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| Saturday, July 22, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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Cricketers and crooks THURSDAY, July 20, 2000, would be remembered as the blackest day, thus far, in the history of Indian cricket. On this day income tax and CBI officials conducted joint nationwide raids on the business and residential premises of two administrators and seven past and present members of the Indian cricket team. Revival after “demise” Hesitant protection |
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NEW MICROFINANCE Apathy on question of Tibet
Lip service is not enough Protection of the environment by Tavleen Singh A WEEK before the deaths of the tigers in Nandankanan zoo I met Mr Tiger himself, Valmik Thapar. He is a quiet, modest man who has led a passionate, lone crusade to save what is left of India’s forests but even he admits that unless we wake up fast the next generation of Indian children may never see a tiger except in a zoo. And, as we can see from what happened in Nandankanan, our zoos are in such appalling shape that we should consider ourselves lucky if any animal, leave alone tigers, survive in them either.
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Cricketers and crooks THURSDAY, July 20, 2000, would be remembered as the blackest day, thus far, in the history of Indian cricket. On this day income tax and CBI officials conducted joint nationwide raids on the business and residential premises of two administrators and seven past and present members of the Indian cricket team. It is evident that the income tax officials were looking for unaccounted wealth while the CBI sleuths were interested in evidence which could assist them in proving the involvement of administrators in shady telecast deals and players in incidents of match-fixing and betting. Simultaneous raids were conducted on the premises of a number of bookies and match-fixers. The investigating agencies apparently wanted to send out two messages. One, that in the eyes of the law Mukesh Gupta, a known bookie, and Kapil Dev, as also other cricketers, are accused of having committed similar offences and, therefore, need similar treatment. Second, that the income tax raids were the result of the evidence which the CBI collected while investigating the match-fixing scam. In any case, the involvement of players in fixing matches is an offence which is difficult to prove. Hansie Cronje could have stuck to his initial statement and may never have been found out through the normal procedures of investigation. The income tax raids on the business and residential quarters of Kapil Dev, Mohammad Azharuddin, Manoj Prabhakar, Ajay Jadeja, Navjot Sidhu, Nikhil Chopra, Ajay Sharma, former ICC President Jagmohan Dalmiya and BCCI treasurer Kishore Rungta can be linked to the match-fixing, betting and telecast scams. The office of Worldtel President Mark Mascarenhas in Bangalore too was searched by an income tax team. Union Minister of State for Finance Dhananjaya Kumar, who claimed that incriminating documents to prove massive tax evasion were found during the search operations, said that Mr Mascarenhas’ office was searched because of his suspected involvement in match-fixing deals. When asked whether the Worldtel President was investigated as a bookmaker Mr Dhananjaya Kumar made a valid observation by pointing out that “he was certainly not in the category of cricketer or administrator”. The argument which seeks to link the income tax raids to the on-going match-fixing investigations is not without substance. Ajay Sharma’s international career ended about a decade ago. He was never in the category which may have helped other players to “amass wealth beyond their known sources of income” while representing India. And Nikhil Chopra’s career has yet to take off for him to be able to amass the kind of wealth which excites income tax officials. They could have become rich only through selling cricket and not by playing the game. The second argument linking the income tax raids to the match-fixing scam has something to do with the unaccounted and unspecified amount of money found in the club locker of Sunil Gavaskar in Mumbai. He was not searched because his name has thus far not figured in the controversy which has shaken the very foundations of international cricket. He may be found guilty of tax evasion, but not of playing “unfair cricket” And don’t forget the bookies. Their premises were searched along with those of the administrators and the players. It would be unfair to compare cricketers with politicians and those associated with the film industry for getting them out of the mess they have created for themselves and the game. Neither Indian politics nor the film industry, in their present form, can survive without an over-dose of dirty money. Ironically, the infusion of the same kind of money is largely responsible for killing cricket as a gentlemen’s game. No politician or film star has ever gone out of business for not being able to explain the source of his or her wealth. But cricket was a different ball game. In the sub-continent, at least, it had acquired the status of a religion. The joint income tax and CBI raids may have the effect of a final blow to the already badly bruised faith of the fans in the integrity of their cricket idols. The possession of unexplainable wealth would be seen as circumstantial evidence of some Indian players having sold their soul and the once noble game of cricket to mammon. |
