The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Paddy growers deserve bonus
Check distress sale of produce in mandis

Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has promised a bonus on paddy to farmers. The issue has been left to the Union Cabinet, which should positively view the farmers’ demand. This year farmers had to incur additional expenditure to save their paddy crop in view of the deficient rains. It is because of the farmers’ efforts that, despite an erratic monsoon, Punjab will be able to supply 85 lakh tonnes of rice to the Central pool against 80 lakh tonnes last year. They deserve a reward. Besides, the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices had recommended a lower minimum support price of Rs 980 per quintal for paddy this year compared to Rs 1,080 per quintal last year.

There are reports that farmers have been forced to make a distress sale of paddy at many places in Punjab. Official agencies have been slow in buying paddy as there is not enough storage space since last year’s produce has not been cleared by the FCI. Private rice millers initially stayed away from the mandis as they refused to lift the 201 variety, constituting 40 per cent of the total paddy arrivals. This variety, recommended by PAU, takes less time to mature and requires no chemical sprays, but rice millers say it is discoloured beyond the acceptable limits.

It is not enough to announce an MSP or bonus for paddy. The government should ensure that farmers actually get the promised price. Farmers who have sold paddy to private traders or rice millers may feel cheated as the bonus will be available only to those selling their produce to the official agencies. The unpleasant situation could have been avoided had the bonus or a suitable hike in the MSP been announced well in advance. Rice millers and traders know fully well that small farmers cannot hold back their produce for long due to their pressing needs and lack of storage facilities. Hence, they take advantage of the situation, often with official blessings.

The bitter truth
India must fight diabetes

India, far from being in the pink of health, is heading towards a diabetes explosion. With over 50 million diabetics, the figure released by the International Diabetes Federation, it continues to be the world’s diabetes capital. While the number of people with the ‘pre-diabetic’ condition, too, is fairly large, by 2030 as much as 8.4 per cent of the country’s adult population is likely to be diabetic. Indeed, there is a serious cause for concern and concerted efforts have to be made to control the disease that affects more people in the working age.

Diabetes, often called the silent killer, can damage the retina, nerves and kidney and even predispose patients to high blood pressure and high cholesterol that increases the risk to heart disease and other complications. Studies have shown that the high incidence of diabetes in India is mainly due to a sedentary lifestyle, lack of physical activity, obesity and stress and calorie-rich diets. The disease not only plays havoc with the lives of patients but is also a huge economic burden. Besides productivity loss, India is likely to spend nearly 2.8 billion dollars annually on diabetes control measures by 2010. Treating the disease as an urban health problem alone would not be judicious. The government proposal for a compulsory blood test for the rural masses is welcome.

Since the problem of diabetes is compounded by the lack of awareness, mass awareness campaigns can play a crucial role. Identifying those in the high risk category and regular check- ups are vital. Experts are also right in asserting that the disease has to be tackled right from childhood years. Simple lifestyle changes like regular walks and use of sugar substitutes have shown a significant reduction in diabetes cases. Proper disease management and prevention can go a long way in tackling diabetes, the fifth largest killer in India.

Thought for the Day

I have laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations. — Samuel Johnson

ARTICLE

Why court cases pile up
Giving stay orders as a routine is to blame
by Harpreet S. Giani

It is highly instructive to sit in any court at precisely 10 every morning. The first order of business before most judges in a High Court every day is to hear the freshly filed cases and to consider whether to entertain the petition or appeal, or whether to dismiss the case out of hand immediately.

Typically, a lawyer has just a few minutes to make out a case and try to convince the judge of the validity of the cause he is pleading. In those cases which make the cut and are not thrown out immediately, it is now usual for the judge to put the other side on notice (or in legal parlance, to issue a “notice of motion”) and thereby to call them on a future date to appear and rebut the petitioner or the appellant’s lawyer.

This system of issuing a notice in order to hear the other side before admitting a case for hearing at length was initially meant to weed out frivolous or patently unsustainable cases and prevent them from clogging the courts’ docket. But now this system has degenerated to the extent that the fresh “motion” cases take up most part of a judge’s working day and leave him very little time to hear the “admitted” or “regular” cases which require in-depth consideration.

In a violent departure from the intent behind this system of issuing a “notice of motion”, it has become the norm for a majority of the cases filed in the High Court to be carried on the “motion” docket for many years rather than being “admitted” or “dismissed” swiftly.

This is not, however, the main reason for the insurmountable pendency of cases which the High Court is faced with. The real reason why cases continue to pile up and the reason why one hears of lawyers and litigants going to great lengths to delay the adjudication of the cases by the courts is the practice of appending the vexatious sentence “stay operation meanwhile” to the initial order putting the other side on notice.

