 |
| Wednesday,
April 4, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
|
Messages from the census Compressed natural anger Congress and coalition |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Weaknesses in the BJP and NDA Small savings are really small
The Order of Precedence
The environmental cost of cremation by wood
Bhuj can re-emerge
from its ruins
|
|
Messages from the census THERE are both comforting and depressing messages from the census figures. The cheerful development is that the annual population growth rate has come down to 1.93 per cent from 2.14 per cent in 1991, when last census operations were conducted, though the total figure has increased to over 100.70 crore, up by 181 million in 10 years. The second encouraging message is that the literacy rate has improved considerably for both males and females — from 52.2 per cent in 1991 to 65.4 per cent in 2001. It is a different matter that only a little more than half (54.6 per cent) of the female population can read and write. The third good news is that there is some improvement in the sex ratio — for every 1000 men there are 933 women today though 10 years ago the females numbered only 927. But this is only one side of the picture. The other side so depressing. If the country continues to add to its population at the current rate, or even a little less than this figure, in the next 50 years India will surpass China, earning the dubious distinction of being the most populous country of the world. Already we have added a Brazil to our numbers, which is the fifth largest country in terms of population. Here lies a major challenge for the ruling class. In fact, all political parties have to give a place of primacy to the population issue on their agenda. Unfortunately, the entire political class has been neglecting the problem, especially after the 1975-77 Emergency excesses at the hands of those engaged in implementing the population programme. But it is a serious matter. The country can neglect it at its own peril. Any drive to reduce the number of Indians should concentrate more on Bihar and UP, the two states whose performance has been the worst. More attractive incentives will have to be offered to the poverty-stricken and illiterate people as they prefer to have as many children as they can because in their case more hands mean more income to the family. The northern states will have to learn a lot from the southern states, which have performed excellently. The sharpest decline has been registered by Mr Chandrababu Naidu's Andhra Pradesh, from 24.2 per 1000 in 1991 to 13.9 in 2001. All said and done, these achievements — not enough, of course — have been made despite the fact that the population question has remained relegated to the background because of its poor vote catching appeal. The country could have done definitely better had the successive governments accorded it the attention it deserves. |
|
Compressed natural anger MOST middle class Indians have a fairly high level of tolerance. Otherwise they will not be able to survive in a system which is both inefficient and corrupt. However, the chaos which the Supreme Court order against the plying of non-CNG buses in Delhi has caused manifested itself in the form of public violence on Tuesday. Angry commuters in Badarpur reportedly took out their anger, on being needlessly denied the right to safe and inexpensive public transport, by setting fire to six buses. It will not do to point an accusing finger at the apex court for the chaos on Delhi roads. The real culprit is the Delhi government in general and Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit in particular. Had the Supreme Court not cracked the whip, the political patrons of the polluting industries may have succeeded in letting them make Delhi increasingly unsafe for human habitation. The highest court in the land had to virtually scream at the recalcitrant Delhi Administration for understanding the importance of cleaning up the Yamuna. After the apex court responded to a public interest petition on public transport as the single largest source of pollution in the national capital the powers that be instead of complying with the directives of the judiciary came up with unconvincing excuses. Political interests evidently would have been served better had the objective of withdrawing from service non-CNG buses and taxis in Delhi been defeated. Tuesday's ugly incidents could have been averted had Mrs Dikshit instead of playing politics, for keeping the powerful transport lobby in good humour, performed the role of an administrator. The Delhi government had announced that at least 5,000 buses, which met the strict standards fixed by the highest court, would be on the road on Monday and thereafter. But the actual strength of the depleted fleet was slightly above 1,000. No attempt was made to ensure that autorickshaws and cabs did not take advantage of the shortage of buses because of the Supreme Court order. Over 28,000 affidavits were filed in the Supreme Court, but only the lucky few managed to get the necessary permit from an inefficient and corrupt transport department. Had the Delhi transport department shed the red tape attitude for meeting the deadline for the complete switchover of all forms of public transport to the eco-friendly fuel, Badarpur commuters may not have given expression to their pent-up anger in the manner in which they did. |