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Revival after “demise” ONE can always expect the unexpected in West Asia peace talks. First the USA announced on Wednesday that the Camp David summit was dead. And then, just two hours later, President Clinton made bold to say that it would continue. And now comes a confirmation by an Israeli Minister that Prime Minister Ehud Barak has accepted a US proposal under which Israel and the Palestinians will share sovereignty over parts of Arab East Jerusalem. Earlier, it was rejected out of hand. That is quite a turnaround and achieves what nine days of intense discussions had failed to do. It is interesting to note that during this testing time, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, did not meet across the table for talks. Only Mr Clinton shuttled as an intermediary while the negotiators of the two sides matched their wits. It must have been quite a Herculean task, and he admitted as much. The effort showed in his hoarse voice and tired face when he left to attend a summit of Group of Eight industrialised nations in Okinawa, Japan. He kept up the time pressure on both sides but could not bring about a resolution. Neither side was in a mood to yield an inch, even if that meant the loss of a mile. And now that he is away, there is a breakthrough in making. Israel seems to have agreed to a framework agreement bypassing the intractable Jerusalem issue, which could be taken up at a later date. In effect, that would mean that there would be status quo for several years in Jerusalem's Old City, which is home to some of the holiest sites for Christians, Jews and Muslims. Palestinians would get some sort of safe passage to the Al-Aqsa mosque complex. The Israeli acceptance is yet to be formally confirmed but under the given circumstances, it is perhaps the only workable option. The vital point is whether Mr Barak would be able to convince his countrymen to accept it. A large number of right-wing Israelis consider Jerusalem their "eternal, undivided Capital" and Mr Barak may have to pay a heavy price for daring to sign a deal. In a recent newspaper survey, a full 70 per cent of Israeli Jews said they would strongly oppose any agreement under which Israel returned any part of East Jerusalem, captured in 1967, to the Palestinians. There is strong opposition on the other side of the fence also. The Washington-based PLO representative Hassan Abdel-Rahman is quoted to have said that without full sovereignty there will be no deal. Then there are also ticklish differences over the fate of nearly four million Palestinian refugees, the size of the Palestinian State on the West Bank and Gaza, and the question of Jewish settlements. Apparently, both Mr Barak and Mr Arafat have to do a lot of tightrope walking. If they can do that, and goad their countrymen to go along with them, they will have their place in the sun. If not ….! |
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Hesitant protection TARRIF
wall has gone up to discourage import of a large number of agricultural products and protect the Indian producers from fierce competition from April 1 next year. Husked rice (unpolished and hence called brown rice) and the broken variety attract a stiff 80 per cent basic customs duty, according to an official booklet. Until now there has been no duty. Similarly, 50 per cent import duty has been slapped on maize seed, sorgham, millet and spelt. Cereal-based preparation for infants attract a higher customs duty at 35 per cent, up from 15 per cent. This was first announced some weeks back. This has become necessary since import of 714 items has been freed and next year the remaining list of 715 items will fade away from the banned category or technically under quantitative restriction (QR). These stiff levels of taxation are legal under the WTO agreement which does not prescribe what is termed as bound rate. This bound rate is the ceiling on import duty on various goods. India and a few other countries renegotiated a hike in the case of agricultural products which has come handy now. The government claims that the duty structure is a fine balance of the interests of the producers of these items and the consumers. On June 12 the government slapped a 60 per cent duty on milk powder in the midst of a general scare that cheap imports from European countries would bankrupt dairy farmers. Wheat imports, mostly from Australia, stopped early this year, after customs duty went up to 60 per cent. Commerce Minister Murasoli Maran has held out an assurance that he would activate all available mechanisms to ensure that imports do not injure indigenous production. He has to since the end of banned list of items will sound the death knell of small-scale industry. For