 |
Monday,
June 9, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
|
Shooting the messenger Delhi’s clean air Dance for free |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Punjab’s combustible waters
Past participle
Ropeways on gas From Austria with love for India Short take
|
Shooting the messenger AS there can be no smoke without fire, there is definitely something cooking behind the scene in the BJP over the leadership question. It is not for no reason that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has jumped into the arena to explain that “both Mr Vajpayee and Mr Advani are swayamsevaks. Both are equal and close to us.” It is for the party to decide who should lead it in the run-up to the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. While the RSS had this much to say on the raging controversy, Deputy Prime Minister L. K. Advani has blamed the media for the goings-on. His argument is that as a former journalist he knows “how controversies are made without any basis... My respect for newspapers has gone down that much.” He made these uncalled for remarks while he was about to leave for a 12-day crucial visit to the US and the UK with media people accompanying him. The Deputy Prime Minister kept quiet so long as the controversy suited him. When it began to take an ugly turn, he found an easy scapegoat in the Fourth Estate. This does not behove a person of Mr Advani’s stature. He should have known that the Indian media is respected the world over for its reasonably balanced news and views. As most observers of India’s political scene would agree, the BJP has only itself to blame for the leadership issue. First, Prime Minister Vajpayee talked of “tiring and retiring”. Then came party chief Venkaiah Naidu with a two-mascot formulation for next year’s parliamentary elections, describing Mr Vajpayee as “Vikas Purush” and Mr Advani as “Lauh Purush”. When he found himself in trouble, Mr Naidu too began to blame journalists for not getting the real import of what he had said early this week. On Thursday, he announced a new formulation: the party will fight the poll under the sole leadership of Mr Vajpayee and with Mr Advani as his deputy. The Prime Minister added to the confusion when he stated after coming back from his foreign tour that Mr Advani has to lead the BJP in the coming battle of the ballot. Describing it as the poet-Prime Minister’s large-heartedness will not do. The truth is that Mr Vajpayee was playing his card pretty well. “Call it googly or anything, he has played his card well”, as Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray has remarked. As if all this was not enough, Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi has now come out with what is called the technical aspect of the whole episode. His viewpoint is that Mr Naidu’s two-mascot idea was never endorsed by the party. Whatever is the reality, the media has played its role as a responsible democratic institution by highlighting every development related to the first-rate controversy. If the truth hurts, it is not the media’s problem. |
Delhi’s clean air DELHI has bagged the United States Department of Energy’s first Clean Cities International Partner of the Year award. The award was given for the city’s bold efforts to curb air pollution and support alternative fuel initiatives. A combination of factors and initiatives have contributed to the success of the campaign. The Supreme Court of India deserves a special word of praise for nudging a diffident Delhi Government into action. The late Anil Aggarwal and his Centre for Science and Environment also kept the heat on. The task to stabilise pollution levels in the Capital despite the growing number of vehicles must have been daunting. At one point of time Delhi had earned the dubious distinction as the centre of air-borne ailments. Without the clean air campaign the metro would have been choking on 38 per cent more particulates, that kill one person every hour in Delhi alone. Making all forms of public transport vehicles to switch-over to
CNG, described by environmentalists as a green fuel, was not an easy task. After initial resistance, the trade union representatives of the public transport operators had no option but to follow the guidelines set by the apex court for improving the air quality of Delhi. It is indeed a remarkable achievement that the entire fleet of 70,000 diesel-run buses now uses
CNG, whereas in most American cities only a fraction of the passenger buses have started using the new substitute for conventional fuel. Now that the public transport network has done its bit for reducing air pollution levels, the owners of personal vehicles should be asked to do their bit for improving the collective level of fitness of the people of Delhi. Hopefully, the praise that Delhi has received from international organisations will spur the political leadership and the bureaucracy to combat other forms of pollution equally effectively. The Supreme Court was responsible for the shifting of thousands of polluting small industrial units, running illegally in residential areas, to locations outside Delhi. It had also expressed displeasure over the poor garbage disposal system. The Delhi Government was pulled up for the lukewarm interest in reducing the disturbingly high level of pollution of the
