Gandhiji and his movement of Ahimsa

Mahatma Gandhi, our Father of the Nation was one of the brightest luminaries of Non-Violence, Truth & Peaceful Resistance and Humanism not only in India but in the rest of the world. Born in 2^nd October, 1869 to Karamchand and Putli bai Gandhi in Porbandar, Gujarat, he was named as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in his childhood. A frank, fearless and honest young lad he did his schooling in Porbandar and then in nearby Rajkot. He was sent to study Law in England and joined as Barrister in 1891. There too he abstained from alcohol, meat very vigourously.

 Two years later in 1893, he moved on to South Africa to fight a legal suit for a Gujrati merchant there. He was thrown out of the train in Peitermaritzburg for the colour of his skin despite having a valid first-class ticket for his seat. This was his first encounter with apartheid and racial discrimination. It was just a small instance of what was prevalent then in South Africa towards the black, brown or non-white people. This shook him and made him struggle against the colonial rule there. He participated, organised in activities opposing the laws for the blacks and the Indians there that made them unequal in almost matters of life like employment, land or agriculture, marriages, social and political rights etc. He was successful in not only uniting people for their cause but also helping change some of the laws existing at that time. He set up the Pheonix Farm to shelter homeless and sick people and often took care of them himself. Upon his return to India in 1915, he was appalled at the British colonial slavery, misery, poverty, discrimination and the atrocities on the people.

He decided to join the India’s freedom struggle and not pursue his legal career. He regarded Gopal Krishna Gokhale as his Guru under whose guide he got the path and zeal for the struggle for India’s freedom. Initially he fought for the rights of the labourers and farmers. His first peaceful and non-violent struggle bore fruit in Champaran, Bihar when he made the administration change the rules on profit from Poppy cultivation and the heavy taxations on it. Later he organised many peaceful and non-violent 

protests and agitations like the Civil Disobedience Movement, Non-cooperation movement, the Dandi March against salt tax, Swadeshi movement for the boycott of foreign goods, Khilafat movement, Quit India movement etc. His method was to protest for one’s rights by defeating the mighty British government by the force of the powerful will without resorting to physical force, till the last. That is, he alongwith the freedom fighters continued receiving the lathis, sticks and bullets of the government then without forcibly hitting back. By this he compelled the government to concede to many of their demands. He wanted to break the morale of the oppressive rulers by non-violently receiving their punishments.

Satyagraha-as he called it was a struggle for truth. According to him this satyagraha or the pursuit of truth was essential for an individual, a nation or a struggle to powerfully move towards its destined goals and place. Ahimsa or non-violence was the best path accordingly in satyagraha.Ahimsa or non-violence was a means to defeat an enemy from the core rather than physically. It was a weapon readily available as well one that 

could unite the Indian masses fight against the mighty British. He experimented with all his principles – satyagraha, ahimsa and all. Both, he said were sides of the same concept. He managed to get back the rights of the people with these principles very efficiently. His idea of non-violent or passive resistance inspired freedom fighters all over the world from Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, South East Asia’s and African freedom movements and many others.                        

 

ChatGPT – The Wonder Bot

ChatGPT- The AI ChatBot from OpenAI has cast a spell of surprise, wonder as well as hope by its wide scale abilities in problem solving, answering queries or automating tasks for a large number of people world over.

ChatGPT 4, released in November 2022 is the latest version of the ChatGPT after ChatGPT 3.5, 3 etc. The GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer while Chatbots like it were made primarily to reply to customer queries relating to shopping, businesses or alike. Later the functionalities became broader like answering academic queries, predicting sports results, generating journalistic articles, writing computer programs, solving school homeworks, doing painting, writing poems in seconds et al.The ChatGPT uses the Large Language Model (LLMs) to predict something after a given word or sentence. It is trainable – meaning it can be taught to learn new methods of arranging data, either in text, graphical, pictorial or visual media form. The whole software is still in its developing stages with additions in new features, capabilities and accuracy levels.

ChatGPT being a product of Artificial Intelligence is a great tool for increased productivity and automation. It can save time and labour in many fields like research, media, space, electronics etc. It has created a record in creating the fastest user base i.e. 1 billion users per month. It has also been the fastest in getting investments i.e. since its release on November last it has garnered billions. Microsoft has decided to invest $10bn in it, while owner OpenAI has forecast a revenue of $1 bn this year. Microsoft has integrated ChatGPT with its own search engine Bing.  Google has launched its own AI, Bard to compete with it and will also invest around $300mn in AI research and development.

ChatGPT’s critics have also been vocal about its harmful capabilities and misuse. Terming it as blasphemous in re-generating art or in literature to weapons of total destruction and death. ChatGPT can be potentially misused to create slanderous articles on issues damaging reputations of people, spreading misinformation or fakes speedily or copying in examinations, projects etc. On the other hand, ChatGPT also provides irrational, incorrect or nonsensical results.

The future of ChatGPT or AI is potent with possibilities of tremendous progress and use. Businesses are using it to generate strategies for increasing customer bases or increasing profitability. Scientific research can be greatly helped by such generative apps. Governments also use it for data analysis, creating solutions to problems or creating policies for the benefit of all. ChatGPT, given its wide capabilities can rule the AI world for years to come and technologies that may appear.

