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Hijack and die! Power pangs in
Punjab Education for
dyslexics |
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Industry firmly on
growth path
The dancing
Vice-Chancellor
A step forward Dead at dawn Chatterati
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Power pangs in Punjab
Though the summer has just started, Punjab is already in the grip of a power crisis. Power cuts have become endemic. The Punjab State Electricity Board has imposed additional weekly off-days on the industry. The power situation has deteriorated rather too early this year and the public annoyance with the authorities is all the more acute because of the 3 per cent hike in the electricity duty announced in the state budget for 2010-11. Though the duty hike will fetch an extra Rs 270 crore a year, it is not clear whether the board will have enough funds to purchase power to meet the peak season demand. Last year was one of the worst for power consumers. Though free power, which had pushed the power board to the edge of bankruptcy, has been discontinued, the Punjab government’s finances remain in trouble. The government will have to reimburse the farmers’ power bills. A few weeks ago the state leadership had issued huge advertisements in the media claiming how large power projects were being launched and that the state would become power surplus in three years. The reality is that in the short term the government has no money to buy power to bridge the growing gap between demand and supply. Currently, there is a demand for 1,210 lakh units and the availability is just 1,080 lakh units. The power situation has deteriorated because for the past many years the government and the power board have not invested in capacity addition. The political leadership had wasted too much time in deciding whether a nuclear power plant was in the interests of the state or not. Now three thermal power projects are being set up in the state by private companies. When these will be commissioned is anybody’s guess. Lack of power has held back the state’s industrial and agricultural growth apart from playing havoc with normal life. |
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Education for dyslexics
The Supreme Court’s dismissal of a plea by a dyslexic student of Panchkula who wanted permission to use a calculator while writing his Class XII CBSE examination has brought to the fore the discrepancy between the norms followed by two of the premier school boards, the CBSE and the ICSE. While the latter allows calculators to be used by examinees, the former does not. As a result, the 820 dyslexic students appearing for the Class X and XII CBSE examinations this year will not be allowed to use calculators. Both boards make provisions for the differently-abled children to get assistance when they take examinations, taking their difficulties into account. Thus, dyslexic examinees get "scribes" to write for them. They also get extra time. Sensitivity towards differently-abled children, however, is low and they face many impediments, individual and institutional, in their quest to find their place in the world. While children with obvious physical impairments can easily be identified, those afflicted with dyslexia and other learning disabilities need trained teachers and counsellors to identify them. While the school boards have made provisions for reservation of seats for these special children, unfortunately, these remain largely on paper. Even after the admission, many challenges remain, and they have to be addressed on a day-to-day basis with sensitivity and care to enable these differently-abled children to be productive members of our society. Multiplicity of rules like those seen regarding the use of a calculator need to be removed and this, indeed, makes a powerful case for a uniform education policy for schools and colleges. Conflicts in ideological positions among various boards like the ICSE and the CBSE must be ironed out so that all the examinees in the nation are governed by uniform norms. |
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From the standpoint of pure reason, there are no good grounds to support the claim that one should sacrifice one’s own happiness to that of others.