|
Congress and coalition PACHMARHI is a forgotten word for the Congress as is the brave talk of going it alone in elections. The new realisation is that it should team up with regional parties even as a junior partner. In Tamil Nadu it will contest a humiliatingly meagre 15 seats, six seats less than the caste-based, LTTE-loving PMK. Pondicherry is a problem but ultimately Ms Jayalalitha will prevail. In West Bengal the position is only slightly better. The party is set to field 57 candidates and maybe a few more to accommodate all the 42 sitting MLAs. This dramatic policy backtracking is being packaged in acceptable ideology. In Tamil Nadu and West Bengal the BJP is a rootless entity and it should not get a chance to dig in. This calls for scaling down its demand and mobilising all secular forces. Presented this way, its shrinking base, which is the reason for giving in to the two formidable ladies, sounds like a statesman-like sacrifice. There is, however, force in this strategy. If the party has to have any chance of revival at the national level, it has to remain relevant in all states. And also roll back the BJP’s area of influence and confine it to the Hindi belt and Gujarat. A major expansion thrust will emerge after the Assembly elections in May. The party hopes to be part of the ruling coalition or be the ruling party in all five states. In Kerala the Congress-led UDF has an equal chance and tradition there is for the two fronts to be in the saddle alternately. The chances of the DMK retaining power are not rated high. In Pondicherry it wants to contest the election with the Tamil Maanila Congress on its side by limiting the alliance with the AIADMK to Tamil Nadu alone. In West Bengal it hopes to occupy the treasury benches. The next Assam Chief Minister will most likely be a Congressman. If all this turns out to be a reality, it would do wonders to the morale of the party ranks. It is this long-term strategy that has forced the party to unite all Congress factions and position itself to regain the faded image of a natural ruling party. Hence the increasing importance of comparatively young leaders. Next target will be Mr Sharad Pawar. Top party leaders think that the Congress will be more appealing to regional parties than the BJP, once the latter is forced to fight back. |
|
Weaknesses in the BJP and NDA AS the two main political formations digest the consequences of the tehelka.com tapes, the Bharatiya Janata Party has finally got the message while the Congress is still unsure of its next move. The BJP has begun its Herculean task of repairing its compromised image even as it is lending half an ear to the conspiracy theorists. For the Congress, the short-term objective is to make the most of the scandal in the forthcoming elections without giving much thought to what might follow. Having extracted as much capital out of the scandal as it could by disrupting parliamentary proceedings for days on end, the Congress will find that such tactics yield diminishing returns and come close to irresponsibility. Although the timing of the charges against Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s secretary, Mr Vincent George, was unfortunate from the government’s point of view, it was a reminder of the old party’s vulnerability, and after vociferously defending him, the Congress leadership adopted the better course of maintaining silence. The BJP leadership has succeeded in steadying the ship of state after panicking for a time but the crisis has revealed major weaknesses in the party and the National Democratic Alliance. In consequence, both are weaker, and with two constituents out of the coalition, the fortunes of the ruling coalition are dependent upon one leader and party, Andhra’s Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu and his Telugu Desam. What price he will demand for his continuing cooperation remains to be seen although the longevity of the NDA regime at the Centre suits his purposes. The major problems thrown up by the crisis affect the BJP. Apart from the party losing its virginity in the cruellest fashion, the Tehelka tapes have magnified the contradictions in the Sangh Parivar. It is still not clear how far the pendulum has swung in the direction of those described as hardliners to the disadvantage of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. What is clear is the new volubility and self-righteousness of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its desire to call the shots in the government, preferably from within the Prime Minister’s Office. It is a startling indication of how far the Sangh Parivar has travelled from its fabled days of discipline and ethics that it is washing so much dirty linen in public. Publicly hitting at the main functionaries in the PMO is an extraordinary development as was the public upbraiding of the unfortunate once party President, Mr Bangaru Laxman. And the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has been chiming in with its own confused and contradictory comments, turning on the heat on the Ayodhya issue. It was said of the Congress that it was an umbrella party containing within it most of the country’s political tendencies. Now it would seem that the BJP is not