The Stock Market Story

The Stock Market is a place where the stocks and shares of Companies, Govt. Institutions etc. are sold or purchased giving them an opportunity to get public funding and the public and other investors to earn from the rise or fall in stock/share prices traded there. The stocks or shares of the Companies etc. are listed on the Stock Exchanges like the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) or the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in India after which the investors can purchase them to earn profits in the rise/fall in stock/share prices. The investors can do so through a registered Broker either Online though Websites, Apps etc. or through telephonic requests.

The Stock Market is a very popular investment medium. The returns from it are usually higher than any other form of investment viz. Bank Savings, FD, Real Estate, Gold or even Mutual Funds. Although long term returns are better, still some traders eke out formidable returns in short term trades say, 1 day, a week, a month or 3 months. Stock Market trading or success is of course a hard work. A large amount of study, intricacy, patience and alertness is essential to make plausible returns from it. There are rags to riches stories but at the same time distress tales of utter financial collapse or bankruptcy. There are instances where people started their trading journey with only a handful of money but with their sheer grit, hardwork and efficiency became millionaires and billionaires. The stock/share prices change every moment after the trades that take place in them or due to any news of profitability or loss of the Companies coming in. The uncertainty in the stock prices moving either high or low or just remaining flat is so big that 100% predictability is impossible. Even with the best of Chart tracking like – Line Charts, Candle Stick Charts, Intra Day, Weekly or Monthly Charts, etc. accurate prediction of the prices is still a guess. Even for the best of market experts, financial pundits or experienced traders too price prediction is not fully certain. One has to have tremendous patience, alertness and knowledge so as to build a formidable wealth out stock market tradings. The Indian Stock Market started its operations with the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) set up in 1875. Later the National Stock Exchange (NSE) was set up in 1992 in Bombay erstwhile Mumbai. Initially trading was done using paper shares which were exchanged after a certain price was achieved. Later in the 1995 Online trading using the Internet and Computers was started. Now-a-days smartphones or laptops, PCs are widely used for trading alongwith telephonic trading. Whilst paper trading is not prevalent now. Important terminologies related to the Stock Market include-

· Share or Stock – A unit of holding of partnership of a Company or firm by an investor after purchase from a stock market. A stock is a group of shares thus acquired.

· Demat A/c- A Dematerialized account where shares of Companies etc. are stored in electronic form after converting them from physical shares.

· Listing and IPOs- A stock or share must listed on a Stock Exchange in order to be traded. An IPO (Initial Public Offering) is the availability of shares for purchase for getting listed on the Exchange.

· Exchange-A place where stocks/shares of Companies can be traded like BSE, NSE in India or the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange), LSE (London Stock Exchange) etc. SEBI (Securities Exchange Board of India) regulates the markets in India.

· Index – A value for indicating total of value of stocks in an Exchange or in the predefined group.

· Broker- A firm or Company registered with the regulator so that it can enable its customers to trade in stocks at the exchanges.

·Bidding Price and Offer Price- Bidding Price, Price at which a stock can be bought. Offer price, price at which a stock can be sold.

· Bulls and Bears- Technical term meaning prices or markets are going up, Bulls and going down, Bears.  

· Volatility-Sharp or fast movement in the stock prices or the indices.

· Order - The request to buy or sell a particular stock/share made through a broker.

· Stop Loss – A minimum price of stock below which it is sold and not retained.

·Futures and Options – A segment of the Stock Market that purchases stocks/shares that are to be sold at date later with or without the chance to make exits in between.

· Commodities- A segment of the Stock Market that enables sell or purchase of items like Gold, Silver, Copper etc, Pulses like Dal, Spices, Grains like Rice, Wheat, Barley etc., Oil, Natural Gas, Crops like Jute, Guar etc.

· Currency Market - A segment of the Stock Market that enables the trading of Indian or Foreign currencies.

· T+1 date- A date after a trading date on which it is settled. Usually one day (working day) after the given trade.

· STT and LTCG – The Securities and Transaction Tax, paid on each trade done. Long Term Capital Gains Tax, tax paid on profits of stocks/ shares held for more than a year.

· DMA, DEMA, MAs- Abbreviations for Daily Moving Average, Daily Exponential Moving Average or simply Moving Average used to show the stock price movements on a daily or a 20, 30, 50, 100 200, 500 day intervals.  

The fortunes of the world’s richest billionaires have been brightened by the Stock Markets viz- Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Benjamin Graham, Jeff Bezos, George Soros, Elon Musk

or India’s own Rakesh Jhunjhunwalla,Mukesh Ambani, Ramdeo Agarwal, Radha Krishna Damani etc. One thing is common among them all. They have arduously even against the worst of market crashes and turmoils stuck to their task and built wealth both for themselves, their Companies or their clients. The Stock Market is a large source of public revenue as well as a hope of additional income for large number of small investors, mutual fund investors or garnering wealth for companies listed. The Indian stock markets have been leaders lately in terms of overall returns generated on investments and will very hopefully do well in the future given India’s high economic growth rates and excellent prospects.