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No to biofuels Weighty matters |
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Pawar at play Yearning for the IPL evenings THE good thing about Sharad Pawar is that he is a man of many interests. Unlike most politicians, he does not have a one-track mind. This is not to say that he is not single-minded when he takes up an issue or cause and sees it to its logical conclusion.
Taliban’s survival
My birthday
Elusive change Punjab farmer needs to be rewarded
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No to biofuels WHAT have been rumbles of protest against biofuels have now been transformed into a positive growl. Developed countries are on the defensive, while many nations, including India, have made their reservations about using crops for fuel clear, as it impinges on food security. Even a UN report on the eve of the international conference underway in Rome warned that without sensible land-use policies, food security could be affected and “the environmental and social damage could in some cases outweigh the benefits”. US and European countries have been on the forefront in mandating a percentage of biofuels in fuel sold to consumers, and it is believed that this policy has contributed to the food crisis. US officials, on their part, believe that it has contributed less than “three per cent” to the rising commodity prices. Just before rising food prices attained crisis proportions, studies by Princeton University and Nature Conservancy released in February this year pointed out that land use changes necessitated by biofuel policies were actually increasing the “carbon debt”. Experts were warning even in the middle of last year that biofuels could increase world hunger. In fact, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said last October that using fertile land to grow crops for biofuels, instead of food, was a “crime against humanity.” Biofuels are now mainly made from corn, palm oil, and sugarcane. He wanted a five-year ban on the practice and argued that in that time, new technologies would enable viable conversion of agricultural waste into biofuels. This is a route that every country should seriously pursue. India, too, has stressed that biofuel use is a major cause of the food crisis, and not the rising demand from countries like India and China. In any case, the per capita food consumption in these countries is still lower than that of developed countries. Considered along with the fact that biofuels are not going to arrest carbon pollution of the atmosphere, countries should try to evolve international strictures against inappropriate land use. While fossil fuels are a limited resource and their prices are rising as well, burning up crops for fuel makes no sense at all as the world first has to eat.
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Weighty matters THE air hostesses had already lost the battle of the bulge. Now they have lost the battle of the court also and the hope of a reprieve has crash-landed. Five air hostesses who had been grounded for putting on excessive weight had moved the court alleging that the action was arbitrary and illegal. But a bench of the Delhi High Court has dismissed their appeal, saying that there is no unreasonableness or arbitrariness in the decision of Indian Airlines (now Air India) and that grace and concessions are not matters of legal right. While the court has sided with the airlines on the ground that air crew has to be athletic to deal with any emergency and for that he or she has to be in good shape, the job of an air hostess is fairly strenuous even otherwise. Excess weight brings lot many diseases in its wake and such air hostesses cannot do justice to the demands put on them. Then there is also the question of keeping up with the worldwide standards wherein air hostesses have to be not only fit but presentable too. The bulky ones do not present a very good image about the airlines either. But this fitness should not be expected only from air hostesses and air crew. There is need for putting similar conditions on other services also. The foremost is the police force. Many of the cops today sport a paunch. Leave alone catching a thief, they cannot be expected to catch even their breath. They hardly evoke any confidence. The same is the case with firemen who, too, have to be of an athletic build. A recent study revealed that a third of the policemen in Chandigarh are overweight. Out of them, 10 per cent are obese with weight close to, and in some cases exceeding, a quintal. Such policemen can barely defend themselves, leave alone defend the public. But then a recent World Health Organisation study has said that almost 47 per cent of the Indian workforce in industries, mostly in urban areas, is overweight while around 27 per cent suffer from hypertension. Is it that we get policemen and air hostesses that we deserve? |
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Pawar at play THE good thing about Sharad Pawar is that he is a man of many interests. Unlike most politicians, he does not have a one-track mind. This is not to say that he is not single-minded when he takes up an issue or cause and sees it to its logical conclusion. Only the simple-minded rustic, who probably doesn’t watch television, would expect that because he is Agriculture Minister, Mr Pawar will be sitting around in the countryside. No doubt he plays the field, but not necessarily of the agricultural variety alone. It is no secret that he prefers cricket to crops, and his preferred field is the one where, to paraphrase Bernard Shaw’s observation, eleven unflannelled guys play and much more than eleven million watch it on television. The IPL is the best entertainment the country has known and life without the matches is not the same. For several weeks the whole country was riveted on some scintillating cricket. Cynics might say that viewers were stirred more by the gyrations of the cheerleaders than the antics of the willow wielders. Regardless of such minor differences of opinion, we have it now on the authority of none other than Mr Pawar, the BCCI’s big boss, that the end of the IPL matches has left people twiddling their thumbs in the evening. Mr Pawar revealed that people from all over the country are flooding him with SMSs asking how they are to spend their evenings in the absence of the IPL contests. The secret of Mr Pawar’s success is that he knows how to spend his time, and spend it well. It is hard to imagine that he would not know how to spend his evenings. Perhaps, he can offer tips to those who are bereft of an evening activity on what they could do with their time till IPL matches resume. The only catch is that Mr Pawar has to recommend an activity that would win the approval of Health Minister Anbumani
