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Sharpening conflict Costly dals |
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Peak of glory Triumph of the human spirit Scaling the Everest is a metaphor for achieving the impossible. It is also a feat that a select band of special men and women have achieved ever since Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climbed the highest mountain peak in the world in 1953. Giving a special meaning to this metaphor now is a middle-aged New Zealander, Mark Inglis, who has become the first person without legs to climb the summit.
Plight of Punjab
The New Yorker
The A Q Khan effect Descended from
Jesus? Do the math Chatterati
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Costly dals Rising pulse prices are hitting where they hurt — dal is an essential part of the diet of Indians across the country, whether in the rice or the wheat belts. For the poor, it is often the only source of protein. During the last few months now, prices have steadily gone up. Groceries tend to be picked up in bulk, and many urban families may not have noticed earlier just how much the label price of most dals has increased. But everyone is feeling the pinch now, and with another petrol and LPG price hike also a distinct possibility, there is a definite sense of gathering inflationary pressures, especially on poor people’s lives. There are several factors pushing up dal prices. One is speculation about the effect that unseasonable rains may have had on dal crops in several parts of the country. Lower yields are expected from pulse-producing states like Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Speculation on the commodity markets, driven by expectations of shortage on the one hand and a rise in both domestic and export demand on the other, is boosting the prices. There is a vast difference between the minimum support price (MSP) of pulses and the wholesale prices. Arhar dal, for example, cost Rs 1900 per quintal last year, against the MSP of Rs 1400. While wheat imports have very much been in the public eye, it is a fact the government is also importing pulses to meet the demand. The government’s target of 15 million tonnes per year has not been achieved for several years, forcing imports of around two million tonnes every year. Per capita availability of dal has actually been declining — a sad comment on a country which is the largest producer of pulses in the world, with 27 per cent of global production. While the Green Revolution has increased the productivity of rice and wheat, productivity gains in pulses have been comparatively lower. The crop sorely needs breakthroughs in yield-increasing varieties, pest control and irrigation. |
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Peak of glory Scaling
the Everest is a metaphor for achieving the impossible. It is also a feat that a select band of special men and women have achieved ever since Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climbed the highest mountain peak in the world in 1953. Giving a special meaning to this metaphor now is a middle-aged New Zealander, Mark Inglis, who has become the first person without legs to climb the summit. He lost both his legs to frostbite 23 years ago when he was caught in a snowstorm. But he did not give up, and dreamt of scaling the Everest. Now, he has done it. Accomplishing this awesome mission has shown that will power and the spirit of human endeavour can overcome any disability and all obstacles. Inglis richly deserves the salutes he is getting. Tempered with this triumph, however, is the news that the body of another climber has been recovered and one more person is missing. The harsh environment and extreme cold takes its toll and more than a hundred persons have lost their lives in an endeavour to climb the summit that holds special significance to the differently-abled individuals who want to extract the maximum they can out of what life has given them. Tom Whittaker, an American, was the pioneer. With a prosthetic leg he climbed to 24,000 feet in 1989 and 28,000 feet in 1995, before finally reaching the summit in 1998. Erik Weihenmayer became the first blind man to reach the summit in 2001. The roll of honour includes Reinhold Messner of Italy, who climbed Everest twice without oxygen and once in four days. Messner is also the first person to climb Everest solo. Junko Tabei from Japan became the first woman to scale the summit. Inglis’ artificial leg, especially adapted for climbing, snapped at one point and he had to repair it before he could get a replacement. He also suffered from frostbite and injuries to his stumps, but as he reunites with his family, he may well dwell on his awe-inspiring accomplishments. |
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Suspicions amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds; they never fly by twilight.