— W. Somerset Maugham
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Industry firmly on growth path While the industrial countries in Western Europe are grappling with unemployment and high fiscal deficits owing to the economic crisis that struck the world in 2007, India seems to have come out unscathed. Industrial growth in India did decline steeply following the crisis, but now it seems the country is on a steady upward growth path. Not only has GDP growth picked up, registering a 6 per cent rise during the last quarter of the current fiscal year (which is lower than the 7.9 per cent in the previous quarter), but industrial growth has also shown an improvement. In December 2009, the IIP( Index of Industrial Production) rose by 17.5 per cent and in January 2010, it went up by 16.5 per cent. India and China have both been able to come out of the recession more quickly than other countries, specially the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) of Europe. India’s recent industrial growth is good by any standard though not as high as China’s. When we look at the individual components of the industrial growth index, the manufacturing sector registered an impressive increase of 17.9 per cent. On the whole, Indian industry is picking up though agriculture remains a laggard. Should we feel complacent or should we be cautious? Perhaps, a cautious approach is desirable. Though India is a huge country with an enormous domestic market, there is cause for concern regarding the future of export industries and the markets abroad. If the developed economies reduce their demand, it is bound to affect India’s exports. As is evident from the recent data, the US and the EU are not totally out of the wood yet and there is the likelihood of continuation of the recession and contraction of demand. Many countries in the EU need an urgent bailout by other members, especially Germany, and unless that happens the euro may remain in danger vis-à-vis other major currencies. Some of the PIGS have a huge sovereign debt and a growing number of the unemployed. Greece’s unemployment is at 12.7 per cent and Spain’s at 19 per cent. Greece’s debt/GDP ratio is at 123 per cent and Italy’s at 118 per cent. Obviously, their demand is going to be affected with cuts in public spending and increasing joblessness. India, of course, has diversified its exports and the US and the EU, though important export destinations, are no longer the most important ones. India’s trade is now more with the Middle-East and the East, and China is one of the most important trading partners. Back home, because of the slowdown in agriculture, the focus of the government will have to be on revamping the farming sector, especially irrigation facilities, to preempt another drought from wrecking the crops in summer. The government would also have to try to reduce food inflation drastically and urgently. It has been plaguing the economy for the past one year. Perhaps, a more meaningful and quicker way of controlling food inflation may be by releasing food stocks in the market from the huge stockpiles of foodgrains in possession of the government, and also importing other essential commodities to meet the deficit in demand and supply. It is being done, according to government sources. Unfortunately, though the recent data do show a slight reduction in the rate of food inflation, general inflation is rising due to the hike in excise duty on petrol and diesel in Budget-2010. Controlling inflation is vital, otherwise it would lead to a lower demand for non-durable consumer goods because people burdened with inflation would spend less on everyday items like tootpaste, soap, clothing, shoes, etc. Already, the non-durable consumer segment of the industrial growth index is experiencing a slowdown. There is also reason to revamp infrastructure development which had slowed down during the recession and is just picking up. Hopefully, the 46 per cent increase in the Plan expenditure on infrastructure should take care of the infrastructure bottlenecks to facilitate industrial growth. After all, it is the infrastructural superiority of China that has led to its spectacular industrial advancement. One should also be worried about the slow credit growth that has led to a slowdown in domestic investment and capital expenditure in the past. Fortunately, the core sector growth for January 2010 has also been good at 9.4 per cent, which means electricity, gas, cement and steel industries are doing well. And the capital goods component grew at 56 per cent, which means that industry owners are making new investments and are probably spending on capacity enhancement. But, then, how do we explain the slow credit growth? May be, industry is borrowing from other sources to meet its requirement. How to sustain investment is a big question, and the needs of industry have to be addressed carefully. Though the Finance Minister has not withdrawn the stimulus package totally, many sectors need a further boost. Similarly, the RBI probably has to think about its monetary policy tools for controlling inflation. It is customary for the Central bank to raise interest rates to suck out liquidity from the system to bring down inflation. But today when credit offtake is already low, a further hike in interest rates will lead to a postponement of investment expenditure further. Perhaps, we are too eager to say that all is well and nothing very serious has affected India since the global financial crisis. In the Economic Survey, even the fear of unemployment that was caused by the closing of some export units has been eased by the news of fresh recruitment of about 5 lakh workers in these industries during the last one year. The recent news of an increase in industrial output, employment opportunities and productivity is good for the country and is being hailed by foreign investors. It is the resilience of the Indian economy as well as the big market that helped India beat the global financial crisis under which Western economies are still reeling. It ought to bring home the realisation that nurturing our own industries is more vital for the welfare of the people than going strongly for export-led economic growth. Linking with the global market is inevitable, but keeping in mind what has happened during the economic crisis, it is better to tread carefully on the opening up of the financial sector fully to foreign institutional investments which have started flowing in more than before, specially when there is a firming up of interest rates. It may further damage India’s competitiveness (India is already suffering due to the undervalued yuan) vis-à-vis China due to the hardening of the rupee against the
dollar.
