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Caring for women |
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Axe on green belts
Musharraf’s comeback plan
Changing sports scenario
Airconditioned views
Learn from farmers
FCI questions ‘grain drain’ figures
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Caring for women
Though Punjab MLAs often spend considerable time on politicking, blame game, mud-slinging, slogan-shouting and disrupting proceedings in the Assembly, it is a matter of relief that they still come out once in a while with positive pieces of legislation. The Punjab Land Reforms (Amendment) Bill 2010 is one such legislation that will remove discrimination against daughters in matters of inheriting land. Though belated and passed hurriedly without debate, the Bill is still welcome. In agrarian societies where land has a sentimental value it has been the practice to leave out daughters while dividing land among sons. Daughters are compensated through dowry in lieu of their share in the land. But then as awareness spreads and society is becoming sensitive to women’s needs, and women too are asserting their rights, daughters have started getting equal social and economic rights. Despite some progress, Punjab and Haryana still have miles to go in ensuring parity between sons and daughters. The male-female ratio in the two states is still imbalanced as unborn daughters are liquidated even by their so-called educated parents. Grown-up girls are killed in the name of family honour if they dare choose a partner other than the one their parents approve of. In such a social scenario the laws have to be updated to eliminate any bias against women. In fact, all laws in general and those concerning marriage, divorce, property ownership and inheritance in particular need to be re-examined. Some states, including Punjab, offer stamp duty concessions if property is purchased or transferred in the name of women. State budgets too should be gender-sensitive so that women get their due share in the state outlay. The government needs to provide women free health care for life and education up to at least the graduation level. If the woman of the house is educated and healthy, so will the family and society be.
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Axe on green belts The draft prepared by the Town and Country Planning (TCP) department, which is to be placed before the Himachal Cabinet, is about the worst thing that could happen to Shimla. It proposes to lift the ban on construction activity in the 17 green belts of the state capital where a blanket ban was imposed in 2000 to protect trees and green cover from further depletion. Once the ban is lifted, the land mafia can be depended upon to choke the lungs of the town as if there is no tomorrow.
The green cover of the city which had been saved from the axe for 10 years thanks to the ban will die a painful and unceremonious death. That will be a nightmare not only for the city but all its residents. Earlier, there was a proposal to give only one-time relief to those persons who had bought land in the green areas prior to 2000 when a complete ban was imposed on construction activity. The present draft is far more cruel, considering that it aims to lift the ban permanently. The government is apparently succumbing to the lobby which has no compunction about turning Shimla into a far worse concrete jungle. The heartlessness of it all is obvious from the fact that there is also a move to disband the Green Area Committee, which had been constituted to ensure that the green areas of the state capital do not shrink further. The power to allow construction activity in the green areas will be given to the local Municipal Corporation, which is notorious for looking the other way when there is an assault on trees. Those who love the queen of the hills need to fight tooth and nail to make the government see reason. Enough damage has already been done to Shimla. It cannot take any more.
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Musharraf’s comeback plan Former military ruler of Pakistan Gen Pervez Musharraf’s plan to formally launch his own political party has been in the news for a long time. What was in doubt was his declaration that he would return to Pakistan to try his luck as a politician. Now, however, it is clear that he will function a la Altaf Husain of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). Obviously, he cannot take the risk of being among his people to “change the political culture” of Pakistan because of a number of cases pending against him.
