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Harsh punishment EU’s promises |
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Take the option Phase out Class X board exams The approval, by the Central Advisory Board of Education, of the proposal to make the Class X board examinations optional should be commended. This move will ensure that there is less stress on schoolchildren, who have to take two board examinations in the last three years of schooling.
Forty years after
1965 war
Dead as Dodo?
Why belittle
Bhakra? As oil prices rise,
field trips get cancelled Delhi
Durbar
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EU’s promises Although
many nuts and bolts are to be sorted out, the emerging agreement between India and the European Union making New Delhi a partner in the Galileo navigation satellite programme and supporting India’s efforts for entry into the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project is significant. It will be an altogether different world once both projects become a reality. Galileo, going to be fully in service in 2008, will be Europe’s rival to the US Global Positioning System (GPS) with 30 satellites orbiting nearly 24000 km above the earth, helping in telecommunications, rail and road transport, air travel, energy and environmental applications and a better determination of the position of an object. India’s attempt to join the ITER, located in France, seems to have brightened up with the EU promising to help it become a part of the ambitious nuclear energy project. India has an impeccable record in nuclear nonproliferation, and the other partners —- the US, Japan, Russia, China and South Korea —- should, therefore, have no reservations in expressing their approval. The ITER may take at least three decades to reach the stage of fruition, but once its results are there, enough energy will be available. The Sixth India-EU Summit, which covered a wide range of subjects, besides Galileo and the ITER, provided them an occasion to discuss in detail about how to cooperate for tackling terrorism. The problem, as it was admitted, cannot be eliminated unless it is attacked with a multi-pronged strategy, blocking its sources of funding and ending its support base. Any bilateral endeavour is incomplete without stepping up economic cooperation. India and the EU, therefore, decided to constitute a high-level group for increasing bilateral trade and investment flows. The FDI flow from the EU to India during the period of economic liberalisation was only $7 billion, less than 1 per cent of the EU’s overseas investments. The bulk of India’s trade with the EU, which grew by 20 per cent in 2004-05, still comprises traditional goods. The trade basket will reflect a change only when the EU eases its anti-dumping measures in areas like textiles, electronics, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. There are tremendous possibilities of expanding trade and economic relations between the two. |
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Take the option The
approval, by the Central Advisory Board of Education, of the proposal to make the Class X board examinations optional should be commended. This move will ensure that there is less stress on schoolchildren, who have to take two board examinations in the last three years of schooling. However, since education is a state subject, the implementation of this decision is likely to be diluted. Already, Delhi, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh have protested against the idea of making the Class X examinations optional for students who wish to continue studying for Class XII. Students who opt for professional or vocational courses after Class X will, however, have to take the board examinations, as will the students who would want to change school after Class X. For all practical purposes, today, it is necessary to have passed the Class XII examinations. The Council of the Board of School Education had, on May 1, also exhorted all state boards to adopt a standardised evaluation system and make examinations stress-free. Towards this, the National Curriculum Framework had also suggested a shorter duration of examinations and papers that comprised well-designed multiple questions and short-answer queries. The NCERT had suggested that English be made the second language and learning it should be mandatory for all classes in all streams of education. These suggestions have merit and should be implemented. Hundreds of thousands of students all over India take the board examinations primarily because it is the critical benchmark for entry to higher education. It is up to the boards to ensure that what should be an important milestone in every child’s development does not become a nightmare. |
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We must travel in the direction of our
fear. — John Berryman |
Forty years after 1965 war