long this sector has enjoyed a sheltered life, with many items reserved for it. During these years there has been no technology upgradation with the result that there is a real threat of imports swamping it out of existence. Competition will not come from multinational companies or even the West but from China and South Korea. The fear about cheap but sturdy Chinese bicycles and television sets is still valid. China exports a colour TV set at less than half the price of the cheapest India assembled one. Many consumer goods which will enter the free import list have a bound rate of duty — namely, the high tariff way of protecting local units is not available. As it is, the reserved list is not applicable in the newly created special economic zones. Even big companies can turn out any of the reserved items. So far there has been no adverse impact because there has not been enough time for new units to come up. The Minister has hinted at amending the Industrial (Development and Regulation) Act of 1951 to insulate small units. But it will be against both liberalisation and free trade. |
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NEW MICROFINANCE RECENTLY,, microfinance has gained cognisance as one of the fastest growing aspects of development, especially in the context of reaching the world’s poorest more effectively. The genesis of microfinance services appears to be in the incapacity or disinterest of the formal credit agencies to service the needs of low-income clientele. Even within the priority sector lending programmes, the thrust has been on productive activities, against the needs of the poor, mainly for consumption and to tide over their occasional contingencies. This has made the formal sector develop a supplementary credit delivery system by encouraging institutional arrangements outside the financial system (like NGOs) to act as intermediaries. The terms microfinance, microcredit and micro enterprise finance, despite their interchangeable use, can have different theoretical perspectives. While the term microcredit suggests the predominance of “debt” or lending, the expression “microfinance” contains both microcredit and microsavings in it. It is also known as small-scale financial services provided to people who work in agriculture, fishing and herding; who operate small or micro enterprises; who provide services; who work for wages or commission; and other individuals and groups at the local levels of developing countries, both rural and urban. The term “micro enterprise finance” is more specific. It relates to those micro enterprises which are usually perceived to be non-farm with emphasis on trading, smallscale processing, manufacturing activities even as several financial institutions in the developing world involved in microfinancing do not restrict the purpose to non-farm enterprises. The microenterprises are born and nurtured through microcredit, the bulk of which is advanced in the informal sector. As per USAID, micro enterprise finance services generally target poor clientele with enterprises of their own, including those who are self-employed. Start-up enterprises, as also seasonal or part-time income generating activities fall under the purview of this definition and may better be termed as pre-enterprises. To K. Kaladhar, “the formal lending being undertaken in rural and semi-urban areas by financial institutions setup to supply credit for agriculture, small enterprises, etc is nothing but microfinance.” The significance of the concept lies in its role in freeing the credit market in the developing world of its myriad dysfunctionalities, which arise mainly from political interference, imprudent financial policies and systematic deficiencies; and replacing inherently unviable state-sponsored directed credit anti-poverty programmes. While the old paradigm of microfinance thought of providing credit basically to rural and semi-urban poor through government financial institutions, with donor support in general, the new microfinance is perceived as a paradigm shift in the quality of delivery having concepts like self-reliance, self-sufficiency and self-help at its core with emphasis on women borrowers and provision of finance for creation of assets and their maintenance. The role of state under it is only to provide a facilitative policy environment, which is in tune with the broad financial sector reforms. New microfinance thus focuses on the “process” retaining most of the old characteristics, i.e. farm and non-farm credit, target-groups being the poor, operating largely in rural and semi-urban areas and small borrowal accounts. Besides, it has simple procedures; delivery of credit and related services at commercial rates in a convenient and user friendly way; quick disbursal of small and short-term loans; clear recovery procedures and strategies; maintaining high repayment rates; incentives of access to larger loans immediately following successful repayment of first loan; organisational culture, structure, capacity and operating system that can support and sustain delivery to a significant and increasing number and encouraging and accepting savings in concert with lending programmes. Being based on “borrower knows the best” principle, it is also capable of maintaining high repayment rates. Largely those local organisations are successful microfinance institutions which reach underserviced markets and are commercially viable. Thus, the new paradigm lays stress on financial intermediation with self-sustainability of institutions and qualitative/quantitative outreach to the poor. Such intermediary developmental institutions have originated and proved their viability in many of the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America over the past two decades or so. Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), Branco Solidario and Brancosol of Bolivia and Grameen Bank of Bangladesh among others are often quoted as successful microfinance institutions besides some of the countries, such as, Sri Lanka, Malawi and Kenya. With regard to Indian microfinance which is vast and basically rural and semi-urban, a number of NGOs, including SEWA (Gujarat), Women’s Working Forum (Tamil Nadu), MYRADA (Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh) and ASA, Tamil Nadu, have shown a substantial outreach. There are two distinct streams of thought in the literature on microfinance vis-a-vis the poor. The perception of the formal financial mechanism that banking with the poor being potentially risky and economically unviable has to encounter issues of “cost, risks and sustainability” in the event it caters to their needs has been falsified by some such successful interventions in the informal, non-governmental sector. Very recently, Jeremy Seabrook, a renowned London based journalist toeing this line of argument, has held that the success of the businesses covered by microcredit is remarkably high and the rate of loan repayment under them is even higher than the formal bank loan repayments. He, however, does not favour microcredit because of its rich-poor gap widening effect despite its merits over the old paradigm of microfinance and what hundreds of microcredit programmes around the world have shown, that microcredit is key tool to end poverty and economic dependence. Thus, just contrary to the western view which holds microcredit to be a painless way of ending poverty without distribution, he holds that whatever modest prosperity it gives to the enterprising poor, is only at the cost of the poorest. Almost similar observations have been made by Hulme and Mosley. To them, in many countries, the very poor clients of Micro Enterprise Financial Institutions (MEFIs) generally have not been able to raise their living standards due to their low debt absorption capacity. The inability of the MEFIs to address structural issues, besides market imperfections, renders them an ineffective anti-poverty solution. Thus, the microcredit for poverty alleviation policy is of no help to suppress dissent of the poor having low absorptive capacity, the presence of which may only lead to such policies ending up creating a large pool of indebted ones. |
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Apathy on question of Tibet WHILE the reverberations of communist China’s atrocities and the grimmest possible human rights violations in the occupied territory of Tibet have touched the free world’s conscience far and wide, their agonising wavelengths have ironically bypassed the receiving sets around the official corridors in New Delhi despite the fact that there is widespread public sympathy within the country for the Tibetan cause and the diaspora. For instance, President K.R. Narayanan during the course of his recent official sojourn in China, discussed almost everything under the sun ranging from trade to terrorism with the communist ruling clique but not the pivotal question of Tibet, which is central to India’s defence and security. It must not be forgotten that the vexed border problem in the Himalayan regions is the direct outcome of Chinese invasion of Tibet half a century ago. India on its part, during the last couple of years has sincerely been trying to find a lasting solution by determining the Line of Actual Control (LAC) through the occasional meetings of the Joint Working Groups but the Chinese shrewd sense of diplomacy has so far frustrated the Indian overtures with unfathomable finesse. On the other hand in far away Washington, President Bill Clinton had his latest meeting with the Dalai Lama in the second half of June, and expressed United States’ strong support to Tibetans’ human rights and their religious and cultural heritage, besides appreciating the Tibetan spiritual leader’s continued efforts to seek dialogue with China for achieving genuine autonomy under the Chinese sovereignty. Prior to this, Julia Taft, the US special coordinator on Tibet in the State Department, had issued a new condemnation of Beijing’s human rights record in the region describing the situation in the Tibetan plateau inconsistent with international standards of respect for fundamental rights. In the early 1990s, the US Senate had already passed a resolution declaring the whole of Tibet an occupied country whose true representatives were