The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Crippling uranium
Nothing is safe, be it air or water

WHEN there is death lurking everywhere, be it in air or water, one does not know where to hide. These two essential elements of life seem to have become poisonous in many parts of northern India. Water samples mainly from the southern Malwa region of Punjab have been found to contain shockingly high amounts of uranium and other heavy metals. When hair samples of 149 children and a few adults at the Baba Farid Centre for Special Children in Faridkot were sent to a reputed laboratory in Germany for testing, it was suspected that they were suffering from mental retardation and cerebral palsy because of arsenic exposure. But the test reports have revealed that 87 per cent of children below 12 years and 82 per cent beyond that age have uranium levels high enough to cause diseases. In fact, uranium level was 62, 44 and 27 times higher than normal in samples of three children from Kotkapura and Faridkot. The radioactive count in water being consumed was five to eight times more than the permissible limit.

That is intriguing because Punjab does not have any uranium mines. One strong possibility is that depleted uranium used by Americans as penetrator in armour-piercing tank rounds and bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan has travelled through air and reached the region as well as Delhi. That is a very serious development, putting the lives of millions at risk. Due to it, digestive, respiratory and nervous system disorders are common in Punjab. There is also an increase in erectile dysfunction in men, menstrual disorders in women, childless couples, spontaneous abortion, premature births, congenital abnormalities, death in early childhood and premature death.

Even otherwise, all kinds of toxic heavy metals like tin, lead, aluminum, manganese and iron have been found in the hair samples of children. That shows how badly water sources have been polluted due to indiscriminate use of pesticides and fertilisers. It is common knowledge that sewerage water laced with industrial pollutants is used at many places for irrigation. Allowing such poisoning of air and water amounts to mass hara-kiri. Drastic measures must be taken without even a day’s delay.

Flirting with Taliban
At least now Pak double game must end

That Pakistan has been clandestinely helping the Taliban survive in Afghanistan is a known fact. This has been pointed out off and on by those closely watching the scene in Afghanistan, but the US, which considered Pakistan as a “key ally” in the war on terrorism, refused to accept the reality. Now fresh and incontrovertible proof has been provided by a report of the London School of Economics (LSE). Not only that there is no change in Pakistan’s policy on the Taliban, President Asif Zardari recently met senior Taliban leaders in a jail and offered them all kinds of help, including their release at the appropriate time. What the LSE report has pointed out has been confirmed by a former intelligence chief of Afghanistan, who recently resigned owing to serious differences with President Hamid Karzai on the question of dealing with the Taliban. How the ISI has been helping the Taliban’s senior functionaries to escape the onslaught of the US-led multinational forces exposes Pakistan’s double game. Islamabad has been falsely claiming to have launched a major drive to eliminate the Taliban and other extremist elements. The truth is exactly the opposite of it.

Pakistan, which has been scared of India’s growing influence in Afghanistan, hopes to regain the position it had in that country before the US-led multinational military campaign began to stamp out the Taliban. Islamabad is quietly waiting for the withdrawal of the US troops, scheduled to begin in July 2011, so that it can start working again on its strategic depth idea. It will be easier for Pakistan to achieve success on this front once the Taliban get entry into the government as a result of President Karzai’s strategy of buying peace by inducting the Taliban into the system. The Afghan leader is believed to have no faith in the US-NATO ability to establish peace in Afghanistan by decimating the Taliban.

This is a recipe for disaster. Allowing the Taliban to regain the ground they have lost must be opposed by all those who value peace. The US must see through the Pakistani game plan and punish it for its dirty role. Any leniency on the Taliban front may lead to dangerous consequences.

