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Beyond Nano
Taps as evidence |
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New plant welcome
Separatism needs firmness
Venturing into deep sea
New boss at RBI
Shift focus to energy efficiency
Health
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Beyond Nano
THE announcement by the House of Tatas that it is withdrawing from Singur and is looking for an alternative site for its Nano project is, hopefully, not the end of the matter. Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee will be held solely responsible for the Tatas’ decision, notwithstanding her disclaimer.
Having prevented the company employees from entering their premises through a continuous blockade, she cannot claim that the Tatas are withdrawing on their own. Ever since the West Bengal Government began the process of acquiring 1,000 acres for the Tata project about two years ago, she has been opposing it. Now, her objection is to the setting up of ancillary industries for which about 400 acres, out of the total 1,000 acres, have been earmarked. As a political leader, whose sole interest should be the welfare of the people, Ms Banerjee should have adopted a more reasonable approach. For the development of West Bengal and to bring it on a par with states like Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, industrialisation is a must. Needless to say, agriculture alone cannot meet the growing aspirations of the people in a densely populated state. The project has the potential of providing jobs for thousands of people, both directly and indirectly. It would also attract other industrial houses to the state, giving industrialisation a major push. Alas, the Trinamool Congress leader saw the project as an initiative of the Left Front Government that needed to be opposed. Even now, it is not too late to retrieve the project. Realisation seems to have dawned on Ms Banjerjee that if the Tatas withdraw from Singur, she will earn the wrath of not just those who willingly parted with their land for the project but also all those who want industrialisation of West Bengal. Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi who has been trying to sort out the problem in his individual capacity has the best wishes of all those who want the Tatas to stay in
Singur. It is possible to find a solution to the Trinamool Congress’ demand for return of the 400 acres of land through talks among the parties concerned like the farmers, the Tatas and the government. For this, they should show pragmatism, rather than adamancy. It is a tall order given the fact that Ms Banerjee’s psyche is trained to oppose. |
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Taps as evidence
THE Supreme Court ruling that intercepted telephonic conversation could form the basis of a first information report (FIR) has helped to untie a judicial knot. It will speed up the trial of Mumbai’s leading Bollywood financier and diamond merchant Bharat Shah for his alleged links with the underworld.
The court has upheld Sections 13, 14, 15 and 16 of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) that allowed the state police to tap oral or electronic communication. Under the Evidence Act, phone or wire intercepts are recognised only as “corroborative” evidence, but under special laws like the MCOCA, they are admissible as “independent” evidence. In March 2003, following an appeal by Bharat Shah, the Bombay High Court had struck down the four sections of the MCOCA and ruled that the state government had no right to enact a law on a subject like Communications which is in the Union List. In his petition, Shah, who had allegedly threatened certain Bollywood actors through underworld don Chhota Shakeel, had questioned the constitutional validity of the Act. He also claimed that these provisions already existed in the Indian Telegraph Act, 1955. Consequently, the Maharashtra government appealed to the Supreme Court against the High Court ruling. In January 2001, Bharat Shah was arrested under the MCOCA and charged with using gangster Chhota Shakeel to force actors to work in his film, Chori Chori Chupke Chupke. He was also charged with passing money to the Mumbai underworld through hawala. In fact, he and other members of an organised crime syndicate are accused of conspiracy and carrying out unlawful activities. The telephonic conversations intercepted by the police will now be treated as admissible evidence, paving the way for the prosecution of Shah and others. Also, the trial of cases relating to the Mumbai and Malegaon blasts and the Aurangabad arms seizure, which were stayed by the apex court, will acquire a new dimension following the latest ruling. |
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New plant welcome
Rarely a power plant to be set up by a private company is launched with such fanfare as was done at Banawala in Mansa district of Punjab where the Chief Minister laid the foundation stone on Tuesday. The government is offering only land for the 1980 MW project, which is to be set up by a private company on a build-own-operate basis at a cost of Rs 10,000 crore in three years. This is the second private power plant in Punjab. The first one of 540 MW capacity was announced years ago at Goindwal Sahib in Tarn Taran district. So far only land has been acquired. Whatever little private investment comes to Punjab should be welcomed, especially in the power sector, as the state is lagging in growth.