merely striving to catch up with the old party in reaching corruption targets but also in becoming another umbrella party. Perhaps it is in the nature of Indian polity that no ruling party at the Centre can survive for long without being all things to most men. There is thus an element of truth in the RSS charge that the BJP is becoming “Congressised”. Such philosophical conclusions are of scant comfort to the BJP leadership, which is not merely unable to bring discipline to the party’s ranks but has no control over members of the Sangh Parivar promoting their different agendas at a time of crisis. The relationship between the RSS and the BJP has never been fully clarified, partly because it suited both sides to maintain a measure of ambiguity to gain more political space for partisan advantage. At one stage, it promoted itself as a cultural organisation to escape the long arm of the law. The RSS is, of course, the BJP’s spiritual mentor but is now in danger of losing its status by succumbing to the temptation of becoming a participant in intra-party warfare. It is one thing to say, as the RSS had been declaring, that it was more important to stick to principles than remain in power; quite another to take pot shots at the former BJP President and the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister. The VHP is on surer ground in laying down a new deadline for the Ayodhya temple because it has traditionally served the purpose of taking extreme positions ruling BJP functionaries dare not and provided political cover for the BJP when in power. The Sangh Parivar’s predicament is partly the result of the corrupting influences of power made famous by Lord Acton’s classical definition; partly, it is the unfamiliarity of political actors in managing coalition governments. Perhaps there is also an element of frustration, as far as the RSS and those variously described as purists and hardliners are concerned. It is clear as daylight that Mr Vajpayee’s trump card remains what it has been, his acceptability by the coalition partners and the country, to the exclusion of any other leader in the BJP. The important point is: Where does the BJP go from here? The tasks of governance do not wait upon the convenience of the ruling party and must be performed with as much savoir faire as the NDA coalition can gather. But the BJP leaders should revisit the scene to draw lessons from their failure in managing the crisis. Mr Vajpayee is to blame for not insisting on Defence Minister George Fernandes, immediate resignation and for going to extraordinary lengths to keep the Samata Party in the coalition. Second, the chorus of shouts of a national and international conspiracy sent the wrong signal. Third, instead of party spokesmen vociferously defending the BJP and the government, it would have been wiser to adopt a more humble and less strident posture, given the circumstances. Presumably, the Congress and the other Opposition parties will have the wisdom to return to parliamentary debate when the Budget session resumes its labours. However, it would be too much to hope that the forthcoming Assembly elections will not cast their long shadow over what should be the cut and thrust of rational debate. The tragedy is that a Budget that won much praise when it was presented has become a hostage of short-term political considerations, for the Opposition more than for the ruling coalition. The writer is a former Editor of The Statesman. |
|
Small savings are really small THE so-called dream Budget of Mr Yashwant Sinha has been so much praised by the corporate czars that it has come to be described as of the corporate sector, for the corporate sector and by the corporate sector. Some have gone to the extent of saying that “Bharat” has been ignored to promote “India”. And all this in the name of the reforms, which have been characterised by fits and starts all along. I will dwell upon the rationale, or the lack of it, for reduction in the interest rate cuts at the expense of the small savers. Let us understand as to why the interest rates tend to go up. The answer is the ever increasing government borrowing, which is projected to be 4 per cent higher next year than the revised estimates for the current year. If the government has no intention to rein in its proclivity to balloon the borrowings, as is evident from the Budget proposals, the interest rates for the industry will move upwards, sooner than later. Since the government in any case will be borrowing from the market to meet the fiscal deficit, let us appreciate that the amount mobilised through small savings would be only one-third of the borrowings through government securities. The yield on long-term securities, a major instrument of government borrowing, works out to a little less than 11 per cent. Then why penalise the poor small saver who invests in the small saving schemes like the Public Provident Fund, which provides a semblance of safety net to those who are not covered by any pension scheme. Not for him, the volatile stock markets. It has been empirically established that small savings being of long-term nature with sufficiently long lock-in period, do not come in the way of the growth of bank deposits. They eminently serve the purpose of the individuals but are of no use to the corporates. If the total bank deposits