The cases registered against him include those relating to his alleged involvement in the killing of Baloch nationalist Nawab Akbar Baghti, the Lal Masjid operation in Islamabad, suspension of the judiciary and the imposition of an emergency. General Musharraf cannot think of coming back home so long as Pakistan Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, who was suspended twice during the retired General’s rule, is there on the scene. General Musharraf, who has chosen a Friday to launch his All-Pakistan Muslim League because of the day’s religious significance, perhaps, feels that this is the right time for him to announce his emergence on the political landscape of Pakistan. The Army has given a good dressing down to the PPP-led government in Islamabad for its poor handling of the crisis caused by the unprecedented floods. People in the flood-hit areas consider the Army as their saviour. The ruling politicians stand condemned. General Musharraf must be feeling vindicated as he tried to prove during his rule that the traditional politicians of his country were not fit to govern the country. He patronised a Muslim League faction, derisively called the King’s Party, when he was running the show as President. But the party fared badly during the 2008 elections, leading to his ouster from the seat of power. Only a small section of educated Pakistanis consider him as the man who saved Pakistan by reversing the country’s Taliban policy after 9/11. A vast majority of Pakistanis hold him responsible for the suicide bombing culture that has endangered the very survival of their country. Keeping all this in view, one can easily say that his new political experiment will take him nowhere. |
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Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. — Martin Luther King
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Changing sports scenario
As a lover and player of cricket, a few responsibilities entrusted to me have given me greater joy than being asked by the then Chairman of the BCCI, Mr N.K.P Salve, in 1982 to assist and look after the Indian cricket team visiting Pakistan. I was then India’s Consul-General in Karachi.
During that series, Imran Khan devastated the Indian batting line-up, with only Sunil Gavaskar and Mohinder Amarnath performing creditably and consistently. The Indians were then still learning the art of dealing with reverse swing — an art perfected by the Pakistanis — though some in our team quietly noted that Imran seemed to swing the ball prodigiously only after the tea intervals! I then asked a Pakistani commentator what he thought of Imran’s bowling against India. He replied that Imran had told him that when he played against India he thought of Kashmir and treated the encounter not as a cricket match, but as a jihad. It is not surprising that when he took to politics and formed the Tehrik-e-Insaf Party, Imran was joined by worthies like former ISI chief Lieut-Gen Hamid Gul and the viscerally anti-Indian former Foreign Minister and High Commissioner to India Abdus Sattar. The Pakistan Cricket Board, like its hockey and squash administrations, was then run by its 1965 war hero, its former Air Force chief Air Marshal Nur Khan — a formidable individual, who even General Zia-ul-Haq would not dare to take on. Nur Khan did a remarkable job in changing the sociological composition of sport in Pakistan. He looked away from the traditional Karachi and Lahore elites and encouraged interest in sports in poorer neighbourhoods, apart from small towns and rural Pakistan. It was this approach that led to Pakistan turning out a regular stream of world class fast bowlers and unorthodox but gutsy batsmen. It was Imran Khan who moulded this motley crowd into a formidable team, performing brilliantly, but erratically. But it was impossible to ignore the underlying tensions that gripped any match Pakistan played against India. I asked the founder and first Editor of the Jang Group of newspapers , Mir Khalilur Rahman, why his countrymen were so fired up when playing cricket against India. He wryly responded: “Our problem is that we treat the cricket field as a battlefield and think the battlefield is a cricket field”! Sadly, Air Marshal Nur Khan’s is today a lone voice in the wilderness, raised against the futility of antagonism towards India. Unlike the days when Nur Khan was a towering figure in Pakistani cricket, standards of financial propriety and fair play have fallen there like in India. Cricket, as a former Chairman of the BCCI is said to have remarked, is today primarily a source of entertainment for fans and of personal enrichment for others. The Indian media adopted a moralistic posture in lampooning Pakistani cricketers for their involvement in “spot fixing” in England, conveniently forgetting that four of our own erstwhile heroes, including a former captain, were banned for alleged involvement in “match fixing”. Neither India