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Trees being choked to death
Now, senior officers on Vigilance radar
Bad season for apple growers
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vignettes
Himachal diary
Kamla Nehru Hospital shifting may put burden on IGMC
Minjar fair from July 26
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Trees being choked to death
Dharamsala, July 21 When a Tribune team visited Ansui village, many trees were found cut in a forest on the common land.Only stumps were left ,indicating once green trees stood there. Another way of destruction was also noticed. The bark of many green trees was found removed. In some cases, the lower portions were found burned after the removal of the bark. Sources say after its bark is removed,a tree dries soon. It gives an excuse to unscrupulous elements to fell it. Gurcharan Singh, a social activist, said he had repeatedly complained to the forest authorities regarding the illicit felling of the trees for performing yajna. However, no action had been taken. Forest officials when contacted said they took action whenever any case of illicit felling was brought to their notice. Ansui is not the only village where people are either felling trees or adopting dubious methods to remove them. On the Mcleodganj-Dharamkot road also, trees are being felled. In the area, unscrupulous elements loosen the earth along the roadside leading to landslides. Though the trees there are part of the reserve forest area, many hotels have come up on it after felling them. Other methods like putting acid in the roots and clearing the bark are also used to dry and later cut trees.
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Now, senior officers on Vigilance radar
Shimla, July 21 Rather than a petty kanungo or a peon falling in the net of the Vigilance Bureau, what is appreciable is the fact that even senior and powerful bureaucrats, engineers and forest officers are being nabbed. More often the achievements of the bureau make news only after the change of power or when elections are round the corner. Even though it was former Congress minister Singhi Ram and the chairman of the Himachal Board of School Education, BR Rahi, who were the first victims of a Vigilance probe after the formation of the BJP regime in December 2007, the arrest of senior officers like Sanjay Gupta, Subhash Ahluwalia and BS Thind, a chief engineer of the National Hydro Power Corporation (NHPC), state drug controller Sher Singh and two executive engineers is a welcome step. With a posting in the bureau considered relatively unimportant as compared to a district or even a battalion, the agency is often plagued by several ills like reluctance on the part of police personnel to inquire into cases against prominent persons, including politicians and bureaucrats. The conviction rate in the cases registered by the Vigilance is barely 25 per cent, which is another deterrent for police officers to go full steam into investigations against the so-called high and mighty. With no inbuilt mechanism providing insulation to the investigating officers and the supporting staff against the imminent backlash, the reluctance on the part of Vigilance officials is understandable. “I know of at least three SP-rank officers who had to face the music on the change of political power for having pursued cases against politicians, resulting in their entire career being spoilt,” says a senior police officer. With adverse remarks being inserted in their ACRs for having pursued cases against politicians, almost 50 per cent of those in the Vigilance do not want to pursue cases against the powerful. The bureau also investigates anonymous and pseudonymous complaints provided they contain specific and verifiable allegations. During 2007, a total of 16 trap cases were registered by the bureau with most of the cases pertaining to patwaris, peons and forest guards. In 2008, this figure hovered around 19 with some higher-ups falling in the Vigilance net. This year, the department has brought under its scanner senior officers, including senior bureaucrats, 21 of whom were arrested in trap cases. “During my tenure in the Vigilance, I have never been given directions to frame or let go any influential person by the political bosses.So, there is no question of a Vigilance probe being dictated by the ruling party,” says DS Manhas, DGP (Vigilance). There is no denying the fact that often the Vigilance is made to investigate politically motivated cases. Even now it is investigating the BJP chargesheet against the previous Congress regime, on the basis of which 33 inquiries are being conducted. Ten cases have been registered in the bitumen scam while Singhi Ram’s case is in court and in the case of Subhash Ahluwlia, permission for prosecution is likely to be sought shortly. The bureau had 249 pending cases and almost 700 pending complaints as on March 31, 2009. With the lack of knowledge of the use of modern technology professionalism, many cases often do not stand in a court of law resulting in the guilty going scot-free. “The sensitisation of all those concerned and above all community participation is the only means by which we can check the menace of corruption,” says Manhas.