COME September 6 and every year our neighbour to the west observes the “Defence of Pakistan Day”. This has indeed gone on for four decades. In this country, the 1965 war is ignored even more than the other clashes of arms in which it has been involved. The only exception to this rule has been the sudden spurt earlier this year over the absurd boast of the Pakistani politician, Mr Gohar Ayub, that his father, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, had obtained, through the “treachery” of an Indian brigadier, the Indian war plans! An outstanding feature of the 40th anniversary of the war, however, is that it has come at a time when the mood about the prospects of peace between India and Pakistan is far more upbeat than ever before. With both sides determined to hold fast to the peace process, the atmosphere ought to be conducive to an amicable, not acrimonious, discussion on the wars in the past. In this context the first point to be made is that the Pakistani pretence that the 1965 war began only on September 6 is a classic example of the liberties that our Pakistani friends blandly take with history and facts. The wide world knows that the war started on August 5 of that year when, under the meticulously planned Operation Gibraltar, armed Pakistani commandos were infiltrated into Kashmir in the vain hope of triggering an uprising in the valley. This misadventure having flopped by the month-end, on September 1, Pakistan launched Operation Grand Slam aimed at occupying the sensitive area of Chhamb-Jaurian and then going for the jugular at Akhnoor to cut Kashmir off from the rest of India. At first, the Pakistani advance was rapid enough, partly because the then Chief of Army Staff, Gen J. N. Chaudhuri, needlessly delayed his request for air strikes on the Pakistani armour. But even after the advance was slowed down the challenge was serious enough. It was then that Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri put into effect his strategy of crossing the international border that began in the Lahore sector at first light on September 6. Altaf Gauhar, Ayub’s confidant, indeed alter ego, and biographer, has recorded that on that morning, the “most surprised man in Pakistan was Ayub Khan”. This was so because Ayub, a rather cautious man, was initially reluctant to sanction Gibraltar and Grand Slam. He did so only after Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the principal advocate of the policy of wresting Kashmir from India by force, was able — with the help of his most hawkish Foreign Secretary, Aziz Ahmed, and some others — to persuade the President that India would never “dare” to cross the international border. In so assuring Ayub, Bhutto and his cohorts were being less than honest and dangerously derisive of Shastri. But it must be conceded that in advocating that the “last opportunity to get Kashmir must not be lost”, Bhutto had a point. He argued that “traumatised” by the defeat in the high Himalayas, left “leaderless” by Nehru’s death and tormented by an acute food shortage and language riots in the South, India was in very bad shape. If Pakistan wanted Kashmir, it was “now or never”. For, a massive expansion of the Indian armed forces was on and in this the United States was offering India help, however limited. Soon enough Pakistan would not be able to take on the Indian military might. Bhutto buttressed his case also by citing Indian “pusillanimity” during the Kutch affair that was Pakistan’s rehearsal for what was to follow in Kashmir. The Americans had neatly sidestepped Indian complaints that Pakistan had used US-supplied Patton tanks in the Rann of Kutch, and this was a “good omen” for Pakistan. Moreover, Pentagon-affiliated American think tanks, after elaborate war games, had concluded that in an India-Pakistan war over Kashmir, Pakistan would win. How the war ended is well known and does not therefore need to be recounted in detail. In the words of the then British High Commissioner to Pakistan, Sir Morris-James, in a matter of days the choice before Ayub was “an honourable draw or defeat”. General Gul Hasan, a future Army Chief who had a lot to do with the 1965 war, wrote: “We delude ourselves that we emerged victorious. Far from it. All we attained was to ensure that our adversary did not make telling gains.” The way most Indians, including the armed forces, looked at it was that this country had frustrated Pakistan’s all-out attempt to grab Kashmir and had simultaneously “wiped out the stigma of 1962”. All this lies in the distant past. In today’s ambience let’s look back calmly and objectively. On the 1965 war there has been a lot more candid discussion in Pakistan than in India. Indeed, here even today the official history of the 1965 war, like that of Mao’s India war, remains classified. There should be no attempt to cover up the near -disasters that Indian leadership, civilian and military, all but courted. In the first place, the events of September 1 took the country by surprise. This was aggravated manifold because the Army chief had not bothered to take the Air Force into confidence. The consequent friction between the two services had its deleterious consequences. There was utter confusion about air support to ground troops. Secondly, General Chaudhuri, who had first refused to believe the intelligence reports that Pakistan had raised an additional armoured division, later panicked and wanted to withdraw the Indian forces to the east of the Beas river, which would have given Pakistan the free run it wanted. To his eternal credit, the Army Commander, Lieut-General Harbaksh Singh, refused. It is no longer a secret that it became necessary to use the good offices of the then Maharaja of Patiala to ensure that the Chief of Army Staff did not overrule General Harbaksh. This is no way to fight a war. There is a lot more, but only one other instance of slipshod approach should suffice. Even to this day the impression persists that both India and Pakistan had run out of ammunition by the time of the ceasefire. This is completely untrue in the case of India, which had exhausted only 8 per cent of the ammunition at its disposal. The scare about exhaustion was the product entirely of mismanaged logistics. The Ministry of Defence had, in fact, ordered a million rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition from Yugoslavia. The order had to be cancelled.
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Dead as Dodo?
