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Guilty of
Coimbatore Volatility
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Out of
boxing
New
crops for old
Jamuna
in free flow
Mohd.
Zahir Shah’s legacy squandered Turtle
trouble for Tatas Delhi
Durbar
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Guilty of Coimbatore It
is the season of convictions in terrorism-related cases. If it was the killers of the then Chief Minister Beant Singh who were served their just desserts in Chandigarh last week, the 1995 Bombay blasts case too has meandered to its conclusion the other day. And now, a special court has convicted as many as 73 persons for a series of explosions, which rocked Coimbatore on February 14,1998, and killed 58 persons, injuring over 250 others. Among them are leaders of the outlawed fundamentalist organisation Al-Umma. All of them face death or life in prison, when the court announces the quantum of sentences, possibly on August 16. At the same time, the court has acquitted the president of Kerala’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Abdul Nasser Madhani of all the five charges. The series of 12 synchronised explosions that took place in Coimbatore on Valentine’s Day nine years ago was the worst terrorist attack in South India. The aim was ostensibly to kill visiting BJP leader L.K.Advani and also to avenge the death of 18 Muslims in communal riots in Coimbatore in the last two months of 1997. There was thus a widespread conspiracy to create enmity between two communities. Perhaps the horrendous blasts could have been avoided if the then DMK government had initiated action on receiving specific tip-off from the Central intelligence agencies about the conspiracy. But then, politicians have a long history of acting after the horses have bolted. If it is any consolation, the trial, which began only in 2002, has come to the conclusion faster than many other similar cases. Unlike the Mumbai blasts case, the Coimbatore trial was held under normal criminal laws and not special anti-terrorist laws like TADA. In fact, Chief Minister Karunanidhi stoutly refused to hand over the case to the CBI and handed it over to CB-CID of the Tamil Nadu police. What matters the most today is whether the extensive network made by the Al-Umma in the South has been completely smashed or not. We hope the authorities are vigilant enough to prevent any future mischief. |
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Volatility continues It
was another jittery day for investors the world over as the US Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq recovered in late trades, while European and Asian markets had mixed trading on Thursday with the swinging BSE Sensex ending the day with a gain of 50 points. Nervous investors are playing cautious and keenly watching the US markets for a lead. Top financial institutions’ reactions vary sharply. Some see markets in a danger zone in the next two-three weeks, while others feel the sub-prime issue has been overblown and point to a healthy growth in the US economy and corporate earnings. The turbulence has been caused by US housing woes. The Sensex collapsed 615 points on Wednesday, causing jitters among investors who had got used to comforts of a non-stop upward journey. The first jolt came last Friday with a 542-point crash. Few had realised the extent of damage caused by sub-mortgaging (in the US they call it sub-prime) of houses to persons with poor credit histories at exorbitant interest rates. The result was defaults in loan repayments, resulting in losses to leading house builders and financial companies. Many thought it was a localised problem and won’t spread. Tuesday’s CRR cut by the RBI did not dampen market enthusiasm and the Sensex recovered sharply along with other global markets. But the next day the euphoria was over and all too optimistic investors got a rude shock when foreign financial institutions turned sellers all over, reducing their exposure in the emerging markets. The saving grace is the fundamentals of major economies are sound. The US and Europe are on a steady growth path while Asian economies, particularly of India and China, are booming. How long the current uncertainty will continue is anybody’s guess. But the long-term signals are all green. The shock treatment was perhaps necessary to rid the credit markets of unbridled players.
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Out of boxing Sport
in India is in deep crisis. Yet another distressing reminder of this is the country’s first international boxing gold medallist, Padam Bahadur Mall, quitting as a coach. Why? Because, the honorarium of Rs 1500 per month, which the Uttarakhand Government has been paying him for the last 10 years, is not something on which he can survive. The amazing part is not that the Arjuna Awardee and Asia’s Best Boxer of 1962 has resigned his job, but that he has continued in it for a decade. Now that he has thrown in the towel, the state government would hasten to make amends, bemoaning that it would be a big loss to sports in Uttarakhand. But do things have to reach this point before the authorities are shaken out of their callous indifference to sports and the condition of sportsmen and coaches? Perhaps, it cannot be otherwise in a country and an age where sports is defined by television and spectator value, which in turn is dependent on brand values, sponsors and endorsements. In this climate of corporatised sport as entertainment, only cricket and tennis — more accurately, some cricket and tennis players — are on our radar. Inevitably, the whole country is plunged in agony or delirious with delight depending on whether the Indian cricket team loses or wins a match. Despite this preoccupation with cricket — as it appears on TV — the game itself is neglected and there is no sustained effort to develop those with talent. The fate of other games is unspeakably worse and occasional reports — such as the one in The Tribune on the boxing legend Mall — alert us to the plight of sportsmen and athletes condemned to oblivion and penury. It can be no comfort to Mall that he is in the distinguished company of several other athletes and hockey and football players who have been forgotten. The refusal to acknowledge their condition and make life livable for them is a symptom of how true sport and development of a sports culture have become irrelevant in India.
