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| Monday, May 22, 2000, Chandigarh, India  
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Stubborn
on subsidies
Water:
the ground reality |
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| The land question in Zimbabwe by Hari Sharan Chhabra IT is often heard in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe : “ When the white settlers came to Zimbabwe, they had the Bible and we the blacks had the land. Now they have the land and we have the Bible.” Memories of Vietnam war By Abu Abraham NOT many people would know that I was once a war correspondent with the United States armed forces. This was 30 years ago when I visited Vietnam and Cambodia. I was accredited as a ‘civilian non-combatant’ and was given the rank of Major.
Whose
baby is it anyway?
Holding
fairs in the heat of summer
May 22, 1925
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PRIME Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee delivered a stiff lecture on subsidy reduction, but at the end of the day it seemed to be a wasted effort. The occasion was the Inter-State Council meeting to discuss overall Centre-state relations and Mr Vajpayee relentlessly focused on the deteriorating finances of both the Centre and the states, more of the latter. His strident tone did not have any effect on the sulking Chief Ministers who actually wanted to rewrite the agenda. He did not offer any new argument and all arguments have already been aired and repeated; but what he did was to inject a sense of urgency, bordering on desperation, in demanding that the states should immediately restore the financial health and then listed the priority areas. Subsidies must be trimmed; the states too should take hard decisions. Obviously he does not want the polity to be divided along subsidy line but likes all to board the reduction bus. Not many volunteered, for they are fighters for more and not less subsidy. And anyway the Centre’s record is neither impressive nor inspiring. Some Chief Ministers went on the offensive and not surprisingly, Andhra Pradesh’s Chandrababu Naidu was one of them. Maharashtra’s Vilasrao Deshmukh mounted a withering attack on the Centre for taking decisions on its own, which affected the lives of millions in the states. He virtually demanded a consensus on all such financial issues. This is carrying the coalition dharma into the economic decision-making arena. Mr Naidu came out with a virtual declaration of financial independence. He wanted the Centre to abolish all its social amelioration schemes and hand over 50 per cent of its tax revenue to states since they implemented them. (At present the states get 29 per cent of all taxes which the Centre collects. An academic-turned-analyst has found that the so-called increase in the share of the states in reality represents a fall and the recommendations of the Tenth Finance Commission have been grossly and unilaterally changed.) Mr Vajpayee’s tough talking may not yield any immediate dividends. But he has laid out the alliance government’s policy towards the states in an unambiguous manner. The Centre has no funds and so it cannot bale out states. Budget provisions for the social sector and infrastructure are shrinking and that is disquieting. The Centre, on its part, has done enough: it has cut subsidies, is restructuring the public sector undertakings, raising more revenue and cutting down non-essential expenditure. Those Chief Ministers who closely follow the goings-on in New Delhi will not be impressed by what it has achieved so far. He handed down a similar prescription to the Chief Ministers. Bring down theft of electricity (he actually referred to transmission and distribution losses), hike power and irrigation water tariff, throw out unwanted staff and introduce reforms. All very well, but beyond the political ability of the state ruling parties. These may not even be practical. After privatisation of electricity transmission, the loss has shot up in Haryana from around 25 per cent to 45 per cent and it is not an exception. Water and electricity charges are very sensitive issues and, as it happened in Andhra Pradesh, might give a handle to the opposition to mount a crippling campaign. Reducing employment is a controversial question and the Centre would have established its credential if it had not added nearly a lakh of workers last year and if the Prime Minister had pulled up Ms Uma Bharti for her antics in Bhopal. Asking the states to reset their policy compass by 180 degrees cannot be anybody’s idea of a midsummer daydream.