nor Pakistan can honestly claim today that their sports institutions observe high standards of financial propriety. But it is ridiculous to claim that sports can be totally divorced from international politics. The Moscow Olympics were boycotted by the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union returned the favour by boycotting the Los Angeles Olympics. South Africa was banned from international sport when apartheid prevailed and the Anglo-Saxon bloc refuses to play against Zimbabwe because they dislike its ruler, President Mugabe. No government could have defied outraged public opinion and invited Pakistani cricketers when wounds of the 26/11 terrorist attack were still raw. I was invited recently to participate in some television programmes when news came that the India-Pakistan duo of Rohan Bopanna and Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi had staged an upset victory to enter the finals of the US Open. Sports buffs and professional bleeding hearts across the country were ecstatic, proclaiming that the young tennis stars were ushering in a “new era” of eternal friendship between India and Pakistan. Not to be outdone, our Sports Minister M.S. Gill, who is unlikely to get a Bharat Ratna for his ministry’s stewardship of the Commonwealth Games, jumped in to proclaim: “I have one question for everyone. If Bopanna and Qureshi can play together, why not India and Pakistan?” The minister was obviously ignorant of the fact that over the past decade the Cricket Boards of South Asian countries had got together and, using Indian financial clout, had effectively shifted the centre of cricketing power from the Anglo-Saxon world to the subcontinent. The headquarters of the ICC moved from the hallowed precincts at Lords to a centre of subcontinental cricket, the Emirate of Dubai in 2005. While Sports Minister Gill was waxing eloquent on how sportsmen had set an example for others to follow came the chilling news that three Indian soldiers had been killed by jihadis from across the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. Those talking about a “new era in India-Pakistan relations” seem to forget the realities of the present era when terrorism sponsored by state agencies from across our border is taking lives across the country, from Kashmir to Kerala. One wonders if the families of the three soldiers or their compatriots would have been very pleased by the media hype over the US Open. This is not to suggest that we should underestimate the contributions that sportsmen, civil society groups, business houses and academic contacts play in promoting better understanding between countries. And there are millions of people in both India and Pakistan who yearn for a better future in the relationship. We should, however, avoid hyping individual events when unwarranted. Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi is an exceptional Pakistani sportsman. At a time when the Pakistani cricket team is afflicted with excessive religiosity — a legacy of its former captain Inzamam-ul-Haq — Aisam has challenged conventional thinking in Pakistan by partnering with an Israeli player in the international circuit. He won his first international tournament in 2008 partnering with Prakash Amritraj, winning the South African Open with Rohan Bopanna earlier this year. Sports Minister Gill would do well to ask his Cabinet colleague, the Union Home Minister, to ease some of the draconian rules, now imposed on visas for Pakistani nationals, including their distinguished sportsmen like young Aisam Qureshi. Moreover, even non-resident Indians who recently acquired foreign nationality and hold multi-entry visas to visit friends and relatives in India are today targets of our Home Ministry’s paranoia and are prevented from visiting India
freely.
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Airconditioned views
DISCUSSIONS on contentious public issues like Naxalism, suicide by farmers, terrorism etc. generate much heat and passion. The remark that is often made to silence those voicing opposite views is: “Sitting in airconditioned rooms, what do you people know about the reality or ground situation”. It can hardly be said with certainty whether these persons are always closer to reality themselves. And be it remembered that all that they say is itself said in either an airconditioned conference hall or an auditorium! In 1902 Willis Carrier first made an apparatus that controlled the temperature and air humidity. This ‘chiller’, now known the world over as airconditioner, that travelled across oceans and continents and fought searing heat waves, has now become an invention that many find hard to live without. There are exceptions to the magic of this technological wonder. Gandhiji lived all his life in ashrams and jhuggis. He had no use for airconditioners and it is hard to imagine anybody with a cooler temperament and closer to the reality of the Indian situation than the Mahatma. His