Dharamsala, July 7
Development funds received under various schemes are being wasted here. These days, the district administration has started development works around the Bhagsunag temple area.

The cemented stairs of the temple, which were made of tiles and were in good shape, are being dismantled, a move which has left many perplexed.

Members of local NGOs allege that the money is being wasted. They say where is the need to reconstruct the stairs which were in good condition.

The tiles were serving their purpose and could have easily lasted many more years. However, by breaking the tiles to do something new in the peak tourist season, the authorities have just created inconvenience for the tourists, besides wasting public money.

The locals said instead of breaking the tiles, the district administration could have installed lights on the path or created other facilities on priority. Besides, the location of toilets in the lower area and their poor condition is perilous for tourists. Senior citizens visiting the Bhagsunag area have to climb many stairs to reach the toilets. So, instead of breaking the tiles, the district administration should have concentrated on creating a ramp to the toilets and improving the facilities.

Besides, there is a need of dustbin along the tract to the Bhagsu waterfall as a large number of tourists visit the site and generally throw the waste in a nullah. There is also a scope for solar lights along the tract.

The Bhagsunag temple development authority has recently envisaged a plan to revamp the entire area. It has also planned to renovate the old wooden inn near the temple area. It has also been planned to replace the old dome of the temple with traditional Hindu temple-type roof. The logic of the district administration for the alteration is that it would create more space in the temple.

However, the Gorkha Regiments, who consider Bhagsunag as their ‘kul devta’, are opposing the move. They organise a pooja every year in the temple. They have also been maintaining the inn and the temple. They are of the view that the original structure of the temple should not be altered.

The Kangra deputy commissioner said he would ensure that breaking the existing path in good condition was not a sheer wastage of funds.

The district administration also removed the kiosks raised by Tibetans near the temple. The Tibetans used to sell herbs and other small articles in the kiosks that was also a tourist attraction.

Shimla, July 7
With recurring dry spells severely affecting the productivity of major crops, farmers in the hill state have been forced to switch over to fodder cultivation.

In a state facing perennial shortage of fodder, the farmers are now finding the cultivation of fodder crops i.e chari, bazra, oats and barseem, economical than the traditional wheat and maize crops in the rain-fed areas which account for almost 80 per cent of the total area under cultivation.

The demand for fodder seed has been going up and this season, the agriculture department has already supplied over 4,000 quintals of bazra and chari seed, which is almost three times the last year’s requirement. The main reason is the failure of the rabi crop due to the lack of rains during winter. While over 18,000 hectare area was left unsown, the growth was stinted in some areas forcing farmers to cut the grain-less wheat crop early to pave the way for sowing fodder which does not require either irrigation or protection from monkeys and other wild animals.

The move will provide green fodder to milch cattle in the lean summer months when the farmers import large quantities of dry fodder from neighbouring states. The delay in the onset of monsoon and the lack of moisture in soil due to prolonged dry spell has affected the maize crop and the department has advised farmers to sow fodder if there is no germination of maize by the first week of July. Incidentally, maize has been the main crop as it does not require irrigation and it accounts for more than half of the total food grain production. It is the only crop the yield of which is slightly higher the national average at 26 quintals per hectare.

Director of Himalayan Research Group Dr Lal Singh is not surprised over the diversification to fodder in view of the increasing cost of dry fodder. In areas like Mandi, the landed cost of dry fodder procured from Punjab ranges between Rs 5 and Rs 7 per kg and unlike green fodder, which increases milk yield, it just sustained the cattle, he observes. The shortage of fodder has been a major bottleneck hampering the growth of dairy farming in the state.

The farm productivity has been below the national average due to inherent factors like small landholdings, lack of irrigation and the hilly terrain. The average holding size is 1.2 hectare and 85 per cent of the total 8.63 lakh farmers fall in the small and marginal category. The average holding of 5.56 lakh marginal farmers is only 0.4 hectare. In 2008-09, only 14 lakh tonne of food grain was produced as against the target of 16 lakh tonne. The output of wheat was only 5 lakh tonne against a target of 6.5 lakh tonne.

Director of agriculture JC Rana said given the constraints which limited farm productivity the target of food sufficiency was no longer a priority. The emphasis was on crop diversification to increase the income of farmers, extend irrigation facility and encourage protected cultivation for which a Rs 155-crore scheme had been launched, he said, adding that the department had been encouraging farmers to diversify to cash crops like off-season vegetables and seed production.

Rana said already, 55,000 hectare had been brought under off-season vegetables, the total production of which had been increased to 11.50 lakh tonne. The target was to increase the area to 65,000 hectare by the end of the 11th Plan and attain a production of 13.50 lakh tonne. However, fodder cultivation was a new phenomenon, which had been forced by treacherous weather on which the farmers had been heavily dependent. The plan to bring 2,500 hectare under poly-house cultivation would further reduce the dependence on weather to an extent.

Hamirpur, July 7
The state government has started a unique programme for ensuring better dental health of schoolchildren through which 100 per cent dental care would be provided in a phased manner.

A state-level dental health programme for schoolchildren, which was launched from Hamirpur district on June 25 by the state Health Minister, aims to create a better dental environment for the masses in the state.

Under the programme, dental medical officers (MOs) would conduct check-up of schoolchildren in both government and private schools periodically.

The Dental Health Services (DHS) directorate, which is organising the programme, has proposed to carry check-up of about 2.58 lakh children annually in the schools.

