The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Water under the soil
Punjab stand not in the state’s interest

Punjab’s political leadership resists doing anything that can harm its electoral prospects. It is averse even to a law that can help the state conserve its precious water resources. Punjab and five other laggard states — Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Tripura, Manipur and Nagaland — are avoiding a law passed elsewhere in the country to curb the excessive extraction of groundwater. Surely, having a law is not itself enough. But Punjab has not done much on its own to obviate the need for a law. The Centre should go beyond circulating water Bill copies and call a meeting of the recalcitrant state leaders to press the need for water conservation.

Spurred by Central policies, farmers in Punjab have paid a heavy price for growing paddy. Free power too came handy in the reckless exploitation of groundwater. Few paddy growers are worried over reports from NASA and the National Geophysical Research Institute painting a grim picture of the waterfront. Nobody bothers if told that groundwater in 103 of the 137 blocks in Punjab is over-exploited. As the water table sinks at an alarming rate, farmers install submersible pumps, each costing more than Rs 1 lakh, to chase the receding water level.

A concerned Punjab Farmers Commission has pointed out that rainwater can recharge groundwater only up to 80-90 feet. But submersible pumps extract water from as low as 300 to 400 feet, which means exhausting the non-renewable reserves. While experts advise farmers to stop or go slow on self-destructive agricultural practices and urge semi-literate politicians to intervene for their own benefit, revive the disappearing village ponds and make rainwater harvesting mandatory, such wisdom has few takers in a state placed 16th in literacy nationally. The Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, wants a tax on groundwater to control its waste and over-use. But politicians in Punjab keep their minds tightly shut and do not let in any such enlightenment to seep in.

Containing Maoists
State governments must chip in

While admitting that the operation against the Maoists was slow, the Union Home Minister went on to express his confidence after a review meeting in Kolkata that the Maoist menace would be controlled to a great extent within the next six months. This is the first time he has indicated a time-frame, which in effect means that the anti-Maoist drive is moving according to plans. Mr Chidambaram has blown hot and cold, used the carrot and the stick and offered talks on the one hand and retaliation on the other. While he mobilised state governments for a concerted armed campaign against the Maoists, he appeared reasonable while saying “Maoists are our own people” and inviting them to abjure violence and come to the table for talks.

There are signs that the Maoists are in some kind of disarray and possibly some of them are keen for talks. The more radical and hardened fringe among the Maoists, however, continue to pursue their goal of a bloody revolution. The continuing violence unleashed by the Maoists has succeeded in reducing public support for them even in their strongholds, as also indicated by a growing number of desertions from their ranks.

But while Mr Chidambaram appears clear in his mind that the immediate goal is to re-establish civil administration and re-assert the authority of the state in Maoist strongholds, states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Bihar continue to harp on “development first” by which they presumably mean more Central grants into their coffers. There does not appear much clarity though about how development can be ensured in the void created by the abdication of civil administration in the first place. There is need for the Home Minister to ensure that the state governments, irrespective of their political dispensation, do not abdicate their share of responsibility in combating the Maoists. It is a national problem and has to be tackled by both the Centre and the states.

Thought for the Day

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train. — Oscar Wilde

ARTICLE

Goodwill in Afghanistan
Geography comes in India’s way
by Zorawar Daulet Singh

Despite having emerged as one of the leading suppliers of developmental assistance in Afghanistan, India has been unable to leverage the “soft power” of aid and societal goodwill earned in Afghanistan to shape political outcomes. A clear distinction has now been drawn between Afghanistan’s “immediate neighbours” and a second tier of regional states that includes India.

On the eve of the just concluded London Conference, the UN Security Council removed five former Taliban officials from its sanctions list. The conference has clearly legitimised a framework for the return of the Taliban as a player in Afghan politics. Pakistan’s role as a potential enabler in this process of future reconciliation has also been recognised. To be sure, this trend has been apparent for some time now and Mr Obama’s policy review last March with its implied division of labour with the Pakistani military had paved the way for such a course. Nonetheless, a “talk talk, fight fight” strategy by the Western alliance has now been set in motion and the next several months will reveal the efficacy of this path.

As the Indian Foreign Minister reiterated in London on January 28, “The principal objective of India’s development partnership, covering the entire country and straddling all sectors of development, is to build indigenous Afghan capacities and institutions.” Yet, India’s $1.3 billion in development aid has not prevented New Delhi from being relegated to the periphery of high politics over Afghanistan.

