The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Toying with trains
Maoists need to be isolated first

By holding the Bhubaneshwar-New Delhi Rajdhani hostage on Tuesday, Maoists have indicated their growing ability to disrupt train services in the country. They have hijacked passenger trains before, notably in Jharkhand, and disrupted the movement of trains by uprooting tracks, damaging signals and attacking railway stations, usually in the darkness of the night. This time they mobilised several hundred sympathisers during the day and demonstrated how easily even a fast train like the Rajdhani can be halted at a wayside station. They could have damaged the train if they wanted because the Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel seemed to be missing from the scene. Whether they would have made any difference is a separate issue but in case they are deployed in trains only at night, the dramatic hold-up will certainly prompt the Railway Board to have second thoughts. In any case, the objective was clearly not to inflict any damage but to show the flag and extract publicity. Maoists, unfortunately, would be tempted to repeat their audacious act.

The government, however, has itself to blame for the tight corner it is in. Trains have always been a soft target with political parties, and also mobs protesting anything and everything under the sun. This has taken place with monotonous regularity during bandhs despite the Supreme Court’s explicit order banning such political protests which damage public property and inconvenience people. But hardly any political party or their supporters have been made to pay for such lawlessness. The state governments’ failure to take action against mainstream political parties and their associated organisations considerably weakens their ability to take tough action against extremists.

While there can be no dialogue with Maoists, the PCAPA ( People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities), formed a year ago, does provide an opening. It is impossible to secure every yard of the railway track in the country and at all hours. Maoists must, therefore, be isolated from the masses. With Union Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee’s known proximity to the PCAPA, the government must seize the opportunity.

Telemedicine in Punjab
Can benefit rural people

Rural healthcare in Punjab is plagued by many ills. Besides the paucity of doctors, the medical infrastructure is lacking in rural areas. In the given scenario, the setting up of the Electronic Health Points at three villages in Muktsar district in collaboration with the state government is a laudable initiative. The pilot project, in operation for the past two months, has so far fared well. If extended to other villages, the innovative scheme can go a long way in providing basic medical care to the people living in the villages.

Essentially, the project involves the use of telecommunication to provide medical information and services. Employing multi-media technology saves both time and money. Patients don’t need to travel to get specialist medical advice. In India where there is a glaring gap between urban and rural health care, telemedicine can to some extent reduce the pressure on urban facilities.

However, there are many constraints en route its successful implementation. Since it is relatively a new concept, rural people will have to be not only familiarised with its benefits but their misgivings about the efficacy and reliability of long-distance advice will also have to be allayed. The medical fraternity, too, needs to take its job seriously. In the age of technology it is only in the fitness of things to use means to help those who need it the most. At the same time, efforts have to be made to revamp Punjab’s overall rural medicare which remains a picture of neglect and apathy.

Thought for the Day

In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal and so illbred, as audible laughter. — Lord Chesterfield

ARTICLE

Dangers to polity
Opposition space getting shrunk
by Inder Malhotra

FOR a long time, in election after election, including the inspiring Lok Sabha poll less than six months ago, some ominous trends, threatening the very integrity of the already distorted Indian political system, have been in evidence. The rather drab tri-state assembly elections indicate that these have escalated, not abated.

To take the worst four of them, in no particular order, the first is the political promiscuity of an insidious kind. The Ayaram-Gayaram era might have ended, but the mindset remains the same. A Shiv Sena veteran, ratting on mentor Balasaheb Thackeray on poll-eve, was welcomed by the Congress with open arms and instantly given the party ticket for an assembly seat. Of the more revealing case of Mr Narayan Rane, a rather rabid former Shiv Sena Chief Minister — immediately made Revenue Minister but later rapped on the knuckles for recalcitrance and now enjoying much greater clout than before — the less said the better.