stand at Rs 9,35,000 crore, the small savings account for just Rs 1,55,000 crore. Even with a lower rate of interest on bank deposits, the household sector invests in bank deposits two and a half times more than it does in small savings. According to analysts, the spread of the total investment this year is expected to be like this: Rs 40,000 crore in small savings, Rs 1,00,000 crore in term deposits in banks and Rs 1,20,000 crore in government securities. Unless the interest rate differential is made pretty large, which is highly unlikely, there is no probability of cross-switching among the aforesaid three avenues of investment. The R.V. Gupta Committee on small savings had recommended that the interest rate on small savings should be indexed to the instruments of comparable maturity on an annual basis, with a .5 per cent bias in favour of small savings. This should take care of the inflationary impact on the real returns on savings. If interest rates on small savings are reduced just like that, the household savings will tend to reduce and the money may get diverted to meet short-term consumption. I’m sure the idea underlying the interest rate cut is not to spur demand by this logic, which is fundamentally flawed. We are a labour abundant, capital scarce economy. Since 1996 the rate of savings and investment in the economy is falling. The secret of high economic growth achieved by the Asian “tigers” lay in their high rate of savings which ranged from 35 to 40 per cent, as against 23 per cent in India. Given the pitiable state of our infrastructure sector, we can ill afford to lose the small savings segment so vital to support investment and capital formation, without which the dream of a 9 per cent growth rate may not be realised. Experts opine that high transaction costs, non-performing assets and other inefficiencies in our financial system are responsible for higher lending rates. The small investor must not be penalised for this. In conclusion, the government would do well to attempt to reduce the borrowing meant to meet the runaway revenue expenditure. The strategy to control the fiscal deficit by cutting into capital expenditure is counter-productive in as much as it sets at naught the proclaimed objective of improvement in infrastructure. Unless and until the country improves upon the inadequate and inefficient infrastructure, the projected growth rate cannot be achieved. Are we missing the woods for the trees? |
|
The Order of Precedence THE post of Commodore-in-Charge, Kochi (Kerala), has been a vital assignment since its inception. This command included the entire Naval base, including the airwing, signal school, basic training school, gunnery school and navigating school etc spread over the strategic Wellington island. The Commodore-in-Charge had a decisive say in all operational matters concerning all naval ships, merchant ships and aircraft, including commercial flights, in this entire area. One could not even visit the best local hotel without feeling the presence of navy. The railway terminus was also located in the Wellington island area. There was no official activity of significance in Kochi where the Indian Navy was not represented. The Kerala High Court occupied a small building in Ernakulam known only to mostly persons concerned. It was February, 1953, when information was received that the Chief of Naval Staff from New Delhi was paying an official visit to Kochi. A large party in his honour was arranged for Saturday. Accordingly a printed invitation was issued to all invitees requesting them to confirm their participation by Thursday. That included the Chief Justice of the Kerala High Court residing at Kochi. Most of the recipients of the invitation cards replied by Thursday morning while no reply was received from the Chief Justice. The Commodore asked his ADC, a young Lieutenant, to ring up and find out. The PA to Chief Justice informed the Lieutenant that he could not accept the invitation for any party from the Navy as the Commodore had not yet called on him. The Commodore-in-Charge was surprised by this reply and hurriedly consulted the official list of the Order of Precedence. So far, he was under the impression that he held the most influential position in the area with a strength of 4500 armed and civilian persons under his command. Even the Collector of the district consulted the Navy before taking any major administrative and security decision. The local chief considered naval command as the elder brother. A quick scrutiny of the Order of Precedence showed that the Chief Justice of any state in India stood much above any military commander of the sub area like the Commodore-in-Charge of the local naval station. In fact, even the Collector of Kochi ranked above the Commodore. The irony of the situation deeply embarrassed the Commodore who asked his ADC at 10.30 a.m. to inform the Chief Justice that the Commodore-in-Charge, Kochi was coming to the High Court premises to formally call on the Chief Justice within an hour, the same day. The Chief Justice conveyed his convenience. The Commodore and the ADC got dolled up in their ceremonial dress with medals and swords. In addition the retinue included four more armed sailors in two jeeps and a front rider on motor cycle. The Commodore’s car was flying his pennant. The convoy approached the High Court premises winding its way through the wide avenues of the Wellington island to the High Court building which stood besides a primary school and did not have a boundary wall in between. The two jeeps had to be parked on the outside main road as the High Court premises had a total parking capacity of 10 vehicles only. The next morning the Chief Justice called on the Commodore-in-Charge in his office at Wellington island as the return call and accepted the invitation. Needless to say that there was no mention of this incident when the Chief Justice of the Kerala High Court was introduced to the Chief of the Naval Staff during the Saturday party. |
