The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Ansals in jail
Uphaar culprits deserve no leniency

THURSDAY’s surrender of Sushil Ansal and Gopal Ansal before a Delhi court would not have been possible but for the Supreme Court’s strong disapproval of their conduct and cancellation of bails in the 1999 Uphaar fire tragedy case. While the trial court sentenced them for two years in November last, the Delhi High Court released them on bail! Ajit Chowdhary and Nirmal Chopra, managers of the theatre, who were on bail and got seven years imprisonment, also surrendered. Surprisingly, the CBI did not oppose bail for them for reasons best known to it. The real estate barons have been exploiting the legal loopholes for 11 years and circumventing justice. The Delhi Police, in an additional charge-sheet, has charged them with destroying evidence and criminal conspiracy. They have allegedly taken away from the court some crucial documents that showed their direct involvement in the tragedy.

Surprisingly, despite the Supreme Court’s explicit orders to arrest the Ansal brothers, the authorities have been dithering in taking action against them. The apex court has ruled that “tampering with court records is worse than dacoity and murder” and that the Delhi High Court should not have granted them bail. If they are convicted on the charge of destroying evidence, they face a jail term of up to seven years.

The Uphaar tragedy, which killed 59 people and injured over 100, occurred mainly because of the callousness of the Ansal brothers who own the theatre and a host of officials of the Delhi Vidyut Board, the Delhi Fire Services and the Municipal Corporation. They are accused of overlooking structural changes and addition of seats in the theatre which obstructed the movie-lovers from escaping. However, the main culprits got little punishment and have been evading justice. The apex court has directed the High Court to fast-track the hearing by designating a Bench exclusively to hear the appeals on a day-to-day basis. The Chief Justice of the High Court would do well to initiate steps promptly so that justice can be expedited.

Mini Big Bang
Atom smashing is a giant step

IT is gratifying that the doomsayers have not been able to derail the atom-smashing test at the world’s largest particle collider near Geneva on Wednesday because that would have prevented humanity from taking a giant step forward. The momentous experiment has the potential to not only understand the makeup of the universe but can have a million other every-day advantages. Just as the technology developed for space exploration has helped in everything from making better batteries to better watches, the experiment at the $3.8 billion Large Hadron Collider can yield numerous benefits. To name just a few, the neutrons that may be generated can be used to break down the radioactive waste into harmless stable elements. It can help in medical research by treating cancer with the beams of protons, carbon ions and even antimatter. CERN is also investigating the theory that the rate of cloud formation is linked to the level of cosmic rays. The project could find out whether other factors besides greenhouse gases are involved in climate changes.

Fear of the unknown is well known. But it should not be so strong that it comes in the way of progress. The fears generated by a few scientists that the experiment would imperil the earth have proved to be unfounded but caused unnecessary concern all over the world. What should not be forgotten is that in the past too, such pessimistic theories have proved entirely wrong. It had been “scientifically” proved that if ever an attempt was made to run a train faster than 40 miles per hour, all air would be sucked out and passengers would die. Another bunch of scientists was equally certain that rockets cannot work in the vacuum of space. The irony is that the assurances of the sane majority are ignored and we pay heed to one or two dissenters.

In India especially, a very negative role has been played by a few TV channels. They drummed it into the minds of the public through day-long programmes embellished with chilling graphics that the end of the universe is near. A girl even committed suicide while thinking of this possibility. Let us be more rational and fete the scientists who are developing the cutting-edge technology. What is all the more creditable is that there are scores of Indian scientists in the team.

Thought for the Day

Old soldiers never die,/ They simply fade away.

— J. Foley

ARTICLE

Road to new N-dawn
High-speed drive ahead
by O. P. Sabherwal

AT the outset of the national debate on the 123 Agreement, CPI leader A.B. Bardhan declared with gusto: “The nuclear agreement will not open the gates of heaven.” Perhaps not, but it has opened the road that leads to “heaven”, if lifting the 35-year-old sanctions blocking international nuclear trade with India, even while it retains nuclear arsenal, could be so described.

At the end of the tunnel from which India has emerged is a bright dawn that nuclear science and technology opens up - not only for the crucial energy sector but also for major areas such as information technology, defence production and pharmaceuticals. Global interaction on all of them - even meteorology - was being held up in the name of dual-use technology and nuclear linkages. The lifting of this embargo alters the perspective for Indian economy as a whole.

