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Valley at boiling point
Deal on deficits |
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Tight Aussie norms
BP oil spill and Bhopal
Home remedies
The absence of any systematic study by Indian or foreign scientists has left sufficient room for wide and wild speculation on the probable causes of high incidence of cancer in parts of Punjab
Question marks over claims
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Valley at boiling point
Jammu and Kashmir
is faced with a new crisis today. This can be easily understood by those who might have seen the picture of a jawan of the paramilitary forces, carried in sections of the media, being beaten up by young protesters, near Srinagar, on Monday. Eight young men have lost their lives since Friday in clashes between CRPF men and protesters in the valley. It all started with two suspected terrorists being killed in an encounter with CRPF jawans in the Sopore area on Friday morning. While the security forces claimed that both were terrorists, most local people refused to believe it, saying that one of the persons done to death in the Sopore encounter was an innocent young man. The situation provided an excellent opportunity to separatists to incite youngsters to protest against the “highhandedness” of the security forces. The situation took a turn for the worse with the Mirwaiz Umar Farooq-led Hurriyat Conference organising a protest march from Srinagar to Sopore. The CRPF, the most visible force fighting militancy in the state, is under attack from the state government as well as the ordinary people. The state government has described it as having gone “out of control”. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah expressed concern to Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram over the recent killings of civilians. What steps are taken after Mr Chidambaram’s scheduled visit to Srinagar on Thursday remains to be seen, but two state ministers, Mr Ali Mohammed Sagar and Mr Taj Mohideen, have declared that the government has “devised a mechanism” to ensure that there will be “no casualty from tomorrow”. Such assurances have no meaning when there is a strong anti-CRPF sentiment all over Kashmir. CRPF men cannot avoid opening fire in self-defence when they fear threat to their lives from emotionally charged protesters. The problem, however, is that every civilian death in a CRPF firing is used by separatists and their supporters to vitiate the atmosphere in the valley. The security forces are faced with a tricky situation. They have to learn to maintain restraint even in most provocative circumstances so that there are no human rights violations. The erring personnel should be punished to ensure that anything that has the potential to derail the drive against militancy in the state is prevented.
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Deal on deficits
The
Group of 20 ended its summit in Toronto on Sunday by somehow reconciling two divergent viewpoints on how to handle the shaky economic recovery. One school of thought, articulated by President Barack Obama, contended that time was not ripe for a stimulus exit or slowing government spending as this would stunt growth and spur unemployment. Deflation, said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was a greater threat than inflation. Dr Manmohan Singh, however, also accommodated the European concerns when he advocated a calibrated approach to the 2008 stimulus phase-out, depending on each country’s conditions. This found a wider acceptance and justified President Obama’s compliment that “when the Prime Minister (Dr Manmohan Singh) speaks, people listen”. On the other side of the table were nervous European countries that had piled up heavy debts and run up unmanageable fiscal deficits while trying to boost growth. They pleaded for cutting deficits and undertaking austerity measures. The European Union did manage to influence the final communiqué to stress on fiscal tightening. As a result, G20 pledged to halve the budget deficits by 2013. Though Europe also secured a push for stronger banking regulation and financial reform, its proposal for a tax on banks to fund future bailouts was dropped after strong opposition from India, Canada and other countries unaffected by the banking crisis. Since Brazilian President Lula da Silva did not turn up at the summit, the other BRIC members – Russia, India and China – called off their scheduled meeting and did not put up a united front on financial challenges. China was appreciated for its currency exchange flexibility but Beijing got the laudatory references removed from the final communiqué. Despite its clout, the US did not achieve much at Toronto. Obama said: “Our fiscal health tomorrow will rest in no small measure on our ability to create jobs and growth today”. The G20 communique did not pay much heed to President Obama’s otherwise pragmatic advice.
