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Maya in
trouble Cleaning
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Focus on
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The
cobra’s venom
Chappar
Churi
Scientist
who fought famine Myth of ancient
Greece’s ‘heroes’ blown away US govt makes its
Register Web-friendly
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Cleaning of the Ganga
In
India, rivers are supposed to be a sacred life-sustaining entity. The Ganga is the holiest of them all. Yet, today it is among the 10 most endangered ones in the world. But the misuse of the river as a carrier of municipal sewage and industrial effluents has made its water dangerous for use. Under the circumstances, a 10-year project to rejuvenate the river is not only welcome but also a crying need. As much as Rs 15,000 crore is to be spent under the project so that by 2020, no untreated municipal sewage and industrial effluents flow into the Ganga. At present, only 20 per cent of municipal sewage flowing into it is treated. The money allocated for the massive project is a tidy sum, but it will be successful only if it is meticulously planned and faithfully executed. There is need for extra caution because the country has been spending extensively to clean up rivers in the past also. Between 1985 and 2009, Rs 916 crore was pumped in to help the Ganga Action Plan I and II take off. But the river is dirtier today than it was in 1985. When the Environment Minister himself asks “where the money has gone?” there are bound to be question marks about the new project also. It is true that while the previous plans followed a town-centric approach, the ambitious Mission Clean Ganga will take a basin-centric approach. Yet, there is need for extreme caution, lest the money again goes down the river. Total Centre-State coordination would be needed. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has described the proposed institutional framework of the National Ganga River Basin Authority as “weak”. All such feedback should be taken into account by rising above routine political considerations. The Ganga belongs to everyone, after all.
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Focus on the people
The
annual Human Development Report released on Monday by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) indicates that India has slipped six points on the Human Development Index over the previous year while China has moved up by seven points at the same time. Comparisons are odious and rankings, India at 134 and China at 92, do not always tell the full story. It would not have made much difference either if India were to move up by a few points, because the stark reality is that even 62 years after Independence, we have not succeeded in ensuring a basic minimum quality of life for the citizen. Despite a better GDP growth rate and remarkable progress in several areas, large sections of people continue to wallow in poverty, remain illiterate, suffer from poor health and are deprived of jobs. The country’s progress is grossly ill-balanced. The thrust of the report has been on migration and it makes the timely point that migrants all over the world have benefited themselves and also the community they served. UNDP studies call the bluff on age-old beliefs that migrants are parasites and hijack job-prospects of the local population. It is an interesting point in the context of the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance’s electoral promise to impose restrictions on the movement of people to Mumbai and other urban centres. The report also establishes that contrary to popular belief, much of the migration world-wide is taking place within the same country and not from the developing to the developed countries. The UNDP report has been an annual feature since 1990 and seeks to remind nations about the key challenge of focusing on people. As the report itself describes it, “ Development is about people realising their potential, increasing their choices and enjoying the freedom to lead lives they value.” Previous UNDP reports had warned about a drop in agricultural production in the country as a result of changing rainfall pattern and also predicted increased exposure to droughts, floods and storms that it feared would destroy opportunities and reinforce inequalities. Its worst fears seem to be coming true but the new report would hopefully be a wake-up call.