|
75 YEARS
AGO THE General Secretary, PPCC, has issued a circular letter in the course of which he asks that those — Hindus, Mussalmans, Sikhs, Christians and Parsis — who wish to seek election to the Council and the Assembly as Congress candidates, should send their applications to the office of the Provincial Congress Committee as soon as possible. It would be better if applications are sent through the District Congress Committees. Only the applications of those will be considered by the Congress Election Board who are members of the Congress, sign the Congress pledge and accept the Congress policy and programme. A meeting of the executive council of PPCC will be held on April 9th at 3 p.m. at the Bradlaugh Hall, Lahore. |
|
|
The environmental cost of cremation by wood IF you go by Hindi films the last wish of any person is so supreme and Godly that it is fulfilled at all cost, even if the most dreaded criminal makes such a wish. But in real life there exist no such reality. The most inexpensive and yet extremely rewarding to the universe the last wish of even the dead, at least in Chandigarh is of no concern and consequence, thanks to the callous and indifferent working of the Municipal Corporation. Dr P. N. Chhuttani, the great thinker, who relentlessly worked for universal peace and the environment had written in his will that no wood should be wasted while cremating his body. “Electric crematorium should be used to dispose of my body to enable me to save every piece of wood”. But alas! His last will could not be fulfilled, as the Electric Furnace Crematorium — EFC — in the cremation ground in Sector 25 was not working. The family had no option but to waste four quintals of wood. Yes! It takes four quintals of wood to cremate an average body and another one quintal for a heavy body. The EFC remains locked and deserted because it has been declared “useless” for want of ‘spare parts’ that are not available anymore. As per the records of the Municipal Corporation, “The model of the furnace is very old and has become obsolete”. However, the corporation made this EFC functional in November, 1999, and it remained available to the public till March, 2000. Once declared “out of order”; the corporation approached M/S Asia Brown Bovery Ltd, Ahmedabad, for spare parts. Reportedly, the firm expressed its inability to provide old spare parts. The firm, however, offered to completely overhaul the EFC, including modernising of the old parts, at a phenomenal cost of Rs 18 lakh, excluding any taxes, duty, freight, insurance etc. For a completely new electric furnace, the company quoted Rs 30 lakh, inclusive of all taxes etc. The corporation, in all its wisdom, decided not to go in for overhauling but for a new cremtorium. Till date, this decision has not been implemented. “The Municipal Corporation is faced with paucity of funds and that precisely is the reason why the EFC has not been replaced. The cremation ground falls under civic amenities and we get only Rs 15 lakh to deal with it for the entire city. And civic amenities include not only cremations but also community centres, ‘janj ghars’, bus-stand shelters, public toilets etc.” revealed the former Corporation Chief Engineer, Mr Puranjit Singh. True these are the harsh realities. But there are still harsher realities that we are faced with. Is the role of the Municipal Corporation and its counsellors limited to following rules and finances only? Surely, they know that if a dead body is cremated with wood, it effects the universe. “Each day the cremation ground of Sector 25 receives, on an average, seven to eight bodies for cremation with wood. Approximately, 35 quintals of wood is used every day”, disclosed Sham Lal, the person in charge of cremations. So in a year Chandigarhians alone are using 12,775 quintals of wood in just one cremation ground. It has to be nearly a 20-year-old tree to provide four quintals of wood for just one body to be cremated. Thus for the Sector 25 cremation ground alone 3,193 trees are cut every year. The monetary loss in terms of rupees is far less than the environmental loss. One quintal of wood costs Rs 100 in the market. However, the person in charge of cremations at the Sector 25 cremation ground in his own words disclosed that relatives are charged Rs 800 for four quintals of wood. On the other hand, under the Forest Conservation Act of India, the loss in terms of environment is enormous. According to calculations in this Act: One hectare of fully stocked forest translates to 500 cubic metres of growing stock of trees. The environmental loss of this one-hectare (if trees are cut) would be Rs 226 lakh. Thus trees cut