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Pak N-deal ambitions
Hard realty |
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Who killed Dubey?
Conventional farming has its limits
London and Monty
Groping in the dark
Caught in ethical tension
Mumbai Diary
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Pak N-deal ambitions
Even
if the Barack Obama administration has not begun a process for an India-type civilian nuclear deal with Pakistan, what has been reported by the media on moves in that direction is disconcerting. The subject came under sharp focus following the disclosure by US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson to a Los Angeles daily that Washington had been thinking of “working-level talks” with Islamabad for a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement on the pretext of helping Pakistan to meet its growing energy requirement. This is what Pakistan has been pestering the US for ever since the Indo-US nuclear deal became a reality. But the George Bush administration had clearly told Pakistan that this was not possible in view of Islamabad’s track record as a nuclear proliferator. President Bush was pursuing a policy initiated during the second tenure of President Bill Clinton, aimed at de-hyphenation of US relations with India, having nothing to do with Washington’s dealings with Islamabad. The Obama administration appears to be inclined to restore the status quo ante. India got the nuclear deal primarily because of its impeccable credentials as a responsible nuclear-weapon state, despite not being a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That is why the deal was easily cleared by the powerful Nuclear Suppliers Group, making India eligible for nuclear trade with other countries. But Pakistan is in an entirely different category. Its secret attempts to help Iran, North Korea and Libya with nuclear weapon-manufacturing technology and design have got exposed. Instead of thinking of an India-type civilian nuclear deal with Pakistan, the US should have forced Islamabad to allow it to question the disgraced father of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, A. Q. Khan, to unearth more details relating to the Khan Nulcear Mart. The US, still reeling under recession, may have its own compulsions, including that of infusing new life into its nuclear arms industry. But international security is no less important, which may get seriously threatened with allowing Pakistan access to the latest nuclear technology by way of signing a nuclear deal with Islamabad. The internal situation in Pakistan is such that its existing nuclear assets may fall in the hands of rogue elements anytime. The US will also be harming its own interests if it prefers to place itself on the side of a known nuclear proliferator. |
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Hard realty
First, the financial meltdown, beginning with the US housing muddle, and then the RBI’s tightening of monetary policy, the real estate is once again in real trouble. Gone are the days when plot, house or flat prices jumped from week to week. So many made so much money in so short a time that every street corner saw a new property consultant entering the booming business, dishing out advice at a hefty price on what to buy and where. And everybody made money — from the farmer to the NRI investor. No longer. Latest reports suggest many fortune seekers have burnt their fingers. In the past two years property prices in Chandigarh have risen while those in its neighbourhood have either stagnated or dipped. Panchkula and Mohali have seen a little rescheduling of the housing prices in keeping with the changed trend. Zirakpur has many housing projects left incomplete as buyers have deserted. Many have got trapped as builders have run short of funds and failed to meet deadlines. Builders are defaulting on bank loans, liberally given to fund the property boom during 2006-07, and banks are now piling up NPAs (non-performing assets). During the downturn they turned cautious and avoided lending to risky clients despite the RBI lowering interest rates. As inflation has remained untamed, loans are getting costlier, adding to the troubles of prospective house buyers. The recent hikes in salaries of the state and Central employees have partly eased an otherwise dismal housing scenario and saved banks from several individual loan defaults. Owning a roof has seldom been as difficult as now. There are too many pitfalls. The regulatory mechanism is ineffective in helping house buyers duped by unscrupulous builders. The correction is necessary to bring down prices to more realistic levels. The market forces have their own way of punishing greed, ignorance and illogical decisions. |
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Who killed Dubey?