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Tight Aussie norms
Indian
students in Australia are feeling the heat of changes in rules for visas and permanent residency that come into effect there from July 1. So far, there were 400 occupations in the Skilled Occupations List (SOL) which got a person permanent resident status and student visas. Australia has now reduced it to just 181. That means that those international students who pursued courses like cooking, hairdressing or hotel management will no longer be able to apply for permanent migration. That has put the future of around 15,000 Indian students in Australia in jeopardy. Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi visited Australia recently and requested the government to exempt existing students from the new list. Many Indian students had made a beeline for Australia during the past 10 years because certain courses were touted as guaranteed to deliver a visa. Many of them went there on student visas without vocational or language skills. Out of the 41,000 visas issued last year in the skilled category, 12 per cent went to cooks and hairdressers. Nearly three-fourths of those visas went to those — mostly Indians — who had studied in Australia. It is such students who are now in big trouble. The situation is ticklish. While the Indian delegation reasoned with the Australian authorities that since these students were issued student visas despite prior knowledge that they lacked vocational and language skills, they cannot be forced to leave. The Australian argument is equally strong that they were only given student visas and they cannot be given permanent resident status under the new occupations list. Not only that, all 1,300 private colleges have been told to apply for re-accreditation. This will make it hard for them to offer entry into Australia in the guise of providing education. The turnaround should be a warning to all those who are ever eager to try their luck abroad.
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Often when I pray I wonder if I am not posting letters to a non-existent address. — C. S. Lewis
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BP oil spill and Bhopal
There
is little in common between BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the December 1984 Union Carbide gas leak in Bhopal that killed over 20,000 and left over a million affected with toxins. Except that, the United States is involved in both. In the BP case, as a victim; and, in the other, as the defensive fortress of the man and the multinational charged with criminal and constructive responsibility for gas leak in the Indian city. The world, including developing countries, are well informed of every aspect of the BP spill — its cause, consequences, and, of course, the costs. The oil spill and how US President Barack Obama made BP cough up $ 20 billion in compensation is all too well known. The US and Britain, both nuclear powers separated by the Atlantic and English language, quickly came to terms on what needs to be done in the aftermath of the spill. There was little acrimony and very minor disagreements considering the scale of the disaster and the huge amount. In stark contrast, Bhopal is not on the world’s radar. President Obama has no reason to be affected by Bhopal. Even Warren Anderson, Union Carbide’s Chief Executive when the disaster struck Bhopal 26 years ago, roams free and, despite an arrest warrant and extradition request out for him, is at no risk of being brought to account. As much as Anderson, Dow Chemicals, which owns Carbide, has rejected liability and stonewalled attempts to make it clean up or pay for cleaning up the toxins that remain at the Bhopal site. It is shocking that Indian corporate houses, as also eminent jurists, should have been rooting for Union Carbide and Dow rather than for their own countrymen, particularly the victims of the gas leak. What is it about Indian capital that makes it betray national interests, or certainly, make common cause with international capital against the Indian people. Like Seveso, Minamata, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, Bhopal in central India is synonymous with one of the worst industrial disasters of the 20th century, the aftermath of which still haunts its long-neglected victims. In fact, Bhopal ranks at the top with Chernobyl. There is no agreement on the number of dead and affected. But there is no disagreement that Bhopal’s greater misfortune is that it belongs to the developing world. I had reached Bhopal soon after the gas leak. The place was awash with rumours and speculation. One “rumour” was that Union Carbide had knowledge of an antidote for treating the victims of the gas leak, but it had refused to share particulars about the antidote. Subsequently, there have been other reports of the company being in possession of an antidote. Regardless of the truth of the matter, the fact that the rumour persists shows the contempt of Western multinationals for lives in developing countries. Neither the Indian government nor its institutions such as the CSIR and the ICMR thought it fit to investigate the technological disaster for its medical consequences. The international community of scientists and bodies such as the World Health Organisation are equally