Asian universities close again amid new coronavirus wave
Amid a new COVID-19 wave in South and Southeast Asia and fears of a highly transmissible deadly variant from India that has devastated that country and overwhelmed the Indian health system, universities in countries neighbouring India have reversed plans to re-open universities and colleges and brought in new lockdowns.
Students in countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan now fear they face another disrupted academic year and lost education, saying their governments have barely tackled problems in accessing online education experienced during the first wave. And they say universities are no better prepared than last year to cope with the new wave, despite plans to vaccinate students and provide other facilities.
Shopian: Adnan Ali Khan, a PhD scholar, has started an online ‘retail’ business of selling Kashmiri apples, delivering them to the doorstep in small packs of one to six apples.
A native of Pinjora village, the 29-year-old is probably the first Kashmiri to sell apples in retail packs on the internet. Kashmiri apples are generally sold in large boxes in local markets and their rates are decided by traders, not by farmers.
Khan said that the idea of starting an online business emerged when he was pursuing engineering in Pune.
“It used to trouble me that the rates of our produce were being decided by the trader, instead of the grower,” Khan said while talking to Kashmir Reader.