O P I N I O N S

PERSPECTIVE

A Tribune Special
Water crisis in East and West Punjab
Let’s tackle it with a steady application of science, says Manohar Singh Gill
As the long hot summer sizzles, men’s thoughts in Lahore and in Amritsar turned to water. It is scarce on both sides of the border. When the British finally and fully took over the Punjab in 1849, their thoughts turned to the possibility of engineering for agriculture.

Food security: Delivery system must improve
by Ranjit Singh
With the dawn of Independence, we were left with poverty, hunger, starvation, food insecurity, food insufficiency, malnutrition etc. Therefore, the basic priority of the first government of Independent India was to eradicate these problems and become self-dependent.

OPED

Raw deal for ex-servicemen
Centre must give one rank one pension
by Lt-Gen Raj Kadyan (retd)
The ex-servicemen have been fighting for justice. In 2008, they took the unprecedented step of going public with their demands. Rallies were held at Gurgaon and 61 other cities throughout the country. The Sixth Pay Commission report had just come out and not unexpectedly the ex-servicemen got a raw deal.

On Record
Championing the cause of conservation
by Perneet Singh
Harsh Vardhan, a leading nature conservationist and a member of Rajasthan State Wildlife Advisory Board, was responsible for saving the Great Indian Bustard species being hunted through falconry by the Arab Sheikhs during the late 1970s. He is also the main organiser of India’s only Birding Fair, an annual feature at Man Sagar Lake, Jaipur.

Profile
Ujjwal Nikam: The legal Robinhood
by Harihar Swarup
Ujjwal Nikam, the man behind the conviction of Pakistan’s Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab for his involvement in the Mumbai terror attack was little known outside Maharashtra till recently but today he has become India’s most celebrated public prosecutor. Kasab has been sentenced to death and the nation is cheering the court’s decision and also hailing Ujjwal as a hero of sorts.

PERSPECTIVE

A Tribune Special
Water crisis in East and West Punjab
Let’s tackle it with a steady application of science, says Manohar Singh Gill

As the long hot summer sizzles, men’s thoughts in Lahore and in Amritsar turned to water. It is scarce on both sides of the border. When the British finally and fully took over the Punjab in 1849, their thoughts turned to the possibility of engineering for agriculture.

In the 1860s they built the first canal in the Gurdaspur-Amritsar area. In the period 1880-1920, they built the great canal colonies in the west Punjab.

The life-giving water was spread over the Baars, pushing back forever the great story of buffalo herder Ranjha and the peerless Heer. The open scrub lands dotted with Kikar and lusty rivers was replaced with wheat and cotton fields and vast citrus gardens.

The graziers disappeared. Sikh farmers having little land in the impoverished East went West and by the 1930s were becoming fat and prosperous Zamindars. Sadly, just when the fruits were coming they were pushed back East. The political battle of the 1940s was also a land battle. Someone said to me in Lahore once, “we are land rich”. There they added to their holdings, howsoever.

In the East, Tarlok Singh, ICS, devised the graded cut for Nehru, to settle far too many farmers, on far less land. In the Sixties and Seventies, the Punjabis helped by cooperative loans, put down nine lakh shallow tubewells, built the Bhakra, and created the Green Revolution. I remember in my Amritsar village, sweet water was just 15 feet down in the well; by the side of our land, passed a small canal, perfectly designed by the British. In the summer, we grew green sweet smelling Lucerne, and other fodders, and the buffaloes gave much milk.

In the West Punjab, they did not share the land bounty fairly. The few at the top took the most. But still in their skewed farm sociology, they prospered with good harvests, more citrus orchards and plenty of water to waste.

In the new century, all this changed. In 1960, Jawaharlal Nehru and Ayub Khan signed the Indus Treaty in Karachi, crafted by the World Bank head, Eugene Black. For 50 years this worked well for both Punjabs. Both built the Bhakra, the Beas and the Tarbela dams and expanded irrigation. My Punjab added nine lakh tubewells through co-operatives. The other Punjab failed with their public sector tubewells and remains largely dependent on canal water.