guilty of wilful neglect of their responsibility in the matter. Instead of the culprits being brought to book and delivering justice to the victims, conveniently confusing questions of the company’s responsibility and the compensation case’s jurisdiction were raised to obfuscate the real issues. And, the issues are legion, including the role of the state, the government, the judiciary, the efficacy of (extradition) pacts between nations and the corporate class in both India and the US. The cruelest irony was the recent Bhopal court verdict: two years in prison for seven Indian executives of Carbide at the time of the gas leak while the American interests involved continue to go untouched. This raises a number of new issues, not all of which can be dealt with in this space. The most important question today, unlike in 1984, when every issue gets easily internationalised, is: Why is the rest of the world, especially the developing world, silent on Bhopal? When it comes to climate change, the environment, human rights and other such issues, be it in India or China, the West is the first to raise a hue and cry about so-called violations which may not even affect their interests. They perceive this as part of their global leadership role, of a responsibility they owe to the people in the developing countries. But this great injustice, this wilful denial of justice to the victims of Union Carbide in Bhopal has not stirred the messianic zeal of the West, not stricken its conscience nor moved it to act with a modicum of concern for its fellow humanity in the developing world. There is a lesson in this for India as much as for China, both rising powers and aspiring to be superpowers. Their economic clout may grow by leaps and bounds; they may have nuclear deterrence; and their respective governments may be backed by the resolve of over a billion people. But unless they learn to confront and negotiate the prevalent global power structure in defence of their people and secure their national interests, striving to become superpowers is pointless. Just as the developing countries joined hands at the climate change convention, it is essential that they come together, define the issues that is their common lot, and arising from that, set the agenda to determine international equations. China and India should learn from the way the US struck terror in BP and the British government, and silenced everybody else in its single-minded pursuit of making the culprit pay for the damage done to the Gulf of Mexico. Unless the developing countries that matter on the world stage learn to exercise power on issues critical to their people, achievements such as nuclear superiority and GDP growth are pointless.n The writer, who had covered the Bhopal gas leak in 1984 and subsequent developments, is an editor/writer with the Global Times in Beijing.
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Home remedies Last
Sunday I almost made it to the Guinness Book of Records by hiccuping non-stop for three hours, 58 minutes and 49.7 seconds and Good Samaritans preferring outlandish (and landish) suggestions for relieving me of my distressing affliction were many and rest assured, when my eagerly awaited. 1001 Household Remedies for Hiccups is published, their contribution will be handsomely acknowledged on the fly page. The first to weigh in was the family retainer — a toothless old thing on the wrong side of 90 who should have been pensioned off and sent home packing around the turn of the century. “I know just the right cure for you, sir, “she said trying to look bright (but falling flat on her gnarled face); “I’ll take a pinch of methi and sock it in turmeric water and I’ll grind it into a fine paste and add a little asafoetida and wrap it in a betelleaf. You stand on one leg facing nor’ nor’west and swallow the stuff whole while I chant a mantra in chaste Sanskrit. That’s what we do in my ancestral village in Northern Karnataka and not once has it failed!” “Oh yeah, “I snarled between bouts of hiccups,” while at it, how about mixing your ‘stuff’ with a quart of moonshine whisky?” The chap who had looked in to strike a lucrative multilateral barter deal — a plastic shaving mug for a priceless Benares silk saree, said: “I know just what’s to be done, sir. You strip to your waist and lie flat on your back, your arms spreadeagled and legs doubled up at the knees, I’ll squat on the nape of your neck and pummel you with all the brute strength I’ve got between your solar plexus and the 12th vertebral rib cage. That’ll force the air out of your lungs and with it the hiccups. That’s what we do on the North-west Frontier!” “You lay so much as a grubby little finger on me and I won’t be answerable for the consequences,” I vowed grimly. My next-door neighbour who had looked in to borrow my BPL ration card and misappropriate for herself my monthly quota of sooji and maida said” “what you should do is mix some sour curds and clarified buffalo ghee and swallow it whole!” She didn’t get my ration card. The old retainer wasn’t thru’ yet. “I know an even better cure,” she said, “I’ll take a little.....” I held up a restraining hand. I can appreciate your eagerness to know if any of the above suggestions were of any help in getting rid of my hiccups. Oh yes, very definitely yes.
HIC!