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To become great, one must be humble. The tree laden with fruit always bends low. — Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa
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The cobra’s venom As
the anti-Maoist operations of the Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (COBRA) in Chhattisgarh show, the Centre has finally woken up to the need for a proactive policy aimed at confronting the Maoists head-on. This change of stance is a welcome departure from its earlier dependence either on state governments for tackling the menace presumably because law and order is a state subject, or on the lawless salwa judum vigilante groups. Both these approaches underlined an inadequate appreciation of the ideological nature of the threat posed by the Maoists. They were initially thought to be little different from the gangs of petty criminals which the state police forces were capable of controlling with a stick-and-carrot policy. When the task proved to be more difficult because of the dogmatic commitment of the Maoists, the states assumed that enlisting the help of paramilitary forces such as the CRPF should be enough. When even these measures proved to be inadequate, there was a recourse to perhaps the worst remedy of all — that of setting up the salwa judum groups to tackle the rebels. Yet, it is one of the basic guidelines of anti-insurgency operations, dating back to the British operations against the Communist guerrillas in Malaya in the 1940s, that the government must not fight an internal battle with the help of civilian groups. The reason is that the latter soon become a law unto themselves and begin to terrorise the local people. Caught between the two lawless groups — the insurgents and the vigilante units — the locals tend to side with the rebels because they occasionally provide a modicum of justice in their kangaroo courts. Therefore, the task of battling the radicals should always be restricted to the law-enforcing agencies. The formation of a special unit like COBRA is a sign that the government is now following the right track. Perhaps the partial success of the anti-Maoist offensive in Lalgarh in West Bengal sent the message that instead of camping like sitting ducks, the paramilitary forces should go after the militants. When this was done, the rebels melted away into the jungles, abandoning Lalgarh town which had been in their control for several months. There is every possibility that if there are simultaneous drives against the Maoists in Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and elsewhere, the Centre should be able to scatter and eliminate them as has already been done in Andhra Pradesh. In the process, the fond dream of the Maoists that they are implementing Mao Zedong’s theory of surrounding the towns with “liberated” villages will be shattered. It has to be remembered that the present tactics of the Maoists involving the building of bases in the forested areas is a relatively new one. Although the movement originally began among a section of peasants in Naxalbari in West Bengal and secured a foothold in Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh, it soon became an urban insurrection. The reason was that the CPM, like the CPI before it, was essentially a party of the working class, deriving inspiration from the Bolshevik uprising which took place in the towns. Classical Marxism had little time for peasants or the “idiocy of rural life”, in Marx’s words. So, the Naxalites, who broke away from the CPM in the late Sixties, remained rooted in their urban habitats. Although some of them did move to the villages in accordance with Mao’s dictates, it was mainly to escape the police dragnet. Their policy, however, of killing lower level policemen in towns and landowners in the countryside remained mostly anarchic, which attracted criticism from even their mentors in Beijing. It wasn’t surprising, therefore, that like the anti-British revolutionaries, who lacked an organisation based on mass support, the isolated Naxalites, too, became an easy prey to police surveillance and elimination in fake encounters. Their fate was not unlike that of another group of insurgents, the Khalistanis, who also lacked popular support. The lesson which the Maoists learnt from the failure of their mainly urban activities — Charu Mazumdar was caught from one of Calcutta’s busiest localities — made them move into the jungles of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, etc. It was the inability of the intelligence agencies and of the political class to anticipate their game plan which enabled them to become the biggest internal threat, according to the Prime Minister. Even when the danger posed by them was becoming apparent, the politicians were confused about ways to deal with them. While some of them described the Maoists as “our boys”, others believed that an emphasis on development, mainly in the tribal areas, would weaken them. In the event, neither did the “boys” respond to the government’s overtures, nor was development undertaken with enough purposefulness to wean away the impoverished tribals from their grip. There is another factor which perhaps explains the government’s earlier lack of seriousness. It is the belief that no insurgency in India can succeed in the long run. The country’s experience with militancy in Kashmir, the north-east and Punjab has seemingly convinced the rulers that the basic stability of the democratic system undermines the influence of the rebels in course of time. Since the people know that political change is possible via the ballot, not many of them are enthusiastic about an armed struggle. In addition, age, illness and disillusionment erode the credibility and sustaining power of any rebel group over a longish period. Perhaps they also realise that the paramilitary forces are too strong to be easily defeated. The revolutionary dream of the Maoists, therefore, of defeating the state in an armed confrontation can never be fulfilled. It was possible in Russia and China because of the chaotic conditions created by war and civil unrest. The two countries were also undemocratic. But such a scene cannot be replicated in India. However, the government’s earlier lackadaisical approach may have fostered an illusion among the Maoists that they have been able to “liberate” the so-called red corridor. Similar fantasies were entertained by the Naxalites in the late Sixties and early Seventies in some of the outlying areas of Calcutta like Tollygunge or Kasba or Baranagar where they created a virtual reign of terror with their home-made bombs and pipe-guns. But their control lasted only as long as the police did not intervene with the licence to kill. It is undoubtedly the same with the red corridor. Once the paramilitary forces act with determination to smash their hideouts, there is little doubt that the Maoist menace can be eradicated. The difficulty, however, is that the government may not be prepared to act with sufficient ruthlessness since innocent lives are bound to be lost in such operations. If that happens, the civil libertarians will be up in arms in condemning the government for its “anti-people” policies. As is known, film maker Aparna Sen and others visited Lalgarh during the anti-Maoist operation to express their solidarity with the suffering of the ordinary people. Although they did urge the Maoists to give up violence, few believed that the appeal would be heeded. Similarly, a few years ago, the police in Andhra Pradesh allowed a group of Maoists to escape because, as the then chief minister, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, acknowledged, a “senior Naxalite leader” would have been killed “if we had gone ahead”. The result of such misplaced generosity has been the deaths of several hundred policemen at the hands of Maoists and their attacks on railway stations and transmission towers. Thankfully, the government seems to have realised the folly of its earlier charitable
policies.