The principal reason why India has been unable to exercise more orthodox instruments of power is the absence of a direct geographical supply line to Afghanistan. Ignoring the logic of geography, a segment of India’s strategic community has been impetuously advocating a deployment of troops into the Afghan theatre. The proponents for an Indian military deployment have also not accounted for the lack of expeditionary capabilities in India’s armed forces that could sustain a large-scale deployment over an extended period. Nor has it been established how alienating the southern Pashtuns, a likely result from an Indian military involvement, would benefit India.

Thus, throwing boots into the Afghan theatre would more likely imply Indian forces forgoing their operational autonomy and accepting an overwhelming reliance on the US and ISAF command and logistical infrastructure. Given the scaling back of western goals in Afghanistan and a lack of strategic convergence with India’s preferred outcomes in the Hindu Kush, ceding operational autonomy over Indian forces would be imprudent and negate the original intent of projecting Indian power.

On the other hand, by acknowledging that there are structural limits to India’s ability to influence geopolitical outcomes in Afghanistan, New Delhi might be able to forge a more realistic policy where the ends and means are on the same page. Such an exercise would also enable India to evaluate and employ multiple means to advance its geostrategic interests on its Western frontiers.

For a start, it is worth articulating the essence of India’s goals in Afghanistan since New Delhi has been remarkably coy about spelling out the raison d’être of its Afghan policy. From the very start, Afghanistan for India was all about Pakistan. The post-9/11 phase of India’s Afghan policy was essentially one of bandwagoning with a superpower seeking retribution for 9/11 in the hope that Washington’s strategic ire might eventually fall upon the principal source of international terrorism — Pakistan. The opposite has occurred. Nine years on, the continuing Western military presence has only managed to transform the principal benefactor of the Taliban — Rawalpindi — into an indispensable partner in the American mission in Afghanistan. Such is the logic of geography!

India, it would appear, has expended a significant amount of diplomatic capital since 2001 to ensure that the Western military presence in Afghanistan remained unaffected by the India-Pakistan security dilemma. India’s strategic posture and outlook were remoulded to ease the presence of the Western alliance in Afghanistan. This was achieved by initiating a policy of reassurance vis-à-vis Pakistan and quietly absorbing blow after blow of asymmetric proxy assaults that have extended into the Indian heartland. The illogic of this entire policy path and the assumptions that preceded it were finally confronted by the Indian security establishment in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror strikes in November 2008. In retrospect, what began as a policy of reshaping Western perceptions vis-à-vis Pakistan after 9/11 gradually transformed with India bending its own goals and security perceptions to suit the Western military intervention in Afghanistan. In other words, India was adapting its strategy to serve tactical imperatives!

Now that this charade is over, New Delhi can once again reassess its posture and policy goals vis-à-vis Afghanistan only this time by relating it explicitly to a grand strategy vis-à-vis Pakistan. Plainly put, Afghanistan was envisioned as one of the means to modulate Pakistani behaviour. The ultimate goal was always a roll-back of the military-intelligence superstructure in Pakistan and the irredentist aspirations of the Pakistani elite toward either side of their frontiers. The ISAF and US forces never shared such expansive goals in Afghanistan and, therefore, have been unwilling to expend blood and treasure to emasculate India’s troubled neighbour.

As events on the ground have denuded India’s Afghan policy, perhaps the moment has come to end our obsession with Afghanistan and start evaluating the utility of other national security instruments to advance the same overarching objectives vis-à-vis Pakistan that we envisaged on the eve of 9/11.

Given enduring geopolitical constraints, India cannot play a great game in Afghanistan. For a state that lacks geographical contiguity with Afghanistan, the level of goodwill that India has attained among the common Afghans is commendable. But such gains need to be supplemented by adapting New Delhi’s broader strategy vis-à-vis Islamabad. A renewed and diligent focus on the Radcliffe Line and toward the security of the Kashmir valley would be a start.

MIDDLE

The rum guzzlers
by Rachna Singh

As an Army child I was quite accustomed to staying in never-heard-of places. One such place was Bengdubi in West Bengal. When my father was posted to Bengdubi it did not even have its own train station. We had to alight at Jalpaiguri and then make our way by road to Bengdubi.

We first arrived in Jalpaiguri one cold December morning and were ritually picked up at the station by a captain and ushered into the ubiquitous one-tonne (a small army truck) for our journey to Bengdubi. Soon, we had left the small town of Jalpaiguri behind and were moving through a thickly forested area.