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A man should have the fine point of his soul taken off to become fit for this world. — John Keats
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Taliban’s survival
Despite
the US-led onslaught continuing since October 2001, the Taliban remains a force to be reckoned with in Afghanistan. A few weeks ago the Taliban made an unsuccessful attempt on the life of President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, demolishing the myth of the country's capital being safe from the extremist outfit. The incident that marred the solemnity of the celebrations to mark the 16th year of the mujahideen victory over the Soviet-backed communist regime in Afghanistan proved that the Taliban insurgents can strike their target in any part of the war-torn country. As if this was not enough to unnerve President Karzai, the new government in Pakistan began to enter into "peace" deals with the Taliban. Though the policy was experimented by the previous regime in Islamabad in its efforts to restore order in the South and North Waziristan areas, the PPP-led coalition government has almost reversed the Pervez Musharraf regime's policy of using the armed forces wherever necessary to free the tribal areas from the control of extremist elements like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Islamabad appears to be convinced today that a kid-glove approach may be more effective in establishing peace in Pakistan's tribal areas than the policy that involved massive military operations against militants. There is no realisation in Pakistan that its new policy may make the situation worse in Afghanistan. President Karzai's appeal to the world community (read the US) to force the Pakistan government to abandon its policy of "peace" deals remains almost ignored. Whatever Mr Karzai's problems today, he, too, had offered a fig leaf to the various "moderate" Taliban factions some time ago. He talked of inducting in his government those in the Taliban who undertook to leave the path of violence. He failed where Pakistan seems to have succeeded. Any step that results in strengthening the support base of the Taliban cannot help in eliminating extremism or militancy. What Pakistan is doing will ultimately strengthen the hold of the Taliban particularly over the Pashtun tribes on both sides of the Durand Line. But there are other factors which, too, have been providing sustenance to the extremist movement. A major factor that has helped the Taliban survive the US-led military campaign against its activists is the very nature of agriculture in Afghanistan, a predominantly agrarian nation. The US and its Western allies have spent millions of dollars on encouraging the Afghans to take to the cultivation of fruit, wheat and other such food crops instead of poppy, used in the production of heroin. The Karzai government has prepared an elaborate plan to revive the agriculture sector and make it free from poppy cultivation. It will present a $4 billion plan at a meeting, to be held soon, of the international donors for the reconstruction of Afghanistan. But it will not be easy to convince the donors that the massive injection of funds will make poppy cultivation unpopular in Afghanistan. The country's share in the world's total opium production is as high as 93 per cent. The government claims that this year there will be no poppy cultivation in 20 of the 34 provinces in Afghanistan. Last year 13 provinces were free from the poppy crop. But the crop is as popular as ever in the entire southern Afghanistan, including Helmand province. And 50 per cent of the country's opium production is credited to Helmand, the stronghold of the Taliban. A large part of the income generated through poppy cultivation goes to the extremist movement. Interestingly, the infamous Taliban regime (1996-2001) had brought the opium production in Afghanistan to a negligible level through its coercive tactics. But the same outfit today promotes poppy cultivation in different ways. Besides the Taliban activists, opium traffickers and traders provide as much support to the farmers as cannot be expected from international development agencies. The extremists and private traders provide credit to the poppy farmers on easy terms and also help them in marketing their produce. Russian smugglers play a crucial role in promoting the destructive cause of the Taliban. These smugglers supply the Taliban activists the arms and ammunition they need in exchange for opium, according to a report in the Peshawar-based Frontier Post. The farmers, in fact, do not have to worry about the marketing of the contraband crop. The entire produce is lifted from the farmers' houses or fields by the buyers, and the payment is made with few questions asked. This is contrary to the marketing of wheat or fruit crop. Wheat is the latest addition to the crops grown in Afghanistan. But fruit cultivation has always been one of the preferences of the farmers there. They feel discouraged in going in for fruit and wheat cultivation not only because of unattractive returns compared to that from poppy, but also owing to marketing risks and rampant official corruption. Many times the farmers are robbed of their produce on the way to the market. Widespread poverty has also helped the Taliban in retaining its support base in Afghanistan. Recently a Pakistani newspaper carried a pathetic story of a poor farmer having sold off his young daughter for the survival of the rest of the family members at least for some time. The ordinary Afghans are not happy to see highways coming up in various parts of the country because very few people own motorised vehicles there. They do not understand the significance of highways in promoting trade and industry. The news that 12 new airports will come up in Afghanistan in five years is also unlikely to cheer them up. Their outlook may change when local workers are employed on a large scale by the companies engaged in infrastructure projects. The Afghans are happy only when they see new dispensaries or hospitals, schools and colleges being constructed. Besides these and power and water supply projects, there is need for setting up agriculture-based industries on a large scale. Promotion of such industries may help in controlling poppy cultivation. This can choke the supply of funds to the Taliban, making it difficult to survive in Afghanistan. Promotion of farm-related industrial activity cannot be ignored if the world wants Afghanistan to get rid of the
Taliban.
