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Advantage
Mayawati Terror
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Doctored
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A monsoon truce
Precious
possessions
Comeback of coal World warned over
killer flu pandemic, again Delhi Durbar
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Advantage Mayawati WHATEVER be the outcome of the trust vote in Parliament on Tuesday, one thing is clear. It is UP Chief Minister and Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati who has got the maximum mileage out of the political instability prevailing at the Centre. It is to her that the disgruntled elements on both sides of the nuclear divide flock. By her masterly stroke of withdrawing support to the Manmohan Singh government, she energised the Opposition forcing CPM leader Prakash Karat to meet her. What’s more, even former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda and a one-time Prime Minister-aspirant Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party find nothing embarrassing in professing acceptance of her leadership. In the event the Third Front idea clicks with most of the non-Congress and non-BJP parties, few doubt that she will be the leader of the Front. Some Left leaders have already mentioned Ms Mayawati’s name as the next Prime Minister. Of course, those who had laughed at her when she openly professed her desire of becoming the first Dalit Prime Minister would have by now realised that her ambition is no longer a laughing matter. In less than a fortnight, her leadership has gained greater pan-Indian acceptance. The media focus on the UP Chief Minister is just a reflection of the metamorphosis her stature has undergone in such a short period. It cannot be gainsaid that her ascendance is in direct proportion to the decline in the stature of Leader of Opposition Lal Krishna Advani. It is not difficult to understand why the BJP leader has not emerged as the rallying point for all those opposed to the UPA government. This is because they all know that the BJP’s opposition to the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal is not at all convincing. If the talks the BJP’s Jaswant Singh had with US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott during the Vajpayee regime are anything to go by, the BJP could have conceded even more to the US. In fact, the BJP was the first to talk about forging a strategic partnership with the US. Many in the party do not find the deal an issue on which it should bring down the UPA government. Small wonder that the BJP stands exposed in the nuclear debate. And if it defeats the government, the party will merely play into the hands of Ms Mayawati, who alone stands to gain from the development.
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True magnanimity consists not in never falling but in rising each time we fall. — Oliver Goldsmith
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Precious possessions He
was a distinguished civil service administrator in one of the princely states. But what he was popularly remembered by and even revered for, was his sense of fair play, honesty and integrity. There was one practice from his daily routine which often crops up, during conversation to this day, among octogenarians from that princely state. The Nazim Sahib (the designation a District Collector-cum-Magistrate was known by) had a spacious table in his study at home. The pending office files were neatly arranged on the table, each afternoon. Electricity had yet to reach out to the mofussil towns. So there were two fat candles arranged on either edge of the study table. And a separate matchbox to go with each candle. When the sun dipped, the Jemadar (seniormost peon) would tip-toe into the study and light the candle on the left edge of the table. When the last file was disposed of, it was time for the Nazim Sahib to turn to the two sporting magazines “The Field” and “Country Life” or to a work of fiction or a biography. At this stage the Jemadar would promptly light the candle on the right edge and put out the one on the left. For, the left candle was provisioned through public money and the other, from the Nazim’s personal salary! When he was promoted and posted to the secretariat he was given several farewells. It was on the final function that the Jemadar walked up and with full decorum of the Nazim’s office gifted to him the last candle retrieved from the left edge of the study table! Now 60 years later, that three quarter length of a candle is proudly displayed by the family as a symbol of rectitude and memento from the bygone times. Perhaps his most precious possession was one shotgun in his collection. He was a votary of the field-sports, pig-sticking, show-jumping and taking after game birds. Shooting a game bird always on the wings and “clean” was his passion. Possessing a custom-built shotgun from a leading British gunsmith was his dream. He succeeded in his passion and came close to attaining his dream. It was a claim close to a boast of this civil administrator that he gained proficiency in the English language by reading The Statesman from cover to cover daily. So the notice of an urgent sale of a shotgun in 1964(?) was at once spotted and promptly followed up. The manufacturers of the gun, its balance, the detachable side-locks and the stock of walnut wood were an exquisitely packaged “dream”. But no self-respecting civil servant had twenty thousand rupees to his credit in the bank in those days. Never mind, a few acres of the ancestral farm land were sold and the dream realised! He would pick up the gun frequently, slide open the side-locks and sit mesmerised looking at its delicately gold-plated trigger mechanism. The gun acted like the single focal-point for effortlessly slipping into a yogic trance. And he never tired of it all his life. A chance meeting in 1978 with a group of five young Britons in Ladakh was to reveal the true significance of this gun deal during our conversation. The honourable editor of The Statesman, Delhi (Mr Charleston, I think), “fell hopelessly in love with an Amrita Shergill painting”, said his daughter. To acquire this precious possession he simply had to part with another from his life. A few more corroborating facts and we were able to nail down beyond reasonable doubt the identity of both the seller and the buyer of that gun, drinking tea from a stall on the left bank of the Indus, outside the Alchi monastery. Indeed, happy are the ways of providential encounters with strangers! The young lady and my wife spontaneously and tenderly put an arm around each other’s waist. The memory of that moment is yet another precious
possession.
