The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Punjab’s green dream
To remain committed is the key

The Punjab Cabinet has cleared a “Greening Punjab Project”. That is a very positive move if the government can carry it the way it is envisaged. At least at the outset, there is no amount specified for the corpus to be created for it. There is the suggestion that private companies would also be encouraged to contribute to it as part of their corporate social responsibility — a rather grey area, subject more to charity that surety. The next challenge would be to find land to plant trees. It is proposed that land under various government departments and institutions would be used. With the large number of departments involved, there would be as many impediments. Panchayats have also not been cooperative in the past in matters regarding land.

One problem with such do-good plans is they are often forgotten along the way. Results can be achieved only if people and bodies committed to the cause are involved. Officials are never motivated enough — in this case, there would be no complaints, or votes affected, if the targets are not met. Punjab has lost lakhs of trees — and land for planting trees — to the widening of national highways and roads along canals. A plan to purchase wasteland from farmers for compensatory afforestation has earlier failed, as land price is always an issue, and the scheme is also fraught with chances of fraud. One option could be to plant trees on farmers’ land free of cost, without acquiring the land. A moratorium on cutting the trees for a period could be imposed.

Another glaring source the government has ignored is its own forestland. The state has 6.12 per cent of its land marked “forest area” in revenue records. However, barely more than half of it is covered by forests. The tree cover outside forests is almost equal to the cover in forests, which is, to a great extent, the result of agro-forestry, something the government needs to promote as a diversification option. For a movement to be anything more than a slogan, it is the sincerity that matters.

State of anganwaris
Playing havoc with the lives of children

It is indeed ironic that the anganwari scheme meant to alleviate child hunger and malnutrition is plagued with many ills. The recent incident in Haryana in which fungus-infested food was supplied to anganwaris in Kaithal is yet another proof that these courtyard shelters are in effect no one’s baby.

On the surface, the incident might seem like a minor lapse but actually reveals a deeper malaise that cannot be justified. The fact that the food was not just of poor quality but also downright unpalatable is symptomatic of the “couldn’t care less attitude” of those concerned. That their negligence could have played havoc with the lives of children already at risk, speaks volumes of their insensitivity and lack of concern.

The Anganwari Programme that came into being as part of the Integrated Child Development Services Scheme is meant to be a tool to check malnourishment. Sadly, the scheme has been lacking in many aspects. The Tribune has often exposed the dismal reality behind these centres not only in Haryana but also in Punjab. The state of anganwaris in Haryana has exposed the lack of accountability, besides many other loopholes. While in some anganwaris the beneficiaries were no more than names in the register, poor storage, questionable quality of food and the absence of proper facilities were other problems. In Punjab, the situation was found to be no better. Actually, the way anganwaris are run across the country leaves much to be desired.

Perhaps, the rub lies in not making the officials concerned answerable. That a well-meaning scheme, which pumps in crores and employs a huge manpower, is not allowed to meet the desired results is an indictment of the machinery involved in running and monitoring it. Anganwaris are supposed to be cradles of care, not of neglect, as these have become in recent times. All efforts must be made to turn around the working of anganwaris. Both responsibility and accountability have to be fixed. Those who fail in their duties, as in the Haryana case, must be made to pay a heavy price for their lapses.

Thought for the Day

The love of family and the admiration of friends is much more important than wealth and privilege.— Charles Kuralt

ARTICLE

Presidential poll endgame
BJP dithers, Mulayam Singh defends himself
by Inder Malhotra

FOR all practical purposes Pranab Mukherjee is assured of his election as India’s next President. Yet politicking and machinations centred on the presidential poll persist. Evidently, the practitioners of the political game in this country are believers in Yogi Behra’s famous dictum: “It is not over until it is over”. Another version of this aphorism - derived obviously from the realm of opera, comic or otherwise - is that it isn’t over “until the fat lady sings”.

Mercifully, in the present case, the fat lady will sing, metaphorically, long before July 17, the day of voting.

June 30 is the last date for nominations. Therefore, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, torn asunder by differences between the saffron party and its allies as well as divisions among the BJP’s own leaders, and left completely in the lurch by former President APJ Abdul Kalam’s withdrawal from the contest, cannot prolong its indecision indefinitely. The most it can do is to wait until June 21 when the Left Front is scheduled to decide whether or not to support Mr Mukherjee. No wonder, the joke doing the rounds in Delhi is that the NDA should be renamed “No Decision Alliance”.