Industrial activity is anything but throbbing, largely because of irregular, inadequate and expensive power supply. According to official figures, there is a 30 per cent gap between demand and supply. The state needs 8672 MW but the supply is only 6556 MW. The private sector, therefore, has made a welcome entry in this critical area. But advance planning should be done for setting up more power plants -- thermal or nuclear - to meet Punjab’s growing demand. For so many years additional power could not be made available because farmers and sections of the poor got free supply. The government did not compensate the power board adequately and in time for the politically motivated largess. A near bankrupt power board could not set up new plants. Even the maintenance and replacement of the outworn infrastructure is a problem. People suffer power cuts as the board does not have enough money to buy electricity. It is not yet clear whether the private companies will sell power direct to consumers or route it through the board. Thermal power is usually expensive. The companies have their commercial compulsions. The regulator and the government will, hopefully, balance the conflicting interests of consumers as well as the companies. |
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Those who do not find time for exercise will have to find time for illness.
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Separatism needs firmness IN June this year I spent a week visiting the “Paradise on Earth,” the valley of Kashmir, with my wife and grandchildren. We were enthralled by the serenity of Srinagar, the Shankaracharya Temple, the exhilaration of climbing up to 13000 feet on the highest ropeway in the world in Gulmarg and the joys of a boat ride on the Dal Lake, as traders did brisk business with thousands of tourists from all across India, selling carpets, shawls and handicrafts. Barely a month later, when I was in Srinagar to participate in a seminar on restoring peace, the situation had changed radically. There was palpable tension in the air. Strident propaganda by the separatist Hurriyat Conference, claiming that the allotment of a mere 40 hectares of land to the Amarnath Shrine Board was aimed at changing the religious composition of Kashmir, produced a backlash in the Jammu region, after the government yielded to separatist demands in unseemly hurry, by revoking the earlier order. It would be superficial to attribute the recent developments, that led to a virtual abdication of authority in a sensitive border state by the Manmohan Singh government, to the land controversy alone. For too long there has been not an unjustified sense of grievance in the Jammu region, transcending communal considerations, because of the perception that the valley-dominated politics of the state had led to economic and political discrimination against non-Kashmiris, of all religious denominations. It is no secret that both former Governor Lt-General Sinha and Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, himself hailing from the Jammu region, believed in recasting the politics of the state to end the Kashmiri valley’s domination. There is a mistaken belief in our “intellectual classes” that there is some mystical strength and resilience in the values of “Kashmiriyat” which are said to transcend communal considerations and make the ordinary Kashmiri tolerant and secular. Those holding this belief ignore the fact that very few in the valley feel a sense of guilt over the disgraceful manner in which Kashmiri Pandits have been forced out of their homes. Moreover, even as the recent crisis was escalating, the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen warned the Kashmiri Pandits of physical violence, should they seek to return to their homes. There was no condemnation of the threat from those claiming to embrace “Kashmiriyat”. The reality is that since the 1980s the Jamat-e-Islami has been making steady inroads into the intellectual and sectarian discourse in the Kashmir valley. The uprising in 1989 was largely a manifestation of public anger at the seriously rigged elections that led to the formation of a Congress-National Conference government in 1987. The abject surrender of the V.P. Singh government to the terrorist demands after the Rubaiyya Sayeed kidnapping incident transformed what could have been contained as local grievances into a full-fledged insurrection, which Pakistan took full advantage of. It is to the credit of former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and his successors that the situation in Jammu and Kashmir was dealt with effectively, by a judicious mixture of force, using state power; political accommodation, including the resumption of political activities and elections, and imaginative diplomacy that brought the focus sharply on Pakistan’s sponsorship of terrorism. The most important turning point for India was the elections of 2002 which received international acclaim and led to the formation of the Congress-PDP government in J&K. It is to the credit of this government that the period 2002-2008 witnessed sustained economic growth. But New Delhi erroneously believed that merely setting up “Task Forces” to address a range of issues, including the vexed question of autonomy — when there was no consensus within J&K itself on what autonomy should entail — would be an effective antidote to separatist demands. This approach gave the separatists backed by Pakistan an issue to latch on to, even though it should have been obvious that any formula for autonomy which New Delhi offered would be rejected by the separatists, who would keep demanding more, at Pakistan’s behest. Instead of demoralising our security forces as our Prime Minister did, by his warning of “zero tolerance for human rights violations”, New Delhi will have to adopt a policy of “zero tolerance for separatism” in J&K. After initial dithering by the inept Home Minister, the writ of the state has been re-established, with a well-executed clampdown on the separatist leadership, which followed a visit to the state by National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan. It is now imperative to move separatist leaders to locations outside J&K and initiate proceedings for sedition against them. Secondly, a clear message has to be sent out that while it will tolerate no challenge to its writ, New Delhi would be willing to work with Pakistan in its search for a J&K solution wherein, as the Prime Minister has said, “borders cannot be redrawn”. India should express readiness to accord the same measure of autonomy as Pakistan would accord across the LoC to PoK and to Gilgit and Baltistan. The European Parliament in Brussels recently noted that as the “world’s largest secular democracy,” India has devolved democratic structures at all levels while Pakistan still lacks implementation of democracy in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The European Parliament observed that both Gilgit and Baltistan enjoyed no form of democratic representation whatsoever. Rather than constantly holding out promises of autonomy, the time has come for New Delhi to tell all those who demand “azaadi” in Jammu and Kashmir and their many apologists in the national Capital that they should first go to their mentors in Rawalpindi and ask them to move in tandem with India on the question of autonomy on both sides of the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir.