the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in exile. As far back as 1960, the International Committee of Jurists had concluded that the Chinese committed genocide in Tibet in the most flagrant violation of human rights. In June, 1991, the Australian House of Representatives had passed a unanimous resolution condemning human rights abuse in Tibet and calling on the Chinese government to begin negotiations with the Dalai Lama. Subsequently, in August, 1991, the UN, responding to the violent repression of political demonstrations in Lhasa, had passed a resolution criticising Chinese policies in Tibet and calling on Beijing “to fully respect the fundamental rights and freedoms of the Tibetan people”. Similarly, German Bundestag’s resolution of June, 1996, on Tibet underlined improvement of the human right situation in Tibet. During a half-century of occupation, PLA troops have mercilessly killed thousands of Tibetans. Many more thousands who were lucky enough to escape firing squads fled to India as hapless refugees and still keep on doing so as China continues to employ the most primitive and inhuman forms of torture to suppress the local population with the sole objective of erasing Tibetan culture. In order to bolster the repressive machinery, Beijing has also recruited some former PLA troops from China and deployed them in Tibet. The Western part of the territory was named as the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) but autonomy is a misnomer. In practice it is another name for tyrannical dictatorship run on behalf of the communist regime in the far-away Beijing. Tibet was a peaceful feudal Buddhist kingdom before Mao Ze Dong’s red army invaded it in 1950 forcing the Dalai Lama and his government to flee to India. After reassurances from the Chinese, the government returned to the capital, Lhasa, and was granted a limited level of autonomy from Beijing. Since this autonomy was a facade, opposition to Chinese rule began to rise inviting brutal oppression in return. As the violent opposition to communist rule began to rise, the Chinese army began retaliating by burning monasteries and killing thousands of civilians. Finally, the Dalai Lama fled the country in 1959 and took refuge in India. Soon afterwards the PLA hordes stormed Lhasa and other towns, slaughtering over 80,000 people in the initial invasion. The brutality with which the Chinese have suppressed the people of Tibet has been amazing. It is estimated that altogether more than a million people have been killed by Red Army since then. Moreover, with the continuous, resettlement of countless ethnic mainland Chinese in the region, the Tibetans have been reduced to a minority in their own homeland. The Dalai Lama, who since his exile to India has been going round the world’s capitals trying to draw support for his people, has been striving for years to obtain a peaceful dialogue with the Chinese government. In September, 1987, he introduced a five-point peace plan for Tibet. The points were — 1) Transformation of the whole of Tibet into a zone of peace; 2) Abandonment of China’s population transfer policy, which threatens the very existence of the Tibetans as a people; 3) Respect for the Tibetan people’s fundamental human rights and democratic freedoms; 4) Restoration and protection of Tibet’s natural environment and the abandonment of China’s use of Tibet for the production of nuclear weapons and dumping of nuclear waste; and lastely 5) Commencement of earnest negotiations on the future status of Tibet and of relations between the Tibetan and Chinese peoples. These proposals were widely acclaimed by most of the democratic nations. The free world honoured the Dalai Lama with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his untiring and sincere efforts to promote peace. It is indeed an irony of human history that India, whose security was directly threatened by communist China’s forced occupation of Tibet in 1950 just because Beijing had exercised in the long past a notional suzerainty over Lhasa, had quietly acquiesced in the PLA’s barbarous onslaught on the roof of the world. By capturing Tibet, China obtained a land border not only with India but also Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK). As stated in a report of the International Commission of Jurists, Tibet was a fully sovereign state sharing a common border with China. But once a peaceful buffer state between India and China, the territory has been transformed into a militarised zone. There are at least 300,000 Chinese troops stationed there at any time and the high mountains of Tibet serve as an important base for China’s strategic weapons deployment. At least one quarter of China’s nuclear arsenal of 350 nuclear missiles are believed to be based at five different missile bases on the Tibetan plateau with Indian cities as potential targets. China is also believed to be using Tibet as a dumping ground for its nuclear waste. There were reports that China had made an offer to West Germany in 1984 to dispose of nuclear waste. This, if true, will pollute the major rivers of the Indian subcontinent like the Brahmputra and the Indus which originate