Sixty years have drastically reduced the comfort of 1950 on both sides. In Pakistan, the population growth from 50 to 175 million has put an unacceptable burden. This has reduced the water availability per capita, per year, from 5000 cubic feet in 1960 to 1500 today. In our Punjab too, the population, over 60 years has increased, but at a lesser rate.

In the East Punjab, in 1947, 6000 cubic meters of potable water was available per person, per year. Now this has been reduced to 1600 cubic meters. It is estimated to fall to 1147 cubic meters in 2050. However, the nine lakh shallow tubewells, now dangle dry. The rich have started digging deep, to 300 feet or more, with submersible pumps, to grab the water.

The small farmers who predominate, cannot afford the cost and are being dried out. One deep tubewell will dry up a hundred around it. The water table has gone far down and this situation will lead to social tension. We read every day that 95 per cent of East Punjab’s development blocks are in the grey area for tubewells.

In the Southern Punjab and some other pockets, the underground water in any case is salty. The West Punjab too faces these grave questions.

As a child I went to Sargodha in the West to stay in the new lands. The land, the cattle and the people smiled. Now I read of Ghanzafar Ali, a farmer in Chak 95, Sargodha and his woes. He says, the water crisis means life or death to him. His regular supply is not coming. He cannot grow the fodder and the cattle will starve in summer. There are extended closures of the canal.

According to him, the crisis is in the entire state, but particularly in Sargodha-Faislabad. He worries about the weather changes and finally laments, “we are tied to river water, dams, rainfall, and tubewells. You take away the river water and this place will turn into a wilderness, it once was”.

This is exactly the warning Calvert, ICS, gave in 1928, in his classic book, The Wealth and Welfare of the Punjab. In Lahore, aggressive leaders challenge the Indus Treaty and accuse India of not being fair. Swiss arbitrators are brought in to adjudicate. The Americans with their satellite studies have recently put out ominous reports of severe and steady ground water depletion in both Punjabs and Western Uttar Pradesh.

In a convocation address at Punjab Agriculture University in Ludhiana on November 5, 1998, I had warned of the crisis and tension that will come, within and without countries on question of water. We see it already and I worry of ten years hence, with more population, more demands, more anxiety, and hysteria.

What should the two Punjabs do? What should my Punjab do? I know we will have to rise above and beyond all politics and focus on this crisis which will require difficult and bitter solutions. Scientific solutions exist, and more can be found. But they will have to be applied with a will and firmness over long periods to make any visible difference.

As Development Commissioner, Punjab (1985-88), I had visualised that the time had come to license and regulate tubewell sinking including the permissible depth. All must share fairly, and not take the maximum by means of wealth and power.

I also felt that it is very easy in the computer age to monitor all nine lakh tubewells all the time to know the depletion and the recharge; to be able to plan and administer the fair share and use of groundwater.

I would appoint a High Commissioner for Ground Water Management for the Punjab with full scientific staff, and powers, reporting only to the Chief Minister. He should also present an annual detailed written report to the State Assembly. A more balanced crop plan has to be insisted upon.

I had said in Ludhiana that the Punjab is not a great agriculture state. It is only a grain growing factory and factories have lock outs. We are facing one now. In our Punjab, we faced an unprecedented crisis when far too many people returned from the West, to be settled on too little of poor quality land.

We created a new Punjab, which since 1966 has been providing the surplus for the country to avoid foreign imports. If we face up to this new crisis in the new century, we certainly can overcome it. Let us use the full scientific knowledge of the world to lay out the efficient system of water usage like the Israelis.

Our British canals are in a state of collapse and flood irrigations will not do. We also need to have a more balanced crop regime. This requires the Punjab Agricultural University to be revived and made efficient.