It has become a commonplace practice for the judges, who are presented with petitions or appeals against the orders or judgments of inferior courts, to direct that the order or judgment which has been challenged shall not be given effect to and shall be kept in abeyance until further orders. The hitherto successful respondent who finds himself called to the High Court even after winning a tortuous legal battle in one or multiple subordinate courts suddenly finds that the other side has managed to get his foot in the door in the High Court; and all the words of wisdom and the reasons hitherto marshalled by the judges in the lower courts are set to naught by this “stay” order.

An order by a High Court judge to “stay” a subordinate court’s order is nothing but a vote of no-confidence in that subordinate judge. Take an example here. Let us say that a landlord files a case against his tenant seeking his eviction from some rented premises. Let us say that the tenant puts up a spirited defence before the court of the Rent Controller but is unsuccessful. The tenant, who has been ordered to vacate the premises now files an appeal before the Appellate Authority who immediately “stays” the order of eviction and proceeds to decide the appeal — over a period of a few years usually. Now even if the landlord is successful in repelling the appeal filed by the tenant, the tenant has the right to file a revision petition before the High Court.

At this third stage in the course of the litigation, the High Court is well aware that the tenant has already been ordered to be evicted by at least two judges who function lawfully under the direct control of the High Court. Still, if the tenant’s lawyer is able to make out even the semblance of a case – on a technical ground or rarely on some substantive issue – then the High Court judge is almost guaranteed to once again stay the judgments ordering the tenant’s eviction. Having secured this order of “stay”, neither the tenant nor his counsel is going to be in any pressing urgency to have the petition heard and decided at any early date.

The order of stay is an embarrassment for the judge against whose judgment the High Court passes the order. The order of stay is a preliminary finding on the part of the High Court judge that the subordinate judge seems to have made a mistake and ought not to have decided the way he has. It goes to the very judicial competence of the subordinate judge and casts his ability, integrity and impartiality into doubt.

Needless to say, if the High Court feels that a particular subordinate judge is consistently ignoring the law or deciding wrongly, it is open to the High Court to discipline the judge or even withdraw work from him. This logical approach is unfortunately shunned in favor of “righting the wrongs” of a bad judge by staying his judgments and burdening the High Court with additional work and reopening the case for re-examining the facts.

The very fact that a judge has given a patient hearing to a case and has delivered a judgment ought to inspire sufficient confidence in the mind of a superior court’s judge that justice has been done. It ought to be presumed that the judgment of the subordinate judge must be correct and must have been arrived at after due legal assistance from the counsel on either side.

In reality, however, it is usually presumed by the judge issuing a notice of motion that the subordinate court lawyers as well as judges are incompetent and unless the High Court intervenes, no justice would be done. It is presumed by superior courts that allowing the judgment of the lower court to be implemented expeditiously would necessarily result in a miscarriage of justice.

The filing of an appeal is an attack on a lawfully delivered verdict and must never be treated as a routine affair, for if successful the appeal or revision exposes a miscarriage of justice. The reversal of a judgment by a higher or appellate court must be viewed as a very serious failure on the part of a subordinate judge and not treated as casually as it is these days.

To ensure that litigants and their lawyers do not indulge in speculative litigation or frivolous tactics, to restore the respect and authority of the subordinate judiciary, indeed to curb the enormous backlog of cases, it is imperative that the passing of stay orders in routine is deprecated.

The procedural law which is on the statute books provides sufficient protection for a person who is genuinely aggrieved of a judicially bad order or judgment to approach a superior court expeditiously and to secure a speedy reversal. There can be no justification, therefore, to condemn the subordinate judge and to doubt his judgment in the few minutes that the judge gets to hear the case on the very first occasion that the petition or appeal is set before him.

This self-discipline which the superior judges must exercise is by far the simplest and the most effective way to curtail the litigious rut our society is falling into and to restore the function of the constitutional courts to their correct role.

The passing of stay orders as a matter of routine undermines the authority of the subordinate judges and turns the multiple rounds of hotly contested litigation before subordinate courts into a mere formality which litigants must endure before finally getting justice in the High Courts.

MIDDLE

An evening in Minneapolis
by Shriniwas Joshi

Approaching weekend makes Friday evenings lively in the US. My wife and I reached Minneapolis in upper Midwest on a Friday evening to be received at the airport by my charming niece Richa. She had made all arrangements to make our evening a memorable one.