Yamuna. The discharge of industrial waste in the river, virtually gasping for breath, was stopped on the directive of the Supreme Court. The American award should serve as an incentive for launching an aggressive war on water pollution. The studies conducted by the Central Pollution Control Board show that 70 per cent of the pollution is caused by the release of untreated sewerage in the river. The remaining 30 per cent is caused by untreated industrial waste. In effect, 70 per cent of the task for cleaning the Yamuna remains unfinished. The universally accepted principle of “polluter must pay” should be applied for making the various agencies responsible for the collection and disposal of domestic garbage in Delhi take their job seriously. |
Dance for free JAILS are supposed to be reform centres. But officials of the high-security Burail jail near Chandigarh recently converted it into some kind of a “performance centre”. The enquiry conducted by an SDM has confirmed that an entertainment programme was organised in the female ward on May 26 where a few women prisoners were made to present dance and song sequences. There are reports that certain jail officials provided the music system for the show. That indicates that the show did have the official blessing. Ironically, some of these performers were picked up for immoral trafficking. While it has been stressed that the show was not vulgar, considering that the wife and the daughter of the jail superintendent were present, nobody has clarified whether jail officials are authorised to be present at such an “entertainment programme” along with their families. Among them was the 19-year-old son of the jail superintendent. How come he was allowed to enter the female ward? Interestingly, the jail superintendent had initially denied that his family members attended the show. It is true that a daily recreational programme is organised in the jail for the inmates, but to describe the “musical extravaganza” as a part of that routine stretches things a little too far. Singing a few bhajans or songs is entirely different from a performance by girls incarcerated for engaging in the oldest profession. And that too on the day they were remanded in judicial custody. Outside, at least they get paid for such shows. Behind the walls of the prison, they obviously did everything gratis. It will be instructive to find out whether they gave the performance on their own or were forced to do so. In a way, the scandal is symptomatic of the chaos prevailing in many jails. Rules are given a go-by in many cases. Facilities are provided to the select few provided they can pay for these while the rest are denied even what is their due. In a survival-of-the-fittest atmosphere, those jailed for minor crimes end up doing chores for hardened criminals. Many of them become worse persons than what they were when they were sent in. That defeats the very purpose of a jail term. Overcrowding and lack of funds have already brought about many aberrations in the functioning of jails. Bad or indifferent management will only make matters worse. What the inmates need to lessen the drudgery of jail life is some socially relevant diversion; certainly not a dance performance by
callgirls. |
Punjab’s combustible waters IN one of his truly remarkable insights, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee observed the other day that wars in future would be fought on the issue of water rather than petrol. His intuitive words came in the background of two seemingly unrelated developments — the American invasion of Iraq and the national debate on the inter-connectivity of river water resources in India. Around the same time, as if by sheer coincidence, Punjab and Haryana seemed already to be in the midst of one such war. Earlier, the Supreme Court added a surrealistic dimension to the eminently avoidable conflict by decreeing that Punjab construct the Satluj-Yamuna Link Canal (SYL) regardless of whether any water is to flow through it or not. So now, our entire national energy is being expended on persuading the horse to pull the cart forward from the rear. The inventive originality of the arguments being advanced in favour of the SYL notwithstanding, the first issue to be settled is that of legal rights. However, it must be stated, if only for the sake of putting the national interest in perspective, that in terms of cusec-hectare productivity equation, Punjab has always been far and away the best national investment in agriculture. But this remains — and will remain — peripheral to the main issue at hand. The core, indeed the only issue in question, is — or at any rate, ought to be — the riparian principle. It is amazing that what is central in identical cases elsewhere is sought to be reduced to the peripheral in the case of Punjab, and sometimes dismissed altogether as irrelevant. History, law, precedent, economic common sense, national interest, justice, socio-political fair play — everything calls for Punjab’s riparian cries to be heard. Punjab’s is the only case not just in India but in the whole world where it has been deemed advisable to give the riparian principle a convenient goby. And how! The Constitution of India clearly makes river waters a state subject over which the Centre has no jurisdiction. Haryana and for that matter