views remained unchanged even when he was ushered into an airconditioned study by Lord Mountbatten who wanted to discuss with him the issue of partition of India. The airconditioner in Mountbatten’s study nearly led to a ‘catastrophe’. Edvina Mountbatten who saw Gandhiji’s shoulders shaking snapped the airconditioner off and covered him with her husband’s bridge-sweaters. This implacable foe of technology refused to budge from his views on the partition of India which he had firmly set himself against. Legendary Hakim Abdul Hameed of Hamdard Dawakhana was similarly opposed to airconditioning. He found nothing curative in it. He cured countless people while sitting, all his life, in a dimly lit room with a faintly moving ceiling fan. It is in human nature to yearn for cool climes or comforts when troubled by heat. Romans used aquaducts. Our ‘rishis’ enjoyed the cool breeze in their sequestered ashrams in the midst of jungles and did lofty thinking. Even ‘khap-panchayats’ conduct their deliberations under well shaded ‘Neem’ or ‘Banyan’ trees. But some comfort lovers are incorrigible. I recall the wife of a senior officer in Assam declining to accompany him to a mofussil town where he was posted by saying: “AC aru coco cola na holey, moi kinekva thakim” (how shall I stay without AC and coca cola). Today tinytots reared in airconditioned homes complain when their classrooms and dormitories are found lacking in this facility. An example of a detainee in a lockup is worth citing. His kin came to me the other day and complained, “The lock-up is lacking in ‘basic’ facilities like western style commode and cooling device!” Our Parliament and assemblies, the tribunes of our people, so well airconditioned and their proceedings so well televised, belie that airconditioning can always have a cooling effect. Our representatives claiming proximity to reality and people’s feelings — which, indeed, they are expected to — sometimes forget all about airconditioning when they lunge for the throats of those who combat their views. Isn’t it a reverse
impact?
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Learn from farmers Let us first take the Supreme Court ruling regarding the free distribution of food grains. From time to time, the FCI has been declaring specified quantities of substandard wheat/rice lying in their godowns or those of MARKFED, the State Warehousing Corporation, the Central Warehousing Corporations and the like. These do not satisfy the specifications laid down for human consumption and are tagged as “unfit for human consumption”. These are disposed of in the market for purposes other than human consumption. Around 1972-73 I was the Managing Director, MARKFED(Punjab), and Mr S.L. Kapur, IAS (retd) was the Chairman. The FCI released some of substandard wheat to be disposed of as unfit for human consumption. The Punjab government received instructions to transfer the wheat to Maharashtra. Even before this letter reached us, grain dealers from Maharashtra were already in Chandigarh trying to get the allocations of this wheat. I pointed out to the government that we should not deal with private dealers and transfer this to Maharashtra on a state-to-state basis. The Maharashtra Government was accordingly requested. They sent us a list of their authorised agents to take the delivery of wheat on behalf of the Maharashtra state. The wheat was transferred to these government nominees. It was clearly mentioned in all the paper work that the wheat was unfit for human consumption. However, somehow this wheat reached the distributing system in Maharashtra. After a few months, both Mr S.L.Kapur and I received summons to appear before a Magistrate’s court. We were held responsible for sending substandard wheat that was being sold to the public. We were charged under the IPC and the Essential Commodities Act. Mr Kapur and I had to appear in the court, had to undergo the court procedure and were allowed to leave on bail with instructions to appear whenever summoned. We went to Maharashtra’s Home Secretary to explain the whole case requesting him for the withdrawal of the case against us. After hearing us patiently, he asked us to see the Food Secretary in whose jurisdiction this case would be. We went to the Food Secretary and explained the whole situation again mentioning that the transfer was marked as “unfit for human consumption” and its disposal was to be organised by the government of Maharashtra and that It was for the Maharashtra government to ensure that it was not sold for human consumption. He also said he would examine the case. It took us two-three appearances in the court and almost begging the Maharashtra government before it was agreed to withdraw the case against us. Dr. Sucha Singh Gill has observed that the Supreme Court order is “worth implementing immediately”. The point I want to make is that it is not a simple matter to distribute substandard wheat to the poor free or otherwise. To