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Demystify GM crops Growing
intolerance Politics
of the absurd |
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Coalition building,
India style
The prospect
Human
Rights Diary From
Pakistan
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Demystify GM crops A
Manila-based Indian scientist has suggested to the Punjab Government to promote the cultivation of GM (genetically modified, and also called transgenic) crops to help farmers have a competitive edge. Dr Gurdev Singh Khush of the International Rice Research Institute made a case for Bt cotton and other GM crops while presenting a paper at the Indian Science Congress in Chandigarh on Monday. According to Dr Khush, Bt cotton has proved to be a major success in China. In India too the area under this crop has grown by 25 per cent. His concerns at the alarming fall in the Punjab watertable due to widespread paddy cultivation are also valid. Opinion is still divided on GM crops and foods. Some countries, led by the US and China, are vigorously growing such crops, while environmentalists and other pressure groups in Europe and Britain are opposing the resort to these crops. The supporters list benefits such as higher yields, lower costs, better nutritious value and improved environment for taking to the GM crops. The opponents point to dangers of introducing allergens and other anti-nutrition factors in foods. There is the possibility of transgenes escaping from cultivated crops into wild relatives, they say. Besides, GM foods carrying antibiotic genes may generate antibiotic resistance in livestock and humans. The pests could later evolve resistance to the toxins produced by GM crops. In India research is still inconclusive. Researchers have taken rather too long to give their verdict on the safety and otherwise of GM crops. Bt crop’s benefits, in the short run at least, have been proved beyond doubt by studies, including the one made public by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Bonn in February last year. India and other developing countries need to have scientific capacity to assess biosafety, to evaluate gains and losses and put in place an effective monitoring system and legal framework before undertaking the cultivation of transgenic crops. |
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Growing intolerance THE Shiv Sena seems to have company. What its sainiks have been doing in Mumbai has been emulated and even surpassed by the little-known Sambhaji Brigade of the Maratha Mahasangh in neighbouring Pune. On Monday its activists targeted the venerable Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute there and destroyed many rare manuscripts. Irreplaceable curios and mementos were broken or stolen. Their ire was not against the institution but against a British historian, James W. Laine, whose remarks about Shivaji were considered unpalatable by these zealots. The only fault of the institute was that one of the scholars quoted in his book,
Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India, by Laine happened to be a member of the institute's managing committee. Ironically, the institute is engaged, since 1917, in preserving the legacy of the beloved Maharashtra of the Maratha Mahasangh. Yet, they thought nothing of damaging 18,000 books and 30,000 rare manuscripts. There could not be a bigger loss to the heritage of the State and the country. Whoever deployed these activists to vandalise the institute was only destroying what he was claiming to protect. The destruction was so maniacal that even the Shiv Sena has expressed sorrow over it. This trend of intolerance is growing because most of such trouble makers go scot-free. Some of them happen to have political backing while others are supposed to be politically "useful" and hence beyond the arm of law. It is alleged that when the Pune institute was being ransacked, policemen did arrive but kept standing outside the premises like mute spectators. If historians, artistes and scholars of the land have to get a clearance certificate from rampaging mobs, we will have very little left of history, art and culture. Every time the government succumbs to the rioters, it encourages many more to join the thought police. |
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Politics of the absurd THE saffron elements used to complain about being treated as untouchable by mainstream political parties. Not any more. Not at least in Uttar Pradesh where Mr Kalyan Singh, a former BJP Chief Minister, now seems to have the most shakeable hand in Indian politics. He turned up at Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee's birthday bash in Lucknow and both the BJP and the non-BJP leaders suddenly woke up, almost like Rip Wan Winkle, into a changed political world. A world in which the Lodh leader's political standing suddenly turned bullish. If he could become a commodity, the already volatile sensex would have gone berserk. When the sensex shoots up, the market is called bullish. But in the case of Mr Kalyan Singh the seekers of political fortune want to embrace him in a tight bearish hug until at least the Lok Sabha elections. His 71st birthday celebrations may not have matched the splendour of Ms Mayawati's bash when she was Chief Minister. But it was still an extraordinary show. Mrs Sonia Gandhi sent a special emissary to greet him. Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav made a personal appearance. And all the top saffron guns boomed loudly in favour of his homecoming. The BJP spread out the (saffron?) carpet for him to return to his political Ayodhya. But where was his political queen, Ms Kusum Rai, when Mr Kalyan Singh was living life king size as the most sought after 71-year-old birthday boy? In true old-fashioned filmi style she was seen sulking in a corner and pain was flowing from the song she reportedly sang on "popular demand" in a secluded corner. The pain in her voice may have had something to do with the
