Wooing Indian diaspora
THE accusation of being inactive seems to have stung Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to the quick. Suddenly, he is on an announcement- making spree. A superhighway connecting the four corners of the country, information technology, infrastructure ... the list is long and growing.

CEC's correct steps
THE hour of reckoning is arriving fast for the states which are scheduled to go to the polls. The climate of public opinion matters less than the environment of violence and corruption.

Where water is poison
DECADES of mismanagement and neglect have combined to make drinking water not only a scarce commodity but a dangerous one too. Pollution of even underground water has brought the rural malaise of water-borne diseases to urban areas.

MEMORIES OF NEHRU
by P. D. Tandon
VERY few persons in the world are blessed with the real grandeur of the human spirit. Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson, Gandhi, Tagore and such others are still remembered because of it. I do not long to remember Nehru, but find it difficult to forget him as he too had it in abundant measure. Some incidents come to my mind which tell us of his vast human sympathy.

Power sector needs big thrust
by Dhurjati Mukherjee
THOUGH the Economic Advisory Council has set up a working group on infrastructure, the power sector has not received adequate attention. Even the 1998-99 budget has hardly increased the plan outlay for power.

Hard look at Romesh Sharma’s links
by Tavleen singh
THE only time I ever went to Romesh Sharma’s now famous farm house was a couple of years ago to attend the wedding of Delhi’s celebrated socialite, Bina Ramani. So, when the story of his misdemeanours and his links with mafia dons in Dubai started being splashed all over the press I rang Bina to find out how she had come to be a friend of this very bad man.

Nothing to write home about
by Amita Malik
TO tell you the truth, I was glued to cricket and Sharjah last week and not a bit sorry. Because it is difficult to remember a more routine week on television. Not to speak of technical glitches. At least there was some excitement in the cricket although, thanks to Doordarshan, we hardly saw the cricket for the ads.

Coiled spring
by Yash Pal
HE just dropped in at my house in Delhi, carrying a bunch of papers. A rather bedraggled man of about 35 years, with some difficulty in communicating, claiming that he had made an invention. He informed me that he had made a slide projector using the sun as a light source.

75 Years Ago

Discussion in the Commons
EARL WINTERTON, Under-Secretary for India (Horsham and Worthing, U.) moved the second reading of the East India Loans Bill. It proposed to authorise the Secretary of State in Council to raise in Great Britain sums not exceeding £ 1.5 crore for the general purposes of the Government of India, and sums not exceeding £ 5 crore for capital expenditure on railways and irrigation works.

Wooing Indian diaspora

THE accusation of being inactive seems to have stung Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to the quick. Suddenly, he is on an announcement- making spree. A superhighway connecting the four corners of the country, information technology, infrastructure ... the list is long and growing. The latest addition is the announcement about the conferring of Person of Indian Origin (PIO) cards on Indians living abroad with alien passports. To be fair to him, Mr Vajpayee does need such image-boosting in good measure. If only his government is as quick in implementation as it has become on policy announcements, the face of India can change radically. The PIO card scheme can be but a cog in the giant-wheel. Yes, it does touch upon an emotional issue. People of Indian origin have this unmistakable feeling that they are treated as aliens by their apna Bharat. Little do they realise that the fate of those living within India is hardly better. Be that as it may, financial conditions prevailing in the country are such that it is essential to woo those who can bankroll its sundry schemes. Hence the pressing need for initiating special incentives for the Indian settled abroad.

The main demand of those who can help the country in its hour of need has been for dual citizenship. The Prime Minister has promised to consider that sympathetically. The committee to look into the matter has been asked to submit its reports within three months. Considering that the other task forces set up in various sectors recently have managed to give their reports within the stipulated time period, there is reason to hope that this one too would be able to finalise its recommendations within 90 days. For the time being the Prime Minister has only come out with the PIO scheme which will offer a “visa-free regime and several other facilities in the economic, financial and educational fields”. The PIO card holders will thus have parity with NRIs regarding acquisition and transfer of immovable property in India, admission of children to educational institutions here and preference in various housing schemes of central and state government agencies. Its details are to be announced shortly. There is need for extreme caution though. Even if the final announcement takes a few extra days, the government should go over the proposals with a fine tooth comb because there is a very real possibility of confusion on various vital issues. For instance, this facility is to be provided to only those settled in specific countries. Will that not cause heartburn in Indians settled in other countries? Then there can be a lot of hair- splitting about the very definition of who exactly is a person of Indian origin. Will those whose ancestors left India centuries ago qualify? All these issues will have to be finely settled. But more than these, the overriding issue is whether those who have fully integrated themselves into the country of their adoption will have enough interest in the place of their origin? It will be embarrassing if the scheme does not generate the kind of response that is anticipated.