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Bad season for apple growers
Shimla, July 21 The monsoon has not only been delayed, but also quite weak so far but every drop of rain which the apple orchards receive will add to the size of the fruit, particularly in the mid and high hills where harvesting begins in August. The horticulture department has been unsure about the crop prospects and has been revising the estimates of production after every few days. Initially, the anticipated output based on the fruit setting in various areas was put at 2.10 crore boxes, 45 lakh boxes fewer than last year’s production. The abject lack of snow, considered as white manure for the apple orchards, in most of the growing areas had indeed affected the crop. As the dry spell continued, whatever little moisture in the soil was there evaporated making the things worse. The department promptly scaled down production estimates to 1.80 crore boxes and the delay in the arrival of the monsoon brought it down to 1.5 crore boxes. Now that the region is having some rain, there is some hope of revival in the high hills and some pockets in the mid hills. It is all over for the growers in the lower hills where plucking of the fruit has already started. The small-size fruit is good only for processing and does not fetch a good price in the market. The impact of the dry spell was accentuated due to exceptionally warm conditions which triggered off hundreds of forest fires, severely affecting the lower areas like the Kullu valley from Bajaura to Patlikuhl, Theog, parts of Rampur and Rohru subdivisions. There was heavy premature dropping of fruit as a result of which the production will be less than 50 per cent of the normal in these areas. The damage in the mid-hill areas, which account for the bulk of the produce, ranges from 30 to 50 per cent. The number of fruit cannot increase, but good rain over the next month or so could still help increase the size and in turn the output, says Gurdev Singh, director of horticulture. Rajeev Chauhan, a leading orchardist of the state, advises the growers to delay harvesting by a fortnight to take the advantage of the rain. The size of the fruit will improve if the region gets some rain over the next few weeks and the increase in volume will help make up some of the losses. The growers have not used much fertilisers and nutrients during the season because of the dry weather. The lack of moisture severely hampers the intake of nutrients from the soil and applying fertilisers becomes a wasteful exercise in such a situation. Ranjit Mehta, another prominent grower form Kotkhai, maintains that the damage to the crop has been to the extent of 50 per cent, though orchards in the high hills are not affected much. Moreover, whatever crop is there, the percentage of superior grade of fruit will certainly be less. A lean crop usually fetches high prices in the market which partly makes up for the low output. However, the growers fear that the government may be forced to procure more apples under the market intervention scheme if the size is small and the quality of the fruit is poor. This could hurt them as only 6,000 to 8,000 tonne of the fruit is actually processed and the rest is sold in various markets. In the past, flooding of the markets by poor-quality fruit had affected the rates of even the superior grades affecting returns. For instance, if the prices come down by Rs 100 per box, the total loss to the growers on 2 crore boxes will be around Rs 200 crore, Chauhan points out. The government promoted horticulture in the hills, as it did not require irrigation like agriculture. But declining snow and rain coupled with rising average temperature has forced the growers to develop facilities to irrigate their orchards to save the crop. Over the past two years, more than 1,500 water-storage tanks have been built. A 300-cubic metre capacity tank is considered sufficient for an average orchard.
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Europeans were afraid of ‘chi chi’ accent
by Shriniwas Joshi The hill stations, including Shimla, during the British period were closely identified with the women and children living there. Shimla witnessed their inflow from the early decade of the 19th century. The British men stayed in the plains as per the requirement of the jobs, but used to take their families to Shimla to counter the physical toll of the tropics on this fragile population. Shimla had the “grass widows”, women whose husbands remained at their posts in the plains; genuine widows; young married and unmarried women. Summer European census figures for Shimla show that the percentage of women grew from 44.6 per cent in 1869 to 53.7 per cent in 1904 to 57 per cent in 1922. Most of these women were related to the officers in the government - civil or military - and they could afford a lengthy stay in Shimla where by coming close to higher hierarchy the social status of the family enhanced. With women, came their offspring and with offspring, came many schools, mostly boarding schools because those who stayed behind in the plains preferred to send their children to the hills for education, if not to England. Dane Kennedy writes in “The Magic Mountains”, “The hill schools modelled their appearance and approach after English public schools pitched themselves both to those parents who wanted their child to obtain the schooling at an English institution and to those who wanted their child to receive the benefits of an English-style education without incurring the financial cost or facing the emotional loss entailed in