Almost
every night I walked my daschund Dodo down Copernicus Marg, past the Kamani auditorium, Punjab and Haryana Bhavans and the Princes’ Park, all well known landmarks in the heart of Delhi. It was not a particularly exciting walk. It was 11 p.m. one such night as I set out accompanied by my son and Dodo. Despite my son’s caution and hesitation, I insisted on crossing the road to the other side. As I strode across, as I had done hundreds of times before, I felt something missing. Dodo’s collar had slipped off and before I could react he had shot across the road even as a passing Santro hit him and sailed past. I ran to the crumpled heap that lay on the road. My heart lurched at the agony of the moment. With little hope and much remorse, we struggled home carrying the dead weight. I rang every vet I knew. No answer. Finally a Dr Choudhury at South Extension asked me to bring the animal over immediately. My thoughts were a jumble of memories as we drove to the clinic. Dodo’s mischievous ways, his tiny black face pleading for crumbs, his deceptively loud daschund bark flinging threats at visiting pigeons and squirrels brimmed before my eyes. Tears welled up as I recalled the boundless love and affection he had showered on us in his two-year-old life. The ride to the vet was a difficult one. It was raining. The roads had been excavated for new flyovers, u-turns and slip roads. Minus street lighting and signages we were lost. After what seemed an age, we blinked our way down the uneven colony pathways of South Extension until a sign VET lay ahead. Dr Choudhury and his wife were waiting for us. While she probed Dodo’s chest with a tiny stethoscope her husband lifted the eyelids. They exchanged glances and nodded at each other before the vet said “He’s still alive”, but without much enthusiasm. He then proceeded to pump injection upon injection into Dodo’s lifeless muscles. “Take him home now” said Dr Chowdhury as he washed his hands. “If he wakes up, bring him back tomorrow.” “What has happened, Doctor?” I asked tremulously. “Can’t say right now”, he replied. At home, I lay Dodo on a cushion on the rug next to me and tried to catch some sleep. I awoke to the sound of a shuffle even as the crows and peacocks carried on their early morning cacophony outside. I reached out for Dodo. He was still inert. But nearer him on the rug lay what looked like a pool of blood. Dark, dense and wet. Haemorrhage? Even before I could touch it, the unmistakable odour of urine reached my nostrils. For the first time in my life I joyfully welcomed the “business” on the carpet, a phenomenon which had been banished with screams, threats and newspapers all through Dodo’s puppyhood. The visit to the vet confirmed that Dodo would live. His organs and bones were intact. The vet-wife looked at his nails and said: “He is lucky, he has 20 nails. Dogs only have 18. We get a lot of people asking for such dogs.” Was that veterinary science or just Dodo’s good luck? The night walks still go on.
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Why belittle Bhakra? The
Bhakra Dam, Nehru’s temple of modern India, is under attacks from pseudo environmentalists. These self-appointed experts have been, for the past two decades, unleashing a venomous propaganda against India’s major water resource development projects within and outside the country. They had condemned the Indira Gandhi Nahar Project (IGNP) as a pipe dream, but retracted when the Rajasthan Canal started blooming parts of the Thar desert. They had prophesied that not a single drop of water from the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) would reach the distant regions of Saurashtra, but when the Narmada waters from the semi-finished Sardar Sarovar Dam gushed to that region they chose to hide themselves ostrich like in the sands of ignorance. In their newly acquired wisdom, they had even attributed the primary cause of terrorism in Punjab in the nineties to the Bhakra-led Green Revolution! Though they claim that they are fighting for the sustained development of water resources, it is apparent that their crusades are aimed to ensure their own sustained development and to remain in the limelight for their continued survival. Irresponsible criticism against such mega projects by self-appointed experts masquerading as environmental activists got a boost in the latter part of the 20th century with the media providing adequate space for such debates. Chanting the mantra of environment, these self-avowed champions of ecology indiscriminately attacked every developmental effort in the country to get national and international recognition. The report of the World Commission on Dams (WCD), a report specially designed for the “sustained underdevelopment” of countries like India, came handy to them to oppose major water projects in the country then. The activists have again surfaced now, this time to unravel the Bhakra, to belittle its contribution to the country and to prove that it had brought nothing but disaster to the people. Quoting the WCD report, they have questioned the very need for the dam, since according to them, irrigation in Punjab and Haryana had begun many decades before the dam came into existence and the existing diversion schemes had met the food needs then and would still have met the needs of the nation even if the Bhakra had not been there. As the flood-waters would have been passed over these small diversion structures, there would have been less submergence upstream as compared to the dam storage and the impact in