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My birthday
IT
was common practice in villages in those forgettable days that a pregnant woman was confined to cowshed to give birth to a child. It is a fact that I was born; it is a fact that my dear, dearest mother got pregnant; it is a fact that I was born in a cowshed but it is not a fact that I am a bull by virtue of being born there although Zodiac confers two-horned ‘Taurus’ status upon me. I may be bullheaded or bull in a china shop but no, certainly not, a bull. I am grateful to Mumbai Sensex that they call bull an optimist and I thank my stars that I was not born to Spanish parents, otherwise the place of my delivery would have forced them to send me to one of the 400 rings there where I would have made a pathetic spectacle of myself goring the red rag to the cheers of the thousands. I was born on May 11 and this year my birthday drowned in the celebrations of Mother’s Day. When the bell of the telephone rang, I picked up the receiver, it was my son. He said, “Papa, please give it to Mama.” And then he lavished praise on her Mama that she had the beauty of a spring day, the patience of a saint, the appetite of a small bird and he validated that what he was today was because of her. I really had no objection on what he had said but the President of the country from where he was making the call and his Secretary with name of a staple food in India would have challenged his quote “the appetite of a small bird. Anyway, he winded up the call with words happy birthday to Papa. My daughter started with many happy returns but added that simply having children doesn’t make fathers; father should not restrict himself to the office only, he should also see how the children are growing and doing. She added that God could not be everywhere and therefore He made mothers. Alan Bennett, English playwright and actor, writes that she was going through Waterstone’s Literary Diary which recorded the birthdays of various celebrities. Naturally, she turned to her own birthday; May 9 was blank except for the note: first British Launderette was opened on Queensway, London, 1944. I also tried to find the importance of May 11. The first one was “Buddha smiled again on this day in 1998. India blasted three underground nuclear devices at Pokharan.” My birthday since then is called Technology Day. The other great thing that had happened on my birthday was Princess Margaret had unveiled an odd monument Man with two Hats in Ottawa in 2002. The great artist who was born on the date was Salvador Dali who had said, “There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.” Blast, oddity and madness are associated with all May 11ites. Happy
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Elusive change ONE hates to be a curmudgeon this brave June dawn, when everything seems possible, and the most dazzling new political talent America had seen in a generation has pulled off a quite astonishing triumph, against all the odds. It’s not just that, after the most enthralling and exciting primary season in memory, he is the first African-American to win the nomination of a major party. He has drawn millions of new voters into the political process. Thanks to a canny strategy, brilliant organisation, and above all an astonishing ability to inspire, he has bested the Clinton double-act that has dominated the Democratic Party for the best part of two decades. Make no mistake, this was an upset for the ages. But Obama (and this is one of his great strengths) is also a realist. He knows full well that if the battle thus far has been tough, it’s going to get even tougher. And others know it too. Like it or not, there’s also a whiff of buyers’ remorse in the air. The phenomenon is understandable enough. A protracted contest was always going to prompt some second thoughts among voters. Inevitably, it has exposed the flaws and weaknesses of every candidate. The Obama of today is not the unsullied, Messiah-like figure who at one point reeled off a dozen straight wins against Hillary Clinton. He is visibly tired, he has made his share of gaffes. To be sure, his victory speech after the final primaries was the spell-binding Obama of old (a mixture of Martin Luther King and JFK, with a hint of Abraham Lincoln, enthused one CNN commentator). But that oratorical