Differences in interpreting the aspects of the NSG waiver will continue for some time. But on one crucial point there is little room for doubt - that the NSG clearance is the vital stage that “liberates” India from shackles, debarring international nuclear trade without its joining the NPT. High-end technology does not, of course, go abegging, but India’s scientific attainments via the nuclear route place it on a vantage point in global interaction, ferreting out technologies that will propel India upward in its economic quests all round.

There are still many critics of the NSG waiver, but most of them lack an understanding of the Indian nuclear establishment’s advances - for instance, on what is known as ENR (reprocessing and enrichment) technologies. This is so not only with small western countries having little nuclear capability of their own, such as Austria and New Zealand, but even more, the domestic mainstream parties, such as the Left parties and the BJP.

The latter continue to harp on the demand that the possibility of the United States providing ENR technologies to India should be spelt out in the accord as a commitment. This is an unrealistic call. It also fails to understand that India has developed reprocessing technology - making a breakthrough as early as 1965 - and has built as many as four reprocessing plants. And, therefore, New Zealand and Austria’s demand that the export of ENR technology to India be banned because of fears that it would use this technology import to push its weapons programme makes no sense. Similar is the demand for banning heavy water exports to India. This might be amusing since India is now a leading heavy water producer, and its heavy water technology is perhaps the most advanced - inducing countries such as South Korea and even China to seek Indian heavy water imports because of quality and price.

All this does not mean that ENR technology and equipment imports to India should be banned. High technology such as reprocessing continues to develop and the 123 Agreement incorporates an Indian commitment to construct a dedicated reprocessing plant within safeguards to reprocess spent fuel from American, French and Russian reactors - the existing ones and those that might be imported hereafter. It is natural, therefore, to assume that the United States will help in this project - by reprocessing equipment and technology export to India.

The next stage in India’s nuclear journey is American Congressional approval of the 123 Agreement. True, the agreement governs only nuclear commerce and scientific interaction with the United States. The rest of the world - be it an agreement on nuclear reactors, purchase of uranium fuel or a wide range of nuclear equipment - can immediately proceed with this nuclear commerce and scientific interaction with India.

The Indian nuclear establishment is, in fact, readying with such an action plan, covering the critical items that will uplift Indian nuclear capability in a big way. The short-term plank gives primacy to the import of advanced reactor designs and uranium fuel for the Indian indigenous reactors that are to be placed under IAEA safeguards in a phased manner in the next two years.

These are 14 already operating Indian PHWRs, and another 8,000-MWe capacity reactors sanctioned for construction. Import of uranium fuel for these reactors will provide a strong base for the nuclear accord to take off, since fuel for imported light water reactors will be tied up with reactor agreements - necessarily so because this fuel will be low-enriched uranium, not the “natural” uranium used by indigenously built PHW reactors.

Both aspects of the action plan can commence simultaneously. While uranium imports can be sought from South Africa, Australia, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, import of light water reactors has to be primarily focused on France, Russia and United States. In the first place, brushing up agreements with Russia and France on the latest, advanced light water reactor designs of the two countries can commence. Broadly, agreements with both Russia and France are ready. They have to be given finishing touches - related fuel supply, financial arrangement, technology knowhow that Indian nuclear scientists have to share to operate the reactors, and time schedules for building the reactors.

True, the Americans are anxious that France and Russia should not get an early jump in nuclear trade with India - a level-playing field is what they want. This anxiety can be met, provided the American law-makers speedily give clearance to the bilateral 123 Agreement that the two governments have drawn up. The non-proliferation ayatollahs in the United States - the Arms Control Association, for instance - can still throw spokes in the wheel, of which they have given ample demonstration. It is for the American administration to tackle their non-proliferation hotheads with all the resources at their command. Perhaps the strong American-Indian community can play a useful role and so too the powerful American nuclear industry. The latter, with General Electric, in the lead, is hoping for big business contracts. As the biggest American company, General Electric, is bracing up for the occasion and is making informal offerings, strongly competing with France and Russia. For India, deals that are best in terms of reactor design, built-in fuel supply, technology strappings, price and payment terms will be ones preferred. With a capable nuclear establishment, India can be expected to make the best of the opportunity that is available. India needs not only quality - the most advanced in the developing reactor technology - but also the matching price and suitable financial arrangements. Such as the likes of the Russian financial agreement on the 2000 MWe VVR design light water reactors that are being built at Kodankoolam.

A good beginning with operating the NSG waiver and the 123 Agreement with the US matters a lot for India. In perspective, large uranium imports will give a big push to the indigenous nuclear capacity build-up, which has to be the mainstay, sustaining India’s long-term thorium fast-breeder-based nuclear power programme. In the short-term, it is the quality of the imported light water reactors that will largely fill the gap in India’s rising energy demand. Both aspects are equally important - and these have to be realised within the financial resources that India can manage.