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Chappar Churi ABOUT 14 years ago I wrote a book on the lives and teachings of the Sikh Gurus. When my son finished reading it, he turned to me and said: “After Guru Gobind Singh — what?” It was a moot question. I had researched the period up to the Great Guru’s death and was vague in my knowledge of the period after that. I decided to do something about it. The result was “The Legend of Banda Bahadur”. While researching the book I visited many sites connected with Banda Bahadur’s life and exploits and Chappar Churi was one of them. Today Chappar Churi is a nondescript village like thousands of other villages of Punjab. But its ‘maidan’ had, on May 22, 1710, been the site of a decisive battle between Banda Bahadur and Wazir Khan, the Moghul governor of Sirhind. Banda Bahadur had personally led an ill- equipped, undisciplined host of men against Wazir Khan’s larger, well-disciplined, well trained and well-equipped army. Wazir Khan’s army had been defeated and had fled the battlefield: Wazir Khan himself had been killed by Bhai Fateh Singh. No sign of that glorious and triumphant battle remains but if one looks closely at the maidan and the rivulet flowing past, it is possible to imagine the way it must have been. I closed my eyes and heard the sounds of steel striking steel, of horses neighing and elephants trumpeting, battle cries, the boom of canon. I smelt the gunpowder, the sweat and, the blood, both human and animal. It was possible, even after all these centuries to conjure up the battle, savour Banda Bahadur’s victory and revel in the glory of my proud heritage. Now Chappar Churi is in the news again. In the Master Plan for Greater Mohali it is to be the site of an artificial lake that will put the Sukhna Lake in the shade and of a designer golf course. I went back to Chappar Churi again a few days ago. But this time when I closed my eyes I saw the tranquil green of a world class golf course, smelt flowers and newly mown grass on the breeze. In the distance I heard the faint laughter of tourists on the lake. It was, in its own way, a beautiful vision. Development is essential and the golf course and lake will not only generate employment and income for the local population but also bring Mohali onto the world tourist map. But at the same time there is regret at the loss of a heritage site. It is possible, at the moment, to synthesis the two — to create that beautiful and essential lake and golf course and to protect this important part of the Sikh heritage. Chappar Churi could be declared a heritage village and a plot of land set aside for a suitable memorial to Banda Bahadur’s famous victory which will also add to the tourist potential of the place. Thus history and progress could exist
together.
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Scientist who fought famine
From 1963 onwards, he visited India in March every year to see the wheat crop. During his extensive travels by road, he used to stop frequently, talk to the farmers, and examine the state of the health of the plants. Plants and farmers became his life-long friends and companions. Eliminating the wheat rust menace became his unrelenting mission. Dr. Borlaug started his research career in agriculture in Mexico at a time when the world was passing through a serious food crisis. During 1942-1943, nearly two million people died of hunger during the Great Bengal Famine. China also experienced widespread and severe famine during the 1950s. Famines were frequent in Ethiopia, the Sahelian region of Africa, and many other parts of the developing world. It was in this background that Dr. Borlaug decided to look for a permanent solution to recurrent famines by harnessing science to increase the productivity, profitability, and sustainability of small farms. The work he did in Mexico during the 1950s in breeding semi-dwarf, rust-resistant wheat varieties and its extension to India, Pakistan, and other countries during the 1960s brought about a total transformation in the atmosphere for the possibility of achieving a balance between human numbers and the human capacity to produce food. Developing nations gained in self-confidence in their agricultural capability. He disproved prophets of doom like Paul and William Paddock and Paul and Anne Ehrlich — who even advocated the application of the ‘triage’ principle in the selection of countries that should and should not be saved from starvation through American assistance. The introduction of Mexican semi-dwarf varieties of wheat in India in the early 1960s not only helped improve wheat production but also led to the union of brain and brawn in rural areas. The enthusiasm generated by the new technology can be glimpsed in the following extract from an article I wrote in 1969 for an Indian magazine: “Brimming with enthusiasm, hard-working, skilled and determined, the Punjab farmer has been the backbone of the revolution. Revolutions are usually associated with the young, but in this revolution, age has been no obstacle to participation. Farmers, young and old, educated and uneducated, have easily taken to the new agronomy. It has been heart-warming