As we moved through the forest, I thought I spied a huge grey hump behind a distant clump of bamboo trees. Seeing my interest, the captain accompanying us informed me that it was nothing but a ‘Rum-guzzler’. Seeing my total incomprehension he twinkled: “This is what we call elephants here as they have a great fondness for rum and can smell it from miles away”. My skeptical look elicited a complacent “you will see” from the captain.

In the bustle of shifting to a new place I soon forgot this conversation. Then arrived the day when my father was to be formally ‘dined-in’ at the officers mess. We were ushered to the dimly lit lawns as soon as we arrived. The bar was set out at the far end of the lawn. Suddenly, in the middle of the party bonhomie, I heard a shout “rum-guzzlers aa gaye”. Before I could spy the gatecrashers, the entire entourage, with practiced agility retreated to the mess lounge and positioned themselves before the bay windows.

Intrigued, I squeezed myself into a crevice near one of the windows and peered outside. Nothing. And then I saw them as they materialised out of the dark, ‘them’ being two mammoth elephants walking through the gates of the officers mess with a stately sway.

As I watched spell-bound the duo stopped, lifted their trunks and delicately sniffed the air. They moved their heads as if in confirmation and purposefully headed towards the bar. Then with an enviable delicacy they curled their trunks around the bottles of rum on the bar counter and tapped them on the ground till the bottle broke and made a ‘rum-puddle.’ Using their trunks they guzzled down the liquor and continued till the bar counter was empty of all bottles. Then they beat an unsteady retreat and disappeared into the darkness.

The spectacle was something out of a Ripley’s ‘Believe it or not’. The image of the rum-guzzlers has stayed with me and even after three decades brings a reminiscent smile to my lips.

OPED

2010 – Do-or-die year for agriculture
by Dr M.S. Swaminathan

It is now 42 years since the term "Green Revolution" was coined by Dr William Gaud of the USA to describe advances in production arising from productivity improvement. Even in 1968 I had concluded that if farm ecology and economics go wrong, nothing else would go right in agriculture. I expressed my views in the following words in my lecture at the Indian Science Congress Session held in Varanasi in January, 1968.

"Intensive cultivation of land without conservation of soil fertility and soil structure would lead, ultimately, to the springing up of deserts. Irrigation without arrangements for drainage would result in soils getting alkaline or saline. An indiscriminate use of pesticides, fungicides and herbicides could cause adverse changes in the biological balance as well as lead to an increase in the incidence of cancer and other diseases, through the toxic residues present in the grains or other edible parts. Unscientific tapping of underground water will lead to the rapid exhaustion of this wonderful capital resource left to us through ages of natural farming".

The present decade may mark the beginning of a new climate era, characterised by extreme and often unpredictable weather conditions and rise in sea levels. The recent Climate Conference in Copenhagen unfortunately failed to get a global commitment to halt economic growth based on high carbon intensity. The Climate Conference due to be held in Mexico in December this year will probably generate the political commitment essential to restrict the rise in global mean temperature to not more than 2ºC, as compared to the mean temperature of today.

Even a 2ºC rise will affect adversely crop yields in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, which already have a high degree of prevalence of endemic hunger. It will also lead to the possibility of small islands getting submerged. The greatest casualty of climate change will be food, water and livelihood security.

Farmers of the world can help to avoid serious famines by developing and adopting climate resilient farming systems. 2010 has been declared by the United Nations as the International Year of Biodiversity. Biodiversity is the feedstock for a climate resilient agriculture. We should therefore redouble our efforts to prevent genetic erosion and to promote the conservation and sustainable and equitable use of biodiversity.

2010 will also witness a major conference at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to review the progress made since 2000 in achieving the U N Millennium Development Goals. The first among these goals is reducing hunger and poverty by half by 2015.

Unfortunately, the number of hungry children, women and men, which was 800 million in 2000, is now over a billion. This is partly due to a rise in food prices, thereby making it difficult for the poor to have access to balanced diet at affordable prices. There is no time to relax and the farmers of the Punjab must redouble their efforts to increase food production.

Also, our food security should be built on the foundation of home-grown food since agriculture is the backbone of the livelihood security system of nearly 700 million people in the country. Nearly 60 per cent of the cultivated area is rainfed and these are the areas where pulses, oilseeds and other crops of importance to nutrition security such as millets are grown.

I need hardly emphasise that India is the home for the largest number of malnourished children, women and men in the world. The majority of the malnourished are producer-consumers (ie, farmer-consumer) and landless labour. Increasing the productivity and profitability of small farms is the most effective method of achieving the UN Millennium Development Goal No. 1: ie, reducing hunger and poverty.