sending them to England”. After giving much attention to the schools, reserving some of them for European girls only, the Britons and other Europeans were afraid of “chi-chi” accent that their wards may attain in “Chi chi” was considered as an appalling accent that children acquired in Indian schools. It was the hallmark of country bred. “Chi chi” was actually defined in 1903 as a disparaging term applied to half-castes or Eurasians said to be taken from chi (fie!), a common native interjection of remonstrance or reproof. One of the great alumni of Auckland House was the author of several books, Mary Margaret Kaye. She and her sister Dorothy Elizabeth, nicknamed Bets, were born in Shimla and were in school in 1916-17. Both of them were reluctant students and their stay at Auckland was only one term. Kaye writes, “We regarded (the school) as a prison house. Desks, time-tables, lecturing, hectoring teachers and lessons, lessons, lessons. Our lovely carefree days were over. The school was strictly for the children of Europeans, which naturally included a very large proportion of what were then called Eurasians, the majority of whom spoke with a lilting sing-song accent that was very like a Welsh one and was known as chi chi”. She remembered Tennyson’s “The Brook” being recited in her class in “chi chi” accent. Mary reached home and gave a repeat performance of it to Bets. Their mother heard it and was not amused but horrified by the thought of her children picking up the “chi chi” accent. She immediately withdrew them from the school and that was the wish-fulfillment for the naughty girls. Ruddy (Rudyard Kipling), who made Shimla famous by his writings, and his sister Trix were also sent to England at a tender age to study there because it was apprehended that “once a ‘chi chi’ accent, as English contaminated by a native tongue is termed, is acquired, it is rarely lost even after years of later life in England, and pure speech is an essential, according to an Englishman”. The Rumer and Joanna Godden, the two sisters, who wrote that delightful book “Two under the Indian Sun” left late for England after touching the teens in India and there, in England, the English schools could not provide status to them because “their accent was inflected with that dreaded Indian ‘chi chi’ singsong”. Afraid of “chi chi accent”, the hardest choice a European woman had to make in India then was to decide whether it was best to go home with her children or to stay with her husband.
Tailpiece
General Charles Harvey writes in “Some Records of Crime”, “The grown-up sons and daughters having never been at home (England), are almost to the manner, natives in their ways, and talk what is called ‘chi chi’ baat, Oodhur don’t go” (don’t go there).
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Himachal diary
The daily “tamasha” by private companies for the promotion of their products atop the Rotary Hall on the congested Mall is causing hardships to the locals as well as tourists. Using high-decibel sound systems to attract passersby, the promoters shatter the serenity of the internationally famous promenade, which serves as the open drawing room for the locals. The Shimlaites, particularly the old-timers, who have been using it as a meeting place traditionally, are enraged over what they term as the “desecration” of the Mall by commercial interests.
There is no escape from the irritating noise produced from the public address system which is virtually hammered into the ears of the strollers. The crowd witnessing the “tamasha” chokes the Mall and the strollers have to virtually jostle their way through. What was initially an occasional affair has become a regular feature of late much to the chagrin of the local people. The people have been visiting the office of The Tribune to vent their anger over the failure of the authorities to maintain the “sanctity and quietude” of the Mall which has already become a crowded place. Such commercial activities require vast open space and the right venue is the Ridge where summer festival is held. The tourists complain that there is no place in and around Shimla where they could spend time, it will be prudent on the part of the authorities to spare the Mall.
Political lull in state
The state seems to be slipping into a political lull after the loud and rather prolonged din created by the parliament election. The Central and the state governments are back to the routine business of the administration and even the parties have returned to their normal working. The induction of two cabinet ministers and three chief parliamentary secretaries has been largely a quiet affair and the only voice of discontent is being raised by Hari Narayan Saini, the MLA from Nalagarh who had helped the party to secure a huge lead from his assembly constituency in the Lok Sabha polls. His anger is understandable, as the party had during the run-up to the election announced that performance of the legislators would be the main criterion for induction into ministry. Even in the Congress, there is a complete silence and nothing had emerged out of the exercise started by the party to analyse the reasons for the dismal performance in the election. The political calm is also hurting many journalists professionally as they are not finding many juicy political stories. The condition of so-called political analyst is also not good with a lot of them finding little grist to the mill for political stories. But not losing heart, a few experienced journalists come out with comforting words “if political winter is here, the summer may not be too far”.