All this in the midst of overblown rhetoric by the standard-bearers of secularism about their zero tolerance of communal, parochial and divisive elements! And in a very short time there has already been an acrimonious spat between Ms Mamata Banerjee and the Congress because of a flip-flop in the latter’s fidelity to the Trinamool ally and the Marxists on the wrong side of the fence.

The second and the more serious menace to the system is the lethal dimension that big money has acquired in manipulating the entire political structure. To be sure, money it is that makes the mare go. But never before has it done so to such a gargantuan extent. Nor is it a matter any longer of a few multi-billionaire tycoons buying Rajya Sabha or even Lok Sabha seats. The number of crorepatis that have won both the Lok Sabha and the three-state assembly elections, belonging to all parties, has risen by leaps and bounds. In the Maharashtra assembly with a total membership of 288, the count of those commanding tens or even hundreds of crores of rupees has shot up from 108 in 2004 to 184 this time around. In Haryana the situation is staggering. Sixty-seven of its 90 members are crorepatis; 32 of them belong to the 40-member Congress legislative party! A lot more worrisome is the stark fact that every super-rich who was elected in 2004 admits to having doubled or even trebled his hoard since then.

The big money’s almost total triumph over the electoral process is corrosive and scandalous beyond measure. Moneybags ensconced in the seats of power cannot but be in deep collusion with their counterparts outside, whether in the corporate sector or solo, to mutual advantage. Every observer of the Maharashtra scene has also reported that a distressingly large section of the media, print and electronic, has partaken of the splurge of lucre, often enthusiastically and at its own initiative. TV channels and newspapers have sold themselves at a heavy price. The scale seems to be much larger than during the parliamentary poll.

Yet another consequence of black money’s supremacy over all norms of democracy is the horrendously widespread distribution of cash to the voters. Before the Lok Sabha poll, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav in UP, iconic film star Chiranjeevi in Andhra and the then BJP leader, Mr Jaswant Singh, in Rajasthan, were caught on camera brazenly dolling out crisp currency notes to the people, especially the poor. This was only the visible tip of the iceberg. Now this evil practice, too, has multiplied. There are authentic reports that since the gap between the rich and the poor is widening and the privileged are wholly impervious to the plight of the dispossessed, the poor are developing a vested interest in receiving hard cash from those wanting their votes. Election-time bribery is thus acquiring what Shakespeare called the “quality of mercy” that “blesseth him who gives and him who takes”. In short, Indian elections, once famous for their fairness, are being corrupted to the core.

As if this was not enough, the stranglehold of the dynasties has suddenly become as comprehensive and strangulating as that of big and tainted money. To be sure, political dynasties — the Gandhis in power in New Delhi, the Karunanidhi clan in Chennai, the Abdullahs in Srinagar and so on — have been around for a long time. But what has happened this time around is mind-boggling. Rare was a candidate in both Maharashtra and Haryana, whether elected or defeated, who wasn’t a son, daughter, wife, daughter-in-law or a relation of some bigwig in the party on whose ticket he or she contested. Sadly, this dismal trend has developed a momentum of its own. Bloodline, it seems, is becoming the lifeblood of Indian polity. Witness, Mr Mulayam Singh’s determination to get daughter-in-law Dimple elected to the Lok Sabha to join her husband.

The catastrophic combination of kinship and money power cannot but play havoc with the political system this country has tried to develop with only partial success. How would talented youngsters with potential but without “right parentage” and adequate resources have any chance of entering politics if every legislative seat and every ministerial office is reserved for the progeny of the incumbent? Perhaps the only political space available to them would be the one occupied by extremists of the one kind or the other. A foretaste of what this would mean is already visible in what is called the red corridor across the country’s tribal lands.

