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Tuesday,
February 11, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Polluting
the Beas Meaningful
idea, but... Brakes on
growth |
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PM for
self-employment avenues
A
perilous flight from Srinagar
Halt
this jingoistic backlash
Searching
for a Valentine
|
Polluting the Beas HIMACHAL PRADESH has the potential to become the Switzerland of India. Dr Y. S. Parmar had a vision for turning the state into a prime tourist destination as also the power house of the country. After him not a single leader from the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party has bothered to give a second look to the magnificent yet feasible dream of the founder of Himachal Pradesh. Instead of becoming a tourist paradise, the hills of Himachal present a dismal picture of ecological and environment degradation caused by official indifference, ignorance and collusion with corrupt contractors. The state has suffered because of the indifference of the political and bureaucratic machinery in introducing eco-friendly measures for protecting the fragile ecology of the Shivaliks from further degradation. The Tribune investigation into the ecological rape of the Beas by the state machinery is a sad comment on the level of commitment of successive governments to protecting the Himalayas before Nature hits back with ruthless ferocity to avenge its continued abuse. It is clear that no one in authority had bothered to draw up a roadmap for preventing truck-loads of pollutants from being dumped into the river by those in charge of the Larji hydel project. Satyam and Continental Constructions, which have been given the contract for the project, should be served notice and slapped heavy penalties for ignoring the basic guidelines for protecting the river water systems from being damaged. It goes without saying that rapid industrial and agricultural development has caused resources in many rivers and lakes to become polluted. In some cases the problems are complex. But what prevents the Himachal Pradesh government from adopting an interdisciplinary approach for the control of pollution of the state’s precious ecology and environment? Physical, chemical and biological engineering measures have evidently not received the attention they deserve. There is an urgent need to train specialists with the help of proper methodologies, technologies and management approaches. This army of trained experts would be in a better position to prevent river and soil pollution. The Himachal Pradesh government should also give a serious thought to including senior and competent water resources managers for the efficient coordination and implementation of projects. Had the supervision of the Larji project been in competent hands, the private contractors would not have chosen the easy option of dumping the excavated muck into the river. The simple rule of thumb for giving clearance to any project, be it the construction of a hydel power plant or a cement factory or industry or general mining activity for constructing roads, should be its likely impact on the delicate eco-system. If the risk is above acceptable and sustainable limits, a firm “no” should be the only answer. A rupee gained by damaging the ecology is bad policy and questionable economics. But without serious involvement of the political leadership not much can be done for preventing Himachal Pradesh from becoming an ecological disaster and an environment nightmare. Just how concerned are the politicians is clear from the attention the issue has received in the election manifestos of the parties seeking the right to represent the people of Himachal for the next five years. |
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Meaningful idea, but... The Union Government’s proposal to set up a Central law enforcement agency to tackle grave offences like terrorism, espionage, illegal migration and insurgency in states appears to be meaningful. The idea as such may have some practical problems. But opposition for the heck of it — as some Chief Ministers did at a conference on internal security in New Delhi the other day — does not stand the test of scrutiny. Some of them representing the Congress-ruled states may have voiced concern on the proposal, fearing infringement on the powers of the states by the Centre. This is easily understandable in view of the existing political reality. They pleaded at the conference that the CBI served the purpose well and that there was no need for a separate Central agency to monitor law and order which was purely a state subject. With a view to dispelling the fears among the Chief Ministers, Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani said that there was no need to suspect the Centre’s intentions. Instead of weakening the role of the states, the proposed agency will only help strengthen the law and order machinery and effectively tackle terrorism and other related offences. Undoubtedly, the internal security situation in the country has undergone a metamorphosis in the past two years. It would be erroneous to suggest that terrorism perpetrated by Pakistan’s ISI-backed militants is confined to only one or two states. In fact, it has become the biggest threat to the country and linked to this are the increasing number of incidents involving espionage, illegal migration and other crimes. Moreover, if states like Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh are affected by the spread of naxalite activities by the People’s War Group, the north-eastern states have been hit by insurgency for a long time. The country is facing new challenges which require new responses to tackle inter-state crimes affecting internal security. The