The BJP’s woes are many and multifarious. Its most important ally, the Janata Dal (United), is completely at odds with it over the issue of contesting against Mr Mukherjee. Shiv Sena disdainfully stayed away from the conclave in Delhi and, after Dr Kalam’s decision not to be a candidate, has announced that it would vote for the Congress candidate regardless of what the NDA decides. Remarkably, even Maneka Gandhi has endorsed Mr Mukherjee. Above all, Dr Kalam’s decision to stay out of the contest has left the saffron camp with hardly any option.

Incidentally, it must also be said that the eminent defence scientist’s decision to stay out of the fray came rather late, given the fact that his precondition for accepting the nomination was that there must be credible assurance of majority support in the electoral college. This possibility had vanished into thin air ever since the Samajwadi Party leader, Mulayam Singh Yadav, had startled the country and shocked the Congress by joining hands with West Bengal’s Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress leader, Mamata Banerjee, to project Dr Kalam as the most acceptable candidate and then do a U-turn in 24 hours flat, loudly switching support to Mr Mukherjee.

The BJP’s hopes of offering support to the Congress nominee in return for the post of Vice-President were a non-starter anyway. Therefore, those BJP leaders who advocate that the NDA must contest the election because it would be politically unwise to let the Congress have a “cake walk” make sense. The trouble, however, is what would be the worth of a “token” contest when all it would do is to expose utter disunity among the NDA’s constituents? The bitter truth is that while the Congress-led UPA-2 is paralysed and “scam-smothered”, the plight of the principal opposition party and its allies is much worse.

As of now, the only candidate available to those hell-bent on a fight is former Speaker Purno Sangma of the Nationalist Congress Party. He had thrown his hat in the ring long ago, and is voluble about his determination to stay in the fray and fight, notwithstanding NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s threat of “disciplinary action” against him. Mr Sangma enjoys the support of two regional parties, Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK. He now wants the BJP to adopt him. Like a drowning man, the BJP may clutch at this straw, especially if it enhances the chances of Ms Jayalalithaa and Mr Patnaik returning to the NDA by 2014.

No less conspicuous than the BJP’s woes is another feature of the present scene which some are describing as the “post-surge in support for the Mukherjee era”. It is the sharp attack on the SP supreme leader, Mr Yadav, for acting the way he did. Interestingly, the infuriated Ms Banerjee is quiet on the subject but most others are berating MSY for “betrayal”, “back-stabbing” and opportunism of the worst kind. Mr Yadav is supremely unconcerned. For him the surprise is that anyone should be surprised.

He is after all a past master in the long established pattern of politics, first patented in Uttar Pradesh and then extended to the entire country. Under it, the ground rules of political behaviour are: “Stab any friend, embrace any foe, discard any principle, and make any compromise as long as this suits your purpose”. He did not invent this doctrine but he is very adept in following it. Public memory may be short but there are many who still remember how Charan Singh brought down the Janata government in 1979 to become India’s only Prime Minister who couldn’t face Parliament for even a single day.

Mr Yadav and his cohorts are trying to explain away his unethical conduct. But this cannot hide the ugly reality. Almost every newspaper has published, without inviting any contradiction, that after his two secret meetings with Congress president Sonia Gandhi, he got two assurances. First, that his son Akhilesh’s government in Lucknow would get all help from the Centre. Secondly, and more importantly, the Central Bureau of Investigation’s inquiry into charges of “disproportionate assets” against Mr Yadav himself that has been going on for years would drag on. Incidentally, the sole leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party and UP’s former Chief Minister, Mayawati, who is also under investigation seems to have received the same reassurances because she, too, has rallied round Mr Mukherjee.

Such gross misuse and abuse of the CBI and other state agencies by ruling parties of all hues for crass political objectives is one of the biggest blots on the Indian system. One can only hope that after what has happened in Andhra, the Congress-led government in Delhi would realise that misuse of the CBI could be a double-edged sword. In that state, a bastion of the Congress in bygone days, the CBI was a virtual player in the string of 18 byelections. It arrested the Congress’s principal foe, YS Jaganmohan Reddy, with the result that the Congress’s expected defeat turned into decimation. Even Union Cabinet minister Vylar Ravi has admitted this much.

MIDDLE

The Elements of Style
by Roopinder Singh

I had known Preminder Singh Sandhawalia for a while when one day he told me: “I am a keen follower of Strunk and White.” I had not known anyone who described himself in this way. I was familiar with the two authors of the book that had originally been recommended to me by my philosophy teacher, Vijay Tankha.

Like we all do with many well-meaning recommendations, I did nothing at all about it, till a few years later the name figured again in the list of titles I was expected to be familiar with while doing a journalism course in New York. Now I bought the book and realised how much I could have gained from it if only I had read it earlier.