— Francis Bacon |
Plight of Punjab PUNJAB had fertile, though shallow, soils. A deficit state after Partition was converted into the granary of the country through the consolidation of the land-holdings with an independent approach to every farm, howsoever small, with a provision of canal water and then production technology with assured market clearance for foodgrains at remunerative prices. These elements and production factors accompanied by a conducive policy environment made this 1.5 per cent of the landmass of India the provider of foodgrains to an otherwise starving country. It came handy for the Government of India to encourage the farmers of this state to produce more and more foodgrains without any consideration, given to the depletion of resources, specially water for irrigation. This approach continued for four decades in spite of the fact that the state, realising the fast deteriorating soils, depleting water-table, degrading agro-ecology and progressively increasing economic squeeze on the farmers, wanted to diversify its agricultural production pattern that would meet the sustainability criteria of the product-mix. But, unfortunately, the shortsighted policy of the Central Government did not support the approach of the state government in this direction. As a consequence, Punjab is in a totally unenviable position today and the policy-makers at the Centre are in a deep slumber that does not permit them to see the catastrophe towards which the country is moving fast. This small state has been keeping the nation afloat by providing more than 20 million tonnes of foodgrains to the central pool every year for the last four decades. Think for a moment, if this much of foodgrain was not available to the country for such a long period, what would have been the fate of this nation! But the million-dollar
question is: do the policy-makers realise this and do they realise the significance of the impending disaster? Punjab is drying up very fast. By diverting excessive Gobind Sagar (Bhakhra Dam) water out of the basin of the river Sutlej and by encouraging an intensive cropping pattern with higher water requirements, the state is left with no alternative but to depend on the pumping of underground water. Today 80 per cent of the water requirements of crops in the state are met by underground water. As a consequence, the underground watertable is receding very fast, at the rate of more than one metre a year. More than one-third of the tubewells are being operated with submersible pumps that are drying up the centrifugal pumps around. The installation of a good-size submersible pump costs upwards of Rs 80,000. Small farmers cannot afford this much investment. Whereas with the increase in the number of submersible pumps, the watertable is declining very fast, the cost of lifting the underground water is also increasing fast. Look at the social cost of producing paddy in the state! For the last three years successively the state has been purchasing electricity to be diverted to the almost non-paying farm sector. In addition, the electricity supply to industry was officially denied for two days a week. Even when electricity was supplied there were extensive unscheduled and unannounced cuts. The domestic sector suffered supply cuts between four and eight hours. Worst sufferers were the domestic consumers in the rural areas. It is estimated that the state had to suffer a social cost of over Rs 5,000 crore to save the paddy crop in the state, which was counted nowhere in the cost of production of the crop. Other states received drought relief, because they adequately met the drought criteria specified by the Central Government. Here in Punjab the drought was on the finances of the state government and the loss suffered by society at large and industry in particular. Every human being, animal and plant paid for saving the paddy crop in the state, but never got compensated in any manner. If at all an insultingly marginal increase was given in the support price, this went to the farmer. The rest of the Punjab society and the government were left high and dry. This unaccounted social cost helped the Centre in fixing a low support price that benefited the consumers of the deficit states through corresponding low issue prices. Unfortunately, Punjab never figures in the mind of the Central policy-makers except for squeezing the state for more and more foodgrains, whatever may happen to its resource base, specially the underground water resources. Support to the diversification programme has been continuously denied with a stupid question; why not in other states? One wonders if the decision-makers at the Centre would like to reduce the foodgrain production, specially rice, in Bihar, Orissa or any other deficit state! Now the Centre comes out with a Shahi Farman that the states that overdraw electricity from the northern grid will be penalised with a higher tariff, little realising that Punjab and partly Haryana purchase electricity from outside to save their paddy crop. If these states suffer a higher social cost with this decision and the paddy crop gets a setback, India will be advancing towards becoming a basket case in respect of foodgrains. However, in a sense, by discouraging these states from growing paddy because of excessively higher electricity costs will tend to effect savings in water use in these states. This can happen only if these costs are passed on to the farmers, if not wholly then at least partially, but electoral compulsions will not allow such a bold decision in Punjab that is slated for assembly elections after a few months. To save Punjab from getting dried up and save it from escalating social costs of growing paddy and thereby saving the country from an impending disaster, the Central policy-makers have to wake up to the ground realities of the situation and take timely action to save the state in order to save the country from becoming a food basket case once
again.
