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Lessons from Kosi |
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Time to revisit job scheme
On Record
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Lessons from Kosi
THE current Kosi flood is undoubtedly a major national disaster. An embankment has given way in Nepal. The river has changed its course. There are different views on what brought this about, where the responsibility lies, and whether the situation can be reversed. The human tragedy is enormous, and there is widespread criticism of the tardiness and inadequacy of the administrative response to it. There is also an inter-governmental angle to this disaster. To put it very briefly, the India-Nepal relationship has been badly mismanaged on both sides. Perhaps the best course would be to wipe the slate clean and start afresh. However, that is too complex a subject to be gone into here. The immediate priority now is, of course, rescue, relief, assurance of essential supplies, shelter, medical help and so on. Belatedly, after much public criticism, the Central and state governments seem to be swinging into action. Can they not enlist the assistance or advice of the governmental and non-government agencies that worked to good purpose in Tamil Nadu in the aftermath of the Tsunami in 2004? Causes, consequences, and lessons are matters of great complexity, but may one venture into that dangerous ground with a few tentative remarks? Given the friability and proneness to mass-wasting of the Himalayan system and the waywardness of the Kosi and the heavy load of sediment that it carries, it was probably a mistake to have built a barrage and embankments on that river. Be that as it may, embankments, even if they do not break down, might cause various problems. These include, among other things, a rise in the level of the river-bed and the consequent elevation of the river above the level of the ground on either side, possible attacks by the river further downstream and, of course, the emergence of water logging and even flooding in the areas ‘protected’ by the embankments because water cannot drain from those areas into the river. While in some specific instances, embankments might have done some good without doing any harm, they are in the case of a river like the Kosi a remedy worse than the disease. It might be argued that the arguments against embankments do not apply to dams, as they will provide space for the temporary storage and gradual release of floods, thus moderating them. That seems very plausible, but a dam-and-reservoir project is rarely built exclusively for flood control. It is generally built for multiple purposes (irrigation, power-generation, flood-control, etc), and there is a conflict in-built into such projects. Flood control would require the intended space in the reservoir to be kept vacant for accommodating flood waters, whereas irrigation or power generation would require the reservoir to be as full as possible. As the latter are gainful activities in an economic sense, they are apt to prevail over flood control. If the space meant for accommodating floods is not available when the flood comes, the gates will have to be opened in the interest of the safety of the dam. The downstream area might experience a greater flood than it would have done if the dam had never been built. This has actually happened more than once. Assuming that a flood cushion is built into a dam project and is operated as such, or alternatively that a dam is built exclusively for flood control and strictly operated for that purpose, the dam might indeed moderate a flood up to a point. However, a flood larger than the ‘design flood’ would raise safety concerns and necessitate the opening of the gates; and this can happen at any time. This is an inherent danger in all dams. One is not saying that dams and embankments should never be built. All that one can say is that in general these are better avoided, and that where they are absolutely necessary, great care should go into their design, construction, maintenance and operation. In particular, the drainage aspect should receive the utmost attention. The decision-making in such cases should be open, accountable and fully participative. In recommending minimal recourse to dams and embankments, one is not arguing that calamities must be accepted and suffered fatalistically. Consider what we do in the case of earthquakes or hurricanes or tornadoes or tsunamis. Does anyone say that they should be stopped or prevented from happening or controlled? What everyone would say is that they should be predicted, anticipated, and prepared for; that there should be timely information, a state of preparedness for disaster, the minimisation of damage and prompt and adequate response by way of rescue and relief when the disaster actually strikes. Exactly the same point applies to floods. Floods are natural phenomena. They will occur from time to time, in varying magnitudes and intensities. When the flood waters come, the river needs space to spread and accommodate them until they recede. The natural flood-plain of a river is an integral part of the river. If we build on it, or if we try to contain the river within embankments, we are asking for trouble. Adaptation to floods, timely information, anticipatory preparations for minimising damage, and prompt action when the flood comes, are the answer. In addition, we can also learn from well-established traditional coping practices evolved over centuries by communities accustomed to periodical floods. That wisdom is for the future. What do we do about structures already built? If we repair the damage to the embankment and try to put the river back into its old course, we are running the risk of a recurrence of a major disaster in the future. On the other hand, if we do not rebuild the structures but let the river find its natural course, we might be putting at risk a large number of people who are living and pursuing their livelihoods in areas earlier ‘protected’ by the embankments. That is a difficult choice but not really a dilemma. The argument that we cannot put the clock back is not valid. Having realised the The writer is a former Secretary, Union Ministry of Water Resources, New Delhi |
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An idiot is one who is of non-sane memory from his birth, by a perpetual infirmity, without lucid intervals: and those are said to be idiots who cannot count 20, or tell the days of the week, or who do not know their fathers and mothers or the like. We are the reigning champions. Anyone is free to challenge us. The Congress government has proved itself in AP. No one can surprise us. Fear is a universal emotion irrespective of age or social status. It is one emotion that binds every living thing. That’s why, I am always fascinated by horror.