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THE coup in Fiji is one of a piece with similar manoeuvres by Idi Amin in Uganda and in Fiji itself in 1987 by Col Sitiveni Rabuka. The hatred for Indians has been exploited cleverly to generate a wave of xenophobia. In fact, the failed businessman George Speight who has declared himself the Interim Prime Minister of Fiji is the son of an MP belonging to Rabuka's party, which was in power till last year, when Mr Mahendra Pal Chaudhry's Fijian Labour Party-led coalition won 70 per cent of the seats in the 71-seat Parliament. Society there is a bewildering mix of various nationalities. While the ethnic Fijians comprise about 51 per cent of the population, the Indians are about 44 per cent. But the Indians, who are descendants of the people who went there as indentured labour, are today economically better off than the ethnic Fijians and dominate key industries such as sugar. It is this disparity which has caused the heartburn, triggering a clear-cut ethnic divide. The Indians who made Fiji their home were poor workers but since they came from a highly developed culture, they stuck quite strongly to their own customs and rituals and failed to assimilate with the local people completely. This mentality was grossly misunderstood. In fact, protests against the Chaudhry government had become shriller during the past few months. The Labour Party Government was particularly under fire for alleged pro-Indian policies. The immediate flashpoint was provided by the attempts by the first ethnic Indian Prime Minister to renew the expiring leases on farmland held by thousands of tenants of Indian origin who are the core of his political support. Rabuka had exploited similar differences to the hilt for 12 years and George Speight now seems all set to do the same. But when Rabuka made two
coup attempts in 1987 to depose an Indian-dominated
multi-racial government, he enjoyed the support of most
local people. Things are vastly different this time. Not
only the President but also the Church has dissociated
itself from the coup. (Most of the indigenous Fijians are
Christians). Much depends on the role of the army, which
is dominated by ethnic Fijians. Indications so far are
that even if some sections do support Mr Speight, this
backing is not total and unconditional. Speight's
appointing of opposition lawmaker Ratu Timoci Silatolu as
Interim Prime Minister and then declaring himself as
Prime Minister tells its own story. The previous coup had
caused a wave of indignation and had isolated Fiji
internationally. Many Indians left the country. It was
realised soon enough that if the tiny island in the South
Pacific were to progress, it had to carry the Indians
along. All those lessons have apparently been forgotten
in a hurry. But the way things are going, sanity may
return soon enough. The looting that targeted Indian
establishments has come to an end. Mr Speight and others
spreading the venom of hatred cannot be unaware of the
possibility that international aid as well as Fiji's
membership of the Commonwealth may be in jeopardy if the
illegal change of government becomes permanent. |
Water: the
ground reality TODAY 10 crore Indians and their six crore cattle, spread over a number of states, are victims of a severe drought, the worst in the last 100 years. Rivers, lakes, wells and tanks have dried. There is no water, no food, no fodder. Cattle are dying and people starving. And rains are still far away. Here is a disaster that was waiting to happen. For years now, there has been widespread drawal of water from deeper and deeper layers for irrigation and for use by ever-expanding cities. Digging wells that are a kilometre-deep and pumping out precious water for squandering is an abuse of science. Greed and arrogance have led man to belittle nature and disturb its equilibrium. And now nature has struck back. Since the monsoon months bring torrential rain, we have tended to believe, in a suicidally erroneous manner, that India is a water-blessed country. It is only the plains of India, fed by the Himalayan snows, that have plenty of water at all levels. Some soils, in fact, would benefit from dewatering. The rest of the country, however, cannot take water for granted. Even when overall rain has been normal or slightly above normal, regions like Saurashtra, Kutch, Vidharbha, Marathwada and Telangana have suffered (at various times) shortfalls as substantial as 20-30 per cent. India, taken as a whole, is a water-deficit country. There are two kinds of water available for civilisational purposes: surface water (coming from rivers, canals, ponds, tanks and rains) and ground water. Ground water is the rain water that went underground because of gravity. Rain water is used up in different ways. Part of it is absorbed by plants. Another part is retained as moisture by the top one and a half metres of soil. This layer is called the crop-root zone. Water that ends up still deeper and becomes extractable is called ground water. This water has been traditionally drawn out, using human and animal muscular power, for