The Curriculum Vitae and the Job Application Letter

A curriculum viate (pronounced kari-kyu-lam-veetai) or a CV, also known as a resume (pronounced re-zyu-may) in American English, is a brief written account of your personal details, such as full name, address and telephone number, educational qualifications, previous work experience, languages spoken, and sometimes also your intests, that you send with a short letter of application when you are trying to get a job or admission to a course of study. A bio-data or a curriculum vitac (usually referred to simply as a c v) presents information about a person lo an employer. However, bare facts about a potential employee are often not enough. I hey need to be organized in a way that will make them stand out and attract attention. The facts have to persuade the employer and show him/her that the applicant has the qualities the employer is looking for.

When in use a Curriculum Vitae

Use a curriculum vitae only when the employer specifically asks for one in the position advertised. If instead, the employers ask you to till in their own application form, it means they want you to put down the information about yourself in the same manner as all other candidates. If you enclose a curriculum vitae and omit the questions on the form (say questions that deal with training etc.), the employer will probably disregard your application entirely. Even if you enclose a curriculum vitae in addition to the completed form, the employer is unlikely to read this extra piece of paper.

However, if you want to supply additional relevant information for which the form allows no space, you out attach this on a separate sheet of paper.   I here should be some reference to this in your answers in the body of the form, for example, “See attached sheet”. You can also attach extra sheets if the space on the form is insufficient, unless you are specifically told to limit yourself to that space.

You could also use a curriculum vitae when writing to an employer for a possible opening. But in cither case, you need to persuade the employer to take your application seriously.

The format for a Curriculum Vitae

Sometimes, as stated earlier, a proforma is given in the advertisement itself. This needs to be carefully followed. Otherwise, a curriculum vitae should contain in a tabular form, details about yourself (name, address, date of birth, nationality), educational qualifications, work experience, (both presented chronologically) followed by interests and activities. Finally, it is in order to name at least two referees. Some jobs, especially government jobs, require details about caste and religion. The government also gives you the right not to state your religion if you do not wish to. In case the job belongs to any reserved category, it is necessary to specify your caste only if you belong to SC/ST/OBC categories. You are, however, not required to submit any proof of this with your curriculum vitae.

Last but not the least you all know how to write biodata i.e. in simple format.

Thanks

GROWTH OF COMMUNALISM IN INDIA

Communalism is a modern phenomenon. It had its roots in the modern colonial socio-economic political structure. Communalism emerged as a result of the emergence of new, modern politics based on the people and on popular participation and mobilisation. It made it necessary to have wider links and loyalties among the people and to form new identities. This process was bound to be difficult, gradual and complex.

This process required the birth and spread of modern ideas of nation, class and cultural-linguistic identity. These identities, being new and unfamiliar, arose and grew slowly and in a zig-zag fashion. Quite often people used the old, familiar pre-modern identity of caste, locality, sect and religion to grasp the new reality, to make wider connections and to evolve new entities. This has happened all over the world. But gradually the modern and historically-necessary identities of nation, nationality and class have prevailed.

Unfortunately, in India this process has remained incomplete for decades.. In particular, religious consciousness was transformed into communal consciousness in some parts of the country and among some sections of the people. In particular, modern political consciousness was late in developing among the Muslims. As nationalism spread among the Hindus and Parsis of the lower-middle class, it failed to grow equally rapidly among the Muslims of the same class.

Hindus and Muslims had fought shoulder to shoulder during the Revolt of 1857. In fact, after the suppression of the Revolt, British officials had taken a particularly vindictive attitude towards the Muslims .With the rise of the nationalist movement the British statesmen grew apprehensive about the safety and stability of their empire in India. To check the growth of a united national feeling in the country, they decided to follow more actively the policy of’ divide and rule’ and to divide the people along religious lines, in other words, to encourage communal and separatist tendencies in Indian politics.