MIDDLE

Barog bypass
by Vijay Saihgal

THE noble soul of legendary figure Bhalkhu “engineer” who helped the British to build Kalka-Shimla rail line in early days must be envious of the National Highway Authority (NHA) for constructing the Barog bypass. This bypass links Kumarhatti with Solan on Shimla Highway.

It is a bit longer than the present road climbing through spectacular Barog Hills. People going to Shimla or coming back have already started using the Barog bypass for sake of smooth drive. The time is not far away when the Barog-climb would become a tale of yesterdays or a centre of solitude only.

British engineers had to penetrate through the bottom of Barog Hills for constructing the longest tunnel on the Kalka-Shimla rail line, now declared part of world heritage. The NHA has been wise enough to take a safer route around the hills. There was a time when the British used to travel to Shimla through a bridle path. It linked Kalka to Shimla via Kasauli, Subathu and Jutogh.

During our school days at Subathu we used to walk on foot to Kasauli (about eleven miles) to see the latest Hindi movies at Defence Cinema known as ‘Cinema White’. Now it has been converted into a small makeshift market selling readymade garments and hosiery.

Like our hero Bhalkhu’s soul Dagshai, the poor cousin of Kumarhatti, must also be envious of the Barog bypass. Dagshai (earlier known as Dage Shahi, where the freedom fighters were kept in gallows) has been cut off from the national highway for decades. No direct bus is available for Dagshai, a small sleeping cantonment. Till now you could see Dagshai while travelling through Barog heights. But now you have to peep out of your vehicles to get a view of Dagshai. Many dhabas have cropped up by the side of the new bypass and are doing brisk business during tourist season.

We were told by our elders that the British engineer had planned to construct the Kalka-Shimla rail line via Subathu, which is situated on the other side of the valley. The scheme was dropped as the then Subathuwallahs refused to pay rupees two thousand as “rishwat”. This annoyed the survey party. As a result Subathu was totally cut off from the Kalka-Shimla rail line for all times to come.

Till now whenever the road to Barog was blocked due to heavy snowfall or landslide road traffic use to divert from Dharmpur to Solan via Subathu. Barog bypass has already snatched this privilege from Subathu. It has to be content with its regular traffic going to Arki, Kunihar, Darlaghat and Solan etc., unless a new link road being constructed near upper side of Kumarhatti under Pradhan Mantri Sadak Yojna takes shape. It would link Barog valley to Subathu through a mountainous range. Only a few kilometres of the road has been completed. Are they waiting for another Bhalkhu “engineer” for its completion?

OPED

Mother of experiments
Machine switched on; it works
by Andy McSmith

ALL was quiet at the moment when the greatest scientific experiment in history was scheduled to begin, at 9.30 am Swiss time on Wednesday. No bands, 300 journalists stopped talking.

A machine that has taken 13 years to design and build, at a cost approaching (pounds sterling) 5 bn, and which will advance the frontiers of science was switched on for the first time.

Absolutely nothing happened. This was bad enough for those who were doing live broadcasts, who were supposed to capture breathlessly the excitement of the moment. The project leader at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern), Lyndon Evans, must have wished a black hole would pop out of his machine and swallow him up.

There he was, with his new kit, 6,000 scientists and technicians on hand to operate it, a microphone clipped on his shirt to pick up any swear words he might mutter as the world waited n and the machine was not working.

“Five, four, three, two, one ...nothing,” Dr Evans said, in a nervous attempt at humour.

The reputation of European science hung by a thread for nearly four minutes, until at last the computer screen at the control centre said something had happened. There was a round of applause from everyone present.

“It’s not like trying to start your home computer,” the press relations woman said later. “It’s much, much more complicated.” I disagree. It was exactly like trying to start your home computer. As any Luddite knows, a home computer can detect the moment when it is really important that it should work perfectly, and that is when it develops a glitch.

Wednesday was the biggest day in European science for decades. It was the start of the most expensive scientific experiment in history. It was also the biggest PR exercise ever mounted by Europe’s scientific community. It was vital nothing went wrong.

One small indicator of the uniqueness of the occasion was that Cern staff abandoned the usual standards of scruffiness associated with advanced science. Dr Evans, a miner’s son from south Wales, was dressed in a shirt and jeans. His normal work clothes are a T-shirt and shorts.

The glitch was caused by a cryogenic problem, cryogenics being the science of producing low temperatures. The temperature inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the particle accelerator built by Cern, is about as close to absolute zero as it is possible to get. It is colder than outer space.