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Comeback of coal ALBANIA, Colombia – Its gray and black walls stretching to infinity, Latin America’s largest coal mine resembles a miniature Grand Canyon. The big difference is that the timeless hand of nature has not carved out El Cerrejon mine. Booming global demand has. A fleet of electric shovels runs 24 hours a day scooping up 50 tons of coal at a swipe. The rock is then loaded onto 100-car trains that roll nine times a day to a private Caribbean port, where it is placed on cargo ships that deliver it to power plants in Chile, the Netherlands, Japan, the U.S. Eastern Seaboard and elsewhere. As the global price of oil and natural gas soar, some customers are taking a new look at other fuels – including coal. And countries including China and India, whose demand is helping push the price of petroleum, need even more energy. Besides petroleum products, they are buying vast amounts of coal, as well. The worldwide demand for oil has its own set of environmental consequences – drilling in pristine areas where it previously was uneconomical and continued emission of greenhouse gases. But environmentalists warn that renewed reliance on coal takes the threat to another level. “Growing coal use threatens nothing less than the end of civilization as we know it,” said Henry Henderson, the Chicago-based Midwest director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Low in acid-rain-causing sulfur and inexpensive to produce, Colombia’s coal has always been coveted. These days, El Cerrejon and half a dozen other major mines in the region are booming. Energy & Mines Minister Hernan Martinez says Colombia’s shipments will rise to 80 million tons this year, 10 percent more than last year and double the amount just five years ago. The value of Colombia’s coal exports in 2008 will surpass $5 billion, up 40 percent from last year and 10 times what it was six years ago, a reflection of the increased price. Coal has more than doubled in price to $100 a ton in a year. China added more coal-burning power plants in 2007 than Britain has built in its history, said Gerard McCloskey, a coal market specialist with Cambridge Energy Research Associates in London. Only a few years ago, China was exporting the equivalent of Colombia’s current annual exports. But by next year, the U.S. Department of Energy forecasts, it will become a net importer. Similarly, Russia and Poland are keeping much of the coal they once exported. Prices also have been driven up by flooded mines in Australia and a hike in global shipping rates. Still, generating energy from coal costs one-third as much as from natural gas in Japan, and half to two-thirds as much in Britain, McClosky said. According to John Dean, coal energy consultant with Global Insight, a research company in Frederick, Md., those favorable economics have persuaded several U.S. utilities to build new or expanded coal-fired power plants. Probably the largest project is Duke Energy’s two coal-fired generation plants in Cliffside, N.C., which by 2012 will produce 1,600 megawatts of energy – more than the output of the San Onofre nuclear power plant near San Clemente, Calif. By 2030, about 54 percent of all U.S. electric power will be coal-fired, up from the current 48 percent, according to the National Mining Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group. Environmentalists and consumer advocates warn of the consequences. Of longer-term concern are the effects on climate change. Coal-fired power generation and manufacturing is the leading source of carbon dioxide and methane emissions, which scientists agree are the leading contributors to the so-called “greenhouse effect” and global warming. Two environmental advocacy groups, Greenpeace and Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, have called for a moratorium on new coal-fired plants until a feasible means of mitigating coal’s carbon dioxide emissions can be put in place. Kate Smolski, legislative coordinator with Greenpeace in Washington, D.C., said that although all fossil fuels contribute to global warming, coal is the “dirtiest, emitting double the carbon dioxide per energy unit produced, compared with natural gas.” A mid-sized coal mine that produces 500 megawatts of energy, the amount of electricity consumed by 500,000 families, will churn out as much carbon dioxide a year as half a million cars, according to the