irrigation, drinking and other purposes. The annual rain recharges the ground water. The amount of recharging varies from ground to ground. In the flat, alluvial Sindh-Ganga plain, the fraction is typically 20 per cent while in the arid areas like western Rajasthan it is as low as 1 per cent. The fraction stands at 5-10 per cent in the rocky Deccan region. Some rainwater evaporates. The remainder runs off to the ocean. This surface run off depends on the slope of the land and the vegetation cover. By constructing suitable check dams, the run-off can be minimised. This way, more water can be made available for recharge. (Canals and man-made water reservoirs also push up the water-table, sometimes right into the crop-root zone causing waterlogging). Rainwater harvesting is as old as agriculture itself. When human beings took to agriculture, they were still in the neolithic age. The use of metal, copper and iron came later. The neolithic farmers were not technologically equipped to deal with mighty rivers or tropical forests. They settled in semi-arid areas, depending on seasonal rains for agriculture, and surface and ground water for sustenance. In the pre-machine age, human knew their limitations. The only source of energy available to them was their own muscular power and that of their animals. Their capacity to dig wells and draw water was limited. They knew the value of water and devised ways of conserving it. It was not so much the question of making hay while the sun shone as recharging the wells while the rain poured. Things changed with the manufacture of machinery. Pumpsets permitted large-scale use of ground water for irrigation. In the 1930s as many as 1500 tubewells were dug in the Ganga alluvium and more than three million hectares (mha) irrigated. After Independence, in the early 1950s the USA offered to assist India in installing a large number of tubewells. In 1954 a central Exploratory Tubewell Organisation was set up. India had entered the era of indiscriminate use of ground water. In 1969, the Government of India, stung by “the drought conditions in the last four years in several parts of the country and the continued food shortages”, concluded that “the maximum exploitation of both surface and ground water resources within the next four to five Plan periods needs greater emphasis and attention.” In 1972, an Irrigation Commission was set up. Consistent with the wisdom of the times, it did not distinguish between surface water and ground water. Rather it set up the category of major and medium irrigation vis-a-vis minor irrigation, comprising wells and tanks. Ground water irrigation has a number of attractive features. It is available on demand and gives a feeling of personal proprietorship. More importantly, it gives a 30-50 per cent higher crop yield as compared to canal irrigation. The Green Revolution was, no doubt, made possible by the development of high yielding varieties of seeds, but there is no gainsaying the fact that it was a child of the pumpset technology. The last half a century has belonged to the well. In 1947, at the time of Independence, India has a net, or geographical, sown area of 100 mha, out of which less than 20 per cent (19.4 mha) was irrigated. In the next 50 years, by 1995, the net sown area had increased to 143 mha; and the fraction of irrigated part had moved up to 35 per cent (50 mha). Today, this irrigated 35 per cent area produces 55 per cent of India’s foodgrains, while the remaining rain-fed area (65 per cent) produces only 45 per cent foodgrains. A part of the net irrigated area is multiple-cropped. If we count this part as many times as it is cropped, we arrive at the gross, or crop, sown area. This figure is directly proportional to the water used. In 1992 the gross irrigated area stood at 72 mha, serviced equally by surface and ground water. The figure rose to 81 mha in 1997. The break-up is not available, but it is reasonable to suppose that most of the new water came from the wells. It can, therefore, be said with confidence that more than half of the irrigation today is provided by ground water rather than by surface water. We have data on the net irrigated area for the period 1947-1987. In 1947 the net irrigated area was 19.4 mha which rose to 20.9 mha in 1951 and to 43 mha in 1987. As can be expected, the increase from 1947 to 1951 was rather modest. Irrigation, especially ground water irrigation, became top priority with the launch of the First Five Year Plan. From 1951 to 1987, while the surface water-fed area increased by 63 per cent, the ground water-fed area went up by 252 per cent. The figures are almost similar in the case of Pakistan. More specifically, the growth in irrigation in the two Punjabs has followed the same pattern. In 1960 the net irrigated area in Indian Punjab was 2.02 mha, but it rose to 4.03 mha in 1997, showing a 100 per cent increase. In Pakistani Punjab, the figure for 1960 was 6.70 mha which went up to 13.57 in 1997. More than the rest of India, both Punjab and Haryana (especially Punjab), have been guilty of over-exploitation of their ground water resources. Six