Moreover, the policy of pampering the Kashmir valley with constant “economic packages” and assistance far more than what other states receive should be reviewed and discarded. For the past four years Dr Manmohan Singh’s government has pampered separatist outfits and leaders in the Kashmir valley in the mistaken belief that they can be made to see reason by sweet words and magnanimous gestures. The country is today paying the price for such misguided beliefs. One hopes New Delhi now realises that soft words are no substitute for an iron fist in dealing with separatism. Russian President Vladimir Putin crushed separatism in Chechnya, not by plaintive appeals for understanding to Chechen separatists and militants, but by firm, decisive action. President Abraham Lincoln acted no differently in safeguarding the unity and territorial integrity of the US, even not hesitating to have the separatist stronghold of Atlanta reduced to ashes, as his forces ended separatist
challenges. |
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Venturing into deep sea I
was serving in Eastern Naval Command when INS Vikrant arrived in Bay of Bengal during 1971. Sinking of Pakistani submarine PNS Gazi followed soon. In the command headquarters the Gazi invited considerable attention from public as well as media. Speculations were rife about what was to be done with the sunken vessel on seabed near Bimlipatnam coast north of Vishakhapatnam. Ministers and top officials understood the sensitivity of the situation. Some of the provincial ministers, however, were keen at least to have a look at Gazi while she lay slightly tilted on seabed. In a hurriedly summoned meeting at command headquarters it was decided to issue a press note indicating the approximate cost of a single visit by any person or VIP to anywhere close to the submarine by lowering sea bell, diving equipment and use of associated boats etc. The calculations revealed expenditure of several lakhs of rupees each trip, including special payment to deep sea divers etc. Their enthusiasm now seemed to have cooled down but they were still keen to have a look at life under the sea. A repeated request on these lines needed an appropriate response from Eastern Naval Command. It was decided first to allow two State Govern-ment officials to visit an Indian operational submarine preceded by a brief on “life on board a submarine”. Significance of an inner stainless steel hull, use of human body size propulsion batteries, hydroplanes for diving and surfacing, use of periscope under snort and fully dived submerged submarine conditions, use of airborne sanitary flush system and negative role of oxygen as one goes below the sea level was explained to the visitors, much to their surprise. As the seawater pressure increased below the sea level the diver was required to increase the quantity of inert gases like nitrogen while decreasing the quantity of oxygen gradually. By that time their keenness to visit Gazi faded out.
At operational level, however, it was decided to make arrangements to lower a sea bell along with deep sea divers, entering the control room of the Pakistani submarine and retrieve at least its logbook and any other sensitive item which may be found. Since there was no survivor on board except floating remains of bodies no effort was to be made to retrieve any human remains. This operation was a quiet one away from the public or media gaze. Therefore the main item brought out from PNS Gazi then were the vital logbook and a tape recording of the then Pakistan Prime Minister Bhutto’s speeches. These proved very valuable in tracing the Gazi’s course in pursuit of INS Vikrant in Bay of Bengal until her own destruction. Today, remains of the Gazi lying on seabed are in watery grave silence mostly disturbed by fishes and sharks around the hull while the logbook and Bhuttos tape recording can be seen displayed in nearby Eastern Naval Command
Museum! |
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New boss at RBI
Sincere, eager to learn and a dedicated man full of conviction” is how a professor of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, describes the new Reserve Bank of India Governor, Dr Duvvuri Subbarao. These qualities would surely be important for the man on the Mint Street at a time when inflationary pressures are high and the growth prospects look grim. The trend in prices is disturbing, Subbarao had said earlier as the Finance Secretary. “There’s a view that the growth momentum of the past five years is running out of steam. I don’t agree.
