The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

	Floods in AP, Karnataka Both states deserve liberal aid to tackle calamity Triggered by heavy rain last week, floods have wreaked havoc in parts of coastal Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The death toll in both states is increasing fast, with Kurnool, Mahboobnagar, Krishna and Guntur districts in Andhra Pradesh being the worst affected. Over 400 villages are under water. Thousands, trapped on rooftops without food and water for three days, are still awaiting help. With the water level in the Prakasam Barrage across the Krishna having reached the maximum level on Monday, the threat of massive floods loomed large over Vijayawada, a major trading and railway hub with a population of 1.2 million, located on the banks of the Krishna. Flood waters have cut off this important city from the Hyderabad side, breaching the Chennai National Highway. Officials termed it as the “worst floods” in the Krishna river in 100 years. The focus of evacuation is mainly on Krishna and Guntur districts. Heavy rain in North Karnataka has flooded several districts, cutting off towns like Bijapur, Bagalkot and Bellary. Karwar had 50 cm of rain on Sunday — highest in 50 years. The waters inundated the Krishna and the Tungabhadra rivers, and the Karnataka government released up to 24 lakh cusecs of water from the Almatti and Narayanpur dams in a single day. Owing to the flooding of the Tungabhadra river following heavy inflows from upstream, the Mantralaya pilgrim town in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh has been devastated. It is a moot question whether the Andhra government could have better managed the systematic release of waters from the Surekshu, Srisalam and Nagarjunasagar dams before things got out of control. However, the state government says that the scale of floods has been so massive this time that the “possible maximum flood” (PMF) happens only after many decades. The Centre is providing all help to both states in the rescue, relief and rehabilitation efforts. It should heed their appeal for liberal assistance to tackle the calamity on a war-footing. Floods occur due to the rivers’ inadequate capacity to contain the huge flow brought down from the upper catchments following heavy rainfall. There is need for an effective flood mitigation system to ensure the safety of the people and the economy.
	Signals from Siliguri Congress, Mamata are testing the water Congress leaders in West Bengal are not amused at Ms Mamata Banerjee’s dig that they have become “a little too greedy”. Mamata’s public statement on Sunday came after the Congress nominee defeated the candidate put up by her for the office of the Mayor of the Siliguri Municipal Corporation. Even more galling for her was that the Congress won with support of the Left Front. The alliance between the Congress and Ms Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress has been on a roll this year, routing the Left Front in one election after another in West Bengal. With a strong sentiment building up against the three-decades old Left Front rule in the state, the alliance is widely expected to do well in the Assembly election due in 2011. The break-down of the alliance in Siliguri, therefore, is a setback and Ms Banerjee has not minced her words, blaming the Congress for stabbing the Trinamool Congress on the back. The Congress, however, has traditionally been strong in north Bengal, nursed among others by late Ghani Khan Chaudhury, Pranab Mukherjee and Priyaranjan Dasmunshi. Moreover, the party had accepted the Trinamool Congress as the dominant partner in both the general election and subsequent by-elections this year and for once, the Congress felt, it was time for Trinamool to concede some ground. Though it had contested fewer seats in Siliguri than its ally, the Congress still won as many seats as Ms Banerjee’s party. It, therefore, staked claim to the Mayor’s office, offering the Deputy Mayor’s and Chairman’s offices to Trinamool. But Didi would have none of it and the offer was dismissed out of hand. The Congress then sought support from ‘all’ councillors and the Left Front was only too happy to oblige, if for no other reason than to score a point over its arch enemy, Ms Mamata Banerjee. Siliguri appears to be a sort of signal from the Congress that it will henceforth bargain as hard as it can, that it will not bow any longer to Mamata’s pressures. As many as 10 byelections for the Assembly are scheduled to be held next month and the even more crucial election for the Calcutta Municipal Corporation and 82 municipalities in the state are due next year. The two parties, however, cannot afford to break the alliance, however. Neither party is keen to oblige the Left Front at this stage.
	Thought for the Day No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes, than a public library. — Samuel Johnson
	Corrections and clarifications Dorjee Khandu, the Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister, has wrongly been described as the Andhra Pradesh CM in the highlight of the report from Arunachal Pradesh, “Only politicians get rich in Arunachal” (Page 2, October 5). Well known Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa’s name has been misspelt in the report, “Spicmacay north zone fest ends” (Page 3, October 5). It should have been ‘another alumnus’ and not the plural ‘alumni’ in the report, “Bapu’s ethics still relevant, says CEC” (Page 2, October 5). The word, ‘heaving’ has inadvertently appeared in the phrase “…the stomping of feet…” appearing in the report, “BSF not to tone down aggressive border drill (Page 4, October 5). Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them. This column appears twice a week — every Tuesday and Friday. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error. Readers in such cases can write to Mr Kamlendra Kanwar, Senior Associate Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is kanwar@tribunemail.com. H.K. Dua Editor-in-Chief