districts of Punjab — Kapurthala, Jalandhar, Sangrur, Patiala, Ludhiana and Amritsar — are facing ground water depletion. Keeping them company are Kurukshetra, Karnal and Mahendragarh. Chandigarh, senselessly built away from a natural supply of water, did make a half-hearted attempt to raise its water-table by creating the artificial Sukhna Lake. In the early years, digging of tubewells was banned in Chandigarh, but finally expediency got the better of good sense. Chandigarh has been living off its ground water ever since. The lust for ground water has been sought to be legitimised through a quantitative sleight of hand. In earlier estimates only 70 per cent of the ground water recharge was earmarked for irrigation. The remaining 30 per cent was meant to take care of other requirements: “(1) maintaining off-season ‘base’ flow in rivers; (2) natural utilisation by forests, shrubs and other natural vegetation; and (3) non-irrigation uses like drinking water and industrial purposes.” In recent times, this sensible formula has been changed to the detriment of ground water. It has since been ordained that as much as 85 per cent of the recharge may be drawn for irrigation, leaving a paltry 15 per cent for other purposes. The basis on which the limit was pushed up from 70 per cent to 85 per cent is not recorded. Another dubious practice has been the listing of aggregate ground water potential. It is difficult to appreciate numbers that run into millions and billions, the more so when they have units like metres cubed. Even more importantly, the total volume of ground water is a meaningless concept. Water is a local commodity. Clubbing a water-logged district with a water-starved district does not make both of them normal. Important facts should be stated starkly. The key parameter in discussing the water problem is the local water-table. Is it rising or falling, and at what rate? The reckless extraction of ground water has been worse compounded by the utter disregard for the time-tested practice of rainwater harvesting. In the drought-prone areas the water-table has been pushed so deep that it has become almost impossible to draw water. The poor people, who have been depending on their own and their cattle’s muscular power for their water supply, have been literally deserted. We have at hand a real crisis. India, no doubt, has the remarkable capacity to tide over a crisis. Unfortunately, it then starts waiting for the next crisis. Let us take a vow that we will not permit another water famine to occur. The solution to a problem lies in the mindset and not in the procedures. Let us realise that there has been a problem and let us set out to solve it. More specifically, Punjab and Haryana should immediately address the twin problems of water-depletion and water-logging. As for Chandigarh, it can atone for its past profligacy by showing results before the monsoon sets in. All government buildings and campuses should collect rain water and store it in sumps and wells. People in comfortable chairs should now be raising the water-table under their seats. (The writer is
Director, National Institute of Science, Technology and
Development Studies, New Delhi). |
The land
question in Zimbabwe IT is often heard in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe : “ When the white settlers came to Zimbabwe, they had the Bible and we the blacks had the land. Now they have the land and we have the Bible.” This explains the land question, a sensitive issue that touches the heart of every Zimbabwean, especially the landless blacks. It is discomforting how white settlers forcibly grabbed land from the blacks with the open support of the British colonial regime. Twenty years after the hard-fought war of independence, nearly 4500 white farming families still own more than 60 per cent of the most fertile farm land. Pertinently, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe recently amended the constitution which entitles the government to take over land from the whites without paying any compensation. They deserve no compensation, says Mr Mugabe bluntly. The constitution was amended soon after pro-Mugabe war veterans took control of over 1000 white-owned farms. Let us compare the land question in Zimbabwe with that in post-apartheid South Africa, where 15 per cent white population owns over 80 per cent of the land. Says the South Africa Yearbook, 1998, an official publication of the post-apartheid regime : “The government intends to follow a policy on land reform which respects the existing property rights and provides for just and equitable compensation as prescribed by the Constitution.” It is clear that the ANC-ruled South Africa is too generous towards white land owners. Even as there are no war veterans in South Africa in the Zimbabwean sense of the term, it will not be a surprise if landless blacks in South Africa also rise in revolt in the not too distant future as has happened in neighbouring Zimbabwe. It is most unfortunate that violence in Zimbabwe has taken the lives of two white farmers, a policeman and two war veterans. That the white