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Zardari’s wings clipped
RBI soft on inflation |
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Iranian N-game plan Desperate bid to prevent fresh UN sanctions While Iran appears to be bent upon becoming a nuclear weapon state, it is wary of fresh UN Security Council sanctions, which may be slapped on it in the near future. This perhaps explains why it organised a two-day international conference on nuclear disarmament in Teheran soon after the Nuclear Security Summit held in Washington DC.
Gujarat farmers in deep trouble
Achieving success
Of cellphones and
toilets
Why booms don’t benefit locals
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Zardari’s wings clipped
Pakistan
President Asif Ali Zardari showed his characteristic streak of wiliness and an exaggerated bravado to make a setback look like an achievement when he smiled before cameras while signing the historic 18th Amendment to the country’s 1973 Constitution which took away his controversial powers, including the one to sack the Prime Minister, to dissolve the National Assembly and appoint the Chief of Army Staff. For a man who has manipulated his way to the top, the loss of so much authority in one stroke must have made him shed silent tears. But he was not the one to let his disappointment show. In fact, he cited the passage of this amendment as one of his signal achievements. Zardari’s loss today is Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s gain, but how much of a difference this would make to Indo-Pak relations is anybody’s guess. India has, for quite some time, voiced the view that it is confused who or what is the real power centre in Pakistan, and consequently who it should do business with. When the Mumbai terror attacks occurred in November 2008, while the Pakistan government blamed it on non-State actors, the needle of suspicion pointed also towards the army which was a State actor. Considering that there are signs that Zardari has been made to pay the price for being less close to the army establishment than Gilani is, little would change for India with the army continuing to control the levers of power through remote control. It would indeed be unrealistic to expect Gilani to assume extraordinary powers, with the army breathing down his neck. The behind-the-scene tug of war between the main political actors in the Pakistani high drama would predictably continue despite the constitutional amendment. Prime Minister Gilani would seek to consolidate his position as an all-powerful leader while keeping the army in good humour. Zardari on his part would strain every nerve to assume the prime ministerial mantle sooner than later so that he can wield real power again. And there is former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif waiting in the wings, itching to stage a comeback. All in all, an interesting tussle lies ahead. While Pakistan’s bolstering of parliamentary democracy deserves to be welcomed, the proof of the pudding would lie in its eating.
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RBI soft on inflation
THE RBI’s softer-than-expected increase in the key rates has come as a pleasant surprise. The 25-basis point raise in the short-term lending (repo) and borrowing (reverse repo) rates along with the cash reserve ratio will not hurt growth. After managing the fallout of the global financial crisis and aiding recovery, the RBI abandoned the easy credit policy in January this year like the central banks of China, Australia and the Philippines and turned to fighting inflation. Though inflation at 9.9 per cent is still high, the RBI seems to be taking it easy in the hope that a good rabi crop and a normal monsoon later in July will lift agricultural production and douse the raging food inflation. While there is a consensus over the RBI’s 8 per cent GDP growth projection for 2010-11, its hope of inflation cooling to 5.5 per cent does not have many takers. As global recovery picks up and demand surges, the prices of non-food commodities are bound to soar to uncomfortable levels. Oil has already gone past $80 a barrel and if India is still not complaining, it is because the rupee has appreciated sharply. Since India is next to China in growth, surplus cash from all over is flowing into the country, inflating the equity, commodity and real estate prices. The central bank will have to guard against the building of what experts call “asset bubbles”. A bigger challenge for the RBI is to manage the huge Rs 4.57 lakh crore borrowings by the government, which, it is feared, can crowd out private investment. The government has ignored the RBI advice, tendered in January, to curtail its borrowing spree. Since there is enough money in the system, the small takeaway by the RBI will not hurt small borrowers. Bankers have indicated that they won’t push up interest rates. This means the demand for auto, home and education loans may not slacken. So growth will stay on track. |
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Iranian N-game plan
While
Iran appears to be bent upon
becoming a nuclear weapon state, it is wary of fresh UN Security
Council sanctions, which may be slapped on it in the near future. This
perhaps explains why it organised a two-day international conference
on nuclear disarmament in Teheran soon after the Nuclear Security
Summit held in Washington DC. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
used the strongest language possible to accuse the US of being “the
world’s only atomic criminal” which talks of nuclear