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Time to revisit job scheme
The
National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) is landmark in rural development. The scheme guarantees 100 days unskilled employment to every rural household on the minimum wages fixed by the state government and also makes provision for the payment of unemployment allowance in case of the failure to provide work. It not only aims at employment generation and poverty alleviation but also seeks to create durable assets in the rural sector. The NREGS was implemented in Haryana’s two most backward districts of Sirsa and Mahendergarh in February 2006 and in two other relatively backward districts of Mewat and Ambala in April 2007. This write-up aims at exploring the reasons for the rather slow progress of the scheme in terms of the applications received, registration cards issued and wages paid to the workers in the 16 districts of Haryana where it was launched on April 1, 2008. In spite of the district-level orientation courses organised by the Haryana Institute of Public Administration and the Haryana Institute of Rural Development in February-March 2008 and block-level courses and cluster-level training on social audit by the HIRD teams in April-May, 2008, there is a great deal of ignorance and confusion among the stakeholders about the guidelines of the scheme issued by the Centre in 2006 and the state government in 2007. Besides, there is a fear psychosis among many sarpanches of the gram panchayats who have been assigned a key role in the implementation of the scheme. Some of them apprehend that the requirement of maintaining many registers and muster rolls and the inbuilt provisions for social audit, social audit forum and the Right to Information in NREGA could land them in trouble. Others are reluctant to implement the scheme because the ban on the hiring of the contractors and use of machines and the compulsion of payment of wages through accounts in banks and post offices have left little scope for deriving any personal benefit from it. Some gram sachivs, who constitute the cutting edge in the implementation mechanism, too shared the same feelings. Moreover, being overburdened by the secretarial and executive work of five to six gram panchayats, they regard this unremunerative work as a baggage. Another source of their reluctance has been the inordinate delay in the recruitment of the rojgar sahayaks for assisting them. The other problems that the sarpanches and the gram sachivs have to face include the non-availability of the junior engineer for doing timely measurement of the labour performed by the workers. The JEs are not available because, on an average, this technical officer has to work for the NREGS in about 20 gram panchayats in addition to his routine functions, work pertaining to other rural development programmes and construction and maintenance works of gram panchayats and panchayat samitis. The reluctance of the bankers and the post masters in opening the zero balance accounts of the workers has also been a discouraging factor for them. Many BDPOs, who have been made the programme officers for the NREGS, in spite of the provision for the appointment of a whole-time Central-funded programme officer, have neither the time nor interest in this scheme. The BDPO is already an overburdened functionary of the Development and Panchayat Department due to his multifarious role. Moreover, some of them are holding dual charge because many posts have remained vacant for long. Some additional deputy commissioners, who have been made the additional district programme coordinators, in addition to their multiple role as the chief executive officer of the District Rural Development Agency and the Zila Parishad, have little time and interest in the NREGS. Thus, they are unable to provide the needed leadership to the stakeholders at the district, block and gram panchayat levels. The state government has not appointed whole-time district programme coordinators though their salary has to be paid by the Government of India. The deputy commissioners, the most overworked officers in the district administration, have been made the district programme coordinators, but have little time for the NREGS. Therefore, the ADCs are supposed to function as the district programme coordinators. Some of them have, indeed, done excellent work due to their strong commitment for the NREGS despite time constraint. The state government has taken some corrective measures. Rozgar sahayaks have been appointed, but their monthly salary of Rs 2000 during the period of work and Rs 1000 during the non-working period is too meager. This needs to be raised. Moreover, instead of appointing one rozgar sahayak for two gram panchayats, there should be one each for every panchayat. In addition to rozgar sahayaks, mates will also have to be appointed for measuring the quantity of labour done on a day-to-day basis. The BDPO’s burden has also been reduced by appointing the additional block development programme officers. The HIRD has organised district-level refresher courses in June-July, 2008 for the capacity building of the XENs, SDOs, JEs, BDPOs, SEPOs, Gram Sachivs, office staff of the samitis and the DRDA officers. The assistant project officers and project economists of the DRDAs have also been trained at the state headquarters in the Management of Information System (MIS). Time and motion studies have also been completed in all the districts. However, a lot more needs to be done. The full-time additional district programme coordinators also need to be appointed by taking advantage of the cent percent