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Return of prodigals Brand Gandhi |
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SEZ policy ‘irreversible’ PM removes uncertainty Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has clarified that the policy on setting up special economic zones (SEZs) is “irreversible” and its implementation will be resumed once the “inadequacies” in compensation are redressed and the interests of all stake-holders who suffer in the process are protected.
The fate of poster boys
Prosecute and be damned
Bold champion of
university reforms Paris embraces plan to become city of cycles
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Return of prodigals AS
a dejected, perhaps even defiant, cricket team scurries back into Indian shores after a damning debacle in the Caribbean, millions of fans and well-wishers of the sport are justified in asking: where to from here? For there is something more at stake here than just the careers of a few has-beens and sundry non-performers. For while cricket is indeed a sport where losing goes in tandem with winning, there is a sense now that Indian cricket is bogged down by so much that is external to the game, that the energy, the talent, and the controlled aggression and sustained determination that make for sporting excellence have gone missing. Greg Chappell’s comment about the team “collapsing under the weight of expectations” and the fact that the Indian team was under more pressure than any other international team, are telling. Such pressures, however, cannot entirely be attributed to the fans’ emotions back home. While there is no justifying the extreme reactions of so-called fans, there is no doubt that much of the pressure is created because team selection, training and on-field play appear compromised by everything from rampant commercialism, to regionalism, to needless obsession about star status. The Saurav Ganguly saga from the dropping to the peevishness to the fortuitous comeback is a case in point, as was the drama over Virendra Sehwag. Unless a team is able to drop even Sachin Tendulkar without endless agonising over it, true sporting considerations will always take a back seat. As for those “issues” that Chappell mentions cannot be discussed in the media - the people have a right to know what they are. While on the one hand, the sinister arm of the betting mafia has reached out to strike at cricket, the debate about acting in advertisements is intensifying. The board may well want to pay its cricketers handsome salaries in return for total commitment to the game. While it is true that it is only performing cricketers who rake in the moolah, insiders have attested to how these commercial commitments impact training and performance. As for bench strength, our reserves of talent are dismal, and a country-wide effort is needed to augment it. The time is now to shed as many non-performing assets as possible.
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Brand Gandhi AN advertisement for a credit card in South Africa has stirred the Indian community there as it inappropriately uses the photograph of Mahatma Gandhi. The advertiser is the British Virgin group, whose proprietor Richard Branson is known for his flamboyance. Once in New Delhi, he sought to promote his airlines by hiring an auto-rickshaw to travel in the city in the company of Virgin airhostesses. However unethical tapping on the charisma of the Mahatma to promote his new venture may be, what he has done is what we Indians routinely do to the Man from Porbandar. Almost every little shop in the country has a Gandhi quote displayed in bold letters, “The customer is the most important visitor on our premises… He is doing us a favour by giving us an opportunity to serve him”. A researcher, who wanted to trace the origin of this particular quotation, was astonished to find that it did not figure in the Collected Works of Gandhi. Nor was it part of any of the speeches he ever made. His conclusion that the quote was a fabrication was, therefore, inevitable. We do not as much as bat our eyelids when we pay scant regard to the ideals he stood for in his life -- non-violence, pursuit of truth and respect for the other. As one of his biographers says, “In India, we think we know him. No face is more familiar. He looks at us from currency notes, postage stamps and billboards. We feel we can sketch the spectacles, the baldhead, the loincloth, the pocket-watch. But familiarity is not knowledge”. Of course, every year we remember him on Gandhi Jayanti but only to forget him for the rest of the year. Leaders who claim to follow him are found wallowing in ill-gotten wealth while the high-denomination currency notes that feature Gandhi are what the corrupt insist on when they demand bribe. In their parlance, two Gandhis mean Rs 1,000. The land where the apostle of peace who sacrificed his life for the cause of Hindu-Muslim unity was born witnessed the most horrible communal riots in the post-Independence period. This being the case, it would really require some guts for Indians to criticise Branson’s advertisement, which only reflects the readiness to exploit Gandhi for one’s own good. |
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SEZ policy ‘irreversible’ Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has clarified that the policy on setting up special economic zones (SEZs) is “irreversible” and its implementation will be resumed once the “inadequacies” in compensation are redressed and the interests of all stake-holders who suffer in the process are protected. This will help remove misgivings, if any, regarding the setting up of SEZs. Dr Manmohan Singh had put the SEZ policy on hold following protests by farmers over inadequate compensation and forcible land acquisition at certain places. A group of ministers headed by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee was asked to formulate a comprehensive relief and rehabilitation policy before moving ahead on SEZs. Before the policy was held in abeyance, the Board of Approvals in the Commerce Ministry had cleared 237 SEZ projects and of these 63 were notified. As the empowered group of ministers was taking its own time, the Chief Ministers of Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal urged the Centre to “defreeze” the SEZ policy so that work could resume at least on those projects which had been already cleared and about which there had been no controversy. The Prime Minister has chosen not to respond to their demand while commenting on the SEZs. On the delay in stitching up a SEZ policy all that the Prime Minister has said is the government has been forced to “halt a little bit” since human, social and economic concerns need to be addressed. The ministerial group will also have to take into account Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s plea that SEZs should come up only on barren or single-crop land. Hopefully, the group would not ignore the interests of states like Punjab where large chunks of barren land are unavailable. The Prime Minister has himself announced a SEZ for Amritsar. It is hoped the ministerial group will not put the future of the Amritsar SEZ in jeopardy. |
