The Canadian Parvasi - Issue 05

The International News Weekly July 28, 2017 | Toronto 08
NEWS
India will have more
than 850 million online
users by 2025
NEW DELHI: India will have more than 850 million online
users by 2025, with Reliance Jio 4G triggering most
of the growth which has added 100 million connections in
just seven months, a survey revealed on Thursday.
"While it took the country eight years to reach 250
million 3G connections, Reliance Jio 4G network added
100 million connections in just seven months," said
the survey conducted by the Boston Consulting Group
(BCG). It estimated that by 2020, half of all Internet users
in India will be rural, 40 per cent of whom will be women
and 33 per cent will be of 35 years of age or older. "Digital's
impact is becoming pervasive across all consumer segments.
This breaks the earlier trend in the country when
the initial digital consumers were male, millennial and
mostly metro-based," the survey noted.
It predicted that digitally influenced spending, which
currently stands at $45 billion-$50 billion a year, may
increase more than tenfold to between $500 billion-$550
billion."This will account for 30 per cent to 35 per cent
of all retail sales by 2025," the survey found. The survey
examined the changing behaviour of Indian consumers
across more than 50 product categories through questionnaires
and interviews with more than 10,000 consumers
in 30 locations nationwide. IANS
Talking to yourself may
help control emotions
NEW YORK: Feeling stuck in negativity? Talking to
yourself may help you control emotions without taking
any additional mental effort, researchers say, adding the
talk has to be in third person. The findings suggest that
third-person self-talk may constitute a relatively effortless
form of emotion regulation than using first person
self-talk -- the way people normally talk to themselves.
Third-person self-talk may also act as an on-the-spot
strategy for regulating one's emotions, as many other
forms of emotion regulation require considerable thought
and effort, the researchers said. "Essentially, we think
referring to yourself in the third person leads people to
think about themselves more similar to how they think
about others, and you can see evidence for this in the
brain," said Jason Moser, Associate Professor at the Michigan
State University in the US. "That helps people gain a
tiny bit of psychological distance from their experiences,
which can often be useful for regulating emotions," Moser
added. For the study, published in the journal Scientific
Reports, the team involved two experiments. In the first
experiment, participants viewed neutral and disturbing
images while their brain activity was monitored by an
electroencephalograph. (IANS)
Indian jailed for 30 months in
US for selling gun silencers
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau at BAPS Toronto on its 10th anniversary.
Guiding Canada down a multicultural
food path, with consequences
By Sylvain Charlebois
HALIFAX (Troy Media): The new
principles Health Canada will use for its
next food guide signal a complete revamp
of our rainbow of food groups.
It appears a plant-based diet will be
strongly encouraged. We might even
see a focus on more plant-based proteins
like beans, lentils, nuts and tofu in the
next Canada's Food Guide. This would
represent a significant departure from
what we've seen in the guide since its establishment
in the 1940s.Health Canada
also suggests other significant changes,
making many traditional agriculture
sectors anxious. While the guide's current
format of groups and colours has
proven convenient and simple, the proposed
changes aim for a nutrition-based
approach. That will likely group proteins
and apply to all dietary needs, vegan or
vegetarian lifestyles included.
It probably won't abandon outright
the main staples that Canadian consumers
have embraced for decades, but the
food guide will look and feel different.
The next version will acknowledge, at
last, that Canada has a dynamic, heterogenous
food market. It will also encourage
Canadians to drink more water, and entice
them to cook more and eat together.
That's all good news.
The current food guide clearly has
baggage. The first guide, in 1942, was
intended to build demand for Canadian
commodities during the Second World
War. Concerns about food security were
acute and Canada sought to be a food-sovereign
nation. Agricultural embargoes
were frequent. But things have changed
and we have a more open food economy.
The shift in food geopolitics means consumers
have different choices and expectations.
In the past, things went too far
when commodity-driven recommendations
were incorporated into the guide,
supported by questionable science. For
example, encouraging adult Canadians
to have two cups of milk a day is just absurd.
We're one of few countries still advocating
this.
The Dairy Farmers of Canada may
not like this but Canada in 2017 is a different
place. Many immigrants don't
drink milk. Many consumers suffer from
intolerances and allergies. And we have
many more choices than Canadians had
in 1942. This time, Health Canada did
the right thing: it listened to Canadians.
More than 20,000 Canadians have responded
to requests for food guide suggestions,
making the process more open
and democratic than ever. Parents, teachers,
physical education professionals and
fitness enthusiasts, culinary experts, and
many more community-based groups,
including food banks, got involved. This
is exactly what was needed.
The principles suggested by Health
Canada show they want a food guide
primarily for Canadians. However, that
guide may be at odds with some agricultural
policies. Canada's protectionist
supply management system of quotas
and tariffs shows that our dairy sector,
for example, is vital to the agricultural
economy and must be protected. The
dairy sector's economic contribution
over the years has been unparalleled.
However, Canadian per capita milk consumption
has dropped significantly over
the last few decades. The new food guide
could lead Canadians even further from
milk, compromising the welfare of many
farms. The same effects will be felt in the
cattle industry.
As we necessarily put consumers
first, we also need to reflect on what will
happen to Canadian farming. The next
food guide will make the disconnect between
Canadian agricultural policies and
food consumption much more obvious.
The new food policy framework, being
considered by Agriculture Canada, must
address this gap. In the end, though, what
matters most is how the guide resonates
with citizens and how it can be used. This
won't be easy. The current version is really
a tool for elementary schools, not for
consumers looking for answers.
Perhaps we'll need two guides: one
for health professionals and one for regular
consumers. Both would be designed
to achieve similar outcomes, with messages
articulated differently. For consumers,
the economics of food should
also be recognized. Food is expensive,
and all consumers must be made aware
of their options.Revamping our rainbow
of food groups is obviously a multifaceted
undertaking.
(Sylvain Charlebois is a Senior Fellow Atlantic
Institute for Market Studies)
New York: An Indian citizen
has been jailed for 30
months by a federal court
in Louisiana in the US for
illegally selling gun silencers
and planning to smuggle
more of them disguised
as auto parts.
Mohit Chauhan, 31,
who is from Pitampura in
New Delhi and was sentenced
on Tuesday, admitted
before federal Judge
Elizabeth E. Foote in April
that he had dealt with firearms
without a license.
Alexander C. Van Hook,
the acting federal prosecutor
for Western Louisiana,
said on Wednesday that
Chauhan was contacted
by someone who wanted
to buy silencers and he discussed
by email and phone
manufacturing silencers
for the client.
The silencers were to
be imported as "auto parts"
to evade customs, Hook
said.
Chauhan brought silencer
parts to the Louisiana
city of Shreveport
in December to show the
buyer, according to the
prosecutor.
When they met in restaurant
in Bossier City to
discuss the sale, federal
agents recorded their conversation,
leading to his
prosecution, Hook said.
Chauhan lacked a
licence to deal in firearms
and the parts had been
brought illegally into the
US. His customer was not
publicly identified. IANS
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