After the screening of the children, they would be referred for treatment to the nearest dental clinics in batches, preferably accompanied by their parents.

Telling about the programme, Dr Hem Lata Sood, joint director of the DHS, told The Tribune that, “The programme would be carried out in 129 clinics in the state and 161 MOs would conduct dental check-up once a week, preferably on Saturdays.”

“While the MOs would be required to check at least 50 students in a visit, they would submit a report to the department on the basis of which they would be paid incidental expenses of Rs 200 per visit and the report about the work would be reflected in their ACRs,” she added.

Dr Rajan Bhardwaj, district coordinator of the programme, said, “We are also involving schoolteachers and principals in the programme.

Besides dental check-up, we are teaching the correct method of brushing teeth through demonstration and other important aspects of dental care.”

The lone lift connecting the Cart Road with The Mall is unable to take the burden of unending stream of locals as well as tourists.

It is during the tourist season when thousands of visitors pour into the town every day that long queues can be seen in front of the lift. With most parts of the main town prohibited for vehicular traffic, practically everyone, including locals, have to rely on the lift. The over two-decade-old lift of the Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation (HPTDC) remains the only commercial one in the town. The queue is not just at the lower end on the Cart Road but also on The Mall as people wait for their turn.

The exotic lamp post has gone as also the wrought iron’s lion-faced water tap. In the land of arty fountain-slabs, a pair of ugly looking water taps jut out of the hideous tiles throwing the earlier one away. The bazaar still carries the name ‘lakkar’ although it has more medicine-selling establishments. The strict provisions on forest conservation and control of the government on the flow of wood have sapped the interest of the shop owners in the trade of wood-based products.

Timber extraction that was a lucrative business of high investment and returns in 1908 when there were 16 timber merchants here have reduced to a couple with little stocks of timber lying just above the present cart road near Lakkar Bazaar bus stand.

Saharanpur is internationally famous for its wood carving cottage industry and a couple of shops in Lakkar Bazaar have been keeping the word ‘lakkar’ alive by selling the wood-products brought from there. Earlier, carrying walking sticks was common in the town because Shimla was known for long walks and a nice wooden stick in hand was an effective companion.

With the change of times, the natives and the tourists in the town, perforce, walk in those areas only where the government has imposed restrictions on taking vehicles. Even the walkers of yesterday are commuters of today. The culture of carrying sticks, therefore, has vanished and the bazaar had to put up the shutters on many a shop.

It being nearest to the state’s principal hospital attached to Indira Gandhi Medical College started replacing the wood shops with medicine stores and has become an ever-growing medicine market of Shimla. A physician, a dentist, an eye specialist, an eye-glass frame dealer, a radiologist and a few diagnostic centres have also come up here in the past few years. But the picture was totally different about a hundred years ago. Mary Margaret Kaye who has written several novels, including the most popular ‘The Far Pavilions’ was born in Shimla in 1908 and was a student of Auckland House in the year 1916-17.

She used to pass by the bazaar while going to school and describes it in the first part of her biography, ‘The Sun in the Morning’.“True to its name, Lakkar Bazaar was where most of the workers-in-wood had their shops: the master craftsmen who could turn a section of oak, pine, sycamore, rosewood or walnut into innumerable charming artifacts.

The carvers and joiners; the members and makers of furniture, toys, ornaments, pipes and walking-sticks. They could all be found there, and the whole bazaar always smelt deliciously of sawdust and pinewood.” She wrote about the two forks that the bazaar had and still have; the left-hand fork plunges steeply to Chapslee and Auckland House and the right-hand fork takes one to Snowdon, earlier the official residence of the Commander-in-Chief of India, and now a medical college.

Though the commodities and their display in the shops along the left-hand fork have considerably changed from what it was during MM Kaye’s times, yet her description is vivid for any reader. She writes: “It was lined for several hundred yards by shops purveying different merchandise; flimsy buildings, in which were sold grain, fruit, vegetables and sweetmeats, cloth, medicines, brass and tin-ware, cheap trinkets and fragile glass bangles in glittering, sparkling colours (not to be seen today) that made the open-fronted shops look like Aladdin’s cave.” She gives an interesting account of cajoling the rickshawpullers called ‘jhampanis’ to get out of the rickshaw and walk as soon as she and her younger sister Bets neared the bazaar. While walking, they would, in the manner of the monkeys, used to filch handful of roasted grams (chunna) from the basket of paanwallas, selling grams and roasted groundnuts too.

Kaye writes that she was extremely fond of halwa and jellabies also, but being too sticky to snatch and conceal, she would always walk off with roasted grams. And I quote for some strange reason the chunna one paid for never tasted half as good as the chunna one snatched on the sly.

Chunna has petered out of the shops but a hawker selling it still sits by the side of the road with a wooden-stick used to shoo the chunna-snatcher-monkeys away.

Kangra July 7
Four-and-a-half-year old Ananya left the audience at the auditorium of Dr RP Government Medical College, Tanda, spellbound by giving a performance on tabla on the occasion of World Music Day.

The fingers of the little master were dancing on the tabla while Pandit Anupam Rai was on the harmonium. The audience continued to clap till the end of the performance.

Health minister Rajeev Bindal was the chief guest. Ananay, who was honoured by Bindal for his unimaginable performance, is the son of Ruchi Sharma, a renowned kathak dancer and a student of Pandit Rai.