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The dancing Vice-Chancellor Vice-Chancellors are trusted to deliver scholarly speeches. The Chief Minister’s outrage, therefore, was real when he saw the Vice-Chancellor in a vest dancing with a group of young, nubile women dressed for the occasion. The CM watched in utter disbelief as the VC counted the beats on a
dholak , a percussion instrument, slung round his neck and danced rhythmically in step with the dancers. The Chief Minister looked embarrassed while Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi appeared amused. On his return to the state capital, the Chief Minister threw a fit. How could a Vice Chancellor do such a thing, he fumed. What would the PM think of his selection ? He calmed down after aides explained that the VC happened to be an accomplished musician as well. He played the flute as effortlessly as the
nagara and the dholak , the two percussion instruments which are popular in eastern India. Several months later, a friend of the Vice- Chancellor was summoned by the CM’s office. Tell this man to behave, asserted the Chief Minister without mincing his words, or else he would be sacked. This time the VC had done the unpardonable act of attending a function organised by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), BJP’s student wing, while it was the Congress government, which had made the appointment. It was like a Vice-Chancellor in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat or Parkash Singh Badal’s Punjab accepting invitation to become the chief guest at functions hosted by the student wings of the Congress or the Left parties; or a VC in Bengal sharing the dais with Mamata Banerjee. Politicians in power rarely condone such suspicious conduct that bordered on betrayal. But our VC was unperturbed. To the pleas of his earnest friend, he calmly replied over the telephone: “ The university is meant for the students and I will continue to accept every invitation from them. Their political colour is not my concern.” Well, the inevitable happened and he was replaced by a more pliant and politically correct successor. Two decades later, on Friday last week, Dr Ram Dayal Munda was nominated to the Rajya Sabha by the President. Ironically, he never won an election, not even on his home ground, though he contested three or four times over these years. An anthropologist by training, Dr Munda was teaching in Chicago, where he spent 17 years of his life, when he was invited to return and set up a new Post-Graduate department of Tribal and Regional Languages. He returned with his American wife and while his spouse stayed in a hotel, Dr Munda set about building his house with his bare hands. “ Tribals,” he explained, “ build their own houses with the assistance of their friends and relatives. I am merely following tradition”. The masons and the mistries were his friends, relatives or neighbours from his village and the Professor would work with them, climb up ladders and sleep on the heaps of straw, one of the building materials he used. When the university expressed its inability to release funds for a departmental auditorium, he sought permission to build an open-air auditorium with the help of students. And his students, both boys and girls, readily laid bricks , carried sand, limestone and boulders under his instructions ! The galleries were ready in a few months, perhaps the cheapest and the fastest building exercise in any university. Whoever proposed his name for the Rajya Sabha did an enormous service to his
people.
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A step forward The
Haryana Government's recent decision to set up municipal corporations in seven towns of Yamunanagar, Panchkula, Ambala, Rohtak, Panipat, Karnal and Hisar is being hailed as “a big initiative for urban development” and also assailed by some as “a wasteful exercise”. The government has merged the twin towns of Yamunanagar-Jagadhari and Ambala Cantonment-Amabla City to make two municipal corporations. Earlier these towns had separate municipal councils. Positive
Negative
Till now the state had only two municipal corporations, Faridabad and Gurgaon, the former being the oldest. There is weight in the argument that with these towns growing into big cities, the municipal committees or councils don’t have necessary administrative infrastructure to meet the challenges of urbanization. The administrative head of a committee is an Executive Officer (EO) and its engineering wing is headed by a municipal engineer (ME), who is an officer of the rank of sub-divisional engineer. A corporation has a Commissioner, an IAS officer with a few HCS officers to assist him as Joint Commissioners. It has a full-fledged engineering department headed by a Chief Engineer. Then there is a vast difference in the financial powers. A committee can undertake development projects only up to Rs 3 lakh, while a corporation has powers up to Rs 50 lakh. For development projects of beyond Rs 3 lakh, a committee has to take the approval of the Deputy Commissioner (DC), who again has the power up to only Rs 10 lakh. The Deputy Commissioner has far greater hold over a committee as compared to the corporation, over which he virtually has no control. All resolutions passed by the committee can be suspended by the DC, who many a time acts at the bidding of local politicians. The resolutions of the corporation can be suspended only by the state government. All this reads very impressive. But when it comes to the ground, the situation is far from ideal. The concept of local self-government is based on delegation of powers by the state government to elected representatives at the grassroots. However, no one wants to shed one’s powers, least of the politicians and the bureaucracy. There are also several instances of how the person whom the authority was delegated, misused it for vested interests. Till a few years ago, the oldest corporation in the state, Faridabad, had the power to sanction change of land use (CLU). Due to its proximity to Delhi, the CLU has always been lucrative for the politicians and the bureaucrats for obvious reasons. The state government received reports that an officer who was posted as Commissioner of the Faridabad corporation, was misusing the power. The government amended the law. Now the CLU cases are to be