pedigree could not disguise the fact that he has limped over the finish line, having won only six of the last 14 primaries. Small wonder Clinton finds it so hard to admit defeat. “Losing by a landslide is easy,” a senior Democrat commented the other day, “what’s tough is losing by a whisker.” Obama has been placed under scrutiny – albeit belatedly. Even so, with barely three years service in the Senate (and much of that spent on the campaign trail), he remains an unproven quality. In his duel with Clinton, he has shown a worrying inability to win the big swing states, especially the quartet of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan, two of which at least Democrats must win to capture the White House, under whatever combination of electoral college arithmetic you choose. Much has been made of Obama’s appeal to Republicans and independent voters. The plain fact is that right now there are as many, if not more, “McCain-ocrats” – Democrats likely to cross over to John McCain – as there are “Obama-cans”, especially among blue-collar whites in states like, yes, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. At this opening moment of the general election campaign, Obama must be counted favourite to win in November. Indeed, no Democratic candidate worth his salt would not be. Republicans go into this election saddled with a lousy economy, an unpopular war, an even more unpopular incumbent President, and an unprecedented number of Americans who believe the country is heading in the wrong direction. Even so, McCain is within striking distance in the national polls. The least of Obama’s tasks is what to do about Hillary, introduced by her campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, as “the next president of the United States” hours after Obama had publicly secured more than enough to guarantee him the party’s nomination, beyond even the obfuscatory powers of Clintonian semantics. What the lady wants is a matter for speculation. Is it the vice-presidency, a special mandate to reform health care, or both, or something else entirely? One must presume, that despite her refusal in New York on Tuesday evening to so much as breathe the word “concede”, she will quietly acknowledge defeat in the next few days. But you can’t be sure. No wonder many Obama supporters fear that she (and/or Bill) has some last trick up her sleeve that would snatch the nomination away. My own guess is that they don’t, it’s just that the Clintons find it harder than most to admit defeat. Even so, the odds probably are that, at the end of the day, Obama will not put her on the ticket. But assume that the Clinton issue is resolved, and that at a choreographed and triumphant convention Obama is proclaimed the nominee by acclamation, much as was Walter Mondale in 1984, after a battle with challenger Gary Hart that was almost as fierce and as close as the one this year. Even having re-united the party, the nominee still would be vulnerable. There is, for one thing, his liberal record. The set-piece speeches to huge audiences at which he excels tend to be long on platitudinous idealism, but short on specifics. But if McCain is more conservative than he lets on, Obama is more liberal. Indeed, as Republicans gleefully point out, his voting record since 2005 is the most liberal in the Senate. Already he is tacking to the centre. The flag pin, that emblem of “patriotism” once conspicuous by its absence from the Obama lapel, is once again in evidence. He now ends his speeches with a rousing “God Bless America”. And tellingly, on the very morrow of his triumph, there he was at a conference proclaiming a presidential contender’s obligatory fealty to the state of Israel. Yes America by its own standards is moving leftward. But is it ready for Obama’s liberalism, especially when set against the military hero appeal of John McCain? Even more fundamental, is America ready for a black president? This is the supreme unanswerable of a general election campaign that will be as fascinating as the Democratic primary contest that has just ended. The polls, eliciting only what people say, not what they think, are no guide. If America is not ready, then all of Obama’s capacity to inspire, all his message of change, will count for nothing. If it is ready, then he will win, and maybe by a landslide.
