’. ‘Raelism’ also known as ‘Raelianism’ or ‘Raelian movement’ is a philosophy, a concept, a belief. The followers of this movement believe that the aliens are the ancestors of all life on earth. These followers refer to alien as ‘Elohim’. Being a Raelian means that a person believes in the fact that all life on Earth was created by the ‘Elohim’; a society who came to Earth 25,000 years ago specifically to create life.

After the first encounter with the Alien in December, 1973; Claude claims to have the new detailed explanation of the origins of life forms on Earth and information on how to organize the future. After six consecutive encounters, Claude accepted the mission given to him and started working as the messenger of the ‘Elohim’. By the year 2007, Claude created a cult of 65,000 members. Like scientology, ‘Raelianism’ is considered a ‘UFO religion’ with similar theories on intelligent design and extraterrestrial life. Currently, Raelianism is world’s largest UFO religion (numerically).     

On 9^th May, Glenn Carter, the man responsible for the UK’s Raelian movement population reveals that there is more to Raelian belief than alien ancestors. He explained, Rael (Claude’s Raelian name) is their messenger, who is here to tell the world that people of this world are in fact an intentional scientific creation. According to him, the main goal of Raelians at this stage is to create an embassy in order to facilitate and welcome the return of the Elohim to Earth. Currently, this extraterrestrial embassy is being built at Jerusalem. 

Raelians are famous for welcoming sexual freedom and scientific development. They even claim to have done human cloning successfully in 2002. An American woman underwent the cloning procedure which lead to birth of a daughter named Eve. This claimed instance explains the possibility of becoming eternal.

For more than 30 years, Rael has been travelling relentlessly while making a vow not to own anything but to give everything towards welcoming the Elohim in the extraterrestrial embassy, which is to be built before 2035.

Published: 

http://bdnews24.com/lifestyle/2014/05/12/meet-rael-the-ambassador-for-extraterrestrials

Reference:

http://www.rael.org/rael/?prophet

http://www.rael.org/home

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2624420/Inside-wacky-world-Ra-lians-cult-believes-humans-descended-ALIENS.html

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2002/dec/27/genetics.science