ARTICLE

Leadership vacuum hits BJP
Search on for Rajnath’s replacement
by S. Nihal Singh

THERE was something more than mere comical in the urbane Bharatiya Janata Party politician, Mr Arun Jaitley, unveiling his party’s Haryana election manifesto. Because the document promising, among other things, to “ban Western music and obscenity on display in the name of culture by enacting a law” was bad enough. But it reflects, like nothing else before it, the confusion in the BJP about what it is and what it wants to be.

The irony is that this foray into medievalism comes after the party’s mentor, Mr Mohan Bhagwat of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, had held his widely publicised durbar in Delhi implying that after the damaging internal feuds and tussle for power in the BJP, he had licked the party into shape. He had decreed that Mr L.K. Advani’s time was up although he had some leeway in deciding when to go. Second, and most importantly, there was no option for the party but to follow the Hindutva creed.

In the short term, what it seems to have accomplished is a virtual vacuum of leadership, with the various wings of the party going their different ways. Facing a string of assembly elections, the BJP has decided at one level to bring in the image and voice of Mr A.B. Vajpayee and other leaders into the election campaigns without leaving Mr Advani out. At another level, the RSS has teamed up with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to begin a long march in defence of the cow, lately in the news for other reasons.

The state BJP parties have apparently been given the freedom to do their own thing. In any event, the party’s Haryana leadership has interpreted the RSS cracking the whip as giving it the freedom to bash Western music and culture. If desi and old are gold in the new scheme of things, anything alien and Western is bad. Put simply, it has equated obscenity with Western music. The BJP worthies in the state have perhaps never heard the great works of Western classical music or even the more accessible Beatle songs, not to mention Bob Dylan.

True, national and other parties have to attune themselves to the never-ending cycle of elections, whatever the nature of the crises they are undergoing. The BJP is particularly vulnerable because it has a lame duck leader who has adopted a low posture, perhaps fearing that his writ does not run. And Mr Rajnath Singh is bestirring himself in the hope of landing a suitable job after he loses the party presidency. The longer Mr Advani takes to relinquish the leader of the Opposition post, the greater will be the confusion in the party.

Mr Bhagwat might have done more harm than good in announcing to the party and the world that it is the RSS that calls the shots in the BJP. Sometimes, assertions of primacy yield better results in privacy. The umbilical cord that connects the RSS with the party is a fact of life although the former on occasion cultivates the feint of being a cultural organisation interested in weightier themes than winning political power. But the reinforcing of the BJP with trusted men placed in positions of power and the deference of the most powerful party leaders to it are ample evidence of its clout.

Apparently, Mr Bhagwat’s attempt was to make the point that he was not interested in micromanaging the crisis in the BJP. But having decapitated the party, he is now at the mercy of second rung leaders furiously fighting for power. To complicate the picture, the power bug has also bitten the not-so- relatively young.

On the other hand, the BJP is left with the problem of how to project the Hindutva creed because it must weigh the reality of India if it wants to win elections. This task, to be defined by the next leader, becomes more onerous now that the RSS has called it to account. Partly, the answer will lie with the calibre of Mr Advani’s successor; partly the degree of freedom accorded to him by the RSS.

In the interim, the BJP has decided to emphasise bread and butter issues in contesting the forthcoming state assembly elections. With the price rise of essential commodities and continuing consequences of the global economic downturn, there are sufficient targets to take on the ruling party at the Centre. Ideological issues can wait until they are sorted out in the fullness of time. But the BJP cannot have a bright future if it were to espouse retrograde social and political themes in an attempt to please what must remain a fringe in society.

Many in the BJP are pining for Mr Vajpayee, the great conciliator, but his physical ailments rule him out in any active political role. A mechanism of a collective, which might be favoured by the RSS, will not work in the cut and thrust of politics. Those who fancy Mr Narendra Modi in the leadership role forget a cardinal fact of Indian politics: a leader can lead only if he or she unites, rather than divides, society in a plural set-up.

How the BJP and the RSS will pull themselves out of the hole they have dug remains to be seen. Perhaps Mr Bhagwat will need to micromanage affairs in the BJP beyond the firmans he has given to Mr Advani and Mr Rajnath Singh. The RSS seems to be tilting towards picking a state leader, rather than the known aspirants for the top job, to place him as the party leader. That would leave Mr Jaitley in place as leader of the Rajya Sabha and Ms Sushma Swaraj would take Mr Advani’s place in the Lok Sabha.