Rajasthan are not riparian states insofar as the Satluj, the Ravi and the Beas are concerned. So, how does one give the Centre a role where it has none and deprive Punjab of its exclusive jurisdiction over the waters of these rivers? Here is how. In the pre-Independence India, this region had six rivers: Ravi, Beas, Satluj, Jhelum, Chenab and Sind. As a part of the Partition settlement, the first three were allotted to the Indian part of Punjab. The total surplus water available from these was 15.2 million acre feet (MAF) and all of it was the exclusive property of Punjab (including PEPSU ) and J and K, they being the sole riparian states of these rivers. But when a settlement had to be made with Pakistan in 1955, the Government of India, instead of drawing up a utilisation infrastructure map for Punjab, asked Rajasthan, in addition to Punjab (which included the then princely state of PEPSU) and J and K, to give claims on these waters. This was done ostensibly to magnify the actual requirement base for the country and to satisfy international community on the genuineness of India’s demand. But strangely, the only yardstick available to the “international community” — i.e. the riparian principle — was completely ignored. This need not have been so considering how a canal network in Punjab, capable of bringing about a green revolution in the decades to come, would alone account for the whole of this water. Even an elementary understanding of farm economics and of the utilisation patterns in immediate future would have exposed the exercise of including Rajasthan into the scheme of things as highly questionable. To understand just how disastrously the “experts” miscalculated the prospective usage in Punjab, suffice it to say that we are pumping out two crore acre feet of un-recharged water every year. Subsoil water- table has been going down by one foot every year in 86 out of a total of 138 blocks and experts say that at this rate, all tubewells in the state will go dry by 2015. (And they thought we needed to bring in Rajasthan to justify the usage of river waters!) Based on the calculations that were bound to prove shortsighted, the following distribution was made during a meeting lasting half an hour on January 9, 1955. Rajasthan, a non-qualifier from the start, walked away with more than the combined share of Punjab, PEPSU and J and K. (Rajasthan 8.00 MAF, Punjab 5.90, PEPSU 1.30 , J and K 0.65) Interestingly, areas that now form Haryana were not even a part of the calculations in arriving at the figure of 5.9 MAF for Punjab. So much for Haryana’s claims as a successor state! There are unequivocal precedents of non-riparian successor states being denied a share in the river waters of the parent state (Madras — Andhra, etc.) In the Narmada dispute, Rajasthan was denied a seat on the table precisely for being non-riparian. The same non-riparian Rajasthan ran away with a lion’s share of Punjab’s waters in the same country under the same government! And later, Haryana, in defiance of the riparian principle, was given 3.5 MAF of water by Indira Gandhi. That was amazing considering that the principle had not been violated even during the British regime. In 1873, the non-riparian princely states of Patiala, Nabha and Jind received water from the Satluj only by paying seigniorage (Malkana) to Punjab in lieu of the water given. In 1921, Bikaner was given water from the Gang canal, and once again Bikaner, not being a riparian state, had to pay seigniorage to Punjab. Against such compelling evidence of law and precedent, what exactly is Haryana’s case on the Ravi-Beas waters? No successor state has ever got a right on the rivers of the parent state except if these flow through the former. One does not need a Supreme Court verdict to come and tell us that the Ravi, the Beas and the Satluj do not flow through Haryana, just as the Yamuna does not flow through Punjab. So where exactly is the case for a link canal? The political argument in favour of the SYL is based on two documents, one of which was killed and buried by its sole surviving signatory (Rajiv Gandhi) when he refused to transfer Chandigarh to Punjab on January 26,1986, as stipulated by the document (a.k.a Punjab Accord) and the other ( Punjab Re-Organisation Act 1966 or the PRA) is a living affront to the Indian Constitution as it violates specific provisions which make river waters a state subject. So, how do we solve the SYL imbroglio? The plain and bitter answer to this question is that we don’t. The fact that we have mis-spent millions of rupees on an ill-conceived project cannot be used as a justification for continuing to spend billions more. In any case, it is absurd to think of a canal without having a clue on whether any water is to flow through it or not. The only issue before us is to state our position on the riparian principle. It is either the riparian principle or the SYL. If you violate that principle here, what would stop other states all over the country from doing so? The author, former Media Adviser to the then Chief Minister, Mr Parkash Singh Badal, teaches English at Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana |
Past participle ADULTHOOD has at least one compensation.