prospect of having to surrender ministerial comforts if her mentor, Mr Kalyan Singh, decides to abandon Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav. It would be a double tragedy for her. |
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Thought for the day If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are
rich. — John F. Kennedy |
Coalition building, India style IF there is still any doubt about the Lok Sabha election 2004 being advanced to April-May, it should be discarded now. For, the message of the frantic flurry into which every political party or formation worth the name — not least the BJP, the core of the ruling coalition in New Delhi, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) — has worked itself is clear enough. To be sure, a final decision has yet to be taken by the huddle of the BJP bigwigs at Hyderabad next week. No one should underestimate Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s understandable desire to become the first non-Congress Prime Minister to complete a full five-year tenure. He has already been in the saddle for five years and nine months, of course, not counting the 13-day interlude in May 1996. But because his earlier government had fallen by a single vote in April 1999, a full term can be completed only in October. Even so, it is inconceivable that the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr L.K. Advani, would have committed himself to an early battle of the ballot so categorically as he did at Mumbai, if he were not sure of his ground. He must have had some indication that Atalji would go along with his party’s predominant preference. Mr Advani had spoken out, moreover, after his much-advertised meeting with one of the BJP’s most important allies, the Shiv Sena supremo, Mr Balasaheb Thackeray, who is keen on the advancement of the election. In any case, Mr Vajpayee, with his unerring political instinct, must know that to stick to September-October as the election date after creating so much expectation to the contrary could be counter-productive. However, there are even more powerful reasons for the BJP to take the plunge in April-May. In the first place, if it hopes to reap the fruits of its tremendous triumph in the assembly elections in three major states in the Hindi heartland, then the BJP must act quickly and strike while the iron is hot. Who can say what the sanyasin in Bhopal and the princess in Jaipur might or might not do in a 10-month timeframe to dissipate the gains of the assembly elections? Secondly, the economic boom and the consequent “feel good” factor could turn into a bust if the rain gods, lavishly generous in 2003, turn niggardly in the coming monsoon season. Add to this the rising inflation rate that has already reached a seven-month high of 5.6 per cent and the attraction of and early parliamentary poll becomes manifest for those that occupy the Treasury Benches and hope to return to them. The third major reason for the ruling combination to hasten the poll is the disarray in the Congress, the principal opposition party and the only other magnet around which a coalition to take on the NDA can be formed. Why give Ms Sonia Gandhi more time to restore some order in her party and to cobble together a coalition of “like-minded secular parties” — an inescapable strategy to which she has become a convert rather belatedly? As if the squalid and protracted factional warfare in Punjab and Kerala, underscoring the inability of the Congress “high command” to discipline its wayward flock, were not enough, fratricide has broken out also in the party in Gujarat where the party’s very survival is at stake. If it cannot unite there, it hardly can in states where it is in power or hopes to be, as in the case of Andhra, with all the spoils of office to fight over? This is a spectacle that naturally gladdens the BJP leaders. But they are much more jubilant over the Congress President’s frustration in her search for allies. Undoubtedly, the BJP is also facing some problems. Several of the NDA’s constituents have left it in recent months, the latest and the most important being the DMK in Tamil Nadu, and some others might yet do so. But Mr Vajpayee is quite right in claiming that others would soon take their place. There is much less embarrassment for the Prime Minister in once again welcoming into the NDA Ms. Jayalalithaa and her AIADMK though she had brought his government down in 1999 than there is in Ms Gandhi becoming a junior partner of Mr M. Karunanidhi of the DMK in Tamil Nadu. After all, in 1998, she had accused him of complicity in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi! Her major