Our seats were booked in a newly opened Chambers kitchen that serves art and sculpture besides the best in Italian gastronomy. It is in Hennepin Avenue of the downtown named after Belgian Father Louis Hennepin who in the seventeenth century gave eyewitness account of two waterfalls — the renowned Niagara and the St. Anthony on river Mississippi at Minneapolis.

Our table in open-air courtyard of Chambers, where fire was aglow in a square pit, was adjacent to one where a young damsel was celebrating her birthday vociferously. With overweight and obese abounding in the US, I found the gathering there slim and trim — the gift of long, extreme cold winters as the residents take to physical exercises during the bright days.

The Italian dinner is served leisurely and in morsels. The waiter could cull out vegetarian and teetotal dishes for us from ‘creature-cum-champagne-centric’ menu. The beverage was Bellini with peach puree and carbonated water. And the food opened with greenness of verdure, thinly sliced pieces of kaddu-tori, called Zucchini Carpaccio and lemon.

Fritti meaning fried food, the next course, was fried artichokes served whole in Italy but presented chopped to us in finger-friendly style. Fried mushroom in Polenta made of corn flour was the next item. Pizza Margherita, the subsequent dish, has been named on Queen Marghereta who visited Naples in 1899 where a chef Esposito prepared pizza for her which she liked and sent a thank you note to him.

Pizza has a recent history in Italy compared to pasta having older pedigree — about a thousand years. Of scores of pasta forms, we were served armoniche pasta, wavy half-ruffle shape, with cut vegetables mostly tomatoes. We wrapped up the dinner with dessert of Pavlova in yuzu sorbet with side dish of olives and pecans in chocolate syrup. Prepared of corn flour mixed in well-beaten white of eggs and light like the movements of a Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, it earned its name from her.

Yuzu is a citrus fruit native to China. The easy-paced dinner concluded at midnight when we visited the art-gallery where a sculpture made of 3000 steel tongs (chimta) by world-known Subodh Gupta from Khagaul, Bihar, made us proud.

After the ‘historical’ feast, we wandered past midnight in crowded Hennepin Avenue where a stunning, svelte lasso in cowboy boots and bikini was feasting the eyes of the gathered joyous. Richa made us rich by the treasured evening.n

OPED

Cost of preventing climate change is not too high
by Eban Goodstein and Frank Ackerman

Here is the good news on the climate front: The Europeans have ratcheted down their emissions targets, the Chinese are getting serious about solar power and energy efficiency, and Washington is lumbering toward a carbon cap.

These are steps toward the long-held goal: cutting global warming pollution 80 percent by 2050. Such cuts would stabilize the thickness of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide blanket surrounding the planet at 450 parts per million (ppm) and, we've been told, ensure that the global average temperature increase would not exceed 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) from 1990 levels.

The bad news? Turns out that 450 ppm is so 2005.

In the past four years, climate scientists, led by NASA's James Hansen, have dramatically altered the goal. To avoid the collapse of the continental ice-sheets and a dangerous rise in sea levels, many scientists are now saying we have to get down to 350 ppm, and quickly.

This means what was already a heroic (and to many, impossible) target has become mind-boggling. Reaching 350 ppm would require a 97 percent reduction in emissions, entailing a complete conversion to renewable energy systems by mid-century, with the world economy virtually free of carbon emissions. Such a goal is far more demanding than any of the leading policy proposals under discussion.

Game over?

No. It's just time to rethink what is possible.

Some have argued that the worrisome climate news is that the cost of preventing climate change is too high. In fact, estimates of the cost of acting to mitigate warming have remained relatively stable, while estimates of the likely cost of inaction are becoming unbearable.

Whether the goal is 450 or 350 parts per million, this is still a problem we can afford to solve. Stopping global warming remains fundamentally a problem of political will.

We are among the eight authors of a recent report for Economics for Equity and the Environment Network, an affiliate of the nonprofit Ecotrust, that surveyed numerous economic studies on the cost of meeting the 350 ppm goal. We found that quicker action aimed at more ambitious targets makes good economic sense.

Our report shows that a comprehensive global strategy is well within the range of what most nations are willing to pay to avoid far greater damages from climate change down the line.

With investments of roughly 1 to 3 percent of global gross domestic product, or $600 billion to $1.8 trillion, we could rapidly transition from oil and coal to renewables and clean energy sources, including wind and solar, and replenish global forests, which would help trap billions of tons of carbon.

These efforts would create jobs and stabilize the climate in the process. Fluctuations or changes in some factors, such as the price of oil, could mean these investments might actually save us money.