The conviction of three persons by a Patna court for killing National Highway Authority of India whistleblower Satyendra Dubey in 2003 has kicked off a controversy. Though the quantum of punishment will be announced on March 27, the judgement is being dubbed a travesty of justice. The slain engineer’s brother, Dhananjay, has charged that those convicted are “petty thieves” and in no way connected with the murder. He has contested the CBI’s inference that Dubey was the victim of a road robbery. An IIT-Kanpur product, Dubey was killed after he had complained to the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2002 alleging corruption and poor quality of work in the prestigious Golden Quadrilateral Project in Bihar’s Gaya district. In his letter to Mr Vajpayee, he had named some people and requested that his name be kept confidential as he feared threat to his life. Yet, his name got leaked and he was eliminated. A year after Dubey’s murder, the land mafia of Bihar’s Shabdo village killed social activists Sarita and Mahesh. Their murder in 2004 shook the country’s conscience. Then came Manjunath Shanmugham’s murder in 2005. An Indian Oil Corporation executive and IIM alumnus, he was gunned down by the petrol mafia in UP’s Lakhimpur Kheri because he stopped dealers from selling adulterated oil. Two months ago, Satish Shetty, a Right to Information activist, was murdered in Pune for his campaign against the land mafia. In one of the fastest convictions, Pawan Mittal, a petrol pump owner, was sentenced to death and seven others were given life imprisonment for killing Manjunath Shanmugham. But what about the killers of other whistleblowers? The CBI must come clean about the Dubey murder probe. The Centre needs to enact a legislation to protect the identity of those who rip the lid off corruption and irregularities in government departments. The recommendations of the Law Commission and the Constitution Review Committee should be implemented in this regard. The continued attacks on whistleblowers prove that the Centre’s earlier order in 2004, following a Supreme Court directive, has failed to serve the intended purpose. If the Centre is sincerely committed to zero tolerance to corruption, it must show the required political will and bring forward a legislation to protect the whistleblowers. |
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I have spread my dreams under your feet;/Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
— W.B. Yeats |
Conventional farming has its limits
Not
many people challenged sustainability of the Green Revolution because it was associated with increased food production for feeding the world’s poor and hungry. But was it due to new inventions of crop varieties, chemical pesticides and fertilisers, or was there something else more fundamental that caused this boost in agricultural production? Agriculture, like any other production process, needs a certain amount of energy input to produce something more useful as output. One of the major portions of farm energy input has always been available in the form of solar energy. This is consumed by plants using their photosynthesis capabilities and the rest of the input is filled in by animal/human energy in the shape of physical labour. That model wasn’t capable to feed 7 billion humans presently inhabiting this planet but, nonetheless, it was sustainable. A sustainable system is one which over its lifetime produces enough energy to maintain, grow and reproduce itself. Then with the availability of relatively cheap fossil fuels (hydro-carbons) and the farm machinery that runs on these fuels, farmers were more than happy to switch over to this new “Green Revolutionary” system of non-renewable energy-intensive farming. This new model made farmers totally dependant on ever-increasing energy consumption, thus increasing the fossil fuel content of our food chain. Fossil fuel (oil) is solar energy stored as hydro-carbon deposits under the crust of the earth over millions of years. There are two factors worth mentioning here about the fossil fuels. Firstly, fossil fuel reserves are of limited quantity due to the fact that they can only exist at a certain temperature and pressure and hence found only up to a certain depth under the earth’s surface. Secondly, they don’t exist everywhere. Mother Nature did not distribute its resources evenly. She gave oil to the Saudis but didn’t provide them with good soil or water. To the Punjabis, she gave good soil and water but no oil. May be, she thought it would be too humdrum if everybody was treated alike. Farmers are mostly aware of the visible energy inputs in the form of diesel consumed by tractors or electricity consumed by irrigation motors. Besides this, a huge quantity of invisible energy is consumed to manufacture other farm inputs. Consider the tractor for instance; right from the time of mining iron ore, making steel, shipping steel, transporting thousands of factory workers to manufacture a few hundred different parts in dozens of different cities, assembling and shipping a working tractor. All this happens well before the machine enters the fields. The energy cycle is visible only when you start your tractor for actual ploughing, sowing, harvesting and transportation of the farm produce to the markets. An invisible energy cycle starts again when the farm produce is sent to the storage, processing and packaging to be shipped to the end users across the country or even overseas. Other farm inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides have energy cycles of their own. Pumping irrigation water either by diesel engines or electricity produced by coal-powered plants adds another substantial hydro-carbon footprint. Total solar energy received on a daily basis by our planet sets a limit to the maximum photosynthesis capacity and thus gives an idea about the maximum amount of food that can be produced sustainably. The only other way to increase production is to use stored solar energy in the form of fossil fuel. If we want to continue practising agriculture for centuries to come, also known as permaculture, we better understand the energy