As for my friends in the West, they should, as their Foreign Minister has said, stop wasting 40 per cent of the canal water rely on their collective will and effort and not allow people to mislead with the comfort that we have no shortcomings. Both Punjabs should face the water crisis with courage and a steady application of science. Else, they are in trouble, which won’t go away.n

The writer is a former Development Commissioner, Punjab, and Secretary to Government of India, Department of Agriculture. He is currently a Union Minister

Food security: Delivery system must improve
by Ranjit Singh

With the dawn of Independence, we were left with poverty, hunger, starvation, food insecurity, food insufficiency, malnutrition etc. Therefore, the basic priority of the first government of Independent India was to eradicate these problems and become self-dependent.

To attain this objective, the Centre adopted socio-economic planning on socialistic pattern. The First Five-Year Plan was all about agricultural self-sufficiency and food security. It brought good results But even after 60 years of the Republic, we are grappling with the same problems and we cannot blame any alien rule for this.

The UPA government has initiated the National Food Security Bill under which every family living below the poverty line will get a fixed quantity of foodgrains (25 kg to 35 kg) every month at concessional rates. With this Act, India will enter the list of few select countries that have the right to food for its citizens.

If enacted by Parliament, it will be a landmark legislation. Over 200 million are living without any right to food, on-third of the share of world’s poor population, 57 million children suffering from malnutrition. The Global Hunger Index has put India at the 66th position out of the 88 countries in 2008 as calculated by the Food and Agricultural Organisation.

The Supreme Court-appointed Penal on Food Security has reported that the number of people without food security is larger than the poor in the country. It pointed out that programmes like the Public Distribution System (PDS) have been inadequate to cater the needs of the larger BPL population base. This strengthens the need for a constitutional Act guaranteeing minimum security to the poor.

Ironically, even after a record stock of foodgrains at the national level, certain population groups suffer from deficiency of food. In fact, food stocks are rotting in godowns due to inadequate storage facility. According to an estimate, about 15 per cent of available foodgrains get wasted every year.

According to Prof Amartya Sen, starvation is not due to insufficiency or inadequacy of production but due to poverty. Indeed, due to poverty, the purchasing power of the poor is low. As a result, he cannot buy adequate foodgrains for his consumption. Kalahandi district of Orissa is infamous for hunger, starvation deaths and malnutrition. Once Orissa’s Rice Bowl, it was counted in the ‘food surplus zone’ in the state. Price rise has adversely affected these people and reducing the purchasing power of the poorest of poor.

The tribal people have become the worst victims of hunger and starvation. They are forced to consume wild roots, leaves of the wild plants, powder of tamarind seeds, mango kernels, edible roots and tubers which have toxic elements. Prof Amartya Sen rightly said that chronic hunger kills larger number of people over a longer period of time than even famines.

Poverty is the root cause of many social and economic problems. Basically, it encircles many interlocking problems under the broader heading poverty. It is a multiple deprivation. According to NSSO’s 61st round survey, 301 million (28 per cent) people are living below the poverty line in India. S. Mahendra Dev and C. Ravi has put the number of hard care poor at 115 million (10.3 per cent).

These sections of society are most insecure and vulnerable to hunger and deprivation. Therefore, there is need for food security for these sections of society. The National Food Security Act (NFSA) will be a step forward for helping them. Though the government has initiated many poverty alleviation programmes to uplift these sections, these have not helped much. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has shown some potential but still many miles to go to deliver the promises.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in his Red Fort address on August 15, 2009, stated “However good progammes and schemes might be, their benefit will not reach the public till the government machinery is not free of corruption and it is not effective in their implementation”. There should be transparency and accountability in governance. The Right to Information Act should be enforced to spread awareness among the downtrodden.

The panchayati raj institutions must be tuned with the Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act and given adequate authority and responsibility to implement, secure feedback and awaken the masses regarding the programmes concerning their own welfare. The recommendation of Administrative Reform Commission must be implemented and the gap between theory and practice must be minimised. Unnecessary formalities must be curtailed for the speedy execution of programmes.

The proposed Act will be of little use if it picks up the same BPL households as targets for providing benefits under the PDS. It is common knowledge that BPL surveys during 1992, 1997 and 2002 were faculty. Therefore, it would be wiser to do a new comprehensive BPL survey before bringing such a historic legislation into force. Otherwise, this Act will prove to be the proverbial old wine in new bottle at the cost of the taxpayer.