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The absence of any systematic study by Indian or foreign scientists has left sufficient room for wide and wild speculation on the probable causes of high incidence of cancer in parts of Punjab
It
is well known in Punjab that the Malwa region shows a very high incidence of cancer, stunted growth and other neurological disorders. High level of uranium concentration has been found in the hair samples of children of Centre for Special Children, Faridkot by Dr Caren Smith, visiting toxicologist from South Africa. Blood samples were analysed in a German Lab. Besides uranium, lead, cadmium, strontium, barium were also found in the samples. A study carried out by PGIMER Chandigarh doctors is not tenable because they compared the chemical quality of ground water in and around Talwandi Sabo (Bathinda) with that of Chamkaur Sahib, even though the two regions have different geology.
What is uranium
Uranium is a naturally occurring radioactive element which is present in trace in rocks, minerals plants and natural waters. It occurs along with thorium and potassium in granitic rocks. It has the property to get dissolved in water in hexavalent form at a normal pH of 5 to 7). It gets precipitated in reducing environment in tetravalent form and form complexes such as hydroxides, phosphates, sulphate, carbonate etc. Uranium compounds are soluble in water, very mobile and travel kilometres. When the bed rocks containing uranium and thorium and other elements are exposed to sun, rain, wind, they get weathered and break down to form soil. Uranium gets dispersed in matrix, soil and finally gets re-deposited in areas/pockets where reducing conditions are present. Hence we get higher concentration of uranium in pockets.
The absence of any systematic study carried out by Indian or foreign scientists has left sufficient room for wide and wild speculation on probable causes for this tragic phenomenon. The high values of uranium have been attributed to Kota nuclear power plant; Khushab heavy water plant in Pakistan; and uranium-carrying winds from Afghanistan, without any scientific basis. Though Malwa is a part of Punjab, geologically it is more akin to Haryana and Rajasthan. There are no rocks exposed on the surface in the SW Punjab. However, the rocks of Aravalli-Delhi ridge and Malani granites and rhyolites are exposed at Tusham, district Bhiwani, just south of the region. These rocks take a northwest turn from Tusham and become submerged under the Punjab Plains, only to get resurfaced at Kirana Hills, Pakistan. The gravity data have delineated 6 km wide and 240 km long pear shaped body under the Punjab plains covering the SW Punjab. The Tusham granites are high heat producing granites, that is, they are enriched in uranium, thorium and calcium. The uranium concentration in the granites is 8 to 11.5 parts per million (ppm) as compared to the normal value of 4.5 in granites in general. The average crustal value is 2.7 ppm.
The main source of uranium appears to be Tusham granites of Malani suite. There is a indiscriminate quarrying of granites being done at Khanak and adjoining areas of Tusham causing a lot of dust due to crushers. Besides, there is a thick evaporites (salt) sequence with a total thickness of 130 m occurring at a depth of 305-350 m, below alluvium in Faridkot and Ferozepur districts. Evaporites also occur near Sirsa in Haryana. The evaporites have limestone, shale, gypsum, halite, sulphate etc. Limestone has 2.2 ppm and shale has 3.2 ppm of uranium. Another natural source of uranium is the thick sediments under alluvium brought down by the Satluj and Beas rivers. In addition, the Satluj flows through Shivalik rocks which have dispersed uranium in them. Apart from these another source could be flyash coming out of the Bathinda thermal plant. Uranium gets concentrated after burning of coal. One kg of coal ash produced 2000 Bq of radioactivity whereas one kg of granite produced 1000 Bq of radioactivity in the environment. A collaborative study undertaken by me and other scientists revealed that most water samples tested for uranium had higher concentration than the WHO-prescribed tolerable limit of 0.015mg/l, with some showing a value 20 times higher, that is 0.316 mg/l. Interestingly, in spite of high concentration of uranium in water, the radon activity is within permissible limits ( less than 400Bq/l) , because the gas escapes into the atmosphere. Detailed study of chemical quality of groundwater in Jajjal, Malkana, Talwandi Sabo, Gyana and adjoining areas has shown that the groundwater in these areas contains more than the permissible limits of fluorine, sulphate, uranium, lead, chromium, and nickel, etc. The high concentration of these elements can be attributed to the subsurface geology i.e. the presence of granitic rocks, evaporites sequence and limestone and dolomites. It may be mentioned that the chemical quality of ground water is influenced by the interaction of rainwater with bed rock, residency time of groundwater and the type of flow and the mineralogy of aquifers. Permissible limit of sulphates in drinking water