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We haven’t got the money, so we have got to think! — Ernest Rutherford
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New crops for old Diversification
of agricultural production patterns is the crying need of the intensively-cultivated irrigated areas of the country, specially in the region comprising Punjab, Haryana and Western UP . The Finance Minister of Punjab in his budget speech rightly emphasised the need for a crop adjustment programme (read diversification). Although no road-map has been laid down in the budget, it does show the concern in respect of adverse effects of the intensive rotation of wheat and rice on the depleting underground watertable, deteriorating soil health, degrading agri-ecology, declining factor productivity and squeeze on farm incomes. This, however, is not a new concern. The emphasis on it has been on and off, depending upon the food situation. Since 1985, the state government commissioned two reports on diversification, one submitted in 1986 and the other in 2002. There are several viable alternatives suggested in the report of the committee on “crop adjustment programme for agricultural growth and productivity”, submitted in 2002, yet a lackadaisical approach on the execution of the recommendations has rendered the programme a non-starter. However, the most enthusiastic approach, though with undue haste and misplaced emphasis, has been adopted in respect of citrus plantations as a substitute for wheat and rice rotation. It is not that this alternative is not viable, but the problem lies in the haste with which the untested material is being propagated and planted on an extensive scale. This is bound to prove disastrous for the economy of the areas covered. For citrus plants, it does not take less than seven or eight years to make even a rough judgment of the performance of the plant on yield and quality of fruit and its vulnerability to yearly climatic variations and other biotic and abiotic stresses, although plants may bear some fruit in the third or fourth year of its age. Even in hurry, the plant material for extensive planting should be multiplied after this minimum testing period. It again takes at least five years to obtain some reasonable level of production that would be available for the market or for processing. There is thus a gestation period of at least 12 years before the programme can take its roots. This was explained to the Tropicana and state government agencies involved in the first meeting held in 2003. Yet, in their wisdom, no heed has been paid to these aspects. At present, some 17 varieties of citrus are under trial at five locations in Punjab. This is only the fourth year of plants age. At Abohar eight entries retained between zero to five fruits per plant, at Attari 10 varieties between zero to seven fruits and at Jallowal no variety retained more than seven fruits. It is only at Gangian and Khanaura that performance is comparatively better. Here, too, the varieties already recommended by PAU have performed better. Yet these are table varieties, not the ones meant for processing. Kinnow has out-performed all other varieties at every location. Yet Kinnow is a table purpose fruit. The new varieties that have reasonable number of fruits do not have enough juice and are hence not suitable for processing. These plants have to be, therefore, watched for at least three or four more years before they can be reasonably assessed for their yield and quality for processing. To multiply the plant material based on these trials, it would be a totally unwise and amateurish approach. The disquietening aspect of the programme is that implementers of the programme claim that they have successfully tested and released 10 varieties of citrus plants for plantation in the state. They claim that they have already planted more than 1500 acres under these varieties and have a target of planting 10,000 acres during 2007-08. They have a target of producing four lakh plants every year. One wonders which 10 varieties they have successfully tested in the fourth year of age of the plants and with what material they have already planted more than 1500 acres of land! It has been possible to plant this untested doubtful material on an extensive scale simply because the government has leased in land from the farmers for 12 years at an average rate of Rs 10,000 per acre per annum with the provision to return the mature garden to the farmer after 12 years. The total stake here is of the government, Whether they earn enough income or not out of these plantations in 12 years to meet the costs incurred is totally the risk of the state government. On the one hand, this unscientific and unduly hasty approach is going to cost the state heavily, and by the time the gardens are handed over and reality dawns on the government, the perpetrators of this infliction