Mandi/Barmana, November 8
Overloading of cement-clinker trucks and tractor-trailers carrying hydropower machineries to project sites, which are partly responsible for the pathetic condition of national highways, has been going on unchecked, thanks to the rampant corruption and the blame game among the state traffic police, the Ministry of Surface Transport (MoST), the National Highway Authorities of India (NHAI), the Borders Roads Organisation (BRO) and the state PWD.

According to inputs received from different agencies responsible for construction, maintenance and regulation of national highways, four major factors are responsible for the pathetic road condition of 11 national highways that run across the state.

The four factors include rampant corruption in the execution of works, use of sub-standard material in roads, rampant overloading by cement companies and lack of enforcing provision of the Central Motors Vehicles Act, 1988; the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, 1984; and the Carriageway Road Act to regulate traffic and check overloading.

But as far as checking overloading is concerned, nothing serious has been done so far. The frequent breakdowns of overloaded trucks and tractor-trailers not only jeopardise travelling on the highway, but also erode the road surface for commuters that hit local economy and result in frequent wear and tears of private vehicles that raise the cost of maintenance drastically, observe road researchers.

On March 25, 2011, in the National Road Safety Council meeting held in New Delhi, MoST had agreed that overloading should be strictly checked enforcing the Prevention of Damage to the Public Property Act, 1984, and the Carriageway Road Act and truck owners and drivers should be punished by cancelling their permits.

Even the state traffic police, the NHAI and the PWD are competent to enforce the Acts to regulate traffic on national highways.

Cement factories in the state continue to play havoc on the highway carrying overloaded trucks from mining sites to markets, most of these on the Chandigarh-Manali highway. There are no “weigh bridges” to check overloading on national highways.

All that the PWD does is that it puts PWD engineers under suspension for compromising with the quality of road construction, maintenance and tarring, but who are reinstated when the next government takes over.

A series of reports carried in these columns have reached MoST, Dr CP Joshi, including Chief Minister PK Dhumal. But no action has been taken so far.

President, HP PWD Engineers Federation, KS Thakur and its general secretary Jagdish Vaidya said it was wrong to blame engineers for the poor condition of roads and suspend them as had been done in the tarring of the Bilaspur-Gambhar stretch case.

Engineers are overburdened and many things are at play, including political interests, they said.

SP Singh, coordinator, Indian Foundation of Transport Research and Training, New Delhi, told The Tribune that “The NHAI, MoST and the PWD are engaged in a blame game. To check overloading is the responsibility of the Centre and the state.”

Solan, November 8
With no check on the reckless digging of the Kasauli-Dharampur road at various places by builders, the crucial carriageway is facing immense damage with not only culverts facing damage but also the road alignment being disturbed at several places.

Since several projects, both housing and commercial, are coming up on the road and intense digging activity is underway on both sides of the roads, reckless digging of both the vales and hills to clear land for construction is causing havoc to the environment.

In a majority of the projects, huge carriageways are being constructed for transporting heavy machinery to clear the hills. At places, the parapets have been damaged and the road width has been reduced as builders have expanded their carriageways by encroaching upon the road.

However, the PWD authorities have been sitting pretty and allowing stark violations and encroachments of the road. It was intriguing as to how the field staff of the PWD had turned blind to the violations.

The worst damage is being witnessed at sites where both the valley and hillsides are being dug up to clear the sites. This has not only shaken the foundation of the road as a large portion below it has been dug but also increased the risk of massive landslides with the hill above having been chipped away as well.

Some builders have constructed their boundary walls on the parapets itself, but the PWD officials have turned a blind eye to such irregularities.

While the Town and Country Planning (TCP) Department disallowed straight cutting of hillside having a slope of more than 45 degrees, the norm was observed more in the breach with clear violations.

At other sites, the nullahs which carry rainwater have been used to construct flats. While this has disturbed the alignment and culverts, it was surprising how a power connection has been extended to such flats despite the TCP Department declaring the construction as illegal.

The impact of the indiscriminate constructions was visible from the fact that the road had remained closed on several occasions in the rains when landslides had blocked the roads owing to indiscriminate digging of the hills. At some places the hillside adjoining the road has been cleared while the strata above it have become unsafe in the absence of any support from below. This has increased the risk of accidents when boulders from the hill could roll down on the motorist below.

There has been a sharp increase in the construction activities on this road soon after the high court had lifted its ban on fresh constructions in 2009.

Executive engineer OP Verma of the PWD said the field staff had failed to report any such issue.

He added that he would take stock of the situation and ensure that such violations and damage to the PWD road were checked.

The violators would be dealt with strongly, he said.

However, being the main road leading to Kasauli, the tourist flow had been deterred by the poor roads and its deteriorating plight owing to scores of constructions being underway.