is 400 mg/l .However some of the samples we analysed , showed a value as high as 880 mg/l. It may be noted that excessive sulphate presence can cause diarrhea. In small doses fluoride inhibits dental caries, while in higher doses it causes dental and skeletal fluorosis. Concentration levels of fluoride reported from groundwater in the study area vary from 0.30 to 3.82 mg/l. Here also, the upper value is way above the WHO limit of 1.5 mg/l Lead is a poison and accumulates in the skeletal structure of human beings and animals. It has adverse effect on the central nervous system, kidney and may cause cancer and brain damage. While the prescribed maximum permissible limit for lead in drinking water is 0.05 mg/l, the six samples showed a range of values from nil to as high as 0.18 mg/l. As is well known, there is indiscriminate use of agro-chemicals in the region as the area lies in the cotton belt of Punjab. The pesticides, phosphates and nitrogen fertilisers also contribute heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic to soil and water. To sum up , the high concentration of hazardous elements in the region can be attributed to the reactions of groundwater with the rocks of buried Aravalli - Delhi ridge and uranium-rich granites of Tusham area along with the evaporites, including sulphur-rich limestone and dolomite which could contribute sulfate, carbonate and salinity to the groundwater. It is unfortunate that we neither have authentic data on human misery nor a systematic scientific study of the causes thereof. There is urgent need for credible research carried out by an interdisciplinary team comprising geologists, medical doctors, nuclear scientists, biologists, anthropologists, agricultural scientists and others. (The writer is from the Geology Department, Panjab University, Chandigarh)
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Question marks over claims FARIDKOT: Armed with the report of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) declaring the gamma radiation and radioactivity levels in the soil samples within the permissible levels here, the medical fraternity has put a question mark on the claim of a local NGO that high concentration of uranium and heavy metals in drinking water was making the Punjab kids mentally retarded. The report of a German laboratory confirming high content of uranium and other heavy metals in the water that was recently released by Pritpal Singh, president of the NGO, Baba Farid Centre for Special Children (BFCSC), has created panic, particularly in the Malwa belt. A similar report released by the centre almost a year ago had also created ripples following which a team of BARC collected samples of water, soil and hair of the mentally challenged children. The civil surgeon of Faridkot had also constituted a team of five doctors to look into the issue. He constituted a similar committee last week to probe into the functioning of the BFCSC and also look into the treatment they were providing to the affected children. Civil surgeon, Dr Harjit Bharti, said the purpose was to verify the authenticity of the report and also ascertain whether the Baba Farid Centre for Special Children was being run by qualified staff or not. He said that an enquiry into the functioning of the centre was also initiated by the then civil surgeon last year but the process got bogged down due to a number of enquiries that were ordered by various governmental and autonomous organisations on the complaints of the NGO. Bharti said that the report of BARC had pointed out that of the nine water samples collected from various areas of Faridkot and Amritsar, only three from the borewells of the Narayangarh Gurdwara and railway crossing at Kotkapura and also Taina village were found to be containing uranium beyond the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) limit of 60 micro grams. However, Pritpal Singh contested the report of BARC and claimed that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has fixed the limit of 15 micro grams of uranium content for safe drinking water. He said that the centre was set up six years ago and had started treating the mentally challenged children four years ago during which Dr Manjit Bhalla, a child specialist in the civil hospital, who was also a member of the team that was constituted last year to enquire into the issue of uranium content in water and functioning of the centre, said at least six children undergoing treatment in the centre of the NGO had suffered retardation due to complications at the time of delivery and not due to uranium. Their mothers had confirmed this during the visit of the team to the centre, he claimed. This fact also came to light when a woman from Hoshiarpur I met at the centre she confirmed that one of her twins who suffered oxygen problem at the time of birth was mentally challenged while the other one was a normal child and studying in a school. Pritpal Singh claimed that the committee that had collected the entire record of the NGO last year
did not detect even a single fault in the centre’s functioning.
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