The longer Mr Bhagwat waits to complete the task he has begun in re-engineering the BJP, the more arduous would be the party’s return to power at the Centre. The present uncertainties can only encourage other state parties to follow the Haryana example by interpreting Hindutva in their own manner, to the glee of other parties and the despair of the intelligent voter.

MIDDLE

A for Angle, B for Bangle, C for Candle….
by Ashima Bath

PEOPLE tell me that English is a funny language and I can prove it. As a teacher there are always moments of mirth tinged with censure that are filed away.

A young lad once ran into me crying that his teacher was wrong. Calming him down with a biscuit I asked to see his notebook. An exercise had been done and one of the words given to be made into a sentence was the word “pregnant”.

The chapter was about a hospital catching fire. This little mite had written: “the fireman rushed into the building and came out pregnant”. Digging deeper I discovered that the dictionary he had used stated the meaning of the word pregnant to be “carrying a child.” Now whose baby was it anyway and who was at fault?

Yet another particularly memorable one was that of teaching how to write telegrams to Class X a few years ago. The question was to draft a telegram asking your father to send money urgently for your grandmother’s illness. X brought his register to me in which was written within the telegram format: DAD GRANDMOTHER VERY SICK STOP SEND MONEY VERY QUICKLY STOP OR SHE’S HISTORY.

Once I had managed to control my laughter I asked for the reason behind the word “history”, to which with great alacrity X replied: “But, Ma’am, don’t you know people who die become history?” When did he become so word smart?

During our school entrance examinations there was a question of writing the opposite gender of what was given. In one of the boxes it was typed RAM (I wish I could ask you here to hold your breath) the answer given to which was SITA. Don’t laugh, no one told the fifth graders that English wasn’t phonetically written.

And here I thought that finding a note outside my house that read “BATHHOUSE” was pointed enough. How shall I wash it away? Uh, my last name is Bath.

Boarders are always hungry. After coming home and eating mutton curry and rice one of my ex-students remarked: “Gee Ma’am, you’re a good cooker.” Hawkins, indeed! This has happened to one my colleagues too.

I think in my next life I’ll teach aerobics, perhaps yoga or even knitting. No papers to be set or marked, I hasten to add. No explanations why two similar words sound so different. Remember Amitabh Bacchan in “Namak Halal” with PUT and BUT?

I say this every year and every year I look forward to new students with newer antics. God bless them and us teachers.

OPED

Copenhagen may signal a fresh start for climate talks
by Juliet Eilperin

WASHINGTON: Like most members of President Obama’s climate team, David Sandalow was one of President Bill Clinton’s negotiators in Kyoto. And he carries an indelible lesson from the experience of signing off on the international climate pact there 12 years ago: “Only agree abroad to what you can implement at home.”

He had been elated at the deal by more than 180 nations in December 1997. But within months, a television ad appeared, decrying the agreement for not including developing nations such as China and India. “It’s not global and it won’t work,” said the ad, which was sponsored by business groups including the American Association of Automobile Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute. It captured the growing discontent in the United States over the Clinton administration’s signing off on a package that did not force similar cuts by major developing countries.

That political backlash is one of several reasons why any deal struck two months from now in Copenhagen will at best signal the start of a new global approach to tackling climate change, rather than its successful conclusion.

Kyoto’s legacy — including the decision to exclude major developing countries from the agreement, the failure of the United States to ratify it and the fact that many of its signatories have missed their emissions targets — continues to dominate UN talks aimed at curbing the world’s greenhouse gas output. It has made the United States more cautious about defining specific reductions, made other industrialised nations sceptical of the US commitment and made developing countries more insistent on getting money from rich nations to address their problems.

“If we have any kind of international agreement in Copenhagen, there will have to be some accommodation of American political realities, but you have to meet a number of political realities on the other side,” said Melinda Kimble, senior vice president of the U.N. Foundation and a lead negotiator for the State Department when Kyoto was forged.

These realities have made it harder for most of the key countries, whose representatives have been meeting in Bangkok, to reach an agreement by December, especially one that involves a massive shift of their nation’s economic trajectories for the sake of a long-term reward. Even the Japanese have proposed abandoning the Kyoto agreement for a completely new structure.

“The Kyoto Protocol is a very historic protocol,” said Kenichi Kobayashi, who directs the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ climate change division. “But now the situation has greatly changed in the last 10 years.”