Thought for the Day

You can’t shame or humiliate modern celebrities. What used to be called shame and humiliation is now called publicity. — P. J. O’Rourke

ARTICLE

Failure in West Bengal
Buddha could not be a Deng
by Amulya Ganguli

The 19th century French intellectual Alexis de Tocqueville might have been speaking on present-day West Bengal when he said that “the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps towards reform”. Considering that Buddhadev Bhattacharjee’s motto was “reform or perish” before his party’s reverses started in 2008, he was evidently trying to remodel his administration. But the electorate did not give him the time. Instead, his party had to pay a price for its bad governance.

The turnaround in the CPM’s fortunes has been quite dramatic. When it celebrated the Left Front’s 30th anniversary in power in 2007, the comrades did not know that they were about to go into a free fall. The Left’s success in the 2006 assembly elections had convinced the Chief Minister that his grip on the state was firm enough for initiating his programme of reforms.

Any well-wisher of West Bengal would have wished him well. The state had suffered long enough from “rigid Marxism”, a phrase used by Bhattacharjee himself about the party’s earlier policies, which had led to the flight of capital. He wanted to reverse the process by seemingly acting as the state’s Deng Xiaoping. “We are keenly studying China’s policies”, he said, “and we have learnt (that) don’t stick to dogma, but change with the times”. He was referring to Deng’s advice: learn truth from facts, not from books.

The task which Bhattacharjee had undertaken was stupendous. It would have been a Herculean endeavour not only to undo three decades of dogmatism, but he was also trying to do so against the wishes of the party’s Central leaders. If the latter chose to keep quiet, the reason perhaps was that West Bengal was some kind of a milch cow for the party because the value of being in power for so long was inestimable in a “bourgeois” society, where money talks.

It is only now that the Central comrades have started hitting back, blaming the Bhattacharjee government’s wooing of the private sector for the setback. “The implementation of neo-liberal policies was responsible for the party’s alienation from the people”, according to Prakash Karat, the CPM general secretary, who is known to be a hardliner. Not surprisingly, the “erosion” in the party’s “working class outlook” has also been blamed for the so-called rectification document, for Bhattacharjee was in the habit of telling the workers that “you have to change. If you fail to change, your company may fail”.

Now that the Chief Minister is being openly criticised, Bhattacharjee may have realised that he was too half-hearted about the reforms. There is a hint that he understood this particular failing, for he had admitted to keeping quiet when his party called a bandh although he was “opposed to any kind of bandh, be it called by the Opposition or the ruling party. But, unfortunately, I belong to a party and when my party called a bandh, I kept mum. But I have decided to open my mouth next time”.

But the “next time” never came, for he had lost his cue. It was imperative that when he decided to break the stranglehold of the dogma on the party, he should have gone the whole distance. It is obvious that capitalism cannot be practised while demonstrating against the joint exercises by the Indian and US air forces in Kharagpur. The one issue on which Bhattacharjee could have put his foot down was on the CPM’s withdrawal of support from the Union government on the nuclear deal, for he would have received considerable support from within and outside the party. Jyoti Basu, for instance, was known to be against the decision to withdraw support, which was Karat’s brainchild, and so was Amartya Sen, whose opinion carries considerable weight in West Bengal, and also outside the state.

Sen later said that the Left could have voted against the deal and “not pull the government down”, adding that “if there is one place where the US government gets real respect, it is from the Left - that the Americans are so powerful that we need to be wary of them. Mostly people think of them as paper tigers”. Following the defeat of the Left and the BJP in the parliamentary vote on the nuclear deal, he said, “I am disappointed with the Left parties. It is certainly a case that the Left has lost its voice”. Somnath Chatterjee, too, said that the Left had become “irrelevant” after his expulsion from the CPM for defying Karat’s diktat to step down from the Speaker’s post before the debate on the deal.

Considering that the irrelevance was subsequently highlighted in the precipitous fall in the Left’s tally of Lok Sabha seats from 61 in 2004 to 24 in 2009, Bhattacharjee would have been on a strong wicket if he had stuck to his guns on the reforms. He could have also effectively utilised mavericks in the party like the late Subhas Chakravarty, who had openly said that leaders at the central level should contest elections in order to gauge the popular mood. The reference to Karat, Sitaram Yechury and Co was evident. But, arguably, Bhattacharjee lacked the intellectual stamina to wage an inner-party ideological struggle.