dealt with by the Town and Country Planning Department. Interestingly, the officer continued to wield his authority on the CLU on the basis of an innocuous provision in the Municipal Corporation Act that it was the duty of the corporation to check any unauthorised change of land or property use. Of course, the scale of the misuse of the authority had reduced! Some say the upgradation of the committee to the corporations is like a “promotion without consequential benefits”. The financial health of the corporations would be no better than the committees because the rate of house tax and other levies is uniform in the state. The corporation would be slightly better placed than a committee because of the larger area under its jurisdiction. The proposal to create more corporations in Haryana was first mooted in the early 2000s. But it got stalled at the highest political level. None of the cities in which the corporation was to be created had a population of five lakh. Later, this condition was reduced to three lakh. It was felt that while other states like Punjab and Rajasthan had the corporations for several towns, Haryana had lagged behind. At that time only Faridabad had the corporation. The addition of many villages to the cities to meet the population criterion has reduced the “political space” for grassroots politicians. Many panches and sarpanches will lose their political posts. This has made the new proposal unpopular with them. The panchayat land will now vest with the corporations. The case of Panchkula is different from the other new corporations. The addition of Kalka and Pinjore to the Panchkula corporation will make it unwieldy because of geographical incongruity. The distance of 20-km between Kalka and Panchkula will pose problems both for the people and the administrators. The Periphery Act, which prohibits construction around Chandigarh, will not be applicable in the area under the Panchkula corporation. This will help those who want to go in for big projects. The supporters of the corporations say the addition of villages to the municipal areas will ensure their speedy development. The prices of land will also go up. Notwithstanding the administrative infrastructure of any organisation, the delivery would depend on the persons managing
it.
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Dead at dawn AN
estimated nine million children under the age of five die each year and India accounts for two million alone with the under-five mortality rate of 76 per 1,000 live births, says a UNICEF report on the “State of India’s Newborns 2009”. Startlingly, with 57 children under one year for every 1,000 live births dying, infants constitute about 45 per cent of the country’s total child deaths. To address this silent emergency, World Vision, a development organisation, has identified Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, where child and maternal mortality is more pronounced, for its “Child Health Now” campaign. The campaign will focus on reducing two-thirds of the child mortality by 2015 on the lines of UNICEF’s Millennium Development Goals-4 through larger community reach and engagement of civil society. In fact, while admitting the lapses and inadequacies in the country’s flagship programmes like the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), Rural Development Minister of State Pradip Jain Aditya has invited NGOs and civil society for an interface for better health outcomes. Besides, he says, “The health machinery in rural areas, starting with primary health centres, has been largely unable to benefit the needy owing to rampant corruption. There has to be an integration of health schemes and education programmes at the regular community level, especially in rural India, where evils like female foeticide contribute to a large number of child deaths.” According to the National Director of World Vision (India), Jayakumar Christian, the current disturbing situation is due to the lack of political will and a gap between the funds needed and allocated primarily. Only a revamp of the current health policies, scaling up of infrastructure and improving the delivery system would be a solution. “The government’s commitment has to be visible through the allocation at least 3 per cent of the GDP or 5 per cent of the annual budgetary allocations and quality implementation of the NHRM, the ICDS etc. “Also, it is important that the government mandates the civil society engagement at the level of panchayats in monitoring and evaluating the programmes,” he said. In India, this year the budget outlay for health, quite in tandem with the past years’ trend, has been just 2.3 per cent of the budgetary allocations, making India one of the low-spenders on health, notwithstanding that India holds the dubious distinction of having the highest number of under-five mortality. Globally, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are the epicentres, recording 99 per cent of the total child deaths. Further, 35 per cent of all deaths among children are due to malnutrition, indisputably linked to poverty with five million deaths (60 per cent) occurring in six developing nations alone: Nigeria (1.1 million deaths), Congo (5,00,000), Pakistan (4,00,000), China (3,82,000) and Ethiopia (3,82,000 deaths) apart from India. According to the UNICEF, 40 per cent of the cumulative deaths could be attributed to preventable diseases and deaths due to neonatal complications and infections, pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria together account for 45 per cent of child mortality. In the case of India, the high rate of maternal mortality, i.e, 450 per 100,000 live births also reflects the high child deaths, with India having 35 per cent
of the developing world’s low birth weight babies. The UNICEF data also point out that children whose mothers die during childbirth are 10 times more likely to die before their fifth birthday than those whose mothers survive. Pointing out that India’s 40 per cent of children live with malnutrition, the UNICEF’s chief health officer in India, Dr Henri van de Hombergh, says: “Cheap interventions, like breast-feeding and educating the mothers about its benefits would reduce child deaths.” Babies who are not breastfed are six times more likely to die within two months of the birth vis-à-vis those given mothers’
milk.