The fourth and the last threatening trend is the overall weakening of the Indian polity because of the virtual decimation of the BJP, which is really a case of self-destruction, as even its staunch supporters admit. This party was brain dead after its second consecutive defeat in the Lok Sabha election and remains so because it is bereft of any viable ideology or even idea, leaderless and highly fractious. Its cadre is demoralised. To expect it to come back to life would be a triumph of wishful thinking over ground reality. The rest of the Opposition, largely state-specific, is also divided and opportunistic. This may be good for the Congress that can hope to be dominant for another decade or two. But that dominance won’t have the sheen that it did through the bulk of the Nehru era. Nor the authority it wielded in the era of Indira Gandhi’s supremacy. It would be a “muddle of the road party” like it was from 1967 to 1971.

MIDDLE

Schoolboy slang
by Harish Dhillon

In the old days when means of transport and communication were extremely limited, each geographical region, bounded by rivers or mountains, attained a distinct linguistic identity. In Punjab, for example, the Doaba region had a very individual and distinctive dialect as did the regions of Majha and Malwa.

In residential schools, which too tend to be “isolated geographical regions”, this phenomenon is duplicated and each school develops its own very individualistic brand of slang. For an outsider this slang becomes sometimes a totally strange, almost foreign, language. For instance, what does one make of the remark, “Oh yaar, he was badly chepoed!”? It becomes an experience of real enlightenment when we are told that the speaker means: “he” was severely scolded or reprimanded.

Another unique example of this slang is: “They khup created after lights out.” One would think this would mean that they created a lot of noise after the lights had been switched off. But “khup” takes on a connotation that goes far beyond noise. In fact, “khup” could be created even with a total absence of noise. “Khup” really means a minor infringement of the rules for the sheer thrill of doing something forbidden.

But what really takes the cake is a remark like “He was in solid luck”. The non-initiated could be forgiven for concluding that the person referred to, if he hadn’t won a lottery, had at least managed to be included in a school team. Unfortunately, he would be completely off the mark: the “luck” here is anything but lucky. It means getting into very serious trouble.

Like all languages, schoolboy slang evolves and develops constantly. When I was in school “p.c.” meant polite conversation. When you said: “She is very good at making p.c.” you were paying a grudging compliment to her social skills. Today, probably in recognition of the changed social environment, p.c. is a totally derogatory term. When you say “He is lagaoing p.c. to Heady,” you mean that he is attempting “personal chamchagiri” in an effort to worm his way into the Headmaster’s confidence through sycophancy.

Schoolboy slang extends not only to vocabulary but also to the tone and inflection of voice. Some years ago I was in Oxford and found the local branch of “Dillons,” the well established chain of bookstores. I decided to buy some books so that my children too could see the similarity of name on the carry bags. Penguin was celebrating its sixtieth year by bringing out 60 titles at 60 pence each. While I was choosing three titles I heard a delightful conversation on the other side of the book rack. “They are all so good, can’t we buy all 60 of them?” said a female voice.

“Oye, are you ma-a-d?” came a sharp male retort.

My heart gave a leap. The tone and inflection of that last retort could only have come from my school. I went around the racks to enquire. Yes, they were both from Sanawar.

OPED

Back to disinvestment
The policy needs a balanced approach
by B.S. Ghuman

The disinvestment programme has started unfolding. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs gave its nod on October 19 to divest a 5 per cent stake in NTPC and 10 per cent in Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam. The disinvestment of SAIL is also in the pipeline.

Historically, the revenue side has dominated the disinvestment programme. Other objectives of disinvestment like (i) encouraging wider public participation, including that of workers; (ii) penetrating market discipline within public enterprises; and (iii) improving performance, etc. have not succeeded in getting adequate attention.

While preparing a roadmap for the disinvestment, it is suggested to evolve a balanced approach by assigning adequate weightage to each objective. This will help not only in achieving the revenue targets, but also creating a performance-oriented culture in public enterprises.

The experience of the disinvestment programme in India suggests that it is basically used as a vehicle to raise resources for bridging the fiscal deficit. Unfortunately the programme is not a success story even on the achievement of the financial targets.

For example, the pooling of targets and achievements from 1991-92 to 2004-05 clearly shows that the disinvestment programme succeeded in achieving (Rs. 47, 671.96 crore) only half of the target (Rs. 96, 800 crore). The target for the years 2005-2008 was not fixed and the disinvestment receipts during this period were to the tune of Rs 3,936.62 crore.