Besides, his recourse to Deng’s policies may have been no more than a tactical ploy and not based on a genuine reassessment of Marxism. He had merely noted how the state was stagnating in the absence of industries, especially when agriculture could no longer absorb the younger generation. The years of Jyoti Basu’s reign were being compared within the party with the Brezhnev era of the former Soviet Union. That public sector could not be the preferred option for rejuvenating the industrial scene was also obvious because of its propensity for incurring losses and producing shoddy goods.

However, the Finance Minister in Basu’s Cabinet, Ashok Mitra, wanted the party to follow that path. Mitra has now been approvingly quoted by Karat to disparage Bhattacharjee. When the latter turned to the private sector, a majority in the CPM and the Left Front had reservations about this dramatic u-turn from Marxism. The untimely death of Anil Biswas, who was the party’s secretary in West Bengal, also deprived him of a close supporter, who had the persuasive powers to carry the party with him. Yet, Bhattacharjee gamely soldiered on, demonstrating that a chief minister cannot be easily overruled even if the CPM’s Stalinism makes the party supreme.

This was the time when Manmohan Singh called Bhattacharjee a model chief minister that the latter should have laid down his markers on the road to reforms. But he was not bold enough to become a Deng. He remained the obedient party apparatchik, who did not hesitate to use the party’s customary strong-arm methods to enforce his writ on the protesters in Singur and Nandigram. If he had broken from the party then by reiterating even more forcefully his objections to doctrinaire Marxism, Mamata Banerjee might have been reluctant to criticise someone who was confronting her main adversary after underlining its earlier flawed policies.

Now, Bhattacharjee has fallen between two stools. He has lost West Bengal and the hawks in his party have turned against him to give vent to their suppressed anger. The Chief Minister knows that they are wrong. Just as a return to Hindutva will not help the BJP, an assertion of dogmatic Marxism will not help the CPM. Bhattacharjee had found the remedy, but took only half doses of the prescribed medicine to make the disease worse.

MIDDLE

Retirement, be not proud
by Harbans Singh Virdi

Retirement, like death, is a certainty; a career will come to an end, as does life ultimately. But it suddenly dawned upon me that it scared the hell out of everyone, be it a bureaucrat, a judge or a journalist. When retirement was a universal truth, I wondered why the whole mankind feared and womankind dreaded it.

John Donne, a 17th century poet, wrote a poem: ‘Death Be Not Proud” in which he tried to explain that a phenomenon like death was irreversible.

“Death Be Not Proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not soe”

Now I take the liberty of corrupting the opening lines of this sonnet, as ‘Retirement, Be Not Proud though some have called thee parting and painful.’ I have to check whether there is any poem on retirement.

A journalist, having worked for three decades peacefully, suddenly realised that his date of birth was wrong. He advanced weird arguments, saying since he came from a cyclonic region, his actual date of birth certificate was swept away by one such cyclone. The office found it a bizarre explanation. Ultimately, he retired into obscurity. In his attempt for extension he lost his gratuity called Grace.

Unfortunately, some retired souls are caught so unawares that even after quitting on a certain day; they reach the office, daydreaming, and even occupy the same seat. Then there are others, who keep lurking around the working place even after retirement.

But different people tackle retirement in different way. So a retired man asked his servant not to serve him pranthas any longer since he had lost his pay and perks. However, after a few days, the man noticed that the servant was still making pranthas for breakfast. When asked as to why he was doing so, the servant politely replied: Sir, I am making pranthas for myself. No doubt you have retired, I have not; I am earning as much as I did earlier.’

A bureaucrat, whom the loyal staff saluted day and night, now suddenly found himself workless and worthless. His family, worried at his plight, hit upon an idea. They employed a well-dressed person who would daily knock at the door of the bureaucrat and salute him. No wonder, in a few days, the bureaucrat was as bubbly as before. And thus happily he lived on — in retirement.