terms of displacement, submergence of forests, etc could have been avoided with a no-dam option. Since much of the Bhakra command was already irrigated, according to these cynics, irrigation from the Bhakra canals played a limited role in these areas as tubewell irrigation has been the overwhelming major source. According to their present findings, the Bhakra dam has played only a limited role in the Green Revolution and hence they have suggested alternatives such as the options of local rainwater harvesting. They have quoted the success story of Sukhomajri where they saw a large variety of crops, and greater yields. They insist that the same principles can be applied anywhere and a moderate increase in yields spread over large areas can meet our food requirements. Unfortunately, these activists appear to be suffering from an ideology-induced myopia and afflicted by bouts of amnesia regarding the ground reality. The Bhakra Relevant District Gazetteers have documented famines occurring in the 18th, 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, thus nailing the claims of happy, pristine conditions of the countryside then. The Bhakra came and its storage assured irrigation to 0.9 mha erratically served by the then existing diversion schemes and facilitated new irrigation to 2.6 mha. The recharge from the irrigation system helped extensive groundwater development. The Bhakra power enabled massive industrialisation and electrification of many villages and towns. Assured drinking water from the Bhakra reached millions of households spread in villages, town and even in Delhi. The frequent flood havoc downstream from the Sutlej became a part of history with the reservoir absorbing most of the floods. The opponents of major dams have been unduly optimistic about stand-alone local options. However, a study of the performance of these much-hyped alternatives reveal that while the success stories of such efforts are few, the failure stories can fill volumes. For example, in Andhra Pradesh under the “Neeru Meeru” scheme many failures have been reported after sinking millions of rupees in the project by the state government. In Gujarat, though thousands of local harvesting structures were constructed in the last decade in the Saurashtra region for providing water to the people, many failed and the Narmada waters from the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) had to quench the thirst of lakhs of people. The yeoman’s service done by Anna Hazare of Ralegaon Siddhi in greening the area with local water harvesting structures is always quoted. But the contribution from the Kukat canal, which irrigates a major part of the area and recharges the groundwater from this irrigation system, finds, very little mention in such propaganda blitz. The experiment with check dams in the Shivalik foothills in Haryana is yet another story of failures. The bunch of arm-chair theorists out to prove that the Bhakra is a disaster has made a lopsided, distorted presentation of the ground reality and has suggested alternatives for future which have not been replicated successfully.
The writer is a former member-secretary of the Indian National Committee on Irrigation and Drainage |
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As oil prices rise, field trips get cancelled The
adults in your life are probably really cranky right now about having to pay more than $3 per gallon for gas. This time last year, a gallon of regular gas in the Washington area was $1.89. Today, at about $3.25 a gallon, it costs about $50 to fill a 15-gallon tank, compared with less than $30 last year. Soon, kids may be doing their own griping about rising gas prices, because the problem is affecting schools. In Fairfax County, Va., for instance, school lunch prices are 20 cents higher than last year, partly because of rising fuel costs. What's gas got to do with your slice of pizza? Trucks bring that frozen pizza from the place it's made to your school cafeteria. Those trucks run on diesel fuel, which also has gotten more expensive. Since the school has to pay more for food, you are charged more. Elsewhere in the country, kids are feeling the effects of rising fuel costs in other ways. One North Carolina school district has canceled field trips for the year and cut back on using buses for sporting events. Newport News, Va., is cutting bus routes, meaning that kids will have to walk farther to get to bus stops. In Colorado, some school bus drivers have been told to spend less time warming up the buses, which could mean chillier bus rides on winter mornings. “We're going to have to find an extra $1.2 million for fuel,” said Linda Farbry, head of transportation for Fairfax County Public Schools. Cutting programs or hiking lunch costs seemed outrageous to Jo'Juan Dew, 9, a fifth-grader at a Landover, Md., elementary school “Why do kids have to pay for gas?” Jo'Juan asked last week. It would be terrible if school officials canceled field trips, he said. If cafeteria prices went up, “I would probably freak out and start bringing my lunch,” said sixth-grader Shaquille Christian, 11, who buys lunch with allowance money. “Why are these gas prices going up, anyway?” asked Isis Jones, 11. Countries that once were poor--including China and India--are getting richer, so people there are buying cars, expanding buildings and needing more gasoline than ever. But the supply of oil that gets turned into gas is being pinched, in part because one of the world's largest oil producers, Iraq, is a country in chaos. When the demand for gasoline is greater than the supply, prices go up. Hurricane Katrina made a bad situation worse. About a third of the oil that the United States produces comes through the storm-ravaged Gulf of Mexico. But many of the oil rigs in the Gulf and the large factories that turn oil into gasoline, called refineries, have been shut down by the storm. Meanwhile, as fuel prices stay sky-high, school is not the only place where kids feel the impact. Austin Dorsey, 10, said the extra cost of gas means money troubles for his parents: “It's one of the reasons my mom has to work