A road map for our agricultural renaissance and agrarian prosperity was presented by the National Commission on Farmers (NCF) in its five reports presented between 2004-2006. The reports are yet to be printed, let alone implemented. For example, 70 per cent of India's population does not find a place in the Padma awards announced on January 26 each year, although the NCF had stressed the need for according social prestige and recognition to farmers through such gestures.

Farming, particularly in the heartland of the Green Revolution comprising Punjab, Haryana and Western UP is in deep ecological and economic crises. No wonder over 40 per cent of the farmers surveyed by NSSO wish to quit farming, if there is another option. Some of the areas needing immediate attention and action are the following:

l Defending the gains already made in the Green Resolution areas through conservation farming, involving concurrent attention to soil health enhancement, water conservation and effective use, biodiversity protection and launching a climate resilient agriculture movement, is an urgent task.

These are the areas which feed the public distribution system. The NCF had recommended the allocation of Rs.1,000 crore for this purpose. Expenditure in this area will also come under the Green Box provision of the WTO. Climate resilient agriculture will involve shifting attention to per day rather than per crop productivity.

l There is need for extending the gains to eastern India, the sleeping giant of Indian agriculture. Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, eastern UP, West Bengal, Assam and Orissa have immense untapped production potential. A large number of GOI schemes with a substantial financial outlay like the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, the Food Security Mission and the National Horticulture Mission exist, but are not making the desired impact on the productivity and production of small farmers.

A well-planned "Bridge the Yield Gap Movement" needs to be initiated with the active involvement of farming families gram sabhas need to be involved in finalising the components of the Bridge the Yield Gap Movement.

l Enhancing the productivity of dry farming areas is another goal. The gap between potential and actual yields with the technologies on the shelf ranges from 200 to 300 per cent in these areas. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi initiated a dry land farming revolution in these areas through the pulses and oilseeds missions, but the end to end approach he had designed was soon given up and there was a reversion to the business as usual approach.

I suggest that during 2010-11, 60,000 pulses and oilseed villages may be organised in rainfed areas to mark the 60th anniversary of our Republic. In each of these villages, there should be a Lab-to-Land programme organised by the ICAR and agricultural universities. These pulses and oilseed villages, may be developed with the help of gram sabhas and with the active involvement of farm scientists with the requisite knowledge and experience.

Today, the consumer is paying very high prices for pulses, but the producer lives in poverty.

2010 is a do or die year for Indian agriculture. If we don't take steps to address the serious ecological, economic and social crises facing our farm families, we will be forced to support foreign farmers, through extensive food imports. This will result in a rise in food inflation, increase the rural-urban and rich-poor divides and allow the era of farmers' suicides to persist. On the other hand, we have a unique opportunity for ensuring food for all by mobilising the power of "Yuva and Mahila Kisans" and by harnessing the vast untapped yield reservoir existing in most farming systems through synergy between technology and public policy.

Overcoming hidden hunger caused by micronutrient deficiencies like iron, iodine, zinc, Vitamin A and Vitamin B12 can be achieved by growing and consuming appropriate local vegetables and fruits. There is a horticultural remedy for every nutritional malady. Moringa, which is a jewel in the horticultural crown, is an example.

Urban and non-farming members of the human family should realise that we live on this planet as the guests of sunlight and green plants, and of the farm women and men who toil in sun and rain, and day and night, to produce food for over six billion people, by bringing about synergy between green plants and sunlight. Let us salute the farmers of the world and help them to help in achieving the goal of a hunger-free world.

Excerpted from the writer’s convocation address delivered at PAU, Ludhiana, on Wednesday.

Justifying Iraq war
by Mark Steel

If you want to understand the details of how we went to war in Iraq, it is probably best not to watch a single moment of the Chilcot inquiry. Because the most glaring points of the big picture seem to get lost, amidst genteel discussions about whose note was at which meeting using which font at what angle.

But a judgement of whether the government lied in the months before the war can't be made without seeing the wider context, in which a decision had already been taken to support the war. So they were desperate to present a case for why we had to take part, and Saddam's weapons of mass destruction appeared the most persuasive.

From then on, any snippet from anywhere that backed that case was proclaimed as evidence, and anything that refuted it, no matter how convincing, was ignored. So they announced Saddam had bought uranium from Africa, because someone had seen it on the internet. And included in their dossier evidence that appears to have come from an Iraqi taxi driver, who said he overheard ministers discussing their weapons.