The major factors responsible for the dismal picture are ad hocism in policy; the absence of systematic efforts for preparing public enterprises for disinvestment; qualitative judgement for selecting public enterprises for disinvestment; problems associated with time schedule of disinvestment and share valuation methods; absence of incentives for enterprises in the form of getting back a percentage of disinvestment proceeds; opposition from the administrative ministry concerned, employees, trade unions and interest groups; lack of capital and lukewarm response of international capital; and the absence of political consensus on disinvestment.

In case the disinvestment programme in the pipeline succeeds in overcoming the inadequacies of the earlier programmes, the possibility of making disinvestment a success story is not ruled out.

Resource mobilisation is a one-time achievement of disinvestment. For getting rich dividends from disinvestment the other objectives of disinvestment deserve equal treatment.

The empirical evidence reveals that only lip service has been paid to them. Progress on account of the objective of encouraging wider public participation, including that of the workers is unsatisfactory.

In the first two rounds, disinvestment was opened only to the public financial institutions and mutual funds. In the third round, disinvestment was opened to the public but with a minimum bid of Rs. 25 million, which was in later phases reduced to Rs. 2,500.

Given the glaring income inequalities achieving the objective of wider public participation by fixing a minimum bid beyond the reach of common citizen is a very difficult task.

In the proposed disinvestment programme the public issue mode is likely to be adopted and hence there is a ray of hope that ‘aam admi’ may reap the benefits of disinvestment.

This objective can only be achieved if small applicants are preferred over large applicants as it was done in the U.K. privatisation process. The government this time is planning to give a 5 per cent discount to small applicants.

Penetrating the market forces within public enterprises has also been very weak. It is mainly due to the majority shareholding held by public sector financial institutions and cross shareholding by other public enterprises.

Further, PEs have to maintain an interface with a large number of ministries and institutions. The select few include Parliament, the administrative ministry, the Department of Public Enterprises, the Finance Ministry, CAG, the Planning Commission, the CVC and the CBI.

The cumbersome administrative procedures and plethora of guidelines to be followed by the PEs while dealing with various government institutions hinder the penetration of market forces in decision-making in PEs.

No doubt, the Vittal Committee (1997) and the Nair Committee (2001) have suggested the deletion of a number of guidelines and modifications in others, still the existing guidelines are large enough to constrain the culture of market forces.

The performance of public enterprises after disinvestment has not experienced any perceptible improvement mainly due to the predominance of risk-averse management style (i.e. bureaucratic approach) and work culture not fully conducive to performance.

The policy instruments which can help in encouraging the penetration of market forces in public enterprises and improvement in performance after disinvestment are professionalisation of their Boards, of Directors and granting more autonomy to the PEs, thus promoting an entrepreneurial approach.

According to the Office Memorandum of the Department of Public Enterprises, dated March 16, 1992, one-third of the directors would be non-official part-time directors.

The institution of non-official director helps in reaping the benefits of expertise available in the PEs. The professionalisation of the Board of Directors also helps in bringing in new and alternative ideas at the policy level, the execution of which enables the enterprises to improve their physical and financial performance.

Granting autonomy on the pattern of Navratnas or Miniratnas and now Maharatnas after disinvestment also needs the attention of policy-makers. An autonomy package becomes all the more necessary in the background of a very impressive performance by many public enterprises, such as, BHEL, CIL and NTPC.

BHEL has the distinction of paying dividends to the government continuously for 20 years now. The CIC and NTPC success stories are equally impressive.

The autonomy package finally would strengthen the conventional philosophy of keeping the government at an arm’s length. Cutting down drastically the guidelines to be followed by the PEs and reducing the number of interface institutions can also help in improving the performance of the PEs after disinvestment.