A major institutional challenge to the NFSA will be that even if service providers exist, the quality of delivery is poor (as in case of PDS). Ironically, those responsible for service delivery cannot be held accountable. Unless this is enforced and transparency is ensured, it will be difficult to make significant improvement in delivery. This is a major challenge before governance that must be addressed to on priority before enacting the Act.

The NFSA is not the final solution. The Arjun Sengupta Commission on Unorganised Sector aptly said that 77 per cent of India’s adult population spends less than Rs 20 per day. Therefore, rudimentary attention must be given to increase the income-earning and purchasing power of the poor. This can only be attained by higher inclusive growth, raising the livelihood opportunities of the poor through the endowment of land and non-land assets, generating employment opportunities and through public intervention for large-scale food for work programmes.n

The writer is Lecturer, GTB College, Bhawanigarh (Sangrur)

OPED

Raw deal for ex-servicemen
Centre must give one rank one pension
by Lt-Gen Raj Kadyan (retd)

The ex-servicemen have been fighting for justice. In 2008, they took the unprecedented step of going public with their demands. Rallies were held at Gurgaon and 61 other cities throughout the country. The Sixth Pay Commission report had just come out and not unexpectedly the ex-servicemen got a raw deal.

By convention, a soldier is expected to maintain silence even after he sheds his uniform. He himself would prefer it that way. But his silence must be respected and reciprocated, instead of being exploited. His genuine aspirations must be met. Unfortunately, that is not being done.

Projecting one’s demand on a public platform was not an action taken easily or on impulse. Immediately on declassification of the Pay Commission report, the political leadership was contacted with all respect and deference that being the peoples’ representatives is their due. ‘One rank one pension’ or OROP, as it is popularly known, was the lead demand. It implies relating military pensions to length of service and rank on retirement, independent of the date of retirement.

Contact was established at the highest level in our political leadership. The only counter-argument was “if we give it to you, other government servants will also demand”. The ‘others’ are our own kith and kin, not adversaries. If they deserve it, certainly give it to them as well. However, if they are used as a pretext to deny the soldiers their rightful dues, then it is unfair.

It can then be argued that give OROP to only those retirees who like the soldiers stay away from their families for all/ most of their service life; to only those who perpetually follow a 24x7 work schedule; to those who face danger, and death on a daily basis; to those who are compulsorily retired when in mid-thirties on a pittance… and the list of differences goes on. Comparison is valid only between the similar.

The rally on April 27, 2008 was launched after due notice to the hierarchy. The government was apprised. There was concern. ‘Soldiers’ should not be doing it, we were reminded. When we claim soldiers are different and should not be clubbed with others, the notion is pooh-poohed. But in expectations we remain different. The dichotomy was pointed out. Silence. Placing our demand before the public was a compulsion forced by deaf ears; it was not a choice.

Seeing veterans on the road, even in a very disciplined manner could only jerk the authorities. It did. Within weeks of the first rally two of our demands were met; a separate pay commission for the defence forces and constitution of an Ex-Servicemen Commission. However, they failed to spread much cheer. The first would take effect only in 2016. Apart from failing to address immediate concern it was also looked at with suspicion.

Our bureaucracy-dominated government is known to find a difficulty for every solution, and there is enough time to do so. In the constitution of the Commission, the devil lay in details. The proposed list of members had only one retired military person. It even included a lady from political background, ostensibly to look after the interests of service widows, with whose condition she would be totally unfamiliar.

Interestingly, the commission is to be headed by a retired judge with no background in soldiering, the very basis for constituting a separate pay commission. The veterans rightly asked when the Women’s Commission is headed by a woman, the Minority Commission always by a person from the minorities, the Tribal Commission by someone from the tribal groupings, why the Ex-servicemen Commission should not be headed by an ex-serviceman? Silence.