Centre alone can play a leadership and coordinating role in supplementing the efforts of the state governments in tackling inter-state crimes. Some Chief Ministers are unrealistic in believing that the CBI can tackle grave offences confronting the country today. The CBI is only an investigating agency and it has absolutely no powers to tackle offences like espionage and serious inter-state crimes. However, there is no denying the fact that this premier investigating agency itself is not free from blame. It is often dubbed as an instrument of oppression in the hands of the Centre to fix political opponents. This would largely explain why some Chief Ministers are strongly opposed to the idea of a Central law enforcement agency. However, two questions arise in this context: why are agencies like the CBI and the Intelligence Bureau under strain? And who is responsible for the mess? Clearly, politicisation of these premier agencies — at the Centre and in the states — has played havoc with the federal polity and disturbed the constitutional equilibrium. The N.N.Vohra Committee Report has
succinctly examined the nexus between politicians and criminals, but little has been done to break this unholy alliance. The Chief Ministers’ conference examined some of the proposals like the minimum tenure for IAS and IPS officers in the districts, particularly those afflicted by violence and extremism. However, this again is dictated more by the officers’ proximity to the powers that be and the respective Chief Ministers’ whims and fancies than by the officers’ professional standing, integrity and other administrative considerations. |
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Brakes on growth THE game of prediction fondly and frequently played by politicians, economists and policy-makers often lands them with an egg on the face. Yet, undeterred, they continue with their favourite pastime. Earlier this fiscal year came the Prime Minister’s clarion call for an 8 per cent GDP growth rate which, he emphasised, was achievable. Then the Planning Commission came out in January this year with a “Vision 2020” document, which claims that India can quadruple its real per capita income and reduce the poverty level to almost zero. This may sound unbelievable, but there is more of misplaced optimism. The country, it says, can “attain a level of development higher than where China is today, and be on a par with upper middle-income countries like Argentina, Hungary and Malaysia”. The accompanying rider says for this to happen the country must show an 8.5 to 9 per cent growth rate over the next 20 years, a possibility in the eyes of the planning body. In October last year the Reserve Bank of India scaled down its GDP growth estimates from the earlier 6.65 per cent to 5-5.5 per cent. Now all the facts and figures used by the Prime Minister, the Planning Commission and the RBI to present to the Indian public a rosy picture of the future have been distorted by the ground reality. According to the government’s own figures released on Friday, the country’s gross domestic product will grow by just 4.4 per cent during 2002-03 as against 5.6 per cent in the previous financial year. This is not for the first time that the government estimates have gone haywire, but whatever credibility is attached to its calculations will fall further. What has gone wrong? The Central Statistical Organisation figures blame the slowdown on agriculture and the services sector, which together account for a hefty 58 per cent share of the GDP. After many years, agriculture has reported a negative growth rate. This is in sharp contrast to a healthy 5.7 per cent growth rate registered by agriculture last year, which enabled the GDP to show an increase of 5.6 per cent. The services sector has also failed to match last year’s levels. Barring telecommunications, the slowdown in the services sector has affected the transport, trade and hotels segments in particular. The possibility of war in West Asia is going to deal a further blow to the Indian economy as oil imports may upset all calculations. An environment of uncertainty created by the US offensive, first in Afghanistan and now expected in Iraq, coupled with the tension on the India-Pakistan border has slackened, if not stopped altogether, the flow of foreign tourists and investment. The rise in steel and petroleum prices will have a cascading effect. This is not to forget the drought, which has put an additional burden on the already shrinking incomes from agriculture. The coming Budget will have to take care of these concerns. Agriculture deserves special attention as its growth alone can uplift the vast majority of the population. Growing unrest among farmers is a pointer to the bleak future ahead unless tackled with tact and a proper
strategy. |
PM for self-employment avenues A striking feature of the performance of the Indian economy in its so-called market-friendly phase starting in the nineties has indeed been a sharp increase in the proportion of the work force, which has been pushed into casual and part-time employment at low wages and without social security. The growth of gainful employment in organised industry and services has lagged in the public and private sectors far behind the overall growth rate of the economy. The prospects have, therefore, become increasingly bleak for gainful employment and job security for the mass of the working people in India. There was gradual growth in jobs after India gained political independence in response to planned economic and social development. This positive trend halted, to begin with, and then reversed in the last 12 years of the market-oriented economic growth process. The organised industry, especially manufacturing, attracted for two