trouble, however, is that no secular party is rushing to rally around the banner of the “secular front” she has proposed. On the contrary, an existing ally of the Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), led by Mr Sharad Pawar who has a strong base in Maharashtra, has served notice that it is “keeping all its options open”. Translated into simple, language, it means that this “secular” party has no compunction about joining the NDA under the BJP’s leadership. Transparently crass though this stance is, it has logic of its own. By joining hands with the BJP and the Shiv Sena, Mr Pawar can hope to have a seat in the Union Cabinet and control of an important portfolio as well as his share in power in Maharashtra. Ideology, secular or otherwise, is dead in any case. The paramount point in this connection is that the blatantly opportunistic approach spelled out by Mr Pawar is neither his nor his party’s monopoly. Almost every party, group, faction and splinter is guided and goaded by the same motive of self-promotion, regardless of any other consideration. It is against this backdrop that the most important potential ally of the Congress, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi party, has all but ditched it. Mr Yadav, now Chief Minister of the key state, UP, where the BJP faces its gravest challenge, has declared what can best be interpreted as “equidistance” from both the Congress and the BJP, if not a tilt towards the latter. On a par with Mr Yadav’s decision to maximise his post-election leverage are the attempts of the Defence Minister and NDA convener, Mr George Fernandes, to unite all “socialists” scattered across the political spectrum to improve his own bargaining capacity. All in all, however, Mr. Vajpayee, thanks to his record in running a coalition successfully, would have a marked edge over Ms Gandhi. She has hardly run any coalition and her party has a dismal record of betraying every coalition government in Delhi it had purported to support. |
The prospect “Long
time, no see?” said my friend from the coffee house. We had met at the bank counter. He looked up from filling a pay-in slip. A bulging briefcase lay by his side. It was partly open and I couldn’t help noticing that it was crammed with stapled bundles of 100-rupee notes. “Hullo” I said. “How are you?” not wishing to prolong our conversation. “Never felt better in my life” he said, flashing a wide grin and giving me a view of his gold-capped teeth. “You certainly look fine” I said, “and prosperous”. I eyed his briefcase. “How do you manage it?” He waved his hand airily at the money. “Oh that?” he said. “It’s only a week’s taking. Let me get rid of this lot and I’ll tell you all about it.” I was about to make an excuse but he shut me up by saying, “Tell you what. Have lunch with me.” “O.K” I said, “many thanks.” Fifteen minutes later we walked out of the bank and hailed a taxi. I thought I’d pay for it as he was standing me lunch. “Where to?” I asked, “The old coffee house?” “Coffee house, my foot!” he said with a snort. “When I say lunch I mean lunch.” He directed the taxi driver to a posh, airconditioned restaurant in Connaught Place. He handed me the menu with a flourish. “Have what you like” he said. “I can recommend their onion soup and they do an excellent chicken a la king.” So we ordered the soup and the chicken and French fried potatoes, washing it all down with a bottle of white wine. Between large mouthfuls of the chicken he told me what he had been doing since our last meeting. “I’m on business on my own now” he said. “And boy, it’s easy money. All in hard cash too.” “But what do you do to earn it?” I asked. “Buy and sell” he said. “just buy and sell.” “Buy and sell what?” I asked. He lowered his voice. “Dollars, dope, porno books, naughty films, watches, cameras. Anything foreign I can lay my hands on.” “Pretty risky business” I said. “You may end up behind bars.” But he wasn’t listening to me. His eyes were following a tall foreigner who had got up from his table and was leaving the restaurant. “I’ll be back in a jiffy” he said. “I want a word with that man who’s going out. Looks like a good prospect. Just order two peach melbas like a good chap. I did, and had to eat both of them as there was no sign of my friend. The waiter hovered round me with the bill. After paying it I had just enough money left for my bus fare home. I didn’t see my friend for almost a year. Then, one morning, he was at the coffee house. He had at least two days’ growth of beard on his face. He wasn’t wearing a tie and his suit looked as if he had slept in it. “Where have you been all this time?” I asked. He avoided my gaze. “I’ve been away” he said. “I had to leave rather suddenly.” “You seem to be in the habit of leaving rather suddenly” I said. I hadn’t forgotten the lunch that had cost me nearly 300 rupees. He looked up at me and said. “Actually, that was the day my run of bad luck began. The tall American I followed out from the restaurant...” “The good prospect” I cut in. “Prospect be damned” he said. “He turned out to be a member of Interpol.” Then, the old grin reappeared. “I had to take an enforced holiday for nine months but I made some good contacts in there. We’re forming a syndicate when the others come out. Care to join us?” I noticed that the gold on his teeth hadn’t lost its shine.