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A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery. — James Joyce
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The fate of poster boys
WE have reached a point where cricket is no longer a mere game. It is show business, a variant of Bollywood. Like Bollywood stars, our cricketers prance on the ramp; they endorse products of various hues and open restaurants. Playing cricket on the field would seem to be a side activity. India's infatuation with cricket is of long standing, but in the new consumer society we entered after the economic reforms of 1991, cricketers have become brand ambassadors, rather than players. India has the world's richest cricket club and to be a member of the country's test or one-day cricket squad is to be rich and famous. Nobody grudges cricketers their riches or fame as long as they deliver when they do get to play. Even more than tear-jerking soap operas, there is so much of emotional capital invested in cricket that failure, except perhaps at the final stage, is unacceptable. And to lose at the lowly league level to minnows, or Sri Lanka for that matter, is cause for national grief and rage. India might lose consistently at hockey to be met with perfunctory grief, after the glorious years when India was the king without peer. The country's status in football, for all the acres of newsprint expended on European league matches, is so low that it easier to count from the bottom up and there is scarcely a moan to be heard. We might win a cup in badminton once in a generation to some joy but no countrywide celebration. But cricket is a different matter cutting across castes, status or sex or creed. The private television channels signed on willowy actresses to add glamour to the sport and soon we had the fair sex acting as anchors chatting knowledgeably about the finer points of the game. Cricket had been liberated from the field to become a spectator sport in the tenements of the poor, the homes of the middle class and the rich. Cricketers might have a short shelf life — hence the penchant for opening restaurants for the rainy day — but there is so much riding on them in their active phase that they invite trouble if they fail to deliver. Posters of cricketing heroes go up in flames, wicketkeeper Mahendra Singh Dhoni's home in the making on land gifted by a generous state administration for past services is targeted by hero-worshippers turned angry mobs and the homes of other cricketers are kept under a watchful eye. This is, of course, the obverse side of the coin of fame. It is a high-risk profession to be a cricketer. It is just that of all the games, the people of India have fastened on to this one legacy of the Raj, apart from Scotch whisky, to make cricket our very own game. There is even a much-hyped film in which we, rustics and all, defeat our former colonial rulers in the most British of games, i.e. cricket. And we have had some greats and victories to show for it, even winning a World Cup, if we can perceive that victory through the mists of time. Every time an Olympics takes place, we prepare ourselves to be disappointed and debate yet again why a country of over a billion people cannot do better. We did win an individual silver medal the last time, compared to the bronze of the time before. It is the absence of a sports culture; we are told, of inadequate sports funds going to padded sports delegations composed of more bureaucrats than players. Once the Olympics are over, we revert to our favourite sport of being couch potatoes. India is famed for taking what foreigners bring in the guise of rulers or otherwise and making it our very own. So it is with cricket, a game that has acquired a spiritual quality. Divine benediction is sought for Team India before an important match; the priest is as knowledgeable about the game as anyone else. Let prayers then reach out to the skies and bring us victory. But God doesn't always listen to us. How salutary it would be if we would bring cricket into the fold of Bollywood! We would then enjoy it as a spectator sport without being frustrated and anguished at losing a game or two — or three. Or better still, in this era of convergence, make cricket a video game. With controls in hand, we could make Rahul Dravids and Sachin Tendulkars and Saurav Gangulys do our bidding and win all the matches they played against mighty Australia and rivals Pakistan. It is surprising that none of the Japanese wizard-making companies have caught on to the idea of making a cricket game series, tapping into a mine of gold. Indeed, we are getting too serious about cricket for our own good and welfare. A game is no longer a game if we take a defeat to heart and burn posters and damage property to give vent to our frustrations. A retreat to the mountains for meditation could be one solution, were it not for the numbers involved. The mountains would get terribly crowded were the whole nation to seek a retreat amidst the snowy peaks. The cure for cricket fever must, therefore, lie in more mundane remedies. It is for psychologists to determine whether the brand of cricket played by Indian teams has a demonic streak to it. Or whether the peculiar symptoms of high fever and throbbing hearts are related to our need for burning calories in a people disinclined to shake a leg. There is a place for catharsis in Greek tragedy, as in life itself. The ancients discovered the therapeutic qualities of a grand tragedy and if defeat on the cricket field serves a similar purpose for us, so be it. The choice is ours. Either we subsume our passion for cricket in the video game parlour — any number of Indian software wizards can give us a cricket game series making Sachin jump from comic books to video games —or we can try to contain our emotions when we lose a game. Posters of our heroes are not for
burning.