Significantly, those who attended the the two-day conference on “The Global Indian Entrepreneurs” organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), where the Prime Minister made this announcement were not too enthused by it. Their grouse has been that while things might be changing at the level of the Prime Minister or the Finance Minister, the rest of India continues to be hamstrung by bureaucratic delays and red-tapism. Its high fiscal deficit, increasing corruption, overlapping roles of politicians, bureaucrats and industry comprise bottlenecks beyond which no high-profile scheme is able to pass. Till that happens, India will not be a favoured destination even for those who have emotional ties with it. As the FICCI President, Mr Sudhir Jalan, has said, overseas Indians can invest as much as $ 100 billion. All that they want is that the policy atmosphere should be unequivocally conducive at all levels of governance. The tragedy is that the rot has gone so deep that the Prime Minister has had to concede that it is not possible to create overnight an enabling environment matching that in developed countries. The reason why this is not possible, according to him, is that there are competing claims on the country’s limited resources. However, that happens to be only one of the reasons and not the front-ranking one at that. The actual culprits are self-serving politicians, lethargic bureaucrats and unscrupulous industrialists, aided and abetted by white-collar criminals. Till that nexus is broken, the impediments are not going to go away, help from Indians settled abroad notwithstanding.

CEC's correct steps

THE hour of reckoning is arriving fast for the states which are scheduled to go to the polls. The climate of public opinion matters less than the environment of violence and corruption. It should be the natural role of political parties seeking power to go to the electors with humility and detailed accounts of their past achievements and future projects for the welfare of the people in various constituencies. But in our vitiated political milieu, any talk of ideals is utopian. The Chief Election Commissioner, Dr M.S. Gill, has kept a constant watch on the situation in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Mizoram. His designated men will be posted soon in sensitive areas. He has taken practical steps to ensure fairness in the coming elections. One of the endeavours is the "sealing of borders of the adjoining states". For instance, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, which share their demarcating lines with Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, have been directed to see to it that no criminal activity is allowed to escalate into the election-bound areas. The British made an unpopular law popularly known as the Goonda Act. This one measure was strong enough to act as a prophylactic with circumstances which prevented a breach of the peace in most cases. Now we have numerous protective laws and rules, but the law and order situation is going out of control. Dr Gill's intention is to put trans-border goondaism and electoral vandalism under check. One would wish him success, but the "resident trouble-makers" are powerful enough to disturb the poll proceedings. Import is not necessary in any area for booth capturing, bogus-voting and intimidation.

However, the CEC's action is well-intended. Credit also goes to him for giving a directive to Doordarshan and All-India Radio to the effect that there is no undue projection of news and views expressed through the electronic media which amounts to propaganda on behalf of any political party. The Prime Minister's recent speech at Gaya has become a talking point, thanks to its propagandist tenor. Doordarshan had no business to telecast it the way it did. It amounted to influencing the voters at various places. Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee does not cease to be a BJP leader when he speaks to gatherings at poll time. But the distribution of tickets has been made by all parties on the basis of caste and community. Rajputs, Jats, Brahmins, Mahajans and the minorities have been under the focus of attention of all political parties. Why have women not been given the promised deal by various outfits? No party has any considerable chunk of traditional supporters. Sometimes there are intra-caste rivalries. Nangloi in Delhi had a bitter taste of these the other day. Reports from Rajasthan speak of compartmentalisation within the vote banks. A free and fair election will not be possible until the voters, who are the real masters, are properly educated to exercise their franchise according to their needs, norms and convictions. Money and muscle power will have a free play in the days ahead. But Dr Gill does deserve praise for the timely steps he has taken. The onus of making adult suffrage a success largely rests with the electors themselves. There are many notorious nominees in the fray in spite of efforts at nominational screening. The chance of purifying the electoral system must not be missed again and again.