Remember, ‘r’ in retirement reads relief (from work), not relieved (from life).

OPED

Making panchayats work
Genuine devolution of funds holds the key
by Ranbir Singh

Women wait for their turn to vote in a village near Sirsa — Tribune Photo Amit Soni

The Gram Panchayat elections in Haryana’s 13 out of 21 districts are just over. These could not be held in eight districts as Municipal Corporations are being created there and their boundaries are yet to be demarcated. As many as 2.52 per cent gram panchayats, 3.37 per cent Sarpanches and 40.36 per cent Panches were elected unanimously.

The voter turn out was a record 80 per cent — higher than the votes polled in the 2009 Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections. Significant differences were visible in the voting percentages for the general and reserved seats. It was higher in general male and female seats than in the reserved male and female seats. This shows that there was some degree of reluctance among the general caste voters to vote for the Scheduled Caste candidates. However, there was no such variation in the polling percentages for the general male and general female seats because women mostly remain proxy candidates for those males of their families who could not contest and their seats had been reserved for women.

There were three interesting cases of boycott in these elections. In Sangatpura of Jind district, people protested against inadequate development and the failure of district administration to address various problems, including the shortage of drinking water. In Sighhpura of the district, the boycott was to press the khap panchayats’ demand to amend the Hindu Marriage Act and seek the release of those arrested for the lynching of a youth, Ved Pal, who had married a girl from this village violating the brotherhood norm.

In Bapora of Bhiwani district, the boycott was to protest against the Sarpanch post’s reservation for the Scheduled Castes. Disturbingly, polling was boycotted by all the voters except two in Karora village of Kaithal district to which Manoj and Babli, who were murdered for having married in the same gotras, belonged.

The polling has been by and large peaceful except some stray cases of violence. Three persons were killed and many injured in group clashes in Mewat district. Members of the dominant caste in Beruki of Palwal district assaulted and torched the houses of a few Dalits. Though the Congress leaders and the state government have described it as a case of poll violence among two groups, the BSP Supremo and UP Chief Minister Mayawati has written to the President of India demanding dismissal of the state government and imposition of President’s Rule in Haryana.

The elections remained Sarpanch-centric because the Gram Panchayats have been made more powerful than the Panchayat Samitis and the Zila Parishads under the Haryana Panchayati Raj Act, 1994. Moreover, all the rural development programmes of the Government of India and the Haryana Government as well as their programmes for the welfare and empowerment of women and the Scheduled Castes are implemented through the Gram Panchayats. Consequently, the Sarpanch election had been contested with greater zeal than that of the Panches and Panchayat Samiti and Zila Parishad members.

Though the political parties did field official candidates and the party symbols had not been used by the contestants, the local leaders of all the parties, particularly the Congress and the INLD, canvassed votes for the candidates supported by them for Sarpanch of Gram Panchayats and members of the Panchayat Samitis and Zila Parishads.

They were not given party symbols because their leaders did not want to lose face in the event of their defeat and could also woo the winners for backing their candidates for the chairpersonship of Panchayat Samitis and Presidentship of the Zila Parishad.

Far more important than the caste and sub-caste factor were the intra-caste and intra-sub-caste, personality and extended family-based, factions in the elections. The Scheduled Castes too were able to play an important role.

There was free flow of money and liquor for influencing the voters. Some voters openly declared that it was their turn to exploit the candidates for the office of Sarpanch as after the elections some of them would misuse their office to pilfer money out of the government grants they receive for development, poverty alleviation and employment generation programmes.

Most voters felt that many candidates contested elections not for serving the village community but for attaining Chaudhar (position of power), for serving their personal and family interest, and for developing political and administrative links for achieving their political ambitions.