farmers live in fear is understandable. That many have been forced to flee their farms is no surprise. After all, Zimbabwe is grappling with its worst economic and political crisis since independence in 1980. Mr Mugabe has to take immediate steps before the situation goes out of control. It is, however, an act of statesmanship on Mr Mugabe’s part that he organised a meeting between Mr Kim Henwood, President of the Commercial Farmers’ Union, an organisation of the whites, and Chenjerai “Hitler” Hunzvi (he was nicknamed Hitler during the liberation war), Chairman of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Union, who have occupied hundreds of white-owned farms. If one were to go by Press reports, the two rival organisations have agreed to negotiate and stop violence, even as Mr Mugabe is strongly opposed to ordering the withdrawal of war veterans from white-owned farms. On the face of it, Mr Mugabe is for peace, yet there is no contradiction in the fact that on April 18, the 20th anniversary of Zimbabwe’s independence, he called white farmers “enemies of the state”. After all, the distribution of land to the landless blacks is today Mr Mugabe’s “unfinished agenda”. His government is determined to acquire land from white farmers which the Zimbabweans say was stolen by British settlers. Mr Mugabe is angry with white farmers because he has been told that they are financially backing an opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, led by Mr Morgan Tsvangirai. The media in Britain is vociferous that he could defeat Mr Mugabe’s ruling Patriotic Front-ZANU in the parliamentary elections to be held in June. But there are many who say that the takeover of white farms by the war veterans has increased Mr Mugabe’s popularity and strengthened his political position, especially in rural areas. Therefore, he is sure to win the elections. In this regard, Mr Mugabe, using tough language against Britain (even the threat of war), has been reminding the latter of its past commitment to assist in land distribution in Zimbabwe. He has been blaming Britain for going back on its commitment to fund the purchase of white-owned land. But Britain alleges that some is land was bought by the British government. Instead of distributing it to the landless farm workers, Mr Mugabe has been rewarding his political cronies with gifts of land. The Zimbabwean leader, however, denies this charge. Mr Mugabe’s relations with white settlers (now numbering less than 100,000, while they were 200,000 in 1980) have been uneasy. In 1988 he abolished a law that guaranteed 20 parliamentary seats to the whites. Since the ruling Patriotic Front-ZANU commanded a comfortable majority, Mr Mugabe had no difficulty in removing this seat reservation law from the statute book. Why has Mr Mugabe woken up on the issue of land reforms only now, 20 years after independence. The fact is, for many years, a review of the white land ownership has been promised by him. The land issue resurfaced when the Zimbabwe government announced that it would resettle blacks on behalf of the country’s white-owned land by 2000. The Commercial Farmers’ Union strongly protested, but in the early nineties it was decreed that half the land belonging to the whites would be distributed to black subsistence farmers. Mr Mugabe is talking about 50 per cent of the land even today. Interestingly, the white settlers came to British Rhodesia in search of gold, after the discovery of the yellow metal in South Africa. Finding little gold, the settlers took to appropriating farmlands. White supremacy in the British colony was enhanced by the British colonial regime in 1930 by a land Act which excluded Africans from the ownership of the best farming land. The landless blacks have now to work on white-owned farms at subsistence wages. The unjust occupation of
60 per cent of the land by the small white minority is,
indeed, a colonial legacy, and like all colonial legacies
this one may not be allowed to continue much further. |
Whose baby
is it anyway? FASHIONING for the first time the jurisprudence of an unwanted child, the Supreme Court of India took a hard-nosed look at reality last month and, in an able decision, firmly established medical liability for failed sterilisation and the anguish and expense that follow in its wake. “Damages for the birth of an unwanted child,” ruled the court on April 24, “may not be of any value for those who are already living in affluent conditions, but those who live below the poverty line or who belong to the labour class (and) earn their livelihood on daily basis ... cannot be denied the claim for damages on account of medical negligence.” The principles, said the court (looking around the globe), on the basis of which damages have not been allowed in other countries for failed sterilisation due to public policy, “cannot be strictly applied to Indian conditions (especially) so far as poor families are concerned.” The public policy involved in refusing a claim for damages for being forced to bear and rear an unwanted child was best stated by an English judge, Sir Kenneth Graham