non-proliferation, though “it has not taken any serious measure in
this regard”. The representatives of 50 countries at the conference
could have expected what they heard, yet they came to participate in
it. However, the participation of so many countries in the gathering
cannot help Iran in going ahead with its pursuit of the ultimate
weapon in the guise of having a peaceful nuclear energy programme. Iranian
credentials became suspect the day it was found to have set up a
nuclear power plant at Natanz without bringing it to the notice of the
International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA). As a signatory to the
Nulcear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it has certain obligations
which Iran failed to fulfil at the initial stage. That is why the
US-led drive against the Iranian nuclear programme has succeeded in
getting the Security Council sanctions imposed on Teheran. India, too,
voted for the sanctions at IAEA governors’ meetings in the past,
though it believes the Iranian nuclear issue should be resolved
through dialogue and diplomacy. Russia and China, two of the five
permanent Security Council members represented at the Teheran
conference, have been relentlessly opposing fresh sanctions. Their
plea is if harsher sanctions are imposed the sufferers will be the
Iranian masses, who cannot be held responsible for the policies of
their rulers. However, the indirectly helpful role of Russia and China
has been aimed at protecting their economic interests in Iran, which
has a huge natural gas deposit. Some of the Western allies of the US,
too, seem to have their reservations about taking any step that may
destabilise the Iranian economy. That may be the reason why the US has
been reluctant to use force to prevent Iran from going nuclear. The
emerging scenario is quite disturbing. If somehow Iran succeeds in
acquiring nuclear weapon capability, it may lead to a fresh crisis,
particularly in West Asia. |
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Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.— William Congreve
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Gujarat farmers in deep trouble
IT is once again Narendra Modi, and his playground is the same state of Gujarat. This time the story is not that of Muslims’ carnage—5,000 Muslim families do not return to their homes at night even today—but that of the suffering inflicted on the farmers. Both reflect, however, the same bent of mind: I am the ruler and the plebeians do not count. During a visit to Ahmedabad a few days ago I found the farmers wailing for water which the Sardar Sarovar had caught nearly three years ago when the Narmada river was harnessed. But the Modi government did not build the canals to carry water to the famished fields. The result is that only 9 per cent of water has been used in the last three years --- 3 per cent a year. Strange, the same Gujarat saw unanimity on the building of the dam which Medha Patkar, a human rights activist, firmly opposed. “It is our Kashmir,” the Gujaratis would say when any question about the dam was posed. The same Gujaratis say today that the question is not about the dam, but the use of water. Even after spending some Rs 40,000 crore—the original estimate was Rs 800 crore—only 30 per cent of canals have been built out of 60,000 km-long networks. The people of Guajrat are so worked up that they appointed a people’s commission, under the chairmanship of a retired High Court judge, to find out the reality on the ground instead of depending on Modi’s propaganda. The commission heard nearly 3,000 farmers and went through a ream of affidavits. After eight months of their travel, the commission members came to the woeful conclusion that the farmers had been “cheated and betrayed” because the water had not reached them. The commission found it to its horror that the 40 per cent of water had been diverted to industry which was not to get even a drop from the project meant to benefit farmers. At a public function a few days ago in Ahmedabad, where many of Gujarat’s leading lights like ex-Foreign Minister Madhavsinh Solanki, former head of the Narmada project Sanat Mehta and Gandhian Gautam Thakkar were present, the negligence of the Modi government was highlighted and the state was squarely attacked for not using the Narmada water. The speakers were once the staunch supporters of the dam. They still are in a way. But they wondered whether it was worth reopening the dam issue when the water was available at the reservoir and did not reach the farmers who had been waiting for it for decades. Punjab and Haryana did not face this situation. When the Bhakra dam was being raised, the people’s organisations for the utilisation of water were constituted to take water to their fields. Canals were cemented to avoid seepage. The Modi government did little in this respect, although it made such a promise when the project was announced. One undertaking given was that a special channel would be constructed to reach drinking water from the reservoir to the parched throats in Saurashtra and Rajkot. Some pipelines have been laid but the expense of water drawn is exorbitantly high. The Maharashtra government is not getting its share of electricity under the agreement and is, therefore, dragging its feet on the allotment of land to the oustees. The most important part of the people’s consent on the dam was the resettlement of the oustees. According to the Narmada Tribunal Award, they would be given land for land and rehabilitated six months before their land was submerged. Gujarat took