cycle, the soil-nutrient cycle and the water cycle of the current model of agricultural practices. Are we consuming more energy than we are producing in the form of food crops? Are we returning everything produced on our land back to it? Are we consuming water faster than what is being replaced by Nature? To answer these questions, one doesn’t need a degree from a university. Put these questions to any number of farmers and almost all of them will make out the correct answers. They all know that soil nutrients are being depleted and only partially replaced by petroleum-based fertilisers; ground water level is dropping in most locations. What they don’t know or don’t want to discuss is whether this fossil-fuel based farming system is sustainable or not? It is such a daunting thought that most of us do not want to recognise the problem or even discuss it. Some of us acknowledge the problem but hope that someone else will invent a solution. The public discussion on this topic is certainly absent. What a dangerous fantasy. The current model of agriculture is severely dependant on adding a huge amount of non-renewable and mostly imported energy in the form of diesel, petrol and gas. As we have consumed more than half of the hydro-carbon stock from the ground during the last century alone, oil and gas are set to deplete within our lifetime. Since we are fast heading towards a post-carbon age, consequently the cost of hydro-carbons will increase manifold in the near future. This will have a multiplier effect on the production costs and prices of all food items. No matter which political party you belong to and no matter how many andolans or morchas you put together, you can’t run away from this simple mathematical correlation. We can blindly carry on this path of maintaining or even increasing the agricultural production by tapping the remaining stockpile of fossil fuels until we finish it. Then what? Imagine, for a moment, agriculture without fossil fuels. Can a farmer plough, sow, harvest, process and transport his wheat or rice crop on a mere 10 acre land? It is very intimidating for the present-day farmers to think of this scenario, but it should also send a forewarning to the population that relies on surplus production by the farming community. It would be naïve to think that the government will do something to fix this. The government’s prime job is to keep the things as usual, at least till the next elections. It is guaranteed to maintain the status quo, especially if the proposed changes can cause a decrease in production and consumption and, therefore, result in reduced tax revenues. Which section of the population is likely to pay the price for this readjustment? Politicians might lose their hungry voters but they can switch sides. Some government officials may lose their jobs but they might find a real productive work elsewhere. Ultimately, it will be the farming community that will face the brunt by losing its livelihood. Farmers can’t leave their land and go elsewhere. The farmers are the one who have no option but to change their operations from mechanised to localised organic farming. But how can we change the system if we can’t even perceive the problem? Like any other grassroot movement, you might have a small group to start with a new way of thinking. Get on with localised farming practices and even start a local trade based on the barter system and slowly become fully self-sufficient, not depending on cheap fossil fuels and any sort of government help. The ultimate achievement for any village community would be to establish an eco-village; a complete self-sustaining unit. All this might find resistance from the establishment; after all, we are talking about agrarian reforms. Most of us cannot handle too much reality and it is devastating when age-old traditions shatter for whatever reason. At the same time, if you are not a scientist or a government official, you may have retained the ability to see things in a simple way. We can’t see the predicament of the current farming model and its imminent collapse unless we understand the short life-span of fossil fuels and move away from intensive mechanised farming practices that solely rely on them. We can plan ahead now and try for relatively smooth transition or wait for oil to run out at some point in the near future, and everything will change for us without seeking our advice. It is a harsh view but there is no easy way out.n The writer is an academic based in Australia. |
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London and Monty
I
joined our Army more than a decade after the British had left our shores. We, however, still felt their presence among us at the Indian Military Academy, Dehra Dun. The remnants of the Anglo-Saxon culture still permeated our routine. Quite a few things were good about the British ethos which we could gainfully retain. Some memories of their time, however, needed to be thrown out of the nearest window. Their apolitical and professional approach to the military career was worth emulating. Their theory in the Indian context that the officers were individuals and the men were only a mass, deserved to be given a burial. It needed to be inculcated that all of us were just human. The armed forces commanders at all levels find themselves in a unique predicament. At least within their own command, they must have the image of being “the bravest and the best” all the time. They can be friendly and patronising, but cannot afford to be chummy with anybody, not even with their seconds-in-command. They often feel what is usually described as “the loneliness of command” —- the top, after all, is a lonely place. They just cannot open their heart to anybody in their units and formations. Yet, some of them are highly communicative when it comes to narrating their experiences in battle or elsewhere. We had our Brig Prakash Nath posted out. He was a tough task-master and it was by no means an easy job to be his staff officer. Still we were comfortable with him as he was true to himself and a genuine person, though not a very amiable one. We were rather uneasy about what his successor would