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Punjab farmer needs to be rewarded AFTER a bumper crop and a contribution of 10.3 million tonnes of wheat to the central pool, almost 50 per cent of the total procurement of 20.7 million tonnes so far, the farmers of Punjab have once again proved their worth and importance for national food security. Considering the fact that Punjab has only 2.5 per cent of the land area and 2.1 per cent of the total population of the country, this contribution is not small by any standards. Out of the total 160 million hectares of operational land holdings in the country, the farmer of Punjab cultivates just 9.97 lakh hectares, a mere 0.6 per cent. The Punjab farmer is performing this feat since the late sixties and now 40 years down the lane, the net result of his toil is there for all to see. He has landed himself in a debt trap, been forced to sell his food-producing land to land sharks or greedy money lenders, spoil the health of the land with overdoses of pesticides and fertilisers, and to deplete underground water. Thousands of farmers have committed suicide. This he has done for a nation whose policy makers seem to be in deep slumber, when it comes to the core issues of farmers and remunerative prices. The most recent “reward” was a circular by a leading bank of the nation refusing loans for farming equipment on the count that they incur high volumes of non-performing assets (NPA) in this segment. In our country, when a cricket team returns after a T-20 win or a tennis player brings in a silver or bronze, he or she is showered with bounty in crores. Has somebody ever spared a thought for those who feed these performers, who provide them with the basic body fuel in the form of food, fruits, milk and meat? The food producer in our country has always lived in penury while the processor has been minting money with only a small value addition. Food security is vital for a nation and developed countries like the US use it as a strategic weapon against developing countries and have armtwisted many of them in the past. Our policy makers have forgotten perhaps, how during the food crisis of the sixties, our PM was made to wait outside the office of the then US president for hours, just to make us realise how much it costs to gift a few granules to a hungry lot. It was only after this humiliation that the country seriously thought about giving priority to this crucial sector and laid the foundations of the green revolution. The nation harvested rich dividends and famine-like conditions became a thing of the past. But after four decades of hard work, the condition of the Punjab farmer has deteriorated. In the meantime, many industrialists, with the active help of government policies and liberal banking, have become billionaires and have made the Forbes 500 list. Today, the younger generation is highly calculative and considers the value of future returns. The unprofitable, uncomfortable and unreliable sector of agriculture is forcing the younger generation to opt out of this activity. In this era, the relationship with things, people, places and professions is becoming temporary. The era of cheap food is going to be over sooner than later. Considering this massive contribution of this sturdy fellow of Punjab, it is now the turn of the government to reciprocate by remunerating him fairly and ensuring proper infrastructure and banking. He definitely deserves a pat on the back and a package as a motivation to keep his relationship with the profession. Otherwise, the day will come when corporate giants dominate the business of food production in large farms, and the same wheat and rice shall not be available even at triple of the prevailing prices. The time has come when the government needs to think seriously about food production and provide funds for repairing and replenishing the farming infrastructure in the state and to make a second green revolution a reality. The nation should salute the farmer in the true spirit of ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’, a slogan which has lost relevance over a period of time. Both are in despair today due to shabby treatment meted out to them. Let the government take a serious view of things, since it is a matter of both internal as well as external security of the country. |
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Delhi Durbar Will the petrol price hike bail out the BJP’s beleaguered Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, who is facing a rebellion from his own partymen? The BJP parliamentary board met on Tuesday to discuss this lingering crisis but chose to defer a decision. The grapevine has it that the BJP is hoping that the Government’s inevitable announcement of a steep hike in petrol prices will predictably lead to such an outcry that it will drown out all other issues. The feeling is that if the party had taken a decision on Sushil Kumar Modi, it would have robbed itself of the opportunity to criticise the UPA government on the petrol hike. In such a case, the media would have ignored its opposition to the hike and highlighted the Modi issue instead. Whether this will actually bail out Modi and for how long is anyone’s guess. Cruising along As India Inc makes giant strides abroad with major acquisitions and mergers, there is one person who is also contributiing to the country’s global image on his own. Noted yoga guru, Swami Ramdev, already known in the country for creating a revolution with his yoga techniques, has now started on “yoga cruises”. After a recent yoga cruise in East Asia, he has now taken about a thousand-odd people with him to China on a cruise, teaching them yoga on board. His next stop beyond Indian shores is said to be the United States and Canada later this year, where he will conduct five-day camps in Los Angeles, Houston and Washington DC, which are expected to be attended by over 2,000 persons everyday. Election mode With Delhi headed for elections later this year, politicans have gone into overdrive to showcase the achievements of the UPA and Sheila Dikshit governments. And they are grabbing every opportunity coming their way for this purpose. The metro section between Shahdara and Dilshad Garden was recently inaugurated by urban development minister Jaipal Reddy while the function for the inauguration of the Dilshad Garden metro station was attended by Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit, Congress MP Sandeep Dikshit and Delhi tourism minister Haroon Yusuf. This is a far cry from earlier such inaugural functions, which have been low-profile affairs, with officials instead of politicians being called to do the honours. Tribal affairs The Gujjar controversy has the tribal affairs ministry officials running for cover. Confused over the government’s stand on the issue and aware of its own limitations in the matter, ministry officials were desperate to avoid a direct contact with the media. Some of them went to the extent of instructing personal staff “against giving appointments to journalists.” The new minister of state for tribal affairs Rameshwar Uraon was so wary of commenting on the sensitive issue that he switched off his cell the moment journalists began contacting him for insight. “I myself need a briefing,” he declared
Contributed by Faraz Ahmad, Girja Shankar Kaura, Vibha Sharma and Aditi Tandon |
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