The elections did provide an opportunity to the voters to directly participate in the grassroots democracy. These also converted our representative democracy into a participatory democracy for a short spell. But elections alone are not enough. The capacity building measures are needed. Mere training programmes are not sufficient for this purpose. There is need for genuine devolution of functions, functionaries and funds to the Panchayati Raj Institutions.

The institution of Gram Sabha, which constitutes the base of Panchayati Raj, will also have to be strengthened for making the Sarpanch accountable to people. The mechanism of social audit too needs to be made more effective for ensuring transparency in the working of the Panchayats.

The state government’s decision to increase the financial powers, honorarium and daily allowances of Panchayati Raj representatives is welcome. But polls alone are no substitute for empowerment which not only requires political will but also a radical change in the mindset of the bureaucracy, official functionaries of Panchayati Raj Institutions and the officers of Line Departments. Otherwise, good governance will remain elusive.

The writer, a former Professor of Political Science, Kurukshetra University, is presently Consultant, Haryana Institute of Rural Development, Nilokheri

Soil fertility: A viable alternative
by Sanjay Swami

Of late, there has been a debate on organic farming. Critics question the scientific validity and feasibility of organic farming. In India, the so-called organic farmers preach a strange, two-pronged doctrine compounded mainly of superstition and half-truths.

The positive side of their thesis is a flat claim that organic matter alone is the answer to better crops and improved nutrition. Such “organically farmed” crops are supposed to yield more, to be free of insects and diseases, and to have wonderful health-giving qualities for the animals or humans who consume them. If this were true, it would be impossible for us to produce our food requirements because all of the manure, leaves, twigs, grass clippings and crop residues available would fall far short of meeting the need.

This faction has sought to appropriate a good word “organic”, and has twisted its meaning to cover a whole crazy doctrine. These people apparently believe that by playing on words such as “organic” and “natural”, they have the key to an immortal truth. The facts are that organic matter, in its true sense, is an important component of the soil. Ever since we have had soil scientists, they have recognised the values of organic matter.

The loss of soil humus through cultivation has long been a matter of concern. So these people have nothing new to offer on that score. Organic matter is often called “the life of the soil” because it supplies most of the food needs of the soil organisms which aid in changing non-available plant food materials into forms that are available to the plants, and contains small quantities of practically all plant nutrients. It is also a soil conditioner, bringing about beneficial chemical and physical changes. It has a tremendous influence on the soil and on its ability to absorb and retain water.

The chemical role of organic matter is particularly important as it is the storehouse for the reserve nitrogen supply. When soil nitrogen is not combined with organic matter it can be lost rapidly by leaching. Considerable phosphorus and small quantities of practically all other mineral elements in the soil are made available via the organic matter.

The fact is that plants absorb all the nutrients as inorganic ionic forms only whether it came from organic matter, or from commercial fertiliser. The plants don’t and can’t differentiate between the nutrients supplied through manures and fertilisers. Practically all plant-food elements carried by organic matter are not used in their organic form; they are changed by micro-organisms to the simple chemical forms which the plants can use — the same form in which these elements become available to plants when applied as chemical fertilizers.

The nutrients from the fertilisers are readily available as most fertilisers are water soluble while the nutrients supplied through organic manures would become available for crop uptake slowly and gradually but would be available for longer duration due to slow decomposition of the organic manures and gradual release of the nutrients into the labile pool. After being released into the labile pool, the nutrients from the fertilisers as well as the manures will behave and interact similarly. So, it is erroneous to say that nitrogen in commercial fertiliser is “poisonous” while nitrogen from organic matter is beneficial. The basic nitrogen is the same in either case.

In fine, agriculture on commercial and profitable scale cannot be sustained for long through total organic farming as we don’t have enough organic manure for all our arable lands. Chemical fertilisers stand between us and hunger. True, total inorganic farming using fertilisers and agricultural chemicals alone may become hazardous in the long run. A feasible and viable alternative to sustain agriculture on commercial scale with quality produces is the integrated soil fertility management involving manures, fertilisers and bio-fertilisers in judicious combination.