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The New Yorker For
a Chandigarh girl like me, New York had always seemed like an impersonal, monster city with the loud Times Square neon lights and the cat-like Dow Jones “eyes” peering down at you. However, my most recent stay in the Big Apple has rather been a delicious bite! Now, I just love being a familiar Manhattan dweller, knowing the difference between “uptown” and “downtown”, and “streets” and “avenues” although it took a while to get there. Deciphering the arcane maze of yellow, red and blue lines on the subway map was a pain until it all made perfect sense one day. Now if you really want to look like a New Yorker on the subway, I recommend, no smiling, pretending like you are awfully busy reading the Wall Street Journal, listening to your iPod or fiddling with the Blackberry, and, of course, never apologising if you brush somebody’s arm while walking! Mastering the subway system in the first week was a blessing as I could then venture out to discover the city. Within a span of just two months, I had experienced downtown work life, explored colourful Chinatown, arty SoHo and the bohemian East Village area. Wallstreet was all about tall grey buildings, no sky, and a ton of ambitious pin-striped executives — mostly investment bankers and consultants who have defined a whole different culture. In the evenings, one couldn’t help but notice a curious breed of very attractive women who had no professional or residential connection with Wallstreet, flocking the bars to “socialise”. My banker friends like to call them “gold-diggers”. The unexpected Trinity Church at the intersection of Wallstreet and Broadway lends a charming mix of the old and the new. It is such a treat to hear the church bells ring in the middle of a crazy work-day! Living in Chinatown offered its own unique advantages — apart from great cheap food, hair salons and bargain shopping, there was proximity to SoHo. Named after South of Houston, SoHo is a bustling neighbourhood that boasts of the snootiest art galleries, gourmet coffee shops and designer stores in the city. However, it tends to get labelled as being too pretentious at times. The East Village area, another fun hang-out, has a more rustic charm and some of the best restaurants in town. In these two months, the city had obviously seduced me with its character and as my Chicago-dwelling friends put it, I had moved to the “dark side”. However, the ultimate test of being a true New Yorker is, if you can flag a cab in less than 5 minutes. I have had some of the most unforgettable conversations with Egyptian, Pakistani, Turkish, African-American and even Punjabi cab drivers in New York. And one of the drivers — a Sardarji from Kharar — knew all about Chandigarh. With such unpredictable “journeys” in the Big Apple, who could ever feel
homesick? |
The A Q Khan effect The
fact that the United States continues to be soft on Pakistan even though its leaders are aware that Pakistan is the epicentre of Jehadi terrorism, is a great puzzle for the Indian government and strategic analysts in India. The mastermind of the 9/11 attack is a Kuwait born Pakistani. The ISI and Omar Sheikh sent $ 100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 attack. The shoe bomber Richard Reeves and the London train bombers had a Pakistani connection. Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri were permitted to have safe havens in Pakistan and continue to be there. The US coordinator on counter-terrorism, Henry Crumpton, recently complained about the inadequacy of Pakistani cooperation in hunting down the Taliban and the Al Qaeda. There is evidence of a resurgence of Taliban activity in Afghanistan, mostly with Pakistani help. In spite of all these, General Musharraf continues to be the favourite son of the US administration. He has been able to flout every dictum of President Bush and still is hailed as an ally on the war on terrorism. Why? For the first time, we are getting a plausible explanation from an American analyst, Tom Donnelly, of the American Enterprise Institute. Donnelly focuses on the US concerns about Pakistani nuclear weapons and nuclear materials. He highlights the role and activities of Dr. A.Q. Khan and his pan-Islamic orientation. He points to the possibility of certain sections of the Pakistani Army and scientific establishment sharing his Pan-Islamic orientation. He draws attention to the US Quadrennial Defence Review (QDR) which has a whole section on the threat to the US from loose nuclear weapons and materials getting out of the control of a nuclear weapon state. Though no state is specifically named, it is quite obvious that the concern is about Pakistan as the QDR refers to a state friendly to US. Donnelly outlines a plan that the US would perhaps be adopting to deal with such a situation. The plan has all signs of a military briefing. The first assumption is that though the hijacking of a nuclear device or materials may be carried out by a combination of jehadis, extremist oriented sections of the army and the scientific establishment, the Pakistan government and the Army will be with the US and will cooperate in recovering the materials from the jehadi group. This assumption is absolutely basic to the success of the operation. The implication is the situation will be beyond control if the Pakistani government and Army are non-cooperative. Donnelly’s plan involves deployment of the US Delta force, rangers, infantry and air force elements. The US may have to act alone. While Indian help may be available that will be red rag to the Pakistani government and Army and therefore should be avoided. This operation is