Where water is poison

DECADES of mismanagement and neglect have combined to make drinking water not only a scarce commodity but a dangerous one too. Pollution of even underground water has brought the rural malaise of water-borne diseases to urban areas. Delhi tops the list where tap water, when available, is close to trap water with high levels of pollution. Now a report says that fully one-third of ground water comes of the contaminated variety. A good part of rural Delhi depends on hand pumps and bore-wells and thus is vulnerable to uncontrolled poisoning from industrial sources. Laboratory tests have so far found only fluoride and nitrate and not the more dangerous hard metals like lead and chromium which can cause cancer. Fluoride and nitrate are linked to fluorosis, skin diseases and stomach problems. This situation is irreversible and what is more, it can only get worse. Banning the use of ground water and painting the hand pumps in deep red colour are the only solutions a government authority has offered. Of making safe water available to the exposed residents in far off blocks there is no mention. With everyone busy in election work, the issue will have to be on the backburner, if the Congress does not use it as a stick to beat the ruling BJP with. It is not being realistic to expect political parties to put their heads together to tackle such life-and-death issues as water and air pollution of frightening levels.

The Yamuna has been converted into an open drain and the much-touted Ganga Action Plan has become a joke. Elsewhere mindless exploitation of ground water and excessive use of water in agriculture has led to an alarming depletion of the resource or water-logging as in Punjab. Curiously, this goes side by side with hundreds of thousands of villages denied the basic necessity of potable water, and water-borne diseases take a heavy toll of human lives year after year. The painful fact is that the country does not have a comprehensive water use plan, nor any clue to a scientific handling of the precious resource. Experts have warned of an impending crisis of acute water shortage in Delhi and the unaffordable cost of augmenting supply. One recent study has talked of the average water bill in the Capital equalling the present levels of house rent if the capital cost of bringing drinking water from distant sources is to be recovered from the consumers. That may sound far-fetched now, but the reckless contamination of surface and ground water cannot but trigger a crisis. Mumbai is the only metropolis which can boast of a pollution-free source of water supply; the reservoir is on a hill and water comes through pipes. Other cities and towns, choking in polluted air, are tomorrow’s candidates for poisoned water and all that it entails.

MEMORIES OF NEHRU
Grandeur of human spirit
by P. D. Tandon

VERY few persons in the world are blessed with the real grandeur of the human spirit. Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson, Gandhi, Tagore and such others are still remembered because of it. I do not long to remember Nehru, but find it difficult to forget him as he too had it in abundant measure. Some incidents come to my mind which tell us of his vast human sympathy.

In October, 1953, a few pensioners went to Anand Bhavan to complain to Nehru that they had not received their pension for four or five years. The shivering, emaciated old men attracted a lot of sympathy there that day and almost everybody advised them to place their case before the Prime Minister. Even the officials, who were present there, felt somewhat ashamed when they realised that the old men had not had their pensions for the last several years. One of them said to the pensioners: “You need not fear anybody. This delay is criminal. You must bring it to Pandit Nehru’s notice”.

The Prime Minister came out to meet the visitors and when he saw these old men standing in a corner, he went up to them and politely enquired: “Kaho Bhai kya baat hai? Acchhe to ho” (Tell me brothers what is the matter? I hope you are all right). One of them almost broke down and with a trembling voice said: “Huzoor char saal se pension nahin mili. Bhukon mar rahe hain.” (Sir, we have not received our pensions for four years. We are dying of hunger.) Nehru was shocked. He exclaimed: “What? Have you not had your pensions for the last four years?” They bowed respectfully and replied: “Sir, what we are saying is correct. You can ask the District Magistrate”.

This deeply hurt Nehru. The face that had been wreathed in smiles took on the furrows of extreme irritation. He promptly summoned the District Magistrate and when he appeared, said to him: “Do you hear what they say? This is shocking. This is incredible. What have you to say about it? The District Magistrate tried to explain things, but Nehru interrupted: “Explanations will not do. See to it that they get their pension without any further delay.”