overtime.” — LA Times-Washington Post |
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Delhi Durbar Ever
since the monsoon session of Parliament came to a close, the Capital’s political grapevine has been abuzz with the talk about a Cabinet reshuffle. Ministerial aspirants are closely following Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s packed schedule and the configuration of stars to zero in on the possible date for this long-awaited expansion. With many political pundits having been proved wrong on this score, nobody is willing to hazard a guess when this elusive reshuffle will take place. Observed a senior Cabinet minister: “ Asking about a Cabinet reshuffle is like asking when cross-border terrorism will end, when the river-linking project will come through and when the Met Department will start predicting the monsoon correctly.” Now that the Congress has made it clear that it will “sink or swim” with the Lalu Prasad Yadav-led RJD in the coming Bihar assembly poll, its leaders have to reinvent their script. This was evident when Mr Digvijay Singh, AICC General Secretary in charge of Bihar, visited Patna recently where he deftly skirted all queries on Mr Yadav’s administrative skills and instead dwelt at length on how he had turned around the loss-making Indian Railways in his short tenure as minister. Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav, the Congress leader explained, is like a guided missile. He had delivered at the Centre since he now has the advantage of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s guidance. And he will do the same in Bihar this time precisely because of this guidance which was not available to him earlier, Mr Singh reasoned. It is now to be seen if the electorate of Bihar buys this argument. Business pays, as usual The success of television business channels in the recent years has prompted yet another media house to look at the possibility of adding one to its existing bouquet of news channels. Taking a cue from CNBC and the recent launches of CNBC Awaaz, Zee Business and even a business channel from NDTV, the market buzz is that the TV Today Network is now exploring the possibility of going down the same road. The group is learnt to have even sought an uplink licence for the proposed channel. A surprise victory The clean sweep by the National Students Union of India in the recent elections to the Delhi University Students Union came as a surprise to many in the party. The friction over the choice of the presidential candidate saw the NSUI opt for a low-key campaign while detractors within the party went to the extent of even predicting a defeat for the candidate. That the NSUI camp was definitely low on confidence was evident from the near-absence of supporters, outside the counting hall. The scene changed dramatically when the results were announced. Contributed by Girija Shankar Kaura, Prashant Sood, Smriti Kak Ramachandran and Anita Katyal |
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From the pages of The Tibetan Treaty
The Tibetan Treaty has been signed at last. The signatories on behalf of the Lamas, in the absence of the Dalai Lama, were the Regent, the Ti Rinpochi and the representatives of the three great monasteries. Whether the Dalai Lama will feel himself bound to abide by it, or whether he may be instigated by Russian influence to set its provisions at naught, is a question for the future; but so far as the present is concerned every lover of peace will heartily rejoice that a great state of tension has been relieved and that no further bloodshed or violence to the feelings of an ancient and peace-loving people will be at least immediately necessary. Colonel Younghusband certainly deserves credit for the patience and tact with which he fulfilled the latter half of his task, and a part of the bloodshed at least might have been avoided if in the beginning also attempts had been made to wear down the obstinacy of the Lamas by display of the same qualities instead of the power of fire-arms. |
Eat dry and simple food and drink cold water; do not look at the buttered bread of others and long for it. — Kabir Happiness lies, first of all, in health. — Book of quotations on Happiness Whoever intercedes with intervention for good partake thereby of it; and whoever intercedes with intervention for ill, shares thereby in it: and it is God who makes everything happen. —
Book of quotations on Islam No salvation is possible for man as long as he has desire, as long as he hankers for worldly things. — Ramkrishna With mighty armies, a general may win many wars, with the power of his position, a king may crush many enemies. But neither armies nor power can help a man crush his evil desires. Only will power can do so. —
The Buddha We vow to be rich. We vow to take revenge. How often do we vow to do good without expecting a return? —
Book of quotations on Hinduism |
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