to see young college graduates, retired officials, ex-armymen, illiterate peasants and small farmers queuing up to get the new seeds. At least in the Punjab, the divorce between intellect and labour, which has been the bane of our agriculture, is vanishing.” The five principles Dr. Borlaug adopted in his life were (to use his own words): give your best; believe you can succeed; face adversity squarely; be confident you will find the answers when problems arise; then go out and win some bouts. These principles have shaped the attitude and action of thousands of young farm scientists across the world. He applied these principles in the field of science and agricultural development, but I guess he developed them much earlier in the field of wrestling, judging from his induction into the Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2004. Having made a significant contribution to shaping the agricultural destiny of many countries in Asia and Latin America, Dr. Borlaug turned his attention to Africa in 1985. With support from President Jimmy Carter, Ryoichi Sasakawa, Yohei Sasakawa and the Nippon Foundation, he organised the Sasakawa-Global 2000 programme. Numerous small-scale farmers were helped to double and triple the yield of maize, rice, sorghum, millet, wheat, cassava, and grain legumes. Unfortunately, such spectacular results in demonstration plots did not lead to significant production gains at the national level, owing to lack of infrastructure such as irrigation, roads, seed production, and remunerative marketing systems. This made him exclaim: “Africa has the potential for a green revolution, but you cannot eat potential.” The blend of professional skill, political action, and farmers’ enthusiasm needed to ignite another Green Revolution as in India was lacking in Africa at that time. Concerned with the lack of adequate recognition for the contributions of farm and food scientists, Dr. Borlaug had the World Food Prize established in 1986, which he hoped would come to be regarded as the Nobel Prize for food and agriculture. My research centre in Chennai, India [the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation] is the child of the first World Food Prize I received in 1987. Throughout his professional career, Dr. Borlaug spent time in training young scholars and researchers. This led him to promote the World Food Prize Youth Institute and its programme to help high school students work in other countries in order to widen their understanding of the human condition. This usually became a life-changing experience for them. When Mahatma Gandhi died in January 1948, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said: “The light has gone out of our life, but the light that shone in this country was no ordinary light. A thousand years later, that light will be seen in this country, the world will see it, and it will give solace to innumerable hearts. For that light represented the living, eternal truth, reminding us of the right path, drawing us from error, taking humankind to freedom from hunger and deprivation.” The same can be said of Norman Borlaug. His repeated message that there was no time to relax until hunger became history will be heard so long as a single person is denied the opportunity for a healthy and productive life because of malnutrition. Norman Borlaug was a remarkable man who was supported by a remarkable family —wife Margaret, son William, and daughter Jeanie. To my mind, Margaret who died in 2007 is the unsung heroine of the Green Revolution. Without her unwavering support, Dr. Borlaug might not have accomplished nearly so much in his long and demanding career. Dr. Borlaug was not only a great scientist but also a humanist full of compassion and love for fellow human beings, irrespective of race, religion, colour, or political belief. This is clear from his last spoken words on the night of Saturday, September 12, 2009. Earlier in the day, a scientist showed him a nitrogen tracer developed for measuring soil fertility. His last words were “Take the tracer to the farmer.” This life-long dedication to taking scientific innovation to farmers without delay set Dr. Borlaug apart from most other farm scientists carrying out equally important research. I was present when he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007. He pointed out that between 1960 and 2000, the proportion of “the world’s people who felt hunger during some portion of the year had fallen from about 60 per cent to 14 per cent.” But the latter figure still “translates into 850 million men, women and children who lack sufficient calories and protein to grow strong and healthy bodies.” So he added: “The battle to ensure food security for hundreds of millions of miserably poor people is far from won.” This is the unfinished task Norman Borlaug leaves scientists and political leaders worldwide. It will be appropriate for the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture to become the flagship of the movement for a world without
hunger. (Adapted from the Norman Borlaug Memorial Address given by the author at the Rudder Auditorium, Texas A&M University, USA, on October 6, 2009.)