But they ignored Hans Blix, who said he'd found no conclusive evidence, because unlike a reliable source such as a taxi driver or the internet, he was just the chief bloody United Nations sodding bloody weapons inspector, that's all.

If Alastair Campbell had got his way the dossier would probably have included other sections such as "The compelling testimony of Mr Dipworth, who said he saw Saddam personally buying plutonium at a car boot sale", before it emerged this was in a dream he had after eating three packets of Cheesy Wotsits. Or "The evidence of Mr Justin Toper, astrologer for The Sun, who said quite explicitly, 'This is a good time to confront old foes, as they may be hiding something massive'."

Yet Tony Blair said, "I have no doubt Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, no doubt, absolutely no doubt at all." The line they all follow is that they sincerely believed that, which is possible, but not one of them appears to have considered the evidence impartially or they would have had doubts.

We can all be mistakenly certain; I was once sincerely convinced that Doug Mountjoy had been 1978 world snooker champion runner-up, but as various lists and books were presented displaying this to be wrong, I started to have my doubts. But for Blair, the evidence wasn't collected in order to make a judgement, it was only accepted if it backed the decision already made.

Part of the government's defence for going to war is that "everybody" believed Saddam had these weapons, so how were they to know different? But the main reason why many people did believe this, was the government kept saying it. It's like running into a pub and screaming "Fire, for God's sake get out NOW." Then afterwards when everyone's outside and there's clearly no fire, you say, "You can't blame me, everyone else believed it as well."

Or there's the debâcle of the 45 minutes, which was revealed as the time it would take Saddam to launch his deadly weapons. So every newspaper was covered in stories and graphs showing how he could incinerate British bases in 45 minutes before it turned out much later that this only referred to the time it would take to launch his normal battlefield weapons, which any army could do. San Marino could probably get their army together in that time, if they could just find the key to the shed, so maybe we should invade them next.

— By arrangement with The Independent

Genetic disorder turns risk-averse into gamblers
by Steve Connor

The brains of people who risk everything when gambling may be wired up differently to those of the naturally cautious, according to a study that appears to have discovered a neurological basis for reckless behaviour.

The research found that people were far more gullible to high-risk gambling when a small but distinct part of their brain had been damaged as a result of a rare genetic disorder. They showed little of the natural aversion to losing something of value that most people are born with.

Tests on two otherwise healthy women who had suffered damage to a part of the brain called the amygdala, which has already been implicated in the arousal of fear and anxiety, revealed that they were far more ready to lose money through risky gambling behaviour compared to healthy individuals with no such brain damage.

The amygdala is an almond-shaped structure deep inside the core of the brain and it is sometimes referred to as the "seat of fear" because of its important role in controlling this basic, primal emotion. It is an ancient part of the brain, existing long before the evolutionary development of the outer "higher cortex" which controls more sophisticated emotional states.

"A fully functioning amygdala appears to make us more cautious. We already know that the amygdala is involved in processing fear, and it also appears to make us afraid of losing money," said Professor Ralph Adolphs of University College London. Scientists involved in the latest study tested the two American women, a 43-year-old who had left school at 18 and a 23-year-old who had gone to college, for their tendency to "loss aversion", in other words their inclination to risk losing money as a result of reckless gambling.

The scientists presented each woman with a gift of $50 (£32) and invited them to participate in a series of gambling choices based on a 50:50 chance of winning. They were offered bets such as risk winning $5 or losing $20, win $50 or lose $20 and win $20 or lose $15.

Most people would not take the risk on these sums based on just flipping a coin and healthy participants in the study showed normal loss-aversion behaviour seen in the population at large. The two women, however, gambled on almost any bet, no matter what the risks involved.

"Monetary loss aversion has been studied in behavioural economics for some time, but this is the first time that patients have been reported who lack it entirely," said Benedetto De Martino, a researcher at University College London.Loss aversion behaviour is seen to be important biologically because it is a way of weighing up the options of potentially life-threatening decisions during human evolution. However, it manifests itself in other decisions we take in a more modern setting.

"Imagine you're on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? You've just answered the £500,000 question correctly and have moved on to the final question. You're down to your 50:50 lifeline but don't know the answer," Dr De Martino said.

"If you get it right, you'll win £1m; if you get it wrong, you'll drop back to £32,000. The vast majority of people would take the "loss-averse option" and walk away with £500,000," he said.

— By arrangement with The Independent