The writer is Soil Scientist, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, Jammu

Chatterati
Elegant evening with Naqvis
by Devi Cherian

Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi

Last week clearly was a week of celebrations for the BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. First he will return to the Rajya Sabha. With the kind of confusion in the BJP, no one was sure if Naqvi would make it.

The second celebration for the Naqvi family was the wedding of their son Arshad Naqvi. The reception was at a five-star hotel. It was an elegant evening with a royal gathering of political bigwigs. The Prime Minister came to bless the couple and spent time chatting with other dignitaries.

Vice-President Hamid Ansari, Dr Karan Singh, BJP leader Rajnath Singh and Sachin Pilot were also present. Arun Jaitely and Rajeev Shukla spent the evening together most probably discussing the fate of the IPL and BCCI. The two new young faces of the Gadkari’s crisis team in the BJP — Varun Gandhi and Vani Tripathi were also present. Abhishek Manu Singhvi did drop in to wish the new couple.

Fruits for VVIPs

Delhi is a place where leaders from different states carry small gifts to VVIPs, considered politically appropriate. Last week any top leader’s house you went to, you were served syrupy-sweet Shahi litchis and Jardalu mangoes, admired for their size, aroma and pulp. Many VVIPs in New Delhi received 5-kg packets of both fruits colorfully wrapped with words, Bihar Ke Mukhya Mantri Nitish Kumar Se Saprem Bhent. They were sent from Bihar with special refrigeration facilities to New Delhi.

During the apple and cherry season, Himachal Pradesh leaders bring boxes to Central leaders. Some are transported from their personal orchards while some are bought from Khan and Bengali market here under the pretence of having travelled all the way from the hills in their cars.

From Mumbai, Maharashtra’s leaders get Alphansos during the season; from Andhra Pradesh the most valued offerings are the special mango Begum Palli and the famous Shaarifa (custard apple). From Kashmir, it is either Kagazi Badams or the very rare Amri apple. We also have the special cashewnuts with skin sent by leaders who want to create a real impression. The miniature seedless papaya from the North-East as also pineapples are also a real big deal. From Bengal, its the special sweet dish Mishti Doi and Kerala’s smoothies travel with the crispest coconut chips. Then, we have various leaders travelling abroad picking up chocolates, cheese and perfumes by the dozen to smooth their pathways in Delhi’s Byzantine corridors.

Obsession with RS

Anand Sharma

Delhi’s obsession with the Rajya Sabha is natural. It is one place where party leaders, the real rulers of Delhi, have complete sway. While the Congress uses the tactic of keeping its cards close to its chest, this time there was nervousness.

Though all sitting ministers have been accommodated, speculations about some of them like Mr Anand Sharma and Mr Jairam Ramesh kept them on tenterhooks. Comfortable cross-country berths were found to accommodate each of them and all is now well. The BJP pulled off some surprises and there were allegations of money bags against JD(U) and JMM. On the whole, the Congress circles heaved a sigh of relief.

Corrections and clarifications

n The headline “Pranab admits Anderson let off to maintain law” (Page 1, June 14) should have used the word ‘order’ rather than ‘law’.

n The middle “The peace that was” by Raj Chatterjee (Page 10, June 14) got repeated inadvertently. It was earlier published on May 28, 2010.

n The word “surroundings” in the deck of the write-up “Candle light experience” (Lifestyle, Page 4, June 14) has been spelt wrongly as “sorroundings”.

n The entire news report “Millers seek relaxation on ban” (Page 5, June 13) revolves around the FCI. Surprisingly, there is no mention of the FCI either in the headline or the breakquote.

Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them.

This column appears twice a week — every Tuesday and Friday. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error.

Readers in such cases can write to Mr Kamlendra Kanwar, Senior Associate Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is kanwar@tribunemail.com.

Raj Chengappa
Editor-in-Chief