It’s a mercy that we do not have to content with perfect subjunctives, gerundial infinitives and past perfect continuouses! Of course the injunctions against splitting infinitives are still occasionally touted as the authoritative pronouncement of Queens’ English as “she is spoke”! But come adulthood, the hogwash of rituals, like “parsing”, muddies one no more. “Common noun, singular number, nominative case, subject to the verb...”, I remember and shudder at my Achilles heel. The exercises in Wren’s Grammar, or in a more venerable text — the Nesfield’s — grew in difficulty till there were bizarre constructions simply to stupefy the students. It was difficult to find in those half page long sentences what was the noun, where was the pronoun and what was the pronouncement! “O hark, yonder beckons the star lit firmament...”, were the type of sentences one was supposed to deal with. Parsing “hark” under a star lit firmament was unromantic enough. But when you found that there was disagreement between two “pundits” in your school, and it was a case of Wren Versus Nesfield, fought vicariously, one would tend to get confused. “Confusion worse confounded”, to hack that hackneyed phrase once again. Another ridiculous exercise was to change “active” to “passive”, which human nature anyway does; Kis kis ko gayiye, kis kis ko royiye, Aaram bari cheej hai, muh dhak ke soyiye, classically seems the indolence of human nature. Dolce far niente sums up this beautifully in Italian. Chinese had their own version — “It is best to do nothing and then take a little rest after that”! For many of us, conversion from active to passive and passive to active voice only meant doing away with, or injecting inverted commas! We often thought of the image of the grammarian as an inverted one! Splitting infinitive was a high crime; once a sure sign of illiteracy. It has lost some of its venom though. The crime is to introduce something between “to” and the verb such as “to really understand”. Bernard Shaw debunked the theory as mere fetish. Fowler denotes two and a half page to a discussion on this subject and concludes that it is better to split than make yourself understandable! “Bogey haunted creatures”, is the description he uses for those who are keen to avoid splitting, yet cannot do it without changing the meaning! Fraser, who revised Grower’s “The Complete Plain Words”, is of the view that split infinitives are hardly ever necessary, but no one may split hairs over this! Some broad minded grammarians have described this as a bad name and a bad rule! But like all voices of sanity they are barely audible, over the cacophony of diehard antisplitters. “Present perfect continuous” was just like bureaucracy — an antichange concept. Everything present is perfect and should continue. Perhaps the first grammarian was a bureaucrat in his several previous avatars. Rules, sub-rules, provisos, notwithstandings are the grammar of bureaucracy. And of course everything is reduced to a “case” — subjective, vocative, imperative, nominative or even provocative! A new language has been born of late — computer language. Cobol, Fortran, Algol, Basic, Pascal are all household words now. But what about the grammar aspect of these languages? Are split infinitives permitted for instance? Or the floppies will die of shame when the programmer tries to really kiss them, instead of kissing them really! How will be a fused participle be treated in Fortran? Adulthood, as I said, has advantages — escape from the tyranny of the school masterish grammarian. But not altogether. One has to contend with the grammar of politics, its nouns, its verbs, its split infinitives. For it’s the split infinitives who create the most splitting headaches! |
|
Ropeways on gas AN Austrian aerial ropeway engineer, Mr F. Kropivnik, has suggested that the Indian Army should go in for an extensive network of aerial ropeways in J and K for the maintenance of its troops deployed along the LoC for an effective check on infiltration from across the border.