Around its 27-km underground tunnel, there are 6,500 magnets, with enough power to cause protons fired into the LHC to accelerate to more than 99.99 per cent of the speed of light. If one of those thousands of magnets is 1C warmer than it should be, or 1mm out of position, it could wreck the experiment.

Engineers discovered on Monday night that there was something wrong, and worked frantically to put it right. The night shift on Tuesday discovered more problems. But when the scientists assembled at 9 am on Wednesday, they were briefed that all was now OK. Then came those four doom-laden moments, when it looked as if something else had gone horribly wrong.

At last, a beam of protons and hydrogen atoms stripped of their electrons and began its slow progress around the 27-km circuit. It was halted at eight points to ensure that it was moving in a perfect path.

At point six, it appeared that the beam would have to be dumped and the experiment started afresh, because it was oscillating, but the problem was corrected, and at 10.26 am, there was a noisy standing ovation as the beam arrived back where it had begun, having completed a 27-km circuit in less than an hour.

There are two tubes in the LHC tunnel that are race tracks for protons. In the first, the beam travelled clockwise. The next task was to send another beam anti-clockwise around the other tube. That one got back to base at around 3 pm to another jubilant ovation. And that was that for day one in the life of the Large Hadron Collider and a good day’s work, even though all it has proved is that the machine works.

“This is only the start of the commissioning process. It could take years to fully commission,” said Rüdiger Schmidt, the scientist in charge of hardware commissioning. There is still a long wait for answers to the big mysteries of the universe, such as why some particles have mass when others don’t, what is “dark matter”, and are there more than three dimensions to the universe?

When it is up and running, the LHC will fire beams of protons in opposite direction around the two tubes. They intersect at four points, which is where the energy-laden protons will smash together, replicating the conditions that existed less than a nanosecond after the Big Bang. Above each intersection is a research status where computers will read the data from the collisions. The complex is so vast that visitors need a passport to move from one research centre to another across the Swiss-French border.

The LHC is not the world’s first particle accelerator, but it is the most powerful, by a factor of about seven. In the US, a plan to build one of this magnitude was abandoned because of the cost.

Europe is the world leader in experimental particle physics. Discoveries made in the LHC, which would be impossible anywhere else, could mean Nobel prizes for the British physicists Stephen Hawking and Peter Higgs if their theories turn out to be correct. But Professor Jordan Nash, of Imperial College London, who will help analyse LHC’s data said: “It’s not about prizes.

All of us do it out of fundamental curiosity about how the universe works. We have done all the easy stuff over the last 2,000 years. To push further takes a hugely complex apparatus. What we are going to learn is what nature consists of, not what we think it consists of.”

By arrangement with The Independent

Corruption, the root cause of poverty
by Gobind Thukral

THE World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have come out with reports about the increasing poverty levels in India. They also tell us that the neo-liberal economic model in operation since 1991 has failed to remove the ugly blot of poverty on the face of the ‘Socialist Republic of India’.

This is most evident when we study the absolute numbers. The number of people living below $1.25 a day has increased from 421 million in 1981 to 456 million in 2005. India is home to roughly one-third of the world’s poor people. It also has a higher proportion of its population living on less than $2 a day than even sub-Saharan Africa.

The rate of decline of poverty in India was faster between 1981 and 1990 than between 1990 and 2005, the time of high growth under the pro-market reforms. Economic reforms, which started in 1991, have failed to reduce poverty at the promised faster rate.

India’s Planning Commission has, however, a different story to tell. Latest numbers indicate that the poverty level average dropped to 25.9 per cent in 2005-06. This implies that there are 260 million poor people in the country whose income is less than Rs 356 a month in the villages and Rs 538 a month in the cities. Earlier calculations were on the basis of consumption of calories and the new estimates indicate redefine poverty on the basis of access to education, health, infrastructure, clean environment and benefits for women and children.

No two economists would agree either on the yardsticks to measure poverty or the absolute numbers. Also the basic data for estimating poverty comes from large-scale surveys of consumption expenditure conducted by the National Sample Survey.

Rising prices add to the number daily. It does make the government sit up and worry during an election year. Hence a slew of measures — employment guarantee scheme, unemployment allowance for the educated youth and tribal land rights.

China, which accounted for 38 per cent of the world’s poor in 1990, was able to reduce its share fall to 12 per cent by 2005. India, on the other hand, saw its share rise from 22 to 30 per cent!