The pensioners exclaimed with tearful gratitude: “Huzoor salaam! Aap ki meharbani se bhukhe logon ke pet bhar jayenge”. (Thank you sir. Thanks to your kindness, hungry men will now have food.)

This incident so upset Nehru that he immediately turned away and was in no mood to talk to anybody for quite some time.

The Prime Minister came to Anand Bhavan for a brief visit one day. After breakfast he came into the drawing-room where a small crowd of distinguished people had collected. He gave a charming smile of recognition to everyone and joined hands in salutation. He stood there adjusting the rose in the button-hole. He suddenly saw some young boys standing in the verandah. He looked at them and stood still. Others around him stood quiet and alert. He did not talk to the big and the distinguished and went out to meet the boys. “How are you?” he enquired. The lads smiled and said: “Panditji, sab theek hai” (Panditji, everything is all right.”)

“Any difficulty?” he asked.

The boys looked at each other and hesitated to say anything. “Come along, what is the matter?” he enquired.

One of them blurted out: “Panditji, during rains our books get wet and we get drenched when we return home.”

“Really! Is that so?” he queried affectionately.

He said Jai Hind and went away. The boys echoed, “Panditji ki jai”.

Nehru went to Delhi and the same day sent a man to the market to buy some canvas bags and rain coats for the youngsters. These items were bought and shown to him and sent to Allahabad for the boys who had told him that their books and clothes got wet during rains when they returned home from school. He had many big problems, most of the time, to attend to, but the little needs of insignificant people also attracted his attention and he used to help them.

Thakur Chandra Sigh Garhwali, one of the military officers who had refused to fire on unarmed men in Peshawar and was consequently sentenced to imprisonment for life, was released in 1941, when Nehru was in Dehra Dun jail. Chandra Singh wrote a letter to Nehru after his release and acquainted him with his problems. Nehru realised that Chandra Singh had come out of jail after so many years, had little contact with the outside world, and would, naturally, welcome some help. He wrote the following letter to Chandra Singh from jail:

“Priya Chandrasinghji,

Aap ka patra mila. Aapke chhutne ki khabar sunkar mujhe khushi hui. Aap Anand Bhavan me bahut itminaan se jab tak chahen rahen, hamare mehman bankar. Mujhe afsos hai ki mai khud wahan nahi hun apse milne ko. Jab Bapuji aapko bulaven, aap Wardha jaayne aur jitne din tak kahen wahan unke pas rahiye. Phir vapas Allahabad aakar Anand Bhavan me thehariye, maine Mahadeva Bhai se zikr kar diya tha.

Aapka,
Jawaharlal Nehru”

(Dear Chandrasinghji,

Received your letter. I was glad to hear of your release. You may surely stay in Anand Bhavan as my guest as long as you like. I am sorry that I am not there to meet you. When Bapuji (Gandhiji) calls you to Wardha, go there and stay with him for as many days as he wants. After that, return to Allahabad and stay at Anand Bhavan. I have told Mahadeva Bhai about you.

Yours
Jawaharlal Nehru)

Nehru was instinctively generous. When he gave you something, he felt shy and a little hesitant as though he felt that he had not given enough. He was particularly considerate towards those whom he personally knew and tried to help them in all possible ways. Sensitive men must have found it difficult to ask any favour from Nehru for they knew that he felt embarrassed. He helped people, forgot the good turns he did, never referred to these and never wanted anything in return.

In the pre-Independence era, all sorts of people approached him for help which was hardly ever denied. I remember that in early 1942 a Congressman, who had suffered much in satyagraha movement, came to Anand Bhavan and asked Nehru for some money. He went up to his room and sent quite a substantial sum for the visitor through his private secretary. But the Congressman threw the currency notes away in the corridor of Anand Bhavan saying, “Nehru is my captain and I must get more money to get over my present difficulties.” Nehru was informed about it and he quietly sent more money and the man went away saying, Jawaharlal Nehru ki jai”.

Power sector needs big thrust
by Dhurjati Mukherjee

THOUGH the Economic Advisory Council has set up a working group on infrastructure, the power sector has not received adequate attention. Even the 1998-99 budget has hardly increased the plan outlay for power. At the ground level, however, there is tremendous shortage of power in the country and the demand-supply gap is increasing steadily. Though power projects have been announced by many companies, the track record in project implementation tells a very different story. Addition in generation capacity has been well below target levels and the trend is unlikely to reverse at least in the coming two to three years.