be like, whether he would like to ask for dinner too early to deprive us of our evening fun in our officers’ mess or he would make us sit in the mess well past midnight and then expect us to be up on our feet for the morning P.T. We finally landed with Brig Bikram Chand, a simple-minded soldier. All was right with him, except the fact that he had served under Monty (Field Marshal Montgomery) and had also done a training course in London. So, when we met in the mess every evening, we had to be prepared to listen to his stories beginning with, “You see, where Monty went wrong …” and “When I was in London…”. I was obstinate enough to once ask him what he was when he served with Monty. He disclosed innocently that he was then a Second Lieutenant, but did not take the hint that we were having a dig at his finding faults with the strategies of the legendary Field Marshal. Similarly, we did not like to hear about London on a daily basis. There was, however, no remedy for all this, except to escape to the toilet all too frequently to shake L and R (London and Monty) out of our system, till at least the next
evening. |
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Groping in the dark
In
the budget proposals for 2010- 11 Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Badal has announced a substantial increase in the fund allocation for school, college/university, technical and vocational education. Realising the need to have an “educated and technically trained” workforce rather than a merely literate population, Punjab has increased its allocation by a substantial 25 per cent over last year. This year Punjab has reserved Rs 546 crore for school education, Rs 51 crore for higher education and over Rs 145 crore for technical education. Comparatively, Haryana has increased its allocation by almost 12 per cent over the current fiscal. It has reserved a whopping Rs 5,946.29 crore for school and higher education and Rs 431.12 crore for technical and vocational education. It is not that Haryana’s budget outlay (planned and non-planned) is more than Punjab. In fact, the outlay for Punjab is around Rs 43,000 crore -- almost Rs 10,000 crore more than that of neighbouring Haryana. But what stops the state from investing in the social sector in general and education in particular is the heavy establishment costs. With 60 per cent of the state budget going into salaries alone, the state has little left for improving its education infrastructure. With the limited resources at hand, Punjab will be using a major component of the budgetary allocations in implementing the flagship schemes like Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan and mid-day meal scheme in financial partnership with the Central government. A sizeable part of the budgetary allocation has been reserved for e-learning initiatives and setting up virtual classrooms. Though this has already been initiated in hundreds of schools, whether these e-learning centres actually take off in the rustic heartland or remain confined to the model schools in the urban areas will have to be seen. But one good aspect has been the stress on making computer education compulsory and setting aside of Rs 75 crore for this information and communication technology project. Even as Punjab scrambles for more resources to be put under education, Haryana has been on the road map to improving its education sector. The state has increased its total budget for education from Rs 1,733 crore in 2004-05 to Rs 5,331.35 crore in 2010-11. This shows that the total budget of Punjab for education is even less than what it was for Haryana five years ago. Haryana is putting in more money for ensuring easy accessibility of schools to all children with a primary school being available to a child within a 1.03 km radius, a middle school within 1.07 km, a high school within 1.52 km and a senior secondary school within a radius of 2.28 km. Punjab deserves appreciation for recruiting more teachers, upgrading infrastructure in existing schools and ensuring that schools are available to students within a close radius of their homes – a fact that has ensured better attendance rate in schools. Special emphasis has been given to the educationally backward districts and blocks with proposals for setting up model schools there. In order to better the girl child education rate in the state, funds have been set aside to create girls’ hostels, especially in secondary and senior secondary schools. The two states are not just emphasising on improving the school education scenario. A major part of the education budget this year will go into setting up centres of higher education like the International Business School at Mohali and Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law. The existing industrial training institutes will, hopefully, be turned into centres of excellence and new ones are to be set up. As many as 13 new model degree colleges have been proposed, mostly in the educationally backward districts. Though small, efforts are being made to improve the education scene in Punjab. The policymakers, however, need to realise that the concept of job-oriented education should not be the most important aspect of learning. This is something that most of the new age schools and colleges in the private sector have realised and are now implementing Socrates’ famous dictum: “Teach Thyself”. |