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Human Rights Diary
Celebrations
of the New Year still flickered in India’s metropolitan areas when darkness engulfed the villages of Jehanabad in Bihar. The Ranbir Sena of upper castes once again killed Dalits sitting around bonfires outside their huts. Such tragedies have seen the police, manned by upper castes, arriving late. It was no different this time. However, the Dalits, even though helpless, gave an appropriate reply when they booed the force and made it withdraw. It has been the same scenario for years. The Dalits have got exasperated over the familiar exercise: upper caste armed men come one evening and kill dalits demanded minimum wages or objected to the behaviour meted out to them. Then reaches the police days after, doing nothing to prevent the recurrence of violence or take action against those who kill without hesitation. The government claims that the number of such incidents has gone down. It may be so statistically, but not in reality. Some 15 years ago I, along with some human rights activists, undertook a padayatra to these very villages to find out why Naxalism had taken birth in the area. We found the
answer: The upper caste landlords did not pay the fixed minimum wage to the Dalit labourers who had no other avenue to earn their livelihood. True, some were marginal farmers, really hard put to pay, but they lived a far better life than the Dalits. During the sojourn, I was woken up one night by three armed members of the People’s War
Group (PWG). After having distinguished themselves in postgraduate courses, they vainly tried their best to get an opening. When no job came their way, they took to the gun to change the system. They are still fighting while the system remains unchanged. The vested interests have been clever enough to change a class war into a caste war. The same phenomenon of not getting their due is the story of bonded labour in Punjab. A relatively well-off state has the maximum number of bonded labourers. According to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the number of complaints received from the state are far more than any other. This is despite the fact that Punjab is a major importer of migrant labour. So appalled is the NHRC over bonded labour in the state that it has drawn the attention of the Deputy Commissioners to the evil practice. Apparently, farmers, the backbone of the state, are not doing well. Most of them are said to be under debt. Once former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal told me that every farmer in Punjab was under debt. Since they are in no position to pay back, some of them resort to bonding their children to moneylenders for clearing their loans. Sometime moneylenders forcibly take away their children. Busy in political games as the state government is, it has hardly any time to pay attention to bonded labour. Swami Agnivesh, who has devoted all his life to get bonded children freed, sounded despondent at a meeting the other day. His anguish was that society was not even sensitive to the feeling of degradation that the poor nourish because they have to bond their children to eke out a living. What was the use of having an Act when no action was being taken under it, he lamented. Indeed, the Bonded Labour Systems (Abolition) Act, passed in 1976, has proved to be ineffective like the Untouchability Act. People have no compunction in violating the law because the authorities, particularly the police, are party to the system. They reportedly get a regular payment to look to the other side when children are bonded.