on the Tibetan land mass with radioactivity. Yet we have not voiced our concern over this in the international fora. That official India has distanced itself from reality is obvious from the fact that the question of Tibet did not figure on President KR Narayanan’s agenda for discussions with the Chinese authorities concerned. Merely granting political asylum to the Dalai Lama and refugee status to thousands of hapless Tibetans is not enough. Had we hesitated a bit in this regard, some other democratic powers would have volunteered to grab the opportunity. While we must strive hard to normalise the relations with our northern neighbour and find a honourable and lasting solution to the border problem, we must also espouse the Dalai Lama’s cause and peaceful endeavours to return to his homeland under a genuinely achieved autonomy from Beijing. India like the rest of the free world must not lose any official opportunity to exercise its leverage with the Peoples’ Republic in order to create genial conditions in the Shangri La to enable thousands to Tibetans housed in the refugee settlements in various parts of India for the last five decades to return to their homes and feel again the whiff of freedom’s fresh air. |
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Lip service is not enough A WEEK before the deaths of the tigers in Nandankanan zoo I met Mr Tiger himself, Valmik Thapar. He is a quiet, modest man who has led a passionate, lone crusade to save what is left of India’s forests but even he admits that unless we wake up fast the next generation of Indian children may never see a tiger except in a zoo. And, as we can see from what happened in Nandankanan, our zoos are in such appalling shape that we should consider ourselves lucky if any animal, leave alone tigers, survive in them either. Valmik blames commercial and political mafias for the destruction of our forests and believes that unless we can persuade the government to create a separate Ministry for Forests and Wildlife we will not be able to prevent further destruction. A separate ministry is necessary, he says, because the Ministry for Environment under whom the forests currently come has too many other tasks to be able to devote its full attention to conservation. He points out that of the 1,000 people working in the ministry 920 deal with environment and only 80 with forests and wildlife. But, I ask, how can we hope that a new ministry will make a difference if it is going to be manned by the same uncaring officials and politicians who have been responsible for the destruction so far? He admits that this is a problem but points out that a Ministry whose only task would be conservation would at least be a beginning. The rest, he adds, is up to us. Public opinion needs to be mobilised on a massive scale if our remaining forests (20 per cent of our land) are to be saved and it must be mobilised if we are not to end up with a barren, wasteland of a country. Valmik’s crusade began more than 20 years ago when he first visited the Ranthambhore National Park and fell passionately in love with the tiger. He has since written eight books on the subject, made television films and wandered across the country trying to raise awareness about the urgent need to preserve what is left of our natural environment of which the tiger is the most powerful and beautiful symbol. Valmik does not believe that the forests have been destroyed mainly because of the poverty and ignorance of villagers. It is true that they exploit the forests for their basic needs like firewood and grazing land, he agrees, but the destruction this causes is small compared to the destruction caused by the mafias. There are 17 Indian states which still have tigers and in all of them their existence is threatened mainly by those who exploit the forest for commercial purposes. At the top there is invariably the uncaring attitude of the politician (tigers have no votes) and it is because they turn a blind eye that the timber lobbies and the mining lobbies manage to thrive and prosper. He believes that it is possible to stop them and one of the measures he recommends is the creation of a green fund which would ensure that those who make commercial use of the forests put back some of what they earn — say 10 per cent — into putting back what they take from the forests. He points out that when India became independent the earnings from commercial mining was less than Rs 50 crore annually. Today the mining industry is estimated to earn more than Rs 40,000 crore a year and they put nothing back into the forest at all. “I am not against mining or development,” he says. “But it is possible to have both if we can have a green fund that ensures that some of the money goes back into preservation”. Has he talked to State Government about this, I ask naively, and be throws his hands up in despair and says all there has been is talk, talk and more talk. Politicians and officials are very good at talking and at putting good intentions down on paper but when it comes to actually doing something there is the usual absence of action. Lack of political will is obvious even when you consider