The World Bank asserts that that poverty reduction in India has not been proportionate to its spectacular growth. To improve the lives of a greater number of its poor, India will also have to reduce those basic inequalities — lack of access to education, healthcare and opportunities — that prevent poor people from participating in the growth process.

Poor governance, high rate of corruption and communal divides besides unprincipled politics has made the life of aam admi more miserably than any World Bank or Asia Development Bank report or even the claims of the UPA government would show.

Why we are poor? One major reason is corruption. Tulsi Savani, a researcher has done some homework on how dishonest industrialists, shameful politicians and corrupt bureaucrats have deposited in foreign banks in their illegal personal accounts a sum of about $1500 billion. “This money, misappropriated by them, is about 13 times larger than the country’s foreign debt. With this, 45 crore poor people can get Rs 1,00,000 each”, Savani estimated.

Once this amount of black money and property comes back, India can repay its entire foreign debt. According to Savani, India will have surplus amount, almost 12 times larger than the foreign debt. If this surplus amount is invested in earning interest, the amount of interest will be more than the Central government’s annual budget. So even if all the taxes are abolished, the Centre will be able to maintain the country comfortably.

India with $1456 billion has more money in Swiss banks than the rest of the world combined. It is unhindered public loot since 1947 — the loot of the aam admi since 1947. In our brush with reality we know here how this loot goes on without any trepidation.

Experts tell us that one per cent of the world’s population holds more than 57 per cent of total global wealth. These secret accounts hold much of this money. How much of this is from India is anybody’s guess. Our economist Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh must be in the know of all this, yet has never even opened his mouth.

In fact, some economists believe tax havens to be a plot of the western world against the poor countries. By allowing the abundance of tax havens, the western world plainly encourages the movement of scarce capital from the developing countries to the rich.

It is noteworthy that most of the wealth of Indians parked in these tax havens is illegal money acquired through corrupt means. Tax heavens are not for low tax rates, but to keep ill-gotten wealth. Small islands are notorious for that. Consider how India, despite best efforts, could not trace the ultimate beneficiary of transactions in the Bofors scam because of the secrecy associated with the bank accounts? We can understand now why we are poor.

Delhi Durbar
Brajesh’s praise for N-deal

AMONG the first phone calls Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made, after he received news from Vienna about the NSG waiver, was to Brajesh Mishra, National Security Adviser in the NDA government and former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s think tank on foreign policy and strategic affairs. For past several months, Mishra has openly supported the Indo-US nuclear deal, much to the embarrassment of the BJP which has vociferously opposed the nuclear deal, accusing the UPA government of surrendering its right to test a nuclear device.

The Prime Minister thanked Mishra for his support while giving him the good news from Vienna and indirectly suggested that it might be a good idea if he were to go public with his appreciation. The result was that Brajesh Mishra was on virtually every television channel, all praise for the nuclear deal.

For Marathi Press

To keep its allies in good humour and attract new partners, the BJP has had to go back on its well-known positions. For instance, it had whipped up Hindu passions by promising them a grand Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. But it had to abandon this plan when the choice was between the Mandir agenda and the formation of the NDA government. Its allies like the JD (U) and the TDP wanted to be seen as secular.

The last straw came early this week when the party revised its stand with party spokesman Prakash Jawadekar attacking Jaya Bachchan for calling herself as a Hindi-speaking UPwallah at a function. The reason for this diatribe was obvious: the BJP’s ally in Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena is in competition with dissident leader, Raj Thackeray in whipping up Mee Marathi passions in Mumbai.

Jawadekar, who comes from Maharashtra, insisted on giving his ‘bytes’ to TV channels in Marathi, declaring with a glint in his eye, “This is only for the Marathi Press.”

Cool welcome

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi’s visit to India could not have come at a more inopportune time — just a day after Beijing tried to block a consensus in favour of India-specific waiver in Vienna. Some officials suggested that New Delhi should convey to him that he was an unwelcome guest in India after their “great betrayal” in Vienna.

The Prime Minister, however, said that the show must go on. “We can change friends but not our neighbours,” he argued. Yang was given a cool response at all his bilateral engagements. The Taj Mahal Hotel on Mansingh Road, where he held talks with Pranab Mukherjee, was virtually declared out of bounds for Tibetan refugees and others.

CBI offers help

The CBI has decided to take the help of technology to take its message to the people. It is now sending SMS messages to all Airtel customers in Delhi cautioning them against corruption and bribery. The message urges people to contact the CBI if a Central, Delhi government, PSU or bank employee demands bribe for any official work in the Capital.

Contributed by Anita Katyal, Faraz Ahmad, Ashok Tuteja and Bhagyashree Pande