NRDC. Located in sparsely populated northern Colombia, the El Cerrejon mine, rail line and port were built in the late 1970s by Exxon according to U.S. standards. El Cerrejon generally has been credited with being environmentally kind, as coal mines go. The owners say they are making an effort to reclaim the areas stripped by planting trees and pasture, predicting that they will be habitable decades from now when the coal is gone. But other areas of Colombia, particularly the historic port city of Santa Marta and its surrounding beach areas, are suffering spills and barge sinkings, which have damaged fishing and tourism along the country’s Caribbean coast. The government is requiring all mines to use direct loading systems like El Cerrejon’s by 2010, but some in the industry say the goal is unrealistic. For now, Colombia is reaping a windfall. Known for legal exports such as coffee, bananas and oil as well as illegal tonnage of cocaine, it quietly has become a world player in coal, ranking fourth among exporters behind Indonesia, Australia and Russia. El Cerrejon’s owners are considering investing $600 million in a second docking facility at Puerto Bolivar and a major expansion of its railroad line. The Colombian government is sharing the wealth. “The industry invested billions of dollars in an area of Colombia where there was once nothing, and it’s paid off,” Martinez said. By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
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World warned over killer flu pandemic, again The
world is failing to guard against the inevitable spread of a devastating flu pandemic which could kill 50 million people and wreak massive disruption around the globe, the British Government has warned. In evidence to the UK’s House of Lords committee, ministers said that early warning systems for spotting emerging diseases were “poorly co-ordinated” and lacked “vision” and “clarity”. They said that more needed to be done to improve detection and surveillance for potential pandemics and called for urgent improvement in rapid-response strategies. The Government’s evidence appeared in a highly critical report from the Lords Intergovernmental Organisations Committee, which attacked the World Health Organisation (WHO) as “dysfunctional” and criticised the international response to the threat of an outbreak of disease which could sweep across the globe. The Government said: “While there has not been a pandemic since 1968, another one is inevitable.” Ministers said it would could kill between two and 50 million people worldwide and that such an outbreak would leave up to 75,000 people dead in Britain and cause “massive” disruption. Peers joined ministers calling for urgent action to build up early warning systems across the Third World that can identify and neutralise outbreaks of potentially deadly new strains of disease before they are swept across the globe by modern trade and travel. Peers also called for new action to monitor animal diseases, warning of the potentially disastrous effects of conditions such as the H5N1 bird flu virus jumping to humans and demanded that Britain step up funding for the WHO to tackle the threat. International tourist journeys are now reaching 800 million a year, giving unprecedented potential for epidemics to spread across borders, and many cities rapidly growing in developing countries, which would provide “fertile ground” to spread disease. Peers on the committee warned that conditions such as Sars, avian influenza and ebola “have the potential to cause rapid and devastating sickness and death across much of the world if they are not detected and checked in time”. Their report said: “We have been warned that an influenza pandemic is overdue and that when – rather than if – it comes the effects could be devastating, particularly if the strain of the virus should be of the H5N1 variety that has been seen in south-east Asia in recent years. “While much progress has been made in the past 10 years in improving global surveillance and response systems, much remains to be done if we are to detect new strains of the virus and counter them before they have had the chance to spread.” The report called for a fundamental overhaul of the WHO’s regional offices around the world. “Given the threats to global health that we face from newly emerging infectious diseases, a dysfunctional organisational structure within the world’s