decades a large proportion of the work force, skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled, at above subsistence level and also contributed significantly to the build-up of domestic demand for its products. But in the wake of the implementation of the so-called economic reforms, there has been large-scale retrenchment of workers from manufacturing industries. Apart from managerial and marketing professionals, who may have found lucrative jobs, the work force as a whole has suffered gravely. The working people have been forced to accept below subsistence level wages without job security. The upshot is that while overall economic growth may have picked up to average 5.5 per cent in the post-economic reform era, even 7.5 per cent in some years, employment opportunities for the working class have shrunk. Employment elasticity of output has declined even as capital intensity has increased in response to the market-friendly liberalisation of the economic growth process. National Sample Survey and the Census figures show that as against 0.52 additional jobs per one unit of output in the eighties, additional employment declined to only 0.16 per cent in the nineties. This is applauded by certain economic reformers as an indication of efficiency of corporate business as labour productivity too is reported to have increased in the nineties by as much as 5.6 per cent annually. This means that the same number of workers have contributed 5-6 per cent more to industrial production as against 2-3 per cent in the eighties. But corporate industry has still gone for more capital investment and technologies, foreign and imported, to displace labour. It is not at all surprising that the costs in their production structure in the corporate sector have gone up while employment has been decreasing and prices of goods and services, especially of essential mass consumption goods for the final consumers have been rising since the early nineties and demand recession has hit Indian industry since the middle of the nineties. But corporate industry is happy under these arrangements because it has managed to enhance its profitability and monopolised all the gains for growth without sharing with workers and consumers. The prescription of the Prime Minister that the working people should reconcile themselves to work at low wages and without job security is, however, a totally bad response to the acute, indeed explosive, employment problem in India today. It cannot give sustainable growth nor result in modernisation and efficiency of the production structure in India. Worse still is his call for self-employment for the mass of the work force in handicrafts, village industries and farming. Already these sectors of the economy are providing lowly employment for the vast majority, nearly 70 per cent, of the growing population of India. The organised industry and services provide jobs hardly for 15 per cent of India's work force. Unless there is steady shift of work force from farming, handicrafts and self-employment at less than subsistence earnings at a rate faster than the growth of population, there can be no reduction in mass poverty and no end to mass misery and mass discontent. But in the Tenth Plan scheme of things the agriculture is expected to generate the bulk of new employment — as much as 9.47 million of the employment target of 10 million. As in respect of the overall economic growth target of over 8 per cent set in the Plan, fanciful assumptions have guided the planners about an increase in rural employment. The employment elasticity of output in agriculture since the mid-nineties has been only 0.006 per cent per year for output growth of 3.1 per cent. But it is merrily assumed by the planners that employment elasticity for the same order of growth of agriculture will jump to as high as 0.23 per cent. This is indeed ridiculous, especially so because the growth and employment targets of the Tenth Plan are based on a massive inflow of foreign investment and the application of labour-displacing technologies and corporate business enterprise even in agriculture. It is not amiss in this context to also take note of the sustained and sinister campaign master-minded by corporate business, Indian and foreign, and their political and ideological representatives to divert and divide the people, in particular the working class, by clever counter-posing of the sectional interests of organised workers with the unemployed and all living in utter deprivation and poverty. Administrative measures have been brought into play to wind up tripartite machinery for democratic resolution of industrial disputes. The right to work on fair terms and job security is now proposed to be curtailed through legislation. The employment and industrial relations policies of the "reformers" in and outside the government must be boldly rebuffed by the working people who must organise and unite to combat the designs of the entrenched vested interests in the economy and polity. |