Jupp, in 1983. “It is highly undesirable (he said) that any child should learn that a court has publicly declared his life or birth to be a mistake, a disaster even, and that he or she is unwanted or rejected. Such pronouncements would disrupt families and weaken the structure of society.” Speaking for the Queen’s Bench Division of the British High Court of Justice in Udale’s case, the following words of Sir Kenneth Graham would surely strike a chord in several Indian hearts: “It has been the assumption of our culture from time immemorial that a child coming into the world, even if, as some say, the world is a vale of tears, is a blessing and an occasion for rejoicing.” How then, he asked, could the law be dismayed that the surgeon’s mistake bestowed the gift of life on the child? Just three years earlier, similar emotions had found expression across the Atlantic. The “tangible but all-important, incalculable but invaluable benefits of parenthood far outweigh any of the mere monetary burdens” of an unplanned child resulting from medical negligence, the Supreme Court of Florida (in the USA) ruled in 1980 in Public Health Trust vs Brown. There was and is, however, no dearth of judicial opinions, nay, convictions to the contrary. “Pretermitting moral and theological considerations,” said the Supreme Court of Minnesota, the 32nd state of the USA, in 1977, “we are not persuaded that public policy considerations can properly be used to deny recovery to parents of an unplanned, healthy child of all damages proximately caused by a negligently performed sterilisation operation.” “Although public sentiment,” continued the court in Sherlock vs Stillwater Clinic, “may recognise that to the vast majority of parents the long-term and enduring benefits of parenthood outweigh the economic costs of rearing a healthy child, it would seem myopic to declare today that these benefits exceed the costs as a matter of law.” Note that the “today” refers to the year 1977 and anticipates the Supreme Court of India by 23 years. And that the words which follow, every one of them, could, with equal if not greater justification, have been written for an Indian rather than American readership. “The use of various birth control methods by millions of Americans (said the court) demonstrates an acceptance of the family-planning concept as an integral aspect of the modern marital relationship, so that today it must be acknowledged that the time-honoured command to “be fruitful and multiply” has not only lost contemporary significance to a growing number of potential parents but is contrary to public policies embodied in the statutes encouraging family planning.” That is precisely what the Supreme Court of India held last month on April 24. In a country, it said, where the population is increasing by the tick of every second on the clock and the government has taken up family planning as an important programme, popularising both contraceptives and sterilisation, the doctor as also the State must be held responsible if the sterilisation fails on account of negligence, resulting in another birth in the family and creating an “additional economic burden”. The court was speaking, no doubt, of sterilisations performed by doctors in government hospitals or as part of official family planning programmes, in view of the facts of the case before it, but the law laid down by it, after a competent global survey of comparative jurisprudence, fully covers private doctors as well and the institutions which employ or engage them. Nor is the court’s stress on poor families (with which I began) intended to exclude victims of medical negligence more comfortably placed. The stress serves basically a polemical purpose in the context of the larger moral debate on the issue. “A healthy baby,” said the court of Queen’s Bench in Thake vs Maurice in 1984, reorienting English law, “is so lovely a creature that I can well understand the reaction of one who asks: how could its birth possibly give rise to an action for damages? But every baby has a belly to be filled and a body to be clothed.” It is good to be moral,
in other words, but better still to be practical. |
Holding
fairs in the heat of summer THE season is definitely undying. Does this mean that our spirits or the very quest is undying or else ambitions are getting stuffed right upto the throats? Every single day before I can chant “no more” there comes yet another. Invite, that is. At times it make you angry because you realise that even some very crucial events are taking place right now when the mercury is rising and the power cuts are making living conditions unbearable. The Social Development Fair with the very crucial theme — natural disaster preparedness and management — took off this week, at Pragati Maidan (May 15 to 21). And why at this point of time, rather at this time of the year? And there seems no ready answer, though an ITPO source did concede that there was a low turn-out of those who visited this fair. Who would venture out in this heat to view disaster management strategies, save the VIP who inaugurated it and those who had no