UGC fellowship for Dharamsala teacher
Charu Sharma from the department of English in government college, Dharamsala, has been awarded post-doctoral UGC research fellowship for two years. Her topic for research is “(Re) Presenting Peripheral India: Lived experience as literature” which focuses on Dalits and Tribals of India in the present scenario. Charu while talking to The Tribune said besides relying on the available data, she would also visit various tribal areas of the country.
Camp on muscular dystrophy
The authorities of BEd college, Dharamsala, and the Indian Association of Muscular Dystrophy organised a two-day camp on muscular dystrophy in the college campus recently. Experts gave advice to patients and their guardians for coping with the problems at the camp organised under the aegis of the Sarva Sikhya Abhiyan. The Minister for empowerment and social justice Sarveen Chaudhary presided over the closing ceremony of the camp. (Contributed by Rakesh Lohumi, DP Gupta and Lalit Mohan)
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Kamla Nehru Hospital shifting may put burden on IGMC
Shimla, July 21 The decision to shift Kamla Nehru Hospital (KNH), housing the gynaecology wing, from its present location near Oak Over to the IGMC has been taken on the basis of a report submitted by the consultant engaged specifically for the task who gave the go-ahead.A committee has been constituted to oversee the entire process over the next three months. Surprisingly, the decision comes at a time when practically all requirements of a mother-child hospital have been fulfilled at the KNH.Having the hospital next to the IGMC could have been a wise move had new and exclusive infrastructure been created rather than taking out space from within the existing set-up of the IGMC, which also has a medical college. The Kamla Nehru Hospital came into existence in April 25, 1924, as part of the philanthropic activities undertaken by Lady Reading during the British rule. The hospital was named after Lady Reading and it was till very recently christened as Kamla Nehru Hospital. A portion of the hospital is still housed in a heritage building built during the days of the Raj. Hospital sources said rather than constructing new wards and operation theatres for the gynaecology wing, which used to function exclusively in the hospital, the space and infrastructure of various departments of the IGMC and Nursing School was being taken out. To make space for the 178 beds of the hospital, the B-block of Government Dental College and hospital is being vacated. The operation theatres with the orthopaedics department of the IGMC will be used for undertaking surgeries and the labour rooms will be created by seeking space from the ENT department. It is not just the ortho and ENT departments which will bear the brunt of the ill-planned shifting, but also the Nursing School will become a victim as the government proposes to shift it on the premises occupied by the KNH. Even though the doctors at the IGMC and the KNH are supposed to comply with the shifting move, they are unanimous in their opinion that the decision will adversely affect the functioning of both the medical institutes. No doubt, there had been a demand to shift the KNH to the IGMC some years ago, but the creation of the required facilities for deliveries and gynaecological problems at the KNH had been sorted out. The hospital has a separate blood bank, X-ray unit, microbiology laboratory and a neo-natal nursery, which meet practically all routine requirements of the gynaecology department. Notwithstanding the fact that there is a long waiting list of the planned surgeries some of which are performed on Sundays and other holidays to reduce waiting period, the orthopaedics department has to give its OPDs for the gynaecology wing.
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Minjar fair from July 26
Chamba, July 21 Chamba, the land of Lord Shiva, celebrates the eight-day long historic Minjar fair every year. The word ‘minjar’ has originated from the Sanskrit word ‘manjari’ which means shoots of corn. In Persian, on the contrary, the word ‘minjar’ or ‘manzar’ stands for a huge spectacle or for a comprehensive presentation. In this way, the Persian connotation affirms that the Minjar fair is a huge spectacle, if it is tallied with the present day fete. The date of the fair i.e. third Sunday of Bikrami Sawan every year, symbolises both Surajvansi clan of the age-old dynasty and worship of the sun. Once, during the regime of King Sahila Varma (920-940 AD) of the erstwhile Chamba state, the Kangra ruler attacked Chamba. Varma’s forces retorted so fiercely that as a result Sahila Varma emerged victorious. On his back home journey from the battlefield the people of his tiny state, who presented him with ‘tentacles’ of maize and paddy at a bridge over the Ravi, accorded Sahila Varma a warm welcome.
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Dharamsala, July 21
The daily “tamasha” by private companies for the promotion of their products atop the Rotary Hall on the congested Mall is causing hardships to the locals as well as tourists. Using high-decibel sound systems to attract passersby, the promoters shatter the serenity of the internationally famous promenade, which serves as the open drawing room for the locals.