carry out the Supreme Court ruling, the government will have to release only that wheat which meets the prescribed norms for human consumption. The disposal of damaged wheat unfit for human consumption is a separate matter. The Government of India has already announced the release of 25 lakh tonnes of wheat for free distribution to the poor. When it comes to the actual working, it may or may not be the wheat which the print and other media has been projecting. Some of it even after cleaning and processing may still not be suitable for human consumption in which case the government will have to release good quality wheat. The disposal of damaged wheat will still remain a problem. In the afore-mentioned articles, some other points have been raised. A lot of data as to how much wheat is produced, procured from the mandis and stored in various godowns and also how much wheat gets damaged every year. Sidhu has condemned the storing of liquor in the godowns of the Punjab Warehousing Corporation. It may be clarified that the Punjab Warehousing Corporation has to work according to its own charter. These corporations are not meant for the storage of food grains only. They have to make the best use of their warehousing facilities keeping it commercially viable. Their major client may be the FCI but that does not debar them from storing liquor or other goods which give them better returns. Their apex body, the Central Warehousing Corporation, also follows the same policy. They too store a lot of food grains, but they also do a lot of other “godowning” according to their own commercial judgement. Mr. Sidhu’s suggestion about the construction of more godowns by the government under the PPP scheme is welcome and I am sure the Central and state governments will adopt or have adopted this approach. The storage in silos has also been mentioned. No doubt food grains stored in silos retain their quality for a longer period and damage is minimal. The FCI has been having silos for long. They have it in Moga, Kaithal, Delhi and other places. Adani, a commercial organization, is modernising these silos. I have seen that. They are doing a very good work for better handling and quick movement of food grains. But there are other factors to be considered. Our country has not been able to go in for bulk handling of food grains on any sizeable scale. In this the farmer has left the FCI and other agencies far behind. The farmer has been bringing wheat/paddy in bulk for quite a few decades now. He puts tarpauline and other such material for lining trolley or his bullock cart and takes the produce to a mandi in bulk. Thereafter the cleaning and other operations are done manually by traders. The Punnjab government installed machinery for the cleaning of food grains at Khamano and some other places. This equipment remains unused. After the purchase food grains are put in gunny bags, transported to godowns and again transferred by trucks to nearby railway stations for despatch to different destinations in the country or to ports for export. The Railways and road transport have failed to equip themselves for the bulk transportation of food grains. The bagged wheat stored has to be again bagged for further movement. It has been mentioned that wheat should be sent to those allotted in other states direct from mandis. A quick evacuation of wheat from Punjab to other states again is not an easy matter. Almost 90-95 per cent of wheat is received in May-June. The total capacity which the Railways and road transport can offer is far below the requirement for a simultaneous movement. It has, therefore, to be stored in Punjab for some time before it can be sent to different states. In around 1973-74 the then Punjab Food Minister (Mr Kharbanda) and myself (then Director, Food & Supplies) went to the then Railway Minister (Mr Hanumanthayia) for more allocation of rakes for a quick movement of wheat from Punjab. We both came back after hearing details of his plans as to how he is going to run the Railways more efficiently and get more return per wagon. The movement of wheat from Punjab did not seem to be in his calculations. Dr. Manjit Singh Kang has observed that we should invest in storage technology. He too has emphasised that investment in food production in general and storage in particular is necessary if India has to have the long-term food grain production policy and meet the projected demand of 276 million tonnes in 2021 and over 400 million tonnes in 2050. Increasing production to that level may be possible. The storage may remain a problem. More investment is needed for research in storage technology. Recently, a training programme was held for senior officers of the Food Corporation of India. They were given a broad picture of storage practices and methods followed in Western countries. It is not that the Government of India is not aware of it. From the late seventies onwards the Government of India has been inviting and