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White is a 1918 classic considered as one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English. It is a 100-page style guide for writing in English, which lays stress on pithiness, especially by omitting needless words. The person who told me he was a follower of Strunk and White was one of the most stylish men that I had met, linguistically, sartorially and in many other ways.

He lived in Chandigarh and was cosmopolitan in his outlook, quite understandably, since much of his upbringing, education and career span was in Bombay and Delhi. He travelled extensively because of his work on airports for the Government of India, the International Airports Authority, and the International Civil Aviation Organisation. He had a hand in the planning and execution of most of the airports in India, and some abroad, including in Ethiopia. He had settled in Chandigarh after retirement.

He was fond of reading books, had a very impressive library to which he retired to read and ruminate. He wanted to tell the story of his forefathers and wrote “Noblemen and Kinsmen: History of a Sikh Family”. The slim 250-page volume, which was published in 1999, was informative, especially since it filled a gap about the clan that had been eclipsed by its collaterals, the Sukarchakias. Honoured in the court of Ranjit Singh, the Sandhawalia Sardars were also controversial. However, many members of the clan played a role in the history of Punjab.

The book did well, and he was soon on to another, which became “Beyond Identity,” published in 2007. This time it was a work of fiction, which allowed the author to take a creative licence and think of a utopia, even as his characters effortlessly traversed continents familiar to the author. The book launch in Chandigarh was an event that drew an international audience, reflecting the content, and the author’s circle of friends.

Neighbours that we were, we met, though not as often as I would have wanted to. His sons Drishinder and Birinder are friends and I knew that he had been working on another book. Thus, when I heard of his death in London, it came as a shock. I also learnt that he had just finished his third book, and that pre-publication copies of the book had been dispatched to his Chandigarh residence.

What did not come as a shock was the large number of mourners who had gathered to pay their respects to him, many prominent persons from the city. The bibliophile in him would also have been touched that among the mourners were the owners of two of the leading bookshops in Chandigarh, paying a quiet tribute to the man, and his love for books.n

OPED BUSINESS

Managing milk and middlemen
Running a dairy farm has become a tough enterprise. While dairy farmers get low returns, consumers pay a high price for milk. The middleman takes away 25-30 per cent of the price a consumer pays
Joginder Singh

Milkmen pour milk into a drain in Delhi to protest low prices. A file photograph

The recent spilling of milk in Delhi by milkmen from Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere to protest against the lowering of prices by processing units needs to be logically probed. One obvious reason for this is the higher milk yield due to a favourable climate this year, causing a seasonal adverse effect on its price. However, there are still wider policy issues which require special attention to address the problem.

The steep growth of cereal production as a consequence of the Green Revolution in Punjab and Haryana got dampened with time which was expected to happen due to the saturation of technology diffusion and slackening of momentum of innovations. Various other avenues of growth within the farm sector were open but were not properly taken care of as the economy lacked a proper direction.

The dairy sector was one such potential area which has a close association with the crop sector in terms of helping in agricultural diversification, improving soil health and regulating farm income apart from being an important avenue of nutritional security. Some efforts were, however made to improve the genetic base of cattle, nutritional aspect of feeding, networking veterinary services and streamlining milk marketing, including processing and distribution. But a number of gaps still persist due to which it could not gain the desired momentum.

Production up

About one-third of the total farm income is contributed by livestock. As the contribution of the farm sector to the net state domestic product fell from 46% in 1993-94 to 25% in 2009-10, the contribution of this sub-sector also tumbled from 13% to 8% but it has a scope for revival. On the other hand, the production of milk in Punjab went up at a fast rate.

A sharp rise in production of milk, much faster than the size of population, has made the picture rosy as is clear from the facts. For instance, milk output in the state, which was merely 24 lakh tonnes in 1975-76, shot up to 77 lakh tonnes in 2000-01 and further to 94 lakh tonnes in 2009-10, an increase of almost four times.

The per capita availability during this period more than doubled with 915 g/day in 2009-10 as compared to the national average of 281 g/cap/day. Despite all this, the occupation of dairy farming is considered less profitable and more back-breaking because of the rising cost of feed, wages of labour required for care and upkeep of animals, heavy initial investment and low farm gate prices. The quandary is that the consumer feels hit hard by high milk prices, faces adulteration and various other malpractices. An effort is made to identify some gaps and possible ways to bridge such gaps.

Size of business

The number, kind and quality of dairy herd are the basic parameters to be viewed. In 1990 the number of female adult animals (above 3 years age in case of local cow and buffalo and 2.5 years in case of cross-bred cows) was 44 lakh which has recently shown a declining trend, touching a level of 39 lakh in 2007. Of this, about 70% animals were in milk as against only 63% during 1990 and the remaining are dry or not-calved.