funding by the Union Ministry of Rural Development. The newly recruited ABPOs and rozgar sahayaks need adequate training. The sarpanches also need refresher courses for allaying their apprehensions about the NREGS and for their capacity building. The Sarpanch-centric character of the implementation of the scheme, too, needs to be changed by ensuring active involvement of all the panches of the gram panchayats. The panches also need orientation courses. The panchayat samitis, the zila parishads, the line departments like the forest, agriculture, horticulture and irrigation, NGOs and self-help groups should also be made partners in the effective operationalisation of the scheme. The elected representatives of the samitis and the parishads, officers of the line departments, young professionals of NGOs and office-bearers of SHGs too need orientation in the NREGS. Training programmes have to be organised for them at the district, block and village levels. Moreover, the stakeholders should be encouraged to dovetail other rural development programmes to take care of the material component and use of machines whenever it is completely unavoidable. A mass awareness campaign on the NREGS needs to be launched at the village level for generating demand and for educating the rural masses about their entitlements under the scheme. This is also essential to make social audit and social audit forum a reality. It is also necessary for ensuring transparency and accountability in its execution. The training institutes, the NGOs, the organisations of the peasants and the landless workers, the academia and the media will have to make combined and concerted efforts in this direction. The writer is Consultant, Haryana Institute of Rural Development, Nilokheri
(Karnal) |
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On Record THE overall trend in market is still down and a correction in the equity markets could be of another 20-25 per cent, according to Shankar Sharma, Director of First Global. In an interview to The Sunday Tribune, he says that by September next year the oil prices will come down to $60-70 a barrel. India will benefit from fund reallocation in emerging markets, though markets are all about how much it holds in returns. It is a reservoir of returns that has rewarded the investors and now the investors will have to wait for another 3-5 years for the reservoir to replenish before giving more bonanza, he says. Excerpts: Q: Are certain stocks in the markets still overvalued? A: There has been too much hype in certain stocks compared to what they reflect. For example, BHEL and L&T are still expensive. There is no room for such companies in the economic slowdown to give stellar returns. The fall of the markets will be triggered by RIL and it could go much below the Rs 2000 level that it is right now. For, these stocks have no headroom for growth any longer. Q: Did all the bad news in India and US pull equities in a bear market? A: Overall the trend is down punctuated by the rallies we keep seeing, the markets can double from these lows but that still it won’t be a bull market. If anything, the overall GDP, numbers, inflation numbers and IIP data have confirmed our fears and there is still uncertainty of what lies ahead. Despite all the positives, such as the government not collapsing, etc., the market didn’t even sustain that spike on the very next day of the trust vote. This tells us that, intrinsically, the 12,500- 15,000 level was not a strong rally. Though we feel that there is a lot of hype being created about inflation, that’s another bubble waiting to burst. Q: What is the outlook on crude oil and its impact on the markets? A: The crude oil has to come off substantially to $70-80 barrel levels for it to India will be the beneficiary of that. For a bull market to come back, crude has to really collapse. Now it might take 12 months to get to the $ 50 level, it will not happen tomorrow because like equity markets, crude bulls are also there. So they will say the world is running short of oil etc. You will see crude rallying 10-20 per cent from the lows. So that phase seems 12 months away, when crude hits the lows it ought to hit. That’s when you will see India begin to come back into its own Q: Will the uncertainty in the US and Europe prevent FII money coming into A: There is still a lot of bullishness as regards investing in India barring a few minor glitches like inflation and deficits the overall situation is not bad. Everybody expects 7-7.5 per cent growth. I think we’ll get there, but I doubt we will slow much more. Crude has to come off substantially. China has actually done quite well. The China Mainland Index has been trashed because the bottom 20 per cent are very trashy companies. China will benefit, but China’s market is of a very different flavour. India is more of a market that people would like to see. India will benefit a lot more than China does. Clearly, in a global emerging market situation, the losers will be Brazil and Russia. Now, within the EM pack, that money will get reallocated elsewhere. So, somebody has to gain at somebody’s loss. There is no market of that size which is out to gain the points that Brazil and Russia are losing. That has got to be India. Q: Will the corporate numbers be down in the coming quarter and reflect A: The interest rate burden, crude oil impact and slowing overall demand are likely to show in the coming two quarters. It is not possible to assume that corporate numbers will not slow down. Corporate India is still in denial. The real numbers will now begin to creep out, which is where the lows of the market will be formed. But numbers are not going to be disastrous. That’s why, when markets could shed 20-25 per cent from here, they could come down to around 10,000 level. Q: Which segment of stocks will do well? A: IT and pharma will not fall, Public Sector banks look very well valued. In the real estate segment, there is too much hype. If markets fall from these levels, some heavyweights holding the markets like BHEL, Reliance L&T may shed. These could fall off 30-40 per cent to balance out the other stocks. |