Revisiting the relevant recommendations of the Disinvestment Commission spread over its 13 reports will be of immense help for evolving a balanced approach towards the disinvestment programme.n

The writer is the Dean, Faculty of Arts, Panjab University, Chandigarh

PAU-201: A boon for agriculture
by Gurdev Singh Hira

It is rather unfortunate that unnecessary questions have been raised about the quality of the rice variety called PAU-201 released by Punjab Agricultural University in 2007.

It is a semi-dwarf stiff-strawed variety with dark green erect leaves that remain green until maturity. The average plant height of the variety is 101 cm. It takes 144 days to mature after seeding. It produces long and slender grains with good cooking quality.

The variety is resistant to the attack of most of the pathotypes and insect pests such as hoppers prevalent in Punjab. Its average yield is 30 quintals per acre. The actual yield of the variety in farmers fields is 32-35 quintal per acre that could go even higher in more fertility soils. The variety meets all the permissible limits of shelling and has more nutritional value than other rice varieties since it contains high contents of iron, manganese and phenols (anti-oxidants). The biggest advantage of this variety is that it requires much less water as compared to other long-duration varieties which mature in 158-160 days after seeding.

Punjab is facing a serious problem of the falling water table. It is feared that in the next 10-15 years many areas of Punjab will not be able to grow rice. Rice plantation in Punjab should start from June 10 onwards. Even if this practice continues for another 15 years, it is projected that by the year 2025 the water table in 42 blocks of central districts of Punjab will reach more than 100 feet deep.

In 31 blocks the water table will go more than 135 feet deep, in 10 blocks the water table will go down to more than 170 feet and in four blocks the water table depth will touch 200-270 feet. To overcome the rapidly falling water table problem in Punjab, farmers will have to delay rice plantation to June 20 instead of June 10.

The studies carried out by me over the years(1998-2008) based on the data generated from 653 observation wells in the state by the Directorate of Irrigation Research and Environment and the Ground Water Cell of Agriculture have indicated that during 1998-2005, the transplanting of paddy before June 10 had a total fall of the water table in 132 blocks (98.5% area) and only two blocks experienced a rising water table due to the natural water flow.

During 2005-08, when transplanting was delayed up to June 10, these figures were 99 blocks (73.9%) and 35 blocks (26.1%), respectively. The studies projected that if paddy transplanting is further delayed to June 20, the water table will fall in 72 blocks (53.7% area) and will rise in 62 blocks.

Further, with paddy transplanting delayed up to June 30, the water table will fall in only 54 blocks (40.3% area) while it will rise in as many as 80 blocks (59.7% area) of the state.

It implies that the major problem of water depletion in the face of contemporary agriculture can be addressed by following a proper transplanting date for which early maturing and short-duration paddy varieties are suitable.

If the varieties happen to be high yielding, farmers can gain ecologically and economically, a step for sustainability of agriculture. The two recently released varieties of Punjab Agricultural University, namely PAU-201 and PR-120, are of medium and short duration maturity, respectively.

PR-120 is a semi-dwarf variety that matures in 132 days after seeding. It possesses long, slender clear translucent grains with a good cooking quality. It is resistant to all the eight pathotypes of bacterial blight pathogen prevalent in Punjab. Its average paddy yield is 28.5 quintal per acre. The water resources of Punjab can be conserved by cultivating these recently developed varieties that have been well received by farmers.

As far as PAU-201 is concerned, it has remarkable characteristics with multifold advantages. It is already covering around 30% area of Punjab. The variety is well received by farmers due to high yield, disease resistance and less water consumption due to its short-duration maturity.

The Directorate of Rice Research, Hyderabad and other agencies have approved the variety as grade ‘A’ category. The variety is also resistant to hoppers and has no aspergillus (toxin producing fungus). It also fits in the permissible limits of shelling.

Besides, the rice bran of this variety is richer in oil content than others. The Ministry of Consumers Affair, Food and Public Distribution has also accredited this variety as ‘A’ grade rice and has never complained about its colouration. The following suggestions should be considered:

Shelling of PAU-201 variety should be done separately as its polishing requirement is 1-2% or more. Despite that it has a better rice recovery than other varieties.