detailed in his article in phases and he does not deal with the post recovery phase. The Donnelly paper needs to be circulated widely and studied in detail by appropriate authorities in India. The important issue that comes out of this article is the imperative need for the US to keep on the right side of General Musharraf and the Pakistani Army because of the existentialist threat of Pakistani nuclear weapons and materials falling into the hands of the jehadis. Because of this compulsion the US has to overlook all transgressions of General Musharraf and the top army leadership. In that sense, the US is under an existential nuclear blackmail by Pakistan. This gives Musharraf adequate courage to demand economic and military aid and even access to civil nuclear energy from the US, even though he allows a safe haven to Al Qaeda and Taliban leaderships and reneges on all promises to act against jehadis in his country. This existential blackmail has three components- the large scale presence of Jehadis in Pakistan, a reputation for pan-Islamic orientation among intelligence establishments, scientists and the Army, and proved attempts originating in Pakistan and aimed at the US for using WMD. All the three factors exist. There is no need for General Musharraf or any other Pakistani leader to convey any specific blackmail. The signals are all there and the US can read them. There is no other explanation that can adequately explain the US tolerance of Pakistani behaviour, which has been far more provocative than that of Iran or North Korea. The US also faces an unfamiliar problem. All its nuclear theology was based on the concept of deterrence, which assumed that the adversary valued certain things such as life, property and future of his nation. But the jehadis value nothing and therefore cannot be deterred. Further, the Pakistani leadership deliberately cultivates an image of irrationality. Recently, in an interview, General Aslam Beg elaborated on the advice he had given to the Iranians. Whoever hits Iran, hit Israel and destroy it. He boasted that his strategy for Pakistan was, no matter who hits his country, he would hit India. In India there is inadequate understanding of the US predicament. The US is in a kind of hostage situation. We should have noticed that there has been very few detailed analyses about reasons underlying the extraordinary permissiveness of the US about Pakistani behaviour. The charges of A.Q. Khan’s CIA linkages have been ignored. Even the monstrous accusation that 9/11 commission members were dealt with by Pakistani lobbyists and persuaded to water down their conclusions evoked no response from the US media or law makers. Pakistan’s defiant non-cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency in respect of Iranian proliferation, in which Islamabad is the primary guilty party has been looked away from. In these circumstances, President Bush displayed rare courage in refusing to succumb to the latest blackmail from Pakistan seeking equal treatment with India on access to civil nuclear energy. How long the US will put up with Pakistani blackmail? Will the US be able to keep blackmail under manageable levels or will it someday or other breach the limits of US tolerance? Will US succeed in democratising Pakistan under these circumstances or will it have to reconcile itself to successive army regimes flaunting its linkages to jehadis? These are the issues that need to be addressed in Indo-US Track II deliberations. |
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Descended from Jesus? Do the math Does
Jesus have a secret line of descendants who are living today? It’s an oddly appealing idea. We tend to think of ancestry in terms of bloodlines, in which some individuals are descended from famous ancestors and others are not. And the idea echoes deeper religious themes of individuals and groups favored by God. But this is one idea in “The Da Vinci Code” that just won’t wash. Jesus couldn’t have just a few descendants living today. If anyone alive today is descended from Jesus, then so are most of the people on the planet. This absurd-sounding statement is an inevitable consequence of the workings of ancestry. People may have just a few descendants in the two or three generations after they lived, but, after that, the number of descendants explodes. For a population to remain the same size, every adult has to have an average of two children who grow to adulthood and have children. So the number of descendants for the average person grows exponentially – two children, four grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and so on. In just 10 generations – roughly 250 years – an average person can have more than 1,000 descendants. Of course, no one is average. Some people have lots of children; some have none. But over time the fecund and the barren balance each other out. Also, a person’s descendants eventually start having children with each other. That slows the rate of growth of a person’s descendants, but usually not much, at least in the short term. It’s virtually impossible to “manage” a genealogical lineage so that a person has a limited number of descendants. The lineage would quickly go extinct in the occasional generation in which all of a person’s descendants do not have children (or their children die). And a managed lineage inevitably would “leak” – someone would begin having children at a normal pace, and the usual process of growth would commence. In real genealogies, a person’s descendants either peter out within a few generations or begin to grow exponentially. People who lived just a few centuries earlier have many millions of descendants. The same observations