A perilous flight from Srinagar In over a hundred flights during the period preceding my crippling illness in 1993, I had often to travel within India and abroad in connection with seminars, lecture visits, conferences etc, and except for a couple of flights, the remaining have almost faded away to remain hazy, diminishing memories. However, there is one flight, in particular, that is vividly printed on my mind, and when I think of it, a buzz and hum of passengers in panic, as also the bizarre aspects of the proceedings on board remind me of human nature’s torment and tantrums in the face of disaster. One or two other flights — one from Kuwait to Frankfurt and the other from Warsaw to Poznan in Poland — too have left marginal indentations in their own way. In the Kuwait-Frankfurt flight, a sudden bursting of thick fog inside the plane and the mysterious noises of the crew and stewardesses did shake me and my wife and son for a few moments. Mercifully, however, the thing cleared up in about 5 minutes’ time, and some order restored. A technical flaw, bawled a crew member. We all felt relieved and relaxed. Soon after, the LOT airways flight from Warsaw in 1977, in the end, had no dramatics, only a moment of anxiety for me personally. The plane having suddenly entered a sea of dense fog flew on smoothly, and a crew member, seeing me in visible distress assured me that such experiences were normal in that part of the year. Which brings me back to one particular flight which, as I have said earlier, was full of high drama and some melodramatic scenes. It was a scheduled flight from Srinagar to Chandigarh and I guess, it was a lesson in understanding the dialectic of “the extreme situation”, to recall a Joseph Conrad concept of the spirit’s ordeal in such moments. As we know, the history of civil aviation is not very enviable, and just before the flight in question, an Indian Airlines plane had crashed, trying to break through the menacing clouds and fog over the Banihal Pass. For me, that tragedy had a deeply hurtful meaning, for a Srinagar friend’s young son, a handsome gallant in his early twenties, had jumped out of the burning plane to meet with a horrifying death. Returning, then, to the flight which triggered the muses today after a lapse of 30 years or so, I recall both with trepidation and wry amusement what happened on the fateful day. I was returning along with several academic colleagues from a USEFI seminar on American Literature in Srinagar, and the experience of that flight has remained with me a matter of mixed emotions. To begin with, I may observe that, on the whole, my nerves remained steady despite a hint of terror, for I was busy enough consoling a most valued friend and teacher, Prof Gurbachan Singh Talib, who had started muttering some kind of a mantra, and was visibly shaken. He saw imminent death, and the wretchedness of the moment was writ large on his face. But a college teacher, the redoubtable O.P. Sharma, in the next seat, found it an occasion for the exercise of his caustic and bawdy wit. This proved too much for Prof Talib, and he was almost ready to deliver a blow or two to the offending “joker”. Though nearly all the passengers were in varying states of distress, I remember one stewardess in a maniac condition, weeping loudly and unashamedly. Again, a young married lady, known to me, too was utterly broken, and was down on her knees, saying her last prayers. I knew her as a neighbour once in Patiala, and she later swore never to travel by air — “a devil’s carriage”, as she called it. Well, to sum up this harrowing little tale, the pilot after heroic gymnastics and gyrations was able to bring back the plane to Srinagar. We remained suspended between life and death for nearly 20 minutes. Next morning, we were flown to Jammu to be shifted to a war-scarred wobbling carrier-plane nicknamed “tub” by aviators. When we touched the Chandigarh airport, no wonder, we let off a mighty hurrah! |
Halt this jingoistic backlash The BJP government's obsession with encashing on the people's inherent sense of national pride through adventurist gameplans has been the root cause of much of the troubles. The heightening tension on the Bangladesh border and the manner in which it has been precipitated reveal to what extent the cultural nationalist adventurism can go. True, the Bangladeshi influx and its sheer magnitude — estimated at 1.5 million to two million — has been causing acute strain on India with all its demographic imbalances in certain areas. But this has been going on for about five decades. Subsequent governments had tried to resolve them within the constraints. Dhaka has not been particularly obstructive. There is an element of truth in the BJP's charge that the previous governments had not done enough to detect and deport the aliens. Hence pushing out the Bangladeshis residing all over the country had remained one of BJP's pet election promises. When the BJP government made the first organised move to round up the Bangladeshis, put them in trains and push across the border, the protests had mainly come from inside India. Dhaka might not have been very cooperative but did not adopt a confrontationist posture on the border. Thousands were in fact thrown out until Ms Mamata Banerjee who was soon to face elections in West Bengal, had stopped it. Marginalised and humiliated, she is no more in a position even to protest. Banerjee's main complaint then had been that many of those picked by Shiv Sena men in Mumbai and elsewhere were actually our own Bengalis. Mamatadi's pitiable plight apart, why this time the Bangladesh side has taken such an aggressive posture? Why the opposition groups which had then endorsed her initiatives now remain passive? Taking the second first, there is no reason to believe that the police are more diligent in identifying the genuine Bangladeshis as many have of late taken Hindu names and their women using bindis and sindurs. How many cops are linguistically equipped to spot the Bangladeshi accent? If the post-Gujarat aggressiveness has stunned the opposition to the extent of Congress chief ministers seeking countrywide ban on cow slaughter, the same kind of religious hatred scare seems to be working on Dhaka to produce adverse results. Ever since the Goa session, the BJP leaders have been harping on the Bangladeshi issue more stridently. Home Minister L.K Advani himself has vowed many times to push out all 'infiltrators' despite the impracticability of such a gigantic operation. Togadias and Giriraj Kishores