After the none-too-impressive performances in the previous two years, addition in electricity capacity saw a moderate improvement in 1997-98. Capacity addition in the year was at a reasonable 3750 MW after being quite low for the last two years. The improvement in capacity generation was primarily on account of a late surge in the month of March when as much as 691 MW went on stream. The plant load factor increased marginally to 64.4 per cent last year compared to 63.8 per cent in 1996-97. Substantial differences, however, persisted across regions, the Eastern region registering only 46.8 per cent and the North Eastern region even lesser at 34.9 per cent.

The requirement of power is the maximum in the Northern Region where in the current year the peak estimates stand at around 25,763 MW. But due to poor availability there has been a tremendous shortage of power in Delhi and surrounding areas. The situation is not quite happy in the Western Region either where rapid industrialisation has led to increased demand for power. In fact, industrial and agricultural productivity are now severely constrained due to perpetual shortage of energy both in urban and rural India.

There are several parts of the country where the watering of fields must occur only at night as that is the only time power can be supplied. Also, despite having energised approximately 12 million pumpsets for agriculture, the number of rural households which receive electricity is miserably poor. Even the ones which are connected seldom derive the luxury of sustained supply. All this contrasts with a scenario that is based on a healthy and financially strong electricity supply industry. That would raise the welfare of farmers through regular electricity supply for agricultural operations and also for homes.

Unfortunately, India’s record in energy generation and consumption has been quite poor. According to the UNDP Report, 1996, it is found that from 1971 to 1993, the per capita commercial use in China, Thailand and Malaysia increased respectively from 278 to 623, 178 to 678 and 436 to 1529 kg of oil equivalent whereas in India, the energy use increased from a mere 111 to 242 kg of oil equivalent. The per capita energy consumption has also been equally disappointing.

The World Development Report, 1997, showed India’s energy use (oil equivalent) for the year 1994 as 248 kg per capita while that of Pakistan was 254 kg and China’s was 664 kg the industrial leaders like Canada 7854 kg and the USA 7819 kg. It is estimated that to have a steady economic growth of 7 per cent per annum, India would require 10,000 MW of additional power per annum and for this the country would require to mobilise investment of around $ 10,000 million every year.

One does not need to advocate the rationale for an integral energy ministry. But there is considerable merit in coordinating the energy plans of different energy-related departments and ministries to ensure a least cost mix of energy supply for the consumer. Such integration was gradually taking shape in the early 80s when the Advisory Board on Energy was established under the chairmanship of Mr K.C. Pant reporting directly to the Prime Minister. But the ABE was wound up and ministries dealing with energy have largely been going their own way.

At such a crucial juncture with resource constraints affecting the economy, renovation and modernisation (R&M) of power plants should be the first priority. Although the average national PLF of thermal plants rose significantly from just over 50 per cent to 65 per cent over the last decade, there is much scope for further improvement. According to an estimate 15,000 MW thermal capacity is generating at below 45 per cent and about 8000 MW of hydel plants are performing well below the rated capacity. R&M of the thermal plants alone can quickly result in an output increase equalling 5000 MW of a new capacity.

In fact, in the longer term, the R&M initiatives could yield much bigger returns. Apart from this, the scope for exploring renewable energy development in a bigger way has to be seriously explored. Small hydro, wind energy, bio-energy, solar energy should be given adequate techno — economic thrust by the government in this regard. — INFA

Coiled spring
by Yash Pal

HE just dropped in at my house in Delhi, carrying a bunch of papers. A rather bedraggled man of about 35 years, with some difficulty in communicating, claiming that he had made an invention. He was a self-employed book binder in Chandigarh, with a passion for tinkering, on which he spent most of his time. He informed me that he had made a slide projector using the sun as a light source. He had also made another instrument which he called as Surya Yantra. He had no formal education, perhaps less than the middle school level. He could not make a drawing or write an equation. Yet he claimed to have made something useful and ingenious and wanted it to be recognised. This, so that he could work in a place where he might go on indulging his passion for tinkering and making things.