on the state exchequer may not be in their present positions for accountability, and the farmers finding the orchards uneconomical to operate may have to uproot the orchards. It is, thus, no less than a serious economic crime being committed on the agricultural economy of the state. One can appreciate the hurry on the part of implementers of the programme, yet hurry too takes time! The programme implementers should not play so lightly with the destiny of the farmers in the name of urgency for the diversification of production patterns. It would have been better to encourage and promote kinnow plantations till suitable material is identified and multiplied in respect of processable oranges. Kinnow can effectively replace the wheat-rice rotation with much higher returns and a healthy impact on agricultural ecology of the state. There are already more than 30,000 hectares of land under kinnow in the state and with a little more effort, the area can be easily expanded to 50,000 hectares in less than five years. It should not be difficult to cover up to two lakh hectares under kinnow in the long run. On an average, kinnow is yielding 15 tonnes of fruit at present with an income of Rs 75,000 per acre in the Kandi belt, and the yield can be increased to 30 tonnes and the income to Rs 1.5 lakh per acre with the adoption of the available improved technology and adoption of the recommended cultural practices. This requires a little more investment in extension work through the employment of an adequate number of extension workers and improving their mobility in the field. The state needs to introduce European standard good agricultural practices (Euro-GAP) and Good Trade Practices (GTP), as well as the Traceability System to make the fruit readily acceptable in the European market. This can easily double the incomes of the kinnow growers. One has to keep in mind that even if the processable orange plantation is expanded, the orchardists should never be allowed to become a captive market of the processing factories. Studies in the US have shown that the orchard owners who produce oranges for table purposes and sell in the open market, get two and a half times more income than the producers who produce for the processing plants. Yet they have no alternative till they uproot the orchards and replant their own. The situation is not that simple as is being projected in a totally unprofessional manner. One wonders what is that which is driving the programme implementers to such an uncalled for hurry that may land the state and the farmers involved into huge financial losses, and the time lost as well as the setback to the willingness of the farmers to participate in even absolutely healthy programmes initiated by the sate in the
future.
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Jamuna in free flow THE free-flowing Jamuna seemed to be at my beck and call throughout the day. Early in the morning when I craved for my cup of “nimbu-Pani” she promptly served me when the butler was not around there. Daily, a massive support for me to climb down the uneven stairs leading to the garden. Whenever I felt an urge for a cup of tea while strolling in the sunny garden, it reached me in a jiffy. At her echoing call, the chairs, table and hot cups of coffee were promptly brought to us by the household staff. The Sangam of genuine Jamuna and nicknamed “Ganga”, my hard-working and efficient daughter-in-law, provided elixir of life to the aged parents-in-law, Mother and elderly Aunt. Both of them spared no action to fulfil our individual needs. Our personal food-habits and fancy for any local delicacy were promptly attended to. Climbing down at racing speed all the steps up to the gate at least 4-5 times a day, she went to the market at least twice a day to fulfil our needs. Jamuna had green fingers and she turned the whole estate into a fairyland with multi-coloured flowers sprouting from every nook and corner of the farm. With the help of her colleague-cum-husband, Raja Ram, working whole-time at the farm, she saw to it that damaged stairs were repaired and new paths laid to make our stay comfortable. My son and daughter-in-law ordered dozens of new varieties of plants so that the skilled hands of Jamuna multiply them by the dozen by the time the family visits the farm next. Back to helicopter, it was a strange experience. Reaching Nainital both my husband and myself felt the need to visit the toilet. The climb from that spot to the helipad was quite a stiff one. I had to be carried on a chair. Gauri in her traditionally best clothes was to provide me moral support when I felt utterly ridiculous being carried on a chair. Three days after this remarkable holiday, I got my blood-test done. Amazing! Hemoglobin dropped from devastatingly high 15.4 per gm to 12.9, cholesterol goes down from 214 to 171! Is it because of the blessings of this Daughter of
Mountains!