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Prosecute and be damned
I
have read with sadness in the daily issues of The Tribune — over the years — how in the State of Punjab the exit of one Chief Minister and the induction of another (belonging to a rival political party) inevitably results in criminal prosecution of the former. It happened when Mr Amarinder Singh came to power. It has happened again when his rival Mr Parkash Singh Badal has become Chief Minister. I would respectfully request each of them, and their supporters, to harken to the reaction of one of India’s most astute politicians. Mrs Indira Gandhi had suffered humiliation after she was defeated at the polls in March 1977: she was expelled from Parliament and she ridiculed the Shah Commission. But after the 1980 elections she came romping back to power. And surprisingly, despite the blemishes of the Internal Emergency, she was in many ways a different woman: she had matured from politician to statesman! And thereby hangs a story. One day, shortly after February 1980 Mr Frank Anthony (who had been a nominated member of the Lok Sabha representing the Anglo-Indian community during Mrs Gandhi’s first stint as PM, came fuming into the Bar Library of the Supreme Court loudly saying to all and sundry: “Mrs Gandhi doesn’t understand. The Prime Minister simply will not listen. I have all the evidence.” I asked him why he was so distressed. And he told me. He had been to visit Mrs Gandhi, now “twice-born” in high office. He had taken with him documentary material about “misdeeds” of Kanti Morarji (son of her immediate predecessor in office) and demanded a criminal prosecution or at least a commission of inquiry. Mrs. Gandhi heard him out patiently and then quietly said: “No, Mr Anthony — no — there will be no more commissions of inquiry; no more criminal cases”. Frank Anthony was left stunned. Political recrimination was out. Politicians (sometimes) do learn their lesson — even though the hard
way!
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Bold champion of university reforms BANGALORE — He has variously been described as a one-man army fighting against all that is wrong in our universities to representing righteousness in an era of institutionalised mis-management. Starting off as a man chosen by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav and then being told that his days are numbered, Lucknow University Vice Chancellor Professor Ram Prakash Singh claims he will have the last laugh. “It is Mulayam Singh’s days that are numbered” he told the Tribune after receiving the Manjunath Shanmugan Integrity award at Bangalore. Prof Singh’s reform movement in the Lucknow university campus has caught the fancy of other Vice Chancellors in Uttar Pradesh, particularly Allahabad University, which has also announced a one year moratorium on student elections. The Universities of Rohilkhand and Bundelkhand have held elections according to the Lyndoh Committee recommendations, sticking to which had seen Prof Singh’s house being “gheroed” and his son stalked while serving in a software company in Noida. “The more difficult the situation, the more insistent he became on standing his ground”, says Prof Singh’s wife Savita Prakash. The Professor himself says though his two daughters did not want him to go to Lucknow initially as they had personally experienced the state of affairs there while studying in Varanasi, they later insisted he carry on once he took on the job of cleansing the system. The Vice Chancellor came back to Lucknow after working for thirty years at IIT, Kharagpur, in the field of Polymer Science, because the city is his home. “I originate from the neighbouring Barabanki district and came back to do my bit for my State”. He did not realise that this bit could see him taking on the role of a virtual one man army. “ Within days of my joining the University in January, 2005, student leaders came to me and told me that mass copying would take place in the upcoming Law examination as had been happening in the past. I took this on as my first test and ensured the exam was copy free”. From here started his fight against those he calls “organised criminal elements masquerading as students on the University campus’’. Prof Singh said he came to grips with the situation as soon as he received a report of the state of affairs of the University from the Deputy Registrar. What he learnt was shocking. Employees of the Works department, Examination Branch and Student Union leaders had formed a mafia and were siphoning off crores of rupees. “I tried to enforce discipline and my first target was the Executive Engineer of the Works department who was removed from his office. While this sent a signal across to the other officers of the department, it was not liked by the student union leaders who used to get all the construction contracts of the University”, he disclosed. A much bigger confrontation involving the Samajwadi Party itself developed in 2006 during elections to the student body of the University. Prof Singh puts it this way: “My fight with Mulayam started last year. His candidate was likely to lose in the election to the student body and Samajwadi Party workers wanted me to rig the election. I scolded the District Magistrate