The biggest change is that developing countries such as China, India and Brazil — none of whom are bound to specific climate targets under Kyoto, and continue to say they will not embrace them as part of an international treaty — are much bigger carbon emitters than they used to be. China has surpassed the United States as the world’s largest emitter, according to the International Energy Agency, with the two nations accounting for about 40 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The agency said that 97 percent of the rise in energy-related carbon dioxide emissions will come from developing nations by 2030.

Jairam Ramesh, India’s minister of state for Environment and Forests, told reporters Friday that America’s near-term climate targets remain too modest. “The stalemate in negotiations has not been caused by China and India,” Ramesh said. “The make-or-break issue is emissions cuts. If there’s no agreement on that, there’s no agreement in Copenhagen.”

Todd Stern, the US special envoy for climate change, said he is focused on achieving “the art of the possible. ... The task here is to get a deal consistent with those (constraints), which pushes us in the right direction.”

In some ways the political climate has loosened the Obama’s administration’s constraints in recent months. Major US companies and even utilities now back a federal cap on greenhouse gases, and the combination of the House-passed climate bill and legislation introduced last week suggest that the President could meet his goal of reducing the nation’s emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020.

Several environmentalists say US negotiators have been too hesitant to use provisions in the House bill — such as its emissions targets and funding to help poor countries preserve their forests and cope with climate effects — to lay the groundwork for a global deal.

“The ghost of Kyoto hangs over the US more than it does over most nations,” said Ned Helme, who heads the Center for Clean Air Policy. “I think we could be a bit bolder now because we have a good story to tell internationally.”

But on October 2, Obama’s top domestic climate adviser, Carol Browner, said it was “not likely” that a final bill would be signed by the president before Copenhagen. Stern is unwilling to codify targets internationally that the United States has yet to adopt.

Instead US negotiators, as well as ones like India’s Ramesh, are exploring whether the world’s major emitters could forge a pact that encompasses nationally binding goals and is subject — at least to some extent — to international review. James Connaughton, who chaired President Bush’s Council on Environmental Quality, said the outcome in Copenhagen could resemble what Bush and his top deputies had sought for years.

“What all major economies realized this time around is that they need to establish a domestic consensus on an agreed level of effort as a stronger basis for the commitments they make internationally, and as a catalyst for international cooperation,” Connaughton said. — By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

Rajasthan’s dying folk music finds a voice
by Madhusree Chatterjee

Traditional folk music from the remote villages of Rajasthan is finding high-profile voices to carry it mainstream. A five-day Rajasthan International Folk Festival (RIFF), which began October 1 at the sprawling Mehrangarh Fort, in Jodhpur is promoting “unheard of music from the desert villages that is dying a slow death due to lack of patronage and popularity”.

On Saturday, the country’s leading exponent of classical Rajasthani sarangi and vocal music, Ustad Sultan Khan, jumped the “class divide between classical and folk music” to throw his lot with marginalised ethnic folk musicians of Marwar in a rare “folk-meets classical” concert Maru Tarang at the RIFF.

“I want to highlight folk music and work with talented folk musicians because I love Rajasthani folk. I belong to Marwar,” Sultan Khan, who has worked in several Bollywood movies and has collaborated with rock bands like Duran Duran and Beatles, said.

“It is difficult for folk music to achieve the refinement of classical music in the state because folk is memory-based, handed down the generations by word of mouth. There are no written compositions. In contrast, classical music follows the strict grammar of the gharana and is honed with years of ‘talim (tutelage)’ and practice,” he said.

Sultan Khan, who will work with rock legend Carlos Santana in California later this year, said, “Folk music is a visual feast because of its sheer energy and colour while classical music is subtle, meant to be heard and felt”.

“But I am glad to have met them on common ground,” the ailing ustad said.

Maru Tarang was first performed in December 2008, thanks to the efforts of the RIFF which was trying to make the two genres meet on a common ground, director of RIFF Divya Bhatia said.

The concert is a watershed since it “bridges the class divide that exists between the two — folk and classical”.

“Though the origin of classical lies in folk, the father and the son can look alike,’ Sultan Khan’s son Sabir Khan, a budding national talent, explained.

Maru Tarang featured Sultan Khan, his son Sabir Khan and Sultan’s brother Hamid Khan and leading Manganiyar Sindhi sarangi maestro Lakha Khan and vocalist Anwar Khan. The group sang popular Rajasthani wedding and festival numbers, ‘sufi’ ‘bhajans’ and ‘rajwari maand’ (in praise of the maharaja) in both classical and the traditional folk styles, accompanied by the sarangi.