for four quintals to five quintals of wood for one cremation would cost the environment Rs 2.20 lakh. This environmental loss is calculated on account of oxygen loss, erosion of soil, loss of wildlife, re-charging of water table, reducing surface run off etc. We all know that one of the major causes of global warming is elimination of trees. In India studies over the past five decades reveal that we are cutting trees several times more than the plantation. This causes fast depletion of forest cover. It certainly is of great interest for us to note the first world countries are paying fabulous amount of money to countries like Indonesia for putting a ban on cutting their forests. In this backdrop, we now review the electric furnace crematorium of Chandigarh. The Municipal Corporation was obviously oblivious of the enormous environmental loss and did not take urgent steps to make the EFC functional. It would have saved thousands of trees over the past five years when it got locked for want of a mere Rs 18 lakh for its repair or say Rs 30 lakh for replacement with a new EFC. Interestingly, two committees were constituted specifically for the management of the EFC only. The first meeting of this committee was held on November 6, 1997. This committee made a number of constructive, practical and urgent recommendations. The main recommendations were. (i) Executive Engineer Swaran Singh was made Nodal Officer. (ii) Comprehensive plan for beautification and overall development of the cremation ground was to be made by an architect. (iii) Boundary wall was to be constructed and (iv) A managing committee was to be constituted for running the cremation ground. This committee was also to collect donations for beautification. Subsequently, a second meeting of the committee for the management of the cremation ground took place on September 9, 1998 within a year of the previous one. In this meeting, Maj-Gen Rajinder Nath (retd) and Air Marshal R. S. Bedi (retd) had expressed their dismay that no action had taken place to implement the previous recommendations. This time they suggested that the EFC should be repaired and people should be educated to make use of it. The pundit in charge at the cremation ground was asked to put up display boards indicating the rate of fuel and wood approved by the committee. Neither the board has been put up nor the rates have been got approved from the managing committee. The committee also felt that the nearby dump of dead animals should be covered by soil. Except for shifting the site from one corner to another nothing has taken place in this regard. Ironically, somewhere along the line the repair of the EFC or replacement with a new furnace got lost and the committee instead recommended that a sectional officer and an executive engineer, electrical should be asked to contact two firms who have got the expertise of installing EFC. It directed that a second electric crematorium should be installed. While this issue is still dragging on many a contentious citizen of Chandigarh who wish to be cremated at the electric crematorium precisely to save our environment are left with no choice. As per an ancient Indian idiom, a dead elephant is worth “sawa lakh” (One Lakh twentyfive thousand). But how much worth is the body of a human being in modern times? It costs Rs 800 if cremated with wood and Rs 30 if cremated in the electric crematorium. |
|
Bhuj can re-emerge from its ruins LIKE the mythical bird phoenix that rose from its ashes, the quake damaged Bhuj can reemerge from its ruins if a proposal by Indian scientists gets formal government approval. “We are proposing to rebuild Bhuj from the huge amount of debris that the quake has created by using innovative methods,” R.K. Bandari of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) told PTI. “The mountains of debris are an environmental hazard and disposing them of will cost a lot of money, converting the environmental problem into an economic opportunity is what our proposal is all about. In that process many people who lost everything in the quake ‘might get jobs,” Bandari said. He said the plan is to recycle the debris into material that can be used for building roads and embankments or turned into building blocks for constructing new houses. It can also be compacted into stone columns and placed in boreholes to strengthen the ground. According to Bandari, several buildings in Bhuj and Ahmedabad were dangerously tilted but otherwise remained intact suggesting that the shock waves turned the soil into a sort of liquid thereby making the structures sink into the ground by a phenomenon called “liquefaction”. Strengthening these weakened areas with stone columns made of debris will give protection against future earthquakes, it is claimed. The technology for all this exists within the CSIR laboratories, Bandari said. He said that reuse of debris in building construction would, however, require an amendment to building byelaws. The building code which specifies the materials that can be used in construction has not been revised for several years, he said. Bandari, who is CSIR expert in disaster management said the idea of putting the debris to use arose from his earlier experience in dealing with a landslide in 1984 when a landslide buried a whole village in the foothills of the Himalayas.