Dr A. S. Anand, Chairman of NHRC, says that it is the duty of the state to identify bonded labour. True, but how does one go about when the law defenders are on the pay of law-breakers? Political parties do not make a noise lest the landlord, the industrialist or someone else from the elitist group should get offended. They are the ones who deliver the parties votes. It is another matter that the children, who should be in school, suffer because the parents cannot afford to bring them up. A country where six crore children are engaged in full-time jobs can hardly feel the pain of bonded labourers. Employed children are uneducated and unskilled. They constitute the unorganised sector with no bargaining power. They are exposed to health hazards and die early or become handicapped after a few years of work. On the other hand, the civil society organisations, which run projects on child labour, have little foresight. They hate to link the problem with the economic environment in families and communities. They believe that the problem of child labour can be solved merely by the enforcement of laws. Meaningful and compulsory education is the best preventive step. *
* * * Once again, the height of the Narmada Dam is sought to be raised without bothering about the rehabilitation of the oustees. Medha Patkar has sent out an anguished letter for help. The Supreme Court, which has expressed its unhappiness in the past on lack of proper resettlement of the uprooted, probably knows that all the uprooted have not got the two hectares of cultivable land, a house plot and the cash or bullocks which were promised to them. The resettlement sites lack basic amenities. Only a few weeks ago did 15 oustees try to commit suicide. They are all adivasis from the Naswadi talukas (districts of Narmada and Barode) who were shifted to the resettlement sites as back as the 1980s. Apparently, they have not been adequately rehabilitated. The government promised them, among other things, one job per family. The attempted suicide puts a question mark on the Gujarat government’s repeated claims that it has rehabilitated 4,600 oustees. When the people displaced at the dam height of 80, 90 and 100 metres have not been fully rehabilitated, how can the government ask for another 10-metre height? |
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From
Pakistan PESHAWAR: Opposing the idea of creating new federating units by dividing Punjab, Awami National Party chief Asfandyar Wali Khan has recommended a more active role for the Senate to ensure level-playing field for all the four provinces. “ANP is against the idea of increasing the number of federating units or creating parity among them in the National Assembly; rather it seeks greater powers for the Senate to make it an entity effective enough to guarantee equal rights,” Mr Asfandyar Wali says. He has suggested that the Senate should have powers to vote on the annual money Bill, otherwise, it would remain a “toothless” entity as it was today. “We don’t say that the federating units should have equal number of representatives in the National Assembly, but we believe that the Senate needs to be placed with more authority to remove the sense of deprivation among smaller provinces.”
— The Dawn
Afghan petrol for Pakistan
PESHAWAR: The petrol exported from Pakistan to Afghanistan is re-exported into the country, causing huge losses to the national exchequer, sources told Dawn on Tuesday. The sources said the government had recently issued permits to Pakistani and Afghan traders to export petrol to Afghanistan, where the commodity is tax-free. According to the terms of contract, every permit-holder would purchase 100,000 litres of petrol at the rate of $31,995 from the two main depots of the Pakistan State Oil (PSO) — one situated at Taru Jabba near Peshawar and the other at Sehala near Rawalpindi. Normally, Afghanistan purchases its petrol supplies from Iran and other Central Asian states to meet its domestic consumption, while for the US-led coalition forces stationed in Afghanistan, petrol is purchased from Pakistan. “In fact, the quality of Pakistani petrol is far better than the oil exported to Afghanistan from Iran and other countries,” the sources said. Still, a large quantity of the petrol exported from Pakistan is bought by the Afghan traders in Jalalabad, who smuggle it back to Pakistan with the support of smugglers in the tribal areas and with the connivance of law-enforcement agencies, which incurred losses to the public exchequer. “The price of one litre petrol sold by the PSO is about Rs17.8 as no tax is levied on it, while its cost on transportation to Jalalabad is about 50 paisa and octroi tax on one litre is about Rs1.3,” the sources claimed.
— The Dawn
Law on women
prisoners to change
LAHORE: The government on Tuesday assured the Punjab Assembly to consider the release of women prisoners having small children with them in jails on parole and not to hesitate amending the rules in this regard, if needed. The assurance was given by Minister for Jails Saeed Akbar Khan Niwani on a resolution moved by PPP-P MPA Farzana Raja. Ms Farzana had demanded that the government should make arrangements for education of the children living with their mothers in jails. She said after the stipulated time these children were separated from their mothers and after spending a long period in jails, they could not adjust themselves in society.
— The Nation |
I salute him who was smart in protecting the life of Lakshmana, who ever brings joy to the gods, who at the end of the battle killed Akshakumara (son of Ravana), and who is seen by many who chant the names of
Sree Rama. — Shri Adi Shankaracharya Root up priest craft from the old religion, and you get the best religion in the world. Can you make a European society with India’s religion? I believe it is possible and must be. — Swami Vivekananda Man’s deeds determine his thoughts. — Guru
Nanak If you try to stop the mind, it will only become more active. It is not necessary to stop it. You must ask it where it is going. — Yogaswami Goodness will flow through you to the rest of the world. Those who mean to do good to the world will do well to become a concentrated essence of purity and love. — Swami A. Parthasarathy |
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