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Mohd. Zahir Shah’s legacy squandered The
death last week, at 92, of the former king of Afghanistan, Mohammed Zahir Shah, is yet another sad loss on Afghan soil this year. Zahir Shah’s 40-year reign is remembered for promoting women’s rights, bringing democracy in the form of a constitutional monarchy and providing Afghanistan’s longest modern period of peace. But 34 years after he was overthrown in a bloodless coup for allowing these political and social reforms to stall, the heartbreaking fact is that progress is once again stalling in Afghanistan, and a peaceful death of old age is a luxury few Afghans will experience. Although he died at home as the “father of the nation,” Zahir Shah’s shortcomings offer a lesson that neither Afghanistan nor the United States can afford to ignore. Just because a nation sets out on a positive path does not mean that freedom and progress are inevitable. Indeed, it is all too easy for political and social gains to slip away, in the absence of a concerted effort to maintain them. I was back in Kabul this month for my sixth visit, 51/2 years after the touted defeat of the Taliban, and – contrary to the popular notion that only the provinces are in peril – the city felt markedly less secure and hopeful than it had during my first trip, in June 2002. Then, I had found a country physically destroyed but a people optimistic for the prospects offered by a life newly freed of Taliban oppression. In those first months and years, women took the brave steps of rejoining public life; male and female students returned to newly reopened schools to catch up on education interrupted by Taliban restrictions, economic hardship and refugee life; and everyone dreamed of a reborn Afghanistan and renewed economic opportunities rising from infrastructure, roads and buildings constructed with promised international assistance. This summer, I traveled regularly over the busy city thoroughfare where a rush-hour Taliban bus bombing days earlier had killed 35 police recruits and civilians. Police and soldiers with automatic weapons now stand in the middle of traffic lanes, scanning for suspicious vehicles, and children – particularly girls – have been removed from schools by fearful parents after 550 schools were destroyed or closed by insurgent violence just this year. But it’s not only Taliban and other radicals who threaten the lives of ordinary Afghans. At the end of June, the Associated Press reported that the 178 civilians killed to that point this year by insurgent attacks were surpassed by the 203 killed by US and NATO forces. Such “carelessness,” as President Hamid Karzai termed it, gives the Taliban more ammunition in the battle for Afghan sympathies and makes US “liberation” look like a political game the Bush administration is losing. Yet military violence isn’t the only cause of needless death that Afghan civilians fear. Despite millions of dollars in aid promised by the international community, Afghanistan remains a country in which most people lack access to clean drinking water, proper sanitation, electricity and basic medical care. The unemployment rate is 40 percent, the mean life expectancy is 45, 1 in 5 children doesn’t live to age 5, and 1 in 9 women dies in pregnancy or childbirth. Nearly 50 years after Zahir Shah made veiling voluntary and opened new educational and occupational opportunities to women, being a woman is arguably one of the greatest risk factors in Afghanistan. The U.N. Development Fund for Women calls violence against women there “endemic,” and Afghan women largely find no protection from police, the legal or justice systems or even their own families. The story I heard from a woman I’ll call Asima is not unlike those of other Afghan women I’ve interviewed over the years. Married forcibly at age 16 to a relative stranger who offered a large bride-price to her poor father, Asima spent the next four years being abused by her husband, who would beat her with electrical cords and then pour scalding tea on her wounds. Knowing she would be blamed for causing his violence and that her family would be dishonored if she left the marriage, she withstood his abuse until she was sure the entire community, including her in-laws and father, could not deny his abuse was unjustifiable. But as I talked to her in a Kabul woman’s shelter, she feared for her life from her husband. He was released from jail because no one had taken her side when he told the police and a judge that he’d done nothing more than slap her around a bit. Just before Zahir Shah’s ouster for not moving his promised reforms forward, Louis Dupree, author of a widely cited text on Afghanistan, incorrectly predicted: “The modernization cannot be stopped, only the direction and rate of the changes can be affected by subsequent governments.” Little did he or anyone know at the time what was in store for Afghanistan. But the lesson to be learned is that empty promises, stalled change and inattentiveness can have dire consequences for countries and peoples. Dying peacefully in one’s bed of old age should not be a privilege reserved for royalty. In the absence of care, focus and constant effort, progress is not the inevitable course of history. The writer is director of the gender studies program at the By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
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Turtle trouble for Tatas Environmentalists say Tata Steel’s plan to build what has been described as a “mega-port” at Dhamra on the coast of Orissa threatens to