I was somewhat suspicious, and a bit embarrassed at being so, because Rajat had travelled all the way to Delhi and located my difficult-to-reach house in Noida, just to get some encouragement and advice. I felt there must he something to this man, but I was not able to quite categorise him, nor decide on the way I could assist him.

Finally I gave him a letter for some friends at Panjab University at Chandigarh, to show his creations for evaluation. Apparently he did that, as he told me when he sought me out soon after my arrival here. As expected, he was informed by my friends that his invention was not that new, because physicists and astronomers had done similar things quite some time ago.

Som came to call on me at my house in Chandigarh and showed me various letters of appreciation he had received from a large number of schools where he had demonstrated his gadgets. I expressed a desire to see his creations and we arranged that he would come the next day and my wife and I would accompany him to his house in Mohali. This we did.

Som lives in one small room, 2.5 m square, all by himself. He does all his book binding work in the same room. It was clear that the room also served as his kitchen. I believe he shares a common bathroom with several others. Soon after we arrived, several children walked in, also some adults. He is considered someone special. The children helped in setting up his solar imaging and projection box outside in the sun. Nothing is very heavy, because everything, except the lenses, is made of the same materials he uses to do his book binding, namely cardboard, some paper, a little cloth, everything fixed together with the bookbinding glue, which Som himself prepares. There are sliding racks on which banks of lenses are mounted and there are components which can be dropped in or taken out of the way. The quality of the images is good, limited only by the quality of the lenses available. One marvels how — according to him — he came to the solutions he did simply by trial and error, because he is innocent of geometrical optics, even at the level of a school child. His passion and perseverence was obvious and attested to by the admiring children who informed us that he is immersed in his work late into the night.

When we probed him to find out what he really wanted, he said something to the effect: “I do not want a routine job. If I spend all my time on book binding, I can easily make about 6000 rupees a month. Perhaps I will go on doing book binding to partially support myself, but I would like to be in an environment where I can invent things. I have always wanted to make new things, but unfortunately I never got any education or training. Even book binding of high quality I picked up by looking at good bindings.”

I cannot help feeling that this is true of a large fraction of the people who have missed formal education. It is quite likely that the number of real and potential inventors amongst those who were not “standardised” by school education is far greater than amongst those who are extruded by our schools and colleges. Rajat Som will not be picked up for a job by a normal selection committee. Even if he were, he would be probably put on a routine boring, chore, perhaps that of a ‘helper’, to clean tables, wash test tubes or lift standard pieces of equipment from one bench to another.

I see two challenges while we await the arrival of India that will be “a world power” of the twentyfirst century. First, we should some how begin to notice the millions who learn their skills and crafts on their own, through unrecognised discovery or peer teaching, and bring them into our education, research institutions and industry — to fertilise them and to flower on their own. Second, we should spark a culture in our education system where standards will not be set through “standardisation”, but by encouraging charming, even esoteric, angularities, in an intimate interaction with the local and the specific.

I believe just so much will make India a great country. In the meanwhile, does some one have a suggestion for Rajat Som?

Hard look at Romesh Sharma’s links

by Tavleen singh

THE only time I ever went to Romesh Sharma’s now famous farm house was a couple of years ago to attend the wedding of Delhi’s celebrated socialite, Bina Ramani. So, when the story of his misdemeanours and his links with mafia dons in Dubai started being splashed all over the press I rang Bina to find out how she had come to be a friend of this very bad man. She was slightly nervous at the question and said other reporters had also been calling her to ask similar questions but that, in fact, she knew nothing about him other than that he had very kindly allowed her to have her wedding in his farm house. “I had a broken leg, remember, and I was desperate to find a farm house near Delhi where we could have the wedding. I heard about Romesh Sharma from Neelam Mukherji (actor Joy Mukherji’s wife) and that’s how I contacted him.”

That is how some of the most respectable people in Delhi —Ministers, bureaucrats, businessmen, journalists and the American ambassador — came to spend several days being entertained at Sharma’s farm house. It wasn’t much of a place then, just a couple of outhouses scattered over vast stretches of landscaped lawn, but Sharma was often in attendance as we danced, sang and participated in the various ceremonies associated with Bina’s wedding. She said she got to know him a bit afterwards but not really all that well and hardly stayed in touch after the wedding was over. All that she remembered of him was that he was very polite. “Always saying Behnji and Namaste, that kind of thing.”