receiving many proposals about scientific methods of storage. There are a number of practices for better handling of storage. Silos is not the only alternative. Many other methods are cheaper and better than silos. However, all such methods require bulk handling of food grains. The present system of mandis to godowns and dispatch will require bulk handling. From the farmers’ field to the final destination, the handling will have to be in bulk. We need to look at the farmer with great respect. He moved on to bulk handling decades ago where the government is still stuck with the age-old system of handling and storage in gunny bags. The writer, a retired IAS officer of the Punjab cadre now settled in Noida, is a former Additional Secretary, Ministry of Food, and Director, Board of the Food Corporation of India
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FCI questions ‘grain drain’ figures 1. “The media recently reported that 50,000 tonnes of wheat had got damaged in Punjab alone, Sharad Pawar called the reports exaggerated. However, in the affidavit before the Supreme Court his own ministry proved him wrong by putting the figure at around 67,000 tonnes.” The actual quantity of damaged foodgrains as on 1.07.2010 is as under: FCI: 11708 Tonnes Punjab State Agencies: 54260 Tonnes Haryana State Agencies: 1574 Tonnes These figures were accurately quoted in the answer given on 27.07.2010 in response to the Lok Sabha starred question number 30. 2. “About 7.5 lakh tonnes wheat were damaged and sold as animal feed in 2004.” This figure is incorrect and has been bloated by several degrees as the food grains (i.e. wheat & rice) with the FCI that were damaged during 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 were 0.76 and 0.97 lakh tones, respectively. Thus, the cumulative total damaged food grains for these two years are 1.73 Lakh tonnes and not 7.5 Lakh tonnes of wheat as mentioned in the article. 3. “Strangely the FCI hands over wheat at below market rates to a select number of registered mills that sell flour at a hefty profit.” The OMSS is a scheme under which wheat is released in order to bring down prices in the open market. Under this scheme wheat is sold by the FCI to technically qualified bulk consumers empanelled in accordance with the guidelines given by the Government of India through a process of open tenders. The reserved price for these tenders is fixed by a high-level committee set up by the government. In fact the FCI has been able to sell only 42,454 tonnes between April 2010 and August 2010. The federation of flour mills has been representing that the reserved price fixed by the govt./FCI is higher than the market price due to which the tender sale under the OMSS is so small. Nirmal Sandhu responds: 1. The FCI has given the figure of food grains damaged in its own godowns, while my article mentions the figure of total food grains damaged, including those in Punjab and Haryana, which comes to 67,542 tonnes as the FCI’s own figures show. 2. The FCI is citing the figures for the years 2003-04 and 2004-05. The figure of 7.5 lakh tonnes of wheat liquidated as animal feed pertains to the stocks held between 1998 and 2001. For details see IAS officer Ashok Khemka’s article “Food stocks and prices both soar” published in The Economic Times on March 11, 2010. 3. The FCI has not mentioned the actual price at which it sells wheat to private flour mills. My observation is based on the March 2010 quarter when wheat was released to the registered mills at Rs 1,240 per quintal. The branded flour prices then were at about Rs 2,000 a quintal or Rs 200 per 10-kg bag. The FCI did not make enough wheat sales in the open market to bring down the flour prices despite having huge stocks. This benefited the mills at the cost of consumers. |
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Corrections and clarifications l
In the break quote with the report “Uneasy calm in Ayodhya,” (The Tribune, Page 2, September 30), it is mentioned “Babu Khan, who has been sewing clothes for Ram Lalla’s idol since 13 years…”, should have instead been “for 13 years”. l
In the report, “Sukhois deployed for CWG security,” (The Tribune, Page 8, September 29), ‘aircrafts’ is erroneously used as a plural. The plural of aircraft is aircraft. l
In the report, “Ayodhya under tight security,” (The Tribune, Page 2, September 29) the expression “flutters” is used. It should just have been flutter. l
In the photo caption with the report, “Male hippo forced into isolation at Chhatbir zoo,” (The Tribune, Page 3, September 29) it should have been “one of the four hippopotamuses,” instead of “one of the four hippopotamus”. l
The headline “Almora, Nainital count their losses,” (The Tribune, Page 18, September 28), should not have had ‘their’ which is only used for living beings. It could have just been “counting losses”. 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
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