and the District Police Chief for not providing enough security on the campus and sent an SOS to the Chancellor (Governor) requesting him to order the police to maintain law and order on the campus”. The VC says the subsequent defeat of Mulayam’s candidate annoyed the Samajwadi Party. “Today you will see the SP will not win the elections”. When student leaders created a situation in which the affairs of the University could not be run smoothly, he refused to buckle under and closed the University in December, 2006. It reopened in January this year with 85 student leaders being expelled. Prof Singh said 221 students had been suspended and more expulsions would follow. Besides this, he said, the University had also expelled 200 students who had taken illegal admission through forged documents. The Vice Chancellor says even as there is calm in the University today he continues carrying out his reforms. New rules are being framed for hostel admission in July this year which will restrict admission only to those taking up degree courses. No student will be allowed to stay in the hostel beyond a period of eight years. Besides this, 32 new employment-oriented courses are being introduced. The University has also been able to attract research projects worth Rs 20 crore despite no help from the Uttar Pradesh government. Expanding on the present state of varsities, Prof Singh says earlier Universities were elitist. “Now their base has expanded but neither infrastructure nor faculty has increased correspondingly. This is basically the reason for turmoil on campuses”. In Lucknow, he says, there are 500 faculty members for 38,000 students and when he took on the task of increasing the infrastructure he had to have twenty toilets constructed besides installing 56 water coolers and renovating all the classrooms. How did all this come about? “My family, including my father, was an inspiration. Though we were a landed family due to force of circumstances we lived in poverty; but my father helped me to become what I am today. I was also deeply influenced by scientist Vikram Sarabhai with whom I worked for a brief period of six months”. And what does he attribute his achievement to? “The fact that I had nothing to lose. They could not dent my prestige. I only had to stick to my guns, which I did”. |
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Paris embraces plan to become city of cycles PARIS — Paris is for lovers – lovers of food and art and wine, lovers of the romantic sort and, starting this summer, lovers of bicycles. On July 15, the day after Bastille Day, Parisians will wake up to discover thousands of low-cost rental bikes at hundreds of high-tech bicycle stations scattered throughout the city, an ambitious program to cut traffic, reduce pollution, improve parking and enhance the city’s image as a greener, quieter, more relaxed place. By the end of the year, organizers and city officials say, there should be 20,600 bikes at 1,450 stations – or about one station every 250 yards across the entire city. Based on experience elsewhere – particularly in Lyon, France’s third-largest city, which launched a similar system two years ago – regular users of the bikes will ride them almost for free. “It has completely transformed the landscape of Lyon--everywhere you see people on the bikes,” said Jean-Louis Touraine, the city’s deputy mayor. The program was meant “not just to modify the equilibrium between the modes of transportation and reduce air pollution, but also to modify the image of the city and to have a city where humans occupy a larger space.” The Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanok, has the same aim, said his aide, Jean-Luc Dumesnil: “We think it could change Paris’s image – make it quieter, less polluted, with a nicer atmosphere, a better way of life.” But there is a practical side, too, Dumesnil said. A recent study analyzed different trips in the city “with a car, bike, taxi and walking, and the bikes were always the fastest.” The Lyon rental bikes can also be among the cheapest ways to travel, because the first half-hour is free, and most trips are shorter than that. “It’s faster than the bus or metro, it’s good exercise, and it’s almost free,” said Vianney Paquet, 19, who is studying law in Lyon. Paquet said that he uses the rental bikes four or five times a day and pays 10 euros (about $13) a year, half for an annual membership fee and half for rental credit that he never actually spends because his rides typically last just a few minutes. Anthonin Darbon, director of Cyclocity, which operates Lyon’s program and won the contract to start up and run the one in Paris, said 95 percent of the roughly 20,000 daily bike rentals in Lyon are free because of their length. Cyclocity is a subsidiary of outdoor advertising behemoth JCDecaux. The Cyclocity concept evolved from utopian “bike-sharing” ideas that were tried in Europe in the 1960s and ‘70s, usually modeled on Amsterdam’s famous “white bicycle” plan, in which idealistic hippies repaired scores of bicycles, painted them white, and left them on the streets for anyone to use for free. But in the end, the bikes were stolen and became too beat-up to ride. JCDecaux experimented with designs and developed a sturdier, less vandal-prone