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Where the river meets the sea: Photo exhibition narrates degradation of the Sunderbans

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By Saket Suman
Panaji, Dec 21 (IANS) How does a photographer give expression to the many stories of personal and ecological loss from the Sunderbans? She picks up her camera and focuses her lens on several themes as well as incidents to narrate the gradual loss that the Ganga-Brahmaputra basin is constantly facing.

“A Slow Violence: Stories from the largest river basin in the world” is a haunting and, to a large extent, disturbing exhibition that is on display at the ongoing Serendipity Arts Festival here. Curated by Dinesh Khanna, the exhibition displays the photographs of Arati Kumar-Rao, whose environment-focused stills have appeared in leading national and international publications.

The first image that one sees at this exhibition is an aerial view of the Sunderbans, captured not at an ordinary time but in December 2014 when a cargo ship rammed an oil tanker moored in the Sunderbans, in Bangladesh. The photograph shows a lone boat passing through the delta, where the oil spill is clearly visible. Some 358,000 litres of heavy fuel oil spilled into the eco-sensitive region and the Unesco world Heritage Site has never been the same again.

“Slow-violence is neither spectacular nor instanteous, and is borne by people away from the eye of graphic media and loud news-cycles. The social fallout of environmental degradation, for example, is a slow violence. It unfolds in temporal timescales, its true implications manifesting over several generations and, often, in places far removed from the trigger points,” the photographer Kumar-Rao, who is working on her first book, mentions in a note accompanying the exhibition.

The Sunderbans is the largest mangrove in the world, home to many endangered species like the Royal Bengal Tiger and the Gangetic Dolphin, they act as a buffer against storm surges and rising sea levels. But the exhibition shows that all is not well.

“In a startling show of apathy, the government left the fisherfolk to clean the mess. Armed with nothing more than pots and pans, sans gloves, shoes or masks, they sank all their time into it. Men, women and children suffered skin, respiratory and digestive issues,” Kumar-Rao added, as she introduced the next set of images.

In one of them, half a body of a woman is seen, with the oil-spilled delta in the backdrop. Her right hand, the only one visible because of the angle from which the image was taken, is marred in thick black tar. Her clothes are marred too.

The next three images take the onlookers right inside the settlements of the fishermen, where they are seen “cleaning the mess”. An old man is struggling to breathe, another of his kind is seen collecting oil in a small jar and the third shows just two hands — both marred in tar.

The last set of images consist of three separate photographs, the first showing the rich eco-system of the region, the second showing the daunting presence of the oil-spill at a much later date and the last is again an aerial shot of the delta.

The other half of the exhibition focuses on the livelihood aspect and brings presents some graphic images that evoke a sense that, in the photographer’s own words, “the fishes have disappeared”. Again divided into sets, the photographs depict the impact of dams, overfishing and similar issues in the Ganga-Brahmaputra basin.

(Saket Suman is in Goa at the invitation of the organisers of the Serendipity Arts Festival. He can be contacted at [email protected])

–IANS
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Casino Days Reveal Internal Data on Most Popular Smartphones

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CasinoDays India

International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.

Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.

The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.

Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile

The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.

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The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.

“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.

Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings

Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.

 

CasinoDays India

Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).

Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.

The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.

Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.

Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities

The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.

On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.

Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.

“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.

The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.

 

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