To some, the price of 1 to 3 percent of global economic output may seem too high. But examine the amount in context. Suppose, for instance, that the cost of climate protection turns out to be 2.5 percent of global GDP.

In an economy like that of the United States that is, say, growing at a roughly 2.5 percent annual rate, spending 2.5 percent of its GDP on climate protection each year would be equivalent to skipping one year's growth and then resuming.

Put another way, Americans in 2050 would have to wait one additional year, until 2051, to be as rich as they would have been had they not been investing in the transition to clean energy.

Consider another comparison: Military spending is greater than 4 percent of GDP in both the United States and China. Because of concerns about potential future dangers, both countries are already diverting from annual consumption more than the high-end estimates of what it would take to stop global warming.

Business lobbies have argued that even the moderate reductions called for in recent U.S. climate and energy legislation would cripple the economy.

Yet academic research and findings by the Congressional Budget Office and the Environmental Protection Agency show that recent U.S. legislative proposals would have very little if any negative impact on the U.S. economy.

Our report surveys the economic studies of the costs of achieving the far more ambitious target of 350 ppm and finds only estimates of moderate net global costs.

The pace of our switch to clean energy will determine whether we hit a concentration target (whatever it may be) or fail to do so. Certainly, failure to slow and stop warming will impose high costs on future generations. The world has begun taking important initial steps toward addressing the climate crisis, with increasingly widespread acceptance.

To avoid dangerous warming or the effects it would cause will require us to do better than 450 ppm. Luckily, the data suggest that we can, indeed, afford to do better. What we cannot afford is too little climate policy, too late.n

Eban Goodstein is an economist and a professor at Bard College. Frank Ackerman is an economist at the Stockholm Environment Institute

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

MP farmers too driven to suicide
by Shivnarayan Gour

It was a seemingly peaceful day in April this year in Kursithana village of Bankhari block in Hoshangabad district of Madhya Pradesh. Except this time around the cultivation season for Amaan Singh, a farmer, meant the end of a tether. Expecting to produce 100 quintals of wheat which would have provided for his family and seen him through till the next season, he had taken a loan of Rs 50,000 from Satpura Regional Cooperative Bank and an additional Rs 1 lakh from money-lenders.

However, he had grossly been off the mark regarding the yield from his piece of land. Instead of the expected 100 quintals, it produced only 35 quintals which would fetch around Rs 37,000 and certainly not enough to feed his family and pay back his debtors. Driven to despair, Amaan took the only solution that struck him: He consumed poison and ended his life.

In another chilling case, in the same block another farmer from Nandana village consumed poison but he was rushed to a health care centre where his life was saved . In this case too the farmer had taken a loan of Rs 1,25,000 which he was hoping to pay back through money earned after a good yield.

Large amounts of money was gobbled up by an extended use of the generator for irrigation purposes. There was no choice since the availability of electricity is sporadic. In spite of this he harvested only 12 quintals of wheat.

In yet another case in village Bhairapur also in Bankhari block, 22-year-old Mithilesh Raghuvansi committed suicide. His disconsolate mother said that as the crop was not good and his son had taken loans which he could not hope to repay, he committed suicide.

Three lives snuffed out in a single week in April, 2009. Farmers who till the earth and toil to produce the golden grain. Is this the bitter harvest they had to reap? How could such a situation come to pass in this century in a country where agricultural work is the mainstay of the vast majority?

Small farmers use pumps for irrigation which are run on diesel in the face of severe electricity shortage. This pushes up the cost and, if followed by a low yield, breaks the backs of farmers. And they enter the vicious debt trap.

In Hoshangabad district the Tawa Dam’s use for irrigation remains limited. For instance, in Bankhedi block, the sources of irrigation remain existing wells and rivers.

While farmers struggle on the fields and battle with rising costs of inputs, there is a lot to be desired in terms of fixing support prices by the government. According to sources, prices for 24 crops are not increasing at the same pace as the costs of inputs.

According to a study, the support price of wheat should be Rs 1,500 per quintal while the government rate stands at Rs 1,100 only. Sadly, the shortfall bears heavily on farmers and the pattern of suicides in the region is a reflection of this situation. In another sense, it means farming is proving unviable.

Farmers' suicides is a phenomenon that has spread its tentacles in various parts of our country, except perhaps the Northeast. According to statistics available, 46 farmers are committing suicide in India everyday. According to the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) in the year 2007, there were 1,22,637 cases of suicide; out of them 14.4 per cent i.e. 17,656 were farmers. These figures continue to rise every year.

There is an even more disturbing trend within this overall picture. In Maharashtra and Karnataka, most of the farmers who committed suicide were involved in cultivating cash crops. This is changing. Now even those cultivating foodgrains are taking their lives.