“This is the most effective option as compared to the use of helicopters, mules and motorised vehicles for carrying supplies to the forward pickets along the LoC”, he said in an interview with TNS. “Ropeways can be built and operated even in the icy wastes of the Siachen glacier. And it will cost just a fraction of what the Army might be spending on maintaining its presence in the area through choppers, mules and other surface means.” He is of the view that Kargil might have never taken place had the Indian Army built aerial ropeways along major points along the LoC in the Drass, Kargil and Batalik sectors. “Aerial ropeways in the treacherous hill terrain would have ensured that the troops had plenty of supplies even on hilltops throughout the year and would have obviated the need for them to come down during winter. This would have put paid to the Pakistani plan of infiltration across the LoC in the Kargil sector. “An aerial ropeway can be operated almost round the year in all weather conditions. Even a small ropeway can carry up to five tonnes of material per hour. It can be used to ferry not only food supplies and heavy pieces of equipment but also troops. And in areas where no electricity is available, any fuel can be used to operate aerial ropeways. In Austria, we use ordinary LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) which is used as cooking gas in India, to operate an aerial ropeway in the Swiss Alps”. Mr Kropivnik served in the Austrian Army as a soldier before graduating as a ropeway engineer and erector from Vienna University. He joined a Swiss company which sent him to India in 1964 to set up an 8-km long aerial ropeway project along the old Kalimpong-Lhasa route in Sikkim. “I completed the project and saw a vast scope for such projects in the Himalayas. I decided to stay back in India and set up my own company in Chandigarh’s industrial area. So far I have completed more than 30 ropeway projects in India, including J and K, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Sikkim and Kharagvasla, Pune. I also built a ropeway in Chitral, Gilgit and Hunza area of PoK in 1969. “But I am sorry to say that the full potential and importance of an aerial ropeway is yet to be appreciated in India. One kilometre of ropeway erected in a hill terrain can save construction of up to 8 km of road. And mind you, even after building the road, you still have to use vehicles to transport goods, men and material. There are no such hassles in the case of a ropeway. “And, a ropeway can be built in any direction and angle to avoid detection from the enemy”. Mr Kropivnik says that although he has been in India for the past about 30 years and offering his services to various state governments and institutions, only a handful of aerial ropeway projects have been built. “I find it very frustrating. Here is a person who has been building world class ropeways with locally available material and still there are not many takers. I made a presentation to the SASE (Snow and Avalanche Study Establishment) on aerial ropeways in the hills some time ago. “I am not here to make money on ropeways. If that was the case, I would have gone to the US like Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is a hazardous job. In one project at Nangal last year, I broke both my legs and almost lost my life. But I am getting old. And I want that before I wind up my show, I should have something solid to show in this country, which has given me food and shelter for the past 30 years”. |
|
From Austria with love for India
An Austrian by birth, Mr Kropivnik is now a passport holder of the European Union. “When I was born in 1941, there was no Austria. It had been annexed by Hitler,” recalls Mr Kropivnik. “Those were difficult times. We used to grow potatoes in flowerpots to have something to eat for survival. There were so many orphans that Hitler had to start kindergartens to look after them”. Mr Kropivnik served for a year in the Austrian Army before joining a Swiss company, Lasso Ropeways, as an aerial ropeway engineer. He was sent to India way back in 1964 by the company to execute a project in Sikkim. That was his first visit to India and he liked what he saw. His work brought him to India repeatedly requiring extended stays in this country. “Staying alone in a foreign country can be tough”, says Mr Kropivnik. “I used to feel very lonely in a rented flat in New Delhi. I had with me a colleague in our Swiss company who also used to come to India. He had married an Indian lady. I went with him to the house of his in-laws house a few times where I came across my future wife, Promila. She was the younger sister of my colleague’s wife. Since my work was likely to keep me in India for a long time, I decided to marry an Indian...” When he took his saree-clad bride back home to Austria, his mother was shocked. “Tell her to wear something respectable,” his mother told him, recalls Mr Kropivnik with a smile. “I understood the culture of India where it is not considered respectable for a woman to show her legs. I explained this to my mother...” Mr Kropivnik says that they decided to settle down in Chandigarh, first because it was close to the hills of Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and J and K where he had to work and, second, because, they wanted to be close to Promila’s aged father who lived in Ambala. Chandigarh was also neat and clean which they liked. He acquired a four-kanal plot in Chandigarh’s Industrial Area where he set up his ropeway factory. He has two sons and a daughter. The daughter, now married in Austria, studied in Carmel Convent while the sons, who are also settled abroad, studied at St. John’s. They can all speak and understand Hindi. Austria has only nine states. Austrians living abroad are regarded as residents of the “tenth state”. The Austrian government remains in regular touch with them through various means. Sometimes ago, the Austrian national television, ORF, made a documentary on Austrians living in India. Mr Kropivnik was featured in the documentary. Quick-witted and easy to laugh, Mr Kropivnik loves music. “Our whole family loves music”, he says displaying a CD containing songs sung by the members of his family. He has also been a keen hunter. Once he shot a bear in J and K which he had got stuffed by a taxidermist in Mysore. He is not very active on the social circuit of Chandigarh. But the recent debate and interactive session on “Save Sukhna” organised by Chandigarh Tribune attracted him. “I attended the interactive session because I felt that as a mechanical engineer I can make a contribution towards the desilting of Sukhna lake”. ASP