Shimla, November 8
To make teachings to his students more comprehensible, he not only learnt a language which was completely alien to him but adopted it as if it was his mother tongue as he now endeavours to propagate the language far and wide.

Hearing Pandit Rao Dharennavar speak chaste Punjabi, it is unbelievable as one would expect a Kannada to be quite unfamiliar to Punjabi. However, Rao took on the arduous task of learning a new language only to make it easier for him to communicate and get across to his students in a more effective manner.

Thus began Rao’s love for Punjabi which till date remains infallible. It was in 2003 that Rao joined as an assistant professor in sociology at Post Graduate Government College, Sector 46, Chandigarh. Hailing from Bijapur district in Karnataka, Rao often found himself at a loss when language would become a barrier during conversation with the students.

“It was in 2004 that I started learning Punjabi as over 80 per cent of my students were Punjabi and this definitely helped me communicate better with them,” Rao said. Today he has eight books in Punjabi to his credit, which are mostly translations of 12th century saint Wani of Karnataka.

He completed his MA and MPhil in sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and it was after being selected through the Union Public Service Commission that he got posted in Chandigarh.

He has also translated Sri Jap Ji Saheb and Sri Sukhmani Saheb into Kannada. “I am now translating Sri Guru Granth Saheb ji into Kannada as I am hugely influenced by Sri Jap Ji Saheb and modern poets like Bahi Veer Singh ji, Sant Ram Udasi and Shiv Kumar Batalvi,” he said.

He has not only kept his passion with Punjabi confined to penning books and undertaking translations from Kannada into Punjabi but also travels to different states to promote the language.

He was here in the “Queen of Hills” last week on a similar mission. He was honoured by Sri Guru Singh Sabha for his work for Gurumukhi. The Sikh community of the town expressed their gratitude to Rao for the interest he was taking in promoting Punjabi.

“They have now urged me to translate Sri Guru Granth Saheb into Kannada so that more than 6 crore people of Karnataka can be blessed with Gurbani,” he said.

Talking about languages, he said people in Karnataka love Kannada and worship it like a goddess. “What is unfortunate in north India is that people do not value and love their language the way they should revere it,” he added.

He said gurdwaras in Himachal should promote children literature so that school children should grow up reading it.

He also expressed surprise at the fact that various dialects of the hilly areas did not have a script, which he said should be developed.

District Institute of Education and Training (DIET) is the most significant educational intervention in the country. The NCERT came up in the 1960s and the State Councils of Education Research and Training were formed in 1970s. There was the need for a third tier of training and resource support structure at the district level to improve the quality of basic education.

Hence, DIETs were set up in almost all states in the country. The DIET at Shamlaghat, about 30 km from Shimla on Kanda Jail road, was established in the year 2000 with an intake of 200. The DIET building at Shamlaghat is good and serves the purpose for which the Institute was created.

When Prabhat Kumar, coordinator of Nehru Yuva Kendra, invited me to DIET at Shamlaghat to have interaction with 44 youths of six districts - Bilaspur, Shimla, Solan, Sirmaur, Kinnaur and Una - on human values in Indian context, I readily accepted the invitation (see photo).

I quoted Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, “India leads in human values even today. In spite of the enormous problems, the enormous challenges we have, there is still compassion and the sense of serving the needy. In every corner of this country there is a sense of togetherness, belonging, in spite of a lot of challenges. I think there is human potential. The only thing we really lack is self-confidence, confidence in the past, in the present, in the future.” And then I told the gathering several inspirational stories stuck to different values. The educative part was the interactive session when the youth unfolded themselves.

The female members, in unison, were of the opinion that despite so much talk of justice and equality, the rural women are an oppressed lot. They still work hard on the fields and farms to the extent of 18 hours a day during agricultural seasons, but when it comes to spending the money earned through their hard work, men rule the roost. It is like -SHE WORKS; HE DECIDES. Woman liberalisation will remain mere words unless she gets the power to spend the money in her own way. Then there are problems of domestic violence, uncared for elders - especially old ladies -and alcoholism and tobacco consumption. Quite a few challenged the domestic violence percentage when I told them that the National Health Family Survey-3 placed it at 6 percent in Himachal Pradesh, the lowest in the country.

Corruption, Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev was also one of the topics of discussion. Most of them agreed that though Baba Ramdev is over-ambitious and Anna is a bit obstinate, yet the issue of corruption that they were raising had substance enough as every branch of the governmental tree had been ‘scabbed’ that needed fumigation. One among the audience stood up with ‘correct thyself first’ attitude. He said, “When we travel in a bus, we give Rs 2 instead of Rs 4 to the conductor and do not ask for a ticket, thus saving Rs 2 for ourselves. The seeds of corruption are sowed in us from the young age.” I seconded him by telling the gathering that the best sloka of Bhagwadgita for anyone to imbibe in life is: “Always try to develop yourself and never let you fall: For you are your own foe and your own friend.”