“India’s current run of growth is structural rather than cyclical. In the short-term, our central concern is reining in inflation. In a democracy an inflation rate of 8.75 per cent raises serious challenges”, said Subbarao in an interview when he took over as the Finance Secretary in June 2008. The 22nd RBI Governor takes over the reins at a critical time. He will have to get into action straightaway with the next policy review in October.
In addition to curbing inflation, an important task for him will be to balance the relationship between the Finance Ministry and the central bank. The government is heading towards a general election due in May and the Union budget pressured by subsidies and policies such as a loan waiver for poor farmers. But this situation is not new for the economist-bureaucrat. Dr D. Subbarao began his career in Andhra Pradesh in the mid-1990s when the state was nearing bankruptcy.
He had to do a balancing act between implementing aggressive economic reforms and giving a human face to them, said a senior bureaucrat, who was also a batch-mate of the RBI Governor designate. As the state finance head, Dr Subbarao was believed to have authored the regulation of government expenditure and advocated disinvestment of state enterprises. He was instrumental in getting external assistance from the World Bank, a batch-mate of his pointed out.
Widely seen as a reformer, the IAS topper of the 1972-batch was a Joint Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Finance during 1988-1993 when the then Finance Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, initiated India’s economic reforms. This experience of a reformist will be very critical to the banking sector as there is a review coming up next year to examine whether to open up the sector further to foreign banks and approve fresh bank licences for corporates — a major turning point in a sector that has largely been dominated by public sector banks having a stronghold on the rural segment critical to India’s growth story. In the international sphere, India’s apex bank chief is going to be looked upon as a man who could give right signals to attract foreign investments heading to various emerging economies.
Attracting investments is going to be a formidable task ahead for Dr Subbarao as his policies will continually be challenged by monetary polices in other equally competing economies. India, Russia, Brazil and China are the economies being closely monitored by billion-dollar conglomerates, private equity funds and sovereign funds, which who are looking to park their funds in a country where returns are good and monetary policy is stable.
Balancing the rupee-exchange rate and managing remittances of non-resident Indians, who have found renewed interest in India, is also going to be a tightrope walk in the times of recession pressures in most advanced economies. At home he has to encourage the new breed of Indian businessmen by making credit easy to procure and affordable as also inculcate a sense of discipline of channelling the credit for the purpose it is intended.
However, for the common man, Dr Subbrao’s policy of high interest rates will continue to remain in the near term, making credit for a home or a car very dear. “I believe the RBI’s recent decision to raise the CRR and the repo rate is appropriate, given the current high level of inflation” ,he said when the RBI raised the rates last time.
As a lead economist in the World Bank during 1999-2004, Dr Subbarao worked on issues of public finance in countries of Africa and East Asia. An IIT Kanpur graduate, he did his MS in economics from Ohio State University
(1978) and was a Humphrey Fellow at MIT during 1982-83. Dr Subbarao had said earlier that India would continue to maintain a GDP growth of 8.5 per cent and |
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Shift focus to energy efficiency
THE recent G8 Summit failed to yield any fruitful results. Concerns for reducing greenhouse emissions looked hypocritical as none of the powerful eight had the will to take effective measures. The US, the biggest polluter of the world, tried to shift focus to India and China instead of mending its own ways. Somehow, this country finds it easy to blame Asia for every malady it faces—be it the food crisis or recession or environmental pollution. Instead, a constructive approach is needed.
The world is waking up to the adverse impact of greenhouse emissions. Significant climate changes are being noticed the arctic ice cap has begun to melt. So have the Himalayan glaciers. Results are going to be disastrous. Fighting climatic changes is going to be the biggest issue; other issues will soon take a back seat. The Kyoto protocol said that global greenhouse emissions of the 1990 level would be cut by 5 per cent by 2012. It meant not only controlling all emissions during the next 22 years but also reducing the existing ones by 5 per cent despite rapid technological advances, urbanisation and industrialisation of the world. The summit found that GH emissions had increased not only in the US, but also by 2 per cent each in Britain and Germany. Clearly, a summit gets reduced to a mere ceremory when such findings contrary to the passed resolutions stare at us. The next target has now been fixed as “half of the current greenhouse emissions by 2050.” It is a mere postponing of efforts to be done in this direction. South Africa was right in dismissing the summit agreement as a mere “empty slogan”.