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Chatterati Bihar's
famous snack litti-chokha will soon find a place on the plate of US President Barack Obama. A day after his meeting with US Ambassador to India Timothy J Roemer in Patna, Irfan Alam has been invited to an entrepreneurship summit called by Obama. He proposes to hand over a tin of freshly baked litti with dry chokha to the President at the White House this April. Irfan (30), an IIM-A graduate, is the chairman of the SammaN Foundation that works for the uplift of rickshaw-pullers and their families. There are around 10 million rickshaw-pullers in the country and mainly illiterate and poor. Of them 90 per cent were farm workers who had migrated to cities in search greener pastures. Irfan got banks to finance rickshaw-pullers. He designed rickshaws, which carry newspapers, mineral water bottles and other small items for sale if a passenger needs them. These rickshaws also carry ads and the pullers get 50 per cent of the ad revenue. Irfan, who has gifted a model to Roemer, started off with 100 such rickshaws in 2007. Now three lakh rickshaw-pullers from across the country are registered with SammaN. The organisation also provides books to rickshaw-pullers’ children and imparts training in occupational skills to their wives. Tihar prisoners
learn to dance It was an unusual shoe designing workshop and a dance evening by choreographer Shiamak Davar. The venue was Tihar jail. One hundred and six inmates took lessons in a fusion of jazz and modern dance. Designer Sanjana Jon, singer Shibani Kashyap, boxer Akhil Kumar and Indian women hockey team captain Mamta Kharab walked the ramp, wearing outfits created by the inmates. It was an “overwhelming experience”. The next time you see chic shoes they may just be hand-made by Tihar inmates. The jail has tied up with a shoe designer for a three-month course in shoe designing. Prisoners will learn how to earn their livelihood and if their conduct is satisfactory, their jail term may be reduced by 25 per cent. Gadkari’s choice causes a flutter The new BJP team is in keeping with the 33 per cent quota for women. BJP president Nitin Gadkari has adjusted retired actresses Hema Malini and Smriti Irani, who add glamour to the party, though Vasundhara Raje is the only general secretary of substance. The BJP president has coolly ignored his detractors and put all the right-hand men of the leaders who matter in the BJP and the RSS in plum posts. Anurag Thakur and Poonam Mahajan will be adjusted in the youth wing. In Bihar a piqued Shatrughan Sinha wonders why Yashwant Sinha has been ignored. Shatru also wants a Rajya Sabha berth from Bihar for his wife Poonam. The BJP, which has 54 MLAs in the Bihar Assembly, can ensure victory of only one candidate in the biennial Rajya Sabha polls due in April-May. Two from a family is not a problem here. Vasundhara Raje’s son and relatives and many others leaders are already adjusted. The BJP keeps talking about 33 per cent reservations for women but as a matter of fact, it refrains from giving even 10 per cent representation to the fair sex. Also, the party is yet to send a woman to the Rajya Sabha from Bihar, argues Shotgun. Shotgun was the first film star to join the BJP when it was a two-MP party in the opposition. He has contributed towards building the party. Despite his stature and popularity, he is neither a general secretary nor a member of the parliamentary
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