It was a learning process for me. The real life of rural Himachal Pradesh is visible when you sit with youth who willingly share their experiences. I give credit to those five young men who stood up and declared that they smoke when I asked the question, “How many of you smoke?” I got the chance of letting them know the dangers of cigarette, bidi smoking and tobacco-chewing and then they agreed to make a serious attempt to leave this bad habit which they had ingrained under peer-pressure in schools. We summed up with the resounding words of Sathya Sai, “Cultivate the heart to raise a harvest of Truth, Righteousness, Peace and Love. This crop has to be raised in your heart and should be shared with others.”

“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to discover it in himself.” — Galileo Galilei

The Charu Castle Foundation has organised a week-long all-India painting competition for girls at the historic Gaiety Theatre, in which each participant will make two paintings and draw ten sketches to capture the beautiful landscape, majestic buildings and the landmarks of the “Queen of Hills” on the canvas.

In all, 51 girls from various states are participating in the workshop which will conclude on November 12. By assigning two paintings to each participant, the organisers have provided ample scope for giving creative expression to their own thoughts and ideas (see photos). One of the painting has to be based on the theme of nature and for the second painting, participants could choose the theme.

The participants would go around the city daily and sketch various monuments, buildings, landscapes and other specimen of the imperial heritage. At the end of the competition, there will be over 500 sketches depicting various aspects of the city.

Chief Organiser V Bhan said the The Charu Castle Foundation has been regularly organising training programmes, workshops and competitions to promote artistic talent amongst the students, particularly girls, and the competition was a part of the effort. It has organised a number of painting workshops and competitions in various states, in which more than 20,000 girls have participated. It has also organised three international folk dance competitions.

The foundation also gives cash prizes to the winners amounting to Rs 2 lakh every year. It is also setting up a doll museum at Naldehra where more than 2,000 dolls will be displayed.

(Contributed by DP Gupta, Rakesh Lohumi and Pratibha Chauhan)

Bilaspur, November 8
Himachal Pradesh has excelled even the most forward state of Kerala in matter of education in the country and now serious attempts are afoot to develop this tiny hill state into “Education Hub” where students from all other states would be coming for higher education in all disciplines. This was said by Education Minister ID Dhiman while presiding over the concluding function of HP University Inter College Cultural Programmes (group- three) Competition at Ghumarwin near here recently.

He said the state is stressing on quality education and a number of steps have already been taken towards that direction.The minister was very critical of those teachers and lecturers, who though employed in government service and were getting the best of salaries, yet who had taken to evil of paid tuitions as a profit earning side-profession. He said this had eroded the highly respected Indian cult of “Guru Shishya Parampara”, in which teachers were highly respected not only by students but also by the society and students were very obedient to them.

“How can a teacher earn respect from students when he earned money from their parents and had turned his noble profession in to a business?” he asked.

He said he was also once a teacher and he also taught tuitions, but not for money rather for ensuring that his weaker students got good marks and intelligent students excelled and carved out a brilliant career for them. He said almost all other teachers did the same, but never charged a single penny from the students. “We were all paid back by the satisfaction of our students having passed with flying colours, our first and foremost objective as teachers!” he added.

The minister asked teachers and lecturers to desist from turning education into a lucrative business and get their respect back, which was more precious than the money which they could amass by such a practice.

He said those who forget their past and their cultural heritage are also themselves forgotten by history and nothing remains of such people and races.

Principal Dr JS Negi and RS Chauhan, director, physical education, HP University, also addressed function and said more than 1,000 students drawn from 45 colleges of the state contested in this cultural competition.

Chamba, November 8
The Kalidas Academy of Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, has bestowed the prestigious “Kalidas Award for 2011” on Vijay Sharma, the renowned artist of Chamba, for his creation of Pahari painting based on Meghdoot.

Every year, the Kalidas Academy invites paintings and sculptures from the artists across the country. A jury comprising top art critics makes the selection of the best outstanding creations of the year.

This year, Vijay Sharma has been selected for the Kalidas Award for miniature painting.

The award carries Rs 25,000, besides a citation and “angavastram”.

Vijay Sharma of Chamba is one of the foremost miniaturists of Himachal Pradesh. He has been giving lecture demonstrations of Pahari miniature painting in India and abroad. He has played a vital role in the revival of famed Kangra School of Painting.

He had received the prestigious National Award for Master Craftsperson in 1990 from the President of India for his remarkable contribution to the field of traditional arts.

Vijay will receive the Kalidas Award at a grand public function to be held in Ujjain on November 12.

He painted the verses of great Sanskrit classic Meghdoot of Kalidas in which a Yakshi is shown clapping to make her pet peacock to dance.