None of the developed countries wants to slow down industrialisation though all feel concerned over global warming and look at others for cutting down their emissions. That is a callous attitude. Effective steps need to be taken. All over the world, the focus has to be shifted from cost-cutting to carbon emission reduction and energy efficient technologies. So far we have been looking for economical solutions only. Now, energy-efficiency needs to be given a priority even if it costs more. All nations need to work on this.
At the G 8 Summit, Japan displayed a hydrogen powered RX-8 Mazda and eight more environment friendly cars. Japan claims that carbon-dioxide emissions from these cars will be cut by 50 per cent of those in previous models. These are going to be future cars. In India, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) has proposed mandatory fuel efficiency norms for cars. Like electric appliances, it wants to label the cars also and classify them into nine categories.
India has more than 100 million cars on its roads and people are increasingly shifting to mid-size cars. Such a scenario demands better fuel efficiency to tide over the energy crisis that the country is likely to face in future. Fuel efficiency will lead to cutting emissions also.
In India the use of air-conditioners has seen an unprecedented rise during the last 10 years. The cost of an AC is no more the sole criterion to buy it. Power consumption has to be the basic factor. An AC may consume electricity worth its cost in a single season itself. Fifty per cent of the total power demand of residential and commercial sectors is today consumed by ACs. The more the EER of an AC, the more energy efficient it is. The EER means Energy Efficiency Rating.
A zero emission house constructed at the G8 Summit site drew all the energy required by it from solar panels and wind turbine generators. Solar panels installed on the roof and wind turbine generators cost three times the normal cost of energy required for the house. But again, eco-friendly energy and not the cost was the prime criteria behind it. The world has to fast wake up to the use of energy efficient lighting also. The mounting power consumption with demand outstripping supply every year is making that essential. Time is not far when conventional light bulbs will see a production ban.
A genuine CFL may be 10 times costlier than an ordinary bulbs. Yet it has to be chosen, being much more energy efficient. In fact, now we have to look for long-term savings instead of short-term costs. Increasing concerns for environment protection have a softening effect on the rough and tough construction sector. A green building is one that makes the best possible use of natural light and air and the minimum possible consumption of energy and water.
It uses industrial byproducts, believes in recycling of waste water, harvesting of rain water, minimum use of air-conditioning and tries to support environment protection in every possible way. It may soon become mandatory for all commercial, industrial and institutional buildings to achieve the green building rating.
It is time to shift focus from cost to energy efficiency. The initial cost of adopting energy-efficient technologies may be higher but soon it gets recovered through the energy saved. Cutting down the GH emissions to face the menace of climate change is an additional advantage. |
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Health OVER the past five years, Sarah Pierce has suffered repeated kidney failure, spent three years on dialysis, had the plasma in her blood replaced twice, and lost a fiance, friends and a job — all because of something she ate. Pierce, now 30, was infected with a toxic strain of bacteria, E. coli O157:H7, that can be spread through undercooked meat or raw produce. Today, she has a healthy kidney donated by her brother, a full-time job and a husband. But the medicines she takes to keep her body from rejecting her replacement kidney carry a high risk of causing birth defects, so she has ruled out pregnancy.
"I would have liked to have had children," she said. Pierce belongs to a small subset of people who develop long-term health problems from food poisoning. Their ranks are growing. Over the past decade, as medical experts have sought out the source of certain chronic illnesses, they have increasingly found links to episodes of food poisoning, sometimes many years beforehand, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Campylobacter, a bacterium associated with raw chicken, is now recognized as a leading cause of the sudden acute paralysis known as Guillain-Barre syndrome. Certain strains of salmonella, the bacterium involved in the recent outbreak in Mexican raw jalapeno and serrano peppers, can cause arthritis. And E. coli O157:H7, a strain of an otherwise harmless bacterium that lives in animal intestines, can release toxins that cause hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, a kidney disorder that in 25 to 50 percent of cases leads to kidney failure, high blood pressure and other problems as much as 10 years later. This list is just the beginning of the many health problems some people are now attributing to food-borne infections.
"What the classical medical literature says and what we've seen is not the same," said Donna Rosenbaum, executive director of Safe Tables Our Priority, or STOP, a nonprofit that represents people who have suffered serious food-borne illness. The CDC estimates there are 76 million cases of food-borne disease in the United States annually. The vast majority of people experience it only as an unpleasant bout of diarrhea or abdominal pain, though an estimated 5,000 to 9,000 Americans die each year from food poisoning. A handful of pathogens are responsible for more than 90 percent of those fatalities: salmonella, listeria, toxoplasma, noroviruses, campylobacter and E. coli. Those most susceptible to infection are small children, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems. By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
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