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Myth of ancient Greece’s ‘heroes’ blown away Spartans! Prepare for, well, embarrassment. It seems that far from being elite, noble warriors, each worth 1,000 of any rival soldiers, King Great? A mummy’s boy: in fact, his mum was a better fighter by a long chalk and died a soldier’s death on the battlefield. They and other figures from antiquity are to have their reputations shattered by a new British study which reveals the “truth” behind long-established legends. Michael Scott, a classicist at Cambridge University, points to evidence that could change the way we think about our classical heroes. The heroic Spartans of Thermopylae, whose valiant standoff with an enormous Persian army is immortalised in the Hollywood film 300, are unmasked by Dr Scott as little more than war-mongering bullies of the ancient world who policed Athens with near-mindless violence, destroying anything they took a dislike to. Alexander the Great, remembered for his conquests across the known world and spreading Greek civilisation to the east, is dismissed was a “mummy’s boy” whose endless stream of letters from the battlefield to his mother Olympias infuriated his generals. Despite the fact that Alexander was recently voted the greatest Greek of all time by in a poll in Greece, Dr Scott charges that his successes were merely opportunistic exploitation of foundations laid by his father, Philip II. Olympias, sympathetically portrayed by Angelina Jolie in the film Alexander, was a violent and fearless warrior to put her son to shame, according to Dr Scott. It’s even suspected that she may have murdered her husband, Philip of Macedon. She was finally captured in battle and put to death in 316BC by Macedonian comrades of those whom she had slain in battle. The Greek philosopher Isocrates also suffers under scrutiny. Until now he was thought a steadfast believer in democracy in Athens and is widely believed to be one of the greatest orators and political commentators of his time. But, late in life, Isocrates realised democracy no longer worked in Athens and threw in his lot in with Philip of Macedon when Philip became king. Even the great “Golden City” of Athens itself is not spared a kicking from Dr Scott. He argues that its early successes have, over time, obscured a darker history that mirrors societal problems in 21st-century Britain. Far from being a major world player, fourth-century BC Athens imploded under the weight of a crippling economic downturn, while politicians embroiled themselves in fraud. Meanwhile, they sent the army to fight unpopular foreign wars and struggled to cope with a surge in immigration. “If history can provide a map of where we have been, a mirror to where we are right now and perhaps even a guide to what we should do next, the story of this period is perfectly suited to do that in our times,” Dr Scott said yesterday. “It shows how an earlier generation of people responded to similar challenges and which strategies succeeded. It is a period of history that we would do well to think about a little more right now—and we ignore it at our
peril.” — By arrangement with The Independent
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US govt makes its Register Web-friendly WASHINGTON — Lawyers, lobbyists, librarians and concerned citizens, rejoice: As of Monday, it is much easier to access the Federal Register. The de facto daily newspaper of the executive branch publishes approximately 80,000 pages of documents each year, including presidential disaster declarations, Medicare reimbursement rates, and thousands of agency rulings on policies ranging from banking to fishing to food. It’s a must-read for anyone with business before the federal government or concerned about regulatory decisions, including academics and good-government advocates. Issues dating to 2000 now are available at Data.gov in a form known in the Web world as XML, which allows users to transport data from a Web site and store it, reorganize it or customize it elsewhere. Officials suggested that the move puts readers, rather than the government, in charge of deciding how to access the Register’s reams of information. “In much the same way that newspapers have looked at making content more accessible by changing the print and typeface, we can now do the same thing by making the Federal Register available such that people can manipulate it and customize it and reuse the content to make the information even more accessible,” said Beth Noveck, director of the White House Open Government Initiative. Monday’s launch is the outgrowth of President Obama’s first executive order, which mandated greater transparency in federal government. The Office of the Federal Register publishes the Register each business day. The first issue, in 1936, had 11 pages; Friday’s had 157. According to the White House, the Register totaled 79,435 pages in fiscal 2008, with 31,879 documents, its largest year ever. Online readers downloaded more than 200 million Register documents in fiscal 2009, the White House said. The Register may be the ultimate record of the business of the executive branch, but it is universally recognized as a difficult document to navigate. Monday’s release should make it easier for users to find their specific topic without having to wade through volumes of unrelated material. Government officials expect information-hungry users to make the most of the new access. The technology will allow users, including Web site designers, to quickly gather data and manipulate the information with tools such as mapping software, word clouds, spreadsheets and e-mail alert systems, White House officials and government observers said. “It makes it much easier to follow a specific topic area or look at specific regulations from a specific agency or search within a geographic area,” said John Wonderlich, policy director of the Sunlight Foundation, an open-government advocacy group. “It’s not going to be useful for everyone, but if you’re looking at making government processes more efficient, this view across the government will be very useful.” Mary Alice Baish, director of government relations for the American Association of Law Libraries, said members are “delighted” about the move. “This is a win-win situation for business, the regulatory community and consumers,” she
said. — By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post
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