|
|
Short take ONE question that the organisers of the Ghallughara Divas function at Amritsar where Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was declared a martyr and a handful of radical Sikhs were allowed to use an SGPC platform in the presence of the Akal Takht Jathedar to preach their separatist agenda need to ask is: what positive thing did they achieve for the community they represent? All they did was to scratch the old wounds and revive the talk of Khalistan. Punjabis still recall with horror the days of militancy. Many had mentally and physically suffered before, during and after Operation Bluestar, losing their loved ones. Punjab paid a heavy price for the follies of a few. Some of those who played the mischief then are still around, operating through their new agents. Policemen who have got away with state-sponsored killings and “disappearances” are also around. Police districts and security guards are intact. The social milieu is explosive more than ever before. Just see how a minor dispute at Talhan flared into a Jat-versus-Dalit violent confrontation, spreading immediately to nearby Jalandhar. The debt-ridden, drought-hit peasantry is feeling the heat of rising farm input costs and falling incomes. The unemployment level is more than
alarming. There are virtually no government jobs. Industry offers limited avenues. New industry is not coming to the state. The increasing migration of youth to foreign lands, by whatever channels and means, is a pointer to the hopeless situation obtaining in Punjab. Those too poor to flee their once progressive state, whose annual economic growth rate is below the national average, are turning to drugs in desperation. The cost of higher education has become prohibitive for many. Talented and trained youth are moving to other states for employment. Such a volatile social scene can be easily exploited by cunning politicians wearing blue and white turbans. The disgruntled semi-literate religious politicians do not understand the wider implications of the loose talk they indulge in at religious places, either at the behest of some shrewd players or out of their own ignorance. They are expert at whipping up public passions, not in the subtle way that Mark Antony did with the Romans, but in a rather rustic style, turning minor issues into major controversies. Readily available to ignite the inflammable situation is the competition-driven and circulation crazy media, which willingly plays into the hands of smart operators. Otherwise, how do you explain the digging out of someone called Jagjit Singh Chauhan from the well-earned and well-deserved oblivion to which he had been rightly dumped? Every time he talks of Khalistan, it makes headlines. It was partly the likes of him who fuelled terrorism and caused so much turmoil in the state. What were Jathedar Joginder Singh Vedanti’s compulsions in attending the SGPC-cum-Dal Khalsa function are not known. Maybe the way he and the other high priests bailed out Mr Parkash Singh Badal on the charge of violating the Akal Takht “maryada” without imposing any “tankhah” on him was weighing heavily on his mind. So it was perhaps to placate the hardcore that he could not restrain himself from raising the issue of right to self-determination. But he at least was conscious of the recent history and appealed to the gathering not to instigate the youth on the issue. The SGPC President, Mr Kirpal Singh Badungarh, whose only qualification for holding the august post is his loyality to Mr Badal, has also learnt the art of survival by diverting attention from himself to the larger issues. So he has dug up history and picked up the widely circulated allegation of discrimination against the Sikhs. No Sikh, he informs the community and the nation, has ever become the Chief of the Army Staff. I have spoken to many Sikh defence officers, including a few Lieut-Generals, but they have seldom faced any discrimination and they are all praise for the ways of the Army. So one would rather believe a defence officer rather than a Badungarh. What has Mr Badungarh to say about Mr Arjan Singh being made the Marshal of the IAF? There are a few questions that the silent, moderate Sikh majority must ask itself: should it again remain a mute spectator to the questionable goings-on in the name of religion? Should politics and religion stay together? Mr Badal runs the SGPC through Mr Badungarh. The SGPC appoints the Akal Takht Jathedar. Can he take any action against Mr Badal, who did not bother about the Takht “hukamnama” unless political
compulsions of Akali unity and Mr Tohra’s insistence brought him to Akal Takht? Is the community to be guided by a semi-literate politico-religious leadership? Should one learn no lesson from history? In the first week of June every year the Sikhs have to seriously think over what the Akal Takht Jathedar said at Friday’s function: “Let us do some soul-searching about what went wrong in the past as we lost thousands of our energetic and able youth, but achieved nothing.”
|
 |
| Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir | Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs | Nation | Editorial | | Business | Sport | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh Tribune | Ludhiana Tribune 50 years of Independence | Tercentenary Celebrations | | 123 Years of Trust | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
AT 63, Mr Florian Kropivnik does not look his age. And for good reason. His profession as an aerial ropeway engineer has been taking him through some of the toughest terrains in the Himalayas which keeps him physically fit.