have even demanded sending troops to Bangladesh to teach them a lesson. Though changes in Dhaka have also contributed to the growing mistrust, the BJP government could do little to dissuade the former from providing facilities for the ISI. It thus tactlessly allowed Dhaka to what looks like gradually sliding in to the Pakistani hands. The confrontation on the Bangladesh border with the BSF and BDR face to face has been a diplomatic disaster forced on us by the BJP's vote bank-oriented communal policies at home. Jingoism may be an effective device to mop up votes but it is poor diplomacy. As a result, we have to fight on too many fronts at great costs. Union Home Ministry sources reveal plans for the deployment of an additional 40,000 BSF men along the 4,100-km stretch on Bangladesh border in a phased manner. Though the uncertainty over the stranded snake charmers has ended, the main issues still remain unresolved. The jingoistic policies, call it “cultural nationalism”, have also left us without friends among the neighbours. Big brother's display of greatness and pride normally tends to spark the neighbours' “small country syndrome”. Forget about Mianmar. Sri Lanka trust not India, its immediate neighbour, but a far away country for negotiations on ending the civil war. The BJP government has not been able to establish the right cord with the only Hindu kingdom. For over a year the relationship with Nepal has cooled off, and we feel uncomfortable with the involvement of countries other than us in peace negotiations with the Maoists. We are nowhere in the picture. Ironically, every programme professedly crafted to strengthen the national pride and security has only led to worsen the crisis. After five years, those who had blamed the earlier regimes for ISI activities and terrorism now find both reaching unmanageable levels. Home Minister himself admits “I am alive only because of luck”. Even Parliament House became unsafe. Nuclear blast did not prove any supremacy or security. Unprecedented defence mobilisation on the border for nine months at astronomical costs failed to produce any results. Instead of curbing terrorism, the POTA is being found effective only in setting score with political adversaries. All this is bound to happen when divisive ideology gets precedence over sane national policies. If such excessively exclusivist programmes go on unchecked, it has been due to the failure of the political system and amnesia of the intelligentsia. Restraint within the ruling NDA totally non-existent. Even those like the TDP, TMC and the DMK who had earlier used their clout to prevent hatred programmes that endangered the traditional harmony remain unconcerned. The TDP's last such shock treatment has been during the Gujarat massacre. Opposition parties, always conscious about the BJP's ability to win the middle class heart due to its superior publicity clout, shy away from any political offensive. As result, the adventurous drifts goes on and on until it ends up in disaster or it loses its voter catching value. |
Searching for a Valentine Dateless on a Saturday night? Just turn to your cellphone for help. Cell phone companies are warming up to the idea of helping customers find romance over the mobiles. Here's how it would work: Single people would subscribe to the service online or by text message over their cellphones. They would fill out applications with their interests. They could also post pictures, because cellphones increasingly include a camera or image-viewing option. When out and about, the users could ping the service asking for compatible singles in the area. After notifying the other members nearby, the system would provide the user with a list of people in close proximity and their location. A potential match could be right across the street. This type of service is already popular in Japan and some parts of Europe, where teenagers and 20-somethings often set up rendezvous by cellphone. AT and T Wireless (AWE) says it has had success with its Find Friends service, which lets people look up the locations of people on their buddy lists, according to a report in The Wired News. SMS.ac, a San Diego, California, company that hosts an online community of wireless-messaging users, also offers a dating service in which users send text notes over short-messaging service, or SMS, to people whose profiles interest them. Moviso, a Vivendi Universal (V) company that sells ring tones, games, songs and other mobile media services to wireless carriers, plans to take that concept one step further. Around February 14 — Valentine's Day — the Los Angeles mobile media company plans to unveil DateTrak, a permission-based system that lets users anonymously search for people who share their interests, including their real-time locations.
ANI |
Let us live happily then not having those who hate us! Let us dwell free from hatred among men who hate! Let us live happily then, free from ailments among the ailing! Let us dwell free from ailments among men who are ailing. Let us live happily then free from greed among the greedy! Let us dwell free from greed among men who are greedy. Let us live happily then, though we call nothing our own! We shall be like the bright gods, feeding on happiness. —The Dhammapada XV.197-200. Max Mueller’s translation *** The three secrets of happiness are: To see no evil; To hear no evil; To do no evil. —Chinese proverb |
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The employment target of 10 million per year in the Tenth Plan is a hoax. This is admitted as such by the Prime Minister, albeit obliquely. Speaking at a party rally last month, Mr. A. B. Vajpayee cautioned the job seekers not to pin their hopes on the government but explore opportunities for self-employment.