principal policy-making, standard-setting and surveillance body simply cannot be afforded.” A government briefing given to the committee warned: “Not all countries have the resources or capacities to put in place a seasonal influenza vaccination policy and, in the event of an influenza pandemic, it is also recognised that current stock will not meet world-wide demand. “There needs to be an improvement to rapid response strategies in poorer, more vulnerable, countries.” Ministers warned that there was “no agreed vision or clarity over roles” among the international bodies working in the field. Lord Soley, the committee’s chairman, welcomed efforts to guard against a flu pandemic but warned: “They are not good enough. We have a pandemic twice every century. If something developed in a country with a developed healthcare system you would stop it and stop it before it went round the world. You cannot have that confidence about the developing world,” it warned. Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrats’ health spokesman, likened the threat from a pandemic to the threat of international terrorism. He said: “Globally there has been massive attention to the threat from terrorism and rightly so. But the potential for loss of life from a pandemic is massive, enormous and yet we stare a disaster in the face and we see a chaotic, uncoordinated and incoherent international response to it. By arrangement with
The Independent
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Delhi Durbar In the good old days, when Samajwadi Party spokesperson Amar Singh was in a happier frame of mind and body, not too preoccupied with defending secularism and India’s energy needs in the form of the Indo-US nuclear deal, he was perpetually surrounded by the glamour world, enjoying the company of two film actresses. One, of course, he called Bhabhiji, the veteran Jaya Bachchan, and the other was Jayaprada. Suddenly, both the Jayas have disappeared from Amar Singh’s company, which is being attributed to his new found love for the Congress party. Given the strained relations between the Gandhis and the Bachchans, it is pretty clear that Jaya Bachchan is not too happy with this turn of events. The other Jaya – Jayaprada – is also troubled over the Samajwadi Party’s growing proximity to the Congress. In the last Lok Sabha elections, Amar Singh had deliberately fielded Jayaprada against Begum Noor Bano from Rampur, considered to be among the few remaining Congress bastions in Uttar Pradesh. This time, there is every possibility that Jayaprada could be sacrificed at the altar of this rapprochement between the Congress and the SP. The grapevine has it that Jayaprada is returning to her roots in Hyderabad and the political arms of her original mentor, TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu. She no longer craves the company of socialists.
Dalaal halaal Had L.K. Advani known his “dalaal salaam” quip would evoke the deepest emotions in Amar Singh, he would not have made the remark. The one-liner from Advani inspired an hour-long press conference by Amar Singh, who came armed with stinging Hindi vocabulary to express his “sympathy” at being called a “dalaal” by Advani. Singh began by presenting a discourse on the history of “lal” (Left) and dalaal (SP) salaam, moving on to talk about the merger of colours “lal” and “bhagva” (saffron). If that was not enough he went on to pepper his full-of-colour talk with shades of grey by congratulating the BJP (saffron) for no longer treating the Left (lal) as an untouchable. Not ending there, he gloated: “Ab yeh lal, bhagva aur haathi (meaning BSP) milke mujhe halaal bhi kar dein, to main rukne wala nahin…”
Liberated muse Science and technology minister Kapil Sibal’s disdain for the Left parties, particularly CPM general secretary Prakash Karat, has always been well known. He was, however, constrained from going public with his views as long as the Communists were supporting the UPA government. But now that the Left has withdrawn support to the ruling coalition, Sibal and many others like him in the Congress are feeling liberated and are all set to attack Karat and Co. Sibal has even penned a couple of acidic poems on Karat and the Communists which will be published in his forthcoming poetry book, awaiting formal release next month. Contributed by Faraz Ahmad, Aditi Tandon and Anita Katyal
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