the responsibility of implementing the award on itself and promised to give land if Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, the other beneficiaries, failed to resettle the uprooted. But Gujarat has very little land to give. In fact, the state has not been able to requisition fully the land needed for building canals. It can still be said that Gujarat has done part of its job as far as rehabilitating some of the oustees is concerned. But the other two states have practically raised their hands. Madhya Pradesh is the worst. No amount of pressure has worked on it. An indefinite jeevan adhikar yatra (right to life) started this week. It saw more than 2000 adivasis, farmers, fish workers, labourers, potters and other Sardar Sarovar project-affected persons from the Narmada valley assembling at Rajghat in Delhi recently. The participants at the yatra challenged the unjust political moves to push the giant dam ahead despite the failure of the rehabilitation of the oustees and also in the face of “gross environmental non-compliance and unprecedented corruption, causing forced and illegal displacement of the two lakh population in the valley.” The biggest defaulter is the Central government which has allocated Rs 11,000 crore even in the current budget for the building of canals. New Delhi has not been able to convince Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh to make the Narmada Tribunal Award good. Former Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz was dropped from the Cabinet because he had given an honest report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after Medha Patkar’s fast unto death. The report admitted that the claims of Madhya Pradesh, where Soz personally went, were bogus and that practically no rehabilitation work had been undertaken. Still the Prime Minister went along with the raising of the dam’s height. This meant pounding of more water and uprooting of more adivasis. Gujarat’s pride, as Modi has projected the Sardar Saravar project, has been definitely damaged if not destroyed. When the farmers have got only 10 per cent of water, they cannot think of holding their head high. These very people celebrated every slab of the dam’s height. They admit that there was no hurry in uprooting the villagers from their homes if the government was not ready with the canals to use the reservoir water. The Tata Institute of Social Sciences had said in its report that the height of the dam need not be raised when the present quantum of water remained mostly unutilised. Still Modi is at it.
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Achieving success
We were contemporaries at the university, he in the Department of Medieval Indian History and I in the Department of English. He had a passion for acting and I for writing. We first came together for the inter university youth festival where I wrote the radio play and he read the lead part. We went on to work together on projects for a local theatre group where I re-worked difficult and inconvenient parts of the script while he had the lead part. I shared his conviction that he would, one day, be a very successful actor and he shared my conviction that I would, one day, be a very successful writer. Then life pushed us along separate paths and we were caught up in other webs. He fell into conditions of extreme penury and clawed his way desperately up to monitory success, first by working for a travel agency, then, by setting up his own agency. Absolutely brilliant and innovative packages soon catapulted him into the very top league. Haunted by the memory of those difficult early days, he moved ever upwards on the financial spiral. The pursuit of money kept him so busy he had little time for acting. Then one day he sold his agency and moved to Bombay to pursue this passion. A few character roles and TV commercials came his way. But there was no indication that he would ever graduate to something more substantial. My own situation was very similar. I became a school teacher and was caught up in the spirit-breaking, tightrope-walking activity of raising a family, building a roof over my head and saving enough to secure my post-retirement years. My writing became a weekend hobby. There were 17 books, and a host of short stories. But none of them showed any flash of that early passion. We met after a lifetime. After the initial drinks had mellowed us both, he turned to me and smiled and his eyes lit up again with that long ago passion. “My God, Harish, you can have no idea what a tremendous feeling it is! The smell of grease paint, the warmth of the spotlights, the excitements in your heart when the director calls 'action', I know I will never be anything but a bit actor, but I am content. Every time the spotlight focuses on me and I turn to the camera, it is heaven”. The words found an echo in my heart. I too do 'bit' roles in the drama of literature — my middles. Yet every time a middle is published, every time someone contacts me, and there are many who do, to say how much he liked my middle, it is heaven. Neither of us has lived up to the promise and passion of our youth — he has won no Oscar and I have won no Nobel prize. But each of us has found success. We have come to terms with our failure, recognised the extent of our abilities and are
content!
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Of cellphones and toilets A recent report released by the United Nations has ironically revealed that India has more cellphones than toilets. Only 366 million people in India had access to improved sanitation in 2008.