choice but to be present there — at least till the time of the inauguration. Not to miss the teaser attached to this fair, the visiting hours — 12 pm onwards — as if making sure that each and every visitor would reach the venue in a state of disaster! And when I received the news that kathak dancer Uma Sharma is all set to present ‘Images of Krishna in the Holy Guru Granth Sahib’ (at the IIC, May 31) I simply couldn’t resist asking her the obvious — why has she chosen one of the hottest days of the year for this special dance. And she quipped “ Somehow I find myself most active during summers and I believe that no activity should stop just because it is too hot. Then, not everybody can afford to go to Europe or to the hill stations, so for their entertainment dance has to go on ...in fact several years back I had danced on the same theme and this time when Punjabi poetess Amrit Kaur Kent brought up the idea I agreed to give a repeat performance...” So on May 31 evening whilst Amrit Kaur will be the compere, Uma will kathak and Khushwant Singh will sit on the chief guest’s seat. Before moving ahead I must mention that the just concluded festival of South Asian documentaries was received without much enthusiasm. The two films I saw — “No One Believes The Professor” and “Don’t Pass Me By” were definitely not exciting. In fact the former, made by a Lahore based director, Farjad Nabi, is the joint winner of the Best Film Award ‘99 and it revolved around Orpheus Augustus Marcks, who walks the line between genuis and divine madness. And the latter, made by three women directors settled in Canada, revolves around tourists who meet/interact in Nepal’s tourist town of Pokhara. And the problem around both these documentaries seemed to stem from the fact that situations etc seemed very contrived. Anyway, these 15 documentaries are now travelling to different cities of South Asia as well as north America and Europe and as Kanak Mani Dixit — the man behind this documentary film festival and also the editor of the Kathmandu based Himal publication — says, “These documentaries do bring the subcontinent into sharp focus ... a window to the culture, lifestyle, history and politics of the region.” And, then, Chandigarh-based journalist Raja Jaikrishan had come here to exhibit his photo collages at Hauz Khas situated art gallery, Art Konsult (the exhibition will be on till May 26). The collages rather their depictions are not so disturbing as his words. As he speaks with immense nostalgia about his hometown Srinagar, you can almost feel his pain. “I have been rendered homeless because two nations decide to fight on a particular territory.... I last visited the J&K Valley in 1989 and then I knew I could never visit it again...... the fact that one cannot visit one’s hometown is traumatic”. But then he adds that he has not become cynical and nor has he lost hope of a settlement — “The solution to the ongoing crisis in J & K should be left to the people of the state. The Kashmiri people should decide what to do.” Another serious concern of the day From the midnight of May 11, we crossed the one billion (population) mark but there seems no apparent tension, at the mounting numbers. In fact, no warnings nor threats or fallout signals of the impending disaster are being sent out by the government or any of its agencies. I was invited to only one conference and that too was co-hosted by UNFPA. Kiran Bedi was the chief guest and she did speak a lot of sense vis-a-vis — the population explosion, “Ask yourself whether you are in the right emotional, physical and economic state to give birth to a child, to be able to bring up another child.” But here again, the audience she addressed were you and me. We are aware of these issues. Its those who produce children for those “extra-helping hands” have to be addressed. But Bedi certainly has a
way to reach out, a technique with words and she should
address the masses, on this impending disaster. |
Memories
of Vietnam war NOT many people would know that I was once a war correspondent with the United States armed forces. This was 30 years ago when I visited Vietnam and Cambodia. I was accredited as a ‘civilian non-combatant’ and was given the rank of Major. I must be the only major, past or present, who served the US Army in kurta and pyjamas. It was a comfortable ‘uniform’ to wear in the hot and sultry climate of Vietnam. I was based in Saigon, and in close touch with the Press Centre of MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam). I was given four identification cards. One was the accreditation card, another for cheap beer and food at the army canteen. The two other cards were identical in every detail, with photographs, my height, weight, colour of hair, eyes, etc. In case anything happened to me they made sure that they could inform my next of kin. The war was still in full swing. It ended only five years later, in 1975. We are now observing the 25th anniversary of the end of the war. The bitterest and perhaps the most wasteful war of the century started in the early fifties and the withdrawal of the French from