Neelam Mukherji was in Mumbai so the next person I contacted, in my search for information on the infamous Romesh, was Suresh Jindal, the film producer at whose house Bina had met Neelam. How had Neelam made the acquaintance of such a character I asked? Was it through Bal Thackeray, with whom she also has close ties?

“No, no” said Suresh “she apparently had some friends who had a property dispute that he helped them solve. I met him too with Neelam and he seemed very unlike a crook. He was always very polite, very deferential”.

My search continued and finally after further inquiries I obtained the telephone number of one of Romesh’s victims. Poor, shattered, heartbroken Sanjay Sabharwal who claims that he not only stole his properties but also his wife. Even on the telephone he sounded nervous and frightened. “I will come and see you” he said “but you know that I fear for my life. They’ve given me two policemen for my security but I’m worried that they will try and bump me off. I have to keep my whereabouts hidden”.

He came the next day to see me with his two armed policemen in tow. A slight, frazzled, distraught man who is still haunted by the memory of being a prisoner in Romesh Sharma’s garage for several months. “You cannot imagine what he did to me, Madame, you can’t believe how he used to beat me with hockey sticks, how brutally he treated me. It was only luck that I escaped. One day I noticed that the door was open and there was no one around so I just ran and ran.”

Sanjay’s story is not dissimilar to that of Sharma’s other victims. He met him through an acquaintance who suggested that he could help him sort out a property dispute. Instead of sorting it out Sharma stole it from him through the simple method of paying him less than a quarter its cost and refusing to pay the balance. Sanjay says that what destroyed him even more than the loss of the properties was the fact that he discovered that his wife was having an affair with Sharma and had allowed herself to be photographed with him in a compromising position. “Apparently, they were in it together” says Sanjay bitterly.

Ever since Sanjay escaped from Sharma’s clutches he has fought a lone crusade against the man. He showed me copies of a Hindi weekly paper, called Vidarbha Chandika which has been printing stories against Sharma for more than year. The stories have headlines like ‘Sharma’s associate becomes P.S. to the Home Minister’ and ‘In an attempt to cover up his crimes” Vijay Rath presented to Laloo’. The stories are by a reporter called Ashraf Mistry who, Sanjay says, has been trying to expose Sharma along with him.

Sanjay’s own story featured in the newspaper under the headline ‘Freedom fighter Comrade Ramchandra’s family harassed by Sharma’. Sanjay’s grandfather was a Comrade of Bhagat Singh and he hoped that his connection would help him recover the properties that Sharma stole from him. These included a house in Delhi’s upmarket Anand Niketan and an office in Connaught Place. Sanjay wrote to at least two Prime Ministers, Inder Kumar Gujral and Atal Behari Vajpayee, in his search for justice. From Vajpayee he even got a reply. “I am desired to acknowledge the receipt of your letter dated 26.8.1998 addressed to the Prime Minister and to say that it is being forwarded for action as appropriate to the Commissioner of Police, Delhi”.

Mr Advani has made it clear that Sharma will not go scot free. That his story will be made fully public. The CBI is equally keen that Sharma’s links with shadowy, Dubai-based thugs like Chhota Shakeel be brought out in the open and in order to do this Sharma has been detained under the National Security Act. But, will such determined action continue when Romesh Sharma starts to sing?

When he sees himself facing long years in jail he could start singing like the proverbial canary and if he does then some of the biggest stars in the Indian political spectrum could start crashing down.

Nothing to write home about

by Amita Malik

TO tell you the truth, I was glued to cricket and Sharjah last week and not a bit sorry. Because it is difficult to remember a more routine week on television. Not to speak of technical glitches. At least there was some excitement in the cricket although, thanks to Doordarshan, we hardly saw the cricket for the ads. In any other democratic country, sports lovers would have organised dharnas outside Mandi House but here they only got as far as flooding my phone with protests which I duly conveyed to Mr Rakesh Bahadur who is in charge of both sport and advertisments at Mandi House. Not that it made an iota of difference. I wonder why our cricket and tennis authorities and prominent sportsmen and women do not stir themselves to protest to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting about how DD rides roughshod over the viewer.