would apply to Jesus, although we’ll never know if he really had children. Essentially, whether you have descendants is an all-or-nothing proposition in the long run, as two co-authors and I showed in an article in the scientific journal Nature a couple of years ago. If a person has four or five grandchildren, that person will almost certainly be an ancestor of the entire world population two or three millenniums from now. And if a person lived longer than two or three millenniums ago, that person is either an ancestor of everyone living today or of no one living today. The idea that we all could be descended from Jesus takes some getting used to. After all, if we’re all descended from Jesus, and Jesus is the son of God, that’s a pretty illustrious bloodline. But don’t let it go to your head. You’re also descended from Pontius Pilate and Judas, as long as they produced the requisite four or five grandchildren. We’re all descended from beggars and kings, judges and murderers, merchants and slaves. We’re caught up in webs of ancestry – a big, tangled, sometimes dysfunctional family. (Olson is the author of “Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and
Our Common Origins.”) By arrangement with La Times-Washington Post |
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Chatterati Cross
border love continues in spite of the cross border fights between our
politicians. Sufi songs and soulful renditions of qawwalis by renowned
Pakistan singer Rahat Fateh Ali Khan had his Indian audience completely
mesmerised. Rahat is the nephew of the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Besides
Rahat, Pakistani pop singer Adeel, along with his Indian Punjabi counter part
Harbhajan Mann, enlivened the evening. In fact, so enthralled was the audience
that Adeel and Mann had to do an encore. Obviously music knows no
boundaries. The audience literally grooved to their tunes. Renuka Choudhary
was the chief guest here along with people like Vandana Luthra of VLCC fame
and Kapil Dev. After taking Bollywood by storm Rahat Fateh Ali Khan has sure
received a warm response in Delhi, with numbers like "Munde Kuriya
Panwe" and "Bheege Hont Tere". Director and Producer
Subhash Ghai, who was present here, has signed up the singers for his next
film.
Savouring Lahori khana Now from Sufi music on to a
Lahori food festival. But let’s talk about the ambience first, because a
good meal is about the entire experience, and not just the food. Coriander
Leaf has dim lights that give the romantic effect of candles, along with glass
panels on the floor through which you can see flowing water. Space age glass,
and wood, with heart-rending ghazals in the background. Utterly beautiful, and
immensely peaceful, and even better if you bring a significant other. Lahori
khana at its finest was on offer; the meal began with succulent Chargha
Chicken Roast which was just right. The emphasis on "just right"
should do the trick. Moving on to the saga of Murgh-e-Shalimar, Zanat-e-Numa
(stuffed potato curry in tangy spinach gravy) and Taka Tak Gobhi.
Heavy, not in spice but flavour, these dishes were admirably aided by Noormahal
Biryani (rice, cooked with chicken and cashews over a slow fire) and Sheermal.
Yes, we ate every bit with relish, and almost ordered seconds, but our
stomachs protested too much! Pista Kheer was eaten against our stomachs’
better judgment, but who says you have got to listen to the tummy all the
time?
Conflict of interest Those well-heeled Armani-Gucci sporting
entrepreneurial MPs may be in for a spot of trouble. Some of these worthies
have managed membership in House panels on sectors in which they have big
business interests. Take one high-flying gentleman, for instance, on the civil
aviation standing committee. Or a five star host on the tourism panel.
Conflict of interest? That sort of thing is only raised in the West, right?
But then, our upper classes love keeping up with the hot-cat developed
countries, and even some lowly, sour-grapes MPs have begun raising,
"conflict of interest" issues. They are now preparing to insist one
must declare business interests upon donning the MP colours! May be a good
idea. After all, our upper house now has businessman from all spheres. They
align themselves to a party by the way of party funding, and then mix with the
policy makers of our nation. |
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From the pages of Invasion of Kashmir
New Delhi, Oct 26: Reliable sources indicate that an urgent call for help and assistance has been received from the Kashmir State authorities against inroads and raids by a large army of Afridi tribesmen and National Guards from across the Hazara border. It is believed that these bands came in 500 military trucks reported to have been supplied by the Pakistan authorities. According to a United Press message, the raiders have advanced about 55 miles into Kashmir State and are now about 70 miles from Srinagar. Opinion among observers in New Delhi shows that tribesmen’s raids have been engineered, planned and arranged and amount to a virtual undeclared war against a friendly neighbour. |
Do not become attached to pleasure. Pleasure can bring grief in its wake. Grief as its disappearance. Fear at the thought of its disappearance. The man who is free from all pleasure know neither grief not fear. —
The Buddha Islam does not teach unconditional forgiveness and non-resistance of evil on every occasion, nor does it inculcate that punishment is not be given to the offender under any circumstances. —
The Koran The dead sustain their bond with the living, through their past virtuous deeds. — Guru Nanak |
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