Jewellery units flout bylaws
By Varinder Singh
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, Sept 24 — About two dozen gold purification and jewellery making units running in shop-cum-flats in Sector 22-D are thriving in violation of the city building bye-laws and the provisions of air and water Acts.

These units have been running in most of the first and second floors of SCFs from number 1 to 34 and even in garages facing the residential area in the sector for more than 20 years. The people engaged in the business expressed ignorance about the building bye-laws which prohibit any industrial and semi-industrial activity from within the SCFs.

The Administration too, it seems, has been reluctant to take any penal action against them as nothing has allegedly been done to stop the violations or solve the problem of nuisance and air pollution faced by the residents of the area which is hardly 10 to15 yards away from these units.

According to official sources, the units have not been using the best available technology (BAT) for treatment of waste water, poisonous substances and affluents like acids. They have not sought the mandatory permission as prescribed under the Manufacture, Storage and Import of Hazardous Chemicals Rules 1989. These rules specify that an occupier shall not undertake any industrial activity, particularly related to handling hazardous chemicals without prior approval.

A resident, who did not wish to be identified, said that they have written to the administration, but to no avail. "In such a situation, we have no choice but to bear with the pollution caused by these units," he added. He alleged that these unit owners have made their own sewage system by directly inserting PVC pipes into the sewer line to release affluents into sewer directly.

On the other hand, the manufactures express ignorance about any pollution or violation being caused by their units. "We don't know of any permission required to do our business. Moreover, all of us are tenants, if anybody has any objection, he should go to the landlords," said Mr Mohinder Verma, a manufacturer.

Balwinder, another manufacturer, conceded that though they were violating the building bye-laws, said they had been doing their business for the past 25 years. "That is the case with all of us," he said.

Meanwhile, inquiries with the UT Pollution Control Committee revealed that the committee had issued notices to the manufacturers regarding violation of air and water Acts. "We are in the process of taking action," said an official, adding that the administration had ordered the closure of two of such units last year.

Passion for power of personality
By Rajni Lamba

POSING as an SP and getting away with it for 11 days is a feat that may be remarked by some to be quite formidable but seeing the state of affairs of today’s world I am not surprised. Name dropping, posing big, acting unlike ones natural self and a general dissatisfaction with what one is endowed with coupled with a burning desire to be what one is not have been ingrained in the very bloodline of today’s neer-do-wells. The thirst for quick gains, the hunger for power and the lust to be “someone” have replaced the old fashioned ideals, motivations, aspirations and ambitions of the yesteryear.

Most faults are laid well-neigh at the doorstep of youth, immaturity and rampant ignorance. However, here I have a feeling that parents share an equal blame. Those of us who remember the poignant scene of Manoj Kumar’s film “Purab aur Paschim” and Ashok Kumar’s pained query “Kya diya hae Paschim ney?” will find the answer writ large on the faces of the young and middle generations around them Alas! unlike films life generally has endings that veer away from the Shakespearean “alls well that ends well” philosophy.

Somewhere down the line the parents who themselves were the youth picked up the fast-paced life styles and annexured goal/value models from the West find themselves adrift today as they have forgotten the ways of their fathers and are unable to cope with the ways of their progeny. Men in their 40s have been known to live through their days by talking of this or that relative who is a big name for whiling away their time in digging up how they are related to this or that “power personality”. I know of a man who in his fits of compulsive drinking bouts picks up the phone and starts dialling the numbers of all the big shots in the directory and spins all sorts of yarns about how he or his family is connected to this or that “power personality”. Two aspects of this charade never ceases to amaze me. Firstly is the fact that he is tolerated by these public servants who never usually get the real idea behind the farce or are too involved in issues nearer to them to be bothered to check the antecedents of such callers. And the other aspect is that he manages to unfazed bully the Telephone Department into charging him on the basis of his average consumption of telephonic calls rather than the large amounts that accrue to his name because of his mania. And the best part is the telephone he uses in the name of his aged, blind, invalid father and he manages to use twist arm tactics to get his 73-year-old mother to pay the rentals on the telephone.

Then there is the case of the fellow who indulges in drunken driving and knowingly tends to challenge the traffic and other police personnel he comes across on the highway. Whenever he is stopped by the traffic police he rattles out a list of names right from the Prime Minister down as relatives of close associates of his own or his family. This more often than not manages to impress upon them to let him go scotfree at the peril of facing dire consequences if they meddle with him.

Also there is the case of the compulsive liar who loves to talk of high drama situations. He may nick himself while shaving but gives a blow-by-blow account of the incident which would be adequate to fuel a melodramatic Nana Patekar chiller thriller. Many a time his family and friends have warned him and today nobody really believes what he is saying. They often look at his wife to make sure if what he is saying is the truth and to what extent can they rely on his newsworthiness. A case of the boy who yelled “tiger, tiger” and antagonised the villagers to the extent that he found himself defenceless when the tiger really turned up.

There have been con artistes and con artistes but the one who took the cake along with the cream in recent times is the fellow who posed as a big time consultant for large global funding agencies like the World Bank, the UN, the UNFA and others. Based in Faridabad he did nothing small keeping the maxim of big is beautiful. Big villa, big library, big fleet of cars, big bank accounts and big lifestyle fed by a big vision on how to live it up on the money of others. His passion was to fire the imagination of the moneyed drawn them into the web of big funding from “phoren” agencies through their reliable agent. The scale of his planning and implementation can be imagined from the large success of his enterprise and the time he could sustain it which was well neigh half a decade.

The charm and ease exhibited by these wily “Natwarlals” a la Charles Sobhraj et al is often succumbed to by the gullible. The axe really falls when those who live by their veritable wits in this fast moving world fall victim to them. Any honest to goodness service person would not dream of asking for some ID if a chap claims to be the SP as happened in the case of Chandigarh “fake SP”. In the USA one is often asked to present some from of ID for almost all queries one may put up at a workplace before any answers are given. In our all trusting land of “Satyam Shivam Sundaram” the ball rolls on trust, faith and blind belief. The cookie only crumbles when some disbelieving soul shatters the bonhomie of the fraud-happy imposter. There is no foolproofing against such occurrences as any psychologist worth his salt will have you know. However, there is no harm in being a little alert and disbelieving lest one would be taken for a ride. One may shudder to think what would happen if everyone were suspect but the call of the times leaves little recourse.