In the Vidharbha region of Maharashtra, infamous for the number of farmer suicides, the cultivation is primarily of cotton. Farmers are dependent entirely on external market forces for selling their produce. In case the market slumps, farmers are forced to sell at prices lower than what would be remunerative.

In the case of foodgrains, however, it is quite different. The degree of dependency on external markets is much lower. Foodgrains can be sold at the local 'haats' or village markets or even consumed within the household. Many payments done within the village community are through foodgrains. Thus, the safety net for foodgrain farmers traditionally is much wider.

In a way this trend is linked to the Green Revolution, which boosted production of crops in the short-term. The situation is fast changing and while the yield is stagnant, the costs are increasing. And this is pushing more and more farmers into debt. According to newspaper reports, 80 to 90 per cent farmers, around 32,20,600 in MP bear the burden of debt.

In the face of rising costs and stagnant yields and in the absence of a system of support prices, they are simply falling between the cracks and taking the ultimate solution as a way out of their misery. This is unfortunately a growing trend and farmers’ suicides have been reported from several parts of MP, including Chindwara, Khargaon, Bhopal, Bankeri, Pipariya and Badwani.

Unfortunately, no one is listening. Both the Union and state governments have ignored the needs of farmers. They have turned a deaf ear to the farmers' demands for remunerative prices of their produce. Inputs such as fertilisers, water for irrigation, seeds and power are some of their fundamental needs which find little priority with the authorities.

To add insult to the injury, the focus has been on corporatisation of farming. Last year, the state government organised an agri-business meet and invited several companies to enter the farm sector.

What is required is not half-baked, superficial methods but a fundamental change in thinking and action on the ground to address this problem which is gnawing at the lives of our farmers. It is time that the farm sector, largely dependent on the monsoon in India, should receive the priority it so clearly needs before the crisis engulfing the farm sector reaches mammoth proportions and becomes a national crisis. — Charkha Features

Chatterati
Politicians take Adivasi voters for a ride
by Devi Cherian

A number of villagers who set off for Diwali shopping nearly had a heart attack when they flashed Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes from their purses to make payments. The shopkeepers after a close examination declared that the notes were counterfeit. They were gullible tribal voters who had received money from some politicians during elections. So the villagers had to turn back empty-handed without making purchases as the currency they possessed turned out to be fake.

It is said during this election a large number of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 counterfeit notes have been pushed into circulation in the rural areas. Usually, during elections such notes are distributed among the voters as a consideration for votes. Some original notes were being pushed out but as demand became too much the candidates seem to have taken recourse to the counterfeit notes. Such notes are mostly in the tribal talukas in Maharashtra.

The villagers, who had been taken for a ride by political parties and miscreants, cursed their fate as their hopes were shattered. A complaint has already been made to the authorities.

Recently, a large stock of counterfeit notes was seized by the police and the RBI had declared the series fake. But how do the innocent, poor and illiterate villagers know the real from the fake?

Modi goes in for tiffin politics

A savvy Narendra Modi in a white sports jacket, a khaki trouser and a blue T-shirt was addressing a group of his followers. He announced that his friends must go through his blog.

Narendra Modi has decided to show off his other talents now. He has become a poet. He has written a long poem in Gujarati. The poem is full of words like compassion, empathy, pain and sensitivity. There is an English translation also available of the poem.

So not only has his attire changed, his thoughts too seem to have undergone a drastic change. Is this an image change for a higher ambition for tomorrow?

With the state of the BJP what it is, it seems that the Chief Ministers are getting a bit desperate. Obviously, Narendra Modi has a lot of free time on hand, especially when he is not in demand for campaigning. There is no party work as the party is so busy with infighting going on among leaders. Today there are more leaders in the BJP than workers. So in a way, it’s good that Narendra Modi is keeping himself busy with his hobbies.

On the other hand, Modi is setting new trends. He had a meeting in his constituency at a dinner where every worker brought a tiffin from home and shared it in a mass meal. Mr Modi brought his tiffin of local bhakeri and shaak and shared it with his grassroots workers.

Over dinner, he discussed basic issues of his constituency, besides giving an idea of various schemes and issues that he is tackling.

The success of Modi’s tiffin meeting has motivated the BJP to organise similar meetings in all constituencies to build a better rapport of the elected representative with grassroot party workers in the constituency.

This is a solid cadre-building exercise plus tiffin diplomacy. The home-cooked meals are shared in a community/constituency. The BJP has decided to re-introduce the concept of tiffin baithaks in Gujarat.