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Profile
Persons like Soumitra Chatterjee are rare in filmdom. While others run after awards, he hardly attaches any importance to them. In protest against the National Film Award committee’s bias in awarding popular and mainstream cinema talents, he turned down the 2001 special jury award for Best Actor. But in June 2008 he gracefully accepted the award for Best Actor after having been convinced that the committee’s selection was no longer prejudiced. In the Seventies, Soumitra rejected the Padma Shri because he thought the selection of awardees was not fair but in 2004, he accepted the same award. Soumitra was closely associated with legendary Satyajit Ray. His film debut came in Ray’s Apur Sansar. At that time Soumitra was a radio announcer and had played a small role in a Bengali stage production. Subsequently, he collaborated with Ray in the production of 14 films. Besides working with Ray, he excelled in collaboration with other well-known Bengali directors such as Mrinal Sen and Tapan Sinha. Soumitra has been active in Bangla theatre as an actor, playwright and director. He is also well known for poetry recital and has acted on TV and indigenous folk drama or jatra. Born in Krihanagar, 10 km from Kolkata, on January 19, 1935, Soumitra’s father Mohitkumar was involved in the Non-cooperation Movement. When Soumitra was born, he was an established lawyer in Kolkata. The newborn was named after a character in Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s epic poem, Meghnadbadh Kabya which his mother, Ashalata Devi, admired a lot. It was from his parents that Soumitra inherited an abiding interest in poetry. Much of Soumitra’s childhood was spent in the sylvan surroundings of Krishnanagar, played by the river Jajtangi, taking solitary rides on country boats, listening to the vibrations of the rail-bridge as the train passed. The Chatterjee family ran an amateur theatre group. Along side boys of his generation, Soumitra, featured in some of the juvenile theatre productions including Rabindranath Tagore’s Mukut. He had a stellar role in a school production of The Sleeping Princess directed by the Principal of British origin. The Thespian in Soumitra was already born. Like Apu in Pather Panchali, Soumitra left Krishnanagar at the age of 10. Having spent a year in Barasat, the Chatterjee family stayed in Howrah for sometime. Soumitra took his matriculation from Howrah district school. By that time, he was winning accolades for his acting prowess, both in and out of the school. A school production of Mahendra Gupta’s popular play, Maharaja Nandkumar found him playing the role of British General. The advantage of having relatives in Kolkata ensured regular passage to the imperial city for the Chatterjee family. With Soumitra getting admitted to City College in 1951, the family came over and settled in Kolkata. During the years of studying Bangla literature under stalwarts like Narayan Ganguly, young Soumitra thrived on world literature. Winter nights passed by listening to the music of Allaudin Khan, Bade Ghulam Ali, Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan. Days dawned with paintings of Nandlal Bose and Gopal Ghosh. Reminiscing those days, Soumitra says: “There was a plethora of romanticism in the atmosphere we were brought up, the tradition handed over by our predecessor. The Leftist idealism developed into a conviction leading us forward in the 1950s”. Since then, there was no looking back for Soumitra. He lives in his Golf Green residence in South Kolkata with Deepa, his wife and badminton champion in her youth. |
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brought this about, where the responsibility lies, and whether the situation can be
reversed. The human tragedy is enormous, and there is widespread criticism of the tardiness and inadequacy of the administrative response to it.
THE overall trend in market is still down and a correction in the equity markets could be of another 20-25 per cent, according to Shankar Sharma, Director of First Global. In an interview to The Sunday Tribune, he says that by September next year the oil prices will come down to $60-70 a barrel.
Shankar Sharma
Profile
People should avoid eating meat at least once a week. For meat consumption would begin to double by 2050, implying that the volume of methane emitted by cattle and sheep would double, too, further aggravating the global warming problem. Cattle rearing also contributes to climate change through habitat loss.
I am not sure whether we can say inflation is softening
consistently,
Ballet is a form that requires different emotions and one dance form cannot do justice to it. So, in my dance school in Mumbai, I will teach people everything — from script writing and lighting techniques to dance forms so that they can direct and produce their own shows.
I didn’t know much about pole vault and Sergey Bubka but once I started practising, I started admiring him. He taught us that nothing was impossible. As a strong woman, who always did what she wanted to do, I also want to be remembered as the
unbeatable.