Unproductive and uneconomical animals, which put a heavy burden on the livestock economy of the state, must find an alternative economic use rather than leaving them as stray. Such neglected large herds of dairy animals of migrant Gujjars are sources of infectious diseases.

Further, local cows are increasingly being replaced by cross-bred cows. Thus with the improvement of stock, the average yield per animal went up to 4.35 lit/day in 2007 as against 3.18 lit/day in 1990, which is still too low in comparison to the fast-rising cost of dairying. From these facts, it is clear that as an economy measure, quality of animals rather than the number is gaining importance. As compared to general crop farming, its profitability lags much behind apart from the high degree of risk involved.

Further, it is a labour-intensive enterprise and the problem of labour in-migration is getting serious with the operation of MGNREGA in labour-surplus states. Unproductive and uneconomical animals, which put a heavy burden on the livestock economy of the state, must find an alternative economic use rather than leaving them as stray. Such neglected large herds of dairy animals of migrant Gujjars are sources of infectious diseases.

With the declining herd of animals in the state, a greater quantity of fodder and care is available for productive animals even if the area under fodder crops remains at about 8% of the cultivated area, thus improving the productivity of milch animals further.

Another silver lining is that the area under basmati crop has shot up. In the basmati belt the cost of feed and fodder is relatively low due to the fact that basmati straw is fed to animals without much problem and after wheat and before transplanting basmati, an additional short duration fodder crop can be taken. In other regions, the high cost of feed and fodder makes dairy a less economical proposition. A systematic animal improvement programme through breeding, veterinary services, nutrition, proper care and management needs to be undertaken with zeal.

Poor marketing

In order to ensure remunerative prices of milk to dairy farmers, it has also become necessary to streamline its marketing. Being highly perishable in nature, milk requires pasteurisation, processing scientifically and disposal at the earliest possible. The number of organised milk processing units in the state has gone up, particularly in the private sector, and these are currently having an annual processing capacity equivalent to about 25% of the total milk production.

Still the producer-milk vendor-consumer is the most important channel of milk marketing in which the middleman mops up 25-30 per cent of the consumer's rupee apart from indulging in malpractices, particularly adulteration. Milk producers with one or two animals and scattered over a large area constitute the nitty-gritty of problems of high collection cost of milk, unhygienic conditions and high cost of veterinary services. Initiatives by producers or consumers to bridge this gap through cooperatives can play an important role.

Consumers on the other end face serious problems of steeply rising milk prices, almost ten times in three decades (retail price increasing from 2.53/lit in 1980 to 24.69/lit in 2010) and poor quality of milk and milk products due to adulteration and even the large-scale manufacture of synthetic milk. In view of lack of a suitable and effective food law, adulterators play with the health of people and get away scot-free. Policy measures in this regard need to be revamped urgently and immediately.

Value addition

The number of milk processing units in the state was only 25 in 1994-95, of which 11 and 14 were run by Milkfed and the private sector respectively. The number shot up to 74 with the private sector accounting for 60 units. The total milk processed is 6.18 lakh litres per day or 22.7 lakh tonnes a year, accounting for about one-fourth of the total milk output in the state. With the increase in the number of milk processing units in the state, some improvement in milk marketing has taken place but still a lot needs to be done in this direction, particularly in terms of generating exportable potential of milk and milk products, through improvements in the quality standards.

Further, most milk processing units are neither able to cater to the domestic market nor have improved the quality of milk and milk products up to the international sanitary and phyto-sanitary standards (SPS) set under the WTO as has been done by Scandinavian countries, Australia and New Zealand.

The milk production system also needs an overhaul and there is need to establish scientific commercial dairy farms, ensuring the delivery of standardised feed and high-yielding seeds of fodder crops, making an easy access to veterinary schemes and programmes to manage the large proportion of unproductive animals to make it a successful venture in the state.

Economics of a dairy farm
l A dairy farm's success and profits depend on
1. location of the unit
2. size of the business
3 quality of livestock
4 resource availability
l How much investment?
For a well-managed dairy farm unit of 10 buffaloes or 10 cross-bred cows, each with an average yield of 2,000 litres and 3,000 litres per lactation of 16 and 14 months, respectively, an initial investment of 4 lakh and 4.5 lakh in terms of value of animals, cost of shed and machinery is required. Another 50,000 should be arranged to meet the operational expenses at least for two months.
l What are returns?
Accounting for all the fixed and operational costs, the buffalo unit promises an annual return of 1.30 lakh and the cow unit 2.80 lakh, respectively.

The writer is the Dean, Faculty of Management, Ludhiana College of Engineering & Technology, Katani Kalan, Punjab)