PTI Fast foods and feminism Instant mixes and pre-cooked foods supposedly liberate the modern Indian woman from the drudgery of chopping, grinding and cooking. The feminist dimension of the proliferation of fast foods has not received much attention because it is assumed that whatever saves women time and effort is “good”. But with their high fat content and numerous chemical additives, fast foods are hazardous to health. Add to that the industry’s adverse impact on the environment and rural poverty. In the USA, 200,000 persons suffer food poisoning, 900 need hospitalisation and 14 die each day. Doctors are blaming pre-processed, pre-cooked food served by chain outlets for this situation.
WFS Yen and the art of
making mischief If you thought chopping a cow in half pushed the boundaries of contemporary art, you haven’t met Tatsumi Orimoto, otherwise known as Bread Man, a performer who has travelled the world with a bloomer tied over his face. Several Japanese artists are causing a sensation in their own country. Tatsumi Orimoto is, at 55, a grand old man of Japanese contemporary art. He has made his name with a performance piece, or live sculpture, which involves wrapping several loaves of bread around his head, tightly, with twine. The configurations are not accidental: there is a large oval bloomer at the front where his face should be, and at least six baguettes jutting out at various angles from the centre. Orimoto must scarcely be able to see behind this leaven elephantiasis, and yet he wanders about the world shaking hands, boarding trains, challenging people to accept him. You might call it street theatre of the absurd. He has been to Turkey, Nepal, Germany, and, with a photographer, documented each performative moment: the time he was chased by homeless people in New York, or thrown out of a restaurant in Moscow for wasting food; the occasions when he was laughed at by students or ignored by passing tourists as he posed at the foot of Big Ben. “Bread Man”, Orimoto says now, is a project that will continue until he dies. This May, as part of the Tokyo Life exhibition at Selfridges, Orimoto will exhibit some of his photographs, and walk along Oxford Street as Bread Man. But for now, he is back in Kawasaki, the city outside Tokyo where he grew up. He lives with his mother in a small, traditional Japanese house. His mother has Alzheimer’s, and while looking after her, he has made her the subject of his work; she is now known as Art Mama.
Guardian |
|
You and I and everything in the universe are the absolute, not parts, but the whole. You are the whole of that Absolute. ***** And if all this Maya is so beautiful think of the wondrous beauty of the Reality behind it! ***** Can you see your own eyes? God is like that. He is as close as your own eyes. He is your own, even though you cannot see Him. ***** If I consider myself greater than the ant that crawls on the ground I am ignorant. ***** I may have to be born again because I have fallen in love with man. ***** Of course I would commit a crime and go to hell forever if by that I could really help a human being. ***** Without it I can fly With pure thought I can travel, leaving this world, this body behind. Moving away from the experience of the body I am so subtle I, the subtle being of light I move beyond sound to the ocean of light. I bathe in this ocean of light. — The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. II, Sayings and Utterances ***** I am a being of peace A loveful being A being of light A being of power. I am light I am energy I am alive, vibrant, sparkling divine. I am separate from this dense body of matter, my vehicle... — Creative Raja Yoga Study Book |
 |
| Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir | Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs | Nation | Editorial | | Business | Sport | World | Mailbag | In Spotlight | Chandigarh Tribune | Ludhiana Tribune 50 years of Independence | Tercentenary Celebrations | | 121 Years of Trust | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