For this purpose they decided to come out as ‘champions’ of the Muslims and to win over to their side Muslim zamindars, landlords and the newly educated. They also fostered other divisions in Indian society. They promoted provincialism by talking of Bengali domination. They tried to utilize the caste structure to turn non-Brahmins against Brahmins and the lower castes against the higher castes. In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where Hindus and Muslims had always lived in peace, they actively encouraged the movement to replace Urdu as the court language by Hindi.

In other words, they tried to use even the legitimate demands of different sections of Indian society to create divisions among the Indian people. The colonial government treated Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs as separate communities. It readily accepted communal leaders as authentic representatives of all their co-religionists. It permitted the propagation of virulent communal ideas and communal hatred through the press, pamphlets, posters, literature and other public platforms. 

This is a very vast issue. We should think about it deeply and use our own mind to come to any decision.

Declining Standard of Newspaper and Magazines.

I suggested earlier that it would he a mistake to regard the cultural struggle now going on as a straight fight between, say, what The ‘limes and the picture-dailies represent. To wish that a majority of the population will ever read The times is to wish that the human beings were constitutionally different, and is to fall into an intellectual snobbery. The ahihiy to read the decent weeklies is not a sine qua non of the the good life. It seems unlikely it any tune, and is certainly not likely in any period which those of us now alive are likely to know dial a majority in any class will have strongly intellectual pursuits. There are other ways of being in the truth. The strongest objection to the more trivial popular extcriainrnenls is not that they prevent their readers from becoming highbrow, hut ihat they make it harder for people without an intellectual bent to become wise in their own way.

The fact that changes in English society over the last fifty years have greatly increased the opportunities for further education available to the few people who will seek it has, therefore little direct compensatory bearing on the fact that concurrent changes are bringing about an increased trivialisation in productions for the majority. Most readers of a popular modern newspaper/magazine are unlikely ever to read a ‘quality’ paper but they used to read an old style weekly which was in some respects better than their newspaper / magazine. The new-style popular publications fail not because they are poor substitutes for The Times but because they are only bloodless imitations of what they purport to be, because they are pallid but slicked-up extensions even on nineteenth-century sensationalism, and a considerable decline from the sinewy sensationalism of Elizabethan vernacular writers. They can be accused (as can all else for which they stand as example : the thin bonhomie of many television programmes, the popular film, much in commercial radio) not of failing to be highbrow, but of not being truly concrete and personal.

The real battle is not between a standard newspaper read by a small class of people and offering intellectual fare on the one hand and a picture-daily read by the masses and doling out popular but cheap entertainment on the other, for at no time the readers of one can become those of the other. There is no need for it either. What is at stake is good sense and not intelleetualism. Increased opportunities for education have not brought about a corresponding decrease in newspapers and magazines of poor taste and low or no worth The fall in standards is all the more regrettable because they fail to transmit and spread even sensationalism of a superior order - as was in evidence in their nineteenth century counterparts or in vernacular writing in the Elizabethan period. 

PROSTITUTION

Prostitution has been an institution which has made women a commodity throughout the social evolution of humanity around the world. The practice has been reported in virtually every culture and described throughout recorded history. As a form of deviance, prostitution has been of interest to sociologists as a reflection of various social processes and phenomena. Sociologists have studied prostitution as a form of sexual deviance and a reflection of the basic values, norms, and institutions within a society. Sociological studies of prostitution have been concerned with the function it serves in a society, the gender inequality and double standard implicit in the practice, and the social dynamics involved in becoming a prostitute. Prostitution represents a form of sexual deviance in that it is a sexual practice which is widely viewed as socially undesirable and degrading. Colloquial terms used to refer to prostitutes, such as hooker, hustler, and whore, carry negative connotations.

An important issue is defining what constitutes prostitution. Most definitions stress the relatively indiscriminate exchange of sexual activity for economic gain. Prostitution is one of the branches of the sex industry. A prostitute is a person, “who allows her body to be used for lewd purposes in return for payment.” For the prostitute, the practice represents a means of supplementing an income. A person who trades sexual activity for a job promotion would not be labeled a prostitute by most observers, although this situation includes some of the same elements as prostitution. What separates prostitution from the previous example is the repeated, indiscriminate nature of the exchange. More than an isolated deviant act, prostitution entails a deviant profession.