their Indo-Chinese empire. With the Americans intervening to fill the vacuum, the war escalated into a major conflict. At the end 58,153 Americans died. Vietnamese casualties, military and civilian, were estimated to be around four million. The country was devastated. Tons of poisonous defoliants killed people while destroying vegetation. It was a weird kind of war. Its brutality was not obvious, at least in Saigon. Life went on in the city as if everything was normal. The air smelt heavily of diesel and the pine trees on the avenues had lost their foliage half way up. There were then 300,00 cars in Saigon and half a million scooters. There were no beggars to be seen or war-wounded people. The little girl in my drawing posed for me but would not take any money. I could buy her flowers but she wanted no charity, she proudly indicated. Restaurants and bars were full, mostly with US and South Vietnamese soldiers and their girls. The streets were clean, the market place quiet and orderly. If I wanted to get any idea of what the war was really like, I would have to go into the countryside I was told. I spent a day in a village in the Delta, 30 miles outside Saigon. It was like somewhere in Kerala; paddy fields, coconut palms, bananas, pineapples, buffaloes and thousands of ducks. The houses were similar, even the haystacks were the same; only the people were different. The Mekong Delta is the granary, the orchard, the vegetable garden of South Vietnam. In a rice field I sketched a group of women having a lunch break of sandwiches and soup. They were refugees from a nearby village which had got caught up in the fighting. In the distance some helicopters whirred. I had a three-day trip into the South China Sea, where the US Army, under the auspices of the Red Cross, took journalists to witness an exchange of prisoners. We had left one evening from Danang on the Red Cross ship, Vung Tau with 86 prisoners to be exchanged for American and South Vietnamese ones. In the morning, as the ship anchored about 10 miles off the coast of the demilitarised zone, we noticed that the North Vietnamese prisoners who included a number of fishermen huddled together at one end of the deck were gazing out at the mountains on the horizon which they hadn’t seen for five years. While we waited for two small boats to arrive to take the prisoners, the journalists were allowed to talk to them. They were a sullen lot, not keen to talk to us. But I had more success than the others, being an Indian. They allowed me to go into their midst and didn’t mind my sketching them. They were pale and tired and looked like teenagers, though they were probably much older. One of them, when asked by a Western journalist which side he thought would win the war, said quietly, ‘Vietnam will win.’ He continued, ‘When we go to North Vietnam, we don’t see any Chinese or Russian soldiers, but when we come to the South we see Americans everywhere.’ Another boy, maimed like several others, was asked what he proposed to do when he got back. He replied, ‘I’ll go back and fight.’ A young American cameraman turned to me and said, ‘He’s a bad guy.’ The Americans never
seemed to understand the Vietnamese and the spirit that
moved them to fight the world’s most formidable
military force the way they did. Their own propaganda
defeated them in the end. The thought of not winning the
war never entered their minds, so invincible they thought
the USA was. Their spokesmen, day after day, told the
world’s press about their victories and the success
of their mission of bringing freedom to those who were
thirsting for it. Every visiting senator and other VIPs
went back with the impression that the war was going
well, that prosperity and security had come to the
Vietnamese. |
May
22, 1925 NO sooner has His Majesty’s Government introduced a Bill in Parliament to give effect to the Lee recommendations regarding Europeans in the All-India Services than the accredited friends of India’s voiceless millions have bestirred themselves to obtain similar “just” treatment of those Europeans who are not in the All-India but in the Provincial Services, and whose cases were not dealt with by the Lee Committee. The question was raised in the Lords by Lord Ampthill and he was appropriately seconded by Lord Sydenham, both of whom contended that these Europeans were as much in need of relief as their comrades in the higher Services, and that if such relief was not forthcoming, disaster in the shape of a falling off in the number of European recruits for these Services would befall India. What could an obliging Secretary of State do but to promise his fullest and most careful consideration to the matter? As matter of fact, he
said, this was one of the foremost subjects he wanted to
discuss with the Viceroy. For our part we entirely fail
to see the logic of depriving Europeans in the Provincial
Services of the advantage proposed to be conferred on
Europeans in the Superior Services. Are they not as much
Europeans as the others? And are not both equally
indispensable for India? |
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