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Caught in ethical tension The tribe of critics who have often dismissed Punjab’s indomitable poet Surjit Patar as the poet of mushaira can take a break. For once again he has emerged tall. With Saraswati Samman coming his way he has not only become the third Punjabi after Dr Haribhajan Singh and Dr Dalip Kaur Tiwana to be so honoured, but also finds himself in the company of greats like Sunil Gangopadhyay and Vijay Tendulkar. However, Patar doesn’t see the award as a means to silence his critics or to settle scores with them. Rather the moment he heard the news the first thing he did was he acknowledged a debt of gratitude to Guru Nanak and Baba Farid Indian poetic tradition, to all the poets whose poetry he has browsed and above all his mother tongue. And now he is ready to answer his detractors who decry his lyrical poetry on grounds that are quite unfounded. Says he, “ If Gurbani can be sung, if Sufi poetry is sung, then why have problems with my ‘maari moti’ poetry”. Going back in time he recalls he was always fascinated with music and as a child he would insist on buying musical instruments like harmonium and sarangi rather than toys. Expectedly, the childhood demand was not granted by parents who feared it might distract him from studies. Yet music continued to permeate both his being and poetry. While his first poem was ‘Gaayika’, his poetry continues to sing and reverberate with a lyrical resonance till date compelling him to write “Hey kavita mein mud aayean haan tere ooche dwaar, jithe har dam sargam goonje har gam dai niwar.” Poetry, according to him, is an antidote to loneliness, a means to transcend pain and perhaps even the final refuge echoing in lines “Santaap nu geet bana lena, meri mukti da ek raah taan hai, je hoe nahi hai dar koi, eh lafzan di dargah taan hai.” Poetry for him is the deepest voice of humanity. Words that were originally meant to express have become a veneer we cover ourselves with and it is in literature alone that words convey what we actually feel. Like many others, he doesn’t concur that poetry falls like manna from heaven yet finds the creative process rather mysterious. He avers, “Deep within us lies a memory bank and often a disturbance or an event can trigger the chain reaction and words are automatically woven as if one has been handed over a thread and a needle.” And the metre of poetry he insists is no impediment in this torrent of poetic thoughts. Comparing metre to the grammar of language, he says, “ Just as we are not conscious of the grammar when we speak, the same way metre is internalised by a poet.” What of imagery in his poetry? He smiles, “ Well a poet always thinks in terms of metaphors.” Indeed, often the reader can decipher it differently. Like though the thought for kuch keha taan hanera jarega kivein came while passing by an old court in Ludhiana, people associated it with days of terrorism in Punjab. Similarly in his poem Buddhi Jadugarni he was referring to the establishment and readers thought he was alluding to the late Indira Gandhi even though the poem was written much before her despotic Emergency days. “Poet”, he reveals, “does react to his times”. His compilation “Birakh Arz Kare” is about Punjab’s dark chapter of terror. Such poetry, he agrees, might be topical and could have a limited shelf life. But the fact that some of his poetic lines like “Kal Waris Shah nu wandeya si, aj Shiv Kumar di waari hai” have almost become part of Punjabi folklore and permanently etched on the minds of readers is itself an answer to the universal and timeless appeal of his poetry. Does he think Lafzan Di Dargah that fetched him the Saraswati Samman is his best work? And the acclaimed poet, who has only six books of poetry, besides one of adaptation of plays to his credit, chooses not to discriminate between his various creative endeavours. Nor does he feel that his poetry has passed through segregated phases. On the contrary themes such as the dialogue between nature and culture, ethical tension, the gnawing gap between ideal and reality have been the recurring leitmotif. And the litmus test of his poetry are not honours like the Sahitya Akademi Award, Anaad Kaav Samman, Dashabadi Kavi Puruskar, Panchnad Puruskar, etc, that he has received or the honorary D Litt degree conferred by GNDU, Amritsar. Rather he is egged on by the fire in him that incessantly challenges “ Chal Patar hun dhoondan chaleye bhooliyan hoyian thaavan, kithe kithe chad aaye haan unlikhiya kavitaavan’. And it is this quest that will not be deterred by any criticism. Nor of what he calls his “gazetted critics” who never miss an opportunity to throw a barb at him. He quips, “Each time I am on cloud nine they bring me back to mother earth with a thump. Yet I get up again”. And scales even greater heights. |
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Mumbai Diary The uneasy marriage between the Congress and the NCP in Maharashtra is under strain over sharing the spoils of office. With the Congress' Ashok Chavan determined to show who is the boss when it comes to awarding "lucrative" contracts involving crores of rupees, Sharad Pawar's party is getting hot under the collar. Recently, Chavan over-ruled Deputy Chief Minister Chagan Bhujbal of the NCP and shifted a proposal to turn the existing secretariat at Nariman Point into a high-rise from the PWD to the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority controlled by the CM himself. Now all real estate projects handled by the PWD ministry under the NCP are being vetted by the CM himself, much to the discomfiture of Bhujbal. Small wonder, cabinet meetings have become slanging matches. Shiv Sainiks turn secretive Shiv Sena leaders who do not hesitate to take credit for the violence unleashed by them have begun to feel the pinch — on their pocket books. With the courts asking the party's leaders to pay for damage caused to public and private property, the toughs are getting reticent about owning up to acts of machismo. When Shiv Sainiks attacked the Bombay Natural History Society over its "refusal" to adopt Mumbai as part of its name, they covered their faces with scarves and escaped before news photographers arrived to shoot pictures. The times, then, are surely a changing! No business like show biz Anil Ambani, while juggling cash between companies hungry for growth, cannot resist the lure of the arch lights. One year after the multi-million dollar deal with Steven Spielberg, the younger Ambani is working on a blueprint to emerge as a major Bollywood player. At a film-land party recently, Anil and wife Tina sparkled with scores of stars and celebrities from tinsel town fawning all over them. And Anilbhai didn't disappoint. Funds, he said, would not be a problem and everyone would be able to realise his dream — under the RDAG banner, of course. |
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