A “prostitute” is derived from a composition of two Latin words: pro and statuere implying “to expose”, “to place up front”. A variety of terms are used for prostitution, some of which distinguish between different kinds, or imply a value judgment about them. The Greek word for prostitute is porne. The English word pornography, and its corollaries in other languages, are directly derivative of the Greek word porne. In ancient Rome, a registered prostitute was called a meretrix while the unregistered one fell under the broad category prostibulae. Common alternatives for prostitute include escort and whore, although not all professional escorts are prostitutes. The word “prostitute”, or more frequently “whore”, is also used as an insult towards a person (typically a woman or girl) who is perceived as being sexually promiscuous. Those seeking to remove the social stigma associated with prostitution often promote terminology such as sex worker, commercial sex worker (CSW), or sex trade worker. A hooker or streetwalker solicits customers in public places; a call girl makes appointments by phone.

In the report prepared by the Advisory Committee, League of Nations, Geneva (1943:8) the following observations were made which indicate tenacity with which prostitution persists in civilised communities: “Prostitution has outlived every social, economic, ethical system which the West has known since the time of the Greek City States. It has had its vicissitudes; but, flourishing or languishing public or clandestine, it has existed in large towns for the last years, thereby proving how deeply it is rooted in human social life.”

Correctly or not, prostitute without specifying a gender is commonly assumed to be female; compound terms such as male prostitution or male escort are therefore used to identify males. Those offering services to female customers are commonly known as gigolos; those offering services to male customers are hustlers or rent boys.

Organizers of prostitution are typically known as pimps (if male) and madams (if female). More formally, they practice procuring, and are procurers, or procuresses.

The customers of prostitutes are known as johns or tricks in North America and punters in the British Isles. These slang terms are used among both prostitutes and law enforcement for persons who solicit prostitutes. In some places, men who drive around red-light districts for the purpose of soliciting prostitutes are also known as kerb crawlers.

Prostitution is commercialised sex and, as such, it involves two parties- seller and buyer. It can be described as indiscriminate sexual activity without the normal motives i.e procreation or pleasure, but is economically motivated so far as the seller is concerned. The seller generally is a woman and a man the buyer; the reverse roles are, however, not unknown. As per section 2(f) of The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956 “prostitution” means the sexual exploitation or abuse of  persons for commercial purposes or for consideration in money or in any other kind, and the expression “prostitute” shall be construed accordingly. Also there is, though much rarer, male prostitution in which gratification is by one male to another. In the discussion which follows, the subject is in the most usual context, the commercialised heterosexual practice. Thus the most common form of prostitution involves women who sell sexual services to heterosexual men. The second most common group comprises male homosexual prostitutes who cater to gay men. The consistent pattern in society and throughout history is for the customers of prostitutes to be men. Male prostitutes who make themselves available to women (termed as gigolos) are uncommon, and lesbian prostitutes are considered extremely rare.

TERRORISM IN INDIA

The emergence of terrorism in India has been an unfortunate and most harmful development of our times. It has been a sad reality of Indian politics for the last two decades. J & K, Assam other north-eastern states Andhra, Bihar and even some of the southern states now stand gravely affected by terrorism. In one form or another, terrorism continues to be present in several parts of India.

Terrorism has been a standard weapon of the secessionists, sub-nationalists and revolutionaries, who have been advocating either the creation of independent homelands out of India or the transformation of India into a new state or the securing a particular bigotic advantage or interest. In J & K, the secessionist groups have adopted terrorism as a weapon. Pakistan has been sponsoring the terrorists of all shades in securing their evil designs which appear to favour Pakistan. Terrorism in its several forms—narco-terrorism, fundamentalist terrorism, cross-border Terrorism ideological terrorism—has been present in India.