The main demand of OROP remains unaddressed. The demand is neither huge nor extraordinary. It is not a demand for more money; it is rather a demand for equity and justice. Expecting equal remuneration for equal services cannot be called unreasonable. This makes the government reluctance to accept it even more intriguing. Defence forces are the last arrow in the country’s arsenal, also the most reliable. Picking at one’s healthiest tooth cannot be termed wise or rational.

The authorities have adopted many tricks to scuttle the OROP demand. They first ordered a committee (of bureaucrats, without a defence representative) to look into ‘OROP and related issues’. It only touched the so-called related issues. OROP was summarily rejected as being ‘administratively’ not feasible.

The government then claimed to be bound by the Committee’s recommendations. It is like the anecdote where a burglar pleaded innocence on the grounds that it was his hand that committed the crime and not he himself. In denying OROP the political class may not be complicit but they are apparently powerless.

There has surely been some enhancement announced for the pre-2006 pensioners. But there is still a wide gap between pre- and post-2006 categories. OROP has thus not been sanctioned, notwithstanding the government advertisements to the contrary. 

There has been a spate of court decisions lately on pension related issues, all favouring the ESM. In one case the apex court used extremely harsh words against the government, which were reported in the media. The prevailing sentiments support the ESM demand.

The government needs to see the proverbial writing on the wall and sanction the long pending demand of OROP. Being a demand for justice the ESM will settle for nothing else. There is no wriggle room here. Yet, we will never cease to be what we always were while in uniform — disciplined, patriotic and responsible.n

The write is a former Deputy Chief of Army Staff

On Record
Championing the cause of conservation
by Perneet Singh

Harsh Vardhan

Harsh Vardhan, a leading nature conservationist and a member of Rajasthan State Wildlife Advisory Board, was responsible for saving the Great Indian Bustard species being hunted through falconry by the Arab Sheikhs during the late 1970s. He is also the main organiser of India’s only Birding Fair, an annual feature at Man Sagar Lake, Jaipur.

In a tete-a-tete with The Tribune in Jaipur, he talks about the current state of wildlife in India and tiger conservation.

Excerpts:

Q: When did your tryst with nature start?

A: Very early. When I started my career as a journalist, I noticed that very little was being written in the media on wildlife. Meanwhile, the Centre banned hunting of tigers and the Project Tiger was also conceived ur system we can have a project solely dedicated to the tiger. That’s when I started evincing interest in this area.

Q: What is the current state of affairs?

A: Conservation is given low priority today. Though we have a separate Ministry for Environment for the last 28 years or so, conservation doesn’t get priority. It has to be two-way — in-situ and ex-situ conservation. We should have “ecosystem-based development”.

Q: What about the water crisis in Keoladeo National Park and the UNESCO world heritage site status?

A: It is one of the finest wetlands in India. It needs 550 million cubic feet of flowing water during the monsoon. This has not happened for the last six years because of the lackadaisical attitude of the Rajasthan government. Now, funds have been allotted and pipelines are being laid. Though the work has come to a standstill due to a dispute, it may take another year for adequate water to reach the park.

The UNESCO has done little for the park except putting up a board which the park authorities never bother to clean up. UNESCO is giving peanuts to the park. Its money is not being utilised for habitat betterment or augmentation of flowing water. It is going into educational programmes for the villagers.

Q: What about tiger overpopulation in Ranthambore National Park?

A: Those at the helm need to have a habitat-centric approach in conservation in which the important stakeholders are the villagers. However, the Forest Department has done little to help the villagers.

Q. Do you support DNA test for tigers before their relocation from Ranthambore to Sariska Tiger Reserve?

A: Why not? There is nothing wrong in conducting DNA test of tigers. We have a state-of-the-art institute in the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, and there is no harm in ascertaining whether the tigers, which are to be relocated, belong to the same family. Tigers breed fine if you provide them perfect habitat, security and good prey-predator equation.

Q: Are forest staff well equipped to deal with poachers?

A: The forest guards have no khaki uniform, boots, bicycles, torches, mobile phones, not to speak of revolvers or guns. They have no quarters. How can you expect them to work round the clock, have network of information and chase poachers who use jeeps?