that there is no new recruitment of forest staff, despite a 40 per cent vacancy, because the Finance Ministry is cutting costs. It is also evident in the lack of attention to the murder of forest officials although there are an estimated 50 deaths a year. Valmik does not spare the media either pointing out that only perfunctory attention is paid to environmental concerns while acres of newsprint are devoted on a daily basis to the inanities expressed by some political leader or other. After meeting him I spent a week examining carefully the 10 newspapers I read every day and was horrified to find that, other than for a couple of days when the Nandankanan deaths occurred, there was almost not a single environmental story in the press. Yet, every day, newspaper readers were bombarded with stories on what some politician or other had to say. Even when the landslide occurred in the Mumbai suburb of Ghatkopar there was more attention devoted to what some VIP had to say than to the causes of the disaster. Slums are also an environmental concern since sub-human living conditions breed disease and the destruction of the urban environment but, somehow, the press seemed to think it was more important to give us details and pictures of Sonia Gandhi distributing cheques to the families of victims. The media’s unconcern cannot be justified but in an attempt to give the other side of the story I reminded Valmik that if there were political and commercial lobbies there were also environmental lobbies that often lobbied only against development. It’s the sort of question that makes environmentalist hackles rise but Valmik admitted that there were environmentalist lobbies who sometimes lobbied harder against development than for the environment. But, he added, they were often working against other more powerful lobbies and instead of getting into a litany of accusations and blame everyone needed to come together. The situation is grim. Not only is there a trade in tiger bones with south-east Asia but in the past six months there has been an ominous re-emergence of the skin trade, 200 leopard skins have been caught and we cannot afford to lose even one. Our forests, at least what is left of them, are an irreplaceable national treasure and if they can be saved through a separate Ministry of Forests then it is time that we got one. It is also time the government realised that lip service is not enough. Its response to the deaths (should we say murder?) of the tigers in Nandankanan was a press release from the Press Information Bureau which said: “Minister for Environment and Forests Thiru TR Baalu has constituted, on the request of Chief Minister of Orissa Thiru. Naveen Patnaik, a six-member expert team to investigate the death of 10 tigers in Nandankanan zoo of Bhubaneshwar.......The team will suggest the preventive measures to safeguard against such incidents in future”. The press release reflected exactly the attitude we do not need. We do not need inquiries and committees and do not need to waste paper on meaningless press releases. The Environment Ministry should know that paper is made from cutting trees and that if it has nothing of consequence to say it should at least not waste paper saying it. |
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Meditation is an integration of consciousness. It is not a routine or a ritual. It is not a religious exercise belonging to some religion. It is an opening of yourself to the final realities of life. It has nothing to do with Hinduism, Christianity, Islam or any religion. It has no connection with any scripture, also. It is an impersonal act on the part of yourself, wherein you lift up your consciousness to a recognition of the fact that you are a temporary sojourning entity into eternity. —
Swami Krishnananda, Your Questions Answered:
*** Meditate on God either in an obscure corner or in the solitude of forests, or within the silent sanctuary of your own heart. Be diluted in the Lord even as the crude medicine is diluted by spirit. —
Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna,
*** Meditation is both the training and the food for the soul, developing its potentialities, proving its existence, and above all, providing the means of Christ-consciousness. .... Meditation has a two-fold purpose of self-realisation and God-realisation. It produces a harmonious development in secular life and also recovers the glory of the soul... —
I.C. Sharma, Cayce, Karma and Reincarnation, Chapter 10 *** In the state of samadhi, one realises one’s true self. This is what we call Pradhu-darshana or Atma-Sakshatkar (i.e. realisation of God or Atma). The Jiva attains moksha through this very experience. This realisation of the Self or the Atma is the be-all and end-all of human life. —
Sudarshan Kumar Biala, Yoga for Better Living and
*** Wisdom comes to a man who meditates, acts and lives according to the true eternal laws of Nature. —
Rig Veda, X.47.6 *** He who is humble and meek Who meditates with love, Who surrenders to the Saints, In him dwells the Lord As in water dwells the fish. —
Sant Kabir, Kabir
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