The main reasons behind the emergence of terrorism have been religious fundamentalism, sectarian fanaticism, linguistic religionalism, bigotry, parochialism socio-economic problems like illiteracy, ignorance, poverty, unemployment, under-employment and above all the help and support from hostile neighbours like Pakistan. In fact, the nefarious policies and activities of Pakistan’s ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) and some terrorist organisations and outfits operating from the Pakistani soil have been in the main responsible for the increasing acts of terrorism in India. The terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament on 13th December, 2001 and in September 2002 on the Akhshar Dham Temple were definitely aided and sponsored by the Pakistan based terrorist outfits. Terrorism in J & K has been a Pakistan sponsored terrorism. Earlier, Terrorism in Punjab had its roots and branches in Pakistan. In fact, the Afganistan-Pakistan region acted as the breeding ground and sponsoring area of Jihadi terrorism which raised its ugly head in several countries in the 1980s and which became international menace in the 1990s. It has been present in substantial measure even the world had to initiate a war against terrorism in October 2001. The 11 September, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, in the USA brought into the open the ugliest and the deadliest face of terrorism and compelled the USA to launch a war against terrorism. It began as a war against Taliban’s Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaida network. Within two months, notable success was achieved and an Anti-Taliban Anti-Al Quida regime was established in Afghanistan. However the fight against terrorism still continues. It is expected, and the world is committed to extend this war against terrorism in all other parts of the world. India has been fighting the menace of terrorism (particular cross-border terrorism) since early 1980s and is committed to carry on the exercise till a complete elimination of terrorism in this part of the world is achieved.

Since the early 1980s, the growing menace of terrorism has been adversely affecting the processes of national integration and nation-building in India. It has contained within it the danger of balkanisation or disintegration of the country. It constitutes a very complex and dangerous situation which, if it remains uncontrolled, has the potential to jeopardise national unity. However, India has the will and strength to meet the menace. The example of Punjab has been heart warming. A strong political leadership, a determination and strict and strongest action constitute the need of the hour.

Terrorism is both a social and political phenomenon which cannot exist without larger support groups and support, help and shelter of an organisation or a country and some measure public sympathy. Hence a comprehensive policy and plan of action is always needed to end it. Redirection of public support—away from terrorists—”is only possible where a government is able to listen, to observe and to understand. To read violence as a social text and act accordingly, is the best line of defence a democratic society has, given a little luck and some political intelligence.”

For tackling the menace of terrorism a detailed and concrete strategy in every area, say the North-East and Kashmir, must also take into account the local realities. Punjab has been successful in coming out of the dark and sad period of terrorism and the lessons learnt must guide the path to be adapted for fighting the forces of terrorism. Restoration of democracy in Punjab in 1992, the refusal’ of the masses to get divided on communal lines, strongly motivated police action and the clear cut policy against the forces of terrorism indeed paid rich dividends in the form of peace and security for the Punjabis. A similar process has been underway in J & K since 1997. It is hoped that it will successfully meet the menace of terrorism, particular after the successful holding of election to J & K Vidhan Sabha in Sept’-October 2002. However, the real reason behind the continuance of terrorism in India, particularly in the State of J & K, has been the sympathy, support, shelter and finance which Pakistan has been extending to the terrorist outfits like Lashkar-e-Toeba, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Hizbul Mujahidin and others. The December 13, 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament and the terrorist attacks against Akshartham, Ayodhya, Varanasi and July 2006 Bomb Blost in Bombay have fully exposed the Pakistan ISI and Pakistan based terrorist organisations hand behind terrorism in India. In fact cross-border terrorism has been following from Pakistani into India and it has been posing a big menace to India’s security and socio-economic prospect. The time has come for an effective and strong action against the terrorists and the perpetrators of terrorism. Now India has to act decisively against cross-border terrorism. The on-going international war against terrorism fully justifies India’s war against cross-border terrorism.

Full-form of the Two Major Organisation who fight with each other everyday.

RAW : Research & Analysis Wing

ISI : Inter Services Intelligence

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