Since cricket took place in the evenings, I watched more in the mornings. First the DD programme Subeh Savera, which is an unashamed clone of Good Morning India almost item by item. A man and a woman anchor, the girl very gauche with the sort of fixed smile on her face, no matter what, like the GMI week-end girl. And the man in a would-be designer embroidered kurta with what looks like talcum powder on his plastered hair, and a fixed smile to match. The morning exercises are in tights, like GMI, but neither the participants nor the leaders are as trim. The interviewing is simply not in the same class. Much better is the Metro programme, with the assistance now of Aaj Tak and the long-established First Edition where newscaster Sudha Sadanand has brought in some much-needed pep with her confident manner. I did not have enough time to watch the morning programmes on other channels, most of which start with long religious discourses with varying degrees of telegenic attraction. But shall do so.

Before the cricket started, I surfed over the afternoon serials, presumably aimed at women. Well, Aaj Ki Nari was about to incite the dhobi’s daughter against her arranged marriage below the legal age. And a good thing too. Pity the claustrophic serial does not allow more room for Koel Purie’s undoubted charm. The other serials leave one little choice beyond switching off. They all deal with marital situations in a heavy-handed stagy manner. A pity, because Pakistan does these domestic serials with far more credibility and far more professionalism. Indian domestic serials seem to have got bogged down in monotonous dialogue and situations.

At the risk of being considered anti-national, I prefer to watch the BBC’s Hard Talk. I was fortunate in being able to catch both Tim Sebastian talking to Shekhar Kapur in Hard Talk and earlier watched Barry Norman interview Shekhar on Sky TV, to which he has reneged from the BBC which makes it harder for his Indian fans. But Norman’s programme is carried on Star World now and one has to get familiar with the timings. Tim Sebastian asked searching questions but was throughout warm and witty. Shekhar coped beautifully with questions like the cracking of a coconut every morning before shooting and whether his cast and crew felt any awkwardness about being directed by an Indian. I felt it was very odd that when Shekhar was asked about switching over from accountancy to films he did not mention a word about his uncles Chetan, Dev and Goldie Anand or the fact that one side of his family was very much into films. The redoubtable Barry Norman, on the other hand, did seem to suffer from a colonial hangover and asked some strange questions bordering on the offensive. I suppose the British will never forgive Shekhar for robbing their Virgin Queen of her virginity, although he said it was as unproved as her being a virgin. But both interviews were stimulating, with Shekhar speaking the sort of sophisticated language which scores.

Tailpiece: I wonder if other viewers are suffering from the same technical glitches as this viewer. It has nothing to do with my excellent TV set. But after its impressive launch, the National Geographic Channel has frequent breaks in sound and also three broad lines running across the bottom of the screen. Then I find that only the daily BBC programmes emanating from India have terrible distortions in sound. I find it difficult to make out what Niret Alva, Siddharta Basu and Rahul Bose are saying, which is very odd. As soon as the next programme comes on, the sound is perfect. The cable operator denies any faults from his end. I feel both these prestigious organisations should look into these annoying glitches and put them right as quicky as possible.

75 YEARS AGO

East India loans

Discussion in the Commons

EARL Winterton, Under-Secretary for India (Horsham and Worthing, U.) moved the second reading of the East India Loans Bill. It proposed to authorise the Secretary of State in Council to raise in Great Britain sums not exceeding £ 1.5 crore for the general purposes of the Government of India, and sums not exceeding £ 5 crore for capital expenditure on railways and irrigation works.

The increase of borrowing powers for productive purposes was needed for the execution of the programme in view, under which capital expenditure on Indian railways for the next year and the two following years was expected to average £ 2 crore a year.

It might be asked whether the conditions of affairs in India were such as to justify British investors in concluding that they had as good an investment as hitherto in Indian stocks. In the debate on India yesterday he showed what a vast improvement had taken place in Indian political affairs and in the maintenance of public order.

It was said in the course of that debate that the Punjab was in a state of complete anarchy. That statement illustrated the attitude of some critics in this country, and some in India also who seemed to regard India as a disturbed peninsula in a peaceable continent. The exact opposite was the case. Since 1914 Asia had suffered from political convulsions at least as great as Europe had suffered from.