Cellphones and toilets reflect the two facets of India. While mobiles are a manifestation of the recent revolution in the information technology, the poor sanitation conditions prevailing in the countryside are reflective of a cultural delusion. The number of cellphones, which was 0.35 per 100 persons in the year 2000-01, has skyrocketed to 45 per 100 persons now. More than 545 million cellphones are operational in India. The number is expected to rise to one billion by 2015. Unfortunately, though riding high on economic growth, India remains largely an unhygienic state plagued by tropical diseases and unsanitary conditions. Some 110 million households remain without access to toilets or with no safe way to dispose of human waste and many defecate in the open fields or near the water sources where from they draw water. Dirty water and lack of toilets and proper hygiene kill 3.3 million people around the world of which India has a significant proportion. Only 86 per cent of the population of India has access to improved water supply, and the duration of this supply averages only 4.3 hours a day. According to a study conducted by the National Council for Applied Economic Research in 2004-05, morbidity is reported to be lower in households using clean fuels instead of firewood, piped water instead of open source water and flush toilets. Unfortunately, the majority of Indian houses (62 per cent) have none of these amenities and only 7 per cent have all the three. Though the mobiles have changed from the first to third generation, the level of sanitation in India has not changed much. Open drains in villages still give you filthy smell with breeding colonies of mosquitoes. Cow dung, which could be organically used to increase fertility of the impoverished soil, is still used in “chullahas”. In the urban areas, a major fallout of the robust consumption-driven economic growth is the generation of growing amounts of municipal waste. Many cities and towns are overwhelmed by the increasing volume of waste. Only 25 per cent of the total sewage generated in the urban areas is treated before being released into the rivers and water courses. In old cities the sewerage has become inadequate to carry the increasing load of waste. As a result, it leaks and contaminates the drinking water supply. In March, 1999, the Supreme Court intervened to bring about India’s Municipal Solid Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 2000 providing a clear roadmap for all urban areas for daily doorstep collection and minimising the waste quantities by recycling and stabilising all biodegradable waste for use as compost, but the progress has been slow. The containers carrying solid waste breakdown in the middle of the road. Composting and land-filling are the exception rather than the rule. Plastics, electronic trash and biomedical refuse are the new generation urban wastes. Not many states have banned the use of plastic carrybags, which continue choking drains and spreading dirt and filth. Feral cows, dogs and boars can often be seen around the heaps of garbage devouring the remains of households thrown in polybags. E-waste is one of the fastest growing waste streams, with people changing their computers, television sets and mobile phones more frequently than ever before. According to one estimate, about 20-50 million tonnes of e-waste is generated annually worldwide to which India contributes 4.00 lakh tonnes a year. Most of the components in electronic devices contain lead, cadmium, mercury, PVCs, brominated flame retardants (BFRs), chromium, beryllium and phthalates. Long-term exposure to these substances can damage the nervous system, kidney and bones, and the reproductive and endocrine systems. Indiscriminately dumped components can pollute the ground water. Unfortunately, a legal framework on the principle to reduce, reuse and recycle e-waste is not available in India, whereas global initiatives to phase out chemicals from electronic devices started in 2006. Sanitation means eradication of water-borne diseases like diarrhoea, cholera and hepatitis, gain in productive time, saving the cost of medicines and better health and prosperity. Improved sanitation, including hand washing with soap and water purification, could worldwide save the lives of 1.5 million children, who suffer from diarrhoeal diseases each year. The UN Millennium Development Goals include a target to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015. The main focus of the programme is to remove the stigma around sanitation, discuss the importance of sanitation, highlighting poverty reduction, health and other benefits that flow from better hygiene, household sanitation arrangements and wastewater treatment. The only way to clean up India is to involve communities and popularise environment friendly human-waste disposal systems such as developed by Sulabh International that are cost-effective for the average Indian household. Only a clean India can be healthy and incredible. The writer is the Chief Conservator of Forests, Punjab
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Why booms don’t benefit locals Ghangariya