Better quality, efficient machines should be used for shelling of this variety as the obsolete machinery leads to more breakage.

The rice of PAU-201 variety could be sold as brown rice.

On the market floor several impurities contaminate the lot leading to its spoilage. It should, therefore, be lifted and shelled on priority. The ware housing conditions should also be revamped.

I strongly feel that the variety PAU-201 is in the larger interest of humanity due to its highly nutritive grains, of the nation due to its high yield and of the state due to its being less water requiring.

Further, the farmers can use their land for other crops due to its short duration. I, like many other scientists, am convinced that this variety can be a boon to the Punjab agriculture and serve the cause of national food and nutritional security.n

The writer is a former Additional Director of Research (Agri.), Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana

Victims of locked-in syndrome?
by Peter Garrison

I started flying small airplanes when I was 18, and after I got out of the service, I used my GI Bill money to adorn my pilot’s license with a Lear Jet rating. Most of the training consisted of takeoffs and landings at Bakersfield, Calif.; we never climbed above 10,000 feet or went very fast.

But at the end of the course we made a real flight — to Las Vegas and back — and I finally got to climb to something like a jet’s cruising altitude and experience something like a jet’s speed.

The cockpit of a Lear Jet — these were old Model 24s, the jet equivalent of a ‘55 Chevy — was a tight place, with a steeply slanted windshield grazing your forehead, a tall instrument panel in front of you and a console projecting back between the seats. You couldn’t move around much.

And there was nothing to do. The airplane flew itself, holding heading, speed and altitude with greater precision than any human could. The sound of the aft-mounted engines resembled that of a distant vacuum cleaner. The Mojave Desert crept by almost imperceptibly, too remote to be interesting except to geologists.

This was what it was be a jet pilot! Immobility, inaction and silence. It was almost like being one of those victims of locked-in syndrome who are fully aware but cannot move or speak.

So I have no trouble imagining that the two pilots of Northwest Airlines Flight 188 — whose licenses were revoked Tuesday by the FAA — could have been sleeping when they overshot the Minneapolis airport by 150 miles.

I don’t know whether they were — alternative explanations are still coming in — but if so, it wouldn’t be that surprising. Airline flying, with its time-zone shifts and irregular schedules, poses obvious fatigue risks. And besides the fatigue, there’s the monotony.

Crews intermittently receive instructions from the ground — mostly just to change radio frequencies as they move from one air traffic sector to another — while computers do the bulk of the work. One of the problems of cockpit automation, in fact, is finding ways to keep uninvolved pilots aware of where they are and what the airplane is doing as it traverses the experiential void between takeoff and landing.

We may never know for certain what happened, because the cockpit voice recorder preserves only the most recent 30 minutes. But I have to admit that I find the laptop explanation a bit hard to believe. I’m sure the merging of the Northwest and Delta seniority lists is fascinating, but still.

When I’m on an instrument flight plan, I start to feel uneasy if I haven’t talked with a controller in 20 minutes or so. These guys were in their own world for more than an hour — what were they thinking? But then, they’ve logged a lot more hours of suspended animation than I have.

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

Corrections and clarifications

n In the headline “Rodrigues-Bansal head for another showdown” (Page 1, Oct. 29, Chandigarh Tribune), there should have been a comma between the two names and not a hyphen.

n In the headline “Fruitful talk with China: Krishna” (Page 1, Oct. 28), the word should have been “talks” not “talk”.

n In the headline on the report about Jairam Ramesh being likely to miss the Barcelona meet on climate change (Page 2, Oct. 28), the word “change” has been mis-spelt as “chagne”.

n In the intro of the report “CAT stay on military probe raises debate” (Page 3, Oct. 27) “….even after several months of it was ordered” should have been “…..even several months after it was ordered”.

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