jeopardise the habitat of the Olive Ridley turtles, which breed on nearby beaches at the Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary. The sanctuary is one of just a handful of such sites in the world and every year more than 100,000 Olive Ridley turtles nest there. “The port will be just [seven miles] from the beach...but Tata is very powerful. You can say they are in full control,” said Biswajit Mohanty of the Wildlife Society of Orissa. The proposed port is just one of several threats to the Olive Ridley turtle on the east coast of India. Earlier this year it was revealed that thousands of turtles were washing up on the beaches of Orissa having been caught up by the nets of illegal trawlers and drowned. Greenpeace estimates that around 120,000 turtles have been washed up in the last 12 years, though the possible number of turtles killed could be considerably higher. A total of 8,000 carcasses have come ashore since November. Though the turtles technically have the same level of protection as tigers, environmentalists – as well as local, traditional fishermen – accuse the government of doing little to confront the illegal trawlermen, who by law should remain 12 miles from the coast. The impact on the turtles has already been seen at the Gahirmatha sanctuary. Mr Mohanty said that while 230,000 turtles nested there in 2006, this year the total was just 140,000. And things could yet get worse. The turtles’ new threat comes in the form of a massive port that will be one of the biggest in South Asia, covering a total around 4,000 acres. Tata Steel, part of the Tata Group, first unveiled its blueprint for the project almost 10 years ago and it said it intends to start construction of the port soon. Built jointly with another Indian company, the port will handle an estimated 80m tonnes of cargo per annum when completed. In addition to its proximity to the breeding grounds at Gahirmatha, the port site is barely three miles from Bhitarkanika Sanctuary, a World Heritage Site. Campaigners say the proposals for the site have always been mired in controversy. They say the land for the port site was originally due to be included within the Bhitarkanika sanctuary when plans were drawn up in 1988. Ten years later the state government instructed that the area of land be removed from the proposed sanctuary area and just five months after that state government asked the federal authorities for their approval for the port. Sanjiv Gopal, oceans campaigner for Greenpeace, said: “This is close to one of the largest sea turtle grounds in India, one of just [a handful] of places around the world - the others are in Mexico and Costa Rica. From a purely ecological view this is one of Mother Nature’s wonders. There is enough common sense and science to say that [the port] needs to be relocated.” An environmental assessment commissioned by Greenpeace and carried out by Professor Sushil Dutta, also found that the coastline around Dhamra contained a large population of horseshoe crabs as well as rare frog and snake species which had never before been recorded on mainland India. No-one from Tata was available for comment but Santosh Mohapatra, CEO of the port company, previously told Tehelka magazine “We have taken clearance from the Ministry of Forest and Environment. Work on the port will start very soon.” By arrangement with
The Independent
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Delhi Durbar
Serious
civil aviation industry watchers are viewing the merger of Indian and Air India and the arrival of a new fleet of aircraft as a fresh beginning in the country’s booming aviation sector; for many it was a fit occasion to celebrate and pop the bubbly. And the movers and shakers in the merged new entity are doing so in style. After the mandatory politically correct function in Delhi, where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was the chief guest, the venue shifted to Mumbai. A special troupe of singers and dancers was flown in from Broadway for the grand occasion and the grapevine has it that members of the Parliamentary consultative committee, attached to the civil aviation ministry,
were also transported to Mumbai – ostensibly for a meeting. But naturally, they stayed on to celebrate.
Kanimozhi's rapport building
DMK Chief and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi may keep denying that his daughter Kanimozhi will not be appointed a Central minister, but his poetess-turned-politician
daughter may just be biding her time. Kanimozhi, who took oath as a Rajya Sabha member last week, has already started making moves to establish a rapport with top political correspondents of national dailies, which can prove useful in the coming years. She is understood to have drawn up a list of political correspondents and is trying to meet them in person. She is grounding this ‘rapport building’ exercise with a regional focus. Kanimozhi has apparently started by meeting Tamil speaking journalists first and will subsequently enlarge the list to
include the others. As they say, communication is power.
Soft spot for sarkari babus It is often said that politicians never retire. But the same could also apply to bureaucrats, certainly those who the rulers believe have done well in their job. Even before they demit office, they are invariably given another official assignment. In fact, the joke in babudom is that an official spends his last year in office lobbying for a
post-retirement slot. Outgoing defence secretary Shekhar Dutt is the latest to join this growing tribe of babus. His appointment as deputy national security advisor was announced several days before he retired. Similarly, outgoing Cabinet secretary B.K.Chaturvedi was accommodated in the Planning Commission. Earlier, the previous foreign secretary Shyam Saran was given a special slot in the Prime Minister’s Office. Being a former bureaucrat himself, PM Manmohan Singh apparently has a soft spot for sarkari babus. Contributed by Girija Shankar Kaura, S. Satyanarayanan and Anita Katyal
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