Manganiyar guru Lakha Khan said, “The collaboration is a shot in the arm for Manganiyar folk which is dying a slow death in the villages of Jodhpur, Barmer and Jaisalmer.”

“We are poor people and cannot live on music alone. Moreover, Rajasthan is a dry state and our crops in the villages are erratic. We have to depend on sponsors to promote our music. In this case, we were lucky to have a sponsor like the virasat (royalty) and Sultan Khan as a collaborator,” Lakha Khan, a frail old man said.

Mumbai-based Sufi and folk vocalist Rekha Bharadwaj, wife of filmmaker Vishal Bharadwaj, is also collaborating with female folk musicians in the state.

In a concert on Octoberober 2, ‘Maand and More’, Rekha pitted her powerful contralto and earthy style of music with the state’s living Maand and Bhopi (folk styles) legends, Bhanwari Devi Bhopi and Rehana Mirza singing Rajwari Maand from Udaipur and Sufi Zikr (the whirling chant ‘la illaha il Allah’) in jugalbandi with the duo.

“This is my first collaboration with folk musicians from Rajasthan. Though our styles are different, we sing of the same emotions — love, God and valour. Essentially, it is a bonding of feminine music from the state,” Rekha Bharadwaj said.

Rekha, who met Bhanwari Devi and Rehana Mirza in June this year for the first time felt she should have spent more time with them. “I had to know their lifestyles and soil to get deeper into their music. I want to take them to Bollywood, if possible,” Rekha said.

Most of the instruments, barring the sarangi, are on the verge of extinction.

Ustad Allaudin Khan Langa, a string maestro from the endangered Langa community of musicians of western Rajasthan, attributes the decline to the unavailability of the instruments.

Allaudin and his family of four are the last exponents of surinda, a hand-crafted string instrument from Pakistan.

“But there will be nobody to keep the tradition alive barring my son and nephews, who have learnt it from me,” Khan said.

His grandfather brought the surinda to India from Pakistan 70 years ago but “no one makes the instrument in Pakistan any more”, he said.

A concert, ‘Strings of Thar — Living Legends’, at the Mehrangarh Palace October 3, showcased instruments like surinda, kamaycha and the sarangi. — IANS

Delhi Durbar
On Gandhi, CPI backs UPA

Whatever the political differences between the CPI and the Congress-led UPA, the former is on the government side for once. The binding force this time is Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi, after whose name the UPA has rechristened its ambitious National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).

So happy is the CPI with the renaming of the Act after Gandhiji that no amount of pestering the other day could prevent party general secretary A.B. Bardhan from lauding the move.

The communist leader even ignored the argument that normally only schemes are named after personalities. When asked if it was proper to rename a law after a historical figure, Bardhan quipped: “This name commands universal reverence. It is finer than many other names. I welcome the move.”

SC Judge misses chance, repents

The memory of having lost a golden opportunity to bow out with a splash will haunt Supreme Court Judge BN Agarwal, who retires later this week. The Judge, the senior most after the Chief Justice of India, wanted to find a solution to the long-standing problem of unauthorised occupation of government quarters by retired government officials and former Ministers, MPs and MLAs and even some Judges.

The Judge tried his best to pass an order when a PIL on the issue came up for hearing on October 1. Holding the proceedings, along with Justice GS Singhvi, he acknowledged that the Bench had committed a mistake earlier by issuing notice only to the Centre and not to the states in the case.

Since the states were not given an opportunity to be heard, the court was not in a position to issue any directive before his retirement, he said. Now the problem would have to be tackled by another Bench, Justice Agarwal observed, repenting the miffed chance.

Mayawati’s new confidant

If there is one thing UP Chief Minister Mayawati will surely be remembered for, it is the sudden rise and fall of her attendants and acolytes. The latest is Satish Mishra, the Supreme Court lawyer who rose to be the Brahmin face of BSP and was credited with securing Brahmin votes for ‘Behenji’ in the 2007 state Assembly elections, making her the Chief Minister with no outside crutches.

Of late, Mishra is not seen around much and gossip mongers in Lucknow say Behenji has asked him to concentrate on fighting her legal battles in innumerable courts.

The new rising star is Navneet Sehgal, a young Chandigarh 1988 batch IAS officer who is simultaneously holding the office of Additional Resident Commissioner in Delhi and Secretary to the CM in Lucknow. Along with these two posts, he is also Chairman of UP Jal Nigam; Chairman, Secretary and Managing Director (all in one) of the UP Power Corporation and Secretary, Urban Development as also Coordinator of the prestigious and cash-rich Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM).

— Contributed by Aditi Tandon, R Sedhuraman and Faraz Ahmad