, the base camp for the famous Valley of Flowers in Uttarakhand , is reached by a tough 16 km trek from Govindghat. Almost half the way along the trekking route there are numerous dhabas catering to the tired, thirsty and hungry tourists. The peculiar thing about these eateries is that they are not set up by local villagers but by temporary migrants from UP. In other words , the locals do not seem to benefit much from the tourist business. The neighbourhood where I live in Bangalore was a sparsely populated suburb when we moved in 15 years ago. For our daily needs, we depended on a nearby small grocery owned by a local named Shetty. Over the years the area’s population has multiplied manifold. But Mr. Shetty’s shop remains small as it was. The boom benefited a Moplah retailer from Mallapuram in Kerala who set up shop 10 years ago with a small outlet which he went on expanding in size and variety of goods and is today having a turnover which is the envy of any big retail chain operating in the city. MTR is a landmark restaurant of Bangalore established in 1924, which is famous all over the world for its tasty dosas, idlis and filter coffee. Despite Bangalore’s phenomenal growth in the last four decades, the owners of MTR have chosen to remain a one-outlet business whose internal area has not seen expansion since its inception . Guess who benefited from the explosion of consumerism in Bangalore? McDonald , which opened its first outlet in Bangalore just 5 years ago , has already over 15 of them in the city and is planning to open more . Back in 1947, following partition, a large number of refugees from Sindh were given shelter in Jaipur. In order to help them get back on their feet, they were allotted some commercial space in the city for starting retail shops. Within a span of 20 years, the textiles and clothing market started by the migrants has overtaken in popularity and business volume the much older textile retail trade run by the local Marwaris . So, what is it about locals that prevents them from riding an economic boom? There is the comfort factor which acts like a sedative. Being in familiar surroundings, the locals do not feel threatened . Complacent about their well-settled business, they do not feel any ambitious push to expand . Years of being frogs in their little pools render locals ignorant about the ways of dealing with expansion . MTR, for example, tried to trade in its brand image to expand its presence in Bangalore by opening a few franchisee outlets but it remained an ineffectual exercise because the company lacked the expertise in supply chain management, quality control , training etc. On the other hand , McDonald, having decades of experience and tremendous expertise, could successfully roll out a number of outlets in a short period . Another hurdle which impedes locals from exploiting an economic upturn and consequent business opportunities is the lack of skills . Mega industrial projects in backward areas throw up enormous peripheral small business and employment opportunities . Unfortunately , the locals are virtually shut out of most of these because of the lack of requisite skills , technical knowhow , managerial expertise or entrepreneurial knowledge . Ultimately, most of the new jobs or small businesses or minor contracts are captured by outsiders with ability, experience and ambition. What the locals are left with are the lowest level manual jobs, thereby causing resentment among them. Some corporate giants have realised the implications of this and taken up skill-building projects in the backward areas of their interest . Tata Steel , for example, has established , near its proposed steel plant at Kalinganagar in Orissa , a training school which imparts to interested local tribals skills in masonry and welding. Much more needs to be done, not just by companies but also state governments, education authorities, NGOs and others to build such skills and business abilities so that locals also participate in the economic growth process.
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Delhi Durbar A lawyers’ forum seems to have come to the rescue of legal correspondents covering the Supreme Court who struggle to report oral observations of judges and the orders dictated by them in the open court. The forum has filed a petition seeking a mandatory use of microphones not only by the judges but also the lawyers. It also wants video recording of the proceedings to be shown live outside smaller courtrooms which are unable to accommodate all the stakeholders. Actually, this is not the first time the issue has been raised. The need for using the audio system was voiced at a workshop by none other than Attorney General GE Vahanvati last year when he was the Solicitor General. The problem of audibility is accentuated in cases where the judges concerned are soft spoken like Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan. Estranged fellows
The irony of fate has brought some sworn enemies and traditional rivals, people who could never see eye to eye, in close proximity to each other on the benches of the 15th Lok Sabha. Thus we have Mulayam Singh Yadav seated next to BSP leader Dara Singh Chauhan. In spite of the Left and the NDA being still wary and suspicious of each other, Basudeb Acharia finds himself seated next to Sharad Yadav and almost at an embracing distance of the BJP members. Still worse, H.D. Deve Gowda is seated next to Lalu Prasad. Past acrimony between them is common knowledge. Therefore, even while sitting together they hardly exchange a glance or acknowledge each other’s presence. But both have lost much of their political clout in this Lok Sabha and, therefore, have practically very little to do. Naturally, to kill boredom and avoid noticing the neighbour, the best option is to close one’s eyes and doze off which both are seen currently doing together on the front benches. ‘Growth with equity’
As Shashi Tharoor’s “external affairs” opera involving Sunanda Pushkar broke the TRP ratings of all other soaps, including the daily IPL matches, there is much tongue-wagging going on in political circles. A senior BJP leader was heard commenting how Tharoor has fulfilled at least one poll promise of the Congress party—“growth with equity”. However, this suave elegant and sophisticated minister’s choice hasn’t gone down well with his admirers among women politicians and journalists. They were making snide remarks about Pushkar’s sartorial preferences, her nose job and even “peroxide blonde hair”. For once, the men who normally despise Tharoor were sympathetic to him, saying he could not be blamed for “swaying to the charms of such a gorgeous woman”. Contributed by Faraz Ahmad, R Sedhuraman and Vibha Sharma
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