Q: Can we bring the cheetah back to India?

A: Cheetah cannot be brought here. It is fraught with dire consequences. When we are unable to look after our tigers that are going out, attacking villagers and getting poisoned, what will cheetah do? Cheetah cannot be restricted in a certain area and then we need at least 60 to 90 cheetahs. Where do we have such a big area to hem the proper habitat?

Profile
Ujjwal Nikam: The legal Robinhood
by Harihar Swarup

Ujjwal Nikam, the man behind the conviction of Pakistan’s Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab for his involvement in the Mumbai terror attack was little known outside Maharashtra till recently but today he has become India’s most celebrated public prosecutor. Kasab has been sentenced to death and the nation is cheering the court’s decision and also hailing Ujjwal as a hero of sorts.

Ujjwal has been public prosecutor for some of India’s most powerful cases, including the 1994 Mumbai bomb blast trails, the Gulshan Kumar murder trial, the Pramod Mahajan murder case and the Nadeem extradition case. In his legal career, spread over 30 years, 57-year-old Ujjwal has been instrumental in 600 life sentences and over 30 cases of death penalty.

Ujjwal took up the 1993 blasts case as a challenge to deliver justice to the victims and he proved his mettle. It culminated in a historic trial, the world’s biggest and longest. It was indeed a turning point in his career.

On the first day of the trial when he came to file the chargesheet, at least, 100 media persons were waiting in the court. Since then, he has been a familiar face on TV as he fought many celebrated cases. Some members of the legal fraternity tried to muffle his voice and a gag order was issued by the state director of prosecution in connection with the Ajmal Kasab case last year. The order was withdrawn after he took up the matter with the Maharashtra Chief Minister and Home Minister. “What is wrong with getting publicity if you draw it”, he reportedly said.

Hailing from Jalgoan, a district town, 430 km from Mumbai, Ujjwal spends five days a week in a hotel room before catching a train for home on Friday evening to spend weekends with his wife Jyoti and other members of the joint family. He stays in hotel because he cannot afford a flat in Mumbai. Constant travelling has affected his health. He carries homemade wheat flour which he gives to cooks in the hotel to prepare rotis for him.

Ujjwal comes from a well-to-do land-owning family of Jalgoan. His late father D.M. Nikam was a Barrister trained in England. The father wanted him, second of his three sons, to join the legal profession but a lawyer was the last thing Ujjwal wanted to be while studying for a science degree in early seventies at a Jalgaon college. Legal profession somehow did not appeal to him.

However, the elder Nikam would not take no for an answer from his son. Ujjwal completed his law degree in first class in 1977 and wanted to become a judge but the father again said no. He told him if he joined the state judicial service and became a judge he would learn nothing. Ujjwal, thus, became a civil lawyer taking up cases for Jalgoan’s omnipresent co-operative societies and sugar mills.

However, luck took another turn for Ujjwal; a victory in a hard-fought case changed all that. In early 1980s, he decided to try his hand at criminal law. Four years later he became what was termed as ‘Legal Robinhood’ or a public prosecutor.

Ujjwal is now getting attracted towards politics. He is on friendly terms with most politicians in Maharashtra but no one has asked him yet to join a political party.

His family members, particularly his mother, is against Ujjwal entering the uncertain world of politics because “it is not an option for a descent person”. He does not agree with his family members and feels “politics is certainly one way of serving the people”. But, at the same time, politics mean big money” and he has no money. Ujjwal does not rule out his joining politics and looking for the kind of opportunity he gets.

Ujjwal now travels in a bullet-proof car with two police escorts vehicles packed with commandos. His presence draws crowd wherever he goes. He maintains a rigorous schedule, getting up at 4 a.m. and doing his exercise. He then studies cases and briefs police officers.

He is in the court at 10 a.m. sharp. When off from the court, he reads newspapers and watches TV to keep himself abreast of current affairs. He retires by 10 p.m. and avoids going to late night parties.