bike, along with a rental system to discourage theft: Each rider must leave a credit card or refundable deposit of about $195, along with personal information. In Lyon, about 10 percent of the bikes are stolen each year, but many are later recovered, Darbon said. And to encourage people to return bikes quickly, rental rates rise the longer the bikes are out. In Paris, for instance, renting a bike will be free for the first 30 minutes, $1.30 for the next 30 minutes, $2.60 for the third half-hour, and $5.20 for the fourth half-hour of use and every 30 minutes after that. That makes the cost of a two-hour rental about $9.10. The Paris deal will bring the world’s biggest bicycle fleet to the City of Light in a complex, 10-year public-private partnership. JCDecaux will provide all of the bikes (at a cost of about $1,300 apiece) and build the pickup/drop-off stations. Each will have 15 to 40 high-tech racks connected to a centralized computer that can monitor each bike’s condition and location. Customers can buy a prepaid card or use a credit card at a computerized console to release a bike. All revenue from the program will go to the city, and the company will also pay Paris a fee of about $4.3 million a year. In exchange, Paris is giving the company exclusive control over 1,628 city-owned billboards, including the revenue from them, for the same period. About half the billboard space will be given back to the city at no cost for public-interest advertising.
By arrangement with
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Delhi Durbar IT was a compliment that senior BJP leader and Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha V K Malhotra could not accept. The other day, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram began his reply to the debate on the General Budget 2007-08 in the Lok Sabha by giving a back-handed compliment to Malhotra, saying that harsh criticism from the opposition appears to bode well for the economy. “The more vehement the criticism (from Malhotra), the better the growth story turns out to be. May I, therefore, wish Malhotra, who has returned as opening bowler in this year's Budget debate, many happy returns? In the interest of robust and sustained economic growth of the country, may I wish him a long life, many more years in opposition and many more speeches opposing the Budget?’ he quipped, putting Malhotra in an awkward position. Blame game Experts will obviously give their views on India’s dismal performance in the cricket World Cup but a comment from BJP senior leader Arun Jaitley is worth noting. Asked for his reaction, Jaitley, who has been involved with cricket administration for years now, said the electronic media in particular and our countrymen in general, who cannot take defeat as part of the game, are the real culprits. When the
impression goes out that their home and their dear ones are not safe if they get defeated, the boys come under tremendous pressure and constant pressure spoils their natural game. It is like you tell your kid that if he did not do well in his or her exam, they would be spanked and expelled from home. On the other hand, the country’s electronic media had nothing else to show but cricket. Now at least, the return of the political correspondent is certain; otherwise nothing else was selling but cricket, Jaitley observed.
Farmers’ day out With President A P J Abdul Kalam setting aside last Saturday specially for farmers to go round the famous Mughal Gardens in the sprawling estate of Rashtrapati Bhawan, the response was encouraging. There were about 6000 farmers from 19 states who went round the various sections of the Mughal Gardens like the Herbal garden, Musical garden, Spiritual garden, Nutrition garden, Bio-Fuel park and so on. In his inimitable style, Mr Kalam administered an eight-point oath to the farmers urging them to educate their children and consider them as valuable assets. He underlined the need for not discriminating against the girl child, abstaining from intoxicants, being ideal parents to their children and cultivating Jatropha and other herbal plants. The President quoted a verse from the Tirukkural of the great Saint Poet Thiruvalluvar, saying that as the world is based on one pivot, in the same way the entire human race is dependent for food on the farmers. After an interface with the President, the farmers were hosted lunch in Rashtrapati
Bhawan.
Contributed by S Satyanarayanan, Satish Misra and R Suryamurthy
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Accept life, welcoming old age, all of you striving one behind the other filling the gap made by death. May Ishwara, give you healthy and long life. God’s light pervades in every creature as every creature is contained within His light. Love begins in the family. Peace begins in the family. Where there is love, there is unity, peace and joy. Slow and inglorious self-imposed starvation among the starving masses is every time more heroic than the death of the scaffold under
falseexaltation. The deathless Self sees all, knows all. From him springs Brahma, who embodies the process of evolution into name and form by which the one appears to be many. Speak the truth and nothing but the truth.
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